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Sept. 27, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
54:16
872 Debating and Universally Preferable Behavior

Can you debate without using UPB?

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Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Jeff. No, no, really. Now!
Now! Today! Today!
Now! It is the 27th, not yesterday.
So I hope you're doing well, and I'm going to take a round at the challenge of UPB and debating.
And this is a pretty key aspect to the whole question of UPB. It's fiendishly difficult to grasp...
For reasons that I can maybe go into another time, but fundamentally, it is fiendishly difficult to grasp, but it is right within your fingertips.
And I know that the word grasp may sound like a non-rational or non-scientific statement, like, you just have to kind of get it, man, let your mind go...
But I don't mean that. I mean that the connection that you can make to put this in place in your mind, once you get it, it is an absolute burst of illumination.
It is fighting through a whole bunch of stuff that we're taught never to think about.
But once you get it, it is an incredible burst of illumination, but it is very hard to get it.
And then when you do get it, you're like, well, what was so hard about that?
But, of course, the difficulty is the propaganda, because UPB... It's the opposite of exploitation and power and false moral arguments that exploit and degrade mankind.
So, let me put it as boldly as I can up front, and then we can sort of mull it over with examples at leisure.
So, you cannot debate without UPB. You cannot debate without UPB. That is the most fundamental thing to grasp in terms of UPB in action.
I don't say UPB the theory.
You cannot debate without UPB. This is not an assertion.
This is logically a sound.
I've just worked it out in a fairly lengthy book.
You cannot debate without UPB. And a gentleman I was debating with, a very smart gentleman, great respect for him, but he's tangled up in this stuff, and I can understand it. I mean, I spent more than 20 years tangled up in it, too, so I don't begrudge it, but I can't participate in it at that level.
I was sort of debating with him on the board.
And... He's saying, you know, if everything is conditional, if you want to be healthy, then you should eat well and exercise.
And if you want to lose weight, then you should reduce your caloric intake or increase your expenditure or both.
And if it's like, well, yeah, of course.
No question, right?
No question. And the corollary of that is, if you want to say something that is true, then it must be logical.
If you want to say something that is true, then it must be logical.
The fact that everything is conditional is not itself conditional.
This is what's so tough.
It's really thinking about thinking.
It's not looking at the picture.
It's looking at the frame.
And the picture is so beguiling and distracting that it's hard for us to look at the frame.
So it's really, really tough.
Once you get it, it becomes really, really easy.
Although not always, but for the most part.
But if this gentleman says...
Everything is conditional upon the goal, then that itself is not conditional.
So you could say everything is conditional upon the goal, except the fact that everything is conditional upon the goal.
And I agree, UPB does not violate the is-or dichotomy.
It does not say that there is a should based on a reality.
You can jump off a cliff.
If you want to live, you should not jump off a cliff.
But there's nothing innate that says, in the way that Ayn Rand has tried and many other philosophers have tried, there's nothing innate in the world that says, you should not jump off a cliff.
Like, well, if you want to live, right.
On the other hand, if your family's being held hostage and they're going to They're going to be shot if you don't jump off a cliff and you secretly know that you have a parachute in your backpack.
Then you should jump off a cliff, right?
It all depends upon the circumstances, which does not make anything subjective.
This is the tough part for people to get.
The laws of physics are not subjective, but the laws of physics don't involve choice and free will.
Morality, by its very nature, involves choice.
If there's no choice, there's no morality.
Because morality involves choice, everybody thinks that you can just make it up and be subjective and this and that and the other, but that's not the case at all.
So when I say that you cannot debate without UPB, what I mean by that is a debate is not just, I don't even know what the word would be, but, you know, when two people are just snapping at each other.
I left the keys over there.
No, you didn't. You never leave the keys like that kind of stuff.
That's not a debate, right?
And the reason that you can't debate without UPB is that either you're talking about opinions, or you're talking about facts.
Either you're talking about mere bigoted assertions, Or you're dealing with rationality and empiricism.
You could give two kids a script which says the speed of light is constant.
No, it's not. Yes, it is.
No, it's not. Yes, it is. In that sort of Monty Python sketch kind of way.
An argument is a logical series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
No, it isn't. Yes, it is. No, it isn't.
But that's not a debate. A debate is the mutual comparison of ideas to an objective standard.
And that objective standard could well be somebody else's ideas!
If somebody says, oh, Steph once argued that his left toenail is a space alien, well, the way that you would figure that one out is, God help you, burrow through the infinite tunnels of well-hidden podcast language and find the...
You can have a debate about whether Mordor is east or west of the Shire.
But there's an objective standard called what did Tolkien actually write and what are in the maps and this and that.
Right?
But if you're arguing, you know, what exactly was Sauron thinking of right before the ring fell into the Mount Doom, there's no objective answer.
There's no objective. This is a made-up character.
And there's just no way to know, right?
You can't debate whether or not I had a dream about a flying dog last night.
You can't debate that.
I can assert it and you can accept it as true or not.
But there's no debating it because there's no objective standard.
Nobody can ever tell. Nobody will ever know what I dreamt of last night.
So there's just no possibility for an objective standard in any way, shape, or form.
Do you feel me, my brothers and sisters?
It's not a debate if it is a mere assertion of personal preferences, right?
So if you've never met me before, and you didn't know anything about me, and you hear me saying to the hot dog vendor, yeah, I like onions on my hot dog.
Never met me before. And is it reasonable for you to come up and say, no, you don't.
You don't like onions on your hot dog?
Never. Would that be a reasonable thing to say?
No. I mean, we all intuitively understand that, of course, that would be a very bizarre thing to say to someone you've never met before.
Now, maybe if I... Maybe if you sort of knew me and knew that I'd never put these things on a hot dog, maybe you'd say, no, you don't, right?
But you don't know. Maybe I'm going through a paranoid delusion and think that there is a beast after me who can be repelled by onion breath, right?
And now I want them, right?
And this all sounds very silly, but this idea, when you have no objective standard to compare things to, there's no such thing as a debate, is very, very fundamental.
A debate is not about me versus you, it's about our mutual ideas versus reality, versus truth, versus logic, versus consistency.
Or compared to these things, right?
A scientific debate is one wherein the results of a theorem, assuming the theorem is logically consistent, the results of a theorem are compared against empirical measurements.
Or alternate theorems are put forward to explain phenomenon that is not encapsulated or encompassed by previous theorems.
Right? But it's not just he said, she said.
It's not just na-na-na-na-boo-boo.
Anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you like glue.
Or something more accurate.
Right? It is the comparison of our ideas to a universal behavior.
That is a debate. Right?
So this gentleman I was debating on the board, he said, well, you know, something about truth.
And I said, well, is truth universally preferable?
And he said, no, it's personally preferable.
I prefer that you speak the truth, or I prefer that you accept the truth.
And, I mean, I know it's complicated to unpack, but if somebody says to you, no, the truth is not universally preferable, I just prefer that you...
Speak the truth. Then what they're basically saying is that the truth is just another opinion.
Right? And this is just somebody who says that I prefer that you like chocolate ice cream like I do.
Right? It's not a debate. You can't debate opinions.
I mean, you can, but it's not a debate.
It's just a he said, she said, back and forth assertion of subjective experience.
Right? Any more than a Catholic can debate with a Protestant about which is the better religion.
Right? I mean, they have the Bible, I guess you could say, but that's all nonsense and interpretation, right?
So, you cannot, you cannot debate with anybody without UPB, without a standard of truth that is independent of mere individual consciousness.
You can't. Now, of course, to accept that there's a standard of truth independent of individual consciousness, we have to accept that there is a reality independent of existing consciousness, of individual consciousness.
I mean, if I say to you, you are wrong, then there's a me, there's a you, there's a reality that I'm using to transmit those words, And there is a criteria called wrong, which simply means that your statements are incompatible with logical reality.
Right? And that can be a quasi-subjective reality.
If I say Gondor is, or if I say Mordor is north of the Shire, Then that's wrong.
not because you can empirically go out and find and measure and look at objective maps and travel the roads and so on because it's a made-up world, but it's inconsistent with the evidence that is put forward in the Lord of the Rings series.
So the moment that I say you are wrong, I I'm saying that there is a common reality that we both inhabit.
Obviously, I'm saying things like, your senses work.
I'm saying that language has meaning.
I mean, that's inevitable.
You simply can't make a statement like, you are wrong, and then follow it up with, you are wrong, language in fact has no meaning.
Because I'm using language.
You can't say you are wrong.
The senses are invalid. Because I'm using the person's hearing to talk about what is right and what is wrong, what is correct and what is incorrect.
So the moment that somebody says to me, you are wrong, they have accepted that we each have sovereign consciousness.
They have accepted self-ownership, which I go into more in the book on UPB, which should be out next week.
And they have accepted that there is an objective standard of truth or falsehood that exists independently of our consciousness.
They have accepted that I have deviated from this standard in some manner that can be objectively proven.
I mean, nobody ever says, you are wrong, because my invisible pet elf...
Told me so, that nobody else has ever seen or heard of, and so on.
I mean, people get close to that when they talk about God.
God says you are wrong, Steph-O-Rama, but of course it's not really that...
I mean, they're just substituting God there for this, quote, objective reality that we're all supposed to inhabit.
We all inhabit the mind and plan and soul of God or whatever, right?
So... If somebody says to me, Steph, you are wrong, they are accepting objective reality.
Or an objective methodology called rationality, which is derived from the behavior of matter and energy in the world, which at the perceptual essential level is entirely objective and consistent.
That's why scientific reproducibility is the key.
It's one of the very basis of the scientific method is reality is constant.
You can't say, well, this experiment worked over in this lab, but it just doesn't work in this lab because reality isn't constant.
You can't say that, right?
I mean, you can, but it's just not valid.
So UPB, as a framework, is simply the acceptance of the reality that is encased in the statement, you are is simply the acceptance of the reality that is encased in It is also encapsulated in the statement, I need proof.
Right, so somebody was saying to me, can you point me to a podcast where you prove that truth is preferable?
And I know it's hard, I know it's hard, but really it's worth making the effort to understand that the moment you say to me, Okay, so you say that truth is UPB. Can you point me to a podcast where you have proven that truth is UPB? Well, you've just proven it yourself.
Because if you say that you need proof that truth is UPB, then proof is UPB. Because you're not going to accept as proof me saying, I don't need a podcast.
I just assert it, and you must believe it.
Nobody's going to accept that.
Because they're going to say, no, the fact that you asserted stuff does not mean it's so.
Which is quite right, of course.
You need evidence, you need proof, you need this, you need that.
So proof, evidence, logic, whatever, it's UPV. So, the statement, you are wrong, I need proof, where's the evidence?
All of these debating statements.
You're contradicting yourself, right?
So somebody comes up to you and says, you're contradicting yourself.
And remember, it's always so fundamental, this question, compared to what?
Compared to what? I'm contradicting myself compared to logic.
So if I say 2 plus 2 is 5, then I'm wrong.
If I say at the beginning of my argument 2 plus 2 is 4, and then halfway through 2 plus 2 is 5, and then at the end 2 plus 2 is a seagull, then I'm contradicting myself.
And how many of you would be satisfied if I did that, if I said, oh, it doesn't matter, It doesn't matter.
I mean, it doesn't matter if I contradict.
I don't contradict myself relative to myself, right?
It's like a four-foot tall person saying, I'm not short relative to me.
Because if it's relative to you, there's no such thing as tall and short, because it's a comparator, right?
If you go up to a four-foot tall person and you say you were short...
Not compared to an ant. They're incredibly tall compared to an ant.
Or maybe even an anthill.
But if I contradict myself in an argument and you say, Steph, you've contradicted yourself.
And I say, doesn't matter.
Are you satisfied with that?
Of course not. And there's good reasons, logical reasons as to why you shouldn't, which again is sort of in the book.
It's coming out next week.
Universally preferable behavior.
A rational proof of secular ethics.
Gripping title. You would not be satisfied if I simply said, so what if I contradict myself in that Walt Mittman way?
You say I contradict myself very well, and then I contradict myself.
Or some other guy who said, consistency is the hobgoblins of little minds.
Well, that's all nonsense, of course.
I have never once, in debating countless people over decades, had anyone say, Steph, you just contradicted yourself.
And I say, it doesn't matter, it's still true.
I've never had anyone say, oh, okay.
Right? So the moment that somebody says, Steph, you contradicted yourself, they're saying that you can't contradict yourself.
Right? And if I say, well, it's just your opinion that self-contradiction is bad...
My thesis still holds, they wouldn't be satisfied with that, and neither would you.
UPB is a form of honesty.
And I don't mean this to be in any way negative or insulting, but it is.
UPB is a form of honesty.
And the honesty...
is just saying to yourself, what would I accept in a debate?
It's a form of integrity with the reality of your experience of a debate, right?
Thank you.
So this guy, God bless him, is fighting tooth and nail, as old people do on the question of UPB. They fight tooth and nail.
Well, this doesn't add up to that, and this is not consistent with that, and you contradicted yourself here, and you contradicted yourself there.
Right? Pages and pages.
Conversations. Hour-long conversations.
Fighting, fighting, fighting. Oh, that's great.
That's fine, right? And then I say...
If truth is UPB, they say, no, it's personal.
It's a personal preference.
I mean, it's a complete break with intellectual integrity, right?
I mean, this is emotional scarring.
I mean, it has to be. Otherwise, it's insanity, which I don't want to pass judgment on, especially remotely.
If truth is merely a subjective preference, then why is anyone debating with me so hard?
And pointing out inconsistencies that they see, and pointing out a logic that they see, and pointing out a lack of evidence that they see.
You can't use UPB to demolish UPB. You can't.
And if you wouldn't emotionally or intellectually accept something in a debate, then you need to be honest with that.
And if you're fighting tooth and nail to get to the truth...
It's because you believe the truth has value, and if you're debating with somebody about the truth and pointing out inconsistencies that you see or illogic that you see, then you're saying that the truth has value and that other people ought to achieve it.
That's what a debate is.
The truth has value and you ought to achieve it.
You should achieve it.
The moment you debate, you're saying the truth has value, the truth is objective, and you ought to achieve it.
People tell me that I must abandon my positions because those positions are illogical.
Not that it's up to me.
They tell me, Steph, you're wrong because of X, Y, and Z. And they don't say, because I want you to be wrong, because it troubles me if you're right.
Because, of course, wrong and right in the subjectivist universe mean nothing.
People come up to me and they say, Steph, you're wrong because of X, Y, and Z. And X, Y, and Z are always logic or evidence.
Always logic or evidence.
People come up to me and say, if they misunderstood UPB, they think it's a description of universally preferred behavior rather than a prescription for universally preferable behavior.
If they misunderstand UPB, they come up to me and they say, Steph, UPB is invalid because, you know, like some people don't even want to breathe.
You'd think UPB would be Breathing, but some people choose not to breathe, suffocate themselves or hang themselves or whatever, right?
Which, of course, is a complete and total vindication of the concept of UPB. Because they're saying a statement where there is contradictory empirical evidence is an invalid statement.
So if I say everyone prefers to breathe and they can find one person who doesn't, then that has invalidated my statement.
Which is a UPB principle that statements which claim universal empirical efficacy or accuracy are just proven by even a single contradictory instance.
If I say all rocks fall down, you find one rock that falls up, my statement is incorrect.
So that's what I mean when I talk about UPB. You can't tell anyone that they're wrong without UPB. And this is where people just get messed up, right?
So what they do is they keep putting up a strawman UPB argument without understanding that UPB as a framework permeates and encompasses not just the ethical theories that are proposed, but all intellectual activity.
UPB is the master umbrella for all intellectual activity, be it moral theories, be it the scientific method, be it empiricism, be it logic, be it mathematics.
Engineering. All cognitive functioning that interacts with objective reality or uses logic or compares itself to objective reality or logic.
All intellectual activity is subject to UPB. Now, if I Say, and I've talked about this before, but it's worth going over the arguments again.
If I say UPP doesn't exist, like if I say UPP is a valid concept or UPP is a valid construct, UPP is valid, and you say, no, it's not, then you've just used UPP. You've just used UPP. Because if I say UPB is valid,
UPB is logical, and you say, no, it's not, then clearly you are saying that UPB is not logical, and therefore I should not say that UPB is logical.
Sorry to be grinding this down, but it's so important to understand.
Think of the difference.
I say UPB is logical and you say, no, it's not.
Versus, I had a dream about a flying elephant last night, and you say, no, you didn't.
We understand that the first is a debate, and the second is two assertions, which can never be proven, objectively.
And that's not a debate.
We get this intuitively.
And that's what I mean when I say that understanding UPB is also a considerable matter of integrity.
Or it's considerably bound up in questions of integrity.
Because if you get that you would never debate somebody about whether they had a dream or not last night and what the content was, then you understand UPB. Now, whether you're willing to admit that understanding or you simply fight to the death against a premise that you axiomatically accept is up to you.
And that's why I lose patience with people who keep fighting.
And I explain it, and they keep fighting, and I explain it, and they keep fighting.
It just means they have an emotional block, right?
They want to stay in a situation of uncertainty.
So they act in a manner which does not display integrity.
And I know it's tough to grasp, and I'm sure this won't be the last one podcast I'm doing on it.
And this is only touched on in the book, so don't think I'm replacing the book.
You should still get that. But if somebody says to me, UPB is invalid, there's no such thing as UPB, UPB is not logical, then they're displaying UPB, which they're comparing a mental construct to rationality or empiricism.
They're saying it is either irrational or unproven, and therefore you should not believe in it.
When someone says to you, UPB is invalid, They're only telling you that because they think that you should not believe in things that are invalid.
Right? So if I say UPB is valid, and you say UPB is invalid, and I say, I agree, but you should believe in it anyway, what would you say?
Right? Just understand that your instincts are pro-UPB. So you say, UPB is invalid.
And I say, yes it is.
It's self-contradictory, it's irrational, it's unproven by anything in logic or reality.
And you should believe it anyway.
What would you say? You'd say, no, don't be silly.
Right? I mean, that's what you'd say.
I guarantee, I guarantee you that if I propose something that is self-contradictory, illogical, unproven, anti-empirical, Then you will 150% guarantee you that you will then say, and therefore I should not believe in it.
And therefore I should not believe in it.
Or it should not be believed.
Which is UPB. Which is to say that comparing thoughts to empirical or objective reality If it fails that test, if it fails that test of equivalence, conformity with logic or evidence, then it should be rejected as invalid.
And it's binding.
Right? It's binding.
See, if we're both saying something about reality, and by reality I'm going to include empiricism and logic just so I don't have to keep repeating it.
If I say something to you about reality, then if I'm incorrect...
Then I am bound, if I wish to be honest, I am bound to reject my statement.
Because if I'm saying something is true, then I'm saying it's true relative to reality.
That's an accurate description of reality.
And I'm saying you should believe it, not because I'm saying it, but because it is an accurate description of reality.
And that's why you should believe it.
Not just because I'm saying it, but because it is in fact true.
Valid with regards to reality.
And so if it then turns out that what I'm saying is not valid with regards to reality, Then since I have said I only believe it because it is valid with regards to reality, then I should no longer believe it, right?
Like if I come into your store and I say to you, I only spend valid currency And then you take the $10 bill from me, and you hold it under the infrared thing, and you do your check, and it turns out it's counterfeit.
It's fake currency. What happens then if I try to spend it?
Well, clearly I've contradicted myself.
I've said I only spend valid money.
My money has proven to be invalid, and I continue to spend it, which means that...
I mean, that's corrupt as well as...
A lie. Because I'm only saying I spend valid money so that you will think my money is valid.
Then if my money turns out to be counterfeit, if I continue to spend it, that's pretty corrupt, right?
So if I say, you should believe X because X is true, and that's why I believe it, right?
That's not my opinion. I believe it because it's true.
If it turns out that it's not true, but I continue to believe it, And then that's pretty corrupt.
Because I've made a statement, and of course untruth is about this in much more detail, that I've made a statement.
X is true. I am a helpless slave to the truth, and the truth is X. And I only believe it because it is true and proven.
Well then, if it's disproven, by my own standard, I should give up X, right?
And I believe in God because God is real.
God is true. God is a valid concept.
The moment you put up a reason for your belief, then you're saying, my belief results from that reason, like dominoes, right?
The last domino falls over because all the earlier dominoes fell over.
Now, you understand? So, somebody who says, my belief is just the last domino that fell over, in a whole sequence of beliefs or statements or whatever, right?
It's not my fault that I ended up believing this.
This is just what reality dictates.
I am helpless in the face of what is true.
If somebody says that, then, of course, they gain a certain legitimacy and objectivity in their beliefs, in their approach.
And... They, of course, are making the implicit claim that they've worked through all the statements that lead to the domino falling over, right?
I don't believe that the world is round just because I feel like it, but because there's these sequence of things that have been established, and my belief is simply an acceptance of reality.
And so if you say to somebody who says, my belief is an acceptance of the last domino falling over, of a whole sequence of evidence and logic and so on...
If somebody says that and then you say, oh, okay, well then why don't you step me through the ten dominoes that fell over that knocked your last domino of acceptance or belief over?
Then they should be able to produce those, right?
I say, I believe in ethics.
I believe in UPB. People say, well, what is your proof?
I say, here's my article, here's my introduction to philosophy series, here's this, here's that.
I accept ethics as the last domino knocking over a series of logical and Empirically supported propositions.
Now, then, if you say to that person, okay, great, why don't you step me through the dominoes that you knocked over, or were knocked over for you by reason and evidence, in order to provide you with this final acceptance of the truth?
Well, if they then cannot If they tell you the dominoes that were knocked over in order for them to end up with this belief, then clearly what they did is they just knocked over this last domino themselves based on their subjective preference and claim that it is a logical and empirical result of objective statements.
And that's pretty corrupt, right?
Somebody who claims logic and validity clearly accepts that those things are more powerful than mere opinion.
Someone who claims logic and empiricism, rationality, evidence, knows that these things have value.
And if they then use those things which have value to support the exact opposite conclusion, then they are both affirming and denying the value of logic and evidence.
It's really corrupt.
I'm not sort of pointing my fingers at anyone here except maybe this Mormon guy who joined.
Or if they think they've knocked over, and we all can make this mistake, right?
If they think that they've knocked over all of these dominoes, but they haven't, right?
Somebody says, well, I accept the ontological proof of God, and You go through that, and you see that, you step them through that, and they realize it's invalid.
Then, of course, they have to put that domino back up, right?
Because it hasn't fallen over. There is no God.
Or at least they have to say there is no God based on the ontological argument.
But if you step them through all of that, and they still believe in God, and just shift there, right?
Then clearly, the goal is to, not the truth, but to support a prejudice, right?
Because once you start demanding reason and evidence and you're looking at UPB, once you say that there is a truth statement that is binding on others, you are using UPB. The UPB is, if you wish to make accurate statements about reality, you have to compare your concepts to reality.
If you want to say that something is true, you have to validate it, reason and evidence, in comparison to reality.
Right? The moment that you say that something is true or is binding upon somebody else, then clearly you are comparing those statements to reality.
You have to be.
Because you're not saying your statement is simply disliked by me.
You're not saying that.
You're saying your statement is false, which is a comparator to reality.
UPB. Statements which are true should be accurate with regards to reality.
The moment you use UPB, you cannot deny UPB. The moment that you say somebody's statement is true or false, or even use language.
The moment you use language accurately, you're saying that accuracy is preferable to incomprehensibility.
People don't type a made-up language to me in wingdings.
The moment you say you are wrong...
You're saying that specific, accurate, and comprehensible language is preferable to incomprehensibility.
Now, if you say to me, you are wrong, and I typed something back in Wingdings, you're going to be annoyed, right?
Why? Why is it binding on me to respond comprehensibly?
What if I say to you, listen, I sent you my answer psychically.
I sent you my answer, get some tarot cards and lay them down, and that's my answer, and that's my proof.
Well, you would be annoyed by that as well, right?
And you'd say, dude, you're ducking the question, you're evading the question.
And you would feel, feel, I'm not saying it's proof, but at least have honesty to how you feel, and don't reject your feelings, right?
You would feel, if I said I've sent you my proof back psychically, it's going to come out in your next Ouija board session, or I've asked Socrates to come back from the dead and explain it all to you, I've given him instructions, let me know what he says, you would clearly understand that I was dodging the question, and that I shouldn't. But why?
If UPB is not valid, why should I reply in any consistent manner?
You can't say you should objectively make statements that are true and consistent and then say, and UPB is false or unproven because you've accepted it.
The moment you use language, the moment you use reason, the moment you use evidence, the moment you identify an objective reality that is between us or that we are part of, the moment you require consistency, The moment you debate, you've accepted UPB. Let's take another example.
I'm sorry to beat this to death, but clearly it needs it, right?
UPB's been around for two years, and a lot of people still have exactly the same confusion.
So, if you say to me, UPB is illogical, or UPB is unproven, And I tell you, no, you're wrong.
UPP is proven. And you ask for my proof, and we go through this long thing.
And it turns out that I have defined proof as my personal assertion.
Whatever I say is by definition proven.
Right? If I redefined proof as my personal assertion, what would you say?
How would you feel? I know exactly how you'd feel.
You'd feel annoyed, angry, and jerked around.
Right? Right? And what if that's not wrong?
What if you're right about that? I think you are, if I did that.
So, UPB is not defining commonly accepted terms as their opposite, whenever it's convenient.
We get this with Christians all the time.
They say, I believe in God because God exists.
And we prove that God cannot exist, and they say, well, I believe in God because of faith.
In other words, I don't believe in God because of anything.
It is axiomatic. So when somebody starts off by saying, I believe in God because of X, Y, and Z, and then you disprove X, Y, and Z, and they say, well, I still believe in God.
Then they're saying, I believe in God because God has proven it true or valid.
And when all of that is not true, then God is the last domino of a whole sequence of reasoning.
And then when you say that those dominoes don't fall over, they say, oh, well, my domino falls over anyway.
Why? Well, because it does.
Then they've simply redefined their belief in God as deriving from proof to not deriving from anything.
Proof versus the opposite of proof.
And we're annoyed by that.
It's universally preferable that at least with the most commonly accepted words, and we use them with accuracy, and we don't define them by their opposites whenever it's convenient to us.
So that's another example of how emotionally we understand UPB. Like in our gut, and I know this, because having debated with all these people, hundreds of people on the board, hundreds of people in my life, whenever you violate UPB, people get annoyed.
And then they say UPB is invalid.
I mean, this is the bizarre, upside-down world of modern philosophy, and maybe not just modern philosophy, I'm sure that this is the case throughout history as well.
UPB... It's invalid, people say, but whenever you violate it, they get angry.
So which is it? I mean, this is exactly the same as the determinist argument.
Determinists say you have no choice over what you do.
And then when you do something they don't like, they get angry.
And that's what I mean when I say it's about integrity.
I mean... If a three-year-old kid says to me, Mr.
Why are you bald? I can say, well, because I pissed off the hair fairy in a past life.
I can tell the truth, right? But it's not reasonable to get angry at a three-year-old for saying, Mr.
Why are you bald? But boy, when they get to 3.01, all hell's gonna break loose.
And that's very interesting, right?
If I get angry at a three-year-old who says, Mr.
Why are you bald? Clearly I'm being immature and so on, right?
But I would not then justly or validly express my irritation at that person.
And so, this is what is so funny.
I mean, just at an emotional level or a level of integrity when it comes to UPB. This is what is so fundamentally funny about it.
That everyone says it's invalid, and then when you violate it, they get angry.
Do you get the sort of very funny humor in that?
This is not true, but the moment that you act as if it's not true, I'm going to get angry at you.
And of course, clearly there's so much foo stuff in there that you could do a whole series on that, and perhaps one day I will.
Where you get intellectual arguments from your parents, and then when you act as if those intellectual arguments are true, they get angry at you, right?
So your mom just says, fine, do whatever you want.
And then you do whatever you want, and she gets angry at you, right?
I mean, this is the root of where this stuff is coming from.
They say, this is true, and then the moment you accept it and act as if it's true, they get angry.
That's the impossible sort of brain-destroying situation that they're attempting to reproduce for you.
And again, I'm not saying it's conscious malevolence or anything like that.
It's just a habit. Because, of course, it's important to explain why UPB is so violently resisted and so irrationally resisted.
Why people use UPB to attack UPB and then say UPB is invalid.
But if you act as if it's invalid, I'm going to attack you too.
So... There's, of course, the family explanation and the teacher's explanation and so on, right?
So when you... I mean, if you imagine sort of being 10 years old or whatever and the teacher says, you know, you shouldn't resolve your disputes by force, right?
And they say, well, isn't your salary paid for by force?
Then they're going to get angry, right?
That's why we don't do it, right?
If we talk about the hypocrisy of our parents, they get angry.
Do as I say, not as I do.
They get angry. People put forward premises all the time, and the moment you take them seriously, they get angry, because they're designed to sort of manipulate and control you.
Anyway, we don't have to get into the whole On Truth book, but you might want to order that.
In fact, I know you should.
Absolutely. That's UPB. Order my book.
So, there is that aspect of things, for sure.
That is why people get so crazy around UPB. That's sort of the one aspect.
That we're trained to use principles to attack principles.
Right? That's how we're trained.
That's the entire basis of our political system, our religious system, and our familial justification and parental justifications.
So, that's one aspect of things.
Another aspect of things that is very important, I think, is to understand...
That once you get UPB, you get evicted from excuseville.
Procrastinationville, population minus you.
That's very important to understand.
I mean, to me, it's fairly empirically obvious that the people who totally get UPB and accept the reality of UPB, they change their lives.
Because there's no wondering anymore.
There's no what if, what if, who knows, this and that and the other.
Ron Paul, parents, the Fed.
There's none of that nonsense.
And I don't mean it's nonsense like it's not true.
I mean it's nonsense like who cares in terms of your life and your liberty.
But when people finally do get UPB, it's like a huge weight is lifted off their shoulders.
Because now they don't have to wonder about the roots of morality and they don't have to wonder about the justifications for philosophy and how to debate and so on, right?
Now, of course, they do enter into the ranks of this shiny little gang that is attempting to be the light bearing the world forward.
And that brings with it a whole host of other challenges, of course.
But... Once you get UPB, then you get the truth and validity of what it is we're doing here.
And you can't spend the rest of your days in that fussy, fussy little procrastination world called what is truth, what is virtue.
Once you get it, you can't delay anymore.
You can't. I mean, you won't.
I mean, everybody knows that.
That's why they fight it so hard. Because they don't want to put it into action.
They don't want to put what they already accept and believe into action.
And that's why they find it so hard.
Family stuff, teacher stuff.
And people love to live in the paralysis land of let's think about it some more.
Right? Like the show Monk.
It causes me anxiety to be certain about what to do.
Because once I'm certain about what to do, then I know I have to do it.
Then I know I have to do it.
And that is something that people don't like.
With certainty comes action.
And people who are afraid of action will fight certainty.
It is a symptom and, I say, a major cause of depression and insecurity.
And the amazing thing, of course, is that people fight UPB Even though it is a carefully reasoned-out approach to the truth.
They fight UPB rather than going to fight, say, Muslims or postmodernists or Christians or statists, right?
Where there's many more valid reasons to oppose that.
It's not even a remotely thought-out approach.
So why is it that people feel a very, very strong desire and act on that desire To attack the most rational proof of ethics.
Why is it that they're drawn to that?
I mean, if ethics is incorrect, then surely those who are the most irrational should be the ones you'd attack first.
But they don't. What they do is they attack the most rational proof of ethics that I believe is around.
Maybe even has been around.
Of all the ethical systems in the world, I'm going to fight the one that is the most rational.
No. I mean, it can't be taken seriously.
It can't be taken seriously.
It's clear to me, and there's good reasons for this, even if it's not clear to them, that they oppose it because it is true, and they know that it's true, and they act as if it's true.
But then when they have to believe that it is true consciously, it causes great anxiety, because that impels them into highly stressful and anxiety-producing action.
And so it's better, more comfortable for them to fuss and fight.
I look forward to your donations.
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That the new book is coming out, I think, next week.
That you can buy the conversations from the first annual Free Domain Radio Weekend for a mere $17.
You can get the link.
If you use the link from the website, that would be great.
If you send me $17, then I have to email you the link.
But if you use the PayPal way of doing it, you get the link automatically.
And I look forward to seeing you in Miami on the 18th and 19th of January 2008.
Send me an email through the web.
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And as always, I look forward to your donations.
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