The Process of Learning is the Meaning of Life: Skepticism & Self-Doubt.

in the 21st century in the era of the
Internet in the era of the instantaneous Google search in the era of the increasing availability of information but also the decreasing depth of that available information in some ways expertise and experience are underrated and in some ways they're overrated I am the last person to come on the internet and discourage you from making your own YouTube videos talking about issues in politics history religion philosophy even and the last person to discourage you by saying you're not an expert in this however what I encourage you to do is to speak in a really honest way from sources and speak to your own bias your own perspective and that way you won't make videos that you yourself look back on later and regret don't speak in an objective voice as if you're not working from a finite set of sources and to certain conclusions that are guided by your own bias your own agenda which is fine that's normal it's normal to say well look I just read these one or two books it may just be you read these one or two Wikipedia articles let's face it most YouTube videos are not even made on the basis of reading two whole books right and then it's a look this is why I read the books when I when I read these books I had this preconceived idea I this is you and I had this interest and now here's the conclusion I came towards maybe you challenged your own bias and now this we think and you know what somebody in the audience may reach out to you and say hey look you don't realize it but the two books you read or really biased are really one-sided they're actually let's say they're communist propaganda depending on the topic there's communist propaganda there hey you know if you look at these other facts of this other version of events you're gonna get a different perspective when I was living in Laos let's say the first one year I was living in Laos if you don't know what Laos is Laos is a small country north of Cambodia northeast of Thailand west of Vietnam okay it's a small country in Southeast Asia when I was living in Laos my first year there I need you read six books about the history of Laos like maybe six and there aren't that many books that exist on the history of Laos I went to the library there and I would get these collections of conference papers these huge tomes from these academic conferences and it would take them off the shelf and I would go through and read every article dealing with the history of Laos that was in there and I probably read a pretty big percentage of what exists in the English language or both history flows and then I would meet these people I would meet people who had PhDs I would meet people who were writing books on this topic you know sometimes there are people who wrote more like guidebooks for tourists other cons history books and it seems like I always knew more than they did it seemed like I was better informed and I didn't think of myself as an expert and this is a kind of shocking and strange thing about the world of expertise and university credentials and who knows what and why and you know what the huge advantage I had was was I was honest with myself and was honest with others about how little I knew and and what it was I relied on for that knowledge how it was I came to know those things all right skepticism isn't just something you apply outward with the world the world of scientific phenomena outside you it's something you have to imply you have to apply inwardly you have to look in the mirror skeptically you have to examine your own conclusion skeptically and how you came to those movies or what was your agenda what were your assumptions what were the sources he relied upon all right if you can do that on YouTube then you can make brilliant valuable meaningful videos even when you're not an expert and I would say the same about writing essays about exploring new topics and new themes in life okay there is another YouTube channel he's also vegan I'm vegan he's also an atheist I'm an atheist okay called cosmic skeptic and I deeply hate this guy I oughta rly despise his YouTube content we have so much in common and yet I hate him and this hatred is demonstrated really well by a video he just did recent about Galileo okay so it's about the trial of Galileo and the thing is I don't know to what extent this kid is consciously aware that he's creating new mythology I don't know if he's really aware of how dishonest he's being how misleading he's being in telling this story from history because he's not honest about his sources he's not honest about his motivations his purpose his biases he's not honest about the process here and the product is this bizarre and baffling concoction of half-truths mythology so on and so forth now I'm gonna prove this to you with just one source okay let's be clear if you haven't watched cosmic skeptics video about Galileo don't watch it it's garbage okay but if you have watched it you can challenge the quasi historical fable he presents by simply looking at the Wikipedia article for Galileo's theory of the times tide tige okay so Galileo's theory of the tides coming in tides going on if you just look at that one Wikipedia article you are suddenly gonna be where whoa there's there's a whole different side to this history like in terms of the biography of Galileo in terms of what his relationship was with the church in terms of what his project was as an author I mean you can think of the guy as a scientist but most of what he was doing was more like a social critic an author he was being a provocative philosopher intellectual he was political junkie whoa when you look at this one Wikipedia article about Galileo's theory of the tides and is ever coal that includes also some of the information of the the church's response to it you realize okay what was going on here it was not the case that Galileo was a humble scientist who was just interested in using his telescope and he discovered this book written by Copernicus no okay no all right for those of you who don't know the details the details are and this is part of what's so frustrating about encountering misinformation about politics political history philosophy so on and so forth it would be tremendously boring it would be a tremendous waste of my time for me to get out the books from the library and really go through in a detailed way and explain to you how and why cosmic skeptics video about Galileo is misleading and how it's really a kind of dangerous mythology it's a new fable being presented to the audience and you know it's not just a waste of my time the sad fact is it would probably be a waste of your time also I mean there is no audience for it right so in this way on the Internet mythology proliferate and of course you know the scariest examples are mythology about world war two you know mythology about the Russian Revolution communism in Russia and so on and you know a lot I mean I'm saying the word mythology here it's not that you're looking at something that's completely false you know there are bits and pieces of the truth put together in a misleading way in an appealing package a fable with a clear moral to the story right what again real history is never like that you know and I've seen this being done by people who are communists and I've seen people who were not communists and who were not even aware they were reading communist propaganda getting totally misled and bent out of shape who's read this this is a parallel example the problem with cosmic skeptic has nothing to do with communism I've seen this happen on a massive scale with Buddhism where disinformation about Buddhism often you know carefully pieced together from little bits and pieces of the truth that go together to make a modern myth I've met so many people including people with PhDs who believe that there is no hell in Buddhism that there's no going to hell after you die but ISM and who are shocked when I tell them that no I mean the the pally can the actual Bible of Buddhism it's full of vivid descriptions of Hell that go on for many many pages and there are even you could say very very cynical descriptions of how the concept of Hell is part of a social engineering project that the Buddha is consciously engaged in to change human behavior by instilling in people and awareness of Hell in a fear of Hell instilling in people the desire to be reborn in heaven how this changes humaid or a change of society you get kind of weird cynical discussions in that you get straight-up mythology about hell and you know I see the way the whole world including of course leaders of public opinion YouTube the the step-by-step get into this process of mythologizing this process of you know valorizing history and philosophy and it produces incredibly warped views of politics and along the way nobody is being honest about precisely what I'm begging you to be honest about saying if you make youtube videos if you write essays if you're engaging those to be honest about how you know what it is you know and what were your motivations your bias is what was your dinner what were your motivations for discovering that to begin with you know and then maybe how your views were challenged and be honest with yourself and others about how finite the basis of your knowledge is because then when it changes later you'll be able to look back and then say hey you know what my view of the abolition of slavery was really warped because I only looked at one period of time in American history and I didn't think about Haiti and I didn't think about China I didn't think about ancient Egypt you know later in my life I knew all these other examples and you know what I didn't even think about the earlier period of slavery within the United States of America you know if you only focused on this Civil War period but actually we're talking about centuries going all the way back to Christopher Columbus and the importance of slavery in the genocide of native people and maybe now working from more sources better sources greater knowledge and maybe with a different set of motivations different set of sensitivities maybe now you're coming to different conclusions it's the most wonderful thing in the world for non specialists and non experts to come here on YouTube and my own Explorer experience is in every field I've worked in including history and politics of Southeast Asia Laos and Cambodia oh my god the experts on the history of Cambodia the experts on the politics of Cambodia which is maybe the most extreme example of the the failure of communism of communism killing huge numbers of people in a short span of time oh my god the perspective of the experts on the history of Cambodia is way worse and way more dishonest and way more fictitious than what you're gonna get from amateurs here on YouTube look up Noam Chomsky and his excuses for mass murder under the Comerica whoo there are some fields where the experts are all ideological maniacs and Buddhist studies is a great example that it's only people who really believed in reincarnation and really believed that meditation is gonna solve all your emotional problems these are the people with PhDs publishing books on Buddhism and shaping the way the world sees these things there's no doubt that an intelligent outsider with detachment and skepticism can come to more valuable conclusions about Cambodia and Laos more valuable conclusions about Buddhism more valuable conclusions about Galileo or whatever the case may be but you have to have this rigorous honesty where you don't just disclose your sources you even reflect on why and how it is that you ended up choosing those sources because there was some other choice with the opposite perspective that you rejected or you didn't even find out about right let's be honest about our own ignorance let's be honest about where our knowledge comes from and where it's going what the motivations are that drive us forward in that quest for knowledge let's learn together because ignorant is infinite and the desire we have to better ourselves and make the world a better place through learning tragically is all too finite indeed