"I went vegan finally when I fell in love with one" - filmmaker & writer Jay Shapiro - Ep: 151

Jay (https://sentientism.info/sentientist-... & ‪@JayShapiroDilemmaPodcast‬) is an award winning film-maker, writer, & podcaster. He directed the film Islam & the Future of Tolerance, based around a post 9/11 conversation between Sam Harris ‪@samharrisorg‬ & Maajid Nawaz ‪@MaajidNawazRadical‬. He produces and creates a wide range of content, writes on his "What Jay Thinks" blog & hosts the Dilemma podcast - I had the pleasure of being his guest for a Dilemma hangout about Sentientism back in 2020 (https://www.youtube.com/live/kc5cmqRN.... He loves thoughtful deep dives into philosophy, psychology, & political analysis.

In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?” Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The audio is on our Podcast: https://apple.co/391khQO & https://anchor.fm/sentientism.

We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:54 Jay Intro
The Essential #samharris series
Documentary & narrative film-making
"I really want to understand ideas... and transmit those to an audience... even if I totally disagree with the idea"

03:16 What's Real?
Growing up in a secular #Jewish household
"Post-holocaust American judaism is it's own brand... a very ethical & political tribe more than a religious one"
"Never again becomes the holiest prayer"
Psychologist dad, guidance counsellor mum
"I'm a boring naturalist but... I love analogies for what it feels like to exist"
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five "Oh... This is what I like"
An over-active imagination as a kid... "my scientists", The Truman Show, solipsism, Philip K Dick & #scifi
#Meditation, #psychedelics, religious experiences... "scrambles the dials"
Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality"
How evolution shapes our construction of experiences of reality
Psychedelics help us "catch it in the act" of reality construction
"There's much more out there" e.g. non-human sentient experiences
"It reminds you of the expansiveness of reality rather than show you a new one"
The National High School Ethics Bowl
Anil Seth's "How your brain hallucinates reality" ‪@TED‬
Annika Harris's exploration of consciousness theories re: "The Hard Question"
"Reality is awesome enough - who needs magic" (I mis-spoke!)
Epistemological tests?: atheism, veganism, spherical earth...
Writing about Sam Harris, not for him
Object-oriented ontology
#psychology "I don't think we're the rational animal... we're the rationalising animal"
How people respond to #cognitivedissonance (Leon Festinger) "they really don't like it"
Criticising #consequentialism "you can justify anything... wait long enough and the consequences will work out... where do you stop the clock... too easy to find an out"
#Virtueethics "Secular virtue" (vs. religious views of virtue)
What happens after noticing the cognitive dissonance. More about psychology & values more than epistemology?
Coping mechanisms. Consequentialism, capitalism, economics... give people outs to "quiet these voices in their heads"
Neil Levy "people are more rational than you think"    • "Why bad beliefs happen to good people" - ...  
Qanon, Goop products... everyone selects evidence/sources to suit themselves
Believing unfounded things can be a "rational" response to existential crises / the discomfort of cognitive dissonance

37:45 What Matters?
"There is no grounding (to ethics)"
David Hume's "unbreachable" is-ought chasm
"If you hate Sam (Harris) I think you'll like a lot of what I do there" (the Foundations of Morality episode of The Essential Sam Harris
There is a relationship between is and ought but "It's up to us to define that relationship"
"My bridge": Carl Sagan's "We are a way for the universe to know itself"
"I'm super humanistic... I bristle at the efforts... to downgrade the human as just another animal"
We have the "moral opportunity" to figure things out & decide what we ought to do
"Luckily there's a lot of joy & fun in figuring it out... and some sadness... it's the only game in town... so I'm playing"
"I'm trying to champion the human" & David Deutsch re: creation of explanations/knowledge
"Experience must be the only way to see the bridge across is-ought"
Moral agency & patiency
Compassion as a moral opportunity
Cultivated meat: Is there a risk of easy solutions that don't require humans to be better? Would we be missing a moral opportunity? What future horrors might we create?
A future where everyone is #vegan so "we don't even need the word any more"
The value of sacrifice?

58:50 Who Matters?

01:50:49 How Can We Make A Better Future?

... & much more!

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