October 3, 2024 • 40 mins
The New Republic editor Michael Tomasky joins us to weigh the aftermath of the VP debate. Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg Epstein examines his new book Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson demanded hurricane
relief aid, which he did not end up voting for.
Of course, we have such a great show for you today.
The New Republic editor Mike Tamaski joins us to talk
(00:24):
about the debate and the state of the race. Then
we'll talk to Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg Epstein
about his new book, tech Agnostic, how technology became the
world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs a reformation.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But first the news and now the news.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
So my, there's patterns that occur that some people lie
about those patterns. One of those patterns is is that
Trump does not say very nice things about our troops.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, Trump does not for whatever reason, is injured troops. Somehow,
even though normal people feel terrible for injured troops or
injured people in general, Trump seems to not have the
empathy chip, and much to his detriments, So on Tuesday,
he referred to brain injuries. These are troops who've had
these brain injuries that have ruined or greatly disturbed their lives.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
These are the injuries.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
They had in the Iranian attack on a base in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
He called them headaches.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And he made these comments on Tuesday after it was
believed that he had said, you'd been tougher on a
rand than anyone. And again, this is like Trump's whole
strong man thing where he says that he is better, tougher,
more presidential, but he usually usually just sort of ignores
(01:50):
the truth, and that's what's happening here. But also the
cruelty of these troops being injured and then having Donald
Trump just consider it to be lost completely a non
issue is really disturbing. And again we see Donald Trump
degrading the military. Not surprising, but disturbing.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
It.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It has not been a great day for Donald Trump,
great week for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Jesse, Well, there's a thing that the left is very
excited about in one of Trump's legal proceedings, which is
that there's going to be some unsealed filings a Trump
twenty twenty election case.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
What are you seeing here, So, Judge chuck In unsealed
the Special Councils filing in the Trump twenty twenty election case.
Jack Smith had wanted to do this. We had thought
that maybe it wouldn't happen because Trump seems to get
away with everything. But in fact it has been unsealed.
It is one hundred and sixty five page filing with
(02:47):
some reactions. But the net of it is Donald Trump encouraged.
It's a lot of stuff we suspected, right. Like Donald
Trump encouraged, got excited about the idea that there would
be another Brooks Brothers riot. He encouraged a riot. He
you know, a lot of the stuff you suspected.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
When a colleague of that undefined campaign, there's a campaign
employee tells a person their batch of votes appear to
be heavily in favor of Joe Biden. The employee responded,
find a reason it isn't give us options to file litigation.
When a colleague suggested there would be unrest reminiscent of
the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida in two thousand, the
(03:31):
campaign employee.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Said, make them riot.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Do it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The motion alleges, and the filing provided numerous examples of
how then Vice President Mike Pence allegedly tried to gradually
and gently convince Trump to accept his election loss. So
you know, it's a lot of stuff we thought, but
the proof is extremely important, and in my mind, it's
(03:56):
good to see that we're not all crazy and that,
but a lot of us suspected what was happening was
actually happening. Jesse Cannon, I have a news article that
I want to add to our news cycle today.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Tell me all about it.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
A pair of billionaire preachers, if that is Oh, yes,
I read about this, tidaw. A pair of billionaire preachers
built the most powerful political machine in Texas. I know
you're going to be shocked to hear this, but they
are not Democrats.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You're telling me the people who benefit from a tax
loophole the most are not Democrats. I don't believe you.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It's two oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, and
they have basically pushed the Texas State House to the
furthest right of anyone's wildest dreams. They're Christian nationalists, but
they also donate a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You trump in there.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Is a line about how it's so conservative that the
state House is so conservative now that old school Republicans
are basically rhinos.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Compared to this.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I mean, what's really interesting about these two is they
really want to end public schools with vouchers and create
a Christian school world, and that is again because of
the desire to make America a Christian nation. It's definitely
worth reading. It's in pro publica. It's a kind of
(05:22):
really expensive reporting that all of us need to support
and super interesting and definitely worth the read.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
We have even more toward dates for you. Did you
know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have Fast Politics
BOLEI jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring
you the night of laughs for our dark political landscape.
Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at
the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty
seventh at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
We'll be at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty
(05:58):
first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October
we'll be in Affiliates City Winery and then DC on
the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just
announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh
as we get through this election and hopefully never hear
(06:21):
from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
this election season and give you the inside analysis of
what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now
by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
as Unusual dot bio.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. My friend, my editor, Mike Tamaski.
Oh Stukes, my former editor.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, but my heart, Yeah the best.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Still have visions in your pros in my dreams occasion.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Ah, my pros are not that good. I think your
editing is better than my writing. Let's talk about where
we are with in the world of politics and insanity.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
Yeah, you know, we're in a decent place. I think
we all would have liked him. Walls who have done
better in that debate and would have liked to see
him throw more punches and correct more of those lives.
On the other hand, I've seen now three polls after
action polls showing that he really won among independents. It's
very interesting thing to look at. People like us pundits
(07:38):
all agree that Vance won. Advance was more polished. There's
no question about it. If you look at the poles
of regular people who watch and ask who won, Yeah,
and it's Advance, but margin of error or sometimes it's
a dead heat, so there's no clear consensus on who won.
But then among independence, I've seen three polls that Wills
and Independence favored him handily. So it may be Molly
(08:00):
that exactly the thing that people like you and I
wanted him to do was just to be partisan, be
a fire breathing partisan. It may well be that the
fact that he wasn't that is exactly what went over Independence.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense that Vance,
even though Vance was a little nicer last night, that
the niceness and the sort of cheerful Midwestern demeanor of
Walls is actually more meaningful to voters than being right
(08:32):
or scoring points or debunking miss right.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It's like, I feel like we should have a moment
here to talk about vibes and the case four vibes.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, you ready.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
On pro vibe fire away.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
For example, there's been so much time during the Biden
administration when I've talked to people in the admin or
around the admin or media people, and you know, you've said, well,
they do they're doing this, chips and science, they are
doing this, they're doing that. And they've said, you know,
when you've you know, all this really good, cool, interesting
policy stuff, and then you know the person will say, yeah,
(09:09):
but nobody knows, so does it matter if nobody knows?
And then all of a sudden Harris gets in the
race and she has really good vibes for whatever reason,
the vibes are like it's like the opposite of Biden.
People are just they wanted and they're interested in her
and they love her and they you know, there's just vibes.
(09:30):
And then people are like, you can't run for president
of vibes.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
O contrere. I mean a lot of people have a
lot of people have I mean, you know, obviously the
policies and general philosophy has got to be mixed in there.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But yeah, they're Democrats. I mean, they have a lot
of policy.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan was a vibe kind
of candidate. I mean it was clear what he was for,
you know, or what he was against government. But he
was a vibee kind of candidate with that sunny smile
of his and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But wasn't Bill Clinton kind of a vibey candidate.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
Clinton's kind of vibey Obama was. I mean, any successful
charismatic politician is here's the way to put it. Voters
and just human beings. You know, we reason emotionally. Okay,
we reason emotionally that which has to say, our first
response to a person we see on TV, or you know,
(10:25):
a sports team who we obsessed partly on the basis
of their color schemes and uniforms. You know, our first
reactions are emotional, and they're just instant, and they're either
kind of positive or kind of negative. And then we
start building in our brain the logical reasons that support
that first emotional instinct. So you're either, in the case
(10:47):
of Donald Trump, a case unfathomable to you and me.
There are millions of people out there who saw him
come down to that escalator and went, that's my guy.
And then right, you know, and they just did that emotionally,
and then you are constructing the intellectual reasons while you're
for it, But the first reaction is emotional. Without question.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I think there's really a case for vibes here in
this moment in political life, and Trump was largely a
vibes based candidate.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
He was and remains so, and so like she needs
to be in her own right, we have a great
matchup here because she's very much the opposite.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So now let's talk about what she needs to do
right now. I've heard anxiety that she's not on the
trail enough, but there was just a major, major hurricane
and she's down there in Georgia today doing what she
needs to do and not looking partisan, and you know,
she is in leadership. There are like three things happening
(11:49):
right now that I think are these sort of outside issues.
There's a hurricane, there's this doc worker strike, which could
be enormous, and then there's the Iran Israel war.
Speaker 6 (12:02):
So talk to me the last one first. That could
damage I mean, it depends on how it goes over
the next four and a half weeks. Obviously, this is
a situation where she can't particularly depart much from her boss,
and her boss, unfortunately, is saying do anything you want
to do, Bibe. Now, waging a war against Husblela is
(12:23):
a different thing than killing a bunch of babies at Kaza.
Everybody understands that. But you know, I don't know. The
only thing we can do is just hope that that
conflagration doesn't explode before November fifth, because she just can't
really separate herself very much from the president while she's
the vice president. It's just really hard to do. Hubert
Humphrey learned that in nineteen sixty eight. Now with the strike,
(12:46):
I worry about that. I have read that it would
take like three weeks for the effects to be felt
by the average consumer. So I would certainly hope they
can get it settled before then.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Despite the fact that the head of the dock workers
is from friend, they have not gotten a raise in
a long time, and the business is a good business.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
But they endorsed Harris back in July, right, the undid did, Yeah,
the union did, but some of that, so there's that.
I don't know. The only other thing I would say Mollie,
is that Okay, Harris came out of the gate, you know,
like a fire ablaze, you know, tons of energy, tons
of sizzle, tons of charisma. Walls seemed a great choice.
Their first barnstorming tour, great convention, great barnstorming tour, after
(13:29):
the convention, great debate. Great. In the last week or two,
a couple of weeks, they've lost a little bit of
that is inevitable, that can't be sustained forever. But okay,
the question phasing the campaign is they should have known,
and I'm sure they did know they were going to
lose some of that. So what do you do? How
do you keep it going? What's the next phase? I
(13:50):
don't think that's really clear yet what the next phase is.
And they there's just a certain sharpness that's missing. I mean,
maybe it comes from just being out on the trail.
And of course you and I aren't seeing this because
we're not in places where you know, it's the States, yeah,
and we're not seeing ads, and we're not seeing news
(14:12):
accounts of their visits or anything. But I feel that
they have lost a little momentum and last night was
would have been a chance to get the momentum back
and they didn't, so I don't know exactly what they
do right now.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So I did talk to them and was like, are
you guys on the trail en?
Speaker 6 (14:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I talked to someone in Biden world, not in Harris world,
and he said it would be unseemly right now to
be out there with the hurricane.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean I don't understand those calculations. They're
above my pay grade. But I think she needs to
introduce some new ideas, introduce some new lines of attack
against Trump. I assume they're getting a commercial up about
Vance saying last night he said about the election in
January sixth and so on. You know, they need to
press that. Remember freedom from the Convention and the flag
(15:08):
waving and all that stuff. I loved that stuff. Get
back to that, and she talks about it in her
stump speeches. I watch her stump speeches sometimes, but there
still needs to be a little bit more communication to
people of who she is. And you know what the
core idea is behind this campaign?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And I think that's a really important point, is that
there's got to be some of that. Talk to me
about this moment where at the end of the debate.
Vance is unable to say that Donald Trump lost in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Well, it was the moment of the debate. It's a
moment that, potentially, depending on what the Democrats managed to
do with it, cancels out all of his fluid and
successful answers earlier. It's very clear that Vance said the
things he's said, that Timberwall said, he said, and you
know he has said, you know what he would do
(16:05):
with respect to you know, the next time around. So
I think that's something that I wish that had come
first Rathertheless, I wish that'd be the first question.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
The good news is so many people will see the
clips of it. Yeah, that linear doesn't necessarily matter the
way it did alone, you know, the way it did
when everyone had cable. The problem is trump Ism is
built on a lie, right, It's built on a lie
that Trump won the twenty twenty election, which now Trump
has stopped saying because I don't either he has some
(16:37):
kind of memory issues or he's just decided that he's
going to tell the truth about the twenty twenty election finally,
But now he says I lost it by a whisker.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
You hear that sometimes, So like the.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Lie of trump Ism is really one of the fundamental premises.
The thing that made me anxious if we're going to
go into Molly free therapy, which I guess we are
because no one can stop me, is that. And we
have not seen anyone able to do this really. Advance
was able to do trumpsm without Trump a couple times
(17:13):
during that debate. You know, this sort of sunny midwestern guy.
He's not really midwestern, right, but he sort of became
kind of you know, he's a cipher, so he became
kind of Midwestern when he was with Walls, and you
really did see a kind of you know, I'm just
a folksy guy who wants to monitor women's periods. And
(17:35):
I did feel like that line he has, which I
think works really well for him, is that liberals say
that if Donald Trump is president, everything is going to
be a nightmare. But Donald Trump was president before and
you're all still here, right, And some of those ideas
like where he sort of made this case that Trump
was saving Obamacare even though it's not true, olt like
(18:01):
he was able to put a plausible spin on it.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Well he was, and that's you know, that's where you know,
we were disappointed the Walls didn't rebut that particularly that
thing about saying at Mountcare that was just insane.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And I mean amazingly demented and insane.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
It was. So Vance is going to head back out
on the trail. I would presume he's going to go
back to talking the way he talked before this debate, right,
because that's that's what those audiences want to hear. They
don't they don't want to hear mister midwestern nice guy.
They don't want to hear a guy who expresses sympathy
to Tim Walls at the fact that his son saw
somebody get shot. They want somebody who breathes fire.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That was the mainstream pivot, right.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
Yeah, they want somebody who breathes fire. And I think
he's kind of like returned to being that person in
pretty short order.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
What scares me is that the mainstream pivot works, and
that one of the reasons why Trump is is having
so much trouble surviving is because of Trump, and that
his policies, if given to someone who is more disciplined,
less in saying better pretending to be normal, could ultimately
(19:11):
Project twenty twenty five could really end up being a
real thing.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Well, yes, but that's a problem for God on the road.
You know, right now our problem is Donald Trump. But
the pivot to normal can work. But you know, Romney
did a similar thing in the first debate in two
thousand and eight. He didn't become president. You know, it
depends on what the other side does with it. And
after that debate, Obama shaped up won the next two debates.
(19:37):
And also they've attacked Romney very successfully over baying capital
and they won comfortably. And I think, you know, Harris Harrison,
the Democrats can do the same thing. They have more
money than God. They can put whatever virtuals they want.
You know, there's not enough airtime in Michigan for them
to spend all their money. They have so much money.
So as long as they do good ads and good
(19:59):
TikTok social media stuff, then you know, I think they
still ought to be able to define Trump in a
way that you know, Vance's performance last night will be
a distant memory by November fifth.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, that's right. Thank you so much, Mike Tamaski. I
hope you wilcome back.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
Thank you anytime.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
awful Trump's second term could be. Well, so are we,
which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
we have just released the final episode of this five
(20:39):
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John
Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you
are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
you can hit play and put your phone in the
lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
We need to educate.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Harvard and MIT chaplain Greg Ebstein is the author of
tech Agnostic, How Technology became the world's most powerful religion
and why it desperately needs a reformation. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Greg, Thank.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
You so much. Molly, it's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
All right, you gotta tell us first of all, tell
us what you do.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And then you can tell us what your book is about.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
My title is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT,
so I serve those two universities. Chaplain is usually thought
of as a religious advisor, community leader, etc. But I'm
non religious. I'm an atheist. To the word that I
like best is humanists, and I serve the very large,
(21:59):
actually non religious communities at those institutions.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
So you're a religious advisor for the non religious.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, And I myself am non religious. It's unusual. When
I first have it, got to Harvard to do this
work about twenty plus years ago, I was one of
the only humanist chaplains in North America, really one of
the only ones in the world other than a couple
places in Europe. And now I've completely lost track of
how many of us there are. It's a growing field
(22:28):
because the population of non religious people has just balloon
in the past couple decades. And there's a lot of
people who are not religious but want to live deeply meaningful,
ethical lives, want to feel that they're part of a community,
want to make the world a better place. And humanism
is a word that I and a lot of other
(22:49):
people use to describe that approach to life.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Now, tell us about this book.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
So I have a book coming out in about three
four weeks now. I've been working on it for five
six years. It's a follow up to my book Good
Without God, What a billion non religious people do believe.
But this book is called tech Agnostic, How technology became
the world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs
(23:17):
a reformation. And so it's it's a fun book, but
it's also quite serious. It's a look at the fact
that tech, what you might call big tech, what you
might call this sort of mythological place of Silicon Valley,
has taken on this enormous role in our lives, in
our society, in our politics, that is so far beyond
(23:41):
now what you could possibly refer to as the thing
that most people refer to tech as, which is, you know,
an industry, right, Like you say the tech and then
algorithmically you complete that phrase with industry. Right, it just
doesn't make any sense anymore, because there's no industry left
on the face of the earth that isn't in some
way at least significant industry that isn't in some way
(24:02):
a tech industry. And so, having spent my life in
the world of religion, when I was asked to join
MIT as a chaplain, and I had this other role
that they gave me called convener for ethical life. Back
in twenty eighteen, I started thinking like yeah at MIT
at Mastersts Institute of Technology and Religion and non religious people,
(24:25):
and I realized, Oh, this thing that has taken over
my life has actually taken over most of our lives,
and it really, when you start to think about it,
actually can look like a religion.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I mean it reminds me of churches right in the
around the period of the Reformation.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah, you've got the symbols, you've got the prayerful rituals,
right like most religious people pray once a week, once
a day, three times a day, five times a day.
We genuflect before our stained glass black mirrors on average
a couple hundred times a day now. And it's not
a coincidence even that. You know, if you look at
(25:04):
somebody doing that, you know, opening their phone, it does
kind of look like they're worshiping and on. Like some
religions that I could name, because I'm not in any
way anti religious. I'm a chaplain. I work with people
who are religious all the time. But this particular religion,
you know, has a decent sized chance of causing some
kind of apocalypse.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, No, I think that's a really good point. Jesus Christ.
Why have I never put this together before? The technology
is the new religion?
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Yeah, I mean there's a certain kind of humor to it, right,
Like when I talk to people about this, I say, well,
you know, am I literally saying that technology has become
the world's most powerful religion? Or you know, is this
whole book that I've written the most annoying extended metaphor
you've ever heard in your entire life? And you know,
the answer is yes, there's some of both meant. But
(25:58):
what I'm really getting at here is that not only
is this thing that we call tech now playing this
just sort of like minute to minute role in our lives,
where you know, everything that we do is some kind
of interface with tech. And I used to write about
tech addiction, but I stopped even thinking about it that way,
because it's it's not an addiction if every single person
(26:20):
that you know is doing it all the time equally
and you can't even quite turn it off, like there's
no way to opt out. But it's more than just that, Molly,
It's big tech, if you want to use that phrase,
has become dominated by some really weird ideas ideas that
when I look at it through my sort of studies
(26:40):
and religion lens look a lot like I mean, you
could call the mythology, right. A lot of people have
said that Silicon Valley has a kind of mythology to it.
But if somebody said, well, you know, Zeus has taken
over our culture, I mean, nobody would be particularly worried
about that, right. But if I told you that, like
fun to mentalist, Christianity was taking over, and I could
(27:02):
give you some evidence for that, you might legitimately have
to be concerned, right. And so that's why I actually
think that the ideas that animate a lot of the
multi multi billionaires in Silicon Valley look more to me
like a kind of theology or a religious doctrine even
And you know it's worrisome because if and I'll give
(27:25):
you a couple of examples in a minute, obviously, but
you know it's worrisome because if most of the people
that are listening to this had a worry that their
friend or their family, or that they themselves were under
the spell of some kind of really weird sounding theological idea.
And again, you know, there are good theological ideas too,
plenty of them. But if you if you fell under
(27:45):
the spell of some weird ones, you would instinctively, almost
you know, intuitively know to question, right, what's the agenda
behind this theological claim that you, the pope, the priest,
the Rabbi, the minister, imom whatever are making. But we
don't question the ideas that are underlying a lot of
big tech nearly enough when I started looking at, you know,
(28:09):
the role the tech is playing. I mean, just the
fastest example that comes to my mind. There's another book
out called AI Snake Oil that's written by two prominent
Princeton AI scholars, Sayash Kapoor and i Arvin Neraanan, and
you know, in it they talk about what AI can
and can't do. But they have an article on their
you know, blog about their book that they put out
(28:31):
a couple weeks ago, and it was titled AI companies
are pivoting from creating gods to building products good? And
you know, yeah, that is good, I guess. But if
they have to pivot from creating gods, that ought to
tell you something, right, this is what what most people
would agree, you know, is kind of our world's flagship
(28:52):
industry right now, right the most trending human endeavor right
now is trying to create AI and so you know
they're having to pay it from creating gods. That's a
little odd, that's a little scary, right, But it's more
than just that though. You know, I noticed comparisons that
I make in the book to you know, other major
(29:13):
religious doctrines, even like the ideas of heaven and Hell
of chosenness, which shows up obviously in Christian Gudeo Christian history,
a ton religious colonialism. It just goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, so connect this because tech Bros and not just Elon,
but Andreas and Horowitzz, they're all in crew. All of
these people consider themselves to be and I think they
will eventually run for office. They all consider themselves right
now they have surrogates like JD. Vance and Bratt Masters,
(29:51):
but eventually I think they will get rid of the
surrogates and just do it themselves. So explain to me
what their ideology he is.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Yeah, I mean it's great because as you know, JD.
Vance is the acolyte of Peter til Right, He's really
nothing without Peter Tiel, who is this multi billionaire venture
capitalists founder who is a kind of right winger libertarian
that you know, is in many ways leading the charge
(30:22):
of the kinds of weird ideas that I detail in
my book and talk about, you know, why we ought
to be concerned by so. Peter Tiel, for example, on
his website the founder's fund up until at least now
you know, maybe they'll change it at some point, but
has talked about how for him, the ideal venture capitalist
I mean, or rather the ideal recipient a venture capital,
(30:45):
the ideal founder and a founder is a kind of
demigod in the Silicon Valley pantheon, right. The ideal founder
he you know, he says as a quote, has a
kind of near messianic attitude about the company or whatever
that he and it usually is he is founding. And
you know, if that's not enough, and you know, by
(31:06):
the way, like is that a good thing? Right? Usually
if somebody came up to you on the street and
told you that they have a near messianic attitude, you know,
you would run like the wind right in the other direction,
you know. And I had a guy named Russ Wilcox,
who teaches how to be a CEO here at Harvard
Business School, who talked to me on the record and
said that he agrees with this, and that he too
(31:27):
was looking for a kind of messianic complex in his founders.
Then you've got somebody like a Mark Andresen, right, you
know who you mentioned, who is so zealous that he
has a document called the Techno Optimists Manifesto that was
really popular when they put it up online, you know
a little while back. It uses the phrase, Molly, we believe.
(31:50):
He uses the phrase we believe one hundred and thirty
three times in a short document. Okay, And just to
give you one of so many quotes I could give
you from this this document, which is it's so theological.
I often begin my speeches to audiences with this document
and I tell them I'm going to quote from scripture.
He says, we believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
How would that even work? That's so insane.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
It's not just insane, it's a very particular type of
insanity for somebody like myself, where I've been studying religion
my whole life. He says, we believe any deceleration of
AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI,
that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. Right.
So what he's doing here, First of all, he's taking
(32:38):
a line from abortion, right, He's taking the you know
that you have to be pro life, rigidly pro life.
He says essentially about bringing the AI into life, and
that when somebody tells you that if you don't do something,
that you're going to destroy the world, it's a classic
form of extremist religious manipulation that basically says, we're going
(33:01):
to take advantage of the fact that we know that you,
like any other normal, decent human being, you want to
be a moral person, you want to be a moral citizen. Again,
most people do. It's just sort of you know, human nature,
like we evolve to be selfish at times, but we
also really needed to evolve to be cooperative and care
about one another. Otherwise human beings don't get here to
(33:23):
this day. Right. So, but he's taking advantage of that
and saying like, if you don't obey our theology of
AI where we want you to invest, or we want
you to be part of our social project to invest
trillions of dollars in this thing, then you're murdering. You're
killing you know, you're terrible, right, And so that's a
(33:45):
sense of how religious this phenomenon actually is.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
It's not bizarre, and it makes sense. And if you
track like the decline in religion in this country and
the assent of technology, it makes a lot of sense
what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
But I just never put it together. So now I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
The thing that I would also want people to take
away from this is that when I'm making these criticisms
in the book and with you, like, I'm not anti technology,
I wouldn't even know how to try to make an
argument or to write a book that's anti technology, right, Like,
I get it. You know, I'm not saying that, you know,
we all need to go back to the days of
(34:26):
you know, hovering around the fire. Right. What I am
saying is that we've gone a little too far in
our uncritical faith in any and every technology that comes along,
and we've forgotten to ask ourselves, you know, at times,
what agenda might be underlying, like our every day, every hour,
(34:51):
every minute reliance on this stuff. And so that what
I'm asking for is not like elimination of tech. It's
a reformation. You know, we need to improve our way
of thinking and acting around this stuff to.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Have some amount of guile to not take this as
necessarily all God.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Yeah, I mean, so I'm a chaplain, right, I've spent
twenty plus years working alongside religious people of all kinds. Right,
there's fifty of us Harvard chaplains. There's about thirty of us,
and I t chaplains. I've been in leadership roles, elected
and appointed in both settings. You know, I regularly work
with all kinds of religious people. I'm part of a
(35:33):
fellowship right now by a big interfaith organization called Interfaith
America called the Vote is Sacred fellowship where we're like
it's religious leaders and myself working from across the country
on how to strengthen and protect democracy. So there's great
people in these religious communities, and I learn from them
all the time that you know, my religious friends and
colleagues make me a better person sometimes with you know,
(35:55):
the ways that they interact with their families and their communities. Right.
But what I like is reformed religion, self critical religion.
I like Christians who know that Christianity isn't perfect, and
they know that it desperately needs to be critiqued. Sometimes.
I like Jews who are maybe religious or passionate about
their Judaism but they can recognize that Judaism isn't perfect.
(36:19):
They're not perfect. They need to be self critical. Israel
isn't perfect, We need to be critical of it sometimes,
et cetera, et cetera. Right, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, the same thing,
even humanists, right like I tend to get into fights
with you know, my fellow atheists, people like Richard Dawkins
or Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchins if I
felt like they're being too anti religious, trying to act
(36:42):
like humanism. What I do is all perfect, all good. No.
And so it's a recognition that the more that this
Silicon Valley world becomes a kind of quasi religious institution,
the more we need to be critical of it. The
more we need to look at each new sort of
value and values proposition and say, like, is that real?
(37:05):
Can we really trust you, Sam Altman to be doing
open AI for the good of the world. Sam Altman
is going around now hat in hand, asking from some
of the worst people on earth, honestly, for literally millions
of dollars to build these data centers across America, each
of which is as powerful as several nuclear power plants. Right,
(37:28):
and like open Ai is a company that of course
famously started as a nonprofit and they just this past
week announced oh just kidding. All of the investment that
made us a multi multi billion dollar company was made
into a certain kind of company, but we were never
actually going to be that kind of company after all.
(37:48):
So you know, if you invested in us, or if
you trusted us, screw you. We're now for profit and
we want your trillion thank you, And so we need
to learn how to be more critical of people like
Altman in advances.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Right. No, it's a really good point. It's a really
really good point. Greg. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
Oh, it's a pleasure, Molly. You know, we first sort
of interacted at the beginning of the pandemic when I
was kind of doing online chaplaincy for some of my
students on Twitter and LinkedIn because there was no way
to reach them in person, and you kind of gave
that a bit of a boost. You know. Something that
I'd said to one of the students, I guess was
moving to you. And it was so moving to me
(38:26):
to get to engage with you back then. And I'm
a huge fan. Thank you for what you do.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh, well, thank you for coming on and really so interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I appreciate you.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, I hope to see again sometime. No moment.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Jesse Cannon, Mai Jung Fast.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I have to tell you, one of the things I
feel like is one of the most just we'll look
back as one of the more gross parts of our
society was having our safety net be GoFundMe. And because
it's one of the more gross parts of society, guess
you just waded into it.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Well, you know, the guy who wants to end federal
disaster relief and many of the things that the federal
government does just started a disaster relief go fund me
page for people who have been affected by this monster hurricane.
It's tacky, but it's also like, the federal government exists.
(39:25):
We pay taxes so that we can help these people. Certainly,
raising extra money is good, but I think it's worth
realizing that Donald Trump could easily make a donation to
this area or purchase something to give to people like
paper Tels just kidding, not paper Tells, But he instead
(39:46):
decided to raise money from his people. Again, Donald Trump
has taken a lot of money from his people. So
the fact that he's trying to take more is really disgusting,
and that is our moment of fucker. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
(40:08):
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson demanded hurricane
relief aid, which he did not end up voting for.
Of course, we have such a great show for you today.
The New Republic editor Mike Tamaski joins us to talk
(00:24):
about the debate and the state of the race. Then
we'll talk to Harvard and MIT humanist chaplain Greg Epstein
about his new book, tech Agnostic, how technology became the
world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs a reformation.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
But first the news and now the news.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
So my, there's patterns that occur that some people lie
about those patterns. One of those patterns is is that
Trump does not say very nice things about our troops.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yeah, Trump does not for whatever reason, is injured troops. Somehow,
even though normal people feel terrible for injured troops or
injured people in general, Trump seems to not have the
empathy chip, and much to his detriments, So on Tuesday,
he referred to brain injuries. These are troops who've had
these brain injuries that have ruined or greatly disturbed their lives.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
These are the injuries.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
They had in the Iranian attack on a base in Iraq.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
He called them headaches.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
And he made these comments on Tuesday after it was
believed that he had said, you'd been tougher on a
rand than anyone. And again, this is like Trump's whole
strong man thing where he says that he is better, tougher,
more presidential, but he usually usually just sort of ignores
(01:50):
the truth, and that's what's happening here. But also the
cruelty of these troops being injured and then having Donald
Trump just consider it to be lost completely a non
issue is really disturbing. And again we see Donald Trump
degrading the military. Not surprising, but disturbing.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
It.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
It has not been a great day for Donald Trump,
great week for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Jesse, Well, there's a thing that the left is very
excited about in one of Trump's legal proceedings, which is
that there's going to be some unsealed filings a Trump
twenty twenty election case.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
What are you seeing here, So, Judge chuck In unsealed
the Special Councils filing in the Trump twenty twenty election case.
Jack Smith had wanted to do this. We had thought
that maybe it wouldn't happen because Trump seems to get
away with everything. But in fact it has been unsealed.
It is one hundred and sixty five page filing with
(02:47):
some reactions. But the net of it is Donald Trump encouraged.
It's a lot of stuff we suspected, right. Like Donald
Trump encouraged, got excited about the idea that there would
be another Brooks Brothers riot. He encouraged a riot. He
you know, a lot of the stuff you suspected.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Right.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
When a colleague of that undefined campaign, there's a campaign
employee tells a person their batch of votes appear to
be heavily in favor of Joe Biden. The employee responded,
find a reason it isn't give us options to file litigation.
When a colleague suggested there would be unrest reminiscent of
the Brooks Brothers riot in Florida in two thousand, the
(03:31):
campaign employee.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Said, make them riot.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Do it.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
The motion alleges, and the filing provided numerous examples of
how then Vice President Mike Pence allegedly tried to gradually
and gently convince Trump to accept his election loss. So
you know, it's a lot of stuff we thought, but
the proof is extremely important, and in my mind, it's
(03:56):
good to see that we're not all crazy and that,
but a lot of us suspected what was happening was
actually happening. Jesse Cannon, I have a news article that
I want to add to our news cycle today.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Tell me all about it.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
A pair of billionaire preachers, if that is Oh, yes,
I read about this, tidaw. A pair of billionaire preachers
built the most powerful political machine in Texas. I know
you're going to be shocked to hear this, but they
are not Democrats.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You're telling me the people who benefit from a tax
loophole the most are not Democrats. I don't believe you.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
It's two oil tycoons, Tim Dunn and Ferris Wilkes, and
they have basically pushed the Texas State House to the
furthest right of anyone's wildest dreams. They're Christian nationalists, but
they also donate a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
You trump in there.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Is a line about how it's so conservative that the
state House is so conservative now that old school Republicans
are basically rhinos.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Compared to this.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
I mean, what's really interesting about these two is they
really want to end public schools with vouchers and create
a Christian school world, and that is again because of
the desire to make America a Christian nation. It's definitely
worth reading. It's in pro publica. It's a kind of
(05:22):
really expensive reporting that all of us need to support
and super interesting and definitely worth the read.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
We have even more toward dates for you. Did you
know the Lincoln projects Rick Wills that have Fast Politics
BOLEI jug Fast are heading out on tour to bring
you the night of laughs for our dark political landscape.
Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at
the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty
seventh at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
We'll be at the Bavariam in Milwaukee on the twenty
(05:58):
first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be
in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit
the East coast. On September thirtieth, we'll be in Boston
at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October
we'll be in Affiliates City Winery and then DC on
the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just
announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth
of October at City Winery. If you need to laugh
as we get through this election and hopefully never hear
(06:21):
from a guy who lives in a golf club again,
we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests
to help you laugh instead of cry your way through
this election season and give you the inside analysis of
what's really going on right now. Buy your tickets now
by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics
as Unusual dot bio.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Mike Tamaski is the editor of The New Republic and
author of The Middle Out The Rise of Progressive Economics.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. My friend, my editor, Mike Tamaski.
Oh Stukes, my former editor.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, but my heart, Yeah the best.
Speaker 6 (07:00):
Still have visions in your pros in my dreams occasion.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Ah, my pros are not that good. I think your
editing is better than my writing. Let's talk about where
we are with in the world of politics and insanity.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
Yeah, you know, we're in a decent place. I think
we all would have liked him. Walls who have done
better in that debate and would have liked to see
him throw more punches and correct more of those lives.
On the other hand, I've seen now three polls after
action polls showing that he really won among independents. It's
very interesting thing to look at. People like us pundits
(07:38):
all agree that Vance won. Advance was more polished. There's
no question about it. If you look at the poles
of regular people who watch and ask who won, Yeah,
and it's Advance, but margin of error or sometimes it's
a dead heat, so there's no clear consensus on who won.
But then among independence, I've seen three polls that Wills
and Independence favored him handily. So it may be Molly
(08:00):
that exactly the thing that people like you and I
wanted him to do was just to be partisan, be
a fire breathing partisan. It may well be that the
fact that he wasn't that is exactly what went over Independence.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, I mean, I think it makes sense that Vance,
even though Vance was a little nicer last night, that
the niceness and the sort of cheerful Midwestern demeanor of
Walls is actually more meaningful to voters than being right
(08:32):
or scoring points or debunking miss right.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
It's like, I feel like we should have a moment
here to talk about vibes and the case four vibes.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, you ready.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
On pro vibe fire away.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
For example, there's been so much time during the Biden
administration when I've talked to people in the admin or
around the admin or media people, and you know, you've said, well,
they do they're doing this, chips and science, they are
doing this, they're doing that. And they've said, you know,
when you've you know, all this really good, cool, interesting
policy stuff, and then you know the person will say, yeah,
(09:09):
but nobody knows, so does it matter if nobody knows?
And then all of a sudden Harris gets in the
race and she has really good vibes for whatever reason,
the vibes are like it's like the opposite of Biden.
People are just they wanted and they're interested in her
and they love her and they you know, there's just vibes.
(09:30):
And then people are like, you can't run for president
of vibes.
Speaker 6 (09:34):
O contrere. I mean a lot of people have a
lot of people have I mean, you know, obviously the
policies and general philosophy has got to be mixed in there.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But yeah, they're Democrats. I mean, they have a lot
of policy.
Speaker 6 (09:48):
I mean, you know, Ronald Reagan was a vibe kind
of candidate. I mean it was clear what he was for,
you know, or what he was against government. But he
was a vibee kind of candidate with that sunny smile
of his and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
But wasn't Bill Clinton kind of a vibey candidate.
Speaker 6 (10:03):
Clinton's kind of vibey Obama was. I mean, any successful
charismatic politician is here's the way to put it. Voters
and just human beings. You know, we reason emotionally. Okay,
we reason emotionally that which has to say, our first
response to a person we see on TV, or you know,
(10:25):
a sports team who we obsessed partly on the basis
of their color schemes and uniforms. You know, our first
reactions are emotional, and they're just instant, and they're either
kind of positive or kind of negative. And then we
start building in our brain the logical reasons that support
that first emotional instinct. So you're either, in the case
(10:47):
of Donald Trump, a case unfathomable to you and me.
There are millions of people out there who saw him
come down to that escalator and went, that's my guy.
And then right, you know, and they just did that emotionally,
and then you are constructing the intellectual reasons while you're
for it, But the first reaction is emotional. Without question.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I think there's really a case for vibes here in
this moment in political life, and Trump was largely a
vibes based candidate.
Speaker 6 (11:17):
He was and remains so, and so like she needs
to be in her own right, we have a great
matchup here because she's very much the opposite.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
So now let's talk about what she needs to do
right now. I've heard anxiety that she's not on the
trail enough, but there was just a major, major hurricane
and she's down there in Georgia today doing what she
needs to do and not looking partisan, and you know,
she is in leadership. There are like three things happening
(11:49):
right now that I think are these sort of outside issues.
There's a hurricane, there's this doc worker strike, which could
be enormous, and then there's the Iran Israel war.
Speaker 6 (12:02):
So talk to me the last one first. That could
damage I mean, it depends on how it goes over
the next four and a half weeks. Obviously, this is
a situation where she can't particularly depart much from her boss,
and her boss, unfortunately, is saying do anything you want
to do, Bibe. Now, waging a war against Husblela is
(12:23):
a different thing than killing a bunch of babies at Kaza.
Everybody understands that. But you know, I don't know. The
only thing we can do is just hope that that
conflagration doesn't explode before November fifth, because she just can't
really separate herself very much from the president while she's
the vice president. It's just really hard to do. Hubert
Humphrey learned that in nineteen sixty eight. Now with the strike,
(12:46):
I worry about that. I have read that it would
take like three weeks for the effects to be felt
by the average consumer. So I would certainly hope they
can get it settled before then.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Despite the fact that the head of the dock workers
is from friend, they have not gotten a raise in
a long time, and the business is a good business.
Speaker 6 (13:05):
But they endorsed Harris back in July, right, the undid did, Yeah,
the union did, but some of that, so there's that.
I don't know. The only other thing I would say Mollie,
is that Okay, Harris came out of the gate, you know,
like a fire ablaze, you know, tons of energy, tons
of sizzle, tons of charisma. Walls seemed a great choice.
Their first barnstorming tour, great convention, great barnstorming tour, after
(13:29):
the convention, great debate. Great. In the last week or two,
a couple of weeks, they've lost a little bit of
that is inevitable, that can't be sustained forever. But okay,
the question phasing the campaign is they should have known,
and I'm sure they did know they were going to
lose some of that. So what do you do? How
do you keep it going? What's the next phase? I
(13:50):
don't think that's really clear yet what the next phase is.
And they there's just a certain sharpness that's missing. I mean,
maybe it comes from just being out on the trail.
And of course you and I aren't seeing this because
we're not in places where you know, it's the States, yeah,
and we're not seeing ads, and we're not seeing news
(14:12):
accounts of their visits or anything. But I feel that
they have lost a little momentum and last night was
would have been a chance to get the momentum back
and they didn't, so I don't know exactly what they
do right now.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
So I did talk to them and was like, are
you guys on the trail en?
Speaker 6 (14:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (14:32):
I talked to someone in Biden world, not in Harris world,
and he said it would be unseemly right now to
be out there with the hurricane.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Yeah. Well, I mean I don't understand those calculations. They're
above my pay grade. But I think she needs to
introduce some new ideas, introduce some new lines of attack
against Trump. I assume they're getting a commercial up about
Vance saying last night he said about the election in
January sixth and so on. You know, they need to
press that. Remember freedom from the Convention and the flag
(15:08):
waving and all that stuff. I loved that stuff. Get
back to that, and she talks about it in her
stump speeches. I watch her stump speeches sometimes, but there
still needs to be a little bit more communication to
people of who she is. And you know what the
core idea is behind this campaign?
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And I think that's a really important point, is that
there's got to be some of that. Talk to me
about this moment where at the end of the debate.
Vance is unable to say that Donald Trump lost in
twenty twenty.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
Well, it was the moment of the debate. It's a
moment that, potentially, depending on what the Democrats managed to
do with it, cancels out all of his fluid and
successful answers earlier. It's very clear that Vance said the
things he's said, that Timberwall said, he said, and you
know he has said, you know what he would do
(16:05):
with respect to you know, the next time around. So
I think that's something that I wish that had come
first Rathertheless, I wish that'd be the first question.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
The good news is so many people will see the
clips of it. Yeah, that linear doesn't necessarily matter the
way it did alone, you know, the way it did
when everyone had cable. The problem is trump Ism is
built on a lie, right, It's built on a lie
that Trump won the twenty twenty election, which now Trump
has stopped saying because I don't either he has some
(16:37):
kind of memory issues or he's just decided that he's
going to tell the truth about the twenty twenty election finally,
But now he says I lost it by a whisker.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
You hear that sometimes, So like the.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Lie of trump Ism is really one of the fundamental premises.
The thing that made me anxious if we're going to
go into Molly free therapy, which I guess we are
because no one can stop me, is that. And we
have not seen anyone able to do this really. Advance
was able to do trumpsm without Trump a couple times
(17:13):
during that debate. You know, this sort of sunny midwestern guy.
He's not really midwestern, right, but he sort of became
kind of you know, he's a cipher, so he became
kind of Midwestern when he was with Walls, and you
really did see a kind of you know, I'm just
a folksy guy who wants to monitor women's periods. And
(17:35):
I did feel like that line he has, which I
think works really well for him, is that liberals say
that if Donald Trump is president, everything is going to
be a nightmare. But Donald Trump was president before and
you're all still here, right, And some of those ideas
like where he sort of made this case that Trump
was saving Obamacare even though it's not true, olt like
(18:01):
he was able to put a plausible spin on it.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
Well he was, and that's you know, that's where you know,
we were disappointed the Walls didn't rebut that particularly that
thing about saying at Mountcare that was just insane.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
And I mean amazingly demented and insane.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
It was. So Vance is going to head back out
on the trail. I would presume he's going to go
back to talking the way he talked before this debate, right,
because that's that's what those audiences want to hear. They
don't they don't want to hear mister midwestern nice guy.
They don't want to hear a guy who expresses sympathy
to Tim Walls at the fact that his son saw
somebody get shot. They want somebody who breathes fire.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That was the mainstream pivot, right.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
Yeah, they want somebody who breathes fire. And I think
he's kind of like returned to being that person in
pretty short order.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
What scares me is that the mainstream pivot works, and
that one of the reasons why Trump is is having
so much trouble surviving is because of Trump, and that
his policies, if given to someone who is more disciplined,
less in saying better pretending to be normal, could ultimately
(19:11):
Project twenty twenty five could really end up being a
real thing.
Speaker 6 (19:16):
Well, yes, but that's a problem for God on the road.
You know, right now our problem is Donald Trump. But
the pivot to normal can work. But you know, Romney
did a similar thing in the first debate in two
thousand and eight. He didn't become president. You know, it
depends on what the other side does with it. And
after that debate, Obama shaped up won the next two debates.
(19:37):
And also they've attacked Romney very successfully over baying capital
and they won comfortably. And I think, you know, Harris Harrison,
the Democrats can do the same thing. They have more
money than God. They can put whatever virtuals they want.
You know, there's not enough airtime in Michigan for them
to spend all their money. They have so much money.
So as long as they do good ads and good
(19:59):
TikTok social media stuff, then you know, I think they
still ought to be able to define Trump in a
way that you know, Vance's performance last night will be
a distant memory by November fifth.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, that's right. Thank you so much, Mike Tamaski. I
hope you wilcome back.
Speaker 6 (20:17):
Thank you anytime.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
awful Trump's second term could be. Well, so are we,
which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
we have just released the final episode of this five
(20:39):
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John
Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you
are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
you can hit play and put your phone in the
lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
We need to educate.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Harvard and MIT chaplain Greg Ebstein is the author of
tech Agnostic, How Technology became the world's most powerful religion
and why it desperately needs a reformation. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Greg, Thank.
Speaker 4 (21:25):
You so much. Molly, it's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
All right, you gotta tell us first of all, tell
us what you do.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
And then you can tell us what your book is about.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
My title is the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT,
so I serve those two universities. Chaplain is usually thought
of as a religious advisor, community leader, etc. But I'm
non religious. I'm an atheist. To the word that I
like best is humanists, and I serve the very large,
(21:59):
actually non religious communities at those institutions.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
So you're a religious advisor for the non religious.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
Yeah, And I myself am non religious. It's unusual. When
I first have it, got to Harvard to do this
work about twenty plus years ago, I was one of
the only humanist chaplains in North America, really one of
the only ones in the world other than a couple
places in Europe. And now I've completely lost track of
how many of us there are. It's a growing field
(22:28):
because the population of non religious people has just balloon
in the past couple decades. And there's a lot of
people who are not religious but want to live deeply meaningful,
ethical lives, want to feel that they're part of a community,
want to make the world a better place. And humanism
is a word that I and a lot of other
(22:49):
people use to describe that approach to life.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
Now, tell us about this book.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
So I have a book coming out in about three
four weeks now. I've been working on it for five
six years. It's a follow up to my book Good
Without God, What a billion non religious people do believe.
But this book is called tech Agnostic, How technology became
the world's most powerful religion and why it desperately needs
(23:17):
a reformation. And so it's it's a fun book, but
it's also quite serious. It's a look at the fact
that tech, what you might call big tech, what you
might call this sort of mythological place of Silicon Valley,
has taken on this enormous role in our lives, in
our society, in our politics, that is so far beyond
(23:41):
now what you could possibly refer to as the thing
that most people refer to tech as, which is, you know,
an industry, right, Like you say the tech and then
algorithmically you complete that phrase with industry. Right, it just
doesn't make any sense anymore, because there's no industry left
on the face of the earth that isn't in some
way at least significant industry that isn't in some way
(24:02):
a tech industry. And so, having spent my life in
the world of religion, when I was asked to join
MIT as a chaplain, and I had this other role
that they gave me called convener for ethical life. Back
in twenty eighteen, I started thinking like yeah at MIT
at Mastersts Institute of Technology and Religion and non religious people,
(24:25):
and I realized, Oh, this thing that has taken over
my life has actually taken over most of our lives,
and it really, when you start to think about it,
actually can look like a religion.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
I mean it reminds me of churches right in the
around the period of the Reformation.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
Yeah, you've got the symbols, you've got the prayerful rituals,
right like most religious people pray once a week, once
a day, three times a day, five times a day.
We genuflect before our stained glass black mirrors on average
a couple hundred times a day now. And it's not
a coincidence even that. You know, if you look at
(25:04):
somebody doing that, you know, opening their phone, it does
kind of look like they're worshiping and on. Like some
religions that I could name, because I'm not in any
way anti religious. I'm a chaplain. I work with people
who are religious all the time. But this particular religion,
you know, has a decent sized chance of causing some
kind of apocalypse.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, No, I think that's a really good point. Jesus Christ.
Why have I never put this together before? The technology
is the new religion?
Speaker 4 (25:34):
Yeah, I mean there's a certain kind of humor to it, right,
Like when I talk to people about this, I say, well,
you know, am I literally saying that technology has become
the world's most powerful religion? Or you know, is this
whole book that I've written the most annoying extended metaphor
you've ever heard in your entire life? And you know,
the answer is yes, there's some of both meant. But
(25:58):
what I'm really getting at here is that not only
is this thing that we call tech now playing this
just sort of like minute to minute role in our lives,
where you know, everything that we do is some kind
of interface with tech. And I used to write about
tech addiction, but I stopped even thinking about it that way,
because it's it's not an addiction if every single person
(26:20):
that you know is doing it all the time equally
and you can't even quite turn it off, like there's
no way to opt out. But it's more than just that, Molly,
It's big tech, if you want to use that phrase,
has become dominated by some really weird ideas ideas that
when I look at it through my sort of studies
(26:40):
and religion lens look a lot like I mean, you
could call the mythology, right. A lot of people have
said that Silicon Valley has a kind of mythology to it.
But if somebody said, well, you know, Zeus has taken
over our culture, I mean, nobody would be particularly worried
about that, right. But if I told you that, like
fun to mentalist, Christianity was taking over, and I could
(27:02):
give you some evidence for that, you might legitimately have
to be concerned, right. And so that's why I actually
think that the ideas that animate a lot of the
multi multi billionaires in Silicon Valley look more to me
like a kind of theology or a religious doctrine even
And you know it's worrisome because if and I'll give
(27:25):
you a couple of examples in a minute, obviously, but
you know it's worrisome because if most of the people
that are listening to this had a worry that their
friend or their family, or that they themselves were under
the spell of some kind of really weird sounding theological idea.
And again, you know, there are good theological ideas too,
plenty of them. But if you if you fell under
(27:45):
the spell of some weird ones, you would instinctively, almost
you know, intuitively know to question, right, what's the agenda
behind this theological claim that you, the pope, the priest,
the Rabbi, the minister, imom whatever are making. But we
don't question the ideas that are underlying a lot of
big tech nearly enough when I started looking at, you know,
(28:09):
the role the tech is playing. I mean, just the
fastest example that comes to my mind. There's another book
out called AI Snake Oil that's written by two prominent
Princeton AI scholars, Sayash Kapoor and i Arvin Neraanan, and
you know, in it they talk about what AI can
and can't do. But they have an article on their
you know, blog about their book that they put out
(28:31):
a couple weeks ago, and it was titled AI companies
are pivoting from creating gods to building products good? And
you know, yeah, that is good, I guess. But if
they have to pivot from creating gods, that ought to
tell you something, right, this is what what most people
would agree, you know, is kind of our world's flagship
(28:52):
industry right now, right the most trending human endeavor right
now is trying to create AI and so you know
they're having to pay it from creating gods. That's a
little odd, that's a little scary, right, But it's more
than just that though. You know, I noticed comparisons that
I make in the book to you know, other major
(29:13):
religious doctrines, even like the ideas of heaven and Hell
of chosenness, which shows up obviously in Christian Gudeo Christian history,
a ton religious colonialism. It just goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (29:28):
Yeah, so connect this because tech Bros and not just Elon,
but Andreas and Horowitzz, they're all in crew. All of
these people consider themselves to be and I think they
will eventually run for office. They all consider themselves right
now they have surrogates like JD. Vance and Bratt Masters,
(29:51):
but eventually I think they will get rid of the
surrogates and just do it themselves. So explain to me
what their ideology he is.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Yeah, I mean it's great because as you know, JD.
Vance is the acolyte of Peter til Right, He's really
nothing without Peter Tiel, who is this multi billionaire venture
capitalists founder who is a kind of right winger libertarian
that you know, is in many ways leading the charge
(30:22):
of the kinds of weird ideas that I detail in
my book and talk about, you know, why we ought
to be concerned by so. Peter Tiel, for example, on
his website the founder's fund up until at least now
you know, maybe they'll change it at some point, but
has talked about how for him, the ideal venture capitalist
I mean, or rather the ideal recipient a venture capital,
(30:45):
the ideal founder and a founder is a kind of
demigod in the Silicon Valley pantheon, right. The ideal founder
he you know, he says as a quote, has a
kind of near messianic attitude about the company or whatever
that he and it usually is he is founding. And
you know, if that's not enough, and you know, by
(31:06):
the way, like is that a good thing? Right? Usually
if somebody came up to you on the street and
told you that they have a near messianic attitude, you know,
you would run like the wind right in the other direction,
you know. And I had a guy named Russ Wilcox,
who teaches how to be a CEO here at Harvard
Business School, who talked to me on the record and
said that he agrees with this, and that he too
(31:27):
was looking for a kind of messianic complex in his founders.
Then you've got somebody like a Mark Andresen, right, you
know who you mentioned, who is so zealous that he
has a document called the Techno Optimists Manifesto that was
really popular when they put it up online, you know
a little while back. It uses the phrase, Molly, we believe.
(31:50):
He uses the phrase we believe one hundred and thirty
three times in a short document. Okay, And just to
give you one of so many quotes I could give
you from this this document, which is it's so theological.
I often begin my speeches to audiences with this document
and I tell them I'm going to quote from scripture.
He says, we believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
How would that even work? That's so insane.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
It's not just insane, it's a very particular type of
insanity for somebody like myself, where I've been studying religion
my whole life. He says, we believe any deceleration of
AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI,
that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. Right.
So what he's doing here, First of all, he's taking
(32:38):
a line from abortion, right, He's taking the you know
that you have to be pro life, rigidly pro life.
He says essentially about bringing the AI into life, and
that when somebody tells you that if you don't do something,
that you're going to destroy the world, it's a classic
form of extremist religious manipulation that basically says, we're going
(33:01):
to take advantage of the fact that we know that you,
like any other normal, decent human being, you want to
be a moral person, you want to be a moral citizen. Again,
most people do. It's just sort of you know, human nature,
like we evolve to be selfish at times, but we
also really needed to evolve to be cooperative and care
about one another. Otherwise human beings don't get here to
(33:23):
this day. Right. So, but he's taking advantage of that
and saying like, if you don't obey our theology of
AI where we want you to invest, or we want
you to be part of our social project to invest
trillions of dollars in this thing, then you're murdering. You're
killing you know, you're terrible, right, And so that's a
(33:45):
sense of how religious this phenomenon actually is.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
It's not bizarre, and it makes sense. And if you
track like the decline in religion in this country and
the assent of technology, it makes a lot of sense
what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (34:02):
But I just never put it together. So now I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
The thing that I would also want people to take
away from this is that when I'm making these criticisms
in the book and with you, like, I'm not anti technology,
I wouldn't even know how to try to make an
argument or to write a book that's anti technology, right, Like,
I get it. You know, I'm not saying that, you know,
we all need to go back to the days of
(34:26):
you know, hovering around the fire. Right. What I am
saying is that we've gone a little too far in
our uncritical faith in any and every technology that comes along,
and we've forgotten to ask ourselves, you know, at times,
what agenda might be underlying, like our every day, every hour,
(34:51):
every minute reliance on this stuff. And so that what
I'm asking for is not like elimination of tech. It's
a reformation. You know, we need to improve our way
of thinking and acting around this stuff to.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Have some amount of guile to not take this as
necessarily all God.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Yeah, I mean, so I'm a chaplain, right, I've spent
twenty plus years working alongside religious people of all kinds. Right,
there's fifty of us Harvard chaplains. There's about thirty of us,
and I t chaplains. I've been in leadership roles, elected
and appointed in both settings. You know, I regularly work
with all kinds of religious people. I'm part of a
(35:33):
fellowship right now by a big interfaith organization called Interfaith
America called the Vote is Sacred fellowship where we're like
it's religious leaders and myself working from across the country
on how to strengthen and protect democracy. So there's great
people in these religious communities, and I learn from them
all the time that you know, my religious friends and
colleagues make me a better person sometimes with you know,
(35:55):
the ways that they interact with their families and their communities. Right.
But what I like is reformed religion, self critical religion.
I like Christians who know that Christianity isn't perfect, and
they know that it desperately needs to be critiqued. Sometimes.
I like Jews who are maybe religious or passionate about
their Judaism but they can recognize that Judaism isn't perfect.
(36:19):
They're not perfect. They need to be self critical. Israel
isn't perfect, We need to be critical of it sometimes,
et cetera, et cetera. Right, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, the same thing,
even humanists, right like I tend to get into fights
with you know, my fellow atheists, people like Richard Dawkins
or Sam Harris or the late Christopher Hitchins if I
felt like they're being too anti religious, trying to act
(36:42):
like humanism. What I do is all perfect, all good. No.
And so it's a recognition that the more that this
Silicon Valley world becomes a kind of quasi religious institution,
the more we need to be critical of it. The
more we need to look at each new sort of
value and values proposition and say, like, is that real?
(37:05):
Can we really trust you, Sam Altman to be doing
open AI for the good of the world. Sam Altman
is going around now hat in hand, asking from some
of the worst people on earth, honestly, for literally millions
of dollars to build these data centers across America, each
of which is as powerful as several nuclear power plants. Right,
(37:28):
and like open Ai is a company that of course
famously started as a nonprofit and they just this past
week announced oh just kidding. All of the investment that
made us a multi multi billion dollar company was made
into a certain kind of company, but we were never
actually going to be that kind of company after all.
(37:48):
So you know, if you invested in us, or if
you trusted us, screw you. We're now for profit and
we want your trillion thank you, And so we need
to learn how to be more critical of people like
Altman in advances.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
Right. No, it's a really good point. It's a really
really good point. Greg. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 4 (38:06):
Oh, it's a pleasure, Molly. You know, we first sort
of interacted at the beginning of the pandemic when I
was kind of doing online chaplaincy for some of my
students on Twitter and LinkedIn because there was no way
to reach them in person, and you kind of gave
that a bit of a boost. You know. Something that
I'd said to one of the students, I guess was
moving to you. And it was so moving to me
(38:26):
to get to engage with you back then. And I'm
a huge fan. Thank you for what you do.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Oh, well, thank you for coming on and really so interesting.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
I appreciate you.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
Yeah, I hope to see again sometime. No moment.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
Jesse Cannon, Mai Jung Fast.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I have to tell you, one of the things I
feel like is one of the most just we'll look
back as one of the more gross parts of our
society was having our safety net be GoFundMe. And because
it's one of the more gross parts of society, guess
you just waded into it.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Well, you know, the guy who wants to end federal
disaster relief and many of the things that the federal
government does just started a disaster relief go fund me
page for people who have been affected by this monster hurricane.
It's tacky, but it's also like, the federal government exists.
(39:25):
We pay taxes so that we can help these people. Certainly,
raising extra money is good, but I think it's worth
realizing that Donald Trump could easily make a donation to
this area or purchase something to give to people like
paper Tels just kidding, not paper Tells, But he instead
(39:46):
decided to raise money from his people. Again, Donald Trump
has taken a lot of money from his people. So
the fact that he's trying to take more is really disgusting,
and that is our moment of fucker. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
(40:08):
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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