April 22, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
23:49
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Hello? Hey, how's it going? | |
| Can you hear me? I sure can. | |
| Great. So I haven't really formulated this question very well in my mind, but from my, I don't know if you remember, but my Ayn Rand sort of background, I've sort of had this struggle with sort of the practicality of using humility when you're sort of expressing your ideas, as opposed to sort of the, you know, am I just sort of being humble to sort of... | |
| I guess alleviate other people's insecurities in their own self-esteem. | |
| I really like how you present things because you definitely have this great balance of humility but also just saying, this is what I believe to be the truth and here's my reasoning. | |
| I might be crazy but I'm free to hear any arguments against it. | |
| And it seems to go very well in terms of getting people to really listen. | |
| But where do you see sort of being overly humble being a problem? | |
| Is it a problem? I don't know. | |
| What are your views on that? | |
| That's a good set of questions, let me tell you. | |
| From 1 through 12. | |
| Sorry. No, no, they're fantastic questions, I do think, and I think that they're highly appropriate because I'm very keen on trying to get people better, trying to help people become better at communicating about About philosophy, so I'm very keen on that. | |
| I think those are excellent questions. | |
| So, in brief, I am humble because I am a slave to reason and to evidence. | |
| Right. If somebody has a better argument, I'm down with them, right? | |
| I'm all for it, right? | |
| Because I'm not wed to a conclusion, I'm only wed to a methodology. | |
| I'm wed to the scientific method, not to Newton's theory, if that makes sense. | |
| Right, right. So there is a humility which is that my opinions don't mean anything. | |
| My quote truth doesn't mean anything. | |
| Only the truth, reason and evidence means anything as far as truth statements go. | |
| I mean, I like jazz. | |
| That doesn't mean that that's subject to a moral evaluation or a rational evaluation. | |
| So humility to reason and evidence is the first and foremost thing. | |
| Now, when it comes to conversing with other people, I view it in the following manner. | |
| This is a little bit similar to what I talked about in the Sunday show. | |
| I guess that was the 20th yesterday of April. | |
| The way that I approach it is that I'm a doctor with a pill. | |
| Right. Whatever it takes to get the other person to take the pill, I will do. | |
| My only success is measured as to whether or not I get that pill down someone's throat. | |
| And if I have to tell them it's a sugar pill, if I have to pretend to be taking the same pill myself, I mean, I know this sounds all horribly manipulative, and I'll get to that in a second. | |
| Okay, good. No, I'm aware of that, right? | |
| I'm aware that this may be viewed as a manipulative and patronizing approach to the truth and so on. | |
| But let me just go up front with the negatives and then we can talk about, or the goal, and then we can talk about the methodology. | |
| Okay. But whatever it is that I have to do to get to other person to take the pill, and it's not my pill. | |
| It's the pill of reason and evidence. | |
| I try as best as I can To work with the reality of the situation. | |
| And the reality of the situation is that if somebody disagrees with me, he thinks that he's right, just as I think that I'm right, right? | |
| Sure. So, if he thinks that he's right, and I tell him that he's wrong without proving to him that he's wrong, then all we are is two television sets pointed at each other, both saying we're right. | |
| Right. So the reality is that if a religious person comes to debate with me, he thinks there is a God and he thinks that he's right. | |
| Now, I obviously want to convince him of the truth that there is no God, but I have to recognize the reality, if I want to be empirical, I have to recognize the reality that he wants to prove to me that there is a God. | |
| And if I say to him, I am in no way flexible about whether there is a God or not, And this is going to be a one-way street where I'm just going to tell you that there is no God and prove it to you and I have no interest in what you're going to say. | |
| How is he going to react? Well, not well. | |
| He won't listen to anything you have to say. | |
| Well, of course, because I'm not listening to anything that he's going to say. | |
| Right. Now, is it possible in any conceivable universe that... | |
| I and other philosophers that I've read have all missed some key crucial example that there is a god. | |
| Oh, is it possible? | |
| Yeah. I don't know. | |
| I guess. Maybe very, very small. | |
| That doesn't mean that is it possible there is a god. | |
| That's not what I'm saying. I don't think it's possible that there is a god. | |
| Is it possible that there's some great argument for the existence of a god that I've never heard? | |
| Yeah, sure. Am I going to find it enjoyable and intellectually stimulating and invigorating to listen to and respond to that argument? | |
| Yeah, you should, yeah. Yeah, for sure, right? | |
| I mean, there's nothing wrong with trying out another jujitsu move, right? | |
| So, I have to be willing to accept the possibility that the person has a great argument that I've not heard before, and that's why I say, I'm totally willing to hear your side, I want to, you know, come at me with everything you've got, and let's see if we can't find out the truth together, right? I don't think that's humility. | |
| That's just a recognition of the fact that he believes that he's right and that I cannot ask from him a higher standard of respect than I am willing to grant to him. | |
| I can't say, you need to respect my beliefs, though they're diametrically opposed to yours, and you need to believe that I'm right and you have nothing to offer, but I'm not willing to do the reverse. | |
| Right, right. | |
| I mean, and it is genuinely true. | |
| If somebody comes up with some mind-blowing argument about the existence of God, that would be pretty cool. | |
| I don't think it's going to happen after 25 years, but, you know, why not? | |
| Because if I'm not willing to—I mean, there's lots of people who want to talk to me, and I don't talk to them, right? | |
| Except your girlfriend who had a long... | |
| No, I'm just kidding. | |
| But I don't talk to them because they're clearly mean or aggressive or abusive or crazy or... | |
| or whatever, right? | |
| And there are some people that I think are worth talking to and it turns out to not be so much the case, right? | |
| - Right. | |
| - So if I'm going to go into a conversation with someone, I have to believe that they have something of value to add because otherwise, if I don't think they have anything of value to add, I just do a podcast, right? | |
| I just do a speech. | |
| - Yeah. - So-- - So at what point do you sort of draw that line as to they're not worth talking to? | |
| Is it when they don't give you the respect that you give them in the sense of, oh, I'm not going to hear you out? | |
| What is that line for you? | |
| Well, that certainly does happen, but what's far more common is that they simply don't give truth and reason the respect that they deserve. | |
| Right. So if somebody says, I believe in God because of X, Y, and Z, and then I just prove X, Y, and Z, and they say, well, I still believe in God, then clearly debating has no interest. | |
| They want to believe in God, and they just make up a bunch of crap to surround it, to confuse people, right? | |
| So if people just will reject reason and evidence, then, oh yeah, then there's no point, right? | |
| Because they're just fundamentally deranged in their core. | |
| And there's no possibility of debate without a rational and objective standard, right? | |
| That's the difference between religious, quote, debates between religious people and the scientific method. | |
| Right. Yeah, because I'm trying to get towards more, like, how you sort of handle these debates, because I just, from past experience, I get so, like, emotional and angry when people do not respect logic and reason, when they completely just discount it, and it just is really frustrating to sort of, to, I don't know, and maybe at that point I should have just sort of discontinued the... | |
| No, no, it's before then. | |
| See, you have a lot of control over how that goes, right? | |
| Yeah. I mean, have you ever, except maybe on very rare occasions, have you ever heard any debate that I've been involved in, devolved to that kind of stuff? | |
| Oh, no. No, so it's not... | |
| I mean, if I can do it, anybody can do it, right? | |
| Yeah, and that's what I'm trying to learn. | |
| What another man can do, right? | |
| Right, that's what I'm trying to learn. | |
| Like, what is it that... | |
| And maybe it's what you've already talked about, being open to whatever arguments they present. | |
| Well, the key thing is that, psychologically, I think it's essential to understand that people who are irrational, deep down, they already know that they're wrong. | |
| They already know it. | |
| And the purpose is, if you go in and start thumping on their reasoning, they'll just get defensive and you won't get anywhere, right? | |
| Right. Whereas if you invite them to prove you wrong and you just keep letting them come at you and prove you wrong and keep asking those Socratic questions, eventually they will realize that they don't have good arguments. | |
| And then they may do one of two things, right? | |
| Most people will then just either start repeating themselves, avoid the topic, get upset, leave, slam the door, flounce off, pout, whatever. | |
| Either do something emotionally or intellectually negative or dishonest. | |
| Or they'll say... | |
| Shit! Shit, right? | |
| I guess I don't have all of the arguments that I thought I did, right? | |
| Because if you can't generate doubt within people, because the point is to get them to think. | |
| It's not for you to be right, and it's not for you to correct them. | |
| The point is to get them to think, because that's a self-sustaining thing. | |
| It's the old thing, like, you teach a man to fish, you don't bring him fish. | |
| You don't give a man answers. | |
| You teach him to think, because then he can do it on his own, and then he can also become a force for truth, right? | |
| Right, right. And it's that process or that moment where you can ignite a mind into a thrill and excitement about truth and philosophy that your job is done, right? | |
| Because you want to make people self-sustaining in this kind of stuff. | |
| And with a lot of people, like, you'll just, you know, you'll pound into them and they'll get mad and they'll pound into you and you both part ways just kind of like, well, that was a whole lot of headbanging without even a good Metallica beat, right? | |
| And that, you know, that's not... | |
| We don't have the strength as a movement to do that. | |
| I mean, there may be a time where we can be more aggressive when we become more of the majority or more assertive, let's say. | |
| But at the moment, we have to do the judo thing, which is where you use the momentum of your opponent to unbalance him, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So, somebody comes rushing at you. | |
| For me, I just picture some 300-pound guy. | |
| I can try and rush at him, but it's just going to be an ugly impact. | |
| I want to use his momentum, his energy, his certainty to allow him to fall over. | |
| That's a good analogy, yeah, because what's happening to me currently is that I hear the same arguments that I've sort of heard before and I've already reasoned out and it frustrates me and sort of puts me off balance and that's a good analogy in the sense that like I should sort of maintain my sort of purely rational sort of strong standpoint and let them sort of have the emotional, irrational sort of responses. | |
| Yeah, like I always say to people, you know, if they disagree with UPB or some approach that I'm taking, it's like, hey, you know, show me how I'm wrong. | |
| Do me the favor of correcting me because that's – I want to be right. | |
| I don't want to have a position and hold to it regardless, you know, like some guy on a hill defending it while it goes underwater. | |
| I mean, that's not what I want. | |
| I want to be right, not to have a position. | |
| And I have theories that I put out there, and I'd rather they be right, but the important thing is that they be right. | |
| And so I say to people, you know, come and tell me how I'm wrong. | |
| I invite you in, you know, and tell me how I'm... | |
| And people are kind of surprised at that, and it actually can be quite a civil and positive interaction. | |
| Like, there was this guy in the chat window the other day who brought up The usual stuff, you know, like the propaganda is in the realm of advertising and is in the realm of Madison Avenue and corporations. | |
| You know, just the usual stuff, right? | |
| And I said, well, you could be right. | |
| Because, you know, why not, right? | |
| Hey, let's take that premise that he could be right. | |
| Because if I know for sure he's not right and I think he's totally irrational, then I just won't debate with him, right? | |
| But I say, okay, well, let's say that you're right. | |
| If you had a choice between... | |
| Like in terms of influencing people, would you rather be able to show them commercials that they may or may not be able to tune into and that you can't compel them to, or would you rather get them from the age of 5 to 18 in your educational arena where you could basically force feed them knowledge for 6 or 7 hours a day, 5 days a week for 14 or 15 years starting at the age of 5? | |
| It's like, yeah, I guess I'd want that. | |
| And I said – and so I accept that you are very interested in propaganda and I accept that you want to be able to convince people that they're in a kind of matrix of manufactured illusions. | |
| But you want to make sure that you're aiming at a cause, not an effect, right? | |
| At the – not the symptom but at the actual disease. | |
| And it certainly is true that people are susceptible to advertising in mainstream media but that all occurs because they're stuck in the state schools and prior to that the family. | |
| And let's not forget religious indoctrination that is pounded into children from a very early age. | |
| So I – and I just say you – because what I'm trying to sell to him is you want to have as much effect and credibility as possible. | |
| And certainly forced childhood indoctrination through the family or through the state schools in terms of religion or statism is infinitely more effective than a couple of commercial spots in adult living. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Whereas if I had just said to him, oh, that's bullshit. | |
| Corporations aren't the problem. | |
| Schools are the problem. | |
| Right. | |
| Then it's just it's immediately adversarial. | |
| And I just he bites my hand and I don't get to give him the pill. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. But if I accept your premise that you are very interested and you're very concerned about indoctrination, which would you rather have, schools or advertisements? | |
| And obviously, if he says advertisements, then he's insane and you don't talk to him, right? | |
| But if he says, yeah, I guess by that standard it would be schools that I'd want if I wanted to indoctrinate people, then it's his energy and his momentum. | |
| And you're saying, what I'm saying to him is, I want to help you achieve your goal, right? | |
| So when people say, We can't get rid of the government or the welfare state because of the poor, right? | |
| It's like, okay, so you care about the poor. | |
| I care about the poor. Everybody cares about the poor because it's the first objection that people come up with. | |
| And I want to help you to actually help the poor, right? | |
| Because if somebody says, I want to know the origin of life, and they say, well, God created it, say, well, once you can convince them that that's not a real answer, then you can actually help them get to a real answer, right? | |
| Yeah. Which is that Darwin created. | |
| I'm just kidding. But you want to help people get to their goal, right? | |
| People have this illusion that the state and God and so on will get them to where they want it. | |
| But then they don't. It's the illusion of a solution, which is really, really dangerous, right? | |
| Yeah. So if somebody says... | |
| I've got a cancer, and I want to cure my cancer, and the way that I'm going to do it is I'm going to do the Macarena. | |
| Then you say, well, I get that you want to cure your cancer, and here's what you should be doing instead of the Macarena, which won't help you, right? | |
| Yeah. The thing I come across a lot is, using that analogy, is like, you know, someone saying Macarena will cure cancer, and you tell them, I don't think so, and then they respond with, well, you must be pro-cancer. | |
| Well, no, but what you can say is that's very interesting. | |
| I've never heard that before. | |
| Perhaps you can step me through the logic by which you came to the conclusion that the Macarena cures cancer. | |
| Right. Now, either they have gone through the logic but made mistakes, in which case they respect logic, but they've made errors, as we all do, or they're just crazy, in which case you don't engage with them, right? | |
| Right, right. But it's like, you know, make the case. | |
| Because where we're coming from, for most people, is a place of near freaky-ass insanity, right? | |
| No government? Are you people lunatic? | |
| No God? Nobody's proved that. | |
| I've never heard that before. Nobody at Harvard School of Government is talking about no government. | |
| I've never heard this idea before. | |
| Taxation is violence? Are you people insane? | |
| And then you layer in the FDR stuff about the corruption of the family and this and that, and it's like, right? | |
| You just short-circuit people, right? | |
| Right. And it's just recognizing that you can't take someone from being a fat chain-smoking slob to being an Olympic gold medalist athlete in the span of two afternoons, right? | |
| Right. Right, right. | |
| And you have to build credibility before people will listen to you. | |
| And the problem with libertarians and objectivists to some degree and also anarchists is that, you know, we get angry. | |
| And then people say, okay, so this guy sounds crazy and he appears angry. | |
| Hmm. I wonder if I should go with his ideas or not, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I definitely have that problem. | |
| Right, so you want to appear happy and curious and rational and patient and with a real recognition of the difficulty of the sale, right? | |
| Because basically what I analogize it to is, hey, I'd like to charge you $500,000 for this really tasty shit sandwich. | |
| Anybody? Anybody? Going once, going twice, right? | |
| And people, they get angry then when people don't want to eat the shit sandwich for $500,000. | |
| But that's what it's like when you bring philosophy into people's lives, right? | |
| Yeah. Because, I mean, as you know, with your girlfriend, with your family, with other people, it's a whole lot of shit sandwiches early on, right? | |
| Yes. I mean, truth, right? | |
| Yeah. So it's just being sensitive to that. | |
| And if they see, and if you say, well, I'm well-versed in philosophy, and you can see how angry and impatient it makes me, so eat this shit sandwich so that you can be angry and impatient. | |
| People are like, you know, that's a whole lot I don't want, right? | |
| Yeah. That's very true, yeah. | |
| Whereas at least if you say, okay, it is 500 shit sandwiches in a row, but afterwards you're completely happy, then at least people will say, okay, at least there's a goal that makes the shit sandwiches somewhat palatable. | |
| Right. And how do you, this is more of a specific question, like, how do you deal with straw men when someone sort of breaks down an argument that they, you know, have sort of projected onto you? | |
| And I mean, other than just pointing out, like, that's not really what I was saying. | |
| Like, is there any way that you deal with that? | |
| Well, again, I try not to give people answers, but if somebody's putting a straw man argument together, I'll say, okay, can you tell me how you got that from what I said? | |
| Because I can't make the connection. | |
| Let them explain it to you. | |
| Because, as you know, and I don't know if you've ever done any tutoring or anything like that. | |
| I've done, I mean, I taught in a daycare and so on. | |
| I've done a fair amount of tutoring in my life. | |
| There's nothing more that is more of a test of somebody's understanding than to have them try and explain it to someone else, right? | |
| Yeah. Yeah. You don't sound convinced. | |
| No. Oh, no, no. Absolutely. | |
| Yeah. I mean, it's almost like teaching sort of solidifies your own knowledge. | |
| And so you're having them teach it to you. | |
| Right. Like, it's easy to read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. | |
| Okay, not Atlas Shrugged. But it's easy to read these books and go, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. | |
| But the real challenge of whether you understand the ideas or not is whether you can explain them to somebody who's skeptical in a way that is going to be convincing, right? | |
| Right, right. It's like everybody listens to the RTR book and goes, got it. | |
| Right? Oh yeah. And then I see them in the chat window all the time, like completely not RT. It's a hard thing to do, right? | |
| Oh yeah, definitely. So if you can demonstrate it and explain it to other people, that's great. | |
| So when people put forward a thesis that I disagree with, the important thing is not that I tell them that they're wrong, which if they don't believe, me telling them isn't going to make any difference, right? | |
| I mean, it's like me saying the world is not round but flat. | |
| I mean, if you believe it or not, it doesn't make any difference. | |
| It's just a statement, right? | |
| But if they have a thesis that I consider a straw man or something that's falsified, right, or falsifiable, then I want them to explain it to me so that they see where the flaws are. | |
| Because if they see where the flaws are, they already – I don't need to lift a finger, right? | |
| Whereas if I tell them where the flaws are and they don't see it, they just – I may even squeeze agreement out of them in the moment, but it's not going to do smack in the long run, right? | |
| Right. Right. | |
| Right. Right. Yeah. | |
| It's the other thing, right? It's like, well, people say, well, you know, in a stateless society, the poor would have no access to dispute resolution. | |
| What if you can't afford DROs and so on, right? | |
| Right. It's like, well, do you care about the poor? | |
| Would you be willing to help them? | |
| Yeah, well, I certainly would be and so on, right? | |
| And then you say, okay, well, if you want to help the poor, that could happen. | |
| People say, well, nobody helps the poor anyway. | |
| It's like, well, then how do you explain the existence of the welfare state and agencies which already help the poor and charities and so on? | |
| So just empirically, I can't see how that makes sense. | |
| But you can make the case to me. | |
| You know, I'm open and willing to be converted and so on. | |
| And then what happens is people realize that what they say is assertion without evidence or rationality. | |
| But they've got to get that. | |
| The important thing is they get that, not that you get that. | |
| Yeah. Yeah. | |
| There's nothing more powerful to get people to the truth than a complete willingness to be corrected. | |
| Yeah. And read your Plato, right? | |
| I mean, Socrates does this all the time, that annoying bastard, right? | |
| I mean, people come up and say, oh, Socrates, how can you have any doubt about virtue? | |
| I know exactly what virtue is, blah, blah, blah. | |
| And he's like, oh, well, that's wonderful because, you know, my poor feeble mind has been unable to come up with a good definition of virtue or justice or whatever. | |
| But perhaps you can enlighten me and teach me and instruct me on this and that and the other. | |
| But that's why they basically killed him because he was such a passive-aggressive little bastard. | |
| But read that, right? | |
| I mean, that's the kind of stuff you don't get in Rand, right? | |
| I mean, because Rand's pretty brittle and aggressive. | |
| But I think that kind of stuff is really, really helpful and really, really positive. | |
| And it gives you a life that is joyous because there's nothing more joyous than getting somebody else to start really thinking rather than repeating cliches. | |
| Yeah, absolutely. Okay. | |
| Well, thanks. That really helped. | |
| You're very welcome. Do let me know how it goes. | |
| And of course, the first person to do this with is both yourself and then, of course, your girlfriend, right? | |
| Yes, absolutely. All right. | |
| Well, thanks, man. And I hope that was helpful. |
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