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It's like I said: Rogan has had guests that I consider to be cranks. But Rogan is completely transparent about the guest list being people he finds interesting.

by timr 4y ago

It's like I said: Rogan has had guests that I consider to be cranks. But Rogan is completely transparent about the guest list being people he finds interesting. That's not a high bar. Therefore, I don't outsource my critical thinking or judgment of character to Joe Rogan. I do feel for Rogan here...he's doing more-or-less the same thing he's been doing since the start, but now it's "wrong", because other people are expecting him to behave in a particular way. He builds an audience by being a good conversationalist with a huge variety of different, sometimes nutty, people, and suddenly uptight folks expect him to be Walter Cronkite.

evol262 4y ago
Kind of the thing with being in mass media with an enormous audience is that you lose the ability to just do what you've always been doing. I mean, he can, by abandoning his platform and starting over with something else, but the piles of money are too attractive. Public figures who can heavily influence discourse and thought have an ethical obligation to not give unchallenged credence and a drastically increased audience to their nonsense. If Rogan thought that Goebbels was interesting and let him do his thing for hours to an audience of millions, he would be held to a higher standard. If Rogan thought that Ted Bundy was interesting and let him tell "his side of the story" without challenging it with the truth, he would be held to a higher standard. This is a basic which we should expect of our society.
- jgust 4y ago
  We can expect it but I'm not sure that means anything. I'd really like people to stop giving Tucker Carlson attention, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
  - lazyeye 4y ago
    The subtext is always the same. "The real problem is all the stupid, easily influenced people out there. Not smart (like us)".
- nradov 4y ago
  The ethical obligation exists only in your own mind. Stop projecting. The rest of us are capable of thinking for ourselves and don't necessarily believe the random ramblings of a comedian or his guests. And your hypotheticals about Nazis and serial killers are totally irrelevant. You are arguing in bad faith and trying to inflame the discussion.
  - evol262 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - goatlover 4y ago
      > We should expect better. Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that? > then surely there's nothing wrong with having Nazis or mass murderers given airtime. You invoked Godwin's law twice. What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here?
      - evol262 4y ago
        > Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that? I'm not sure why you presume that "we, as society, should expect better" means "this applies only to Joe Rogan listeners and we need to convince them." It's a general stance on how society ought to operate, and the use of "ought" is in the "how ought one live?" question raised by ethics. We get to decide that as society. This isn't a new concept. Society would not have advanced to a point that we were capable of having this conversation at all if "we" had not already agreed on basic principles, such as "you should not steal", and "you should not murder", and "be generally honest in your dealings with others if you want to keep your reputation". These are all inherent rules of society which you implicitly follow in order to be part of it. Holding public figures who have a louder voice to a standard of behavior which does not actively undermine society by giving credence to disinformation isn't some horrible leap or infringement upon your freedom. It's avoiding the Gracchi. > You invoked Godwin's law twice. Mentioning Nazis isn't Godwin's Law. Feel free to substitute some other bogeyman who you feel giving an unfiltered platform to would deteriorate society. > What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here? No, it doesn't. Honestly, I'm getting the sense that you've never engaged in any kind of philosophical discourse before, which this is sort of veering into, and throwing out the names of fallacies doesn't mean they apply. The point is, as I said in my last post, a reductio ad absurdum. It is constructing a contrapositive. It is saying "if we follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, this is where it leads; verify whether that's true or false, less black and white." And it was false/shades of grey. Clearly there is some level at which even ardent JRE listeners believe giving people a platform is harmful. So the question is "what are the guidelines for when something is too much?" My position is, as repeatedly restated, that those with a greater platform have a duty to not do harm to society by allowing crackpots to talk without being challenged, whether that's denying climate change, believing lizard people run the government, believing we are secretly in contact with aliens, taking veterinary antiparasitics on the advice of one person rather than the guidance of literally every medical organization on Earth, etc. It has no been made clear anywhere what the position of Joe Rogan defenders is other than "he's just a comedian; you shouldn't take him seriously; people can think for themselves; he doesn't have any obligation to question them". But again, it's apparent that having Nazis or murderers on with an unfiltered platform would cross some line. So where is that line? Where are Joe Rogan defenders drawing the line of what is "too much" to air? What is the basis for drawing it there and not somewhere else?
- towaway15463 4y ago
  I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests. If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France?
  - evol262 4y ago
    > I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests. The debasement of "journalism" to the point where it applies to Joe Rogan and/or "news networks" which have actively fought (and won) court battles on the basis that no reasonable person would believe the statements were actually true, or news radio which for decades gave equal airtime to "both sides" even if one of those sides believed in a Hollow Earth does not mean that "journalism" has lost high standards, merely that the term has been horrifyingly diluted in the United States. > If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France? Whataboutism is an intellectually bankrupt argument. Nobody is defending those journalists, but if you're going to try to make a whataboutist argument, apples-to-apples works a lot better than "with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Hitler was bad and that Ford would have actively led a fifth column if he could have, so they were bad". You could equally say "if you want to bring Dwayne Johnson into this, then how about all of the love for Cosby as America's Dad?" The known facts are different. If you want to assert that a comparison to Nazis (and I used Goebbels as an example because he was principally a radio propagandist rather than Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, etc; he's the sort of person who would have seemed like a harmless marketing geek) is bad in a whataboutist sense, you would do much better to say "if you want to bring Nazis into this, then how about Speer? He wasn't (actively) involved in the Holocaust and he could have had a lot of interesting things to say about architecture and designing an imperial capital?"
joe_the_user 4y ago
First, I think the Lazar example says to me that he's not merely naive - it takes effort to not ask someone like that basic questions. Second, the thing with national level news isn't just that people are "uptight". It's that there are many professional and well-practiced liars out there eager for a softball venue (people less obvious than Lazar usually). These sorts of people make significant money from their deceptions and Rogan is an enabler of this stuff, making vast amounts of money himself. Edit: and just on the question of Rogan's evolution. Just by Wikipedia's bio, I'd say he didn't start with small nuts and graduate to fronting professional conmen. Rather, he started MMA chat, built to national level and then moved laterally to interviewing people saying "hypothetically true" things about the world in generally.
- towaway15463 4y ago
  By his own admission he only continues the podcast because he wants to continue talking to people he finds interesting. He already has fuck you money and multiple lucrative careers so he hardly needs it as a job. He isn’t beholden to anyone and he isn’t doing it for the benefit of anyone else. It’s his platform so what he says goes. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen to it and you’re welcome to build your own to get your personal views out there like millions of other people have.
  - mint2 4y ago
    >By his own admission he only continues the podcast because he wants to continue talking to people he finds interesting. He already has fuck you money Hold up, think about what that statements means. 1. Let’s take the guy’s word at face value who is totally okay helping spread deception. 2. And the rich person says he’s not continuing to do “action that made him rich” because he wants even more money, but because he enjoys it. Should that statement really be taken at face value given the context and the claim? JR giving dubious theories a friendly platform is extremely harmful if his listeners are buying those arguments and repeating them.
- briHass 4y ago
  Personally, I like when I can listen to an interview/podcast where the host isn't trying to 'gotcha' the guest or trying to prove how smart they are. Rogan can go on some boring/unrelated tangents, but he's one of the best in the business at letting his guests dig themselves in whatever hole they're going to dig. I listened to that interview, with no background on Lazar or UFO-aficionados in general, and it seemed pretty clear he was full of it. I'm able to make my own decisions without the host telling me how I should think about the guest or needlessly arguing with someone they ostensibly brought on in good faith.

by timr 4y ago

evol262 4y ago

Kind of the thing with being in mass media with an enormous audience is that you lose the ability to just do what you've always been doing. I mean, he can, by abandoning his platform and starting over with something else, but the piles of money are too attractive. Public figures who can heavily influence discourse and thought have an ethical obligation to not give unchallenged credence and a drastically increased audience to their nonsense. If Rogan thought that Goebbels was interesting and let him do his thing for hours to an audience of millions, he would be held to a higher standard. If Rogan thought that Ted Bundy was interesting and let him tell "his side of the story" without challenging it with the truth, he would be held to a higher standard. This is a basic which we should expect of our society.

jgust 4y ago
We can expect it but I'm not sure that means anything. I'd really like people to stop giving Tucker Carlson attention, but that doesn't seem to be happening.
- lazyeye 4y ago
  The subtext is always the same. "The real problem is all the stupid, easily influenced people out there. Not smart (like us)".
nradov 4y ago
The ethical obligation exists only in your own mind. Stop projecting. The rest of us are capable of thinking for ourselves and don't necessarily believe the random ramblings of a comedian or his guests. And your hypotheticals about Nazis and serial killers are totally irrelevant. You are arguing in bad faith and trying to inflame the discussion.
- evol262 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - goatlover 4y ago
    > We should expect better. Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that? > then surely there's nothing wrong with having Nazis or mass murderers given airtime. You invoked Godwin's law twice. What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here?
    - evol262 4y ago
      > Do you think you would get his 11-12 million listeners to agree with you on what society should expect? Who gets to decide that? I'm not sure why you presume that "we, as society, should expect better" means "this applies only to Joe Rogan listeners and we need to convince them." It's a general stance on how society ought to operate, and the use of "ought" is in the "how ought one live?" question raised by ethics. We get to decide that as society. This isn't a new concept. Society would not have advanced to a point that we were capable of having this conversation at all if "we" had not already agreed on basic principles, such as "you should not steal", and "you should not murder", and "be generally honest in your dealings with others if you want to keep your reputation". These are all inherent rules of society which you implicitly follow in order to be part of it. Holding public figures who have a louder voice to a standard of behavior which does not actively undermine society by giving credence to disinformation isn't some horrible leap or infringement upon your freedom. It's avoiding the Gracchi. > You invoked Godwin's law twice. Mentioning Nazis isn't Godwin's Law. Feel free to substitute some other bogeyman who you feel giving an unfiltered platform to would deteriorate society. > What sort of argument are you going to win by invoking Nazis and worst case scenarios? Surely the slipper slope fallacy applies here? No, it doesn't. Honestly, I'm getting the sense that you've never engaged in any kind of philosophical discourse before, which this is sort of veering into, and throwing out the names of fallacies doesn't mean they apply. The point is, as I said in my last post, a reductio ad absurdum. It is constructing a contrapositive. It is saying "if we follow your reasoning to its logical conclusion, this is where it leads; verify whether that's true or false, less black and white." And it was false/shades of grey. Clearly there is some level at which even ardent JRE listeners believe giving people a platform is harmful. So the question is "what are the guidelines for when something is too much?" My position is, as repeatedly restated, that those with a greater platform have a duty to not do harm to society by allowing crackpots to talk without being challenged, whether that's denying climate change, believing lizard people run the government, believing we are secretly in contact with aliens, taking veterinary antiparasitics on the advice of one person rather than the guidance of literally every medical organization on Earth, etc. It has no been made clear anywhere what the position of Joe Rogan defenders is other than "he's just a comedian; you shouldn't take him seriously; people can think for themselves; he doesn't have any obligation to question them". But again, it's apparent that having Nazis or murderers on with an unfiltered platform would cross some line. So where is that line? Where are Joe Rogan defenders drawing the line of what is "too much" to air? What is the basis for drawing it there and not somewhere else?
towaway15463 4y ago
I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests. If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France?
- evol262 4y ago
  > I doubt it. High standards are rare in journalism, most will go along with high profile figures if it serves their own interests. The debasement of "journalism" to the point where it applies to Joe Rogan and/or "news networks" which have actively fought (and won) court battles on the basis that no reasonable person would believe the statements were actually true, or news radio which for decades gave equal airtime to "both sides" even if one of those sides believed in a Hollow Earth does not mean that "journalism" has lost high standards, merely that the term has been horrifyingly diluted in the United States. > If you want to bring Nazis into this then how about all of the practically fawning interviews that US media had with Adolph Hitler right up until he invaded France? Whataboutism is an intellectually bankrupt argument. Nobody is defending those journalists, but if you're going to try to make a whataboutist argument, apples-to-apples works a lot better than "with the benefit of hindsight, we know that Hitler was bad and that Ford would have actively led a fifth column if he could have, so they were bad". You could equally say "if you want to bring Dwayne Johnson into this, then how about all of the love for Cosby as America's Dad?" The known facts are different. If you want to assert that a comparison to Nazis (and I used Goebbels as an example because he was principally a radio propagandist rather than Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, etc; he's the sort of person who would have seemed like a harmless marketing geek) is bad in a whataboutist sense, you would do much better to say "if you want to bring Nazis into this, then how about Speer? He wasn't (actively) involved in the Holocaust and he could have had a lot of interesting things to say about architecture and designing an imperial capital?"

joe_the_user 4y ago

First, I think the Lazar example says to me that he's not merely naive - it takes effort to not ask someone like that basic questions. Second, the thing with national level news isn't just that people are "uptight". It's that there are many professional and well-practiced liars out there eager for a softball venue (people less obvious than Lazar usually). These sorts of people make significant money from their deceptions and Rogan is an enabler of this stuff, making vast amounts of money himself. Edit: and just on the question of Rogan's evolution. Just by Wikipedia's bio, I'd say he didn't start with small nuts and graduate to fronting professional conmen. Rather, he started MMA chat, built to national level and then moved laterally to interviewing people saying "hypothetically true" things about the world in generally.

towaway15463 4y ago
By his own admission he only continues the podcast because he wants to continue talking to people he finds interesting. He already has fuck you money and multiple lucrative careers so he hardly needs it as a job. He isn’t beholden to anyone and he isn’t doing it for the benefit of anyone else. It’s his platform so what he says goes. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen to it and you’re welcome to build your own to get your personal views out there like millions of other people have.
- mint2 4y ago
  >By his own admission he only continues the podcast because he wants to continue talking to people he finds interesting. He already has fuck you money Hold up, think about what that statements means. 1. Let’s take the guy’s word at face value who is totally okay helping spread deception. 2. And the rich person says he’s not continuing to do “action that made him rich” because he wants even more money, but because he enjoys it. Should that statement really be taken at face value given the context and the claim? JR giving dubious theories a friendly platform is extremely harmful if his listeners are buying those arguments and repeating them.
briHass 4y ago
Personally, I like when I can listen to an interview/podcast where the host isn't trying to 'gotcha' the guest or trying to prove how smart they are. Rogan can go on some boring/unrelated tangents, but he's one of the best in the business at letting his guests dig themselves in whatever hole they're going to dig. I listened to that interview, with no background on Lazar or UFO-aficionados in general, and it seemed pretty clear he was full of it. I'm able to make my own decisions without the host telling me how I should think about the guest or needlessly arguing with someone they ostensibly brought on in good faith.