Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 20, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:20:28

1462 Sunday Call in Show September 20, 2009

I also let rip on some truly irritating callers.

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Alright, well let's get started.
	Thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	This is the Free Domain Radio Sunday Von Sunday Show.
	This fine day, the 20th of September 2009.
	I hope you're doing just excellently.
	This is a call-in show.
	It's really all about you, the fine and dandy listener.
	And if you want to call in to have a chat, you can either put your Skype Addy into the chat window or you can call 347-633-9636 to talk philosophy, whatever is on your mind about the meaning of life and death and everything in between.
	And I'm going to just take a pause to give people a chance to dial in to talk about philosophy, and we'll wait and see if people are queued up.
	And if not, no problem.
	I have an opening Chattelfest intro, which I can definitely deploy if need be.
	So we'll just put that number out there again.
	You can just dial in to chat.
	347-633-9636 to talk about philosophy.
	We talked about economics.
	Self-knowledge, family, whatever is on your mind that rational, empirical principles can help you out with.
	And I would say there should be almost nothing on your mind that rational principles cannot help you out with, except perhaps Heidi Montag in a bunny suit, which obviously is in a class all on its own.
	So the number, once again, 347-633-9636.
	And we'll just wait for a second there.
	I did get an invite to speak In Paris, of all places.
	Not Paris, Texas nor Paris, Ontario, but in fact the real deal.
	The home of the baguettes and waitress who appear that they're peeing on you from a great height.
	Yes, that would be Paris, France, but unfortunately they had no money to pay me.
	And much though I enjoy a charity, since I am a charity, I just couldn't see how I could swing it.
	So unfortunately that is not going ahead.
	That having been said, I did have a debate yesterday on the Peter Mack Show with a bona fide diet in the world objectivist, and we had a cordial, though inevitably slightly frustrating conversation.
	I must say, if you're going to debate, and call me an anal debate or a toilet train at gunpoint, but I really do believe that if you're going to debate with someone about a particular topic, It's really, really important to read up on that topic.
	If you're going to debate me, I've got free books out there.
	When I prepare for debates, I literally will spend days preparing For a debate, I didn't so much with the objectivist because I spent 20 years being an objectivist, so I think I can talk about that fairly fluently or fluidly.
	But when I was going to debate Michael Bednarik, I spent like a week reading about the Constitution, reading Michael Bednarik's books.
	And I just think it's really, really important.
	It's kind of around respect, not so much for me, but respect for the audience.
	Because if all you come to a debate with an anarchist is You know, fear scenarios of, you know, motorcycle gangs taking over society and so on.
	That's not really a debate.
	That's more like campfire ghost stories, not really an intellectual pursuit.
	So that's just my suggestion, and I'm not really going to get involved in more debates with people who don't seem to have read it.
	You don't have to read me. It's not like any kind of be-all and end-all as far as voluntarism goes, but, you know, read up on some Rothbard or some Bakunin or Frederick Bastiat's The Laws is not a bad place to go.
	You can read up on The Constitution of No Authority or just about anything else by Alessandra Spooner.
	Lots and lots of things that you can read that are critical of status philosophies.
	And if you're going to debate somebody who's critical of status philosophies...
	I think it's usually a good idea.
	This just comes from my own paranoid perhaps days in the business world where I just would not go to a meeting without a significant amount of preparation.
	I wouldn't go and present to a client without reading up a good deal about his or her business environment and hopefully having a few minorly intelligent things to say.
	That's perhaps just my fetish, but it is my strong suggestion if you're going to get involved in debates to read.
	And I also think this is just a general principle.
	I'm trying to remember. Oh yeah, talk about a pairing of unlikely minds.
	It was Sean Hannity and Christopher Hitchens on Fox News.
	This is when Christopher Hitchens was out pimping God is Not Great, which is not a bad book, in my opinion.
	It's worth reading. I mean, he's very erudite.
	He reads it himself, and he has this annoying, slightly muttery, up-and-down volume thing, but you can almost normalize that, of course.
	And... Sean Hannity was just saying some stuff that was just nonsensical.
	And Christopher Hitchens said, you know, in that plummy British accent, which I won't even really try to reproduce here, he's like, well, you know, strike me as a man who has never read a position contrary to his own beliefs or something like that.
	And Hannity was like, oh, no, I've read all of them.
	Which I thought was just a ridiculous thing to say.
	But nonetheless, I really do strongly suggest that it's so, so, so important to read positions that are highly critical of your own.
	Certainly, as a philosopher, to the degree that you could call me that, I get a huge amount of criticism of my positions and my beliefs.
	A good deal of which is uninformed, but a good deal of which is very intelligent and very helpful and very perceptive.
	When you hold a position that is contrary to the majority position, and that doesn't mean mainstream media.
	That means like if you're a libertarian, you just hang out with other libertarians and read libertarian books.
	I still think it's really, really important to read positions that are critical of your position as a whole.
	I mean, for two reasons.
	One is that you could be wrong about something and it's really important to have that self-criticism in whatever it is that you're doing.
	And number two, when you're debating with people, it's really good to know their arguments, to know where they're going to come from and what arguments they're going to make so that you can effectively counter them.
	I think the more different or the more unusual your position in society is, the more you need to read positions that are critical of your position.
	And I just think that's generally a really, really good idea.
	And so if you're going to debate someone, read a lot about where they're coming from and where their biases and prejudice or good arguments are going to be so that you can either incorporate them or find arguments against them.
	It really does...
	You know, like objectivists.
	One of the things that I would say about objectivists as a whole is that they kind of come out of this tradition that is highly respectful, if not stalkerly, like, worshipful of American foreign policy.
	And this, of course, comes out of Ayn Rand directly.
	I mean, she fled Russia and found a new and obviously very successful and influential life in America and had a huge amount of affection and love for America, which I think you should love the values, not the rocks or necessarily the people, but you should love the values that are virtuous and true and good.
	But one of the things that has occurred or has come out of that is out of the Randian, obviously, foundations of objectivism has been a very, very strong support for highly aggressive U.S. foreign policy and a lack of criticism of imperialism.
	And as I've mentioned before, there have been even if you exclude the millions of Native Americans who were killed to make way for the American settlers.
	Upwards of 30 million deaths have been caused by U.S. foreign imperialism.
	And I think it's really important to be critical to read positions that are very critical of U.S. foreign policy, because certainly for many years, I sort of didn't look into that stuff very much for a variety of reasons.
	It really wasn't something I debated much.
	And when I did begin to read into the truth about American imperialism, particularly if you look at things like the Philippines or Guatemala or Cuba or the overthrow of Allende and his replacement with Pinochet in Argentina, and you can read some Naomi Klein.
	And Noam Chomsky is a fantastic person to read.
	He's a libertarian socialist, as he claims, which to me is like being an up and down black and white person.
	But nonetheless, his criticisms of American foreign policy are really, really well worth reading.
	It's very important to get the view from outside the biosphere that you live in, right?
	To look at America not from the view from the inside, from the founding fathers and all of that, which is significant propaganda.
	But to look from the outside, right?
	I mean, I grew up with this worshipful view of British involvement in the Second World War, and I grew up with this worshipful view of the white man's burden called the British Empire to civilize the savage tribes of the world.
	And when you start to read positions critical of things like the British Empire and British involvement in the Second World War and the First World War, you begin to see a view from the other side.
	And I think seeing that view from the other side is very important to have a well-rounded, sophisticated, sometimes ambivalent, but deep and rich experience of history to look at...
	I mean, the classic example in modern American history is to look at 9-11, obviously from the perspective of the victims in the towers and other places, But also to look at it from the Muslim world and what the Muslim world is trying to do, which of course is to bring down the American empire through economic, through drawing it into economically destructive wars, which is of course what America trained the radical Muslims to do with regards to Russia in, yes, you guessed it, Afghanistan itself.
	So to look at things from both perspectives is really, really important.
	Stepping into somebody else's viewpoint in no way diminishes your own capacity to process and experience the truth, I would argue.
	That it really strongly, strongly, strongly enhances your appreciation of and capacity to accept the truth.
	Because you don't want to be defensive against particular positions.
	You don't want to dismiss them.
	I think you want to try and incorporate them and you want to try to absorb them so that you can really get around a 360 degree view of the truth rather than just one perspective and I don't read this person because they're biased or I don't read this person because whatever,
	right? I've read the whole Bible, I've taken courses on the history of Christianity and Judaism, and I have read a huge amount that is critical of laissez-faire, free market capitalism, I think we all have, but really sophisticated criticisms.
	I've taken entire courses on the philosophy of statist legal institutions, and I'm going to bore you with the whole details of my education.
	But I've read a lot, right?
	So people who read a lot of Rand maybe don't read a lot of Kant because, you know, Rand has this antipathy towards Kant and you say, well, I'm not, you know, that's enough for me or whatever.
	But I think it's really important to read Kant and to read about the categorical imperative and to read about his approach to philosophy, to read Plato and to look at where, you know, what he was trying to do, what he was trying to achieve, why he was trying to achieve that and where his failures and mistakes were.
	So that's just sort of my suggestion.
	I think it's really important if you're an objectivist to read Murray Rothbard.
	I think if you're an anarchist, it's really important to read Rand.
	I think if you are, you know, pro sort of US, the golden age of US history, sort of the first 50 or 60 years, you could say, from the founding of the Republic to Lincoln's initiation of the Civil War, the Civil War, the war between the states, whatever you want to call it.
	There's this golden age, and I think you really want to read positions that are critical of that.
	Obviously, the positions written by black historians about slavery, feminist historians about the lack of rights for women, historians of childhood about the brutalities of childhood in those days.
	And the corruption and brutality of the early American state.
	I think it's really, really important.
	You don't just read the Declaration of Independence and a bunch of really patriotic stuff about those golden days of the early republic and not read positions that are critical of that.
	It doesn't mean that you have to change your opinion about the golden age, though I would certainly suggest remaining open to it.
	But there is this belief That, you know, if you can find a really good government somewhere in history, then all we have to do is try and get back to that.
	And I think if you look at just the ideals of the early American Republic, there's a lot there that, to me, is very admirable.
	There was a dedication to property rights.
	There was a rejection of aristocracy.
	There was an attempt to limit the power of the state, at least on paper, through the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and so on.
	There was some stuff to be admired.
	And there was some stuff to be intensely despised.
	So, I think that it's really just important to get that 360-degree view, because I don't think you can really form your own opinion unless you're in possession of as many facts as possible.
	If you just say, well, Ayn Rand wrote this about the early republic, or Leonard Picoff, or Vince Wenger, or whoever it is that you're reading in objective circles, wrote about the golden age, and that's it, right?
	Thomas de Lorenzo, whoever you're reading, writes about this golden age of the early republic.
	But you really can't make a decision until you hear the other side of the argument and you read positions that are critical of the golden age of the early republic.
	It certainly was a shock for me when I began to dive into that.
	And I think you will very quickly see when you read these opposing arguments that it is a very simplistic thing to say that there was just this wonderful country in early America with some minor flaws and some problems which allowed for the expansion of state power.
	It's not really the reality of the situation.
	There is no good state throughout history.
	You could make the argument that America, the American government was as big as it possibly could be in the beginning when it had huge debts, so no real money, very little army, and a huge untamed wilderness and very scattered population, no real method of communication.
	So it was only small because it couldn't be bigger, right?
	It was as large as it humanly could be given the circumstances, and that always seems to be the case.
	With states. So that's it for my brief and semi-brief introduction.
	And let me just put that number out again.
	If you want to call in and talk about anything to do with philosophy or set me straight about American history, I have moral leaders.
	You can call in at 347-633-96.
	Wait for it. 369-636, last voltages.
	Mr. J, do we have anybody tunneling their way through the ether to us?
	We do, actually.
	And before we bring the caller on the air, you can also use the Click to Talk feature.
	And how you use that is you just go to blogtalkradio.com and set up an account there.
	It's free, of course. And once you join in on the chat...
	You can then use the click-to-talk feature at the top there, providing you have a microphone.
	And just to remind you, sorry, when we say click-to-talk, what we mean is that we will only accept Morse code, which will be liberally interpreted by me to be ranked praise for my new haircut.
	Isn't that beautiful? All right.
	Are you stood up, by the way?
	Am I what? Are you sitting down or are you standing?
	I'm standing, baby. Hmm, that's strange.
	The video I'm seeing, I just see the...
	The red wall. Maybe your video is frozen or something.
	Hey, we had that happen last time.
	Alright, let me try restart again.
	Okay. Well, that'll be gripping.
	How's that? Let me see.
	Oh, it's frozen again.
	It says 24 frames per second, but there's actually no updating whatsoever.
	Fascinating.
	Somebody says frozen forehead.
	Yeah, frozen forehead, absolutely.
	But at least you can see the haircut, and that's really the important thing.
	He can. He can, and he is welcome to.
	Or he can use the click-to-talk feature, seeing as he does have a BlogTalk account.
	Okay, let's bring this guy on, or lady, from a 727 area code.
	You are on the air.
	Go ahead. Excellent.
	Hey, Stefan, this is Chris.
	Hey, Chris, how's it going? I... Oh, good.
	I didn't hear the whole beginning of the show, but I did catch the last piece we talked about, and I must agree completely.
	There's, I mean, my own personal opinions on things, you know, have changed month to month just depending on what I've been exposed to, and I definitely try and pursue the most differing opinions possible on any subject, because that's, you know, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, right?
	So, you know, you just try and Get the extremes and then work your way towards the truth that's most meaningful to you.
	Yeah, I'm sorry to just interrupt, but I completely agree with you and I have been guilty of that in the past, of avoiding information that is discomforting to my particular opinions or my particular beliefs.
	And it does take a fair amount of courage to plunge into the opposite opinion.
	And you feel like, oh my god, I'm going to lose my certainty.
	But I don't think you want the brittle certainty of sort of cherry-picked ideology.
	I think you want the genuine certainty of having absorbed a wide variety of opposing opinions, worked through the facts from first principles, and really come to a rational and empirical conclusion, not by sort of excluding information that is discomforting.
	Exactly. Well, I do have a...
	One thing that, you know, it's the, uh, why are we here?
	What are we, you know, what's it all about?
	I do have that one that I, I kind of feel like it's the one thing you won't, one of the many things you won't get a conclusive answer to.
	And so, you know, the most we can, the best we can do is kind of approximate it.
	Uh, and from, from understanding, um, there are, it seems to be, there are three answers to the question.
	I'm sorry, the question is sort of the meaning of life question.
	Not so much the meaning of life, partially, but, you know, is there a God?
	Is there not a God? What is existence?
	That type thing. And so the three answers are, well, you know, there is a God, definitely, and some intelligent guy up in the sky, you know, making things happen.
	Then there is the second opinion.
	Well, no, it's highly deterministic.
	This is all just the rules of the game.
	You know, the rules of the game do impart chaos, but...
	There's nothing inherently special about any of this.
	It's just the rules of the game.
	And then the third opinion, which is deeply rooted in Eastern philosophy, is it's all in your head.
	You move it all up. None of this really exists.
	It's all just kind of a, you know, it's a think and grow rich idea.
	You know, as long as you think it, it'll happen because this is your reality.
	And so between all three of those, you know, over time I've become much more I'm much more appreciative of science and what I can absolutely prove, and so I'm leaning much harder towards determinism.
	And the reason that I am, and I'm going to submit this and you may be able to actually put names and theories to it, but, you know, Descartes, there was a very large movement for a lot of the philosophers to try and prove the existence of God logically.
	And Descartes did the best he could, but it didn't go over well enough, because there was no way for them to prove it logically.
	And so you had this one philosopher at the time, when everybody else was trying to justify an intelligent God, this one philosopher came along and said, what if God isn't intelligent?
	What if He is entropy?
	And the idea being, you know, it's kind of transcendental, but you've got The Big Bang.
	Well, we know everything started out as this one, you know, almost perfect glob of energy.
	And due to some imperfection in that glob of energy, it exploded.
	And it all came down to one string touching another string in just the right way, whatever, it sets off the chain reaction.
	That is the Big Bang.
	And those imperfections that existed From before, turned into the galaxies and the planets that we see today, and even the animals and the bugs and the people.
	So, that is determinism, but it also says that...
	Sorry, technically that's not determinism, if I understand what you're saying correctly.
	Okay. You can correct me if I've misunderstood what you're saying, but I think scientists who believe in our capacity for free will, and I define free will as our capacity to compare our thoughts to an ideal standard,
	And scientists who believe in our capacity for free will would accept, I think, everything that you have said so far, with the caveat that I don't think that the word perfection is appropriate to a pre-conscious universe, to a universe that does not have rational consciousness in it, because there's no such thing as... Perfect or imperfect, right?
	It's like saying when the solar system was being formed, was it perfect or not?
	Well, there would be no external standard or conscious standard or rational standard by which to judge that.
	Perfection, I think, is a very recent addition to at least our section of the universe, certainly over the last say 50 or 75 or 100,000 years, when human beings have developed the capacity to compare their thoughts to an ideal standard, whether that's logic or mathematics or empiricism or science or whatever.
	So, I don't think that the fact that before rational consciousness developed there was a causal series of both physical and biological events, I don't think that that would then say that the result of that with rational consciousness in the universe is a now continued to be deterministic universe.
	You know, a rock falling down a hill is a determined event we can sort of understand even though we don't know exactly where it's going to land because we don't know all the variables.
	We don't think that it's choosing to go where it goes.
	And I would say that prior to rational consciousness, the progress of the universe would fall into the sort of rock falling down a hill thing, to the degree to which animals can choose, who knows, right?
	That may be a small factor there.
	But since rational consciousness, since our capacity to compare our thoughts to an ideal standard, or to reject that ideal standard, which is still just putting another standard in its place, I think that has been the development of a sort of limited capacity for choice in the universe.
	So I don't think that you want to take that same sweep of history for 20 billion years and then have it also include the last 100 or 200,000 years where rational consciousness has developed in the capacity to compare our thoughts to some sort of ideal standard seems to have taken place.
	Right. Well, I understand what you're saying.
	And I think we are talking about the same thing and what that is.
	Variant of determinism, and I'm using the term properly and appropriately, but this variant of determinism is the ghost in the machine.
	I work with computers and I read this statistic one time that said a computer in a server farm will fail once in every 10 years from some gamma-ray particle from outer space that came from some galaxy far away.
	It'll just hit the machine in just the right way to cause a failure.
	And who can really quantify that?
	But they were trying to say, sometimes things just happen.
	You may not be able to explain it, but if you really could get all the variables and all the data, you could see that this machine is so enormously complex that sometimes things just change, but it's all based on the rules.
	And so that's what I'm saying.
	Even though there is this We do really feel we have free will, and we can really, you know...
	I'm sorry, I just want to make sure I understand, because the problem I have with people who make long speeches, and Lord knows I'm one of them, right, is that there's stuff that I want to make sure I understand before they go on, so I'm sorry for interrupting.
	So what you're saying is that you don't believe in free will.
	You're saying that you are more on the determinist side of things.
	Is that correct? Well, I think that determinism gives us the illusion of free will.
	It just blew my mind.
	Well, it's like the ghost and the machine.
	It's the chaos that the machine imparts gives you the illusion.
	I mean, I've done some work with neural networks on computers, and it's enormously deterministic.
	I mean, the whole thing is...
	Well, you know, there's no question that computers are deterministic.
	I don't think anyone's going to argue that.
	But I think that if you're going to say that human behavior is randomly generated, I think you're going to have a great deal of trouble explaining why human behavior tends to have such significant patterns to it, right?
	Like if you give someone a thousand dollars, they will tend to be generally quite happy.
	That's not random, right? Or if you live in Uzbekistan or some godforsaken hellhole out in Eastern Europe or whatever, In the 18th or 19th or early 20th century that a large majority of the most able people would try and find their way to America.
	In a free market, people tend to work to increase their wealth.
	In general, parents tend to feed and shelter their children and so on.
	I think that if you're going to say that it's random in the way that that sort of particle hitting the server once every 10 years go, if it's random, I think you have an impossible task of explaining why human behavior tends to be so consistent.
	Let's try and unify both of those then.
	What I was trying to say with the whole server, you know, particle making one fail and all that stuff was That there are things that appear random.
	There are things that appear.
	There's just no explanation.
	It must be some voodoo magic machine.
	But in reality, if you can get all the rules and all the variables and you can put them all together, you see it was determined.
	It was going to happen.
	Sorry, again, to be precise, you don't know that, right?
	I mean, this is a theory. You say it like it's been proven or certain, but you don't know that, right?
	Because you haven't been able to prove it. I mean, if you have been able to prove it, then you should stop talking to me and go talk to the Nobel Prize Committee, because you would absolutely get the greatest Nobel Prize in history.
	So it's not proven, right, this theory that you have, that if you had all the variables, you would be able to perfectly predict the outcome of every human interaction.
	Well, doesn't that seem like, you know, at face value, doesn't it seem like that makes sense?
	No, it doesn't make sense to me.
	It doesn't make sense to me at all, because it doesn't make sense to me why you would be telling someone that.
	Why I would be telling somebody, if you want to understand the system, you need to quantify the variables?
	Well, no, because you can't change anyone's mind, so I'm not sure why you'd be talking about it.
	Well, I wouldn't offer that so much, because that's determinism to a fault.
	Determinism doesn't mean you can't change your mind in the sense that the chaos in the system imparts the illusion of free will.
	You can have rules that are so sophisticated in the system that it applies flexibility within certain boundaries.
	Right. My thought is, you know, just because you can say that, okay, giving somebody $1,000 makes them happy, that seems to be the rules of the system.
	You know, humans have it in their brain instinctively sometimes that, you know, to be able to gather more resources is something to pursue.
	You get more dopamine out of it, so people will be happy.
	And so that just kind of follows the rules.
	The bigger problem I have with the other two, the one that it's all an illusion, it's all in your head, You know, the Eastern philosophy is that immediately if I am going to disagree with that person, that means they're disagreeing with themselves.
	So that can't hold true.
	They themselves are imparting doubt in their own theory.
	And then the second idea that there is definitely some intelligence beyond us that started all this, there's just absolutely no way to prove it.
	It is 100% a faith-based system.
	So the default I feel that you have to say, okay, at the very least, there are deterministic rules to how this whole thing went down.
	I don't know if something intelligent created those rules, but at the very least, we know there are rules.
	Actually, no, sorry, it's not...
	I've gone down the determinist hole six million different ways from Sunday, and I'm not going to sort of do it again this Sunday, and if you want, I've got debates on YouTube, and you can do a search through freedomainradio.com for my views on determinism, and we actually did a determinist debate a couple of weeks ago here,
	so I won't continue, but that's all right, but I just wanted to point out that The idea that there's a highly complex and sophisticated intelligence at the root or at the beginning of the universe or prior to the universe is not something which is impossible to prove or disprove.
	It's actually very easy to disprove.
	The way that you disprove it is that In any system, complexity is the result of gradual evolution over time.
	So obviously our brains are the most complex brains that we have so far discovered in the universe and certainly here on Earth.
	And the reason that we have this amazing capacity to have these very complex thoughts and this amazing technology and to use the astounding tools of reason in the world It's because brains have developed from very, very simple choice gates or mechanisms to highly complex abstract reasoning things.
	And complexity in living organisms or complexity in consciousness is the result of significant hundreds of millions or even billions of years of evolution.
	To say that there's a mind that is infinitely more complex than human beings that has not needed to be evolved is completely irrational and counter to every biological principle and development of life and intelligence that we've ever known.
	So it's not that hard to say, well, there was no God at the beginning of things.
	There may be a God at the very end of things once, you know, evolution has gone through every conceivable iteration in the improvement of intelligence and capacities.
	But for sure, there's no God at the beginning.
	It's sort of like saying that You know, the most intelligent human being was the one who started evolution.
	Well, no, because evolution has produced the most intelligent human being, whoever that is or whoever that's going to be.
	But there's no way that the effect could have been the cause.
	Complexity in consciousness is the effect of evolution and the development of complexity in biological matter.
	It can't be the cause at the very beginning.
	It can only be the result.
	Right. Well, there was a time when I was younger, I was in the Mormon faith, and I started to learn about what their theology was about.
	And some of the more exclusive things that you don't get until you've been in for a while is that they believe in an infinity of infinities.
	So the idea is there isn't one God that started it all.
	This is the current God for this universe, and when you die, if you're good enough, you get to go start your own universe and be your own God somewhere.
	So there's the infinity of infinities.
	And that concept, most theologies don't embrace it just because, you know, it's kind of hard to go down that rabbit hole.
	But that could be, you know, an adjunct to there is one intelligent creator.
	And he wasn't the first one.
	It has been an evolution.
	And there was one before him.
	And there's one before him. Yeah.
	There's no proof. I mean, that's all just nonsense superstition, right?
	There's no proof for any of that.
	There's no proof, no science, no human being who was trained at all, and I don't mean you, right, who would be trained in rational and critical and empirical thinking would go with...
	I mean, that's just crazy, right?
	I mean, that's like stuff that, you know, big-haired Afro guys on the sidewalk mutter into their broken walkie-talkies, right?
	I mean, that's not anything to do with philosophy.
	That's just a bunch of nonsensical and exploitive speculation, too.
	To take in, unfortunately, usually the gullible and the young.
	And again, I'm not putting you into those categories, but you understand there's nothing to do with philosophy at all.
	So we do have another caller, if you don't mind, and I certainly do appreciate your thoughts on this.
	So we will try to get the other caller in.
	We're just trying to get James back in.
	He's getting booted out of ye olde Skypey.
	So let me just see if we can get him back in and see if we can dial in the other corner.
	So I'm just trying once more and otherwise I will put in another shorty speechy.
	We had, for those who are interested, we have had an interesting roundtable discussion.
	That has started up at Free Domain Radio.
	It was a Friday night at 9 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. We're trying to do this monthly, so we'll post it on the board, and I'll put it in Twitter.
	And it's an Entrepreneurs' Roundtable Conference.
	Of course, the philosophy that I really try to espouse is around personal freedom within your own life.
	And as an ex-entrepreneur, actually not even ex, I'm still an entrepreneur just in this crazy philosophy world, I found it very, very liberating to be my own boss.
	And because then, you know, I can sexually harass myself and not have any problems with it.
	But if you're interested, I will post this.
	Let me just get the number of the podcast in case you're interested.
	It is people who are either entrepreneurs or interested in it, talking about possibilities and ways to get into the entrepreneurial lifestyle.
	It is FDR 1458, Entrepreneurs Roundtable No.
	1. FDR 1458.
	I will post that later today.
	And we will try to make that a monthly event so the people who are interested in the entrepreneurial lifestyle, we can sort of share ideas and marketing ideas and questions and comments and help each other to avoid all of the mistakes that I unfortunately made early on in my entrepreneurial career.
	So if you're interested in that, just check out the Free Domain Radio Board and you are welcome to join.
	Jimmy, Jim, are you back?
	We do have a caller, a caller from Eric Code 636.
	You are on the air.
	636, what are you wearing?
	Sorry, go on. I am wearing a Subcomandante Marcos t-shirt that I'm sure was printed on slave labor made clothing.
	So there's the irony for you.
	This is Rabble Rouser. Oh, hi.
	How's it going? Hello.
	Yes, I did contact you about doing a more formal...
	We'll use the word debate for a less better word.
	Critical discourse might be better.
	I just feel that... That it's one of the major aspects lacking in the anarchist thought today is the internal critical discourse.
	I've listened to your debates with non-anarchists or with minarchists or any other of the new words that are being applied to these strains of somewhat radical thought.
	But I'd like to see some more critical discourse within the anarchist thought.
	And that's what that was about.
	I'm not necessarily sure that I'm ready to do it today.
	I have my own show this evening to prepare for.
	So you're calling to tell me that you're not going to debate with me?
	At least not now? Yes, not now.
	But I do want to mention a few things about what the last caller was saying.
	Wait, is this about determinism?
	No, no, no.
	I don't want to do determinism anymore.
	I'm sorry. I'm not arguing for or against determinism.
	Just the mere scientific aspect of the god hunt.
	What, the god hunt? What is that?
	Well, the god hunt would be the hunt or the search for the existence or non-existence of a god.
	Which is meaningless to religion, right?
	Because religion claims that it already has found a god, and therefore if it hasn't and we still have to find it, religion is still completely false, right?
	Oh, precisely. Absolutely.
	But that's not to say that religion is necessarily, inherently bad for the search for God.
	No, no, sorry. Religious people don't search for God because they think they already have it.
	Like, if I have a home and I've driven home, I don't keep driving home because I'm already there.
	So religious people don't search for God.
	They say that they already have God.
	But that's not to say that somebody being introduced to the ideas of religion and the ideas of God does not lead to a deeper thought process that would inherently Bring them to the point where they're searching for God outside of the scape of their religion.
	I'm saying that religion is the human stepping point.
	It's a stone by which we leaped off.
	It's similar to any political thought process.
	Someone who is considering themselves to be a more highly elevated political consciousness began with a stepping stone of a human construct that they necessarily don't agree with now.
	But began with it as a launching point.
	No, sorry, I can't agree with you there.
	Religion is not a launching point.
	Religion is an aggressive and superstitious and economically exploitive error that is inflicted and terrorized upon children through telling them that they're born evil and will burn in flames forever and so on.
	And you know this, You know this because of your experience with religion.
	No, I know this because that is what religion is, not because of my experience with religion, but because that is what is in the Bible and that is what is taught in churches, not just because of my experience.
	Okay, now you're picking a specific religion now.
	You're picking a specific religion.
	I want to say clearly now that I'm not arguing for the validity of religion as a philosophy.
	I'm arguing that Religion as an idea is not inherently an evil idea, nor an inhibiting idea.
	Okay, what is your definition of religion then?
	My definition of religion would be a set of traditions and habits formed around the search for or the celebration of a spiritual entity.
	So you feel that religion is those who say, there is no God, let's go looking for one?
	Or there is no God that we know of as, yeah, let's go looking for one?
	I've never heard of such a religion, but that would conform to your...
	It's a search for the understanding of God.
	Now, of course, Just as markets, free market, capitalism...
	Sorry, sorry. No, no, no. Let's not go forward.
	We have to take this step by step, right?
	Everybody wants to... I am taking this step by step.
	No, but I have to understand what you're saying step by step.
	In your definition, you said it's the search for God.
	And what that means is that a group that says there is no God, there's no evidence for any God, but it's, you know, let's go looking for God, that that would be a religion.
	I never used the term search for God. I never used the term search for God.
	That's the term you applied.
	I said it's the search for understanding.
	Search for the spiritual entity.
	Oh, search for the spiritual entity means that there is no spiritual entity yet, but we're going to go looking for one?
	No, it means it's a search for the understanding of it.
	Well, but there is no spiritual entity, and so it's like saying, I want to dissect a leprechaun, right?
	And I'm going to call myself a biologist, right?
	Because there's no such thing as a leprechaun, you can't dissect it, because there's no such thing as the spiritual entity.
	The search for understanding that which does not exist is crazy, right?
	Well, that's by your definition that there is no spiritual entity.
	No, that's not my definition.
	There is no spiritual entity.
	No, there is no spiritual entity in the universe.
	The entire idea is ludicrous, it is self-contradictory, it is destructive, it creates wars, it causes violence, it is just a terrible error.
	Of course, in the hands of those who don't understand it, of course, in the hands of those who don't understand anything, it can be a terrible and invasive tool.
	Anything can be. Such as capitalism.
	Capitalism in the hands of those who have absolutely no understanding becomes what capitalism is today.
	What is your definition of capitalism?
	I'm sorry? What is your definition of capitalism, please?
	My definition of capitalism is the creation of profit from resource.
	The creation of profit from resource.
	Yes, whether that resource be labor, whether that resource be intelligence, whether that resource be natural resources such as water, land, any of those things, creation of profit from those things.
	Right, so somebody who steals your wallet is a capitalist, is that right?
	If they turn around and sell it, absolutely.
	Isn't that what capitalism has done?
	Okay, and so there's...
	...from the common good and turned around and profited from them.
	Right. So the communist dictatorship, say, under Stalin, or Khrushchev, or Brezhnev, would be capitalist because the ruling oligarchy were profiting and had their villas on the Black Sea and the Dachaus on the Caspian Sea.
	They were profiting from the slave labor of the communist hordes, so they would be Although they called themselves communists, they would be capitalists.
	And in the same way, if somebody puts a drug in your drink and harvests your kidney and sells it on the black market, they're also a capitalist and morally indistinguishable from somebody who produces a voluntary good and service for mutual exchange.
	Absolutely. Okay, I can't talk to you anymore because you make no sense whatsoever.
	I'm sorry to say that so bluntly, but if you're going to use the term capitalist to include a communist, a thief, a murderous organ donator, and somebody who trades voluntarily and peacefully in the free market, your definition makes no sense and has no moral content at all.
	Can you somehow explain to me how someone can trade voluntarily on a free market?
	Furthermore, how everybody could be able to enter such a market, thereby making it what would be called a free market.
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure what your question is?
	My question is, you need to define voluntarily exchange on a free market.
	How can you voluntarily exchange something which is not yours without taking it?
	Well, you produce something.
	Out of what? Out of thin air?
	Now that's God complex. So you're telling me the existence of God is there.
	You cannot produce something out of thin air.
	You must produce something from a resource.
	That resource must come from a source.
	That source must be common, must be something that is shared in common.
	To have a free market, one must then take a resource that is inherently not theirs from birth.
	There is no birthright to the world, according to the free market, because then you're talking about private property.
	What inherits private property?
	What allows private property in the use of those resources?
	Those resources must be taken from somewhere.
	Right, so I have a little recorder, right?
	This little iRiver that I use to record podcasts, right?
	And so you're saying that I should not own this, or it's not possible for me to have worked and to voluntarily exchange.
	I mean, because fundamentally, right, the only property that you fundamentally have is yourself, right?
	It's your own mind and it's your own body, right?
	So if I go and there's some uninhabited field in the middle of nowhere, I'm going to go and clear that field and I plant some crops.
	The only thing that I fundamentally have ownership over is my own mind and my own body.
	Which you, of course, completely agree with because you're using your mind and your body to produce arguments which would be yours and therefore you own the arguments which is why I don't talk to someone else, right?
	So, the only property that you actually have is your own body and your own mind.
	Now, the degree to which you produce or create things that didn't exist before based on your own self-ownership is the degree to which you have mastery over the things that you produce.
	So, if I clear some field or drain some swamp and plant some crops, I have some wheat that is only there because of the effort of my labor and it would not exist in any other form.
	Like if I go fishing and I pull a fish out of the ocean and then, you know, we can eat the fish.
	Well, the only reason we can eat the fish is because I went and pulled it out of the ocean.
	So clearly, because I have responsibility for my own body and my own mind, which is why we know that criminals should be punished or whatever because they're morally responsible for who they strangle with their hands or whatever.
	So if something is created or brought into being, you know, like a house or crops or a fish that you can actually eat rather than one that's 20 fathoms down in the ocean, then sure, the person who has, in a sense, produced or created that good, who's turned a tree branch into a bow and arrow, who's created something that is of use that was not in existence beforehand, yeah, of course they should have ownership over that.
	That, of course, is perfectly natural.
	No, but the impossibility of entering into a market and adding profit to those things would lie in that you would have to then continue to take fish, continue to take more fish than you need, continue to take more fish than you have right to.
	If there are other people fishing, you would have competition.
	You would have to then find a way to, by force, take the fish that you feel you so rightfully own away from those I mean, just out of curiosity, because now we're suddenly, you've got a whole bunch of fishermen at war with each other.
	I'm just curious. I mean, have you actually ever studied the history of fisheries outside, you know, the government?
	I'm just curious, because you say that, well, because we have people who fish, you're going to end up with fishermen shooting torpedoes at each other in competition for fish.
	No, no, no. Have you actually studied the history of what it is that you're talking about or are you just kind of pulling words out of some orifice we won't mention?
	The reason being that's not how fish actually works.
	Excuse me, I'm using your analogy.
	I didn't come up with the fish analogy.
	You came up with the fish analogy. No, but you're coming up with the violence.
	That's not how fishermen actually work.
	When fishermen all work on a lake, I mean, you can look this up.
	You can look this up on the internet.
	You can get books on it. It's really not that hard to find.
	And you need to do this if you're going to start talking about these topics, really.
	If you look at the history of fishing, when you have a bunch of people on a lake, they've got a fishing town on a lake, I swear to you, the fishermen do not end up blowing each other up, sabotaging each other's boats, and strangling each other in order to get more fish.
	What they do is they say, well, here's the amount of fish we can catch.
	Let's have a voluntary quota system and it's enforced through social ostracism and, you know, just general.
	This is the way it works.
	The fisheries on the east coast of Canada ran perfectly fine for 400 years until, unfortunately, the government came in and started setting quotas.
	And the fishermen did not strangle each other and they did not murder each other and they did not end up with violence.
	They simply sat down and said, well, in order for us to all sustain this fishery, you know, we're going to have to eat this much, we're going to have to sell this much, we're going to have to leave this much in the ocean...
	So that we have enough fish for next year.
	That worked perfectly fine for 400 years, and it's worked perfectly fine throughout the world.
	Unfortunately, things become a problem when governments come in and start screwing around with things.
	But if you want to start talking about fisheries and violence, I think you need to just read a little about it before you start making up all of this stuff.
	I'm not making up stuff.
	I'm replying to your analogy.
	Okay, I'm going to stop this conversation because I'm not enjoying it, and I just find it really annoying, and I think the listeners are finding it that way too.
	So, James, do we have anybody else who wants to chat about philosophy?
	Well, I guess while we're waiting to come back, just a principle or two from the last fellow who called in.
	It's similar to what I was talking about with the anarcho-communist who called in, I think, two weeks ago.
	I think if you want to talk about particular industries or areas, I think it's important to have read some...
	Real history of this kind of stuff.
	Again, this is just part of the preparation and understanding of how to debate productively.
	And so if you're going to say, well, when one guy starts fishing, another guy's going to start fishing, and they're going to end up trying to strangle each other, then I think you need to sort of say, well, okay, that's a theory, right?
	I have a theory that if fishermen are competing for the same resource, that they will start attacking each other and strangling each other.
	Then you need to do some research to find out if that's true or false.
	Yeah, so you don't want to live in the world of just theory, right?
	You really, really, really want to focus on the empirical aspects of what it is that you're talking about as a thinker, right?
	I mean, that to me is, you know, I'm the ultimate empiricist in that sense, right?
	Everything has to go through some sort of empirical verification process.
	Otherwise, it's just, you know, wind in the air, right?
	The fart in the wind. And so if you have a theory, That competition for resources among private citizens will immediately lead or inevitably lead to some sort of war, then you need to look that up.
	You need to look up the history of how phishing was dealt with.
	And it doesn't take long. I mean, this is the beauty of the Internet.
	The beauty of the Internet is that nobody anymore can be excused For not having basic facts, right?
	I mean, because it's not like you have to go and track to some library in New York and look up some obscure fishing history from 20 years ago or whatever.
	Everything is so immediately available on the internet that those people who haven't taken the time to look at some basic facts about their theories, to me, are just not worth talking to because they're just not interested in empiricism.
	And if they're not interested in empiricism, then all we're doing is arguing who likes what kind of flavor of ice cream.
	That's not a philosophical debate, right?
	And also, if facts don't sway someone, then I'm not going to continue debating, right?
	So if I say, well, the facts contradict your theory and it doesn't sort of pause for someone, then I'm not going to continue that debate because it doesn't really make any sense, right?
	So when I say to the first guy, well, you know, Consciousness and complexity result from evolution over time.
	He comes up with some evolution in the realm of godhood before.
	Like, that just is not listening to what I'm saying, right?
	And the guy who's saying, well, no, fishermen will end up attacking each other.
	And I say, that's actually not the history of fishing.
	Quite the opposite. There was a huge amount of cooperation for the maintenance of public sort of resources in common by fishermen throughout history.
	And I've cited a number of examples.
	And that doesn't sway him, then it's like, okay, well, if we're not going to talk about facts and reasoned evidence, then we're not talking about anything, or it's just a bunch of opinions and I just don't have time for that.
	I don't want to pretend that that's Philosophy, like the guy who says that capitalism applies to both the communists and to a voluntary person in the free market, then that's not a definition that makes any sense at all.
	It's like saying, well, cancer is a malevolent cell reproducing illness that will kill you, and also the complete opposite of that at the same time.
	It's like, well, if coercion and voluntarism are both under the same umbrella, Then you can't have a debate because it's like, okay, truth is false and false is true and everything in between and everything's black and white and gray.
	That's debate. It's like, let's not.
	Scientists would never do that and I'm not sure why philosophers would bother either.
	All right, Jimmy James, did we come back at all?
	Hello? All right.
	Well, I think we're having enough technical issues for those who are listening.
	You are welcome to drop by fdrurl.com forward slash call in where we can finish up the show on Skype because it looks like we're just having nothing but technical issues here with live stream.
	So you can go to fdrurl.com forward slash call in one word.
	You will need to create a board account, but it'll only take a minute or two.
	We will switch this baby over to Skype and I do apologize.
	For the technical issues, I'm not sure what's going on, but we will try and work them out for next week.
	Thank you for your patience, and we will see you over on Skypeland.
	Thank you. All right.
	Go ahead, Mr.
	G. Sure.
	So, yeah, the latest...
	8 page thread or whatever has been the vegetarian thread which has been interesting and it's been interesting to read it and I just found myself experiencing a lot of irritation around that thread and there have been a couple of other threads around them too so the past two weeks there have been like two or three UBB of vegetarianism threads and I was trying to figure out where the irritation was coming from because I'm totally open to the fact that it could be my own past and history with kind of moralizing of opinions and I don't like meat therefore you're bad and that kind of stuff.
	And I don't think it's necessarily like I'm defending my own diet because I eat meat like once every week or two if that.
	Like I'm not a huge meat eater so I'm not a huge carnivore and just defending my own diet.
	So I'm trying to figure out if Anyone else has any thoughts as well, or if you have thoughts, Steph, because, I mean, Christina and I in Philadelphia talked about diet for a little bit outside in the lobby, and I mean, I have absolutely no problem with kind of her.
	It's my personal preference.
	I don't really like meat very much, so I don't eat it very much, but I just have a bit of a, like, more of a challenge accepting the meat-eating is evil and I have a question about vegetarianism.
	Exactly what is the point of contention?
	I admit I did not read through the thread, but I kind of glanced through it quickly.
	And the complaint that he seemed to be putting forth was that it's over suffering.
	So is that suffering of animals?
	So is that what the where the problem revolves around?
	I'm not entirely sure to be honest.
	Well Well, I think that's the argument, right?
	Which is that sentient animals can suffer, and when we kill them, they don't like it, it's bad, and therefore we should not do it, right?
	And that the greater the consciousness, the greater that we should avoid killing them for our own purpose.
	Culinary satisfaction, those satisfactions can easily be fulfilled through other means, right?
	You can get protein from, you know, peanut butter and cottage cheese and cheese and stuff like that, right?
	So that you don't need to eat meat and it is self-indulgent and it necessitates the killing and the suffering of sentient creatures, right?
	Not just the killing, but also the way they're all packed in so tightly and don't roam free and all that kind of stuff.
	So I think that's the basic argument that it's It's an unnecessary cruelty that further dehumanizes us as creatures, right?
	And if we want to develop our own empathy and sympathy, a good place to start is in our treatment of animals.
	I haven't read that thread in particular, but that's what I've heard before.
	That sounds right.
	And that's not anything that I would particularly disagree with.
	I agreed with your sentiments when the college class asked that question.
	It was like, well, yeah, I think we eat far too much meat, and I think that we'll eat far less meat in a stateless society, and anything we can do to be gentler to animals is great.
	And so I have no problems with that.
	So I don't see a huge area of disagreement between me and the people who are in that thread, but I still find myself with a lot of irritation.
	I think it might be just with the Because you don't take as absolutist of a stance about meat eating.
	You don't point to any of us eating a burger and say, ah, evil, right?
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	I mean, it's not baby eating, right?
	I mean, it's a different kettle of fish as far as I'm concerned.
	I mean, I have a problem with a very sort of explicit and specific focus on animal rights as a whole.
	Because I think that the jury is pretty much in, as far as that goes, that cruelty towards animals arises out of cruelty towards children.
	And I think that the argument that we've made is that if you want to have a more peaceful and happier world, then you need to treat children better.
	There's no point telling people that they're bad for being cruel to animals.
	That's like saying war is bad.
	I mean, it's just not a very intelligent way of approaching the problem.
	And, you know, just lecturing and hectoring people, and I don't know if they're doing that, is a problem because it's not understanding the root cause of stuff, right?
	I mean, I don't just go around saying war is bad.
	I go around saying that the reason we have wars is because of the externalization of costs through statism.
	And the reason we have statism, in my opinion, is because of...
	The way that children are raised.
	And so I try to really get to the root of the issue and come up with a solution to it, not just saying to people, you know, war sucks and we shouldn't do it.
	It just doesn't seem to me particularly an intelligent approach.
	And the reason that I take that approach is simply because I actually want to have an effect on the world.
	Like, I really want to have an effect on the world, which means I don't just want to lecture people about stuff that's kind of obvious.
	Of course, nobody is...
	For cruelty to animals, right?
	I mean, no sane human being says, well, you know, I don't just want a burger.
	I want a burger from a cow that was slowly tortured, right?
	I mean, that's just not what people do, right?
	So given that nobody wants war, you know, and then we have to figure out why wars occur and what's the real root cause of it.
	And I mean, I've taken the approach that I've taken, which will either be right or not, or somewhere in between.
	And I think that when it comes to cruelty to animals, Lecturing people isn't going to do anyone any good.
	It's kind of self-indulgent.
	And I think if you really do care about animals, then you should really focus strongly, I believe, on really, really looking into why animals get treated badly.
	What kind of human being is it Who will, you know, stack chickens in these, you know, god-awful rows and will put baby cows, you know, milk feed them to the point of serious obesity and stuff them in these tiny containers.
	Like, what kind of human being does that?
	And I would assume that it's a human being who was treated like an animal when he was...
	A child. I mean, that would be at least where I'd start.
	I mean, that would be the end result. And then I would go into all of that.
	Because I really do care about stopping it.
	It's not just a self-indulgent moral crusade where I get to feel superior to people by telling them that what they're doing is bad.
	Right? But I really want to dig in and find out what the actual cause of this is.
	And I think that if you responsibly do that, it's not that hard to figure out that...
	Cruelty to children. Children who've experienced a lot of cruelty tend to be quite cruel to animals, right?
	So I think they're just not going very deep into it.
	And because of that, I think it's fair to at least be somewhat suspicious of their true motives.
	Right, right. Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	I mean, you have to stay curious when you're trying to solve very important problems.
	You have to stay curious And I think it's very important to not just state the obvious and think that you're really progressing.
	You know, that's, you know, war is bad.
	You know, there's those hippie slogans from the 60s, you know, war is bad for children and birds and bees and other living things and so on.
	Make love, not war. It's like, but those people aren't really against war, in my opinion, right?
	They're for having a moral posture.
	They're not really against war.
	Because if you're really against something, Then you will stop at nothing in your attempt to uncover its true root causes, if that makes any sense.
	Right, right. And I guess that would be triggering the irritation in me, just a gut sense that that's not all that there is to all this, that it's not just about what's on the surface in these threads.
	Yeah, I mean, I've asked animal rights activists, I don't think ever on this show, but I've asked them in the past, you know, what do they believe?
	Or have they had some knowledge or experience of the voluminous studies that link child abuse to cruelty to animals?
	And if they have, then I'm impressed, right?
	And I say, okay, so if you want to improve our treatment of animals, then...
	You know, the first thing you would want to do is help people to understand the relationship between child abuse and animal mistreatment.
	I mean, I think that would be...
	And that, to me, is a great...
	People who do that, I think, are very responsible and very good, in my opinion.
	So, the people who don't do that...
	I don't know.
	To me, it's just harder to take that kind of thing seriously.
	Because that's an easy one, right?
	I mean, everybody who's got any knowledge knows that child abuse has some influence on mistreatment of animals or that, you know, somebody who tortures animals as a kid is probably not going to grow up to be a really fantastic person or whatever.
	So that, to me, would be the first place to start.
	Now, if they get angry and upset that I'm bringing up a clear causal relationship between child abuse and the mistreatment of animals, then I... I don't really think that they're into protecting animals.
	I don't, right?
	I mean, maybe they are, but that's certainly not what I would think.
	I think they're into being morally superior.
	You know, like those people who go around lecturing you that stuff you buy has been produced by underpaid labor, right?
	And you say, well, what is the definition of underpaid?
	I mean, everyone thinks that they're underpaid, right?
	And what is the history, the economic history of the countries that you're talking about, and so on.
	And if they don't know any of that stuff, then I just assume that they're just, you know, they're just walking around using, quote, ethics to feel, to make other people feel inferior and to feel superior themselves.
	And, you know, all that kind of nonsense.
	Self-righteous. Yeah, just self-righteous.
	I don't eat meat, so I'm morally superior, and I don't buy this, and my stuff is all free-range, and I shop for stuff locally, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	It's like the people who drive electric cars and have never looked into the economics of it and realized that electric cars are, in many, many ways, much more damaging to the environment than gasoline-powered cars.
	It's just a form of moral superiority, and that's what they're really into, not into the protection.
	Of the environment or the protection of children or whatever, or the protection of animals, right?
	Because if you're into the protection of animals, the first place you need to look is the mistreatment of children.
	And if they're not, and if they resist that, then they're just not really into it.
	That's, you know, it's like a guy saying, last thing I want to do is get lung cancer, so I'm going to smoke another cigarette.
	Then he's just, it doesn't match, right?
	Right, right. Well, Steph, then I have a question, because that...
	I actually don't think...
	I'm vegan just to let you know where I stand on it, but I don't think that it's an issue of morality, like UPB, because I kind of, with the gut-sense thing, I don't think that I would ever feel comfortable with somebody having forests used against them to prevent them from eating meat.
	But then, a lot of the arguments...
	People, like...
	Your answer just now to it was less in the moral argument and more in the practical, if you want to stop the animals, but not so much in the area of morality.
	And I've been talking with this with a couple people the last couple weeks, and it sort of seems like, because the question we had was like, why wouldn't the NAP apply to animals?
	And I'm not sure if this is the right way to go, but it sort of seemed like if If animals don't own themselves, because that's where the non-aggression comes from, because it's going against your property, like your body sort of thing.
	So if they don't own themselves, then it would be okay to aggress against animals, like murder them for food.
	But I'm not sure how you could define how property rights would be defined so that animals would be excluded from that, or if even that's the right path to go down.
	But it just seemed to me like all the arguments we were giving were not in the moral nature, but more of the practical, like how to achieve the end.
	No, you're absolutely right, and that's just because I've made the arguments a number of times before, and I'll just touch on them briefly here, but animals don't have the capacity to conceptualize.
	They don't have free will. They don't have the capacity to compare their actions against the theoretical ideal.
	So that you can't have a social contract with an animal.
	The reason that the NAP doesn't apply to animals is that animals don't apply to the NAP, right?
	You can't say to the lion who's hungry and who's stalking you through the bush, I will buy you some cereal to eat and you don't have to eat me, right?
	So animals are predators.
	And again, I'm not saying cows, but in general, right?
	I mean, this is the thing.
	Animals will initiate the use of force To get what they want, right?
	And a lion who's hungry will go and eat a gazelle, right?
	And will initiate force to do so and won't go to a vegetarian restaurant and all that kind of stuff because they're instinctual based and they just do what they do and they're very violent, right?
	There's a lot of violence in nature.
	It's not moral violence because they don't have the capacity to do other than what they're doing.
	And so they can't enter into a social contract.
	They can't trade. They have no property rights because they have no concept of property because they don't have Self-ownership means self-responsibility and we accept that animals are not morally responsible for their own behavior.
	That's why we don't put lions on trial for murdering gazelles or crocodiles on trial for murdering zebras because we understand that they're not morally responsible for their own actions because they cannot compare their actions to a theoretical ideal called morality.
	And we also understand this in the realm of certain people who would be criminally insane.
	They just don't have the capacity to know the difference between right and wrong And all of that.
	And we treat them differently than a criminal who hides the body and has motive and all that and does it for profit or whatever.
	So animals simply cannot be included in the social contract and are not morally responsible, do not have self-ownership from a moral standpoint at all, and therefore are not covered by the non-aggression principle because they can't understand the non-aggression principle because they're not rational.
	Creatures in the way that human beings are.
	So, I mean, there's more to it, of course, but that's just the brief stuff that I've talked about before.
	That's the moral argument that I would use against it.
	Now, does that mean that we can then go around torturing animals?
	Well, I would say not. And I would say not in particular because torturing animals makes people worse, right?
	I mean, if you go around torturing animals, like George Bush used to blow up frogs with firecrackers, and now he's blowing up Iraqis with B-52s, right?
	So there is a, you know, it's a dangerous thing to do.
	It's a bad thing to do.
	And it is gratuitously ugly and violent and wrong and unnecessary.
	And so I think that that, I mean, it certainly would have no problem with that being part of a moral system.
	But yeah, I mean, we can't include animals because they don't have a consciousness of the social contract or alternatives to dispute resolution other than eating each other.
	I completely understand that the animals cannot participate at all in the moral contract because they don't have any understanding or ability to conceptualize that sort of thing.
	I don't understand or what I get confused about is that we are capable of that.
	Why isn't it that Because we are capable that we can apply it to them, or does both parties involved have to be able to know what's going on?
	Well, the definition of a contract is that both parties know what's going on, right?
	Right. That's why I can't make a loan arrangement with my house plant, right?
	Okay. And then I'm not trying to be like, No, no, go for it.
	This question's always kind of trollish, but it's the only way I can really visualize the principle, but maybe it's just the biology argument.
	Because then it sort of seems like when you have people who are mentally retarded or something, they also don't understand that maybe they're in a position where they can't conceptualize the same sort of thing, but they do seem to fall under the NAP, and maybe that just falls under the gray areas of biology, but I'm not...
	That's something that always comes up for me then, when I get to that point.
	Well, yeah, I mean, you'd have to be really, really, really retarded to approach an animal level of intelligence, right?
	I mean, you would have to be, like most retarded people, IQ of 70 or 60 or whatever, but to approach a level of animal intelligence, I mean, you'd have to be so severely retarded that it would be just like one in a billion.
	And those people, if, let's say...
	There was somebody who was as retarded as a lion, right?
	Not to insult lions, but if somebody, and remember, please, if you're not talking, if you could mute.
	If somebody is as retarded as a lion, and every time that man gets hungry, he goes and eats a baby, we would have no problem, I think, restraining that person, initiating violence against him, or at least retaliatory violence against him.
	And keeping him out of society forever, right?
	That he would not be covered now.
	Would we necessarily go and eat him?
	Well, of course not, right? Just because that would make no sense fundamentally.
	But if somebody was that retarded, they would have no possibility of If that retarded and that violent, they would have no possibility of being part of the social contract and I don't think anybody who would be remotely morally responsible would have any problem restricting permanently the movements of that person, right? Because they had no moral understanding of the consequences of their actions and would go out and eat babies whenever they got hungry and could not be restrained or taught differently.
	That person would simply have no liberty within society, of course, right?
	Okay, yeah, that makes sense to me.
	And those are pretty much just the questions that I had around it at this point.
	So thank you for your answers.
	Right, I appreciate that.
	And to me, the distinction is between consciousness, rational consciousness, and non-rational consciousness.
	And the animal rights people, and maybe they'll turn out to be right, I doubt it, but they want to extend that to say, well, it's all forms of consciousness, and you get to the silly extremes where You know, you can't eat a carrot because it's murder.
	That, to me, just seems inherently silly.
	And even if we accept that carrot is murder, let's at least try and save human beings before we try and save animals.
	Because you can't save animals without saving human beings.
	That's been my fundamental argument from the very beginning of this sort of issue.
	You cannot save animals without saving human beings.
	You cannot get human beings to act more kindly towards animals or even to be vegetarian, if that's your preference.
	You simply can't get human beings to be kinder to animals until human beings are kinder to human beings, specifically in the form of better parenting.
	So that would be my argument, that it's fine to focus on better protection of animals.
	To me, that's great. But what you really need to do to achieve that is to focus on the better protection and care for children.
	And that's how you will achieve it, and there's no other way that it can be achieved.
	And I just wanted to say, too, I think that's a...
	It's a better formulation that we can't save animals till we save humans because the one that you were using before and the people have said is we shouldn't talk about animal rights until like we deal with the bigger things which I think is also valid but it sort of is like well let's it sort of like is really dismissive of the whole thing and that that was kind of annoying to me just because it's like well we can we should be able to talk about anything it's not like I'm only Talking about animal rights or anything like that,
	and that's my sole focus.
	But I think that it's definitely more understandable.
	We just can't save animals until we save humans, so that doesn't strike me as annoying or as irritating to me.
	Well, but the reason that I've said that, and again, maybe I'm wrong, but I'll give the argument.
	You can let me know if it makes any sense.
	The reason that I've said that It's because to me, animal rights activists, and not just animal rights activists, but lots of people, but certain kinds of animal rights activists, they're like a bunch of people on one side of a mountain.
	And they're saying, we desperately, desperately, desperately need to get over the mountain.
	That is the most important thing for us or whatever, right?
	And I say, well, to get over the mountain, you need some boots, at least, right?
	That's the very least that you need, is because you desperately want to get over the mountain and you're barefoot, right?
	And the mountain is snowy and jagged and blah, blah, blah.
	You get frostbite and die.
	So the first thing you need to get is boots.
	If you don't have boots, you can't get over the mountain.
	And they say, well, we don't want boots.
	We only want to get over the mountain.
	And I say, no, no, no. You can't get over the mountain if you don't have the boots.
	And they say, but all we want to do, we don't want to talk about getting boots.
	We only want to talk about getting over the mountain.
	And it's like, no, no, no. You don't understand.
	You can't get over the mountain unless you get the boots.
	So the reason I say stop talking about getting over the mountain and start talking about getting the boots is because you simply can't Get over the mountain without the boots.
	It's never going to happen. Never going to worry.
	And that's the analogy, of course, right?
	If you want to save animals, then save children.
	And say, well, we don't want to talk about saving children.
	It's like, well, then there's no point talking about saving animals.
	There's no point talking about going over the mountain if you're not willing to get some boots.
	Great, that makes sense.
	And thanks again for addressing my comments.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Oh, you're absolutely welcome.
	And of course, if you think of objections, which are always more than possible, feel free to let me know.
	All right. Did we have any other...
	Greg, how did that all sit with you?
	That sat very well with me.
	That definitely explained a lot of the irritation I was feeling.
	And to my satisfaction, I feel a lot better about how I was feeling with those threats.
	And it shows up in a number of other ways, right?
	So people say, well, we should get rid of war.
	And it's like, well, here's my argument.
	We have to get rid of the state in order to get rid of war.
	And they say, I don't want to talk about the state.
	I only want to talk about getting rid of war.
	Then we're right back to, you need boots to get over the mountain.
	And it shows a lot of different places, right?
	And when people say, all they want to do is get over the mountain, and then they wave you away with irritation when you point out the need for boots, I think it's fair to say, I don't think you really want to get over the mountain.
	I think you want to talk about going over the mountain.
	I don't think you really want to get over the mountain.
	Because you're not able to disprove my argument that you need boots, but you're also not going and looking for boots.
	You're just talking about how important it is to get over the mountain.
	And that to me, those kinds of people are really annoying because they waste a lot of people's time and it's all about their own ego and about moral pomposity than it is about actually achieving something.
	Right, right. Yeah, I think that metaphor was just fantastic by the way and it's so applicable to so many things that come up on the board and so applicable to situations Where we just we don't really want to talk about what it's not about and I think that that metaphor makes it very clear and It was a great great Well,
	and that's what we've been doing from the beginning right because people say I want to be free I want to get over the mountain right and we say well You can't be free if You don't have truth clarity and some degree of virtue in your personal relationships You need boots to get over the mountain You need to be free in your personal relationships in order to be free in the world,
	first and foremost. If you have political freedom and you're enslaved to your personal relationships, to abusive or corrupt or false or destructive personal relationships, if those are in your life, then you won't really be free, right?
	So here's something you can do.
	Go get some boots, right? Go talk to people about virtue in your life and listen to the responses.
	And people are like, no, no, no.
	I want to end the Fed, right?
	It's like, no, no, no. You can't end the Fed if you can't speak about truth and virtue in your personal relationships.
	And people say, well, I don't want to deal with any of that, right?
	Then to me, that's the same thing as I want to get over the mountain.
	don't talk to me about boots, right?
	And the other kinds of people, the guy who showed up in the call today, right?
	Who just, you know...
	Wanted to be right. It didn't trouble him that his definitions were completely contradictory and so on, right?
	And so it's like, okay, well, if all you want to be is right, I'm not going to pretend to debate with you because I'm not about being right.
	I'm about trying to be as honest and as accurate as possible.
	So I'm not going to debate with somebody where it's a domination, ego, nonsense, self-aggrandizement exercise because this is a philosophy show, right?
	This isn't a serve someone's ego show, right?
	Well, just by the by, I think another interesting point about that guy who called in today was that he wasn't making any focused points.
	He was just tossing shit out and hoping that some of it would stick.
	Like I said at the beginning of this little bit, it's just like he went from one topic to the next, like five different insane ramblings without any real cohesion.
	He wouldn't move, move, move, move on until then, hoping that something would stick with you.
	And he did say search for God, I think.
	And then he changed it to search for knowledge of God or something like that.
	And I just like, okay, switch definitions and all that.
	It's like, eh, you know, who's got time?
	He didn't seem to be very concerned with consistency.
	That's a nice way of putting it.
	Yeah, I think that's fair.
	But yeah, that satisfied me with regards to the vegetarian thing.
	And it's good. It's good.
	Again, you know, your instincts are...
	Smarter than all of us combined, right?
	As far as that goes. So, you know, I certainly do compliment you for following your thoughts on this matter and trying to figure out what's going on.
	I mean, I think it's very important.
	We are, you know, innately sensitive to hypocrisy and to pomposity, I think.
	And I think that's really, really good to try and figure it out.
	All right.
	Does anybody else have any other questions or comments or anything that it would like to bring up?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	I will post one, let's see, maybe one baby photo in the chat window.
	Last chance, last chance for comments, last chance for questions.
	All right.
	Well, thank you, everybody, for joining us this beautiful Sunday afternoon.
	And I hope that you all have a completely wonderful week.
	And thanks again to the people who participated in the entrepreneur stuff from last week.
	That was great. I really do appreciate that.
	We got a very, very good, I think, a very good show out of it, which I will post later today.
	And we will talk to you next week, if not before.

▲