0:05 - Opening Philosophy on Life
2:18 - Academia's Failures
9:11 - The Nonsense of Why
10:31 - The Fight Against Evil
27:32 - The Nature of Suffering
48:31 - Antinatalism and Morality
1:06:08 - The Rise of Psychopathy
1:12:03 - Dr. Robert Hare's Insights
1:13:31 - Nature vs. Nurture Debate
1:21:11 - Protecting Our Children
1:24:16 - The Journey into Philosophy
1:26:38 - The Role of God and Morality
1:36:23 - Parenting and Societal Expectations
1:45:05 - Self-Diagnosis and Identity
1:50:23 - The Political Center in America
2:08:50 - Understanding Deviance and Dissent
In this episode, I delve into thought-provoking philosophical discussions rooted in practical application. Reflecting on the nature of existence and the quest for understanding, we navigate complex inquiries—from "Why does consciousness exist?" to "What is the role of evil in our society?" Philosophy is not just an abstract study; it's a means to confront our daily realities and moral dilemmas.
Initially, we engage with fundamental questions surrounding consciousness and existence, exploring why such inquiries often veer into irrelevant territory. In doing so, I challenge listeners to consider the utility of these philosophical questions and their impact on everyday moral choices. The deeper purpose of these explorations is to empower individuals, offering them tools to confront the chaos of life rather than retreat into abstract theories.
As we progress, we tackle the moral structures governing individual and societal behavior. I emphasize the distinction between deviance—actions that contradict beneficial moral standards—and dissent, which opposes harmful or immoral rules. These concepts resonate particularly within today's socio-political climate, prompting important discussions on morality's universality versus its contextual interpretations.
Throughout this discourse, your thoughts and interactions are welcomed. I encourage you to share your perspectives, criticisms, or questions—this dialogue enhances our collective understanding. With the show's dynamic format, listeners become an integral part of the discussion, offering varied viewpoints that enrich the exploration of these philosophical questions.
We wrap up with the notion that rather than being passive participants in life, individuals should actively shape their narratives. It's crucial to reflect on how one’s past experiences influence their current identity without allowing those experiences to become limiting labels. The idea that each person possesses the power to redefine themselves aligns closely with the pursuit of personal and moral growth.
Join me as we challenge established norms, support each other in seeking truth and virtue, and navigate the moral complexities of our lives. The conversation continues to evolve, inviting you to engage and contribute to this philosophical exploration in a meaningful way.
[0:00] Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Pinchy Punchy First of the Monthy.
[0:06] We are talking the 1st of August, 2025, and I'm here to talk philosophy with y'all. Bring your toughest questions, your biggest challenges, whatever's on your mind, whatever I can do to help, whatever philosophy can do to help. I dare say together we can get some beautiful stuff going on. So I'm just going to give everyone a moment here. You can just request a talk. Don't forget to unmute when you're in and kicking. And I'll be happy to take your questions, comments, criticisms, whatever's on your mind. I do, of course, have topics and thoughties. Not to mention, of course, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I'd very much appreciate that.
[0:56] But, so, the why, the why, the why, the why, the why, the YMCA, like the DMCA, but with a bit more native headdresses. Now, why, why is their consciousness, why is their life, why is their gravity, why is the universe, why, why, why? Mostly bullcrap, mostly absolute circle joke, okie-kwokie nonsense. The why don't matter. The why don't matter. Let me ask you this. Let's say that there was a scientific answer or explanation regarding the origins of the universe. Let's just say that science says, well, matter can't be created or destroyed, only transferred to energy and back. So there is no beginning of the universe. The universe is eternal. Matter is constant. And there is no Big Bang, because that was a sardonic phrase, actually, that was sort of invented as a mockery of the sort of origins of the universe theories. And let's say that the theoretical physicists.
[2:19] Finally said, well, you know, we really haven't made any advancements since the 60s. And you can look at the questionnaires going out to theoretical physicists saying, what do you think is going down at the root of the matter? And the answer is a complete big-ass scattershot. And I remember I dated a woman who was an engineer in my early 20s, and she was like, oh, this string theory is super string theory, string theory is really cool. I remember reading about it like that, it's really cool. And what's happened right in the 30 years since? Well, not much. Yeah, not much.
[3:02] I mean, all of that stuff is mostly nonsense. And I always wonder, like I always wonder with academia. I mean, if I was being paid for a bunch of stuff and I wasn't producing any results, I'd feel terrible. I mean, is everybody in academia who stays in academia just a complete sociopath who doesn't care? I mean, when was the last time that a bunch of theoretical physicists got together and said, Oh, guys, you know, I really can't sleep at night. Like, we are taking billions, tens of billions, maybe even more since the 60s. You know, we're, you know, we're really taking a lot of money off the taxpayers. You know, it's nice that we only have to work 10 hours a week. It's nice that we get summers off for a couple of months. It's nice that every couple of years we get sabbaticals and we go and sit in Saint-Martin and kick our feet up in a hammock and, you know, it's really cool. But I just, I can't, it's really, it's really getting me down. Like I just can't justify all the money that we're taking through government force from the taxpayers and we're not really providing them anything in return. Like, don't you think that we should stop circle jerking into each other's inbox in this made up pretend peer review system and actually, I don't know, build some shit for humanity that helps something or someone in some manner.
[4:31] I'd feel terrible. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. I could not just sit there year after year sucking down the blood-soaked taxpayer red-nailed money and not produce anything that actually helped the taxpayer or was virtuous or valuable to the taxpayer. I just, I feel wretched. And that comes from my business training, that you don't take a bunch of investment. Can you imagine if theoretical physicists or theoretical physics was a business investment? It's been, you know, close to 60 years, and we produced virtually nothing. Great startup plan, guys. Couldn't be more proud. But I don't care. So let's say the theoretical physicists finally discovered the root of all matter, and that the universe was constant and it wasn't created, and what would that matter to you? In your daily life, in the moral battles that we face, the battles for truth and integrity, the promotion of virtue, the conflict with evildoers and corruptors, what would it do for you at all? Would it change the amount of oxygen you need? Nope. Would it change the amount of food that you have to consume? Nope. Would it change whether you need to exercise or not? Nope. Would it change the heart-pounding fear which many people feel when speaking truth to power, perhaps wisely so, maybe it's been a deficiency of mine, would it change any of that?
[5:55] Would it change the slow roll destruction of Western countries?
[6:06] What happened 14 billion years ago, matters not at all to the moral choices you have to make in your daily life. The why, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Why is the universe... I posted this on X. Our job is to build bridges and do good and battle evil.
[6:40] If you know why gravity exists as if it matters, does that change how you engineer a bridge? Nope. Because gravity is a constant. The why of gravity is immaterial to all the material that you produce and why. But the why is we need a bridge to cross this chasm or this canyon. The why of gravity, Who cares? Gravity is a constant. You have to engineer using gravity. You don't want to under-engineer and build something too weak. You don't want to over-engineer and waste resources by building something that has too much strength for its stated purpose. You don't want to build a footbridge so that it can handle three panzer tanks. And you don't want to build a panzer tank bridge so that it can only handle three pedestrians, right? So you've got to find the right balance. Of costs and benefits, of strength and the expenditure of resources.
[7:42] What does it matter why there is gravity, why there is the universe? What does it matter? Well, we don't know the why of consciousness. So? So? What does that matter in terms of the moral challenges and conflicts the moral strength that you need to do good in this benighted universe, to try and claw back some light from the darkening skies of corruption. What does it matter? Now, people get all into the whys.
[8:18] I can tell you why.
[8:18] Why do people get all into the whys? W-H-Y-S is very un-W-I-S-E. Because it's a lot easier to ponder the deep mysteries of the origin of the universe than to promote virtue, harm the interests of evildoers, and have them have their say in the inevitable blowback. Yeah, but why do we have consciousness? What is gravity? Is that going to trouble one single evildoer? Nope. No, it won't. It will do nothing whatsoever to prevent the spread of evil, the corruption of the virtuous, and the destruction of civilization.
[9:12] It's self-indulgent, masturbatory nonsense. Just say, I mean, honestly, just be honest. That's all I'm asking from people, and that's all I ask for myself as well, right? So just be honest. Just say, look, evildoers scare me. I don't want to fight them. That's fine. I mean, that's honest. Evildoers scare me. They have a lot of power. Don't want to fight them. Hey, man, I get it. I'm not complaining because that at least has the virtue called honesty. But it's when people are like, well, you know, I guess it would be interesting to fight evildoers, but I really have to sit here in an armchair with my sound-deadening headphones on, listening to Dark Side of the Moon and trying to figure out the origins of consciousness by staring into my own neurons with my own neurons. Love to help you, man. Love to help you in this. Hand the ammo, intellectually and morally battle against evildoers. Love to help you, man. But I'm trying to figure out why gravity.
[10:32] Ah, I don't want people, and I, you know, I have this tendency myself, I think we all do, but I don't want to give people comfort they have not earned. If you don't want to join us in the fight against evil, and you don't want to promote virtue, that's fine. Don't lie about it. Don't pretend that you're scouring the deep, intragalactic mysteries of the universe by pondering the origins of things, and why gravity, and why electromagnetism? Like, you're not, you're just running. You're just running. And listen, running from the fight is fine too. You can't fight forever like everybody was, oh, you got to get back into politics, man. It's like I did politics for 40 years. You don't put out King Lear as your soldier, so to speak, right? So, there's times where you don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I'm going to say, politics became boring and dangerous, which is really the worst combination. Like, government schools. So.
[11:41] Just be honest. Just be honest. I'm talking about the psychic people. The psychic people. I mean, the psychic phenomena is false. It's false. It's absolutely false. Absolutely wrong. People, have you investigated every single case? I don't have to. Somebody says to me that two and two make five. I don't have to do shit. It disproves itself. Well, have you searched everywhere in the universe for a square circle? Don't have to. This contradictory entity doesn't exist. Well, but I have premonitions. No, you don't. You have coincidences. Yes, yes, yes. Every now and then something you, oh, I dreamt I was riding an escalator and now I'm riding an escalator. That's weird. No, it's not weird. It's a coincidence because you don't, of course, think of all of the thousands of dreams that you have that don't come true. I dreamt this morning that I was late trying to pack to catch a plane. Hey, you know what I didn't do today? Catch a plane. And so all of the things that aren't true.
[12:48] Oh, I, I dreamed that, uh, this woman said, I dreamed that someone had a miscarriage, and they didn't even tell me they were pregnant. It's like, yeah, maybe you got an instinct or maybe you got an instinct. Maybe they smell differently. You know, we have more than the five senses. We get balance and, and, uh, hunger and, and the cold and, and all of that. Right. So I get all of that. We have really good intuitions, we have really good insights, and so on, right? Maybe you've had a dream about someone where that person, although they seemed nice, was doing something really bad or wrong, and later you find out that their seemingly nice personality is just a sociopathic mask to cover up their cold and cruel tendencies, right?
[13:36] Oh, it's psychic. No, you've got the body language. You're like, we have great instincts, right? People are like, well, what about when you have a really uneasy feeling that something might be dangerous? It's like, bro, squirrels have that.
[13:48] It's not psychic. And of course, from about, what was it, 1964 until 2015, which is a good old chunk of time, right? It's a good old chunk of time. It's 60 years, almost. The amazing Randy and other people had a million dollars. A million dollars. If you could just prove any kind of psychic ability more than a thousand people tried to prove it. None of them succeeded. It's not a real thing. You can't see the future. Do you know why? Because seeing into the future is also seeing through space, right? Because the earth is rotating. It's rocketing around the sun. The sun is rocketing around the galaxy center and the galaxy is doing its own little Harlem shuffle. So, you know, it's what they say. Oh, I had a time machine. I went back a thousand years. It's like, bro, you're just hanging in empty space half a light year away from the planet because you're staying in the same spot. The planet has moved. Or it hasn't caught up to you if it's in the past. So no, you can't see the future because that would involve you seeing not just through time, but also through space as well. Let's say that you could see a year into the future. Well, how many millions of miles away from the Earth's current position is the Earth in the future going to be. Oh, no, but I can see from here where the earth is going to be a million miles away. It's like, no, you can't. You can't.
[15:09] One of the ways we'd know somebody was actually psychic is they'd own just about everything in the known universe. Because if you're psychic, you should be able to tell what the price of stock is going to be tomorrow, and you can make a bazillion dollars. But of course, you can't. You can't. What's the price of the stock going to be tomorrow? And people who don't address this are just fantasizing. And fantasizing that you have magical powers means you're going crazy. Like, if you genuinely believe that you have magical powers, that is a sign of severe mental problems, in my humble opinion. Because magical thinking is a scar tissue left over from the trauma of a bad childhood. And continuing that magical thinking is only extending the scars of early childhood trauma, not something you want to do. And you certainly don't want to claim that it is some kind of virtue. I got a microphone that's hanging by a thread. All right. But let's get to the brains of the outfit you the glorious gorgeous and wonderful listeners let's get your comments in and on the record, Dreegon Dreegon what is on your mind my friend hit me with your best thought fire away you might need to unmute there you go.
[16:32] Hey how's it going Stef?
[16:35] Good. How you doing?
[16:37] Good. I just kind of wanted to bring up, you're familiar with the movie The Matrix, right?
[16:43] Yes.
[16:45] This is, I guess I'm going to bring this up first because thinking about why some of this stuff is important.
[16:53] Sorry, which stuff?
[16:55] Well, you're talking about the, I call it the woo stuff. Do you kind of know what I mean when I talk about the woo stuff?
[17:01] Yeah, the woo stuff, yeah, yeah.
[17:04] So, you're talking about premonitions and things of that nature. What do you think about mind reading? Do you think your mind can be read?
[17:13] I mean, I think it's theoretically possible, and I think that there's been some Neuralink stuff that has done some good that way. But as far as the ancient practice and the non-scientific practice of mind reading, no, that's not a thing. And of course, listen, if you were, just think of hunters, right? So if you've got five guys out and you're hunting something, can you imagine the advantage you'd have if you could psychically communicate with each other?
[17:44] It would be insane, right? I mean, you would have 21st century advantages 100,000 or 200,000 years ago. And so if there was the capacity to read minds at a distance, which would be the transfer of information without any medium that we know of, that would be such an evolutionary advantage that those people would win. They'd win in hunting, they'd win in wooing, they'd win in war, they'd win in everything. And that particular gene for psychic abilities or that set of genes would spread like wildfire. Like we wouldn't have conversation, we wouldn't have written language, we wouldn't have communications technology. Because, you know, like everybody was like, oh no, I have psychic abilities. You got to look into this. Like, I can't help but notice that you're typing rather than beaming these thoughts directly into my brain. So even the people who say it don't really believe it. You know, it would be like if somebody tweeted something and I wanted to reply to it, I had to go where they live. I had to fly. Let's say they live in, I don't know, Kenya, right? So I had to fly to Africa and I'd go to their house, find them, knock on their door and say, hey man, I got to reply to your tweet. And they're like, why didn't you just post it? Just post it.
[18:51] Well, why would people want to type anything if they could just communicate with me or others directly? So the fact that they type it It means they don't believe in any of this psychic nonsense. So, no, it's not a real thing. But go ahead.
[19:02] Well, I think the kind of point I want to make is, we'll get into some conspiracy theory stuff here, but it's what's alleged about what the government is trying to do. And this is pretty far out, but alleged about the microtransmitters and the jabs and the graphene oxide that's supposed to power it And, you know, that guy Yuval Noah Harari talking about hacking human beings.
[19:30] Okay. So, and I don't particularly believe that stuff, but let's say that it's true. That would not be psychic. That would be science. Yeah.
[19:38] It'd be nice, but it's, again, you know, I posted to your page about the tweet by Arthur C. Clarke, any advanced technology is, advanced enough technology is equivalent to magic. So we're talking about magic.
[19:52] No, no, no. My kind of. No, we're not talking about magic. He says any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. For sure. Yeah. I mean, if there was somebody who said, you know, you may live in a different country, a different time zone. So the idea that you can talk into my ear would be considered clairvoyant or magical or something like that in the distant past, not even the too distant past, right? Or something like that, right? So it just looks like magic. That's all. And CGI is kind of a technology that can recreate magical things or things that look magical on the screen and so on. But it's not actually magic. It's just science.
[20:29] That's the point. I think it's important that you, you, you have your mind open to the things that are coming in this really advanced technology, technological world that we're living.
[20:39] Sorry, what do you mean by, I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm not sure what you mean by have your mind open.
[20:46] Well, let's take a, let's take another tact here. You know what a tech troll, you know what a person is who has an extra.
[20:52] Did you hear me ask you a question?
[20:55] Yeah, go ahead.
[20:56] No, I did ask you a question.
[20:58] What's the question? I'm sorry.
[21:00] Is there an internet cutting out? Did you not hear me? Well, I was, I guess I didn't get it. You weren't listening. See, I'm fine with mind reading, but perhaps you could just listen to my voice first and foremost. So my question was, what do you mean by having an open mind? What is that? Does that mean open to reason and evidence or does that mean open to nonsense? Not that I'm saying you're saying nonsense, but that's usually what people mean when they say have an open mind. They mean don't have any standards for proof for what I'm saying.
[21:30] Well, open to things that, open to the woo-woo a little bit, I guess.
[21:33] Okay, so hang on, hang on. So what does that mean, open to the woo-woo? Does that mean, I believe whatever people say without any standards of proof or truth?
[21:44] Well, let me give you this example. Do you know what a person is that has an extra cone in their eye?
[21:51] I'm sorry, say again?
[21:53] You ever heard of someone who has an extra cone? A cone is something that detects color. There is a rare form of where some people, very few, have an extra cone.
[22:06] Yeah, there's rods and there's cones. So they can see them. There's rods and there's cones. One does the shading and the other does the color. Is that right?
[22:12] Something like that.
[22:13] Okay. So let's say somebody has an extra cone in their eye. Okay, go ahead.
[22:21] Extra cone. So they can see a hundred million colors.
[22:23] Okay.
[22:24] And the typical person can see a million colors. Okay. Well, if someone was trying to explain to you, someone who had this capability was trying to explain to you what it's like to see 100 million colors and we only see a million, you know, you wouldn't have, you couldn't relate to what they were saying.
[22:41] I absolutely could relate. Hang on, hang on. Don't tell me what I can and can't relate to. Of course I can relate to it. They can just see more colors. Yeah. Right. So dogs can hear higher frequencies, but I can hear some pretty high frequencies. And so if I can see a million colors and somebody can see 10 million colors, I know exactly what they're talking about. I mean, I can't experience their 10 million colors directly, but I can still, it's just more than what I can see. It's not different fundamentally.
[23:09] But you could be missing something. If a dog is hearing something you're not hearing and the dog is hearing it and saying, I'm hearing something and, well, I don't hear it.
[23:15] I understand that dogs can hear above human frequencies, but that doesn't mean that I can't understand what the dog is doing. He's just doing what I can do, but more of it. But it's not comprehensible to me.
[23:27] He's hearing a sound you're not hearing, right?
[23:29] Right, and I can hear sounds that he can't hear if it's too low, right? So, but it's still, I understand hearing. I understand that he can hear things that I can't hear. Bloodhounds can smell things that my nose can't detect, but it's just more. Whereas something like psychic phenomena or woo-woo phenomena is completely different from anything that human beings have experienced, right? Because nobody has been able to reproduce it. Nobody knows the mechanism by which it might even conceivably work. Nobody talks about the difficulty of not just seeing through time, but also through seeing across millions of miles or hundreds of millions of miles of space. And so it's not more of what we do. A psychic phenomenon isn't like talking, but more, right? Some people have a bigger vocabulary, some people have a smaller vocabulary, and the people with smaller vocabulary just know that it's the same thing, it's just more of the same. It's just more of the same. Like a dog's high hearing is just more of the same, right? And a bloodhound's smell is just more of the same, right? So whereas psychic phenomenon is a difference not in degree but of kind, and that's where I get skeptical and it's never been proven.
[24:38] I'm not really talking about a specific thing that's supernatural. I am talking about advances in science, and I'm talking about the importance of being aware in this world of what we might be facing along the lines of— It's too generic.
[24:52] I don't know what you're talking about.
[24:55] Again, it's kind of back to the matrix, which is what I brought in the first place. We're kind of in this— the matrix is this symbol for being in this kind of manipulated into a world, And I would argue that there are several matrices that we're in that the people in power use to control us.
[25:14] Do you mean propaganda?
[25:18] Propaganda, religion.
[25:19] Okay.
[25:21] Currency is a way.
[25:22] Okay. But what does that have to do with woo-woo?
[25:26] Because I think it's important to realize that you have to keep your mind open to things that may seem impossible, I guess, or outside the realm of the possible.
[25:39] Okay, but everything you're talking about, religion, is empirical, and propaganda is empirical, and other things that you mentioned are all empirical. They're not impossible. So why on earth would I keep my mind open to something that is impossible? Let me ask you this. Are you open to the possibility that two and two make five?
[26:05] I guess in the slightest bit, yes, I would have to be because I kind of,
[26:10] Hang on, hang on. I just want to understand. So you think that two and two might equal five?
[26:17] I think anything is To a very small degree. I'm saying I would almost...
[26:24] I don't care what the degree is.
[26:26] 2% agree that 2.2 plus 2 is 4.
[26:30] So what would be the thinking behind the possibility that 2 and 2 could make 5? How could that be possible?
[26:39] I think that's a bad example because it's so...
[26:42] I don't care what you think is a good or bad example. I'm asking you to answer the question. You don't have to, but you can't just say it's a bad example because it's tough to answer.
[26:51] Well, I think it's easy to answer. It's so simple. But if you translate that into...
[26:56] I'm sorry, you're cutting out a little bit here. You said it's easy to answer because what?
[26:59] It's so simple. What is simple? If you're talking more complicated, I think you kind of miss the treachery of language where...
[27:08] Okay, don't start lecturing me about my deficiencies without answering my question. That's really rude.
[27:17] I'm sorry. What was the question?
[27:18] Oh my God. What is going on in this world? It's like nobody listens anymore. All right. Tell me how it is possible that two and two make five.
[27:32] Let's see. If you have two point rounding errors.
[27:38] No. Two and two make five. No round. No round. You can't introduce rounding errors because then you would say, you know, two point two four plus two point two and two make five. How is it possible that two and two make five?
[27:57] I couldn't explain why. Again, that is such a bulletproof simple that it would be hard to do.
[28:02] You said that it's possible that two and two might not equal five. Right. You said it's possible that two and two could equal five. So I'm asking you, how do you reason that it's possible?
[28:14] I don't know how it might not be possible, but maybe an advanced mathematician knows something I do and could provide that.
[28:21] No mathematician will ever tell you that two and two make five.
[28:24] Or that contingency.
[28:25] I'm sorry?
[28:27] I'm leaving that skepticism for the contingency that maybe someone does. Maybe there's some math genius who figures out in some multiple dimension. You know, again, we get this is woo. This is not practical stuff that affects our real world stuff.
[28:45] Okay, so you've told me that it's really important for me to keep an open mind and I have a limited perspective, right? Yes. Okay. So you don't know that two and two make five, but you know for sure, that I have to keep an open mind and that I have a limited perspective. That's insane.
[29:02] No, you're not an open mind. You could be manipulated into the matrix if you're not keeping an open mind, maybe.
[29:08] I could what? That's...
[29:10] Being manipulated into the
[29:12] Matrix so you're not certain that two and two make five but you're certain that i'm wrong no.
[29:17] No i didn't say that
[29:18] Yeah i'm saying i have a limited perspective you didn't say there's some chance that you have you said Stef you have a limited perspective, oh my gosh you you must keep an open mind why you don't even know that two and two make four who are you to tell anyone about anything you don't even know that you exist you don't know that one and one make two you don't know that the world is round you don't know anything you don't know anything, but you have the arrogance to tell me what I'm right or wrong about. Wow.
[29:43] No, I didn't say you were right or wrong. I said you're free to do what you want. Why are you instantiating more to that than you can allow
[29:51] Yourself to be.
[29:53] Hard not to?
[29:55] You said it's important for me to keep an open mind, right?
[29:58] Yeah.
[29:59] Okay, how do you know? How do you know it's important? You don't even know that two and two make four. Who are you to tell me what I should or shouldn't do with my mind when you don't even know basic math? You're not even certain of basic math, but you're certain it's important for me to keep an open mind.
[30:14] Really?
[30:15] Like, if you don't know that two and two make four, why would I listen to you about anything? That is radical epistemological skepticism. You don't know that I exist. You don't know that you exist. You don't know that you're not a brain in a tank. You won't even say that two and two make four. Why would I take your advice about anything when you can't do your time's table with any certainty?
[30:37] Well because you you're making all this stuff certain like there's no possibility of all
[30:41] All this stuff there's no possibility that two and two make anything other than four there's absolutely no possibility and let me tell you this brother i don't mean to sound harsh i'm actually here to try and help you because this is bad for your brain it's really fucking bad for your brain to have this radical skepticism so the reason it's bad is that you are kept alive literally kept alive by people who accept the two and two make four because that's what delivers your electricity that's what delivers your food that's what delivers your prices that's what undergirds your economic transactions that's what keeps your car running so you are kept alive by people who say two and two make four absolutely 100 your bridges work because two and two make four airplanes stay in the sky because two and two make four all of it your house runs everything runs water comes to your pipes because two and two make four no still do i'm still talking i'll mute you i'll mute you let me finish my fucking speech all right all right so you're kept alive by people who have absolute certainty we're having this come could you and i have this conversation, if people weren't certain about binaries in computers, on-off switches in computers. If they weren't certain about that, we would not be able to have this conversation. So everything that keeps you alive.
[32:04] Is based on the certainty that everyone else has. And you refuse to participate in that certainty, but keep yourself back in this weird skeptical position that means absolutely nothing into your life. And you kind of spread this poison of doubt to other people. And I think it's vicious. I think it's vicious for you to try and spread doubt that two and two make four, because people who don't understand basic reality go crazy.
[32:25] You know, I'm the, I'm used to be a professional engineer. I've been a professional engineer. I'm the one out in the real world. I used to plow the highways for the highway department you talk about someone who's out in the real world doing real things that's me so you know i understand the conventional reality that that has to we have to live it but i'm saying if you don't believe that your mind can be read and you're not paying attention to what's going on in science and the government is getting closer and closer to being on
[32:51] Hang on that's not even what i said i said i said that there does seem to be some neural link stuff and maybe they can read your mind and you know with brain scans but hang on but the traditional The traditional mind-reading stuff is all bullshit. Now, maybe with sort of new science, they can figure stuff out in that kind of way for sure. But you conveniently dodged the, you don't believe that two and two make four.
[33:15] You know, that's just a trick that you're using because, you know, obviously I believe two and two makes four, but I'm trying to make a
[33:21] Point about these. No, you said, no, that's not. Listen, you can change your story, but don't pretend you didn't.
[33:25] You know, basic philosophy.
[33:27] Oh, you're now going to instruct me on basic philosophy when you don't even know that two and two make four Or are you kidding me?
[33:33] Yeah, I can instruct you. You don't think you can learn from me?
[33:36] I think I can learn what not to do from you, because you said you are not certain that two and two don't make five.
[33:45] To the point that you shouldn't be certain about anything, yes.
[33:49] I don't know. That doesn't mean that. I don't want whatever weasel word gaslighting bullshit you want to spread. You said, now you can change your mind. That's fine. We do it all the time. And you can say, you know what? In further reflection, I do accept that two and two make four. I do accept that two and two can never make five. But in the absence of that, you're epistemologically and philosophically a buffoon, a complete clown.
[34:10] So Hume is a clown. Is that what you're saying? You think you're smarter than Hume, David Hume?
[34:15] I'm not sure what argument you're making here.
[34:19] That something as certain as a cue ball hitting another ball couldn't be, a causal chain couldn't be ascribed to that?
[34:29] I'm still not sure what argument you're making. Are you saying that Hume said that two and two don't make four, necessarily?
[34:37] I'm saying that there should be skepticism to everything.
[34:40] Are you saying that Hume said two and two could make five? Because you're bringing Hume up into this argument, which means you better know what the fuck you're talking about.
[34:52] Hume did not use that example.
[34:54] Okay. So then you're just a sophist and full of nonsense and get off my show. All right. I really, I can't tell you how much this stuff is dangerous. And I think it's just absolutely horrendous that people are out there spreading this radical... Insane crazy making. We don't know that two and two make four. It could make five or a blue unicorn, or it could equal Ed Sheeran's left ass cheek. And it's like, no, no, it can't. Stop spreading this shit. Because it's only evildoers who will win from that. All right. Summer in the something something. I am thrilled to hear. Oh, let's go back here and here and summer. What is on your mind, my friend? Help us help the world through reason and evidence. Uh, yes, you're on the air. Do you know that?
[35:52] Uh, yeah, there's a bit of echo, uh, for me. Is there for you?
[35:55] I don't hear an echo now.
[35:58] Okay, okay. Um, yeah, I got a bit of an echo. That's right. I think you're a little bit inverted that time. I think you're a misrepresenter of what you're saying.
[36:08] I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing what you're saying. Hang on, hang on. Are you using a speakerphone or something? Because I'm having trouble understanding you.
[36:16] Uh hello my check one two one two hello okay
[36:19] Not not too bad okay so you're saying i was unfair to this guy go ahead.
[36:22] A little bit i i think i think he was he didn't he was just saying like 99.9 certain that two plus two equals four you know i mean i yeah i think you're a little bit unfair i think you're a bit misrepresenting
[36:35] Are you are you certain that i was unfair.
[36:40] I i i think you're unfair yeah okay
[36:43] So oh my god it's wild man i say this with sympathy because it's not like philosophy is well taught in the world at the moment i mean other than at freedomain.com so you're a hundred percent certain that i was unfair but you're not a hundred percent certain that two and two make four uh.
[37:01] I i think i think you were saying that he doesn't believe that two and two makes four.
[37:08] No, he said he's not 100% certain that two and two don't make five.
[37:15] Uh-huh.
[37:16] I think he was saying like 99% certain or 99.999% recurring.
[37:23] Yeah, but that's not it. That's not it. Syllogistically, according not, this is not inductive logic. This is deductive logic, right? So, you know the classical one. Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Or all men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. Is that 100% true? If all men are mortal and Socrates is a man, is it 100% certain that Socrates is mortal?
[37:58] You've put the second description, yeah.
[38:00] Okay. So, that's exactly the same as two and two make four. Two and two is just another way of saying four. It's almost a tautology because two plus two is four. So basically what we're saying when we say two and two make four is we're saying four equals four. Now, if you can't say with a hundred percent certainty that A is A, you sure as shit can't tell me that I'm being unfair morally to some caller. Because if you can't be certain that two and two make four, but you're absolutely certain that I was unfair, then you're saying that ambiguous moral judgments are infinitely more certain than tautological mathematical statements. That's deranged. I'm not saying you're deranged, but that premise is deranged.
[38:45] Well, fair enough. Yeah, okay, fair enough. We'll move on to something else, if you don't mind.
[38:52] I'd like to know if you accept my argument rather than just pretending I didn't say something.
[38:57] Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I find that on streams as well. I thought that was a thing, but so... What do you want me to bring?
[39:05] Okay, I'm going to move on. It's wild, man. I don't know. People just, they've sort of given up listening completely. And I'm going to keep going until I find people who listen. Because, you know, it's like when I was an actor, you know, one of the things that was a challenge as an actor, I don't know if you've ever done any acting, the people who are listening to this, but one of the things that's a challenge as an actor is not just waiting your turn to talk, but actually listening to the other person, right? And there's this kind of funny thing. So people say the most errant nonsense, and look, I sympathize. I myself have spoken errant nonsense over the course of my life and have had to be rather robustly corrected over the course of my life and career, and I'm sure it will happen. It may even happen today, and I'm sure it will happen again in the future, that I have said errant nonsense and need to be confronted and corrected. And I do this not to be mean. I don't do this to be dominant. I do this because I don't want people to go insane, and I also don't want evil to win. And if you can't be certain that two and two make four, you can't ever call anyone else out for lying or being corrupt or being immoral or being manipulative or anything like that, because you've got radical skepticism about whether you even exist. And therefore, you're useless as tits on a bull when it comes to the fight against corruption that we kind of all need to fight. Because, of course, as we know, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. And if you say, well, I don't know that two and two really make four, I mean, we're in a war. And you're doubting the existence of.
[40:32] Of your shoes. So you're completely useless just getting in the way. So to speak and to listen is really, really important. And I do listen pretty well. And these calls are all recorded. And of course, if I had a habit of completely strawmanning and misrepresenting people, people would quote it back to me all the time. I may not get every phrase. Perfect. I don't have a notepad here, and I'm not writing everything down because I'm really trying to listen actively. But for sure, the guy did say that he's not 100% certain that two and two make four, or he's not 100% certain that two and two don't make five. And that's a real thing. Now, when you reflect that back to people, my hope, right, is when I repeat things back to people, that they say, oh, you know what, that, yeah, two and two make four. Like, let's be serious. Because otherwise, you can't mark any math tests. You can't actually approve of any engineering project. You can't build anything because you could be wrong. And the funny thing is, and this is the other interesting thing that happens epistemologically, like the study of how we acquire valid knowledge, is that the second guy was not certain that two and two made four, but he was absolutely certain that I was unfair to the first caller.
[41:46] Again, this is wild. This is wild. Whether I was unfair. Well, first, he's not certain that two and two make four, but he's absolutely certain that there's an objective metric called fairness and unfairness that can be applied to the previous debate that I had. So I don't know that two and two make four, but I do know that there's an objective standard called unfairness and you, Stef, crossed the line by 14%. He said a little bit unfair or whatever it is, right? Now, I just tell you, I just tell you this straight up, man. Nobody with any brains, any brains whatsoever, once you say you're not certain that two and two make four, nobody with any brains is going to listen to any other thing you say. Because every other thing you say is conditioned by the fact that you don't even know that two and two make four.
[42:35] I mean, would you hire an accountant who couldn't count? Would you hire an engineer who didn't know what math was? Would you hire a physicist who didn't know what science was? No. If somebody says, well, I don't follow the scientific method, but I want to work for you as a scientist, you'd say, no. Say, well, you haven't heard my proposals. Like, bro, you just told me you don't believe in the scientific method. Why would I hire you as a scientist? So why would I listen to you assert that anything is true if you don't even know that two and two make four. That's the price of entry into any reasonable conversation. At least it's accepting that two and two make four. Because if you come on with your bullshit opinions about Stef, you were fair, you were unfair, you were this, you were that. It's like, bro, you didn't even know that two and two make four. Shut up. You've got nothing to say about anything. That's the price. The price of not saying that two and two make four is nobody listens to you at all who's got any brains at all. All right. Let us move on. Oh, Lord, that is a mouthful of shaken bag, shaken, um, scrabble bag, Polish syllables, I think. Wozniak? Wozniak? Wozniak? You are on the air.
[43:45] Just, yes, go ahead. Can we hear you? Hello, hello, one, two, three, test.
[43:53] Yeah, yeah, I can hear you.
[43:54] Okay, hello. So first of all, thanks for having me. Just wanted to say that I donated to Free Domain a couple days back. Wanted to say it to the listeners. It feels great and highly recommend.
[44:08] Thank you, and you're now right about everything that you say from here on inwards, because I'm absolutely for sale.
[44:12] Yes, yes, yes, exactly. So it's kind of related because it's about epistemology, I guess. It's about my question is about antinatalism I have this friend who I regard as highly intelligent he actually has PhD in law and philosophy and we actually agree on most of the stuff but one point that I'm unable to convince him is about the morality of having children So he's on the anti-natalist side. And well, he basically says that my arguments are invalid and fraudulent. And I just thought that maybe I'll present those to you.
[45:03] So fraudulent is a moral category, right? You're defrauding it. So he thinks that you're immoral?
[45:09] Maybe it could be a translation issue. I'm not a native speaker. But yeah, basically that they are invalid and they are sophist sort of.
[45:20] Does he believe that you know the arguments are invalid but are making them anyway?
[45:28] No, I think he kind of said that maybe that you could interpret it like that. He just...
[45:36] If you disprove someone's arguments and they don't have a rebuttal and they don't accept your disproof, then they're not arguing in good faith, right?
[45:49] Well, yeah, it kind of felt like it. It didn't feel like he was actually trying to...
[45:55] From him to you, he would feel that way. Okay, let's move on. Sorry, that was me stalling and speed bumping you, so I apologize for that. So what are his arguments about antinatalism?
[46:08] So his argument is basically coming from Kant, and that's saying that basically introducing pleasure to someone is morally like ambiguous, not ambiguous, neutral.
[46:28] Sorry, slow down, slow down. I need to, because if there's an argument, I need to understand each component. Introducing pleasure to someone is morally neutral?
[46:36] To the world, like bringing pleasure to someone maybe, that would be the better phrasing.
[46:42] I need an example of what you mean by bringing pleasure. Are you talking like a rub and tug, or what are we talking here?
[46:47] I feel like, I don't know, giving someone a hug, I don't know.
[46:54] Like if somebody is hungry and you give them food, that's morally neutral?
[46:59] Yeah, that was like...
[47:01] Okay, so if you do something that somebody else likes or enjoys or feels good about, that's morally neutral, is that right?
[47:07] That doesn't make you moral.
[47:11] Okay. I'm just going to make a note here. I just want to make sure I understand this. I'm not asking from skepticism. I just want to inhabit the argument and understanding. So bringing pleasure doesn't make you moral, right?
[47:25] Yeah.
[47:25] Okay?
[47:27] Doesn't make you good. And whereas, pretty perfectly, introducing someone to suffering is like, to needless suffering, I guess, makes you immoral.
[47:40] Okay, so whereas causing someone to suffer, To suffer is immoral, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[47:50] So basically, by having a child,
[47:53] Inevitably… Hang on, hang on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not getting to natalism yet. I've got to understand these arguments.
[47:59] All right?
[48:00] Okay. So bringing pleasure to someone doesn't make you moral, but causing someone to suffer is immoral. Why?
[48:09] Um, why? I mean I sort of agree on the
[48:18] Negative side I'm not asking for your agreement, I'm asking for the argument because he's such a statement pleasure doesn't make you moral, causing someone to suffer is immoral why?
[48:31] For example coming from UPB perspective, you could say that no,
[48:36] This is not UPB this is feelings based, this is hedonism based pain is bad Right? So this is not UPB. So why is causing someone to suffer immoral?
[48:49] Hmm. Uh, huh. Let's. Hmm. Oh, my God. It's a difficult question, actually.
[49:06] Well, that's why I didn't want you to move on, because that's kind of foundational to the moral argument. So, if I'm dating a woman and I'm more attracted to some other woman, I'm not particularly satisfied with the relationship, she thinks I'm about to propose, I pull the rug out from under her, and I break up with her. She's going to be in tears. She's going to be sad for weeks or months or maybe longer the rest of her life because it's me. Right? So, if I cause someone to suffer because I break up with her, is that immoral?
[49:39] No, of course not.
[49:41] Because… But I am causing someone to suffer.
[49:43] Yes.
[49:44] And it is needless in that I could keep going out with her. It's not physically impossible that I continue to go out with her. I'm causing her to suffer. What about if somebody… I mean, wait, wait.
[49:54] Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, but you said that it's needless. I mean, I guess in this case, I would say that it's actually not because I mean, the fact that she could doesn't mean that it's better, right? It was a better alternative to...
[50:12] Well, not for her. She would rather we keep going at it.
[50:15] For her, yes. But I'm a moral agent, so I'm responsible for my happiness. this.
[50:23] The argument was causing someone to suffer needlessly is immoral. Okay, so by breaking up with her, I'm causing her needless suffering because I could continue to go out with her and she'd be much happier if I did. So is it immoral to break up with someone ever if it makes them unhappy?
[50:41] But it's not needless because I need to break up with her.
[50:44] No, I don't. No, no, I need, I need to breathe I need to be constrained by gravity I don't need to break up with someone I need to eat to live but I can date and be with someone forever without breaking up with them that's possible.
[50:59] Right but if it's causing me suffering going out with her I want to prevent my suffering, for example.
[51:09] Okay, so then causing someone to suffer is not immoral in itself, right?
[51:15] It's not, yes.
[51:17] Okay, so then I would say to your friend, go back and work on your bullshit moral argument until it's not bullshit anymore.
[51:25] Uh-huh. I was sort of attacking it from a different perspective.
[51:30] Well, no, why would you need to attack it? It's not proven. uh-huh and there's tons of suffering in the world like a a somebody who puts you on a diet is going to cause you to suffer a coach who pushes you is going to cause you to uh to suffer right, and uh if you're allergic to your favorite food and you stop eating it that causes you to suffer the guy who's telling you you're allergic blah blah blah right somebody who gives you the heimlich maneuver and breaks through of your ribs is causing you to suffer somebody who gives you a tracheotomy because they think you're choking is causing you to suffer. And so you can come up with all of these things and say, ah, yes, but well, in the long run, it's good for you and on the balance and blah, blah, blah. It's like, ah, yeah, it's all just, you know, well, if your intention is a needless suffering, well, I thought it was necessary. Like people can just make up whatever they want. And I talked about this this morning. I haven't published the show yet, but the problem is if you have a moral law that involves mind reading and trying to figure out future results that could be months or years down the road, you don't have a moral system at all.
[52:35] Because if I have to say, well, it's intentional suffering, well, then everyone's going to claim that the suffering was unintentional. And then I've got to, what, read their mind in the past, which is impossible. I don't have a moral system. Or if you say, well, if the results in the long run are beneficial to the person, then you can't make any moral decisions ahead of time because you don't know what the future is going to hold. So you don't have a moral system if it's about suffering. You just have a guesswork and conformity and not wanting to upset people. I mean, telling the truth causes people to suffer. I mean, I see this every day that I post on X or other places. Telling the truth causes people to suffer. The guy who said, I don't know if two and two make four, and I was telling him that's bullshit, which it is, am I causing him to suffer? I caused him to suffer so much that the next guy white knighted on his behalf and said, you were unfair. I don't know that two and two make four, but I know 100% that you were unfair, right? So, telling people the truth causes them to suffer. Is it important? Is it necessary for me to tell people the truth? No, I can go through life without telling anyone the truth, but telling them the truth causes them to suffer. Talking about IQ causes people to suffer. Saying to people, there's no psychic phenomena that is true or valid causes them to suffer if they base their identity on their special because there are magical elves that live in their head that tell the future to them, like reading an elvish scroll. So causing people to suffer is immoral. Causing people to needlessly suffer is immoral is a bullshit non-argument.
[54:01] Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, yeah, actually, that's a good point. Well, for me, it was actually, I don't even, I didn't even get this far, because to me, the sentence itself, like logically.
[54:22] See, he accused you of being a sophist. That's a sophist, causing someone to suffer, it's immoral. Because then you have to say, no, no, no, I don't know why, tell me why. And then people are like, oh, you don't even know that causing someone to suffer is immoral, you psychopath. Like, you know what I mean? I'm not saying it's you.
[54:38] Right? You're right, yeah.
[54:39] It's a form of sophistry, right? Because we have to have a blank slate when it comes to ethics, right? So causing someone to suffer is immoral. Well, who wouldn't agree with that except a sociopath or a psychopath who doesn't care about other people's feelings, blah, blah, blah. Like, I posted this on X the other day, which is that an essential component of happiness is developing the capacity to ignore other people's suffering. And people were like, no, I should never ignore other people's suffering. And I'm like, bro, every day, every day on this planet, 150,000 people die. Do you mourn any of them? If you don't know them, of course not. I mean, there's 150,000 families who have lost a son, a mother, a brother, a cousin, whatever. And they're all very sad and they suffer. But we don't, right? You know, during this conversation, there are people drawing their last breaths, being ravished by horrible diseases. And yet we have to, at least I choose to focus on this conversation and push the suffering others out of my mind. Now, of course, if people I care about are suffering or a particular value is under attack or whatever it is, then I will care. And in fact, I care about people suffering when they say they don't even know that two and two make four, because I think that's a gateway to madness and certainly a shame for not fighting the good fight. So, yeah, I would say that...
[55:53] It's a piece of sophistry. You say, causing someone to suffer is immoral. It's like, why? That's a valid question, isn't it? Why? Tell me why. Make the case. I'm happy to hear the case. And it better be airtight. UPB is airtight. UPB does not require mind reading people's intentions. UPB does not require, well, like consequentialism or pragmatism or utilitarianism. Well, but the results are going to be good down the road in some manner, right? And we can extrapolate, but the future is just mysticism because nobody knows. Like you could bully a kid and you could say, well, but I'm toughening that kid up. And there is certainly a percentage of children who get toughened up because they were bullied. They get tougher, they get stronger, they get more confident because they've overcome the bullying. So you could say, no, no, no, bullying children is good because my intention is to toughen them up down the road. Like, how can you say it's wrong then? Because you don't know what could happen down the road. They might get toughened up and you can't read people's intention you can't say well you say that you're just bullying a kid to toughen him up but but you you actually just to say this is like you can't read people's minds that way you can't read people's intentions so uh this consequentialism and this kantian suffering nonsense is just another form of mysticism and it is a terrible form of sophistry but sorry go ahead oh.
[57:08] I was just saying you could cut someone's legs off and they're strong their arms are gonna get stronger too right
[57:14] Right uh.
[57:15] Let's just so basically i was i'm actually pretty proud of my argument so i i'm gonna say it anyway
[57:20] Go go yeah yeah.
[57:22] Yeah so because uh i mean i would love i would like you to rate it because that's what he said that's fraudulent right uh but that's so uh so
[57:31] His argument is life is suffering causing someone to suffer is immoral therefore having children is evil right yes.
[57:37] Yes yes uh and my argument is that so suffering is a property of someone. That someone needs to exist. And if you think about it, when you're saying that there's going to be less suffering, this sentence doesn't really make sense because suffering always is someone's suffering. It needs to be some entity, right? So when you're comparing suffering of someone, existing person, with the suffering of someone who doesn't really exist, you're sort of deducing your argument from falsehood because you're it's those two entities are incomparable like the living person and hypothetical person sorry
[58:29] Let me just i think i can sum it up and please i'm sorry if i get it wrong and please correct me of course so you have to compare entities with the capacity to suffer in order to comparing suffering to non-suffering yeah yeah and so nobody says i'm depressed relative to a rock or a cloud, right? So a person who doesn't exist has no capacity for suffering. So comparing the suffering of somebody who does exist to somebody who doesn't exist is apples to oranges. It's an invalid comparison.
[59:00] Yeah.
[59:01] Okay.
[59:03] And that's fraudulent.
[59:04] Yeah, it's like trying to do math with colors. It's just a category error, right?
[59:08] Exactly, exactly. So if you have a computer program and you have a database and let's say you wanted to compare age of person who's been deleted from a database with a person who is in a database, the program is going to crash because the logic is unsound, right? It's not a valid...
[59:24] Yeah, in technical terms, it's called a null comparison.
[59:27] Yeah, yeah.
[59:28] Okay, a null is I don't know what the value is. I don't know if it's a date, a number. I don't know if it's a hex. I don't know if it's a blob. I don't know if it's an only object. I have no idea. And so if you're going to say, is X greater than or less than the number 10, then you can't answer it because you don't know what X is. It could be a color. It could be a category of horse. So unless you know it's a number, like you put it in an int or a double or an integer or a single or some of the sort of data type. So is his position, this friend of yours, is his position that, oh, life is suffering.
[1:00:09] Mm-hmm. Yes. I'm going to have to say something. No, sorry.
[1:00:15] Hang on, hang on, hang on. I'm not sure. Maybe I missed the answer to the question. Is his perspective that life is suffering?
[1:00:23] Yes, of course, yes.
[1:00:25] Okay. So is he saying that he is suffering in his life?
[1:00:33] Yes.
[1:00:34] Is he saying not that his life contains suffering, but that his life is suffering? In other words, there is no part of his life that is not suffering.
[1:00:43] I don't know. Not that far, but it's like part of it, sure, that it's suffering.
[1:00:49] Okay. I know we're guessing, and I'd love for him to call into the show because I think this natalism stuff is incredibly narcissistic and selfish, and I'd love to unpack that with him. So what percentage of life, not just his life, but what percentage of life as a whole would he think is suffering?
[1:01:10] He was telling me how his entire early childhood was suffering because he had a really hard time at school, like bullying, and that's sort of where he draws that.
[1:01:24] No, that's not life is suffering. That's his parents neglected to protect him. So I'm not sure why life is suffering because his parents didn't protect him. Because that's your job as a parent is to make sure your kids don't get bullied, right? So his parents failed. It's like saying, well, all life is starvation because my parents didn't feed me. And I'm like, what? That's a bizarre category error, isn't it?
[1:01:51] Well if I'm going to be playing sort of his character here he would say that you know maybe you can protect the person in some regard but the suffering is inevitable and it's going to come in some way like in the end you're going to be old and die the best case scenario is that you're going to die old and you're going to suffer then you're sort of bringing this into existence.
[1:02:21] Okay, does your friend have a favorite movie or book?
[1:02:26] Probably, yeah. Probably some Batman.
[1:02:30] Okay, let's say that his favorite movie is Batman, like the good one with Heath Ledger, right? Okay, so let's say that his favorite movie is Batman, right? Let me ask you this. Does Batman, the movie, have an ending?
[1:02:47] Yeah.
[1:02:47] Right So Batman the movie Has an ending Does he enjoy watching the movie Even though he knows it's going to end.
[1:03:01] That's a good point.
[1:03:03] Every day has an ending. It's called sleep. Most days, anyway. Does that mean he can't enjoy the day because it's going to have an end? What about a song? Oh, I love this song. No, I hate this song because it doesn't go on forever and ever. Ah, man, it ends. Right, so anyway, it's all just nonsense. See, he enjoys tons of things even though they have a finite span of existence. And so it all is just petulant nonsense. What's happened, I guarantee you that this, this is as certain to me as two and two make four, is that in order to forgive his parents, he's turned their shitty parenting into life itself is suffering. It's like, no, your parents failed to protect you. They were bad parents. And rather than confront them, you now don't want to have kids. And I bet you him not wanting to have kids has a lot to do with passive aggressive stuff against his parents because he's mad at them. and so he's developed all of this nonsense. It's all just psychological cope and crap. And unfortunately, he's having a PhD. Life is suffering. It's like, why are you doing a PhD? You know, your education is going to end. Why would you get a PhD since your brain is going to turn to dust anyway? But that's different. It's like a bunch of nonsense. Not you, but this stuff.
[1:04:22] Yeah. Oh, my God. Okay, so I'll just...
[1:04:27] If he speaks English, just tell him to call into my show. We'll sort this shit out. We'll get him to talk to his parents and deal with the actual stuff. It's like all these feminists. It's like, yeah, you get it. We get it. Your mom chose a bad guy to be your father. I get it. But you need to go and talk to your mother and talk to your father and not take it out on men in general. That's just a ridiculous cope. Sorry, you were going to say.
[1:04:47] No, I was going to say that it's... That would be awesome. I would love to hear this debate. because I feel my discussions with him are always, he just sends me some screenshots from Kant or something at the end.
[1:05:03] Yeah.
[1:05:05] It would be cool for him to go into his weight category.
[1:05:10] Yeah, no, there's this professor of logic, he's still floating around on X, I think. He says he's reviewing my book. He's reviewing my book so that he doesn't have a debate with me and I'd love to have a debate. you know, I'm actually not particularly pleased with libertarians and atheists who haven't debated UPB. I think it's really, really cowardly because it has had a big effect on the moral universe. And if it's wrong, then people should correct it. And since I've always invited people to debate UPB and they don't do it, I think that's very, very cowardly. If they think it's wrong, then they, you know, I think that there are certain moral theories that are absolutely wrong. And so what I do is I argue against them, right? And because I think it's really important if something is wrong, like if you're a doctor and somebody is saying you should rub maggots into an open wound, wouldn't you, and people were listening to that and it was having a big effect, wouldn't you debate that person to have them not put forward that stuff?
[1:06:06] Anyway, so that's neither here nor there.
[1:06:08] All right. Well, thank you. Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
[1:06:11] No, thank you very much. I'm very content. This made my day, actually. Thank you so much for having me. You're very welcome.
[1:06:18] And I think, of course, it is very funny when people say, oh, life is suffering. Well, maybe if you spend your whole life getting educated and not doing anything with it, maybe that's suffering. I can tell you that the taxpayers are suffering because they're not getting their money's worth from this guy who just takes all of this stuff. You know, if you're going to take, and I took this pretty seriously because, you know, I got educated as an adult in Canada. Just a moment, sorry. I got educated in Canada, which meant that the Canadian taxpayers, to some degree, funded my education in English literature, the arts, and the history of philosophy. I got to the graduate school level. And I took a certain amount of money from the Canadian taxpayers to get educated. And I feel very strongly a responsibility to pay that back by giving them their money's worth in terms of their education. But so sorry, Tomas, go ahead.
[1:07:15] Hey, Stefan. I was wondering about the podcast that you made yesterday. I think it was about evil. And I was thinking because I remember hearing from Jordan Peterson. He said that when around 4% of the population has some time of psychopathy, the non-psychopathic people, they tend to rebel against them and renew the cycle in a way. I don't know if that's understood.
[1:07:46] So, I'm trying to think of an analogy here, or not an analogy, but a comparison, and tell me if this fits. So, in the Inuit communities, like what used to be called the Eskimos, the people in little ice huts up north. So, they have a name, and I can't remember what it is. It's a name for the kind of guy who pretends to be injured so that he doesn't have to go and hunt. And then, when all the men are out hunting, he tries to sleep with their wives. And what they do is they just take this guy out hunting and they either kill him or put him on a little ice floe and push him away so that he can't get back. And they just remove him from the tribe. Is it something like that?
[1:08:31] It is indeed something like that. But let's imagine maybe that there are plenty of guys like this. And when a certain threshold is surpassed, so for example, say 4% of the population are like him, then the people start to rebel against him. And maybe that this that you said happens and and they kill him while hunting or or similar things. So I was thinking.
[1:08:56] Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. OK. Yeah. So are you asking for my response to Jordan Peterson's argument?
[1:09:04] No, I'm just trying to develop the argument from that.
[1:09:08] No, I fundamentally don't agree.
[1:09:11] Okay, can I listen, hear you then?
[1:09:15] Well, sure. I mean, because we have this modern technocratic, all-encompassing, deduct your income at source and use your children as collateral to borrow and bribe your way into power, we have psychopaths and sociopaths running the world, and we don't have the capacity.
[1:09:34] To ostracize them or remove them from society. So because the state is so powerful, we can't we can't do any of that with our leaders as a whole. And we can vote them out and so on, but you just get another one usually to vote back in. So I think at a tribal level, at a tribal level, you got to sleep sometimes and everyone's more or less the same size. And as people age out, they get weaker and so on. So at a tribal level, at the Inuit level, yeah, that can happen, but not at a modern, massive technocratic state that's half the entire economy and has satellites, NSA spyware, facial recognition, and endless censorship, then we don't have the capacity to do that kind of stuff.
[1:10:23] I mean, why didn't people do it in the Soviet Union under Lenin or Stalin or Brezhnev or Khrushchev, right? They were all a bunch of sociopaths, maybe not so much Khrushchev, but then he was raised in a much better way. But, I mean, certainly Stalin and Lenin and some Brezhnev, why don't they do that with the leader of North Korea? Why don't they just take him out as a sociopath or a psychopath? Well, because he's got all the weapons and all the army and surveillance and he can just disappear people and throw them into gulags. So we don't have the capacity at a nation-state level to ostracize people who are psychopaths, because the first thing they do is go for the kind of power that you couldn't possibly get in a tribal environment. But sorry, go ahead.
[1:11:14] So that actually fits with my following question, because I also tend to agree into that, because I tend to think that psychopath sociopath population keeps growing. And if we add maybe a genetic component to that, so maybe sociopathy and psychopathy are somewhat inheritable by genetics.
[1:11:34] I think there's a predisposition to it that is inheritable by genetics, but it usually requires specific triggers such as child abuse for it to manifest, if that makes sense.
[1:11:45] Right. It makes sense that maybe it's, let's say, 50% inheritance, and then you have to activate it by mistreating the child or something like that.
[1:11:55] Yeah. Sorry, one of the premier researchers in psychopathy, his name is Dr. Robert Hare.
[1:12:01] I think he wrote The Psychopath Handbook or something like that.
[1:12:04] And Dr. Robert Hare was adopted. And at one point, he was doing a scan or looking at a scan of a brain and a brain that was active and doing things. and he said, oh my God, that's a total psychopath brain. And then he realized it was himself that he'd actually put himself in the experiment. I can't remember if it was on purpose or by accident. And he said, but I'm not a psychopath. Although my wife says I can be a little cold from time to time and so on. And one of the reasons he believes that although he has a psychopath brain, he's not a psychopath as he was adopted and raised in a very loving and affectionate family and became a very productive and helpful member of society. And while a little cold, according to his wife was not a psychopath. And that's just from memory. So I apologize if I've got any of the details wrong.
[1:12:48] And of course, in my Bomb and the Brain series, I talked about a particular gene for violence that was in a male population. And 100% of the boys with that gene who were exposed to physical abuse became criminals. But those who were not exposed to physical abuse was a much lower percentage. So I think it's the old length and breadth question, nature versus nurture. But I think there are genetic predispositions. You know, some people can smoke their whole lives and don't get sick. You know, other people smoke just a little bit and get sick. And so I think you have genes of susceptibility to cigarette smoke, but you still need to cigarette smoke, if that makes sense.
[1:13:32] It does make sense. So then I'll continue to my question that this is will be my actual question um what would happen if finally in a society the psychopaths and the sociopaths win and they they reproduce more maybe they they start inheriting these genes or they start changing culture so they nurture sociopaths and psychopaths can a society come back from that and and be healthy
[1:13:57] Again that's where but that's where we are what do you mean if that's where we are.
[1:14:00] You're right
[1:14:02] I mean sociopaths and psychopaths are in charge and And culture and schools and the media are generally promoting psychopathy because cold-eyed violence, you know, the guy walking away from the explosion behind him looking all kinds of cools with his sunglasses. I mean, that's all sociopathy, right? And the women, like, you will always see this. It's wild in movies. Like, somebody, you know, beats the living crap out of five guys. I saw this in Reacher. In Reacher, which is on Amazon Prime, there's a scene where, I think this is the first episode or two, so sorry if there's spoilers, but the main character gouges out somebody's eyes and is perfectly fine afterwards. Is not troubled, doesn't have any problems, and is completely unruffled and has no particular emotions of any kind and goes through life, you know, slaughtering people, gouging their eyes out, breaking their arms, and so on.
[1:14:56] Perfectly fine. And in fact, he's portrayed as cool and neat. He's six foot five, 240 pounds of pure muscle, gets all the girls. And this, of course, is just promoting psychopathy and sociopathy, in my opinion. So, I mean, this is just one example out of many. The number of people who commit violence with no aftermath, no psychological problems, no issues. You know, like the majority of men in the Second World War never fired their weapons. That's how tough it is to get people to be murderers. But of course, in media, people just murder, kill, slaughter all the time, have no negative effects whatsoever, no PTSD, no shell shock, no psychological problems, no sleep problems, no nothing. Like The Accountant is a movie, I think there's two movies of them with Ben Affleck, where he plays a guy who just commits the most appalling violence. And now he's, I think he's supposed to be autistic or something like that. Yeah, commits the most appalling violence. No problems. You see this with the movies with The Rock in it all the time, just absolutely horrifying levels of violence. Brad Pitt does this as well. No problems, no challenges, no issues, and no conscience, not troubled by anything. Quentin Tarantino is past master of this normalizing sociopathy. I mean, I think he's just about one of the most corrupt and ugly souls on the planet with a big megaphone but uh that's that's how his life is right i mean uh in the movie pulp fiction right uh the.
[1:16:21] The John Travolta character and the Samuel L. Jackson character, you know, again, spoilers, you know, there's a bump in the road and they blow a kid's head off who's in the back of the car. No problems, no issues. Oh, they get Harvey Keitel. Oh, this is fun. This is great coffee. Good. Ha ha. Right. They don't, they have no, they suffer no ill effects. It's a comedy. They're wearing funny t-shirts and so on.
[1:16:42] And it is just a cold eyed, complete, wild, ugly, vicious sociopathy. I've never watched much of Kill Bill, but it's the same thing. Just absolutely brutal violence. and everything's fine afterwards. There's no issues. There's no problems. There's no, I mean, you read something like.
[1:16:59] All Quiet on the Western Front and you get just a very strong and powerful sense of just how brutal the war was and shell shock came out of the First World War, how dissociative it was. You look at the Vietnam Vets who came back. You look at the people who came back from the Gulf War, the people who came back from Iraq, the people who came back from Afghanistan and so on. Absolutely brutal what has happened to their psychology and yet all that is portrayed in the media is people being psychotically violent with absolutely no ill effects to their psyches whatsoever. And again, there's a few exceptions here and there. I mean, even if we look at something like Silence of the Lambs, where Hannibal Lecter, Hannibal the Cannibal, right, played by Anthony Hopkins, of course, you know, he's considered kind of cool and he takes vengeance on some other guy, having him over for dinner and all of that stuff. And it's all just totally fine and funny and cool and hip and Dexter. And I mean, honestly, the list could go on and on.
[1:17:56] And so, yeah, we've got sociopaths in charge and sociopaths running the media. And they're programming people to be sociopaths, to dehumanize others, right? This is the whole white privilege, white guilt stuff, to dehumanize others. This is for feminists to dehumanize men and view them as predators. It's all about unlocking people's capacity to commit violence without guilt. And of course, I was demonized myself in the media. And then when I was out doing speeches and so on, we got bomb threats, death threats, physical attacks upon the venues, attacks on the buses, bringing people out to hear arguments about morality and philosophy. And so, yeah, sociopathy, the way you spread it is you create people.
[1:18:37] Who are not people. You create people like they would say this about Jews. They would say that the Hutsis and the Tutsis, that they're inhuman, that they're plagues, that they're viruses, that they're cockroaches, I think was in Ethiopia, I think it was, or Somalia. No, Ethiopia, where they just completely dehumanized. You can see this called people Nazis, and there was the unclean aspect of COVID that the people were selfish and inhuman. And once you dehumanize people can commit violence against them with no problem because they just view them as inhuman, like they view them as cockroaches or coyotes or lice or something like that. And it is absolutely brutal. And it is a continual process. Once you see it, it's almost impossible to unsee. Just this absolute dehumanization. There's a movie called, oh gosh, what was it? It was with Colin Firth. And there was a Christian church. The Christians were saying something racist, I think. And then he's got the whole, um, it's got a whole like five minute scene of him brutally slaughtering the Christians, uh, for saying something, uh, that was perceived to be racist, or maybe it was racist or whatever. But then apparently you can just mass slaughter people for this, you know, this came out with Hulk Hogan recently that Hulk Hogan used the N word and was completely banished from public life, even though he apologized. Uh, public racism is absolutely unforgivable, but, um.
[1:20:04] I mean, Ozzy Osbourne blew away 17 of his cats using a shotgun and literally tried to murder his wife. And he was mourned like it was the passing of the second coming. It was just this wild. So sorry for the long rant. But yeah, this dehumanization is really actually quite alarming. And I really don't think it's being talked about often enough. This de-platforming, as I talked about in Orlando many years ago, de-platforming is a prelude to mass violence. You don't even get a voice. You don't get to speak. What you say is so unspeakable and so evil. You know, punch a Nazi. Well, it turns out just about anyone who disagrees with you is a Nazi and can be punched. And people are worried about Nazis, though there's no functional Nazi party anywhere in the world, but they're not worried about communists, which are infesting academia. So anyway, long rant. I appreciate your patience, but I'm not sure how a society where we're ruled by psychopaths and the media and the educational system are promoting psychopathy. I'm not sure how that's too different from what we've got going on.
[1:21:04] So, yeah, I do agree. I remember myself being way more sensitive as a child,
[1:21:08] and I think it's getting worse and worse with the years.
[1:21:11] I think lately it's been the media, it's been the violence shown in the media and different media is worse than before. And continuing to that, maybe this would be my last question so I don't make it so long. I'm a new father, so what do we do with our children? and do we protect them from the real world in a sense? What would you recommend? What's your idea on this?
[1:21:35] Well, the world is who we are with. I mean, there's a world out there, of course, and we should definitely keep an eye on it. So you build fences because there are wolves, but once you're inside the fences, you enjoy time with your family because at least the wolves are kept at bay. So with regards to your kids, you create a positive and healthy environment full of rational and happy people, and that's their world. Now, there's a world out there, of course, again, you've got to keep your eye on it, but the best we can do is create a good world for our children through the choices that we're able to make, which is in who's in their life, rather than things which we can't change, which is the general society. Does that make sense?
[1:22:15] It does make sense. So that's why I'm thinking, I think you mentioned it as well, homeschooling and yeah, homeschooling at least. That makes sense to me because you choose what to teach your children and maybe you also choose who to socialize with then.
[1:22:30] Yeah, yeah, for sure. All right. Well, thanks, man. And you're welcome back anytime. Always have great questions. All right. Roger. Roger Dodger. Hey, I remember you from X. Roger Marquez. What is in your mind, my friend? Hello.
[1:22:50] Thanks for having me. It is great to accompany you, elevating the conversation on next or Twitter, as you call it, to bring more life to philosophy. I myself tried that, but you have a bit more followers, so kudos to you.
[1:23:13] What I wanted to talk about here is graduating from merely just learning philosophy in school which in my case sucked real bad I actually got traumatized into thinking that philosophy according to school is incredibly boring and useless yeah and useless but then after 10 years of kind of recovering from the trauma of of being exposed to such a horrible presentation of philosophy. The pandemic happened and through the pandemic I noticed some things. I noticed at my workplace people were freaking out, interpersonal relationships were kind of being put to the test. And so I started to figure out that maybe I'm not the person I need to be to
[1:24:11] deal with such environment, such difficulties, such trials.
[1:24:17] So basically my entry point to philosophy was ancient Roman Stoicism. And then I went from there. Basically I...
[1:24:29] The people that Marcus Aurelius references, I also studied them, and so on and so forth. And so I heard by you, you also said that you are self-taught in philosophy.
[1:24:46] I'm sorry, I didn't get that. I said I'm a what?
[1:24:51] Correct me if I'm wrong. Did you say that you studied philosophy during the past 40 years as a self-taught endeavor?
[1:25:03] Well, not entirely. Not entirely. So I don't want to go over my whole resume, but I studied philosophy both at the undergraduate and the graduate level. And, of course, I was on the debating team, so I learned a lot about debate and hopefully not sophistry, but, you know, how to create logical arguments and so on. And my graduate school thesis was on the history of philosophy involving four major Western philosophers from the Greeks to John Locke. So obviously, it's not like I've got some postdoctoral work from Stanford on philosophy, but I did have a fair amount of training outside of my own self-study. But go ahead.
[1:25:40] Okay, so sure. So you have quite a bit more of formal training than I knew about. Sorry, I didn't.
[1:25:50] No, listen, there's no reason why you need to know my resume and my history, so there's nothing to apologize for, so yeah, go ahead.
[1:25:57] Yeah, sure. I also listened to your UPB book. I thought it was really interesting. And especially your critique of the concepts of God and state. I really do agree that these are major boogeymen that human culture has created and it puts communities particularly vulnerable to tyrants. Tyrants will use these as tools with huge glee to make people do stuff that they want to do or keep them in power or such.
[1:26:38] I will ask you, sorry, I will because I appreciate your feedback, but I will request that you get to a question.
[1:26:48] Okay, sure, sure. So my question is, Since we live in a universe that is so self-consistent, we literally, scientifically studying it through physics, etc., with math, we can find these truths through inductive and deductive logic that are really strong and adamant and bulletproof. And so couldn't someone say that since the universe is so self-consistent and so reliable for us to philosophize using logic, et cetera, isn't the essence behind this extreme level of confidence in the universe actually something that we could label with a divine label, basically?
[1:27:40] I think I understand what you mean. Let me repeat it back to you and make sure I get it, and of course, let me know if I don't. So, given how consistent, rational, and objective the universe is, and given that we have the capacity, of course, as thinking beings to understand and appreciate the rationality and universality of the universe, is that not an argument for the universe having been created in a rational manner through God, and our minds also having been created by God to process and appreciate the rationality of his creation. And I'm sorry, I know I'm paraphrasing a bit, but is it along those lines?
[1:28:19] It's adding a bit. I wouldn't go so far. I spent many years as an atheist as well. I wouldn't go so far to make that leap to say it was created with purpose, etc. But through our empirical study, it really is like this. So at least it has some kind of quality or essence that gives it these attributes of self-consistency.
[1:28:47] Hang on. I'm so sorry. Please go ahead. I apologize.
[1:28:51] It's a bit like to analogize. Say we implement a simulator and we implement features so that it can simulate evolution of simple biological beings. So just because we implemented those features, these virtual beings in the simulation, they actually undergo evolution and change through generation, etc. If we hadn't implemented that, of course it would not happen. And so as we see our universe, our universe is quote-unquote implemented. We do not know if with a purpose or not, if by a being or not. But it actually is like that and we can benefit from this, basically. So if we can benefit from this, it's something I think we could appreciate that it's really awesome like that.
[1:29:45] Okay, so it's my understanding that your argument is something like the universe was created by God for people.
[1:29:56] Not necessarily an anthropocentric view like that.
[1:30:03] Sorry, what was the purpose of the universe? If we assume that God creates it, what is the purpose of the universe? Why would God have created it? Do you think? I mean, we don't know necessarily the mind of God, but I assume you'd have some idea.
[1:30:17] Well, there are many, many hypotheses.
[1:30:20] No, no, but what do you think is a likely, like, if God goes to the trouble of creating the universe, I know it's not a lot of trouble for an all-powerful, all-knowing being, but if God has created the universe, like, if a person creates a zoo, it is for the purposes of storing or keeping and displaying animals for either philanthropy or profit or both, right? So the zoo is created for that. If somebody builds an apartment building, it's so that they can rent out the apartments. If somebody paints a painting, it's so that other people can look at and enjoy and hopefully buy or appreciate the painting. When I produce a show, it is with the goal of having people understand some philosophical argument better or something like that. So there is a purpose. A guy who wants to build a bridge builds a bridge, and the purpose of the bridge is to convey things across a gap.
[1:31:09] So if the universe is created by God, it must have a purpose. And since God is focused upon moral arguments and the entry to heaven or the potential punishments of hell, then we assume that the universe is created by God as a moral experiment to hopefully encourage people to pursue the good rather than be corrupted. And is that something fair to say? Because God is very much around morality, and human beings are the only beings we know of in the universe capable of comprehending God and following moral commandments. So I would assume that God has created the universe as, I won't say a moral experiment, but as a moral stage where humanity can play out free will and hopefully choose the good.
[1:32:01] Well, that is a possibility But I don't think there is any way to verify If that is the case No,
[1:32:08] No, no There are ways to verify if that is the case Okay, what do you think God most wants from humanity? And I'm not trying to trick you or trap you or anything It's a genuine question Genuine, open-hearted, open-minded question What do you think, or what does God say That he most wants from humanity?
[1:32:29] Well, I have no idea what God says because I don't actually have any, you know, 100% sure words from God. And I also don't have...
[1:32:41] I'm sorry, are you a religious man yourself?
[1:32:46] I was. Well, I was born in Roman Catholicism.
[1:32:50] Are you an atheist now?
[1:32:53] No, I really quickly turned to atheism, but now I'm just studying philosophy, and so I'm really not sure if God does not exist or if God exists.
[1:33:08] Okay, alright, so I thought we were arguing some theology here, but that's not your perspective, right?
[1:33:15] Yeah, I really don't claim to have any theological knowledge.
[1:33:21] Well, you do have theological knowledge because you were raised a Catholic. But okay, sorry about that. I thought you were making an argument as to the reason why God might have created the universe. So I'll just touch on my argument briefly and then we'll get to the next caller. Thank you for your patience here.
[1:33:41] So if somebody says, I have created a giant zoo, it covers 10 acres, and it has one mouse in it, we would have a question. And we would say, well, hang on a second. If you've created a zoo, which is for the storage and display of animals for profit, fun, and philanthropy, if you have created a zoo that is 10 acres in size, but you have only one mouse, We have a question, which is, if the purpose of the zoo is to have animals, why are there no animals, or almost no animals in the zoo? So then the question with regards to the creation of the universe is, if the universe is created as a moral sage wherein mankind can play out moral goals of loving God and doing good and getting to heaven, then why is like 99.99, almost infinity percent of the universe completely empty? And why is there life on only one of the eight planets in the solar system and why is there no other life that we've ever been able to detect in any other circumstance. So that's the argument I was going to try and get to. All right, Monsieur Scott, I am all ears. What is on your mind?
[1:34:52] Hi, thank you for taking my call. I hope you're having a good night. I have a question that might be particularly applicable to you considering you have a daughter and you speak on male, uh, male, female relations. And that is when I, uh, I find this comes up quite a bit in conversations where we're talking about gender, this or that, where people say, well, I can't believe you have that view considering you have two daughters. And, uh, it's a very, um, it's clearly an ad hom attack. It's, uh, it's quite hurtful. Um, and, uh, I'm, I'm just curious how you respond to that. Cause I'm sure you've seen that on X, and I'm sure you've had that in real life as well.
[1:35:30] Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, you know, I have the enormous blessing of happening to live with two absolutely wonderful females. Our daughter, of course, is homeschooled. My wife and I both stay home. And so I'm not only living with, but, you know, 24-7, with some exceptions, of course, with two absolutely delightful and wonderful females. And I actually just found out this week that my daughter has created three alt accounts to troll me on X, which I can't help but admire. I really can't help but admire that. Yeah, I mean, as far as that goes, I.
[1:36:11] So you say, oh, I have this particular, so how could you have this perspective if you have a daughter? And it's like, well, I mean, a lot of what I do is for my daughter,
[1:36:20] right? I mean, you know, as a parent yourself and you have two, I have only one.
[1:36:24] But, you know, most of what we do is for the sake of our kids. You know, she and my wife are the first things I think about when I get up and the last thing I think about before I go to bed. And in between, I get some thoughts or philosophy, hopefully from time to time. but yeah a lot of it is around creating a good world for our children and a good world for our children involves smart people having babies so i talk about pronatalism a good life for the future is obviously boys asking girls out from time to time so i encourage that and i do not want my daughter to grow up in a world where women are not held responsible for what they do i do not want my daughter growing up in a world where she has all the political and economic power of a full adult, but is given the moral responsibility of your average poop-smearing toddler. I do not want my daughter to grow up in a world where she is praised for things outside of her control and never ever receives any negative feedback for the things within her control. So the idea that I would be doing things against what is best for my daughter, it would be, and it is really, it's an old Socratic question.
[1:37:37] Because when Socrates was dragged in front of the court in Athens by Miletus.
[1:37:44] Then Miletus said, well, you don't believe in the gods of the city and you corrupt the youth. You don't do what is best for the city, right? And then he said, well, you know, Socrates said to Miletus, well, then you must know what is best for the city and you must know what is best for the young.
[1:38:00] So tell me, what am I doing that is wrong? And what would you suggest that is the best? And Meletus doesn't really want to answer because he knows he's a sophist and he is not saying anything that is even remotely true. And so it is the question. So how can you believe this if you have a daughter and you want what's best for your daughter and so on? It's like, how do you know? How do you know that what I'm doing is not best for my daughter? How do you know what is best for all women? And how do you know that I don't know that? right and just ask those questions because you know listen man i'm i'm seriously keen on getting schooled i love to get schooled i love to get owned i love because you know if i've got an error that is invisible to me that is bad for my mind that is bad for what it is that i do you know i've always said this to my wife like if i'm driving and i look like i'm about to make a mistake tell me don't let me make a mistake right if i mean i can't remember this ever happening but Like if I'm coming up on a four-way stop and I don't see the stop sign for whatever reason, right, then I want my wife to say, hey, there's a stop sign. You got to stop, right? I want that kind of feedback. You know, if you've ever had to take medicine, if I forget to take medicine, you know, you got to take it, I don't know, four times a day or whatever, right? I forget to take medicine. I want my wife to remind me.
[1:39:21] You know, if you're carrying a big heavy box and you're about to step on a roller skate, you want people to tell you so that you don't fall down the stairs or something. So I love to get fixed. So if people tell me that I'm wrong about something, that I'm foolish about something, that I've got something, I mean, yeah, tell me. Absolutely. Completely. I mean, you have to have credibility with me. You have to accept the two and two make four before you can correct me on a damn thing. But no, so if people say your beliefs are harmful to your daughter.
[1:39:52] I'll be like, okay,
[1:39:53] Well, tell me. tell me how you know what is harmful for my daughter and tell me how you know what is good and right for all women and you know of course they don't have a clue uh it's just a bunch of political and woke nonsense but yeah just just ask people questions and you know be willing to be schooled and educated you know i mean i can't tell you how many probably a hundred or two hundred people over the course of my career i've you know tell me i'm completely wrong i'm like hey man let's have a debate i've got time this afternoon let's let's hop on the line let's hash it out i mean I'm keen, you know? I mean, this professor of logic wants to take me on, fantastic, you know? I mean, I can't lose because either I'm right, which is good, or I'm corrected, which is even better because it allows me to stop persisting in error. So does that make any sense yet? Just let people teach you.
[1:40:40] Yeah, and that's very similar to the approach that I've taken saying, you know, how do you know what's best for my daughter? Like, what you think is best, there's a lot of assumptions built into what you think is best for anyone in the world. Whether you think pushing, for example, for more traditional roles for women in society, just as an example. So you don't think women can career? It's like, no, I never said that.
[1:41:08] I don't tell you, you don't think that women can what?
[1:41:10] No uh if i were to say pushing pushing against like girl boss uh the girl boss mentality for example um trying not to raise our daughters with the idea that they have to uh chase adventure like moana rather than uh watch more traditional stories um from 50 or 80 years ago um like uh well what you you don't think your your daughter can have a like how is that good for your daughter or you don't think they can have a career. Like, no, they can have a career. Hold on a second. But no, that's not what I want to push. And that's not the values I hope to instill in them. And the idea that all of this can boil down to just a paycheck and that's how they measure their self-worth, like that's a pretty big assumption that you're making by saying that that's, you know, the be-all end-all in terms of their value to society.
[1:42:03] Well, and don't be afraid to be fairly assertive. Like the, how dare you phrase, I think is underutilized. You know, like if, if somebody says, well, what you're doing is bad for your daughter. It's like, okay, so what is the purpose of life? I don't know, make money. It's like, well, that's not a very good purpose of life. I mean, you need some money to live, but it's not a very good purpose of life. Oh, be happy. It's like, well, how dare you assume that you know what makes my daughter happy? I don't assume that. I give her choices and options. I remind her that there are choices and options. She doesn't have to have kids. She doesn't have to get a job. She doesn't have to go to school. She can make her choices about all of these things. Like, how dare you come into my life and tell me that you know what is best for my daughter when you don't even know me or my daughter at all? Like, how dare you? Like, it's okay to push back on these fracking busybody Karen heads and could be male too. Like just people need some humility. I mean, humility is such a great virtue that, you know, sometimes we have to shame people into recovering it.
[1:43:02] That's an interesting phrase to use. Thanks. That's helpful. I have one more question if you don't mind. You were posting today or or maybe it was last night, about sort of self-reflection or self-diagnosis. And I'm wondering of like mental conditions or personality defects. I don't know. I don't remember the specifics, but my thought is on like ADHD, autism, stuff like that where people diagnose themselves later in life and sort of reflect back on a childhood that they may or may not remember in its entirety or at all potentially. Um and how you how you uh reverse someone that you think is going down sort of a rabbit hole of self-reflection and turning it into sort of an identity um potentially getting validated by those around them or a therapist or um culture at large going down a tick-tock rabbit hole that sort of stuff yeah
[1:44:00] I mean i i also posted like some people end up in a abusive relationship with their own self-diagnosis. And, you know, this comes out of the, I mean, I posted, I think it was yesterday, that most introversion is just PTSD from being neglected as a child. There's some data behind all of that. And people like, they're like, no, no, no, I'm an introvert, and it's totally fine, and F you, and blah, blah, blah. And of course, you know, the volatility and the triggered stuff is kind of tragically important, but how do you know? I mean, how do you know what you're capable of? How do you know what is biological, what is genetic, what is environmental, what is open to your choice? I mean, and I say this because, I mean, I, when I was very little, I was, you know, very, very shy, very shy. And I worked at it and became less shy over time. And, you know, that was a slog and a half.
[1:45:05] And I enjoy time alone, I enjoy time socializing, and it's all great. And so when people are like, well, no, no, no, I'm an introvert, and they just box themselves in and say, well, it's 100% biological, 100% genetic, I can't change it. It's like, you don't know that. You feel, and you notice this with the same sort of languages, the same language that people use. And it's like, for introverts, it's like, you know, my social battery drains. It's like, no, you don't have a social battery. We're a social animal.
[1:45:36] And it could be, it could be that your introversion has to do with the feeling of a lack of self-worth because your parents didn't pay attention to you or take delight in or seek out your company. I mean, I always want my daughter to know how much I enjoy her company. And, you know, last night she wanted to get some steps in and it was like 1115. I was pretty dog tired. She's like, hey, you want to go for a walk? I'm like, yes, absolutely. Because when you move out next year or the year after, whatever, I'm not going to look back and say, gee, I wish I'd had fewer walks with my daughter, you know, when she was living here, because when she's gone, it's, you know, it's going to be like a hole in my heart, right? So she knows how much I enjoy her company and how precious and what a treasure she is to me and to all of that. She's actually, she has ordered these little spray bottles. And when I do things that are, quote, bugging her, she, you know, like you do with cats, like she sprays me with a spray bottle, completely hilarious. She had it in the car and I made a joke at her expense. She just sprayed me in the ear. It's absolutely hilarious. But yeah, she's really funny and a great delight. And so, yeah, people self-diagnosis. Well, I'm this and I'm that. And it's like, how do you know? Look, I'm not talking about, you know, severe autists, you know, the 25% who are non-verbal. I'm not talking about anything like that. I mean, the stuff where there really is, you know, very, very clear stuff.
[1:46:53] But, you know, people, they just fall in love with the, oh, I'm this, I'm ADHD, I'm this. It's like, maybe, I mean, I can't diagnose anyone, neither can I interfere with any formal diagnosis that's given by a professional. But I certainly would invite people that you don't want to brand yourself with a particular label, and then that's all you are. And there's all you can be, and there's no pushing against it. It's not like trying to will your eye color to change, to try and develop some freaking neuroplasticity. So i do think that there is a certain amount of just you know super duper falling in love like i'm now defined by this i am now uh this is this is who i am and it's like well maybe maybe but i mean most of my success in life as a whole such as has been has been absolutely going against.
[1:47:46] Everything that I was told I could expect out of life. You know, I mean, I don't want to give you the whole sob story because I mean, most people know it, but you know, I was born to a single mother household. She had catastrophic mental health issues. She actually did get institutionalized repeatedly over the course of my childhood. I've been paying my own bills since I was 15 with roommates and so on. And this was not, you know, I suffered extraordinary levels of chaos, madness, and violence and mysticism and all kinds of nutty stuff. My mom was really into psychic stuff, which is why one of the reasons I'm aware of how dangerous it can be. And if I had said anything about myself based upon my origin stories or based upon my self-definition, I would not have been able to do what I do. I absolutely steadfastly and foundationally refuse to put limits on what I can do. I will not do it because I don't have that vanity. I don't have the vanity to look inside and say, well, I know what I'm capable of, and I know what my capacities are, and I know what my limits are. Absolutely false. I will do things until they don't work. And absolutely true. A lot of things don't work for me in life, and I recognize my limitations, but I will not ever try and figure them out ahead of time because that is just fear-based, and that is vanity-based.
[1:49:05] And so I really, really have a problem with people who just, well, I'm an introvert, and I can't do this, and it's just wired into me. It's hard. I mean, I don't know, maybe, but maybe not. And if you just define yourself as that and never try and push through it or overcome it, you're probably leaving a lot of gold on the table, if that makes sense.
[1:49:27] Yeah, thank you.
[1:49:29] All right, thanks, man. All right, let's do another call or two. Thank you. You know, one day we will get through, like, everyone. I don't know that that day will be today. And sorry, I'm just going to people I have not talked to before. Herc. Herc, Herc. I'm thinking about that old cartoon, Hercules. Herc. Anyway, what's up, my friend? What's on your mind?
[1:49:56] Uh it's short for an indian name herkishan but anyway wait
[1:50:00] Are you saying to me that sing is an indian name hang on i gotta write this down next thing you know smith will be considered somewhat anglo anyway sorry go ahead.
[1:50:09] Uh the first time i heard you speak when you returned to twitter someone prompted you about uh there is no center politically in america i think was the uh That was the thought.
[1:50:24] That entails a lot of questions. Could you expand on what you were talking about there? Because you basically just said there is no center. And I'm curious because there are centrist ideologies, there are attempts to make centrist parties, but we're not really allowed to have competition here in America.
[1:50:45] Okay, so I'm not sure what your specific question is. I'm sorry if I missed it.
[1:50:50] You said there's no political center in America, I believe.
[1:50:54] I mean, that sounds a bit absolutist, but I would certainly say that the parties are further apart ideologically now than they certainly were when I was younger, and I think probably at any point since the Civil War.
[1:51:08] So you don't consider the Democrats a right-wing party?
[1:51:12] I don't consider the Democrats a right-wing party. What do you mean? The Democrats are specifically a left-wing party.
[1:51:19] Yeah, I don't see that, and many leftists don't see that.
[1:51:26] They had Bernie Sanders as a— I mean, if Bernie Sanders hadn't been shivved by Hillary Clinton, he might have been the nominee. What are you talking about?
[1:51:36] Well, that is an independent who's somewhat of an old-fashioned liberal.
[1:51:41] No, Bernie Sanders is like communist adjacent. What are you talking about?
[1:51:46] Well, he was much more socialist when he was younger, that's true. But he's pivoted to the Ukraine proxy war scam, and he's lost a lot of street cred with people in the socialist circles.
[1:52:00] Okay, are you going to try to tell me that Bernie Sanders is not on the left?
[1:52:04] No, I think he's an old-fashioned liberal. I think he's left of center like myself. I'm a green libertarian, and it's a little different than his political ideology.
[1:52:14] Sorry, are you saying that libertarians are on the left?
[1:52:17] No, I'm saying that left libertarians are slightly to the left.
[1:52:22] Sorry, you said green libertarians. Hang on, hang on. Sorry, you're racing through these definitions. I need to catch up. So I thought you said you were a green libertarian.
[1:52:30] Yes, it's a defunct party, so it's up to individuals like me to find candidates to define a left-of-center pragmatic platform in between the Greens and Libertarians.
[1:52:42] Okay, so what is a Green Libertarian?
[1:52:46] Well, a green libertarian believes that some federal authoritarianism will have to stay in place, whereas a libertarian socialist, which is also a left-of-center libertarian ideology, they believe that eventually it'll all get phased out and we'll have a pure libertarian centrist society.
[1:53:05] Okay, I'm sorry. It seems to me like you've just thrown a bunch of language against the wall and seeing if it sticks. Because libertarians, I mean, generally believe that a minimal government, the old joke is a government small enough to drown in a bathtub, that a government concerned only with police, the military, the courts, maybe prisons, that that's it for the government. So I'm not sure what you mean. Leftism is big government. Libertarianism is ridiculously small government. So when you say left libertarian, it's big little government. And that's a contradiction in terms. So if you can help me unravel that mystery, I'd appreciate it.
[1:53:46] Yes, it does have some contradictory elements. because left libertarians are more focused on the scope of the government's power. So we piss off pure libertarians in the center and conservative libertarians right of center.
[1:54:04] I don't know why. Sorry. I mean, who you piss off is not as relevant as trying to understand the philosophy. So when you say we're more concerned with the scope of government, I don't know what that means.
[1:54:17] The scope of its power is more important to tackle first. So job creation through government agencies like doing proper forestry that the private sector doesn't get a big payday out of is an example of a policy point from left libertarians that pisses off.
[1:54:37] Okay, so sorry. So left libertarians want the government to run the forests.
[1:54:43] Left libertarians want to take the place of the private sector when the private sector isn't making
[1:54:49] A okay i just please bro stop politicking me i just need an answer i'm trying to get these answers you just you just go on to a talking you want a.
[1:54:56] Yes or no question
[1:54:57] Yeah so left libertarians want to hang on hang on let me just make sure make sure i'm asking the right question or answering the right question so left libertarians want the government to run the forest to the forests.
[1:55:09] Unless the private sector does a better job sure yes
[1:55:13] What do you mean unless i mean you you have to let the private sector own it well they find out whether it does a better job what does that mean well.
[1:55:23] The the wildfires uh are sometimes a result of not clearing the brush and there's not a huge profit in hiring lots of people to do that work.
[1:55:36] Are you saying that the forest buyers are resulting from private industry?
[1:55:44] I'm saying there's a void that the government can fill, that the private sector is not filling at the moment.
[1:55:50] Okay. Are you saying, hang on, are you saying that people in the government should have the right to take millions of acres by force from the free market?
[1:56:02] No, I'm saying that it would be better for society at this point to create millions of jobs, cleaning up plastics in the ocean and the waterways.
[1:56:13] I don't care about your wish list. We're talking about political power here, bro.
[1:56:17] Okay.
[1:56:18] So are you saying that the government should initiate the use of force to take millions of acres through coercion?
[1:56:27] No, no, no, no. That is not what I'm saying.
[1:56:30] Okay, then the government doesn't run it. Then it's in the free market and people buy and sell it without government interference. So I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
[1:56:36] Okay, so I'm talking about a jobs program.
[1:56:40] No, oh God. I'm just trying to understand the mechanics. You're saying the government should run things, which means the government can initiate the use of force to control millions of acres. And if you go in and you try and do something on there, which I'm still talking. So if you go into the government land and you try and do something the government wants, they can call the cops. They can get you taken out by force. They can shoot you if you resist. If you build something on their land, you can't buy it. You can't own it. You can't homestead it. You can't do any of that. So the government uses its violent powers to take over millions of acres. Is that what you mean by government control of the forests?
[1:57:14] No, I mean federal lands.
[1:57:16] What? Is the federal part of the government? I don't understand anything anymore.
[1:57:22] There are billions of acres of federal lands in America.
[1:57:25] Right. And so that means that the government is using force to prevent free market transactions involving those lands, right? Do you not understand how governments work? I mean, you've been in politics for a while. You know the government initiates use of force, right?
[1:57:41] Well, I'm not an expert on debating.
[1:57:44] No, no, I'm not asking you to be an expert on debating. Do you know that the government controls land through threatening force against people who try to use it as if it were in the free market?
[1:57:55] Yes, that's a common theme among all libertarians.
[1:58:00] Okay, so then when I say the government is going to use force to prevent millions of acres to be used in the free market or be available to the free market, I'm not sure why that's an issue.
[1:58:10] Because they've already established it as federal land. Some of them are in violation of Indian treaties. It's a complicated scenario where Native tribes are still trying to get back some of the lands. And in some cases, they haven't even accept payments for those lands.
[1:58:31] Yeah, but why would government contracts be valid in a free market? I mean, when slavery was ended, slave contracts weren't valid, right?
[1:58:38] True, but we don't live in a free market. We live in a fascist place.
[1:58:42] No, but you're a libertarian, which means that should be your ideal, right? To have as much private property and free market and voluntary interactions as possible, right?
[1:58:54] Well, as possible, if it's for the greater good, that would be the caveat with left libertarians.
[1:59:01] Okay. I mean, you know the general question. Who determines, who has the power and the brilliance, if not the downright omniscience, to know what is the greater good? Who has the vanity to say, I know what the greater good is for millions and millions and tens of millions and hundreds to millions of individuals? Who has the godlike reasoning powers and omniscience to know what is the greater good?
[1:59:27] Well, unfortunately, we've delegated that power to the executive branch, and they have created agencies like the EPA, who unfortunately do the exact opposite of their mandate.
[1:59:39] Sure. I mean, that's what coercion corrupts, right? So, government programs do the opposite of their stated intention. So, why would you want the government to control millions of acres, you know, in a sort of ideal future society, why is it you would want the government to control millions of acres through force?
[1:59:56] Well, an ideal society would be pure libertarianism, like Friedman, his son, wrote in The Machinery of Freedom. So some left libertarians, like the libertarian socialists, think it's just a temporary state.
[2:00:11] I don't think what is a temporary state. I don't know what that means.
[2:00:15] That there will be some federal oversight and authoritarianism. Like endangered species, like monitoring the usage of water that flows through many different states, so on and so forth.
[2:00:27] So they believe that some human beings can handle power and other human beings can't. So the people in the free market can't handle voluntary economic power, but the people in the government can handle brutal universal coercive power. So voluntarism corrupts, but political power ennobles and people can handle that kind of power. Is that right?
[2:00:50] I wouldn't frame it that way, but I understand where you're coming from. I have libertarian friends that feel that way. I would add that right now we need a centrist party or an independence with a pragmatic centrist platform. And green libertarianism is something that could be environmental friendly, could create millions of jobs in areas that we need. for instance.
[2:01:18] Sorry, how do you, my apologies, sorry for not understanding the economics behind your thinking. How does the government create millions of jobs?
[2:01:26] Well, I mentioned it before, not just proper forestry, but we need to clean our waterways. 40% of our rivers and lakes are too polluted for aquatic life. Some of that's natural, like algae blooms. Most of it's from dumping. 10% of our beaches are unswimmable. And of course, the giant Pacific garbage patches, which we've only invented, we only have the invention that cleans the...
[2:01:48] It's India and China that are responsible for like 90% of the ocean's pollution, so that's a whole different matter. But okay, so you're saying that the government creates jobs, and what is the downside of that? Because I'm always concerned when people make political promises like, well, you're going to create millions of jobs. It's like, what, it just snaps your fingers and they come into effect with no negative effects anywhere else in the economy. So what would be the cost to the economy? Hang on, hang on, let me finish asking the question. So what would be the cost of creating these millions of jobs, which I assume would cost tens or hundreds of billions of dollars? So let's just say tens of billions of dollars. So what would be the cost of the economy if the government creating these jobs?
[2:02:26] Yes, that's what I was going to answer. So I'm a fan of Tom Sowell, and he said there's no solutions. There's only tradeoffs. So the tradeoff is that more people would have jobs, less people hopefully would be on welfare. More people would be out exercising and property would be saved with clearing the forest. And of course, 99.9% of Americans have microplastics in foreign substances.
[2:02:54] Okay, hang on, hang on, hang on. Do you remember my question? Because you're doing the exact opposite. it okay.
[2:03:02] So there is some authoritarianism that has
[2:03:08] To be uh.
[2:03:10] Embraced now because the private sector is not cleaning up
[2:03:15] The do you do you remember my question oh.
[2:03:19] Please state it again so we
[2:03:20] So again it's wild to me man that people simply i'm sorry listen no it's really it's really rude because I've asked you the question twice now and you just go off on your talking points and you don't even notice the question. It's wild to me. All right. My question was, you said the government's going to create millions of jobs. What's the downside to the economy of the government creating millions of jobs?
[2:03:40] Okay, so you stated it yourself. More tax dollars
[2:03:44] Go to- I did not say more tax dollars.
[2:03:46] Okay, well, tens of billions, I think you said, of taxpayer money. I'll say that. Will go to programs like the public works used to be, that kind of thing, public forestry service.
[2:04:01] And the reason I didn't say tax dollars is the government can spend money on creating millions of green jobs, but it either has to tax or borrow or sell bonds, which is deferred borrowing, or it has to cut spending elsewhere, which is going to result in the loss of millions of jobs. So it doesn't necessarily involve raising taxes. But sorry, go ahead.
[2:04:19] Oh, you're absolutely correct. And thanks for that varied approach to how government operates. So, yeah, the downside is that there could be a lack of accountability. The programs could hire a bunch of lazy people that don't actually do the job. The same exact amount of property could be lost that's currently happening now because of poor mismanagement. We know the BLM is a terribly mismanaged organization.
[2:04:53] Oh, that's Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter, just for those who are confused about the acronym. Sorry, go ahead.
[2:04:59] Yes, the Bureau of Land Management. Yeah, they really have given the shaft to the Native American tribes, for instance. So the authoritarianism is something that makes many libertarians uncomfortable, and it does sound like a contradiction.
[2:05:16] No, no, it's not an emotional thing. it's not an emotional thing like you understand why libertarians have a problem with massive government control right it's not uncomfortable i.
[2:05:27] Mean it's there's uh a prevailing thought that government can't do anything right
[2:05:34] No no that's not that's not libertarian argument i mean that's in effect but the libertarian argument is moral not consequentialist or pragmatic oh.
[2:05:44] So you're talking about that the government has too much power over people's lives and take
[2:05:49] Money away. Well, the government operates on the initiation of the use of force, which goes against the libertarian principle of the NAP, the non-aggression principle. So it's a moral issue. And to take an extreme example, we don't say rape and murder make some people uncomfortable. It's like, well, no, it's immoral. It's evil, right? It's evil to rape and murder. And so it is a matter of a moral context, not an efficiency context. In other words, even if the government were magically efficient, it would still be immoral for the government to initiate these force, according to the libertarian argument.
[2:06:25] It can be summed up as taxation and stuff or all taxation and stuff. Yes. So that is a pushback.
[2:06:34] Yes. Yes, it is. All right. Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
[2:06:38] Well, no, I was curious why you don't think there's centrist ideologies.
[2:06:48] What do you mean centrist? We went from centrist politics to centrist parties to centrist ideologies. There's three different categories.
[2:06:56] So, you do believe there are centrist ideologies? I'm trying to get clarification, because you didn't go into detail about there is no center in America.
[2:07:04] Okay, but do you remember what it—see, this is a funny—how long ago was this show?
[2:07:09] This was the first one you came back to Twitter, so that was like two, three weeks ago?
[2:07:13] No, no, I came back to Twitter over two months ago. Oh, my God. Okay, so are you asking me to remember in detail an argument that I made two months ago?
[2:07:24] It wasn't even an argument. Someone prompted you from a different show. Okay, a statement.
[2:07:28] It doesn't matter. A statement. Because, I mean, you don't, and I'm not trying to fault you. I'm just sort of pointing it out. You didn't write down what I said, right?
[2:07:38] No, I did not.
[2:07:39] Okay, so we're both going off hazy memory, right?
[2:07:43] Yes, and I do remember you saying there is no center, and basically that's that.
[2:07:48] But there is no center in what? Are there centrist ideologies in America? Well, of course there are. I mean, there's over 300 million people. Of course, there's going to be some people who have centrist beliefs. So, I mean, I would never say there are zero people in all of America who have centrist ideologies. Yes, you did not say ideologies.
[2:08:05] That's why I was trying to quiz you on what your position is.
[2:08:10] No, but you just said ideologies. That's why I brought this up.
[2:08:13] Well, I prompted you with that because I do believe there are centrist ideologies, and you just confirmed it, so we have no real argument on that score. And of course, I agree with you that America does not allow competition with the two main parties so that a centrist party can develop. So I agree with you on that, that there is no real center, politically speaking, for a lot of us. We have to call ourselves independents or moderates and swing voters and so on and so forth. So that leads to a lot of frustration.
[2:08:46] Okay. I think we agree, and I appreciate the conversation.
[2:08:51] I obviously was a little baffled as to why you were asking me to clarify something that is self-evident and we both agree on. But anyway, all right. We have, let's take Josh to be the last caller tonight. Josh, what is on your mind other than your skull and some cerebral fluid? Yes, my friend, what's on your mind?
[2:09:12] Stefan, how can a person determine the difference between conduct that is defiant and conduct that is deviant?
[2:09:25] Conduct that is defiant and conduct that is deviant. Okay, defiant I kind of get. I'm not sure what you mean by deviant, because deviant simply means off the norm. It would be deviant to be a non-communist in communism, or an anti-Nazi in Nazi Germany might be considered deviant, so it just means against the prevailing ethos. So what do you mean by deviant? Do you mean more like degenerate or something like that?
[2:09:56] I was hoping that you could help me understand deviance. I can only provide you a definition that was made by Joseph Heath in his book, The Rebel Cell, that I was reading today. And he says that deviance occurs when people disobey the rules for self-interested reasons. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that's his interpretation.
[2:10:18] They disobey the rules for self-interested reasons. Okay so if somebody's so hang on so if if in france under the vichy regime when the north of france was occupied by the nazis and somebody has selfish reasons to want to eliminate nazi rule over france then it would be deviant for them to join the resistance i guess audrey heppard style Is that right?
[2:10:46] The definition of dissent as classified by him is a good faith objection. They disobey despite the consequences.
[2:10:57] I'm sorry. I was working with the first definition. We're trying to establish it. And now you're going to a second definition. Hang on. Hang on. No, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh, Josh. You've called him before, right?
[2:11:11] I remember, you remember, yes.
[2:11:13] Yeah, yeah. So how do I generally react when I'm trying to make a point and you start talking in my ear?
[2:11:22] Not good. It won't happen again.
[2:11:23] No, that's fine. I'm not trying to be a bully. I'm not trying to be mean, but we have to have a civil convo, right? So we're trying to figure out deviant, and you said it's disobeying society's rules for self-interested reasons. And so I gave you a scenario and I wanted to get your response on it, if that fits what you call, what you mean by a deviant.
[2:11:48] It's entirely possible that it could be dissent.
[2:11:52] No, no. Do you remember what my scenario was?
[2:11:56] The north of France, acts of rebellion.
[2:12:00] Right. So does that fit your definition?
[2:12:06] No, it's a poor example. It's a poor hypothetical. It doesn't help me at all. I want your definition.
[2:12:13] No, no, hang on. Hang on, hang on. That's not how this works. So, and I'm not trying to trip you up, I'm just genuinely trying to understand. It's a good faith argument, right? So, if it is disobeying social rules for the cause of self-interest, then the social rules in the north of France after May 1940 or whatever it was, was that the Nazis occupied the north of France. And if you had a self-interested motive to overthrow Nazi rule, then you would join the French resistance. Do you agree with me so far?
[2:12:51] Yeah.
[2:12:51] So you are now disobeying society's rules, which is the Nazi occupation, for self-interested reasons. Would that count as deviant?
[2:13:03] I don't think that those are society's rules.
[2:13:06] Oh, no, they are. No, no, the Nazis had the rules. Trust me, bro.
[2:13:13] Well, they have the rules temporarily in a land of which is not traditionally there. So I don't know if their law is there.
[2:13:22] Okay, that's fine. So if we're going to throw in more standards, like there's a certain amount of time you have to be there, it has to be not temporary, which of course you don't know at the time. And one of the reasons it wasn't temporary was in part because of the French resistance. But that's fine. Let's go east with the scenario. So the Nazis have been voted in in Germany as of 1933. The Nazis have been voted in and they've imposed their dictatorial powers under Adolf Hitler and so on. And you have a self-interested reason to overthrow the Nazis in Germany, which have been voted in for, mostly out of a fear of communism, but that's what they're in for. And you then start to act in a way that goes against the Nazis and their rules against the laws of the Nazi regime for self-interested reasons. Maybe you hate them, you want to protect your Jewish friends, whatever it's going to be, right? So this is somebody who's acting against social rules for self-interested reasons. Would they be considered deviant? Now, this is not, and this is the German population who have voted mostly German. I know Hitler was Austrian, but a mostly German party is that deviant under the rules that you are proposing.
[2:14:34] One could argue that the Nazi party itself was deviants. So an objection to the deviant act would be a form of dissent or defiance, I think, to something that is alien to the law.
[2:14:49] Okay, so then it's not social rules. It would be more moral or legitimate social rules. Is that right?
[2:14:56] Yes.
[2:14:57] Okay, so then it is not a matter of deviating from social rules. It's a matter of attempting to uphold moral rules and opposing evil or immoral rules, which I'm sure we would agree the Nazis had no shorter job, right? So, is that closer that you are? It is deviant to oppose moral rules, but it is dissent to oppose evil or immoral rules. Is that right?
[2:15:31] Yes, this is correct.
[2:15:34] Okay. And again, I'm not trying to trip you up. I'm just trying to map the thinking here. Okay. That's good. I appreciate that. Okay. So then what are moral rules?
[2:15:45] You're asking me the question, Stefan?
[2:15:47] Well, sure. Because if we're going to say that deviance is opposing moral rules, whereas dissent is opposing immoral rules, we have to know how to judge whether somebody is a, you asked me what's the difference between deviation, and dissent or being deviant and dissenting, then if the difference is the morality of the rules you are either defying or upholding, then we have to know what are moral rules. Because once we know what are moral rules, then we will know somebody who is a deviant versus somebody who's dissenting. In other words, a deviant would be if you live in a society governed by good moral rules, A deviant would be to oppose those, whereas if you live in a society governed by evil moral rules, then it would be dissent to oppose those. Do I have that right?
[2:16:41] Yes, yes. For the sake of brevity, I would agree that that is the...
[2:16:47] I'm not sure what you mean. I don't want to get things wrong for the sake of brevity.
[2:16:55] Well, the idea of moral rules or what is moral, I feel, is embedded within a constitution. And constitutions?
[2:17:04] Well, hang on. Russia had a constitution under the Soviets. And the Russian constitution guaranteed a whole bunch of rights that rarely manifested in the actual judiciary. But you can have lots of constitutions and lots of rules. They may or may not be followed. So the fact that they're written down doesn't necessarily mean that they're being followed. And the fact that something's called a constitution doesn't mean that the rules are moral. You mean the American constitution? Is that what you mean?
[2:17:35] How one ought to act morally in any given place of the world by and large is determined by the history and the geography of that given place and no no no
[2:17:47] No no no no no no that's like saying that science is different in the mountains than in the valleys right uh so so morality is objective and universal, math doesn't change from country to country, physics doesn't change from country to country, and neither does morality. Now, what may be agreed upon by the general population as rules may vary by these factors, but morality itself does not.
[2:18:11] Okay. Yeah, I agree.
[2:18:13] Like murder is murder. It doesn't matter where you are. It could be on a space station or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench or at the top of Mount Everest or wherever, right? So, I wouldn't say that morality changes from these things. Otherwise, we wouldn't have any definitions of dissent versus deviance because there wouldn't be any objective moral rules to either, oppose in a deviant manner or support and uphold in a moral manner.
[2:18:37] Okay, well, where does that leave us? I said constitution. So how do we know what is moral and objective, I guess?
[2:18:48] Sure. Well, so what would be moral would be any society or system that upholds the non-aggression principle. And the other side of the coin of the non-aggression principle is property rights. So any society or system that upholds the non-aggression principle and property rights, and I've got a whole description of one of these societies in my free book. It's a novel called The Future. It's my atlas shrugged for what it's worth. The novel called The Future, which you can get at freedomain.com slash books. So if you have a society that upholds the non-aggression principle and property rights, and you deviate from that, then you would be a deviant, right? You would be deviating not just from accepted social rules, but moral social rules, good social rules. On the other hand, if you have a society that violates at an egregious level, like some tyranny, North Korea, Soviet Russia, whatever fascists did, Germany, or even Italy. So if you have a tyranny that is no particular rule of law and it's whim-based and people get thrown in gulags and disappear on a regular basis, then if you are opposing those tyrannical rules or systems, then you would be dissenting because those would be evil or immoral rules or systems. Is that a fair way to put it?
[2:20:09] Yes.
[2:20:10] Okay, then the difference between dissent and deviance is dissent opposes evil moral rules and deviance opposes good moral rules.
[2:20:20] So for the individuals to
[2:20:23] Hang on hang on hang on hang on we got the answer you either have to agree or disagree with it there's no point just going on to another talking point.
[2:20:30] Well it's yes i agree i was just going to say my original question was how does a person determine whether their action is a form of deviance or form of dissent so that
[2:20:42] We have the answer.
[2:20:43] Right you You just said it,
[2:20:45] Right, correct. Well, no, I didn't just say it. I proved it according to the things that we both accept.
[2:20:52] You've proved it. How can it be applied to the everyday person?
[2:20:57] How can I tell you? No, no, no, that's a whole different category. And here's the thing. I mean, would you say that, you know, in 10 minutes, I answered your question, which is quite a complex question?
[2:21:10] Yeah.
[2:21:11] Did I charge you for it?
[2:21:13] No.
[2:21:13] So rather than racing off to have me perform another task for you, what might be a slightly nicer way to respond?
[2:21:20] A donation?
[2:21:22] No, honestly, it didn't even cross my mind.
[2:21:25] You brought it up.
[2:21:28] I brought up a donation. What do you mean?
[2:21:30] Well, you said you didn't charge anything for...
[2:21:32] No, I didn't charge you. So no, I'm not asking for a donation. But even a few people... I'll just tell you, it would be, hey, thanks for answering my question. That was really cool.
[2:21:42] Well, yeah, I'm grateful. Absolutely. You're amazing.
[2:21:45] Well, no, you didn't, but you didn't express any gratitude. All you did was move on to ask another question of me. And I'll just tell you this. I'll just tell you this. Maybe it's because it's, you know, two and a half hours into the show. So I'll just tell you this as a whole, that if somebody provides a free resource that answers a challenging question for you in about 10 minutes, show some appreciation to them before asking them to perform another task for you for free. And listen, I'm sorry to be a nag, and I do apologize if that seems ill-tempered or anything like that. But I got to tell you, it takes a lot of skill and experience to answer tough questions like this. You are getting the benefit of 40 years of concentrated and sometimes personally dangerous study and speaking and tens of thousands of hours of research and a massive amount of money in.
[2:22:38] Education and obviously some in therapy so that I can have good emotional responses to these kinds of things. So if you come with a very difficult question and somebody is able to answer it, in a relatively short order, in a way that you agree with and is objectively good and helpful, then immediately saying, well, here's my next question without saying, I really appreciate you answering my last question. It's not particular to me, right? I'm just saying that in life, in general, if you want people to do free labor for you, it might be nice to thank them. Like, if you have a friend who comes over and helps you move, and it's all day and it's sweaty, hard work and he, you know, hurts his back or something like that. If you have a friend who comes over to help you move.
[2:23:21] And you don't thank him, but you say, oh, I need you to help me move tomorrow. He just may not be that motivated, which is why I didn't want to go on to the next question. So anyway, just pointing that out. I want you to get what you want in life as a whole, and the best way to do that is with some appreciation. Now, having said that, I hugely appreciate everyone who called in tonight. Thank you so, so much for a great set of conversations and comments. I really do appreciate it, and I hope that what I do is helpful. Freedomain.com slash donate would be how you could express your appreciation because, of course, all of this costs time, effort, energy, money, and resources. So if you could help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate, I would be massively grateful and humbly thankful. So have yourselves a wonderful evening. I will see you, those of you who are subscribers at freedomain.locals.com, we'll talk 11 a.m. On Sunday morning, and we'll have our private super spicy convo, and we can do call-ins, or we can just do text questions, or both, if you like. So that'll be Sunday, 11 a.m. If you'd like to join that conversation, you can try fdrurl.com slash locals, fdr, free domain radio, fdrurl.com slash locals, and you can sign up for free and give it a try. You get amazing bonuses, 12 hours on the French Revolution, 23-part history of philosophy series, a whole bunch of AIs, hundreds of premium podcasts, and the Sunday morning show. So I hope you'll join us for that. Lots of love, my friends. Thank you again so much for tonight.
[2:24:49] Bye.
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