The Social Contract with Joe Walsh

We Must Change The Way We Think (with Ilana Redstone)

I sat down with Professor Ilana Redstone (@irakresh) whose book, "The Certainty Trap," just came out. If you care about how dangerously divided this country is, you MUST read this book. Healing the divide goes well beyond civil discourse. To heal the divide, we must transform how we think. Have a listen.

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Duration:: 51m
Broadcast on:: 10 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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Follow me here and join the millions of Americans who are renewing their social contract with each other. The social contract, it's on us. Hey, former Congressman Joe Walsh with you this Tuesday. Thank you for listening to social contract with Joe Walsh. I want to start like this, but Keith, can we bring Alana in? There she is. Welcome, Alana Redstone. I want to start like this. I have very few times in my life have I met someone or read something, written someone that utterly changed the way I think. My guest today is one of those people, and she's written a book which has completely changed the way I try to approach myself in public life and with people privately. And we're going to get into it. We all, the context everybody listening to me, and you're going to mostly listen to Alana Redstone here in a moment, Professor Alana Redstone. This country is dangerously divided. You've heard me say this a million times. We are at each other's throats. If we don't figure out how to stop doing this, say goodbye to our democracy. Alana Redstone is a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois. She has written a book that is just out now. I mean right now called the certainty trap. Why we need to question our, there it is. Thank you, Keith. There it is, Alana. The certainty trap. Why we need to question ourselves more and how we can judge others less. We've got in the private chat down there. I think you can see it. We've got the link. Go to Amazon and buy this book. If you are as concerned about a dangerously divided America as I am, go get this book. It'll change the way you think. Alana, welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's so nice to be here again. It's so good to be with you. And I've thought of 39 different ways to start our conversation. But I don't know that I've ever asked you this question. This book, the certainty trap, start here with me. Why did you write this? I wrote it because it was sort of, it's been a couple of years that kind of in the works. As I was trying to figure out what seemed to me to be breaking down in terms of how we were talking about both in my own campus and my own classes, but also more broadly how we were talking about the most heated and most contentious issues, particularly those around race, identity, gender, immigration, right, all of it, and what seemed to be kind of breaking down in a way that was both more alarming and also more unfamiliar to me. What's alarming? What did you feel was alarming? What I felt was alarming was the amount of, I don't know if I would have put it in words in these kinds of words at the beginning, but looking at it now is the amount of, the way we are contemptuous and dismissive of one another. And so the argument in the book is really not, it's not, I am not the like, let's all get along and hug it out person. That's great, someone else can write that book. This is really more of just, I'm making observations and making connections so that people and providing a path forward so that people understand how the way we're thinking and the way we're judging one another is actually incompatible with the democracy that we say we want to preserve and strengthen. So, but not to poo poo or dismiss, can't we all just hold hands, kumbaya, hug, and get along? There's, and again, that's why I find this book, the certainty trap so profound, because it moves miles beyond that, but there's value in that, correct? Totally, absolutely. It's just, it's not me, like it's, and I think, I think there's absolutely value in it. And the reason, a lot of the reason I ask, you know, like I know, so many people in this space believe that's what we have, that's all we have to do. Yeah, I think that, I think that it's, I think that it's, look, I think more empathy, I think more understanding, those are clearly good things. I think that it's a framing that is kind of not enough, and it's not necessarily compelling enough for most people. You have to really sort of change how you're thinking and change how you're judging people. You have to care about something more than you care about being right. Do you, Alana, do you believe as I do, and maybe my vantage point is skewed, because I've been in the hand-to-hand combat for so long, you believe the nation right now is really dangerously divided. I do, I do, and you know, every once in a while, I get asked if I should, well, do you really think it's worse than it was? I mean, I'm 51, so is it really worse than it was, you know, whatever, 30 years ago or something? And my sense is, I can't prove this. I mean, there's also some polling data about, you know, how we view one another, and that suggests that things are not great in terms of levels of social trust and trust in institutions and things like that. My sense is that we, there is, again, I'll just go back to this problem of contempt, and that is a sense, that is really the problem that I'm trying to solve, and that does seem worse to me than it did two, three decades ago. So drill down, my dear, and with certainty trap, let's back up why this contempt? Where is this unusual amount of contempt today coming from? So let me, let me back up for a second, and I'm going to just give you sort of a high level model of how this fits in, like, how this fits into democracy and why it matters. And then, so I'm going to start really high and then end up right where we're talking about the certainty trap. Cool. So we hear, I mean, this will be no, I'm sure this will be familiar to you, we hear people talk about, and we do it ourselves, threats to democracy, and we talk about them as though we usually use language that sounds like, okay, well, the threat's coming from the right, threat's coming from the left, if you're sitting on the right, you see the threat in kind of political correctness and the sensorious, that sensorious culture, or what is seen as a sensorious culture, if you're sitting on the left, you see it in Trump, 2020 election denial, what, right? And so we end up, and I'm not saying that these things, I'm not trying to make a claim of equivalence or lack thereof, I'm just saying this is sort of the simplified view. And so part of what happens when we do that is when we see this threats to democracy as coming from the left and the right, a couple of things happen. One is that we fail to see how they're actually interconnected, which I'll talk about in a minute, how we're all kind of, we're all, democracy requires political pluralism, which again, we'll come back to in a second, and which means we're all in this together. So like, there's, so that, so seeing this left and right thing, like seeing threats as becoming from the left or the right, or exclusively as coming from the left and the right, that tends to be a problem in that sense. But the other thing that it does is it really gives us permission to ignore our own role in creating the situation that we're in. And so what I would say, and this actually is, we'll be in this part that I'm going to say right now, we'll be in the next book, it's not in the certainty trap book, but it is actually context for the certainty trap book. So if you think about, rather than thinking about a left-to-right model of democratic stability, think of it as sort of three blocks, a tower with three blocks on it. And each one, if any one of the blocks breaks, crumbles, whatever, the whole thing can come crashing down. So at the top block, you have what I think of as the machinery of democracy. So this is free and fair elections, this is the separation of powers, limits on executive power, etc. And again, all of these blocks, all of them matter. I'm not trying to make an argument that they don't. So that's the machinery. So this is where we, when we hear a lot about threats from threats to democracy, particularly as embodied in Trump and right in that kind of in the way that that's viewed, they are often talking, not exclusively, but oftentimes talking about threats at that level. Right under that is a commitment to political pluralism. So a commitment to political pluralism is necessary for any of the stuff above it to have any real grit to it, to have any meat to it. So in other words, why should I care about your free speech rights if I don't have a corresponding commitment to political pluralism? So there are lots of organizations that do great work focused at that level. So these are organizations that are focused on things like civil discourse, to some extent organizations that are focused on debating, to some extent political polarization, viewpoint diversity, that's really all trying to reinvigorate and double down our commitment to political pluralism, which is totally again, also important as is the top level. The bottom block is which sits right underneath our commitment to political pluralism is you could think of it as neutrality, you could think of it as tolerance, I don't love those words, what it really is, this is where the contempt comes in. It's a lack of contempt for people who disagree. And so that's where the certainty trap is focused. I'm focused on that bottom block in changing, transforming, clarifying, learning the clarifying question, how we think in this way that it leads to judgment. So you asked the question about contempt. Contempt, judgment, righteous outrage, moral outrage, righteous indignation, those come from certainty. That's not a sort of not so much a theoretical argument. Like this is just the way it is. Like if you feel morally outraged, it's because you're very certain about some value, belief, or principle. And that's what and somebody else has violated that. Go ahead, you look like you have a question. What would you label that bottom block? Would you label it tolerance? What would you call it? I don't love tolerance. I don't love tolerance because it not because there's anything wrong with that. I mean, more tolerance is great, but partly because it's become kind of loaded. There's a lot of language that's become pretty loaded. And so then people start to mean different things. And the other thing is that some people will put in that space they would think of words like respect, like mutual respect. The reason I don't use that either is because I think it's true strong. Like I actually think that there's an argument to be made. I'm not sure how I, where I land on this, but I think there's an argument to be made that the default shouldn't be respect, that somebody actually has to earn your respect. And so you can't just give it away for free. And so like I really think this lack of contempt is sort of the most, there's not a great word for it. I mean, maybe one of your listeners will have a clever word that I'm not thinking of. Yeah, go ahead. Back up. Okay, so back up to everybody listening to us. And what's unique about this podcast, Alana, is because of my unique, weird political journey from far right to far left and now somewhere who knows where we've got listeners across the spectrum. What is your, what is the definition of the certainty? What is the certainty trap? Yeah, so the certainty trap, the easiest way to think about it is to define it by how we know we're in it. And so the certainty trap is the, is the contempt, the outrage, the indignation that we feel when we treat our knowledge as definitive rather than provisional, when we treat the answers to complex questions as given and obvious, when we see, when we see our own preferred argument as having no downsides and no, sorry, no downsides and all upsides. And when we, frankly, when we, this is, I think probably perhaps a less intuitive part, when we fail to clarify our own thinking. So one of the things, one of the concerns that I'll often run up against with the certainty trap, there are two, there are two concerns that come up a lot, and I'll just preempt them right here. One of them is people will think, well, okay, if you're saying I need to avoid the problem of certainty, are you then saying that I have to believe weird things? Like, are you saying then, right? Like, are you saying that like any explanation is, you know, whether the earth is flat or spheroid is suddenly the result of a coin flip. And I go into, obviously, I have a lot more space to go into this in the book. But there's no reason that leaving certainty behind means that everything is just up for grabs and anything is as good as anything else. Because what you're doing is, you're thinking about what we know in the space of confidence and how much confidence you can have in it, but confidence is not the same thing as certainty. And I want to drill down on that, because I found that, that I find that fascinating. But I am, as you know, a big gun rights guy, a big second amendment, that's my AR 15. Don't you dare touch it. I should be able to carry whatever gun I want to carry anywhere in this country to protect me and my own. I am certain in that belief. And anybody who thinks differently is coming for my freaking guns, Alana. Is that kind of a certainty trap thing? And I despise those people who want to take my guns. So the problem that certainty, so the goal of avoiding the goal, and just to go big again, the goal is not to avoid disagreement. The goal is to be able to, it's never to avoid disagreement. It's to live with the disagreement. Yeah, sorry, it's never, yeah, the goal is not agreement. Sorry, I tripped my own words. The goal is not agreement. It's to live with the disagreement. So I, to answer your question, I would say it sort of depends on the problem that the certainty trap is trying to solve is really that problem and how we view one another. There's nothing about it that says that you can't get fired up about a particular issue, or be an advocate, or an activist, or there's nothing, it's fundamentally about how you view. So just what I would say to answer your question is not all certainty is a trap. The trap is, you could, there are interesting philosophical questions about certainty, which I talk about a little bit in the book, but the trap is the contempt that it leads to. So the trap would be, Alanna, the trap would be, I feel so certain in gun rights that anyone, I believe, anyone, and I don't, but anyone who disagrees with me, I hold contempt for because they want to take away my guns, whatever. Yeah, I mean, Lee can put a finer point on it. Anyone who, you know, I support gun rights, if I'm just making this argument. And, you know, anyone who disagrees with me doesn't care about the Second Amendment and wants to live in a highly surveilled, highly surveilled nanny state. Okay. Right. I support gun restrictions, and I think that, and anyone who is opposed to gun restrictions doesn't care about children being killed. So, and to go back to your bottom box, and I find this so fascinating, that bottom box is contempt. We feel so certain in our beliefs, so certain that anyone who disagrees with us, not only do they just disagree with us, we have utter contempt for them. And we, we're stupid. Yeah. I mean, so that's like, I just want to touch quickly on the other problem, the other concern that comes up a lot. So one is sort of this, do I have to believe weird things? The other one is, well, if you're saying, are you making some argument that, am I making some argument that says, we can't say this is good and this is bad, like we're just kind of waffling in the middle all the time. That is not, that is also not, and I talk about this a lot in the book, like that is also not what is required when you're avoiding the problem of certainty. The reason is part of what certainty does is it makes us really sloppy in our thinking. So that means that when we disagree, we are not clear about what it is that, like what you're bumping up against, that value, that belief or that principle, it's so, I'm trying to think of an example. Like, so if I, yeah, I mean, like, so if we're, I don't remember if we talked about this last time when I was, I don't know if it was the same example, but like, if we're seeing someone steal a car, right? If we're standing here looking out the window and we're seeing someone steal a car, and I say, oh my God, Joe, can you believe that person stealing a car? And let's assume I have every reason to believe it's not their car and they're stealing it, whatever. My expectation is that you're going to say your response is going to be something like, wow, that's crazy. Like, I can't believe they're stealing a car because I'm, because I'm assuming that you also think stealing is wrong, right? Like, I don't say that out loud because I'm assuming that you share that value. Now, in something like stealing, it's not about assumption, right? But when it comes to, you know, all of these other issues around race, gender, again, you know, all the ones I've listed before, race, gender, immigration, all that certainty keeps us from saying all of that out loud and making our thinking clear. And when we don't make it clear, we don't give the space for somebody else to question or challenge it. I'm speaking with Professor Alana Redstone from the University of Illinois. She's come out with an amazing new book that changed the way I think about how we treat each other in this democracy. It's called The Certainty Trap. I think we've got it right there. Why we need to question ourselves more and how we can judge others less. This book is just out. The link is right there. Go to Amazon. Get it. Period. So you usurped me. Is there, and I guess then this leads to the difference in certainty and confidence. Like you say, you've got a chapter titled Down With Certainty, Long Live Confidence. Yes. What's the difference there? So the difference, if you think of, so this idea that our knowledge is provisional, right? So if we think that our answer is to question, and I'll use, take an example, just to put it on a heated issue, take an example, like the relationship between gender and biology. Yeah. Right. So now you could find there are lots of people making all kinds of claims all over the map about how these two things relate or don't relate. If we treat our knowledge about them as definitive, let's say I make a definitive claim that gender and biology, excuse me, that gender is entirely socially constructed and has no biological component at all. That then gives me, that paves the way for me to then judge, right? Again, this like, you're either hateful or stupid. Anybody who comes along and says, well, I think, you know, women are more nurturing or, you know, men are more aggressive or whatever. Now there, I talk about this in the book as well. There are reasons for that. There are reasons people are wary of those kinds of arguments and any kind of, any kind of argument that smacks of having a biological basis or having being part of nature rather than nurture, because we, those arguments have been used, you know, historically they've been used in all kinds of sinister ways. The other thing is that when we, when we say something, if we allow the space that something could be nature, sorry, nurture, sorry, nature, instead of nurture, it means it suggests we can't do anything about it. So what I'm saying is that, like, again, obviously, this show is not about that in particular, but what I'm saying is that when we treat, it's the definitive, it's the treating that the knowledge is definitive that actually gives us permission to contempt to really be like your hateful misogynist or your, you know, an idiot of somebody who disagrees. So the way that you're moving from confidence is if you think of the number line that then I described this in the book, a number line from zero to one, where one and zero occupy positions of certainty, particularly one is, you know, I'm certain something is accurate or true or et cetera. Moving from one to point nine nine is categorically different from moving from point nine nine to point nine eight. So creating that microspace of doubt really makes a difference in terms of how we think about what we know. And there are lots of people, you know, ranging from philosophers to mathematicians to physicists who have made this point about kind of the provisional nature of our knowledge, what I'm doing is sort of linking it together to how we judge, how we condemn, and how that ladders up to democracy. How did we, Alana, how did we get to the point where so many of us are have become so certain in our beliefs and then contempt, contemptional toward people who disagree with us? How do we get so certain? It's an interesting question. I mean, there's lots of, so I kind of give a couple of my best, you know, sort of guesses at this in the book. This is not something that I've dug into as much. I mean, so, so one example, but I feel like this gets dumped on sort of too much too reflexively. One is social media, right? Like it just, I mean, it has to be there's, you know, what fraction of the state that we're in is due to social media. I have, I don't know, but I don't think it's zero because of the way it creates incentives to, it creates incentives to be outraged. It creates, right? Like, I mean, it sets up an incentive structure that goes against everything that I'm saying. So one is probably social media. Another could be, I mean, another one that I talk about in the book is sort of this, the, you know, there's some research, there's some research that suggests that we, we are sort of a program, a program, but like sort of gnat by nature, we simplify our surroundings. We categorize them. We also, when we're, when we're in, when we're presented with vast amounts of information, we need to make categories and simplify things. So is there some piece that since the volume of information, just the straight up volume of information that we encounter day to day, we've started to, you know, sort of pare that down in a way that has created, that has over, that has contributed to the oversimplification. That's possible. I don't know that it's any one, you know, yeah, I'm not sure that it's any one particular thing, but I think that it's become sort of calcified. What's your, what's your, what's your top answer, your best answer, your most concise answer, when someone asks you point blank, Alana, what's so wrong with being certain in our beliefs? What's so wrong with being certain? You come back with one. What I would tell, so what I would say, and I've, and I've talked to students about this, I've talked to other groups about this, you don't have to listen to anything that I'm saying, but you can ignore everything that I'm saying and say, you know, whatever, like I don't want to, I don't want any of that. But don't then tell me that what you're concerned about is political polarization. I'm because you can't have it both ways. Like, I mean, you can't, so let me just, then I think some of this, let me talk about, let me give you three examples of where this starts to break down and talk about the assumptions that I'm making. I'm assuming, and talking about the certainty trap, I'm talking, I'm assuming that people care about one of two things, at least, or both. One is understanding as best they can, what's true about the world, right? And so that, you could, that would be one thing. The other would be sort of strengthening democracy, reducing political polarization, strength, building social trust. If you don't care about either, if you're not trying to optimize for, if you don't care about either of those things. So let me give you three examples. One, and I think I might have said this last time, and I'm going to apologize in advance, one might be if you're trying to win an election, right? Like, I'm good, but for me, don't vote for that guy, he's terrible. That's, that's a different set of incentives. Another might be if you're trying to build a following on social media, again, it's just a different set of incentives, like rewards average. And the third might be if you are trying to control a narrative by shooting out a fire hose of lies. So, and by lies, I mean something really specific. I don't mean lies where I say you're lying. I mean lies in the sense that you yourself don't believe them to be true. So, yeah, that's, so that's, so if any of those things, and there are probably more examples as well, if any of those are true, you are just fundamentally operating under a different incentive structure, and you are, what I'm going to, what I'm saying, then this idea of certainty and the importance of leaving it behind is probably going to fall on deaf ears. I think the assumption that I'm making is a pretty good assumption in most, for most people most of the time. Like, in our communities, in our schools, in our, in our, you know, our faith communities where people gather, like, I think it's a pretty good assumption. Most of the Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation. They said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those onerous to your contracts, they said, what the f*ck are you talking about? You insane Hollywood s*ck. So, to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up for 3 months plus taxes and fees promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. So, it's full turns at mintmobile.com. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. You chose to hit play on this podcast today. Smart choice. Make another smart choice with Auto Quote Explorer to compare rates from multiple car insurance companies all at once. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates, not available in all states or situations, prices vary based on how you buy. Time. Alana, when I first met you and we first started to speak and you described this book to me and then I've read the book now, it is the closest, and this is what when people ask me about it, it's the closest I know of the certainty trap, this book, what you have to say to a roadmap for how to fix where we are. Explain that because to me, you do present a roadmap. Yeah. Well, thank you. I mean, I hope that I hope that's true. I don't want to leave people just feeling, you know, frustrated and depressed. No. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is about, so this is about changing how we think and a lot of times people will ask sort of, well, what can I do? Like how to, and you know, you can't change the sound, this sounds more sort of self-help-y than I mean. Yeah. Like you can't change what other people are doing. Like you can change the way you are thinking and you can model that change in your own interactions, right? You can, in the book, I talk about three fallacies, the settled question fallacy, the fallacy of equal knowledge and the fallacy of known intent. You can, whether you call them that or whether you use your own terms or language or whatever, you can start to recognize those in your own interactions, in your own, you can see them play out. Once you sort of start paying attention, you can see them play out in social media, you can see them play out in other contexts. This is just as relevant if you're sitting in a room by yourself as it is if you are having an interaction with someone. The idea of this, of changing how we think it, and I want to make one point about education, but it is not focused, it's not focused on the interaction. And this is another way that it's different from these ideas of civil discourse. The idea of changing how we think the interactions change as a result of that, right? And so it does, so just about education, it does have really particular implications for education, both K through 12 education and higher education in terms of how we think about what we know and what that means. That's what I love about this book, and that's what I think is so unique and innovative about your approach here. And so I don't know of other people who are talking about changing the way we think. And if we do that, the discourse, all of that will take care of itself. When you talk to your students or anybody else and they're asking for specific ways and or tools on how to change the way we think, they think, practically, what do you tell people? Three steps. One is try to come up, and again, you don't have to do this with someone else. You don't even need someone to, you don't even need someone to like be a stand-in for the opposing viewpoint. You can do it yourself in your head. So one is try and come up with whatever the position is that you think is objectionable. Try and come up with a version of that position that would make sense to you. And so whatever it is, it's pro-gun control, it's anti-gun control, it's pro-migration, it's opposition of black lives, it's all lives matter, it's black lives matter, whatever it is. Try and come up with a version of that opinion, that position that makes sense to you. And by make sense, I mean that doesn't fall into any of the three fallacies that I talk about in the book, that doesn't fall into the settled question fallacy, that doesn't fall into the fallacy of equal knowledge, which is just the idea, the fallacy of equal knowledge is just the idea that if the only, if the other person just knew what I knew, they would have the right opinion. So it doesn't fall into that, and that doesn't fall into the fallacy of known intent, which is just the assumption that we know the other person's intent. So come up with a version that would make sense to you, and make sure that that version doesn't fall into any of those three fallacies. If for most, in most cases, for most contentious issues, that just going through those first two steps is kind of enough to let you, people, we can figure a lot of stuff out just by thinking of by making that sort of intellectual commitment. There are cases where that you can't. There are cases like where, you know what, I just can't come up with any version that would seem anything less than totally objectionable. I can't steelman the pro-slavery position. For example, so when that happens, so this third step, in the cases where that happens, your obligation is to be clear about what principle you're bumping up against something. So then when that happens, be clear about what it is that you're bumping up against, and someone else, if they wanted to, they could challenge you on that. They could disagree with you about that. You don't have to change your mind. So in the slavery case, it might be something like, I think all lives have equal moral value. That might be a kind of bedrock principle, and my commitment is to express it in language that the other person would understand. So I can't come up with a version of slavery because it's evil, because that's evil is, we don't mean the same thing, but I can say it, I think all lives have equal moral value, if that's my principle that we're bumping up against. And that's it. So those are three steps, and you can do that, you can think through all kinds of things that way. It does take practice, but that's it. It does take practice. Challenging and clarifying our thinking. Drill down more on clarifying. Talk about clarifying our thinking. Yeah, clarifying is about clarifying is, you know, so if I'm having a conversation with, so one of the examples that I asked my students, this is, I don't remember, this is my business last year, and, and I said, let's say that you're, I was trying to give them a new, a new example that they hadn't heard yet. And so I said, let's say that you're having a conversation, maybe you're the age you are now, maybe you're old or whatever, you're having the conversation with the parents of a friend, and the friend is gay, and the parents want to try and convert, want to try and convert him, want him to be straight, you know, and we're just going to bracket. This is a thought experiment, we're going to bracket the laws about conversion care. We're just going to, because we're just going to, because we're just turning a thought experiment. And so, like, you're interacting with these parents, and so how would you, and let's say you don't agree with them, and so how can you, what can you say? Like, if you don't, if you want the conversation to be able to continue, like, so what would happen if you said, for example, well, that's just the most homophobic thing I've ever heard, right? So now, right? So now you, this is the fallacy of known intent. Like, now you've, now, now, let me, and I'll come back to that in a second. So, like, that would be pretty much a conversation killer, and they would understandably probably, I assume, be defensive and, right? So, you could say, well, there's, let me show you this research study that shows that conversion therapy doesn't work, right? Now, you could do that, and there's nothing wrong with doing that, but that does get into this, excuse me, this fallacy of equal knowledge. It's open to necessarily change their mind, because if we all had the same information, we wouldn't necessarily agree when it comes to the issues, right? So, what could you say then? You still want to express, you still want to be, right? So what is the thing that's, what is the principle that you're bumping up against? When I did the last time I did this to students, there was a student who said, she said, you know, I believe that people should be able to love who they want. This was what she, and, like, that was it. She didn't make any assumption about their intent. She didn't make any assumption that, like, you don't have the right information. She just said, right? Now, what could happen is part of all, part of, in terms of changing how we think, part of what that means is understanding that any idea, question, any, sorry, any idea, value, belief, principle, et cetera, can be questioned, anything. Nothing gets a free pass. So, if I say, I think anyone should be allowed, I think people should be allowed to love whoever they want, someone can press me on it. They could say, well, you know, do you think that we should, are you making an advocate, are you advocating for polygamy? You know, should I be able to, should I be able to marry my dog? You know, whatever, like, is it, and so I don't have to change my mind or change my position or even have an answer for it. But they get to, because nothing is, nothing is exempt from being challenged or criticized. But by the way, Alana, by the way, stop there. And I know you and I have talked about this. All ideas are open to questioning. Yeah. Now, I think that, that, right, that right there would blow away a lot of people in our. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you would originally ask the question about clarifying our thinking. Like, this is why, this is why those, like, if all, if we stay with the sort of sloppy thinking that certainty leads us to, we can't question and challenge each other. And if we can't question and challenge each other, then we end up in this contemptuous, right? We make, then we let, then we're left with our assumptions and our oversimplifications, right? And, and so that is actually really important. You know, there's always issues. There are always issues. Well, I shouldn't say always, but many people have issues that they want to take off the table, right? Like, do I really, this is, do I really have to talk to my Holocaust and our neighbor? You know, I don't know. Yes. Yeah. There's always a lot of people have something they want to take off the table. And you can do that. Like you, I've had students do that before. I had a student last semester who said, you know, this is the height of the protests about Israel and God, and she was like, nope, can't do it. And I was like, that's totally fine. Like you, that's her thing. Like she was like, and then, and I said, as long as what we, as long as we understand that the more things, the more of us take off the table, the worse off we all are. Yeah. Are we, are we Alana? Are we, are we there? Like, are we in, have we been in that position now for a while where we are taking more things off the table? Do you feel? I think that we do it. I think that in, I think that a lot of times we do it without realizing that we're doing it. So like, one of the things, I don't know, I'm not sure if I put this in the book, I think I did, but um, assumptions aren't certainty, but certainty leads us to forget that they're assumptions. Right. And so like, I don't necessarily think, I, I'm not of the belief that it's a conscious effort where people are deliberately saying like, no, no, no, you can't, no, no, no, don't, don't touch that. Like, I don't get that, that's not my impression. I think that there are feedback loops. When you treat something as given for long enough, then it sort of gets, it becomes part of just how we talk and how we, and so the way out of that is to say, which I think is the right way to think about kind of education more generally, um, is you can question anything. Um, anything, everything. Yeah. So, so like Alana, again, you know, my political background. So I come from MAGA, I voted for Trump in 16, then I woke up and now I've been a six year hell raising never Trump. I still engage with MAGA folk every single day. They used to be my friends. And what I've, what I've learned to do is model a lot of what you're talking about, um, changing the way I think. Yeah. Um, and I've, and I don't know if this relates. I know it does to a degree. My only goal when I engage with these folks who tell me, Joe Biden didn't really win in 2020. My only goal is to try to understand why they think that way. And I feel like if I have a greater understanding, then I won't have content as much contempt. Yeah. Does that make sense? Totally. No, totally. And I mean, the election, I, it's something that I talk about specifically in that I do go through that example in the book. Um, yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things that certainty does is it erodes trust in institutions, particularly, particularly in, in education and in the media. Um, it, it absolutely erodes trust in institutions. And so when you, and we need some, again, we need a critical mass. I don't, it doesn't have to, you don't need every single person in a democracy to trust an institution, but there's some, there's some critical mass or some tipping point, right? Where you can't have, you can't have, especially when it divides along political lines, half the country that doesn't trust anything that's being said, even in, but the problem is, is that like, so lots of people have made that argument. What we sort of, the piece that doesn't get off and said along with it is that there are reasons that we have a, that people don't trust those institutions. Yes. Like there are actual, and a lot of that, and again, I have more space to talk about this in the book, but a lot of that has to do with certainty, not all of it. Yeah, a lot of it. Do you, I've told people this about your book. Yeah. And maybe you've said this, maybe it's in the book, maybe I stole the line from you, like I feel like you're trying to help talk a country off the ledge. Yeah, I mean, gosh, that would be nice. That would be nice. I mean, I am under no illusion that this book is, you know, in a country of whatever we are, 330, 340 million people, that it's everybody's cup of tea. But I do think that it could change things. I mean, if I think that, you know, with a, with sort of, I think that there are enough people out there that are looking for something, looking for some other way to sort of navigate all of the rancor and that we're in, that we're steeped in. And someone who will just say, look, you can't have, you can't, you can ignore it, but then don't tell me you're worried about political polarization. Well, and this is why Professor Redstone, I adore you, because my whole mantra is, if you want to save this damn democracy, it's on us. Don't look toward Kamala Harris or Donald Trump or Chuck Schumer or whoever, it's on us. We have to change. And what I love about your book is it's a version of it's on us. We individually, it's not his problem or it's not his we have to change the way we think. Yeah, I love that. I think that's magical. I think that's important. Yeah. Well, hopefully, hopefully that's, hopefully that lands well with lots of people. So a Keith, put that up. Can you put it up one more time, Keith? There it is. The book is the certainty trap by Professor Alanna Redstone. Keep it up, Keith, for a moment. Thank you. Why we need to question ourselves more and how we can judge others less. I believe that this is a super novel and the most helpful approach I know to help a terribly divided country write itself and save our democracy. We have to change the way we think. We have to avoid the certainty trap. Get this book. Buy this book. Alanna, you can take down, Keith. Thank you. I were 60 days from an election. I'm out every day just bababa. And I think this is, and it may, I think this is the most important book that's come out this year. Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Like, I totally completely mean that because it gives us away. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you. Hopefully that hopefully. Hey, you dedicated the book to your kids and you said, without naming them, I hope they continue to move through the world with a little open space in their hearts and minds. I did. That's beautiful. Oh, thank you. I really like that. They are good kids. Most of the time. Go to Amazon, everybody, and buy this book. I'm going to have Alanna on again in the near future here. I want to continue this dialogue. The book is the certainty trap, the certainty trap. Go buy it. Go to Amazon, get it. The link is right there. I'm going to continue to promote it on all of my platforms. Amazing. Yeah. Well, I really, and people don't know this, my history with this lady. I invited her on my podcast for a 10 minute conversation because I was told to do it. And after 55 minutes, my producer said stop the conversation because he didn't mind to edit anymore. I couldn't stop talking with her and listening to her. Alanna Redstone, a professor of sociology at the University of Illinois, the name of the book is the certainty trap. By the way, Alanna, do you you've got is that website still up in your own website? Alanna Redstone dot com. Alanna with one L, all one word, Alanna Redstone, I L A N A Redstone dot com. Yep. Go to that website, I L A N A Redstone dot com. She is on what I still call Twitter. Yeah. At Ira Crash, I R A K R E S H. Go buy this book. Alanna, you're the best. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Remember to listen, share and follow the social contract with Joe Walsh on Apple podcasts, Spotify and everywhere great podcasts are found. And be sure to leave a five star review. This has been the social contract with Joe Walsh. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? 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