0:06 - Welcome to Sunday Live
3:17 - COVID Deaths and Misattributions
4:43 - School Spending vs. Test Scores
6:32 - Movie Trends and Culture
6:49 - Biden's Cognitive Decline
8:22 - Government Taxation Insights
12:43 - Planning for the Future
18:28 - The Impact of Generational Choices
20:34 - Skills and Workforce Challenges
31:28 - Understanding Relationships and Marriage
38:05 - The Reality of Bans and Censorship
44:17 - Negotiating with Principles
48:59 - Parenting and Preferences
52:19 - Generational Sacrifice and Expectations
1:01:44 - The Illusion of Infinite Resources
1:09:20 - Political Consequences and Responsibility
1:11:10 - The Narcissism of Boomers
1:16:09 - Ending Toxic Relationships
1:19:34 - The Nature of AI and Consciousness
1:22:24 - Closing Thoughts and Support
In today’s episode, we dive into timely discussions, including a recent peer-reviewed study from Greece that reveals a surprising statistic: only 24.5% of COVID deaths in seven hospitals were directly caused by the virus. This finding sets the stage for an in-depth exploration of the possible incentives hospitals may have had to classify deaths as COVID-related, leading to a significant conversation on how economic factors can influence public health narratives. We also reference additional research from Athens that found 45% of COVID deaths did not stem from the virus, leading to an essential distinction between dying with COVID versus dying from it. This distinction raises vital questions about the integrity and accuracy of health data during a global crisis.
We then shift gears to discuss education, examining the relationship between school spending and student outcomes through the lens of data that suggests an almost nonexistent correlation between the two. A World Bank study buttresses this claim, indicating that the returns on investment in education may diminish after reaching an expenditure threshold. The implications for policymakers are profound, as we discuss what this could mean for educational reform and the approaches we take towards funding schools.
As we engage with audience comments, the conversation turns towards housing market concerns, particularly regarding Generation Z’s outlook on home ownership and the impact of economic instability on their future planning. Are young people in a mindset of strategizing for a sustainable future, or are they resigned to an impending collapse of the current system? This question opens a broader dialogue about societal trends, wealth creation, and personal investment strategies.
Additionally, we delve into psychological aspects of modern relationships and societal expectations, particularly focusing on how individuals navigate personal desires within familial and social settings. We explore common pitfalls such as the 'win-lose' mentality, which can create dysfunctional dynamics in personal relationships, and how understanding this can foster healthier communication.
On a lighter note, we engage with topics such as the recent evolution of the film industry, noting the predominance of family-friendly content in box office success. This segues into a poignant commentary on societal shifts and what they suggest about current generational values.
Finally, we touch upon a variety of themes including personal growth, economic realism, and the challenges of navigating adulthood in a seemingly chaotic world. The conversation becomes a call to action, prompting listeners to evaluate their planning for the future amidst uncertainties while emphasizing the importance of resilience and adaptability.
Join me as we explore these diverse discussions, weaving through complex societal realities while encouraging an empowered and thoughtful approach to contemporary issues.
[0:00] Hey, everybody. Welcome to a Sunday morning live, April 27th.
[0:07] Oh, my gosh. We're almost into May. And happy to chat with you guys. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I think, yeah, this is the last show. Oh, no, there'll be one on Wednesday. So this is almost the last show before the end of the month. And if you could help out the show, I would really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And let's start off with a wee bit of a banger that came out of Greece. This is from Leading Report. Only 24.5% of COVID deaths in seven hospitals could be directly caused by COVID, according to a new Greek peer-reviewed study.
[0:46] And it's kind of funny that it's a little bit more people on the left. You know, people on the left, they say, ah, well, you see, but capitalists are so corrupt and the ruling classes are so corrupt, so they associate corruption with power and then they miss all of those sort of second-order consequences or public choice theory, which is if you say, well, we're going to pay extra to hospitals who have to treat COVID patients, right? We're going to pay extra because it's a pandemic and they need the extra resources and so on. So for every COVID patient who ends up in hospital, we're going to pay extra to the hospital.
[1:33] Which, of course, you know, I'm sure a fair number of hospitals did this on the up and up, but there is kind of an incentive there for hospitals to declare, that patients are sick from COVID or dying from COVID. So
[1:55] Now, this is in Athens as well. This is from Mario Norfol. And researchers, a little bit different numbers. I'm not sure if these are different studies or, but they said 45% of COVID deaths in Athens weren't really from COVID. Researchers checked 530 hospital deaths during the Omicron wave and found 45.3% didn't die from COVID at all. Most actually died from cancer, sepsis, strokes, heart failure, or kidney failure. but because they tested positive, they got stamped as COVID deaths anyway. Some didn't even have COVID symptoms, but hey, a positive test was all it took to make the numbers look scarier. Dying with COVID and dying because of COVID are two very different things, but the officials pretended they were the same. Yes.
[2:59] Now, people say cancer, sepsis, strokes, heart failure, kidney failure. If somebody was saying every one of these conditions is caused by or accelerated by this particular virus, caused by? I don't know.
[3:17] I'm not sure that we're ever going to get to the truth. I am not sure we're ever going to get to the truth, all right.
[3:43] All right I can pick to my comments here, And from Stat Shepard, also known as Stat under par Sherpa on X, there is almost no correlation between the amount a school district spends per student and test scores. And this is a sort of scatter graph of average spend per student and average test scores by school district. There's a correlation coefficient of 0.06 between school district spending per student and test scores almost no relationship, a World Bank study supports this weak correlation between spending and learning outcomes globally, so but research by Kiribo Jackson indicates that spending can matter up to a threshold about 8k per student annually suggesting diminishing returns beyond that point.
[4:43] Fair. Maybe, maybe.
[4:57] So, what are your thoughts on this? What are your thoughts? Let me get to your comments. Good morning from Texas. Good morning to Texas. James says, I'd forgotten about the attribution of COVID, died with COVID, to nearly every death, like that one motorcycle has to gotten to a fatal accident.
[5:24] If I remember correctly the COVID test went through so many cycles the false positive was highly likely well the guy who invented the PCR test specifically and clearly said that it was not for diagnosis and of course they did I mean I think they did they spun the cycle so many times that it was pretty easy to get, a false positive for sure for sure, um almost every single highest grossing film of 2024 is a kids movie, uh well i don't know if i would categorize all of these as kids movies inside out 2 was the big one 1.6 billion a deadpool and wolverine i think i saw one deadpool movie was really not very kid friendly but deadpool and wolverine is that considered a kids movie or maybe if it's marketed to teens. Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, Wicked, Mufasa the Lion King, Dune Part 2. I don't think Dune Part 2 is a kid's movie. No, I don't think that's quite correct. Godzilla X-Kong, The New Empire, Kung Fu Panda 4, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
[6:32] Boy, you know, we are a long way from Shakespeare, man.
[6:50] Yeah, I don't think Tune 2 was that.
[7:07] I think a guy at the White House dinner got an award for talking about Biden's cognitive decline, which was pretty sudden and catastrophic. He got an award for that. I bet nobody got any negative consequences for failing to report on it for a long time so.
[7:33] Virginia Guiffery died by suicide, apparently, after she was in a somewhat, I mean, described in various ways, a crash with a bus in Australia, pretty remote location. She said it was really bad. She had four days to live. The police said it wasn't that bad. I don't know, who's going to know the truth about these things?
[8:00] According to leading report, I think it's true, The U.S. Government collected more in taxes in fiscal year 2024 than the GDP of every country in the world except the U.S. and China. U.S. government collected more in taxes in fiscal year 2024 than the GDP of every country in the world except the U.S. and China. Isn't that wild?
[8:23] And it's never enough. This is one of the things I said about the welfare state many years ago, is that the welfare state hands over far more money to the poor, than even existed in the 19th century when the Communist Manifesto was written. I mean, the money that's handed over to the poor is many multiples of the entire world's GDP in the 19th century, like in any particular year. And it still doesn't work. Well, again, that's the sort of secondary effects, right? If you give money to people who are poor, you are paying them to be poor. Whatever you subsidize, you get more of, and whatever you tax, you get less of, right? So you get less productivity and more dependence, right?
[9:25] All right. All right. Yesterday, I was surprised at the shop. I brought a few multipacks. The cashier took a calculator to calculate three times 12 equals 36. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of movies, are the huge multiplex movie houses with 16 screens a thing of the past? I think you can find some pretty big movie theaters. I think particularly in the States. Biden was saying stupid stuff when he was running for VP in 2008. Was he ever mentally sharp? I don't know that he was ever mentally sharp, but he did not have that kind of thousand-yard stare cognitive decline stuff that was going on. What are your thoughts on how the housing bubble has affected the attitudes of Gen Z? That's a good question.
[10:31] All right, one to ten. How dark. How dark should we go? You tell me. How dark should we go? You tell me. I mean, it's a Sunday morning. It's a lovely day. 10. I know better than to ask this group. 69. Nice. All right. All right. I bow to the collective wisdom of the audience, as always. So, all right. Well, let me ask you guys this. Let me ask you this. Are you planning for the future or waiting for the end? Are you planning for the future, or waiting for the end?
[11:42] P for planning, W for waiting. Are you saving your money? Are you putting aside things? Are you investing in a lifelong career? Are you planning for the future? Or if you have a sense, which you can certainly make the case, right? If you have a sense that the current system is unsustainable, well, I mean, we know that the current system as it stands, right? The level of spending and debt and unfunded liabilities is unsustainable. If you have that sense that it's unsustainable, are you waiting for the end of whatever change is coming after an unstable or, unsustainable system after that hits its wall? Are you.
[12:37] Planning for the future or waiting for the end?
[12:43] It's a big question. I think that, a lot of Gen, what were we talking about? Gen Z. I think a lot of people in Gen Z are not so much planning for the future as they are waiting for the end.
[13:15] What was it? The Babylon Bee was like, well, you could read the book of Revelations or just open your curtains and watch it, right?
[13:30] Thank you for the tip, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I really, really would appreciate it. Support for these slightly less inspiring shows this month because of my ear. I really do appreciate your support, freedomain.com slash donate. Donate. All right. So people are planning, planning, planning, planning, planning. Good. Both off-grid, self-sustainable house with vegetable garden. Or preparing, planning. L, for learning to enjoy the experience. Yeah, planning, planning, planning for the unforeseen. Planning, don't let the doom and gloomers give you an excuse to be irresponsible with money. Hmm. Scott says, I think the housing bubble has ruined the world, and so there is no point saving, working, or having any ambitions because I'll never own a house. I'm waiting for the end. Now, I mean, that's a bit of a false dichotomy that I put forward. Sorry about that. Planning for the future could include planning for whatever change is coming in society. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Working to survive and rebel. to someone. Someone says, before Bitcoin, I was just waiting. Somebody says, F waiting for the end, rage against the dying of the light.
[15:00] So I do think, let's get back to, I, The deferral of gratification is based upon the predictability of the future. And the deferral of gratification is founded or based upon the predictability of the future.
[15:32] Now, if the predictability of the future is threatened or undermined, and I think we have sort of very deep instincts this way, particularly sort of, I think, cold climate cultures, the people whose ancestors evolved in cold climate cultures, what we do is we have a deep instinct for the unsustainable. Or, of course, to put it in my usual other way, those people who did not have a deep instinct for the unsustainable ended up not surviving winter as a whole, or they had a lower chance of surviving winter. Does that make sense? I think it makes sense, right? So it's worth deferring gratification if the future is predictable. And if you have a sort of deep instinct for the unsustainability of society, then what happens is you no longer really believe in the deferral of gratification.
[16:49] And that manifests of course in investing in your own skill set your own economic value that manifests in learning particular new skills that manifests also in dating it manifests in going through the difficult rejection filled experience of asking girls out i think that's still fairly traditional. Maybe for girls, it's asking guys out or trying to be more attractive. I mean, that sort of OnlyFans phenomenon where some estimates are, and it's kind of hard to believe, but poorly things put this out. Some estimates are that in terms of like 18 to 24 year old women, one out of 10 is doing OnlyFans. And again, I know that OnlyFans is not entirely based on, thank you, David, I know that OnlyFans is not entirely based on sexual matters, but mostly, mostly, I think.
[17:50] So OnlyFans is, to help with the future, I'm going to get my resources now. And video games are around pleasure in the moment at the expense of the future same thing with pornography and so all of that stuff is to do with consumption in the present at the expense of the future what's the point of saving if you know you've seen these bitter memes you know work for 40 years and then the fed prints a bunch of money and steals 40 of your savings, and there's not much you can do about it.
[18:28] I mean, you can invest, of course, in all of that, but all of that is because the money is going to be taken, right? So if you look at the behavior of young people.
[18:54] If you look at the younger people, I don't think that they are sort of working very hard to invest in their own futures. And this is not any kind of criticism. I can completely understand where people are coming from. And of course, you know, I'm going to be 59 in a couple of months. So for me, I grew up in a situation or an environment where you could really plan for the future. Now, as it turns out, the planning for the future stuff became progressively more unpredictable as time went forward, in particular because of things like affirmative action, me being sort of a white male and so on. It became more difficult to actively plan and progress. I was sort of talking about this in the last show, where I developed all of these really good business skills and then found it really hard to get good jobs, right?
[20:12] So, I don't see a lot, I mean, there are people who are doing it and I get all of that and that's all good. But I think for a lot of people, I think, I think for a lot of people, they don't see the point of investing in their future. They just don't.
[20:34] They, they, for what? Like, Like, why would I, you know, the bit at the beginning of your career where you just really have to work hard in order to gain skills, right? So you go through 12 years of government miseducation and then you go through a bunch of, I mean, certainly it's different to some degree in the sciences, although the sciences are also being completely infected by this hyper-egalitarianism woke virus stuff. So you go through all of this stuff all of this propaganda in government schools you go through all of this, propaganda in universities and then you come out and have to actually provide value and so one of the reasons why people have to work so hard when, they get out into the workforce is all they've been is propagandized and because all they've been is propagandized, they don't have any particularly useful skills.
[21:39] I mean, propaganda is all about replacing strictness with excuses, right? So, I mean, there are definitely, you know, data-driven departments in universities that say, if you find any group outcome differences, and you ascribe it to anything other than bigotry, you're wrong. So that is replacing strictness and curiosity with excuses.
[22:10] And it's really hard to come back from that as a discipline, right?
[22:18] It's very tough. Very tough. So the whole thing, when you get into the workforce, you have to work like crazy. You have to work like crazy just to learn how to start providing value. Now, I mean, for me, I got into the business world. I was in, of course, I did my gold panning. I was in two years of an English degree. I went to theater school, left theater school, finished my undergrad in history, and then worked for a year and then did a graduate degree in history and then got into programming and into the business world, co-founded a software company. So I knew going into the business world that I had a lot to learn about. I mean, it's not like a degree in history or training in acting in English is going to give you really great business skills in terms of evaluating value and providing value and all of that. So I knew for sure, I knew for a fact, that when I got into the business world, I was going to have to work like crazy to learn how to provide value.
[23:25] And even though I worked pretty hard, in hindsight, I could have worked harder. I could have worked harder for sure. And this was the case for me, even though I had spent a lot of time working on economics, right? So that I could understand what the value was of economics and so on.
[23:52] So I think people are willing to do that sacrifice. They're willing to do that sacrifice if they, to get a benefit down the road. They're willing to do 70-hour weeks, 80-hour weeks, sometimes even more when I was doing it. They're willing to provide value. I mean, I remember working three days straight without any sleep at all to get a system ready for a very demanding client. I have no issue with the demanding of the client, the demandingness of the client, so to speak. So I was willing to do that because I felt very strongly that I was providing value and I really enjoyed having my own company and I really enjoyed being in charge and all of that because I generally have a pretty good, a decent respect for my own decisions. So...
[25:00] I was willing to do that because I felt I was just investing in my own future career and skills and expertise. And then after that, right, and this stuff takes a generation or more to kind of collapse in on itself. It's sort of like the marriage rate is like when family courts get very male and friendly and sort of no-fault divorce gets very female-friendly. You still have a generation of people who are already married, right, and still getting married. But then the kids of those, you know, horrible divorces, horrible breakups, the kids of those people end up not really wanting to get married because they saw what happened, particularly the sons, right? Because they saw what happened to their own dad, right? In the court system.
[25:52] And they don't want to do it. They just, they don't want to do it. So then it becomes less likely for the next generation to get married. And then what happens, of course, is that you lose marital skills like that, like over the course of one generation. You just lose those marital skills. Because you don't see functional marriages, you don't grow up with functional marriages. And so if there's some sort of non-marital scenario going down the road, then you just lose all those skills. It can happen, I mean, from a sort of civilizational history standpoint, it happens very rapidly, but it's slow enough that you don't notice it like a big, sudden, wrenching change in society. I mean, hit me with a why if your parents were relatively happily married, you know, functional and, you know, not Bickertins and all of that. Hit me with a Y if your parents stayed relatively happily married, and hit me with an N if that was not the case. They were either unhappily married or split up.
[27:07] Yeah. Nuko says yes. James, of course, says no. I get that. Somebody says, this is so true. I noticed really quickly that my wife and I are missing marriage skills. Big learning curve. Yes. And I'm sorry to see this and hear this. Of course, most of you have not had the example of growing up with a functional marriage. Somebody says, yes, parents have a completely blissful marriage. Lovely. Yes, engaged to be married myself. Beautiful. But I think most of you, 75% here, seems to be that they did not. Right? So that's a real challenge. Right? That's a real challenge. It's, you know, it's easier to grow up learning Japanese. It's easier to grow up speaking Japanese than it is to learn Japanese later in life. It's really tough. Really tough.
[28:15] So those skills are gone, or I guess you could put it another way so people talk about sort of the widening gap between rich and poor and there's lots of reasons for that but one reason that's not talked about in general, is that the reason a central reason as to why there's a widening gap between rich and poor is that a happy marriage adds a massive amount to your wealth in the world. It really does. It's amazing. A happy marriage adds a huge amount to your household net worth in the world. And those people who come from reasonably happy and stable marriages grow up with that skill set of how to have a decent, reasonably happy marriage, right? And those kids who grew up without that are, of course, much more likely to get split up, to divorce, to whatever, right?
[29:26] So, the people whose parents split up end up with caution about marriage, and they don't have good relationship skills because they weren't modeled or taught, implicitly and explicitly. They don't see their parents sort of resolving disputes and working together. And so, they end up staying single. And staying single, right, there's two big jumps in a man's income. One, when he gets married, and two, when he has his first child. Because you just, my daughter says, you lock in, you buckle down, right? You get very focused as a man when you're providing for a family. You get serious. You get serious about things. Because people are 150% depending on you. So you don't get the acceleration, of marriage and kids to your income. Book recommendations, you should, of course, check out my book, Real-Time Relationships at freedomain.com slash books. It's free, real-time relationships. All right, let me get to your comments.
[30:55] Are prenuptial agreements not effective in U.S. courts? Well, I'm obviously no lawyer. You should look this up for yourself. But it's a dice roll. It's a bit of a dice roll. Somebody says, I've noticed that the younger the people in the marriage, the less happy they are. Older people seem to be able to cope with the fact that life just sucks.
[31:28] Sometimes younger people seem to blame each other. Hmm.
[31:43] Somebody on X wrote, I miss Stefan on X. I get that he currently does stuff elsewhere, but I'm here, and that's not really going to change. I've never agreed with 100% of his takes, but even when I disagreed, I will fully admit he made me think and examine my own take on the matter. Right.
[32:07] Well, it's not that people have to use two websites. I mean, most people have a podcast subscription. I mean, I don't mean paid, right? They subscribe to a podcast and get downloads, right? So they're already subscribed, probably, to a bunch of podcasts. And they would just need to add my podcast to that. So they don't have to use two websites. Why did they ban you on all social media platforms, hmm he says villager style hmm, I think for telling the truth and being effective, I mean this is this is a big challenge right this is I think this sort of wage scale that everybody's kind of dancing on which is if you, get involved in sort of public social discourse and you're trying to change things towards a more honest and empirical and scientific situation.
[33:31] So you either are ineffective, in which case, what's the point? Or you're effective, in which case you get suppressed or banned. I don't really like no-win situations. I really, really don't like no-win situations. I try to avoid them pretty strenuously. So if I were to go back on X, either I would have a big effect moving social discourse more towards reason, facts, data, evidence, and truth. I'd have a big effect in which case I'd probably just get banned again or alternatively I'd have no real effect in which case thank you Joseph and, Joseph says I'm reading real time relationships and just had my first ever real conversation with my wife it was horrifying and beautiful thank you Stefan thank you I appreciate your tip freedomman.com slash donate to continue to spread the word, you're helping peaceful parenting don't forget peaceforparenting.com.
[34:46] Somebody says, every platform bans you at the same time. It's almost like all media platforms have an authority they adhere to. Who knows? Maybe this will come out in my lifetime. Probably not. Like, what were the trigger points? What were the dominoes that caused all of this? I don't know. But I still view my de-platforming as a very beneficial thing as a whole. Somebody says after your call yesterday so i did a um a live stream yesterday a voice chat live stream it's a lot of fun thank you everyone for dropping by um, so he says after your call yesterday i am still confused why you do not use x the financial cost to use it is near zero but the upside for your business is massive you seem to use tiktok which has worse terms. I mean, I posted TikTok, I don't really use it, but TikTok has not banned me. Right? It's not, right? They have not, in my view, of course, unjustly treated me. So.
[36:12] Mike Cernovich wrote on X, Stefan Molyneux had won the war of ideas, that's why he was banned. It was all for totally fake reasons, but people have short memories. Milo was framed, those were the threats in 2015 to 2017, me to some degree, but those were the big guns. Yeah, I mean, it was pretty tough to... If I had simply asserted things without evidence, it would have been pretty easy to dismiss me but you know i interviewed all of the experts like on the iq issue i interviewed 17 world-renowned experts in the field of human intelligence so.
[37:00] It was kind of hard you know because people i remember people would write to me on on x back in the day and say oh the iq stuff is false right now if it was just me asserting stuff then people could say the iq stuff is false and you know then they could find academics, sort of woke at least for me woke pseudo academics they could quote those academics, and say these academics say the iq stuff is false right and it could have just been a he said she said can my expert your expert now once i had accumulated 17 interviews with world-renowned experts in the field of intelligence, if people were to try to ascribe perspectives on intelligence, human intelligence, to just me, me alone, well, I could say, you know, don't shoot the messenger, I've interviewed the experts, and from the left and the right and the middle, and they all agree on the basics, so you're going to have to talk it, take it up with them, right?
[38:06] So, I assume that I was banned because the work that I did was, you know, I think it was kind of irrefutable. Somebody says, your analysis of people were the most insightful and touching videos I've watched. Examples, Robin Williams, Elliot Rodger, Charles Manson, you gave clarity that mainstream media didn't talk about. Yeah. Tommy Sotomayor was recently banned on X and Gavin McGinnis is still banned, is that right? I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you, Yeah, I did shows with Tommy back in the day, brave guy brave guy powerful speaker.
[39:22] Hmm, Tommy wrote that's crazy how banned I am yet the stuff they allow on social media, is so much worse they banned me on X which is supposed to be a free speech platform I'm now banned on X and YouTube permanently with no reason behind it hmm if you want to watch me go to my website, tjskoc.com tjskoc.com I will keep going hmm, so what did he get banned for this is i think pose i think this is tommy posting, hello your account has been permanently suspended for violating the x rules specifically our policies on counterfeit goods.
[40:21] I mean, I obviously don't know the backstory behind all of this, but it's interesting to read.
[40:41] Yeah, you can go to freedomain.com slash playlist slash IQ. freedomain.com slash playlist slash IQ.
[40:54] All right. And Gavin McGinnis never got reinstated. Is that right? That's rough all right um Stef somebody says why do some parents get really angry when their child says I want to me they're just stating a preference but it really seems to anger some people as being entitled and rude why does a toddler saying I want have this effect on people, so in general and as a whole stating personal preferences in a relationship, where people have a win-lose mentality, is setting the stage for a very terrible kind of conflict. So, you know, if my daughter was young, younger, and she would say, I want, I'd be like, yeah, tell me more, right? We have that conversation. We're trying to work it out, try and sort it out. And she's perfectly welcome to say, I want, about something, right? Because I want her to have preferences. I want her to have, and I want. I mean, I don't want to erase her preferences and desires. Of course, right?
[42:12] Now, if people who have a win-lose mentality, right, I want and you want, one of us is going to have to escalate and dominate the other. One of us i mean if you've been in situations where it's a win-lose mentality around differing perspectives or opinions rather than a negotiation where you try and figure out how, both parties or most parties can get most of what they want, i mean you can see this is the fundamental why people don't understand trump by the way is that, you know, I talked about this with regards to the tariffs, right? That Trump is imposing tariffs to get people to come to the negotiating table with the goal of reducing tariffs. And there's this, you know, kind of unintelligent screeching from the left and the right about how tariffs are bad. And it's like, yes, I'm not a fan of tariffs, right? This is definitely a violation of the non-aggression principle, and it is an interference in property rights. I get all of that. All makes perfect sense to me.
[43:34] But how do you deal with other countries that have huge tariffs on you? I mean, they clearly don't believe that tariffs are bad or wrong. So how do you get people to lower their tariffs? Right?
[43:56] Well, if they're not going to do it on principle, you either have to bribe them or they have to suffer. I mean, the reason why we have principles is we don't just end up responding to the carrot of the stick, right? That's why we have principles. People can appeal to our principles rather than rewarding us for good behavior or punishing us for bad behavior.
[44:17] We're not just then livestock with a, you know, here's a treat or here's a stick right so if you have as you should have of course a, preference or dedication to telling the truth telling the truth then you should focus on telling the truth and should you be tempted to not tell the truth you say oh well no but but i have to um.
[44:45] I have to tell the truth. And if you get, you know, if somebody thinks you're lying and know that you have a preference of telling the truth or a value called telling the truth, then they will say to you, oh, you should tell the truth, right? And they say, oh, yes, you should tell the truth, right? So you sort of return to that. So the purpose of having principles is that you escape positive and negative consequences as the guideline for your action. It no longer is what can I get away with or what profits me or what has me avoid a negative consequence, you have your principles. Now, how do you negotiate with people who don't have principles and where countries have a big trade surplus with the United States or the United States has a trade deficit with them and they have a lot of tariffs and regulations and maybe they're threatening to impose crazy speech laws on Americans and so on. Or people who use American companies. I mean, how do you negotiate with people who don't seem to have an excess of principles?
[45:56] Well, a carrot and a stick. If you come to the table and negotiate, we can lower tariffs. If you don't come to the table and negotiate, tariffs will keep going up. Now, of course, it would be great if, and I've certainly done my part in trying to bring this about, But it certainly would be great if people in the world, you could just appeal to their principles and say, well, but remember, tariffs violate the non-aggression principle, their interference in property rights, the initiation of the use of force. And people are like, ah, you're right. You're right. Absolutely. That's true. So I should stop doing that. But that's not how the world works. So Trump is aiming for a win-win With regards to other countries And their consumers.
[46:48] But the only way he can get that is, you know, he's obviously, I am sure that America has tried reducing tariffs with other countries based upon, you know, this is better for your economy and blah, blah, blah. But of course, the politicians are getting a lot of their donations from people who are disproportionately, or corporations or industries that are disproportionately benefiting from tariffs. So what's he going to do? well he's going to if, it's the old roadhouse line it's important to be nice until it's time to not be nice, right treat people the best you can when you first meet them after that treat them as they treat you, so he's aiming for a win-win and he's doing that by inflicting pain points until people come to the table.
[47:41] And when they come to the table of course the hope or the goal is that they will, lower tariffs so he's aiming for win-win so i know this is a long way from toddlers right but, i'm sort of talking about this as a whole so when the child says i want if the mentality is win-lose Well, if the child gets what the child wants, I'm going to have a terrible day. If I get what I want and the child does not get what the child wants, the child is going to have a terrible day. So then when the child says, I want, the child is setting up the family for a terrible day. Ugh, there goes the day, why ruin the day, blah, blah, blah. So they get angry because they don't want the day to be ruined, but they don't know. And I say this with sympathy, it's not any big condemnation, I say this with sympathy. They get upset because, you're now in a win-lose conflict situation. Yeah, perhaps not so far from toddlers as it should be. Quite right. Quite right.
[49:00] Thank you, Joseph. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Really would appreciate it. So I think that's why. They just don't know how to find a win-win situation. And a win-win situation is not that hard to achieve. It's not some, I mean, all you do is have to, you just have to deeply listen to and appreciate people's complaints and problems. All you have to do is just deeply listen to and absorb. If people know that you really care about what they want, the solution is irrelevant. If people really, really understand that you care about what they want and want to find a way to provide it.
[50:04] The solution is not important. I mean, if you've ever been in a situation where a salesman is trying to sell something to you and you really get a sense that the salesperson, is deeply dedicated and concerned about what you want, to the point where the salesman might even say, you know, I don't think we have anything that matches that, but let me think about it a little bit more, or, you know, you probably should go across the street. They'll have more of what you're looking for. So if the salesperson really genuinely cares about what you want and is doing his very best to provide a good solution, then you can sort of trust the process to a large degree.
[50:59] As somebody says, there is a generation that is so spoiled and coddled that they do not want to even undergo the least amount of discomfort in order for long-term gain, compared to greatest generation who fought World War II. Well, for the younger people who don't see much of a future in their society, I don't think, I'm not talking about World War II in particular, I don't think that they look back upon the sacrifices of their elders and say, I should do that too, because for a lot of younger people, which we were talking about earlier, they've ended up with a society they don't really want. A society that doesn't really work for them. It doesn't give them much of a future, doesn't give them a path up the rungs of the ladder to family, home ownership, and stability, and a good career, and all that kind of stuff, right? So when you say to people, well, the young people don't want to sacrifice, I think from the perspective of the younger people.
[52:12] What is the value of all of this sacrifice?
[52:20] Somebody says, happy wife, happy life. means a marriage is basically a win-lose. So happy wife, happy life is a, I think it's a horribly sexist condemnation of women. I mean, obviously not all women, but they're basically saying, well, if my wife isn't happy, she'll ruin everyone's day. The only way to have a happy day is for my wife to get what she wants. The happy wife, happy life stuff is really terrible. You know, she'll storm around slamming drawers and cupboards and she'll withdraw affection and she'll just be like a petty controlling manipulative witch and I think that's pretty terrible.
[53:05] All right. Somebody says, I truly believe you got banned because of George Floyd. You were fighting the narrative and you seemed as if you were in Trump's corner. I was in the truth's corner in general. You spoke about IQ for years, never got banned. It was Floyd that threw you over the edge. Yeah. I mean, certainly I think that is the case. As I've mentioned before, I had a cop, two cops, a black cop and a white cop, but we had a show where we were talking about, George Floyd, and it was uploaded and processing when my YouTube account got yoinked into the nether.
[53:42] Yeah, I mean, you could certainly see that the George Floyd stuff was going to, boil and bubble over into a huge amount of violence and rioting and murder and mass of amounts of property destruction, and there were people really fanning those flames.
[54:07] And I wanted a counter perspective, and having the black cop and the white cop talk about excited delirium and the problems with the rest, and that it may not have been what was obviously very vividly portrayed in that horrible video. It could have been something else, or that there were other options or possibilities. Yeah, I think that was probably something. But of course, there were other people who were pushing back against that that didn't get banned, right? Didn't Steven Crowder actually recreate the leaning on the neck thing? So it's hard to say. It's hard to say, and it doesn't really matter at this point. I'm very happy doing what I'm doing. And I'm providing more value to the future in what I'm doing now, because in the past, of course, I would just talk about current events, which is great, but provided more value in the present but less value in the future. Now I talk about more philosophical principles, which is less value in the present but more value in the future. And I think a philosopher should aim to have a long shadow into the future, as all of that, if that makes sense.
[55:18] So here's an interesting example.
[55:25] Here's an interesting post. This is our teachers.
[55:34] Somebody wrote, a teacher wrote, my high school, my high achievers are starting to notice the hard work doesn't matter. Sixth grade teacher in an S-B-G district. Not sure what that is. We are not allowed to take off any points for late work and because creativity slash visual appeal on projects isn't a standard of mine, I'm not allowed to grade it. Meaning one kid has a poster with nothing but some words written in pencil, gets the same exact grade as the kids who went above and beyond. They've started to notice that the kids who turn things in late face no consequences, and the kids who do the bare minimum get the same grade as them. One of them said to my face, how is it fair he turned his project in late with nothing but pencil on his poster, but mine is on time and creative, but we get the same grade? I don't know how to respond appropriately so I asked my admin what I should say and they told me tell them that life isn't fair so now I have kids catching on to this refusing to work because they now know they can do it whenever they want with no consequences and then when they do work they do the bare minimum because why would you work harder for the same amount of credit, honestly I can't blame them I would do the exact same thing if I was in 6th grade now I don't know how to solve this problem because, if it's not a standard it can't be graded.
[57:00] That is that's rough, that's rough, did you guys experience that at all? That wasn't the case with me for sure, somebody says my husband tends to take it personally when I'm unhappy I'm in the process of explaining I have as much right to be unhappy as him and some things he just can't fix for the record I don't slam drawers right.
[57:41] So, my guess, right, and you can talk to your husband about this, and I hope you will, my guess is that it's not that he's taking it personally when you're unhappy, I bet you dollars to donuts, that your husband grew up with a very manipulative and aggressive mother, and you being unhappy triggers those kind of memories of him with his mother, his mother being unhappy and taking it out on him, so it's probably not personal to you. It probably is just a triggering from his own childhood. So, oh, standards-based grading. That's SBG. Okay, I thought it was a school district for something. Croc summary. Standards-based grading is an assessment approach where student performance is evaluated based on their mastery of specific learning standards or objectives rather than traditional letter grades or points. What?
[58:37] In some ways, the boomers didn't set a good precedent. Or example, for sacrifice. They voted for seemingly endless government spending for what felt good at the time. They also embraced the hedonism of the 60s, 70s, and further. I mean, don't put all the boomers at Woodstock, right? I mean, the vast majority of boomers were not hedonists, were not drug users, did not have orgies or live in cults, scabies, exchange, flesh pits. They didn't do that, right? Oh, this husband, an awful stepmother, right on the money, though, Stef, yeah. Now, I mean, the conversation to have, in my humble opinion, would be something like, yeah, but I'm not her, right? I'm not her. So don't treat me as if I'm her, as I'm not, right? So if your stepmother was negative when she was upset and was kind of controlling, then when you try to control my being upset, you're kind of like her, right? But don't treat me as if I'm your evil stepmother, right?
[59:53] Now, the boomers were really the first generation where fiat currency was just going and going and going. Just a way to the races. Just endless money printing. I mean, this particularly happened when Nixon took the U.S. off the vestiges of the gold standard in 71. Just money print. and money printing breeds a kind of moral psychosis.
[1:00:29] Because people are limited in their morals by limits in their resources. So if there are poor people around and you want to help them, Well, you have to subtract, I mean, if it's private, right? You have to subtract from your salary in order to provide to the poor. So there's a limit. And of course, what you want is to provide for the poor in such a way that the poor get better, right? Or at least don't get poorer, or stop having a bunch of kids that they can't afford, or stop making better decisions, or get off drugs, or get a job, or whatever it is, right? Stop dating losers or having unprotected sex with losers.
[1:01:31] So, the boomers were protected from rational consequences of endless charity, because money was just printed and borrowed.
[1:01:44] So, the boomers no longer had to recognize the basic reality of life, that there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. Right, there are no solutions. I mean, I'm talking in terms of practical application of resource transfer. I'm not talking about morals, right, as a whole. But there are no solutions, there are only trade-offs. So once sex got decoupled from reproduction through the pill, once the welfare state came in, once foreign aid came in, once old age pensions came in, which I know was long before, I mean, that was in the post-Second World War period. But once you could just fire the infinite canon of made-up money at whatever made you feel bad, you no longer had to balance rational considerations of limited resources in order to provide actually productive charity and resources. So
[1:02:56] They could just indulge in feeling good Rather than in doing good.
[1:03:08] They could just indulge in feeling good rather than doing good. And once you cross that Rubicon where it just becomes about feeling good rather than doing good, you get addicted to virtue signaling rather than actually doing good. And then anyone who says you should actually do good rather than only appearing to do good, they become your enemy. Right? Become your enemy because you are now addicted to feeling good rather than doing good. And then everyone who says, well, doing good should actually achieve good, right? Like if you want to help the poor, why do we keep getting more and more and more poor, right? I mean, you've seen these videos, I'm sure. Somebody went up to a wealthy liberal's house and said, do you want, like, do you think we should accept refugees? And she says, yes, yes, yes. And then he, you know, starts offloading a bunch of people from a bus saying, oh, they're going to come live in your house. And she's like, no, no, no, slams the door, right? Because in the abstractions, everything is infinite. But you know, in your house, resources are finite. You only have a certain number of rooms, you only have a certain number of food, a certain amount of food at the time. And so when it moves from general platonic abstractions, which is where infinity lives, and people have this kind of moral psychosis.
[1:04:33] Then you move from the abstract, where infinity exists, to the immediate, to your actual environment, where infinity does not exist, and suddenly it's a very, very different equation. I mean, the government and its money printing fools people into believing that infinity is a thing. And once you can get people to believe that infinity is a thing, right? I mean, if people always want more programs and no politician who succeeds ever says to people, okay, well, what do you want to cut?
[1:05:19] Well okay you want to spend more on this okay what do you want to cut i mean even in the lead up to let's say the first gulf war or the iraq war or anything like that there was no politician, who went to the population who said yeah we're pro-war and said okay um, well what do you want to cut what are we going to cut what are we going to cut, It's kind of important, right? Oh, you think we should ship all of this in America or England or other places? Oh, you think we should ship all of these weapons of war to Ukraine? That's very expensive. So what should we cut? That doesn't happen, right? There's no trade-offs. It's really, it makes people crazy. It makes people out of reality. It makes people out of math. Math, common sense, facts.
[1:06:26] It's really terrible. It makes people crazy. I mean, if somebody said, I have infinite money, we would view that as somebody who was crazy, deluded, schizophrenic, psychotic, whatever. I mean, I'm no expert, but I just use these terms in an amateur fashion. But we would view them as seriously disturbed. If somebody were to say, I want to buy a yacht and an airplane and the Maldives.
[1:07:02] We would say, well, how much money do you have? And you say, well, I have as much money as I want. I have infinity money. I can buy everything. I have infinity money. Or if somebody were to say they're on some sort of fixed income which governments are on a fixed income and if they were to say well i want to spend a million dollars a year on x whatever right, and then other people would say okay but you then have to cut a million dollars from somewhere else they say no i don't i don't have to do that what are you crazy you just don't care about x you just want people affected by x to just suffer they're like well no because if you keep spending more and more without cutting anything, you're just going to go broke. It's like, no, I'm not going to go broke. I have infinity money. I have as much money as I ever want. I have infinity money, right? Well, if people said that, you would probably refer them to a mental health professional. Well, you don't have infinity money. It would be a mark of mental illness, wouldn't it?
[1:08:12] But this has been completely normalized in society. If people who want to keep spending infinity more, with no restraint, and no balancing, and no loss, people who are just like, well, we have to spend infinity, otherwise we're terrible and mean. Well, if people want to do that, and get enraged at any even potential imposition of rational limitations, we would view them as mentally ill, wouldn't we? But this is the norm in politics.
[1:08:57] If somebody were to say, well, I can't afford all of this, but I'm just going to borrow and keep borrowing and keep borrowing and keep borrowing until my debt is three or four times my income, and the debt is hundreds of times my discretionary spending.
[1:09:20] The debt is hundreds of times the discretionary spending. We would view that person as very disturbed, right? Very disturbed. crazy, Bernie Sanders walks into a bar and says free drinks, who's buying? right, hello penguin poster.
[1:09:49] True, not many said there would be a cost to all this spending. The bill would come due at some point and no concept or consequences for their actions. Right. And of course, the boomers as a whole are responsible for the voting in of all of this kind of stuff because they've certainly, you know, if they're in their 60s and 70s, they've been around for the longest. So the boomers are certainly the most responsible for all of this stuff. And the boomers want the least consequences. Right. How many boomers are saying, you know what? We did kind of mess up. We really did mess up really badly. So we should really at least have a means test for Social Security. Like, well, no, I paid into the system. It's my money. It's like, well, you paid into the system, but you also wanted the system to spend on everything else. And so there's no money. Your Social Security is not there. There's no lockbox. There's no account with your name on it. It's just you're paid by taxing the next generation, who is poorer than you. I talk about taxing the poor to pay for the rich. The boomers are the richest generation in human history. And they are taxing a significantly disadvantaged population, which is everyone who came after.
[1:11:05] It's terrible. Terrible stuff.
[1:11:10] But you can't bring reality to them. I talked about this post a couple of weeks ago. it was a post about how boomers are just kind of like toddlers you have to keep reality from them otherwise they just completely freak out because they just can't handle it they can't too much unreality really breaks the brain too much unreality really breaks the brain to the point where, all the king's horses and all the king's men cannot put boomers together again, yeah they came up with the magic age of 65 for a time and the average life expectancy was 62 Yeah. Although, remember, the average life expectancy at 62 would have been heavily skewed by higher levels of infant mortality, right? So you know that woman who's got the We Can Do It poster from World War II? The woman in the We Can Do It poster was named Geraldine Hoff. She only worked as a metal presser for about a week, just long enough to get her photo taken. She quit the job because she thought it was too dangerous and wanted to become a cellist. Meanwhile, millions of men were fighting and dying in order to protect democracy and freedom. Well, I'm not sure that's why they were fighting, but I thought that was kind of funny, that the woman in the poster quit after a week because she was too dangerous, too unpleasant.
[1:12:33] The New York Times had an obituary for a former Harvard Medical School pathologist, driven out of his job for insisting on a heterodox position, on the risk factors of heart disease that clashed with big pharma orthodoxy in the service of his financial interests that later he was proven to be correct. So the obituary is Kilmer S. McCulley, a pathologist at Harvard Medical School in the 60s and 70s, whose colleagues banished him to the basement for insisting, correctly, it turned out, that homocysteine, an amino acid, was being overlooked as a possible risk factor for heart disease. And he died on February 21st, blah, blah, blah. He was 91. His daughter, Martha McCauley, said the cause was metastatic, sorry, metastatic prostate cancer, blah, blah, blah. Still debated today, Dr. McCauley's theory was that inadequate intake of certain B vitamins caused high levels of homocysteine. I think I got that right, in the blood, hardening the arteries with plaque. The idea challenged the cholesterol focused paradigm backed by the pharmaceutical industry. Dr. McCauley didn't think cholesterol should be ignored, but he thought it was malpractice to disregard the significance of homocysteine. His bosses at Harvard disagreed. First, they moved his lab below ground, then they told him to leave. He struggled to find work for years.
[1:13:57] Hmm, believe the science.
[1:14:06] Believe the science. freedomain.com slash donate. Believe the donations.
[1:14:16] All right. When you bring this stuff up to boomers, they get angry as if you're directly attacking the boomer you're speaking to. Goes to show their rank, narcissism. Hmm. So uh the narcissism is the idea that preferences are to be serviced by others your preferences are to be serviced by others you know when you pull into a gas station there's still a few in canada you pull into a gas station you turn your car off and you wait for the guy to come out and fill your gas or whatever right your preference is to be serviced by others now of course you pay for it and all of that. So it's an exchange for mutual benefit. But I think the narcissist as a whole views everyone like they're just gas station attendants that he never has to pay or she never has to pay. So defying immediate preferences is considered an attack. The narcissist views you as if they've already paid you for the gas that you're supposed to put in their car, but then you just lock up, and don't give them any gas and make fun of them from behind the glass door of the gas station. Right? Nana, nana, boo-boo. So.
[1:15:36] They feel they've already paid you. That's the narcissist. Well, I mean, I'm here. You should be enraptured by the glory of my presence. I've already paid you. So you owe me. Parents do this with like, well, I put a roof over your head, food in your belly, blah, blah, blah. Drove you places. Thank you.
[1:15:57] So, all right. Somebody says, I apologize. I'm not sure if this is the place. I was just wondering if you have any advice for a breakup with a woman you've realized is toxic.
[1:16:10] It's like I'm warning the person who I thought she was, could be, or perhaps the best version of herself, the person I thought she was, just does not exist. And I'm very attached to that idea.
[1:16:24] So, I mean, I obviously don't know the details. of this. But my guess would be that the best way to break up with a toxic person, in this case a woman, the best way to break up with a toxic woman is to criticize only yourself and escape with your nads intact. I can't handle it. I failed you. I'm wrong. I'm bad. I've made a mistake. I can't commit. I'm going through this or that crisis. I'm not worthy of you. I'm not good for you. To try to, I mean, the goal is to get out of one piece without a stalker or any false accusations or anything like that, right? So I would assume, I don't think I've ever had to break up with a toxic woman in this way. I mean, things didn't work out and occasionally I would get dumped. But I would assume that, you know, you could maybe talk about compatibilities or, you know, but I would assume that if the woman is potentially volatile, and as you say, toxic, the best way to not.
[1:17:43] End up in a negative situation with some sort of Glenn Close-style bunny boiler is to only criticize yourself and praise her like crazy, right? You're too good for me is probably the best way to get out, right?
[1:17:59] Somebody says, Stef, have you seen the video of Alex O'Connor getting AI to admit that it lies? I know and understand that AI is just code. However, if AI can debate and interact with humans while learning, is that not consciousness? to some degree. No, it's not consciousness at all. It's just a word. I mean, you can go back and watch my presentations on AI. It's just a word guesser. It's just guessing words. And of course, it does some amazing things, for sure. But no, it is not consciousness. It is just trying to figure out the next best word based upon a near infinity of prior words. No, it's not. I mean, it can simulate consciousness, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I mean, if you, you know, Doom, what new version of doom is coming out next month god help me but i mean doom can simulate, three dimensions on a flat screen right it's got depth and lighting and right i remember i can't remember which game it was maybe it was quake two or something but you shot a light down a hall and the light lit up as the hall lit up when it went down like just amazing stuff right so your brain, turns two dimensions into three dimensions. It's an illusion, right? It's not three dimensions. And it's not consciousness. It's just a simulation.
[1:19:28] And, of course, AI in no way mirrors the human mind.
[1:19:35] And because AI does not mirror the human mind, it can't be... Yeah, heavy metal music starts in the background. Because AI does not model or mirror the human mind, it can't be conscious in any way that we would really understand. I mean, you and I don't have... We're not trained. You don't take babies and hook them up to large language models, right? Somebody said, oh, James says, when you ask AI why it said something, it just uses its word guesser to produce a response. It does not have insight into its thoughts. It doesn't have thinking. Yeah, it doesn't think. It doesn't think. AI does nothing until it's asked. I mean, I guess it processes new files in the background and so on. But AI, unless you program it to, is not going to review its own behavior and seek to optimize it and make it more moral or better or whatever, right? And, of course, AI is ridiculously complicated because there's a lot of pattern recognition that AI has to avoid in order to escape condemnation, at least a lot of the AI does. So a lot of the graphic processing unit consumption, electricity consumption and cooling and all of that is because AI has to be programmed to be less intelligent, to be less aware.
[1:20:54] All right any other last questions comments issues, great show really appreciate these lovely questions freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show and really really would appreciate it and i commit to doing even better shows going forward, open the pod bay door hell yeah I wonder if narcissism in adults is when people are stuck in a childlike state of mind. Since children are narcissistic to some degree, what do you think? It's pretty early. I mean, I remember my daughter being very young when she fed me back, right? So, I mean, if you stick a tongue out at a baby, the baby will stick the tongue out back at you. Somebody says, I think dude was asking personally stuff like how to heal his self-doubt or feeling regret for missing signs.
[1:21:56] Well, I mean, if that's the case, I would need more information. So if I did not answer your question, I'm sorry if I didn't, if I didn't answer your question directly, freedomain.com slash call, freedomain.com slash call, and we can talk more directly about it because I would need more information about what were the red flags, what was your history, why do you think you were blind to them, did other people warn you or not, that kind of stuff, right? All right, well, thank you, everyone, so much for dropping by today. What a lovely conversation.
[1:22:25] Free domain.com slash donate to help out the show i would really really appreciate, that free domain.com slash donate you can also go to subscribestore.com forward slash free domain or fdrurl.com slash, um locals for that my ear is uh it's getting better but it's inconsistent uh it's a three month healing so i got hit with a nasty virus so i appreciate that uh it's slowly getting better but It's up and down. So have yourself a wonderful day, everyone. I will talk to you soon. And we'll look for more. I enjoyed dipping into, if you want to join the Telegram group, you can do that at freedemand.com slash connect. And we'll do some more shows there before Wednesday. All right. Lots of love, everyone. Thank you so much. Freedemand.com slash tonight. Take care, my brothers and sisters. I will talk to you soon. Bye.
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