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Nov. 8, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
56:52
1204 My Major Contribution to Philosophy

It is in fact embarrassingly simple...

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Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's November the 7th, 2008.
We're just out again for a lovely walk to enjoy the spectacular Canadian fall.
It's a bit of a hoary witch in the winter, but summer and fall on Canada are truly beautiful.
The temperature changes fairly quickly, so you get these, you know, crisp Absolutely azure skies.
Blue 292 in the spectrum, if I remember rightly.
And you get these beautiful leaf displays.
So I'm taking a stroll through a public park, scraping back a few measly tax dollars.
And I wanted, or I say in the ever-bowing obsequence I have to the wishes of the listeners, I've had...
Okay, maybe completely self-indulgent, but I've had a bunch of people ask me over the last couple of months.
I'm trying to sort of go through the back orders, so to speak, of podcasts.
Because the true news stuff is kind of taking up a lot of the newer stuff.
But I've had a bunch of people who've asked me lately...
Uh, Steph, how can you be so fucking smart?
No, actually, it's just a ripoff of an old Steve Martin joke.
But I've had a bunch of people ask me, Steve, how can you be so fucking funny?
The answer? Timing! Timing!
Timing! And I'd like to do what I can to try to respond to that.
Because I think it's retardedly simple.
Like most of the big advances, I think, in human thought.
What I do is just retardedly simple, and I thought I'd sort of go over the principles so that you could apply it to yourself, right?
Or to the debates that you have, or the way that you think, and so on, right?
So what I'll do in my tiresomely repetitive way is I will talk about the principle, and then I will give examples until your head is about to explode, and then I will talk about the principle as if I hadn't mentioned it before, and then I will talk about some irrelevant personal topic.
Oh, I have a twinge on my shoulder.
No, I'm kidding. So, if I were to sum it up, it's really simple.
And this is just in terms of philosophy.
The psychology stuff is not quite as simple, but in terms of philosophy, it's really retarded.
What have I done that has contributed the most in terms of philosophy or has given this conversation the most impetus and power?
Well, it's simple, no exceptions.
That's all it really comes down to.
Or to put it another way, since that would be too short a podcast...
The principles of the question or the principles of the proposition include the proposition.
The principles of the proposition include the proposition.
If you propose a principle, then your proposition is included in that principle.
That sounds complex, but it's really not.
If I propose that gravity applies to everything, then it applies to me.
I can't say that gravity applies to everything and then have it not apply to me.
Because that's the U in UPB, the universality aspect of UPB. So, here's for the tiresome examples, right?
So, for instance, right?
Somebody posted on the board recently.
And it's not that I don't remember who posted.
I just don't like to use identifiers without explicit permission unless I'm annoyed.
But somebody posted on the board recently and said they were having a debate with someone.
And this person was...
Like they said, well, we shouldn't have a government.
And then the woman he was debating with said, well, but how would we protect ourselves against the thieves and murderers, right?
And I replied that you could say something like, you mean like George Bush?
Because that to me is a pretty succinct answer, right?
Because, and this is an example of the principle in action, right?
That the proposition includes itself.
The principles of the proposition include the proposition, right?
If I say this is everything, everything includes what I'm saying.
If I say this principle applies to everything, then it includes the principle that I'm proposing.
I know that this sounds...
I'm trying to think of a better way to put it, but no luck is yet.
So, And so when I say that a response to what about the thieves and murderers, like George Bush, the reason that that works in terms of what I talk about is because when you say we don't need a government and somebody says, well, what about the thieves and murderers?
What they're doing is they're saying there is a dangerous component in society which we need to address by creating a monopoly of violence, right?
But the government is subsumed to society.
The government is a conceptual subset, and frankly a pretty arbitrary one, but it is a conceptual subset of humanity.
So whatever you say applies to humanity.
This is logic 101, right?
Whatever you say is a characteristic of humanity applies to a subset of humanity, right?
So if you say, all people possess brains, then every person possesses a brain.
Right? Determinists excluded.
They just possess a machine.
So I think that's sort of a basic, this is just basic logic 101, right?
All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
So all the characteristics that you ascribe to humanity include all of humanity.
So if you say there are dangerous predators in human society, then that characteristic applies to all humanity.
Again, that's basic logic. If society, which is an aggregation of human beings, is at risk Of thieves and murderers, violence, corruption, criminals, then it applies to all humanity, right?
Otherwise it's just bigoted, right?
It's just an arbitrary distinction.
Only short people are murderers.
I mean, whatever, you're just not making up any kind of cogent or rational correlation.
So if you're applying a risk or a danger or a potential or properties to all humanity, then you are applying it to all subsets of humanity, right?
All men can be murderers, therefore redheads can be murderers, because redheads are men, right?
This is, again, just basic logic 101.
And this is what I mean when I say it's retardedly simple.
And so, if all people...
Right, so you can say to someone, there's a lot of dangerous criminals, a lot of dangerous violent people around.
And you say, well, would that include short guys?
Yes. Would that include redheads?
Yes. Would that include women who speak Polish?
Yes. Because it's all humanity, right?
Well, then that includes the government, right?
Because the government is just, well, it's completely arbitrary, but nonetheless perceived to be valid subset of humanity.
And that's all I'm doing.
You can't logically say, "All men are mortal.
I am a man. I am not mortal." I mean, obviously, that just doesn't work even remotely.
That's just a complete contradiction.
If you're mortal, if all men are mortal, then you're a man, you're mortal.
If you're not mortal, then not all men are mortal, and you've got to start again with your principles, right?
And that's really all I've been doing over and over and over.
Yay! Into the 1200s.
We are. Look at that. We're approaching the middle age, the high middle ages of the podcasts.
That's all I've been doing.
All I've been doing is applying that principle over and over and over again.
You can't say, all men are mortal.
I am a man. I am immortal.
Can't do it. You can't say all human beings have the capacity for violence, therefore we need a group of human beings who have no capacity for violence.
All human beings can be thievish, murderous, and corrupt, therefore we need a group of human beings to solve this problem who themselves are not prone to these tendencies.
Right? All men are mortal.
And so need to be ruled by a group of men who are immortal.
Well, this doesn't even...
And when I put it this way, it's embarrassing, right?
It's embarrassing that this is even a question.
And it just only shows the power of propaganda, right?
That this absolutely, retardedly simple principle should be so confused to so many people, right?
And it's the same thing that I've been doing with, of course, the determinists, right?
So a guy wrote to me this morning about how Barack Obama disproves free will, which is a pretty amazing thing, because, of course, if there's no free will, proof and disprove mean nothing.
And so he went on this long thing, I didn't quite understand it, about how Barack Obama disproves free will.
And he starts off by saying, you know, I watched your free will series, Steph, and I pretty much was sure there was going to be a whale jumping over you near the end.
But it didn't happen.
All that happened was you got up suddenly from your chair.
But he said, I watched the Free Will series, and like a lot of determinists, I was very disappointed, and you should have done this, and you should have done that, and this would have been better, and you didn't address that.
Like all this kind of stuff, right?
And if I just respond to the content of his argument rather than to the form of his argument, then we just go round and round the mulberry bush, right?
If I accept, right?
If someone says to you, we need a government to protect us from violent people, and you say, well, the government doesn't protect us from violent people, or a DRO society or a free society would protect us better from violence, then you're just talking about arguments from effect, theoreticals, and you just go round and round the mulberry bush, right? And you don't need to do any of that, right?
All you need to do is say, well, if violence is a danger for humanity, then giving people the monopoly of force is entirely the wrong solution, right?
It's like cutting off someone's head to save them from a headache.
Because if all humanity is prone to violence, then this will also be true of this arbitrary subsection of humanity called the state.
You're looking at a line-up of people.
This is how arbitrary it is.
You're looking at a line-up of people and you're saying, every human being wants to kill the guy in front of him.
Except for every 12th guy.
This is how retarded the justifications for the state are.
Everyone, everyone, all thousand people in that lineup want to kill the guy in front of him.
Except for every 12th guy.
Why 12th? What a ridiculous thing to say, right?
But if somebody were to make that argument, you would see it.
Bang Zappo clearly, right?
I mean, you wouldn't even know how to respond to such a retarded statement, right?
But that's exactly what people say when they talk about the state.
Human beings all have the capacity for evil, except these guys in the government who are purely virtuous.
Well, are they human beings?
Yes. Well, right?
I understand. And with democracy, it's even worse, right?
Because in democracy, people can somehow, people in this lineup of a thousand people can somehow magically identify this arbitrary 12th person.
And although they want to kill the guy in front of them, they're going to vote in these 12 people to prevent them from killing the guy in front of them.
Well, if they don't want to kill the guy in front of them, you don't need a state.
And if they do want to kill the guy in front of them, they'll never vote for guys who prevent them from doing that.
It's completely retarded.
And again, it's just the amazing power of propaganda that keeps any of this stuff even remotely credible.
I mean, that doesn't make people laugh out loud.
Because when you propose a similar argument, well, exactly the same argument, then it's laughable.
It's embarrassing, right?
And that's what I experience when I see the statist arguments, right?
So, sorry, let's go back to determinism for a second.
So this guy wrote to me and said, I was disappointed in your videos.
You should have done better. You should have done this.
This wasn't addressed, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And this is the fundamental issue that I have with the determinists.
And I don't think determinists are stupid.
They act in completely retarded ways.
But I don't think they're stupid.
I think they're psychologically broken because...
The only other option is that they're too stupid to use language.
And, of course, they always know what to avoid.
They always know what to evade.
These are primitive psycho classes that are emotionally broken early on, and all that they have left is defenses.
And, of course, I would also say that determinists have done bad things in their life and cling to determinism as a way of saying it wasn't my fault.
That's the only way to explain this incessant emotional tension and energy and frustration and manipulation behind this position.
So... So I wrote back to this guy who said, Steph, I watched your determinist videos, I'm a determinist, and I was disappointed you should have done them differently.
And I said, you know, it's so ridiculous to me that determinists simply don't seem smart enough to get this basic concept.
The basic concept is this. If I say that Zeus does not control the weather, That Zeus does not control the weather.
That's what I say. Zeus does not control the weather.
Old Socratic argument, right?
If I say Zeus does not control the weather, and it rains on my wedding day, and someone creates a song about it called Ironic, which contains no examples of actual irony, Zeus does not control the weather, and that it rains on my wedding day, What could it conceivably mean for me to then write a long letter to Zeus indicating my disappointment that he had made it rain on my wedding day?
It's complete madness, right?
I mean, when we put it that way, it's completely clear how insane it is.
Zeus does not control the weather.
Man, it's raining. I'm so mad at Zeus.
I'm so disappointed in Zeus's choice to make it rain.
Oh, but Zeus doesn't control the weather.
The weather is... Simply a function of physics.
It is not a function of choice.
The weather just does what it does.
It's not conscious. It doesn't make choices.
Well, that's what they say about the human mind, right?
Any determinist who starts off by saying, I'm disappointed in you, is simply contradicting his own premise, right?
Zeus doesn't control the weather.
I'm disappointed that Zeus made it rain.
Well, which the fuck is it?
And what you always get, and this is true of nihilists, it's true of determinists, it's true of agnostics, what you always get is this evasion and overcomplication, right?
It's just fog. It's just bullshit.
It's like that squid that sprays ink in your face underwater to get away.
It's got nothing to do with truth.
I've already done the psychology of this sort of stuff, so at least my take on it.
But... All that's saying, like again, all I'm doing there is saying that the principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
Steph, I'm disappointed in you.
You should have done better.
I'm going to change your mind and improve your thinking.
All of that, of course, as I've always said, presupposes choice.
Presupposes better and worse standards and denies The premise, right?
If everything is inevitable and choice is an illusion, then being disappointed is ridiculous, right?
I mean, it's not that we would never feel disappointment, it's just that we would recognize disappointment as an irrational state relative to our belief system, right?
So, this basic...
If you say Zeus does not control the weather, then you can't say that you're disappointed or upset or angry or frustrated with Zeus doing X or Y or Z with the weather, right?
Zeus doesn't control the weather.
The weather just happens. And there will certainly be times, you know, if it rains on your wedding day, you will be frustrated.
You will be disappointed. But you won't get mad at the rain clouds, right?
Or if you did, you would at least recognize it as irrational, and you'd hide it as a kind of embarrassing immaturity, right?
Or you'd deal with it as a kind of embarrassing immaturity, but you wouldn't act as if the rain clouds were personally screwing up your life unless you were so ridiculously emotionally immature that psychology or psychotherapy probably couldn't even help you, right?
And certainly... If someone came and posted on the board and said, Zeus doesn't control the weather, I am so angry and disappointed with Zeus for making it rain on my wedding day, that we would not view that as a proposition worthy of being debated, right? Because if, and this is, you know, I'll get back to that later, but we would not view that as a proposition worthy of being debated for two reasons, right?
Either, because two possibilities.
Someone who says, Zeus doesn't control the weather.
I'm mad at Zeus for making it rain.
Either A, they don't have the capacity, the intellectual capacity, to recognize this contradiction, in which case they're, like, crazy.
That is an absolutely anti-functioning brain.
They can't think in that environment or in that situation.
It'd be like debating with a one-year-old using hand signals.
just stare at you, drool, and pee themselves, right?
Or, of course, the other possibility is that said fine and lovely person who said, "Zeus doesn't control the weather, I'm mad at Zeus for making it rain," does understand "Zeus doesn't control the weather, I'm mad at Zeus for making it rain," does understand this contradiction and is trying to pass Well, then maybe they're intellectually better off, but they're emotionally completely screwed up.
Manipulative, destructive, bad, right?
I mean, that's just a gross thing to do to someone, is to screw around with their brain by proposing contradictions and evading when they're pointed.
It's just trolling, right?
So either they're retarded or they're an asshole.
That's all. There's only choices.
So there's nothing to debate, right?
If they're retarded, then debating with a retarded person is certainly beneath us, right?
And kind of insensitive and insulting to the retarded person, right?
On the other hand, if they're an asshole, then you don't play the game, right?
Because you don't sully the truth by pretending that assholes are worth debating, right?
The truth is a sacred and beautiful thing, but you keep it pure, right?
You don't go to whores if you want to have a beautiful love, and you don't debate with assholes if you want to respect the truth and yourself, fundamentally.
So that's another example of saying that the proposition includes The principles of the proposition include the proposition.
We've talked about it with the state, we've talked about it with the determinists.
Of course, with nihilists it's very simple, right?
There are no values and therefore we should discard our adherence to values.
Well, if you just debate about whether there are values and whether we should discard them, then you just go round and round the mulberry bush, right?
It's completely pointless, huge waste of time.
And all you are is a scurrying ant in the ant farm of trolling run by ass clowns, right?
I mean, again, have some self-respect for that.
And I say that with, you know, I fall for it too, right?
But that's what I try to remind myself.
It's like, no, no, no, no. Don't do that.
I mean, so I have to catch myself, and I try to catch other people when they're tempted by this nonsense as well.
But that's sort of where it is, right?
So with nihilists, if you start saying, well, are there values or are there not values, then it's the same way as saying, trying to argue the science of whether things are determined or aren't determined.
Are or aren't. Or it's the same as saying, well, how would society run In the absence of a state without noticing or pointing out or dealing with the logical contradiction.
I'm just trying to help. Everything I do is around efficiency, right?
Life is short and philosophy has been stunted for thousands of years, so we're trying to make things a little more goddamn deficient than they have been for the last couple of thousand years with people debating all this bullshit minutiae and forgetting this basic principle that the principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
UPB. All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
And the man making the argument, who is a man or a woman, is also mortal.
So all I'm trying to do is be efficient, right?
So with the nihilists, I don't go into the argument about whether values exist.
It's pointless. It's like arguing which color is better.
What I do say, as I pointed out in this video, which has kept nihilists far from us, Of course I say, well, if a nihilist says that values don't exist and therefore we should reject values, then he's claiming that a value exists.
Right? Which is anti-values, which we should reject values based on.
In other words, he's saying that the rejection of values is a higher value than the acceptance of values, which requires that you accept values.
You can't reject and accept values simultaneously.
It's impossible, right?
The principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
It's all I've been doing.
That's it, man! That's all I've been doing.
It's retarded, right? It's retarded!
And it's, again, testament to the power of propaganda that this is seen as revolutionary and mind-blowing, right?
So, nihilists, either they notice this contradiction, in which case...
Either they noticed there was one third option.
Either they can't understand this contradiction, which is generally not the case.
You take some brains to debate nihilism.
Either they can't, in which case they're functionally retarded and it's embarrassing to debate with them.
In the same way that it's embarrassing for Mike Tyson to get a ring with the Girl Guide, or me, So either they can't distinguish this contradiction, in which case, forget it, or they can and they evade it.
And there's another one which, as yet, remains largely theoretical, that they're brought up short, right?
An nihilist comes charging in saying there's no values and you should reject your values because it's a value to reject values.
You should accept that which does not exist and you should choose that for which no better choice exists.
And you point this out and they go, whoa!
You know what? That's completely right.
That is. That is a complete contradiction.
In the same way that when someone comes charging in and says, we need a state to protect us from brutal people, it's like, well, then the state will be composed of brutal people who will actually have a monopoly of force.
That's even more dangerous, right?
Like, I'm afraid of lions, so I'm going to arm the lions.
I mean, that doesn't make any sense, right?
And the occasional person will say, whoa!
But just about everyone else, like 99.999% of the population, will just fog and evade and complicate.
And you just go round and round, and it's like, ah, forget it.
Because if you can't get that that's a contradiction, then you're just a jerk.
And the most dangerous jerk, right?
I know this sounds pretty aggressive towards these people, but these people fuck up philosophy.
And when philosophy gets fucked up, people get killed.
You get wars. You get brain damage to children in the welfare state.
You get military-industrial complexes.
You get communism.
You get socialism. You get fascism.
When philosophy gets fucked up, people get killed.
And a lot of them get killed.
So I view people who are out there pumping bad philosophy into the intellectual bloodstream of society.
I view those people...
As even worse than someone who says praying will cure cancer, who is actually getting people killed because praying won't cure cancer, but when you're praying to cure cancer, you're not actually getting treatment, right?
To me, they are actually worse than the Jehovah's Witness parents who won't allow blood transfusion for their kid, right?
Thus condemning the kid to death for various hemophilical or leukemia-based illnesses.
Haemophiliac victims. Victims of Haemophilia?
I think you know what I mean. So, the people who pump bad philosophy into the world are creating the conditions of genocide, creating the conditions of prisons, creating the conditions of statism, creating the conditions of arms sales.
Creating all of the predations and violence that occurs.
In the same way, agnostics are the ones responsible for the continuance of religion.
I mean, if we didn't have agnostics, if agnostics grew a pair suited up and got things right, if they'd done it in the Enlightenment, religion would be gone by now.
No one's agnostic about slavery, and so slavery is gone as an institution.
But agnostics keep the door ajar for the gods to keep coming back in and fucking up the planet, right?
They're the ones the most responsible for religion because they claim to be rational.
So for me, that's the efficiency principle.
You're either savable from your own era or, most often, you are an asshole.
I've not met anyone who's actually retarded, but that would be the only other option.
Retarded people don't tend to debate nihilism and determinism and agnosticism.
So that's the example there.
Agnosticism. I just did the video on it.
You can run through that. That if you say we can't know anything, that includes the statement we can't know anything, right?
We can't know anything for sure.
If you start debating about whether we can or can't know things for sure, you just run around the mulberry bush, right?
Which is what philosophy has been doing for thousands of years.
But if you say to the person, Okay, so if we can't know anything, we can't know that we can't know anything, so you have nothing to say.
You can't say anything. Because the principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
You can't make universal statements and carve out a little area of anti-reality where your proposition sits.
You see the commonalities in religion and in the family, in the state.
In philosophy as a whole.
My principle is universal, except for the little corner of opposition or anti-logic, anti-reality, where my proposition is excluded from its own principles.
We can't know anything for sure.
Does that include this statement? And that's the moment of truth, right?
And if the person evades or complicates or starts going off on a tangent or whatever, then fuck them.
I mean, what I was going to say earlier, which I mentioned here, is that I've been debating with people to point out that it's useless to debate with people, for the most part.
I mean, who's changed their minds based on a debate with me?
I mean, who's come in with oppositional principles?
They don't, right?
Because it's nothing to do with the truth.
They're sophists.
Stronger now because of pseudoscience than they were even in the time of Socrates.
That's how the principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
It's how it shows up in these various spheres.
Gravity affects all mass, therefore the person who's saying it can't fly, right?
Prescribing a universal or creating a universal principle does not give you the magical powers to evade that principle.
In fact, because of its universality, you are bound by it.
All men are mortal. I am immortal.
I am a man, right?
It doesn't work, right? It's one of these...
It's a great phrase.
I've mentioned it before from Dawkins.
I learned it. That a scientific principle that's too retarded to even discuss, it's like, it's not even wrong.
It's not even right enough to be wrong.
And something like...
We can know nothing for certain, and that is a certain statement.
Again, the principle is universal, but it excludes its own statement.
Well, then it's not universal, and then it's just bullshit.
It's just an opinion, right? Everything is an opinion.
Well, is that a fact?
If it's a fact, then everything is not an opinion, and you need an objective way of determining opinion from fact, right?
If you say it's a fact, everything is relative.
Is that relative or absolute?
Well, that's relative. Well, then you can't say everything.
And very quickly you find you can't say anything at all.
People put forward these principles that are universal, which exclude themselves all the time.
All the time.
And we see this, of course.
I mean, this is how I found my way out of a podcast I put out recently about parental guilt for crimes against the children, if such crimes occurred.
Right, so, some of them were saying to me the other day, you know, my dad, you know, when I confronted my father, he said, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge and circumstances that I had, and I was badly raised, and, you know, all this, that, and the other, right?
And so that's a universal principle, that if you do something that's wrong...
if you do something that is uh bad or destructive or abusive or whatever if you do something that's wrong then you have to look at all of that in context right you have to if i as a father beat you and you consider that unjust now well I, you know, they'll either try, well, it was, you know, you were a bad kid or whatever.
But if that doesn't work, oh, well, you've got to put things in context.
I did the best I could. It's how I was raised, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
But it's the universality of that principle that means something, right?
Because if the Father says, you can't blame me because we are both bound...
By the reality that if I did not think it was wrong, it was not wrong.
Right? We are both bound by the reality that if I did not think it was wrong, it was not wrong.
If I did not know that it was wrong to hit you, or if I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, then you cannot blame me for that.
Because we are both bound by that principle.
It's a universal principle. I am excused because I did not know That it was wrong.
You can't blame me. I did the best I could.
Well, that's a problem, right?
Because if it is universal that we cannot blame somebody who does not think that what he is doing is wrong, then clearly that also applied to you as a child.
In fact, much more so because you were a child, right?
So, if as a child you were punished for doing something, quote, wrong, then your parent already accepted And, of course, you didn't think it was wrong at the time, then your parent is already accepting that ignorance of moral law is not a valid excuse for moral transgressions, right? Or claiming, even if you just claim it, right?
So, if you steal a chocolate bar when you're seven and your dad gets mad at you and you say, oh, I didn't know it was wrong, Is he going to say, oh, okay, well, no problem then.
I forgive you. In fact, I'm sorry that I got upset with you because you didn't know, right?
And if you keep doing that, as a kid, is your father going to keep saying that?
Well, you don't know, so it's okay, right?
Well, no, of course not. You were punished, right?
Ignorance of the law was no excuse.
And so you weren't ever allowed to say when you did something wrong as a kid, I didn't know.
I did the best I could. There were difficult circumstances.
I didn't know what I didn't know.
Blah, blah, blah. That was never something which gained you forgiveness and love.
So, for your parent to pull this universal principle out that he specifically and explicitly rejected by punishing you as a child to defend himself as an adult, And to say, you should forgive me for what I did when I was 35 because I didn't know, although I did not forgive you for what you did when you were 5 for what you did not know, then he's saying that people who are 35 have the opposite of moral responsibility.
They have no moral culpability for what they do, but 5-year-olds have infinite moral culpability.
Right, it's a violation of UPB. We can certainly make the case that the moral status and moral responsibility of a 35-year-old is quite different than that of a 5-year-old, but it would not be to favor the lack of responsibility in the 35-year-old, but quite the opposite, right? You are punished for your moral choices, which you are responsible for when you're 5 or 6 or 7 or 10, but when I was 30, 35, 40, I could not be punished.
I cannot be held responsible for my parenting because I... X, Y, and Z, right?
Well, that violates UPB in a very fundamental way, right?
And the reason that I can say...
Because, you know, and I just wanted to point this out in case you were thinking it too, which you probably were.
When I... If I steal a candy bar when I'm seven and then I say I didn't know it was wrong...
Let's say that my father then says, well, it is wrong and you shouldn't do it again, and here's why, and then I keep doing it, right?
Well, the analogy for that when you're a parent is, Dad, I don't think that you listen to me.
I don't think that you understand what I feel.
I don't think that you're listening to and accepting my complaints about my childhood, right?
Well, how does that go, right?
Does it not always happen that...
Your father ends up continuing to reject and minimize and dismiss your complaints in the same way that if I kept stealing candy bars, even though I knew it was wrong, I could be punished, right?
Even if I didn't agree it was wrong, I would still have to not steal candy bars, right?
So if you're saying, Dad, I need you to listen, I need you to accept what I'm saying, I need you to Listen to and accept my complaints about my childhood, right?
If he continues to not do that, then it's the exact equivalent of you continuing to steal candy bars even after you've been told it's the wrong thing to do, right?
Dad, to reject my experience, my history, is the wrong thing to do.
I have said that and now you must obey in the same way when you said I had to stop stealing candy bars that I had to obey, right?
So it's the same principle, right?
If your dad continues to not listen to you and to disobey what you say is a standard, then you should get to hit him, right?
And if he's not responsible for disobeying your standards as an adult child, then, of course, he has even more to apologize for, for holding you morally responsible when you were seven.
Anyway, we've gone over this argument before, but it's a slightly more complex but identical Form of this principle, right?
Of this standard, this contribution that I've made.
Which is nothing more than science, right?
Fundamentally. Science progresses when we give up on exceptions, right?
Science progresses when we do not view contradictions as eternal mysteries and miracles, right?
It's impossible to understand the objective nature of water if you believe a man can walk on it, as well as sink into it, right?
Because there's this depth of understanding that you simply cannot reach, right?
If you believe that God's hand moves through the world and breaks physical laws at will, creates and destroys physical laws at will, Then you can no more create the physics of the world than you can create the physics of your dreams at night, which are sometimes consistent and sometimes not consistent.
And sometimes you are very heavy and sometimes you can fly.
You can't create the physics of dreams.
It's non-reproducible, it's random, it's contradictory, so it can't be done.
And so knowledge really only begins to accumulate true knowledge, valid knowledge, not just imaginary crap.
It only really begins to accumulate when we accept that the principle includes itself.
The principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
And we give up on crazy ass exceptions, right?
And we take out the arbitrariness of the definitions, right?
All men are mortal.
That guy's a man. He's immortal.
Well, why is he immortal? I don't know.
He's God. Well, it doesn't answer anything, right?
It just destroys logic and reality.
It doesn't destroy reality, but sorry.
It destroys logic and consistency and the possibility of true knowledge.
Because you're just making up arbitrary distinctions with opposite properties.
Arbitrary distinctions with opposing properties.
That is the essence of...
Evil philosophy, if you want to put it.
I mean, I want to put it that way.
I mean, I'm not going to make the case for that, but arbitrary distinctions with opposite properties, right?
You can't talk to God, but this priest can, right?
Arbitrary distinctions with opposing properties.
The initiation of the use of force is wrong.
So we need to create this arbitrary government which has the moral necessity or the right to initiate the use of force.
Arbitrary distinctions, opposite properties.
Murder out of costume.
Killing out of costume is murder.
Killing in costume is heroism.
Preemptive war is defense.
The use of force, i.e.
the invasion of Iraq, who had never threatened the US, the initiation of the use of force is directly equivalent to the retaliation against the specific use of force.
Self-defense equals attack.
The initiation of the use of force equals self-defense.
Arbitrary distinctions with opposite properties.
When they do it, when they kill our civilians, it's terrorism.
When we kill their civilians, it's a war against terrorism.
Arbitrary distinctions, opposite properties.
My country, right or wrong?
Well, if everyone says that, we get complete contradictions, right?
There are 10,000 gods that are ridiculous, and my god is eternal and true.
Arbitrary distinctions, opposite properties.
Their gods are false, my god is true.
You see how often, how eternally, this all shows up, right?
That's what I talk about in How Not to Achieve Freedom.
Academic economists, right?
The free market is good, but it is good for us to be excluded from the free market.
It is a quality statement that I am making that the free market produces quality, although I am not in the free market at all.
Well, it can't be a quality statement.
If coercion produces a lack of quality, then saying that the free market produces quality When you are not in the free market is a contradiction.
The principle applies to everyone but me.
The principle applies universally except to my principle.
And of course that is the foundation of criminal corruption as well.
Everybody I mean, if there's only one thief, he does very well, right?
Because if there's only one thief, people aren't really going to invest in anti-theft measures.
There's only one thief in the world.
People aren't going to bother with anti-theft measures, right?
Because the odds of him stealing from you are infinitesimally small.
So he can waltz in and out.
People won't lock their doors. He'll make a killing, right?
So to speak. Right, so he wants theft to apply to everyone but him.
Sorry, he wants the evil of theft to apply to everyone but him, so he makes out like a bandit.
If you were the only person getting a government grant, you would be unbelievably wealthy, right?
Arbitrary distinctions, opposite properties.
You pay taxes, I collect taxes.
Like the farmers, right?
You need to generate the wealth through the free market to pay me, who's not in the free market, but rather taking subsidies, lobbying governments, right?
Arbitrary distinctions. Farmer, non-farmer.
I mean, it's not arbitrary in that it's not, you know, it's arbitrary in terms of the moral content, right?
It's like saying short guys can kill and tall guys can't, right?
It's arbitrary. It's a non-essential distinction, right?
Not even a real distinction at all.
It's true that there are short guys and tall guys.
It's not true that they have opposite moral characteristics.
And I'm sorry to...
Yeah, if they hop on...
about this but to continue to talk about it because it's really you have no idea how efficient it is to take this principle right so um and and apply it to debates it is so i mean it is warp speed right as opposed to going impulse in a tiny spiral it is warp speed Conclusions to debates.
You simply can't get any more efficient any faster.
And that's so essential because life is short.
There will be a lot of work to do, right?
The doctor who can figure out the most quickly, who can make it and who can't in triage, in a battlefield, will be the one who saves the most lives, right?
That much we can all understand and appreciate, right?
So the rapidity, if someone can't get this or won't get it, move on, move on, move on, move on, move on.
Don't look back.
Right?
Move on, move on, move on, move on, move on, move on, move on.
Because if you light up someone's mind with this understanding that universality equals universality, right?
Right?
If you light up someone's mind with this, there's no limit to what they can do with their thinking.
Right? There's no limit to what they can do with their thinking.
And I'm sure if you're up here, you've had that same experience, that once you grasp that universality equals universality and a universal proposition cannot exclude itself, then we become gods of the intellect.
It seems magical.
It seems amazing, right?
It seems almost supernatural in its clarity, perceptiveness, and efficiency.
I mean, we become like Keanu Reeves in The Second Matrix, you know?
Spinning and taking on a hundred guys, taking on a thousand guys.
Easy peasy, right? If we get this.
Now, if we don't, then we're just, you know, wasting our lives, right?
Applying defibrillators to the dead, right?
To mummies, almost.
Right? If we don't get this, then we don't...
Then it's a catastrophic disaster as far as utility and efficiency goes, right?
We're just spinning our wheels. Which, of course, is what people do.
Now, of course, people have an emotional resistance to this, right?
It's not just that people are jerks, right?
I mean, no, I say that.
But, I mean, fundamentally, they're fearful, right?
They're afraid. These are people who are tortured by consistency, right?
I mean, we know the history deep down.
Whenever they tried to apply consistency, they were attacked, right?
Well, Dad, how come it's okay when you do it, but when I do, shut up, right?
Do as I say, not as I do.
No backtalk, right?
They get beaten, right? So they've tortured relationship to consistency, right?
And they're attempting to do all of this crazy justification for why inconsistency is virtuous, right?
Because there's torture trying to bond.
It's Stockholm Syndrome. It's all to do with their upbringing and history.
Every child wishes to apply consistency, right?
In fact, the definition of maturity is consistency, fundamentally.
Not making up rules.
That's immaturity, right? But consistency, and children will always strive for consistency.
You see a child pushing another child, the child will always say, he pushed me first, right?
trying to strive for the validity of consistency.
And most people won't make it.
When we just know that, looking at history, looking at universities, most people won't make it.
Of course, I wasn't expecting, but it's telling that I didn't get any Emails from interested or excited academics saying, holy shit, you can do this in the free market?
Man, tell me how. I'm all over it.
I want it bad. I want to follow my values.
I want to be consistent. Free market produces value.
You're getting four million downloads a year.
That's more people than I'm able to reach, so teach me how because I want to achieve the efficiency that I preach to others.
Well, no, of course they don't do that, right?
Because they have the magical exception, right?
Same thing with communism, right?
Nobody should own property, right?
Property is control of materials and resources and labor, right?
Capital. Nobody should control property, so we need a government to control property.
Well, that no-wookie, right?
It doesn't work. National socialism.
Race has, or racism, race has moral content.
Well, no it doesn't.
Race is a biological descriptor.
It does not have moral content.
Culture has moral content.
Not unless it's recognized as culture, right?
Not until it's recognized as culture.
Because culture is accidental, right?
Like the kid growing up in Soviet Russia becomes a communist.
There's no moral content until he understands propaganda, right?
Then he's got moral choice, right? So this basic idea is really foundational to what I'm going on and on and on and on and on about, right?
The principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
Just turn it back. Say, if your proposition is universal, how does it affect your proposition?
UPB works beautifully.
In that paradigm, right?
Because in UPB, the principle of the proposition is the proposition.
It includes the proposition.
It is synonymous with the proposition.
UPB includes itself, which is why you can't fight it.
You can't fight a universal proposition.
Because the moment you fight it, you're saying it's false relative to a universal standard of truth.
We know all of this, right? But the reason that UPV is such a breakthrough and the reason that it informs everything that I talk about in this conversation and the reason it has such amazing applicability and such, dare I say, universality is because it is the...
The only proposition, the only foundational proposition that I know of that accepts and includes itself in its principle.
That's why it's so irresistible and that's of course why it drives so many people kind of nuts, right?
Because it is so annoyingly inescapable and the only way that you can try to escape UPB is to propose UPB. It doesn't work, right?
And of course, just to give you one last example, you've seen me do this over and over with self-ownership, right?
So people deny self-ownership, and I say, I don't argue about whether people have self-ownership or not.
All I say is, aren't you exercising self-ownership, i.e.
the use of your body, to communicate that self-ownership is invalid?
Right? People say, property rights are invalid.
And they are typing...
On a computer that they are using.
Property is the use of materials, right?
Exclusive use of materials. There's only you typing, otherwise we'd get gobbled nonsense, right?
Can't count on the keyboard stuff.
People say property rights are invalid.
Well, you're using property to communicate that property rights are invalid, right?
There would be no server for you to type on.
There would be no computer, no keyboard, and you would not be using your own fingers, right?
So you can't use property to deny property.
You can't exercise self-ownership to invalidate self-ownership.
I mean, you can. It's just wrong.
It's just ridiculous, right? All men are mortal.
I am a man. I am immortal.
You know, fuck off and go back to the drawing board, right?
Because everybody gets it.
That's ridiculous, right? So, I mean, you see that you're just doing that over and over and over and over and over again, right?
So, when I put the agnosticism video out, of course, a number of people posted on the...
In the chat, sorry, on the YouTube comments, logic is invalid because of X, Y, and Z, right?
It's like, well, so you're basically making a series of consistent statements to say that a series of consistent statements is invalid.
You know, try again, right?
Logic is also something that is UPP compliant, right?
So... That is, that contribution, which is, it's idiotic.
It's embarrassingly simple, right?
Principle of the proposition includes the proposition.
Don't examine what people say.
Everyone's trying to distract you with content, right?
But you look at the form.
Everyone's going to try and get you to argue whether self-ownership is valid or not, but you look at the form.
Well, you're exercising self-ownership to invalidate self-ownership.
Go back and try again, idiot, right?
And again, I don't say idiot up front.
I only say idiot when they then start fogging, right?
Because then they are assholes, right?
And again, poisonous, right?
The root of genocide is bad philosophy.
The root of violence, the root of torture is bad philosophy, right?
So that's what I, you know, if there's one thing that I could give you, which I've held off until this time.
And if it's just because people were asking me, what's my contribution, right?
If there's one thing I could give you, it's, you know, fuck content.
Just look at the form. Look at the form of what someone is saying.
Look at the implications of that, right?
Don't argue with a nihilist about whether values exist or not.
Don't argue with a determinist, the science of determinism.
You don't need to. Just look at the principles embedded in the proposition.
You can't use principles, you can't use the same principles to No, that's too complicated a way.
I've already said it a million times, so I don't need to say it again.
Thank you everybody so much for listening.
I hope that this is helpful. I look forward to your donations.
Please, please, please help me keep this conversation going out to a wider and wider group.
There is no better thing than we can do with our time, money, and energies than to spread the truth of philosophy, which is going to provide an even greater boon to humanity than science and medicine has.
So, thank you so much for listening.
I look forward to your donations. Or, And subscriptions.
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