LaBossiere Podcast

#29 - Agnes Callard

Episode Summary

On status games, paths in life, persuasion, good parenting, privacy, and God.

Episode Notes

Agnes Callard is an Associate Professor in Philosophy at the University of Chicago. She received her BA from UChicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are Ancient Philosophy and Ethics.

She was born in Budapest, Hungary, and attended the University of Chicago as an undergraduate. Her book, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming (2018) discusses the major value-transformations that shape our lives: becoming parents, changes in political views, acquiring new passions. How do these changes happen, and to what extent does a person have a hand in guiding them?

Episode Transcription

Agnes Callard 
 

[TRANSCRIPT IS AUTO-GENERATED]

[00:00:00] Alex: Agnes Callard is an associate professor in philosophy at the university of Chicago. She received her BA from U Chicago in 1997 and her PhD from Berkeley in 2008. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She was born in Budapest, Hungary, and attended the university of Chicago as an undergraduate. 
 

Her book aspiration, the agency of becoming discusses the major value transformations that shape our lives. Becoming parents, changes in political views, acquiring new passions. How do these changes happen? And to what extent does a person have a hand in guiding them? I got to sit down in person with Agnes, which was a first for this podcast. 
 

We talked about status games, paths in life, persuasion, good parenting privacy, and God. Hope you enjoy. 
 

  
 

[00:00:50] Alex: But yeah, that's sort of the cut and dry. But again, I appreciate. Doing the super cool. So I wanted to start off yeah, this is a bit strange doing it in person, like so used to seeing somebody on the other side of the zoom screen, I guess the audio quality is going to be better, at least. So I wanted to start off with just your path, you know, there's plenty to talk about as far as your work is concerned, but I think in your case, it'd be really cool to hear about your path earlier on in life, because you were born in Hungary. 
 

If I'm not mistaken, what was that all like for you?  
 

[00:01:26] Agnes: So I came to the U S when I was about six and I via Rome, we spent a year in room in between, cause you couldn't leave Hungary legally at the time. So once you left hungry, you needed to find a country that would take you in basically as refugees. 
 

And so eventually my parents teamed up with this sort of organization that was taking Russian Jews either to. The U S or to Israel, actually, I think my parents initially thought they were gonna end up at Israel. But we ended up here. And then by the time I was 10, we got American passports. And so then I spent my, I was able to where we were not able to go back to Hungary until we had passports. 
 

And so, but then once we had American passports, we could go back. And so I spent my childhood from that point kind of half and half up through college. I would be in Hungary for the summers and then in the U S for like the academic year. I I do remember thinking as a kid, like people would talk about like, like behind the iron curtain and I didn't really get, that was a metaphor. 
 

And so I thought it was weird because Hungary was really nice and they had great ice cream and everyone was nice to me. I was like, why everyone thought it was such a horrible place was strange to me. But I had a very skewed picture. Obviously I thought most Hungarians were Jews because I probably knew like many of the Jews in hungry. 
 

And those were all the people we, you know, we only ever hung out with other Jews. And so like that was not a representative sample. So I but in, in the U S I went to Orthodox Jewish schools. Mostly my parents were not religious, but just because they sort of took us in as like my sister and my me, and as like charity cases. 
 

And so we were able to go for free. Until around high school, I went to a public school Religious school, but having a non-religious home life thing did not work out. It created a lot of conflicts. And then I in high school I got very into debate Lincoln Douglas debate, and that's how I discovered philosophy because it would sort of come up as these sources for quotes. 
 

Basically, so like went to the the Barnes and noble, I think it was, I think it was one in Manhattan though. I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly. And, but they all, like, they had a philosophy section and I just bought one of each book. It was like one shelf. And I read through that and that was very exciting for me. 
 

I especially loved content. I wasn't good at debate. Like I didn't win a lot. I mean, I was, I was, I was successful in the sense that I was captain of my high school team, but I was not successful in terms of like winning tournaments or things like that. But I loved it anyway. And then I was an undergrad. 
 

In high school, my main interests were math and physics. And so I thought that's what I was going to do. I thought I was going to be a physics major when I came here. But sort of, I sort of discovered, like I discovered the humanities in a different way when I got here. And I discovered that like there could be right or wrong answers in the humanities, which I hadn't really occurred to me. 
 

It kind of just seemed like people making stuff up. Right. And so that was just more exciting to me than physics. So I ended up, I ended up being a classics major and also fundamentals major as an undergrad here. And then I went to classics grad school at Berkeley. And then I did that. Like, I basically jumped when you go to grad school, there's like a bunch of hoops you have to jump through, like in classics, which is a specially large number of hoops. 
 

So there's just a lot of exams, you know, like language exams, prose, composition, history, exams, et cetera. I basically jumped through all the hoops and then I'm like, okay, but I don't actually want to write a classics dissertation. So I spent a year at Princeton. Visiting their philosophy department seeing like maybe what I want to do philosophy. 
 

Cause I wasn't even philosophy majors, undergrad. So and then I did like philosophy. I did, I liked Princeton for a year, but I couldn't imagine being there for longer than a year. So then I applied come back to Berkeley and philosophy and then got a PhD in philosophy and then got a job here. This is my first job that I've had since 2008. 
 

That's my trajectory.  
 

[00:04:52] Alex: Cool. Yeah. You know, you touched on it a little bit. I was going to ask Ask you to go into, you know, what it was that got you into philosophy, because obviously I don't see a lot of kids, you know, reading Socrates at an early age. But in your case it sort of looks like, you know, having come in here and thinking, okay, maybe I want to go into physics and then ending up not doing philosophy, but sort of going down that route. 
 

Was it just the sort of chain of logic, so to speak that really interested you in saying like, okay, there can be a right answer for this. Where in, in, you know, in physics or something, maybe in math you can prove things to be true or false was what intrigued you, the fact that you could sort of apply those same principles to the humanities. 
 

[00:05:35] Agnes: Yeah. I mean, even things like, you know, should you be a vegetarian or. What should you eat? And like the thought that you could, like, I took this class called human being and citizen. My, you know, it was my core class and I took it with this woman named Amy Cass. And I remember, I just remember this one discussion that we had, and I think, I think it was in that classroom made was another, I took with her about the Odyssey. 
 

We were talking about the Lotus eaters and she's like a of Cedars are kind of like vegetarians, you know? And it was like, what would it be like, what is there what would it be to like, be a plant eater? And for that to mark you as I was a vegetarian at the time, not anymore, no, but I was for a long time. 
 

And you know, for, for being a plant eater to sort of mark you out culturally. So not even like asking about vegetarianism, are we morally prohibited from eating animals, but asking about the kind of cultural significance of your eating habits? It just was a way of thinking I hadn't encountered before. 
 

But I think that I really, I mean, I think I started to be interested in philosophy, you know, when I read these things for debate where my goal initially was justifying things to quote. But I thought they were really interesting and I thought, I actually thought like that content answered all the questions. 
 

So it was puzzling to me that there was faucet after college. I thought he just had got it. Got it. All right. And I did come in here wanting to do more content Joyce. I was very into James Joyce. It's an undergraduate. So I'm sorry. I was a high school student. So those were two, two authors that I wanted to study more in college. 
 

And so even though it wasn't a philosophy major, I did take philosophy classes and I took sort of literature classes that had a philosophical bent to them. And I think that like in high school, it wasn't exactly that I, I didn't do badly in humanities, but. I always felt like I wasn't, I didn't know what was being asked for, like with a paper I would write. 
 

And I wrote all my papers the night before, and I kept writing them and rewriting them and being like, what am I supposed to be doing here? I just found it really like puzzling what I was supposed to be doing. And somehow in college, the idea of like learning something from a work of literature sort of clicked. 
 

So yes, it's the true in the false, and it's also just being able to get purchased both on the work of literature and on your own life, by bringing them together  
 

[00:07:46] Alex: to shift gears for a second. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on, you know, starting out, whether you're reading Plato, Socrates con, any of these people, what do you think? 
 

Why is it that some writing lasts the test of time, right? Like this is particularly true in philosophy. Do you think we place too much emphasis on it or is like the longevity, a sign of the significance of the human condition or they got it. Right.  
 

[00:08:09] Agnes: So I think that there's one additional factor besides the question of like, how good was it? 
 

It's sort of. How influential was it? Right. So if like, even if it wasn't that good, but then it sort of dictates how a whole bunch of debates are framed later, you might need to read it to understand. Right. But I think the question did have we gotten it basically, right? I mean, that's a hard one for me to answer because even if I look at the Canon, right, there's just stuff in the kin and that doesn't resonate with me at all. 
 

Like if I were making the Canon by myself without any knowledge of like, you know, like Aquinas and Plotinus would not show up in the Canon for me, like, I'm just, don't get much out of reading them. And Vic and shine might not show up in the Canon for me if I were creating it. Right. Like if somebody just gave me a bunch of texts and And so like, when I say, you know, are we just picking the things that are good? 
 

Like some of the things we've picked don't seem that good to me. On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to be like, yeah, different philosophers, just going to resonate with different people. And some people might read Plato and they're just like, you know, like why does it play to tell us what he thinks? 
 

And they want something more like content. And so it's, it's hard, I guess it's hard to distinguish that what is objectively good versus what resonates with you? Sorry. There's an additional thing that I think is super important, which is just having there be a relatively small number of authors who most people have read such that we have some. 
 

We have the possibility of having a conversation. Right. Cause a conversation requires at least some shared terminology. So but like the thought could there be just undiscovered greatness? I think there just is. I mean, I think there's this, you know, Portuguese poet slash I think he's a philosopher, Fernando Pessoa, I think he's a genius. 
 

He hasn't made it into the philosophical cannon in the way that a lot of writers who write kind of similar to him, like Nietzsche guard have you know, do I think that some kind of Travis you're injustice, I don't tend to think about the way they're probably tons of others that I've never read that also could have been made it into the Canon. 
 

So so it's hard to sort of step outside my own skin and be like, well, we're correct in these cases and incorrect in these ones, because again, posole resonates with me and, you know, but I think. I guess I do think that with respect to the authors who are in the Canon, who do resonate with me, I feel confident that the things I see in those authors are genuine insights because I've had them as insights. 
 

So I've experienced the insight.  
 

[00:10:37] Alex: Got it. And now to turn it on you for a second I'm gonna ask you the same question I asked, I think Tyler Cowen which was, what do you think compels you to write? Cause you're pretty prolific in your own, right? 
 

[00:10:47] Agnes: I think that a bunch of different things, or like a bunch of different levels, one could address the issue. Like often it's like, I promise to give a talk or I promise to write something. And so then I have to write it, but of course I create those contexts for myself. I tend to write. Like a lot of people say they write like, almost like to figure out what they think. 
 

And I think I am doing that to some degree, but for me in a very fundamental way, writing is an act of communication. So I'm like not writing to myself. I'm, I'm imagining some kind of audience, if it's a talk, I'm imagining the audience of the talk. If it's, if I have an editor, I'm imagining the editor, like if I'm writing something for like the point or something, I'm imagining my point editor as my audience. 
 

When my dissertation, I just wrote it for my main dissertation advisor, Sam Scheffler. Right. So for me, writing is communicative and that means you have to be thinking of an audience and like I'm writing a trade book right now. And it was getting started was the hardest thing ever, because it was so hard to imagine my audience, because I'm like, who is reading this book. 
 

Right. Like and I think in the end I decided it was just like, I was gonna pick like first year under U Chicago undergrads as my, my mental model, like someone who hasn't encountered Plato before, but it was like interested because I needed someone. I was like, I'm imagining I'm giving a talk to them. 
 

Right. So I think I like communicating with. I like, like, you know, kind of putting a thought forward to that group of people. And then also not only having them ask me questions, but setting up in some sense, which questions are going to ask, right? You, you have control over what questions people ask you by how you talk and what you say. 
 

And so my communication is in a way shaped by my anticipation of what kinds of questions I want to receive. But yeah, I guess I think my reasons for writing and my reasons for like talking to you right now are not that different.  
 

[00:12:25] Alex: Got it. And so I want to sort of double down on, I think what brought us together in the first place, which is I recorded something. 
 

Tyler Cowen like a few weeks ago and you had something to say about it. And it had a little bit to do with something that you were just touching on, which is just doing things for the sake of doing them or what audience you have in mind. And so I think what you wrote was let's see if I can find this. 
 

Tyler says the reason he keeps writing is that he does it for its own sake, rather than to benefit his audience by changing their mind. Then he says it's like money where you keep going. If you're not doing it for its own sake, but to benefit the world by changing it. I'm curious to hear you expand on that a little bit and where you think the difference really  
 

[00:13:05] Agnes: lies. 
 

I mean, I thought Tyler was just flat out contradicting himself. That is I thought he was saying two things are similar when they're in fact different. I think that one thing that's interesting is that these two activities, namely writing and making money, we have different conditions under which we praise them. 
 

So we praise writing when you don't care what people think and you're doing it for its own sake. And then we praise making money when you really have these altruistic other motives. And so what Tyler wanted to do was present both things under their best aspect. And so he was presenting, I mean, and of course then there, there are similar under that level of description. 
 

Right. But I think that. I mean, I think it sort of illustrates a danger and I am sure that I fall into it as much as Tyler does of when you're trying to talk or give an account of yourself, you're at the same time, trying to praise yourself or present yourself in a good light. It's really hard to do like the first thing without doing the second thing. 
 

And so you can sort of get so caught up in that, that you actually don't even hear what you're saying and that it doesn't like fit together. But in terms of, you know, my actual thoughts about when people want to write and how people ought to make money, I think the thought that people who are making, like, I think Tyler's thought that like a lot of people who make money are actually altruistic and want to benefit the world. 
 

That seems true to me from the small sample I've had of people who are engaged in making money. Surprisingly true. I think he's right about that. And then, you know, why do people, right? I mean, I think that 
 

I guess there's, you know, there's, there's the question. Why did the people, why do those people who want to improve the world, the businessmen who want to do the, why? Why do they want to do that? Right. And like, at least part of that is that they want to be thought well, of right. They want to be valued and respected. 
 

And a lot of people, especially who have a lot of money feel like I don't want to just be thought of as someone who has a lot of money, I want to be thought of as someone who has other virtues and the two other virtues that I think they tend to go for are one being really, really smart and really good at business, such that in effect, the money they have is earned or deserved as a result of the scale. 
 

And the other is like being well-intentioned or being morally good, like being directed at the good of humanity. Right. And so that's sort of you know, partly explain why there's this push to either represent yourself as smart or represent yourself as naturalistic or ideally, both. Right. For people who write a lot, you know we want people to pay attention to us and listen to us like I'm communicating. 
 

Because I like to people who are listening to me, right. I think Tyler is doing the same thing. Like he's not just writing for himself or he's obviously writing for an audience, but I think that there is, you know, there are different like degrees to which what you share, what you say can be shaped by your conception of your audience. 
 

And there are sort of like, I think, bad and good equilibria that one can get into with one's audience. Right? So like, if all you're ever doing is satisfying your audience's expectations about exactly who they already think you are. And you're just sort of producing a certain kind of content. And there's plenty of people online who are doing this right. 
 

Who. You could almost see it as like flattery of a certain kind of audience. Like that's certainly bad. Right. And I think what Tyler was trying to do when he said he only writes for himself is to signal that he's not that kind of an accommodator of his audience. Right. And I think he isn't. So but even the people who are not doing that are writing for an audience and they're writing because they care what other people think about them. 
 

If you didn't care, what other people think about you thought about you at all? Like you would just have far less of an incentive to engage with those people.  
 

[00:16:35] Alex: I think you're touching on something interesting there. Why you think that that's held in such high regard in some, in some senses, like not caring, what other people think of you? 
 

Cause it's very weird to go about life and run into people who-- it's not to say, I don't do this myself-- who say, oh, I don't really care what they think. I don't care what this person thinks. That's almost like it's almost sort of a jockeying for status in a way, which I want to get into later. 
 

But why do you think that is?  
 

[00:17:04] Agnes: I think that when you reveal that you care, what other people think you're exposing a vulnerable. And in effect you're telling them, you can really hurt me by just thinking of me poorly. Right. And people don't like to reveal that about themselves. They like to appear tough. 
 

And so toughness and indifference often go together as signals, I think. So I think also, so that's one aspect of it. Here's another aspect of it. As we're growing up, when we're young, we like care a lot about what people think about us. Like it's very clear that kids care what their parents think about them. 
 

Right. Kids, if you're, if you're, if you say to your kid, I'm disappointed in you, that's very like your kid is devastated. So there's no question that like kids care what their parents think about them, but then like, you know, as the kid gets older, they care a little bit less what their parents think with them, but they care what their friends think about them. 
 

Right. And I think we see it as a mark of maturity to like, not care as much. What people think about you that is to have innocence Within your own soul, a kind of ability to assess when you're doing well and doing badly and not having to farm that judgment out onto other people. And so to care about what other people think about you as sort of to admit that you're not grown up,  
 

[00:18:10] Alex: so to shift gears and sort of what I was alluding to earlier I think you were talking to, I want to say it's as reclined about this. 
 

And he brought up you know, some things about status and meritocracy and especially, you know, some of your thoughts on when we meet for the first time. Right? What the interplay between actually getting to know someone is and jockeying for statuses. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. 
 

Like, is there an inner place at one or the other. Why do we do that?  
 

[00:18:36] Agnes: Yeah, I mean I think that you know, when you say jockeying for status, that sounds like one of the two status games that I I'm describing in the piece that Ezra is referring to there, namely the one where each of us wants to be higher than the other. 
 

I find that, that, that is a game that I, I experienced and I get into with people sometimes, but I find I more often get into the other game, the we're equal game. And I think it's that it's like, you might think there's this appearance that you can just show up in a room, right? At a party you'd run into and you start talking to the person, but actually somewhere deep in our brains, we have this thought before we start communicating, we have to, in some sense, set up a relationship that we have, right. 
 

So we have to be communicating as something or other and You know, one basis on which we could be communicating is we're equals and another basis on which we could be communicating is one of us is above the other. And so in effect, we're like trying to figure that it's like before we have the conversation, let's figure out the terms on which the conversation is going to be conducted. 
 

I don't I don't think everyone does this. Like I think kids don't do it very much. Young kids, like you know, my kids recently had like some kids, their age that came over to our house that they didn't know before. And like, they kind of just start relating in a very direct way of like, I like this, you know? 
 

But I think as we get older and it may just keep happening more and more as you get older, like maybe I'll be doing it more when I'm 60 or something, you feel more and more like you need to have like a basis for having the conversation. And I even, I think all that's fine. The, the times when it really bothers me are the times when it eats up the entire time for having the conversation right. 
 

Where you never actually get to saying anything because you spend the whole time determining like your, you know, the basis upon which you might have some other conversation that you never  
 

[00:20:21] Alex: have. Right. I guess half of that is like smalltalk though. Right. And just the basis on which we can get to know each other is okay, you know, we're both in this example, both sort of part of a U Chicago community, we can come to the Logan center and meet, and that's like something that we can do. 
 

But in any other sense, it's like, where do you draw the line between actually getting to know someone and I'm going to try and relate to you in such a way that puts me above or below you or equal to you.  
 

[00:20:47] Agnes: Good. I mean, I think that Yeah. I think that a lot of small talk is just about setting up via Galatarian status game. 
 

Sure. So we, we in effect are subject to the weather in particular, right? Like we are subject to the same natural forces, right. That's a big equalizer for people. It works much less like in the time of zoom, we're not whole, we don't have the same weather anymore. The people that we talked to but I think that, so I think that the way that you can distinguish it is just, are you asking questions where you want to know the answer? 
 

Like a lot of the questions that we ask people that are part of small talk, we're not asking them because we want to know the answer. And, but getting to know someone, you ask them questions where you actually do want to know the answer. And so you can just sort of ask yourself, do I want you to know the answer or not? 
 

And that will determine which of the two things you're doing  
 

[00:21:33] Alex: to delve a little bit deeper into that initial question you argued for. I think a non-punitive meritocracy with regard to all of this, how do you break that down for anybody who doesn't know what that means? Which I didn't about two days ago. 
 

[00:21:48] Agnes: So I would say like you know, the, the kind of the structure of normativity is like possibly bipartite so you can praise people or let's say, let's say tripartite. Okay. So you can praise people for going above and beyond. You can blame them for going below, and then you can maybe do nothing if they exactly meet the norm. 
 

Right. That's where that I was, was leaving out the middle thing. So, yeah. So you might have a norm. And so now you're going to check, right? Do people exceed? Do they meet it or do they fall below it? Now, whether they even count as exceeding it or meeting it or falling below, it is going to be like heavily context dependent and a whole lot of ways, right. 
 

If I get a paper from a student, right. And I need to judge this, this paper exceed or meet or fall below expectations, I need to know, wait a minute. Like it is a high school student. Is it a college student? What year are they in? How far along are we in the course? What course is it? Right. So, so you have a lot of contextual information that you need in order to even make this assessment. 
 

But I think we can make it and we make it all the time about people in all sorts of different ways. And I think that what I'm trying to argue for in that piece is that we don't need to couple the blame as tightly as we tend to, to the price. So. We could think of our meritocracy in which some people, you know, succeed very, very strikingly in life. 
 

We get, think of that as like, those people, like in large part, like deserve to succeed in the sense that they worked hard to get where they are. And they made the best of the talents that they were given and the opportunities that they were given. And so we don't need to be shy of, or let's say jealous of like respecting them for that though. 
 

Again, those judgements have to make contextually. So for instance, if you imagine one of those people had a lot fewer opportunities than the others and was in a much more diverse environment. We want me to give them even more credit. Right. We can think of. And then we, but we don't need to, to, to infer from that, to the idea that we need a symmetrical treatment for the failure. 
 

So people who don't achieve very much and who who are unhappy with their lives. And I think we don't have to think, well, it was through fault of their own. We can think about those cases. No, it was mostly because of you know, external factors interfering and the reason that the justification of treating these cases asymmetrically, I think it's just. 
 

It's clear that everyone desires the good and everyone desires to achieve the good. And so if they fail it's because something got in their way. Whereas if they succeeded really is that drive for the good that's, that's pushing them there.  
 

[00:24:23] Alex: Gotcha. So I wanted to switch gears again for a second, and I think this is like a close enough subject that it makes sense to go to, but that is on persuasion through argument versus persuasion through influence. 
 

There's a, I think it was a 2019. I want to say New York times article that she wrote on academic de platforming and sort of as this, the way I interpreted it as, as a call to focus on actual viewpoints rather than the number of people that hold down. Am I getting that right? Yeah.  
 

[00:24:51] Agnes: So it was on whether we should use petitions to sort of solve disputes among academic philosophers. 
 

[00:24:58] Alex: Gotcha. So do you think calling for persuasion by authority is idealistic in a sense like don't the majority sort of control the narrative of history.  
 

[00:25:09] Agnes: No, it's not the reason I'm against it. I think the reason that I'm against it is that the authority could be wrong. And that what we want to do is to find the truth. And there are sort of methods of persuasion that are primarily aimed at shaping other people's beliefs, but not shaping other people's beliefs with a view to the truth. 
 

Right. And so I think that at least philosophers, and really not only philosophers ought to be employing what I would call inquisitive forms of persuasion that is forms of persuasion that are, that are directed at knowing the truth, whatever it is, whatever it may be and persuasion by authority. 
 

Isn't like  
 

[00:25:49] Alex: that. Got you. Got you. So another question here. And it has to do, I think a bit with your book aspiration is just on permutations and paths in life. And so as, I guess, a bit of a preface to the something that I happen to think a lot about is dealing with permutations and just the number of possibilities in life, right? 
 

Like reasonably speaking, there's a sequence of actions that I could take that would lead me to become a tour guide in Bali and another, that would lead me to become prime minister of Canada. Neither of those I would say are particularly likely, but they're there. And so when it comes to dealing with decisions on a day-to-day basis and sort of the, the agency of becoming in the sense that you put it is, is that something that we should be thinking about? 
 

[00:26:40] Agnes: Yeah. So I think one thing that's interesting is this question, like, how does. Is the, you that becomes a tour guide in Bali from the youth, it becomes the prime minister of Canada. And like, from your, from your vantage point right now, those look like totally different lives because you're imagining the one in Bali, like, you know, and the other one in Canada and the other one, you know, the target has very like maybe a relaxed life. 
 

And the Canada prime minister is like very busy. Right. But I think it's sort of consistent with those facts, the sort of the externally visible facts about the person that like, you're very unhappy in both of these lives and you have a lot of the same vices and like you're kind of dissatisfied and disenchanted with your life and you don't have a sense of what's important and you don't have loved ones or, oh, it's also the opposite is, is consistent. 
 

Right. And so part of like the question. I think we often frame the basic facts of our lives in terms of career, because that's like a grip that you can get on your life. The parents is a very American thing. I've heard, like, I've heard that in America, when you meet someone, you ask them what they do. But like in Europe, people ask like where you from or something, they wouldn't ask what you do. 
 

Right. And the European thing is, is yet another totally illusory way of trying to get a grip on a person. Like where, where did they come from? You know, were they born in this city or that city, like, who cares? Right. But we need something, we need some way of getting a grip on like our identities. Right. 
 

And so we use these external signs of like tour guide versus prime minister. But I think that, you know what I'm talking about in my book, like it could well be a process where you end up as the tour guide or the prime minister, but it's, you know, as we're sort of like moving forward in our lives, it's not that what we're doing is making a bunch of choices. 
 

In ways we couldn't at all for sea land us in some, you know, some life, you know, is there, like if I had taken this other train and I had not run into this person, then I would be right. It's rather like, of course there are those opportunities and there are these like moments where it's like, oh, if I hadn't met this person, like th th that can be true. 
 

It can be a necessary condition, but that's far from it's being sufficient. Right. There's a whole other story of like, you got into that train and you met this person, and then you, from that point kind of like work to try to come to appreciate some form of value that you then were also able to like, provide to the world, right. 
 

As tour guide or as prime minister. And so I think that you know, what, what we're working at as aspirants is sort of coming into flesh out the inside of the point of view of the tour guide or the prime minister that will eventually be such that we. Come to have the world look a distinctive new way to us. 
 

Right. And what we can have from that at the, at the beginning, the view, the view that we have from the outside is like a very under determined shell of like what it would be to actually inhabit that point of view. And it's the inhabiting work that we're doing as aspirin.  
 

[00:29:22] Alex: Got it. You know, it's interesting growing up and I know you have kids, so you can probably relate to this. 
 

It seems like we're almost forced to choose very early on. I think this is less so in the states, but if you're looking at, you know, seemingly education and in parts of Europe, like in middle school, you're basically saying, okay, I want to go down this path. Is there any fault in that, do you think, like when you're looking at your own kids and sort of trying to grapple with what good parenting is, do you think that telling them that they should at least have some sort of path or following their interests that far out is a good thing? 
 

Or should they just sort of do whatever they're compelled to do in the short term?  
 

[00:30:06] Agnes: I think that like my oldest is very driven and he is wanting to be like, you know, to write and direct movies for quite a long time now. At least for, you know, he's 17, maybe at least for like six or seven years. And it's never a matter of me being like, you should find something or you shouldn't find something. 
 

It didn't feel like something I could control. And my middle son is like a little bit that way with respect to history, he's very interested in history wants to be a high school history teacher, cool teacher. And so like, it has seen maybe this is an illusion, but it just sort of seemed to me that my kids like just sort of coalesced onto something, but it could also be that like my oldest and my middle are unusual and maybe my youngest is not going to, and he'll just be kind of drifting for a bit. 
 

I was much more of a drifter than my, either of those two kids are. And, you know, I think that even when we settle on, even when people settle on something, like you had told me, you settled on banking at some point, and then it turned out you were unsettled. Right. And so I think like, all I can say about my older two is like where they are now. 
 

Right. Which isn't necessarily where they're going to be. But I do, you know, as a kid, you get asked a lot, like, what are you going to be when you grow up? You start getting asked that when you're like four years old. Right. And so I think a kid always feels the need to have some kind of an answer to that question. 
 

And my youngest, the answer he gives you, if you ask him, if he's going to be a philosopher, he's going to carry on the family tradition because he's like, knows that his older two brothers are like, you know, straying from the path. So, you know, but like, what does that mean? It just, for him mostly means like having some answer. 
 

Right. So I think, you know, is it, is it bad to pressure kids to produce some answer? Other, I don't know the answer to that. Like, I guess I haven't tried to live in the alternative world.  
 

[00:31:46] Alex: More broadly now, what do you think makes good parenting? Is there anything you're particularly focused on that you think other people are probably looking over? 
 

[00:31:55] Agnes: I think one thing that's maybe that differentiates me from other people who think about parenting. I think the category of good parenting makes less sense. It's sort of like good husbanding or good wifing or something where, what you're really talking about is a relationship that can be going either well or badly. 
 

And like, there's this tendency to like erase the kids part of the relationship, you know, it's like, oh, it's not, I gotta do good parenting. And like, my kids have no responsibility. Like I think it's their job to be good kids too. Right. And so that the good parenting thing seems to me to like alive that a bit and to over state one party's role in fully determining whether a relationship is healthy or not. 
 

And I think whether those relationships are like healthy or good relationships is partly a function of like how the personalities mesh or interact. And that's not totally up to like one's control. And so there's like an illusion for instance, that every parent could be like an equally good parent to every child. 
 

And like, I just don't think that's true. Sure. So I think like what you have to do with each of your kids is sort of find some kind of equilibrium of how to interact that works for both of you. And that takes a long time because it takes them time to like come into being as a person. Right. And I think that's what you're sort of doing and they're trying to do it too. 
 

And and it's like, it's rarely a thing where it's like, well, if you just committed harder or something to doing it, like, it would be like, you know, in a marriage we'll just commit harder to like being a good spouse. And then the relationship will work out. It's like, no, it's not really how relationships work. 
 

Right. Or being a good brother or sister. Right. Like it's I, you know, I think there are sort of things where it's like clear cases of like abuse or parents have power over their children to tussle, to abuse that power. But if we sort of set that pretty extreme set of things aside you know, you're providing your kids with the basics of what they need for life that then you've done, like the basics, the part that's only on you, right. 
 

It's on you to do that. It's not on them to get food or whatever, but then once you've done that, it's like a relationship and like any relationship, it's pretty hard to say what it would take for it to go well, it's going to be like incredibly specific to the contours of that relationship.  
 

[00:33:54] Alex: Got it. One thing I want to switch to for a second is what drives us. 
 

And you've written a little bit about anger, actually, a lot about anger. I think it's interesting, you know, not necessarily anger, but in my own. Sort of personal experience. Spite has been something it's not quite the same as anger, but it's actually really cool when someone says like, oh, you'll never amount to, you know, doing that thing or that other thing. 
 

And it's actually a pretty cool driver w one thing that you wrote about that I thought was cool just in the context of anger is betrayal. So the, the basic sort of flow here is, you know, if I betray you at this time, T1, that will be true at T2 T3, T N whatever. What's the difference between that and just holding a grudge? 
 

Is that something that is that an analog? Is that the  
 

[00:34:43] Agnes: same thing? I think it is just holding a grudge. Yes. In effect, what I'm doing in that piece is arguing that grudges are rational. They're just a rational response to the fact that somebody did something bad and can never undo it.  
 

[00:34:54] Alex: Do you think it's worthwhile  
 

[00:34:56] Agnes: often? Not. Right. So like, you know what, my point in saying that it's rational is like, if you think there's a reason to be angry, right? So like, if you think there was any, like, I might, you know I might not have betrayed you, you might be wrong about that or whatever, then maybe you didn't have any, I suppose, suppose we think there is a reason then that same reason, it's still a reason later. 
 

It doesn't change the reason doesn't put on different clothing at later times. Right. You know, should you you could have a reason to be angry, but have overwhelming reason not to get angry, even though you have a reason to be angry and you could have a reason to be angry, but like have a reason not to hold onto your anger. 
 

Like there are all kinds of ways in which anger is inconvenient. So sure. Right. That reason can be overwritten by other reasons. That's true of every kind of reason. But You know, there's a different there's a different kind of thing that people I think had hoped, which was to say the reason could somehow be addressed or resolved, right. 
 

Such that then you wouldn't have a reason anymore. So instead it would become irrational for you. And that's what, it's a little bit harder for me to see what would count as fulfilling that role.  
 

[00:35:55] Alex: Got it. Got it. Do you think there's a, do you think some things are more rational drivers than others, right? 
 

Or does it just depend contextually? Like is someone driven entirely by anger? More rational just in that decision than someone that's driven purely by hope?  
 

[00:36:11] Agnes: I think Oop is it's a hard one because hope has tends to have a lot of fantasy built into it. So I think that you know, if what you're doing is attending to this reason that you have to be angry and you're just, you have like a laser focus on that reason. 
 

And you're not paying attention to anything else in a way you are more rational in relation to that reason, but you could be being very irrational and ignoring like a whole bunch of other stuff. Right. So if we want to do an overall assessment of rationality, rather than, than just your rationality relative to that one consideration then I think you're probably going to be ended up less rational overall, if you're angry. 
 

[00:36:43] Alex: That makes sense. There was, I think I cannot remember the interview for the life of me, but a couple of things that you said you were working on at the time, just in your own life. One was fashion. One was God. And I can't remember the third  
 

[00:36:56] Agnes: podcast I did with Tyler. 
 

That's the one.  
 

[00:36:59] Alex: So firstly, how did this come up? I mean, we're just recording audio right now, but you're dressed in some really funky clothes, which is very cool. Even the headphones that you have laying over on the desk over there, like match your top, which I think is cool. It's just like. Where did this come about for you? 
 

[00:37:16] Agnes: I think that in general, I really like. Matters to me, that things be colorful in by environment. So like my clothes, but also my office and like everything I look at and I get a lot of happiness out of color. And I'm almost just surprised that this is a true of everyone. Like it seems to me almost like, like if you go to, if you go to a store there's often like the colorful and the less colorful clothing, and it's not like some big price difference or something like, you could just pay the same amount of money because colorful clothing. 
 

Right. Which seems to me, like, you're just getting more value. So in a way, what I think is weird is other people or like you, you know, you have like, people's like, my office is very colorful, but like everyone could have a colorful office. Like it, it's not, it's not like that expensive or that hard. 
 

Right. So I almost want. Put it on to other people, like why aren't other people more colorful? Like it's like, it's like food, there's like food that tastes really good. Right. And then there's like very boring and dull food and like, most people would choose it, like tasty, exciting food, but visually they choose like the boring food. 
 

So that's weird to me. And I just, I enjoy, like, I also, like I hang my clothing on the walls of my bedroom so I can like look at the address because I can't wear all my dresses. I have a lot of dresses that weren't dressed today, but I have a lot of dresses. And so I want to enjoy them more often than even when I wear them. 
 

So I like have them all hanging on the walls and so I can see them and it just makes me happy to look at them. And I guess I'm also, I guess, exploiting this fact about most people, because I like to be the center of attention. It's easier to be the center of attention. If you're dressed in like a bright and colorful way, people will pay attention to you. 
 

So I mean, I'm trying to think of, are there any downs, like, like it's almost like, I'm just, it's weird to me that everyone doesn't do this. There seem to be no downsides. It's not especially expensive. It's not really hard. It's like this, it's like, I'm just plucking this low hanging fruit of like this great thing that's available to everyone. 
 

But for some reason, other people don't  
 

[00:39:01] Alex: no, it's funny. I'm realizing like sitting here, we are very much like opposites. I think you're in like a color block. T-shirt you have, I think ponds or like marshes all over your pants. Yeah. I think those are lions on your socks. Are those chickens?  
 

[00:39:15] Agnes: They are, it's a rabbit and a hat. 
 

It's magic. It's like a magic theme socks. Oh my God.  
 

[00:39:20] Alex: And I'm sitting here in gray pants and a black sweater, you know, I think for me, I'm like very much notorious among my friends for wearing like gray and black for me. It's interesting. It feels like a way to ground myself. It feels like I mean, half of it is being able to roll out about in the morning and just like pick up anything and it just be look fine. 
 

Right. But the other half of it is monochromatics I think in my case anywhere, like a very soothing thing. So on a day-to-day basis, it does feel a lot more natural for me to just wear, you know, more boring things because it's like, that's the one thing throughout the day that like, okay, that can be constant. 
 

That can be sort of a, sort of a calming presence for me in a way it's a very weird thing to try and articulate.  
 

[00:40:07] Agnes: She makes a lot of sense to me. That seems rational to me because for me, it's like, I'm always looking for more stimulation, right? Yeah. Assuming everyone wants that. And I'm like, Hey, why doesn't everyone take this thing that they could have? 
 

And what you're saying is not everyone wants that. That is we maybe be getting a lot of stimulation in certain areas of our lives and we want to keep other areas of our lives more calm. And so I'm just like maximizing stimulation everywhere. But that might be, you know, more than what other people  
 

[00:40:32] Alex: want. 
 

Yeah, definitely. So what about the other one? You talked about fashion, you said the other thing was God, is that still something you think about a  
 

[00:40:41] Agnes: lot? Yeah, it is. And I think that you know, one like the form that, that has taken most recently and I, this might not seem like direct, but it's like to think a lot about complaint. 
 

Cause I think of like, God, as in some way, the fundamental address, see of complaint in the form of like prayer and in the form of like, why did you make the world this way? And why are things the way they are? And. I think you know, I just, I have a lot of questions, like religious questions that I haven't found a good context for communicating with people about. 
 

So I'm still like, I am still working on that. But like one question that I have is like, I tend to, like, I struggle over my belief, but I tend to believe in God, but have like a very open-ended sense of what God is in the sense of like, I'm open to the thought that there are many gods and I'm open to the thought that like all the people around me are God's like, maybe this is what God looks like is like human beings. 
 

There are times when I think that that human beings are kind of like mortal gods of a kind. And so one thing I'm like one thing I'm still, you know, sort of struggling with is How to find the right avenue, the right place for discussing those questions. And I have like, I've gone to some conferences on religion. 
 

I taught a class, I think I'm religious epistemology in Brazil. I, so I've, I've done different things. But, but it hasn't like pulled itself together. And this thing about complaint, which I'm still sort of, I wrote something for the point, but I'm still thinking about it is maybe the best condensation of that aspiration or something so far. 
 

I think my third thing might've been teaching that I said in terms of what am I aspiring in relation to you know, trying to teach to do better in the classroom. And I think I found that a lot, like in a way, I'm not sure I've improved that much in the classroom, but I've, since the time I had that, you know, which was, that was the first I did a podcast. 
 

It was the second podcast I ever did, but it was like the. You know, sort of big podcast. And and since then I've done like a lot more sort of public type stuff. And I've found that there are maybe more ways for me to exploit the kinds of advantages that I have in teaching. Like there's certain things I'm good at and teaching certain things I'm not good at. 
 

And when I think I said to Tyler that I wanted to improve in relation to teaching, I was thinking of becoming better at the things I'm not good at, but what I've maybe found more of is like, well, I can just find more in different ways to do the things I am good  
 

[00:43:14] Alex: at. Got it. Got it. That makes sense. You know, your, your point on complaint when you were talking about God, I think really resonates because usually when people talk about God, the fundamental question is like, oh, like has got bill, right. 
 

I don't think that's really the right question to be asking at all. I think. To your point. I think what you were trying to get at at least a little bit there is, I think all that really matters is, you know, what benefit it provides or what benefit believing God provides in life. You know? Like I think having something or someone to sort of point at, and whether you're directing whether you're directing gratitude or whether you're directing a complaint or anything else, like having that thing to sort of point at when anything's out of your control, I think is just a fundamentally like. 
 

Good things as far as quality of life is concerned.  
 

[00:44:05] Agnes: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, my earliest, like it's interesting. Cause as I said, I was telling you earlier that I ran into troubles as a young kid being in a religious school, but not being from religious family. And then it would, you know, it was sort of I mean, I guess this is how things go is like by high school, when I started believing in God, I was now in public school no longer in a religious context. 
 

But I think the first thing that drew me to believe in God was just feeling grateful that everything existed and feeling like if there's no, God, there was no being to whom I could express my gratitude like that. The gratitude had nowhere to go, you know? And I was thinking, oh, the sad thing, if you don't believe in God is you can't be as grateful for everything that exists and how wonderful everything is. 
 

But then there's also complaint, which is like, I found the need to complain more. You know, that that need is more compelling to me. And I find that even when I complained to another person, I think I'm complaining to something very special in them. Right? Like the, the part of them that can hear my complaint is sort of the divine part of them where I'm like, why are things the way they are? 
 

Why am I being made to her? Why do I have to suffer? Like when you say that to another person, like they could very well be like, why don't you, why are you asking me? Right. But like, if you say that to the right person, and they're not going to say, why are you asking me? And so in effect, it's like they're taking on the mantle of like being, playing God, being God for that interaction. 
 

And that's part of what drives me. The thing maybe that is like, what it is to believe in God is to, in some sense, feel like you can address other human beings as God. Maybe that's the closest it's like, because if you're addressing, I find often I do pray and I try to address God, but it's hard because like you're imagining. 
 

Like like a hazy thing or like a kind of old man or you, and you're trying to tell yourself not to imagine those things. Right. And maybe that the closest you can come to like addressing God is actually dressing the human being.  
 

[00:45:53] Alex: Hmm. So last question for you has a bit to do with privacy life online, living in public, you know, you mentioned earlier that you're very much a fan of being the center of attention. 
 

And at the same time you are someone who's pretty active, publicly be on social media or writing in columns, any of this other stuff. Is that something that comes naturally to you? Would you say?  
 

[00:46:19] Agnes: Yes. I mean, I w you know, I only, like I joined Twitter about three years ago maybe three and a half now. 
 

But I like it a lot. I like the I like interacting with strangers. I, I do think it comes pretty naturally to me. I think that there's this incredible sense of possibility. Like in some of it may be an illusion, but of the space of possible interactions that you can have with sort of anyone that that online kind of promises you. 
 

And I get all kinds of help that I wasn't expecting. You know, I'll just mention something and some will be like, oh, here's the thing, or, oh, did you read this? Or here's an idea, here's an argument or whatever. Like, and if you sort of, I think how much you seek attention. It's just a function of how self-sufficient you are like. 
 

And so I'm not very, self-sufficient, I'm not capable of really thinking that well, on my own, I'm not capable that well, capable of entertaining myself. I mean, can do if I have a book or something, but that's another kind of socializing. Right. And so I think that I enjoy having this set of social interactions that I can always like plug into whenever I want. 
 

I didn't like being in a world where like, I couldn't socialize whenever I felt like it. So I like it, but I very much see that for other people, it can be quite oppressive and I'm, it's a little mysterious to me and I'm not saying I'm suspicious or skeptical, but it's just genuinely mysterious. How much people who seem to think it's bad are also just drawn to engage in it nonetheless. 
 

I would like a better theory of that than I have  
 

[00:47:59] Alex: one thing that's interesting. And I guess this is a separate conversation altogether, but there's this concept of the metaverse that's like, come into question a lot recently, especially with this Facebook announcement, I think like a week ago. And a really cool way I heard it described was it not necessarily being a place, but rather a point in time when you care more about your online presence than your real life presence, do you see yourself moving in that direction at all? 
 

[00:48:27] Agnes: So it depends what we mean by your online presence. So I am though, I love being on Twitter and I like having an online persona in that. I hate zoom way more than like, I think anyone that I've interacted with, like, as you may know, I insisted on doing this interview in person. Right. I see a huge difference. 
 

For me it's like, it's not even really the same sort of thing. It's like, there's, there's doing something and then there's pretending you're doing it. And all the stuff on zoom to me is more in the direction of just pretending like so when I'm on zoom, I just feel like I'm acting like I'm acting like a human. 
 

I'm forcing myself to pay attention, but at every moment I'm sort of distracted. If I have any ability to like, do other things, I will like, whether it be doodling or checking my email or whatever, I'm not able to really control those impulses. I lose track. If it's a talk, I will just stop paying attention. 
 

And the theory that I've come up with about my. Is that my brain at a very deep level does not think that what's happening is real. When it's like a bunch of faces on a screen, my brain says, that's not how reality looks. It's not how people show up to you. And so these people aren't actually there, this isn't actually happening, right? 
 

This is like a movie you're watching. Right? And so I keep telling myself, no, no, no, this is real. Like, this is like a lecture that I'm attending. And I have to listen and pay attention to ask you the question. I'm trying to tell myself that, but I'm like counteracting this voice and deep inside my brain saying this is not real. 
 

And the whole zoom experience is that battle inside my soul, between the deep part of my brain saying, this is not real. And me trying to tell myself at Israel and like how much of me I can devote to the interaction is like, whatever fraction is leftover from fighting that battle. And so. So you're asking me what the metaverse, you know, I'm like, well, what, what would it be like zoom? 
 

Or would somehow that trick, that D part of my brain into thinking this was really happening, because things are more like three-dimensional I have these glasses and maybe that's enough. And then maybe that deep part of my brain thinks is actually happening. That's all I need. I just need it to be like, you know, convinced of but I'm worried that that deep part of my brain is actually pretty well attuned to the way reality works into the way things smell and feel when they're really happening. 
 

And that, like, if I saw people like looking like they did in that metaverse video, I'd be, my brain would be like, this isn't actually happening. This isn't real. This is like, the movie was like a video game that we're in. And so I am in that way though. I love Twitter. Like I am also Twitter. Doesn't somehow persuade me that we're in a room, you know, hanging out right. 
 

Forms of online interaction that attempt to mimic interpersonal interaction. So far have done it poorly again, I leave room for the idea that they could do it well at some future.  
 

[00:51:08] Alex: Sure. So to wrap us up just wanted to delve a little bit more into the privacy aspect of it and what you thought about that, you know, again, having sort of a pretty large online persona and I think there was something you wrote, again, this is a New York times column about tweeting about your son. 
 

And I'm curious, especially in the context of that, maybe not with people, you know, close to you, but you yourself is privacy. Something that you think about a lot. And I don't mean like, you know, someone's going to find you or like there's a safety concern, but I mean more so about, you know, your ownership or agency over your own work over your own thoughts. 
 

Is that something  
 

[00:51:44] Agnes: I think about it a huge amount. I was starting to write something about it, like almost a year ago. I went and like this deep dive in the kind of legal theory, literature on privacy and like, you know, just read like thousands of pages of law review articles on privacy. And the, the conclusion I come to is like, we don't know what privacy is. 
 

Like the, the sort of most state-of-the-art paper that I can remember was a kind of, it was called like a taxonomy of privacy, but I think the author's name is S O L O V E. I don't know how you pronounce it, but it was like here, like 17 different like headings that fall under privacy that might not have much to do with each other. 
 

Right. So I think like the number one thing I think, and there's a famous article by Judith Thompson called something like the right to privacy in which she's like, yeah. I think it's kind of a way we have of grouping together, certain ways of protecting other rights. Right. So one question I have is like, is there such a thing as the right to privacy? 
 

We sort of, you know, it was sort of created by Brandeis and. There's a joint authored Brandeis and somebody else essay called the right to privacy. That was like the you know, introduced the idea that there could be such a right. But it had a lot to do with really the right to like have people like sell your image and stuff like that. 
 

Right. So, so I think about it a lot on the philosophical level. In fact, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm thinking I should teach a class on privacy. But I feel at a personal level, let's sure what it is that I would want in wanting privacy. That is kind of a little bit with the skeptics as to like, there may not be anything like, it may be a word that we use for a bunch of stuff that makes us uncomfortable. 
 

It's like that violates my privacy.  
 

[00:53:14] Alex: Is it inherently good as sort of what you're  
 

[00:53:16] Agnes: saying? Like, like there, I guess here's the way I put it. They're all, all sorts of ways we resist being interfered with. For our own benefit. So like Socrates interlocutors could have said, leave me alone. I've read the privacy stop. 
 

Like trying to show me that my basic framework for thinking about the world is broken. Right. And he was interfering in their most like intimate place, namely their basic value structure and saying, I'm going to tear this apart. And I think that was a good thing to do. And if that kind of privacy violation is okay, I'm not sure like that the idea of privacy or interfering or intrusion can in and of itself be a problem. 
 

[00:54:02] Alex: Got it. Agnes. That's all I had. Okay. This was awesome. Thank you for doing this. Yeah, it was fun. Thanks. Totally.