April 13, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:16:27
2949 Criticism: The Truth About Sex - Call In Show - April 11th, 2015
If you like rant-filled shows, then this is the show for you! | Given what we perceive to be a respectable track record for choosing compelling source material for "The Truth About" series video posts, this latest edition on "Sex" seems to have missed the mark for us after a casual listen and became grossly misleading after a more invested listen. Since when does a report generated by a DC based conservative think tank, with a mission to formulate and promote conservative public policies in the United States, constitute a valid body of knowledge to anchor such a definitive video title and 45 minute pontification on a topic as wildly divergent from culture to culture around the world and often even more diverse within the same local geography in modern urban environments? | What are your thoughts on the research out of social psychology on persuasion, influence, compliance, and its application to marketing and sales? These customers aren't being FORCED into buying anything, but their decisions can become convoluted using information about their own neurological functions; functions they may not even be aware of. Is this moral? Is this ethical? Do you think this behavior would be encouraged, or discouraged, in a free market? | Do you recommend any particular methodology for cultivating, nurturing protecting and sustaining relationships? Are people committed to self-knowledge and self-respect left to high turnover in relationships?
But that's the shortest intro you've ever done, Steph.
How about that?
All right.
Well, it was short until you commented on how short it was.
I see.
Now I'll have to do it again, but shorter.
There we go.
All right.
What versus Eric and Dina today?
They wrote in and said, Since when does a report generated by a D.C.-based conservative think tank with a mission to formulate and promote conservative public policies in the United States constitute a valid body of knowledge to anchor
such a definitive video title in 45-minute pontification on a subject that is widely divergent from culture to culture around the world and often even more diverse within the same local geography in modern urban environments?
And it was Dina and who?
And Eric.
Eric.
Well, you know when people start using the words pontification that they're bothered by something.
So, hey guys, how you doing?
Hello.
Good morning or evening.
Good, good evening.
Is it both of you or just you, Eric?
It's both of us.
Oh, hey, how you guys doing?
Good.
Good.
Well, thanks for calling in.
I appreciate the pushback and certainly if we have used erroneous data, we'll obviously put out a correction and this, that and the other.
But I'm not sure why you said that we use data from the Heritage Institution.
So the Heritage, you guys quoted the research report itself, which Heritage, I know that they link to the CDC underlying data, but it's 1995 data from the Heritage, or from the CDC study, and the Heritage report itself was really where you, during the video, It focused people's attention.
So it was the heritage study was this and this, the heritage study was this and this.
Calling forth the meaning from the data.
Was the data erroneous?
Well, so it comes down to kind of our question around the target audience for this data.
No, no, wait, wait, no, no, hang on.
I'm happy to get with the interpretation, but let's at least start with the facts, right?
Was the data erroneous?
The data being a 10,000 person sample survey from 1995 from women from ages 15 to 44, sounds like it's probably not erroneous.
The underlying, I guess the The people that were born between 1951 and 1980 constitute this body that were surveyed back in 1995.
So not arguing with that, no.
Okay, so bringing up the Heritage Foundation is kind of a red herring, right?
Like the Heritage Foundation reported on the data and we reported on the data but used some of the Heritage Foundation presentation.
So the real issue is the CDC data underlying it, right?
No.
No, no.
No, okay.
No, if the data is correct, then it's sort of like getting upset with the photocopier for the original text, if that makes sense.
If the data is correct, then we can cast the heritage and focus on the CDC. Well, the heritage is where all of the graphing of the data and the interpretation of Meaning wrangled from the data was surfaced and then was used in the podcast.
Okay, but you can't possibly have an issue with the graphs, right?
If the data is correct, then you can't have an issue with the graphs.
Yes, I think that that's probably accurate.
The data, the graphs, those we're not necessarily arguing with.
I think it's the interpretation of and the The wrapper of the truth about podcasts for sex.
Okay.
So in which area, and I'm open to correction here, genuinely, in which area was the interpretation of the data incorrect?
Well, so the...
How do you want to...
So I would say that the area that it was...
Perhaps not so much incorrect, but as we listened to it again, it became essentially quite a, for us, misleading sort of, this is the way that human sexuality should be understood, and because of this particular data that we're looking at, this is the validation for this view.
And the fact that the study was from 1995, the fact that the women from 1951 and 1980 were the birth years, this is a very different generation, very different world that we're viewing data from.
To make an interpretation for, as you said in the video title, basically there's some mind-blowing correlation.
This is the stuff you need to know before playing the big person's game which makes real people.
Which is kind of...
it's grossly overstating we believe the matter based upon the data that you've selected so I think that there's plenty of other data which we haven't ourselves done okay guys I mean I appreciate that we're having a sex talk but I feel this is all If you could just, you know, take off my panties and take me to town, that would be fantastic.
I still don't know what the actual issue is.
If it's a truth about human sexuality, saying, well, the data is 20 years old, well, human sexuality would not have changed much in 20 years, right?
Like, if we're saying, here's the average height of human beings, I guess you could say, well, in the Middle Ages they were a little bit shorter, and maybe in the future they'll be a little bit taller, but in 20 years that data wouldn't have changed that much.
So if I'm saying sort of some fundamental truth about human sexuality, I don't think that the fact that the data is 20 years old would be a huge problem.
Also, I mean, we would really like to have more contemporaneous data, but a lot of political correctness, a lot of, you know, stuff we've actually just talked about recently with some academics who've come on the show, It means that people have stopped studying this stuff because it's inconvenient to certain political viewpoints.
I don't mean to include you.
I'm just saying that we didn't sort of cherry pick older data and discard newer data.
This stuff has kind of dried up as far as I understand it.
Well, so people know, too, the...
The original data came from the National Survey of Family Growth, which is put out by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control.
And they do five-year cycles on this stuff.
And they have a 2011 to 2015 cycle that's hopefully going to have a lot of the same information but updated and including men coming out.
That has not been released yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing that when it comes out so we can parse that out for men specifically, too, since that's a question a lot of people had.
Yeah, that would be great to add the other flavor because, so as we've been traveling, the view of how families look, so we've been traveling for the past year or so after we left Seattle, traveling through Asia, traveling down now into Australia, we flirted with Eastern Europe a little bit.
The family structure, the happiness factor, so I think that that was really the piece that grabbed Dina The worst here that made us start thinking about this a little bit more deeply was to get to the happy plateau of a rich and fulfilled life.
What does that even mean for most of the other people around the world that are not in the Western propagandized world?
Wait, wait, hang on.
Are you saying that the people in the Eastern world are not propagandized?
Differently.
A different propaganda, okay.
Completely different.
I mean, the family structure in rural Vietnam It's phenomenally strong.
The happiness of the women, I would say, is arguably not very strong.
And so, pair bonding, single relationship that they've had with their married partner...
I'm going to try and draw a little bit of a leap here, but...
Maybe...
Can I add in here?
You say that human sexuality doesn't change over time, but I would say that it changes within society.
Let's be precise.
I didn't say that human sexuality doesn't change over time.
Obviously, it does.
And I've gone over in the show many times that there's a broad spectrum between the R versus K reproductive strategies, the R being sort of less familial investment in offspring, quicker development of those offspring, versus the K reproductive strategy, which is more investment in offspring.
These change racially, these change culturally.
And I also didn't say that human sexuality doesn't change over time.
I said there's not a significant change over the last 20 years, biologically, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, so we're not in disagreement at all in terms of these things biologically changing.
I think the matter around this being the pinnacle of happiness or the plateau of a rich and fulfilled life...
Sorry, what is the plateau of happiness?
It seems like the numbers game.
Look, I'm trying to figure out what you guys' issue is.
I'm trying to sort of figure out, you've talked a little bit about your travels, but I just don't know what, and I'm trying to sort of move this along just because we're going to have lots of people listening to this, and I want to make sure that people don't skip over it and not get the criticisms that you guys have.
So if you can just sort of boil them down to where you feel the data or the interpretations are incorrect.
Sorry, go ahead.
I'll try and boil it down how it hit me.
You can rip it apart.
That's fine.
But I grew up in a very Christian home.
My parents kind of thought that they should lock me away from the world and homeschool me for a while and then send me to private Christian school.
So it was a very, very full inundation of...
Of that mindset.
And my mom told me very early, basically the numbers game and happiness.
So, if you wait until you're married, you're going to be happy.
If you have less numbers, the numbers of sexual partners you have in your life is going to completely, basically predetermine your happiness and the solid grounding of your future marriage and the happiness of your life.
And I kind of went away from my Christian upbringing and made my own decisions about how I wanted to kind of go through my life.
And I decided more that it was about the quality and depth and mutual benefit of the relationships that I was in and how good a match this person was for me and how I was growing through life and learning.
Rather than kind of pure numbers.
So I went out into the world with this fear of numbers of sexual partners.
Just this daunting, crushing, oh man, if I had a new boyfriend for a year and I had sex with him, that's another number.
And I'd sit there and count on my hands and I'd think about my future and how unhappy I was going to be.
So kind of going through and listening to this after I'd done kind of a full circle on this, And figured it out for myself and hearing someone I respect so greatly, kind of, it feels like preaching the same fear of numbers and potentially encouraging people, I guess, to either give this information to their children as is and say, you know, beware the numbers.
Or potentially men pick their spouses based on how many numbers they've had.
And actually expecting this to truly manifest itself in the happiness of their relationship down the road versus people thinking they're happy because they're in a religious marriage that they got into when they were quite young like most of the people I saw around me growing up who my mom was It was kind of pointing to these
children who were a little bit older than me and married and, you know, they'd waited and telling me that their life was the happy life.
But my life has been quite divergent from that and I feel I've been quite happy.
But this kind of brought me back in history to this whole, whoa, numbers game.
So I guess that's where we started talking about it and started dissecting it.
And I think it would be more fair to give you that story up front.
So, I mean, it really reminded you of a parental lecture, right?
And a pretty unwelcome parental lecture, as far as I understand it.
Well, a parental lecture that gave me a lot of fear and discomfort about my relationships and my sexual life for quite a while.
Right.
And when you say fear of numbers, Obviously, you know it's not the numbers.
Like, if I got shot five times, I'm not afraid of the number five, but the actual five bullets, right?
So fear of numbers is a way of kind of discounting the data, if that makes sense.
I'm not too sure I fully follow.
Well, you're saying it's just, you know, you've used the phrase number game, or it's a fear of numbers, and so on.
But it's not the numbers.
The numbers aren't the problem, right?
It's whatever goes on that produces the numbers that appears to be having a tendency towards a problem.
So the fact is that you've had, obviously, more than one sexual partner and that's perfectly fine.
I mean, these numbers say that the more sexual partners you have, the less likely a marriage is to succeed.
But that doesn't mean that you can't have a wonderful marriage and have 20 sexual partners.
These are the odds, right?
Some people smoke and live to be a hundred, right?
I mean, that's not quite exactly the same because smoking has other effects.
But what you're saying is basically, I have beaten the odds, which is the entire point of odds.
It doesn't determine where you end up.
It's just that, you know, if you've had a huge number of sexual partners, your marriage has like a less than, I think it's about 20% chance of surviving in the long run.
So you're saying, well, I'm not in that 20%, and so I'm not sure what the issue is.
That's perfectly encapsulated within the numbers, right?
I guess it's more that the information is presented with quite a bit of, this is the most important thing everyone needs to know.
This is the information that you need to know to start living life.
I think you said something about...
Kind of like raising your children and having sex and having partners and reaching this plateau of a fulfilled life.
This is the one thing you need to know.
And I just felt like that being told to me when I was young and you kind of telling a bunch of other people to tell that to their children and not really focusing on the factors around Wait, sorry.
Are you saying that there are facts or tendencies or trends that we should withhold from our children?
Well, it would seem to me that teaching a child more about how to pick people in their relationships and have wisdom in that area without just telling them You know, if you wait to have sex with your husband, you'll have a happier marriage.
The facts are that if you wait to have sex with your husband, your marriage is far more likely to last.
And I'm not sure why I would want to withhold those facts from people.
I mean, how many people wait to have sex until they're married?
That has no bearing on whether it's true or false, whether that's what the facts said.
If the facts say that, I'm not sure how it's beneficial to withhold that information from people.
I'm not saying it's deterministic, but those are the trends.
I'm thinking here as I'm listening to you guys talk about this, the world has changed tremendously, not biologically, for us individually, but Ideologically, the rapid change of relationships around the world in at least those parts of the world where there's a bit more of a renaissance in relationship,
sort of thinking for yourself, self-ownership, these ideas where we've broken some of these older...
Pair bonding requirements of...
Not to say that they're good or bad.
We've shifted the mindset of...
Let's...
Okay.
We shifted the mindset of how we look at relationships quite a bit and to look at what we perceive as self-reported data from women in this age range in this particular generation which were highly religious perhaps as the foundational body of who these people were.
So those that...
Wait, wait.
I don't...
Sorry to interrupt.
I don't think that the study asked any questions about religion.
Well, I think that's, we're making a bit of a, we're making a bit of when we hear this data, when we hear of women in the United States from this particular period of time, we're making a broader inference of who are those individuals that are waiting to marry.
They're going to be in this highly religious category, we perceive.
And so this is a bit of our own inferring from the data.
More of a conservative society than we have now with much more repercussions for earlier sexual conduct.
Right.
Okay.
Got it.
So our generation, we're a product of that generation.
And our perception is that we've devolved quite a bit in terms of the family unit, the family structure, all of these points that you've talked about for many years, the disastrous effects of this.
We agree with you.
We think that that is what's causing a lot of the schizophrenia in the mindset of relationships of today.
However, the relationships of today, comparing them as a one-for-one sort of relationship from this data from this previous religious, highly much more religious generation, we agree with you that having quality partnerships and limiting frivolous sex is a good thing.
Net-net good, but putting it really into the world of Of owning your relationships with others and owning your desires when it comes to exploring sexuality in a safe and consensual sort of way.
And I know that you talked about getting into the polyamory and monogamy porn for some of the future discussions here.
These options were so incredibly aberrant back in the 1951 to 1980 days, whereas now Wait, hang on.
Have you guys ever heard of the key parties of the 70s or the free love of the 60s?
I'm not sure how sexual experimentation is somehow uniquely confined to your generation.
I guess maybe my mom is wrong, but she went to college in San Francisco in 69, and her take on it, or at least what she told me, was that most of society was still quite conservative.
What we imagine, and you might know more than me because I wasn't born yet, what we imagine is just this giant orgy all across America was much more of a kind of highly publicized minority of the population.
Is that not true?
No, no, I get that, but I mean, I don't know that you're going to have much luck countering a pretty rigorous set of data with what my mom said.
I just asked you if it was true or not.
Well, I don't know if it's true or not, but I do know that divorce rates went up 300% or more in the 1970s, and there was a sexual licentiousness that certainly seemed to be floating around quite a bit in the 70s.
I just don't know that, I mean, and sexual licentiousness was very big in the French Revolution and the ancient Roman Empire.
I don't think we have a monopoly on sexual experimentation, you know, that's popped up over the last 20 years.
I think there's been quite a lot In the same way that, of course, not everything was Woodstock in the 1960s, but not everything was Leave it to Beaver in the 1950s either.
There was a jazz scene, there was a scene that was quite sexually experimentive.
But nonetheless, let's get back to some of the...
I'm sorry, go ahead, you want to say?
Oh, I was just going to say, in the 70s very much, and I kind of commented on that to Eric when we were looking at it, but when you're looking at the data for women in stable marriages, the last year that they could have been born was 1965, so they're kind of growing up, and probably a majority of that data was from earlier, people who were born earlier.
Okay.
Carry on.
I was just diverging.
Okay, so let's get a bit more into sort of where you guys are at, if that's alright.
So, how long have you guys been a couple?
Five, four years?
Four or five years?
Something like that.
And are you a monogamous couple?
Yep.
Alright.
And prior to becoming a couple, what was your number?
I don't know.
Not like it was super high, but I don't know.
Probably in the 15 to 20 realm.
And how old were you when you got together?
We got together, let's see, 29?
28.
And Eric, what was your number?
It wasn't Roughly, I would say, eight or nine or ten.
I forget.
I don't know.
This throws out a little bit of our background and why I suggest where we are today ideologically and from an educational perspective on relationships.
No, hang on.
Sorry, because I want to get to that, and I promise that I will.
Go ahead.
But I'm just trying to...
To figure this part out, right?
So, Dina, you had between 15 and 20 relationships over 10 or so years, is that right?
Or 15 to 20 sexual partners over 10 or so years?
I think so.
Yeah.
I'm just curious why that's so hazy.
Yeah.
I don't know, because I didn't sit down and specifically count it out before I got on the phone.
Okay.
And what was the longest of those relationships?
Maybe three years.
Oh, okay, okay.
And the next longest?
There was a bunch of year-longs.
And what about one-night stands or very short flings?
I think that there was...
I think the shortest was maybe a couple weeks.
And was that because you were traveling or was there some other reason why the relationship didn't last?
A couple were traveling.
And then, I guess, before we got together...
We were both poly.
So that kind of would be a bit more.
So there was a few that were added on during that time, which were a little bit more short, but they were still kind of durations in and of themselves, if that makes sense.
And so you got into, you had a couple of boyfriends.
Were they polyamorous and they convinced you?
Or were you polyamorous and convinced them?
Or were you both polyamorous at the beginning?
Well, I, I was kind of just giving it a try on my own.
So I, I guess it just it wasn't a very long stint for me.
So it just kind of turned into more of what we would imagine dating in the city would be like.
But with...
I'm sorry, I don't I don't understand that.
So the polyamory came about, was it part of the beginning of the relationship?
Did one party convince the other?
By convinced, I don't mean anything nefarious.
I'm just, you know, somebody has to bring it up, right?
It came about as a thing that I was desirous of trying.
Oh, so you wanted to be polyamorous and you said to your boyfriend, I'd like it if we could both date other people but remain in a sexual relationship with each other?
Well, I was single at the time.
So I had had a boyfriend and I'd usually...
I mean, a lot of times I'd have boyfriend for a year and then kind of have a year of singleness, of just nobody, no partners in between.
So this was more of a, I had lived in an area and been around people who were doing a lot of polyamory and more kind of the kink side of things quite successfully in their lives.
And I was single and I figured, I think that I've learned about as much As I feel like I need to learn from the relationships I've had to find one that is really lasting.
At this point, this is the time I'm kind of looking for the culmination of all these kind of things that I've found to be the most important.
And it's not coming around, so maybe I'll try this poly thing for a little bit and have some fun and see if somebody falls out of that.
And so, sorry, I thought polyamorous was when you were in a relationship but dated outside that relationship.
Is it different than that?
Is it that you just are dating a number of people simultaneously and they all know about that?
Well, at this point, that's what it was because, so you kind of have to designate a primary if you want to have that structure.
Well, no, I'm not talking about the theory.
I'm just asking, sorry to interrupt, but what you did in particular?
I didn't have a primary boyfriend at that time.
So you slept with a number of different men, but they all knew that you were sleeping with other men?
Yes.
And how many men at a time?
Well, I couldn't quite rationalize myself with doing it completely all at a time.
So I sort of had these three relationships that were stretching.
Sorry, I'm not sure what stretching means.
Um, let's say so three relationships that were going on for a couple months simultaneously, but I, I only slept with one person for sort of the first part of our relationship and someone in the, and another one kind of for the middle and one at the end.
And then I kind of met Eric and we sort of transitioned out of, out of that because he was also poly.
And he had much longer relationships.
So he can explain it a lot better.
No, no.
Again, I don't want the theory, just your experience.
And so you'd be dating a man, not sleeping with him, and then you'd say to the man you weren't sleeping with, I want to sleep with someone else.
Or you'd be dating a man and sleeping with him, and then say to another man, I want to date you but not sleep with you because I'm sleeping with this first man.
It's more like I'd go on a first date with him.
We'd talk about a lot of things.
I'd say that this was something I was trying.
And then we would kind of continue to date and see each other without sleeping together for quite a while.
But he would know, sorry to interrupt, but the new guy would know that you're not sleeping with him, but you're sleeping with another man.
Yes.
And he'd be okay with that, like you having sex with some other man, but not with him.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, you don't have to sleep with someone on the first three dates or so.
I mean...
No, but you said it was a couple of months, right?
So for a couple of months, you'd be sleeping with...
Yeah.
So I guess a couple of months.
And this is kind of where...
One of them was kind of short.
So I guess...
This is where...
Sorry, I'm sorry.
Just a sec.
Just a sec.
Sorry.
I'm not sure what that means.
Do you mean one of the guys or one of the relationships was kind of short?
One of the relationships was kind of shorter.
So...
What does that mean?
I think it was maybe only a few weeks within that time period.
So two of them were sort of for a couple months, and then one of them was for a couple weeks.
And the guy you were sleeping with knew that you were dating someone else at the same time?
Okay, got it, got it.
Sorry, Eric, you were going to say?
I was just going to say, so this is why when I put my email to Mike about, we've got a number of experiences that are all related to the topics that you're going to be covering here soon, and in certain urban environments, these sorts of relationship gymnastics and the mental structures that people put themselves into,
they allow some pretty odd relationships to come about, but when you really get to know a lot of these people, The happiness factor.
It's really, really hard to put a...
A capstone on it as any sort of, you know, these are the numbers, these are the facts, because these different configurations work really well while they work, and then you transition out of them, and you say, that was a great experience, now I'm going to go and do this experience.
And from a lot of the people that we have spent a lot of our life with, that's perfectly acceptable, and when all parties are acknowledged and heard and Involved in this, these sorts of configurations seem to, at least from our experience, give you a lot of self-ownership in owning your relationships, owning your sexuality, owning your feelings of happiness in the world as an individual human critter.
And did any of this non-traditional or non-standard relationships, did they ever come with any STDs?
No.
I had a close call with one, and that was a big wake-up call for me.
But I escaped with everything in good shape.
Right, okay.
And Eric, what were your experiences?
I appreciate you guys sharing with this, and I'm sorry to be overly nosy, but I'm just trying to get the context of where you're coming from.
Yeah, obviously the context of where we're coming from.
We wouldn't have...
I've taken such a firm sort of madness.
This podcast is really raw without a lot of this, right?
So our experiences are pretty valid.
So obviously my upbringing, the parental side of things, child of a divorce, mother that got remarried and got divorced again.
So I've been through a lot of those sorts of All of the fallout from divorce.
I know it very well.
My own experiences, though, since I was a child, I was really left with myself to figure things out quite a bit.
And I had a lot of tangential relationships with adults that gave me some ideas of how relationships could look.
So I spent a lot of time with other families that were not mine, not my mother, not my father.
And so I got a real good broad sense of, oh, okay, well, this is how these people do it, and this is how these people do it.
These people have kids.
These people don't have kids.
These people seem happy.
These people don't seem happy.
So I got a lot of input early on.
So I feel from my relationship perspective, they've all flowed pretty in the direction I wanted to take them.
Because I was really solid in myself, first and foremost, before anchoring to a relationship and putting all of the common...
keeping everything into somebody else for your own emotional stability.
I didn't do...
I don't feel like I had to do that so much, which...
Which I feel, as I've come through my relationships, I've got pretty good relationships with my exes.
And, yeah.
I don't know if that...
How much more would you like to know?
What would you like to know?
Well, I'm sorry to hear about the divorce.
How old were you when your parents divorced?
I was five.
She got remarried at eight.
She got re-divorced at 13.
So...
Yeah, I mean, that's pretty tragic, right?
I mean, you had a relationship with your dad.
He was gone.
I assume there was some relationship with your stepdad.
Then he was gone.
And then there was a new stepdad?
No, she didn't get remarried the third time.
It was just a stepfather and a father.
And did she have boyfriends after that?
No.
Imagine that.
Well, she had one.
Sorry, I'm not sure why that's outlandish.
This goes into the whole, how do you respond to your family and the family of origin sort of thing.
For a long time, your ideas around, or not your ideas, but your...
When it comes to defooing, when it comes to basically choosing the family that you want to be a part of because they mutually support you and you can actually relate to them, that all made sense to me when I was very young.
So your podcasts helped to put some new words around things that I was already quite well versed in.
So I haven't spent a lot of time with my mother.
And it was only just last year when we stopped through that I really realized that I have an amazing cat woman in my life.
Cat lady.
Crazy old cat lady sort of thing.
Oh, you mean your mom?
Yeah, she's amazing.
She's just astonishingly out there.
And Dina, what was your childhood like?
Very stable, happily married, and still married parents.
I was an only child, we both were.
Lived kind of out in the country.
Nothing really to complain about besides the religion, but you know, that's just part of a lot of people's life.
Right.
Now, did either of you, I don't know how to put this delicately, did either of you have any, I guess, what would charitably be called premature sexual experiences when you were, say, below the ages of 16 or 15?
No.
Nope.
Well, I mean, I think that...
However people want to do and arrange their sexual lives is of no particular concern to anybody interested in freedom or the non-aggression principle.
These aren't moral issues, right, whether you're polyamorous or not.
Obviously, honesty is a virtue and it sounds like you were honest with everyone.
I personally, you know, if I was interested romantically in a woman and she was like, well, I'll date you, but I'm having sex with someone else, I'd be like, well, good luck with that, but that's not my thing.
But that's, you know, maybe more akin to personal tastes, but...
To me, it's like, well, if you're not attracted enough to sleep with me, then you should go and pursue the relationship with the guy that you're in.
I do think that...
And this is just a personal perspective.
This is not anything philosophical.
But I do think that...
You know, for things you want to get good at, repetition is really good.
Like, if you want to get good at playing piano, you've got to put lots of time into playing piano or learning Mandarin or something like that.
But...
For breakups, like for long-term relationships, you need to be good at staying in long-term relationships in general.
And I think that for a lot of people, because I don't know why there's this correlation between the number of sexual partners and the potential instability of the marriage, but I think that When things get difficult, that's when you need to sort of buckle down and work extra hard in relationships.
I think if people break up a lot, then they're kind of getting good at breaking up.
And that's my only sort of rough theory as to why.
And that doesn't mean people can't change.
It doesn't mean that people can't figure out what happened and how you obviously have gone from shorter relationships to a obviously long-term monogamous relationship.
Now you're in, I guess, you're early to mid-30s.
So, yeah, people can change.
People can grow.
But my sort of concern is to get the information out to people so that, you know, I myself came from a single mother household and abusive background and so on.
So if somebody was asking me these questions, it would be like, ooh, you know, that's not very helpful in terms of my sexual market value.
However, of course, because I can say, as I did when I first got together with my current wife, listen, I've done huge amounts of self-work, lots of therapy, here's where I'm at, here's what I understand about my history, here's what I understand about my parents, here's what I understand about a sibling and so on, right?
And I think that is where the differences can occur.
I think that if people have come from difficult histories, and I think, Eric, you said something like you got solid with it, which I'd like to ask a little bit more about.
If people have come from these difficult histories and haven't done anything about it and haven't tried to figure things out and haven't looked inward and tried to center themselves and deal with the trauma, they're very risky people to date.
You know, it's like getting into a cab with a brick on the gas and the cabbie's blindfolded.
It's just probably, you know, maybe you'll get there in one piece, but the odds are sort of against it.
And I think that if people have looked at, like this is why I'm constantly saying to people, you know, pursue self-knowledge, read books about self-knowledge, go to therapy, because that gives you a chance to break out of whatever history there is.
I think we all know, and the data supports this, that, you know, you're more likely to get divorced if you're the child of divorced parents.
And so for me, because of that knowledge, because of that risk factor, we should do what we can to alleviate that.
Like if in my family history there was some big problem with heart disease, you know, everybody dies at 50 from heart disease, I'd want to know that.
Not so I would be resigned to my fate or say, well, I can't do anything, so I'm going to sit on the couch, eat Cheetos, and watch American Idol.
What I would do is say, well, if we've got this family history, then I really need to act counter to that.
And, you know, be as heart healthy as I can and maintain a healthy weight and exercise and do all of that kind of stuff.
So for me, the knowledge to put out there is to say, look, there are risk factors for long term relationships.
And that's why you need to be aware of them so that you can act in opposition to those tendencies and to those trends.
They're not prescriptions.
They're not deterministic.
They're saying, look, these are the risks.
And if you guys have done the work that's necessary to achieve a more stable relationship, I mean, I'm thinking, Eric, of you in particular, if you've done the work that's necessary to achieve a more stable relationship with Dina than you had modeled for you by your mother, and as you said, you did this work to get solid with yourself, I think that's fantastic.
That, to me, is taking the information and the risk factors and using them in the right way, if that makes sense.
Yeah, and we couldn't agree more with that.
This is where, for us, the The key piece of success in every aspect of life is education and taking some ownership in it.
So what do you need to know?
And then taking action to, as you say, the...
Doing something about it in counter to, right?
I mean, that's what I feel like I did.
Having pretty terrible models of how things could be, but then also having other models of how things can, how other people live, you can then make a choice.
And that's where the choice becomes the ownership in your destiny, if you will.
And teaching people to beat these odds, as you say, oh, well, it's the most important that you...
You know, potentially, we'll see how the rest of life takes us, but potentially beat these odds.
And teaching people how to do that, I guess, along with giving them the base information.
Because the base information kind of, it almost seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something, if you just really take it on.
But giving people the tools to say, okay, well, for people who don't examine and don't see Life potentially is a grand experiment and just kind of play into these odds.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but I guess...
Well, I think it's what we talked about with...
You've put out a lot of content around self-work is super important.
Here are some avenues.
Here are some things you can ask yourself here.
Whatever you do, just find a therapist, work on yourself, work on yourself, and share this with potential partners.
We couldn't agree more.
I guess the wrapped up in a bow, truth about segment here didn't mention the importance of, hey, these are just numbers, take it with a grain of salt, because your relationships with other people can be changed.
You can own this, you can change, you can rise to the infinite potential that you have, that you've talked about in other podcasts.
Well, I mean, I think that's implied in the fact that it's, you know, 100% of people, I don't know, who take strychnine die, right?
I mean, so, but if the odds are like 20%, then clearly there's a way around these tendencies and these trends.
And of course, you know, 3,000 shows, at least half of which I'm strongly encouraging people to get therapy.
I'm not sure it needs to be, you know, 1,501.
I know.
But, and of course, we did say very clearly in the presentation, these are not deterministic, these are trends and so on, and, you know, self-knowledge is important.
But, now, are you guys thinking of, I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that you're not married?
No.
Okay, and are you guys thinking of having kids?
No.
Oh, you don't want to have kids, right?
Not at this point in time.
Well, you're in your early to mid-30s, right?
Mm-hmm.
So you don't have a decade in which to decide, right?
We have no plans of children at the present.
To either of you want kids?
Nope.
Not at the moment.
It comes down to your podcasts on the numbers game of having a kid, bringing a child into the world.
I think you were gearing it more towards maybe men, why men shouldn't bring I don't think I've ever done a show saying men shouldn't bring children into the world.
I think you made the argument, one of the ones around why it's so stacked against men in terms of psychologically, or I forget the one, I feel like it had a man in a prison cage sort of thing as the main image thumbnail for it,
but something to the effect of the The raw deal for men, potentially, if you bring a child into the world and you get divorced and all of the things, the arguments for why men have chosen to not, or would choose to not have children.
Well, no, I think divorce is sort of a different matter.
We've got shows coming up on the data about divorce.
I don't think I've ever encouraged people to not have kids.
I mean, I have a...
Why men don't want to get married?
Oh yeah, no, definitely, for sure, there's definitely a bias against men, and the family court systems are biased against men, and it is a challenge.
So certainly I've said that there's some significant challenges towards men getting married.
I think there's ways to mediate those risks and those challenges, but anyway, let's go on.
So in terms of your thoughts about having or not having kids?
Yeah, so I think that a lot of those are pretty valid, and I think societally and just globally, bringing a child into the world as it is today, there are a lot of factors that really play into, man, that's really not a very good idea.
Why would you do that?
No, but that's for guys not in a stable relationship, right?
You guys are in a stable relationship as far as, you mean, you're planning on staying together?
Yep.
For like ever?
Yep.
Yeah, so, you know, that doesn't apply to you then, right?
At least my argument is why men don't want to get married because you are, in all fundamental manners, married, right?
Again, I'm not sort of talking about the status piece of paper.
I'm talking about the commitment to stay together forever, right?
Yep.
Right.
So, to take...
The argument as to why men are hesitant getting married and saying that it has something to do with you is not relevant.
I'm just curious what your thoughts are about having children yourself.
Like outside of stuff I've said to unmarried men.
People do it for so many terribly selfish reasons.
But there's other people.
I'm talking about your thoughts about it.
I kind of feel...
Well, right now in my life, I have no desire to have them.
I never say there's a definite...
Things always change.
People change.
I'm open to maybe wanting that in the future, but right now and throughout my previous history, I've never have wanted that.
Also, I feel like finding a place in the world in which to have a child and being...
As strong and I guess kind of perfect as you would need to be to make the choice to bring someone into the world and raise them up, it's pretty daunting.
And then leaving them in this mess after you're gone?
Which mess?
Well...
The world is...
Oh, you mean like the bottom world kind of thing?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a lot better than the Middle Ages, right?
I mean, this is really the most advanced and advantageous epoch that the world has ever experienced, right?
I guess for short-term chunks of human life, potentially.
So you feel that the world is too disastrous to have children?
Disastrous, huh?
Or that the future of the world is too negative or bad things are going to happen?
A little bit of that.
It comes, I think you said it at one point, with the, I think you said something to the, I'm embarrassed to introduce the world to my daughter sort of thing.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
No, there's lots of really terrible stuff to explain about the world.
But there's less terrible stuff to explain about the world now than there would have been, say, in the 16th century, or the 10th century, or the 8th century, or the minus 2nd century, or something like that.
It's like, Daddy, what's slavery?
Right?
I mean, there's terrible stuff, absolutely.
And I wish the world were a lot better.
But it is, as I've said, I wouldn't want to be born any other time in history.
But...
So, I mean, it doesn't sound like you guys have a lot of strong emotional, like, this or that.
There's some vague, well, other people and unease about the world as a whole, but...
And I'm not trying to cross-examine you, like, the absolute standard has to be you want to have kids, but...
Well, because you want to...
I think the idea of making the future for your children better than what you had, I think that seems like one of the most daunting and one of the most impossible...
Propositions to even tackle, to say, given what I know, the knowledge of the potential future that we face as a species right now, how can you possibly make it that sort of cyclical better for the next generation?
I know that just this conversation in itself is opening up a lot of minds and getting people to think a lot differently, and hopefully that will make things move in a better direction.
But it's kind of that sense of embarrassment and that sense of, man, I can't turn this over to my own generation.
I'll live in it and enjoy it and do as best I can in it while I'm in it and touch the lives of those that are already here.
But to spark open a new consciousness and give the Give the keys over.
I don't know.
I mean, your parents decided or grew up in a world where there was the Cold War and an imminent threat of nuclear war, and they decided to have children.
I assume that you're both happy that your parents decided to have children, right?
Yeah.
For personal reasons, sure.
Personal selfish reasons, yeah.
So you're happy that your parents defied a very dangerous world and decided to have children?
Well, I was an accident, so...
Well, accident when it comes to childbirth is not exactly the same as being hit by a meteor.
There's like only Mary, Mary Mother of God, I think, can claim that there was an accident involved.
I mean, there usually is some form of unprotected sex or some sort of sexual activity, which always carries the risk of that.
But you're both happy that your parents just like had kids.
I mean, plus they decided to keep you rather than abort you, right?
We're enjoying life.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, and if you were diagnosed with some fatal illness tomorrow, you'd be extremely unhappy.
So you're happy that your parents with a far more dangerous world than you're facing decided to have kids, but you don't want to have kids because you feel the world could be too dangerous.
I'm just being an annoying dick here, just so you know.
You've got a point.
You've got a point.
You also have a little bit of the knowledge.
I mean, I can just say the knowledge of the...
The knowledge of the world as it was when they had us, I don't think my mother had any clue.
She didn't know there was a country called Russia that had weapons?
Nah, I think that it's all in abstract.
She wanted an accessory.
To me, the question doesn't compute because it doesn't...
I'm sorry, are you saying that your mother didn't know there was a Cold War?
I'm saying that she probably realized that something over there somewhere was going on.
Oh, no, no, no, we learned about this in school.
I mean, that's like saying she didn't know her times table.
No, this was very clearly taught.
In school, this was not something that you had to go to the far ends of the earth.
It's not like achieving wisdom from some yogi in a mountaintop in India.
This was all very...
We had history classes about this.
We had lots of information about this growing up.
I mean, there were nuclear drills and all that kind of stuff.
So, no, no, your mom knew about the dangers of the world.
I mean, unless she had such a low IQ that she should not have been legally married, right?
You have a point.
I'll give you, you have a point.
And I'm not trying to say I have kids or anything.
I'm just saying that the dangerous world argument, I mean, if anyone, like, we have the least danger, like, the least imminent danger now.
War is at the lowest point in human history, virtually.
Poverty is at the lowest area in human history.
Technology, of course, is so staggeringly fantastic that we three, and the millions of people who end up listening to this, who never would have had a chance to talk and have what I'm really enjoying as a very interesting conversation.
So if the it's a dangerous world, don't bring kids into it argument...
But if the world was valid, none of us would be here, right?
Because the world was far more dangerous during the Black Death, during religious persecution times, Salem witch trials, the fall of Rome, the revolutions, the French revolutions, even the British revolutions, the religious warfare, the Thirty Years' War.
The wars of Napoleonic conquest, the world was more dangerous, and we know that because people had a life expectancy of roughly eight minutes in general.
Life expectancy in the Roman Empire was 21, and there's no antibiotics.
One UTI could kill you, one toothache could kill you.
There's the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War.
A nuclear war to potentials.
I mean, it's been a very dangerous planet for...
And think of a gazelle.
A gazelle is like, well, I can't have baby gazelle.
There are lions there.
I just saw someone get eaten last week.
It's like, that's true.
And nonetheless, they still keep pumping out baby gazelles.
So I'm just saying that it's not a universalizable argument for us in the present to say the world's too dangerous.
Okay.
Taken.
Sorry, I'll shut up now.
Go ahead.
Granted.
In the culture that we find ourselves living in, it's a bit different than some of our recent history where having children benefited you as the parent, as the family, as the society.
There doesn't seem to be a vast need for more population on the earth right now.
There doesn't seem to be a direct need for us personally to create little people besides the oh they'll take care of us when we're older which is just a highly I agree with you.
Sorry to interrupt.
That's a terrible reason to have children.
And not only is it terrible, it's retarded.
Yeah.
Because if you want to be taken care of when you get old, save all the money you spend on your children and use it to buy a great retirement home with, like, fantastic, you know, happy ending, sweetest massage or whatever you want in fridham.
I mean, and of course your kids could move away.
They might not even like you.
The values may change to the point where they, you know, have anything to do with you.
So the idea that you have kids so that someone will take care of you in your old age is completely wrong-headed, retarded, and ridiculous.
I'm not saying you're proposing it, but anybody who thinks that probably shouldn't have children because they won't know which end of the body to wipe when there's crap coming out.
Correct.
So right now in the world...
Hang on, but the overpopulation thing?
The overpopulation thing?
You think that there's too many people in the world and that's why we shouldn't have more?
Do you have something magical to say against that?
I mean, it seems pretty...
This all comes down to the sustainability.
I don't know if you're familiar with an author, Derek Jensen.
He asked the question, do you think that this society will undergo a voluntary change towards a sane and sustainable way of living?
And most people will say, well, no.
And some people might say, voluntary?
Oh, no.
No, no.
So the sustainability of the food, the sustainability of I mean, we're looking, we're grasping at straws in every aspect possible to come up with technology solutions to give us the ability to, I don't know, in California, drink fresh water through desalinization sort of thing.
So, I mean, everywhere you look, the sustainability, the carrying capacity of the planet, I know that there's plenty of gray area between the definitely the world is overpopulated and oh no, there's plenty of headroom.
These are You could argue those and you could explore those for months and months of research.
The overall sense of humanity as a sustainable, as a sane and sustainable sort of set of guiding principles for how they proceed forward, we look at that as a bit of, man, this is insane.
What are they thinking with the deforestation sort of stuff?
I mean, the Anna, that's opening up a huge can of worms that goes into our thinking around why would you bring more people into the planet sort of thing, that question.
Oh, I can give you some fine answers to that if you like.
Having been someone who's brought at least one other person, I got some kids of my own out there somewhere.
That's an old Red Fox joke, if I remember.
But yeah, I can give you some good answers to that if you like.
At least I think they're good.
So maybe you can pick what you want to give answers to.
It seems like now...
Oh wait, no, if we're going to another topic, I want to do one topic at a time.
Okay, okay.
Okay, okay.
I guess this is more selfish.
I have more selfish reasons and he has more broader, you know, the world reasons.
Yeah, I'm not sure that...
Anyway, okay.
So, let me tell you something.
The problem with the world is not overpopulation.
The problem with the world is the initiation of force.
And the world is not exactly overpopulated by people who reject the initiation of force, right?
So you listen to this show, both of you, and you're both fertile, I assume, right?
And so the world is not exactly chock full of people who are voluntarists, people into the voluntary family, people who've got self-knowledge, people who've been to therapy, people who have good relationships, people who reject the state and the initiation of force and understand the universality of secular ethics and value philosophy.
We are not overflowing.
With those kinds of people.
So if you guys don't have children, it's not like there'll be more philosophical children, well-raised, without spanking, without aggression, without timeouts, without being yelled at, without being bullied, without being stuffed into the brain-mashing, sausage-sitting factory of ass-wide government school pseudo-education.
It's not like we have a massive excess of those people.
We have a massive access of people who are traumatized and propagandized and nationalized and religiousized and statusized and sandwiched in between the various levels and layers of political, parental, teacher, priestly and government power.
We have lots of people who are raised, who are beaten up and then really, really happy to go and become soldiers and go shoot people.
We have lots of those people.
What we don't have, my friends, my fertile brothers and sisters.
What we don't have is a lot of children raised peacefully and well who can make the world a much better place by showing people how well children who are raised well can turn out.
So that's my sort of first point.
Saying that the world is overpopulated is like saying, well, my body is overpopulated with bacteria that's killing me, so I don't want to take any antibiotics.
Because antibiotics, well, I already have enough stuff in my system.
It's like, no, but we want the opposite stuff that's currently in the world.
And that means people who are raised peacefully and generously and gently and benevolently and rationally and so on.
Those people will counter the tendency of people to strip the Earth's resources bare.
So that's sort of number one.
We need better people in the world to counter the breeding fools of propaganda and nationalism and religiosity and so on.
So we're not short of antibiotics to the general plague of irrationality that is consuming the planet.
That's sort of my first.
And to say, well, I don't want to have kids because there's too many people.
It's like, but there are too many people, even if we accept that argument, there's too many people because...
The government keeps making more people and keeps giving.
There's no property rights on the forest, which is why there's deforestation.
And there's fiat currency being pumped out, which raises people's consumerism and strips the earth bare of all of its resources.
And you've got this short-term government solution where it's like, buy votes, pump up the economy.
Buy votes, pump up the economy.
Borrow.
Borrow, print, sell, in debt, borrow, print, spend, spend, spend, and that's why.
But so we don't have enough people opposing that paradigm and saying, this stuff is evil, this stuff is counterfeiting, this stuff is destructive, we need to stand up against that tide.
There's not every kind of person in the world, and it's not like there's just these paint spatters in the world, And that's turning out sunlight and like, well, I don't want to put another random paint splatter on that.
No, you're not going to put another random paint splatter on that.
If you guys are philosophical parents, you're going to be raising some people who are the opposite of everything that you dislike and despise about the world and its current tendencies.
You're going to be putting a bulwark up against it.
You know, it's like Genghis Khan and his horde are riding down on a virtuous village and they all have spears.
And I say, hey man, let's get a spear and let's stick it in the ground so that we can slow down their charge and so they won't overrun the village and kill us all.
And you're like, oh man, there are already too many spears in the world.
It's like, yes, there are too many spears in the world and they're all coming towards us.
So we need some spears to go back so that we slow these bastards down and have a chance to win.
So that's sort of my first point.
My second point is that There is a radical depopulation occurring in the world and it happens to be occurring among whites and it happens to be occurring among Western Europeans, right?
The replacement rate for European civilization, whatever you think of it, the good and bad, the replacement rate for Western civilization is ridiculously low.
I mean ridiculously low to the point where like I think two percent of the world's population are Caucasian women of childbearing age.
I mean It's just crazy.
The Freedom Club, which is why we're having this conversation, and the Free Market Club, and the Scientific Rational Skeptical Club, which comes out of the Western European tradition all the way back to the ancient Greeks.
Well, there's not too many people of that culture left in the world, and the numbers are declining considerably.
And I'm not saying you have any...
Any obligation to your culture to breed or anything like that.
But there is a significant decline in Western European civilization and its inhabitants.
And so there's not exactly too many of the Western Europeans left in the world.
There's a huge decline in Western European stock or Caucasoid stock or whatever you want to call it.
It's gone from like a third of the world's population down to like 8% in 60 or 70 years, largely as a result of various government programs and so on, right?
So I would not necessarily suggest that you don't have an obligation to your culture or anything like that, but saying that there's too many people in the world.
Well, of the Freedom Club, we're whittling down to very little, to virtually nothing.
And that is a significant issue with regards to the maintenance and growth of freedom and what's left of the free market throughout the world.
So, you know, it's not like if you don't have kids that there's not going to be some, you know, crazy group somewhere out there that's going to have eight kids per family.
They're going to say, great, more room for us!
And they're going to move in, and they're going to vote if there's still a government, and they're going to change the culture to the point where it's going to be fairly unrecognizable to you.
So, these are other considerations.
Plus, you know, the basic fact is you like being alive, and people had to decide to have kids and make whatever sacrifices you deem necessary or you see as present or existing for those kids to exist, for you to exist.
And as I've sort of made the case before, you have...
This great gift of life.
And it is an incredible gift.
It is a wonderful gift.
You have, through your somewhat overworked penis and vagina system, you have a fantastic opportunity to rub your naughty bits together and convert star sneeze into human consciousness.
I mean, what an incredible thing.
People say, well, God made life.
It's like, well, that's cool.
But we can all do that with our naughty bits, rub them together, boom!
You get life, you get thought, you get creativity, you get brilliance, you get, you know, my daughter is currently writing this song that is really great.
This song would never had existed had my wife and I decided to shake hands in that Mormon manner and make kids.
And, you know, it's not like the religious people aren't saying, well, you know, there's too many Catholics in the world, so we really better stop having children.
Well, if you guys decide not to have kids, that's just more room for the religious kids.
Anyway, that's the end of my rant.
I think you single-handedly answered all of the questions that we heard all throughout Vietnam that I never really gave when they said, oh, you have no kids, why not?
How old are you?
How old are you?
No, are you married?
How old are you?
How many kids do you have?
Three questions on every good Vietnamese woman's mind.
And man.
And man.
And how's Vietnam doing?
Are they doing all right?
They're populating pretty well.
They're doing okay with it.
And I say this selfishly, and I have an agenda, right?
And the reason I'm saying that is so that you can discard me and my thoughts at will.
I'm really, really keen on my daughter growing up in a world which has more rationally raised children in it.
Right?
So I'm doing this, like, I feel like I'm going out alone, right?
I'm like, hey, let's raise all our kids rationally.
Are you with me?
And I head out across.
It's like, hello, anybody?
Anybody?
I'm looking back.
Anybody?
Come on!
She's gonna have to grow up in this world.
I don't want more Mormons.
I don't want more.
I want people in the Freedom Club.
Free philosophy, thoughts, peaceful.
Come on, people!
Give her some company.
I'm sure she'll be happy to have more people when she grows up who've been raised peacefully and rationally who may invent a cure for cancer, who may invent the next whatever the equivalent of the thumb drive is or the email that has cut down the amount of paper that's required in the world or Kindle or tablets or whatever that cuts down the requirement for paper and the deforestation of the planet.
Who's going to come up with a cure for whatever may be happening with the climate that could be related to global warming, maybe even anthropogenic global warming.
They could come up with a cure for that.
I just want those...
People in the world where my daughter grows up.
So she doesn't grow up and say, wow, you know, Dad, there don't seem to be any other rational people out here.
And it's like, well, yes, that's because all the rational people thought the world was overpopulated.
It's like, well, the world seems to be pretty overpopulated with crazy people.
Yes, well, I tried, honey.
I tried telling them, you know, with a...
Yep.
All of that.
All of that.
You got a point.
One thing I'm just going to add in, because I think you'll like it.
We are calling today from Philosopher Falls.
Philosopher falls.
Actually, that sounds quite sinister.
Philosopher stands by the edge of the waterfall.
Philosopher is pushed.
Philosopher falls.
Hopefully not.
Who knows how it got its name.
There's a lot of nice things set up looking at the falls.
So I'm thinking that that's why, hopefully.
Wait, maybe we're here because the people are going to sit at the seats and watch somebody push us off.
That's what's happening.
Yeah, yeah.
Don't say that you're a philosopher.
It's like, we've been waiting for you.
This was named for you.
Come up to the top of the falls.
Oh, it was in 20 years.
Yeah.
Well, listen, guys, I appreciate you calling in, and thanks a lot for the feedback.
And just so everybody is aware, and we'll maybe put a link to this on the Truth About Sex video, they're not...
Predictions of certainty and they hopefully are stimulations to figure out self-knowledge and you know I'm going to assume because you guys are in a monogamous stable relationship that you prefer it to The seed spraying of polyamory, which is not to say better or for worse.
I'm just saying that you prefer it, right?
And if there's things that could be done for other people to achieve the happiness that you have in your long-term relationship, I'd like to encourage people to pursue that.
But that is around self-knowledge.
Nothing that happens in the past is a for certain direction of the future other than, say, falling off Philosopher Falls, in which case gravity pretty much becomes determinism.
But I really appreciate you guys calling in.
I really enjoyed the conversation.
Thank you.
We will make some breakfast and procreate.
Yeah, we'll go procreate now.
All right, baby.
Send me the footage.
Take care.
Bye.
Bye.
All right.
Well, up next is Justin.
Justin wrote in and said, What is Stefan's opinion on the research out of social psychology and persuasion, influence, and compliance, i.e.
Robert Chaldene's Six Principles of Influence?
and its application to marketing and or sales.
These customers aren't being forced into buying anything, but their decisions can become convoluted using information about their own neurological functions, functions they may not yet even be aware of.
Is this moral?
Is this ethical?
Do you think this behavior would be encouraged or discouraged in a free market?
Alright.
So you're saying that people can be susceptible to other people's knowledge of how the brain works and could be sort of somewhat, quote, programmed to respond in a certain way?
Absolutely, yeah.
Programmed is a pretty strong word.
I don't...
I don't have all the information on sort of like brainwashing and whatnot, but I... No, no, no.
I didn't say that they could be influenced, let's say.
Well, yes, absolutely.
I mean, there are psychological tricks people can play or the way that they stack the information that they receive on marketing or in the environment around them that can really guide their decision-making and even their thoughts around what they're experiencing without them being fully aware that they're even being...
Influenced in that in that way because it's on such a subconscious level and I guess I'm curious as to Drawing the line between which of these techniques are this application to marketing and business approaches?
What is ethical and what is not?
Where does it walk that line?
Or would it actually be considered a sort of coercion because people might not even be aware that these techniques are being used on them?
So therefore, is it a force?
Is it coercive?
Or is it actually, I guess, innocent?
Well, no, it doesn't have to be a force or innocent, right?
I mean, you can manipulate people.
And it's interesting that you choose advertising and business when it happens far more and far more deeply and powerfully in religion and politics.
But, you know, business is generally where people put this stuff in.
Like, advertising is the big problem, not, say, 20 years of religious or status propaganda from churches and government schools.
But...
No, it's not immoral to manipulate people.
It may not be highly ethical.
But in a free society, I mean, of course, the goal is, if you're not manipulated by your parents, then you're not likely to be susceptible to advertising.
And of course, the goal, one of the major goals of this show...
is to convince people or encourage people to parent peacefully.
Now when you parent peacefully you have to negotiate because decisions need to be made and there are conflicts and disagreements in all relationships, so you have to negotiate.
And so when you negotiate, hopefully you're not manipulating.
You are simply being honest with your thoughts and feelings.
And so if children don't grow up being manipulated, it seems to me very unlikely.
That they would end up being easy to manipulate as adults.
Manipulation in advertising arises out of manipulation that people get as a result of churches and schools and leftist propaganda, rightist propaganda, all kinds of propaganda.
If you're raised in propaganda, you're susceptible to propaganda.
And...
So I think that in a free society, people would not be very susceptible to that stuff.
It would also be, government schools kind of teach you about propaganda, right?
Because that would be to expose themselves.
That's like the counterfeiter holding up the counterfeit note and saying, see, not real.
Let me show you how you tell.
The whole point is they can't show you.
So I think that the government schools and religions are not very good at teaching children about propaganda.
Propaganda, because they're usually using it.
And so, in a free society, you can teach kids all about our susceptibility to various kinds of propaganda.
Like, you can educate children about how they can so easily be manipulated.
And kids would want that, and parents would want that, because if you're not raising your kid by manipulating him or her, you don't want that child to then be susceptible to manipulation when they get older.
I mean, obviously, right?
It's like saying, I raise my kids home cooking every meal, make sure I know what's in it, make sure it's already healthy, and I really hope that somebody force feeds them junk food when they become adults.
It's like the whole point of doing that is that they get healthy, learn healthy habits, and stay healthy.
So I think in a free society, kids would...
Be trained against propaganda and therefore be so I think so non-susceptible to it in fact would be turned off by it like too obvious Too obvious a set of propaganda that I think would not work very well the more obvious kinds of propaganda or I guess you could say manipulation You know, the old thing is like, this beer is next to this pretty woman.
You want the pretty woman, therefore you'll buy the beer.
I mean, obviously, and that's so irrational, but I think at a biological level, a man's response in particular to female attractiveness or simply to the presence of women or even just thinking about women, men's brains shut down, which is not the biggest compliment that females as a gender have ever experienced.
Well, you see, you're thinking about a woman, you're interacting with a woman, so stop thinking.
It's like, evolution, not be kind to the fairer sex.
But I think that will always be a part of...
Human life and I'm sure it's the case for women as well when they look at Matthew McConaughey in a fine silk shirt They probably have some base physiological response I think that stuff will be there but kids will be trained about it and so on in the same way that we train kids to say to understand that You know food that looks good and tastes good isn't always good for you That doesn't mean that they'll never eat it or certainly that they'll still be susceptible to it but wherever there's biological association propaganda still occurring and And that stuff isn't quite as common as it used to
be, except in women's magazines, which I'll get to another time.
I keep wanting to go through a women's magazine and do a show on it, but I can't fondly bid that many brain cells adieu.
I just feel like it's on a pirate ship just taking your crew and Putting it into boiling, shark-infested waters to go through a woman's magazine.
Maybe it's true for men's magazines, too.
I don't know, but at least there's advice from bartenders in it.
So that would be my solution.
I think people are pretty susceptible to it at the moment, but that's a mere effect of what they're exposed to as children.
So, okay, I completely agree in terms of how a person can be brought up in the family and...
One thing that I've learned from listening to your show is being able to better identify my own emotions and really sit with myself when I'm realizing that I'm having a physiological response.
And a lot of the marketing techniques that I see being used, I've now become less susceptible to them because I detect this physiological either fight or flight response if they're using a technique of scarcity or something like that.
And I have more awareness to it where I can say, you know what, they're actually using a technique and I can detect that and I know that the scarcity could be completely fictitious.
So I don't actually have to feel compelled to purchase this product or this service.
I still believe, though, that there's definitely a lot of...
I just study into neurophysiology that no amount of education from parents or the family could even really remove that from the experience.
For instance, one study I'm thinking of, and this doesn't have a perfect marketing application, but I think it speaks a lot about how our brain operates.
It's based on the contrast effect where if you hold your two hands right and left in two separate buckets of water with different temperatures in them, one bucket being extremely hot to the point of just almost stalling you and the other being extremely cold, both being very uncomfortable to hold your hands in. both being very uncomfortable to hold your hands in.
And if you hold it in there for a minute and then you remove it and put it into a bucket in the middle, and it's the same temperature.
The hand that was hot will then feel extremely cold and the hand that was cold will then feel extremely hot in the room temperature bucket because your brain creates this contrast effect of hot to then rapid cold and cold to rapid hot heat.
Even though both hands are in the same temperature water, we perceive it as two different temperatures, even on our own body.
And I think when we start to look at how the brain operates in that level and more and more marketers and advertising are moving in that direction with doing research on even commercials while studying EEGs and fMRIs in people's brains, I mean, you know, at what point is a parent going to be able to, you know, educate a child to not fall for those things?
I mean, those are almost Based on our evolution, in our hardwiring, to have our brains operate that way and perceive these stimuli in that way.
And so I'm wondering, is that still considered propaganda?
Is it still wrong to take advantage of those hardwirings that are in our body?
Well, no, no.
I mean, look, advertisers don't have any control over your children directly, because as the parent, you can very easily shield your children from advertisements, right?
Right.
So that's sort of number one.
Number two, even if the advertisements make your child want something, you don't have to give it to them, right?
I mean, so that, I don't think that's particularly a strong case for that.
The second, sorry, and the third thing is that advertising, the purpose of advertising is to get you to try the product.
Right, so...
There's a kind of gum called menthos.
I think it's called menthos.
And when I grew up, I had a friend who saw this menthos advertising.
And he's like, wow, you know, that looks great.
You know, the wintry blast of iciness that goes into your mouth and frosts your tonsils.
And he tried it and he's like, oh my God.
He said, you know, after I tried that, it's like, that is the worst tasting thing I have ever put in my mouth.
And he said, to this day, every now and then, like I can't quite believe it.
Like every now and then I will buy...
And I'll put it in my mouth just to remind myself how good everything else tastes relative to that gum.
And I'm thinking like one of the heaviest advertised cars in the 50s was the Edsel, which apparently was a real lemon and didn't sell.
They spent $100 million trying to advertise new Coke.
And all that the advertising can get you to do is try that product.
But if you don't like the product, then advertising won't help, right?
Right.
In fact, you've just blown a huge amount of money in R&D and production costs and advertising costs.
You've just done a huge amount of damage to your business.
Advertising can't reprogram your brain.
Like, there's this cough mixture.
I don't know if it's where you are, but it's up here in Canada called Buckley's.
And Buckley's is apparently, they just masturbate Satan's armpits into a jar and call it medicine.
And...
The whole time when I was growing up, I never tried it.
It's like, Buckley's, it tastes awful, but it works.
And that was their slogan.
And I'm like, oh, come on, how bad could it be?
And then I had it once.
I think it was the only thing that was around.
And I tried it.
And like, damn, those people are really not kidding.
I mean, that is just...
That's just vile.
I mean, if all food tasted like that, we'd all have Brad Pitt's abs.
So, and did it work?
I think it did, right?
I mean, did it work enough for me to want to try that again if there's any other conceivable alternative, including seppuku?
No, it didn't work that well for my particular taste.
But that is like, they're not kidding.
It really is just absolutely horrific.
I've never tasted anything that bad in my life.
And I was a bachelor who cooked for myself.
So, advertising is not, like, doesn't just program people.
Like, it is something that can get you to try a product, but it can't get you, like, I mean, I'm telling you, like, I don't drink pop anymore.
I had enough people, and thank you, you know, like, I sipped a Diet Pepsi on the show, and I don't normally drink a lot of pop, but I sipped a Diet Pepsi on the show, and I think, you know, it broke the internet, the number of people who were outraged, saying, my God, aspartame, and so on, right?
Right.
And so I don't really drink.
And I've even had to give up.
I'm on a sort of anti-flatulence kick.
Hey, let me expose to you all of my inner life.
I'm on an anti-flatulence kick.
And so I'm, you know, red carbonated.
So I don't drink anything carbonated and all that.
And...
But I'm telling you, like I was trying to explain to my daughter the other day, you know, she said, well, why do people, you know, doesn't look like it tastes very good and you don't seem to miss it.
And I said, oh man, but I'm telling you, Coke, my memory of Coke, like when I grew up, we were just dirt poor.
And I could rarely ever afford, we could rarely ever afford to have any pop in the house at all.
In fact, I remember the rare times we had that Slovenly R.C. Kohler in the house.
If I had friends over and they wanted pop, I'd have to, like, put huge amounts of ice in there just to be able to pour to have enough for my friends because we just didn't really have it.
And I had a friend whose house, like, in their basement, they had a cold room.
You have a cold room.
And in that cold room, stacked, like, the very ambrosia of the gods in ridiculous upper-middle-class excess was, like, cans of pop.
Like, you could just go in and have cans of pop.
I mean, it's staggering.
But I remember I used to play a lot of soccer.
When I was a young man, like, like, I think I sort of, it sort of faded out for me around the age of 17.
But from, like, 13 to 17, I played a lot of soccer.
And I remember once, like, sometimes Canada is, like, the hottest place outside of, like, active volcano head on Venus or, like, full sunward-facing crater on Mercury.
It's just incredibly hot.
I guess it's hot like Florida because it can be really humid and it just bakes and And I remember playing soccer.
And I was so thirsty, so thirsty.
And I found a quarter on the soccer field.
And inside the school, which miraculously was actually open, it was a Saturday.
And I ran in from playing soccer, like so hot.
And I had this quarter.
I put the quarter in the Coke machine and the Coke came out and it was like...
It was so good.
My mouth is watering even now.
Like this is like 35 or 38 years later.
It came out and you know those beads of coldness that they have on the pictures of like the beers and they go...
It's like you just lick the whole glass.
And it came out like that with beads of coldness on it.
And I picked it up and my hand was so hot.
It was so hot.
I was like some Greek deity.
Not the Midas touch, but the burning hands of inflamment touch guy.
And I picked this thing up and my whole hand had a body chill.
It went all the way up my elbow, up to my tits.
I mean, it was like frosted coke boob nipple guy.
And I cracked this thing and even that sound...
You know, just...
And I've, like, opened it.
And, you know, that little...
That little...
Pop Climax that comes down, a little spray that comes out, that goes up into the air.
And it's like...
I smelled it.
It's so good.
It even cooled my nose.
My nose hair has got tiny little icicles on them.
And I was so hot.
And I actually...
And I put it against my chest and it cooled my whole body.
And I thought, oh man, I don't want to put it against my body.
I've got to make this thing lukewarm.
And then I just...
I put it up...
I've just drained it.
I couldn't drink more than half because, you know, it basically is an endurance test of inter-agony, right?
And I was like, oh my, that's so good.
Like, my knees went weak.
And of course, actually, this is not even a diet.
I don't think they even had diet coke when I was a kid.
But the sugar, the energy, like, it just flowed into my body.
And I could feel strength returning to my veins.
And this column of, like, this growing icicle of deep dish refreshment was...
Growing down into my belly and my whole spine turned into this frosted air conditioning glory of refreshment.
Oh my god.
I had to wipe my mouth here.
It's disgusting.
Oh my god.
I feel like I'm having another drink now, but it's slightly less refreshing.
Yeah, we don't do advertisements on the show, Steph.
What are you doing?
No, no.
I'm telling you my experience.
This was my experience.
This is like a joyous moment.
In my youth, haven't you ever had something like that?
Where you're just like, that is the perfect thing at the perfect time.
And somebody could have said to me, like in that moment, this is how sad it was, because it was very, again, very rare for me to have pop growing up.
But someone could have said to me at that time, Oh, you could have this stinky old pop for a quarter, and it's coming from some dusty old school vending machine.
It's been there how long?
I have for you.
I have for you, my friend, fresh Alps sweat water.
It is water that has run down from the top of the Alps, perfectly pure, perfectly...
I don't know why I say this in an accent.
Perfectly pure, perfectly clear, and it's going to be slightly chilled, and in it will be a hologram of Jill St.
John, and you can drink that, and it will be perfectly refreshing.
I'll be like...
Forget it, man.
That's just like, that's like llama spit for me.
I just, that Coke, that glistening Coke, that is like what I, and I don't think I've ever had a better drink in my life.
And I've certainly been more thirsty in my life.
Like when I went to visit my father when I was 16 in Africa, he took me on this hike that basically started in, at the edge of the national park.
And ended up in infinity.
It was actually infinity.
And we climbed like 3,000 feet in one day.
I wasn't particularly fit at this point.
I was going through a non-fit phase in my life.
And I was so thirsty.
I didn't bring much water.
And he's like, well, what you need to do is suck a stone.
And Koch brothers.
Suck a stone.
And that will produce more saliva.
And that will quench your thirst.
I'm like, what?
Yeah.
I'm producing this a lot.
I'm producing the liquid.
How on earth can consuming the liquid that I myself am producing?
I guess masturbation gives me a baby too, right?
But I've just, by the way, put something...
I just put a subliminal thing in there for people.
So that to me was like, now, that was not because there'd been all these commercials.
I mean, that was just what I wanted at the time.
So it's really good.
Coke is really good.
It's why people drink it.
It's really good.
I'm not saying it's good for you.
I know it cleans pennies and apparently polishes...
Satan's fiery hand of death across the human landscape of ill health, but I'm just saying that it's really good.
Now, that wasn't because I saw a commercial.
That's just like I did taste it.
It was really good.
Now, why did I ever first try a Coke wine if someone gave it to me?
And it is good.
I'm sorry.
Like, it is, you know, I don't know if it's like sugar-based masochism.
It's like, it's so good.
It's like, because you're drinking that pop, and it's like, I'm so thirsty, and it's so painful.
It's hurting my throat, but it's thirsty.
Right?
I mean, basically, it's like a cheesecake that just slaps you in the face repeatedly.
It's so good.
Gotta go in for a...
So good.
Let me try the creme brulee that pokes me in the eye, a la Three Stooges, next.
It's just one of these things.
It's a very ambivalent but exciting and joyful thing to drink.
Anyway, I mean, that's my commercial tank.
I guess where I'm coming from, just to give you a little bit of a background, is obviously we're a long way off to a free society to where people would be less susceptible to these sort of influences from either an advertisement or a design of a service or even a pitch that someone might be giving about how phenomenal a coach is after playing soccer like you just did.
Plus, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Can I just say...
say something?
Sure.
Who do I blow to get a Coke at this point in my life?
I just need to know that because I'm willing to, uh, because I'll know I'll have something to take away the taste, but sorry, go ahead.
No, no, that was good.
Um, in the interim then, uh, before we get to this free society, how do I make sure that I walk the line properly in, in my approaches to marketing and business development that, Because I really study these techniques a lot and I find it interesting that some of them can be misused in a way to actually manipulate people but others can actually be used ethically to generate win-win situations.
So I'm always trying to look at that to make sure that I'm staying on the side of ethics with the way that I conduct business and at the same time What would be a solution for the people who are not yet coming to the self-knowledge of being able to thwart these manipulations as they see them?
Could there be more education about marketing a business for people to learn about these tricks that could be played on them?
Do you believe in the product that you are advertising?
Yes.
Then all's fair in Love and War, baby.
You're talking about a guy who makes dick-sucking jokes on a philosophy show, right?
You're talking to a guy who takes off his shirt and imitates a supermodel knocking on a guy's door to have sex.
I mean, you're not talking to the most refined Noam Chomsky-style I mean, I will do anything to get people interested in philosophy.
I will pull any string I can think of.
I will do anything ridiculous that I can think of.
I mean, I've been attacked by Grumpy Cat in a show about Obamacare.
I mean, I will do anything to get people interested in philosophy.
To get people interested in philosophy because I really believe in the product.
I really believe in what we're doing and what we're having as a conversation here.
And because I hugely believe in it, by hook or by crook using any tool that I can think of.
I mean, I won't lie to people or anything like that, but I've been using any tool of engagement that I can conceivably imagine.
I will try and drag people into this show.
And we get, you know, three plus million show downloads and views a month.
Which is great.
And I assume that's going up over time.
And I, you know, this has been, I think, the biggest philosophy bomb that's landed on the planet since the beginning of philosophy.
And again, mostly because of technology and, you know, people like you who call them with great questions.
So for me, what is the ethical approach?
I don't care.
I will get people interested in philosophy no matter what.
Bad publicity is, I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right.
I don't care what you say about the show, just spell its name right and give people the URL. So I believe so strongly and so foundationally in this show.
That I will go and, as people characterize it, beg for money.
And why will I beg for money?
So that I can continue to do these shows and hopefully do them better.
I'm constantly trying to move the goalpost of what I'm willing to do and what I'm willing to talk about.
We talk about issues of race and gender and family that other people go within 20 miles and end up as nuclear shadows on politically correct walls.
And I would do all of that.
Because I want the show to be relevant.
I want it to be useful.
I want it to be actionable.
I want it to be compelling.
I want it to be interesting.
Because people have got, you know, the fact that there's an internet out here means that I get to talk to you, but it means every other person in the universe can start a show as well.
And so it's great that we have this communication avenue, but Lord knows it can get incredibly cluttered with every other sentient being in the known universe trying to get your attention as well.
So from my standpoint...
Believe in your product.
Believe in what you're producing.
Believe in what you're creating.
Believe in the value that you're bringing to the world.
And after that, all's fair in love and war.
But you won't lie, though.
You said that you wouldn't be dishonest.
And I think that's, you know, one of those lines where...
You know, people would have to say, well, anything beyond this line of dishonesty is a marketing technique, even if I do believe in my own product, because I know people who believe in their product and will still use dishonest techniques to market it and to sell it.
Or maybe that speaks to actually how much they actually believe in their own product.
You don't need to call into a philosophy show to say, should I lie?
True.
I mean, there are complicated ethical issues in the world.
I don't think should I lie is one of them, right, Justin?
I get that.
And no, I agree with you.
I guess I am aware of very subtle techniques that I have a hard time even identifying whether or not it would be construed as a lie in terms of positioning a product or service and marketing that can either gain more sales, gain more revenue out of the customers, still deliver a product that they want in the first place.
But all you can get them to do is try your product.
You're not controlling them forever.
There was no amount of advertising that was going to make my friend buy Mentos.
Let's not even look at advertising.
Beyond that, if someone's already in a restaurant and making decisions about what they want to order, there are things that people can list on a menu that would change their decision-making about what they order, even if they weren't intending to order those foods when they first stepped into that restaurant.
It's not about...
It's not necessarily just the words on the page that are, you know, describing the food.
Oh no, I get it.
I was a waiter, and I was a waiter at a pretty high-end restaurant, and we had this dessert called the profiterole.
And I would say to people, hey, you know, we got this dessert called the Perfeterol.
Let me just tell you about it because it's really great.
We get this light, fluffy French pastry that's so light it could almost float.
It's like almost like a dandelion fluff of like pure Parisian sugary pasty goodness.
And then we take freshly made scooped vanilla ice cream.
We put that in.
We put another layer of the pastry on top.
Another, not too much, a little bit of ice cream, perfectly flavored, just the right amount of vanilla.
And then we put on the top another light, fluffy, French-style, Parisian, locally baked pastry roll.
That's like, you know, it's like brioche.
It's like what that queen was saying, let them eat cake.
And Marie Antoinette was saying, let them eat cake.
It's brioche.
It's a kind of sweet French pastry.
And then we put this chocolate sauce.
Now, not the kind of chocolate sauce you're getting from that Hershey's jar or the little squeeze.
We make this in-house, this chocolate sauce, three strawberries.
And if you want, if you're feeling extravagant, like that's not extravagant enough, we've got this thing where we put also some raspberry sauce.
And again, like real raspberries squished between the breasts of Cuban women.
It is a raspberry sauce.
And the whole thing comes to you and don't order it for yourself because it's big enough to share.
This will be a dessert that will keep you up.
Like you'll wake up in the middle of the night and you'll say, my life is incomplete because I'm not currently eating this dessert.
I'm hesitant to offer it to you because it is so good that you will never even want candy again because it simply won't be as good as this dessert.
Now, is that encouraging someone to buy a dessert?
Oh, sure it is.
Did I believe in it?
Absolutely.
Did I hope they wouldn't finish it?
Yes, because at that time, I had no pride in my food.
Please don't finish this.
I'd go up to people, are you done?
Are you done?
How about now?
Are you done?
Are you done?
And I know I tried it.
It was a fantastic dessert.
And yeah, am I encouraging people to buy it?
Yes.
Does that add to the restaurant's profits and my tip to some degree?
Yes.
But they can always say no.
I mean, if you go for a job interview, don't you put a suit on?
Well, it depends on the establishment.
But you know what I mean.
Like, I mean, if you go for a job interview for some sort of professional job, you put on a suit.
Is that manipulative?
No, because the truth is if you wear the opposite of what would work for that place, their psychology would suggest that you're less qualified just based on what you're wearing.
Although you couldn't factually draw that conclusion other than knowing what's appropriate or not, right?
I mean, if it was a job where you didn't interact with anyone, some sort of backroom job, not wearing a suit, right?
I guess that comes down to concepts.
I mean, there is a ton of research out there from social psychology about what you wear to certain situations and how that construes you as an authority figure, having any credibility, integrity, and so on.
So, I mean, I don't want to get overly complicated about this stuff, but if you've got a product you're passionate about, then don't lie, but encourage people as strongly as you can to try your product.
And if they like it, then they like it.
And if the person I'll say to them, I said, look, if you don't like the dessert, send it back.
We won't even charge you.
Because it never happened.
This dessert was fantastic.
And everything I said about the dessert was true.
And people were like, thank you so much for...
That was like the best dessert I've ever had.
Thank you so much for suggesting it.
I would never have had it, and now I've had it.
And I said, and now all other desserts are going to be a disappointment.
So you thank me, but at the same time, you don't thank me, right?
So...
So yeah, I mean, I believed in the dessert.
I obviously benefited to some degree from selling the dessert, but I wanted people to try this dessert.
It's so good.
It's like when you have a great album, you're like, put on these headphones, listen to this song.
It's incredible.
And even if you're not selling the album, if you are, right, fine, right?
But if you believe in it, let your passion shine.
Let, you know, again, do everything that's ethical to get people to try this product.
I mean, it's, you know, I bet you people still remember that dessert from 30 years ago when I was selling it.
Yeah, okay.
I mean, I... I agree with you there, and I guess the line is really just honesty and not lying in the sales approach.
I guess I'm a little bit confused as to why I may have gotten caught up on that in the first place as I learn about these subjects and tricks of marketing and whatnot, but that could be a conversation for another time, perhaps.
I would imagine that because some politicians use this stuff and there are great susceptibilities in the population.
Like when I'm at a play center, I'm usually the guy who gets games going with all the kids because just, you know, that tidal wave of kid energy when everyone's playing together can be hugely fun.
And, you know, I can tell in less than a second which kids have dads and which kids don't.
I mean, you just, you know.
You just, and I won't sort of get into the hows and whys, but you just know.
Now, you don't want to ever misuse that power.
You don't ever want to use that power in any negative way whatsoever.
So you're aware that there's a power in the world, which is your study of marketing and psychology and salesmanship and so on.
And you don't want to use that for negative and nefarious ends.
And there are lots of people who do, right?
Politicians will attempt to sell you on this stuff and...
You want to make sure you're not in that crew, right?
But it has a lot to do with, like, manipulation to get people to act against their own self-interest is not a good thing, right?
On the other hand, what we call manipulation to get people to act in their own self-interest, you know, again, all's fair in love and war.
I use whatever the enemy uses.
I don't bring a knife to a gunfight.
I use whatever the enemy uses.
But, you know, with the caveat that philosophy is much better than anything they're putting out.
It's the opposite in most cases.
And I'm teaching them critical thinking, which means that they're going to outgrow anything.
So are you going to say?
Is it fair to assume that you know another person's self-interest, though?
There's a lot of ways to influence people to make healthier decisions, better decisions by my standards and perhaps by your standards.
Everyone has different standards for this.
Is that fair or would it still be construed as a coercive persuasion or a manipulation if somebody says, no, I actually did want to eat that cake.
Why did you influence me to make a healthier decision when I actually wanted that cake in the first place or something like that?
That feels like a little bit of a fuzzy area for me.
Because you're not lying to them and you think you're acting in their best interest, but everyone has their own goalposts for that.
I don't know.
Do you have any thoughts on that?
I don't know what is going to define someone's self-interest, but I do believe that critical thinking is better than irrational thinking.
Obviously, that's the deal, right, with being a philosopher.
And I think that exposing people to accurate information and critical thinking principles and critical thinking examples...
Is for the better, for sure.
I mean, that's the gig, right?
That's the deal of being a philosopher.
So I don't know what's better for people in terms of, you know, should they like jazz or blues, but I do know that, you know, I may not know exactly how everyone in the world should eat, but I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be eating sand and dark shit, right?
So that's, you know, I don't know what they should do positively, but I know what they should avoid, which is sort of the non-aggression principle thing, right?
Right.
And so you would say that it's, or it sounds like you're saying that it is fair to use these strategies and this understanding of the brain to guide people's decisions to something that would be, I guess, as a majority, construed as a better option for society, or no?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
No, no, but my whole point as a philosopher is to remove...
From people's mind justifications for those who think that they do know what is positively better for other people, because that's taxation, that's the welfare state, that's the military-industrial complex, that's the whole governmental structure, as is the religious structure, is saying, I know what is better for you than you do yourself, right?
There's a non-aggression principle that's don't use force against others, it doesn't, right?
Right.
I mean, I feel like I know of examples of companies that can use That can use these strategies, though, to guide people towards decisions that maybe can be construed as better, and it's not necessarily coercion from the state or persuasion from a politician.
For instance, when you're first signing up for a nude company and perhaps they offer you a savings, 401k options and things like that, We've done a lot of research into what are people's average rates of savings based on the preset default that you're exposed to on the form.
If it's not checked off automatically that says, yes, I want to play with the 401k program at this company, people tend to not save at all and they don't join the program for several years, whereas you can actually just have the checkbots Well,
and then if you believe in the 401k program, then you can tell them about it in the hiring policy.
In the hiring, I assume you have some sort of orientation, right?
And tell them about that.
You know, if people are that passive that a checkbox, they'll just do whatever the checkbox says, then I don't know what to say.
I don't think that the big problem in their life is whether that box is checked or not.
Right, so then maybe the bigger question is how do we, and I think you hit it in the beginning of Having better relationships with the family and connections to emotions and real-time relationships and whatnot has people more aware of this default pattern to where they can say, no, hold on a minute.
I actually want to make a critical decision here rather than just going with whatever's on the page in front of me.
So if that's where you're coming from, I completely agree with that.
Would you say that it's the right of the company to really set any of their own defaults, to really set any of their own environment, especially if they believe in the product?
Justin, you keep overcomplicating things.
You don't need to ask me these questions.
Is it an initiation of the use of force to have a default checklist?
To have something default checked?
I guess not, no.
No, it's not, right?
I mean, so...
I'm sorry if I'm moving the goalpost.
I'm not trying to.
I feel like there's so many different avenues for the application of this research that, in some ways, it can actually play with people's emotions.
From the perception of the business and how the customer perceives the service that they're being offered.
In that case, is it okay for a marketing or a business design to study the way that they can modify people's emotions so that they actually feel like they want the company or the service or the business more than perhaps they did if they weren't I feel like I'm going around in circles.
I do apologize.
No, look, of course, all is fair.
You're not initiating the use of force and you want people to use your product.
Now, if your product sucks, then no amount of marketing is going to make it unsuck, right?
Okay.
Again, all it can do is get people to try the product for the first time.
And these days when you have, like, don't worry about, I mean, these days when you have, like, reviews of companies and products and everything right there on the website, I mean, it's really hard to get away with crappy stuff these days.
I mean, it was easier before, right?
But it's hard to get away with it.
But, yeah, I mean, all's fair.
I mean, you can do whatever.
Let me give an example.
Alright, so I can't find the exact one that I'm looking for, but there's this guy called Justin Trudeau, who's a Canadian politician who's the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who was a high-foreheaded, weaseled-faced husband of Margaret Trudeau, who...
Apparently hung out quite intimately with the Rolling Stones.
Anyway, he's this dewy-eyed, puppy-dog, tousled-haired fellow who's very good-looking.
Certainly, you know, politics is usually showbiz for ugly people, but he's a really good-looking guy, right?
And this is what's on Amazon as the pitch for his book called Common Ground.
Mike, could you give me the piano, please?
Justin Trudeau's candid memoir will reveal to its readers the experiences that have shaped him over the course of his life and show how his passion for Canada and its people took root.
Covering the years from his childhood at 24 Sussex to his McGill days during the tumultuous time of the Charlottetown Accord to his first campaign in Papineau to his role as liberal leader today the book will capture the foundational moments that have formed the man we have come to know And informed his vision for the future of Canada.
Filled with anecdotes, personal reflections and never-before-seen photographs from his own collection, Mr.
Trudeau's memoir will show how the events of his life have led him to this moment and prepared him for the future.
Now, Justin, is that geared to men or women?
Um...
I can't distinguish that.
Well, I'm telling you, as a guy who was director of marketing, that is geared entirely towards women.
In fact, if women don't climax upon that reading, they need to go and see a gynecologist.
Yeah.
Okay, candid.
First of all, candid is a woman, like, it's like the word pampering.
So for women, would you like an in-home pampering?
For men, it's like, what, are you going to rub shit in my body?
No, thank you.
Strangers into my house to rub shit into my body.
For women, it's like, ooh, in-home pampering.
I'm purring already, right?
Candid memoir.
So candid is like, he's going to tell you secrets, ladies.
And of course, you know, a lot of female friendships are not secrets, right?
The experiences that have shaped him over the course of his life.
I mean, can you imagine John Locke, like the second treatise on government?
On the back it says, this is a candid memoir from John Locke that will reveal to its readers the experiences that have shaped him over the course of his life.
And it's like, what?
No, just give me your damn arguments.
This is a book on politics.
He's a politician.
Give me your arguments.
But it's no, the experiences that have shaped him and so on, right?
Childhood at 24, this is all like, it's all women's stuff.
It's all women's stuff.
Capture the foundational moments that have formed the man.
It's like, what?
Are you saying he's just like a pinball bouncing off his experiences that have formed him like the way a potter forms a clay?
I don't want to know.
I want to know what guy thinks.
What's his facts?
What's his reason?
What's his evidence?
No, no, no, no.
We want a book.
Filled with anecdotes, personal reflections, and never-before-seen photographs from his own collection.
So that's the voyeuristic element of women.
Oh, we get to see his pictures.
That's cool.
I wonder what he looked like as a baby.
Have you ever looked at a thinker and said, well, I don't know, I could listen to his arguments, but I also wonder what he looked like as a baby, right?
This is just women stuff.
And this isn't even the worst one.
The worst one I saw was in McLean somewhere.
I can't find it right now.
But, oh man, it's brutal.
It's brutal.
And so it's manipulative as hell.
I can't imagine any heterosexual male who would respond to this kind of stuff.
But for women, this is like catnip.
Again, not all women and so on, right?
But it's like anecdotes and personal reflections.
It's like, man, if you want all my tax money, I want more than you than fucking anecdotes and personal reflections.
And I don't care what you look like as a baby.
Stop spending my money!
So, I don't know.
It's a memoir.
It's a candid memoir.
It's like, I don't give a shit what your candid experiences were that shaped you.
Will you stop spending all my money?
Will you stop putting my children into debt?
Will you stop growing the size and power of the state?
Will you stop being so pretty so that people can't think straight when you're talking about your personal fucking anecdotes and memoirs?
Give me some facts.
Give me some arguments.
Give me a little bit of philosophy.
A tiny shred of critical thinking.
I don't care which personal experiences shaped your fucking vision.
As long as your vision doesn't include massive tax increases on me, I'm okay.
Anyway.
I couldn't get over the piano in the beginning, so I'm with you.
Yeah.
All right.
And look, I mean, you sound like a very morally sensitive person.
Perhaps a little oversensitive, but that's, you know, perhaps a topic for another time.
But no, believe in your product and then move mountains to get it into the hands of people.
That's all that matters.
Believe in your product and move mountains to get it into the hands of people.
And that's loyalty to your product.
If you don't believe in your product, keep moving until you find one or make a product that you can believe in.
But that is important.
Once you've got the right product and you believe in the importance of getting it, Thank you very much for your time.
The reason for the question was really to make sure that I had my definitions rights and my understanding of my studies in terms of how they fall on the ethical and the moral spectrums.
So I really appreciate your feedback, and it's definitely going to help guide me as I work on it.
Well, you can, but again, I don't think that marketing in magazines and TVs is the big problem.
One big problem is makeup on women.
Have you seen the movie Interstellar?
No, not yet.
Okay.
Here's my pitch for Interstellar.
Are you ready?
No.
We are going to take you on a journey.
And we're going to take you on a journey, my friends, to the edge of the known universe.
At the edge of this known universe, at a time where gravity flows backwards and time stretches to infinity, the laws of physics reverse themselves so much...
That Anne Hathaway looks like an ordinary human being.
That is my pitch for Interstellar.
If you ever get a chance to watch that movie, Anne Hathaway, who is one of these weirdly dewy-eyed, huge...
She looks like an electrified baby.
She's in this movie without makeup, and she looks like an ordinary human being.
It's astounding, right?
It's astonishing.
I mean, Matthew McConaughey looks young until he cries, and then he looks like an Ancient mummified Chinese head.
But no, it's true.
It's weird.
Just try looking at these.
Or if you want to watch a movie where a woman looks like a normal human being, watch the movie Wild.
About this woman who hiked the Pacific Coast Trail, I think it's called.
It took her like three months and her toenails fell off and stuff.
And there's Reese Witherspoon looking like a regular, honest-to-God, normal human being.
And it's so funny.
It's such a courageous role.
He is so courageous.
They're going without makeup.
And it's like, what?
Nobody's...
Such a courageous movie.
He took his shirt off.
It's like, no, that's just what he looks like.
But...
And just do this for shits and giggles.
I mean, there's tons of...
This is the women without makeup.
You know, the before and after makeup stuff, right?
I was showing this to my daughter the other day because I want her to understand that the cyborgs she sees on television have about as much relationship to real women and real human beings as flashlight does to real vaginas.
Don't ask me how I know that.
Don't keep asking me.
Wait, sorry, that was my conscience.
That wasn't the audience.
Anyway, but it's really important.
The amount of advertising that goes on on television is less important to me than the amount of obfuscation that goes on women's faces.
And that really is astonishing.
And yes, they have pores.
You know, high def reveals that these women are not shellacked.
Okay.
Well, one exception, the woman who plays the lead on Bones.
She's got this eerie skin that is more akin to vertically engineered cream than it is to actual human epidermis.
But it is...
I've heard these things where men say, first date!
First date should be...
Swimming!
So that you can see what she looks like without makeup.
I remember seeing the beginning of some movie.
I don't think I watched it all the way through.
But Anna Faris plays this woman who wakes up, sneaks out of bed, puts on her makeup because she's a guy sleeping with her, and comes back and then wakes up like this is how she just looks in the morning.
And it's kind of weird and kind of eerie.
Watched Ann Coulter on TV the other day.
I don't know what kind of weird interstellar Arkansas ditch caterpillar that woman puts on her upper eyelids.
But dear Lord in heaven.
I mean, it's like wearing two sunshades.
It's like she's got two little Vegas dealers over her eyeballs.
I mean, you strike a match off those things and set fire to the entire studio.
It's just weird.
But I think that stuff is kind of creepy.
And I think it would behoove women to focus a little bit less on their looks and focus a little bit more on, you know, say virtue and reliability, honesty, integrity, which, you know, a lot of women have and so on.
But picking up women's magazines, we got this women's magazine.
We get it delivered to the house.
I don't know why, but we do.
And you flip through it and it's like, Here's another woman who was born pretty.
Here's another woman who was born pretty.
This woman was born with great hair.
This woman has big boobs.
This woman has ridiculously long eyelashes that came about naturally.
This woman, it's like spider legs having orgasms underneath their eyebrows.
And this woman has really long legs.
And this woman, while this woman that we say will make you cellulite free if you use this cream, she's actually a 14-year-old gymnast, so not to worry about that.
But, oh my god, the amount of like, here, you can bullshit the world and we'll show you how.
Give us money and we'll allow you to bullshit the world.
You can look older if you're younger.
You can look younger if you're older.
It's like, this 79-year-old grandma looks like she's 40 and is like, no, she doesn't.
She looks like somebody took her entire head skin of faceness and tied a giant Gordian knot behind her head and now she can barely move and can't smile and can't blink.
She's like the woman who plays the...
There's this show called State of Affairs, and there's this black woman who plays the president.
I swear to God, she has no facial expressions whatsoever.
I know black don't crack, but I think she's got Botox to the point where she looks like an elephant's knee and has about the same acting ability or acting range of expression.
Bemused resignation.
Anger.
Lust.
Does anything move up there?
No.
Some of these actresses have become like ventriloquist acts.
It's like, how can you have those words without your lips even moving?
Like they got stuck in a pool drain, like that old joke from First Wives Club.
So as far as your sensitivity towards marketing goes, I think it would be fascinating to It was an old Batman movie where, I can't remember why, but makeup becomes dangerous and you see all of these anchors on TV. They can't, like their hair's all bushy and they've got pimples and stuff like that.
And it's like, yeah, that's, it would be great.
I mean, Listen, I'm just...
I have this ridiculously high-def camera at 60 frames a second.
It's like I did not really understand the degree to which I look like a talking speckled hen egg because of the sparse freckles I've always had in my life.
I don't notice that.
I take a picture with some old Polaroid and I look like...
Brad Pitt, you know, I get a high-def camera and suddenly I look like the Crypt Keeper with leprosy.
It's just the way it works, but I know that people are actually listening to the quality of the show rather than going, wow.
That egg, I'd hit that.
That's speckly shit.
That means he's good in bed.
You know all about that stuff, don't you?
It's like, no, hey, high def.
And every time, I don't know, every time I pause, I look angry or stoned.
I just really wanted to point that out.
Try it.
Pause one of my videos.
Angry or stoned.
That's basically the sum total.
Or it's an O face, but that's a little bit more rare.
So there's lots of things to worry about, you know, politicians, makeup.
I mean, if men rented cars and suits to make themselves look much richer every single day, and there were magazines, how to fake wealth for the ladies, how to fake having more resources than you have for the ladies.
Here's a fake six-pack, you know, here's something that you can get that you can tie.
Here's some Naugahyde horsehair that you can lash and tie around so that you squish in your man belly, you know.
Here's how to fake hair for the ladies.
Here's how to fake that you have a nice car.
Here's how to fake that you're interested in her.
Use this expression when she's talking to pretend that you're interested.
Like, if everything in every single conceivable men's magazine was, here's how to bullshit and lie and manipulate women, women would be like, well, that's shitty, isn't it?
What the fuck is wrong with you guys?
To the point where you can't even get anything straight.
Where you're showing up looking like some...
Giant vat of cream landed in some giant vat of money and you're supposed to actually believe this.
I mean, here's how to fake that you have any assets whatsoever.
You may live in a shoebox, but here's how to make it look like you're living in some Bel Air condo.
And it's like if every single thing in men's magazines was how to lie to women, oh my god, women would be looking at men going like, what is the matter with you?
Why can't you just tell the truth?
Why?
Why?
I mean, it's just madness.
What the hell is wrong?
And so this, men look at these, men with any discernment, we look at these magazines, you go to the grocery store, look at these magazines, it's like, here's how to lie to men.
Lie to men.
Fake stuff with men.
Your nails aren't big enough.
Here's, you need nails that allows you to gouge out the back of Tutankhamun's brain stem.
If you're going through the eyeballs.
You need nails that you can climb trees and dig for roots and berries and peel carrots from four feet away.
That's the kind of nails you need.
Nails that if you fall off a building, you can flap and achieve some semi-semblance of air motion.
Those are the nails you need.
Longer lashes.
You need long and ashes.
You need neotony-style shoes that make you so wobbly that men feel like pedophiles for trying to pick you up.
Oh, are you having trouble walking there, honey?
Because you're three or two?
Wow, you're sexy!
Here's how to make your eyeballs look huge, like you're twelve.
Or...
That girl from Modern Family or Anne Hathaway, whether you're at the edge of the universe or not, that woman is permanently startled.
I don't know if she's got little toothpicks in there or what.
But it's just bizarre.
I mean, because this is what it looks like.
Women's media as a whole is, here's how to lie to men.
Get yourself some Spanx.
Don't do any sit-ups.
Get yourself some Spanx.
Here's how to lie to men and here's how to injure yourself with the occasional exercise routine that's far too difficult and will never stick.
But it's just lie, lie, lie.
Manipulate, manipulate.
Lie, lie, lie.
Fool them, fool them, fool them.
It's like, what the hell is wrong with you women that you can't just be who you are and think that men might possibly like you for looking like you.
Right?
Looking like you.
It's like, I don't know, we did just have a baby.
That baby is adorable.
But without makeup on the baby, I don't think we're going to keep it.
I mean, really, it's just not cute enough.
And so hairless.
Can we get hair transplants, my armpit hair, to that baby's forehead?
Because it just looks all kind of like Donald Trump in a windstorm over there.
I mean, just stop lying.
Stop being addicted to this lying to men at all times.
Fake them.
Fake boobs.
That's not your real hair.
That's not your real boobs.
Black women's hair doesn't look like that.
It doesn't.
I was there in the 70s.
I saw afros so big that the woman had to take a run at anything that wasn't a double door propped open.
Anyway.
No, that's not your real hair color.
Come on!
You're over 40.
If there's no gray in there, it's bullshit.
Bullshit.
Lies.
All of it lies.
Anyway.
And the other thing, too, is that women...
Oh, man.
Women have the temerity to be upset with pickup artists.
They're manipulative.
Really?
Oh my god!
They're manipulative!
You mean they're not being forthright and honest about who they are and what they look like and what resources and...
Sometimes they try to pretend that they have more money than they do.
Sometimes you all try to pretend that you're a little less road-worn than you actually are.
I mean, some women is like, I've never seen the sun.
This is what an eight-year-old vampire looks like.
It's like, nope!
That's what polyfiller looks like.
The wall may look smooth, but the house is about to fall down.
You're not fooling anyone with that stuff.
And let's not even get started.
It's like, if you were actually having an orgasm in front of me, your lips would not be that red.
The only time that your lips should look that red is if you have been French kissing somebody who just had a tooth removed.
That is the only way that your lips should ever look that red.
That is not a human color.
I don't like colors not found in nature in my food or on my women.
That is not a natural color.
There is no red in the world that is like that unless you're looking at the esophagus of a vampire in full feed mode.
It's just, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe if you just bit off Evander Holyfield's ear, that would be the color of your lips.
But I'm not sure that Mike Tyson and lipstick is an image anybody want us to have.
Maybe, maybe if you are...
Very much into fava beans with a white wine sauce, you would have lips of that particular color.
But unless you're actually bleeding out from the gums, this should not be your color.
And there's no way that anybody who's not punched currently should have eyes Even remotely that kind of black violet-y color that goes on there, it's just bizarre.
And yes, yes, yes, eyebrows can be a little bit large.
It's okay.
If you have these weird little laser eyebrows, nature put eyebrows there for one reason, to make sweat not go into your eyeballs.
If you have eyebrows like that, you're basically taking a shower with your mouth open trying not to drink anything.
So anyway, I could go on and on, but that may be stuff to focus on a little more than the odd little bit of manipulation that goes on advertising.
Well, yeah, and I mean, we can stop it here, but it does go beyond advertising.
I think that as much manipulation and lying as might be happening between the two genders, I think it happens a lot in business too.
And I think that bringing that to light for some people could be really beneficial for their experiences at their careers and their places of work and to avoid such manipulations and abusive powers of either management or other employees and so on, and even customers.
So ultimately, I want to bring more of all of that to light and continue.
That's my niche.
That's my focus.
I enjoy it.
That's what I'd like to share more of.
I would not like a...
A grocer who was selling eggs and changed the best buy date.
Right.
And that's basically what makeup and all this body manipulation and hair dye and crap like that does.
It's like, I don't care if you look younger on the outside, your eggs ain't any younger, and that's what it's all about.
Right.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
And let's do one last caller.
All right, Steph, before we get to the next call, I want to do something real quick, okay?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, that's a Diet Pepsi I'm opening.
Oh, gosh.
All right, that's it.
I'm going to shove an entire portfolio up my ass on campus.
Sorry.
Here we go.
So good.
Up next is Andrew.
Andrew wrote in and said, I'm beginning to feel that the only true quote-unquote healthy relationships tend to be transactional,
and for a number of reasons, most fall into the realm of quote-unquote abuse to varying degrees.
For lack of a better term, do you recommend any particular methodology for cultivating, nurturing, protecting, and sustaining human relationships?
Or are people committed to self-knowledge and self-respect left to high turnover in relationships?
Well, just honesty.
I mean, with all of the complexity that that involves, I mean, just be honest with people.
Honesty is one of these great positive and negative vibe machines in that it will draw honest people to you and drive dishonest people away from you.
Dishonest people have so much to hide that if they come across someone who's frank and curious, they tend to To flee, right?
And so, I think just having a robust commitment to context-appropriate levels of honesty is, I think, and I know that that's a very short answer to a very complicated question, but I think if you sort of, as I try to do, I mean, sort of stop in your life and say, am I being honest with this person?
I'm being honest with this person.
Is there anything that I could have added or anything that I'm leaving out?
Can I be honest with this person?
And...
You'd be surprised, at least I am.
The gap can be, you know...
There's a lot of filters that go on in human relationships.
And, you know, are all of them bad?
Probably not.
But there are appropriate, contextual, helpful facts that we either keep from people, avoid, or give in a distorted fashion.
And I think just having that continued commitment to honesty...
Is the best way that I know of to try to keep relationships honest and keep them honest.
Be honest to keep your relationships honest.
Hey, at least there's nothing tautological about that one.
But it keeps them alive.
It keeps them vibrant.
Because honesty will always bring new insights and new insights.
Give you more stuff to be honest and curious about.
I guess this is somewhat interesting perspective.
Well, thank you.
Hopefully the somewhat isn't too much of a condemnation.
Not at all, Steph.
Not at all.
I guess you'll acknowledge, too, that honesty can be very scary for a lot of people at times, correct?
Terrifying.
Absolutely terrifying.
Yeah, because we're punished for honesty.
I mean, if your teacher is boring when you're in grade school and you say, the teacher, I'm really bored.
I'm really bored right now.
I find you very boring.
If you say to your math teacher who's teaching you the opposite angle theorem or the triangle inequality relation, not the triangle inequality theorem, because the acronym for that just makes us giggle.
But if you say, well, what is the relevance of this to my life?
Or, you know, if you're bored around a family dinner table and you say, I'm bored.
My daughter said, we were talking about something this evening.
My daughter said, I'm bored with this conversation.
Okay, well, let's figure out something that can be more interesting to all of us, right?
It's perfectly valid.
She's allowed to be bored.
And so we unstrapped the nine tablets we had affixed to her eyeballs and switched it to something else.
But, I mean, to what degree are we allowed?
To be honest.
You know, if God is all-powerful, why is there evil?
Why is there a devil?
Why does God give the devil dominion over us?
If God knows what we're going to do because he's all-knowing, how can he blame us for something he knows that we're going to do?
I mean, these are all basic questions that kids have.
I had them, you had them, everyone has them.
How often are they allowed to be questioned?
I mean, in Islam, the compulsion in the realm of religion is forbidden, so why is there a death penalty for apostasy?
I mean, this is all reasonable questions, and what happens is almost no kids ever ask them.
Because they know.
They know, they know.
See, honesty is a virtue that is only a virtue when those in authority have something that they want you to tell them.
When you have information.
When you have information they want, then honesty is a virtue.
And when you have information they don't want, then diplomacy or tact is a virtue, right?
In other words, lying is a virtue when the truth is upsetting to them, and honesty is a virtue when lying is upsetting to them.
You know, it's the old thing that change in society benefits some people and harms other people, and all the people it benefits call it progress, and all the people who it doesn't benefit call it disruptive, and they all attach all this moral crap to all of this stuff, but it's just, you know, does it benefit my interest or harm it?
Let's recloak it in philosophies that I don't appear too obviously selfish.
And, yeah, we just had a Winners and Losers podcast that just got released.
What's the number of it, Mike?
Oh, I don't know off the top of my head, but we're nearing 3,000 at this point.
Yeah, somewhere up around the...
I remember the...
I think I did...
I recorded the first, like, the intro to the one when I laughed and said it was 183 shows because that just seemed like a lot.
2,948.
Winners and Losers.
2,948.
3,000 is going to be a whiny donation pitch, right?
Guys, readdomainradio.com slash donate.
Come on, guys.
I was like, we had this, sorry to fly tangent.
I played Dungeons and Dragons when I was younger.
And I mean, we were all very serious at the beginning.
And then as things move forward, sometimes it became pretty funny.
And it would be more of a comedy fest evening.
And I was far from the funniest person in that group.
I mean, there were some wickedly funny people in that group.
And we had this guy who, you know, the funny bone was just like an alien organism in his body.
I think if you put a funny bone in the guy's body, his body would have reacted to it like a foreign object.
It would have just had some allergic reaction to it.
So anytime there was jokes, he'd be like, guys, guys, let's get serious.
We're here to play.
And it's like, what?
Let's get serious.
We're here to play.
Anyway, so yeah, I'm gonna try and do that guy's voice.
Guys!
Guys!
Give me some money!
The Dungeons& Dragons podcast is 2,933 as well.
I'll point that out.
I do have one, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I did it.
I did the Dungeons& Dragons podcast.
And it's only a matter of time until I introduce Izzy to Dungeons& Dragons, which was a hugely great influence in my life because it's really hard to get to know Satan without the portal spells from Dungeons& Dragons.
So anyway, let's get back to the caller.
But yeah, honesty is terrifying for people because in general we're punished for any emotional authenticity as children.
And so we're aversive, right?
We're trained to be aversive to those things.
Yeah, I agree with that 110% if that's possible.
But given that general state of affairs, how does a person pursuing self-knowledge then Cultivate good relationships, because I've listened to your show for quite some time, and you give what I consider to be very good advice in setting standards for your relationships.
I've heard you talk to callers who were dating someone, close friends with people, who were treating them in a less-than-loving and respectful manner to, as you mentioned earlier in this call, to be honest and communicate about that.
Or, you know, those interactions and basically gauge the person's reaction to that conversation to determine how much that person was really concerned with your feelings and well-being.
And, you know, I know you never tell people what to do, but you let them know that that's a good indication as to whether or not that person is a friend.
You know, and I find that to be really good advice.
Now, in my application of it, Basically, this is what I've kind of come up with as it pertains to standard for my relationship.
The best definition I could find for a friend is a person who considers my well-being in their self-interest.
And the reason I say that is because it's very obvious that humans primarily act based on their self-interest.
Things that benefit them, things that make them feel good, comfortable, are the things they generally pursue.
And In very close and what I consider to be emotionally beneficial relationships, a person is affected negatively when someone they care about closely is hurt in some way.
As I've heard you talk about before, if your daughter's upset, you don't just...
Sorry, but there's nothing moral in that definition.
There's nothing moral.
I understand that.
That's totally subjective.
But obviously everyone has different emotional makeups and that self-knowledge enables a person to know what's good for them emotionally to a certain extent.
Agree?
Disagree?
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, what was the definition again?
Someone who you're...
Your happiness is part of their self-interest?
They consider my well-being to be in their self-interest.
Yeah, I mean, but well-being is a very subjective thing as well, right?
Absolutely.
So, there's nothing moral about that.
And I think friendship, if it doesn't have a moral dimension, then it's not worthy of the name.
To me, a friend is somebody who...
We remind and encourage each other of the joys of life and the necessity of virtue.
And, you know, you can't go around reminding each other of the necessity of virtue of all times, but to add to the joys and remind each other of the joys of life and to remind each other of the necessity of virtue, that to me is the best friendship around.
It's just off the top of my head.
Maybe that could be refined over time.
But I think that friendship without virtue, I don't think is...
It's just around rank and compatibility and a bunch of subjective notions.
I don't think that there would be anything philosophical or moral about any of that.
And I think that the morality is necessary.
You know, as I've talked about, love is our involuntary response to virtue.
If we're virtuous, and since friendship certainly falls under the umbrella term of love, Then friendship, which doesn't have any virtue baked into its definition, wouldn't respond.
Now, I know that's somewhat circular, but it wouldn't respond to that definition of love being our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
Steph, don't you think that, I guess, for that definition to kind of stick...
It assumes that the average person has a rational, empirical view of what's ethical.
I'll just kind of give a small example.
You know, a lot of people might think that, including people as influential as Warren Buffett, thinks that it's a moral thing to have a society wherein you have a group of people with a monopoly on force in the center of society extracting resources from the public to ensure that, you know, the poor are taken thinks that it's a moral thing to have a society wherein you
You know, people like Christopher Hitchens, as I just mentioned, Warren Buffett, they said, you know, the care of the poor shouldn't be left to the whims of wealthy people, you know, and therefore that is the moral justification for a state or welfare state in that instance.
And, you know, of course, you and I would disagree with them, but there are an overwhelming number of people who would agree with them despite that being theft.
Right.
No, I get all of that.
I understand that.
And they're not immoral for believing that if they have a genuine belief in the virtue and value and rationality of their argument.
Now, the question isn't, are you moral before you encounter a more rational argument?
The question is, you know, how do you handle a more rational argument?
Couldn't two people, even with the same leanings, disagree?
I mean, I saw that debate you had with Walter Block, and he was arguing more from A legalistic, libertarian perspective which justified spanking.
You know, now obviously you and I disagree with it, but we're all libertarians.
Under his view though, it's only applicable to responsible adults.
Well no, he said, he said, Walter Block made the rather jaw-dropping statement that libertarianism has nothing to do with ethics.
So, I don't know what he was fundamentally arguing about or from.
I think basically, you know, if it's nothing to do with ethics, then you're bigger and you're stronger, so you can hit people, but that includes the government.
So anyway, I mean, yeah, people could disagree.
Of course, of course.
I mean, I disagree with myself about things I may have said in the past.
I certainly was pro-Iraq war prior to the show, and I'm glad that I changed my mind about that, because seeing the fallout of what has happened since the destruction of the existing Iraqi state has been unbelievably brutal and continues to be Unbelievably brutal.
Does this mean that I was evil when I supported the Iraq war?
No.
I had the best information and the best arguments and was following the best reasoning that I had at the time.
Before I take some course in learning Japanese, it doesn't mean I'm dumb because I didn't know Japanese.
I just didn't have the knowledge.
People exist in A state of non-immorality if they're pursuing their best conscience and their best knowledge, right?
I mean, a doctor in the 17th century would be considered a murderer now, but could very well be considered a good doctor, and rightly so, in the 17th century, because he was doing the best he could with the knowledge and tools that he had.
But if you tried to take those knowledge and tools and do them now, you'd be like a butcher who'd show up in a really bad season of nip-tuck.
So...
So, yeah, it's like four people.
Anyway, so I obviously watch too much TV, number one.
Number two is that, yeah, people can disagree.
And if they come up with Really bad, emotionally defensive, insulting arguments when you come up with a different perspective.
Like if I were to debate Christopher Hitchens, if he were still alive, about the welfare state, and he basically was like, well, this guy just obviously doesn't care about the poor, and he's a tool of the right-wing Koch brothers conglomerate of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, that would be very disappointing.
That would be very disappointing, because it would mean then...
He basically is hostile towards religion because religion makes bad arguments and then when someone challenges his political viewpoints then he would then be hostile to that person because he's making bad arguments and would simply do ad hominems.
Or if Christopher Hitchens was still alive and Christopher Hitchens were looking at the wreckage of Iraqi society now being overrun by Crazy guys who set people on fire in cages and behead people and kill lots of...
Anyway, those guys and say, well, maybe it wasn't that great an idea or maybe the consequences have been somewhat negative.
Maybe there's something I missed in the capacity of an imperialist nation to bring civility to a very savage region of the world.
Well, but if he's like, no, I still believe it was a great idea and nothing can convince me otherwise, then he would hold a fundamentally religious view of the conflict, which is it doesn't matter what evidence comes in.
It doesn't matter how bad things get.
It doesn't matter any of that stuff.
Or if one were to point out that, you know, one can't do good with stolen money, and the money that was used to pay for the war in Iraq was stolen from the future, was stolen from the unborn, was stolen from the children, was stolen from the current population against their will...
And if he said, well, you could vote and this and that and the other, right?
Well, you know, voting doesn't change morality.
Otherwise, Hitler would never have been prosecuted or his generals because they were all voted in.
So it's when people are exposed to a more rational argument, to information that even if there's consequentialist arguments, if the consequences don't go the way that they expect, So the welfare state was supposed to accelerate the elimination of poverty.
Poverty was going down by one percentage point a year in the post-Second World War period in America.
We were within a stone's throw of eliminating all but voluntary poverty within a generation.
The welfare state was simply supposed to accelerate The end of poverty, and now it has not done that at all.
So if people then say, well, that doesn't matter, then the consequences don't matter.
And if consequences don't matter and rational arguments don't matter, you're dealing with a religious or fundamentalist viewpoint.
And the same thing happens with atheists, communists, or people on the left, right?
The problem wasn't communism, the problem was people, or, you know, Stalin wasn't really a communist, and neither was Mao or Chiang Kai-shek, or...
Actually, no, Chiang Kai-shek wasn't a communist.
Neither was Mao or the people in charge of Cambodia, or whatever, right?
I mean, they're not real communists, and none of the Eastern European bloc countries are not real communists.
Cuba is not real communism.
Come on!
At some point!
At some point.
So...
So, yeah, I mean, I would say that, sorry, then people say, well, what about America?
I say, oh, but that's not capitalism and so on.
Well, capitalism requires a free market of money first and foremost.
And that's a basic definition of capitalism is that you have a free market.
And the most important thing to have a free market in is money because that's The tool by which all transactions occur, or at least most transactions occur.
And so if there's no free market in money, if there's no competing currencies, then there's no free market.
It's not capitalistic, fundamentally.
I mean, people traded goods in a barter system in Russia that doesn't make it a capitalist country because there was no legally recognized Private property and free market in most goods and services, and in the same way in the supposedly capitalist countries, there's no legally recognized property rights and a free market in currency.
The currency is a state monopoly, and therefore it's fundamentally fascistic, certainly not capitalistic.
The first market is always money, and if there's no market in money, there's no market.
Everything else is just a disaster waiting to unravel.
So, you just keep providing people better arguments and better information and you see what they do with it, right?
Like, so I've repeated in this show before the statistic that, you know, 50% of marriages end in divorce.
Turns out that's complete bullshit.
That has about as much relevance to marriages ending in divorce as like one in four and one in five rape victims on a campus, for God's sakes.
I mean, it's all just a bunch of propaganda nonsense made up that's not even remotely true.
And so, in receiving that better information, we are now putting together a presentation to explicate all of that and clear up misconceptions and things that I've said before that have turned out to be mistaken.
Because, you know, you can't check absolutely everything.
You know, if the world turns out to be banana-shaped, I hope I'll be forgiven for pointing out that it was kind of like a sphere.
Yeah.
So, it's what happens when you get access to better and different information.
That's the question of where the integrity comes in.
So, no, nobody has to be perfect.
Lots of people believe lots of things that are false.
I believe things that are false.
I'm sure I believe things that are false right now.
The question is what happens when you get better information or better arguments.
That's where the integrity shows up.
Yeah, I agree with that 110% as well.
Yeah.
Steph, wouldn't you also agree, though, that even the most sincere truth seeker can sometimes have the problem of the confirmation bias, particularly if they've defended a position or an idea or body of beliefs for so long?
That they find themselves more entrenched in trying to defend this particular train of thought or these particular set of ideas as opposed to just continuing to follow the data or the information wherever it leads.
I was raised to believe that multiculturalism was always a great value.
And, in fact, I ran a newsletter promoting multiculturalism and so on, and I was raised with that as just an automatic value.
Our diversity is our strength.
I think that was said by the head of the U.S. Army recently.
Our diversity is our strength.
It's like, hmm, I'm pretty sure it's the bombers and the bullets and the bombs and the tanks.
I think that's your strength.
I don't think diversity is necessarily your strength.
Yeah.
And seeing data that challenged that was startling, was very startling.
And, you know, seeing the arguments for racial disparities is startling and is unsettling.
And I don't know.
I mean, I also believed in, you know, death by environmentalism.
And reading Bjorn Lundberg's The Skeptical Environmentalist was...
Challenging, to say the least.
I mean, I did a show with them years ago through the Casey Group, and it's hard.
You know, it's hard to get this counter-information, and confirmation bias is always a challenge.
So I, you know, I can't tell you, other than we know it's a challenge, and we have to read conflicting and opposing opinions as best we can.
I was raised at, you know...
Mixed economy, free market bits and socialist bits.
I mean, that is the very best.
It's the pinnacle.
It's the end of history.
It's the best human civilization.
And, you know, finding out that, let's say the least, some arguments against that is hard.
You know, I was an objectivist for years and years and years.
And finding out that this, at least in my perspective, which I've made the case for before, that some limitations, some challenges, it's hard.
And...
You know, all I can say is that knowing that that's a tendency of people, be gentle with them when challenging them on that.
Be firm, but, you know, be gentle and recognize that, you know, if your cherished beliefs are being undermined and attacked, you'd probably want somebody to be kind of gentle with you, too.
But not too gentle for too long, because, you know, at some point we've got to move the debate forward.
But, yeah, it is a challenge.
And, you know, but once you know it's a challenge, you know, if I know I have a sweet tooth, then I've got to be careful around dessert, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
The reason I asked the question the way I did is because, for instance, with libertarianism, there's absolutely no other, if we're going to use this expression, political ideology that I think matches it.
I mean, if the justification for a state is to protect the freedoms of an individual, How on earth can you justify policies that directly hurt individuals to the benefit of others, you know?
I was trying to get some clarity on my position and I kind of wrote sort of like a journal or a blog entry, something like that.
And basically what I said was that generally when people argue for different political ideologies, They say certain things don't work, right?
They say trickle-down economics do not work or a welfare state doesn't work.
Whatever your leanings are, you say this or that doesn't work.
Oh, yeah.
Or the big one is the deregulation caused the 2007 crash.
Exactly, exactly.
But no one ever stops and says, what do you mean by work?
You know what I mean?
Obviously, if something has to work, there needs to be some sort of objective.
Or it has been proven that.
It has been definitively established that, right?
Yeah.
The time for debate is past.
Man-made climate catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is real.
The time for debate is past.
It's like, hmm, whether in a hundred years you think that's a completely, absolutely unquestionable absolute?
I don't think you know what science is.
Yeah.
I guess my basic point is that if it's all about objectives, then you have to consider whose objective is the focus.
And only libertarianism allows for as many individuals as possible, using their own resources, their own relationships, etc., to pursue whatever it is their objectives are.
So even in the most general sense of things working for individuals, the idea of libertarianism works.
Yet, even some very staunch advocates of it, David Friedman being one, will very quickly highlight some problems with it in that it doesn't always lead you to the desirable conclusion.
And then the question is, what is the implication of that?
Does that mean that you scrap the ideology?
Totally, because it doesn't give you the universality you want.
I think if you go on YouTube, he has this discourse he gave.
I think it was like 1979, 1980.
Wherein he gives an example of an anarchist society that obviously doesn't have a state and has the problem with national defense.
And it says if the Russians want to bomb the U.S., what do you do?
Do you force a whole bunch of people to pay so that you get an armed militia?
Or what if there is a threat that if you don't kill them, they'll come and kill a significant number of people in your area?
But for you to defend yourself, it's going to force you literally to trespass on someone else's property or to kill other people in the process.
You know, basically questions that don't have easy answers, whereas the implications of the ideology don't lead you to where you want to go.
It's very hard for people to stick with their line of thought and, you know, come away sounding as if they're sane, you know.
And so that's kind of what I find when it comes to my relationships.
When I talk to people about honesty, as you mentioned before, about understanding what their needs are and whether or not this friendship serves their needs, those are extremely hard conversations for people because, you know, a lot of them are passive.
You know, they associate with people when they want to be out, you know, they want to party, they want to drink, they want to hang out, they want to You know, sleepover at your house.
They want to go on road trips.
They think of things that, you know, at least I personally find to be shallow.
I find to be, you know, not meaningful to any extent minus a good time.
But then when it's time to truly be a friend, when it's time to talk about how the way a person's behavior affects you, the way a person's speech makes you feel about yourself, things like that, you know, People tend to be lost and they don't think that it's something that ought to come up.
It's a hard conversation that ought to be avoided.
And that's why I kind of posed the question the way I did at the beginning because it would almost seem that if a person sets standards for their relationships, there's a very high likelihood of them being alone because...
You know, most people deal with a lot of the problems that you mentioned at the outset, you know, honesty being penalized and so them having to apply a filter to much of what they say and, you know, kind of being conditioned to not being open and honest.
I've got to interrupt because there's a false dichotomy.
Look, if I said to you, like, let's say you're really starving, right?
Sure.
Sorry, Andrew.
Let's say that I give you this bowl full of plastic fruit, right?
Sure.
And I say, but if you don't eat this fruit, you'll be hungry.
This plastic fruit, if you don't eat it, you'll be hungry, so eat it.
What would you say?
Of course not.
It's not real food.
But if you say, well, if you have standards for relationships, you'll be alone.
You're alone anyway, but you're more alone.
If you don't have these standards and you're just blending with the local carbon-based life form Borg of history, you're alone anyway.
If you're not able to be honest, if you've got to hide, if you've got to dissemble, if you've got to pretend you don't believe what you do believe and pretend you do believe what you don't believe, you're worse than alone.
At least if you don't eat the plastic fruit, you don't have plastic fruit coming at your ass.
Right?
So you're alone either, like, either way you're alone, but at least if you're actually alone, you have the opportunity to get real relationships going.
But if you're embedded in these fake, false, lying, nonsense relationships, pseudo-relationships, relationships which are about the extinguishing of who you are, you don't even have a chance to.
I'm too full of fake fruit, I can't eat any real fruit.
Right?
So this idea, well, if you have standards, you'll be alone, I vehemently reject that as a standard.
If you fake who you are in your supposed relationships, you're worse than alone.
You're worse than alone, because being alone has significant advantages in life.
Being alone has significant advantages in life.
Whereas being consumed by relationships that train you as a liar, that train you as a faker, that train you as a sophist and a dissembler and a coward, those relationships have almost no advantages other than you get to breathe a little bit more carbon dioxide than you would otherwise.
I agree with you, Steph.
And I didn't mean to, if I did, imply that it's better to have relationships that aren't really fulfilling than to set standards for them and be alone.
I definitely would prefer the latter, which is why I asked the question of high turnover, because obviously if an individual applies a lot of the stuff that's talked about on your show, You know, they're going to treat others with respect, with dignity, you know, view them as individuals.
I especially love, love, love, I can't say that word enough about, you know, the idea that you advocate about extending personhood to children.
And every time I see a child that, you know, is smart enough to have a conversation with me, I try to speak to them as if they're an adult, not with obviously subject matter, but, you know, just trying to be attentive and really hear Whatever it is they're trying to say.
And I love to see their eyes lighten up when they see someone who's genuinely interested in what they're saying.
So, you know, I definitely understand that, you know, you have to set standards for your relationships regardless of, you know, come what may.
But I guess my real question is...
Do you have any, I guess, tips for people who are really trying to make application of it and have these close relationships?
Because I hear you talk about marriage or you talk about having real relationships and long relationships, but it's very hard to have those relationships where people fall miserably short of that standard, where people aren't honest, where people don't show respect,
where people, I guess, When relationships can become abusive, not necessarily intentionally, but, you know, for instance, if a person has a giving disposition, obviously that's going to attract very needy people.
And, you know, a person with a giving disposition of the needy person, you know, for a while they might seem to kind of fulfill each other.
You know, it may fulfill the paternalistic instinct in the giver and obviously any deficiencies in the needy person.
But then after a while, if the person who has the paternalistic instinct may begin to feel as though they're giving way more to this relationship than they're getting from it, they then may, you know, feel abused.
And if they ever bring that to the attention of the other individual, they'll say, hey, well, this is the way it's always been.
What's wrong, you know?
So...
Situations like that have been my experience and I'm wondering what I can do to circumvent that because I generally have a love of people and I want close relationships but at the same time I don't want them to be fake.
I don't want them to be relationships that are emotionally detrimental to me or that make me feel as though I'm being used or that I'm not gaining as much as I put into this relationship.
Alright, I'm gonna just end up with a rant here because I can't answer every one of these theoreticals, so I'll just end up with a rant here and hopefully it'll make some sense.
Not a problem.
I'll try to catch what's applicable.
Go ahead.
We have become strangely over delicate as of late.
As a species, I would say.
We have become Very hothouse flower, very trembling hibiscus in a slight breeze our heads can fall off.
We have become very tremulous and delicate, most of us.
And we have become very risk-averse.
I don't know what's happened to the balls of the species.
We used to cross planes.
We used to tangle with tigers.
We used to take down sharks with knives.
Johnny Weissmiller used to do the same thing with crocodiles.
We used to be pretty fucking tough as a species.
People...
Defood Europe to fly the new world.
I mean, you left your entire family, your whole culture, your everything, your language, your money.
You basically packed up a sandwich and a spare pair of shoes and you went across through a mule to a ship that took you six weeks to get across an ocean to land in a country where you get $12 in your tribe and $2 in your family and a quarter in your pocket.
So we have this...
We used to have these balls that we would...
I mean, what, 60,000 years ago?
I mean, humanity split into three major groups.
And one group said, too fucking hot here.
I'm going north.
And you know what's going to be great about going north?
Agriculture and winter and all this shit that's going to weed out nine-tenths of us.
And the other one went, we're going to go over to Siberia.
And really places that are even worse than Europe.
And we just used to do these crazy things.
And we used to go off in log boats across rivers, across oceans.
A Thor Heyerdahl.
The Contiki recreated a lashed nine poles together and crossed the fucking Pacific.
We used to be adventurous.
We used to have hair on our chests.
We used to look at the dawn and say, what colossal fuck-up can I do today that is going to randomly advance the species?
We are based on genes that experiment and fail mightily.
And we spread out and we waged war and we pushed the boundaries and we pushed the envelope geographically, philosophically, politically.
There were revolutions.
We broke with past orders.
We had new gods.
We forgot old gods.
Mankind has forgotten more gods than it will ever worship in the future.
And we overturned everything and we took down dynasties and we ended empires.
And we broke the back of history to make way for the mammals of newness.
And we regularly evolved out of dinosaur-dom, and everything that was the day before yesterday was a dinosaur, and every impulse of the next five minutes was the new mammal that would conquer the world.
And we had this questing-ness, we had this hunger, we had this explore or die.
And there was land that would open up in the West.
We're just working on this presentation about George Washington.
But there's land that would open up in the West.
Here, 40 acres!
In the middle of nowhere.
You've got to clear it yourself.
There's going to be bugs and bears and mosquitoes the size of biplanes.
You're going to be like Cary Grant in an old movie, ducking and There's going to be diseases and there's going to be Indians and there's going to be God knows what your neighbors are going to be like.
And if you stub your toe and get an infection, you might as well just saw off your own foot.
And we used to say, great!
40 acres?
Fantastic!
I've had it with this city.
Off I go.
Off I go into the middle of nowhere.
Into the middle of nowhere.
We used to be Those guys.
Those men and those women.
We used to be willing to cast aside our whole lives, cast aside our whole tribe, cast aside our whole environment to explore the new world.
The new world that we all value and live in for the most part.
We broke with history.
We broke with slavery.
We broke with the aristocracy.
We broke with the theocracy.
These were savage, savage battles that we were born into and we fought and we won.
And some of it, you know, like Aristotle says, there's an excess of courage that is foolhardiness.
And yes, we should have been a little bit more fucking scared of machine guns in 1914 would have been great for the planet as a whole.
There is a little bit of off I go, a little bit over courage.
A little bit of over courage.
But we used to be Very robust.
A very robust people.
And I don't know exactly...
I don't know if it's all just raised by women.
I don't know if it's single motherhood.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But something has happened.
Something has happened to the point where it's like...
Well, but Aunt Edna, who's a schoolteacher, might not like me.
And that's, to me, how the mighty balls have...
Fallen and shrunk into dust specks hanging in a largely empty nutsack.
I'm sorry to be so graphic.
It's just the way I feel about it.
It's not a philosophical argument.
It may not apply to you.
But it's like, but my second cousin who works for the IRS might disapprove of my theories.
God, really?
This is what stops us now?
This is what stops the progress of the species.
Imagine if this had been the case in the past.
The abolitionist was like, slavery is wrong.
Slavery is evil.
What?
What?
Oh, I've got a third cousin who's a slave owner.
I'm sorry for offending everyone.
I'm so sorry.
Let's keep going with the slavery because I don't want any awkward Thanksgiving dinners.
No!
Awkwardness should be the first course at Thanksgiving dinners.
Because with awkwardness comes challenge.
And when did it ever become that we're so frail in our beliefs that counter-information enrages us like tantrums from two-year-olds who can't get lollipops?
I did this video on the defense of marriage.
I didn't say everyone has to get married and have kids.
Like, here, here's the plus sides about marriage.
What?
MGTOW people, you can't get counter-information without having tantrums?
Marriage might not be for you, but maybe it's not because there's a problem with marriage.
Anyway.
This idea that you just can't get counter-information without getting offended and upset.
Man, God, we used to be robust.
There used to be these very powerful debates.
There used to be these very great differences of opinions.
And yes, sometimes families would split down the line, down the middle.
And some would become Protestants and some would remain Catholics.
And some people would be abolitionists and some people would be pro-slavery and there would be schisms and there would be splits and there would be people who would not talk to each other because of moral foundations and because of moral commitments.
And now I don't know what's happened, but it's like all of a sudden it's just like, ah, we have a difference of opinion morally.
We can't have that.
We've got to all stay so quiet.
We can't have any conflicts.
No, have conflicts.
Make the tabletop jump with the force of difference of opinion.
That's called progress!
We've become so risk-averse, and the weird thing is that everything we like, everything we enjoy, everything that is important to us that is made by men was made by people who said, fuck risk.
I may not love it, but I'm going to embrace it like that smelly aunt.
Who uses way too many mothballs.
May not love her.
Gonna give her a hug.
May not love risk.
Gonna embrace it.
Right?
So, and people say, well, marriage is too risky.
Marriage is too risky.
Eh.
So what?
Do you like your computer that you're typing marriage is too risky on?
Do you know that that computer was built by a guy?
In a company that was founded by a guy?
Who said fuck risk?
Fuck risk.
Forget it.
I mean, if you're as smart as Michael Dell, you can make a huge living as a salesman.
That guy is a killer salesman, right?
No, no, he's like, I'm going to found a company.
Forget it.
I'm sick and tired of selling computers in my dorm rooms.
I'm going to start a company.
Grow as a company.
And these guys, everything that you use around you that's man-made is people who said, screw risk, I'm doing it anyway.
And yes, the government is heavily involved in marriage and there's risk because of that.
Guess what, man?
Government's heavily involved in everything.
Everything government can screw you up on.
I know!
I've been an entrepreneur.
I'm still an entrepreneur.
Government could pass a law tomorrow that could shut down this whole show completely.
Right?
The government could pass a law that says, I gotta get a license and I gotta spend five...
The government could do anything they want to anything.
Every business could get a law passed against it.
Every business could get a tax hike.
Every business could get some crappy government-sponsored union in there that screws everything up.
Everyone who builds everything does so in the face of government interference.
Are you going to give away everything that's good in your life because there's a stink of government on it?
Well, welcome to not living anywhere near civilization.
But everybody who's saying, well, I want to type about how marriage is too risky is typing on keyboards and computers through an internet that was built because people said, screw risk, we don't care if the government's involved, we're doing it anyway.
But we've become so tremulous and so scared.
We are like a nation, a planet of fraidy cats.
Well, no, except for the crazy religious extremists.
They're acting on their beliefs, aren't they?
Aren't they pretty much doing what the Bible and the other religious books tells them to do?
Aren't a lot of them really committed?
To what it is that they're doing.
And we're like, well, I don't know.
I might offend some people in my life.
So I really don't really want to talk about peaceful parenting.
And I don't really want to talk about a free society.
And I don't really want to talk about violence and taxation and theft.
And I don't really want to talk about the counterfeiting of national currencies.
And I don't really want to talk about the intergenerational theft of national debts.
And I don't really want to...
Well...
Is ISIS interested in setting up an Islamic caliphate?
Why, yes, they are.
Are they doing a lot about it?
Yes, they are.
But we don't want to even offend our third cousin who works for the state by talking about...
When did we are like...
Especially the Western European Freedom Club.
Holy crap, we had balls so heavy they clanged from one side to the other like the bells of Big Ben.
And now we're just so...
Steph says that you have to act with integrity and Steph says that you should confront people about the violence they support against you and that's really bad.
Is it true?
Oh, but it's offensive.
Is it true?
No, but it bothers me.
Is it true?
Do you have a counter-argument or are you just mewling like a baby cat in my ear trying to distract me from something from which I cannot be distracted, which is what I'm up to?
Well, I don't know.
You see, if I... If I'm a peaceful parent, my own parents might get upset.
Really, were they bothered about upsetting you when they were spanky parents?
So let them survive a little bit being upset, because the whole reason they weren't optimum parents is they didn't really care that much about you being upset, or they wanted you to be upset, which is why they punished you.
Oh, but the people who work for the government might be upset if I'm an anarchist or a libertarian.
Well, are they very upset about taking your money by gunpoint?
No, they're not.
They're very happy about it.
So they can maybe live with a little emotional discomfort given that they're taking your stolen money as their pay.
Maybe they can feel a little bit uncomfortable when they eat the mashed potatoes that they're taking out of your ass.
The idea that we've just become this don't offend anyone, don't bother anyone, don't upset anyone.
I can't handle it when people don't like something that I'm doing.
Who does that paralyze the most?
It's part of the whole evil rules the world.
This is what is keeping people down.
It is only those who are empathetic whose empathy is used against them.
What is the problem?
With the Freedom Club.
The problem with the Freedom Club is the Freedom Club is the Freedom Club because of empathy, because of universalization.
Why do we have rights for everyone?
Because we empathize.
We could be those other people.
How would you feel if you were...
How would you feel in this person's shoes, right?
No, no, no, no.
That's good for developing universal rights, but it's very bad if we then empathize with people who are committed to harming us, who are committed to stealing from us, who are committed to exploiting us or supporting a system that does exactly that.
That is where empathy stops!
It must stop.
Because we must have empathy for the future.
We must have empathy for virtue, empathy for the right.
But we're told suddenly everyone's equal so we can't get mad at anyone.
We can't offend anyone.
Nobody can be upset.
And if somebody is upset, that means we're in the wrong.
No!
If bad people are upset, we're in the right!
If you're fighting cancer and the cancer was sentient, the cancer would hate you if you were winning.
That's the point!
That's the point.
This idea that we can't upset anyone is implanted to us by bad people who then don't have to reply to our arguments, don't have to reply to the facts or the data.
All they have to be is upset and somehow we're wrong.
But that's lazy people who want to exploit us and don't want to think or have no good arguments.
They substitute, I'm offended, I'm upset, I'm outraged, I'm fainting.
I don't feel safe.
I need a safe place.
I need a teddy bear and a cookie and a hug.
Can't believe that meat man said this.
Oh my god.
Have we all become 12-year-old girls?
I mean, is that where the destiny of the human race is?
The race that conquered the planet?
The race that conquered the moon?
The race that is going to conquer the entire fucking solar system?
Well, we don't want to offend anyone.
We don't want to offend anyone.
We're going to upset.
Ah!
Ah!
Who told us this?
Why was it even remotely believed?
Every goddamn thing that has come great out of human history, every progress, pisses off just about everyone else around.
Were the dinosaurs happy that the mammals ate all their food?
Are we happy to not be dinosaurs?
Why, yes, we are.
Is the dinosaurs going hungry the price of us being sentient beings?
I'm fine with that.
Fuck you, dinosaurs.
We got the food.
We evolved.
We're better.
And it's the same thing among human beings as well.
And if you've got better arguments, better evidence, call in.
Tell me where I'm wrong.
It's an open forum here.
We give you six or seven hours a week.
Come on!
Call in.
Tell me how I'm wrong.
Oh, don't you want to do that?
Oh, you just want to be upset.
Good luck with that, dinosaur.
We'll just get the food.
Good luck.
No, no, no, no.
We are not all equal in the human race.
There are good people and there are bad people.
You know, there are these studies that have come out recently which I massively applaud about how great religion is for people, about how it protects people from dysfunctional behavior.
Absolutely beautiful!
I'm behind that 150%.
Do you know why religion is so great for people?
Religion is so great for people because religion reminds people of evil.
That there is evil in the world.
Now, they supernaturalize it and they say, well, people are the puppets of the world.
No.
You can't have a functional life if you don't believe in evil.
It's like being a doctor who doesn't believe there's any difference between health and sickness.
What's your job?
You've got no job!
If you're a doctor, you don't believe in health, you don't believe in sickness, you're a fraud!
You've got nothing to do!
I'm a mathematician, but all numbers are the same.
No, you're not a mathematician!
You're a fraud!
And if you don't believe in evil, what the hell are you going to do with your life?
Video games and porn?
TV shows?
Sex?
Money?
Buy stuff?
Fuck!
Fuck!
That's like a tree growing into its own roots and calling itself procreative.
You've got nothing to do if there's no evil to fight.
If there's no illness, there's no need for doctors.
The whole profession is a fraud.
And if there's no evil, There's no need for virtue.
And that's why, you see, evil people will try to tell you that there's no such thing as evil to make you cast aside the necessity of virtue.
As the old saying goes, the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing people he doesn't exist.
And the reason why religion protects people is because religion reminds people that there's evil in the world and that their job is to do good and their job is to do right, to be righteous, to do good.
Moral things because morality is uncomfortable and religion says it's worth it for heaven.
It's worth it because God wants you to be virtuous, the devil wants you to be bad, and you get to go to heaven if you're good.
And going to heaven makes people willing to make their second cousin uncomfortable.
And there's no secular equivalent to evil other than that's inappropriate.
That's dysfunctional.
That makes me uncomfortable.
Oh yeah, there's a moral crusade.
Let's make you comfortable.
Because that way, the world doesn't have to be a battle between good and evil.
The world can be an extra fucking pillow for your big ass!
Because comfort's all we care about now!
Edward Gibbons and the decline and fall of Roman Empire.
Five things that brought down Rome.
Destruction of the family, an excess of taxation, an excess of arguments, an addiction to merely sensual and materialistic pleasures, and the fall of religious values.
When people can tell you there's no God, the next thing they want you to believe is there's no evil.
And I have more respect for communism.
Than secular leftism.
Because at least communism said there's evil, he's over there, he's fat and he wears a monocle, let's go get him.
I didn't approve of them.
Go get him.
But any belief system that does not recognize the reality of evil is stripping you of the capacity to do good.
And because we have forgotten that there's evil in the world, we have forgotten that there is some goddamn things in the world.
That are damn well worth making people uncomfortable about.
I'm sorry that taxation is theft.
It's not my fucking fault that that's a fact.
I'm sorry that fiat currency is counterfeit intergenerational theft and fraud.
That's not my fault.
I didn't invent it.
I didn't make it wrong.
Don't shoot the messenger.
It's not my fault that two and two make four.
It's not my fault there's no God.
It's not my fault that governments are immoral.
It's not my fault that public schools are indoctrination.
It's not my fault that people are lied to and other people kiss and lick the boots of those who lie.
It's not my fault for telling you what is true.
I didn't make it up.
I didn't conjure this into existence.
Thou shalt not steal is a moral reality, a moral fact.
And people literally post that they're offended.
That they're upset.
And you're saying, you, I mean, I mean this positively, and I mean this encouragingly, and you don't have to do anything with this now.
Just sit and think about it.
And maybe tomorrow you'll wake up and say, I don't know what was in that guy's hot buttered coffee enema, but A, I never want it for myself, and B, he's full of shit.
Well, I guess not with the hot buttered coffee enema, but you know what I mean.
But There are things important enough for us to endure social discomfort.
And if you can't endure social discomfort, slowly step away from the philosophy.
I'm dead serious.
Step away from the philosophy.
If you can't handle injecting people with a life-saving vaccine, don't pretend to be a nurse and pretend to inject people and faint.
Well, if I could very briefly interject, Steph, I have no problem with the ideology of fucking shit up and leaving, especially when it comes to advancing truth.
So, that's not...
I guess really what I'm getting at.
You know, I've gotten into debates with a number of people about these very issues.
And, you know, people have disagreed with me vehemently.
But for the sake of onlookers, I've always tried to be extremely civil about it.
So that at least at the end, you know, even if people didn't really have a dog in the race, they saw that reason prevailed and they saw, well, this person doesn't have to resort to ad hominems or, you know, any sort of disrespect.
There might be a little more validity in his position.
Let me inquire a little bit more about that.
What I'm really getting at is the relationships that people with self-knowledge, who agree with most of the things that you said for rational and empirical reasons, the relationships that they choose to have.
All of us, obviously, well, I can't really speak for everyone who listens to this show, but I can speak for me and a number of your callers whose conversations with you have at least captured my attention.
They care about these issues, and based on their set of abilities, based on their ability to articulate the arguments, they want to advance philosophy.
They want to advance empirical analysis and truth and the like.
But we understand, looking at the world, you know, as you mentioned in your rant there...
Okay, you've got to cut to the chase here, or at least you've got to use more than one tone in your speech.
Okay, well, can you sum this up, or at least vary your tone a little?
Well, it's very hard to sum it up, you know, going back to...
No, no, it's not that hard to sum things up.
I mean, you've had time to think about this question, what is the issue?
Well, it was really a question that I'm not sure if you answered, but you didn't promise me that you'd answer it.
You told me to be a rant.
Okay, what's the question?
Do you have any advice on how individuals who are seeking self-knowledge, any methodology for them to choose emotionally beneficial relationships, given the state of the world, given the state of affairs?
Okay, what did I say at the very beginning?
At the very beginning of the rant or the call?
No, this call.
You said honesty.
Okay, so is that not an answer that satisfies you?
So, let me see if I got your answer right.
Because here's what's troublesome.
Here's what's troublesome.
And I'm just giving you this feedback honestly.
I'm not trying to be mean.
But the reality is, you asked me a question and I gave you an answer with some explanation.
Now you're asking me exactly the same question after we've been talking for an hour as if I had not said anything.
Now, I'm not saying you have to accept what it is that I've said, but I think you have to at least acknowledge that I've said something, right?
Okay.
Does that seem reasonable?
You can reject what I'm saying, but it's weird.
It's like the last hour just didn't happen.
Well, Steph, you know, you obviously said a lot, so it's not like it's extremely clear what your answer is.
But you asked the same question as if I hadn't said anything.
So essentially, your answer to that question is, be honest.
Okay, yes.
Yes, and it took me an hour to say be honest.
I think that's where we got.
So we're going to move on to the end of the show, but I really do appreciate everyone who called in.
And it was always a fantastically enjoyable show.
I really do appreciate people's questions, issues, comments, and problems.
Please, please, please help out the show and just...
To make sure that I get some mercury chrome for my throat to fix it.
But if you can go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show, please help us spread this most essential conversation.
Please help us spread discomfort and hostility towards philosophy through the ever-incursing wave of philosophy we are generating from here in the mothership in Canada.
