0:04 - Welcome to Your Wednesday Night Live
9:22 - Renting vs. Buying: The Great Debate
31:37 - Shocking Housing Statistics
35:51 - The Burden of Aging
1:14:56 - The Consequences of Choices
1:26:43 - The Witch Doctor vs. The Doctor
1:33:33 - Emotional Responsibility and Choices
1:39:06 - Moving to a New City: Strategies
In this episode, we delve into a lively discussion reflecting on a recent live stream experience with an Eastern European guest, known for challenging stereotypes. I express my fascination with individuals who defy social expectations, exploring ideas about intellectuals, stubbornness, and the malleability of social norms.
As we transition to audience questions, the conversation turns personal, igniting reflections on the struggles of reading lengthy texts in middle age. I share my journey as a reader, reminiscing about the years spent rapidly consuming books while also acknowledging the hurdles faced today, including eye strain and concentration. This segues into a deeper discussion about the cognitive changes that come with aging and the societal pressures on engaging with literature.
We touch on serious topics, such as the rise of euthanasia in Canada, highlighting a staggering statistic that 5% of deaths in 2023 resulted from government-sanctioned euthanasia. I utilize a comparative lens to analyze the broader implications of such policies in society, digging into ethical considerations and the societal narratives woven around these topics.
The episode also tackles health, particularly the connection between sexual activity and cardiovascular health, with research suggesting significant risks for infrequent sexual activity. I encourage listeners to think critically about societal narratives around relationships and intimacy as they relate to health.
The conversation continues with thoughts on social dynamics and societal expectations, particularly around modern relationships. I delve into the complexities of dating habits in today’s world, discussing the struggles of men and women in navigating relationships while dealing with societal pressures against promiscuity, dating norms, and the impact of modern technology on these interactions.
Moving into financial discussions, I dissect the current housing market trends, sharing that the median age of renters has risen to 42, reflecting economic shifts. I compare the traditional ownership model against renting, providing insights on the long-term financial impacts of each choice, and explore the dynamics of wealth generation versus liabilities in these scenarios.
As the episode progresses, I transition into a candid critique of alcohol, discussing its extensive physiological and psychological harm. Drawing from research, I highlight the societal narratives that glamorize drinking, challenging listeners to rethink their relationship with alcohol. I argue for a more sober approach to socializing, sharing my personal aversion to intoxication based on its detrimental effects on health and well-being.
Lastly, I explore the implications of artificial intelligence and job displacement, challenging the audience to consider the ongoing struggle between philosophical thought and the prevalent sophistry in society. I invoke the notion that critical thinking is essential for survival in an increasingly automated world, framing it as a necessary skill to thrive amidst technological advancement.
In summation, this episode is rich with personal reflections, societal critiques, and philosophical inquiries, inviting listeners to contemplate their relationships with reading, health, society, and technology. The conversation remains grounded in encouraging self-awareness and critical thinking, establishing a foundational dialogue for personal and societal progress.
[0:00] Good evening, everybody. Welcome to your Wednesday Night Live.
[0:05] Did a really, really fun live stream this afternoon with a fine Eastern European specimen who was abstract and stubborn. If you can believe this, a guy from Eastern Europe, abstract, filibustering, and stubborn. Next thing, next thing, I might meet a stubborn Indian man. It's inconceivable, but it might happen. I actually got to tell you, I love, love, love meeting people who break stereotypes. You know, like the intellectual bald guys, totally breaking stereotypes. There are no stereotypes left. They're all broken. All right. So let's get to your questions and comments. Curious if reading a 900-page book in middle age, don't know much about the middle ages i read the book and i just turn the pages, don't know much about no rise and fall don't know much about nothing at all, curious if reading a 900 page book in middle age is really really challenging compared to when you were 18 to 20 or is it just me my eyes want to rest very quickly is this anybody else it doesn't matter if I wear glasses.
[1:20] Um, let's see if I can read a bit further if it's a large font, but only a few extra pages before I want to break. Just curious if it's definitely anyone else can read. So read a lot if they want. Um, well, I went through when Mike was my producer, sometimes we would have to have interviews with, you know, sort of well-published intellectuals or academics. And I would sometimes have to read, four or five books a week and this went on for years so um i would be able to do it uh i have not plowed through big long books in a while uh i i have sort of will sit down and and read a novel my family and i will read a novel so uh i i'm fairly good at accents and so, i will invent accents which i i i i weave myself a rather uh a story journey through accent land uh and so we'll read novels um together and that's fun thank you for the tip dylan uh freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show very much appreciated but i don't think i've plowed through i've got a bunch of books on my bookshelf but these days i generally uh listen to audiobooks while doing stuff rather than sit and read. Unless I need to sort of take notes, in which case I'll, I'll read. But I don't remember having any particular issues. I mean, you know, it never hurts to get your eyes checked, right?
[2:49] Is it true? You see, this Ozempic is causing people to go blind, so they lose weight and don't even get to see how good they look. That's bizarre, man.
[3:01] 20, 20, 20, right? Every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away or more for more than 20 seconds. Just rest your eyes that way.
[3:14] Thank you, Eric. And of course, you know, man, listen to my audiobooks, honestly, it's about as good as you get. Like, I'm a trained actor with a pretty expressive voice, and I'm good at characterization, especially the novels are fantastic. All right. So, as your questions come in, I will give you some interesting itty-bitty-titty-bitties. So... There is some interesting facts that I stored for the show tonight. We'll talk about those just by the way for your questions to come in. What percentage of all Canadians who died in 2023 were euthanized, aka killed by their government? What percentage of Canadians who died in 2023 were euthanized? What was it? A friend of mine had, I don't know if this ever became a real band, but the friend of mine had a band name called Youth in Asia. youth in Asia. You want to hear suicide pods.
[4:33] Yeah, it's 5%. 5% of Canadians who died in 2023 were euthanized. Now, this, of course, doesn't count the vaccines, but that's an interesting percentage. Now, this is interesting. You can write this down and give this to your wives and girlfriends. I don't need to. Men who have sex once a month are what percentage more likely to have cardiovascular disease compared to those who had sex two to three times a week? Men who had sex once a month are what percentage more likely to have cardiovascular disease compared to those who had sex two to three times a week?
[5:19] And there is, in fact, sources for this as well. I will give you the link here in case you want to go and check the sources, because this sounds like one of these things that men wave around in women's faces. Well, it's one of the things that men wave around in women's faces. But I will give you the link here in case you want to check it out, check out the sources.
[5:42] But it is 45%. So, if you are a man and you have sex only once a month, you're 45% more likely to have cardiovascular disease than a man who has sex two to three times a week. Now, I understand, and I'm sure this is dealt with in the study, I understand where you would say, well, wait a minute, if you already have cardiovascular disease, you probably don't have some diamond hard 19-year-old boner, and so you're less likely to have sex because you're already ill but again i'm sure that's dealt with in the i'm sure that dealt with in the in the study but that seems interesting um pearly things is kind of on a tear as she often is, but she's kind of on a tear at the moment which is, saying well if young people are not supposed to be promiscuous they're not supposed to use pornography, but women aren't getting married until they're in their 30s, what are men supposed to do?
[6:50] Men are supposed to commit, so you can't just keep dating the same woman, you can't use pornography, you can't sleep around, but of course, we're evolved to get married in our teens, and to stay married our whole lives, right? That's our deal, right? Our sexuality developed in a time of near constant access to sex. I mean the the concept of marital rape is relatively new i know it's a volatile topic and all of that but i'm just telling you the sort of facts that a man is supposed to get married in his teens and he's supposed to have a wife who obviously with some exceptions and so on uh is supposed to give him regular access to sex i assume several times a week as as men generally want it at a bare minimum and so what is it that men are supposed to do exactly no pornography no sleeping around um no marriage what what are the consequences of women waiting 10 or 15 years to it.
[8:05] So it's an interesting question. I unfortunately don't have to worry too much about the answer, but I of course care about it in general as, you know, a guy who cares about other people. Thank you, Brent. FreeDomain.com slash donate to help out.
[8:30] We just live in such a desmond morris had a book it influenced me quite a bit actually called the human zoo i read this many when i was a kid i read the human zoo and it's really it's really interesting saying that all sorts of strangeness and perversions come into human beings when they live in cities and that they're more akin to a zoo than anything else living in the zoo All right. Let's get to your other questions and comments. Amy Nixon wrote on X, possibly the most shocking housing stat I've seen recently. The median age of a renter in the United States is 42 years old as of 2024, up from 33 years old just three years prior. Isn't that wild?
[9:23] So hit me do you do you own or rent o or a w uh own doesn't mean that you own outright but you know you have a mortgage right, do you own or rent as a whole.
[9:45] You rent, you know, own, own, own, own, about 50-50, own, rent, rent, own. Now, of course, renting was the great move over the past, say, 12 to 14 years, let's say 15 years. Renting was a great move for the last 15 years on one condition. On one condition, renting was absolutely the best move you could possibly make. On one condition. What was that one condition? What was the one condition that made renting the best financial move you could make almost bar none? Oh, John's got it. Yeah, John had it before I even said anything. John had it before I even said anything. The answer, of course, is that you rent and you buy Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. If you had, um, if you had taken, uh, I don't know what it is in other places in Canada, it's about 25% down payment. So you had a $400,000 place. If you take a hundred thousand dollars and you put it into Bitcoin 15 years ago, I mean, you'd be crazy rich, right?
[11:06] And of course, anybody who's owned a house known that a house is just like Pac-Man eating the nads of your finances, right? Oh, there's a problem with the air conditioning. Oh, there's no hot water. Oh, uh, the, the sump pump has a problem. Oh, uh, the vents need to be cleaned. Oh, it's just, it's constant, right? It's constant.
[11:29] So I, I'm not a hater of renting. I think renting is totally fine. It's not, not a problem because renting is like renting versus buying. It's just, It's just an IQ test, right?
[11:45] The rent versus buying is just an IQ test, right? Because people say, well, but if you rent, you're just throwing your money away. You're just throwing your money away, right? Because remember, to idiots, there's only one variable. They can't do more than one variable. Only one variable. And this is why they call themselves smart. See, some people call themselves smart because they analyze a bunch of variables and come up with a subtle group of factors that give people a better metric by which to make decisions. Other people call themselves smart by trying to reduce everything to one variable and calling everyone else an idiot. Should you save your money or should you spend your money well you should save your money cause then you have more money, should you buy or should you rent us you should rent us no not rent us because rent us you got nothing to show for it at the end you just give your money away and you don't have any asset when you just rent.
[13:07] Should you should you should you lease a car or or or buy a car well you should buy a car because if you lease a car you don't have much money at the end of it you don't really have any car either one factor one factor.
[13:28] Oh that is so funny it's so funny, the one the one factor of people well here's the problem so the one factor of people like your social mobility is almost entirely based upon your capacity to deceive yourself, right it's really really important you ever feel like it's tough to move up socially like it's tough to move up socially, right? So why a lot of people get stuck in the lower classes, is because they want to appear smart to dummies. So they read up a little bit and they get sort of the one factor. That's one factor, right? Yeah, one factor people versus period, just like this, Period people. Well, the period is like one, it's like this period is, there's only one factor, right? It's only one factor. And so social mobility, if you're born as I was like at the real bottom of the rung, right? If you're really born at the bottom of society, the way that you move up in society is you stop trying to seem smart to dummies.
[14:50] You have to, because if, I'm not saying you, but if, if there's a guy named Bob, right? Of bob and bob is like a one one factor guy who just everyone thinks is really smart because he just has the answers everything because he boils everything down to one factor which is trying to boil your entire brain down to one brain cell so bob can't move up in the world, because the moment he moves up in the world, he both looks like and feels like an idiot, you know like the people who have a exploitation how do people become wealthy exploitation.
[15:30] Really so are you saying that there was really exploitation was not a factor in the world until about 1775 1770 foundation of the agricultural revolution let's say because you know, if you kind of look at the Industrial Revolution, 19th century, 20th century, wealth runs through the roof. So there was no exploitation in the past, and then people became wealthy because of exploitation, because there's way more wealth around now than there was, say, in the 15th century. Just some basic questions, right? Just some basic questions. My house is going up in value nope nope your culture is being diluted and the dollar is going down in value.
[16:28] So this is, this is the curse that lands on people who try to be smart to dummies is they get stuck with dummies for the rest of their life. They can't escape, right? Vanity and pomposity and trying to appear smart to dumb people means that you have to, you, you, you're trapped with the dummies. You're trapped with the dummies. It's one of the biggest drugs around. Is trying to feel smart to dumb people. Why do certain ethnicities not do well? Racism, one factor, that's it, nothing else, no other explanation. Okay. You know, it's kind of like, there was sort of this trollish guy who was in here recently, and I was doing all these sort of petty passive aggressive tsunami estrogen-based manipulations, and it's just like, all you're telling me is this just works with the people you surround yourself with. This kind of stuff works, otherwise you wouldn't do it. Jeff, the great Jeffrey Tucker, I won't say friend of the show, but we did some shows in the past. He wrote, did you know that presidents and their appointments have not had access to payment systems since 1946?
[17:56] So presidents and their appointments have not had access to payment systems since 1946. Did you know that the entire nation has been dependent on, quote, a very small group, end quote, of career bureaucrats to manage the multiple trillions coming and going without oversight from anyone who voters have elected? I did not know that, he said. Yep, you know the lights are going on and the roaches are scattering I don't know if you know this but searches for criminal defense lawyer are massively spiked in in Washington DC, who would have guessed it's bad luck for them right It's absolutely bad luck for them. Now, there's a couple of things I've sort of railed against over the years. Well, maybe more than a couple.
[18:59] One is weed and weed and psychosis, weed and schizophrenia, weed and mental collapse are well documented. Now, another is alcohol. Another is alcohol. I was trying to think, I really was trying to think of the last time I had a drink. And I had half a shot of fireball whiskey a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to clear my sinuses. And before that, maybe six weeks before that, I had a Michelob Ultra while playing trivia with some friends.
[19:34] I couldn't remember prior to that. So, I mean, I'm not a 100% teetotaler, but I last got drunk when I was about, it was at the, um, it was after I played Macbeth, the cast party, I got drunk and that was, I was 21 or 22. That was the last time I got drunk. I mean, I just won't do it. It's just absolutely vile. Uh, being drunk is like voluntarily giving yourself vertigo and a neurological disorder. You know, the spins are horrible. You're sitting on the bed and you know what's the old line you're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on and especially if you drink beer you feel nauseous you get the spins you just want to sleep but you can't sleep because you keep waking up to pee because you drank so much beer it's really just the most vile thing around and i i i just become i'm i'm exactly myself when i drink or when I drank, I'm exactly myself, just nauseous and uncoordinated. Why on earth would I do that to myself? You know, I guess some people drink because they're socially anxious, but I don't really have any of that kind of stuff. But alcohol, this is from Sjin Norman.
[20:52] In England, here's the drug harm score out of 100. For selected drugs, this is as of 2010. So harm to users, health, damage, mental impairment, and dependence, mortality, loss of tangibles, and relationships, harm to others, community, economic, and environmental costs, crime and injury, family adversities. Number one by far is alcohol. Number one by far is alcohol with a score over 70 out of 100. This is the drug harm score. It's a combination of harm to others and harm to self, harm to users. So way at the top is alcohol. Next is heroin with a score of 55. Crack cocaine, score of 53, 54. then methamphetamine, cocaine, tobacco, amphetamine, cannabis, benzodiazepines, isn't that what took down Jordan Peterson, ketamine, methadone, ecstasy, LSD, and mushrooms. Now, again, I'm aware, I mean, I understand the multivariable factors, right? That alcohol is higher than heroin because alcohol is more common than heroin. I get all of that. I understand all of.
[22:11] Uh, what harm does alcohol cause you? Well, immediate, uh, drowsiness, feeling of relaxation. I never got that. Loss of inhibitions. Lord knows I could use a few more inhibitions in my life. So alcohol did not help me with that. Confusion, loss of consciousness, slower breathing, slower heart rate, nausea, vomiting, dehydration, unsteadiness, loss of coordination, risky behavior, e.g. Unsafe sex. Of course, I would include drunk driving and all of that. Uh, long-term, dependence pretty big risk of anxiety increased risk of anxiety and depression brain damage yeah that's important heart problems liver problems increased risk of diabetes and obesity malnutrition cancer and serious birth defects if used during pregnancy it's a fucking poison people, so how does alcohol, work in the body.
[23:12] Well you drink alcohol once in the bloodstream alcohol crosses the blood brain barrier and affects the brain alcohol moves through the body and absorbs into the bloodstream alcohol in the brain increases levels of feel-good dopamine the brain sends signals to increase heart rate and blood pressure most of the alcohol gets absorbed through the stomach 20 small intestine 80 on an empty stomach, alcohol can get to the brain in one minute. The liver breaks down alcohol so that it can leave the body. One drink or 0.5 to one ounce of alcohol roughly per hour is what gets done. But the dopamine increase from alcohol is temporary.
[23:58] And it lowers your baseline once the effects wears off, right? So, not drinking your dopamine level, say, would be 50, drinking, they go to 100, and then your dopamine level crashes, because once the body artificially produces something, the natural production tends to diminish, right? Alcohol is a poison. Your body breaks it down into, acetaldehyde, acetaldehyde, a toxic chemical. The buzz isn't a benefit, it's your brain reacting to poison. This breakdown is toxic and damages your cells. Your liver breaks it down, but the process harms the liver over time. This is true even for only one or two drinks per night, right? So as you know, cirrhosis of the liver, unsorts of problems, right? Alcohol stays in your system longer than you think. Blood, one to two hours per drink. Breath, 12 to 24 hours. Urine, 12 to 24 hours.
[24:58] With moderate to heavy drinking, some alcohol will still be in your system when you wake up. Frequent drinking leads to more cortisol at baseline. This is the stress hormone. This effect makes you more stressed and anxious when you're not drinking. Alcohol also disrupts sleep. Low amounts of alcohol decreased sleep quality by 9.3%. That's less than two drinks for men, less than one drink for women. Moderate amounts of alcohol decreased sleep quality by 24%. High amounts of alcohol decreased sleep quality by 39.2%. That's not that high. More than two drinks for men and more than one drink for women.
[25:42] Alcohol also increases the conversion of testosterone into estrogens bad for gaining muscles also increase health risks there of course alcohol gives you empty calories there's no nutritional value in the calories it creates so if you drink a lot this can increase your weight that's sort of the famous uh beer gut uh benefits of drinking in terms of health nope there aren't It's a myth that red wine is good for you. Some drinks do give you less of a hangover. I guess you can minimize damage. But the biggest downside, this is from the article, the biggest downside of alcohol might not even be your health. It's the things you do while you drink that you regret the next day.
[26:22] But you can reverse most damage by quitting. The brain starts recovering quite quickly. And a full reset takes two to six months or longer for heavy users. Ton of health benefits. So if you quit alcohol, the quality of your sleep will increase. You will be better hydrated. You will find it easy to lose weight. You'll reduce your blood pressure. Your skin health will improve. Mood and levels of concentration rise. Your memory will begin to improve. Your stomach will feel better. your liver will be healthier and you may dodge accidents because alcohol plays a role in at least half of all serious trauma injuries and deaths cut back to reduce injuries and sick days it's demon sweat it is absolute demon sweat i loathe alcohol and in the alcohol category the only thing I loathe more than alcohol are the complete demonic assholes who try to make it cool to drink. Hey man, you just got to relax. Unwind, crack a cold one, man. Just relax. Put on some toonage. Stare at the lake. You know, just chat. It'll be great, man. Put on some Floyd.
[27:38] I have bottomless contempt for people who cannot socialize without alcohol. That is the saddest the most pathetic thing. Hey, and I remember this with some friends I had when I was much younger, who I suspected and was in fact right that they were drifting into alcoholism. I'm like, why do we have to drink every time we get together? Why do you guys have to have drinks every time? Why can't you get together without drinks? You can't watch a movie without drinks. You can't have a party without drinks. You can't have a pool party without drinks. You can't have a picnic without drinks. You can't go to the cottage without drinks. You can't, like you can't do anything i mean you'd probably have a drink um at the gym if there was a coaster, hey man why are you trying to control us you're just a square you know.
[28:31] Uh it's i i have such contempt for it and i have some bottomless contempt for all the movies that promote drinking and in particular the movies that promote we promote weed culture coming out of hollywood that is just absolutely demonic destruction absolutely demonic destruction it's absolutely monstrous absolutely monstrous and of course you know there are young impressionable people who were looking for what's cool you know it's kind of like like in um in movies you always see the same thing which is people with the worst conceivable lifestyles and the greatest possible physiques.
[29:17] It's wretched. Yeah, if you need alcohol, thank you more, son. If you need alcohol, you've just got to stop. I know it's tough, but please, God. I mean, talk to your doctor and all of that, but you've just got to stop. I can't stand being around people who are drunk because I'm not with them. I'm only with the alcohol. All right. Somebody says the price of rent and housing has been going up for a long time, but higher housing costs to buy means you have to save a larger down payment and that amount gets hit harder from inflation. Yeah. Yeah. That's why, um, a friend of mine sold a little property and he, he bought it for, I don't know, X amount of dollars, sold it for a little bit more. But if you count in inflation, he didn't really make any money, but he gets hit with a capital gains tax because a government loves inflation, higher tax brackets, and you get to hit people with capital gains who haven't actually gained anything relative to inflation, right? So he was saying if inflation is 3% per year, ha, and you have $40,000, that's $1,200 or $100 a month. Yeah, for sure.
[30:35] I just don't talk to dumb people. Well, I'm going through this fulcrum at the moment. I'm sorry, I don't mean to make it about me, but I, I'm, I'm sort of, it's sort of ground into my bones that I'm way past the middle part of my life, which means I just don't have patience for things that waste my time. I just don't, I have no patience. So I just won't talk to people who are not smart and I won't talk to people who are propagandized and I won't talk to people who are NPCs. Uh, I don't have, I don't have the time. I literally don't have the time. I'll be 59 years old this year.
[31:13] I don't have the time. I don't have the time. It's like people pounding on my door when I've calculated how much food I need over the cold-ass winter for my family and people pounding on my door, I'm like, back off from the door or the dogs will find you in spring. I just don't have time. Sorry. We're out.
[31:38] Bill mitchell um bad permanent windstorm was that his elvis in a windstorm or something like that, bill mitchell was on the show a couple of times we did a debate about trump, and uh bill mitchell wrote uh yesterday he wrote i'm honestly very close to giving up on posting completely and just doing a show at night right now i'm getting 0.3 percent reach on 98 percent of my posts clearly i am no longer welcome on this site so are there still suppressions and all of this kind of funky hunky dory stuff going on on x i don't know i don't know.
[32:19] So, I wanted to mention this. I mentioned it sort of very briefly the other day, but I want to get into just a little bit more detail. I'm curious if you've ever tried this. Ignoring warriors can improve your mental health. Evidence. After practice blocking out fears, people were less anxious and less depressed three months later, especially if they had high anxiety or PTSD. Not all concerns demand attention. Some thoughts are worth dismissing. So that's an interesting question right interesting question is what percentage of your fears have come true, what percentage of your fears have come true.
[33:20] And if your fears have come, or if bad things have happened in your life, did you anticipate them? I'm not particularly great at anticipating bad things happening. I generally try not to worry too much about anything. My die was cast sort of many years ago. But when there are negative things that occur it's it's usually nothing i've thought of, usually nothing i've thought of just kind of popped in out of nowhere and i wasn't anticipating it and so on right and i'll tell you this man like uh this is sorry to to to to wreck your perception of the passage of time particularly if you're younger but this seems to be kind of true This seems to be kind of true. There are phases in your life where there's bad news all the time.
[34:17] It's tough, man. It's tough. There are phases in your life.
[34:23] Where there's just going to be bad news on a pretty continual basis. Whether it's about yourself, whether it's about your parents, whether it's about your friends, your friends' parents, your mid to late 50s in particular, and the hits just keep on coming. It's just lots of bad news because you know people's uh the people's bad health decisions are catching up with them in their late 50s and or just bad luck but in general it's bad bad choices lifestyle choices or not managing stress choices and so on but uh people's you know when you're in your late 50s and you had your parents were 25 and then they're right they're in their 80s and that's certainly if you really don't stay heartily robust and even those who do sometimes you just get bad luck but if you don't stay heartily robust you know exercise uh eat well stay strong your 50s are gonna suck because everybody who's older is just getting torn apart by time it's just horrible, and i'm sort of i'm sort of in that phrase i'm in that phase where just the bad news the friends and family just keeps coming and some of it's pretty grim man some of it is pretty grim.
[35:52] I mean i'm fine, other than i had well i just this what this um conjunctivitis that mimicked a i didn't even know conjunctivitis that could mimic mimic a flu i didn't even know such demons existed, all right let's get to your comments.
[36:15] All right i wear bow ties sometimes in reference to jeffrey tucker's positivity he is a merry old soul, pressure on me to go back down to live on disability. I want to work, he says, does not mean employers want to hire. I have several real strikes against me. Spirit and mind willing, body not so much. It's complicated and wages being driven down and government will eventually be bankrupt, hence MAID. Nasty trap. I would settle for working full-time at about $10 an hour above minimum wage at this point, stuck at fighting for a dollar better. I'm sorry about that that's very tough that's very tough you know and this is not relative to you because these are sort of tucker cucked on iq yeah but i mean who didn't right who didn't so this is not specific to you but this is general advice from somebody who's had a positive and healthy relationship with occasional paranoia, don't stay out of relationships, don't get too isolated, don't get too comfortable being alone, and don't get comfortable with not working and being productive.
[37:35] And I say this as, I mean, a guy who dated a fair amount when I was younger, if I was talking to a woman and she's like, oh, I haven't been in a relationship in like eight years, I'd be like, well, you ain't about to be in one now as a whole because... I mean, unless she did therapy, self-work and so on, because it'd be like, okay, so you're comfortable without being in a relationship and you have no skills. So when I was sort of, I was viewed dating as like an interview, right? So when I was interviewing for the position of girlfriend, wife, mother of my children, um, I'm looking for experience, you know, like if I was a hiring manager and someone said, I want a job. And I said, well, when was your last job? And they said, well, eight years ago, I'd be like, so you got really used to being lazy. Like you got really used to not working you are out of you are out of shape you are out of work it'd be like if you were hiring for some athletic team and they said well when did you last play this sport well eight years ago or when did you last exercise well eight years ago it's like well, you know you're just going to get injured like stay active stay active in work it doesn't matter how bad it is and stay active in relationships. You would not believe how easy it is to lose your skills.
[39:01] And whatever you don't build, every muscle you don't exercise, atrophies like that. It's amazing. Because I view the brain, it's just my opinion, I don't know if there's truth behind it, but I view the brain as relentlessly efficient. Oh, are we not using this? Erased. You know, like I, I got fairly good at the language French because I had to learn, I had to be tested in an exam on my French translation abilities to get my graduate degree in the history of philosophy from the University of Toronto. So I had to get, I took a lot of French courses. I practiced like crazy learning how to translate French and I became fairly good at French. And then what? Gone. I did 10 years of violin, mostly gone. Right? So the brain is always pruning it's always pruning man it's all oh we're not using this done man it's just the the brain does not hoard the brain cleans the brain fire hoses things out the brain sets fire to that which is unused the brain flushes on a continual basis it is constantly stripping down and paring down and and you can think of things i mean obviously riding a bike Like there's certain things like that are, if it goes into the body, that's a different matter because there's muscle memory, there's body memory and so on, right?
[40:29] But the brain is constantly discarding. So the way that I kind of view it, and I think this is really, really important for you guys as well. But the way that i view it is it's like i live with this obsessive roommate who's constantly throwing things out and he doesn't really care what he throws out he just if it's out and in the way and and it doesn't seem to be in use he's going to throw it out right so i can't leave my wallet out for a couple of days, it's going to throw it out, right? I can't leave my shirt, even if it's folded anywhere outside of my closet, because it's going to throw it out. So I view the brain as just, it's just constantly throwing out, flushing out, discarding and dumping. It's constantly doing that. And you don't want it to do that with your wallet or your balls. You don't want it to do that with your job and your capacity to have a romantic relationship or even a a friendship friendship right it's just constantly discarding and what you don't want it to discard is your capacity to relate to people and to make money.
[41:58] Ah, Sepanta, nice to see you, my friend. The whole reason I got into philosophy outside of high school was to use philosophy to seem smart to dumb people. Thankfully, actual philosophy cured me of that desire. And thank you for that, Stef. I couldn't imagine who I'd be if I'd pursued government school, quote, philosophy here. John says, thank you for your opposition to weed, Stef. Seven and a half years off weed, largely thanks to your show. I appreciate that. I once tried a sip of a mixed drink at 18. Never since. Milo makes wine drinking so fun, but he behaves kind of bratty, just in a comedic genius kind of way. Yeah, he's Loki, right? He's Loki. Drinking is so bad, man. I find it great as a treat once every few months, but nothing more. Thank you for your subscription more, son. I appreciate that. Caffeine? No, caffeine is not a drug that way. Not everything is a drug. Food is a drug, man. You know, you feel really uncomfortable if you don't breathe, so air is a drug too, man. Neurological issues suck bad enough. Sober, last thing I need is intoxicants to make it worse. Amen to that.
[43:15] Andrew Huberman, Stanford neurologist. And suspicious giga-chad. Main criticism of alcohol was that it makes you neglect long-term goals and planning. You're essentially managing minute-to-minute, so to speak. Well, is that alcohol or alcoholism?
[43:35] All right. Let's see here. He promotes nicotine in safer delivery forms. An FTR Locals user wrote an article about how a man consuming alcohol six months before conception could lead to fetal alcohol syndrome. Really? Any opinion on nicotine staff smoking patches, lozenges, and lip patches? Well, I mean, obviously the chewing tobacco and the smoking is bad for you as a whole, but nicotine can be a great productivity enhancer. Very good for creativity from what I've heard. You ever notice if you run big ideas to someone who smells like alcohol or is a frequent drinker, he or she will have serious doubts in your abilities. They're revealing to you that they themselves can't gold sweat and plan ahead. Why would you share ideas with someone who smells like alcohol? Why would you have a frequent drinker you talk to at all? Frequent drinkers will fuck you up and suck you down, man. They really will. There is a nihilism and a self-hatred at the core of alcoholism that is like a neutron bomb. The buildings are left standing, but all the people are nuclear shadows.
[44:55] It reminds me of those fraudulent TikTokers who pretend they eat 20 donuts and have 7% body fat. Somebody says, the prisoner says, I stopped drinking alcohol February 2004. I'm now 21 years sober. Good for you. I haven't had even a single glass of wine and one beer and never will again. I watched my mother, father, aunt, and grandfather destroy themselves with alcohol. My father died of liver failure and alcohol-induced dementia. He was 66 years old. He drank beer until the very day he died. well bro was locked in bro was locked in.
[45:34] All right let me get to any other comments, it's humbling to think, about that most of what you worry about never happens and most of what happens that's bad for you you never saw coming i agree with that i agree with that however it is really important to remember that the things you worry about that don't happen, some of them don't happen because you worry about them, right? So it's sort of like somebody who's like a heavy smoker and then they quit because they're like, man, I'm really worried about getting lung cancer, emphysema, COPD, and then they get old and they're like, man, I never even got that. I shouldn't, but it's because you quit, right? So sometimes worry will eliminate the problem. You say, oh, well, it didn't really happen, blah, blah, blah, right?
[46:28] Yeah i mean most of taxation is just a humiliation ritual it really doesn't have anything to do with what the government needs they just like to take your stuff because it's power, we're told we could be or do whatever we wanted to the point where we had to believe to fit in in my late 20s a lot of that blind faith died sorry i don't quite follow that.
[46:57] Uh, friendliness is strength or weakness. I'm looking for a career change and I'm trying to figure out what my strengths are. Asking people who know me what they think my strengths are, most of them said friendly in their reply. But I often find that I'm just friendly because I'm trying to fit in and I end up dissatisfied. So should I count being friendly as one of my strengths or weaknesses? And if it's a weakness, how to turn it into a strength everyone perceives it to be, the strength everyone perceives it to be. So friendliness is fine. I'm very friendly and positive person, I will sort of take, for example, the call I had today. And you can hear this in calling shows, but the call I had today, the guy just wouldn't answer my questions.
[47:45] I mean, I'm not even going to say there's not a lot that bothers me because that's not really for me to judge. And i understand that you know people listen and they want to give me all this nuance and complexity and explain and blah blah blah blah blah right i did a private call-in show with someone the other day at 45 minutes i hadn't gotten a word in edgewise so i get and you know i'm like hey if you want to just keep talking that's fine i don't want feedback i'm happy to listen but when people don't answer questions i get it's you know it's going to happen sometimes When people don't answer questions, it just drives me a little batty after a while because it's rude, right? Because a conversation is about the exchange of information. And particularly when it's sort of a live broadcast or it's a show that's recorded, people have to answer questions, right?
[48:42] Have to answer questions. And when people don't answer questions, I'll give them a certain amount of leeway because sometimes people just aren't used to it, whatever, right? But at some point, it's like, if we're going to have this conversation, you're going to have to answer the questions. You don't have to answer the questions, but if you don't answer the questions, I'm not going to have the conversation. I mean, as I said in the call, if you go to a doctor and you say, doc, I just feel sick, unwell, bad, whatever, he's going to start answering, asking you questions, right? Okay, where does it hurt? Well, you know, pain's a funny concept. Lots of cultures interpret pain in different kinds of ways, and there's emotional pain, and the doctor's going to be like, okay, like, I don't need to let, where does it hurt? Where do you feel uncomfortable? What are the symptoms? Well, what is a symptom, really? I mean, it's an interesting epistemological question, because sometimes, if you're really saying the symptom is not fitting, okay, right? Like, Like at some point, the doctor's going to say, I can't help you if you don't answer my questions. If you're coming here for help, you need help with your health, and you're complaining that your health is bad, you're going to have to tell me what your symptoms are, or as Kevin Samuel's going to say, or I'm going to bid you goodnight.
[49:59] So I think people see my friendliness, and they also see my strictness or my directness, right? I mean, people even saw this when I was on TV in, in various places, particularly in, uh, New Zealand, uh, you know, somebody was just trying to corner me and I was just like real patiently, just like, no, I'm going to get my point across. Nope. I'm going to get my point across. Nope. I'm going to get my point across. And, uh, I'm just, I'm, I treat people the best I can. The first I meet them, which is the friendliness. And after that, I treat them as they treat me.
[50:42] So, a dog that never bites is not a good guard dog, or at least never barks. So, friendliness is fine as long as you have the option to not be friendly. If you don't have the option to not be friendly, then it's just grinning slave mask, right? I just, you need to like me because I don't have any support. You need to like me because, and this sort of begging, I'm not saying this is you in particular, but sort of this begging, cringing, licking everyone because you just want to be liked. That's not being nice. That's just being pathetic, right? So niceness, if you can't not be nice, you can't be nice. Because then you're like the woman who will sleep with anyone. Well, she can't choose anyone.
[51:36] Somebody says, my co-worker is 53. I still remember when that seemed old. My co-worker is 53 and he's extremely sedentary. He barely moves all day, overweight, eats junk food and drinks Pepsi. He recently told us he got diagnosed with a rare form of liver disease. He's already stage two fibrosis. He's made no life changes other than medication. He's just waiting to die. Well, he's not waiting to die.
[52:03] He's not waiting to die. He's choosing death. I mean, I've talked about this before, so I've just touched on it briefly. Do not underestimate the number of people in life who want to die. This is Thanatos, right? The death impulse. Do not underestimate, never underestimate the number of people in life who want to die. These are the guys they they drink and drive they get into extreme sports they do crazy dangerous stuff like what's the julian sands going hiking in the middle of nowhere without anyone right they go cave diving uh they get into bar fights uh they are completely sedentary and they're kind of the weekend warriors like they're sedentary all week and then they try to play you know pick up hockey on the weekend and sort of well known this sort of alien chest explosion heart stuff that goes on. So I would assume this guy, I don't know this guy, but my general assumption would be, okay, so he has nothing to live for and he wants to go out with a good taste in his mouth.
[53:08] A lot of people like this. A lot of people like this. The guys, women who date really violent men and keep provoking them, I assume that there's just a death impulse there. And men who date crazy women, you know, because women are less often convicted of murder because they'll often do things like, you know, poison or more subtle forms or just nag and stress a guy to death or something like that. But there's a lot of people who have like one foot on the black river, right? They don't really want to be here anymore, whether it's a bad conscience or hopelessness or despair or right so your co-worker who's 53 what's he got to live for is his life full of love and virtue and progress and happiness and someone right a lot of people, a lot of people.
[54:08] Did memories from my childhood get pruned by my brain because I don't have many memories under the age of 12? I'm in my 20s. A lot of times, I don't know, obviously it's just my amateur opinion, but a lot of times trauma prevents the formation of memories. Stress and trauma prevents the formation of memories. Somebody says, is this a man or a woman? Let us see. He says, I'm 49. nine, since my sexual market value is nil, I haven't taken dating seriously. Well, I wouldn't say it's nil. I mean, you're a very, very attractive woman. It's not nil. It's just lower than it was, right?
[54:51] That hit me hard. I think I'm getting comfortable not dating or building new relationships. Your mind will adapt to just about anything. This is why circumstances are not too, too much to fear. Your mind will adapt to just about anything. And if your mind is like, oh, are we, wait, we're just not dating. We're not, we're not really pursuing relationships. Okay. We'll adapt to that. I'm going to discard all of the relationship skills because we don't need them. And, uh, don't do it. Don't do it. Uh, somehow I'm still in the dating game, but I can't find a logical reason to do so at 49 other than I shouldn't give up on love. You can't find a logical reason to date. This is to Eite. You can't find a logical reason to date at the age of 49. I'm not sure I quite understand that. I can give you a logical reason to date if you want, right?
[55:57] So you have almost 40 years left on the planet, statistically. And you're probably going to retire in your 60s, which means you're going to have 20 plus years where you're going to have to pay some bills, my friend. You're going to need over $2 million to retire on. I mean, I don't know how much of old age pensions will be around in 15, 20 years. So you're going to need $2 million probably to retire on. Is it easier to get that kind of money if you're in a partnership? It's funny because logical reason is just numbers.
[56:41] How are you going to live for the almost four decades to go? 22, 23, 24, 25 years after you finish retiring, what are you going to live on? Now if you date and get married to someone he's too old for kids or whatever right but if you date and get married to someone then you you're living for half the price, you have two incomes he has his savings and maybe he has kids who might if they care about you enough might take care of you if you age and the other thing you get my friend is you get and i don't mean to sound overly vampiric but this is the basic fact of life and reality you get a nice big old juicy life insurance package right so most men should have i think a million dollars plus in life insurance so you um get married you have a husband uh he's going to help you save he's going to have his assets and when he dies i assume since his will would be for his kids or other relatives you get his life insurance so that's a million dollars that you can use to live on when you get old. So, I'm not sure what it means. Now, maybe you're like massively independently wealthy. I don't know. But you see, I can't find a logical reason to date at the age of 49.
[58:09] I mean, there's very deep and important financial reasons. And you can say, oh, that's not so romantic. Well, it ain't so romantic living under a bridge when you're 75. That's not very romantic. Also, most people who are on their own for too long start to go a little crazy, because we need that constant feedback from other people in our life in order to stay sane, right? We have offloaded our reality processing to a social sphere. It's really hard to stay sane if you're not in social relationships and in particular in romantic relationships because we all get odd quirky thoughts. We all get odd quirky obsessions and we need people to push back on that shit so we don't go crazy.
[59:03] All right what would you advise me sorry what would your okay sorry it's a bit awkward what would you advise to me as an aspiring entrepreneur but also a guy who wants to date get married and have kids do you think the two can mix reasonably my entrepreneur friends are super locked in and don't put much time into finding good relationships. Well, those are the people you'll be competing with. So what do you have to offer as an entrepreneur? Right? The only offer, the only thing you really have to offer as a budding entrepreneur, is your ability to outwork other people. If you've got a wife and kids, you really can't do that, except at their expense, right?
[59:49] So do your entrepreneurial stuff now and then have uh have your kids later freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show really appreciate that, the call the call today was brutal man dating a muslim woman for years and years how can you be so led by your dong while listening to this philosophy show for 15 years well remember a lot of people um you know like some people watch women doing aerobics because they want to do aerobics and get healthy other people what's a friend of mine used to call uh oh it's a chillity movie well that's a lone rental it's a lone rental so other people will watch women doing aerobics for other reasons some people watch what i do listen to what i do or what we do it's um they want to, learn and become wise and make better decisions and so on and other people it's just entertainment right.
[1:00:53] Stef, what's your opinion on Matt Walsh saying he wants laws against AI? Matt said there will not only be jobs lost, but entire industries to AI. I'm against him on principle. However, I do agree that many careers may come to an end. Well, I suppose Matt Walsh, if he thinks that technology is bad and costs jobs, then what he should do is he should go door to door to do his show because if he goes door to door to do his show he'll have drivers he'll have remote lighting technicians set up cameras and so he'll providing a lot more jobs if he goes door to door to do his show and just knocks on people's door and hey do you want a bearded guy with a throaty voice to talk to you about trans women um then he's gonna be really um creating a lot of jobs if he does the show door-to-door. Now, if he says, well, hang on, it's much more efficient for me to do the show.
[1:01:50] Online and just broadcast it, I'd be like, well, but what about all the jobs that you are eliminating by not doing the show live, right? Even if you don't want to go door-to-door, you could go from town to town and do the show live, even if it wasn't recorded, do the show live and take questions from the audience. So, wow, that'd be really expensive. I'd be away from my family. Okay, so everybody loves efficiency reductions everywhere, but what they do, right? So Matt Walsh is not going to go do the show live. He's not going to go knock on people's doors. He's going to do his own show as efficiently as humanly possible and screw all of the people who get unemployed because he's broadcasting from a centralized studio rather than going door to door. So when people say, well, I mean, I remember this with Tucker Carlson. He's like, well, we can't have self-driving cars because then, you know, people will lose their jobs, right? Like, okay. So, I mean, I'm fine with that as an argument, not with the government doing it. But when people say we should be less efficient so that we can have more people work, I really don't care what they say. I just look at their lives and I say, okay, well, how have you implemented that in your life? How have you voluntarily made your business less efficient in order.
[1:03:14] To generate jobs or maintain jobs for other people? And the answer, it's always the same. It's always very boring. It's always the same. But they've done nothing. You know, Matt Walsh could change his set every day, right? And he could spend $5,000 a day changing up his set every day, right? And he would hire a lot of people to do that.
[1:03:38] Well, why doesn't he do that?
[1:03:41] Why doesn't he change his set every day? that would generate work. You'd say, well, that's kind of inefficient and it's a waste of money. I'm like, okay, so you don't want to be inefficient because it's going to waste money. So you don't want to generate jobs because that would be inefficient, but then you want to prevent something like AI because it might, uh, generate, uh, jobs. Like my particular feeling, and I could be wrong or right about this. I'll just tell you my feeling at the moment. It is a feeling. It's just a just a feeling um i i don't feel common course with the common people anymore i i used to i really really used to i used to feel real common course with the common people.
[1:04:27] I i felt very strongly my responsibility for that you know like happened to be gifted with a certain gift of gab and reasoning and communication and so on and i felt real common course with the common people as a whole i did but i don't anymore it's kind of been whittled away from me i won't say passive because there's choices involved in it but it's kind of been whittled away from me over the last um 15 17 years because the common people uh lap up uh that i'm just a bad guy right there's a bad guy a cult leader a supremacist like i'm just a bad guy they lap it all up, right? They go to the newspapers and the magazine, lap it all up, right?
[1:05:13] And they don't defend me and they don't protect me. In fact, they give lots of money and eyeballs in advertising dollars to people who say terrible things about me. And that's fine. They can absolutely do that. That's absolutely their choice. But as I've always said, I treat people the best I can. After that, I treat them as they treat me. So the sort of common people, the average people, and so on, I mean, I wish them good luck. I really do. I absolutely wish them good luck. I wish you the best, but I'm not sacrificing for you because you don't sacrifice for me. You know, for the common people as a whole, common people, the NPCs, the average, the normies, if you want your intellectuals to defend you, you have to, A, not defend, not attack your intellectuals, or B, even if you're not attacking them, defend them a little. And I, of course, you know, when I was attacked in the mainstream for years and years and years, I would go and I would read the comments, right? And the comments were all, I agree, he's a terrible guy, this is the worst thing ever, he's a bad guy. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. People are completely free. I'm a no-censorship kind of guy.
[1:06:33] So i don't uh i don't have any particular wish or or desire like have you seen me rushing to the defense of of england much lately well no because i mean england was the country i was abused in for many years and uh the it was the british press that launched attacks on me many years ago and the british people all lapped it up and it's like well uh good luck right If the common people in their wisdom, and they have some wisdom, the common people in their wisdom have decided that they can do without moral philosophers protecting their interests. Because, you know, somebody dangles a piece of meat, they just snap at it and growl at it. And so, you know, if there is a town, you know, you have medicine and you want to go to a town to help people with the medicine, but then the local witch doctor ooga-boogers you and, oh, he's a bad guy and his medicine is actually poison. And then you go to the town because you want to help the people. They've got a terrible disease. You've got the cure. You want to help the people and the people...
[1:07:50] You know, turn over your Jeep, drag you out and, and beat you up. And then, right. Then you'd be like, okay, well, geez, that was pretty, that's pretty bad. Yeah. But I really want to help the people. So you try again and then, you know, they set fire to your tent and they, they scream at you and they throw things at you and they chase you out and you barely escape with your life and that kind of thing. Right. So, uh, after a certain amount of time, after a certain amount of time, Do you want to keep going back to that town to try and save the people? You don't. If you have half a brain or, you know, a snail in a tire track sense of self-preservation, you don't. Okay. You guys have decided to do without your doctors and your medicines because you want to listen to the ooga booga witch doctors who tell you that the doctor is, is mean and wants to hurt you and all that kind of stuff. Right?
[1:08:45] So my particular relationship I wish them the best I hope that they come to wisdom you know but if they want to listen to the witch doctors and attack the real doctors, then I wish them the best I doubt they'll get it because they chose the witch doctor over the doctor, right they chose sophists and liars over moral souls who really cared for their improvement. So, I mean, they will probably end up standing, the average person as a whole, will probably end up standing in history as an example of what not to do. Of what not to do. There's no point me going back to the town with my medicine.
[1:09:46] You understand? Like, there's no, what's the point? Why would I go back to the town with the medicine when they listen to the witch doctors and attack me? I mean, this happened, uh, where, where places that I went, uh, there was, you know, violence, bomb threats, death threats, you know, sort of thing. I swear to God, half the time I was peeing, I was expecting to get shanked in the, in the kidneys. And, uh, the media, you know, was to some degree whipping this kind of stuff up and people were cheering on the media. I mean, there were exceptions. Don't get me wrong. There were exceptions. I can still reach those people through what I do now. But people have made their choice. They want the liars and the sophists. They don't want the moral truth tellers. They don't want me. They don't want me. I mean, I know that what I have is a value. I know that I'm the cure, but they don't want me. They have chosen the liars who flatter their egos rather than the people who challenge their illusions. And that was sort of the one, that was sort of the one, but the two punch was, the common people baying like a bunch of jackal vulture vampires to take away the rights of people over covet.
[1:11:09] So, So I don't, you know, the bunch of people in power said, oh, these people are terrible, people who are skeptical, they're terrible, they're anti-vaxxers, and people are just like, take them down. Okay. Pretty fucking dangerous time to be a free thinker. So they have chosen not just to be instructed by sophists but they are absolutely willing attack dogs on freethinkers.
[1:11:52] Now, maybe it's wrong of me. Maybe Matt Walsh is a bigger hearted and more. Yeah, but I just, in my heart of hearts, I'm just like, oh, AI might take your jobs? You almost took my freedoms, my life, and my career. Oh no, AI might take your jobs.
[1:12:15] What sacrifices would i make for those who have supported those who've attacked me and and so on right like what and i'm i'm i'm happy to hear the arguments and maybe there's something big that i'm missing but this is to me completely consistent with my philosophy as a whole that if even, 10 to 20 percent of people had gone to bat for me in in the comments in my inbox oh i read this article. It was so unjust. It was so unfair. What can I do to anything? Because when you look at the Milgram experiments, you look at the Stanford prison experiments and so on, there's 20% of people, 25% of people, 15% of people, it's about a quarter of people, give or take, 20%, a fifth or two, a quarter of people who think independent of authority. So if they had read these articles and said, gee, that's really terrible and so on. And I got nothing. Oh, when I've been deplatformed and so on, I said, oh, this is really unjust. This is really unfair and so on, right? But they didn't, right? People completely forgot about me. And I see this, you know, when occasionally I'll sort of pop up on X and just out of curiosity go read stuff. Oh man, whatever happened to that guy? I thought he died. Is he still around? Whatever happened to that guy? Oh my God, he's gone. And so that's, and again, that's fine. I have actually great thanks and appreciation for my invisibility.
[1:13:45] But when I struggled right to the fiery cliff edge of self-destruction to work to save the world, and I move one website over and people don't care, why would I care if their jobs get replaced by AI? Again, I'm happy to hear the case of the contrary, but why would I put myself, back out with exposure and risk and challenge and death threats and bomb threats, to people who, for the most part, cheered on those attacking me. Why, you would, come on, be honest, you would not go back to the village where you kept getting attacked for trying to bring medicine, because they were listening to their witch doctors and their liars, right? You wouldn't go back there. But, but, but those villagers who kept throwing stuff at you and throwing spears at you and setting fire to your tent and turning over your jeep, man. Those guys, those villagers who kept attacking you because they kept listening to the witch doctors, man, those villagers might get their jobs replaced by AI.
[1:14:57] Okay i mean yeah it might happen might happen, oh dear oh dear well someone says Stef i have learned a lot from how you manage the callers your eloquent assertions inspire me to level up my own communications well done and thank you, yeah see i mean i think but the caller today i was assertive about what i needed and the standard that i required for the conversation i was assertive about that once you started complying with that we could be friendly again right there's no just dig in and oh be hostile no, saying this is what i need to continue the conversation and also he did me wrong he accused me of something you know not egregious but fairly bad he publicly accused me of being manipulative and and and false and you know once he apologized for that yeah it's fine right, all right.
[1:15:58] All right. Push button elevators, put that job in the trash. We passed laws banning them. You could get rid of all unemployment in America or the West or Canada, Europe. You could get rid of all unemployment tomorrow. Just ban automated farm equipment. No unemployment. It's all sorted out. Yet people don't really want to do that. Self-driving cars can put chauffeurs out of work. Cars put horses out of work. Buddywick, buggywick manufacturers out of work. AI and post-scarcity civilization could work well. The transition may be very painful though. Right, so you understand that.
[1:16:48] AI can only replace NPCs. I mean, I'm not talking about the code stuff and all of that, but AI cannot think. It can only assemble language in pre-configured ways according to prior assemblages. I've got whole presentations on AI. It's a word guesser based upon prior usage, just like an NPC. The NPCs pretend to know things they don't know. They pretend to have smarts they don't have. and they're ferociously hostile to anyone who reveals their retarded limitations of pretend thinking. The sophists, those who pretend to know that which they do not know, are the enemies of philosophers and have been ever since Miletus versus Socrates, Socrates versus the sophists, Aristotle, Plato, you name it, versus the sophists. Artificial intelligence is the natural enemy of philosophy.
[1:17:49] We are locked in a mortal battle. The pretense of thought versus actual thought. It's a zero-sum game. Winners and losers. We win, they lose. They lose, we win. Oh, no. Are you saying that artificial intelligence might put soffits out of work? Good! Because those same fucking soffits have been putting philosophers out of life for thousands of years.
[1:18:22] Because if you genuinely think, you can't be replaced by AI, even if you're not super smart, if you genuinely think.
[1:18:33] But the people who pretend to think, the people who simply assemble language based upon preconceived propaganda, they're AI, and AI will replace them. You can't get AI to write what I write, but you sure as shit can get AI to write generic media slop of propaganda, right? So AI is taking food, power, and authority out of the mouths of people who only pretend to think, who are the natural enemies of philosophers because they regularly chase us down and try and get us banned, excluded, killed, deplatformed, debanked, whatever, right? Now even then i'm not happy about it i'm just not gonna fight it all right somebody says dating when 50 lots of hostile women first date is a job interview where you're asked about your job where you work etc money then you have to deal with liars the short attention spans of people who think they're still in high school reading profiles is miserable women writing that you have to be taller than me in heels or most often they write very very little believe i've been on a foodie date, oh a foodie call, yeah, run into women who had horrible breakups, were there nowhere near recovered.
[1:19:56] The Times have been called an idiot for recommending someone to listen to Stef as a ridiculous number. Jeanette McCurdy releases a book called I'm Glad My Mom Died about her childhood trauma and everyone sees her as a saint. It's ridiculous.
[1:20:15] Secretary Molyneux of the Department of Philosophy, because a government grant is just what we need. Is it too soon to apply for a job there, Stef? It's pretty funny. Uh, yes, I'm sorry, Stef. I was going through a tough time also when you got canceled. And I remember telling myself, nah, he won't care, read, respond if I sent you a heartfelt email. Well, um, your lack of care or concern or attention for what was a difficult time for me is very liberating for me. Very liberating for me. but but the fault that you make is you're assuming me you're assuming my preferences which are actually your preferences right you say oh i don't want to impose it's like so that's about you and then you just make up this other thing right haven't seen you in a while well that's because you hadn't had your eyes open because i've been here the whole time somebody says my husband was fired for not getting vaccinated right and and you know people who got fired for not being vaccinated it got replaced by migrants who were never even tested and didn't have to get vaccinated, right? Oh my!
[1:21:36] Ah, I never understood before that LLMs provoke insecurity in NPCs because they can't produce anything beyond its assemblages. Yeah, for sure. For sure. That makes sense, Stef. Read the NPCs. It's like the Bible verse that says something like, dust off your boots and leave that town when the normies turn on us and those npcs are losing out big time not hearing philosophy like we do here well that's a vanity thing though right amazing show tonight thank you dylan freedomain.com you already donated that's fine for other people i would appreciate that.
[1:22:11] Yeah, the pretense of thought is like counterfeit money, right? Bad money drives out good money, right? It's a fundamental law of economics, right? That when bad money circulates, gold gets hoarded. Bad money drives out good money, right? So NPCs drive out philosophers.
[1:22:36] Soffits drive out reasoners. Pretend virtue, which is counterfeit virtue, drives out the gold of real virtue. So the sophists and people like me are in a foundational win-lose battle for the soul of mankind. The sophists provide the easy answers that don't get you in trouble and allow you to feel good. The philosophers provide the difficult answers that might get you in trouble, but are actually true and virtuous, right? It's like the sophists of the fat positivity movement, right? Oh, you're 300 pounds. You look fabulous. It's just prejudice, right? And you've seen these videos of like this fat positive movement. Well, he's dead. She's dead. She died. He died. She died, right? So the people who want to make you feel good rather than actually do good, I mean, I get that there's a market on both sides of the things, right? So why is it that people want the sophists. Well, the sophists offer them the easy path to virtue.
[1:23:44] Ozempic is one of the, if it turns out to be true, that there's this blindness thing, right? But Ozempic, of course, you know, being obese has risks of blindness too. If you get diabetes, it's untreated. You can lose your vision because all the fine nerves, I think, that go to the eyes. So, but rather than do diet and exercise, people take Ozempic, which causes them to become blind. Rather than do reason and evidence, people do sophistry, which causes them to become blind. And people get addicted to false answers that make them feel good, rather than true answers that are challenging, but truly virtuous. And people have the choice, right? And they keep choosing a sophistry. They keep choosing the pretense of virtue. They keep choosing comfortable lives over uncomfortable lies and no soul over uncomfortable truths, right? That's their choice. And I respect their choice. I respect their choice. Go for it. Go for it. But don't think that going for it has no consequences. Right?
[1:25:01] Don't think that choosing the witch doctor and chasing out the doctor has no consequences on your health.
[1:25:15] So, uh, you know, somebody that I would consider in the sophistry round would be somebody like Joe Rogan. So I did Joe Rogan show three times, the last time he really kind of turned on me and it was a real, um, uh, ambush and so on. And so, uh, people have, I mean, certainly when they were younger, they were exposed to me quite a bit on Joe Rogan and they chose to stay with Joe Rogan. He got like a hundred million dollar deal from Spotify or something like that. So people chose to stay with Joe Rogan and not with me. And that's fine. I know it's fine. I don't mean to be like the Tonya Harding in the mirror thing, but no, it genuinely is fine. I am an empiricist and I don't want any fact to be denied me. I don't want to deny any facts, even if they hurt. and in fact, especially if they hurt. So, people choose sophists over philosophy. They choose the witch doctor and the violence of the mob over the philosopher and the reason of the mind. I'm an empiricist. These are just facts. Do they bother me sometimes? Yes, they do. Have they bothered me recently? No, they haven't. It has been years since I've been bothered by this. Honestly, years. I'm fine.
[1:26:44] So, people have made their choices. They have chased away the doctor, and they have embraced and praised and elevated and showered with gold, the witch doctor.
[1:27:09] It is beyond my capacity, and even if I had the capacity, I would not will it. It is beyond my capacity to make people choose things. It is also utterly beyond my capacity, to stand between bad decisions and their consequences because it's impossible to do that. Hit me with a why. If you know anyone who believes they've been vax-injured by the COVID vaccine, I do. People who themselves believe that they have been injured by the COVID vaccine, and it's pretty bad. More than one.
[1:28:11] So what do we got here? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes. Yes, no. Jeff, I just want to thank you for orange-pilling me all the way back in 2013. Hey, that's prior to Trump. Right. So I moved heaven and earth. Obviously, I could never tell him, I could never give anyone medical advice, but I very clearly shared my concerns, my own personal concerns. I can never give anyone medical advice, can't tell you don't take, take, don't take anything like that. I'm not a doctor, can't give you medical advice, but I can be clear about my particular concerns and hesitations. And it was not a fun process. As we all know, right, those of us who had skepticism and concern about a novel treatment that clearly had not gone through long-term testing because it was impossible to do so in a couple of months.
[1:29:15] So when people, it's one thing if people say, I disagree and here's my reasons why, okay, you can have that debate, right? But if people say, you should have your rights taken away because you're not obeying the government, and then they get harmed by obeying the government, I don't like it, I don't want it, but I refuse to grieve it. I can even be sad for it, but I refuse to grieve it. I can't. I can't. I will not command my heart against its essential nature and its mammalian and animalistic origins. I mean, the guy today wanted sympathy, I think, for his breakup when he had not done any values filtering, according to what I talk about, and had not, well, had been listening to my show for what I do for like 15 years.
[1:30:38] The internet has given everybody intimate connection almost instantaneous to the actual truth and people get mad about the iq stuff like well i i interviewed 17 world experts about it The interviews are all there. The source data is all there. You can go look it up.
[1:31:07] Or, you know, the people who believe in the fine people hoax, which was the basis of Biden's campaign, according to what he said. The people who believe that stuff, they voluntarily chose to accept and amplify lies. To me, it's like, if somebody gets shot in some random drive-by, that's horrible. I sympathize. It wasn't their fault. They're innocent, right? But what is my emotional responsibility or what is my emotional reaction? If I'm honest, we should be honest here, right? I'm not telling you what to feel. I'm just telling you my particular perceptions. If you find out that someone died, because they played russian roulette with a handgun, right oh there's there was a these things called the darwin awards i sort of remember one from many years ago where a bunch of guys again when you go skiing there are these poles and there are these big, they're like sort of.
[1:32:19] Gymnastics mattresses around the base of the poles so that if you crash into them, it's soft and not hard metal. And there are a bunch of guys, they tore one off when the, it was closed, right? It was middle of the night. They tore one off and they rode this big gymnastics mat down the hill and they ended up crashing into the very pole they'd taken it away from and some of them got badly injured and I think one or two of them died. Now, if you're honest, if you're honest, what is your reaction to that? People broke into, I think they stole this thing, they ran down the hill and they ran into the pole which they'd stolen the protection from and got injured or died or something like that, right? what is your reaction, do you grieve is this the saddest thing well if that's the saddest thing then what is your reaction to people who through no fault of their own end up with some big problem and disaster.
[1:33:33] And these are people who just injured themselves, right? What is your relationship with people who wanted you to have your rights taken away, wanted you to lose your job, and if they end up being injured by that treatment, I don't want it to happen. I guess I can say I'm sad that it happened.
[1:34:03] All right. Somebody said, talked with three women online, took all three sequentially in about three months. Took less than three weeks to be asking for money after love bombing before ever getting to dive deep into values and ethics. Blocked them. I want a partner for time and all eternity, not a parasite. Yeah, I don't have people in my life who did that. Yeah, I will drink their tears. I don't know. I mean...
[1:34:41] I'm not, I'm, I'm not there. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I'm not like, yay. Cause you know, it's pretty, pretty fucking tragic, but with the NPCs, uh, oh no, they might lose their jobs to AI. Well, that's pretty easy to solve. Stop pretending to think and just say from AI. Pretty easy, right? If you can't muster up any more creativity and intelligence than a fucking bucket of bolts, you might've missed the turnoff to become an actual enlightened human being or a thinking human being. If you want to survive the onslaught of AI, just learn how to think and you'll be fine out of the argument.com. It's like we've got these terminators all coming over. All these bombs and spaceships and clouds of death and lasers and sky drones and all you have to do is think and you're absolutely unharmed.
[1:36:00] You're fine. You're bulletproof. You're laserproof. It's like in the world war z right like if you if you're sick the zombies ignore you they just rush past you and they don't attack you if you think ai doesn't even see you can't do you any harm you're like in a full sun in an invasion of vampires if you think, which means stop pretending to think if you actually think you're bulletproof AI cannot harm you. You think I'm worried about AI taking over my shows? Oh no, what if I get replaced by AI? AI will never be able to do what I do, even if it absorbs all of my shows, and I'm sure a bunch of them have been hoovered up, but even it cannot do what I do. It's like guys being worried about being replaced by AI are like women who only bring sex to the table being worried about being replaced by other women who bring sex to the table. Well, maybe if you bring more than a hole to the table, you can't be replaced by a hole. And maybe if you bring thought to the table, you can't be replaced by a bucket of word guess and AI slop bullshit.
[1:37:26] You know, it's like in all the Star Wars slop movies, right? Like people shoot at the Jedi and the Jedi deflect the bolts and, and, and then take away the guns, and they have the magic powers, and they raise the X-wings from the swamps in Dagobah. I'm so sad that I still know that. And they have all of these magic powers. And robots can't kill them. And mere mortal weaponry cannot kill them. They are above all of that. If you strike me down, I shall return more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Well, that's thought with AI. A bunch of robots with lasers. You're immune to their danger. All you have to do is think.
[1:38:17] All right. So any advice? Last question here. Any advice for moving to a new city staff? There's so much to do. I have the job and place hunt. I'm doing it online for now. I'm told I'll get a job relatively quickly in person, other than whether an obvious downtown area is for work hunting. Is there any common strategies for moving to a brand new place from all your years of travel?
[1:38:39] Yeah. Yeah. Just everybody always forgets about the social shit, right? So just join sports groups, join reading groups, book clubs, uh, join a dance, uh, studios, just, just do anything to, to meet people because moving to a new city, uh, you know, most of us have friends baked into school and neighborhoods and families and environments, and you've got to go make new friends. So you just, you're going to have to just, I don't care if it's Dungeons and Dragons groups, I don't care what it is.
[1:39:06] Uh, but you have to, have to, have to get involved in social groups and go out there and meet people because you move to a new place man those social muscles can decay like that you're like a astronaut's bones in space you turn into jelly baby jelly all right any of the last donations freedom.com slash donate or or or three robots.
[1:39:30] Right here in the locals app and the rumble app you can tip right there too freedom.com slash donate. If you find the show to be of value and you are listening a later, a few moments later, you can go to freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really would appreciate it. Don't forget to go fdrurl.com slash locals to sign up, to get access to all of the absolutely amazing premium shows, premium live streams, and also all of the AIs are fantastic. All right. Thanks everyone so much. Have yourself a beautiful, glorious, lovely evening, freedomain.com slash donate just one more time for you. We will talk to you soon. Bye.
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