0:00 - Introduction to Community Questions
6:46 - Responsibility to Children
8:41 - Personal Philosophy on Parenting
13:23 - Thoughts on Richard Dawkins
14:53 - Genetic Afflictions and Parenthood
16:24 - Balancing Selfishness and Selflessness
22:30 - Conclusion and Farewell
In today’s episode, we dive deeply into the complex ethics surrounding public figures returning to social media platforms, focusing on notable cases like Alex Jones, David Icke, and J.F. Gariepy. I explore the moral responsibilities and potential consequences of their actions in relation to their bans and subsequent returns, questioning the notion of moral high ground and whether individuals should be judged by the same philosophical standards we set for ourselves. I dissect the implications of these public figures’ decisions, particularly the ramifications of being labeled as moral transgressors for expressing controversial opinions.
I delve into the legal nuances of defamation, particularly how the standards shift for public versus private figures, using Alex Jones's Sandy Hook comments as a focal point. I emphasize the significantly different legal frameworks dealing with defamation for individuals who are private citizens, arguing that the harsh legal consequences he faced seem disproportionate when compared to those applied to larger corporations responsible for extensive harm. This leads to a broader discussion about moral standards and their variability in public discourse.
As we transition into broader themes, I draw contrasts between consequentialist ethics and principled philosophy. I propose the analogy of an ER doctor versus a nutritionist to illustrate how immediate interventions differ from preventive measures. The conversation unfolds into the importance of promoting peaceful parenting as a societal principle, emphasizing not only the well-being of our own children but also the necessity of looking out for the future of all children in our communities. This principle of caring extends into discussing the historical context of parenting practices and the responsibilities we bear towards others in a moral framework.
A significant portion of this episode is dedicated to the intimate relationship between our values and the effect they exert on societal structure, focusing on how personal parenting philosophies must intersect with a larger commitment to peaceful values. The discussion navigates through implications around societal violence and emotional health, as well as the ethical duty to ensure that children are raised in environments that foster their happiness and security.
Towards the conclusion, I consider the balance of personal happiness against collective responsibility, dissecting the inherent complexity involved in familial relationships and personal interactions. I propose that authentic connection in relationships, grounded in mutual investment in each other's happiness, is key to achieving a fulfilling life. The necessity of external perspectives is highlighted—how others can offer valuable insights into our behaviors and choices that we may overlook ourselves.
In wrapping up, I leave listeners with reflections on how our choices, from social media presence to parenting style, ripple out to create a broader societal impact, reinforcing the interconnectedness of our values and those of others. The last thoughts encourage continued engagement with the community and deeper exploration into how we can collectively foster a more peaceful future for the next generation.
[0:00] All righty, righty. Good day, everybody. These are questions from a variety of places, from freedomain.locals.com to Facebook. I hope that you will join these great communities, particularly freedomain.locals.com or subscribestar.com. Great communities, and I would really, really appreciate your support. All right. Dear Seth, do you think less of people like, for example, Alex Jones, David Icke, and J.F. Gariepy for returning to Twitter without first receiving an apology? Alex Jones in particular is a notable example because he was not only banned but continued to remain banned on X based on Elon Musk ridiculously equating Alex Jones to be some sort of moral monster for having a journalistic opinion on Sandy Hook. Despite that, Jones still went back on Twitter, now X as soon as possible. Do you give people who go back on Twitter a moral pass because they are not necessarily obliged to follow the same high philosophical moral standards as yours. Therefore, you hold them to your own moral, personal moral standards. Additionally, if you believe they have violated a moral norm, would you conclude they are ultimately the victim in such circumstances and how they respond to being a victim is not a great moral wrong, even if you personally would respond otherwise and have responded otherwise.
[1:12] So, yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm no lawyer. My understanding of the issue with Alex Jones is that by questioning the truth of Sandy Hook, he was calling to some degree, or at least I think he was perceived as calling the parents of the children murdered at Sandy Hook as liars, and that's where the defamation stuff came from, and in particular because they're private people. Again, no legal advice, but my obviously amateur understanding is that in the U.S., if you're a public figure, the bar for defamation is quite high. You have to show material damages, and you have to show malicious intent, Intent, whatever that means, of course, I mean, it's pretty easy to, even if you do have malicious intent, it's very hard to prove because everybody knows that's the standard and therefore they don't, you know, write down, oh, I know this is, and they also have to, you know, so you have to be a public figure, you have to show malicious intent and, you know, to some degree you have to show that the person who lied about the public figure knew that the information was false, like all this kind of stuff, right? Right. So but because the Sandy Hook parents were private figures, it was a different standard. I'm not saying whether I agree or disagree, of course. I mean, I think that the damages are wild.
[2:20] I mean, you got hit with more damages than major pharmaceutical companies who harmed a lot of people. So like directly, physically harmed a lot of people. So, yeah, it's crazy stuff. But honestly, I mean, I do think that I have fairly high standards for myself. I don't really think about the moral choices of other people that much. I certainly wouldn't nag people about this. And obviously, there's a case to be made. So obviously, people like Alex Jones, David Icke, and J.F. Gariepy.
[2:56] Believe that they can do more good by being on Twitter than by not being on Twitter. So they, and again, I'm not speaking for them, right? I don't know what their moral choices are, their moral decisions are all about. But I will say that there is an argument to be made from consequentialism. And the argument from consequentialism is to say, well, I can do more good by being on a worldwide, public, highly trafficked platform like Twitter or X than by not being on that. And you can absolutely make a case for that. I've wrestled with that case myself, right? Which is to say, well, if I'm on, let's say I'm on X promoting peaceful parenting on X.
[3:45] Then you know can't i actually save some of the children from negative outcomes kind of in the here and now and isn't that worth doing right like if i'm promoting peaceful parenting then i'm going to end up doing real good for kids in the here and now so there's an argument from consequences which obviously people who are on twitter and i think that these are guys obviously they're They're interested in ethics and virtue, like most people are, and they have made the case for themselves that it's better for them to be on Twitter than not be on Twitter, right? And I'm not speaking for them. It's just that because they're on Twitter, they have accepted in their minds that it is beneficial to their pursuit of truth and virtue as they see it, that they perceive that it's better for them to be on Twitter. And if you're working with an argument from consequences, that makes sense.
[4:42] So to me, it's the difference between an ER doctor and a nutritionist. A nutritionist is trying to prevent illness in the long run. An ER doctor is trying to deal with illness and ailments together. Illness and ailments in the moment, right? In the moment. So, a nutritionist will try to have you eat well and stay a healthy weight so that you, you won't get a heart attack, right, when you're 50, say, right? And if you don't listen to the nutritionist, then you have heart attack maybe in your 50s because you're fat and have eaten poorly. And then you go to the ER, right? You go to the emergency room, and then the doctor is not going to lecture you on your diet, but is going to do whatever intervention is necessary to have you not die from the heart attack. Sorry to reuse this analogy, but it is sort of very helpful. So the argument from principles is like being a nutritionist in that you're aiming to prevent these issues. The argument from consequences is dealing with the immediate wrongs in the world.
[5:48] And most people, and again, these guys are obviously pursuing truth and virtue as they see it, and because they're posting on Twitter, they assume that they can do more good. And it tends to be more in the moment. They can do more good in the moment. Now, philosophers who aim at doing maximum good in the moment tend to not do well. well, right, in the short run, and maybe things work out in the long run, but that's really hard to tell. So I'm aiming for a maximum philosophy, which means to step back from current affairs and look for principles in the long run. So I don't really think about whether they're doing good or bad or right or wrong. They have a different metric. For me, I am really always trying to work from the argument from principles. And I'm tempted, of course, as we tend to be with the argument from consequences, which is, can I do more good in the short run by being in the public square? Yeah, I think for certain that you can, but does that cost you in the long run? I think so. All right.
[6:46] Let's see here. Is there an overarching theme to your work thus far on the responsibility to children, first your own, and then to others?
[6:55] Looking for help piecing together peaceful parenting puzzle from consilience, lessons to propose, apropos, proper prerequisite parental priority responsibility for protecting other children plus her own i don't know what that means sorry risking oversimplification don't worry you're not risking that jesus says emphasize the caring for all children as imperative and equivalent care for jesus himself lloyd de mars establishes a trend of increasing innovation with better child-rearing practices across history similarly industrial revolution results from abolition the truth about the french revolution.
[7:29] Warns how bourgeoisie parent more peacefully, succeed economically, isolate and face resentment for both upper children of nursemaids and lower classes children of soiled swaddling, adding tinder to the powder keg. British abolitionism around slavery, I guess, exemplifies backlash despite diplomatic pressure, blood and treasure repaid in our lifetimes to end the slave trade, resulting in receiving sole blame for the practice today. You're being deplatformed for bringing UPB and peaceful parenting into the world where the history of philosophers shows acquiescence is the more common road taken. All right, so COVID inoculation, the accumulation of constelated crisis, blackout discreditation of every coercion-backed institution, and the celestial navigation of UPB guides future stargazers. This is summaries, I guess, R versus K from the gene wars in the present. We see how an inevitable collapse of society founded on flat artifice can realign us back to biological and economic facts. Releasing the angels, the sieve from the future concludes It includes that their responsibility to intervene on behalf of the children of Roman's clan to defend themselves, to defend those unable to defend themselves.
[8:35] In summary, all these point to optimism and responsibility to protect the children, primary, and other children, secondary, despite opposition.
[8:41] Any thoughts about how to make a purchase? Oh, sorry. I guess that's the end of that question. Sorry to be dense. I don't really quite follow. So I think the general question is we have responsibility for ourselves and other children.
[8:59] So, again, philosophy is all about principles in the long term, just as economics is not about short term obvious gains, but long term hidden costs. Right. So one of the reasons that I have focused peaceful parenting as a whole and I mean, look, we can see we can see this right coming out of the Epstein, Jeffrey Epstein coming out of the P. Diddy stuff and all of that, that there is, you know, if these accusations are true, then we can see just how appallingly children are trafficked and exploited across the world, right? And there are a lot of people who take a lot of sadistic pleasure out of the torture and harm and mutilation of their children, right? And so, you know, all those who work to protect children run up against these rather sinister forces, and that's the way it goes. So, as a peaceful parent, I never raised my voice to my daughter, never called her a name, never insulted her, never used any physical force to control her behavior, and so on.
[10:03] It's, to me, it would be kind of cruel, if not very cruel, it would be very cruel to raise my child, according to peaceful parenting, without also promoting peaceful parenting. Parenting because then my child particularly because she's an only child because my child would then be raised in a truly singular fashion and there would not be other people around who would be raised in a similar manner with whom she could commune with and socialize with and, so on when she got older so for me and i think this is a generally decent case for for everyone one. But the reason that we would work to protect other people's children is because it's hard to say that we are raising our children well. If we're not spreading the principles of virtuous parenting, then by allowing or by not at least giving other parents the choice to raise their children better, we end up with our child being isolated in a world where just about everybody else is raised with some form of coercion or hostility or verbal abuse or physical control coercion right so because i want if you'd be it would be like teaching your daughter.
[11:19] A special made-up language that nobody else speaks and then turning her loose in the world that would be very difficult for her or him right so i can't raise my child well without promoting a peaceful parenting you can't just do it in isolation because then your children are going to be isolated when they grow up. So if I was the only parent, I'm not saying I am, but if I was the only parent raising my child according to peaceful parenting principles.
[11:44] In conformity with the non-aggression principle, then how and where is she supposed to fit in when she grows up, right? I want my daughter to grow up in a society with less crime, where people reason with each other, where people are relatively peaceful with each other, where people are emotionally expressive and honest with each other. I want my daughter to live in a society where those elements are present. I mean, they're never going to be, at least not for the foreseeable future. They're never going to be prevalent, but they'll be present, at least. Now, because I want my daughter to be raised, let's just say, in a lower crime society, then to spread peaceful parenting is going to reduce the amount of criminality in the world. So, it is completely in accordance with peaceful parenting to spread peaceful parenting, and it actually is to some degree a violation of peaceful parenting to not spread it. Because by not spreading peaceful parenting, you're launching your children into a society that is more coercive and violent and manipulative and destructive than it would be if you'd promoted it.
[12:49] So I don't see, obviously you want to take care of your own children first, but the idea that you don't have an investment in other people's children as a shadow cast by the fact that your own children are going to grow up, you're going to die, and they have to find a place that they can get along with people and understand people, and so, not spreading peaceful parenting is not peaceful parenting, because peaceful parenting is about, to a large degree ensuring the future virtuous happiness of your children, and if there aren't any other children around who've been peacefully parented because you haven't spread it, then you're really interfering with that goal.
[13:23] Would you be interested in doing a show with Richard Dawkins about how natural selection applies to ideas and the inevitability of anarchy from that point of view? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. You know, people, I don't do really, I really don't do interviews anymore, very occasionally and so on, but I really don't do interviews with people anymore. And with Richard Dawkins, I mean, the sort of meme idea, which he came up with some decades ago, it's not a particularly interesting topic for me. I would be interested in the corruption of science with coerced government money and his defense of, well, not defense, but his minimization of the harm done by what he would refer to as mild pedophilia and so on, and his relationship to universal values and virtues. I think that would be interesting, but he's not going to talk to me.
[14:15] Let's see here. So the reason why is that if somebody of sort of significant prominence talked to me, then they would need to attack me for the, you know, generalized misrepresentation of my arguments and views, or they would be considered complicit and would face a lot of blowback and just no particular cost benefit for them. That makes sense. From listening to your past posts, you seem to have a generally pronatalist stance. I admire this. But what are your thoughts about a person having children if there's a reasonable chance he has a genetic affliction, which is not yet expressed and which could be passed down for minor afflictions like poor eyesight?
[14:53] So, I mean, just about everybody ends up with poor eyesight, right? Unless you have glaucoma, like boner or something. So, poor eyesight is not a genetic affliction. A poor eyesight, of course, can be corrected with glasses and other fairly low-tech solutions. And, I mean, I didn't need glasses until I was in my 40s, and now I've gone through three various prescriptions. So, it's fine. It's just a minor inconvenience. It doesn't really matter.
[15:22] So, I don't, I mean, everybody's going to, everybody's rolling the dice when it comes to having kids. Everybody's rolling the dice when it comes to having kids. and you're saying wow but what if there's a significant risk of some negative outcome, I mean, you're granting life. And if, I mean, most people who have poor eyesight don't want to throw themselves off a cliff. In other words, they prefer living with poor eyesight to not being alive at all. So I don't really see how that makes much sense. This is a cope and an excuse. I mean, of course, you can talk to genetic counselors. And if there's, you know, some massive chance that the kid's going to be born, you know, without a heart that functions well, or like some really, like they're not going to live for more than a couple of months after birth. I mean, that's a different matter, right? I mean, if it's an overwhelming chance that the kid's not going to make it, then that would not seem to be a very positive course of action. But, I mean, everybody knows there's always a risk when it comes to having kids.
[16:24] All right. On relating properly with others, how to balance being, quote, selfish and asking what's in it for me versus not being selfless. It's not about you. How to find the golden middle path. Well, that's easy.
[16:41] So, it's hard to know what makes us happiest. What makes us alone happiest. It's hard to see the back of your own head. Well, you can't see the back of your own head unless you twist yourself in various mirrors. And, of course, we didn't evolve. Like, nobody saw the back of their heads in evolution. They didn't have mirrors and so on, no glass. So what makes you happy can be complicated and confusing and to see that from the inside out is tough. I didn't know that philosophy made me happy until I encountered a bunch of philosophy that I read. I didn't invent my own happiness. It was other people who granted me that happiness. Obviously, I wouldn't have developed philosophy all on my own.
[17:27] Right? I mean, nobody builds a house all on their own, right? At least a modern house with all the conveniences. So other people granted me the path to happiness when it comes to exercise science and nutritional science. And we don't invent it all ourselves. So other people grant us good health in that way. Of course, we have to will it and do it, but other people grant it to us as a whole and in general. So our happiness is often best delivered to us by by other people, right? I mean, even if you like, let's say you love playing guitar and singing, right? Well, somebody's got to invent the microphone, the stadium, the guitar, the amplifier, the electricity, the roadies, the speakers. So it's really hard to just say, well, my happiness is identified by me, self-generated for me alone. And it's a collective, it's a collective kind of thing, right? I mean, if you want to have kids, you have to participate with someone else to get a fertilized egg and grow it to a baby and raise the kids from there. So the what's in it for me, that's assuming that you know best. Alone, what is best for you? I have not found that in general to be the case. Now, it can go the other way too. So I love my own novels, right?
[18:46] Publishers, for reasons that I think are more political than artistic, I don't agree. They do not love my novels. In fact, I always got a peculiar kind of hatred and hostility from publishers about what I have written, even though it is of undeniable quality and depth and, I think, good humanity. But, of course, it's anti-collectivist, anti-socialist, anti-irrational, and so on. So, anti-manipulative and pro-children and pro-peaceful parenting. So, that's tough for people in the arts who seem to not be entirely behind those standards.
[19:21] So, even though a lot of people disliked enormously and, in fact, had a visceral hatred for the art that I produced, I kept doing it because I loved it. So, sometimes the world is wrong and you're right. Sometimes the world is right and you're wrong. I mean, when you have kids, right, a number of times you'll say, let's try this thing they don't want to. And then you're convinced to at least give it a try. And then it turns out that they love it. Right. So, sometimes, I mean, think of all the things that you've been introduced to that you weren't that keen on to begin with, which then turned out to be great and wonderful. I mean, that's right. So really the best way to ensure your happiness, it's not about you. It's not about, well, what's in it for me versus what's best for the other person, is you marry someone who focuses on your happiness and you focus on their happiness. Right? Because you get that outside eye, right? I mean, think of happiness like your haircut in the back, right? You can't cut your own hair in the back. You need someone else to do it for you.
[20:21] And this is why marriage is generally the path to happiness, because you get somebody else to watch out, give you suggestions, know you. I mean, your marriage partner knows you in many ways better than you know yourself, because they see you from the outside, which you can't do. So we only have empirical evidence of other people, right? So within our own minds, we have this amazing constellation of, you know, Pluses and minuses and thoughts and feelings and images and scraps of ideas and inspirations and anxieties, depressions. You know, we're in this maelstrom from the inside, right? Now, other people from the outside, they don't experience the maelstrom of our own thoughts. We only know others empirically, what they say and what they do.
[21:10] So, let me give you an example. So, when I was younger, of course, I was quite into acting and did quite well as an actor. And I couldn't decide whether I should focus on acting or writing. And somebody asked me, well, when you come home and you have some free time, what do you do? Do you work on monologues? Do you work on accents or sword fighting or gymnastics or whatever might increase your value as an actor? Or do you write? I'm like, oh, well, yeah, generally, if I have some free time, I'll write. So it's like, well, then that's what you should be doing. So she gave me that feedback based upon the observed empiricism of my preferences rather than, well, what do you think will be best? And what do you prefer? It's subjective. Let's just look at the objective actions.
[21:59] So having a partner with you cuts through the clutter of our internal chaos of thoughts because they only experience us empirically and therefore they have more objectivity sometimes about what we like and prefer. So find someone who is interested and fairly devoted to your happiness. Be fairly interested and devoted to their happiness and that really is your greatest chance. There is not a, well, what I want versus what's best for the other person. You get the right person and the two are one and the same.
[22:30] So I hope that helps and I appreciate your time. I'll get to more of these questions later. But I have something else to do right now. Love you guys. Freedomain.com to help out the show. Thanks, a mil. Bye.
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