0:00 - Introduction
7:52 - Lack of Free Will and Free Speech in Politics
9:41 - Importance of Rational Consistency in Theories
12:03 - The Practicality of Moral Theories
15:18 - Variations in Biological Free Will
17:16 - Society Under UPB Acceptance
Stefan Molyneux discusses his personal stance on politics, highlighting his disinterest in political matters due to the lack of free will and free speech within the political landscape. He shares anecdotes regarding interactions with family members where he noticed a lack of identifiable free will and discusses the importance of self-criticism and comparing actions to ideal standards to exercise free will effectively.
Molyneux delves into the concept of free will and its connection to Christianity, liberalism, and atheism. He emphasizes the need to develop the self-critical muscle to intercept impulses and adhere to ideal standards. He links the decline of free will to the shift from religious to secular values in society, noting the impact on individuals' ability to resist impulses and make reasoned decisions.
The discussion moves towards Molyneux's Universal Preferable Behavior (UPB) framework, comparing it to the scientific method in evaluating moral propositions. He explains that UPB aims to establish ideal standards for moral behavior, emphasizing rationality, universality, and consistency in moral theories. Molyneux clarifies that UPB is not designed for practical outcomes but serves as a guideline for evaluating moral claims within a framework of universal standards.
The conversation touches upon the societal implications of UPB, envisioning a society based on voluntary interactions, free will, and private property rights. Molyneux explores the potential coexistence of UPB with social credit systems, emphasizing the importance of voluntary agreements and ethical behavior in shaping societal structures. He concludes by advocating for the promotion of non-evil actions and invites further engagement through donations on freedomain.com.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain. Hope you're doing well. Questions from freedomain.locals.com, a great community. I hope you join. When you say you don't do politics anymore, does that mean even in your personal life? You just avoid it? Politics is becoming soul-crushing these days and plays with my head. I don't do politics, really, in my personal life. I'll occasionally read up on it a little bit here and there.
[0:22] Just to get the lay of the land in someone, one but i do find politics to be profoundly uninteresting profoundly uninteresting i think that debate is important where there's two things free will and free speech where you have free will and free speech then i think debate is interesting and important but obviously there's not a lot of free will in politics anymore everybody's just scrambling for the last piece of gold from the the decaying empire all over the place. And so everybody's just motivated by self-interest and their perceived need to survive and so on and flourish. And people have, like, over a couple of generations, people adapt to state power and feel like they can't really live without it. So there's not really much free will there. Is there much free speech in politics? Well, no, not really, because if you say the things about politics that are the basic truths um you don't um make it very long so uh i i where there's no free will, and there's no free speech or that where there's little free will and little free speech and this was the same with my family too right i mean with my mother what i did was um i tried to be honest about the issues in the fight i didn't try i was honest about the issues in the family and there There was no way past her defenses and her gaslighting and avoidance and so on.
[1:52] And so I recognized that for whatever reason, in this area, she had no identifiable free will, like in the area of self-criticism. It's important to map this with people in your life as a whole.
[2:04] The crows are coming to feast on the remnants of my political career so she had no functional free will and i had this with other relationships as well girlfriends and so on you try to be, honest about the issues that you see and there's no particular free will that's just defenses so when people are you know i used to refer to it as defendo but you know it's just the npc meme whatever you say they have an instant response that avoids all responsibility and usually blames to you so there's no functional free will in that kind of conversation free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and if people are just responding automatically, without any interference from the near frontal cortex you know you have like a third of a second to to control or intercept or interfere with impulses arising from the fight or flight mechanism people who don't do that it is a muscle that you need to develop and you need we're not not really born with it, this sort of self-critical muscle where you say, could I be wrong? Could I be the bad guy? Could I be doing the wrong thing? What are my standards and how am I doing relative to those? Now, Christianity developed these muscles in humanity to an infinite degree, near infinite degree, and liberalism and atheism and secularism has caused these to decay. Christianity has higher standards that you need to compare your actions to, and secularism does not.
[3:29] And so the muscle to intercept our impulses and compare proposed actions to ideal standards has atrophied for 200 years or so, right? I mean, French Revolution and onwards, and certainly with socialism and communism, that happens. Oh, pretty badly. I just lost a page. Is that important? Yeah. So I'll get it later. So I would say that when I'm talking with people and there is no evidence of a muscle that they have developed or a habit that they have developed to intercept their own emotions.
[4:10] And have a commitment to the truth despite discomfort, which is really, if you don't exercise the muscle called free will, this is where the NPC meme comes from, if you don't exercise the muscle called free will, which is to intercept your emotions and compare them to an ideal standard, I don't want to tell the truth, but I will tell the truth, right? I don't want to do X, but I will do X, because you have an ideal standard. I don't want to diet, but I will diet. I don't want to exercise, but I will exercise. I don't want to be courageous. Really, it is the essence of courage, right? I don't want to be courageous, but I will be courageous. So people who have no experience or no particular muscle in resisting their impulses, in resisting their baser natures, those people have no functional free will. And of course, the goal is to one of the things with UPB was trying to one of the things I was trying to deliver to the world with UPB was the resurrection of the free will of ideal standards, which Christianity cultivated and provided and Socrates did to some degree, but it was mostly intellectual, not emotional.
[5:26] So the free will of comparing proposed actions to ideal standards that had atrophied really since the french revolution which was a huge um example or or demonstration of what happens when you no longer restrain your behavior according to any moral standards um i've got a whole 10 hour series on the french revolution which you can get by becoming a subscriber at free demand man.locals.com you should really check it out it's essential to these kinds of conversations.
[5:56] But upb was aim aiming at redelivering a free will to the society that that i live in to the society that i live in to the culture that i have history with because by creating absolute ideal standards it then gave you a metric by which you can compare your proposed actions to as in with Christianity it's being at one with the Holy Spirit obeying God what would Jesus do it is comparing proposed actions to ideal standards which gives you free will without those ideal standards you have no functional free will because you're just bouncing off desire and fear and guilt and you're easily pushed around and manipulated because you don't have any ideal standards you have nothing to to sacrifice for I mean sacrifice the hedonism at the moment for so So.
[6:48] I gave it a good, honest shot, and it is a valid framework, but it is up to other people to accept it and to promulgate it, right? I can only do so much in promulgating philosophy, right? And I hope that you know, I hope that you, I'm sure you do now, I just sort of remind you, I don't have any capacity to spread philosophy outside of other people also spreading philosophy, because then I could become isolated and freakified in the general minds. So yeah so and also with people do you have free speech right do you have free speech in your relationships i mean we can talk about the legal right of this now the other okay but do you actually have free speech in your relationships can you say what you think and feel without being attacked punished ostracized uh whispered about having your reputation attacked uh being uh getting those weird looks uh those shut down looks like what are you talking about why would you say that Do you have free speech in your relationships? It's one thing to have the legal right. It's another thing to have the right in society.
[7:52] So where there's not much evidence of free will, and when there's little practical free speech, I don't get involved. Are personal opinions attached to other people, peer groups, or environments like universities, etc.? It seems to me they are. Otherwise, logical people start to become illogical when they start to lose the high ground on certain topics like climate change or voting. The less they are rooted in such thought groups, the more open they seem to be. Personal opinions seem to be mingled with other people's opinions. I've read this a couple of times before doing this little recording. So are you saying that our people tribe, our personal opinions attach to other people, peer groups, or environments?
[8:38] I mean, I don't really know how to answer that. So if you could give me that question again, I would appreciate that. How will UPB work in a society that is incentivized by social credit slash carbon credits? So UPB is a truly free society where people don't have the right or the perceived right to initiate the use of force against others for the general good, the common good, the social good, and so on. So UPB works. Okay, UPB doesn't work. I mean, how does science work? Science, UPP doesn't work. It is not a practical tool for implementing things. It is physics, not engineering. So engineering stuff has to work. Physics stuff just has to be true. Engineering has a practical component. Does the touchscreen work, right? That's the practical component. But physics doesn't have to work. It just has to be true. It just has to be valid. So moral theories don't have to work. I mean, they should explain the facts of history and they should be consistent and universal as they claim to be, right?
[9:42] But physicists have to explain the operations of the universe and their theories have to be rationally consistent with both reason and evidence, right? So consistent with reason is the hypothetical side of the scientific method, right? Do you say that two and two make four and also two and two make five in the same theory? Well, then that's inconsistent. consistent, and do you say that gravity both attracts and repels, that gases both expand and contract when heated? That would be an example of a contradiction in the theory, and when there's a contradiction in the theory that's designed to describe a rational universe, which is non-contradictory, then if what you're describing is rational and your theory is not rational, then your theory cannot be valid. Your theory cannot be valid.
[10:31] If what you're trying to describe is a light source and your theory demands that it have no light and emit no light, then your theory is inconsistent with the facts of reality and you don't have to test it, right? You just have to say that this is inconsistent. If it contradicts itself, if it contradicts the observable facts of reality, your theory is simply wrong. So when you say, how will UPB work? You're trying to say, well, what are the practical effects of universal morality? morality. I mean, I think the practical effects will be positive and good and beneficial and so on, but that's not what it's for. So for instance, when a scientific discovery, a physics discovery, a purely theoretical physics discovery is made, it might have an effect on making your touch screens work better. But you don't judge it by that. Because in order for it to make your touch screens work better, it has to be valid and true according to the scientific method. So that's what's needed.
[11:24] So if the theory in physics is valid and true, if it accurately describes what happens in reality, and if it is internally logically consistent, and it can be used to predict future events in the world of physics, then it's valid and true, and then we can start to use it in engineering. But going from theoretical to practical is going from physics to engineering, is going from the creation of medicines to the treatment of people, right? One is theoretical and prone to success or failure. The other one is practical after it's been proven to be successful, or at least that's how the way it used to work.
[12:04] So as far as how will UPB work, UPB doesn't work. Oh, people are going to snip that, right? It's not designed to have a practical outcome. It is designed to have an ideal standard.
[12:18] An ideal standard. It's like saying, can I take my business plan to the bank and get money and deposit it as money, right? Well, no. The business plan is a theoretical. It is a goal. It is an ideal. And your goal is to work practically to try to achieve it, maybe exceed it.
[12:37] So the idea of money is not currency, right? You cannot chop down and sell the wood embedded in the concept of the forest. The theoreticals are there to describe common standards within reality, like trees and wood and so on, right? Clouds, right? Water vapor in the air.
[13:00] So the concept is not designed to work. It is designed for accuracy.
[13:06] So UPB is designed to be accurate, and UPB says, if morality is universal and valid, then it cannot be self-contradictory. Now, if morality, if universally preferable behavior must be rational, universal, and consistent, what would that look like when we flesh that out, right?
[13:30] So it is a methodology for evaluating moral propositions, just as the scientific method is a methodology for evaluating statements statements about empirical material physical and biological reality right so the scientific method says if you want your individual scientific hypothesis or conjecture to be valid it has to go through these steps right it has to be logically consistent it has to accurately describe reality it has to be replicable it should be reviewed by other people you have to release the source data like all of this kind of stuff that goes on with the scientific method so and this is a one of the So UPP is like science, right? So when we say science, we're talking both about the scientific method and individual scientific conjectures, right? So science refers to the scientific method and the theory of evolution. It refers to the scientific method and the general or specific theory of relativity, right? Or quantum mechanics or the money-grubbing nonsense known as superstring theory. So...
[14:39] UPB refers to, if you want to make a moral statement, it has to be universal and consistent. And ideally, it should accurately describe the facts of reality and history, right? So if you have a theory which says, a moral theory which says central planning leads to economic efficiency or slavery is good for the economy, then you have to deal with the fact that the opposite is true in reality, right? So if it explains the facts of reality, so much the better, but it does so within the reality of free will, which means that there are going to be variations. So biology has a free will embedded in it, human biology, and also in animal biology, too.
[15:19] You say a horse has one head, but every now and then you'll get this mutant horse born with two heads, but you have to accept that it's going to be some variation. Right as a physics is absolute anything to do with life is a bell curve right uh uh in general women are shorter than men but they're individual women taller than the average men and so on right so when you deal with um life you're dealing with a bell curve which is statistical probability.
[15:45] When you're dealing with physics you're dealing with absolutes right you're dealing with absolutes It is almost syllogistical. So physics is deductive reasoning, and anything to do with life is inductive reasoning, right? So probabilities and averages and standards, which is why it's tough for a lot of people to follow this kind of stuff. They take the reasoning to do with science and physics, and they try to apply it to life and choice, and it doesn't particularly work.
[16:14] So a UPB is there to evaluate moral statements, moral absolutes.
[16:21] And UPB also refers to the moral standards and absolutes that are validated by the UPB framework, right? So the bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder are all validated by the UPB framework. But, you know, there are other things that we need to look at, animal rights and abortion and so on, all through the UPB framework, which I've done a lot of over the years. So I hope that that helps you understand. UPB says that all, it's almost a tautology, right? So it says all claims to morality must be universal and consistent. Why? Because morality is claimed to be universal and consistent. They're called human rights, which means that they apply to all humans. And so UPB says, okay, so if your claim is that your moral theory is universal and consistent, guess what? It has to be universal and consistent. And then all but voluntarism end up failing that test.
[17:16] So that's why. So yeah, you could end up with a society that's a UPB acceptant that has some kind of social credit, maybe even has carbon credits, I don't know. But it will all be voluntary. And it would all be negotiated. And it would all be based upon free will and private property rights. So how that works, I don't have a clue, doesn't matter. But it just has to not be evil. Whatever you say, let's just not promote evil. people. Thanks so much, freedomain.com slash donate. Have yourself a wonderful day. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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