Aug. 24, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:06:47
3057 Word Salad of Assertions - Call In Show - August 22nd, 2015
Question 1: After listening to "The Truth about Gene Wars: r/K Selection Theory" presentation, I was left with some questions. At first glance I’d say I am and began life as a K-strategist but many outside pressures have worked to encourage the development r selected traits. If r-strategies developed in stressful environments as a child can self-knowledge give me the tools to replace them with K-strategies?Question 2: I want to talk about the lack of nuance when views about 'the left' are expressed. You ignore that many on the anti-authoritarian left entirely agree with many points that you raise, but you still call ‘the left’ a virus - don’t you think that is rather short-sighted?Question 3: Over thousands of years countless numbers of mystics and greatest minds and writers in human history, have not only had faith in God but experienced God, as I have myself. How can you say so many great minds throughout history are wrong simply because you have not experienced God yourself, in part because you have not even committed to look?
Winter has its charms, but summer is a sultry, slutty mistress of my heart.
So, I just wish I lived in a land with bigger bugs.
And more corrupt politics.
Just one of the things that seems to happen with more vitamin D. So, I hope you're doing well.
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That having been said, let me hopefully support you with a few words of philosophical wisdom as we dive into caller numero 10.
Alright, up first today is Ruben.
Ruben wrote in and his question said, After listening to the Truth About Gene Wars, the R versus K selection theory presentation, I was left with some questions.
At first glance, I'd say that I am and began life as a K strategist, but many outside pressures have worked to encourage the development of R selected traits.
There are areas in my life that I find are selected tendencies running rampant and others that cage traits seem to be coming more naturally.
It is as if not only are there varying degrees between the two extremes from one area of life to the next, but many variables that can influence shifts, positive or negative, moment to moment and throughout my life.
this wrong?
If our strategies developed in stressful environments as a child, can self-knowledge give me the tools to replace them with K strategies?
Yes.
And to say any more would just be pure R.
How are you doing, Ruben?
Well, thank you, Stefan.
One of the listeners whose name makes me hungry.
Oh!
And also enjoy soulful gospel music, but that's another story.
So how are you doing tonight?
Doing well.
Yeah, quite a bit going on, but it's It's a big honor and very excited to be able to join the conversation.
Found your show at a time in life where it took a while to catch on or to really get into the conversation in an in-depth way, but I first found you when Looking up stuff on self-abuse,
and you have this wonderful talk with music in the background and stuff, and it just really hit me at a time where, yeah, I've just latched onto your show, and it's great to join the conversation.
Well, thanks, Mike, if you can dig us up a title.
Let's help share that.
There are some gems back there lost in the dust of philosophical prehistory.
Have you done a video on this?
The answer is yes, most likely we have.
We will say yes, and it's possible that it's not true, but for the most part.
Possible, but unlikely.
So, the R versus K.
Let me just give you a very brief, you know, for those, and I'll diminish these in depth and detail as we go forward, because people are just going to have to get the hang of this stuff, because it is very interesting and exciting.
R versus K reproductive strategies come out of biology.
You can find them in biological textbooks.
We've, of course, I've done gene wars part one.
Part two, I was literally sweating my brain out today putting together the presentation for part three.
It is right at the edge of what my brain can do, which is very exciting for me.
I always like wobbling on the edge of falling.
And our reproductive strategy is a reproductive strategy that organisms evolved to use when there's no shortage of food or other resources, but there is predation.
So you think of rabbits.
And insects and other things in general where they don't really run out of food, but they get eaten.
And if you are in a situation where food is plentiful and there are predators, your best reproductive strategy is to have sex as early and as often as possible and produce as many offspring as possible and don't give really much of a rat's ass about how those offspring do.
That is your best strategy.
And have early sexual maturity or maturation.
Because if you get eaten before, You get to reproduce, then it doesn't do you much of any good.
And alongside of that, because you're prey, well, you want to run fast, but there's not really much else that you can do.
I mean, the wolf comes in around the rabbit, the rabbits all just scatter.
And so there's not a lot of evolutionary pressures on more sophisticated and complex things other than, run!
Run!
Run!
And so, yeah, you basically are a highly promiscuous, non-involved parent whose job is to turn grass into more rabbits as quickly as possible and outbreed the predation that occurs.
The wolves, on the other hand, are case-selected, which means that the quality of the wolf really matters.
like a smarter wolf that's able to cooperate better with the other wolves is going to evolve a better strategy for catching its prey.
So there are jackals in Africa that when they hunt the deer or the springbok or whatever it is that they hunt, a zebra I think as well, you know, some of them lie in wait and the others drive them towards the trap and they all have to cooperate because individually and singly they can't really catch the deer.
The deer are just running and jumping machines and also fierce kickers, right?
The deer can be quite aggressive in the defense.
And so the jackals that cooperate, that work well together, that develop in-group preferences and so on and train their children on how to best hunt The deer, well, they're the ones who succeed.
And so K-selected organisms, which tend to be at the top of the food chain, tend to be the most intelligent, the most complex, the most sophisticated, have a very strong in-group preference.
They really highly invest in their children.
Think of the amount of time that lions spend teaching their children how to hunt and all that.
Whereas, of course, for the rabbits, you only need to teach the rabbits to run, or to eat hunting grass, relatively easy, particularly in Denver, I think it is.
And so, the R versus K reproductive strategies is a way of explaining, and I think with very good explanatory and even predictive power, the differences in left-right ideologies.
There are biological bases, there are genetic and epigenetic differences between these two mindsets and gene sets, and they are at war.
They are enemies.
And I'm currently, you know, these are the bullets that I take for philosophy...
I'm watching Twilight New Moon to figure out the difference between vampires, which are selected, of course.
They don't run out of people to eat, versus werewolves who hunt vampires, and it's very rare for them to find one.
And, of course, wolves are...
Very K-selected in nature and very fiercely loyal and so on.
And monogamous.
Monogamy is a big key thing.
The R-selected tend to be single parents, both on the left and in nature.
So that's just a very, very brief tour.
I invite you to look at Gene Wars Part 1-2 and hopefully very soon...
Part 3.
I may do a part 4.
I'm sort of going to see how well people like the explanatory power of part 3, which goes into how these different gene sets and tendencies, both biological, genetic, epigenetic, and philosophical, show up in the different ways that people on the left and the right view something like abortion, right?
So abortion, just very briefly, for ours...
Children are expendable.
For K's, children are an incredibly precious resource.
If you go and take a baby rabbit away from a mother rabbit, she doesn't really care.
If you try and take a baby bear away from a mother grizzly bear, well, you're not going to have a very fun day.
Same thing with wolves and so on.
So they're fiercely loyal and protective of their offspring, and the offspring are real treasures.
Whereas for rabbits, it's like, oh, God, another baby.
It's like that scene in Monty Python's Meaning of Life where the Catholic woman just has a baby while she's doing the dishes.
Oh, could you get that one, dear?
Thump goes onto the floor.
And if you look at abortion, well, on the left, of course, they're pro-choice and just a bunch of cells.
Not really that important.
You can kill it.
It's not really a human being yet.
Whereas on the right, it's like, but that's a baby.
That's a baby.
How could you?
Right?
And that's just R versus K manifesting itself in emotional preferences and a perspective on the value of children.
K's with national debt, they're like, well, this is going to be harmful to our children, so we better rein in the spending because it's going to be bad for our kids.
Whereas the R's are like, anyone who doesn't let you have grass when you're a rabbit is just an asshole, because there's just an infinite amount of grass.
Anyone who's withholding it from you must just be a really mean jerk.
And in the same way, anyone who suggests restraining government spending just hates the poor.
Anyway, so I'm sort of getting into that latter part of the analysis right now, and that's just a sort of very brief overview of it before we dive in.
So, sorry, Ruben.
Thank you for your patience, but go ahead.
Yeah, no, I was really glad actually right at the top with that resounding yes to the question.
Because I guess as I started learning and listening to your first two videos, Yeah, it left me wondering, is this a key to really try and continue my path to self-knowledge?
Is this a key, like, when I spot these R-traits, is that, like, biological?
Do I just accept it and learn ways to strategize around it, or is this replaceable?
Is this more like schema and memes that can be replaced with better schema?
Yeah, I mean, I was just struck by your use of the term self-knowledge, which of course I use a lot as well.
And it's really a challenge to use the term self-knowledge, and I'm sort of recognizing this more as I dive deeper into this question of epigenetics, because your self is not a thing that you get to know.
It's a thing that you change by knowing it.
That journey of self-knowledge never ends.
Because yourself changes.
Yourself is not a thing.
You photograph a rock from all sides.
You photograph all the outside of the rock.
But you haven't changed the rock by taking a picture of it.
If you pick up a book and memorize it, you know, who is it?
Benedict Cumbersnatch or something like that.
He's playing Hamlet at the moment.
And you go and memorize Hamlet, you haven't changed the play.
I mean, you've just memorized it.
In fact, if you've changed the play, you've not done a good job.
I remember when I was playing Gloucester in King Lear when I was younger, the guy who gouges out someone else's eyes.
It was just a deliciously meaty, evil role.
And I made a mistake in coming in, and I spoke the wrong line.
And fortunately, the other actors were good enough that they used a bit of iambic improvisation to remind me of the right line.
It's the only time I ever flubbed a line on stage, but...
So you don't want to be changing up Shakespeare.
You can ad-lib a bunch of stuff but not Shakespeare.
And so when you learn something that's fixed, you learn it but you haven't changed the fixed thing.
But when you learn something about yourself, it creates choices and opportunities that didn't exist before.
If you have a tendency towards dating crazy women because you had a crazy mom and then you learn that pattern, it gives you the choice to not date crazy women and therefore you've learned that you have a tendency to date crazy women and you've changed that which you have studied.
By studying it, you've created a choice where before was only habit.
I'd certainly say that R versus K, I was bred very, very significantly R-based.
But I think I had tendencies towards K deep down.
But I think I was a K specimen dropped in a pure, undiluted R vat of K-destroying, acidic, feminine liquid.
And I think that when I came across...
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I like that.
It reminds me of Sam Harris' description of the self as a process, which is highly changeable.
Yeah.
And so, in other words, the more I can identify our traits and learn about the roots in my history as to why they exist, you're saying that's going to provide the knowledge that I need to make those changes.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that, I mean, for me, when I came across Ayn Rand at the age of 15 or 16, That was my first exposure to pure distilled K-juice.
And for a lot of people, I'm not obviously equating the two, but there's enough similarities that it's worthwhile.
For a lot of people, that's seeing Donald Trump handle the media.
It's just like, what?
Why is he not afraid of verbal abuse?
Well, because K's aren't afraid of verbal abuse.
R's are terrified of it.
But K's are not terrified.
They're, you know, sticks and stones, right?
And so for a lot of people, I think this is why, particularly in...
I mean, it's hard to understand the appeal of Donald Trump without understanding how many kids are growing up without fathers, right?
This is the first time they've seen an assertive male in the face of this R-selected bitching, whining, and moaning.
And the idea that the old, magical, politically correct spells are not working to take the spine out of an alpha male is, I don't know, let's just yell it louder.
They call him Teflon Don, I think they're calling him now, like the things are just sliding off him and so on.
Right.
People are just startling.
They're startled to see a K-selected human being in action.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, that's a real insight for me because you connected verbal abuse and...
I guess to get a little personal, wasn't planning on it, but I recently was let go from a job that I really, really Believed I would retire at.
And it had to do, I think, with our traits in me and in my role.
There was a lot of customer-facing interactions, which from time to time would be verbally abusive.
You mean the customers were?
Yeah.
Correct.
And I always prided myself.
I had not been in such a directly customer-facing role in many years, but more on the management side.
And so I thought this was going to be a real easy role to knock out of the park and climb the ladder to success and escalate.
But yeah, I ran into a wall there, and it was pretty devastating.
What was the one?
You know, getting defensive, I think.
You mean you getting defensive?
Yeah.
With the customers?
Correct.
And even though I've done training, I've literally written manuals on techniques and the logic behind not taking things personal.
There were...
Yeah, just these triggers throughout interactions.
And it wasn't all personality types.
It was few and far in between, but still a big problem.
Because anytime I'd have an interaction like that, I would just really...
Take ownership and beat myself up a bit over it and really want to learn from it and whatnot.
But yeah, throughout that whole process, I kept thinking, boy, I'm doing so well in all these other areas.
I just got to cinch up this one thing.
But it got to a point where it was the wrong customer at the wrong time.
Well, I'm sorry to interrupt, but there is this...
And it is truly weird when you think about it, but there's this weird belief at the moment, and it's been going on for decades now.
And this is going back to Donald Trump, right?
So he's using the term anchor babies, right?
And he was asked by some whiny, weasel-faced reporter, you know, did you know that the term anchor babies is offensive?
And Donald Trump was like, hey, I'm going to use the term anchor babies because that's what everybody uses and that's the right phrase.
Excuse me, I'm going to use the words that I'm using.
And it is purely our selected to imagine that because someone is upset, something bad has happened.
And so the problem for me, and maybe this is what you face in your job, Ruben, but the problem for me is Is that in the past, and certainly in the world that I grew up in, like I grew up in a very rough and tumble world in boarding school and so on, and there was a lot of physical competition.
And to trip someone was a confession of viciousness and impotence.
You know, if you're in a running race with someone, you tie their shoes together or you trip them or something.
That was like the lowest of the low.
Like it was incomprehensible.
And if you...
Got angry and upset with what someone was saying, that was a confession that you lost.
In other words, if you started attacking someone personally during a debate, or if you cried, or if you got upset, that was considered shameful.
Sure.
You know, like if you shoot at the goal and you miss, and then you burst into tears and sob, that would be considered like, what the hell's wrong with you?
That's not what you do.
But that's case-elected stuff, where you compete, and you compete honestly and openly, and you follow the rules, and you don't make it personal.
But in our society right now, and there's a lot of reasons for this, which we don't have to get into, but there's this belief that if someone's upset, something bad has happened.
I mean, unless that person is a white male.
Something good has happened, right?
We've upset the patriarchy, yay.
I don't know if it comes out of women or whatever, but it is...
And so with the verbal abuse stuff, we just live in this culture where what you said has really upset someone.
Therefore, that's bad.
And that is such a foreign concept.
Like, very fundamentally, that is a foreign concept to me.
But it's something that if you believe it, It completely displaces dispassionate, rational, and objective debates.
I mean, you can just go to the Bernie Sanders video that I did, the truth about Bernie Sanders.
And just look at, you know, the colloquial, oh, butt hurt.
They're just butt hurt.
They're upset.
And you can just see this.
This is upsetting to me.
This bothers me.
This is boring.
This is irritating.
And it's like, I just have to keep saying, like a metronome.
Not an argument.
Not an argument.
And it's tragic.
The degree to which people, and I assume that these are young people, probably more young people than most, they have no idea.
That being upset is a confession of intellectual impotency.
It doesn't mean you can't ever get angry or be upset or whatever, that's totally fine.
But simply saying, I'm upset, it's like saying, well, we had a football game, soccer game, football, to the domestic, soccer to the colonists, and my team lost Ten to zero.
But I'm going to cry until everyone says that my team won.
I mean, try that.
I mean, the people would just look at you like, what are you talking about?
Or like you come up with some proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in mathematics and it completely doesn't hold together because it involves unicorn droppings and dragon eyes and stuff, and then you say, well, I'm going to be really upset until everyone tells me that I've solved it.
I mean, it's incomprehensible, the idea that mere emotions move reality.
But because it's become so widespread and so foundational to our thinking, It's become, you know, this general witch hunt.
And it's the R-selected.
R-selected amygdalas freak out when stressed and when anxious.
And they view it as an attack upon themselves.
And therefore, they react in the viciousness of their verbal attacks.
It's because they literally feel like they're being attacked.
I just feel like you're attacking me.
And people don't have the capacity to go back and say...
Oh, and the fact that you're upset, it's a shame that you're upset, but this is the way it is.
And I don't know, like in your organization, whether that was supported or not, or whether you were just supposed to kowtow to every lunatic with a grudge.
I get the picture that there's this...
There's these...
I guess like the matrix metaphor is good.
I got that from you.
But there's these plugs still where it allows these things to fester.
It allows whatever it is that's got me to the point where there's a sensitive spot.
I feel like in a job setting, I should absolutely have unshakable composure, especially something that I've been doing for so long.
Yeah, it just feels like I'm...
Hunting down, I guess, these areas where I'm blinded to or what have you, and it's allowing these R traits to fester.
Hey, man, I'm so sorry.
I've got to interrupt you because it's also abstract.
I find myself having a tough time paying attention to what you're saying.
Okay.
Do you want to talk any specifics about your job or anything else?
But it's very abstract in terms of your experience.
Again, if you don't want to talk about anything in particular, but I do find it hard to sort of stay focused on such abstractions.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm trying to get...
Get to the point where I wouldn't be moved emotionally and inappropriately, right?
If I'm going to be upset, like you were saying, there's got to be reasons.
And so, it's like life keeps coming and as I'm trying to, you know...
Hang on, hang on.
K is not the absence of emotion.
I mean, what's wrong with being upset?
I mean, if you've ever, again, you ever see a grizzly mom and her cubs, she's going to get pretty fucking upset, right?
Sure, sure.
So I guess a direct example would be the call that I was let go for, where...
It wasn't that I was upset to the point where I'm using language that isn't business-appropriate, but the customer felt like I was being very condescending.
She happened to know folks in the organization, some executive-level folks.
The timing was interesting as well, to add, because I was just returning from my father's funeral.
As I walked in after being gone for a week, they pulled me aside and let me go.
It's kind of a double whammy.
But that's what I mean.
No warning?
No letter of warning?
No nothing?
Correct.
How long did you work there for?
Not long, like six, seven months.
Yeah.
So I guess I want to grapple this stuff and be the...
Kind of man and leader that I know I am.
It's a little frustrating because it feels like, you know, I have a strong religious background.
My father was a pastor and I became a pastor after Bible college and later in life, you know, became a free thinker and started this journey trying to make money for myself outside of a My background.
And I've just run into this issue over and over where it's, you know, it plays itself out in different ways.
But I'm just not fitting in to any corporate America setting, you know.
And it's, I really, I know I can.
I mean, I was extremely successful in a church world.
And I know that I'm even more grounded and logical now.
So it's just...
But hang on, hang on.
So when you had the conversation with the customer...
Yes.
And she said she was so upset that you were being condescending to her that she got you fired, like she wanted to get you fired?
Yeah.
And I obviously don't know what the conversation was like.
But...
Looking back on the conversation itself, I mean, do you feel that you handled it in a very negative or destructive way or what?
Yeah, you know, there's a...
I did not take the time to be empathetic like I knew to.
There's the whole motto, fix the customer, you know, then the issue.
And she was upset in the beginning.
And it wasn't an issue that was something we supported.
It wasn't on...
Our side.
And, you know, I spent a good 20 minutes testing, showing her that our system was working and kind of giving her some next steps.
And she was very...
Was this a life or death situation?
I mean, you know, was it?
No.
Contracts.
So, you know, for her, yeah, she had deadlines.
And I'm sure there was more than, you know, $200,000 on the line.
So fairly, it wasn't like, you know, my Amazon Kindle isn't working.
Exactly.
No, exactly.
Okay, for her at least.
Right.
Absolutely.
But, you know, of course, there's the tug of war between company resources, not wanting to spend two hours helping her with this other system that we don't make or support, just to, you know, please the customer.
Wait, were you trying to help her with a system that you guys don't make or support?
Well, I drew the line.
I took it as far as I could, gave her next steps and things like that, but the whole point was my angle was not addressing her emotional state.
Instead, I was being logical and showing, here's the facts, we can see our systems working.
Sorry, so it was her interaction with another system and it was the other system that was the problem?
Yes.
Right.
And she obviously didn't want to start initiating a call with people who had this other system because there was a deadline and she was freaking out, right?
Correct.
Right, right.
So is it fair to say that factually you were in the right?
Yes, but I hold myself to a...
No, no, no.
Hang on.
No, no.
Man to man or K to K, right?
Okay.
The standard is, like, if factually you were correct, like you spent 20 minutes saying to this woman, you know, I'm going to help you through this, so we're going to try and figure out what's working, and then after 20 minutes you say, well, I can't fix this because this is outside what we have made or we support, right?
You know, I'm sorry that you're upset, but there's no magic that, I mean, you can't fix it, right?
Right, right.
And when we reach that point...
Sorry, hang on.
So that reality, like, if you were factually correct...
And if she started to escalate, I don't know if your calls are recorded or whatever, but if the woman started to escalate and become abusive because you couldn't fix something that you couldn't fix, then, you know, if I were your manager, again, This is assuming that this is all the...
I mean, I would support you.
Yeah.
I think...
I think...
Like, I'm sorry, I mean, like if somebody calls, like if let's say I work at some car dealership and somebody calls up and say the engine isn't working, the engine isn't working, you bastards, you're supposed to have fixed the engine, it's not working, I'd be really sympathetic and we'd do anything we could, right?
And then the guy says, well, it's actually my lawnmower engine.
Right.
I'd say, well, why are you calling the car dealership?
Like, what?
We can't fix you.
We didn't touch it.
We can't fix your lawnmower engine, right?
And if the person then said, well, you're not being sympathetic enough, you know, the only sane response is, well, you're not being sane enough.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We can't fix what we can't fix.
Yeah, there's got to be, I think, reinforcement and strategy from your department.
The department itself has to reinforce and give their front lines strategies, positioning, ways out of those situations.
In this case, it's a newer company.
Well, of course, you can escalate it up the chain, right?
I mean, if the person's being completely unreasonable, say, well, I'll put you in touch with my manager, right?
Because I sympathize, and I can understand in your situation, I'd be equally frustrated, but I can't, A, I can't fix it, and B, I certainly won't be subjected to verbal abuse or something that is not my fault and I can't fix, right?
Yeah, that would have been the wiser approach.
I mean, do you have, like in the customer service standards or manuals in that company or in that industry, is there a standard which says you don't accept any verbal abuse?
I think, yeah, I think in the policies you might have a three strike option where you can ask the customer kindly three times, you know, and warn them and then disconnect.
Right.
And was she being verbally abusive or did that just come...
You know, it was...
She remained, I think, as I did using business, you know, approved language or whatever, HR-friendly language.
But we...
We reached that point and she began digging in, well, if you would have just explained it this way or that way.
The whole time she wanted me to be in this other system helping her with that.
At that point is when I began the three-strike.
It wasn't really appropriate for the three-strike because she wasn't saying F you, this and that.
At the same time, I had been moved emotionally to a point where I didn't really take the time to try and hear her out, let her kind of vent, and then do my apologies and whatnot.
Hang on, hang on.
Apologize for what?
Her experience?
No, no, no.
Apologies are when you've done something wrong.
I mean, does the company expect you to apologize when it's not your fault and you couldn't fix it?
I would say, yeah, the QA department would certainly expect a statement of some sort of empathy.
You can say, I'm sorry I couldn't help you, but not, I'm sorry I did something wrong.
And these little details are important because in general...
You know, I'm concerned as a whole that in general we're just creating and feeding this culture of bullying.
You know, like the New York Times can dig up allegations by Ivana Trump from Trump's divorce from like the 90s or whatever, right?
And publish this and people still continue to buy the New York Times.
And this is not you, right?
The culture as a whole Is just becoming very compliant to bullies, right?
So the K thing is that you don't stand up to bullies.
And if you get fired for standing up to a bully, you get fired for standing up for a bully.
Good riddance.
Right?
Move on.
Wow.
I mean, in our selected world, well, I didn't grovel before an irrational and nasty person.
So nasty that she worked to get you fired afterwards, right?
Right.
Wow.
Well, I would consider that a mark of honor.
I lost my job.
I stood up to a bully.
Well, what the hell did I want to do?
Grovel before bullies for the next 40 years?
Right.
That's interesting and really helpful.
What are you feeling when I say that?
I'm feeling a lot.
Well, it strikes me a lot.
I'm feeling that there has been, since I was walking to the train and coming home that day, evaluating, obviously.
One of the things that I've maybe been shoving down is I think I'm an expert in the field.
That's how I was feeling.
And I think I was feeling like, you know what, the company made a big mistake.
Excuse me.
No, don't.
Feeling is cake.
Resentment and lustre are, but deep and genuine feelings are okay.
So, no, don't feel shy about your feelings.
But as I was evaluating, I kept feeling like, you know what, this was a big mistake on their part.
And I had a lot to offer.
It made me want to write a book on my particular knowledge in this area and try to establish myself as an expert and really change the trajectory.
Excuse me, traveling the world and on television as a Christian.
And I'm a dynamic and I can do things, but it feels like I don't know how to present myself outside of a church world, you know, in a way.
Sorry, did you say how to present yourself outside of a church world?
Right, at least effectively.
And you know why that is, right?
No, I don't know.
Well, I don't either.
I'd like to know why.
I'll tell you what I think.
I'll tell you what I think.
Because you don't have a backup product, right?
Because when you're in the church, you're selling heaven, right?
Yeah.
You're selling heaven, and you are not the product, but heaven is the product, and you have value and credibility because you are perceived to be the path or the gateway to heaven, right?
Right.
They're buying a stairway to heaven.
Whereas in the business world, outside of that, you don't have an intangible giant product behind you that gives you credibility.
Right.
Right?
I mean, I've always said to people, this conversation is not, I'm not selling happiness here.
You know, all I can do You know, all I've got is three chords and the truth.
And I'm certainly not selling happiness.
And I'm certainly not saying, well, you know, this conversation, you know, you've got to donate to this show and you've got to do what this show says.
And that's the only way you're going to be happy.
Everything else is a lie.
Right?
Like I've got a monopoly on happiness and you need to do specific things that benefit me materially and then you'll be happy.
Well, that would be a giant con and completely the opposite.
Right?
I mean, it's my responsibility to be frank about the difficulties that the truth present in this world, the only consolation being that, you know, like Sigmund Freud said when the Nazis came and expelled him from Austria, I think it was, and he said, you know, they burnt all my papers and they burnt all my books.
This is massive progress.
A hundred years ago, they would have burnt me.
I just did a podcast today on hatred and envy of the rich where I was saying that yes, bankers just ripped off the taxpayers for trillions of dollars, but they did it without a war.
That's massive progress.
Like they stole the money, but they didn't steal it by unleashing tsunamis of the blood of the young on the planet.
Believe it or not, this is massive progress in humankind.
And So you had a product that you represented that people automatically wanted, and because of your position, they automatically believed that you were the gateway to achieving eternal life in heaven.
Right.
And now, you don't have the backup God squad, and you don't have the invisible and imaginary benefit of heaven to sell to people, and so you have to work your credibility and your impact And your importance without fantasy.
And that's hard.
I mean, you're singing without autotune now, right?
It's just you.
And I do have a lot to offer.
I'm so glad we got to talk at this point in time because, of course, I'm on a job hunt and pushing aside all these other efforts.
I've got a manuscript started already with maybe six chapters for a book in the field that I'm in.
I think that's what I needed to hear.
Even though there isn't a magic man in the sky to promote, there's some really good ideas of value that I can be representing.
Is this your first time you've been fired?
No.
It's not.
And how were your firings in the past relative to your...
I'm trying to think.
I've been fired a couple of times in my life.
Never for anything particularly important.
And it was always for the better.
Right.
You know, you feel rejected like you're cast out from the tribe.
You know, ostracism is painful for us, you know, because ostracism was like death in the past.
Either personal death, because nobody guarded us while we slept and there were predators around, or gene death in that we wouldn't get the eggs and therefore, right, wouldn't get to pass on our genes.
And firing, you know, feels like a rejection.
But...
Firing simply says that your values and the values of your employer really don't match.
I thank...
I thank the ever-living titties of every woman who ever dumped me before I met my wife.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for tossing my skanky ass to the sidewalk.
I hugely, massively, genuinely, deeply, and in a very humble and heartfelt way thank them for not finding me up to scratch.
What a glorious thing.
That was.
What an incredible benefit that was to myself, to my wife, obviously to my daughter.
It is, you know, at the time, yeah, it was painful.
Oh, it's rejection.
It's terrible, right?
I get it.
I understand that.
And I'm not trying to minimize all of that.
But in hindsight, I'm glad I got kicked out by those dilettos.
I am just thrilled.
That's...
That's absolutely correct in this case.
You bounce around until you land where you're supposed to be.
Especially if what you're doing is original.
If you're thinking for yourself, you bounce around until you land where you're supposed to be.
I mean, this is like my 20th job or something like that.
You bounce around until you land where you're supposed to be.
If you have integrity, do you know what you do, Ruben?
You bounce around until you don't have to make any fucking compromises.
And this job, talking down crazy people, sounds like a whole lot of compromises.
You bounce around until you compromise no more.
And this is the first job for me with no compromises.
That's why there's no upgrade from here.
This is the first job where I can make the taste and the truth without looking over my shoulder, without being afraid of being fired.
I could be fired by the listeners for sure.
But that's only if I do that which neither I nor the listeners want, which is to make arguments unsupported by reason and evidence and if I make a mistake to refuse to correct it.
So, I don't want to do that.
So, we're aligned as far as that goes.
But you bounce around until you land at a place where you don't have to compromise.
And this last job, you had to compromise.
Big time.
And even if this woman had really tried hard to get you fired, and they'd be like, well, we'll put you on promotion, we think it was really bad.
I mean, oh my god, thank god they just fired you.
Right, right.
Because otherwise, you would have been exposed.
It would have been exposed to you what kind of god-awful compromises were expected of you and how much of your own soulful integrity you were supposed to put through the cheese shredder of corporate compliance.
And that would have been even worse.
So that's...
Maybe I'm putting my stumbling...
Things in my way to a life with no compromise.
I've, over the years, been developing these workshops and in a few cities throughout California and Hawaii, I've been able to set up certain workshops with youth centers and whatnot where I use hip-hop and music to do these classes where critical thinking is the actual curriculum.
But the hook or what have you is the music and working with art and things.
And that's where I flourish.
I mean, it's like the best time to be in a setting there where young minds are really active and involved because of the music.
The way the curriculum set up, the conversations that we get to have are really just expanding, asking new questions that they maybe haven't asked themselves before.
And it's an exciting thing, but I keep telling myself I have to get this great job, make all this money, have this bank account so I can really launch something permanent and whatnot with this project.
Maybe there's...
No, you just have to put out a message where you don't compromise, right?
I'm going to go out on a limb here that when you say you're teaching kids through hip-hop, these aren't a lot of kids dancing around swords in Scottish kilts, right?
So, you know, you're talking to a community that, of course, has massive problems with single motherhood, to name one of many of the problems, right?
And can you be honest in this environment about how incredibly destructive single motherhood is to society, to themselves as a whole?
Oh, absolutely.
Fantastic.
There's no compromise, right?
Exactly.
As opposed to, you know, if somebody takes you aside, it's like, no, no, we can't blame the sainted single mothers.
It's Whitey.
Remember.
Go back to whitey all the time.
Institutional, which just means whitey.
But anyway, so, I mean, if you can do that stuff, right, if you can talk to kids, you know, black kids and all that, frankly, about, you know, the challenges and opportunities of, you know, a very energetic and vibrant and creative cultural environment, you know, with, of course, significant, some significant cultural problems as well.
I mean, what a fantastic thing that would be.
I mean, I think that deep down we all know truth when we hear it.
We all thirst for it.
And some of us thirst to drink its blood and kill it as quickly as possible.
But we all know it when we see and hear it.
It's that deep-throated conviction that, of course, a lot of pastors are able to imitate.
Or maybe they really believe it too.
I don't know.
But if you can do that, I mean, God, wouldn't that be a little bit more fulfilling than helping horrible people work with systems you don't really care about?
Yeah, help moms avoid their mothering and finish their reports and get their contracts on time.
Yeah, no, indeed.
And that's certainly something that I'm determined to achieve.
It's just life keeps coming, like I said earlier.
No, but that's passive.
That's like you're tied to the tracks and the train's coming.
Life doesn't keep coming.
It's your life.
You know, like I want to get some stuff done, but emails keep coming.
It's like, well, then stop responding to emails.
Do you mean bills keep coming?
Bills, rent.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Right, but see, then you can take a job.
And know that you have the goal of reaching out to the hip-hop kids or whatever, right?
You can take that job and go with that, knowing that that's your goal.
And if you get fired from the job, it's like, well, you know, one step closer to the hip-hop dream of bringing truth to kids, right?
No, that's fantastic perspective, Stefan.
That's exactly what I knew would happen if I got a chance to talk to you.
So it's fantastic to have gotten to do so.
The K response to rejection is to evaluate the rejector.
The R response is to feel, oh, how terrible.
Oh, the bottom falls out of your universe and this and that and the other.
The confident response to being rejected is to look at who's rejecting you.
Now, if good people reject you, Well, that's not great, right?
That's not great.
On the other hand, if evil people don't like you, well, that's very good.
That's very good.
The idea of needing to be liked by everyone, that comes from...
It's not only to do with women, but it has a lot to do with the fact that through our evolution...
Women needed to raise children collectively, and they needed to work in very close quarters and proximity with other women, and therefore everyone had to like you, and this is why women tend to be value-free and avoid conflict and so on, and take out all their frustrations with conformity by brutalizing their children.
Again, we're just talking in general and throughout our evolution.
And men had the luxury of disliking other men.
Because you could go out in separate hunting parties.
You could segregate yourself, right?
You could not have people come with you, right?
You stay home with the women, right?
Or whatever, right?
And so, for men, the quality was really important.
This is the K driver, right?
The people are not all equal.
So for women, if you're rejected, that's just generally bad because you don't have the chance to reject people who are rejecting you.
But men have a much greater opportunity and are much more comfortable with being rejected.
And the way that you survive rejection is you evaluate who's rejecting you.
And if who's rejecting you is a wonderful, kind and heroic person, Well, that's a wake-up call to get your game up, right?
To improve yourself.
But if who's rejecting you is some, I don't know, some shallow idiot or some coward or some evil person, you know, everyone who does good in this world gets criticized, and the important thing is to evaluate the critic.
Evaluate the critic.
I was actually taught this.
You know, there's something in English literature which I took for two years when I was younger in college.
The unreliable narrator, which is the guy says, oh yeah, this is what happened.
And as it turns out, it's really not.
Or there's something else.
There's a famous play, I think it was originally written in Japanese, called Rashomon, which I ended up having to do a fair amount of research on when I was at theater school and explain to the class.
And It's a story told.
A man and his bride come across a robber in the woods.
And it's the same story three times.
And the man, of course, is heroic and fights the robber and saves the bride and all that.
The bride is heroic and outwits the robber.
And the robber gets what he wants.
And it's the same story told.
It's the same.
And you never actually know what happened.
All you know is these sort of multiple perspectives.
And so the unreliable narratives is really important.
There's no...
Critics all have their own motives and their own preferences.
When you get fired, it's really important to evaluate who is rejecting you.
Years and years ago, I was interested in a woman.
More than a little interested in a woman.
And I don't want to get into the whole story, but basically, she ended up as a single mom.
Ooh, I can hear everyone rushing to their keyboards, apparently trying to explain what I think about single moms.
Trust me, I thought this before then, right?
But I grew up with one.
You know, it's funny.
Anyway, to go back to another time.
So, you know, I just wasn't quite good enough for her.
I just...
I didn't...
I wasn't up to scratch, you see.
I didn't meet her highly rigorous standards called not being there.
I mean, I know I'm a great husband and I'm a great dad.
And I just, you know, I wasn't up to scratch.
Didn't do it for her.
Because, you know, I was competing with Not being there at all.
Right?
I mean, that's just sad.
That's just sad.
Evaluate the rejecter.
Yeah!
I mean, I haven't, listen, I haven't done really any internet stalking and all that, but, you know, I wonder how so-and-so is doing.
It occasionally will percolate to me.
Let's just put it that way.
It occasionally percolates to me.
Maybe she really valued a full head of hair and foresaw the coming hairline.
Listen, man, I'm still less bald.
I'm still less bald than someone who isn't there at all.
I bring more hair to the table than someone who isn't there at all.
He's too short.
I'm still taller than someone who isn't there at all.
You don't make enough money.
Well, that's different because of the welfare state.
But anyway...
Oh yeah, there was this other woman who was like, you know, you're just not ambitious enough.
Like, okay, there are certainly legitimate things that I could be criticized about.
Not being ambitious enough is certainly not one of them.
And last I heard, she was a Pilates instructor.
Because nothing says ambition like, lift your butt a little more.
I don't know.
People, I mean, so many people over my life have accused me of being like a dreamer, out of touch with reality, lost in my own thoughts, impractical, and all that kind of stuff.
It's like, yeah, okay, let's measure up, right?
Let's see how it goes, right?
The longer that life goes, the more people tend to become what they criticize, if their criticisms are irrational.
Because it's all just projection and junk like that.
But So I guess just to make sure that I'm really going to leave this clear with trying to, I guess, put the RK in relation to all this life experience and goals and whatnot.
But it sounds like in practice, my next steps are really to be identifying our traits and in that process, I'm giving myself the tools to...
Find better, you know, I guess build better pathways in my mind and better responses.
I'm just trying to make sure, you know, that I can unify this stuff.
And I really do like the clarity that RK studies are giving me.
Well, you need to find other Ks.
Right?
You need a pack.
You surround yourself with R's, you're going to become an R. Right?
Surround yourself with K's, you're going to become a K. Right?
Recognize the fundamental biological, not just incompatibility, but oppositionality of the R versus the K's.
You know, I treat K's with respect.
I do not treat R's with respect once they've revealed themselves.
Because I'm not going to pretend.
And it's also not good for them.
Right.
I mean, the only way that R's become K's is learning how to deal with discomfort.
You know, biologically speaking, R's have empathy without standards, right?
Which is why, well, the poor...
But Ks also feel empathy, but we have the capacity to intercept that empathy and figure out whether it's justified.
People inflict the punishments they're the most afraid of, right?
So people who...
You know, this woman was terrified of having her economic self-interest harmed, and so what did she do?
She harmed her economic self-interest, right?
And people will always inflict...
The punishments that they most fear themselves.
And that's how you know the weaknesses of your attackers, right?
People were trying to humiliate you, and it's like, okay, so you're the most afraid of humiliation, so that's what I can do.
And then I'll win.
There's no way to attack without revealing your soft spot, right?
And so, Ks have a very high in-group loyalty, a very high in-group preference.
They'll let everyone who participated in the hunt feed.
Ours have no in-group preference at all.
So your business, the business that you were in, of course it has loyalty to the customers, but it should have loyalty to standards as a whole.
And as somebody who was within the organization, that's just one customer, but you're an employee who deals with many customers.
They should have had A preference for you.
I mean, you're an honorable, decent guy.
Your father had just died.
You said you came from his funeral?
Right.
So where's their loyalty to you?
And I asked them in the exiting...
I said, what about the 250 cases a month of just satisfied customers?
What about all the customer kudos?
What about all the surveys, 100%?
What about the fact I was a top performer this whole past six months?
And it's just deaf ears.
Have you ever seen the movie Goodfellas?
Yeah, years back, though.
Okay, so, I mean, I'm not going to apologize for spoilers for movies that are more than 20 years old, right?
But in Goodfellas, Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci are like their buddies in the mafia for years and years and years and years and years and years.
They're friends.
They hang out together.
They've spent countless hours together and they're allies.
You say friends, they're evil people, whatever, right?
But they're allies.
And then...
The Robert De Niro character has to get the Joe Pesci character killed.
And he does.
Doesn't look back, right?
Now, I remember even 20 years ago when I first watched that movie.
And it is a great movie.
It is a terrifying movie.
And it's a horrifying movie.
But it's a really, really great depiction of an hour-based society.
There is...
And I remember thinking, like, how could he do that?
How could he possibly do that?
How could Robert De Niro's character...
Possibly do that?
To Joe Pesci's character.
Is there no loyalty?
Has there been no accumulated positive regard for 20 years of being allies and, quote, friends, right?
And the answer is, well, no.
So, to me, this was incomprehensible.
Like, I thought it was unbelievable.
I couldn't imagine, right?
But then, I've obviously, like most people who've done anything with their lives, I've made mistakes in choosing my companions and I've been betrayed and all that.
And I get, because I am a very loyal person, I made the mistake of mistaking the world for myself, right?
And now I get it.
Yeah, we'll hang out.
It's like a bunch of rabbits, right?
A bunch of rabbits sitting in a field.
One of them gets...
Grabbed by a hawk, and the other's like, oh, they don't even interrupt their eating.
They could have played together since they were infants.
One of them goes and gets, there's no pair bonding.
No in-group loyalty, no social bonding or anything like that.
And they just, there's no loyalty.
So when you're going and saying, well, wait a minute, haven't I accumulated some valuable capital in this company?
They're like, nope, because they are selected.
We don't care.
It's convenient for us in the moment, so we don't want to confront this woman, we don't want to get in any more trouble.
No.
Bye-bye.
When you're saying, well, wait a minute, where's the loyalty?
But if there are selected, there's no such thing.
Does that make sense?
No, it really does.
And I like the challenge of surrounding myself with K's.
I mean, I do hunger for it.
It's not the easiest thing to...
Shit, no.
It's not the easiest thing to find at all.
Right.
I'd love to just start connecting every day and working on projects with all types of like-minded, enthusiastic K's.
Yeah.
And that's what you need.
People you can trust.
People who you can rely upon.
People who have strong in-group preferences.
People whose values you share.
If you want to get betrayed, just go walk out the door and trust the first person you meet.
Maybe the thousandth person you meet.
Betrayal is as easy as breathing to get, right?
Yeah, well, I mean...
Catching betrayal as a carbon-based life form is like a Kadassian ass-catching dick.
I mean, it's just not that hard, right?
All right, listen, man, I've got to move on to the next caller.
Indeed.
But, you know, I wish you the very best.
And, you know, when you get used to looking for the R versus K stuff, you can find them pretty clearly and easily.
You know, ask people about their family backgrounds, ask about their degree of self-knowledge and so on.
Right.
You know...
Certainly since the First World War, and definitely after the Second World War, we've just had successive waves of R gene sets washing over humanity, and we're largely R now.
But it's okay.
I mean, it's happened before in history, and it'll happen probably again in history, at least until we get peaceful parenting all knocked out of the park.
But, you know...
They're still out there, right?
We're still out there.
We're just scattered.
A little propagandized.
You know, identifying stuff in a way where usually it would stop progress.
But anyways, yeah, this show has been awesome with that.
And on my way out, I do want to mention this stuff you've been giving us with the politics is amazing.
And it sparked up a big thing between my brother and I. Starting to really get into politics as a union representative, and now he's picking up some steam and stuff, but totally on a communist path.
So him and I have been talking about your show and whatnot, and he would love to get on and debate in a way.
Yeah, he's welcome.
Okay.
No, listen, I love it when people come on a debate.
It's great fun.
I can't taste them all.
The swords get sharper when they hit other swords.
Absolutely.
Good.
Okay.
Because I try to get into it with them, but man, it'd be awesome to have you two kind of go out.
He's intelligent and he'll be level-headed, so I think it'd make for a great conversation.
Fantastic.
I look forward to it.
Please tell him he's welcome anytime.
Right on.
Thanks, man.
I appreciate it, Ruben.
Have a great night, and this will work out for the best.
I know that that sounds like a real Hallmark cliche, but there's a lot of truth in that reality.
I know I'll be reaching back out in no time at all, talking about a great program that we've got going, and thank you for the success at that point.
Oh, listen, man, if you want to, you know, when you get your stuff going, just let us know.
Whatever we can do, whatever I can do to help publicize it, I'll certainly be eager and happy to do.
Awesome.
Just let us know.
Right on, Stephan.
And thank you too, Michael.
Thanks, man.
Right on.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, up next is Justin.
And Justin wrote in and said, I want to talk about the lack of nuance when views about the left are expressed.
Ignoring that many on the anti-authoritarian left entirely agree with many points that you raise, the violence of the state being bad, that voluntary interactions are the best way to run a society, etc., But by then calling them a virus simply because they would rather see a different version of how goods and services are exchanged seems to be rather short sighted.
Us anarchists are small in number at the best of times and if we want to remove the state we have to stop arguing with each other and focus on what we can agree upon.
The best thing being that all of these varying ideas on the anti-authoritarian axis can be tried in a free market of ideas and capital in a voluntary way.
So let's look forward to that and celebrate the possible diversity of ideas that could flourish without a state interference in our lives.
That's from Justin.
Yo.
Nice to meet you.
Justin, how are you doing?
Good to meet you as well, thank you.
Yeah, great.
Yourself?
Well, thank you.
So I'm not really sure what...
What your proposal is, if that makes sense.
I'm not really sure what it is you're suggesting.
Are you suggesting that I do something different?
In which case, what would it be?
And I don't mean that to sound...
I don't mean, what the hell do you mean?
I mean, I genuinely don't sort of understand what's actionable in your critique.
Yeah, sure, of course.
The main problem to me seems to be that when you make these...
Almost great sweeping comments about, I mean this was left on your Determinism in Socialism or something video, about the left as this giant kind of almost, it comes across as monolithic thing that all agrees on, you know, that state socialism and what have you is the only way to, you know, increase the wealth of the working class and all that kind of stuff.
So it seems like you might end up throwing the baby out of the bathwater, as it were, and I worry that people who might be interested in your ideas are going to get turned off of them because there's not – not every socialist is on the communist kind of Russian model. and I worry that people who might be interested in Not every socialist is on the social democrat model we have here in Britain.
Wait, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I mean I confess to just feeling a bit annoyed already because when you're lecturing me that not every socialist is a communist, I can't even imagine any time that I've ever said that.
No, no, no.
I know that.
I know that.
I'm not, quote, lecturing you.
I'm just saying it comes across as if when you make the left...
No, no, no.
Hang on, hang on.
It comes across as is already kind of a weasel word, right?
A weasel phrase.
Because that's something that, like, my impression is it comes across as.
My feeling is that it's like, what have I actually said, right?
You've got to be a bit more rigorous than that.
If I've actually said all socialists are communists and all communists are libertarians.
You called the left, and I quote, a virus, which is quite, you know, strong words for something that not all of the left is the virus in the, you know, What's the word I'm looking for?
Using the mechanics of the state.
As their way of expressing their viewpoint, which is primarily what anarchists are generally against.
That's something we can all agree on.
That's the point I'm trying to raise.
We can visualize political views on the four-way axis, left and right, authoritarian and anti-authoritarian.
And there's plenty of people on the anti-authoritarian axis who would agree with you, but they happen to sit in a more left-wing viewpoint.
That's a difference of Societal technique rather than necessarily a complete philosophical viewpoint.
What is societal?
Sorry, I don't understand what societal...
There's a lot I don't understand, but what really jumps out is I don't understand what you mean when you say societal technique.
It's economics, isn't it?
It's like one person might prefer to shop at, say, a cooperative owned by...
You know, the workers in the place, and some people might rather shop at a normal industry like, you know, a big chain of supermarkets down the road, and that's their personal choice, and that's part of their ethics.
Sorry, what does that have to do with left versus right?
I mean, neither of those would involve the initiation of the use of force, right?
No, no, no, you're misunderstanding me.
Left versus right is not part of It's statism versus unstatism.
It's capitalism versus socialism.
And authoritarianism is the use of the state in making sure those ideologies are then carried out.
I just want to make sure we're on the same page.
Are you all right?
Hang on, hang on.
Are you saying that the degree of private property is unrelated to the size and power of the state?
Because you said capitalism has nothing to do with the size and power of the state, capitalism versus socialism, but capitalism is private ownership of the means of production and socialism is public ownership or government ownership of the means of production.
No, no, no.
Socialism can, of course, mean that, that it's about the state owning it, but it doesn't have to.
As many people I've talked to on the left-hand side, I should put this out there, I don't subscribe to any particular form of anarchism because, you know, you listen...
Okay, can you give me, sorry, then can you give me a definition of the left that is coherent and doesn't say, well, but there's another version of it that, you know...
I mean, so if it involves both the...
Public ownership of the means of production, government ownership of the means of production.
No, no.
It doesn't necessarily entail governmental owns the means of production.
What it means is that the people who work the factories should, some people would say by proxy of the state, I would say that's a horrible idea, obviously.
But there's nothing in capitalism that prevents workers from owning the means of production.
Yeah, I agree with you, but I can see that and I agree with that and that's what I say in my next point on my question.
But the point I'm trying to raise is that that is, especially in the UK, which I can only talk of from where I live because I'm not embedded in American culture, is that, and I'm sure many people from Europe and the UK listen to your show, I know I do, That's considered anyway over here, if it's not, then that's obviously a problem of semantics, which I apologize for if I've raised a purely semantic point that doesn't mean anything.
That's generally considered to be a left-wing viewpoint.
Socialism, left-wing policy, is the people owning the means of production.
Well, all people own means of production.
I mean, there's no robot that owns a factory that I know of, and no space aliens.
All means of production are owned by people, so that may be a little unspecific.
No, the workers.
Well, are you saying that the managers aren't people?
No, no, of course I'm not bloody saying that.
What I'm saying is that most people on the left wing are going to say that it's not just up to the managers or the...
of the benefits of the person's labor.
I'm undecided as to which system is completely best.
Well, hang on.
So I'm just trying to break down what it is that you're trying to say.
Because, listen, man, I've been a manager and I worked pretty damn hard.
So it's kind of offensive for me.
Not that that doesn't mean anything like it's not wrong because it's offensive, right?
But it is, you know, I mean, the idea that there are workers and managers.
Well, managers work really damn hard.
So that's not a strong enough differentiation.
So do you mean that the people who have no experience in managing should be the managers, or the people who have the least education in management should be the managers, or the people who are least capable of managing should be the managers?
Because, you know, if you have a factory and you've got a bunch of workers, you know, when I was a manager, I was thrilled.
When people came up with great ideas, right?
I just want to raise the point.
I'm not saying that I support any particular viewpoint.
No, no, no.
You've said that already.
What I'm trying to understand is what language you're using.
I'm not saying you're an advocate.
We don't need to say that again because you've already said it twice.
But when the socialists say that the worker should own the means of production, I don't know what that means because managers are workers and the means of production didn't spring out of the earth out of nowhere.
Somebody had to scrimp and save and invest and risk in order to create those things.
So the way that a worker can own the means of production, I guess, is the worker can go out to, like in a free society, an unowned piece of land, and they can homestead that, they can put up fences around it, they can build a log cabin, they can build a plow out of whatever, and then those are the means of production by which they can produce crops.
And there's nothing in a free society or capitalism or anything that would say, no, you can't do that if you go work in a factory.
Right, so the workers can, and they can save up their money, and then they can choose to buy a better plow, or they can choose to buy a combine harvester that is even more efficient.
They can choose to buy automatic strawberry and grape pickers, which I've recently found out actually exist.
And they can choose, and there's nothing in a free market that would prevent them from doing that.
In fact, if they did a great job, they'd be amply rewarded.
Yeah, I mean, I completely see that and agree that.
I think what From a left-wing standpoint, the view is that the people on top, I don't know, that's such a ridiculously nebulous term, you'll have to excuse me for that, is that those of the managerial and upper middle class and upper class positions take an inordinate amount of wealth from the labour that's put in by Be more menial type
workers.
But there's no problem with that in a free society because if you're underpaying your workers, they can go and get jobs with people who pay them better.
This is an interesting thing.
Unemployment, obviously, is already relatively high.
No, no, no.
Hang on, hang on.
We can't jump from theoreticals.
To state-run capitalism as it stands now, right?
So we're talking about a free market environment.
And in a free market environment, if whatever they're taking too much of the workers' wages, whatever that might even mean, everybody wants to be paid more and everybody wants for what they're paid for and everyone wants to pay less for whatever everybody else pays for or provides.
And so, but there's a balance, right?
And if, let's say, I take 90% of the workers' wages and keep it for myself, right, I sell their wages at $40 an hour and I pay them $4 an hour, well, I've just created a massive, massive opportunity for a whole bunch of people to rush in and start bidding up the price of the workers.
To underpay your workers creates a competitive vacuum that brings competition in.
Like nature abhors a vacuum.
And if you underpay your workers and you're making an obscene amount of money, everyone is like, whoa, man, easy money out there.
And they come in and they pay the workers $5 an hour.
And then they're making $35.
And then someone comes in and says $6.
Well, $34 is still the money.
And you just bid the wages up.
So I don't know how it's possible to continue to, and underpaid and overpaid, these are all just subjective terms anyway.
Like, what is the fair price for something?
Well, I don't know.
Whatever somebody wants to pay for it.
I have no idea what that is.
But certainly the competitive pressures are, it's a very bad idea to underpay your workers.
Because you train them, right?
It costs a lot of money to train workers.
I mean, I know.
Even if, like, when I hired programmers, it was one thing that they knew how to program, but they also had to learn You know, the hundreds of thousands of lines per module of code that I and others had written already and they had to learn how to maintain it.
They had to learn the business model and they had to learn our customer preferences.
They had to develop relationships.
So if you underpay your workers, you're training them in your business.
And then, if they go, you've just lost that whole investment.
Underpaying your workers is a really bad idea.
I understand all that, and I think that's great.
That all makes fantastic logical sense.
So, just to clarify then, you have obviously no problem at all with things like...
Worker-owned cooperatives and all that kind of stuff, traditionally viewed, certainly in my culture, whether it's in your culture as well, I couldn't possibly comment, as left-wing ideas, that's fine to you.
I don't know what worker-owned cooperatives means.
Right, okay.
I mean, everybody who's in a business is usually working.
I mean when I ran a business there was no one who came in and played Quake all day and so everything is a worker owned.
What it means is that the shareholders of the company are the workers themselves and that those people all have a say to a lesser or greater degree depending on how the company's set up.
Obviously there's massive differences between how they kind of constitutionally as it were set up their businesses Is that every worker who works there owns, even if it's in a small part, a part of the company, meaning they share in the profits directly of the greater company, the entity as a whole, which is obviously great for the lower paid workers because, you know, they share in some of the larger profits and it's a good incentive for the workers as far as management is concerned.
I mean, it's good to keep productivity.
But as long as they have the right to sell their share, right?
Shareholders have the right to buy and sell shares, right?
So you could say there are 100 workers and each one of them gets 1% of the company, for sure.
But then you see some workers are going to be smarter and they're going to be more economically productive.
And other workers are going to be less smart and are not going to be as economically productive.
Some workers are going to have a better work ethic.
They're going to enjoy working more.
They might feel more responsible.
while they're willing to work overtime, and other people won't, right?
I mean, and they'll want a free ride.
I mean, you know, a free ride.
The temptation, hang on, let me finish.
And so, if you are contributing, like if you have 1% of the company, but you're contributing 5% of the value, then other people are exploiting you.
Because they're taking your hard-earned value production, like let's say I have, like I'm a A janitor, right?
I sweep the factory floor, right?
And I get 1% of the company, and so does the person who works night and day and travels to sell and all that kind of stuff and has gone to school and all that, right?
Well, I didn't go to school, and I go home.
I work 9 to 5, and I get my 15-minute breaks and my hour lunch, and I don't have to travel.
I'll be away from my family and all that.
So one person is providing more value than this.
But let's say that as the sweeper of the factory, I decide to go...
Tonight's school and get an MBA from Harvard or something like that.
Harvard!
And I'm then not just producing a tenth of a percent of value, but I'm suddenly producing 10% of the value because I'm stepping up and doing better.
Is it still fair for me to only receive 1% of the profits when I am Producing 10% of the value.
Of course.
Or are other people exploiting me then?
But the thing is with cooperatives, obviously it depends on how they're run, but that is only part of the incentive.
Obviously a manager or someone of a higher position or someone who puts more into the company can still get paid more than the rest of the company.
You have to be very specific and precise with these things.
There's no such thing as putting more into the company.
I don't even know what that means.
Well, that's what you've just been saying.
You've provided 10% of value.
No, the person who's producing more value.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
That's what I mean.
If someone produces more value into the company, so, you know, what you just said, then they can, of course, be paid more for it.
That's, I've never said any, no one's ever said, no, someone who...
But isn't that exactly what happens with managers and, as you say, workers?
Yes, but the companies are owned, at least, you know, mostly by everyone inside the company, again, and you've had no problem with that, so I just want to...
Everyone...
God, everyone owns the company anyway.
Like, when I was a manager...
No, they really don't.
No, because...
No, they do, because when I... Like, a shareholder has the right to get paid dividends, if that's the way the company is set up, right?
You make profits and you pay off dividends to your shareholders.
And they have the right to buy and sell their shares.
Now when I hired someone, we would sign a contract and that person would own, let's say we're paying them $40,000, that person would own $40,000 of the company's profitability.
We were just paying them a very big dividend in the form of salary rather than a small dividend per share.
So they owned the company's resources Because we had to pay them $40,000 or $50,000 or $60,000 or more and they owned that share of the company's resources.
So employees who are being paid, they own the company because they own or they are legally obliged to receive or have a legal claim upon the money that is their salary.
So they have a legal claim upon the value of the company, just as a shareholder does.
It's just it's in the form of salary rather than shares.
And they could get paid in shares if they wanted.
I mean, I don't think anybody would really object to that because they could, of course, take all of their salary and use it to buy shares if they want, right?
But they choose to take their income in cash rather than in shares.
I mean, again, you can certainly get paid in shares and lots of people do.
So, this idea that people who are salaried employees don't have any ownership in the company is false because they do have ownership in the company and the company has to pay them.
They own the company's profits, a portion of the company's profits.
Yeah, I know.
I understand that.
That's something I'd have to go away and put more thought into, as it were.
That's not something I'm just going to be able to...
That's not an idea of...
Yeah, you can mull it off.
Yeah, of course.
This conversation's gone quite well, really.
I just want to make one last point before I head off, because it's 2.30 a.m.
here in Britain.
If it's at all possible, in your videos, we've talked about this briefly, it's the comment of the left, where there's many people who...
I just worry that by bashing, it's not really bashing, by making those sweeping generalizations, it's just as bad as someone on the left making a sweeping generalization about those on the right.
We agree, so many anarchists along Europe who mostly are not ANCAPs as far as I can tell, all the ones I've met certainly are not, they're usually anarcho-communists and all that kind of stuff.
If we can all agree on certain principles of state interference equals bad, it would be a great place to start.
We can actually work together to start creating the society we want rather than arguing amongst ourselves and pissing each other off.
God, but why on earth would I want to do anything to work to create a society with communists?
Well, they're not communists on the Russian crazy model, are they?
They're part of a different axis of political thought.
What do they believe?
Well, you're familiar, obviously, the last stage of communism is apparently, although, of course, it would never actually work out that way because people are corrupt, is that the state is to wither away and this is just, quote, the management of things and, quote, and I can't remember where that comes from in Marx.
I'm pretty sure it comes from Marx.
But that's like saying that the end result of my medical treatment is magic.
Well, no, I agree with Steph.
So what is it that they...
I don't know what...
And I'd love to get an ANCOM on here, an anarcho-communist on here, so they can explain what they're talking about.
I mean, if they don't violate the non-aggression principle, fine.
But then they're...
Anarcho-capitalists, because they agree with self-ownership and property rights.
If they want to violate property rights, they have to initiate the use of force, and then we're enemies.
Again, I'll have to go and mull that one over.
If you want to come back and bring an anarcho-communist, fantastic.
I mean, they tried this in the 1930s in Spain, and it just turned into the usual nightmarish totalitarian hellhole.
Well, it was an internal civil war between the Republican Party with the Poem militias getting attacked by the Stalinist militias, and it all went horribly, horribly wrong.
But, yeah, that wasn't good.
I mean, I think anarcho-communism works fine in families.
I'm not going to charge my daughter rent.
But among adults, yeah.
I mean, it's the old argument, you know, if you want to be in an anarcho-commune, you want to set up a commune where nobody owns anything and everybody works collectively, go for it.
You know, there's nothing...
As long as you're not initiating the use of force, you can do anything you want.
So the idea that there's a system called anarcho-communism that is somehow some social system that people have to participate in is totalitarian in its nature.
Yeah, I agree.
I agree.
Okay.
So in that case, it's not, as far as I can tell, it's not...
Left-wing ideas you're against.
What you're against ultimately is left-wing ideas and right-wing ideas, I suppose, enforced through violence.
Those are left and right-wing ideas.
Because left and right-wing ideas are the organization of resources in society using the force of the state.
If you're an anarchist, you can't be a communist.
Now, when we say anarcho-capitalist, it doesn't mean you have to be a capitalist.
You can be a communist in an anarcho-capitalist society.
You just can't initiate the use of force or violate people's property rights.
And so, the left and right are both arguments on how the initiation of force should be used to benefit the world.
You know, how much rape should we employ in society to make everybody love everybody?
Well, the answer is none.
None at all.
And so, both the left and the right, and I've done, of course, videos criticizing both the left and the right.
Now, the right I have a little bit more sympathy with in some areas, insofar as the right tends to focus their irrationality on religion, whereas the left tends to focus their irrationality on the state.
And this is why on the left you have more state and less religion, and on the right you have more religion and less state.
Now, somebody's irrational beliefs...
Do not directly harm me.
If they believe that giant turtles run their lives, that doesn't take any money from me directly.
But on the left, the irrational ideas they have are all involved with the initiation of state power against my property rights, so they're a bit more of an immediate threat.
Yeah, I think I understand where the cross-purposes has come from.
I'm obviously using a different That was really informative.
Thank you.
Bye for now.
All right.
Thanks, Justin.
And up last on the show today is John.
And John wrote in...
Sorry.
What is this last of which you speak?
You got to the last caller today, Steph.
How about that?
No, I don't like it.
Wait.
I feel appendicitis coming on.
Maybe there'll be a hand puppet that wants to call in or something.
No, Mike, just before we go in, maybe we can just talk you and I for the benefit.
Because when we originally started working together, your degree of creative input was, I guess, an X factor, right?
But it wasn't like, Mike, if you could come up with a really great idea for videos and stuff, that would be excellent, right?
That sort of evolved as we began working together, right?
Yeah, of course.
And...
I wasn't like, no.
I have value to provide.
Stop it!
Don't do that!
Right.
That's not typing.
And so where people can provide value, that contribution, anybody with any business sense or whatever, it's hard to say it's just a business or whatever, but that contribution is highly valuable and recognized, right?
I mean, Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver went to see a Bruce Springsteen concert where Bruce Springsteen was, like before he did the movie, he went to see a Springsteen concert.
Springsteen, the vicious socialist.
But anyway, we'll get to that another time.
And Bruce Springsteen was doing, you know, thousands of people in the crowd.
And Bruce Springsteen was catcalling with the crowd saying that they were cheering.
And he's like, hey, you talking to me?
You talking to me?
And Robert De Niro decided to put that in.
And the writer later mentioned, with no rancor, he was basically just saying that all the best things in that movie were never in the script.
Everything that anybody remembers from that movie had nothing to do with the script and was generally improvised.
And the writer was happy.
And so Robert De Niro did his improvisation and the writer was thrilled and the director was thrilled and everybody was happy because it made the movie better, more memorable, more of a classic.
And so the idea, just follow the script, man.
You know, if you've got something of value to add, anybody with any sense is going to embrace and enjoy that.
And so I just really wanted to sort of point that out, that this idea that there's this, well, sorry, Mike, you're just an employee, a contractor, so it doesn't, you know...
If only I owned the means of production, then we'd be okay.
Give me my brain back.
I need to go to the washer.
Okay.
I'll just say it too real quick because I had a thought when you mentioned anti-authoritarianism on the left.
Anti-authoritarianism is not always a good thing because there is earned authority.
You know, like a doctor or a dentist that's highly skilled in their field, they have earned authority.
You don't want to just reject all authority.
That's completely irrational.
It's the rejection of unearned authority.
People that are just anti-authoritarian through and through I don't know that they're going to fall in line along people that I really want to associate with because they're not going to give people credibility when credibility is warranted.
And, you know, there is plenty of goods and services in the division of labor amongst humans that I am not capable of creating or providing.
And I want some experts to do that stuff for me.
So that's an important thing to keep in mind.
Can you look up Bakunin and Shoes?
He's got a great quote about that.
Bakunin and Shoes.
Bakunin.
It's B-A-K-U-N-I-N. And something like, you know, people say I reject all authority, heaven forbid.
I certainly do not reject the authority of a shoemaker in the fixing of my shoes.
I don't think that's the exact quote, but it's something like perish the thought, of course.
Valid authority.
Oh, it's a...
This is a very long passage by him.
Yeah.
Alright, well I think I got the gist of it.
People can look it up for themselves.
Alright.
Okay, I'm sorry, what was the caller's name?
Yeah, the caller's name is John, and John wrote in and said, Over thousands of years, countless numbers of mystics and greatest minds and writers in human history have not only had faith in God, but experienced God, as I have myself.
Just a few months ago, a woman I know online had a vision of Jesus Christ herself and converted to Christianity.
How can you say that so many great minds throughout history are simply wrong because you have not experienced God yourself, in part because you have not even committed to look?
Denying other great minds experience is simply hubris.
That's the first question that John writes in, or more of a statement.
Would you like to elaborate on that a bit, John?
Stephen, by the way, I just want to let you know that I'm a tremendous fan of yours and I deeply appreciate everything that you do and I fantastically admire you.
I appreciate that.
I hope that we will have this conversation as two people who are on the same side.
I'm also, like yourself, Deeply committed to truth and deeply committed to making the world a better place, you know, through truth and through insight and through philosophy.
And so I hope we're not antagonistic just simply because we have different approaches to the same subject matter.
Oh, gosh, I would hope not.
I'm sure it's happened, but I can't really think of many times where I've initiated the use of antagonism.
I certainly don't back down.
I'm not saying this will be you, but my philosophy has always been treat people the best you can when you first meet them, and after that, treat them as they treat you.
So when people become rude to me, I have no problem being rude back, but I don't think that's going to be the case here.
Right, I feel great.
Do some more that you wanted to add to the...
I can be kind of a passionate person.
Passion is good.
If my passion is at any times, I know you're not of this type, offensive to you, please, just take your mind that I come from a positive place.
No, actually, I'm only offended by people who are moderate in their pursuit of truth.
Right.
That's the bad stuff, right?
Yeah, and I am...
Passionately committed to truth.
That is a...
I dedicate my entire life to it.
And it's a very...
I mean, I will sacrifice my life for truth.
That's how committed I am to it.
Alright, so let's go over the shape of it a bit more.
I've spoken with several people.
A friend of mine who's a very hardcore libertarian who turned me on to your program.
And he's also a Christian.
And we have discussed over the phone, like, we just don't get you, man.
I mean, like, we literally have had conversations where, like, he asked me, like, John, do you think an atheist can do God's work?
And I'm just like, man, I just don't know this guy.
Yeah.
Because normally when you're...
The whole basis of finding truth is you have to start with a proper logical foundation.
And then from that, if you have a set logical foundation that's set in stone and right, you can extrapolate that into greater truths.
And if your logical foundation is off, normally when you start Connecting dots, they just go astray.
They go into La La Land and suddenly you're Karl Marx talking about how everything is equal, which is fucking insane.
I'm just trying to understand your perspective.
I myself have a very eccentric background.
I was a Dallas monk for three years.
I graduated from UCLA with a...
Wait, a what?
A what?
A what monk?
A Daoist monk?
Daoism as in China, the Chinese religion of Daoism.
Oh, good.
I thought you meant in Texas, which I was like in Dallas.
No, I'm not Daoist, but a Daoist monk.
I think they're more known for their chi leaders, but okay, good.
And I also, one of the things on me is that I had a falling out with God period of time in my life because I had a very abusive childhood, not with my family, but from outsiders.
And I was angry with God about that.
Sorry, you were angry with God about what?
About the fact that I had a very abusive childhood.
Sorry, what happened?
I was I was a very gentle kid and I I I have a very high IQ you know I did well in school and I'm a little bit different than some people I've never experienced intellectual insecurity in my life and And one of the things that it took me a while to figure out is that the natural response for most people to intellectual insecurity is vindictiveness.
And when people feel that they feel as if they're maybe not as smart, often people, they lash out.
And I get frustrated my whole life.
And I just got the crap beat out of me for Many years of my life on a very regular basis.
And I just didn't comprehend why someone would just beat up someone.
It didn't make any sense to me.
And when I was first beat up, I was told to turn the other cheek on a muggle.
And I just took that as You know, gospel.
And so, for years, I just let people just kick a little shit out of me for things that I didn't understand why.
And when I finally hit puberty and, like, you know, I excelled in athletics, I was always a strong kid, so people didn't quite understand why I didn't fight God.
And one time I was being beaten again.
And I pushed the kid off me and told him to fuck off me and he turned away from me.
And I thought to myself, I thought this didn't even tell me to do this before.
So I was perfectly capable of defending myself.
And it produced a period of time in which I was angry at God for this lack of knowledge, this lack of ability to protect myself.
And when I went to UCLA, I decided to study religion because I thought religion was the enemy.
It was the enemy!
And in my hubris, I decided I needed to know my enemy better to destroy it.
Really?
Yeah, so freaking arrogant and silly.
So you became like a godstalker.
Yes.
That's exactly what I did.
The thing with...
It's important to recognize that religion is that God is not the religion.
The religion is not the church.
The church is not the believers.
And so those things get merged in together with a lot of people, and people see the hypocrisy of people, and then they go, there's no God!
And that's totally illogical.
And what I did is I basically went in there to kind of like destroy religion and what I thought was superstition and all this bullshit.
And as I really began to understand religion and the text, and I've read every single freaking major religious text in the world, and a lot of the minor ones, is that what it became clear to me was that For a lot of these people, not all, but for a lot of them, what happened to them was something that was truly special.
And so special that they dedicated their entire frickin' life to trying to be able to communicate it to other people.
And I wrote my thesis, there's 250 pages, and you see the perfect score on it, on a psychological, anthropological Interpretation of the semiotics of religious experience.
As I mentioned, I've experienced God multiple times in my life, and I'm not a fool.
And those experiences are meaningful to me.
In some ways, they haven't kind of happened in a happen-sense fashion.
In some ways, I really had very powerfully integrated with great resources and energy to seek it out to me.
And I just don't understand how someone who's as freaking brilliant as you are, who's as committed to truth and logic, Can be an atheist.
I can respect that you being agnostic, but there is no proof that God doesn't exist.
It simply doesn't exist, man.
I mean, there's room for doubt that God doesn't exist, but there's no fucking proof whatsoever that God doesn't exist.
And, I mean, I'm here, I don't want to hurt you.
I'm here, you know, My spiritual life has actually radically improved my aesthetic understanding of reality.
I'm not a perfect man.
I have all kinds of fricking problems.
I'm not even a happy man.
But I have these moments where I can think clearly and look at reality and just see how fucking fantastically beautiful it is.
I just would hope that maybe through this discussion I might be able to a little bit inch you towards Something that's not going to hurt your logic, not going to hurt your desire for truth, not going to hurt your desire to be the best person you can be,
not going to hurt your desire to be a beacon of truth for other people, but maybe on a personal level, help you walk out and see a sunset and appreciate it a little bit more.
All right.
No, I appreciate that.
Look, I get the benevolence behind what it is that you're saying.
I appreciate the sentiment.
Obviously, you feel that you have a great gift and a great insight that you feel I'm lacking and that you want to share with me, right?
To make me a better person, to get me closer to the truth, right?
Right.
Isn't that what we should do in general?
Generally speaking, if you're committed to the truth, You want to share that.
You want to help other people basically empower themselves.
I don't want to tell you what to do.
I don't want to control your worldview.
I just want to help you to basically...
If I'm ill with ignorance and you have a painless pill to fix my illness, you'd want me to take it.
I fully understand that.
And so you and I are going to enter into a very, very exciting contest.
Because only one of us can be right.
And that's because, you know, something is valid or it's not, right?
Yes, that is a fricking, very healthy way of approaching it.
And I appreciate, you know, because, listen, when I speak out against the existence of God, you know, every atheist on the planet, you know, piles into me and...
It says, well, you know, the burden of proof is on the other person.
So why are you asserting that there's no God?
Because if I come across somebody in the woods and a log has landed on their leg, I will try and help them up.
And it's not enough to just say, well, maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
We have a difference of opinion.
I'm an agnostic.
I need proof.
Otherwise, if I genuinely believe that something doesn't exist...
I need to forcefully make my case because if I'm right and something doesn't exist and people are trapped in error, that's bad for them.
And so I want to lift a log off someone's leg so that they can go to a hospital and get better.
And you obviously feel the same way with regards to me, which I appreciate and I respect and also appreciate the sentiment that you're bringing to bear on the topic.
So I guess we can start.
Let's have a definition of God.
Well, as I spoke to Michael earlier, are you familiar with the Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu-C? Who?
The Neo-Confucian philosopher Chu-C-H-U-H-S-I. I don't think so now.
Okay.
Well, you know, as a person who's studied all these religions and also was, you know, Dallas Monk, which is, you know, based on Eastern philosophy, Chu-C has wrote a book called...
Further Reflections on Things at Hand, in which he describes the concept of Li, which can be vaguely described as principle.
And in it, he lays out, as far as I can find, an irrefutable argument in that there has to be a central organizational principle to reality for there to be an organized principle flow of linear causality.
The fact that I'm speaking to you right now and I'm not instantly turning into a chicken and then into like a rock and then into a ball of light and instead there's an organized flow of causation means that there has to be an organizing principle and is utterly open within philosophy to argue whether that principle is animate or not Whether or not it is conscious or not,
whether or not it is self-aware or not, but to deny that there is an organizational principle that holds these disparate forces together and has them act in a cohesive manner is madness.
Well, hang on, hang on.
So what you're saying is that there are constant laws of matter, that the laws of the universe...
And those laws of matter are constant for a frickin' reason, bro.
No, no, no, no.
Hang on.
There's no way.
There's no justification for going from what is to it was planned.
One of the craziest things in the world is random.
I'm a very smart person and I don't have the answer to this question, so I'm going to say random because my ego exceeds my desire for truth.
I'm sorry.
You garbled for a second there.
You said something about random?
Yeah.
You find often in terms of physics and Darwinism and that when people can't explain something, they often, too often, it tells the people, too often define it as random.
Random forces define why they're utterly stable Sorry, I'm lost.
So, you and I both accept that there are constant properties and behavior, so to say.
It's tough to not anthropomorphize.
You say laws and it sounds like there's a lawgiver or whatever, right?
But atoms have constant properties.
I wouldn't say they have concept properties.
I'd say they have roughly similar properties.
I personally believe that if you look at Einstein, Einstein's wrong because he defined the speed of light as a constant.
It's not a constant.
It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the greatest minds that defined our era of the 20th century, Darwin, um, Karl Marx and Einstein are all wrong to some certain degree.
They defined our, yeah, yeah, sorry, first of all, that's 19th and 20th century Marx Marx and Darwin were 19th century.
Obviously, Einstein born in the 19th, but his discoveries were in the early 20th.
But yeah, we know that they're wrong because of the scientific method, right?
The scientific method which compares hypotheses to that which is measurable and reproducible.
And if there's a gap, then the reality, the matter, the sense data always wins over the idea, right?
I mean, if I predict the ball's going to bounce and it doesn't, then my theory is false because theories always bend to empirical data.
So the scientific method is the constant by which we know that people are wrong.
So the fact that we know people are wrong is not a refutation of science, but an affirmation of it.
Yeah.
I mean, how do we know if a theologian is wrong?
We don't, because it's all made up, right?
So the idea that knowing that a scientist is wrong is somehow a refutation of science or a limitation on science or a problem with science, no.
That's the whole point, is that there are ways of knowing whether a scientist is correct or incorrect, whereas knowing whether a theologian is correct or incorrect is virtually impossible.
Well, one of the things about science is that science is fantastic at recognizing that which is quantifiable in reality, which is awesome.
It's recognizing that which is qualifiable in reality.
Okay, hang on.
We're jumping from topic to topic.
What was the first question I asked when we began this conversation?
Just after you gave me your background.
Yeah, well, please, I'm sorry, but I've forgotten.
The first question I asked was, John, what is your definition, or give me a definition of God?
I did.
And now we've gone 10 or 15 minutes into it, and I don't have a damn thing.
I attempted to give that review using Chusey's definition of principle, which is a central organizational principle to reality.
And I asked for more clarification on that in saying, so what you're saying is that there are constant laws of the universe, which is not to imply a lawgiver, it's just a colloquial term, right?
So there are constant properties and behaviors of matter and energy in the universe, but that is not a...
What you gave me was the basis of the scientific method, not a definition of God.
Well, what I'm saying is that there's something that organizes those relationships, right?
No, no, no.
There is no possible way to go from the existence of the laws of matter to they have been created and organized by some entity.
Okay, proteins.
Give me an answer to proteins.
Wait, are we going from the laws of matter to life itself?
Sure.
I have multiple...
Here's the thing now.
This is going to sound crazy.
Please be patient with me.
If I seem like I'm going all over the place, I apologize.
I'm not trying to be a sophist and distract you with things.
I just want a definition of God, that's all?
That's not exactly the same as the laws of physics or the laws of matter?
Not the fundamental forces of the universe.
But that principle that organizes them and their relationships between each other in a certain way, on a very basic level, if you want to argue that that is an animus, that it is not a consciousness, you know what?
I'm okay with that, man.
I don't know what that means, because the laws that exist, laws of matter that exist, the properties of atoms and the The ways in which matter and energy behave, those are just constants.
And the idea that there's something or someone that organized them doesn't follow.
So is it that you're saying that the deity is consciousness without matter?
To assume that there is a natural relationship between strong and weak nuclear force and electromagnetic force, And that it just happens is using the word random.
It's random.
No, no, it's not random.
The whole point of physical laws is they're not random.
If they were random, then you would be turning into an elephant and a ball of fire and a unicorn, and then we wouldn't have a conversation.
The only reason that life has been able to evolve and that we are able to have this conversation is because the laws of matter are constant and predictable and universal.
And there's a reason for that.
Why?
How would you know there's a reason for it?
Because there's an organizational principle, just like there's an organizational principle in your consciousness that allows you to have a coherent conversation.
Pretty much every single thing that you've ever seen in your life, that you've ever done, has been created by consciousness, your consciousness.
Wait, I don't understand what we're saying.
Are you saying that I went to Africa, therefore Africa was created by my consciousness?
No, I'm saying that your experience in Africa was created by your consciousness.
No, my experience in Africa was created by my sense data, which received information from a place called Africa.
Now, I may have had some subjective preferences or likes or dislikes or whatever, and those would be part of my consciousness, but The experience of being in Africa in its totality was not created by my consciousness.
That's a Cartesian argument that's like we're a brain in a tank, and I, of course, completely reject it.
I don't believe that either.
Okay, so the idea that my trip to Africa was somehow entirely created within my own mind is not right.
Well, it was created certainly by your sense of free will.
You chose to do things like to look right instead of left.
You chose to walk forwards and walking backwards, which influenced the sensory data that came into your being, which again, influenced your consciousness, which influenced your further choices to go to sleep, to go up stairways, to do whatever you're going to do, which influenced your experience, which influenced your consciousness.
Okay.
I have no doubt that my choice has an influence on my experience.
Otherwise, we would be to say that we have no free will.
But that doesn't mean that my consciousness creates my experience.
It merely means that my choices have an influence on my experience.
They do.
Okay.
So, so far we're in complete agreement and the idea of a deity has nowhere entered the picture.
The laws of the universe are constant and choice has an effect upon experience.
I'm curious, what is your greatest doubt regarding the potentiality?
Because you believe that God does not exist.
I know that God does not exist.
It's not a belief.
Okay, that's great.
And the reason, very briefly, the reason for that, and you've probably heard these arguments before, but for those who haven't had the privilege of hearing me talk about this before, or the curse, I don't know, whichever one you want to choose.
But to say that something exists means that it must be perceptible in some manner by the senses, either directly, like you walk into a door, oh look, it's a door and not a doorframe, or indirectly, insofar as you may determine the effects of something.
So you can't see a black hole, but you can see the effects of a black hole and its massive gravity well, say, on a nearby star, that it's sucking that whirlpool of star matter into its insatiable more of gravity-ness.
And so for something to exist, it must show up Well, first it must be rationally consistent and therefore possible to exist.
So, you know, the old Bertrand Russell example of Is there a teacup floating somewhere beyond the orbit of Mars?
Well, there could be, because it's possible for a teacup to be floating beyond the orbit of Mars.
If space aliens drank tea and threw it out of their vessel or dumped it out, then it went into orbit beyond Mars, then you could conceivably say that a teacup is somewhere beyond Mars, and that's not impossible.
You know, we may doubt it, and there may be reasons to doubt it, but we certainly can't rule it out.
If we said that a terrestrial frog was living in the interplanetary vacuum between Mars and the asteroid belt, this would be impossible because, of course, you can't live.
Terrestrial frogs can't live in space.
There's no oxygen.
There's no water.
There's very little...
So that would be an impossible.
We would know for sure that there's no frog that's been living for the last couple of hundred thousand years somewhere between Mars and the asteroid belt in orbit around the Sun.
That's just not possible.
Or if we were to say that there's a unicorn somewhere in the universe, a unicorn being...
A horse with a horn on its head, well, we could say, sure, we can't rule it out, and we can never rule it out, because, of course, the universe is billions of light-years across, and we could scour even if we could travel faster than light, which does seem to be something that is being tweaked about in physics these days.
We would then start at one end of the universe, even if we could magically examine every planet.
Well, by the time we got to the other end of the universe, it might have evolved on the first planet we went to.
So we can never rule out something like a...
A unicorn as something that exists.
However, we can say that there's no such thing as a square circle.
We don't have to look all over the universe for a self-contradictory entity to know whether it exists or not.
And so, when we say God exists, then what we're saying is that God shows up somewhere in the rational universe, therefore is subject to the laws of physics, because that's what being existing means, being part of the universe, which means being subjected to the laws of physics, And therefore, is not a God.
Because something which can be rationally known to tangibly exist, and therefore be subject to all the known laws of the universe, means it can't be consciousness without matter, because consciousness is an effect of matter.
And so, once we say God exists, we're saying that it is a mere mundane object, or person, or thing, that is part of the universe, that is subject to all the laws of the universe, and therefore is not God.
And if we say that God somehow exists but is never part of the universe and is never detectable by any human methodology that is direct and measurable and reproducible and part of the scientific method, then we're saying that the exact opposite of existence is that which exists, which is a logical paradox which can't possibly be true.
In other words, if there's never any evidence of any direct, tangible way of perceiving or determining the existence of a deity, that's exactly how we know something doesn't exist.
So if the definition of deity is something which can't be perceived and is not subject to the laws of the universe and is not part of the universe, well, that's exactly what something that doesn't exist is defined as.
Not part of the universe, can't be perceived in any way.
There's no difference between God and a vacuum.
And so, um, if we say God exists, and when we parse out the actual statement, we say, we find out that it means that that which is defined as not existing exists, then we have, you know, one of Aristotle's three laws of logic has been violated, and we don't have to look any further, but we simply know that it is not a true statement.
Um, Stephan, um, We're obviously having a debate here, and you're obviously a great man, and you're a person who I am, and you're a person who is running the Martyr's Philosophy show on the planet, and I'm just some dude calling in.
So I hope, I'm asking you to be a good patient with you.
Just debate.
You don't have to give me the backstory or give me the subtitles or tell me what I do and don't do.
Just respond to my argument.
My argument is that it's the freaking worst argument I've heard of my fucking wife.
Pure sophistry.
Sorry, what I have said is the worst argument you've ever heard in your life?
Do you think that might be a bit of hyperbole?
It might be a bit of hyperbole.
But don't tell me it's a bad argument.
Just disprove it.
I will.
But then don't give me all this crap ahead of time by telling me it's a really bad argument.
It's pure sophistry, which is very insulting, by the way.
Here's where we may part ways in terms of being nice to each other.
Because you just accused me of sophistry and putting forward a really terrible argument.
And because it's the biggest philosophy show in the world, I ought to know better.
So, of course, you're basically kind of accusing me of dissembling and falsifying and putting forward something I don't believe.
So here, I mean, I get your aggression, but rather than telling me that I'm wrong, which is sort of a waste of time, you either prove that I'm wrong or you don't, but telling me that I'm wrong before you prove is called poisoning the well.
It's trying to get people to believe that I'm wrong before you actually take the trouble to make an argument.
That's sophistry, my friend.
This is why I ask you for some patience.
So one of the things...
Well, how about you...
Hang on, hang on.
How about you provide me some patience rather than just telling me I'm a sophist putting forward the worst argument you've ever heard?
Is that giving patience to me?
Is that being patient with me?
Well, I honestly don't think...
I honestly think that you're being emotional right now.
And I would like to...
No, no, forget that.
Forget the emotionality.
It doesn't matter if I'm emotional or not.
Are you being patient with me?
Because you're asking me to be patient with you, but of course we should not ask for virtues that we ourselves are not providing in a conversation.
Are you being patient with me?
And consider it with me.
I think so.
By saying that it's pure sophistry and the worst argument you've ever heard, that's being patient and kind.
You know what?
You're right.
Because that is...
I use hyperbole there.
It's rude.
Yeah, it's a bit rude.
You're right.
You're right.
There's not the worst argument for her.
I think it's an unfair argument, and I do think it's soft.
No, unfair is not a philosophical term.
It's either a valid or an invalid argument.
It's invalid.
Okay.
So, go ahead.
Invalidate it.
Okay.
Your argument can be viewed, and please let me, this is a little long-winded, so I'll No, no.
Don't be long-winded, man.
You've studied thought.
You've studied reason.
You've studied argument.
What you have to do is disprove my argument.
Here's the thing.
Your argument is essentially that infrared radiation doesn't exist because you can't sense it.
Of course you can sense it.
I said directly or indirectly.
You can sense radiation with a Geiger counter.
Have you ever heard of remote viewing?
Well, hang on.
do you concede that I covered radiation in my argument?
Yes.
You said indirectly, yes, correct.
I missed that point.
No, because I just disproved something that you said, and then you moved on without any acknowledgement, which is not fair.
It was my fault.
I missed that you said indirectly, so I apologize for that.
Remember I was talking about a black hole, that you can't see a black hole directly, but did you miss that whole part?
I saw that part, but the black hole is essentially an information void.
I'm sorry, black hole is what?
Well, it's considered a void of information, because there is no information that comes out of it.
So, saying that the fact that there is an information void is considered proof that a black hole exists.
No, no, no.
The proof that a black hole exists is that you can see its effects on surrounding matter.
As I pointed out, like it's pulling that star stuff into a big whirlpool around it.
So you see its effects on that which is around it.
And that's how you know it's there.
Right.
And I have personally, myself, I've known dozens of people who have had No, no, hang on, hang on.
That's not the argument.
You're drifting.
So first of all, you said that you missed the whole point where I was talking about indirect, right?
Which means you either weren't listening or you didn't understand the argument.
That's not a very good sign in terms of your first rebuttal.
I'm just pointing this out, you know, as a guy who's a philosopher.
So we can drop that, the argument that you had about radiation, and I'll also be fine with the fact that you missed a whole segment of my argument, and then you called my argument the worst argument you'd ever heard and pure sophistry when you weren't even listening or didn't even understand some of it, and then you accused me of hubris?
I mean, yes, because...
You dismissed my entire argument as being terrible and pure sophistry, and you didn't even understand a significant part of my argument.
It's a terrible argument saying that God is limited by the laws of this.
Where did you get that from?
Hang on, hang on.
Let's go back.
No, let's go back.
No, you're dodging again.
John, John, John, you're dodging again.
You called my argument the worst argument you'd ever heard, and you didn't even understand a basic point that I reiterated several times.
Which is, hey, I asked you, patient, it sounds like you're responding right now like you're butt hurt.
And I ask you for patience to have a long explanation of my perspective in contrast to your own, and you are jumping on my response.
I'm not jumping on your response.
You said that my argument was the worst argument you'd ever heard, and you failed to understand a basic part of my argument.
I'm sorry, I'll let you talk, because if we both talk at the same time, we're not communicating.
So go ahead.
Thank you.
So, do you reject the experiences of great minds?
Oh no, no.
I'm still staying on this topic and then we can move on.
So just from the perspective of somebody who's having a conversation with you, which I guess is not feedback you've had a lot of because you've probably got away with this quite a bit.
You said to me after I made an argument that it was the worst argument you'd ever heard, and it was pure sophistry.
And then it turned out you didn't even...
Hang on, hang on, hang on.
Let me finish.
Remember we said that if we both...
Hang on.
Remember we said if we both talk at the same time, we're not communicating?
So can I finish my thought?
Are we going to agree right now that we're not going to interrupt each other?
You interrupted me just now.
Yeah, you've interrupted me approximately a dozen times now.
So if we're going to agree that we're not going to interrupt each other, I will utterly agree to that.
But you just interrupted me.
Right.
Because you have interrupted me multiple times.
So I will continue to let you speak completely without interruption as long as we have equality in terms of agreement of our discourse.
Fantastic.
Okay, so if I can continue my point without you interrupting, that would be great.
Yes, sir.
And I won't interrupt you either.
Great.
Okay.
So, the point of contention here is that you're accusing me of hubris, of arrogance, You stated, after I made my argument, that it was the worst argument you'd ever heard, and it was pure sophistry.
And then it turned out that you didn't even understand one of the basic points that I made, which I made several times.
Does that seem troubling to you?
What seems troubling to me is that you're correct.
It was rude.
And that it was not the worst argument I've ever heard.
I think it was an invalid argument.
But you're right.
I used rhetoric in terms of our discourse because I thought you're I guess your argument emotionally triggered me in a way that I should have had better emotional management.
And for that I apologize for and I should apologize for because it's a lie.
It's not the worst argument I've ever heard.
I think it's a valid argument.
I think you're missing out on certain key facts and understandings of things.
I think that the whole concept of being able to perceive things is missing things like, let's say, intuition and indirect senses are often things that need to be developed, such as in drinking wine.
You have to kind of be taught and learn how to find certain earthly notes and Fruity notes in Hawaiian.
Because you won't know that initially.
And those are qualities that need to be developed, just like case selection qualities need to be developed.
And that you have not directly experienced these things is not a valid argument than so many other people have.
And that's my primary point.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you, but that wasn't my argument.
You're not addressing my argument.
My argument wasn't, I have not experienced it, therefore it's not true.
I never said anything like that.
So I'm not sure what you're responding to, but that's not how debates are supposed to work, right?
I make a case and you can make a counter case and find the flaws in my logic and all that.
But you're responding to a straw man in that I never said there's no God because I've never personally experienced one.
I never made any kind of case like that.
You're saying there's no evidence.
I'm sorry, I don't...
I already made the case.
I mean, do you not understand the case?
I mean, I don't know about you.
Like, when I'm in a debate...
Somebody is making points.
I'm sort of feverishly writing them down and trying to figure out whether they make sense.
Yeah, I'm not feverishly writing them down.
Okay, even non-feverishly.
Yeah, okay.
I'm listening to what you're saying and hearing you make points that just don't seem to be logically connected.
Okay, but then you've got to disprove that they're logical.
Then make the case against my case.
But what you're saying that some people have experienced something in heaven is not the case.
Are you saying that God comes from the physical world and he's not God?
How does it make sense?
Are you saying that you could accept a definition of God as something that would be part of the universe, that would be physically detectable, either directly or indirectly, and would be subject to all the laws of the universe?
Well, Well, one of the things about something that people often note with God is these laws of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipotence.
John, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just want to point out, I don't think you're answering Steph's question that he just asked.
I was going to mention that, but I didn't want to.
Yeah, I think it's okay for the host to jump in sometimes to interrupt if it's going off, but he has a very specific question there, and Forgive me.
Please forgive me.
I'm kind of long-winded and kind of oblique in the way that I respond to some things.
And so one of the things that an organized creative principle of its conscious and self-awareness also has the power to limit its own power.
And so that's the case if you have something that exists outside of The material universe and enters into it.
It has the power to kind of alter its nature temporarily or indefinitely.
Just like you and I have the power and the free will to transition from art to case selection units and so forth.
And so the concept that something that a very powerful Organizational principle has the option of compromise.
I don't think it's unreasonable in a statement.
So, are you saying that God both is and is not subject to the laws of the universe?
Yes.
Okay.
So if God both is and is not subject to the laws of the universe, then at some point we will be able to detect God through his effects on matter and our energy.
Like if I say something is both within and is inside and outside a room, right, like someone standing on both sides, then I can detect the part of them that's inside the room and at least know that there's half a person then I can detect the part of them that's inside the room
So if God is both inside and outside the universe, then we can detect that part of God that is inside the universe, and therefore he would then be proven to, or something would be proven to exist, right?
But the part of God that was outside the universe would be outside any possible test of existence, and therefore would be synonymous with non-existence.
No, no, no.
Here's a fellow thing to inform my perspective.
Have you ever heard of remote viewing before?
I'm sorry, have you ever what?
Have you ever heard of remote viewing before?
I have.
You have?
Okay, great.
Steph, are you familiar with remote viewing?
I'm thinking of remote control of PCs, but...
Remote viewing is essentially, well, I'll just say, remote viewing is essentially, there is something in a locked space that you don't know what's in, and you're able to ascertain what is in that space without any exposure to information or experience of that space.
Yes, pretty much so.
Yeah, and what it is, is this is a very interesting subject that you might want to look into.
It's because it's crazy.
It's one of those crazy things that you would not expect to be normal in part of the world, but it is.
What happened in the Cold War, the United States figured out that the Soviets had a psychic spying program.
The Soviets had what?
A psychic spying program.
It's very easily documented.
And so being the Cold War, you know, this competition thing, you know, the United States figured out, hey, we have to have a psychics fighting program, too.
And so in the 70s, early 70s, what they did is they had two physicists, Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, take a bunch of psychics at the Stanford Research Institute, and they basically tested these guys, hardcore.
To find out, like, are these people actually able to perceive data without any kind of sensory input?
And they did all these kind of experiments.
And they did so.
And they objectively were able to figure out, like, wow, some of these guys are not bullshit on this.
They're actually able to perceive data without any fucking sensory input.
And then what they did was they...
They started figuring out, like, what's going on in these people's heads when they're doing this?
What's the psychological process?
It just doesn't happen at random.
And they put together these protocols based upon tension, you know, from certain things to other things.
And then they started bringing soldiers, often who had had weird things like near-death experiences and stuff like that, And they taught them this protocol, and they were able to do the same thing, acquire accurate data without any sensory input.
Wait, wait, and how has this been proven in double-blind experiments and so on?
Yes, man.
I don't believe you.
I simply don't believe you.
I simply don't believe you even remotely.
I have a remote viewing, but this is not true.
Let me just jump in here, too, because I think there's something relevant to this discussion.
John, this is something you're probably not aware of, but are you familiar with Project Alpha at all?
It was something involving the Washington University.
I've never heard of that.
It's talked about pretty extensively in An Honest Liar, which is James Randi's documentary, which just came out, which I will wholeheartedly recommend to everyone as well.
It's really interesting.
And James Randi runs the James Randi Educational Foundation.
He's a magician.
I'm just explaining to the audience as well, which may not be aware.
So James Randi runs the James Randi Educational Foundation, and one of the aspects of the Educational Foundation these days is a million-dollar challenge where claims, possibly paranormal or psychic, remote viewing falls in this category.
He's done remote viewing in the past.
People are allowed to come in and try and prove their claims under controlled conditions for the opportunity to get a million dollars.
Now, before there was the Million Dollar Challenge, there was this Project Alpha project where James Randi, with some people involved at Washington University, set up some studies to try and test supposed psychic abilities.
And Randi put in some plants, which were mentalists, some people that are trained in magic and other disciplines where they can make people believe that they're psychic, make them believe that they have powers that they don't just by...
Tricks.
Simple magic tricks and that type of thing.
Yeah, within this project, there was quite a few scientists and these two mentalists completely confused and had these scientists believing that they were a real thing, that they were genuine psychics.
And it was only after an extended period of time that they came out and confessed and outed themselves and said that they were just essentially toying with the scientists the entire time for the purpose of proving that even under scientific conditions, you can't tell scientists They're not showing the infallibility of testing this type of stuff for people that aren't familiar with the methods that are being used to subvert the typical scientific process because people aren't looking for various conditions and attributes that the mentalists are employing to skew the data that's
being presented.
So, that's something I would just throw out there for food for thought.
It's described and gone over in great detail in An Honest Liar, which is Randy's documentary, this full-practic alpha hoax.
And it's a big part of Randy's early appeal and led to the James Randi educational profession and everything that it does now.
So, I just want to point that out there.
I also wanted to mention, too, that a fellow named Dean Radin in a book called The Conscious Universe says that the remote viewing program That was run by the government finally wound down in 1994.
The CIA basically shut it down because they were convinced that after 24 years of experiments it was clear that remote viewing was of no practical value to the intelligence community.
The CIA report noted that in the case of remote viewing there was a large amount of irrelevant, erroneous information that was provided and there was little agreement observed among the reports of the remote viewers.
The CIA report there were four independent There were six reported instances of failed replication.
And so the government poured almost a quarter century of trying to find value out of this and found no value.
Now, if a government program is shut down, boy, it's got to really fail because, man, lots of government programs continue going even when they don't fail.
So I think that it is not scientifically replicated, at least as far as I can tell.
There's some value to that response.
First of all, what Randy says is true.
People are easily fooled.
That's absolutely true.
People are easily manipulated.
That's one of the fucking tragedies of the world.
Unfortunately, the world is still filled with con artists and people are so easily manipulated by their beliefs and stuff like that.
The desire to believe things.
And the thing with remote viewing is that my story is that I used to run a nationally distributed musical culture magazine and I found out about this program and I went and while I was sitting under Dallas Master and who trained with a guy and I went and interviewed him for an article and he took a liking to me and at a time that he was training
like six people for a weekend for 50 grand apiece you know he trained me for a full 12 hours you know one-on-one and I became quite good at this and Can we test it right now, Jeff?
Yeah, let's do it.
Absolutely.
I'm holding something in my hand.
I want you to tell me what it is.
It doesn't work like that, man.
That's always what you hear.
That is exactly the same story.
Whenever you say to someone, whenever somebody says, I have psychic abilities, and the moment you decide to test them, you always hear the same response.
It's like clockwork.
It doesn't work that way.
Oh, so if you have a direct pipeline through to some omniscient deity, I'm thinking of a color, just ask that deity what it is.
Oh, it doesn't work that way.
Whenever you put forward a test to people's claims about their supposedly psychic abilities or their relationship with omniscience, you always hear the same response.
And I've literally been hearing it for over 35 years.
Whenever I've challenged people about their psychic abilities, you always hear the same response.
It doesn't work that way.
Well, that's correct, except it just doesn't work.
There's no that way or this way about it.
Now, let me please have a response without you interrupting me.
There is a technique.
There's a very organized and disciplined way that it's set about.
It is an organized structure.
One of the things about it is it's not that bullshit.
It's not like, guess what I have in my pocket.
Let me give you a great example.
Why isn't it that way?
Please, you just interrupt me.
Well, no, but you made a statement.
Am I not allowed to ask for what that statement even means?
This is a conversation, John.
We have to be able to ask questions.
I'm not trying to interrupt you.
Like, you make a statement.
Two and two make five.
I can't sort of, until I understand what you're saying, there's no point in continuing.
It's literally not like, you know, I want cake.
Here's cake.
No, there's an order for things.
And one of the things about stuff is like, I'll give you a great example.
I was...
They use this military language.
And I was given a target.
And this was a long time ago.
And when you receive the target data, all you receive is a series of numbers that were faxed to me.
So there was nobody in the fucking house, nobody around me.
I didn't speak to anyone.
I just got some numbers faxed to me.
And then you go through this series of symbol production, of focusing your attention in certain ways.
You start producing impressions.
And the impressions are entirely based upon first impressions, but not thinking.
Doing whatever your impressions before you analyze the data.
And anytime you start to actually think you know what it is, it's considered to be imagination.
And so I'm doing this frickin'...
I've got eight numbers in front of me.
I've got papers that you organize in a certain fashion.
You move from simple to more complex data.
And I'm writing down over...
I'm drawing a fucking...
Dude, I'm sorry.
Look, I've got to interrupt you here, because it is my show, and I'm asking you for scientific proof, and you're saying, I did some stuff once, which I can't possibly verify, which I have no way of knowing if you're telling me the truth or not.
I mean, you're just rambling.
This has nothing to do with science or philosophy or truth or anything.
So ultimately what happened is I drew the Golden Gate Bridge, and then I called up and said, please...
Hang on, hang on.
Did you hear me?
Yes.
So what you just continue is if I didn't talk?
You interrupted me.
No, I did interrupt you because you're speaking nonsense.
This is a philosophy show, not your claims that can't be verified by anyone about subjective experiences that you think are true.
People intuitively experience things.
Everything's not based upon the physical senses.
Evolutionary biologists have shown that we have thought centers in our brain that are based upon, their instincts are based upon coalition identification.
No, no, you have to prove things.
You're claiming that you have an ability, you reject my demand that you, or my request that you prove it, and then you just give me some rambling story about something happened that I can't possibly verify.
Do not let me finish the story, then.
No, I don't want you to finish the story because it's not relevant to a discussion about philosophy, truth, reason, empiricism, or reality.
The relevant story is that people have throughout history, great minds, greater than yours and mine, like Newton, have experienced God.
And that that is a meaningful experience for them.
How do you know whether, hang on, how do you know whether Newton experienced God?
Oh, come on, bro.
Don't give me that epistological argument of like, how do you know that you're even here?
You could be a brain in the back.
I didn't say that.
I didn't say how do you know that you're even here.
That's an argument for exaggeration.
What I'm asking is, when people got thrown in jail for being atheists, saying, well, I know what they experienced because they professed a public belief in God, It's like saying, well, gosh, everyone under Stalin was a communist because they all said they were communists.
It's like, nope, they just got thrown in jail or got thrown into the gulag.
I don't know.
Maybe he did, maybe he did have a subjective experience of a deity, but I don't know for sure.
I know what people, what he wrote down.
I know what other people, I know he went to church and so on, but that was the law.
I mean, you had to do it.
But you're playing upon doubt.
Ultimately, we make faith about fucking everything.
I mean, we don't, we're not omniscient.
We know, I don't perfectly know that I'm actually speaking to you right now.
I could follow some, you know, ridiculous thing out of the brain of that which, you know, is so unlikely.
That it's not even worth paying attention to.
When you have things like the likelihood of proteins producing themselves randomly happening, being greater than the number of atoms in the universe, that's not even worth looking at because it is so freaking unlikely.
Could it be true?
Yes, it could be true.
But it's so incredibly unlikely.
John, this is a word salad of assertions.
Right?
Because first we're talking about remote viewing, and then you're talking to me about Newton, and you're using the argument from authority.
Well, Newton's smarter than you, and he believed in God, so of course you have to believe in God.
You've got to know that that is a...
A fallacy, right?
The argument from authority is one of the basic fallacies that you learn when you're about eight years old.
And you're trying to pull that in a philosophical discussion as if I'm not going to be aware of that.
Well, Newton was smart and he believed in God, so you should believe in God.
That is completely a false argument.
You know that, right?
It's called the argument from authority.
I have not been skilled in these terms of debate.
I basically debate sanctionally.
You should learn how to debate.
Because you should know when you're making a fallacious argument.
And you should learn how to rebut an argument that's been made.
Because I made an argument that was pretty clear, I think, at the beginning, and you've not really responded to any of it.
And you're pulling out remote viewing, and then proteins, and then Newton, and like all sorts of stuff, right?
But none of that is any coherent response to the argument that I put forward.
And I understand you are not well-versed in how to have a debate.
It's not your forte.
It's not I guess it wasn't taught to you in the education that you went through.
I mean, I've been on the debating team since I was in high school, and I've studied all the debating techniques and all the fallacies.
Well, I shouldn't say all.
There's so many, right?
But I'm very experienced at debating, and you wanted to have a debate with me.
And if I say I want to play chess with someone, and I say, well, I just move the pieces where I feel they should go, Well, I'm not playing chess.
I'm just moving pieces around a chess board randomly.
But if you want to debate, then you have to learn how to play chess.
You have to learn where the pieces are and how they move and what's allowed and what's not allowed.
And this idea that you sort of debate instinctively, it's like me saying, well, I just play chess instinctively and the rooks can do whatever they want and the queen can do whatever.
That's not chess.
You're not playing the game the way the game has to be played if you want to have a debate and try to establish some truth.
And the worst thing is that you started off by telling me I don't know
how good I am at something because you're terrible at it.
It's not an insult.
I mean, the evidence is there for anybody who wants to listen to the conversation.
May I have a response?
You will have a response.
It won't be a response to what I've said, but you can certainly say what you want.
You're actually the first person to actually call me a terrible debater in my life.
Here's one of the things about this particular subject now.
I don't want to hurt your feelings.
Again, I want to emphasize this.
We're on the same side.
I totally respect you.
We just have an issue on this particular issue in which we differ.
What you do in the world is fucking awesome.
The information you present is amazing.
I agree.
You are a tremendous debater.
One of the things that is different between you and I, and I'm sorry that you, I have a certain pain in my life, and you have a certain pain in my life, is that I was raised with a very stable family, with a wonderful father who was born in poverty and worked his way up to being the Vice President of Walt Disney Corporation.
And You didn't have that.
I'm sorry, you probably didn't get your ass kicked, but I didn't.
One of the things about having a father that is useful in terms of being able to trun those case selection genes in which you can further appreciate the value of God is that your physical father has that similar role in that he's not around all the time.
He's out there in the world, invisible.
You can't freaking see him.
You don't know what he's doing, but he's out there gaining physical resources for the family to nourish you.
And that role, that mentoring role, provides a cognitive bridge to be able to appreciate the concept of something that you can't see.
That is out there providing spiritual resources for your personal evolution.
And I've had that mentoring, I've had that experience, and you haven't.
And so I understand...
Sorry, again, this...
I understand why this is a barrier for you.
I'm confused because earlier you said that...
So you just said you had a great childhood, but didn't, John, earlier you say that you were angry at God because you had a bad childhood?
I was...
No, I had a great family.
My family was great.
My childhood was not great.
My family was great.
Your childhood was bad, but your family was great?
Yes.
Yes, sir.
Doesn't your family have some responsibility in having you have a good childhood?
I'm also in the kind of person.
I didn't necessarily kind of audition.
They weren't really aware of The pain I was experiencing.
I didn't communicate that.
Wait, so you had a good family but you didn't tell them when you were in pain?
Yeah.
That's on me.
That's on me.
Wait, but isn't that not having a good family if you can't even tell them when you're suffering?
I wasn't fearful of my communication.
I just didn't feel like...
I mean, it sounds crazy now, I get it, but I just didn't feel like...
I felt like that was something I just needed to do with myself as opposed to looking at somebody else to like, you know, mommy solved my problem.
I just didn't process things like that.
So, John, do you remember...
It's a skill that I was able to bring to bear on our conversation, even without the miraculous power of remote viewing.
Do you remember I said that you were going to have a response, but it wasn't going to be a response to my argument?
And this is what happened, right?
You gave me a response which basically said, Steph, I'm right because you had a bad childhood.
And I didn't.
Well, you didn't have a father, as it was.
Okay, sorry.
So you're right, because I didn't have a father.
That is really being terrible at debating.
Because whether I had a father or not has no relevance on the validity or invalidity of the argument that I was presenting.
This is not a rebuttal of what it is that I'm saying.
Two and two make four.
Well, Steph, you don't understand that two and two make God because you didn't have a father.
That's not even incomprehensible.
That's like anti-comprehensible. - God, Stephen. - And the fact that no one has told you that you're bad at this is really troubling to me,
Because it means that you've not spent any time around anyone who knows anything about logical argumentation, rebuttal, rational constructions, propositions, or anything like that.
It means that you spend your life swimming around in the mental soup of people who don't have a clue what to do with their brains, and no one has ever pointed out that you're really terrible at this.
And I say this, like, positively, like, a smart guy could become better.
Is that purely why I graduated, similar to what you say, earned a perfect score on the ASVAB, which one in 50,000 people do, and twice earned a perfect score on my logic exam at Legere?
I have no idea of any of that.
I'm only telling you what I am experiencing and what I absolutely know for sure, that you are really terrible at this.
And look, I mean, if you listen back to it or with a critical mind, you write down the points that I make and whether you attempt to rebut them, You know, I started off by asking for a definition.
We didn't get very far in that.
You asked me for my proof against the existence of God.
I gave you that proof.
You didn't, but you're all over the map and you don't actually deal with any of the points that I'm bringing up.
Okay.
I should be writing notes because you are throwing a lot of information at me.
And it's a very good debating technique.
Like I said, you're excellent.
Hang on.
What do you mean technique?
You mean like a trick?
I make you laugh like a clown?
Is that what you're saying?
No, like when I put forward, you know, like you said, like Steph, you run the biggest philosophy show in the world and you know that I'm a very good debater.
It doesn't mean that I win because I'm a good debater.
It just means that I'm a very good debater.
And I've had a lot of experience in putting forward these arguments.
And so, if I'm up against somebody who's really good, I'm going to do my homework.
I'm going to study their arguments.
Like, of course, for those who don't know, we've gone over this very briefly, I've got a free book called Against the Gods?
Which is available at freedomainradio.com slash free.
So, when I go into a debate with someone, this is just preparation, right?
Because you're talking about hubris.
And hubris, of course, is being overconfident in your own abilities, right?
So, if I'm going up against...
Somebody who runs the biggest philosophy show in the world, and I want to school them on philosophy, then what I'm going to do, especially if they've written an 80-page book about exactly what we're talking about, what I would do is I would go through that book line by line, and I would find the logical problems in what this person had written.
The book is free.
I wouldn't even have to give them a penny to buy their big tome of error, right?
And I would be really prepared, and I would see all of the errors, and I would say, well, on this page of the book you said this, and on this page of the book you said this.
This doesn't make sense.
This doesn't follow.
I'd be prepared.
I'd be ready.
Well, Stefan, I was really hoping that we could have a conversation between two friends who want to help each other, as opposed to me beating you.
As opposed to you doing what?
As opposed to me beating you in something.
Like, I really did not want to go into this thing as a matter of like...
No, but we have a disagreement.
We have a disagreement, but like...
Generally speaking, man, like, you know...
You know nothing about me, and I unfortunately know more about you because I've watched certain videos for years.
And I've really grown to enjoy you.
And I've really grown to like, you know...
I just really appreciate what you do not only as a mom, but where did you come from?
You're honestly trying to make the world a better place and you're You're cutting through all the fucking bullshit.
And it's freaking so awesome.
It's so wonderful that you're doing that.
I don't know what we're talking about.
First of all, when I gave you my first argument...
Things like, if we look at our conversation, that, you know, if you study moralistic programs like that, you know, communication isn't just like the word script.
We're talking about phrasing, the tonality, and stuff like that.
And when...
I've challenged you.
Your turn of voice speeds up.
It becomes like aggressive.
You are the one who began interrupting me early, which is a terrible thing to do in the discourse.
And that communicates to me that you are communicating from A defensive and emotional position.
And I will concede to you several things like, you know, I'm sorry if I insulted you calling me to this office.
That was, you know, I gauged in hyperbole.
You were right to call me out and all that.
Absolutely.
You know?
You're right.
I have no excuse for that.
But I do not think that we have had an evil-keel honest discussion of things.
You have mired your feet In this thing that you have no personal experience of.
And that's just odd, man.
Consider how brilliant you are.
Consider how committed, truth you are.
Everything like that.
If you were like a frickin' radical agnostic, I wouldn't even explain you either of that.
The fact that you know that something exists that you have no experience of is It's so odd to me.
Okay, well let me help make it, because the word odd is not an argument, unless I'm saying that something is even, right?
So I will help you to understand and make it less odd for you, which again doesn't have anything to do with philosophy or truth value, but I can de-odify it hopefully a little bit.
So if you're saying that God is a subjective experience, I completely agree with you.
I completely agree with you, John, that there are lots of people in the world, maybe even the majority of people in the world, who have a subjective experience which they call God.
Now, philosophy, though, does not respect the epistemological validity or the metaphysical reality of subjective experiences.
Like, that's how we know If I had a dream about an elephant last night, I didn't actually see a real elephant, something happened in my mind.
And so the differentiation between internal processes and external reality is, well, founded in metaphysics, but epistemology is the study of knowledge, how we acquire valid knowledge, must differentiate between internal experiences and external reality.
There are people who have psychotic visions, There are people who have brain tumors who see things that can't possibly exist.
There are crazy people who believe that they're reincarnation of Jesus Christ or they're Napoleon.
There are lots of people who have very vivid subjective experiences.
For instance, there is some explanation as to why people believe that they've been abducted by space aliens, that the chemical that your body releases when you sleep, that when you dream of running, your legs don't actually move and wake you up.
It deadens you.
It's like a narcotic for your muscles.
It deadens your muscles.
And so people who claim that they've been abducted by space aliens will often say, you know, like, I woke up and I couldn't move and there were these shadowy people around me and so on.
And they have found that there are people who wake up before the sleep paralysis leaves their body and they experience exactly that.
I woke up.
I couldn't move.
That same thing produces visions of shadowy people around you.
Now...
That doesn't mean that nobody could get abducted by space aliens.
Physically, it's possible.
They can't get abducted by square circles, but they can get abducted by space aliens because there's nothing about space aliens or abductions or spaceships that fundamentally violates the laws of physics or violates the law of non-contradiction or identity or anything like that.
So when you say to me, Steph, lots of people have had this subjective experience, I don't disagree with you and I honestly believe that they honestly believe that they've had this subjective experience.
What they cannot do is they cannot say my subjective experience translates into objective reality.
That I'm bringing Freud into a philosophical discussion is not...
Not kosher in many ways, but Freud believed that this feeling of oneness that the Buddhists pursued, this sense of nirvana, had to do with an oceanic feeling of oneness that we had with our mothers in our mothers' arms and so on.
That's not science, but that's just one metaphorical way that someone had of describing how people seem to have a similar kind of situation.
There are ways of inducing religious visions in the minds of people by stimulating a particular area of the brain with electricity.
And they see angels, and they see devils, and they experience God.
There is a form of temporal lobe epilepsy that fully replicates religious visions.
And this temporal lobe epilepsy is not rare, not that rare in the population.
So there are numerous and powerful and vivid and entirely believable subjective experiences that people have.
That in no way, shape, or form can then jump from inside the mind to empirical and objective within reality.
The empirical and objective within reality is a totally separate process.
A subjective experience in no way proves an objective existence.
So when you say, well, lots of people have had these experiences, I fully accept that.
What's interesting is that they tend to have the experiences that are culturally appropriate to their history.
You don't see a lot of Muslims suddenly getting visions of Jesus, and you don't see a lot of Christians suddenly getting visions of, you know, eight-armed, scimitar-wheeling, elephant-headed gods from India and so on.
It tends to be kind of relative to their own cultural histories and environments and so on.
And that's the one point.
The other point is that you said I've never pursued it.
Of course, I was raised religious.
I was raised as a Christian and I believed when I was a kid.
So this idea that I've never pursued it is false as well.
But that's what I wanted to point out with regards to subjective experience.
When you say that God exists as a subjective experience within people's minds, I fully and completely accept and agree with you.
But there is no way to validly take a subjective experience and replicate it as an objective reality without empirical testing and rational consistency.
That's how we know our dreams are our dreams and not our waking life.
Well, Stephen, I think that I will not accuse you of soft true that argument.
That was great.
Um...
The only one point that will take challenge to is that you're right.
They tend to be culturally specific.
And that's the weird thing about this thing, which is essentially you're dealing entirely with the left brain.
I'm a left brain person.
I think it should be dominant.
But there is a value in this kind of right brain processing, which tends to move into things that aren't as linearly defined logically.
You're absolutely right.
Michael was talking about that with Randy.
It's really muddy.
The whole element of spirituality is very muddy waters because lie and truth is not as easily defined as it is through scientific method.
And very similar things that can look very similar can be madness or they can be genius.
And we talked about how in the Middle East nobody's seen Jesus Christ.
Actually, if you do some research, there's a weird phenomenon that's going on is that People around the world are having visions of Jesus Christ, not having visions of Mahouda or Krishna or something.
It's only this one figure and that's an outlier in terms of data.
I don't think I wouldn't be able to convince you.
I guess that maybe wasn't my purpose here.
I want to ask your forgiveness to a certain degree in that you made some valid points that I didn't do my best job on.
Which, you know, I should have.
I always want to bring my best job to things.
I just would hope that you would consider that with truth, we tend to want, especially as frickin' men, we want things clear-cut.
You know, this clear-cut, like, it's either a wave or a particle.
But sometimes it depends upon how you look at it.
It could be a waiver of particle, like the Heisenberg and Cerny principle.
With this kind of like spiritual thing and with things like intuition and with remote view, which I hope you'll do some research on and maybe be a little bit more open-minded, it's not the same thing as like gravity.
It's murkier and it requires a whole lot of attention to kind of separate the wheat and chattel from these things.
I just would hope that in this conversation, you would just be open to a slightly more open mind on the subject matter.
And that's all I'm asking of you.
If you say no, hey, it's okay.
I just am presenting my experience, my knowledge, and maybe that could be behind you.
Oh, listen, I'm always open to new arguments and evidence.
I'm just not open to mere assertions, right?
I mean, I put out for a reason.
I just don't put out at frat parties.
Can I ask you a couple of questions just as we finish up?
Oh, sure.
Thank you.
As I said, you know, I used to work in a film...
I'm in the television industry and the music industry in Los Angeles, and I've met a whole lot of celebrities in my life, countless celebrities in my life.
When I found out that I was going to be speaking with you, you have no idea how nervous and exciting I was.
It was pretty short notice.
I thought I was going to have more time to prepare for it.
John, sorry to cut you off, man, but were you even listening to what Steph said?
Yeah.
He asked if he could ask you a question and then you went on a monologue.
Yeah, my monologue is just like, dude, you're awesome.
Please ask me any questions you want.
Okay.
How tall are you?
I am a little short of playing 5'9".
5'9".
And what do you weigh?
Right now I weigh 185.
And are you fairly athletic?
Yeah, fairly athletic.
I'm getting back into shape.
I was an athlete in high school, a free sport athlete, a martial artist most of my life.
Okay.
And have you ever done any modeling?
Yes, I've done a little bit of modeling, but that was not professional.
Oh, I understand.
I understand.
You're a very good-looking guy, I assume.
I really don't think so.
I'm okay with you.
I'm better than average with you.
Mike, you've got a picture here.
We've got a picture on Skype.
We'll keep it private, of course, right?
But what do you think?
I'd say you fall on the handsome scale, John.
Thank you, Mike.
I would say...
I was acquainted in that fashion.
I'd, you know, give you a second look.
No, listen, I got to tell you, man.
I mean, Nice had a thick blonde hair.
Blue eyes, is that right?
Long face.
And you know what they say about guys with long faces.
A lot of shaving.
Anyway.
But been to Los Angeles.
Not driven out on the ugly cart, as a lot of people who go to Los Angeles are.
And so I'm going to tell you straight up, 8.5 to 9.5 out of 10.
Well, that's very kind of a show.
I'm not sure it is.
Let me keep going.
And are you in your 20s?
Oh, no, sir.
I'm not sure.
And how recent is this photo?
About a year and a half old.
About what?
A year and a half old.
And you're in your 30s?
I'm in my 40s.
I'm 45 percent.
You look incredibly young for your age, John, I will say.
Thank you, sir.
Incredibly young for your age.
Thank you.
And are you married?
No, I'm single, sir.
You're single.
And how often do you date?
I've joined the sexist, sir.
I don't date him.
When did you last have a relationship?
I last had a relationship in December of last year.
Okay, so it's relatively easy.
And did you have much trouble getting dates in the past?
Not in California, but I do.
So, I mean, certainly you're a very fine-looking person.
Man, for any age, but, you know, 45s.
You're 45.
I guess this was when you were 43 and a half.
Yeah, you look fantastic, right?
I mean, one of the best-looking guys in that age range that I've seen, you know, just judging by the picture and all that.
And again, I know it's not any kind of professional shot or whatever.
It's webcam-y, blurry stuff.
But nonetheless, you look fantastic.
I will tell you something about pretty people.
in my experience this does not have any relevance to our discussion whatsoever and this is no proof or disproof of anything this is just something that I'm sure you're somewhat aware of but because the listeners may not be aware of this and it may not be relevant to you but it is important in my experience the prettier the person is the prettier the person is the less people want to criticize them you have no idea that no criticism is
I do have some idea, because you said nobody has ever said that you're a bad debater.
So I have some idea of the criticism that you've had in your life.
I'm just going with my experience, but sealed within this conversation.
I've also found in my life that people...
Not to be a bitch about those, but I've also found in my life that people who are involved tend to respond negatively to my benefit.
I don't know.
I didn't actually see your picture until just a few minutes ago.
So, yeah, I guess, yeah, bald people probably feel that, you know, I mean, you've got a fine head of shoulder length, blonde hair in your 40s.
Yeah, they probably feel some, I don't know, bugs them or whatever, right?
But anyway, so I'm just pointing out that...
You're a little guy, man.
I mean, like, seriously, you're a little...
I love my looks.
I am very happy with my looks and you couldn't pay me to have that head of hair because I go in front of a camera too often.
You know, I'm with Patrick Stewart versus Catherine Janeway in the Star Trek series.
The woman who played Catherine Janeway was like, Patrick Stewart has it so easy because I have to spend an hour to get my hair to look like this every single day of shooting.
And I'm like, I'm low maintenance.
I'm like up and go.
And so I feel like I get to live an extra five years by being bald.
And I'm very happy.
And I think the Added testosterone is not the end of the world for what I do.
So neither here nor there.
But because you have a reality distortion field around you just by being very physically attractive.
And I would say the same thing.
You've heard me ask this of women.
Women who have outlandish ideas.
At least ideas that aren't necessarily as strictly empirical and logical as some people might like.
And a lot of times people are just looking into your dreamy blue eyes and nodding because you're very attractive.
And this does, again, I'm not saying this has anything to do with the quality or non-quality of your arguments, but it is something to be aware of that everything that is a blessing, as you know, is also a curse.
With great knowledge comes great sorrow.
And with great wisdom comes great pain sometimes.
Everything that is a blessing is also a curse.
Good looks are a blessing, but among certain people, it doesn't necessarily give you the most objective view of things.
Anyway, that's all I wanted.
Everything in life has the potential to be a trap.
It's just how it is.
A strength can be a weakness.
All that happens.
People overcompensate.
What they're not good at, they I'm sorry, did you want to add something else?
No, man.
I just want to again express...
I just want to reassert that I love what you do and that we're not able to see common ground and things.
It will not change the fact that I love what you do.
And I apologize if I didn't do my best for us to see more common ground on things.
Well, no problem with that.
I mean, there may be no common ground in this particular area and that's perfectly fine.
I also wanted to say how much I enjoyed the conversation.
It's nice and enjoyable and invigorating to have someone come on who really disagrees with me or, you know, at least has an alternative perspective and it keeps me sharp and it keeps me focused and I really appreciate the call, John.
It was a great pleasure to have the conversation.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Things are gracious.
I just will make the one request that Some of these points that I mentioned that if you wouldn't mind putting a small amount of the resources into looking into that, maybe that might alter your perspective in a way that I
will be happy to do so.
Thank you very much.
Thanks everyone so much.
a wonderful evening of philosophical back and forth and always a real pleasure to be able to speak with you the fine listeners freedomainradio.com slash oh is he going to say free no he's not he's going to say donate no he's going to say free freedomainradio.com slash free if you want to pick up my books so I think that they are obviously worth picking up.
Join the 100,000 or so other people who are downloading and perusing and consuming the books every month.
Month!
Yes, that's right.
In Canada, a best-selling book is 5,000 copies.
Fine if you give things away for free.
You can move a lot more products.
So you can go to FreeDomainRadio.com slash free to get the books.
Of course, if you like them or you like this conversation, you want it to continue to expand, Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
And thanks again, Mike, for lining up a great series of callers.
