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April 2, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:17
1321 YouTube Listener Questions

Responses to common 'tuber questions.

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
This is a trinity of responses to some of the most common questions that I get from you fabulous, delightful, wonderful, and brilliant listeners, which I hope will clear up a few things.
We're going to talk about Gatom, we're going to talk about concepts, and we're going to talk about anarchism, so it should be quite an exciting ride.
So, the first question I get, I made a claim in a video previously that homosexuality was biological in origin.
Now, formally, in a podcast I made many moons ago, I talked about sexual trauma in particular as a possible denominator in the development of homosexuality.
This really comes from, I mean, I went to theater school, I lived with four gay guys and a lesbian when I was doing my Master's thesis or when I was in graduate school, so I have some experience with the gay world, and there did seem to be some commonalities when I would ask people about this.
I put it forward as a potential theory, and of course I'm certainly not the first to come up with that theory, but I'm sort of now of the view that it's more effect than cause, in other words, that trauma may occur to children who are gay, but that's probably because they feel insecure in their attachments because of the general negative perception of homosexuality, particularly among children and teenagers in society.
Anyway, let's have a look at the source for where I got this idea, the one that I'm putting forward now, Why Men Don't Iron by Anne and Bill Moir, M-O-I-R. Of course, I got this the moment I got married, looking for justification.
So this is from page 40.
I'm going to read a little bit from the book just so you get a sense of where the science that I'm quoting comes from.
And it says here, the gay lobby may not like it, But the evidence suggests that homosexuality is a, quote, natural fundamental form of human sexuality, is not, quote, socially determined, and its incidence does not change from one culture to the next.
Being gay is natural. Not being gay is natural.
If gayness is a natural variation of the human condition, as ineradicable and inevitable as left-handedness, what causes it?
One suggestion is that homosexuality derives from genes the ancestral building blocks handed down from parent to child.
Is there a gene that causes homosexuality?
In 1993, Dan Hamer and his colleagues announced the discovery of just such a gene, but its existence is still controversial, and Hamer's research has been under assault ever since the announcement.
And some scientists complained that the sample from which he had drawn his genetic material was skewed because it comprised only self-proclaimed gaze, while others believed he had oversimplified a horrendously complex process.
The most likely explanation is a biological process that occurs in the womb.
Few scientists dispute the influence that is wielded on the developing fetus by hormones.
And hormones are central to the process of sexual development.
Hormones, among other things, are the switches that activate genes and in turn those genes instruct the growing fetus whether to be male or female.
It is to that process and its effects on sexual orientation that we must now turn.
It seems obvious that hormones will determine our gender, but until very recently, the further assertion that the same hormones determined our brain structure into either a male or female pattern was very controversial.
The idea of a differently patterned brain was anathema to most hardline feminists who wanted to assert their equality, by which they too often meant sameness to men.
If it could be proved that the brains of men and women were distinctly different in structure and function, then it was an alarmingly short step to believing that there might be different inabilities as well.
Their problem was that male and female brains did turn out to be distinctly different, and what was once a politically controversial theory quietly became the standard stuff of undergraduate textbooks.
Women might take some consolation from the fact that the basic human template is female, and I got castigated for this statement by a number of people, but this is the science that I've read.
Again, I can't verify it, but this is what I know.
Every fetus begins as a female, but at six weeks boys begin To be made by a flood of hormones that drench the developing baby and so convert sugar and spice into slugs and snails.
The male fetus is capable of making high levels of androgens, or male hormones such as testosterone.
Androgens is female, of course.
The male starts making the hormone at six weeks.
It is not a one-shot action.
It goes on for months in the womb, each successive dose of hormones doing its bit to turn what was female into a male.
For our purposes, the crucial moment appears to come in the third month of pregnancy when a heavy dose of testosterone affects the developing boy's brain.
Among other effects, this dose of testosterone sets his sexual orientation.
Up until now, quote, his brain has been effectively female, and like any female, his sexual longings, if he had any, would be focused on males.
The testosterone drench reverses his polarity, and from now on he will be attracted to girls.
But if the testosterone dose falls below a critical high level, the brain remains female.
All fetuses receive some testosterone, even those destined to be born girls, but samples taken from the amniotic fluid suggest that the brain-sexing drench of testosterone is eight to nine times higher for boys than it is for girls.
Now, it does not take much imagination to hypothesize that a shortfall in testosterone at the crucial moment of pregnancy might leave an otherwise conventional male with a female sexual orientation.
The result would be an adult man who is quite naturally attracted to other males.
It is possible that a, quote, gay gene influences the crucial testosterone levels, but whether that is the case or not, the evidence for this hormonal cause of homosexuality is overwhelming.
Overwhelming, but not absolutely proven.
I think I went too far in a previous video.
I do apologize for that. We cannot experiment on developing human fetuses to test the hypothesis.
So the evidence, however compelling, is indirect.
A study by Lee Ellis has shown that mothers who suffer from severe stress Stress reduces the levels of testosterone during the third month of pregnancy produce a higher than average incidence of homosexual offspring.
We cannot prove this absolutely because, of course, you can't experiment, but animal studies support the biological explanation.
Human and rats share specific sex hormones and have similar areas at the base of the brains that control sexual behavior, the hypothalamus.
Roger Gorski and his team has demonstrated that a rat's sexual orientation can be changed at will By manipulation of fetal hormones, a male rat deprived of testosterone in its early fetal stage becomes female in its sexual behavior.
No amount of male hormones given in later pregnancy can reverse this behavior.
The animal's brain has been permanently organized into the female pattern.
A female rat dosed in the same critical period with male hormones becomes masculine in its sexual behavior.
And again, no amount of later female hormone influence will reverse the orientation.
Gorski's work suggests that there is a critical stage during the development of the mammalian brain when male or female sexuality is established.
Once that critical moment is passed, no amount of corrective hormone will make any difference.
The sexual orientation of rats, and most probably that of humans too, is determined in the womb.
So... Roger Gorski and his team then experimented by manipulating the hormones delivered to a developing rat fetus to see if they made any difference to the hypothalamus and discovered that they could determine the hypothalamus' structure by restricting the hormone dosage.
This was a breakthrough discovery, for though it had been inferred that hormones changed brain structure and behavior, it was the first time anyone had demonstrated that process in a laboratory.
Goski and his team had shown that sexual orientation was determined by hormones and that the brain's physical structure could be manipulated by the same hormones and all this in an area of the brain that was well established as central to controlling sexual behavior.
These experiments have been replicated by many different laboratories and in other animal species.
And inevitably lead to the question of whether homosexuality occurs outside the laboratory in species other than man.
For a long time this has been denied, thus providing ammunition to those who ascribe homosexuality to social or cultural causes.
But more recent research has demonstrated frequent male-male sex in primates and in mountain sheep.
But what about humans?
Empirical evidence suggests that human sexual orientation is determined by exposure to testosterone during the third month of pregnancy.
But is there any physical evidence?
Again, it is the hypothalamus that most interest science, because the human hypothalamus, like the rats, controls sexual behavior and justice in rats.
Distinct differences have been found in the male and female hypothalamus.
There is an area in the hypothalamus called the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area, Boy, there's a turn-on for you.
And researchers have demonstrated that this area is always larger in male brains than in female brains.
In rats, it is between five to seven times larger, while in humans it appears to be two to three times larger.
This same area was investigated in homosexual men.
Simon LeVay, in a controversial discovery, announced that the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area was twice as large in heterosexual men as in homosexual men, which meant simply that gay men presented a female brain structure.
So, anyway, you can read more about this.
this I've given you some...
Furthermore, we might expect to see a reverse manifestation The less testosterone the fetus receives, the more female the behavior, and such a correlation does exist.
70% of male homosexuals displayed a preference for girl-type play.
As children, there have been two studies of hand-eye coordination that measured how well the subjects could throw a missile and hit a target.
The studies discovered that a homosexual's ability to throw accurately was much poorer than the ability of heterosexual men.
In fact, homosexual target throwing was like a woman's.
There is a sex difference in the structure of the inner ear that is under the control of fetal testosterone.
Lesbians have the male type of inner ear structure.
And again, you can sort of go on and on.
So to sum up, the normal incidence of male homosexuality is about 1 to 4%, not the 1 in 10 often quoted.
Heterosexual is no more part gay than the gay is part heterosexual.
Homosexuality is natural. Heterosexuality in the male is also biologically determined, not socially conditioned.
So, as you can see, there are very specific brain differences between men and women, and not just brain difference, but this inner ear structure which is different between men and women.
Lesbians have the male inner ear structure, and lesbians have the male aspect of the hypothalamus, and the homosexuals have the female aspect of the hypothalamus.
So, not to put too fine a point in it, but there's a woman's brain and a man's body, and a man's brain and a woman's body, and this, of course, is the root It would seem almost overwhelmingly to be the case.
We may never have a convincing proof that it's 100% because we can't experiment, obviously, on fetuses, but it holds up with almost near perfect correlation in rats, other kinds of mammals, a wide variety of animals.
Make a gay animal by doing testosterone baths or withholding those during certain aspects of pregnancy and vice versa.
So that's where I got that from.
I think it's about as proven as things can be in these kinds of realms where you can't experiment on fetuses.
So, you know, perhaps it will turn out to be false, but the overwhelming evidence is for biological roots of homosexuality.
So that's the first thing. Now, the second thing Which I get questioned about or criticized about quite a lot, which is great, is this issue of concepts.
The forest versus the trees.
Now, obviously my basic intention is that concepts exist within the mind and are imperfectly derived from similar characteristics in reality.
So we see a bunch of trees and we'll think of a forest.
The trees exist in reality, the forest does not.
The forest is a concept within our mind.
And this is a point I hold to fast and have for many, many years and I think it's absolutely essential that we do so because there's no other way to maintain this sort of Aristotelian view that concepts do not exist in reality are imperfectly derived from the behavior of matter and concepts fundamentally are only possible because of atoms and physical laws which Create reproducible or similar behavior.
The atoms within one tree are similar to the atoms within another or in a similar configuration, which is why we can detect patterns and conceptualize them.
But concepts themselves do not exist in the material realm.
I'm a staunch and virulent anti-Platonic simply because I'm an individualist and concepts like society, government, culture, collective, group, Crowd and so on simply do not exist and do not possess any rights that are not specific to the individuals.
So, I'm staunchly holding to that viewpoint, but if you've argued this point, and a number of people have emailed me this, and thank you for the response, if you've argued this with someone, you get back a very clever response sometimes, which is somebody says, well, okay, let's say that a forest doesn't exist.
A tree is just a concept, too, and trees Don't exist either.
Trees are collections of cells, and even cells don't exist.
They are collections of atoms, and you can say that the atoms exist or don't, but everything other than an atom becomes a concept, and you can't speak about anything without relying on these concepts, and therefore, therefore, therefore.
I'm not sure what the end of that argument is, but it is a really good and clever response, and let me give you my response to the clever response, and you can see if it makes any sense.
Let's just say there's a table, and on that table there are three oranges.
Now, I would say that the number three does not exist.
There are, in fact, three discrete entities there, composed of matter and energy, which are similar, right?
I mean, oranges share similar characteristics, which is why if you put two oranges and a pipe mom on a table, you don't say, hey, three fruits, right?
I mean, there are similar characteristics between the oranges.
I think we have to accept that, or we can't speak reasonably about anything.
So, when we look at these three oranges, the group of oranges does not exist, right?
Because there's just three oranges on the table.
Now, what holds these oranges together as a group is only the concept.
And you could say, well, there's a tiny amount of gravitational energy, but it doesn't hold them together, right?
Because if the table tilts like this, they just roll apart and so on.
So there is nothing, you wave your hand between the oranges, there's nothing between them.
I feel like a magician, you know, no strings.
But when you pick up an orange and you hold an orange and you cut an orange and you eat an orange or, you know, squish it on your face as part of some wild sex play, then what happens is you are aware that the orange itself is bound together by both strong and weak atomic forces, right?
I mean, it is bound together as a unit.
Just as if you are standing 20 feet away from someone, there's nothing between you that binds you together.
You can walk apart, but you can't have both your legs walk in a different direction and have that work, right?
So there's real tangible objective differences between a self-contained physical entity like a tree or like a person or like an orange versus a meandering abstract concept like A bunch of oranges, a crowd of people, or a forest.
So it is certainly true that the tree is a concept, but the tree is referring to an object which is bound up together and not easily divisible and really held together by very strong and weak atomic forces and cellular glue and all that kind of stuff.
And that's different.
Fundamentally, we understand that, right?
I mean, that's just an empirical thing.
If you don't get that, you just...
Do the experiment with the orange, right?
Try and roll an orange apart without separating it, as opposed to rolling two oranges apart on a flat surface.
The two oranges will roll apart, no problem.
You try and roll one orange apart, it's stuck together, right?
So we're talking about an empirical difference between a tree and a forest, right?
The tree is stuck together and is a unified entity.
And, you know, it has changes.
The leaves come and go and so on.
But we understand that the tree itself is pretty constant.
You know, even when it's alive or dead, we say, oh, a dead tree or whatever, right?
If we get a toothpick, we say, well, this came from a tree, right?
Or if it's a wooden toothpick.
So, we just want to go with that empirical stuff.
And I really want to point out, and this is a hugely useful thing that I'm going to say here, and I really want you to work with this, and I know you may be skeptical, but just give it a shot.
The thing you want to do with philosophy is not to lose yourself in words and abstractions, but to return to the simple empiricism that is the root of logic, right?
Because you get these criticisms as like, well, there's no reality because of quantum physics.
But quantum physics has no effect, no effect, no discernible effect whatsoever on What we actually see, taste and touch.
So, in the realm of ethics, you stab a guy, we've got an ethical opinion about stabbing or whatever.
Mine's called universally preferable behavior.
You can pick up the free book at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
But there's nothing that could conceivably happen at the quantum mechanics level that would have any effect on things like property rights and ethical rights and other sorts of abortion or child abuse or all of the ethical issues that we would deal with as philosophers.
Quantum mechanics is great for subatomic particle examination and so on, but it has zero effect at the perceptual level of the senses.
No effect whatsoever.
And I'm going to stick by that because I've read a few books on this, and again, if I'm completely wrong or all the books I've read are wrong, let me know.
But this is what I've read, and I'm very confident about that.
But again, maybe there's something new that I haven't heard about.
So, when it comes to To thinking about things clearly and logically, it's really important not to get sucked into the whirlwind of words, to mentally go up into this platonic world of forms where you are suddenly confusing a tree with a forest.
Or when you're saying, well, a group of oranges is just as much of a concept as an orange itself, without thinking about if you went to a...
Just think about it simply.
You go to a grocery store, or think about opening a grocery store.
Put your money where your concepts are.
So you open up a grocery store, and it's called the concept fruit store.
And there's no fruit in the store whatsoever, but on the table, and perhaps there's a light mist of metaphor coming down, there is something on the table which says, concept of oranges, $12, or $2, or 12 cents, or whatever. Concept, you know, a bunch of grapes.
A bunch of bananas, right?
And somebody comes in and says, well, where are the grapes?
It's like, no, no, no, I'm not selling grapes.
I'm selling a bunch of grapes. But where are the grapes?
I'm not selling grapes.
I'm selling the concept of grapes.
And would you feel that that store would do very well?
Or would that be sort of a bad comedy sketch, right?
The philosophical fruit store, right?
Hey, we've got a fruit metaphor going here.
Fruit theme. Fruit theme going.
So, you just want to do that, or if you want to take another swing, open up an eBay store called iPod Concepts, and you say, I'm not selling any iPods, I'm selling the concept of an iPod.
I'm selling the idea of an iPod.
So, you can go to some other store and pay $100 or $200 for an iPod, or you can come to my store, and for only $20, I'm going to sell you the concept of an iPod.
Would anyone buy that? Well, no, because we understand That we would not be buying anything whatsoever.
And if you ordered an iPod and somebody sent you the concept of an iPod in a box, you would open that box and see precisely nothing and you would feel ripped off because there was nothing there, right?
So, when you are having problems with philosophy, go back to simple, you know, economic exchanges are great because we have an innate and instinctual understanding of value and existence at that level.
Think about going for a job and you say, well, what's the salary going to be?
And we say, well, we're going to pay you with the concept of money.
We're not going to actually give you any dollars.
We're going to pay you with the concept of money.
Would you accept that job?
Well, no, because you would realize that you would have nothing that would be exchangeable with anyone else.
Just keep going back to this, you know, look at tangible exchanges, look at physical things, think of oranges on a table, just go right back to the basics.
And when something is completely wrong at the basics, then you can start to work your way up to the broad abstractions.
But for God's sake, indeed, don't start with the broad abstractions and try and work your way down to the physical.
Start with the physical, with the tangible, with what actually is in the world that you can see, touch, taste, smell.
And work your way up to the concepts from there.
Start with the empirical and go to the abstract.
And if you have abstracts, take them back to the physical and see if they're going to work, because otherwise you're just weaving words in an abstract, an errorless void, and really it's just a massive amount of yogic masturbation, which, you know, although fun in the abstract, really doesn't achieve anything in the real world.
I just want to sort of point that out.
I'm a ruthless empiricist, right?
Which is why, you know, I say, hey, maybe there's this thing about homosexuality and early abuse and so on, and I'm like, read this stuff, and I say, okay, well, I have new facts, so we abandon the old possibility and look at the new facts, right?
So, always go back to the empirical.
Always go back to the simple.
Test your theory in the simplest of ways, which is why when I talk about my own approach to ethics, universally preferable behavior, I do the Robinson Crusoe thing, right?
Like all good economists do when trying to explain a theory, you go to two guys in a room, right?
Theft is good, how can that work with two guys in one room?
Go back to the very simplest of situations to test your theories.
That's how science works, and it's really how philosophy should work as well.
Since I put out other videos not particularly talking about my own political approach or approach to politics or really social organization, I've been getting a lot of questions, rightly so and intelligently so, saying, well, are you a minarchist or are you an anarchist?
And I don't...
I mean, I understand why people would want to know that, because everybody wants to get to the conclusions and not go through the grindingly challenging phase of methodology and proof.
But to me, it's not a question that makes much sense, and I'll sort of tell you why.
I mean, if you go to a scientist and you say, you know, are you into super string theory or some...
Like, are you this...
Is this who you are, a super string guy, or are you some other 27-dimension non-super string guy?
He's going to say, well, that's not really a fair question.
I'm a scientist. I try to go where the reason and evidence lies.
And that's really important.
I mean, if you say, well, are you an anarchist?
It's like, well, no, because anarchy is a conclusion.
And I believe that a stateless society is a logical and rational and moral, and really the only logical and rational and moral application Philosophical principles and evidence and reason and so on.
But it is a conclusion, and I'm not particularly interested in conclusions.
I am interested in methodology, which is why I'm sort of switching from a possible theory about childhood trauma to simple, stark biological facts, because I'm not interested in what my conclusions are, and I don't think that you should be either.
We are only interested in reason and evidence.
And so, when people say, well, are you an anarchist?
It's like, I can't really answer that.
I'm a philosopher, I'm an empiricist, I'm a rationalist, and I'm not particularly interested in what the conclusions are.
I mean, I think that I can make the case, and I have in my intro to philosophy, I can make a very strong case.
And if you can check out the free book, Everyday Anarchy and Practical Anarchy, again, freedomainradio.com forward slash free for all of that.
But I'm not...
You know, I'm not an anarchist.
I'm a philosopher, and anarchy stateless society is the logical application of a consistent and empirical ethical theory, but I'm not an anarchist, because that's to say that I'm invested in the conclusion, not the methodology.
And people mistake this a lot, right?
Because every time I put out a video where I don't talk about religion, sorry, I get, hey, I'm really relieved that you didn't bash religion, because clearly you're anti-God, anti-Christian, don't like religiosity, and so on.
And that's just not true.
I mean, it's not true at all.
I mean, personally, I think it would be fantastic if Jews could rise from the dead and snakes could talk and I could live forever on a cloud with my wife and talk with everyone about philosophy who was dead and gone and all.
I mean, I think it would be a thrilling and exciting...
A thing if, you know, people came down in fiery chariots and healed the sick and the lame with the touch of their fingers and virgins could give birth.
I mean, it would be a pretty spectacularly exciting world to live in if, you know, gods and demons and ghosts and gremlins and so on were all floating around and we, you know, had certainty that if we, you know, worshipped a particular invisible friend that we would live forever.
I mean, In the same way that it would be, you know, pretty cool if we found Middle Earth somewhere and it was all true and happening and it would be like something pretty wild to explain and to figure out from a scientific and logical standpoint.
It would be a very, very fun universe if I did not have to think about death being the end but being a gateway to eternal life, dancing on the clouds with The go-go dances of God.
I mean, that would be a wonderful and exciting thing.
It's not that I'm anti-religion.
I mean, I would love to have that be part of the world.
It would be very exciting and something really interesting to explore and to work out.
And, of course, I could just pray for answers rather than have to do all this annoying and grueling empirical and rational work.
So, it's not that I'm anti-religion at all.
I'm not anti-religion.
I'm not anti-state. I'm not anti-whatever people sort of say.
I'm not anti-family, for heaven's sake, right?
But, unfortunately, reason and evidence dismisses religiosity as superstition, as a fairy tale.
Don't shoot the messenger, right?
I mean, I've made the arguments, they've stood up.
I'm not, of course, the first to make all of these arguments.
There's some atheism, the case against God, lots of great books out there that you can read.
I'm not an atheist.
I'm not an anarchist. I'm not X, Y, and Z. I'm a philosopher, and reason and evidence is it.
I mean, everything else is just bigotry, nonsense, and prejudice, and emotional defenses, and crap like that.
So... To say that I'm anti-religion is to say I've completely missed the point and to personalize something that is actually quite objective and rational.
I mean, if somebody can prove to me the existence of a god, if somebody can demonstrate in a scientifically controllable, reproducible manner the existence of consciousness without matter, of life without matter, of an eternal being, Who is incredibly complex and omniscient and all-powerful and did not evolve.
And if they can somehow find a way to resolve the problems of omniscience and omnipotence, right?
If you know the future, you can't change it.
So you can't be both omniscient and omnipotent at the same time without just saying, well, I just remove criteria like time and space and all that kind of stuff, which is just a way of saying, well, you can't prove it.
If someone can do that, fantastic, but unfortunately reason and evidence leads to a completely godless universe and there are challenges involved with that which we need to find a way to to found ethics without religion.
Reason and evidence leads to a stateless society because we are all roughly equal in terms of potentiality and what we commonly call human rights and therefore there is no group that has the right to initiate force against Any other.
That is to create an opposing ethic for the same thing.
It's like saying that a tree is both made of wood and fire.
Trees can be both made of wood and fire at the same time.
And, of course, that would be inconsistent.
You can't say that mammals both give live birth and suckle their young and are warm-blooded and also give birth through eggs and are cold-blooded.
I mean, that's just to conflate mammals and reptiles.
So you can't have a category called human being Human beings with a certain group that's carved off and allowed to just initiate force at will against others, even with their sort of nominal, quote, participation in a democratic system.
It just, reason and evidence doesn't support it.
Reason and evidence utterly denies the existence of gods and ghosts and gremlins and so on.
And so it's not, I'm not an atheist, I'm not anti-religious, I'm not anti-family, I'm not anti-state, I'm not an anarchist, or any of these sorts of things.
I am just as strictly as possible and, you know, with mistakes and corrections along the way, as strictly as possible, working from reason and evidence and first principles.
Where they lead is where they lead.
You know, we're just trying to get to the truth to try to get to the reality so that we can have a better, happier, and more moral world.
So, I hope that that clears up some things.
Please do keep your feedback coming.
I hugely appreciate it.
And thank you so much for watching, as always.
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