YouSaid · the spoken record

David Wolpe

lines on the record: 141
first: 2022-03-16
most recent: 2022-03-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Love of each other. Right. Yep. There's no question about the idea. I mean, Judaism, that was actually the great innovation of the monotheistic idea. In pagan societies, it was all about how you treated the gods. Monotheism said, no, God cares how you treat each other. So it's, in fact, the mystics use the same kind of word in Hebrew de Vekut, which means clinging, that is used about Adam and Eve, about, it says, therefore a man will leave his father and mother and Davak with his wife. And Davak means cling. So there is an analogy there, absolutely.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe the meaning of life is for human beings to grow in soul. That's why we're here. And you can do that in infinite numbers of ways, but you're supposed to return your soul like more burnished and beautiful than you got it. I mean, it's going to have some nicks and cuts. But that's what it means, to deepen and grow it. And you do that. More than anything else, you do that. I mean, that's the principal way, I think, that you do it.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So here's this really wonderful story that Hugo Grinn, who was a rabbi in England, died, I don't know, like 15, 20 years ago, used to tell he grew up in Auschwitz. He was a child there, and he was with his father, and it was Hanukkah. And you're supposed to light the candles. And his father took the margarine ration and used it as the oil to light the Hanukkah candles. And Hugo was scandalized. And he said, that's our food. And his father said, what we have learned, my son, is you can live for three weeks without food. You can live for three days without water. But you can't live for three minutes without hope.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's what I said before about Judaism's advice to younger people is that it mattered. If you believe that something matters, you have enormous resilience. It's meaninglessness that is the greatest threat to a decent life. When people are like deeply depressed, whether it is chemical depression or what they feel like is this is all meaningless. And meaning now, obviously. Chemical depression calls in part for chemical means, but Meaning is the great antidote. Can talk about what kind of meaning. I mean, there are kinds of meanings that are awful, but meaning is the great antidote to a sense that life is just nihilistic and purposeless. To that destructiveness that I think is too common.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you really do. Also, I love Saul Bellow, especially her tug, but it's a very different kind of thinking person's novel. I read a lot of mysteries and a lot of other kinds of fiction and literature. But in terms of the books that most You mentioned one of them, which is Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. And I also really, really love Heschel's The Sabbath. I think it's a beautiful book. It's a very short book, just as Frankl's book is.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I might have been. I don't remember maybe the, but anyway, but I would say. Middle march is up there. Middle March presents an entire world. And it's written by a woman, Marianne Evans, who took the pen named George Elliot, who Virginia Wolf said it's the only English novel written for grown-ups. You feel the genius in her sentences, like the pressure of her intellect in her sentences. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. I love it.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite novel is Middlemarch. March. I remember I was listening to a podcast. I was listening to one of your podcasts where you said where your guest said the two greatest novels of the 19th century were Brothers Karamazov and what was the other one he mentioned? I don't remember.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And I think it's partly because I grew up without that. I mean, I grew up with a lot of space in my life. And so I had a chance to develop that voice. That's why I think it's harder for kids today than it was for me. I mean, I grew up when there were three channels. There was three, six, and ten. There was ABC, CBS, and NBC. And that was it. And you spent your evening, you know, playing board games or reading or whatever. And there was a lot of space. And we played football in the street. And you went on your bike in the morning and nobody worried about you and you came home at night and everybody assumed you were fine. And so I really feel, and also I went into a religious tradition where I feel like I have the opportunity to judge myself by bigger metrics. And it's still hard. It's not like, oh, I wear impenetrable armor. It's still hard.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to develop your own internal metric of both what matters and what is good because you will be exposed to more voices than any generation in history telling you that that's good or this is good. They're called influences, but what they are is voices telling you what you should think and what you should believe. And so have some internal space where you'll be able to say, for example, I know this person is doing that and it looks great, but that's not me.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll show you different possibilities that you don't imagine at the moment. And I think the second thing that I would say is. I know that this is a very old fashioned, but I would say don't To the extent that you can read, don't just, and not just on social media, read books, learn things that will give you a broader context for your life than just today or yesterday or the day before. I suppose the other thing that I would say is The extent that you can”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the first thing that I would say is that life is longer than you think it is, even though I understand the impulse to be in a rush. You will have many unfoldings more even than people of my generation did.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Social media, I wish that it were not as algorithmically biased towards conflict. I don't think that that's healthy, but I do, I think it brings a lot of blessings into people's lives if they use it wisely. Like anything else, it can be awful. But I've connected to all sorts of people that I never would have known. And that's been wonderful.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they have more to lose. When you have more to lose, it actually makes you, I think, countries are less willing to go to war when they have more to lose. And families want peace when it's good at home. So I think there's an element of that as well.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like what human beings can do if they just put aside their ideological shackles is remarkable. And I'm hopeful that one day that'll happen.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the last couple of games, and I watched. And so I wasn't so much, I mean, it's not that I'm uninterested in Dubai, but I really, I went there for the chess thing. The Expo was also on at the same time. And I saw here's this amazing place. I came back. This guy I know who lived in Dubai for several years and works in the Middle East said to me, what did you think of it? And I said, I say, Dubai, it was like very, you know, very polished, very sophisticated, very clean, very no crime and so on. But it was like, you know, kind of like Las Vegas in the Middle East without the gambling or something like that. And he said, you know, he totally changed my perspective in a couple sentences. He said, I know it seems like that when you come from Los Angeles. He said, the fly there from Yemen or from Riyadh. And it is a miracle. And I thought, oh my God, you're right.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that I'm not sure that I could give one answer to that, but I will give a piece of an answer. Why did the Abraham Accords happen? The main reason that they happened was because economics overrode ideology. And I actually am hopeful that that's in the end what will happen, that people will say, you know what, we could have such a better life if we put aside the ideological animosities and just created this different kind of Middle East together. I went to Dubai. Watch the World Chess Championship because I really wanted to see Magnus Carlson play. I thought. Alive when you have such a remarkable world champion, go see him play. So I actually took myself to Dubai.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comes to be, and I believe that it will, I think not only that there would be peace, but I think that those two peoples together could probably do remarkable things in the world.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since I'm an optimist about human Look, I mean, I have many, many thoughts about it. I'm a very, very strong supporter of Israel. And I also feel really for the plight of the Palestinians. I think that there are... This is a clash of legitimate narratives that is impossible to exactly split the difference of. However, I know that Israel has made peace with Egypt, has made peace with Jordan, has made peace now with other Arab nations. I don't believe that Israel is unwilling to make peace. And so I think that as difficult as it will be The Palestinians to come to grips with the fact that the Jewish state is not leaving and is legitimately here as opposed to we can't get rid of it now, but we will get rid of it one day. If that”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The week after that, we had Active Shooter training in my synagogue. So, one of the things I drew was that security for synagogues is important. And the second is that The reality of anti-semitism. Which I had thought had waned when I first began my rabbinet. I thought it's not going to be such a big issue. It is like an evergreen issue. And Jews and all people of goodwill have to take this really seriously because it has devastating consequences. And if the world doesn't know that, then it just hasn't been paying attention.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Father, I mean, both my parents, but my father, who was a rabbi, was such a wonderful, warm, and loving man. So I associate a religious figure with real goodness.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was he actually discovered that in his 30s that his mother was Jewish. He actually has a beautiful essay about it, discovering in his 30s that his mother was Jewish. Yep. So remarkably enough. He actually was Jewish. Autobiography. Hitch 22 is a great read. And I just want to say what you discover there. I don't know if I'm giving too much away by telling this story. What you discover there is that his mother ran away with a minister or a priest and they died in what seemed like was a suicide pact. And so I read it unfortunately after he passed away, but I would have wanted to ask him, do you think that has anything to do maybe with the hostility towards religion?”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes Really believe that it does. I really do. Its meaning, and I want to emphasize this is not political. Deepest meaning of Judaism is not political.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to say almost to every young woman under 30 on TikTok, you don't matter because you're beautiful. That's not why you matter. I hope you know that. You matter because you have a soul. And to every young man who's like nihilistic and doesn't think and just thinks that if they make enough money, their life will be fine. I want to say the same thing, which is really, that's not ultimately you matter because you're in the image of God. And Judaism really deeply, deeply believes and preaches that. And I think that that's a message that has so much to say to the world. It's like you have to take people's souls seriously. And for all of the difficulty in figuring out all these social questions and what they mean, I just don't want to dismiss people because I disagree with them politically or socially.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the most beautiful part about Judaism That even though it is filled with humor and wit, it takes life and it takes the soul seriously. It really believes that this matters and that we matter. And what we do matters. And I think that that's incredibly important and especially in a world in which young people feel so much like they don't matter. That's an unbelievably powerful message. I mean, you know, it's”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funny because I always thought, okay, my father is a rabbi, that's great, but nobody else. And I think what happened to me was it was not a logical decision to come to faith. It was a sort of opening of my heart. It's like this world is way much more than my mind can capture. And I kind of felt my way to God. And in the moments... My faith, you know, there was a rabbi named Rabbi Nachman of Braslav. He said he was a moon man. His faith waxed and waned. So sometimes I have more, sometimes less. In my feeling girl moments is when I have more.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I realized That all of that rationality didn't shield him. He had an incredibly messy life, multiple marriages, endless infidelities. Family members he didn't speak to, he didn't speak to him. He was raised by his grandparents because his parents had died and like really not a happy or I mean a remarkable life, but not a happy one. And so I started to like believe that maybe it was possible that people who had faith were not just stupid and needed crutches, but But saw something deeper than Russell did. And the more people that I met that were like that,”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, there was another rabbi I was at summer camp and I was sitting on the porch of the, I remember exactly, and I was reading Bertrand Russell and this guy came up to me and said, what are you reading? I was maybe 16 or 17. And I said, Bertrand Russell, I was spoiling for a fight. And he said, I'm glad you're reading him. I said, really? Why? He goes, how old are you, David? I said, whatever I was, 16, 17. He said, well, I'd rather you grow out of him than grow into him. And you know what? He was actually right because when I started to read about Russell's life.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really think so. I had that experience. It's like I want to just be a thinking machine. I don't want to be a body because my body was making me so uncomfortable. I had all these urges and inclinations that I couldn't control. So Russell was perfect. And my father, who was a rabbi, did the very wise thing of buying me, some of Bertrand Russell's books, which was his way of saying I'm not afraid of him.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was in high school Was a really pretty ardent atheist, and I loved Bertrand Russell, who was, for my money, with all due respect to all the very, very capable people that we've talked about earlier, he's the best atheist, pound for pound, that there was, and a remarkably witty and lucid writer. And I was totally in his thrall. And I would read every book by Russell. I could get my hands on. And the reason that I did. Have this theory that why do adolescent boys like Mr. Spock and like Sherlock Holmes, I think it's because when you hit puberty, for a lot of us, there's so much discomfort with our bodies that we like the idea that we're just brains.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All I would say is The older you get, the more you're struck by the fact that time does not freeze Know people will sometimes say to me, you have an age today, and then I'll look at an old picture of myself. And I'll say That was very kind of you, but that's not true. It's not true. So, yeah, I mean, I love the idea of, you know, seeing eternity in a grain of sand was how Blake put it. I love that notion. But when you talk about life after death, I really, I think that in some ways my fundamental faith is in human beings that this doesn't all disappear, that there's something about people that transcends this world.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think it is. Well, partly because God is supposed to be eternal and therefore it moves the mind in that direction, even though it is completely unfathomable.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Says, the one who doesn't say, Look, this is the only world we've ever seen, the only world we've ever known. Why do you think there's something out there? He says, now imagine the one who believes is born. Back in the womb, his brother is mourning a death, but outside, everybody celebrating a birth. He said, and that's what it's like when you die. Love that image”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That every image of what it's like is foolish. Like Mark Twain has, I think in letters from Earth, he says, we're going to lie on greenfields and listen to harp music, which you wouldn't want to do for five minutes while you're alive, but you think you'll be happy for the rest of eternity doing it after you die. So, I don't know. This world was a surprise. So, why shouldn't the next world be a surprise? I have no idea. But I really like this parable that's told by a guy in... A book on death and mourning by a rabbi and a book on death and mourning about twins in a womb. One of them believes that there's a life outside and the other one doesn't.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, it has more symbolism around it than anything. And his answer is anything that reminds you that you're a physical body because that's what dies. Your body dies, it decays, it dies, it gets eaten by worms. That you don't want to think about, so you deny it. I think the part of religion is a confrontation with your own mortality. But also a certain transcendence of it because the idea is something about you is eternal. What exactly I don't know? And you asked, what do I think happens after we die? So I don't know any better than anyone else does, but I'll say two things about it. One is...”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't fear it. First of all, I would say when I was in high school, I think my father actually encouraged me to read this book. I read Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, which I found and still find to be one of the most profound works I've ever come across. And he convinced me that a lot of what our society is about are ways that we avoid encountering our own mortality. Our physicality, I mean, among the points he makes, and I'm not quoting him at all directly, is like, why does everything about our physical body make us so uncomfortable? Everything that comes out of you other than tears is either mildly or very disgusting. Why? Why does that have to be? Why are sex and eating and all the things that are physical, surrounded with so much symbolism? I mean, what are table manners really? They're like, we're not eating like animals because we're not eating like animals.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been incredibly lucky. I don't have a good life because I was good. I have a good life because I was lucky. And that implies not that I should feel guilty about it, but that I have a tremendous responsibility as a result to other people who aren't so lucky.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These kinds of explanations are obscene. They just are. You can't, I mean, when somebody is actually suffering, oh, the rabbi said God gave people free will, that's just awful. But there is a second piece to this also, which is that there is natural suffering, like children born with diseases or earthquakes or volcanoes or whatever. And here my argument is that in some ways suffering has to be random in the world because When people say why do bad things happen to good people, well, if only good things happen to good people, everybody would be good. But it would have no moral content. The only way you can be good and it have moral content is say, I know that I can live a really good life and have really terrible things happen to me nonetheless. So it feels to me like it has to be a randomly. Now that means, by the way, that”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's assume for a minute that everything was a primitive robot. There would be no suffering, but there would also be no growth. And that implies choices. One of the things that I've said that I know why it hurts people, and I don't mean it quite the way, but I will say it nonetheless, is the Holocaust presents the exact same theological question as somebody who gets shot on the streets of a city in Los Angeles, which is, God, why do you allow some people to do bad things to other people? It's on an unimaginable scale, but it's the same question. And the answer has to be You either allow people to have free will or you don't. You can't say as God, I'm going to let everybody have free will, but not Nazis. Nazis don't get free will because Cambodians, they can kill each other. Rwandans kill each other, but the Nazis don't get to do that. So that's one piece of the puzzle. And what makes it unfathomable is when you're actually faced with suffering.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look at when you're not conscious, you don't suffer. You know, we've had operations where we've been put under anesthetic. We're not conscious, and we don't suffer during the operation if we were conscious, we would. But there's also, I mean, there's a non-physical suffering that is very much tied to consciousness. I can think of things right now that will cause me suffering, like pain that I've caused or pain that other people I care about have felt or so on. So I don't see how I think that way, I think it's equally true of joy. Joy is also a product of consciousness.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll preach to the robots. I'm hoping. First of all, depends how quickly you do it and how much longer I have to live. I resist it tremendously, but I am also enough of a student of history to know that my instinctive resistance has nothing to do with whether it will come about. I have a hard time believing it. We'll see.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's true, but it's true that I have the assumption that you feel somewhat like I do. I mean, obviously, I don't. And that could be illusion. And I don't know. And I know that you don't feel exactly as I do. I think we have a long, at least to me, we have a long way to go before the detached part of our brains, that is the objective evaluating part as opposed to the emotive it feels this way part, believe that that machine has consciousness.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. According to the scripture, can't live by bread alone. But I would. I mean, I know that there's no way to determine this, but it's still about what you feel.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's what I'm asking at what point do you believe that the, and I know that this is an impossible question, but at what point do you believe that there is a consciousness in there as opposed to... Just an extraordinarily, I mean, like when I play chess against a computer and it beats me, I'm embarrassed even though the computer doesn't, I don't think the computer is going, are you idiot, but it feels that way. There is some part of me that says, okay, I know that this computer doesn't actually know who I am or care who I am. It just knows how to move the pieces. So at what point do you, I mean, you're giving me instances. It speaks. It does this. It does this. But at what point does that for you cross the threshold into it's actually a sentient being”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you can make the distinction. Like, if I have a doll and I bend the doll over and it makes a sad face, I know that that doll is not actually in pain, even though I am observing pain. What's that?”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exhibit the capacity to suffer, or they exhibit behaviors that evoke in you a sense that they are suffering. Those aren't the same things.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any statement you make about something like consciousness has, I think, a sort of equal level of humility. You're saying that you know we don't have it is as not you, Lex, but you person saying we don't have it is as intellectually arrogant as my saying we do. I think for me, humility comes in in admitting that we really, really have just the tiniest part of the puzzle. And as you get older, at least my experience has been not that you get more answers, but that you just see a bigger puzzle.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could be outraged. I said it. Well, I happen to be allergic to both, but I'm very fond of animals. The thing that's so perplexes me about this is the denial of the reality of consciousness from people who are fully aware that they're conscious. I don't know how you divest yourself of the most present quality of being a person in your discussions about what it is to be a person.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, this is the most fascinating and inexplicable Discussion. And again, this is a discussion I've had I've privileged to have with Daniel Dennett and could not make any, as you can imagine, any headway on my, but he was delightful and brilliant to talk to. For me, consciousness is a real thing. I don't know if it is, I mean, I kind of like the panpsychist view, that there's an element of consciousness in everything, that that's constitutive of reality. But I'm not wedded to it. But I think that it exists in different degrees in all sentient creatures. I think that anybody who has a pet knows that they have some kind of consciousness”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's fundamental to Judaism. I think that the idea is that You are the custodian of your soul. And even though I grant that there's a certain over emphasis in modern society on the individuality of the soul, that is, we are more interconnected than I think we believe. Still, yeah, the I, the idea that every human being is an image of God that, I mean, that the human being in the Torah is created singly. And again, do I really believe there was an Adam and Eve and a Garden of Eden? No, not literally, but I think that it expresses a deep truth about human life.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, that could be an illusion. It could be an illusion. Now I understand. Right, but actual free choice, free will. I don't see where you get it if you're a materialist. I think you have to have a spiritual component. By the way, this is also, I think Sam would agree with this. I think he wrote about not having free will. And I think if you don't have a God and you don't have a soul, that free will is a logical impossibility.”
2022-03-16 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #270 – David Wolpe: Judaism · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source