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June 19, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:10
287 Effective Discussions

Some tips for debaters

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is 8.28 on...
Ooh, gosh. I'm not even going to try and guess.
Maybe the 19th. 18th or 19th?
Ooh, I think it might be the 19th.
Of... I hope you had an excellent weekend.
Thanks again to everyone who came in and chatted.
Well, actually, did quite a lot of listening on the podcast that came out yesterday, which was the lengthy chat on Free Will, the sequel.
And I hope that it was illuminating as far as that subject goes.
It is a subject I'm going to take a break with, at least for these guys, for a variety of reasons.
And mostly because it should be enjoyable, right?
And stuff like that. Debating free will, I just find not to be too enjoyable with people.
Because, well, at least with the people who were on the chat yesterday.
Because I just find that there's a high degree of frustration among people who debate free will.
Because they, especially on the deterministic side, and I'm not going to sort of get into the debate but just talk about the style of debating because I think it might be worthwhile for people to ponder this, I guess you could say, because it is something that is important to understand when it comes to debating that...
It's very... I mean, I've always found that it's important to sort of respect the intelligence of the people that you're debating with.
And I was having real trouble, real trouble, understanding why or how, if everything is determined, how we can deal with the problem of moral responsibility.
If everything is determined ahead of time, if it's just all of my actions are sort of wired into the nature of the universe since the dawn of the Big Bang...
How it is that we have moral responsibility.
And this, of course, is not exactly my objection to the problem of determinism.
It's all the way back to, I'm sure, democratism.
Apocetus worked with this same problem, too.
And it's also not an argument against determinism.
If determinism is true, and of course it may well be, I certainly don't know.
If determinism is true, then one of the consequences is that there is no moral responsibility, and this is the fundamental objection.
To determinism from an aesthetic standpoint.
It's not a logical objection, because whether we like moral responsibility or not, it doesn't really matter.
What matters are the facts of reality.
So it's not an objection against it, but it is something which people who are determinists do have a good deal of difficulty with in sort of explaining or in sort of...
I've never spoken to a determinist in dozens of conversations about this kind of topic.
I've never spoken to a determinist who has told me, yes, because there is determinism, there is no such thing as moral responsibility.
There's always something about, well, we don't know what we're going to do, and so we have to act as if we have moral responsibility, and The lack of knowledge about all the variables means that we still have to judge.
But I mean, all of that is just nonsense.
And it's not just nonsense to me, I mean to every single human being who's ever been on the free will side.
I've never read or heard of a satisfactory answer to this problem of moral responsibility.
And again, I'm not saying that they're wrong.
At all. I mean, there could well be everything that I'm saying, every tick in my face, every swing of my driving wheel, has all been carved into the nature of existence since the dawn of time.
But one of the consequences of that, of course, is that nobody's responsible for what it is that they do any more than a rock is responsible when you throw it off a cliff for falling down.
I mean, that's the nature of reality.
So, anyway, I mean, you've heard these points in the debate, but I think the thing that's interesting about the debating style that occurred, and certainly the reason why I got angry, was I find it very annoying, and again, they may be entirely right, I'm just sort of talking about my feelings, right? I find it very annoying when people say to me what I feel or what I experience or what I reason out as a complete contradiction.
Yes, everything is determined, and yes, you have complete responsibility.
It's just a contradiction, and it doesn't make much sense to me.
But what happens is people will then tell me both sides of the equation, or it feels like people will just give me contradictory information.
And this is something that occurs in families as well, so you may have experienced this in your own life.
So, somebody says to you that this particular condition exists, and this goes back to the pendulum of violence and virtue that we were talking about before, that people will just change their tune depending on which side of the question you're coming from.
So, when you say to people, I'm skeptical about determinism because it's not proven, and so I'm going to go with free will for now, because that's what I experience, and that's what the majority of human society seems to be taking for granted, which, again, doesn't make it right, but it does seem to be a decent position.
Of course, that's the whole point of these podcasts, is I believe in free will.
It's possible to influence people by working hard to give them new information and to give them new ways of thinking.
It's absolutely up to you in the end, whether you go for it or not.
But you can't go for something like Free Domain Radio if Free Domain Radio doesn't exist, for sure, right?
I mean, I guess unless you're working in complete parallel to me, which seems like quite a lot of work, since, you know, if I can synthesize what took me 20 years into a couple podcasts, I think that that's kind of efficient, I guess you could say, or kind of easy on the brainwaves, because it wasn't the easiest thing to come up with.
But what I find annoying in debate with people is somebody will say to me, and we'll forget about the free will one, because I don't want to re-debate the free will thing, because I'm fairly aware that I have a venue that these other people don't have.
So, at least this venue, I know that Francois has his own venue.
But I don't want to re-debate it, because that's not really fair, and I won't have a chance to answer the arguments.
So we'll just take the sort of violence and virtue one and talk about that.
It's interesting and makes me angry, and I don't think that's unhealthy at all, as I've talked about before.
All of our emotions are healthy, and it's usually conformity or suppression that causes poor behavior or dysfunctional behavior.
But when I say to someone that the government is violent, and then they say, while we choose them, And then I work hard to convince them that it's all a taxation, everything all based on coercion.
And they say, yes, I do understand when the government tells us to do something that it's coercive, right?
That we don't have a choice in the matter.
And we say, okay, great. So you establish that.
That's been established.
And then, literally, and this can literally be ten seconds later.
And then you start talking about Well, why can't I get to coerce people and this and that?
It's like, well, because they're the government.
And then you have to work on, well, why would one moral rule exist for one person and be completely opposite for another?
And you go through all of that stuff.
And then you establish that.
And then you say that violence is bad and that we should reduce it as much as possible.
The government is an agent of violence.
And then they say, well, but we've chosen them.
So you get involved in this mad dance where you think you've established something.
And then it just changes.
Sort of like you're trying to sort of build a house on the water, so to speak, right?
You sort of get one plank floating, and then you go over to get another plank, and then you come back and it's floated away, or you put two planks together, you go to get the nails, you come back, and they've separated by ten feet because the water's choppy.
That kind of stuff is...
It's irritating to me because it's fundamentally manipulative.
If you establish something, then you have to continue with it being established.
People aren't so deranged that they forget from one minute to the next what's been established.
For me, this occurs with people who want to have their cake and eat it too.
And this usually comes when either people are dealing with family issues in the guise of debating philosophy.
Or if they want to strain to achieve a knowledge that they don't have.
So people like the idea of determinism, of course, because we can't rationally, with our current level of knowledge of physics and neuroscience, we can't explain the ghost of the machine, right?
We can't explain... How one tiny, tiny, tiny sub-percentage of matter has an ability, or seems to have an ability, that no other piece of matter in the universe has.
Like, it feels like a bug.
So we've got this computer called matter in the universe, which runs along and does its thing based on objective laws programmed by Zeus, of course.
And then you have this thing called consciousness, which...
It breaks all of those laws.
It's self-generating, self-directed, it has the option to do this or that or the other.
And so it feels messy. It feels like a break in the rules and...
It feels very hard to explain it without reference to an external factor, like something coming outside of the universe or something that's not composed of matter, like a soul or a spirit and so on.
And I mean, I understand that.
I understand that. But I don't see what the big issue is to have exceptions, like seeming exceptions to rules that may be illuminating.
Maybe something, like if we say, like, there's an example, and I know it's a silly example, but I mean, it's worth mentioning, I think, that If you're a physicist in the Middle Ages and you say, everything falls down, and then you come across a helium balloon, well, you don't say, well, everything falls down, but occasionally something falls up, and that's the rule.
You would probably investigate the properties of helium, and you'd learn quite a bit about physics and nature at the same time, but you would only do that because you would say, well, I don't know what the heck is going on here.
I don't know why this balloon is going up.
And since, in a sense, right, the consciousness, human consciousness in particular, is the only balloon in the universe that goes up, right?
All the other matter is, sort of, carves its own way and is predetermined, or a piano doesn't play itself and compose music and so on.
But human consciousness is the balloon that floats up.
And my answer is, well, I don't know.
I don't know why it flows up.
I don't know what's going on.
I don't know if it's something that's so predetermined that we have no choice.
It just feels like we have a choice.
And we've developed all these emotions and social mechanisms like debates to try and get other people to change their minds, which is futile because other people will never change their minds.
It's all, there's no mind to change as we understand it and all this kind of stuff.
Because everything's predetermined.
So it could be the case that determinism is all true, and everything that I feel, and everything that I see in society, and everything that most philosophers talk about, and even some theologians, That all of this is incorrect.
Perfectly valid. Perfectly, perfectly valid.
I need to see proof, of course, because I don't just take what people say on faith.
Especially, I mean, I don't take what people say on faith except when it's, you know, it sort of makes sense within the logical universe that I experience, right?
So Christina phones me and says, I'm downtown buying a watch.
I don't assume that she's in a hayloft with some Spaniard named Raul.
That's, at least not today.
That's Thursdays. But when somebody says to me that everything is determined, despite everything you feel, everything you've experienced...
And it's tough to say that to an artist, too, right?
Because artists are creating something that's new, right?
I mean, I've written six or seven books that didn't exist before.
I've written hundreds of poems, dozens of articles.
And so if you're a writer and you're creating something new...
Then it's hard to sort of say, well, this is all determined, right?
Because it feels new, right?
I'm not saying it is, right? But I'm just saying that the barrier for proof is higher with an artist.
All this stuff could perfectly be true.
It doesn't feel true. And there's lots of empirical evidence, in my view, that at least everyone believes that free will exists and uses it.
To try and change other people's minds, advertisers and religious people and politicians and so on.
The politicians completely believe in free will.
That's why they use so much propaganda, right?
And that's why they use force and propaganda, right?
Because otherwise you'd think for yourself and choose differently.
I mean, they're aware of that, so that's why they want to intervene and eliminate free will through, or at least reduce its capacity to choose through propaganda and coercion.
So they're stacking the deck against the choice to not pay your taxes and so on.
So it seems to me that they fully understand.
Of course, they could be wrong.
They could be wrong.
And advertisers could be wrong.
I could be wrong. My experience could be wrong.
And new things can pop into existence through determinism as well, like poems and plays and articles and arguments and so on.
And all of that is certainly possible.
I'm perfectly willing to never say never, right?
That's a dangerous thing to do in this world.
But the problem is that there's no proof, right?
I mean, there's no proof of free will.
There's lots of evidence for free will, but it's fairly subjective and worldwide, but not universal.
And there's evidence for determinism in all the physical sciences.
And so I understand all of that, and it makes good sense to me.
But we don't know, right?
And I just like debating with people where the knowledge doesn't exist, but people are willing to come to conclusions.
Especially when those things are counterintuitive, right?
If you're debating with somebody who's religious, then, like, there's no information about the existence of God.
There's no proof of the existence of God, and there's no disproof of the existence of God, but something is being proposed which is counter to what, in the case of God, right, if you propose the existence of God, you're proposing something that is counter to sensual evidence and empirical rationality.
Because everything that we see in the universe and in the world and everything that occurs does not prove the existence of any kind of deity.
And so, if you're going to come up with something exists, which is contrary to all sense data, which is contrary to human experience, like empirical experience, then you're going to have a great deal of difficulty, I think, because the onus of proof is on you and it can't be proven.
Now, the parallels in the world of free will, and this is, again, not to debate the free will issue itself, but just to talk about parameters around these kinds of debates.
You could, of course, make the same argument for free will as well, and I'll sort of put on the deterministic hat and make the argument against free will using the religious parallels, which is, you know, not often used because a lot, well, I guess some atheists are into this stuff as well, but let's say that to take the parallels it would be something like this.
You say that you don't believe in God because God is outside of reality.
It's consciousness without form and that the fact that lots of people believe in God is no proof for God.
The fact that there's lots of churches is no evidence for God because everyone could be wrong and human beings believe nonsense all the time.
And lots and lots of billions and billions of human beings believe nonsense all the time.
Well, of course, the parallel argument in the realm of free will is to say that, well, you're saying that all matter in the universe, except for the little square foot of brain matter that you have, that all matter in the universe is causal, right?
It's a chain of events.
It's simply one thing causes another.
It's like dominoes going down a staircase, right?
Everything is tripped by something previous.
Then saying that, well, that's true, but there's this exception.
You know, this brain thing exists which is self-causing.
Well, that is something that's completely counterintuitive, and that the burden of proof is on those people who say that free will exists, because they're then proposing something that is counterintuitive.
To everything else that occurs within the universe.
And the fact that you say, well, everyone experiences free will, doesn't prove a damn thing.
Because everybody who's religious claims to experience God as well as a subjective state.
So everyone says, yes, I talk to God every day.
I feel the presence of Jesus moving across the waters.
So everyone feels, you know, the women ululate, and the men bow and pray, and everyone will tell you straight-eyed, so wide-eyed and earnest-faced, that they experience a God, or a series of gods, or saints, or whoever they happen to be praying to, that they experience those things on a daily level.
So the fact that the vast majority of people experience God in their hearts, or in their minds, or in their souls, It doesn't mean anything in terms of proving the existence of God, right?
You have to come up with something empirical that's not counter to everything else that we know that exists in matter.
And the other thing is that the argument that churches exist, right?
For God, insofar as churches exist, and holy books exist, and people dedicate their whole life to it, and this, that, and the other.
That doesn't mean anything, right?
So saying that, from the free will side of things, saying that, well, the argument is that...
If you take the argument that advertising exists, and propaganda exists, and all forms of argument exists, and debates exist, and the Senate exists, that there's lots and lots of venues wherein people will try and change other people's minds, that kids start negotiating from day one, and so on. None of that means anything.
All it does is it says that people believe in free will.
I mean, the fact that people try to influence each other's behavior does not prove the existence of free will.
What it does do is prove that people believe in free will.
I mean, the fact that priests exist in churches and all that, and denominations, and people baptize their kids all the time, the fact that that doesn't prove the existence of God, that just proves the existence of people's belief in God.
Or more technically, it proves the existence of social conformity.
We don't know what people's beliefs are, but we do know that people are doing what they're told when they baptize their kid because somebody on a desert island who had never been exposed to something like Catholicism wouldn't do that, right?
So all that we know is that they're doing what they're told.
We don't know the reasons.
They can tell us the reasons, which we can't fathom because we can't verify that independently until they come up with something that allows you to actually wire up someone's brain to see if they're lying.
I don't know. You won't be able to prove that kind of stuff, but it does prove that they're doing what they're told.
So, I mean, I fully understand a determinist position, which is one of the reasons why it's irritating when people say to me, look, it's really simple, you're just not getting it.
Like, oh my God, if you ever, ever, ever, ever want to irritate anybody with any sense of pride or any sense of self-respect...
You sure as hell don't ever want to say to someone, it's really simple, you're just not getting it.
And I listened to that kind of stuff for about an hour before I lost my temper because it's really insulting when you've got a good deal of knowledge about a certain topic.
And I think I've just taken the determinist position and argued it fairly convincingly.
It's not that I don't understand determinism, right?
When people say to me, in my view, 2 plus 2 is 4, and then they say 2 plus 2 is a hamster, and I say, well, I'm sorry, I don't quite understand that.
Or they say 2 plus 2 is 5, they then just say, look, it's really, really simple.
It's really simple. You seem to be having a lot of problems with this.
Let's try another approach to see if we can't help you out.
Well, that's a guaranteed way to piss someone off, frankly.
I mean, if you're really self-doubting, if the moment someone says to you, it's really simple, you just don't get it, if you then say, oh, okay, maybe I have a block here, maybe I don't understand something, maybe it is really simple, I'm just not able to grasp it because...
You know, it ties into that whole not being able to tie my shoes well together and combing my hair forward so I can't see when I drive and drooling on my polo shirt and because I'm not that bright.
If it's really simple but I'm having trouble understanding it, then I must be a completely retarded.
So if you're not that kind of person, like if you're someone who's like, no, I'm pretty good at grasping concepts, if somebody is explaining something to me and I can't even get past the first set of premises, i.e., everything is pre-programmed, we have no choice, but we're responsible for what we do,
if people can't even give me a satisfactory answer to the basic principles, Like, I understand if we're sort of into the 25th syllogism and we're holding 500 axioms, premises, syllogisms, arguments, debates, points, emotions, and histories, if we're juggling all of that stuff, and I'm having trouble, like, I'm...
Breaking up, Captain. I'm having trouble holding all of that stuff together.
Then I can understand when somebody says, okay, let's just retrace our steps here because we're getting somewhere, but we're not sure exactly where.
I feel like it's really important, but I know that we're getting kind of confused.
I'm getting confused. You're getting confused.
Let's sort of go back to the basics and start this again.
Fantastic. You know, the guy who proved Fermat's last theorem filled up like 15 blackboards to do it.
I don't think he's going to turn to someone who's saying, I'm having a problem with your proof, and say, look, it's really, really simple.
You're just having trouble with it.
I mean, what if he did? He'd be kind of like a jerk, right?
I mean, that would be something that would not be productive to say to an intelligent person, that it's really simple, but they just can't seem to grasp it with their little brain, right?
It's never going to work with me, and it's never going to convince anyone because it's fundamentally insulting.
I don't think I've ever said to anyone, look, it's really, really simple.
You just don't get it. I think that coming on 300 podcasts, I've always said this stuff is really tough.
It took me 20 years. Take your time.
It's really challenging.
I'm still learning as I go.
And everybody who comes this far or who's gone through more than a podcast or two, Huge respect for your brains, your intellects, your curiosity, your integrity.
I mean, all kudos, all praises.
That, to me, is my approach, because I know how difficult this stuff is, so I never assume that somebody is just going to be resisting what it is that I'm saying, or unable to grasp it, because it's too simple for them.
Because they're just, you know, addicted to over-complicating stuff or they're just not able to grasp something that's so immediately self-evident.
And I'm patient with people even when I say stuff like taxation is forced.
Well, you could sort of argue...
That that's very simple, and people who don't get it are just being, you know, whatever, right?
But of course, as any competent psychologist will tell you as well, if it is the case that somebody is resisting what you're saying, right, so you say taxation is false, and they get shocked and appalled, and they fight back, the way that you're not going to convince them, You're not going to convince them by telling them that it's really simple.
They just can't get it.
Maybe it's too simple for them to understand, or maybe they're too simple to understand it because it's a very simple thing, but they just don't get it.
Well, you might get someone to stop debating with you, but you're never going to convince them of the basic idea.
What you need to do is you need to figure out What is going on for the other person, right?
At an emotional level, right?
I mean, debate it, you know, 20 minutes, whatever, and if they're really still just resisting the idea, then you abandon the topic, right?
So I will provide a gift to the determinists around why I have, you could say, a resistance to the idea of determinism.
And if determinism is true, Then the feelings, which are the greatest treasure for me, and I'm not saying this is rational, I think it's rational, but I'm not saying it's proven, I'm just, this is my gift to people who are out there who are determinists, who probably wouldn't ask me about my personal motives because they prefer to debate at an intellectual level, but my particular, and the reason that I didn't do this in the debate yesterday was that They were trying to convince me.
So the problem was that if I then say, well, what's your emotional motive for what you believe?
I could absolutely guarantee you that what was going to come back was, you know, don't change the topic.
Don't start psychologizing.
Don't try and frame the discussion in something else.
We haven't resolved the discussion, blah, blah, blah.
So, that was absolutely going to occur, so there wasn't much point doing it, but I will hand out as a free gift, as a free debating tool, for those who wish to engage me in the realm of free will, my emotional attachment to free will.
Well, there are a number of emotions that I take great pleasure in, and if I accepted the deterministic argument, I would have to fight those emotions as irrational.
And one of the emotions, of course, is pride.
Pride is an emotion that I take great pleasure in.
I have a good deal of pride.
About what it is that I've achieved in my life, even in a, you know, just a sort of normalized standard.
Founded companies, written books.
I'm very proud of the conversations that we're having in Free Domain Radio.
I'm proud of my relationship with my wife.
I'm proud of my professional career.
I'm proud of my integrity, this sort of hard one.
So even just on average or on balance, I would be proud of myself when I combine it with where I came from as a human being, my sort of family history.
Then I feel that much more proud and it's a very pleasurable feeling.
I really enjoy the self-respect and I really enjoy the sense of accomplishment and so on that occurs for me because I've tried to make the best decisions that I could with the information that I had with a view to my long-term interest without sacrificing my short-term interest.
All of the balance that goes on when you're trying to decide what it is to do with your life and which steps to take.
Just by the by, when you come from an emotionally abusive or mentally ill household, I mean, my mother was committed, my father was committed, when you come from that kind of background, it's very challenging because you've experienced so little pleasure that you desire.
Your strong desire is to be a hedonist, because you're like, well, okay, so I had a really crappy first 20 years-odd of my life, so now I'm going to make up for all the fun that I never had, and I'm just going to go and have fun, and to hell with the future, right?
I mean, that's denialism and hedonism that comes as part of having a miserable childhood.
So, you sort of feel that, because if you then say, okay, well, I'm going to spend the next five years getting my accounting degree, and then I'm going to work for another five years, or my law degree, and then I'm going to work another five years, 80 hours a week, you know, reviewing corporate law so that I can get my career going, so that whatever, whatever, right?
Well, then you're starting to talk like you're 30 or 35 before you experience any significant pleasure.
When you're 20 and you've had a miserable childhood, that's just way too long to go.
I didn't exactly become a hedonist, but I did take education that pleased me.
I wanted to go and have fun, and I wanted to go and enjoy myself, so I went to theater school, and I did half an English degree, and I finished a history degree, and I did a master's in history, focusing on exactly the kind of stuff that I loved to focus on, philosophy and so on.
But at the same time, I ended up with a good career, and so I think I did a good job of balancing the short-term and the long-term goals.
So I did stuff that was enjoyable to me that wasn't going to lead necessarily directly to a career.
But then what happened was after about seven years of education, Including sort of two years at theatre school, two years and an English degree.
Then what happened was I had had enough pleasure and joy in my life that I could then throw myself into work in 80 hours a week, founding a company with a great deal of pleasure.
If I'd have tried to do that right after my terrible childhood, I would probably not have ended up a very happy person.
I might not have made it at all.
So it's complicated to balance the pleasure in the present with the pleasure in the future, especially when you have a great pleasure deficit from coming from a...
So there's lots of things, I don't want to go into a lot of detail about it, but there's lots of things that I'm proud about having navigated, and having gotten through, and having achieved, and so on.
I'm proud of it, like part of it's a little bit of sort of my choices, and a lot of it is my nature.
So, I mean, again, free will doesn't mean infinite choice, right?
I can't choose to become an emu for a day.
Although if I could, boy, I'd make a killing.
So, a pride, sort of one of those feelings that I would simply not be rational in feeling if everything was simply predetermined and none of it was due to any virtue or choices on my part, right?
Me becoming, to this point in my life at the age of 39 and a half, me in this car on my way to work.
It's 9 o'clock. I'm podcasting to you.
I did what I did yesterday.
I did what I did last week.
I'm going to do what I do next week.
None of that is... Pride would be an irrational response to that.
It's like a river being proud that it's a river.
It's just a physical entity.
It's very complicated for the human mind, but the complication just produces seeming randomness, like the weather.
If you knew all the variables, you'd know what the weather is.
Unless free will has anything to do with the weather, like should I drive or should I bike?
So it's simply the immense nature or the immense complication of everything that's going on that causes people to believe that they have free will, but it's not really true.
So the emotion, one emotion I'd have to give up is pride.
Another emotion that I would have to give up would be love.
Because I have an enormous, you know, soul-bending passion for Christina because I have an enormous amount of admiration for what she does, how she does it, how she helps her patients, how she lives her life, the strength and vulnerability and delicacy and beauty of her soul and all of that kind of stuff.
I could go on and on. But I would not feel love for Christina if who she was was inevitable.
If she herself had no choice in the matter of her life and no free will, then I would no longer rationally be able...
Then love would be a kind of bigotry.
Pride would be a kind of bigotry.
Love would be a kind of bigotry.
Because you would be preferring something that could not be otherwise.
So... The other feeling that I would have to rationally oppose as bigotry would be anger.
Now, anger, it's not that I wake up in the morning and say, gee, I hope I get angry today, but anger is a very healthy and powerful emotion when it comes to protecting your interests at a personal level, when it comes to, as I see it, sort of defending the truth at a philosophical level, when it comes to people, when it comes to sort of dealing with people who your instinct is or your emotional...
The response is, are kind of jerking you around, wanting to have the cake and eat it too, and then insulting you for not being able to understand that it's all perfectly rational, that they're contradicting themselves.
And when you sort of get that experience, and I had that experience to some degree yesterday, but not to a very large degree relative to how other people debate with me in my world, so don't worry about that.
But I would have to fight that feeling of anger.
So I could not be angry at my mother.
I could not be angry at my father or my brother.
I could not have wanted to...
I would not have felt that they were responsible for what they did.
I would not have felt that they should have acted differently.
Because my mother was doing what she did, because it was programmed that she do that since the dawn of time.
She had absolutely no capacity or choice to do anything differently.
And so my feeling of moral indignation of self-righteousness, which again, I know it's a pretty poison term based on a lot of theological propositions, but I think that feeling angry at evil is a healthy thing, right?
It's the antibody. I mean, I want my white blood cells to be angry at my cold, so to speak.
I mean, I don't want them to say, well, live and let live, we got a cold, let's not bother, let's not go and attack the virus, let's just leave things be.
I want my white blood cells to get angry at infections and viruses, and I want the body that I rebuild every 11 months to be healthy and strong, and I want infections to be fought, and I want bad things to be kept at bay.
And intellectually, I also want the feeling of anger and hostility towards corruption.
I want that feeling, and I'm not saying the people on the debate yesterday were corrupt, I don't know them well enough, but I want that feeling because it is what helps guide me towards the truth.
It doesn't prove the truth, all it does, but it's been helpful to me.
And so far, I've not been angry at people who weren't jerking me around.
It doesn't mean that it's not possible.
Of course, it's always possible, but that is a healthy experience for me.
And so I would not want to look at that and say, well, any anger at people who are doing what they're doing is not valid because they're doing what they're doing and they don't have a choice.
And so to get angry at it...
You know, it's like going out in the sun when you've been inside all winter.
You go on vacation, you lie in the sun for eight hours, and then you get really angry that there's a sunburn.
And you shake your fist at the sun, right?
You shake your fist at your own skin.
That would be completely irrational, right?
It wouldn't make any sense. How could you possibly, possibly get angry at the sun for burning or at your skin for being burnt?
I mean, it's not like the sun's doing anything to you.
If there's a computer bug and your system crashes and you lose work, which of course happens to everybody who's ever touched a computer, you don't either bring a priest in to exercise your computer or you don't get angry at the computer because it's garbage in, garbage out, right?
It's not like your computer hates you or anything like that.
It just, you know, there's a bug, right?
An error occurred. Based on the physical properties of the computer.
And it may just be random, at least seemingly random, based on the heat or the airflow, or maybe your heatsink went down.
So exactly when the computer breaks could be predicted, but it's not for sure that it could be predicted down to the last nanosecond.
Your computer is going to break randomly.
It's going to crash randomly.
Certainly mine does. But it's not like your computer is malevolent towards you.
So it harms your interest, so to speak, but it's not malevolent.
So I wouldn't have any sense of ethical upset or wanting things to be different.
I wouldn't be able to judge.
Judgment is a very important thing to me as well.
That I can judge both myself, actually primarily myself, and tertiarily others, that I can judge the moral nature of people, of myself, and try and strive for better.
All of this stuff, like all of the stuff that's sort of a fundamental joy and value within my life, all of this stuff would vanish.
I know, I know, I know, and before you email me and tell me that it wouldn't vanish, you don't understand, it's really simple, you don't get that you can get rid of free will completely, but you can still take pride in your actions, and you can still admire your wife, even though what she does is inevitable, and you can still be angry at people who beat you as a child, even though they had no choice in the matter, but don't.
Don't email that to me, and don't tell that to me, because it's just not true.
It's just not true. People don't understand that a huge degree of joy, the vast majority of joy, and maybe all, I don't know.
These are just the three main emotions that came to mind at the moment.
The vast majority of the joy in my life, of the pleasure that I take in living, would...
Cease to exist. Logically, I would have to fight it as irrational, as bigotry, as irrational preference.
And so, given that I really dislike bigotry, I dislike nationalism, and I fight it, then if every preference that I had for a different state of things, or every preferred behavior that I had, you know, ethics is preferred behavior, universally preferred behavior, And people don't seem to have much problem with that.
Of course, when we say preferred, we mean choose one over the other.
And of course, I would have to give up that.
I would have to give up my joy in contemplating ethics and morality and communicating them.
I would also have to give up debating because whether or not somebody was going to choose one thing or another...
It's already predetermined.
You can't do a thing about it. So all of these things I would have to give up.
All of these joys that I experience in my life, I would have to give up logically.
I'm a logical guy, and I don't sort of say, well, it's free will.
I'm going to shift to determinism.
It has no effect on my life. That would be sort of silly, right?
Because this idea is pretty powerful.
It's pretty important. So, what I would say is that if you want to sort of understand why I resist this idea of determinism at an emotional level, right?
And I think there's logical reasons to resist it too, but I'd resist it at an emotional level.
It's because it would strip most, if not all, of the joys and pleasures that I have in life right out of my soul, and I want those things, right?
So, you know, that doesn't prove anything, but it's an important thing to understand that if you're debating with me, I have my reasons, but I also have my emotions, right?
And that's where people, I mean, that's sort of my, you know, if you wanted to be curious about my motives, that's sort of where I'm coming from.
So I hope this is helpful. Thank you so much for listening.
I have not had donations in the last two days, but I'm sure that when people hear me screaming away on the show yesterday, that they'll go, wow, can I ever fund that guy?
Boy, he gets cheesed.
So thanks so much for listening.
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