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Feb. 4, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

19:18

2901 There Are No Solutions

Stefan Molyneux explains why there are no solutions. Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.fdrurl.com/donate

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	Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom in Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	I'd like to talk to you about a principle.
	It's not fundamentally moral, but it is one of these things that is kind of essential to happiness.
	And the principle is this.
	There are no solutions.
	There are only costs and benefits.
	I'll say that again.
	There are no solutions.
	There are only costs and benefits.
	And one of the goals of trying to make people more intelligent, which is really foundational to this conversation, I think that intelligence can be vastly enhanced with reference to principles.
	It's not like scientists are just innately geniuses compared to medieval scientists.
	They just have the scientific method.
	And once you get principles, the degree to which your intelligence finds purchase in the achievement of tangible good in the world becomes pretty much infinite compared to before.
	I mean, imagine, to me at least, most people in trying to live life are like people driving around some really complicated city that didn't grow up in a grid like London, England.
	They're driving around and just waiting to find a...
	like they're looking for, I don't know...
	Where did I grow up?
	Priory Crescent was where I grew up.
	I'm going to just get into a car in London and drive around until I find Priory Crescent.
	And that's sort of living without principles.
	I mean, you may eventually get there, but it's going to be accidental and you probably can't reproduce it for yourself or anyone else.
	Having principles is like having a GPS. You punch in, 12 Priory Crescent, where I grew up in England, On Hermitage Road.
	And you're there.
	In database terms, there's a way of searching through a data table, which is like a big spreadsheet-style set of data.
	It's called a table scan.
	If you've got a million records and you're looking at a million people in your database...
	And you're looking for Smith.
	You start at...
	And end up at...
	And you just basically say, is this Smith?
	Is this Smith?
	Is this Smith for each record?
	And that's brutally slow.
	And very CPU intensive.
	Now, if you're a good database programmer or designer, then you create what are called indices.
	Now, an index...
	It's a way of cataloging the information in a database so that you say, well, at least the S's start here.
	So it's a way of having an index.
	A table scan is sort of like going to the library looking for a book by simply going up and down all of the aisles.
	Whereas indexes in a database are the equivalent of the catalog.
	Oh, this is probably lost on the younger people.
	There's something called a library, which does not involve a screen.
	There used to be these card indexes.
	You'd have these big bureaus or shelves.
	Actually, they were pull drawers, long pull drawers.
	And you'd go through that, and it would tell you the number, and you'd use the number to find.
	It's more efficient.
	You use the number to find the book in the Dewey Decimal System.
	So, principles are like indices.
	You get to what you want that much more quickly.
	Now, the solution that is often expected or demanded or anticipated in society, hoped for and promised by heavens, particularly by politicians, the solution is, we're going to end poverty, right?
	Poverty will be solved.
	We're going to end illiteracy.
	Illiteracy will be solved.
	We're going to end child hunger.
	Child hunger will end world hunger.
	Right?
	Solved.
	And these almost invariably turn out to be a lie.
	I've always said in philosophy, the goal is the methodology, not the conclusion.
	And in this principle, there are no solutions, only costs and benefits, is really important because...
	The cost and benefits is the process, and the solution is the, quote, conclusion.
	End poverty.
	That's the conclusion.
	It's done.
	It's ended.
	It's over.
	Finished.
	Caput.
	Finito.
	Big fat goose egg bagel.
	Zero zilchness of poverty left.
	It's the solution, right?
	But there is no solution.
	There are only costs and benefits.
	So, think of this in terms of your life.
	Most of us would like to have more money.
	In your life, you'd like more money.
	And if you want more money, in general, you have to work harder.
	You have to spend more time at work.
	Now, unless you love your job, then that's somewhat of a negative.
	And certainly, after a certain amount of time, you know, I remember staying up two nights straight to finish the system once, and I was pretty much babbling incoherently.
	By the end of it, you could try and get by on four hours sleep a night and work the remaining 20 hours during the day and that might make you more money, but that's just a cost and a benefit.
	So you have the benefit of more money and you have the cost of exhaustion.
	And even if you say, well, I'm going to sleep eight hours and work 16 hours, then you have the benefit of more money and you have the cost of no social life, no hobbies, no fun, you know, and all that.
	So what is the solution?
	To how much money you want.
	What is the solution to how much money you want?
	There is no solution.
	There are only costs and benefits.
	There is no solution to the problem of how much money you want.
	There are costs and there are benefits.
	Think about dating.
	So there may be a girl who's not physically attractive but is a really great person.
	And if you date, become the boyfriend off, get engaged to, get married to this person, then among certain shallow people that will be viewed as a lower status choice.
	It all sort of amazed me.
	Welcome to the TMZ edition of FDR. And that is...
	Occasionally I think about this.
	I'm not saying I obsess about it.
	But the skinny chanteuse known as Celine Dion.
	Oh yeah, you gotta hear her hit that note in...
	Anymore!
	Right, the...
	All by myself.
	Amazing.
	Anyway.
	She married her manager who...
	Basically looks like a bold and boiled Jabba the Hutt, and is much older than her, and so on.
	And she loves him, and she's with him, and so on.
	Now, I was thinking, because she's in these videos with these ultra-hotties, you know, like these stone-faced, chiseled guys, like the man in Taylor Swift's Blank Space.
	As my daughter points out, he never smiles.
	That's right.
	He's cool.
	Cool and smile.
	Yeah.
	Cool and spontaneity and joy are antonyms.
	And so I was thinking, like, so she's around these gorgeous guys doing her videos and then she marries.
	Renee, something or other, her manager and so on.
	And I just think it's interesting.
	She's happy with him and good for her.
	It is a wise decision if he's a virtuous guy.
	But after listening to Queen's Death on Two Legs, management, music management plus virtue, also hearing Prince tattooing the word slave on his forehead and George Michael refusing to cut an album for 20 years.
	I'm not sure that music management and significant virtue always go hand in hand.
	But anyway.
	So if you want to, like if the woman who's a really great woman is not that physically attractive, then among certain people there will be a cost to dating her.
	Like, you could do so much better kind of thing, right?
	I was being folksy, says George.
	And that's a very interesting question.
	Whereas you could go for the high status hottie where everyone looks at you and envies you.
	I remember dating a woman who was so physically attractive that after my boss met her, he's like, wow, I guess people think you're her bodyguard.
	Which is quite delightful.
	And so you can go for the high-status hottie that everyone envies you for being with.
	But if she's not a good person, again, these are just costs and benefits.
	What's the solution for who you should marry?
	There are costs.
	Or who you should date.
	Marry, I think you've got a bit more of a slant, especially if you want kids and happiness, let's say.
	Then go for a good woman rather than a hot woman.
	Not that the two are always exclusive, but according to How I Met Your Mother, there is the hot-crazy continuum.
	So, what is the solution as to who you should date?
	Or, another example is, most people...
	Like, if you want to know how attractive you are, in general, look to your partner.
	That's how attractive you are physically.
	Because tens, date tens, nines, date nines, blah-de-blah.
	And you might be able to change it a little bit, but in general, not a huge amount.
	Among the unenlightened, right?
	Among us is virtue, virtue, virtue, but...
	You know, our porn is pop-up, UBB. And so the solution as to who you should date is, you know, again, talking about the masters, the muggles, the solution to who you should date is, well, I'm going to try and get the most attractive person I can get, but not so attractive that they won't date me, right?
	So what's the solution?
	Well, costs and benefits.
	You can go for the most attractive people, You know, if you're a 7, you can go for the 10s, but, you know, if you're a woman, the alpha might sleep with you, but it's not going to probably date you.
	So you can go for that, and, you know, there's a small chance you might get someone significantly more attractive than yourself, and, you know, if you're the Spengali to the Quebecois Chanteuse, but it's a risk, right?
	You might end up alone, you know, where what you've been looking for your whole life is right under your nose the whole time!
	Rom-com 101.
	All beautiful women become homely when you put them in glasses.
	And superheroes become incomprehensibly different when you put glasses on them.
	So, costs and benefits.
	What is the solution as to who you should date?
	Well, there's costs and benefits.
	Your job.
	You know, everybody wants more money, but with more money comes usually more work, more responsibility, more stress, and so on, right?
	Should you aim for a job that pays you the maximum amount, but which you're barely competent to do, that's going to be pretty damn stressful.
	It might blow up, right?
	You might get a short amount of money, but end up really blowing up in your face and ending up with no references and demoralized and so on, right?
	Or if you go for a job that's too easy, you're going to get bored.
	Like all people in the public eye, I assume.
	All people in the public eye.
	Everyone has this sort of occasional fantasy of like, I'm going to go open up a Scuba shop and a dive shop in the Seychelles and leave it all behind.
	But I mean, I'd go mental.
	You breathe in here and then you breathe out.
	Don't rise faster than your bubbles.
	Oh yeah, I'm certified.
	So, what's the solution as to how difficult your job should be?
	Costs and benefits.
	What's the solution as to how ambitious you should be?
	Costs and benefits.
	What's the solution as to how much you should save and how much you should spend?
	Costs and benefits.
	Now, of course, at the extreme, you know, should you go into unrecoverable debt?
	Well, that's probably not going to make your life particularly happy, but And borrowing money you can't pay back is theft and immoral.
	And again, I'm not talking about fundamental moral issues, right?
	Like, should you rape?
	Absolutely immoral.
	But so, in sort of the non-moral realm, there are only costs and benefits.
	There are no solutions.
	It's balance, right?
	What is the solution to the balance of predator and prey in an ecosystem?
	Well, there is no solution.
	It's...
	A balance.
	And it changes.
	Weather conditions, birth rates, and so on.
	New predators come in.
	Extinction, I mean, it changes.
	Meteors, comets, dinosaurs take up smoking.
	Ah, you've seen the cartoon.
	So, what is the solution in nature?
	There's no solution.
	There's evolution and there's balance.
	And the balance is never sustained.
	The balance is achieved but never sustained.
	How much money should you spend on research and development versus marketing?
	Versus sales, versus administration, versus whatever, right?
	There are costs and there are benefits.
	There is no solution.
	Now, we are often offered solutions, but those solutions are generally recast in the guise of morality.
	So what is the solution for poverty?
	Well, the solution for poverty is opportunity, because there's nothing wrong with poverty.
	I understand by poverty, I don't mean someone starving to death.
	That's not what poverty means.
	If you look at the stats for what people who are classified as living under poverty in the United States, they've got a car, they've got a house, they've got a color TV, they've got internet, they've got cell phones, microwaves.
	In other words, they're living beyond the means of the richest person 20 years ago in many ways.
	So, the solutions, when something is offered as a solution, it's generally recast in a moral light.
	So, the solution for someone attacking you, if you have a weapon, or you are a weapon, is to use proportional violence, whatever, the minimal necessary violence to protect yourself.
	That's a solution, and that does solve the problem of being attacked, is you shoot a guy, and he's not going to attack you anymore because he's too busy not being without holes.
	So, you know, a woman who's about to get raped, yes, stab the guy.
	If that's the only thing you can do, a man who's about to get raped, yes, stab her.
	Stab her if that's all you can do, right?
	And these situations, there are solutions in moral terms, for sure.
	There's not a sort of cost-benefit.
	I mean, I guess there are.
	You could submit to being murdered rather than defend yourself and so on, but there are kind of black and white solutions to moral issues, which is why when someone is offering you a solution, they generally try to recast it It's a moral issue, right?
	In other words, poverty is bad.
	People are being victimized by evil capitalists.
	They don't have any chance.
	They don't have any opportunity.
	They're suffering from racism and sexism and transgender homophobia and a fear of comets.
	And then it's called a war on, a war on poverty, war on illiteracy, and so on.
	It's recast as a war because war is, well, there's a solution, right?
	As George C. Scott in Patton says, War!
	Your job is not to die for your country.
	The job is to make the mother poor bastard die for his country.
	Rommel, I read your book!
	So, I think that when things that are cost-benefit are reframed as moral issues, that's when you can be sold a solution.
	And so, you know, Obama just talking about free community college for everyone, well, that's considered to be a solution.
	And as you'll note, when people talk about solutions, they don't talk about costs and benefits.
	Well, the cost is this, the benefit is this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Opportunity costs in particular are not talked about.
	I mean, Obama says...
	It'll cost $60 billion over 10 years, which is obviously completely false.
	But he's not saying, and here's what we're going to cut to pay for it.
	It's just, we're going to magically create $60 billion, which is basically not talking about costs.
	We can print money is not talking realistically about costs.
	It's like me saying to a financial manager, well, my solution to my consumer debt is to apply for another visa infinite that I'll never have to pay off.
	Well, that's not really, you know, magic money is not how to solve your problem.
	So he's not talking about costs in any practical sense, right?
	Because he's not saying, well, and we'll cut the budget to this by this and all that.
	And if you think about it, the cost-benefit, like, is it right for you to, I did a call with a guy last night, he's, like, trying to figure out whether he wants to stay in his corporate job or be an entrepreneur.
	What's the solution?
	Well, there is no solution, because there are costs and benefits to both decisions.
	Now, the fact that there are costs and benefits doesn't mean that there's no better choice.
	But there's no solution.
	Because solution is kind of universal, right?
	What is it?
	An old joke?
	It's not just in the periodic table of elements.
	Oh, and chemistry.
	I love chemistry because the only place for alcohol is the solution.
	But it doesn't mean that there's no better or worse answers, but there's no universal answers.
	Should people be entrepreneurs or should they work universally in corporate jobs?
	There's no answer to that.
	That cannot be answered.
	It's like saying, should people save or should they spend?
	There's no answer to that.
	It depends upon personal circumstances, personal preferences, where you are in the arc of your life, whether you're suffering from some terminal illness, you name it.
	There's so many complications that can arise.
	Now, nobody should rape.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Nobody should murder.
	Nobody should steal.
	Nobody should assault.
	Yeah, that's universal.
	100%, baby.
	But...
	Outside of these moral choices and issues, which very few of us have any connection.
	I'm never like, hey, I could buy this candy bar or I could steal it.
	Hmm, what should I do?
	I don't really think about these kinds of things.
	The fundamental moral choices don't usually occur to people very often.
	They do, but not nearly as much as the costs and benefits of the millions of decisions and allocations, right?
	Playing video games is good.
	Playing video games is bad.
	I don't know.
	Costs and benefits, right?
	There's benefits to playing video games and there are costs to playing video games.
	The average American child plays 13 hours of video games a week.
	Well, that's quite a lot, frankly.
	And, you know, take that time and apply it to learning guitar.
	You're a pretty great guitarist in, like, six months.
	Costs and benefits.
	But learning a guitar is less fun than playing a video game, which is why we have more video game players than guitarists.
	So, I just really wanted you to mull over this aspect of...
	There's no solution.
	And this is what is both enjoyable and annoying to people about this conversation, is I don't tell people what to do.
	I might say, well, this is what I might do, or here's things to think about, or here's some principles, but I don't tell people what to do, with one exception in the show.
	But...
	This is what is both inviting and annoying for people because a lot of people just want solutions because the responsibility that comes from weighing costs and benefits is uncomfortable for some people.
	So I hope that you'll mull this over.
	I think it's a really, really important thing to talk about.
	And like all really important things, I have waited until now to bring it up.
	So yeah, I hope you have a great day.
	Costs and benefits.
	Help us benefit from the cost of doing these shows by going to freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Have yourself a wonderful day.

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