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April 12, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:07:18

1328 Sunday Show April 12 2009

Hypersexuality, UPB redux and another rousing debate... ;)

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Time	Text
	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	It is shortly after 4 p.m.
	Jupiter Standard Time, Sunday, April the 12th, 2009, or in the Hebrew calendar, Tuesday.
	So, I hope that you're doing very well.
	We have a guest up here.
	The estimable Carl has decided to join us.
	Hello. He is a man of few words.
	Fortunately, I average us out.
	So, thank you so much for joining us.
	I don't have anything particularly important to mention up front, but other than to say thank you, as always, for the success, I just finished calculating the statistics, the vital statistics, dare I say, of the FDR March reach around,
	media reach, and what we have is 411,000 Podcast downloads, video views, and that's not counting all of the articles that have been reprinted at other places, and it's not counting blog hits and all that kind of stuff.
	But that is some pretty fine stuff, and thanks, of course, to the support of Kind Donators.
	We have over 60,000 books have been downloaded, which is some good stuff for technical philosophy books.
	That is a runaway book.
	Best seller.
	It is the Dan Brown of philosophy.
	So that's good stuff and not only has 60,000 free books been downloaded but a large number of them have not been downloaded by people who claim to be interested in philosophy and that has huge value as well.
	I did a debate recently and then I just Got so annoyed.
	I was talking about this with Carl today.
	I thought it was an interesting topic. Okay, I'll do a brief one and then I'll take questions or comments.
	But you know how libertarians are really around the gold standard.
	Oh, real value, real value, tangible value, none of this fiat money crap.
	Well, it just kind of struck me that a lot of people...
	Like, words are the fiat currency of philosophy and deeds are the gold standard of philosophy.
	And I was sort of talking about that in my post-debate...
	A list of suggestions for people who want to debate.
	You can fake words, right?
	You can say, I'm a virtuous person, or I have integrity, or I have courage, or I have all of these things.
	You can say that sort of stuff in the same way that you can print money if you run the Fed.
	But the gold standard of philosophy are actions, not words.
	I would just strongly suggest People will always try to draw you into the world of words, the world of manipulation, the world of metaphor, the world of aggression, the world of verbal, where you can make up and twist and turn and so on.
	But I strongly suggest to really try and stay in the world of actions.
	Because actions are empirical, and we consider ourselves to be rationalists and empiricists.
	Actions, what people do rather than what they say, is the empirical truth of their personalities, of who they are.
	You know, actions speak louder than words.
	I can't hear what you're saying over what you're actually doing.
	I would really say reject the fiat currency of words and focus on the gold standard of actions in your debates with people and really try to remind yourself and remind others as well as I try to do That if you want to talk about ethics and lecture other people about ethics, it's important to be ethical first yourself.
	Because there's really not much point trying to teach stuff, things that you can't do, right?
	I mean, just as you would not be likely to take a 350 pound asthmatic guy who never got off the couch as your gymnastics coach, It's important not to listen to lectures on virtue from people who are not even displaying the basic and common virtues of honesty and integrity and so on, right? Like there was the brain police guy that I debated with who in the debate with me was, you know, oh, I had a great time.
	It was really enjoyable. Thank you so much.
	It was valuable and so on.
	And then, you know, on his blog the next day, I read that I'm manipulative and false and lie and all this kind of stuff.
	And it's like, man, if you can't even get the basic integrity of not being two-faced, I don't know that I really want to hear...
	In fact, I know for sure that I don't want to hear about your ethical theories in other areas, right?
	So, just something to mull over.
	I try to remind myself of this, and when I try to remind myself of stuff, I will also try to remind you so that we are all, as they say, reminded!
	Sorry, that was my...
	Oh, never mind. Okay, so that's it for my Hamana Hamana.
	If you have questions, comments, issues, praise, bling-bling, please do hurl it at your monitor and I will listen closely.
	All right, well, while we're waiting for people to finish their vocal warm-ups, we will have a look at a question that was posted.
	Somebody said, no Skype name.
	He rode through the desert on a Skype with no name.
	But maybe a question.
	Is violence, like in movies such as Terminator 3 or Quentin Tarantino's movies, something boys and men innately enjoy, or is enjoying that a form of trauma?
	Should we turn to the panel?
	I'm getting a certain amount of drool from Isabella.
	Mom is about to nap.
	Carl is...
	No, he's not. He's just a little under the weather, right?
	So, I guess it's up to me.
	Let me snort a few lines and let's roll.
	Well, I would say that violence to me in art and in movies is something that I can't do.
	I can't do it. I can't do it.
	And this happened to me, oh gosh, when did the movie Casino come out?
	It was like the early 90s. Fifteen, twenty years ago, there was a scene in a casino where they pop a guy's head in a vice and squeeze it until his eyes pop out.
	And I'd seen violent movies before, but I just felt this revulsion, and I left the theater, and I was just like, I'm not doing it.
	I'm never going to look at that stuff again.
	And I would get up and fast-forward.
	I will not see if you saw the movie Revolutionary Road and wouldn't watch near the end.
	That was not even overt or explicit.
	So, myself, I can't do, you know, sadistic violence in movies.
	You know, I mean, there's a debate that's been around before, which I'll touch on here, which is that, you know, cartoony violence in video games.
	Like, I'll play a video game where, you know, I'll shoot rockets at a robot, you know, or whatever, right?
	But to me, it's pretty cartoony and does not have that same kind of, you know, sadistic or evil feel to it.
	So, I think that to really get off on that kind of violence would be evidence of prior trauma.
	If you have experienced a lot of violence in your life, and particularly as a child, that violence is completely overwhelming.
	To you. And the solution to the violence that is overwhelming as a child is, as we touched on, though not explicitly last Sunday, is dissociation.
	It's the separation of your sort of live and rich emotional experiences from your environment because it's too much, right?
	In the same way, if you get hit with a taser, you'll probably pass out, right?
	It overwhelms your body and you futz out.
	And the problem with that, and there are many problems with that, I mean, first of all, it's very healthy to do that as a child, right?
	Dissociation is better than insanity, right?
	So it is very good to do that, very healthy to do that as a child.
	The challenge, of course, is to repair the empathy and the rich and deep emotional experiences when you are an adult, right?
	So you dissociate, and that's perfectly healthy and the right thing to do, in my opinion, when you're a kid.
	And then you have to repair that when...
	You get older.
	And if you don't repair it, what will happen is you have a Simon the Boxer thing, which if you haven't read Real Time Relationships won't make much sense to you, but it's a compulsion to repeat trauma.
	You have, when you are a kid, if you are overwhelmed and you dissociate, you only feel mastery by mastering violence.
	You only feel competence by overcoming the stimulus of violence.
	That is how you feel secure, in a way, because it's how you master the dangerous environment that you're in.
	And so, when you are an adult, you will be drawn back to either fictional or, heaven forbid, real situations of violence, so that you can master violence once more, because you haven't processed the trauma and the fear that causes the dissociation, so you will be compelled, like a criminal, to return to the scene of the crime, although in this case a victim.
	You will be compelled to recreate situations of violence so that you can master and dissociate the terrifying feelings and give yourself a feeling of competence and strength in the face of evil or violence.
	In my opinion, this is the root of the Saw movies, right?
	I've never seen one, but I saw a few clips of a spoof of one and apparently there's all these timed things where you have to cut off your own legs and stuff like that.
	Couldn't pay me enough money to sit through one of those.
	But those kinds of Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, the people go there because they wish to re-experience the sick sense of power and self-mastery that comes from Overcoming and dissociating from violent stimuli and it becomes an addiction and it has all of the negative components of that.
	At the more extreme forms of that we have sadomasochism where people will actually get erotic pleasure out of humiliation or degradation or violence or even specific injuries or pain to genitals or other erogenous zones.
	And of course the final extreme of that is the way you overcome The terror of violence by becoming a perpetrator, right?
	You inhabit the role of perpetrator, and that allows you to kill off empathy repeatedly through violence against others.
	So I don't think it is a particularly healthy thing.
	Again, you know, there's kind of cartoony stuff that goes on.
	I don't think that stuff is particularly horrendous.
	You know, like the, you know, Bugs Bunny gets hit with something, and little bird, Tweety Birds fly around his head.
	Alright, sorry about that. So I was just talking about how when you have experienced this kind of trauma as a child, and you haven't processed it, and the trauma, violence has led to dissociation, then what happens is you are drawn back to re-experience that violence so that you can re-detach, re-dissociate from it, because that is your experience of competence or power or security, but it becomes an addiction and it is a negative addiction.
	It is a negative thing, in my opinion, as an adult, right?
	Because it means that you are going to be constantly drawn back to that kind of violence and continually you're recreating or re-experiencing childhood trauma in order to master it through dissociation and that is A necessary and important thing when you're in a situation of trauma, but it is, I think, a not healthy and a destructive thing then when you're out of that situation of trauma.
	So that's my sort of two cents worth on that topic.
	So if anybody else has anything that they want to add to that or another topic, please feel free to jump in.
	Hello, Steph. Hello.
	Can you hear me clearly? Yes, thank you.
	Okay. Okay, this time I've written some notes down, so I'm more to the point.
	Last year, 2008, May 25th, during a karaoke evening, I was with several colleagues, several nurses I work with at my local hospital.
	This particular nurse In 2006, I have gotten the consent from her, get permission to talk about this because she's going to publish her story online and I'm helping her to do this.
	She was working the overnight shift in the emergency where she works.
	In the middle of the night she got a splitting headache and She collapsed on the floor and ten minutes later when she was in downtown, they diagnosed her with a very rare trauma to the brain that is similar to a brain aneurysm.
	And she went through a coma for quite a while.
	She came out of it.
	She went back in. Ultimately, she was not supposed to survive this problem without severe extreme paralysis or other really major debilitating side effects.
	On May 25th last year, she came back basically to public life and to join her friends for the first time to do karaoke and socialize a bit.
	And it was my first time I've met her Other than when I saw her on her dead bed basically with her long beautiful blonde hair shaved completely and all in a fetish position and really it was totally sad.
	And so when she came back on that night I noticed almost right away her marked significant change In her behavior-savvy, strangers of the opposite sex.
	And the younger, the more she liked them.
	What happened apparently there...
	Sorry to interrupt you.
	Could you just repeat that last bit?
	Strangers of the opposite sex, she liked them?
	Could you just repeat that point?
	I just missed that. Yes.
	She is quite a natural flirt, okay?
	She has this inborn natural beauty, okay?
	And she is very comfortable with herself in a public social setting, like in a karaoke night and so on, okay?
	But that night she was like so much over the top, over the top in flirting and...
	And socializing with the perfect strangers and boys like 10 years younger than her.
	You know, she was 31 years old at the time.
	And I was scared stiff for...
	And I was really worried about her 2-year-old son that stayed at home with her...
	Soon to be husband, which she didn't know anything about this, what she was doing, her behavior at the bar.
	Sorry, she didn't know anything about what?
	About how you felt?
	How her marked change in behavior, her really sad, unreserved, uninhibited, totally uninhibited sexual behavior.
	It is really that.
	Right. And she didn't just introduce, she didn't even introduce herself, you know, like usual polite people, like, okay, hello, my name is such and such.
	Sorry to interrupt, I'm just getting a number of requests from people for her number.
	No, I'm just kidding. Sorry, go on.
	Okay. And, you know, her way of introducing herself that night was like, you know, hello, cutie pie, may I sit on your lap?
	And I mean, it's stuff like that.
	It was totally... Disgusting, as far as I'm concerned.
	And I'm not nearly as close to her as some of the other fellow female nurses that were there, that some were like 15 years older than her and were much closer to her and knew her much more well than myself.
	And I was shocked and surprised and angry that they did not Recognize, and if they did, intervene in such a way that they have the welfare of the two-year-old boy that was in the care of her husband that night.
	I'm sorry, sorry, sorry.
	I just want to make sure I understand. How is it that her son was threatened by her behavior at the bar?
	I'm sure it is.
	I just want to make sure I understand it.
	Yeah, I know, I know.
	Sorry, go on.
	You know, by not being a good mom, I mean, you know?
	I call the expression, you know, she was slotting herself at the bar on that karaoke night.
	Sorry to interrupt you, but I just want to make sure I understand.
	She had a brain injury, right?
	Yes. Right, so I don't know that you'd necessarily want to put on the moral terms for someone who's had a brain injury, because it's not necessarily a moral decision that she's making, right?
	Because our minds come with, we have inhibitors, right?
	Behavior inhibitors that are developed pretty early on in life, and they're very physical things within the frontal lobes, and it is really the sort of Cluster cloud of higher functioning in the high frontal lobes that are the inhibitors for our behavior.
	When I was younger, I had a friend.
	He's unfortunately dead now.
	He died years ago because he didn't have these inhibitors.
	We would go dirt biking. Did we lose the call?
	No, I'm here.
	Sorry, just other people called.
	So, we would go dirt biking and this guy, Jamie, his name was, he was like, he did not have risk processing down to a fine art, let's put it that way.
	Did he have a helmet? No, no helmet.
	And he would literally ride off a bridge into a river without even checking how deep it was, right?
	I mean, he was really, this did not work for him Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of risk.
	This whole crazy venture is a risk.
	I'm a fan of risk, but I'm a fan of intelligent risk or managed risk or something like that.
	Not just cross your fingers and crap like that.
	He didn't develop that and there is There are traumas, and these are generally psychological, although they can be physical.
	There are traumas or a lack of parenting or aggressive parenting that can result in people not developing the physical brain structure of inhibition.
	Inhibition is really good.
	Life is a balance. We want to take risks, but we don't want to take stupid risks.
	Because not taking a risk is itself a risk in life in general, right?
	Like, if it's like, oh, well, I don't, you know, I don't ever want to go and ask a man or a woman out, well, that's taking a risk called loneliness and, you know, a bitter old age or whatever, right?
	So there is no such thing as no risk in life, because avoiding risk is just accepting another kind of risk.
	Yes. So the thing I would just say is that People who have, who do not have that physical structure, and you can see this in kids, right?
	I mean, when I was working in the daycare, you could see these kids who simply did not seem to have the ability to process the consequences of their actions.
	And those were the kids who would, like, push another kid rover right in front of you.
	Because they just, they would have this, it was like, stimulus response.
	They would feel upset and they would lash out.
	They would push, they would hit, they would take, they would whatever.
	And punishment didn't matter to them because It was kind of unrelated.
	It was just kind of random. What I'm saying is that if your friend has had this kind of brain injury which has caused this inhibition to not be present in her mind, then you're sort of like saying it's immoral for a guy who's lost his arm to not clap.
	Well, he can't clap, unless he's a Buddhist, because he's only got one arm.
	And this is not to say that you shouldn't be concerned or care or try to do something about it, but I would suggest that the moral dimension of this might not be the first place to go, if that makes any sense.
	Yes, absolutely. Just to give some more details, she said that she went back to the age of a 13 and 14-year-old girl, resulting of the injury.
	And she never understood actually what happened to her until she discovered this book about a neuroscientist that went on the Oprah Winfrey show several times by the name of Dr.
	Jill Bolte Doyle.
	And apparently she's real.
	I went to see on Wikipedia and she's all there.
	And this doctor, she was 37 years old.
	She had some kind of tumor that exploded in her brain.
	She went back to the age of two years old.
	She lost all her knowledge, everything.
	She was almost like a three-year-old kid that didn't know much of anything.
	So my point is that The next day, I went to talk to somebody at the hospital that knew somebody that didn't work at the hospital, was not even in the province, so that they could call her good friend, this nurse, to ask her if everything is alright and if she could help at all into re-immersion into public life, if you will, okay?
	And eventually this nurse, my friend, she found out about this, okay?
	And she got extremely over the top, mad, and so on.
	She wanted to have my job, my life, and she was going to take legal action against me and tell the hospital that they should fire me and so on.
	And just this past few weeks, she wrote me a five-page double-sided letter saying she was completely wrong because before she read this book, By this neuroscientist, she didn't understand.
	She thought she was totally fine, it was her own business, and nobody had any, not a right, but any reason to doubt or judge her motherly behavior in a karaoke night.
	And now she says that I was the Only one that intervened.
	No doctor, no nurses at the Neurological Institute in Montreal, no expert intervened and recognized through a change of behavior, potentially dangerous behavior.
	None! Nobody intervened and talked to her fellow friends and tried to help, except me.
	My problem is that I'm extremely now I feel really confused and ambivalent about all this praise she wrote to this letter, that she wants to meet me again, she wants to have a nice long supper to talk about all this, because she's very happy that I intervened.
	Because she did have a date rape drug by Hells Angels at one point, a few weeks later, after this incident, okay?
	Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
	That's terrible. That she revealed to me, okay?
	She came several times in several bars in downtown, being kidnapped by Hell's Angels and being date raped and so on.
	She's a very, very attractive, petite-sized lady that is full of...
	And me, my first concern was the two-year-old boy.
	Me, I was ready to risk my friendship to her.
	I was ready to risk my friendship to all her other friends by association, by putting this two-year-old son at the forefront.
	Okay, okay. Now, let me just stop you here, right?
	I'm not even going to assume.
	I'm just going to tell you. Why are you getting involved in this?
	Well, I was involved in it last year.
	You gave this woman some help, which I think is great.
	Yes. But you say you're ambivalent about the dinner that she wants to have, right?
	Yes, and overall, the just value of...
	All this praise that she's giving to me, I mean, I do not feel that I did much at all, except...
	First of all, you did a lot, because no one else did, right?
	Well, yeah, apparently, yeah, but I'm surprised.
	I think you should be proud of that, and I think that, you know, hopefully you will have gotten her to see a specialist, and, you know, she can recreate these inhibitors.
	The neuroplasticity is a very...
	And, of course, I know next to nothing about it, of course, right?
	No, no, no, you're exactly right.
	That is exactly what she's telling me.
	She has recreated these inhibitors and she's so much more well-off now and more sane and more rational.
	No, no, no. See, how long ago did she go through this experience, this awful thing with the Hells Angels?
	That is just under a year ago.
	A year ago, okay. So she's doing this work and that's great.
	It seems to me that it would take a long time to rebuild this kind of stuff.
	I don't know what could be done in here, because I'm no specialist or an amateur in this area.
	But I think that the praise, as you say in the letter, seems very effusive, which may indicate a lack of inhibition as far as praise goes.
	Because the lack of inhibition with sexuality, with anger, because you say she was really enraged and threatened you, and now there seems to be a lack of inhibition with praise.
	Yes, yes. So I guess my question would just be, I think you've done your good deed.
	I think that you want to keep her in the care of professionals, and I think you want to trust your instincts about...
	About the risk and the reward of getting further involved in someone who obviously is still going through treatment for these brain problems.
	Yeah, yeah. And so on that note, I'll leave it at that.
	And I'm working in therapy through that.
	And like you said, to learn to be proud of what I did.
	And yeah, okay.
	So I'll let the other people talk, okay?
	And I say this with huge respect for what you did.
	And that's why I call you Seth.
	I can understand why the woman is so grateful.
	If nobody else brought her up short and got her to get to the help that she needed, I can understand why this woman would be so grateful.
	I am angry at the other people that are much closer to her, that have known her so much longer, that they didn't intervene.
	They didn't do anything. I'm more pissed off at them.
	Well, I understand that.
	I really do understand why you'd be angry.
	But empirically, this is the fact of life.
	That people don't intervene.
	An example, you've obviously listened to FDR. You know the number of people who are embedded in supposedly moral communities who went through the most horrendous kinds of terrible stuff When they were children, and no one lifted a finger to help them, right?
	And this is children, not even adults, right?
	And so they have to call some guy in Canada to get some sympathy, because there's none to be had in their own community, right?
	Oh, I think we might have lost him.
	It is a difficult thing to reconcile, but it does seem to be very real that people do not intervene.
	As a rule, it doesn't mean no one.
	And the reason people don't intervene is exactly what you experienced, that when you did intervene, you got attacked, right?
	And intervention will bring attack quite often.
	I've certainly had a few tastes of it myself, right?
	So... People are cautious.
	They look at the risk-reward and they say, well maybe I'll be able to help this woman or maybe she'll go completely insane on me and she will hound me until I have to leave the country or something, which is a risk that can happen when you try to intervene in these kinds of situations.
	So they're doing a rational calculation.
	I'm not saying it's a particularly virtuous one, but I can certainly understand the logic of, well maybe I'll be able to help possibly, but You know, the odds are that if I try and defuse this bomb, it's going to go off in my face.
	So, you know, again, I'm not saying forgiveness and sympathy and understanding, but it is a rational calculation that they're going through, and we may not agree with their conclusions, but we can certainly understand why they would end up not intervening, I think.
	All right. Well, thank you.
	Excellent and very interesting story.
	You might also, for those who are interested in this, There's a writer called Oliver Sacks, S-A-C-K-S, who's written a number of books about brain injuries and their effects on the personality, which is really quite fascinating because it's very important to remember that we have a lot of wetware as well as just, you know, consciousness.
	And a book in particular, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is really, really interesting.
	Actually, interestingly enough, perhaps it's interesting, when I was studying playwriting in theater school, my Teacher gave me this as a short story assignment.
	There was one, and this is going back a while, but I remember the story I think quite well.
	One young man who was in an institution who was in his 50s who literally believed that he was 24.
	And every day his clock would be reset and he lived this shallow kind of existence where he thought, he just thought every day that he was 24.
	And if you ever held up, if you ever saw he had to have mirrors taken away.
	Because if he saw himself in a mirror, he would be completely shocked And scream in the way that I do.
	Because the state stole my hair, which is why I'm gunning for it.
	And my theory, because this guy was a sailor who joined the Navy at the age of 24 and became an alcoholic...
	And alcohol does bad things to people's memory, and it tends to do so progressively.
	And my sort of theory was that the reason he got stuck at the age of 24 was he got into the Navy.
	He became an alcoholic. He was in the Navy for about 10 years, if I remember right.
	So what happened was, as he began to drink, he began to lose his memory until he lost the memory of having gone into the Navy, and therefore he lost the memory of his first drink, and therefore he stopped drinking, which is why he stopped drinking.
	At the age of 24.
	So he kind of drunk away from 34, 33, 32.
	He kind of drunk away his memory until he was 24.
	And then he stopped.
	He lost the memory of even his first drink.
	And therefore he was no longer an alcoholic.
	But the drinking had destroyed his ability to create new memories.
	And therefore he was stuck in this Groundhog Day of a shallow existence at the age of 24.
	It had no real memory. I think it's well worth looking at the physical basis of the brain and the research certainly does seem to be pretty Pretty advanced and wild in this area.
	So it's just something I would recommend reading up on.
	Neuroplasticity in particular is a fascinating thing to look at what the brain is capable of doing when you rewire the brain.
	And there's some BBC Horizon documentaries on that which are just really, really fantastic.
	I just wanted to mention that and this is an area of interest that I think is certainly well worth exploring for me and maybe the case for you as well.
	That's it for that topic.
	Thank you very much for the kind caller, and if you would like to bring up a topic or question.
	I'm curious, of course, because there were a large number of people who wrote my tailpipe with some severe alacrity, so to speak.
	Because they think that I don't allow people to debate with me or somehow avoid challenging debates or whatever, you know, because the people posting on my recent YouTube video all seem kind of, you know, like decaf may not be a bad idea.
	So I'm curious if the people who feel that I don't allow for debates or somehow avoid tough debates...
	I mentioned the Sunday show, which has now been running for three years, right?
	So there are, what, probably 120 of these Sunday shows, which are entirely open platforms for debating without preparation on my part.
	So people could clearly do the research that they wanted to do, jump in here, and just come at me six different ways from Sunday, so to speak.
	And they would have the upper hand.
	So I'm more than happy to jump in the ring blindfolded with one hand behind my back.
	If people want to come, that would be great.
	So I'm curious if anyone is here from the YouTube channels where they said, gosh, Steph doesn't debate and won't debate with me.
	And I mentioned the Sunday show.
	So I'm just wondering if anyone is here from the YouTube channels who had issues that they wanted to bring up with me.
	Of course not.
	Don't be shy and you can type your questions into the window because you certainly don't seem to have any problem being very aggressive in the YouTube channel and now you have a chance to really bring up your issues face to face and I'm sure that you wouldn't want to be, you know, just that kind of person who has a lot of internet courage and doesn't actually come up with The real issues from this.
	I'm here. I don't even know what you're going to bring up.
	You can have the upper hand as far as that initiative goes.
	I will roll for initiative and I'll roll a 1 and you can do your D20 on me as you like.
	YouTubers, I'm all ears.
	Please bring up your issues and let's debate.
	Okay, well, while we're waiting for the YouTubers while we're waiting for the YouTubers who have such courage to speak up, I'm sure that they're just finding their mic switches or something.
	There was, I thought, an interesting objection to UPB that was brought up that I mentioned in the last video, and then I was accused of strawmanning the argument, so I will give it more detail.
	The argument, it's an interesting argument.
	An objection to UPB, I think it's some guy, Ex-Omniverse or something, if I remember rightly.
	He says that UPB can be used to validate the proposition that everyone should do whatever they have both desire and power to do.
	That that is a universal standard, a universal preferable behavior.
	Of course we would not consider that moral and that is how we know that UPB doesn't work.
	That UPB can be used to validate the moral proposition that everyone should do that which he or she has both desire and power to do or to inflict.
	And I thought it was interesting to get that objection.
	I think that it's an interesting objection.
	I think that it doesn't take a lot of thought To repudiate it.
	So I'll sort of give it a shot and you can let me know what you think.
	I think the important thing to remember about ethics is that they are human specific.
	They're human specific. We don't generally believe that there are ethics in the realm of fleas or amoeba or intestinal parasites or DMV workers.
	So it is a specifically human aspect.
	And if You say, everyone should do that which they have desire and power to do.
	It's hard to see how that would be specific to human beings.
	Because that is what a lion does, right?
	A lion wants to eat a gazelle and if it has the desire and if it has the power to do it, if it's not sick or shot or something, then it will go and try and chase down and eat the gazelle.
	And intestinal parasites want to, I don't know, ingest peters and excrete Methane, in my case.
	And that's what they do.
	They have the power and the desire to do it.
	And dogs want to lick their own genitals.
	Why? Well, because they can.
	And so it's hard.
	If we're going to come up with a system of ethics, I think it's important to have a system of ethics that is specific to human beings and not to everyone.
	Universally preferable behavior doesn't mean universally including aardvarks and anteaters and...
	Zebras and everything in between.
	And so I would say that...
	If you're going to say everyone should just do whatever they want to do and have the power to do, that is not a system of ethics.
	That is a mere description of a biological desire driver imperative.
	It's sort of like saying, my plan for nutrition is that everyone should eat whatever they want to eat whenever they want to eat it if they have access to it.
	That's not a plan of nutrition.
	That's a description of base desire.
	It's not universally preferable behavior.
	It is a description of what people do in the absence of knowledge, in the absence of If you come up with an ethical theory that includes a panther, and includes an eagle, and includes a flying fish, which the, you know, do whatever you have desire and power to do, that includes amoebas and flying fish and aardvarks and so on.
	If you come up with a definition of preferable behavior that is not specific to human beings, then you're going to have the problem of trying to come up with a court for fleas or some sort of ethical repudiation of intestinal bacteria or aardvarks or whatever.
	And if that doesn't strike you as odd, then I don't think there's anything more that I could say.
	So, I think that it's important to look at stuff that is specific to human beings, right?
	So, to respect property rights, which I believe is UPB compliant, is specific to human beings because animals can't respect property rights because they don't have any sense of abstract conceptual reciprocity and universality.
	They can't abstract to the conceptual, right?
	So all beings who can abstract to the conceptual and understand reciprocity and universality and reason and evidence and so on should respect property rights, but if you say all human beings should do that which They have both desire and power to do, then you have to say why only human beings are subject to that rule, which would be common across all biological creatures.
	So that would be my thought on that.
	I mean, I could go grind it through the UPP compliance stuff, but the shortcut that I would take, which I think is valid for that, would be that approach.
	And so I'm sorry.
	I'm going to just give another pause for the YouTubers who wanted so desperately to correct me to speak up.
	While we're waiting for that, what if you just refine...
	Dude, you were just interrupting them.
	Sorry, go on. Oh, wait, were they really quiet?
	What if you just confine it to humans and say that humans should do whatever they have the power to do?
	Well, but you can't arbitrarily just confine something, right?
	You can't say...
	Every gecko is a lizard except this one.
	I don't follow. There has to be some biological or physical or logical basis or empirical basis for that, right?
	You can say every animal here is a lizard except for this mouse, which is a mammal or whatever, right?
	And so you can't say everything should do that which it has desire and power to do, but I'm going to make that specific to human beings.
	That is creating an arbitrary distinction.
	Because there must be something special about human beings that makes that rule different than it does for everything else.
	And then you have to come up with something that is more specific to human beings.
	You can't just create that arbitrary distinction, if that makes sense.
	Because that to me is the equivalent of saying, you know, this gecko is a lizard until I put a hat on it, and then it becomes a mammal.
	And so you can't say, well, this rule, which is applicable to every single animal, is only applicable to human beings.
	In other words, all life forms are carbon-based, but Only human beings are carbon-based.
	Well, those two are logically contradictory, right?
	All creatures, all living creatures are carbon-based.
	Only human beings are carbon-based.
	Do you see what I mean? Because if only human beings are carbon-based, then all creatures cannot be carbon-based.
	If all creatures are carbon-based, only human beings...
	No, it can't be that only human beings are carbon-based.
	Does that make sense? So you're saying that because...
	Wait, but do you get that bit?
	I mean, well, did you see that, right?
	If I put forward the proposition and say, all living beings are carbon-based, and then I say, only human beings are carbon-based, but human beings are living beings, that is a contradiction, right?
	They can't both be true.
	Right, right. So if I say, it is universally preferable that all creatures...
	Should do that which they have power and desire to do.
	That applies to all creatures.
	I can't then say only human beings should do that which they have power and desire to do.
	That's exactly the same problem, right?
	I see. Yeah, that's a lot more clear then.
	I mean, there's lots of ways to respond to that objection, and I think it's actually a pretty good objection myself.
	There are lots of ways to respond to it, but that would be the first one, which is to say, well, why is it only applicable to human beings?
	Because that's applicable to all creatures.
	So how does that compare to only applying the rule that humans should not, or saying that you shouldn't steal?
	How does...
	Well, but of course, UPB does not say you shouldn't steal, right?
	No, it invalidates the...
	It reveals the inconsistency of...
	The moral rule that you should steal.
	Yeah, yeah. It says any moral rule which justifies stealing is logically inconsistent and, of course, inconsistent with empirical evidence, but mostly it's logically self-contradictory.
	But it also validates the moral rule that you shouldn't steal because it's not inconsistent.
	Sorry, say that again?
	But wouldn't you say it also validates The moral rule that you shouldn't steal because it's not an inconsistent rule to make.
	Sorry, there are too many negatives there.
	Can you simplify that? It's not the negative of the other, it's the opposite of what shouldn't be the negative of what is not true.
	Sorry, I just couldn't quite follow that, so maybe you could clear that up a little for me.
	If I say people should not steal, then that can be applied universally, And not be inconsistent.
	Yes. Sorry, I'm not sure what your point is after that.
	I agree with you, but...
	So, UPB doesn't invalidate people should not steal.
	It doesn't mean it validates, or it doesn't mean it says that people should not steal, but rather you can't invalidate If I make a moral rule saying people shouldn't steal, then UPB... I mean, that's UPB... That's consistent with UPB, I guess.
	Yeah, the statement, we should respect property rights, is a universally valid, consistent logical statement, which also happens to conform to certain bits of empirical evidence, right?
	Like societies that respect property rights tend to do better materially and in terms of lifespan and health and so on than societies which don't respect property rights.
	So there's You know, it's consistent with common sense, our gut sense, it's consistent with self-ownership, it's consistent, it's consistently applicable, it passes the coma test and there's empirical evidence.
	And that's about as good as you can get for any theory, whether it's scientific or moral.
	And somebody asked, well, why does UPB only apply to humans?
	Because UPB is a validator of logical propositions.
	And since I've not actually come across an anteater that provides or creates logical propositions, we can assume that it is only valid and applicable to human beings or any other life form that might be able to put forward logical propositions.
	So saying that people should do what they have the power to do, You might as well say all lifeforms might as well do what they have the power to do.
	All lifeforms do, like a lion does what it wants and has the power to do, right?
	Right. And so, does that mean that a lion is moral when it eats an antelope?
	I mean, I would think that anybody would have a tough time trying to come up with a moral rule for the African belt, right?
	I mean, the state of nature, right?
	And, of course, lions don't understand.
	It's not like they can sit there and say, "Well, you know, I'm going to take up farming instead because it's immoral to eat an antelope." Like if I were to come up with a rule that says it is moral to be carbon-based, right?
	Then, clearly, we would have a problem with that, right?
	Because that would apply to a lion and to an amoeba and all that, right?
	And it wouldn't really mean anything.
	Well, it just would be, like...
	It would include things that would make no sense, right?
	Which is, like, it would include lions and amoebas, and it would make no sense to talk about ethics in terms of being carbon-based, because it would include things that ethics clearly do not apply to, right?
	Like intestinal parasites and so on, right?
	So because ethics don't apply to anything but humans, then...
	Why am I not following this?
	I couldn't tell you. I could not tell you.
	But we both understand that ethics only apply to rational animals, let's say.
	Human beings, let's just say, because E.T. phoned home or whatever, right?
	So we understand that ethics only apply to human beings, right?
	So if I create an ethical standard that can be followed by...
	that a lion's behavior displays...
	Then, clearly, I've got a problem with my ethical standard, right?
	Because it only applies to human beings, right?
	I don't understand why that's a problem.
	Well, I can't explain it.
	I mean, I just went through it, right?
	I can't explain it more clearly.
	If I say that this rule only applies to human beings and then I can apply the rule to a non-human, then I've got a logical contradiction, right?
	Right. Right.
	Right, so logistically that's contradictory.
	Right. And UPB does only apply to human beings because it processes moral propositions which only human beings produce, right?
	Right. And if the moral proposition can be equally applied to a human being and a non-human being, then the moral proposition It's problematic because it is attempting to apply ethics to a situation which clearly ethics cannot be applied to, right?
	It's like saying, what color is gravity?
	It's a meaningless question to say, what are the ethics of lions eating antelopes?
	There are no ethics, and therefore any ethical standard which could be applied to that situation is wrong, right?
	It's meaningless. It doesn't work.
	Right. Yeah, this makes sense now.
	Good, good. I really appreciate you keeping to ask the question because it is, it definitely is, you know, it is a challenge.
	There's other ways that you could process this, but this I think is the most interesting.
	And, you know, if I have to do another UPB processing of a, why can't we have a universal moral rule called we only eat fish on Fridays, I think we eat my own head, right?
	So I wanted to try a different way of approaching it.
	And, you know, it seems like when you've got the truth, no matter which way you start, right, you end up with something that's sort of intelligent and useful, if that makes sense.
	Right. I think I've got it clear enough that I can actually write this down in a syllogistic kind of way.
	Good, good. I'm sorry, I'm just trying to add somebody who wanted to in.
	Are they a YouTuber?
	No, I don't think so, sadly.
	Sorry, if somebody else has another question, which they could take us until I get this all sorted out.
	Yeah, I have one. I think it'll be quick.
	Please. It was a comment.
	Somebody, I think it was D for Sean, he said, well, you have to accept UPB in order for you to prove UPB wrong.
	Wait, wait, what was it?
	You have to accept UPB in order for UPB to prove you wrong.
	That's what he said. Go on.
	And he had some...
	I'll read the whole comment.
	For example, if I say I'm an ethical nihilist, there is no right or wrong, and now I'm going to kill some people, there's nothing contradictory about that.
	In order for me to be inconsistent, I have to say murder is moral, and I'm defining the word moral in the same way that UPV defines it, and now I'm going to go kill some people.
	Well, but of course I would start with I am an ethical nihilist, right?
	What do you mean? Well, you said The beginning of your quote or statement was, sweetie, I am an ethical nihilist, and I would start with the question of how can somebody be an ethical nihilist?
	Because a nihilist is to say there is no value, and ethical is to say there is, right?
	Yeah, that makes sense. But even that first one, you have to accept UPB in order for UPB to prove you wrong.
	And that's a contradiction, too, right?
	That's like saying you have to exercise ownership to reject self-ownership.
	And that is just a logical contradiction, like yelling at someone that sound doesn't exist, or painting a picture that says, your eyes never work.
	I mean, sending a letter to someone saying that mail never gets delivered, I mean, that's just a logical contradiction, and you don't need to go into it.
	Okay, that's probably why I didn't get any of it.
	I was just totally baffled by the whole thing.
	It didn't make sense. Right.
	I mean, I thought that he was sort of saying, oh, well, you can't reject UPB because you have to use UPB to reject it, which of course is my contention.
	But, I mean, I think an interesting question, if we're still sort of waiting for people to get caught up, an interesting question is, of course, why are people so angry at UPB? I mean, I have some thoughts about it, but it's an interesting question.
	But I'm sorry, you may have had other things that you wanted to mention, so that was just sort of a thought that I had, but please go on if you had more.
	This was a comment he responded to.
	I kind of said the same thing, that you have to use UPB to prove UPB wrong.
	I think that's where everyone kind of gets caught up in.
	And that is a tough thing to do, for sure.
	That is a tough thing for people to understand.
	That is thinking about arguing rather than just arguing, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. So it's the physics of flight rather than moving a yoke or a joystick.
	And that is tough for people to think about what it is that they're doing as a whole when they debate.
	That is really tough for people to get the handle on.
	Like, what am I relying on when I correct people, right?
	That was my fundamental issue that I had with the determinists, right?
	Which is to say, well, forget the content of it.
	Because that doesn't matter.
	Forget the content of is this or that deterministic and what is the science.
	What is it that you're doing when you correct someone?
	You're saying that there is a preferred state of understanding.
	And how can there be a preferred state?
	That's why I did the rocks falling down the hill.
	I'm not to reopen the debate, but think about what you're doing when you're debating.
	Don't just jump straight in.
	You know, if you're going to play tennis, then, you know, get a racket, know the rules, right?
	Don't just sort of run out under the tennis court and start jumping up and down and with a flamethrower and, you know, an Uzi and say, look, it's tennis, right?
	Think about what it is that you're doing and what the premises are.
	Yeah, well, the whole thing is, like you said, when the other ones are just trying to make an exception to the rule.
	Right, right. I am the exception to the rule.
	Of course, that is the foundation of statism and religion and so on, right?
	Yeah, that's what they're doing in all of this.
	Right, right. Yeah, because I think you could.
	You could go through almost every...
	We both could do their arguments and point out the exception they try to make from the first principle they start with.
	Because that's where it goes, and they just layer stuff on top of it to distract you.
	Absolutely. And this, of course, is what happened at the end of the conversation with this fellow, right?
	Because, he said, you can't invalidate moral propositions, right?
	It's like, but you're invalidating mine, right?
	Yeah, he says that and then he adds other stuff about it.
	He says that and he depicts that as we're both going to assume that and then goes on about something else.
	Right, and it is tough.
	It is a higher order of functioning and a significantly higher order of functioning to think about the framework that you're in.
	It's like asking a fish to notice the water that it's swimming in.
	It's really tough for people to say, what is it that you're assuming when you attempt to correct someone?
	Because the moment that you attempt to correct someone, You don't say to them, I want you to stop believing in UPB because it makes me anxious, which of course is probably the real truth, right?
	But you don't say to the people, I want you to stop believing in X because I don't like it.
	No, no, what you say, you should stop believing in X because X is objectively incorrect, and you have the choice to make a correct statement.
	You are making an incorrect statement relative to reality, which is what truth is defined as, and here's the reasons why.
	There's logic, there's evidence. All of that is implicit the moment you try and correct someone, but getting people to be aware of it It's really, really, really hard, as we all know from having thrashed our face up against this cheese grater for a couple of years, right? It's really hard to get people to slow the fuck down and figure out what is implicit in the very act of doing what they're doing.
	Because everybody wants to jump straight off into this abstract world of words and this and that, right?
	I think even their goals are, if they had a different goal, because we have the goal to be right, and I don't think these people do.
	I think if you change that, then they'll slow down.
	We want to be objectively right.
	Whether or not that's emotionally pleasing or not, we want to be right.
	And not in a pompous way, but just in a...
	In a fiscally responsible way, for me.
	Sorry, go on. No, we do.
	We want to be right. Just truth equals virtue equals happiness.
	Yeah, we want to be right because we want to be happy and we want to help the world, right?
	In the same way, you know, if we're working to get a cure for cancer going, We want to be right because we want to cure cancer.
	We don't want to just make up something and say, okay, we'll do the hokey pokey and your cancer is cured because that would not actually cure cancer.
	We have a goal to be correct because that's actually being helpful.
	In the same way, when our dentist is choosing which instrument he's going to use, we want him to choose the right instrument and to be correct in his choice because otherwise he's going to go at us with a jackhammer and some plasticine, which is not going to be much fun.
	Yeah. It almost seems like they're trying to skip over the virtue part by changing their truths.
	You know what I mean? Not exactly, but tell me more.
	They're afraid of what you have to do.
	That's kind of the change step, the virtue.
	Be good, react in a way.
	Cut yourself off from people who are harmful to you.
	They want to skip that step.
	So they have these exceptions to the rules.
	They change the truth in order to get that happiness.
	Does that make sense? Well, yeah, I think so.
	I mean, the sense that I get also is that I get the sense that it is a kind of a leveling or a superiority thing.
	Like the moment that there's a lot of people in the world, the moment they see someone who's certain of anything, they have a very strong desire to break down that certainty.
	Because certainty, and it's probably because they had people around them who, when they were younger, who were certain, who were jerks, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Right?
	Statist or religious or, you know, just your general generic jerk, right?
	And so certainty is a threat to them.
	And so when somebody achieves certainty, they get kind of enraged because they sense imminent threat and then there's a preemptive attack and they turn into abusers.
	And again, I'm not talking about the guys who are debating recently.
	I'm just talking in general.
	Because, you know, when I put out statements of certainty, people seem to get kind of mad, right?
	And it's not because it's got nothing to do with me, right?
	What have I ever done to them, right?
	I mean... If the only thing that ever comes out of UPB is some guy a million times smarter than I comes up with a better theory of ethics than UPB, because he read UPB and got annoyed, I would consider that to be fantastic.
	I am more than happy to be a small footstool for a greater genius.
	That would be just wonderful.
	If my annoying UPB theory turns out to be completely false, but somebody gets so enraged at it, That they are so, you know, whatever, annoyed at it that they end up coming up with a better theory.
	I would consider that to be great, you know.
	It was like, yay, assist!
	You know, I got an assist in the game, right?
	And that, to me, would be entirely honorable, right?
	But, you know, just the people who get kind of angry and punchy and just weird.
	You know, it's like, you know, just show me your ethics.
	Don't talk to me about all that.
	Yeah. Sorry.
	I'm sorry, just let this gentleman finish up and then we'll continue.
	Oh, Greg was saying Sunday show or whatever.
	I don't know how this works, so...
	Yeah, just hang on and I'll get to you in a sec.
	We're just finishing up with Mr.
	B. Okay, and do you notice this one guy, like, Rock something?
	It's like in LeetSpeak, and he's been, like, spamming comments on the channel.
	I think he kind of fits that thing with the certainty.
	And what is he arguing exactly?
	Because I can't seem to follow what he's trying to say.
	No, I generally can't either, right?
	Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
	Yeah, I mean, you know, the Sunday shows are open, people can join, people can chat, you know, if they've got, you know, if they want to correct me, or they want to, you know, fantastic, right?
	I mean, there is a little bit, like, you know, I mean, if I'm, if there's a little bit of, like, the alpha always provokes resentment, and as far as that goes in, you know, in this small way or whatever, that would be me, and So there is that kind of stuff, right?
	Because, you know, if UPB solves the problem of ethics, and of course I think more than it does every day, it doesn't mean it does, it just means that I think more than it does, then, you know, we don't need religion, right?
	Because that's the big thing, right?
	Religion says, well, science can't give you ethics, reason can't give you ethics.
	And, of course, Richard Dawkins has a great response to that, where he says, well, wait a second, you reject this, this, and this in the Bible, right?
	You reject slavery, you reject the subjugation of women, you reject racism, you reject, you know, genocide, murder, war, all of these things are specifically approved of in the Bible, so you have another criteria by which you cherry-pick good and bad in the Bible, and that criteria is available to everyone, atheists and religious alike, because it's not in the Bible, because if the Bible was the Word of God, you'd be out strangling homosexuals and raping sheep or whatever the hell is in the Old Testament.
	And the fact that you don't do that, but you reject those parts of the Bible based on some external standard, that external standard is available to everyone, and not just the religious.
	I mean, it's a good argument, but of course it's more of a negative than a positive argument, because that other standard that he's talking about is UPB, but of course he doesn't know it because he's Dickie D and hasn't studied it, and why would he?
	He's a socialist anyway.
	I don't know.
	I've read some stuff where he's pretty skeptical of the state, but I wouldn't say...
	He's probably a socialist when it comes to science funding.
	I'll certainly give you that.
	Is that what you wanted to say about that?
	I wouldn't hang out and do a lot of the YouTube arguments.
	You know, there's a board, there's an email, there's a chat room, there's, you know, there's...
	Yeah, I try not to. If people don't want to do that, then, you know, it's...
	Well, I made a comment. They're doing their own thing.
	It's got nothing to do with the me or FDR or UPB or anything like that.
	Yeah, I just made a comment for you to see, just laughing about the using UPB to prove UPB wrong, and then they, you know, jump on that.
	So, I was just curious.
	Yeah, well, it may be interesting to see, but people just get kind of enraged, right?
	Yeah. They just change the topic and get angry about something else.
	I mean, they lack the inhibition, right?
	They lack the observing ego to say, why does this bother me?
	This is what people need to do, right?
	And very few people do, which is to say, why does this bother me?
	Why am I so angry? Why does this bother me so much?
	Why does what Steph's doing and UPB, why does it make me so angry?
	Why am I so angry?
	The moment you ask that question, you recognize that your anger is an internal state that you need to deal with as a psychological phenomenon based on history or whatever, right?
	Then you can stop acting out against me or whoever it is you're acting out against and you can start to deal with this as an internally generated state.
	But as long as people are acting out and this is stimulus response, which of course I've seen ever since I was a kid in my parents and as a teenager in the daycare, When you see the stimulus response, you'd know it's got nothing to do with you whatsoever, that they don't seem to have the maturity or insight or wisdom, or maybe it's a matter of intelligence, to look in the mirror and say, well, wait a second here.
	Why am I so bothered by this?
	Why do I get so angry about this?
	And, you know, it probably comes down to a lot of things, right?
	I mean, frankly, I live a pretty enviable life, right?
	I get to talk about ideas with people, do some good in the world, I think, and...
	You know, stay home with my kid and, you know, count the $12 a day that comes in through PayPal.
	So, sorry, just kidding.
	Better than that. But it's, you know, maybe there's envy.
	Maybe there's They get angry because they can't get to certainty or they're ambivalent about certainty and when I am certain about something they get really upset.
	Maybe the fact that I don't generally lose my temper at people but they do continually.
	The fact that I don't lose my temper with people over real major provocations but they lose their temper with people over minor provocations means that they envy my freedom or equanimity or peace of mind and And then they get angry that they don't have it and then they act out again.
	But that basic question which any intelligent, civilized, reasonable, decent human being asks when he or she gets angry is, why am I angry?
	Why am I so angry?
	Why am I so angry at a fellow libertarian or a fellow anarchist who is spreading stuff 99% of which I agree with?
	Why am I only focusing on that 1% That enrages me, and why am I acting out, and why am I cussing, and why am I provoking, and why am I trolling?
	Any reasonable, decent human being asks that fundamental question and does not imagine that the answer is outside, right?
	Because basically they're religious, right?
	Because a religious person stays religious only because they don't say, what psychological phenomenon is driving me to believe in something I can't see?
	Why do I believe in God?
	Why do I have this belief in God?
	Because that leads them back to their culture, their family, their history, their peer pressure, their fear of thinking for themselves, the punishment for non-conformity.
	It leads them back to psychological things.
	Why do I have a belief in God as opposed to some other God or no God?
	Well, because this God.
	Well, because my parents taught me about this God and I was punished for not believing and my peers would have rejected me and I wasn't allowed to say no and I was dragged off to church.
	And once you go down that road, you end up with a calmer, more rational, more at peace life.
	Where you're not defending the indefendable, you're not reacting like a two-year-old to not getting a candy bar whenever something doesn't go, whenever something bothers you.
	But the people who stay stuck in that petty rage thing are the people who just don't ask that basic question.
	Why am I so...
	Angry. And as long as you avoid asking that question, you get to not deal with stuff, which has its benefits, obviously.
	But the problem is it just locks you in that petty, stupid little dungeon.
	And what happens?
	What do they do to my life, right?
	I mean, my life is great.
	I have a fantastic life, and I hope that everybody understands how much I appreciate your support in helping me do what I'm doing, and often doing more than helping, but stimulating and conversing with me to do even better.
	But I've got the life that I have completely dreamed of and I exactly want.
	I have a beautiful wife, I have a stunning, fantastic, fascinating child, I live in a nice place, I get to spend my life Talking and thinking and writing books and having the most amazing conversations with the most amazing people this planet has to offer.
	We're reaching 60,000 people with shows.
	It's the biggest, most successful philosophy conversation ever because of the technology for the most part.
	What an incredible life, right?
	Everybody, they lift this gun and they want to fire it at me.
	And it doesn't hit me, it just goes off in their faces, right?
	I mean, this is the stupid thing.
	The people think that they're attacking me, but they're not.
	They're attacking some image of me.
	It has nothing to do with me.
	And all they're doing is punching themselves because the image of me is in their own head and they're attacking themselves and their own desires and their own true self and their own higher capacity and higher purpose.
	It doesn't hurt me.
	It's themselves that they're hurting.
	And this will just make them more angry, but only because it's true.
	Was that your question?
	Oh, I've heard that speech a couple times now from you in various podcasts.
	No, I get it. Alright, well, sorry.
	We had somebody else who wanted to bring up an issue or topic.
	Is that okay if we move on?
	Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Thanks.
	Thanks, man. Hello?
	Hey, how's it going? Hi.
	Is my audio all right?
	I was having some issues. I've only been using Skype for maybe a couple weeks now.
	It sounds like you're using a yogurt cup and a thick piece of rope, but we can certainly hear you, so go ahead.
	Okay. I was the one that emailed you with a couple...
	I don't know what you call them, points that I wanted to clarify?
	Yeah, you want to just read that email?
	Well, I was kind of hoping, so I don't get all monotone, if we could just start with one and discuss it, and then I could maybe see where I'm totally off base, or see if this is something that we could maybe not take up all your time on your podcast with.
	Sure, give it a shot, and of course it may not be you who's off base at all, so go for it.
	Well, the main deal with my interaction with you and UPB was that I agree with 90% of all of it, and it's more the methods of proving stuff that I had issues with, kind of a logical thing.
	And like I said, you've got so many podcasts and so many posts and everything that I'd have to read through to Find the one response that maybe you already had, but one of the issues was like the billion dollar proposition, which of course now is probably the trillion dollar proposition.
	But you were using it to talk about determinism versus free will, saying that, you know, a smoker might say that they can't stop smoking until they meet the pile of money and then they can stop.
	And that's the free will, right?
	Am I interpreting that correctly?
	Well, it's not free will.
	I have a video series and podcast series on free will, and I won't go into the definition of it here as I work with it.
	But what I wanted to do with that was to point out a difference between you can't pay a guy a million dollars not to have cancer, because if he's got cancer, he's got cancer.
	But if you pay a million dollars to a guy, he can probably stop smoking for a day, right?
	And it wasn't like, oh, and that's a proof of free will, because it's not.
	But what it is is an example of something that is different between that which is involuntary and that which has certain aspects of voluntarism, or at least appears to have certain aspects of voluntarism.
	Right, okay, so the appearing to have voluntarism is the...
	Because I was going to say that that's, you know, a proof of determinism, if anything, because you're changing the stimuli.
	Well, but would you agree that there is a difference, and I'm not saying that this proves very well, but would you agree that there is some sort of important difference between having cancer and smoking, in that you can't be paid to not have cancer, but you can be paid to not smoke?
	Right, because the original act of smoking is not something that arises from the physical need.
	It gets chosen, and then the nicotine and whatever is the reinforced stimuli that then keeps you smoking.
	Oh, no, I absolutely agree with that, but I don't mean the starting of smoking.
	What I mean is that you can pay someone to stop smoking, but you can't pay them to be taller or to stop having cancer or something, right?
	Right, unless somehow you could communicate to the cancer cells that a million dollars is an important thing.
	I assume that you're just reaching there, right?
	Because we're not going to there, negotiating with cancer cells, right?
	Well, right. That's what I mean.
	I always like to point out the impossible if.
	Can you not do that?
	I want to stay on point here, and clearly we're not going to go into the realm of negotiating with cancer cells, right?
	Right. Okay, so there is a difference.
	The billion dollar proposition was really just around that there is a difference between these two states.
	Where that leads is a long, complicated discussion, but we do have to understand that there is a difference between These two states in the same way that there's a difference between the future, the present and the past, right?
	I can't conceivably change anything that I've done in the past and I can't conceivably predict everything I'm going to do in the future, but I can to some degree have control over what I do in the present.
	Not perfect control, but some level of control.
	Right. Okay, well, we'll just set that one down, because that gets in a determinism, and if everything is determined, then blah, blah, blah, all that stuff, so...
	Well, if everything is determined, there's no debate, no one can be wrong, and so if we're going to continue this debate, let's just drop that one for the moment and go on with your next point, if that's okay?
	Right. Okay, so morality is a concept within the human mind and as such does not exist in external reality the same way that gravity or rocks do.
	And that's kind of where I would touch on the, you can't derive an ought from an is, to say that the ought that encompasses whatever it is that you think is the ought, Isn't integral to the ought.
	The ought just modifies whatever you're proposing ought.
	And the actual thing that's being proposed is an is that isn't, if that makes sense.
	And the ought just says that you should integrate that into your consideration of whatever's going on.
	Well, I didn't follow everything you were saying there, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but if you say you can't get an ought from an is, you're getting an ought from an is, right?
	Say that again? Well, if you say you can't get an ought from an is, then you're saying that we ought not to get an ought from an is, right?
	And therefore you are creating an ought by saying we ought not, right?
	That's the foundation of UPB, right?
	Because an ought isn't a statement of truth, it's a statement of preference.
	So when you say you can't get an ought from an is, you're proposing a truth...
	And if you're saying that we ought not get an ought from an is, that's saying that it's not good to, or it's not preferable to.
	Right, but we have a preference for truth over falsehood, so we are, we get, the moment you make any categorical statement about truth, you have an enormous amount that is embedded into that, right?
	Which is that because there is no ought in the real world, we ought not to come up with one.
	But you can't We ought not to assume there is an ought in the world.
	But that is creating an ought right up front, right?
	In that anybody who says you can get an is from an ought is incorrect relative to reality because they don't exist in the outside world.
	So even the statement you can't get an ought from an is is an ought statement.
	That we ought to prefer the truth, we ought to compare the statements we make to logic and evidence and so on, right?
	So this is what I say.
	You can't make any statement without the implicit UPB thing.
	Well the ought comes from The human preference for truth, not the truth.
	So you're saying that because everybody in whatever discussion prefers to follow whatever's truthful or whatever's real, then there's an automatic assumption of the ought, but the statement of the truth isn't what has the ought, it's the people discussing it that has the ought.
	Right, but you see what I'm saying?
	So then if I say an ought does exist in the world, you're going to correct me, right?
	Well, I mean, the point that I'm making is that the ought is the preference, not the truth.
	They're only tied together because it's not so much that the person's creating an ought, it's that the ought is implied because it's relative to the humans.
	Okay, and perhaps what we should do is then just start with the basics, because I think I understand, but we probably should start a bit more simpler.
	Can you tell me what the truth is?
	Well, the truth is separated from the whole absolute subjective nonsense by reality.
	So it has to tie into reality, otherwise, because that's the metric of truth.
	Okay, so, and I'm just trying to paraphrase and tell me if I'm awry, just so I can sort of understand what you mean.
	So you're saying that the truth is that which conforms to empirical evidence?
	Yeah, I would say that.
	Okay, and... And that if you're proposing, because the way I consider the truth is that it's circular logic, but all-encompassing within, you know, barring the stupid argument that somehow you could see reality from outside reality.
	So reality is like the ground floor, right?
	It's all-encompassing as far as all this debate goes, and it's circular logic, but it's perfect circular logic.
	Okay, and there would be two aspects to truth that I would argue for, and you can tell me if you don't agree.
	There is the truth for which we can get empirical evidence.
	The world is round, right?
	We fly out on Superman's shoulders and we have a look, right?
	Right. And then there is the truth which we do not need to Look at external evidence in order to prove, right?
	I mean, if I say the world is round and we don't have evidence, the world is round is not innately self-contradictory, right?
	And so we need evidence to figure out whether my non-contradictory truth statement conforms to external evidence, right?
	Non-contradictory as in it doesn't have truth or falsehood, it's just a proposition.
	It's just a proposition, right?
	A relationship setting that the world is a proposition, and then wrongness is a proposition, and then you're proposing that they're equal.
	Right. Whereas if I say, sorry to interrupt you, if I say the world is a square circle, that is a logically contradictory statement, and we don't need to appeal to evidence to disprove it, right?
	Right. So we agree that those are the two kinds of truth, right?
	The truth which is not innately self-contradictory but requires external validation, the world is round, and then there is the truth which does not rely on external validation, such as the world is a square circle, which is innately self-contradictory and we don't have to appeal to evidence to prove or disprove it.
	It is innately disproven by its contradictions.
	Right, because you're proposing the test.
	When you say that the world is round and it's also a square, you're doing the same thing that you would do in physical reality, which is to say that if you found a world that was square, you are then facing a proposition that says the world is round and square, and then therefore you realize that it doesn't match with reality.
	No, that's not what I'm saying.
	What I'm saying is that a world cannot be both round and square at the same time, right?
	Right, which is how you prove that the world isn't round, if that's the case.
	No, no, it doesn't mean that the world is anything, it just means that it can't be both round and square at the same time, and therefore we don't need to look for any evidence as to whether there is a square and round world out there, because it's impossible for it to be both at the same time, right?
	Right, I'm just drawing the similarity between what happens mentally and what happens physically as the same process.
	That's all. I agree that there's two, I mean, if you separate it between purely physical and purely mental, then that's what, that's the distinction correct, yeah.
	Right, and it's not, these two truths, they're not unrelated and they're not oppositional, right?
	So the reason that we know that a self-contradictory statement is not true is that contradictions do not exist in reality.
	There cannot be a square, circular world, right?
	Right. And we know that because contradictions don't exist in reality, and therefore any contradictory statement that claims to describe reality is invalid because contradictions do not exist in reality.
	Right. Okay, so it's because of the empirical evidence that contradictions don't exist that we know that self-contradictory statements are invalid, right?
	Well, they don't apply to reality.
	Yeah, well, I mean, if you say my contradictory statement applies to a reality that does not permit contradictions, that is a logical contradiction in and of itself, right?
	Right. So it's invalid, right?
	It's invalid to say my contradictory statement describes a non-contradictory reality.
	Right. Sorry, I'm getting some kind of crackle for people.
	I don't know if that's you or someone else.
	But if you're not talking, if you could remember, please do mute your microphone.
	I would appreciate that. Okay, so we have a sense of what the truth is, right?
	And we also have a sense of that which we can use to figure out what is true from what is false.
	And true, I would say, is when our statements accurately identify Reality or respect the principles that are universal within reality, like non-contradiction.
	So when we have logically consistent truths, that is the first...
	When we have a logically consistent statement, that is the very first barrier that we need to pass.
	And then we may look for empirical evidence.
	So if we have a self-contradictory statement, we don't need to look for empirical evidence because we know it's not going to be there because square circles don't exist in reality.
	They can't possibly. And so it's sort of like building a bridge, right?
	If my math is correct, then the bridge, we can start to explore whether the bridge will stand or whether it's worth building.
	But if my math is completely off, we're not going to start building the bridge because we'll actually have no way of doing it, right?
	Like, if I say 2 plus 2 equals green, and that's my load-bearing statement for the bridge, you could actually have no way of building the bridge, right?
	So the internal logical consistency is the first place we need to look, and then, if the statement is logical and consistent, then we can start to look into evidence in the real world, so to speak, if that makes any sense.
	Right, because when you look at the real world for evidence, you're really introducing arguments that either...
	They add the complexity of whatever your thesis is, and then you see if those are still consistent.
	And since we started with the ought, right?
	Since a preference does not exist outside of human consciousness, like a rock or whatever, the ought, which really is a preference, the preference can only exist within our minds.
	And when we say you cannot get an ought from an is, what it means is that You cannot base your preference like a boat anchor attached by a chain to something outside that is external to reality, right?
	Right. I mean, I would argue that you can't get an...
	I mean, you can't get a universal odd from an is, but internally, the whole idea of, like, for example, UPB of saying that moral...
	Theses have to be internally consistent, you know, ethical frameworks have to be internally consistent is not proof, but it's...
	I guess what I'm going to say is inside the mind of the person, they have to check their oughts with their ises.
	Well, no, and let's just back up for a sec before we get to ethics, because this, and this is a very great point that you're bringing up, in my opinion, but if we say we cannot get an ought from an is...
	We are getting an ought from an is.
	Well, no, that goes back again to saying that all...
	Oh, no, it's backwards, but...
	Oh, sorry. Let me just be more clear about that.
	We're getting an ought from an isn't, right?
	Because there is no ought in reality, therefore we ought not to say that there is.
	No, I know it's trippy as all hell, right?
	But this is really, really an essential point.
	Well, I'm trying to figure out whether I need to tie in the whole atomic electrons and everything.
	I'd prefer it if we didn't.
	Yeah, I don't think it's relevant.
	I just wanted to check. Like, it's when people say...
	Oh, no, forget that.
	But since that which is true is that which accurately reflects what is, and there is no ought outside the human mind, we cannot logically say...
	There is an ought in the real world.
	Well, I mean, that's kind of where I was going with the atom things, is the whole idea that reality is completely consistent, absolutely consistent, would mean that everything in physical reality does what it ought.
	Well, no, I think, no, no, you can't put ought in physical processes, right?
	Right, because an art isn't happening.
	It's the future. Well, an art is a preference, and a rock does not prefer to fall down.
	That's an old Aristotelian idea of physics, right?
	That there are these four elements, right?
	What was it? Air, fire...
	Earth and water, right?
	And the water wants to go and rejoin the water further down, which is why it goes downhill.
	And the fire wants to fly up to the fire element and rejoin it.
	And it has a preference and a yearning and so on.
	And air doesn't go into water because it prefers to stay in the upper air element.
	And it gave all of these preference.
	I'm not saying this is your argument, of course, right?
	But it's an old thing that matter has a desire and a preference.
	And, of course, we can't sustain that as a thesis because that requires Consciousness, and in the way we're talking, rational consciousness, which clearly an atom is not complex enough to possess.
	Right. It kind of ties in, because what I'm saying is that the result of...
	It kind of goes back to the forest and the trees.
	The sense that just because you have the trees together, it doesn't create some extra forest-ness.
	Right? Right? Is what you were saying.
	But then I would say that if you did find some extra quality about the fact that they were all together as a forest, then it would go back to say that you didn't properly assess the qualities inherent in the trees.
	So my example to illustrate that is like gravity.
	Is that if you had two balls on a table rolling past each other and you didn't see any difference, you would say that they don't attract each other.
	But if you had ten gazillion balls all massed together in the middle of space and you threw another ball by it and it did attract, then you would have to go back and reassess what qualities you were attributing to the unit.
	So the whole art thing is the It's a manifestation of the fact that reality follows rules and that we've gotten to a complexity to where we can propose inconsistencies and we can have competing determinisms or preferences in our head that we then need to compare and say, I prefer this most because of its logical consistency and therefore that's identified as an odd.
	Yes, I think I followed you there, and obviously you're a crackerjack smart fellow, so I'm doing my best to keep up.
	And I think that I very much agree with you there.
	And this, of course, is really the important aspect of the essence, really, of UBB, which comes when you want to correct someone else, then you have to correct them compared to what?
	With reference to what?
	And people don't say, you should not believe what you believe because I don't like it.
	Because that really would not be an objective.
	Okay, the government maybe, but no rational sane human being would say that.
	And so we correct other people with reference to the third party called reality.
	And the other two third parties called, whether you call it analytic or synthetic, but internally consistent reason and empirical evidence.
	So we're saying not, you should conform to my thinking.
	But you're thinking, if it is to be considered true or valid, should conform, must conform, to logical consistency and empirical evidence.
	And that is just the basics of UPB. And that's why UPB is bigger than science.
	It is philosophy, right?
	Because it's bigger than science, it's bigger than ethics.
	We've not applied this kind of consistency requirement and empirical evidence requirement to ethical theories because they've been so much in the grip of, you know, guns, ghosts, and gods, right?
	So we're trying to wrestle those free and bring the, you know, medieval quasi-science of ethics into the 21st century and bring rational and scientific principles to bear on it.
	UPB, it overarches science And includes all, like, mathematics, and again, this is not because I'm smarter than scientists or mathematicians, right?
	I just noticed that it wasn't over ethics, and when I put it over ethics, it went over these other things as well.
	But that's how we know that science is valid, because science is obviously completely about internal consistency and empirical evidence.
	And I'm just taking that same scientific approach and bringing it to bear on the question of ethics, which have been considered to be completely subjective, or largely subjective, or cultural, or religious, or laws enforced by idiots with guns, or whatever.
	And we're just trying to take the alchemy out of ethics and say, no, no, no, it's a rational, empirical discipline.
	And if you say that it's not, that is an ethical statement, right?
	So you can't avoid the requirement for logic and consistency with reality unless you're willing to be a cop or a priest, in which case you can just wave guns and scare children.
	But for those of us who are trying to build a rational world, and I'm very happy to hear that you're one of them, and may have been one before I was on board, we're just saying, look, if you want to put out ethics, if you want to put out any kind of preferable Behavior that other people are bound by or should be bound by it needs to be rational and it needs to be consistent with with the evidence I Guess the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because I've heard you say that many times and what I was seeing was I agreed with whatever Mostly with whatever you would propose or and then well the point is that I agree with your end result But I saw some arguments where I think you said that in the first couple of pages,
	and that's when I was like, well, I'm not now suddenly jumping away, throwing the book down and saying this is a load of crap because...
	Francis Bacon didn't figure out quantum physics, right?
	That doesn't mean that science is nonsense, right?
	Right. And the next thing I was going to bring up was when you were talking in the death of concepts about the state doesn't exist, it's just people doing stuff.
	Yes, I certainly recall that.
	Okay. And that's where the forest and trees came in.
	I'm sure people are sick and tired of hearing the forest and trees, but I think it's kind of crucial because I would say that the state is the extra stuff, the stuff that the people don't normally exhibit when they're on their own, but when they come together, they create the phenomenon that we then label as the state.
	I couldn't disagree with you more.
	And that doesn't mean that I'm right or you're wrong.
	I'm just telling you that I couldn't disagree with you more.
	And I think you also don't agree with yourself because it's completely inconsistent.
	This proposition is completely inconsistent with your two balls, trillion balls metaphor from earlier.
	Well, no. Let me explain.
	Because then what I'm saying is because you look at this extra phenomenon that doesn't happen except when people communicate.
	Like when the cop pulls you over for having a taillight out, he doesn't really pull you over because he says, oh, I need to go tell this guy something.
	It's because he's got a book of rules.
	I mean, you can substitute taillight out for anything else.
	He's got, he has delegated a part of his intelligence to this legislative body saying, you know, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna think as a human being because I have identified this body as somehow superior to me and I'm gonna do whatever it tells me to do.
	No, no, no, no.
	Come on. We've got to be more clear about the state.
	It's not a book of rules that make him able to pull you over.
	I mean, I can carry around a book of rules, too.
	I don't get to pull people over and take their money, right?
	No, it's also that the people that are being pulled over are accepting it, too.
	No, no, no, no. It's not because the people who are pulling over are accepting it.
	Because if the people who the cop pulled over were willing and happy to accept his authority, what would he not need to carry?
	Right. No, I understand that.
	We're generalizing all people now to say that they either do or don't accept these things.
	And some people clearly do also delegate this sense of morality that they could be defining for themselves, but they don't have the time or don't have the will to go through the logical process to incorporate internally consistent morality.
	And so they then say, well, the law is some special thing that is more right than I could possibly be, and therefore, you know, I'm going to do whatever this police officer says because I respect the law or something.
	No, no, no. Come on. People are afraid of cops.
	Well, yeah, they are. There's no sane person who drives along the road and looks at the cop coming up behind him with the flashes on and goes, oh, how wonderful, here comes the person I'm delegating my moral authority to, right? I mean, let's live in the real world here, right?
	What people do is, fuck, have I got a tail light out?
	Was I going two kilometers over the speed limit?
	Is my license not being renewed?
	Damn. You wonder what you've done that he could possibly be pulling you over for.
	No, I get that. I'm just saying that we're in a situation right now...
	Let me get to one thing before we get too far into this.
	Do you believe that people can delegate any right to protect themselves?
	I'm not sure what you mean by can.
	You mean is it physically possible for me to sign a contract for someone else to protect me?
	No, is it... Does the morality of somebody, let's say an old woman, protecting themselves by initiating a reciprocal force, does that nature of morality change when she says, you know, grandson, you're big and strong, help protect me against whoever's attacking me?
	Is there a morality that, does morality change when that happens?
	Well, of course not.
	Right, because UPB says that self-defense is a universal right, and it is also a right that I can intervene in somebody else, right?
	Because it's a universal right, so everyone can intervene if Granny's getting mugged.
	I have no problem with that at all.
	So could I put that down in a contract that then says that the person that I'm signing that contract with can then resell it to somebody with equal...
	You can make whatever voluntary contracts you want, of course, absolutely.
	Okay. So I guess just to end a long argument or a long discussion about where I'm getting at this...
	Sorry, but you can't put a contract in on my behalf, right?
	Well, right. And what I'm saying is that we're born in a situation of existing contracts that have been...
	No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait.
	What contracts? Did you ever sign a contract?
	Did you ever get a chance to sign a contract?
	Or were you ever provided with alternatives?
	Did you go to public?
	Well, it has to do with inheritance.
	No, no, no. As I said, you can't sign a contract for me.
	I can't sign a contract for Isabella.
	Right? My daughter. It's more of a...
	I'm not saying that it's for your physical...
	But it's more of a territorial thing.
	We have to be precise.
	I'm sorry to be annoying. You used the word contract after telling me about a voluntary signed contract.
	You're then talking about some other kind of contract which is universally imposed at the point of a gun without any voluntarism territorially.
	You can't use the word in its opposite definition.
	That's like me saying, do you approve of lovemaking?
	Yes. Oh my god, you're a rapist.
	Right? Because then I'm completely switching the words as if they're the same, right?
	Well, no, because I'm dealing with...
	It's like if somebody owns both the Coke can and the Coke in the can, and they only pass on to you the Coke, and somebody else has control of the can.
	So, what I'm seeing is that...
	I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
	I just... I'm not... Don't mean to interrupt you because I want to throw you off.
	I don't understand the Coke and the can and...
	I don't know what that means.
	I'm sure it's got a good point.
	I don't want to not follow what you're saying, because I think that would be disrespectful, so I really want to understand what you mean.
	What I'm doing is I'm going back and re-illustrating the protection of the physical property, the body, and the physical property of the land, saying that you weren't given all control of the land that you think you own.
	So you're operating on somebody else's private property right now.
	And whose private property am I operating on?
	And how did they... Did they buy it from me?
	I mean, whose private property am I... Well, no, you never owned it.
	I'm sorry? You never owned it.
	It's claimed by the state and protected by the state.
	Wait, so some people...
	Wait a second here.
	So some people can universally assert property rights and other people cannot.
	Is that right? Well, how did you originally get your property?
	Well, no, no, hang on. But it seems to me that you would be creating two classes of individuals, right?
	Those who have to earn property and those who can just universally assert property rights over a territorial area called the state, right?
	Well, that didn't exist before.
	Like, that was free before.
	I mean, aside from having to...
	Then you could get into the fact that we had to kick Native Americans off of their land and put them on reservation.
	No, no, no. Sorry, I don't want to go into the empiricism.
	I'm just looking at the logic here, right?
	I'm not sure how some people...
	It seems to me that let's say everybody had the right to be a state.
	Everybody had the right to assert whatever property rights they wanted over any place they wanted within a geographical area, right?
	Unless it was previously claimed, right?
	Let's just say we have a moral theory which says everyone can assert property rights over everything.
	That could never work, right?
	No, but logically. Because let's say that you want my microphone and I want my microphone.
	If we both get to assert ownership over the microphone, then it can't logically work, right?
	Because only one of us can use it.
	Well, I guess the only way that I could come at that is if there's some rule of getting it in the first place.
	No, no, no, no. I'm just saying, let's say that we create...
	Forget about history, past, homesteading, Indians...
	Like the logic of the present, if I say I have a moral theory which says everyone can impose property rights over everyone and everything, just by willing it.
	They don't have to earn it, they don't have to trade it, they don't have to steal it, they don't have to kill Indians to get it, they can just magically assert property rights.
	All Americans can assert property rights over all of Canada, all of America, right?
	You understand that would be impossible in practice, right?
	Right. So the proposition that everyone can magically assert universal property rights can't work.
	It's logically impossible, right?
	So you can't have an arbitrary group of people, some of whom can assert universal property rights, and some of whom can't, because then you're creating An arbitrary distinction between people, right?
	That's like saying some lizards are cold-blooded and other lizards are warm-blooded, right?
	If they're warm-blooded, they're not lizards, right?
	Okay. And so you can't have a state composed of people who can create magical, arbitrary, universal property rights, and then you have another group of people who can't, because that's creating two opposite rules for human beings, which is not logically consistent.
	Well, I'm not saying that they did, though.
	No, but you're saying that there was a contract that they have these universal property rights, and so I'm just trying to...
	We understand that there is no such thing as valid, universal makeup, can take whatever I want, universal property rights.
	Right? Because it can't be...
	No, that's not what I'm saying, though.
	I'm sorry, go ahead. That's not what I'm proposing.
	What I'm proposing is that the people that went out and claimed certain areas would then come together and say, we agree that this territory is governed by X committee.
	Sorry, and are you saying that you have historical evidence of that?
	Like the Constitution, for instance, was ratified by like 0.002% of the population, right?
	But imposed on everyone. And largely against their will.
	Okay, so if you...
	Now you're going back to empiricism and not concepts.
	And so before we do that...
	No, no, no. You're saying that people get together and cede these rights to a third party.
	And I'm saying, well, I'd like to see some evidence for that.
	If you're making a truth statement about reality...
	That's not logically inconsistent.
	People could get together and cede their rights to a third party and have a social contract, right, if it was voluntary.
	But if you're saying that happened, right, so you're not saying that the world is a square circle.
	You're saying there is a social contract that people voluntarily get together to create a state.
	That now we pass into the realm of empirical evidence and are saying, okay, well, let's see the evidence for this, right?
	No, I'm saying that would such a situation be immoral?
	Voluntary contracts are not immoral, of course.
	Right. So...
	The initiation of the use of force is immoral.
	And if you impose a contract upon somebody who has not voluntarily agreed to it, you can only do that through the initiation of force.
	And that's immoral, right?
	Right. But what I'm saying is that you can exist in a situation where you aren't...
	You're not a party to...
	Well, you're not a...
	You're not a party that is contractually allowed to define...
	Like, I can't come into your house or have a kid in your house and suddenly say that I have some kind of control over what color you paint your walls.
	All right. And you can't throw me out of your house because I exist in your house now.
	And so I'm not saying that the state is justified in what it does.
	does, what I'm saying is that you can't just say it's immoral because this is getting a little confusing for me.
	To be perfectly honest with you, I think that you're defending a position that you don't really believe in.
	Because the stuff that I'm putting forward, you're agreeing with every step, right?
	And that doesn't mean I'm right.
	I just mean that you agree with it, right?
	Because when I say, you know, no universal property rights, you're like, yes.
	When I say you can't use initiation of force to enforce contracts on other people who haven't voluntarily signed them, you agree with all of that, right?
	And I don't, I mean, I think that, you know, like a lot of people, and like myself, right, I have this problem too, right?
	I agree with every step, and then I don't like the conclusion, right?
	But that's, fortunately, it's the rolling ball of logic, right?
	What we finally got to was whether or not the Constitution was properly put together.
	No, it wasn't put together.
	The question was, you said that there are these people who voluntarily could get together or have gotten together to do X, Y, and Z about social contracts, and I'm like, okay, well, I'd like to see evidence, right?
	Like, if you say, there is a dragon, I'd like to say, well, I've never heard of one, but perhaps you've got evidence of one, and it would be really cool if you did, and so I would like to see that, if that makes sense.
	Well, right, and that's what I'm getting at, is that we move from whether or not it's Moral to whether or not it exists, whether or not it's applicable to the current situation.
	And that is tied to the origination of the contract, whether that was valid or not.
	Well, first of all, it doesn't matter whether the contract was, even if everybody in the, and you might want to read Lisander Spooner if you haven't, the Constitution of No Authority, even if everybody in the United States voluntarily signed the Constitution and agreed to abide by it, How on earth would that bind anybody 250 years later?
	I mean, we recognize legally and morally that a man's contracts do not pass his genetics into his children, right?
	Well, no, that's what I mean.
	Unless the property was then passed down, negating that...
	If you can inherit only part of property, then...
	The proposition that we didn't inherit control over certain aspects of existing on this property that would still withstand.
	And so the weakness is whether or not...
	I mean, I think that you're letting the size of the amount of people distract you from whether or not it's logically consistent.
	No, no, no. You're introducing, let me get back to this original point.
	I don't think so. I think what's fundamentally happening is you're saying, get enough balls together, you have gravity.
	That's obvious, right? And you're saying, get enough people together and you have a state, right?
	I don't mean to reduce what you're saying, but if I understand it correctly, that's where you're going, right?
	Sorry, I worded it the other way.
	I mean, I said that when you find in the grouping of things together that there's a phenomenon, then you would have to reassess the undetectable attributes that existed within the individual components.
	No, I understand that, right?
	So, if you get A billion balls together, then you have a black hole.
	That's bad science, but let's just say...
	I see what you're saying.
	So all you have is an aggregation of balls that then...
	I feel like we're doing a porn movie here, right?
	All you have... Let's use cubes, if you don't mind, so I don't think of myself sitting on a stack.
	But if you get enough cubes together, then you get a gravity well that is evident that you wouldn't see with each individual cube, right?
	Right. But the thing is that the state is not an aggregation of people.
	The state is a small number of people with guns.
	Because if you have to add something else to the equation, then it's not the nature of each cube.
	You get enough cubes together, you get this effect called gravity.
	I understand that. That makes perfect sense to me.
	And that is because each individual cube has an aspect called gravity, which you can't see until you get them all together.
	Right? Right.
	But, this is why I pointed out that the cop has a gun.
	Because what you're saying is not a mass of people together produces something magically called the state.
	And all you need is the group of people.
	Because what you need is the group of people and guns.
	And once you throw guns into it, that's important.
	That's the only thing that's important.
	Because there's no aggregation of people.
	Like, you don't get, you know, a million people together and, you know, poof, suddenly half of, you know, ten percent of the population turn into politicians and soldiers and guns magically appear into their heads, right?
	It's not fairy dust that way.
	You get a million people together, you don't magically get a state.
	In the way that if you get a million cubes together, you get gravity, right?
	Well, it's not magic because I can show the compounding effect of the ability to contract, the idea of self-defense, defending your property, that kind of stuff.
	No, but the difference is that it needs the gun, which is a new element.
	So it's not an aggregation of people produces a state.
	Because you eat the guns.
	Once you eat the guns, then you would focus on the guns, right?
	Not some aggregation of people.
	No, not necessarily. I mean, you would have to be then saying that guns are not necessary if there's no state.
	Which is false. No, no, no.
	Look, first of all, if everyone's armed, and roughly equally, then there is no state, right?
	Because there's no one who can dominate others with all of this excessive firepower.
	But you can't use the ball analogy or the cube analogy because the cube, all you have to do is put them together and you get this visible effect that is inherent to each cube, right?
	It's not like gravity appears with the millionth cube.
	Each cube has gravity. You put enough together and you get a measurable effect, right?
	Which is specific to each individual cube, right?
	In fact, each individual atom, right?
	So are guns. It's just whether or not you choose to have guns.
	Each individual human being?
	No, but the option to carry one to protect your own interests is...
	No, no, sorry. And we're going back into sort of the legality and the possibility.
	I'm just looking at the logic at this point, right?
	Right. What I'm saying is that just because...
	Let me be completely annoying. Let me be completely annoying and just give you an example.
	Maybe this will make sense. Okay, sure.
	Thanks. And I appreciate your digging in, right?
	Because you could be right, right?
	But let me say this.
	If I say, if you get a million cubes together, they will all turn red, then we would expect for us to not have to do anything but put a million cubes together, and then they all turn red, right?
	Right. However, if I say, well, we get a million cubes together, and they all turn red, we put the millionth cube on, and they don't turn red, and you send them and you say, well, wait a second, how come they're not turning red?
	And I say, well, no, you have to paint them.
	Right, then clearly I'm not talking about something that is innate to cubiness, right?
	I'm saying you get a million together and now you have to add this other thing called red paint to make it turn red, right?
	Because you're bringing an external force.
	Right, so it's not innate to each cube to turn red when you get a million, but you have to bring something external into the equation to make the redness appear, which is red paint on every cube, right?
	So you're saying the gun is external?
	So the gun is external, right?
	The gun is an external factor that you have to bring in to create a state that is not innate to a mere aggregation of human beings.
	No, because the human beings have the capacity to either have guns or not have guns.
	It's already inherent in the individual, not the state.
	So when you have a grouping of people, it would follow naturally to say that perhaps some people in this group have guns, some people don't.
	The reason behind it is what you have the problem with.
	Because you're illustrating as an initiation of force, and I'm saying that it's a weak argument until you can understand that the morality of it comes from whether or not force is initiated.
	And what I'm saying is that the possibility that you're not addressing, that you're just completely missing because you're looking at the evil gun, is that guns are an inherent quality of people.
	Whether they can or cannot have guns is an issue of whether or not they can use that level of force to...
	Guns are not an innate quality of people.
	Rational consciousness is an innate quality of people.
	A liver is an innate quality of a human being, right?
	Having a spinal fluid is an innate quality of a human being.
	Being carbon-based is an innate quality of a human being.
	A gun is an external tool, right?
	That's like saying plowshares are an innate aspect of a human being.
	No, they're an external tool, which is completely optional.
	Okay, let me put it this way then.
	The morality of carrying a gun or not carrying a gun is innate in...
	Is a quality that an individual can have without a state?
	I'm not sure what you mean by the morality of carrying a gun.
	Well, is it moral or immoral to carry a gun?
	It depends on how you use it, right?
	I don't know what you mean by the term morality there.
	Is it inherently wrong to have a gun or use a gun?
	I'm not sure what you mean by inherently wrong.
	Right? Because we did truth, but I'm not sure how you're defining the word ethics.
	Okay. So, without having to get into what the definition of ethics is, I guess I would say is that is there anything inherently wrong about a gun?
	Is there anything inherently...
	I mean, it's... The use can be either preferable or not preferable, depending on internal consistency, right?
	So, like, if I used a gun to defend myself, you wouldn't argue, but if I used a gun to kill somebody without having force initiated on me, then it would be wrong.
	So, it's the same action... Different moral connotation, right?
	Right, but the ethics would be in the actions of the circumstances of making the choice, not the gun, right?
	Exactly. So, could there be a situation where an outside party has the just ground to use force if you considered that you existed on their property?
	Oh no, look, I understand the argument, and I've heard this a million times before, which is not to say that I'm right or wrong about it, right?
	But, yeah, the government owns the property, we rent it, we pay them, and we're on their property, they can initiate force.
	I understand that, but we already dealt with that.
	Because we've already established, and we've both agreed, that universal, arbitrary property rights cannot be valid.
	Right, because they can't be valid for some people, and therefore they can't be valid for anyone, and therefore this is not a valid argument to say that we live on the government's land and owe them rent.
	Okay, so I guess going back to the reason why this is being discussed is because you say the state doesn't exist, and I'm saying that the state is this chain of contract that supposedly exists, and the way to attack it is not to say the state doesn't exist, but to say that the thing that we understand is that chain of contract was not properly put together.
	Well, it's not a contract, right?
	Because you can't use contract to say, you know, voluntary choice to engage and That's saying that slavery is exactly the same as voluntarism.
	You can't use the word contract with regards to the state because the state is not a contractual organization.
	That's like saying that the guys threatened by the mafia to burn down their store unless they hand over a thousand dollars a month have entered into a voluntary preferential contract with the mafia.
	No, they just don't want to get their store burnt down.
	So you want to make sure that you use the words with precision, and you don't want to conflate words like rape and lovemaking.
	You don't want to conflate words like good and evil, and you certainly don't want to conflate words like a violent imposition of political will with voluntary contract.
	To me, that's kind of irresponsible, and I think you should really be more precise.
	What I'm saying is not that you have a contract with them.
	The whole reason why I'm saying that the possibility of validity exists is because you're not a party to that contract.
	It's not a contract.
	How many times do we have to go over this?
	You say, I'm not a party to that contract.
	It's not a contract.
	I don't know how to make that more clear.
	You can't use the word contract to...
	It's like saying, well, guys were sold from slavery in Africa to southern plantations, and therefore they are contractually bound to work there, or not.
	But it's not a contract.
	It's any more than rape is lovemaking.
	It's the complete opposite.
	Okay, I thought we covered that it was.
	The framework that we were not going to be attacking was the fact that the possibility that if it were a valid contract, you couldn't attack it there.
	You had to attack it whether or not the contract was valid.
	So I thought we established that the proposition was that it was a contract of a physical property, of land.
	You know, to say that if I, again to the example, if I came to your house, Yes, but we've already established that the government does not own the land because we've already said that individuals cannot create magical, absolute,
	universal property rights because it's not something that everyone can do and therefore it's not something that only some people can do because that's UPB. I think we're going to have to stop here because we're absolutely going in circles and I feel like we are creating particular clarifications and then they get obscured a few moments later.
	I absolutely reject the idea.
	In fact, I have a video called The Social Contract Defined and Destroyed in 5 Minutes.
	I have always rejected the idea of a social contract because to me a unilateral imposition of violent force upon indoctrinated children is fascism.
	It is not a voluntary contract and therefore you can't use the word.
	You can use the word contract, but I would completely reject your use of the word contract in this form.
	It's like calling the religious indoctrination and terrorizing of children voluntary philosophy and wisdom.
	And again, I'm not saying that you would support any of that, but I think we will have to stop here.
	Because if I feel that we're making progress and then it turns out that we're not, then obviously we're not going to make progress.
	And that doesn't mean that I haven't really enjoyed the debate.
	I absolutely have. And you're obviously a crackerjack smart fellow, and I really do appreciate the points that you're bringing up.
	I think it's been a great... Well, of course not.
	I really do appreciate the debate.
	It has been a good workout.
	So have I. And again, thank you for the time.
	I am coming into your podcast.
	And like I said, I don't know if you remember any of the correspondence, but I do have an issue with the whole concept and the definition of it.
	But that's totally outside of ethics and morality, I think.
	So I'll leave that to you.
	I appreciate that, and we can perhaps talk another time.
	And I certainly do appreciate the points that you've brought up.
	I think it's been a very exciting and positive debate, so thank you so much.
	Thank you as well. Thank you. All right.
	Well... Oh, okay, we have one more person, but just mentioned this has to be quick.
	My baby is getting restless, and so we'll just keep it quick, but I will throw...
	The last leg into the woodchipper.
	Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.
	Hello.
	Are you in?
	Hello. Hey, how's it going?
	I hear you. So you're gonna stream the video, is that right?
	Did I get that correct? This fine gentleman has gloriously and generously agreed To at least take a swing at putting together the much-anticipated Oscar-caliber New Hampshire video of my speech for those who are looking for the me throwing shapes and doing dances to the Rocksteady philosophy.
	Well, what I have is a first draft of the high-definition video that I shot matched to the audio that I've already sent to you, which I'm assuming that's the official version that's on the website now.
	Oh, yeah. So, what I'd like to do is get other People who shot video from different directions and be able to slug that in to have a more, you know, multi-camera effect, sort of.
	But what I'm going to do is I'm going to send you...
	It's an MP4 file right now at 1620x19E.
	I don't have a way of uploading files that big.
	How big is it, baby?
	Well, part one is about 2.3 gigs, and part two is about 3 gigs.
	Man, that's some dense, streamy philosophy.
	So it's probably going to have to be shrunk down.
	I'll take it down to 1280 and upload it to YouTube.
	I've got a 2 gig limit on YouTube, so I can get some pretty fine looking philosophy going up there.
	So what I'll do is I'll send you these DVDs with the MP4 files on them, and you can take them for what you want.
	And if I get other stuff, I can improve it later, but at least you can get a chance to see what it is I've got so far.
	Thank you. And what I'm hoping is that we can use that CNN technology when we get enough video views, we can actually piece together an Obi-Wan Kenobi avatar of me that can play in people's living room and eat too many of their potato chips.
	That really is the goal, but of course that's something we can discuss later.
	It's all about the potato chips, Steph.
	Thank you. Oh, that's it?
	Okay. Well, thank you.
	That's all I wanted to say. I just wanted to say I've got a first draft.
	I'll send it to you, Steph. And then, you know, I would encourage other people to, if they know anybody who's got any video, I'd like to see.
	I'd like to get a copy of it, not just be able to download it off of YouTube, which, you know, has already been shrunk down.
	Right. Well, it'll be pretty high quality because I have unlimited length and up to two gigs per video on YouTube, so I can get some pretty fine quality.
	And thank you so much. I know, you know, oh, shoot a video, match up the audio.
	I know it's a huge amount of work, and I really do appreciate it.
	And for heaven's sake, please let me know how much the shipping costs are, and I'll refund you that because that's the least I can do.
	And as you know, whenever I'm looking at something to do, I think, what is the least I can do?
	Christina, is there anything you'd like to add?
	Thank you so much.
	I really do appreciate that. Keep up the good work, Steph.
	It's all in service to the cause of liberty and getting our real world back.
	And you were able to put that Afro wig and bat wings on that I wanted, right?
	Because that was pretty important to me.
	You can take a look for yourself.
	Soul brother Afro wig rainbow, I think it was.
	Bat wings and one hand is a hook.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate that. Again, do let me know what the shipping costs are for the DVDs.
	I'd be happy to refund you for that as a way of showing my appreciation.
	Thank you everybody so much for dropping by this Sunday show.
	These are great shows.
	I really, really do enjoy them.
	Isabella is still awake, which is shocking.
	She's actually quite fascinated to watch me talk.
	Because she still needs to inhale.
	And so she's trying to figure out how it is that I could conceivably go this long without breathing in as I shrink down to the size of a small Russian doll.
	So thank you so much for dropping by.
	I look forward to your donations.
	April can be a bit of a tricky month.
	I'm not sure why. So if you haven't...
	Yeah, taxes and crap like that, I guess.
	So if you haven't donated for a while, you know, keep a philosopher in vitals.
	Of course, I am losing weight.
	I've lost about 15, 20 pounds.
	Mostly because of low donations.
	No, I'm just kidding. But I do appreciate the donations and the subscriptions, of course, are fantastic.
	So I really do appreciate your continued support of what it is that we're doing here.
	I think this is the best good we can do with our days and I really do appreciate and thank you so much for making this all possible for us and for the world.

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