Jay Shapiro is an award winning filmmaker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020. He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”

Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠.

We discuss:

00:00 Welcome

01:54 Jay Intro

- The Essential #samharris series

- Documentary & narrative film-making

- "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea"

03:16 What's Real?

- Growing up in a secular #Jewish household

- "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one"

- "Never again becomes the holiest prayer"

- Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum

- "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist"

- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like"

- An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi

- #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials"

- Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality"

- How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality

- Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction

- "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences

- "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one"

- The National High School Ethics Bowl

- Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED

- Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question"

- "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!)

- Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth...

- Writing about Sam Harris, not for him

- Object-oriented ontology

- #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal"

- How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it"

- Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out"

- #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue)

- What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?

- Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads"

- Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" https://youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc

- Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves

- Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance

37:45 What Matters?

- "There is no grounding (to ethics)"

- David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm

- "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris

- There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship"

58:50 Who Matters?

01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?

...and much more. Full show notes at ⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠.

Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at ⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠. Join our ⁠⁠"I'm a Sentientist" wall⁠⁠ via ⁠⁠this simple form⁠⁠.

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