abortion, emigration, black lives matter, you know whatever good down the line, whatever. the third fallacy isof the fally of known content. a lot of times in the fallacy of equal knowledge fails so like let's say peter has a wrong opinion about immigration, he doesn't know any better at than you and i talk in either one of two things happen. either you demonstrate to me you have come to know something about immigration and i can no longer blame your wrong opinion on your ignorance. or i' the om information and you don't change your mind. right? either way but now he has all information light as he saw this opinion? its custody yes some hateful, he's got some hateful intent. so those are the three fallacies that sort of work together to form a certainty trap. .. is it popular it's an so i've

taught it for five i taught it five times it was one year where i didn't teach it but i've taught it for i've got five times. i love teaching it. it was this past semester. it had think 30, some 35 or something. students enrolled in it from all demographic. it's a it's a sociology. right. and i'm in a says i'm in higher education, which leans left and i'm in a sociology which leans even further left. so like our students are i mean, it's not. but but my but what i'm work that i'm doing, it doesn't really matter. i could have a roomful of people who are all on the same page about something and it doesn't it doesn't in order do the work that i do. i don't need people to be stand ins for different political perspectives. it's about thinking through like, what is the version of this, what are the is what would happen, what would i have to be treating as certain in order come to the conclusion that everybody who advocates for immigration restrictions is racist? what would i have to be treating a certain in order for that to

be in order to come to that conclusion? and so it's really kind of and so in the students that take it i don't know how to answer the question because in the students that take it there. obviously, it's very self. so it's a great group of. i also teach a class called social problems which in we cover a lot of the same material and there's not quite the same self-selection happening but i in general i find students really receptive. yeah, sorry. go ahead. so when we hear about safe spaces and and students to me get offended by things. yeah. do we? how do you avoid. i'm not. i mean, know, every time i say this, i feel like lightning can strike down, but i've not i've never had an because and here's probably why like i'm not interested in telling what to think about anything. like, i'm not trying to convince them that their position on affirmative action is wrong or to tell them that there are a bunch of like you soft, thin skinned wusses.

like what i'm telling them is, look, this is what's going on. this is the problem. certainty. this is the problem of political polarization, lack of viewpoint, diversity, etc. you have values that are you a university campus, for example? you have values that are in tension, right? wanting to make people feel comfortable, wanting like really wanting a diversity of perspectives and sort of all these things are in tension. you can't have. and most of it very rarely do they want pick the that says we can't have a real a lot. redstone do you find most people are certain about things, certain about their views certain, about their righteousness? i think all are. i mean, i'm sure i am too. i'm certain i am too. i think we all are. yeah, i think it's think it's i think what i'm asking people to do goes against human nature in some ways and and which why you have to in order to sort of get

on board with this have to care about something whether it's reducing strengthening democracy or reducing political polarization or just understanding best we can what's true about the world. you have to care about something more than you care about being right. and that's it turns out to be kind of a heavy lift for some people. a lot of overlap between what i'm talking about and ideas around intellectual humility and curiosity and things that. the difference is that it turns out that most of us are not really very good at recognizing when we lack intellectual humility. and so if you only rely on your the moments where, oh, i should probably be more humble or i should probably be more curious, you're going to miss a lot of opportunities when you really need to be questioning and challenging your thinking with. the certainty trap. i'm saying, no, you're you're q is actually your sense that the answers are easy obvious, that the other person's an idiot, hateful, racist, stupid, whatever that's your cue to

question, challenge your own to question. challenge or clarify your own thinking. so what's arc of the creation of this book? was it a one incident? was it a couple of years building? i think it was. i think it was years building. i think it's i think it's stuff that i've been thinking probably probably for on the order of decades. but, you know, and then really sort of observation in the last, say, ten years, 8 to 10 years about i'm kind of more political topics, but i, you know, interest in kind of morally and ethically questions that's been i've been that's something was an interesting to me for a while and sort of how we make choices how we value different things. yeah. back to your book, the certainty trap at the start of the covid 19 pandemic in early 2020, much of the media coverage of and the public conversation shutdowns had a particular tone. often that tone that you either

favored closing to flatten the curve or you were indifferent to the deaths that might result from keeping things open. flattening the curve meant. supporting shutdowns to slow transmission and prevent hospitals and health care facilities from being overwhelmed. an influx of patients in this case many people treated the costs of this decision as so obviously negligible that anyone who brought them up as a concern was to be condemned. yeah, i mean, i actually talk as i go into some detail. i mean, book's obviously not about covid, but it's such rich. this is a rich set of examples that come out of it. yeah. mean our the way we sort of responded to and thought and our conversation or what passed for a conversation about covid in particularly in early 2020 and sort of how how that conversation about risk and that is and how we value life and how we think about risk and what have you, how do we calculate like that? and i don't mean like calculus,

calculating like an hour. i don't i'm not talking about an epidemiological, but i mean, what is the top able level risk that any society should tolerate, right? so, like you could imagine, if you run the thought experiment imagine there were some some sort of like highly contagious epidemic that had a 90% mortality rate. right. you can like there would be a clear you would have a clear i would think like there would no one will be arguing about shutdowns. right. like now, having said that, there are lots of things out there that that us in all that are risks and so that question about how should we how do we think about those home. the mule 18 amino will rule will bill the wheels is listed on the

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and zero, and math the bottom of the struggle to defint clearly and i that term cancel culture. yeah i mean it's there are those are that i would say that's yeah those are the two topics that often come up in class with students and people we all think that it's they we it's some

shared quiet understanding, but you sort of dig in and start asking questions. and i go a fair amount of particularly that cultural appropriation example i talk about that a bunch in the book, all of these conclusions we draw, there are questions there find the questions. if you think that it's obvious and you think people who disagree are idiots or hateful, there are, that should be your cue that there's something may end up exact you don't do change your mind like you may end up with the same opinion you had before and yet that's still your cue to start to clarify and question your thinking because it's not the world is that all the problems are not obvious. and when they are the actually the more egregious they are sometimes and maybe that was this is the place to start. sometimes people will ask me, well, what are you trying to do? are you trying to both sides slavery? right? and the answer is no not, not at all. and the reason why is because

actually the worse is, the more the more horrific something is, the easier it is to name what principal value, etc. is being violate. it's on me. so for slave when it could slavery maybe it's something like i that all lives have equal value or that no beings enslave another or someone could still challenge me on those i'm not i don't. it's a little harder for me to understand what that would look like, but i don't need to sides like it's very for me like and i can say why why. that's why. why i'm disagreeing that the book called the certainty trap, the subtitle is why we need to question ourselves more and how we can judge less. the author university of illinois professor eleanor redstone, thank you so much. on booktv we want to introduce you to horace cooper his book is

called y'all back in chains how joe biden's policies hurt black americans. mr. cooper, that's pretty strong title. well, i thought it was needed because. it's like a counterfactual. our president often says that he is the champion of black americans, but his policies have not been the champion for black americans. in fact, they're quite unpopular. what a lot of people don't realize and this what i the reason that i wrote book black americans assumed that since the large percentage are democrat that they're also woke progressives black americans are not aggressively not as a there are some but like woke relatives and any group if you compared the woke progressives on capital punishment you'd be shocked to

find that black dramatically diverge. when you talk about crime especially during the george floyd riots polling numbers were coming out about whether we need less law enforcement or more law enforcement. black americans in many polls whether was waters, whether it was were saying they wanted police not less. so why was the defund the police movement so visible, so in many ways, most of america feels blamed for the plight of black america. now, what booker t washington said, what frederick douglass said was leave black people because the things that you're to do on their behalf are harmful. many news stories now have

covering the serious level of crime when woke days won't. here's what will cover when a tourist comes to town and gets harmed or injured when they break into someone's house in new beach. those kinds stories are still making the news. but what's not making the news are the overwhelming number of black americans who are almost systematically and when officers in chicago go in detroit even though detroit claims and they're having a lot of progress, you're seeing police officers, leeds, new york city. we need those especially in black communities. one of the charts that you have in your book is about prison rates. so explain that. so in beginning of the 20th

century, black men were least likely to be in federal prisons. if you say that, the trend that we see, the phenomenon that we see now is an outworking of slavery. what explains this drop the? truth of the matter is this is all the police did was people convict them who were last name of macdonald for the crime that mcdonald's have committed the prison would be overflowing with these mcdonald's. so what we then argue that somehow our system is anti mcdonald's when young black youth and that's what i talk about in the chapter young black youth are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victimizers. when a grandmother reports to the police that she was

assaulted, that she was raped. that's what progressive would have us believe, that she identifies the black person that did that, even though it was a white person. that doesn't make any sense when you see some of the brutal crimes that these people report they're telling us more did it and all too often the most likely victimizer is someone between the age of 14 and 28 who happens to be black. you're getting between 35 and 45% of all of the felonies being committed by this smaller cohort of people. is it no wonder that they're disproportionately arrested and behind? what should we be doing to prevent from assaulting grandma, from doing a home invasion? that's the conversation that we

ought to be having. not a that says, well, he really didn't have any choice. he had to do it. the issue, abortion. this is a quote from your book, the abortion industry preys on blacks, priests what do you say? so, margaret, one of the founders of planned parenthood, was a real bona fide racist. we overuse the word today anything that someone says that might offend a black person or any other minority is called. but racism is actually the belief that there a scientific that you could look at dna and see that one race group was in fear prior to another race group. margaret sanger that's what believed. and she often pushed to try to abortion and contraception as a way to get those communities

that she believed were inferior today planned, even though it says, oh, no, we don't we don't cotton to any of those views of margaret sanger. this proportionately locate their facilities in place where margaret sanger would have recommended them. let's change it out where. does david duke want the abortion clinics to be placed? planned parenthood today would be in the same locations that david duke would ask we should ask ourselves, why are taxpayers was funding this? and last point on this abortion issue is the abortion rate, which is so in the black community, we're not black americans would actually today be the second largest ethnic group. we're not the second largest ethnic group.

we're the third largest ethnic group. and we are rapidly declining in california. we're the fourth largest ethnic. you can't slaughter as many people without having the impact. how many members of congress. how many how many doctors are no longer here? because we have systematically encouraged people to skew life rather than to say it's valuable and precious. what could we do to make it a success and achievement and you report that the black population in america is about 13% of our overall population, but 30 to 40% of all abortions are done on african-american women. if that's the case, are are being victimized or is this service that they're looking for? i, i know we're not supposed to say i would just say when the

devastate of population removals has occurred, it's probably better if people say to and your community this is a service, not a disservice. but the impact is true nonetheless. now not every person that gets an abortion and even half the people that get an abortion. but significa percentages of women say they regret the decision because they didn't fully understand. when we ask that people see the child in utero via there are folks that say no, don't do that because a woman might choose not to have the abortions. so we want the ignorance in order to achieve horace cooper you author of put you all back in chain what's your background. so i'm a native texan i worked

on capitol hill. i used to be a regular on c-span when i was a staff member on capitol hill, but i've relocated back to point blank and i continue to regularly talking about and talking to my community about and you say you were a regular house so you guys often would me up and say, we want you to do our morning that you that you have really great calling shows in the morning and sometimes you do a democrat and a republican staffer sometimes you would stagger it do the republican staffer first and the democrats efforts. so this was during the nineties, right after a newt gingrich came into office. my was -- armey. he was the republican leader of the majority leader at the time. and you are associated with two think tanks project 21 and the national leadership for the national leadership for public policy research. if i get that right national center for foreign