Transcript: Why Critical Thinking Is Dead w/ Warren Smith @Triggernometry

You seem to enjoy it. I hope you don’t make any mistakes.” That was their language.

FRANCIS FOSTER: It’s kind of mafioso, isn’t it?

WARREN SMITH: There are aspects of this that are eerily like — we can get into it if you want, but very strange that people want to be like, “You’re making this up.” It’s crazy.

FRANCIS FOSTER: So let’s talk about that. “I hope you don’t make any mistakes.” Be a shame.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, that’s what it was. Yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: So let’s talk about that aspect of it.

WARREN SMITH: In what way?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, you were saying there’s some stuff that you could share — the people—

Being Fired and the Colleague Who Changed

WARREN SMITH: So after, I was thinking about this incident where the teacher that I had been collaborating with — he was like my best friend at school. We got along really well because our content and subject matter was very similar. We shared an interest in camera technology, both fascinated with it. And we’d be making all these promotional videos for the school to go online.

So maybe a month goes by before I get fired, and he’s warning me and warning me about all this stuff. And I get fired, and it’s like something had switched. And I anticipated this as well. I knew that they were going to sit him down and be like, “You can’t keep doing this with Warren. He’s dead to us.” It was like I was deleted immediately. It was very like, “You don’t exist.” Very strange. No contact.

But a lot of his equipment was in that space because he helped me set it up. So a week goes by and he finally texts me. He texted me the day after. He’s like, “I heard the news.” Because I was escorted out. Really? Yeah. And so I had no contact. I couldn’t say goodbye to anybody. It was—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Wait, hold on. Maybe I’m lost in the timeline. You do this video about J.K. Rowling with a student.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: They say, “Don’t make any mistakes.” Did you then make a mistake?

WARREN SMITH: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What was your mistake?

The Second Video and the Firing

WARREN SMITH: I did the same thing again with a different student, but I took more precautions. So teaching media, I have a list of who has the clearances, who has signed the releases, the parents. And we had had another conversation like, “Oh, this one’s kind of interesting. This might work.”

We had been making the content in my house because we were like, “We don’t want any more heat with the school, so let’s just do it all at the house.” But this one exchange, I was like, “This is interesting.” It was about J.K. Rowling, a student claiming she was racist. And we knew the audience — this is what the audience wanted — and I had the clearances. And so I shared it on X, but the lighting was atrocious. And so I ended up deleting it.

The school took that as evidence that I knew I was doing something wrong and I was trying to cover my tracks. That was the lawyer speak that came at me later. But they sat on that for like 3 weeks hoping I would do it again. I found out later they could have told me, “Hey, this is what we’re talking about. Make these adjustments.” But they were waiting for something to use. It was clearly tactical.

So that would be the mistake. They pull me into the office. I was like, “Did you talk to the student? Did you talk to his parents? I did more than I’ve ever done.” Like, I followed all the steps. “Yeah, but there’s this new step. You have to ask so-and-so, your super.” And I had two sets of supervising principals. “Well, you didn’t check with this person. So you’re gone.”

And they made it very clear: “You can either accept it now — that we want to get rid of you for YouTube, because it’s not just this — or we can conduct an investigation and get back to you in 3 days.” Like, you haven’t talked to the parents or the student that you’re worried about? Does the student even care? Okay, let’s wait.

And then — anyone listening to this, if you find yourself in a similar situation — force them into admitting what they’re doing. Be like, “Okay, you want to fight? You’re firing me now then. I’m not giving you 3 days.” Because what they’re going to do is try and go through everything and find something better and then point to that.

So anyways, a week goes by. I recorded a video about it just to process my thoughts. It was really psychologically one of the most difficult, hardest periods I’ve ever been through. I came home that day and was just throwing up the whole day. I slept on the bathroom floor. And the next day I sat down and recorded something, waited. I didn’t post it for like a week or two. And then I did. And J.K. Rowling reached out, which was a significant gesture for me, meant a lot.

Anyway, so a week goes by, he needs to get his equipment. He comes over to the house. But he’s talking completely different. And he’s like, “You knew you weren’t supposed to do that.” I was like, “Dude, I talked to you about all of these things. You told me they were trying to—” He was like, “But this was—” He was trying to insinuate that I had calculated this to purposely be fired. And it was like I couldn’t recognize him. He was like trying to get me on tape or something.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, it sounds like he was wearing a wire.

The NDA and the Price of Silence

WARREN SMITH: That’s what I meant by the mafia thing. But if I try and tell— I’ve only told the story once. If I tell it, people are like, “That’s— this sounds like you’re just making up a mob movie or something,” but this is true.

He got his equipment out there and he didn’t say a word, which is another indicator that something was strange because he wasn’t saying anything other than these things. And we went outside and he had a cigarette. We knew, we both knew this was the last time we were going to talk to each other. And we were like best friends.

Yeah. And I was like, “Man, this is— I don’t think you understand just the game they’re playing here.” I was like, “Just be careful, like you as well, because this could happen to—” and I had seen people get taken out. The principal who hired me was there for 8 years, devoted 8 years, and the assistant principal who hired me was taken out on the same day 2 years prior. And it was nonsensical reasons. They just will force— they have the ability because it’s not like a regular public school. They have the ability to force through outcomes however they want. It creates a very weird environment.

So he left. And as he was walking out, I was like, “Hey, there’s this one device that will allow me to continue to plug a mic in this XLR adapter. Can I buy it from you?” And he just handed it to me, didn’t say a word, got in his car. And that’s the last time I saw him.

And then I get a text from the school a week later saying, “Hey, he left this microphone.” And we had gone through great lengths to make sure all this equipment was personal, so we’re not crossing any lines. School contacts me and says, “You have our microphone. So we’re going to use that as leverage for this negotiation.”

They send an NDA. They said, “If you sign this NDA, we’ll pay you the rest of what we owe you for the year. We’ll pay you for the end of the month, but we’ll pay you to the end of the year if you sign this NDA. It’ll prevent you from ever talking about this. Just go over it with a lawyer.” Like a person from HR— they’re very rushed on the phone. They want— they’re like, “Do you have any questions?” Yeah, I have a lot of questions. Sorry, click. Like that kind of thing.

How am I going to afford a lawyer? I don’t have any money. And they know that. So they think you’re just going to sign it. And they insinuate that they’ll make it so you can’t teach essentially. They won’t give you a good recommendation if you don’t sign this thing. It would also give them control of some of the videos on the YouTube channel as well.

So I did not sign it. Peter Boghossian helped me get a lawyer. It cost me— I think she went easy on me because she knew the predicament. She gave me a break on the cost, probably $4,000, which is probably a good deal for her. She negotiated with them and she said to me, “If I were you— I’ve never said this to a client. Normally clients come to me with these offers, these NDAs, I say just sign it, because why do you need to talk about this? But this is strange. My advice to you would be, if you can afford to not take it—” it was like $8,000, $9,000, but to me that was massive. She said, “If you can afford it, pass on it. Don’t do it.” And I’m so glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t be talking to you right now.

The Fear Surrounding Open Debate in Education

FRANCIS FOSTER: What did that entire experience teach you about the education system?

WARREN SMITH: I was talking to these guys about it too. There’s a fear that I see at the college level and the high school level around the emotional impact of the students and their ability to have these conversations.

Like Sam Richards, who I’ve worked with, and I do videos covering him sometimes where he’s live streaming his college courses and they do very well because people find it fascinating. He’s very worried about getting shut down. I was supposed to— I went down and spoke to his class, which is 500 students, and I was supposed to go down this month, but he just texted me the other day and said he has a meeting he’s been summoned to by the provost. And he doesn’t think they’re going to get shut down, but that threat is always looming.

And that’s what they’re going to use. I told them this earlier on— I was like, “It’s going to be over the potential for hurt feelings.” They probably won’t even be able to point to anyone where there is actual damage or anyone who really cares, because he’s careful about which students he selects. They all know what they’re doing before they do it. They understand it. But the school can still point to— and that’s one of the things the school pointed to with me. They said, “Okay, well, yes, but the student having something like— yeah, we didn’t expect this to go viral and yes, it doesn’t break any rules, but when there’s millions of people looking at it, it could take a toll on him.”

I was like, “Yeah, but also they’re almost all positive because he changes.” He was reasonable in the video. To me, he was a very mature student and a very intelligent student.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s also as well, you couldn’t see what the student looked like, which is a massive part when it comes to child safety, right?

WARREN SMITH: It would logically— it would be the same thing as if that music teacher made a song with one of his students, they posted on YouTube just the audio, and it goes viral. So that’s technically the exact same thing— it’s just a voice, but you don’t like the content of the words.

The Woke Takeover at Emerson College

FRANCIS FOSTER: Absolutely. And what’s really interesting is this wasn’t your first time in the crosshairs of this kind of phenomenon, because you were at Emerson College, weren’t you? Where I think it was 2016 where you saw the real flourishing of woke post-Trump. So let’s talk about that because that’s fascinating as well.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, I still teach at Emerson. I teach a filmmaking course, and that was originally my plan— to hopefully be a professor at college. My parents were both professors. Academia seemed like a great job, and it is. It’s got great benefits.

But what I saw there in 2016 shook me for sure. I wasn’t into any— I discovered the space as well, Jordan Peterson, and I was fascinated by it because there was certainly a problem with what I was encountering at school. Students— over 300 students— marched into a faculty assembly claiming that Emerson was racist and making— with literally a list of demands, and the administration kowtowed to it. They gave in.

And the next day, the week following that, I was taking a pedagogy course with the dean of undergrad teaching it. And we had to devote the 4-hour class that week to discussing the systemic racism at Emerson. The head of the Social Justice Center— which is a literal office, with literal people, where you could do anonymous bias reports— was sitting in. And the white students were told to surrender our white privilege for the duration of the 4 hours. And I thought, “That’s so weird.”

KONSTANTIN KISIN: How does one surrender their white privilege?

WARREN SMITH: I would love to have a discussion with them, but they won’t. Probably they wouldn’t have a discussion.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s worth bearing in mind to people who don’t know Emerson— Emerson is an incredibly left-wing college.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, it’s extremely left-wing. I didn’t meet a single conservative professor during my time there. I had— there was one student I can remember from grad school that was libertarian.

FRANCIS FOSTER: So that being the case, you think, why is it that one of the most progressive left-wing schools in the country is suddenly racist or white supremacist? It just doesn’t make any sense.

WARREN SMITH: Well, it’s a captivating narrative that creates an emotional satisfaction. It also gives the students the ability to make demands of their professors they couldn’t otherwise make.

So I was asked to teach my first class— screenwriting— and the teacher that was assigning it to me, I was her TA. She said, “Warren, okay, you’re about to do this. So remember, hold the students accountable. For example, Warren, I have this one student who doesn’t show up to class, doesn’t do any assignments, and I’m going to give her the grade she deserves. You need to do the same thing.”

The protest happens. I’m about to teach it. We have a follow-up meeting. “You remember, Warren, what I was saying about that student? She got named on the website— it was a Facebook group, #EmersonSoRacist— accusing her of microaggressions, claiming she made a microaggression, which doesn’t require evidence because it’s subconscious. It’s a microaggression. Yeah, Warren, I was really wrong about that because that student— I forgot how difficult it is. She told me about how difficult it is to be Black at Emerson. So I can’t hold her—” it was insinuating she can’t hold her to account for not coming to class because there’s not enough professors who are Black, according to them. They don’t see themselves reflected in the student body, even though there are many Black students and Black professors.

FRANCIS FOSTER: That’s so crazy. So what it’s effectively saying is you can’t uphold academic standards because somebody is of a different color.

WARREN SMITH: That’s what that student was pushing for, and many do. It allows them to push for that. So if people are going to do what’s in their interest, if you give them the ability to— it doesn’t surprise me in the least that they took this narrative and ran with it.

Why Institutions Cave to Mob Pressure

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And why do you think colleges cave to this kind of thing?

WARREN SMITH: Because the pressure, the culture that exists within this high-level, highbrow academic elite— they all need to be, they all strive to be as sensitive as possible. Here’s an example. One teacher didn’t cave, and I have the letter that he wrote. He sent an email— I think he sent it to the whole school, which is bold. The president— he said we shouldn’t be kowtowing to a mob, essentially. Well-articulated, long email.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that teacher did not blast it. He sent it to the president of the college. The president countered by blasting everyone. Anyone with an Emerson email address received this email. So I have both letters, and it was essentially applying that pressure that you are going to be ostracized. “Yeah, you have tenure, but you’re cooked if you go down this road. You don’t represent our values that we uphold and are striving for. How dare you? These students are brave enough to stand up and tell us about their victimization and the subconscious turmoil that they’re going through every day. How dare you treat it in such an insensitive way?” That was a long email, but that’s how I would summarize it.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because from what you’re talking about with Emerson to what’s happening in the school, it just sounds like the seeds were planted a long time ago. And the inevitable consequence is where we’ve reached now, where any type of debate is shut down or seen as damaging or harmful to the students.

The Suppression of Critical Thinking in Academia

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, I would really enjoyed— I’ve always enjoyed pushing back where I think it’s warranted, and I would in class. And it was interesting to see how the professors responded. It was interesting to note that so many of the graduate-level students in my discipline at least were direct students from China, which I didn’t— I still don’t— I think it’s because they pay higher tuition. It’s essentially business. But Emerson has a high representation in China. Every year they send ambassadors over. They would select a student ambassador to go over for the convention in China.

And I remember because the dean also had a high presence in China, she talked about how many times she’d been there. But I remember challenging one day in social and cultural media studies. I have the textbook still, and in chapter 1 is by Karl Marx talking about can we control the internet? And I was like, well, we should ask how’s it working in China? Like, what do you guys think? And I said it just like that. He said, “No, you can’t talk about that.” I was like, this is a college level, this is a graduate level class. You want to analyze whether we control the internet, but we can’t talk about real world examples because it’s culturally insensitive, is the way he was insinuating.

It’s a little example. That one stands out in my mind vividly. But there was a lot of nonsensical encounters with professors that just gets under your skin. And then that drive, when you do see an alternative like Jordan Peterson, who I think put his finger on the source that you’re describing, what led to this, you could describe largely as postmodernism.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, what I find extraordinary, Warren, is that you can kind of understand that in a society of social media and all this kind of stuff, you kind of go, well, maybe there’s some sense to people being a little bit more careful about expressing controversial things. Maybe, if you work for a big company, no, everyone doesn’t need to know your political opinions because you’re going to come into work, blah blah blah blah blah blah. But the one place that you would think you would encourage people to explore difficult and controversial ideas is university, is college, because that’s what it’s for.

WARREN SMITH: It’s not even political opinions. If we’re having a conversation about can we control the internet, that’s not political. We’re engaging with the logic of the claim.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

WARREN SMITH: And it’s one thing I totally understand, especially at the high school level. I don’t like it when I see left-wing teachers preaching about Trump in class. I wouldn’t do that from the right. It’s another if you’re going to have a discussion, if a student asks you to explain, which literally happened to me, what is the difference between the left and the right, essentially, or what is communism? You can do it in a fair and balanced way.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, well, they left the good people and—

WARREN SMITH: At the college level, that’s what you’re going to get.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Right. But I guess what I’m getting at is, I think it’s obvious to anyone who understands the pipeline of how you go from school to college to work to life, that this is the one part of your life that was specifically carved out for you to think about things, to explore different ideas, to challenge and be challenged. And that’s now been taken away effectively, right? So what do you think the impact of that is on society?

The Tribal Consequences of Ideological Conformity

WARREN SMITH: It’s a big question. I wish I had a really good answer to that. I think it’s what we’re seeing play out. It just creates more of a tribal sense because everyone coming out of that system, out of that college that I’ve encountered personally, I can assure you there’s no one coming out with a different point of view because it’s being hammered so hard.

And I was hired to be the personal videographer — this is how I made money as a student — to the dean I was referring to with the presidents in China. So she would hire me to go in when there’s a public speaker or someone coming, and I would do a promotional video, edit it quickly and get it out in 2 days. And so I got to see — Emerson has a very prestigious journalism program, and I got to see the people they were bringing in to speak, and they would bring in a conservative. This was when Trump was in the election. Not every conservative they brought in — I still have the video, the footage too, of some of this — every single person, every speaker, was still anti-Trump. The conservatives, they were explaining how he’s not a real conservative. It was incredible.

The most nuanced, interesting speaker was a Trump impersonator though. I have some great footage of that where Rolling Stone was doing a thing on him. He was getting some traction. I don’t know where he went, but he came in and laid into the students being like, “No one thinks what you’re doing is — you all are striving, you think you’re victims.” And he was a graduate of Emerson in the comedy program. And that was probably the most interesting speaker I saw. That would be the closest thing to a nuanced take that I would—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And how was that received?

WARREN SMITH: The students were kind of left aghast. They just were kind of speechless. But I think he knew what he — he understands the nature of comedy is to be bold. He’s not afraid to do that. I commend them, there wasn’t shouted off the campus like you would expect. But had he not been in such a prestigious role or just been covered by Rolling Stone and been backed as a personal friend by the dean, he would’ve probably gotten a different response.

The Inability to Separate Ideas from People

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the interesting things about what you’re saying is this kind of environment creates people who actually can’t think, which is why it’s kind of impressive that the student in the video you did about J.K. Rowling, with your help, actually could think. Because increasingly, we see this now on the internet as well. It’s like people are incapable of separating ideas from people.

And the way that debates are now increasingly conducted — I mean, as we’re sitting here recording this, this won’t go out for a while, but there’s literally some of America’s most prominent journalists calling, saying that they have micropenises online. And it seems to me like that’s kind of a direct continuation of this. Like where you no longer discuss any of the issues and it’s just, “You are on the wrong side, you are on the wrong side of history, you are the other.” And what gets lost is the actual conversation.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s deeply offensive to people from the micropenis community.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Absolutely.

WARREN SMITH: I think it’s largely — I’ve been working on this book that’s coming out that kind of delves into this. I think it comes back to the laws of narrative and the fact that we can’t separate the character from the narrative psychologically. That’s impossible. I think it’s largely because their narratives are built on their — their business is built on their claims. When you become wed to your ideas, that becomes your brand. Now you’re defending your brand, so you’re less likely to change your mind. And then it leads into these wars that we’re seeing now.

So that’s my approach is different because I don’t find that to be — there’s things that I feel strongly about still. But those are my first principles. That’s not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing how the first principles manifest into politics. And frankly, politics is kind of boring to me compared to the deeper dynamics beneath all this.

Team Loyalty vs. Consistency of Thought

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I totally agree. And it’s one of the reasons we have had a lot of political guests on the show, but we’ve increasingly felt like we want to space them out, if having any of them at all. And when we started, our rule was we don’t have politicians on the show. And then, you know, things are going on in the world, you want to hear some of their perspectives, whatever. But over time, you’re definitely right that it kind of — you end up playing a totally different game. And it’s not the game we want to play.

And by the way, I think there is plenty of space, and you’re demonstrating, I hope we’re demonstrating it, for content which is not about “we’re on this team or on this team,” but more like we are adjudicating the issues that come up as we go, and we have some principles that guide us in that. But a lot of people won’t be able to tell what we think about an issue that comes up. They try to, but often they’re surprised by that. And I think a lot of people find that very discombobulating because they just want you to be on their team.

WARREN SMITH: Yes. Yeah, that’s been an eye-opener as well for me. There’s been content creators where, because I do this format where I like looking at the dynamics of these interactions, and you’re not going to win them all. Everyone is going to have ones that go well, and because we’re wrong about certain things, and sometimes even when you’re right, it’s going to go poorly. It doesn’t — just the nature of debates. And I don’t even like thinking of myself as a debater, but I’ve noticed that as well, where Tim Pool got really pissed at me because I disagreed with him on one video, and that took me aback. And there is this sense — I’ve had a lot of people where there is this team dynamic where it’s like, “Yeah, but you’re supposed to be on our ideological team.” But it’s important to note, there’s not a single person I’m going to agree with on everything. We were kind of referring to that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, right. Well, one of the difficulties is if you play the team game — which I understand why people play because it’s comfortable and there’s lots of money to be made and friendships and gatherings, there’s lots of network advantages to being part of a thing — I don’t think that’s really compatible with having solid principles.

And the Candace Owens situation is a very good example of this, where she’s making claims about the fact that Erica Kirk killed her husband with the connivance of Egypt or Israel. It changes every day, right? And a lot of people on the right, on her team, are very quiet about it, which is, maybe she’s your friend, whatever, you handle it whichever way you think. That’s up to those people. But I just know that if someone on the left was saying, “Well, no, Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by the guy that we think he was killed by, actually he was killed by Erica Kerr,” I think those people might have had something to say about it, right? So you either have consistency of party loyalty or you have consistency of thought and ideas. And you can’t have both sometimes, right?

WARREN SMITH: Not to the absolute, because you’re going to disagree sometimes for sure. For me, the way I approach it, if I’m being quiet about something, the way I would articulate is like, “I have not seen adequate evidence to indicate that Erica Kirk killed Charlie Kirk.” Like, that’s how I would address it.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, I think that’s right.

WARREN SMITH: Just leave it at that. I don’t know Candace.

The Problem with Team Thinking

KONSTANTIN KISIN: But on my point, the point I’m making is something else, Warren. And again, I don’t really particularly care about having a go at these people who are supposed to call Candace out, or those people, or whatever. I’m not that interested. I’m just making a broader point, which is if you are, let’s say, on the right and someone on the left made these comments about different Charlie Kirk, the response would be immediate and strong and thorough and probably vicious.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And yet when someone on your team does it, you kind of go, “Oh, I think attacking Charlie Kirk’s widow is wrong.”

WARREN SMITH: Yeah. It’s going back to that. We can’t separate the character from the narrative. Right. That’s—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And I guess the point I’m trying to make is I don’t think it’s possible to play a team game while also being true to the facts.

WARREN SMITH: I agree. I don’t play team, even if it looks like it. I don’t play team. I think Jordan Peterson was right to call them— this has always stayed with me— I don’t like identity politics on the left or the right. Maybe it’s because I was just listening to my favorite debate driving down here with Stephen Fry. It’s one of the simplest debates, but it’s one of the most powerful. And that was the message. It’s like, when does the left go too far? When does it? Yeah, the right goes too far. Yes, it teams, and it goes deep to psychology, evolutionary psychology, why we band together in these ways. But it’s a foolish game, I think.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the things that happens is I think in the podcast and content creation YouTube space, what we are talking about, which is ideas and politics, they get meshed together. And so you have people who are talking about ideas and sometimes they’re talking about politics, and we do this too. And then those two things come together and I think it’s quite confusing. It’s like, are you talking about ideas? Are you talking about politics? Because they’re just different games. And I think a lot of the discrepancy comes from that actually.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You know?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

WARREN SMITH: It’s like the difference between the first principles and how those underlying dynamics manifest into politics. I mean, I agree with you on that for sure. Yeah.

The Failure of Education

FRANCIS FOSTER: I think part of the worry is when we talk about education is, ’cause I used to be a teacher so everyone can drink now. I mention it every episode.

WARREN SMITH: That’s right.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah. I like it. Warren’s like, “Yeah, you do.”

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Where’s your mom from again?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Anyway, two drinks. But one of the things that you do as a teacher is you disseminate information, give them information. Arguably the most important part of teaching is not the information aspect of it. You’re teaching skills.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah.

FRANCIS FOSTER: So when I was a drama teacher, what you were doing is you were teaching skills to kids so they knew how to be creative. They knew how to structure and create improvisations, long-form improvisations, plays, how to be more realistic on stage, et cetera. What you are doing is teaching people how to think critically. The problem comes if we don’t do that. These skills are not intuitive. They have to be learned.

WARREN SMITH: That’s interesting. Yes, because I think the recognition of logic is intuitive, but you’re right because this is going counter against what we were just describing about that tribal evolutionary impulse to band together for survival. And yes, breaking away, pattern disruption is, well, it’s a pattern disruption. Most people aren’t going to do it.

The majority, I think about it like this, the majority of people are going to be like water. They’re going to take the path of least resistance. It’s easier to be foolish than wise. There’s risk that comes with breaking away from the group. I sat down with Dr. Peterson, he described it as being the zebra with orange stripes. The reason zebras blend in is because they all have the same stripe. White and black stripes aren’t going to cause you to blend into the grass. You’re blending into the herd.

I think you are on to something there. That’s what I’m trying to delve into with what I’ve been writing and trying to put it into two words.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because when I look at some of these kids, and you know, you look at some people who debate these kids on campuses and you see the kids get angry and upset, and then invariably the comments on YouTube is like, “Oh, kid gets owned,” or whatever else. And I go, actually I think we all now need to be a little bit more adult. I’ve been guilty of this, I hold my hands up, and go, it’s not the fault of the kid, it’s the fault of the system producing it.

Because if it’s just one kid being produced who can’t argue, can’t think critically, you can go, “Well, the kid wasn’t listening, or maybe they weren’t a good student, or whatever it may be.” But the fact that we’re producing legions of people who can’t think critically — that’s not the fault of the people who are getting produced. It’s the fault of the system. And what we need actually is a radical overhaul.

WARREN SMITH: And it’s also the fault of the adults who won’t contend with them or allow them to be contended with for fear of the emotional damage, or they won’t be able to handle it. Even when we’re talking about college students who are adults.

The Abdication of Adult Responsibility

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, that’s why I was asking you about why college administrators cave to this stuff, right? Because I think within that there is actually power that they don’t realize they have, because those are also teachable moments. Right? When a bunch of kids demand some kind of readjustment of the entire system, if you have strong leadership in that moment that communicates that that is not how this works, that can teach those kids something. And I think there’s been an abdication of responsibility on the part of the adults, which is what Francis is trying to get at as well. Would you agree?

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, for sure. It goes back to that. I just can’t stop thinking about this example with Sam Richards and how there’s this fear — all of these problems are going to have so many variables though. There’s the variable of liability. Well, it’s being streamed on YouTube. Okay, well, let’s take that off the table. What about the classrooms where it’s not being streamed on YouTube or being shared? Is that occurring? I’m sure it must be happening. I haven’t seen it personally. It doesn’t mean it’s not happening, but I think I agree with you. It’s safe to say that the majority of cases it’s not being fostered.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s also as well, not only do we not encourage kids and young people to think critically, we also fetishize emotions. So if you’re having a debate and you say something that I profoundly disagree with, or you criticize a point and I get offended because I hold that point dear, suddenly it becomes acceptable to be offended or angry or upset, and I’m the one in the right and you’re the one in the wrong.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, that’s how it gets weaponized. I was just thinking about probably the next video I do is looking back at you talking to Alex O’Connor, I think, and he was trying to make the case as though hate speech laws are justifiable — well, because we have libel laws, defamation laws. So can’t you imagine, Konstantin, a case in which you are actually causing emotional distress or harm to someone because of this medical condition? And I think you handled that well. You were kind of like, “What are you? They’re just two completely different things.” I thought that was interesting.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I agree with you. I’ve forgotten we had that conversation. I like Alex. We get on very well, actually. I don’t remember that bit, but it was a long time ago.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, I just stumbled on it. I hadn’t seen it before. That’s interesting.

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And do you — I mean, you are someone who really thinks about this very carefully. Do you have thoughts on how to develop critical thinking skills, how to teach critical thinking skills?

WARREN SMITH: Yes. So with martial arts, there’s this concept of the kata, right? When you’re in a real street fight, you can’t stop and think. It’s all do, subconscious. But the kata breaks it down into rehearsable movements like a dance. So I was trying to come up with a methodology that could be taught for that portion of it, because there are multiple facets to this.

The more I thought about it, I realized critical thinking is not just for debates, it’s for navigating these daily games that we’re engaging in, whether or not we realize it. When I was at that school navigating what I just described to you, that was a game that was being played on multiple levels. You can anticipate — it’s not necessarily that you’re trying to win, you’re trying to achieve the ideal outcome and recognize where the best move is on the board.

A lot of that is nonverbal. The signals that were being sent to me — no one came up to me and said, “We want you to be fired because I disagree with—” but the body language around Jake Carroll, I noticed it. There’s a lot of communication that’s non-verbal. Perhaps even most communication is non-verbal, and people don’t say what they really think at the copy machine, what your colleague really thinks, but they telegraph it.

But once we do enter the verbal, what is the kata that will allow us to navigate this? So I try to formulate a method that will help with that. For me, I describe it as a sort of a flaw filter where it’s not so much — I come at it as though this is the least bad option I’ve been able to find. Can you genuinely offer anything better? And it’s important to recognize the least bad option because, as Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” There’s going to be flaws, and that’s a method people take or a strategy people take, just pointing out the flaws. That doesn’t disprove you have a better alternative. So I’m listening for the alternative.

I imagine kind of this red light bulb that is sitting on the desk and I’m listening. I’m just this filter, not really taking a strong position necessarily. It depends. And when that light bulb goes off with the first flaw, now you’re ready to make a move. I lay out a strategy for that, but a lot of it is demeanor. How do you develop the demeanor?

And then that gets into the laws of narrative. I think a lot of understanding these dynamics, you need to understand the laws of narrative to understand and think critically about dynamics like we’ve been describing — with why are these moves being made, with people teaming up in this way or not breaking away from their team for this. They’re not thinking critically. Their team comes first.

A lot of that, perhaps it’s because I spent 10 years studying screenwriting and filmmaking, the laws of narrative. But I see a lot of these lessons are relevant. And I think it gave me the basis for what I use today. So hopefully that book will be something that people can use to develop critical thinking, but also how to navigate these daily games.

Truth as a Practical Tool

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, it’s interesting you bring up daily games because it’s kind of how I think about it. Like if you think about life in general, the closer you are to the truth of whatever the issue is, the more functionally better off you’re going to be in that situation, right?

So if your understanding of how to run a business is as close to the truth as possible, you’re going to be better at running a business. If your understanding of what the truth of a YouTube channel is and how to run one, you’re going to be better at doing that. If your understanding of what relationships are like is closer to the truth, that’s much better for you than having your own emotional experience that drives you away from the truth and towards confirming your own biases or whatever else.

And that’s what I think a lot of people don’t realize — truth has a tremendous value. It’s not just a morality thing. And so when we argue about what the truth is about politics or philosophy or society, that’s the place from which we’re coming. And that’s why it’s so valuable, right?

WARREN SMITH: Yeah. And that’s interesting that you put it that way, that there is a true way to run a business, because postmodernism would claim — which is all about truth claims being the result of social conditioning — many would claim there is no true way to run a business. It’s up to me.

Postmodernism, Narrative, and the Roots of Radicalization

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And all interpretations are equally valid, which goes back to how many postmodernists have a business that they run.

WARREN SMITH: Right.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

WARREN SMITH: It’s such an important dynamic that when you’re encountering these students, many of them are arguing postmodernism. They don’t know what postmodernism is. And try debating someone on postmodernism, like they’ll just avoid it and they’ll say, I don’t want to get into that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, it’s like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall, right? But you see, you take any example that— I mean, you talked about martial arts. I imagine, I’m not a martial artist, but I imagine it’s true that there are different ways to throw a punch and there are different ways to do this. But there is a truth.

WARREN SMITH: But there’s one punch that’s most effective. Our bones can only structure in one way. Given your body composition, there’s only one way you can get the most momentum in that position. So that’s an important distinction.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And this is what I think a lot of this dynamic that we now have in terms of the way people communicate is— I think actually most people I see online are behaving like postmodernists.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Almost everybody, left and right.

WARREN SMITH: Okay, so you spoke to Destiny the other day. I made a video critiquing it, and there’s already a response video where I compared it to postmodernism, his response. People are claiming, well, no, Warren’s claiming it’s postmodernism, but that has to do with truth claims.

But when Destiny says to you, well, what is a lot? It’s always changing, therefore you shouldn’t be concerned about it. What do you mean unprecedented? Like, what do you even mean by when you’re claiming it is or it is not a lot? That is a truth claim.

So maybe I should have said it’s similar to talking to a postmodernist when they do that. Everything’s always changing, so we can’t expect a standard. What traditions are you— can you point to a single tradition that hasn’t changed? Traditions don’t matter to a postmodernist.

And it’s absolutely the opposite to how I view— perhaps it’s because of my background in narrative where I do believe these stories, these archetypes, are not just the result of social conditioning. They resonated, they will resonate for deeper reasons.

The Postmodern Classroom and the Problem of Objective Standards

FRANCIS FOSTER: When I got taught postmodernism at university, I remember just sitting there and going, this doesn’t make sense. That’s literally what I thought, because when I asked them to explain postmodernism, they couldn’t really explain what postmodernism is.

WARREN SMITH: Yes, and in my art class, required to take modern art— we go in there, she’s explaining to me, very nice professor, but she’s explaining to me that the banana nailed to the wall is of equal aesthetic beauty as the David, Michelangelo, or whatever it is. There are no objective standards for beauty. Beauty is purely a social construct, which actually goes against biology— there has to be a yardstick that drives us to see a hierarchy of beauty so we have a target to pursue.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But the interesting thing that I find about postmodernism and why I think it’s so prevalent today is that you can only really understand postmodernism if you’re disconnected from reality.

WARREN SMITH: And every postmodernist you speak to has these claims. “What you’re describing is not postmodernism.” And that gets very frustrating. This is the technique that I see the most often. We know what strawmanning is. They claim, “No, you’re misrepresenting my argument.”

But what will happen— Destiny, for example— he will misrepresent your argument, claim, “No, what you’re describing is critical race theory. That’s not what critical race theory is. All critical race theory is, is thinking critically about the structures of group dynamics and power in the past and how that’s—” And they make it sound completely harmless.

So circumvent, say, fine— going off the nonverbal thing— then what I’m talking about, call it whatever you want, is what led those students at Emerson to do this and what led that professor to tell us to surrender our white privilege. That’s what I want to examine, the ideology that leads to that. You can call it whatever you want, and they’re going to try and go off on this thing— just keep them on the rails.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Absolutely, because the more you investigate it, you go, oh, you have to be disconnected from reality in order for this to seem like it makes sense. Which is why discussions on Twitter and social media are so postmodern, is because they’re fundamentally disconnected from reality. Ridiculous ideas can live in social media because they’re not applied to the real world. They’re in the ether. They’re in the digital age, if you know what I mean.

WARREN SMITH: Yes. That’s why I love the format that I am playing with, because it circumvents the strategy where they’ll claim “no one’s saying that, no one is making that argument.” Well, I’ll show you the words coming out of their mouth and then comment on it and then cut to them doing it again.

My favorite video I’ve ever made was the postmodern professor talking with Joe Rogan, and it was like— if you described it, no one would believe you. This is a law of narrative, the central law of screenwriting: show, don’t tell. I can’t tell you about it because you won’t believe it. I can show you though.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Absolutely. Because we’ve had Adam Carolla on the show many times, and one of the points Adam makes is like, the most sensible people are those people who work with their hands. Like, we can talk about postmodernism and go, oh, the aesthetic beauty of a banana nailed to the wall as compared to a Caravaggio. But you can’t go to your carpenter and go, “What is a centimeter?”

WARREN SMITH: Right. Find where the rubber meets the road. So like we were just doing with critical race theory, find a tangible point. That professor said this to me in that room. Where does the rubber meet the road? The trans conversation debate— we’re talking about laws, structuring laws. Just go right there in the debate, not the theory portion of it or how I feel about it. How are we going to actually implement this where the rubber meets the road?

Why Has This Way of Thinking Become So Appealing?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Warren, do you have any thoughts on why humanity is at a point now where this way of thinking has become appealing to people? What is it about modernity or the condition of humanity at this moment that means that people are capable of thinking this is a useful way to think?

WARREN SMITH: We had a big transformation in the ’60s, my parents’ generation. The Vietnam War had a big impact. Postmodernism introduced from France became very appealing because of that transformation. That generation became the administrators. That’s the dean at the college, that generation. That’s my parents, right? They’re on board with all— it’s fun talking to them because it quickly dismantles, but they’re still—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And what was the transformation? Why did the Vietnam War have this effect?

WARREN SMITH: Well, because people— I think because people viewed the Vietnam War, right or wrong, as a big injustice and a miscarriage of power, and it put them on edge. We had World War II, very different. The narrative has shifted drastically. It’s so different from World War II to there.

I think culturally, music, the counterculture— and there’s cool things about all that. Like I like Jimi Hendrix. I think that was the turning point that has now led to the generation in control. And now we’re seeing a completely new generation.

Destiny’s audience, who are pushing for literally— they’re claiming we need to do what they did to Hunter Biden because— and I was listening to his moderator try and talk to Destiny, concerned about the radicalization, violent threats, being like, “Why do we need to make things up when they’re doing things wrong already?” They believe there’s enough to point where this guy believes they’re actually— if they’re doing things wrong, we should be able to point to it, which seems reasonable. If you’re going to try and arrest someone, you should be able to point to something.

Destiny’s response is, “Yet no, but they’re too clever for that, so we have to make it up.” It’s literally— I’m going to make a video about it and show you him saying that again. Show, don’t tell. People won’t believe it. But they’re saying we need to lock them up at any cost. It doesn’t matter because for the greater good, essentially.

Critical Thinking as a Tool Against Radicalization

FRANCIS FOSTER: And that’s why these skills are so important, because they are a really effective tool against radicalization. And we’ve seen people, young people particularly, be radicalized into progressive leftist movements. We’re now seeing people getting radicalized on the right.

WARREN SMITH: Yes.

FRANCIS FOSTER: And these tools are very effective for fighting back against that.

WARREN SMITH: Yes, understanding the laws of narrative hopefully will help with that, I think. But we should touch on this— I hope I didn’t alarm you with the death threat thing, the guy who was kind of going a little bit crazy. I don’t know if you saw that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I did. I have good security, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, but what was interesting about that is that I’ve had people since then messaging me saying, “This guy has been harassing me for a long time.” Even on the left, Tillie Middlehurst, who kind of rose to notoriety from debating Charlie Kirk— the opposite— emailed me the other day. She’s like, “This guy, thank you for posting that. This guy has been creeping me out.” People are really concerned. But I had no idea about any of that. But that is the movement that’s happening.

The Internet, Mental Illness, and Parasocial Relationships

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, one of the things with the internet as well is I think it’s created a space for activating a lot of people who are just mentally not very well. People are able to develop these kind of parasocial relationships that are both positive in inverted commas and negative— in the sense that some people think that they’re in a relationship with an OnlyFans model to which they send money, and other people think they are in a relationship with somebody who they watch online that they don’t like.

And I remember, what was that movie with Robert De Niro about baseball? Was it called The Fan? Have you ever seen that?

WARREN SMITH: Fielder?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, I think it’s called The Fan.

WARREN SMITH: The Fan.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah, I think so.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: He basically— De Niro is a big fan of this baseball player.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: You remember this? And he sort of feels like they’re in a relationship and he’s trying to help him out and he ends up doing all kinds of crazy stuff.

And I think what the internet has done is it’s kind of created a tool for weaponizing mental illness. And if you were like an alien that came down from another planet and read the comments on the average tweet and you just went through the comments, you would just go, schizophrenia, psychosis— bam, bam, bam, bam.

Because there’s a lot of mentally ill people and they’re mostly on the internet. And I’m not saying this in a disparaging, derogatory way. I just think there are a lot of people that use politics now as well to kind of fulfill all these things and cope and deal with issues that they need real help with, to be honest.

The Power of Perceived Value

WARREN SMITH: Yeah, I should— we were talking about this just a moment ago and I forgot a major component of this, which I think is perceived value. So when I went, started to get into the space of viral video, I recognized, whoa, there is little more powerful than the ability to connect with an audience, which is one reason that school fears it so much because it can— you can’t buy it. Brands try. That’s what sponsors are.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But it—

WARREN SMITH: And I think there’s this psychological phenomenon where if there’s 10 people looking up, you’re going to look up and see. Then something occurs with online people, celebrities in general. This perceived value. And you take any of these personalities, they’ll say something and it’s because of the surrounding narrative and we can’t separate the character. So we’re seeing it through the lens of that narrative.

And I’m just thinking, because I was struggling with this myself when I first started, I was like, no one’s going to care if I make such a mundane observation, but the same mundane observation in the hand and in the mouth of someone else, they’re viewing it through that narrative and it takes on a whole other meaning. I think that has something to do with it.

There’s something deeply psychological about it where you reach a point where someone is famous for the sake of being famous. It’s like a struggle for them until then — you see actors kind of break through that threshold. Until that point, it’s all about the roles. But once they cross that threshold of perceived value, we want to watch them because it’s Leonardo DiCaprio or whoever it is, because they’re famous. That’s a whole other threshold. And something actually switches psychologically.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And do you think that’s the point at which those people now feel like they have to have opinions on stuff that probably otherwise they wouldn’t express?

WARREN SMITH: What I think happens is that they’re climbing the ladder to that threshold by those opinions.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Ah, okay.

WARREN SMITH: And then once they’re invested, that’s their business. And now they are going to defend those opinions because it’s not their opinions they’re defending, it’s their business.

The Double-Slit Experiment and Where Logic Ends

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Warren, it’s been great to have you on. Before we head to Substack where our audience get to ask you their questions, what’s the one thing you think we’re not talking about that we should be?

WARREN SMITH: Double slit experiment in quantum physics. Are you familiar with the double slit experiment?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No. Are you, Francis?

FRANCIS FOSTER: No, no, no.

WARREN SMITH: Check it out. I won’t take up the time.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: No, no, take up the time.

FRANCIS FOSTER: Yeah.

WARREN SMITH: Well, I have this chapter in the book, “Where Logic Ends,” and it’s the one that’s sticking in my mind the most because there’s so much about reality that is illogical. So as someone who’s striving to be logical, how do I contend with where logic ends? And quantum mechanics and physics seems to be indicating that the very nature of reality behaves in a way at the atomic level that defies logic.

The double-slit experiment — they take an electron. You would expect these two slits — imagine a paintball gun, it’s firing between these — you would imagine the paintballs would create two lines where they fit through the slits and it’s splattering everywhere else. That’s not what we get. Only when the electrons know they are being observed. And if you— this sounds crazy, it’s not logical.

In quantum, the math — we can observe this. There are many lectures on YouTube where physicists break this down, takes 10 minutes, or you can delve into it deeper. To me, we know it’s happening. So there’s something about our consciousness interacting with the very fabric of reality that is extremely exciting to me.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And you’re saying logic is not the only force in the universe?

WARREN SMITH: No, there’s the logos. I think there is a deeper reality beyond what we can observe within the logos.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s very interesting. I was going to make a joke about anyone who’s married knows logic doesn’t always work, but let’s head over to Substack, head over to triggerpod.co.uk, where Warren’s going to answer your questions. Given your time as a teacher, what is one vital change you would implement in North American high schools if you had the power to do so?

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