0:03 - Introduction to Political Conversations
1:42 - Questioning in Politics
10:17 - The Cost-Benefit Perspective
13:53 - Evaluating Risk and Free Will
17:42 - Single Variable Mindset
26:29 - The Complexity of Deportations
35:47 - The Nature of Responsibility
37:58 - Closing Thoughts on Complexity
In this episode, I reflect on the current landscape of American politics, particularly focusing on the interrogation style and questioning tactics utilized by politicians and media figures. While the confirmation process of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and immigration policies are at the forefront of discussions, I find myself more intrigued by the motivations and implications behind the questioning itself. The perpetual cycle of "gotcha" questions seems less about seeking truth and more about scoring points and navigating the existing social and political narratives. This dynamic highlights a concerning trend where facts become secondary, and emotional responses reign supreme.
I delve into the psychological implications of a "single variable mindset," which I believe is prevalent in both individual reasoning and broader societal discourse. This perspective limits one's ability to engage with complex issues fully; for instance, in discussions surrounding immigration and deportation, discussions often disregard the multifaceted realities involved, reducing everything to simplistic narratives. For those with a single variable approach, the complexities of human lives and moral responsibilities seem to vanish, as they cling to one-dimensional arguments that serve their immediate emotional reactions or ideological stances.
Exploring the concept further, I draw parallels to both historical and personal contexts, noting how upbringing and social conditioning can reinforce this singular focus. I've noticed how children who encounter disapproval for taking risks become more risk-averse, leading to a pattern that extends into adulthood. When individuals are conditioned to respond to either praise or condemnation rather than weighing the genuine costs and benefits of their decisions, their analytical skills dull, and they lose the capacity to engage thoughtfully with the world around them.
I also discuss the implications of this mindset in everyday conflicts, using the example of interpersonal family dynamics to illustrate how emotional manipulation plays into our decision-making. When conflicts arise—especially within family units—an appeal to a singular emotional state, like a parent's sadness, often oversimplifies the situation. In doing so, it urges individuals to sidestep their own feelings or authentic responses for the sake of maintaining peace, further entrenching the emotional manipulators’ hold over the narrative.
Throughout the conversation, I strongly emphasize the necessity for a multivariate mindset, capable of understanding the intricate relationships between various factors at play in any given situation. Free will, I argue, originates not only from the capacity to decide among choices but from an understanding of the multi-faceted nature of those choices themselves. The real power comes from recognizing variables beyond the superficial, enabling us to dissect the claims made in political discourse and everyday conflict more thoroughly.
By challenging this single-variable approach, I hope to encourage listeners to cultivate a deeper understanding of the complexities inherent in all conversations, whether political or personal. It's essential to resist the temptations of reductionist arguments and to engage thoughtfully with the variables that influence our beliefs and decisions. Therefore, I encourage everyone to enhance their capacity for nuanced analysis, broadening the lens through which they observe and evaluate the world around them.
[0:00] Hey, good morning, everybody. No, no, good afternoon. Hope you're doing well.
[0:04] So I had some thoughts. I have been gritting my teeth and looking at some of the, I don't know, the conversations going on in American politics at the moment, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s confirmation process, and of course, what has been going on with the whole deportation argument and so on. And I don't really want to get into the content of that kind of stuff because it's just, you know, boring sophistry versus actual facts.
[0:35] So I've been watching not so much. I used to, in the past, watch the people being questioned. But what I'm doing now, or what I have been doing is looking at the people who are doing the questioning. It's very interesting to watch for me. So what is the purpose of these kinds of gotcha questions, you know, where they try to catch people out and so on. What is it that they're doing? Well, of course, it's not actual, you know, if you've ever been on the receiving end of, you know, hostile, quote, questions, then you know what it is that I'm talking about. But what is it that is actually going on with these kinds of questions? So, the way that I'm working with it in my mind, and I'm obviously happy to hear what you guys think about all of this, but the way that I'm working with it in my mind is something like this, that these interactions, obviously there's no interest in the truth.
[1:39] I mean, people getting hysterical over deportations.
[1:43] I mean, what was it? Bill Clinton deported 12 million people and Barack Obama deported millions. I mean, it's nothing to do with the truth. It's nothing to do with the facts. It's, I mean, particularly with the deportation stuff, it's like, oh, the price of coffee is going to go up and the price of food is going to go up and the price of eggs is going to go up. And that appeals to the, what I talked about the other day, there's only one variable people, like people whose minds or whose emotions or whose prejudices can't handle more than one variable. And the one variable people.
[2:19] Prior to sort of one person, one vote, nobody had to really take into account the one variable people, the single variable people. So, for instance, if you were a general, who understood the complexities and the fogs of war, you didn't have to take into account and appease the average soldier who didn't understand all of the complexities of war. Complexities of war are enormous and, of course, a significant amount of battles. In fact, you could say the majority battles are won by deception. So, if a soldier says, well, we should attack the enemy here.
[3:06] Because this is where the enemy is the weakest. We sent out our scouts, so this is where the enemy is the weakest. Well, the general doesn't have to take into account the soldier's uninformed and foolish opinion, right? Now, if he took the time to sort of explain, he'd say, well, but you understand that the enemy is going to make us want to attack him where he looks the weakest, and so it most likely is a trap. Right. Because the one variable mindset is not comfortable with risk, right?
[3:42] But all conflict involves risk. And so if the one variable soldier, one variable mind soldier, if what he's doing is he's saying, well, we should attack the enemy here because this is where the enemy is the weakest. And then the general says to him, yes, well, but Billy, you understand that if it's obviously weak or if it appears obviously weak, it could very well be a trap. In other words, the enemy is hiding reinforcements or is there some geographical way in which that can be exploited to his advantage or he's got troops just over the hill that are going to come pouring over. So it could be that he's appearing weak in order to get us to attack him there because that's where he's got some advantage we're not quite aware of, right? And then the single variable mindset just flips and says, oh, okay. All right. Okay. So then we should attack him. We should attack the enemy where the enemy appears the strongest. Because if he's faking being weak, where he's actually strong, he's probably faking strong, where he's actually weak. To which the general will hopefully patiently say, I get that for sure.
[4:58] But he also knows that we will think that as well. And therefore, it could be the case that he is actually strong where he appears strong, and he's going to try and reverse-psychologize us into attacking him where he is, in fact, the strongest.
[5:15] So, what you do is the single variable mindset thinks, well, there's an answer. And then the multivariate mindset says, well, there's not really an answer. There's only a set of probabilities. I mean, now, this isn't to do with UPB or morals, principles, and so on. But the single variable mindset is not comfortable with probabilities. It is not comfortable with risk. Now, this either could be to a general lack of intelligence, but most likely and most often, I think it's simply because as children, people like this are often mocked, attacked, criticized, and abused or ostracized for taking reasonable chances, right? So, if you think of a kid comes home and says, I tried riding my bike over a little jump I made and I landed perfectly and it was great. Right, then his parents might say, would say, oh, good, good job. Wow, that was, that's exciting, right?
[6:24] Good job, that's exciting. If, on the other hand, the kid comes in, you know, bleeding and saying, and the parents say, well, what happened? And the kid says, well, I tried to jump over a little ramp I created on my bike, and I just spilled and cut the heck out of myself. Then the parents would say, well, that was stupid, wasn't it? In other words, the parents wait for the result of the risk to come in before they say whether that was good or bad.
[6:55] Which does not teach the child anything about risk. I, with my daughter, you know, when she wants to do things that are physically dangerous, I just say, okay, let's look at the cost-benefit. Now, that's sort of an older thing going to a younger person, right? As you get older, the cost-benefit shifts because you're more aware of consequences and it also takes longer to heal. So I don't want to impose that on my daughter, but it is kind of important. If she says, I want to jump from this high place, right? And I say, well, that's cool. Just, you know, be aware that you might get injured and go for it, right? If you want, but just be aware, right?
[7:36] And so sometimes she would jump and sometimes she wouldn't. And I would also say, like, what's the cost benefit? Like the cost benefit, look, obviously, you want to push your limits and obviously you want to have the cool memory of jumping from a high place. That's great. I understand that. But also, you know, if you do turn your ankle, you could be on the couch for weeks, days or weeks, right? So just, you know, it's just cost benefit, right? I did a full wind sprint a couple of months ago. I was just kind of curious if I still did. Now, of course, when I do that, I'm aware, what if I pull something? What if I tear something? You know, I could be out for weeks, but I did it, right? It's just worth it and it was fine. I suppose I read like 95% of people don't sprint after the age of 30. That's pretty sad. so the single variable mindset is usually someone who receives praise for a good outcome and scorn or contempt and punishment for a bad outcome right so someone who says a kid who says to a rough and tumble dad who says dad i got into a fight and i won the dad says good job, and if the kid says, dad, I got into a fight and I lost, the dad will say, well, that was stupid.
[8:51] Right? So, being praised for good or bad results makes people risk-averse. You want to remind kids of the variables and help them to make a reasonably good decision, right? So, if I were to say to my daughter, never do anything physically risky, I said, never do anything, whatever that means, right? Never do anything physically risky. Well, that comes with other lifelong consequences that could be negative. So, of course, the typical example is, and this is sort of the helicopter mom parenting stuff, never do anything physically risky. What that translates into is an avoidance in general of sports and exercise, because sports and exercise have inherent risks in them. It's just that, I think, in a rational universe, the reasonable risks taken in from sports...
[9:48] And exercise are variable and manageable, whereas the risks that accrue from not exercising are not very variable. In other words, it tends to be, you know, bad muscles, often bad posture, weak joints, and maybe obesity, and softening bones, like all of that kind of stuff, right? So, and so they're not variable, they tend to accumulate, and they're not manageable, they just get worse.
[10:18] So, if I were to say to my daughter, don't do anything physically risky, I would be giving her, I would be sort of maybe assuaging some anxiety at the moment, in the moment, rather than saying, yeah, take reasonable risks. Because if you don't take reasonable risks, then disaster is a certainty, right? It's sort of like a silly example is if you just kept taking grade four over and over again, you'd get straight A's for the rest of your life, right? You would never fail. But you also wouldn't progress or get anywhere in life, and it would be a pretty tragic and sad existence. So, in most times, most times with regards to parenting, what parents are doing if your kid says, I want to jump from this high place, right?
[11:08] If the mother, often it would be the mother, if the mother says no, she's saying no because of her self-recrimination if her child gets injured. Because if your kid says, should I jump from this high place, and your kid jumps from this high place, and then they hurt themselves, it's the self-recrimination that will occur. So, if your kid jumps from a high place and laughs and giggles and is happy, you feel like, oh, good decision, right? And if your kid jumps from a high place, turns their ankle, or skins their knee and cries, you say, oh, that was a bad decision, right? But in general, that's the wrong way to look at cause and effect. All decisions are going to involve risk, right? All decisions are going to involve risk. I mean, obviously, the decision to drive a car involves the risk of getting into an accident. There's a, I think there's a mathematical proof that if you win the lottery, like some significant amount of money in the lottery, you're more at risk of dying in a car accident on your way to pick it up than you are of actually winning the lottery. Or, you know, the old thing I remember telling people when Jaws came out and everybody was afraid of the water. It's like, you know, you're way more at risk driving to the beach in your car than you are getting attacked by a shark in the ocean. Or people who are scared of planes, which are statistically the safest form of travel.
[12:37] So, praise or condemnation for outcomes does not help people evaluate risk, because what they're doing is they are evaluating other people's responses, not the thing itself.
[12:57] A kid who builds a ramp and jumps, as most kids do, right? You build a ramp, you jump the ramp on your bike. They're not assessing the risk of the thing itself. They're assessing whether their friends will think they're cool for doing it or whether their parents will get mad if they fail. They're not evaluating the thing itself. They're guiding themselves according to the responses of others, which is not, it's surrendering an actual cost-benefit analysis of the thing itself, it's surrendering that to the praise or condemnation of others. In other words, you're not saying, well, what are the costs and benefits of building this ramp and jumping it. It is, will I receive more praise or more condemnation for building the ramp and jumping it?
[13:53] And of course, this means that your free will has largely been surrendered to the praise or condemnation of others.
[14:01] So, everybody knows this experience when you're in school and you have a question or a comment. If you raise your hand and make your question or your comment, will the kids make fun of you, or the teacher, or both, or will this be perceived as a positive contribution? And I remember this when I was arguing with a professor about the Cartesian theory of us being a brain in a tank ruled by a demon. I remember feeling very strongly the increasing tension and annoyance from the other student as I continued to argue this point. Of course, I made similar arguments in my book Essential Philosophy, which you can get at essentialphilosophy.com. So, when it comes to questioning teachers, a lot of kids, of course, know that questioning teachers can result in anger. This is all the way back to Socrates. Teachers claim to be wise. Are they actually wise? Do they actually know things? Or are they faking it? You know, that kind of stuff, right?
[15:08] People evaluate things according to praise and punishment, not according to the things themselves. And this means that this is a mechanism put in by manipulators. Because society, or really the anti-philosophical or manipulative or control elements of society, desperately want people to judge proposed actions by praise and punishment rather than, any rational or objective metrics of costs and benefits. Because that way, in order to control people, all they do is they ramp up the punishments, or they ramp up the praise. They ramp up the punishments, or they ramp up the praise. So, you can see this going on in the kind of gotcha stuff that's happening in the American media regarding the deportations.
[16:06] So the left is in general trying to hook these onto one metric which is oh well you know the price of food is going to go up like that's the only variable if all other and this is like this is if all other things being equal do you want the price of food to go up right well we'll know, so they're trying to reduce it to a single variable right when there was this fracas it was last weekend, I think, between Trump and the president of Colombia, where the president of Colombia wouldn't take the planes with Colombian citizens who were being deported. And Trump said, okay, fine, we're going to hit you with massive tariffs and suspend visas and so on, right? And then like, within less than an hour, the Colombian president caved. But during that hour, of course, and I'm sure for some time afterwards, before they caught up with the news, the people on the left were saying, well, but, you know, boy, if you put tariffs on, the price of coffee is going to go up. And that is, it's like a bat signal for the single variable mindset. All other things being equal, do you want the price of coffee to go up? Now, for you and I, and I'm sure everyone listening to this as a whole, for you and I, there's no such thing as all other things being equal, right because but we have to add that because that's implicit in the one variable mindset.
[17:32] Variable mindset here is, well, if Trump raises tariffs on Colombian imports, the price of coffee will go up. And they say, well, I don't want the price of coffee to go up.
[17:42] Therefore, Trump should not impose tariffs on Colombia, right? It's just one variable. Now, again, for you and I, we have to say, well, look, all other things being equal, as if that's like a real thing, when it's not, in fact, a real thing. It's not a real thing to say all other things being equal, because there's no such thing as all other things being equal. It's like saying to someone, well, would you go to the gym if it cost you no money and time? Would you go to the gym and exercise if it cost you no time, money, or effort?
[18:14] Now, of course, if somebody says to you, well, would you go to the gym if it cost you no time, money, or effort? You'd say, well, what are you talking about? Going to the gym implicitly takes time, effort, and money. It takes time to go to the gym, to change, to do your laundry after the gym with the extra sweaty stuff, like cost money to go, cost money for membership, it's effort to go to the gym and, and expend the effort to move the weights around or step on the stairmaster or whatever you're going to do. So if somebody were to say to you, if you could go to the gym and get the benefit of exercise without expending time, effort, or money, would you do that? Well, that's just a way to get you to yes, to say yes. If I can get you to say yes, this is like, it's like cheesy sales 101. If I can get you to say yes to something, then I'll consider that a sale.
[19:05] I'll consider that a sale. So, you know, you can see this with regards to, and it's a wide variety of things going on in politics, and you can, of course, see this in your personal lives, right? So, if you have a big conflict going on, let's say, with your mother, and your mother is being difficult or intransigent or unwilling to negotiate or admit the validity of anything that you're saying, let's just say that conflict is going on, and then your sister calls you up and says, you should call mom, she's feeling sad. You should call mom and just be nice to her and make it up because mom is feeling sad, right? Like there's only one variable. The only variable is mom being sad. And you have the capacity to fix that variable. And if all you have to do is call mom and be nice, mom will no longer be sad, then why wouldn't you do that? Again, all other things being equal, just call mom and she won't be sad anymore. Isn't that a better thing as a whole? Well, yeah, all other things being equal. Now, again, for you and I, the moment somebody says all other things being equal, you know you're being scammed. But the single variable issue or the single issue, single variable mindset.
[20:24] Everything is all other things being equal. It doesn't even need to be said because that's the mindset as a whole. So, your sister is saying, look, a 10-minute phone call makes mom happier, and there are no other variables. Of course, there are many other variables, which is, mom is being mean or difficult or irrational or selfish or aggressive or abusive even, and so I don't want to call her up because there's another variable called, that might make mom happy if I pretend she did nothing wrong, but it will make me unhappy.
[20:58] Now, of course, generally, if you bring that up, the variable called you being unhappy will be aggressed away, manipulated or finessed or aggressed away. And so the way that that will work is if your sister says, call mom, she's unhappy, and you say, well, no, because mom's being difficult and irrational, and I need her to be reasonable in our conversation before I want to call up. Or if I call her up, trust me, she's going to get more unhappy because I'm going to bring up her conflict and ask that she'd be more mature and resolve again.
[21:32] So then your sister will say in her heart, may not be conscious or whatever, but she'll say in her heart, oh dear, so I want mom to be happy. My sibling's unhappiness is in the way, so I need to get rid of my sibling's perception of the unhappiness or the validity of the unhappiness, right? So there's two strategies to eliminate your unhappiness and reduce the equation back to a single variable. Number one is to call your unhappiness selfish, right? You're just holding on to a grudge at mom's expense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So to condemn your unhappiness as selfish and get you to remove your unhappiness as a variable. Because if you're unhappy, like your mother is unhappy, you should call your mother, but if I call my mother, that will make me unhappy. so your unhappiness has to be eliminated in order for your free will to be overridden, right? The purpose of the single variable analysis is to remove your free will.
[22:29] Well, all other things being equal, all other things are equal, the only variable that changes with sanctions on Colombia or import tariffs on Colombia is the price of your coffee goes up. You don't want the price of your coffee to go up, therefore you have to oppose the imposition of tariffs on Colombia. Right?
[22:49] To get you to a single variable analysis which removes your free will. Your free will is to do with multivariate analyses. I mean, if the child who's planning to, like he's built a little ramp and he's going to ride his bike over it, if the child only thinks of glory and success and being thought of as the coolest kid around and being going viral on social media and, you know, just getting thug life memes made, then he has no choice to not do it, because he's only looking at the positives. If the child only looks at the negatives, oh, I'm going to crack my bike, and I'm going to get stitches in my head, and I won't be able to go play my sports for a week or two, or I could get a concussion, or my parents are going to be mad at me, or I'm going to end up in a fail video, and I'm going to be mocked forever, then the child has no choice to do it, choice is multivariate when you reduce things down to one variable you are eliminating people's free will so should you support or oppose tariffs on, Colombia I mean take out the sort of UPB stuff that's a complex policy decision there are costs and benefits.
[24:03] In a free society, people would be punished for failing to uphold their contracts.
[24:09] And can you punish the government of Colombia for failing to uphold its basic social contract to accept its own citizens back onto its soil? Especially if it had facilitated the passage of those citizens to America, right? So you could make even a UQB argument in the Chile, a moral international space of law, that it is simply punishment and reward that resolves these things, right? So, should you support or oppose this? Well, it's complex, right? Now, of course, if America is unable to deport those who remain in the country illegally, legally, then it has no particular way to manage the extremely high costs of a lot of, illegal immigration and negative consequences to the American tax. So it's a multivariate analysis, right? If you're just going to do sort of cost and benefit, it's complex. If you're going to do it on principles, then it's like, well, we are returning citizens to their country of origin, where they actually have citizenship. If the government refuses to take them, then the government is breaking its contract with its own citizens and with the U.S., right? I mean, the citizens of other countries are allowed into the U.S. With the express understanding that their countries will take them back.
[25:34] I mean, you would not allow someone, let's say there's, what is it, Albania? It's a Scotland-made-up country. If Albania said to the U.S. government, we're going to send our citizens to you and you're never allowed to send them back, then the U.S. Would not allow those citizens into America or any country would allow that, right?
[25:54] The contract between countries is, well, your people can come to my country, but, you know, they have to go back, right? And, of course, by them having to go back means the country has to take them back. So, if Colombia has its citizens go into the U.S., let's say legal or illegal, and then Colombia decides to not take its citizens back, even though they're Colombian citizens, that's a form of fraud, right? Because America wouldn't have taken those people, legal or illegal. Not that America chose to take the illegal ones, but arguably arguable in some contexts. But that would be the breaking of a contract between states.
[26:29] So there's a lot of variables at play. So what sophists want to do is reduce it down to one variable so that you don't have a choice, because choice is cost-benefits, right? We all have this with regards to the truth. We have to play the game particularly if we're in NPC normie social environments, of how much truth can we tell we have this so yeah the truth is a virtue but the truth is not a sword to be drawn at all costs, so we all have to play this game and don't even try to pretend to me that you don't everybody does, play this game how much truth can I say how much truth can I say.
[27:13] Cost benefits. Now, if you just say, well, being honest is the only variable, then you'll say a bunch of truths, and then you will probably get punished, and very sort of bad and negative things can happen to you. And, I mean, if that's the way you want to play it, you know, I'm not going to argue with you in particular about discretion is the better part of valor, and you want courage to say the truth, but not so much courage that it becomes self-destructive.
[27:39] So, it's funny because you had a thesis, an antithesis, called Socrates and the Sophists. And Socrates said, I'm going to tell the truth. And the Sophists said, we're only going to pretend to tell the truth. Socrates says, I'm going to seek wisdom. And the Sophists said, I'm going to proselytize the appearance of wisdom, and Socrates pursued this even to the grave, right? So you had one extreme, which is Socrates, you had the opposite extreme, which was the sophists, and you had Aristotle, who was very keen on the Aristotelian mean, which is somewhere in the middle, is probably the best policy, and when he was being aggressed against by the Athenian state, he left saying, I will not allow Athens to sin twice against philosophy. So, that's just interesting that Aristotle manifested the Aristotelian mean between Socrates, one of his heroes, and De Sophus, his existential enemies. It's nice when theory and practice mirror each other. So, to go back to you're in conflict with your mother, your mother calls up your sister and complains how unhappy she is, and your sister then calls you and says, call your mother, it will make her happy.
[28:56] And your sister is then faced with competing variables. Your mother is only happy if you're nice to her, but being nice to your mother when you're in a state of conflict and she's not changing for the better will make you unhappy. So now we have a challenge.
[29:11] Kind of what free will is designed. There's no free will that says, I want to escape gravity, at least not for a sane person. And free will can't have you escape gravity anyway. So where there is no choice, there is no point of having free will. Free will cannot make you, it can slow down your aging, but it cannot make you un-age. It cannot reverse time.
[29:32] So your sibling will say to you one of two things, either negative, it's either going to threaten, or bribe in order to remove your unhappiness as a variable and thus control you by reducing things to one variable, right? So either you're holding on to a grudge and being selfish, which means that you being unhappy is unjust and unfair, and therefore, because you care about justice and rightness and fairness, you should eliminate your unhappiness because that's like the unhappiness of the criminal who got caught. It is unjust and unfair. So that's an attempt to eliminate, oh, stop being so selfish and just, right, go call mom, right? But of course, that's easily opposed by UPB. If being unhappy in a relationship is selfish, then mom's unhappiness is also selfish, right? This is why UPB doesn't allow for these asymmetrical elimination of one variable, which is an attempt for manipulators, and often a very successful attempt, of manipulators to control you by reducing variables. Well, you don't want the price of eggs to go up, do you?
[30:45] Therefore, deportations are bad, because deportations will eliminate labor, the labor force in agriculture, which will raise the price of eggs, and that's the only variable, and that's bad. You don't want poor people to have to pay more for eggs. And therefore, and they always use eggs, even though eggs were often demonized from a nutritional standpoint. Eggs just have existential power in the human mind, which is why my Taylor Swift tweet went so viral. Eggs are life, both for nutrition and for human beings, right? So, your sister will try to eliminate your unhappiness so that she can make you call mom by reducing everything to one variable. Mom's unhappy. Calling her will make her happy, so you should call her. Unless you want mom to be unhappy, in which case you're a selfish bad person and you should do the right thing. So, that's the negative, right? Which is you're selfish for being unhappy at calling your mother while in a state of conflict. The other is a bribe. And the bribe is, I know mom's been difficult, but you need to be the bigger person you need to let go of this grudge you have to accept her for who she is mom's not going to change, she's doing the best she can she means well she expresses it badly I agree with you but you will feel better for being the bigger and better person by calling mom.
[32:11] Right so I'm either going to apply then label selfish which is going to cause negative stimuli within you and get you to conform to what I say or I'm going to bribe you with the dopamine of being the bigger person the more mature person and of being better than mom and calling her even though mom's being petty and immature you will feel better by not holding a grudge right so you've got to rise above her level you're like all of this sort of stuff so your sister is punishing you with bad chemicals or trying to reward you with good chemicals in order to get you to, eliminate your unhappiness, right? So when your parents are unhappy with you, it's because you're bad. When you're unhappy with your parents, it's because you're holding on to the past and won't move on and won't let go and are being petty. Like, you don't understand, right? It's just an attempt to reduce things to one variable. So once you see this in society, and you see this all over the place, of course, in the media, you're trying to reduce things to one variable, right? Well, if you fire a bunch of government workers, the GDP goes down for a while. Like, there's only one variable. If you deport people, the price of, even though Stephen Miller made the argument, only 1% of recent undocumented people end up working on farms. So, there's just one variable.
[33:28] Or, if you deport people, this is the Selena Gomez crying QB doll face, which is, if you deport people, they will be unhappy. So then, of course, this is the utilitarian argument, maximizing happiness is the goal of society. But of course, that's never applied consistently, right? Because the majority of Americans voted for Trump's clear deportation goals. And so deportation, while it makes those being deported unhappy, adds to the net happiness of America, because the government is doing what the Americans voted for, which is a plus for them. So you understand, right? That is, it's always applied selectively. And of course, you know, a fairly rational response is to say, I'm not aware of any clause in the U.S. Constitution that says laws don't apply if you can find a video of somebody crying about it, right? So you can arrest a guy unless his mom is going to be sad, right? I mean, obviously that makes absolutely zero sense, But you're trying to just say, oh, so if somebody is crying over deportations and you want to deport, then you are making people unhappy. Why would you want to make people unhappy? Like, that's the only variable.
[34:46] Things to one variable and take away your free will. Take away your, quote, excuse called complexity. And you can see this, of course, in the comments about the deportations, which is when people are unhappy about deportations and other people say, well, the cause of their unhappiness is Biden for bringing them in, parents for, well, whatever, right? Parents for bringing them over and so on, right?
[35:11] If a man is crying because he's being arrested for rape, then the reason why he's crying is because he's an evil guy who raped someone, right? It is not the policeman who is making him unhappy. Now, this, of course, used to be understood in Christian theology, back when people learned these things, in that people would say, well, how can a good God send people to hell? And, of course, the response is that God doesn't send people to hell, they send themselves to hell by disobeying the moral law. It's their responsibility, their issue, their fault, not God's.
[35:48] You don't blame the policeman for the sadness of the murderer being arrested, right? So when you're talking to people, you are talking to, for the most part, you're talking to junkies addicted to avoiding disapproval and pursuing approval. In other words, everything that's in their sort of mind and in their heart has been reduced to one variable, which is, will I feel better or worse for holding this opinion? Will I be praised or punished for holding this opinion? And that's the variable. So when you see people being, you know, like what's going on with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And so on, you see people being questioned. What's going on is, and this is why I've been watching the people doing the questioning, is that you see these sideways glances looking for approval, looking for the approval.
[36:41] Of those in the media looking for the approval of those in their political party looking for the approval of their friends and so on because their friends have said well this person is a bad person therefore you must oppose him or her and saying anything nice or positive to him or her will get you ostracized, because the.
[36:58] Continuum reduces all complexity to one variable. Will I be liked or disliked? Will I be praised or opposed for doing this, for saying this, for asking that, for raising this issue or not raising that issue? It's just one variable. And people are pretending that they are doing an analysis of multiple variables when it really comes down to one thing and one thing only, which is pleasure, pain, punishment, reward. And in order to do that, they just have to reduce things to one variable. And that puts out the sort of bat signal for all of the people who, usually for reasons of trauma, could be for reasons of intelligence, only process one variable. And the invitation to only process one variable is an invitation to just be dumb or to act as if you are traumatized. So I hope this helps. I really do appreciate your support, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. I really would appreciate your support.
[37:59] It's obviously a tricky time in social media landscape at the moment. Your support would be very happy. I would be very happy to receive your support. And of course, as a one variable person, we should all just focus on my happiness, mine and mine alone. Just kidding. Thanks, everyone. Lots of love. Bye.
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