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Aug. 8, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
49:42
362 Forget About Offense
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Hey, how's it going? It's Steph.
Alright! I'm already annoyed.
So, it's August the...
Yeah, August the 8th, 2006.
Going to see Van Morrison tonight.
Should be fun. And I got a post.
Somebody posted, I think, a very instructive post, which I think is going to be helpful for people.
We're into this whole freedom thing.
And it goes something like this.
He says, Steph, my friend says he's becoming annoyed by how Steph sometimes starts laughing at the absurdity of the arguments of his opponents.
My friend says that when he is in agreement with whatever opinion that Steph is marking, he becomes very frustrated and feels insulted by the laughing.
I've never experienced this myself, he says, because I think generally Steph has a much higher threshold for what qualifies as obvious.
He even tries to prove things that I wouldn't bother discussing because I consider it, or them, so obvious.
But I can see my friend's point.
It's possible that he's thought of something that Steph hasn't thought of.
If this is the case, then Steph is only being insulting to the listener by whipping himself into a giggle fit.
All right, so let's...
I was going to do a little bit more on economics this afternoon.
Maybe if I can keep this rant short, then we can get that far.
But who's kidding who?
The likelihood of that is relatively small.
Now, there's a lot in this...
Email or this post that is very, very, very instructive and helps to, I think, delineate a certain type of personality and a certain kind of approach to the truth that I think is very helpful and worth spending a few minutes on.
So, first of all, he says his friend is becoming annoyed because I, Steph, will sometimes laugh at opinions that are nonsensical.
Or opinions that I consider to be absurd.
And, of course, I don't laugh at them because I consider them to be absurd.
I hope that I have some reason for believing that they are absurd in some manner, and that it's not just a matter of rank opinion that puts me in the whole they-are-absurd camp.
But this to me is quite fascinating, because this word annoying...
I've had a whole number of epithets applied over the last couple of months to my podcasts.
I've had fanatical, I've had annoying, of course, irritating, tedious, repetitive, full of verbal tics, long-winded, of course, endless, blah, blah, blah.
I mean, lots and lots of things that are applied to...
The podcasts. And I think that's all just fine.
I think that it's a huge waste of time to tell me that my podcasts are tedious, because they're not tedious to me, and I'm the one that they have to please first and foremost, because if they don't please me, then I'm not going to do them.
So I don't find them tedious, or at least I certainly don't find them tedious relative to staring at traffic while driving.
And so telling me that they're tedious is...
Not particularly helpful.
And saying that you're annoyed by something that I'm saying, or as I often get in emails or complaints and posts sometimes as well, people don't say, Steph, I'm annoyed by what you say.
They instead will say, Steph, I'm annoyed by how you say it.
I'm annoyed by how you present the truth.
I'm annoyed by the fact that, in this case, he feels that if I'm making fun of something that he believes to be true, or if I shouldn't say I'm making fun of it, I occasionally will, and I have apologized and will continue to apologize for some of the determinist stuff, I know that some of it I have consciously made fun of, and I do apologize for that.
But for the most part, I would say that I'm not just making fun of ideas, because I consider ideas to be far too important to just make fun of them.
I think that if I get a repetitive series of contradictions thrown at me, then yes, I will start to laugh at them, because fundamentally, that's kind of funny.
And as you know, or actually probably don't know, I've certainly sworn eternal hostility to all forms of tyranny over the mind of man and woman.
But I have also sworn eternal hostility towards the false self.
And this does not mean that I have no sympathy towards the false self.
But one of the things that you can tell for sure is a false self emotion is if you get annoyed by an argument.
If you get annoyed by an argument...
Then that is probably a false self-response.
Now, question.
Steph, would you answer this for me, please?
Yes, I will, Steph. Steph, do you not think that it might be the case that when you say you are getting annoyed by an argument and that it is a false self-opinion, and here it is, you are saying that you are already annoyed by this person's post?
Is this not a false self-response on your part?
Excellent question, Steph.
Let me mock you a little more and continue on with why that isn't the case.
The reason that I'm allowed to be irritated in a logical fashion by this post or this person's friend, and this person's friend is not legitimately allowed, so to speak, to become annoyed by me, is because I, in fact, make arguments.
I, in fact, make arguments.
Now, that's not all I do, of course.
Sometimes I make completely unfounded opinions and go on intuition and instinct and so on, and I try to delineate when that's occurring.
I can get annoyed at this person because this person's response to an argument that I'm making is just to be annoyed, which is not an argument.
Because what I would hope is that if this person is a pseudo-intellectual, let's just call him Joe, if Joe is a pseudo-intellectual who just has a whole bunch of opinions and likes to use bigfalutin words like that guy in the bar with that great film Good Will Hunting...
If he's just a pseudo-intellectual, he likes to pretend that he knows stuff, but he doesn't.
If he's a sophist, if he has the trick, or the appearance, or the capacity, or the belief that the worse argument is the better, then...
He is falsely putting out ideas into the world and ideas are the most powerful and dangerous currency that there is.
Ideas are soaked in the blood of millions upon millions upon millions of people and I take them particularly seriously.
And so if this person is out there and believes in things but is not secure enough Is not his secure enough to either laugh me off if I'm being an idiot, or if I'm being manipulative or something,
to just laugh me off, or if he believes that I'm interested in the truth and try and base opinions on something rational and scientific and empirical and so on, If he believes that I am somebody who's trying to find the truth as well,
and he has come across an error of mine, so I'm laughing at a belief and it turns out to be that I'm laughing incorrectly, then he should help me, right?
I mean, if he's a very experienced doctor, and I'm a very bad doctor, and I'm prescribing leeches for a heart attack, Then, surely, he would not be irritated at me, unless he had already told me 20 times that I need not to prescribe leeches for a heart attack.
But then he'd probably just get me disbarred from whatever DRO-approved doctors in the fantasy world of Libertopia.
But... He surely would not be annoyed by me if in all of my ignorance and my professed claims to want to make the world a more honest, less corrupt, more virtuous place, if I was making a mistake and laughing at something that I shouldn't laugh at because of my lack of intelligence or lack of capacity, then surely, as a brother in the search for truth, he should help me out.
If I'm a doctor, and I'm a good doctor, and I see somebody prescribing leeches for the aforementioned heart attack, then I'm going to sit that person down and say, look, I know that you feel that leeches are important, and I certainly understand why.
I mean, this is a common opinion.
But perhaps you could try it this way, and here's the scientific evidence, and here's the proof, and here's the logic, and here's the results, and here's the tests, and blah, blah, blah.
And then I'm going to either go, forget it.
I'm down with the leeches. Man, I've invested in leeches.
I've got a bucket of them in my office and I'm selling them for ten bucks a pop.
I could care less about the health of the patients, right?
In which case he's going to take a particular course of action.
Or, if I'm a doctor who is serious about wanting to help people, if he proves to me that leeches ain't the best thing for the old heart attack, then I would say, uh, thank you so much.
Gosh, I'm so sorry. Let me, uh, I mean, you call up the people I prescribe leeches to and have them do something better with their health than stick leeches on their chest, then I would hope that if I'm making an error, however confidently I'm making that error, that he will correct me.
But what he does do is he says, I'm annoyed because Steph laughs at ideas that Steph believes are absurd.
Now, of course, absurd is a sub-sub-genre of comedy, which you may or may not be aware of.
There are certain shades of Seinfeld in that kind of stuff, particularly in the very final episode.
But absurdity is a perfectly valid thing to laugh at, right?
Open, obvious contradictions, especially pompous self-contradiction that is passed off as...
I'm not saying this guy's friend is this.
I'm just saying that in general, pompous self-importance and the misuse of technical language for the sake of looking smarter than you are.
And all this, that, and the other. This is all objects worthy of satire, and there's a long sort of history of satire going back.
Gogol is the Russian master of this, if you get a chance to see some of his plays or read them.
They're fantastic. Of course, Swift was very satirical.
Lots of other writers have used this as a way of getting to the root of certain kinds of hypocritical falsehoods in human emotion.
Moliere, of course, was very big in this realm as well.
So, if I'm putting an argument out, and I'm laughing at something that I consider to be absurd, then if I'm wrong, then the person who is so much wiser than I am, and I'm sure there are tons of people out there like this, they just seem to be not very vocal.
There seem to be a lot of people out there who are a whole lot smarter than I am, which I fully accept as a completely viable possibility.
It's just that they really don't spend a whole lot of time actually helping me out of my error.
Right? With the determinists, a noble exception to this, who have worked like mighty Turks to help me out of my error.
But by far the vast majority of people tell me that I'm wrong or tell me that I'm annoying or tell me that I'm tedious and this, that, and the other, and that's fine.
But what they don't do is help me out of my error.
And that's where, if you...
If you yourself get involved in any kind of public discussion of ideas, you will have endless amounts of human shit poured all over you from everybody's false self, threatened by the truth kind of bile, and you will be told endlessly how incorrect you are and how silly and vain and self-aggrandizing and culty and blah.
You'll get all of these personal attacks against you.
The one thing that will be conspicuously missing...
From people who are trying to correct you or telling you that you're wrong is any logical proof that you're incorrect.
It's the only slight thing that I would actually like to see the most.
I mean, you're going to attack me all you want, but what I'd really like to see is proof.
That the arguments that I'm putting forward are incorrect.
And of course, this is not to say that everything I say is correct, but I would certainly like, if I got even a 1% correction rate relative to a 99% attack rate, that would be just wonderful.
Now, the key thing here is that this person, this friend of his, right, how else do we know that this is a false self, passive-aggressive, don't-have-fun-because-I'll-get-offended approach to conversation?
Well, the clue here is also when his friend says, Joe says, well, when I agree with the opinion that Steph is mocking, I become very frustrated and feel insulted by the laughing.
I mean, that's quite fascinating.
If the laughing is bad, if the laughing is cruel or mean or demeaning or insulting or something like that, then surely, surely, surely, surely, it should also be the case, even for beliefs that this person doesn't hold.
Right? So, if he only gets frustrated when I am laughing at beliefs that he himself holds but does not get frustrated...
When I'm laughing at beliefs that he doesn't hold, then that might be a clue to him as to what's going on in terms of his own psychological motivation.
If he doesn't mind me laughing at people that he disagrees with, but he does mind me laughing at things that he holds sacred and dear, then it's just possible that the principle that me laughing is bad might be itself, dare I say it? Oh, you know I will.
Just a tad laughable. I hope that that makes sense, because I'm trying not to be too repetitive.
So that's sort of an example of how you know just there's a vast amount of nonsense going on as far as this person's thinking goes.
And then the writer mentions a couple other things about my threshold for what is obvious, which is fine.
But I can see my friend's point, he says.
It's possible that Joe has thought of something that Steph hasn't thought of.
Well, yes, of course, it's absolutely, completely and totally possible that Joe has thought of something that I have not.
It's totally possible that I am laughing at something and I'm completely incorrect.
And it is now recorded from here until the end of MP3ville that I am laughing at the very idea that the world is round because, as everybody knows, it's completely and totally flat.
Ha, ha, ha. Right?
And so I'm laughing and mocking this belief.
Right? I mean, I felt that it was fairly inevitable that within 90 seconds of me finishing podcasts mocking determinists that determinism was going to be proven true, but unfortunately that didn't come to be the case.
But... It's certainly possible that I'm completely, totally and utterly wrong.
That is absolutely the case in every particular circumstance.
Of course, of course, of course.
But, what are you going to do?
What are you going to do? You're going to, if you live your whole life just putting forth these tiny little tentative stabs at the truth with all of these qualifiers wrapped all around it, well, sure, maybe in a world where there weren't corrupt people, we could do that and be happy and content with our intellectual timidity in a productive way.
But sadly, the world is full of crazy people who are totally corrupt and evil, and putting forward the worst ideas in the world, which again are preparing the blood-soaked bath for the rest of humanity, and they're pretty damn certain, my friends, so I don't think that it's really the end of the world to have a little bit of certainty myself.
I really don't think that the world is going to come to a crumbling end if somebody really focused on the scientific method and on virtue and on rational explanation has a little bit of certainty myself.
Because if certainty is the problem, if certainty is the evil, then surely I, who am certain of nothing but the methodology, I am certain of nothing but the scientific method, the evidence of my senses, and the validity of Aristotelian logic...
I am certain of none of the conclusions and frankly could care less about the conclusions.
The only thing that I care about fundamentally is the methodology.
And if somebody can prove that logic is incorrect or that there's a better way of acquiring knowledge than the scientific method, I'm all ears, eyes, tongue, nose, and skin to hear all about it.
And I think that's going to be a tough thing to prove that's going to be a long time coming.
So I think that if, you know, eight trillion bazillion people can be absolutely positively certain that God exists, maybe, just maybe, it might be allowable for a rationalist and somebody who works with the scientific method and empirical evidence to be a little certain as well.
Unless, certainty itself is the evil.
Now, if certainty itself is the evil, Then surely a certainty which would be predicated on willpower alone, on I am right, dammit, because I am right, surely that kind of certainty is a lot more problematic, a lot more corrupt, a lot worse than the kind of certainty which says, well, I'm pretty sure of the scientific method as a methodology, and I'm perfectly open to being corrected by logic and evidence, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So, if certainty is a potential virtue, then surely those who are logical and scientific, or say openly and submit to logic and the scientific method, are far more virtuous than those who are certain just because that's what their daddy and their priest told them to be certain of.
In which case, getting upset with me versus getting upset with all of the other trillions and trillions of religious and nationalistic and statist people in the world...
So, if certainty can be a virtue, surely it is by far a greater virtue for those who submit themselves to logic and science.
If certainty is a vice, Then certainly it is a greater vice to believe based on pure crazy willpower than to believe in a methodology that has universally been proven to be the most accurate and the best methodology for collecting and organizing information, the scientific method and Aristotelian logic.
So, if it's possible, of course it's possible.
Joe could have thought of something that Steph hasn't thought of.
Absolutely. But does that mean I'm not allowed to be certain?
Because it's possible that at some point in the future, 2 plus 2 might be proven to be 5 in some alternate dimension?
When I say that logic is valid and point out obvious logical inconsistencies, which I myself have held in the past, I certainly have had entire podcasts correcting myself, and I laugh at myself quite a bit, but of course it's possible that there's something out there that I haven't thought of.
I would imagine that it's inevitable, that there are countless things out there that I've never thought of.
Although I think I'm closing in with the number of podcasts that we've got going here.
But does that mean that I am then not allowed to be certain if 2 plus 2 is 4?
Because at the 12 billionth decimal, pi might start to replicate itself?
Is the fact that there is a limit to human knowledge mean that what we do have in terms of human knowledge is not valid?
Because I don't know how to walk to Timbuktu, does that mean that I do not know how to walk to the store that I go back to and forward every day?
Because I don't know how to drive to Dallas, does that mean that I don't know how to drive home on a commute I've done dozens of times a month for years?
Of course not. Just because I don't know everything doesn't mean that what I do know might be invalid.
Right? Sensual evidence will not be invalid.
Logic will not be invalid.
The scientific method will not be invalidated.
And so if people have a problem with me being certain about a methodology, I'm not certain about the conclusions, but I sure as hell am certain about the methodology, I will bow to more accurate, more superior logic, better evidence absolutely every single time.
However, I will not bow the scientific method to rank mysticism.
I will surrender absolutely all of my opinions to superior logic, better evidence.
But I will not surrender my opinions to rank prejudice and faith and intellectual or emotional bigotry which says something is true just because I want it to be true.
Something is true because I will it to be true.
I will never surrender a single belief to that form of mental sickness and corruption.
So yes, absolutely.
If being certain of anything is a problem, I'm not...
If it is a problem, I'm not on the list of people to get mad at.
And if it's not a problem, I'm still not on the list of people to get mad at.
Because people who believe in God, and people who believe in the state, and people who believe in the virtue of cops and soldiers, well, those people are certain with no evidence, and their opinions bow to nothing!
It's willful rage that is at the root of those mad, prejudicial faiths.
Those people are certain and crazy.
And their beliefs are subject to nothing outside their own willpower.
And people think that there's a problem that I'm certain about something because I try as hard as humanly possible to surrender myself to logic and the scientific method and empirical evidence.
So somehow my certainty is the problem of all the people in the world that this Joe fellow is getting annoyed at as far as certainty goes.
It's not the people who believe in the Old Testament that wants homosexuals and sorcerers and people who tell you about other gods and atheists put to death.
Those are the people whose certainty annoys him.
No, no, no, no. What about the people who think that George Bush is right in everything he does and support the wholesale slaughter of foreigners who've done nothing to harm Americans?
As far as the hierarchy of certainty which bothers you goes, am I ranked above those people?
I, who submit everything that I believe to logic and science?
As best as I can, and not perfectly.
Is my certainty the real problem in the world?
Is the fact that I'm certain of things like property rights?
The fact that I'm certain of things like the evils of the government?
The fact that I'm anti-war?
The fact that I'm anti-the initiation of the use of force?
The fact that I'm anti-prison?
The fact that I'm anti-state?
The fact that I'm anti-rape?
The fact that I'm anti-fraud?
This is the certainty that is the biggest problem in this guy's life?
I can't conceive of how that might be the case.
I won't laugh at it, but I still can't conceive of how, of all of the human beings in the world, I am the one whose certainty this guy is going to focus on as being a problem.
Now, the question of being insulted by an argument is really quite fascinating.
It's quite fascinating.
To be perfectly upfront, not that I'm trying to hold much back here, but to be perfectly upfront, I view somebody getting annoyed by something that I say without providing me with conclusive proof as to how I am perfectly incorrect.
Which I would welcome and thank that person for and announce it on air and so on, as I did with a number of things that I've been incorrect about.
And when somebody says that one person posted recently that they felt that I had condescended to them in a response, apologized right away, because this is a person who I think has an excellent brain, as just about everybody on the board does.
And so, yes, absolutely.
Don't want to insult people who have shown their intellectual clarity and intelligence and so on.
Fantastic. So I apologize, I correct myself, I make fun of myself, so I don't think that I am not living an argument for morality that is non-reciprocal.
I've even done podcasts, I had Christina do podcasts mocking me in a pretty fundamental way, so I don't know that this person can say that the capacity to laugh at somebody else should not be enjoyed by somebody who's more than perfectly willing to laugh at himself.
But annoyance and feeling insulted by an argument with the concomitant and usually inevitable rage that results from it.
Fascinating, fascinating stuff.
This is passive-aggressive control in a nutshell.
This is passive-aggressive control in a nutshell.
And you would be wise to see this.
And the person who posted this would be wise to see this about his or her friend...
It sounded believable, right? Because if you can't see it, then it's going to have a strong effect on you as far as your capacity to debate and to see things with an emotional and deep kind of clarity goes.
So somebody does not say, Steph, you're incorrect because of X, Y, and Z, and here's the proof.
Wonderful. Kiss the hem of that man's garment.
Fantastic. Thank you.
No. This person says, I'm insulted and annoyed by your argument.
Well, what the fuck does that have to do with anything?
Frankly, what does that have to do with the price of bread and Brussels?
What does the fact that somebody is annoyed and insulted by a moral or philosophical argument have to do with anything?
Now, Steph, question?
Yes. Yes, go ahead.
You, in front. Yes, you, with the driving.
Yes, Steph, you say that it doesn't have anything to do with anything, that somebody is upset by an argument, yet you, with the determinist, Steph, did say that these are the things that I would have to give up in order to believe in determinism, things like virtue, love, responsibility, pride, and so on.
Yes, I did. I certainly did.
But I did not say that that meant anything in terms of the argument.
I simply talked about that as a personal issue that was related to my emotional responses to the argument, but I certainly did not say that these other people were offending me.
I certainly did not say that these other people were insulting me.
I was simply saying these are the emotional consequences that I face when I accept your argument.
And this has a bearing on my possible resistance to accepting your argument.
But in no way was it ever a demand on other people that they should stop saying what it is that they're saying, because I'm, ooh, I'm so insulted, I'm like Blanche Dubois, fainting with a scented handkerchief in the corner of some Tennessee Williams play.
So it doesn't have anything to do with anything to say that you're insulted or offended by an argument.
And it is a passive-aggressive and, frankly, quite pathologically over-feminized approach.
To an argument. It's embarrassing to bring up that an argument offends you.
It's embarrassing.
I mean, for God's sake, where's your pride?
What does it have to do with the fact that you are offended or upset by an argument?
On another thread today, this has sort of been the theme of the day, on another thread, somebody was talking about, we have a gentleman who is, I think, teetering around the God thing.
I think he's religious, and he is teetering around the God thing.
And what he posted was to say that since, and this is a common argument, since we don't know everything about everything, it's possible that God exists.
And, of course, the argument is no.
So he said, well, before America existed, People didn't believe that America existed.
But once America was discovered, then people believed that America existed, and this is just like God.
Well, no, it's not. It's not even remotely like God.
It's the complete opposite of what people claim about God.
It's the same rhetorical device that was used against me a couple of years ago with regards to God, which I've mentioned before in a podcast where somebody says, can you prove that Elizabeth II existed?
So if you're talking to some serf in the 13th century, and you say, can you prove to me that America exists or does not exist?
The guy would say, well, I don't know, not really.
That doesn't have anything to do with anything as far as God goes, though.
I can't sit there and do a DNA test all the way through the lines of the Tudors to show you that Queen Elizabeth I actually existed.
Not the second. I think she's only slightly less mummified.
Queen Elizabeth I, you can't prove for an indubitable fact that she existed.
However... The existence of a woman in history does not contradict all known facts of reality, logic, and biology, right?
So, saying that Queen Elizabeth I exists, it doesn't mean that it's absolutely provable, but it does not mean that it is a self-contradictory statement.
Now, if you say that Queen Elizabeth I existed and was a hermaphrodite, Well, then I would say that in the absence of proof, given the odds of having a knife and fork, so to speak, the odds are probably not that high.
In the absence of proof, we would say, not that that's impossible, because these things can exist, but we would say that it's unlikely.
It's unlikely, but I wouldn't base my PhD thesis on it, either as a biologist, a geneticist, or a historian.
Unless I had some proof that I'm not even going to imagine what it might look like.
Secret paintings. So then again, we don't say, well, okay, Queen Elizabeth I, hermaphrodite, well, yeah, it's possible, it's unlikely, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.
And then if we start to get into the religion of territory, and we say, Queen Elizabeth I was not born of woman, nor was she untimely ripped from her mother's womb, as is mentioned in Macbeth.
So, Queen Elizabeth I existed, yeah, okay, fine, women exist, but she was not born of woman.
Well, then we're starting to go into sort of freaky territory, right?
Because it's like, okay, so you're saying that an organism exists that sort of spontaneously popped into existence and...
Now we're starting to need some pretty serious proof here, because now we're starting to really go against the fundamental nature and reality of all biological constructs and concepts, right?
So, in this particular instance, we're starting to look a little, well, violently shaky.
And then if we say, and she could turn water into wine, and she came back from the dead, and she could fly unaided, and she could talk to the animals, like at some point, it's like, no.
No, no, no, no, no.
There may be a lot that we don't know about the universe, and I'm fully willing to accept that there may not be a lot that we don't know about, that there may be a lot that we don't know about the universe.
Absolutely, totally. But I'll tell you this.
We do know that living organisms have to be born of something.
Primordial soup, or asteroid accepted.
We do know that human beings cannot fly unaided.
We do know that coming back to life three days after you're dead is like really dead, like crucified and the blood drained from your body kind of dead, not like stung by a bee and gone into really slow cardiac arrest in that sort of misery scenario.
And we do know that human beings cannot fluently converse with animals, and we do know and we do know and we do know.
So I may not be able to, as a 13th century serf, prove to you that America does or does not exist.
However, if you say to me that America exists suspended outside of gravity 14 feet above sea level, and it is both on fire and full of water simultaneously, then I'm going to say no.
I don't have to work very hard to disprove a proposition that contradicts all the known facts of physics or biology or science.
If you're saying that matter, which is all susceptible to gravity, if you say that America floats magically 14 feet above sea level, then I can tell you that it doesn't.
If you say, well, America's a landmass and it rises up from the magma through the Earth's crust, like every other land, and it has this, that, and the other, well, sure, absolutely, I've got no problem with that.
If you tell me that some sort of dinosaur existed that had nine heads, sure, hey, you know, maybe it's possible, right?
But if you tell me that a giant human being existed who was 400 feet tall...
Then I'm going to tell you no, because biologists say that if you're over like 12 feet tall, every time you walk, you break your thigh, right?
So I'm going to have to say no.
And if you tell me that a dinosaur existed that was both warm-blooded and cold-blooded simultaneously, that flew exactly the same moment as it swam, and had gills that breathed air, and had lungs that breathed water, then I'm going to say, no, that thing did not exist.
And of course, none of this, what we're talking about, is anything even remotely close to the epistemological and metaphysical insanity we call a deity.
So I, of course, wrote something a little bit more abbreviated than this in the post, which basically said, yeah, well, of course, but America doesn't contradict all the known laws of physics.
And then this gentleman wrote back, and, you know, I admire the persistence, no problem with it, I'm not offended.
Gentleman wrote back and said, well, but...
Maybe the god invented the very same physics that made that god possible.
Hey, absolutely.
For sure, it's certainly possible.
Another way of phrasing it would be, does a leprechaun exist that has created new laws of mathematics that say that 2 plus 2 is both 4 and 5 simultaneously?
It's equally likely.
Now, if you have a logical problem...
Or a sanity requirement that says, yes, I think that the proposition that a leprechaun can exist, that can create new laws of mathematics that mean that 2 plus 2 is 4 and 2 plus 2 is 5 simultaneously...
Well, you know, if you can't say no to that, then really you're just an epistemological slutfest, right?
You then can't say no to anything, right?
If you can't say no to the proposition that leprechauns can make 2 plus 2 equals 4 and 5 simultaneously, then your mind is so far open that it's just become purely slutty and basically sleep with any idea that buys it a drink.
Maybe it doesn't even have to buy it a drink.
That's not having an open mind.
That's having a lazy mind.
That's having no mind in a very sort of fundamental way.
So, this idea that there's something that I might not have thought about in some of the basics that I'm talking about, yeah, absolutely, there's something that I might not have thought about.
But, if I am supposed to not be certain, because it's possible that a leprechaun has invented laws of mathematics that make 2 plus 2 equal both 4 and 5 simultaneously, if that's the criteria by which I'm not allowed to be certain, then nobody's certain.
Right? Certainty, then, is an impossibility.
If you can't say that 2 plus 2 equals 4, as Winston Smith says, if you have the freedom to say that, then all other freedoms follow.
But if you really can't be certain that leprechauns can't make 2 plus 2 equals 4 and 5 simultaneously, then certainty doesn't exist.
There's no possibility.
Then the axiom, the axiom is that there is no certainty.
And therefore, then what is bothering this person about me is the fact that I'm certain about some things.
And I really, really am absolutely, positively, totally and completely certain about certain things.
Certain about the scientific method, certain about logic, certain about the evidence of my senses.
Doesn't mean that they're always correct, but they can always be validated.
Certain that I exist, certain that other people exist, certain that reality is objective and independent of my consciousness, certain that God does not exist, certain that morality has to be universal if it's going to be a binding theory upon other people's behaviors.
I mean, there are things that I'm absolutely certain about.
Now, they're not just axioms, because they're all fundamentally derived from the behavior of matter.
And so, there's really no possibility that those things can be overturned unless reality suddenly changes its properties.
So, I believe that concepts are derived from the properties and natures of atoms, as I've talked about before, fundamentally.
And yet, if it turns out that we wake up tomorrow morning, and for reasons incomprehensible to me at this or any other time, the seas, which were formerly water, have been turned into oceans of fire, then I would say that we might want to have a look at these whole conceptual things, right? But this doesn't happen.
This doesn't happen.
I have no worries whatsoever that tomorrow morning I'm going to wake up and the seas of water will have been replaced by oceans of fire.
I mean, not counting the rapture, of course.
So I am not at all concerned about that.
I am not concerned about God's punishment.
I am not concerned about people's judgments of me at an emotional level.
And so, if this person is really bothered by something called certainty, then if I laugh at an idea that is patently ridiculous, just as I laugh at myself when I'm being patently ridiculous, If this person is offended by me finding humor in absurd beliefs, then what he is really offended by is certainty.
And he wants me to change my...
What do I care about this Joe guy?
I'm not saying this because I'm going to lose any sleep over this Joe guy.
It's just that we all face these people.
We all face these people, right?
These same pathetic incompetents who say things like, well, you need to have respect for my beliefs.
Actually, really and truly, I don't.
I really don't have to have respect for anybody's beliefs.
Now, I do have to have respect for proof, I think, if I want to be a philosopher.
I do have to have respect for proof and evidence and so on.
But I really, really, really don't have to have respect for anybody's beliefs at all.
And to me, it's passive-aggressive and utterly pathetic, utterly pathetic to ask for beliefs.
It's a kind of self-pitying, whining attitude.
That ejects you from the realm of any kind of respect to begin with.
I mean, the moment somebody says, like you're, I don't know, maybe you're making fun of their religion.
Maybe you're laughing at their idea of God.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. But then when all people have to fall back on is, well, you need to have respect.
You should have respect for other people's beliefs.
No. No, no, no, a thousand times no.
No. Beliefs cause genocide.
Beliefs cause death. Beliefs cause rape, murder, slaughter, mayhem, war, prisons, rape rooms.
This is what I do not need to have respect for beliefs which result in these kinds of horrors.
I do not need to have respect for a Christian whose sacred text tells him to kill me.
How the fuck am I going to have respect for myself if I respect somebody who wants me killed?
For believing in the truth.
I don't want Christians killed because they're in error.
This guy, Christians want me killed if they believe in their text down to the root because I'm not in error.
It's Ayn Rand's hatred of the good for being the good, right?
That's hatred of certainty for being certain.
Hatred of truth for being true.
Hatred of honesty for being honest.
So no, human beings do not owe respect, which is something that has to be earned and maintained.
Respect is not something that one human being owes to another human being for the magical act of taking a breath one after another.
I have to have respect for no man's beliefs, nor no woman's either.
And no man or woman has to have respect for my beliefs.
And I would never say to somebody that you must respect my beliefs because I hold them.
That is a vicious kind of fraud and one of the last arsenals in the quiver, one of the last arrows in the quiver of the false self.
You're intolerant if you don't like my beliefs.
You're just a crazy extremist.
You're just a fundamentalist.
You're insulting me.
You're making fun of things that I believe in.
That... I can't even picture the level of self-esteem that would result in somebody thinking that that's a thing to say that's going to mean anything other than, Eww!
Yuck! To me, it's incomprehensible how that could ever be an argument.
And of course, it's not an argument.
All of this is a passive-aggressive control mechanism.
So somebody says, I'm insulted and frustrated and annoyed by the way that you approach these topics, Steph.
Well, fine.
Don't fucking listen then. Nobody's forcing you to put this podcast into your ear.
Don't listen. But for Christ's sake, don't even remotely imagine that that holds any intellectual weight with me.
Or with anybody who's got any self-esteem.
Hey, do the work. Prove me wrong.
I'll thank you from here to eternity.
But you being upset?
What on earth would that have to do with my integrity?
That's your issue to manage.
It's not my issue to manage.
It's not my issue to go out into the world and coddle people and make them feel special and make them feel fine and make them feel that they're smart and make them feel that they're secure and make them feel good about all the stupid, crazy, evil things that they believe.
That's not my job.
That's not anybody's job.
It's nobody's job to do it for me either.
But if all that someone can come up with is, be nicer, that's fine.
Go back to kindergarten and get out of the realm of goddamn intellectual debates.
Get out of the realm of philosophy.
You are a mewling houseplant.
If that is your approach to dealing with ideas, that you feel that your level of being insulted and annoyed and, oh, frustrated...
Too bad.
It's a tough world, ideas are hard, and you've got to be made of slightly sterner stuff than that if you want to have any credibility in the realm of ideas.
Can you imagine me going to a physics conference and talking about my love of unicorns and leprechauns and angels, being stared at and laughed at, perhaps, and then whining from the podium That I'm not getting the respect I deserve.
And that people should be nice to me.
They should respect my beliefs about leprechauns.
You people should be nicer.
What if unicorns did exist?
You don't know everything. They might exist.
They might exist in Middle Earth.
They might exist closer to the center of the planet.
They might be on the dark side of Jupiter or on the moons of Uranus.
They might exist.
You people have no right to laugh at me.
Well, I voluntarily went to a physics conference rather than a conference for batshit people who believe in unicorns.
So if I go to the physics conference without packing my reason gear, I'm going to get mocked.
Or at least I'm going to get stared at like, I think you might be in the wrong hole.
Now, if people want to pull this guilt mother crap of being upset and annoyed and offended and this and that, no, you should respect my beliefs, then they've come to the wrong place if they want to get engaged in philosophy.
It's not the end of the world.
We all make mistakes. We all, you know, I've had it too, where I walk into the wrong room and the women all go, there aren't any urinals in here.
For heaven's sake, put it back in your pants.
No problem. We all go into the wrong place from time to time.
And if you think that being insulted by ideas that are rigorous and logically proved and have strong evidence for them, if you think that that is somehow relevant to a debate in philosophy, you've just stepped into the wrong room.
What you want to be is in a therapist's office.
Working on your self-esteem.
Working on rising above the guilt and manipulation that obviously happened enough to you to make you think that that was a relevant thing to do when debating ideas.
It's okay. I have no problem with it.
But just understand that you're in the wrong room.
But you need to go to probably a group setting where you can complain about how your feelings aren't being taken into account so that a therapist can help you understand that it's not anybody's job after you're 12 to take your feelings into account.
It is absolutely a parent's job before that.
But if you missed that boat, if your parents didn't put you on that boat, I have all the sympathy in the world for you.
I really do. I really, really do.
I'm not kidding about that.
I really do have all the sympathy in the world for you because that's a wretched experience to go through.
It's a terrible thing to be manipulated and to be controlled by other people's passive-aggressive, I'm upset, I'm this, I'm that.
I understand. I do understand.
It is a terrible, terrible thing.
And you need to deal with that as an emotional dysfunction.
But don't get into intellectual debates and think that being upset means anything.
Don't get into the hard, stony desert of philosophical truth and then want people to cry tears under your tongue so you can drink.
It doesn't make any sense. You really, really can't expect for people to take your feelings into account as proofs.
I can take your feelings into account like you can email me or write to me and say, you know, when you say this, I really feel upset.
It's totally fine. Let's talk about it.
Let's talk about that. That's great.
That's important. Your feelings are important.
They're just not relevant to argument.
I mean, they're important in terms of your relationships, sure.
Feelings are totally important in terms of your relationships.
They're just not important in terms of any kind of argument about truth, objective truth, philosophical truth, logical truth.
Your passion to be a physicist will probably make you into a physicist.
Your passion to be a physicist will not prove one single one of your arguments correct, or your theories.
It will not validate any of your suppositions.
So that's the major sort of thing that was quite astounding to me today.
And it's not astounding because I haven't experienced it before.
Of course, we've all experienced this about a hundred million times.
But what I would just say to this guy, he's not going to listen to this whole podcast, I doubt he will, although it is supposed to be liberating, but I'd just say, well, what business is that of Steph's?
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