[0:00] Good evening, good evening. It is some dang day, February 9th, Friday, February 9th, 2024.
We're here, gonna be having a little chitty chat. I'm here to take your questions and comments, issues, challenges, whatever is on your mind.
I will attempt to facilitate through the big chatty speckled forehead of philosophical wonder.
So, just as we get started in and around here, I have been keeping track of some pretty interesting stuff.
Some pretty interesting stuff.
Did you know governments in Africa are emptying their jails and shipping them to Central America with instructions on how to get into America?
We talked about this way back in the day.
Way back in the day. All right, let's get to, let's see here. I have, here we go.
Things that I have been keeping track of, which I find, I find to be of interest.
And again, I am perfectly thrilled and happy to hear what you have to say.
But until the questions start pouring in, Kim Kardashian's son, Seven, says he often tells her she's nothing to him.
[1:28] Kim Kardashian's son, Seven, says he often tells her she is nothing to him.
Isn't that rather sad and tragic?
[1:41] So, as an exchange that showed up somewhere on social media, some guy says, do crabs think fish are flying?
Flying do crabs think fish are flying somebody says how high are you and he's like five nine which the answer is yes yes yes yes, semi-tragic.
[2:08] This guy posted, teacher called and suggested my son be put in special ed, but I'd been doing his work.
Again, somewhat, somewhat tragic, actually severely tragic.
Now, I don't know if you remember way back in the day, I did, this is for my Australian friends.
I did a show where I interviewed a scientist from Australia and we were talking about how the Great Barrier Reef was not losing all of its spine and material.
And this is an article CNN, well, different writers, I guess.
2018, global warming is killing the Great Barrier Reef, study says.
And I, well, obviously listened to this expert, but I chose him for a reason, said this is not true at all. It's not, it's fake news.
And just a couple of years, well, five years, four years later, they wrote parts of Great Barrier Reef, record highest amount of coral in 36 years.
You know just think of all of the fear just think of all of the fear that this show has helped you avoid just think of the fear that all, of this uh that all of the show has helped you avoid i think it's a good thing it's a good thing now i get a question for you because i want to know let me see here.
[3:35] What's your opinion of the rates of women sexually abusing boys?
Well, I think it's a great question and it's a powerful question I think that, it depends what you mean by sexual abuse, obviously molestation and so on, I think the rates are obviously far higher than people think far higher than people think, The world has a blind spot to female evil, which I was talking about, I mean, many, many years ago on the show.
I did a whole three-part series on the nature of female evil.
One of the, it's a form of, see, there's sexual abuse, obviously, molestation and so on.
I obviously don't know the rates. Nobody does, but it's much more common than people think.
One of the biggest issues is romantic abuse.
[4:28] Or pair bonding excuse, uh, abuse or partner abuse insofar as this is very common with single sons of single mothers that they get promoted to quasi husband, right?
And the mom, particularly after she goes past the wall of peak sexual attraction, she gets 40, 50 plus.
She just hangs on like grim death to the son and he becomes the ersatz, the fake husband, right? he becomes a fake husband.
That's a form of romantic abuse and romantic or pair bonding exploitation that the woman who can't attract a man anymore hangs on like grim death to her son.
I guess it could happen to daughters as well. I've seen it a lot with sons and it's really, really awful.
The moms are lonely and, oh, I'm cooking. I'm making hamburger helper. You should come over.
Oh, I need some help with this. Oh, I can't find the other.
Oh, I need some help with my computer or, you know, and, and the guy just goes over and it's really, um, it's, it's parasitical, uh, it's exploitive.
Uh, it strikes me similar to what happens with praying mantises, you know, off with the head of the male.
And, uh, it's really, really rough because the women are lonely and they can't attract a man. And so they just hang on like grim death to their sons.
And it really, really cripples the boys. Yeah.
[5:52] Uh steph did you base oliver on your life for example the speaking on conferences and talking to the attendees afterwards so i mean this is an interesting it's an interesting question, uh so when you are a writer one of the ways that you know that you're a writer is you store scraps and bits of important stuff.
[6:13] So i mean i remember reading this um ernest hemingway was writing about this i think he He was covering the Spanish Civil War.
And what they noticed was that the cow's behavior would change before anyone could even hear the planes that were coming over to bomb.
So people would watch the behavior of the cows and then take shelter.
I can't remember if they stopped lowing or they did. So the cows changed their behavior long before people could even hear the planes.
So those are kind of scraps and details that you need to hang on to.
You are, if you're a writer, particularly a fiction, details just, they just stick to your head.
They stick to your brain and you don't know what you're going to use them for but you end up using them for something so i remember many years ago reading a woman i don't know what she was writing about i don't even remember who it was and i don't remember what publication it was in but she said you know like i try not to be overly shallow but nothing beats that zippy feeling.
[7:06] Of walking into a hotel lobby with a really tight skirt and a pair of high heels on like i just like i remembered that and again this is not all women and that stuck to my head i read that like 30 years ago stuck to my head where did it emerge it emerged in rachel coming into the restaurant at the beginning of the novel uh i've always whenever i'm in restaurants and they have those sliding they have those square mirrors that are kind of misshapen that you're kind of walking through different warping dimensions i use that so like every little sense data every little scrap it just sticks to your head and you don't exactly know when you're going to use it but you do end up.
[7:44] Using it somewhere, somehow. And I remember reading about, again, 40 years ago, I remember reading about a music producer complaining that his star was gaining weight and gave him a big lecture, which I then repurposed for my novel, The God of Atheists, where Al, the music producer, says to Justin, the young star of his boy band.
[8:09] You know, Justin, because he's gaining a little little bit he's getting kind of puffy is justin you can have millions of dollars tours around the world all the groupies you can eat you can have fame flash bulbs red carpet a movie career you can have all of that or you can have a fucking donut you're gonna have to just make a choice kid, right and and so just these little little scraps so of course i didn't base oliver on my life in that he's obviously significantly more chad than i am in a lot of ways and of course very religious and has a wonderful family in many ways but as far as directness and assertiveness he doesn't take any bullshit like if people lie to him he knows it right away and he's willing to throw people to the literally throw people to the wolves insofar as what happens with rachel if they don't tell him the truth he has no interest in reforming people he just doesn't respond to falsehood uh that's a little bit of me of course you know i've spoken i've spoken at conferences And, you know, when I was at a night for freedom in New York, I don't know, six years ago or five years ago, whenever it was, I mean, like 500 people were, I wouldn't say lining up, but we were around chatting and, and giving hugs and all of that.
So I said, and of course I've spoken at men's rights conferences, which is what Oliver's doing.
[9:24] And I did for Oliver's speech, I pretended I was Oliver and spoke like I thought he would speak.
I did that as a podcast. podcast i don't know if i ever released it but i did how i thought oliver would give a speech and then i just transcribed that because i wanted to get the actual natural cadence of giving a speech which is different from doing a live stream or or just chatting with people of course, so you you take these little scraps and bits that you gather over the course of life you observe you see you understand i mean i remember even undergraduate there was a i took a course on Victorian poetry, and there was a guy there, he was really old, and he was so old that he became a full professor with only a bachelor's degree.
Like, you don't understand, if you're, I mean, young, how exquisite education used to be, that you could become a full professor, you didn't need a master's degree, you didn't need a PhD or postdoc work, he was a full professor with...
[10:25] Only a four-year degree, only a four-year degree.
And he was very old and he was lonely and you could smell cats on him when he would sit down. I tried not to sit too close to him.
[10:40] Sometimes people almost give off a psychic stench of despair and it's kind of infectious and you need to recoil from that.
And i remember of course the the possibility that you can fall so far into language words and imagination that you kind of leave the planet behind and only return to the material plane in a sense to depress people around you particularly the young and i stored up that a guy and i used him uh in in a book i had a really old professor uh one of the first philosophy classes i took in university i had a really old professor with a really young and worshipful ta and the ta actually had to help him up to the blackboard and this is the professor i had a fairly strenuous argument about descartes and the cartesian demon and the old guy was taking a long time to process.
[11:31] And the young guy was kind of miffed that i was challenging the old guy and i used that in my novel, uh, almost, uh, when I was a kid, I was reading a book called Emil and the detectives.
And I could care less about what the teacher, I always cared less.
I could care less what the teacher ever was saying.
Like whatever the teachers was like, whatever the teachers were saying in school, I could care less.
And that changed a little bit in university, not a huge amount, but to some degree I just couldn't. And I remember I was reading Emil and the detectives. It's the book I actually read with my daughter.
I was reading Emil and the Detectives, and I was...
[12:12] I had it under the desk and I was just sort of reading it.
And the teacher, and I used the description of that, looking like a boy obsessed with his own genitals in The God of Atheists.
And I also used, the teacher actually called me out.
Called me out and, you know, how dare you read? If you think you know so much, why don't you come up and teach the lesson? And I was like, all right, okay.
So I went up and I taught the lesson. And it was a Friday, the 7th, and I wrote, quote, it's the eighth.
[12:44] And the teacher got mad and said, you even got the date wrong.
I said, no, it's the eighth. In fact, look, it's Saturday. We don't even have to be here. Everybody out.
And it's like, yeah, you can humiliate me for being boring.
And I'll just entertain the class. And of course I got in more trouble out of that, but so what? So, oh no, trouble.
If you don't believe in trouble, trouble you're pretty hard to control so uh was there more of a backstory as to why oliver was single and not married well that's explained very clearly in the book so that's explained very clearly in the book uh why do many young women get angry if encouraged to cover up their revealing clothes in the uk but without complaint cover up when in a foreign country visiting a temple in India, for example.
[13:35] Women are primed by nature to get endorphins from male attention.
Women are primed by nature to get endorphins from male attention.
And of course, since the Victorian era, when seeing a turned ankle, I mean, there are hotels in the United States where they were built so that women went through vertical tubes in order to to enter into a swimming pool and no man could see their legs.
Right. It actually did kind of work that way.
[14:10] Right. So since that time, it's been a race to the bottom, uh, in terms of more and more and more flesh.
It's a, it's like an arms race or a legs race or a, uh, tits and ass race for, for women because women get a high out of male attention.
And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just, you know, we like sugar, but now it was really only 500 years ago that we began adding adding sugar to our diets.
So I think I'm close to my second, well, I think it was last Monday or Tuesday, a week ago, Monday or Tuesday, that I stopped eating added sugar.
And it's been a little rough, man. I was not a huge sugar addict, but it's not only, it's just my body's shifting its energy source.
I'm going through some sluggish afternoons, but that's all right.
I mean, the tougher it is to quit something, the more worthwhile it is to quit because for me, at least, it means I'm more addicted, except coffee.
That's totally a choice. so women get endorphins from from two things they get endorphins from male attention and social approval right they score very high in trait agreeableness which means that they get endorphins from social approval and the way that women used to be policed was they would get social disapproval for revealing too much clothing.
Now, they get male attention and approval.
[15:34] From showing tits and ass on the web, right?
Now, again, it could be like not totally bare or whatever, just cleavage and tight workout wear or short skirts or whatever is short shorts, showing lots of flesh.
So they get a high. Now, when people get addicted to this kind of high, two things happen.
One, they tend to escalate. And two, if you try and take that away...
And women show a lot of, that's not all women, of course, right?
But women show a lot of flesh on the internet because the alternative is crushing depression.
[16:09] You follow what I'm saying, right? Women show a lot of flesh because the alternative to showing a lot of flesh, in other words, if there was some magical law that was passed that women could not get, that they just simply could not dress in a highly sexualized fashion, women would go through withdrawal.
And withdrawal feels to many people like crushing anxiety and depression.
So, they start off with male attention, then it hollows them out from the inside, right?
It hollows them out from the inside because they're not getting their happiness from virtue, they're getting their happiness really from the opposite of virtue, which is stimulating male hormones for the sake of their own dopamine.
It's just a hormone-to-hormone interaction, right? Male hormones translate into female dopamine.
And if that process is interrupted, then women get depressed.
Because they've cheapened themselves. They've turned themselves into flesh, tits and a hole.
I mean, it's really, it's really tragic. They're down at the ape level.
As far as, you know, you see apes shaking, female apes shaking their butts at the alpha male and so on. And they're down at the ape level and it's degrading and inhuman and anti-human in many ways.
[17:21] So women are not, they just start off chasing male attention and then they end up, like all addicts, they end up just running away from the crash, right?
[17:31] And for societies that are successful, societies that are successful work incredibly hard to prevent women from getting addicted to attention.
Because once the women are addicted to attention, it destroys the pair bonding.
Because pair bonding is when I'm only interested in the positive view of one person, not many people, and one person I love, not many strangers, right?
[17:56] So society has to work very hard to keep men from turning violent, obviously, and women from turning into attention addicts.
And the way that happened of course was women would get married off there'd be not monogamy and there would be massive social punishments for infidelity or divorce or divorce or having a child, outside of wedlock or having a child that wasn't the husband's right so this you know what happens of course and you you see this all the time in social media what happens is the women get attracted to they get addicted to male attention and social approval and so just by the by the the reason that they cover up in, uh.
[18:35] The reason that they cover up in say India or, or Pakistan or someplace in the middle East, the reason they cover up is because they will get social disapproval if they post being semi-naked in a temple in India, or like they would get like, how dare you?
That's so disrespectful. So they're, they're simply that it's the same dopamine, right? They get dopamine from male attention and social approval.
And when they they will get more social approval than male attention, they'll change their behavior because, right, you understand, right?
[19:06] So this is what happens, of course, is the women get addicted to male attention.
Some women get addicted to male attention and the clicks, the likes, the hearts, the thirst, the worshipfulness and so on.
And I assume for women, it becomes a strong masturbatory fantasy, which again, further interferes with their ability to have a normal sexual life and pair bond.
And then maybe they settle down with some guy, but then they hit that depression, right? They're addicted to male attention.
They settled down with some guy. Now, some guy, any decent guy, if the woman is posting bikini pics on internet, on the internet, on, let's say, Instagram to pick a poison, then the guy's going to say, listen, we're in a relationship now.
I'd really appreciate it if you weren't posting tits and ass on Instagram like, you're mine now.
I branded you. I own you. Right? No, he's going to say, and she would, of course, if she's reasonable, she would say, well, no.
Right? Of course not. Right? Because you don't want to put out sexual advertising for a new partner, which is what that stuff is, when you're in a committed relationship to an existing partner.
Of course, right? Of course. In the same way that a woman will want a man, if she's in a monogamous relationship with him, she'll want the man to get off the dating apps.
And to certainly stop flashing his wealth, if he's wealthy, right?
Because flashing his wealth is the same as a woman flashing her body.
So what happens is, the woman gets all this male attention. attention.
She gets into a monogamous relationship.
[20:31] And then let's say, and this happens, right? So let's say she starts posting all of this stuff.
Then she gets depressed because she's not getting all of that endless tsunami of male attention.
She gets depressed or anxious or something. She goes through a minor or maybe not so minor mental health crisis.
And then what happens is she says to herself, well, this isn't the guy for me.
This is not the guy for me. He can't be the guy for me because the moment I start dating him, I get anxious and depressed.
[21:00] He's not my person. My gut is telling me, the universe is telling me, God is telling me, this is not my person because I'm with him and I'm miserable.
I'm miserable. I can't sleep. I'm anxious. I'm depressed.
And he's like, well, you seem so much, like you seem to be having a blast out there on internet and I'm now dating you and you're anxious, you're depressed, you're neurotic, you're sexless.
So then she breaks up with him or she has an affair or she goes back to posting.
He finds out and breaks up with her and then she goes back to getting the male attention and the dopamine and then she maybe, you know, all she can do is hook up.
But if she ever tries pair bonding again, which means no longer getting the massive amounts of tsunami like male hormonal attention, she crashes again.
And then she says, oh my God, this isn't the person for me. And then eventually she's just burnt out and can't pair bond.
And the big mental health crisis of the West is still to come.
That's what I wrote about with the character called, crystal on crystal all right somebody oh after this um they call it emotional incest or romantic abuse after my mom got divorced for the second time she started doing this to me i can't can't i cut contact and haven't talked to her since.
[22:14] Hey oh sorry that's a good question uh brian give me just i just want to i don't want to jump around too much in the topic so and see uh tips of course enormously welcome thank you very much.
[22:30] I remember you mentioning that, I think, and musing about releasing it.
Oh, all of her speech and deciding not to, or perhaps it was you wrote Rachel's article.
I didn't end up, I ended up writing an outline of Rachel's article, but I know how people lie on the internet and all of that stuff.
So I got in trouble a few times in school too. It was worth it.
Yeah, you've got to build up your inoculation against disapproval, right?
Steph, did you see Dignify AI that puts clothes on women? Yes, I did. It's not just that.
It's not just that. It also takes off their tattoos and it replaces teddy bears with babies and all that kind of stuff, right?
You have the keto flu. I don't think I'm keto because keto is no carbs too, right? No, I'm just, I'm off.
Like I'm just, everything I read, if there's sugar added, I won't eat it.
Oh, okay. Occasionally I'll have these little cranberry bowls and they have one gram of sugar added or something like that.
But yeah, if there's sugar added in general, I'm not eating it and it's just...
[23:37] You ever read or watch a movie and thought it was great, and later it was ruined for you because you learned the author-director was a monster and made the whole work hypocritical?
The Pianist film was great, but then I learned about Roman Polanski, the director, and every time I think about the film, all I can say is, how dare you, criminal, hypocritical scum?
I remember Roman Polanski survived the Holocaust only to commit predations that he personally ranted against.
Oh, I mean, you start going down the Roman Polanski rabbit hole, man, And there's, there's no bottom to that other than cutting off almost all media.
I mean, you know, the Roman Polanski got standing ovations, Meryl Streep up there cheering and, and you know, like Harvey Weinstein was praised by everyone.
And Roman Polanski got standing ovations, despite the fact that he sexually assaulted a child, I mean, and fled to France.
And yeah, no, it's, it's, um, it's, it's beyond appalling.
It's beyond appalling. I mean, I love the movie Room with a View, and I liked the book, and I read it again recently, and I was like, so this is just basically anti-Christian, right?
So you see a lot more stuff now than you used to.
I see a lot more stuff now than I used to before. Also, it's Friday and payday. Good to know.
So the smartphone and social media apps have poisoned up hair bonding.
I assume it was intentional. No, I don't think it was intentional. No.
Or they carry on wearing revealing clothes for their job, but the boyfriend is okay with it in order to have sex.
[25:07] I mean, a man knows when the woman's pair bonded, right? How do you know when a woman is pair bonded when she's not chasing male attention outside the relationship?
She's not using sexuality to chase male attention outside the relationship, right?
I mean, because can you imagine some guy like doing a live stream and slowly taking off his shirt?
It'd be appalling just appalling alright at 57 I think it's fair to say I'm not chasing female erotic fantasies, alright yeah and France is like ah Roman come home oh yeah for sure yeah France is is a child abuse club masquerading as a country alright so hey Steph happy Friday to you thank you I appreciate that what are your thoughts on selling a business I bought the business three years ago and grew it to double revenue now thinking to sell it for more free time and planning on having kids soon, yeah I don't.
[26:07] How do i put this because i i don't want to be sort of my phase of life versus your phase of life, i i'm not sure i get the whole free time thing too well i i don't i'm not i don't think i'm a huge workaholic although i do produce a lot of work but i don't quite get the whole free time thing too much i mean you know i have little hobbies and well not really hobbies i mean i'll play some racket sports and stuff like that but i mean i guess that could be considered exercise but it's enjoyable i don't really play too many video games anymore um but you know the free time thing do you like what do you do with free time i mean i'll read books but in general you know i'm very sort of because i can see the end of life like 57 you can see the end of life it's not just this big hurry uh it's not this big blurry hike to into the clouds like you're in the clouds you you pass the clouds, you can see the peak and you're getting there, right? The peak being death, right?
So I can see, you know, if I get another 30 years, that's great, but none of it's guaranteed at this, at this age, right?
None of it's, I mean, none of it's guaranteed any age, but you know, you're on the declining end of things.
And what was it? I was at a place, oh yeah, I was at a place the other day that got a senior's discount, got a senior's discount.
[27:23] Or when I was getting my haircut today this guy hey you retired boss yeah so the free time thing i i don't know i don't know free time i mean if there's if there's a dream like you know maybe you've always wanted to be a painter or i don't know write a musical or i don't know like if there's always a dream if there's a dream that you've had for a long time yeah great go go for it but free time to just what sit and stare at the wall.
[27:53] To do what? In order to. That's sort of my life is in order to.
I'm trying to think of the last book I read just for pleasure.
I honestly trying to think. I mean, I used to read more for pleasure.
But now, again, I'm trying to confuse our phase of life. I'm in the phase of life where like in order to.
If I'm going to read a book, it has to have some philosophical purpose.
If I'm going to watch a documentary, it has to have some kind of philosophical purpose.
Something maybe I can use in the show. It's going to provoke some thoughts or ideas that are going to be helpful to the world as a whole or something like that.
Like I did a, I watched a documentary on women who get arrested for false rape charges after they've claimed to have been raped and got a great show out of it that went out to donors earlier this week.
Now, of course, sometimes I watch a documentary and can't really get anything out of it, but yeah, I mean, I'm in the for what phase.
For what? You know, okay, I'll work out. I mean, I work out.
I want to stay healthy and all of that. And it's a good investment.
Somebody says, I normally listen to you while playing video games in my free time. So my free time was purposeful.
[29:07] Well, do you consider that free time? Where you are, and other podcasts.
That's it, banned. And other podcasts. You man whore of syllabic. Of syllabic.
Syllabic. You man whore of syllabic. in constancy to the big chatty forehead um no i mean seriously go and listen to, uh climate change on trial that podcast is fantastic i'm just getting unbelievable flashbacks with the irish people as i mentioned they sound quite a lot like my aunts and uncles and i'm just i'm literally having these flashbacks to being a kid in ireland hearing these lovely accents, due to work all i've read for years is math except for steph's books yeah for what For what?
[29:56] For what?
So if you want to have more free time, if you don't enjoy the work...
[30:05] If you don't enjoy the work, then, yeah, find something else to do.
But, again, I'm happy to hear what you do. I mean, tell me, what do you do with your free time?
What do I do with my free time? I mean, obviously, today, gosh, today I woke up early and I did a little bit of just boring tech work.
I had a podcast I needed to process. And I was going to do a show on the consequentialism thing, but my daughter got up.
So we went for an hour's walk and we had a little bit of breakfast together.
And then we came back and my wife and my daughter went out.
I did a little bit of work and because I'm having this like light sleep and I don't know, this like sugarless semi-flu thing, I napped for about 40 minutes and then I got up. We were going to go bowling, but it turns out my daughter was a little tired, so we didn't go bowling.
And my daughter needs, she needed something from the drugstore.
So we went there. I got a haircut. I came back.
I played a game of Catan with my wife on the tablet while I was doing my weights.
And then I did the show. So, I mean, I don't consider any of that wasted time.
I mean, having a walk with my daughter is great.
She's great company and brunch was really nice. and there's a that's but that's purposeful right i mean enjoying my daughter's company so yeah i mean as far as free time goes i'm like.
[31:34] I don't know, it's um i just just you know free time is like for for what for what, for what, so um but if you're not enjoying the business yeah i would say sell it to someone who enjoys it more so that it can provide better value to people somebody says steph would it be possible for upb not to postulate property rights but rather possession rights possession defined as direct and immediate control only i know it's a weird question but i really don't see contradictions in such a theory yet, direct and immediate control only. I don't understand that.
You've never been an entrepreneur. You've never owned a business.
You've never owned property.
I mean, somebody buys an apartment building and rents out 10 apartments to people.
[32:38] Doesn't he own the apartment building? I mean, he doesn't have direct and immediate control. He's not living there. But doesn't he own the apartment building?
And if you say no, well, then no one's going to build any apartment buildings and no one's going to have a place to live.
So I'm direct and immediate control only. I don't, I don't understand. I don't understand that.
You fly to a resort and you stay in a hotel. The hotel owner could be in another continent, but doesn't he have ownership of the hotel if he's bought it or built it or something?
Has inherited it, or he's got legal ownership. I don't know.
Direct and immediate control only, so when you move into the hotel room, it's now your hotel room.
Like, you now own it, because I don't... If you grab something, and you now have control over it, that means you own... Like, I don't understand.
We own ourselves, and we own the effects of our actions.
The effects of our actions can be quite remote.
Yeah.
[33:47] I play a sport called fives similar to squash i'm a little old for squash, i'm a little old for squash sorry that's making it about me um i'm glad you play the game whatever whatever sport you like is what you should do somebody says your video on the fall of rome was so interesting in high school quote learning about rome put me to sleep oh god oh don't even man.
I'm on keto flu and you start talking to me about, I mean, I took an entire course on Rome in university.
When I was at McGill, I took an entire course on Rome.
Couldn't tell you a fucking thing that I learned other than how to stay awake and memorize useless shit.
There was nothing, nothing.
[34:35] People slaughter history in detail on a regular basis.
Most education is the murder of history with nitty-gritty, itty-bitty, useless, trivial shit.
I remember having to, I literally had to memorize the sequence of emperors and their dates. What the fuck is that for?
And I remember writing an essay on the Crimean War and the professor getting real mad at me and got to redo it.
And I was like, I mean, because I was talking about the Crimean War and its effects on Europe and current Europeans. Like, no, no, no, this is history.
It's not supposed to touch on the present. It's like, that is what history is.
Like, why does your doctor ask you for your medical history?
To do what? Why does your doctor ask you for your medical history so he can figure out what to keep an eye on? Why do they say, you go in, like I remember when I went in for my colonoscopy, they said, do you have any family history of bowel or colon cancer?
It's like, nope, don't think so. I don't know much about my father's medical history, and I haven't talked about my mother in decades, but the purpose of your medical history is what? The future.
[35:54] The purpose of your medical history is for the future. I mean, you could say it's for the present, but we're always moving.
Time keeps on slipping into the future, right? We're always moving into the future.
So the doctor asks you about the past in order to check about the future.
Right? Do you have a family history of means we got to watch out for this in the future.
The purpose of the past is to help you in the future. And if what you're learning in the past doesn't fucking help you with the future, it's as useless as tits on a bull, down a darkened mine, Lost in time on the other side of the moon.
[36:40] It's just awful I literally cannot stand the way that people murder literature they murder poetry and in particular they murder history by sealing it off in the past not having it have any relevance to the future.
[36:56] Experience that teaches you nothing about the future is just masturbation without even the lowered risk of prostate cancer or something, I don't know what, right?
So how much do you think the lead plumbing and lead-laced wine contributed to the decline of Rome?
I mean, it had an effect without a doubt, and we've seen this with the lead paint in particular communities in America.
We can also see this, lead paint was outlawed, or lead gasoline, sorry, was outlawed in various places in America at various times, and you can see the rise in IQ and so on, but it wasn't fundamentally that.
It was certainly a factor. It was a factor.
But it wasn't a deciding factor, because Rome collapsed as a whole and it wasn't just where there was lead piping and so on, right?
Since you mentioned France, are minors engaging in sexual relations with each other okay under UPB? Absolutely not.
Minors cannot engage in sexual relations with each other under UPB, because children do not have the capacity to consent and even with each other, right?
Children do not have the capacity to consent.
So for instance, there's no such thing in UPB as boxing, like full-on boxing for seven-year-olds.
[38:24] And you say, well, even if they, right? If you see two kids slugging at each other, your partner and so on because they don't understand the consequences of that like what could happen because they see action movies where you know guys get thrown against walls get up and dust themselves off and go back to the fight they don't understand that like one push one shove one head bump can be it can be it for you right i mean the the singer for in excess michael hutchins is in london uh he's he's getting some indian curry from a street cart he trips and falls or i think was pushed hits his head against the concrete goes on a downward spiral ends up killing himself just one trip he was also engaged to a manic woman who claimed that he tried to choke her during sex and was having custody issues and lord knows bob geldof's ex-girlfriend or some giant mess of a situation but i mean i'm sure that the head injury because he was dizzy disoriented didn't go and seek help didn't go and get it evaluated for way too long next thing you know he's uh he's killing himself.
[39:27] So, kids can't consent to that.
Now, adult boxers, we allow that, right?
But you wouldn't have kid boxers, right? You wouldn't have children boxers.
Say, oh, well, there's, you know, there's some kid judo and stuff like that.
Yeah, but it's very carefully controlled and managed and soft stuff and no injuries and all of that kind of stuff, right?
So, children can't consent because they can't process the consequences of their choices.
And this is as true of sexuality as it is true of injury or, you know, we don't let children take out loans, right?
We don't let children sign mortgages. We don't let children do these things because they can't fully process the consequences of their own choices.
Like, if you say to a six-year-old kid, you know, here's five bucks for candy, but I'll want 10 bucks in a month.
They just, hey, free candy, right? They're not processing the consequences of their choices. So they don't have the capacity to consent.
And when you add two people without the capacity to consent, you don't end up with consent, right?
Two people who can't consent don't add up to consent.
And so children can't consent to sexual activity, and therefore two children who can't consent to sexual activity does not add up to a child who can consent.
[40:52] So I hope that makes sense. Did you watch the Tucker Putin interview?
I watched about two-thirds of it. And I think it's...
Is that partly how Miley Cyrus became so wild? She had a head injury as a child?
I didn't know that. Can you give me a... I'm sure you're right.
I'm just curious what the story is for that.
The age of consent for sex would be raised to 18 under UPB for everyone?
How on earth would I know?
[41:20] I don't... I don't know what you're asking. Are you asking...
When is adulthood in a free society?
How on earth would I know? How on earth could I possibly know that?
Don't ask people for details when we're talking principles.
It's kind of a bullshit move. Like, I'm sorry to be annoyed and annoying.
It's kind of a bullshit move.
How on earth am I supposed to know what the definition is of adulthood in a voluntary and free society.
[41:58] I mean, that would be almost like a different species because we don't get a free society until children are raised peacefully.
I mean, the majority, right? We don't get a free society until children are raised peacefully.
Now, when children are raised peacefully and reasoned with and negotiated with and not hit and not bullied and not circumcised and not brutalized and not, right?
When children are raised peacefully and have good parents who model adult behavior, when are they mature?
I don't know. No, we've never seen that before in society.
It literally is like saying, well, Steph, what is the composition of the roads in a free society?
[42:38] What is going to be the range of jetpacks in a free society?
Like when people are talking principles, asking for specifics is kind of a bullshit move. I don't know. Nobody can know.
Who, how is cotton going to be picked in the absence of slavery? Nobody knows.
We know that slavery is wrong. Shouldn't have slavery. Whatever replaces it is voluntary and better.
But don't ask for specifics when people are talking principles.
It's a bullshit move. And I'm not saying like you're being mean or anything like that. Just understand that it's a bullshit move.
And anybody who falls for that, you're dragging them down into specifics.
And you know what happens then?
People end up arguing specifics rather than principles.
You're dragging people down from the elevated godlike realm of principles down to the scurvy little monkey level of details.
[43:32] Well, until you can show me exactly how a DRO contract would work in a free system, like the initiation of the use of force is immoral.
Let's talk about that. We talk principles. Now, again, I've written a whole book called Practical Anarchy, and I get all of that, but those are still all principles.
I don't know what will be considered an adult in a free society.
In a free society where children are raised well, their hormones aren't screwed up, they sexually mature later because they're not traumatized.
You know, trauma and child abuse leads to earlier sexual maturation.
You know, like in the Victorian era, when the world, when Western Europe had been at peace for almost a hundred years, women started menstruating at the age of 17 or 18.
Now in traumatized, broken down section society, you've got girls starting to menstruate at nine or 10 years of age or even earlier. Yeah.
[44:37] So, sexual maturity is delayed by parental maturity.
And if you've ever been, it's funny, you know, if you've ever been around kids who are raised really well, you can see this is lack of sexual obsession, the lack of sort of R-selected sexual compulsions and all of that.
Now, maybe that's changed, I don't know, with pornography these days, but I don't know.
Children can't consent. Well, what is the exact definition of children under UPB?
I don't know.
[45:15] How will international property rights be resolved under UPB?
I don't know. The initiation of the use of force is wrong and children can't consent.
Well, what's the exact definition of a child? I don't know.
That's negotiated. That's worked out. That's a moving target.
Maybe children get more mature.
Maybe they get less mature. That which matures later tends to become more complex.
So maybe children will be children for longer and then end up as smarter adults.
I don't know. I have no idea.
I have no idea. Maybe it'll be more individual. Maybe there's a brain scan that will figure it out. I have no idea.
It will be negotiated voluntarily. I don't care what the outcome is as long as the negotiation is voluntary.
[45:56] I think that overburdening people with details and arbitrary requirements is gatekeeping behavior as well.
Well, so here's what happens, right? This is a slicey dicey shit.
And listen, I'm not trying to be hostile towards you. This is like 40 years of dealing with this shit.
So this is not negative to you. I'm glad you brought this up.
It's an interesting topic to talk about.
So if you say, this is the way it plays out. I'm not saying it's, this is the way it plays out. Maybe not with you, but this is the way it plays out.
So, oh, 18 under UPP, you can't have sex.
Okay, so what if a guy's 18 years and one month and is dating a woman who's 17 years and 11 months? Are you saying that they can't have sex?
Okay, what about, and two days?
And what if she's mentally retarded? What if he's super, like you just end up, you set a line and then people come up with counter examples and you end up arguing incredibly detailed nonsense bullshit from now until the end of time while evil people take over the whole fucking world.
Like we're just edge casing ourselves into fucking atoms while evil people take over the world.
[46:58] If you're a big issue in life, you know we've got evil people all around us, we've got a pretty evil culture pretty evil media and I'm sure you know people in your life who are doing wrong supporting direct or indirect violence, you've got spankers child abusers people who put their kids in horrible educational situations you've got your work cut out for you my friend as far as trying to be a good person in this world, if you've dealt with all the personal evils in your life or all the personal evils in everyone you know that you can affect. You've dealt with all of that.
Then maybe we can argue about the age of consent in a free society 500 years in the future.
But you and I both know that you have not dealt with all of the evils that are in your environment, and you are doing this so that you can feel like you're interested in virtue and doing something about virtue, rather than talk to the people in your life.
You're taking a safe route that's ineffective. And I understand that.
Listen, I'm tempted by that.
I understand that. I indulge myself in that sometimes as well.
So I'm not speaking from a situation of virtue or superiority.
[48:15] But this is a way for you to, back off to morality without actually creating anything genuinely good in the world. Sorry. Like it just, it just is.
And, and when I take away bullshit edge cases from people, they get kind of of anxious and hostile because I'm not giving them the dopamine of thinking they're good people because they're talking about theoreticals that affect no one and nothing whatsoever.
It all, you know, and I'm not saying this is true for you at all, at all, but I'm also saying that edge casing, uh, whoa.
So in a free society, uh, it's 18, uh, it's an 18 and like, I don't fucking know.
But I do know that when people demand that you provide them with solutions to edge cases or details, it's a dominance move.
Well, I will approve of what you're saying if you answer my 12 questions.
Maybe I, like, why the hell should I? I mean, you think for yourself.
Why the fuck should I do this detail work for you? Think for yourself.
You come out, you tell me, you tell me. Ask me questions. Like asking people questions. A lot of people think it's subservient.
It's often not. I mean, sometimes it is if somebody is genuine in humility, with all humility, coming to ask you a question.
But a lot of times it's dominant, right? Right.
In other words, well, for me to, and I'm not saying this, I'm not talking about you, the person who asked this question, I'm not trying to pile on you.
This is, this is a totally separate issue. So don't take this personally. This is not about you.
[49:44] But when people are like, well, I, you know, I'm not going to believe what you have to say until you answer these five trolley questions, this one emergency lifeboat situation, this one hanging from a flagpole situation.
And by the way, I'm just going to come up with more.
They're making you chase them and they're making you work for them, which is a dominant issue and you're working for them unpaid you're actually a kind of slave because you're doing all this labor to meet somebody else's requirements they're not paying you a penny.
[50:13] You're enslaved.
Don't answer questions about specifics. Now, again, I've done them.
I look, I'm not, again, I'm not some holy roller here, a guru, cross-legged floating above the mountain, six or eight feet.
I've done this, but this is where I'm at now.
I don't answer questions about specifics. I answer questions about principles, or we explore principles together.
Asking questions about specifics, you know how it is. Again, not talking to this guy.
You know how it is on social media like, well, that's bullshit because this can't happen. Oh no, it happens this way. Well, this and this can't happen.
Oh no, no, it happens this way.
Well, you know, source and you just, you run around, you're like a scholarly slave to people who are never going to accept what you say. They're just wasting your time.
As you could be talking to people who actually live in the realm of principles.
Instead, you're chasing after people who are just dominating you by making you do the dance and the do-si-do and the fucking Macarena to answer all the questions when they They have no intention of accepting what you say. Is this the right place to send questions?
[51:22] What sucks about leaded gasoline is that they knew leaded gasoline was a problem from the start.
Just like the asbestos industry learned it was toxic 40 years before it was banned.
Well, you know why that is. Because this bullshit legal fiction called a corporation was invented. so that people didn't lose their house.
So if the corporation's going to get sued, but you get to keep your house, you're just much less interested in fixing things.
Whereas if you fuck around with asbestos and people get sick, and then you lose your house, and you lose your savings, and you live in a fucking rain barrel, after a while, then you're going to be more like the whole, one of the greatest corruptions in modern capitalism is the concept of the corporation.
Somebody says, fluoride apparently has similar neurological effects to lead, although I claim no expertise, and I think it doesn't biocumulate the same way.
Well, somebody did a study on fluoride.
I think it was in Norway because it was put into the water supply in various times there.
And they tried to find any IQ issues and so on based upon when it was introduced into various... It was Norway or Denmark or one of the Scandinavian countries.
And they couldn't find any correlation in test scores among children and among adults based upon when fluoride was introduced.
Again, I don't know for sure. I'm just giving you sort of one of the counter-examples.
[52:39] I wonder what the effect of smartphone and social media has had in children's IQ and attention span.
Is it similar to how most kids are now over-programmed with busy soccer schedules, dance, and basket-weaving classes?
I'm a devil's advocate position here. I'm a devil's advocate position here.
I think that social media and smartphones have the potential to enormously raise children's IQs. Again, to raise, whether you can raise IQ, change IQ, it's pretty tough.
Like even if we say 80%, well, a fifth of IQ is open to the environment, so you can maybe adjust it a bit.
So IQ is a muscle, in my view, and muscles function on resistance.
Muscles function on resistance. Now, prior to social media, you had a monolith of unidimensional information coming your way, right?
Prior to social media, the monolithic information coming your way, and there were no exceptions to this. There were no exceptions to this.
So if you're older and you went through life and education, before social media, you knew two things for certain if you were educated at all in history. You knew two things for certain.
[54:00] That Joseph McCarthy, Senator Joseph McCarthy, was unbelievably paranoid and completely wrong about the prevalence of communists in the State Department, in Hollywood, and other centralized aspects of U.S. politics, economics, and culture.
That he was just a crazy guy. He was paranoid.
McCarthyism became an irrational witch hunt. You just knew for a fact.
Monolithic. No escape from that.
And you also knew, that Nixon was an unpopular lying corrupt scumbag you knew that I remember taking a course 20th century history and the whole class was laughing because when I was in university the whole class was laughing because the professor was talking about there were contortions that Nixon had to put his body in in order to push the pedal to delete the recordings and blah blah blah so you just knew that for a fact, Joseph McCarthy was a paranoid conspiracy theorist who was entirely wrong, totally wrong.
And Nixon was an unpopular, corrupt president who disgraced the White House with his terrible corruption and sleaziness and all that. This was just a fact.
[55:15] And people, without counterexamples, people are functionally retarded.
This sounds like hyperbole. I don't mean it to be hyperbole at all.
I don't mean they're physically retarded. They're functionally retarded.
They're slow. They're stupid.
They're idiots. Without counterexamples, people are idiots.
Which is why some of the more interesting intellectual activity is happening on the right because the right is swimming against the current of the leftist monolith, right?
[55:46] So without counterexamples, people are stupid. They don't make good decisions.
They don't make wise decisions.
If you just live on trash planet, as I talked about it some weeks ago, and everyone around you is trashy and an addict and volatile, you don't have counterexamples.
When I grew up, there was one or two families.
One family, of course, I remember very vividly and in particular was a very functional and positive and happy family.
Mother and father loved each other. The kids were pretty happy and healthy.
The father was successful. stressful the house had a pool uh they they got along and you know when the when kids would come over there'd be all of these cool uh riddle games and all of that and around the house that had been taped up by the dad and we had uh the dad was was going to get involved in the missile defense program and we had a long discussion about whether that was the right or wrong thing and uh even me at the age of 14 or my my viewpoint was taken with great seriousness and we talked about whether whether colonialism was a good thing, like just, it was a great functional family.
[56:47] Until the dad was basically killed by the Canadian healthcare system, but that's a topic for another time.
You just need one counterexample and your brain grows. You understand?
Like you, you just not, you just need, tell me, you've got to have this, you've got to have this.
You've got to have this. You take things for granted and you find out it's not true. Something foundational, something important, it's just like, no, it's not true.
It's not true at all that Joseph McCarthy was a paranoid guy who had no proof and was wrong.
It's not true. In fact, he was more right than even he knew.
It's not true that Nixon and Joseph McCarthy was enormously popular in America, massively popular in America. I mean, the number of people who attended his funeral was staggering.
[57:37] And Richard Dixon was not hopelessly corrupt. He was relentlessly hounded. did?
He was not hopelessly corrupt. I mean, compared to what? Oh, I mean, he ended the war in Vietnam. JFK started it.
JFK had recording equipment. JFK was hopelessly corrupt in many ways.
And a sex addict. And I mean, he had crazy health issues and medications and all that kind of stuff.
The 50s were not a time of relentless, blind, stupid conformity.
The 50s were not a time when women's rights were crushed.
Women were their happiest in the 50s. And ever since feminism came along, women are becoming more and more unhappy.
So there has to be something where you just looked at things like, holy shit, there's nothing but bullshit here.
There's nothing but bullshit here. So much is a lie. Now, social media gives you, if you choose to get out of the echo chamber, which I think is a pretty good thing to do, social media gives you counter examples, counter examples stimulate curiosity and skepticism which is the foundation of intelligence, so I think children are going to grow up smarter, as the result, of social media, if they choose, if they choose.
[59:02] Alright let's see here miley cyrus was on a quad bike with her father and didn't duck for a brunch while her father did and got hit very badly oh she wasn't in a uh billy ray cyrus right achy breaky heart, uh he she didn't have a helmet on, all right, uh anytime i see arguments about age of consent it's always being argued by people who are way out of that age bracket it's like everyone i've ever seen who is arguing for medical marijuana it's not dying from cancer. Yeah, it's kind of true.
I also, and this is just a personal thing, I'm not saying anything about anybody, just my personal thing is that people who are kind of overly attached to the concept of the age of consent have a creepy vibe coming off them, right?
My female friend argues that a lot of adults do not have the capacity to evaluate the consequences of their actions, and that's why we need the state to make regulations. What is the argument against that?
[1:00:03] Well, so your friend does not want democracy?
Because you can't vote. If you don't know the consequences of your actions, how can you vote?
Oh, she wants them to vote. It's like, okay, well, then they can evaluate the consequences of their actions and don't need the state.
So she's either in a pure fascistic dictatorship mode, which is a whole other set of issues.
But, oh, see, well, they should be able to vote. Okay, well, if people can't understand the consequences of their actions, then their votes are just being bribed or bought. or propaganda is programming them, so they're still not choosing, right? All right.
The state is run by people who do not have the capacity to evaluate or don't care about the consequences of their actions.
I don't think that's true. I think that they do know the consequences of their actions. They just tend to be amoral or amoral.
But if so, if children can't consent, then why isn't everything done with them forceful? Or is it all forceful when you ask a child for some decision?
I don't know what you mean by forceful. Sorry, I don't understand.
I mean, I don't force my daughter. She respects me and my advice is helpful to her and she enjoys spending time with me.
All right, so let's see here.
[1:01:15] Years ago, some person wanted to test property rights by asking if you could break somebody's window if you were hanging off a flagpole.
My favorite response to that, why are the flagpoles the land cap state?
That's funny. Yeah, I remember that was one of the early conflicts that we had, right?
We must stop edging.
[1:01:35] You call, let's see here.
At this age, you can consent. Well, what if this person can't consent? You know.
[1:01:49] I'm distracting myself from like my dad, who is open to verbally abusing me.
I'm sorry, I don't quite follow that. My sympathies, though.
Every time the dems try to push for lowering the voting age i say absolutely so long as you lower the drinking smoking gun buying and conscription age as well either rates the age of voting to 21 or lower the drinking smoking gun buying age to 18 16 whatever just be consistent if they're mature enough in x category then it's fine in y category if a kind of gardener is mature enough to choose their own okay so i don't know what kind of gardener means yeah so i mean you're playing this game called I can magically make people who are after power consistent.
Well, it's inconsistent if you lower this, but you don't lower that, right?
Well, the whole point of power is you don't have to be consistent.
You don't have to be logical. You don't have to be rational.
You know, if you're the government, do you have to consistently provide good service that people would choose in a free market? Nope.
They can be inconsistent. They can be late. They can make you line up at four o'clock in the morning to get some government card. They can, right?
Well, you've got to be consistent. No, the whole point of power is you don't have to be consistent because you have power.
[1:03:06] Uh, anyone have any unique ideas on self curing yourself or perceiving you're being stalked and persecuted? I've been wrestling with this for seven years.
Paranoid schizo. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that, David. That's very, very tough. Very tough. I did a show on gang stalking.
I did a show on gang stalking many years ago. I think it was with an Indian fellow who heard, he lived in an apartment building.
He heard sounds out of his cabinets and was quite convinced that he was being gang stalked. and I obviously can't answer this question in any fundamentally productive way.
Like just so you know, like I can't answer this question in any fundamentally productive way.
[1:03:52] Which is not to say that I can't take a stab at the general issues, which is not specific to you, but it's just my one way of looking about this.
I'm just going to look up the gang stalking thing. I think I think it was after my producer left because I remember trying to come up with the, with the thumbnail on my own long before AI it was pretty tough ah yes September the 26th 2018, hey two days after my birthday and the show is 4211 4211 and And he says, I am subject to covert harassment since August 2015, and so I will give you a link to this. I will copy the link to the MP3.
You may want to listen to this. We had a pretty intense conversation about this.
[1:04:48] So, let me just get your comment here, make sure I deal with it directly.
[1:05:01] Anyone have any unique ideas on self-curing yourself, of perceiving you're being stalked and persecuted?
I've been wrestling with this for seven years, paranoid skitzel.
So again, this is not particular to you.
I can't do anything to help with this kind of stuff, but I can talk about the feeling of being stalked and persecuted, is something my mother experienced, and without a doubt, experiences to this day.
She believed that insurance companies and doctors and ilk were hunting her, chasing her, trying to scare her away from her endless lawsuits.
She slept with a giant serrated knife under her bed.
She thought the graffiti three apartment buildings over was a coded message to her.
When a car backfired, she thought people were shooting at her.
Like she generally believed that she was being stalked and persecuted.
And it was really, really crippling and difficult and painful.
Now, so for her, she was stalked and persecuted as a child. I mean, she was an attractive child in a time of massive child sexual assault, uh, the Russians and the war and all of that kind of stuff. And not just the Russians, Germans as well.
[1:06:09] War is often considered to be some sort of noble end.
War is when all the evil people in the universe get full license to fulfill their darkest desires without consequences. That's, that's war.
Neighbors. I mean, we know this, there were, there was a, in the, um, in Vietnam, there was a sniper, A set of snipers, and they said, well, you know, you tell us who the bad guys are, and we'll go shoot them.
And villagers used it to get the U.S. to shoot people they'd had property disputes with or squabbles with, some guy who'd taken some other guy's wife.
Oh, he's a Viet Cong. So they just, right?
War is when evil people get to fulfill their darkest desires without any consequences whatsoever, other than maybe a medal and a pension. attention.
[1:06:53] So my mother was stalked and persecuted as a child without a doubt.
And when she, I can't diagnose my mother either, but I think of course that the general pattern was when she was no longer gaining male attention, she imagined that people were very, very interested in her for other the reasons she was a beautiful woman and a slender woman and had great charm, uh, in many ways, a great conversationalist and was very intelligent as you can imagine.
And when she could no longer gain male attention, she then believed that malevolent people were obsessed with her instead to be on the receiving end of attention was one thing.
And when she wasn't getting real attention from men, she was getting imaginary attention from enemies, right?
[1:07:50] It's a vicious circle because if you're isolated and nobody's paying any attention to you, that's really awful.
So the temptation is to make up that people are paying attention to you, that you're the focus of a vast group and a conspiracy and they're just obsessed with you and they're stalking you and they're checking your email and they're following your every move. And right.
Maybe it's true. I don't know. But but if if no one's that interested in you as a person, we still have like we have a hunger to pair bond and we have a hunger for people to be interested in us.
[1:08:21] Because if people aren't interested in us, we don't reproduce.
We don't have dates. We don't have marriage. We don't have kids. Nobody's introduced.
Nobody's interested in us. We're gone. We disappear out of the gene pool.
[1:08:31] So it is agony for us to not be interesting to anyone.
Nobody cares about us. Nobody's interested in us. Right. And this is why I say the big mental health crisis of the West is, is going to come over the next five to 10 years, which is all the the women sliding past the wall into obscurity and it's it's going to be absolutely appalling it's it's like you can i can see this like tsunami of menopause just coming down the pipe and it's just going to be absolutely horrendous um particularly as antidepressants continue to be discredited in the way that they are so we can't stand it if nobody's interested in us if If nobody calls to check on us, if we don't impact anyone else's life, if nobody cares whether we live or die, if we're just kind of really out there on the outskirts of society and nobody cares, right?
We wake up with a headache. Nobody cares. We can't sleep. Nobody cares.
We get sick. We just got to stagger to our own fridge to get some food.
[1:09:36] Nobody props up our pillows. Nobody brings us medicine. Nobody inquires as to how we're doing.
We are not designed for a solitary life.
It's, it's, loneliness is one of the biggest killers.
Loneliness is as bad as smoking.
[1:09:58] So in the absence, like, you know, this is the, um, Anne of Green Gables phenomenon where Anne of Green Gables, a fictional character, Lucy Moore Montgomery or something like that.
And I read the book when I was younger and there's a sort of striking scene where this very lonely girl, who's an orphan, um, makes friends with her reflection in the mirror.
We all know like imaginary friends and so on.
The imaginary friends can be personal or they can be like Marvel bullshit or Star Wars bullshit or Star Trek bullshit or something like that.
But in the absence of stimuli, we make up stimuli.
One of the reasons we dream is to keep us asleep because our brain is constantly hungering for stimuli.
In the absence of love, we make up obsession.
In the absence of real people who care about us, we will make up imaginary enemies who are obsessed with us.
It's a form of drug to stave off a feeling of loneliness. I'm not alone if somebody's stalking me.
I'm not insignificant if powerful forces...
[1:11:10] Want to examine my garbage.
I mean, it's a desperately, desperately, desperately sad thing with regards to my own mother.
Honestly, I can't even linger too long in this hot springs of infinite geyser tears because for my mother to have started her life as a sort of beautiful, in-demand, intellectual, funny, well-read woman, and then to end up half rotting away in a dismal rent-controlled old apartment for 40 years, it's, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's honestly, it's beyond appalling.
[1:11:48] How could she, how could you live with that? How could you? So nobody's interested in her, right?
She's, she's passed her level of attractiveness. She's not married.
She's got no real friends. Um, who cares?
And I think, I think it's tougher for women a little bit than it is for men.
I mean i really dislike that anyone who's intelligent and focused is now an autist i just by the way i just i really hate that stuff to be intelligent and dedicated and focused to be able to to be able to actually focus on things and remove distractions now it's autistic but i guess from what's that meme i hate i hate my apartment and then suddenly you get an apple pro and on apple uh vr and there's a bunch of icons all over your apartment it's like yay right.
[1:12:36] So I think there was a vicious circle for my mom and other people that I've known who've gone through this kind of persecution stuff.
[1:12:43] I mean, well, I was persecuted. It's a bit of a different matter.
But for people who go through this persecution stuff, you feel that malevolent forces are chasing you.
The malevolent force is kind of your own loneliness and you have made up you have you're living a kind of waking dream where lots of people are very interested in you and that way you you don't feel like you're not interesting to anyone now if you're not interesting to anyone and nobody really cares about you and i'm not saying this is the case with you i'm just talking in general terms if nobody's really interested in you and you don't matter to anyone yeah like like you ever want to see something really chilling you watch the documentaries on the old japanese people you ever seen these things old japanese people god it's horrible old japanese people and they live alone and they die alone and sometimes it's three weeks before anybody notices and you know then these crews go in to clean up the old japanese women's usually the women old japanese women's home they just clean up crews go in with hazmat suits and plastic bags and and then they find some contact oh there's some woman on the other side of japan or maybe she's moved to thailand or hong kong or something they call her and they say hey your mom's dead there's all this stuff here and they're like oh that's sad i guess uh i don't know donate it to charity i don't want any of this stuff just donate it to charity or throw it out i don't care right god you ever see these people if you go to any sort of touristy spot you you see these people.
[1:14:13] You know they're single maybe it's two older women you just you know they're single they're They're not, you know, and they're taking all these pictures.
[1:14:24] The pictures are going to sell. Here's a picture of Niagara Falls.
Here's a picture of St. Augustine, right?
And they're taking all these pictures and you know, the pictures are going to sit on their computer.
The computer is going to have a password.
They're going to die. Nobody's going to know the password to their computer.
Nobody's really going to care.
And all of those memories that they bought expensive cameras and took expensive photographs and all those memories, all of those pictures, they're just going to be molten down into slag in some recycling vat.
And it's going to be like, it's going to be like they never were.
[1:15:09] Who cares about you? It's an old Kojak thing. I never really watched it.
Telly Savalas, who has played this famous bald detective who always sucked on these lollipops. And he's like, who loves you, baby?
Who loves you, baby? Became a catchphrase. I think it was in the 70s.
I can't remember when Kojak was on.
Became a catchphrase. Who loves you, baby? Okay, who loves you?
Who loves you? Who matters?
Who do you matter to? who is weeping and wailing and clutching at their hair and ears and cheek when you die, it's a pretty big fucking question, who cares if you're here or not, who wants to know how you are and their mood to some degree depends on how you are who cares, Now, if you don't have people who care about you and then you invent people who care about you, and it always has to be malevolent because they have to stay hidden, right?
It can't be somebody cares about me in a positive way because then they just come over and say, hey, how you doing? Let's hang out today.
Hey, I've missed you. Let's talk.
Hey, what's going on? Hey, what are your new thoughts? Right?
Who cares if you're alive or dead?
[1:16:30] So, if no one's around who cares about you, you've got to make up people who hate you, or fear you, or want to undermine you, or destroy you.
Because somebody's got to care about you, otherwise, what's the point of anything?
Well, no one's chasing me out of love, but maybe they're silently encircling me out of hate. I've got to matter to someone.
I've got to matter to someone.
Isn't that the fundamental cry? Thank you.
[1:17:07] Get people in your life who care about you. But the challenge is to get people in your life who care about you, you have to care about them.
Which means you've got to stop talking about being stalked and persecuted.
You've got to focus on other people.
And I think getting off the sinking ship of paranoia, I think the only way off the sinking ship of paranoia is to the benevolent cruise line of love.
To stretch my ocean-going metaphors a little bit.
All right. What is the balance between asking enough questions but not too many the wrong kind?
I have this block about asking questions because I need to overcome anticipation of ridicule slash irritation.
So, when do you ask a question? When do you ask a question? It's a great question.
And I'm going to give you the answer.
[1:18:09] When do you ask a question?
When do you ask a question?
[1:18:33] When do you ask a question?
When you're curious? Nope. No.
[1:18:54] 95% of questions are totally lazy.
When the speaker stops talking, nope.
You ask a question when you can't figure out the answer.
Right? Have you put thought into it, or are you just offloading your thinking to someone else?
Because if you're offloading your thinking to someone else, you're going to end up pretty annoying. Do you follow?
Can you figure it out?
Have you put a lot of work into figuring it out? You can't figure it out, which is fine. And then you go to an expert.
You know that. Let me Google that for you. Everybody has had that situation online.
Line where, uh, there's an answer that's easy for someone to look up, but they're asking you to do it for them. Right?
Like if you're not willing to think, don't ask me any questions because just wasting my time and you're wasting your time.
[1:20:07] You ask questions when you can't figure out the answer.
Now, maybe you can't figure out the answer because the answer is impossible to figure out. Maybe you can't figure out the answer because you're just not experienced or used to thinking those kinds.
In which case, absolutely, ask the question. No question.
Yes, absolutely, ask the question. That's wonderful. That's wonderful.
But don't ask the question if a moment's thought can have you sorted out.
Right, so somebody, like a question about the age of 18. Is the age of 18 UPP? I don't know.
[1:20:42] How could it be?
How could it be? When does a person gain self-ownership? I don't know.
You know, if you're a genius, it's like saying, when should people go to university?
Well, you've got to go to university when you're 19. Well, hey man, I know a genius who went to university when he was 11.
Okay, so there's not a universal answer.
When do children become adults? I don't know. Well, some children never do if they have particular mental deficiencies or problems.
If they're severely traumatized, Jesus Christ, that is the answer.
But you ask a question when you can't figure out the answer.
[1:21:25] So if you say, well, how would national defense be provided in a stateless society?
Okay, well, have you looked it up? Are you just asking the question because you just want somebody else to do your thinking for you or do your research for you?
When people ask me questions that they could research or think for themselves, it's basically like saying, well, I don't feel like working out.
Can you work out for me? It's like, A, no, and B, no. No, I can't, and no, I won't.
Asking questions is supposed to be an aid to thought not a substitute for brain activity.
[1:22:12] If you have a question, and you've thought about it, can't figure it out totally fine, can't figure it out done a bit of research can't find the answer fantastic great time to ask a question but do your own thinking first, do your own thinking first and if you can't figure it out ask someone absolutely great happy to happy to oblige but not as a substitute for thinking, because you got to have your own mode of power every time you ask someone else to figure out something you could figure out you just get weaker and they get more annoyed because you're not exercising in the muscle of your brain.
[1:23:04] I've seen some examples of this on this show from the audience, right?
Now, I did not say to this person, that's a dumb question.
I said, it's a great question. It is a great question because that's tough to figure out.
[1:23:21] Right? It's a tough question for sure. I have no problem with that.
Right? When does somebody become an adult? Is that UPB?
What is UPB? There is no UPB that is time-sensitive, right?
UPB doesn't change from your 17th.99 year to your 18th year.
At some point, this is the game that people play, and I'm not saying this is any negative behavior on the part of this delightful audience.
I appreciate all these questions.
Wouldn't mind a couple more tips. Got to be honest with you, wouldn't mind a couple more tips.
I think I'm working pretty hard here, and I think I'm providing a lot.
I know I'm providing a lot of value here, but this is what people do.
Rather than talk about principles, they talk about edge cases, right?
They talk about edge cases. And that's because they want to paralyze other people.
And they want to discredit other people because if they accept virtue, they have to act on virtue.
So they keep chewing at virtue and worrying about virtue and thinking about virtue rather than just going out and doing it.
[1:24:30] James says i've seen this countless times in my technical career hey i take that very personally or people being just lazy and not even trying to figure things out it's so bad yeah don't come to me if you can figure it out for yourself don't come to me, because it's never going to end and i'm just all i'm doing is insulting your intelligence by giving you an answer that you could easily figure out for yourself self.
[1:24:56] So if you say, well, is the age of 18 adulthood UPP?
No, it's not universal across time.
What is UPP is people without self-owning, people who can't figure out the consequences of their actions can't, that's definitional, right?
People who can't figure out the consequences of of their actions can't consent, right?
I mean, we can all understand this, that a woman who is unconscious cannot consent to sex.
She can't consent to sex. Well, she didn't say no. Yeah, well, she can't consent to sex, right? That's rape.
Would you violate the non-aggression principle if you are, God forbid, needing to steal food to not starve, right?
Right.
[1:25:55] Well, you would just ask people for, well, first of all, like, why did you end up starving? Where are your friends? Where's your family?
Where's your job? Where's your savings? Where's your safety net?
Where's your insurance? Like, why, why did you, like people create these edge scenarios, right?
With no context, no history, like the trolley car, like why, why are people, why are people strapped and tied up on a trolley track, right? That's the evil guy, right?
They just create these without context, just absolute scenarios with no, no history, you know, no process, no, right?
If you're in a situation where you need to steal food so as not to starve you're in a society that doesn't recognize the non-aggression principle in any principled way anyway it's a state of nature right you know you're a you're a soldier you're behind enemy lines and you're going to steal in order to survive it's like well you're you're a soldier so there's already violations of the non-aggression principle than you being a soldier.
You really want to break your heart into a thousand pieces. Just watch all of the people being grabbed and conscripted to war while their family weeps.
And they, it's just, it's awful. Just awful.
[1:27:11] Yeah, like, I mean, if you, like, why would you, why would you be starving?
Why would you starve to death? Why would you be starving to death?
Why, why would that even be occurring?
Because you're in a society that doesn't respect the non-aggression principle, no property rights anyway. In which case you deal with that, not the effects of it, right?
Well, just imagine if. It's like, no, no, no, I'm not...
I'm not going to... I'm not just... Just imagine if, right?
All right. It's not a tip night, so...
Zim says, I want to stay for the record when I said that I think that overburdening people with details and arbitrary requirements is gatekeeping behavior as well.
I wasn't talking about about the age of consent.
I was talking about the educational field and whether you're qualified to discuss certain topics or not. All right.
There was a Russian composer who died starving on a communist bread line, thus immediately decomposing.
But in the tech world, you have to be efficient. I can spend a day to try and solve a problem or I can ask a colleague who already has experience solving it. It's inefficient to try reinventing the wheel.
Well, that's annoying.
[1:28:26] Ah. What can you say to people?
What can you say to people? So my whole point was, my whole point was, if you can, if you can figure it out for yourself, then you don't need to ask people. But if you've tried a little bit here and there, you can't figure it out, you've tried thinking about it, that you can't solve the problem, then yeah, go ask someone.
So I never know what to say to people when you say, here's the rule.
And you say, well, what if somebody conforms to that rule?
Well, we've already, like, we've already addressed this, right?
James, don't engage. Don't do it.
Don't engage. Don't engage.
[1:29:32] Don't engage.
What's happening is he is, he has asked people stupid questions and now he's trying to defend it.
It's got nothing to do with anything we're saying, because we already said, if you've tried to figure it out for yourself and you can't figure it out, go ask someone.
Absolutely. If you've done a little bit of research and you can't figure it out, then yeah.
If it's not obvious to you and you can't figure it, like we're talking about stupid questions, right?
And this person says, but I don't want to spend a whole day if I can just ask a colleague and get it solved right away that it's entirely within the paradigm that we're talking about.
So why you'd bring that up is, it's ridiculous, right? It's just embarrassing.
[1:30:18] Well don't give this medicine to someone if they have a fever yeah but what if they have a fever it's like if you're not listening don't contribute like this is another way that people waste time honestly they're not listening they're not processing and so they waste everyone's time it just if you're not listening don't contribute right i mean i i try if i've stopped listening you learn some things by feet yeah so of course you don't want to you don't want to you don't want to, completely waste your time when someone else is happy to help and it's really efficient right of course but at the same time you don't want to ask someone else every time you have a problem because then you never learn how to figure anything out for yourself, it's a Aristotelian mean yeah but what about it's a mean it's a mean, you know a genius is somebody with 170 IQ well what about 169.99 oh my god.
[1:31:15] Oh, my God.
Ah, being overweight is a BMI of 25 or more. What about 24.999?
And you're super muscular. It's like...
I have no interest. I have no interest in these conversations.
They're just thought interrupts. Thought is interruptors. They're just interruptions of thought and interruptions of progress.
It's really quite tragic. Really quite tragic. Really, really quite sad.
Thank you for the tip, Matt. I appreciate that.
[1:31:52] Thank you for the tip. Name I will not pronounce. Because there's a number in it.
[1:32:01] Soviet humor is like Soviet food. Food not many people get it.
I know a tall Chinese guy. Yeah, yeah. I know we've done this a million times.
[1:32:14] He says, I was reacting to the guy who said that in the tech world, don't come to me if you can figure it out.
My response was that I can figure it out, but it doesn't make sense for me to do it if someone else has a solution.
No, that's not even remotely true. Are you completely selfish?
All right, hit me with a why if you've ever been involved in a complex intellectual task and a bunch of people come and answer you a bunch of questions they could answer themselves, thus interrupting your task.
Having you lose track if you're in some recursive nested loop function and you're trying to juggle 16 different variables and someone comes in and says my computer is slow right.
[1:32:58] Right it's totally selfish if you can figure it out for yourself and you say well i'm just going to ask the guy who's smarter or more experienced or whatever okay so if that's a a general principle, then the smart guy doesn't get anything done.
Because when you go and ask someone, you're subtracting from their productivity. You understand?
You're subtracting from their productivity. Now, if they're a trainer or, you know, I'm doing this as my job or whatever, so to speak.
So that's a different matter, right? That's fine.
But the idea is like, well, of course I'm going to ask someone else because it's more efficient.
It's not more efficient because you need to learn how to figure things out for your own damn self.
And you can't just keep going asking other people to solve your problems you know why because you're paid to solve problems you're not paid to ask questions and have other people solve your problems if you're a computer programmer we're talking about tech if you're a computer programmer you're paid to write code you're not you're not paid to ask other people how to write code because that's subtracting from their productivity and not adding to yours, because then you're just going to go back and ask another question and another question it means that you're in over your head you're in over your depth you need to get the you need to train like hell or you need to quit, well what about that one time and oh okay.
[1:34:20] Yeah.
Well, what about that? I can think of a scenario which is right on the edge. Well, good for you.
Good for you. You're brilliant.
You're brilliant.
I mean, it is really the height of being a midwit to think that you're adding a massive amount to the human journey of wisdom and virtue, by taking a generality and finding it exceptions.
Doesn't AI write code now? It not only writes code, it debugs code.
You can go to AI and you can say, give me all of the source code for this website and it'll do it for you.
You can even say to AI, take all the source code for this website, but turn it into a fitness website and it'll do that for you as well.
[1:35:38] Elon Musk is supposedly buying Disney. Do you think we will see quality coming from the house of mouse?
Elon Musk is buying Disney. I can't imagine that's true.
Can a brother get a sauce on that? I can't imagine that that's true.
I can't imagine that he would think that.
Again, he's obviously a better businessman than I am. Look at those tips.
But I can't imagine that's true. He bought Twitter because of free speech.
I don't think that Disney is the same thing.
[1:36:12] It's a rumor? Yeah, I don't believe that's true. I can't imagine that he, I mean, it could be wrong. I can't imagine.
He's funding Gina Carano's lawsuit against Disney.
Yeah. The Mandalorian woman. She was, she, uh, she was a wrestler or something like that. Right.
So he's funding Gina Carano's lawsuit against Disney.
Yes. Yeah. She's doing a defamation lawsuit against Disney, right?
Because she feels that they defamed her in the firing. Because they called her all kinds of terrible names.
She was an MMA fighter, right?
Would you be friends with someone who is friends with a convicted pedophile?
Of course not. My God. Are you kidding me?
Absolutely in no way, shape, or form. Why on earth would you want to be anywhere near that sick planet? My God. I wouldn't even be in the same solar system.
[1:37:10] Um, yes. So obviously I don't know the details of anything to do with that lawsuit, but my guess is something like this. It's total conjecture. I don't know the details.
It's just an absolute guess. I'm not a lawyer, blah, blah, blah. Right.
But my guess is something like this, that if you have a contract with someone, they usually include something called a morality clause, particularly if their contract has to do with that person being popular.
So if you hire someone in part because of their popularity and then they say terrible things that make them unpopular, then you can fire them and you don't have to pay out the balance of the contract.
If you pay someone, you set up a contract for three years, and then you fire them after a year, you often have to pay out a portion, if not all, of the remaining contract.
But if you get them on a morality clause, sometimes you can get away with firing them because they broke the contract by doing things that substantially lowered their popularity.
[1:38:05] And this Gina woman, she said things that were somewhat controversial in certain circles.
So my guess is that they said that they were firing her because she did these bad things in order to not pay out the balance of her contract.
I don't know. I don't know.
This is just off the top of my head. That was my, my guess.
And so, uh, but because they fired her for bad things and they said they fired her for bad things, she views that.
The identification of the bad things she supposedly did or the bad motives or the bad intent as defamatory.
[1:38:43] Defamation is very tough in the U.S. Excuse me.
Yeah, defamation is very tough in the U.S. You have to prove material damages, and particularly if you're a public figure, as she is. You have to prove material damages.
You have to prove that their statement is false.
And you also have to prove that the person knew it was false when they said it or had a reckless disregard for the truth. And that's obviously a pretty subjective thing.
Very very hard to prove defamation in the united states if you can directly in correlation this is the big debate that's going on in the um michael mann and mark stein trial at the moment is that, after this therefore because of this the dukac fallacy right if somebody loses money after somebody said something mean about them proving that they lost money because of that rather than and it's some other factor.
It's tough. You've got to prove all of those correlations. You've got to prove material damages.
You've got to prove that it's causal to what that person said.
You have to prove that it's false what that person said, and you also have to prove that the person knew that it was false when they said it or had this reckless disregard for the truth.
Again, completely amateur understanding of defamation law.
I'm no lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is just my understanding of it.
[1:40:11] So
[1:40:17] That's a tough and of course all of the people in the public sphere who have maybe malevolent intent I'm not talking about anybody in particular just the average person who may have malevolent intent, they know all of these laws it goes through legal and, of course They're not going to sit there and write and store some email where they say, well, I know it's not true, but I just hate this guy and I'm going to say it anyway because I hope to cost him money, right?
Because they know that, right? So they're just not going to write anything down or say anything about that. So, yeah.
It'll be interesting to see how it goes. But what is it? 12 years on the Michael?
It took 12 years to get the Michael Mann thing to trial. and Mark Stein's in a wheelchair because he's had like three heart attacks.
Again, I don't know if that's causal or what. He could just be unhealthy.
I don't know, bad luck or whatever. I don't know, but it's a pretty brutal process, and very expensive. I can't even imagine. You know, you've got lawyers in these cases that $1,500 is basement bargain and it goes up to $2,500, maybe even more.
[1:41:31] All right, any other last comments or questions as we cruise into the closing phase of this conversation?
Thank you for dropping by tonight. Of course, if you're listening to this later, oh man, oh man, if you're listening to this later, you know the spiel, but I'm going to say it anyway, in hopefully an entertaining fashion.
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