The Greatest Climate Myths and Misperceptions Explained -
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe
Alex Epstein - Mike Rowe
January 30, 2025
We often explore climate and climate change through scientific studies and engaging videos to gain a deeper understanding of the science, trends, and to predict future outcomes. Some uncritically embrace dramatic "expert" predictions of increasing CO2-driven disasters and tipping points. Rarely considered is the philosophical question of how to best foster human and individual flourishing.
Experts portray the pre-industrial era as a pristine, balanced state, disrupted by industrialists and individuals driven by greed and self-interest. They claim that CO2, once naturally stable, has surged by over 50% due to the use of fossil fuels. These "experts" often view humans as harmful pests that require control.
Watch philosopher/energy advocate Alex Epstein, author of the New York Times bestseller Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas Not Less, discuss these contradictions in this video with Mike Rowe, also known as "Mr. Dirty Hands-Dirty Jobs." https://youtu.be/8dj-2to3NJk?si=1A 4 WpbPOT51vxL'.
Transcript
Alex’s thoughts on persuasion
0:00
fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous they took a dangerous climate and made it safe let's
0:05
look at headlines from the 1800s and early 1900s where in a given year millions of Chinese people will die
0:12
because of a famine caused by a drought drought related death has gone down by 99 about over 99% over the last century
0:21
where's the headline right where's the headline it should be every day we did it again fossil exactly like fossil
0:26
fuels people made us safer than ever from climate
0:32
Chuck came in and said Alex is here and he brought a change of clothes just in case and I said just in case of what
0:40
what would happen I just you know sometimes people have opinions you know whatever they do I do the prageru videos
0:45 they're like bring several outfits and we have such a strong that is such a different world yeah but you know what
0:52
they reach good grief man how many how many people did your video over there reach do you even know it is in
0:59
somewhere in the 10 of millions I I don't think it's as much as yours well I mean not that I'm keeping track but um
1:05
Chuck go ahead and Google that for me he here's probably 100 million but yeah no it's it's nuts although what's
1:11
interesting is sometimes what you get recognized for like I get recognized for those a certain amount but then other 1:18
things like other things you might get disproportionately recognized for right
1:23 how much of what you do today do you think of in terms of persuasion 1:31 and uh I mean OB obviously advocacy but 1:36 the business of persuading has to be somewhere near the uh the top of your to-do list so historically it's been 1:43 focused on primarily how do people think about energy like what's their thinking methodology their assumptions that kind 1:50 of thing so are they thinking of energy in an even-handed way where they're you know looking carefully at pros and cons 1:56 of different forms of energy versus you know being super biased against fossil fuels bias against nuclear and then I 2:02 have certain conclusions that I think come from my method of thinking and the facts like hey we should actually be 2:07 using more fossil fuels you know the world is way too poor and way too energy poor and needs way more energy including 2:13 from fossil fuels uh I'd say now though my focus is still on those things but 2:19
more than anything trying to convince the government to adopt certain policies
2:24 and in particular you know we're in early December now we have a very energy friendly 2:30
Administration coming in and they say they want to unleash American Energy and for the last year and a half I've been 2:36
preparing for that in case that happened with trying to lay out hey here here are the exact policies that I and the 2:42
smartest people I've ever talked to believe would actually do this and I I really like this mode I wish it were
2:49
always like this where there were actually an opportunity to make the ideas real do you feel like it's been a 2:56
transition from playing defense to offense to a certain degree whereas for a while and I'm not I'm I'm
3:02
not sure what the default position is but it it seems like the conversation have has to start with well wait a 3:09
minute what if fossil fuels aren't the enemy MH before you can get to hey wait
3:15
a minute what if fossil fuels are in fact the last best hope of civilized 3:21
Life as we know it like that's a that's a good line right I mean but but but that's a big curve and so everybody not 3:29 everybody in the country but it seems like the 330 million of us who are all equally 3:35 addicted to the very fuels we're talking about have a different relationship with 3:40 that addiction and so from a persuasive standpoint you know like do you have to 3:48
judge the room do you have to understand who you're talking to before you engage them on this topic or are you just 3:55 always singing out of the same hym book basically the same way no it's not basic the same way but I would say I'm always 4:01
playing offense in the sense of I'm interested in like I think certain things are good and that's what I'm 4:07 focused on and then I think things are bad in contrast to what I think is good so so to if you look at historically the
4:14
fossil fuel industry if you were to summarize their message there I think there are basically two accurate summaries of their message we're not as 4:21
bad as we used to be or we're not as bad as you think we are right right right 4:27
it's the old argument of hey these under pants are clean there's only a little bit of poop in them okay you should put 4:33
them on anyway is that an old argument it's it's one I've made I've been hearing it for many years
4:39 so well I mean I just think that it's inter like how our own standards change 4:45
with regard to say cleanliness like how clean do you want your clothes is it 4:50
good enough you know how clean do you want your environment how clean do you want your underpants I mean you can walk 4:56 around in a used diaper or you can get them right out of the dryer without even the hint of an ancient 5:02
skidm Mark you like where how do you know it's okay to put them on yes so I'm not sure how much I'm 5:09
going to be able to work with that that particular analogy but I have in terms of laying offense the it's the you know 5:17
so so my way of thinking has been hey like I'm not I only support like it's 5:22
not like I had a background in fossil fuels or something like this or I I like I came from the womb or even my 5:28
education wanting to support fil fuels I probably told this last time like I came from Chevy Chase Maryland a very liberal
5:34
kind of place I didn't learn anything positive about fossil fuels going to the allegedly top schools in the country or 5:39
this kind of thing I had no relationship with the industry or anything like that I was basically a philosopher who really 5:45
believe strongly and thinking about things in a very evenhanded and precise way and it was just pretty clear to me
5:52
once I learned a little bit about energy fossil Fields have these amazing benefits that we have no near-term replacement for like being able to feed 5:59
8 billion people with modern fertilizer and Modern Diesel powerered Agriculture and nobody's talking about these
6:05
benefits and they're only talking about negatives and the main negative they're talking about is climate danger and yet 6:11
one of the main things we do with fossil fuels is neutralize all kinds of climate danger which is why empirically we're 6:16
safer than ever from climate so just with that perspective like I thought of this as like as a pro-human philosopher
6:24
who late pretty late in life like age 27 had his eyes open to the facts I was like this is amazing so I think of it as 6:31
this amazing technology that's what I thought of it from the beginning so I didn't have this perspective of necessary evil I had a perspective of 6:39
superior good and definitely not an addiction but a healthy uh a healthy 6:44
choice so that that's and that's generally my orientation it's like I go I fight for things I like and then if 6:51
I'm fighting against things it's because first and foremost they're depriving us
6:56 of the good I'm never I just find this necessary thing it's an incoherent idea like if it's evil it's not really
The balance between tolerance and flourishing
7:03
necessary it's sort of like the U the flourishing thing yeah great 7:08
conversation by the way I listened to you and Peter teal not long ago oh which one oh god well the one where he was 7:13
challenging me is the funniest conversation Chuck you should check it out because the two guys who 7:19
fundamentally agree but spend an incredible amount of time in the conversation really trying to explain 7:25
the Nuance of the potential disagreement that might exist prior parthe that may or may not imp the 7:33
fat part of the bat we're not quite yet but like two big brains really trying to 7:38
drill down and and listening to it uh just reminded me of how important 7:45
language is you know the words that we choose in not just specific technical 7:51 words but back to the persuasion thing you know Teal's persuasive in a lot of 7:57
ways talk about a Jagged Little Pill right like you know how to get I'll pay you
8:02
$100,000 not to go to college uhhuh right that was such a great example of 8:07
one of the points he was trying to make to you which was sometimes you know when
8:12 big brains get bogged down with the wonkiness of an idea we forget to just 8:18
freaking do it yeah just do a thing that might result in the need for forgiveness
8:24 instead of permission but do the thing you know you have to make some kind of J
8:29
gesture to cut through all the Clutter I just thought that was a really interesting exchange you guys had yes
8:35
yeah so I think it's called like Peter deal challenges Alex up and it came out because we were have these dinners we
8:41 were have these dinners and he's like I disagree with you on like I don't like the concept of human flourishing and we
8:47
were already I think three hours in to this dinner and needed to go to bed so I'm like let's just do a show on this 8:53
let's just let's just have it out cuz he is you know he's been very generous in supporting both my books he did both my 8:59 book launches you know he's been very praising and promoting the book this is a guy who's very generous to me very
9:04
helpful to me but I thought it'd be really interesting to see we also you know probably at least half the time we 9:11
talk we're arguing about something yeah uh which I find interesting and so I thought people would find that
9:16
interesting and and I want to see like I want somebody smart to challenge me my whole issue is I don't like that voler
9:23
thing about you know God grant me one prayer make my enemies ridiculous I find it very annoying my enemies are
9:28
ridiculous right would like some better enemies well this is the point I was trying to get to I'm I'm weary of people
9:35
who are so clearly on opposite sides just stripping down and having a tickle fight right I mean it's just like God
9:42
there there's no like we're never going to get to some sort of 9:47
dayon when there's that much distance at least not in the course of a single conversation you guys fundamentally 9:53
agree I think yeah on a lot of stuff for sure on the big stuff but but but talk about this weird relationship with with 10:02 flourishing and and I wasn't quite sure what to take from it because on its face 10:07 it seems like such a nice thing but unintended consequences I guess and 10:12
applying it to the masses well so I you know I'm very much on the side of I think this is a a great concept that 10:19
should be should be used and defended and pursued in a certain way and so I I 10:25
I mean it's always dangerous to summarize someone else's argument who isn't isn't here but also fun CU you 10:30 know he can't interrupt you I try to I try to do my best but I think what what he'd point to which is valid is that
10:37
there are people who use the concept of human flourishing to pursue goals that he and I would disagree with and in 10:44
particular he brought up the bioethicist named Leon Cass who was very prominently featured in President George W Bush's 10:51
bioethics Council which it what was his book um he jeez I used to be so familiar 10:56
with these I don't remember what's his name again Leon Cass I mean he has multiple books but he's you know both I 11:05
mean Peter and I have only explored our views on biotechnology to some degree but I think in general we both believe 11:10
strongly that there's a lot of good Innovation to be done in biotechnology and that this quote 11:16
unquote bioethics movement was in many ways anti-technology which is not to say that you can't have a prot technology 11:23
bioethics movement this is actually one of the first Concepts I explored in my early 20s was how to have a pro 11:29
pro-human and pro technology but historically it's been very anti-technology and then often socialist
11:35 so it's either we shouldn't play God this just very broad mandate that would of course have prohibited anesthetics
11:41 and birth control and all of this stuff or it's we need to make sure everything is evenly distributed before we can do
11:47 it which just means you're not going to right which means you're not going to do it and so his view is well people talk
11:52 about human flourishing is a term that's sufficiently vague where people can say
11:57
depriving us of life life-saving Innovations is somehow consistent with flourishing because there's some
12:04
spiritual damage it'll do if you can prevent your child from getting some disease in the future therefore we
12:10 shouldn't do it so what he's objecting to I think is the idea of flourishing has a material and a mental part of it
12:18 that's what I like about it in integrates material and mental well-being but when you deal in the
12:23
realm of the mental there's a room for a lot of flexibility in terms of what people can import into it so they can
12:30
say well our mental well-being is better if we don't play God cuz it's sort of bad for our soul to play like they say 12:36
these very vague things and say it's against flourishing and my view is well 12:42 that's true but we still need a concept to to connote this phenomenon that we
12:48
all really want of mental and material well-being because that's really what everyone wants I mean I often think of
12:55
life in terms of what do we want out of life is like an enduring enjoyable 13:01
experience I think most people would like their lives to be that most people 13:07
yes this is the thing I the more I think about it the more I 13:12 come back to this micro macro thing where flourishing or really any good 13:19 thing makes a certain amount of sense when you apply it to the individual and a different kind of sense when you try
13:26
and apply it to the masses yeah and and it's so fossil fuels is certainly on the 13:32
list of things when you're talking about anesthesia and you know I think of Christian Scientists or people who might 13:38
say no no I think I think I have a better chance of flourishing if I keep some of these technical breakthroughs at 13:45
arms length you could even talk about vaccines I'd say people want in a sense part of them wants their life to be an
13:51
enduring enjoyable experience but they certainly have lots of beliefs that get in the way of that and I think many
13:56
dogmas get in the way of that and certainly I think the Christian Science one is a very straightforward one where 14:02 people uh you know will die prematurely or have their kids die prematurely or certainly suffer 14:08
unnecessarily uh be you know I I don't know the exact logic of like you know are they getting to heaven or whatever
14:13
because they don't take aspirin I don't know the exact thing but I know that it's not really working to forgo modern
14:21
medicine right and I would assume you also know that from a from a freedom
14:27
standpoint a ryian stand point for instance like you okay well that might not be a super smart choice for you yeah
14:34 or your family but hey you know freedom is still a thing oh yeah all right but 14:40 then when you get into the world of vaccines where your choice might impact a bunch of other people or the Earth
14:48 where our impact on the earth or at least as I understand the argument you know Greta might be saying look we the 14:55
more we impact the Earth the worse we are the worse we make it for ourselves but really our duty of care is to the 15:02 Earth and so so you've got this sort of benevolent mother naturey 15:08
anthropomorphized thing right that exists I think in the minds of a lot of well-intended people but once we really 15:14
start to talk about the impact of fossil fuels you've got this sort of fan 15:19
bargain you have to somehow navigate you know is it like you have to think about it in 15:26
the way a politician thinks about it in terms of what can I sell persuasively to the largest number of people if we want 15:32 to change hearts and Minds that's the macro but when you bring it back to the micro it's still like what is my 15:38
personal relationship with oil and natural gas what is my personal relationship with with health and 15:43 fitness my personal relationship with littering right and so I'm just 15:50 continually interested in in in the incredible scale and scope of the 15:56
argument you're trying to make and whether you're talking to the masses were one at a time one Concept in 16:02
general that's really important when when you think of this idea of flourishing is the concept of individual 16:09 rights and how that relates to flourishing because I think of like I'm very much an individualist I actually 16:15
don't think it's remotely coherent to be anything other than an individualist uh that's a whole
16:20
discussion too but um I mean we exist as individuals we sort of live and die and suffer and have joy as individuals like
16:28
people talk people think about like collectives and oh we should sacrifice this to this and they act like this
16:33 makes sense doesn't make any sense to it doesn't it's unjust and it just doesn't make any sense like why you know I mean
16:39
I'll just give you the most uh the most urgent example to me like I have a son who's 5 and a half months old
16:46
good-looking kid shared some photos oh okay yeah handsome he is a good-looking kid um and like the I just even thinking 16:54 of at any point in his life somebody saying oh the mass don't like you so
17:00 they get to execute you like Socrates right which is a kind of utilitarian Collective like that
17:06
just that just is to the core of my being the most corrupt thing ever or the 17:11
idea that like he is a pawn of everybody else and his life like he should be miserable so other people should be so 17:17
other people can be happy like I just don't believe this at all so I think when we're thinking about flourishing we need to recognize hey we're all 17:23 individuals and we want rules of society that allow us to all flourish as 17:29
individuals in harmony with one another so I reject this idea of humanity is an organism we're all individuals and we're 17:35
thinking ethically and politically we have to recognize that fact uh and so 17:41
the concept of IND individual rights is crucial because it's basically says how do you define the sphere of action that 17:47
individuals can take to take the actions they need to flourish without interfering with others and and this 17:54
solves a lot of the supposed Collective problems like in terms of uh you know
18:00 polluting somebody's land right it's like well you say you flourish by having a hog farm that pollutes on my land well 18:05
that's interfering with my freedom to pursue my life and to flourish and then
18:10
there are harder examples like air pollution right but even there you can say hey there's a certain we can study 18:16 it and there's a certain amount of air pollution that's fine that's benign and there's a certain amount that Aggregates
18:22 and it's unhealthy and we need to basically figure out at any given time what's the level that sort of
18:29
healthiest but also consistent with us flourishing in all the other ways so you take 18 I use this example in fossil
18:35
future like coal industry in the 1800s right or let's just take the invention of fire right fire has side effects so 18:43
should we have never used fire was fire a violation of individual rights because your neighbors got smoke no right
18:50
because at the time you like the the ability to make fire with smoke was totally essential to flourishing and you
18:56
would totally be willing to tolerate a certain amount of smoke because that prevented you from freezing to death and by the way because civilizations don't
19:03
progress at the same speed and at the same time you still have what a couple billion people on the planet yeah whose 19:10
primary source of energy is burning wood or yeah and they should be free to 19:15
do that although we should do nothing to get in the way of them using better things like like fossil fuels but this
19:22 is like this is what it means I think to think about flourishing is to think about people as individuals and to think
19:27
about at a given time in a given economic and technological State like 19:32
how do you define rights so that everybody has the opportunity to flourish and with something like the global warming issue and the Greta issue
19:40
what you need to do is look objectively at what are the real dangers as well as benefits that come from increasing the 19:46
amount of CO2 in the atmosphere you absolutely cannot have this religious Mother Earth view that you you didn't
19:52
endorse but you alluded to whereas I call it the delicate nurturer right where the Earth exists in this stable
19:58
it's stable it's sufficient it gives us what we need as long as we're not too greedy it's safe and then our impact
20:03
ruins everything that's a primitive religious Dogma like the Earth is dynamic deficient and dangerous and we
20:09
need to impact it so if you look at the climate system from the perspective of what are the actual impacts of more CO2
20:16
what are the benefits and what are the challenges that come with that and you compare that to the level of resilience
20:22 and Mastery that you get from having a lot of energy what I think is definitive is just the resilience and Mastery
20:28
matter far more than any of the new challenges the word you used before with regard to um the Christian Scientist I I Dogma of energy
20:35
think is really interesting a Dogma yeah so talk about the Dogma that exists in 20:42
the religion of energy MH h on both sides if you want but but it it feels to 20:49
me that that my friends typically who who have this benevolent Earth sort of 20:58
default believe very very deeply in it it's not just a it's just not it's not just a 21:04
notion uhhuh it's not just a hunch it's a like they somehow or another it 21:10 metastasized yeah if you want to take the hierarchy or the the the like the line of things that are difficult I
21:17 would say like religion people are born with political party and affiliation
21:22 people are born with I would say those are far more difficult to change than 21:27
this delicate nurture thing although I agreee it is very embedded it's one of these things it's very embedded but it's 21:34 fragile because it's so it's absurd if you study it and it and it trades on 21:40 being scientific which is both its strength and its undoing because if you trade on being scientific you get the 21:45
status of being scientific but then you have the vulnerability of applying scientific method and seeing that it's 21:51
total BS so if you just point out to somebody example well let's just take the issue of of climate right the idea
21:57 that in the 1800s we had a perfect climate right we had 270 280 parts per 22:03 million of CO2 that was somehow perfect and we ruined the climate and now the 22:08
climate is angry at us and therefore we're experiencing unprecedented climate death and damage okay well let's look at 22:16
headlines from the 1800s and early 1900s where in a given year millions of Chinese people will die because of a 22:23 famine caused by a drought uh and drought related deaths are regularly 22:29
under 10,000 per year now drought related death has gone down by 99 about 22:35 over 99% where's over the last century where's the headline right where's the headline it should be every day that we 22:41
should that we did it again fossil exactly like fossil fuels people made us safer than ever from climate once again
22:48 but and you the same thing is true with sto when you just think of it common sense oh yeah I guess I guess there's 22:53 always drought but if you have irrigation and crop transport then Dr rout isn't that big a problem and oh by
23:00 the way both of those things take energy or storms oh wait storms used to just totally wipe people out I mean one
23:07
example I think of is the same storm that now could be like the I mean we live in lagona beach so we don't have
23:13
many storms but like let's say we visit the DC area which we're just visiting and there's a storm like that could be a romantic evening with my wife and me
23:20
right and the same storm where the power let's light a candle well not even the power though right even the power
23:27
requires a certain amount of dysfunction to lose the power at this point I mean we can be so resilient I mean we have
23:32
people who can keep the electricity on in Singapore they can keep it on in Africa they can keep it on in Antarctica
23:38
you just see that what really matters for the the climate is naturally barely
23:43
livable and what matters is our degree of of Mastery you see this for our whole environment again so you can you can
23:50 take the idea that you know I put it as fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous they took a 23:55
dangerous climate and made it safe and it's same thing for resources people think oh we had nature gave us all these
24:01
resources and then we've just squandered them and you know now we've eaten all the slices of pizza now we have to eat
24:07
the box and we're all going to we're all going to die right and it's now wait a second like are the cavemen who they
24:14
were very few of them and they had very few usable resources and now we have too many resources to the point where we're 24:19
all getting fat like that's our problem in terms of food resources oh man so so
24:24
um I mean present company excluded of course well it's nice you to say but just chuckling because this uh this just 24:30
came up um I mean Bobby Kennedy said uh show me a photo of yany stadium in 24:37
1970 uhuh sold out and go ahead and find the find the fat people good luck right
24:44
same with Woodstock same with Woodstock right today it's like you can't not I mean some something has happened and I
24:52
I've had a chance to talk with him a couple times this year he he invited me into his world
24:58
okay yeah uh and it's not my bag you know I'm not a political animal but we do agree on some things and and one of
25:05
the things is this relationship that exists in my mind anyway I guess it's kind of a correlation of sorts and maybe 25:12 there's nothing to it but uh Fitness is different than health
25:19
like we hear about health and fitness all of the time but the fitness to me goes back to sort of the
25:25
individual you know you can do a lot of things to be physically fit Health has this larger patina that sort of it's
25:33
more macro okay well so too green and climate is macro littering
25:43 and some forms of pollution with a small p is is micro you know and so it's like
25:49 when I think about that keep America beautiful campaign with the Weeping Indian yeah that that wasn't an attempt
25:55 to get people to think about the climate and to avoid an apocalypse that's
26:01
supposedly coming in 12 years that was an attempt to pick up your freaking Big Gulp yeah right but I would say there
26:08
you mean so in the health and the fitness thing I think they can one is a valid subset of the other whereas I
26:15 think the anti- littering thing is actually not a subset of the anti-impact 26:21 movement yeah go with that for a minute because it's because it's I I think of a lot of I mean at the core I think what I 26:26
am is I'm a pro-human Environmental philosopher so I have a I have a I want
26:31
us to relate to our environment in a way that benefits us which doesn't at all
26:36
mean we're hostile to the rest of nature but we have a pro-human relationship with the rest of nature so
26:42 the littering example would be well obviously we want an environment that doesn't that minimizes ugliness let
26:49 alone waste that could harm us but by the same token just as we want to elim
26:54
we want to let's say minimize because you can't always eliminate healthily these kinds of things things but you want to minimize that kind of
27:00
contamination you also want to minimize the contamination of nature which is
27:05 massive including you want to minimize the danger of infectious diseases including you want to take advantage of 27:11
Technologies such as vaccines and antibiotics where they are in fact net beneficial which I think is the vast 27:17
majority of the time yeah so it's it's you have to have a like you you're 27:23 thinking about I want the world to be an amazing place for human beings to live and and to me the mistake people make 27:30 which I think this will probably resonate with you is they have this artificial they have this separation of 27:36 the human as sort of unnatural and not our environment yeah like we're not part of the chain right we're not and I think
27:43 of it as no us building you know this no I didn't build this podcast Studio but you guys building this podcast studio is 27:49
like a bird building a nest and that's you making your environment better and just as it would be absurd to say it's 27:56 bad for the bird's environment to make it Nest or it's bad for the beaver's environment to make a dam it's absurd to 28:02 say for a human it's bad for our environment to have roads it's bad for our environment to have factories but that's what they say they use the term
28:08 the environment because they want to separate environment from the species that's thinking about their environment
28:14
and I I'm try I never use the environment I always use our environment because I'm stressing whether it's a factory or a beautiful ocean it's all 28:22 there for us to enjoy that's what we're I mean that's that's how we should not that somebody gave it to us but that 28:27 that's how we should should think of it just as a lion thinks of its environment as like it wants a lot of uh yeah know I
28:32 was in um for honeymoon I was in um in uh Tanzania and and Uganda like the lion
28:38 wants like a good environment for a lion is is The Great Migration right where it can just be lazy and eat all these W to
28:45 beast and just hang out all day in a good environment for us is one where we've industrialized production so we
28:51 can just make all these amazing machines that do 70 times more physical work than we do and we can just sort of use our 28:58 minds and have have fun so I think of it all as we've this is all part of having a good environment and so just I oppose
29:04
littering for the same reason that I like making this podcast studio for the same reason I like going into the ocean
29:10
and I think most people separate they have the separation of there's like nature stuff and human stuff and I think 29:16
it's all human stuff where where'd you take your wife Tanzania Tanzania and Uganda Uganda in the springtime you're Alex’s honeymoon with gorillas
29:23
such a romantic by the way Uganda is sort of shockingly beautiful I was that 29:28 was very unexpected even how I mean that's that's like a lush one of the
29:33
lushest paradise places have you seen chip Empire yet no I haven't seen it oh my god dude but I but you know we go
29:39
there to see the the gorillas my my wife actually got grabbed by one of the gorillas cuz she's very good with kids and the the gorilla child was taken by 29:48
my wife and the mom didn't like it anyway it's uh no harm done but it was 29:53
yeah that's an amazing thing if you could do it which by the way I'm sorry did you say that your wife was grabbed by a gorilla yes yeah he just kind of 29:59
glances it's all part of the honeymoon experience if you're in the Epstein home it was a it was a it was brief it was
30:07
brief but it was it was there I just would like to hear that unpacked a little and I'll send you the footage um
30:13
that's that that's even better but but it's I mean it's yeah it's basically what I mentioned is that I mean you're
30:19 very so so the way it works it's it's primarily in uh Rwanda and Uganda and you can also do it in Congo but Congo is
30:26
a little bit treacherous to go for for honey bit uh so um we were I mean that's
30:32
an fascinating place by the way in terms of like the most amazing environment if you have the right kind of civilization
30:39
versus a terrorizing environment if you don't but like in terms of resources raw materials scenery like that could be one
30:45
of the greatest places on Earth and it is not one of the greatest greatest places on Earth so Uganda does not have
30:50
an ideal government at all but it's a much better government and uh so we were able to visit there safely and yeah you
30:56
go you go visit these gorillas and you're generally told to keep maybe 10 ft away from them so you're you're very
31:03
very close to them and but of course you don't control them it's not like there there's no glass so yeah my wife was 31:10
just staring at this little child don't stare yeah well I think she thinks it was worth I mean she felt like she's
31:17
forming a bond and she's very good at bonding with she's always been very good at bonding with children and at least
31:22
this is our interpretation yeah the mom I guess saw this and didn't like it and just went likeo and then that was it and
31:29
grabbed her by the neck no no not not the neck sorry no no uh just just I think it was her ankle it was her ankle
31:35 and it was just it was just quick I mean we had other people who were deserving of adverse contact from the gorillas uh 31:42
including yeah I mean there was this silver back and just the this woman the we went two days I if you ever go by the 31:48
way go at least two days because you only get to go for an hour and it's just such a surreal experience but yeah we
31:53
went there and this woman is just she's prioritizing her good camera shot over 31:59
the comfort of a silver back I don't that doesn't end well yeah and so the silver and so I believe it was a 32:05
Silverback just sort of brushed right past her and bumped her out of the way so fortunately these gorillas are very 32:11
used to humans so the downside risk is is pretty low but I I don't know why you would play with it also it's there you
32:17
know you want to be nice to them I mean you want to see them on their own so that was our experience well I mean good 32:23 for you man that is that is not sandals for the honeymoon that is a is a whole
32:28
mean I assume you've done this I I don't think there's any vacation that compares to safaris and it's and by the way this 32:34 is another reason why there's this harmony of the industrial you know the industrial pro-human society and the 32:42
enjoyment of nature like people who are poor don't get to enjoy nature they certainly get don't get to enjoy the
32:48
incredible diversity uh of Nature and so people would say even like oh you're talking about going to Safari like you
32:55
have to be rich to do that that's an elitist thing yeah I want everyone to be rich though yeah yeah so I'm not just
33:00
trying to keep it to people who like sell a lot of books and give a lot of speeches and can afford to go there like
33:07
the cheaper energy get I mean it's really an energy problem ultimately like the cheaper energy gets the cheaper it
33:13
is to travel the cheaper it is to have accommodations there like ultimately want a world where not only people in
33:18
those places can be wealthy but we can just sort of trapes around the world super cheaply because we just have all these amazing machines and energy costs
33:26
one10 or 100 as much that's going to have to be nuclear which another reason to be pro- nuclear when you have all
33:31
this abundance and safety and opportunity as the given it can feel you're the worst kind of conservative
33:37
because you feel like oh everything that I like about this world is natural and everything I don't like or I imagine I
33:43 don't like like the changing climate that I'm afraid of even though I don't really have a sense of it what's going on like I don't like that but there
33:50
people's view of the delicate nurture is really the delicate nurturer that is civilization like that's what they
33:56 really are counting on that's what I look well-intended people can be equally
Saving the earth versus improving the earth
34:02
passionate and certain about one of two things they can be passionate and certain that their mission is to save
34:09 the Earth because without it we have nothing or they can be urgent and 34:15
passionate about getting an industrial revolution to the three billion people who haven't had one yet
34:22 thereby increasing everybody's odds for a different level of flourishing but again it's just back to what's the price
34:29
what what is going to happen to the Earth if we it it'll get better so I think of that second one is improving
34:35
the Earth like they want to save the Earth from human beings I want to keep improving the Earth for human human
34:40 beings yeah so I I don't think of it as yeah they're not saving anything they're just regressing I mean they're it's such
34:47 a perverse view because and I mean people hold it innocently But ultimately The View that human impact is a bad
34:53 thing to be eliminated that's one of the most evil views ever it's intrinsically wrong for us to change the earth it's 34:59
just as if there's a commandment Thou shalt not impact the Earth and it's so evil because it singles out humans as a 35:07
uniquely Evil source of impact like they're not against Beaver impact or bear impact or lion impact and they
35:14
don't even seem to care that much when sort of inanimate nature like climate and storms and stuff ruin things their
35:19
sole focus is human impact so if you saw a creature like this but instead of being against human impact they were
35:26
against bare impact you would think this is a perverse person like you have it out for the Bears like your whole goal
35:32 in like I I'm an like I'm an anti- bearest right and they're like they want to like I don't like the way that bears
35:39
are impacting the forest and I don't like the way they move around and obviously this person wants to kill all the Bears right if they're if they're
35:44
against bear impact that means you want if you're against impact you're against the thing and you think like why do you have this this bear I don't know the
35:51
right thing but bar enthropy right I'm making up a term right no it wouldn't be bar anthropy Miss bear Miss bear okay I
35:57
can't you know you know what I mean like the equivalent of misen throp a misanthrope or a misogynist but but they're a a baryn you got you got
36:04
yourself a barog somebody's gonna in the comments put a much better version of this because I never came up with this I
36:10
need to come up with it but so I'll be grateful to that person but this this the barest equivalent of the misanthrope
36:16
you'd think was insane and yet we think it's normal to hate the impact of our own species and it's not about loving
36:23
anything else this is I was on Jordan Peterson's podcast and we had a long disc about this CU he was thinking of it
36:29
I think more as the greens just want the Earth to be green but then he pointed out wait a second why don't they like it
36:35
that CO2 has made the earth a lot Greener and my point is they're not about a green earth they're about a
36:41
dehumanized earth and if Earth on its own becomes Greener they're okay with that but if dehumanizing earth makes the
36:47
Earth Browner they're thrilled with that too so it's really the brown movement because they're against human life which
36:53 makes the earth a lot Greener so this is weird dude I did a a special and unauthorized dirty job special probably
37:00
10 years ago who authorizes or unauthorized Dirty Jobs besides you well there's this network I work for and they
37:06
had many many chiefs and I see and the show was just kind of running on its own
37:12
and doing very well and nobody gave us much trouble and then we started doing these specials where we would look back
37:19 and maybe you know we started with let's take a look at all the crazy high places and then the claustrophobic places let's
37:25 take a look at families with dirty jobs dirty DNA I call that one uh let's take
37:31 a look at the unintended consequences of homeostatic risk and and compensatory
37:36
risk in our brains that are affected by safety protocols and I called that safety third where I made the case that
37:42 complacency is often an unintended consequence of a safety first approach
37:48 to life which creates in people's minds this idea that somebody cares more about them than they do right so all of these
37:56 so like I'm like weighing in on stuff way out of my pay grade but I'm using
38:01
Dirty Jobs experiences to Cobble together specials that make these
38:07 philosophically adjacent Big Ideas it it gives them some Credence and I start to
38:13 make my case from the dirt on these ideas my favorite one was called Brown
38:19 before green and I used a pig farmer who who actually said that to me he he on a rant
38:28 this Bob combs in in in Vegas he's like what's with green man I mean why why
38:34 green it's such a stupid color I'm like what do you mean he goes what I mean yellow like the sun sure blue like the
38:42
Seas right but green the color of rot Gang Green The Color of Money the color
38:48 of Envy well money is good but I guess it's not even real money gold is real money yeah right but we started to riff
38:55 you know and he's like look every single thing that's green grows from something
39:01
brown brown is Primal Brown is the earth Brown is where you start so suddenly I'm
39:10
doing an environmental special on Dirty Jobs called Brown before green where I'm
39:16
basically looking at farmers who are getting a lot of grief for doing things that run a foul of the Greenies but in
39:22 fact are rooted in good solid conservation on a on a real simple
39:28 individual level okay what the heck have you done here man what is this thing
Alex’s energy freedom platform
39:33
you've put together and why don't you do it so this thing is yeah and it'll be public well by the time people see this
39:39 hopefully it'll be public it's called the um the energy Freedom platform mhm
39:44 and maybe the the best way to think of this is ultimately in order for all these
39:51
good things to happen in energy so I'm saying fossil fuels are good nuclear's good really any form of energy that's cost effective good ultimately what has
39:59
to happen is we need the government to have policies that allow you know the kinds of people you study all these 40:06
heroic industrialists that I think of as heroic like ultimately we just need government policies that allow them to 40:12 do what they do best and to figure out like who give me an example of a heroic industrialist well I mean walking Among 40:19
Us in terms of the industry well actually I mean one of my favorites at the moment is Chris Wright who just became nominated for secretary of energy
40:25 and friend of mine and was he when I was asked for recommendations he I I recommended people for the top 50 40:32 positions in energy and he was my number one recommendation for any position so I was like a so I mean he's somebody who I 40:38
mean in the oil and gas industry he's just not just but he's just a very good CEO he's but but for me that's a heroic 40:45 thing to do so there other things that make him very admirable he's a very principled guy he's he speaks up with 40:51
basically the same ideas I have but running a public company which is a lot more downside risk than me right me
40:57
I get frowns and criticisms on social media and sell a lot of books like it's 41:03
people think it's hard being me it's not hard as long as you don't have an insane desire to be liked by idiots it's very
41:11
easy to be me that's that's all I want is the
41:17
approval of idiots that's but that's the thing people just a little riff like people are you know you see these
41:23
celebrities of present company excluded and they' be like oh know I get a
41:28
hundred positive comments on Twitter but then it there's one negative and it ruins my day back to my Underpants
41:36
Theory it doesn't need to be full of Scat it just just a little bit you'd look at it and go nope not putting them
41:43 on but it's it's one little comment but it's like what does it mean a negative comment it's like it's either true or
41:50
not or partially true so if it's true or partially true it's a gift cuz then you can learn something from it presumably
41:57
you want to be right not just be what you were before not just be validated and whatever you happened to start with so that's easy if if you're remotely
42:05 responsible human being that that like you should want to know the truth and Advocate the truth so somebody points out mistakes which certainly happened
42:10 with me before and they're right that's a gift and then if they're wrong though
42:15 and they like who cares so I really think of it as if a four-year-old makes
42:20
fun of me for not believing in Santa Claus like when somebody says something like you're a climate change denial or 42:27
you're a shill for the fossil fuel like anything that's just absurdly false and I know it's false like again if the 42:33
four-year-old comes up to me and says or even the 40-year-old's like you know Santa Claus is real like I proved her the Earth is really flat like it it
42:40 doesn't register so again it's actually very easy to be an advocate like as long
42:47
as you can are persuasive enough to find a bunch of people who like your ideas it's a very easy life being an advocate
42:55 of controversial ideas and I want give people the memo on this because I want more people to have the quote unquote
43:01 courage to Advocate controversial ideas which I don't think takes all that much Courage the quality I think that you're
43:09 talking around uh I think it was Gladwell who wrote about it it's it's disagreeability or
43:16 disagreeableness uh well but it's a compliment you know to get things done
43:22
to to be um to be out front of an issue or to be saying a great truth that has
43:29 not yet been embraced as truth M requires you to be okay with people
43:35
disagreeing with you whether they do it politely or not is neither here nor there um you're just indifferent you
43:43 don't care if if you know the truth is on your side you don't care nearly as much as a normal person would so is that
43:50
is that what is it do you think it's level of conviction in one's own view that's the lever there I think in part
43:57
you know I think it's I I think that's probably that makes sense to me well if 44:02 it goes too far or if the other side were being less charitable they would couch it as arrogance or some kind of 44:08
hubris that's happened of course one thing I've had it's not really imposture syndrome because I knew about it but 44:14
even when I wrote fossil future chapter 10 is about energy freedom and it's it's about okay if you agree with me on 44:20
fossil fuels you want us to be free to use fossil fuels and other forms of energy what's the specific blueprint and 44:26
so I wrote it out as specifically as I knew then but I knew that I didn't have it nearly specific enough to be 44:33 politically actionable and the way I think of it is if you think about in a business like in a business you need to 44:38 set up the systems in a way where it actually works given the variable people 44:44
who work in the business you just think about a large business that has 10,000 employees you know you need to set up the rules in the system such that of 44:51
course you need competent people with a wide variety of people the thing actually has to work and that's that's hard to do it's hard to be able to to 44:57
specify things at that level and and in politics it's the same thing so if you take something like um our grid is a
45:04
perfect example most people know not enough but they they know to some extent we have a problem with the grid and the
45:10
basic problem with our grid which we experien in California but we're only starting to experience is we have uh a
45:17
few very problematically contradictory phenomena so we have a de a an artificial decline
45:24
in the availability of reliable electricity thanks to things like the EPA shutting down reliable power plants
45:30
we have an artificial increase in the demand for Reliable electricity thanks 45:35 to things like uh EV mandates right like so we have we have so we have artificial
45:41
decline in the supply artificial increase in the demand through all the electrification stuff and then an 45:47
organic increase in demand through data centers and AI so and we already are at 45:53 a point of critical shortages around the country where we just more frequently than than I know of in any recent 45:58
history where people are constantly being told we don't have enough power and then sometimes it manifests in a blackout like in California in Texas in 46:06
2021 so we have this problem and everyone can agree that there's a problem same thing with nuclear by the 46:12
way everyone agrees like our nuclear policy sucks but then you ask well how do you fix it and what I found is I and 46:18
others and even a lot of the smart people asked did not have good solutions to it like they would have crappy 46:24
Solutions or no Solutions the nuclear was the worst because there's so much enthusiasm now for nuclear and you ask 46:30
all these people what should the policy be they're like I don't know it's just over-regulated like okay am I going to tell my congressman that it's
46:43
overregulation offices Senate offices and Governor's offic all all at the national level except for Governor's
46:49
offices as I know a lot of politicians and one thing I know is they are way underresourced uh to do the 25 issues
46:58 that they have to work with and so are you going to expect your politician even who's really well-meaning to figure out
47:04 the solution to difficult electricity policy or nuclear policy the nuclear
47:09
industry basically has a persuasion persuasion problem which is basically the idea that they they always blame
47:15
everything on persuasion and they say basically first we're going to change all the hearts and minds and then we're
47:20 going to put forward a reasonable policy but we can't put forward a policy until we've changed all the hearts and Minds
47:27 and my view is a couple things one is within any given cultural environment
47:33
there is a huge range of possible political outcomes and what I found is one of the highest leverage things you
47:38 can do is maximize the political outcome you want within the current cultural
47:44
constraint so you can you can think of it just as like there's this huge range of things so if you take nuclear for example as a perfect example because at 47:50 the moment we have a lot of enthusiasm for nuclear among Democrats and Republicans so the the advance act which 47:55 is passed by um Congressman I like I guess he's he's uh heading out but Jeff Duncan you know he led this thing and
48:02
that had an overwhelmingly overwhelming majority of people passed and it made some real improvements and he would be
48:07
the first to acknowledge there are a lot more improvements that need to be made but that shows you there's a there's a 48:13
Renaissance in nuclear enthusiasm to the point where yes those anti-nuclear
48:19 forces could be like you could have policies that that cater to them but you could also have radical improvements in
48:26
nuclear and my my view is if you want to maximize your if you want to maximize the outcome in a given cultural window
48:33
you need to know exactly what you want done you need to make it as easy as
48:38
possible for people to do what you think is right and this was this idea I came up with four and a half years ago called
48:44
Energy talking points which was at first for the messaging politicians use but is now primarily for policy and the idea of
48:50
energy talking points was instead of handing them a big book which I've done to you guys right hand them a big book
48:56
by you two big books actually yeah yeah but the the second one much bigger um and fossil future so yeah by the way
49:03
everyone definitely worth reading but if you don't want to read a book we have energy
49:26
thousands of examples so we did is we have thousands of tweet length messages that you can copy and paste they all are
49:33
they're all self-contained so you can copy any of them out of context and they work well they have references Etc we 49:38
now have Alex Epstein doai by the way which is now free so people should check that out so you can actually ask me like 49:44
hey I'm at it's no longer Thanksgiving but whatever your next event is like it's Valentine's Day I'm out with my 49:49
date she she says fossil fuels are bad I think they're good what do I say to her like it'll give you a really good answer well what what's your goal I mean it is
49:55
Valentine's Day yeah yeah how do you want the Night to End right right I'd go with yes honey you make some really good points I hadn't thought of it that way
50:03
you're amazing we'll see we'll see if it we'll we'll ask it and we'll see what it says uh but the the idea was let's make 50:09 it really easy for politicians to say the truth about energy and you saw in 50:15
the Republican campaign different people talking about things like 98% decline in climate related disaster deaths well
50:21
that's partially CU we just plastered that all over the place it wasn't just in a book it's copied and pasted on my
50:27
Twitter and on energy
50:56
you're right figure out exactly what policy you Advocate and make it easy for people to be your ally is there a role
51:03 for the thing teal was talking about where sometimes you just have to do it yes like just put a little nucle like
51:09
get some big brain freak and put a little nuclear reactor in your backyard and just start doing it well that that
51:15
that was at the end of that interview and that thing still bugs me because I I know he's right and I haven't thought of enough good instances of it because he
51:21
talks about the Uber example right where they just did it oh right as opposed to First reaching out all the taxi cab
51:27
drivers to see what they think right ex let's do it let's Workshop it but but I mean one thing you know one thing that
51:33
we're even advocating in terms of our nuclear policy is hey let's excuse me let's um let's devote uh let's let's
51:41
have certain Parcels of doe land which we have all this doe land let's really make them experimentation zones for all
51:48
of these different Technologies and do a lot of the performance testing there so
51:53 if you you know there's a lot of details in how performance testing works but you just basically want to validate anything
51:59
you possibly can validate on government land without a lot of restrictions versus saying oh we have to validate it
52:04 on the site we have to validate it with the first unit that we're building on the site it's one one of many things
52:10 where that that would seem to apply here with nuclear like nine or 10 things that you really need to do to to to Really
52:16
unleash it and I think we've identified those and I think we've done it on electricity and and environmental policy
52:22 and well climate is mostly unwinding it but there are like 10 things that need to be out unwind and then on the whole uh domestic
52:29
production and infrastructure front like all the permitting stuff there's some definite things you need to do there and I think figuring it out has that's the
52:36
hard part I think I I'll relate it to the the political thing because I I found this fascinating thing because I
Alex loves policy
52:42
have a very weird approach to politics like I'm never I have agree with my wife as part of her marriage I'm never going into politics I'm never going into
52:48
government ET this was as the Gilla was grabbing her saying honey it's going to be fine this be if elected I will not
52:55
serve yeah yeah so um like but I you know I
53:01
really want to influence I I really want to influence policy and people like I
53:09
you know I work with a lot of politicians and advise a lot of politicians and often they don't really
53:15
know what to make of me at first like it's really and they're often suspicious and and I get it and and I get it I I
53:22
think this is my current explanation of it I think because most not let's just say most people but some people
53:29
particularly when it comes to political uh motivations they 53:34
profess a self-sacrificial motivation that is phony in some way oh to 53:42
mask a motivation that they think of as self-interested uh and I 53:48
actually I have a motivation that I think is healthily self-interested why 53:53
do I want to change policy well part of is I really like the work of it like I'm just very what I en the process I enjoy
54:01
is thinking about difficult problems that I think will make an impact and so 54:06
I just policy it's weird like I become obsessed with it I never expected to be because I kind of hated Politics as a 54:12
kid but I love this problem solving of figuring out how do you actually get nuclear policy so it'll actually work so 54:18
people are actually safe and we actually have nuclear progress or how do you fix the grid like how do you handle things like solar and wind that are 54:24
intermittent and that could be useful under certain circumstances but if you don't account for their intermittency
54:29
are going to totally blow up the grid there all these really difficult things and for me it's an enjoyable way to 54:35
spend time to think about those things but also I need to feel like I'm actually creating value because I'm 54:41 charging people money in one way or another either they're listening to my speeches or you know we have a lot of 54:46
donors for for the energy talking points I mean it's millions of dollars a year like lots of smart people pay for this 54:52
so mostly for me to hire these smart people but they need to be getting value we all need to be getting value so it's like I also I want to have a process
54:59
that I enjoy but a purpose that I believe in and that's legitimately benefiting the customers so so it's like 55:06 but for me it's it's fun to do and people don't people call this like happy warrior I don't even think of it as a 55:11 warrior but it's like for me it's enjoyable to work with really smart people to solve interesting problems to 55:17
have effects in the world that I think are hugely uh value creating and then to
55:22
make a good living doing it like for me that's my four Ps of career like process purpose people and profit like and so 55:30 when I I get excited about like hey if if the new Administration is interested
55:35 in the electricity policy I came up with for me the excitement is seeing my
55:41 creation manifest it's like seeing something I worked on actually worked just like an inventor sees his invention
55:47 work but I think a lot of people they for them what they think would be thrilling is to be like given public
55:54
credit for it or to have a position like the Secretary of Energy or something like this and for me that just doesn't
56:01
seem too exciting cuz it's like the credit it goes back to the kid with Santa Claus right like if the
56:07 four-year-old who believes in Santa Claus thinks I'm the greatest person in the world or the worst person in the world he doesn't know anything and like
56:13
for me whether what determines whether my work is good is whether it has effects in the world and whether I
56:18
believe those effects are good it's not whether anyone including the president of the United States says I'm good or not like that ultimately I don't think
56:24 that determines reality what somebody else says so to get elected to be a position like it's good it's good if it
56:31 allows you to do the work that you want to do but I just don't have any it just doesn't appeal to me in a very selfish
56:37 way it doesn't appeal to me because I just think of it as approval and like approval isn't that great you know I've
56:42
been thinking a lot about that too because I on the one hand I know the futility of trying to boil the ocean on
56:49 the other hand my Foundation is really in the business of 56:55 trying trying to change the idea that a four-year degree is the best path for the most people yeah and that's a big
57:02 thing that's a it's a big swing well you have changed a lot of people and you have in your domain you you have to
57:09
you're trying to convince people that not only are fossil fuels not the enemy they are our best our last best hope for 57:17
the most people right right these are Big swings and when if I'm really being honest with myself I'm like yeah man I
57:23 want to change I want to change the way the country thinks fundamentally about 57:29
education and then I want to impact slash improve the way the country thinks
57:36 about the definition of a good job Visa a skill train well you know what dude I
57:41
mean who's swinging for the fences now oh is that all you're trying to do is change the way 330 million people think 57:48 and so you know I say to myself sometimes look you call your foundation
57:55
microworks because if you can do it for one person take the win man take that
58:01 and and then and then two and then maybe three but careful because before you
58:07
know it you're you're talking about these big giant ideas and look I envy
58:13
that I just I don't know that I have it in me this interest this issue of people
58:19
who say they want to change the world it is a very uh suspect right in many ways
58:25
cuz because you have to think about it's it's different to say like the way I think of it is I want to you know I mean
58:32
ultimately I think the ultimate thing is like establish energy Freedom or Advance probably Advance energy freedom is the best thing like I want to do work that
58:38
creates more freedom for people to produce and consume energy like that's that's my job but I don't think of it as
58:44
like I'm ever going to reach this final Heavenly ideal like I'm either there I've either like changed the whole world
58:50 or I've done nothing and like I want to do more because that's part of just having goals in the part of the process
58:57 of achievement and enjoying things is that you figure out new things and so part of the thing is yeah I know a lot
59:02
more about energy policy than I did two years ago and in two years I want to know a lot more and I want to know a lot more about about influence but it's
59:09 always sort of the same thing it's like it's it's the work involves setting it's like the process this is true of life
59:15 too I think the process of Life involves and a happy life involves setting new
59:20
goals but it's not you're not living for the goal right it's not just like oh you this is what happens to the Olympians
59:26
right they think of it they're living for the goal and then they get the goal they get a gold medal and then their life totally falls apart versus I know I
59:33
don't think there's any Milestone I'm going to hit where I've made it like I'm already there why people find this weird
59:39
because when I come in and like they can tell that I want to have a lot of impact and that I believe in stuff but it's
59:45
like why are you doing this and it's often do you really want to be secretary do you like secretly want to be
59:50
Secretary of Energy or maybe president or maybe just like make a boatload of money
59:56
from the industry and it's like no I really like what I'm doing now and I really want to see it succeed and for me
1:00:04 that's but I want to enjoy my life that's that's part of it it's not I'm not claiming that I'm doing this so 1:00:09
everyone else has energy and I'm miserable like I'm not doing that at all but that that can be hard for people to 1:00:15
relate to I think often because they they they Pride themselves on saying I'm just doing it for my country like I'm 1:00:20
not doing it for me I'm doing it for everything else but then they kind of know but I really do like 1:00:26 but it often oh I really do like being seen as high status and I like people looking up to me and I like having these 1:00:31 titles but then they have a sense there's something wrong with that but what's really wrong with it is it's Hollow and it's not really 1:00:38
self-interested again you're just disagreeable man you're just dis you're that's what that's my main lesson today
1:00:44
I mean you're basically saying that in the end the opinions of others you get to assign whatever value 1:00:51 to them you want yeah they're for you to learn from but they don't determine by themselves they don't 1:00:58 determine my mental model is like there's reality there's Chuck there's Mike there's me like we don't change 1:01:07 what I mean besides the reality inside of us and what we create but like we don't change the laws of physics right we don't change whether there's a Santa 1:01:12
Claus it's our job to figure it out and so if somebody says something about me that's true then it's true if it's not 1:01:20 it's not but somebody's saying Alex Epstein is the smartest guy in the world or Alex Epstein is an idiot like neither 1:01:26 of those really matters I'm interested in intellectual persuasion so trying to get people who expect to disagree with 1:01:32 me to agree with controversial but true things that's that's my interest in Persuasion so of course what they think 1:01:39
matters I mean right the the fact that I keep going to Socrates but the fact that the Athenians thought he was a menace 1:01:45 and wanted to kill him that a problem and it's a problem for me that that we 1:01:50 have really crappy energy policy and it's certainly a problem for me that I mean we're forting that on the rest of 1:01:56 the world to some extent which I think is just super uh unjust so I'm super interested in Persuasion but for me it's 1:02:02
again a lot of people interested in Persuasion or it's like ultimately it's how to get people to like you or 1:02:09 something but I think in general people people in in Industries this is a 1:02:14
persuasion Point people in industries that are opposed uh by the public so 1:02:19
fossil fuel industry would be one but chemical industry you know Plastics Etc they have a very deep misconception I 1:02:26 think this I want to run this by you and they and it relates to this issue I mentioned the message of the industry is 1:02:31
fossil fuels aren't as bad as they used to be or fossil fuels aren't as bad as you think like that's the message you get from the industry and I think the 1:02:38
why they think this is plausible is they think well if people hate us we can't convince them to like us we can only 1:02:45 convince them to hate us less but I don't think that's true CU I think if 1:02:51 you would acknowledge that you deserve to be hated just to a lesser degree you create create boredom and you create 1:02:57
validation of the idea that you should be hated you let somebody else set the table Yeah so versus if you say well 1:03:04
fossil fuels are good that's at least interesting and it changes the frame so I have two books you know that sold 1:03:10
pretty well the moral case for fossil fuels in fossil future what if they had been the second one why Global human 1:03:15
flourishing requires more oil coal and natural gas not less so both of those are very positive and provocative titles
1:03:21
what if I had written two books called fossil fuels aren't as bad as you think and fossil fuels aren't as bad as they used to be those Underpants are clean 1:03:28
enough how would they how would they got to keep going back to that one how how 1:03:34
called a light Motif it's kind of what I do how would those uh you are the master how would 1:03:40
those sell like nobody would be interested in the perspective at all so this is where it's actually much more 1:03:48
powerful and persuasive if you think you have a good thing that people hate say that you're good don't say that you're 1:03:55
not that bad I me you can see this any mean Donald Trump does this right he does like everyone says it's evil incarnate and he says I'm great that's 1:04:03
different from that's a lot different from oh yeah I'm not as bad as you think right that's exactly right um okay where 1:04:12
can people go to get this thing that is now just suddenly been made available so 1:04:17
the best place is just follow the substack Alex epsteins substack do.com because that's where I will release it 1:04:24
Alex epsteins stack.com and then I mentioned resources for you know your Valentine's Day dates and everything
1:04:29 else energy 1:04:55
a little stoic in you you're pushing the rock up the hill and you're doing it with great good humor and just the right
1:05:01
amount of disagreeability which I love awesome all right I'm going to tell my 1:05:06
wife I'm disagreeable and it's and I learned it's a good thing and give my regards to the gorillas thanks folks
1:05:12
we'll talk at you next week if you like what you heard and even 1:05:17
if you don't won't you please you please pretty please 1:05:22
subscri well I hate to beg and I hate to but please pretty freaking 1:05:30 please please please subcribe 1:05:39 [Music]
Alex’s thoughts on persuasion 0:00
fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous they took a dangerous climate and made it safe let's
0:05
look at headlines from the 1800s and early 1900s where in a given year millions of Chinese people will die
0:12
because of a famine caused by a drought drought related death has gone down by 99 about over 99% over the last century
0:21
where's the headline right where's the headline it should be every day we did it again fossil exactly like fossil
0:26
fuels people made us safer than ever from climate
0:32
Chuck came in and said Alex is here and he brought a change of clothes just in case and I said just in case of what
0:40
what would happen I just you know sometimes people have opinions you know whatever they do I do the prageru videos
0:45 they're like bring several outfits and we have such a strong that is such a different world yeah but you know what
0:52 they reach good grief man how many how many people did your video over there reach do you even know it is in
0:59
somewhere in the 10 of millions I I don't think it's as much as yours well I mean not that I'm keeping track but um 1:05
Chuck go ahead and Google that for me he here's probably 100 million but yeah no it's it's nuts although what's 1:11 interesting is sometimes what you get recognized for like I get recognized for those a certain amount but then other 1:18 things like other things you might get disproportionately recognized for right 1:23 how much of what you do today do you think of in terms of persuasion 1:31 and uh I mean OB obviously advocacy but 1:36 the business of persuading has to be somewhere near the uh the top of your to-do list so historically it's been 1:43
focused on primarily how do people think about energy like what's their thinking methodology their assumptions that kind 1:50 of thing so are they thinking of energy in an even-handed way where they're you know looking carefully at pros and cons 1:56
of different forms of energy versus you know being super biased against fossil fuels bias against nuclear and then I 2:02
have certain conclusions that I think come from my method of thinking and the facts like hey we should actually be 2:07
using more fossil fuels you know the world is way too poor and way too energy poor and needs way more energy including
2:13 from fossil fuels uh I'd say now though my focus is still on those things but 2:19 more than anything trying to convince the government to adopt certain policies
2:24 and in particular you know we're in early December now we have a very energy friendly 2:30
Administration coming in and they say they want to unleash American Energy and for the last year and a half I've been 2:36
preparing for that in case that happened with trying to lay out hey here here are the exact policies that I and the 2:42
smartest people I've ever talked to believe would actually do this and I I really like this mode I wish it were 2:49
always like this where there were actually an opportunity to make the ideas real do you feel like it's been a 2:56
transition from playing defense to offense to a certain degree whereas for a while and I'm not I'm I'm 3:02
not sure what the default position is but it it seems like the conversation have has to start with well wait a 3:09
minute what if fossil fuels aren't the enemy MH before you can get to hey wait 3:15 a minute what if fossil fuels are in fact the last best hope of civilized 3:21
Life as we know it like that's a that's a good line right I mean but but but that's a big curve and so everybody not 3:29 everybody in the country but it seems like the 330 million of us who are all equally 3:35 addicted to the very fuels we're talking about have a different relationship with 3:40 that addiction and so from a persuasive standpoint you know like do you have to 3:48
judge the room do you have to understand who you're talking to before you engage them on this topic or are you just 3:55
always singing out of the same hym book basically the same way no it's not basic the same way but I would say I'm always 4:01 playing offense in the sense of I'm interested in like I think certain things are good and that's what I'm 4:07 focused on and then I think things are bad in contrast to what I think is good so so to if you look at historically the 4:14 fossil fuel industry if you were to summarize their message there I think there are basically two accurate summaries of their message we're not as 4:21
bad as we used to be or we're not as bad as you think we are right right right 4:27 it's the old argument of hey these under pants are clean there's only a little bit of poop in them okay you should put 4:33 them on anyway is that an old argument it's it's one I've made I've been hearing it for many years 4:39 so well I mean I just think that it's inter like how our own standards change 4:45
with regard to say cleanliness like how clean do you want your clothes is it
4:50
good enough you know how clean do you want your environment how clean do you want your underpants I mean you can walk
4:56
around in a used diaper or you can get them right out of the dryer without even the hint of an ancient
5:02
skidm Mark you like where how do you know it's okay to put them on yes so I'm not sure how much I'm
5:09
going to be able to work with that that particular analogy but I have in terms of laying offense the it's the you know
5:17
so so my way of thinking has been hey like I'm not I only support like it's
5:22
not like I had a background in fossil fuels or something like this or I I like I came from the womb or even my
5:28
education wanting to support fil fuels I probably told this last time like I came from Chevy Chase Maryland a very liberal
5:34
kind of place I didn't learn anything positive about fossil fuels going to the allegedly top schools in the country or
5:39
this kind of thing I had no relationship with the industry or anything like that I was basically a philosopher who really
5:45
believe strongly and thinking about things in a very evenhanded and precise way and it was just pretty clear to me
5:52
once I learned a little bit about energy fossil Fields have these amazing benefits that we have no near-term replacement for like being able to feed
5:59
8 billion people with modern fertilizer and Modern Diesel powerered Agriculture and nobody's talking about these
6:05
benefits and they're only talking about negatives and the main negative they're talking about is climate danger and yet
6:11
one of the main things we do with fossil fuels is neutralize all kinds of climate danger which is why empirically we're
6:16
safer than ever from climate so just with that perspective like I thought of this as like as a pro-human philosopher
6:24
who late pretty late in life like age 27 had his eyes open to the facts I was like this is amazing so I think of it as 6:31
this amazing technology that's what I thought of it from the beginning so I didn't have this perspective of necessary evil I had a perspective of
6:39
superior good and definitely not an addiction but a healthy uh a healthy
6:44
choice so that that's and that's generally my orientation it's like I go I fight for things I like and then if
6:51
I'm fighting against things it's because first and foremost they're depriving us
6:56 of the good I'm never I just find this necessary thing it's an incoherent idea like if it's evil it's not really
The balance between tolerance and flourishing
7:03
necessary it's sort of like the U the flourishing thing yeah great
7:08
conversation by the way I listened to you and Peter teal not long ago oh which one oh god well the one where he was
7:13 challenging me is the funniest conversation Chuck you should check it out because the two guys who
7:19 fundamentally agree but spend an incredible amount of time in the conversation really trying to explain
7:25
the Nuance of the potential disagreement that might exist prior parthe that may or may not imp the
7:33 fat part of the bat we're not quite yet but like two big brains really trying to 7:38 drill down and and listening to it uh just reminded me of how important 7:45 language is you know the words that we choose in not just specific technical 7:51 words but back to the persuasion thing you know Teal's persuasive in a lot of
7:57 ways talk about a Jagged Little Pill right like you know how to get I'll pay you
8:02
$100,000 not to go to college uhhuh right that was such a great example of 8:07 one of the points he was trying to make to you which was sometimes you know when 8:12 big brains get bogged down with the wonkiness of an idea we forget to just 8:18 freaking do it yeah just do a thing that might result in the need for forgiveness 8:24
instead of permission but do the thing you know you have to make some kind of J
8:29
gesture to cut through all the Clutter I just thought that was a really interesting exchange you guys had yes
8:35
yeah so I think it's called like Peter deal challenges Alex up and it came out because we were have these dinners we
8:41
were have these dinners and he's like I disagree with you on like I don't like the concept of human flourishing and we
8:47
were already I think three hours in to this dinner and needed to go to bed so I'm like let's just do a show on this
8:53
let's just let's just have it out cuz he is you know he's been very generous in supporting both my books he did both my
8:59
book launches you know he's been very praising and promoting the book this is a guy who's very generous to me very
9:04
helpful to me but I thought it'd be really interesting to see we also you know probably at least half the time we
9:11
talk we're arguing about something yeah uh which I find interesting and so I thought people would find that
9:16
interesting and and I want to see like I want somebody smart to challenge me my whole issue is I don't like that voler
9:23
thing about you know God grant me one prayer make my enemies ridiculous I find it very annoying my enemies are
9:28
ridiculous right would like some better enemies well this is the point I was trying to get to I'm I'm weary of people
9:35
who are so clearly on opposite sides just stripping down and having a tickle fight right I mean it's just like God
9:42
there there's no like we're never going to get to some sort of 9:47
dayon when there's that much distance at least not in the course of a single conversation you guys fundamentally
9:53
agree I think yeah on a lot of stuff for sure on the big stuff but but but talk about this weird relationship with with 10:02
flourishing and and I wasn't quite sure what to take from it because on its face
10:07 it seems like such a nice thing but unintended consequences I guess and
10:12
applying it to the masses well so I you know I'm very much on the side of I think this is a a great concept that 10:19
should be should be used and defended and pursued in a certain way and so I I 10:25
I mean it's always dangerous to summarize someone else's argument who isn't isn't here but also fun CU you 10:30
know he can't interrupt you I try to I try to do my best but I think what what he'd point to which is valid is that 10:37
there are people who use the concept of human flourishing to pursue goals that he and I would disagree with and in 10:44
particular he brought up the bioethicist named Leon Cass who was very prominently featured in President George W Bush's 10:51
bioethics Council which it what was his book um he jeez I used to be so familiar 10:56
with these I don't remember what's his name again Leon Cass I mean he has multiple books but he's you know both I 11:05
mean Peter and I have only explored our views on biotechnology to some degree but I think in general we both believe 11:10
strongly that there's a lot of good Innovation to be done in biotechnology and that this quote 11:16
unquote bioethics movement was in many ways anti-technology which is not to say that you can't have a prot technology 11:23
bioethics movement this is actually one of the first Concepts I explored in my early 20s was how to have a pro 11:29
pro-human and pro technology but historically it's been very anti-technology and then often socialist 11:35
so it's either we shouldn't play God this just very broad mandate that would of course have prohibited anesthetics 11:41
and birth control and all of this stuff or it's we need to make sure everything is evenly distributed before we can do 11:47 it which just means you're not going to right which means you're not going to do it and so his view is well people talk 11:52 about human flourishing is a term that's sufficiently vague where people can say
11:57
depriving us of life life-saving Innovations is somehow consistent with flourishing because there's some 12:04
spiritual damage it'll do if you can prevent your child from getting some disease in the future therefore we 12:10 shouldn't do it so what he's objecting to I think is the idea of flourishing has a material and a mental part of it 12:18
that's what I like about it in integrates material and mental well-being but when you deal in the 12:23
realm of the mental there's a room for a lot of flexibility in terms of what people can import into it so they can 12:30
say well our mental well-being is better if we don't play God cuz it's sort of bad for our soul to play like they say 12:36
these very vague things and say it's against flourishing and my view is well 12:42
that's true but we still need a concept to to connote this phenomenon that we 12:48
all really want of mental and material well-being because that's really what everyone wants I mean I often think of
12:55
life in terms of what do we want out of life is like an enduring enjoyable 13:01
experience I think most people would like their lives to be that most people 13:07
yes this is the thing I the more I think about it the more I 13:12 come back to this micro macro thing where flourishing or really any good 13:19 thing makes a certain amount of sense when you apply it to the individual and a different kind of sense when you try 13:26 and apply it to the masses yeah and and it's so fossil fuels is certainly on the 13:32
list of things when you're talking about anesthesia and you know I think of Christian Scientists or people who might 13:38
say no no I think I think I have a better chance of flourishing if I keep some of these technical breakthroughs at 13:45
arms length you could even talk about vaccines I'd say people want in a sense part of them wants their life to be an 13:51
enduring enjoyable experience but they certainly have lots of beliefs that get in the way of that and I think many
13:56
dogmas get in the way of that and certainly I think the Christian Science one is a very straightforward one where 14:02
people uh you know will die prematurely or have their kids die prematurely or certainly suffer
14:08
unnecessarily uh be you know I I don't know the exact logic of like you know are they getting to heaven or whatever
14:13
because they don't take aspirin I don't know the exact thing but I know that it's not really working to forgo modern
14:21
medicine right and I would assume you also know that from a from a freedom
14:27
standpoint a ryian stand point for instance like you okay well that might not be a super smart choice for you yeah
14:34 or your family but hey you know freedom is still a thing oh yeah all right but 14:40 then when you get into the world of vaccines where your choice might impact a bunch of other people or the Earth
14:48 where our impact on the earth or at least as I understand the argument you know Greta might be saying look we the
14:55
more we impact the Earth the worse we are the worse we make it for ourselves but really our duty of care is to the 15:02
Earth and so so you've got this sort of benevolent mother naturey 15:08
anthropomorphized thing right that exists I think in the minds of a lot of well-intended people but once we really 15:14
start to talk about the impact of fossil fuels you've got this sort of fan 15:19 bargain you have to somehow navigate you know is it like you have to think about it in 15:26
the way a politician thinks about it in terms of what can I sell persuasively to the largest number of people if we want 15:32 to change hearts and Minds that's the macro but when you bring it back to the micro it's still like what is my 15:38 personal relationship with oil and natural gas what is my personal relationship with with health and 15:43 fitness my personal relationship with littering right and so I'm just 15:50
continually interested in in in the incredible scale and scope of the 15:56
argument you're trying to make and whether you're talking to the masses were one at a time one Concept in 16:02
general that's really important when when you think of this idea of flourishing is the concept of individual 16:09 rights and how that relates to flourishing because I think of like I'm very much an individualist I actually 16:15
don't think it's remotely coherent to be anything other than an individualist uh that's a whole
16:20
discussion too but um I mean we exist as individuals we sort of live and die and suffer and have joy as individuals like 16:28
people talk people think about like collectives and oh we should sacrifice this to this and they act like this
16:33 makes sense doesn't make any sense to it doesn't it's unjust and it just doesn't make any sense like why you know I mean 16:39
I'll just give you the most uh the most urgent example to me like I have a son who's 5 and a half months old
16:46
good-looking kid shared some photos oh okay yeah handsome he is a good-looking kid um and like the I just even thinking 16:54 of at any point in his life somebody saying oh the mass don't like you so 17:00
they get to execute you like Socrates right which is a kind of utilitarian Collective like that
17:06 just that just is to the core of my being the most corrupt thing ever or the
17:11 idea that like he is a pawn of everybody else and his life like he should be miserable so other people should be so
17:17
other people can be happy like I just don't believe this at all so I think when we're thinking about flourishing we need to recognize hey we're all 17:23
individuals and we want rules of society that allow us to all flourish as 17:29
individuals in harmony with one another so I reject this idea of humanity is an organism we're all individuals and we're 17:35 thinking ethically and politically we have to recognize that fact uh and so 17:41 the concept of IND individual rights is crucial because it's basically says how do you define the sphere of action that
17:47
individuals can take to take the actions they need to flourish without interfering with others and and this 17:54
solves a lot of the supposed Collective problems like in terms of uh you know
18:00 polluting somebody's land right it's like well you say you flourish by having a hog farm that pollutes on my land well
18:05 that's interfering with my freedom to pursue my life and to flourish and then
18:10
there are harder examples like air pollution right but even there you can say hey there's a certain we can study
18:16 it and there's a certain amount of air pollution that's fine that's benign and there's a certain amount that Aggregates 18:22
and it's unhealthy and we need to basically figure out at any given time what's the level that sort of 18:29
healthiest but also consistent with us flourishing in all the other ways so you take 18 I use this example in fossil 18:35
future like coal industry in the 1800s right or let's just take the invention of fire right fire has side effects so
18:43
should we have never used fire was fire a violation of individual rights because your neighbors got smoke no right
18:50 because at the time you like the the ability to make fire with smoke was totally essential to flourishing and you
18:56 would totally be willing to tolerate a certain amount of smoke because that prevented you from freezing to death and by the way because civilizations don't
19:03
progress at the same speed and at the same time you still have what a couple billion people on the planet yeah whose
19:10
primary source of energy is burning wood or yeah and they should be free to 19:15 do that although we should do nothing to get in the way of them using better things like like fossil fuels but this 19:22 is like this is what it means I think to think about flourishing is to think about people as individuals and to think
19:27 about at a given time in a given economic and technological State like
19:32
how do you define rights so that everybody has the opportunity to flourish and with something like the global warming issue and the Greta issue
19:40
what you need to do is look objectively at what are the real dangers as well as benefits that come from increasing the 19:46 amount of CO2 in the atmosphere you absolutely cannot have this religious Mother Earth view that you you didn't
19:52 endorse but you alluded to whereas I call it the delicate nurturer right where the Earth exists in this stable 19:58
it's stable it's sufficient it gives us what we need as long as we're not too greedy it's safe and then our impact
20:03
ruins everything that's a primitive religious Dogma like the Earth is dynamic deficient and dangerous and we 20:09
need to impact it so if you look at the climate system from the perspective of what are the actual impacts of more CO2
20:16
what are the benefits and what are the challenges that come with that and you compare that to the level of resilience
20:22
and Mastery that you get from having a lot of energy what I think is definitive is just the resilience and Mastery
20:28
matter far more than any of the new challenges the word you used before with regard to um the Christian Scientist I I Dogma of energy
20:35
think is really interesting a Dogma yeah so talk about the Dogma that exists in 20:42 the religion of energy MH h on both sides if you want but but it it feels to 20:49
me that that my friends typically who who have this benevolent Earth sort of 20:58
default believe very very deeply in it it's not just a it's just not it's not just a 21:04
notion uhhuh it's not just a hunch it's a like they somehow or another it 21:10
metastasized yeah if you want to take the hierarchy or the the the like the line of things that are difficult I
21:17 would say like religion people are born with political party and affiliation 21:22 people are born with I would say those are far more difficult to change than
21:27
this delicate nurture thing although I agreee it is very embedded it's one of these things it's very embedded but it's 21:34
fragile because it's so it's absurd if you study it and it and it trades on 21:40
being scientific which is both its strength and its undoing because if you trade on being scientific you get the 21:45 status of being scientific but then you have the vulnerability of applying scientific method and seeing that it's
21:51
total BS so if you just point out to somebody example well let's just take the issue of of climate right the idea
21:57
that in the 1800s we had a perfect climate right we had 270 280 parts per 22:03
million of CO2 that was somehow perfect and we ruined the climate and now the 22:08 climate is angry at us and therefore we're experiencing unprecedented climate death and damage okay well let's look at 22:16
headlines from the 1800s and early 1900s where in a given year millions of Chinese people will die because of a
22:23
famine caused by a drought uh and drought related deaths are regularly 22:29
under 10,000 per year now drought related death has gone down by 99 about 22:35
over 99% where's over the last century where's the headline right where's the headline it should be every day that we 22:41
should that we did it again fossil exactly like fossil fuels people made us safer than ever from climate once again
22:48 but and you the same thing is true with sto when you just think of it common sense oh yeah I guess I guess there's 22:53
always drought but if you have irrigation and crop transport then Dr rout isn't that big a problem and oh by 23:00
the way both of those things take energy or storms oh wait storms used to just totally wipe people out I mean one 23:07
example I think of is the same storm that now could be like the I mean we live in lagona beach so we don't have 23:13
many storms but like let's say we visit the DC area which we're just visiting and there's a storm like that could be a romantic evening with my wife and me
23:20
right and the same storm where the power let's light a candle well not even the power though right even the power
23:27
requires a certain amount of dysfunction to lose the power at this point I mean we can be so resilient I mean we have
23:32
people who can keep the electricity on in Singapore they can keep it on in Africa they can keep it on in Antarctica
23:38
you just see that what really matters for the the climate is naturally barely
23:43
livable and what matters is our degree of of Mastery you see this for our whole environment again so you can you can
23:50
take the idea that you know I put it as fossil fuels didn't take a safe climate and make it dangerous they took a
23:55
dangerous climate and made it safe and it's same thing for resources people think oh we had nature gave us all these
24:01
resources and then we've just squandered them and you know now we've eaten all the slices of pizza now we have to eat
24:07
the box and we're all going to we're all going to die right and it's now wait a second like are the cavemen who they 24:14
were very few of them and they had very few usable resources and now we have too many resources to the point where we're 24:19 all getting fat like that's our problem in terms of food resources oh man so so 24:24
um I mean present company excluded of course well it's nice you to say but just chuckling because this uh this just 24:30
came up um I mean Bobby Kennedy said uh show me a photo of yany stadium in 24:37
1970 uhuh sold out and go ahead and find the find the fat people good luck right 24:44
same with Woodstock same with Woodstock right today it's like you can't not I mean some something has happened and I 24:52
I've had a chance to talk with him a couple times this year he he invited me into his world
24:58
okay yeah uh and it's not my bag you know I'm not a political animal but we do agree on some things and and one of
25:05 the things is this relationship that exists in my mind anyway I guess it's kind of a correlation of sorts and maybe
25:12 there's nothing to it but uh Fitness is different than health
25:19 like we hear about health and fitness all of the time but the fitness to me goes back to sort of the
25:25
individual you know you can do a lot of things to be physically fit Health has this larger patina that sort of it's
25:33
more macro okay well so too green and climate is macro littering
25:43 and some forms of pollution with a small p is is micro you know and so it's like
25:49 when I think about that keep America beautiful campaign with the Weeping Indian yeah that that wasn't an attempt
25:55 to get people to think about the climate and to avoid an apocalypse that's 26:01
supposedly coming in 12 years that was an attempt to pick up your freaking Big Gulp yeah right but I would say there
26:08
you mean so in the health and the fitness thing I think they can one is a valid subset of the other whereas I
26:15 think the anti- littering thing is actually not a subset of the anti-impact
26:21 movement yeah go with that for a minute because it's because it's I I think of a lot of I mean at the core I think what I
26:26
am is I'm a pro-human Environmental philosopher so I have a I have a I want
26:31 us to relate to our environment in a way that benefits us which doesn't at all
26:36
mean we're hostile to the rest of nature but we have a pro-human relationship with the rest of nature so 26:42 the littering example would be well obviously we want an environment that doesn't that minimizes ugliness let 26:49 alone waste that could harm us but by the same token just as we want to elim
26:54
we want to let's say minimize because you can't always eliminate healthily these kinds of things things but you want to minimize that kind of 27:00 contamination you also want to minimize the contamination of nature which is 27:05
massive including you want to minimize the danger of infectious diseases including you want to take advantage of 27:11
Technologies such as vaccines and antibiotics where they are in fact net beneficial which I think is the vast 27:17 majority of the time yeah so it's it's you have to have a like you you're 27:23 thinking about I want the world to be an amazing place for human beings to live and and to me the mistake people make 27:30
which I think this will probably resonate with you is they have this artificial they have this separation of 27:36 the human as sort of unnatural and not our environment yeah like we're not part of the chain right we're not and I think 27:43 of it as no us building you know this no I didn't build this podcast Studio but you guys building this podcast studio is 27:49
like a bird building a nest and that's you making your environment better and just as it would be absurd to say it's
27:56
bad for the bird's environment to make it Nest or it's bad for the beaver's environment to make a dam it's absurd to 28:02 say for a human it's bad for our environment to have roads it's bad for our environment to have factories but that's what they say they use the term
28:08 the environment because they want to separate environment from the species that's thinking about their environment
28:14 and I I'm try I never use the environment I always use our environment because I'm stressing whether it's a factory or a beautiful ocean it's all
28:22 there for us to enjoy that's what we're I mean that's that's how we should not that somebody gave it to us but that
28:27
that's how we should should think of it just as a lion thinks of its environment as like it wants a lot of uh yeah know I
28:32 was in um for honeymoon I was in um in uh Tanzania and and Uganda like the lion
28:38
wants like a good environment for a lion is is The Great Migration right where it can just be lazy and eat all these W to
28:45
beast and just hang out all day in a good environment for us is one where we've industrialized production so we 28:51
can just make all these amazing machines that do 70 times more physical work than we do and we can just sort of use our
28:58
minds and have have fun so I think of it all as we've this is all part of having a good environment and so just I oppose
29:04
littering for the same reason that I like making this podcast studio for the same reason I like going into the ocean
29:10
and I think most people separate they have the separation of there's like nature stuff and human stuff and I think
29:16
it's all human stuff where where'd you take your wife Tanzania Tanzania and Uganda Uganda in the springtime you're Alex’s honeymoon with gorillas
29:23
such a romantic by the way Uganda is sort of shockingly beautiful I was that 29:28 was very unexpected even how I mean that's that's like a lush one of the 29:33
lushest paradise places have you seen chip Empire yet no I haven't seen it oh my god dude but I but you know we go
29:39
there to see the the gorillas my my wife actually got grabbed by one of the gorillas cuz she's very good with kids and the the gorilla child was taken by 29:48 my wife and the mom didn't like it anyway it's uh no harm done but it was 29:53 yeah that's an amazing thing if you could do it which by the way I'm sorry did you say that your wife was grabbed by a gorilla yes yeah he just kind of 29:59
glances it's all part of the honeymoon experience if you're in the Epstein home it was a it was a it was brief it was
30:07
brief but it was it was there I just would like to hear that unpacked a little and I'll send you the footage um
30:13 that's that that's even better but but it's I mean it's yeah it's basically what I mentioned is that I mean you're
30:19
very so so the way it works it's it's primarily in uh Rwanda and Uganda and you can also do it in Congo but Congo is 30:26
a little bit treacherous to go for for honey bit uh so um we were I mean that's 30:32
an fascinating place by the way in terms of like the most amazing environment if you have the right kind of civilization
30:39
versus a terrorizing environment if you don't but like in terms of resources raw materials scenery like that could be one
30:45 of the greatest places on Earth and it is not one of the greatest greatest places on Earth so Uganda does not have
30:50
an ideal government at all but it's a much better government and uh so we were able to visit there safely and yeah you
30:56
go you go visit these gorillas and you're generally told to keep maybe 10 ft away from them so you're you're very
31:03
very close to them and but of course you don't control them it's not like there there's no glass so yeah my wife was
31:10
just staring at this little child don't stare yeah well I think she thinks it was worth I mean she felt like she's
31:17
forming a bond and she's very good at bonding with she's always been very good at bonding with children and at least
31:22
this is our interpretation yeah the mom I guess saw this and didn't like it and just went likeo and then that was it and
31:29
grabbed her by the neck no no not not the neck sorry no no uh just just I think it was her ankle it was her ankle
31:35 and it was just it was just quick I mean we had other people who were deserving of adverse contact from the gorillas uh
31:42 including yeah I mean there was this silver back and just the this woman the we went two days I if you ever go by the 31:48
way go at least two days because you only get to go for an hour and it's just such a surreal experience but yeah we
31:53
went there and this woman is just she's prioritizing her good camera shot over
31:59 the comfort of a silver back I don't that doesn't end well yeah and so the silver and so I believe it was a 32:05
Silverback just sort of brushed right past her and bumped her out of the way so fortunately these gorillas are very
32:11
used to humans so the downside risk is is pretty low but I I don't know why you would play with it also it's there you
32:17
know you want to be nice to them I mean you want to see them on their own so that was our experience well I mean good
32:23 for you man that is that is not sandals for the honeymoon that is a is a whole
32:28
mean I assume you've done this I I don't think there's any vacation that compares to safaris and it's and by the way this
32:34 is another reason why there's this harmony of the industrial you know the industrial pro-human society and the
32:42
enjoyment of nature like people who are poor don't get to enjoy nature they certainly get don't get to enjoy the
32:48
incredible diversity uh of Nature and so people would say even like oh you're talking about going to Safari like you
32:55
have to be rich to do that that's an elitist thing yeah I want everyone to be rich though yeah yeah so I'm not just
33:00
trying to keep it to people who like sell a lot of books and give a lot of speeches and can afford to go there like
33:07
the cheaper energy get I mean it's really an energy problem ultimately like the cheaper energy gets the cheaper it
33:13
is to travel the cheaper it is to have accommodations there like ultimately want a world where not only people in 33:18
those places can be wealthy but we can just sort of trapes around the world super cheaply because we just have all these amazing machines and energy costs
33:26
one10 or 100 as much that's going to have to be nuclear which another reason to be pro- nuclear when you have all 33:31
this abundance and safety and opportunity as the given it can feel you're the worst kind of conservative
33:37
because you feel like oh everything that I like about this world is natural and everything I don't like or I imagine I
33:43
don't like like the changing climate that I'm afraid of even though I don't really have a sense of it what's going on like I don't like that but there
33:50
people's view of the delicate nurture is really the delicate nurturer that is civilization like that's what they
33:56 really are counting on that's what I look well-intended people can be equally
34:02
passionate and certain about one of two things they can be passionate and certain that their mission is to save
34:09
the Earth because without it we have nothing or they can be urgent and 34:15
passionate about getting an industrial revolution to the three billion people who haven't had one yet 34:22 thereby increasing everybody's odds for a different level of flourishing but again it's just back to what's the price
34:29 what what is going to happen to the Earth if we it it'll get better so I think of that second one is improving
34:35
the Earth like they want to save the Earth from human beings I want to keep improving the Earth for human human
34:40 beings yeah so I I don't think of it as yeah they're not saving anything they're just regressing I mean they're it's such
34:47 a perverse view because and I mean people hold it innocently But ultimately The View that human impact is a bad
34:53 thing to be eliminated that's one of the most evil views ever it's intrinsically wrong for us to change the earth it's
34:59
just as if there's a commandment Thou shalt not impact the Earth and it's so evil because it singles out humans as a
35:07
uniquely Evil source of impact like they're not against Beaver impact or bear impact or lion impact and they
35:14
don't even seem to care that much when sort of inanimate nature like climate and storms and stuff ruin things their
35:19
sole focus is human impact so if you saw a creature like this but instead of being against human impact they were 35:26
against bare impact you would think this is a perverse person like you have it out for the Bears like your whole goal
35:32
in like I I'm an like I'm an anti- bearest right and they're like they want to like I don't like the way that bears 35:39
are impacting the forest and I don't like the way they move around and obviously this person wants to kill all the Bears right if they're if they're 35:44
against bear impact that means you want if you're against impact you're against the thing and you think like why do you have this this bear I don't know the
35:51
right thing but bar enthropy right I'm making up a term right no it wouldn't be bar anthropy Miss bear Miss bear okay I
35:57
can't you know you know what I mean like the equivalent of misen throp a misanthrope or a misogynist but but they're a a baryn you got you got
36:04
yourself a barog somebody's gonna in the comments put a much better version of this because I never came up with this I
36:10
need to come up with it but so I'll be grateful to that person but this this the barest equivalent of the misanthrope
36:16
you'd think was insane and yet we think it's normal to hate the impact of our own species and it's not about loving
36:23
anything else this is I was on Jordan Peterson's podcast and we had a long disc about this CU he was thinking of it
36:29
I think more as the greens just want the Earth to be green but then he pointed out wait a second why don't they like it
36:35 that CO2 has made the earth a lot Greener and my point is they're not about a green earth they're about a
36:41
dehumanized earth and if Earth on its own becomes Greener they're okay with that but if dehumanizing earth makes the
36:47
Earth Browner they're thrilled with that too so it's really the brown movement because they're against human life which 36:53
makes the earth a lot Greener so this is weird dude I did a a special and unauthorized dirty job special probably
37:00
10 years ago who authorizes or unauthorized Dirty Jobs besides you well there's this network I work for and they
37:06
had many many chiefs and I see and the show was just kind of running on its own
37:12
and doing very well and nobody gave us much trouble and then we started doing these specials where we would look back
37:19
and maybe you know we started with let's take a look at all the crazy high places and then the claustrophobic places let's
37:25
take a look at families with dirty jobs dirty DNA I call that one uh let's take 37:31
a look at the unintended consequences of homeostatic risk and and compensatory
37:36
risk in our brains that are affected by safety protocols and I called that safety third where I made the case that
37:42
complacency is often an unintended consequence of a safety first approach
37:48
to life which creates in people's minds this idea that somebody cares more about them than they do right so all of these
37:56
so like I'm like weighing in on stuff way out of my pay grade but I'm using 38:01
Dirty Jobs experiences to Cobble together specials that make these
38:07 philosophically adjacent Big Ideas it it gives them some Credence and I start to
38:13 make my case from the dirt on these ideas my favorite one was called Brown
38:19
before green and I used a pig farmer who who actually said that to me he he on a rant
38:28
this Bob combs in in in Vegas he's like what's with green man I mean why why
38:34
green it's such a stupid color I'm like what do you mean he goes what I mean yellow like the sun sure blue like the
38:42
Seas right but green the color of rot Gang Green The Color of Money the color
38:48
of Envy well money is good but I guess it's not even real money gold is real money yeah right but we started to riff
38:55 you know and he's like look every single thing that's green grows from something
39:01 brown brown is Primal Brown is the earth Brown is where you start so suddenly I'm
39:10
doing an environmental special on Dirty Jobs called Brown before green where I'm
39:16
basically looking at farmers who are getting a lot of grief for doing things that run a foul of the Greenies but in
39:22 fact are rooted in good solid conservation on a on a real simple
39:28
individual level okay what the heck have you done here man what is this thing
Alex’s energy freedom platform
39:33 you've put together and why don't you do it so this thing is yeah and it'll be public well by the time people see this
39:39
hopefully it'll be public it's called the um the energy Freedom platform mhm
39:44
and maybe the the best way to think of this is ultimately in order for all these
39:51
good things to happen in energy so I'm saying fossil fuels are good nuclear's good really any form of energy that's cost effective good ultimately what has 39:59
to happen is we need the government to have policies that allow you know the kinds of people you study all these 40:06
heroic industrialists that I think of as heroic like ultimately we just need government policies that allow them to
40:12
do what they do best and to figure out like who give me an example of a heroic industrialist well I mean walking Among 40:19
Us in terms of the industry well actually I mean one of my favorites at the moment is Chris Wright who just became nominated for secretary of energy
40:25
and friend of mine and was he when I was asked for recommendations he I I recommended people for the top 50 40:32
positions in energy and he was my number one recommendation for any position so I was like a so I mean he's somebody who I
40:38
mean in the oil and gas industry he's just not just but he's just a very good CEO he's but but for me that's a heroic
40:45 thing to do so there other things that make him very admirable he's a very principled guy he's he speaks up with 40:51
basically the same ideas I have but running a public company which is a lot more downside risk than me right me
40:57
I get frowns and criticisms on social media and sell a lot of books like it's
41:03
people think it's hard being me it's not hard as long as you don't have an insane desire to be liked by idiots it's very 41:11
easy to be me that's that's all I want is the 41:17
approval of idiots that's but that's the thing people just a little riff like people are you know you see these 41:23
celebrities of present company excluded and they' be like oh know I get a 41:28
hundred positive comments on Twitter but then it there's one negative and it ruins my day back to my Underpants
41:36
Theory it doesn't need to be full of Scat it just just a little bit you'd look at it and go nope not putting them
41:43 on but it's it's one little comment but it's like what does it mean a negative comment it's like it's either true or 41:50 not or partially true so if it's true or partially true it's a gift cuz then you can learn something from it presumably
41:57 you want to be right not just be what you were before not just be validated and whatever you happened to start with so that's easy if if you're remotely
42:05
responsible human being that that like you should want to know the truth and Advocate the truth so somebody points out mistakes which certainly happened
42:10 with me before and they're right that's a gift and then if they're wrong though 42:15 and they like who cares so I really think of it as if a four-year-old makes 42:20
fun of me for not believing in Santa Claus like when somebody says something like you're a climate change denial or
42:27
you're a shill for the fossil fuel like anything that's just absurdly false and I know it's false like again if the
42:33 four-year-old comes up to me and says or even the 40-year-old's like you know Santa Claus is real like I proved her the Earth is really flat like it it
42:40 doesn't register so again it's actually very easy to be an advocate like as long 42:47 as you can are persuasive enough to find a bunch of people who like your ideas it's a very easy life being an advocate
42:55 of controversial ideas and I want give people the memo on this because I want more people to have the quote unquote
43:01
courage to Advocate controversial ideas which I don't think takes all that much Courage the quality I think that you're 43:09 talking around uh I think it was Gladwell who wrote about it it's it's disagreeability or 43:16 disagreeableness uh well but it's a compliment you know to get things done
43:22 to to be um to be out front of an issue or to be saying a great truth that has 43:29
not yet been embraced as truth M requires you to be okay with people
43:35 disagreeing with you whether they do it politely or not is neither here nor there um you're just indifferent you
43:43
don't care if if you know the truth is on your side you don't care nearly as much as a normal person would so is that
43:50 is that what is it do you think it's level of conviction in one's own view that's the lever there I think in part
43:57
you know I think it's I I think that's probably that makes sense to me well if
44:02 it goes too far or if the other side were being less charitable they would couch it as arrogance or some kind of
44:08
hubris that's happened of course one thing I've had it's not really imposture syndrome because I knew about it but 44:14 even when I wrote fossil future chapter 10 is about energy freedom and it's it's about okay if you agree with me on 44:20 fossil fuels you want us to be free to use fossil fuels and other forms of energy what's the specific blueprint and 44:26
so I wrote it out as specifically as I knew then but I knew that I didn't have it nearly specific enough to be
44:33
politically actionable and the way I think of it is if you think about in a business like in a business you need to 44:38
set up the systems in a way where it actually works given the variable people
44:44 who work in the business you just think about a large business that has 10,000 employees you know you need to set up the rules in the system such that of
44:51
course you need competent people with a wide variety of people the thing actually has to work and that's that's hard to do it's hard to be able to to
44:57
specify things at that level and and in politics it's the same thing so if you take something like um our grid is a 45:04
perfect example most people know not enough but they they know to some extent we have a problem with the grid and the 45:10
basic problem with our grid which we experien in California but we're only starting to experience is we have uh a 45:17
few very problematically contradictory phenomena so we have a de a an artificial decline
45:24 in the availability of reliable electricity thanks to things like the EPA shutting down reliable power plants
45:30
we have an artificial increase in the demand for Reliable electricity thanks 45:35 to things like uh EV mandates right like so we have we have so we have artificial
45:41 decline in the supply artificial increase in the demand through all the electrification stuff and then an 45:47
organic increase in demand through data centers and AI so and we already are at
45:53
a point of critical shortages around the country where we just more frequently than than I know of in any recent
45:58
history where people are constantly being told we don't have enough power and then sometimes it manifests in a blackout like in California in Texas in
46:06
2021 so we have this problem and everyone can agree that there's a problem same thing with nuclear by the 46:12
way everyone agrees like our nuclear policy sucks but then you ask well how do you fix it and what I found is I and
46:18
others and even a lot of the smart people asked did not have good solutions to it like they would have crappy
46:24
Solutions or no Solutions the nuclear was the worst because there's so much enthusiasm now for nuclear and you ask
46:30 all these people what should the policy be they're like I don't know it's just over-regulated like okay am I going to tell my congressman that it's
46:43 overregulation offices Senate offices and Governor's offic all all at the national level except for Governor's
46:49
offices as I know a lot of politicians and one thing I know is they are way underresourced uh to do the 25 issues
46:58 that they have to work with and so are you going to expect your politician even who's really well-meaning to figure out
47:04 the solution to difficult electricity policy or nuclear policy the nuclear
47:09
industry basically has a persuasion persuasion problem which is basically the idea that they they always blame
47:15
everything on persuasion and they say basically first we're going to change all the hearts and minds and then we're
47:20 going to put forward a reasonable policy but we can't put forward a policy until we've changed all the hearts and Minds
47:27 and my view is a couple things one is within any given cultural environment
47:33 there is a huge range of possible political outcomes and what I found is one of the highest leverage things you
47:38 can do is maximize the political outcome you want within the current cultural
47:44 constraint so you can you can think of it just as like there's this huge range of things so if you take nuclear for example as a perfect example because at 47:50 the moment we have a lot of enthusiasm for nuclear among Democrats and Republicans so the the advance act which
47:55 is passed by um Congressman I like I guess he's he's uh heading out but Jeff Duncan you know he led this thing and 48:02 that had an overwhelmingly overwhelming majority of people passed and it made some real improvements and he would be 48:07
the first to acknowledge there are a lot more improvements that need to be made but that shows you there's a there's a
48:13
Renaissance in nuclear enthusiasm to the point where yes those anti-nuclear
48:19
forces could be like you could have policies that that cater to them but you could also have radical improvements in 48:26
nuclear and my my view is if you want to maximize your if you want to maximize the outcome in a given cultural window
48:33 you need to know exactly what you want done you need to make it as easy as
48:38
possible for people to do what you think is right and this was this idea I came up with four and a half years ago called
48:44
Energy talking points which was at first for the messaging politicians use but is now primarily for policy and the idea of
48:50
energy talking points was instead of handing them a big book which I've done to you guys right hand them a big book
48:56 by you two big books actually yeah yeah but the the second one much bigger um and fossil future so yeah by the way
49:03
everyone definitely worth reading but if you don't want to read a book we have energy
49:26
thousands of examples so we did is we have thousands of tweet length messages that you can copy and paste they all are
49:33
they're all self-contained so you can copy any of them out of context and they work well they have references Etc we
49:38
now have Alex Epstein doai by the way which is now free so people should check that out so you can actually ask me like
49:44
hey I'm at it's no longer Thanksgiving but whatever your next event is like it's Valentine's Day I'm out with my
49:49
date she she says fossil fuels are bad I think they're good what do I say to her like it'll give you a really good answer well what what's your goal I mean it is
49:55
Valentine's Day yeah yeah how do you want the Night to End right right I'd go with yes honey you make some really good points I hadn't thought of it that way
50:03
you're amazing we'll see we'll see if it we'll we'll ask it and we'll see what it says uh but the the idea was let's make
50:09
it really easy for politicians to say the truth about energy and you saw in 50:15
the Republican campaign different people talking about things like 98% decline in climate related disaster deaths well
50:21
that's partially CU we just plastered that all over the place it wasn't just in a book it's copied and pasted on my
50:27
Twitter and on energy
50:56
you're right figure out exactly what policy you Advocate and make it easy for people to be your ally is there a role
51:03
for the thing teal was talking about where sometimes you just have to do it yes like just put a little nucle like
51:09
get some big brain freak and put a little nuclear reactor in your backyard and just start doing it well that that
51:15 that was at the end of that interview and that thing still bugs me because I I know he's right and I haven't thought of enough good instances of it because he
51:21
talks about the Uber example right where they just did it oh right as opposed to First reaching out all the taxi cab
51:27
drivers to see what they think right ex let's do it let's Workshop it but but I mean one thing you know one thing that 51:33
we're even advocating in terms of our nuclear policy is hey let's excuse me let's um let's devote uh let's let's
51:41 have certain Parcels of doe land which we have all this doe land let's really make them experimentation zones for all
51:48 of these different Technologies and do a lot of the performance testing there so
51:53
if you you know there's a lot of details in how performance testing works but you just basically want to validate anything
51:59 you possibly can validate on government land without a lot of restrictions versus saying oh we have to validate it
52:04 on the site we have to validate it with the first unit that we're building on the site it's one one of many things
52:10 where that that would seem to apply here with nuclear like nine or 10 things that you really need to do to to to Really
52:16
unleash it and I think we've identified those and I think we've done it on electricity and and environmental policy
52:22
and well climate is mostly unwinding it but there are like 10 things that need to be out unwind and then on the whole uh domestic
52:29
production and infrastructure front like all the permitting stuff there's some definite things you need to do there and I think figuring it out has that's the
52:36
hard part I think I I'll relate it to the the political thing because I I found this fascinating thing because I
Alex loves policy
52:42
have a very weird approach to politics like I'm never I have agree with my wife as part of her marriage I'm never going into politics I'm never going into
52:48
government ET this was as the Gilla was grabbing her saying honey it's going to be fine this be if elected I will not
52:55
serve yeah yeah so um like but I you know I
53:01
really want to influence I I really want to influence policy and people like I
53:09
you know I work with a lot of politicians and advise a lot of politicians and often they don't really
53:15
know what to make of me at first like it's really and they're often suspicious and and I get it and and I get it I I
53:22
think this is my current explanation of it I think because most not let's just say most people but some people
53:29 particularly when it comes to political uh motivations they 53:34
profess a self-sacrificial motivation that is phony in some way oh to 53:42 mask a motivation that they think of as self-interested uh and I 53:48
actually I have a motivation that I think is healthily self-interested why 53:53
do I want to change policy well part of is I really like the work of it like I'm just very what I en the process I enjoy 54:01
is thinking about difficult problems that I think will make an impact and so 54:06
I just policy it's weird like I become obsessed with it I never expected to be because I kind of hated Politics as a 54:12
kid but I love this problem solving of figuring out how do you actually get nuclear policy so it'll actually work so
54:18
people are actually safe and we actually have nuclear progress or how do you fix the grid like how do you handle things like solar and wind that are 54:24
intermittent and that could be useful under certain circumstances but if you don't account for their intermittency
54:29
are going to totally blow up the grid there all these really difficult things and for me it's an enjoyable way to
54:35
spend time to think about those things but also I need to feel like I'm actually creating value because I'm
54:41
charging people money in one way or another either they're listening to my speeches or you know we have a lot of
54:46
donors for for the energy talking points I mean it's millions of dollars a year like lots of smart people pay for this
54:52
so mostly for me to hire these smart people but they need to be getting value we all need to be getting value so it's like I also I want to have a process
54:59 that I enjoy but a purpose that I believe in and that's legitimately benefiting the customers so so it's like
55:06
but for me it's it's fun to do and people don't people call this like happy warrior I don't even think of it as a 55:11 warrior but it's like for me it's enjoyable to work with really smart people to solve interesting problems to 55:17 have effects in the world that I think are hugely uh value creating and then to
55:22 make a good living doing it like for me that's my four Ps of career like process purpose people and profit like and so
55:30 when I I get excited about like hey if if the new Administration is interested
55:35 in the electricity policy I came up with for me the excitement is seeing my
55:41
creation manifest it's like seeing something I worked on actually worked just like an inventor sees his invention
55:47 work but I think a lot of people they for them what they think would be thrilling is to be like given public
55:54 credit for it or to have a position like the Secretary of Energy or something like this and for me that just doesn't
56:01
seem too exciting cuz it's like the credit it goes back to the kid with Santa Claus right like if the
56:07
four-year-old who believes in Santa Claus thinks I'm the greatest person in the world or the worst person in the world he doesn't know anything and like
56:13 for me whether what determines whether my work is good is whether it has effects in the world and whether I
56:18 believe those effects are good it's not whether anyone including the president of the United States says I'm good or not like that ultimately I don't think
56:24
that determines reality what somebody else says so to get elected to be a position like it's good it's good if it
56:31
allows you to do the work that you want to do but I just don't have any it just doesn't appeal to me in a very selfish
56:37
way it doesn't appeal to me because I just think of it as approval and like approval isn't that great you know I've
56:42
been thinking a lot about that too because I on the one hand I know the futility of trying to boil the ocean on
56:49
the other hand my Foundation is really in the business of
56:55
trying trying to change the idea that a four-year degree is the best path for the most people yeah and that's a big
57:02
thing that's a it's a big swing well you have changed a lot of people and you have in your domain you you have to
57:09 you're trying to convince people that not only are fossil fuels not the enemy they are our best our last best hope for
57:17
the most people right right these are Big swings and when if I'm really being honest with myself I'm like yeah man I
57:23
want to change I want to change the way the country thinks fundamentally about
57:29
education and then I want to impact slash improve the way the country thinks
57:36 about the definition of a good job Visa a skill train well you know what dude I
57:41
mean who's swinging for the fences now oh is that all you're trying to do is change the way 330 million people think
57:48
and so you know I say to myself sometimes look you call your foundation
57:55 microworks because if you can do it for one person take the win man take that
58:01 and and then and then two and then maybe three but careful because before you
58:07 know it you're you're talking about these big giant ideas and look I envy
58:13 that I just I don't know that I have it in me this interest this issue of people
58:19 who say they want to change the world it is a very uh suspect right in many ways
58:25
cuz because you have to think about it's it's different to say like the way I think of it is I want to you know I mean
58:32
ultimately I think the ultimate thing is like establish energy Freedom or Advance probably Advance energy freedom is the best thing like I want to do work that
58:38 creates more freedom for people to produce and consume energy like that's that's my job but I don't think of it as 58:44
like I'm ever going to reach this final Heavenly ideal like I'm either there I've either like changed the whole world
58:50 or I've done nothing and like I want to do more because that's part of just having goals in the part of the process
58:57 of achievement and enjoying things is that you figure out new things and so part of the thing is yeah I know a lot
59:02
more about energy policy than I did two years ago and in two years I want to know a lot more and I want to know a lot more about about influence but it's
59:09 always sort of the same thing it's like it's it's the work involves setting it's like the process this is true of life
59:15
too I think the process of Life involves and a happy life involves setting new
59:20 goals but it's not you're not living for the goal right it's not just like oh you this is what happens to the Olympians
59:26 right they think of it they're living for the goal and then they get the goal they get a gold medal and then their life totally falls apart versus I know I
59:33 don't think there's any Milestone I'm going to hit where I've made it like I'm already there why people find this weird
59:39
because when I come in and like they can tell that I want to have a lot of impact and that I believe in stuff but it's
59:45
like why are you doing this and it's often do you really want to be secretary do you like secretly want to be
59:50
Secretary of Energy or maybe president or maybe just like make a boatload of money
59:56
from the industry and it's like no I really like what I'm doing now and I really want to see it succeed and for me
1:00:04
that's but I want to enjoy my life that's that's part of it it's not I'm not claiming that I'm doing this so 1:00:09
everyone else has energy and I'm miserable like I'm not doing that at all but that that can be hard for people to 1:00:15
relate to I think often because they they they Pride themselves on saying I'm just doing it for my country like I'm 1:00:20
not doing it for me I'm doing it for everything else but then they kind of know but I really do like 1:00:26
but it often oh I really do like being seen as high status and I like people looking up to me and I like having these 1:00:31 titles but then they have a sense there's something wrong with that but what's really wrong with it is it's Hollow and it's not really 1:00:38 self-interested again you're just disagreeable man you're just dis you're that's what that's my main lesson today
1:00:44
I mean you're basically saying that in the end the opinions of others you get to assign whatever value 1:00:51 to them you want yeah they're for you to learn from but they don't determine by themselves they don't
1:00:58
determine my mental model is like there's reality there's Chuck there's Mike there's me like we don't change 1:01:07 what I mean besides the reality inside of us and what we create but like we don't change the laws of physics right we don't change whether there's a Santa 1:01:12
Claus it's our job to figure it out and so if somebody says something about me that's true then it's true if it's not 1:01:20
it's not but somebody's saying Alex Epstein is the smartest guy in the world or Alex Epstein is an idiot like neither 1:01:26 of those really matters I'm interested in intellectual persuasion so trying to get people who expect to disagree with 1:01:32 me to agree with controversial but true things that's that's my interest in Persuasion so of course what they think 1:01:39 matters I mean right the the fact that I keep going to Socrates but the fact that the Athenians thought he was a menace 1:01:45 and wanted to kill him that a problem and it's a problem for me that that we 1:01:50 have really crappy energy policy and it's certainly a problem for me that I mean we're forting that on the rest of 1:01:56 the world to some extent which I think is just super uh unjust so I'm super interested in Persuasion but for me it's 1:02:02 again a lot of people interested in Persuasion or it's like ultimately it's how to get people to like you or 1:02:09 something but I think in general people people in in Industries this is a 1:02:14
persuasion Point people in industries that are opposed uh by the public so 1:02:19
fossil fuel industry would be one but chemical industry you know Plastics Etc they have a very deep misconception I 1:02:26
think this I want to run this by you and they and it relates to this issue I mentioned the message of the industry is 1:02:31
fossil fuels aren't as bad as they used to be or fossil fuels aren't as bad as you think like that's the message you get from the industry and I think the 1:02:38
why they think this is plausible is they think well if people hate us we can't convince them to like us we can only 1:02:45 convince them to hate us less but I don't think that's true CU I think if 1:02:51
you would acknowledge that you deserve to be hated just to a lesser degree you create create boredom and you create 1:02:57
validation of the idea that you should be hated you let somebody else set the table Yeah so versus if you say well
1:03:04
fossil fuels are good that's at least interesting and it changes the frame so I have two books you know that sold 1:03:10
pretty well the moral case for fossil fuels in fossil future what if they had been the second one why Global human 1:03:15
flourishing requires more oil coal and natural gas not less so both of those are very positive and provocative titles
1:03:21
what if I had written two books called fossil fuels aren't as bad as you think and fossil fuels aren't as bad as they used to be those Underpants are clean
1:03:28
enough how would they how would they got to keep going back to that one how how 1:03:34
called a light Motif it's kind of what I do how would those uh you are the master how would 1:03:40
those sell like nobody would be interested in the perspective at all so this is where it's actually much more 1:03:48
powerful and persuasive if you think you have a good thing that people hate say that you're good don't say that you're 1:03:55
not that bad I me you can see this any mean Donald Trump does this right he does like everyone says it's evil incarnate and he says I'm great that's 1:04:03
different from that's a lot different from oh yeah I'm not as bad as you think right that's exactly right um okay where
1:04:12
can people go to get this thing that is now just suddenly been made available so 1:04:17
the best place is just follow the substack Alex epsteins substack do.com because that's where I will release it
1:04:24 Alex epsteins stack.com and then I mentioned resources for you know your Valentine's Day dates and everything
1:04:29 else energy 1:04:55
a little stoic in you you're pushing the rock up the hill and you're doing it with great good humor and just the right
1:05:01
amount of disagreeability which I love awesome all right I'm going to tell my 1:05:06 wife I'm disagreeable and it's and I learned it's a good thing and give my regards to the gorillas thanks folks 1:05:12 we'll talk at you next week if you like what you heard and even 1:05:17 if you don't won't you please you please pretty please 1:05:22
subscri well I hate to beg and I hate to but please pretty freaking
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please please please subcribe 1:05:39 [Music]