Two for Tea Podcast

David’s book, The Irrational Ape: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk, and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World (2019) is available here:

https://www.simonandschuster.co.uk/books/The-Irrational-Ape/David-Robert-Grimes/9781471178252

Additional References

Visit Letter here:

https://letter.wiki/conversations.

Looking for a correspondent? DM @JacksonAEdwards on Twitter or email [email protected].

Emily St Mandel, Station Eleven: A Novel (2014)

Steve Stewart-Williams, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolved (2018)

John P. A. Ioannidis, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” (2005)

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

David Grimes and John Ioannidis, “Modelling Science Trustworthiness Under Publish Or Perish Pressure” (2018):

https://uwspace.uwaterloo.ca/handle/10012/13117;

Buster Benson, Why Are We Yelling? The Art of Productive Disagreement (2019):

https://busterbenson.com/

My conversation with Buster on the book can be found here:

https://letter.wiki/conversation/225

Timestamps

3:00–6:35 On Letter

7:56 Relative vs. absolute risk increase or reduction

14:10 False positives & Baysian analysis

24:00 The Sally Clark case: an egregrious miscarriage of justice.

26:14 The prosecutor’s fallacy

27:40 The hair analysis unit & Kirk Odom’s wrongful conviction

36:32 Cargo cults

42:50 False equivalence, esp. with regard to vaccinations

47:28 Statistical significance vs. effect size

53:45 Dietary science & surrogate outcomes

59:58 Berkeley admissions and Simpson’s paradox

1:05:45 Self-reporting and personality tests

1:08:14 The replication crisis in biomedical science

1:12:58 Disinformation and misinformation

1:17:51 Identity protective cognition

You can find Aaron’s podcast, Embrace the Void, here:

https://voidpod.com/podcasts;

and his podcast, Philosophers in Space, co-hosted by Thomas Smith, here:

https://0gphilosophy.libsyn.com/

You can find Aaron’s conversations on Letter and write to him here:

https://letter.wiki/AaronRabinowitz/conversations

Support Aaron here (I’m a patron!):

https://www.patreon.com/EmbraceTheVoid

Follow Aaron on Twitter: @ETVPod

Further References

Thomas Chatterton Williams, A Self-Portrait in Black and White: Unlearning Race (2019)

My article on fascism:

https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/05/fascism-and-how-to-fight-it-a-letter-exchange/

Martin Luther King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (1963):

https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/letter-birmingham-jail

J. S. Mill, On Liberty (1859): econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html

Gurwinder Bhogal, “How Not to Deradicalize a Twitter Neonazi”:

https://areomagazine.com/2017/10/28/how-not-to-de-radicalize-a-twitter-neo-nazi/

Rohit Chopra, The Virtual Hindu Rashtra (2019):

https://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Hindu-Rashtra-Saffron-Nationalism/dp/9353029570

For our discussion of Jordan Peterson, see the timestamps:

https://soundcloud.com/user-761174326/14-william-buckner-and-cody-moser

My letter exchange with Nick Kano:

https://letter.wiki/conversation/250

Clyde Rathbone’s interview on Embrace the Void:

https://voidpod.com/podcasts/2019/11/20/ev-117-letterswiki-with-clyde-rathbone

Timestamps

6:15 Is civility fetishised? Tone policing and the difficulty of arguing.

19:10 Should some people be excused from civility? Is frankness itself a privilege?

22:35 Is the left is more averse to free speech than the right?

27:13 Freedom of speech in academe

39:47 The ecological fallacy

47:30 Protesting

50:58 Moral signalling

55:27 Free speech and its trade offs; free speech on social media

David’s latest book, Ethical Porn for Dicks: A Man’s Guide to Responsible Viewing Pleasure (2016) can be ordered here:

https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Porn-Dicks-Responsible-Pleasure/dp/0996485236/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

David’s The Myth of Sex Addiction (2012) can be found here:

https://rowman.com/isbn/9781442213067/the-myth-of-sex-addiction

David’s 2012 book, Insatiable Wives: Women who Stray and the Men who Love Them can be found here:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Insatiable-Wives-Women-Stray-Love/dp/1442200316

David’s column for Psychology Today can be found here:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/experts/david-j-ley-phd

David’s writings for the Good Men Project can be found here:

https://goodmenproject.com/author/david-j-ley/

You can follow David on Twitter: @DrDavidLey

Further References

My deep dive into circumcision:

https://areomagazine.com/2019/09/24/a-wrong-against-boys-an-impossible-conversation-about-circumcision/

Ang Lee’s film Lust, Caution (2007)

David on the no-fap community:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/women-who-stray/201503/the-nofap-phenomenon

Timestamps

1:45 Is there such a thing as sex addiction or porn addiction?

20:10 Is there a correlation between pornography use and sexual violence?

25:42 Moral panics around fiction

30:05 Young people watching pornography when they know nothing about real sex

35:55 Aesthetics versus pleasure

43:40 When our body’s impulses don’t correspond with our wishes; disconnects between mind and body

55:20 Men’s and women’s differing responses to porn

58:38 Towards a concept of sexual integrity

1:00:59 The no-fap community

1:06:30 Masturbation

For a comprehensive guide to Salil’s work, see:

http://www.saliltripathi.com/Welcome.html

Salil’s articles for Mint:

https://www.livemint.com/topic/salil-tripathi

Salil’s article for Caravan:

https://caravanmagazine.in/author/93

Salil’s books can be found here:

The Colonel Who Would Not Repent: The Bangladesh War and Its Unquiet Legacy (2016):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300218184/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0

Detours: Songs of the Open Road (2015):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A59F3J8/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1

Offence: The Hindu Case (2009):

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906497389/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i2

You can follow Salil @saliltripathi on Twitter.

Further References

Letter:

https://letter.wiki/conversations

The Impossible Conversations competition:

https://www.impossibleconversations.info/

The conversation on Antifa and political violence:

https://letter.wiki/conversation/59

My accounts of letter exchanges in Areo can be found here:

https://areomagazine.com/author/terpsichoral/

Roger Cohen’s article on Kashmir:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/opinion/trump-modi-houston.html

Isaac Chotiner’s interview with Roger Cohen:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-times-columnist-roger-cohen-on-the-future-of-india

Salil’s article on the Indian media’s behaviour during conflicts with Pakistan:

https://caravanmagazine.in/media/question-journalists-support-for-armed-forces

Modi’s article on Gandhi:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/02/opinion/modi-mahatma-gandhi.html

The Indian Penal Code:

https://indiacode.nic.in/handle/123456789/2263?view_type=browse&sam_handle=123456789/1362

Salil Tripathi on M.F. Husain:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303714704576383173779641758

M.F. Husain’s work:

https://www.wikiart.org/en/m-f-husain

Salil on the Modi myth: https://caravanmagazine.in/vantage/minds-modi-myth

Meera Sanyal on demonitisation:

https://www.amazon.in/Big-Reverse-Demonetization-Knocked-India/dp/9353023947

Salil’s obituary of Meera Sanyal:

https://www.livemint.com/opinion/columns/opinion-lessons-from-an-old-friend-that-india-s-public-life-should-imbibe-1548259689773.html

Salil on whataboutery:

https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/5nErFTVfxk0UPN2WT9QpAI/The-role-of-a-writer.html

Rabindranath Tagore’s poem on Indian freedom:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45668/gitanjali-35

Jon Lee Anderson:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lee_Anderson

John Pilger on Cambodia:

http://johnpilger.com/videos/year-zero-the-silent-death-of-cambodia

Vajpayee’s speech calling for the destruction of Babri Masjid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_Nvqqx5_Po

Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1980)

Timestamps

3:25 Letter and the Impossible Conversations competition

8:45 The portrayal of India in the domestic and international media, esp regarding the situation in Kashmir

14:40 Indian media’s behaviour during conflicts with Pakistan

19:00 Recent coverage of India in the foreign press

23:50 Lynchings and the Modi government

27:40 Trump versus Modi

32:33 Free speech and the Indian penal code

37:00 The Modi myth

43:00 The injustices of Indian bureacracy

46:12 Indian whataboutery

51:32 What inspired Salil to become a journalist

53:10 Salil’s journalistic icons

54:30 The biggest challenges facing journalists today

1:06:42 Salil’s predictions for the future of journalism in India

For Steve’s book, Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life: How Evolutionary Theory Undermines Everything You Thought You Knew (2012) see:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/darwin-god-and-the-meaning-of-life/A3055F89051D5F4ADE4AFE9473BF0AAB

For Steve’s book, The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve (2019) see:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/ape-that-understood-the-universe/3448755E3BF801C936343555DA7AECBB

Find out more about Steve here:

https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/

Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveStuWill

Further References

Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (1976)

David Sloan Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (2019)

Erwin Frey, see the survival of the weakest

Geoffrey Miller, The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2001)

Tim Taylor, The Artificial Ape: How Technology Changed the Course of Human Evolution (2010)

Wilhelm von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)

Iona Italia, “A Wrong against Boys: An Impossible Conversation about Circumcision,” in Areo Magazine (2019)

Battlestar Galactica remake (TV series, 2004)

Timestamps

2:08 The gene’s eye view

7:04 Explaining altruism and strong reciprocity

13:44 Culture as an evolutionary accelerator

15:06 Lactose tolerance

16:12 The survival of the weakest

17:56 Sexual selection as an evolutionary ratchet

23:13 Intelligence and language

24:46 Homosexuality

32:22 Evolution and ethics

33:48 Technology and cumulative culture

38:39 The meme’s eye view

44:50 Inclusive fitness

48:46 Evolutionary psychology doesn’t provide a moral template

53:03 Memes and ethics

53:57 Gene-culture co-evolution

57:06 Traits vs. the selection processes that produce them

58:09 Romantic love and jealousy

1:00:39 Why do men hunt?

1:04:00 How will humanity develop in the future?

1:06:40 Intrasexual competition and mate choices

1:15:46 Why women prefer pretty boys

1:19:07 Memetic fitness

1:20:53 Misconceptions about evolutionary psychology; & when adaptationism goes too far

3:38 What attracted Andy to Diderot?

7:09 Diderot’s radical questioning of political and sexual norms: homosexuality; masturbation; incest fantasies

20:55 “My thoughts are my sluts”—intellectual libertinage

25:44 Diderot’s relationships with women

28:00 Diderot as a playwright

30:24 Religious sexual fantasies

31:00 The Literary Correspondence

31:50 Diderot on painting and on acting

39:15 Samuel Richardson and the new focus on humble people

41:32 La Religieuse (The Nun)

45:12 Diderot on slavery

51:08 Diderot’s letters

56:18 Diderot on free will, materialism, atheism

1:00:18 The Encyclopédie

1:18:05 Diderot’s politics

1:22:05 His unfettered joy in life

Andy’s books:

Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (2019);

Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment (2011, 2013)

and

Sublime Disorder, Physical Monstrosity in Diderot's Universe (2001) can all be found on Amazon. Follow his author page here:

https://www.amazon.com/Andrew-S-Curran/e/B004FOWWD0/

You can find out more about Andy here:

https://www.andrewscurran.com/

And here:

https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/faculty/acurran/profile.html

Follow Andy on Twitter @AndrewSCurran

6:38 Defining terms: compatibilism, semi-compatibilism, determinism, libertarianism

46:50 Moral responsibility

1:02:30 Reasons responsiveness

1:20:07 Sociopathy and the amydala

1:24:30 The sorites paradox (the paradox of the heap)

1:36:15 What does it mean to have control?

1:52:05 Rights forfeiture theory, criminal punishment and free will

2:29:30 How did the three of us arrive at our respective positions?

For the original discussion on Letter, see:

https://letter.wiki/conversation/54.

For my article on the discussion see:

https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/28/on-free-will-a-letter-exchange

For Ben Burgis’ responses, see:

https://areomagazine.com/2019/08/02/free-will-and-sam-harris-puppet-analogy-a-reply-to-iona-italia/

And

https://areomagazine.com/2019/10/08/free-will-the-libet-experiments-and-the-war-on-terror/

Join Jon Rosen’s discussion group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1750878868488774/

Follow Ben Burgis on Twitter @BenBurgis

Follow Jon Rosen on Twitter @rosenbaier

Additional References

For Frankfurt cases:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/

Gagandeep Singh:

https://www.hindustantimes.com/dehradun/i-was-just-doing-my-duty-says-cop-who-saved-muslim-youth-s-life/story-CB1NP0uP1vz34NsV12bjGK.html

Pereboom’s four case argument:

https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2015/01/perebooms-four-case-argument-against.html

For more on John Martin Fischer:

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/fischer/

David Lewis, “The Paradox of Time Travel”:

https://www.csus.edu/indiv/m/merlinos/paradoxes%20of%20time%20travel.pdf

Ryan Lake, “No Fate But What We Make: A Defence of the Compatibility of Freedom and Causal Determinism”:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3457/849101f0502d9ad148c0e41eddef4c50fa84.pdf

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1973)

Sam Harris, “In Defence of Profiling”:

https://samharris.org/in-defense-of-profiling/

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis (approx. 405 BCE)

2:13 General information about Malaysia: history, politics, economics

4:36 Demographics and religion

8:03 Malaysian independence

9:15 The history of Malaysian party politics since independence

10:10 The evolution of Malay nationalism and the rise of Islamist politics

15:06 Anwar Ibrahim

16:21 Sodomy laws and gay rights in Malaysia

17:38 The decriminalisation of homosexuality in India

20:18 Changes to Islam within Malaysia: from tropical Islam to a more austere & authoritarian form

27:05 The controversy around the teaching of khat (Malay-Arabic calligraphy)

29:30 Zakir Naik’s accusing Hindu and Chinese Malaysians of disloyalty and the resulting controversy

33:20 Is there a ghettoisation of different communities? The geographical breakdown by race.

34:18 Relative prosperity of the different racial communities

40:47 The Malaysian economy and the temptation towards authoritarianism

43:48 Free speech, the media and Malaysian civil society

47:49 Arabisation

51:20 A new Orientalism on the part of Westerners

59:58 Legal systems in Malaysia

1:02:08 Intercommunity relations

1:03:46 Women in Malaysia

1:05:35 Imran’s predictions for the future of the country

For Imran’s articles, see here:

https://areomagazine.com/author/imranshamsunahar/;

https://quillette.com/author/imran-shamsunahar/;

https://www.scmp.com/author/imran-shamsunahar;

https://nationalinterest.org/profile/imran-shamsunahar

Imran’s contributions to the War is Boring blog can be found here:

https://warisboring.com/author/imran-shamsunahar/

See also https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Racial-divisions-of-Malaysia-s-politics-harm-whole-country

We refer specifically to this article in the podcast: https://quillette.com/2018/01/31/neo-orientalism-left/

Follow Imran on Twitter here: @AsiaAnalyst47

Timestamps

3:50 Eric argues that people’s feelings about immigration aren’t linked to economic anxiety

4:42 Brexit/Trump/populist right support isn’t linked to social class. What does predict this?

7:44 Psychological dimensions of conservative attitudes: is it reactionary? Retrograde or just nostalgic?

13:21 The Islam factor

24:52 Four white majority responses to immigration change: fight, flee, repress & join.

25:24 The fight response

25:38 The flee response: white flight from minority neighbourhoods, white self-segregation

31:11 The repress response: fear of expressing anti-immigration views; the ethics of anti-racism.

35:11 The concealed condition: uncovering anti-immigration views that people are reluctant to admit to.

37:34 The join response: friendship, intermarriage, assimilation.

38:27 The coming mixed race majority

39:30 How important is ancestry to belonging? Civic versus ethnic nationalism. Majority melting pots.

46:08 Assimilation

49:12 Why there is a danger of a far right resurgence right now

50:30 On what basis do you choose which immigrants to allow in?

59:45 What steps should we take, going forward? How to combat racism?

59:52 Separating racial appearance from membership in an ethnic group

1:05:24 Choosing a racial identity, what influences identification as white/non-white?

1:11:14 The Social Justice left as a force multiplier for right-wing populism

Eric’s book, Whiteshift: Population, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities (2019) can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Whiteshift-Populism-Immigration-Future-Majorities/dp/1468316974

For more about Eric’s work: http://www.sneps.net/

Follow Eric on Twitter: @epkaufm

Further Reading

Jonathan Haidt, “The moral roots of liberals and conservatives,” TED talk, 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs41JrnGaxc

Michael Lind, “The Beige and the Black”

https://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/16/magazine/the-beige-and-the-black.html

Razib Khan, “Why There Will Not Be a Beige Future.”

https://areomagazine.com/2018/11/28/why-there-will-not-be-a-beige-future-skin-color-genetics-race-and-racism/

For the Hidden Tribes analysis see:

https://hiddentribes.us/

2:07 Evolutionary theory as a comprehensive way of looking at life

7:20 Evolutionary theory and English literature

11:52 Gene-centric evolutionary theory versus the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

15:50 Looking at learning and management from an evolutionary standpoint: Toyota

17:07 How a knowledge of evolution can influence public policy

25:40 An evolutionary view of psychotherapy

27:00 Multi-level selection theory. Application to cancer therapies.

28:20 How chicken farming illustrates group level selection theory

33:37 The problem of good—how did altruism evolve?

36:54 Water striders

41:11 How these ideas apply to introverts and extroverts and business school hirings

42:41 How they apply to Battlestar Galactica

44:37 The neighbourhood project

48:25 Systems of meaning

50:15 Measuring prosociality among schoolchildren: what influences it? How to increase it?

54:03 Response from more gene-based evolutionary theorists; social science and humanities scholars who have adopted evolutionary approaches

57:10 Equivalence

58:35 Replicators versus vehicles

1:02:14 Applying these principles to our own lives: success and the morality of the cancer cell

David’s book This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution (2019) can be found here:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/246844/this-view-of-life-by-david-sloan-wilson/9781101870204/.

For more about David’s work see:

https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/persons/david-sloan-wilson/

And

https://evolution-institute.org/profile/david-sloan-wilson/

And

https://www.prosocial.world/

Find David’s other books here:

https://www.amazon.com/David-Sloan-Wilson/e/B001H6MNP6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share,

esp. The Neighbourhood Project: Using Evolution to Improve My City, One Block at a Time (2012):

https://www.amazon.com/Neighborhood-Project-Using-Evolution-Improve/dp/0316037672

Follow David on Letter.Wiki: https://letter.wiki/DavidSloanWilson/conversations

Follow David on Twitter: @David_S_Wilson

Further Notes

I discuss Sloan Wilson’s ideas and correspondence with Massimo Pigliucci here:

https://areomagazine.com/2019/07/10/human-cultural-evolution-a-letter-exchange/

For the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis see:

https://extendedevolutionarysynthesis.com/

Steven C. Hayes and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT):

https://stevenchayes.com/category/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy/

For Omar Tonsi Eldakar’s work on waterstriders see

https://phys.org/news/2009-11-mom-nice-guys-girls.html

Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking (2012).

See also:

https://www.quietrev.com/

Battlestar Galactica:

https://www.syfy.com/battlestargalactica

For a critical view, see Jerry Coyne:

https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/03/09/david-sloan-wilson-loses-it-again/

See David Sloan Wilson on social constructivism:

https://evolution-institute.org/saving-social-constructivism/

Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene (1976)