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June 13, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:31:09
1085 Authority and Certainty Part 2 (Conference)
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So, just to recap from this afternoon, you were talking about...
Annoying questions.
Yeah. I was asking annoying questions.
Let's see. It had something to do with complexity and simplicity...
Oh, you people peeing all over my masterpieces.
It's just... I can't keep all those balls in the air all at once.
Oh, I know it's difficult.
I think I felt my motivation dip just a little bit, so I'm just keeping you informed.
Right. Well, I was just trying to tie all this stuff back into some of the things that you've been saying in the chat room about your therapy experiences over the last week.
Yeah. In particular, I remember an incident you were talking about with your therapist...
And how you got upset at her because she started giving you solutions to a problem that you brought up in therapy.
And then also, later on in the conversation this afternoon, I was reminded of the fact that you mentioned that the two dudes that you were...
Dealing with in group therapy.
Yeah, the two dudes you were dealing with in group therapy are the two dudes you disliked the most.
There were examples of what Steph was talking about where he would fail early out of the conversation.
Yeah, and these are guys that...
I knew exactly how they would turn out from the very beginning, from the first 10 minutes that I met them in the group.
And I expressed this to my therapist.
And she thought, well, no, they're in the group.
Therefore, they must have some kind of introspective capacity because they're in this group.
And therefore, they must have some kind of investment in thinking of whether...
So I go, okay, well, let me give you the benefit of the doubt and I'll go talk to these people.
Well, you get the benefit of the doubt?
Well, she had a good point that they were invested in therapy.
But... Yes, I know.
I know that I was right the first time.
Well, and how do you know that you were right?
And by that, I just mean that her argument was not correct.
Well, I was right because the first time I met them, they said...
Things that indicated that evidence and reason were not...
They spouted a couple of tautologies and they said a couple of things that indicated they weren't very introspective.
But the argument that...
I mean, never ever let anybody talk you out of your empirical experience.
And saying that everyone who's in group therapy is necessarily introspective is like saying that everyone who posts more than three times on the FDR board is a philosopher.
Okay, I totally agree there.
I mean, we've seen lots of people, right?
Smart people, people with education and so on, and they're not...
Not that way inclined, right?
People who even call themselves philosophers.
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, the idea that everyone in therapy is introspective is like saying that everyone who's around FDR is philosophical, and that's not the case at all.
In fact, a lot of people are drawn into therapy to avoid self-knowledge.
In the same way, a lot of people are drawn to philosophy to avoid actionable knowledge.
And actually, when you said that stuff, I was immediately reminded of somebody else in Nate's past that was exactly like that.
You mean which one? Which one of the 300?
Wow, got a whole army back there.
Yes. Nate, you come with the Spartan army?
Yeah. I have them all.
No, just recalling some of the things that Rachel said in Chicago were very much, to me, indicative of somebody who was in therapy in order to avoid her own problems.
No, really? Oh, yeah.
Like, for example, the situation with her mother having committed suicide.
I mean, I asked her directly if she talked about that at all with her therapist.
Oh, no, she was totally over that.
She was totally over that.
Yeah, oh, I mentioned it to her, and, you know, she didn't really say anything interesting, so we moved on.
Right, she'd moved on from that.
That's what I'm saying.
Steph said that I was reminded of that particular interaction.
So my gut instinct with these guys, I kind of...
I came into the chat room and I talked to somebody in the chat room who's not in this call.
I think it was Dave Bachman.
I'm not sure. But I talked to somebody about these two guys the very first time I met them.
Gave my entire analysis of them.
You know, exactly what I predicted they would do if I were to try to become introspective in any way, shape, or form, or ask questions about what somebody in the group that is introspective feels about their experience in that moment as a kid, as a child, how they would react.
And every single one of my predictions has come true.
I mean, to a...
just beyond true.
Just like, my first gun instinct was right, and therefore, you know...
I go into therapy with my individual therapist, and I tell her...
Look, this is exactly who these people are, and this is exactly how they're going to respond.
And she goes, oh no, they're in there for...
But you can't say that because they're probably in there for group therapy, or they're in there because they're introspective, or because they have some kind of capacity for introspection.
So I'm like, okay, well, let me test your theory.
And I went into group therapy again, tested it, I'm right.
Tested it again, I'm right.
But every time you come back from group therapy, you're more and more frustrated, right?
Right, because I don't need to test this.
I'm right. And then I've got all this professional therapist telling me that I'm wrong each time.
Why do you keep bringing it up with her?
I don't know.
Why would I do that?
And what's wrong with her being wrong?
Well, what's wrong with her being wrong is she's a therapist and I need to feel like she's got some credibility.
Well, sure, but I mean, you don't want to...
I mean...
You want to end up trusting your judgment, not hers, right?
Right, that's the whole goal.
Right, the whole goal is to trust yours.
So, being more right than your therapist is good news.
And I've been getting the sense, especially with the exchange about the...
The solution giving.
It's sort of like you've been trying to find reasons not to trust her anymore.
Yeah, right?
But she may have expertise in particular areas, right?
But Nate's been studying philosophy like mad for a couple of years, right?
At least of this kind. And other people have...
And he's been studying philosophy for years before that, right?
So this is something that Nate's becoming an expert in, right?
Sure. So, I mean, a therapist isn't going to help you If you're a dentist, right?
Be a better dentist. No.
So when it comes to understanding how their philosophical premises are going to impact their long-term interactions, that's your expertise, right?
She's not a philosopher, right?
No, and I'm starting to wonder why the hell I'm there sometimes.
Well, because you've got issues around processing emotions, not around understanding the long-term effects of people's philosophical premises, right?
So, my issues around emotions are especially in regards to isolation, right?
Well, I don't know. I believe you.
Well, I don't know that I would categorize them that way because they seem to be about a lot, right?
And I don't mean that that means that there are lots of big problems.
I just mean that there's a lot of things going on in your emotional issues that you want to deal with, right?
Some of which is isolation.
Sorry, go on. Isolation, loneliness, loneliness.
How have I managed that in the past?
I go out and find chicks and, you know, do my thing.
Right.
But if your issue is isolation, then I'm not sure how keeping your therapist at arm's length is going to help you solve that.
That's exactly why I brought the whole issue of isolation up with her this past session.
This actually sort of reminds me of the conversation you had with Greg Minton on the weekend show about his therapist's husband.
All we want is some specialized knowledge from these people, right?
Right. As I said, and again, this is just my therapist, believed that yogis could fly.
You know, my dentist might be a Scientologist.
What do I care? Fix my teeth?
So, Greg, earlier you said that in group and in therapy, I did something similar to what I did with Steph earlier today.
Yeah. What was it?
I know I snapped back with a fairly simplistic question about a complex issue and put him in kind of an impossible situation.
Right, which was what you were doing to your therapist, right?
You were putting her into an impossible situation.
Into an impossible situation.
What was that situation?
I... What was the impossible situation?
You were talking to her about feeling isolated and lonely at certain specific times of the day or certain specific days of the week.
Right. Like Saturdays at 1800 hours.
I feel isolated and alone until about 2300 hours.
So from 1800 to 2300 on Saturdays, I feel isolated and alone, and that's when I want to go out and do my thing.
My usual.
And then she suggested some possible solutions to that.
Right, which I don't think I was looking for that...
For, you know, what should I do in reaction to these feelings?
I was looking for what do these feelings mean and where do they come from?
And she started throwing these solutions at me and I got really frustrated.
Well, did you ask her what do these mean or how did you present it to her?
What were you projecting that you wanted from her?
Well, I don't know. I just started telling her the problem.
I feel X at X time, on X day, and that's when she came out with the solutions.
And maybe she's right to come out with solutions.
I don't know. I don't know.
Is that what she's supposed to do?
Nate, Nate, Nate, Nate.
He plays the pretty card.
See, we should have done this on Uvu.
we could see him massaging his hair.
Well, Nate, this is trust your feelings, right?
I mean, if you feel frustrated, then you feel frustrated.
And you can either spend the rest of your life saying, well, I'm sure I'm wrong, right?
Which is, you know, I mean, then you can just save your money, right?
Don't need to see a therapist because anyone can say, I feel this, but I'm sure that I'm wrong.
I mean, that's easy, right?
Or maybe I'm wrong, you know?
So I felt frustrated when she started offering solutions.
Right. And I didn't say I feel frustrated.
Well, it's what do you say about your feelings, right?
What is it that when you experience a feeling, what do you say, right?
What do you say to yourself?
Like when you experience frustration with your therapist, what you do is you get all kinds of like brain farty, right?
Yeah. You know, like, well, I feel this, but maybe it's wrong, and maybe this, and maybe the therapist, and maybe there's some long-term plan, and maybe this, and maybe I shouldn't feel frustrated, but then she's supposed to be my therapist.
I'm supposed to get into her, oh, she's talking now.
Like, you get all kinds of, like, you know, 12 hamsters on 16 espressos go around the wheel, right?
Yeah. Only 12?
Right, but you short-circuit yourself with, you know, you plug every telephone, you know those old switchboard operators, you just plug everything in, right?
The wall of sound, it does stultify you, right?
Right.
Yeah, so don't do that.
Oh, he's doing it again.
No, and what I mean, you can't switch that off, of course, right?
But you have a habit, which is perfectly understandable given your history, right?
But you've got a habit of self-management, right?
You know, like you were like a herd of horses charging in 12 different directions, but it kind of comes up with a hyper-accelerated thinking pattern, right?
Yeah. I can almost see you like you're piloting your body.
And then I get her thousand-yard stare.
Yeah, it's like, well, from my observation of Homo sapiens, a human being would smile and tilt his head at this point.
Bzzz! With smile muscles.
Right? Right.
In order to blend in with humanity, what I need to do is, right, do not lie to the right directly to the face.
Right. Got a giant free-ring binder of instructions.
Exactly. That is extremely disconcerting when you do that, Nathan.
No wonder you get the thousand yards.
You know, you're like the pasty white guy in a rap group thinking that nobody's on to him, you know?
Yeah. What up, home fellows?
How is the post?
Posse? Posse?
I can't recall.
Anyway, word up to your mater.
That is the perfect description.
I know. It's like you're piloting yourself.
Bank left. Smile.
Chew. Right? Yeah.
Wait, it's time to relax the smile.
Everybody's staring at me.
Now blink! You're far too accurate.
That's true, right? Yeah.
Completely true.
Well, and with all due respect to your considerable intelligence, it's kind of hard to listen to people when you're trying not to crash land a wounded plane, right?
Right. It's like if you're trying to land this plane without any wheels in a swamp when the world is on fire and someone's like, hey, what did you think of the movie Iron Man?
It's like, shut up, I'm trying to land this fucking plane.
Yeah. That's a perfect metaphor, Steph.
Don't talk to me, can't you see?
I'm sweating, I'm dying.
The fucking joystick just came off in my hand and you want to know about a fucking movie!
That's kind of how I felt when you did your Iron Man review.
And then it's like, and all of that actually just occurs in your head, right?
And then you're like, intercept, intercept, average human being would not react in this manner, must not strangle stewardess, right?
Right. And then your hands shake, or it's like, hands must not shake, this is not human behavior, code, code, they're on to me, they're on to me!
Do not show any panic.
And, you know, it's even weirder for the person talking to you, because, I mean, they don't really know what's going on in your head, so when you've got your own thousand-yard stare, it's like, ah, what the fuck did I just do?
Right, right, right.
Why are the airbags deployed?
So, I mean, this just...
I mean, so with...
Don't you feel a little bit like, you know, android in the world, so to speak?
Yeah. You know, you're like a Vulcan who got drafted into the village people.
It's like, I don't know any of these dance moves, but I think they'll shoot me if I don't get them right, right?
So it's just like Spock on stilts or something, you know?
Steph, what did you take before this call?
I want some of it, whatever it is.
Well, am I wrong?
I mean, I don't want to be unjust, right?
And I say this with all affection because, I mean, we've all been there, right?
But it's a tougher place for you, right?
Bilbo, Bilbo, Bilbo, Baggins.
I don't think you're being unjust at all, Steph.
I'll post a YouTube video.
I think it's a German thing, and it's called a bush pilot.
A bush pilot is a guy who flies around in the middle of nowhere in a little plane, delivering, prospecting.
I took those things when I was in that line of work.
Yeah. The Bush pilot is like – it's actually someone who's driving President Bush from the inside.
He's got the joysticks and it's all like 1950s flying saucer that he uses to drive President Bush around.
And it's actually quite well done.
Like he'll crank a winch and his hand will come up in the video and so on.
Like it's really funny and that's sort of just what it reminded me of.
Piloting the starship Nathan, you know?
Oh, my God. That sounds terribly dangerous.
Like R2-D2, you have a little midget inside of you with controls.
Oh my god, it's R2-R2-D2. Oh no.
At least it's not Z3-KO. True.
But that's the challenge, right?
Is that... You're trying to compute something very complicated using those old sketch-in punch cards.
Yes. And you can't quite keep up, and this is where the self-consciousness comes from, right?
Right. It's like, I am wearing the skin of a human being, they cannot find the evil swamp thing underneath, right?
Okay, I've lost you there.
Well, that's all about giving your subconscious an equal voice in your decision-making, right? I mean, your conscious mind can't do everything.
That's sort of what he's saying there.
You're trying to do everything consciously and you can't.
You have to trust your gut at some point.
Your subconscious mind is telling you all this good stuff that you're trying to...
Head off at the pass, right?
Yeah, I mean, you can think of the brain like a bicycle.
You've got a series of gears, right?
And I can never remember the numbers, but once the one when you're going up a really steep hill and you need to pedal a lot but you don't get much traction, is that like first?
Yeah, first gear, for sure.
First gear, right? So the conscious mind is first gear, right?
And then the unconscious is like gear 12 million, right?
Where it's like half a pedal gets you around the world, right?
Right. And so your conscious mind is great at that really fast pedaling that you need to do, and then your unconscious is good for the long haul, right?
And for a little bit, you can actually, you know, because when you're going up a hill and you're pedaling like crazy, you're just trying to get up the hill and you're sweating, you're not enjoying the view, right?
No, in my unconscious, it's like, not just gear 12000, but one cycle of pedaling gets me all the way around the world.
With what? Like these two guys, I got all the way to the end of their psyche, just in the first 10 minutes of meeting them.
Right, and that's your gear 12 million, right?
Right, right. Okay, so let's get back to the gear one, right?
So, you can't coast, you can't enjoy the view, you're just fighting to get up a hill.
And we need to do that, obviously, at times in our life, to use our hyper-conscious reasoning mind to solve particular kinds of problems.
But because your instincts were so opposed in your upbringing, you only have one gear, right?
Hmm... Or at least you're only allowed to use one gear.
Yeah, I mean, sorry, you only have access.
And again, I'm not saying your instincts don't work.
I mean, we're just talking about, you know, original Nate, post-family, pre-philosophy or whatever, right?
Yes. And what I mean by that is you've got to pedal like crazy because other people have these different gears, right?
And you have this one gear and that's okay when you're sort of, you know, you can get by in high school and, you know, college and so on.
But as life begins to accelerate...
I mean, you've got to pedal a lot to keep up, right?
Right. And you don't really get to enjoy the view, right?
Well, not really.
Well, and, because everybody else seems to be, from your viewpoint, seems to be coasting along in gear 12 million and enjoying the view, right?
You end up in this strange situation where you've got to be pedaling like crazy.
But somehow you have to make it appear effortless, like you're coasting along, right?
I don't know if it's that or if it's the exact opposite, because it seems like everybody else is pedaling in gear 1, and I'm sometimes alternating between gear 12,000 and...
Well, no, but what I mean is that in this hyperthinking that you go into that I was talking about earlier...
Where it's like, I feel frustrated with my therapist, but I can't be quite right to be frustrated with my therapist, but I want to be able to trust my therapist, but maybe my feelings are wrong, and she is the expert, but I don't feel that way.
Like, you know, that kind of stuff?
Yes. That, to me, that's what I mean by gear one, right?
Okay. You're pedaling like crazy, right?
Yes. And not getting anywhere, really, right?
No. Because that state of mind doesn't lead you to any certainty, right?
No. Definitely not.
You just round and round, right?
No, it leads me to more just uncertainty.
Right, right, right.
But at the same time, you can't spend your whole life like that, right?
I mean, you have to make decisions, you have to whatever, right?
Right. So you're trying to make this one gear do a whole bunch of different things, right?
Exactly. Exactly. And that's why it's very stressful, right?
To say the least.
Right, right.
And because you have one gear for all things, in a sense, you kind of want people to be more than one thing for you, because you need someone else to be these other gears, right?
And what I mean by that is, if you recognize that you have your own variety of gears, you can be sort of funny and serious and relaxed and tense and it's all part of the rhythm of living, then other people have their own particular gears, right?
And you can then say, this therapist can be completely wrong.
About how philosophical premises end up playing out in people's emotional lives.
Well, because she's not trained, right?
It would be like asking her to be a psychologist and a neurosurgeon too, right?
Right, right, right.
Okay, I get that. So she doesn't have your gear 12 million because she's not a philosopher.
But you don't need her for that.
What you need for her is to get you out of first gear when you get stuck there, right?
Right. And that first gear is what again?
Your second gear is confusion.
Your first gear, right?
The hyperconscious rationality.
Just think about that when you get frustrated with the therapist and you can't think, right?
Like your thoughts, they just chase each other all around, right?
I like that phrase, too.
You can't think.
Because in a moment like that, you don't need to think.
You need to feel. I need to just tell her what I'm feeling.
Well, yeah, but I mean, that's so much easier said than done, right?
Now we're back to, let's just put the drink down, right?
Right. I mean, so much easier said than done, but the first thing to recognize is that, and I use this term with all judiciousness, this is an enemy of yours now.
Right? This first gear, this confusion, this stuff, right?
That it's an enemy to your happiness.
And that doesn't mean it wasn't useful when you were younger and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But, you know, when you're a baby, nobody wants to hold you if you don't have a diaper.
When you're 35, few people want to hold you if you do, right?
It's just appropriate to the time, right?
Right. Right. But now it's an enemy of yours, right?
I don't understand why it's an enemy.
Because if you're sitting there thinking, well, my therapist, I'm frustrated, but I don't know if it's right.
Maybe my therapist is wrong about this, but if she's wrong about this, what else is she wrong about?
And am I paying her for nothing?
And oh my God, I've got all these financial troubles and this, like all of that stuff, right?
All of that, yes.
All of it, right? And I'm sure we could go for two days and we would get 5% of it, maybe, right?
And that's my...
Right, the endless chain of thoughts that lead nowhere.
Right, exactly. Totally.
Like a cloud of gnats, right?
Right. That is an enemy of yours.
That thought, that habit, that pattern...
Right. That's like an alcoholic's desire for a drink.
It's an enemy of yours.
It's like, why bother with this person?
She doesn't know anything.
Right. And that's fine, too.
But if you felt certain about that, then you'd say, hey, you know what?
This is not working for me, and I don't feel that it's going to, so here's your check.
I'm going to find another therapist.
Right. And I'm going to go to another therapist and she's going to do the same thing.
Well, for sure. We're far ahead in a lot of ways in certain areas of thought, I think.
And so there's not going to be anybody who's going to have caught up, right?
God, no. Right?
So we can't expect them for that, right?
It's like you've just invented penicillin and you go to a drugstore and say, I need some penicillin, right?
And they say, what? Right.
Right. And then you say, oh, you people don't have any good medicine because you don't even know what penicillin is?
And they say, what?
Right. That's just, I mean, that's just appropriate.
We've invented a lot of new stuff here.
We're talking about a lot of new stuff here.
So expecting a therapist to know it is, you know, not reasonable, right?
It's not rational. I mean, they have, or we have penicillin, but I mean, they have other medicines that are useful for other ailments where penicillin doesn't quite go where we need it to go, I think.
Yeah, if penicillin were a bicycle.
No, I'm just kidding. Right, they have other medications that we need, right?
And so we've invented a couple of our own that they don't have yet, but we can't judge them by that standard because we're obsessive philosopher monkeys, right?
Yes. Yes. And what do we do about that?
Well, we'll get to your secondary thing about confusion, right?
Actually, let's just get to your secondary thing about confusion, because you've certainly been bringing it up enough that you're asking for help with it, right?
You weren't the guest that was commenting about confusion a lot.
No. Oh, okay.
Good, that wasn't you. Were you around today with the guy...
Oh, it was actually...
It was Mr. C. Just wasn't getting something about inflation, right?
Yes. Mr.
C wasn't getting it? Oh, man.
I mean, oh, man.
Let me tell you. Smart guy.
But it was just like a total circular thing.
And it wasn't even that tough an argument, right?
It was just some emotional block.
I don't know what it was, right? But this guy who was saying...
Well, you should not pay your taxes or you're complicit in the government or whatever.
And I was saying, well, the argument could be made, as a guest, I was saying the argument could be made that you're screwing the poor by not paying your taxes because the government will just print money.
It hurts the poor. Inflation hurts the poor the most and so on.
So you're kind of taking a bullet for the underprivileged, right?
And, I mean, literally, Mr.
C, he just refused at some level to get it, right?
I saw that, but I was...
Unusual. I mean, the guy's really smart, but this was his defense for this, right?
Maybe he's got something about the poor.
Yeah, it could be any number of things, right?
But I certainly know, but he literally, it was like a broken record, right, that he was going on, right?
So I'd say, well, you know, but how does inflation hurt the poor?
It's like, well, anybody on a fixed or minimal income erodes the purchasing power and They have less discretionary income.
And he's like, well, why would the government spend more money if you don't pay taxes?
Well, the government always spends more money.
It's like, yeah, so it doesn't matter whether you pay your taxes or not.
And I'm saying, well, but the government will always spend money and then they have to top it up with this inflation if you don't pay your taxes.
And he was like, but the government is always going to spend more money, so it doesn't matter.
It was literally that far apart in terms of comprehension.
Oh, man. But he was...
I was kind of siding with him on that one.
I know. I mean, you were...
Had you been arguing like that, I would have known it was you right away.
But... Yeah, I was kind of But the idea that, you know, if the government needs a million dollars and it only gets $900,000 in taxes, of course it's going to borrow or pay, right?
It's a difference. It doesn't cut its spending, right?
And I gave an example because I said, well, we know that it doesn't cut its spending because more and more people go into the gray or black market.
Government spending doesn't decrease and they pay fewer taxes, right?
Right. Or they raise taxes, which again hits the poor the hardest because it cuts into their discretionary income times, right?
Because even if you say, well, it doesn't raise taxes on the poor because of the graduated income tax, well, they're employers then, right?
I mean, they get paid less, right?
Oh, wow. I mean, it's not an airtight argument, but that's why I said you could make that case, right, as easily, right, to say, well, I'm paying my taxes so that they don't screw the poor even more, right?
That's my charity. And all I was trying to do was saying – was to try and say it's complicated, right?
Right. But I was coming back and saying that – asking if you were saying that not paying your taxes – It was your fault if the poor suffered from inflation.
Well, no. I mean, I certainly had never said that it was my fault or your fault.
That's just an effect, though, right?
Right. So it's complicated, right?
I mean, you can say, well, I'm not going to pay my taxes, right?
But then the guy next to you just has to pay for you, right?
Right. And again, that doesn't make you evil.
I mean, the evil is the guy taking the taxes, right?
It doesn't make you evil, but it's complicated.
Right, but everybody around you is going to call you evil for not carrying your part of the load.
Oh, sure. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the slaves hate the slave who escapes, right?
Right. But I'm just saying, that's all it is.
It's complicated, right?
So how does this tie into...
I'm always trying to tie it back into your confusion.
Well, this thing where you suddenly can't think, right?
Like, what happens to you, Nate, when you come back with, like, and the first gear is what?
And, you know, like, and how does this relate to, right?
Because it blows my mind.
It's like you just suddenly become completely retarded.
Right? Because we go like earlier today, like we talk for like an hour about this, you know, complicated stuff and detailed stuff and, you know, all the complicated stuff.
And you were like picking it up, like chewing it out, no problem, right?
Right. And then we talk about how, you know, in first gear your thoughts just go round and round and your mind races.
And like two or three times you're like, and first gear is what again?
I don't know, I just kind of fog for a second.
Well, it's more than a second, right?
It's really frustrating.
Kinda.
And I didn't mention this earlier, but when you told me earlier that I was asking some annoying questions and I felt that wave of horror, when I got to the freeway I started working out in my head, you know, when I got to the freeway I started working out in my head, you know, what was
was I feeling, you know, inadequate in the chat room, or was I trying to help when I knew I couldn't help?
And then suddenly I felt really sad, just like a bum, just really, really, really sad.
And do you remember the thought that preceded it, or was it something that just arose almost spontaneously?
It just rose spontaneously, just...
I felt really, really, really frustrated that I couldn't help.
And then I felt really sad.
Right. Right.
Okay. Okay.
And do you remember what the sadness was about or did you have any thoughts about sadness?
I really never figured it out.
I sat there trying to figure out what the hell is making me so sad.
And making me just bawl like a baby.
Right. Well, if you remember from RTR, there's something in the book which talks about how a slave will attempt to frustrate his master, right?
Right.
One of the reasons that blacks in the South, and this would be true of any slave population, but one of the reasons that blacks in the South were considered stupid was because they just pretended to be slow, right?
Right.
You know, I don't follow mass learning.
I mean, that Al Johnson, that horrible racist blackface stuff, you know, like that...
You see them in the old 20s movies, right?
Yeah. Scratching their heads and they can't remember where they put things and they're just, you know, like big retarded school kids, right?
Right. And that was how...
Jack Benny's sidekick.
I'm sorry? Jack Benny's sidekick.
Oh, I don't think I ever saw that, but...
But, I mean, you can see those, you know, oh, Massa, I don't know, they just couldn't, like, they pretended or they portrayed themselves as not being able to think, right?
Which was a defense.
Well, sure, it's a defense, right?
Right. Because if you prove yourself to be able and you're a slave, what do you get?
Right. Some expectations of...
More work.
More work, exactly.
Some expectations of more work followed by more work.
Yeah, you get more work, right?
Right. Right. I mean, you want to be the scrawny, retarded slave in appearance, right?
You don't want to be the really smart six-foot-two strapping, right?
What you'd get is moved up to the house, and then the entire rest of the slave population would hate you.
Oh, for sure. If you got moved up to the house, then you would not have the companionship, and also you would have...
You would be picked on emotionally, right?
Because what would happen is you would – instead of being out home and like doing – I personally, myself, I would rather do the field work than lay the table.
Because I'm out there doing the field work.
I just got to produce my cotton.
If I'm out there laying the table, it's like, oh, this goddamn fork isn't in the right place, and this knife should be aligned with this thing, and this saucer should be over here, and, like, annoying, detailed, inconsequential crap, right?
Right. And you would get hit if you got it wrong.
Like, the worst combination of things is complicated, meaningless, boring, with violent punishment for getting it wrong.
Or religion.
That's pretty much childhood.
Well, yeah, but I mean, that's the worst combination of stuff, right?
Because I'll say, I mean, violent punishment for getting something wrong is – but at least if you're learning about ethics, at least you feel that there's some meat on the bone, right?
Like you're being punished for something that's important.
But the way that they used to – there's this – in the life of Brian, they make fun of this, right?
In that the guy is writing Romans Go Home on the wall.
And they go through all of the excruciating minutiae of Latin grammar and syntax with a sword to his throat, right?
I don't remember that part.
It's a great scene.
It's a great scene. I need to re-rent that.
I haven't seen it in a couple of years.
People called Romanus.
They go towards the house.
It's a brilliant scene.
Because it also gets what these guys remember.
Because they grew up a generation even before Greg and I. They remember.
They remember what it was like.
When you had to memorize all of this God help you Latin bullshit with a guy who would hit you with a metal ruler if you got it wrong.
Right, that was just like one generation prior.
Oh yeah! That was my high school, not the ruler.
Right, so... So slaves, if they knew what was good for them, they just want to be dumb, right?
It's less work, and you don't get involved in this endless, petty, stupid minutiae all the time.
Where people will hit you for doing something wrong, at least out in the fields.
First of all, out in the fields, they can't hit you too hard because they need you to work.
And the work that you have to do is not that taxing, right?
Mentally, anyway. Mentally, right?
So, you want to be out there, do your work, you get your exercise, you're out there, you may be singing with your friends, you're chanting or whatever, right?
I mean, you're a slave, so it sucks, but the house slave is a whole different kind of slave, right?
And, and, see, but we're just talking about that level of intelligence.
What if you're a really smart slave, right?
And you correct your master, right?
Suddenly you don't know your place, boy, right?
Right. You're saying you're smarter than me, boy, right?
You get lynched.
Oh, for sure.
Because they can only keep you slaves by pretending that you're dumb.
Their evil then arises to them if you're intelligent, right?
That's also why I think in the propaganda, the whole white man's burden thing, I mean, they portrayed the savages in Africa as, you know, like little more than children that needed Christianization.
Right, right. And for us with our parents, our parents obviously gave us this dual message, right?
That you had to be smart for show, but you couldn't be smarter than they were, right?
So, you had to get good grades.
I'm sorry? That's backtalk.
Yeah, that's backtalk, right?
So, this is the paradox.
I talk about it in Untruth, right?
This is like, you need to get good grades, right?
And you need to learn, you know, all this stuff for status, for the parent status, right?
Because if you get bad grades, they don't look good and they have to sit there where the teacher says you got bad grades, you have to sign the report cards and so on.
And so you have to get a good education, but God help you if you are smarter than they are.
Go get a good education, but God help you if that education leads you to atheism.
Oh, yeah. Or anarchism or skepticism about the eternal virtue of the family, right?
Right. Oh.
So, uh...
Are you saying that I kind of played this dumb card?
That's a very interesting question when you think about it.
which i'm not going to answer of course laughs - Is that a loaded question?
Well, you know the answer very well.
If you know enough to ask the question.
I don't mind if you say yes.
I mean, if it is, then that means something.
No, but you realize that asking me about whether you're playing dumb is playing dumb, right?
So you've already answered yourself by, you know, just asking.
You've been caught in your own trap.
If you ask, am I playing dumb in fluent Greek?
Hmm. Ancient Greek, no less.
Huh. No, it's just that you were punished for intelligence, both in the immediate, in terms of backtalk, and you were also punished for intelligence in the long run, right?
Well, I can remember several thousand occasions in which I was slapped for backtalk.
Right, right. So, if you are intelligent, and if you reason, and if you state your case, you get assaulted, right?
Every time. Right.
So, intelligence equals assault.
Right. Whereas if you play dumb, you know, maybe you'll just get a slap and a kibble, right?
Huh. Yeah.
That's all I'm saying. It's your enemy, right?
It's your portable cotton field.
Great.
You know, if you're a slave and they ask you to lay the table, I'll stick four forks up my ass, right?
Saying, I thought that's what you meant.
Then they'll send me out of the field.
They won't ever trouble themselves to bring me back, right?
So the fog is, if I think and if I express my thoughts, I will be beaten.
I will be assaulted, right? Right.
So, you're acting as if you're in a situation of imminent physical danger 20 years after the fact, right?
And it's more than just, if I think, in this case, it's if I'm certain about what I... What I've discovered, then I'll be...
I'll be beaten or whatever, metaphorically speaking, right?
Because you were totally certain about these two guys in therapy, in group therapy, but you kept pursuing them, not because you cared about them, but because...
You kind of accepted the idea that, well, you must be too dumb to really get it, right?
Maybe there's something there that I just don't see yet.
Right. And that's why I... Sorry, are you 34, 35, Nate?
How old are you? 34.
34, okay. Right, so you're not a young man.
You're not middle-aged, right?
But you're kind of in that in-between, right?
Right. Right. And I'll give you a big secret if you like.
Yay!
It's just being right at some point, you either will it or it's never going to happen.
Right?
Because you have enough empirical evidence now at your age to know what's right.
Right?
I'm not talking about some crazy-ass lifeboat scenario in abstract philosophy, but the basics, right?
Right, so when I know exactly how these people are going to react and exactly who I should avoid in the group...
And then I express that to my therapist and she says I'm wrong.
Yeah, you can say I'm in my 30s.
Maybe I've been studying this stuff for years, but maybe there's something out there that I just don't know yet.
But that's just agnosticism, right?
You're agnostic towards your instincts.
Maybe there's an alternate universe where these guys turn out to be really great, right?
Maybe there's a god out there somewhere, right?
Right. You can't disprove that there's no god, right?
It's just agnosticism.
Hey, wait a minute.
Oh, Bobby got that one, didn't he?
That was you in the chat room.
Huh?
I think Steph was in there as guest one time.
Well, I don't know about that, but you realize, if you say, despite all evidence, I could still be wrong, that's exactly the same as agnosticism, right?
With religion. Right.
Right, and it's funny, too, how this afternoon you were kind of yucking it up about how there was that one guy who threw out Stephen Hawking's name, and because he was a very important person, we were all just going to believe him, right?
And it occurs to me now that that's sort of what you were doing with your therapist, right?
Well, she's a trained therapist, so I have to...
She's the professional, right?
Treat her opinion seriously.
Right. She's the professional, right?
Right. That's right.
But she's not the professional in your feelings and she's certainly not a professional in your group there because she's not even there.
Right. So this is the great secret, right?
Which is that at some point, and I think that we can do this fairly young, but at some point you're just going to say...
If the evidence is in, I'm just right.
But the thing is, that's not necessarily an excuse to kick her to the curb either.
No, no, no. Nothing like that.
But it's something like this, right?
Like an agnostic is going to say, I'm going north.
Sorry, an agnostic could say, yes, it's true that the compass I've got says that it's going north.
That we're going north. And it's true that the compass that you say, that you have, that you're showing me, also says that we're going north.
And we have 15 backup compasses, which all say that we're heading north.
But you know what? They could all be broken.
All right, I see the ridiculousness of that.
Like at some point, you've just got to go north because life is short, right?
And if you've got 17 compasses...
Or it's even because you've got actually with religion...
You're saying, I mean, every compass on the planet is pointing north and you've got every piece of information.
And you say, well, in some alternate universe, maybe north or south.
And it's like, fuck, okay, yeah, you go there, right?
I'll just go north of this one, right?
Sorry, Greg. Well, I was going to expand on your metaphor a little bit and sort of point out that...
It's sort of like what you've been doing is trying to compare your barometer to your compass to prove how useless your barometer is, right?
Yeah, the different gear thing too, right?
Right. And so this is just it, right?
So if you...
Have an emotional response to these guys.
You ask them some questions, and it turns out that their philosophy is all kinds of weird.
And you see them interacting, and that's also weird.
Right? Then, they're weird, right?
I mean, you know, you've got 17 compasses all pointing north, and you're saying, I don't know.
If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck...
If I could just send you the chat log of me and Dave or whatever, where I just spelled out exactly what these guys were like on the first night I met them.
Oh, I have no doubt you were perfectly correct.
I was just...
I just was to a T. Sure.
I knew exactly what would happen when I did X, and exactly what happened happened.
Right, right. And you know, the people who have been banned from this conversation have not gone on to be wonderful people.
No. You keep talking about trusting your feelings, Nate, and I mean, obviously you have all of this empirical evidence about your being right, so the time does come when it's like, okay, it's time to actually do what I've been telling myself that I should do, eventually. And it is just willpower.
It's just willpower.
You know, it's like you've got a bunch of people yelling at you, which is what happens when you're in first gear and you're thinking 6 million miles an hour and getting nowhere.
And it's just like, guys, back off.
You're right. This is where we're going.
All the compasses point north.
Here's all the evidence. And I mean, I have to do this to myself, sometimes a couple of times a day.
Because we're sailing without a compass out here, right?
I have to just sit there and say, you know what, Steph?
You freaky bastard, you got it this far, right?
Your instincts aren't going to screw you up now.
I can just feel Nate in my head saying, but what if my feelings are wrong?
What if I trust them if they're wrong?
Well, I mean, you've kind of seen the alternative to not trusting your feelings, right?
I mean, it's been like 34 years of not doing that.
So, you know, what could possibly be worse than the alternative, you know?
And maybe almost a year of...
Focusing on them and trying to figure out, okay, if I do the opposite of what they say is going to happen, then what's going to happen?
Oh, it looks like they were right.
Every time they're right.
Right. Yeah, they're going to be right.
I mean, I don't know how it is or what it is, but, you know, they evolved long before our conscious brains have been around since we were lizard people, which apparently is not that far back, according to some.
Alex jokes! Yeah, I mean, but that's like saying, you know, what if my heart explodes tomorrow?
It's like, well, I can't live like that, right?
Right. Right. You know, what if I have a massive stroke while I'm driving my car and I plow into a church full of children?
I don't know. Like, whatever, right?
Like, well, I'll exercise.
I'll eat well. I'll be alert when I drive.
And, you know, of course, yeah, some disasters could always occur.
But, you know, it's just a matter of saying, like, at some point, this shit's got to pay off and I've got to be right.
Right. At some point, I've just got to trust it, despite what therapists or any kind of professional says.
And you've got this great axiom, right?
And this can sound all kinds of culty, but it's absolutely true.
You've got this great axiom, which is that if your feelings were wrong, they weren't yours to begin with.
It's some foo invasion, it's some scar tissue, it's some bullshit, it's some infection from someone else.
Right. Right. Your feelings, I know this is all tautological, but it's just the way it is.
Your feelings are right.
But if you act on your feelings and it turns out that something goes wrong, then I guarantee you, you go back and look over that shit, it was coming from somewhere else.
Yeah. And the time you act on feelings that aren't yours, I've found that that kind of puts me in better touch with my feelings than next time.
It's actually, you know, helpful sometimes in like this perverse way.
Yeah, no, I mean, not perverse.
I mean, it is. I mean, Christine and I were working on the book tonight, and she was reading, I put some parts of the article about the state as the health of war.
And she was reading through a section, and it began to gobble in her mouth, right?
The words were dropping, going back and forward, and so on.
And I didn't really notice it until I found myself irritated about five or six minutes later.
And I was irritated.
So I said, you know, why are you mush-mouthing it and not stopping and saying there's something wrong with the text, right?
And as it turned out, I mean, because I say there's three kinds of people in a war, right?
There's the people who decide on the war, there's the people who profit from the war, and there's the people who pay for the war, right?
And she was getting all kinds of flashbacks to her family, right?
The people who decide on the conflict would be her parents, the people who profit from the conflict would be her parents, and she is the taxpayer psychologically there, right, who has to pay for it under threat of violence, right?
Right. And so she kind of flashed out to the family stuff, right?
And we spent about 20 minutes reeling her back in and, you know, to all that kind of stuff.
And so she would say, well, you know, I felt all this anxiety about what Steph was writing and, you know, that maybe there was a problem with it because I couldn't quite follow it and so on, right?
And she'd say, well, I had all this anxiety, but that's not her feeling.
And she did the same thing with RTR. Christina did?
Yeah. Oh yeah, no, if I don't freak my wife out, it's not a good book.
There's no question. So you write them just with freaking her out in mind.
Now we know the writing technique, Steph.
Well, I don't think it's just her.
No, it definitely isn't.
But that's just the axiom, right?
If my feelings are leading me astray, follow the benefit.
So, what was the difference, Nate, between your instincts about those two guys in group therapy and this dude that you were debating in the chatroom today?
Oh, that reminds me.
Yeah. Why were you so certain about those two guys, but this guy you just kept going on and on and on with?
Well... Body language.
Yeah, body language for sure.
Don't do that stuff in the chat room.
Yeah, I would say...
Sorry, you can't have intense debates, you can't have big emotional talks in the chat room.
And I knew there was something else going on.
And after the conversation was over with Steph and I, I go back to the chat room and this schmucker?
I don't know what his name is.
Schmunky. Schmunky.
Yeah, but he's in there and he's talking about how he feels really bad about having caused negative feelings.
I said, I don't think that's the problem.
Yeah. I don't think that's what the issue is.
And he says, well, this friend of mine suggested this, and then I became...
I said, well, what happened when he suggested this?
And he said, well, I felt anxious and uncertain.
I was like, okay, well, what did you not talk about?
And then I worked him to the point of saying, well, I didn't talk about my anxiety and uncertainty and ambivalence.
And, um, after that, you know, he, um...
It got to the point where he realized that he wasn't talking about his feelings and therefore provoked it in us and started throwing us through loops.
And then what happened with me was I started throwing you through a loop.
And it just kind of passed from his friend to him to me to you.
This infection.
Did any of that...
Yeah, I followed that.
I followed that. But, Nate, were you enjoying the debate with this fellow?
No. Right, so, I mean, your feelings were working fine, right?
Oh, those were, yes, those were working fine.
So, I mean, it's that simple, right?
I found the guy just not fun to debate with because you'd make a point and he'd just switch.
He'd even concede a point and then literally three lines later it would pop up again as if you'd never talked, right?
It's not fun. Right. No, that's no fun at all.
So the question is, if you're feeling you're working fine, what other feelings or what other anxieties kept you from listening to your feelings?
Because that's the other beautiful thing about this philosophy.
It's like, hey, if I'm not enjoying it, I mean, I don't have to do it.
That's right. And normally I do that, but what was it about this guy?
Yeah. I mean, just lately I've been doing that.
No, he was tough, no question.
He was not an easy fellow to work with.
And this guy is somebody who's read RTR and somebody who's...
Or he claims to anyways.
Well, he said he bought the books.
I don't know if he read them all, but I doubt it.
Or if you read them, it was like, interesting.
Huh, that's interesting. Oh, that's a good metaphor, you know, without processing any of it, right?
Right. Or like one of the people who read it to, you know, make up every single argument against it and don't actually like anything.
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, that's the...
Read it to refute it. It's the Stuart Smalley, the joke of the guy.
It's the standard. It's like the woman who's got every self-help book in the world and bursts into tears if a guy doesn't call her back in three minutes.
God, it's mother!
Oh yeah, like Charlotte's mom, right?
Watch Dr. Phil and get nothing out of it, right?
Well, to his credit, he did...
Did at least admit what he was feeling before he posted the first time.
Huh? What? He did admit to what he was feeling before he posted the first time and to the fact that he wasn't honest about that to begin with.
Who are we talking about? This smucky guy.
Nate, you didn't enjoy the debate.
No. So what are you selling him for?
His credit is like, you didn't enjoy the debate.
Why are you arguing his side?
There's nothing that says that you need to debate every fellow who comes in the chat room and wants to talk about one of Steph's books.
I mean, if you don't enjoy it, there's no obligation there.
Don't do it. Yeah, because for you, I mean, I could see this, right?
Because people like this, every time this guy put a hook in the water, right, somebody was biting at it, right?
And I mean, he was just like, wow, that's like shooting fish in a barrel, right?
And I think it's because it's like, you bring up a valid point.
If I don't debate it, it looks like I'm not interested in philosophy.
It looks like, I don't know, this isn't a cult-approved topic with an instant answer.
I'm not going to debate it.
Or if I can't debate this, then I'm not smart.
Or if I don't have an answer, then it's not good.
You know, all this nonsense, right?
That was all going through my head.
Every single one of those thoughts.
What the hell do you think no unchosen positive obligations means?
Oh, it means I didn't have to debate.
Yeah, it's like, I mean, who's this guy on the internet in terms of, is he going to give you the stamp of intellectual approval that finally makes you feel smart enough?
Is he the one?
Is he Neo who's going to come and reach through and just put that, you know, your fucking UPB approved stamp on your forehead?
Is he the one who can finally validate you to yourself?
Well, of course not, right? The chosen one.
Yeah, I mean, if you're not going to do it, no one's going to do it.
If you're not going to say, yeah, I'm smart enough, and I'm smart enough to know that my feelings about not wanting to debate this guy are smarter than I am.
That's all part of the MECO system.
Yeah, and just self-crust, right?
It's like, this guy's dangling.
If you're not enjoying the debate, well, if you're not enjoying the debate, there's a reason you're not enjoying it.
Yeah, and that reason is smarter than you are, and it's smarter than I am, and so on, right?
Huh.
Right, and the people who were banned, who went all kinds of flipped out, I mean, they didn't flip out that bad while they were here, but it turns out that, you know, feelings were good.
They were right. How long does it take to start really just following them every single time?
Well, I don't know that you can follow them every single time, right?
I mean, I certainly can't, right?
Should you? It's just having it as a standard, though, right?
Right. It's just having it as a standard.
It's just having these feelings as a standard so that if you say that...
So you remind, right?
You remind yourself.
Say, well, if I'm not enjoying this debate, I don't have to debate.
And it's not... I'm not going to refrain from debating with this fellow because...
I'm cowardly, or I can't think, or I'm too dumb to debate with him.
Because that's just short-circuiting yourself, right?
Right. Because you don't know why you don't want to debate with the guy.
That's RTR, right?
That's the real-time relationship thing.
You just say, I don't know why I don't want to debate with the guy.
But I assume that's a damn good reason.
And I'll try and find it out, right?
So that I can further refine and, you know, we can still be empirical, right?
Right. I mean, if I, I don't know, if I ban some guy, right, who turns out to be some glowing god of internet wisdom...
Then for sure, I will find out, and I will sort of say, okay, well, did he remind me of someone that I, you know, I'll examine it, right?
And what happened?
You know, why system fails, Deffy, right?
Why system fails?
Oh, God! So, that's, I mean, but in the absence of evidence, why am I questioning all these things?
I mean, that is like, you know, life is short, right?
We have to start taking things for granted.
And I'm pretty much down with the world is round, you know?
I know that there is a flat earth society, but I'm just going to go with that the earth is round, you know?
That's where I'm staking my claim, so to speak, right?
In spherity.
That's where I'm going with that.
And it's the same thing with, you know, thoughts and feelings and instincts.
Like, if I don't want to debate with this guy, I mean, and in the chat room of all places, right?
I mean, the chat room, you can just leave.
Nobody can chase you anywhere, right?
I mean, it's not like they then put their hands on your leg and say, why'd you leave me?
Right? It doesn't happen, right?
They don't haunt your dreams.
Okay, maybe yours. But there's nothing they can do, right?
And then you can come back in 20 minutes and say, oh man, bad crash or whatever, right?
And it's true.
It wasn't that crash called the debate, right?
But that's freedom, right?
That's the freedom, right?
And this guy was highly anxious and he was really repetitive and he was really compulsive, right?
Right. Broken record, no progress, no hierarchy of values, no first principles, no definitions, right?
He's just acting out, right?
Right. And if somebody who's that compulsive about feeling guilty, about feeling shame...
I mean, I don't know this guy from Adam, but I can guarantee you it's not about his taxes being deducted at source.
You know, there's no moral...
There's no human being in the planet who is that morally developed that they're going to feel that strongly...
About taxation? Just nobody, right?
And I hope that therefore will be, because I hope we solve the problem of taxation before that ever comes about.
But it's not about the taxes.
And the funny thing is, is that he actually later said, when I asked him about donations, I'm broke!
So it's like, so you're not even paying the fucking taxes?
What are we talking about?
He's unemployed, meaning he has no income, meaning he's not paying taxes.
Okay, so you're not going to leave, you're not going to stay, you're not going to submit, you're not going to fight, and you're not paying any taxes, and you've been talking about this for two hours.
Come on. Come on.
This has nothing to do with...
This is not brain surgery.
This doesn't take, you know, Sigmund Freud, you know, dry hump in the brain of Jung to figure this one out, right?
I mean, this is just somebody who's got some emotional problems with regards to guilt and shame, and it's gone some weird counter-transference route through this abstract philosophical question, right?
And what was he expressing in the chat room?
He said, I just want this question answered.
It's like, no, you don't.
Hello? That would be Ash.
Oh yeah, Ash. If you can mute your mic, if you're not talking, it'd be great, just because we get the sounds of the movement.
But yeah, because he didn't want the question answered, because at the end of an hour or two, he was in exactly the same place as he was at the beginning, right?
Like Ellen, yeah.
Yeah, nothing had changed.
Like who? Yeah. Alan.
Oh, the guy I debated. Aaron.
Aaron, yeah. Aaron.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, no, there was an Alan fellow who was into mathematics or something.
I debated that. Yeah, right, right, right.
That guy, too. Yeah, he took off, too, right?
Because as soon as I said that, you know, instead of asking questions about, you know, what if a sardine brain is controlling my little finger, am I responsible?
We'll put the resulting nose pick or something, right?
Oh, that guy.
So, you know, when I talk to him about not worrying so much about all these abstract questions but going out and bringing some virtue to the people around him.
I'm not going to ask for anybody else.
He just got all kinds of offended and upset, right?
Right.
So he's not interested in action.
He's playing out some intellectual superiority game called avoiding the truth and the consequences of the truth, which is actually to talk to people about virtue and inspire them, if you can, with your own example, right?
Right. The guy who claims he's worked out an entire mathematical system where rocks can fall up and down at the same time.
Right. Yeah, and it's like having graduated with his medical degree in Klingon physiology, he goes looking for a job, right?
Well, that's a huge waste of time, right?
But a square circle can exist if you...
It's those guys. I mean, they're just not at all interested in getting questions answered.
What they are interested in...
You know, like, as we talked about earlier, the guy...
Who stalked Jodie Foster was not actually interested in having Jodie Foster love him, right?
He wasn't interested in having a great relationship with Jodie Foster, right?
Right.
Right.
He was just interested in using the word bifurcate as often as he could.
Bifurcate.
Huh?
Yeah, the rock can fall up and down guy.
But if you bifurcate the rock...
Right. Hey, you can bifurcate.
I get mine wholesale. Sorry?
That was like the most frustrating hour and a half that I've ever spent on the phone with anybody in my life.
You were on the phone with this guy?
We were all on the call together.
Oh, oh, oh, I see, I see, I see.
Got it. Just listening to you and that fellow.
Right. Right.
Yeah, I seem to remember something about not enjoying the debate.
Exactly. Yeah, I hung up at the end.
It was like, bye.
To be honest, I can't imagine why people don't donate just so I don't release those things.
I mean... Like, oh man, come on.
I mean, not that I would, if somebody told me no, obviously I would just say, I mean, it's fine, right?
But to me, it's just...
The one thing I've always wondered is, why did you go on with that guy for so bloody long?
Was it just until you really stopped enjoying it, or what was that...
You mean the bifurcation guy?
Yeah, that guy. Oh, the guy who was talking about if you had two brains and one was controlling your arms.
Is that that guy?
Yeah, the one who worked out a mathematical theorem whereby a rock can indeed fall up and down at the same time.
Because I was enjoying it.
Really? Yeah.
I mean, look, I wouldn't keep doing it if I didn't enjoy it.
I enjoy elaborating twistings of your mind.
Was it funny?
Well, see, but the thing is, because I was having a good time, I don't need to justify it, right?
Why was I having that orgasm?
Interesting. But really, what was the meaning of that orgasm, right?
Well, I mean, just in terms of...
Oh wait, sorry. How many hands could you see when I was doing that video cast?
If you enjoy it, we don't want to know.
No, but just the thing, I can't remember why I was enjoying it, but I think it was because I hadn't done a philosophy chat in a while.
And look, I personally do enjoy, I think maybe the difference is that because I can call, I'm relatively comfortable calling bullshit on people.
I have no particular investment in whether they think I'm smart or whether they think that I'm a good debater or whether they think that I'm a nice guy or an excellent escapades extra, escapades extra.
It doesn't matter to me.
So if I'm enjoying the questions, and of course for me, people are teaching AIDS, so to speak, right?
Some people do. So, you know, if I can help them demonstrate something to other people, of course, for me, it's all like, you know, if people enjoyed this debate or the way that I think, they may pick up some books and like a thousand copies of UPB have been downloaded.
I think that's good, right?
Not all from that video or anything, right?
So for me, there's lots of utility and, you know, I mean...
It's a fun workout to find errors and, you know, I mean, so for me, I didn't really have a bad time.
Once I got that he was full of crap, right, then I ended the conversation, but I didn't end it, I didn't continue it while I was not enjoying it, right?
Right. Makes sense.
Even after the bifurcation?
Right, just trying to understand the gap between the point at which, say, I stop enjoying it and you stop enjoying it, right?
Right. But there's no objective point there, right?
I mean, it doesn't matter, right?
I mean, if you didn't enjoy it but kept doing it, that'd be kind of masochistic.
Whether you would last 10 minutes and I would last 50 minutes doesn't matter, right?
I mean, to me, there's no right answer in terms of that, right?
Right. Well, there's also the point that I can't say that I actually enjoyed getting through all the...
Relationship podcasts when I first started listening to this, but I managed to get through them, if that makes sense.
But you enjoy the consequences, no?
Oh, sure. Sure, sure.
Right. What I'm saying is sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy in order to get something on the other end.
Oh, that's dentistry, right?
Who enjoys that shit, right?
I scraped my teeth.
I can't believe the sadist who came up with this treatment actually found out that it was healthy.
He was probably surprised.
It's like, I don't know, they seem really uncomfortable when you scrape the shit out of their teeth.
Just do that, right? And then it's like a year later, it's like, they have fewer cavities.
Really? Yeah.
Wow! I'm pretty sure that's how most...
What causes the most pain and discomfort?
And, you know, if there's some positive health benefits on the side, I guess that's icing on the cake of we like to hurt people.
Yes, pay me $75 and I'll make your gums bleed.
I think that's pretty adequate.
I could just go into a biker bar in a frou-frou and get the same thing.
Right, I don't think that would contribute too much to your oral health.
I say bearded fellows, you're all riding lawnmowers.
Now I'm going to do the dance of the spring chicken.
That explains my dad and my brother.
Well, they're both dentists.
They both love to inflict pain.
Have you ever seen that film, Little Shop of Horrors?
Yes. Steve Martin has a brilliant bit in that Son be a dentist.
Have you ever seen that? No? Not that part.
Ah, okay. Well, I'll get it off YouTube.
It's pretty funny. He grows up as a kid.
He likes inflicting pain on things, and he doesn't know what to do with himself, and then his mom sets him on the right direction, right?
Right. That would be a good one for an FDR rewrite.
So I grew up in a family of sadists.
That's great. Well, I don't think that was ever in any doubt, Nathan.
Oh no. Not at all.
Alright. There it is.
It's two minutes long.
Ha!
That's when my mama said What did she say?
She said my boy had things okay To find a way To make your natural tenets as pay You'll be a dentist.
You have a talent for causing pain.
Be a dentist.
People will pay you to be inhumane.
Your temperament's wrong for priesthood And pink jeep would suit you still last Son, be a dente You'll be a success!
Here he is, folks, the leader of the plaque Watch him suck up that gas, oh my god He's a dentist that he'll never ever be any good Oh, what does he've done by the mark he just sawed?
Oh, that hurts. Wait, I'm not numb.
Ah, shut up. Open wide.
Here I come! I am your dentist.
And I enjoy the career that I think I love.
I am your dentist.
And I get off on the pain I am.
Really love it. They cause my patients distress.
Somewhere, somewhere in heaven above me, I knew, I knew that my mom was proud of me.
Oh, mama.
Cause I'm a deaf and a sexist.
Say ah.
Oh. Say ah.
Oh. All right.
Anything else that people wanted to talk about?
I just wanted to thank you because I had a lot of the same questions about some things that my therapist had said, and this actually resolves them all.
So thank you, Steph and Nate, for this.
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