Sentientism | "I went vegan finally when I fell in love with one" - filmmaker & writer Jay Shapiro - Ep: 151 @Sentientism | Uploaded April 2023 | Updated October 2024, 3 hours ago.
Jay (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/jay-shapiro & @JayShapiroDilemmaHost) is an award winning film-maker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris @samharrisorg & Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawazRadical. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020 (youtube.com/live/kc5cmqRN_AE?feature=share). He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:54 Jay Intro
- The Essential #samharris series
- Documentary & narrative film-making
- "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea"
03:16 What's Real?
- Growing up in a secular #Jewish household
- "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one"
- "Never again becomes the holiest prayer"
- Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum
- "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist"
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like"
- An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi
- #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials"
- Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality"
- How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality
- Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction
- "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences
- "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one"
- The National High School Ethics Bowl
- Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED
- Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question"
- "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!)
- Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth...
- Writing about Sam Harris, not for him
- Object-oriented ontology
- #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal"
- How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it"
- Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out"
- #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue)
- What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?
- Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads"
- Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc
- Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves
- Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance
37:45 What Matters?
- "There is no grounding (to ethics)"
- David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm
- "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris
- There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship"
- "My bridge": Carl Sagan's "We are a way for the universe to know itself"
- "I'm super humanistic... I bristle at the efforts... to downgrade the human as just another animal"
- We have the "moral opportunity" to figure things out & decide what we ought to do
- "Luckily there's a lot of joy & fun in figuring it out... and some sadness... it's the only game in town... so I'm playing"
- "I'm trying to champion the human" & David Deutsch re: creation of explanations/knowledge
- "Experience must be the only way to see the bridge across is-ought"
- Moral agency & patiency
- Compassion as a moral opportunity
- Cultivated meat: Is there a risk of easy solutions that don't require humans to be better? Would we be missing a moral opportunity? What future horrors might we create?
- A future where everyone is #vegan so "we don't even need the word any more"
- The value of sacrifice?
58:50 Who Matters?
01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
Jay (sentientism.info/sentientist-pledge/jay-shapiro & @JayShapiroDilemmaHost) is an award winning film-maker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris @samharrisorg & Maajid Nawaz @MaajidNawazRadical. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020 (youtube.com/live/kc5cmqRN_AE?feature=share). He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:54 Jay Intro
- The Essential #samharris series
- Documentary & narrative film-making
- "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea"
03:16 What's Real?
- Growing up in a secular #Jewish household
- "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one"
- "Never again becomes the holiest prayer"
- Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum
- "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist"
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like"
- An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi
- #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials"
- Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality"
- How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality
- Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction
- "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences
- "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one"
- The National High School Ethics Bowl
- Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED
- Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question"
- "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!)
- Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth...
- Writing about Sam Harris, not for him
- Object-oriented ontology
- #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal"
- How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it"
- Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out"
- #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue)
- What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?
- Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads"
- Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc
- Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves
- Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance
37:45 What Matters?
- "There is no grounding (to ethics)"
- David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm
- "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris
- There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship"
- "My bridge": Carl Sagan's "We are a way for the universe to know itself"
- "I'm super humanistic... I bristle at the efforts... to downgrade the human as just another animal"
- We have the "moral opportunity" to figure things out & decide what we ought to do
- "Luckily there's a lot of joy & fun in figuring it out... and some sadness... it's the only game in town... so I'm playing"
- "I'm trying to champion the human" & David Deutsch re: creation of explanations/knowledge
- "Experience must be the only way to see the bridge across is-ought"
- Moral agency & patiency
- Compassion as a moral opportunity
- Cultivated meat: Is there a risk of easy solutions that don't require humans to be better? Would we be missing a moral opportunity? What future horrors might we create?
- A future where everyone is #vegan so "we don't even need the word any more"
- The value of sacrifice?
58:50 Who Matters?
01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?
... & much more!
#Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all #sentient beings.” More at sentientism.info/. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall sentientism.info/wall/.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. E.g.: facebook.com/groups/sentientism.
