March 27, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:26
3240 The Secret About Nitpickers: What They Won't Tell You!
Have you ever been worn down by the slow drip, drip, drip of nitpicker driven skepticism? Stefan Molyneux describes the danger of flagpole scenarios and the sophistic tricks used to enable mental procrastination in those who care about consistency. Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donateArticle: Hanging By A Threadhttp://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/1029/freedomain-radio-hanging-by-a-threadThe Edge of Moralityhttp://www.fdrpodcasts.com/#/2426/the-edge-of-morality
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain Radio.
Hope you're doing well.
Well, welcome to my dark side.
Ladies and gentlemen, I uncorked it recently and it seems to be flowing with a full black Icarusaurin-type tears down the landscape of my soul.
So here we're going to talk about a fellow who goes by Xander.
Xander?
And forget about the moral argument as a whole.
I just really want to work on the form as a whole.
He wrote to me and he said, How about this?
This is about a free society without a state.
How about this?
One guy in town owns the dam.
The only source of electricity.
And the indoor plumbing system.
The only source of tap water.
This guy literally slaps his children up and down the street every day.
People cannot convince him to stop with words.
Because this sick fellow actually wants to hurt his children.
People cannot initiate force against him because that would be immoral as they learned in preschool.
People cannot effectively sanction against him because no one wants to risk losing their electricity and tap water.
The question is this.
In your system, Steph, how do you stop this jerk from abusing his children in this situation?
Oh, Xandy.
Oh, Xandy, how little you truly understand how much you're working for the forces of evil.
Let me tell you.
First of all, the argument is very, very simple.
Of course you can initiate force against somebody who's beating up his children because self-defense is a universal right and thus can be acted on as a third party.
That's why you can hire security guards to protect your property.
Of course, if somebody's beating someone up, third parties can act to prevent it.
It's not a violation of the non-aggression principle.
This guy is initiating force.
Easy answer.
So the question is, since Xander knows apparently how to type, probably using his tiny penis, why could he not figure this out?
Well, because the purpose of this fellow, I'm just going to call him Mr.
X. The purpose of Mr.
X's argument, as is the purpose of so many arguments that are put forward to consistent people, is paralysis.
That is the entire and whole and sole and total point is paralysis.
Let me give you an analogy before I dive into the actual argument.
So...
Let's say that you want to become a boxer, and I am your trainer.
And you come to me and I say, wow, you're a big guy.
Strong, meaty, northern European type.
You can beat living hell.
Actually, they're better at weightlifting, but you can beat living hell out of anyone.
But let's say I tell you this.
Okay.
To become a boxer, the first thing you need to do is limber up, right?
You've got to stretch.
You've got to really be able to stretch out those hamstrings, stretch out.
Because, you know, if you're not limber and you throw a punch or something, you pull a muscle.
So you've really got to be limber to be a boxer.
And you're like, okay, so...
Coach Steph, show me some stretches.
And, you know, I show you a bunch of stretches.
And you do some stretching, you know, for half an hour.
Say, okay, sorry, I don't mean to sound like Mr.
Miyagi-style training, but you've got to go away.
Now you come back tomorrow and, you know, we'll start to work.
You come back the next day, I'm like, okay, a little more stretching because...
Stretching is the key, right?
And you do 45 minutes of stretching, and then you say to me, okay, can we go and hit something, punch something, get in the ring or something?
No!
Stretching is the key.
Trust me, you've got to keep stretching.
And you keep coming back and you keep coming back.
And all I keep telling you to do is to stretch.
And then maybe I say, you know, work your arm a little bit like this and so on.
And this goes on week after week after week, month after month after month.
You never get in the ring.
You never actually learn how to box.
Because all you're doing is doing the necessary but not sufficient preparations for getting into the ring and doing some actual boxing.
And maybe this goes on for years, that you've just, you've got to keep refining your preparation for boxing.
Right?
You've got to do maybe a little shadow boxing.
You know, maybe a little, do a little dance.
Make a little love.
Get down tonight.
And I keep telling you how to prepare for boxing, but you never actually get into the wrong ring and box.
You know, maybe you can hit those pads on my hands or whatever, but you never actually get into the ring to box.
Now, you do this for years, and then you know what I say to you?
Oh!
You know what?
You're too old.
Sorry.
You know, you really can't be a boxer at your age.
It's a shame, really, but I can't train you.
I've got to find a younger guy.
Now you'd be like, oh my god, I've been waiting to get into the ring and box for years, and all you've been doing is teach me how to prepare for it, but not actually do it, and now it's too late and I can't do it.
Well, you've prevented me.
I've prevented you from coming into the ring, right?
That's been my whole object.
Let's say that I had a lot of money on other boxers to win, right?
I got a whole stable of boxers, and I knew just looking at you the first time, you could take down those other boxers.
And so I pretended to train you when my sole goal was to keep you out of the ring because I didn't want my other boxers to lose.
Or imagine that there's rumors of rumors of war.
Bad, sinister, dangerous people are gathering just over the horizon.
And I offer to train you and your friends in the ways of combat, to save your civilization, to protect your women and children.
I am going to train you in the ways of combat.
And I say, well, the most important thing when it comes to war is to be a very good shot.
You must be flawless in your sniping.
So you practice, and I set up, you know, the tin cans on the fence post down 20 feet away, and you shoot, and you miss, and you shoot, and you miss, and then you shoot, you start to hit a little more, a little more.
I say, okay, well, I'm going to get rid of the can.
We're going to put a ping pong ball there.
Now you've got to shoot that.
Ah, okay.
Now I'm going to take away the ping pong ball.
I'm going to put a marble.
Now you've got to shoot that.
Then I'm going to throw that marble up in the air.
You've got to shoot that marble out of the air.
And then I'm going to release a butterfly in the woods and you've got to find it and shoot it and not miss!
And at some point you're going to be like, hey, can we actually, you know, armies are getting closer.
Can we actually go and do something?
No!
You can't fight yet.
You're not ready.
You're not perfect.
You're not perfect.
And then I say, I've licked one tiny piece of dust.
Up in the air it goes.
You must find it and shoot it.
And then I say, I have placed a ping-pong ball at the top of a tree deep in the forest.
You must fight.
All you do is practice.
All you do is practice, and you never actually go to fight.
The army passes you by.
The army takes the capital.
And then it turns out that I am, in fact, an agent of the enemy.
You see, they sent me as a spy to get you to only train and never fight, thus taking you out of the war.
And those with the greatest capacity and willingness and desire to fight are those you must most assiduously take out of the fight, because they're the ones who can actually win.
So this guy, Mr.
X... He's coming to me.
Now, he knows, because this is a matter of a fairly public record, he knows that I am fascinated by and driven by consistency.
Obsessive consistency disorder, OCD, that is the root of a rational and empirical thinker.
So he knows that if I detect an inconsistency in my thought systems, in my philosophy, or in philosophy, in my arguments, if I detect an inconsistency...
Facial tics.
It's going to kind of bother me.
You know, it's like I'm trying to see something at a distance.
This guy blows some sawdust into my eye.
It bothers me.
And so he's like, okay, you got to sort this one out.
And I guarantee you, without this speech, which is designed to save your life and civilization and the future as a whole, without the speech, I would have answered this and the guy would have come back with some other Argument.
Like years ago, someone gave me the argument, okay, Steph, you're into like property rights, right?
Okay, so picture this.
There's a guy, he's hanging from a flagpole.
He's hanging from a flagpole and he's going to fall 40 feet to his death.
And he kicks in a window and he crawls in through the window.
He's just violated someone's property rights because he's gone into their apartment without their permission.
Right?
So how can property rights be sacrosanct and sacred and universal if, in this instance, what, would you rather he fall to his death and leave a perfect moral stain on the sidewalk 40 feet below?
Aha!
Property rights aren't absolute because you advocate their abridgment, their violation.
You advocate this.
Death?
Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
And then, you know, I went and wrote an article and...
Rebutted this, and it all made sense, and we'll link to it below.
And what happened?
The guy came back with another one.
And this, I am ashamed to say, consumed many more mental cycles than it ever should have in me, and I, of course, want to pass along this wisdom so that it doesn't do the same thing for you.
The people who know, like, you want to put forward rational arguments?
empirical arguments, you are broadcasting to the world as a whole that you really, really, really, really, really, really, really care about consistency.
You care about rationality, You care that it hangs together.
It's not a house of cards.
It is a cathedral of concepts built upon rock.
Not upon sand.
So, as soon as you say, well, you know, here's my evidence, here's my...
People are like, ooh, that guy, he's got obsessive consistency disorder.
I know how to torture this guy.
Blow a little sawdust in his face.
Tell him he hasn't hit the ping-pong ball on the top of the tree three kilometers away, and until he does, he can't consider himself ready to fight.
I'm going to pick at every single loose thread that I could possibly find or invent, and the moment he seals it up, I'm just going to find another one.
Why?
Why?!
Why do they do this?
To keep you out of the ring.
To keep you out of the fight.
These are petty little sadists who know how to push your buttons because, if you're a rational thinker, you want consistency.
They know how to push your buttons.
They see what you want.
Consistency.
And then they torture you by throwing endless curveballs at you which you're supposed to hit instead of actually playing the game.
It's all stretching.
No boxing.
It's all practice.
No fighting.
And they take you out of the war.
And if you look at your life, and you're into consistency, how much time and energy have you spent trying to patch up every little conceivable imaginary hole in your tapestry, rather than rolling it out or hanging it to be admired by others?
And the question is fundamentally this.
This guy, Mr.
X, Xander...
Who creates this scenario where it's totally made up.
It's artificial.
There's no government in the town.
He's got all the water and the dam.
And he's beating his kids.
Is that really the number one moral issue in the world today?
It really is not.
And my question is for these guys and all the people like him.
There are people out in the world called most everyone except you and me who have completely crazy, irrational, contradictory, insane beliefs.
Is this person so fascinated by consistency?
Oh, things have got to be consistent or I just can't respect a system!
Dance for me, consistency person.
Dance for me, OCD person.
I throw a wrench into your perfect system and watch in sadistic glee as you dive around trying to patch it all up rather than actually going out there and fighting.
Oh, dance, my little puppet.
Here's a little curveball.
Here's a little inconsistency.
I've created some scenario involving space aliens with more arms than squids and more eyes than fruit flies who come down and have 74.9% the intelligence and empathy of human beings.
Are they people?
At what percentage point are they actually people?
You're on a lifeboat!
People are starving.
People are dying.
You only have a...
Dance!
My rational puppet of consistency as I throw these silly little stupid science fiction scenarios at your head and watch you go, huh, that's a good question.
I think I'll spend a day and a half rebutting it because that's going to fix everything and then you'll be rational, right?
They won't be!
They will never be!
Their purpose is to keep you out of the ring!
Their purpose is to keep your gun trained on ping-pongs rather than evildoers.
Do you understand?
They will never be satisfied.
Every single argument or objection you answer will be followed by another one and another one and another one And the end result is they own you.
You have become their slave.
And somehow, the validity of your system depends upon their acceptance.
It's a form of verbal abuse, a form of humiliation, a form of withholding, the withholding of approval until you satisfy particular demands.
And my only question is this.
If inconsistency is such a A problem for these people.
Mr.
X. Hi.
If a perfectly coherent and consistent system is all you care about, should you not start I'm fine.
I'm fine.
Sorry, let me start.
Mr.
X, if inconsistency is such a problem for you that you feel that thinkers must be perfectly consistent in the cathedrals of concepts that they assemble together, why are you starting with me?
Why do you spend all this time to come up with this scenario and type it out and pass it to me?
Why me?
Why me?
Are there any conceivable, or conceivably, more inconsistent systems out there in the world than the ones I put forward?
I wonder if this moral hero, this prince of consistency, I wonder if he posts a lot of stuff on Twitter, Islamic websites, or communist websites, or Nazi websites, or, like, can he not find any more inconsistent systems than the one I put forward that he's got to focus on?
Me.
And the system that I've put forward, you can find out more about this system.
I've got a bunch of free books at freedomainradio.com slash free.
I don't know.
I've been putting a...
Close to 35 years of work into it, so I think it's pretty good.
I think it hangs together pretty well.
I've got books on social organizations, on relationships, on ethics, on religion, and so on.
So, is this guy going to a lot of religious fundamentalist websites and pointing out they're inconsistent?
No, he's not.
He's not.
He's not.
In fact, what he's doing is being sent by insane systems and To make sure that all I ever do is train and not act.
That all I ever do is stretch and not box.
And this is what I mean when I say that they work for the enemy.
They work for the enemy of reason.
Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
And people who chip away at rational systems and create insane scenarios of lifeboats and flagpole hangings and weird towns where one guy owns everything, you know, whatever, right?
They're not interested in consistency.
They're interested in paralysis.
They don't view your system as something that they can help out of a wheelchair.
They view your system as robust and athletic, and they want to put it into a wheelchair.
That's what they want to do.
They are snakes.
They are not anything but venomous snakes that attempt to paralyze you.
In this behavior.
Maybe they're fine in other areas of their life.
But I doubt it.
Because, you know, personality tends to be consistent in one way or one form or another.
So, I say to you, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, my tribe.
Have the basics down.
Property rights.
The non-aggression principle.
Free will, reason, evidence, science.
Have your basics down.
And as soon as you put out that you care about something, especially in this internet-enabled world, as soon as you put out that you care about something, every single asshole and a half on the planet will come swarming around you like you just poured out a bunch of honey in a fly farm.
Because, oh, this guy cares about it.
Let me tweak him.
We are not generally surrounded by people, but by trolls, we hope, through the rapid evolution of philosophy, to eventually convert into people sooner rather than later, I hope.
But they're not interested in consistency.
They're not interested in helping you perfect your system.
Because if they were very much against inconsistency, where would rational philosophy be in the hierarchy of systems they would criticize?
There would not be life enough should they live as long as Methuselah for them to get down the list of irrational belief systems to get to rational philosophy.
There would not be enough time in the universe for them to do that.
If they could speak as fast as me, and sometimes I'm aware that I sound like faxing even when you don't double speed me on YouTube, don't do it!
I don't sound sane enough even at normal speed!
Don't double speed me, bro!
Half speed is fine!
So these people are not interested in consistency, they're interested in...
Serving evil by paralyzing goodness.
So just ask them, can you show me all your other posts where you've criticized irrational systems?
They won't have.
Because people who are committed to irrational systems have the magic of faith.
Faith in gods.
Faith in the collective.
Faith in the common good, as defined by the elite.
Faith in the state.
Faith in law.
Law is magic.
It's not just an opinion with a gun.
It's a tidal wave of virtue that comes out of the general brain farts of the unintelligent population.
They've come to you because they know you care about consistency, not because they care about consistency.
They are not interested in helping you perfect your system.
They're interested only in torturing you.
And killing virtue.
And we know what our immune system does.
With things that aim to harm it, well, let's just put it nicely and say, such incursions, such intrusions, such assaults, such attacks should be scornfully rejected.
Pass by the people who claim that they wish to perfect you through practice.
