All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 2, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:10:06
928 Shooting Down UPB...(a listener conversation)

Caution ...or avoidance?

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
So, my question was about the latest YouTube video, which I think I'll find the name of it here.
Ron Paul and politics versus personal liberties.
Versus personal liberties.
That's the one. Which I think, I mean, most of the gist of it was confronting people about sanctioning the use of violence, not just in the abstract, but against you personally.
And yeah, how that can really move the conversation forward.
But I think my question was really just surrounding whether you did or intended to differentiate between those who openly say at the end of the conversation, yes, I actually do support the use of violence against you personally if you don't support this or that or the other.
And those who sort of continue to deny that there's violence being used against you and they remain reluctant, which, I mean, I can see that if someone openly supports violence against you, yeah, you'd get rid of that person from your life.
If there's someone who's umming and ahhing and they're struggling with it and they're not being honest with you, obviously, then I'd say that that's not a really good thing and they're probably not being honest and they're probably just avoiding the issue.
But that's very different to someone who supports violence against you.
But that's everyone, right?
I mean, there's nobody who's going to look you in the eye.
I mean, very few people, a couple of so few people.
There are a few. But there's very few people who are going to look you in the eye and say, yes, you should be shot for disagreeing with me.
I mean, I've had, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of these conversations, and I've only had 10 or 20 people actually look me in the eye and say, yes, I completely support you being shot for disagreeing with me.
And you kind of have to admire those people, in a way.
I mean, it's weird. They are consistent.
You know, they are not unwilling to accept the consequences of their beliefs.
And it's like the Christians.
The Christians who claim that the Bible is the literal word of God.
And when you point out that they should kill unbelievers, they say, yes, I should kill unbelievers.
That is...
I mean, it's insane, but at least it's something that's not Weasley.
But just about the default position.
When you say to people that by supporting the state, you are supporting violence against me, the default position...
Of everybody is to cloud the issue.
For sure. So, I mean, that would be everyone.
But it's not that hard to figure out.
Like, you have to work very hard to ignore the fact that the state uses violence.
That's right, but I think that's what my point is.
I think the fact that they're working so hard to try to reconcile these things shows that they actually...
I mean, I think it's fair to say, and I don't know if you'd agree, that the honest truth is that they don't want to see you shot.
I mean, that's why they're struggling.
Well, can you tell me what it means when you say, struggling to reconcile these things?
The fact that, I mean, it's obvious that the government has power and that it's used against people and that that's necessary and inseparable.
But the fact that they also don't want to acknowledge that and, you know, treat it personally and say that that power could or should be used against you.
Well, I mean, they're not reconcilable, right?
Well, that's exactly the point.
That's why they're struggling. But I think somebody who openly says, yes, I want to, you know, they don't want to see you shot, but yes, I would support, you know, violence against you if you didn't pay your tax.
Someone who says that is different to someone who's just being totally inconsistent and dishonest.
And while you'd get rid of the first person from your life, The second person, well, you know, you wouldn't keep them too close, but I don't think it's the same sort of offense.
So, inconsistency and falsehood is, for you, a lesser offense than consistency?
I'm not trying to trick you.
I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.
So the person who is consistent with his belief in the virtue of state violence is a bad person.
But the person who ignores, represses, weasels out, pretends not to understand, says he'll get back to you, the person who doesn't, who is not consistent with his own beliefs and avoids the topic, is less bad or less culpable than the person who is consistent with his beliefs.
Well, I mean, you've put it not the way I would, but yeah, I would say that just in that the person who is consistent is wide open to the initiation of force, right?
And that's the sort of person you want to get rid of, whereas the person who's struggling, yeah, they're weaseling and they're being dishonest, and these are all bad things, and you don't want people around you who...
I really show these traits, but certainly it's different to supporting the initiation of force.
Now, I mean, I agree with you in some ways, but let me, before I sort of return to the moral approach, and I do appreciate this is a very important thing to talk about.
It's something that is unclear whether that's because the position is bad or I made it clear or they're avoiding for a lot of people, so I appreciate that.
But certainly it's clear, I would say, that Yeah.
violence, right?
It is by far the majority of people who will evade the topic and just feel uncomfortable about it and want to talk about the news or the weather or the sports or something like that.
So if you are in a situation, as we all are, where the state violence is dominating your life, that must be because the vast majority of people, that must be as a result of the beliefs of the vast majority of people, right?
Not of a tiny minority of people.
Okay, yeah.
So the people who openly advocate violence against you, if they were the only people who supported the state, there would be no state.
That's right, but I'm not sure that you can look at the effects of people's actions and then walk backwards to figure out the gravity of their actions.
Do you know what I mean? No, but I'm just saying that in terms of the domination that we face as free individuals, in terms of the coercion that we are subjected to, it is the beliefs of the vast majority of people That are primarily responsible for our subjugation,
right? Yeah. And therefore, if you say that we should only get rid of the people in our life who openly and directly advocate the use of force against us, You're saying that we should not do anything that will actually change anything because those people are in such a minority that you may meet one or two of those people in your life and everyone else whose beliefs,
or rather evasion, is the direct cause of your coercive enslavement, those people you should not reject.
In other words, rejecting people will do nothing.
Integrity with your own beliefs will do nothing.
Well, I'm not going with the, in other words, but I think that relies on, and you made a pretty strong case for it, and I probably agree that the only way to really move things forward is to, you know, make it personal and live what it is you're preaching and all of that.
But I think there's still something to be said for just discussing these things with people Who are, you know, fumbling and they're umming and ahhing and they're avoiding the topic.
I don't... Well, sure. I mean, sorry to interrupt.
I agree with that. I mean, I'm not saying that you, you know, you corner your elderly grandmother, you know, and you say, do you support me being thrown in jail?
Do you, do you, do you? And if she says, uh, uh, uh, you're like, that's it, you know, I'm leaving and I'm never coming back.
I mean, that's not what I've done, right?
I mean, I've tried to engage people at a consistent and persistent level in this conversation.
So I'm not saying that you march right up and corner someone and then, you know, if they don't immediately become a full-fledged anarcho-capitalist, that's it for you then.
You're off the bus or whatever.
And it does take a while for people to understand, for it to become conscious.
It does take a while for people to understand that there is violence, right?
And that the violence is directed against individuals.
So I fully understand that that can be a learning process.
But there are two types of people in general, in my experience, when you approach them with a basic but unacknowledged and often repressed fact, like the state is using violence and when you support the state, you're supporting violence against me.
There are people who say, well, that doesn't seem right, but tell me more.
Right? Like, that feels wrong or that feels weird, but I'm certainly interested in hearing what you have to say.
And those kinds of people are great to continue conversing with, right?
I mean, Lord knows I didn't come out of the womb as an anarcho-capitalist, right?
So it was people's patience in the conversation with me that also helped me to sort of move forward in understanding some basic truths.
So, but it's the direction of the conversation that matters, right?
There are other people who will evade and not, like they've just shut the conversation down, right?
Because they fully get What the conversation, where it leads to, right?
And they actively reject pursuing that knowledge and they actively reject going that way, right?
So it's the direction of the conversation and what I'm concerned about is obviously arguing at an abstract level gets us nowhere because we've been doing that for hundreds of years and things are worse now than when we started, right?
So that doesn't work. Just going off to live in the woods, which some people feel is massive intellectual consistency, also doesn't work.
If you abandon society to the crazy people, society isn't ever going to get any saner.
But most of what I've experienced and the people I've talked to about this and have reported on these kinds of conversations, mostly what happens, like by far the majority of times, you'll get one person in A thousand who will say, oh yeah, you should be shot.
And you'll get a couple of people in a hundred who will have the intellectual integrity and curiosity to...
Ask questions and are capable of being enlightened with some sort of rational truth.
But unfortunately, 90 to 98% is just rule of thumb, right?
I mean, it doesn't mean, right?
Somebody could be an amazing communications genius and raise that to, or lower that to 90%.
I've had a surprising amount of people say that, yeah, I mean, I support force.
I mean, they're perfectly aware of that and they're open about that.
I mean, what, they think it's a necessary evil or whatever, but...
Certainly not one in a thousand.
They support it against you?
Yeah, I mean, I don't think I really, you know, looked them in the eyes too hard, but in the abstract conversation, I think, yeah, they do.
Like, they're not unrealistic about...
Well, that's something certainly to pursue, right?
And if the vast...
If the majority or even a large percentage of people in your life openly approve of and like the use of force against you, then you need to change.
I don't think they like it.
Well, if they approve of it, right?
I mean, if they approve of it, and the initiation of the use of force is a proactive action, right?
Yeah. So, if you prefer something that is proactive, then you could say it's a necessary evil, but still, you prefer doing it to the alternative, right?
Yeah, but that's different to liking.
Like, I would prefer to go to the dentist and not go to the dentist, but that doesn't mean I like going to the dentist.
Well, I mean, I do like going to the dentist because I'm pretty clear what happens if you don't.
I know what you mean, but I know what you mean.
Like, I like the fact that they have novocaine.
I like the fact that it's not the 14th century, but...
Okay, but let's just say it's a necessary evil, but they are certainly willing to advocate the use of violence against you, right?
Yep. And that's, I mean, okay, so your statistics may be different, and that's certainly fine, right?
But I think that helps my case more than yours, whether or not that is true or not.
No, I agree. It probably does, yeah.
But the people who you get into a conversation, let's just talk about it.
So if I get into a conversation with a guy named Bob and say, well, you know, taxation is coercion, and he's like, oh, what nonsense, right?
Don't be ridiculous. We choose the government, right?
And you don't just say, okay, well, then that's it.
Get out of my car.
You know, I'm not even slowing down.
Roll when you hit the gravel. What you say is, well, because you assume that this is a startled reaction, right?
It has no more intellectual consistency or no more intellectual content than tapping someone's knee with a little hammer and watching their leg go up.
It's just a reaction.
But if the person then says, you know, well, it's not coercion, and I say, well, then there's violence involved, you get thrown in prison, blah, blah, blah.
And they say, well, you choose it.
And it's like, well, if you choose it, why is there a gun involved?
You can't say that a woman chooses to make love to a man when he's got a knife to her throat and blah, blah, blah.
When you go through the arguments and help them to dismantle their own knee-jerk reactions, then...
People go one of two ways, right?
I mean, they either will then harden their defenses and continue to prevaricate, to use emotionally laden language, to escalate, to get hostile, to insult you, to pretend not to understand.
Like all these emotional tricks, right?
I'm going with obfuscate like 90% of the time.
That's my experience. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely. You know, well, it's a democracy.
If you don't like it, you can run for office.
Like all this nonsense that people come up to pretend to themselves that there's not violence occurring.
Now, those people are working very hard to avoid the basics.
And of course, they're not thinking.
This is just propaganda, right?
This is just stuff that everyone is told about democracy, about you're free, and government is good, and the West is the best, and all this kind of stuff.
And particularly, this is the case in the United States, right?
They're addicted to the fantasy of freedom in the U.S., particularly as they become less free, which is almost always the case.
Now, those people, they don't come back.
Once you've dug into a moral position...
And this is, of course, you're not creating this in them.
This is not like the first time they've ever thought about it.
They have a habit of hardening their defenses into a moral position.
And once people harden their emotional defenses into a moral position, what they hear is, you should act immorally.
And nobody will ever do that.
Everybody has to redefine what they're doing as moral.
That's why whenever you debate a statist...
The argument from the status side, if they harden their position, is all about morality.
It's all about ethics.
And once people harden their emotional defenses into an ethical absolute, then...
And that ethical absolute could be as simple as, well, judge not lest you be judged.
You know, nothing is for certain.
Like, whatever it is that people come up with.
Then there's no possibility of them changing that.
Because the argument for morality is so powerful.
And what you're uncovering is, A situation where the person converts anything which is emotionally uncomfortable into an immoral position, right?
So if you say taxation is force and that makes them uncomfortable, they simply convert your position into an immoral one and use all of the rhetorical tricks that we all are born with.
Some evil genie puts it on us in the crib.
And that's a habit that you didn't create.
You're just unmasking. And if they have a habit...
Of converting emotional distress or discomfort into a morally superior and condescending position, you can't change...
I mean, obviously they've learned that from their parents, right?
And they've learned that from childhood discipline, and maybe they had some teachers who reinforced it, or some priests, or whatever.
But that's a core emotional habit that you can't undo with logic, and you can't undo with rhetoric.
And it's my concern that people will be in that situation, and of course the level of frustration that people who argue philosophy...
Experience when they get stuck in these kinds of black holes is extraordinarily high, and it turns philosophy from a pleasurable and profitable pursuit into beating your head against the wall until you just want to explode, right?
And so my concern is to recognize the difference between people who are surprised but curious, which is an intellectually respectful and responsible position, right?
It's the same thing when I was a little kid, right, and somebody said the earth was round.
I was surprised but curious.
It sure as hell doesn't look round, right?
And so when people are surprised but curious, you may debate with them for weeks or months, but you're making progress, right?
And of course they may be helping you to understand certain things as well, but it's a productive and engaged discussion with the goal of truth.
But when you sort of surprise someone with the truth and they react with emotionally hostile or obfuscatory defenses, then you're in a situation that you can't work with.
I mean, it's like arguing Science with a pygmy witch doctor.
You're not even speaking the same language, you don't have the same reference points, and it's those people that That are responsible for the state.
It's not the people who are willing to use force who are responsible for the state.
Because there's so much in the minority.
People who are directly willing to use force.
Those are the sociopaths and they're a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the population.
But it's the people as a whole who use moral arguments for the state or who obscure the violence of the state that make it possible.
So if you're only going to target the people who openly use violence, then you're just never going to achieve anything, if that makes sense.
I think I probably just misunderstood the intensity of the podcast as meaning that you would just write people off in something of an instant and really not pursue conversations.
I pretty much see what you're saying now, that it's more to do with the direction the argument takes.
And your feelings about it, right?
Yeah. I mean, I'm the annoying libertarian emotional nagging guy, right?
Because I'm always trying to get people to not follow rules, in a sense.
I mean, there are, of course, rules, but I don't debate with anybody who violates the non-aggression principle or anything.
But it's more around really being in touch with your own experience of the conversation, right?
So if you...
Like, we get this, sort of what I'm talking about.
We understand emotionally within 20 seconds of starting a debate.
Whether you feel frustrated, whether you feel tense, whether you feel aggressed against, whether you feel desperate, whether you feel like, oh my god, you guys throw in 50 knives at me, I have to dodge, and whether you feel put upon, and so on, right?
All of those are experiences that are very clear to us emotionally when we begin to debate.
Gladwell's got a book called Blink, where he talks about how much we can process in an instance, which I think I've certainly found to be the case.
So what I'm trying to say to people is, and I don't know if I'll do another video on this, but what I'm trying to say to people is your emotional experience of the debate will tell you everything that you need to know about your debating partner.
Are you excited?
Are you thrilled?
Are you challenged but not scared?
Or do you feel angry and frustrated?
Like your emotional core will tell you where the debate is going to go so that you don't have to sit there and waste months on a fruitless debate that just makes you feel worse, right?
But that's sort of why I keep pointing people at the emotional side of things because our emotional processing is so extraordinarily essential.
astute and powerful and we as philosophers or thinkers often rely on syllogisms rather than feelings but our feelings are amazingly accurate i found in this sort of situation yeah no i i think i pretty much agree Much a shame as it is, given that we're, what, 20 minutes in and already in agreement.
That's no good. Come on, come on.
We could drag this out for a while.
I mean, I could just provoke you, I'm sure.
So I'm right in thinking that you're not...
Well, maybe I could throw us into another 20 minutes.
You're not equating...
On any moral basis, these sort of people who avoid and evade and all of this sort of stuff to people who actually openly support force.
Oh sure, I'm saying that the people who evade are worse.
Morally or just practically?
Well, it doesn't... I mean, because nobody's actually pointed a gun at me in a debate, there's no practical difference between the people who say, I want you shot, and the people who say, I don't want to talk about whether you get shot, but I support the government.
I mean, practically, as in, given that they're the majority.
And, uh... Yeah, I mean, in practical consequences, it's the majority of people whose beliefs support the state, right?
In the same way that even in a totally free society, you'll have some racist nutjobs out in the boonies who will put together their own little version of the KKK, but that's a whole lot different from the government protecting, supporting, and enforcing slavery, right?
So when you talk about people's individual beliefs, as an activist or as somebody who's trying to sort of move, The direction of social thought, I think it's incumbent upon us to recognize that it is the majority of people's beliefs that support the existing social structure.
Because when a belief becomes a minority, it becomes something that's shameful or looked down upon or just laughed at.
Yes, there is a flat-earth society, and yes, even in certain intellectual circles you can find the odd racist, but they have to kind of keep it hidden.
They can't openly state it with moral righteousness and fervor.
So the way that That Christians looked at blacks in the 18th century was as a semi-human race that needed to be brought to Christ and couldn't think and were sort of like retarded children and so on.
And in all the salons and in all of the articles and in all of the intellectual circles, this was the position that was dominant.
And so if you did not hold it, you faced a certain amount of social sanction and so on.
And in the same way, you could not put those beliefs forward now without being roundly attacked and ridiculed, right, as a racist.
And rightly so, right?
So it's the majority of people's opinions that shape the debate.
And so I would say that the people who actively avoid the basic truth of state violence, they are the vast majority of people, and thus they are the people who are responsible for the continuation of the statist paradigm, right, because and thus they are the people who are responsible for the continuation of the And not only do they avoid the topic, but they attack people who do not avoid the topic.
Because that's what happens when you get into debates with those people.
They get upset, they get angry, they get irritable.
They are the reason why the socially dominant paradigm of violence equals virtue, as long as somebody's wearing a uniform, They are the reason why it continues.
Not the crazy guys who are willing to use force and not the people who will, you know, hop, skip and crawl towards enlightenment, but the people who attack those who bring forward the truth, they're the ones primarily responsible for defending and maintaining the existing social paradigm of thought, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I agree with that.
I'm just trying to figure out whether it's more like, you know, the boulder rolling down the hill, just in terms of moral culpability, because even though in practical terms they are the ones responsible for violence, I mean, it's given partly because they're the majority,
I suppose. I mean, I think in terms of the individual, You can't say that they are more culpable given that as a majority they have a greater effect because surely if the majority were these openly violent people society would be even worse than it is,
right? So just in terms of moral culpability I'm thinking that you have this person who's making all sorts of emotional arguments and throwing it everywhere and refusing to acknowledge reason and all of this but You know, if some government agent busted in the door at that moment and held a gun to your head, I'm pretty sure that they would, you know, scream and cry and say, no, don't hurt him, right?
Like, that...
Their moral crime is just dishonesty and, I don't know, I mean, I'm not sure these are moral crimes, but I'm thinking that their problem is denial, dishonesty, and all of these things, which is morally very different to violence, even if it does enable violence.
I'm just trying to separate the gravity of those things.
Sure, and perhaps a metaphor might be in order, since I am Mr.
Metaphor Machine. Rightly or wrongly, I spit them out and we'll see if they help.
Yeah, hit me. But if some...
And again, sorry to use the rape.
It's so emotionally charged, but it is the one crime that can't be mixed in with self-defense or anything.
But if person A, if guy A, Bob, is raping a woman, then clearly he's a sociopath and an evil guy and so on.
But if there are...
20 or 30 people standing around doing nothing.
They argue that rape is an evil, a great evil.
But then when they're standing around watching this woman getting raped, and then one person decides to call the authorities, whatever, the cops or the DROs or whatever, and they all yell at him to not get involved, to not do anything.
But at the same time, they loudly proclaim how against rape they are.
To me, the person who is doing the rape is obviously the one that you would punish from a legal standpoint.
But in terms of moral horror, to me, it's the hypocrites who are standing around proclaiming how wrong rape is, but then attacking anybody who threatens or who wants to report the rape.
Those people to me would be by far more corrupt.
Really? More corrupt than the person who is actually initiating force?
Yes. I can see the effects of their actions could, given that there's more of them and they're working together on all of this, I can see the effects of their actions could be pretty terrible, but I didn't think that within the UPV framework you really looked at consequences to figure out the gravity of a moral offence.
Well, I mean, I think that consequences have something to do with it.
Again, I'm not going to sort of say that because it's not objectively measurable.
But if, you see, it's a complicated relationship.
But basically, if the rapist knows that a bunch of intellectuals standing around who claim to be against rape, if the rapist knows that they will attack anyone who threatens to call the authorities, that is what enables his rape.
Yeah. If he knows that everyone is going to jump on him, call 911, and he's going to end up with 20 years in prison or whatever, if he knows that, then he is going to be much less likely to rape somebody.
But if he knows that they're going to shield him from the consequences of his actions, and in fact praise his actions as virtuous, and attack anyone who threatens to punish him or prevent the rape, then that enables the rapist.
You create rapists by attacking those who would Bring legal consequences to bear on the rapist or try to prevent or stop his crime in progress.
No, I do totally agree with that.
I'm just not quite convinced that the actions of the bystanders is on par with, let alone, you know, greater than the actual initiation of rape.
I agree with you. I mean, I absolutely agree with you that it is the rapist that is primarily responsible.
But as I say in the book on UPB, it is the moral theories that are the great danger, right?
Yeah. It's not the individual rapist who is the great danger.
If you think of the two million Americans in prison, of which, I don't know, like 100,000 are getting raped every day or something, if you look at that situation, the danger to the people who are getting raped is not the individual rapist.
It's the ideology that puts them in prison.
Because they're getting raped, right?
Yeah, for sure. I'm just eager to make a clear differentiation between what actions have consequences and what actions are morally culpable.
And I'm sure that both are morally culpable, but it's a question of degrees.
Yeah, and certainly the person who is You know, totally down with the war on drugs, right?
Because I think it's like a million of the people in the US prisons or a million and a half are there for non-violent crimes, and crimes which in any reasonable society would not be crimes.
The person who is advocating the war on drugs or state power as a whole and who does not listen to any arguments against and then attacks people from a standpoint of moral superiority and using all the rhetorical tricks at their command to support and maintain the war on drugs That person has some responsibility.
Again, it's nothing that you could really pursue from a legal context, but that person has some moral responsibility for the resulting rapes, right?
Because he is supporting a system and attacking people.
People who question that system, which is, as we know, since moral theories drive society, that is the greatest cause, ultimately, of the horrors that go on in prisons.
I would agree, yeah, for sure. And so those people who attack people who point out the violence of the state are the ones who, in the grand scheme of things and in the big sort of go-back-to-Pluto view of the planet, The ones who are responsible for our Enslavement, right, for the violence.
All of the war, the destruction of the poor in the realm of the welfare state and the prisons and all that kind of the national debt and the corruption of the currency.
It's those people who attack those who point out the violence of the state and it's those people who defend and justify the violence of the state who are, in the big scheme of things, responsible.
The average guy who's 18 or 19 over in Iraq is not responsible for the war.
I mean, definitely The war could not occur without his participation, so it's not like he's not part of the equation.
But he's not there because he's an evil guy who wants to kill people.
I'm sure there are a few people over there like that.
But he's there because of a moral argument that he did not invent that was pounded into his head year after year in just about every context he was in.
Yeah. No, I'm leaning towards what you're saying.
I do get it, yeah.
Okay. Wow, that was...
A 32-minute agreement.
Look at that. We even had one at 20.
I know. I mean, you mull it over, of course, right?
And the key thing that I would suggest, and again, this is like touchy-feely fruity as all get up, which I'm totally aware of, but...
Yeah.
in this just take a pause right because we we jump in and we start swinging at least i do right but but it's important to take a pause and say how do i feel about this interaction yeah right because i think i mean my arguments or whatever i mean doesn't really matter that much right But the important thing is just to check in with how you're feeling.
Do you feel like this is something that's exciting?
Because when you really start to wake somebody up from this matrix or whatever, it's an incredibly exciting process, right?
It really is just like watching a supernova as their brain lights up.
And you can't get a drug that gives you that feeling, I think.
So that's a wonderful thing.
But when you are in a situation where you're being hedged and blocked and minimized and ridiculed and attacked and undermined and so on, right?
Then there's an angry, frustrated, bitter feeling that comes out of that.
And I think that will give you everything that you need to know about sort of guiding yourself.
Because every time you get into one of those conversations, you make the next conversation that much darker, right?
Because, you know, every time you get knocked out in the ring, you get...
Less confident going in the next time.
I think it's really important in terms of keeping our strength, confidence and vitality up because it's that vitality that will really change people's minds.
That's something I'm also recently really learning the hard way but learning nonetheless.
Excellent. Alright, listen, I won't drag it out.
If you agree, I'll quit when I'm ahead for once in my damn life.
There was one other thing that I wanted to ask about if you got the time, but maybe it can just be real quick and you can podcast on it or send me an email or whatever you like.
So, I finished UPB and I enjoyed it, I've got to say.
Well done. I like it a lot.
And I was chatting with a friend of mine who I think is doing his PhD in philosophy, in philosophy of religion at the moment.
And he's not big on the philosophical area of ethics.
That's not his thing. But we had a good discussion about it and I sort of...
Brought it up and mentioned, hey, there's this random guy on the internet and he thinks he's got it all figured out.
When I say random, I really mean random.
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, yeah.
I mean, you should say it.
Anyway. And he sort of thumbed through the book and read a couple of pages and read the blurb.
I mean, he didn't give it a read by any means.
But I think his...
The things that he expressed to me, which I thought I'd pursue, given that I respect his opinion especially, was that you didn't make reference to meta-ethics.
And this is all news to me.
I mean, I'm certainly not deep in this circle of discussion, but that is outside of Freedom and Radio, I guess.
But he was concerned that you didn't address meta-ethics, and that you also didn't sort of We assess the other key ethical theories, which I guess is utilitarianism and consequentialism and these things, and show where they fall down.
Which, I mean, I thought that was sort of implicit.
If you can prove that moral rules must be universal, then basically everything but UPB falls down, I guess.
But I just thought I'd tell you...
What does he mean by meta-ethics?
In what way does he use that term?
Well, I mean, he had to explain it to me, so I'll regurgitate it as best as I can remember.
I think he explained that there was three levels of ethics that are discussed commonly.
The first one I forget.
The second one was normative ethics, which is sort of building a system of ethics which is consistent and logical and has some...
It has some stuff going for it, basically.
Like, I think utilitarianism would fit into a system of normative ethics, and so would you, BB. And then meta-ethics is the discussion of which of those normative ethical theories is the best and why.
And, you know, it could be because it is best in tune with our instincts, or it could be because it, I don't know, it breeds the best results or something like that.
Yeah, I mean, I don't really know what to say about all of that.
I mean, it seems to me that if you have a mathematical theory that is true, you don't need to write about every mathematical theory that is not true.
Sure, but maybe the key runners or something like that.
Well, but first of all, that's a hole with no bottom, right?
And I did touch on ethical theories that I was not going to accept, and I talked about utilitarianism in the intro, and of course I have podcasts on utilitarianism and so on.
But the problem with, and of course this guy is an academic, so this is going to be his bent, right?
Assuming it's a guy. But the problem with that, of course, is that that is a hole with no bottom, right?
So you can either spend your life analyzing other people's thoughts or thinking yourself.
And the problem is, if you say, well, I'm now going to compare my ethical theory to utilitarianism, or I'm going to disprove utilitarianism, then how many utilitarian writers are there in the world?
Well, there are thousands, right? And so once you step into that quagmire, what happens is people say, well, you haven't read this book by this guy, and your issue was dealt with with this book by this guy, and this guy has an approach that's very interesting, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And every specialist comes crawling out of the woodwork who has his pet utilitarian on his shoulder telling me that I'm...
And you end up in this game which of course is the academic fencing with limp swords par excellence which is running around chasing quotations.
Whereas if you can build a system from the ground up Then you don't need to do that, right?
So if Francis Bacon comes up with the scientific method, then he doesn't need to disprove the thesis of every theologian in the world who's come up with some other system of determining truth from falsehood, like revelation or prayer or whatever, right?
So reading the moles on the back of your hand and getting communication from space aliens...
Because there's an infinite number of ways to be wrong, but generally there's only one way to be right.
There's reason and evidence, right?
So if you've got that correct, if you go into a discussion of every other ethical theory, and you can't just say, well, I'm only going to do utilitarianism.
If you go into a discussion of every other conceivable moral theory, and this guy, as a philosopher of religion, would, I'm sure, include religious theories of ethics in there as well, Then you never come out, right?
Because you could not conceivably spend...
You could have 50 lifetimes and never complete that task, right?
Yeah. Well, no, I think that's a good point.
That was sort of the point that I was trying to make as well, that I think...
I mean, if something's valid, you don't really have to disprove others.
I think that was sort of one of his concerns.
Why is it you think that he did not read what is obviously a very short book and is packed full of, like, even if you don't agree with everything that goes on, there's some pretty bright stuff in there, right?
And it's not the toughest read in the world.
I tried to keep it as entertaining as possible.
Why is it you think that he stopped where he stopped and then brought up stuff that is not relevant to the discussion?
Probably because nothing more than some sort of circumstance.
I mean, we were just catching up for a coffee and I handed it to him over the table and I was only maybe 20 pages from the end or something like that.
So he flicked through it in some reasonable amount of time and then put it down and said, yeah, well, I can sort of see what's going on here.
And he read the index and all that sort of stuff.
I mean, he didn't by any means give it a good read.
But those were just the things...
Do you think he's going to give a good read?
Yeah, I mean, I said I'd loan it to him when I was done, which I am now, and I'll give it to him and see what he thinks.
And those were... I mean, he didn't say, here are some, you know, really strong criticism against Stefan, and, you know, he's an idiot.
He just said, these are the things that I would look into, and these are sort of a couple of alarm bells going off for him.
Probably, yeah. How did you feel when he said that?
Well, I mean, honestly, I'm always a little bit concerned that I might be getting dragged into the first shiny thing I see.
Right. So, I mean, I sort of sit around and you read a lot and you swim around in your own headspace and after a while you do start to think that, you know, holy crap, this all makes sense.
I don't know if I can really say it all makes sense without getting some sort of external validation.
We all need reason and evidence as external validation, but you mean sort of from someone?
Yeah, like personal validation.
Is this person religious?
No. Well, I would say no.
Is he studying the history of religion or philosophy of religion?
I don't know, really.
I mean, he was at some stage, but now he's not really.
I mean, you understand, that's like a scientist studying alchemy or magic.
Well, I mean, I don't know about the field, it might be.
It might just be an interest of his.
But let's just go back, if you can, just for one second, right?
Because you gave me sort of an intellectual description, but when he said, well, Steph should deal more with utilitarianism, and there's these meta-ethics, and there's normative this, and whatever that, subjective is that, and so on, how did you feel when he said that?
Let me just think for one sec.
Sure. I think I probably felt a little bit threatened that something which I'd invested in, at least intellectually, might be falling apart when someone whose opinion I do trust, to some extent, questioned it, even though he hadn't even read the book, to be honest.
Well, but that's important, right?
I mean, if somebody starts questioning something without having read the content, right, that's important.
But anyway, so sorry, you felt a certain amount of trepidation or fear or, like, what was it that, I mean, just at the basic, you know, we are mammals kind of level, what was the feeling that occurred for you?
Probably just angst because, I mean, if UPB falls over, then what do I think about ethics?
Then I'm not really sure.
I'm sort of back to square one and That's a bit intimidating.
I should clarify, by the way, just his tone when he was saying these things.
He wasn't launching any really strong criticisms or any criticism, really.
I sort of gave him the book and said, tell me what you think.
Sorry? But to me, that's even worse, right?
I mean, if somebody launches a strong criticism, that's great.
Like as I've had this article, obviously the book graph from the article Proving Libertarian Morality, which has been kicking around for two years.
And I've sent some highly educated people to it to critique it, to tell me where the flaws are, to tell me where the errors are, and so on.
So it's stood, right, so far.
It's stood with the one minor revision in terms of language going from...
Universally preferred behavior to universally preferable behavior more for the sake of clarity than error.
But, I mean, it's sort of, so far, it stood.
Like, I mean, so a strong criticism would be great.
A strong criticism would be version 2, which I would give for free to anyone who bought version 1, where I would improve the content, right?
So a strong criticism would be great.
But what you got was not a strong criticism, but a criticism nonetheless, right?
No, I wouldn't even...
I wouldn't even call it a criticism.
I mean, technically, I suppose it was a criticism, but I think I sort of want you to trust that if you could hear the tone and this guy's demeanor, I mean, he's just a really sort of friendly guy.
And if you could hear his tone and if you knew his demeanor, he was really just sort of like, okay, well, you know, helping me out, me being the person who's, you know, fairly new to philosophy and he's Obviously, he's been studying it for a while, and he's right into it, and he probably just frankly knows a bit more about it than me.
But I'm sorry, it doesn't matter to me what this guy's tone was, right?
Because I don't know him at all. But what I do trust is your feelings.
Yeah. Oh, when I say I was intimidated, I don't mean because of the way he put it to me.
I just mean that I was intimidated about the fact that what it is that I've invested in could be false.
Well, sure. So what he did was he sowed doubt in your mind, right?
Yeah, but I don't think that that's...
Well, I'm sure you do, actually.
But I don't think that that's necessarily like a malicious or...
Bad thing to do. I mean, I gave him the book and I said, you know, just have a flick around and just tell me what you think.
And he just said, well, it's interesting to me that he hasn't made reference to metaethics when, I mean, the guys he hangs around with, I think that's one of the things they talk about a lot.
Sure. And look, I'm not trying to pick on this guy, right?
But I just want to get to something, if you don't mind.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not really sure where you're going.
That might be why we're going around in circles.
No problem. No problem. What was your goal?
Like, what was your conscious goal in handing the book to this fellow and only giving him a chance to skim it, right?
Because it's a pretty in-depth book, right?
It's not something that... I've got people who've read it five times who get new stuff, and certainly I got that even after writing it.
What was your goal in handing the book over?
I think just to show him what it is that I've been reading about since we last spoke.
I mean, we don't catch up too often.
And just to get an idea of his first reaction.
I mean, I would have liked him to, you know, drop it in shock and go, this is it.
But that was just some sort of, you know, some dream.
I'm not really sure, yeah.
And how long have you known this fella?
I've probably only actually been...
You know, good friends with him and realized he was interested in studying this sort of stuff for less than four months or something.
Okay, so that's certainly, it's not like you just met him at a coffee shop and said, hey, read this book.
So, you know who he is, right?
Because I'm going to put forward a thesis here, which you can say is nonsense or whatever, right?
It's just a possibility, right?
Okay. You don't feel comfortable.
I'm tying together the beginning and the end of the conversation because I don't think that the topics we bring up are entirely accidental, right?
So let's say that what I talked about in the Ron Paul Part 3 video is something that you're not comfortable with because the very first word that you used at the beginning of this conversation was confrontation, confronting people with X, Y, and Z, right?
Okay. So, if you're not comfortable with doing that, and if you are, that's amazing, because I've never met anyone who is, right?
Confronting people on a moral, on core morality is horrible.
I mean, there's nobody who enjoys it, and it is just like, you know, you don't want to be the doctor who enjoys telling people they have cancer, right?
It's always a horrible part of the job, right?
There's lots of stuff about being a doctor that's great, But there's horrible parts to it as well.
And there's lots of stuff about being a philosopher that's great, but there's horrible parts about it.
And the horrible part that's core, at least for me and everyone I've talked to, is confronting people or just basically being honest with them about the reality of the violence around them, right?
So can we say that you have some level of discomfort with that?
Yeah, I think that's true, but just at the moment, that doesn't ring especially true.
It doesn't ring true that you have discomfort with it?
It doesn't ring especially true.
That's definitely true. I mean, it's definitely an uncomfortable thing, but it's not a key discomfort of mine.
Okay. Well, I'm going to put forward a proposition, and you can tell me whether it rings true, and let me know what you think.
Okay. My proposition is this, that you feel uncomfortable confronting people about this conversation.
And, sorry, can you tell me where you are in the podcast series?
In the way, sorry? In the podcast series.
All over the place.
All over the place. Okay.
Have you listened to any sort of the 920 series, The Responsibility of Doctors, or anything like that?
I might have scattered around there, but that one doesn't.
If UPB is true, and if you want to do the right thing, and if the only way to do the right thing is to talk to people about core ethical issues, if all of that is true, then you have to do it.
Yeah. I mean, it's not a rule I'm making up.
It's just, you know, if you want to be a doctor and you want to help people, antibiotics is the way to do it.
You have to prescribe antibiotics.
It's not a choice then anymore, right?
Sure. So, if UPB is true, and if the thesis in the latest video is true, then you have to do that despite discomfort, right?
You have to talk to people about the violence, and then you have to cut them out of your life if they continue to weasel and advocate violence, right?
Okay. I mean, that's a consequence, right?
I mean, that's not something I'm making up, right?
Yeah, for sure. If you want to do the right thing, and the right thing is no longer uncertain, then you just have to do the right thing, right?
Yeah. So, I'm guessing, this is what I'm guessing.
I'm guessing that you could not find a way to disprove UPB. Is that fair?
I don't know if it's fair to say I can't find a way to disprove it.
I think I'm still absorbing it and trying to understand it.
But it's a pretty good shot, right?
I'd say it's a good shot.
Whether or not I decapitated the beast, it certainly took some blows, right?
Yeah, for sure. I'm liking it a lot, but I'm not eager to wield it yet and throw it around at people until I'm more confident That is true, basically.
Right, okay. But, I mean, relative to your expectations, was it sort of on par, or did it exceed your expectations, or did it fall short in so far as you hoped that you would be completely certain at the end, or where did it sort of sit?
I was hoping I'd be completely certain at the end, and it fell slightly short.
Okay. No, that's totally fine.
That's fine. Totally fair.
So, here's my...
And sorry, would you say that if you did take on the program of talking to people about core ethics...
And then rejecting those who you did not have a productive and positive conversation within a couple of weeks.
How many people do you think would be left in your life?
If you just got gripped with the mania to do this, whether you should or shouldn't, it doesn't matter, right?
But if you did, Put that forward as an absolute.
I will talk to people about core ethics.
I will put the phrase about me into the initiation of the use of force.
And I will not have people in my life who don't reject the use of force against me.
Over the next couple of weeks, if you talk to everyone in your life who's not totally periphery, like the grocer or whatever, how many people would be left?
Very few. Do you want a number?
Yeah, sure. Out of how many, how many would be left?
I'm just trying to think of how many people I have had this discussion with so far who I expect would actually give some sort of positive conversation.
And when you say to people, I can't hang with you if you advocate the use of violence against me, you will be subject to the most withering personal attacks about how you're in a cult, about how you're intolerant, about how you're absolutist, about how you're like an Islamic fundamentalist.
And I get these all the time, so I understand what happens, right?
It's that when you actually put traction into your moral statements, people feel the whiff of their own corruption and then they attack you, right?
So just that you know that that's going to happen, right?
That if you say, if you don't just sort of disconnect from people, like just don't return their calls or whatever, but if you say to them openly, look, if you continue to advocate the use of violence against me, I can't have you in my life.
And if you continue to obscure this basic fact that you are advocating the use of violence by supporting the state against me, I can't have you in my life, how is it that you feel that people would react to that statement?
Yeah, pretty poorly. I expect there'd probably be a few left.
Maybe, I don't know, four or five, something like that.
I'm not really sure. Out of how many?
Out of how many people in my life?
Or, I don't know, a few hundred, I suppose.
Okay, so we're talking about like a one to two percent retention rate, let's say.
Something like that, yeah. And we're also talking about a couple of hundred unbelievably ugly conversations, right?
Yeah. That's not fun, right?
No. And that, I would say, absolutely makes me uncomfortable.
Right. Okay. So this is my thesis, if you don't mind.
And you can sort of mull it over, or you can tell me that I'm full of shite right now.
That's totally fine. But my thesis is this, that you could not find a way to disprove UPB. And thus, the imminence of those conversations that you need to have with the people around you, the imminence of that, particularly combined with the video that I put out two days ago, the imminence of that cost you, unconsciously, a great deal of anxiety.
And so you picked somebody in your life that you knew would help you push back these conversations in your life so that you wouldn't have to have them for now.
It's not like you're saying, I'm never going to have them.
But it's like, if I can find somebody who can sow some doubt into my mind, then I don't have to have these conversations right away.
Okay. So you picked this guy to help you avoid the inevitable consequences of this conversation, right?
Which is to have the conversations with other people about ethics, right?
I'll stop you there with some total shite, but we can move on.
I don't want to cut you off halfway because you've thought about this.
I had the discussion before that video, which is before the real R, Confronting, you know, you're confronting video saying, you've got to do this.
So, I can't say it was prompted by that.
And also, I think what prompted me, if I remember correctly, is that I had been having this discussion with people and I had been just getting frustrated.
I mean, I posted on the board a couple of times, I think posts to the effect of wow, wow, I'm frustrated, that sort of thing.
And I think I sent him an email saying let's catch up for a coffee and a chat because I wanted to speak to someone who I thought would respond better.
I mean I just wanted to speak to someone who I knew embraced rationality and you know, was capable of holding a conversation for half an hour without Making some stupid statement, which, you know, just has me smacking my head.
Well, I understand that. Sorry to interrupt you.
I totally understand that. And I don't mean to imply that you had this conversation yesterday after I released the video two days ago.
I mean, I know that. But the video certainly prompted you to get in contact with me, right?
And that's totally fine.
Yeah. But what I am saying is that I'm relying on, as you know, like my belief, my starting point is that everybody's a genius and everybody's a philosopher.
So I am going to give your...
You know, massive and stellar brain, full kudos, right?
Until you start drooling on the phone or something like that.
So I'm going to give your intelligence and perceptiveness nothing but the highest, far higher than mine, obviously, in your own life and so on, right?
So if you wanted to get certainty from someone about this book, let's say that I was going to pay you a million dollars or something like that.
To get certainty from this fellow with regards to this book, what would you do?
What would I do? Yeah.
Go and talk to him.
No. Sorry to be annoying.
I'm sorry, I might have misunderstood the question.
If you wanted to get this guy's detailed opinion on the UPB book, what would you do?
Oh, I'd have finished reading it before I met with him and I'd have given it to him and made him read it before we had a talk.
Exactly. And you would have said, look, I will buy you the most sumptuous dinner in the world if you will read this book and give me a detailed critique of it.
Yep. You would not have handed it to him and said, skim through the index and tell me what you think.
Yep. Do you understand that that is not the actions of somebody who wants certainty from someone?
Okay, sure. Now also, if he respected philosophy truly, and this is just my opinion, again, you know him better than I do, but just based on what you've told me, he would never in a million years pass judgment on an ethical theory when he only got to skim for a few minutes.
Okay. Do you see what I mean?
That's like a doctor diagnosing someone who says, Doctor, I have a pain.
The doctor would say, I can't give you a diagnosis and be a responsible doctor if you simply say, it hurts somewhere on my body.
Like a responsible doctor would not say, what's wrong with you?
Okay. So, you guys were engaged in a game, in my humble opinion.
Again, you were engaged in a game.
So what you were doing was you were giving him something that could not conceivably result in anything positive coming out of him with regards to this book.
Like, he wasn't going to say... This is amazing.
I need to read this.
I can't conceivably give you an opinion, but where can I buy this book?
And you say, well, it's $13 and change.
You can get the PDF tonight.
And then he would read it, and it only takes a couple of hours to read, and he would make detailed notes, and you guys would get together, and so on.
That would be the response of somebody who respected philosophy as a whole.
You wouldn't pass off a judgment after skimming Yeah.
So basically, if you can sort of go back to the Middle Ages in your mind with me, and we step out of the time machine, what you've done is you've given a copy, and this is not to equate myself with this, just to use it as a metaphor, of Newton's Principia to a priest.
And you have asked the priest what he thinks.
And the priest has only skimmed it over and said, well, he doesn't seem to take into account the divine will.
But if you really wanted an independent evaluation of Newton's Principia, you wouldn't just give it to somebody, even a mathematician, to skim.
So you must have given this book to him under these circumstances in order to create the very feeling that you got out of it, which was some anxiety, some angst, and some feelings of insecurity with regards to what it is that you were pursuing in this philosophical conversation.
Okay. I can see that what you're saying is consistent and makes sense.
I don't want to...
Shoot it down, and I don't know, how do you differentiate between denial and, you know, genuine, no, I think you're wrong?
Well, sorry, the way that I would differentiate from it, and this is, again, this is just a theory, right?
I mean, it does fit with the facts.
And the alternative to this theory is that you're retarded.
Like, honestly, I mean, like, I don't mean, and you're not, right?
I think you're brilliant, right?
So... The alternative to this theory is you saying, I have no idea whether...
Like, I actually gave a highly complex and original philosophical work to a guy, asked him to skim it, and then accepted his response as valid, right?
Because, honestly, looking at that objectively...
You'd have to be completely retarded to think that would ever work and give you any sense of certainty or positivity.
And you gave it to a guy who's highly interested in religion and who's also an academic, right?
So obviously there's a whole lot of stuff that's going on there, right?
But that would never be the actions of somebody who wanted a measured, considered, and thoughtful opinion, right?
So there's no conceivable way that you could have rationally done this and gotten a positive response that would have eased your mind, right?
Okay, but I'm just saying it's not necessarily the actions of somebody who's in some way consciously or subconsciously aiming to sow seeds of doubt in their own mind to alleviate their anxiety about some sort of… Conversations, right? Yeah, some sort of conversation that I don't want to have.
I'm saying the other possible explanation is that I actually had been having some confronting conversations with people which were typically, as you would totally expect, disastrous and frustrating and making me anxious and making me upset.
And so I went to this guy and wanted to meet up with him because I wanted to speak with someone intelligent.
Or, sorry, well, maybe someone intelligent, someone who's especially rational.
You can assume he's intelligent, right?
He's a PhD. He's obviously not got an IQ of 90.
I'm sure that's the case. Yeah.
And I think it really just came up in conversation.
I'm just saying that I don't think I went out to him and gave it to him in the hopes to, you know, alleviate my anxiety.
I'm just thinking that He said, what do you mean reading?
And I said this and I gave it to him and he skimmed over and I said, you know, well, maybe this is where I fall down.
I said, yeah, what do you think of this random internet guy?
Well, yeah, and you knew that, right?
Like, you know that there's a reason there are over 900 podcasts, and it's not just because I enjoy the sound of my own voice.
Lord knows nobody does, right?
But there's a reason there are that many podcasts, and that's because this is a highly challenging conversation, and it's more challenging psychologically than it is philosophically, right?
Philosophically, it's kind of brain dead, right?
You know, truth and reason, right?
Reason and evidence is truth.
I mean, it's not that complicated, but it's the psychological barriers and challenges which are the major aspects of this, right?
So, there's no way that you could conceivably get a positive response knowing the complexity of this conversation and also knowing the difficulties that you've had in this conversation with people, the frustration and the angst that comes out of that.
And here was another example of angst that came out of a conversation, right?
And you knew this going in, right?
So, if you said, what are you reading?
You would have said, I'm reading a book on ethics that has just blown my mind and here's what I'd like you to do, if you don't mind, right?
I mean, and I'll I'll pay you to do it.
It's that important to me. I will buy you a copy of this book and I will give it to you.
And if you could read it, make notes, you know, just I need to sort of get a third eye on this and let me know syllogistically where the logic breaks down and so on.
I would massive, I mean, I think it would be interesting to you because this is certainly an up-and-coming theory of ethics and, you know, this book has sold a lot of copies and so you may run into it at some point in your career.
But if you could, I don't even want to show you the cover of the book, right?
Because you have to read it, and it is pretty revolutionary.
Whether it's true or not, I'm still mulling over, but certainly it's a damn good argument, right?
Whether or not it holds the test of time and all circumstances we're still working on.
But I need to buy you a copy of this book, and if you could go through it in detail, I would hugely, hugely appreciate it.
I think you'll get something out of it, even if You find out that it's wrong, right?
So scientists have a theory, sorry, scientists have a description of a theory that's completely retarded.
And they say, the theory is so bad, it's not even wrong, right?
Like, faith is a theory that is so bad, it's not even wrong.
Like, you can't even learn anything out of its errors.
So this is a theory that if it's wrong, it's still useful, right?
Because at least we've eliminated reason and evidence as a criteria for moral theories, right?
So So, if you really wanted to get a considered opinion, you would know exactly what to do.
Order a guy a copy of the book and give him two weeks to read it and make notes and then offer to buy him dinner, you know, whatever, right?
And then you probably wouldn't have to buy you dinner for giving him the book if he was really interested in sort of ethics as a rational discipline.
But that's what you would do if you really wanted to get, like, you wouldn't just hand the book over to somebody who studies religion and ask them to skim it and give you feedback, right?
Yeah. And you knew that.
I mean, again, I'm just talking unconsciously, right?
I mean, because there's no way that anybody with any brains, and I give you full credit for having massive brains, there's no way that anybody with any brains would say the best way to get opinions about a radical new theory is to have somebody skim it who is invested in the diametrical opposite of that theory.
Yeah, sure. But I'm just saying, whereas you're saying either I did it in order to intentionally alleviate some stress by sowing the seeds of doubt, or I was totally retarded because I gave it to him, expecting one thing, knowing totally that the opposite would be the case.
I'm just thinking that there's a third possibility that, I mean, that that was what the time allowed for, and I did want to hear quickly what he had to say.
I don't know what I'm saying here now, sorry.
What you're saying, I can't say it sounds very true.
It sounds very plausible, but...
Sure, and of course, there's no proof in this stuff.
The only proof is...
I mean, the proof is very easy.
Proving this theory is very easy, right?
Yeah. And proving this theory is that if you are not getting any secondary gains out of having doubt about this conversation, then you simply have to act as if this conversation is true, as if UPB is true, as if the recent video is true,
and see how you feel. Now, if when you try to act as if the philosophy is true, you feel an enormous amount of anxiety, and you feel the urge to back off from that, then clearly you will gain some benefits from Creating doubt within yourself.
Does that make sense? Okay, yeah.
And so if the conversation is true and that causes you a great deal of anxiety, then clearly you will get benefit out of people sowing seeds of doubt in you, right?
Yeah. So all you have to do is act as if the conversation is true, right?
As you go and you make a lunch date with some friends after we have this conversation and you say, I'd like to talk to you about this This question of coercion in society, particularly against me.
So if that is the equivalent of me saying to you, jump off this cliff into this pit of vipers, then clearly you want to avoid that conversation, and Lord knows we all do, and I understand that.
Then, clearly, you will get an enormous amount of benefit from avoiding that conversation, in which case, then you have motive as well as means, opportunity, and all that for the scenario that I talked about, where you handed the book to this guy and told him to skim it for the express purpose of increasing doubt and thus postponing the conversations.
Okay. Well, I think I'm going to think about that probably, and a lot, and...
Think about whether or not that's true.
I mean, it certainly could be, and I'm sure when I think about it I'll have a better idea.
Yeah, well, do let me know.
And, of course, it is a theory, right?
Of course, you can't prove this stuff logistically, but it's something that may help explain not just the facts, but also the presentation of the facts, like why you wanted to bring this up right after the discussion about corruption in the video and so on.
So, would you... I mean, I'm happy...
Like, I feel like we've got enough out of this.
I'm happy to stop here, and I'll send you a copy of this, and you can have a listen and let me know what you think.
Yeah, for sure. That sounds good.
Okay. And maybe I'm playing with fire here, but...
I would, at some point, like to hear, if you got the time, what you think about UPB and metaethics.
I mean, I haven't even checked out Wikipedia to see what it says about metaethics, but what my friend told me really briefly was that it basically says if there are a few theories which generally seem to be consistent, finding a basis on which to say one is better than the others, and I assume that UPB would come out better than the others because they fall down flat, That's the study of metaethics and those who study ethics talk a lot about this.
Well, sure. I would certainly be interested to have a look at it.
So if you find some good resources, I may just know it by a different name because I've not studied philosophy at the graduate school level.
Actually, I have, but not at the PhD level.
So I just may know it by a different name.
So if you come across a good resource, be sure to let me know.
And look, if your friend wants to debate, right?
Like, I mean, if he reads the book and wants to debate, totally thrilled.
Like, that may be the easiest, right?
I'd be totally thrilled to debate with him, so just let him know.
Sure. All right.
▲
Export Selection