A pedophile claims he's really an eight year old girl trapped in a grown man's body. If biological sex is fluid and changeable, on what basis do we deny his claims? Also, I asked people if they'd save their dog or a person from a fire. The results are disturbing. And do human beings really have free will? I answer an email about that and several other subjects.
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Mine, sadly, was mired by the fact that, for some reason, I'm a football fan.
A Ravens fan, even worse.
And, of course, they lost.
To put it mildly, they lost in the Divisional Round of the playoffs.
And the thing is, I was emotionally devastated.
I was tormented, traumatized, broken, ruined.
Which is basically how I feel at the end of every football season, except for the two where we went to the Super Bowl and won.
But then there's this moment the next day, and any sports fan I think can probably relate to this.
There's a moment the next day, maybe two days later, after the season is over, and it feels like you're waking up from hypnosis or something.
And I always think, You know, a couple days later, after I have a little bit of distance, I think, why do I care so much about this again?
Why do I have emotional capital invested in the outcome of a game played between people I don't even know?
How would my life be improved if my favorite team won a championship in the sport that I like?
How is my life damaged when they don't?
Why does any of this matter to me?
And I can't answer those questions.
I really can't.
I don't know why it matters.
Except to say that I think being a sports fan is a form of psychosis.
I think it could be diagnosed.
I'm sure eventually it will be diagnosed.
In fact, I'm sure eventually the psychiatric industry will come up with a pill.
They've come up with a pill for everything else.
So they'll come up with a pill to cure sports fan-itis.
And you know what?
When they come up with that pill, I will take it.
Because it's just not worth it.
It really isn't.
I wish I didn't care about sports.
I could, you know, I could get my Sundays back.
I could start, I don't know, gardening or something.
I don't know.
I'd figure out something to do with the time, but it's just better than sitting there caring so much about this nonsense.
All right.
Speaking of psychosis, we have to begin on a Monday with, unfortunately, not the kind of story you want to start your week with, but I think it's important.
So, there's this guy in Michigan, pedophile.
He's going to be spending the next 10 to 20 years in prison after being caught with child pornography.
Now, in court, he offered two defenses of his behavior.
And the defenses, fortunately, were not successful, but they are kind of interesting.
One, he said that child pornography is protected under the First Amendment.
Two, he claimed that he himself, though he is a, I think, 45-year-old man, he claimed that he's really an eight-year-old girl.
So let's take a look at a report done by the local ABC affiliate down in, over in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where this case happened.
Here's their report on this.
Watch.
Joseph Goldberg argued that his drawings and computer images did not constitute child pornography.
During a recent court appearance, he even compared his felony child porn convictions to the horrors of Auschwitz.
I have always been an 8-year-old girl.
And even in my drawings and fantasies, I am always an 8-year-old girl.
Bizarre statements in a case that was unique to say the least.
Joseph Goldbrick was arrested back in 2018 for child sexually abusive material found on his home computer.
Now that came amid an investigation into a runaway 17-year-old girl from Ohio.
We had a minor runaway at the house.
During a search of Goebrich's home on Pine Avenue Northwest in Grand Rapids, police recovered child pornography from his computer.
Goebrich contends it was not real child porn, but rather computer animated.
And Goebrich says he identifies as an eight-year-old girl.
Whenever we did this, there were adults having sex with me in an online forum.
Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Dan Helmer says more than 50 illicit images were on Goldbrick's computer.
They included actual victims known to police.
But that wasn't all.
Even during the trial, the defendant continued to draw drawings,
provide them with the same, talking about raising babies in the Kent County Jail.
Okay, so the judge was not convinced by that excuse.
And he shouldn't be, obviously, because it's insane.
But, based on the precedent in place, the precedent of accepting the self-identification of a person who claims, you know, a man who claims to be a female, well, we have to accept that self-identification.
In other words, if you're going to accept that a man can be a woman, Exactly on what basis do you reject his claim to being an 8-year-old girl?
See, that's the problem.
If you're going to do the first thing, if you're going to say, yeah, this biological male is a woman in some mysterious sense, then why can't he in the same sort of mysterious sense really be an 8-year-old girl or a 12-year-old boy or whatever he wants to be?
So, we know in this case, according to left-wing gender theory, which is now mainstream gender theory, promoted by the media and Hollywood and academia and everywhere else, corporations.
So, we know that we can't reject this scumbag's claim to being a female.
That part, he's allowed to have, right?
We have no basis.
If he says that he's a female, then we have to just give him that, don't we?
The fact that he's a creepy old bald dude is irrelevant.
He says he's a female, and so he is.
That's the way it goes.
What about age, though?
Well, remember, by the way, we've seen this before.
There was that, a few years ago, there was that 50-plus-year-old man who left his family, left his wife and kid to live as a six-year-old girl.
Maybe you remember that case.
Maybe you've blocked it out of your head.
Probably a better thing to do.
But on what basis Do we reject their claims to being young girls if we accept the idea that a man can be a woman?
See, we can't say...
As sane and reasonable people, our response when a 45-year-old man says he's an 8-year-old girl, we could say, well, he's just not.
He's physically not an 8-year-old girl in any sense of the word, so that claim is nonsense.
We can reject it on that basis.
It is just factually, biologically, chronologically, physically, in every sense, untrue.
And therefore, it's untrue.
But the problem is, that same argument also disqualifies any man who claims to be a woman.
Because we could look at them and see that they are biologically, physically, chromosomally, hormonally, in every sense, a male.
And so therefore, that's what they are.
It's just not true that they're a woman.
But if we can't do that, if we can't look at someone physically and make these determinations, Based on science and biology, then, again, we're left with the same problem.
How do we disqualify someone who says that they're a child, when they're really an adult?
Because we've already established that physical and biological realities are irrelevant.
And we can't say, well, gender is fluid, but age is not.
First of all, gender is not actually fluid.
There's just two of them, biologically speaking.
There aren't any others.
It is a binary system.
We just pretend that it's not binary, that it's fluid.
So, why can't we do the same with age?
In fact, here's the thing.
Age actually is fluid in a sense.
In the sense that nobody stays one age forever.
I'm a 33-year-old man now.
I'm not going to be a 33-year-old man two years from now.
I'm still going to be a man, but I won't be 33 anymore.
I wasn't a 12-year-old boy forever.
I was only that for one year, right?
So age does change.
Moreover, a man who says that he feels like a woman has no frame of reference.
He's never been a woman, and therefore he doesn't know what it's like to feel like one.
And so whatever feelings he's having, he has no way of knowing if those are actually woman feelings, and so therefore it becomes this circular logic where he says he is a woman because he feels like one.
Well, how does he know that he feels like one because he is one?
Right?
It's a circle.
It doesn't make any sense.
But with age, at least an adult who claims to feel like a child, whatever that means, can at least say that he has some frame of reference.
He was at one point a child, so he sort of knows what that feels like.
Moreover, we know that there are psychological and neurological conditions that cause adults to essentially have the brains of a child.
That is a thing that happens.
There are people who are severely mentally delayed, and even though their body is that of an adult, they have the mind of a child.
So therefore, claiming to be a child stuck in an adult's body actually can have some truth to it.
Whereas claiming to be a woman stuck in a man's body just has no truth to it whatsoever.
Now, I don't think that's the case for this scumbag who, by the way, should be going to prison for life, not just for 10 years or 20 years.
But I'm just trying to make the point here that trans age actually has a better scientific basis and is more justifiable than transgenderism.
It's still BS.
It's still bogus.
It's still nonsense.
It's still madness, but if you're going to accept transgenderism, there just is no logical and coherent argument for rejecting trans-ageism.
There just isn't.
Whatever argument you make against the claim that an adult can identify as a child would apply, would even more so apply, to the claims that a man can be a woman.
So you have to choose.
It's as simple as that.
And this is not a slippery slope argument because I'm not talking about slopes.
You know, about one thing leading to a more extreme thing.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm not saying that transgenderism is leading to, or will lead to, the more extreme case of an adult claiming to be a child.
What I'm saying is that transgenderism is already a more extreme thing than trans-ageism.
And trans-racialism, by the way, for that matter.
I'm saying that those things are higher up on the slope.
And if we're on this slippery slope into Crazyville, you know, you've got trans-ageism and trans-racialism like somewhere around here on the slope, and then transgenderism is like down here.
Because it makes less sense than these other things over here.
Or, you know, in fact, putting slopes aside entirely, this is really a question of categories.
There are certain things about yourself that you can change.
Your hairstyle.
Your weight.
You can learn a new language.
Your personality can change, and it does for everybody to some extent.
These things are, in some sense, fluid.
They change.
They can be adjusted.
You can choose to make changes to them.
But then there are other things that you cannot choose to change because they're simply facts about you.
They just are.
Your sex, your race, your age.
My point is this.
If you're going to extract anything from that second category of unchangeable things and try to put it into the first, then everything else in that category comes with it.
Because the logic that keeps one thing in that category keeps everything there.
And if we're abandoning that logic, then there is no basis anymore to keep anything in that category.
And now we have to say that that category doesn't exist.
The category of things that you can't change about yourself now simply doesn't exist.
You can change everything.
Especially when it comes to sex, because in fact your sex is the thing that most belongs in the second category.
It is the most unchangeable thing about you.
It is the brutest of brute facts.
Your age will change on its own, your race can be a mix of many different things, but your sex just is.
If that, if that of all things is now relative, then so is everything else.
And that's the problem here.
So, what the left will do, because they haven't even really gotten to the point yet where they're accepting transracialism, maybe a little bit.
I think we see movement in that direction, but they're not there yet.
They certainly aren't accepting trans-ageism, but they've already made the arguments for it.
And this is what we see with the left a lot.
Where they make a certain argument because they're trying to justify one particular thing, but the problem is that that argument also justifies a whole bunch of other things.
And it takes them a while to circle back around and say, oh yeah, you know that other stuff?
Yeah, maybe that stuff is good too.
At first they'll always say, no, no, no, no, no, we're not trying to justify that other stuff.
No, no, no, this is different.
They can't tell you why it's different.
They can't explain it.
But they'll say that it is.
Same thing with, you know, another obvious example is with marriage.
They say marriage is not between one man and one woman.
And originally they said, oh no, you know, we're not trying to justify things like polygamy.
Now, now we're at the point where I think most leftists will say, yeah, sure, who cares?
Polygamy is fine.
But at first, they claimed, if you recall, when we were having this argument, especially in the lead-up to the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, the claim from most leftists was, no, no, no, we're not trying to judge.
Polygamy?
No, that's not the point here.
But of course, every argument you've made for getting rid of the idea of one-man, one-woman marriage would apply to polygamous just as much.
Even more so, actually.
That's another example where polygamy is a little bit further up on the slope, not further down.
It just took them a while to circle back around.
And the same thing is going to happen with the trans stuff, where they're transing everything.
They started with gender.
That is the most extreme thing to trans.
Of all the things to trans, that's the most extreme.
But they started with that, and now it's just a matter of circling back around and saying, yeah, that too.
Oh sure, yeah, that also.
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All right, Bernie Sanders sent out a tweet that says, the tweet, the caption is, there are only 22 days until the Iowa caucus, it's time to get rolling.
Can you take a trip to help our campaign win in the essential early states?
Sign up here.
And then, so that's a, okay, pretty normal caption.
But it's a caption of a video of him, Sanders, pulling out of the driveway of one of his three houses.
And I don't know, just watch this clip.
Why?
I don't know if this is self-deprecation.
If so, then I respect it, but I can't quite figure out why Bernie Sanders released a video of himself charging out of his driveway, backing out of his driveway, swerving wildly, and then backing out of the driveway at full speed without stopping to look both ways, like a stereotypical old person.
This is the stuff of stand-up comedy routines going back 40 years of how old people back out of their driveways.
And now you have it.
Bernie Sanders, 78-year-old man, however old he is, doing exactly that.
You saw there was very little visibility because all the cars parked on the road there.
And he just charges right out, doesn't stop to look.
I'm not sure what the point there is.
And showing us that.
Other than, I guess, just embracing it and saying, look, I am very old.
That's true.
This is how I back out of the driveway.
Deal with it.
And if that's his message, then I respect it.
Alright, so last week, I don't remember why this came up exactly, but last week we were talking about how so many people in our culture today value their pets over fellow human beings.
And one of the emails I received in response to that discussion inspired me to put up an online poll, and that poll has revealed some disturbing findings.
So the email from Trinity says, Hi Matt, I agree with everything you said on the show regarding people valuing dogs more than humans.
I asked many people what would they choose, a random person or their pet, if they were both found drowning.
Surprisingly, everyone answered their pet.
What do you think is the underlying reason for this?
Is it the lack of religion and unclear morals?
So I thought this was a good question.
So I stole the question, adjusted it a little bit, and I put it on my Twitter.
I posed a version of this, and my question was very simple.
Your favorite pet and a grown man you don't know are trapped in a burning building.
You can only save one.
Who do you choose?
Now, as of this morning, I haven't checked it in a few hours, but as of this morning, there were almost 30,000 votes tabulated.
Out of that, out of 30,000 votes, 40%, 40% said they would let a human being burn to death in favor of saving an animal.
40%.
Now, you might say, this is not a scientific result, this was not a scientific poll, this was a Twitter poll.
It's not even, it's not exactly a random sample, right?
These are people who mostly follow me on Twitter, so is there some bias there, whatever.
And that's true.
But listen to this, because this is kind of remarkable.
I looked this up after the fact.
I found that a psychologist conducted a similar survey in a more scientific setting to find out, you know, whether people will put their pet above the needs of a human.
And his results are exactly the same.
So this psychologist named Richard Topolsky surveyed people and asked them.
In this scenario, it's a person and a dog, and they're both about to be hit by a bus,
and you can only save one.
And again, in this case, 40%, the same exact percentage, 40% said that they would save their dog over a human.
What are the chances that two surveys conducted separately would coincidentally come to the same conclusion
in terms of the percentages?
I think it's more likely that this 40%, the reason why we both came to 40% is because that really is representative.
40% of people in this country do put their pets' lives above human life.
And what makes this even more depressing is that my followers skew heavily in the direction of conservative Christians.
So, you know, maybe if you had just seen this poll result from the psychologists, you would say, oh, you know, well, maybe that's a whole bunch of liberal godless atheists, you know, nihilists who don't value human life at all.
No, this is not that.
This apparently doesn't matter what your ideology is or religion, you know, there's the same tendency.
Now, as expected, in Topolsky's study, he found that the 40% figure dips significantly when people are asked to choose between their dog and somebody they know.
So, if it's a stranger, then, yeah, 40% are saying, screw that guy, let him get splattered by the bus.
But, if you say, okay, what if it's a...
And in fact, the number is still really high if it's a distant cousin.
So it could be a family member, but if it's a distant cousin, I think it was, I don't know, I don't have it in front of me, but it was a high percentage of people said, even in that case, see you later, cousin.
Now, if you get down to like best friend, grandparent, best friend or grandparent, or maybe both if your grandparent is your best friend.
In that case, the vast majority of people are going to save the best friend or the grandparent.
But still, there still were a minority of people, according to this study, a small minority, but still, they're there.
There was a minority of people who said that they would let their grandmother get run over by a bus rather than their dog.
Now, this speaks to something that I've been talking about.
For years, and it annoys people whenever I talk about it, and I can already feel through the camera, I can feel people getting annoyed at me right now as I speak.
It's a common feeling for me.
But I'm gonna keep talking about it because I think it's actually important.
I think it's really kind of a troubling trend.
It's not good to have so many people who Don't understand that their pet's life is not as valuable as human life.
There is a problem in this culture of people failing to understand that human life is more important and more precious than animal life.
The pet obsession has gotten to this pathological state where it's turning people into sociopaths who no longer recognize the inherent value of human life.
I don't know how else to describe that.
I mean, all these people, at least on my Twitter, it's not just that people were answering the survey, but they were justifying it openly, announcing and saying, yeah, sure, yeah, I'd totally, I'd let a person die for the sake of my dog.
And it's like, you do realize that you have the moral insight of a psychopath, right?
You do realize that you couldn't possibly justify that morally on any level.
You realize that, don't you?
I don't know.
It's not even a rhetorical question.
I don't know if these people realize it or not.
Are they just embracing the fact that they're psychopaths?
Now, look, I'm not saying That having a pet automatically does that to you.
I'm not saying that every person who has a pet is a psychopath.
Maybe you can make an argument, but no, that's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying that the obsessive, pet-focused, pet-centered life that some people lead has contributed to, has caused, has fed this delusion.
That animals are more, not even as important as people, but more important.
And when people go around calling their pets their children and that sort of stuff, it seems like, after a while, some of them really start to believe it.
And I didn't put this poll up because, honestly, I don't even want to know the answer, but I was tempted to ask, what if it was your dog and your child?
Who do you choose?
I'm betting you.
Now, I think it'd be small minority, but there are people who would choose the dog.
We already know from this psychologist that there are definitely people who choose the dog over the grandparent.
This also, by the way, this is not, and before we try to make excuses and say, oh, this is natural, you know, people, this is how they are with their dogs.
It's not natural.
This is actually the opposite of natural.
This is completely unnatural.
Our natural inclination is to prefer our own species.
And every species is like this.
Your natural inclination is supposed to be to prioritize your own species.
We are all naturally speciesist.
And we should be.
That is a good prejudice to have.
Every other species has it.
I can guarantee you dogs care more about other dogs.
Lions care more about other lions.
Gorillas care more about other gorillas.
They are naturally inclined in that direction.
So, if you're tempted to say, well, of course people feel this way about their pets.
That's how it's always been.
No, it's not of course.
It's not how it's always been.
This is a distinctly modern and western phenomenon, as I said last week.
Now, to answer the question posed by the person in the email saying, you know, why is this happening?
Why are so many people now essentially psychopaths who don't even understand that human life is more important than animal life?
Why do we live in a country where so many people would let a human being, likely a father and a husband, burn alive in favor of saving their stupid pets?
Well, here's my theory to that.
Actually, I'll give my theory in a second, but I really want to dwell on this in a second, because I know that it's a hypothetical.
And you could say that all day long.
You could say, oh, it's just a hypothetical.
Yeah, it's a hypothetical, but there's a point here.
It's a thought experiment to try to figure out what your priorities are.
So, if you're in the 40%, think about what you're saying.
You're saying that you would let a conscious, self-aware, human adult, who certainly has a family and is most likely a husband and a father, you would let him burn alive A absolutely torturous, horrific death that he will be fully aware of, and you will let his family be, his children be orphaned, and you'll let his wife be widowed for the sake of your dog.
My God!
Just, and I want to believe that most, maybe you're just not thinking it through, I don't know.
Really think about that.
And then I had a lot of other people saying, oh, you know, you can't really answer this question.
It's a difficult, it's one of those things you have to be, you don't know what you'll do in the moment until you're there.
No, I know what I would do.
I can tell you right now, I have a cat.
And if that cat is trapped in a burning building and there's a human there, see you later, cat.
That's, I don't even have to think about it.
No hesitation, not even a second.
There would not be one second of me going, you know, I've got the guy there.
Is trapped and then I've got the cat there wouldn't be one second of me going Should I get the cat?
And then the guy looks at me and guilt trips me into no that wouldn't happen.
I just I'm going right for the guy So why you know why is it why do people put their pets above their Above humans.
I think it comes down to selfishness and And when you think of it that way, it's a lot less mysterious.
Once you start to realize that most of the bad stuff, you know, in life, most of the bad things we do, most of our bad priorities, it always comes down to selfishness in the end.
Because this pet obsession, and again, when I say obsession, I mean obsession.
I'm not talking about if you have a pet and you love your pet.
But the love you have for your pet is in a proper perspective, and it's proportionate, and you obviously put humans above your pet, and you put your family above your pet, and you put strangers above... You know, if you're in that category, then go in peace.
God be with you.
I have no problem with you.
I am also a pet owner, so I'm, you know, we're on the same page, right?
I'm talking about the wackadoodles who openly announced that they would save their cat or dog and let a human being burn to death.
That's what I'm talking about.
And for those people, I think it is selfishness.
Which is very different from normal sort of animal lovers, meaning the people in the first camp.
People who love animals, but not more than they love people.
And people like that, people who have a very, you know, have a great passion for animals, And our animal lovers, but still, it's all in proportion, and they would never value an animal over a person.
Those people I admire, because I think, you know, that comes from an abiding and abounding just compassion for all living things, and I think that's great, right?
But the people who put the animals above other people I think for them, it is a sort of a selfishness, and I think the reason is, you know, what is it that they like about the pet?
Well, it's because the pet makes them feel good.
The way people talk about dogs, you know, the dog worships the ground you walk on.
They're so excited when you come home.
It's like, yeah, all that is fine.
Personally, I don't need to be worshipped every second of the day.
It's a little bit much, honestly.
To have a dog following me around all hours of the day worshipping me, a little bit much.
Don't really need that.
I need a little space.
It can be nice sometimes, I suppose.
But that's really what people love about their pets.
And then they'll say things like, oh, a pet will never betray you like a person will.
A pet will never lie to you like a person will.
What they're really saying is, you know, I want to be in a relationship with someone where it's all about me and I'm getting nothing but pleasure out of it.
And I never have to deal with any, you know, the other person never sort of intrudes their own personality on me.
I never have to do, you know, I never have to do anything like forgive.
That's what they're saying.
That's why they prefer animals over humans.
Because the relationship you can have with a human being is much richer and much deeper and much more meaningful as anybody who's ever had a real relationship with another person knows.
But Yeah, it is a person.
And so they have their own personality.
They have their own goals.
They have their own priorities.
They have moral weaknesses.
They are going to do things sometimes like lie to you.
They might betray you.
So then you need to forgive them.
And it takes more work on your end.
And I think there are a lot of people who are so weak and so selfish and so pathetic that they don't want to do that work for another person.
They just want it.
They'll just, you know, they'll substitute a person for a dog and they don't have to worry about any of that.
And the dog will just worship them.
It'll be all about them.
And, uh, you know, the dog's always there.
They can keep the dog at home.
When they go to work, they come home, the dog is there.
They can always just put the dog where they want the dog.
And it's always really just about them in the end.
I also think there's the Disney effect.
I think a lot of adults still think they're in a Disney movie.
Um, And I guess because they grew up watching this, and so they ascribe noble intentions to their pets.
They talk about their pets as if their pets are virtuous, saintly creatures.
You know.
They really do ascribe virtuous motives to their pets.
But you notice it never goes on the other end.
Like, they would never accuse their dog of knowingly stealing.
You know, they would never think that their dog should be held morally responsible for stealing something from the counter.
Maybe, you know, stealing some food from the counter.
Even if their dog goes and bites someone, they immediately make an excuse.
They say, oh, it's just that he's a dog, you know, he doesn't know any better.
So when it comes to something bad, their dog doesn't deserve any moral guilt.
But on the other hand, with the good stuff, it's, oh no, he's loyal, he's loving, he's... So what they've made the dog out to be, this morally perfect, angelic creature.
Which, of course, is insane.
And in reality, with animals, most of what they do is instinctive.
You know, they do it because they've been programmed that way biologically by nature.
Most of the love they show to you, it's only because you feed them.
And if you stop feeding them, they'd probably eat you instead.
That's the thing.
That's really the test.
You say your dog loves you.
I mean, maybe there's a certain emotional sense of that, where he does have some affection for you.
But if you stop feeding your dog, he'll eat you.
And then he just will.
Your kids probably won't.
But your dog will.
Because he's a dog.
And that's fine.
You know, it's fine for dogs to be dogs.
But, uh, let's just... Let's just keep it in.
Let's just keep it in perspective, is all I'm trying to say.
All right, let's go to emails, mattwalshow at gmail.com, mattwalshow at gmail.com.
This is from Carlos, says, Matt, great show, great columns, great everything, etc.
On Twitter, you were discussing thinkers who have different worldviews from your own.
You gave a favorable mention to Sam Harris and even said you found his argument against free will persuasive.
Can you elaborate on that?
I have to say I was shocked to read this from you, given that you've so often defended free will.
Yeah.
We were talking about that on Twitter.
And I do appreciate Sam Harris.
I've read many of his books.
I didn't say, and he wrote a book against, you know, arguing against the concept of free will.
Pretty short little book.
And I think it's worth reading.
Now, I didn't say that his argument against free will was persuasive, let alone did I say that I was persuaded by it.
So I didn't say that I read his book and said, you know what, there is no free will.
I said it was a more formidable argument that he presented than I expected.
And part of my point here is that we have to be willing to admit when somebody makes a formidable, i.e., credible, intelligent, plausible argument that we disagree with.
Because I think if we've never encountered a formidable argument that we disagree with, that's a pretty good indication that we're living in a bubble.
So I thought he made a pretty good case for his view, but I still disagree with his conclusion.
Let me tell you why I disagree, first of all.
And then I'll get to the formidable aspect of his argument.
I disagree with anybody claiming that free will doesn't exist.
And this is determinism, if you want the fancy ism name for this view.
I disagree because, as far as I can tell, you just can't get around a simple fact.
And that simple fact is that, like, I am choosing to do this right now.
Okay?
Raising the mug up and down.
Which, by the way, you can get these at the DeliWire store.
I'm choosing to do this.
I could not be doing this.
I could be doing any number of other things.
Rather than doing this, I could go downstairs and make a grilled cheese sandwich.
I could go jump in a lake.
I could go in a killing spree.
I could do all of those things.
But instead, I'm sitting here right now, raising my mug up and down like an idiot.
That's a choice that I'm making.
And when I say that I could be doing those things, what I mean is, those are theoretical options available to me, and there is nothing actively, physically preventing me from doing them.
So I could do them.
And I can do anything within the laws of physics.
And if I can do anything theoretically within the laws of physics, then I have free will.
At least that's what I mean when I talk about free will.
Now, here's an example of true determinism.
Computers.
So I could build a fancy robot.
Well, I couldn't build a fancy robot because I'm stupid, but a smart person could build a fancy robot that can, you know, walk across the room, pour a cup of coffee, bring it back to you.
Something really impressive like that.
But that's programmed.
The robot has no choice, literally no choice.
It could malfunction and go and do something else.
But again, that's not a choice.
That's just a malfunction.
It can't choose to do something else.
And with all due respect to Terminator and The Matrix, it couldn't actually choose to go out and kill people or enslave mankind or do any of that stuff.
It can only do what it's programmed to do or else it can break.
Those are kind of the two possibilities.
My computer could not even theoretically become a Buddhist.
I could theoretically become a Buddhist.
That's an option open to me.
I could do it because I have free will.
The only reason I'm not a Buddhist right now is because I haven't chosen to be one.
So I think free will stands.
But here's the formidable aspect of Harris's argument.
And I'm summarizing it very briefly, trying not to make a straw man out of it.
So if I do make a straw man out of it, that's unintentional.
But I think his point is basically this.
So take a murderer, for example.
Okay.
That murderer chose to be a murderer, I would say.
Chose to shoot up the movie theater.
And you would say that, well, he chose to do that, and you chose not to do that.
And that's the reason you're not a murderer, and he is.
But Harris says, hold on a second.
Wait a minute.
What if you had the exact same genes as that guy?
Not, like, pants, but genes.
Genetics.
What if you had the exact same genes?
And the same psychological makeup.
And the same mental illnesses, if he has any.
And the same family background.
And the same childhood traumas.
And every other thing that's happened to that guy that he didn't choose.
Let's say all of that happened to you also.
Can you be so sure in that case that you wouldn't also be a mass murderer?
And the answer, we have to admit, is no.
You know, we can't be so sure.
In fact, probably we would be.
If we were in the exact same situation as that guy, exact same, from birth, everything is exactly the same.
We'd probably do the same thing.
In fact, we would probably be that guy.
I mean, then we would essentially be him, and we'd probably do everything that he does.
Another example, I think maybe even a better example would be, an easier example, would be Suicide Bomber.
And, you know, with the Suicide Bomber, we could take even genetics and stuff out of it, and let's just say that, you know, you grew up in Iraq.
And you were indoctrinated into militant Islam every day of your life from birth, and you were told every day of your life from birth that, you know, if you become a martyr, you'll get 72 virgins, and you had all that same conditioning for years and years and years and years and years.
Would you become a suicide bomber too?
Probably.
And, you know, and that's a good point that he raises, and I think we have to grapple with it.
That's not a point that you can just gloss over.
It's a point that we, and I assume Harris makes, goes back to this theme in his book, where this is like, this is something we want to gloss over because it makes us uncomfortable.
And we start to feel the foundations of our justice system sort of begin to collapse around us.
Where if now we're saying that like we would probably do all of the bad things that bad people have done if we were in their same exact situation, like then what basis do we have to even put them in jail?
And all these questions come rushing in and it's very disturbing.
But here's my response.
What Harris is talking about, these factors that he's talking about, are influences.
They are things that can influence you in one direction or another.
And they may be very strong influences, very strong.
Brainwashing from birth is an indoctrination from birth into a certain worldview.
It doesn't have to be Milton-Islam, it could be anything.
But being indoctrinated into it from birth is a very, very strong influence.
It is very hard to be born into a certain worldview, a certain way of thinking, and to break out of that.
It is very hard to do.
Most people can't.
And the only way that you know if you can is if you've done it.
If you have, never have.
Now, hopefully, you didn't need to because you were sort of indoctrinated, quote-unquote, into the right way of thinking.
But if you've never had to make that effort of breaking out of that, then you don't really know if you could or not.
And probably you can't, because most people can't.
But my point is, you still have a choice.
You aren't literally programmed.
You could theoretically do something else.
And that's all I mean by free will, which is why I say that free will still stands.
Right?
You take somebody in the inner city, someone born with no father in the home, born in the projects, nothing but bad influences all around, nothing but crime and drugs all around, terrible school system, all of that, right?
And then they go and become a drug dealer.
And Harris would say, well, if you were in that exact same situation, wouldn't you also be a drug dealer?
Probably.
Yes, probably.
But that doesn't mean they don't actually have a choice.
They do have a choice.
The choice is still there.
You could choose something else.
And we know that.
One way we know that is that some people do choose.
You know, there are a lot of people who are grown, who are born into terrible situations, frankly end up being terrible people.
And that's the horrible thing about it.
Just like there are a lot of people who, you know, suffer all kinds of trauma as children and then go on and become sexual abusers and pedophiles.
I think if you look at most pedophiles and you look at their family background, you're going to find that a lot of horrible things happened to them when they were kids.
But that doesn't mean that there is still a choice.
You can break out of that.
And we know there are plenty of people who are born in these horrible situations, whether they're born, you know, into Milton Islam, and they're trying, people trying to condition them into being suicide bombers, or they're born into a situation where a lot of people become drug dealers.
There are people born in those situations who do break out of that and make better choices and prove, and it takes a whole lot of courage and guts and everything, more than probably I have or you have, but it is possible.
Let's look at another example.
Let's say someone puts a gun to your head.
Let's say that you're sitting at a desk, there's a button on the desk.
And if you press that button, it's going to set off an explosion across town that kills a thousand people.
And let's say someone literally puts a gun to your head and says, press that button.
Actual gun to the head.
Now, I guess Sam Harris would say, your free will has been taken from you.
Well, you never had free will to begin with, but, you know, according to him, but you have no choice, he would say.
You have a gun to your head.
And on one level, it makes sense.
Yeah, there's a gun to your head.
What choice do you have?
But my point is, you actually do have a choice.
The gun represents a very, very, very, very strong influence in one direction.
But you could still choose not to press it.
There's going to be a horrible consequence for you.
You're going to be killed, probably.
But you could make that choice.
That choice is still available to you.
It is still a theoretical option.
It may take a lot of courage, a lot of guts, but you could do it.
And so you have free will.
And so really, all of these things that Harris brings up, even though they're good things to consider, and it's interesting to talk about them, they actually have nothing to do with free will at all.
Because they have no bearing on the fact That we can still make whatever choice we want to make.
You know, it is true, and I've talked about it myself, that most of the choices we make in life are determined by desire and opportunity.
In other words, most of the things you've done in your life, you've done them, good or bad, you've done them because you wanted to, number one, and number two, because you had the opportunity to do it.
And by opportunity, I mean not just the physical opportunity to do it, but also a chance to do it without there being, in your mind, horrible consequences for it.
So good or bad?
Let's just focus on the bad for a minute.
Every sin you've committed, every bad thing you've done, big or small thing, why did you do it?
You did it because you wanted to, and because you had the chance to.
And that really is, and same for the good stuff.
And that really does seemingly determine most of the things that we do in life.
And in fact, most of the times when you decline to do a bad thing, and maybe you want to give yourself moral credit for it and say, oh, I didn't do that because it's wrong.
But really, no, that's not really the reason you didn't do it.
The real reason you didn't do it is probably because you didn't want to.
Like, I went into a store recently, kind of a mom and pop shop, And I was looking around, and whoever was supposed to be at the cash register was in the back for like 10 minutes.
Store was unattended.
There were no cameras.
And I thought to myself, anyone could just walk in here and steal whatever they want.
I could have stolen whatever I wanted.
I didn't steal anything.
Why didn't I steal something?
I had the opportunity.
Why didn't I steal it?
Is it because stealing is wrong?
Well, stealing is wrong, but that's not why I didn't do it.
I didn't do it because I didn't want to.
I just had no desire to steal.
That's not something I want to do.
I don't want to steal.
No desire.
Didn't even cross my mind.
It crossed my mind as an option for someone else, and I was hoping the guy would come out soon.
So that wouldn't happen.
Now, what if I was in that store?
Same situation.
I got all the opportunity in the world, but I really, really, really want to steal.
Maybe I'm a kleptomaniac.
Maybe I've just been raised that stealing is okay.
Maybe I have a you know, I've fallen on hard times and I know whatever like What if I really had that strong desire would I have stolen?
I don't know maybe You know, I think in order to know if We are essentially slaves to opportunity and desire in our life.
We just have to look and see you know, I How many occasions have there been in my life when I've really wanted to do something bad and I've really had the chance to do it without there being any consequence and I didn't do it?
And I think if we do an honest assessment and we realize that, you know, pretty much every time I want to do something and I have the chance to do it, I do it.
If that's the case for us, then that means that that's pretty much 100% confirmation that if you were in the situation of the drug dealer or the bank robber or the suicide bomber, you'd be doing that stuff too.
But opportunity and desire often do determine our actions as human beings, but they don't have to.
You can overcome that.
I mean, you can have the desire to do something bad and the opportunity and not do it.
Just like you could do something good even though you really don't want to do the good thing and it's a big hassle to do it and you could still do it anyway.
Most people don't act that way because most people lack virtue and lack courage and strength.
I'm one of them.
That doesn't mean it has to be that way.
You can overcome that and that's the beauty of free will.
That's what it means to be free.
You know, and so that's really the point.
I think what Harris is really getting at is that we are weak, selfish people.
And on that point, I have no disagreement.
And he's also making the point that, hey, you know, you're a weak, selfish person, and so maybe slow your roll a little bit, you know, in feeling superior to all these other people that have done bad things, because you probably do the same thing.
You like to claim you wouldn't, but you probably would.
And on that point, I agree, it's a good point, but I just, I wish he could make that point without bringing free will into it because, you know, free will is also the thing that is, that is the, it's freedom.
I mean, it's also the escape offered to people in these horrible situations.
What about, what about the kid who is brought up in a situation where most people become drug dealers?
Don't we want to say to him, Look, you don't have to do this.
You can make a better choice.
You don't have to be a slave to this.
You can do something better.
Sam Harris seems to be saying, and anyone who's a determinist is basically saying, no, there's no point of even relaying that message to that kid because he has no choice.
And I think that's a horrible, horrible mistake.
All right.
So that's free will.
And I also chose, it was my free will to spend 30 minutes babbling about that.
So there you go.
We all make choices.
That was mine.
And I think we'll leave it here.
Thanks everybody for watching.
Thanks for listening.
Godspeed.
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The Iranians have taken to the street to protest their oppressive government, which overturns the media narrative that Trump's killing of a terrorist leader united them.
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