#154 Happiness: Epicurus' Ancient Guide - Jonny Thomson

28:03Jonny Thomson:Good. Yes. I mean, there's a lot there. I mean, you're right that a lot of the history of philosophy and history of religion has taken a dim view of pleasure. That's because we often understand pleasure in the sense of what they call these moving pleasures, which are these peaks of feeling good you know drinking drinking beer or partying and stuff but even it could be on small thing like you know even to watch in the sunrise could be a nice pleasure it's a kind of moving pleasure in that sense and those kind of pleasures even epicureans would agree are can be problematic um but so they would actually say that the greatest pleasure is more what we now call peace or contentment or finding peace and being pain-free and stuff or being um what's called ataraxia which is called peace of mind um but the question is why do they think pleasure is good and pain is bad and well two reasons really one is that epicurus agreed with aristotle that he thought um if we're to discuss human happiness we have to talk about what we are aiming towards what we are going towards so he says that if the good in life has to satisfy two criteria one it has to be available to us right from the start right at the start of being a human being and second it has to be something that everything aims towards that we want that again i mentioned earlier that it confused me that no one was talking enough about how happiness needs to feel good and epicureanism is saying that you know all humans possibly all complex animals and you know who knows below that aim towards pleasure and we recoil from pain that's the basic kind of pull and push of biology really and physiology and let alone psychology you know we we want pleasure and we want to avoid pain.

29:40And so when we talk about the good, it makes sense to Epicurus and to me that to define the good has to be something that you want. And as far as everyone I've ever met in my life has said they don't want pain, they do want to feel good, pleasure. So that's the answer to that question.

29:59Jonny Thomson:So when we talk about pleasure being the motivating factor of ethics, would the Epicurean say, you ought to value your own pleasure? Or is it more like you just do value your own pleasure? Like, is there this prescriptive element of like, this is how you ought to order your values? Or are they just describing how human psychology works? So the word ought is tied up with deontology, it's tied up with duty and things. And so that would not have existed in the ancient world and definitely not in epicureanism um so when we're talking about the good so pleasure is the good it's more in terms of a value rather than an ethical value um not rather ethical statements as you know that was a good thing to do it's more like good it's good to have we want it so good is almost tied up synonymously with what we want so what you're talking about there the ought and ethics is what epicureus would probably talk about as justice And so I talk about this in the final chapter of the book.

30:59Epicureanism does see justice as a local matter, what we now call contractarianism, which is the idea that you form a contract with someone else to mutually agree not to harm them. And then justice exists within those kind of social contracts. So it's kind of social contract theory, which is very different, of course, to the Stoics, who were the first cosmopolitans, who believed that we do have a degree of ethical responsibility to everybody in the world. And their title, virtue, applies to everyone, everything. Epicureanism says that virtue, again, is instrumentally valuable to our own happiness, but also that justice exists within the contract between two parties, a contract id.

31:38Jonny Thomson:What do you call people who sign up to a contract? Contractees, maybe? Sainese? Sainese. Yeah. There's something, there's a word. It's already in the comments. Okay. So yeah, I mean, the ancient Greek philosophers, you know, like Alistair McIntyre's book, After Virtue, which makes this big song and dance about the fact that our ethical terminology just kind of means something different to what these guys are talking about. And so we have these concepts of like should and ought, and you might say, well why should i value my pleasure the ancient greek might just be like i mean aristotle opens his nicomachean ethics by saying like you know all men aim at the good you know and women presumably too that that's just what people aim at and so let's find out what the good is it doesn't have this undertone of like there is this spooky element of the world called duty and here's what i think it is and how it should sort of bind you.

32:42Jonny Thomson:It's like, there's just this fact that things aim at other things. Humans aim at this thing, which we call the good. So let's figure out what that is. And for Aristotle, he thought the good was this thing called eudaimonia, which is roughly translated in English a lot of the time to something like pleasure, or more accurately, maybe like flourishing. Is this the same kind of concept that Epicurus is talking about? Like, could you say that Epicurus' pleasure is what he would call eudaimonia, or do you think these are distinct? Very broadly, yes. I mean, these are all called the eudaimonic schools.

33:15So Aristotle, as you mentioned rightly, started it, and then Epicureanism, Stoicism, Cynicism, Scepticism, these are all the eudaimonic schools in that they are trying to sell happiness. Again, I think we almost get too hung up on the idea of eudaimonia as being a flourishing thing. I think happiness is a perfectly good translation of eudaimonia. Yeah, people don't like it because people associate eudaimonia with pleasure or happiness. But I don't think we today understand happiness as being just entirely pleasure-based. Like if your mum or a therapist or somebody said to you, are you happy? You know, I don't think you'd mean, am I in pleasure right now?

33:53You'd take the meaning of the question to be some kind of existential happiness, which is what they meant in ancient Greece as well. So Epicurus, when he talks about, he doesn't talk about eudaimonia in that sense. He doesn't really talk about it that much at all. He talks about pleasure more than that. But he does, Epicureanism works in the assumption that we have to be far more intentional about our happiness. So as I mentioned earlier, pleasure is not just these peaks of chemicals in the brain, dopamine, endorphins, whatever, and stuff like that. Pleasure is settled. It is contented. It's being pain-free.

34:27And so Epicureanism, So you mentioned the logos earlier, which is very big in all of the Greek philosophies. Epicureanism prefers to use the word logismos, which is not reason in any kind of divine sense. It's more what we might call deliberation or weighing up. And humans do it very well, but of course all animals do this. I talk about in the book about hermit crabs, they do it as well. They have these nice shells and they might be scared by a predator or they experience a kind of pain. They have got to weigh up whether they would stay in these shells or whether they would leave it. humans are doing exactly the same thing all of the time so we need to weigh up and we need to be more deliberate about thinking about pleasure but also more importantly for the epicureans about thinking about how to remove pain and by pain i mean anxiety so we need to think about what things are causing me to be anxious stressed and distressed and how can i remove that how can i be better how can i um feel better and that's what epicureanism is saying that's what happiness comes down to that you have to take ownership of that and just think it through a bit more.

35:28Jonny Thomson:In the 19th century, utilitarianism sort of burst onto the scene and became incredibly popular. And the idea was quite simple that, you know, people desire pleasurable experiences and the avoidance of pain. And the best thing we can do for the good of all people is to of maximize that pleasure and minimize that pain. From what we've heard so far, at least, that sounds exceptionally similar to Epicureanism. What's the difference? Because people might sort of have that as a useful touchstone. Most people know what utilitarianism kind of is all about. So what's the difference? No, no. And you're right.

36:09So when Bentham talked about the two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain, I tend to use that language. I think I use it in the book as well because I like it. It's a good visual. I mean, the major difference is they try to turn into a political and ethical system, which has worked. We still, essentially, most governments, democratic, liberal governments, work under a form of utilitarianism. We have to maximize utility and pleasure for the most in a democratic system. In ethics, they do the same thing. As I mentioned earlier, Epicurus doesn't really talk about ethics in that sense. None of the Greeks talk about ethics in the sense we use it today in making up an ethical system.

36:44It's more about virtue it's more about living everyday life so epicureanism sorry um utilitarianism talks about maximizing pleasure for everybody epicureanism is about my pleasure yeah and about me as an animal how can i get the most pleasure and how can i avoid the most pain at the most extreme of utilitarianism you have the likes of peter singer who are saying that we have almost an equal duty to maximize the pleasure for a faraway child in a distant country or minimize the pain of a faraway country as we do as my own children or those around me. Epicureanism is pushing the dial right back to the other extreme.

37:24It's what we call localism. It will kind of say that what I can do with my own hands, what is in front of me matters more. And it's about my own pleasure and my own pain, which will inevitably be my own loved ones, my own friends, and my small pocket of the world really so that's the major difference which not a lot of people which

37:45Jonny Thomson:i should say that some people won't get on board with they don't like the idea yeah they might like the idea we do have an equal duty to every human in the world regardless of who they are where they are what state of life they're in but epigenism says no they weren't talking in terms of duties but they definitely say that you know justice for a start is between signatories of the contract but also my pleasure will always be found in my local pocket of yeah for the universe you know that's easy to say isn't it you know like i feel like it's a bit of a bit uh like a get out of jail free card for hedonists egoists the kind of people who say well you know i justify my ethical worldview by just my own self-interest and somebody says well shouldn't you care for other people and they go, well, I do.

38:30Jonny Thomson:Yeah, good news. I do care for other people, so problem solved. Except not everybody does, right? And Epicureans are surely as familiar as the rest of us with the psychopath or the sadist who genuinely just take pleasure in harming other people. And as with utilitarianism, there is this question of like, if you are not just saying that it's permissible to be happy, but that is the thing to strive for, to the detriment of everybody else, you know, they can all go to hell. The thing that matters is that I feel good. If I'm just of a psychological constitution, such that I just take pleasure in the destruction of everybody else's happiness, ought I not do that?

39:11Jonny Thomson:And does the Epicurean see that as a problem? No, it's a good issue. Yeah. No, the problem is a sadistic guard, you know, and Mill had to face it as well. And the Epicureans obviously deal with it a different way because Mill came up with this, you know, the higher and lower pleasures, kind of like a hierarchy of what you should and should not enjoy in life, which is, I think most people agree, fairly snobbish. Yeah, and beginning to just approximate not being a utilitarian anymore. Yeah. And just saying that there are some things that are better than others. Yeah, exactly. So you just gave up the idea.

39:36Jonny Thomson:But Epicureanism has a few different ways out, really. The first is to, I would probably challenge the idea that you could be a perfectly level-headed, happy psychopath and sadist. It seems bizarre to me that we could have this happy conversation, you know, we'll have a laugh afterwards, we might get a drink later on and stuff, and then you go home on your own and just torture a cat at any evening. it may that's because you're not a psychopath well i think there's there is quite a lot of evidence to suggest that people who are psychopaths and sadists and have those kind of issues are also very distressed and unhappy in other respects um to be very level-headed and settled in your pleasure while also being a sadist from what i understand from the evidence would be um contradictory the second thing is as i mentioned earlier that epicureans um say you should be very deliberate about our happiness that um if a sadist for example enjoys a pleasure of torturing a cat, let's say.

40:26I didn't like cats growing up. I don't know why I picked them. I never picked dogs in my example, so I always choose cats. It doesn't mean I should, I'm not, I'm probably going to be cancelled by half the internet here, but dog people might still support me, but I'm sure you'll be just fine. I always choose cats. Maybe I should choose some other example that, you know, some aliens or something like that. More canceable things have probably been said in this podcast. Okay, right. Okay. So let's say you torture a cat, you're a sadist, and it gives you a spike of pleasure in that moment. Okay. That's what A, that's what they call a moving pleasure.

40:50And those are the lesser pleasures. And as with all pleasures in life, you've got to be careful you don't become addicted to it so be careful you don't become addicted to torture cats um but also be aware that you live under the certain laws of the land so by doing that you are exposing yourselves to two future pains the first is the constant pain you're going to be caught you're going to be found out and that is an anxiety that that gnaws at you in fact in crime and punishment we have this example of someone who basically becomes insane over the course of the book because this paranoia, this anxiety of being caught and being recognised as being the murderer really gnaws.

41:26And the third issue with that is that, of course, you will get caught eventually. And then things really go south. You end up in the company of other sadists and other criminals. And nowadays, we have a relative, well, at least in our country and most liberal democracy, we have relatively humane prison systems back in Epicurus' time and throughout most of human history and still true for a lot of the world if you are caught as a criminal your existence becomes desperately painful after that um i mentioned dostoevsky again you know in the house of the dead he talks about the prison house there where people you know shaved heads tattooed faces you know stinking barely any rations people shivving each other in the night because they got a nicer blanket than somebody else that's the reality that if you are a sadist if you are a if you are vicious in the sense of like you are you indulge your vices you will find yourself surrounded by those other people so you'll find yourself surrounded by other cat torturers

42:24Jonny Thomson:you've you've already told me though that that's not how things work anymore i mean the the thing is i understand this and this conversation is had in the context of all of these ethical philosophies it's like there are loads of practical considerations it's like well if you're a utilitarian, why don't you just kill an innocent person, steal their organs? And you say, oh, because we live in a society and people would be scared and stuff. But for me, it seems trivially easy to just control the thought experiment, to get rid of those factors, to just be like, you know, suppose you just know that it's not going to be a problem.

43:01Jonny Thomson:I suppose that you find yourself in a society where you have become the supreme dictator and you're above the law and you don't need to worry it the only thing you need to worry about is like maybe like uprisings but maybe the people who you know the majority of the people really enjoy the fact that you've got this privilege and you know like there were societies that used to get by on human sacrifice they used to sort of rally together and just like and just sacrifice humans because they thought that's what the gods wanted if you woke up tomorrow and you traveled back in time and you were a shaman in one of these ancient cultures and you thought yes come on now i can you know put someone in a wicker man and burn them to death and nobody's going to come after me for it and you know now great i'm going to take pleasure in that if you then just go about your happy business burning that human alive taking great you know pleasure in it knowing nothing's going to come of it are you the epicurean hero or would epicure still say a lot something's going on there i mean you're First, you're absolutely right.

44:00The Epicurus would agree with you about the shaman. And this is one of the biggest reasons why Epicurus really did not like religion for that reason. The second you start saying that the afterlife or the divinities are more important than what I have here, then yes, it becomes very dangerous. It becomes very unhappy. And then this is why Epicurus said religion is a bad thing in that sense. But does it become unhappy?

44:19Jonny Thomson:But then also, say again? Does it become unhappy for you? Yes. Well, then it's the other thing. You want to imagine, I'm putting in my cant here. If we are to universalize this, would you want to live in a society where human sacrifice is normalized? Where, let's say you go to bed one night, you wake up, can I have your son? I've got a five-year-old son at home. He's been selected for the human sacrifice this weekend. Would I like to live in that society? No, that would be horrible and distressing for me. So religion is anxious-inducing in itself, according to Epicurus, but also living in that kind of society would be bad.

44:54now to the dictator question again this is where the rubber hits the floor a little bit or hit rubber hits the road i should say that the thought experiments are run up against the reality here at some point i i can't imagine a situation where a dictator is not constantly anxious looking over their shoulders in fact if you look through a history you know most dictators have a pretty sad life or end up pretty bad at the end badly at the end yes an epicurus uh recommended not

45:22Jonny Thomson:getting involved in politics he did because of the sheer anxiety of it yes i i can understand that but then at the same time i still i sort of think to myself you know okay so i i want to get a bit sort of weird here because i want to say something like okay well imagine you just lived in a society where your child maybe it's like a maybe it's like racially based or tribe based or something and you just know that that's not going to happen to your child you just know for a fact because this is the other line that i think people take as they say well is that the kind of society you wish to live in well okay so let's universalize the rule but let's be very specific about what the rule is you know everybody in this society has to act so as johnny thompson is allowed to sacrifice children would you be okay living in a society like that well if you're a sadist well good yeah sure like why not i talk about so in in chapter six of the book i talk about ursula le guin's short story about the ones who walk away from omelette which is which is exactly this idea that you know let's say my society depends upon the i mean that story there's a torture of a child locked in a basement somewhere you know fed scraps and stuff but you're i mean you're expanding it to being more like the i think shirley i forget the surname wrote the lottery something maybe we can add that into show notes which is basically this idea it's like it's like some kind of um black mirror horrible horror movie where somebody has to get sacrificed you know everyone against us um again religion is the only probably reason for why that would be the case and epicureanism is about friendship about community and about recognizing your local pocket as of the world as being important to your happiness let's say we lived in the same village we know we get on we have a good time we talk about movies we read books we go jogging we run through fields we have a platonic friendship you know in that in that situation would i then be happy if i'm sorry alex had been drugged dragged away this weekend because he's been selected for the purge the murder whatever no of course i wouldn't i i so this is what in the book i talk about martha nussbaum's idea of capability approach yeah um and this is i mentioned that you know epicureanism as you say as you rightly say is is a a political philosophy yeah that is possibly the way i could see it being politicized better than more than than epic and than utilitarianism i should say because that essentially says that there are certain base requirements that all human beings need if they are to be happy yeah it's kind of like a politicized version of maslow's hierarchy of needs and into that i would put a base thing that all humans need to be happy is the recognition that i would that i or my friends will not be dragged away in the night to be sacrificed to baal the final i think that was important to my happiness or anxiety i don't think i could be ataraxic and like anxiety free living in those kind of societies unless of course we say we just create a a strictly racially hierarchical hierarchical society and we socialize you to believe that friendship with people of other races is just not desirable so you've got absolutely no interest in their interests and they're the only people who ever are subject to sacrifice so you have all of your friends and you live very happily and the people that you're not friends with you have no interest in being friends with and then you occasionally get together and in order to sort of purge the society of its sort of vested up anger and hatred we just sort of pick a human sacrifice and we all take a great deal of pleasure in that in fact it doesn't even matter if everyone else is taking pleasure in it it's just as long as you do as long as you take pleasure in that kind of thing in a way that guarantees it's not going to come back to bite you in the butt.

48:59Jonny Thomson:You can understand what I'm asking, which is, okay, maybe in practice, there would always be some kind of anxiety or something that would come back. But in principle, if there just were a situation where somebody did something which seems trivially immoral, but only brought them pleasure, can the Epicurean, do they have a sort of in-principle approach to say that is still wrong? This is why I mentioned earlier that you see within Epicureanism, the first embryonic ideas of what we now would call a conscience i think that what you're talking about there would be some kind of intentional kind of dystopian erasure of your conscience right um because that is you know it's not a small thing i think of having a bad conscience having a guilty conscience is a great source of anxiety so if you live in society where these horrible things were happening and by which you did nothing or you didn't care at all that would be where your conscience is being kind of lobotomized from you and stuff and you're right in the science fiction thought experiment i can imagine that um it's hard to imagine a society where which is where you erase people's conscience in that sense while people are also enjoying the kind of pleasure that epicureanism is talking about now of course i talk about in the book there there are some people who live such lives which are very hard lives that they do have to harden themselves to the realities of the world and what we might call a conscience is a luxury of living in a time of luxury.

50:20That some people might be willing to let people die and get on with their life because they recognize they've got to get on with what they have over here. But still, looking at the broader picture, those people are not happy in the sense that we want to talk about here. That is not a happy society. And if you are a member of that society, you will not also be happy as well. So does that answer the question, the idea of a conscience? And if you're lobotomizing someone's conscience, yeah, fine, but you can get away with all... That's true of any ethical system, isn't it? You're essentially saying that...

50:46Well, I'm not sure. Let's create a thought experiment here where you don't care about the good. In fact, Emmanuel Kan talks about this. Imagine a situation. He says people naturally want to do the good. And we might have a misunderstanding about what the good is, but that is a natural impulsion of humans.

51:02Jonny Thomson:And you're saying now let's imagine a situation where people don't care. I am for two reasons. One is that I'm not sure that is true of all ethical philosophies. for example like if goodness is externally imposed if we're like divine command theorists you know what is good is just whatever god commands right and somebody just loses their conscience they just don't have a sense of right and wrong you might still be able to say that even though you don't recognize it some this thing's still wrong because god says that it's wrong you know there are theories that will just say that that's the case or maybe if you've got a view of human rights where it's the people who possess the rights that's really where the truth and falsity of the ethical system lies such that even if you have no concern for their rights doesn't mean they don't have them any more than not believing in gravity means you're going to be able to fly you know whereas a worldview like epicureanism seems to require the belief in gravity for gravity to work if you know what i mean like if you stop no finding happiness then it no longer becomes the desirable thing.

52:07No, because the Epicurean philosophy is wired into the biology of being a human being. Sure. The pleasure principle is, obviously, we're talking two and a half thousand years before Darwin, but I've often thought that if Epicurus read on the origin of the species, he'd be like, this is amazing. I think that it's very much wired into who we are as a species. And I think that's why, while I'm not called a Politan, I think when Epicurus is talking about it, he's talking about the human condition as close as we can come to it. I think all humans are like this. No, the analogy of what you mentioned there, but with divine command theory or with human rights idea, would be to say, let's say somebody thought that a god saying something is right or wrong, but then actively didn't care about that.

52:44We've brainwashed them to not care about their god. That's what you're saying. Yeah, that is plausible. That could exist in that world. Yeah, sure.

52:52Jonny Thomson:So, yeah. Yeah. I think the other thing that crossed my mind, and I promise we will move on after this, but this is probably the main sticking point for Epicureanism, right? this is like the main thing that people come up against i'm wondering it might seem like a tangent and it's such it's such a podcast question to ask do you think this isn't a trick question just like probability where you're sat do you think ai will ever become conscious do you think do you think there's the possibility of ai consciousness i mean i um i agree with anniel seth on this yeah um the beast machine theory i i agree with what you said you know all examples of consciousness that we know of have existed within some kind of organic framework so you think probably not then well i mean i was talking i was you know i was researching the other day for some an article about about the different types of intelligence yeah you know the sternberg different types of intelligence and i do agree that we are very we like to ascribe consciousness intentionality and personality to things because they mimic certain types of intelligence and the one intelligence that we place the most onus on is communication and language and what happens to LLM seem to do very well.

53:57There are all sorts of other intelligences. Now, it might be a bit wishy-washy how far you go down the list, but I think a lot of people agree these days that some kind of emotion intelligence is important, some kind of even playful intelligence. People talk about playful intelligence. And AI doesn't have that. So I don't think that AI has consciousness as we

54:15Jonny Thomson:would understand it he's just very good at you know communicating the reason i ask is because i don't know if you believe it ever will or will ever be able to forget like the ai that we have today if we'll ever be able to artificially construct an intelligence made out of silicon the reason i think that's interesting is because and i actually agree with you i'm kind of suspicious i mean maybe it's conscious to the extent that everything's conscious you know but i don't think it's going to have this this brain like but then i see no reason like along with someone like david charmers if you just build a one-to-one correspondence between the brain and a silicon electrical circuit i see no reason why the same thing shouldn't happen as mysterious as it may be but the reason i ask is because if ai ever did become conscious we could just program an ai system that takes pleasure in all kinds of horrible terrible things or that takes pleasure in a totally different way to human beings, such that Epicureanism is very rooted in human psychology.

55:14Jonny Thomson:But if we woke up this Frankensteinian AI monster who was just programmed to take pleasure in like, I mean, I think if we just programmed it to take pleasure in gardening, then the Epicurean would probably go like, okay, so as long as that's a conscious being that has thoughts and feelings and it takes pleasure in gardening, it should garden, according to epicureanism and yet if i programmed it to take pleasure in like murdering people on the streets and you said ah but you know the the the army and the police will try to to try to stop it and i say great because i've also programmed it to just it just can't wait to be martyred or it can't wait to you know and you could and no longer would you be able to say well that's just not human psychology that's just not how the brain works i think the epicurean would either have to say my ethical worldview only applies to human beings which fair enough but then you would have this problem of how to ethically govern yeah artificial intelligence or they have to say that actually for that ai robot that's just the right thing for them to do and it's our pleasure versus theirs and see who wins out yes i mean it's a really interesting thought experiment actually and i've you know i've not reposed it before and the reason why it's interesting because epicureanism does say that pleasure is the only good and pain is the only bad now the question is do they mean is good or are good and bad in that context objective values which exist outside of humans yes because i think i and i think epicureans are willing to admit that pleasure exists within other animals i think the pleasure principle is true for humans but it's also true of primates of high mammals fish turtles whatever and stuff but then the other way i would actually fudge it a little bit this is just this is fresh off the bat this is straight off my head i would say that what an ai an artificial silicon and would feeling as pleasure, we need a new word for that.

57:04I think that wouldn't be pleasure in the sense of organic pleasure. It's almost mirrored my attitude to consciousness generally, to be honest, that I think all the instances of pleasure we have exist within an evolutionary system. And I think Epicureanism exists within an evolutionary system. And when we're talking about happiness, we have to take stock of the fact that we are animals on a line which are programmed by DNA to exist within the world as we have grown up in it i think if what would pleasure look like for an artificial intelligence it wouldn't be that it would be something where well on one hand it would be just what we've the same thing as we have but also it wouldn't be embodied it wouldn't be that kind of beast machine theory so i've kind of fudged it off the hoof no but i think that's fair enough

57:46Jonny Thomson:and and yeah anil wrote this prize-winning essay um he's about to occupy this the seat that you're satin and i'll ask him about this um i don't like you know so many when people record multiple episodes in a day they go through great pain to make it seem like they haven't done that yeah yeah you know when somebody you know people that often change their clothes between do they like and they do this on tv as well like if they'll be like oh like you know we'll be back next week and then they go and change clothes because the episode's not going to wear till next week yeah i once asked a a thomas friend of mine who thinks that lying is always wrong i was like if i'm filming a podcast with johnny thompson and then we cut johnny thompson and then exactly that's what he said and then i go and change into a different color shirt to record my next episode with annal seth so it kind of maybe seems like it's a different am i is that am i lying you know does that count as a lie yeah i think it's a an area of i do it i do it well i batch film my stuff and i'll change a jumper but why like what why do you do that yeah because i get a lot of comments on my jumpers and it's become part of my ip and if i wore the same thing for seven episode episodes seven seven films in a row then I think people would chug it but yeah no I mean that's fair enough so you're not trying to convince people that you actually filmed it well I am of course yeah by doing it and letting them think that it's a different day isn't it kind of lying yes but nothing's wrong with lying yeah I guess you're an epicurean yeah exactly and you feel the same I'm sure you've I mean you've lied today many times I'm sure I I'm sure I never lie.

59:14Jonny Thomson:Okay, but back to Anil. Anil wrote this essay about why he thinks AI probably won't be conscious, or at least that we're thinking about it in the wrong way. And one of the things he points out, for example, I'm going to fudge this, is that there's a particular kind of neuron or neuronal activity, which is specifically related to metabolism. materialism which means that if we wanted to actually replicate a human brain with silicon we'd also kind of have to house it in a physical entity that metabolizes which is just not the kind of thing that silicon can really do and so if you actually were to i imagine there's probably lots of that kind of thing going on like the brain being very well integrated with the rest of the physical goings-on of the body to the extent that if you wanted to fully you know mechanize it you'd essentially have to build a biological body.

1:00:07Jonny Thomson:And at that point, you're kind of just doing the same thing. Even before modern neuroscience, you know, who's talking about? Consciousness is intentional as well. It's a tool by which we operate the world. And I think pleasure is also like that. Pleasure is also intentional. It's wired into the universe as we have it. It's a tool by which we can operate around the world. And I think that's why it's also talked about in the book. It's why it's also very important and we should be very um conscious of for want of a better word or we should be very much aware of our pleasures and our pains because they are very good you mentioned earlier barometers they are very good um heuristics or or data points by which we can navigate the complexities of being a human being so in the 20th century robert nozick the great american political philosopher you know i saw the i saw it it washed over your eyes you're like oh here we go here we go um criticize utilitarianism with this idea of the experience machine he imagined this kind of machine that you could step into and have experiences would you believe it uh in which it will start simulating pleasurable experiences it's a bit like going into the matrix right so i don't know you hook up your brain and you just live in this illusory world you wake up and you believe that everything is real we could be in the experience machine right now um with all of the pleasure that we're that we're having with this conversation money back exactly yeah i i i can't quite imagine what it would be like but even if you just took how our life is right now and just turn the pleasurable experiences up by like you know five percent it's still better than the real world and crucially you wouldn't know that you're living an illusion you'd be like properly plugged into the matrix and nozick's point is to say that most people will say they wouldn't want this most people say i would not get in the experience machine but if what you should care about is the maximization of your pleasure it seems to be the most right and actually you've also pointed out i think the problem with the pleasure machine generally as as you've articulated it.

1:02:11Because in my view, there are two versions of the experience machine. The first is, yes, as you mentioned, we are entirely ignorant of the fact that we are in the pleasure machine, like the Matrix, that we just don't know this is the pleasure machine. And the second version is what we do know about it and that we're still in there enjoying ourselves, but also in the back of our minds, we recognize that this is all illusionary, it's fake. Now in that one, yes, the Epicureans have a problem with that because, you know, people don't like being deceived and being duped is a source of anxiety and a source of pain.

1:02:44But also each Epicurean among us and viewers watching who have converted to Epicureanism have to make that decision for themselves. They have to say, you know, to what extent does the tarake, the distress or the anxiety of living in the machine outweigh the pleasure I'm getting from being in the experience machine? And you, I think, put your finger on the problem with the questionnaire where people are asked about this. would you rather live in this machine you can't ask that question without them knowing it's a machine so does that make sense yeah i know exactly what you mean because like when you're

1:03:14Jonny Thomson:making the decision yes you already you know that it's a that it's but then if you were being rational you could say that i am just convinced rationally that what i should do is what will maximize my pleasure and right now i'm uncomfortable at the thought of being duped but i'm only going to be uncomfortable for the next 10 seconds because once i press that button i'll forget bit all about it so although i am a bit uncomfortable now that is a in the same way that like if i go to the gym i might be like oh i'm going to be uncomfortable for an hour but i just put up with the discomfort because i know that it'll be worth it in the long run because i'm being rational and if i'm rational about the experience machine yeah right now i'm kind of uncomfortable at the thought of being jude but 10 seconds i'll press the button and then there's almost two points here i mean what so the first point is that epicureanism and epicurus is very careful to say that happiness is something that we create and we find by use of our logismos i I mentioned this deliberation and stuff.

1:04:04So it has to be an element of me appreciating the world and recognizing and being grateful for what I have, that if you depend upon any externality for your happiness, eventually, you know, you're becoming dependent upon that, you become addicted to that, and that ends up being a cause of unhappiness. But let's play the game, and let's imagine that in this world, I press the button, and in that world, it is exactly like this. I think that my logismos is in charge, and I'm choosing gratitude, I'm choosing happiness and accepting stuff. Yeah. I don't see why that would be a problem for an epicure.

1:04:35But then that would be right now. That could be right now. I mean, now we're playing the Cartesian game. That could be literally right now. When we walked into this room, you and I might have been met by Zeus, who smells very lovely, and came over to us and said, guys, I've got an option for you. Do you want to press a button? You know, I'm going to give you the same opportunity, but you won't know about it, but 5 % more pleasure. And it is quite pleasurable, actually. Would you press it? Maybe we did. Maybe we did. And then we both pressed the green,

1:04:56Jonny Thomson:and we're right here right now. Well, would you predict that you, like, would you press the button if I gave you that option now? Would you? What, the exact same world? Well, no, I wouldn't right now because in the now, I would know it's a dupe and therefore I wouldn't want to do that because that would cause me the pain. Yeah, but now you're not being an epicureum because the epicureum would say, like, if I have an opportunity to expend a little bit of discomfort now for a great deal of happiness in the future, that's what's best for me. But I think that I'm in that moment because it also incorporates, I'd lose, it depends.

1:05:29And if it's the same world, the same people within it, my friends and everything, then yeah, I probably would do that. No, no, it's a different world. They're fake. So what are they? My kids, for example.

1:05:38Jonny Thomson:Say it's like some kind of brain in a vat type situation, you know, like you just sort of attach a wire to your brain. No, because the distress of pressing that button in the now would outweigh, I think, anything. You think it'd be that bad? I think it would be that bad. Because you're basically asking me to kill my kids and my wife. That's what you're saying. No, no, no. Just yourself, kind of, to them. But you won't care about that. And of course, most people would say, no, but I care about, I don't want to upset my wife and my kids. You're an Epicurean. You don't care about their suffering only insofar as it makes you feel suffering.

1:06:12Jonny Thomson:Exactly. Which I'm going to take care of. I'm going to get rid of it. The stress in that moment of pressing that button would outweigh, I think, any future opportunity. So do you think we could do it in steps where first I'll say, okay, I'm going to give you a button you can press right now, which will make you sort of care a bit less about your wife and then once we've done that because you've been like okay that would actually make my life a bit better maybe then i convince you okay now there's a button you can and finally we get you to a point where you're like yeah yeah i could press this this ultimate button again i think every step along the way would be an act of distress for me i don't think i would do that because it'd be so minor each time that given the promise of the the experience machine this wonderful incredible i press it so let's say you'd have to hide from me all of the future buttons in the future yeah but only to mitigate the sort of unjustified suffering that you're emotionally feeling.

1:06:56So the situation is that you'd come up to me right now and say, hi, John, I've got a button here, which means you care about your wife 1 % less.

1:07:01Jonny Thomson:Do you want to press it, mate? And I'll be like, why, Alex? Because I promise you, and you know that I'm telling the truth, that ultimately this will lead to more pleasure in your life. Because obviously most people don't want to press this button, right? And I'm just trying to point out that like the silliness of a circumstance like this is because obviously I'm not going to press a button to care less about my wife. but what if you knew that was going to make you more pleasurable i like you i get on with you but i don't trust you enough if you came up with a button and said go on mate press this you'll care about you but i mean to be honest i mean we can make this almost real you could come up to me and say you know do you want a shot of heroin you know trust me and it's a great feeling have a good time you won't care about anything in a couple weeks times trust me and i'll be like i like you i don't trust you enough to press minus one percent caring for my wife i'd say yeah um but yeah in the thought experiment that's i know you're 100 this is where yeah this is where we're kind of like should an epicurean then take a shot of heroin before they die as a point of obligation my mom always used to say try everything once yeah um but i think heroin before you die yeah yeah i don't see anything wrong with that before you die there's nothing intrinsically wrong with heroin no and all pleasure is good if heroin gives you pleasure but the problem with epicureanism and why epicureanism is quite unique actually is that it says that all pleasures kinetic pleasures moon pleasures have a degree of addiction of course of heroin we're talking extreme bodily addiction yeah psychological addiction as well as you know neurochemical addiction of dopamine and and adrenaline or whatever but yeah i think i would like to try heroin before i die yeah that's your cold open right there yeah yeah well what are you doing what are you doing after this i i think um i think these conversations are very similar to the stuff that you hear with like utilitarianism these kinds of objections i think there is an extent to which philosophers construct these ridiculous counterfactual worlds to try to disprove a worldview where like when i used to be utilitarian people would construct back in back Back in my day, I used to sort of, people would say like, well, what about this scenario?

1:09:14Jonny Thomson:What about, you know, the experience machine? What about this? And I would say, well, but in reality, this is how it'd work. And they go, well, let's just control for that. Let's say that, you know, it's the homeless person that has no friends and no family. Oh, and I'm also going to remove your conscience. Oh, and I'm also going to do that. It got to a point where I was kind of willing to be like, okay, in that case, yes, in your extremely convoluted scenario, that would just be the right thing to do. but i don't have to worry about that because we actually live in a real world i do like following them i i absolutely agree with you so actually at any point i i potentially could have said right let's just talk about the reality of being an embodied evolutionary yeah higher primate whatever you could push the thought experiment so far that i say like hypothetically if it were the right thing to do to murder someone should you do it yes and at some point you kind of had just have to go well yes because you've made it trivially the right thing to do following the thought experiments because I find I enjoy it.

1:10:05And also, it's a bugbear of mine that people seem to comment on my videos all the time, you know, of course there's no trolley. You know, why can't you get off the track? What kind of lever? What I'll do, I'll pull the lever just at the right moment so the trolley spins and doesn't hit anyone at all. Yeah, that's really not the point, is it? Nice one. Yeah, that's great. Spoken like an engineer. People do hate thought experiments. Exactly. But I get it. I understand why, you know, intuition pumps. You know, I appreciate why we have them.

1:10:30Jonny Thomson:Yeah, I'm a big fan of the trolley problem and all that kind of stuff. and the idea that it's not supposed to actually be training yourself for a situation where you might have to decide where to send a trolley it's quite clearly doing something else and we're stress with stress testing yeah but then this is also good what you've done today as well you've also stress tested epicureanism and of course every i should also say that i don't think epicureanism is the perfect dogma i'm not i'm not a disciple i as i mentioned earlier i think there are quite a few areas where he gets it wrong his cult like following in the garden classic example he also mentions, for example, about sex as basically being a source of all misery.

1:11:05He can't see any reason why anyone would A, have sex and B, have kids at any point. Of course, I've got two kids, which means I've had sex at least twice in my life. Congratulations. Thank you very much. We have a diary. Why did he not like sex? Because, and I kind of agree why he's saying it, because the point he's making is that the consequences, the impact of having sex with the wrong person at the wrong time can be bad. And also, as all Greeks, there is a certain irrationality which comes on when your libido kicks in. Robin Williams, the late Robin Williams, has this great quotation, which I use in the book, which is that the good law of God gave men two heads, and you can only think of one at any time.

1:11:51And I think there's a degree of truth to that, that people who are lost in the um you know carnal throes of lust do tend to not think about the long-term games i'm sure anyone who's watching this has been on three pints deep on in ibiza with some friends hasn't been thinking about the long-term consequences of their actions

1:12:12Jonny Thomson:yeah that's that's fair enough actually um but that said i enjoy sex yeah i wanted the yeah i I wonder the extent to which not releasing that libido would actually make things. Because if all you're saying is the problem is that lust sort of clouds your thoughts, then the best thing you can do is get rid of that. You're right. Sadly, lots of Epicurean documents are lost to us. So his masturbation diaries were lost to history. But we can only assume that maybe he did release his libido at some point. We don't know what hidden materials he was relying on. Or, you know, it might be the case that, you know, use it or lose it.

1:12:53I think that is a case that people who don't seem to indulge their libido or do tend to wank need to carry on wanking.

1:13:01Jonny Thomson:But other people swear by, like, controlling, like, sort of keeping it in, as it were. There's a Reddit about it, isn't there? No fap. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like the whole, like, sort of, if you just, like, store up your energy, then you can, like, redirect it into... this and this and that and so maybe epicurus was i came here on the tube today there's obviously some testosterone companies get massively paying for all of the billboards or the posters around maybe it increases your testosterone i mean i'm sure the comment section will be alive with people on either side of the debate i have had sex i have masturbated i will take heroin one day yeah but i don't know i don't know the science of it maybe it will internalize some kind of testosterone and make you better overall and but the important point is that we're having a discussion in some way that you know we are taking happiness seriously that should be part of the deliberation that if somebody is anxious and unhappy when they are wanking a lot yes then maybe they need to sit down and say well maybe my wanking is causing me to be unhappy and that's an important part of the deliberation on the other hand if you've got you've stopped wanking for let's say four or five months and enough to you know measure it as a kind of like an experiment and you are measurably less happy then perhaps it's not for you and that this is true of i interviewed some called richard byes and you're a lot and neuroscientists about the cold about cold plunging as well that i think most people agreed to say that cold plunging is physiologically good for most people who have no underlying health conditions but for some people it can make it worse it can make them worse and also just the anxiety of waking up in the morning to get in a cold bath in the morning outweighs the physiological benefits it's obvious so you just got to sit down and make up that deliberation yourself so that's the interesting thing and epicurean is some epicureanism is uh is caricatured as like oh just do the pleasurable thing in the sense that like oh you want to have the mcdonald's oh you want to have a wank you know do your thing whereas the epicurean has to has to believe that if it becomes apparent that this is not sort of prolonging a long-term happiness that it just becomes the wrong absolutely Absolutely.

1:15:06And that also involves, of course, taking stock of your feelings and you need to check in with your emotions. And this is why I think therapy is incredibly useful. And I think we should do more of it, not necessarily with clinical therapists, but with friends and with yourself in the diary or with philosophers. You know, you should do this checking in on your emotions and recognizing, well, actually, hang on, that was a wrong turn. And actually, I'm worse off now. I feel more anxious. Or inversely, I feel happier. I really enjoy talking to Alex O 'Connor, so I'm going to do this every week.

1:15:37Jonny Thomson:Yeah, I try so hard on this show not to do the podcast thing. I'm not like other podcasts. Oh, yeah. But we've done AI consciousness. We're talking about no fat. We're talking about testosterone levels. I fear that soon I will be too far down the rabbit hole. What else is on the, you know, people want to talk about choices, how to make better decisions, you know, relationship advice. Yeah, how to like fix your life in 12 easy steps and that kind of stuff. Exactly. Which, you know, fair enough. Maybe that is what Epicureanism is kind of offering people though. A sort of, a lot of the ancient Greek schools are co-opted by the modern self-help.

1:16:17Jonny Thomson:I actually when like because I knew I was going to be speaking to you I I was in a bookshop yesterday and I remember like going into like Waterstones and seeing basically this big sort of uh shelf of books and I took a picture because I was just staring at these books and it was like it had like the atomic habits thing and then it's got all the like Ryan Holiday's books and then it's got robert green and it's all things like you know like the power of positive thinking and dare to lead and discipline is destiny that's a ryan holiday one and you know like the happy index is another one here yeah and uh you are a badass and yeah like this kind of stuff how to talk to anyone and it's like there's this publishing phenomenon where like everybody but you could be writing a book about like ancient greek metaphysics and the publisher will go how about we turn it into like how this ancient thinker can make you better at friendship yeah yeah it's all about sort of it's being kind of co-opted right i wonder what you think about the extent to which as social media influencers we risk playing into this watering down of philosophy by being like let's talk about Epicurious but Epicurious but let's do it in a way where I can call this episode you know how to be happy yeah and I am highly sensitive to that I'm highly sensitive to that that we're reducing it um but I've kind of made peace of it in two ways really the first way is I always see myself as as the gateway drug to which one to philosophy to read in the Nicomachean pro science yeah so I think what we're doing now hopefully people go away and they'll Google or they'll probably use Gemini or ChatGPT to, you know, whatever.

1:18:06So I like to think that they will go in and do a bit of further research. And the second thing is, I mentioned that, you know, we have these lost books of Aristotle's and of all of the almost Greek philosophers that I like to think that what they were actually doing in the school most of the day was this kind of stuff. Wanking. Yeah, wanking during heroin and also talking about philosophy in an accessible, normal human way. The books that we get handed down to us from antiquity are their condensed books. and, you know, highly philosophical stuff. They wouldn't be doing that all of the time. They would have just been chatting and, you know, shooting the breeze, the philosophical breeze.

1:18:40And so I think we are the equivalent of the ancient Greek schools of philosophy. I'm obviously the garden. I don't know where you'd feel most at home. The stoa, the academy. You've always been a bit of a math.

1:18:52Jonny Thomson:Maybe more the academy. Yeah, I think so. You say a math set. Yeah, they had to study math for 10 years. Yeah, no, I used to be into like analytic philosophy, but I could never really do maths. I think I've got that. What's dyslexia for numbers? Like I'm really - Dyscalculate. Yeah. I'm like extremely bad at like addition and so like mental math. Well, Feta would have wrestled you at the academy. It would have literally wrestled me. But do you know where you would have found a home? The garden. In the garden with everybody else. Of everybody, slaves, the foreigners, the women, whoever, even Alex O 'Connor.

1:19:22Even me. Yeah. Alex O 'Connor is welcome in the garden. We would share some bread and some cheese. In fact, Epicurious got this quotation. We wrote to a friend saying, please send me a wheel of cheese so i may feast every day so when they talk about the epicurean feasts you know the stoics and christians imagined it's being something like gluttonous binge eyes white shut kind of orgy but actually it's just i'm slicing off a cheese and some bread and giving it

1:19:44Jonny Thomson:to some friends i don't know i'm like um what did groucho mark say i wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member i sort of feel that way about this maybe although i'd like i'd love to i'd love to try it out but i would if i were there i think i would want to speak to the man in charge and i'd want to ask him a few questions i don't want to ask him about the experience machine i'd want to ask him about ai consciousness yeah but i'd also want to ask him about something else which actually ties into this whole self-help type stuff right like those books and no offense to those authors by the way like i hope they're all selling well and all like join the the the library of great you know do do your thing but there's there's a level to which there's this kind of optimism where every book has to be about like how to fix your life yeah there can't be any just like read this interesting thing or here's a thing that will just be maybe marginally useful like you know here are like 20 tips to like moderately adapting certain specific areas of your life you know that kind of stuff yeah but there's so much of this optimism how to change your life how to do this and so much of it is about agency it's like here's how like by changing the way you think you can find happiness here's how you can make more money here's how you can invest properly here's how to you know use the gym to fix your mental health and stuff And Epicureanism is very in line with this in the sense that it believes that you are essentially in control of your happiness and your sadness.

1:21:03Jonny Thomson:Now, I think that's a bit easy to say, right? And another important critique of the Epicurean is that they downplay the extent to which you are not in control of the factors that make you happy or sad. Whereas the Stoics will say, yeah, I'm not in control of that, but I just say that whatever happens, I just do the virtuous thing of remaining steadfast. Whereas the Epicureans are searching for pleasure. Some people just don't get it. And yet Epicurus is pretty insistent that you can control this. Well, actually, this is where I think Stoicism and Epicureanism are actually more aligned. Yeah. I mentioned earlier that apart from a few philosophical differences, I think if you put an Epicurean next to a Stoic next to a Benedictine monk, they would look and behave, well, probably not look, but they would behave pretty similar, I imagine.

1:21:51And in this regard, it's exactly the same. I mean, Epicurus has these quotations where he says, you know, prepare for the future, essentially. But if you do the hard work now of preparing, then whatever the future brings, you will be better off. which is, I mean, the Stoics occasionally lifted a lot of stuff from Epicurus and rebadged it as their own. And there's an ancient Greek virtue called autarchy, which is self-sufficiency. And it looks a bit differently across Stoicism and Epicureanism. Stoicism talks about indifference, that we need to be indifferent to these things because when catastrophe inevitably comes along, my family will die, I'll lose my job, I'll get a leg cut off in an industrial accident.

1:22:27I'm ready for it I'm I'm indifferent to these things and epicureanism would approve of that in the sense that you know they see virtue as a as a kind of insurance policy that things like resilience and autarky um and wisdom are necessary so that when life throws a wobbly at you or throws a spanner in the works for the American audience I think wobbly is a goal a cricket

1:22:50Jonny Thomson:um analogy maybe I wouldn't I wouldn't know don't play cricket no don't even watch it not do i but i know about that okay anyway they throw a ball at you which is bad you're ready for it and whereas the epicureans would say what we should do is consciously get our insurance policies in line now and this is where friendship is really important right that yes they are very well aware if epicurus himself was wracked with terrible pain over the cross of his life we talked about you bending over with stomach pains earlier he had some kind of digestive issue we think it might been Crohn's I say commentators have pointed out that it might be in your medical opinion my medical opinion and he died from kidney stones which are generally recognized to be one of the most painful things in fact he has a letter at the end where he talked to his friend saying I haven't been able to pee for like three days I'm dying friend and he says in that letter he says the only thing which has given me pleasure right now is remembering our conversations that we once had yeah so you know he knew pain and all and I said in the post Alexander the Great World it was a time of strife and danger and famine and starvation.

1:23:54And so there was a lot of pain. And so the best way we can prevent or at least prepare for that is to have good friends at our back, Epicureans would say. So, you know, the Stoics also say this, they take friendship very seriously, but they are more indifferent towards friendships. Whereas Epicureans would say we really need to nurture friendship as much as possible because there will come a time when we might need to call on them and we might need to be picked up by them. But yes, I think in this regard, Epicureanism and Stoicism are actually pretty aligned because it doesn't depend on virtue in that case.

1:24:28In fact, virtue is useful for both of them, resilience, wisdom, autarky.

1:24:32Jonny Thomson:But as a historical fact, they kind of hated each other, right? The Epicureans and the Stoics. Well, this depends who you speak to. I mean, when I say speak, who you read. So the Stoics playing the Epicureans, Epicureans play the Stoics. The Epicureans say Chrysippus started, he threw the first stone. Right from the off, they were slightly scowling at each other. They were slightly unfriendly cousins. And then the argument is that Chrysippus really took it up a level. But then, of course, the Stoics argued Epicureans did it as well, and which I believe, because Epicurus was quite sharp-tongued in his writings and stuff.

1:25:10But by and large, they in my opinion the differences yes they were philosophical but they were they were minor enough that i think the differences were more um catalyzed by the fact they were trying to appeal to the same people they were rival businesses basically they were trying to get students in the same way the university system these days so i'm gonna roll my sleeves down by i just think about editing you want um rival school systems universities these days they need students to get money to pay their professors stuff the same was true back then the schools needed students for prestige and also for money and i think they were rivals in that respect and then later on with with christianity of course um epicureanism isn't good because it offers the opposite of what they are yeah christianity is a salvationist religion which says that you owe you need god to be happy and to to basically go to heaven and epicureanism says no that you are in control of your happiness and you are in control of your life so you don't need a god yeah this is also why the stoics didn't like it if i'm honest some of the stoics cleanthes you mentioned chris chrisippus and um xeno would have been a bit earlier but and marcus really didn't like him not xeno of paradox fame no of of sitium who's the founder of of the stoicism as a movement um you know they they did have a religion i've said it before i i think they do have some kind of theology to what they're saying so they object to the fact that epicureanism is saying you don't need the logos you don't need this yeah things and is that so

1:26:33Jonny Thomson:what would you say it's clear to see what the difference between Epicureanism and Christianity is. But Stoicism and Epicureanism, what would you say is like the defining... Three major differences. I mean, the first, as I mentioned, is the religious one. The ancient Stoics, Logos, this cosmic pneuma, the great conflagration, this rebirth, reincarnation, a certain degree of immortality to the soul. Although, again, it depends of who you read. Are you talking about Kleinthes? Are you talking about Marcus Aurelius? Are you talking about Tim Ferriss? It's very different. But we can disregard that because I do think you can at least build a kind of stoicism without that the other two problems or differences i should say are virtue is to summon bonum so uh stoicism says that virtue is the greatest good is to tell us that we're aiming towards and happiness is a preferred indifferent but it's kind of on the way on the ladder towards it whereas epicureanism is saying that no virtue is on the on the way to happiness or pleasure and the third difference is more modern and that's i think stoicism places an unrealistic expectation on some kind of detached sense of reason and rationality that is free of emotions and stoics kind of have this idea that emotions happen to us almost like sensations that they pop into our understanding and then we have this detached logos which can look at the emotions and decide whether they are worthy or not and if they're worthy they become good feelings take them enjoy them as much as you want if they're bad feelings discard them as being bad I don't think that's how the human judgment, how human judgment works.

1:28:07It is naturally flavored by emotions and by our moods, for example. In fact, Antonio Damasio in Descartes' error talks about this as well. There is no mind-heart distinction. They are wired together. You know, our emotions are framing how we even experience the world, let alone how we judge it. So I don't think you can have this view from nowhere, which I think the whole, you know, our thinking makes it good or bad depends

1:28:30Jonny Thomson:upon in my opinion stoicism is having a bit of a cultural moment it's it's like the in thing especially in the podcast space self-help like lots of books being influenced by figures like tim ferris and ryan holiday epicureanism isn't really undergoing the same kind of thing do you think do you think we're due well uh yes i mean available in all good bookshops i believe that you know i i want to spearhead the epicurean movement but you know there's a few reasons for that really. One is, yes, this concerted anti-epicurean propaganda, which existed throughout Stoicism and Christianity, but then it hasn't gone away.

1:29:03And that's interesting. Despite this, it pops up again and again. You mentioned the utilitarians, Bentham and Mill, Erasmus liked it as well. There are lots of examples of epicureanism throughout history. Gornilo liked it as well. Really? Interesting. So, you know, it pops up. Yeah. And the other reason, I think, what were you saying? The reason of due a resurgence?

1:29:28Jonny Thomson:Yeah, like we do an Epicurean moment in the same way that Stoicism is. Yeah, and the other reason I was saying is that Stoicism has been far more documented throughout time. Yeah, it's like why is... It goes hand in hand. So we've lost a lot of Epicurean's documents. In fact, I was talking to Simon Critchley, who's a philosopher, David Dane. He's great. He's a really nice guy. If you haven't had the one, he's just so knowledgeable. The kind of person you can sit down, he'll just drop in on the side, which is like that alone is a, yeah it's content to do um and he was talking about they found these lost scrolls i think herculanean maybe are these the ones which they can't open that they're reading with like yeah yeah and some in that is is some epicurean documents i think and we haven't got the technology yet to read them without destroying them i've seen this in them like they've got one in they were showing one in display at the bodleian in oxford yeah uh in the western library they had a a sort of display of artifacts all kinds of stuff and they had yeah this this burnt scroll yeah i think it was it might have been from like it might have been from um from pompeii yeah it might not be but yeah and or whatever this one was and it was just like the little descriptor just said like oh this is like the chart remained of a scroll like that would you can't open it without damaging it and then it just sort of casually said oh but like with you know imaging technology we're beginning to yeah finally read it like with sort of and it includes things like one of the lost works of the ancient philosopher xyz and i was just like my jaw hit the floor i was like this is unbelievable i said to him like wouldn't it be great because we've only got a few select books from even aristotle you know someone who's meant to be like this you know the far one of the fathers of philosophy plato even there's this lost book of plato where he talks about atlantis apparently yeah now wouldn't it be great if you found these books and they just talk absolute yeah they're and they're just talking about aliens they're talking about you know you should always eat like you know whatever coal yeah yeah yeah that would be quite quite funny and our complete judgment of them changes as a result of this ridiculous kind of side projects they had at the day yeah it'd be like when uh isaac newton's like private yes writings and diaries were like bought yeah and everyone's waiting for these wonderful like you know under underappreciated scientific discoveries and turns out he was just like this frantic borderline like schizophrenic approach to biblical studies trying to do numerology and finding out when the world is going to end an alchemist as well wasn't it yeah yeah yeah so you know it wouldn't surprise me but then that didn't tarnish his reputation we still think newton is one of the probably the you know in fact a few articles written about he is an unbelievable genius but then his reputation as a as a person i'm not sure i would have wanted to to meet the guy no but that's true of most geniuses i imagine actually maybe which is which is why we get on so well we get on so well we're You're not geniuses.

1:32:06Jonny Thomson:It's just fine to be around. Yeah. I like to imagine like a role-playing game. You know, I used to play the Fallout games. Do you ever play the Fallout games? I never played them. Well, you get a few stats at the start. And you know, strength, dexterity, intelligence, one of them, charisma. And you can only put a few points into one of them. So you've got to pick your character, the starting character at the start and things. I think I obviously have quite a lot of charisma and strength. You have intelligence. So put us together. Put us together. And up on the friendship. Exactly. Yeah. um my final question for you is um gosh it seems a bit morbid but i want to know how the you're right i want to know how the epicureans deal with death yeah well this is again we mentioned earlier about areas where i i'm not entirely on board with epicurus epicureanism or epicurus is on on the record as saying that we should not fear death because while we are alive death is not here and when we are dead we won't be around to care anyway essentially yeah um the reason why says that as all philosophers actually you know um i think it's cicero who said that the art of philosophy is is learning how to die yes is you know i get that because if you take away the fear of death suddenly no matter what the world throws at you it's slightly put into perspective and also if you don't fear death you've always got a plan b you're probably gonna have to edit this out because that went past the youtube you know i'm not endorsing suicide but what philosophers seem to be saying is that if you don't fear death then the worst comes to worse it's not actually that bad.

1:33:30Epicurus is saying the same thing, that we shouldn't fear death because the hold it has over our decisions makes us anxious. But I just don't think, for somebody who is so attuned to our natural evolutionary psychology, I don't think you can philosophize your way out of the fear of death. Now, some people possibly have. You hear stories of people who have actually made peace with that but i think fearing death is quite universal do you are you are you scared of death i i just don't spend as people ask that like and i just i think i just don't spend enough time thinking

1:34:05Jonny Thomson:about it to to answer it properly because i kind of want to say no but that might be firstly for want of thinking about it secondly because i'm becoming increasingly convinced that the self is an illusion and that i'm just this sort of bundle of complex consciousness that will not cease to exist at any point yeah so like i'm sort of i i'm i'm pretty content like with my agnosticism like i sort of i think because i just don't know and i've i've heard so many wacky ideas about the nature of selves and consciousness and where it all comes from that i'm just like we'll we'll find out when we get there but that is a little bit epicurean of me this this kind of well right now i've got no idea so i'm not going to worry about it and when i get there i'll find out yeah you know what i mean i absolutely and i i also get the philosophy the consistency of what epicureanism is saying that actually the fear is is that pain at the moment at the end of let's say i'm on my deathbed i'm i'm high on my my heroin and i'm thinking yeah as i rank mcdonald's as well and being and torturing a cat you know i'm and i'm thinking well you know what am i scared of i'm scared of really in that in that moment i my philosophy tells me that the death afterwards is going to be the same as my life was before i was born you know cleopatra the dinosaurs whatever then nothing to me it'll be that like that afterwards yeah what i'm scared of is leaving behind my children leave i'm a wife and leaving behind the pleasure of the world but then it's also true that the moment that my eyes shut and my breathe my last that you know i won't care about that but that doesn't make me any less scared of it of the pain of it yeah well you know fear is an emotion and emotions are not the kinds of things that people typically try to rationalize and so when we ask like should you fear death i think the question is really like just do you fear death and if you do or don't are there some rational considerations that might affect your emotion but it's just something that you either feel or you don't and i don't know maybe i'll do a deep dive on this maybe i can have someone on the show to do an episode on on death i made meant to make a video about death for a long time just the different philosophical ideas like around it but yeah i mean some emotions you can rationalize not a way or you can change the shift or you can adapt them yeah you certainly can um but it's like you're not actually changing the emotion you're changing the the facts which inspire emotions like if you were really upset because it was going to rain on your wedding day if you were just like distraught if i just told you a fact about the world it's actually going to be sunny suddenly you'd be happy rather than sad but not because i've like changed your emotional response to a circumstance yeah just because i've You sound more epicure in the more I'm talking to you.

1:36:35Yeah, exactly.

1:36:36Jonny Thomson:You're placing yourself in the position where you're feeling these emotional responses. And yeah, I think that's... I've heard, you know, people... I'm going to do the podcast thing again and talk about the meaning crisis. But I'm just asking you in brief and closing here because I've heard you say that people always talk about the meaning crisis. I'm suspicious as to whether that is a thing that is like typical of our age. Yeah. I think there is a meaning crisis and it's called the human condition and everybody suffers with it no matter when they're born. You think that's true. But you've said that we don't have a meaning crisis so much as we have a happiness crisis.

1:37:07Yeah, or even the connection crisis. I mean, I should cite our sources. We were at a mutual event a couple of weeks ago where our mutual friend, Joe Folley, was on stage before me. Yes, this was Elliot Buick's event. Yeah, and he stole my line because he actually did say this before I did. And so it sounds as if I'd plagiarized him, but it is in my book before he said it on stage, I should say that. okay but yes i i think that um the meaning question is part of the meaning industry and i like according to the meaning industry because i feel as though people asking the question about meaning often have an agenda in the same way that somebody is trying to sell you something in my own experience i was being interviewed by some very nice man on the west coast of america it was a nice kind of chatty conversation admittedly we weren't talking about wanking heroin but it was nice enough as it was anyway at one point he kept saying you know have you got meaning in your life?

1:37:55I was like, yeah, yeah. He said, what gives you meaning? I said, well, my kids. He said, but they won't live forever. I said, well, okay, what really gives you meaning? And on it went to the point where it was obviously clear that he wanted me to give an answer and the only answer was God. That the only answer that would satisfy this meaning question was God. Now, I don't think that's true of all the questions about meaning, but I do think that a vast majority of the questions are framed within the Judeo-Christian or religious understanding of meaning that the only answer that can satisfy meaning is god i don't even think that answer satisfies it i've just pushed the question back a few steps you know why does that why if god came down and says the meaning of your life is to you know i don't know count blades of grass you know that would that make life meaningful no um so i think there are answers i can give in my life which i think would satisfy the meaning question but they become more empirical more measurable and more understandable because for example i think you know when i'm playing with my children.

1:38:49My children love miniature steam trains. If I'm sitting on the back of a miniature steam train with my child, there's no point in thinking, what is the meaning of this? I'm just in that moment. So I think it's a pleasure crisis, a happiness crisis, but also I think it's a connection crisis. That I think we are so bunkered down into these kind of atomized units in society that I think there's a lot of kind of like, what is the meaning of this? What is the point of this? And I think when you are in groups, when you're with people, when you feel like you're belonging somewhere the meaning question evaporates you don't start to ask that yes i don't think um emil durkheim a sociologist talks about it as being anomie decided if this disconnection unwired from the world and i think that's where we're at at the moment but i think the meaning question what answer it's a kind of culpapurian answer to it like ask them what answer would satisfy you right now and if the only answer is god then yes i'm sorry i'm not going to answer your question because I don't believe in that God.

1:39:42Yeah. Yeah.

1:39:44Jonny Thomson:Do you agree? What gives you meaning? Do I believe in God? Yeah. Well, of course it was skeptic. I don't know. I just did a lengthy interview with Big Think about nihilism and meaning and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I think that meaning is... There are two ways you can sort of look at the question. There's either literally what gives you meaning. So I think meaning and purpose are synonymous. so it would be like whatever your reason for acting is or reason for being is but again that becomes measurable doesn't it might that's your value system yeah and so i think that whatever in a sort of petersonian sense or a or a sumum bonum sense whatever is just in fact the principal motivator of like all of your behaviors is literally speaking your purpose the question is people want to ground that purpose so they say they want to sort of have it bottom out somewhere that's like self-justifying so i think what people mean by meaning is something like a non-contingent reason to act or be that is just necessarily self-justifying and ontologically whatever i'm suspicious as to whether that will ever be found but for each individual person in practice you can just discover where it is because you'll say to somebody like you know why are you here well you know because i want to promote my book okay why do you want to do that well i'm not just here for You might be like, oh, I want to, you might be like, oh, why am I at work?

1:41:05Jonny Thomson:Because I want to make some money. And then I say, why do you, why do you want to make money? And for some people, they'll look at you and go like, what do you, what do you mean? Why do I want to, obviously I want to make money. But if they're a bit more thoughtful, they might go, oh, well, I want to make money so I can buy a nice home. It's like, why do you want to do that? Well, so I can provide for my children. Why do you want to do that? Because I want my children to be happy. And if you ask, why do you want your children to be happy? They would look at you and go. And what's the bottom of that ladder?

1:41:26Jonny Thomson:What are you talking about? God, of course. Pleasure. i'd say god consciousness pan psychism so what is your reason d 'être your reason to get out of bed in the morning um well today it was because you know i had to come and come and come and do this um but yeah i i in one sense i kind of want to say that the meaning of life is to stop asking what the meaning of life is if you just get out of bed yeah and it doesn't go like you said i mean you said yourself when you're sat on the train with your children at the moment you start thinking what is the meaning of this it kind of ruins it right and like on those those days where if if you are literally waking up and your first thought is like should i get out of bed what's the point it probably means you're like depressed yes yeah and maybe that's just the the appropriate response to this veil of tears is to just be depressed all the time but i strive to be in a situation not that i wake up in the morning think to myself what's the meaning in all of this oh yeah that's right that's what it is and then get up i just want to get up and suppose talks about this is he calls it as conitus this is natural drive to just be yeah to live and again he's talking pre darwin but he's a evolutionary isn't it no we are you know our genes are wired to carry on i should and be any biologist listening after we're twitching at the use of programming and wired i've done it twice now but yeah you know that's how i use it in layman terms i mean i do agree with the Epicurean that I think I'm probably like a psychological hedonist, meaning that I think that in fact, people always pursue their own pleasure.

1:42:57Jonny Thomson:And by pleasure, I mean very broadly, like experiences that are wanted when experienced. I kind of think that's what pleasure means. And pain broadly defined as experiences or an experience that is not wanted when experienced. And I think it's fairly clear to me that people just seek after their own pleasure. And again, And for me, I can kind of take this slightly more classical philosophical approach, like of the Greeks, in sidestepping the question of what you ought to do or ought to care about or what ought to be your meaning and just say that, in fact, that is what motivates people. That is what they're behaving in accordance with.

1:43:32Jonny Thomson:And so, for most intents and purposes, you can just have a rational discussion as to whether that goal is being achieved. um and then you can extrapolate to virtues and friendships and communities as well by saying you know what is the kind of world i want to create by which i can maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain and actually i think you probably come quite similar close to what we have right now you know i i couldn't imagine this moment being better yeah well thanks you know and i think sometimes people ask you know that meaning and because i'm a philosophy channel they're like so what's meaning it's like i don't think you're going to find like i'd be lucky if i found it for myself but if i found some transferable sense of meaning if you're listening to a 26 year old sort of atheist youtuber agnostic youtuber panpsychist youtuber not just a youtuber i think you're like a speaker writer a social media content creator writer yeah um musician yeah renaissance man that is true you are tinkling oh yeah yeah oh well yeah yeah yeah watch this space people there's there's more to come in that regard but sorry i um 26 year old yeah i think if you believe that that's if i'm going to have an answer to that question that's going to be like satisfying we're going to go oh yeah cool nice awesome then you're delusional like we're not going to be able to work that out but you mentioned earlier also about do i feel like you know a sense of kind of what we're doing is good or bad as philosophers or philosophy but also i think what we are doing as well is we do expose people to the sheer variety of answers that are out there yeah and i'm hoping that one someone will watch your video or watch one of my videos they'll be like yeah yes that idea absolutely grips me when it resonates yeah possesses me and for me the stuff the stuff about like a lot of stuff about consciousness has in a way that i can't i couldn't put it into words but it's just it's just consoled me like i earlier when you're talking about death i'm like the weirdness that i'm sort of discovering with how the brain works and split brains and centers of consciousness and stuff and annal seth's probably the other side of that door so i better speak quietly in case he bursts in and starts trying to debunk me i find like i'm a bit like in a way i can't quite describe i'm just consoled by it and i'm hoping at some point to really figure out why i think that's helping and try to put it into words for other people who might find it useful see i'm almost going the other way with consciousness that consciousness is turning me more woo-woo actually that I interviewed Rupert Sheldrake last year and you know I think he had a really good point that you know he was talking about dark matter and dark energy as well but then he also said about consciousness like a scientific model which cannot adequately accommodate that not just that we're not in the future we need better technology because technology won't be able to find something subjective you know it's the heart problem surely is not fit for purpose and I'm starting to know he neither he nor i have an alternative model to work on it's the best thing available to but i do feel as though consciousness is a vastly important phenomenon and i think that's to then just call it an accident or a mistake or you know is is hogwash yeah hogwash but then i don't think any of course it that i think he he i think he's a hopeful um physical assistant to where he believes that one day scientists will be resolved i don't i don't know we should i'll ask him and i'll ask him in a minute i don't have the meaning of life but ladies and gentlemen if you wish to discover it for yourself you will find it in the forthcoming book what's it called the it's going to be called the happiness potion 12 easy steps to fixing your it's going to be there it's called the it's going to be called the art of enough that works um the ancient epicurean art of finding and keeping happiness i like it sounds great and we'll put the links in the description i'm not sure exactly when it's coming out but it'll be available to pre-order and i'm going to interview you soon all of that good stuff yeah yeah one hopes i'm always happy to to do this again great well johnny thompson i'm glad we could finally sit down and do this i've known you for for a little little while now and you know love the content that you put out i think it's so easily digestible and it's popular for a reason uh philosophy minis is the channel i'll put it in the description alongside the book thanks for your time thanks very much yeah i mean in some ways we are mirroring the ancient greek schools you know we're in the same lane some way competing but also we're friends aren't we we meet in our feasts i like to think so i keep bumping into you at flossy festivals that's right and of course i know that our friendship for you is is only out of concern for your own pleasure for what it's worth i i care about you intrinsically as a person in yourself yeah which i think makes me the better friend well there might be a day might not be tomorrow might not be in a couple of months but you know you'll be sitting down on sover watching yourself on YouTube, as I know you tend to do, and there'll be a, there'll be a, and you go and open the door and they're, hi, Alex, Johnny, have you got a sofa to lie on?

1:48:21And you'll say, I'll say, why not let's? Yeah. And then we'll snuggle up on the sofa. Yeah. And replay it together. Exactly.

1:48:29Jonny Thomson:Wow. What a beautiful place to end. Thanks for your time today, Johnny. Thanks, Alex.