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Feb. 18, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:01:04

650 Call In Show Feb 18 2007

Amazon adventures and past lives

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	Alright, okay, so let's get started.
	Thanks everyone for joining.
	I'm going to start by reading a little bit about amazon.com because we might as well dip into some practical aspects of economics and again just click on ask to talk after I finish the introduction.
	I'm not going to give out any of my opinions about it.
	Lord knows you people aren't short of my opinions but I'd like to sort of ask other people what they think about this.
	So this is from techdirt.com and it says, yes, those free DVDs on Amazon were too good to be true.
	From time to time you hear stories of websites accidentally mispricing items, allowing customers a brief window to buy things at ridiculously cheap prices.
	This has happened a couple of times.
	On airline websites, allowing people to travel for less than a dollar.
	Apparently, Amazon.com committed such an error around Christmas when it offered two DVD box sets for the sum total of zero dollars in a savagely socialistic approach to pricing.
	Naturally, several customers, and probably more than several, enthusiastically took advantage of the generous offer, but they were not so happy when the company tried backing out of the offer after the DVDs had already been sent.
	Once the company realized the error, it contacted those customers and told them that if they didn't send back the DVDs, they would go ahead and charge their credit cards.
	So what happened was, this is sort of what I've been able to glean, what happened was Amazon had a two-for-one offer for DVDs.
	So you buy one DVD, like a single DVD, you buy one DVD movie and you get a second one for free, I guess it would be same or lesser price, that kind of stuff.
	Due to a glitch in their, I'm sure it was their pricing XML file or something, but due to a glitch in their technicals, what happened was, instead of it being a two-for-one offer, if you ordered a box set, you got two for nothing.
	So obviously somebody had set up something incorrectly.
	And it made it all the way through All the way through the Amazon checks and balances, which is obviously rare, but can happen.
	I'm sure that people have gift certificates, they have promotional codes, they have e-dollars or whatever, which would result in them having a zero-dollar shipment.
	You apply a gift certificate or a gift card, you're not going to be charged a penny.
	For your purchase.
	So, a zero dollar shipment is not the end of the world.
	Now, this has caused quite a storm of debate in the libertarian group that I occasionally will dip into to have a look at, and also online, and Christina and I had a rousing debate about it last night.
	So I kind of wanted to throw it out there.
	This is a very interesting application of some of the principles that we've been talking about here.
	And I just sort of wanted to get people's opinions about what they thought about this issue.
	What happened was, I think I actually have the letter.
	Let me just give you the letter that Amazon sent around, and maybe this can help you sort of understand.
	So Amazon said, Hello from Amazon.com.
	In reviewing your order placed on 23rd December 2006, we discovered that due to an error, we did not charge you the correct amount for the items you purchased.
	According to the terms of the promotion, purchasing one DVD at the regular price, entitled due to a free DVD of equal or lesser value.
	You can view the terms of the promotion here.
	There's a website. Because these items have already shipped to you, you can either keep the items, and we will charge you the amount you would have been charged, or you can return the items, at no cost to you, to Amazon within 30 days.
	Please note that we can only accept the return of unopened items in their original condition.
	So if you bought a whole bunch of these sort of free DVDs or quote bought them and then ripped them open, then you have to pay for them.
	They can't accept them back because obviously you could have just copied them or whatever.
	As a result of the...
	Sorry, as the result...
	Sorry, as the return is the result of our error, you will not be charged for return shipping.
	Blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	Anyway, I think you get the general idea.
	So... The question is, what do you think?
	There's quite a controversy.
	Some people think that it's Amazon's error and therefore Amazon can't charge you.
	If you've opened these things up or you gave them away as gifts and somebody else has opened them up or whatever, then you're going to get charged.
	They're going to take your credit card and they're going to charge you For these items.
	And I was just wondering what people thought about that.
	If you were in Amazon's position, if you were in the customer's position, what do you think that the right thing to do in this circumstance is?
	So let's see, did we have anybody who wanted to answer that?
	To give a shot at answering it?
	Or are we too at about a million other people on the internet?
	The only people interested in this and nobody here is.
	Let's see, shall we? Okay, let me just close this.
	So we have a couple of comments here.
	So somebody says, Amazon was in the wrong...
	Somebody else has said, I think property had transferred ownership at the wrong cost, but it failed.
	But due to the delayed pricing mechanism, what was contractually agreed to between Amazon and their customers?
	Somebody else said, I think the explicit agreement was two for one, not two for none.
	Charging more than the contractual agreement would be wrong.
	That would be theft. Somebody else said, you know that there's a big chance you'll get something afterwards, like when you order something and don't get billed.
	You have to take that into account.
	Oh, Greg has a comment about this, so let's throw him on, shall we?
	I think we shall. Greg, I think you're on.
	Yeah, I guess I'll speak up on it.
	The way I see it, it's really a logistical problem, and that is what was the price of the item on the webpage versus what and that is what was the price of the item on the webpage versus what was the price that they were
	Well, the price on the webpage was, let's just say, $50 for, I don't know, the West Wing season, $6 million or something, and then the price they got charged when they checked out was $0.
	Right, so the price was two per one.
	So if the item was listed on the page as $50, and I bought two of them, and my shopping cart then said zero, then that should raise a red flag on mine because the offer was for then that should raise a red flag on mine because the offer was
	So if the sum total is zero, then I know I'm getting two for none, which is not what they agreed to.
	Right? Right.
	Now, I think that certainly is the case.
	I think that the people who are...
	I'm really going to resist giving my opinion about this because I sort of want to hear what other people have to say.
	But of course, for some people, they're buying like $600 worth of stuff, right?
	And so they don't look at each line item, and I mean, my wife does, but a lot of people wouldn't.
	And they don't look at each line item, and they just say, oh, DVD zero.
	Well, that must be my two-for-one.
	Like, they don't sort of break everything down, so...
	That would sort of be, I think, one way of absolving some of that sort of issue where people are clearly getting like zero dollars for like whatever two DVDs.
	Right, and the dollar amount really doesn't matter either when you're dealing with principle.
	Whether it's one dollar or a million dollars, it's the principle that matters, right?
	If, on the other hand, that box set of the West Wing was listed on their page as $0, and I clicked on it and it added it to my cart, and my cart said $0, and I had it shipped to me for $0, then that's their problem, because that was the offer.
	So, to me, it's a matter of what it is that I think I'm getting from you.
	If I know it's a two-for-one deal, and I walk away paying nothing, then I know I've just ripped you off.
	But do you think that anyone would sell and ship you something for zero dollars?
	I mean, you could be right.
	I mean, I'm just trying to understand that if it says zero dollars on the page and then you choose zero dollars, you check it out, you know you're getting charged, not getting charged for the good, you know that they're even paying to ship it to you, do you not think that that also might be a red flag for an error?
	Well, I mean, I would question it, but I wouldn't necessarily think that that's an error because I've actually...
	Had free stuff shipped to me before.
	I mean, they'll do that oftentimes to get you to come back and buy other stuff, right?
	But usually that's a big splashy promotion.
	It's not usually buried away.
	Like you get an email saying, free DVD or whatever, right?
	Like it's usually sort of flashing away.
	And yeah, you're right. It certainly could be the case, but if somebody's shipping you something for free and it's not something that you expected, then usually...
	It is the case that somebody might say later, oops, that really wasn't supposed to happen.
	But for you, if the price is listed as $0 and you go through the whole process and check out, then you feel that you should not be asked to return anything or have your credit card charged.
	No, because that was the upfront offer.
	If someone doesn't have the time to...
	You know, check his own price tags, then, you know, that's the price, right?
	So I think it's reasonable to assume that whatever the price tag is on the item on the page is whatever they're charging for it.
	But if the price tag is one thing on the page, And another in the inbox, or the cart, then that to me is a programming error.
	That's an obvious programming error that somebody obviously overlooked, and so then you know you're taking them for a ride.
	But if they're selling it for zero dollars, Then, that's the price.
	So, if this had happened to you, and you'd seen the zero dollars in the page, and then you'd sort of checked out with zero dollars, and then you'd received this email saying, please return it to us at our expense, you would not return it?
	Well, I would definitely challenge it, because in that case, you know, there's the fact that they're changing the price after the fact, right?
	The price that I saw on the page and that I put into my cart and that I checked out with was zero.
	And now they're coming back and they're saying, well, we didn't want it to be zero.
	Now we want it to be $2 or $10 or whatever, right?
	You know, supposing you actually did pay something for it.
	Supposing you paid $20 for it, right?
	Whatever it is. And then they come back and they say, oh, that wasn't supposed to be $20.
	It was supposed to be $50.
	So we're going to charge you another $30 after the fact.
	See, that's different from it being listed at $50, and I mean putting it in my cart and getting charged $0 at checkout.
	Right. Now, I certainly understand that.
	The reason I think this is such an interesting question is that it sort of comes down to two aspects or two ways of looking at interactions.
	One is to say that there is the letter of the law, right?
	So it's like if Amazon has a disclaimer which says...
	Somewhere deep buried in their terms and conditions, something that says, while we strive to achieve accuracy in all prices, there may be times where errors have occurred and this and that and the other.
	And we reserve the right to fix prices.
	Now, of course, Amazon has a huge incentive not to do that.
	Because they don't want to get known as the people who like bait and switch, you know?
	It's 50 bucks, right?
	Then you ship it, it's like, oh, it's actually 150 and we charged your card without telling you or whatever, right?
	Nobody would shop there.
	So there's a limiter on how much any retailer, especially an e-tailer, is going to do with that kind of stuff.
	So, buried within the terms and conditions, there's one way of looking at it that says, well, if buried in the terms and conditions, there's a way of them saying, well, we might change our prices after the fact, we strive to be as accurate as possible, but blah, blah, blah.
	If you found out that that was in the terms and conditions, then you would not feel that there was a problem, or would you feel there was a problem?
	To be honest with you, I hadn't even thought of that, but you're right.
	You have to sign up for an account over at Amazon.
	Yeah, there are all these terms and conditions and so on.
	And this is a very interesting sort of natural versus positive law, right?
	Is the problem solved if you say, well, it's a total ripoff.
	I didn't pay for these things.
	I've already given them away. I've opened them.
	And then somebody says, oh, in the terms and conditions, in paragraph 720, there's this thing which says, would you then automatically feel like, oh, well, that's fine then, because then that's the contract?
	Or would you feel that that was not a good solution?
	Well, I would have to bend to the terms and conditions, because if I was If I'm willing enough to go there and sign up and not read what my responsibilities were and what their privileges were, then the outcome is my fault.
	Well, I still think that the outcome is their fault, but you have specific obligations in the thing that you check to, you know, the EULAs, the end-user license agreements that nobody reads, all these kinds of things that you have.
	But I think that you would feel that...
	There was a problem, and you would feel like this is sort of a rip-off, but I'm not sure that that feeling would immediately vanish the moment you saw the language.
	You'd say, well, it's a rip-off, and they covered their ass, those bastards, or something like that.
	Would that sort of be your experience, or would it be something else?
	Well, the question is, who's ripping off whom?
	I mean, they're the ones with the merchandise, and they're the ones that made the mistake, and I'm the one that gains by it.
	So who's ripping off whom?
	All they're saying is, we don't want to be taken, right?
	We don't want our merchandise just vanishing off the shelves from the stakes we make.
	So who's ripping off whom there?
	I mean, if they say, well, it was supposed to be priced at $30 and you got it for free, so we're going to charge you $30, are they really ripping off whom?
	Ripping me off? Well, not if they offer to pay the shipment to have it returned, you know, for no cost to you, that kind of stuff.
	I mean, there's a little bit of labor that you've sort of have to expend and so on, and you may have opened it or whatever.
	But I think the interesting question is, and this is why I think for me this issue is...
	Wait, do we have somebody else who wanted to sound in for this?
	Is there anyone else listed? No?
	Because, you know, I'm more than happy to hear other people's opinions before tossing my own out.
	Did anyone else click on that?
	Okay, well, again, I'm not going to give my opinion yet because I'd still want to hear other people's because I think this is a very interesting micro level of the kind of stuff that we talk about in this show.
	We accept as consumers that we have the right to reverse a transaction.
	We have the right, in a sense, to change the conditions of the sale.
	So, Christina and I, we bought an overhead projector.
	And we didn't like the way that it looked when you were just looking at text.
	It looked kind of fuzzy. Now, we didn't read the future-sharp fine print.
	We just knew, as consumers, that we have the right to reverse a transaction.
	Even though we've paid the money, we've signed the visa, we've accepted the goods, we've taken it home, we've unpacked it, we've done this and that, we assume as consumers that we have the right to reverse a transaction.
	And we have, I think, 30 days or something like that to do that.
	And... We assume that that, I mean for me at least, that right exists because I'm a consumer and I have the right to do it.
	But really I should think about it logically more in terms of I am an economic agent and if I make a mistake, if I buy a good and it turns out not to be what I want, And it also has happened that I have bought things and found that I don't need them, right? I remember buying an MP3 player because my existing one broke, and then when I just idly turned on my existing one, it worked again, so I took the MP3 player I'd bought back.
	Well, that's not the fault of FutureShop, right?
	I mean, I have just, on a whim, found that I don't need the good or whatever, so I bring it back.
	And I don't expect to be charged a penny.
	I don't expect any of these sorts of issues when I do that.
	And so I wonder if that's not a consumer versus a business thing, but just whether that's a reasonable or decent thing for human beings who interact economically.
	If I make a mistake, I assume that I have the full right to reverse and completely nullify the transaction, get my money back without a penny being shaved off, and have them basically check all of the doodads that are supposed to be in there and whatever, right?
	And then they're going to accept the loss if they have to sell it as an open item and lose the 10% or whatever.
	So I have the right for that as a consumer, and I wonder if it may not be just that if we look at sort of universally preferable behavior, you can't differentiate people into consumers and businesses, into sellers and buyers, because everyone in a transaction is a seller and a buyer, right?
	I'm buying the DVDs from Amazon, but they're buying my money from me with the DVDs.
	I mean, everybody's a buyer and a seller in every transaction.
	So I just wonder if it's to do with the contract or whether it's more universal than that, that if somebody does make a mistake in a transaction, if they have the right to reverse it within some sort of reasonable time frame.
	That was sort of the question that I have.
	And I don't have a really solid answer for it, but that was sort of where I was going.
	What do you think? Well, I don't really...
	I don't subscribe to the notion that we have a right to reverse the transaction.
	I mean...
	Maybe I'll put it this way.
	I would be shocked if FutureSharp really complained about my reversing the transaction.
	Well, that's an expectation, and I have that expectation with certain stores as well because they have stated policies, return policies.
	But the return policy that a store puts up isn't necessarily a right that I have as a consumer.
	No, I completely agree with that.
	I do totally agree with that, yeah.
	I used the wrong word, so yeah, an expectation.
	It's certainly not a right.
	So it may be true that people like to have that expectation that they can reverse their decisions within a certain period of reasonable time, but I don't think there should be an expectation on either the buyer or the seller's part.
	And that's where It's really where the contract becomes a necessity.
	So the membership agreement at Amazon or the ULANA piece of software or whatever, it's the one thing that answers all those implicit questions about who has what privileges and who has what rights.
	Yes. So if I have a basket of apples and you have a bushel of walnuts and we want to exchange them and we're not quite sure what to expect in the process of the exchange, then we would write something up saying, I'm going to give you all my apples and you're going to give me all your walnuts and then we're just going to part ways and that's going to be that.
	Right. Otherwise, I might expect, well, you know, if I don't like his walnuts, I'm going to take them back to his house after a week and expect my apples back, right?
	Right, right. Whereas he's thinking, whew, I got those apples, he's got those crummy walnuts, it's all over now, right?
	Right, right. So the agreement, to me, seems to be a necessity.
	I mean... That's the one thing we should expect, but the problem is, how do you keep them from getting so complex that nobody can trade anymore?
	Yes, no, that's right. I mean, you don't want to have a 90-page contract when you go and buy a jug of milk, right?
	So I consider 80 pages, sure, but not 90, because that's a tipping point.
	No, I certainly agree with that.
	I mean, my sort of thoughts on this are varied, and Christina and I had a very interesting chat about it last night, but my sort of thoughts about it are that There is, to me, a kind of humanity involved in people make mistakes, right? I mean, I think that forgiveness for error is pretty important in life, overall.
	And there's no sort of...
	I mean, Amazon wasn't like, oh man, these box set DVDs are really moving slowly.
	Let's pretend that they're free and then charge people for them.
	Because that's just really bad customer relations.
	They still have to pay for the shipping if people do return and so on.
	So, I mean, there's no sort of ill intent on...
	On Amazon's part, and this to me, I think, is a very interesting thing around DROs, right?
	Because contracts, I think, are fundamentally important around the issue of ill intent, right?
	I mean, if somebody just says, you know, give me 20 bucks and I'll ship you this watch, and they take your 20 bucks and they never had any intention of shipping you a watch, then, of course, you're in a tricky situation and do contract and so on.
	But, you know, genuine errors, you know, it's kind of like to take an extreme example, right?
	I mean, you are a manufacturer and you ordered a bunch of ball bearings from a manufacturing company in New Orleans in 2006.
	And then, you know, obviously the hurricane hit, Katrina hit, and the whole city was flooded.
	Do you then say, you know, one day after the contract and you don't get your ball bearings that you're going to sue You know, the ashen, broken remains of this business, right?
	Because that's kind of like an act of God, so to speak, or an accident or whatever.
	And I just, to me, it's an interesting question, to what degree do we have latitude for errors on people's parts, right?
	So I'm not saying this is you, but you can sort of get the image of a company that slips a digit on an advertisement, right?
	And it says $2.99 for this, I don't know, sound system, and it's $2.99, but it's supposed to be $299.
	And all these people come streaming in and say, ah, I have three bucks, give me my sound system.
	And, you know, righteous and thumping on the table and yelling at the manager and saying, it's printed right here, this kind of stuff.
	And that seems to me, and I'm not saying this has anything to do with you, this was sort of just my own thoughts on it, that seems to me a kind of scary world to live in, if that makes any sense.
	And, sorry, Christine, in your hand?
	You want to? I think if there's a flyer that says something costs $2.99 when in actual fact it's $299 and a bunch of customers float a store and they say, you know, we want this for $2.99, but before the store actually opened, the manager or the manufacturer realized that there was an error in the advertisement and they put up all these other counter-advertisements or corrections in their store window.
	They sent a speedy note to the newspaper to publish for the next day saying there was an error.
	It's not $2.99, it's $299.
	Then I think that that's a very different scenario.
	Well, I agree with that, but that's then not as much of an error.
	I mean, it's the big errors in a sense that we need to have more forgiveness for, if that makes any sense, because they've caught it then.
	And then they're sort of, let's just say somebody comes in, it's a new cashier from another country who has no idea of the price, and they sell like 50 of them for $2.99.
	The issue with Amazon is that they sold a bunch of items before they caught their error.
	Once the error was caught, then that's where the problem begins.
	I mean, for those people who they sold the items to for either zero dollars or for half the price, I'm not quite clear with zero dollars, right?
	So it's those people who paid no money for these items.
	That's where the issue is, not when the correction took place.
	After the correction took place, people were no longer being charged $0.
	So it's for the people who purchased these items for $0.
	And the issue is, should we honor the $0, right?
	I think you know where my opinion is, and just for all the listeners, I think, yeah, I think they should honor the $0.
	But go on with the reasons.
	I had a similar issue of I bought a television set, my very first television set, many, many, many years ago.
	I can actually tell you when, 1994.
	They were advertising it for $899.
	It was the 1995 model that was just out in 1994.
	And it was an electronics store, a big chain store here.
	I went, I purchased the television.
	I'd done my research. It was the one that I wanted.
	When the television came in and they delivered it to me, they called me up and said they would have to charge me more.
	I said, why is that? They said they made a mistake in their flyer.
	I said, well, that's not my mistake.
	I had the flyer. I had the picture.
	It actually showed the same picture.
	It showed the model. What they had wanted to do was they wanted to sell the 1994 model for the sale price of $899.
	The 1995 model was over $1,000.
	So I thought it was a great deal.
	And I was able to show the picture, take the advertisement to the manager.
	The manager then spoke to their customer relations or customer service or someone in their head office.
	And I managed to get the television for what it was offered.
	And I thought that that was the agreement.
	There was a contract there.
	This is what you're advertising it for.
	This is what I'm coming in to purchase.
	I'm showing you the picture, what I'm coming in to purchase.
	This is the TV I'm looking for.
	Please honor that agreement.
	And they did. And they did.
	Now, if I'd gone into the store and there were all these signs up saying, our mistake is an error, we are not...
	Then I would not have purchased the television.
	But after I'd purchased it to tell me that I owed them money, I just thought that that was wrong.
	Well, sure. I mean, but that was probably just a couple of people max, right?
	I mean, we're talking here about 10 or 20,000 people who got free DVDs.
	Right. But I'm sure it was much more manageable than what was going on for...
	I'm sorry, Rod, you had a question?
	Are you in at the moment? Can you hear me?
	Hello? Hello? My on?
	Yes. Greg, you're still in.
	Oh, I'm still on, too?
	Yeah, so we're going to get around Robin here.
	I hope this isn't crushingly dull to everyone.
	I do find it a very interesting question, and to me, there's a lot involved here.
	One more person wants in.
	Okay, we'll hear from Rod, and then we'll bring the other person in.
	Okay, is this thing working?
	Yes. Okay, thanks.
	I had a couple of...
	With the particular situation on Amazon where they sent this stuff out and now they're asking for money back, if this scenario was covered on their whatever user agreement that everyone says I agree to this when they sign up for an account, then I think that the entire issue is completely settled already.
	Whatever is in that agreement is the The original contract, so if it's not in the agreement and it just comes to them saying, could you please send this stuff back, I'd have to, as far as looking at this in a moral sense, I'd have to start looking at where does the force enter into this?
	Has anyone forced Amazon to send out a bunch of these DVDs to people?
	I don't really think so.
	You may even say it's kind of sneaky and underhanded that people said, oh boy, I'm going to get it for zero click, you know, and all that stuff.
	But so far, no one's really, you know, got and robbed them or anything.
	Now, if we had a, if we were living in kind of, you know, Libritopia right now, and we had DRO systems set up and everything is, Is functioning the way that we think is morally righteous and stuff like that according to our little model that we have going.
	Then we have the opportunity to have DRO ratings that could be enhanced by, say, a customer gets this request from Amazon saying, oh, shoot, we screwed up.
	I know that it's not covered by our contract, but would you be so kind as to allow us to charge your credit card for the original amount that was on the webpage that Originally advertised it and if you say yes, I agree to this then you know Amazon can notify your DRO company and say this This consumer is a really righteous dude give him another extra gold star on his account and then people will know that when they're dealing with this guy he's on the level he's very understanding he forgives mistakes he does the right thing you know and I think that would be like a positive way of reinforcing Doing the right thing,
	so to speak, it doesn't involve force, it doesn't involve anything, but it gives people an incentive to want to do the right thing.
	Can I just interrupt you for a sec?
	Because I think you're making a very interesting point, which is that if I am a consumer and any error that occurs in any interaction that I have with anyone else, if I always am going to demand that that be in my favor, no matter what, then companies that deal with me are going to have to have an extra layer or two of quality assurance, of testing everything.
	Whereas if I'm a bit more of a happy-go-lucky guy, then people are going to say, he's not a six sigma, you know,.0000001% error kind of guy.
	So in effect, I'm voluntarily going down the quality chain in return for additional cost reductions in what it is that people sell to me.
	So that is interesting that there may be the people then who demand that kind of high quality would pay a premium for it and the people who would accept more risk of problems would pay less money and that would sort of even things out.
	So I just sort of wanted to point out that that's sort of an interesting thing.
	The other thing I'd say is that it is kind of like without the whole DRO rating agency, we are in a kind of stateless society situation here.
	There's no chance whatsoever that Amazon is going to go and sue its customers and there's very little chance that the customers are going to launch a lawsuit against Amazon.
	So we're kind of in a very interesting DRO type model here without the ancillary benefits that real libertopian society would have.
	But this is a sort of interesting negotiated kind of thing because there is probably not going to be any force involved in the resolution of these things.
	Also, I think that when I was talking about the extra gold stars or brownie points or whatever you would call it on your DRO contract or your ratings, that provides almost another currency which is reputation.
	That's extremely important in a free society.
	Reputation is It's probably the most important thing that you might have in a free society where you're not dealing with people.
	When you're dealing with people across the country or completely anonymous people across the internet, the only way that you're going to be able to trust anyone in a free society that doesn't have these crazy dudes with guns that are ready to bust down any door at your beck and call Then you might have to go with the, you know, kind of like the eBay star rating system.
	You look at the feedback and you say, this guy looks like he's on the up and up.
	I know that I have very little recourse if this guy completely shafts me on eBay.
	I mean, I've actually been completely ripped off on eBay before.
	There's really not much I can do about it.
	Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah.
	That pump wasn't really small enough.
	No, what I did was I basically offered nude photos of myself, but what I did was it was just my head on a llama's body, but the llama definitely had no clothing on it, so a lot of people misunderstood that, so sorry.
	But go on. Right, but you know, I mean, eBay is kind of like anarchy.
	There's very little recourse for me save going to find this guy and aiming a gun at his head saying, I want my money back.
	But I also had an opportunity to check his feedback and this guy had figured out a way to gain the system by getting false feedback.
	But anyway, the point is that the reputation is going to become one of the most important currencies in a free society, I think.
	Yeah, it's very interesting.
	I myself am a little bit more happy-go-lucky this way because I return stuff and I, in a sense, reverse contracts.
	And to me, I don't do that just because it's the letter of the law.
	For me, the liberties that I take myself in economic transactions, I'm willing to grant the other person.
	The law or the contract reflects the right thing to do.
	The contract does not define the right thing to do.
	For me, just based on universally preferable behavior and empathy, I certainly, as everybody knows who tries to I'm an error dude,
	right? Hurting them isn't the easiest thing in the world.
	So I myself, and especially because I'm a self-taught computer guy, errors are just, you know, boy, who'd even want to start listing them?
	So for me, the contract that I have with someone, there's a spirit of the law that...
	That drives the letter of the law.
	The letter of the law does not define for me the right and the wrong.
	So for me, since I take the liberties to make mistakes, quote, in my life in general and particularly in economic transactions, right?
	So I've quit jobs.
	I've returned goods.
	I've done all of these kinds of things wherein I've just...
	I've changed my mind and reversed because I've made an error or I've changed my mind or circumstances have changed or whatever.
	And so because I take that, and I don't take that because the contract allows me to do that.
	I take that because I accept that there are mistakes in life and, you know, for me, okay, I don't want my surgeon to be drunk and there are certain things that I, you know, I don't want my pilot to be, you know, blindfolded, but there are errors in life.
	So for me... Given that I accept those errors within myself, it would be for me at least, it's just my personal opinion, it would be kind of churlish for me to say, well, you people can't make any errors and if you do, you must pay for every single one of them, right?
	Sorry, I'll just finish this point up quickly.
	So for me, the contract reflects the spirit and the spirit is that since I take the right to reverse a transaction, I grant that right to other people as well.
	And the contract for me is less important.
	The contract reflects The freedoms that I want in a contract, but the freedoms then that I'm willing to grant other people in a contract as well.
	To me, it's a mirror.
	Every freedom I take for myself, I logically have to grant to others.
	And whatever the contract is doesn't define that relationship for me.
	It reflects those values for me.
	Anyway, that's sort of the end of my spiel.
	Well, I was just going to ask, Ben, putting that philosophy into play in your own life, Ben, you recuse yourself from transacting with anyone who doesn't engage in the same sort of rules, correct? No, no, not at all.
	I mean, it's not that case at all.
	So, for instance...
	I don't say that...
	I mean, if a pilot flew a plane as well as I update my RSS feeds, I would never fly on that airline, right?
	So there are different standards, right?
	And if I drove my car with the same degree of quality that I update my RSS feeds, then I would be in a ditch in 30 seconds, right?
	So for me, the quality has a lot to do with the downside, right?
	So the downside of a pilot making an error is considerably greater than Amazon shipping the wrong DVD to someone, right?
	Or what harm does it really do if, you know, once a week I screw up an RSS feed, you know, of the 20 or 30 that I sort of post and edit?
	What harm does it really do?
	It doesn't really do a huge deal.
	It's a bit inconvenient for people, but it's no problem.
	No huge hell. So for me, it has a lot to do with the downside of things that is where the risk involves.
	I would never say that people in every walk of life have to have exactly the same amount of error tolerance I have.
	Sorry, go ahead. That's not exactly what I'm asking though.
	What I'm saying though is that you would seek out other merchants or other retailers or To bring it back to the original story, that offered that sort of thing as a privilege to its customers or offered that sort of thing in the contracts that it wrote up for its transactions,
	right? So someplace like Amazon, you'd avoid doing business there if you If it didn't include such things as, well, if we make an error, then we'll leave it in your favor.
	Well, no. I would prefer, just as everyone would, I'd prefer to get everything for free.
	I would prefer to have a completely one-sided contract where I could return everything up to two years later, and they could never reverse a single transaction the moment that it had gone through.
	It's just that, logically for me, I don't think that I could support that.
	If I want to have the right to return a good up to 30 days, then I'm not sure how I could deny the right to the person that I was dealing with to have that same privilege, I guess.
	I mean, if I can unilaterally alter the terms of the contract within 30 days after signing it, I'm not sure how I could deny that right to the person that I'm dealing with.
	Right, and so you'd expect that of the merchants that you shopped with?
	Sure. Okay, well that's really all I was kind of wondering was, you know, That goes not only for yourself, but for everyone you deal with in terms of transactions.
	For sure, yeah. For sure.
	The question is, though, at what point does...
	At what point does it stop being a mistake and start being malicious?
	I just read this.
	Somebody wrote this and I thought it was kind of funny because I think it ties into what we're saying here.
	These discussions go on for pages and pages on the internet.
	People really are getting into this and I think it's because they recognize that there's a deep and valuable principle at the heart of this, whether I'm having any luck with it or not is up to you.
	Somebody wrote here, it says, I charge Amazon with bait and switch as well as attempted mass murder.
	I, along with everyone else, has been damaged in our heart and souls.
	I have even heard reports of people dying from broken hearts.
	And the reason I think that's funny is because it is a bunch of DVDs, right?
	And so I think that the flexibility there is fair enough, right?
	If somebody comes in and pretends to be a surgeon and takes the money and then cuts people's, you know, I don't know, like just cuts into people and kills them, then clearly there's greed and malevolence at work there as well.
	But I would say that Amazon's been around for, what, like 10 years?
	This is the first time I've heard of this kind of stuff, although I do remember reading about Staples a couple of years ago in the US, I think it was.
	It was supposed to be $5 off a purchase order for $50.
	It was a coupon code. But unfortunately, it was $50 off $50.
	So again, it was sort of free.
	People entered their coupon code, and it was like everything became free.
	And they ended up saying to everyone who bought using that, of course, everyone emailed it around, and it got to be a real, as I'm sure happened with this Amazon thing, right, where people are saying, my God, you get all these free box sets.
	Just do this over at Amazon, and here it is, right?
	But they just said to people, look, you have to pay for these things or you have to return them because this was an error.
	And so, you know, office supplies, DVDs, not the end of the world, right?
	Fifty bucks for a box set, who knows, right?
	Maybe a hundred bucks. So for me, there's a certain amount of latitude in that.
	But, you know, there's not a lot of latitude in other things, right?
	Like driving a car or flying a plane or, you know, doing surgery and so on.
	And so where the expectation for quality, which would be sort of rational, does not meet with the achievement of the quality or the difference isn't communicated, I think that would be sort of malevolent.
	That kind of makes sense to me then.
	It depends on what it is you're transacting.
	No matter how good a reputation a doctor has, all it takes is one mistake and you're done.
	I have an uncle who was not only a bomber and fighter pilot in World War II, but became a commercial aviation dude after the war.
	In the early 70s, he was landing a Boeing 747.
	And he blacked out for about four or five seconds, came to, and landed the plane flying, but he was never allowed to fly again.
	Whereas if you're a computer programmer and you black out for four or five seconds, actually, if it's not four or five days, people probably won't even notice because you're kind of immobile to begin with, right?
	But there's certain fault tolerances, I guess, that are different depending on what's occurring.
	And, of course, you and I don't sign a contract With the pilot, right?
	I mean, we certainly could probably end up suing, even in a free society, if they regularly covered up evidence of substance abuse on the part of the pilot and, you know, whatever.
	I mean, it underpaid him because he was a damaged goods.
	Then, yeah, we could do that kind of stuff.
	Or if there were priests...
	Oh, wait, that's different. Oh, no, actually, they did sue the Catholic Church.
	Lost billions of dollars for those priests that they kept shipping around to.
	So for me, I think there are certain rational expectations of quality that are implicit based upon the importance of what's going on.
	And there, I think, we have the right to sort of expect higher standards of quality.
	But this one, I think, where the negative consequences are fairly minimal.
	Rightly or wrongly, I sort of put myself in the shoes of whoever screwed up over there.
	For me, it's not a huge leap of imagination to imagine screwing up, so I can sort of put myself in those shoes fairly easily.
	I've been there a number of times.
	It's the, oh my god, what have I done?
	Blood drains from your face and so on.
	Pretty much every second, podcasts like that for me.
	For me, there's a certain gentleness to this kind of stuff.
	We all make mistakes.
	There's a reason why I'm not an airplane pilot.
	I go into software where you can keep correcting things.
	Actually, that's It brings up kind of another interesting aspect to this when you put it in those terms.
	When I started out myself in IT, I had a number of moments of mortality myself where, you know, you issue the wrong command on the console and all of a sudden, you know, three weeks worth of client output vanishes, that sort of thing.
	So, But it was that terminal to me, that critical to me, because my boss's We're that upset about it, because their bosses were that upset about it, because the clients were that upset about it, because of delayed output and stuff.
	Jobs had to be rerun, and the company had to eat the billing time on the computers and all that.
	So had there been more, I guess, tolerance From the people making the purchase in the first place, then the degree of pressure and stress down at the bottom of that pile wouldn't have been as significant Maybe even leading to less error?
	I don't know. Well, I wonder.
	I mean, there's always a real balance in life, right?
	I mean, it's certainly the case, as we all know, that if we change the speed limit to five miles an hour, there would be no traffic fatalities at all, rather than the tens of thousands a year that there are in North America.
	So we all absolutely know that everything in life is a trade-off.
	And quality is very expensive, right?
	High quality is very expensive.
	And what is the right level of quality for everyone?
	Well, who knows, right? I mean, you and I don't spend our entire days eating wheatgrass and going to the gym, which might add a certain amount of time to our life, but, you know, that's what they say.
	It's not like you live forever. It just feels like forever.
	So there's a certain kind of balance in life between quality and cost, which we sort of are all fairly aware of.
	And that aspect of things is important.
	And the other thing that I'd sort of say about that is that I think that excellence as a whole is generally achieved through positive motivation, not through fear.
	I mean, I have no problem with quality as a whole.
	I try and put out a good show and so on, and sometimes I get hyper-obsessive about editing out the errs and the ums.
	But the reason that I enjoy doing these shows is because I have a positive motivation.
	I want to do a good show and to sort of do the right thing and communicate in the right way, at least what it is that I'm trying to get across in a way that's, you know, energetic and entertaining and satisfying to me at least.
	But not because I'm terrified that people are going to get mad at me if I do a bad show.
	And I think my particular issue with the realm of quality is that quality is so often inflicted rather than encouraged.
	And I think that is what I think you were getting at, right?
	That it was terror that drove quality and that kind of paranoia.
	To me, it's a very high price to pay in terms of happiness and satisfaction to just be continually afraid that something's going to go wrong.
	It's really a stressful and negative way to live, and I'm not sure it adds a huge amount to optimization.
	It certainly may add to quality, but does it do so at the degree that other things slow down and become inefficient?
	I don't know, but I just don't like the whole fear aspect of that kind of quality, and I think that a lot of the stuff that I was reading on these Amazon threads We're about, you know, those rich capitalist bastards, you know, what does it matter?
	They make a mistake. Too bad for them.
	Sucks to be there. And it's just like a really entitled aggressive consumerism.
	And I think that that's dangerous because the people at Amazon don't care, but the people who are making these kinds of posts, what happens when they make a mistake in their life, right?
	Well, they have to become terrified because that's kind of the mental seeds that they've sown in the world.
	Right, and that's why they react that way on those boards.
	Because that's the kind of world that they've lived with.
	Now it's their turn to Somebody here has just posted that they get mad and take down the site whenever I release a boring podcast.
	What do you think happened last weekend?
	Well, I certainly appreciate that sentiment, but if it's been a year and a half now and it only happened once, I'm either impressed by my quality or your lack of discerning taste.
	Probably the latter. So...
	I think the Jennycast were some of the best podcasts ever, someone has mentioned.
	I really appreciate that, and I know that I didn't do much podcasting last week.
	I'm spending too much time working out loud on my podcast for myself, which is about the future of the show and all of that.
	But I certainly did gear up some energy for the Jennycasts, without a doubt, and I certainly did enjoy them.
	I'm sorry that I read through her post so quickly.
	I was listening to them back here.
	With Christina, and I'm sorry that you had to head to the board to get anything coherent.
	I was reading so fast it actually turned into a kind of proto-faxing at one point.
	So sorry about that.
	But yes, I was certainly pleased with how they came about.
	And I certainly agree that...
	Well, I certainly do enjoy it when I get the giggles.
	Somebody put up the award for Best Maniacal Laughter for Jennyism Part 2, so I certainly appreciate that.
	Now, post-modernism, We can go into this if you want, but you can certainly...
	I'll just touch on it very briefly.
	I did a fair amount of work on this for the novel.
	The God of Atheists available for donations of $50 or more.
	But postmodernism, you can see a lot of it in Jenny's posts.
	And I'm not trying to pick on Jenny when she's an 18-year-old girl.
	I feel like I'm sort of Kicking sand in the face of a girl guide, but there is a lot of postmodernism in her posts, right?
	So everything is read for context.
	Everything is subjective.
	Everything is interpretation.
	There's sort of no objective reality that compares to that you can ever do in postmodernism.
	I'm sorry for those who haven't been up on the latest podcast, but the compare to what that you can do in postmodernism is only ever other people's opinions Or other people's opinions in the past, right?
	So that is sort of a reading for context was a very big thing that Jenny was talking about in her posts, and that's something that is very common in postmodernism, that it's not objective truth and it's not any comparison to reality or even to logic.
	The only thing that you do is you're comparing one person's thoughts To another person's thoughts, or as I talk about in The God of Atheists, about the academic, that he had been, quote, compared and contrasted into a kind of intellectual jellyfish, able to take the shape of almost any fashionable container.
	And that, of course, the compared to is compare and contrast this thinker to this thinker.
	And, of course, it's never to objective logic or external reality.
	So postmodernism is a real navel-gazing vortex of almost sinister non-existence in the modern academic world.
	And it was one of the things that It propelled me out of the academic world like a cork off a shaken champagne bottle.
	So that was one of the aspects that I really found very strongly.
	Let's see here. She could be here.
	The laughter was great, just as the cry is, but not 35 seconds of it.
	I think that's great.
	You guys want to ration my laughter.
	You know, it is called a fast-forward.
	It's all completely available to you, but I'm not really going to have any luck when that kind of giggle strikes me, putting an hourglass or a sand hourglass on my dashboard and saying, oh, I better stop laughing because it's been more than 30 seconds.
	Yeah, I found out just 18.
	I found out a little bit later.
	Of course, she did talk a fair amount more mature and so on.
	Yeah. Well, I find that kind of, actually kind of startling, because that means she's like just out of high school, right?
	Yes, yes, I think so.
	So, that means that she must have picked up most of that while in high school.
	Well, it could be, but you never know, right?
	She could come from an academic family.
	She might have five older brothers who are taking postmodern philosophy at the graduate level.
	I mean, there could be any number of things that she would have had exposure to.
	Without a doubt, she's an extraordinarily intelligent and linguistically skilled person, as I mentioned in the podcast, and I certainly hope.
	That she will take a shot at talking with us further, but I highly, highly doubt it.
	I haven't heard from her in a couple of days ever since I asked her to define the state and capitalism, or at least what she meant by those terms, and also to confirm whether she felt that violence was a good or a bad way of human beings resolving their disputes.
	I haven't heard back from her, and I think that's probably quite telling, so I doubt that we will, or if we do, it's going to be a really angry image.
	It's going to be a really angry email or post about the Jannaism cast, but we shall see.
	I just find it kind of interesting that that much...
	That much could be gleaned from high school.
	She could be going to private school, too, but for sure, this is not typical high school curriculum, for sure.
	And she also, as Christina pointed out, she might have graduated early.
	She might be in her first and second year of university if she graduated at 16.
	That's possible. Unfortunate, but possible.
	All right, so I'm certainly happy to thank so much for the people who participated in that.
	I am glad that other people found it vaguely interesting, because I thought it was quite fascinating.
	Cephathus, I think, had a question, so I'm going to just pop him up briefly, and then we shall continue.
	Let me just move on to listening, and...
	Sorry that we didn't get to all of the Ask a Therapist questions, but we will in the next round get to those that we didn't get to on Friday.
	Mr. Nate. Yes.
	How's it going? Pretty good.
	I'm actually painting while I'm listening to this.
	With your teeth? Yes, with my teeth.
	Excellent. Excellent. Try not to use too many consonants.
	Um... I guess I'll read what I just sent you.
	I'm having a lot of problems putting all of this...
	I think I posted the long list of relationship podcasts and everything I've read so far from Ayn Rand to Nathaniel Brandon and, you know, advice from my own therapist and, I mean, my former therapist, I guess, now that I can't afford him.
	I'm trying to put this whole curiosity thing into practice and it just seems almost as if every time I think about it, it's either too late or too early and then once I'm in the moment, actually making that happen is very difficult.
	Can you think of an example?
	Well, like talking to my girlfriend, or talking to my friend Mark, or even my other friend Maisie, I just kind of, if anything hits on certain values or anything like that, I get kind of overwhelmed with anxiety and stage fright kind of, and I just forget everything, kind of like how I am when I take tests.
	Right. I just sort of forget everything, all the rules that I posted on and all the advice I've been given, everything.
	It all wipes out of my mind and gets overwhelmed with anxiety and so I forget everything and then I just start into this, either I start into a diatribe or I just say everything wrong and I can't say anything right.
	Right, right. No, I certainly understand that.
	I mean, that's not uncommon when you start to try on sort of really unusual ideas for yourself or new ideas.
	There is a period of gangly, almost Tourette's-like teenage awkwardness that goes through that process of learning about new ideas, trying to put them into practice.
	The thing that I would suggest is that the certainty that allows you to act in an integrated manner without feeling overwhelmed, and look, it certainly has never ended for me, and I doubt it ever will end.
	When you come across a really strong personality who has really opposite values, I find it hard, even it's like standing up in a hurricane.
	I do find it hard, especially when that person has all of the weight of We're good to go.
	Who supports the troops? Whoever says, I don't support the troops.
	Whenever you have a large amount of cultural inertia or an avalanche of mental habit coming down a hill, it's really hard to stand up in front of that, and I don't think particularly necessary.
	The one thing that I would say is that you need to have integrity with how you feel.
	If you feel doubt, In a particular moment, it is honest to share that with people, right?
	So let's say that you come across somebody and they say, well, I think that we should do our very best to help the poor and government is the only thing to do that.
	And at that moment, they say it with such conviction and such passion that you feel yourself falling into line with that opinion or that perspective.
	Well, I would say that there's no point trying to pretend to have a sword when you don't have a sword.
	That just gets you mauled in a fight.
	So the honest thing to do there is to say, you speak this very forcefully, and I find myself agreeing with you, but I feel confused and doubtful about my reaction.
	That is the kind of really rigorous honesty that means that you don't end up having to pretend We all want to be Howard Rook.
	We all want to be John Galt.
	We all want to be these kinds of heroes who experience no doubt, who gaze with cool, contemptuous, icy glares at anybody who displeases them or who disagrees with them or anything like that.
	But I don't think that's a literary ideal.
	That's a dramatic ideal.
	That's not how human beings really work.
	I mean, Ayn Rand is criticized for this, and she herself would criticize herself for this and say, look, I'm not trying to portray life as it is.
	My characters, as she repeatedly said, are not prescriptions for action.
	They're not recipes on how to live.
	And Nathaniel Brandon talks about that, that people misinterpret the romantic and idealistic style of Ayn Rand and say, I need to be like Howard Rourke to be a good person.
	And she would say, no, that's not...
	You may say to yourself, what would Howard Rourke do?
	And that might give you some way of synthesizing the philosophy, but the important point is not to imitate Howard Rourke or not to imitate a kind of certainty that you don't have.
	So if you meet someone and they're bowling you over with their hostility towards this, that, or the other, If you want to engage with them, and there's no reason why you have to, I mean, we don't have to be slaves to truth, right?
	Slaves to freedom. Nobody wants that kind of contradiction.
	But you simply be honest with them and say, you're really blowing my ideas away, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I really do feel confused about it.
	Tell me more about what you think, and let me tell you about what I think, and then don't just necessarily talk about ideas, but talk about the feelings that you're having as well and say, I have these ideas that are very much out of the mainstream, and I find that they're like, They're like eels in my hand.
	They're like greased eels in my hand.
	Anytime I stop staring at them, they squirm away and disappear into the water and I can't find them again.
	And then when people go away and I sit down and read, then they come back and it's really weird to be in this situation where I believe things that are very different from what just about everyone else believes and they come on very strong and I lose track of my beliefs and then they come back again and then I feel really certain about them and then I really doubt them again.
	And I think that kind of honesty is where to go to, right?
	You can't be curious.
	Curiosity is just the final form of honesty, right?
	Because the first thing you need to be is curious about your own reactions in that moment, not about what the other person is putting out.
	I see. The hard part about all of that is actually remembering all of it in the moment.
	Well, I agree with you, but what you're trying to do is to hide something from people.
	Is that fairly fair to say?
	Yeah, I guess I was...
	And in this past case, I was hiding my anxiety and just trying to convey the ideas instead of just being honest.
	Right, right. And again, you are not conscripted into the army of the truth-tellers, right?
	This is not your job. This is not your responsibility.
	And of course, even if you were conscripted into the army of truth-tellers, What you would have to do is connect with people first.
	You can't change people's minds unless you connect with them.
	And you can't connect with them if you're trying to be something other than you're not.
	Authenticity and vulnerability and emotional openness and accessibility and honesty Are the ways to connect with people and you will never be able to change anybody's mind unless you connect with them.
	But even if you do connect with them, there's no guarantee that you're going to change their mind.
	In fact, you may connect with something really horrible in them and then run the other way, which is also a good thing to do, though not easy.
	So the only thing to remember is that if you're feeling it, you should...
	And you feel safe enough, right?
	Again, you're not conscripted now to tell everyone everything that's going on in your personality.
	But if you are in a conversation...
	Don't feel that you need to get your ideas across.
	It's totally fine to blank out, but if you want to stay in the conversation, just be honest.
	It's hard to remember a recipe, but it's easy to remember to speak your mind and to speak your heart.
	There's no sequence of things like you get to glance at this recipe once and now you have to go and remember everything and cook it.
	Well, of course, that's never going to work and that's going to create a lot of anxiety because you're trying to achieve an effect with people.
	But the only way that I've ever found to be effective in my communication with people is to try and be as honest as I can about everything that's going on in my mind and in my heart and to be curious about What's going on with other people?
	That's not a recipe, right?
	That's more of a process to just be honest and open.
	You may also be feeling hesitation because you fear attack from people, but you don't want to stay in limbo about that.
	You want to be vulnerable with people, right?
	You want to run towards them with open arms, and that way, if they throw spears at you, you can start running the other way and not have any regrets.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	I need to write all this down.
	Don't worry, we're taping. But no, I mean, I'm not saying any of this is easy, but it's not a recipe.
	Like, if I say this or I say that, then it's going to work.
	You don't have to memorize it like a script.
	But if you're feeling something strong...
	At the moment, it feels like you have to sidestep it or pretend to be something else or overcome it either with aggression or with compliance or with confusion or with anxiety.
	But if you simply communicate and say, you know, the way that we're talking about this stuff is really frying my brain, I'm really feeling confused and I'm not even sure why, then that's an honest thing.
	And people will either explore it with you or they won't.
	But at least you won't be pretending to be anything other than who you are.
	Right. Did you have anything you wanted to say?
	You know, the one thing that I say to my clients all the time when they're faced with situations where they feel anxiety or where they feel something quite strongly, like usually it's either it's anxiety or some kind of anger that they're feeling, is just to be aware that they're feeling this emotion and to just name it and say, you know, I'm feeling a little anxious in this moment.
	And I'm not sure why.
	You don't even have to know why.
	You just need to know that you're feeling anxious.
	Or you know what? I feel a little angry and I don't know why.
	Or I feel a lot angry. Or I'm really angry and I'm not sure why.
	I don't know if it's something about me.
	I don't know if something that you said.
	I just don't know why. But the situation is making me kind of angry.
	And you name the situation and you get away from the content.
	And you can talk about the interaction, because it's probably the interaction that's more an issue than the content.
	The people are probably trying to force their views upon you, and they're not listening to what it is that you're trying to say, or maybe that's how you're feeling or perceiving it, but it would be a good idea to explore that.
	Right, and the problem is when they do that, I end up doing the same thing in return.
	I end up forcing my views or Oh, there's my phone.
	Well, as you answer this phone, just remember the whole point is to win, win, win at all costs.
	no prisoners right I don't sure if you are you going to answer your phone or are you going to chat No, I... Well, you can sing with me now.
	Anything you can say, I can say louder.
	Something like that. Right.
	No, I ended up hitting ignore on that.
	This morning I kind of got in a bit of a rough conversation with my girlfriend and it was really all a bad approach on my part and she was not upset about what I was saying but how I was saying it and I would just kind of I kind of I've shifted into this stern talking,
	preaching type thing just out of my own anxiety and not really thinking about how I was feeling or anything like that.
	And normally if I were to say how I was feeling to her, she would be all concerned about that.
	Not about the idea itself.
	She's more concerned about personal things than any of these ideas at all.
	She's really more concerned about the relationship and personal stuff.
	She's kind of like Christina seems to be in a way.
	She's not really all that fascinated with the whole political thing.
	I would say about the conversation that you had this morning, if you don't mind answering your question, when she started talking to you and telling you, look, I just don't like the way you're talking to me right now, or the tone of voice that you've taken, I'm not sure how she communicated that to you.
	I assume she did, because you're telling us that that's what she had a problem with.
	What was your response to that?
	I actually didn't respond.
	I went to take a shower and I simply avoided it, and that was the case.
	But if you can't avoid, it's very important to be clean.
	Right. I went to take a shower, and I thought about what she was saying.
	It had to do with an encounter with a cop last night who sort of let us go.
	And she thought, oh, well, that means some cops are nice guys, you know, it's just like, and my thoughts in my head were about, well, okay, after a couple of pints of beer over a period of two hours, I could have still gotten, you know, but I didn't actually say all that.
	that.
	I just was like, well, if that's the – if I had actually been – let's see, how do how do I word this?
	If the – what was I saying?
	Okay, we can't The cop let us go.
	I kind of compared it to if we encountered a thug in an alley and he was busy beating up another guy for his money and he let us go, then that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a nice guy.
	He just was busy doing other things.
	So I kind of tried to compare it to that, but that was after the shower, and you know, after I thought about it some, and then I just kind of, instead of explaining how anxious I was, I just kind of went out of control and started into a bunch of metaphors.
	And how did that work?
	That got me in big trouble.
	Right, right. No, look, I can totally understand this.
	And how long have you been seeing this go for?
	How long have I what?
	I've been seeing this go for. Oh, it's been about a month, but it's been very, very productive.
	I mean, as far as, you know, tackling all the things up front go.
	Right, right. Well, look...
	This journey is a process and you guys are getting to know each other and you're exploring lots of other things than your opinions about the state and about cops and this and that and the other.
	And the only thing that I would suggest is that if you accept that she could be possibly the right woman for you for life, let's just say.
	I don't mean to sort of pass sentence or anything like that.
	If you accept that it's possible, and of course if you don't accept that it's possible, then you might not want to date her, right?
	Because, you know, nobody's getting any younger around here.
	If it's possible that this is the right woman for you for the rest of your life, then you have all the time in the world to turn her against cops.
	There's no reason to rush it.
	You can gently turn this ship around over the course of a decade.
	You can let things go.
	And that was one of the hardest lessons for me to learn in the realm of philosophy, was the value of letting things go.
	I sort of felt, I don't know if you feel this way, but I sort of felt when I was first talking philosophy, when I say that, I mean, for the first 15 years of my philosophical existence...
	That if I let one thing go, right, and one comment go unresponded to and unhammered into and this and that, that I was getting some seriously excessive naughty points in the realm of philosophy, right? That I was sort of like the catcher in the rye.
	Like, if one gets by, it's the worst thing ever, right?
	And I don't think that's important.
	If somebody says to you, well, it just goes to show you that some cops are nice, you can say, yeah, it's possible.
	Or you can say, yeah, that's interesting, tell me more.
	You don't have to say a shred about your own opinion on it.
	Because... The best way, and again, I'm not always the best at doing this, but the best way to change people's minds is to really try and listen to them as much as possible.
	I obsess over the feedback that I get about the show, and I'm always trying to fine-tune it to be more in touch with the issues that are important to people.
	If your girlfriend says to you, I really want to have sex with Bill Clinton because he's the second coming or something, and he's the best guy ever.
	Well, maybe not that first part, but she says, you know, Bill Clinton's the best guy ever.
	I can't wait for Hillary to get in.
	Just say, well, that's interesting. Tell me more.
	You've got all the time in the world.
	If she's the right person for you, you have all the time in the world to change her mind about these things.
	And it will take a long time.
	Christine and I are still having conversations about various aspects.
	And of course, you have to be open to have your mind changed as well.
	When this woman was on last week, this woman who was talking about theosophy and past lives and this and that, hey, I'm totally open to having my mind changed.
	If she can show me some peer-reviewed scientific stuff, fantastic.
	I am so wild.
	I mean, geez, past lives, wouldn't that be the coolest thing ever?
	And so maybe we're all wrong.
	And this is very important to remember, right?
	This is the scientific method.
	Everything is always open to question.
	Everything is always open to review.
	The methodology is not open to review, but the conclusions are open to review.
	So maybe we've all missed something, or maybe I've missed something, let's just put it to me.
	Maybe I've missed something completely and totally important about the state and about cops or soldiers or whatever, welfare programs.
	And so, I'm totally, hey, anybody wants to reopen that question with me, fantastic, let's go to it.
	Now, they don't get to say, God exists because I have faith, right?
	But hey, if somebody wants to take a stab at proving the existence of God, fantastic.
	Nobody gets to change the methodology, but if she goes and says, you know, well, this proves that there's nice cops in the world, right?
	Well, just say, tell me more.
	How does it prove it?
	You don't have to change her mind.
	You don't have to make her into a photocopy of you in order to be with her.
	This flexibility, which was never possible in your family, because this is family scar tissue.
	I can guarantee that. We're good to go.
	And you don't want to let that sort of come out into your current relationships.
	You don't want to turn into that kind of claustrophobic guy.
	And it's like, oh, did somebody say something positive about cops in the room?
	I think I heard something. I mean, I'm at a party and there are 500 people talking, but I think I heard the words cops and good.
	Hey, who's talking? Turn this music off.
	I'm not saying I'm just parodying, but don't turn into that guy.
	Maybe there's a great proof out there that cops are the best thing ever.
	We've just never thought of it. Nobody gets to change the methodology, logic and reality and consistency and so on, but you don't want to get fixed on the conclusions, right?
	You don't want to be rigid about conclusions.
	You want to be rigid about the methodology in the way that scientists are, but the moment we become rigid about the conclusions, we choke the life out of what it is, I think, that we're trying to do.
	And so you can let things go, you can be curious, you can be open to being wrong, but don't end up being in this situation where difference is threat, if that makes any sense.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah, I'm just hoping I didn't...
	It seems like every time I fail at this whole application of this, that I end up Creating a problem because of it or some sort of argument or some sort of frustration on her part or she, I mean the same thing can happen in reverse but it seems like more often than not it's me trying to attempt at applying all of this stuff and then Failing at it and then screwing something up as a result.
	Right. So for every solution that you get from this kind of philosophy, you create another problem, right?
	So I'm sure that's kind of frustrating.
	I mean, that's really, really frustrating.
	And it may be that the thing to do is to take a month or two off from philosophy, right?
	I mean, it's not going anywhere.
	It's like I used to feel when I was younger, like if I'm sick, I can't take any time off from going to the gym.
	Because if the moment I take time off from going to the gym, I'm never going back.
	But that's it. Like I'm gonna be 300 pounds and I'm gonna die in three years, right?
	So the stakes were pretty high.
	But you can quite easily take time off from philosophy.
	I mean, you've done amazing and very intense work on yourself since March of last year.
	I mean, that's 10 months, 11 months of solid going at it, right?
	There's absolutely no reason why you can't take some time off, right?
	So there's no reason why you can't say, okay, you know, for the next month or two months, I'm going to not talk about philosophy with my girlfriend.
	There's no reason why.
	I mean, you can trust that your true self is going to get you to the right place.
	But if you're trying to, you know, I know you're going through some career excitements, some financial challenges, you've got a new relationship on your hands, you're trying to work through all this philosophical stuff, you've just defued.
	I mean, dude, you've got to respect that your plate can get too full.
	You can't try and do everything at once.
	You will end up just being frustrated and confused and it's not going to work out, right?
	You've got to manage The number of plates you've got spinning on sticks in your hands, right?
	You don't have any appendages left to take on more.
	So I would say that when your plate is getting too full, and again, this is stuff that you were never taught when you were a kid, right?
	People just loaded stuff on you and you were never allowed to complain or change things, but I wouldn't try and do everything at once.
	It really is a recipe for things either failing or you not enjoying the success, one of the two.
	Right, that's definitely true.
	I think right now the only thing that's vitally important to me is learning how to communicate, or relearning, or not even relearning, actually learning from scratch what I should have learned countless number of years ago.
	Trying to communicate with people and relearn the curiosity that was just probably I mean, that was actually beaten out of me verbally or in any other way.
	Right. And the stakes are pretty high right now because you really like this girl and you really are taking on a lot of challenges in your life.
	But if you're trying to do too much, it's sort of like trying to write an exam when you've got bats flying at your head all the time and flies.
	You know, the... The ceiling is creaking, and you're not sure if things are going to collapse, and you're trying to concentrate, and you're sweating.
	It's just something's got to give, right?
	And I would say that the thing that you have most control over is to take a break, at least from talking about philosophy with your girlfriend, and recognize that she is, and again, this is going to sound horribly sexist, but this is just my opinion, right?
	I'm not saying this is proven. Women are less interested in politics and philosophy and economics than men are.
	You just need to look at the Nobel Prizes for some indication of this, right, by gender.
	And for her to become as interested as you are in philosophy and economics and politics and so on is like asking you to become as interested in the things that more women are interested in, like, you know, deep...
	Actually, we're interested in relationships here as well.
	What are women interested in?
	Shopping? Shopping, cleanliness, propriety, the approval of relatives, you know, this sort of stuff.
	I mean, you're not going to turn into a woman, she's not going to turn into a man.
	There's absolutely no problem with you guys having different spheres of influence, sorry, different spheres of interests.
	You don't have to drag her into your hobbies, she doesn't have to drag you into hers.
	You do have to have some basic agreement on principles, but The issue is not whether you both hate cops.
	That's not going to be enough to sustain a relationship.
	You're going to have to recognize that.
	This stuff threatens people.
	For sure, you want to build up your credibility with your lady friend before exposing her to some of the more challenging aspects of anarcho-capitalist philosophy.
	You know, on first dates, I generally try and stay away from the soldiers and murderers topics.
	And I'm not saying you're saying any of this, right?
	But without the context, it just looks kind of crazed, right?
	So just be careful and take a break and respect that you're interested in this.
	She may be or may not be, but it's okay not to bring this to the relationship for a while.
	Yeah, that's a good idea.
	I'm going to have to... Did you not ask?
	Sorry, I went on too long, didn't I? No, no, no.
	Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you again.
	Trying to process it all.
	It all makes sense.
	But that's about the extent of what I was trying to say.
	Communication and curiosity and how to make it happen and like you said, starting with honesty is a good way to start because I'm going to feel something and then if I'm feeling something then I should probably say what I'm feeling first.
	Yeah, and that much is not...
	It's hard to do, but it's not hard to remember.
	Trying to remember all the logical sequence of steps about how you explain why cops are bad to people, that's tough to do, right?
	But I'm feeling it, therefore I should talk about it with somebody that I care about.
	It's hard to do, but it's easy to remember, if that makes sense.
	Right. All right, well, that's my topic for the day.
	Okay. Let me just...
	Thank you so much. I'm going to just put the next person in.
	We have...
	We have a question from Nils.
	Did you see my YouTube video response?
	I'm absolutely, totally and completely sorry.
	A thousand apologies. I have not seen it yet.
	I'm not even going to talk about just how horrendously busy I've been getting ready for Free Domain Radio, the full-time extravaganza, or at least the...
	Not Nights and Weekends extravaganza, but I have not had a chance to look at it yet.
	I will look at it soon, and I'm very, very sorry that Niels went to the trouble of creating a video response to some issues that we were chatting back and forth about on the board as of, I think, a week and a half ago.
	It's been on my list, and I'm just sorry.
	I haven't done it yet, but I will.
	And I certainly appreciate the time that you spent trying to put that together.
	Oh dear, we woke up Rod as well.
	All right. Now, if anybody else has any other sort of questions, please feel free to throw them up on the board or to click on the request to talk.
	Oh, yeah. Can I grab that seat for a second?
	Theosophy. Yes, I did put a little bit of time in, which I should have been spending looking at Neil's video.
	All right, so fortunately a fine listener has done some of the work for me, and I will sort of put out his responses.
	He said, Steph, I listened to your latest podcast, 643, believe it or not, last night.
	You mentioned to the woman who favorably referenced the literature of the Theosophical Society that you would do some research into peer-reviewed scientific literature in the subject.
	I also noticed that her husband agreed with your skin-in-the-gain comment, but she did not chime in with agreement, nor would I expect a person like that to do so.
	I used to believe strongly in psi, PSI, and related subjects, but have essentially dropped such beliefs in favor of extreme skepticism, as of about 20 years ago.
	I would be happy to immediately reverse myself if I were to learn of a well-controlled, peer-reviewed scientific study that provided experimental results to high statistical confidence in any aspect of PSI.
	What does that mean?
	Pounds per square inch?
	Because I believe in that.
	Psychic phenomena, right? I have not seen any such in over 20 years.
	Many claims, of course, but no science I could value.
	In regard to your research, I highly recommend what I believe is the best summary on psychic and related research by Susan Blackmore, whose website is www.susanblackmore.co.uk.
	It was originally from a Skeptical Inquirer article from the spring of 1987, Skeptical Inquirer, but now is fortunately available on her website at susanblackmore.co.uk forward slash articles forward slash si87.html entitled The Elusive Open Mind, 10 Years of Negative Research in Parapsychology.
	I read it some months ago, and it was still as powerful an article for me as when I first read it 20 years ago.
	If memory serves me, according to Blackmore, somewhere around the time of the publication of this article, she stated that the only experiments that may have indicated a scientific basis for psychic phenomenon past or then present were those of Charles Onerton of Princeton, and they were very weak and could possibly be reduced to statistical irrelevance with more well-controlled follow-on experimentation.
	Susan Blackmore, who initially strongly believed in Psy, summarized the whole Psy and related claims in a way that I thought was about as objective as a person could be.
	And more importantly, from a perspective of a very serious researcher in the science and related fields for over 10 years, she eventually lost interest in the subject due, in large part, due to the lack of scientific justification, and now has moved on to the study of memes and consciousness.
	So I did have a brief look at this, and I will read some of this sort of stuff.
	So, the elusive open mind, 10 years of negative research in parapsychology.
	Everyone thinks they're open-minded, says old Susan.
	Scientists in particular like to think they have open minds, but we know from psychology that this is just one of those attributes that people like to apply to themselves.
	We shouldn't perhaps have to worry about it at all, except that parapsychology forces one to ask, do I believe in this, or do I disbelieve in this, or do I have an open mind?
	And she goes on to talk quite a bit about the research that's out there and the fact that there are no peer-reviewed scientific journals that prove anything to do with psychic phenomenon.
	Nobody has ever done better than random on any test which has involved, you know, guess what's on the other side of these cards or any sorts of things where direct sensual experience or logical reasoning is not a factor.
	that there is any sort of psychological test sorry, a psychic test for any sort of predictive or any sort of out-of-random guesses at things and this is something that I've known about before and I've read some articles on this when I was younger and it really is just absolutely terrible how gullible a lot of people are towards this kind of stuff And this woman here says,
	while I was at Surrey, I was lucky enough to be given the chance to teach a parapsychology class.
	It attracted more than 100 students, so I had plenty of subjects for my experiments.
	I began three kinds of tests.
	First, I predicted a positive correlation between ESP and memory.
	That is, if memory and ESP are aspects of the same process, then the same people should be good at both of them.
	I did many tests of this kind.
	Second, I predicted that the best target materials for ESP should not be those that are easy to perceive but those that are easy to remember.
	I did a series of experiments with different target materials.
	Third, I predicted that the errors and confusions made in ESP should more closely resemble those made in memory than those made in perception.
	I had high hopes for this method since the study of errors has always been so useful in psychology.
	For example, in the study of visual illusions, I also did many experiments to test this.
	However, the only noteworthy thing about all of the results was the number that were not significant.
	In other words, she did not get any results for years of doing these sorts of tests with admitted people who believed in this phenomenon.
	She did not receive anything outside of statistical random results.
	And so I looked at that.
	I also looked at the website where she had mentioned that this guy who supposedly spontaneously was able to play piano, and there was just no...
	I mean, there's no evidence cited of it.
	And of course, this is all self-reporting, right?
	I mean, if somebody says to me, oh, this guy, he was able to play piano, but he'd never played piano before, and that's proof of past lives, Well, that's just somebody desperate to believe in something.
	That's not somebody who's taking a logical and skeptical approach to the problems of human knowledge.
	How could it conceivably be known that this person We did not ever have any piano lessons.
	There's simply no way to know that.
	Nobody has a robot video camera floating around with them for their whole life where you could rewind everything and see, hey, there's no piano playing knowledge here.
	And you say, what, are you calling me a liar, people will say?
	Are you calling this guy a liar?
	It's like, well... If the shoe fits, sure, because we know from religion that people lie continually about these sorts of things in order to make money.
	We know that people who claim to be psychics are liars.
	They learn a whole bunch of skills that bamboozle people.
	And there may be some people who genuinely believe this sort of stuff.
	But for the most part, there is no proof of the existence of God, yet we have religion.
	Is everybody lying?
	Well, yeah, kind of, right?
	Because they certainly don't believe in God in the same way they believe that their house exists.
	So for sure, people will lie continually to gullible people about psychological phenomenon.
	in order to make money.
	It's how the church makes its money.
	Of course, fundamentally, it's how the state makes its money.
	And so lying about phenomenon in order to transfer wealth, we see it all the time in society.
	And so, for me, it's completely within the bounds of reality, in fact, of probability, that if somebody says, I've never taken piano lessons, but look, I can play the piano.
	Well, what's more likely?
	That souls can transubstantiate and mutate between different individuals?
	That memories can survive the physical death of the body and be transferred in some manner to a new body upon birth?
	That certain configurations within the brain are transferred in some parapsychological or paranormal fashion from one generation to the other or that somebody's lying so that they can make money on the lecture circuit selling their nonsense story to gullible people.
	What are the odds, right?
	If we accept parapsychology in the absence of peer-reviewed scientific methodology, then we have to accept religion and we have to accept Zeus and we have to accept leprechauns.
	Why? Because some people, if you pay them, will say that they really believe in these things.
	Well, we know that human beings will lie to make money.
	They will lie about phenomenon that can't be objectively proven in order to make money.
	So whether it is lying or whether people have convinced themselves or whether they really feel strongly, who knows?
	But the one thing that I will say about the conversation that I had with this lady last week Was that she did not offer me up the scientific-reviewed journals, right?
	I mean, they have to be available on the web.
	Something this big would not be kept in somebody's basement, right?
	You would have to go and interrogate their cat to find out the truth of the matter.
	So if something like Past Lives had been scientifically proven, it would be available on the web.
	And she's provided me no links and provided me no references of peer-reviewed scientific journals that I could look this stuff up in.
	And also, I don't live in the woods, right?
	I mean, if psychic phenomenon had been proven, I think I would have heard about it.
	In fact, I think we all would have heard about it.
	It'd be like somebody saying, oh yeah, no, the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is totally proven.
	Maybe you just missed C-SPAN that day.
	You know, it was on at 2 o'clock in the morning, but nobody really showed any interest, right?
	I mean, of course people would be all over this.
	The other thing that I would say that is indicative of this kind of thinking, or rather not thinking, Which didn't lead me to want to spend an enormous amount of time trying to dig this stuff up.
	As you may remember, if you didn't hear it, I did say this, that the amazing Randy, he's the guy who publishes a magician and he's a debunker of spiritual and nonsensical things.
	He runs Skeptic magazine.
	For the last 30 years, he's offered a million dollars to anybody who could prove any kind of psychic phenomenon.
	And I said, you know, here's something that makes me a little bit skeptical, that everyone says this thing exists, and there's a million dollars sitting there waiting for anybody who's going to go down and do it, right?
	And so this is a sort of strike against this kind of stuff in terms of believability, right?
	If you're going to pay people a million dollars to prove that they can do something that they claim they can already do in their sleep, so to speak, then of course somebody's going to go and pick up that money.
	And the fact that nobody has makes me skeptical.
	And what this woman did was she responded by saying...
	That the amazing Randy must be blocking those abilities, those psychic abilities in those people.
	Now, she had no proof of this, but this is the kind of, quote, thinking that goes on in this realm, in the realm of psychic phenomenon, wherein you provide a counterexample or an example that would provide doubt as to the veracity of the claim, and somebody just makes up the answer.
	Well, the amazing Randy has offered a million dollars.
	Why hasn't anyone taken it up?
	Oh, he must have ways of blocking it.
	Well, you're just making up an answer.
	She doesn't know. She hasn't gone to try this test herself.
	She doesn't have any objective proof that the amazing Randy has the ability to magically block psychic phenomenon for people.
	She just made up an answer.
	She was not interested in examining the question or understanding my skepticism.
	She just made the answer up.
	And this is a very, very important thing to understand about this kind of thinking, which is very common.
	It is the essence of wish-based or whim-based or fantastical thinking, magical thinking.
	Something doesn't fit with the theory?
	Eh, forget it. I just make up an answer.
	God let my daughter die of some horrible wasting illness, leukemia or something?
	Well, he's testing me. We just make up an answer.
	You don't actually have to examine any evidence or questions.
	Just make up an answer. A government program isn't working?
	Well, we just need more funding. We just make up an answer.
	That's what human beings of this kind do, and they are boat anchors on the forward progress of the species.
	They drag us back to this medieval or Stone Age whim-based thinking.
	Don't like the evidence?
	Make up an answer. Wish it away.
	Whim it away. And look, libertarians can do this as well.
	Market anarchists can do this as well.
	Somalia seems to be going badly even though it's supposed to be an anarchistic society.
	Well, it must be something that the states are doing.
	Well, that's not a good enough answer.
	If you're going to dig in, you've got to dig in.
	Say, I don't know. Or say, well, there seems to be this evidence.
	I don't know. I haven't been there.
	I don't know much about it.
	Could be this, could be that.
	But the refusal to make up answers is essential in the forward progress of the species.
	Of course there's no such thing as psychic phenomenon.
	I mean, any biologist could tell you that.
	That if we had the capacity to achieve psychic communications, why would nature bother giving us mouths and vocal cords?
	Can you imagine a hunting party that was trying to bring down an elephant or a gazelle or a mammoth?
	If they could psychically communicate with each other rather than having to whisper to each other or hiss or hand signals or something, imagine how much more effective they would be.
	Now, is it possible that in the future something may, yeah, who knows, right?
	But it certainly doesn't mean anything's possible within the realm of reality.
	Maybe there is some subatomic quantum-based ether that human beings can communicate through, but so what?
	Anything could be true as far as that goes.
	But it certainly is true that the people who believe in it now do not believe in it because there's any logic or evidence or science.
	They're just making up answers.
	And of course if you have, as this woman has, spent your whole life taking money from people in order to take them through this past life's journey, well, what are you going to do if it turns out that it's false?
	Aren't you going to kind of have to give all that money back?
	That would be the honorable thing to do.
	If you think you've been selling somebody a cure for baldness that it turns out to be sugar water, well you should refund their money.
	Unless you sold it on Amazon, two for one.
	But this is the stakes that people get into when they get into this kind of stuff, right?
	When they start selling these services, that's why anybody with a financial interest in the state, and this is why your parents, when they get older, when they have a financial interest in your obedience, and this is why these people like priests and someone who have a financial interest in lying to people You can't take anything they say with any seriousness.
	So anyway, I did spend a bit of time investigating this.
	I'll post this gentleman's response on the board, but certainly I could find no peer-reviewed stuff in any scientific journals.
	And of course there's none.
	Of course there's none. This would be the biggest news in history.
	If psychic phenomenon were proved, you would not be able to escape this.
	If you lived in a bath escape, you would not be able to escape this.
	So, of course there's no such thing.
	It's just a fringe world of people who are not too stable, who are ripping people off for the sake of a couple of bucks and destroying their capacity for rationality.
	I mean, they're doing an enormous amount of harm in the world, of course, right?
	So, yeah, of course there's no such thing as psychic phenomenon.
	I really wasn't expecting to find any, and nothing's changed since I last looked.
	Alright. Did anybody...
	If anybody has any questions or issues or comments, did anything come up on the chatty room as I was ranting away?
	Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.
	I think it's a bit sad that Stefan now bashes the woman even though she said she personally knows that person for many years and he suddenly could play piano.
	It doesn't prove anything, but I don't think it's okay he ignores this claim by her.
	Well, but it's not a question of me ignoring this claim by her.
	This is a basic sort of fact of debating and of proposing a theory, which is that if you propose a theory, it's not...
	The burden of proof is not on me to disprove that this guy ever had piano lessons.
	If somebody says, this guy never had piano lessons and now he's able to play piano, and therefore it comes from a past life, and therefore it comes from a past life, I don't have to lift a finger.
	This person who's making the claim, they have to prove their claim.
	They have to prove their claim.
	So they have to prove that this person never played piano, Never took any lessons, which of course is impossible.
	And then they have to prove that the knowledge that this person now has to play the piano has come from a past life.
	Right? And could not be explained by any other methodology.
	Could not be explained by any other methodology.
	And maybe there is no lying. Maybe this guy took piano lessons and then he fell down and he hit his head on a rock and he totally forgot that he ever took piano because he lost six months of his life.
	And maybe he took the lessons when he was four.
	Well, who knows, right?
	There's so many different ways that this could occur that have nothing to do with past lives and so on, right?
	But past lives would actually be relatively easy to prove.
	It would be relatively easy to prove.
	All you would do is you would take people, and there are these stories on the past lives websites that I had a look at this week where they say, Well, this guy turned out to have been an architect in sort of 15th century Florence, and then he was in Florence in the 20th century, and he walked around describing all the buildings that he had built when he was an architect in his past life in the 15th century or whatever.
	Well, this would be pretty easy to prove, right?
	I mean, all you do is you get a whole bunch of people and you put up tests for them about things that they would be reasonably expected to know, So you would say, okay, well, there are these buildings.
	This information is publicly available.
	This information would only be available to the builder or to the architect or to those who had studied it forever and ever and ever.
	And you simply ask them those questions.
	And it would be relatively easy to prove that there would be a strong correlation or at least a strong indication that knowledge was available that could not have been achieved through the normal course of events.
	That would not be the end of the world to prove.
	And imagine how much money you would make If you were able to prove that or at least put up a strong correlation, you'd make a fortune.
	But no, these people just all rely on anecdotal stuff and I heard a guy who had never been to Florence who was describing all the buildings and they whisper these things excitedly like children, like gullible children.
	They just like this kind of stuff because it gives them a sense of mystery and a sense of excitement and ooh, possibility and all this kind of stuff.
	And then you always hear this thing like we only use 10% of our brains or 20% of our brains and all this and that.
	All that's nonsense too.
	Yes, we only use 10% of our brains at any given time, in the same way that we don't flex all of our muscles simultaneously because it would break our skeleton.
	Of course we don't use all of our muscles simultaneously.
	I'm pacing back and forth here, so when I'm moving my leg forward, it's my quadricep on the front that's contracting, And then, not at the same time, my calf muscle, right?
	So I'm only using 10% of my muscles at any given time to walk, but of course I'm not doing crunches and, you know, push-ups at the same time as I'm walking around.
	That's for Friday night gym class.
	So, yeah, I mean, this is just the kind of stuff that people like to think that there's this vast untapped potential within any of us that's psychic and mystical and so on, and it's all pure nonsense.
	We are exactly, perfectly designed, as nature intended us, with an unfortunate tendency towards gullibility, which we can explain through social means.
	Didn't we already have him on?
	Can you just check? He wants to talk again.
	Just check, see if he donated. Second talks absolutely require donations.
	I think he probably just wanted to interrupt.
	Go ahead. Hey, I sent, well, checks in the mail at least.
	How's that? Sure, I believe that.
	On this past lives thing, I read an article, it was kind of a sort of pseudoscientific sort of what-if type thing was that It presents a possibility at least for quote-unquote past life memories.
	The discussion was about how does the human body store memories because you can say that if you have a memory from when you were nine years old then where is it stored because not a single molecule in your body is the same as it was or not a single cell in your body was the same as it was when you were nine.
	Somehow it's able to survive the complete destruction and rebuilding of your entire body simultaneously over.
	Well, yeah, that certainly could be the case, but I think that memories would be the same kind of thing that a scar would be.
	I mean, if I have a scar on my thumb where I cut myself when I was a kid, if I have kids, they're not going to inherit the scar, they're going to inherit the thumb.
	So memories, I think, would be more specific to the individual and not encoded within the DNA, but it certainly could be possible.
	It's not like we're even close to knowing any significant stuff around this yet.
	Right, and that's kind of where I was going before you interrupted me, dang it.
	Well put, go on.
	But the theory that they were putting forth, or not theory, but just hypothesis, was perhaps the neurons in the brain use the kind of junk DNA from, you know, when you have an entire genome for that, you know, every single cell contains all the DNA that's necessary to describe the entire organism.
	But each cell only uses a tiny fraction of that to build cells, you know?
	And so there's a bunch of leftover DNA in every cell that's not really used.
	Now in the neurons, perhaps, there could be a method for storing information because, you know, obviously living organisms store information very well in a very small package in DNA already.
	We know that through, you know, genetics and stuff.
	So perhaps there is a mechanism by which the brain is able to encode these temporary memories that are stored in electrical impulses and patterns in the brain.
	Perhaps when you sleep, then there is a little dictation machine that says, okay, good memory.
	We're going to keep this one. Nah, this one's useless.
	Let's toss it out. Any of the ones that they are going to keep, they then kind of hard code into your hard drive, which is the leftover DNA in all of your neurons and stuff.
	So you can When you look at how many neurons you have in a brain, there's just enormous amounts of storage capacity there.
	So anyway, one of the examples that they used about how this information may possibly be transferred between generations is that there might be some strange unknown mechanism That would allow for,
	I guess, leakage of the DNA coding somehow into the sex cells, which, I mean, anyone who has ever seen, you know, a nature channel or something like that, you'll see, let's say a baby fawn is, you know, kind of spit out of the womb, and the first thing a baby fawn does is it stands up and walks over to its mother to start suckling.
	Does this fawn, you know, quote-unquote, remember to do this?
	You know, what's the difference between instinct and memory?
	And, you know, there's all kinds of strange kind of gray areas between genetic instinct and memory.
	And, of course, none of this proves a possibility of, you know, past lives like I was once Napoleon, and I have a habit of jamming my hand into my jacket.
	But it's a possibility for passing Memory information through time at least, maybe within a certain organism and maybe even possibly through generations.
	What do you think about that? Well, I think it's an excellent theory and an excellent idea, and I apologize for playing biologist with my rudimentary knowledge, but I will take a swing at it in this way and say that I would doubt that that would occur for two reasons.
	One is that the more encoded knowledge that an organism has, the less flexible it is to respond to its environment.
	That, of course, is going to have a cost.
	Human babies, when you brush a nipple, and sometimes adult males, when you brush a nipple up against their mouth, they will turn and suckle.
	That's inbuilt.
	That's the natural response that the baby is going to have to a nipple.
	You can get this to occur just by taking your finger along the cheek of a baby.
	Can entertain you for hours, actually.
	And so there is this kind of response in a human being as well.
	What has made us so extraordinarily successful is our ability to adapt to changing environments.
	The more hard-coded, in a sense, the less flexible and upgradable, the more hard-coded knowledge becomes.
	Then the less flexible the organism becomes, if that sort of makes any sense.
	And the second thing that I would say about that is that one of the extraordinary vulnerabilities that human beings have as a species is that we have, I think except for elephants and whales, we have the longest time to sexual maturity of any organism on the planet.
	And one of the reasons that we have that, the central reason that we have that incredibly long time to sexual maturity, like 13 or 14 years, Is because we have this incredibly long latency period between about the age of five or six in puberty, so it's like six or seven years, where almost nothing is happening except our brains are developing.
	And our brains are developing in that lengthy time period.
	They're developing the flexibility that is sort of the hallmark of our species, the rationality and the speech is mostly laid into, but it's becoming much more sophisticated.
	I think that the reason that I would suggest that that is not likely to be the case is because if we could say, for instance, have...
	Not the capacity for language, but language itself, hard-coded in our brains, that would cut a couple of years out of our developmental maturity.
	So if we were all hard-wired with English, obviously it would be good for my podcast audience, but if we were all hard-wired for English, let's say, then we could cut a couple of years off.
	Now, those couple of years are hugely important because, as you know, You know, like one out of two or three out of four, sometimes babies would die before reaching sexual maturity throughout history.
	So if nature could have found a way to provide more practical and enacted knowledge within our minds in an intergenerational way, other than the basic sort of instincts that we have as a species, I think that would have been evolutionarily advantageous enough that it would have overtaken the latency period.
	In other words, those...
	Babies that were born with the capacity to, I don't know, quote Shakespeare and play piano and build bridges and so on, would be able to mature that much faster and would not have to go through that long latency period where they're helpless in the face of predators and disease and war and so on.
	So I've got to imagine that The amount of knowledge that is transmitted is just the right amount through this billions of years of evolution is just the right amount and if we could have the capacity and it was productive to hard code knowledge other than the very basic stuff that we have then that would have occurred and we would not have the capacity for language but language itself built within our minds.
	But then, of course, that would be a problem because how would language be evolutionary if it was hard-coded into our minds?
	We would not have the capacity to create new words or new concept.
	And if this sort of make any sense, that there's, I think, arguments to say that that would be evolutionary disadvantageous and that's why we don't have that capacity?
	Oh, certainly. No, I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying.
	I was just kind of putting forth a, hey, this is sort of an interesting thing.
	And also, If any of this stuff truly does get passed intergenerationally from something that's brand new and learned for the first time in one generation and showing up in the next generation, it would necessarily mean that it would pass through the male sex cells instead of female because I believe that females are usually female mammals, I think, are formed with all of their eggs.
	I'm not sure. You know, you'd only be able to recall male memories, I guess, or something like that.
	Right, which would make most women faint.
	Right. Really? That's all you think about?
	I can't think about anything else?
	That's it? Really? Good God, I'm horrified.
	So the roses are just for...
	I thought it was just kind of an intriguing...
	Just kind of like a little thought experiment type thing of, you know, what if...
	Well, thank you.
	It's interesting stuff for sure, and of course I would be as thrilled as anyone to find out that these sorts of things were possible, because I'd love to know how to play piano, and if I could take a pill, that would be great.
	But, of course, we have to wait for the scientists to be able to prove it.
	Somebody has asked, I would like to hear your opinion on the psychic military experiments like the soldiers in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, who tried to kill goats by staring at them and the psychic spying slash remote viewing programs.
	Well, I don't really know anything about that.
	Other than the fact that I don't believe that goats are the most significant danger that Americans are facing.
	I think that's more sheep, but that's more of a joke about democracy than anything else.
	Sorry? Chickens are easier.
	No, I mean, yeah, it's, you know, I don't know if anyone else, I went through the same thing I think that most people did.
	I tried psychic phenomenon.
	I remember actually lying when I was about, gosh, I must have been about, I just moved to Canada, so I was about 11 or 12 years old.
	I was lying on a bed and I had listened to a 45 because I'm that old.
	And I wanted to be able to move, I was just lying there in a very relaxed state, and I wanted to be able to move, The record needle back to the beginning of the 45.
	And I tried, I tried it, willing it, willing it, right?
	And, of course, what happened was I was no longer relaxed after trying it, and I realized, of course, that I'd gotten myself far more excited and expended far more energy than if I'd simply gotten up to move the needle back to the beginning of the record.
	So that was sort of my experience with psychic phenomenon.
	And it sort of maybe colored my view from there in.
	It certainly would be cool, but I certainly don't really think that it's going to be the case.
	Put the needle on the record.
	That's right, brother. You sing it.
	Mars needs women.
	Alright, but listen, we have now cooked around two hours.
	I'm certainly happy.
	I tried rolling my pencil on the desk.
	Absolutely. I'm sure everyone's tried it at least once.
	And certainly after listening to Klaatu's version of calling occupants of interplanetary craft, I tried the UFO thing as well.
	Certainly would have been happy to join the Close Encounters of the Third Kind People in the Sky.
	No luck. So, bent spoons with your mind.
	Tried that too. No luck.
	Of course, all that stuff's been totally debunked naturally.
	So, I can even...
	I tried making chicks dig me.
	You know? And that's the funny thing, is that if psychic phenomenon were ever to be discovered, that's how it would be discovered.
	Because that's how technology advances.
	It's either trying to get chicks to like you, or it's trying to find substitutes for chicks liking you, like pornography.
	So that's how technology really advances.
	The VCR, the internet, all these sorts of things.
	So that's absolutely how it's going to work.
	Is Greg now speaking in tongues?
	Wow. You know, I felt he would be the first to try it.
	I really did. We talked about this the other day.
	Yeah. Demon, get behind me.
	All right. Well, listen, just before we completely degenerate into even more incoherence than normal, if anybody else has any last questions or comments, certainly be happy to entertain them.
	Otherwise, I'm going to flop on the couch and do practically nothing.
	I was sort of working since 7.30 this morning on Free Debate Radio, so I'm going to take a break.
	And I certainly appreciate everybody's support.
	Thank you so much for coming by and joining us today.
	And I will talk to you guys next week.
	I'll try and get a little bit more podcasting in this week, but I can't guarantee anything just now.
	So thank you so much for listening.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	I appreciate everybody's support.

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