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Aug. 20, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:05
1130 How to Beat FDR...
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Hello, nitpickers! It's Steph.
I hope that you're doing most excellently, and let me define excellently, syllable by syllable.
Okay, this is for the nitpickers.
The people who...
And, you know, please excuse the term if you don't mind.
It's alarmingly imprecise for you, I'm sure.
But let me explain to you what it's like being accosted by these gnats continually and hopefully give you a way of achieving your goals, achieving your objectives, of improving upon my philosophy much, much greater, to correct me of my fundamental errors and so on.
And I'm sorry I forgot to bring the board posting, but somebody wrote on the board and said something like this.
They said, Well, Steph, I started reading UPB, and let me tell you, I was enormously disappointed with the beginning of the book.
You state up front that you are not going to insult the reader's intelligence by defining things like reality, integrity, and so on.
And I must say that I think that A book of ethics, a book that deals with something as complicated and nuanced as ethics, which does not begin by defining reality, is woefully deficient and, frankly, amateur.
Fortunately, however, you break your own rule, not a few paragraphs later, when you define blah-de-blah-de-blah, and it kind of goes on from there, right?
Other people say, well, what is your criteria for truth versus error?
And I would say, well, I said, well, that which conforms to reason and evidence.
And he says, well, that's an amateur response.
I'm afraid I was expecting something just a little more sophisticated from a philosopher.
and therefore I find that I cannot take you seriously as a thinker.
Blah de blah de blah de blah de blah de blah de blah de blah.
And that is all perfectly fine.
Let me just sort of deal with the first criticism that often arises, which is basically, Steph, you're a fucking idiot, right?
I mean, that's the one that comes up fairly often.
Oh, Steph, you just don't really understand philosophy.
You just don't really get it.
You're not really interested in doing the hard and heavy lifting of coming up with definitions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And that's totally fine, right?
I mean, people say that, although I think I've done more work in definitions in terms of the Introduction to Philosophy series than most philosophers have really kind of gotten around to.
And frankly, I do stand by the proposition that if somebody is holding a book they consider to be real, which is read by or written by somebody they consider to exist in the real world because they come to the board and post it, their responses, to have to define reality to someone like that is pretty pathetic, right? I mean, it's pretty pathetic for somebody to say, okay, your book is real, you're real, I'm going to come to your board, I'm going to post using clear language, but I have no idea what reality is.
I mean, that's just pitiful.
I mean, that's just pitiful objection, frankly.
But let's accept that, right?
So if somebody says, well, Steph, you don't define your terms and you contradict yourself paragraph by paragraph, then one of two possibilities exists, right?
I mean, then this is just a basic sort of reality check for people who feel tempted to take this route with me or with other people.
If I am completely retarded and a piss-poor philosopher and so thick and so stupid that I don't define essential terms and I contradict myself wildly and rampantly and I have no idea what I'm talking about and I just make stuff up and this and that, then clearly I'm an idiot, right? I'm a fool.
And if it's true that I'm an idiot and a fool, which is, you know, I guess still within the realm of possibility, then...
You should not debate with me, right?
Because debating with idiots is not a productive course of action, and I can tell you this from a long, bitter, and heavy experience.
So, if your intellect is so vastly superior to mine, and if the incisiveness of your brilliance is so amazingly superior to mine, then it is like Mike Tyson eyeing a girl guide when it comes to the heavyweight championship of the world.
Clearly it would be ignoble and base for Mike Tyson to step into a ring with a lollipop-holding little girl guide.
Cracker one and consider it a victory.
That would be pretty pathetic.
So if your towering, immense, amazing, concise, brilliant, detailed, logical, rational, empirical brain is so vastly superior to mine, then clearly it would be beneath you to debate with me.
So, don't.
Obviously, I'm too unintelligent to follow you.
I mean, if I can't even put basic and essential thoughts together, and if I contradict myself all the time, then clearly I'm borderline retarded with delusions of grandeur because I think that I have something of value to add to philosophy.
And if I'm so deluded and stupid, then you should not debate with me.
I mean, that would be ignoble and ridiculous for you to do.
And clearly, if the listeners who think I have something of value to add, they must be equally, if not more, deluded and retarded than myself.
So coming to the board would be sort of pointless.
I mean, unless you regularly go to kindergarten classes and argue string theory, then I can't imagine why you would drop past The board of such retarded and idiotic and deluded people and attempt to have a productive and rational conversation.
So that's sort of the first possibility, which is that I, and by proxy my listeners who think that I have something of value to add, must all be deluded and retarded, unable to string A coherent series of thoughts together and just idiotic.
In which case, going to debate with such fools is foolish, right?
It's foolish on your part to engage in a debate with people who are deluded and retarded.
So that's sort of the first thing that I would say.
Now, the second thing that I would say is that If it's not true that I'm an idiot, right?
So, if I am an idiot, you should not want to debate with me.
Now, if it's not true that I'm an idiot, if I am, in fact, have intelligence, at least I'm attempting to have integrity, attempting to strive to provide something of value to the world of thought...
And with decent intentions and with, to the best of my abilities, attempting to add something to the ebb and flow of human thought.
Then calling me an idiot is just a sophisticated, manipulative, petty, asshole trick, right?
It's just an attempt to make me think I'm dumb or to make me appear dumb to others, which of course is A pathetic, pathetic, ridiculous, contemptible approach to debating philosophy.
So, just to sort of sum up this first part of it, if I am an idiot, then clearly you should not If your intellect is so vastly superior to mine that you can find all the errors in the planet on the first two pages of my book on ethics and dismiss me out of hand from there, then clearly I'm just not somebody to be taken seriously and you should not waste your time debating with such an idiot, right?
In fact, even coming to point all of this stuff out is pointless, again, unless you have a big habit of introducing string theory debates to kindergarten classes.
Then it really doesn't make any sense.
You should find people who are of your intellectual caliber to debate with and not muck about with us lollipop-licking girl guides.
And secondly, if I am not in fact an idiot, but you are calling me an idiot in one form or another, either aggressively or passive-aggressively, then I can tell you this.
I don't want to debate with you because you're a dick, frankly.
You're a douche and you're a jerk.
So I'm just not going to do it.
So that's just something.
Either come and treat me with dignity and respect or don't.
If you don't, then either I'm an idiot, then in which case debating with me means that you're an even bigger idiot.
Or I'm not an idiot, in which case you're just an asshole and you should go and not be around reasonable and decent people until you can clean up your act.
So that's sort of the one thing.
And the other thing which I think is kind of interesting is it is really amazing how the most successful philosophy conversation in history, which is this conversation, it is really amazing to me how...
The most successful and all-encompassing, I don't know any other philosophy conversation that deals with the variety of topics that we deal with here, from art to psychology to metaphysics to epistemology to ethics to reality to property rights to economics to, like, we run the gamut, however, successfully around successfully, well, definitely successfully in terms of output and reach and so on.
But it is amazing to me how the most successful and far-ranging and, dare I say, brilliant philosophy conversation in the history of mankind, it is amazing just how many vastly superior minds This flash of brilliance on the human horizon of thought brings out.
Amazing just how many extraordinarily brilliant minds are out there who have the answers to just about everything at the tip of their tongues, who have remained mysteriously hidden until Free Domain Radio comes along, in which case they leap out of the woodwork and come along and start correcting me and you and everyone else that they can lay their typing hands on.
Let me sort of give you an analogy as to why I think this is just so silly, fundamentally.
Is it because nobody has anything to correct FDR? And of course, absolutely.
I'm sure we've got stuff to correct on, right?
But if it's not tweaks, if it is a major revolution in thought, like if FDR is completely wrong, it's got a bass-ackwards and it should be some other thing completely, then there's no point debating us.
If you're not going to correct and nudge and fix problems or lack of clarity or certain steps in logic that need to be tweaked, but if it's a fundamental rewrite of philosophy, like nihilism, like deism, like political libertarianism, like the family doesn't matter, psychology is psychobabble, it's all bullshit.
If it's a foundational swing, so to speak, at the core of what we talk about here, Then I'm telling you, coming to FDR is completely retarded on your part.
There's a reason why I don't spend a lot of time debating with fundamentalist Jewish people online or Islamic Muslims or fundamentalist Christians.
There's a reason which I don't do it because I can't do a core rewrite of their philosophy.
I can't talk to them and do a core rewrite of their philosophy.
It's too much work. It's going to be rebuilding things from scratch.
And they're already, of course, so immersed in and invested in their errors that it's completely pointless to go and attempt to fundamentally rewrite people's philosophy, right?
And this is, again, to the nihilists, to the dais, to the political libertarians, to all the people who come and say there's no such thing as truth or ethics is an illusion or whatever, right?
Let me give you an example.
This is going to sound kind of silly, but hopefully it will make some sense as an illustrative analogy.
If I understand this correctly, and I think I do, Tom Cruise is the most successful movie star on the planet.
His movies have grossed the most money, he gets paid the most, and so on.
Tom Cruise is the most successful movie star on the planet.
I'm sure there are lots of people, millions of people probably around the world, who don't like Tom Cruise and would do quite a lot to stay out of one of his movies.
Now, in terms, again, as we've talked about before, in terms of region, I'm not trying to pump myself up here, I'm just sort of giving you a silly example, right?
An analogy. When it comes to philosophy, I am the Tom Cruise of philosophy in the modern world, without the lack of height, the nice hair, and the, frankly, the abs.
But I am the Tom Cruise of philosophy at the moment, and I'm sure there'll be another one soon, but this is where it stands at the moment.
And there are lots of people who don't like my acting.
There are lots of people who don't like my movie star quality or who think I don't have that or whatever, right?
I'm a bad philosopher.
I'm a bad movie star, bad actor, right?
And I'm sure there's, you know, I hate Tom Cruise websites all over the place and they talk about how crappy an actor he is and bad person he is and all this kind of crap, right?
And there are all these people who are wannabe actors who scorn Tom Cruise, right?
And he sucks and this and that, right?
And... My suggestion, if this makes any sense, I think what would be really positive and helpful for you and would bring you a lot of happiness and a lot of positivity to your life and give you the pleasure of doing your best to help the world as a whole.
Something like this, right?
Well, if you think that you're an actor, if you are an actor, and if you think that you're so much better A movie star or a movie actor than Tom Cruise.
You are going to be more popular, you are going to be more charismatic, you are going to bring a higher quality of acting to the screen, and you're just better than Tom Cruise.
And not just a little bit, but a lot.
Tom Cruise is bad and you are really good.
Tom Cruise gets it all wrong and you will get it all right.
Tom Cruise is fundamentally just a bad actor and you are fundamentally a great actor.
Then my suggestion is that you should not sit there writing little posts about how bad Tom Cruise is, but you should actually audition For the roles that Tom Cruise is up for.
And if it takes you a while to get there, it takes you a while to get there, but that's fine, right?
But you should audition for the roles that Tom Cruise is up for.
And then you should not tell people how great you are and how bad Tom Cruise is, but you should show them how bad Tom Cruise is relative to you, because you will then take his place as the biggest movie star in the world, right?
You won't sit there in your basement pounding out endless...
nitpicky little crap about how bad Tom Cruise is, but you will actually just take Tom Cruise's place due to the magnificence and charisma and presence and skills and abilities that you have as a movie actor.
Surely that would make sense, right?
I mean, that's just taking people at face value, right?
Tom Cruise sucks and you're so much better than Tom Cruise, so clearly you should go and compete with Tom Cruise, right?
That to me would make the most sense, right?
Now, when it comes to being an internet philosopher or a podcaster or whatever, it's much, much easier to compete with me than it is to compete with Tom Cruise, right?
So a lot of the roles at Tom Cruise, they're not exactly open auditions, right?
It's not like an open call and anyone can sort of show up, right?
The Tom Cruise roles tend to go...
Is it Ellen Lewis, the big casting agent in the States?
He tends to get his pick, right?
Any movie that Tom Cruise wants to do is probably going to get made, right?
So, competing with Tom Cruise takes a long time and, you know, a huge amount of dedication.
You've got to move, you've got to take acting classes and stuff like that.
I was actually taught by the guy who taught Tom Cruise his mask work.
Pierre Le something like that.
Anyway. So...
So that's my suggestion.
When it comes to competing with me or if you're vastly superior to me, if I've got it all wrong and you're so right, then you should compete with me and you should win over my audience and you should prove yourself to be A better philosopher.
Certainly, I have tried to come up with the truth as best as I am able to.
And I have tens of thousands of listeners who donate.
Well, tens of thousands of listeners and some who donate.
Hopefully you. And you can compete with me very easily.
I started with a microphone that costs about $15.
I had a computer, which was...
actually, mine was relatively cheap because it was free because I was at work, but I ended up buying it from...
I ended up getting it for free from the office.
They just gave it to me when I left, because it's not a pretty old computer by now.
So, but let's say you have to spend $100 or $200 on a computer, but then, of course, since you're posting on the FDR boards, you already have a computer, I'm going to assume.
So, all you have to do is this.
All you have to do is go out and pick up a $15 microphone or $20 microphone, I use Audacity for recording for the most part, which is free, a free piece of software.
You can get ad-supported hosting for a couple of bucks a month to host your podcasts, right?
So competing with me, you can start tomorrow, right?
You can start tomorrow, you can start the day after, you can start today.
And you can have your podcast...
Up and running in a day or two, maximum.
And if you need any help, I would be happy to provide you some tips.
I'm more than happy. The more philosophers, the better.
Competition is beneficial for what it is that I'm trying to do.
The more people who are interested in philosophy, I will cross-link to you.
You can post your philosophy podcast on my board.
You can do whatever you like.
To promote this, right?
So, if you want to compete with Tom Cruise, you've got to move to LA, you've got to get the cover, you've got to get the headshots, you've got to get an agent, you've got to take acting classes, you've got to become known, you've got to work for free at the beginning, and so on.
And that's quite a lot of work to ask for, right?
That's quite a high barrier to entry, let's say.
But on the other hand, to compete with me is very easy.
I mean, I've already gathered a whole bunch of people who will, I'm sure, give your podcast a listen.
Right? I mean, I've already done the heavy lifting for you.
I started a couple of years ago.
I've already gathered together thousands of people who are interested in philosophy, who will see your post, and who will start to listen to your podcast.
Your podcast. And of course, since you genuinely believe that I've got it mostly wrong and you've got it mostly right, and if you assume that people are drawn to philosophy because they want the truth, then you will doubtless be absolutely able to steal away my audience and leave me destined to the obscurity which you believe that I so richly deserve, right? And that, I think, is an important...
An important consideration for you to take on, right?
You're not going to be able to change my mind about the basics that I spent 25 years developing.
You just won't, right?
I mean, right or wrong, this is what I've committed myself to, and I certainly have not received the kinds of objections that I would consider to be valid.
So let's say that I'm just pig-headed and ignorant.
There's no point trying to convert Billy Graham to atheism, right?
Let's put it that way, right?
There's no point trying to convert Tom Cruise to the opinion that he's just a bad actor, right?
And has nothing to offer the acting world, because clearly he does have something to offer the acting world, which is the vast success of his movies.
And clearly I do have something to offer the world of human thought, because a lot of people have gotten interested in philosophy and psychology and self-knowledge and RTR and UBB, argument for morality, all that kind of good stuff, through What it is that I do.
So you can't convince me that I don't have something to offer.
You can't convince me that I'm not right about the things that I have put forward as being correct, right?
I mean, unless you can come up with some big magical flaw, which so far I have not experienced.
Now, of course, you could say, well, yes, Steph, but you haven't experienced it because you're blind to any evidence which contradicts your theory, blah, blah, blah.
Okay, well, let's say that that's true.
Let's say I am completely blind to every piece of evidence that contradicts my theory, but then clearly I'm a lost cause.
And you should, instead, you should leverage the audience that I have gathered together.
Who love philosophy and who certainly listen to podcasts and donate.
And you should not attempt to punch out the Girl Guide or you should not attempt to correct me if you believe that I'm immune to correction because I'm just stuck in my own way of thinking.
But you should exploit the forum that I've put together, and I completely will offer this to you.
I'm not going to delete posts that if you come up with a podcast, you're completely welcome to use the resources that I've put together to steal my audience and to do a better service to philosophy than I have done.
If you do have this vastly superior intellect and you are perfectly capable and able of illuminating the world in a far superior way than I have managed to with my paltry and poor mind and paltry and poor abilities and resources, then you should not hide your light from the world.
You should not hide your truth from the world.
If you care about the truth and you've thought enough to Believe that you're right and I'm wrong.
You shouldn't really not withhold the glory of what you're doing to the world.
You should get the microphone and you should record and you should post your podcast and you should Talk to people at FDR and get them involved in your podcast, and if your arguments are so much better than mine, as you believe they are, then you should take my audience, and I'm happy to give them to you, since you are a better shepherd of the truth than I am, and that would be a wonderful thing, because I'm actually more interested in leading people to the truth than I am in leading them to me.
So, that's sort of my offer to you.
To stop coming in and nitpicking and all this kind of stuff and insulting me about Just how dumb I am and how I don't define terms and how I contradict myself all the time and how I don't listen and I'm narcissistic.
There's no need to do it.
What you should do is take your enviable gifts and abilities and you should be kind enough to the world to go and start your own show, steal my audience with your superior reasoning skills and your superior abilities to get to the truth and to get to reality And you should have an easier job than me,
because I'll tell you, what I did was, when I wanted to talk to the world about philosophy and believed that I had something of value to add...
Let me sort of give you a hand here, right?
So I'm more than happy to help out where I can, but let me give you a hand here.
What I did was I didn't go to libertarian forums or, I don't know, Marxist forums or theological forums or that kind of...
I didn't go to those places and start to debate them and nitpick at their ideas and so on, right?
Because I just thought that was...
That would have been a pretty sad way to spend my gifts, which I believe are not inconsequential.
And obviously, if people who are correcting me believe that their gifts are not inconsequential either, I dare say.
So... Let me sort of give you this tip or give you this piece of advice or this step up, which is that you should do what worked for me, right?
Which is to not go to people who you believe are fundamentally in error and nitpick at them and get nowhere and frustrate everyone involved, yourself included.
I'm trying to minimize and reduce your frustration in these situations, but in my opinion, you should Not do that.
I didn't do it and it worked out for me, right?
So what you should do is stop nitpicking at people who you disagree with and stop going to forums and just telling people that they're wrong and stupid, basically.
They don't understand anything.
They don't provide definitions.
They don't understand philosophy.
And you should stop doing that.
Because clearly your capacities far outstrip the menial and dull reality of nitpicking at an internet forum, right?
I mean, if you're Einstein and you have this amazing ability to come up with the theory of relativity, what you should do is not sit there on a forum and criticize Newtonian physics, right?
That would be too small.
That would be too small a scope for your abilities.
So what you should do is you should put forward your thesis and you should stop nitpicking at other people and you should put forward the glory of your thesis and your approach to the world as a whole.
And so do what I did, which is, you know, write articles, introducing your ideas to the world, find places where you can publish those articles and start to build up a listenership to develop a blog, and then practice with public speaking and podcasting and getting your ideas across, and hopefully if you can work in some entertaining energy and humor and so on, that's great.
I mean, that can be a real help.
Or a real boon to what it is that you're doing.
And through that process, you see, you will be able to get your ideas out in a way that won't be frustrating for you, that you won't need to, because the glory of what it is that you're coming up with is so amazing, that you won't be stuck nitpicking other people's ideas,
but instead what you will do is you will have the ability, or you will take on the capacity To bring the illumination to the world that you have on your own terms, which is a completely wonderful thing to be doing.
You don't want to be limited by the discussion topics, right?
If you have this amount of intelligence and this amount of logic and so on, then I strongly suggest that you're going to be entirely limited by sitting around on someone else's forum that you need to create your own discussion with people You need to create a way for people to view your thought within its own context,
right? Not to stay within the context of somebody else's thinking, right?
Not to have me, Steph, create or provide the topics that you're going to discuss or work with.
But I think you really do want to have that ability to...
Just to find things on your own terms and to create your own methodology and way of thinking, to come up with your own original thoughts and bring them out to the world so that the world can really and genuinely appreciate What it is that you're able to bring to bear.
Don't be limited by what it is that I'm doing.
Don't be limited to discussing.
I mean, if UPB sucks as a moral theory, heaven's sake, right?
Don't be limited by it.
And don't even debate it, right?
I didn't sit there, I didn't start off by just criticizing everybody else's theories, and that really worked for me.
And worked for me, I don't mean like you've got to agree with my ideas, but worked for me in terms of It really did get people excited by a new kind of thinking or a new way of approaching, you know, these sort of age-old problems.
But don't be limited. Don't be limited.
I mean, if your Einstein can come up with a theory of relativity, don't be limited by the limitations of Newtonian theory, right?
You get to just put your own ideas out there.
Put your own thoughts out there.
And, you know, steal my audience and lead them to truth in a way that I just was not able to if it turns out that I'm completely wrong.
Lead them to the truth.
I will happily give up my audience to a superior truth, to a better way of looking at things, to a more accurate and honest way of looking at things.
I will absolutely and happily give up that audience to you and do whatever I can to support you, as I have with other thinkers whose ideas I have found to be of value.
And that's my invitation to you, and I can't stress to you How strongly I urge you to take this up.
How strongly I urge you to take this challenge on, to take this up.
You should help the world out with your abilities.
You should really focus on bringing all of the wonder that you have in your mind to the world as a whole.
The future desperately needs you if you're really...
If you've really got it going on in a way that I can only dream of, the world really, really, really needs you.
And it needs you a lot more than it needs me if you're the one who's got it all down, right?
I just strongly urge you to take that on, to not muck about on my forum, to not muck about criticizing my ideas.
If you've got better ideas, do what I did.
Get it going. I'd be happy to help.
I'd be happy to do what I can to help bring about your vision for you.
And you're welcome to appeal to my audience with the truth that you have available to you.
And I genuinely hope, sincerely and genuinely hope, that you will take that on and give that a shot.
Because it's going to be so much more satisfying for you in the long run.
I can tell you this from experience, whether you agree with me or just think I'm the biggest jackass on the planet.
There is nothing quite like putting your ideas out there as best you can, you know, taking the hits, you know, learning as you go, getting a community excited and interested in philosophy and self-examination and psychology and art theory and all that kind of stuff.
There's nothing like it. And if you have that ability, I want to share that with you.
I want to share that capacity and that joy with you.
And so I hope that you will take it very seriously, what I'm saying.
This is not tongue-in-cheek. You absolutely, genuinely should have You should take the joy and the excitement and the thrill of getting your ideas out there to people, getting people engaged in philosophy.
There is a hunger for the truth out there.
There is a hunger for reality out there.
There is a hunger for... I'm honesty and directness and self-knowledge out there if you can do so much of a better job than I can please please take it on I will do whatever I can to help I will do whatever I can to support what it is that you're doing steal my audience steal my income I will be happy to be your acolyte because if they donate to me they'll donate even more to you who's more right and maybe you can throw me a few scraps from your table so I hope this makes some sense and I look forward to helping out my critics with support to get them to Reach a wider audience and disseminate a far more accurate and better truth.
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