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April 26, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:18:06

2959 CRAYDAR | Crazy Detecting Radar System - Call In Show - April 25th, 2015

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	Hi, everybody!
	Stephen Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	Just getting my vowels out.
	Having a vowel movement before the show.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's Saturday night, which means it's time to talk to the Borg brain about philosophy, reason, evidence, and all the deep things in the world that make life worth living.
	So I hope you're having a great, great week.
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	All right.
	Well, up for us today is Sean.
	Sean wrote in and said, in recent years, scientists have found ways of changing the human genome.
	The sum of all a being's genes, without breeding several generations to get the effects desired.
	For example, E. coli bacteria do not produce insulin, the chemical product needed to produce sugar, but it is possible to add human genes to the E. coli's genome to make it produce insulin.
	A more recent example has happened with mosquitoes.
	For mosquitoes to carry malaria, a certain gene is required.
	Scientists can not only replace that gene, but they found out that they can add another gene that ensures that all of the mosquito offspring will not be carriers of malaria.
	The possibilities here are not limited to bacteria and mosquitoes.
	This can, in principle, be applied to humans as well.
	With this technology, you could make sure your kids don't inherit genes that are linked to genetic diseases, but could also affect the way they look and possibly their sexuality.
	So my question is, what are the ethical limitations of editing the human genome?
	Is there something you wanted to add to that question?
	No, not really.
	It's pretty straightforward.
	What is the limitations...
	Ethical limitations to what someone can do to their own genes.
	Well, I'm not sure what you mean by ethical limitations.
	I know that sounds like a bit of an obtuse question, but it's always good to figure out what that means.
	Because you could say, well, ethical is like unfair advantage.
	Like if it costs a lot of money to make your kids super attractive or whatever, extra gene for intelligence or something, that gives them sort of an unfair advantage.
	But what is it that you mean by ethical?
	When I mean by ethical, I mean...
	I guess something that does not violate the non-aggressive principle.
	I am a libertarian.
	I'm not an anarchist, but I'm very supportive of that.
	So you're an inconsistent libertarian.
	Got it.
	I wouldn't say inconsistent.
	I would say a classical liberal.
	Okay, let's start with that then.
	So what part of the non-aggression principle do you exempt governments from?
	I don't exempt them.
	I believe governments should operate at a person's consent.
	If For example, where you don't consent to government, I believe you should have the option of going somewhere without government.
	Wait, wait, hang on.
	So, you mean you'd have to leave the geographical area if you don't agree with the government?
	It's kind of hard to do that with government.
	I mean, if you have someone who isn't...
	It isn't paying the government taxes or anything.
	They can always try to freeload off someone else.
	So yeah, essentially a reservation saying you can do whatever you want here.
	So the government is the de facto owner of the geographical landmass or the geographical area?
	No.
	It's an agent that the people that you pay to keep their property safe.
	Right.
	And so there could be other agents that would do a better job because, you know, power corrupts and the moment you have a monopoly of power, you're going to get corruption.
	So the government, I guess what you would call the government, would be one agent that may provide services but would be competing with other agencies that may provide kind of protection or services.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	That exists today already with...
	You could refer to migrate between governments to some extent.
	I mean, between countries, that is.
	No, I think we just missed the argument.
	So my argument is that if the government is not the de facto owner of America, Then it cannot compel you to leave your own home, right?
	Like I can't go to, let's say that you own your own home.
	I can't get a group of people together and say, we now want 10% of your income and if you don't like it, you can move to New Zealand, right?
	That would not be fair for just some individual or some group of individuals to do because they don't own your house, right?
	I can't come up and compel you.
	To pay me money or accept my services.
	And if you don't, then I can compel you to move.
	Or, you know, it's like the mafia, right?
	The mafia goes to some neighborhood.
	Let's just go with the complete cliche and say it's a Greek, Italian neighborhood.
	It's some Italian neighborhood.
	And they can say, well, you have to pay us protection money and we'll keep you safe from arsonists and thieves.
	And you have to pay us this money.
	And if you don't want to pay us this money, then you have to leave town.
	We would not consider that to be a just or fair exercise of universal property rights, right?
	No, it wouldn't.
	Right, so on what grounds, if the non-aggression principle is universal, on what grounds do you get to invent a magical dimension called government, which is exempt from, which is just composed of individuals, which is exempt from this other moral standard?
	If not leave, then I would say they have the right to succeed from that government then.
	No, no, no.
	See, you've created this thing called the government, which is just a group of individuals, and you're trying to find a way to exempt it from the non-aggression principle because you're giving it the right to initiate force and force people to leave their homes or force people to leave some geographical area or, you know, so they have to Obey the state or leave and it is only the government that you're allowing to do that.
	So you have two opposing moral rules.
	One is which I cannot set up a standard that you must comply with or leave the geographical area.
	I'm not allowed to do that.
	You're not allowed to do that because that's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	It's the initiation of the use of force.
	I'm just sitting in my home and some guy creates some arbitrary rules that I have to follow or I have to leave my home and Right?
	He's not doing that in self-defense.
	I'm just sitting at home.
	And so why I say that you're an inconsistent libertarian if you're not a voluntarist or an anarchist is that you've got the non-aggression principle, but you create this alternate dimension where the opposite of the non-aggression principle is valid.
	But you can't have it both ways.
	You can't have a non-aggression principle that you then create the opposite of, right?
	Alright, keep going.
	Well, no, I think that it's, you know, it's the religious argument which says, you know, there's a doorway and I walk through the doorway and that's how I know the door is not closed because that's non-existence, right?
	The non-presence of matter.
	But even though there's no physical evidence for a deity, I'm going to accept the existence of a deity because in some alternate dimension or alternate universe, the opposite of existence is existence.
	And so you can't claim to be consistent.
	And I say this with regret because I spent 20 years as a minarchist, right?
	So like the government, which is like the law courts and the police and the prisons maybe, but certainly national defense, because that just seems to make sense.
	You know, the government's so small that you can drown it in a bathtub, right?
	And then I'm like, well, I've got the water.
	I've got the government.
	Let's get some drowning.
	But it's just this consistency thing.
	You know, the extension of human excellence is the extension of universal principles, right?
	And this is true in science as well.
	Like, we would not consider a very good scientist to say that gravity operates except the opposite of gravity operates in Washington, D.C., right?
	That that would be inconsistent.
	Or, you know, gravity operates in Kentucky, but not in Illinois.
	That would not be consistent.
	I mean, the reason why we're able to send probes all the way out past Pluto is because we accept the universality of the laws of physics.
	And the more that laws are defined as universal and absolute and wherever you go, no matter what happens, the laws are universal.
	That is progress.
	I've used this example before but you know the ancient Ptolemaic system which thought that the deity liked a circle because I guess they'd all studied a lot of Euclidean geometry and they thought that math was somehow the mind of God so everything had to be a circle and the earth was the center of the solar system but of course Because the Earth is not the center of the solar system, but rather the Sun is, there's a time when Mars seems to go backwards when observed from Earth, right?
	And it only makes sense if you put the Sun at the center of the solar system, and you accept that orbits are not a perfect circle, but rather an ellipsis, which was somehow offensive to those who thought that a perfectly geometrical god had designed the universe.
	And so the Ptolemaic system As observations improved, it just got more and more complicated.
	You had to have all these circles within circles within circles, and it took you like 400 calculations to figure out where Mars was going to be tomorrow, or next week or next month.
	Whereas, of course, when you have the Sun-centered solar system and you accept that these are elliptical orbits, just one or two calculations will tell you where Mars is going to be.
	So the extension of these kinds of principles both simplifies and universalizes, but extremely disorients people, right?
	I mean, the idea of removing the state from the center of social organization is as bizarre to us as Removing the earth as the center of the solar system was to people in the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th century.
	Even now some people appear to be confused by it.
	But if we have a principle it must be universal.
	We can't claim that the non-aggression principle, the non-initiation of force is a real virtue and is a universal virtue and then create this weird exception to it.
	And of course it is completely disorienting for us to think of a society without a state.
	I get that.
	But we enjoy, I assume we enjoy the pictures of the spaceships going past, you know, Ceres with its two weird little lights and going past Jupiter with its giant red pimple spot of infinite hellish tornado-ness.
	And we enjoy all of these amazing things that we get being back.
	But those things only exist.
	We can only do those things because we have accepted, I guess, as a species, the disorientation of taking the Earth-centered model of the universe and throwing it out.
	And everything doesn't spin around the Earth, no matter what the Bible says that the Earth is fixed and does not move.
	So for the ancients and even for the Middle Ages and even into the early Renaissance, the idea that we were on this giant spinning orb going around the sun, you know, thousands of miles an hour while the sun went around the Milky Way at thousands of miles an hour or whatever it is.
	Was completely disorienting and shattered their entire conception, not just of how society worked, but of how the universe worked, which I think we can accept is a little bit more disorienting than, hey, I wonder if no government would be okay.
	And so the cosmology of the Earth, of the universe, designed by an all-perfect, geometrically accurate and as simplistic as possible deity, with Earth at the center because that was the center of creation, with everything revolving around the Earth because that was what the deity was most focused on, changing that to the Earth spinning around the Sun, the Sun spinning around the Milky Way, the orbits not being...
	A perfect circle, but rather an ellipses.
	This was all incredibly disorienting for people, and the first people to propose it, of course, were looked at as completely mad, and heretical, and bad.
	Now, of course...
	For the voluntarist or for the anarchist to say, look, we've got this principle and we're either going to have this principle or we're not going to have this principle.
	But let's not half have this principle because that is very destructive, right?
	That's like saying, well, I can fly to the moon and I'm going to do half my calculations on Copernican mathematics or Copernican calculations and half of it on Ptolemaic calculations.
	Well, then you're really in the worst situation because you're heading off to the moon.
	And you're going to miss.
	So you just float off into deep, into solar system space.
	And so if we're going to have this principle, and this has sort of been my argument from the beginning, if we're going to have this principle called the non-aggression principle, which I think is great and valid, and we're going to have a call tonight about universally preferable behavior, so we're going to have a great way of explicating all these kinds of ethics.
	Let's have the non-aggression principle.
	But let's be rational, objective, and scientific about it.
	And whenever you are tempted to create a weird exception for any social entity, you have to simply say, oh, this is a cyst.
	This is a piece of crap.
	This is an irrational, weird wormhole that culture or statism or religiosity or superstition or whatever.
	This has been put into my mind, which says, go here, but no further.
	The mark of power is always about limiting human thought.
	Power is fundamentally about limiting human thought, which is why kids have to be ground through thousands of hours of indoctrination in government schools for 12 or more years.
	Because the whole point of power is to say, thought can go to here.
	Thought can go up to here.
	Thought can go here because here is useful.
	For thought to go because it provides goodies for power, right?
	So you can reason your planting and you can reason your castle building and your building of catapults and your building of longbows and you can use science and engineering to do all of the things that are useful to the ruling class like providing food and weaponry and taxes.
	Reason goes to here.
	But if reason goes any further, the hierarchy dissolves.
	And so there's this barrier, this giant, fiery, flaming Mordor wall of reason is great up to here, but if you go one step further, reason becomes really bad.
	And you have obviously...
	And I understand it.
	I'm not criticizing.
	I get it.
	And once you take that final step, as they say, an anarchist is just a conscientious libertarian plus 18 months...
	Or so.
	But we have this non-aggression principle.
	It's either going to be universal or why bother?
	Like, why bother having 80% of a value?
	I think that's really, really dangerous.
	Because what it does is it makes us very able at supporting the existing power structure.
	So, if people are people, right?
	People always...
	People who listen to this sometimes dislike that I say that concepts must be subjugated to instances, that you cannot create a group of people with opposite properties to other people.
	If I get four people together and we chant the word fly, that does not give us the capacity to fly.
	And if I get 400 people and we chant the word government, that does not give us the moral right to do the opposite of the non-aggression principle.
	Okay.
	Can we get back to my topic now?
	I guess we're not getting any further past that, fiery wall.
	So the topic is pretty simple, right?
	Which is, does it initiate the use of force to mess about with the human genome?
	If I mess around with my genome, no.
	But if, say, with a human embryo, you are certainly messing with its genome, and you can radically change its life for the rest of its life, for better or worse.
	Even one mistake, what could happen has not even been imagined as of yet.
	Thinking, muscles, all that stuff, it's all controlled by genes.
	And if that is messed up, the person could be just a mutilated human being, mentally, physically, any way you can think of.
	I'm thinking, at one point, would you say, this is going to be unethical treating embryos in this fashion?
	Because that's, as far as we know, that's the only way we can do it, for the most part.
	There is...
	Wait, sorry, the only way we can do what?
	The only way that I, from what of the research I've done, the only way you can edit the human genome is if you're starting with either embryo, sperm, or eggs.
	The only way you can do it with an adult so far is adjusting white blood cells.
	But that's it.
	Sorry, when you say edit, do you mean the only way that you can change human genetics is through science, through sort of genetic manipulation?
	Yes.
	That's not true.
	No, no, no, no.
	I mean, I'm talking about the recent method they've discovered.
	I'm not talking about centuries of breeding and so on.
	Oh, no, I'm not talking either about that.
	Pardon?
	Well, I'm not talking about centuries of selective breeding or whatever you'd want to call it, epigenetics or eugenics that just sort of happens, you know, smart people marry smart people, and I'm not talking about that either.
	Okay, so what are you talking about?
	Well, okay, so in the hierarchy of what we are concerned about as moralists with regards to human genetic alteration, I think that the most important thing that we would focus on would be violence which alters genetics.
	In other words, actions which both alter genetics and also Violate the non-aggression principle.
	That would be the highest level, right?
	So I think we agree that if you hold someone down or knock them out and then inject something into them that alters their genetics, that would be the highest priority that we would want to deal with as moralists, right?
	Yes, that is certainly immoral.
	Okay.
	So we know that...
	Child abuse alters human genetics and child abuse is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	So if you're concerned about the alteration of human genetics, worrying about what might happen in the future when there is literally billions of examples of actions which violate the non-aggression principle through the abuse of children and also alters genetics, There are studies that show that child abuse alters the genetics, not just of the children being abused, but of their own children as well.
	Even if the parents don't abuse their own children, there are still markers from the original child abuse.
	So it has a multi-generational alteration of genetics.
	It turns particular genes on.
	It switches other particular genes off.
	And these genes are We're good to go.
	So I'm hugely concerned about the genetic quality of the species, and the best way to improve the genetic quality of the species is to oppose child abuse, which significantly and in a multi-generational way degrades and downgrades and renders more volatile and prone to illness the human genetic structure.
	Well, this is another way that the human genome can be affected in unthinkable ways.
	Okay.
	And so if I'm saying, if you're saying there's a potential illness that could be in place dozens of years from now, and I say, but we have a plate of billions of instances around the world, you still want to go back to the one that might be the case a couple of dozen years from now.
	No, this is not going to be the case a couple dozen years from now.
	The technology is practically here.
	They're just going to be working on...
	Okay, let's say it's five years from now.
	Okay.
	A potential genetic altering This procedure that may be in place for a tiny minority of people five years from now is to you of higher priority and more important to talk about than millions of or literally billions of inflictions of behavior that are negatively impacting the human genome structure that's occurring in the world at the moment that you can do something about.
	Whatever the laws that are passed, whatever is allowed or not allowed, you're not going to have a say in it, right?
	But I assume that you have at least some say in your local circle or whatever about Talking about child abuse, about speaking out about child abuse and so on.
	And the reason I'm saying this, I'm not trying to be annoying, but if you're concerned about the quality of human genetics and human actions which negatively impact human genetics, I'm trying to empower you to act on that concern, right?
	I'm trying to say to you, look all around you, there are probably children being harmed, children being indoctrinated, children being hit, children being yelled at, children being abused.
	You can probably do something.
	You can do a lot more about that than you can about, you know, what Chinese researchers may do in five years and what may be available to the super rich.
	And you won't be able to do anything about that.
	And any conversation that you and I would have about what's ethical or not ethical in that area...
	Would be kind of like, you know, masturbating down a storm drain and calling yourself a dad.
	Because the reality is there's stuff that we can really do in our lives to improve the quality of human genetics, which is really around just trying to remind people to treat their kids as peacefully and reasonably as possible.
	I agree with that.
	What I'm curious about, what I'm really interested about at the second is the ethical implications of this sort of thing.
	I mean, where is it?
	Is this wrong?
	Is this right?
	That's the part I wanted to focus on.
	And what are your thoughts on it?
	So far, I think that it shouldn't be done until it can be demonstratedly proven with animals that you can do this and do this without ill effect.
	That's my thoughts so far.
	And I certainly don't want to ban it because banning it could be condemning millions of people to say diseases like Huntington's disease or other genetic diseases that are passed on, like schizophrenia.
	The list goes on.
	Yeah, I mean, I think it's like all advances in science, there's positive aspects and negative aspects.
	Of course, there are a wide variety of genetic ailments and dysfunctions and diseases that could be treated in this way.
	As far as, you know, mosquitoes and DDT, sorry, mosquitoes and malaria, I mean, there was a fantastic way of dealing with mosquitoes called DDT. Which after Rachel Carson passed the incredibly hysterical and frankly false Silent Spring about how it was gonna kill all the birds' eggs and make them too thin and all that, 60 plus million people have died as a result of a worldwide ban on DDT, which is far from as dangerous as everybody imagined.
	So we did have a great way of dealing with mosquitoes and then it was banned.
	So if that was unbanned, I think that would be better and then Bill Gates wouldn't have to waste his time Trying to ship mosquito netting everywhere and having it all stolen and sold on the black market in return for weapons to oppress the people.
	But that's a topic for another time.
	I can't talk about the ethics of what would go on in a statist society.
	That's why I didn't bring the state into this.
	In a free society, obviously, people would want to have as many genetic ailments engineered away as humanly possible.
	And, you know, the best way to do that is to don't marry your cousin, right?
	I mean, the best way to, you know, as you probably know, right?
	I mean, a lot of these ailments require two compatible genes.
	And the further apart the gene pool of the people that you're having children with, the better off those children are most likely to be.
	And so if you say don't have a culture which insists on marrying your cousin or staying really tightly within your gene pool, such as, say, the royal family or the Middle East, then you are going to do a lot better.
	So a lot of this stuff could be dealt with better by changing particular ideologies around who's available for mating and having kids with.
	But I think like most people, they would really want to have as much safeguarding and precautions in as possible to minimize the harm and to maximize the reward.
	And how that would play out would be, I assume that people would get the right signals from insurance companies, right?
	So insurance is one of these wonderful things that lets you immediately get a calculation of risk.
	And insurance is as important to the economy in many ways as price is, at least to the future economy.
	Price is a wonderful way of telling you exactly, you know, labor, materials, demand, supply, and everything that went into producing a particular item.
	And you know if an item doesn't sell that it's a bad allocation of resources if it does sell it's a good allocation of resources and so Price gives you all of this stuff that is wonderful in a free society When you want to become parents you would get your genetic testing assuming you wanted insurance for your kid and your kids health Which I assume would be available and would be very cheap once government got out of the way And you would go and you would get your blood tests and you get your genetic tests and so on and those treatments which provided
	far more benefit than harm would be very cheap and those which were more risky would get progressively more expensive until they would probably be prohibitively expensive but the price of insurance compared to various choices is the best way to figure out risk and so once the government gets out of the way of the development of these kinds of potential gene therapies and then allows insurance companies to work their mathematical magic.
	People will get very clear price signals about the best choices that they can make for their kids based upon the available information.
	Now, that's sort of eliminating the negative.
	And as far as applying the positive, you know, it's a tough call.
	It's a tough call.
	You know, there's some significant arguments out there at the There is like a dystopian devolution that is occurring in that the smartest people are so worried about things like overpopulation of the environment and so on and they just don't want to have kids.
	And the less intelligent people in that sort of idiocracy style are breeding like rabbits, you know, with sometimes it would seem similar amounts of brain matter.
	And so there is strong arguments about the decay of sort of human quality at the moment, particularly in terms of intelligence.
	That having been said, there is of course the Flynn effect, which is that IQ also rises.
	So there's two arguments, and I don't know which way it goes.
	But there's always genetic drift.
	There's always genetic tendencies that are occurring within populations, both towards the positive and towards the negative.
	And I think that if you have...
	Parents and you say to parents, if you take this injection of genetic material, your kid with no negative health effects will have 10 points higher IQ. I think that I can't see how any parent would Not even remotely be interested in that.
	You know, whether you do it or not, I don't know.
	There's, of course, people who would say, I am as God made me, right?
	As the guy in Spinal Tap says, I'm just as God made me.
	And so there will be people who won't want to interfere and there will be people who have, you know, certified all-natural, you know, like some boob tattoos in Los Angeles.
	And those people would not want to enhance their children or to provide.
	But of course, if you're a smart person, you marry another smart person, I think there's a 0.6 or 0.7 correlation between parental IQ and child IQ. It's not perfect.
	There's a regression to the mean, but it's, of course, you're doing already that.
	You know, just choose a smart woman to marry and you're already, in a sense, genetically programming the kid to have a higher chance of significantly increased intelligence.
	And if there is something out there that can provide, obviously, you know, hey, you take this gene therapy and your kid will be immune to cancer, I mean, who wouldn't want to be interested in that?
	And so the elimination of a negative is one thing.
	The degree to which you can rev up the positive is a challenge.
	There are high IQ populations in the world, such as the Escanani Jews, but they are more susceptible to other kinds of ailments, particularly neurosis and so on.
	So It's hard to say.
	I mean, that would just be something that's up to the parents.
	And, you know, I can't see initiating the use of force against people like that.
	People put their kids through risky medical procedures all the time.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	The force isn't initiated against the parents.
	It's all this is done on the embryo.
	No, what I mean is, if we would define it as immoral, like if we would say that any positive genetic modifications, in other words, you're not looking to eliminate a negative, right?
	You're not looking to eliminate something like multiple sclerosis or spina bifida, or like you're not looking to eliminate a negative, but rather to enhance a positive.
	You know, like, if you take this gene therapy, your sons will never go bald.
	I mean, not that anybody would want that, but let's say theoretically they did.
	Well, the enhancement of a positive, I think, is where the real question is.
	I don't think anybody could say that the elimination of a negative health effect through some sort of gene testing is a bad thing.
	I mean, I just, I think that would be, then you have to say, well, okay, no washing your hands and no vaccinations and no...
	None of that antibacterial goo and I mean no hairnets.
	I mean, of course, we do lots of things all the time to try and eliminate negative health effects.
	But the promotion of positive attributes, taller, you know, more handsome, more hair, you know, elimination of unibrow from all of Eastern Europe, all of that kind of stuff.
	That's where things do become more challenging.
	but I do think that first of all there will be insurance areas around that so people who want to mess around with that and there will be unknowns there will be unknowns because there's simply no way to know there can be things which are fine in the first generation but they're terrible on the second generation and nobody will really know for sure I think until that stuff gets played out so I think that the elimination of risky negatives will be a no-brainer
	I think that the promotion of positives like greater intelligence or height or better looking or whatever more muscle I don't think that that would be something particularly pursued because there would be so many unknown risks involved in that Thank you.
	Okay.
	So you're saying in a free society this is not going to be tempting for most people?
	Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who say, you know, there's an old thing that parents say that they've always said.
	You know, people say, well, do you want a boy or a girl?
	Or do you want, you know, do you want a musician?
	Do you want, you know, do you want somebody who does a lot of crosswords?
	Do you want somebody who builds couches?
	And parents say, in general, they say, they're kind of like the same thing.
	And they say, I don't care if it's a boy or it's a girl, or artistic, tall, short, as long as it's healthy.
	Or as long as the baby is healthy, everything else is fine after that.
	And I think that is where people's focus is going to be that if they're you wouldn't just treat your kid for everything I mean you look for particular Genetic risks and then you would work if those were a risk factor to try and eliminate those But I think the idea that you would risk your entire gene pool with unknown treatments for the sake of like hey This will make your kid two inches taller.
	It's like I don't know Maybe he's gonna be six foot eight to begin with and two inches won't do that much good and And what are the downsides?
	Well, we can't guarantee that there won't be any downsides.
	You know, we've tested it for one generation, but we don't know what might happen with the second generation and so on.
	I just think that stuff, you know, your kid will be smarter, but, you know, there's a much higher incidence of depression and anxiety and so on.
	I think people would say, look, I just don't want my kid to suffer some ailment or illness or something like that.
	After that, I'm just going to let nature take its course.
	I think that would be what most people would do.
	All right.
	Going back to one thing you said earlier, that smarter people marry smarter people, and obviously they produce smarter kids.
	Oh, and avoid marrying relatives.
	My parents, they come from opposite ends of the country.
	I live in the U.S. And I have one sister who is a schizophrenic.
	She is their...
	The first 20 years, she seemed perfectly healthy, fine, and then she goes completely insane.
	And a lot of what happens with schizophrenia, it's genetic.
	So, my parents also, my father has a master's, my mother has a bachelor's, so just two smart people marrying, that's not end all of sale.
	I'm incredibly sorry to hear about your sister, of course, but you understand when I said that there was like a 0.6, 0.7 correlation, that that's not a 1.0 correlation, right?
	Yes.
	I do.
	So, are you trying to tell me that I know a tall Chinese guy invalidates that Chinese guys tend to be shorter, say, than Europeans?
	No, no, no, no, not at all.
	I'm just saying it's not 100% a case.
	You're...
	Yes, of course.
	Of course it's not 100%.
	You're having a conversation with yourself, I mean, because I never said it was 100% case.
	I said these would be helpful tendencies, but it's not 100%.
	Yes, they are.
	But, okay.
	So anyway.
	All right.
	Well, thanks for the call.
	I appreciate it.
	And again, I'm very sorry to hear about your sister.
	I don't know, honestly, the degree to which...
	There is strict genetics involved in something like schizophrenia.
	My personal belief, which is just amateur idiot hour as usual, but I think that there is a genetic plus an environmental component, which is not much of an answer and has no scientific credibility.
	I just wanted to sort of mention it out there.
	And we actually have a little bit of research here.
	Let me just pop that in.
	Let's see here.
	What have we got?
	Whoa, that's long.
	Got any summaries there?
	It's going to take me the rest of the show to read.
	Exact cause is still unknown.
	The brains of people living with schizophrenia are different for those diagnosed with the illness.
	It's too early to classify schizophrenia as either a neurodevelopmental impairment of the growth and development of the brain or a neurodegenerative progressive loss of structure or function of neurons disorder as both seem to occur over the course of the illness.
	Research strongly suggests that the emergence of schizophrenia is a result of both genetic and environmental factors.
	Hey, look at that.
	My guess may actually be valid.
	Unlike other genetic conditions, and you mentioned earlier Huntington's or cystic fibrosis, it is believed that no one single gene causes the disease by itself, but rather that several genes are associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia.
	While it occurs in 1% of the population, having a history of family psychosis greatly increases the risk.
	Schizophrenia Occurs at roughly 10% of people who have a first degree relative with the disorder, a parent or sibling.
	However, the highest risk occurs when an identical twin is diagnosed with schizophrenia.
	The unaffected twin has a roughly 50% chance of developing the disorder.
	The genetic component appears to extend beyond family environment.
	For example, children with a parent living with schizophrenia who were put up for early adoption still develop schizophrenia at a higher rate than the rest of the population.
	So...
	Anyway, that's something.
	I just wanted to sort of get some of the facts out there.
	So massive sympathies for your sister.
	It's an incredibly difficult thing.
	You know, mental dysfunction, craziness, schizophrenia, or in my case, it was sort of a rampant paranoia.
	These are very, very difficult conditions to live with and to live around.
	There is this reality distortion field that pulses out from these people that is like this massive tsunami.
	And it feels sometimes like your basic empirical reality processing is like the tiniest of sandcastles.
	I'm just going to make My own experience.
	And so I am incredibly sorry.
	What a very, very difficult thing your family has to go through with that.
	And I just wanted to extend my condolences and sympathies for that.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Okay, well, thank you very much.
	Great question.
	Let's move on.
	Alright, up next is Erwin for the UPB debate, debate, debate, debate.
	He wrote in and said, It's been a long time in tension of mine to actually play the part of the one who actually defends UPB. I've listened to tons of call-in shows where everyone was trying to disprove UPB. In my case, I want to confirm if I really do understand UPB and defending it, and have Steph play the one who will disapprove or try and disapprove UPB. Oh, he's ready to go!
	Are you strapped in, Erwin?
	I put on my attack hat.
	I don't know where to start.
	I don't know.
	Well, so give me a couple of sentences that you would put out to establish a UPB. And for those who don't know, this is universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, which is my approach to validating Morality or ethics without appeal to consequentialism, utilitarianism, a deity, a government, punishment, you name it.
	But to have it as a self-contained universal system of ethics that validates the four major bands that are in all reasonable ethical systems, a ban on rape, assault, theft, and murder.
	So the book is available for free at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	I really strongly urge you, have a listen, have a read.
	It's available in a variety of formats, all free.
	And that's kind of what we're talking about.
	You won't need to read it to, I think, get something of value from this debate, but that's just the sort of intro for those who aren't as familiar.
	So, if you want to put...
	You put forward something positive and...
	Well, so debates obviously work in a variety of ways.
	Either I can put forward a definition of ethics that is not compatible with UPB and you can try and knock that over using UPB, or...
	You can put forward a positive declaration of UPB and then I can attempt to knock it over.
	What about this?
	When you were writing the book, when you were just writing the book, if there was one thing or if there was something that you encountered while writing it that you had some kind of dilemma in...
	Oh, all of it.
	I mean, yeah.
	I mean, the fish on Friday one was a bit more of a challenge.
	But no, all of it was very difficult to work on because of the screaming, no ethics, no virtue, consequentialist crap that was floating around in my head as a result of just having been raised in the modern world.
	But do you want me to put forward a statement that defines ethics in some other manner?
	Sure, sure.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And I'll UPB you.
	Yeah, so ethics really should be understood as a local aesthetic preference which is designed to create some semblance of order within society.
	And it changes from society to society.
	From within that society, the best way for ethics to work is to be transmitted to the children as if it's sort of universally true and, you know, the Ten Commandments are just true everywhere and God made it for everyone and so on.
	And that's just because children are children and they don't have the intelligence to have the sophistication of knowing why there's such a thing as ethics.
	So we teach ethics as if it's kind of universal and true.
	But as you grow up and you look at other cultures, of course, you realize very clearly that lots of cultures have lots of different ethical standards.
	And every ethical rule that you consider to be sacrosanct has in some culture a praiseworthy, not just exception, but Complete counter.
	Oh, you don't like cannibalism.
	Well, there are some cultures where cannibalism.
	You don't like incest or murder.
	But even within the same culture, you put on the right uniform and get ordered by the right guy in a funny hat and shiny gold coins on his chest and suddenly murder becomes something you don't go to jail for but rather you get a medal and pension for and a hero's welcome when you return home.
	So, even within particular cultures, there is a wide variety of opposing moral standards depending on particular conditions.
	You say, ah, the initiation of force to take away property is really bad, but there are some people in the West who say that taxation is the initiation of force, and most people accept that, so...
	The idea that there's some universal moral standard is completely as absurd as trying to prove that, you know, there's one perfect musical style that everybody, that is always the best and everything else is just completely wrong and immoral.
	Or that there's one perfect food.
	Everybody eats depending on their taste, their preferences, their choices, their immediate needs or their long-term needs, their medical conditions.
	So ethics is a form of Taste.
	Ethics is a form of subjective preference that simply allows society to self-organize in some manner.
	Like if you can get enough people to believe that stealing is bad, then you have a more organized and orderly society.
	And those people, I just sort of finished the introductory statement, those people who make the case, absurd as it is, That ethics is somehow universal remain in a very primitive and I would say childlike state of mental development.
	In other words, when you're a kid, just for the sake of efficiency, you're not introduced to all of the complexities of philosophical, moral, cultural thought about virtue, ethics, right and wrong.
	You're not introduced into utilitarianism because you're five or three and you just got to stop hitting and grabbing things from other kids.
	And so when you're very little, you're told that ethics are universal.
	But, you know, when you're very little, you, you know, you crap into a pillow tied to your ass, right?
	I mean, that doesn't mean that that's what you do when you're 20 or 30.
	Or if you do, you probably need some medical attention.
	So this absolutism, this black and white thinking, this weird kind of universalization, it's just what you're told when you're kids.
	When you grow up, you're supposed to have a more sophisticated view of things.
	You're supposed to outgrow Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and get into some Mozart.
	And so I do find it amusing and interesting that people still hold this view of some sort of universal, magical ethic that transcends space-time and, you know, the multi-dimensions of Zeus' farts.
	But the reality is that it's just situational stuff that societies have evolved to help maintain some sort of order within society.
	And to think that it's universal is to remain stuck in a very, very immature intellectual and emotional development stage.
	Okay.
	To respond to that, I would say that absurd is not an argument.
	It's just an adjective.
	And it's not like when we say that UPB is, or if there's something, if there's such a thing as an objective morality, it doesn't mean that there is something or someone who holds this objective view.
	It just means it's universal.
	When it comes to culture, cultural trends, time, when you say that your views are better than the other tribes' views, it just means that your preferences are more prevalent in that specific geographical area.
	But when it comes to UPB, we gotta have a standard to what things, what kind of behavior are Applicable to everyone, like for example, the non-aggression principle, a thing, a behavior must be unwanted before we can call it an aggression.
	Sorry, I'm getting anxious.
	It's hard, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	If you're not making great arguments yet, we've got to have a standard.
	It's not an argument, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you want me to give you a little swing through and just get you oriented?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Thanks.
	Okay, so the response to that is to say, of course it's certainly true that people around the world disagree on ethical standards.
	So what?
	There are people around the world who are really bad at math.
	That doesn't mean that mathematics doesn't follow some objective standard.
	There are cultures around the world that strenuously reject the scientific method.
	That doesn't mean that the scientific method itself is subjective.
	So the fact that you have described, you know, there certainly is no universal acceptance of ethics.
	So what?
	I mean, so all you're doing is saying that because people haven't accepted a universal standard of ethics, therefore there can't be a universal standard of ethics.
	It's like saying because there are cultures out there that don't know geometry, geometry is subjective.
	Or those who know geometry badly or do it badly, that geometry is subjective.
	So merely making the observation That there is not currently a universal standard of ethics that everyone accepts is not even remotely close to disproving that such a standard could be valid.
	Because you have to really address, before you start establishing UPB, you have to start by addressing the arguments that the person is putting forward.
	And this argument from, there's a bunch of relative stuff around, therefore there's no such thing as objectivity.
	If that standard were and the other thing you could say is that if that standard were valid Then we have no scientific method.
	We have no mathematics.
	We have no engineering.
	We have no physics We have nothing of those things because those things were all subjective at some point in human history if you look at the Bible the I mean Reality was subjective and that God could come in and do whatever he wanted and violate and reverse physics principles at whim and at will And so reality itself was subjective.
	And so if we're going to say, well, everything that is subjective completely denies any possibility at any time and in any place of there being an objective standard, then, you know, clearly you would have to say that there's no such thing as science or math or physics or any of these sorts of things.
	And that's obviously not the case.
	So the fact that there are subjective standards in no way precludes proof for objective standards in the future.
	Yet then it becomes just a preference, like let's say, then we're just arguing whether you like strawberry ice cream and I like chocolate ice cream.
	And when we're arguing about something that's objective, I'm saying, or you're going to be saying that ice cream is cold as a principle.
	UPV. Yeah, that's right.
	So there's a difference between subjective tastes and that which is supposed to be objective.
	There are people who are very bad at arguing.
	They're very, very bad at arguing, or they're cunningly bad at arguing in a sophist kind of way.
	Like the sort of world weariness and superiority, plus the insult that if you believe, like at the beginning of when I opened up the statement, the not too subtle insult of anyone who believes in objective universal morality is stuck in a primitive, childlike, retarded, truncated, you name it, state of intellectual development.
	Somehow I got distracted.
	That's just an insult.
	And I would call someone on that kind of insult.
	That's really not an argument to say, well, you see, if you believe in ethics, you're just somehow immature and you just don't have the...
	You're stuck in a childlike state.
	I mean, that's not an argument.
	That's just being a douchebag on my part by making that argument.
	I was surprised because you don't really do that a lot when you argue people.
	Would you argue with anything at all?
	I think that's the first time I've heard you do a nudge.
	I'm willing to re-douche, but I don't initiate douche.
	I have the non-initiation of douchebaggery.
	That's the nab.
	But I am very much self-defense douchebaggery, no problem.
	Okay, so once you got the person to understand...
	That the subjectivity of ethics in the world as it stands in no way precludes objectivity of ethics in the future, then you would have to say something like this.
	The only things which we can consider to be objective are principles and rules or standards outside the human mind.
	Because what's inside the human mind can be very subjective.
	Obviously dreams that people have, preferences that people have, and so on.
	So there has to be, but in order for there to be objectivity, we have to accept that there's universal principles of matter and that those universal principles of matter can get into our heads in some manner, right?
	I mean, because if they can't, then we can't even have a conversation because I'm using objective matter and its principles to have a conversation, to make a case, to use language, which is sound waves and so on, right?
	Right.
	And so there has to be something that's subjective out there.
	Otherwise, we have to say that mathematics and science is subjective, which would be...
	If somebody who's willing to make that case is just not somebody you even want to bother having a debate with.
	And so objective reality and the principles of objective reality, which we'll call logic, which we'll call rationality, those have to be objective.
	So any standard which you put forward that conforms to...
	To rationality, to logic, that is a logical argument and also has significant support for that logical argument in empirical reality is the closest we can get to objectivity.
	And so if we want to establish ethics, then we have to be able to make an objective rational case for ethics and it also should be supported by By empirical evidence in the world.
	We can't have any other standard.
	I mean, that's the way it works in science.
	You have to have an internally consistent rational hypothesis.
	And then when you go out and test that hypothesis, it has to be backed up by stuff that occurs within reality that's empirically and measurably and objectively testable.
	And you can't have any other standard.
	The scientific standard or the philosophical standard of reason plus empiricism is the very highest conceivable standard.
	There is no standard that is higher than that, that is different than that.
	And if we can get ethics to be both logically consistent and supported by reality, then we've proven it as much as you can prove any theory that could ever be put forward by a human being.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	But when you're arguing with someone who deeply, passionately believes that truth is subjective, the arrogance behind that statement...
	Oh, no, it's not arrogance.
	It's just manipulation.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Do you want to be that guy?
	Do you want to make the case that truth is subjective?
	No.
	I can, but I mean, the argument that somebody says truth is subjective, then you would say, is the statement that truth is subjective, objective or subjective?
	I mean, that's as simple as it is.
	And this is why I say it's so patently obvious that it's either some emotional damage or some dedication to mind-fucking manipulation and sophistry.
	But if you say to the person who says truth is subjective, you say, well, is that an objective or subjective statement?
	Now, if it's a subjective statement...
	Then they're not saying, they're not making any philosophical claim.
	Everything which is a subjective statement has no basis in philosophy.
	Any more than, I like jazz, is a scientific statement.
	It is not.
	You can say, jazz is composed of sound waves, and sound waves have these objective properties, and sound travels at 600 and change miles an hour, and you can make those statements, and then you've gone from subjective to objective.
	But philosophy is only and forever concerning itself with objectivity.
	Because otherwise, it's something like aesthetics, you know, personal preferences, and those are important and valid, and marketers study them all the time to figure out how to get people to buy stuff and all that.
	But philosophy...
	It's only concerned with the objective.
	And so if somebody says, well, truth is subjective and that's a purely subjective statement, then you say, well, then you can't use the word truth because truth is a philosophical term.
	That relates to that which can be proven, in other words, that which is objective.
	Two and two make four is not a subjective statement.
	I like the sensual curve of the number two when it emerges from Venus de Milo's painting dripping in olive oil.
	That, well, I guess that's pretty objective too.
	That would be a subjective preference statement.
	I like this painting.
	I don't like that painting.
	Subjective preference statement.
	But if somebody uses the word truth and says all truth is subjective, what they're saying is everything which is objective is also subjective at the same time.
	Because truth is a statement about that which is objective.
	Empirical, testable, measurable, rational, you name it.
	And so when somebody says truth is subjective, they're saying objective is subjective.
	Right?
	And that is not valid.
	Now they can say there's nothing that's objective.
	Nothing exists which is Objective.
	There's no such thing that is objective.
	And then, I mean, taken to its logical conclusion, that is, of course, the statement of an insane person.
	There's to say that absolutely nothing is objective whatsoever, because they're using the objective principles of matter to try and convince you that there's nothing objective.
	Right?
	They're using sound.
	They are using the objective properties of your ears and of their vocal cords and of their tongue movements and their mouth movements and so on.
	And they're using at least some degree of objectivity in their language.
	They're not saying, right?
	I mean, because that would be an incomprehensible blurb, right?
	Just a blurb.
	So they're using the objective...
	Principles of matter.
	They're using at least some objective sense or some accepted common definitions of words and language in order to try and convince you.
	So they're using an objective medium, using objective language to try and convince you that there's no such thing as anything that can be objective.
	And that is, as I've said before in shows, that's like me mailing you a letter with the urgent message that letters never get delivered to the correct person.
	It's like, if I really believe that letters never get...
	Sent to the right person, why would I send you a letter?
	Clearly I'm relying on letters being sent to you in order to I can't get the message to you so I can't have a universal argument that I mail to you which says mail never gets to its intended recipient.
	That's just an obvious contradiction.
	And there are very few, I've met maybe one or two people who will really go to the wall to the case that there's absolutely nothing that's subjective.
	And those people are so mentally and emotionally disturbed that it's like trying to teach needlepoint to somebody kind of going through an epileptic attack.
	I mean, you just stand back and hope they don't stab themselves.
	Those people are claiming that there's nothing that's subjective?
	Or maybe did I hear that wrong?
	Yeah, if there's nothing that's true and nothing that's subjective.
	If you point these contradictions out to people, Then they'll usually say, okay, so there's obviously some things that are objective.
	But the people who genuinely, really honest to goodness will make the case that there's no such thing as truth or objectivity and ignore or bypass the completely obvious counter-arguments to that.
	In my experience, and I've only met a handful of people who really dedicate themselves to that, They're really mentally and emotionally disturbed.
	I know that's not an argument.
	I'm just telling you that I won't have debates with those people because they're insane.
	And I don't mean like, oh, they're crazy.
	Like they're genuinely insane.
	And somehow, it kind of pains you even more, right?
	When you can empathize with these people who cannot really understand what you're trying to say.
	And somehow, are you familiar with this comedian named Ricky Gervais?
	Oh yeah.
	He once quoted, I think on Twitter, he said that when people kill each other or do something evil to anything, to anyone at all, it's just a result of natural selection.
	So he doesn't think that there's any moral basis for opposing murder, he just thinks it's like evolution?
	Mike, see if you can dig up that quote, because I'd be quite disappointed.
	It's not exactly that, but I think he's pointing out to religion and Muslim extremists.
	It's just a kind of natural selection when this specific group of people kill themselves.
	It's just a form of evolution trying to do its own thing because it Oh, sort of like a Darwin Award kind of thing.
	Okay, well, let's get back to the debate.
	Here's the tweet, just so we can clarify that.
	Grown adults refusing to take medicine in favor of prayer is my favorite form of natural selection.
	He put that out on July 3rd, 2014.
	Oh, so then people will die if they rely on prayer rather than medicine, and therefore they can't reproduce.
	Yeah, I mean, it's kind of pithy and kind of funny, but of course the tragedy is that it often is inflicted on their kids, too.
	There's a Native American, sorry, Native Canadian up here, a First Nations person, a young person, who got leukemia and then, you know, decided, or I don't know if their parents or whatever, opted to go with traditional herbal chanting medicine or whatever.
	And of course, it didn't work.
	Leukemia came back and now she's going to chemo.
	Anyway.
	So the challenge then is to say, is there such a thing as universally preferable behavior, right?
	Right.
	If we're going to say universally, then we must mean objective, right?
	I didn't choose the words out of a scrabble bag, but universally means objective, right?
	So can there be such a thing as universally preferable behavior?
	Well, almost tautologically, but it's still worth teasing out.
	You must accept that if I'm claiming that something is universal, it is preferable if that's actually true.
	Truth is preferable to falsehood.
	And so if I claim that something is universal, then it's preferable that it be universal.
	Does this sort of make sense?
	Yeah, it does.
	Okay, so there's our first universally preferable behavior, that if I claim something is universal, then it should be universal.
	If I claim something is objective, it's better for it, it's preferable for it to actually be objective.
	It's important to be accurate and true in what you're defining and what you're saying.
	And if something is rational, if I say that something is rational, and rational is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for universality.
	In other words, there's nothing that's irrational that could possibly be universal.
	Because everything that's outside of our minds follows particular specific laws and thus, like logic, also must follow particular and specific laws.
	Contradictions do not exist in a valid state in logic.
	Contradictions do not exist in a valid state in reality.
	is something cannot be a car and a pebble at the same time, right?
	Something cannot be on fire and completely frozen at the same time.
	Like these kinds of contradictions don't exist in reality, unless you're going to really manipulate things.
	Like the people, when I say there's no such thing as a square circle, and they say, but a cylinder, and it's like, but a cylinder is three-dimensional.
	A square and a circle are two-dimensional.
	No cheating.
	You can't change things and cheat.
	So the person can't then say there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, unless they're willing to say that there's no such thing as universality, in which case they're back to being completely crazy.
	Or they have to then say that if you define something as universal behavior, it's completely equal in terms of validity if it is both universal and subjective at the same time, which would be to propose a contradiction, which would be Not preferable.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, it does.
	And even if just in case they found...
	Yeah, it does make sense.
	And it doesn't mean that just in case they luckily found a universal that Just in case they found a subjective claim that happens to be universal doesn't mean that the principle and the methodology that
	they use to arrive at that specific subjective claim Wait, what do you mean?
	A subjective claim that happened to be universal?
	What do you mean?
	You mean accidentally?
	Accidentally, yeah.
	Like if I say, I really like the shape of these letters E equals MC squared, but it turns out I've just had some wonderful equivalence of matter and energy.
	Yeah.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah, sure, sure.
	And they use that as a basis as something that's valid, but their methodology is wrong.
	It's just that they landed on that conclusion.
	Well, again, I try to debate if I'm really going to get involved in a debate that's not for show, like if I'm doing it privately.
	If I'm doing a debate for show, you know, like publicly, then my purpose is the audience.
	You know, my tool is the person, and very often they are a tool.
	But my goal is the audience, to change their mind.
	The odds of somebody changing their mind in a debate is pretty...
	Pretty rare.
	It can happen, of course, but usually it's after the fact and that.
	But if I'm having a private debate, if I see that the person has a heavy emotional investment in finding the most outlandish exceptions to every conceivable rule...
	Then I'll point it out once or twice, but if they're just really dug into it, then I get that I've just come up to that fiery mode of emotional problems, and I just can't get any further.
	Because they're just, they're hell-bent on finding some way to oppose any kind of universal.
	And that's to do with upbringing and parents and violence and it's really deep and it's really old and you just, you know, that's something that you need therapy for, not philosophy.
	So that's if somebody's just hell-bent on finding the most outlandish exceptions to every conceivable standard that you put forward.
	Yeah.
	It's really difficult for you to not offend them when you're trying to argue about a specific topic that's universal.
	No, no, no.
	You've got to frame that correctly, though, right?
	Yeah.
	You've got to frame that correctly.
	You do not offend people.
	Yeah.
	There's no big button.
	You don't have eight guys from your security detail of infinite...
	Of infinite offensiveness.
	Hold them down.
	You push this giant button with the hilt of a Nazi dagger.
	Offense!
	That's not how offense works, right?
	I mean, people offend themselves.
	They offend themselves.
	You simply say words.
	Right?
	So when you say, people have a difficult time not being offended...
	That's one thing.
	But the idea of saying, you know, you have a difficult time not offending people.
	Like somebody wrote to me the other day.
	And said, Steph, you know, basically it's wrong for you to make people feel guilty for not donating to your show.
	It's like, I don't have the capacity to make people feel guilty and, you know, damn you for trying to restrain my freedom of speech.
	I can go out and ask for a million dollars a second if I want.
	I'm not going to get it, but I'm free to go and ask for anything that I want.
	I put the show out and people are perfectly free to donate or not donate.
	I'm going to make the case for donating, but don't imagine that I somehow have this magical power to make people feel guilty and therefore I should shut up.
	Right?
	I mean, I'm not screaming fire in a crowded theater.
	I'm honestly expressing my preference that people donate at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	And this idea that I should somehow shut up because other people feel guilty is them putting their own emotional immaturity in front of my right of free speech.
	So anyway, I just think that's...
	So it's really important.
	Yeah, people get offended.
	That's their business, right?
	I mean, if you need a safe space and a hug because Christina Hoff Summers is coming to your college, there's nothing to do with Christina Hoff Summers.
	That's to do with you and some weird Victorian hypersensitivity and hysteria.
	It's got nothing to do with expose yourself to ideas that...
	The opposite of what you believe.
	That's how you know.
	If you want to get a muscle, work some damn resistance.
	But everybody wants to lie there like they've basically been poured into concrete of some sort of propagandistic stasis and think that they're growing.
	College should be where you go to...
	Get opposite things to find where your arguments are the weakest, which means expose yourself to the strongest arguments that your opposition has.
	I mean, if you want to be a good fighter, you don't step into the room with a gecko, step in it and say, I'm a champion.
	I mean, you go fight whoever's strongest.
	I mean, but the idea that I need a teddy bear and a cookie and a hug because Ann Coulter is in town.
	Oh my God, how ridiculous.
	Anyway, so I just wanted to point out, yeah, people are going to get offended, but that's their business, right?
	I mean, the idea that other people's upset should be like a hand around your neck choking off your capacity to speak, it gives neurosis far more power than it should ever have.
	I mean, neurosis and hysteria and all of these things should be like a refreshing breeze in your face.
	There shouldn't be a brick wall that stops you.
	Yeah, it's kind of sad.
	Mind if I ask one last question?
	It's not a really long one like this.
	It's one principle that I live by when it comes to this kind of conversation.
	When I try to talk to anyone, it's not Easy to offend me.
	It's like I'm trying to be somebody who challenges people and try to make me feel dumb or stupid because I want to learn.
	I want to learn a lot of stuff, especially from people I don't know or close to me.
	If I feel stupid, it just means that I I'm lacking in something at that specific topic.
	But that's not the definition of stupidity, right?
	No, just the feeling of being stupid because knowing that you're lacking on some specific topic.
	Yeah, I mean, if I expect people to rise when I walk into a room and some guy's in a wheelchair, I don't call him rude, right?
	No, no.
	No, when you're talking to, like, let's say someone whose specialty is in quantum, no, not quantum physics, maybe genetics, the awareness of knowing that you lack knowledge in a specific topic and being really,
	I'm in the last words, feeling like an idiot because you know that you don't know No, no, but you're putting all of these pejoratives on things, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, we just had Gabor Mate back on the show, and I mean, his knowledge of neurobiology and so on, I mean, virtually infinitely greater than mine, as far as I understand it.
	It's some sort of electric train that goes up and down your spine that gives you feels.
	But, I mean, it's not stupid.
	I mean, it's, you know...
	He's an expert and I'm going to ask him some questions.
	But the idea that that makes me stupid or ignorant or something like that, I don't see that.
	No, that's not my point.
	What's a better word for that?
	I don't think it's stupid, but for lack of a better word, or ignorance.
	Well, you could say less informed.
	There you go.
	I mean, I wouldn't go to an expert if I was more informed than the expert, because then I'm the expert, right?
	They could ask me questions or whatever.
	But yeah, just being less informed than someone, I think, is a valid way of putting it.
	Yeah, I really apologize to Mike because this didn't happen to be the best debate of the century or a decade.
	Oh, no, it's really tough.
	It didn't turn out to be a debate.
	It's tough.
	No, I mean, I've been sort of batting the ideas back and forth.
	And so I can do one of two things.
	I can sort of go from where we were to the establishment of ethics, or I can do a rant about people who get offended.
	It's your choice, your show.
	Let's go for the first one you presented.
	Okay.
	So, once you have universally preferable behavior, then as soon as you've got universality, then you would say that ethics is a description of universally preferable behavior.
	And people can say, well, that's tautological.
	And it's like, but ethics is universally preferable behavior.
	Otherwise, it's aesthetics.
	Ethics have to be something which is imposable upon another human being.
	I cannot impose my love of queen on other people, however tempting it may be, however many falsetto chainsaws I might have in my pocket.
	But I cannot impose that on other people.
	However, I can impose the security of my persons and property on other people.
	As some guy's running at me with a chainsaw, I can shoot his legs out or whatever, right?
	So ethics is...
	By definition, that which we're willing to impose upon other people because there's police and there's law courts and there's prisons and there are social standards which are imposed upon other people.
	And that has to be distinct from aesthetics.
	And again, anyone who says, well, there's no way that you could ever impose anything on anyone else is somebody who has no...
	No sense of reality.
	And I mean, it's just so ridiculous, right?
	I mean, it's like, oh, have you ever had anything stolen?
	Yes.
	Well, how did you know?
	Right?
	I mean, that's the kind of person you say, okay, just give me your wallet, you know, give me your pants, give me your underwear, you know, give me a kidney, give me a split.
	I mean, at some point they'll say no, right?
	And that's just how things go.
	So ethics has to be something which is imposable on other people.
	Now, that which is imposable on other people, which has nothing to do with objectivity, is just bullying, right?
	And so, that's no good, right?
	And so, ethics has to be something around universally preferable behavior.
	Now, for something to be universal, it has to be rationally consistent, and again, in accordance with the evidence.
	So self-ownership, obviously, is rationally consistent, and I go into the book as to why.
	And then we start to get to, well, is murder something that can be, like, is an opposition to murder something that can be rationally consistent?
	Well, yeah, because if you take two guys in a room, they cannot both murder each other at the same time.
	And forget about them both strangling each other at the same time.
	That's sort of a red herring.
	The point is that murder must be unwanted.
	Now, if they start to get into euthanasia and so on, then you can switch to theft, which is even easier.
	A theft has to be something that's unwanted, right?
	So if I leave a washing machine in front of my house, in front of my four dogs and three pickups up on bricks, if I leave a washing machine saying, take me, and some guy comes and picks it up, I can't complain that it's theft, right?
	Because I clearly signaled my desire that I didn't want the property.
	The guy's probably doing me a favor.
	So I picked it up.
	On the other hand, if somebody breaks into my house and steals my washing machine, I can at least legitimately claim that that's theft because it's unwanted, right?
	One is, I want you to take this property, please do.
	The other is, I don't want you to take this property because it's attached to the wall and my house is locked.
	And so theft has to be something that is unwanted.
	Now something cannot, an action cannot be universalized if it is both a positive value and a negative value at the same time.
	So we cannot say that a doctor Who has a net negative effect on his patient's health is as good a doctor as a doctor who has a net positive effect on his patient's health, right?
	I mean, a guy, like a doctor who stabs another guy in the throat when he's perfectly healthy and breathing fine is clearly a murderer, but somebody who does an emergency tracheotomy when you're choking on something is clearly trying to help you, right?
	So both of these things can't be the same.
	And...
	We can't say that a builder is a great builder if he builds you a wonderful house that lasts forever and a guy who puts dynamite in your basement and blows your house up.
	I mean, those two things can't be both in the same definition.
	And so two guys in the same room cannot steal from each other at the same time.
	So let's say one has an iPod, one has an iPad, because apparently I'm just funded by Apple.
	But they can't both steal from each other at the same time.
	Or let's say that there's just one iPad.
	Well, if I want you to have the iPad, it's not stealing.
	So if stealing is a good thing, then it can't be a good thing.
	And this is where the contradictions arise.
	So if I want you to steal something, if I want you to take my property, it's not theft.
	So I have to not want you to take my property, and you have to want to take my property in order for the jigsaw puzzle of theft to occur.
	So if I have the iPad and you take from me the iPad, and I don't want you to take the iPad from me, Then it is theft.
	In other words, I have to want to keep my property and you have to want to take my property.
	Property rights have to be a value for me and the opposite of property rights have to be a value for you.
	So we can't have contradictions in universality which we sort of explored and explained earlier.
	And if you work through, then something like the things like rape and theft and assault and murder all fall into this category that they can't be universalized as positive actions because They contradict themselves because one person has to want it as a positive action and the other person has to not want it as a positive action.
	Somebody has to, to be raped, the woman has to, or the man has to not want the sexual activity and therefore one person is pursuing sexual activity, the other person is specifically opposing that sexual activity so rape cannot be a universal value because one person has to really hate it and not want it and the other person has to really want it and you can't have opposite desires and then say that something can be universalized.
	So, I mean, this is a very, very brief synopsis of what goes on, but you can at least get the person to admit that thou shalt murder can't be universalized.
	But you can, thou shalt not murder can be universalized, because two guys in the same room cannot be murdering each other at the same time.
	In other words, they can both respect the sanctity of life in the room.
	They can both respect property.
	They can both respect each other's various orifices.
	They can both Respect each other's physical integrity by not hitting each other.
	So the respect of the non-aggression principle can be universalized.
	Violations of the non-aggression principle cannot be universalized.
	And so if we've accepted that rational consistency and empirical evidence is a basis for universally preferable behavior, then we can certainly say that Bans on rape, assault, theft and murder can be universalized whereas making those things universally preferable behavior cannot be universalized and then And then, and I go into this in more detail in the book, and then we can say, is there any empirical evidence for these things as well?
	And we would say, okay, well, so societies that respect property rights, do they generally do better in general than properties which do not respect property rights?
	Societies that praise murder, do they do better than societies that ban murder and so on?
	And that would be more on the sort of Sam Harris empirical side, and these are not certain proofs, but they're empirical support for The theories as a whole, you know, did communism work out really well?
	No.
	Do societies that respect property rights, you know, like Singapore and so on, do they do relatively well?
	Yes.
	And you can just follow human movements.
	Where do people want to move to?
	Not a lot of people from Kansas trying to get into the Soviet Union.
	So again, this is not going to convince everyone, but hopefully it gives you a fruitful enough avenue to want to get into the book and to listen to or to explore the ways in which ethics can be proven from a rational standpoint and also can garner significant empirical support from history and from around the world.
	So does that help at all?
	Yes, it does.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because I plowed through the book.
	I just bought the book, by the way.
	I plowed through the book two weeks ago when I first got it.
	And it's hard.
	When you're listening to it, you know you get it.
	You know you understand it.
	But when you actually talk to someone...
	No, it's horrible.
	I still screw it up from time to time, too.
	So it's horrible.
	And there's sometimes, you know, Charles Murray has a book out.
	And it's about sort of the widening gaps in modern American society.
	I mean, I listened to it on audiobook twice, and then I read a summation of it, and then I was just listening to him give a lecture on it, and it finally just clicked.
	Losing ground.
	No, not losing ground.
	I can't remember what it's called, but it's some new book that he had pretty recently.
	And sometimes it just takes a while for that click to happen.
	And with UPB, it's particularly tough.
	Because if UPB is accepted, the world changes more radically even than when Newtonian physics was accepted.
	Because ethics concerns everyone, but physics not so much.
	Coming Apart, The State of White America, 1960 to 2010.
	And so, yeah, there's a huge amount of historical, mental, emotional, cultural, religious, political, and social resistance to UPB because it completely rewrites human relations and social relations, parent-child relation, and so on.
	And so there's a lot of resistance and there's a lot of opposition.
	Plus, the book can certainly use some improvement, which I'm currently plugging away on.
	Thanks very much for the question and comments.
	It's certainly always a joy to chat about that.
	So there's got to be a part two of the UPV? Well, it's basically just a revised edition.
	I'm writing a much shorter summary of the book, and I also want to work on...
	I'm sort of taking notes on it at the moment.
	I want to work on...
	You know, just I've had like six or seven additional years of great arguments against it and refinements.
	And I'd like to tweak and improve some of the language.
	And I've had some comments where things don't make as much sense.
	Language terminology, you know, you write a book over a couple of months and sometimes the language drifts a little and you don't catch in the editing.
	So just I think that the general thesis to me still remains as bulletproof as ever, but it can be improved in terms of how it's communicated.
	Yeah, thanks a lot.
	Yeah, you guys, if you guys are listening to this, please donate.
	Free Debate Radio, forward slash donate.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, Steph and Mike.
	Thanks, everyone.
	Thanks for calling in.
	Not a lot of people that want to call in and debate UPP, so you got some stuff on you.
	Thanks for calling in.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	All right, well, up next is Fred.
	Fred wrote in and said, What's the best way of dealing with people close to you who are being annoying?
	I'm thinking more of spousal relationships, but I suppose family members and coworkers can also fall into this category.
	Here are some examples of things I personally find annoying.
	If I'm watching a hockey game with my wife, she feels innate to say oomph every time there's a body check or two people run into each other on the ice.
	The first couple of times it was fine, but after a couple of hundred times, it gets a bit annoying.
	Or if I'm working on something in my office with the door closed so I can concentrate on what I'm doing from time to time.
	She'll barge in.
	To share some kind of gossip or trivial thing.
	In fact, she did this now as I'm typing this email.
	Texting can also become annoying when it's excessive or trivial, and sometimes both, especially when I'm trying to get something done while I'm driving.
	She knows I'm driving.
	I've told her a number of times already just to call me when I'm driving, and I'll use the hands-free speakerphone, etc., etc.
	I've tried to politely point out some of these things before, but that doesn't seem to work, or I guess I come off sounding like a jerk when I do it.
	So for the most part, I now try to just block things out that annoy me and ignore them, but every once in a while, usually when I'm burnt out or tired or really busy, I will blow up and lose it because of this sort of stuff.
	This doesn't really help either.
	We get into a fight about it.
	What I find most annoying is that my wife doesn't seem to have any problem telling me or any of our kids when we are annoying her and does so quite regularly.
	However, she seems to take easily offense to anyone asking her to stop annoying them.
	The reciprocity just doesn't seem to be there, and I don't think she sees the double standard.
	So I'm curious your thoughts and potential strategies for dealing with this.
	Right, that's a great question.
	It's a great question.
	I mean, how many great loves get eroded by petty annoyances, right?
	Yeah, hi.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, I guess it's kind of along the lines of the straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing, and we really want to avoid that sort of thing, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Yeah, I had a girl I went out with years ago.
	Every single time an airplane would fly any time that was, you know, I'm not talking little dots with the contrails.
	I mean, like, any time an airplane would fly by, do you know what she would say?
	What?
	She would say, I just, I cannot understand.
	It's incomprehensible to me that that thing doesn't just fall out of the sky.
	Like, every single time.
	It was like this weird conditioned response.
	You know, push button.
	Button marked airplane.
	Producers sound shape called.
	I can't believe they don't just fall out of the sky.
	I was driving with my brother once.
	And every time we would get to a stop sign or a red light, he would point at the stop sign or the red light.
	You know, and after a number of times, I asked him.
	He pointed it?
	Yeah, he would just point at it and not say anything.
	Like you weren't driving through it or something?
	No, no.
	No, he was just pointing.
	And I said, what the heck are you doing?
	And he told me, well, his wife always is worried that he's not seeing these things.
	So he got into the habit of just pointing to them so that she knew that he saw them.
	Right.
	It's kind of bizarre.
	The lengths we'll go to appease people sometimes.
	Yeah, I'll be honest, and this may be my annoying or abrasive side.
	I'm not a big one for that kind of appeasement.
	Even on the little stuff?
	Especially on the little stuff.
	Because if there's the big stuff, don't get married.
	But if it's the little stuff, yeah, I think those kind of repetitive stuff is indications of kind of like a blocked emotional something, like where there's just that sort of repetitive stuff.
	So I'm a big one for basically saying to people, why do you keep doing that?
	It's annoying.
	Like, let's not do that, right?
	Now, if they have a good reason for doing it, I'm happy to listen.
	But no, I'm not a big one for biting my lip for 20 years.
	Okay, so what's the polite or easy strategy for doing that?
	Like I said, you know, in the...
	Well, you don't have one.
	You don't have one because you've tried this other thing for a long time, right?
	It's one of these things, is it easy to quit smoking in your first cigarette or your 400,000th cigarette, right?
	Well, you've got 17 years, at least with your wife, of doing things a particular way.
	So I'm afraid, my friend, you don't have an easy, pain-free way of doing it.
	That doesn't mean that it's not possible.
	It's just, that's the reality, right?
	You do it at the beginning and it's easy if you do it later, right?
	Well, I suppose, you know, if I rewind the The tape on those 17 years, I think I did try to do some of it earlier on, and that's what led to some of the fights kind of thing.
	Okay, so give me an example of what, I know it's maybe a ways back, but some example and what kind of fight came out of it?
	Let's say, you know, she has this habit, you know, if she's doing laundry, the towels all get picked up, I can come out of the shower or Or let's say wash my hands and there's no towels there because they're all in the laundry kind of thing.
	And I'm like, hey, come on, I want a towel.
	Or garbage is another one.
	You know, taking out the garbage bag but leaving the garbage can empty kind of thing.
	And you go in there and your hands are full and ready to throw something in the garbage and it's not there.
	Well, I mean, I'll tell you what I do with the towel thing.
	You parade around naked, right?
	I just go give her a hug.
	Nice, squishy.
	I might not even wash the soap off.
	Yeah, yeah.
	You know, like bears scratch themselves against the log and I'm drying myself against your dirty pillows.
	Yeah.
	And she won't forget that, right?
	No.
	I suppose probably what I've gotten back the most is if you're not happy with how something's being done like that, do it yourself.
	If you're not happy with how something's being done, do it yourself?
	Yeah, that seems to be a pretty standard comeback on her side.
	Who makes more money in your relationship?
	It's debatable.
	I would say I probably do.
	Oh, okay.
	So then if she wants to buy anything that she wouldn't just be able to directly afford only with her salary, that shouldn't be the case, right?
	Well, we've got a joint account.
	Like, it's not like...
	No, no, but I mean, philosophically, right?
	I mean, anything that you do, like, so anything that you do...
	That she doesn't do, she has no right to complain about, right?
	I assume that like most guys, she does more stuff inside the house, you do more stuff outside the house?
	Yeah, it's probably, yeah, I don't know.
	I would say it's even split, but it's hard to say.
	Okay, can you give me something?
	Is there anything that you don't do 50-50?
	Come and help me out a little here, Fred.
	Don't make me work so hard.
	You can join me in this conversation anytime you want.
	Is there anything that you do more of?
	Yeah, like I'm the guy that will do the upkeep on the house, the physical stuff, the furnace, the cleaning the eavesdrops, the looking after the van and the vehicles, sweeping the...
	Okay, so great.
	So then if you're cleaning the furnace and, you know, I don't know, you track furnace grit and dust upstairs all across the clean carpets, and she says, hey, and you say, well, look, man, if you don't like the way I'm doing it, do it yourself, right?
	Right.
	What would she say?
	Hmm...
	Actually, I don't think she would say anything to that, because I have actually done some of those things.
	Working on a sewer pump, you know, you talk about pretty noxious odors when you're fixing a sewer pump in a house kind of thing, and it does smell up the whole thing, and yeah, she's just happy when it's not.
	But Fred, I mean, come on, you can't not work on a sewage pump without it being smelly, but you can not track dirt across clean floors, right?
	Oh, okay, gotcha.
	Yeah, that kind of thing.
	Yeah, take your shoes off, you know, before you come in the house kind of thing.
	Right.
	Yeah, and that's happened.
	Where, you know, specifically, you know, we made, you know, the floors on the main floor is all linoleum.
	So, you know, if I do track mud in, it's easy to clean up, and I have done it.
	And yeah, that certainly annoys her.
	It's like, what are you tracking the mud in for?
	Well, I didn't want to take my shoes off.
	Right, and if you don't like the way I'm doing it, then I don't know what, you could wear my shoes.
	But you can't have a standard in a relationship that says that nothing that you do can be criticized.
	The person can have no feedback on whatever it is that you're saying, right?
	I mean, that cannot be a rational standard in a relationship.
	Right.
	Yeah, and maybe that's what it seems like to me, where I would like to give more feedback than I do, but I kind of pick my battles.
	Okay, but the question is, why do you have to pick your battles?
	I mean, is there a way that you can do it that is enjoyable?
	Criticism, you know, it doesn't have to be painful.
	It doesn't have to be unpleasant.
	It doesn't have to be difficult.
	It doesn't have to be contentious.
	There's lots of fun ways of giving people, I mean, 99% sometimes it feels like of these call-in shows is criticizing people, at least of certain shows, not all of them, but some of them.
	But there's ways to do it that are enjoyable and fun and don't make the people usually mega defensive or whatever it is, right?
	Right.
	And I find that, you know, if it's with my friends or with the kids or somebody that's You know, not quite as close.
	It seems to be much easier.
	But then your challenge, Fred, is to figure out why it's hard for your wife and don't let her blame you, right?
	This is so important.
	You know, we have jokes in our household, like, you know, from zero to blame daddy in how many seconds, right?
	Something goes wrong.
	Ba-da-ba-da-ba, ba-da-ba-da-ba, knows Kevin Bacon and it's daddy's fault.
	A bag of chips is missing.
	Where's daddy?
	Penis damnation or whatever it is, right?
	And you can see this in society, right?
	How long does it take to blame men for anything that's happening?
	It really doesn't take very long at all.
	It's usually very, very easy.
	But when you say to somebody, you know, what's hard about being criticized, then most people will say, it's the way you do it, right?
	Yep.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yeah, I've gotten that.
	Yeah, don't accept that as an answer.
	Because look, that's to say that your wife had no personality, no history, no influences before you got married, right?
	Or before at least you got engaged.
	Okay.
	That's not the case.
	Right?
	So be curious about her history with criticism.
	What was it like for her when she was a child and she was criticized?
	What was it like?
	How did her dad criticize her mom?
	How did her mom criticize her?
	How did her mom criticize her dad?
	And I, you know, I don't know that I think there's something true that's not universally true, but there's a real trend that's true.
	And, you know, back me up if you'm right, if you think I'm right and tell me if you think I'm not, Fred, but guys can take criticism and women generally can't.
	That's a very blanket statement.
	It's not true from all.
	But in general, I don't know.
	I think it's maybe because guys play more competitive sports.
	I don't know exactly where it comes from.
	But, you know, when guys are told to do something better, generally we try and do something better.
	And when women are told to do something better, it's like you suddenly pull the pin out of the grenade and it's like, well, wait, what?
	Where did my arm go?
	I just suggested something better, right?
	Well, and my wife and I have talked about that a little bit just with the kids' sports because there's boy sports and there's girl sports and we've got two boys and a girl.
	And we see some of those differences, you know, like...
	My son's hockey team, you know, we've got one kid that, you know, was amazing at getting breakaways this year but couldn't score for the life of chance after chance after chance.
	Well, eventually everybody on the team started bugging him about it, then he buckled down and he got to it.
	And she was like, well, there's no way that would ever work with girls.
	Well, yeah, I mean, maybe if you had girls who were into competitive sports, then maybe they would see the value of criticism, right?
	Yeah, but like she sees, you know, with my daughter, you know, playing the volleyball and the basketball, and then she does figure skating, which is a little bit different animal, but it does pop up.
	But it does seem like there's different strategies or rules when it comes to that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, and I mean, just as an annoying universalist, Fred, I don't like these different standards and rules.
	You know, I don't want to treat my daughter in some fundamentally different way than I would treat a son.
	Correct.
	I mean, there's a few things, right?
	Because she's pretty, so we're already starting to work on, you know, people are going to want to be your friend, partly because you're pretty, right?
	And so, you know, just having her aware of how her looks are going to have an effect on those around her.
	But I think if I had some hunkasaurus son, that would probably be a similar kind of conversation in many ways.
	But I try not to have these differences, right?
	And the problem is, of course, if you have a difference with your wife, that's probably why there's a difference with your daughter.
	Yeah, I've seen it.
	I find it quite entertaining sometimes because there's times my daughter will treat my wife the way my wife treats me and my wife doesn't see it.
	And I think it's quite funny when it happens.
	Right.
	I don't know if you can follow that, but it...
	Yeah, no, I get that.
	And I'm very much an egalitarian when it comes to gender and race and class and so on, right?
	And this is all very strange for people, but, you know, it really shouldn't be.
	I'm kind of into universals and I have universal standards of behavior, so I'm not going to change them for black people or women or anything.
	I'm, you know, just not going to do it.
	Not going to do it.
	And so when it comes to criticism, there is...
	To me, honesty is really the key.
	And so in my relationships, if someone is doing something that bothers me, I'll say, that really annoys me.
	Doesn't mean that that person has to change.
	It doesn't mean that I'm right, but the annoyance is going to be there.
	I can either vocalize it, and we can deal with it openly, or I can not vocalize it, in which case it's just going to come out in some other subterranean weird ways that are going to be negative to the relationship.
	So I don't see, like, if you say to your wife, uh, Okay, let's try this roleplay.
	Okay, so, honey, could you do me a favor?
	Like, for 17 years now, whenever we watch a hockey game, whenever a guy gets body checked, you go, oof!
	You know, I get that you're a very empathetic person and you've got the feels and the mirror neurons, I guess, are clustering up there like nobody's business, but it just kind of gets getting on my nerves.
	And I'm just wondering if there's any way you might be able to not do that.
	Why is it you have to spoil my fun?
	I'm watching the game.
	I'm having fun.
	I'm expressing myself.
	Why can't I express myself when I'm watching a game?
	Lots of other people get to express themselves.
	That would be the kind of thing that would probably come back.
	Yeah, no, and that's fine.
	Okay.
	But I'm not saying that you shouldn't express yourself.
	Like, I'm not talking about duct-taping you and putting you underneath the ottoman.
	What I'm saying is that saying oof every single time, it just seems kind of repetitive, and that's why it annoys me.
	It's sort of like lip-smacking, you know, like if I lip-smack every single time, you know, if I lip-smack every single time I have a chew, and you said that kind of is an annoying sound to have at the dinner table, and if I were to say, well, I'm just expressing myself, I'm expressing my appreciation, I mean, that doesn't give you a voice either, right?
	The logic works with me.
	It doesn't seem to work when I try to...
	No, but what would she say?
	Married her for 17 years?
	Don't tell me you can't puppet her, right?
	I'd go back to...
	She would say, okay, I can kind of see what you're saying, but I want to have fun.
	Why are you stifling me from having my fun?
	So are you saying that you can't have fun unless you say, oof, every time somebody gets a body check?
	Right.
	Is that what you would say?
	You'd say that's the only way she can have fun?
	I suppose not.
	Okay, so there's a way...
	And boisterous during the games, and sometimes it seems a little irrational and over-exuberant to me.
	Well, one thing at a time, right?
	Okay.
	So we're just trying to deal with the oomph at the moment, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and the way I've kind of gotten around that one is to kind of make a joke of it.
	You know, if she'll say it, I'll repeat it.
	Yeah, no, but that hasn't worked, right?
	No, it's been reasonably successful.
	So, wait, are you saying that you're bringing up a problem that you've solved?
	Well, that one in particular, I may have solved, but there's a continuum there.
	Okay, but look, it comes down, and you can have a, you know, these things are never about the little things, they're about the bigger things, right?
	So, I always try to get to principles as quickly as possible.
	Okay.
	Right, which is where I try to universalize and reverse the statement about me smacking my lips at dinner.
	Try to get to the principles as quickly as possible, because they're interesting principles.
	And the principle is, what is going to make the couple as a whole more happy?
	So let's say I get plus 10 points of pleasure for smacking my lips, but my wife gets minus 50 points of pleasure for smacking her lips, right?
	When I smack my lips, right?
	So the sensible thing to do is for me to stop it, right?
	Because it gets me less pleasure than it costs her in terms of just assigning some sort of number value to it.
	Okay.
	Right?
	So, whereas if her being boisterous gets her plus 50 points, but it only gets minus 10 points for you, right?
	Okay.
	And given that you live with someone, there's always got to be some things that are annoying to the other person and fun for you, right?
	Yep.
	If you get up two hours earlier than everyone else in your family, but you love to yodel at the top of your lungs in the shower, and that gives you plus 10 points of happiness, but it's minus 100 points for everyone else, what's the reasonable thing to do?
	Stop the yodeling.
	No yodeling in the shower first thing in the morning, right?
	And these kinds of compromises are all over the place in relationships, right?
	Right.
	You know, you get four friends together and you want to go and see a movie, no one is going to get to see the exact movie they want, right?
	Unless you're all currently dressed as characters from Lord of the Rings and Peter Jackson is in town.
	Yeah.
	So, these are all things that are negotiable, but the idea of saying that I must be able to express or do whatever I want, no matter if it's uncomfortable for other people, can't be rationally sustained and it can't be universalized.
	In a relationship.
	So then the question isn't, there's no easy answers for all this kind of stuff, but there's a lot of fun to explore, is, okay, what is going to maximize our happiness?
	In other words, you can do trades.
	Like, so you can say, okay, I've got minus 50 points of happiness for you going oof every time somebody gets body checked.
	You have plus 10 points, right?
	Okay.
	Is there something we can trade?
	Okay.
	Right, so tell me something that I do that's really annoying to you and maybe it's not that enjoyable for me and I'll trade you these things so that we'll both end up better off.
	Ah, okay, there's an interesting concept.
	Try and trade something because usually you can't think of something to trade in the moment, but the other person probably sure could.
	Oh, I bet you they could.
	I bet you that's a list that goes on for quite a long way.
	And so just try those kinds of things, right?
	Like around making the bed, right?
	I mean, there's the guy making the bed, which is, you know, when it becomes like peeling whale blubber off a downed killer whale to peel your sheets back, then it's time to wash them, goddammit.
	But the idea of making the bed doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to a lot of men because, you know, it's the old argument, it's going to mess it up again, right?
	My wife, like most women, feels that...
	That's interesting because I'm the one that actually makes the bed.
	Okay, yeah, I'm just, you know, this is generics, right?
	Yeah.
	My wife, like most women, feel that just about at any time the Architectural Digest helicopter with the telephoto lens is just going to hover up around the windows and take pictures and they send to her mom.
	That's what's going to happen.
	So it's got to be made.
	Men, you know, the number of pillows that we need is like, you know, one pillow that's usually dragged from your bachelor couch is fair enough.
	But women need about as many pillows as you have eyebrows, eyebrow hairs on your head, for reasons that simply escape me.
	But maybe there's, you know, if the ceiling collapses, you can build a very quick fort to protect yourself.
	And so there's just things that, you know, just kind of different.
	I make the bet.
	You know, if I get up second, I make the bet.
	Would I make the bet if I was a bachelor?
	I certainly would not.
	But it makes my wife happy and it's not a big negative for me.
	And that kind of generosity, usually, I think in the best relationships, that kind of generosity breeds generosity.
	And so if there's something that's bothering you that your wife's doing, you know, just offer up a trade.
	Well, what are you doing that's bothering, you know, that's bothering you?
	And what am I doing that's bothering you?
	And let's do a trade.
	Okay, let's ramp this up a little bit.
	A little bit more on the emotional scale.
	She does most of the cooking, and there's been a few times where it's not the easiest thing to eat, or it's on the bland side, or there's some ingredients that just don't seem to work in whatever it is.
	And I found she's very, very touchy if I start just asking, even asking questions like, So, what's in this?
	But that's because you're beating around the bush, and that never works.
	I suppose.
	That's just an invitation for aggression.
	Honey, I'm already scared.
	Where's it going to go now?
	Fear creates a void which is filled by aggression, usually.
	There's very few people who can encounter fear and not fill it with aggression.
	It's just one of these vacuums.
	Nature abhors a vacuum, and aggression usually rushes in to fill.
	So, I find, you know, it's like, don't blink, don't stammer, and You know, whatever, right?
	Okay.
	So, yeah, I mean, this happens sometimes as well.
	I mean, I cook and my wife doesn't like what I've cooked or my daughter doesn't like what I've cooked or it's too spicy or something like that.
	And, of course, when you make food and you spend a lot of time preparing it, you want people to enjoy it.
	But, of course, the, you know, if you say, you know, if your wife says, how do you like it?
	And you say, oh, it's kind of bland and she gets upset.
	It's like, would you rather I lie?
	Well, sometimes I think that she does.
	Well, but that's an interesting question, right?
	And again, you go back to principles, which is, okay, tell me the stuff I'm supposed to lie about.
	I mean, if you actively want me to not tell you the truth or to falsify my emotional experience or to tell you something that you want to hear rather than what I actually genuinely experience and think, just tell me where.
	Is it, you know, do these pants make my butt look too big?
	It's like, no, your butt makes your butt look too big or whatever, right?
	That's where the frying pan comes out in the back of the head kind of thing, right?
	Well, but if you have these agreements ahead of time, then you're not trying to navigate blind.
	Like, if you have a principle which says, okay, I don't want you to ever tell me the truth about my cooking.
	You have to like it all no matter what, right?
	Okay.
	Then if that's known ahead of time, and you've got a good trade for that, right?
	Like, tell me I always have a six-pack even if I can't see my toenails.
	Okay.
	Then you have, I guess, mutually assured destruction from endless falsification.
	But you have to go back to the principles, which is, if I don't like something, then am I supposed to lie, right?
	In bed, right, I mean, around sexuality, I would assume that people, if they don't like something, you know, like that rhino horn is really making my sphincter uncomfortable, then it's a good thing to say that, right?
	Because you don't want to spend the next 30 years doing something that's not that much fun for you or is even negative.
	And so, right, so as far as that, like, just that kind of stuff goes, I mean, don't you want the honesty?
	And...
	If you don't want the honesty, that's a really interesting conversation to have, which is, okay, well, do you want me to lie?
	And yes, I want you to lie.
	It's like, okay, why do you want me to lie?
	I mean, do you want to not know if I'm enjoying your food?
	Because now that it's official that I'm supposed to lie, you'll never even know if I really like your food.
	Okay, well, let me take a stab at that one, because I think if I went down that road, it would be, no, I don't want you to lie, but I don't like your tone.
	I don't like the way you're talking to me about this.
	Or I don't like being lectured or hectored or...
	Yeah, and who knows?
	Yeah, maybe that goes back to those parental relationships she had however many years ago.
	I'm not sure.
	Well, yeah, okay.
	But here's the thing, right?
	And trust me, I've had those conversations before.
	And my suggestion, Fred, is to say there's two things that are going on here, right?
	And if we try and put the two together, we'll never get to any resolution.
	Right?
	So...
	So what are the two things?
	So hang on.
	So there's a difference, like, how do we get to some town is different from do we want to go?
	Right?
	And those two are separate questions.
	And so...
	If the tone is different from content, right?
	I mean, unless you're actually screaming it in your face or something like that, or, you know, you've got the saucepan and you're yelling it.
	But tone is different from content, right?
	And tone is really very difficult to negotiate, right?
	And so you don't want me to lie, but you want me to tell you the truth in a different way, right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	But what that says is that her emotional response is under your control.
	In other words, she has no chance of changing her emotional response.
	The only thing you can do is change your tone.
	And I, you know, when people try that stuff with me, it's like, nuh-uh, nuh-uh.
	You know, I don't have that much power.
	I cannot, like, my tone can't magically make you feel stuff.
	I have too much respect for you to take away your autonomy and self-ownership and responsibility.
	Right?
	So I'm going to tell you the truth.
	I wasn't being mean.
	I wasn't being nasty.
	I wasn't calling you names.
	Obviously, it's a bit tense because we've had conflicts about this before, but we have to create this self-ownership thing in a relationship, which is that my tone does not program your emotional apparatus.
	You are responsible.
	I'm responsible for your emotional responses.
	I'm responsible for what I say, but you are responsible for your emotional response.
	And you cannot blame your emotional response upon my tone, because who even knows what that means?
	It's really tough to know.
	I mean, obviously, I'm swearing at you.
	That's rude.
	And you can say, that's bad behavior.
	That's wrong behavior.
	Don't yell at me.
	Don't swear at me.
	That's perfectly valid.
	But anytime you're upset, if we circle back and make it about my tone, you actually don't have any emotional autonomy in this relationship at that point, and that's really not healthy.
	Okay, and I think that's the root of this stuff.
	I'm not quite sure how to breach those kind of subjects, I suppose.
	Well, you can say, look, you can say...
	This is what I would say.
	And, you know, whether this works or not, it really will just depend on your tone.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	This is what I would say.
	Is that, okay, we say, let's say I had a tone.
	Let's say that my tone, and, you know, it's amazing what people will, the amount of emotional baggage people stuff into something like tone.
	Your tone was disrespectful and dismissive, and it's like, my what now was what?
	Right?
	I mean, good lord.
	Tone can carry a pretty heavy burden sometimes.
	It can really be a heavy load.
	But I would say something like this, which is, so I was not happy about the food, and so I said something, but I'm supposed to be responsible for managing my negative response to the food so it doesn't show up in my language at all, right?
	So I'm responsible for intercepting my negative emotions and not blaming it on the food, right?
	And saying, well, I only said it that way because the food was bad.
	And therefore, it's your fault as a cook that I had a tone, right?
	Your wife wouldn't accept that, right?
	No.
	So when I have a negative stimulus as a husband, I don't like the food, this is bad food, we've had fights about it before, whatever.
	So if I have negative stimulus as a husband, it's my job to intercept that negative stimulus and it's my job to transform it and to not have anything that has what you call a negative tone.
	So I am responsible for my emotional responses and I have to intercept and change it, right?
	Okay.
	But if that's true, then you can't blame your emotional response on my tone.
	Because then I'm fully responsible for my emotional responses and must modify them, but you can blame 100% of your emotional response on my tone.
	That is having two different standards for us.
	I'm responsible for my emotional feelings, and I have to change them to be more considerate, but you are not responsible for your emotional feelings.
	They're just programmed by my tone.
	But we can't have these two standards, because if you're going to have high standards for me and then low standards for you, we're going to have problems, right?
	Yep.
	Well, and I think that's kind of what my daughter has sussed out.
	Is some of those double standards, and it's interesting when she throws it back at her.
	Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I'm really trying to help you with your daughter's teenage years if they haven't already hit.
	No, we're right there.
	Yeah, so now, that's probably why this call is coming up, right?
	Because the teenage years, it's all about what happens before the teenage years, right?
	Oh, I know.
	Yeah, man, I wish I would have started listening to you, you know, 10 years ago, because there's all sorts of interesting things that I'm thinking about.
	That I never really thought about before.
	There's a number of things, you know, I think I did do correct, or we did do correct, and I think, you know, reading a lot of Ayn Rand when I was younger, and non-aggression principle, and traitor principle, and that, I never really realized how much I used that, those principles, when it comes to raising the kids, but I do it all the time.
	And it's to the point where I'm surprised, you know, that other people don't do it, that it's not so common, and I guess it's just...
	It got ingrained in me, and it does work well when you use it.
	Right, right.
	I'm a little off topic, I think.
	No, I get it.
	I get it.
	And most people, and again, you know, I'm not getting your wife's side of things, but just going from what you said, Fred, I mean, most people, when they're manipulative, it's not usually a conscious intention.
	It's just what they're used to and what they've grown up with and what their relationships have become.
	But what they do is they set up a rule and then exempt themselves.
	Right.
	So the rule is, I don't care what happened to you emotionally, you can't have a tone.
	So you're 100% responsible for transforming your emotions into something positive, no matter what you're feeling.
	And it's like, but I'm 100% upset because of your tone, and I have no choice about that.
	And it's like, well, wait a minute.
	Why do I get this rule of infinite emotional autonomy and self-responsibility, but you're just programmed by what I say, right?
	And it's just the way that people grow up and it's what happens to them.
	Again, I'm not trying to impute any malicious intentions on the part of your wife.
	And it's also these habits and less challenged.
	And it's philosophy that challenges these, right?
	It's universalizing these things.
	That's all I'm basically doing is just universalizing these things.
	But a lot of conflicts between the genders have to do with the woman imposing a standard on a man that she herself is exempt from, but because the man is scared or guilty, the man accepts it.
	And that gives the woman the two poles of powerlessness and power.
	Like it's too much power and too little power, which is usually why there's these destabilizations.
	And I think if you look at these conflicts that you have with gender or with women, It's usually to do with some situation where she claims she has very little power in order to get too much power.
	And, you know, I'm not saying your wife is this way inclined, but you see this in sort of radical feminism, right?
	That women claim they have so little power that they need preferential legislation from the government, right?
	They have so little power to negotiate that they need the government to force employers to give them more wages, right?
	I claim to have so little power so that I can then Have a lot of power and that is in general the victim slash victimizer that occurs and again I'm not putting your wife into this moral category It's probably just a way a minor way But the woman basically says well I have no power over my emotions when you use that tone Therefore you have to change that tone.
	I have so little power and now I get to control what you do a hundred percent and nobody ever focuses on my reaction or what I do I claim to have so little power but That way I get too much power.
	And trying to give that, trying to make that middle ground is really, really important.
	It happens in minorities as well.
	Blacks.
	The blacks say, well, we have so little power because of slavery and racism that now we need affirmative action and now we need this and now we need that and now we need these programs and it's like we claim to have so little power and now we end up with too much power in certain situations and that's negative.
	And so...
	And it happens in religion, too, where the priest says, you have no power to effect your own salvation.
	You're powerless.
	Now I have lots of power over you.
	I hold the keys to the kingdom of heaven and so on.
	So, I mean, it's a big sort of a lot to drop onto some of the little conflicts that you have with your wife.
	But always be on the lookout for people who claim that they're powerless in terms of what you do.
	And then demand that you change what you do.
	That's the transmutation of powerlessness to too much power that creates a lot of destabilization and resentment, I think, in the long run, too.
	And I'm thinking this is how we go from the little things to the big things.
	And I think about the little things and the specifics with my wife.
	I don't think she's ever really thought about it the way we're discussing it now.
	It's just how she was brought up or how she's related to people over time.
	And it's just kind of worked for her, I guess.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, it's what happens.
	It's like the water that goes down the existing channel, right?
	Your water goes down some existing channel and you put a big giant rock in there and it finds a new way.
	Or like the old thing, I don't know if you've ever had it.
	You go up to shake someone's hand and they just stare at you.
	You don't just stand there with your hand out there like a little drawbridge.
	You've got to do something different, right?
	And so it's not, you know, I'm not trying to impugn any malicious intent.
	It's just probably what she saw and it's what model...
	And it is a feminine strategy because women do have, in many ways, less power than men, right?
	Like in terms of evolution, right?
	Because they were constantly knocked up or giving birth or breastfeeding and so they just didn't have as much.
	And of course, they have 40% less body strength and, you know, this constant disabling with kids.
	They didn't have as much power.
	And therefore, they developed other methods of achieving what they wanted.
	And I think some of those habits we kind of need to outgrow as generous.
	But yeah, be careful of...
	It's like if you played sports, right?
	The guy who really nags everyone that they don't ever pass to him, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Then some guys feel, okay, well, I got to pastor this guy more, right?
	Sometimes that's what they'll feel.
	Oh, sometimes they'll say, well, we don't pastor you because you suck, right?
	But sometimes they'll be like, oh, okay, well, I need to pastor this guy, right?
	So he's claiming, oh, I'm helpless, you guys never pastor me, but he's actually trying to control your behavior and get you to pastor him more.
	And if you go for that and everybody starts passing to him more, he's actually controlling the team through his supposed helplessness.
	And, you know, these people who complain and who put forward this helplessness, well, it's your tone that makes me feel this, they're trying to get too much power over you and it's important to neither give people the out of helplessness And in particular, if they're using that as the back cock of the fist to kind of knock you into shape, to not give them that too much power.
	And to remind your wife that, no, it's not my tone that makes you feel these things.
	You are responsible for your own feelings, just as I'm responsible for mine.
	But we can't have this thing where I've got to change my mood and change my tone, but you're completely helpless in the face of what I say.
	That's not reasonable, and it's not something I want my daughter to be exposed to either.
	Right, right.
	But boy, it's going to be interesting listening back to this and thinking about it because I like the basic annoying kind of things, let's try and do some kind of trade.
	With this stuff around tone and all that, that sounds like it's going to be a little bit trickier.
	Yeah, tone is a hole with no bottom.
	Don't you feel a kind of ball-shrinking dread sometimes when you go into the female quicksand of tone?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's...
	Like, oh great, now we're talking about tone.
	It's completely subjective.
	I can't possibly dispute it.
	And I, you know, where do we go from here?
	It really is.
	You're used to dealing with logic and facts and all that stuff.
	And it all just kind of goes out the window.
	Right.
	Right.
	But this is where you go to equality, right?
	This is where you go to equality.
	And...
	That's where universalization is really important.
	Because if your wife is going to say that she's genuinely helpless, but you have control over your thoughts and feelings, but she's just a shadow of whatever you do, she just reacts to whatever you do and so on, I don't think she's going to go that route, right?
	Because that's a pretty harsh thing to say about yourself.
	You, my dear husband Fred, have 100% responsibility over your own tone no matter what the provocation is.
	But I'm just a helpless shadow of your tone and I'm just emotionally reacting.
	Then she's like not even there.
	She's just like a shadow, not a person, right?
	I don't think she'd go that far.
	And that's where the principles are so important.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Is there also, you know, I'm thinking through it, you know, a bit of resentment.
	It's like, oh, you know, I'm making most of the meals I'm cooking every day.
	What do I make now?
	Here I got to make something else again.
	Oh, and now they're not happy about what I'm making today.
	Well, but see, that's a conversation you want to have about what it's about.
	Right?
	It's not about your tone and how much you should pretend to like her food.
	Like, if it's I'm cooking too much and I'm annoyed about it, then have a conversation about that.
	You know, sit down and say, okay, well, you know, Fred, I feel like I'm cooking too much, and I really noticed that when I found myself irrationally annoyed at the fact that you didn't like my food.
	Of course you're free to not like my food.
	I mean, I order you to like my food.
	That's kind of totalitarian.
	But I'm just, I'm annoyed that, I feel like I'm just On this tiny little circle of cook, cook, cook, clean, clean, clean, laundry, laundry, laundry, laundry, floors, floors, floors, floors.
	Like it's just, I feel like I'm on this tiny little Roomba robot circle.
	I'm stuck in this revolving door of stupid shit every day.
	And that's a conversation that's important to have.
	That may be a venting conversation.
	That may be something that you change, something fundamental about the conversation.
	It may be that she's looking at all of the costs of decisions and none of the benefits, which we all have a tendency to do.
	You know, like, well, you know, this 4,000 square foot house we live in is just consuming me with housework.
	And it's like, you want to move to a smaller house?
	Oh, no.
	Like, well, if you have a big house, you know, that's, you know.
	This old car is driving me crazy.
	Half time it doesn't even work.
	Should we buy a new car?
	No, too expensive.
	It's like, well, you know, cost and benefits to everything, baby.
	Just like reality.
	And if she feels like she's cooking too much, you know, there's a decision that you can all make.
	You know, maybe you and the kids or you and your wife can just get together and make a big vat.
	I'm a big fan of vats.
	If it's a cauldron, if it's not big enough for me to actually take some sort of sponge bath in it, I don't want to cook in it.
	I'm a big one for bulk.
	Just make a lot of stuff and then just stick it in the fridge, stick it in the freezer and thaw as necessary.
	So there's lots of things that can be done.
	If somebody feels like they're cooking too much, you can all have a cooking party on the Sunday or whatever or get a slow cooker or something which is just going to keep things bubbling like some backdoor Macbeth situation.
	Then you can make sort of practical things that you, there's practical decisions that you can make and things that you can do that's going to cut down on the cooking.
	Or you can say, you know, we have children who last time I checked certainly had enough fingers to text and type and play Xbox.
	So kids, you know, mom's really annoyed at having to cook this much.
	What are we going to do to solve this problem, right?
	Yeah, and we are slowly getting the kids going on that.
	And we're certainly not opposed to take out.
	And there's, you know, some of the dinners, you know, you can pick up or...
	Yeah, or sandwiches.
	You know, I mean, your kids may suddenly find that they're a big fan of sandwiches when they get the responsibility of cooking, right?
	Which is kind of like getting the maternal subsidy of fresh meals, or more complicated meals.
	So, you know, if your kids are old enough, you said your daughter's near puberty, so, you know, sit down and say, you know, mom's really bored of cooking.
	And I get it, you know, cooking is not super fun for a lot of people.
	You know, for most people, it's not some Nigella Lawson bubble bubble toil and trouble, you know, phantasmagorical experience of a multi-variety of spices and herbs and exotic chickens.
	So it's mostly just, oh, mac and cheese again.
	I want a vat!
	Give me a vat!
	There's a whole other side to that, because, yeah, the kids are slowly learning, and with the learning process, yeah, sometimes, you know, things are...
	Overcooked, undercooked, recipes not followed completely, all that kind of stuff.
	But there too, I don't have as big a problem with that kind of stuff because it is part of the learning process.
	Well, yeah.
	And I mean, most guys, again, to generalize again, it's like, fuel.
	Fuel!
	You know, does it give me enough fuel to do what I need to do?
	Good.
	I mean, if I could get food in a pellet, shut up my ass, I'd be thrilled, right?
	I mean...
	I don't know.
	I need a certain amount of flavor.
	I mean, every now and then, it's nice to go out for a really good meal and, you know, like, or to cook a really good meal or whatever, but for the most part, it's just like...
	You know, give me some sort of shake, give me some sort of astronaut pellet that I can put up my nose and I'm thrilled.
	So, yeah, just fuel!
	Give me fuel!
	I need fuel for typing, fuel for shows.
	And also, I mean, my daughter is six.
	Man, she can make, she figured out something the other day.
	Let me tell you what this is.
	If you ever try it, it's fantastic.
	It's, you get a, like a, she calls it a wrap, but it's basically like a falafel wrap or like a wrap.
	And you put a little bit of Nutella, a little bit of peanut butter, and cut up bananas and wrap it all up.
	She made that for dinner the other day because she just wanted to make her own food.
	And I'm like, damn, that is like, that is a seriously sticky hoagie of infinite goodness.
	That was tasty.
	I mean, it's great if you just have to go out and lift a truck.
	You've got enough carbs for that.
	But yeah, so maybe they could just do more experimentation and you can ride it out.
	Fair enough.
	All right, Fred, is that useful enough to get you in trouble?
	Yeah, I think it is.
	And listen, if your wife wants to call in, just have her call in.
	I'd love to get her side of things.
	Yeah, and...
	Maybe it's not the body checking.
	Maybe you're farting a lot and she's going, oof.
	Actually, it's probably the other way around.
	Oh, I'm telling, I'm telling, I'm telling.
	Women do not...
	That's another one of those double standards.
	The guys aren't allowed to let anything...
	Anything gets past their orifices.
	But the gals, you know, when they're alone with their significant others, you know, it seems like let her fly.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I mean, marriage is sometimes it's a bit of heavy lifting to keep the romance, you know.
	Hey, I really enjoyed that Indian meal.
	Why is the duvet floating three feet above her bed and we're weeping?
	All right.
	Well, thanks, Fred.
	Keep me posted.
	And yeah, if your wife wants to call in, I'm certainly happy to chat with her, too.
	Sounds good.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Well, up next is Tim.
	Tim wrote in and said,"...in my frequent interactions online and in real life, I often get the quote-unquote, seems-like-a-nice-person excuse when talking with people who have been victimized by sociopaths they let into their lives." Oh wait, sorry.
	The sociopath, he seemed like a nice person?
	Yeah.
	They just changed.
	That kind of thing, I believe.
	Having listened to your show a lot over the years, I've learned not to accept this excuse and tell people that there are signs of sociopathy that we all need to be wary of, but my list at the moment feels incomplete.
	What are some good ways to spot a sociopath that you have found?
	Yeah, well, we were just talking about this.
	You know how there's a...
	Gay people claim to have something called gaydar, which is, you know, they obviously don't want to hit on guys who are not gay.
	It could be risky and certainly won't get them what they want.
	And so there's something called GADAR. And I think we need to help people find something called CRADAR, which is how to find crazy people.
	CRADAR. I think that's very, very important because, you know, by the time that you haven't found the crazy people and they're around, it's too late.
	You know, like you have to get out of the crypt before the door seals from the outside.
	So those are great questions.
	But let me ask you this.
	So if you...
	When you ask people about signs of crazy that they have had out there, what do they say?
	Do they ever admit or do they just say, no, there was no way of knowing?
	Usually they'll deny there's any way of knowing.
	I'll tell them the ways I know, but it's really hard to get a response from it.
	They seem to be in a great deal of denial about it.
	Okay, why do you think they are that?
	I think they would...
	I think they're afraid people would think less of them if there was some responsibility on their part for it.
	No.
	No, no, that's very charitable.
	That's very charitable, but no.
	That's me.
	I'm sorry to be annoying, but no.
	I know.
	You are such a nice guy.
	I try.
	Yeah, try less.
	Okay.
	Be a guy who changes things rather than a nice guy.
	Nice guys are just invisible.
	Nice guys are like, I don't offend anyone.
	Nobody's bothered by me.
	Oh, I offend plenty of people.
	I did a YouTube channel talking about this sort of thing.
	I had people who just hated me.
	Oh, wait, hang on.
	You have a YouTube channel and people are upset with you.
	I think that's also known as having a YouTube channel.
	But anyway, go ahead.
	Yeah, more so than some.
	All right.
	Anyway.
	Okay, so do they ever admit it or do they basically just say there was no way to know?
	I can't recall.
	It may have happened, but I can't recall any time it ever did.
	Have you heard of Mattress Girl?
	Yeah, I have no idea what the mattress is supposed to mean.
	I never could figure that out.
	The mattress, I think, was her way of saying that because the person that she claimed raped her and anally raped her was still on campus, that the mattress was her way of protesting that or whatever, right?
	So this guy, Paul Nungesser, he's from Germany, and this is from The Daily Caller.
	Columbia University student Paul Nungesser is suing the university because he says it allegedly let him be harassed by mattress girl Emma Salkowitz, who accused him of raping her.
	Now, some of the...
	So this woman became a national hero in the campaign against campus sexual assault.
	She was actually invited to the State of the Union, and she's been carrying around this mattress.
	Apparently she's getting credit for carrying around this mattress.
	Like, not credit like feminist credit, but like school credit as an art project.
	And so the lawsuit, his lawsuit, uses Facebook messages and other evidence to paint a picture of this woman as a jilted love interest whose deep obsession with Nungesser transformed into savage Hatred.
	The complaint extensively draws from Facebook conversations between the two, quoting Salkowitz, the woman, as regaling this guy with tales for her past and present sexual experiences.
	So, I'm just, you know, as far as Kradar goes, let's go with this.
	So, at one point, she expresses fears for her reputation after contracting an STD following drunken sex at a party.
	So, according to the complaint, she...
	She said, I've officially had sex with all of John Doe's best friends.
	She said, did lots of drugs.
	Just kidding.
	Just got very drunk.
	Well, anyways, now I have an STD. I actually hate John Doe.
	Like, if a girl is about to puke, don't put your unprotected dick into her.
	I really don't want to be known as the girl who contracted an STD because she was drunk.
	You know, it was more his fault for fucking me unconscious.
	I mean, I was conscious, but clearly not in my right mind.
	I was literally blackout, like I puked all over the place.
	The complaint also argues that Salkowitz showed an intense romantic interest in this guy during the summer of 2012 when he was in Germany.
	She sent him more than a dozen messages along the lines of, Paul, I miss you, Paul, I miss you, Paul!
	Or, I would love to have you here, OMG, we could snuggle!
	The lawsuit even argues it was Salkowitz herself who first broached the possibility of anal sex with this guy, even though the claims of forced anal sex are central to her claim of rape.
	During one Facebook exchange, she said, fuck me in the butt.
	Now, this is, you can sort of go on and on if you want with this stuff.
	You can do this.
	It's on the Daily Caller.
	And this is all the allegations and so on, right?
	And I just, you know, if this was a guy who ended up In a relationship with this woman, I don't know the story, but in the end of the relationship, I'd be like, dude, I mean, yeah, this Kradar should be...
	Kradar should be like flaring up your nostrils like flamethrowers.
	And this is, you know, if this is true, pretty evident of some pretty crazy stuff, right?
	Oh yeah.
	So, and this is all stuff that now, of course, another big problem is that according to, because he was cleared by the university, you're not supposed to talk about any of this stuff.
	You're not supposed to share it.
	You're not supposed to tell anyone.
	You're not supposed to, nobody's supposed to know.
	And he didn't tell anyone, at least according to what he says, the fact that she had a mattress around me, she might have been hinting at something.
	And so this was also a big problem.
	And he's suing the university because I think his argument is that, or his lawyer's argument is that the university enabled this behavior and gave her credit for this behavior, course credit and so on.
	And didn't give her any sanctions for...
	Revealing sort of what happened or whatever, right?
	So yeah, there is some pretty strong indications for some people.
	I've certainly managed to dodge some cray-cray in my life.
	And usually it wasn't that hard to figure out.
	I mean, and the crazy that I didn't dodge also wasn't hard to figure out.
	It was just...
	The reason that I was susceptible when I was younger to crazy people was that the cost of setting a barrier up against crazy people was much higher than just those people.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, you had people who were kind of stuck in your life, so that would have...
	Like your mom, as you've said many times.
	Yeah.
	If I put up a thing that says, you know, I don't want crazy people in my life, well, that's not a...
	A tight target weapon.
	I mean, that's a WMD as far as my sort of social life went in my 20s.
	I mean, to say, I don't want...
	I'm not just not gonna...
	No crazy people in my life.
	Because here's the thing, right?
	When you get involved with a crazy person, it's not just your fault.
	Right?
	So if you get involved with a crazy person...
	It's everyone's fault around you.
	I mean, I'm not saying sort of some fundamental moral responsibility that they hold and so on, but, you know, if you're on fire at an extended family Thanksgiving dinner and everybody lets you burn to death, well, it's not just you, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And so the question is, where's your...
	Where's your social safety net?
	Where's your moat of love that keeps crazy out?
	That keeps crazy at bay?
	I mean, where are your friends that you trust and say, you know, okay, this girl wants me to do her in the butt.
	I guess I've always wanted to do that.
	But I don't know.
	People are like, oh, man.
	Oh, my God.
	I don't care how much you want butt sex.
	That is not worth it.
	That is no way, shape, or form worth it.
	I mean, that dick goes in.
	It ain't coming back out.
	And...
	Where are the people in your life who are going to protect you, who are going to watch your back, who are going to be aware that, you know, maybe you got some kinky fetish that this man or this woman or whoever is going to offer to satisfy and thus clouds your brain from judgment and all that kind of stuff.
	And it's a whole social environment.
	Like, either you're getting signals of crazy people or crazy signals or And you don't tell anyone around you, in which case there's an isolation factor that's really probably why they're dumping crazy all over you.
	Or you did share the crazy stuff with the people around you and they didn't...
	They didn't help or stop or intervene or shake you, you know, slap you with your own elongated dumbstick or whatever.
	And there's a whole lot of neglect and betrayal and distance and isolation that goes on that allows a crazy person to fasten onto someone.
	And so there's a lot that goes on in terms of drawing the big line between you and crazy town Boy, I mean, that can go right through people's foreheads around you.
	So you say a lot of these people let crazy people in their life because they're surrounded by people who either are crazy themselves or are just completely oblivious or just didn't care enough to actually say, hey, maybe you shouldn't get involved with that person?
	Well, okay, so if they're crazy themselves, obviously they're not going to point out how that person is crazy.
	I get all of that.
	If they don't care about you, I don't know.
	I mean, that's just, that's pretty horrible, right?
	I mean, to recognize that people saw this crazy stuff and just didn't care enough about you to help, that's not good, right?
	It means that you are in a very risky situation.
	Look, we all rely enormously on other people for reality.
	You know, I... Thinking is an individual act, and yes, Ayn Rand, the smoking in the brain, yes, thinking is an individual act, but it's not just an individual act.
	People went kind of nuts when President Obama said, you didn't build that, right?
	You didn't build that.
	And they kind of misunderstood what he was saying, right?
	And I'm not sort of defending what he was saying, but he was saying that there's a lot of, you know, The government builds roads and the government delivers your water and the government tries to ensure that there's clean food.
	I'm not saying the government has to do these things, but he's saying there's lots of infrastructure that you're using.
	And this is not a statement of any kind of artificial humility, because false humility is just another kind of hypocrisy, but I genuinely believe and understand that That my intellectual contributions are microscopic compared to what I have inherited.
	I mean, just look at language, for God's sakes.
	I mean, what the hell did I have to do with the invention of English?
	You know, I tried to add a few words to the language, like the B-nap and the dick-napping and so on.
	But for the most, and Kradar, I guess, now, too.
	But the vast majority, almost the complete extent of What I say is using words I never developed.
	I just inherited this incredible collective project called human language.
	Reason itself, I certainly didn't invent.
	Empirical evidence, the scientific method, philosophy, all of these things I inherited and I, you know, try and pay it forward by adding a few points of light to an already crowded galaxy.
	But what I'm able to achieve intellectually is tiny compared to everything that That I've inherited.
	Now, of course, the areas that I'm trying to work in, in terms of ethics and child protection and reasonable parenting, they're huge in terms of the future.
	But I'm merely extending, right?
	Extending reason, extending the non-aggression principle, extending the protection of individuals, extending the non-aggression principle to anti-spanking and anti-intimidation and so on.
	So I'm merely extending.
	And, you know, as I said years ago, my big contribution...
	It's really around extension, which I'm not saying is unimportant and so on, but nonetheless, it can have huge and profound effects, right?
	Rocks fall.
	Hey, the earth is falling around the sun, too.
	It can have a big effect on things.
	So, how much of me is just me?
	It's really hard to imagine that it's much.
	Because I was raised in a particular tradition which is ecclesiastical and philosophical and I have a certain amount of genetic intelligence, which comes from both sides of my family.
	Some seriously smart people going back to William Molyneux and even further back.
	We have been elites on both sides of my family for many years.
	In my mother's side, poets and writers.
	I think I've got an uncle who won a poetry award for all of Germany for a poem of his that hung actually when I was growing up.
	For many years.
	So we've got writers and artists and my father's side and my father's got a doctorate and he's a very accomplished geologist So, who am I that is just me?
	I don't know, it's hard to say.
	I mean, inherited my body, inherited my health, or lack thereof, inherited my brains, inherited language, inherited philosophy, inherited science, inherited intellectualism.
	A particular warmth or response that I had to philosophical writings that I ran across in my 20s, well, lots of people read those same things and didn't get just turned on intellectually.
	So, was that me?
	Was that just a response that I had?
	You know, I mean, it's like saying, it is my personal choice that I like chocolate.
	It's like, well, no, I like for chocolate.
	It's a lot of evolution, a lot of, you know, get calories while you can.
	Even things like being fat or not.
	You know, I mean, if kids go through particular privations in the womb or early on in life, then their genes get programmed to grab and hold on to more fat than other people do.
	And other people could eat what I eat and exercise as I exercise and be, you know, 50% more of my like 195 pounds.
	So, you know, how much of this is just me?
	I mean, it's sort of an impossible question.
	But in terms of our interdependence on each other, we've got this radical, to some degree, atomic individualism that goes on in the West.
	And whenever I talk about collective obligations or maybe pay it forward by having kids or whenever I talk about Our obligations to help each other, to look out for each other and so on.
	And people are like, no, I'm an individual.
	I'm going to do what I want.
	It's like, okay, well, why don't you invent your own goddamn language then?
	And why don't you make your own house out of scratch?
	No, because you want all these things from other people.
	Why don't you invent reason and philosophy?
	And why don't you invent mathematics by having four coconuts and a head-scratcher?
	It's like, why don't you make your own clothes?
	We're all involved in this collective.
	And I know this sounds like a bit of a tangent, but it's really not.
	Protection from crazy is a tribal effort.
	It cannot be achieved by an individual.
	Particularly, particularly, particularly, apparently when anal sex is involved.
	Particularly when sex is involved.
	Because sex is befogging and women and men will help you along to the reproductive strategy, right?
	Like the short term, have sex, cross your fingers, move on, sexual strategy.
	We always have that tendency because, you know, the other one is, the K is like long-term investment and so on.
	That's uncertain.
	That could change and society could change and who knows, right?
	And so when sexuality, when romance, when boom, dang, be involved, then it is very much a collective endeavor.
	You need like women and men like sandbags between you and crazy vagina town, right?
	I mean, they throw themselves in front of you.
	It's like that old...
	Greek myth where, you know, the guy wants to hear the sirens singing.
	And so he, you know, the sirens, if you hear them singing, you jump off your boat and you go and swim and you drown.
	But he wants to hear the siren singing.
	And so he says he's on his ship and he says to his ship's captain, his first mate, he says, listen, just tie me, you know, tie me to the mast.
	I want to hear these sirens sing, these beautiful hot women.
	I want to hear them sing.
	I want to hear them sing.
	But don't untie me whatever you do.
	And the guy's like, are you sure, man?
	Because people just go crazy trying to get to those women.
	And he's like, no, man, tie me to the mast.
	Yeah, yeah, nothing penis about that, right?
	Tie me to the mast so I can hear these sirens sing, but don't untie me no matter what.
	And they sail and they sail, and then he hears the sirens sing.
	The other guys all got wax in their ears, so they can't hear a damn thing.
	The guy's tied to the mast and he's like, oh man, just untie me.
	And the guy's kind of here, he kicks them, he kicks them, he's like, untie me!
	He's screaming, untie me!
	I've got to go, untie me!
	Let me take my masked penis into Craytown with the sirens.
	And they won't untie him and they steadfastly resist and he's screaming at the top of his lungs and he's trying to chew his way through his wrist ropes and he's trying to pull the entire mast out of the ship just so he can get there and he shreds his back and he's a real mess.
	And then after the singing, after they pass by the singing and these hot women on rocks, he's like, oh, thank you so much.
	I'm so glad you didn't untie me.
	And he's like, what, what?
	Take the thing out of your room.
	And it is a collective endeavor to protect us, to protect each other from crazy people.
	It is a collective endeavor to make the world a more rational place, which is why I say to people, donate, share, do something, help philosophy spread.
	You don't like my stuff, make your own stuff.
	Do something.
	Find someone you support that makes the world a saneer place and do something to support them.
	Help them out.
	Donate to them.
	Spread their work.
	Make your own work.
	Spread whosever work you think is valuable because there's huge numbers of people out there who ain't going to think until they get it.
	The principles of thinking.
	I sure as hell didn't know how to think until I got the principles of thinking.
	I sure as hell didn't get it from school and I didn't get it from church and I didn't get it from my family.
	I got it from other people who took the time and effort to write down something intelligent to make coherent and cogent arguments do something because it is a collective endeavor to make the world a better place.
	It is a collective endeavor.
	To make the world less crazy, to make it sane, to make it think, to make it curious, to make it non-defensive, to make it emotionally open, to make it strong.
	It is a collective endeavor.
	This guy, if what he's saying is true, and these are all allegations, but this guy who got involved with this crazy woman, he needed a human shield around him.
	He needed a human shield around him.
	And everybody who let him get into that situation, when he was dicknapped, when his penis and balls took him to a crazy town on a one-way ticket, well, you've got to lasso those guys.
	You've got to throw yourself in front of them.
	You've got to let them get angry at you.
	You've got to let them scream at you, untie me!
	Untie me!
	The song is too beautiful!
	And you know that the song is beautiful, but the next step in the journey of fate is a watery death.
	And the song is beautiful as a prelude to violence, to murder.
	And we have to be strong enough to cover up our own ears.
	And to refuse to untie men who are being dicknapped.
	And women who are being clitnapped.
	And just say to them, this is a bad idea, you cannot do this.
	And do whatever it takes to keep them from subsidizing crazy with sex.
	So does that help at all?
	Yeah, it does.
	Although, what would you say to people who already are surrounded by crazy or were kind of just born into it?
	What would you say to those people who are just kind of already in there and there wasn't anyone?
	Well, I would say, do you think that everybody is crazy?
	Do you think that everybody in the whole world is crazy?
	And if they said yes...
	Then I would say, do you think I'm crazy?
	And if they said yes, then I'd say, well, I'm not.
	If you think that I am, that's not good.
	If you genuinely think that I am, then I shouldn't be your friend.
	Because I'm either so crazy that I think I'm not crazy, or you think I am crazy when I'm not.
	But either way, this is not a compatible relationship.
	But if they say, well, no, obviously not everybody in the world is crazy.
	Then...
	I would say, don't hang back with the brutes.
	If not everyone in the world is crazy, then why are you willing to limit yourself to crazy people?
	Why don't you look higher?
	Why don't you look better?
	I think some people feel like they don't have any other choice, although they don't.
	I mean, I'm thankful as heck.
	I live in the area where the Internet's around, where I can always find people who aren't.
	Yeah, I mean, you usually don't have to go...
	I mean, you usually don't hang back...
	Sorry.
	You usually don't have to go as far as the internet to find non-sociopaths.
	Oh yeah, but it has helped a lot.
	Great.
	Yeah, I mean, maybe to find people of the very highest quality, for sure.
	There's a great line, a great little speech here.
	Blanche Dubois, not the most sympathetic character, a real estrogen-based parasite running out of estrogen, but Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire.
	So Blanche says to Stella, you're married to a madman.
	And Stella says to her sister, I wish you'd stop taking it for granted that I'm in something I want to get out of.
	She says, what you were talking about is desire, just brutal desire.
	The name of that rattle-trapped streetcar that bangs through the quarter up one old narrow street and down another.
	Stella says, haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?
	And her sister says, it brought me here where I'm not wanted and where I'm ashamed to be.
	And she says, don't you think your superior attitude is a little bit out of place?
	Blanche says, may I speak plainly?
	If you'll forgive me, he's common.
	He's like an animal.
	He has an animal's habits.
	There's even something subhuman about him.
	Thousands of years have passed him right by, and there he is, Stanley Kowalski, survivor of the Stone Age, bearing the raw meat home from the kill in the jungle.
	And you, you here waiting for him.
	Maybe he'll strike you, or maybe he'll grunt and kiss you.
	That is, if kisses have been discovered yet.
	His poker night, you call it?
	This party of apes!
	Maybe we are a long way from being made in God's image, but Stella, my sister, there's been some progress since then.
	Such things as art, as poetry, as music in some kinds of people, some tenderer feelings have had some little beginning that we have got to make grow and to cling to and hold as our flag in this dark march towards whatever it is we're approaching.
	Don't, don't hang back with the brutes!
	And I remember reading that when I was pretty young and just thinking like, okay, she's crazy, but still, don't hang back with the brutes.
	But you have to know them as brutes and you have to know that there's non-brutes out there, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	I had that experience with people I used to hang out with on a forum.
	I even met them in person a couple times and they seemed like nice people.
	But after I'd listened to your show a lot, and we'd had some spats about politics and that sort of thing a couple times, but I asked them the against me argument, and they made the wrong choice.
	And I said, well, I'm sorry, we can't be friends anymore.
	I never talked to them again.
	And look, those conversations can go haywire, but there's no reason why people can't think of it, think it over, right?
	And then come back later and say, wow, you know, that really startled me and I'm not saying I agree, but, you know, but if they don't even circle back, you know, it's chilling.
	I tell you, man, it is chilling sometimes when you realize just how little you're missed.
	Oh, that was the best part.
	One of them asked me to come back, and there wasn't an apology or anything for it.
	All they said was, oh, we're not talking about that sort of thing anymore, so it's totally safe.
	Like, that somehow erases what you just basically said to my face?
	No.
	It's ridiculous.
	Right.
	All right.
	Methodology for trying to figure out who's crazy or not.
	I think I've become too subtle in my subterfuge lately.
	Because I have this real challenge of talking to kindergartners all the way to post-grads in terms of philosophy.
	And I think I've gotten a little too subtle in my subterfuges yet.
	Because when I'm talking about makeup with women, it'll be like, why are you talking about makeup with women?
	It's like, well, it's important.
	If a woman's makeup is designed to get resources out of men by pretending she's having an orgasm just by looking at you, well, it's kind of tough to talk about being exploited, right?
	It's kind of tough to talk about being objectified if you're putting your cum face on to get stuff out of men.
	And it's also kind of tough for women to talk solely about being victims of sexual harassment.
	Because if a woman is painting her O face on her face to get stuff for men, then it's kind of tough for women only to be the victims of sexual harassment, right?
	Pheronomes that...
	Makeup that imitates a woman's most fertile cycle and an orgasm itself combined with the makeup...
	Sorry, with...
	With perfume that mimics sexual pheronomes means that there is sexual harassment going on in this realm.
	And it's just a way of bringing reality to the situation and to equalizing things in terms of giving men a voice.
	So it's not just all about female victimization, objectification, and sexual harassment on the part of women, but no.
	I mean, putting out sexual signals all the time and complaining about objectification is not rational, not great.
	So it is important to talk about these things.
	And as far as methodologies go, the first thing is if there's a meeting of something other than the minds, first and foremost, then to me that's an indication of a challenge.
	I don't mean a challenge like a horse you want to break or a hill you want to climb, but a challenge like, I don't know, I don't know who can do this, right?
	And what I mean by that is that, again, just talking about women, if the woman comes across like really flirty, really sexual, coquettish, and all of that, and is really amping up the sexual characteristics of her presentation, then you are in the land of danger.
	Danger and crazy.
	Danger and crazy.
	My wife's gorgeous.
	First time I met her on a volleyball team, I mean, she's wearing a big old baggy t-shirt and sweatpants.
	She doesn't do that stuff.
	And so I got to know her as a person.
	And So when there's a significant amount of sexual manipulation and sexual offering at the beginning, that is signs that things are just not going to go well.
	Sorry, that's the way it is.
	Makeup is an R reproductive strategy, not a K reproductive strategy, and that is destabilizing and dangerous.
	These are different lists for men and for women.
	People who don't ask you much about yourself over the course of a mutual conversation, that is a big sign of problems to come.
	People who drop status signals, this is all just off the top of my head, so it could be it's not an exhaustive list, but people who drop status signals all over the place, you know, I remember being in Morocco and Y2K and sitting with some guy and He was telling me about all the videos of rock stars he'd worked on and David Bowie this and David Byrne that and all that.
	It's interesting and I'm happy to chat about it for a while, but after half an hour, it's like, Jesus, shut the fuck up, you boring son of a bitch.
	David Bowie maybe may be interesting, but not so much.
	Hey, could you confirm something?
	I heard this.
	You were...
	You were an employer once, so you might know this.
	Someone once told me that there's a question that they sometimes ask in interviews to test for sociopathy.
	They ask you to tell a story about some time where you wronged someone and what you did to make up for it or whatever.
	The sociopath will always gloss over the apology part because he can't ever admit he apologized or even lie about it because that's still admitting he did something wrong.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, I've never asked that question in particular, but I would ask a question.
	I would say, tell me about what you consider your biggest mistake in your jobs hitherto and what happened.
	And if they make it all about someone else's fault, not theirs, that's a warning sign.
	Oh, yeah, and you get this pseudo-crap like, you know, I guess my biggest mistake was not quitting this asshole and boss when I should have and, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	Like, my mistake was that I was too loyal to this jerk, you know?
	It's like, okay, so you're not somebody who takes any response.
	Okay, so that is, yeah, that's a big indication of a problem to come.
	When...
	So yes, the state of signals spraying all over the place is really boring because it means that somebody's just trying to impress you rather than get to know you, which means they're going to use you as ego gratification rather than get to know you as a person.
	People who talk about horrifying things with no outward sign of emotion or with signs of counter-emotion...
	is a sure sign of emotional disconnection.
	And none of this stuff means sociopath.
	I'm not a psychologist who has no capacity to diagnose anyone.
	But in terms of like crazy, dangerous, bad stuff, you know, like if they're giggling away about how they got beaten up as kids, that is a big problem.
	If they talk about being victimized, Then that is also a problem.
	Now, I don't mean that they were victimized as kids, because kids is a different thing.
	But if as adults, like I've mentioned this before, that I went on a date with a woman once who was talking about how her ex-boyfriend just left her with like $17,000 in credit card debt, and she was just railing against him.
	And it's like, I didn't even know where to begin other than, Jack!
	Right?
	Because like, how...
	How could this possibly happen?
	Do you not check your credit card statements?
	Did you give credit cards to a guy who was not employed?
	Did you...
	Like, what the...
	How could this...
	Did you have no idea that these kind of people exist?
	And so on.
	So, that kind of stuff is...
	It's really important as well.
	People who don't seem to have an internal sense of standard is important.
	People who have no curiosity about you in any fundamental way is really important.
	I had a boss years ago, and we were at a conference, and somebody was talking to him and talking to him, and it was really interesting.
	After 20 minutes, and I just happened to check, 20 minutes, like in the Turns and walks away.
	The guy was talking to him.
	He's right in the middle of saying something.
	My boss just turned and walked away.
	I was like, I caught up with him later and I said, dude, what's all that about?
	And he said, well, you know, my wife and I, you know, because he said I'm in business and, you know, and I meet a lot of people.
	And my wife and I, you know, after a certain amount of discussion, we just made a rule.
	And we said, if the person doesn't ask me a single question in 20 minutes, I don't care if they're in the middle of a sentence, I don't care if they're currently on fire, I'm turning and walking away.
	And I thought, well, that's it.
	Now, I'm fully aware, I'm not asking you a lot of questions here now, but that's just because you asked me a big lengthy question.
	But that's, you know, person doesn't ask me about myself.
	And you can sense this compulsion, this driving.
	When people are not comfortable in their own skin, if they're not comfortable with silence, if they're not genuinely interested in who you are, if they're not curious, and so on, then that is usually not...
	Not a great sign.
	Now, I can also be a little bit snobby about some stuff too, which is like if the person doesn't seem to have ever read a book, that's usually not a particularly great sign.
	And the reason for that is that books require much more empathy than movies do.
	Because in books, you're getting into somebody else's head.
	You're getting into their thought processes.
	It is a very...
	And there's a reason why literacy and book reading is associated with heightened states of empathy.
	Because in a movie you can't get into somebody else's head.
	I guess you can if there's like voiceovers or in Hamlet there's these soliloquies which are his thoughts and so on.
	But books, you really get into people's heads.
	I mean, I just remember I was talking about this with my daughter the other day, just how we read bits of The Hobbit.
	And in The Hobbit it says at one point that...
	Smog was awakening from a dream which featured a big man with a very sharp sword.
	An uneasy dream.
	And it's like, of course, Smorg never talks about that dream, so how on earth would anyone ever know that Smorg had that dream?
	Right?
	Well, of course, the author has omniscience, but that's a way of even empathizing you dream the dream of the dragon.
	You know, you can't really get that in a movie, but you can have these little tidbits about what people are thinking.
	Or I also remember Alan Dean Foster, I think, was...
	I don't know if he still writes, but he was a science fiction writer who used to do a lot of movie adaptations.
	He did Alien.
	I think he did Star Wars.
	And I remember...
	When I was a kid reading the Star Wars novels.
	I think I just read that one.
	Oh, no, I read Splinter in the Mind's Eye, which was tragically bereft of spaceships.
	But anyway, and in the book Star Wars, the first time that the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperspeed or light speed or whatever they call it.
	I can't remember.
	Hyperwarp.
	Anyway, whatever it is, the faster than light thing.
	I think Luke, he's talking about Luke and he says, strangely enough, Luke was thinking about a dog he once owned when they made the leap into hyperspace.
	Now, Luke never says that, but you get a little window into Luke's mind, which, you know, you wouldn't necessarily get if he's been played by someone like Mark Hamill, but that's a story topic for another time.
	And so if they've not read any books...
	Not a lot of empathy in video games, right?
	Not a lot of empathy in movies, but in books or poetry or these things there is a lot of getting into other people's skin.
	There's an old saying which came up in a movie a while back ago with Anthony Hopkins and Deborah Winger who has made a career of dying of cancer, but a book is a chance to try another person's life on for size, right?
	To sort of get a sense Of what somebody else's life is like and what they think and what they've experienced.
	So to me, literacy has something to do with that in that people who have a lot...
	Like it either helps develop empathy or people who have a lot of empathy are more drawn towards novels and poems and so on.
	And to a smaller degree plays, although not as much because there's usually just vocalizations and stage directions and so on.
	There are some plays, of course, that are more...
	Internal.
	But those are some other things that I would recommend as well.
	The other thing too is when I dissociate around people, and this happens sometimes when I'm on calls with people in these conversations, when I dissociate from people, when I find myself getting distracted or annoyed or irritated or so on, I usually find that I'm in the presence of their dissociation.
	Not always, sometimes I just get distracted, but it does happen that way.
	And what happens as well is if I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and I find that I'm really working hard to try and keep their attention, like I feel like I need to put on some sort of song and dance show or I need to actually keep their attention.
	I used to have this when I was younger.
	I'd be chatting with someone and their eyes would be wandering all over the room, maybe looking for somebody more interesting or better looking to chat with or whatever.
	And if that's going on, that means that they view people as accessories and as utilities.
	And if they're not interested in you as an individual, but you as a status symbol might be important.
	And that's not going to go well at all.
	Also, if they present as somebody without much history, in other words, you can't ever find out anything about their past really or it's kind of oblique or distracted or dissociated or cursory or something like that, that's usually not a very good sign either.
	On the other hand, if people simply only talk about their past and so on, then that's usually not great.
	If talking to you appears to be a huge relief, They're grabbing at you like a drowning man grabs at a soggy barrel, then that's usually not a good sign either.
	If they appear to be over-eager in what you're saying, that's another way of trying to erase you, and that's usually not a good sign.
	I know this all sounds very complicated and so on, but it's all just sort of instinctual stuff.
	Mike, did you have anything you wanted to...
	I'd say people that aren't interested in reciprocity.
	You have a relationship.
	Most friendships are founded on some degree of reciprocity.
	And if you're someone that's...
	Always helping the other person or you find out that you know over time it seems to be skewed in the direction of you helping them more than you're getting back and Then say you need something and you find out they're not there That lack of reciprocity is something that's not gonna be sustainable long term and Isn't signs of someone with a high degree of integrity Yeah,
	yeah, I remember when a friend of mine was having many many years ago a friend of mine was having a baby and And I went over to help him clean his whole place and clean his whole place out.
	And I just, it was years before I even thought of having kids, but I do remember thinking, I wonder if I called that person up and asked them to come and help me clean my house out if I was going to have a baby.
	I guarantee you they'd never show up.
	Guarantee they'd never show up.
	Or like, you know, the people you help them move and then you've got to move and they're like, yeah, but my finger is a little owie or I'm busy or, you know, why don't you just hire some movers or whatever, right?
	It's like, okay, I get it.
	People are incredibly clear if you let them be, right?
	Yeah.
	There's also, you know, the people that endlessly complain about their exes or, you know, their former boss or stuff like that.
	They just have a litany of quote-unquote bodies in their past of just terrible people who just didn't understand how smart or brilliant or great they were and continually wronged them for no apparent reason at every turn.
	And, you know, but it had nothing to do with them whatsoever.
	Just...
	Or the people who complain about current relationships and don't have any plan to change them.
	Yeah, that's another good one.
	You know, those people just, hey, you want to drive me in my paralysis quagmire of inaction and complaints?
	Come on in!
	The water is...
	Oh, it's not comfortable.
	The rule I always used to tell people was, what are the biggest tests?
	How do they react to the word no?
	How do they react to not getting their way?
	I always find it does tend to bring out the crazy people.
	If they just take a stride like, oh, alright, maybe next time and move on and never mention it again, okay, you may have a non-crazy.
	But if they lay out the guilt trips and everything, I'm just like, yeah, don't try that on me.
	Anybody who uses the phrase, whatever, Anybody who uses the phrase, whatever, is something like that.
	It's like, oh man, don't give me your farty nihilism in my face.
	Like, just don't give me that.
	It's a statement of a superior and exhausted emptiness that just really drives me batty.
	Ooh, I got one.
	Let's agree to disagree.
	Oh, God!
	I hate that guy!
	I hate that guy!
	Oh, my God, I hate that person.
	Now, if by disagree, you mean strangle you with a boat hook?
	Yes.
	Then I think we can agree on that.
	If I had a dollar for every statist who hit me with that, my God, I'd be much richer than I am.
	I hit your pain button, didn't I, Tim?
	Yeah, but statist don't allow you to disagree.
	I disagree with taxes.
	Go to jail.
	You're not allowing me to disagree.
	I don't see that.
	It's amazing.
	Oh my god.
	Oh, not that there's been anyone on this call, but how about people who ask you a question and you give them an answer and they then ask the same question as if you've just not spoken.
	That's never done that.
	What are you talking about?
	And Tim, I'm not talking about you, but...
	I know.
	I mean, that happens like...
	Not that me, but I've been through that before.
	Yeah, like the first guy who's like...
	I want to talk about genetic engineering.
	It's like, how about child abuse?
	That's a very present and clear danger of genetic engineering you can do something about.
	It's like, yeah, but genetic engineering...
	Disagree with me all you want, but at least notice that I've spoken.
	If we're in danger of making a zombie plague, then I'll be worried.
	But otherwise, it's kind of low on my priority list.
	Can I get another one?
	And this may be just my own personal thing.
	It drives me nuts.
	When people say, my truth...
	That's just my truth.
	You've got your truth, I've got my truth.
	Oh, Mike, I've got one for you.
	How about if you disagree with someone, they say, I just don't feel heard.
	It's like, oh, so if I'm physically hearing you, that means I must agree with you, and if I don't agree with you, I'm being non-empathetic?
	What?
	This is starting to get painful now.
	Good!
	Let us not suffer alone.
	Let our scars be waves of other people helping avoid the worlding blades.
	Yeah, a lot of these are so familiar, especially because I've debated status for a long time.
	Someone who, uh, you say something, you, like, explain something or have a long conversation, and at the end they sum it up by going, basically what you're saying is, and then it's like, open sentence.
	Okay, so let me get this straight.
	What you're saying is, it's like, and you know whatever follows that is gonna be just horrible and insulting.
	I don't buy it.
	Oh, I don't buy it.
	Yeah, like you're selling something.
	Yeah, would you like to buy my used car called philosophy?
	No?
	Okay, I guess I'll find some other sucker to drop it on.
	Yeah, the whole repeating the question thing just always struck me as, well, I didn't like your answer, so do it again, please.
	Like they're my bloody teacher or something.
	No!
	First off, let me tell you, first off, then whatever comes after you know it's going to be horrible.
	Period.
	Period is the one that also drives me nuts.
	Humana, humana, humana, humana, period.
	Okay, I have done that, but usually when stating something that's pretty indefensible.
	Yeah, it's just that, you know, first of all, I don't use semicolon, colon, period, comma when I talk, unless I'm getting confused about voice dictation versus conversation.
	But yeah, period is not an argument, right?
	It's just a way of basically saying to somebody, shut up.
	And of course, if you're at that point in a debate, it's usually good to disengage.
	How about parentheses, you know, horrific, trollish, angry statement?
	Just saying!
	Just saying!
	Oh, just saying!
	Just saying, everyone!
	Just saying is another one of these twitchy ones that just, it's designed to get under your goat, right?
	I think you're a total asshole, you know?
	Just saying!
	Just saying!
	I mean, don't shoot the messenger, you know?
	Just saying!
	I'm just saying stuff, so I have no responsibility for what I'm saying, because I got the word just, J-U-S with an apostrophe.
	Just saying!
	I mean, Hitler was my personal, just saying!
	Yeah, that's special.
	People who overuse the word guys, too.
	Guys, guys, it's really important.
	You know, it always makes me sad.
	Like, there's that guy who sits in between of...
	Oh, Harold and Lloyd, is it?
	Dumb and Dumber?
	Oh, Jeff Daniels.
	Remember, he's sitting in between Mark, Bird, and he's like, guys, guys, guys!
	Guys, seriously.
	The guys who bring everything down to a sudden serious jolt, that kind of drives me a little bit.
	Lots of people are having fun.
	It's like, guys, guys, seriously.
	Guys, seriously.
	Hey, wet blanket man.
	You're saying dumb and dumber remind me of something.
	It's not quite in that category, but people that like Adam Sandler movies, stay away.
	Sorry.
	I know we'll get emails.
	I'm going to work incredibly hard to show you just how much fun not working hard is.
	I'm going to make 12 movies a year about how much fun it is to be a slacker.
	You bastard!
	I know some Adam Sandler fans are going to not like that, but sorry.
	I heard he's a very nice guy to work with.
	It's just, can you stop glorifying the slackers, for God's sakes?
	People listen to you, and you work very hard at what you do.
	And you keep reminding and telling people.
	It's the Judd Apatow thing a bit too, which is like, yeah, you know, the guys just hang around, smoke a lot of dough, play a lot of video games, and we're kind of, you know, making that cool.
	But you work really hard.
	Yeah.
	So why are you glorifying all of this?
	Are you trying to spread this virus of, like, inactivity to everyone else except your friends?
	It's that old trope you see in movies.
	Like, the people, they just slack around all day, and you're like, how are they affording this house?
	Where is this coming from?
	Does anyone actually have a job in the vicinity of this household?
	It's like Harold and Kumar go to White Castle.
	It's like, yeah, we're riding a Jaguar.
	We love all this dope and so on, right?
	And it's like...
	It's like, but the people who are making the movie are getting up really early and working really hard.
	But they're spreading this virus of do-nothingness.
	People that glorify their own laziness.
	That's something to be on the lookout for.
	I'm sorry?
	People that glorify their own laziness is something to look out for.
	Or just glorify something that really isn't worthy of glorifying.
	People with no sense of direction of future or growth or plans.
	People who live entirely in the now.
	People who are vast underachievers, people who, yeah, there's lots of, because they'll be easy in the short run, but they'll be hell in the long run.
	Large amounts of debt, something from romantic relationships to be wary of.
	Yeah, see, people don't understand that, I mean, large amount of debt, I mean, unless it's, I don't know, like a mortgage or something, but like just lots of credit card debt that you don't really have a chance of paying off.
	It's like, So basically, you're just a long-distance shoplifter.
	You're just an abstract thief who doesn't even have the courage to brave security guards.
	Sometimes I've wondered if that's one of the reasons why the left vilifies money, because it has this way of telling unflattering truths about yourself.
	Yeah, that's that great line from Wall Street where The communist guy is like, I didn't teach you to judge a man by the size of his wallet!
	And it's like, well, you know, it's...
	Income is somewhat related to IQ, which is somewhat related to other positive things in life.
	It's not a perfect measure, but it's not the worst one in the world.
	I think Doug Casey had a great quote about libertarians.
	It's like, let's stop talking about the Fed and maybe go out and make some money.
	We talk about the free market.
	How about some libertarians?
	Yeah, stop talking about fiat currency.
	Go harvest some.
	Go get some.
	some go provide a service that people want and get some freedom for money um well i was going to say people who can't do any small talk or people who can only do small talk the Those two extremes kind of drive me batty.
	Oh, people that always have to be on.
	There cannot be a relaxing moment or a chill moment in a conversation.
	It always has to be some type of hyped-up joke or, you know, a performance of some kind to the point where you're exhausted five minutes in.
	People who tell the same stories.
	Oh, yes!
	With no acknowledgement that they've told.
	I certainly don't have an exciting memory of the last 3,000 shows.
	But if I think I've done...
	I always say, like, I've said this before.
	I've said this metaphor before.
	I've used this story before.
	Because I just...
	I've had people around, like, in the professional environment.
	It's, like, literally the third time.
	Like, in three weeks that I'm hearing the same story.
	And it's like, what the...
	I'm guilty of that sometimes at work, though.
	It's mostly due to memory.
	I don't exactly have the best sort of memory.
	And it's hard to keep track of who I've told what story to.
	But if they correct me, say, you have told me that before, oh, sorry.
	And I'll just stop right there and try something else.
	Oh, look, it happens to everyone.
	I mean, especially after you've been married for a while.
	I think I'm revealing something.
	No, no, I've heard this before.
	But, so, I, yep.
	People who, yeah, the on people can be pretty exhausting.
	And especially also if they reuse material.
	It's one thing to be on.
	Like if you're on like Robin Williams and you're just this creative fountainhead, that's one thing.
	But if you're on and it's like, mmm, same jokes.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Or like, I remember I had a guy who was like, only your right hand knows you're left-handed.
	And he thought this was, he would say this like every month or two.
	And I don't know what we were supposed to say.
	What?
	Or people who pretend to be more drunk or stoned than they are.
	I was so wasted.
	No, you weren't.
	Three light beers.
	Do not leaving Las Vegas.
	Screenplay make.
	Or people who are pretending to not be nearly as stoned or drunk as they actually are.
	Oh, yeah.
	I'm okay to drive.
	You know you're at 40 degrees, right?
	Now I can drive.
	Get away from the car.
	Anyway, I think we've eliminated all but us three in the conversation of the entire world.
	We're the only three people we can talk to now.
	Oh, aren't we lucky?
	Yeah.
	No, I mean, it's just authenticity, people who are there, who know that you're a human being, who know that you have needs that mirror their own.
	Just, you know, I hate to say, like, humanity 101, but it feels like it's a little rare these days.
	But...
	People who can have a conversation.
	You know, I used to take conversations for granted.
	And again, just talking with Gabor Matei, we were talking about less conversation happening in the world these days, particularly for kids growing up.
	You know, tablets, video games, media, and so on, and texting and so on.
	People just are not as fluent at conversations as they used to be.
	And he was saying, you know, this is probably why your show gets so many downloads is because people want to have a conversation about something that means something.
	But then he said, you know, vocabularies have dropped like 50% in a generation or two.
	And that, you know, people who are not, who just not had a lot of conversation, it means that they have spent a lot of time not empathizing.
	Because conversations that are more than small talk are fundamentally about empathy.
	You have to know what the other person's intent is, what their thoughts are, how to compliment them.
	Or even if you're opposing what they say, how to put it in a way that keeps the conversation going and so on.
	That is not an easy skill.
	It doesn't just happen.
	I mean, it takes a lot of practice.
	Though I can personally attest, if you haven't had a lot of practice to any people listening to this, if you haven't had a lot of practice with it, it can be learned.
	Like, when I was in school, I was a really timid and very quiet, total bookworm, total type.
	And, well, Benji decided I didn't like that, and I started trying to have conversations with people.
	And, yeah, my early attempts were pretty embarrassing, but now I'm a lot better at it.
	At work, I hold people's attention, telling all sorts of interesting things, and listening to theirs in return.
	And people eat it up.
	Right.
	Yeah, they eat it up until there are any consequences to their existing relationships.
	And then it's out with the pitchfork sometimes.
	But, yeah, it's the nature of the beast.
	This is not exactly a comprehensive or exhaustive research list, but I think the best way is to really try and stay in touch with your own thoughts and feelings.
	When you're in a good conversation, when you're in a conversation with somebody who's mature and emotionally available and so on, You feel excited.
	You feel present.
	You feel seen.
	You feel curious.
	There's an ease to it.
	Two people inhabiting the same universe with the same needs and a similar methodology of communication.
	I mean, you can't help but find that somewhat easy.
	And when there's a lot of interruptions in the flow of conversation, it's usually because people are trying to figure out something.
	Like I know when I'm having a debate with someone and I'm trying to step them through and there's these long pauses, it's because they're trying to figure out what trap I'm laying, what sort of place I'm trying to corner them into.
	And that means they're not in the moment listening to what's being said.
	They're trying to plot or think ahead or figure out the end process.
	Game of the conversation or end goal.
	And that's not, right, those conversations usually are really, you know, awkward and stiff.
	But people who are just in the moment listening and curious, and they're not running an agenda and not trying to validate themselves or invalidate you or validate you and invalidate themselves and so on.
	I mean, I remember when I first got into the National Theatre School, there was a woman I knew Who was also trying to be an actress.
	In fact, I met her during the audition process.
	And I was then working up north before I first went to the theater school and she wrote me some seriously hilarious and very enjoyable letters.
	But in one of them, she was like, oh, you know, you're going to be successful and you're going to be a star and I'm going to be like, you'll be walking away from your first Broadway performance and I'll be like curled up in a bus shelter or something.
	Like that kind of stuff, right?
	Which, you know, obviously was not the best or greatest stuff to hear because it's You know, an appeal to a kind of vanity that I didn't actually possess.
	And it's kind of sad hearing it because, you know, wouldn't it be great if we could do a show together kind of thing?
	It would be much more fun than stepping over you in a garbage can or something.
	But that is not usually a sign of good stuff.
	If they're trying to over-validate you and under-validate themselves, then they're trying to gain control over you by appealing to your vanity, and that's usually not a good thing either.
	Oh, that's another one, too.
	Just people that constantly put themselves down in front of you.
	And you have to either stop and correct that and point that out to them.
	But if it's just repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, it becomes exhausting.
	It's like, I'm just sitting here and watching you completely take yourself apart in front of me.
	This is not enjoyable.
	Yeah, some may be just fishing for compliments.
	That's a common trick a lot of people do.
	Or not, which is even more scary.
	Yeah.
	But yeah, I mean, people who just say things that are off.
	And I know that sounds like silly or whatever, but, you know, like smart people who say, I'm not that smart, or really pretty people who say, I'm not that good looking, or...
	False modesty is just another form of hypocrisy.
	You said it earlier in the show.
	Yeah, and or people who are like maybe five or ten pounds overweight saying, oh, I've really got to lose weight, or I feel so bloated, or whatever.
	And it's just like...
	You know, just you're looking for that objective reality processing that that goes on.
	And if it's not there, you're gonna, you know, wherever the further people are away from reality, the more they'll chew up your resources attempting to maintain their delusions.
	And another good way to check yourself to, you know, kind of encapsulate everything that we discussed is how do you feel after talking to someone?
	You know, are you feeling energized?
	Are you feeling exhausted?
	You know, like, oh, God, I feel like I've been through a war.
	Or are you like, oh man, I'm fired up.
	I'm excited.
	I'm really energetic.
	I enjoyed that.
	Love to do it again.
	You know, that immediate after.
	But not so pumped up.
	I could take on ten grizzlies.
	Certainly.
	But yeah, being aware of the, you know, doing the post-mortem after a conversation about how you feel and keeping that in mind next time you have time to interact with that person.
	That's something good to keep in mind.
	Useful enough?
	Yeah, definitely.
	I'll be sure to pass this along to people I talk to.
	Oh, and I want to say, too, for listeners, if we missed something, and I'm sure we did, if you have the big neon warning signs, let me know.
	Send me an email, operations at freedomainradio.com.
	I think making a list?
	We've talked about putting a list together in a book or something, you know, like Dating warning signs seem to look out for in relationships, and I think a lot of people will find it helpful.
	So if we missed any, you can think of any, feel free.
	Operations at FreeDomainRadio.com.
	Send me them and we'll put them together in some type of list so everyone can benefit from the collective genius that is the FreeDomainRadio listenership.
	Yeah, put some blips on our radar.
	This one's probably pretty obvious, but I did neglect to mention it, was just general dishonesty.
	Like, if you're talking to someone, you're just getting the sense, I don't believe a word this person's saying, yeah.
	Like, lying all the time, especially if it's even about inconsequential things, like, why?
	If you're lying about this, what else are you lying about?
	Well, if you're going to lie about minor things, when it comes to something important, God knows what's going to happen, you know?
	Especially if you call them on it and they try to make you out to be the bad guy for calling them on it or try to say it's not a big deal or something like that.
	I'm just saying.
	Yeah, if they really can't understand why you object to that, yeah, that's a class one warning sign.
	Oh, you made me think of another one.
	Someone says something horribly offensive to you and I'm just joking.
	Why can't you take a joke?
	Come on.
	Why so serious?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and also, like, at a philosophical level, like, I used to think that philosophy, when I was really young, like, I used to think philosophy was just, like, these abstractions.
	Like, like...
	People could say things like, there's no such thing as truth, or reality, what a concept, or objectivity is a fiction, or we've moved beyond good and evil, or we're no longer interested, as the Madonna song goes, in the difference between right and wrong.
	I used to think that these were just pretentious intellectual attitudes.
	Holy crap, no.
	No, they're serious.
	They really mean that stuff.
	They're not kidding.
	Like that's why when you talk to people about philosophical stuff and they, you know, two frontal full cannons of double D cray cray in your forehead, they're not kidding.
	Like this is their relationship to reality.
	They're not kidding.
	Until it turns against them.
	Then they try to claim morality is a real thing.
	Well, yeah, or statists.
	Like, this might be the against me argument.
	Like, oh, they want you thrown in jail for disagreement?
	They're not kidding.
	Like, they're not kidding.
	And, you know, the status is a different matter because that's like, that's very much against the programming that most people have taken.
	But holy, like when people, I mean, they're really...
	You know, when people say everything is subjective, what they're saying is that their sole reality is control of other people.
	They're not interested in objective reality, they're only interested in control of other people.
	So the only thing that matters to them is manipulating subjective opinions, is manipulating people's perceptions, is controlling people's responses.
	And so when they say, there's no such thing as truth, everything is subjective, what they're saying is, I'm not interested in objective reality, my crop is not truth, it is not reality, it is not empiricism, my crop is people, and I farm people.
	They're really deadly serious about that.
	They probably won't admit it, and they may not even know it consciously.
	But, whoa, I mean, they really, I mean, years of experience, hard-ass learned experience has taught me that basic fundamental truth.
	When people tell you about the metaphysics, their epistemology, their ethics, and their politics, they're not kidding.
	Like, they really are deadly serious about that stuff.
	Horrifying.
	It is horrifying.
	It is horrifying.
	And it's one of the reasons why we try to avoid those deep conversations with a lot of people because they will tell you that people are crops and I harvest them and that's all I care about.
	And the rest of it, what do I care about reality?
	I can rule people.
	Yeah.
	It's kind of a similar note.
	Something I used to wrestle with for a while was...
	I used to wonder, was there a difference between people who are genuinely malicious and people who are well-meaning but misguided?
	But the conclusion I arrived was people who are misguided is if you give them evidence that they are doing wrong, that they're not to reap in the results they want, if they double down and just reject that, like if they have a valid counter argument, that's one thing.
	But if they just double down and reject it simply because it's not what they want to hear, then they're putting their egos ahead of virtue.
	And that's pretty telling to me.
	Yeah, like a doctor who doesn't prescribe antibiotics because he's never even heard of them.
	He's not a bad doctor, but once he's seen the studies and he's seen the proof and then he doesn't prescribe antibiotics, well then he's a very dangerous doctor, right?
	And this is why people don't like the spread of philosophy because it reveals themselves to themselves, right?
	I mean the ugly people want the most distorted mirrors, right?
	And philosophy comes along with a clear mirror and shows you who you are.
	And people hate philosophy Some people hate philosophy because it gives them an ethical status that did not exist before philosophy.
	And the spread of a better methodology reveals a malignancy of motive that people don't want to accept about themselves.
	And people throw ugly terms at philosophers because philosophy reveals the ugliness within them.
	I don't just have to project.
	Anyway, that's all nonsense.
	But The reality is that, yeah, when people are talking about philosophy, oh, everything's subjective.
	There's no such thing as truth.
	And, you know, there's no such thing as right and wrong.
	There's only different perspectives and so on.
	I mean, you don't want that from your airline pilot, right?
	There's no such thing as up and down.
	There's no such thing as the difference between sky and land.
	And we're all in some Howard Jones song.
	You don't want that from your pilot because a pilot has to deal with some real shit.
	But when a salesman says there's no such thing as truth and everything's subjective, what he's saying is that he's just a manipulator and he just controls people.
	A politician, there's no such thing as...
	I always hated that.
	Even before I knew a damn thing about philosophy, I was like, I thought the goal of philosophy was to clear away the fog, not make more of it.
	What the heck is this all about?
	Well, you know, the ghosts hide in fog, right?
	You clear away the fog, you clear away the ghosts and they lose their power.
	You know, there's scary stuff in the dark.
	You turn the light on and there's very little more fear.
	But the ghosts don't want the light, right?
	They don't want the exorcism of truth.
	But yeah, so I mean, ask people philosophical questions and really listen to what they're saying.
	Now, if they say stuff like, oh, I'm an agnostic, you can't disprove, you can't, I'm not saying that, you know, that's just more of a technical question.
	You can talk to them about stuff like I've got in my free book Against the Gods, freedomainradio.com slash free.
	I'm not talking about, you know, I'm, you know, the police are needed for law and order.
	I'm not talking about that kind of stuff, because that's, you know, that's red pill, blue pill stuff.
	But in terms of like, oh yeah, there's no such thing as objective reality, it's like, so you're telling me you're crazy?
	Because people who genuinely believe that, they end up in institutions.
	So yeah, philosophical questions, the deeper they are, the more quickly they will reveal some of the scariest people in the known universe.
	And that's important too.
	All right.
	I think we've milked that one, but yeah, please send stuff in and we'll compile a list of Cradar blips to look for.
	Was that helpful, Tim?
	Is there more that you wanted to mention?
	I think that should about do it.
	All right.
	Well, thanks everyone so much, as always, for a very, very enjoyable conversation set.
	I appreciate everyone who calls in, even or perhaps especially the people I mock.
	But thanks everyone so much.
	Always look forward to your feedback.
	You can email us, you can contact us to let us know what you think.
	Desperately, of course, as always, still need Your support for the show.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
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	Have yourselves a great, great week.

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