Busted and Babeling

I'm not all here today, but I'm getting better. I guess this coffee is home. Not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Mister Gerbatcheff, tear down this wall, read my lips. Either you're with us or you were with the terrorists. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilax. Rob Long is out

this weekend. We're going to talk to Peter Schweitzer about Chinese influence and David Berlinsky about well you're just gonna have to listen, so let's rails a podcast. So it's hard to believe that an expungeible gun charge in two misdemeanors is what Hunter Biden gets. It's an intentional production by the DJ and my administration. No one and known is above the law. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast. Number nine billion, seven and forty three million, six hundred

and forty two thousand. If you're keeping track now, just seems like that, Actually no, it doesn't. It feels like number ten, number fifteen. The spirit of adventure and newness is still in the air. As Peter Robinson, who's been doing this is longer than I have steps up to the mic once again with that fresh courage of a man who's willing to take on the world and let the opinions fly and damn the consequences, right Peter,

Well, damn it anyway, No, damn it anyway. Yeah, we're just saying before we start at the show, that you know, here we are at the end of the week. I don't know when you're listening to it, but chances are that the things, the objects, the fascinations, the concerns that have churned through the American mind for the last week are probably as with us seeping out into sort of torpid state where we want to move

on. For example, the whole week everyone was concerned about the Titanic submersible, and now we know there's really nothing more to be said about it except to home a few bars for those in peril at the sea and regret and move on. Maybe you can talk about knock on things the way that some people took this as a as an opportunity to let the world know what horrible

people that they are. Ben Dreyfussy actor did a piece on his substack about empathy and the basic human quality of and how these people who were taking just absolute delight in the fact that there were rich people down there who were probably lost, end or dead or are suffering was a good thing actually, and that it is a sign of virtue to wish ill of those people and define

that their situation was almost a delight in some sort of cosmic sense. The people who see things the explicitly and entirely through a title economic prism themselves are are miserable, unhappy people who go about every day in a state of fury because the world is not conforming to what they know to be the truth and the inevitability of things, and they have to get it out like this in a way that is the most curious form of virtual signal signaling I can imagine.

I don't know if you saw a lot of this, Peter, But is this new to our age as social media amplified it, or as social media just allowed us to see that there are just rotten people out there and they're always at man social What is there to say social media permitted people? We don't we know, I haven't there's studies. I don't even know how you'd structure this study. But don't we know that being on social media is like driving in your car, you James, mild mannered person that mild wealth

not mild mannered, is not right. But you wouldn't ordinarily, strolling down the sidewalk flip the bird to a to someone no one else on the sidewalk in the car. I have I have to say momentary anger. I have said nasty things twitters like that. Is this is? This is this hatred for the rich? Anything new? No envy is one of the seven Deadly sins? And do you think it stems from envy? Oh? Yeah,

for sure, for sure. It seems to me perfectly obvious. And this last week was really really First of all, they missed the economic point. They missed the story, and the story is that the richest man on that submersible Hamish something or other can't recall. But as far as I can tell, he was largely a self made man. So this is a man who had gone through life creating enterprises, employing people, creating value of all kinds. He wasn't. He wasn't. He did not pull together his fortune from

the from the sweat of the brow of oppressed peoples. It was a free market economy in which he was operating. The second economic point, of course, is that when rich people spend money on things that seemed frivolous to the rest of us, they permit things to happen. Electric vehicles were originally just it was a rich people around here in Silicon values started buying Tesla's. Now

they're a mass mark get commodity. On and on we go. So I don't know exactly what the future is of deep sea exploration, but that people were paying a quarter of a million dollars a seat for the last some number of years. I know. Bill Buckley was one of the very first who went down end up submersible and looked at the Titanic, wrote a marvelous piece about it that all strikes me as admirable, and I'm waiting for you to

him the usual ode to the human spirit. So the other bit of this, I have to say, looking at the news this morning, and it now seems to be clear that something went wrong with that submersible. Very quickly the Navy picked up the sound of an implosion. I read a couple of pieces that if that is indeed what happens, and it now seems clear that that is what happened, then death would have been instantaneous for everybody aboard.

And I have to say, for me personally, that was a relief because even as all over Twitter people were mocking the five down below the surface, I was thinking to myself, I can't imagine a worse way to die, slow asphyxiation over ninety six hours, a mile and a half beneath the surface of the ocean, total darkness. I just can't how, I just it's

a relief to me to know that it all happened instantly. I can't watch videos of people spelunking, so I can't imagine putting myself in a situation where I hear I hear the seventeen bolts being being put in place to seal me in the two before I'm dropped down at the Yankee depth. So no, yes, right, no, you're absolutely correct. I mean, although when driving, I've never flipped anybody off. What I have done is have you never you? Okay, let the record show you are a better human what

everyone a better human being than I am. What I have done is given the Minnesota Midwestern equivalent of it, which is the raised hand, just a raise head like like like what and I would if you're watching this on video, of course you can see me making that distinctive gesture. But no, you're right because as you are, you are ensconced in your own little intellectual emotional bubble as you scroll through social media, ping, pogging, amongst a

dozen different things that make you angry. And so when you land on something, yes, you can bring all the full force of the peevishness that you've brought from the other tweets into this one. It's not a pleasant place. It has you know, it has a great boon, and I'm glad it's there. It's revelatory in what it says about people. But you're right, social media doesn't make kids happy. It doesn't that, so it's not you

know, could we do without it? I'm just I'm thinking back to the way we were talking before the show started, and I know there's nothing more compelling than telling people what we were talking about before the short started. But we were talking about, Hey, I'm called in radio and somebody who's bemoaning the fact that, well, when you know, when Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctor, and all of a sudden it's turned into hate radio,

and all these crazy people started calling there was the same thing. It is nonsense, but there is the There was at the time the sort of notion that opening up the airwaves to everybody allows you, allows these voices, allows these these these crazy people to say these things unmediated, and that conversation continues to this day where you have my own Senator Amy Klobuscher, who's who's being very concerned about the layoffs at Meta and Twitter and the rest of it,

and whether or not they will be able to get in front of disinformation for the next campaign. I'm just I'm looking at these people the same way we

looked at the people talking about the callers. Let me decide, let me listen or read and figure out exactly so the idea and this is this big, overarching, top down idea that has come about from you want to say the left, but it's probably our technocratic betters are handlers the idea that disinformation is this great threat and that freedom of speech, while it may sound nice and the abstract, certainly has to be constrained by the smart people or we're

going to get the wrong outcomes. And looking at Twitter this week, as people talked about this, it's like, you know, all this is sort of emotional disinformation what they were saying about these people. But I'm still glad it's out there. Like I said, I'd rather I'd rather all the flowers, you know, all the poisons in the mud hatch out, as Robert Graves had Claudius say, right, I'm with you on that. I have

to say I'm also with you on I don't know. Every time I say I'm shocked by something, you say, oh, come on, get with it. Maybe you should. Maybe it's acceptable to be shocked. You should have been shocked a decade ago. I was shocked a decade ago. But I'm still shocked at I don't know. How is it that I am i the only person left who considers free speech the most important of our rights. It seems like it sometimes. I just don't understand the way the country has

just let it go and again again again. I say it. Go right

ahead, pile on me for continuing to be shocked. But that the mains the journalists, their entire profession, the whole tradition in which they're working depends upon freedom of speech, and they're the first to do the We now know, thanks to the work of Matt Tayyee, beyond others that the federal government, agency after agency after agency was telling Twitter and Facebook take that downtake, that downtake, that down, and when they didn't do it, the federal

agency would leak to the New York Times or other members of the press, and the reporters would call and say, are you taking this down? Because if it doesn't go down, there's going to be a story. Journalists at major and formerly honorable institutions permitted themselves to become knowingly to become instruments of censorship. I am in justice staggered by this instruments of the state in order to do the right thing exactly exactly. The younger crop of journalists do not believe,

and they speak sarcastically of what about. You know, both sides is um If one side is illegitimate and destructive, there's no point in giving it. If the planet is going to die because of climate change or climate crisis, then both sides is hastening the decline the demise of us all. So it is actually injurious to the body politics to get to let the other side seem to have the same amount of weight and merit as the other. That's

part of the problem. But that's another podcast. This podcast is going to be as current as is possible because we're going to talk about well, we're going to talk with Peter Schweizer, founder of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is the host of the Drill Down podcast and the author of Clinton Cash, Secret Empires, Profiles and Corruption, and most recently of Red Handed. Welcome Peter,

Thanks for joining us in the podcast. So Peter found out this week that Hunter Biden, you know, that fellow who left the laptop and which was of course the subject of Russian information. I think, so he pled guilty federal tax misdemeanors and he struck a deal to resolve a federal gun charge. Gosha. That was sweet or was it? They say he got a sweet heart deal? Is that so? Absolutely no question about it. Sweetheart

deal on a couple levels. Number one, the level of a criminal activity that he agreed to, in other words, really what he was engaged in, his felony tax evasion. That's what these whistleblowers are I think, showing and demonstrating and arguing, but also in terms of what was not in that agreement. It seems pretty clear that the US attorney in Delaware wanted a charge Hunter Biden with felony violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act Farah, that was

not allowed to proceed by the Department of Justice. So it was a sweetheart deal on multiple levels for Hunter Biden. And I think that this issue is only going to further unspool. And let's remember, this pleagree is subject to the approved full of a judge during sentencing. That judge is a Trump appointee, and in light of the revelations of these irs whistleblowers, I'm not so sure that judge is going to go along. The judge may refuse to accept

the plea agreement. Yes, yeah, the judge has that option. Peter, we are old friends. I want to disclose that as if it's I'm actually I'm not disclosed. I'm boasting about it. I know, Peter Schweitzer, I want to get to red handed in a moment, of course, I want to talk about this topic the other topic. But you know what I want to do is just say thanks, because you're doing what a lot of people used to do but almost nobody does anymore, and that is called

journalism. You are a genuine investigative reporter. You go after big stories, and you dig, and you dig and you dig. And since we are long past the days when the Washington Post or the New York Times will publish big stories that tend to reflect badly on members of the establishment, you publish these as books. You go on. So truly I want to say thank you. And the other thing I want to ask is is there are we now at the stage at which we can feel confident that an alternative business model

for journalism real journalism has emerged. That is to say, we now have our own Fox News. Peter Schweitzer, you're heading something called the Government Accountability Institute. I'd like you to tell us about that. But can we now feel confident a that our side of each story is going to get out, but also that real journalism will continue. I think of you, and I think of Matt Taiebi, although I'd be willing to bet that you never voted the same way in either of your lives. But he's now said, wait

a minute. The whole journalistic enterprises I used to know it is gone and he's setting up himself. So can we relax? You have people figured out a new model or are you still struggling. That's a great question. And it's always great to be with you. Peter. I don't think that we've quite got the model yet, and that's not because we don't have great people. I think Matt does fantastic journalism. Michael Schellenberger is great journalism. It's

it's it's a combination of things. Number One, you have to have the resources for these deep investigative dives. It takes a lot of time and a lot of money. News organizations, mainstream media news organizations used to have it.

That has dwindled. But at the same time, you've seen this ideological tilt you talk we were talking about this earlier among journalists, where you know, Donald Trump is an existential threat or climate change is an existential threat, so we're going to do tilted stories because we're saving the planet, right, those two trends. I think that the sort of showing how the journalists are biased and only showing one side of the story has emerged. You still have

the resource problem. I mean, you know, we exposed the Biden deals in China in twenty eighteen. I had seven researchers working full time. Did you really for ten months to uncover that story? We're a five to one

c three we get donations. The point being we found that story because there was a Chinese social media website that had pictures of Hunter Biden's standing with the equivalent in China of the head of Morgan Stanley Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary in twenty eleven, and I was thinking, what is going on here? It takes a lot of time and money to unschool very complex stories, and I don't think we have the resources to do that yet.

But if I can interject you, I mean, I work for a newspaper, a pretty solidly staffed in newspaper, and yeah, we're not going to do that story because we're concentrated here on our home state. But the New York Time Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal have the resources to do that. And if the New York Times and you know, the Washington Post does that story, it will be amplified through the wire services to willing papers elsewhere. So it's it's resources, yes, but it's

also desire. I mean, as we saw m MPR came out right away and said we're not going to handle the laptop story because obviously this is just all you nonsense. Something for which they've never been brought to account. So it's a choice. I mean resources, yes, but it is a choice.

And the problem with that is that that since so the mainstream journals aren't doing it, it's easier to delegitimize guys like you because you're seen as being partisan hacks who come to this with bushels and axe handles and in the agendas to grind. No. I think you're right, it's it's resource. The resources exist in these mainstream media outlets. They don't want to cover these stories.

When I first covered the Bidens and exposed it in twenty eighteen in China, I actually had a very nice launch with a with a very experience seasoned a well known reporter for the New York Times who covers China and other issues. And in that book in twenty eighteen, I had you profile exposing things related to Mitch McConnell's family and their ties to China, as well as the

Bidens. They followed up with a story on Mitch McConnell. The New York Times did themselves sort of standing on the shoulders of my work, which is fine, which is great. That reporter told me in twenty eighteen. If Joe Biden runs for president, we are absolutely going to cover this story. They never did. They never did. I don't think it's because he didn't want to cover it. I think it's because the editorial leadership did not want to cover it. So, yeah, they don't. They don't have a

desire to cover these stories. But honestly, what they are doing is they are completely trashing their brands. If you look at if you look a Pew research you know that looks at trust in American institutions, Congress is at nineteen percent, it's the lowest. Right next to them at twenty one percent, is the media. They are destroying their brands by selectively reporting what they're choosing to cover and what they're not covering, And it's only going to get worse,

and they're only damaging themselves because they can't muscle these stories anymore. Precisely because of what Peter said, You've got these alternatives that are putting this stuff out. Okay, two red handed? Then, Peter, how did I was about to say what attracted you to this story? But in you've already made clear that in a certain sense, this is a story you've been covering for years. Give us, well, let's sell some books. Give us

one or two of the most arresting revelations. What's the book about. Just give us, let's just let's just take it through and give listeners are not they'll be hearing about this for the first time. What is the book about. Give us one or two really arresting findings red handed? I mean, the subtitle is you know how Americans get rich helping China win? And so it focuses on Washington d Silicon Valley in Wall Street and just three quick illustrations.

When it comes to the Bidens based on the laptop, the Bidens have received thirty one million dollars from four Chinese businessmen who are named in the laptop, who are named in the book, and all four of those businessmen who transferred money to the Bidens with no services or anything given in return for that money. All of those businessmen have links to the highest levels of Chinese intelligence.

One of them, at the same time he set up the Bidens in a twenty million dollars deal, was at the same time business partners with a Vice Minister for State Security in China. All of them have that profile. So the Biden money in my mind is not just about corruption. It's about compromont, it's about espionage, it's about possible recruitment. Go to Silicon Valley. The biggest, most talented companies in Silicon Valley are aiding and abetting China

in its military words to exploit artificial intelligence. They know it's going on. They've helped those companies in China that are developing these military technologies enhanced their capabilities. Microsoft, Facebook, or Meta and Elon Musk regularly say very favorable things

about China because they want access to the China market. And then go to All Street and you can find the same thing, inglorious things that are being said by major hitters on Wall Street who are prostrating themselves let's be honest about this and saying wonderful things about China in exchange for access to the market. So that's really what the book is about. And if you look at the front cover, you can see the collection of individuals that we expose in the

book. If you know this, the FBI does or should know it, The National Security Agency does or should know, the CIA does or should know it, And the New York Times and the Washington Post do or should know it. Why is only Peter Schweitzer writing about this? Well, good question. I know the FBI knows about it, and I can say this now

because the New York Times ran a piece about it. The FBI knows about it because the FBI has been in communication with me on a myriad of research projects going back to twenty fifteen, and we're always happy to cooperate with law enforcement. What's interesting is the New York Times story was basically saying the FBI is relying on people like Peter Schweitzer rather than checking the veracity of what was being reported. So the FBI knows about this, I think a lot of

government agencies know about it. The New York Times and the Washington Post know about it. They choose not to cover it. And part of the reason we don't get a lot of action in Washington on this cap hill we're getting some movement is you, frankly, have some powerful Republicans that benefit commercially mightily from their relationships with China, and they're over a barrel. I mean, as I talk about in the book, Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine

Choo. The Chow family has a shipping business. The ships are all built by Chinese state owned companies. The construction of these ships, it's hundreds of millions of dollars, are financed by Chinese state banks. The crews that manned these ships are all recruited from China, and the contracts that they have to ship goods on these big vessels across the Pacific come from Chinese state owned enterprises.

If Mitch McConnell does something that ticks off China, they can destroy the Chow family business overnight, and that's the kind of leverage that China wants over its political opponents. Peter out here in Silicon Valley where I live, I couldn't. I'm not going to name name is because nobody this is the kind

of talk that takes place among friends. Name any one of the big operations out here, and they all employ a lot of Chinese, some are Chinese nationals, some are Chinese Americans, and the general feeling is it's hopeless, meaning we can either do business. We can either code and work on our next product, or we can run our own intel operation and try to make

sure that whatever we develop doesn't get to Beijing. But we can't do both because we have so many Chinese employees that it is simply taken for granted that when a major innovation takes place, it gets flipped over to Beijing pretty quickly. Now, in one sense that's chilling, but in another sense, you just describe the kind of actual reality that people are dealing with here. All of these operations that we're describing are publicly listed companies. They have fiduciary responsibilities

to their shareholders. They are in competitive marketplaces, they must continue to innovate. And so the question, I mean, the first impulse is to say, well, they're just not good Americans. But on the other hand, you say, wait a minute, when did it become their job. Where

is the United States government? It's up to them. It's up to the federal government to enforce certain rules on all actors, so that making sure that your fundamental security measures get put in place within companies becomes a fundamental way of doing business across the competitive space. I don't know. So there's a premise there, which is that in some sense it's hopeless that in some sense these people are in business. They have to do business. And then maybe really

it's the federal government that's falling failing here. Attack any of those if you want to, what do you make of that that is in the air out here. That's a kind of stand standard conversation. Yeah, no, and I think there's there's some truth to that. What I would say is, yes, we cannot totally disengage from China, but we should at least make it harder for them. So I'll give you an example. Yes, Google has Chinese employees. You could argue Google needs Chinese employees because we don't have

the STEM talent in the United States. But that's different than Google funding literally funding and sponsoring research facilities for artificial intelligence in China that are controlled by the Chinese military. It seems to me that is something on a order of magnitude, you know, exponentially worse than recognizing you're going to have certain employees in your company and they may you may engage in intellectual property that So that's kind

of what I'm talking about. And I think it's really incompany upon shareholders and consumers in the United States to effectively shame these companies, you know, to make clear that this is a problem, that you're subsidizing our enemy and we don't want you to do it. The federal government has been lax here. But I also think that you know, it's high time that we hold some of these companies into account. They're certainly concerned about their posture on other,

let's say, social issues. I would think this is one we need to make sure that they're being clear on as well. Last question, Peter, doesn't matter if you look at China demographically, they're going to suffer collapse. They have a huge amount of debt and an economy based on a real estate bubble that is popping and popping and popping and being refilled and popping and popping. In the long run, of course, we're all did But in the long run, really do we have to worry that much about China? Or

can we just shit it out and let them fall apart? Well, the question really a minute, it's a great question. The question really comes down to what do you think President ge or the man that follows President Gees posture is going to be given the realities they face. Is it going to make him more aggressive or is it going to make them softer towards the West? All indications with ge since twenty twelve is that it has made him harder,

It has made him more aggressive, it's made him more desperate. That's what I think we need to be concerned about, and we also need to realize this is sort of the subject the research I'm working on right now and the next book is in a lot of respects, it's not a question of whether we're going to be at war with China. I would contend China's already at

war with the United States. Their involvement with Fentonel, the things that they did during COVID to exascerbate the body count of American dying, other things that they are doing, so they kind of view their posture already at war with the United States. They're serious casualties, I would argue, in the millions that have died as a result of China's policies, that's the present reality.

I don't think we have the comfort of looking twenty five thirty years down the road because of these trans as you correctly point out, are against China. I don't have the comfort of looking thirty five years down the road. The two of you may Peter Schweitzer from the Governmental Accountability Institute, the books that are Clinton Cash, Secret, Empire's Profile and Corruption, and most recently Red Handed, We like to have you back again soon. There's so much to

talk about, and thanks for joining us here in the podcast today. Peter Peter Schweitzer, one of the best working journalists in the country get red Handed. Thanks guys to kill Peter. And now we pivot to the philosophical, theisophical, to different matters entirely than we were talking about before. And we aren't honored to have with us. David Berlinski, Senior Fellow the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the author of Deniable Darwin, The Devil's Delusion,

Human Nature, and just out this month, Science After Babbel. David, welcome. I was reading an excerpt of your book today, and what are the lines that struck me and I copied it down, was that talking about science and the constellations are lack thereof of science. Talking about the arid nature of the things we are discussing, you said, there remains a curious

fact that no one much likes what everyone accepts. I found that interesting that we are in this world of scientism, that we are in this world where we had erected this edifice of knowledge, but it hasn't brought in anybody happiness as a matter of fact, the more the more it comes out with what you regard as outlandish ideas be unhappier. Our viewer of ourselves in the world, in the universe seems to be So, why is it? Why why do we all just trust the science? I guess I should ask you,

Well, I don't know that we all trust the science. We just find ourselves in a world in which we are obliged to accept certain features of the world which are clearly the user fructs of the scientific system of belief. We don't have much choice with respect to many of those artifacts. Telephonies, the food system, habitation, sanitation, all of those are just given to us, and as givens we have to accept it. So our margin of choices

relatively narrow. When I remark or remark that none of us much likes this system of belief, it's not for the technological benefitiis from may or may not be particularly satisfactory. It's for the underlying vision of what it means to be

a human being in a human universe that I'm speaking. And it seems to me that without a great deal of careful reflection on the part of the scientific community, it has nonetheless given us a certain perspective that as we occupy a minor planet in the Solar System, we are of no cosmic significance whatsoever. There's nothing particularly remarkable about human life. It's a continuity with animal life, and animal life with an accident. There's no intrinsic meaning, purpose, dignity,

or teleology associated with human life. Religious beliefs completely arbitrary and lacking in all credibility as far as we can see. The ultimate constituents of reality, so speaks the scientific community, are things like quantum fields erupting every now and then into some shower of particles. And that's about it. Now, it's perfectly obvious why most people don't consider that a particularly attractive world view. But there is any way. That is a worldview. It's a dominant worldview.

It's a very pervasive worldview, and it's a worldview that's not all that easy to rebut and yet rebutted. David Berlinski does do in his book Science After Babbel. David, may, I tell you why you're just an execrable human being for having the temerity to write such a book and offer such arguments. Here's why, Because we know better. We know what religion leads to.

We've been through the wars of religion. It was only science, only the discovery and steady application of the scientific method, of empiricism, of trial and error, of serious engagement with reality around us, that got us out of our heads, out of useless, unprovable speculation on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, that enabled us to climb out of poverty, that gave us the industrial revolution that is now giving us gave us the

communications revolution that's now giving us a green a world of green energy, and that has imposed a certain peace that has let us get along together in a pluralistic way by putting religion and this whole dark age of human thought in a box where it belongs and giving us science instead. And this is the existential We speak to you in Paris. Paris is the city of camu and sac.

If it is the case that we are alone in a vast universe, that life has no meaning except the meaning that we impute to it, well, then welcome to existentialism. Great minds have been there all ready in the twentieth century. That is just we just are going to have to learn to live with reality, be brave, embrace it, and don't try to knock it down, to which David Berlinski responds, how all that sounds good to

me, at least the first forty seconds of your remark. If you stop after forty seconds, yeah, if you could point me in the direction of where I would find the Enlightenment in its full flower, I would at least consider leaving my apartment and going there. But as far as I can, sitting where I am in my apartments in Europe, the Enlightenment is about as

far from contemporary concerns as it has always been. It seems to be even on the contrary that the Enlightenment has proven itself feckless and incompetent in the face of twentieth century of horrors, and it seems to be doing no better in the face of twenty first century. But more to the point that we had been offered on the part of the scientific establishment in the late twenty is not embracing manly confrontation with the reality. But across the border with is prawl from

the reality. And I think that withdrawl, the melancholing law withdrawing row is the overwhelming fact of the scientific enterprise in the twenty four century. Every sense of reality is now trembling because there's a very cold wind blowing. The Enlightenment ideal, which is really a Greek ideal, that we can know the world as it really is, seems very fragile. No, we can't really know the world as it is. What we can know of various theories, very

various perception. Look, all of our social life today is consumed with the idea that the believer proposition is exactly what is meant by knowing that proposition. That's what the phrase so often used, my truth really comes to the standard for epistemological commitment now is not knowledge but belief interconviction. That's not a confrontation with theology. That's a withdrawal from reality. Every sense that the stertal world

imposes constraints on human cognition, that's proven to be very flabby. Look at the chat GPT. Interact with chat GPT, and it's a remarkable technological achievement, no doubt, and interacting with it is very constructive, very salutary. Look, the thing hallucinates, It says things which are not so it's a

form of intelligence. I think it's a prophetic form of intelligence, because that is where we are headed to a universe in which what is imagined, believed, conjecture, construe has epistemological promise over what is known and what is true. It's no hallucinating, it's just behaving the way we're all going to behave in fifty years. I don't know where to start to start to pull out

questions from from the remarkable answers. I mean, we can know the world in a sense I know that if I bang my head against that wall, it will hurt. I know that if I slam my hand on that door over there, it will be a similar sensation. I also know that there are things that I do not see that birds and bugs see because they are looking at the world through different wavelengths and for different purposes. But we can all agree on a certain number of things that exist, that are true,

that are solid, that are right. That's the whole. That's the whole. But what we have now is in the absence of a dominating idea with such gravity that everything revolves around it, we have instead just a kaleidoscope of individual constellations in which everybody has their own beliefs and they're all equally valid, and we have nothing uniting us except for the belief that all beliefs are valid.

If I'm summing up correctly, what you have to say, The question isn't how do we get back to a central organizing principle again, because that could be a very bad central organizing principle. How do we get back to a good one? And is it possible in these days where identity and information and knowledge and belief is so prismatically scattered that there's no hope of gathering it back into a single shaft of light. Again, If that sounds like a

sort of question that makes any sense, what do we do? I guess, well, I don't know what we are going to do. I'm going to finish my cigar. Well, let me ask chat GPT. What is David Berlinski going to do? But here's the point. Everything you just said it is common sensical the people with a certain kind of education, position, certain background. But this was accommodated in the eighteenth century by Bishop Barker,

who said, to be is to be perceived. There's nothing else. You bang your hand on a door, you can dismiss the door as an external object and savor or regret the pain that has just been induced in your hand. Einstein had the same discussion with proponents of quantum theory. I had forgot

who he asked, Heisenberg or Niels bought. Do you really believe that when I'm not looking at the moon it disappears There's no such to which the obvious answer from Barkley's position, from any idealist position, any solipsis position, is yes, there is no such thing as the external object. There are only ideas in your mind or in the mind of God. Interesting, interesting way

to present that. When I was in graduate school in the mid nineteen sixties, the philosopher to which everyone repaired was Unan, and after yun Count and then after Count the twentieth century critical analysts Burton Russell all the way to Plant. I would bet that the philosophers who are being read avidly now in the graduate schools not un but Barkley, not Count but Hagel, and following Barkley and Hagel, all the old forgotten British idealists. Because we are clearly living

in a time bordering on the form of collective solipcism. The fact that when I smack my hand on my own table, I feel something my hand is undoubted. We all agree to that. But the further inference that there's a system of permanently existing objects beyond the ken of my senses can be denied, and it has very consistently been denied by Barkley. For example, to be is to be perceived, its replaced in the twenty first century by the apathem. To be is to be believed, and even more notable, to be

is to be believed by a great many people. That increases the strength of conviction which we can bring to bear on a belief. Something that Botley has changed, and the way we look at these issues David Boswell's Life of Johnson, Sir, how do you refute Bishop Berkeley? And I refute them? Thus he kicked the stone? Because that convince you. After what I've just said, it convinces me. But that's because I start in a certain position in the first place, to which I now come. You have named this

book science after Babel. You're going to tell us in a moment quite what you mean by that, But I can't help observing it's in the title, and it's in you, and you and I have known each other a while now that not only are you totally conversant with all the philosophers of the twentieth century, the mathematical under the only man I know who really understands quantum mechanics, I mean, really understands it. Here you are putting right into the

title an allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures, which means what you take this late Bronze Age early Modern period book collection of scriptures? Seriously? You think there is wisdom to be found there relevant to us today. I know better than to say, David, do you believe in God? Because I've tried that before and it's gotten me nowhere. Why is Babbel in the title? Well, there are two reasons. One you pointed out yourself. It's a magnificent

biblical story. It's pregnant story. It's also the something to the Great painting by Peter Bordal. Yes, I think, I'm not sure. I'm looking for a copy of mile. I don't know where it is, but I think there's a copy of the painting on the book cover. The statement, but it's an ambiguous title. The story of the Tower Babbles, the story

of the extent to which the arrogance of architects. Architects building a tower to reach the heavens was confounded by God because he divided their tongues so they could no longer successfully communicate. And that's in the picture too, because you can see looking at the picture that there's enormous squat tower is incoherent. I like that image. I like the story because even though it makes a point about the incoherence of the architecture, the fact visible in front of your eyes remains

the tower is still selling that architects or no architects. I think that's the real meaning of the title. We are clearly in a position where we had begun to examine the scien. We've worked with three centuries incredible songs that we've worked with three centuries with an eye to consistency, coherence, and further development.

Discovered that there are places of info inherence. But we on the outside, and I'm certainly on the outside, nonetheless, are obliged to admit that this great power is still standard despite any any math versions I many I could express, And it can be finished if people get together, solve the language problem, learning one another's tongues, work out a way to do it.

But now Unfortunately, where we are today, we have the very notions of empiricism are being eroded by this, this insistence on personal truth, on my truth, because all of the things that undergird the ability to construct the tower, things like just basic mechanics, things like math, are being held up as products of a of an errant, evil civilization, with colonialism and racism

and everything else baked right into the bones of it. I mean, it's critical race theories, as you have to demolish all of these institutions in order to create the one that will bring about the utopia, So you can't even the tower may stand, but we look at it like dumb apes goddling, because we will end up without the skills to begin construction. Anew, I agree with you. I agree with you completely. I don't look forward to

aher army. The best of circumstances in which languages are suddenly reconciled and the development of the science since taking place between the sixteen and the twentieth century once again proceeds on upload, something new will happen. I think something new is happening right now on artificial intelligence. That's a separate discussion. But I agree with you that they're real and serious threats to the integrity not only of the

scientific establishment, but of intellectual itself. Our ability clearly and predicting the reason about anything is compromised when some sense of the superiority of certain ways of addressing issues is dismissed from consideration in favor of rather squalid political deals in which every identity boot in society is represented in proportion to its numbers, so that at the Institute for Advanced Study, if you're proposed to study the latest developments in

quantum field theory, at least two percent of your professorship must be composed of Swiss Chinese lesbians. That is a recipe for disaster. Everybody understands that. Everybody knows it, everyone's afraid of it, and no one can do a blessed thing about it. That is a fact of life. It's not a fact if everybody, it's a fact of life. Anyone, whether any form of organized intellectual life is going to survive the present moment of collective solecism.

It's very difficult to answer. But all that being said, and I agree with you completely on the shrewdness of your political analysis. You must not forget that every squalid movement in contemporary life can be traced back intellectually to philosophical or mathematical or physical principles that are much deeper than the squalidness of the present day would indicate compromising with truth, for example, drawing back from empiricism, these

are not simply matters of identity quality. They have their roots and philosophical and mathematical developments of the nineteen filities, and that should be that should be acknowledged. It's not a trivial phenomena in your faces, it's a very deep It has its trivial aspects. I'm the first one to make fun of it,

but it has its much more significant expense as well. We know certain things now in the fashion of no go theorems in physics, that is to say, we know certain things are just not possible when we want to speak of the truth. We know there is no terminal point. We consistently and continuously we will be forced to move to evermore expansive definitions. And that's just a fact of logic. And there are many, many other similar considerations that could

be adduced. It's not the fact that all progress in mathematics and philosophy leads in the direction we would like it to lead. Sometimes it leads in the reverse direction. And that's happened in the twentieth century. The fact that quantum mechanics is not support naive and criticism. Nobody wanted that, nobody expected it,

but it doesn't. And that's just a fact. We're talking with David Berlinski, philosopher and mathematician whose new book is Science After Babel, and if you are like me and unlike David, you will need to savor Science after Babel, page by page by page. David, here's we have to talk

more. We just have to. But here's here's a question, a kind of closing question from me for now, recognizing that it's morning over here for us, and James and I have commitments, and it's evening over there for you, and you'd like to I got all the time in the world you have, Okay, I was about to say, you want to you want

a NEGRONI to go with that cigar? All right? So we have been through an episode in this country and in the West generally, but of COVID, of public health officials standing on the science, the science, the science, using that, using the science to justify a certain political well, I think it was just ham fistedness, but to shut down opposition. And so this is in mind you seem you being you. Of course, there are

many arguments taking place at many different levels. But are you arguing in science after Babbel, that we have been untrue to the scientific project, that we have failed to treat science as science, that during the COVID lockdown, for example, even as Burke said, a thousand knights should have sprung to the defense of the Queen of Marie Antoinette of France, a thousand scientists should have sprung up to say to Fauci, no, no, no, there's still

debate over this and over this and over this, and you should use some of your budget of billions to set up rapid tests, in other words, to pursue the science. Or are you making the argument that at this stage of the game, one of the many things we now know about science is that it is in and of itself limited, that, far from giving us the sword with which we can slash every Gordian knot that stands between us and a deep understanding of reality, it's a limited tool. It can slash some

knots, but not others. I guess what I'm asking, And of course, by comparison with whatever you're about to say, it's a crude question. Are you saying more science, but we must be true to science, we have permitted ourselves to misunderstand it. Or are you saying the whole scientific project became infused with a grand kind of pomposity and science is isself very limited? Can I adopt both positions simultaneous, sho being you? Of course, look

the one thing I have to remind you of yours. I was not in the United States during COVID. I was in France, and I think experiences as between France and I say, in retrospect then look rather different. There is no comparable movement in France attacking French health officials, for example, in the way that Fauci is being attacked. And I'm not even sure what the

what the graverman of the attack is. That's how far away I am from current affairs in the United States. But apparently he made some serious mistakes with respect to masking, with respect to school shutdowns exactly the masking school shutdowns, and I forgot there was there was really nothing comparable. I think there was a fairly widespread, indeed sense of admiration in France for the way health officials actually managed the pandemic. In the end, everybody agrees that the French government

blundered very badly in the first two or three months. They didn't take the lesson of Italy very seriously. There was slow to respond, and people were horrified to discover that they had no masks, that they had never bothered to stock up in masks. The mask program ended in two thousand and eight or something like that, but thereafter I think the government very successfully rebounded. It did launch a program of vaccination which continues to this day. It did obtain

I think something like eight vaccinal coverage. I can't say it was a triumph because too many people died, but in certain respects it was France's public system

at its best. So I really can't comment on I do know that Fauci seems to have played an extremely dishonorable role with respect to the origins of the COVID virus in Uhan, and that I know from the inside, because I published pieces and influence about that, and I know about the calls that he made, and I know about his efforts to gain a unanimity of opinion with respect to the impossibility of a laboratory. But I gather that's not really what

you are talking about. Well, even setting fout to your side, are you saying we need to Our problem today is that we have misunderstood what science can and cannot do, and we need to return to a true understanding of science and back it. We need more science, but we need to understand it properly. Or are you saying, ladies and gentlemen, after three hundred

years of this, science has an announcement to make. It can only do so much, and we must while remaining true and appreciating these staggering goods that science has given us. If we wish meaning in life, if we wish to pursue the deepest philosophical questions that we've been working on for the last couple of thousand years, we're going to have to We're going to have to accept the limits on science and turn to other means. Is that closer to the

argument in science after babble? Well, I think it's a reasonable argument. To the extent that it's reasonable. I hope I've made it for sure. There are many areas of life. Perhaps the most important areas where none of the great theories really is helpfully instruct or certainly not quantum field theory. Where it comes to the aching questions of life and death, meaning, significance,

the inference to something beyond our brief human existence. None of these questions are touched on by quantum field theory or the lang Lands program in mathematics, or anything else. What we get from the science, since our glimpses of a more ordered structural laws sharing in thot ways of world, that's something else.

That's a benefit. It's the same benefit we get from looking at work art But in terms of science as its practice today, it seems to me there is a farm or dangerous than eubristic sense of limit less possibilities than there was Sage fifty years ago. After all, the introduction of artificial intelligence is not supposed to end with a system that roughly mimits human intelligence. It's supposed to introduce us to an inferior of ever superior intelligence in his own minds, and

that's a program of unlimited ambition. The same thing is true of various attempts in Silicon Valley and beyond to merge consciousness into a computer system or to promote various absurdain im dissolution personally republican transhumanist schemes. They all participate in the same desire to push boundaries away and march well beyond the boundaries we thought we had the opposed. So no, I don't. I don't think the message is

that the scientific community itself is discovering them. It never will, it never has. The question is, and it's a it's a real philosophic as well as the scientific question. Are there those limits? Is everything that's not forbidden by the laws of physics actually possible? And it possible desirable? Those are very significant questions. I didn't have an answer, but I think they should

be asked. Well. To Peter's point, there has been there's never been a time in American culture where there hasn't been a desire for some sort of spirituality. They just don't like Christianity because it's what their parents made them go to when they were kids in the hand to where itchy church pants and being a place to smell the old candles. They didn't like it, and so they came accurrent They fell for every single little idiotic, newfangled or imported idea

that came along. So there's always been a desire for some sort of spirituality. It's a question of whether we have something that can can can meet the challenges that the new era of science is providing. When you say that there are no boundaries there, that there's a sense of a desire for more and more, almost theological forms of science that pause with these strange, these strange quantum ideas that the brain really can't wrap itself around, and but maybe are

true when you need to find out, etc. Etc. It brings me back to the one thing I've never been able to grasp in my gut and head at the same time, and that's dark matter. I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for it, and that there are people who can explain it to me, but it almost seems religious in its desire for we can't explain this part about the universe, so we're going to make up a thing that

explains it. And what I love about this whole theory is that it comes down to two views of human of humanity, of our of our destiny. If there are a sufficient mass in the universe, at some point, expansion stops and it contracts back down into that singular singularity, into that infinitely hot, dense point. Then it explodes and starts the whole thing again. And the whole universe is a series of this back and forth, almost like respiration.

And we're in one form of the breath now the other. If there isn't sufficient mass to bring the universepect together, is heat death or the end of the universe is every single particle separated by hundreds of billions of light years, which is a bleak thing. And there are some people who find solace in heat death. And there are some people who find solace the people, the people who believe that, who believe that there is that humanity itself is

a is a uniquely loathsome thing of virus in the universe. Lots of those nuts around, But they always believe that getting rid of humanity, you might promote the welfare, say of cows. I don't want to confront them with a prospect of an omnivorous heat that destroys everything. Everybody rebels against that, scruples at that. But the idea of the multiverse that's equally repugnant, isn't

it. Imagine clambering to the edge of space and time only to find your double on the other side of the fence, pursuing some inane course of correction in your own life, and having all sorts of philosophical problems about which is the real you. I think I prefer the heat death to that. I would like to argue about the multiverse with you, and we probably already are in some other multiverse, but we're gonna have to get to that in another

show. You're gonna have to come back because um, there is so much to be found in what you say that it just takes me and I'm gonna go back and listen to this and regret all the things that I've never asked and h and feel stupid for the questions that I did. In the meantime, however, day you know that one is exactly I know that's that's that's exactly it. In any case, we enview you, Envy you, your cigar, your view of the city. Almost done. It's a metaphor for

the show, right right, right right. That's so, buy an extra long Romeo and Juliet next time and we'll have at it again. The book is Science after Babble, and we're going to have you on again. We vow it, we we pledge it, we demand it. David Berlinsky in Paris joining us on the Ricochet podcast. What a pleasure, sir, good night, good night. Thanks very much for having me, David, thank

you so much. Zike has done both of you. You know, this is the point of the podcast where you usually tell people that they can meet up in real space and have a meeting. But I think we should have

a Paris Ricochet meetup. I don't know how we're going to figure it out, but I think we should, and we should all find some extraordinary restaurant, complete with French beers and snails and the rest of it, and invite David and just pepper him with questions for the entire evening, because I have the feeling that fellow is inclined to a philosophical conversation of an unstinting nature, and that would be a good idea, right Peter, Oh, I have

have I have experienced essentially unstinted, Yes, unstinted, two cigars, several negrones. Talking with David is one of the great I was about to call it mind blowing, which is a kind of banality from what the nineteen sixties, but it does really feel almost as though after you do, you know, there's some people it's almost the definition of a bore that you feel less

alive after talking to him, David. It's the other way around. Not only do you feel more alive, but you feel as though, in some basic way you're your brain is actually bigger inside your skull, that he has somehow expanded your way, the very way in which you look at at at anyway. Well, he drives me to bad radio. Good radio is where

you come back immediately with a question. There's no dead air. You gotta be you just yes, you move along, and if you're trained in radio or trained as a guest, you have the ability to start speaking even if

you do not know what you're going to say exactly. It just comes with the profession telling me with David, I would I would take that paragraph and I download it, and I'd pick it apart, and I would I would be comfortable with forty five forty five seconds of dead air, which is an eternity trying to figure out exactly how I wanted to say what I wanted to say and not make a fool of myself for saying it. So that's absolutely fun and I cannot imagine adding alcohol to the max. But we're going to

have to leave that for some other day. Like I say in the in the multiverse, we're already doing this in Paris and we're on our third NEGRONI. So what more can we say than that, Peter? Can we know? We want to tell you. By the way, this podcast was brought to you by us and by all the wonderful folks you've heard about in the

interstitials, and of course by ricochet dot com. Support us by supporting ricochet dot com, go to ricochet dot com, slash join jo I n and become part of what some are saying is the last remaining sane sliver of the Internet. And there are days when I doubt that, But there's never a day where I dont hit Ricochet four or five times just to see what's new. Peter, Um, that's it Rob? Next week, I hope, or Charlie or somebody. We don't know what happened? Do we know?

Do we know what happened to Rob? We don't know what happened. Actually, wait, isn't he how bizarre? Right? Curse? Isn't he in Europe? He may be in Paris at this very moment. It would have been great if he just wandered into the frame there exactly playing accord, like a clown of money Python. But that would for all we know. He you know, that says exactly what he is doing. He was sitting in the other room, just biding his time. All right, that's it,

we're done, we're good. We'll see everybody in the comments at Ricochet four as the main pusche and maybe now we Ricochet joined the conversation