Pan

Psygast

Part two, further analysis and discussion. Okay, Robert, so we're going to start off by

reading a quote by you to yourself and we're going to ask you some follow-up questions about it.

So it is possible that we are at a point in history where the only alternative to deeper strife

and chaos is for people

to become more aware of how their minds work, including the subtle ways feelings influence

cognition, trigger cognitive bias, and so on, and how their minds are in a sense distorting

reality. So I guess kind of a broad question to start, but what's your main concern with this quote?

What's what's this kind of turning point in history you're talking about?

Well, I do have kind of an apocalyptic, you know, inclination.

And that could be to some extent a holdover from my Southern Baptist upbringing.

I'm not kidding.

I mean, it could be for all I know, but I do, it does seem to me, you know, long ago when I was at the New Republic magazine in Washington,

like in the late 80s, I did a piece on, it was, well, it was some anniversary of the nonproliferation

treaty, nuclear nonproliferation treaty. And I started looking

into weapons of mass destruction. And I realized that with some of these things, like especially

biological weapons, a fairly small group of people could do an immense amount of damage. And so I started,

you know, and it's become kind of clearer since then that that's the case,

because information technologies allow a relatively small number of people who aren't even in the

same country but share a common hatred to organize and in principle deploy lethal force.

So I do worry about the consequences of humans continuing to behave the way

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