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March 26, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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3631 Failing At Life With A Smile On Your Face - Call in Show - March 23rd, 2017

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	Ho, ho, ho everybody!
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Well, great callers in tonight's show.
	The first caller wanted to know...
	So he works at a big corporation where there's a lot of diversity hiring and promotion of women to try and close down the gap, right?
	The...
	Statistics gap between the demographics of the local population and their prevalence in senior management positions and so on.
	Diversity hiring, trying to close the wage gap between men and women, and we went pretty deep into the philosophy and economics behind this, and I think it was very helpful for him.
	I know it was helpful for him, and I think it will be so for you.
	The second caller, I don't know.
	Interesting.
	Mike and I had different views on this.
	I want to know what you think.
	He seems to have an issue getting his life started.
	Very smart guy, working in a pretty low-rent occupation.
	Not sure he's really doing much to achieve what he's capable of or what his goals could be, but he seems to be quite happy not doing that.
	So I'll let you let me know what you think of that conversation.
	I really enjoyed it, but it did end in an interesting and unusual way for this show.
	Now, the third caller wanted to know how can we cure science of its addiction to social justice warrior lefty diversity hiring and wage gappy kind of stuff.
	Well, I think you'll enjoy the answer.
	I know I did.
	And the listener found it very, very helpful, as I think you will be as well.
	And the fourth caller is taking...
	A philosophy slash question mark double major in university and he wants to know how does he break into the marketplace of ideas?
	What do you need to do to have the world listen to the reason and evidence that you can bring to bear in social discourse?
	So this is a bit of an open the kimono, what goes on for me behind the show and how I keep motivated and keep focused and what I bring to the table.
	If you like the making of, I guess you'll find that interesting.
	I like talking about that kind of stuff.
	But let me know how interesting you find it.
	And I really enjoyed the conversation with Mr.
	Philosophy Degree Fellow.
	So, that having been said, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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	Alright, well up first on the show today we have Lee.
	Lee wrote in and said, As a manager in a global financial services business that employs over 200,000 people and has revenues of over 29 billion US dollars, I've seen a huge focus develop on quote-unquote gender equality, meaning that there are a number of initiatives and programs aimed at getting more women into senior positions in the firm where they are statistically underrepresented.
	Do you think that such initiatives are valuable, and if so, what role can-slash-should men play in supporting them?
	I ask as while I am very quote-unquote pro-equality through my work with the Women's Network, I have increasingly heard phrases like, quote, white men just don't get it, end quote, end quote, there are too many pale, male, and stale decision-makers, end quote.
	Which makes me ask...
	Is there an enormous double standard developing?
	That's from Lee.
	Developing?
	Developing?
	Hey, Lee, how's it going?
	Hi, Stefan.
	It's nice to meet you.
	Nice to meet you, too.
	Nice to meet you, too.
	Well, what do you think, first and foremost?
	Well, I can give you the context of my work with the Women's Network, if you like, but I started working with them a year and a half ago, and I've been a little bit surprised with some of the things that I've heard.
	I'm a white Irish guy working with them.
	I don't know if I've got enough evidence to say that the double standard has developed over the last year and a half, but I've certainly become more aware of phrases like that, like the two that I quoted in my question.
	Right.
	I mean, that's racist, right?
	Well, you see, I've tried...
	I mean, part of the reason I wanted to talk to you was because I find it difficult to know how to respond to them.
	And I have said to some people, I mean, mostly the females that I work with, if I said that about any other gender or ethnic background in the organisation, I'd probably be fired on the spot, to be quite honest.
	And you're sort of met with a shrug of the shoulders sometimes.
	And I find it difficult to know what to do And how to respond.
	But I also want to get your view on the broader problem itself.
	And what is the broader problem?
	The organisation would articulate it as our senior Leadership and senior decision makers are 80% male and 20% female.
	And you flip that when it comes to, for example, secretaries in the organisation.
	And their view is that the organisation would be better served with having a much closer to 50-50 gender split at the top levels of leadership.
	Okay, but why do they think it should be 50-50?
	Well, I think, quite simply, you would see it's based, I think, on the population being split 50-50 between male and females.
	Well, but males and females make different decisions.
	Like, in the criminal system, the vast majority of prisoners are men.
	And is that because the criminal system is completely biased against men and for women, that it just lets them off crimes randomly?
	Okay, it does a little bit of that.
	But why are there far more male criminals than female criminals?
	Well, I mean, I would assume that testosterone has a role to play in that, to some degree.
	But also there's differences in behavioural tendencies between the two genders, I think, is what you're getting at.
	Ah, okay.
	So here we have a discrepancy, and I, of course, have never seen, and it's so predictable to point this out, but of course I've never seen a feminist say anything like, well, we've really got to bring up the number of women in prison because clearly it's biased against men because it's not 50-50, the number of prisoners being female, right?
	Yeah, yeah, I know, I agree with that.
	Yeah, I would agree with that.
	You're highly unlikely to see or hear someone who claims to be a feminist, which I think is a confusing term, personally.
	It's not really, once you get that it's just about leftism, that it's not confusing at all.
	So they would say, well, listen, there are more men in prison because there are more male criminals, and there are more male criminals because of a combination of biology and decision-making, right?
	Right.
	Yes.
	So the exact same thing is true at the highest levels of business.
	There's a combination of biology and decision-making.
	Women want to work less.
	Women lack testosterone, so they're less ambitious.
	And women at the highest levels of intelligence are less proportionately represented, right?
	I mean, there are many more, like up to 13 or 14 times more men at the highest levels of intelligence than women.
	And of course...
	Managerial stuff, as you know, is one big giant IQ test to some degree.
	And so women have kids.
	Women want to take time off to have kids.
	And so you take time off to have kids.
	You lack testosterone.
	And at the highest levels of intelligence, which is where the management is, you're less...
	There are far fewer women available.
	So it's...
	I actually listened to your podcast on Beauty and the Beast, which was very interesting and instructive, and I know it touched on the intelligence point.
	I've also read bits of The Bell Curve as well, which covers intelligence from a racial perspective.
	I do want to point out that some of my female colleagues would probably strongly disagree with you and say that they certainly don't want to work less.
	They actually want to have meaningful Why?
	I mean, I'm not sure.
	If you have a baby, then you're off having a baby.
	And you may take significant time off after your work.
	And you also may not come back at all.
	Or you may come back only briefly to sort of fulfill a contractual thing.
	So it's much more expensive for a company to backfill in, particularly the senior position.
	Look, if you need to hire a temp to replace a secretary for six months, that's not really the end of the world.
	But if you're like the vice president of manufacturing for Asia, Well, that's a little bit tougher to find somebody who just want to bungee in for six months or a year and then just going to bungee back out because those people at that high level of skill, they want more permanent careers.
	There's no temp agency for CXO-level positions or VP-level positions.
	I mean, there kind of is, but it's very rare and it's very risky.
	And by the time you get someone up to speed, well, you understand, right?
	I mean, it's just a huge economic net negative.
	So I'm not sure...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I actually do understand that point of view, and I actually think it can cut the other way.
	It's not a point of view.
	Hang on.
	It's not a point of view.
	I mean, these are facts.
	This is not just like, I like blue, what colour do you like?
	I mean, tell me where my reasoning or my evidence is incorrect.
	I'll come back to that in a second, but I actually don't think that your reasoning or evidence is wrong.
	What I was going to say is I've seen it go the other way with smaller businesses.
	So my dad, for example, ran a small business in Belfast and he couldn't have taken on a female employee because if she got pregnant, they couldn't afford to bring someone else in for a temporary period of time and spend the money and resources and training and pay maternity leave.
	So at the lower and smaller businesses as well, it does have effects.
	Well, and economically speaking, there are two times when a man's income goes up significantly.
	The first is when he gets married and the second is when he becomes a father.
	So if you hire a man and he decides to become a parent, his productivity is going to go up.
	Because he's like, oh man, I got more mouths to feed.
	I better work even harder.
	I better be even more dedicated.
	I better learn more.
	I better go to night school.
	I better become an even better employee.
	Whereas a woman's productivity is going to go down.
	No question.
	It's going to go down because she's going to be pregnant.
	She's going to be having the baby.
	She's going to be breastfeeding.
	Hopefully, unless she wants to be a really terrible mom and...
	I don't know, pump her boob milk in a toilet or something like that.
	So, yeah, I don't know how you're supposed to even that out without an equal redistribution of wombs and testicles.
	I mean, I'm sorry, this is just, you know, it's not patriarchy, it's mother nature.
	It's just the way that we've evolved.
	No, no, and I get that.
	I do get that.
	I think if you think in pure productivity terms, that's pretty factual.
	And I wouldn't pretend or try to disagree with this.
	I guess something I'd be interested in hearing your view on, though, is I want my mum, who is from Ireland, was basically told, you'll be a teacher, a nurse, or a housewife.
	That was it when she was born in the 50s and raised in the 60s.
	And she was perceived as being a bit of a rebel because she went away to be a civil servant and work on an office job.
	Well, a government office job.
	A government office job with that, yes.
	And I'm well versed in your views on big government.
	And Northern Ireland is actually quite overrepresented compared to the rest of the UK on civil service jobs.
	The reason I mention that is I think it's great that other people or other women like my auntie can have and hold senior positions.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, but how many siblings do you have?
	I've got one brother.
	You've got one brother, okay.
	And when your mother was pregnant with you or your brother, or both if you're twins, did she continue to work?
	Did she take time off?
	Did she breastfeed you for the recommended 18 months, both of you, or what happened?
	Well, so I think she definitely breastfed both of us.
	She did also take time, she took time off for I think, pretty, I think, I'm trying to think actually.
	She certainly spent most time, for whenever I was born, I think the first two years she would have looked after me, and it probably would have been a year to a year and a half whenever my brother was born.
	So three and a half years out of the workforce?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	I guess it's good she had a government job then, isn't it?
	Yeah, no, I understand the argument you're making.
	Did your father take three and a half...
	Sorry to interrupt, sorry.
	Did your father take three and a half years off when you were born?
	Sorry, do these women then think that what should happen is the men should go to work to support the women, to pay extra for the women who aren't working in the marketplace?
	Is it fair for the men to be forced to pay for the women when the women aren't even making them a sandwich?
	I don't...
	In blunt terms, no.
	I don't think that it necessarily is.
	But do you not think there's space in an organisation?
	And I'm asking this as an honest question.
	This is why I wanted to talk to you about this stuff, Stefan.
	Do you not think there's space, though, for putting a value like equality first?
	But we are putting a value.
	No, no, we are.
	We are putting a value like equality first.
	Which is, if you work an equal amount of time, at an equal level of skill, you should get paid an equal amount of money.
	That is equality.
	If you take three and a half years off, you don't get paid an equal amount of money.
	That's called exploitation.
	That's not equality.
	Yeah, I would agree with that.
	I think that's a fair point.
	You have an equality to negotiate.
	You have an equality to hold your employer's feet to the fire and try and get as much as possible.
	You have equality to make a social or economic case.
	If you're a woman who feels that women should be hired at the same level of men, you can start a company to do that.
	You can get all the women together.
	And you can start a company together if you want.
	Or what you can do...
	Is you can do the research and you can say, well, look, the companies that are more female-friendly do better.
	And I don't just mean the companies do better because they get a whole bunch of grants from the government for hitting diversity targets.
	I mean, like, in a free market situation.
	Or you can go to shareholders and you can make the case that they should put mothers' needs above profits and they can make that case.
	I just don't think you should...
	I don't think you can call it equality when women say, well, men need to be forced to pay for our personal choices.
	I don't think that's equality.
	I think that's very traditionally female in a way, right?
	Yeah, and you do make an interesting point.
	I'm not going to mention the company that I work for, for fairly obvious reasons, but I've seen a lot of literature that says, essentially, having more women in positions of leadership makes you more profitable.
	That's the central message.
	I haven't actually seen any data or evidence or statistics to back that up.
	I'm a naturally curious person.
	The reason I got involved with the Women's Network was because I didn't really understand what the either perceived or actual issues were.
	But I haven't seen anything that materially backs up productivity measures.
	Have you?
	Well, I've seen things quite the other way, but not enough that I'm going to rest any kind of reputational hat on them.
	But no, it's...
	I mean, it's just...
	It's praxeological.
	It's just...
	It's basic logic that if you have the choice to hire two people, one of whom is going to work for you consistently and the other of whom could leave at any moment and stay off for years and maybe never come back...
	It's not that complicated.
	It's like saying, you really, really, you meet this girl on vacation and she's the hottest, greatest, smartest, funniest thing that you can conceivably imagine.
	But you really hope, like you live in London, let's say, you really hope that she lives in Australia rather than London.
	Boy, if we could just not see each other much, that would be the very best thing.
	That would be insane, right?
	You would rather she be close and available to you rather than distant and unavailable to you.
	And it's the same thing with employers.
	And, of course, you're not allowed.
	Now, there are women out there who don't want to have kids.
	And, as you know, I'm sure you're aware of this, right?
	The numbers in terms of salary for college-educated women who've been in the workforce in the same professions for as long as college-educated men, women earn more than men.
	They earn, I think it's 103, 106% what men earn.
	If they've been in the workforce for the same amount of time, with the same level of skills and the same level of education, they earn more.
	It's just when they start to have babies.
	Of course.
	I actually didn't know that.
	I actually haven't seen anything that's presented that.
	Mike, if you could whip that up for me.
	But yes, I think this is in the States, but we'll find more about this.
	But no, if you want to go have babies, and listen, this is not disrespectful to women at all.
	I love the fact that women are out there having babies.
	I like the fact that they'll be a next generation.
	Wonderful stuff.
	But let's not pretend that it makes you economically identically valuable to a man who's going to keep working, and in fact, work harder, not less.
	Okay, I mean, I think that's a very, very fair point.
	And it doesn't change when you have children and come back to work.
	Sorry again.
	It doesn't change when you have children and come back to work.
	You have to leave to pick up your kids from daycare.
	I mean, I know this.
	I've been a manager.
	Five o'clock, all the people, all the moms, gone.
	Now, the young men and the young women who don't have kids, well, they can stay and we can go out for dinner and we can talk more business and we can come back and play a couple of LAN games and work on some code, if we feel like it, right?
	But that flexibility is simply not available for the parents, for the most part.
	Like some of them, a few of them had like parents around, but they want to go home and see their children.
	And you know what?
	As a manager, as a human being, I want them to go home and see their children.
	I don't want them to keep doing everything else, right?
	Hmm.
	Yeah, I mean, I think in productivity terms, I think you make a very, very fair point.
	A very, very fair point, actually.
	I guess there's a part of me, I mean, I'm open to you criticizing me for this.
	Absolutely happy for you to do that.
	There's a part of me that can't escape this feeling that we should still advocate equality in terms of saying, actually, Your gender doesn't matter in terms of having a successful, fully realized career.
	And anything that we as an organization can do to help support that is a net gain for you and the organization.
	You keep using this word equality, and I guess we have to circle back and revisit it.
	Equality of outcome is not the same as equality of opportunity, right?
	Yep, understood.
	Right?
	If you want equality of outcome, let's say there's a fat kid and a Kenyan in a running race, right?
	Well, the fat kid's going to run slower than the Kenyan, right?
	For sure.
	Some Kenyan runner in his prime.
	Now, so if you start them both at the same starting point, then that's equality of opportunity.
	If you want them to cross the finish line, At the same time, then you can't have them start at the same place, right?
	You have to put the fat kid like 10 yards from the finish line, and you have to put the Kenyan guy 100 yards back or whatever, right?
	Yep.
	So you can't have both.
	You can't have equality of outcome and equality of opportunity.
	It's completely impossible because of the bell curve, because of childbirth, because of hormones, because of...
	You can't have both.
	So you can choose which inequality you want.
	But you can't say equality like you're talking about both.
	So you can openly say, I think that women and men should end up with the same proportional representation, and they should end up with the same incomes, and regardless of parenting or breastfeeding or coming or going from the workforce or whatever, you can make that case, but then you have to accept that you are sentencing society to radical inequality in the starting position.
	Yep.
	That's what I mean.
	You're talking like you get both equality, starting and ending.
	You don't.
	You choose one.
	Okay, Stefan.
	Thank you.
	That's actually a really useful distinction.
	Now, of course, I don't blame women for wanting this at all.
	I mean, I'm not saying it's hugely moral or anything like that.
	But sure, look, if you can get free stuff from the government, it's really hard for a lot of people to say no to that.
	So, you know, the fact that women find, and minorities too, right, they find that, well, if I complain about this inequality of outcome, I can stimulate men's white knighting instincts to come and rescue and save me from statistics and save me from the bell curve and save me from childbirth and so on.
	But it is, it's terrible on so many levels.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	The other thing I wanted to get your view on, and I think you said you have worked in a corporate environment before.
	White knighting is something that I have seen firsthand, and it's incredibly frustrating because I don't think it actually helps people better understand the problem or perceive problem at all, actually.
	Well, women crying out injustice and having men go get them resources, I mean, this is not empowering.
	You understand?
	If women want there to be equality, then go start a company and run it according to those principles.
	Stop whining and bleating and nagging and complaining and yelling at men to go get you resources.
	I mean, come on!
	That's a stereotypically Victorian fainting couch bullshit that you can conceivably imagine.
	Go make it happen.
	Go make the case.
	Go build the companies.
	Go prove your case.
	Many, I think many of my female colleagues would say that they're doing just that, by instigating organizational change.
	Whether or not you or I agree with them, that's what they would say they're doing.
	Well, okay, but what does it mean to say instituting organizational change?
	Does that mean setting up quotas?
	Yeah, that's right.
	Having targets in place for the leadership team.
	But that's not what women do.
	No, what women do, not all women, but...
	Some women.
	What they do is they run to the government.
	And they say, we want equal pay legislation.
	Right?
	So there was laws put in as far back as the 1960s, like half a century ago, put in place to say that a woman can have the legal might of the state on her side to negotiate on her behalf when it comes to wages.
	Equal pay for work of equal value.
	That a woman can initiate the power of the state against an employer that she feels is paying her less for an equivalently paid.
	Man, now that's a massive, massive legal precedent.
	To have the giant armed might of the state behind you at the negotiating table is not empowering to women.
	If you need to run to the state, you're not empowered, right?
	So for more than half a century now, This has been the law, at least in the States and any other places as well.
	And if after half a century of having the government force employers to pay you as much as your peers, if there's still a wage gap, I don't even know what to say.
	The fact that people aren't revisiting this and saying, well, this must be something else.
	Well, this is actually something that's pretty poorly understood in my own organisation, actually, which is the gender pay gap.
	And people in my organization believe that the pay gap is, as you've just described it, which is women can get paid less for doing the same job as men.
	No, no, no, they can't.
	No, you're right, they can't.
	That doesn't happen.
	It's a common misconception held among some people that I've worked directly with.
	You mean idiots.
	No, come on, this is not complicated.
	I mean, if you compare full-time work to part-time work, if you compare levels of education, if you compare levels of expertise, the wage gap almost completely disappears.
	Once you normalize by the choices that people make, the wage gap almost completely disappears.
	The amount of apples and oranges you have to compare To milk a 20 or 30% wage gap out of agendas is ridiculous.
	Like, you have to compare, you know, part-time cleaning staff with full-time doctors.
	Like, it becomes lunatic just how much statistical manipulation you need to go through to produce these numbers that fuel the resentment of fools.
	Do you know the number that they are reporting, though?
	In fact, my organisation is one of sort of Many that have signed up to report this, which is, then they're calling it the gender pay gap, which is basically the average earnings of females in an organization compared to the average earnings of a male as a way of illustrating.
	That's ridiculous.
	It's incredibly crude.
	Yeah, it's statistically crude.
	No, it's not statistically crude.
	It's statistically a complete and total lie.
	Because you've got to compare apples to apples.
	If more women are choosing to be secretaries, now you could say, ah, yes, but there's...
	And this is why the thing goes round and round.
	As people say, well, yes, but there's this glass ceiling and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
	So what you're saying is the company could make a huge amount of money from these secretaries by promoting them.
	But for some reason, it just hates profit.
	It just hates making money.
	It's willing to pay these secretaries 30,000 or 20,000 quid a year.
	But if it promoted them to salespeople, it could be making...
	150,000 quid off them a year.
	But it keeps them down in the secretarial pool, despite the fact they could be massively more economically productive, just because it hates making money.
	These companies just hate profit.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone believes that.
	Sure they do.
	Sure they do, because they're saying that these women should be paid more.
	And that's all on the receiving end, but anybody with half a brain, and I know you understand this, Lee, but anyone with half a brain regarding economics knows you don't just get paid on some whim, you get paid based upon how much productivity you're providing to the company.
	The reason that CEOs get paid more than janitors is that there are fewer CEOs and they provide much more value to the company.
	So if you want to be paid more, you have to provide more value.
	It's not just pass a law and people will just pay you what they owe you or people think, well, there's a just-ware or a wage or a fair wage.
	No, you get what you negotiate.
	You get what you negotiate.
	And if you want the company to pay you more, you have to provide more value to the company.
	And so if they're saying, well, these secretaries should be paid more, they should be promoted or whatever...
	Then the secretary should make that case by becoming so valuable to the company that the company is going to promote them because it will make more money.
	If you've got some wonderful salesperson who's rotting her life away at some secretarial desk, then if she shows interest in a sales call...
	I mean, I had a coder who I worked with.
	He was very interested in the sales side of things.
	Like, I used to go out and do a lot of sales support and do some sales myself.
	So, I'm like, okay, great.
	Well, come along.
	Show interest, and if you're interested in it.
	And then, you know, he was good at that, so I began to train him on how to do that.
	Fantastic!
	Because that means I don't have to go on those things as much, and I can go and do and learn something new.
	Yeah.
	I think what they're saying, and this is me paraphrasing, is less that the secretary should be paid more and more the glass ceiling argument, which is the opportunities historically haven't been there.
	In my experience, I've never, ever seen a woman held back for being a woman.
	In fact, I've probably seen the opposite on occasions, but that's not to say it doesn't happen.
	But I do think it's a slightly different argument that's being made when they use the gender pay gap as a measure.
	But why would women be held back if the company can make such wonderful profits off the women?
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	You don't just pick someone out of the mailroom and make him CEO like he's just won the lottery and pay him $10 million.
	You pay $10 million to the CEO because if you don't, it will cost you $50 million.
	This guy adds $50 million, so you pay him to make $40 million.
	He doesn't cost you $10 million.
	So if there's this wonderful productivity in the female staff, then any company would be absolutely foolish and would very quickly go out of business.
	If there was all this wonderful productivity locked up in the loins of women that the company was just unwilling to exploit, it would be like literally finding a massive pile of money in the parking lot and setting fire to it.
	I mean, that would not, and actually you would also get sued, by the way, because of course if you're a CEO or CXO in a corporation, you have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the value of the assets within your corporation, right?
	So if, for instance, you were found to have some fetish for having, you know, tiny Chinese hermits copy every document rather than buying photocopiers, well, that would be very expensive and very time-consuming, very unproductive.
	So if you made those kinds of decisions, you'd first get fired, or if they were bad enough, you might even get sued.
	So if there was all of this amazing productive value, all this profit potential locked up in these women and you didn't promote them and exploit it, you would be very bad at your job.
	Okay, so you're saying that the system is such that if there were the potential, it would have been realised by now?
	Well, just think of two companies, right?
	We could do the math, but I'll just give you the general idea.
	Let's do Company A and Company B. Now, in Company A, there are women there who, if their potential was unlocked, they would have $5 million extra a year.
	Right?
	So you'd promote all these secretaries to be salespeople, saleswomen, right?
	All these female secretaries, you'd promote them to be saleswomen.
	And even with the cost of the new secretaries, you're up $5 million a year.
	And then there's company B, which doesn't do that.
	Well, what's going to happen?
	Well, company A is going to have $5 million extra a year.
	Let's say it's a small company, right?
	Let's say that that's a significant chunk of money.
	It's not like Google, but you find it between the couches, I think, on lunch break.
	Right?
	And so Company A has $5 million extra to hire to grow.
	Plus, Company B's secretaries, what are they going to do?
	They're going to go and look at Company A and say, holy crap, these guys are going to unlock my potential.
	I'm quitting here and I'm going there.
	So you get all of the secretaries who have this wonderful sales potential at Company B too, which gets you $10 million extra a year.
	And then, not only have they lost all their secretaries at Company B, they're going to hire a whole bunch of new secretaries.
	But, let's say that they're sexist, they want to hire only female secretaries, but the women don't want to work there.
	They all want to go and work for company A, where women's full potential is unlocked.
	It wouldn't take long.
	It wouldn't take long at all for company A to completely leave company B bankrupt, absorbed, bought out, in the dust.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, no, I understand.
	I understand the thought process and logic.
	I understand.
	Okay, I guess then my last question, the second question I was interested in getting your views on quickly, because I don't want to monopolise the...
	No, no, listen, I just want to add one thing, sorry.
	Women know this.
	They know this deep down, which is why they run to the government rather than to their managers.
	The women know this deep down, which is why they run to the government rather than starting their own companies.
	They know that they want something that's unfair and unjust and harmful to men and unequal and mean.
	It does.
	It does feel that way sometimes.
	For example, I was asked, and I've spoken at conferences before, and I was asked to sign a pledge to say I would refuse to speak at a conference unless there was a woman on the panel.
	I just had to say, sorry, no.
	The panel should be chosen on merit, not I was criticized for not signing this pledge, which to me just seemed to be more towards tokenism than merit, like I say.
	Have you heard about that before?
	No, I have not heard about that particular wrinkle in the space-time continuum.
	No, I mean, the woman should be on the panel because she just has so much value to add.
	Right?
	Because they're good enough.
	Yeah!
	I mean, nobody needs to...
	Like, if you're going to a conservative conference, right?
	You're going to some conservative conference.
	Um...
	Nobody needs to boycott anyone so that Ann Coulter gets a speaking gig, right?
	Because people want to hear Ann Coulter.
	She's a fantastic speaker, very engaging, very brave, very powerful, very funny.
	She's a funny, funny woman.
	And nobody needs to.
	Because they want to.
	In fact, you're going to sell more tickets to your conference if Ann Coulter is speaking.
	Or other women or whatever, right?
	Right.
	And so nobody needs to sit there and say, well, I'm not going to this conference unless you have a woman speaking.
	It's like, oh, Ann Coulter's there?
	I'm in.
	She's great.
	Yeah.
	We see that this is the, I mean, my anecdotal experience, my experience would be on that view.
	But what I get told by some of my female colleagues is almost the opposite.
	And as I said, my work with the Women's Network, I'm not really sure.
	Not really sure where the truth lies, which is why I wanted to talk to you about it.
	Look, I either have something extra that's great or something deficient that needs to be there, but I cannot look at women as fundamentally different than men.
	I mean, sure, there are differences, obviously, right?
	But if you want to figure this out, all you need to do is think of me.
	See, when you're thinking about women, everyone, just think of me.
	So imagine, imagine that you heard this story.
	You read this in the newspaper.
	Stefan Molyneux of Free Domain Radio has successfully lobbied the government to get $5 million a year of taxpayer money to do his show on the internet.
	What would go through your mind if you read something like that?
	I'd be surprised that you'd taken the cash from the government.
	But I would also wonder what you'd...
	I'd wonder what you'd hope to achieve by...
	Five million dollars!
	I mean, that's what I would hope to achieve!
	Five million dollars a year!
	But wouldn't you sit there and say, well, why is he running to the government for his money?
	What I was going to say was, yeah, what was the argument that you made to the government to justify it?
	Or, as you said, why have you gone to the government?
	Roll on your subscribers, for example.
	Right.
	But you wouldn't sit there and say, well, I guess...
	So, voluntarists or, you know, whatever position you pick that's not popular in the world as a whole that I have, which is most of them, right?
	But you wouldn't sit there, well, voluntarists are starkly underrepresented in the media, so it makes sense to give him $5 million a year from the government because his views are underrepresented in the media, even in the alternative media.
	And therefore, it makes perfect sense for him to get that money to balance out his lack of representation.
	Mm-hmm.
	Would you think that?
	Well, I don't...
	You wouldn't.
	I don't think...
	No, no.
	You wouldn't, right?
	Now, if I said, well, see, here the problem is, you know, people in the media, they don't talk about race and IQ. They don't talk about gender and IQ. You know, they're kind of sucking it up to the global warming stuff.
	They don't talk about small or no government.
	They don't talk about, like, all of the things.
	They don't talk about equality of opportunity as much as equality of outcome.
	I literally could make the case that my views are vastly underrepresented in the media and then say, well, I need a subsidy.
	It's bigotry against me.
	That's the only reason.
	That I'm not there, right?
	And I could make that case, but nobody would believe me.
	They'd just say, wow, five million bucks.
	Sweet.
	That's what he's doing it for.
	He's claiming all this stuff.
	Follow the money, right?
	He's claiming all this stuff for the five million bucks.
	He's not interested in equality, right?
	Because they'd say to me, listen, if your views are unusual or startling, well, that's the price you make for being unusual and startling.
	And that way, what you need to do, Steph, is you need to get better at your show, you need to get better at presenting, you need to be more compelling in asking people for money at freedomainradio.com/donate or something like that.
	But they tell me to get off my loathsome spotty behind and go and compete in the marketplace.
	But nobody would genuinely believe that I felt sinisterly underrepresented and therefore needed $5 million.
	Yeah, agreed.
	Completely agreed.
	That's, yeah.
	Here's how lunatic it is.
	This is from Forbes.
	The official Bureau of Labor Department statistics show that the median earnings of full-time female workers is 77% of the median earnings of full-time male workers.
	But that is very different from 77 cents on the dollar for doing the same work as men.
	The latter gives the impression that a man and a woman standing next to each other doing the same job for the same number of hours gets paid different salaries, which has been illegal for half a century.
	Anybody who still believes that is a useful idiot.
	I'm not putting you in that category.
	But anyone who says, oh yes, well, you know, it's the same job.
	That's been illegal for more than half a century.
	So it's not at all the case that this is men and women doing the same.
	This is different job categories.
	And full-time, all it means is 35 hours or more.
	But men work more hours than women.
	Like male doctors work 500 hours a year on average longer than female doctors.
	So you could be comparing men working 40 plus hours to women working 35 hours.
	It's, um, I don't know.
	I mean, what do you say?
	I don't even know what to say.
	I mean, you really have to torture statistics so that they can cough up this kind of stuff.
	Men work more dangerous jobs, right?
	Men work more night shifts.
	I mean, 90 plus percent of workplace deaths are men.
	And men, if they have a wife who's home, which, you know, this is still in America, the significant proportion of the population, if they have a wife who's home, they're much more free to work.
	Whereas women don't often have a husband at home taking care of the kids, so women are less free to put in extra hours and do business trips and business travel and blah.
	Listen, when I was like a business entrepreneurial guy, it was nuts.
	Like the amount of hours I worked was insane.
	And the amount of travel I did, there were times, months and months, right beyond the road, two weeks a month.
	Like, you can't do that if you want to be a decent parent.
	You just, you can't.
	Even a halfway decent parent.
	So, and listen, enjoy your time with the kids.
	I'm not saying bad.
	Great, enjoy your time with the kids, but recognize that kids are not an economically positive situation for society.
	They're not profitable.
	Well, they are, of course, if you're on welfare, but they're not profitable.
	They cost money.
	And, um...
	I think that the problem with the gender pay gap is it's not nearly big enough.
	Because if the gender pay gap were bigger, then women would find men more valuable.
	Because women getting all of these, like we're LARPing as full-time workers by working for the government, or we've got all these paid maternity leaves, and a lot of us are teachers where you get all this time off in the summer, and you get all these unions.
	It's not real work.
	I mean, it's real work in that you're doing something that's vaguely productive, but it's heavily subsidized, right?
	More women than men work for the government, by far, in many Western countries.
	And that's artificially inflated wages, artificially inflated benefits, and lots of time off, and sick days, and holidays, and professional development days, and crap like that.
	I mean...
	If the gender pay gap was in the free market, well, of course, everyone would end up wealthier over time, but it should be much larger, given how little women are productive relative to men in general.
	And that way, women would be more tempted...
	To have children, that would be great, you know, because especially white women, not doing your duty, not lying back and thinking of England, not doing your duty to produce the next generation of sunscreen consumers.
	So if there was a bigger gender pay gap, then women would be less tempted to work.
	They would be more in need of good, solid, stable, dependable, providing men.
	They would be home-having kids.
	They'd be happier.
	Housewives are the happiest people around.
	And as women have been going more and more into the workforce, which is an odd place for them to be, biologically, historically, evolutionarily.
	It doesn't mean women can't be fantastic workers at all.
	In general, as feminists have convinced more and more women to go into the workforce, women have become more and more and more miserable.
	Every single decade, women's happiness goes in the toilet.
	Except for the housewives and the women who are raising the kids at home.
	They're having a great time.
	They're loving it.
	It's because I care about women that I want the gender pay gap to be much bigger.
	It's a very interesting point of view.
	I say that sincerely, and I've not actually heard anyone make that argument before.
	I'm not sure if I made it in my business, I'd last very long.
	You make the money.
	If you get a few shekels, donate them to the show.
	Let me take the bullets.
	That's my job.
	I'm the one who's paid for that, and I don't want you to suffer because of it.
	And listen, I say this.
	I say this.
	Hopefully.
	I mean, the haters are going to hate, and who cares, right?
	But I've been a stay-at-home mom.
	You know, I've been not out there in the workforce at any kind of full-time job.
	I'm going to do this show, but I have a fair amount of flexibility.
	I mean, I work like a dog, but I have a lot of flexibility to spend time with my daughter, and So, it's a great life.
	I'm sorry, I shouldn't really be saying this.
	Philosophy is very tough.
	You really have to pay me for the dangers of working in philosophy.
	Sometimes the studio is too bright for me.
	Oh man, it's hell.
	Sometimes I get emotional.
	Very, very tough on my system.
	Paper cuts sometimes, and sometimes tech can be frustrating to work with.
	So, pretty much I'm a lumberjack of thought.
	I just really wanted to pay me.
	But no, it's being at home with kids, it's a pretty great life.
	It's a pretty great life.
	And the fact that women have been so easily convinced that, oh, it's such a lesser occupation.
	Oh, my God.
	You know, that's the old thing.
	Royalty and the aristocracy never used to raise their own children, right?
	So it became like déclassé to raise your own children.
	It became a mark of wealth and status to not raise your own children.
	And I guess women kind of got talked into that stuff.
	Let other people raise your children while you go off to work.
	And Give most of your money to taxes, and then the rest of your money to people who take care of your children!
	Do you know what I find particularly frustrating?
	I studied for a degree in philosophy as well, and I actually really enjoyed having discussions like this with people, and having my own viewpoint challenged, and hopefully revising and improving my opinion based on new arguments and evidence.
	Very, very difficult to do that in a corporate environment.
	And I get the impression that, as I said, if I was to bring either this show or play a section of this show to people, they would assume they were.
	Oh, you'll be dragged off into the pink gulag of HR lickety-split.
	And several stern letters shall be placed in your file, and people shall look at you very askance.
	Oh, no, no.
	Listen, women have figured this stuff out.
	They've put themselves into the HR departments, which basically didn't exist before women got into the workforce.
	And now you need an HR department because women are just so productive in the corporate environment.
	You need an HR department and you need to basically sail blind and no one can tell you the truth about anything because apparently that's how you make money when women come into your work environment.
	Okay, you've given me some...
	Some food for thought, Stefan.
	Have a look at it.
	Don't tell me, don't tell me, but just have a look up if you work at some place.
	And look, I can say all of this because I've actually been the most influenced by women in the realm of philosophy.
	I have great female guests on.
	I'm happily married.
	I have a wonderful daughter.
	I love femininity and I love women.
	I love them so much.
	I don't want to insult them by pretending that they're retarded children who can't handle the truth.
	Like, I just love women so much that I just want to tell them the truth.
	And that way, once they understand the truth that men aren't holding them back, they can be free to fall back in love with men again rather than staring at them balefully and resentfully as...
	The light fades from their eyes and they're slowly consumed by the cats that they used instead of children.
	So I can say all of this stuff.
	I mean, obviously the haters will be the haters and people will take everything out of context and who cares about that?
	I kind of have no control about that.
	But yeah, have a look at the budget of your HR department and realize that the HR department largely exists because...
	of women and it's staffed by women and deals with problems of women in the workplace and listen women in the workplace a fantastic thing but we all need to have the facts at hand because if you don't have the facts you look at all disparities of outcome and imagine sinister motives which makes you paranoid and miserable and unhappy and as women have been told more and more that they're oppressed and men are out to get them and there's a glass ceiling and there's sexism and misogyny and rape culture strangely enough When you take women from a comfortable suburban
	environment and put them into the lion cage of rampaging and raping male masculinity, they seem to have become somewhat less happy.
	You're doomed!
	Men all want to rape you!
	You're doomed!
	You're never going to get ahead!
	They all hate you!
	Sexism!
	Patriarchy!
	Hey, what's the matter?
	How come you're not happy?
	I don't understand.
	Hey, want some antidepressants?
	That's going to solve the problem.
	I think as we opened with the two quotes that I included, the too many pale male and stale decision makers, you can sense the resentment.
	I mean, that was used in a room that I was in, and I was just like, how on earth do you respond to that?
	That's awful.
	It is.
	It is.
	And this resentment is not, it's worldwide.
	Worldwide.
	Everybody looks at the white countries and thinks, well, you're rich because we're poor.
	You stole from us.
	You're exploiting colonial bastards.
	You owe us back.
	We're going to come and get it.
	And more importantly, I think for me, Stefan, I actually don't think it's helpful to instigating social progress.
	Because people's starting position is one where they have sort of assumed attitudes and Well, imagine if you're a young, ambitious, intelligent,
	brilliant woman, and imagine that you're told your whole life that men are out to get you, that there's sexism and misogyny and woman hatred all throughout your society, that all of the white males in power are there because they're vicious exploiters.
	I mean, it's a Marxist narrative, you understand, that the wealthy are wealthy because they've exploited and taken from the poor.
	It's all Marxist nonsense.
	But how is that going to affect your approach to your job?
	How's that going to affect your approach to your boss?
	How's that going to affect your capacity to negotiate?
	Is that going to make you punchy?
	And is that going to make you overaggressive?
	Is that going to, you know, make you not as likely to succeed?
	Yeah.
	Whereas if you thought, okay, well, you know, men work hard, women work hard, there's no fundamental injustice in the free market, and I can go as far as I want to.
	And if, you know, the company's going to be fair to me because the company wants to make money, and if I can produce more value for the company, then that will be recognized and I'll do well.
	And yeah, there may be the odd jerk, but that's, you know, not statistically relevant and isn't going to run my entire life.
	Then you then show up to work enthusiastic and positive as opposed to, you know...
	Hateful, estrogen-crushing parasites of evil patriarchy.
	And it's like you're going to work for Jabba the Hutt.
	Like, how positive, how peppy, how bouncy could you possibly be once you've been convinced that you're working in some predatory gulag of whiplashing penises?
	You know, like, I mean, you're just not going to be happy.
	You're not going to enjoy yourself.
	And then you're going to say, Aha!
	I knew it!
	They're not advancing me, those sexist bastards, just because I'm a woman!
	Well, who's going to want to work with you?
	Who's going to want to mentor you?
	Mentoring is so important.
	And if you think it's an evil patriarchy that's running everything, and every white male boss who's out there hates you for your gender, your Race, your ethnicity.
	Then, you know, if somebody shows an interest in your work and wants to encourage you, well, I must be harassing me.
	You just, you can't.
	If you're going to invite women into the workforce and then tell them that the workforce is innately biased against them and exploitive, you're leading women into a situation of near infinite misery and futility and frustration.
	How awful, how horrible for women and men.
	I think that's it, isn't it?
	That's a net loss for both sexes, actually, in terms of the type of environment you can find yourself in.
	Yeah, but the ideologues don't care how much misery they produce as long as they get more money, more votes, bigger government.
	They don't care how many people's hearts they break.
	All right, I'm going to move on.
	Thanks very much for the call, Lee.
	Very enjoyable, and I hope that it's been helpful for you.
	Yes, Stephen.
	Thank you.
	Very, very helpful.
	Just to say thanks for the show.
	I always enjoy it.
	My pleasure.
	Cheers.
	Have a good one.
	All right, up next we have Cameron.
	Sorry, you gave me the book.
	I wanted to mention this.
	Why Men Earn More, the startling truth behind the pay gap and what women can do about it.
	That is by Dr.
	Warren Farrell, late of this show at times.
	And it's getting a little crusty now, 2005, but I'm sure the principles are still the same.
	And so that would be my suggestion.
	Sorry, Mike, go ahead.
	Right up next we have Cavan.
	He wrote in and said, I just listened to your, your job is to get married and have children show, through your YouTube channel, and I would be very interested to explore an ideal with you.
	In the show, Lindsay talked about her priorities, but is any man out there in a traditional career really able to plan for the future?
	Many have educational debts and no streams of passive income.
	Jobs are disappearing and boomers retire.
	Many of their jobs are going with them.
	Also, how can a moral man work in a regulated sector of business?
	Doesn't making more dollars just make the government rich while its subjects trade their health and sanity for it?
	Doesn't it just feed into this atrocity that is mandatory healthcare?
	Isn't it the duty of someone who sees these problems to allow this situation to fall apart?
	That's from Kevin.
	Hello, Kevin.
	How's it going?
	Hi, Steph.
	How are you doing?
	I'm well.
	I'm well, thanks.
	It's a big-ass question, I'll tell you that.
	And it's multi-part, so I mean, you know, I do work for the man.
	Like, I have about, well, let's see, what is it?
	I have about 45 minutes to talk.
	But anyway, yeah, it's a big idea, and it's really, it's got a lot of parts to it.
	And it's really, I mean, personally, you know, I'm a bartender.
	I'm a professional Dungeons& Dragons storyteller, and I've made that job myself.
	I went to the University of Cincinnati and got a degree in entrepreneurship, so I learned general business and what it takes to start your own thing, and I'm trying to do something very different.
	And I see all these things that are happening in the world, and I think to myself, do I want to contribute to what's going on On the big world stage, you know, like taxes being the number one thing.
	Do I want to pay into a system where I see all these problems with it?
	And is it really worth, I don't know, being that guy that Lindsay's looking for?
	You know, like being the provider and having that family and doing all these things when it seems like everything As a poor white male instead of a rich white male in America, does it make sense to even go that direction?
	Play what would be called the rich man's game?
	Right.
	So your question is, if I understand this correctly, Kevin, is it worth gathering resources, attracting a mate, becoming a family man, having kids and so on, given everything that's happening in the world?
	Is that right?
	Yeah, I think that's the major main idea.
	Right.
	How old are your parents?
	Let's see.
	My father is 21 years older than me, so he's 53.
	And my mother is...
	23 years older than me, so 55.
	Right.
	Right.
	So they grew up, I mean, they're a little bit older than me, but they grew up in the Cold War, right?
	Right.
	And my father, well, they're both Marines.
	My father actually fought in Granada.
	Right.
	Do you think your parents could have made a case to not have you?
	Oh, for sure.
	Are you glad they didn't make that case?
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	There's your answer.
	Well, I guess a big part of it is...
	Wait, wait, hang on.
	Didn't we just get an answer?
	For sure.
	We're just kind of skating past that, right?
	There's a thumb.
	Let's stop the car and see what we hit.
	Your parents could have made the excuse.
	Troubled times, troubled times, right?
	I remember this, an old WKRP, but I used to love that show when I was a kid.
	I used to watch that after school, WKRP in Cincinnati.
	Great show.
	And Mr.
	Carlson gets, he's kind of older and his wife gets pregnant and he says, I don't know, these are troubled times.
	And you know what she says?
	His wife says, people have been saying that for 5,000 years.
	Yeah.
	Yet still here we are.
	Your parents could have made that excuse, then you wouldn't be here to ask this question.
	You're happy to be here.
	That's your answer.
	Make life.
	Like life?
	Make life.
	Love life.
	Make more life.
	And you know what?
	You'll end up loving your life even more.
	Your parents were Marines, right?
	Now, what do Marines say?
	Marines say, Leave no one behind, right?
	No one gets left behind on the battlefield.
	Squad cohesion is everything.
	You must love your squad mates even more than you hate the enemy, right?
	Because then, if you have strong bonds with your squad mates, you have something to fight for.
	See, you're saying, do I have anything to fight for?
	Can the fight happen?
	You've got nothing in the game yet.
	You have kids.
	Ooh, baby, you've got something in the game.
	Then you have something to fight for.
	But if you don't have any chips in the game, it's not that exciting to watch.
	You say, why are people even playing?
	You put your mortgage and your pink slip for your car in the game, you're pretty interested in the game now, right?
	So you go out and you get a bride and you make some kids.
	Why then?
	You have squad mates.
	Little, screechy squad mates that are constantly, mysteriously hitting you in the nuts.
	But these are your squad mates.
	These are your teammates.
	These are who you do not leave behind.
	This is who you fight for.
	Right.
	And I guess I see what my father's life and how it's kind of unfolded.
	And so, I mean, we talk about it all the time.
	And he's just very frustrated where the world is.
	And I mean, he's worked his whole life.
	He's been amazingly successful in what he's done.
	I mean, he was the pilot for not Marine One, but kind of like the helicopter that goes along with Marine One.
	So he's still on the presidential flight crew.
	That's fantastic.
	Congratulations.
	Is he conservative?
	Yes.
	Damn it, this is the second show in two days where we have conservatives calling in and talking about helicopters.
	I just wanted to tell you that some of the solutions – anyway, just kidding.
	Go on.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	But what I'm saying is that he had a pretty good career in the military.
	He did get hurt.
	He didn't do a full 20-year.
	Anything like that.
	But he had an aerospace engineering degree.
	He's been working at analog devices in Boston as a robotics technician for a long time.
	Yeah, he's a brilliant guy.
	And he has – he's like getting ready for retirement, and he's looking at his life, and he's like, so what did I get from it?
	Other than, of course, he loves us.
	My parents were divorced very young, but he always kept in contact, child support, made sure we had what we needed.
	But he's looking back and he's like, what do I have but a cabin in New Hampshire to kind of retreat to after I retire?
	Oh, he didn't get remarried or anything?
	Oh, he did get remarried.
	But I mean, you know, so he's got his wife.
	I hope his wife isn't around when he says, what do I have in my life other than a piece of real estate?
	So I guess, well, so, you know, I was getting around to that.
	But anyway, it's like, you know, he's like, okay, so I have this little bit of savings.
	I have this, you know, place to live and my wife.
	But, you know, I see all these people around, you know, I see the managerial types and that kind of stuff.
	They make all the money, you know, it's like I... There's this huge gap between his ability to work with things and their ability to work with people, and they get paid more, and why is that?
	I try and talk to him about it.
	Why do people who work with people get paid more than people who work with things?
	That's because things are the end point.
	They don't make more money.
	If I fix a motor, I can charge...
	500 bucks because I fixed someone's motor.
	But if I train 10 guys to fix motors, that's 5,000 bucks they're making all the time.
	Because if you're just working with things, that's the end point of that productivity.
	If you are working with people, you can multiply.
	Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but go on.
	But yes, I try and kind of, you know, talk him through that kind of thing.
	And it's just, it's tough to see that, you know, he's lived this whole life and he's been extremely, he's extremely brilliant, successful and that kind of thing.
	And at the end of it, he's like, what do I have to do?
	Except because of the things that are going on in the bigger, you know, like, world stage.
	Only someone as young as you, my friend, could say at the end of it when he's 53.
	Oh, I just wanted to point.
	You mean at the end of his career kind of thing, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, the end of his career.
	Yeah, when he, you know, goes to his cabin in the woods and he becomes the man of the woods.
	But that's what he likes to do.
	That's why he's retiring.
	Why is he retiring?
	53?
	That's pretty young.
	Because he's tired.
	He's tired of seeing what's going on in the world and the city and what he feels is like a ruling class and he just wants to give up and go do something else.
	Is he going to go do something?
	I'm just kind of curious.
	Is he just going to sit and watch the seasons change or what?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	He wants to go to his cabin in New Hampshire and...
	And, you know, just kind of be an old man in the hill with his wife and, you know, hunting elk for, or not elk on that side, I'm sorry, hunting deer for, we got elk out here in Oregon.
	But yeah, hunting deer and living off the land and that kind of thing.
	So does he think that it's your fight now, that he's too old, it's going to be your fight to make the world a better place?
	I guess, but really, he's not like, you should go do this.
	I mean, I was in the military for a while.
	I was a radio man on a submarine.
	So I could get money to go to college and everything.
	No selfies, I hope.
	No.
	Nope, stay away from the selfies for sure.
	So that got me interested in computers and communication and that kind of thing.
	The work that I do now is mostly communication-based.
	But I'm not rich.
	I look at my dad and I'm like, man, he's a rich man.
	He had a huge income, has a huge retirement, but he's going out into the woods or whatever.
	And I see myself and it's like, man, I've got a long ways to go.
	But anyway, I'm sorry.
	I can tend to ramble myself and get off topic.
	So wait, sorry, you're...
	Educated in communications, but you're a bartender.
	I mean, I know the bartenders chat, but help me square that circle.
	So I live in a rural part of Oregon.
	I mean, I'm working on...
	What is it?
	I mean, I have some IT experience, but I'm working on more...
	I don't know.
	I've wanted to be a game designer since I was, you know, like eight years old.
	Okay, you're not answering me.
	Come on.
	Take a deep breath.
	Focus that brain, man.
	You're not at work.
	Okay, so you're working as a bartender, which relative to your potential is aiming a little low.
	Is that fair to say?
	For sure.
	Okay, so why are you working as a bartender?
	Rather than getting your dream of game design going or whatever it is that's going to stretch you a little bit more than you want some more pretzels.
	I'm educating myself.
	I'm learning Unity.
	I'm doing things when it comes to the actual programming of things, getting on that side.
	Because mostly what I did in the Navy was communication.
	So it was information security and writing stuff.
	Writing communications and that kind of stuff.
	Okay, let's just cut to the chase.
	I hate to sound like your surgeon made you.
	Oh no, that's fine.
	Okay, so be honest with me.
	How many hours a week are you spending on your dream of game design?
	Probably 30.
	Really?
	30 is like a really good part-time job, close to a full-time job, that you're spending.
	Right.
	And how long have you been doing that for?
	Let's see.
	About a year.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	And what do you have to show for it?
	Mostly just...
	I do some stuff on the community side of a couple of organizations and games, and that's about it.
	So when it comes to the actual programming and that kind of stuff, not much.
	I've been...
	Trying to network and figure out, you know, what you're supposed to do.
	Sorry, if you spent a year, right?
	30 hours a week, right?
	So let's see, 52 times 30.
	I should be able to do that in my head.
	So 1,560 hours of focusing on game design.
	And what, you got a couple of mods in community games, or what do you mean?
	So, my main game is EVE Online.
	I work with a 20,000-man organization in there.
	And I do some writing for them.
	And I've been doing my...
	Wait, writing.
	What do you mean, writing?
	Writing as in I do articles on a website that they have.
	So, nothing to do with game design.
	Okay.
	What else?
	Well, yeah, that part of it doesn't.
	The other stuff is...
	I guess I'm...
	Yeah, I guess it's probably miscategorized.
	Like, I've got...
	So, over the last year...
	I've been doing a...
	My business is professional storytelling.
	So I haven't actually been designing things.
	I've been...
	Wait, your business is professional storytelling?
	Yeah.
	So you've got bartender, game designer, writer for EVE Online, Dungeons& Dragons, Dungeon Master, and now professional storyteller?
	Where does that fit in?
	Well, the professional storyteller is Dungeons& Dragons.
	Oh, you get paid for that?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've made like $10,000 over the last two years.
	So not much?
	Not much at all.
	Okay.
	I didn't even know you could get paid for it.
	That's good to know.
	I've actually thought, because I'm playing a bit with my daughter, I've actually sort of, I mean, I've already sort of sanitized Dungeons& Dragons.
	I've actually thought I should run a contest where you get to DM with me for, like, I get to be your DM for a night.
	That would be too much fun.
	To do it with adults again would be pretty cool.
	Fewer backflips, you understand.
	Absolutely.
	So, okay, so...
	What about the actual coding, right?
	Or actual game design?
	How many hours a week are you spending on that?
	Because this 30-hour thing sounds kind of loosey-goosey.
	Yeah, so I guess I've just started really getting to the coding stuff.
	I guess when I was thinking about game design, it's more about figuring out I don't know what people are interested in when it comes to games, like writing things that are associated with it.
	Those are the things that I've been mostly doing.
	But yes, the coding, I've just started cracking Unity and learning JavaScript and C Sharp and that kind of thing.
	So, you know, still kind of on the very ground floor of that.
	And what's your goal?
	You don't need to be a hardcore coder to be a game designer, right?
	You can come up with a design for a game.
	Vox Days has this kind of stuff.
	You can come up with a design for a game.
	It doesn't mean you have to code it yourself.
	It just means you have a document that says how the game's going to work, the mechanics, the weightings, the hit points, or whatever it's going to be, right?
	Sure.
	So is that the kind of game designer you want to be?
	Or you want to make your own games from scratch?
	Yeah.
	Well, yeah, it's like, I feel like to really do anything, and I'm sorry, we've kind of gone so far off topic.
	No, no, we haven't.
	We are bang on topic, man.
	Don't worry about it.
	Let me handle that side.
	Okay, so yes, I would like to be more in mechanics design story, that kind of thing, but I know that when you're starting out, you have to show that you have competency across the board.
	You know, you probably need to make some games yourself, you know, like small projects to show, hey, you know, I could talk to a programmer and I could know, hey, you know, this is what we can do with this.
	Yeah, you have to know what's possible technically if you want to do a game design document, right?
	You can't expect the impossible.
	Okay.
	Right.
	And do you have like a plan about when you want to produce your first game?
	Do you have an idea for a game?
	Do you have something that you're going to start putting into Unity?
	So, it's tough because it's like, you know, I have this professional storytelling thing that I'm developing.
	It isn't as much on the computer side, but it is something that I can say, you know, I'm doing this performance, I have this business, and have that to attract people that may have some of these other things.
	Sorry, this is getting too confusing for me.
	So, when did you graduate from college?
	Um, let's see.
	I'm sorry.
	Um, it was, it was like two and a half years ago.
	And that was late because you were in the army, right?
	Uh, the Navy.
	The Navy, sorry.
	Now, when you were in, when did you get out of the Navy?
	Um, in, uh, what was it?
	Uh, 09.
	Like the very beginning of 09.
	So like January 09.
	Okay, got it.
	So eight years ago, right?
	Now, why did you need to go to college if you got a good education while in the Navy?
	Um, Because it was free.
	Oh, no, it wasn't free.
	It wasn't free.
	You're a smart enough guy to know that just because someone else is paying for it doesn't mean that it's free because it's a whole lot of deferred income for you, right?
	Sure.
	Yeah.
	So I guess it was a personal interest.
	I was looking at what can I learn in college.
	And I was like, well, all these...
	All these kind of science and technology things and stuff, I mean, I know how to do those things.
	I can read about them.
	I can work on them myself.
	I mean, unless I wanted to be a biochemist or something like that, I probably can't afford myself to have a lab or something like that.
	But if you're well-educated in the Navy and you took a degree, why are you a bartender?
	Because I live with two people that I help.
	And I met them online.
	I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.
	I live with two people that I help.
	So I met two people that were like a couple that's disabled online.
	And they wanted me to come out and help them out on their property and stuff.
	So that's why I live out in rural Oregon.
	Why?
	What?
	Why are you helping disabled people with their property?
	Don't you want a fucking family of your own?
	Yeah.
	Why are you taking care of disabled people, have some disabled children?
	At least at some point they'll not be disabled.
	I don't quite understand the life plan here, brother.
	You've got eight years of education and you're a bartender who plays D&D. And you live out working on a disabled people's property.
	Like, what the fuck is the plan here?
	I don't know.
	Good.
	Okay, good.
	Now we've started with something.
	All right.
	All right.
	Do you want to become a father?
	At some point, yes.
	No, no, no.
	Dude.
	You're 32, okay?
	Yeah.
	There is no at some point.
	At some point is when you're 14.
	No, not even that.
	At some point is when you're 8 and thinking of being an astronaut.
	32 and wanting to become a father, and you're living in rural, I don't know, I'm going to pronounce it wrong, I always do, origami.
	Oregano!
	Oregano!
	But you're 32.
	The fuck is the plan here?
	How are you going to become a father?
	Do you have a girlfriend?
	Uh, no.
	No.
	Of course, the dungeon master's guide is the chick repellent, right?
	Sausage fist and pimple fist.
	Well, plenty of female attention, but no real steady girlfriend.
	Right.
	I mean, you only want to become a father, why would you want a steady girlfriend, right?
	So what is your plan here?
	It's a little bewildering to me.
	Very intelligent guy, articulate, bit of a rambler, but, you know, it's a sin I share.
	Um, want to become a father do you get the sense that you're old 32 right I mean dude I'm telling you 32 32 is not young anymore yeah not really I mean, I'm still in great shape, and I don't know.
	No, no, it's not just about that.
	Sorry, maybe this has never been explained to you.
	It's not just about that.
	It's just that you want to get a woman roughly in your own age group, right?
	Right.
	And as you float up through your 30s, women get crazier and crazier.
	Because you get the leftovers, or the rejects, or the divorced, or the single moms, or the what, the what, the what, right?
	Right.
	Well, shoot, when I was in high school, it was like everybody was pairing up since they were like 14 years old.
	I mean, it didn't...
	I just saw...
	I knew I was going into the military.
	You know, it's just something that pretty much everybody in my family did.
	I was in communications, so...
	No, I don't want to talk about what's happening when you're 18, because that's a long fucking time ago now, all right?
	Yeah.
	Forget 18, forget 14.
	Don't drag me back into the past.
	We're trying to talk about your future here, right?
	Yeah.
	All right?
	You're right.
	Uh-huh.
	Bartender!
	Is it really tough to meet women?
	No.
	Okay.
	You're kind of like stuck somewhere in the past, right?
	You know, low-rent job, Dungeons& Dragons, dabbling around with gaming.
	This is like teenage stuff.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	If you want your life to happen, you know you've got to make it happen.
	People in general will let you drift through life on your own steam, like a kid who lets go of a helium balloon, you know, off it goes, you know, we'll see.
	I guess some of it has to do with the question that I submitted was, I mean, I see all these crazy things going on, and I mean, I've experienced some stuff when it comes to You know, I'm a white male, so, oh, there's all this privilege, and oh, you know, like, blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like, like, when I was in high school, or I'm sorry, when I was in college, and I'm like, what is this?
	I mean, I grew up in a rural area in Ohio, in Appalachia.
	But you don't let those trolls take your future from you, for God's sakes.
	We talk about surrendering the higher to the lower.
	Do you know there are people out there in the world...
	Seem to wake up every day hating what I do.
	So what?
	So what?
	I mean, the number of names that I'm called out there, I can't imagine.
	They would walk, paper, the Louvre, right?
	Who cares?
	You do what you need to do.
	You do what's important.
	You do what's right.
	You do what makes you happy.
	You do what satisfies you.
	Right?
	Right.
	And you owe something back to society, man.
	You say your education was free.
	It wasn't free.
	The taxpayers paid for it.
	The taxpayers paid for you to become a warrior and a well-educated warrior and you're spending it on imaginary monstrous dice and drink.
	You owe something back.
	A lot of people were taxed to turn you into a tough guy.
	And you're hiding out.
	Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
	I think so.
	I say this out of love.
	You understand, right?
	Oh, I understand completely.
	How are you going to get what you want?
	First thing, panic.
	Seriously, panic.
	I said this to a guy older than you who was living in his brother's garage.
	Now is the time to panic.
	You're 32.
	You're drifting, right?
	Right.
	You've got this big giant bag of someday out there when you're gonna get something.
	You're a game designer, a father, a married man.
	It's just out there somewhere.
	What are you doing about it?
	Not much, really.
	You know, a decade can pass like that when you're drifting.
	And this also tells me, Kevin, that you are drifting with other drifters, right?
	Is anyone slapping you upside the head with a wet fish saying, dude, it's fine if you panic now.
	In fact, it might be about the best thing for you.
	I think my parents are just happy that I didn't settle them with any, like, co-signed debt.
	That's about it.
	Well, you know, I'm, no disrespect to your parents, I'm going to invite you to raise your standard just a little bit.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I've, uh, I don't know.
	Well, I mean, I know this stuff.
	I went to school for it.
	What stuff?
	Entrepreneurship, as in starting something.
	You don't know the fuck about entrepreneurship, man, because you've just read about it.
	Right.
	You know, it's like saying, I understand Japanese because I looked at Japan once.
	You've got to do it.
	You've got to live it.
	You don't know anything about anything with regards to entrepreneurship because you haven't done it yet.
	Well, I mean, I felt like I've been doing that.
	I've had this – I mean, of course, you know, it hasn't been a full-time thing because it's kind of like an art thing.
	Wait, don't bring up the five grand a year from dungeon mastering.
	Please don't tell me that's being an entrepreneur.
	Please.
	I'm going to come right over there with my wet fish.
	I'll find you.
	I'll find you.
	I know it's a big place.
	I know you're in the middle of nowhere, but I'll whip fish your ass.
	Well, hit me with it, Seth, because I thought that's a start, right?
	No.
	If after two years you've made $10,000, that's not a fucking entrepreneurship.
	That's a paper route.
	Come on.
	Go up to some woman and say, don't worry, honey.
	I can take care of the family.
	I got $10,000 over the last two years.
	You understand?
	I understand.
	Yeah, for sure.
	You need to stop building some wealth.
	You getting a lot of pension from the military?
	No, I don't get any pension.
	All right.
	The only passive, well, I have a, what do you call it, a retirement account that I have from the military, and that's a little bit of money, but, you know, I've got a little investment in a Used car business that a friend runs.
	So you took orders in the army, and then to get structure you went to school, and now you're just bumping along, right?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Right.
	You know you're gonna die one day, right?
	No, I mean, you know that, right?
	I mean, do you really know that?
	Every single day, those twin steps in the black robe get closer and closer every single day.
	Every day is a coin that you spend in a vending machine called life and it never gives it back.
	And you don't have an infinity of coins.
	You've got a fixed amount of coins.
	You've got a bag of coins.
	You don't know if it's big or small.
	Every day you feed a coin into the machine called life.
	It never comes back.
	And the machine stays the same.
	The only thing that changes is you get a little older, you get a little more bent, you get a little more gray, and you start running out of coins.
	You're going to die.
	And Thinking of your deathbed.
	Hopefully it's later rather than sooner.
	Right, Kevin?
	But think of your deathbed.
	If you could send a message back to you now from your deathbed, looking back over the last eight years of your life, ten years of your life, what do you need to know Instructed by your own mortality, by old you about to slip into the great nothingness and become food for worms.
	What do you today need to learn from dying you in the future?
	Well, I know that I guess I've heard a lot that people say, you know, they always wish that You know, they took more risks or they didn't care what people think and that kind of thing.
	Well, I think I've taken that a little bit too literally because, you know, I have just been working on these little game projects and that kind of thing and not really even taking it seriously to try and, you know, turn that into a career.
	You know, I'm still trying to...
	You know, you can't just get ready to do something forever because if you do, well, you know...
	Like you say, you'll die before you do anything.
	You've been wasting time, right?
	Right.
	You've been pretending to do something.
	You've been self-indulgent.
	You've been risk-avoidant, fear-avoidant, loss-avoidant, right?
	Even with regards to a relationship, right?
	Right.
	And it's time to panic.
	No, it is.
	You know your Pink Floyd?
	Do you know your Pink Floyd?
	Yeah.
	Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
	Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown, waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
	Eh, tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain.
	You are young and life is long.
	There is time to kill today.
	And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
	No one told you when to run.
	You missed the starting gun.
	You run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking, racing around, come up behind you again.
	The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older, shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.
	Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time, plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
	Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
	The time is gone.
	The song is over.
	Thought I had something more to say.
	See, because Gilmore and Waters et al., because they were aware of this, they wrote songs, they wrote albums, they toured, right?
	Right.
	And I'm trying to help steer you off the rocks of regret that you're going to hit when it's too late to fix it all.
	Because your father's checked out.
	Right, he's punching out, right?
	Yeah, he's pretty much done.
	Yeah, he's punching out.
	But that doesn't have to be your choice.
	Right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I don't think...
	I don't know why he is, because he's never been the kind of person to give up.
	No, we're not talking about him.
	I don't want to talk about him anymore.
	He's made his choice.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	He's had his life.
	He's had his family.
	He's had his career.
	He's making his choice.
	He's checking out.
	I don't agree with it, but I'm not talking to him.
	Who is going to want you?
	You want to be a game designer?
	Who's going to want to hire you?
	You want to be a husband?
	Who's going to want to marry you?
	Right?
	How attractive are you making yourself to a potential spouse or potential employer?
	Are you not just setting yourself up for a photocopy day of being an increasingly bitter bartender?
	For the rest of your natural born days.
	And why the hell isn't anyone slapping you upside of the head and saying, dude, time to engage the chain on the bike, man.
	I really don't know why.
	I mean, you know, I keep in touch with family and stuff, but now everybody's just like, just be happy.
	And I am happy.
	You know, I do...
	I do enjoy my life, but, you know, when it comes to actually doing something bigger, something greater, there really hasn't been much.
	But your parents, did not being parents make your parents happy?
	Did they hate being parents?
	I don't think so.
	So then why aren't they helping you become a parent if that's what you want and if that's what helped make them happy, why are they ignoring what you need to do to become a parent?
	Why are they letting you drift?
	It's not funny.
	Well, I lived with my mother, and I was out of the house going to the military and stuff when I was 18, and it was kind of like, don't come back until you've done something.
	Well, I haven't done anything yet.
	Oh, that's what she said?
	Don't come back until you've done something?
	Well, I mean, I'm trying to think of exactly what she said.
	I think it was more like something about, you know, hopefully...
	The military teaches you...
	I don't know.
	What's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to you about your potential?
	about my potential.
	I don't know.
	I got a lot of...
	I had a supportive family in the sense that, you know, I got a lot of, well, we love you and you're, you know...
	No, no, that's feelings.
	That's about it.
	What is it that people have said to you about your potential?
	Look, either you've got nothing to waste, in which case you can drift away like a bump on a log and who cares, right?
	Or you've got something to waste, in which case you should stop wasting it.
	So when we did academic scholastic testing and things in school...
	I tested basically top, top of the class, number one.
	And then they put me through some other things.
	And then they had me sit with some people that were like, so what do you want to do with yourself?
	And at that point, I really enjoyed hard science.
	I was looking at maybe physics or astronomy or something like that.
	Or engineering or whatever.
	But they said, well, we don't have any money for anything.
	We can kind of give you a couple of people to kind of talk to and maybe mentor you a little bit, but that's all we got.
	And who said that?
	The administrators at the school I went to.
	Okay, so they gave you some people who might be able to mentor you, and what happened?
	I talked to them, and they're like, oh, you know, we got this summer program, this and that, and I said, but I already do these things.
	Like, I I've been reading encyclopedias for fun since I was like 10 years old.
	I mean, I know the...
	Wait, so people offered to mentor you, but you said no.
	Well, I mean, they're like school teachers from where I lived.
	It wasn't like I was going to some, I don't know, some college...
	What do you call it?
	I don't know.
	College laboratories or anything like that.
	It's like, oh, they're going to like...
	But it was the best that was around, right?
	That's true.
	It was the best that was around, and you said no.
	Well, I was like, what are they going to do for me?
	Are they going to hand me a book?
	It's like, I know where the library is.
	Well, I don't quite understand.
	I mean, wouldn't you go and give it a try?
	I guess.
	But I guess maybe at that point I was just too arrogant to...
	I don't think that it would do anything for me.
	So is it my understanding that you're happy at the moment?
	I am, generally.
	I mean, I'm happy with what I, you know, I'm happy with the state of my life, but when it comes to thinking about bigger things, I'm not doing them.
	All right.
	Well, here's my suggestion.
	I'm not going to try and talk someone out of being happy.
	Right, because...
	If you're happy, you're happy.
	If at some point in the future, maybe 4 o'clock tomorrow morning, if at some point in the future you feel panic, unease, if you feel less happy, then you should call back in.
	Because right now, if you're happy with your life...
	There's no particular problem to be solved, right?
	If you don't feel like you're somehow underutilizing your potential, right?
	You've been reading encyclopedias since you were a kid, but you're a bartender and a dungeon master.
	So if you don't feel like you're underutilizing your potential, if you don't feel like you're going to miss the boat with regards to finding a quality woman or having something to offer an engaged and creative employer, if you don't feel any anxiety or negativity or concern...
	About your life, I don't...
	I don't have much to say.
	Because I'm not going to try and convince you you're unhappy.
	I mean, that's not my job.
	So, and look, I do appreciate the call.
	You know, if at some point in the future you do actually want to get somewhere, then I'm happy to talk then.
	But right now, if you're happy taking care of disabled people's property and pouring beers for people, then I think it's a bit of an underutilization of your brain.
	But...
	Thank you, Stephen.
	It reads, While
	I ended up leaving graduate school anyway, I think this particular quote illustrates a larger problem in the scientific community, an overemphasis on diversity of skin color, gender, etc., etc., among the ranks of scientists, as opposed to actual scientific progress.
	Now that academia, even in the sciences, has transitioned into essentially an arm of the government, what can be done to push back and restore science to its intended purpose?
	That's from Evan.
	Oh, hey, Evan.
	How are you doing?
	Doing well.
	How are you doing, Stefan?
	I'm very well, thank you.
	Doing well.
	Hopefully doing good.
	So you think that science is really into diversity?
	Well, I guess I didn't really until I kind of saw this feedback and it seemed to go against kind of my former notions that...
	Well, if there's anything in academics that doesn't have to worry about diversity, it's going to be science.
	But I think this feedback shows that they're still going to dock you if you don't kind of push for those agendas, the social justice type goals.
	And it was something that obviously we've seen in the humanities for decades, I guess.
	I haven't been around for that long, but now it seems to be infiltrating science as well.
	Right.
	So, science is not into diversity.
	I mean, government science is not at all into diversity.
	Not even close.
	That's number one.
	Number two, science explains perfectly well why there are fewer Blacks and Hispanics and women at the top levels of science.
	You know the answer to that if you've listened to this show, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	That's about the bell curves and IQ and stuff.
	Yeah, and testosterone and childbearing and right...
	So, if science was at least into science, it would be less into diversity, you understand?
	So don't smear the name of science by confusing it with this quota system, right?
	This bullshit quota system that is anti-science, anti-empiricism, anti-rationality, anti-biology, anti-fact.
	So the question of diversity is ably explained by science.
	Now, I would love it if scientists would admit the shit out of this stuff and then work to try and solve it.
	Please, God, get into the genomes, figure out if it's genetics, figure out what the hell is going on, and then see if we can solve it.
	If we can solve it, fantastic.
	Science is my hero.
	If we can't solve it, at least we know what the problem is, and we stop blaming innocent people like white males for problems that they did not generate themselves.
	I did not design the human genome.
	It's not my fault, there's a bell curve.
	It's just evolution.
	Now, the fact that science denies biology, empirical evidence, brain size, neural mapping, testosterone levels, and basic evolution, to me, is quite precious.
	So it's not science and science is not into diversity.
	If science was into diversity, then...
	A lot of scientists would be more welcoming and opening with regards to, say, climate change skepticism, skepticism being one of the fundamental elements of science, and it would stop waving around this bullshit 97% number of all the scientists who accept climate change.
	Number one, it's not true.
	Number two, science is the opposite of consensus.
	I mean, if we went with consensus, we'd still think that we lived on top of a whole bunch of fucking turtles.
	So anyway, just let's be clear.
	If we're going to talk about government science, it's not science anymore.
	If we want to talk about real science, then science has solved the problem of diversity years ago.
	Okay, yeah, I think that's a good distinction then.
	I guess part of that kind of leads into the next part of, so government is run by science.
	How can we subvert diversity?
	The government influence on it, I guess.
	With science.
	With science.
	You know, when people say, well, see, there's this weird thing.
	There's this weird thing, which is sort of like, well, you know, nobody's sitting there and saying, God damn it, we need to get more Japanese people into engineering.
	Because Japanese people are a minority.
	We need to get more East Asians into engineering.
	You've ever heard that?
	Oh, yeah.
	Underrepresented minorities.
	Yes, yes.
	Well, see, now they say, so it's not minorities.
	Yeah, no.
	Right?
	We all know it's blacks and Hispanics and women, right?
	And the answer to that is clear.
	So you use science, if you want, to overturn superstition, right?
	The Marxist pseudoscience of equality of outcome, right?
	You use science to overturn...
	Let me put it this way.
	When I was an atheist...
	Now, I'm not saying I'm post-atheist, but I'm not an atheist in the way that most people think of atheism.
	When I was an atheist, by God...
	If you were skeptical of evolution, if you were a creationist, have you heard of such creatures?
	Have you seen Jesus Camp?
	They program these children into chanting these slogans, which is so anti-science.
	It's ridiculous.
	Now, what do you think is doing more damage to society?
	The illusion of perfect ethnic and gender egalitarianism or creationism?
	The egalitarianism.
	Right!
	It's hilarious and tragic, and I'm bitter as shit about it, frankly, because it's a heartbreaking topic all around.
	But the fact that atheists sit there and make fun of Christians who are into creationism, which does very little harm to society as a whole, and then atheists turn around and deny...
	The science of human biodiversity denied the bell curve, rage and get attacked, and refused to defend scientists.
	James Watson, co-discoverer with Crick of the DNA, the double helix structure of DNA, Pretty amazing scientist, pretty amazing biologist.
	I actually read the book many years ago.
	I just remember him playing ping pong.
	But anyway, I think of this every time I play ping pong.
	Oh yes, it's like in that book, because my brain just works that way or doesn't work that way.
	But anyway, so it's just hilarious to me and bitter and horrifying that atheists make fun of Christians.
	For the anti-scientific superstition of creationism, while fully embracing the most dangerous superstition of modern times, which is the anti-scientific superstition of egalitarianism.
	It is the most damaging and dangerous disbelief in our times, and we desperately need science To help us out.
	And do they?
	They do not.
	They don't even rush to defend people like James Watson, who says he's pessimistic about the possibility of solving all the problems in sub-Saharan Africa because the evidence shows that they don't have the same levels of intelligence as other groups in the world, although they are more intelligent at least than the outback aboriginals in Australia, or the pygmies.
	But Do they rush to their defense?
	No.
	Because they're too busy, you see, making fun of Christians who believe that the world is younger than carbon dating indicates.
	Wretched, cowardly, contemptible.
	But they need their grants.
	All those scientists need their government grants.
	Sure, absolutely.
	And priests like their pay, but I never saw the desire for priests to get pay an excuse for their beliefs.
	Yeah.
	And this is part of why I left graduate school.
	As you get more liberty-minded, it feels more and more scummy, I guess, like over time.
	Not feels.
	Nay, not feels.
	Tis, Hamlet, tis.
	And I guess that feeling is a reflection of that reality in that instance.
	But yeah.
	So they got to get their grants.
	I mean, that's...
	It's a cowardly, kucky, cash Catholicism that goes on in pseudoscience these days, government-run pseudoscience.
	Cowardly cuckie.
	It is.
	It's for money.
	It's lying about fundamental reality for money.
	And scientists have the fucking nerve to be angry at Christians.
	At least Christians were teaching people to not have sex before marriage.
	At least Christians ended slavery.
	I go to scientists and say, what have you done for me lately?
	The nerve, the nerve, the nerve of these high priests of the white smocks casting contempt upon the Christians.
	Well, the Christians did stand before invading hordes of other religions in the past.
	Don't see a lot of scientists pointing out some of the basic facts.
	Inbreeding?
	Anything!
	Anything!
	Help us out!
	Help save society, the society that pays you by bringing basic facts about biology, evolution, the bell curve and brain size, to the world that desperately needs you to save it from the ignorance that your predecessors imposed upon the world about the absolute egalitarianism between ethnicity and gender.
	Help un- Help disinter the reality that has been buried under the superstition of radical egalitarianism.
	Come on, scientists!
	We've paid you for 150 years, trillions of dollars out of the taxpayers' money.
	Stand up, tell the truth, save us all.
	But I bet they won't.
	No, they'll just come out with another sociology study about racial inequality and how it's just systemic oppression.
	Oh my gosh.
	I mean, reading some of the The emails that they send out about the funds, I mean, it's incomprehensible to me.
	Like, I just, the amount of money that goes to it.
	Yeah.
	It's unreal.
	It's just unreal.
	Yeah.
	Well, the state corrupts everything.
	State money, the unearned corrupts everything.
	But you don't have to earn your money in the marketplace, you can afford ridiculous overheads like social justice warriors.
	I guess for some companies you can even afford it in the short run.
	Not in the long run, though.
	Anyway, so...
	So how do you cure it?
	Well, you cure pseudoscience with science.
	And you cure the pseudoscience of insane egalitarianism with the actual science of human biodiversity and gender biodiversity.
	You know, the fact that men have...
	A brain that's 8% heavier than women.
	The fact that men have 15% more neural connections than women.
	The fact that men have greater intelligence and significantly more men have greater intelligence at the higher end of the bell curve.
	These are facts.
	And scientists, since they're taking our money, should at least pay us back with a few facts that could help save the world.
	So, yeah.
	Cure lies with facts.
	That's what this show has always been about.
	Cure ignorance and superstition with reason and evidence.
	And it seems to be like a lot of people, like your average everyday person probably still thinks that science is safe, though.
	I think that...
	I've got a whole podcast, I don't think it's ever quite come out yet, but we'll get it out at some point, called Scientism, which is just the new religion called science, which is far more dangerous than the old religion, or at least since the old religion was separated from the science.
	Science is far more dangerous to human society.
	Pseudoscience, the pseudoscience of government science, far more dangerous to society than religion.
	I mean, Christianity, I mean, much more dangerous.
	And scientists, they get that deference, they get that power.
	And they misuse it.
	Misuse it terribly.
	Terribly.
	And it's not just the hard scientists, it's the social scientists as well.
	You talked about sociology and so on.
	Sociology could explain all of these things.
	And there are courageous scientists and social scientists and criminologists who are working out there in the field.
	We've had them on this show.
	We've had Linda Gottfriedson.
	We've had Kevin Beaver.
	We've had lots of Jason Richwine.
	Lots of people who are working in this area.
	Because I respect the courage that it takes to do that, and I want to give them a voice.
	We've had James Flynn.
	We've had people, you know, I disagree with their particular solution to it, but they're the experts.
	I'm happy to present both sides of the case of the...
	Environment alone, right?
	Versus the genetics.
	Sure.
	Absolutely.
	We've had lots of people on who are telling the truth about these basic facts.
	But scientists need to grow a pear, grow a spine, and bring the facts to a desperately needed and dying society.
	Helmuth Nyberg, Eric Turkheimer, he's very much an environmentalist, as is James Flynn, as far as this stuff goes.
	Great.
	Great.
	Because the question of whether ethnic differences in intelligence is genetic or environmental is less important than people are just aware that they exist.
	Find ways to close it, but first you have to acknowledge the problem.
	Scientists should be doing that.
	But they're not.
	Because they're scared.
	I understand.
	But then stop pissing on Christians for being conformists.
	Right?
	And I also noticed that a lot more scientists seem to be happy pissing on Christians than Muslims.
	I wonder why that is.
	I wonder why that is.
	It can't be because they lack any particular moral or intellectual courage, could it be?
	But no.
	You cure pseudoscience with science.
	You cure superstition with facts.
	And certainly in the social sciences, Christ almighty, we got an emergency in the West called the migrant crisis.
	Why isn't people putting out the bat signal for the philosophers saying, Oh God, philosophers, we've put you up in wonderful ivory towers.
	We've given you summers off.
	We've given you, you can't be fired.
	We've given you sabbaticals.
	We've given you wonderful conferences in beautiful locations.
	We've been paying you $150,000 a year.
	Just as backup for just such an emergency.
	Break out the philosophers.
	We have an emergency.
	We have a crisis.
	We have a migrant crisis.
	We need to know what to do.
	What is the right thing to do?
	What is the moral thing to do?
	We've got to find out.
	Quick, call the philosophers.
	In case of emergency, break hemlock!
	No, actually, that's the wrong one.
	Yeah, maybe scientists could stop, I don't know, talking about putting climate change skeptics to death.
	You know, that might be a kind of nice thing, or putting them in camps or something.
	That might be...
	You know, if denying science is so bad...
	That you want to put skeptics of climate change in camps or have them killed or prosecuted because they're denying science, you see?
	What about biodiversity in the human population?
	Isn't that denying science?
	And let me tell you something.
	Interesting, funny little story.
	The negatives of denying human biodiversity...
	Are just a little, tiny, tiny bit more imminent and dangerous than what the weather might be like in a hundred years.
	Every time you call on the philosophers, their response is just moral relativism, moral relativism, moral relativism, moral...
	I don't know.
	You're ringing a bell of infinite doom, but if that bell was ringing in the forest and nobody was around to hear it, would it actually be making us that?
	You know, I don't know.
	I hate communism with a visceral passion.
	But their hatred for the intellectuals, I kind of understand, sometimes.
	Oh, man.
	So, yeah, I guess it's just going to be a matter of...
	Telling people, showing them, and just standing up like you were saying.
	And even non-scientists can do that.
	You think?
	I'm sure we could find one or two, say, in the mirror.
	And now if anybody says that they're not obsessed with social justice and science, I've got it on paper.
	So they can't just wisp it away.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, do that.
	Just tell the truth.
	Tell the truth and shame the devil.
	Tell the truth or the skies fall.
	I mean, that's the whole gig.
	Tell the truth.
	It's a three-word business plan.
	Freedom Aid Radio.
	Tell the truth.
	All right, going to move on to the next caller, but thank you very much for the call.
	I appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	All right, up next we have Ben.
	Ben wrote in and said, I'm a second year student at my university.
	I am double majoring, one being philosophy and the other, not yet decided.
	My passion is philosophy, but I know that this major does not translate directly into many jobs.
	Realistically, we all can't hope to run something like Free Domain Radio.
	I understand that integrating philosophy into one's daily life can have an impact on However, I see the only proper role of a true philosopher to be philosophizing.
	That is, teaching, in some sense.
	Does Stefan have any advice in terms of breaking into the marketplace of ideas?
	Good ideas are a start, but surely there is more to it than that.
	That's from Ben.
	Hey Ben, how are you doing tonight?
	Good Stefan, how are you?
	I'm well, I'm well, thank you.
	So, are you fairly early into your degree, is that right?
	I am.
	I'm a second year here, and I haven't yet declared it, but the plan is to double major.
	I know, and have you figured out what you might want to do else?
	As far as a second major?
	Yeah.
	I was considering government or statistics, possibly.
	Certainly a little bit more marketable, maybe, than philosophy.
	Now, why did you choose philosophy?
	To be honest...
	I started listening to your show in high school, and it was the first kind of exposure I had to philosophy.
	There were no high school classes available in philosophy or anything like that.
	And so when I arrived here at the university, I took a philosophy one-on-one class and really liked it.
	I think I'm fortunate to go to a school that really, you know, while it's still liberal in a sense, like most colleges, it is very open about opinions and things like that.
	And I've had some great professors that really sold me on the importance and The kind of joy in studying philosophy, you know?
	I see it as really...
	At least in my life, it's had a big impact, and it has changed the way I see the world around me, you know?
	And how does what you're studying in university compare to what we talk about in this show, or how this show goes?
	It's, um...
	In some ways, surprisingly similar.
	You know, obviously, we try to employ things like reason and logical deduction, you know, when we're studying things that...
	That lends itself to sometimes the more relativistic philosophers, it gets kind of muddled.
	It's been similar overall, you know, though I think the university I go to and some of the professors I've been able to study under have really had a...
	I've been fortunate to study under.
	There are even some that have written about...
	Funny enough, one's a prominent anarcho-libertarian intellectual.
	And he had some very interesting things to say.
	Of course, I've had other professors contrasting political tones, but I think that the experienced professors here has really gone a long way in terms of justifying my going here and the value of the education.
	Right.
	Now, you can do fairly well with a philosophy degree if people understand the rigors of a philosophy degree, right?
	So as far as intelligence goes, it's physics and then philosophy, like highest to second highest, right?
	So you do have to be a smart son of a cookie to be able to make it in a philosophy degree.
	And your sort of mid-career salary on average with a philosophy degree undergraduate, about 75k.
	Yeah, that's certainly not bad.
	And I think I would be able to make that happen.
	I'm fortunate to go to, I think, a university with some weight to its name, and it wouldn't exactly be quite as, you know, like getting a philosophy degree from a small college or something like that, you know?
	Right.
	And I guess what I'm really curious about is I... I really have a passion for the kind of idea of philosophy and philosophical thinking, you know, and I wonder maybe how that can be incorporated into a career or something like that.
	I've looked at maybe media positions, things like that, where I can, you know, in some way try to bring a more open and reasoned kind of tone to discourse, things like that, of that nature.
	What, I mean, you're trying to think of how philosophy can serve you.
	I would invite you to think of how philosophy can serve the world through you.
	What do you think the world needs most?
	Not that I'm saying that you should do something that you hate, but what do you think the world needs the most of with regards to philosophy at the moment?
	Well, I think that we would do very well to kind of have the humility that goes along with philosophy.
	The idea that I think even though philosophers vary a lot in their opinions, it all comes from, I think, a kind of core assumption that, you know, maybe I'm not right about everything, you know?
	And a big part of it is trying to Question your beliefs and listen to others, you know?
	And so the world needs humility, and how do you think you could bring humility to the world?
	Because humility is very painful to vainglorious, megalomaniacal, narcissistic people who think they know everything about everything, right?
	When you confront less intelligent people with the reality of their own incompetence, and you give them, you know, that FaceTime mirror view of the Dunning-Kruger effect, things can get a little volatile, right?
	Yeah.
	And so how would you...
	Be able to best bring humility to the masses.
	Yeah, well, I mean, that's the question.
	And I'd like to think that maybe, you know, in some way, you know, whether it be through a source of media, like the internet or writing or journalism or something like that, you know, kind of, I think a big part of it is exposing kind of the The problem's inherent in the things that we do trust.
	I think, in a way, Donald Trump has had a very humbling effect, or at least something like that, in terms of Americans and how we think of the media and politicians' politics and things like that.
	I think that, in a way, it's kind of beautiful how he's just undermined everything that we took for granted, everything that we thought was proper, and really, we did for a good reason.
	Donald Trump has just kind of come along and said, I don't need to conform to any of that to take advantage of these things that you believe in.
	I think, you know, somehow having a public voice, and it sounds a little bit narcissistic itself, but I do feel that...
	Sorry, what's narcissistic about having a public voice?
	I mean, you understand that I have a public voice, right?
	I'm not taking this personally, but if you're going to put, well, you have a public voice, that's kind of narcissistic.
	I'm not going to take it personally, but I'm going to recognize the categorization.
	So what's narcissistic about having a public voice or wanting to have a public voice, if it's for the service of humanity and for the good of the world?
	Yeah, I guess it would just be constantly being aware.
	I wouldn't accuse you of doing this.
	I mean, Socrates had a public voice.
	I hope you wouldn't call him narcissistic.
	All the great people, or a lot of the great people who looked up to history or studied philosophy, they were great because they had an impact like that.
	I would say that doesn't necessarily go along with having a public voice.
	I would just say that I want to be careful to conflate, or not to conflate the idea of just wanting to be famous in some way with Actually, you know, making sure what I'm doing is valuable to people.
	Well, if you're talking about bringing humanity, humility, by having a public voice, I don't see how that could be narcissistic.
	Yeah, I mean, I think keeping that as a central kind of value in whatever I do, you know, would be a good way to make sure I'm not falling into that trap, you know.
	So, I guess, too, along with my question, what What I was curious about, because I think in your show, you do have a very...
	I mean, obviously, you've found success kind of doing a show about ideas, you know, about philosophy and about looking at the world in a relatively novel way to a lot of people, at least, you know?
	I mean, I just prefer if you boiled it down to reason and evidence, you know, looking at the world, you know, that sounds like it's one of these fragmented disco ball relativistic perspective fests.
	No, just follow reason and evidence wherever they leave.
	That's the goal.
	Yeah, maybe it only sounds weird because so few people do that, you know.
	Right.
	But that's the fault of prior philosophers not doing their jobs, right?
	I have a lot of cleanup to do because prior philosophers made a lot of mess.
	Yeah, I mean, they've certainly played their part.
	I'm looking at you, Frenchies!
	Anyway, go on.
	Oh, yeah.
	I'm perfect.
	Well, you know, like I was saying, I'm happy to go to university where I feel free to question those kind of philosophers when they come up in classes, and I think my professors do a good job of accommodating that, but I'm But yeah, I think your success is largely due, you know, I'm not an expert on, you know, how exactly, you know, you found success.
	But I would say, in my opinion, it's largely due to the fact that you do bring reason and evidence to a discussion, but you also do it in an entertaining and engaging way.
	And so that's what I'm kind of thinking, you know, like, you know, is there kind of another element to finding success in the marketplace of ideas, you know, and having people actually listen to your ideas?
	Sure.
	I mean, there's a trick to it.
	And you've already given me a clue, right?
	So you're a young man.
	That's great.
	Wonderful.
	But it means that you're concerned about your ego and you're concerned about people's perception of you, which is why, you know, you said, well, you know, I'd need to have a public voice.
	And then you immediately were concerned that that might be perceived as narcissistic, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because clearly it's not narcissistic to want to have a public voice.
	It could be, but it's not a synonym, right?
	And so you are not yourself concerned with narcissism.
	You're concerned that if you say you're ambitious, that other people might insult you, right?
	Yeah, that sounds accurate.
	Right.
	So if you want to...
	Be successful.
	You kind of have to forget all of that.
	And it's not the easiest thing in the world to do sometimes, but you kind of have to forget all of that.
	And you have to navigate your path through philosophy, not through approval.
	And as you know, philosophers go through some significant disapproval, if they're doing any good.
	Relative to and the degree to which the society is corrupt, the philosophers will be considered to be disruptive, right?
	So, in the time of late Rome, the philosophers were considered to be disruptive because the decadence of the empire was overwhelming its former, not often very extensive, virtues.
	In the time of Socrates, there was a lot of corruption.
	There was, of course, slavery, and then there was virtually unlimited democracy.
	In many ways, it wasn't a republic.
	And therefore, when Socrates would ask questions of the sophists and of the politicians and all of the other people who pretended that they knew something that they didn't, which was anything, they accused him of not believing in the gods of the cities and of corrupting the young and all this kind of stuff.
	And so you are going to be disapproved of if you're going to do any good in an increasingly, not just irrational, but anti-rational world.
	So if you want to do good, you are going to be loved and hated.
	It's not you, fundamentally, that people are loving and hating, and you kind of need to detach that, right?
	It's themselves, right?
	And...
	If you want to make a real go of it in the realm of public ideas, you have to challenge that part of you that immediately wanted to back down from a desire for public voice by saying, well, I don't want to be narcissistic.
	You know what I mean?
	The part of you that wants to sort of, I won't say grovel, but apologize for wanting to do big goodness in the world.
	And that means that you're going to need people around you who believe in the size and scope and capacity of what it is that you want to do.
	If you want to take on philosophy and being a public facing figure, you're taking on the biggest, deepest, most powerful levers in the world.
	And you may not see success in your lifetime, just as Socrates saw only his own death and the decay of reason and the decay of his society and gave it the curse of obedience to the state later on.
	And you could argue it took 2,000 years for his ideas to truly be resurrected in the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Renaissance, and so on.
	So it may be a long time.
	Now, this is prior to the Internet and all that, and the Library of Alexandra was burned and all.
	But it may be a long time.
	So you have to be content, nay, not just content, satisfied and happy with fidelity to virtue, fidelity to reason, fidelity to evidence, fidelity to honesty, with fidelity to virtue, fidelity to reason, fidelity to evidence, fidelity to honesty, fidelity to the standard virtues and the courage it takes to speak truth to an increasingly feral and howling mob of irrational society.
	You have to be comfortable with detaching your ego from the approval of the irrational and the anti-rational.
	And you have to be patient.
	That's the last bit I struggle with the most.
	You have to be patient.
	Of course, we all wake up patient and then we check our Twitter feed.
	But anyway.
	I can barely even look at Twitter anymore, I've got to say.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, it is like being pummeled by a huge number of tiny boxes who puncture your heart and deflate it completely sometimes.
	But, you know, you've got to know what's going on in the world.
	But make it about the world.
	Make it about virtue.
	I mean, it's not about me.
	I've said this a million times on this show.
	This is not a vanity project for me.
	This isn't something that I do to feel strong or powerful or effective or anything like that.
	This is something I do because I have a good ability to break down and bring reason and evidence to the world.
	And I think if you have that capacity, then you have an obligation.
	You have a responsibility to do what you can.
	Like, if you can heal people with a touch...
	And you stay home playing video games all day.
	Kind of a douche move, right?
	So if you have a particular ability, then you make it about the world.
	You make it about introducing truth to the planet, right?
	Like if you've ever fixed two people up on a date, you don't care whether they like you.
	You care whether they like each other.
	Right?
	And so when you're introducing truth to the world, you don't care whether the world likes you.
	You care how the world responds to the truth.
	And you try and put as much sugar in the medicine of truth with, you know, funny faces and engaging voices and jokes and, you know, all the stuff that I've used for years to a spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down and all.
	But you care about the world, you care about truth, and you're willing to play a very long game to turn things around.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that is a great advice, I've got to say.
	I'll certainly take that to heart.
	I'm actually giving a speech tomorrow in front of a society that I'm going to be speaking on.
	It's a probationary speech, so it's one that I have to pass.
	I'm going to be speaking on freedom of speech and why we shouldn't use labels like racist and things like that to silence people even if we disagree with them.
	Or hate speech.
	Exactly, yeah.
	An emotion is not a tool of cognition.
	An emotion is not a way of evaluating an argument.
	An emotion at the very best can be like a bad coroner's report.
	It may be the indication of a crime, but it's not proof.
	It may bear further investigation.
	But a negative emotional reaction to an argument...
	Is as much a judgment of the person reacting as it is of the person proposing.
	And such a thing as hate speech is incomprehensible.
	There's true speech, there's false speech.
	I don't know about the hate thing.
	That is just hyper-emotionality.
	And it's a real shame, you know, that as more and more women have gotten into intellectual fields, we've seen the growth of things like hysterical reactions to basic facts.
	It doesn't speak well to some of the clichés that some men may have had of women's intellectual and emotional capacities in the past.
	Yeah, and...
	Well, I'm expecting certainly there's a Q&A period, and I'm certainly expecting questions from that perspective.
	But you really kind of touched on the big idea I'm trying to push, and I guess it goes with kind of saying, you know, making the reason and evidence a little bit more palpable or understandable to people, which is that, you know, at least in my opinion, hate speech and things like that, when you try to silence people like that, you don't actually do anything to Address the problem or the source of their hatred or their feelings.
	Because even those people, if they're genuinely hateful, they rationalize their beliefs for a reason.
	And what do you do to actually solve the problem when you just don't talk to them?
	Well, and of course, it's very selective.
	Because you can say any negative thing you want about white males.
	And it's never classified as hate speech, of course.
	It's not a principle.
	It's a principle of silencing a particular group in society and allowing pretty indecorous free rein on hatred of other people in society.
	And it's a horrible and wretched situation and state of mind, and it's incredibly prejudicial.
	So-and-so, such-and-such, is hate speech.
	Well, it's such a negative word.
	And it justifies reactions like you see when conservative people go to speak at universities.
	Yeah, I mean, you give people that you disagree with the actual claim to victimhood that empowers them even more.
	So if you really think that people's ideas are so dangerous, that's the last thing you want to do, you know, is to contradict yourself and, you know, create a whole other victim category of people you're oppressing now.
	And, yeah, I mean, you...
	It's funny, I've been preparing the speech and you really just kind of touched on the major points of it, you know?
	And, yeah, you know, the gist of it is just that an open and, you know, reasoned kind of dialogue without calling names, you know, if we just expose people to a free and open dialogue, the truth has a way of kind of elevating itself up.
	And, you know, I think history has shown that when we do have a kind of Well, you can just ask people if a negative emotional reaction to a speech was justification for shutting down that speech, would slavery ever have been ended?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I was going to use examples.
	I mean, slavery is a great example.
	I was going to use examples like the women's rights movement, civil rights movement, gay rights, all these things, you know, because they use the language of institutional oppression to silence people.
	You know, they say that they're reinforcing those kind of oppressive forces.
	And yet history has shown us that these groups with virtually no institutional power were able to enact change.
	By just, you know, exposing the public at large, you know, through an open debate to the truthfulness of their claims and their, you know, their ideas when they face real discrimination.
	Well, and this category politics is incredibly dangerous.
	because we all know and we can think very clearly of times in histories where you've created a category of moral opprobrium of moral horror of moral hatred and then you just put people into that box into that category and that uncorks all of the rage you wish to act out against them i mean it's happened to various groups in the past and now there's another group i don't know you know conservatives white males whatever it is going to be there's a group
	we say this this category is immoral and everyone in this category can be legitimately attacked or repressed or silenced right silence there's all here you gotta have women's voices gotta have their voices gotta have their voices out yeah but of course you know if you question say the gender wage gap or you point out basic facts about the bell curve of men and male and female intelligence you must be screamed and
	Because the category which you have considered immoral, you can throw everyone in, and the immoral tends to be that which feels bad, that which feels, that which is upsetting, that which you've been programmed, and people don't think they're programmed, right?
	That which you've been programmed to respond to in a negative way, you then feel justified in physically attacking, in disrupting, in shutting down, and silencing.
	And all that does is confess your inability to answer the arguments.
	I've had people on this show arguing for points I find completely reprehensible.
	Fine.
	I'm competent to take those on and to rebut them and to do a good job in that situation, even on the fly.
	And if you want to silence people, you know, you're going to pull sprinklers or air horns or whistles.
	I mean, all you're doing is confessing that you do not have the verbal dexterity or intelligence or experience to defeat their arguments in an open fight.
	You know, you don't injure somebody, a competitor in a sport...
	When you're confident of winning, right?
	You only injured them when you think they're going to win and you're going to lose.
	So it is a very cowardly confession of incompetence.
	But of course, that's what happens when you shovel more and more people who don't have enough brains into college is you end up with them blowing whistles because they're in way over their heads and can't answer the arguments.
	Yeah, I mean, the idea of programming that you bring up is a good one, I think, you know, because Like, certain people, you know, you can't say that a word is universally harmful to people, you know?
	It's not like, you know, you can't learn to survive a bullet to the head, you know?
	But some people do develop so that certain words aren't harmful, and there does seem to be a really clear kind of difference there that just isn't being realized.
	But it's the excuses for censorship, right?
	The excuses for censorship, and censorship is that there's knowledge that's dangerous to an ideology, but there's no knowledge.
	That's dangerous to philosophy.
	There's no knowledge that's dangerous to facts, reason, and evidence.
	There's only knowledge that is dangerous to ideology, to falsehood, to sophistry.
	So, for example, at the end of the Second World War, the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops, the Soviet troops that had been captured by the Germans, they were sent to concentration camps.
	Well, of course they were captured by the Germans.
	A lot of times they ran out of ammo and had no guns.
	They couldn't even fight.
	And so they were sent to concentration camps.
	And why?
	Well, two reasons.
	Number one is that Stalin wanted to pretend that somehow it was the army's fault because he was supposed to be infallible and a great military leader, and so if hundreds of thousands of his troops were caught by the Germans and captured, then he's not that infallible.
	Number one.
	And number two, they had been imprisoned in the West, and therefore they had seen the wealth and the plenty and the consumer goods and all of that in the West, even during the wartime.
	And so they had come back with knowledge.
	Number one, Stalin was incompetent as a general, and number two, the West was much richer than the Soviet Union.
	They came back with knowledge, and the knowledge was dangerous to the delusion that Stalin was trying to inflict of the wonderful communist universe everyone lived in.
	And so they had to be censored, silenced by being sent to concentration camps to gulags, right?
	And so...
	If people go from one country to another, that's, you know, that's fine.
	There's no knowledge.
	I go to Germany, I come back from Germany, and I say about what I saw in Germany.
	And that's not harmful to anyone's delusions, particularly here, unless, of course, I see a lot of migrant crime come back and talk about it, in which case, anyway.
	So when you have delusions, then the facts become your enemy, and then they must be shouted down.
	So to me, significant aggression, like shouting down people and refusing to let them speak and silencing them and censoring them and threatening them and dispelling them and calling the cops.
	This is all just a confession that you're supposed intellectual fortresses of House of Cards, and you panic at the slightest breeze.
	And it is a confession, again, of incompetence and delusion, but...
	It seems compelling to people who aren't very smart.
	Yeah, I mean, the historical examples are a great point.
	I haven't finished it, but I started reading the Gulag Archipelago after you had Jordan Peterson on, who's a fantastic guest, and who was actually recently silenced at a university.
	He wasn't allowed to speak on a panel, I think, last week.
	But yeah, I think history, if anything, just tells us that whenever speeches Suppressed for any reason in history, it really seems only to the benefit of totalitarian or pathological kind of regimes.
	You know, it only seems like to be for the sake of supporting ideas that we all look back on in history as being really horrible ideas.
	So, you know, I'm not sure there's any precedent for today to say that suppressing speech just because we don't like it puts us on the right side of history, you know?
	Well, you know, everybody thinks that there are the rights out of history.
	And this is one of these phrases, too, that, you know, it's not very philosophical, although it's compelling, of course, emotionally.
	It's a good, sophist phrase.
	All right.
	Well, thanks so very much.
	I hope that was helpful.
	Yeah, just commit yourself passionately and recognize that you need to develop a bit of a thick skin while still being sensitive to the needs of society.
	Throw yourself passionately.
	Don't be afraid to be vulnerable.
	Don't be afraid to be foolish.
	Don't be afraid...
	To play the clown.
	You know, we all need, again, the spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down and work to be engaging.
	And most fundamentally, if your passion is to make the world a better place, to bring peace and amity between people, to end the errors which produce endless conflicts, if your heart is in the right place, and I know that's kind of a goofy, non-philosophical phrase, but if your intention is honorable,
	if you are in pursuit of making the world a better place and you're willing to incur some wounds and take some wounds in vanity and delusion with the goal not of lording it over the people who have delusions, because a lot of times it's not even their fault.
	It's just how they were raised and how they were programmed.
	But if you are somebody who is willing to wound others and be wounded yourself for the sake of healing, you know, like a surgeon, he'll cut you to make you better, then if your heart is in the right place, if your intention is in the right place, you will be really surprised at the kind of positivity that you can generate and the you will be really surprised at the kind of positivity that you can generate and the positive receptions that
	As long as your intention is pure, as long as your goal is virtue and your goal is human healing through reason and evidence, you'll be surprised at how bulletproof you can be if your heart is in the right place.
	So thanks very much for the call.
	Thanks everyone!
	For calling in tonight, a great pleasure to chat with you all.
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