0:05 - The Divide Between Young Men and Women
3:09 - Flattery and its Dangers
8:32 - The Boy Crisis
11:06 - Maintaining Attraction in Marriage
21:51 - Rhetoric vs. Reason
32:16 - The Concept of Free Will
35:43 - Consequences of Government Subsidies
37:43 - Impact of 2020 on Free Speech
In this episode, we delve into the pressing concerns regarding the growing divide between young men and women in their 20s and 30s, a phenomenon that seems to stem from an array of social and political influences. Addressing a poignant query from a concerned mother, I offer insights on how these relationships are fraying and provide potential pathways to repair them. Understanding the backdrop of this issue requires a broader view of how political power, especially as wielded by female voters, has reshaped the dynamics between genders, often leading to negative consequences.
I explore the dangers of political power intertwining with both masculinity and femininity. On one hand, hyper-masculinity can lead to fascism, while on the other, hyper-femininity can escalate into socialism or communism. I discuss the ways in which women, through media and government, are flattered into a false sense of superiority while men face alienation and a sense of failure. This imbalance leads to detrimental patterns, such as men retreating into escapism through addictive behaviors and women pursuing vanity over virtue.
A critical aspect of our discussion focuses on the importance of self-discipline in resisting flattery and the societal narratives that complicate genuine relationships. I emphasize the need for young women to recognize that external validation, particularly in the form of flattery, can often mask manipulative motives. Similarly, I stress the importance of encouraging young men to navigate a world that frequently undervalues them in educational and cultural contexts.
Transitioning into the realm of marriage, I provide straightforward advice for men seeking to maintain attraction within their relationships. I argue that marriage should be viewed not as a relaxing monopoly, but as a commitment that demands effort. By maintaining physical health and emotional engagement, couples can counteract complacency, enhancing mutual attraction and responsibility in the relationship.
Our conversation also touches upon the topic of public intellectuals, specifically addressing recent criticisms leveled at figures like Jordan Peterson. I caution against the tendency to overcomplicate profound truths and advocate for a clarity of communication that makes philosophical ideas accessible to all, especially to children. Drawing parallels to the tech industry, I stress how the simplicity of understanding shapes our engagement with complex ideas.
Additionally, I tackle the issue of brainwashing and the societal pressures that encourage consensus on absurdities. By examining how educated individuals are rewarded for affirming false narratives, I illuminate the psychological mechanisms that compel conformity, which in turn erodes meaningful discourse and personal integrity. I confront the topic of free will, arguing for its conceptual validity while emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility in shaping our actions and decisions.
This episode culminates in examining the state of free speech post-2020. Reflecting on my own experiences with censorship, I convey how being pushed from mainstream platforms equipped me to pivot toward fruitful philosophical exploration. I discuss the liberation found in focusing on deeper, more substantive dialogue with those genuinely interested, rather than complying with the pressures that often stifle honest expression.
By addressing these interconnected issues, this episode seeks to foster a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by young men and women today while offering practical solutions and insights that may help restore balance in interpersonal relationships.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Getting some great questions from X. I'm back on X.
[0:05] You can find me at Stefan Molyneux on X. A woman writes, a mother writes, there is a huge divide occurring between younger men and women, 20s and 30s, and it seems almost irreparable. They're having a difficult time forming relationships, getting married, having children, etc. I see both men and women in that age group discussing their travails, and many are becoming very discouraged and want to give up. What advice do you have to repair this issue? It's a big issue and I sympathize and I think I understand. So here's what's important to understand from a sort of real big perspective.
[0:41] Everything plus political power gets corrupted. Political power is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. It sort of corrupts. Now women have greater access to political power than men. Women vote more, they vote longer because they live longer and so on. So the state is now run to a large degree by female voters now both masculinity and femininity which are beautiful in their natural state and have united to get us out of the trough of our animal natures to the higher conceptual realms that we now inhabit we can think and reason and all that so men and women have teamed together to produce all of us over time which is an amazing accomplishment unprecedented in earth's history and perhaps in the universe's history we don't know. But the beauty of masculinity and femininity, the beauty in power, gets corrupted by political power. So for instance, if you take masculinity and you mix it in with the power of the state, you get fascism. When you take femininity and you mix it in with the power of the state, you get socialism slash communism.
[1:48] One is hyper-masculinity, which is masculinity enhanced by the state, and the other is hyper-femininity, which is femininity enhanced by the state. So the way that women are corrupted by political power is through flattery. Men have their weakness, which tends to be sex and status, and women have their weaknesses, which tend to be conformity and vanity. So politicians praise women praise girls at the expense of boys and so boys get depressed alienated and video game or pornography addicts and women get arrogant and and superior and you know a tad on the insufferable side these are general trends there's tons of exceptions.
[2:40] Now, self-discipline means learning how to resist the temptations of flatterers People are controlled more by flattery than by force At least in the modern world as it stands, So teaching girls that those who flatter them are the most likely to exploit them is really important.
[3:10] Flattery is difficult and dangerous for girls in particular because when you're young, as a woman, everybody wants to date you, to defer to you, to bring you presents, to give you gifts, to have sex with you, and so on. And being in the presence of that kind of demand is really, really hard for men to understand. I can't imagine if I was upset in public that everybody would absolutely rally around me and support me and and hug me and right males upset is just something that you have to man up and deal with but women's upset has to be accommodated again in the political realm in particular and um that is is too much power it's too much power.
[3:53] For anyone the incandescent desirability of young women is supposed to be tamed uh through marriage right so women are young and beautiful and attractive and then they're supposed to it's supposed to last like maybe six or 12 months, then you get married, you have kids, and you sort of move on with your life. But now that level of hyper attractiveness, which again, is a beautiful thing, I have no issues with it, can last on and on and on. And women can, you know, you see women in their 40s posting duck face selfie pics to post thirst traps and so on. So they're, you know, 20-plus years into milking looks, which is supposed to be a young woman's game designed to attract a husband and be the foundation of the family. So, of course, the way that women get corrupted is... The media and the state and all of that basically tell them two contradictory things. Number one, you should be absolutely equal to men, and not just in terms of political equality, which of course nobody can argue with that women should have exactly the same rights as men. So you should be equal to men in terms of outcomes. And for women to be equal to men in terms of particularly economic outcomes requires a significant amount of political intervention.
[5:13] The only way that women can be completely equal to men is if women don't have children in which case you get equality and then that's the end of your civilization because to take time off to have and raise children women are going to have to give up certain economic incomes right and rely on men so what you do is you say to women you should be absolutely equal to men in terms of outcomes and you should never settle and you deserve the best so if you want to be equal to men, and then you also want men to do better than you are, then you are going to be perpetually, dissatisfied, and you're never really going to settle down. So if you are raising girls, then you need to teach them that they're going to get flattered by the media, they're going to get flattered by politicians, they're going to get flattered all over the place, and recognize that the flattery, based upon looks and desirability, is almost certainly manipulative. That they should be praised for their virtues, not flattered for their desirability. And to raise women to choose virtue over vanity is tough. It's as tough as raising men to value virtue over status and all of that, and power. So trying to uncouple young women from this sort of steady.
[6:38] Kind of heroin-like drip of praise and flattery is tough because it's very easy to get addicted to money and power for men and it's very easy in status and it's very easy for women to get addicted to flattery and vanity and again these are perfectly healthy in a way men should seek some kind of status, and women, of course, need to be desired in order to build families. So there's nothing wrong with these instincts, but when they're combined with political power, things tend to go kind of rancid. So I think that men...
[7:16] Need to re-engage with the world and recognize that for most boys, and I had Dr. Warren Farrell on years ago, to talk about this sort of boy crisis, the media, and in particular, the educational system, views at best boys as broken girls. The girls are the ideal, and boys are loud, obnoxious, annoying, intrusive, restless, and all of that, to the point where, I don't know countless boys are being drugged for failing to find school interesting can you imagine that can you imagine some director putting out a movie and if the audience isn't particularly interested in them in the movie he then drugs them so that they are kind of paralyzed and and their boredom vaporizes I mean that would just be unholy but we do that so it's important to talk if you've been raising boys and if you've had them in particular in structured and particularly government schools, it's important to talk to them about their experiences and what happened.
[8:16] If you can get women to understand that flattery, particularly from political power and media power, is manipulating them, then you can get them to pursue virtue rather than vanity.
[8:32] And if you can get boys, young men, to recognize that the insults that they have received, usually over the course of their education and through the media are there to suppress them and they should not give in you should not give in to insults all right any tips for a married man to maintain maximum sexual attraction to his wife uh sure that's actually pretty easy, eat well and exercise. Eat well, that's all it is. Eat well and exercise. So you want to try and maintain your physical attractiveness as long as humanly possible. I mean, eventually we all fall off the cliff, but maintain your physical attractiveness as long as possible. So marriage is a monopoly, right? I mean, you make vows that you are each other's sole sexual partners for the rest of your lives.
[9:24] And monopoly often breeds complacency you know like if if some company gets a monopoly from the government that the well the customer service tends to go down a smidge because they're guaranteed their income somebody's work ethic tends to diminish a little bit if they have a tough job and then they win the lottery then they go in and quit their job or whatever right so the way that a lot of people respond to a monopoly and this is you know the sort of famous thing that that you're attractive and then you get married and you kind of go to seat right you get a pot belly or the woman gains weight or you stop exercising and so on because you're like okay well I'm not out there in the sexual marketplace competing this is also this also happens of course it's kind of famous when women get divorced the first thing to do is go back to the gym and and so on so the way that I think you want to view it as a married man and as a married woman, is a monopoly breeds greater responsibility, not less.
[10:21] Greater responsibility, not less. So you have a monopoly over your children, because they're your children, and that should breed greater moral considerations, not less. And so with regards to sexual attraction within a marriage, you should work as hard or harder as you did when you were single to maintain your level of attractiveness for your partner. Not to mention, of course, that if you exercise and maintain a healthy weight, that's good for your sex drive, that's good for your erections and so on. So just recognize that having a monopoly means that you should do better and you should work harder to maintain health and so on.
[11:07] And so should your wife. All right. Thoughts on Jordan Peterson's descent into madness? No, I do not consider Jordan Peterson to be descending into madness. There is, and this is not particular to Jordan Peterson, but I did watch his debate versus 20 Atheists. It's a big topic, so I'll just touch on it briefly here. But there is a tendency for smart people to complicate things. To be perceived as smart because you're complicating things. Like I remember when I was debating, sorry, when I was debating Vosch many years ago, he was like, the Industrial Revolution came about as a result of an incredibly complicated series of events. It's like, no, it didn't. It really didn't. It really didn't. The Industrial Revolution came about because human slavery and serfdom were ended. And so the cost of labor became increasingly important. Therefore, labor-saving devices were implemented. I mean, if you buy a bunch of slaves, you don't want to implement labor-saving devices, low is the value of your investment. So they ended slavery, and that was the foundation. Because that's the one thing that had never happened before in human history, and right after you get the industrial, it's not that complicated.
[12:15] So there is this desire to overcomplicate when you have kids, like little kids. You want to tell them what's real, you want to tell them what's true, you want to tell them what's good. And a lot of the what's real and what's true, they will understand in and of themselves what's good. is a little less instinctive. But you need to be, and I talked about this in the spaces yesterday, you need to be able to explain to children what is true and what is real and what is good by starting it by the age of three or four. And if it's like, you know, it's complicated, a balancing of altruism and consequentialism and majority will and majority rule balanced with the rights of the individual, it's like, forget it. I mean, kids can't understand it. And adults can't be expected to follow it. You have to be able to stretch down your ethics to people who aren't as smart as you are.
[13:07] Of course, right? When I first started working in computers at the age of 11 or 12, it was all command lines and it's like, you know, DQ bang A on tandem and all the grep stuff that goes on on Linux and so on. Like there are some people who love booting up to a flashing cursor and a black screen of ASCII challenges. Okay, fine. But there are lots of people who aren't particularly smart enough or aren't particularly interested enough to get into command line, this, that, or the other. And so you have GUIs, you have touchscreens, and you make the computers easier to use. And it's the same thing with ethics, right? If you want your ethics to be adopted by people as a whole, it has to be explainable to children, and it has to be explainable to people less intelligent than you are.
[13:56] So it is the great temptation of intellectuals to pretend that they're smart because they complicate things and that it's all Aristotelian balance and it's in the mean and there's these considerations and those but that's not how we teach ethics to children right don't hit don't steal don't lie we tell to children so you got to have simple ways of explaining these things and I've done all of that for for many years the purpose of high intelligence is to make.
[14:33] Complexity understandable to the average or even the below average that's the purpose of high intelligence is to clarify and simplify it takes a high degree of intelligence to create a gooey touchscreen interface i mean that there's the the physics and the engineering of the touchscreen there's all of the icon design right so it takes a high degree of intelligence to create a touchscreen GUI graphical user interface.
[15:04] And the reason that you do that is it makes the power of computers accessible to the average person who's not a hobbyist and doesn't like things to be complicated. The purpose of what I've done for 40 years, 20 in the public eye, is to take philosophy and make it comprehensible and applicable in practical, material, measurable ways to benefit people's lives. I am the shiny touchscreen gooey interface for philosophy and so if you can't break down most of your arguments i'm not talking about you know some something like disproving simulation theory or arguments for free will although i really think i would take on the challenge maybe i will at some point to bring those down to people but i had a podcast called the abcs of UPB, you can find that at fdrpodcast.com. And this is me explaining rational ethics to a child. And I, two or three years old, my daughter, I was explaining UPB to her and she got it no problem. So, I don't know about madness, but I do think that, you know, it depends what, when Jordan Peterson is like, well, it depends what you mean by believe. It's like, well, an idea in your mind that you hold to be true, independent of your consciousness, right?
[16:21] So that should not be super complicated. It shouldn't be super complicated to explain what reality is, what truth is, and what virtue is. It should be disarmingly simple. And if it's not disarmingly simple, you've gone wrong somewhere. Because we ask children to know what is true, right? Because when we say don't lie, we're saying, look, as a little kid, you have the ability to tell what is true and you have the ability to choose whether to tell the truth or to lie. So we've got to have reality, truth, and morality explainable to little kids. If we can't explain it to little kids, we can't ask them to follow it, right? You wouldn't say to a little kid, well, in order to have your dinner, you have to be able to understand quadratic equations or quantum mechanics or something like that. That would just be cruel. I mean, dangling, you know, something that they couldn't possibly reach to get. So I think the great temptation is to dissolve the clarity of incisive rationality into this fog of complexity, and then everybody wanders in and gets lost. And then you have no right whatsoever to inflict truth, reality, and morality on children if you can't explain it to children. All right. How does modern brainwashing work on smart, educated people?
[17:43] So brainwashing is a simple mechanism of punishment and reward. So they say, if you say X, whatever outlandish and anti-rational and anti-empirical statement they're going to make. If you say X, you will be praised and rewarded.
[18:04] You know, you'll get your professorship, you'll be maybe in the media, your friends will praise and reward you and so on. So it's just kibbles, right? It's sticks and carrots.
[18:15] So if you say X, which is not true and absurd and obviously not true, then you will be praised and rewarded. If you oppose X or you don't affirm it, you will be punished. You will be deplatformed, you will be ostracized, your friends won't like you, your family might turn on you and so on, right? So that is how propaganda and brainwashing works smart educated people want to do well smart educated people can usually see further into the consequences of their choices so what you do is you just say to people well we have money and status and power and jobs and resources and we'll give them to you if you affirm this ridiculous absurd thing and if you don't affirm this ridiculous and absurd thing we will f you up like we will we will mess you up you won't get the tenureship you won't get the job the girls won't date you the women won't like you uh and your friends will turn on you and and you know we saw all of this in the political realm and we've seen it in the health care realm and so on right but smart educated people don't like to look in the mirror and say well i'm basically just like a rat in a maze avoiding the mouse trap and and getting the cheese. I'm just bribed and threatened in order to hold the moral opinions, quote moral opinions that I hold. They don't like to look in the mirror and say, I'm just a reward-seeking.
[19:39] Protoplasm bald biped, right? So they have to say, once you threaten people and reward people into saying absurd things, then they have to, almost like it's ex post-factor rationalization, they have to say, well, I'm a good person, right? And they say, I'm a good person foundationally, rather than I have to earn being good through the consistent application and promotion of virtue. They say, well, I'm a good person. If I believe X, X must be good. Rather than I'm a person who's responding, as most animals do, to punishments and rewards. So I'll just say absurd things because I don't want to be punished and I like to be rewarded, as we all do, right? Which is why we need the discipline of virtue. I mean, if you ate like your tongue just wanted to, you would be unhealthy, right? Because what the tongue likes, often the body doesn't. And what the body likes, the tongue often doesn't, right? So if I were to say, well, I'm just going to follow eating whatever I like, and I'm going to call it healthy, nutritious food, I would be wrong. We need the discipline of nutrition because our tongue often motivates us to eat badly, right? Kids prefer candy to vegetables, obviously, right? So we need the discipline of virtue so that we can surmount the punishment-reward system that characterizes almost all of human history. And I mean, there's heaven and hell too, right?
[21:08] So educated people... Are subtly or sometimes not so subtly, and we all are, promised rewards if we affirm absurdity, threatened with punishments if we don't. And then when people take the route of affirming absurdities for the sake of avoiding punishment and achieving a reward, they don't want to look themselves in the mirror and say, well, that's what I'm doing. So what they do is they say, well, that must be the good because I'm a good person. And if I believe that, that must be the good. And then the circle is complete, the conscience is destroyed, and social misery ensues. All right, can reason and rhetoric ever truly be separated? If so, is that a wise or foolish thing to attempt?
[21:52] Rhetoric is being able to put forward a convincing, well-illustrated argument. And, I mean, there's other ways to define rhetoric, but I assume that you're using the common parlance, right? Right.
[22:07] So rhetoric is the ability to make an argument seem convincing, and it usually has to do with an appeal to emotion and vivid analogies. Vivid analogies are fine. They're not proof. They're just illustrations. Vivid analogies are like a nice paint job on a car. It doesn't make it drive better, all other things being equal, but it makes it more appealing and more likely to be sold. Look at that I just made an okay you understand so no I don't think they should truly be separated because if you have a great argument you have a responsibility to that argument to present it in a way that is appealing and consumable.
[22:45] Somebody said if I support my own mother having smacked me is that la trauma I find it very easy to justify it from her position, I wouldn't necessarily say that that's trauma, but it is an abandoning of principles, right? The non-aggression principle, thou shalt not initiate the use of force against human beings, applies to all and in particular applies the most to children. Children are helpless and defense and legally, economically bound to their families, almost without exception. And so i don't have to feed everyone in the world morally but if i or if someone let's just say so bob bob doesn't have to feed everyone in the world but if bob lures doug into his basement and locks him in his basement now bob is responsible to feed doug because doug can't get his food any other way.
[23:42] So children are in a sense ensconced embedded or trapped trapped is not the right word because it's just a biological reality a baby is has no choice but to go home with the parents for the most part and no choice but to stay and and leave and not leave and children as a whole can't can't leave their families so if you're not allowed to belt strangers which you're not morally that would be immoral, then of course you're not allowed to belt children. The non-aggression principle is the most necessary when there's a greater disparity of power. So for instance, if you are a 98 pound weakling who's not particularly smart.
[24:28] Saying it's really important that you don't go to a biker bar and start fights doesn't mean that much, right? Because you're not going to go out and start fights. Again, you can think of exceptions, but there's a general rule. If you are, you know, the small, bespectacled, goofy-toothed kid, then saying don't be a bully is probably unnecessary. If you're the big kind of brutish and aggressive kid, saying don't be a bully makes more sense, right? So where you don't have power, then morality is less important. We don't say to a slave, you should choose your occupation because the slave can't choose his occupation, right? We don't say to the slave, it's really important to exercise free will because the slave is ordered around and dictated to. We would focus more on the morality of the slave owner and saying you should free your slaves and so on, right?
[25:20] So morality is most applicable to those who have the most power. And there's no greater power disparity in the world, in the universe that we know of, than that between parent and child, right? So another example would be if you're the boss and you ask your secretary out and you control her career, we have a problem with that. We don't have as much of a problem if two co-workers ask each other out. But if a direct manager asks out his direct employee, that's a conflict of interest and we have higher moral standards for him because he has power over her.
[25:57] So, being hit by your own parents is an egregious violation of the non-aggression principle because they have so much power over you, therefore we have the highest moral standards for them. All right. Quick question. And you know whatever I hear when people say quick question is quite the opposite. But anyway, quick question. Under UPB, there are three tests to check if the standard of morality is correct. Put two guys in a room test. the coma patient test as well as the everybody being able to be moral at the same time there are more ways to check excuse me so very briefly, so if you say stealing is universally preferable behavior okay think of again bob and doug in a room can they both steal from each other at the same time uh not really and they certainly after they've stolen from each other then what right whereas not stealing they can both not steal from each other at the same time. And they can have a continuous moral state of not stealing, which means that they're doing something not evil. So the coma patient test. So the coma patient test is a way of dismantling positive moral obligations. There are no unchosen positive moral obligations. There's thou shalt not, there's not thou shalt. So if you say, well, you have to help the poor.
[27:19] Well can you do that when you're sleeping no so that's does that mean you're evil when you're sleeping right because if helping the poor is the good then not helping the poor must be the evil because it's the opposite right and you're not helping the poor when you're sleeping so the coma test is if you say well you you got to help the poor it's like okay well what about a guy in a coma. Now, a guy in a coma is not assaulting, not murdering, not raping, not stealing. So he's certainly not immoral. So that's another test. So UPB test is that, is everyone able to be moral at the same time, right? So if you say helping the poor is the good, then the person who's helping the poor is doing a good thing. However, it's asymmetrical, right? It means that somebody must be on the receiving end of helping the poor. If you say giving money to the homeless is really good, then the homeless person who's receiving the money can't be good because he's not doing the good. So can everyone be moral at the same time? Can everyone not steal at the same time? Yep. and in eternity. Can everyone not rape, not assault, not murder? Yes, absolutely, totally possible. But the best way to check is look for logical consistency, which these are sort of tests of as a whole. Hello, what is the most important thing in the entire universe?
[28:35] I mean, there are subjective aspects to that and there are objective aspects to that. The most important thing is happiness and the way that you achieve it is through virtue right you have to be rational, in order to be virtuous consistent practice of virtue leads to happiness so the reason equals virtue equals or reason leads to virtue leads to happiness hi Stef long time big fan of the show here give the increasingly woke nature of Christianity not just in the Protestant circles but also in the Catholic Church do you think Christianity will fade out like the old pagan faiths. So as a moral philosopher, I don't want escape hatches to virtue. I don't want you to be able to snap your fingers and escape virtue. So the problem, of course, with religious morality is that you can escape morality by disbelieving in religion. Now, I understand UPB is rational and objective, and you can escape UPB by denying reason and evidence. Sure, of course, right? But, but...
[29:48] Over time, not yet, but over time, those who deny reason and evidence in the realm of morality will be viewed as those who deny reason and evidence in the realm of basic science. So if somebody says, well, the earth is banana shaped, they're not going to be taken seriously because reason and evidence, or if somebody says two and two equals five, they're not taken very seriously. They're viewed as having a reality processing or a mental health problem. So people who reject reason and evidence are then ejected from the conversation. So if I were to go to a physics conference and say, I want to propose the argument that gases both expand and contract at the same time or things fall both up and down at the same time under the same circumstances, they would say, no, you don't understand science. Science doesn't allow for those kinds of contradictions. In fact, you don't even need to test for it. It's just not true. If I would go to a mathematical conference and say, I have a complex proof of a particular conjecture or theorem based upon the axiom that two and two make five, they'd say, well, whatever you've done is not valid in the realm of mathematics because two and two don't make five. So you would be ejected from the conversation.
[30:54] So once UPB becomes accepted, and it will take a generation or two, or maybe even longer, moral revolutions, I mean, it took that long for science, anti-slavery, and so on, the free market. And so, and morality is more volatile than any of those things. But once UPB is accepted, as it will be, I mean, otherwise there's not going to be any life particularly worth living because we'll all be enslaved. So once UPB is accepted over time, then those who reject UPB will be viewed as mentally ill people with a reality processing problem in the same way that people who say that two and two make five are viewed as people with mental health challenges who have a reality processing problem. And there will be no way to escape it, right? So right now, if you say morality is what God decrees, you can get rid of morality by not believing in God, whereas you cannot do that with UPB. It closes the circle and provides no escape hatch from the strictures and constraints of morality. All right. Explain.
[31:55] Oh, sorry. If free will doesn't exist, should we somehow, sorry, should we nonetheless act as though it does? Well, a free will, I mean, the word exists is, right? My phone exists, my hat exists, my shirt exists. They exist independent of my consciousness. And we can check that through the consistent behavior of matter and, you know, sense evidence testing.
[32:16] Logically consistent and sense evidence testing is how we know something exists. A free will is an effect of consciousness, right? Does gravity exist or is gravity an effect of mass? Well, gravity doesn't exist independent of mass. And like where there is no mass around, there is no gravity other than, you know, very, very faint, blah, blah, blah, right? So.
[32:42] A concept doesn't exist in the same way as that which it describes does exist, right? There's a concept called a crowd, but a crowd is just an aggregation of individual people. There's no such thing as a crowd. When the people disperse, there's no such thing as the crowd left as a remnant, right? So free will is a concept or a description of human consciousness. And the description is free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, which is morality or efficiency or so on, right? Or it could be something like business goals and so on. Our proposed actions, we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
[33:22] Now, does that ability exist? No, it doesn't exist. Consciousness is an effect of the brain. It's a description of the biochemical and material effects of neurons in the brain. A forest as a concept does not exist independent of the trees. It is a description of the trees. So free will does not exist independent of human consciousness. It does not exist as a material entity in its own right. But free will is a valid concept. So if you have two bananas, you add two more bananas, you now have four bananas. But the number two, the number two and the number four are not somehow attached to the bananas. They don't exist in an independent state they are conceptual descriptions of what is occurring in the world so conceptual descriptions are valid or invalid they do not exist independent of our minds so is free will a valid concept we sure yeah do we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards absolutely we certainly have the ability to create ideal standards something like tell the truth or do not aggress or be courageous and so on. So we have the ability to propose ideal standards or to have ideal standards. Can we compare our.
[34:44] Our proposed actions to ideal standards, sure, we do it all the time. Should I or shouldn't I, right? Should I have this piece of cheesecake? Should I go exercise? Should I tell the truth? Should I, whatever. Should I be mean? Should I succumb to temptation? So we have ideal standards, and we can compare our proposed actions to ideal standards all the time. This catches the determinist who says you should be a determinist. In other words, you should compare your proposed actions called continuing to believe in free will or act as if you have free will. You should compare your proposed actions to an ideal standard called determinism. So it is this formulation of free will, which is valid, rejects determinism as a self-contradictory argument. So, yes, it is valid. All right. This one's funny. I assume it's mostly comedy. Explain exactly why we shouldn't round up 95% of Walmart customers and place them into forced labor camps. They're fat, lifeless, and cost millions in added health care expenses annually. Discipline must be drilled into people's death, including our children.
[35:43] Okay, so obviously this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but people have been detached from the consequences of their own actions through government subsidies, and therefore they behave in self-destructive ways. So, of course, nobody should have the power to round up people and put them in forced labor camps because you think that's going to be used against people you don't like. Whatever...
[36:14] Violations of morality you attempted to put in place to oppose people you don't like will eventually and usually not so eventually be used on the people you love so it's just a bad deal all right is there a step-by-step series exposition for peaceful parenting i could send to a friend i sent the website but they didn't know where to start uh i don't know what to say about that and i think your friend is lying through his ass or her ass let's just say his yeah he's lying so So at peacefulparenting.com, you go to the website, you can click to start reading the book. You can click to start listening to the audiobook. There's a little player there. There's an AI you can type into questions if you want. One of the questions you could be is, how do I listen to the audiobook? So it's as easy as humanly possible. It's free. They don't have to pay anything. There's no sign up. You don't have to put in your email. You don't have to give a credit card. So you can click on the pdf on the html on the um i think the html's on there on the kindle or the the ebook reader so you can click and read it right away you can listen to the audiobook right away there's instructions on how to get the podcast into a podcast feed if you want to do it that way so it is as easy as humanly possible so if you send someone to a website about peaceful parenting they say i couldn't figure out how to do anything with it then they're just not telling the truth They just don't want to do the peaceful parenting thing. So don't ask me to make things easier for people who don't want to learn. All right.
[37:43] Last question here. And again, thanks for these great questions. Can you touch on what 2020 did to freedom of speech in general? I think the amount of coerced censorship and self-censorship shocked many of us. How did the YouTube ban affect you personally from a self-censorship perspective? Well, I mean, prior to the major bans, I had decided to stop doing politics. It was boring, repetitive, and not particularly stimulating. I love philosophy. I will sacrifice a lot to philosophy, but I still need to remain interested in and motivated to do philosophy. So the danger level went up, the enjoyment level and the repetition went up, enjoyment level went down, both for the repetition and of course the increased risk. And it just became something that I wasn't particularly interested in doing anymore. How did it affect me personally? I mean, it certainly was a little shocking. I mean, who's responsible for might be platforming? Me, basically. I mean, I'm responsible for it because I chose to touch a whole series of third rail topics for the sake of truth and honor. And, you know, if you want to look at sort of the psychology of it, I spent my whole childhood having to lie, being forced to lie. And as an independent, free willed, free thinking adult, I'm just not going to do that. I'm just not going to lie. I was forced to lie as a kid. I don't have to lie as an adult. So I'm damn well not going to that's just a basic honor thing I just couldn't really live with myself if I did.
[39:12] And so yeah it was certainly a little bit shocking as it always is when something that happens like that and I was surprised at how few people followed me to new platforms but then I realized that that was very liberating it allowed me to focus on stuff that a much smaller group of, sort of hardcore philosophy enthusiasts and I could work on together it allowed me to, I mean I did wonderful things like I have a lengthy novel called Almost it's about the history of a British and a German family from World War I to World War II, very very powerful stuff some of the best stuff I've ever written and I got to read that as an audiobook and that was a beautiful thing for me to do a very powerful thing for me to do I really enjoyed it I got to write three more books I got to do lots of great shows with people And so I realized that when people... Leave you alone. You are no longer responsible for pleasing them. You can please yourself and the few who remain. And that was a glorious time for me. I really, really enjoyed it. And it's not over yet. I'm still not going back into politics. But.
[40:23] It certainly had me proud of what I did, but no desire to particularly circle back and do it again. I'm, you know, smart people hate repetition, less intelligent people tend to love it, right? So, I mean, not the kids are unintelligent, but you know, kids love the same stories over and over again. And when I was a kid, I loved the same stories. I love watching the same Mighty Mouse cartoon over and over again. But when you become an adult, like people are on here, say, Stef, you got to get back to talking about IQ. And it's like, I did that. I mean, I talked to 17 world-renowned experts in the topic of IQ. It was very interesting. I did my presentations and all of that. And why would I want to, you know, I wouldn't want to go back to grade five, and I wouldn't want to go back to topics I've already covered before. I need to have new topics, new conversations, new interests. So that's why it's great having these questions and being able to talk about these new topics, or at least if they're old topics in a new context. So it wasn't so much self-censorship as been there, done that, and want to move on to new topics, new experiences, new ideas, new arguments, new conversations. And of course, I thank everyone enormously for this wonderful welcome back to X. It's a great pleasure to be here. And I will talk to you tonight, 7pm. Actually, no, I don't think this is going out today. Maybe it is. Who knows? But anyway, Wednesday nights, 7pm Eastern, Friday night, 7pm, Sundays, 11am. Look forward to your conversations. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.
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