Ep. 103: Rationalism and the Reasons of the Heart
Young Heretics
Spencer Klavan
4.9 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2022
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In an era of emotional partisanship, it's tempting to retreat into pure, cold reason. But that way madness lies—Spencer Klavan discusses rationalism throughout the ages, from Plato and Bacon to Bayes, Aella, and Slate Star Codex. We need our minds, but we need our hearts too—they have their reasons that reason knows not of.
--
Public Goods is the one stop shop for sustainable, high quality everyday essentials made from clean ingredients. Receive $15 off your first Public Goods order at https://publicgoods.com/HERETICS.
--
The Spectator believes that life is bigger than politics, which is why it covers arts, culture, food, wine, travel, and life all around. Sign up today and receive three free months, plus a free hat with promo code HERETICS: https://spectatorworld.com/specialoffer.
--
Bambee is an HR platform built for small businesses. Automate the most important HR practices and get your own dedicated HR Manager. Get your FREE HR audit right now at https://bambee.com/heretics.
--
Stop throwing your tea into the harbor, and start celebrating America's tea heritage with Gold River Trading Co.'s specialty blends. Get 10% off your order with promo code HERETICS: https://goldriverco.com.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm going to start today by reading a tweet from an OnlyFans girl. I'm actually reading a |
| 0:07.4 | quote tweet of this tweet by an anonymous account called raw egg nationalist and it just says |
| 0:13.5 | this is your brain on quote rationality end quote and then here's the tweet that he's quoting |
| 0:20.8 | and it's from Ayela some of you may have seen this girl she's a famous kind of rationalist |
| 0:27.0 | only fans girl she says child porn is created when people get paid to make child porn the |
| 0:34.8 | rarer you make it the more they get paid the best way to protect children is to kill the economic |
| 0:40.7 | demand flood the market with AI generated freely accessible stuff that's created with zero harm |
| 0:48.5 | to kids heavy stuff and I think really gross let's talk about it I'm going to talk to you a little |
| 0:59.0 | bit about this idea of rationalism in a second because what this is about is not the individual |
| 1:05.6 | people are like evil or trying to you know tear apart humanity but that when you lead when you |
| 1:12.9 | follow certain ideas down to their most extreme conclusions you're going to end up making evil |
| 1:19.7 | arguments and this if your idea of rationalism is that you just you know you need to be proud of |
| 1:27.4 | your own dispassion so proud of your own dispassion that you cut out of yourself you know or you |
| 1:32.9 | disregard all your sort of priors you might call them your basic instincts your reactions to things |
| 1:38.7 | and then you're going to end up first of all becoming a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian |
| 1:43.8 | and you're also you're going to blind yourself to certain human realities and you're going to end |
| 1:48.8 | up making in human arguments and that's what this is I mean it's not just of course that you know |
| 1:55.0 | AI generated child porn is a kind of horror to contemplate but it's also this sort of libertarian |
| 2:02.3 | idea that the way to fix things is by you know jiggering around with the letting the free market |
| 2:07.6 | solve everything blinds you to the human reality that pitiful is a horror right and the people |
| 2:14.2 | who face it are facing a terrible demon a burden that they are have been have been given probably |
| 2:21.2 | because of something in their past they need to fight against and that our response to them |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Spencer Klavan, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Spencer Klavan and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.