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Dec. 20, 2018 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:03:17
4268 "I Can't Be Happy! Death Awaits!!" Freedomain Call In

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Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux.
Hope you're doing well. I'm here with Kai, who wants to talk about nihilism, which is a fascinating topic for me and something that I emerged from, like a creature from the Black Lagoon of valuelessness when I was a teenager.
So thanks for taking the time today, Kai.
Great. Thank you for having me.
So why don't you take us a spin through the email that you sent me and we'll start jaw-boning about it.
Okay so you want the whole thing not condensed in one sentence but like with introduction everything?
Just the main body. Okay well the main body is I have noticed over in times in your book and in your presentations that you've once in a while you mentioned the word nihilism and usually with some kind of negative connotation like sort of it seems like you condemn it for some reason.
Well, I came across this term fairly recently, a few years ago.
And when I came across this terminology, I was thinking, okay, well, this seems like a very reasonable view of life.
And I think it can be defended.
In a way, you could say it's a rational view of life.
I was wondering what your take on it is exactly and what is exactly the reason why you, how should I say?
Criticize it. I'll give you the brief history of my experiences with nihilism.
I grew up in a valueless That was early Protestantism, early Christianity, but that faded fairly quickly.
I grew up in a social environment, in a cultural environment, in an intellectual environment where there was perceived to be this Darwinian war of against all, all against all.
There was class struggle, there was gender struggle, there was race struggle, and the exploited and the victim struggle, and there was no particular overarching.
value system that held society together.
When I first came across philosophy, objectivism, and so on, it gave me ethics.
It gave me universal values.
Now, I did find, after some decades, that there was a few shortages in objectivist ethics, which I attempted to fix, I think successfully, in my book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which is available for free at freedomainradio.com slash free.
And When I took shape, I was formless before, without values.
I was a pleasure-seeking hedonist and had no allegiance to any larger morals.
And I took shape with the development of ethics.
I gained a purpose, I gained a solidity, I gained identity.
I became human, I evolved, because animals are amoral, pleasure seekers and pain avoiders, and that's sort of where I was at.
Now, my friends at the time resisted mightily, for the most part successfully, my arguments for morality.
They thought it was ridiculous, it was a control mechanism, they were very Nietzschean in that way that morality is a noose thrown by weaklings to bring down the powerful and bring them to heel because they can't compete with them physically or mentally but they can inflict guilt and self-approach in their masters and therefore bring them to heel.
And now that I'm 52, I have seen the arc of people's lives from when I was a teenager.
The arc of my life has been pretty great.
You know, I was a successful entrepreneur and I've been running this show for 12 years and love what I do, have a positive effect in the world, have a great marriage, a great relationship with my daughter, great relationship with people who I respect what I do all over the world, and it's been pretty great.
On the other hand, the people who I knew as teenagers have had pretty terrible lives.
Those who accepted this nihilistic viewpoint of pleasure seeking and pain avoidance, one of them became a drug addict.
And not just like an in passing drug addict, but like a Destroyed his life.
Drug addict. The other one had a bad, terrible marriage.
And another one did achieve some professional success, but never had a romantic relationship, never got married, never became a father.
And it has just been really terrible and terrifying to see how things have played out.
My most nihilistic friend ended up dying horribly in a motorcycle accident in his late teens because he was a pleasure seeker and he was a thrill seeker and had no way to rein it in with objective morality.
So, it's...
The theory has played out exactly as you would have expected in practice, and from that standpoint, I'm fairly wedded to it because objective morality can be proven rationally and has very significant life effects, whether you accept morality or you don't, which is why I think I speak rather negatively of nihilism.
Now, what you're fair to point out is that I've never entered into a formal argument About the topic, which is, I wouldn't say an oversight, it's just never particularly come up, which is why I was eager to have this conversation with you.
Great. Is it all right with you if we go back to the basics, like to define the term?
Because I guess for some of your listeners, it might not be as clear.
And it's also good when you discuss a topic that you're like on one page.
You agree. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's agree on terms. So the terms is, I guess, for me the definition of nihilism is the view that life ultimately has no purpose.
Human life has ultimately no purpose.
Do you agree with this definition?
It depends what you mean by purpose.
I'm with you on human life.
I think we can accept that because we're not debating with a hedgerow.
But it depends what you mean by purpose.
Purpose meaning, let's say, if I help 1,000 people or if I kill 1,000 people, at the end of the day, when I die, it doesn't matter.
That's what I mean. It doesn't have a purpose.
There is no ultimate goal.
To reinforce your case, I don't know where it is in terms of your cultural references, but if you look at people like the Obamas and the Clintons in America, and you can find right-wing examples of this as well, the Obamas and the Clintons have made absolute fortunes out of rank and horrifying levels of corruption.
Like, Obama and Hillary Clinton, by destroying Libya, opened up the world's biggest open-air slave market, destroyed an entire country, triggered the migrant crisis that made take down Europe, and just to mention one of a whole bunch of things, and they're making out like bandits.
They've got book deals, they've got public speaking deals, they're famous and loved by millions, and they have, from a Darwinian standpoint, They have gathered maximum resources for their own gene pool, and the fact that they have destroyed other countries and potentially other entire civilizations, you know, I got mine, and what happens overseas is less of a concern.
And so, yeah, from that standpoint, if you look at Bill Clinton, you know, sexual predator and so on, and, you know, he had a great run in the White House, was twice elected president, and, you know, gets half a million dollars for a speech in Russia, that is suspected to have been part of the payoff for selling significant portions of America's uranium off to Russian-controlled companies.
But he's got, you know, the Clintons are worth, what, over $100 million?
When he left the White House, he was broke from legal bills, and now they're worth, I think, well north of $100 million.
So there's no divine punishment.
I mean, I agree with that. And if you lack a conscience, like if you're a complete sociopath, there isn't even any internal reproach.
Like Macbeth kills the king and he can't sleep because he feels so terrible.
But if you don't have a conscience, then what is to stop you?
And if you have a conscience, that can even be a liability in many ways in this blank Darwinian struggle for resources.
Does that sort of encapsulate some of what we're talking about?
Well... I think it does focus on the consequences of your actions.
But my point of view was more, or I think the point of view is more if you look at things long term.
So if you say the university is 13 billion years old and humans have only existed for I don't know how much percent of the university.
I've heard estimates around 150,000 years.
Okay, yeah, so if we say that humans have existed for about 150,000 years and let's say that, we cannot estimate how much, but let's say that human existence will probably continue for another million, maybe 100,000, I don't know, x-figure. So at some point, human existence will cease and then everything that has ever been done, good or bad, will be voided.
And it will all disappear and nullify and we all go back to zero and maybe some other life emerges or something else.
But in any case, everything that has been done, good or bad, in the long term doesn't really matter.
That's more or less the viewpoint for how I defend the rational of, I don't know if it's rational, but the viewpoint of nihilism.
In the long term it doesn't really matter.
I mean, the short term and middle long term, you can say a lot of things happen, climate change, wars, drugs, prosperity, etc.
But in the long term, a human life, if you just take a human life, which is about eight years, It depends on what you believe in, of course, but at some point your consciousness will cease to exist because you will disintegrate.
Well, and you can go even further if you want.
And I remember reading this as a kid, as I'm sure you did and we all did, which is, boy, you know, in 10 billion years, the sun goes out!
Or I can't remember if it's 5 or 10, but it's like we're halfway through the life cycle of the sun and that giant nuclear bomb in the sky is going to fizzle out.
Now it's not big enough to become a supernova, so it just collapses and goes to nothing.
And all is dark and the world is cold and life is, you know, is over and so on.
Yeah, there is certainly that aspect of, in that time frame, what does what I have for breakfast mean to anything?
I mean, that's my point.
I mean, could you also defend this kind of point of view?
Like, in the long term, it will all disease anyway.
What do you mean, defend? I mean, defend in the sense that Well, somebody says, if you say to someone, this is important, that is important, and you explain all kinds of important things, politics, everything, and at some point the guy turns around and says, well, it will all disappear anyway, everything will be voided.
Well, can you imagine, hang on, would you prefer to live in a society where you could have these arguments or whether, if these arguments were illegal, would you prefer to live in a society where you had the capacity to pursue these arguments or not?
What do you mean by illegal?
Like there is censorship?
Let's say that discussing these ideas was illegal.
Okay, like if you live in North Korea or something.
Yeah, so you want to have this conversation with me and I want to have this conversation with you.
We prefer that, it makes us happier, we assume, right?
Or if it makes us unhappy, it's like going to the dentist might make you unhappy, makes you happier in the long run kind of thing.
So you and I are going to have this conversation and by our actions we have exhibited a preference for having these conversations as opposed to not having these conversations, right?
So you would prefer to live in a society where you could have these conversations?
Definitely. Right.
So you have a value. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying that...
Sure, but nihilism can be compatible with having also some other values alongside it.
I mean, the view is that, I mean, the view is like, it's like some people are short-term oriented, they use drugs, they live today and today only, and other people are very long-term oriented, they invest and they look into some kind of movements on the market, whatever. And some people are like, middle, long-term, they take into consideration the fact that- No, we don't have to explain this.
Some people have short-term time preferences, some people have long.
Go on. And you could have like, throughout the nihilistic viewpoint, you could say, well, I have a middle long-term view because of nihilism.
I see it as everything will be voided.
So I'm not afraid of whatever the consequences are going to be, because whatever consequences there will be, there will be only during The lifetime of me and the humans that live here now.
Okay, that's not answering the question.
So, you would prefer to live in a society which allowed for free speech, right?
Yes. Now, in order to live in that society, you have to convince other people that free speech is a value, right?
Because there's lots of people who don't like free speech.
Well, I guess, yes.
Now, if there's a way to logically prove the value and virtues of free speech, you are more likely to convince people of your position, right?
If you just say, well, I like free speech, then you're running around saying, I like ice cream.
You're not talking about a universal value.
So if you can find a way to establish the rational objectivity and universality of the value of free speech, you are more likely To achieve free speech within your society and thus have a society that is more enjoyable for you and I think is certainly more productive in terms of intellectual discussions.
So if you are hedonistic and you love these kinds of speeches, then philosophy and universal values will allow you to achieve that hedonism of enjoying these kinds of speeches because you can defend objectively and universally the right to free speech.
Yes. So here we have, in order to pursue the value of talking about nihilism, you have to accept universal morality.
When you say universal, you mean like it's useful for all people or something like that?
No, universal is not utility-based.
Universal is factually true.
Or if you propose Something that violates the principle of free speech you run into insurmountable logical contradictions and then what you can say of course is I reject logic completely and then you've ejected yourself from the realm of philosophy and no serious person needs to take you at all seriously, right? So in terms of free speech, so a basic argument for free speech is that human beings, because we are human beings, have universal properties, right?
We're all mammals, right?
And we live less than 200 years or, you know, we take nine months to gestate on average, whatever you can come up with.
We have kidneys, we have when brains are our most expensive organ and so on.
So we have universal properties.
So if you propose any kind of standard for human beings, That requires that human beings have opposite properties.
You're making a mistake, right?
So if you're a biologist, and you're an insane biologist, right, and you say, human beings must both be carbon-based and silicon-based at the same time, or they must be both mammals and reptiles at the same time, or something is a human being who is a mammal and carbon-based, and the other is a human being that is some silicon-based reptile from another planet, Well, that would not be a consistent categorization or classification of human beings.
Would you agree? Yes.
Right. So if you say that there should be no free speech, that free speech should be policed, then what you're saying is some human beings should have the right to shut down the peaceful speech of others.
And so you have created opposite classifications.
People who cannot speak because they are threatened with violence if they do, and other people who can express their preference for no free speech by pointing guns at people.
So you have two opposing moral categories.
Able to use violence in the realm of speech and not able to use violence in the realm of speech.
Improper or antithetical classification of human beings.
It's exactly the same as a biologist saying a human being is both a mammal and the opposite of a mammal.
Or, some human beings are mammals, some human beings are the opposite.
Of a mammal, but I'm going to call them all human beings.
That would be completely invalid in the realm of biology, and it is also completely invalid in the realm of ethics.
This is the argument for statelessness, right?
That if you say, well, there are some human beings who have the right and the obligation to initiate the use of force against others, which is the government and its police and its military and so on, whereas other people have no possible right to initiate the use of force against others because they can't go around killing and raping and stealing and murdering and so on, Then you have created a category called humanity, which has opposite moral requirements or demands.
And that is invalid, logically.
So there would be an argument to say that, you know, free speech and statelessness are certainly the morally and logically consistent ideals for humanity, and anybody who creates artificial oppositional categories under the same conceptual umbrella is making a terrible, terrible mistake. Okay, I'm on board so far.
Well good, now we have universal ethics, we have philosophical virtues, we have all of these wonderful things.
We are in agreement.
It's lovely. But one thing, so when you say moral values, I mean, how can you agree what is a real value and what is universal?
We just went through free speech and violence, right?
We just went through free speech and the initiation of the use of force.
Those are... Pretty big.
You know, if we can get the world to accept those, we've advanced ethics by about 3,000% in one single day.
So even if we just take those two examples, we went from there's no meaning and life is purposeless and so on to, okay, here's an argument for free speech and here's an argument for the non-initiation of force or the non-aggression principle, which we agreed on, or which you agreed with me on.
So that's pretty cool.
Now, for nihilism, the real question is, if it's true, That human life has no purpose, then you would say, I am a nihilist because nihilism is an accurate and true statement of the human condition.
Is that fair to say? Well, the way I view it, for nihilism, like, moral is really abstract.
No, no, hang on, hang on. I'm so sorry to be annoying, but just let's do this one bit and then you can have your speech, right?
Okay. So, you are a nihilist because Nihilism, for you, is a true and accurate representation of the human condition.
In other words, if somebody were to say to you, life has external meaning, or we're part of a divine plan, or something like that, then you would say that is a false statement, life has no meaning.
Or no purpose, right?
And so, somebody who says life has meaning and purpose, you consider that statement to be false, and you are a nihilist because you believe that the nihilistic statement that life has no purpose and meaning is true, right?
Yes. Which means that you prefer truth to falsehood, and you prefer accuracy to error, and you prefer consistency to contradiction, right?
True. Those are all philosophical values.
Yes. Right, so preferring truth to error, preferring accuracy to falsehood, preferring consistency over contradiction, those are all foundational philosophical values.
So if you are a nihilist, you can't say that there's no such thing as values because you're only a nihilist because you prefer truth to error, right?
Nihilism is definitely compatible in the whole picture.
We would need to have a level of assessing contradictory ideas.
You would have to accept that there is such a thing as different point of views and different values, so you would have to accept that there are such things as values, yes.
Well, and that there are true versus false values.
And truth is not slightly preferable to error.
Truth is infinitely preferable to error.
Right? Because if you and I are going out for a movie, we're going to go see a movie Saturday night.
And you want to see picture A, I want to see picture B. And...
I don't hate picture A. You don't hate picture B. And we flip a coin or something and we go to either one of our movies.
Well, we would say, I prefer movie B to movie A or movie A to movie B, but not infinitely.
In other words, you wouldn't have to have five armed guards to wrestle me kicking and screaming into the movie that was my second choice, right?
So when I say infinitely preferable, it doesn't mean somewhat preferable.
It doesn't mean kind of nicer.
You know, like if you want something at a restaurant, oh, I love that special.
Oh, we're out of that special.
Okay, well, I'm not going to set fire to the restaurant and take off on foot.
I'm just going to have my second choice, which is not quite what I wanted, but whatever, right?
So you don't sit there and say, well, nihilism is 100% true, but some other belief system, which is the opposite of nihilism, is like 97 or 85 or 60% true.
It is minus 100% true.
It is the polar opposite of truth.
And so it's not mildly preferable.
It is not even extremely preferable.
It's infinitely preferable, if that makes sense.
Yes, it makes sense.
Right. So we have infinite preference, we have universality, we have the requirement for consistency with reason and evidence.
These are all basic philosophical principles and they can all be used not to create, but to justify.
Universal standards of morality because where I'm with you completely is that there is no morality in the universe.
There is no truth out there in the universe.
You can choose to run off a cliff and no ghostly hand will support you on your way down and say, it is not your time yet, right?
At least that's never ever been recorded, right?
If you want food, begging the universe for it is going to do nothing because the universe doesn't care, won't listen, and is inert.
It's not even dead because it was never even alive.
It is the opposite of life, which is...
Mere matter and energy.
And so I'm with you that I don't believe that there's any larger shaper of the clay of our lives out there in the universe.
I'm not religious, and although I do respect a lot of religious values because a lot of them come out of a hard-won empiricism of the need for universal values, and I also think that philosophers have not worked hard enough at all to create a universal system of ethics to replace some of the fading tenets of Christianity, much to the detriment of society as a whole.
But I'm with you that there's no atom that is virtuous.
There's no law of physics that is moral.
And that to me, okay, it's fundamental.
I don't care. I hate to say it.
I don't care. It doesn't matter to me.
I mean, if I have three coconuts on a table, I have three coconuts.
Nowhere on that table is the number three.
Nowhere on that table is the category called coconuts.
I can look at a whole bunch of trees and bushes all together, but I can't climb the concept of a forest, right?
So what we have going on in our heads is conceptual.
And some people think, well, if it's not out there in reality, it's not real or it's not true or it's not valid, nothing could be further from the truth.
The truth only exists because we have the ability to extract universal rules from material Events.
Right? Like if I throw a frisbee, a dog can catch the frisbee.
It knows where it's, it doesn't have any idea of calculus or weight or gravity or 9.8 meters per second per second acceleration to the earth or anything like that.
But it can still go and catch.
Bees can find stuff all over the place and they know which flowers they like and all of that.
But our capacity for abstractions, people somehow think because those abstractions don't directly exist within reality, That somehow they're not valid or real or true or whatever.
And that's a rampant materialism that is so reductionist and so dismissing of our fundamental capacity for abstractions, which is what defines us as human and the only reason we have language.
That dismissal of abstractions to me has something to do with nihilism.
So because the abstractions, the meaning, the purpose doesn't exist out there in the world, doesn't exist in the realm of physics, We're tempted to say, therefore it doesn't exist, it has no validity.
But that's not true.
The scientific method, as a process for evaluating universal truth claims about matter and energy, the scientific method does not exist out there in reality, right?
It's not out there inscribed into the atoms and the physics and the properties of things.
You know, a light photon or wave or whatever the hell it is that's speeding along at 186,000 miles per second doesn't have 186,000 miles per second on some little speedometer on its Adam driving cart or something.
But that doesn't mean That science is subjective, because science is attempting to describe the properties and behaviors of matter and energy in a universal sense.
It doesn't just say, the ball drops here, but not over there.
Or, the ball drops downwards on Earth, but upwards on the Moon.
I mean, it's attempting to describe universal phenomenon.
And it's the same thing with morality.
Morality doesn't exist in the universe.
And the attempt of religious people to say that the reason we have morals is because God tells us is an argument from authority and is not evidenced by any material course or any objective standard.
However, the fundamental conceptual leap is to say just because the number 10 doesn't exist in reality doesn't mean that the number 10 is subjective or arbitrary or has no meaning.
Yeah, I mean, you can have a consensus on what is number 10.
You can have what? You can have a consensus in society about what is 10 and you can apply it in mathematics.
No. No, no, that's not what the number 10 is.
The number 10 is not a consensus.
The number 10 is an objective identification.
Of discrete entities, right?
So if somebody owes you $10 and they give you $5, you say, you're short.
You're not giving me $10.
The guy can't say, no, no, no, I've redefined 10 as 5.
You would never accept that in the real world.
And so if you would never accept it in the real world, it's probably a good idea to not try and accept it in an abstract sense, right?
True, but let's say you buy a kilogram of apples, and it's not exactly a kilogram, but it's 9.9999 something.
You don't care about the difference.
So for you it's a 10, but in some other way of measuring it, it's not exactly 10.
No, in fact, you don't want exactly 10 kilograms of apples.
Because if you want exactly 10 kilograms of apples, you're never going to get an apple, because you will never ever get exactly 10 kilograms of apples, right?
It's impossible to go to the infinite degree, and even if you did get it, there would be some settling or evaporation.
You will never get exactly 10 kilograms of apples.
So we all understand that 10 kilograms Is as close to 10 kilograms as you can get without becoming so obsessive that it no longer has value.
Like if you sit there shaving off tiny little slices of apples, or adding tiny little slices of apples, you're expending more calories than you're going to gain from the apples.
So, you know, we understand that the 10 is the ballpark, but we wouldn't say...
The ballpark for apples is pretty loosey-goosey, although you wouldn't accept five kilograms, and the cashier would probably not accept 15 kilograms, right?
But if you are trying to get a probe to Jupiter, well, your level of accuracy is going to be a lot higher.
So, sure, the abstracts are perfect.
You could say, well, you're never going to get two coins.
Because coins are going to be slightly different sizes and weight and ages, and they've been sanded off and rubbed down a little bit, but the convention is that they're two coins, not that they're two exactly identical coins that have no change.
The moment you pick them up, you've changed them, right?
You've rubbed a little bit of the coin off or whatever it is, added some skin to it or something like that.
So, the abstraction is the ideal, but it still serves humankind, right?
It still is supposed to serve Humankind, right?
So if you and I agree to meet for dinner at 7 and I come at 20 seconds past 7, you don't scream at me for being late.
But if I come at 8:30, you might be a bit more upset, son.
Okay.
So far we are on the...
And the purpose of 10 kilograms is to reduce conflict, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's language.
Is it language? Well, it is a convention, so if you choose a price per apple, then you have a problem because everyone picks up the biggest apples and maybe people don't want the remaining apples, right?
Because as a grocery store, you could just charge per apple, right?
But it means that you're going to have a very tough time selling the smaller apples and there's variation in the size of apples and so you just have a convention and the convention is 10 bucks for 10 kilograms or whatever it's going to be.
Just make it sort of simple, right? And so if it's 9.8 kilograms or 10.2 kilograms, that's close enough that people will accept that.
And so it's just a way of reducing conflicts by giving a price based upon weight, which is the actual, to some degree, it's the value of the apple, although you could argue that small apples have less flesh and so on, but it's just a way of us having a convention so that we avoid unnecessary conflict.
And of course, you can, if you want, get really obsessive about the apple and say, well, it's 9.8, but if you add an apple, it's 10.3, but that's very rare in society.
The whole point of the convention is to reduce conflict and just have people get on with their day.
Actually get around to doing something with their apples.
Sure, but the word convention, does it mean the same as consensus?
No, so the consensus is, with regards to the apples, this is a very interesting question.
So the consensus is, You get reasonably close to 10 kilograms.
And you pay for 10 kilograms.
That's the convention. But the convention is not...
You can call 20 kilograms of apples 10.
You can just redefine the number.
That's not the convention. The 10 is objective.
The degree to which you're willing to accept a little higher or a little lower, that's more subjective.
But it's still not completely subjective.
Because you can't say, here's one apple.
I want you to pay for 10 kilograms.
And people will say, well, no, that's...
That's too far. As if it's 9.9 kilograms, people are like, yeah, that's fine.
Like, I've never seen anybody in my life be bothered by that.
Because it's not worth haggling over, and it's not, you know, it's just a convention.
So, the number 10 is not something that you can redefine, if that makes sense.
But how willing you are to accept deviations from 10, there may be some subjectivity involved in that.
Like, you know, I don't know if you've ever known obsessively compulsive people.
In my house, every now and then, I'll notice a picture is slightly askew.
It doesn't drive me crazy, but I'll stop to fix it.
But people who are obsessive compulsive will spend sometimes an entire afternoon trying to get the picture to hang right.
Generally, we prefer pictures that hang straight.
The degree to which we want them to hang straight is somewhat subjective.
Okay. I guess I agree.
I cannot say I disagree with this.
I mean it sounds reasonable.
Well, it's kind of how we work.
I'm sorry to interrupt you again.
I'll be very brief with this. But just for those who don't know, people say, well, you repeat yourself.
It's like, repeat myself, repeat myself, repeat.
But the reality is I'm always getting new listeners, right?
So I just put out this documentary, The 100-Year March, Philosopher in Poland, which you should really check out.
I will. There are always new people coming to the conversation.
So the way that I start philosophizing, not with Nietzsche's hammer.
He said philosophy, start with a hammer.
No, the way that I start philosophizing is to look at what works in the world.
How do people act in the world?
Now, it's not perfect, but it's not always right.
There are obsessive-compulsive people who will sit there trying to weigh the apples perfectly, but they're very, very rare.
And that's recognized as a deviation from the norm.
There are some horses born with two heads.
That doesn't mean we don't have any idea what a horse is.
In fact, we only know that it's a deviation because horses have one head in general.
So I start with what works in the real world.
And I don't mean like what works in various religions and various rituals, but just, you know, people at a market, right?
So what works? And then you sort of have to be curious why it works.
It's the same way that science works, right?
So how did Newton come up with the theory of gravity according to the myth and the legend was an apple fell on his head.
I mean, so he started with something very practical, very tangible, very in the moment.
And then built from there.
And so if stuff works all over the world, people are able to weigh 10 kilograms of apples and pay for them.
It really happens. It really works.
Hundreds of millions of times, maybe billions of times a day in the world.
People weigh something and pay for it.
So it has to be something that works, and therefore we have to start with it can't be insane.
And, you know, most people hang pictures straight, but they don't spend all day trying to get one picture straight.
So that's kind of where I start.
It's not the be-all and end-all, but you start with direct observation.
So I'm an empiricist. I've always said that.
So you start with direct observation of the world, and then you begin to extract principles from that in the same way you would with science.
Okay. Could we just zoom out for a moment and go back to analysis?
Fair enough. I like to listen to all the examples that you have and your way of thinking.
For me, it gives me more knowledge and a richer view of the world.
I just want to go back to the topic at hand which is nihilism and just to say, try to see if we understand each other in one other aspect.
Like, could you agree to live in a society where a part of the society says, well, in the long term actually I cannot get really obsessed In anything, because in the long term, for me nothing matters.
Like I cannot be really...
No, but I'd never hear from those people.
I'd never hear from those people.
So the moment, I'm not putting you in this category, but the moment someone comes up to me and says, nothing that we do matters, right?
My first question would be, then why are you telling me?
Why are you trying to convince me that nothing matters if nothing matters?
Well, he wants to get a point across.
Why does he want to get a point across?
Nothing matters. He wants to test if you can convince him that something does matter.
Maybe you have some information he doesn't have.
No, then he's being dishonest.
Because if he's saying, I have the feeling that nothing matters and I'd really love it if you could convince me otherwise, that's an honest statement.
If he's saying that nothing matters and I take his statement at face value, he's contradicting himself completely.
Well, there is a difference between what we say and what we mean, right?
Well, so then I would say, as I would say to you if you said that, I would say, well, if nothing matters, why are you bringing it up?
I really want to talk about something that I don't think there's any value in talking about is a complete contradiction, right?
Nothing matters, there's no such thing as truth, there's no need for consistency, and you should change your beliefs because your beliefs are false and inconsistent, is a self-contradictory statement.
So the first thing that somebody comes up to me and says, there's no such thing as truth and nothing matters.
Then I would say, but you're prioritizing this conversation because you prefer to do this rather than something else, and you are saying that your statement is true, and therefore there is such a thing as truth, and there is such a thing as prioritization.
Now, prioritization of behavior can only occur if you have a hierarchy of values.
Like if a fire broke out in the studio right now, I'd end this conversation because I have a priority of surviving rather than having the conversation.
We'd pick it up another time, right?
So prioritization can only occur if there's a hierarchy of values.
Now, if there is a hierarchy of values to the point where somebody wants to talk about nihilism, then nihilism can't be true because there is purpose.
The person is exhibiting purpose.
By talking about nihilism, and they're exhibiting a preference for truth statements by advocating for nihilism.
But if nihilism encapsulates no truth and no purpose, then whoever's making that argument is contradicting their own argument and their behavior.
Always look at the behavior. Look at the behavior and extract the principles from the behavior.
And if the actions contradict the principles, you point that out.
Now, if the person just skates past that, then you're dealing with a mental problem or whatever.
Don't bother. But if then they say, huh, I guess that's true.
I guess I'm saying that nothing matters, but it matters to me to have this conversation.
So that's a contradiction. And then you can start to have a fruitful discussion, right?
Yes, I do agree.
I mean, the way you define it right now, like nothing really matters.
There is no truth. I mean, in such a way...
Wait, the way you define it right now?
What do you mean? I mean, at the beginning of the conversation...
It's philosophy! It's not about defining things right now, it's defining things accurately or falsely.
Like, I don't define two and two makes four just in the moment, but next moment it could be something different, right?
No, no, no, no. But what I meant at the beginning, going back to the definition of nihilism, I mean, the way I view it is like there is no ultimate purpose.
Nothing matters, right? No, no ultimate purpose.
Like... If I make a billion dollars, I will still die.
The results will be the same.
If I make minus one billion dollars, I will still die.
But these are not moral issues.
These are not moral issues.
If somebody wants to make money, fine.
As long as they do it honorably, legitimately, and don't steal it, right?
I mean, so, you know, make money.
If you don't want to make money, if you want to be a monk, fine.
These are not moral issues. These are subjective personal choices about lifestyle.
And so if you're saying there's no such thing as truth because people prefer different things, that's a very amateur statement.
It's like saying there's no, like, two and two don't make four because some people like different kinds of ice cream.
So you have to give me an example that's not about somebody's subjective personal lifestyle preferences.
Okay. Well, an example whereby a person says, I want to feed this many children, I want to feed 1 million, I want to feed 10 million.
And then you tell him, well, in the long term, these children will all die, we will all die.
And, you know, the whole story with the universe coming to an end.
Well, but here's the thing.
Let's say I was the guy who wanted to feed a million children.
And let's just say for the sake of argument, you were the guy who came up and sold me.
It was meaningless, right? Yeah.
Do you know what I would ask you? Yes.
Did you have breakfast this morning?
And what would you say? Well...
It's not a tough question.
What would you say? Yes, I would say...
Oh, so you preferred to eat rather than starve to death.
So you've chosen life over death.
You know you're gonna die in a couple decades.
Still you choose to eat. Still you choose to breathe.
Still you choose to have water.
So who are you to say That there's no meaning, life is meaningless, there's no preference for life over death that makes any sense, when the only way that you're able to have that conversation with me is because you have regularly chosen life over death.
You have chosen to eat, you have chosen to get shelter, you have chosen to drink liquids, And so who are you to say, it doesn't matter whether you feed people or not, when the only reason that you're able to say that is because you have fed yourself repeatedly for many, many, many years, and would view someone interrupting that process as attempted murder.
So again, I look at the behavior.
I don't care about the abstract arguments before I process the behavior.
And if the behavior contradicts the argument, I just go with the behavior.
I really don't care about the argument.
Like, I eat, right?
I had some nice beans and potatoes, peas and potatoes for lunch.
And a little cheese. Because I wanted to have good energy for the show, right?
So I'm not going to sit there and say, well, it doesn't matter whether you eat or not, because I just had a meal to have this conversation.
So I can't look at my own actions and then come up with some abstract principle that completely contradicts those actions and call myself anything other than nutty.
Okay. One other thing.
So... How about the point of view about giving birth, creating life as a human being?
How would you defend that in the sense that what would be the purpose of that?
What do you mean? I mean, I know you have children.
I think you have a daughter, right?
Yeah. Two children. Okay.
So what would be the purpose of that?
Again, I'm not sure what you mean by purpose, because it's not a moral choice to have a child.
It's not good and evil. Like, you're not evil if you don't have children, and you're not evil if you have children, or good or...
Again, you're talking about, do you want to make money or not make money?
Do you want to make babies or not make babies?
It's not a moral choice. It's a preference.
Well, it can be seen as a moral choice if you say, well, the resources are running out.
You could say we're pressuring...
The planet in one way or another?
Well then, of course, if you care about the resources of the planet, then what you should do is you should go to the countries with the highest birth rates and you should convince them to lower their birth rates.
In which case you should go learn Swahili or Zulu or something like that because there are African countries.
I know there's not countries or tribes, but there are African countries where the birth rate is 5.6 children per mother.
So you wouldn't go to Italy or Japan where they're like 1.1, 1.2 replacement birth rate.
So if somebody says, well, it's about the resources in the planet, then I'd be like, well, why are you talking to me?
I've got one child. I mean, go talk to, like, again, I'm just looking empirically.
At what's going on.
So as far as resource consumption as well, the other argument would be, again, did you have breakfast this morning, I would say to such a person.
And if they said yes, and if they said no, I'd just say, well, when did you last eat?
And they'd say, last night, or whatever.
Okay, you had a meal. Those meals, the meals that you've had your entire life, the air that you breathe, the clothes that you wear, the gel that you use, all of these consume nature's resources.
So if you are consuming nature's resources and somehow demanding or requiring that other people not consume those resources, you're hypocritical.
You know, it's like all of these rock stars and movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio who are like, we've got to lower our carbon footprint, man, and I'm going to prove it by getting a hipster beard from hell.
But I'm going to fly 12 of my closest friends to my newest movie premiere in private jets.
I don't care what you say.
Your actions are drowning out your words.
So if somebody says, well, we've got to not consume nature's scarce resources, it's like, well, you're only alive because you've consumed a lot of resources, so shut up.
Now, if it's a posthumous note, right, if they wrote something on, they said, I don't want to consume, like, it's really bad to consume nature's resources.
And then they killed themselves.
Okay, well, there's a certain amount of consistency in that.
It's kind of crazy. But there is a certain amount of consistency in that.
But then they're not around to debate with me.
But if they're around to debate with me, guess what?
They've used a lot of nature's scarce resources.
And so I don't really care what they say about nature's scarce resources.
Okay, but I just wanted to have some clarification, like just now you mentioned like in Africa the birth rate is much higher, but what does it matter if it's like we're on one planet, you know?
What does it matter if you decrease one in Canada or one in Africa?
What does it matter? I'm not sure what you mean, what does it matter?
This person is saying it's bad to give birth.
So if that's the case, you go to the place with the highest birth rate and you try to lower it.
Not to the place... Like white people have the lowest birth rate outside of Japanese people on the planet, as far as I know.
So you don't talk to white people about lowering the birth rate.
You go talk to black people about lowering the birth rate.
If you're talking to white people about lowering the birth rate and not black people, then you're just racist.
No, but I mean... What does it matter if we're going to lower the black or the whites?
I mean, you can lower the whites...
You lower the highest! What are you talking about?
You lower the highest. It's like being an oncologist and saying, well, what does it matter if I treat people who have cancer or who don't have cancer?
It's like, well, you're a cancer doctor. You should be treating the people who have cancer.
That should be your priority, not the people who don't have cancer.
And so if people are concerned about birth rates, they should go to the Muslim.
They should say no migration, because what happens with migration from Muslim countries or third world countries is they come to the Western countries, they get massive amounts of welfare, and they crank out tons and tons of kids.
So you should be for closed borders.
You should be for lowering the birth rate in third world countries.
Like, why you would be talking to a white person is ridiculous, right?
Because white people have the lowest birth rate pretty much on the planet.
At least some of the lowest birth rates.
So, yeah.
So if somebody says to me it's a priority that people don't have babies, it's like, what the hell are you talking to me for?
It's like trying to wheel me in to chemotherapy when I don't even have cancer.
It's kind of weird, right?
Okay, but I know we're going a bit off topic, but to be honest, once Muslims or whatever come to the West, these people usually their birth rates lower after some time.
Sure, after some time.
Sure, but there's still a lot more births than there would be otherwise.
Yes, and I guess with welfare, I mean wealth and with prosperity and education, usually Birth decreases, right?
Well, it can happen. It depends upon the ideology.
If the woman is considered to be the property of her husband and can't refuse sex or procreation, well, that's a bit of a challenge now, isn't it?
And that's what should be being talked about.
Yeah. And also, of course, if you have a population from the third world that's heavily into cousin marriage, then you get a huge amount of birth defects, which is massively destructive to the population.
You lose 10 plus IQ points among the population.
And, you know, the important thing to remember is the U.S. Army basically uses IQ tests to find out if they can find any use for someone.
And around sort of like below the mid 80s, I think the cutoff is around 83.
Below that, they simply won't take people.
Because they can't find anything useful for them to do.
So if you have a population that's kind of inbred, a lot of cousin marriage, low IQ as a whole, you are going to end up with a lot of social problems and you're going to end up with a collapse of the welfare state and destruction of socialized medicine and so on.
And yeah, these are just unfortunate consequences, which people really should be talking about, but for some reason they're not.
Well, one reason to be not talking about this is, again, to go back to the nihilistic point of view.
I mean, I sort of switch.
Sometimes I look through the eyes of a nihilist and sometimes I cannot define what the other thing is.
But from a nihilistic point of view is anything can happen and the worst thing that can happen is that you die, right?
Well, but then I don't care to take any advice or prioritization from the nihilist.
Because if the nihilist doesn't care about life and death, then the nihilist isn't going to be eating or breathing, right?
If they're completely indifferent, right?
What you're completely indifferent to, you don't change your behavior about.
Right, so I'm completely indifferent about the orbit of some asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
Completely, and so I'm not sitting there saying, my god, I've got to find something that goes up there and alters that orbit.
So what I'm completely indifferent to, I make no changes in my behavior to accommodate.
So if you're completely indifferent to life and death, then you shouldn't bother eating, you shouldn't bother getting any shelter, you shouldn't bother drinking any water.
But the moment you do, you're saying life is preferable to death.
And then whatever you say in your abstract philosophy, I can't hear over the sound of you chewing and breathing.
Okay, here is something that I think is very much related, which is your view about free will, because as far as I recall, you do...
Wait, wait, no, I'm not sure that I want to switch from nihilism to free will, because I want to try and keep these somewhat on topic.
One thing fits the other, you know?
I'm sorry? It is in a way connected, in a sense that you say...
Okay, we'll do one question.
Okay, so you mentioned choice, like I choose to breathe, to eat, but there are some things that are instinct, some things that are cultural, some things that are involuntary, and some things that you simply cannot change because you're afraid and this is how you're programmed, right? Well, I don't know.
That's a whole lot of stuff there.
I'm not sure how to break it out.
Are you saying that everything that people do is programmed?
Well, if we really have to open this book about free will, I've seen no evidence that there is something else which is different than the environment plus the inside biological factors, chemistry, Temperature, geography, gravity, and everything put together in one piece.
So you're saying that human beings are matter and energy and therefore follow the same behavioral patterns as all other forms of matter and energy?
I think that you can find an external way to explain everything.
Yeah, but that's basically you're saying human beings are matter energy, they're subject to the laws of the universe, and therefore free will is a ghost in the machine, right?
That is as far as I understand this.
All right, so let me ask you this, right?
So you emailed me to have this conversation, right?
True. Now, you can't see this, but I'm holding up a coffee cup.
Now, if I'd have said to you, yeah, let's have this conversation.
I can't make it, but I'm going to put a coffee cup in front of the camera.
What would you say? It's a nice coffee cup, man.
I mean, you're responding to something.
No, what would you say? If I said, I can't make it for the debate, but you can have a chat with my coffee cup, what would you say?
I would say no. Why?
It's just matter and energy, subject to the same physical laws of the universe and the same properties as I am.
I don't understand.
What would the difference be? No, I didn't say that you're a coffee cup.
No, I worked to establish this.
I'm not an idiot at this stuff, man.
Human beings are subject to the same laws of matter and energy and free will as it goes to the machine.
We're not different from any other matter in the universe, fundamentally, right?
Well, matter is so general.
I'm composed of matter and energy.
I'm subject to physical laws.
My coffee cup is composed of matter and energy and is subject to the same physical laws.
Why wouldn't you debate my coffee cup?
What have you got against my lovely brown coffee cup, man?
It wants to debate with you.
Oh, it's eager. It's telling me it's eager to debate.
But you would never accept that.
So you can't say human beings are the same as everything else.
And if you don't like the coffee cup, let's say that I had a pet lizard.
And I said, hey man, I can't make the debate, but my pet lizard, I'll just, I'll put the little, he's in a little terrarium, I'll put it right up here in front of the camera, or my cat, or my dog, or a chimpanzee, and you'd say, no, I'm not debating free will with a chimpanzee, that would be insane!
I'm not debating free will with a coffee cup.
That's what a crazy person would do.
So you will only debate free will with a human being.
That is true. So how can you say human beings are just like everything else in the universe when you'll only ever debate with a human being and would consider it insane to debate with anything else?
Wait, first of all, you give certain definitions to certain things.
We don't have time really to discuss the definition of everything.
Actually, this was the way you wanted to say it, but I gave it a different definition.
Of course, as you said in the beginning, in biology it would make a distinction between a chimpanzee and a human, right?
Yes. So they have different properties.
So, one of the properties is human beings, over time, have evolved something that we call consciousness.
Also, other beings, because this actually fits with something that you said in the beginning of the conversation, you said that apes don't have morality, but of course, apes do have, on some level, have morality, of course.
No. No, they have reciprocal, practical, consequentialist altruism.
They do not have abstract definitions of virtue.
Okay, well, I guess this comes down again to definitions.
No, no, it doesn't come down to definitions, which is why you won't debate an ape, but you will debate me.
I have abstract definitions of morality.
Apes do not. Apes will, if you're kind to an ape, they will bond with you.
They'll be kind back, maybe.
But that's just reciprocal altruism, and it's driven by evolution.
The ape doesn't sit there and say, well, what is truth?
What is goodness? What is virtue?
How do we codify this in an abstract sense that encapsulates the essence of apehood while excluding fish?
The apes don't work that way.
Their brain doesn't have that conceptual ability to work.
They don't have abstractions.
Of immaterial things.
So you give an ape a banana, it'll give you a banana back at some point.
That's nice, you know, and it evolved that way because reciprocal altruism is a great way to maintain tribalism.
And tribalism is necessary in a hostile world where you're going to be attacked by tribes of other apes.
So all the apes that failed to develop reciprocal altruism got wiped out by all the apes who did.
So that's how the gene spread.
We understand that, right? But they're not sitting there writing books on abstract philosophy and inventing platonic dialogues.
It's not how the apes are. They don't have morality.
In the way that we do, even close.
They just have this basic Darwinian reciprocal altruism.
So when you have seen this movie where one ape is given a grape and the other one is given a cucumber and one gets angry about the other, that's not just reciprocal.
There is a feeling of justice.
I don't want to get into all the ins and outs.
But the moment a book written by an ape that's talking about abstract philosophy gets published, I'll revisit the issue.
But right now, I'm not going into the detailed ins and outs of apes because they're not philosophers.
I like apes, don't get me wrong.
No hostility to apes.
I think we should treat them very, very well.
But we should also recognize that they're not doing what we do.
Okay, but is this an argument for free will, being able to debate?
What do you mean? I mean, is that enough to defend free will?
While we know that everything you can think of, some machine can see 10 seconds before you consciously know that you are doing something, we can see that.
Not 100%, and the real question then becomes around self.
Yeah, I know there are certain simple things that machines...
I talk about this in my book, Essential Philosophy, which people should really check out.
But yeah, there are machines that will read your impulses and sometimes get it right before you're consciously aware of it.
So what? With self-knowledge, you discover the source of these impulses and you have the capacity to change them.
We have that capacity to intercept.
Signals that come from our hypothalamus or our fight-or-flight mechanism, we have the capacity to intercept.
You have about a third or a quarter of a second to intercept, like an angry impulse to yell at someone.
If you have self-knowledge, you recognize where that's coming from, you can intercept it, you can redirect it, you can change.
All of these things. We don't just act out.
Now, people who don't have any self-knowledge are kind of like machines, but that's because they've chosen to be closer to animal than human, because they're just reacting, reacting, reacting, acting out, not...
Thinking, not internalizing, not understanding, not reflecting, not learning, not growing.
So yeah, human beings can reject free will.
I've known people in my life who are basically machines.
It's the MPC meme, right?
You know exactly what's coming out of their mouth before they say it.
Exactly. It's automatic, right?
For you, when we started talking about blacks and whites, you had a pushback because that's how we're programmed.
But if you surround your programming, it's a wonderful thing, and you get many more choices.
A choice is like a muscle. You have to work at it.
You have to develop it. It's not something that's innate.
I think it would be more innate if we were raised better, but we're not really raised.
Punishing, programming, all this kind of crap.
So, yeah, there are machines that can predict some people's inconsequential responses.
Are you going to push this button or this button?
Before they do. And then people will say, no, here's when I decided to do it, and there's an impulse that comes up before.
Sure. And that's why we need a concept of free will, because if we don't have it, we kind of do become like machines.
And the powers that be really want us to be machines, because you can program machines.
A man of free will you can't.
Well, when you said that we can choose the way we want to interpret, how you want to change, like if you knew where your impulses came from, you had the freedom to choose how to respond.
But that is obviously not for everyone and it's actually for the people who have this capacity, who have learned this capacity.
It's not a given. It's something that some people could obtain.
I'll just make this my final point because people should check this out.
First of all, I encapsulate my arguments about free will in my new book.
Free! Free! You can get it at freedomainradio.com.
It's called Essential Philosophy, and I'm very, very happy with it.
And I also have a series, which I did probably close to 10 years ago now, a three-part series on YouTube called Free Will Parts 1, 2, and 3, where I argue that free will is our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
So if I believe in the non-aggression principle and have the impulse to hit someone out of the blue, then I say, well, I shouldn't do that because I have this abstract standard called the non-aggression principle, and therefore I'm not going to hit that person.
So you compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
Now, anyone who tells me that that's wrong is asking me to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
So the proposed action is an acceptance of free will, an advocacy for free will, And anyone who tells me that free will is false is asking me to compare my proposed actions to an ideal standard.
The ideal standard called truth is infinitely preferable to error, accuracy is infinitely preferable to inaccuracy, and consistency is infinitely preferable to the opposite of consistency or inconsistency.
So they're saying, well, free will is false, is the ideal standard, and I should compare my behavior, future behavior, called advocating for free will, to that ideal standard, called free will is false, and I should change my future behavior based upon an ideal standard.
And since my definition of free will is the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, they are conforming.
Anybody who argues against free will to me is conforming to my definition of free will.
Now, that's not a kill shot, because you could argue that definition, but then you again would be asking me to compare proposed actions to ideal standards.
Well listen, I'm going to stop there.
I really, really do appreciate the conversation.
I love this kind of workout, and I'm curious to see what people have to say, because there are a lot more people out there who are nihilists than who identify themselves.
As nihilists. So I really, really do appreciate the time that you spent in this conversation.
And I look forward to, as I'm sure you will, the comments on the video.
Yes, thank you very much.
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