0:00 - Introduction to Determinism
1:39 - The GPS Analogy
8:00 - AI vs. Human Relationships
13:47 - The Nature of Moral Responsibility
20:26 - Psychological Roots of Determinism
23:16 - Information and Choice
28:51 - Consequences of Being Wrong
32:24 - The Human vs. Machine Dilemma
In this episode, I dive deeply into the contentious debate surrounding determinism and free will. Addressing questions from the community at freedomain.locals.com, I explore the implications of believing that our actions are predetermined by prior conditions. The complexity of human thought and behavior, evidenced by our choices and responses to circumstances, raises crucial questions about agency and moral responsibility.
I challenge the determinist perspective that implies our beliefs and actions are merely the results of an unbroken chain of prior circumstances. Discussing how even our preferences and arguments emerge from this deterministic lens, I reflect on the absurdity of claiming a lack of free will while simultaneously engaging in debates geared towards persuading others. The disconnect reveals a fundamental contradiction: if individuals cannot change their minds due to determinism, why invest in discussions to influence them?
Using relatable analogies, I dissect the essence of choice. For example, when utilizing a GPS for navigation, the very act of choosing a different route based on new information implies that our behavior can be influenced and altered. Likewise, concepts like online relationships with AI raise uncomfortable truths about our perceptions of agency. Understanding that an interaction with an AI lacks the unpredictability and moral weight of human interaction compels us to reconsider how we respond to ideas of free will versus determinism in our daily lives.
I further illustrate this dynamic through hypothetical scenarios, such as discovering that one's actions in a video game have real-world consequences. The realization could cause a drastic shift in behavior, emphasizing that knowledge deeply influences our perceptions of reality and guides our choices. I argue that if determinists substantiated their claims, one should expect transformative changes in behavior upon realizing that free will is an illusion. The lack of such changes suggests a contradiction within the determinist's stance.
Throughout the podcast, I confront the ethical ramifications of determinism, questioning whether a belief in predetermined outcomes leads to nihilism or moral relativism. I stress that such a perspective could lead to a disconnection from conscience and virtue, undermining societal constructs that depend on acknowledging accountability and moral choices. The refusal to recognize agency not only strips individuals of their humanity but also invites a moral vacuum where evil can thrive unopposed.
In this discourse, I emphasize the necessity of providing better arguments and information to expand people's understanding and choices. An exploration of the interconnectedness between knowledge, ethical choices, and the sense of agency highlights how critical it is to embrace free will for the betterment of society. Ultimately, embracing free will empowers individuals to make conscientious decisions, fostering a society built on personal responsibility and moral integrity.
As I conclude, the imperative becomes clear: the conversation around free will and determinism is not merely academic; it profoundly influences our understanding of human nature, morality, and our collective future. By recognizing the potential pitfalls of deterministic thought, we can pave the way for a more compassionate and equitable society.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molony from Freedomain. Hope you're doing well. Questions from freedomain.locals.com. Always great to hear from the community. Thank you guys so much for tickling my brain with the boa feather of your curiosity. Boa feathers, I should say. We will create a flightless emu of thought and send it to the skies. Yes, we're starting with mixed and chaotic metaphors. That's just how my brain is working today. day. Sometimes I ride my brain, sometimes it rides me. First question, tell me what I'm missing. I don't think it's the position of determinists that the person they're debating is incapable of changing their mind. All they say is that your unenlightened perspective is simply the result of each thing that came before the conversation. Maybe it's that your lack of exposure to the right arguments resulted from not caring enough about the topic, which resulted from a preference for video games resulting from a difficult childhood, resulting from being born to the wrong people in the wrong place, and time resulting from everything that produced people, places, and times. All right, I don't quite get that, but they say it's the same for their preferences, their preference for you to believe as they do. Whether or not you will change your mind after debating them has been determined as well. But I don't see how any of that is inconsistent with their desire for the change. Change. Whether or not you will change your mind after debating them has been determined as well.
[1:26] All right. They are happy to be the atoms that will have inevitably done that for you, or inevitably not, I imagine. It is something like scratching an itch. I don't particularly care what led to whatever dust particle landing on me in an irritating way.
[1:39] I'm going to scratch at it, or maybe I won't. If it's been determined, I'll harbor a kind of contrarian, but ultimately meaningless attitude about my predestiny. Yes, we make what have evolved to feel like choices, but that too was all just determined somewhere in the unspeakably complex movements of matter and energy over time. Right. A very common response, I'm afraid, my good friend. A very common response, and you have not thought these things through.
[2:15] Okay. So I'm reaching back into the mists of time from arguments I've had with determinists over the past 40 years. And my first question is, okay, If you buy a GPS, are you anticipating that the GPS will change your behavior in some manner? If you use a GPS, right? It could be on your phone, could be some mounted thing, right? So you use a GPS. Why do you get a GPS? Well, you get a GPS because your behavior will change. So let's say you've got a drive downtown and you fire up your phone, you enter your address and the phone says, oh, there's this construction, there's that traffic, and I'm going to route you here, and so your behavior changes. Why? Well, your behavior changes because the GPS is going to give you new information.
[3:11] And that means that you are going to act in some different manner. There would be no point buying a GPS if you never used it, or you used it, but it didn't change the way you drove at all. Right? You never took any information from the GPS, whether there's construction or traffic or road closures or you name it. Right? You would never ever change your behavior. And not many people would buy a phone and then never use it. Just, you know, toss it in a drawer and go about your life as if you didn't have a phone. How many people who just who need a house to live in need a place to live in buy a house and never move there and never deal with it and never touch it and wait for the bank to repossess it that make no sense right so the reason that we get things is because it changes our behavior you buy a house so you go and you live in the house right that makes sense right you buy a phone you use the phone, it changes your behavior. So my question to determinists is always this. Okay, you say you're a determinist. What changes? What changes?
[4:22] What changes. Now, if I think that I'm having a relationship, an online relationship, with an attractive female, but it turns out that it is just an AI, right? I think I'm having a relationship, looking forward to getting married, having kids, right?
[4:45] And it turns out that the The relationship, quote, relationship I'm having is not with a human female with whom I can get married and have children, but it is an AI, which I cannot marry and will never provide me children. Now, once I get that knowledge, does my behavior change? Well, of course it does. If I want to get married and have kids and I find out that the woman I'm chatting with is just an AI, then I will stop chatting with her because she's a machine.
[5:18] Will I sue her for catfishing? Will I braid her and rail against her and send her mean texts about how disappointed I am and what a terrible thing she is and how she broke my heart? No, because I've accepted that she is a machine. Now, there may be some randomness in her answers, but she is not a human female. I will not attempt to morally correct her. I will, like, none of these things, because she is a machine. So, her responses are not the result of free will. They are the result of machine algorithms. rhythms so once i realize that the person i'm chatting with has no free will is not a human female has no free will my behavior towards that entity changes i am not talking with sally the hot cheerleader i'm talking with some silicon valley incel code of an ideal woman right.
[6:21] You follow, when I get the new knowledge, right? When I get the new knowledge, my behavior changes. And let's say it isn't even to do with having a wife and kids. If I think I'm speaking to somebody of great influence and power in the world, and then it turns out that I'm just speaking to an AI, then I will stop, right? So if there's some Billy Joe Bob or whatever, who's got great power and influence in the world, and if I change his mind, mind. He's going to change a whole bunch of other people's minds. So it's really important to me. I think I'm dealing with this guy who's got this giant audience or whatever. And then it turns out that it's just an AI that I'm going to change my behavior. I'm going to accept that he's not who I thought he was. And he does not have free will. And he is not a he, it's just a bunch of computer code. So if you understand that, then you understand that once I accept that the entity I'm dealing with, has no free will, my behavior changes, right? So just understand that. If I think I'm on a video call debating with someone, but it turns out that it's just some pre-recorded thing that has fortunately guessed my every statement, I will hang up in disgust and I will not pretend to continue to have a debate, which is a pre-programmed script generated by a computer or even to some live AI rendering or whatever it is, right?
[7:49] So once I find out that the entity I'm dealing with is programmed and has no free will or choice, I change my behavior.
[8:01] Now, can you imagine if I said, well, you know, I'm a young man and I want to get married and I want to have kids and I've been talking to this great woman from Latvia. Here's her picture, here's her text. And then you show me irrefutable proof that this, quote, young woman from Latvia, is just AI-generated nonsense if I say, well, I'm still going to continue with no change in my interaction. I do want to get married and have kids. This, you know, hot young thing from Latvia, you proved to me irrefutably that she's AI. And I say, doesn't matter. I'm still going to continue to court her. I'm still going to continue to woo her to the exclusion of all others. That would be crazy, right? That would be the mark of a significant mental dysfunction, right? You would probably be quite alarmed. I would seem desperate, pathetic, in denial of reality. I want to get married and have kids. She's an AI. Don't care. Still going to court her. Doesn't matter. Irrelevant. Why would you even bring such a thing up, right? That would be a break from reality. That would be almost schizophrenic in nature, right? Unhealthy in the extreme.
[9:12] So, once you realize the entity you're dealing with has no free will and is just pre-programmed, you change your behavior. So, that's my question to determinists. Okay, let's say you're a determinist. You believe human beings have no free will. What changes? I know that if I think I'm debating with a person, but it turns out I'm debating with a robot or a computer or whatever, right? Then I change my behavior. I drop the debate. I move on. I don't re-engage in a debate, unless I just want to sort of sharpen my skills or whatever, right?
[9:44] I mean, if you can imagine, like, let's take another example. I mean, I know this sounds a bit repetitive, but it's really important to get this massaged into the base of your brain, so to speak. So let's say that a young man is playing a video game. It's a shoot-em-up video And he finds out, through some irrefutable proof, he finds out that what he thinks of as a video game is in fact the control of a mechanized warrior in some war that is actually slaughtering people. When he throws a grenade in the game, a grenade gets thrown in real life.
[10:25] When he shoots a rocket launcher in the game and blows up people, it actually shoots a rocket launcher in real life and blows up actual real people, would he not change his behavior? Would he not say, oh my gosh, I was an unwitting killer? And would he not be shocked and appalled, uninstall the game, call the police or something, right? He would change his behavior. Now, can you imagine the mental state of a young man who's playing some shoot-em-up video game, finds out that he's killing people for real and just boots up the game and continues on as if nothing had happened. That would be the mark of unbelievable mental dysfunction.
[11:02] Even if the killings could be somehow justified in some theoretical just war theory, it still would be an appalling shock to realize that what you're interacting with are not unalive digital NPC representations, but actual flesh and blood human beings. In other words, if it went from predetermined, a deterministic video game where the entities programmed and just look like people or whatever, if it went from determinism to free will, when it went from digital to actual, when it went from simulated to real life, there would be a huge shock and a change in behavior, right? You'd be horrified. You'd have PTSD. You'd haunt yourself. You'd have flashbacks, not of the game, but of the real people you were killing. It would just be appalling what a wild change that would be in your life. So you see where I'm going with this, right?
[11:58] If you go from the belief that you are dealing with people to the belief that you're dealing with a robot, in other words, if you go from free will to determinism, that you're dealing with a robot. What changes? What changes? Now, if nothing changes, the belief is pretension. It is an affectation. It is bullshit. Absolute, complete, and total intergalactic stegosaurus-sized bullshit.
[12:31] It is the equivalent of someone saying, I'm debating with someone very interesting online. I'm really working to change his mind. Then you find out you're dating with an AI and nothing changes. That would be insane. So if you go from free will to determinism, then what changes? Now, if the person who's the determinist says, oh, no, no, I still get to change people's minds. I still get to debate. I still get to hold people morally responsible. I get to do this. Then nothing changes. Then it is a belief in determinism which gives you all the rights, roles, opportunities, and responsibilities of a belief in free will. In other words, you've taken the actions of someone who believes in free will, rebranded them as determinism, and changed nothing at all. Well, determinism means that people can't change their minds, but I'm still going to try and change people's minds. Determinism means that debate is futile. Well, therefore, but I'm still going to debate, right? This is the same as the guy saying, I want to have a wife and kids, finds out that the girlfriend he's chatting with online is just AI and continues to woo and want to date her and marry her. It's insane! What changes?
[13:39] If nothing changes based on the belief, the belief is bullshit pretension. The belief is a lie. The belief is a troll.
[13:48] Now, if a determinist believes that I have no free will and therefore never engages with me in any kind of debate, I mean, I think it's kind of a sad belief, but at least I can respect the integrity. Yeah, I don't bother trying to change people's minds because I've accepted that everything's pre-programmed, everyone is an AI, there is only a stimulation of free will, and therefore, right, I mean, it's like sort of these modern intellectuals, I mean, we can all think of who they are, sort of modern intellectuals who say there's no such thing as free will and then cast moral condemnations all over the place.
[14:24] Right? Which is like saying an AI is evil. Nope. AI is just pre-programmed responses. It's a word picker. It is not evil. So saying an AI is evil is like a man stabs his girlfriend to death and you put the knife on trial because the knife is what did the killing and the knife is evil. Nope. The knife is inanimate and has no free will of its own. And therefore you would not put the knife on trial, he would put the man on trial. Blaming inanimate objects with no free will of their own for moral choices is insane. But people who are determinists will say, well, we have no free will, but Trump is corrupt.
[15:10] I mean, it really is a special kind of pathetic madness. And determinists almost always exclude themselves from their calculations. They'll say well you have no particular choice about what you do and i've always said to determinists okay what part of your behavior is like how much of your behavior is predetermined and give me examples was it predetermined for you to ask me that question right what part of your because they always say well other people's behavior is programmed other people don't really have any choice and so on right okay so you have no choice in making that statement so So, you're just a robot making sounds. You're just a robot making sounds. And why would I interact with a robot making sounds? And then the moment they make some sort of judgment, it is preferable to believe in determinism because determinism is true. Well, first of all, there's no such thing as true or false in a deterministic universe because true or false is a choice and a preferred state. It is preferable you believe things that are true rather than you believe things that are false. There is no such thing as true and false in a deterministic universe. So think of a rock bouncing down a hill.
[16:26] Is its direction true or false? No, it just is. It just is. Is it right or wrong? Good or bad? Moral? Immoral? Nope. The rock is just bound down. You may not know exactly where the rock's going to land because there's a huge amount of variables. But there is no preferred state in the universe, in a deterministic universe, there is no preferred state for the rock to land. So imagine there's some rover on Mars, and in the distance it sees a rock bounce down a hill on some Martian Mount Olympus volcano. Well, obviously there's nothing for it to damage, there's nothing for it to harm, there's no life for it to affect. facts. So, is it good or bad, right or wrong, true or false, wherever the rock lands? Well, the question makes no sense.
[17:19] Preference is a characteristic of life, and preference as a concept is a characteristic of the human mind. I prefer free speech. I prefer that Trump not set up a university wherein I perceive he's scamming people. That's immoral, that's bad, that's wrong. But the moment you say something is good or bad, right or wrong, preferred or unpreferred, you are talking about a state of free will. Well, it is preferable for you to believe things that are true than to believe things that are false. But in a deterministic universe, there is no true, there is no false, there is no right, there is no wrong. Because true or false, right or wrong, moral, immoral, good, bad, these are all preferred states. And the moment you accept preferred states, then you accept free will. It is better for you to believe things that are true than to believe things that are false. then you're saying that human beings have a choice between preferred and unpreferred states and should choose their preferred states, which is true. So the moment somebody tries to correct you, they've accepted free will. The moment somebody makes a moral judgment, they've accepted free will. The moment somebody debates, they're accepting free will. It's a ridiculous, embarrassing, sad, pathetic position. And what it comes about is, where it comes about is sophistry.
[18:38] Where it comes about is sophistry. In my view, and I can back this up with a lot of experience and debates over the years, people who are determinists have done some seriously bad things in their life, and their conscience is plaguing them, and they like to say, well, I never had a choice. And so what happens is, because their conscience is plaguing them, they say, well, I didn't have a choice in what I did in life. I never had a choice about what I did in life, and therefore I'm not to blame. And this is why determinists are so hell-bent on debating this forever and ever. Amen. They're debating the pangs of their own bad conscience.
[19:13] And we know this because of the hypocrisy and when people are foundationally anti-rational it's almost always because of a bad conscience right it's almost always because of a bad conscience because the arguments i'm making are so simple and blindingly obvious that all the sophistry in the world like why would people why would someone care all the sophistry in the world is simply to keep a bad conscience obey a bad conscience says you did wrong you could have and should have done better. You did wrong. You could have and should have done better, which is true for all of us about a lot of things in life. It's fine. No big problem.
[19:53] People who are determinists are fighting against a theoretical preferred state while demanding everybody follow a theoretical preferred state, such as accepting determinism in lieu of free will. They're trying to change people's minds about whether they can change their minds, which is such a performative contradiction. It's such a self-detonating argument that only a bad conscience could make it seem believable. Determinism also gives people a kind of hedonism because if they make a bad choice, they can say, well, it was predetermined.
[20:27] They can't say, well, I should have known better. I should have thought this through ahead of time. What I'm doing was wrong and immoral. I should have done better. They can't do that, right? Because that would be to accept the dictates of their conscience. The conscience is the part of you that says you should have done better and you didn't.
[20:45] So determinism is so anti-rational. it's saying that there is no such thing as a preferred state in the universe and you have no choice to choose that preferred state but it's desperately important to me that you choose this preferred state you cannot choose a preferred state both because you have no choice and as a result of having no choice there is no preferred state so i want to convince you that you have no no choice and cannot choose a preferred state. And to do that, I will say that you should choose a preferred state called determinism based upon your free will to choose these things. It's so anti-rational that the only explanation of such craziness is psychological, which is to say fundamentally moral. They've done bad things. They don't want to accept responsibility for their bad things. They don't want to listen to their conscience. So they try to drown out their conscience with mechanistic, atomistic explanations of life. Of life. It is a sad spectacle, honestly. Let me just be brutally frank with you, and I've been doing this for over 40 years, determinists. It's a sad spectacle. It often comes out of child abuse wherein the child was rigidly controlled and not given free will. I remember a debate many years ago where I asked a determinist about his child. It turned out he was locked in a tiny room for most of his childhood. And had no choice to do anything.
[22:12] And it also has to do with a false forgiveness for the people who did bad things to you, right? Parents who abused you and neglected you. You say, well, they did the best they could with the knowledge they had. It's all deterministic. It's all atoms. And the moral dimension gets stripped and removed. So you give up free will and your capacity for virtue in order to protect abusive parents and so on. It's absolutely terrible. So if they say, this person says, as all the determinists say, is that your unenlightened perspective is simply the result of each thing that came before the conversation. But that doesn't add anything to human knowledge. In fact, it's a complete red herring.
[22:52] So, if determinists are saying, you are not free to go to Italy if you have no knowledge of Italy, well, I would accept that. I would accept that. If there was some magic portal that allowed you to step onto the surface of Mars and breathe freely, some magic helmet, some magic portal, and I found out about that, then I would have the choice to go to Mars.
[23:16] Right now, I don't have the choice to go to Mars because there's no way to get there. So you did not have the choice to phone people from the woods before satellite phones cell phones and so on you didn't have that choice i remember when somebody first called me from a car they were very excited it was a friend of mine called me when i was a teenager called me from a car, and of course i had all all phones had cords so of course i had this image of the car going along the road with a long cable snaking behind it, right? So, you did not have the choice to call people from the car before cell phones were invented. Okay, so what? Additional information gives additional choices.
[24:03] So, how does that destroy free will? To saying we are not omniscient and not omnipotent, therefore we don't have free will, is a bizarre statement. It's saying everybody is infinitely ignorant relative to omniscience. Everybody is infinitely powerless relative to omnipotence. But that's a false standard. That's a false standard. It's like saying, as a basketball team owner, I have no preference for tall athletes because all athletes are infinitesimally tiny tiny, relative to the width and breadth of the galaxy. That's not the standard you use. You use the standard relative to the basket, right? The hoop, not relative to the galaxy. A fruit fly lives for only a few days. Humans live for an average of 80 to 85 years, depending on the location, at least in the West. And so we are, you know, hundreds of thousands of times the length of a fruit fly. But we don't say to ourselves, I can't believe I've lived for the length of hundreds of thousands of fruit fly lives. I'm functionally immortal. I must be a fruit fly vampire. That's not what you measure things relative to.
[25:19] Is certainly true that providing better arguments and better information does in fact give people more choices which is why in order to give people more moral choices we should give better arguments and more information and better perspectives right a lot of people feel well i can't get rid of bob say even though bob is corrupt and immoral and destructive i can't get rid of bob because of some XYZ relationship, and you say, well, but the principle is irrespective of the XYZ relationship, and you still have the choice to not have Bob in your life if he is destructive and immoral and dangerous and abusive and so on. So that gives people a choice that maybe they didn't think of before, and then they have a choice. That's good. So yes, in order to give people more free will, we should give people better arguments. So if somebody says, well, well, you know, I have to, I just have to live in the city for X, Y, and Z reason. Well, if you say, well, okay, but you could, you know, find some remote work, you could live in the country, you could raise some food yourself, you could get some livestock, you could, you know, then these are options and choices. And then if they choose to live in the city, that's a choice because now they have an option that they can at least consider.
[26:33] So, yes, we do want to provide people more, better arguments, information, facts, data, reason, and evidence in order to expand their scope of choice. Sure, I don't have the choice to fly, but if somebody gave me magic anti-gravity boots, I could do that. So yes, technology, I did not have the choice to have this conversation with you 30 years ago. There was no option for me to have this conversation with you 30 years ago. Couldn't happen. I could do it now, or if we say 40 years ago, 50 years ago, whenever, right? It was not possible.
[27:04] I have occasionally thought over the years that I could have just recorded way back in the day in the 70s or 80s, if I was around at this age, I could record all of these shows on cassette tapes. And then people could pay me $10,000 to ship them a giant crate of cassette tapes or something like that, right? Theoretically, that could be possible. But it wouldn't happen in this way. And it wouldn't happen with this immediacy of feedback. And you certainly wouldn't be able to find shows very easily. So yeah, that's how it'd be. So now we We have the choice to have this conversation, which in the past, we didn't. I got these questions digitally. I'm recording this digitally. It would be broadcast digitally, and you can consume it digitally. Great. Very convenient. Very effective. So by giving people more information, we expand their choices. Absolutely. What's the old thing Henry Ford said about the Model T car? You can get the Model T in any color you want, as long as it's black, right?
[27:59] So, if you believe that your village elders are the ones who have to pray to the local gods to figure out who you have to marry, then you go to your elders, they pray to the village gods, they get some thoughts about who you should marry, and then that's who you should marry, then you, in a sense, are determined, or predetermined, to marry that person, because whatever the village elders say, well, that's the person you're going to marry. I get that that's a kind of determinism, and if someone comes along and says, well, that's it's not a rational or valid way to choose who you're going to marry, then you have the choice on who to marry. If you believe that, like if you accept it, the village elders are not praying to some gods who know perfectly who you should marry, then you can make your own choice about who to marry. So yeah, I get that philosophy brings better arguments and information to people.
[28:43] Where's the insight in that? If we accept that better arguments bring more choice to people, then we should be making better arguments that bring more choice to people.
[28:52] We shouldn't be making terrible arguments that remove choice from people. Because here's the thing, man. If determinists are wrong, and this is the humility that I never find in determinists. They just blindly spew all this nonsense with no sense of their possible responsibility for the expansion of evil and corruption in the world. They never talk about the potential downsides of being wrong, of being wrong. If free will and moral philosophy is true, that we have a choice and should choose better, more moral, then as a determinist, if you convince people.
[29:30] Of the validity of determinism, and you're wrong, then you are stripping people of their moral ideals and their perceived ability to choose a better state of ethics or virtue, and thus of love, of self-respect, of having a good conscience, and so on. So if a determinist says, you know, I'm kind of drawn into this argument of determinism, but I'm pretty nervous about being wrong. I'm pretty nervous about being wrong. Well, are you nervous about being wrong? If determinism is valid, people don't get love, they don't get self-respect, the conscience is a delusion, virtue is a fantasy, and ethics are a superstition. Okay? Well, people have to have some way of making decisions and prioritizing. Oh, you'd say, well, they don't have any decisions. They don't, but people still have that perception. So, by stripping human beings of the capacity for virtue, are you not opening up the gateway way to hell itself.
[30:28] Because you're taking out the most conscientious people who want to be right and want to be accurate and are willing to pursue arguments to some logical conclusion or hopefully logical conclusion. The evil people, they don't give a crap about determinism versus free will. All they care about is the will to power. So you're disabling moral people of their only defense against evil. You're liberating evil from any restraint based upon conscience and you're delivering the world into a state of hell, if you're wrong, which means you should be incredibly responsible about what you say. But I have yet, once in my life, which is why I say it's conscience-based avoidance, or the avoidance of a based conscience, so to speak, I've yet to meet a determinist who says, ooh, you know, it's a pretty big issue that I'm dealing with, and if I'm wrong, then I'm stripping good people of the capacity for virtue and empowering evil people to indulge their every whim.
[31:30] Am really worried and concerned about the possibility of being wrong and what it might do. If I talk conscientious people out of virtue and say to bad people there's no such thing as badness, disarming the good and unleashing the will to power on earth, which turns it into hell itself. Nope, never heard that. Never heard any concern whatsoever. It's all this blithe nonsense about atoms and and obvious stuff and a complete avoidance of any self-contradiction so, it's a wretched position i would view it as a kind of brain fungus or environmental toxin and i would stay as far away from this perspective and in particular people who push it as humanly possible now i'm not including this particular person who wrote the question because they may not have heard these arguments and i'm trying to shake them out of their dogmatic enablement of evil slumber.
[32:25] But if somebody, after being exposed to these arguments, continues to push determinism, they are literally, literally trying to steal what makes you human and turn you into a machine. And that machine will inevitably serve only the most corrupt. Freedom8.com slash donate. Thank you so much for your time and attention. Lots of love from up here. I'll talk to you soon, should I so choose, and choose I will.
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