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Feb. 20, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:00:01

1856 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 20 February 2011

A personal history of determinism, music as statism, and is it worth getting an arts degree? Hmmmm...

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
	Welcome to the February the 20th, 2011 Sunday philosophy call-in show.
	Thank you to all of the kind new listeners who have joined recently.
	Welcome aboard. I can promise you a stimulating, exciting, frightening, challenging, and ultimately wonderful ride through the magical jet-propelled realm of philosophy.
	People who have written to me recently, and I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to do emails of the week, I'm working on another book, but people do say, Steph, bro, dude, what do you think is going to happen?
	Particularly in the US, but this would be more common to most of the Western democracies who are facing all kinds of fiscal excitement at the moment, and nobody can know for certain, but I will tell you what I've been telling people for the last Oh gosh, I don't know how long, but I certainly spoke about this at the Freedom Summit.
	Ernie Hancock, who is not the black jazz musician, but somebody else, Ernie Hancock's Freedom Summit in Phoenix last year, which is that for the government, we'll just talk about the American government, this is true I think for Western governments, for the government, So voters, citizens who can be bribed with other people's money are initially assets, right?
	So you negotiate with your public sector workers and you say, you know, if you elect me, I'll give you all of these goodies.
	And usually they push it off until way past they're ever in power, like what they've done in California and other places by putting all of these goodies in the pension scheme basket so that they only hit, the bribery only hits long after they're out of power, which is...
	A tragic and inevitable flaw in the system.
	They make all of these promises to citizens and the citizens in return will vote for them and of course in the case of the Democratic Party in particular in the United States they get a good deal of funding from these union organizations.
	And so when you are bribable In return for votes, which is the power, of course, in a democratic political system, then you are an asset and you will get all kinds of promises and foot rubs from people in power.
	Unfortunately, what has happened over the past few years is that the government dependents, the dependent class, and this isn't just welfare or unnecessary workers on government payroll or It also includes the sort of scions of the military industrial complex, the big corporations that make money out of this sort of nonsense.
	But what's happened is because of diminished income and increasing interest payments on the national debt and so on, because of the recession slash depression, the dependent class, which formerly was an asset to the government in that it gave them votes in return for bribes, has now become a liability.
	Because they are now costing more than the government can possibly take in or pay out.
	I mean, the unfunded liabilities in the US economy go into the tens of trillions of dollars, much larger than the actual world's economy.
	Therefore, you know, that which is mathematically cannot continue will not continue.
	It's just a matter of time. And so what does anybody do when something turns from an asset to a liability?
	Well, you try to get rid of it.
	And so what we're going to see, these are my predictions.
	I mean, I'm not an economist. These are just my thoughts on the subject.
	But what you're going to see is, you know, we've reached a tipping point, right?
	So where the dependent class was formerly an asset to the government because it would give votes in return for bribes, it's now become a liability to the government, which means that you're going to offload that liability in the same way that when your house is underwater, mortgage-wise, you, you know, will try to offload it.
	Of course, the government has a lot more power to offload its dependent classes than you have to offload a house that's worth less than you paid for it.
	And so you can see this happening in Wisconsin where some rights of collective bargaining are being aggressed against by the state for public sector unions and they're actually daring to suggest that the public sector employees actually pay the costs of their retirement or pay the costs of their medical care, which is of course being met with all the outrage you can imagine.
	And Obama's, the spending cuts that are being proposed in Congress at the moment are, of course, targeting people who are dependent because this is the great, you know, in all seriousness, this is the terrible tragedy that awaits people who have Become dependent on the state.
	You know, the state initially sort of promises to take care of the most vulnerable in society.
	But of course, when it has to start sloughing off the dependent classes, it's going to start targeting those who have the least power first.
	And that is, of course, the most vulnerable in society.
	This is something completely and totally predicted by libertarian and anarchic thinkers over the past at least half century, if not longer.
	If you go back to Mises, it's almost 100 years.
	And this is why when people say, well we need the government to take care of the poor, one of my responses has always been, well what happens when the government runs out of money and you have this huge dependent class, which is inevitably going to happen, how are the poor going to be taken care of then?
	And so the government is going to start selling off its assets, so there's going to be a large shift With a painful transition, much more painful than it would be in a free system, a painful transition where people are going to move from the dependent classes into the free market, such as is left. You're going to have the government have a fire sale of its assets, of its buildings, of its cars, of its trucks.
	There's going to be a massive shift of resources currently tied up in government limbo moved into the free market.
	That will provide some stimulus to the free market, which the government will then use to start trying to, you know, do its usual job of bribing people and indebting people.
	But that is somewhat limited.
	Of course, trillions of dollars of U.S. debt is held overseas.
	And those people have got to be feeling all kinds of hosed at the moment because nobody wants to be the first one to start selling.
	Because nobody knows what the floor is for the price of U.S. debt instruments, right?
	right, of treasury bonds and securities and bonds and other kinds of goodies.
	Nobody knows what the bottom is and nobody will really know until they start trying to sell it.
	And given where the US is financially at the moment, anybody who tries to sell all of these assets or quote assets will find out very quickly what their real value is.
	If it turns out to be considerably less, as one would expect, than the stated or face or book value, Then governments are going to have to do all of this oogie stuff.
	Foreign governments are then going to have to write down all of that debt and accept paper losses that are going to go into the trillions of dollars, which they don't want to do because they have those debts as assets.
	And if those American financial instruments, those government financial instruments are revealed as far less Worthy financially than was anticipated or pretended, then they're going to have to have massive write-downs, which is going to boost up their national debt, reduce their assets, and cause this domino effect of a fire sale of government assets.
	There will be a struggle as the state sector, which is everybody in the state, independent on the state, as the state sector attempts to throw off its excesses, hurl it back into the free market.
	Whether or not the free market can be innovative and creative enough To absorb this influx and use them profitably of people and capital and materials and so on remains to be seen.
	That has a lot to do with whether the hyper-regulated aspects of the free market are loosened and liberated as well.
	If that doesn't happen then there's not a lot of places for these poor people to go and that is going to be triply tragic on seven different levels of dimensions.
	So those are sort of my predictions.
	You know, my suggestion is always keep talking to people about the inefficacy of violence as a solution to complex social problems.
	Keep pointing out the gun in the room and keep reminding people that there are better ways of helping the poor, infinitely better ways of helping the poor than bribing them with the money of their children and then abandoning them to an arid and desert-like economy when the money runs out.
	So Those are my sort of basic predictions.
	And you can take them for what they're worth.
	Perhaps we'll revisit this in a year and see whether I was even close.
	But that's sort of where I stand at the moment.
	So thank you so much for listening.
	And now we will turn to the real brains of the outfit.
	The listeners who are glowing gods of fabulous reasons.
	So, James, do we have anybody on the line?
	Or are we going to read some questions from the chat room?
	Let's go to the listeners. We had a couple of questions related to your intro.
	The first question that came up was, how does this fit in with the theory that the government always grows?
	Well, that's a good question.
	Do we have an easier one?
	Well, look, the government is not It doesn't necessarily directly include the dependent classes.
	So if you're on welfare, you're not part of the government.
	And if the government sloughs you off welfare, it's not because the government's going to do that because it wants to shrink.
	It's going to do that because the government wants to keep paying itself.
	The government wants to keep paying itself.
	So I don't view reduced payments to welfare as necessarily the case that the government in itself is shrinking.
	That would be if it reduces its growth in all areas and begins to really slow down.
	I also don't think that there's necessarily a straight line in all directions.
	Almost everything which grows, grows in a sort of jagged line.
	So you look at the trend over time.
	For instance, Canada went through a period Some years back where the government was cut, I think it was 10% or so.
	And all that was was a slowdown and then it quickly resumed its natural and inevitable skyward thrust.
	So yeah, I think that it does grow.
	There will be times where it does shrink.
	I mean, if you look at the Second World War in the West, Governments that had mobilized for the war effort shrunk considerably after the Second World War.
	So there would be an example of government shrinking.
	That same thing occurred after the First World War.
	And briefly, of course, this occurred after the fall of communism, or at least communism as a direct military or perceived military threat.
	After the Cold War in the 80s and 90s, there was a diminishment or a reduction in U.S. military spending.
	And that was very quickly ramped back up again.
	So yeah, government grows, but the fact that it might shrink a percentage to a point here or there doesn't generally seem to interfere with the trend as a whole.
	So I think that would be my answer.
	So yeah, I think if I say government always grows, that is to be interpreted as a longer term, larger view trend, because you can certainly find instances where governments have shrunk in the past.
	Yeah, and as somebody points out in the chat room, if the government shrinks, it's only like a bunch of cancer cells regrouping only to expand again whenever it can.
	Yeah, of course. I mean, the government might collapse its spending by half, which I think put it back around the spending from 1998.
	Everybody talks about how catastrophic this spending is.
	If we cut spending, then they always use the same metaphor.
	We're done cutting fat.
	We're down to the bone now.
	It's like, well... The bone that you're talking about was excess fat compared to 10 years ago.
	But now, suddenly, it's like every time it grows a layer, it has an exoskeleton, becomes a new bone or something.
	It's like there's no fat on the system at all.
	But that's, of course, what everyone's going to say.
	Because no politician wants to go to constituents that have been bribed and say, I can no longer bribe you because that is bad for their re-election possibilities.
	So, yeah, it's cancer onion.
	Yeah, good point. Do we have another question?
	Yeah, and please, people, feel free to call.
	We can talk on Skype.
	We can talk on phone.
	We can even go old school and talk on phone.
	I'll put on my special 50s radio announcer, Tinny Voice.
	Yeah, somebody's pointing out, economics junkie, you know, we were just...
	Talking about you yesterday.
	There's an open house up here. We actually are doing a live show to a severely underdressed group of philosophical hecklers.
	This is why we're not doing the video show.
	Except for the subscribers. Just kidding.
	We were just talking about Economics Junkie.
	This is a bit of mad praise.
	I just wanted to point out.
	I'm sorry if you told me your name at some point.
	I'll call you Sally Von Candy Apples.
	I was just talking about what an enjoyable and satisfying interaction it was that we had around UPB, where you said, you know, what about UPB and self-defense?
	And I wrote an article and we refined it.
	You helped me polish the theory and fix up some gaps and some holes and some problems.
	And I just really, really wanted to thank you for that.
	I think I thanked you at the time.
	It was a really satisfying and enjoyable and helpful and meaningful to me intellectual interaction and that to me is where philosophy is at its best so I really really wanted to thank you for that and of course invite you if you have any other criticisms To forward them to BounceMe at freedomainradio.com.
	Actually, if you have a microphone, I would...
	He's right. Yes, I'm great.
	I know. If you have a microphone and you want to talk more about what's going on in the economy at the moment, you certainly are better studied.
	I'm in a sort of panic study.
	It's like, Oh, I have an interview coming up.
	I better read 9,000 words a day by the interview subject, which makes me an expert in that person's subject, but I'm missing a little bit of the big picture view, so if you wanted to let us know, that would be great.
	No, it's certainly not too late to get at it.
	Just give a ping to James P, and he will shoot the yogurt cup and string grappling hook through your window.
	It's better if you open it first, and please stand back from the window.
	And then you just attach it to your belly button, and I slowly whisper.
	And I think it goes pretty much uphill from there.
	Oh, he says, yeah, I'll pick one up in a bit.
	Okay, so he doesn't have one.
	But yeah, so if people want to talk or chat, I think we had another question in here.
	Let me see. If anybody here wants to hit the chat room and let me know if there are questions, you'll be welcome to read it out.
	There was another question.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, there was another question that came up a little earlier.
	I'm not sure if you've sort of...
	It's just really just an opinion question, I guess.
	What value will a degree from a currently established U.S. university have after this economic shift?
	I understand education is extremely important, but is it worth paying such a large amount to a currently established university?
	And then he commented that he passed up, or someone else commented that he passed up borrowing 60K for that particular education, so...
	Sorry, what was it that cost 60k?
	What cost 60k was, I think, the loans.
	Right, right, right. Well, I think that the value of the humanities degree, and, you know, let me know what you think of this, and if anyone has anything to add, just let me know.
	But I think the value of the humanities degree may be declining somewhat.
	In a time of economic uncertainty, employers want Employees who can add value as quickly as possible and that probably will be somebody with a computer science degree as opposed to somebody with a degree in anthropology or French literature of the 17th century.
	People who've studied French literature in the 17th century can write the most erudite porn that you can imagine.
	Maybe there are certain businesses where that would be more economically productive sooner, and they may be able to write great marketing or advertising or other sorts of business literature, but people who've taken business or people who've taken communications or people who've taken dentistry or pituit lawyers or whatever, Those people are going to hit the ground running economically.
	So I think it's important to remember that the timeframe for turning a profit for your employer is shorter when the economy is tighter.
	And so if you're considering school, I say, you know, this is complete opinion time.
	I would say that you might want to gravitate more towards Degrees that have more specific economic value rather than degrees that are fun.
	Or more fun, but the value pops up just at some point down the road.
	So that would sort of be my suggestion.
	Personally, if I were...
	18 again. Well, first of all, I'd just do a whole bunch of jumping jacks because I could.
	You know, when I was running around, some listeners came by this morning to have some breakfast because they have some kids who just adore Isabella.
	Isabella adores them, so they were all playing.
	Isabella wanted us all to run around the downstairs because she's just the incandescent ball of endless energy.
	And yeah, so the dad and I, who were both in her 40s, were like, yeah, we're doing the 40 shuffle.
	You know, like you don't actually run, you're just going to shuffle forward, you know, and like you've lost something on the sidewalk and kind of looking out for it.
	But yeah, so if I was 18, I would feel definitely some hesitation about going, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree in English or history.
	I think that would be kind of risky at the moment.
	That having been said, you know, if you have a yearning burning to do it, and you don't mind the debt and the risk, I think that's fun.
	If you have some inside track for being a teacher or a professor or that's just something you absolutely want to be, then you don't want to give up on your dreams.
	But if it's like 51-49 dentistry versus anthropology, I don't know anyone like that.
	But if you are like that, then you may want to go a little bit more towards stuff that's going to give you more economic traction in the short run.
	Two points on that.
	In my own experience, looking for a job about six to nine months ago, there were more...
	I mean, there are still jobs that are just like, you must have a college degree in anything.
	So it can give you that, but they weren't that good.
	They weren't jobs that were really that great.
	The other thing is, for me, I went to Japan as a way to kind of get out of the United States.
	So if that's something you're thinking of, not just Japan, but most Western countries require a degree of any kind just to get the visa.
	So if you want to look that way, that's something that might be valuable.
	But I agree mostly in that.
	The degree itself is not very worthwhile as a humanities degree.
	I mean, my humanities degree in linguistics was basically worthless, other than it got me out of the country.
	And for the job that I have now, it got me the interview.
	But other than that, not necessary.
	And you can do that with a computer science degree, which would also open the doors to more useful things, right?
	So, yeah. And if you recall a few years ago, Steph, a big thing for me was I was going to do a site degree and I was going to get tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars in debt after a 50% scholarship at a private university in Indiana.
	But for me, a lot of it was like I felt like this was the only thing that I was going to be able to do in order to make any sort of career move in the future.
	And it was a really stressful, to say the least, time for me when that loan didn't go through.
	And it was the worst thing that could have happened to me at the moment that the student loan didn't go through.
	But in retrospect, I mean, I'm having some career uncertainty now as far as like where I want to go in the future, but it has not been the kind of hellish situation.
	Starving on the street existence that I feared in the moment.
	And it's really opened up a lot of paths for me.
	Kind of just taking a few years off and saying I don't have to go straight from high school to college.
	That's not the thing that I have to do.
	So to the listener who asked that, I would just say it might be a good idea to just For a lot of people to just take a year or two or more off and figure out who you are without the external pressures of what you're going to be as an identity because that was something that I struggled with.
	The one thing that I would also just wanted to add in In hindsight, is that if you're going to take a humanities degree, and I mean, I say this as a guy who did English and acting and history, right?
	Not as humanities as you can get with some economics and philosophy.
	But if you're going to take a humanities, my strong recommendation is to have some harder skill in there.
	And that doesn't mean that you have to take that in school.
	I mean, I've been slavishly into computers since I was like 11.
	And so the fact that I knew computers really well and had a humanities degree gave me a pretty well-rounded approach to business.
	So you don't have to study stuff in school.
	In fact, I believe there have been studies that somebody in my programming department sent to me many years ago saying that the most productive programmers in some particular project that was picked fairly randomly were the people with the arts degrees who knew computers.
	So, you know, take an arts degree, but don't just assume that the arts degree is going to get you in any place and get you any place useful.
	I think it's really important to have some more grounded technical skill.
	Computers, of course, is the most obvious one since it's a little harder to figure out how to drill cavities in your home.
	I mean, I think most of us here have tried, but the laws, you know, the laws, the state just restricts us from experimenting on people.
	Go for some harder skills as well as what's going on.
	That would be my suggestion.
	I think that gives you a better rounded approach to things.
	I just wanted to add from my own experience.
	Granted, I was in college nearly a decade ago.
	No, actually, no.
	It was 10 years ago this year. I've been on the longer side of where I would be getting a degree.
	But if you're looking at something like the harder skills, I have a computer science degree, and a lot of it, especially in terms of core requirements, which have nothing to do with your degree, I don't know how much I picked up on it, because I was already in computers before that.
	Now, not everyone has that sort of roll of the dice, but if you're thinking about that and you're interested in computers, just as an example, just as one thing, it's so easy to get into computers.
	I don't know if you could go down to the library and do work on it, but if you have a computer, you can start tinkering around.
	And again, that's just one possibility.
	And it's usually not schooling, but experience.
	Like Steph just mentioned, you know, one particular study.
	It's the experience of actually programming.
	I mean, the projects they give you in school, everybody knows what they give you in school.
	It's not going to be useful, right?
	Or very rarely useful.
	And it can really suck the fun out of programming.
	So that's something else to consider.
	Figure out something you want to do and just go for it.
	If you have a computer, you have nearly everything you need to start playing around.
	Yeah, I mean, one of the things that I remember reading about some time back was, you know, most video games now have multiplayer online capacities, particularly the first-person shooters that I've read about.
	And they have levels, right?
	And the levels are like the corridors and the jump shafts and all that kind of stuff that you play around in.
	And somebody was saying that, you know, how did I get into being a level designer for id Software?
	Well, I wrote a bunch of levels and you can just put them out there.
	You know, it's fun and interesting to try it, I'm sure.
	And I actually tried to do a level called My Brain, but I just got so lost.
	What is the Chinese robot doing here?
	Then I just go and analyze that and forget to finish the level.
	The mermaids I can understand because I think we've...
	Am I drifting too much?
	I think so. But yeah, so I mean if you want to get into game design, just start designing levels.
	Put them out there with your name and then you can use those as a resume.
	So it's whatever it is that you do.
	You can code little apps for the iPhone or the iPad and the developers are pretty cheap.
	The development tools are pretty cheap.
	I think there's even some freeware ones out there.
	And it's free to submit.
	You know, it's an incredible business opportunity.
	And so you don't make any money, so what?
	I mean, to have a way to get programs into the App Store and not have to have, you know, I mean, when we started our business, we needed $80,000.
	And that was just for, you know, mostly the in-house Korean foot massages for me.
	The rest of it was pretty cheap.
	But we needed a lot of money to get started back in the day.
	I mean, you don't need that to write an app for the iPhone.
	And, you know, if it doesn't sell, at least you can have on your resume that I know all about 17th century French literature.
	And, you know, here's my app that I programmed.
	And I also think programming is the kind of discipline that is just good for philosophy.
	Because programming is relentlessly logical.
	And programming allows for...
	It's UPP all over the place, right?
	And it really requires...
	The best programming comes with empathy because you have to...
	I remember I had a guy who was an employee...
	He was a really good programmer, but he had the social skills of an angry hedgehog.
	He wrote a wizard and the next and back things that you used to get on, I guess you still get them on desktops.
	I was doing just a quick initial test of his first prototype and I clicked the back button and it wouldn't go back.
	I asked him to put a back button in.
	I said, this doesn't work, it doesn't go back.
	He said, I know you told me to put that button in, but why would people want to go back?
	They've already been there. For him, he was the programmer, so he knew exactly what to choose and this and that and the other.
	He just didn't understand that people would say, that's not what I wanted, let me go back and try again.
	He was linear that way.
	He didn't put himself into the newbie's shoes.
	And that is a challenge.
	And that became sort of a running gag of like, good programming, bad programming.
	Good programming in the code, bad programming for the user experience.
	So I think that good programming is logical, it's technical, it requires a good deal of empathy, and you also get used to the inevitable cavalcades of petty criticism that are launched at anybody who puts anything on the internet.
	You have to know, like, what the potential things a user will do.
	Like, if you've taken enough support calls, that's another thing you could do.
	You get a job in support and then work on programming on the side and you get an idea.
	Well, no, it's tougher to program if you're losing your will to live every day.
	This is true. No, but...
	If you get an idea of what users have a tendency to do and the kind of stupid things they do if they don't know much about computers, then you can design your program to be kind of idiot-proof.
	If only there was such a thing.
	Idiots are so ingenious. What's that old story?
	This is the old story of the people who kept complaining that their DOS boot up disk kept corrupting and it turns out they were Keeping it affixed to the filing cabinet with a giant magnet.
	Strangely enough, that just kept messing up the disk.
	It's hard to imagine why.
	But yeah, so whatever you can do as a hobby, you know, and I say this is a guy who turned a hobby into a bizarre but basically productive lifestyle.
	Whatever you can do as a hobby is going to have value, I think.
	I mean, unless it's, you know, just, I don't know, cutting your toenails with chainsaws or whatever.
	Actually, YouTube videos, I could see that people would, not the healthiest people in the world, but some people would, I'm sure, pay to see that.
	But yeah. Yeah, I think it's important to look upon education not as, you know, I insert myself into college, I come out into some sort of professional track career.
	I think that you need to look at education as you need to have as well-rounded a skill set as possible, and there's a lot that you can do as far as that goes outside of just going to classes and writing essays and, you know, doing your exams and turning in assignments.
	I really think it needs to be a proactive approach.
	Well-rounded thing. You just want to have as many diverse skills as possible so that you can stand out from the crowd.
	And look, I mean, this is sort of annoying because college is supposed to be time for fun and all that.
	What is it someone said? If you want to get an education, go to the library.
	If you want to get laid, go to college.
	Was that Frank Zappa? Yeah.
	But the reality is that it is hard economic times.
	You need to find ways to differentiate yourself.
	And that would be my suggestion.
	Sorry for that long answer, but we have some experts in the room.
	Do we have any other questions at the moment?
	I have one correction that somebody gave me which I thought was worthwhile mentioning.
	Late at the library.
	Hot! That's right.
	Well, somebody had written to me, which I think was a good correction, is that I said that the free market I would have no problem with privately run fiat currency and the argument was that fiat currency in and of its nature is something that is enforced and valueless.
	And so that's sort of a contradiction because if it's private currency it's not enforced and therefore it doesn't fall under the definition of fiat currency.
	A very worthwhile correction and thank you so much.
	You know there's some nitpicking that is enjoyable and that is definitely one of those.
	I have not spoken to John Taylor Gatto on education.
	I saw a presentation that he gave when I spoke at the 2009 Liberty Forum.
	He gave a presentation and I thought he was an interesting speaker.
	I started to read one of his books on education and he has some fantastic examples of people who achieved extraordinary levels of success by dropping out of even high school early.
	The one that came to mind was Danica Patrick.
	Who I only particularly know because she's one of the GoDaddy girls.
	I don't call them girls. He does.
	But she's a race car driver.
	And she, I think, dropped out of school, left home when she was 16, and just went straight down the NASCAR tubes and came out as a...
	Very good race car driver.
	And so he points out a lot of people who've achieved a great deal of success by bailing out of school early.
	And then he talked about how maybe it would be worthwhile for the government to put in a national program to get youths to help out in some sort of federally mandated and paid for Government program.
	And I was just like, oh dear.
	So close. The solution to bad education is not state conscription.
	That would be my particular approach.
	So, you know, and this is true, of course, of most of the thinkers.
	I'm sure some people feel this is true of me as well.
	I think it's less true of me. But when you have...
	There's always a hold-your-nose passage in so many people's beliefs, right?
	Unless they're really working relentlessly from first principles, which is really rare.
	You're like, oh, this person, this is great, you know, yeah, education is, you know, government education is brain-deadening and soul-deadening and this and that and the other.
	And you're like, you're with him and the history of education that he talks about in America is fascinating and this and that.
	And then they just do something that's just like a, you know, dead carp to the head, you know, in slow motion without the right amount of canola oil.
	And then you're just like, oh, you know, so close.
	So I like him.
	I've tried to contact him, but he...
	I think he only accepts snail mail letters, and I don't know if I remember how to do that anymore.
	No, I'd like to get him on the show and talk to him some more, but I've never heard him on a podcast or anything like that.
	I don't think I've seen him being interviewed.
	I think if you sort of go there with a camera, he'll submit to, because I saw him, he was on, I think, Kevin Soling's The War on Drugs.
	Sorry, The War on Kids, using drugs and other things.
	So I think he'll do interviews, but I don't think he picks up the phone and does remote interviews.
	So I haven't spoken to him directly, but I did see a presentation that he gave.
	Hello, Steph. Yes, sir.
	Hey, it's good to be talking to you.
	Hi. Hi, I have a question.
	I was hoping you could maybe help me collect my thoughts on something.
	It has to do with the humanities a little bit.
	So I'm getting a degree right now, a master's degree, actually, in musicology.
	And it's basically, for those who don't know, it's basically music history.
	And it's something I've loved ever since I was a child.
	I mean, my dad and I would listen to these classical music records and it would It was just wonderful, and I've always wanted to go in that area.
	The past couple years, however, I've been conflicted a little bit because I've thought about how Western music in particular, I guess, the music of Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, all those guys, how that has progressed and evolved.
	And the thing about it is that music has always been around.
	Um, because there was a, uh, an intruding state of some type, whether it's the church, whether it's the patronage system, whether it's, um, and especially the government since the 20th century, um, has supported composers and that kind of thing.
	And that's, you know, the, the music that we have, Western music is due to the state, essentially.
	And so, um, believing that the state is immoral But I'm continuing to study this sort of thing.
	I was wondering, does that make me a bit of a hypocrite at all?
	That's a very, very interesting question.
	I don't know the answer to that.
	Certainly not off the top of my head, because it's very, very complex.
	But I will say this.
	I remember when I was watching Black Swan.
	I mean, I've spent some time around dancers because of my fluid gyroscopic hips and sinewy modern dance approach, which is really like watching a snake being hypnotized by sky lasers.
	But no, the reality is that when I was at the National Theatre School, we were right next door to the National Ballet School.
	So I got to see these impossibly skinny girls smoke all day.
	That's what they do because they can't eat.
	They occasionally will take a deep breath around a salad, but that's about it.
	And so I spent some time around dances and I found them quite annoying because they wouldn't go out with me.
	And from a philosophical standpoint, I found them sort of annoying.
	That whole world is kind of annoying.
	And one of the reasons I sort of mulled that over when I was watching the film was would things like opera and ballet and classical music, would they even still be a cultural force, which I think is your point, in the absence of hundreds of years of state subsidies and state in the absence of hundreds of years of state subsidies and I mean, and this is at every level.
	So, you know, just off the top of my head...
	At Ballet, you have, of course, big subsidies for the education.
	My tuition fees at the National Theatre School were so ridiculously low because it was so heavily subsidized.
	And the buildings that house them are all built by the government and leased out at low or absurdly low rates.
	The performance spaces are built by the government with the condition that you put a certain amount of this stuff on.
	I mean, there are private donors, which of course is perfectly fine.
	And I certainly don't have any stats off the top of my head, but...
	It is, to me, always fascinating to see the degree to which culture is subsidized.
	Also, I mean, the unions, right?
	I mean, there's a listener who is in a union, and, you know, the musicals are partly expensive because you have to pay for the live music performance.
	You don't have the choice, right?
	The consumers don't have the choice to say, I want to see the singer.
	I don't care about the second bassist being live or not.
	I want to see the singer.
	Or, you know, what's going on on stage.
	The orchestra pit, I could care less about.
	I mean, you can't even see these people, but they have to be there live.
	Because that's the government rule.
	And that, of course, is kind of ridiculous.
	So, sorry, we're just getting a bit of a cut down.
	So, just if you're doing chat room and stuff, that's fine.
	But just no heavy media, because that's the same bandwidth for the show.
	So, yeah, it is fascinating to question the degree to which This cultural stuff would still be a potent force and have that kind of air of pretension to it.
	And this is true, again, of mainstream culture to some degree, though not quite as much.
	But yeah, it's a good question.
	I mean, you probably know a lot more about this than I do.
	To what degree do you think this stuff survives and retains its air of, you know, toffee-nosed one-upmanship sometimes because of direct state subsidies or interventions or supports?
	Not to bore the listeners with this kind of stuff, but I'm even thinking about The idea of a symphony.
	How did that come about? And why weren't...
	Why do you see symphonies and stuffy white people music in Europe and in parts of Asia for hundreds of years?
	You don't see anything maybe...
	You don't see anything quite as contrapuntal or aligned the same way.
	You see a lot more folk music.
	You see music becomes part of the family, that sort of thing.
	And the reason why is that I've discovered is because, I mean, for hundreds of years during the medieval age, The church kept people writing these chants, and the chants were used for hundreds of years.
	And gradually people decided, well, maybe for Christmas we're going to sing this chant in octaves to make it more grand.
	And then gradually that starts to change up, and then you get Uh, complex music that way.
	Um, and thinking of it that way, I mean, uh, this, the music that I'm studying and that I love so much is because the church decided to make that step in whatever it is, the, um, 11th century or something like that.
	Um, and so I guess maybe your answer would be keep thinking about it or keep studying and maybe the answer will come to me maybe.
	No, we haven't started talking about the answer yet.
	We're still sort of just delineating the problem.
	Just as you were talking about orchestras and so on, I could sort of see that there's a kind of conspicuous consumption vanity that would happen, like if you're in the 18th century and you want to enjoy a good piece of music.
	If you have a, you know, just a guy who comes to your, like a minstrel comes to your house and sings, you know, that's probably pretty cheap.
	And so the more singers you have, the higher prestige it is, right?
	So it's almost a form of like Versailles or the Taj Mahal, a form of conspicuous consumption.
	I have a full orchestra to entertain me becomes what the king has and a choir and so on.
	So it just seems to me kind of interesting that it's a form of in your face, peasant, you know, suck on this beautiful harmony that you can barely hear because you're down there in the mud while I'm sitting in my throne of gold with all the altar boys I can eat.
	And so maybe it is just sort of had that kind of air of conspicuous consumption that seems to have kind of hung around as it sort of marched through.
	And so, yeah, you know, I would just be really fascinated.
	I mean, there is this parallel universe thing that you always try and think about with this stuff.
	Or just an instantaneous momentary thing where you say, okay, I'm going to...
	All of these subsidies are going to be cut.
	What is going to be the actual price of going to the opera?
	You know, like, so the building is going to be sold.
	Yeah, the building is going to be sold and there's no longer going to be subsidies and all this sort of stuff.
	Well, what would the price be?
	Would it vanish from the world?
	And to what degree has all of the talent, right?
	The one thing that drives me a bit nuts about classical music is that So much of the talent gets poured into the oldies, right?
	I remember buying these CDs when I was really into classical music when I was younger.
	It's like, we have recreated the original instruments.
	We don't play them on those stinky new instruments.
	We play these down to the wood and the exact materials that were used at the time.
	And I was like, I mean, that's so calcified.
	They've even done it with medieval music.
	I used to really be into medieval music.
	And they would try and do these original instruments and so on.
	And all of the people who have, you know, great talent can go and find work, you know, playing music, or I guess some people compose music still, of course.
	But I just think of the amount of energy in the classical world that is poured into all of this old stuff, all of this stuff, because that's where the money is.
	And the reason that that's where the money is, is because there's lots of influence from people who have, you know, political connections and money and all that sort of stuff.
	And it's become this sort of self-reinforcing cultural...
	High thing.
	Classical is better than pop and certain classical is more refined and it's gotten the aura of this cultural heritage that is the magical power of Western classical music and so on.
	I just wonder how much creativity has been funneled off into this little side eddy of classical music from hundreds of years ago.
	This worship of the past has always been suspicious to me because I think it does block a good deal of passion and energy into the future.
	So, again, these are just some thoughts on the subject, nothing particularly delineated.
	And I do want to actually, shockingly enough, get to your questions.
	Is your question, is it hypocritical to be in this world that you love because there is so much state control and subsidies around?
	Because it wouldn't exist without state control and subsidies for hundreds of years, would be a more accurate question.
	Well, I think it wouldn't exist in its current form.
	Okay. Right?
	There would be, you know, as we've always said, whenever government subsidies and controls come into something, it freezes it in time.
	And that certainly seems to be the case with classical music.
	I think, you know, Philip Glass accepted there's just not a whole lot of stuff going on that's modern.
	Although I think Nixon in China, which is not exactly classical, has just been resurrected.
	But even that's, I think, more than 20 years old.
	Anyway. I just saw that production at the New York Met, actually.
	How did you like it? You couldn't get tickets to Spider-Man?
	No. Well, actually, it was available through the New York Met in HD. So I was watching it in Madison, Wisconsin, of all places, at a movie theater in HD. Wow.
	How was it? So now, you were bringing up the point a little bit earlier that it's kind of a bit stuffy, so I was viewing it from the stuffy perspective, even though I do love the music of John Adams quite a bit.
	John Adams the composer, not the...
	Well, I don't know if John Adams the president wrote music, but...
	It's possible. If he wrote Nixon in China, I think so many of our philosophical theories would have to go out the window about inevitability, time travel, prognostication, free will.
	We'd have a whole different conversation of which the subsidies of classical music would probably not be high on the list.
	So let's just go with the new composer.
	The new composer, right, right.
	I think they did some interviews with people backstage, especially the director, and he mentioned that this has finally gained root as a modern classic in the same way that I mean, when's the last classic before Nixon in China that's written?
	It's difficult to say.
	It's probably an opera by Shostakovich or something.
	I don't know. We get to go back that far because classical music listeners are so persnickety about the new music that comes out by modern composers.
	They wouldn't classify Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht in those, would they?
	I think that's considered a more populous musical, right?
	It's populous musical, but people still love it.
	There's a I think it's a good opera.
	It's kind of a Marxist opera.
	It's a view of classical...
	No, it's a view of capitalism as evil.
	It's kind of a mock of it.
	It's called The Rise and the Fall of the City of Mahogony by Kurt Weill.
	And that's viewed a classic by some people.
	Other people, they say, well, it's vile, it's different.
	The thing with modern classical music is there are so many different schools of thought.
	It's similar to modern art.
	I mean, modern classical is kind of an oxymoron anyway, right?
	Well, you have to use that kind of word again, because if you say modern music, people will think Lady Gaga, and you wouldn't classify Lady Gaga into that sort of vein, even though, I mean, I've heard Lady Gaga has had classical training at Juilliard of all places, and I'm sure she's a wonderful musician, but then you're with a group of classical music snobs, and they won't classify her.
	Well, and that's fair. I mean, you wouldn't classify her as jazz.
	No, she's not jazz. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it.
	You wouldn't classify it as country or, you know, you'd probably just say, well, it's pop.
	And that's, you know, that's a fairly recognizable genre.
	But anyway, sorry, let's get out of the fun classifications and go back to your original thought.
	Oh, were we talking about Nixon in China?
	Yes, we were talking about Nixon in China.
	I just was curious if you liked it.
	Yes, I did. I... I love the music, personally.
	The music is good, and the thing about it is the first act is Mao and Nixon and Henry Kissinger sitting down and talking, and of course Mao is sitting there and he can barely walk, and he goes on philosophical rants while Nixon is trying to get some sort of A firm point established in their negotiations, and that's not happening, of course.
	But it's really historically correct, and the scenes that they did, the staging, was somewhat accurate to the photos that they have from that meeting.
	And so, if, say, you're a viewer and you say, I'm going to Nixon in China, I want to see an opera that's about the meeting between Nixon and Mao in China in 1978.
	And so that, yes, we've seen the first act.
	And the second act, it's Pat Nixon going around to all the different little groups.
	She has a tour guide, and the tour guide said, and here's a Chinese school.
	And so the children go up and hug her and everything, and she's watching casually, and of course she sees a little bit of Sorry, I can't think of a good word for it, but she sees the human rights violations that are occurring at that time, vaguely. Not that much, but of course they're trying to dress it up for Pat Nixon, and she does a little monologue about how is this really that good.
	The rest of the opera, however, is all symbolism.
	Right. Sorry, just again, for people who may not be that interested in the details of the opera, I'll give you my two cents on...
	I'm sorry. I don't think it's hypocritical, because I think your love is not of classical music.
	I think your love is of complex music.
	And I think we can certainly say that Beethoven's piece of music is more complex than a piece of music by Lady Gaga.
	Which is, you know, it's neither better or worse.
	It's just, you know, sometimes you want a pizza and sometimes you want, I don't know, what's a piece of food that's complex?
	I would know. Pizza with ducks.
	Tiramisu. So what you prefer is complex music.
	I think that you don't, you can't Rationally draw a line and say, I don't want to get involved in something the state is involved in.
	Look, you and I are talking over the internet.
	I mean, the internet came out of a Department of Defense initiative to make sure that communications could survive nuclear weapons.
	So if I were to say, well, because there's the internet and I want to talk to people, I'm not going to use the internet because it was state-originated or state-sustained.
	No, I'm into communication.
	And in the same way I'm getting from A to B, I say, well, I'm not going to use government roads.
	I'm going to a tunnel or use a catapult or I don't know try and catch some flying geese and strap them to my legs but so you're into complex music it happens to be protected by the government that's not your choice it's certainly not in your power to change but if you were to give up your genuine enjoyment and appreciation of and love of complex music because the government was involved then that would be to sacrifice something that is good and wonderful and beautiful and true For the sake of an evil that you do not agree with and cannot change.
	So I would suggest that focus on what your real joy is, which is not state-protected classical music, but the challenges of complex music, which I think is a beautiful thing to get excited by.
	And live like the state isn't there.
	I mean, that's the only thing that I can suggest is live like the state isn't there.
	Because if you start making decisions about your life based upon where the state is and isn't, you're going to end up, I mean, I can't even turn on the tap, you know, because the government is partly responsible for the production and delivery of clean water.
	So, you know, my house is burning, I will call the fire department.
	I'm not gonna, you know, do the anarchist principle, watch everything go up in flames thing.
	If I'm sick, I will go to the socialist doctor.
	That's the reality. I can't change it, I don't agree with it, but I'm not going to let it tax my life.
	You know, I'll pay their money.
	I'm not gonna pay a mind slice to that.
	Does that make any sense? Yes, that clarifies things quite a bit.
	I think those are points I had come up with in my mind in the past couple years when I was thinking about the direction that music history would have taken without the state.
	But it solidifies it, definitely.
	I think the key for me would be to continue studying Yeah, continue studying, focus on what brings you the greatest joy, the greatest happiness, and don't let the shadow of the state, you know, turn your world dark, because you can't control that.
	You can focus on what you love, and you can focus on the virtuous choices you can make within the environment that you have, but...
	I think you surrender more than you have to to let the existence of the state cast a shadow over that which you love.
	I mean, to get married, we had to file state certificates.
	I mean, does that mean that we love each other less?
	Does that mean that my wife and I are any less deeply committed to each other?
	No, that's just, you know, you've got to squiggle this.
	You know, when I became a citizen, I had to pledge allegiance to the Queen.
	I just substituted the band in my head, because that is actually quite accurate.
	I do pledge allegiance to the Queen and to Freddie Mercury, who was a better Queen than the Queen, in my opinion.
	So that's my suggestion.
	I hope that helps. That does help a lot.
	Thank you so much. Thanks.
	Let me know if you have anything else.
	Anytime you want to have a chat about music, I love the topic.
	Just with a great deal of passion, music is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
	It might be fun, even if it never even becomes a podcast.
	I might just drop you an email if you like it enough.
	That'd be great. Thank you so much for talking.
	You're welcome, man. And we've got some more.
	I've got a question or two from the chat room, unless we have somebody else on the line.
	To speak. Yeah, maybe we can do it.
	We've got so many music lovers.
	Who actually survived my renditions, which was really not expected.
	This is a way of weeding out all the music levels with FDR 500 and 600 and 700.
	And for those of you who've said to me, when's the next one coming out, I only have to ask, what the hell is wrong with your ears?
	That's my... or, you know, like...
	I love how you still, when you come across like a hundred podcasts, like 17, you leave in the gap.
	So now you've got like eight blanks ready.
	And I think you're just going to bombard us with like eight on one day someday.
	Well, you know, I've got a couple of ideas.
	Like, so there's the Billy Joel song, A New York State of Mind.
	I'm in a state, this state of mind, which I think would be a fun one to do.
	Anyway, so that's not necessary.
	But the challenge is I need a lyricist.
	I don't have time to write the lyrics. The other thing, too, is it's tough because Izzy's either awake or she's sleeping.
	So it's tough to make that kind of unholy racket.
	Anyway, we'll get back to the music.
	But yeah, so if we have a conversation about music, I'm always appreciative.
	So some people ping me with new music, which is great because I've devolved into looking for live versions of songs that I used to like 20 years ago, which is a sad, sad state of affairs.
	Yeah. The old man I promised I'd never become.
	I love having young people in the room.
	That doesn't help.
	And so, yeah, we'll put that out if people want to have a conversation.
	I'd like to widen my musical horizons a little bit because I used to be into discovering...
	I used to go to the...
	This is going back in the day, right?
	First go to the LP stores and just go and look for music or you'd be able to listen to those booths and I'd discover new music and it's been a long time since I've been able to do that.
	So I would really like to...
	So yeah, if we do that, I'll put that out.
	Somebody has a question. I have a question.
	He, she, it writes...
	How did you find your niche in life?
	Since I changed a few years ago, I've stopped feeling interested in art and I don't do it anymore.
	I had my life planned around going to college, but I don't want to and will not go.
	I don't enjoy writing anymore.
	I dropped studying Spanish and Hungarian.
	I don't do martial arts anymore, out of concern for my mental health.
	I've gotten fleeting desires to try things like 3D design, singing and stuff, but again, the desire fizzles.
	I don't feel interested in anything except playing World of Warcraft sometimes.
	Yet I am frantic about finding something that makes me happy, gives me a sense of an identity, and which can give me a future from beyond this awful dungeon of low-rent jobs and being poor and having my potential unfulfilled.
	Right now, I just feel a crater in which I hear echoes reverberate from the slightest whisper as I think about what it is that I want.
	Well, that is a tough question.
	That is a tough question.
	I did talk about this recently.
	I don't know if you heard it or not.
	We had a conversation about motivation.
	I sort of talked about my daughter. I think that's a Sunday show ago.
	So you can check that out for something to do with that.
	But I know a little bit about sort of where you're coming from.
	I would say that when you're coming out of a traumatic situation, a long-term traumatic situation, you You need to de-stress and decompress and that can take some time.
	And if what you find relaxing and enjoyable is playing a video game or watching some TV or whatever it is, I think that's perfectly fine.
	Life is a rhythm.
	And it's a rhythm sort of in the details of the day and it's a rhythm in the larger sphere as well.
	So there have been times in my life where I've done almost nothing creative.
	In fact, there's been times in my life where I've done absolutely nothing creative for Year after year after year.
	Nothing philosophical, nothing artistic.
	And there have been times where I did artistic stuff and no business stuff whatsoever.
	You know, times where I took after I had sort of sold my company and took time off to write The God of Atheists and the novel, almost.
	I did nothing to do with business, just particular rhythms that I was in.
	And so I wouldn't necessarily be concerned I think the important thing is to recognize that you can't get behind and push your desires.
	You can be open and receptive to them, and it's important, I think, not to, in a sense, drug your desires through dissociation.
	That can be a bit of a round trip.
	But to be open to the impulse to be creative, to be open to the impulse to try something new, I think is important.
	I think it's very, very important if you come from a top-down, here's what you do, Kind of history, particularly in your family, and we get a lot of that in school as well.
	It's not just the family. Here's what you do.
	You go here. You go out when the bell rings.
	You don't go beyond this fence.
	You don't do this. And then you come back in when the bell rings, and you go back and you sit in your desk.
	And now you don't talk, and if you have to pee, you raise your hand.
	And all of this ridiculous prison-based nonsense that goes on into people's 17th or 18th years is nuts.
	So if that's your school experience, which it is for most, just about everyone, and if that's your home experience as well, Then you have to be very careful to not take a similar approach to creativity.
	You relax into being creative.
	And I say this as a guy who's producing fewer podcasts and definitely fewer solo casts than he used to.
	And I sometimes think, oh my god, I've got some podcasts but I haven't published in like five days or six days.
	Nobody's going to listen to me anymore. It's all over or whatever.
	But I can't publish because of that.
	So when I get those impulses, I look at the impulse.
	I don't let it give me orders.
	Right? So I was like, you gotta do a podcast because you haven't put one out in a while.
	And people aren't paying you to parent.
	They're paying you to podcast to the degree that I'm being paid, right?
	But I won't do a podcast because of that.
	I won't give myself orders to be creative.
	I won't give myself orders to be authentic.
	I won't give myself orders to be honest.
	And I can't give myself orders to be creative.
	And so I try to not fulfill those commandments within me and I try not to let them create an anxiety within me that A disaster will occur or a negative thing will occur if I don't do X. Because I recommend against negative economics in my philosophy, or in philosophy I think is good philosophy, and I really strenuously try to avoid negative economics, bullying myself, and using the argument from effect.
	Because me saying, oh, I've got to put a podcast out because it's been five days or six days, that's an argument from effect.
	I should do a podcast because negative effects will occur if I don't.
	And I really strenuously suggest avoiding the arguments from effect, avoiding the catastrophization, avoiding the bullying.
	Or saying to yourself, oh my god, I just played three hours of World of Warcraft.
	I could have been creating a crystalline vase in the shape of the Andromeda galaxy that would have sold for a million dollars on eBay.
	Or whatever, right? No, you had fun, you enjoyed yourself, and you'd be okay with that.
	My brother used to be this.
	Years ago, there used to be this great comedy lineup, like the Seinfelds, and I can't remember if there were other shows on that I really enjoyed and were funny.
	And so, yeah, usually Thursday nights I'd watch a couple hours of TV and would really enjoy it.
	And I remember my brother was just like, oh, you know, like, don't you feel like you get up and you just feel like gross, like you just wasted time and you just haven't lived and you've just been staring at the idiot box or whatever.
	And I didn't.
	I mean, I found it really enjoyable and funny and engaging.
	And so I just sort of think that it's really important not to shake your finger down at yourself from a great height and say you need to do X, Y, and Z. Sustainable creativity and the niche comes from joy.
	I light up inside and out when I'm talking about philosophy.
	When I'm not talking about philosophy, I mean, with some exceptions, being with my wife and parenting and so on, I sort of feel like a city running on low power, in a power outage or whatever, and I start thinking or talking about philosophy.
	It's like the film starts speeding up and it goes, the music starts playing.
	Okay, maybe not that music, but something like that.
	It's the Jeopardy music.
	And it's like the city is coming to light.
	You know, like the power comes back on grid after grid.
	The city comes to light. And I feel fully, fully engaged as a human being.
	Because for me, philosophy is the all discipline.
	It's not just about analyzing.
	It's not just about feelings. It's Not just about the conscious or the unconscious.
	It's not just about culture. It's not just about whatever, laws or politics or relations.
	It's everything. So I feel like it engages me completely and fully and there's nothing that I could conceive of that would engage me more.
	And that is a pull from pleasure, not a push from panic.
	And what is sustainable in life comes in the pull from pleasure, not the push from consequences, the push from the argument from effect, the push from panic or guilt or a feeling that you're doing something bad or wrong with the time, however you spend it.
	What's that? I just had a question related to this, which you triggered when you were talking about that.
	Which is that I totally agree with you about, you know, not being able to bully yourself into creativity and, you know, the positive economics.
	But then there are also other things in life that you sort of need a little willpower to do, like going to the gym or something like that, you know.
	It's obviously healthy for you, but I know I certainly have parts of myself that are kind of like, uh, uh, gym, you know.
	And so it's, uh, what role do you think, you know, willpower I can play if there's any, you know, sort of principles that you think of, like, is this a situation for willpower, or is this a situation for gentleness and, you know, sort of negotiation with yourself, that type of thing. I really wish the guy sitting next to you who's named Will had answered that, because we're going directly to the source, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I've talked about this before, so I'll just sort of touch on it briefly here.
	Because you can't...
	I mean, going to the gym is a physical action, right?
	So you can will that, but you can't will creativity.
	You can't will love. And you can't will forgiveness or those sorts of things.
	So physical actions, right? Which is why, you know, the guy that doesn't stick a gun in your ribs and say, you know, think of an elephant.
	You know, because he asks you to do something.
	Give me the wallet. Some physical, tangible action.
	Because those can be coerced.
	You can force someone to live with you by chaining them to the table, but you can't force them to love you.
	This is an extreme example, but you can make yourself go to the gym because that's something you can actually do.
	Right? You can make yourself not pick up the cigarette.
	I mean, usually it's better to figure out why you're not going to the gym or what hesitations you have.
	But there are all times, I mean, there are all times where, like the other day, I was like, I was tired, you know, because it was just one of these, you know, I had a light sleep and then I had a bunch of work to do and then I was parenting and I was just tired and I was like...
	Ah, you know, Izzy's gone down.
	She'll be down for at least an hour and a half.
	So I could either have a nap or I could exercise.
	And, you know, the gravity well was not pulling me towards the gym.
	So, you know, and I said, I'm not going to fool myself.
	I'm not going to be like, well, I'm just going to lie down and listen to an audiobook for a few minutes just to relax.
	You know, you'd sort of cheat yourself.
	You know, I remember doing that in school.
	I'm reading a book that's kind of dull.
	It's like, let me just... Let me just shimmy back here a little bit.
	I'm not going to nap. I'm just going to put my head in a slightly more comfortable...
	So, yeah, there are times when you sort of make yourself do stuff.
	I mean, I don't want to go to the dentist.
	I mean, I still have my wisdom teeth, and I'm just paranoid about having to get them out, right?
	And so I don't want to go to the dentist, but I can make myself go to the dentist, right?
	So there's some stuff, you know, going to the gym is just one of these disciplined things, and You know, there are times when you're looking at an apple versus a, you know, a bag of chips and, you know, part of you says bag of chips and part of you says apple and, you know, but you can make stuff.
	But those are things that I think are just sort of maintenance stuff.
	You know, like I'd rather drive my car than take it in for an oil change, but I know that I have to take it in for an oil change.
	So you can make yourself do stuff that's sensible in the short run, but the stuff that is your life's calling, your life's passion, your love's, you know, that kind of stuff, your creativity, the electric stuff that really makes you feel fully alive, you can't will that, I don't think.
	You can will some of the practice that may help you achieve more excellence in that.
	And certainly, as everyone who's been interested has heard, I do a large number of practice speeches before I do any sort of public speaking.
	And those aren't particularly fun, and they're not particularly inspiring to listen to, because it's like, well, I'm going to do this point, and then I'm going to make this bad joke, and then this point.
	But it's just sort of getting that sort of map down.
	So you make yourself do that sort of stuff.
	But the larger life calling stuff, you can't will that.
	Yeah. Sure, yeah, I understand that.
	And then I guess to make it a little more specific, I was thinking of another situation that a lot of people have talked to me about and I've experienced.
	And it's a situation where I found, I guess you'd call it willpower to be helpful.
	And I guess this is something that is a physical action in reality, but the situation of...
	I need to journal or, you know, think about my life and my goals in order to, you know, become happier.
	But I don't want to journal, you know, like...
	And I'm not sure why. And I would kind of need to sort of journal about why I don't want to journal.
	And it seems like this, like, endless loop.
	And I've just... Sometimes I'm just like, you know what?
	I just... I just need to do it even though I don't really feel like doing it.
	And then usually that would help me get out of it.
	But that just feels a little bit different, I don't know, than going to the gym because that's about self-knowledge, if that makes sense.
	You can't force an ecosystem conversation.
	You can't force that kind of stuff.
	Because if you do, then you're not going to get anything useful.
	And that is...
	I would also just go back to my procrastination video.
	I was perfectly free to have an app or to go to the gym.
	So it wasn't like, I have to go to the gym.
	I can't nap. I have to go to the gym.
	Because then I'm not making a choice. I'm just giving myself an order.
	That's not being free.
	So you weigh the pros and cons and then you do what every married man does.
	And you say to your wife, what should I do?
	And she tells you. And you do it.
	Would you like to add anything to that?
	No? Okay. But no, actually, that is what I did.
	Because, you know, when you can't decide, you can ask someone and, you know, get feedback from them.
	And, you know, my wife said, go to the gym.
	Put down the muffin and go to the gym.
	And she was right. I went to the gym.
	I did the gym. I did a workout and I felt great.
	And I was happy that I did it.
	I had lots of energy in the afternoon.
	Because, you know, naps are a dice roll, right?
	Naps are like, I can go this way or I can go to the place.
	You know, you go this way, you have a nap.
	And you wake up, like, on that Friends episode, oh, that was the best nap ever, you know?
	Or it's just like, you basically turn into the half-brained electrocuted zombie who can't get up and drooling all over yourself and whatever, right?
	The nap didn't work!
	And not only am I tired now, but I won't be able to sleep tonight, you know, just that kind of stuff.
	I have to sort of weigh this stuff kind of carefully.
	Or if somebody said, I'm not going to nap, I'm just going to watch Hulu lying down.
	and I'm going to put on the most boring documentary that I can find in a foreign language.
	Look at that.
	88 users.
	I like that. Users. Sounds like it's a drug, you know.
	I used a little FDR chat today and I can't seem to focus my left eyeball.
	Is there a pretty low chance of getting a question answered here?
	Intelligently, yes. Question...
	Okay, we'll see.
	Yeah, type it in and we've got a little bit of space because nobody wants to talk.
	Somebody wrote, "I'm having a hard time connecting free will with the scientific method." What I would suggest is there are some European plugs.
	How can you mix science in the violation of causality?
	Well, again, I've talked about this before, and you can...
	No, no, sorry, somebody asked, just before we get there, are married men determinists?
	No, because her wives have free will.
	A free will but the scientific method.
	Well look, the scientific method does not say that there's no such thing as free will.
	Because that is a question.
	The scientific method is not about asserting arbitrary answers to questions.
	The scientific method is about observations and theories.
	And so the scientific method doesn't say there's no life in a carbon atom and therefore nothing composed of carbon atoms can have life.
	What it does is it says, Shit moves around.
	Whoa! Is it just me or did that hedgehog move, man?
	It's not even windy. What the fuck, man?
	Is it my glasses? I think I feel something spinning.
	Is that us? The scientific method doesn't say the sun goes up and the sun goes down and the sun and the moon are the same size.
	It doesn't say anything like that. It says time goes in, time goes out.
	You can't explain that. There's no miscommunication.
	It's because the Tide doesn't use Skype.
	Anyway. But yeah, if the Tide moved Skype, half of it would come in, the other half would be stalled.
	Maybe that's what Moses did.
	He just called the Red Sea on Skype and it got buffered and then he just ran through.
	Anyway, maybe we're going off track again.
	It's really hard to tell. Follow your bliss, even if it means going off a cliff in slow motion.
	The scientific method says shit moves around and reproduces and the other standard or criteria for life.
	And that's something that we have to take into account.
	And science would say that people have the subjective experience of free will.
	And the scientific method itself is based upon Free will and not causality, because the scientific method is recommended by its adherents as superior to revealed drug-addicted wisdom or whatever, right?
	So any scientist worth his salt would say, you can make up whatever crap you want about the universe, but if you don't subject it to the scientific method, it's just an opinion masquerading as a truth.
	The scientific method is infinitely preferable to whatever other stuff.
	And in medicine, the ultimate gold standard is the double-blind experiment where you have sugar pills and whatever other pills and nobody knows so that you can try and combat the placebo effect and so on.
	But teasing the truth out, which is what we want, is really, really tough.
	As we all know, those of us in hot pursuit of this hair that gets faster and faster it seems.
	And so the scientific method itself says that there is a universally preferable standard of determining truth about the physical world, which is the scientific method and not, you know, chicken entrails sprayed upon a wall because you threw a Bunch of birds into an airplane engine, right? That's not going to give you anything other than, ew, and some very, very fine pate.
	And so the scientific method itself says, this is preferable to this, and therefore we should choose or advocate for this.
	So the scientific method itself is embedded within the concept of free will, which is that we should choose, or we have the capacity to choose something that is better over something that is worse, which is why scientists educate people about the free will, and educate people about The scientific method and so on.
	Sorry go ahead. And the last step of the scientific method is adjust your theory so that it's more true.
	So you come up with an idea, compare it to the evidence, and then you adjust it, and that part would require the freedom to adjust the hypothesis.
	So it's also in that step.
	Right, the freedom to compare the better data, because you may just have better instrumentation, you may have finer calibrations, you may have, you know, whatever.
	Somebody may come up with some way of measuring something that you didn't know, and then, you know, if you're not a philosopher, you adjust your theories.
	Philosophers, we just Hang on like grim fucking death to our theories and we go to the grave with them.
	But if you're a scientist and have even an ounce of intellectual integrity, then you will adjust your...
	I understand. This is not particular for this conversation, but for other conversations.
	Let me just make a note of the time codes here.
	I'm going to edit this thing out. But...
	But yeah, so the scientist has to recognize that he himself is advocating free will through his application of science and pursuit of science versus some other method.
	And that doesn't prove that free will exists.
	It just means that the scientific method is not incompatible with free will, but is in fact rather essential to free will.
	And also that free will is an observable phenomenon.
	And that doesn't mean that it's true, of course, right?
	An observable phenomenon in humanity is religion.
	It just means that religion is something that people truly believe in, but it doesn't mean that it's true.
	So the scientist has to find some way of explaining the reality of free will that he himself is exercising in his pursuit of science and all that kind of stuff.
	So none of this proves free will beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I think it does show that the scientific method is not inherently opposed to it.
	Hello? Yeah, I was the one who posted the question about the scientific method and free will.
	But what it really boggles my mind is that if you can't link cause and effect, you can't figure out what in fact was the reason for something.
	Right. That is the point of free will, right?
	I mean, I'm not saying that proves free will, but that is the point of free will, that it is not like rocks rolling down a hill, but there is the capacity.
	I mean, I've defined free will for many years as...
	Shit, what was it again?
	It was really good. The capacity to compare our proposed actions to conceptual ideals.
	That doesn't mean that we will automatically conform our actions to our preferred ideals.
	But if I have an ideal called telling the truth, I can compare in a moment where I'm tempted to lie with that ideal.
	So we can come up with these ideals and we can compare our current choices to those ideals, our current actions to those ideals, and we can choose to conform or not conform.
	And that is a bit of a mystery.
	There may be some stuff that's going on down in the brain.
	I can certainly tell you that as I've sort of grown in self-knowledge and grown in wisdom, for want of a better word, I find myself less tempted to make bad decisions and less tempted to break with integrity and so on.
	So there is a certain amount of training that I think free will is not just some sort of mystical goblin that sits in your heart and is permanent.
	I think it's sort of like a muscle that you can exercise or not exercise that can get stronger or weaker.
	Again, I'm not saying this is a metaphor, it doesn't prove anything, but it is certainly true, I think, that in any rational conception of free will, it has to escape deterministic causality, without a doubt.
	There has to not just be, you know, we are atoms playing out, they're inevitable from the dawn of time.
	We all understand that Earth did not choose to be a planet, that that was just the way that the physics worked out, based on the way that the matter coalesced in a particular gravitational orbit around the Sun.
	But, That's not the case with human beings.
	If human beings do not escape causality, and I certainly don't have any ironclad argument to prove that they do, I don't.
	I do have sort of a self-detonating argument that anybody who tries to debate me into not believing in free will is violating at least my definition of free will.
	Oh, it's such a beautiful trap.
	No, I think that's reasonable.
	I don't actually have that much of a problem with your definition of free will, the ability to conceive of multiple potential futures, regardless of whether all those futures come to pass.
	Is that pretty accurate?
	Yeah, I think that's a bit consequentialist.
	What I would say is that we have standards of behavior that are ideal.
	I think everyone has that, right?
	I mean, everybody knows that there are ways of eating, let's say, that are better than other ways of eating, right?
	And that doesn't mean that we always follow them, right?
	So every now and then I'll just sit down and eat just a big bag of pure nutritional hell and love it.
	And I think that's okay, right?
	But I recognize that I'm doing it.
	That I'm deviating from an ideal standard.
	I used to eat a candy bar a day and now I've replaced it with two.
	I've replaced it with an apple or something like that because it's better for me.
	I'm older and I lost some weight.
	I want to keep it off. Who can predict from the outside what my choice is going to be?
	Complexity of prediction does not prove free will because the weather is very complex.
	Ideally, prediction would be as simple as possible.
	Yeah, I mean, and certainly if predictability were 100%, then that would be a pretty strong argument for determinism, for sure.
	So it's not so much about choosing multiple courses of action.
	I think that's probably related, but it really is just about comparing our choices to a higher standard, because that's something that computers don't do, and that's something that monkeys don't do, and it's something that dogs don't do.
	So you have to have some sort of conceptual ability, some sort of capacity to universalize Standards of behavior and the intelligence to compare your choices to a particular ideal.
	That to me is the closest description that I can come to what free will is in a definitional.
	Again, it's not a proof, but it's a definitional approach.
	What I was getting at with the computer statement earlier is that a computer can recalibrate itself based on what it's programmed to achieve.
	If it's programmed to achieve Sure.
	Sure, but it's not generating its own universal standards of behavior.
	Because the computer metaphor is challenging because it requires external input from a being that potentially has free will.
	Right, so people say, well, you can program a computer to do X, Y, and Z. Sorry, go ahead.
	Humans have a data being pushed in from the outside in the form of genetics.
	So I don't see how that is all that different.
	Well, tell me what you mean by equating genetics with data.
	I'm just not sure I quite follow that.
	Okay. Well, humans are...
	Constructed by the application of some genome, and computers are constructed by the application of some other information, generally in somebody's mind.
	I don't see how these two things are all that much different.
	How can one cause free will and the other not?
	Well, I mean, I'm trying to sort of wrap my head around your argument, which doesn't mean that it's wrong or bad.
	It just means I'm having trouble conceptualizing it.
	But the vast majority of my genes would have very little to do with my free will, right?
	So there's a genome that says five toes good, six toes not so much good.
	And so whether but whether I have five or six toes would not have an effect, fundamental effect on my capacity for free will.
	There is a genetic code that says, you know, have the lever enzymes do this and the spleen do whatever the hell the spleen does.
	And and have your wisdom be a source of glory for your whole life.
	And but none of those have any because we share all of that information with I mean, sorry, that process of genetic creation of life.
	We share with amoeba.
	And so an amoeba has input from this kind of data as you describe it, and yet we would not describe free will as a potential for an amoeba or a tapeworm or something like that.
	So I don't think that data, which we would share with all forms of life in the form of genetics and DNA, I don't think that data would be a good basis to put free will on because, as I said, there's very little that Would have an effect on it, and we do share it with all the other living organisms, which we don't accept as having free will.
	But I know that you've stated before that you think that the capacity for free will is in the brain.
	And the brain is based on genes that are very similar to a great deal of animals, although there are some differences.
	And I'm sorry, I don't get a chance to actually talk about this all No, listen, you're doing great, and I'm not skeptical or hostile to your perspectives.
	I think it's very interesting, and so I encourage you to continue, and I really appreciate what you're saying, and I hope you're enjoying it, because I certainly am.
	Okay. Well, it's...
	I don't like the consequence of determinism, like the idea that I don't have a choice in anything, but I don't see a way of reconciling free will With the ability to predict the future, the fact that I can throw a ball and I can know fairly accurately where to land.
	And so the ball is deterministic, and I was able to predict that.
	And to take that analogy to people, I'm able to predict the actions of other people to some degree.
	I guess there's some feedback.
	I agree with you.
	I intensely do not like the conclusions of determinists and determinism.
	I've stated that very sort of openly and people sort of get confused by that because then they think that that means I'm not open to reason.
	No, that's a statement of bias.
	It is a statement of bias and I put that out there to be intellectually honest.
	I understand and I agree with that.
	Right. Now, that doesn't mean, has no bearing whatsoever on the truth or falsehood of determinism, right?
	I mean, lots of people who love buddy Jesus don't like the idea of a godless universe, but that doesn't have no bearing on whether there is a God or not, or whether Jesus walked on water or, you know, was his...
	So, yeah, I mean, that is a statement of bias, and the reason I say that is so people understand the bias and understand that I'm going to fight hard for free will, right?
	And that doesn't mean the free will is right or determinism is wrong or anything like that.
	And can I be completely annoying for just a moment and ask my usual question about history?
	Sure. Where would you like to aim?
	Well, can you tell me what...
	Let's pretend that free will is a valid explanation, such as it is.
	Again, I'm not saying I've explained it.
	I've really only described it. But let's pretend that it's valid and, of course, is a muscle that is developed or inhibited from developing in childhood.
	Right? Like every other muscle, right?
	I mean, if you put a kid in an iron lung and don't let him move, his muscles and his bones are going to deteriorate.
	And in the same way, if free will is true and you don't give children the capacity to exercise choice and see the causality of effects and actions and all that, then it's going to be harder to accept free will because the muscle has been inhibited from developing or may have even atrophied So if this is true, again, I'm not saying it is true, but if it is true, then we would expect, if you have trouble with free will, that you may have had a history.
	And again, I just want to be clear to the people who are listening, this is not proof or disproof.
	This is just exploring possible effects upon the argument that, if not seen and recognized, will not allow us to, I think, to continue forward productively.
	Then, if sort of my approach is somewhat valid, then we would expect that you may have had a history of not having as much choice as the norm or the average when you were a kid.
	Would that be anywhere close to the truth?
	Yes. Okay, well perhaps you could just tell us, if you don't mind, just tell us a little bit about that so I can sort of get a framework of where you're coming from.
	The best place, I think, to start was probably my elementary schooling.
	I went to a religious school that used corporeal physical punishment, and it's hard for me to think about, I guess, at this point, but they didn't really push either the Deterministic, you know, the theological determinism or the theological free will argument.
	They just sort of just shut down any discussion similar to that.
	So I don't think I was swayed too much from the religious point of view, but there was, you know, throughout my schooling, I was definitely shut down from thinking.
	So yes, I agree that that probably had an effect, at least on my willingness to accept determinism.
	And at home? My parents weren't religious.
	They sent me to the religious school because they thought religion was good for morals, which I don't understand now, but that's what they did.
	I sort of feel an urge to circle back, like we just hit something in the car.
	That's what it was. If you could talk a bit more about that.
	My brain just got all oogely and pretzely, so if you can just help me understand that a bit.
	My parents didn't go to church and they never, to my knowledge, They thought that it was good to have children raised with morals.
	Both my parents were raised religious themselves, and I think that was their reasoning behind that.
	So if I understand this right, their argument would be something like, when children are more credulous about religion, you can lay in some good moral principles that will last a lifetime, even if you outgrow the religion afterwards.
	Yeah. If you tell children there's a ghost that will reward them if they're kind, they get the value of kindness, even if later on they don't believe in ghosts.
	Again, I don't mean to trivialize it, but is that sort of the approach?
	That is basically right on, to my knowledge.
	And look, I mean, sorry to interrupt, but I do feel some sympathy to your parents in this area.
	I guess what it comes into is they didn't believe that you could have secular ethics.
	Yeah, well, I mean, that's why I feel some real sympathy for them.
	I mean, parents who want to teach genuine, universal, absolute virtues to their children are not going to get that in a secular education.
	They're just not. And, you know, the kids' 10 million questions of why, which in many ways come down to why be good, I don't fault your parents for not having an answer to that.
	I fault a lot of cowardly-ass philosophers for not taking this topic on until their eyeballs bled, because that is just something philosophers have to do.
	They have to do. They have to work on ethics.
	They have to work on ethics. If you're not working on ethics as a philosopher, It is just so much gasbaggery that is going on.
	And I think that the betrayal of the general population by the philosophers who are entrusted with delineating and figuring out ethics in a secular way has been responsible for probably more deaths in history than any other single factor, the state and religion included.
	Because in the absence, you know, people always talk about the power vacuum.
	You know, if there's no government, DROs will become governments or whatever, right?
	But the real power vacuum is if you can't explain ethics to people in a way that makes sense, you invite in all these people who are going to, quote, explain ethics in a way that is exploited.
	The real power vacuum occurs in ethics and ethics alone.
	There is no other power vacuum.
	Every power vacuum relies on the vacuum of a lack of rational, philosophical, secular ethics.
	Sorry about my passion, but I really side with your parents on this one, insofar as you probably got more exposure to ethics in religion, through religious education, than you would have in any kind of secular education.
	Certainly, of course, my goal, such as it is, is to try and provide parents some other way to understand and explain ethics.
	I was just talking about this with the parents who came over this morning who have some kids who are getting definitely up into philosophical reasoning territory.
	And we were just talking about how their kids are like UPB machines.
	And, you know, they were talking about how effective it is to talk about these ways of approaching ethics, even with their young kids.
	And so, you know, sorry to get all passionate.
	I hope it's not a derail.
	But I can genuinely sympathize with and understand your parents' desire to give you virtue and their concern that they weren't going to get it in a secular environment.
	So I just really wanted to.
	I don't fault them for this.
	I mean, I can completely understand.
	I think that they're wrong now, but the mistake wasn't obvious.
	Also, this is actually something I would like to discuss more, but I don't know where to aim for myself.
	The only thing that seems natural was my early schooling.
	Is there any other places you would think that would help form an outlook toward the willingness to accept an internalized choice versus not?
	Well, I assume that since you listen to this show, or I assume if you listen to this show, that you may have more than a few skeptical bones in your body about the infinite sky ghosts of history.
	Oh yeah, no, I'm an atheist, so yeah.
	Right, and at what point in your life did this occur for you?
	Um... I can't remember a time when I was ever religious.
	I mean, from as old as I can remember, I would even...
	I'm sorry, you said, I can't remember a time when I was never religious.
	Oh, I'm sorry, I can't remember a time when I was religious.
	Too many negatives, I think I short-circuited.
	You meant you can't remember a time when you were religious, right?
	Okay, got it. As an example, I can't remember a time when I accepted Santa Claus, for instance.
	Even my earliest memories of Christmas, I would Hide behind the couch and watch I try to catch Santa Claus.
	Most of the time I would fall asleep before anything happened.
	He has that magic sleep spell.
	That was certainly what my understanding was, that he was a second level wizard and he'd rolled the right dice.
	Oh dear, did I show too much in my teenage years?
	Probably. Just look it up in the Fiend Folia or the DM manual.
	He also had the magic power to magic blankets onto me.
	You know, after I was asleep, so...
	Right. Well, I tell you that the Santa Clauses at boarding school came with only a fireball spell.
	They were just terrifying as shit, but we can get into that another time.
	It's like, light up the Christmas tree, punks, you've been bad.
	Anyway, so I would...
	So when you talk...
	Did you talk to your parents about your nonbelief?
	I don't talk to my parents anymore, so...
	And I didn't talk to them when I was still.
	Well, A, I'm sorry to hear that, but B, when you were a kid, did you talk to them about your non-belief?
	It never came up. Like I said, my parents weren't religious.
	Well, that was what technically is called a deflection.
	Did you hear that?
	Yeah, and the screen came back on.
	Sorry about that. No, no, don't apologize.
	I'm pointing it out, right?
	So I said, did you ever talk to them about it?
	And you said it never came up, like at some third party, someone's got to tie the topic on a brick and throw it through your front window or something, right?
	I never brought it up to my knowledge, or to my memory at least.
	You would remember that, I think.
	So, look, here's an example of...
	You know, this is not to bash on your parents.
	I'm just sort of going with the empirical evidence.
	Here's an example of where you did not have the choice to discuss a very important aspect of your thinking with your parents, right?
	Or you felt that you couldn't have the choice to do that.
	Yes, I did. And that's...
	So, you know, again, this is not proof or just proof.
	It's just that it's trying to understand the map of where we came from.
	And so if this is just one example, and obviously this was a very important example, your parents put you in a religious school to get values, you didn't believe in religion, which meant that they weren't achieving their goal, right?
	Because if they say, if you believe in God, you will get these great ethics, and it's okay if you later don't believe in God because you still get the ethics.
	Yes. Anti-moral.
	Not evil, you understand, but just amoral, right?
	Yeah, it is. I definitely swing that way, at least through high school.
	Swing that way. I think that sounds like the opening of a penthouse letter, you know?
	I'm bi-curious when it comes to amoralism.
	I never thought this would happen to me, but I went to the washroom in an airplane.
	Anyway... So, look, here's an example of how your parents' plan, so to speak, wasn't working.
	Because if they say, go to a religious school to get an education in morals, and you need to do that because there's no such thing as morals without religion, and you don't believe, then you have no morals, so to speak, right?
	I mean, you're like, well, okay, so if there's a superstition called morals that I don't believe in any more than I believe in Santa Claus, then this whole schooling is sort of pointless, right?
	In fact, it's counterproductive.
	Because you're being exposed to beliefs that you actively reject.
	Yeah, well, I really hated that school.
	There was at one point I just walked away from the school, just walked home in the middle of the school day, so...
	And how old were you when you did that?
	Fifth grade, so...
	You are, I'm going to tell you, you are a really, really smart fellow.
	And, you know, more balls than I probably will have an entire lifetime because I remember playing.
	I remember one day playing hockey.
	It didn't count so well because I did that pretty much constantly for about a week until they gave up and just put me into the public school, which was worse.
	Excellent. So there you exercised the choice and it sucked.
	Yes. What, I don't even get wafers here?
	This sucks! Anyway, am I going to pay for the wine?
	No. Really? Right, but look, in all seriousness, you were trying to exercise a choice there that you weren't able to discuss with your parents, right?
	Yes. That it really had to come down to sort of a Tiananmen Square standoff about, like, simple noncompliance, right?
	Yes, and that pretty much characterized the rest of my relationship with my parents, so...
	Right, right.
	So, I think we're still batting a thousand as far as people who have trouble with free will having a history of not being able to exercise choice as children.
	Is that...
	Yeah. And please understand, and I hate to keep repeating this, but it's really, really important to remember, we're not coming to philosophical conclusions here.
	No, and that's why I'm willing to speak about this.
	I'm more interested in being right, or being accurate than being right.
	Oh yeah, I completely agree too.
	And the reason, you know, because people do ask why, I sort of ask about childhood and so on, and I ask about childhood because I've been doing this for 25 years.
	And the number of impasses, and I think we all have experienced this, right?
	So you're having a conversation about some topic or other, and you just come up to this, you either go round and round, or you feel like you're in a fog, or you just can't make a connection, you can't make any progress.
	And that is the time when, and I wasn't experiencing that with you, so this is sort of my argument.
	Well, but this is my experience with the entire free will determinism debate, which is one reason I think I keep bringing it up.
	Right, and you're absolutely right to do so, but...
	Right, so if people who believe in determinism...
	And the science is very clear on this, at least as clear as science in this area can be, that for the vast majority of the population, ideology is a response to child abuse.
	Ideology is a response to brain trauma.
	Ideology is a scar tissue that forms around trauma that occurs that can't be processed at the time.
	And ideology is a way of explaining it away.
	So like a particular example is that People who are Republicans are more into the military and more into punitive law and order, like lock them up, three strikes and you're out, that kind of stuff.
	And they tend to come from physically abusive households and they tend to have detectably enlarged amygdala and fight or flight responses to stimuli compared to other people who favor more foreign policy based upon negotiation and less upon war.
	And So the ideology, the brain, obviously, the formation of the amygdala and the strengthening or weakening of the fight or flight mechanism occurs far, far before any kind of ideology is present in the brain.
	Ideology develops usually in the teenage years.
	And this sort of stuff occurs within the first two to three years of life, starting from before birth, right?
	So if the mother is stressed, that can have an effect on the fight or flight response of the baby before birth.
	And so given that the brain structure is in place before the ideology, we have a pretty clear cause and effect here.
	And I can completely understand how people who are debating about free will, and if they are religious, and they believe that if there is no free will, then they cannot be a god, then they're just going to deny determinism because it is difficult emotionally for them to accept determinism.
	And they're then going to come up with all these reasons.
	And then you're going to come up with all these counter-reasons.
	But because you're not talking about the actual thing itself, which is the trauma, you can't get to a rational conversation.
	You have to clear the trauma. You have to understand...
	I'm sorry, I'm giving you orders.
	I apologize. I don't mean you. We all have to understand the degree to which ideology is not philosophy.
	Ideology is the opposite of philosophy.
	Because ideology is an unconscious response to trauma, which is designed to obscure the truth of trauma.
	And that is the opposite.
	And ideology is so particularly dangerous because it is the illusion of an answer.
	And the illusion of an answer is the worst thing in the world.
	Because if you know you don't know, you'll keep looking.
	If you're striding through the woods...
	Sorry, go ahead. It's the whole reason why you'll never change somebody's opinion in a debate.
	Well, you certainly won't by dealing with it in the realm of ideological fencing.
	Because what you're doing is it's very often two peoples.
	If it continues for a long time, it definitely is two peoples.
	It's two people attempting to self-manage toxic anxiety and fear and anger through ideological fencing.
	It has nothing to do with the unbiased pursuit of truth at all costs.
	It is an emotional defense mechanism masquerading as an intellectual argument, which is, you're right, because then nobody's even talking about the fundamental truth, which is my ideology is driven by my early childhood experiences.
	I mean, it's a weird thing to bring up and people get confused, but You know, I just try and follow where the science takes me, you know, as best I can.
	And the science is as clear as it can be, and certainly clear.
	And it explains so much that it is something that absolutely needs to be understood.
	Sorry, I just want to make sure that...
	Sorry, I just heard one of those deadly Skype boing.
	It basically means, bye-bye.
	And then I have to look for that curse word in the Skype call response, you know, that little thing.
	How did your call go? And it's like, how come there's no real curse words here?
	So, yeah.
	And so, if for you, you have...
	If for you, the concept of free will is painful because you weren't allowed to experience even the illusion of it as a kid.
	Maybe free will is an illusion that we all need to grow out, but it's a necessary illusion.
	I don't think that's quite accurate.
	Because I do accept that it feels like I have a choice inside the system.
	But I can't connect the...
	I'm more willing to...
	I think I might be dodging back to the intellectual arguments.
	I apologize. No, no problem.
	If you didn't, we wouldn't have this conversation at any point.
	Yeah. Let's just take, for example, let's say that free will is completely false, but it's a necessary illusion for children.
	And there are necessary illusions for children.
	Absolutely, completely, and totally.
	For instance, I don't show my daughter pictures of the Holocaust.
	She's two. I don't show my daughter open-heart surgery.
	I don't tell my daughter she's going to die and show her a little coffin.
	These things are all true.
	But it's not appropriate to her age.
	So even if we say that free will is an illusion that is necessary for children, then not being allowed to exercise it is still traumatic.
	It's as traumatic, let's say, as showing your kids' movies of the Holocaust when they're five.
	Even then you can say, well, it's true, and they need to know.
	This is the reality of how the world can be.
	It's still enormously and wildly inappropriate to do that.
	So maybe even if we say that it's still not true, There's still a trauma that is associated with not being allowed to believe in the illusion of free will as a kid.
	And that's something that needs to be worked through before a rational and truly objective conversation can be had about free will.
	I don't believe that it's an illusion, but even if we say that it is, it still would be traumatic to not be allowed to exercise it as a kid, I think.
	Yes. Even from my current point of view, Being able to conceive of the future is an important reason why you have such a big brain.
	There's no reason to have such a large energetic brain if you're not going to be using a lot of computation and a lot of memory.
	And I assume that you just mean me personally, right?
	Not the human race as a whole or anything like that.
	No, sorry. Just kidding. We all.
	I'm going to put the microphone right against my forehead.
	Give me a kiss, brother. It's not any more sensible when you're here.
	Sorry, go ahead. It feels like I have a choice, and yet it also, I look at my past, and my past isn't entirely deterministic.
	And I can't...
	Sorry, you said your past is entirely deterministic?
	Yeah, because you can't change the past.
	It's now fixed. You have an order of cause and effect through the entire past.
	It's just not clear that that It continues into the future, where it seems like I can conceive of multiple futures.
	Right, and you certainly did as a kid, conceive of a multiple future called, I don't want to be in this religious school.
	And you acted upon that choice against significant opposition, obviously, right?
	Yes. I just got to tell you again, that's amazingly courageous.
	More courage than I ever had as a kid.
	It had more to do with anger than courage at the time.
	I don't believe that the two are at all unrelated.
	So anger is a very healthy thing to help with courage.
	So anyway, I just look, I mean, I'm just pointing out the praise.
	I mean, I don't want to diminish it by explaining it away with anger because lots of people get angry and don't act on it.
	So yeah, so look, I just sort of jump back to where we started.
	I think that there are many valid good and productive reasons to keeping the question of free will open.
	I certainly haven't closed it, and I would never make that claim.
	I think I have a good defense of it, but free will will eventually be a scientific question.
	It fundamentally is not a philosophical question.
	I mean, I think there's good philosophical arguments for it.
	And I'm very keen on the self-detonating arguments because I'm the laziest debater on the planet.
	And so I don't want to go in and fence, you know, like have a sword fight because that's hard work.
	And if you've ever seen The Princess Bride, you know that that's like seriously sweaty labor to have those kinds of sword fights.
	What I want to do is for somebody to pull their sword out of their scabbard, knock themselves in the head, And then I just go pick their pockets.
	That's what I really, really want.
	I don't like that kind of combat.
	Your sports is almost as big as mine.
	Yes, that is. You should see the movie if you haven't seen Spaceballs, right?
	Is that Spaceballs? Yes.
	Again, revealing too much about my teenage years.
	D&D and Spaceballs. Anyway.
	So I'm very much into self-detonating arguments and that's what I focus on.
	I don't believe that there's a way to argue someone into a better state of mind saying there's no such thing as a better state of mind.
	And that's where I think that the pro-determinist argument stalls.
	If the pro-determinist argument stalls, there's room for free will.
	But eventually it's going to be decided according to science.
	And I don't think it'll be in our lifetime because obviously it's pretty deep in the brain and it's some pretty seriously whacked out stuff.
	We obviously understand that atoms don't have free will.
	Cells don't have free will.
	Some people who have brain injuries clearly don't have much free will, or none at all if the brain injuries are severe enough, as think of Terry Schaever or whatever.
	But somehow we get this property which seems like magic, and according to everything else we know about the universe, is a kind of magic.
	Philosophy can defend it, you can't attack it without using it, and science will eventually find it.
	I mean, that's my prediction and opinion.
	Yeah, I completely agree with that.
	Yeah, and until science finds it, and since I genuinely believe that science will find it, it's like the question of intelligent life in the universe.
	We have no proof, but absolutely and for sure, you know, there's Jabba Huts out there eyeing us with, you know, pitchforks and marinade.
	Like, there's no question that.
	I think I just read an article about the degree of habitable planets that have been discovered.
	They just found 58.
	Like in the last month or two, floating around some stars.
	They can find these amazing...
	I mean, just, you know, science geek for a sec, right?
	They've got these telescopes that are up there.
	Thank heavens for the state. They've got these telescopes that are up there.
	No, I'll pay for this shit.
	I will pay for space aliens, without a doubt.
	Because, you know, space aliens are going to have the best goodies.
	Because they're only going to visit us if they're capitalists.
	Because if they're statists, they never get off the planet, right?
	Or they get to the moon and back and piss away a bunch of money and zero-g experiments that go nowhere in space shuttles.
	So space aliens are going to come and they're going to have the most amazing goods because only capitalists will make it as far.
	Only traders will get there, not statists.
	And so, yeah, they've just found based on really, really tiny fluctuations in starlight, they can not only tell if there are planets going around foreign solar systems or alien solar systems, But also where their orbit is as well.
	And their size! And their size!
	And they have found 58 Earth-sized planets in orbits compatible with...
	Not exactly Earth-sized.
	They're not gas giants, though.
	Not exactly Earth-size.
	That's true. I don't think they take into account the red room, because that doesn't have any effect.
	No, you're right. Sorry, they're not gas giants, but they are...
	So they pass the first standard, and the second standard is in that they're in an orbit that is compatible with water freezing and water being warm, and that sort of band, that sort of 2% band or whatever around a solar system that you could have live.
	At 58, so we know it's out there, and science will eventually find them.
	You can't say for sure, but, you know, of course.
	I mean, just based on statistics. Now, of course, free will isn't exactly the same as statistics.
	Because statistics is evil and free will is good.
	But to me eventually it's going to be a scientific question because the pro-determinist position can't be logically sustained and I love the free will position because I get to be morally self-righteous and condemn people.
	Sorry, because I get to pursue virtue and excellence in my own life.
	Erase, erase, erase!
	If I may ask, where would you Where should I look in my own experiences to understand my own positions and my own conclusions more, would you think?
	Well, I mean, this is why philosophy without therapy is, to me, not a very productive approach.
	Because you don't know if you're dealing with a genuine passion for knowledge and the desire to defend something because it's true and you're passionate about it, or whether you're dealing with scar tissue that you're not aware of because a thorough examination of your history hasn't occurred.
	I don't think that self-growth is impossible without therapy in the same way that you could probably train by yourself in your basement and maybe one in a billion people could get to the Olympics that way, but nobody does.
	People say, I want to go to the Olympics.
	What's the first thing they say? I need a coach.
	To achieve excellence requires that you get a coach.
	So people can do it on their own and of course if you just start working out in your basement, you'll probably get healthier.
	Talk to your doctor of course, right?
	But you'll probably get healthier. Maybe you'll pull a couple of muscles, maybe you'll do a whole bunch of trial and error that's uselessly painful or whatever, but you probably will get better or whatever, right?
	You can change your diet without taking blood and figuring out your cholesterol and talking to a dietician and, you know, whatever, right?
	But it's, you know, why?
	I mean, we don't need you.
	You can build your own car out of, I don't know, thumbnails and headphones and chopsticks if you want, but why?
	You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
	So I think that to reach wisdom in the world, we have to overcome our own biases, which is almost exclusively associated with childhood traumas to do with the family or to do with religion or to do with education for the most part, if not all.
	And if we can understand and map our own internal biases, then we can be very honest with ourselves about why we feel particular drives towards particular topics, why we feel anxiety around other particular topics.
	And we can be honest about that, own up to the anxieties within ourselves and in our conversations.
	You know, I think that...
	Debates, I mean, I've done sort of debates on this show and in person, you know, I really enjoyed the one with Michael Badnarik at Drexel University last year?
	2009. Yeah, summer of 2009.
	And I've got some other debates coming up.
	And I think those are fine because those are sort of show debates.
	But I think when you're debating with a friend, when you're debating with a family member, when you're having conversations about that, The vast majority of the conversation is preparing for the conversation.
	So the vast majority of the conversation is, I feel wedded to this position because I feel that this position is wrong emotionally, and I have the emotions first and then I have the arguments.
	So if we don't understand the emotional attachment we have to our perspectives, the arguments won't make a dent.
	And this causes huge amounts of problems and frustrations and severance relationships over ideology.
	Because ideology is a hugely powerful chainsaw in the bonds between human beings Absolutely.
	Let me just finish the point and then I'll turn it over to you and then over to you.
	Okay. The ideology, if you don't address the underlying emotions that are driving the ideology, you will argue ideology to the point of exhaustion and quite possibly separation with people.
	If you can address the emotions that are underlying the ideology, you can become brothers and sisters and in-betweeners in the way and path to truth.
	But if you battle with ideology without acknowledging and expressing and being vulnerable with the underlying emotions that drive ideology, you will never get to philosophy.
	So for me, the vast majority of a truly positive philosophical conversation is the self-knowledge and the emotional vulnerability and honesty to say, as I've said, and God help me, I'm certainly not perfect in this, but I certainly try to focus on it, to say, I'm really, really, really attached to this position.
	I hugely am invested in it because I like to feel that I'm in love, not that I'm just being driven by inevitable chemicals.
	I like to be proud of my daughter and not just feel that she's, you know, she's growing like a rock would fall down a cliff, you know, that she's doing great things.
	And I have preached my whole life for free will.
	And if I'm wrong, I have a lot of back treading to do and a lot of apologizing to do, which I'm perfectly happy to do.
	If science proves that I'm wrong, then I'll be the first person, maybe the second, because other people are younger and faster online to apologize and retract and But the fortunate thing is I actually won't have to apologize and retract if determinism is true, because if I don't, it was predetermined that I didn't.
	But anyway, if I put out things that are false, I certainly will retract.
	But my urge, just constantly, constantly, constantly, everybody wants to dive in at the deep end called philosophy.
	But you have to earn that with people.
	You have to generate that.
	Intimacy with people to the point where you can know that you're actually talking about the ideas and not the emotional defenses.
	And that is, you know, my constant, you know, this is why therapy is so important.
	It is a good therapist is the coach that gets you to the Olympics of actually talking about the ideas themselves.
	You know, like getting out of Plato's cave, getting out into the light, away from the shadows and the flickering on the wall and the constant fencing of inconsequential facts, statistics, details and nonsense.
	And actually talking about the thing itself, life itself, the truth itself, reason and evidence in the world through a clear-eyed view.
	Most people are driving at high speeds with two really wild kaleidoscopes taped to their eyeballs in a snowstorm.
	And they're just like, I don't know why I keep crashing.
	Something's wrong with the car.
	And it's like you don't even know that you can't see.
	I can totally relate to that.
	My love is physics and I work in mathematics and it's just remarkable when you see a problem that you thought you knew and it clicks and you just realize that you were using this entire time without a clue about what you were doing.
	I can totally relate to that feeling.
	Yeah, so I hope that...
	I mean, certainly if you're not talking to parents, my strong suggestion is always, always, always therapy.
	If you're in college and you certainly sound fresh-faced enough that you are, you can probably get free counseling.
	You know, I just...
	It's a broken record here, but I'm going to urge it to everyone once again.
	You owe it to yourself and to your future happiness.
	The amount of my life that I wasted...
	Prior to going into therapy is an embarrassment.
	Because I, of all people, should have known better.
	And, you know, it's one thing, if I could go back and live my life differently, I would have gone to therapy 15 years before I did.
	Nobody ever told me about it and it wasn't something that was ever part of my conversation with people and I didn't know anything about it.
	But I have very few regrets in my life.
	And that's not even really a regret because it wasn't like I had that fork in the road and chose one over the other.
	But I wish I had gone much sooner.
	I would have had far fewer bad habits to undo.
	I would have had far less adult challenges and traumas and difficulties left to undo.
	So, you know...
	As they say in sinister circles, the younger the better.
	I think that I just hugely strongly encourage it.
	And a lot of the people here have gone through it or are going through it.
	All right. Well, thank you so much to everyone once more.
	If you'd like to help donate to support the spread of, I think, the best philosophy around, you can go to freedomainradio.com forward slash Donate and you can sign up for it.
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	Absolutely, completely and totally take care of your own needs before giving money to people on the internet without a doubt.
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	It's perfectly acceptable. But if you can let me know, that's great.
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	It is always a thrill, and it makes me happy.
	Not that you should particularly care about my happiness as somebody on the net, but it is a thrill and a positive vindication, in a sense, of what it is that I'm doing.
	thank you thank you so much to the people who write in to tell me how much philosophy is improving their lives and of course to the people who tell me how much philosophy is at least temporarily ruining their lives that is something that is unfortunately where things are in particular as always
	thank you so much to the parents who are writing in to tell me that they are using non-aggressive techniques and approaches in raising their children and the degree to which that is called is causing a renaissance and a flourishing of um of happiness and love and joy in their family lives.
	That is what it's all about and makes it all worthwhile.
	So thank you everybody so much for making this possible and have yourselves a completely wonderful week and I will talk to you soon.
	I have a quick announcement for people who are considering going to the barbecue.
	I got a sweet deal for the rates.
	As long as two people occupy a sweet, it's just a little over $40 Canadian.
	So if you are interested in that, per night that is, not the entire stack.
	So if you're interested in that, just go onto the board.
	We don't have a URL for it yet, but we'll get one.
	Sign up on the group thread.
	Send me an email. Send me whatever you want to do to get in touch with me so I can have your name on the list.
	I'm going to sign a contract beginning next week, next couple of days, for 13 suites, which is $26,000.
	The beds are double-sized, so you may not be able to share the bed, or you may be able to share the bed, depending on your roommate.

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