Andy Norman on the Mental Immune System

The J.Rogan Experience. I guess we should start off with what made you write this book? What was the motivation for doing this? Yeah. So I'm a philosopher by training, and philosophers have always been kind of really eager to test ideas and try to weed out the bad ones. That's kind of what we philosophers do. And a lot of times that doesn't make us particularly popular. But I argue in the book that the philosophical method of belief testing called, say, the Socratic method, famous process pioneered by a Greek philosopher thousands of years ago. Basically, if you test ideas with questions and then toss out the ones that don't withstand scrutiny, that's a way to strengthen your mind's resistance to bad ideas. So here's the kind of the skinny on this. And I think that the people who get this concept are going to be the thought leaders of the next few decades. We know our bodies have immune systems, and their job is to hunt down parasites and pathogens and eliminate them. And some of those antibodies actually consume pathogens in our body. Now, the new information, which is just now coming together in philosophy and in the sciences, is that our minds have immune systems just like our bodies do. Only a mental immune system's job is to hunt down and remove mind parasites or bad ideas. Never seen you speechless before. No, I'm not speechless. I just didn't know if you were done with your sentence. I understand that the mind parasites can ruin your mind and that the concept of mental immunity, of some sort of mental immune system. But what kind of mental immune system are you talking about? Are you talking about meditation? Are you talking about a specific way of addressing issues and problems? And how do you factor in things like emotions? Yeah. So let me start simple with a little thought experiment. Maybe you can play along with me here. It's kind of a story. So imagine we are sitting around a bonfire, tossing back a few beers. Okay. And I say, hey, Joe, reach into the fire there, grab me one of those hot coals and hand it to me. What do you say? I say, I'm not really interested in doing that, Andy. Okay, good. And what went on in your head that made you say that? It seems like I'd get injured doing that. Yeah. So you ran a little simulation in your mind and you concluded that that would be harmful. Yes. Right. That was your mind's immune system at work. That simulation run? So basically I was serving up an idea, a suggestion. Hey, Joe, do this for me. You ran a little simulation in your mind. You identified that idea as a bad one. Your mind's immune system was strong enough and well-functioning enough to spot this bad idea and you came out, fuck you, Andy, reach into the fire and get you a drink. Yeah. Kill that hard, Andy. That's true. I'm just trying to speak your language. Is that my language? Okay. I might say that if we're in front of the fire, honestly. I'm going to be like, hey, man, fuck you. But yeah, so I see what you're saying. But it seems a little bit more complicated when you're addressing ideas because one of the problems with these ideas is some of them are very attractive. Yes. I was watching the dumbest video yesterday where people were thinking that when they were getting the COVID vaccine that they're getting microchipped and they were proving it with magnets. They were sticking magnets on themselves and the magnets were clinging to the area where they got the COVID shot. And from this they were concluding? That you're getting microchipped and that somehow or another this magnet was being held in place. So I think you would think of that as a mind parasite. I don't know what that is. I think it's either a hoax or ... How about a conspiracy theory? Can we go that? Yeah, sure. So let me tell you a second story. Okay. So our first example there was a, of your mental immune system functioning properly to spot a bad idea and say, nope, you're not welcome here. Right. Now let's take an example of a mental immune system misfiring. Okay. All right. So this is a story about Fred the Flat Earther. So Fred dies. He goes to heaven. St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates. He says, come on in Fred, you're our lucky customer number 100. You get a chance to chat with God. So Fred marches right in to God's inner sanctum and says, so God, I've been a conspiracy theorist my whole life, a flat earther my whole life. I got to know, is the world flat or is it round? God shakes his head, does a face palm and says, I'm sorry to say Fred, but the world is very round. Fred's face registered shock and then recognition. And he said, this conspiracy theory goes higher than I thought. That's probably exactly what they would do too. Well and- Especially flat earther. Well, and what does this joke tell us about the conspiracy mentality? Right. And you say that's exactly what it would do because I think you understand something about conspiracy thinking, which is that a conspiracy theory infected mind becomes so good at generating antibodies to fight back against even good information that those antibodies will attack the good information. So here's God telling you the truth, right? And Fred's mental antibodies just rush in and dismiss it as part of an even deeper conspiracy. So questions, doubts, suspicions, those are the mind's antibodies, all right? And they can go nuts. They can go on hyperactive, in the same way that the body's immune system can go haywire and attack your body itself. Your mind's immune system can go haywire and your questions and your doubts and your suspicions can attack your mind. I think one of the problems with conspiracy theories and people that believe foolish things is that they don't really seek the truth. They seek something that confirms what they want to be true. And they ignore things to the contrary. And there's even a... Psychologists have a word for this called confirmation bias, right? I'm sure you've heard of it. Yeah, it feels good to be validated. And so a lot of times we come to a belief that makes us comfortable, that feels good to us, and then we just seek out information that confirms it. But we actually dismiss or ignore or diminish anything that might conflict with it. But the problem is that'll send you down a rabbit hole. Oh, yeah. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify, including clips, easily, seamlessly switch between video and audio experience. On Spotify, you can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. Spotify is absolutely free. You don't have to have a premium account to watch new JRE episodes. You just need to search for the JRE on your Spotify app. Go to Spotify now to get this full episode of the Joe Rogan Experience.