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April 9, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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3256 DON'T MAKE THE EVIL BUTTERFLIES ANGRY - Call In Show - April 8th, 2016

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	Hey everybody, it's Evan Molyneux from Freedom Aid Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
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	Yes, it's back.
	but with a difference.
	So we had a long chat with The Determinist But it was really, really enjoyable.
	And it was really great.
	A good overview of the challenges of free will versus determinism.
	I really enjoyed it.
	I hope you will find it illuminating as well.
	Number two, the guy wanted to know if it's immoral that he's becoming only concerned with the well-beings of his friends and family and loved ones and the people who steadfastly reject the reality of what's going wrong with Western civilization or civilization as a whole.
	He's not really finding it in his heart to care about their fate.
	And we had a good chat about pathological altruism and the limits of generosity and the degree to which generosity, when taken to an excess, can lead you to be exploited.
	And the third was, I was giving my syllables to a preacher man, a theologian, a man who studied theology, called in and wanted to talk about atheism and ethics, particularly my approach to ethics, universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics, a book you can get at freedomainradio.com slash free.
	Very, very enjoyable conversation.
	It was a real pleasure.
	All of these were just great callers.
	And, you know, the callers are always great, but these guys earned it and weren't great, as an example to others of how not greatness looks like.
	So, fantastic callers.
	Thank you so much again for your support of this conversation.
	freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	And here we go.
	Alright, well up first today is Joshua.
	Joshua wrote in and said, To quote Sam Harris, Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or we are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them.
	The subjective experience of deliberation seems much more akin to a progress bar filling on a computer than anything else.
	Moreover, the popular idea of free will seems to be doing a lot of harm to society, particularly in our legal system.
	What positive effects does our notion of free will have, and where is the evidence for it?
	That's from Joshua.
	Well, hi, Joshua.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing great, Steph.
	Thanks for having me.
	Well, actually, you're doing whatever the dominoes before you are making you do, but anyway.
	Trick question!
	I am prepared to address that, so we'll have to do that.
	Excellent.
	Now, you know, I don't know, Sam.
	I've read...
	I'm trying to think what Sam Harris have read.
	So his first one on religion, The End of Faith, I think it was called, and I think one or two others.
	I've not read any of his works on religion.
	Determinism versus free will, but I have seen him strongly out there in the public sphere trying to change people's mind or minds.
	So I don't want to talk that much about Sam Harris because he's not here.
	Apparently, the atoms that compose him have not chanced upon us.
	But we'll just take your approach to this, if that's all right.
	No, that's fine.
	I mean, I kind of wanted to address...
	How I got to where I'm at now and kind of address my take on it.
	I know that I don't speak necessarily for all determinists, but I've seen a lot of your videos on the series, your various videos on determinism and various callers that have come before me that have tried to talk about the issue and...
	notes this time so that I can kind of address.
	Okay.
	How about, how about we don't, we don't talk about being prepared and just start the conversation.
	No, that's fine.
	You know, the, the mic check is before the concert.
	So let's just launch into, uh, uh, let us, let, let me entertain you.
	Okay.
	So, um, is, is, give me a question in a, in a concise way, if you could, please.
	So when I hear people talking about free will, people like yourself, uh, other people who argue for its existence or for its usefulness or what have you, um, I guess I don't really understand where they're coming from on it.
	Maybe.
	Maybe it's just that my worldview is a little bit different, but anytime that people start talking about having a choice to make or having a choice in some fashion or when we're talking about a legal system and we're holding someone morally responsible, It really seems to be more a situation of ignorance in a particular situation, either ignorance about how to properly achieve their goals or ignorance, you know, maybe self ignorance, not knowing what they want to achieve.
	And then I tried to come up with a way to articulate that.
	Alright, so if you find my position on free will confusing, why don't you tell me what my position is just to make sure that we're starting from...
	You said you watched some videos before.
	So what is my position on free will and where's the confusion?
	Sure.
	So from your three-part video series that you did, you actually laid out kind of a semi-former argument on it where you gave some of the premises and then went from there.
	So from that video, let's see, we had...
	So the first premise was truth exists.
	Truth is independent.
	Truth is better than error.
	We should prefer truth.
	And the capacity to change opinion is possible.
	Those are the five steps in the argument that you provided.
	And then you said...
	Yeah, and this is sort of back to Aristotelian logic insofar as you can't argue against that without accepting the premises.
	Right, right.
	Self-imploding arguments, that sort of thing, right.
	Yeah.
	So, by...
	I don't, as a determinist, say that people don't make choices.
	So when you made the argument about the boulder rolling down the hill and how arguing with nature isn't effective, I don't see the determinist worldview as saying that people are like rocks in the way that you seem to describe it.
	The way that I see it is the computer thing.
	In the determinist worldview that you're coming from, people can make choices.
	Yes.
	Okay, so aren't we just both calling the same thing by a different name?
	Because I believe that people can make choices, and you believe that people can make choices, so I'm not sure.
	As yet, I'm not sure where our divergence is.
	Okay, so, and that's part of what I wanted to explore, because maybe I was misunderstanding something, but when...
	We're talking about people making choices and when people make counterfactual arguments like, oh, if he had been told not to rape, let's say there was a rapist, for example, and he was told not to rape, but he did it anyway.
	And people say, oh, we need to punish him because he had the available circumstances where he could have made the choice not to rape, but he decided to do it.
	And so when we say these things, I don't see...
	I mean, I can see, you know, as a mechanical process in the brain or, you know, in unique circumstances, some combination of those factors, a choice was made and him being the person who did the actions he has The same kind of responsibility that an animal would,
	but to say that he was deeply responsible or this kind of notion that we get of wrath or vindictive punishment on people because they at root were responsible for the things they did is the part that I don't really agree with, don't really get.
	Now, who's responsible for the argument that you're making right now?
	What do you mean exactly?
	The one that I'm articulating to you?
	Yes, the argument that you're articulating, I assume it's your argument or your perspective, or at least you're communicating it.
	So, Josh, who is responsible for the argument that you're making to me at the moment?
	It's not me, obviously, right?
	It's not Mike, because he's muted.
	You're one of the proximate causes, because I wouldn't be...
	No, no, I'm not the cause of your argument, because you're the one who's articulating the argument and communicating it, right?
	You're choosing the words.
	You did the preparation.
	You have your notes.
	I'm not trying to catch you out on anything.
	I'm just pointing out that you, Josh, are responsible for the argument that you're creating.
	So, for instance, if there was another guy next to you named Brian, and you gave me this argument, and I turned to Brian, and I said, so Brian, your argument is, what would you say to me?
	If I responded to Brian as if Brian had said exactly what you said, and I said, okay, Brian, I'm going to respond to the argument you just made, you would say to me, well, Steph, that Brian didn't make the argument, I did, right?
	Right.
	So you are the one who is causally responsible for the arguments that you're putting out into the world, right?
	Right now.
	So...
	No, this is a yes or no.
	We've got to establish some things before we go off on tangents, right?
	I didn't create the argument, you know, unless we're going to go with, I am the universe, we are the world, right?
	So, I didn't create the argument, there's only one other person talking, that's you, Josh.
	So, you created and are responsible for the presence of this argument in the digital medium we're discussing, in talking through, right?
	Yes, absolutely.
	Okay.
	So you have created an action which has had an effect in the world, which is me listening and the whole world listening and millions of people over time listening.
	No pressure.
	So you have – this is just my subtle way of throwing you off.
	So you have created an argument.
	You are responsible for it.
	You have created something in the world called Josh's argument for determinism.
	And it's nobody else who has created it in terms of in this moment, right?
	Right.
	And so you are responsible for the effect of your argument in the world in that I would reply to you if we were in a room with other people rather than someone else as if that someone else would have made your argument.
	Is that fair to say?
	Yes.
	So how is a rape any different from an argument?
	I mean, sort of fundamentally, you know, I mean, obviously morally, I get it, right?
	Right, no, of course.
	But how is, like, a rapist is making a decision to perform an action in reality that you're responsible for.
	Making an argument is making a decision to perform an action in reality that you are responsible for.
	Right, so in the kind of very narrow delineation of time and place that we're specifying here, I am kind of the...
	The nexus that causes outside of the context that we've established have converged through is, I guess, the way that I would put it.
	I have no idea what that entire sentence meant.
	I'm so sorry.
	That's fair.
	No, that's totally fine.
	Let me flush that out.
	I'm cutting back on my coffee, so if you can do it with him.
	Oh, no, it's fine.
	I'm all hopped up, so let me try and flush that out.
	So when we're saying that in the moment, on this call right now, I'm making an argument for determinism, or I'm making whatever argument I'm making, It is correct to say that if I did not exist as a person, then it would not have happened.
	So that counterfactual seems fair to make.
	But if we expand the context out a little bit, We can trace the trail of breadcrumbs back in many different directions.
	So if you hadn't made a determinism series on YouTube or if you weren't on YouTube, for example, I would never know about you.
	We would never be on this call.
	So your arguments on your part are a partial cause.
	To me giving my argument.
	So you partially...
	No, I mean, sorry.
	They're necessary but not sufficient in that lots of people have listened to those arguments and have not called in.
	So you found the arguments worthy and I appreciate that.
	I do.
	You found the arguments worthy of response and you called in or you wrote in and you waited the sorry it took so long to get you on as it is for everyone.
	We're trying to fix it with an extra show on Tuesdays for our European listeners in particular.
	But so it is necessary but not sufficient in terms of causality and that you wouldn't be calling me if I hadn't made those videos or at least if I hadn't made arguments about it.
	But the fact that I made the arguments is not sufficient for you to do it.
	Right.
	And I'm not trying to say that only because you made the videos.
	I'm not trying to say that that's the sole causally prior event that led to my arguments.
	Okay.
	Sorry to interrupt Josh.
	Go ahead.
	I feel like we're getting, you know, like if you startle a squid at the bottom of the ocean, it shoots out a whole bunch of ink or whatever the hell it is, and then it hides, right?
	Because if you are responsible for the effects of your choices in the world, because it's your argument, you're making it, my question was, how is a rape different from an argument in terms of self-ownership and being responsible for the effects of your actions?
	Now, I feel like we've gone on this big multi-word salad journey, but I don't know what your answer is to that question.
	Because either, I mean, morally, again, I'm just talking about sort of like the functionality of self-ownership and owning the effects of your actions.
	How is a rape different from an argument in terms of self-ownership and creating something in the world?
	Right.
	And I think this comes a little bit back to my original question, which I think is good.
	The way that we treat those situations morally and the way that we think about them in the context of assuming free will is a given, they're treated differently.
	So as you said, we want to try to avoid the moral distinction.
	So for me making the argument to you Yes, I am responsible for it.
	And the rapist doing the things that he does, yes, he is responsible for them.
	But we would treat an animal attack differently than we would treat a rapist attack.
	And we do that because we assume that humans have this extra We have this faculty or this extra capability to inhibit violent urges or however you want to characterize it, whatever flavor of behavioral psychology you want to ascribe to.
	We treat them differently between an animal attack or a person attack.
	We do that because people are sapient and animals aren't.
	Okay, sorry, sorry.
	Let me just boil it down if I can.
	So you're saying that from a philosophical standpoint, there's no difference, but from a moral standpoint, there is a great deal of difference.
	And of course, I fully agree with that.
	One is protected under free speech, the other is a violent sexual attack, right?
	So here we're talking about the ethics of the situation rather than the choice to act in a way that affects external reality.
	Yeah.
	Not quite.
	The moral case is I feel like the easiest illustration of where I see what I think is a cognitive dissonance between how we treat the situation.
	I mean, because another example you could look at is, you know, when we have like a parrot mimicking human speech, we can recognize that they're making the sounds of speech, but we don't say that they're speaking or that they're sentient, that they understand what they're doing.
	They're just mimicking Whatever they're taught because they're an animal and the brain capacity is not sufficient for sentience, what have you.
	So when we talk about humans and when we talk about them having this extra quality, and I think in the videos you talked about it being like the idea being that it's an emergent quality of this sufficiently complex brain where we get this ability through cognition, through volition, through reason to I agree with.
	And then we, from that premise, say that they have this extra characteristic that warrants retributive justice against them, because that's the only way to That's the proper moral way to address their shortcomings.
	That's the part where I... Well, hang on, hang on.
	No, but sorry, but now you're talking about the philosophy of punishment, which is a very complex topic, right?
	So there's an argument which says we punish horse thieves, not because they're bad, but so the horses are not stolen, right?
	And so if you look, compared to an animal attack, right, let's just say, There's a coyote that kills your cat.
	Right.
	Well, we don't punish the coyote because the coyote is following its nature.
	Right.
	We may shoot the coyote without a trial.
	Right.
	You know, Stalin style.
	You know, I mean, that's like totalitarian style.
	There's no trial.
	You just shoot the person.
	I mean, concentration camp.
	So you shoot the dog, right?
	Shoot the coyote.
	Or build effects.
	Well, yeah.
	Now, if an animal, like I remember this years and years ago when we were pulling some all-nighter in my old company, I had this odd fight with the project manager because there was a woman in BC, I think she was hiking with her kids and some mountain lion had attacked them.
	Okay.
	And they shot, they found and shot the mountain lion.
	Okay.
	And she thought this was horribly unjust.
	They tracked it down after the fact, it wasn't like during the attack.
	I think so.
	Yeah, it was after the fact.
	And she thought this was horribly unjust because the people were intruding on the mountain lion's territory.
	So why do you shoot the mountain lion that has attacked a human being?
	Well, because the mountain lion has proven that he's not afraid of human beings and is willing to attack human beings, and that's very dangerous for human beings.
	And generally, in the scale of things, a human life is worth more than anything.
	The life of a mountain lion.
	Now, this is not punishment.
	This is to prevent recurrence.
	And it's not deterrence.
	You know, they don't hang the mountain lion up by its feet and set fire to it slowly while they've gathered all the other mountain lions around to watch this horrible torture so that they never, ever think of attacking a hiker.
	I mean, this is not instructive.
	It's not aversive.
	It is simply to prevent recurrence.
	And so as far as You know, Old Testament style, you know, punish the sinner for his wrongdoing.
	For the most part, if you look at sort of the big history of crime and taking for a moment out the hypothesis about abortion leading to lower crime rates sort of a decade and a half later or the entry and legalization of abortion.
	If we look at the crime in New York in the 70s, it was staggeringly high.
	Like horrendous, like Kurt Russell, Snake Plissken kind of high, horrifying violence.
	And then I think it was Giuliani got in and just started locking people up, locking them up.
	Now, Ben.
	They may be doing terrible things in jail, but while they're in jail, they're not doing terrible things outside of jail.
	And the crime rate plummeted, and as the crime rate plummeted, of course, situations, circumstances in the neighborhoods got better, and so there was less fear, there was less violence, children had more normalized childhood, so it becomes sort of a virtuous cycle where if you lock up the first wave of predators, then you create a positive social environment, and then the next wave Of kids being raised is less scared, less traumatized.
	Fewer of their kids are getting gunned down in drive-bys.
	So you get a positive sort of virtuous cycle.
	And then, of course, Democrats get in and start undoing all of this.
	The crime waves that started in the 60s started because the Democrats got in and started loosening all the crime laws and loosening all the sentencing guidelines and so on.
	And the last example, and then I'll turn it back to you, but the last example that comes to mind is that gun deaths in certain areas of the United States, shooting deaths of police, are up 150% year over year.
	Violence and murders and so on are up.
	Chirac, right?
	I mean, and that's Largely, I would argue, because of what's called the Ferguson effect, which I'm sure you're very well aware of, which is that after the riots in Ferguson and after all of the protests, any time a black man is shot by a white policeman doesn't seem to happen when white fathers and their autistic children are shot up by black cops, but that's a topic for another time.
	So after all of this...
	Strong media reaction to any time a black man dies at the hands of a white police officer.
	This has made police officers and particularly white police officers, especially after Freddie Gray, right?
	It has made them very reluctant to engage Blacks who are potentially committing crimes or under suspicion or anything like that.
	And so this under-policing that is occurring has caused, I think it's fairly safe to at least argue as a hypothetical, it has caused a huge resurgence and increase in crime in the neighborhoods where the cops are kind of backing off from that, which is going to create a lot of trauma, a lot of dead people, a lot of dead which is going to create a lot of trauma, a lot And you're going to start to get this where the virtuous cycle was helping the community get better.
	virtuous cycle was helping the community get better.
	Now there is, of course, a descending spiral of doom that is occurring as well.
	Now there is, of course, a descending spiral of doom that is occurring as well.
	So when it gets to, you know, do we punish or do we put someone in jail?
	So when it gets to, you know, do we punish or do we put someone in jail?
	I don't even know if the best answer is to put someone in jail.
	I don't even know if the best answer is to put someone in jail.
	I mean, but just looking at the current system that we have, do we put someone in jail because we just want to punish them for being bad people?
	Well, there's lots of ways to punish people.
	You don't necessarily have to lock them up in jail.
	Or do we do it simply because, look, they're just like dangerous animals.
	You know, you shoot a rabid dog and we don't want to shoot these people.
	So we lock them up so that they cannot continue to commit crimes like the way they shot that mountain lion.
	It It wasn't because the mountain lion was evil.
	They just didn't want more people to get mauled on the hiking trails.
	Or do we do it as an aversive?
	To other people as a way of negatively conditioning people to or conditioning them to become avoidant of the kind of crimes for which they will get punished.
	And I don't know what the exact answer is, but I think saying, well, we just heap this big giant truckload of moral responsibility on the evildoer and that's the only reason that we lock him up, I think is simplifying some of the complexities of how human society deals with criminals.
	And the last thing I'll say as well...
	Is that if there's a sociopathic element to criminality, which certainly I would argue in the more violent crimes there is, and maybe even in the more fraud-based crimes, nobody knows the cure.
	Sociopathy.
	And recidivism, or the rate at which criminals go back into prison, is extraordinarily high.
	I mean, it's been a long time since I've looked at this in detail.
	My vague memory is it's 80% or so.
	I've looked at it some recently.
	That's accurate.
	Is that about right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So this is the huge challenge.
	Now, again, part of this has to do with the fact that I don't think childhood's being dealt with or whatever, but nobody knows how to cure criminality of a significant degree.
	And it could be that some criminals, they tend to mellow out as they get older.
	You know, they just get like borderline personality disorders.
	Apparently, they just get kind of a little more mild as they go on.
	So I don't know that all of the we punish a criminal is predicated on Punishing him morally merely for using his free will in a destructive or evil or violent way.
	I think there's a lot more to it around keeping people safe and being aversive and all that kind of stuff.
	Right.
	No, I would agree.
	And I think, I mean, I'm condensing a lot of stuff here and trying to keep it succinct while still being effective.
	So, I mean, I'm probably not making the best argument here, but I agree with what you're saying and I agree with your interpretation of those facts.
	The point I was trying to get more around to, and this is based off one of the arguments that Harris put in the book that is titled Book Free Will, was that the way that we think about criminals, and especially if you're a victim, the way that you think about a criminal versus the way that you would think about an animal attack or a natural disaster is different.
	And it's different in a way that causes undue harm to the victim after the fact.
	So...
	One of the examples, so say you're in a park, and you wake up, and there's a bear, and the bear attacks you.
	And you survive your ordeal, but maybe, like, you lose a hand.
	After the fact, you're not...
	Sorry, you lose a what?
	I'm sorry?
	You said you lose a hand?
	Yeah, like, in fact, you lose a hand, but you survive.
	The bear gets caught, they put it, like, somehow it got out of the zoo, you know, whatever.
	After the fact, as you pointed out with the mountain lion example, the victim of the bear attack is not going to feel like the bear was out to get them.
	The bear was doing what a bear does when it finds a person in the park.
	But with a, you know, a criminal, you know, so if a human with a hatchet comes at you while you're sleeping in the park and you lose a hand but you survive the ordeal, you may, you know, fantasize about that person's death or, you know, about getting even with that person long after, you know, the trial may be over and all this.
	And, you know, so the psychological effect and the, you know, people getting PTSD and things like that from these types of, you know, predations are, you Or at least seem, and Harris argues that they're partially predicated on this idea that we treat people differently than we treat animals with regard to this extra faculty that we're calling free will.
	And that's the aspect, and that was part of where I was going to be going with my original question and with the idea of free will doing harm to society within the context of the legal system.
	It's more than the idea of criminality.
	So that's where I see there being a problem that causes victims undue harm and extra harm on top of what they're already dealing with.
	If we look at criminals as whether or not you agree that they're victims of circumstance, you know, the combination of nature or nurture, the fact that the sum of nature and nurture to whatever degree that you described either or both theories accounts for why they're a criminal and not a Girl Scout.
	Or Boy Scout or what have you.
	Wait, sorry, sorry.
	So you're saying that criminals are produced by genetics and environment deterministically.
	In other words, there's no choice involved in whether you become a criminal or not.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And the part of the...
	Sorry, has the argument been made with respect to...
	To genetics and also, in other words, twin studies and so on, and also with respect to the environment that itself may be morally chosen, right?
	So, let's say, I do know, sort of based upon the Bomb and the Brain series, That people can go to www.bombinthebrain.com, some very important information there, that children who have a particular genetic predisposition to violence, if they are beaten, like if they're beaten, then almost all become criminals.
	But saying, well, they're not morally responsible because of genes plus environment, well, what about the people who beat them?
	I mean, has anyone looked into that, right?
	I mean, and so part of the environment that people...
	They say, well, environment and genetics produces this super predator or something like that, and it's amoral because it's deterministic.
	Well, the environment may itself have moral choices that...
	That we could examine, right?
	So simply saying genes plus environment, well, the environment includes people acting on the children who themselves may be making moral choices.
	Certainly.
	So, yeah, and part of why I was originally confused when I first came across your channel and I found out that you were making the arguments for the case of free will while also You know, doing all of the, you know, your recent work with the genetic differentiation with IQ within populations, and yeah, the bomb in the brain, everything with peaceful parenting and things like that.
	It seems like there's a lot, you've made a lot of the cases where people's prior circumstances has quite a bit, if not everything, has quite a bit to do with how they end up later on, which is a very good sort of argument.
	Well, sorry, in the absence of knowledge, I would agree with you.
	Right.
	So if you love smoking in the 18th century, you know, people are like, oh man, Europeans wiped out a lot of natives.
	It's like they sure did, and the natives gave us smoking back, and that's wiped out many more Caucasians or white people than ever.
	Anyway, but let's say in the 18th century you love smoking and people are saying it's perfectly fine for you, perfectly healthy.
	No problem, right?
	Right.
	And maybe you're going to die of tooth decay at 50 anyway, so you don't really care about potential lung cancer at 75 or spark-type emphysema later on, right?
	So if you enjoy smoking and everyone says it's fine for you, Do you have the freedom to quit?
	Well, why would you?
	It's good for you, or at least it's not bad for you, and you really enjoy it.
	Now, maybe you'd quit because it's expensive or whatever, but you'd have no foundational, this will kill me, reason to quit.
	Now, of course, after the 50s and so on, when it became really clear that smoking was linked to...
	was partly because people were just living a lot longer than they were before.
	And so, so then, you know, now people like nobody can, it's right there on the cigarette, you know, these god awful pictures of mutated lungs and stuff like that.
	So nobody can say that they don't know.
	So why do people do that?
	Well, because they want people to know the consequences so that they can weigh short term and long term, you know, short term pleasures versus long term deadly diseases.
	And, you know, you could argue that this plus maybe better childhood, but this has resulted in a significant reduction in smoking over the past couple of generations.
	So So in the absence of knowledge, now, of course, it is considered to be, in many Western countries, moral, in fact, not just okay, but good, morally good, to hit your children.
	And it's legal in many Western countries, and it's considered morally good.
	In fact, not hitting your children is considered to be a great vice.
	Now, if you yourself were hit as a child, and your parents said it was perfectly wonderful and fine, and if your God and your holy book and your priests and your mentors and your entire culture and your family says it is absolutely morally necessary to hit your children, and you've never heard counter-arguments to that, and you've never known anyone who wasn't hit, do you really have a choice to not hit your child?
	I mean, I guess you can say theoretically, if you had a brain tumor, you might, you know, but it's not a practical choice in the absence of information.
	Now, if you get the information about spanking and genetics and smoking is bad for you and blah, blah, blah, blah, then I think you could say that a choice begins to emerge because it's not a given.
	Like I assume gravity is a given.
	If somebody says to me, well, you know, say chitty chitty bang bang three times and you can float, then gravity becomes a choice where it really wasn't before.
	So this is for me, the purpose is when you give people better information, better arguments, it opens up like a little crack of potential choice, whereas before there were just absolutes that nobody really had time to question.
	Maybe oxygen is really bad for me.
	Yeah, I don't have time.
	I gotta get on with my day.
	So, no, that's a very good point.
	And I think this is where the conversation gets interesting.
	Because, so it's definitely accurate to say that if the knowledge is not available, then, you know, you can't really say that there was a choice in the matter.
	But let's say that I was given, like, let's just Suppose for a second that there's some perfectly rational, perfect application of non-aggression principle and everything that we know about the apex of morality.
	And it's put in a book, and it's given to me, but it's in Swahili.
	Now, I'm a linguist, but I don't speak Swahili.
	So, if I get that information, I have, you know, the resource available to me, but I don't have the means to access it, then it doesn't really do me any good.
	And I think that's part of your argument.
	So, now, if someone...
	I'm sorry, the Swahili thing's a total red herring, right?
	I mean, what does that have to do with anything?
	Of course, you have to be able to understand the information provided to you.
	Right, having the material but not knowing how to use it was where I was trying to go with it.
	No, you have to get the information.
	Obviously, it has to be in a consumable format.
	I mean, let's not nitpick ourselves to death as we continue with this conversation.
	Let's just take it for granted that it has to be in a format that you can comprehend.
	It's not sign language if you're blind.
	Okay, so then let's look at it this way.
	I've watched your videos and I've consumed the content and I understood it, but I'm not into philosophy.
	I have the opinion or I've been taught, I've come to the conclusion that reason is just this sophist trick that smart people come up with in order to get me to do what they want.
	And so anytime I see anything that looks formatted in an argument style, then I'm like, oh, that's just the sophistry.
	I'm not going to listen to that.
	If you don't have the receptiveness to the information either, then it's also not going to help you.
	And, you know, are you going to have a choice about accepting good knowledge that you can understand if...
	Well, no, but come on.
	I mean, it's all a choice, right?
	I mean, so I can read that smoking is really bad for me, and then I can say, oh, these people are just...
	They're just bought off by the anti-smoking lobby.
	Like, I can just make up some nonsense...
	To dismiss the argument, right?
	But that itself is a choice.
	I can say, look, clearly I'm a smoker, let's say.
	Imagine I'm a smoker.
	I'm a smoker.
	I want to keep smoking.
	And then, oh, I hear that it's really bad for you.
	And it's like, nah, they're just bought off by the people who don't want your walls to turn yellow or whatever it is, right?
	I was thinking about some friend of mine's dad who smoked forever after he died.
	It was like, these walls are yellow.
	They weren't yellow when we started.
	But, um, so...
	All of that is choice.
	So the choice to reject information is clearly a choice.
	Because you could say, oh, okay, well, this goes against my prior beliefs, but, you know, I'm going to give it a listen, right?
	Now, you can say, or anyone can say, I'm going to reject reason and evidence.
	But that is a choice.
	Okay.
	You can choose not to choose, but you cannot choose to avoid the consequences of not choosing.
	So if I'm lost in the woods, and I say, that's it.
	I can't choose which way to go, so I'm just going to sit here.
	Well, I can choose to not choose which way to walk.
	But I can't choose to get somewhere by staying still in the woods.
	So I can choose not to choose which way I'm going to walk, but I can't choose to avoid the consequences of not choosing.
	That's outside, because that's reality-based, right?
	But those decisions don't arise out of a vacuum.
	So if I'm, back to my example, if I'm going to say, oh...
	That's exactly what I said.
	You need to give people information.
	Of course it doesn't arise out of a vacuum.
	Right.
	But it certainly is, people have less choice the less information they have, the less facts, the less arguments that they have.
	They have less choice.
	So of course it doesn't arise out of a vacuum.
	I'm trying to fill that vacuum with facts and arguments and evidence.
	Right, but if that medium of exchange is not effective or is not maximally effective to them and they reject it as a result, then, you know, they didn't They don't get the omniscience of looking down on themselves externally and saying, oh, this would have been a better choice, but I'm going to go the other way just because, you know, prejudices or prior causes or what have you.
	Right.
	And then what they do is by avoiding choice, by avoiding information, they become another piece of information which people can consume to help them make better choices.
	So the guy who says, ah, these guys are full of crap.
	Smoking is great for you.
	I mean, it's wonderful for you.
	It makes you smell fantastic and it goes great with coffee and smoking is the best thing ever, right?
	So he's going to reject that information.
	Smokes and smokes and smokes and dies.
	And so now what he is is a consumable piece of information for other people to say, huh, maybe rejecting facts isn't a great idea.
	So even if you reject facts, you actually then become an argument as to why you shouldn't reject facts.
	I'm talking to you, Europe, and hopefully to you, North America, when it comes to migrants.
	Right?
	So if you reject, you just become part of the information that other people can consume to make better decisions.
	You know, as the old poster says, you know, I saw this poster years ago.
	I loved it.
	It was my background on my computer when I was in IT. And it was a ship, like just 45 degrees, you know, sinking down, you know, like in the Titanic, the guy falling down, hitting the propeller.
	And underneath it says, it could be that the sole purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
	Right?
	You can be part of the human experience just by saying, don't do what I did, no matter what, right?
	Guy who doesn't lose weight, who ends up losing his foot instead.
	Well, I guess that's losing a little bit of weight and losing his eyesight, which is not really losing any weight at all.
	So that's just the example.
	You know, maybe you should eat less and exercise for other people.
	Sure.
	So, and I get to-- Now, as far as-- Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I was going to say, I understand that, you know, people can be an object lesson, and that's another way that people can...
	Take on the facts of reality and incorporate them in order to better understand what they should or shouldn't be doing to form their normative structure out of the existing data, whether it's being given to them as a lecture or as an object example or just passive observation or what have you.
	But it seems like with that argument that there's this I don't get where we're saying that they had this toggle switch in their head where, okay, this is convincing to me, but this isn't.
	Sorry, I'm not sure why it matters.
	I'll keep this brief, but I'm not sure why it matters.
	Let's say that someone goes out and strangles five guys.
	And...
	And he's using it really badly, in which case he needs to be taken out of society one way or another, right?
	Or he has no free will, in which case he has to be taken out.
	Either way, he's either got free will and he's using it really badly or he doesn't have free will, in which case he's going to keep doing the same thing again and again and again.
	Sure.
	So from outside of him, how we would deal with him as a society doesn't change in that context.
	We'd either mitigate or remove the threat.
	And I get that and I would agree with that.
	But to...
	To wag a finger at him after you've caught him and be like, oh, why did you do this?
	You shouldn't have.
	You should have been doing it else.
	Why didn't you?
	Why didn't you think other than you did?
	Shame on you.
	No, but we can choose that.
	That's very easy to find out.
	Whether or not he thought he was doing the wrong thing, that's very easy to find out.
	All we have to do is figure out, did he try to hide it?
	So if a guy walks into a convenience store, I don't know, what's the biggest thing you could buy in a convenience store?
	A Yule log.
	It's around Christmas.
	Physically or cost, yeah.
	I'm sorry?
	Physically or cost?
	No, physically.
	What's the biggest thing?
	Maybe it's selling watermelons or maybe it's like a 19 liter of Coke for the Southern audience or whatever, right?
	Yeah, big American.
	of those displays, you know, like Shakira selling cell phones.
	I'd really like that cutout Shakira doll to take home.
	Okay.
	So the guy goes in and he takes a giant Shakira doll and the guy's watching him.
	There are video cameras and there's a cop right there buying some gum, right?
	And the guy says, I'm taking this.
	And he picks it up and he walks out, right?
	He's announcing it.
	He's not So clearly, he has no particular conception that he's doing something wrong, right?
	So, would we punish that person for being an immoral person?
	No, clearly he's crazy.
	Or something's wrong with him that he's in a society and has no idea that shoplifting is wrong, right?
	Yeah.
	So maybe that would be a process of education.
	Maybe he's from, I don't know, North Africa.
	Maybe he's from a culture where grabbing women on New Year's Eve is perfectly fine, right?
	In which case, apparently, according to some Northern European countries, you just give him, you know, three hours of PowerPoints and he's totally got 2,500 years of Western developed respect for women.
	Absolutely.
	Okay.
	So if they don't know that anything's wrong, or, you know, the other example, of course, is the person has an undiagnosed brain tumor that's making them crazy and aggressive and so on, right?
	Like I've heard the theories about O.J. Simpson had a lot of concussions in his NFL career.
	Maybe that made him a little bit more aggressive, which is why he's like...
	One of Harris's arguments in the book talks about comparing between a criminal who acted out of character because of a brain tumor versus someone who acted without the brain tumor.
	It's fairly common, yeah.
	And the other argument is, you know, if you say to me something offensive and I just punch you straight in the face, not that I ever would, but if I did, right?
	Yeah.
	I've made somewhat of a choice.
	On the other hand, if you're walking next to me and I just have my first ever epileptic attack and my arm lashes out and cracks you, I'm at least more responsible for one than for the other.
	At least there's a differentiation there.
	So it's very easy to find out if the criminal had some idea of the consequences of his actions.
	So the person just takes out the cut-out Shakira Hi, Mr.
	Cop.
	I'm just going to take this thing home with me.
	It's like, okay.
	Actually, I'd like to take it home with a cop car.
	Did you leave the keys in there?
	Here I go, right?
	And he's announcing it.
	So the question is, does he try to hide it?
	Does he try to hide it?
	Now, if he tries to hide it, he's fully aware of the negative consequences of his actions and he tried to minimize the negative consequences of his actions by hiding.
	You know, it dissolves the body in lime or, you know, I don't know, goes in with a big pocket and stuffs a A giant frozen steak down his pants or whatever, right?
	So if he's hiding it, then he clearly knows that it's disapproved of and he wants to avoid the negative consequences of his actions.
	What that means is that he's aware of negative consequences to actions.
	Which is why he's hiding whatever crime he's doing, trying to dispose of a body or something like that, right?
	And so if he's aware of the negative consequences of his actions, then he's aware, ontologically speaking, he's aware that actions can have negative consequences and that the action he's performing has a negative consequence for him called arrest and jail or maybe execution if he's in a capital punishment environment.
	Now, here we go.
	Here we go.
	Once the criminal has accepted that actions have negative consequences, he knows for a fact that stealing from the store has a negative consequence to the store owner.
	But he doesn't care.
	He's fully capable of processing negative consequences.
	He just has revealed, by hiding his theft, he's revealed that he only cares about negative consequences to himself, and he has no thought whatsoever for the negative consequences for other people.
	In fact, he's perfectly willing to accept the negative consequences for the store owner, He's totally fine with it.
	He just doesn't want any negative consequences to himself.
	And that means that he does not have the capacity, though he has the capacity to process negative consequences, he does not have the capacity to process and act upon the negative consequences of his actions to others.
	And that's what makes him so dangerous.
	Now, do we say that's morally bad?
	Yeah, it's pretty hypocritical.
	Well, I don't want any negative consequences to accrue to me called having to work to earn this thing that I'm stealing.
	I don't care that negative consequences accrue to other people.
	I just don't want any negative consequences to accrue to me, so I'm going to hide it.
	Okay, that's called being a hypocrite.
	You don't want negative consequences for you.
	And thus, the negative consequences have to accrue to other people.
	You don't care about that.
	That's called being a hypocrite.
	And so this person fundamentally either rejects or doesn't process universality, like the do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
	And people who don't process universality are bad people.
	They want positive consequences for themselves.
	They understand there are negative consequences to others, but they just don't care.
	That's called being an asshole or a criminal or whatever you want to call it.
	So you can very easily find out this.
	Again, if they're crazy, that's a different matter, but then they're not going to try and hide it.
	Well, I mean, couldn't it also be the case?
	I mean, because you could have three situations.
	You could have the criminal who steals and doesn't, the one that you gave, where he's just, you know, walking out asking the cop for his keys as he goes with his goods and has no conception of The fact that stealing is wrong or that it's something he should hide.
	And then you could have the sneaky criminal, the other example, where they know it's bad, but they try to do it anyway.
	Just because, you know, they're hypocritical.
	But you could also have someone who's, you know, maybe just doesn't know that they need to hide it.
	Maybe they're just a simpleton.
	And so they get the theft aspect of it, but not the hiding aspect of it.
	What's the difference between one and three?
	So with the first one, they don't understand either that stealing is wrong or that it needs to be hidden.
	In the third example, you could have someone who knows that stealing is wrong but doesn't know not to hide it.
	So you could have someone who's like, oh, I feel really bad about stealing, but maybe they've never had I've seen an interaction with the police before.
	Maybe there's just some sort of illness that they don't understand, the social aspect of it, how they're going to be punished if they get caught stealing or something.
	I don't see how those two necessarily would coincide.
	I'm sorry, I'm just, let's try and break it down again.
	You garbled out for a sec there, so let's just take another run, just make sure I understand it.
	First category, the guy's perfectly happy to inform everyone that he's stealing.
	He goes and walks out with something, and this is somebody who's got something wrong with his head, right?
	Or certainly a wild incompatibility with the social values around him, right?
	And so then there's the person, so he doesn't assume there are any negative consequences to what he's doing.
	You know, maybe like if people leave, I don't know, a barbecue, a functional little barbecue grill, right?
	Some George Foreman contraption, right?
	They leave it out on their front lawn and a sign that says, take me, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, somebody comes along and takes that, they don't assume there are any negative consequences.
	In fact, they may think that it's a win-win because the person gets, you know, they don't have to try and find a garbage man who's going to take a George Foreman grill and the other person gets a grill, so it's a win-win, right?
	So there's no negative consequences that accrue to that.
	Now, if somebody walks into a store and thinks that it's all a take-me-George Foreman, yeah, that's the title of the show, take-me-George Foreman, that's If somebody walks into a store and thinks the whole thing is like a take-me-George-Forman grill on a front lawn on garbage day, then they just don't understand the society that they're living in.
	Now, how do they get to be an adult without understanding the society that they're living in?
	Pretty hard.
	hard but you know maybe they they've got some mental incompetence and they've escaped for or they're out of there or they're or maybe they're demented or whatever like for some reason they're not able to process what they're doing and therefore we don't say that they're hypocrites because they're not able to process negative consequences which is why they're suddenly taking whatever it is they're taking so that's the first situation the second one is the person who's hiding it so either they're hiding it or they're not hiding it i'm not sure what the third category is but i'm sure it's valued i don't know I just can't figure it out.
	Right.
	So I was trying to stay within our current Hypothetical example, because there's another one that I have in mind.
	So for the third category, you have someone who would know that stealing is wrong, but maybe doesn't recognize that they need to be hiding it.
	So maybe they don't know what the police look like, or the police is undercover, or they think that no one's around, or something like that.
	Well, no, sorry, but that's just another way of avoiding the negative consequences.
	So whether they hide it, or they don't need to hide it.
	If you think there's cameras around, then you'll probably wear a balaclava.
	And if you don't, then you won't, right?
	So there's still, the commonality is they're trying to avoid negative consequences.
	Well, so there's a real-world example that illustrates the third point.
	And so I was trying to stay within what we're talking about, but I'll try to lay it out succinctly.
	It's a great chat, by the way.
	I'm really enjoying it.
	I hope you are, too.
	Oh, absolutely.
	No, this is what I did my degree in.
	This is what I live and breathe.
	So the beginning of Sam Harris's book, he talks about two career criminals that were planning on doing a robbery of a house.
	And the family ends up being home in the house.
	And so they tie them up and they're talking with each other, deciding what they want to do about it.
	And all of a sudden, one of the criminals ends up just killing the whole family, just kills everyone, sets the house on fire, just leaves them to burn.
	And he gets caught.
	And after the fact, he...
	I'm trying to remember the exact specifics.
	I'll probably have to reread the book.
	But he doesn't show contrition for it.
	He recognizes that he should have felt contrition.
	But I mean, I guess it's like a sociopathy thing where he didn't feel remorse for it or he didn't...
	He didn't get the kickback of, I shouldn't do this.
	He didn't get the inhibition that stopped him from doing it, even though he recognized that it was wrong.
	And it was a little odd.
	Wait, wait, but how, sorry, how do we know that this was actually his lived experience Versus this is just what he's saying.
	Like, I'd assume that people who can murder others and set fire to their house, I guess he did this to cover up evidence and to kill witnesses.
	So I assume that that person would be capable of lying.
	So you say it like it's an existential fact.
	We know that he didn't experience this.
	We're just going, what are your reports, right?
	Well, the partner was the corroborating aspect of it.
	Because they were career criminals.
	They'd knocked over houses before, and apparently they'd run into people before, and they would just tie them up and leave.
	So his behavior in that instance was out of character for him, according to the accomplice.
	No, no, but you were saying that he did or didn't feel, like he said, he didn't feel this remorse and so on, but how do we know?
	Well, no, not...
	Okay, so not remorse.
	I'm sorry, I misspoke there.
	So the way that it was characterized was that he recognized in the moment while he was there and he was, you know, killing the family.
	Wait, sorry, who did?
	The guy who was the killer or not?
	Yeah, the one who committed the killings.
	Okay.
	In the moment, he doesn't normally kill people like this.
	He just ties them up and leaves or does whatever he needs to do to escape safely, but he doesn't kill people.
	He doesn't consider himself a murderer, but he just kind of, I don't know, Geppetto style felt you know just kind of went through the motions of doing it and he couldn't account for it in his subjective experience for why he did that after the fact and What ended up happening was he he got I think he got the death penalty But he asked for the coroners to autopsy him after he after his execution and to check his brain because apparently he had had some other brain problems and or he was like feeling like headaches and other
	Out-of-place behavioral stuff and they found a tumor on his amygdala and And so the perception of the criminal, and the way that it's explained by Harris in the book, is the perception of the criminal before we know that he had a tumor pushing on a part of his brain that would cause sudden aggression.
	So he would have a heightened amygdala, for those who don't know, and I'm certainly no expert on this, but it's a seed of the brain that to some degree perceives threat and provides the fight-or-flight response.
	So he would have, I guess, with a tumor pressing on it, the idea would be that he would experience a heightened perception of danger and a concomitantly higher fight-or-flight response?
	Right, that was the general premise of it.
	So Harris gives this example, and he says that the tumor is just an easy-to-point-to example of a situation that could potentially occur in any circumstances.
	It's easy to point to a tumor pushing on the amygdala and say, you know, this is what caused him to kill someone when he wouldn't have normally.
	Otherwise, the tumor is responsible, not him.
	He's a victim of his biology.
	And I would not make that case.
	I would not make that case.
	Okay.
	For the simple reason that I'm trying to think of a Buddhist monk who had dedicated his entire life to self-management and peace of mind and, you know, whatever they train for, would a brain tumor pushing on his amygdala make him into a mass murderer?
	It seems unlikely because if the criminal has gone through a whole lifetime of stealing, then he's not going through a whole lifetime of disciplining himself, of getting up early, of shaving, of going to work, of dealing with bosses, of dealing with difficult customers, of learning of dealing with bosses, of dealing with difficult customers, of learning how to overcome his temper so that he doesn't get fired for screaming at
	lifetime of disciplining himself, of getting up early, of shaving, of going to work, of dealing with bosses, of dealing with difficult customers, of learning how to overcome his temper so that he doesn't get fired for screaming at people.
	He hasn't gone through maybe 20 or 30 years of learning how to manage his destructive emotional characteristics in order to get a paycheck.
	You know, he hasn't gone through maybe 20 or 30 years of learning how to manage his destructive emotional characteristics in order to get a paycheck.
	So the fact that he has very bad self-management or non-existent self-management, self-indulgence, means that the brain tumor would have pushed him in a particular direction faster, but it was a direction he was already far down the road of.
	Again, I'm not saying that's proof.
	I'm saying there's one thing that you could say that his prior life as a criminal meant that an escalation of his natural state of being would result in more violence because his whole...
	Basis for existing is to prey upon and hurt other people.
	So the fact that when he got a brain tumor, he became more preying upon and more hurting other people, the brain tumor just puts steroids into the muscles he's been working out on for 20 years.
	Sure.
	No, and I think that's a good point to make.
	But again, if we widen the context of it, the Buddhist monk, for example, he...
	He didn't just fall into a Buddhist temple.
	He presumably had some exposure to Buddhism when he was young, and he empathized with it, or it resonated with him, and so he went down that path.
	And that's not the same situation as presumably what a career criminal in America was doing.
	If we expand the context and we look at the breadcrumb trail that led to him being a career criminal as opposed to being a Buddhist monk, it's not like he had Both options open to him.
	What, are you saying that he had no options to not steal?
	Well, I mean, obviously, you know, it's a hypothetical criminal.
	I don't know every aspect of what he was, you know, what was made available to him.
	But the comparison there, I felt, was a little maybe overselling the point.
	But how is this not...
	Begging the question.
	In other words, we say, well, this is where the person ended up and this is where the person had to end up.
	Well, compare it to what?
	What's the control group?
	Right?
	How is it that we...
	We can't run the life again and see if it turned out differently.
	There's twin studies and all that.
	So what is the null hypothesis for this?
	Well, this is where he ended up, so it was all just a series of dominoes, which ended up with this person doing some particular crime.
	Also, I'd also like to know, sorry, I would also like to know, the proportion of criminals whose actions can be explained, at least to some degree, By brain tumors.
	I gotta tell you, I don't think it's very high.
	Sure.
	Well, yeah, and so the point of the brain tumor story is not to say that every criminal has a brain tumor.
	It's to say that brain tumors are just a special case of the same type of situation.
	You could have the brain chemistry that maybe, because neuroscience, and Harris being a neuroscientist, he's a little more...
	I'm familiar with it, and I am, but the science is still fairly nascent.
	It's still growing, and so we don't fully understand to what degree and in what relationships brain chemistry, brain interaction, all the neuron fun stuff maps onto people's characteristics.
	But the research that has been coming out has, among other things, led to the neuroscience community to To be able to map certain things onto what people were calling their choices.
	So for example, I think it was Benjamin LeBay.
	In 2002, he was doing experiments with fMRI machines where he was scanning the brain and then he was telling people to choose like left or right or one of two different buttons.
	And then by reviewing the timing of it, he was able to map the area in the brain where That was activated when people made the decisions for left or for right.
	And then using that information after he found it, he was able to predict with, I think it was like 75, 80% accuracy, what someone was going to choose up to like five seconds before they felt that they were making the choice.
	And so the science is leading to the idea that the phenomenon that we feel subjectively as consciousness Is basically just kind of the same thing as watching a movie.
	We feel like we're making the choices in the moment, but anyone with an fMRI machine scanning your brain is going to be able to predict what you do before you do it.
	And so it's hard to say that you made a choice.
	But this is, I mean, I'm sorry to, with all due respect to the science, which I get is a great challenge, this is very old hat as far as philosophy goes.
	The idea that we have a vast reservoir of Of accumulated prior decisions and habits and prejudices and bigotries and irrationalities that basically choose for us.
	And we think we have the illusion of choice, but without specific self-knowledge, we really don't.
	I mean, the number of times I've talked to people on this show.
	Yeah, and I've heard them.
	You've heard these calls, right?
	So people are, I have no idea why I was attracted to this woman.
	Well, let's go through her characteristics.
	Let's go through your mother's characteristics.
	Oh, look!
	It's a perfect, oedipal, horrifying fit, right?
	I mean, you've heard these.
	Or people who have a dream.
	They have a dream, and we break it apart, and it really opens up a lot of things that they had never made those connections before.
	Now, so the idea that what he's talking about is there's an unconscious which chooses, and then you think you've chosen.
	And that's a way, it's a very crude way of characterizing these experiments.
	Right.
	But okay.
	But this goes all the way back to Socrates and know thyself.
	It goes back to Freud.
	I know Freud has had some challenges scientifically, to put it mildly.
	But the idea that there's choice before choice.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	There is choice before choice.
	And once you have that knowledge, as we talked about, it's like knowing that smoking is bad for you.
	Knowing that you have...
	Hidden choice before superfluous choice.
	Yeah.
	Knowing that you are going to be susceptible without the knowledge of, sorry, without knowing that you're susceptible to women like your mom, you're going to be susceptible to women like your mom.
	But once you know it, you can identify it, you can see the patterns, and boom, you can change it.
	So the idea that there's choice before choice, that's one of the basics of philosophy.
	And that's what philosophy has been battling in self-knowledge and psychology and therapy and all this.
	And that's why, you know, for 10 years straight, I've been encouraging people many more than years before that in my private life, telling people, go to therapy, study yourself, keep a journal, keep a dream journal, learn about your history, talk to your parents, find out about their dysfunctions and their strengths and their weaknesses and so on.
	Because the more knowledge you have, the more choices you have.
	So, yeah, the fact that this guy is spending a huge amount of time confirming what philosophers have known for thousands of years, I guess it's nice to have it confirmed, but it's not news to those who've been pursuing self-knowledge for a while.
	I might have needed to clarify.
	The way that he did it is a little bit different.
	It's not the idea of...
	Unconscious choice then arising into conscious choice.
	It's unconscious machinery behind the scenes that gives you the subjective experience of choice.
	I get it.
	I know.
	That's exactly what I'm saying, though.
	If you don't know that you're going to be susceptible to a woman like your mom, you're going to think you're just choosing this woman.
	Wow, she's just the best!
	And you think you're choosing her, but it's your unconscious patterns and imprinting that is actually choosing her.
	And in the absence of knowing your unconscious patterns and imprinting, it'll feel like you're choosing her, but you're not.
	So let's say that you gain that self-knowledge and you know that you have this inclination based on your mom.
	That wouldn't necessarily mean that you're going to change Right.
	woman like your mom.
	And this doesn't mean a negative thing.
	If your mom is great, you know, fantastic, right?
	Yeah.
	So if you have this knowledge, when you say it doesn't necessarily mean, of course it doesn't because there's still free will.
	If it necessarily meant something, like, oh, if you take this course of therapy or pursue this goal of self-knowledge, you will be attracted to the opposite of your mom.
	I mean, that would just be another form of determinism, right?
	It gives you the choice.
	Now, you can still choose to ignore the knowledge that you have about your own history and your mom's functions and dysfunctions, and you can end up with someone exactly like your mom.
	Because you're just choosing to ignore the knowledge.
	In the same way, you can learn all about how smoking is bad for you and still keep smoking, but at least you have a choice.
	And this is why people don't like more knowledge in a lot of ways, because more knowledge gives them more responsibility.
	Right, yeah.
	I remember the last call a week or two ago, where you talked about that a bit with the private caller.
	But, so having-- - I had a call, I'm sorry, I had a call, and I'm gonna poke you about childhood in a sec, but I did have a call with a determinist, it's gotta be five or six years ago, Now, and this is not anything other than a minor anecdote, it's not proof or anything, but yeah, he was a determinist.
	And it turns out that as he was growing up, his parents controlled his every move to the point where they would lock him in his bedroom for days and he had no choice about where to go.
	He couldn't get a choice about his friends.
	He didn't get a choice about going to church.
	They didn't give him any choices and he grew up as a determinist.
	And that's not a proof of anything.
	I'm just saying that sometimes self-knowledge can help with regards to why people are attracted to the concept of determinism.
	And since Sam isn't here, you might be the guinea pig for that if that's of interest.
	Yep, that's fine.
	So, um, I'll try to illustrate how I'm looking at it because I can't, I'm not fully getting the way that you're presenting the argument enough to be able to refute it.
	So I'll try to explain where I'm coming from and then maybe you can spot the, where, where I'm missing something.
	So when I see the process of something, you know, if I'm ruminating And I'm trying to, you know, account for a past action or, you know, either alone with a therapist, whatever.
	You know, I'm thinking about past actions and I'm trying to make the connections.
	I'm getting a better understanding of myself.
	The way that I look at that is kind of like learning to use a computer.
	So when you first sit down a computer, you have very rudimentary understanding of how it works.
	You just kind of Play with the keyboard and you learn that certain patterns give you certain responses back.
	But then as you learn how it works...
	Is that how you learn how to use a computer?
	I'm just curious if we can do real-world examples.
	Most people that sit down at the computer are just out randomly pushing buttons.
	They usually try and get someone with spectacles and a little dating experience to help them out.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	This is just trying to make a direct correlation to sitting by myself and ruminating as opposed to sitting in the therapist's office and talking it out with them.
	So if I'm just kind of doing my own thing with it, it's kind of like me just sitting at the computer Teaching myself whatever, you know, about how it works.
	So as I learn more and more about how the function of it works, it doesn't change how it's functioning, but it does expand my use of it.
	And so I'm not I'm going to be better able to try and achieve my goals for whatever I'm doing to achieve on the computer.
	And that's what I think you were talking about there.
	No, but the difference is that the computer is a static entity that you're interacting with, and your interactions don't change the nature of the computer.
	The more you learn about the computer, the computer doesn't change.
	Your capacities to use the computer change.
	Like, Estradivarius is the best violin, right?
	Apparently.
	I took 10 years of violin when I was younger.
	And if you gave me, in my youth orchestra, a Stradivarius, it wouldn't make me a better It may sound a little better, but my playing would not change the Stradivarius, right?
	So when you are looking at a mechanical entity outside of yourself, you can do more things with the computer as you learn more, but the computer is exactly the same as it was when you first started.
	Let's assume it's not downloading updates and just, I don't want to nitpick and flagpole that to that degree.
	Hang on, the computer doesn't change as you learn more about the computer, right?
	You just can do more with it.
	Well, I wouldn't necessarily agree with that.
	The hardware wouldn't change, but you can, as you learn more about the computer, you can start reprogramming it.
	Right, but the architecture hasn't changed.
	Right, well, I feel like the metaphor maps well onto people, because your brain physically won't, aside from whatever your diet is, won't change.
	But the kernel, the OS, however you want to transfer the metaphor, can be...
	Revised, rewritten, either by yourself or in conjunction with someone else.
	And what would the analogy be for a human being if the kernel gets rewritten?
	Well, that would be the gaining of the self-knowledge.
	So let's say that you find some inconsistency that's causing a system crash or cognitive dissonance.
	So if we think of cognitive dissonance as like a system crash, and so once you go through the logs, so to speak, and you find where the error is, and then you have that self-knowledge of, you know, this is what was wrong in my brain, or this is what was wrong in the computer, you patch it, and then you rerun the system, and then it runs better.
	So you've changed how the computer runs by reprogramming it, and then you change how your mind works by introspection and by gaining self-knowledge.
	Right, but in this example that you're giving, though, there are two entities, the person and the computer.
	Right, Josh?
	I mean, there are two entities here, but with self-knowledge, there's one entity.
	That's the big difference.
	The computer is programming itself in this way and it is choosing whether to program itself.
	So you can't say I am standing next to myself the same as I'm programming a computer because that's two entities when you're in fact describing human consciousness which is one entity to the human brain.
	I didn't want to bring AI into it per se.
	No, let's not bring AI into it at all.
	At all.
	I don't do sci-fi as yet.
	And the last AI that Microsoft came, it took, what, eight minutes for trolls to turn it into a racist hate monger.
	So let's not go with AI at the moment.
	But, you know, you can't, you can't, when you're talking about one entity and you introduce two entities, that's kind of cheating, right?
	Because the human consciousness saying, well, our own consciousness self-knowledge is like me programming a computer.
	No, it's not.
	Because with a computer and you, there's two people, two entities, sorry.
	Mm-hmm.
	Two processors, right?
	The human being that's programming the computer and the computer itself.
	But with self-knowledge, there's only one, and that's very significant.
	I think you could have an understanding that has two entities.
	Because when you're deliberating with something, thoughts will arise as you're thinking about things that you didn't choose beforehand.
	And so you'll have this dialogue between your conscious brain, and then all of a sudden a counter-argument will occur to you.
	No, I get all of that.
	I'm sorry, I get all of that.
	But you're physically in the same space.
	Like, you're in the same brain.
	Here we have, like with the computer example, there's a human brain and there's a computer that are separated by space, not to mention biology, right?
	So that's all, like, you can't use...
	As an analogy for one entity, two entities, one of whom is conscious and one of whom is not.
	You can't represent one consciousness with a consciousness and a non-consciousness like a computer.
	That's not fair because you're not describing the same thing.
	It's like, well, to talk about this bird, I'm going to talk about a skyscraper and a bird.
	It's like, why do we need the skyscraper again?
	Well, no, it's not the same thing.
	Yeah, I get where you're coming from.
	I feel like you can...
	Well, I mean, because then you could just be sitting in the computer.
	I mean, I feel like the consciousness being the analog for the person and then the unconscious being the analog for the computing side of it fits pretty well.
	No, no, no, because first of all, hang on.
	I mean...
	way older than the conscious mind.
	In this example, the computer is created by a human, and the human is much older than the computer.
	But biologically, I think we can all understand that what I've called humanity, like modern humanity, it's the post-monkey beta expansion pack, and it's buggy as hell, right?
	Because our whole, the neurological system and the base of the brain, the medulla, the amygdala, like all of the stuff, it's all geological layers, like...
	We start off single cell, fish, lizard, it's all just built up layers.
	And the neofrontal cortex, the new, the human part of us, Life is 4 billion years old and the human part of us is like, what, 100,000 years old?
	120,000?
	It's tiny.
	It's so new.
	It's ridiculous.
	And so the problem is that if you look at the unconscious as a computer, well, first of all, the unconscious is not a mere receptacle.
	A computer is a mere receptacle of what human beings do to it.
	It doesn't really do anything to itself unless a human being has priorly programmed it to do that.
	Whereas the unconscious is...
	3,000 times, it's been clocked at 3,000 times in some situations faster than the conscious mind.
	It's way older than the conscious mind, and it is generative, right?
	I mean, it creates dreams every night.
	It can write songs while you sleep.
	It can create inspiration.
	It can create poetry.
	And a lot of this stuff comes from inspiration.
	And the part of me...
	That is generating even this language.
	And you too, right, Josh?
	The unconscious is not something passive and receiving only like a computer.
	And it interests me that you, as somebody who's pro-determinist, would view your unconscious in that way.
	If you've not come in contact with the sort of living, majestic, titanic, terrifying, exhilarating, fantastic power of the unconscious, I would question the degree to which you've really worked on self-knowledge.
	And then it could be that I could also question the degree – it's not a disproof.
	I would also question the degree to which if you haven't worked very hard on self-knowledge and come into the awesome, titanic, amazing, powerful force of the unconscious and its generative, creative, and inspiring capacity.
	capacities, then I can see why you might be more tempted to look at the unconscious as a computer that's passive to what you do to it.
	You don't come out of objectivism by chance, do you?
	Actually, I do.
	Yeah.
	Ah, there we go.
	So that's the Rand thing, which is your emotions are your prior philosophical arguments or your prior philosophical perceptions or your prior value statements crystallized and returned to you as feelings, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, and the free will aspect of Rand was the only part that I never jived with.
	It was really interesting because I really enjoyed and resonated with...
	Pretty much everything with objectivism, but then there were a couple little parts that I had issues with, and I tried to sort it out.
	I've read Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology at least three or four times, and I get where it's going, but it always seemed like she hand waved every time that she started talking about free will.
	I agree, and I've read Brandon's work on free will, and I have found it to be more assertive than argumentative, which is a real shame, because it is a very important issue.
	And I read it like, you know, somebody reads the Talmud to get the Word of God, and I'm like, no, this doesn't really work.
	And that's why I wanted to come on today, and so I'm glad we were able to do this.
	And listen, look, I fully accept, Josh, just to be clear, that me talking about the majestic power of the unconscious is not an argument.
	I'm aware of that completely.
	This isn't going to prove anything.
	I'm just saying that that's been my experience in working with self-knowledge, that it does look that way.
	And, you know, I think that's one of the great tragedies of Ayn Rand, that...
	As she said, she did not understand psychology at all.
	And she was not interested in self-knowledge in any particular way, which is, I think, why the last half of her life was a pretty sterile disaster.
	Like, after We the Living, the Fountainhead, Anthem, and, of course, Atlas Shrugged, where she...
	She squeezed her unconscious.
	And I always view her like, her unconscious like Stalin with some political prisoners.
	You know, we're going to get that building built now.
	You know, 13 years of grinding away at her unconscious to force it to produce the work in perfect conformity with her philosophical ideals.
	And I think her unconscious was like, okay, I'm done.
	Fuck you now.
	And that's why she didn't write anything from like 1953.
	She wrote no fiction until her death in 1980.
	That's a long time to not, it's 37 years to not.
	Be writing.
	One of the gumshoe detective novel guys, Dashiell Hammett or whatever, wrote to her and said, when's Atlas going to shrug again?
	I think she controlled her unconscious to the point where she was able to squeeze the books out of it.
	I think this is one of the reasons why they seem a little sterile and artificial to others.
	It's not necessarily the case with science fiction.
	It has to go that way.
	I mean, there's lots of writers who write wonderful science fiction who have a great deal of liveliness and who are also, you know, libertarian, if not downright Robert Heinlein style and caps.
	So I think that she was very much domineering of her own unconscious, which is why there were sort of these accusations of this top down hierarchy in what they jokingly called the collective, because she was very dominant.
	And just as she dominated Nathaniel Brandon.
	So I think she dominated her own.
	And you can see this reflected time and again in her writings, you know, where Howard Rourke is, you know, he observed his pain from a great distance and he thought, it hurts me.
	You know, or the one that's always struck me is Hank Reardon.
	Sorry for the spoilers, but Hank Reardon, when he signs over Reardon Metal to the government, he – like the idea strikes him and his emotions completely change and he signs it joyfully.
	Here you go.
	I'm like, no, that's not, you don't just get a new idea and your emotions completely rewrite themselves from scratch as if you never had any evolution or childhood or innate whatever's right.
	I mean, and this idea that a new idea will completely reshape people's emotions gave her entirely unrealistic expectations as to what her novels could achieve, which is why Leonard Peikoff said, oh yeah, a year after Atlas Shrug is published, all the regulations will be abolished in the United States.
	completely rewrite people's emotions.
	That's not how the emotions work.
	They were here a long time before you, and they, you know, just ordering them around.
	I mean, you can create a totalitarian aspect to your own consciousness, where your consciousness orders around the emotions, and, you know, maybe we'll take a suggestion box once every six months, but that is not a productive relationship to the unconscious, and it doesn't show the unconscious the proper respect but that is not a productive relationship to the unconscious, and it doesn't
	Because the child is the father of the man and our rational consciousness is a very new child to a very old mother and father of the unconscious and I don't know.
	I think it's very risky as a whole to be dictatorial with your own feelings.
	I'm not putting you in this category, but since you brought up random objectivism, that was my big struggle.
	I thought, look, I'll change my ideas and my emotions will just line up behind them.
	And it's like, no, that's not how it worked for me and not how it worked for other people.
	Yeah, I... I get where you're going with the unconscious aspect of it.
	I know we didn't want to talk about AI, but on the aspect of science fiction, I very much enjoyed that aspect of it.
	I have a much more optimistic view on Kurzweil singularity and various...
	I really enjoyed Lucy and Transcendence and some of these transhumanist movies that have been coming out recently that aren't Terminator and just, you know, all of the machines are coming to kill us all.
	I look at the upcoming or the looming marriage of the various AI technologies, our increasingly complex neuromapping of the brain and its functions, our better understanding of its capabilities, and then cybernetics and all this fun technology that's coming into the forefront and all of the fiction that's leading ahead of it.
	Starting from Vonnegut and going all the way through to Herbert.
	All the fun things that all the creative types are coming up with.
	That's where I draw the inspiration.
	When I talk about thinking of the unconscious or thinking of how humans work, how humans think, how their function works as computers, I'm not envisioning the two-story IBM computer at the advent of computing.
	This simple, bland, monotone machine, I have a much more colorful outlook of it, and so that's where I come from as far as that's concerned.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I think that the idea that we'll know how to make a human mind is the arrogance of the ant on top of the mountain thinking that it's the mountain.
	And our rational consciousness, and listen, I'm not a woo-woo, you know, like candles and kumbaya show.
	I'm rational empiricism and all that.
	I'm totally down with that, and that's really the focus of the show.
	But the rational, I mean, you're, I'm sure, into evolution as much as I am, or accept it, and the evolution says that the rational consciousness is way new, and it sits on top of a brain that took four billion years to build, and we're like the pimple on the back of the humpback when it comes to, and the idea that, well, the pimple will just build a new humpback, it's like, well, you might want to take a gander at the size and depth and complexity of the wetware that powers us deep down.
	Because it is some truly astounding stuff.
	And I think this is one of the reasons why sort of the more rationalistic philosophies have not gripped the imagination of the masses.
	Perhaps I might even modestly say in the way that this show has, you know, cooking over 160 million downloads.
	Because I'm not afraid of the passion and depth and creativity and fertility.
	In fact, I know that it's essential to life.
	You can be right, and being right doesn't make you happy, but what we're all after is happiness, and that's an emotional state, not necessarily an intellectual one.
	And it can't be programmed by typing ABC in the correct sequence.
	It needs to be wooed and surrendered to and to some degree danced with, which is obviously kind of Nietzschean in a way, but I think there's some good empirical evidence behind it.
	For me, just to sort of sum up my position, I've argued that free will is our capacity to compare proposed behavior to ideal standards.
	And so if you look at the case against spanking, right?
	That spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	What's the proposed action?
	Spanking.
	And what is the ideal standard?
	The non-aggression principle.
	And before I put the arguments out, I did not hold people massively responsible.
	Certainly, if people are hiding what they do to their kids, then yeah, okay, then we're back to that sort of, I don't want negative consequences for me, but I'm more than willing to...
	Inflict negative consequences on my kids.
	So comparing proposed actions to ideal standards is what we have as far as free will goes.
	And can I prove this biologically?
	Well, of course not.
	But nobody can prove anything biologically about free will as yet because all we can do is measure the movement of electrical energy and biochemicals and so on.
	We can't translate that to subjective experience of choice.
	But I do know that anyone who argues against it must first compare a proposed action to an ideal standard, which is what you were doing at the beginning and what I was doing and what we've been doing all the way through is putting forward arguments to try and convince each other that our next actions, whether it's which is what you were doing at the beginning and what I was doing and what we've been doing all the way through is putting forward arguments to try and convince each other that Okay, yeah.
	The way that you sum it up, I'm a lot more sympathetic to, and like I said before, as you presented the topic before, I've been more open to the way that you've described it than others in the field.
	Yeah, and there is, of course, sorry to interrupt, but there is a challenge for atheists with regards to free will, because free will is one of the foundational things Yeah, that's probably...
	Yeah, it is a great challenge to defend free will from a non-spiritual side.
	I love those challenges, you know?
	I mean, if this diving board isn't high enough, just make it higher, because I'll find a way down to that postage stamp of water somehow.
	But it is a great challenge, and it's not too surprising to me that people who start off critical of religion end up critical of free will, because I think it's this, you know, the fallacy of the admixture, you know?
	Because religion has been so often used to justify free will through the appeal to the soul, then all appeals to free will must be irrational in nature, and I don't think that necessarily follows, although I can understand how tempting it might be.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, Joshua.
	Welcome back anytime.
	It was a great, great pleasure to chat, and I really appreciate the conversation.
	Yeah, no, this was wonderful.
	I'll have to come up with some more challenging questions for you.
	Absolutely.
	Anytime, man.
	Anytime.
	All right.
	Take care.
	And by the way, nobody won.
	But hopefully everyone's got more information to make better decisions about free will.
	The goal is to get into the honest conversations playlist and not the rebuttals playlist.
	So...
	Yeah, no, listen, we had a conversation and, you know, it was not exactly a debate, which is great because, you know, there's nothing particularly conclusive can come out of the biological side, but it was a really enjoyable conversation and I hope that people gain the same value out of it that I did.
	Absolutely.
	Thanks, man.
	Yep, take care.
	Alright, up next is Nick.
	Nick wrote in and said, I believe that the creation of the current debt bubble and credit bubble mixed with the increase in socialist government policies is responsible for a human bubble.
	My first instinct is to prepare for my own survival, as well as the survival of those closest to me, while accepting that a quote-unquote great pop must take its course.
	I have a deeply rooted hatred for all forms of manipulation and tyranny, and I keep a really tight ship in regards to who I let into my social circle.
	Given that I see the global crash as nothing more than the result of the masses living unprincipled lives, is it immoral that I am only concerned about the well-being of friends, loved ones, and anyone else who is able to truly recognize what is wrong with our civilization?
	That's from Nick.
	Hey, Nick.
	How you doing?
	Hey, Stefan.
	Thanks for having me on the show.
	I'm really excited to be here.
	Oh, it's my pleasure.
	Thanks for calling.
	I just had a quick question.
	When are the case selected t-shirts coming up?
	When are the case-selected t-shirts coming out?
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Probably on the eve of the...
	I imagine on the eve of the European Civil War, but we'll keep our eyes peeled on that.
	Because I'm looking for any excuse or strategy to provoke conversation, and I think case-selected t-shirts would work pretty well.
	I assume that it's case-selected t-shirts, but then certain activists from the left will just put in two extra Ks and consider that an argument.
	Yeah.
	Alright, so we got the big die-off?
	What's that?
	I'm not disagreeing.
	I just want to make sure.
	So, you're saying that because we've got so much extra, quote, value that we're stealing from the future, through money printing, through debt, and so on, that this has created an excess of humanity, and when the debt comes due, then humanity itself may decline in numbers, because there just won't be as many resources around.
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, it's bad news for For the Rs, right?
	Well, anything that's bad news for the Rs is not great news for the Ks, because it feels like we're a little outnumbered at the moment.
	Yeah, no, well, yeah, well...
	And both the R's and the K's get a vote.
	Yay, democracy!
	Oh, that's...
	Oh, man.
	But the way I was hoping to move the conversation forward was sort of giving my backstory.
	Because my whole life I've pretty much been...
	Labeled as having very little empathy and being very cold and heartless.
	And I was hoping...
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Let me just guess, Nick.
	Is that from people who wanted something from you?
	Either they wanted something from me or they wanted me to contribute to a system that allows other people to get stuff.
	Yeah, it's selfish for you...
	It's selfish of you to not give me something I haven't earned.
	It's like, no, I don't think that's selfish.
	Just try showing up at a factory you haven't worked at and asking for a paycheck.
	It's selfish for not giving it to me.
	No, I know.
	There's all these logical explanations for why I shouldn't be, I guess, objectively, I shouldn't be bothered by this.
	But I feel like it's abnormally deeply rooted in me and I was hoping that by giving you my backstory...
	Sorry, what is abnormally deeply rooted?
	My hatred for tyranny and the use of force against me and people's lack of personal responsibility and just seeing that whole thing as … All right, hang on.
	Which of these words did not fit in what you just said?
	Do you remember what you just gave a list of the things that you hate?
	Force being used against you, people being wildly irresponsible, and charity.
	Yeah.
	Okay, two of those are big problems.
	Charity is, you know, just helping people out that you want to help out.
	You can't put charity in the same category of People initiating force against you, right?
	No, I agree with that.
	Sorry, I'm just a little bit...
	It's interesting that you did, and that tells me one thing, Nick, and one thing only, that you have suffered far more from women than men in this area.
	Oh, you think?
	Because I actually feel like my mom played a major role in seeing me in...
	She played a major role in me discerning and living by principle versus being a bit of a leech on society.
	I truly believe that she played a major role in orienting me the right way.
	Well, you know, my theory is always about evidence, so we'll put that one aside and go with your approach, because I'm never going to tell other people what their experiences should be, so we'll go with that.
	Okay, so you may be...
	You may not have the tumor called pathological altruism.
	That's probably good news, right?
	Yeah.
	So you say that you want to take care of the people you love and who are close to you, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, like I really try to get the word out there as much as I can.
	You know, post videos, have conversations as much as I can.
	I try to, you know, simple things like educating my siblings on things like precious metals.
	And I actually got my parents to get out of the markets.
	And I actually got my mom to vote liberal for the first time, to not vote liberal for the first time in 40 years.
	Right.
	Wait, wait, hang on.
	Wait.
	Oh, dear.
	Oh, dear, Nick.
	Oh my goodness.
	I know it seems conflicting.
	Wait a second.
	So I had a theory that maybe some feminine influence was conflating or mashing up together charity and coercion and your mom has been voting liberal?
	Hmm.
	I think we may be returning to the womb of originality here.
	Can I stack up some more evidence and...
	Yes, please.
	Go ahead.
	Okay.
	So, just examples off the top of my head.
	I started having my first allowance when I was five years old.
	Two dollars a week.
	And the house rule was that I would keep a dollar and then put a dollar in the bank, which obviously I was told, I need that money later to build a life.
	And that would apply to Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, paychecks I would get from teenage jobs.
	I would always have to put half of that paycheck in the bank because You know, those were the house rules, and the day I can afford to live on my own, that's the day that I can spend my money however I want.
	So you kind of had a 50% tax from five.
	Well, it wasn't a bank account put aside for me until I was 18.
	No, no, but you didn't have the choice in how to spend your money.
	No.
	All of it?
	No.
	Okay, so 50% of it was taken away from you against your will.
	And used for your future benefits, supposedly, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so fast forward.
	Sorry, here's where we get charity and coercion to some degree co-join.
	But anyway, keep going and I'll bookmark that.
	So sorry, by saying fast forward, I didn't mean to cut off a point you were trying to make.
	I'm just trying to stack, I guess, I'm just trying to make the case for my mother, pretty much.
	Alright, go ahead.
	Okay.
	So, first time, you know, being a child and seeing my mom withdraw money at an ATM at a bank for the first time, and I would be like, you know, mom, you know, this machine's giving you all this money, you know, why you and dad are working so hard?
	You know, the machine's just giving you money.
	And then she would explain that whenever you withdraw money from the bank, It's only because you've put it there in the first place.
	You've worked to put it there in the first place.
	If you do withdraw money from the bank without putting it there in the first place, not only do you have to pay it back, but you have to put in additional money back, which is called interest.
	That's why it's better to put as much money in the bank as possible so that you do have money to withdraw.
	I feel like that made a big impression on me.
	The first time I purchased an ice cream sandwich, you know, I would go to the store, look up the price, be like, okay, you know, $1.23 or, you know, whatever, and go back home, get my change, come back, and then realize that the ice cream sandwich didn't cost $1.23.
	It costs whatever the tax was at the time, $1.32.
	So then I couldn't walk out of there with the ice cream bar, so then I go back home, and then my parents sort of explain the concept of government and how everyone has to You know, chip in.
	But they were also very vocal in advocating that the government takes much more than it should.
	Later on in high school, I landed my first minimum wage job, started saving money to buy my first car.
	And then I get my pay stub and I notice how multiple amounts are subtracted from the net pay and then I get all upset all over again because that's when I first started budgeting.
	And so I bring this up at the dinner table and then my parents explain the concept of income tax and how, you know, being a Canadian citizen you're expected to contribute to the system just like everyone else.
	So towards the end of high school, I sort of had like an orientation program where the guidance counselor helps students make a decision on which college to attend.
	After various quizzes and tests and personality trait analysis and all this kind of stuff, they had a ranking system at the end and a subdivided wheel with different industries.
	The industry that I ranked the best in would be the one that I should go to college for.
	None of those industries appealed to me.
	I felt pretty discouraged because I would look at the course syllabus No offense, but, you know, courses like philosophy, humanities...
	Oh, listen, don't, don't, don't.
	You don't need to...
	It doesn't offend me.
	I mean, the amount of value I got from college philosophy courses was something I will, at some point, talk about into the camera when I can rehydrate my bitter, indebted tears quickly enough.
	But, sorry, go ahead.
	You know, various liberal arts degrees and a bunch of other courses that just bored me to death.
	Like, I couldn't believe that I was spending all these years in high school...
	Just to spend another four years in a bigger high school.
	So none of that stuff resonated with me, so I go home, and then I see this infomercial once I get home, and it was about the Art Institute.
	And it showed all these breakdowns of the students' work.
	It was a film and animation program.
	So it would show all these major Hollywood sequences for movies and stuff, and then it's like this really, really...
	This really inspiring infomercial and it sort of ended with the tagline, something like unleash your creativity or something.
	And like right away I logged into the website, I ordered the brochure.
	So I'm sort of putting this plan together to go to the school and then I show up the next day at school and tell the guidance counselor, you know, hey, this is what interests me.
	I really want to apply for this program.
	How would I go about doing that?
	And then right away, he did not approve.
	This was private education.
	The tuition would be really high, probably nearing $40,000.
	I wouldn't have access to government loans or grants.
	I wouldn't move away from my friends and family.
	I would have to rent an apartment for myself.
	Just all the excuses in the book why it was a bad idea.
	Then I immediately went home, looked up the tuition price, which was $29,000.
	That's when I asked my parents how short I was, exactly how much money I had been putting aside.
	I was short about $20,000.
	I made the decision to not go to college after high school and work for a year.
	Instead of putting half of my paycheck in the bank, I started putting all of my paycheck in the bank.
	The Art Institute actually had this prepayment program where for every $5,000 I paid off early, they would knock off $1,000 off the total cost of the program.
	Towards the end, I just ended up paying $25,000 instead of the full amount.
	My parents agreed to lend me the rest of the money I hadn't saved up and encouraged me to not pursue college and actually pursue private education.
	So after graduating at 19, I landed my first job as a visual effects artist for a couple of weeks.
	And even though it was a minimum wage job, I was totally in love with my career.
	I couldn't believe that I was getting a paycheck for actually working on films.
	I mean, it was minimum wage, 90 hour weeks.
	But I mean, I didn't care.
	It didn't feel like it worked to me.
	So then four months later, I moved back home and I landed a job at a bigger studio.
	I started making $58,000 a year.
	At 19, that's pretty overwhelming, so I immediately started budgeting for my dream car.
	I actually applied the withholding ratio of my minimum wage pay stub to my new salary because I had no concept of income tax brackets at the time.
	Yeah, when I got my first pay stub from my new job, I was really discouraged.
	I couldn't believe how badly I was getting raped by the government.
	So then I brought this up with my in-laws at the dinner table again.
	A lot of dinner table conversations, it seems, revolving around finance.
	With my in-laws, who were both public school teachers.
	So right away, you know, they would bring up that someone as privileged as me should be contributing to the well-being of society.
	You know, they would bring up the fact that I should be, you know, I should be really proud and not have such a lack of empathy and, you know, see my contribution to even, you know, even people on welfare as...
	They saw it as me buying peace with tax dollars, pretty much.
	You mean because the people on welfare might revolt or riot if they didn't get their welfare?
	Yes.
	So it's better to keep – Yeah.
	So like the reason – like if you have a restaurant and the mafia comes around, you buy peace from them so they won't burn down your store.
	It's the same – it's a shakedown, right?
	Yeah.
	That's pretty honest.
	It's pretty blunt.
	It's not about helping the poor.
	It's just we'll pay you to not set fire to our middle-class neighborhoods.
	All right.
	Well, that's pretty blunt, I guess.
	But phrased, I mean, as young as I was, being phrased as buying peace, it's pretty compelling.
	Yeah, except of course that it's the welfare that has caused the buying of peace to be necessary.
	Yes, no, fully agree.
	And when does it end, right?
	And what happens when huge numbers of people are dependent on a welfare system that mathematically is completely unsustainable?
	Oh, for sure.
	I mean, the longer the end of the welfare state is postponed, the worse it's going to be, which is why everybody wants to kick it down the can because it's come to the point now where it's going to be pretty rough.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, it's...
	I mean, I fully agree with all that.
	And they were also very quick to point out that it would be terrible for me to live in a fully capitalist system.
	Well, that's projection, but okay, from them, the government school teachers, right?
	Yeah.
	Free market would be terrible.
	I like my summers off.
	It would be the worst thing for me.
	You know, things like, you know, education, healthcare, you know, my children wouldn't be provided for, all that stuff, you know.
	Really?
	You're making good coin, but somehow if you weren't taxed as much or you weren't taxed at all, your children wouldn't be provided for?
	What they mean is their children wouldn't be provided.
	Every time the leftists attack capitalists, they're just talking about themselves.
	Well, the phrase was, you know, trust me, it will be more expensive for you in a fully capitalist system.
	Yeah, I get it.
	I can say stuff too.
	I know.
	Feel me to stop me if I'm rambling on.
	Yeah, just get you a point if you can.
	Okay, so the point being, I see it as two bubbles that have formed.
	We're relating to the human life bubble.
	And the first one for me is a belief system bubble.
	Like to me, the progressive movement, political correctness, all that stuff is nothing more than like a form of QE designed to prop up leftists.
	You know, they're being propped up in the exact same way that the financial system is being propped up by something that's fake, something that's totally reliant on the acceptance of the masses, things like feminism, microaggressions, white privilege, all that stuff.
	And to me, I think that the needle that'll pop the belief system bubble will be something like the escalation of the violence in Europe or things like people seeing their jobs being given to immigrants through forced associations.
	I'm sure you're aware that Canadian entrepreneurs are now given $15,000 incentives to hire Syrians.
	Yeah, so that then people can say, oh, look, Syrians have jobs.
	It's like, no, they don't.
	They have subsidies.
	That's not the same thing.
	In fact, it's the jobs taken away rather than jobs added, because all the money you give to the Syrians is some other job that wasn't created.
	Yeah, not exactly.
	Oh, man.
	And the other thing, another pin to the human belief system bubble, it's more on, I guess, a social level.
	Like, I just see a major decrease in women and men's willingness to commit to each other.
	So I'm constantly surrounded by people in my social circles getting divorced.
	Just the other day, a friend of mine was getting married and we were on a car ride home with a bunch of friends and everyone was in agreement that it was the most incredibly stupid decision he could possibly ever make.
	So unless women have no problem in growing old and alone, I think that feminism will have to come to a halt eventually.
	Well, yeah, feminism, look, feminism and leftism go hand in hand, and feminism is a very powerful way of convincing women to not have children.
	Now, you can convince people to not have children, but if you want big government programs, well, you kind of need some taxpayers around.
	So the left has nothing to do with sustainability or helping people because if they really want big government programs, then they should be encouraging women to have as many children as humanly possible so that there'll be all of the tax livestock to feed on the ancient crony cryptkeeper vampire gremlin heads who need all of that money when they retire and then they should be encouraging women to have as many children as humanly possible so So the fact that leftism and feminism is saying, let's have a giant government and giant government program, well, you need a huge number of taxpayers to support that.
	At the same time, they're saying to women, don't have kids.
	I mean, it's just a fantastic way of bringing a 2,500-year society to an end.
	It's pretty well orchestrated, yeah.
	And finally, this is where I come to my philosophical question.
	It's regarding the second bubble, which is the human life bubble.
	And it's just simply, having this bubble pop to me is like a giant grass patch disappearing and leaving all the rabbits with nothing.
	And I believe that the giant grass patch was never meant to be there in the first place, so therefore the rabbits were never meant to be there.
	To me, the bubbles that pop are nothing more than a form of market correction.
	They're not good or bad, they're just simply the natural course of things.
	And so my question is, is it immoral to view things this way?
	Well, I don't know about moral.
	A view can't be moral or immoral.
	It's just a thought.
	Well, I guess then the question would be, is it immoral for the grass patch to disappear and therefore all the rabbits to disappear?
	And then the answer would be no, I guess.
	Well, again, if people cause their own demise through their own rejection of reality, That's neither moral nor immoral nor right nor wrong.
	It just is.
	That's just nature.
	No, that's just nature.
	Okay.
	You know, the lion who steadfastly believes that he can live on grass will die.
	And the zebra who tries to eat meat will die.
	And the bird who refuses to use his wings will die.
	And the mosquito that doesn't suck blood, you get this, right?
	The dolphin who thinks it's a shark and doesn't come up for air will die, right?
	I mean, it's just, you know, the trainer who thinks that the great white shark is a dolphin will die, right?
	I mean, so all organisms that steadfastly reject and refuse reality...
	It's not like, oh, do they deserve?
	I don't know.
	If you go up and hug a hungry tiger, do you deserve to die?
	I don't know.
	You just will.
	Right.
	I mean, it's just, hey, look, here's a cuddly lion.
	I think I'm going to go and play with its cubs.
	Do you deserve to die?
	It's just what happens.
	And if people steadfastly avoid and refuse the basic facts of government debt, Government fiat currency, government financing, trade deficits, the giant sucking sound of jobs heading to every other place than the West these days.
	Well, except Germany.
	Well, that's going to change.
	But if people steadfastly reject and refuse to process and acknowledge reality, well, nature says, fail!
	Fail!
	And you are wiped.
	You're just like erased off the map.
	I mean, that's just the way it works.
	If you don't adapt, and adaptation requires that you process reality.
	If you refuse to adapt, if you don't adapt, you die.
	You die.
	I mean, you think of the differences in the races if we accept the out-of-Africa hypothesis.
	Right.
	Those who went north and did stupid things died.
	Ah, I'm sure there'll be food come February.
	You know, what do I need to save this seed crop for?
	I'm hungry now!
	Oh, do they deserve to die?
	Well, they just will.
	So, look, I... Like you, I don't obviously want to like to see human suffering, but that's exactly why I'm doing what I'm doing, is I don't like to see human suffering.
	And the way that I undo pathological altruism In my heart is through pathological altruism in my voice.
	Let me tell you how it works.
	You help people and you help people and you give them all the information as entertainingly and engagingly and enjoyably presented as humanly possible.
	I don't think I can find any way on this or any other planet in this or any other time in this or any other dimension.
	I cannot conceive of finding a way to get philosophy across to people in a more enjoyable way.
	Can't do it!
	Can't do it.
	Unless it's like the philosophy of porn with a flashlight and a nine-volt bat.
	Like, I don't know how to do it.
	I mean, maybe I can intersplice some screaming goats.
	Do that, Mike.
	So I'm putting it out.
	I get the most experts.
	We get the most facts, the most graphs.
	I make the most jokes, right or wrong, good or bad.
	Like, I can't...
	I yell, I scream, I dance, I sing, I take my top off.
	Like, I do everything that I can to try and get this information in as digestible, enjoyable, implementable format to the planet as humanly possible.
	I can't think...
	Of another way to do it.
	And so, the beautiful thing is, after putting out this amount of effort, this amount of work, taking this amount of risks, taking this number of hits, to get the facts out to the folks, if the folks keep rejecting the facts, no matter how engagingly and entertainingly it is put forward, then if the folks run into trouble, my conscience is clear.
	If I'm the doctor who has told the guy, lose weight, quit smoking.
	Lose weight, quit smoking.
	Lose weight, quit smoking.
	I tell him this every six months when he comes in for his checkup.
	And then the guy gets diabetes and lung cancer because he didn't lose weight and quit smoking.
	Well, I'm sorry.
	I'll treat him if he's got money.
	But I don't feel bad.
	I don't feel bad because I did everything I could to tell him what he needed to do.
	He just chose not to do it.
	And so the way to avoid this pathological altruism is through pathological altruism.
	Through working as hard as I can to help as many people as humanly possible.
	You know, the people out there, you listening to this, you watching this, if you're not liking, subscribing, and sharing, and, you know, donating is great, too.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	But forget about the donating, because, oh, that makes people so cynical.
	He's e-begging.
	Oh, yeah, I asked a woman on a date.
	I'm v-begging.
	Nope, nope.
	Just asking.
	All I'm doing is asking.
	And what I'm seeing when I ask is how people handle power.
	Oh, look, I'm in a vulnerable position of asking.
	I wonder how that is going to reveal your childhood to me.
	Anyway, So, if you're not out there, like, subscribe, and share.
	And, you know, yeah, people will say, oh, these are terrible.
	Forget it.
	Just do it.
	Just do it.
	Because you're part of the great chain of getting the facts out to the folks.
	Get the facts to the folks.
	Get the facts to the folks.
	Got my mind on my money and my money on my...
	Well, that's the thing.
	You say that the experience is enjoyable.
	You do it in the most enjoyable way.
	But when the heated, like, really, really heated pushback comes, you're able to detach yourself from...
	No, you know what it is, man?
	You know what it is?
	Like, if I'm the dentist, I'm saying to someone, listen, you should stop drinking that sugary pop, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, the guy, my dental patient, if I was a dentist, he would go home and he would see a Coke commercial, right?
	Yeah.
	Because the dentist and the Coke...
	Well, it's kind of a win-lose.
	If the Coke wins, the dentist, I guess, wins for money.
	But the teeth and the Coke, right?
	I mean, the dentist trying to protect your teeth and the Coke is trying to get your money and doesn't care about your teeth, right?
	Right.
	And so for me, of course, there's pushback.
	Yeah, because, you know, if everyone listens to the dentist, nobody buys Coke anymore or whatever.
	I mean, you know, whatever is bad for your teeth and all that.
	So, of course, there's a win-lose there.
	And so if I can convince people to be good...
	If I can convince people to be strong, if I can help puncture this giant inflatable demon of pathological altruism currently eating Western civilization whole, well, of course, all the people feeding off it are going to suffer in the short run.
	Of course, you know, you take away the food source.
	If you take away the fruit...
	The evil butterflies get angry.
	That's like a terrible analogy.
	Beware the evil butterflies.
	They will steal your soul.
	So yeah, of course there's pushback naturally.
	I mean if you encourage people to be good, the bad people who prey on the absence of strength will not like it if you're You know, the bullies don't like it if you teach people how to work out and give them some self-defense move.
	Of course, the bullies want to have easy targets to push around.
	You strengthen the virtuous people and the bad people get upset.
	That's natural.
	In fact, if they weren't upset with me, I'd be doing something horribly wrong as a whole.
	But what it does, so you help enough people and then if society goes haywire and they suffer a lot, Well, you did everything you could.
	Your conscience is clear.
	Do you feel that?
	Your conscience is clear.
	And, you know, am I going to feel bad?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I tell you, man, I swing back and forth on this a lot because, you know, I'm still trying to work out the feminine planted dagger of pathological altruism in my heart for the most part.
	It seems like you can't pull it out.
	You just have to push it through.
	It comes out through the ribs of your back.
	But...
	I swing back and forth.
	I swing back and forth.
	You know, I mean, I've been attacked by a lot of people in Western civilization, so if Western civilization as it currently stands are threatened, I can see both sides.
	I'm of two minds, I guess, which is good.
	It's down from 84.
	So, yeah, I mean, try and help people as much as you can, and then if the shite hits the fan, Well, you did everything you could, you know?
	You did everything you could.
	And I'll tell you this, you know, if it comes to feeding my family and feeding Syrian families, I mean, there's no...
	There's no choice for me.
	I mean, I know exactly where my loyalties are.
	And that's a funny little thing called evolution.
	Why are there different ethnicities and different races?
	Because of in-group preferences.
	Because you take care of your own.
	And I expect them to take care of their own, which they're currently trying to do a lot of times by preventing me from taking care of my own through taxes and all that kind of crap.
	Affirmative action and so on.
	But yeah, you take care of your own.
	You expect other groups to do the same.
	And, you know, I want to help people in a universal sense because philosophy is universal.
	But, you know, if there's a big interruption in the food supply and there's some people really suffering, you know, all I could do was spend most of my life telling people that there were big problems coming for which they laughed, attacked, mocked, and, you know, didn't support me for whatever reason for the most part.
	Okay, well...
	Sorry, you know, you try to hug a giant hungry lion called unreality, and now there's just a big, fat, furry burp where you used to be.
	Right.
	I mean, I totally agree with everything you're saying.
	I mean, I guess another question for me would be, do you feel like gender plays a role in how well the information is received?
	Like, you're a guy putting this information out there, but...
	I mean, my girlfriend, you know, we watch her show regularly and, you know, she's sort of, you know, getting out there and it's, I mean, she's getting ostracized by females around her hardcore.
	And so that was my question.
	Do you feel like gender plays a role, depending on whether it's a guy or a girl propagating this information, do you feel like gender plays a role in how well the information is received, whether it's immediate social circles or the masses or whatever?
	I'm not sure what you mean when you say gender plays a role.
	You mean if I was a dusky woman with Big tits?
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	When I sort of engage women and talk about this, it's either warming up to it or simply the cold shoulder, but then the next day they forget about it.
	But it seems like when my girlfriend does it, she's just shut out of her female social circles completely.
	Yeah, females have ferocious in-group preference, which...
	I think pretty well documented and pretty easy to understand from an evolutionary standpoint.
	Males don't because males compete for the females.
	Yeah.
	And female in-group preference is very, very important.
	And there's a couple of basic reasons for it in that in the past, the woman who handed out sexuality without commitment broke the covenant of the females, right?
	And so there used to be a lot, you know, don't slut shame.
	It's like, I don't know, you can slut shame.
	You can avoid slut-shaming, or you can have a civilization.
	Take your pain.
	You know, basic realities, right?
	Slut-shaming is, hey, do you like having roads?
	Hey, electricity, I love it.
	Plumbing, you know, I can't live without it.
	Can't get enough of it.
	Sometimes I just flush to watch the Coriillinus effect.
	So, female in-group preference, women have to be policing each other because a woman who hands out sexuality without commitment, well, she gets pregnant.
	And she gets pregnant and the children grow up without a father, without male commitment.
	She's bleeding resources from everyone else because she can go hunting while she's breastfeeding and so on.
	So she's bleeding resources from everyone else, which is why the welfare state is basically the single mother state.
	And she's lowering the standards because men are like, oh wait, I can get sex without commitment.
	I'm 17.
	I wonder which I'll prefer, you know?
	And then you end up setting up a dating site in Germany.
	But anyway.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, women have to police women, and so women have evolved to have very strong in-group preferences because they need to be susceptible to each other's opinions and approval so that civilization can be maintained through the restraint of female sexuality without commitment.
	On the other hand, do males have a very strong in-group preference?
	No.
	They'll screw each other over the moment some pretty woman comes along, you know, well, I know you were my friend, but some lady came along and says that she doesn't like you, so...
	Oh, there's a nice shiv in the side.
	How does that feel, brother?
	So, you know, men don't have any particular in-group preference, which is why when there's a state, women will vote on block and men will be more fragmented except for the women who depend on the men.
	And then they'll vote more into the male interest, which is why men lose to women when there's a state.
	And there's no equality between the genders when there's a state because of female in-group preference and all of that sort of stuff.
	And males fragmented preference.
	And, you know, bros before hoes, no, not how evolution has worked because the woman is looking for the most aggressive male throughout most of evolution to have a child with.
	And the most aggressive male will not hesitate to stab another male, metaphorically speaking, in the back in order to, you know, this is why there are shit tests from women and, you know, the whole story on that.
	I'm sure I don't need to go over it at all.
	No, but that's...
	So, yeah, so when women bring this information to other women, the old mechanisms that used to keep women's legs pressed together, you know, no huggy, no kissy until I get a wedding ring.
	Right.
	My honey, my baby, don't put my love upon no shelf.
	She said, don't ham in old lines and keep your hands to yourself, right?
	I mean, the old female in-group preference that used to keep women's legs together until there was a ring on her finger, now is kind of going the opposite direction.
	And this is one of the reasons why there's a giant sucking sound of nihilism coming from the...
	Hopefully to be averted end of European civilization.
	So, yeah, gender does definitely play a part.
	And women don't particularly fear the attacks of men because women can turn other women against the men.
	And, you know, you sort of see examples of this where a woman on campus, right, she has some dissatisfying or regretful sexual, and then she goes to some, I don't know, group of this coven of Social justice warriors.
	Oh, it was rape!
	So they can turn women against men very easily.
	That's the whole story of feminism.
	It's just turning women against men.
	And so they don't fear mayoral attacks because women...
	In societies where rape is banned, women have an enormous amount of power.
	And please understand, rape should always be banned.
	I'm just talking biologically, right?
	And so when rape is banned, then a man has to beg or ask or whatever it is for sexual access.
	And refusal of that, he doesn't have the backup rape option, like apparently a third of North African men have admitted to having rape.
	Men don't have the backup rape option.
	So if women as a whole say no to men in the Western societies, their gene pool dies out.
	So men have, because they don't have the rape option in Western society, which again, I don't think they should, obviously, nobody should.
	But because they don't have that option, they have to be supplicatory towards women.
	They have to ask.
	And this is why, you know, in other societies, the woman comes with a dowry.
	But in Western societies, you've got to bring a honking ring and go down on your knee and beg with goodies and a woman to be with you because she has to say yes in order for your genes to survive.
	And she has to say yes in a case-selected, long-term fashion for decades to raise your children.
	And so, women don't fear.
	It says that patriarchy is nonsense because women can turn men against each other just by denying sexual access.
	Men freak out.
	And in terms of your genetics, you would much rather stab another man in the back, either figuratively or literally, in order to gain sexual access because you've reduced a competitor.
	And also, if you don't stab this man in the back and he gets sexual access and you don't, your genes die out.
	So, your genes are like completely destroy male in-group.
	Preferences in order to gain sexual access.
	So it is a big and powerful mess.
	And all of this is perfectly fine and wonderful until you get a big giant state.
	And then female in-group preference combined with a lack of male in-group preference in order to gain sexual access means that...
	Women will always win.
	Women will always vote as a block and men will turn on each other to gain sexual access.
	Female in-group preference combined with the fact that only females can police other females, that means that women have way more of an uphill battle in getting this message of reason and evidence out than we do.
	Yeah, it's very clear, I think, again, biologically speaking, that men have evolved to deal with reality and women have evolved to manipulate people.
	And there's nothing wrong with that.
	Again, we're talking primitive stuff, right?
	Yeah, so it's unreasonable to expect women to be as brave as putting this stuff out there than us, pretty much.
	Yes, for sure.
	Because men compete with each other for females, men do not have a strong in-group preference.
	Therefore, men are willing to be rejected by other men.
	Whereas women, because they don't compete for males and they needed to develop a strong in-group preference in order to police and slut-shame women who wanted to close down civilization by opening up their legs, then what's happened is Because men will constantly stab each other in the back for sexual access, they can't win.
	Women naturally combine together.
	You just go to the grocery store and look at the number of women's magazines versus the number of men's magazines, and it's pretty easy to figure that stuff out.
	So winning the global philosophical battle is a man's job?
	Well, I can tell you looking at the statistics on this show and looking at the callers into this show, I think that because men are willing to be rejected by other men, because men can handle rejection, because traditionally men have proposed marriage or dating or sexual access, and women are the gatekeepers, or at least evolved to be the gatekeepers until the 60s.
	So because men have to face rejection in order to gain sexual access, very few men, like the first woman you ever ask out is the woman you spend the rest of your life with.
	Men have to ask out a lot of women to get sexual access because you always aim high, right?
	You aim as high as humanly possible.
	You go for the tens even if you're like a minus four Danny DeVito Gollum style troll.
	Actually, I like Danny DeVito but you know what I mean?
	So you aim high and basically guys will ask out top tier women and they'll scale down grudgingly and regretfully until the first woman says yes.
	I mean, that was certainly my experience.
	So you aim for the very highest.
	That's in male nature, right?
	Yes.
	And then you just keep scaling down until you get a woman who will say yes.
	So you have to go through a lot of rejection.
	And so you get used to rejection.
	And also, you cannot seek the approval.
	Of your fellow men, because your fellow men's approval will be, don't go for this woman because I want her, right?
	So if you can eliminate all the competitors for the top-tier woman by disapproving of them approaching her, then you win.
	But that's not how evolution works.
	The evolution works where everyone strives, all the men strive for the top-tier women, which means that it's win-lose.
	The man who wins gains a sexual access, and then the man who loses doesn't.
	So it's win-lose.
	For men.
	So we have to be able to reject each other to harm the interests of other men.
	And we have to be relatively immune from rejection.
	Because the men I know...
	I was just talking about this with a friend of mine the other day.
	That the men I know who didn't go through that first, you know, junior high school, ask the girl out in the dance and, you know, face the rejection...
	Yeah, they just swiped right on Tinder.
	Well, no, they...
	Yeah, they never actually ended up getting married or reproducing.
	There's this window of early sexual or more romantic at that age, but it's this early romantic, throw your dice out there and see what you can get, like wave the net around, see if you catch a butterfly.
	Oh, but not an evil one or an angry one.
	So men have to be willing to face rejection, which is why most advances come from men.
	Because whenever you have an advance in any field, there's a lot of hostility from everyone else.
	Like if you're the guy who gets the cheerleader or head cheerleader or whoever's the hottest girl in school, what do the other guys think of you?
	Yeah.
	They hate you.
	I hate that guy who got the girl.
	And so you have to be willing to face the snarls and scowls of every guy and parade.
	Like, yeah, this is the alpha female, at least at this stage in life, that I got and sucks to be you and balls to be me, right?
	And so men have to be willing to face rejection, but women, what are they?
	You know, this is why women put makeup on, so they don't have to be rejected.
	So they get to be the rejecters, right?
	So that they can attract men and then choose from among the big giant sea anemone of waving penises that all want to get with them.
	Eeny, meeny, miny, whoa.
	I think that's how it goes.
	Is this why in our selected community, rejection...
	Men rejecting women creates attraction on the part of the woman.
	Yes, yeah.
	And, you know, how many guys, like when Britney Spears looked the very best, how many guys looked at Kayfet and said, yeah, that makes sense to me.
	Yeah, that makes good sense.
	I'm so glad he's with her.
	I'm sure he deserves it, that lucky virtuous fellow, right?
	Yeah.
	So...
	So the capacity to handle rejection and the capacity to handle hostility is essential for progress.
	And this is why men are responsible for most of the progress.
	I mean, along with the fact that in the bell curve of intelligence, women are shaped like a penis and men are shaped like a tit.
	That's just one of these weird inversals of mathematics that men are more spread across the intelligence scale, high and low, whereas women cluster more rock hard on around the middle.
	And I guess more like a tit with a woman lying on her.
	But anyway, I'll model it myself later with Plato.
	So that capacity to handle rejection, that capacity to enjoy the rumble and tumble of win-lose sexual advances.
	Well, OK, so the first guy to invent the car got a lot of snarly looks from the men who all had horse and carriage companies.
	And the guy to invent the cell phone was, you know, had voodoo dolls stabbed from the guys who made rotary dial phones or whatever, right?
	So the capacity to win and to say, damn the losers, you should have fought harder or tried harder or whatever.
	I don't care.
	I'm going to move on with my prize.
	That is the root of human progress.
	And some women certainly have it, of course, when nobody's talking blanket statements.
	But yeah, it matters.
	If you want progress, you need men out there competing with each other, willing to have those win-lose interactions.
	And right now, I mean, if you look at Japan, this is how you know Japan is never going to recover because the cucked up men are just, you know, after 20 years of recession and debt and all that, they just don't give a damn.
	And same thing with Europe.
	I mean, the likelihood of its recovery is very low.
	Because when men aren't out there competing, their testosterone tends to decline.
	Then they get man tits and, you know, the only muscles they work are the carpal tunnel of call of duty.
	So, anyway.
	Does that make any sense?
	No, it really makes sense.
	The one little hiccup I have is you describe a lot of sort of win-lose transactions.
	And to me, capitalism by definition is, you know, sort of win-win.
	Like, a trade has to be profitable for...
	Oh, no, no.
	But that's only between customer and provider.
	Not between...
	Competitors.
	I see, I see, I see.
	Competitors, right?
	So, I mean, if people are watching me right now, good on you.
	Great taste.
	If people are watching me right now, they're not watching CNN. Right.
	So it's win-win in terms of people would rather watch me than CNN, because the Communist News Network, you know, not always necessarily the best place to go.
	So if people want to watch me rather than CNN, it's a win-win for me and the listener, because we're both voluntary, but it's a win-lose between me and CNN, and that's the important thing.
	Thanks for clearing that up.
	Another thing regarding my question, still sticking with the bubbles popping.
	To me, either the bubble pops or there's some kind of transition that's made.
	The transition can either be made for the better or for the worst.
	The more people I talk to, the more people I meet that sort of advocate Sort of this general zeitgeist movement position.
	And I know that you've debated Peter Joseph on your show, and it's unfortunate because you guys...
	I'm not entirely sure about that.
	I think one of us was debating.
	But anyway, go on.
	No, no, I watched the follow-up with, you know, the breakdown of the long word salads and the principle of continuum or whatever it was.
	But yeah, yeah.
	But, well, I mean, I was...
	I was actually not disappointed, but it was too bad because I really want a lot of the Zeitgeist movement points to be rebutted.
	And you guys just didn't get around the...
	What was the initial thing?
	It was like one point.
	Anyways.
	So yeah, so...
	What is immoral about the Zeitgeist movement?
	Just the bottom line of the whole thing.
	Because if currency, prices, you know, essential goods and services are provided by an automated system, I mean, that's not...
	I'm sort of going to play devil's advocate right now because I in no way believe that this would make society better.
	But how would it be immoral that currency, prices...
	Listen, if someone can invent robots to provide goods and services for free...
	There's nothing immoral about that whatsoever.
	It's perfectly fine.
	The only issue I have with these utopian movements, and I like what Peter Joseph has done in terms of explicating the Federal Reserve and currency and all that kind of stuff.
	If he can come up or other people can come up with ways that some self-generating solar-powered factory can produce stuff and they can hand it out for free, fantastic.
	I think that's wonderful.
	They just can't use the initiation of force against people who disagree with wanting to do it that way.
	That's all.
	You can have a zeitgeist movement in a free society.
	Can you have a free society in a world where currency may be banned by force?
	Well, it's not, you know, no particular configuration of freedom is ever going to bother me.
	It's like saying, is it immoral for people on a date to go to a Thai restaurant or a Vietnamese restaurant?
	Well, it's fine.
	Life is too short and I'm too busy and I have Too many other things to think about, to worry about what happens when people are free and doing things in a voluntary manner.
	The only thing that bothers me is when people say, such and such is going to be banned, and you won't be allowed to have this, and if you do this, then I care.
	I don't care where people go on their first date unless they're kidnapped.
	Then I care, because that's a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	Right.
	No.
	I fully agree with that.
	And to me, even in a zeitgeist environment, you will end up having a difference in social classes because unless you fully abolish trade, people that are voluntarily trading with each other and not depending on the central machine will, over time, elevate their standard of living.
	And then you get class warfare all over again.
	Yeah, and you know, we are a striving species.
	There's a reason that we escaped the god-awful, squishy, mushy sex porn of single-celled amoeba-like orgies.
	You know, there's a reason that we are not living in caves anymore.
	We're a striving species.
	We want new, we want better, we want faster and all that.
	And we don't want to pay for it, of course, because we're resource-hoarding species like all good species, but...
	We're a striving species.
	You know, this idea that we're just gonna hit the stasis and it's gonna be wonderful, people will get so bored.
	You know, their whole life people are like, oh, I wanna retire, you know, and then they retire.
	And they're so bored.
	Well, that's the thing.
	Because they're old.
	They can't even sleep in anymore.
	Well, that's the thing.
	Because one of his major arguments was, you know, once people get shelter, food and water, and, you know, all the essentials covered, then they can be free to create art and music.
	And it's like, in this type of world, what kind of music is going to be created?
	Like, what kind of meaningful...
	I mean, you're completely taking away the incentive to...
	Create loyal bonds or, you know, because you're provided for, you're automatically provided for.
	So what kind of art and music come out of that?
	No, what people, you know, if I had skills and Training and, I don't know, a plethora of resources.
	You'd use the autotune robot.
	No, if people really want to help the planet and they like science, you know, forget about all of this robot Marxist mommy titty city.
	What you want to do is you want to do an analysis and try and find disparities of the genes for intelligence between various ethnicities.
	That's what you want to do.
	And then you want to find a way to We're good to go.
	People would be saying, okay, there's racial IQ differences, we need to figure out what's going on, and we need to figure out how we're going to splice the shit out of this stuff so everyone ends up with the same average IQ. That would be the very, and higher, not, you know, take people down to Australian Aboriginal level.
	So that would be, you know, the very, if people want to get into science to help help the world, that is what needs to be done.
	But of course, that's not even recognized anywhere.
	As an issue as yet.
	So nobody's...
	You can't solve that which you don't acknowledge.
	You can't fix a problem you don't even...
	You pretend doesn't even exist.
	So that's...
	If I was starting from scratch, I would do...
	And...
	Was a suicidal career scientist.
	And, you know, that would be the thing.
	You've got to admit these differences.
	We've got to study these genes.
	We've got to figure out where the genes are differing with regards to race and IQ. And we've got to fix this mother.
	Because I think it's going to be really tough for coexistence to occur in the long run without injustice, feelings of injustice and cries of racism and oppression and like this constant social conflict because of disparities in IQ that to some degree appear to be genetic.
	Wow, you know, if you can solve that, wouldn't that be a glorious gift to humanity, which might literally save, I know I see this a lot, but it literally might save civilization if you can find a way to bring races up to the same level of intelligence.
	God, that would be an unbelievable, positive, humane, planet-saving gift to the world.
	But of course, the people who are currently profiting off problems don't want those problems solved.
	Alright, I've got to move on to the next caller, if you don't demand, but I hope it was helpful and I hope you got some food in the basement, brother.
	Oh, it's a really good conversation, Stefan, and I'll get started on those case-selected t-shirts.
	Yeah, hey, you get them, let us know, I'll order one.
	Cool, alright, thanks a lot, man.
	Special case-selected, maybe we can get a branding from a cereal box.
	Thanks a lot, man.
	Okay, up next today we have Brian.
	Brian wrote in and said, Stefan, I've listened to your show for quite some time and have loved philosophy since grade school.
	I am a preacher with a master's degree in theology, and so I enjoy when you deal with questions of morality with theists on your show.
	However, I am usually disappointed because your guests generally devolve the game of moral philosophy into particular doctrinal discussions.
	In order to both sharpen my own articulation of theistic morality, and perhaps to refine your own articulation of morality, I'd like to wrestle with this question with you.
	What advantage does your attempt at secular objective ethics give you?
	That is from Brian.
	Oh, hey Brian, how you doing?
	Hey Stefan, doing good.
	Good.
	It's a great question, and I have been mulling it.
	With hopefully some valuable depth.
	Did you want to expand on it before I... Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot to say.
	But one of the things that I thought we might do just to kind of dig into it a little bit is contrast you with maybe some other well-known secular ethicists like Dawkins, for example.
	So I assume you're familiar with Dawkins' work.
	Not particularly on ethics, although I know that he says there's sort of an inbuilt altruism that was evolutionarily selected and so on.
	But I don't know much about his ethical theories.
	That's all you really need to know for that.
	His whole ethical system rests on natural selection.
	And so I've heard you kind of push against that in a couple of your – Your video is why that doesn't work.
	You use the phrase makers and takers or something like that in this argument.
	But could you just expand on that for a little bit?
	Why doesn't a purely natural selective ethics system work?
	Well, because biology is about the acquisition of resources necessary to sustain life in your children.
	And So you can create those resources through hard labor, or you can take them through aggression.
	And biologically, either one is perfectly valid.
	And so the idea, so it can't be universalized, right?
	The non-initiation of force can't be universalized when there's a perfectly valid biological strategy called take things from other people through force.
	And we can see that's been very much selected for throughout human history.
	In that societies which tend to be less cooperative tend to produce larger and stronger human beings, particularly males.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So the way that Dawkins kind of gets around that thing where we say, you know, human beings are jerks to each other.
	We got a whole, like, society of – I mean, we're just kind of jerks.
	It's that he actually – And this is where scientists, for instance, my wife is a biologist and she makes fun of Dawkins for this.
	But what he tries to do is he tries to talk about me not acting in my own self-interest.
	I think I am.
	I think I'm actually acting in my self-interest.
	But what I'm actually doing is acting in the self-interest of my species.
	So the thing that's good for natural selection is not...
	For me to kill my neighbor and take its food, but for me to have a non-aggressive act towards it because it helps my species survive, not just me.
	And like I said, my wife, who's a biologist, thinks that Dawkins likes to make fun of him for it.
	But what do you think of his movement there?
	Well, you know, I don't want to characterize that as his argument because if I remember the selfish gene correctly, it's obviously a bit more subtle than that.
	Right, right.
	But I don't know that much work has been done on the degree to which genes shared across a species cooperate with each other.
	So, I mean, one example, which I remember vaguely from a book I read 20 years ago or whatever, but one example is, is the birds all taking off when a predator comes by?
	So if the birds all stay on the ground, then they're going to get picked off.
	If one bird flies up, then it's going to get picked off.
	But if they all fly up together and dodge at the same time, it's very hard for the bird to get any of them, right?
	However, if one bird stays on the ground while they all go up, then that bird is very unlikely to get picked off because the birds are all flying above it.
	So that is an example, I think, where there's a sort of a collective response to a threat That has something to do with saving the genes shared between the birds?
	And, you know, forgive me if I'm way off base, but that's sort of my...
	No, no, you're right.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think that's a perfectly good...
	Oh, you know, what I like, you know, I read...
	I took the time to read your book after I found your channel because I liked a lot of the things that you said, which you might think is weird coming from someone who is one of those takers, but...
	Wait, how are you a taker?
	Oh, I'm a preacher.
	I'm one of those people who subjugate people.
	No, no, no.
	You don't fall into the category of taker.
	Oh, no, I don't.
	Are you using any force there, brother?
	That's true.
	I'm not.
	I'm just using arguments.
	You're really not.
	And you are providing a service, which is, you know, the old spiritual comfort and virtue.
	And, you know, you're resolving disputes between people.
	You're helping married couples stay together.
	You're giving people a purpose and an ethic.
	And it seems to me you're providing a very similar service to what I do, but, you know, probably with different starting points.
	But that does not put you in the taker category at all.
	So, I think that kind of introduces the kind of idea that I want to talk a little bit about.
	No, no, hang on, hang on.
	Let's go back to the whole species thing.
	The difference is, and listen, I know I'm way out there in terms of my education and all of that, so this is just my thoughts.
	This is not a very sophisticated analysis.
	But the difference is that the birds who all rise and flee together They're not preying on each other.
	Human beings are interspecies predators a lot of times.
	They fight with each other, right?
	Humans and ants, the only two animals that wage war with their own kind.
	And by the way, just with regards to our last point, I've got a...
	A video coming out called Why I Changed My Mind About Atheism.
	You might want to check that out.
	But anyway.
	Sounds like fun.
	The difference is that these birds are not attacking each other.
	It's not win-lose specifically.
	Human beings are in a predator-prey relationship with each other.
	So the idea that in a predator-prey relationship that there's win-win among the genetics is not valid as far as I can conceive of it.
	And again, this might be the limitations of my lack of knowledge about biology.
	But taking a species which does not prey on each other and then saying that human beings can follow the same model It's, to me, wrong.
	Human beings, it's like saying, well, the zebra and the lion, both are following, you know, they both mutually benefit.
	Like, come on, I mean, this is a win-lose situation.
	And with human beings, it's a win-lose situation.
	We just talked about that with regards to mating, although that's more common across the species.
	But war and when you think of the warrior class, the aristocrats and so on, right now, the people who are benefiting from using government power to send resources their way from the rich to the middle class to the poor, that is win-lose.
	And the fact that human beings prey on each other, to me, makes human beings less a species and more of an ecosystem.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I think that's a good observation.
	When I read your book, I really liked...
	Sorry, which book was this?
	UPP? Yeah, UPP. When I read it, I really liked a lot of the end section of the book where you kind of get into applying this universally preferable stuff.
	For instance, because I'm...
	A pacifist.
	There's this great book out there that if you haven't read it, you should.
	It's probably the smartest guy I've ever read.
	It's called The Myth of Religious Violence.
	It's by William Cavanaugh.
	And he goes in and talks about how this narrative that's spun about Religion being somehow especially prone to irrational behavior as opposed to a secular state is a myth that is actually— Wait, wait, wait.
	When he's talking about religion, is he talking about Christianity?
	Religion in general, actually.
	So he would include Islam in that?
	He would.
	I will check it out because I certainly like to have my beliefs challenged.
	And what he does is he says that the myth of saying that Religion is inherently somehow not rational.
	It is actually part of the ethos of the secular state and how it comes into be.
	And it's kind of a neat thing.
	And so one of the things where you start pushing against the government's right to say, oh, this person gets to die, this person gets to live because of some arbitrary thing, I mean, that's just not rational.
	Well, you know, certainly in the modern world, and it was to some degree secular states that are responsible for the quarter of a billion people murdered by their own governments in the 20th century.
	And certainly these days, I mean, you could go back to some of the religious wars in the 18th and 17th centuries in Europe, and of course particularly in Germany in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the secular state is far more dangerous to me than any Christian in the world that I can but the secular state is far more dangerous to me than any So anyway, I've got a video coming out about that, so I won't get into that.
	But I will say this.
	what's the benefit of sort of the work that I do.
	I will, you know, if you don't mind getting a tiny bit comfortable, I'll try and keep this brief, but this is sort of what I've been thinking about today.
	So to push over what the atheists call the irrational structure of, let's just say Christianity, 'cause my theology is spotty enough with Christianity, they let them wandering a field.
	So to push over the irrationality of the secular...
	Sorry, to push over the irrationality of religiosity, of Christianity...
	Okay, let's say the atheists wanted to do that as a particular course.
	Okay, they did, right?
	They worked very hard on it from the 19th century onwards.
	And I don't think that they answered the most fundamental question when you push over a structure that you disagree with.
	Let's say you succeed in pushing it over in a lot of ways they have.
	Okay, where the hell is everyone going to live now?
	Thank you.
	Hey, look, I pushed over this building.
	I thought it was terrible.
	Painted badly.
	That stained glass, ew, totally gross.
	Okay, pushed over.
	It's raining.
	It's hailing.
	And people are like, I was living there.
	It was pretty comfortable.
	And now, you know, my eyeballs are getting blasted out by hail.
	Where am I gonna live now?
	And that was a pretty significant problem.
	Now, the problem, I think, could have been solved...
	If the atheist movements had done one thing, which is to say, okay, people get their virtue, they get their ethics from religion.
	We have just torn down religion.
	Now what?
	Now, where are people going to get their virtues?
	And no, it's not going to be from evolution, because evolution, not particularly virtuous.
	It's just mere blunt base survival.
	Like that old saying, Ah, to be in a summer meadow at twilight.
	And to listen to the chirps and the tweets and the songs and the buzzing of all of the creatures trying to get laid.
	Yeah.
	And that's all it is.
	The cacophony of nature is a porn soundtrack.
	Can I get me a lady grasshopper?
	I don't know what the accent that was, but anyway, it's not from the hood, let me tell you that.
	Maybe it's from a hoodie.
	So you can push over the church.
	Where the hell are people going to live?
	For thousands of years, people got their ethics from religion.
	You push over religion, you push over the ethics, and you damn well better work...
	Your brain to the bone to come up with something else to replace the ethics That lived in the church, you just pushed over.
	And I think that atheists didn't do that.
	I think atheists did not do that.
	I know that atheists didn't do that.
	Atheists didn't do that.
	They pushed over the church and it's like, woohoo, freedom, you know, no more commandments, school's out forever.
	Like they didn't have to come up with new ethics because then they would have had to have some restraint, some something to fight for that wasn't just more state power, which the state is always happy to subsidize.
	And so I don't think it's an accident that when they pushed over the church, up grew.
	the buildings of the state.
	Because people didn't have an internal set of ethics to work with, and so now they had to be ordered around.
	And I think it was, I can't remember, maybe Chesterton, who said, when you get rid of all the big rules, you don't end up with freedom, you end up with an infinity of tiny rules.
	Yeah, I got a question.
	You said that when you push over Christianity, you've got to have some sort of ethical thing to take its place.
	In your understanding, does Christianity have what you would call philosophical ethics?
	It has practical ethics.
	See, for me, when I talk about it, I say, and this is, I'm really mean to my religious friends, because they claim to be from my team, and so I can be harder on them, but what I... Whenever I talk about Christianity, I say, you know, we actually don't have an ethic, not in the strictest sense.
	What we really have...
	Yeah, if it was purely philosophical, it wouldn't be in the realm of religion.
	But...
	It's the old thing of, do you want the right prescription from a bad doctor, or do you want the wrong prescription from a good doctor?
	And so for me, the ethics of Christianity which I have...
	Only more recently begun to really understand the value of.
	The ethics of Christianity were, I think, the result of hard-won, hard-fought, bitter, grueling, and gruesome multiple experiments in various ethics throughout history that were kind of whittled down over 2,000 years of trial and error in a huge variety of environments into stuff that really worked for society.
	You know, hard work, savings, no sex before marriage, you know, particularly prior to birth control.
	Stay married, stay committed, invest in your children, you know, teach them virtue, teach them to subjugate themselves to something larger than themselves.
	Otherwise, the great devil of infinite vanity is going to sit in every human heart and work its levers to the destruction of the world.
	So I think that there's a huge amount of practical ethics in Christianity that are the foundation of what we call civilization.
	Even thou shalt not steal, which I think restrained the income tax until the bastard atheist pushed over the church, opened it up.
	Hey, let's get rid of the church.
	We'll put the Federal Reserve in its place.
	What could go wrong?
	My dad would say amen to you right now.
	Yeah, so I think that it's fine.
	Like, okay, you want to push over something that you consider irrational.
	Okay, I mean, that's my job too.
	But for God's sakes, literally, for the sake of civilization, don't push over the only thing that transmits foundational virtues to everyone in society without giving a replacement.
	Do not tear down a functional house and leave the people in what became in the 20th century a rain of blood.
	Don't leave them in the open fields with lightning and frogs falling from the sky.
	Build them something new.
	And that's why, for me, the effort was, okay, I'm not Christian, but I really need ethics.
	And I can't just go to the Randy objectivist thing or maybe the biologist.
	I can't do it.
	I can't do it because those are...
	Certainly evolution is an amoral foundation.
	You say, oh, well, there are practical things.
	Sure, but not all human beings are the same.
	We're interspecies predators, so that which works for the sheep is not the same thing as that which works for the farmer, and that which works for the zebra is not the same thing as that which you can't universalize it.
	So I think that if atheists, okay, fine, push over the church, but build something that can explain ethics and give people the universality that they used to get, From God,
	that they used to get from the monotheism or large monotheism of particular communities, because when they shoved down or they tossed over the church, they broke the unity of Christendom, there was nothing to defend, and now diversity of wildly oppositional and destructive cultures has somehow become a value because people don't have anything that they all believe in to defend anymore.
	And atheism, by undoing the unity of Christendom and the subjugation of people to virtue in something larger and deeper and bigger than themselves, has created a couple of generations now, which may be the last generations of European civilization, of a bunch of people...
	Who worship the state, who pretend that there's no violence in what they worship when that's all it's defined by, who say there's no such thing as truth, but if you disagree with them, they viciously attack you, which is a ridiculous amount of hypocrisy, and who can't even be bothered like the laziest, most depressed panda bears in a Chinese zoo to have sex and make children so that their civilization can survive.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so...
	I told you I liked the last part of your book, and I had a few issues with the first part of UPV. But if you think that what your effort is trying to give some sort of secular basis for the kind of thing that Christianity could provide for Christians, I think, well, I was going to say I don't think you quite did what you set out to do, but I think you did.
	Yeah.
	Because, for me, and this is a point I would debate with Christians, and I do, on a regular basis, when they come into my office and they're trying to figure out, what do I do?
	Christianity, the virtue, and all that sort of, the kind of things that we get, is actually, it's not objective.
	It's aesthetic.
	And what we've done is we've submitted ourselves, made a choice to submit ourselves to the aesthetic of, and I don't want to get into a doctrinal discussion here, but the aesthetic of Jesus and the cross and sacrificial love and that sort of thing.
	But what I got from your book is that you're actually trying to take it a step further, that you're trying to find kind of foundational objective principles, like proposition-style principles, philosophical-style like proposition-style principles, philosophical-style principles that you can build virtue on.
	Am I getting that right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I wanted to be able to prove or to overcome Hume's principles.
	Hume's axiom, which has become sadly swallowed by most secularists, that you can't get an ought from an is.
	Like, there's nothing in the world that means you should do something.
	You know, there's no ought, there's no should in the is.
	Nothing in existence exists.
	Compels you to follow any particular moral path.
	There's sort of radical skepticism.
	And I've always found that hugely problematic.
	And so I wanted to create something universal and something defensible and something – as long as words rather than swords – Yeah, Pack up and go home.
	The pen may be mighty than the sword, but the syllables aren't, and certainly not the propositions.
	So I wanted to give...
	I sort of recognized that you can't bring atheists back to Christianity.
	It's rare.
	It happens.
	It happens.
	But it's rare.
	Right.
	So to me, it's like, okay, well, we've kind of borrowed our way through a cave.
	What's behind us has collapsed.
	And the overhead rock is cracking now.
	We can't go back.
	There's no sideways.
	We can't stay here.
	So we've got to push on.
	And so for me, it was like to try and complete the promise of philosophy.
	Philosophy was, of course, supposed to give people a truth and virtue.
	Reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	Philosophy was supposed to deliver happiness through reason and through virtue.
	Reason, it did fairly well.
	Virtue, it failed at.
	And I think it has not provided happiness at all because it has failed to provide virtue.
	And so I wanted to give people who could not return to Christianity A methodology for virtue that they could wield in debates and conclusively win by pointing out all the fallacies of those who oppose universal values but think that there's something called the truth.
	So you talked about words and how important it is to get our words right.
	One of your points in your book, since I've got you on the line, I'd like to ask you about it.
	When you're talking about, I don't have the book open, but you're talking about how language is objective.
	And you make a remark that you could go into detail on what you mean by that, but for the sake of brevity, you're not going to.
	And you kind of have this, the fact that we can understand each other means it's working.
	But could you go in...
	Into a little more detail on that.
	What do you mean that language is an objective medium?
	Well, there's a couple of ways of talking about it, and it's a great question.
	The first is that language uses an objective medium called reality to transmit itself, right?
	I mean, we are using sound waves to communicate, and we're using sound waves which are, you know, objective pulses of air in reality to communicate our...
	Words.
	So it is an objective medium that we communicate, whether it's sight, whether it's touch, whether it's sound.
	We are doing something that we don't have mind melds, right?
	So we can, fortunately, because, you know, sometimes I want to keep my thoughts private a lot of times.
	So we are working through an objective medium when we are communicating, right?
	Oh, and if you can just back off from your mic a little bit, I'm getting some...
	Breathiness, it's turning me on.
	Sorry, sorry.
	So we're working in an objective medium.
	Now, language is objective is a problematic statement because we can all think of aspects of language that are subjective.
	Right, right.
	My preference is, you know, I like, you know, but these are objective ways of discussing subjective preferences.
	But the degree to which language can be objective must be accepted in order for any conversation to occur.
	So if somebody says language is meaningless, that is a self-detonating statement because they are using an objective methodology, using words transmitted through an objective medium, the air.
	And they are choosing very specific words to say that all language choices are arbitrary because language is meaningless.
	Like, if I was just babbling in some made-up language, it wouldn't matter what quote words I used because it's all meaningless, right?
	Right, right.
	Like, you couldn't correct me if I was just babbling in some made-up language, you know?
	No, no, the syntax of that was wrong, you know?
	It wouldn't make any sense, right?
	So when people say language is meaningless, they are...
	If they can correctly transmit the concept that language is meaningless, that means that language cannot be meaningless because they have used relatively objective words and certainly an objective medium called the air to transmit the idea that words have no meaning.
	So if they are assuming that words have meaning so that they can successfully transmit the idea that words have no meaning, which is a self-detonating statement, you can't say language is meaningless.
	Every time you use language to talk about Right.
	Right, right. right.
	You get this in comments in YouTube, right?
	No one should ever have exclusive use of property.
	It's like, well, who was using the keyboard when you typed that?
	You and 14 other people?
	I mean, why aren't there emojis in Sanskrit and invitations to contact you on LinkedIn in there, right?
	I mean, because you're typing this through...
	Your exclusive use of that property.
	We could talk about how long that lasts and so on, but no one should ever have exclusive use of property.
	It's like, well, you didn't share your comment box and you didn't share your keyboard.
	Anyway, it's self-detonating.
	Yeah, well, I think, you know, but I think there's space between language is meaningless and language is objective.
	You know, so, like, for instance...
	Okay, but no, sorry, but the degree to which you have successfully communicated that idea to me is the degree to which we can at least accept that language is objective.
	I'm sorry, I don't follow.
	So, the question, is language objective, is obviously a very big question.
	It's not objective like gravity, right, because it is a human construct.
	And, you know...
	Meetings change.
	And there is, you know, you've heard me a million times in this show saying, whoa, whoa, let's define our terms.
	Like, I don't understand what you're saying.
	It's not clear to me and so on.
	But the degree to which you say, like you're saying that there's a sort of Aristotelian mean between language is perfectly objective like physics and gravity and things that exist completely independent of human consciousness and existed before they were human, clearly that's not language, right?
	Because language is a human construct.
	So it's not objective like gravity or physics.
	But neither can it be purely subjective, because if you can communicate to me the idea that the pendulum of objectivity in language lies somewhere between pure subjectivity and pure objectivity, the degree to which you have successfully communicated that idea is the degree to which we can accept that it's at least objective to that degree that you can communicate the idea.
	Right, yeah.
	You know, I wouldn't necessarily use the word objective to describe that.
	More pragmatic, kind of a—it's usefulness.
	Yeah, I would go with comprehensible.
	Yeah.
	And not comprehensible to one, right, but comprehensible between people.
	Right, right.
	And so that kind of clears some of that mud up, because when you said that, I was like, whoa, whoa, I remember reading Wittgenstein in college, and I don't like this.
	But this kind of where, I mean, really, language has so much subjective experience all balled into it, it's...
	Absolutely.
	And if you are describing a subjective experience to someone else, you have to be using objective terms to describe your subjective experience.
	If I say, I had a dream about an elephant last night, well, you know that when I say I am referring to myself, had means experienced something.
	A dream, well, that means it was in my head and not real.
	About means it contained, referenced, or something in that way.
	An elephant, well, you know what an elephant is.
	So I am able to communicate a subjective experience to you using terms that we both share.
	Now, I might be thinking of an Indian elephant, and you might be thinking of an African elephant.
	I might be thinking of a baby elephant.
	You might be thinking of a female mature elephant.
	But still, nonetheless, you know when I say elephant that it wasn't a giraffe or it wasn't a box.
	Right.
	It was in the category called elephant, whether it's big or small or whatever it is, right?
	Dry or wet.
	Right, right.
	And that's kind of this subjectiveness is really where I actually start to have issues with the first, your setup.
	Like, so let's talk about So we've talked about language.
	Okay, let's talk about science for a second.
	You know, my wife is a scientist.
	I love science.
	It's, you know, the reason we are where we are today in terms of technology, medicine, all sorts of wonderful things.
	But...
	I don't know that I can make the argument that science is objective.
	Do you know what I mean?
	It's funny you say you don't know the degree to which you can make an argument that something's objective.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Well, if I do, then there's at least some objectivity in what we're talking about.
	I know that you feel that there's objectivity lacking in science, but that depends what you mean by science.
	And again, this is sort of part of the definition.
	Do you mean science as a process?
	Well, of course, the fact that there's subjectivity in science or there's subjectivity in our exploration of the properties of the universe outside our minds, we know that there's subjectivity in it.
	That's why there's a scientific method.
	That's why we don't accept visions as scientific proof or hearsay or non-reproducible experiments.
	You know, oh, I totally had fusion in a jar in my basement yesterday, but I broke it and I can't fix it.
	And you just, okay, well, that's the same as it not happening, right?
	So the fact that there's a process of science fully recognizes subjectivity and error.
	In the same way that the fact that there's double-blind experiments in medicine completely accepts the fact that There's subjectivity in what is called a cure.
	You might take a pill and have a spontaneous remission.
	That doesn't mean the pill cured you unless it happens to 10,000 other, like, whatever it is, right?
	Right, right.
	So if you're talking about the process of science being subjective, well, in a sense, if there was no difference between subjectivity and objectivity, there'd be no need for science because everything we said, you know, we'd be like feminist fantasy rape victims.
	I believe everything that they say because women never lie and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And so if you're talking about the subjectivity in science, I would say that subjectivity, a recognition of subjectivity, of our desire for confirmation bias, of our capacity to misremember, misrecord, and whatever, you know, follow the money, who benefits from who's granting you know, follow the money, who benefits from who's granting who what and so on.
	The fact that there is subjectivity, a tendency towards subjectivity in the human condition, and the fact that you're trying to describe something objective in science is the whole reason for the scientific method and all of its checks and balances to separate subjective preference and particular confirmation bias.
	This is why, you know, show me the data or show me how I can reproduce the experiment to make sure that you're not jiggling anything.
	That I think, in the same way that there's subjectivity and value, you know, my daughter thinks her pictures are worth $1,000 each, you know.
	Maybe they will be someday, but they're not now.
	So we have the free market to create something objective called price because everybody has different conceptions of value.
	Yeah.
	Well, I mean, what I'm getting at in your kind of articulation of this, you say that empirical things are said to be accurate and things that are...
	Valid and accurate things are true things.
	So you have this objective knowledge that we're going for in this endeavor to find a route for secular ethics.
	Well, sorry, just because that may be a little bit confusing to people, I'll very briefly explain it.
	So you design a bridge before you build it.
	You don't just build it and see if it holds, right?
	I mean, you design a bridge before you build it.
	That's just an efficiency thing.
	And in the same way, if you have a hypothesis or an argument or whatever, a proposition, a series of arguments, then they have to be rationally consistent before anything else.
	A... A theory, an argument, a proposition, a hypothesis, they must be rationally consistent as a necessary but not sufficient means to be true.
	Now, if they're rationally consistent and they're borne out by empirical evidence, That's, you can't get, that's like beyond a reasonable doubt.
	You know, you can't get better than that as far as something being true.
	You know, the hypothesis predicts it.
	It predicts it accurately.
	It's rationally consistent.
	It's reproducible.
	It accords with all known evidence, past, present, and, you know, in the future in terms of its capacity to predict.
	Asking for a standard of truth higher than that is really asking for omniscience, which, you know, we don't have yet.
	And Google's close, obviously.
	Yeah, pretty dang.
	Yeah, this...
	But the thing that I guess that I want to maybe talk about in this idea about empiricism and being this kind of...
	I don't know really how to say this.
	Almost absolute knowledge.
	Final arbiter, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think there's some issues with that, for example.
	Well, sorry, but just to be clear, if you're saying something true about empirical reality, empiricism has to be your final test.
	Because you're trying to describe something, and that something must be used to test it, right?
	So if I say, this ball is red, then the redness of the ball and the fact that it's a ball is a test of whether it's true or not.
	Like, if I've got a little bird in my hand and I say, this ball is red, well, it's neither a ball nor red, assuming it's a thrush or something, right?
	Well, I think, I mean, that's more logic, though.
	That's not the scientific method in empiricism.
	That's just the rules of...
	No, no, it is.
	It is insofar as if science is trying to describe something about the natural universe, the external empirical universe, then empiricism must be the test of that.
	Okay, so let me...
	Let me paint a picture of what I mean so you can respond to it.
	The thing with empiricism and trying to have this untainted knowledge, this knowledge without subjectivity, is problematic for several reasons.
	Thomas Kuhn did this fantastic Work about how scientific paradigms have shifted and work.
	And you talk about the transfer from Newtonian-Diestonian physics in your introduction.
	And if you look at how that process goes down, that's not an objective process.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Okay, not an objective process.
	You mean insofar as the scientific method is implemented by, to some degree, at least subjective human beings?
	Is that what you mean?
	Well, yeah, yeah.
	We're going to keep working under Newtonian physics, even though there are all these exceptions popping up.
	And even after the...
	The exceptions have all been found out and oh, Einstein is a great thing.
	Well, whenever I'm going to I'm going to, you know, think of things in terms of Newtonian physics if I'm a really nerdy person.
	Well, no, or if you're navigating across the sea rather than to Jupiter, then you're going to care only about Newtonian physics because the one millimeter difference between Newtonian and Einsteinian navigation is irrelevant to your purposes, right?
	Yeah, and that's the thing.
	It's purposes.
	It becomes not objective But pragmatic?
	Well, no.
	Look, if I think that I can...
	Whim my way across the Atlantic, I'm wrong, right?
	Right.
	Like, I could just follow which way I think the wind's blowing and I'm going to follow this gull and, you know, like, that's not...
	And then, oh, look, there's a sailfish.
	I'm going to follow that.
	It's not going to get me across.
	Or if it is, it's completely by accident, right?
	Right.
	So saying that we have successive waves of more accurate models of the universe, that somehow that makes them all subjective, is not the case.
	Because the way that we know that Einsteinian physics is more accurate than Newtonian physics is it predicts and measures things that Newtonian physics doesn't.
	Like, you know, the space-time problems closer to the speed of light, and also the bending of light around gravity wells, which they measured, I think, in 1920 through an eclipse somewhere in the Pacific.
	Anyway, so the fact that Newtonian physics gave way to Einsteinian physics in terms of an accurate model of the universe shows that the process is objective insofar as we know one's better than the other.
	Well, and that's where I kind of have this—we're talking about language and objectivity and communication and all that sort of thing.
	That's where I have to say that what we get here is science is not this— Objective thing that has some way to give us perfect knowledge.
	What it does is it's a useful tool for us to get some sort of working knowledge of what we see.
	It's observation that helps us with prediction.
	But to say that...
	And sorry, sorry.
	Einsteinian knowledge does not completely invalidate Newtonian knowledge.
	Why not?
	You could still use the Ptolemaic system to calculate where Mars is going to be.
	It's just god-awful and cumbersome and doesn't actually accord with the Sun being at the center of the solar system.
	It enhances it.
	It's like a better camera.
	If you take a picture of an elephant with a 2-megapixel camera, It's just not very detailed.
	Everyone's still an elephant.
	If you take the same picture with some 20 megapixel I can see atomically or something like that, you get a better picture of an elephant, but that doesn't mean that your earlier picture was not of an elephant.
	It just wasn't as detailed and as clear.
	It was more fuzzy.
	So, it's not that the second picture makes the first picture subjective, if that makes sense.
	Well, the thing is, that analogy doesn't quite work with...
	Well, it doesn't matter that it doesn't work.
	It's a good enough analogy.
	Let's call it a two megapixel analogy.
	The issue is, if we're going for a kind of knowledge that is...
	That is empirical, a kind of knowledge that is objective knowledge, perfect knowledge, then we actually do have to throw out...
	Hang on.
	You slipped a little something in there, which is where the Christianity is coming through, right?
	Because you went from objective knowledge to, ah, yes, perfect knowledge.
	Knowledge.
	Now, perfect knowledge requires omniscience, right?
	True, true.
	Okay, so if you want perfect knowledge, and you believe that perfect knowledge is possible, then you have God, right?
	Well, but here's the—I'm not—maybe I'm just letting my theological— I'm not criticizing that.
	I'm just saying, wouldn't that be the logical consequence?
	Yeah, it would.
	But what I'm more saying is that When you are trying to hold up the best possible knowledge that we can have currently as the thing to strive for through the scientific method, it actually does invalidate Newtonian physics.
	Sure, it's pragmatic and it's useful, but it's not the kind of knowledge we're going for.
	Okay, yeah, certainly if perfect knowledge is your standard, then Newtonian physics is less valuable or less accurate than Einsteinian physics.
	However, in terms of like, as you said, as we said, if you want to sail across the ocean, you would use Newtonian rather than Einsteinian physics because it's more practical.
	But Newtonian physics doesn't invalidate Einsteinian physics, again, any more than the higher resolution picture invalidates the lower resolution picture.
	It's just more detailed and more accurate.
	Well, and here's why I said it's not that great of an analogy, and I don't want to push this point too far, but, you know, the 2-megapixel picture of an elephant and the 40-megapixel picture of an elephant is a scale issue, where we're getting more of the same kind of information, whereas scientific paradigm shifts are system changes.
	It's apples and oranges.
	You know what I mean?
	No, I don't, because, and again, this may be my limitations, I'm certainly no philosopher of science, but Einsteinian physics, like, so Newtonian physics, you know, the apple falls from the tree to the ground, I mean, to take a ridiculous example, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	There's nothing in Einsteinian physics that says the tree now falls upwards, or it falls sideways, or it vanishes, or it becomes an elephant, or it becomes a new apple tree instantaneously, or it becomes an apple twice its size.
	Everything that happens in Newtonian physics, like the apple falling to the ground, also occurs in Einsteinian physics.
	That's what I mean when I say it doesn't reverse any of the rules.
	It just gives you more detail and a better scalability, and certainly over higher speeds and longer distances, it becomes more essential.
	Yeah, it becomes very important in the kind of things that it's useful for.
	And so what I guess I'm getting at here is this idea of usefulness, the pragmatic nature of Any sort of inquiry means that the methods and the criterion
	that you're going to use, and you already talked about building a bridge, are dependent on the task that you're setting out to do.
	Right.
	And certainly for a perfect knowledge or omniscience, the idea of utility would be irrelevant, right?
	Right, right.
	So, sorry, God's knowledge would not have a practical end because the practical end would be there would be no point having further knowledge, correct?
	God's knowledge does not evolve, right?
	It's all-knowing, it's all-perfect, it's eternal.
	So it doesn't evolve based upon the exigencies of the moment.
	It is something that is all-perfect and all-knowing and eternal.
	So the idea of there being utility as the driver, and whenever it's the driver, utility is the limiter.
	That wouldn't apply.
	So if I'm getting the sense of what you're saying correctly, that applying utility, which obviously science has a significant aspect of, would be incompatible with the idea of omniscience, which could not be limited by mere pragmatism.
	Well, the thing that I'm really trying to get at is really, honestly, what What exactly did you accomplish here in UPB, honestly?
	Because I think you accomplished something, and I think it's good.
	I enjoyed your work, and I think there's a lot that people can learn from you.
	But what I see in UPB is not a kind of objective foundation for ethics.
	But rather a pragmatic and descriptive kind of work.
	Right.
	Well, as far as the utility of UPB, I sort of talked about that earlier, that I think it's something that atheists owe to the world, which atheists have done a good job of tearing down.
	I don't think they've done nearly as good a job as building up.
	So that is sort of the gift of this atheist to the world of a system of ethics.
	As far as what I've achieved, well, either the arguments are valid in the book or they're not.
	Now, if I have achieved, and I think, you know, I have, although I think it could be better explained, which is why UBB 2.0 will be coming out at some point, but if I have achieved what I think I've achieved, then I have provided a rational proof of secular ethics that does not rely on governments, it does not rely on commandments, it does not rely on arbitrary authorities of any kind, it's comprehensible.
	To just about everyone.
	I've certainly explained it to my daughter when she was very young and she had no particular problems with it.
	It doesn't mean it's easy to understand, but the failure lies both in me and my capacity to communicate, which gets better over time, I hope.
	And also the fact that it's very challenging for people emotionally to hear a different system of ethics and the fact that it challenges a lot of existing power structures, particularly the state.
	And so what I have achieved is something of enormous value and enormous good in the world.
	But as far as, you know, does everyone accept it?
	Well, how many people have even heard of it, right?
	So this is something that I rely on, you know, me doing it and other people doing it.
	I can't, you know, other than doing a great show and making the book free, that's really not, you know, not my account.
	I can't sky write it because that'd be a whole tiny amount of fog.
	So as far as what I've achieved, well, it is a rational proof of secular ethics.
	And I think it is the first of its kind to make the case for, you know, a good chunk of the Ten Commandments, but without relying them to be on command, without requiring them to be commandments.
	So, I can't sort of...
	Go, you know, this is sort of why I think it needed to be done.
	This is what I think, this is what I hugely wish that atheists had done 200 years ago or 2,500 years ago, is say, okay, we'll take away religion, but that's what makes a lot of people believe in virtue.
	So if we don't find some way to give them virtue in the absence of religion, then we're kind of assholes undoing the universe.
	And so I think it's a mission that atheists should have taken on long ago.
	Why they did or why they didn't is...
	Probably a matter of fairly useless conjecture, but I felt it absolutely had to be done.
	I think I've achieved it.
	And as far as sort of where and what pragmatic effect it has in the world, that's not really up to me.
	You make the case and you promote it as much as you can reasonably do, and then you let the chips fall where they may because, as I said to the first caller, I believe in free will, so I'm not going to force people to be good.
	So that's the general synthesis of it.
	Now, My little headset here is almost out of juice because it's been a long show.
	But I want to tell you, as I, you know, everybody's conversation I absolutely loved tonight.
	It's not always the case.
	I usually enjoy it.
	I don't always love it.
	Love this conversation.
	Fantastic.
	You know, you're certainly welcome back anytime.
	And I view you as a brother...
	In the fight against the general nihilism of the world.
	So I really, you know, thank you very much for these questions and these calls.
	Same thing with the determinist and the other caller.
	So you are welcome back anytime if you found this of value and enjoyable for yourself.
	I'll definitely be back.
	All right.
	Thanks a million, everyone.
	Have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	Stefan Molyneux, Free Domain Radio.
	Remember, we've got an extra call-in show, but that doesn't mean that you should try and get in on it because, you know, we're trying to bleed off the excess.
	But we'll see where it goes.
	FDRURL.com slash Amazon to use our affiliate link.
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	Dear God in heaven, more than ever does the world need philosophy.
	This, I believe, is the best way to get it out to the world.
	And so please send the giant red pills of wisdom to an increasingly confused and desperate world.
	I thank you for your help.

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