Jay Shapiro is an award winning filmmaker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris & Maajid Nawaz. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020. He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “who matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is ⁠⁠here on YouTube⁠⁠.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:54 Jay Intro
- The Essential #samharris series
- Documentary & narrative film-making
- "I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea"
03:16 What's Real?
- Growing up in a secular #Jewish household
- "Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one"
- "Never again becomes the holiest prayer"
- Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum
- "I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist"
- Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like"
- An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi
- #Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials"
- Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality"
- How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality
- Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction
- "There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences
- "It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one"
- The National High School Ethics Bowl
- Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" @TED
- Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question"
- "Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!)
- Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth...
- Writing about Sam Harris, not for him
- Object-oriented ontology
- #psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal"
- How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it"
- Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out"
- #Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue)
- What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?
- Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads"
- Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think" https://youtu.be/Tp40ga1cXEc
- Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves
- Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance
37:45 What Matters?
- "There is no grounding (to ethics)"
- David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm
- "If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris
- There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship"
58:50 Who Matters?
01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?

...and much more. Full show notes at ⁠⁠Sentientism.info⁠⁠.
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