0:02

Hey everyone, it's Tristan. It's Daniel.

0:04

Welcome to your undivided attention.

0:06

So Daniel, something I think about often

0:09

is how throughout history, society takes

0:11

a lot of time to confront the

0:13

harms caused by certain industries. I think

0:15

about Upton Sinclair writing about the meat

0:17

packing industry in the early 20th century.

0:20

Now I think about Rachel Carson talking

0:22

about Silent Spring in the 1960s, and

0:24

talking about Silent Spring in the 1960s

0:26

and the 1960s. And with social media

0:29

we're seeing it happen again, the can

0:31

just keeps getting kicked down the road.

0:33

And with AI moving so fast, it

0:35

feels like the normal time that it

0:37

takes us to react isn't compatible with

0:40

doing something soon enough. You know, we

0:42

can become aware of serious problems, but

0:44

if it takes too long to respond,

0:46

meaningful action won't follow. Totally. And I

0:49

think this has to do with the

0:51

way that we manage uncertainty in our

0:53

society. You know, with any new thing,

0:55

with any industry, it's important. And it's

0:58

really easy for us to react to

1:00

that fear that we experience sitting with

1:02

uncertainty by avoiding thinking or speaking about

1:04

topics when we feel uncertain. And then,

1:06

you know, as a society, I often

1:09

think about when we're uncertain about what's

1:11

true or who to trust, we struggle

1:13

to make collective informed decisions.

1:16

And when we watch experts battling it

1:18

out in public, when we hear conflicting

1:20

narratives and strong emotions, it's easy to

1:22

start to doubt what we think we

1:24

know. And it's important to recognize that

1:27

that's not by accident. You know, it's

1:29

because companies and individuals with a lot

1:31

of money and a lot of power

1:33

want to hide the growing evidence of

1:35

harm, and they do so with sophisticated

1:38

and well-funded campaigns that are specifically designed

1:40

to create doubt and uncertainty. And so

1:42

how do we sit with this? Our

1:44

guest today historian, Naomi Oreskes, knows this

1:46

better than anyone. Her book, The Merchants

1:49

of Doubt, reveals how this playbook, has

1:51

been used repeatedly across different industries and

1:53

time periods. And Naomi's most recent book,

1:56

The Big Myth, just came out in

1:58

paperback. So, how do we make bold?

2:00

decisions with the information that we have

2:02

right now, while being open to changing

2:04

our minds as new information comes. How

2:07

should we sit with uncertainty, which is

2:09

everywhere and unavoidable, while inoculating ourselves from

2:11

weaponized out? We discuss all of these

2:13

themes and more. This is such an

2:16

important conversation, and we hope you enjoy

2:18

it. Naomi, thank you for coming on

2:20

Your Undivided Detention. Thank you for having

2:22

me on the show, and thanks for

2:25

doing this podcast. So Naomi. 15 years

2:27

ago, you and your co-author Eric Conway

2:29

wrote this book, Merchants of Doubt, which

2:31

really started this conversation about the ways

2:33

that uncertainty can be manipulated. Let's start

2:36

with a simple question. Who were the

2:38

merchants of Doubt? The original merchants of

2:40

that were a group of physicists. So

2:42

they were scientists, but they were not

2:45

climate scientists. They were Cold War physicists

2:47

who were quite prominent. They had come

2:49

to positions of power and influence and

2:51

even fame to some degree during the

2:54

Cold War for work they had done

2:56

on US weapons and rocketry programs. So

2:58

they had been in positions of advising

3:00

governments. They were quite close to seats

3:03

of power. These four physicists who had

3:05

been very active in attacking... climate science,

3:07

it turned out, had also been active

3:09

attacking the science related to the harms

3:11

of tobacco. And that was the first

3:14

indication for us that something fishy was

3:16

going on, because that's not normal science.

3:18

Normally, physicists wouldn't get involved in a

3:20

debate about chemistry. I mean, maybe if

3:23

it overlapped their work, but these guys

3:25

were so outside their wheelhouse, that was

3:27

pretty obvious that something fishy was going

3:29

on. The other real tell was that

3:32

the strategies they were using were sort

3:34

of taking legitimate scientific questions, but framing

3:36

in a way that wasn't really legitimate.

3:38

So it's normal in science to ask

3:41

questions. How big is your sample size?

3:43

How robust is your model? How did

3:45

you come to that finding? Those are

3:47

all legitimate questions. but they began to

3:50

pursue them with a kind of aggression

3:52

that wasn't really normal, and the real

3:54

tell to do it in places that

3:56

weren't scientific. So we expect scientists to

3:58

pose questions at scientific conferences, at workshops,

4:01

in the pages of peer-reviewed journals, but

4:03

that's not what these guys were doing.

4:05

They were raising questions in the pages

4:07

of the Wall Street Journal, a fortune,

4:10

and Forbes. So they were raising what

4:12

on the... face of things on the

4:14

surface looked superficially to be scientific questions,

4:16

but they were doing it in an

4:19

unscientific way and in unscientific locations. So

4:21

as historians of science, it was very

4:23

obvious to us that something was wrong,

4:25

and that's what we began to investigate.

4:28

Right, but if I'm naive to that

4:30

story, I might come to that and

4:32

think. Here are people who might be

4:34

cremogens, here are people who might be

4:37

fed up, here are people who might

4:39

be angry, but that's not the claim,

4:41

right? The claim is deeper than that,

4:43

that these were people who are actually

4:45

deeply incentivized. Cremogens are normal in science

4:48

and they're not necessarily bad. I mean,

4:50

they can be a pain and they

4:52

ask. There's nothing per se wrong, particularly

4:54

there's nothing epistemologically wrong with being a

4:57

cremogen. But there is something pretty weird

4:59

when you start questioning climate science in

5:01

women's wear daily, right? We started looking

5:03

into it, and then that's when we

5:06

discovered this connection to the tobacco industry.

5:08

And so then we thought, well, why

5:10

the heck would anyone, anyone at all,

5:12

but much less a famous prominent scientist,

5:15

make common calls with the tobacco industry.

5:17

And one of the key players here

5:19

was a man named Frederick Sights, who

5:21

was an extremely famous physicist, someone who

5:23

was very close to people who had

5:26

won Nobel Prizes. He had been the

5:28

president of the U.S. National Academy of

5:30

Sciences, so the highest level of science

5:32

in America, and the president of the

5:35

Rockefeller University. one of America's most prestigious

5:37

scientific research institutes. So why would this

5:39

man, famous, respected, successful, make common cause

5:41

with tobacco? industry. And this is where

5:44

being a historian is a good thing,

5:46

because you can go into dusty archives

5:48

and you can find the papers where

5:50

people answer these questions in their own

5:53

words. And what we found was that

5:55

all four of these men did this

5:57

for what was essentially ideological reasons. That

5:59

is to say, it had nothing to

6:02

do with the science. They weren't really

6:04

in private. They're not having robust conversations

6:06

about how good is the evidence that

6:08

smoking causes cancer. No, that's not what

6:10

they're saying. What they're saying is. this

6:13

threatens freedom. They're saying if we let

6:15

the government regulate the economy, if we

6:17

let them ban smoking or even regulate

6:19

it strictly, like banning advertising, and this

6:22

is a really important point, we'll come

6:24

back to about free speech issues, if

6:26

we let them ban tobacco advertising, then

6:28

we're going to lose the First Amendment.

6:31

If we let them ban smoking in

6:33

public places, the next thing you know,

6:35

they'll be telling us where we can

6:37

live, what jobs we can have, what

6:40

cars we can drive, and we'll be

6:42

on the slippery slope. to totalitarianism. And

6:44

so for them, it's deeply connected with

6:46

their work in the Cold War. So

6:49

the Cold War part of the story

6:51

is not just incidental, it's actually central.

6:53

They feared that if the government became

6:55

more involved in regulating the economy through

6:57

environmental or public health regulation, it would

7:00

be a backdoor to communism. So there's

7:02

this sort of slippery slope in their

7:04

own argument. They're accusing their enemies of

7:06

being on a slippery slope, but they

7:09

themselves go on the slippery slope of

7:11

going from climate scientists doing the work

7:13

that shows why we might want to

7:15

regulate fossil fuels to accusing them essentially

7:18

of being communists and wanting to see

7:20

a kind of communist government in the

7:22

United States. Sure, and honestly, this is

7:24

one of the oldest debates in science.

7:27

The whole enlightenment story that really stuck

7:29

was the story of Galileo versus the

7:31

Pope and the Pope saying, you know,

7:33

you basically can't say this because it

7:35

would erode a lot of things about

7:38

the world. And so there's always been

7:40

this thing with science of how do

7:42

we tell the truth separate from values

7:44

we may care about. If I can

7:47

just say on that, one of the

7:49

ironies of this, though, and we see

7:51

this throughout this story, these guys like

7:53

to present themselves as if they are

7:56

Galileo, that they're the ones who are

7:58

standing up for truth. But of course,

8:00

it's the opposite. They're on the side

8:02

of very, very powerful corporations, like the

8:05

fossil fuel industry. But they try to

8:07

flip that script and claim that they

8:09

are the martyrs. They're the oppressed ones.

8:11

And we see that going on even

8:14

today. And that's one of the reasons

8:16

we want to have you on the

8:18

podcast, because it's actually a really confusing

8:20

time to be a person today in

8:22

our news environment to figure out who

8:25

is being suppressed, what opinions are real,

8:27

what opinions are manufactured. And so we

8:29

really want to come back to that

8:31

theme again and again as we talk

8:34

about this, because it has such relevance

8:36

to where we are today. But before

8:38

we do that, I want to go

8:40

back and talk about some of the

8:43

mechanics of how doubt is seated. tries

8:45

to convey the key thing. The idea

8:47

is that they're selling doubt. They're trying

8:49

to make us think that we don't

8:52

really know the answer, that the science

8:54

is unsettled, that it's too uncertain, that

8:56

the uncertainties are too great to justify

8:58

action. And it's a super clever strategy.

9:01

These people are very smart, right? They're

9:03

not dumb, because they realize if they

9:05

try to claim the opposite of what

9:07

climate scientists are saying. So if climate

9:09

scientists are saying the earth is heating

9:12

up, it's caused by human activities. If

9:14

they were trying to say No, it's

9:16

not heating up. They would lose that

9:18

debate. They have already lost that debate

9:21

because the scientific evidence is overwhelming. But

9:23

if they say, well, we don't really

9:25

know, you know, we need more data,

9:27

we should do more research, and there's

9:30

a lot of uncertainty. The uncertainty is

9:32

a key part of this story. That's

9:34

a much harder thing for scientists to

9:36

argue against because if I say there's

9:39

a ton of uncertainty, and you say,

9:41

well... I mean, yeah, there is uncertainty.

9:43

Of course, there's always uncertainty in science,

9:45

but it's not that bad. You know,

9:48

the scientist is now on his back

9:50

foot, or her back foot, right? The

9:52

scientist is now put in a defense.

9:54

position because they cannot deny categorically that

9:56

there are uncertainties. So the scientists are

9:59

placed in this kind of defensive position

10:01

and the other reason why this strategy

10:03

is so clever is because they're saying

10:05

it's uncertain the science isn't settled there's

10:08

a big debate and then they say

10:10

in fact I will invite you to

10:12

debate me on my podcast on Fox

10:14

News. in the pages of the Wall

10:17

Street Journal. Now the scientists often agrees,

10:19

because the scientists believes in free and

10:21

open conversation, the scientists thinks, I have

10:23

nothing to hide, why wouldn't I debate?

10:26

But the fact is, by agreeing to

10:28

debate, the scientist loses, before he or

10:30

she has even opened their mouth, because

10:32

the purpose of this argument is to

10:34

make it seem that there's a debate.

10:37

Right. They win as soon as there

10:39

is a debate. Bingo. The emergence of

10:41

doubt have won. Exactly. That's right. So

10:43

it's like people's minds are left with

10:46

the idea that there is a controversy.

10:48

We still don't really know. And, you

10:50

know, there's so many other strategies that

10:52

I'd love you to sort of talk

10:55

about, you know, keeping the controversy alive,

10:57

you know, delaying, let's commission an NIH

10:59

study or a study to figure out

11:01

what the true effects are, astroturfing, these

11:04

fake organizations that get sort of spin-ups.

11:06

You talk about citizens for fire safety

11:08

or the tobacco institute or the tobacco

11:10

institute. getting weaponized so that it's harder

11:13

to see the truth. Because basically, unless

11:15

we have antibodies for understanding these different

11:17

strategies, we're vulnerable to them. So essentially,

11:19

you are the kind of a little

11:21

vaccine here to help us have the

11:24

antibodies to understand. Yeah. And it's interesting

11:26

because some of my colleagues have now

11:28

started to talk about inoculation in the

11:30

context of bad information. But of course,

11:33

that's a really tricky metaphor, given that

11:35

we have lots of fellow Americans who

11:37

are suspicious now about vaccinations. So an

11:39

inoculation. you just said. So one of

11:42

the strategies kind of involves buying out

11:44

scientists. I hate to say this, but

11:46

it's true. One of the strategies is

11:48

to say we need more research. It's

11:51

too soon to tell. And it sadly

11:53

is relatively easy to get scientists to

11:55

agree to that because the reality is,

11:57

well, you know, scientists love to do

12:00

research and there always are more questions

12:02

that can be asked and as I've

12:04

already said, there are always some legitimate

12:06

uncertainties that we would do well to

12:08

look more closely at. So it's proved

12:11

very easy to get... scientists to buy

12:13

in sort of inadvertently by just saying,

12:15

oh, let's have a big research program.

12:17

So for example, back in the first

12:20

Bush administration, President Bush established the Global

12:22

Climate Research Program. Now back in 1990,

12:24

that wasn't necessarily a bad or malicious

12:26

thing to do, but it contributed to

12:29

this narrative that it was too soon

12:31

to tell that we needed to do

12:33

a lot more research, even though in

12:35

1992 President Bush signed the United Nations

12:38

Framework Convention on Climate Change, which committed

12:40

the United States to acting on the

12:42

available knowledge, which was already quite robust

12:44

at that time. Another thing you mentioned

12:46

were the astroturf organizations. So now we're

12:49

going from less dishonest to more dishonest.

12:51

So there's a whole range of activities,

12:53

some of which are catastrophically dishonest and

12:55

deceitful and... really appalling and maybe even

12:58

illegal, to others that are more manipulative.

13:00

So Astro turf organizations involve creating organizations

13:02

that purport to be citizens groups or

13:04

purport to be representing important stakeholders like

13:07

firefighters and getting them to do the

13:09

dirty work of the industry. So you

13:11

mentioned the Citizens for Fire Safety. This

13:13

was an organization that was created and

13:16

wholly funded by the tobacco industry. to

13:18

fight tobacco regulation by fighting back against

13:20

the overwhelming evidence that many house fires

13:22

were caused by smoking, particularly smoking in

13:25

bed. And so there were all kinds

13:27

of campaigns that pointed this out to

13:29

try to discourage people from smoking, particularly

13:31

from smoking in bed. The tobacco industry

13:33

made the claim that the real culprit

13:36

it wasn't the cigarette, it was the

13:38

sheets and the pillow cases, and that

13:40

these things needed to be fireproofed. And

13:42

so they persuade people across the country,

13:45

states, the federal government, to pass regulations

13:47

requiring flame retardants in pajamas. And I

13:49

remember when I was a parent, it

13:51

was incredibly hard to find comfortable cotton

13:54

pajamas from my children because they were

13:56

all made out of these disgusting synthetic

13:58

fabrics filled with flame returns. That was

14:00

pushed heavily by this group called the

14:03

Citizens for Fire Safety, represented by firefighters

14:05

who were in the pay of the

14:07

industry. So this was like true industry

14:09

shells. People should just stop here for

14:12

a moment and recognize just how diabolical.

14:14

It's very diabolical. I know. You've got

14:16

a product that is literally, you know.

14:18

causing houses to burn down. And instead

14:20

of actually that product, because they don't

14:23

want to change it, they can't really

14:25

change it, it's not really change a

14:27

bowl. And so they want to externalize

14:29

the source of this harm, this thing

14:32

that's happening in the world, saying, well,

14:34

there's another place that it's coming from.

14:36

It's coming from the flammable. materials, let

14:38

alone the fact that that probably gave

14:41

us more peafos and forever chemicals in

14:43

all of our furniture and bed sheets.

14:45

Now I know that for sure it

14:47

did, right? Right. And the idea, though,

14:50

that I think most people don't know,

14:52

there's sort of this asymmetry, just how

14:54

much effort would a, you know, incentivized

14:56

actor go through to spin up, you

14:58

know, lots and lots or dozens of

15:01

fake organizations, fake... institutions in order to

15:03

so doubt about this thing. And so

15:05

that's what I was so excited to

15:07

have you on because I just don't

15:10

think people understand. So in the case

15:12

of social media, you know, they might

15:14

say, well, we need to do research,

15:16

or let's fund parent education programs so

15:19

that parents are better educated about how

15:21

to manage their better educated about how

15:23

to manage their kids' use of screen

15:25

time, which is of course not an

15:28

actual solution to the fact that they've

15:30

created strategy of. distracting people from the

15:32

true source of the problem. process foods

15:34

that are really hard to stop eating.

15:37

And you might be too young to

15:39

remember this book. When I was young,

15:41

there was an advertising campaign on television

15:43

for Laze Potato Chips, and it featured

15:45

a young girl, a blonde, very pretty

15:48

young girl, and she's talking to the

15:50

devil. And the devil hands her a

15:52

potato chip and says, I bet you

15:54

can't eat just one. And I look

15:57

back on that ad now and my

15:59

mind is blown because in a way

16:01

they're admitting what they were doing. It

16:03

turned out they were doing research to

16:06

figure out how to manufacture a potato

16:08

chip that you couldn't eat just one

16:10

or five or ten that you would

16:12

eat the whole bag and it was

16:15

deliberate and it was knowing and they

16:17

even weirdly chipped their hand in the

16:19

ad except none of us realized that

16:21

that's what they were doing. Well, this

16:24

seems like also, just to do a

16:26

couple more here, there's another strategy which

16:28

is emphasizing personal agency, saying, well, it's

16:30

up to you to have personal responsibility

16:32

with how many Doritos, you know, you

16:35

have. It's up to the person who's

16:37

addicted to cigarettes, to choose, do they

16:39

really want to be addicted to cigarettes,

16:41

to choose, do they really want to

16:44

be addicted or not? They can still

16:46

choose that, social media, which would threaten

16:48

trillions of dollars of value if they

16:50

had to change in any way. Yes,

16:53

well the agency one is crucial and

16:55

it relates to the sort of bigger

16:57

framework, which is the framework of freedom.

16:59

So as you pointed out, there are

17:02

many ad campaigns both on social media

17:04

and in legacy media, basically trying to

17:06

shift the burden away from the producer

17:08

of the damaging product to the consumer

17:10

and to say, well, this is our

17:13

fault because we drive too much. And

17:15

so BP ran a big ad campaign

17:17

that many of us have seen and

17:19

it was super successful to calculate your

17:22

own carbon footprint. And how many of

17:24

us even now... Think about that. They'll

17:26

say, oh, I'm traveling less because I'm

17:28

trying to reduce my carbon footprint, right?

17:31

And of course, reducing your carbon footprint

17:33

isn't a bad thing. If you can

17:35

do it, it's a good thing. But

17:37

the net result of this is to

17:40

shift agency, to shift it away. from

17:42

the producer that is knowingly making a

17:44

harmful product and saying, no, it's my

17:46

fault because I made that choice. But

17:49

it wasn't entirely a choice because at

17:51

the same time the industry is fighting

17:53

regulations that would restrict fossil fuels. They're

17:55

fighting tax credits for electric cars, so

17:57

I'm not really making a free choice.

18:00

I'm making a choice that is heavily

18:02

affected by what the industry has done.

18:04

This is another strategy that we can

18:06

track back to the tobacco industry. Early

18:09

on the tobacco industry realized, and again

18:11

this is in the documents, we can

18:13

find them saying it in their own

18:15

words, that they would not succeed if

18:18

they said to the American people, yeah,

18:20

we know cigarettes will kill you, but

18:22

oh well, you know, enjoy a while

18:24

at last. No, that was not a

18:27

message that would work. Lots and lots

18:29

of people would say, oh, I should

18:31

try to quit. But if they said

18:33

this is about freedom? This is about

18:36

your right to decide for yourself how

18:38

you want to live your life. Do

18:40

you want the government telling you whether

18:42

or not you can smoke? And that

18:44

was a very powerful message. I think

18:47

for two reasons. One is because none

18:49

of us do want the government telling

18:51

us what to do. I think most

18:53

of us feel like, yeah, I want

18:56

to decide for myself where I live,

18:58

where I work, whether I smoke or

19:00

not. but also because it tied into

19:02

this bigger idea of America as a

19:05

beacon of freedom. That what makes America

19:07

America is that this is a country

19:09

of freedom. And so the industry ran

19:11

all kinds of campaigns with American flags,

19:14

with the Statue of Liberty, and we

19:16

talk about this in our new book,

19:18

The Big Myth. We can track this

19:20

back actually into the 1920s and 30s,

19:23

newsreels and documentaries, evoking all these icons

19:25

of American freedom. And this was a

19:27

very powerful argument because it meant that...

19:29

You weren't fighting for a deadly product.

19:31

You were fighting for freedom. And who

19:34

was going to argue against that? Yeah.

19:36

So it occurs to me that when

19:38

we talk about this, what we're really

19:40

talking about is not doubt itself. What

19:43

we're talking about is sort of unfair

19:45

conversational moves, right? It's unfair to turn

19:47

a fact conversation into a values conversation.

19:49

It's unfair to pretend that everyone is

19:52

just saying this when you're bankrolling this.

19:54

And so I kind of want to

19:56

come back because I have to admit

19:58

I bristle slightly about just focusing on

20:01

doubt because science and the process of

20:03

honest inquiry demands that we sit with

20:05

uncertainty. And, you know, it's part of

20:07

our ability to act in this world.

20:09

We don't know things. Sometimes longitudinal studies

20:12

do take 20, 30, 40 years. What

20:14

is the difference between? manufactured doubt that

20:16

is this deeply unfair conversational move that

20:18

destroys our ability to be together versus

20:21

more wise sitting with doubt. Yeah, that's

20:23

a great question. And it's one thing

20:25

we talked about in the book originally

20:27

that it's the doubt strategy is very

20:30

clever because it's a kind of jujitsu

20:32

move. It's taking what should be a

20:34

strength of science, the fact that scientists

20:36

are motivated by. doubt which in a

20:39

different context we call curiosity, scientists do

20:41

spend a lot of time worrying about

20:43

uncertainties and how to characterize them accurately,

20:45

fairly and honestly, and without some degree

20:48

of doubt, there wouldn't be progress in

20:50

science. So that's a good thing, but

20:52

the merchants of doubt take that good

20:54

thing and they turn it into a

20:56

liability and they want to make us

20:59

think that unless... The science is absolutely

21:01

positively 100% certain that therefore we don't

21:03

know anything and can't act. And so

21:05

it's really about exactly what you said,

21:08

that we as citizens have to understand

21:10

that we have to live with uncertainty.

21:12

I wrote a paper once that was

21:14

called Living with Uncertainty. And the reality

21:17

is we do that in our ordinary

21:19

lives all the time. We get married,

21:21

we buy a house, we buy a

21:23

car, we invest for retirement even though...

21:26

We might die beforehand. So we live

21:28

with uncertainty in our daily lives all

21:30

the time and we trust ourselves to

21:32

make judgments about uncertainty in our daily

21:35

lives because we think we have the

21:37

information we need to make those choices.

21:39

And so this leads to another strategy

21:41

we haven't talked about, which is the

21:43

direct attacks on scientists. Part of the

21:46

way this works also is to try

21:48

to undermine our trust in science generally.

21:50

say that scientists are crooked, they're dishonest,

21:52

they're in for the money, which is

21:55

again pretty ironic coming from the tobacco

21:57

industry. Very common. And this is one

21:59

of the things that we've tracked in

22:01

our work that's particularly distressing about what's

22:04

going on right now. Many of the

22:06

things we studied began as a tax

22:08

on particular sciences that seem to show

22:10

the need for regulation like science related

22:13

to tobacco, the ozone hole. climate change,

22:15

also pesticides. But then it's spread. And

22:17

what we've seen in the last 10

22:19

years, really since we published the book,

22:21

is this broader expansion to trying to

22:24

cast doubt on science more generally. So

22:26

this broad attack on science and scientists

22:28

in order to make us think we

22:30

can't trust scientists, but then who should

22:33

we trust? So as you say, now

22:35

we're in this. saturated media landscape with

22:37

information coming at us from all directions,

22:39

and it's really, really hard for anyone

22:42

to know who they should be trusting.

22:44

I feel like there's a distinction between

22:46

reflexive mistrust, which is a problem, and

22:48

then reflexive trusting, which is also a

22:51

problem, and what we're looking for is

22:53

warranted trustworthiness. And one of the things

22:55

I'm worried about the most in this

22:57

space is that I've seen the response

23:00

of scientists, even friends and colleagues, is...

23:02

to try to push for more certainty.

23:04

And they'll say, no, no, we know

23:06

this, we're more certain. And I have

23:08

to admit, I sort of doubt that

23:11

that's the right response. I kind of

23:13

think we all need to sit with

23:15

more uncertainty. I mean, if anything, I

23:17

blame the marketing teams. In the tobacco

23:20

example, I blame the cigarettes are safe,

23:22

eight of ten doctors agree, pulling us

23:24

up to a place where we believe

23:26

they were safe. And so how do

23:29

we counteract that? Because I'm a little

23:31

worried that science will be a race

23:33

to the bottom of people shouting and

23:35

claiming what we know as a sort

23:38

of a false certainty in reaction to

23:40

this very combative environment. Yes, I agree.

23:42

I think you're absolutely right. I think

23:44

it's a big mistake for scientists to

23:47

say, oh, we know this absolutely. I

23:49

think it's much better to say, of

23:51

course there's uncertainty in any live science.

23:53

The whole point of science is to...

23:55

It's a process of discovery and learning.

23:58

And this is of course where history

24:00

of science is so helpful, because of

24:02

course we learn new things, and that's

24:04

good. But we have an issue right

24:07

now. We have to make decisions that

24:09

in some cases are literally life and

24:11

death. And in a case like that,

24:13

it does not make any sense to

24:16

say, Oh, well, I need to wait

24:18

another 10 years till we better understand

24:20

this virus, or I have to wait

24:22

until sea level is on my window

24:25

cell, because then it's too late to

24:27

act. We make decisions based on the

24:29

best available information we have right now,

24:31

but we also prepare to change in

24:33

the future if we need to. And

24:36

we have a term for that in

24:38

science. It's called adaptive management. And it

24:40

was used very, very successfully in the

24:42

ozone hole case. International Convention, the Montreal

24:45

Protocol that was signed to deal with

24:47

the ozone hole, had a feature net

24:49

for adaptive management, because scientists knew that

24:51

there were still things they didn't understand

24:54

about ozone depletion. And so the politicians

24:56

put in a feature that as they

24:58

learn more information, the regulations could be

25:00

made more strict, or they could be

25:03

made less strict. And we could do

25:05

the same thing for climate change. I

25:07

mean, it's what we should do. We

25:09

should start, we should... Always start with

25:12

the least regulation that we think will

25:14

get the job done, but be prepared

25:16

to tighten the regulations if more science

25:18

tells us we need to or to

25:20

lessen them as the case may be.

25:23

What I love about the example you're

25:25

giving with the Montreal Protocol Agreement is

25:27

its law that recognizes its own humility,

25:29

that it's not always going to be

25:32

accurate, that the letter of the law

25:34

and the spirit of the law are

25:36

going to diverge and we need to

25:38

be able to update the assumptions of

25:41

the law as fast as the sort

25:43

of situation requires it. And that's building

25:45

in kind of the right level of

25:47

uncertainty. Yeah, and if I could jump

25:50

in on that, you know, a lot

25:52

of people have criticized the IPCC for...

25:54

a variety of different reasons, but I

25:56

think it's really important for people to

25:59

understand that the UN Framework Convention on

26:01

Climate Change was modeled on the ozone

26:03

case. the ozone case was such an

26:05

effective integration of science and policy and

26:07

it has proved effective and has done

26:10

the job it was intended to do,

26:12

the UN Framework Convention was modeled on

26:14

that. Now it hasn't worked, but I

26:16

think the main reason it hasn't worked

26:19

is because of the resistance of the

26:21

fossil fuel industry and we've now been

26:23

witnessed to 30 years of organized disinformation

26:25

and campaigns to prevent. really to prevent

26:28

governments from doing what they promised to

26:30

do back in 1992. So Naomi, one

26:32

of the things you write about in

26:34

your new book, the big myth, is

26:37

how those who are advocating for the

26:39

maximum unregulated sort of free market approach

26:41

have a selective reading of history and

26:43

have this great example of Adam Smith.

26:45

Could you speak to that? Yeah. So

26:48

one of the things we talk about

26:50

in the book is how the Chicago

26:52

School of Economics... really misrepresented Adam Smith

26:54

and how many of us have this

26:57

view of Adam Smith, the father of

26:59

capitalism as an advocate of unregulated markets

27:01

that business people should just pursue their

27:03

self-interest and all good will come from

27:06

people pursuing their self-interest. That is not

27:08

what Adam Smith wrote. in the wealth

27:10

of nations. In fact, he has an

27:12

extensive discussion of the absolute essential nature

27:15

of banking regulation. He says if you

27:17

leave banks to bankers, they will pursue

27:19

their own self-interest and they will destroy

27:21

the economy, or at least put the

27:24

economy at risk. You can't let factory

27:26

owners just pursue their self-interest, or they'll

27:28

pay their workers' starvation wages. And he

27:30

has multiple examples of this, which he

27:32

goes on to describe at quite great

27:35

length. Yet all of this has been

27:37

removed from the way Adam Smith has

27:39

been presented in American culture since 1945.

27:41

And in fact, it's a kind of,

27:44

you know, I teach agnetology, the production

27:46

of ignorance, the study of ignorance, and

27:48

it's really interesting to see how this

27:50

is a beautiful example of it, because

27:53

in the 1920s and 30s, there were

27:55

people even at the University of Chicago

27:57

saying, no, that's not what Adam Smith

27:59

said. But by the 19... 50s that

28:02

had all been erased it had been

28:04

expunged and they were producing volumes edited

28:06

volumes of Adam Smith that left out

28:08

all of his discussion of the rights

28:11

of workers the need for regulation etc.

28:13

So I want to take us a

28:15

little bit to a different direction which

28:17

is another way that science can get

28:19

weaponized so one of the other areas

28:21

of our work now me is around

28:23

AI risk and you know artificial intelligence

28:25

is the most transformative technology in human

28:27

history. If you have intelligence is what

28:30

birthed all of our inventions and all

28:32

of our science, and if you suddenly

28:34

have artificial intelligence, you can birth an

28:36

infinite amount of new science. It is

28:38

so profound and so paradigmatic, I think

28:40

it's hard for people to get their

28:42

minds around it. There's obviously a lot

28:44

of risk involved in AI, and one

28:46

of the things that I've noticed, some

28:49

of the major frontier AI labs, like

28:51

open AI labs, They came out after

28:53

these whistleblowers left open AI saying, hey,

28:55

we have safety concerns. And what they

28:57

said in response was. We believe in

28:59

a science-based approach to studying AI risk,

29:01

which basically meant they were pre-framing all

29:03

of the people who are safety concerned

29:05

as sci-fi oriented, that they were not

29:08

actually grounded in real risks here on

29:10

Earth PAL, but they were living in

29:12

sort of the terminator scenarios of loss

29:14

of control and sci-fi. And that's one

29:16

of the things that I just, one

29:18

of the reasons I wanted to have

29:20

you want is I want to think

29:22

about how can our... collective antibodies detect

29:24

when this kind of thing is going

29:27

on because that sounds like quite a

29:29

reasonable thing to say. We want a

29:31

science-based approach to do AI risk and

29:33

we don't want to be manufacturing doubts

29:35

or thinking hypothetically about scenarios. Just curious

29:37

your reaction to that. I have to

29:39

say I do something that's getting a

29:41

little nervous when I hear people say

29:43

we want a scientific approach because I

29:46

want to know well who are those

29:48

people and what do they mean by

29:50

a scientific approach because I could mean

29:52

by a an excuse to push off

29:54

regulations. So I would need to learn

29:56

more about, you know, who those people

29:58

are on what they mean by a

30:00

science-based approach. But I guess what I

30:02

would say, you know, it's interesting as

30:05

a historian thinking about how radical this

30:07

is and how serious the risks are,

30:09

because I agree with you, I think

30:11

it is radical, and I think both

30:13

the risks and the potential rewards are

30:15

huge. But it does remind me a

30:17

little bit of about of the chemical

30:19

revolution, because many things were said the

30:21

same about... chemicals, particularly plastics, but also

30:23

pharmaceuticals, other chemicals in the early to

30:26

mid-20th century, and chemicals did revolutionize industry.

30:28

They revolutionized textiles, plastics was huge, you

30:30

know, all kinds of things. And similarly,

30:32

there were many aspects of the chemical

30:34

industry that were very helpful to modern

30:36

life, and there were some aspects that

30:38

were really bad. And so how do

30:40

we make sense of that? And I

30:42

think one thing we know from history

30:45

is it gets back to my favorite

30:47

subject that people in Silicon Valley love

30:49

to hate, which is regulation. That part

30:51

of the role of government is to

30:53

play this balancing act between competing interests.

30:55

In fact, you could argue the whole

30:57

role of government is to deal with

30:59

competing interests. That we live in a

31:01

complex society. What I want isn't necessarily

31:04

the same as what you want. And

31:06

in a perfect world, we'd all get

31:08

what we wanted. In a perfect world,

31:10

we could be libertarians. We all just

31:12

decide for ourselves. But it doesn't work,

31:14

because what I do affects you and

31:16

vice versa. And so that's where governance

31:18

has to come in. And it doesn't

31:20

have to be the federal government. It

31:23

could be corporate governance. It could be

31:25

watchdogs. But I do think that the

31:27

way in which some elements of the

31:29

air industry are pushing back against regulation.

31:31

is really scary and really bad. Because

31:33

if we don't have some kind of

31:35

set of reasonable regulations of this technology

31:37

as it develops, ideally with adaptive management,

31:39

we could find ourselves in a really

31:42

bad place. And one of the things

31:44

we know from the history of the

31:46

chemical industry is that I think it's

31:48

fair to say that many chemicals were

31:50

underregulated. You mentioned PFS a few minutes

31:52

ago. Again, DuPont knew a long time

31:54

ago that these chemicals were potentially harmful

31:56

and were getting everywhere. So the industry

31:58

knew that this was happening and pushed

32:00

hard against revealing the information they had,

32:03

pushed hard against regulation, and we now

32:05

live in a sea, a chemical soup

32:07

where it's become almost impossible to figure

32:09

out what particular chemicals are doing, what

32:11

to us, because it's not a controlled

32:13

experiment anymore. Well, I think that points

32:15

at one of the core problems here

32:17

is that, you know, as much as

32:19

you want good science, good science takes

32:22

time and the technology moves faster than

32:24

the science. And so the question is,

32:26

what do you do with that when

32:28

the technology is moving and rolling out

32:30

much faster than the science? So what

32:32

does it mean to regulate this wisely?

32:34

You talked about one thing, which is

32:36

adaptive management. Are there other tactics that

32:38

you can make sure that as you

32:41

begin to figure out how to figure

32:43

out? Yeah, that's a great question. And

32:45

again, so good news here is that

32:47

we do have the ozone examples. We

32:49

have at least one example where it

32:51

was done right and we can look

32:53

to that example. And I think one

32:55

thing that we learned from that case

32:57

is to do with the importance of

33:00

having both science industry and stakeholder voices

33:02

involved. Because I thought one of the

33:04

really terrible things that someone said recently

33:06

about AI, I think it was Eric

33:08

Schmidt, correct me if I'm wrong, if

33:10

I'm wrong. And I thought that was

33:12

a very shocking and horrible thing for

33:14

an otherwise intelligent person to say, because

33:16

first of all, I don't think it's

33:19

true. I mean, I could say the

33:21

same thing about chemicals, I could say

33:23

the same thing about climate change, but

33:25

intelligent people, you know, who are willing

33:27

to work and learn can come to

33:29

understand what these risks are. And you

33:31

talk about this in your book, right,

33:33

as epistemic privilege, and one of the

33:35

challenges that's sort of fundamental to all

33:37

industries is... The people inside of the

33:40

plastics industry or inside the chemicals industry,

33:42

they do have more technical knowledge than

33:44

a policymaker and their policy team is

33:46

going to have. That doesn't mean you

33:48

should trust them because their incentives are

33:50

completely off to give them the maximum

33:52

agency and freedom. We've covered that. on

33:54

some of our previous episodes. But that's

33:56

actually one of the sort of questions

33:59

we have to balance is, okay, well,

34:01

we want the regulation to be wisely

34:03

informed. We want it to be adaptive

34:05

and never fixed. We want to leverage

34:07

the insights from the people who know

34:09

most about it, but we don't want

34:11

to have those insights be funneled through

34:13

these bad incentives that then end up

34:15

where we don't actually get a result

34:18

that has the best interest of the

34:20

public in mind. And I feel like

34:22

that's sort of the eye of the

34:24

eye of the needle of the needle

34:26

that the needle that we're trying to

34:28

the needle that we're trying to the

34:30

needle that we're trying to the needle

34:32

that we're trying to really fees into

34:34

the point I want to make here,

34:37

which is absolutely. The technologists know the

34:39

most about that technology, and so they

34:41

have to be at the table, and

34:43

they definitely have to be involved. But

34:45

they don't necessarily know the most about

34:47

how these things will influence the users.

34:49

They don't necessarily know the most about

34:51

how these things will influence the users.

34:53

They don't necessarily know the most about

34:56

how you craft good policy. Or stakeholders.

34:58

Or what about labor historians who have

35:00

looked at automation and other content. I

35:02

mean, one of the big worries about

35:04

AI is that a lot of us

35:06

will be put out of work and

35:08

that can be really socially destabilizing. Well,

35:10

there are people who are experts on

35:12

that. And so you could imagine bringing

35:14

to the table some kind of commission

35:17

that would bring the technologists. policy experts

35:19

and people who could represent, you know,

35:21

the risk to stakeholders, maybe even some

35:23

psychologists who study children. I mean, the

35:25

point is there's more than one kind

35:27

of expertise that's needed here, and the

35:29

technical expertise is absolutely essential, but it's

35:31

necessary, but not sufficient. Yeah, and I

35:33

certainly agree with you in that we

35:36

need all of society to come together

35:38

to figure out how to do this

35:40

well. But having lived through the early

35:42

internet and the Ted Stevens, the internet

35:44

is a series of tubes and the

35:46

inability for Congress to understand what they

35:48

were dealing with, I have a certain

35:50

amount of sympathy for this learning curve

35:52

that we're all on together. I mean,

35:55

Tristan and I can't even keep up

35:57

with the news and this is our

35:59

full-time job. And so I'm curious because

36:01

not only will people say that certain

36:03

people outside of industry don't understand, but

36:05

people say that our society... has become

36:07

over-regulated or the regulatory apparatus is too

36:09

slow, not just from the right, but

36:11

from the left. People will say that

36:14

building new housing is too onerous because

36:16

of environmental regulations, for example. And I'm

36:18

curious how you respond to that, because

36:20

you want to pull all of society,

36:22

you want to build committees, you want

36:24

to do this, and I think I

36:26

agree with you from a values perspective

36:28

that we need more of society in

36:30

this conversation, but I'm not sure how

36:33

good we are doing that. I don't

36:35

want to come across sounding like a

36:37

Pollyanna, although I should always point out,

36:39

you know, the moral of the Pollyanna

36:41

story is that the world becomes a

36:43

better place because of her optimism, and

36:45

I think we often forget that. We

36:47

think calling someone a Pollyanna as a

36:49

criticism. But I think, I guess I

36:51

would say two things about that. First,

36:54

I'd want to slightly push back on

36:56

the idea that we have people on

36:58

the left as well as the right

37:00

who are anti-whoare anti-like who are anti-like.

37:02

business opposition to regulation in this country.

37:04

And it's almost all from the right.

37:06

There are some examples, but even the

37:08

housing staff, I mean, I was just

37:10

talking to an urban historian the other

37:13

day about how the real estate industry

37:15

is really behind a lot of this

37:17

pushback against housing regulation, not communities. I

37:19

mean, there are some exceptions, particularly in

37:21

California, but. You know, there's been a

37:23

hundred year history, I mean, this is

37:25

the story we tell in the big

37:27

myth, of the business communities insisting that

37:29

they are over-regulated, and they've used it

37:32

to fight back against regulation of child

37:34

labor, protections of worker safety. tobacco, plastics,

37:36

you know, pesticides, DOT, and also saying

37:38

that if, you know, if the government

37:40

passes this regulation, our industry will be

37:42

destroyed. The automobile industry claimed that if

37:44

we had seat belt laws, the U.S.

37:46

auto industry would be destroyed. And none

37:48

of that was true. And every time

37:51

a regulation was passed, industry adapted and

37:53

typically passed the cost on to consumers,

37:55

which, you know, maybe wasn't always great.

37:57

Maybe sometimes we paid for regulations we

37:59

didn't really need. But in general. The

38:01

opposition to regulation generally comes from the

38:03

business community who wants to do what

38:05

they want to do and they want

38:07

to make as much money as they

38:10

want to make and make it as

38:12

fast as possible. So it gets back

38:14

to what Tristan said about the incentives.

38:16

I understand that. If I were a

38:18

business person I would probably want to

38:20

run my business the way I want

38:22

to run it as well. But in

38:24

a democratic society we have to weigh

38:26

that against the potential harms to other

38:28

people, to the environment, to biodiversity, to

38:31

children. And so this gets back to

38:33

another thing that's really important, especially in

38:35

Silicon Valley, which is the romance of

38:37

speed. We live in a society that

38:39

has, American society has always had a

38:41

romance with speed, railroads, automobiles, space travel.

38:43

We love speed, we love novelty, and

38:45

we like the idea that we are

38:47

a fast-paced, fast-moving society. But on the

38:50

other hand, sometimes moving too fast is

38:52

bad. Sometimes when we move fast and

38:54

break things, we break things we shouldn't

38:56

have broken. And I think we are

38:58

witnessing that in spades right now. I

39:00

mean, we have a broken democracy in

39:02

part because we move too fast, in

39:04

my opinion, with telecommunications deregulation. Something that

39:06

was supposed to be democratizing and give

39:09

consumers more choice, has ended up giving

39:11

us less choice, paying huge bills for

39:13

our streaming services. really contributing to political

39:15

polarization because of how fragmented media has

39:17

become. So that's a really... I have

39:19

an idea. Let's go even faster with

39:21

AI. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, this

39:23

is a really good moment to be

39:25

having this conversation because one of the

39:28

things we're seeing now is exactly what

39:30

we wrote about in our last book,

39:32

the big myth, which is the business

39:34

attempt to dismantle the federal government. because

39:36

they resent the role that the federal

39:38

government has played in regulating business in

39:40

this country. And this is a story

39:42

that has been going on for 100

39:44

years, but is suddenly unfolding in real

39:47

time incredibly rapidly in front of us.

39:49

And part of this argument has to

39:51

do with this idea that government regulation

39:53

is a threat to freedom and that

39:55

any restriction on business puts us on

39:57

this slippery slope to loss of freedom.

39:59

But of course it's not true. because

40:01

we make choices all the time. And

40:03

so one of the examples I like

40:06

to cite, which was from actually from

40:08

a debate among neoliberals in the 1930s

40:10

about what it meant to be a

40:12

neoliberal, and one of them said, look,

40:14

being against regulation because you think it

40:16

eliminates freedom, is like saying that a

40:18

stop light or stop sign or a

40:20

red light is a slippery slope on

40:22

the road to eliminating driving. No one

40:24

who thinks we should have stop signs

40:27

on roads. is trying to eliminate driving.

40:29

We're trying to make driving safe. And

40:31

most regulations that exist in the world,

40:33

or most many, but I probably most,

40:35

have to do with safety, have to

40:37

do with protecting workers, children, the environment,

40:39

biodiversity, against, you know, other interests. And

40:41

so it's always a balancing act. It's

40:43

about, of course, we want economic activity.

40:46

And of course, we want jobs. And

40:48

of course, we know that business... plays

40:50

an essential role in doing those things.

40:52

But we also don't want business to

40:54

kill people with dangerous products. And we

40:56

don't want business to trample the rights

40:58

of working people. We don't want business

41:00

to exploit children. Absolutely. You know, as

41:02

we talk about the urgency that we're

41:05

all feeling and the urgency of these

41:07

problems and how AI even makes that

41:09

worse. I want to fold in that

41:11

everything feels so urgent and some of

41:13

that urgency is real in that we're

41:15

hitting these really real limits and we're

41:17

undermining parts of our society and other

41:19

parts of it seem like a hall

41:21

of mirrors that the internet has created

41:24

where everyone can't slow down to even

41:26

think about a problem because it's all

41:28

so urgent that we just have to

41:30

act now so I can't even sit

41:32

with my uncertainty on something. How do

41:34

you think that this conversation space or

41:36

this compression? that we're all feeling around

41:38

conversations that may take a decade to

41:40

settle the science. How do you think

41:43

that plays into the problem? And what

41:45

would you do? Yeah, I think that's

41:47

a great question. I feel like in

41:49

a way it's one of the paradoxes

41:51

of the present moment. We are facing

41:53

urgent problems. Climate change is irreversible. So

41:55

the longer we wait to act, the

41:57

worse it gets in the less. we're

41:59

able to fix it. So there should

42:01

be some sense of urgency about it.

42:04

And the same with AI, right? I

42:06

mean, as we've been talking about this

42:08

whole hour, this technology is moving very

42:10

quickly. It's already impacting our lives in

42:12

ways we wouldn't have even imagined five

42:14

or ten years ago. But at the

42:16

same time, I think it would be

42:18

really bad to panic. Panic is never

42:20

a good basis for decision-making. And there's

42:23

a way in which the very urgency

42:25

of it really requires us to stop

42:27

and to think and to listen. And

42:29

especially if we think about adaptive management,

42:31

adaptive management is all about not overreacting

42:33

in the moment, making the decision that

42:35

makes the most sense based on the

42:37

information you have, but being prepared to

42:39

adjust in the future. And one of

42:42

the ways that the Montreal Protocol worked

42:44

was by setting specific deadlines, dates. at

42:46

which the people involved would review the

42:48

evidence and decide whether an adjustment was

42:50

needed. And I think that's a beautiful

42:52

model because it incorporates both acting on

42:54

what we know now, not delaying, not

42:56

making excuses to delay, but also recognizing

42:58

human frailty, recognizing the benefits of learning

43:01

more information and being able to work

43:03

in that benefit. and making it structured.

43:05

So it wasn't just a sort of

43:07

promise, oh yeah, we'll look at that

43:09

again next week, but it was actually

43:11

structured into the law. That feels like

43:13

something that all laws should be doing,

43:15

actually, especially all laws that have to

43:17

do with emerging science or technology. Is

43:20

this a common practice or is this

43:22

a one-off that Montreal did? Yeah, that's

43:24

a great question. It would be a

43:26

good thing to study. I don't really

43:28

know the answer to that. you know,

43:30

the conservatives are right about that, that

43:32

we should have better mechanisms for if

43:34

we set up a government agency to

43:36

think about, you know, how long do

43:38

we want this agency to operate? And

43:41

should there be some mechanism for, you

43:43

know, after 10 years deciding if you

43:45

want to renew it? Almost like when

43:47

you take out a library book, you

43:49

know, you could renew it. I think

43:51

that would be a useful thing to

43:53

do. And certainly, one of the things

43:55

that Eric Conway and I write about

43:57

in our new book is that in

44:00

the 1970s, it was absolutely the case

44:02

that there were regulations from the 20s

44:04

and 30s that needed to be revisited.

44:06

I mean, there was a whole world

44:08

of trucking regulation that made no sense,

44:10

given that we now had airlines. Telecommunication,

44:12

it was absolutely right in the Clinton

44:14

era that we revisited telecommunication that was

44:16

based on radio now that we had

44:19

the internet. But again, there wasn't a

44:21

good mechanism for doing that. And I

44:23

think the Clinton administration moved too quickly

44:25

and made some really big mistakes and

44:27

broke some really serious things. So I

44:29

think that Montreal is a good model

44:31

for thinking about how could we do

44:33

something like that? You know, maybe for

44:35

AI, maybe we should have some kind

44:38

of commission on AI safety that has

44:40

a 10-year term, but that is renewable

44:42

if Congress or whoever votes to renew

44:44

it at that time, otherwise it sunsets.

44:46

This is a new thought for me,

44:48

which is you either hear people saying,

44:50

look, there's too many regulations or people

44:52

saying, well, there's not regulated enough. But

44:54

what you're saying is, it's both at

44:57

the same time. We always have old

44:59

regulations that we need to pull off

45:01

and we have new ones that aren't

45:03

protecting us and the ways we need

45:05

to pull off and we have new

45:07

ones that aren't protecting us in the

45:09

ways we need to put on and

45:11

that we should expect that always we

45:13

should be doing. One of the problems

45:15

of history, and as a historian, I

45:18

believe absolutely in the value of history

45:20

and all the lessons we can learn,

45:22

but sometimes people learn the wrong lessons

45:24

or they carry forward experiences from the

45:26

past that maybe aren't necessarily relevant now.

45:28

And so some balance between creating a

45:30

thing that we think we need now,

45:32

but also creating a mechanism to revisit

45:34

it and to learn from our mistakes.

45:37

There's also a way that AI can

45:39

play a role in helping to rapidly

45:41

accelerate our ability to find those laws

45:43

that need updating are no longer relevant

45:45

and to help craft what would those

45:47

updates be, find laws that are in

45:49

conflict with each other, I'm not trying

45:51

to be a techno solutionist or say

45:53

that AI can fix everything, but I

45:56

think To the degree that law is

45:58

actually part of how we solve some

46:00

of these multipolar traps, the if I

46:02

don't do it, I lose to the

46:04

guy that will, law is the solution,

46:06

but the problem is so people have

46:08

seen so many examples, rightly so, of

46:10

bad laws, bad regulation, and so this

46:12

is about how do we get more

46:15

adaptive, more reflective ways of doing this,

46:17

and AI can be actually a part

46:19

of that solution when I think about

46:21

a digital democracy. So

46:24

we've talked a lot in this podcast

46:26

about how hard it is to make

46:29

sense of the world right now. These

46:31

competing doubts and over certainties and different

46:33

cultic takes that social media has riven

46:35

our world into. What are ways that

46:37

individuals can actually stay grounded and understand

46:39

when something is distorted? What are the

46:41

antibodies that prevent people from being so

46:43

susceptible to disinformation right now? Well, I

46:46

think... You know, this is a really

46:48

tricky question, and if I had a

46:50

simple answer, that would be my next

46:52

book, right? Ten ways not to be

46:54

fooled by nonsense or something like that.

46:56

And maybe I'll write that book. But

46:58

I think an important thing to realize

47:00

is that, you know, we all have

47:03

our, we all have brains, and we

47:05

all have the capacity to use our

47:07

brains. So I really encourage people to

47:09

kind of embrace their own intelligence, and

47:11

then to ask questions. So if someone

47:13

is telling you something, the most obvious

47:15

question to say is, and who benefits

47:17

from what they're saying, and what is

47:20

their interest. And you know, that can

47:22

be used in a hostile, skeptical way,

47:24

and it sometimes has been. But in

47:26

general, it's always legitimate to say, well,

47:28

what does this person get out of

47:30

it? So I admit freely, I want

47:32

you to read my books. I get

47:34

some money from my books, but not

47:37

a lot. It's like a bucket book.

47:39

You know, I can't quit my day

47:41

job, as opposed to the fossil fuel

47:43

industry that is looking in trillions of

47:45

trillions of dollars in profit. Climate scientists,

47:47

most of whom get paid good middle

47:49

to upper middle class salaries, but they

47:51

don't get paid anymore if they say

47:54

climate change is serious than if they

47:56

say it's not serious, or the fossil

47:58

fuel industry that stands to earn trillions

48:00

of... more if they get to continue

48:02

doing what they're doing. So the vested

48:04

interest there are pretty lopsided and you

48:06

don't have to be a brainiac or

48:08

Harvard professor to see that difference. I

48:10

remember when we did our AI dilemma

48:13

talk about AI risk and people said,

48:15

but these guys profit from speaking about

48:17

risk and doomerism and here's all the

48:19

problems of technology as if that's what

48:21

is motivating our concerns and to the

48:23

degree that we profit in any way

48:25

from talking about those concerns, how does

48:27

that compare relative to the trillions of

48:30

dollars that the guys on the other

48:32

side of the table can make? And

48:34

I think how does one demonstrate that

48:36

they are a trustworthy actor that they

48:38

are coming from a place of care

48:40

about the common good? And that's built

48:42

over time, and I think it's becoming,

48:44

especially in the age of AI, when

48:47

you can basically so doubt about everything

48:49

and people don't know what's true, the

48:51

actors that are consistently showing up with

48:53

the deepest care and trustworthiness will sort

48:55

of win in that world as we

48:57

erode that trust. Yeah, I think that's

48:59

right. And that's one area where I

49:01

think scientists could do a better job.

49:04

A lot of scientists... We've been trained

49:06

to be brainiacs to use technical knowledge,

49:08

choose mathematics, and in our science, those

49:10

tools are important and good, but we

49:12

also have to recognize that when you

49:14

talk to the broader public, those tools

49:16

are not necessarily the best ones. And

49:18

then you have to relate to people

49:21

on a human level. One thing I've

49:23

been thinking a lot about in recent

49:25

years, I feel that in academia we

49:27

are taught. to talk, right? We're talked

49:29

to get our ideas out, to write

49:31

books, and it's all about, you know,

49:33

I'm getting my ideas out there, and

49:35

we aren't really taught to listen. And

49:38

so I really think that it's important

49:40

for anyone who's in any controversial space,

49:42

whether they're coming out as a scientist,

49:44

a journalist, a technologist, whatever. to recognize

49:46

the importance of listening and to try

49:48

to understand people's concerns. Because, you know,

49:50

I spent some time in Nebraska some

49:52

years ago talking with farmers and one

49:55

of the farmers said to me, I

49:57

just don't want the price of my

49:59

fuel to go up. I thought, well,

50:01

that's totally legitimate. If I were a

50:03

farmer, I wouldn't either. So it means

50:05

if we think about climate solutions, we

50:07

have to think about solutions that don't

50:09

hurt farmers. Tax credits, you know, people

50:11

have talked about fee and dividends systems

50:14

for carbon pricing, but to be mindful

50:16

of how is this affecting people, and

50:18

how can we structure solutions that take

50:20

those considerations into account? Naomi, thank you

50:22

so much for coming on your undivided

50:24

attention, your work on the merchants of

50:26

doubt and the big myth is really

50:28

fundamental and deeply appreciate what you're putting

50:31

out in the world. Yeah, thanks, Naomi.

50:33

Thank you. It's been a great conversation.

50:35

Your undivided attention is produced by the

50:37

Center for Humane Technology, a non-profit working

50:39

to catalyze a humane future. Our senior

50:41

producer is Julia Scott. Josh Lash is

50:43

our researcher and producer, and producer, and

50:45

producer, is Sasha Figan. Mixing on this

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episode by Jeff Sudan, original music by

50:50

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50:54

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