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Dec. 11, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:46:50

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	Good morning, everybody.
	Stephen Molyneux from Freedom, Maine.
	It's the 6th up to 12th, I guess, half a dozen of the dozen of the year of our devil 2020.
	And I have no intro because I've been hogging the mic for intros lately.
	So let's go straight to the listeners.
	All right. Well, this morning we have a caller who writes in.
	I am 41, happily married with two kids considering homeschooling.
	I will have a conversation with Stefan about philosophy and share some of my philosophical ideas with him for his evaluation.
	I'm hoping Stefan can help me see my flaws in my reasoning and help me make my arguments more robust or give me cause to abandon them.
	I imagine the conversation will involve a subset of the following.
	The relationship of the objective and the subjective.
	The nature of God, the existence of free will, if we live in a simulation, the nature of evil, the origins of communism and feminism, the relationship between personal responsibility and politics.
	I believe all that stuff is interconnected, so I've been imagining different paths the conversation could go.
	I think the point of origin I want to talk about is subjective experience, so I'd like to start here.
	Our conscious experience is a bottom-up simulation that necessitates the existence of free will and God within that simulation.
	All right. Well, welcome. Thank you for joining us, of course, today.
	A great pleasure to chat with you.
	And let's see how many of these we can bat around in the time that we have together.
	So I will let you start off the discussion.
	Yeah, well, I'm not expecting us to bash them all around.
	I think where I'm going with this is that I like listening.
	I think you offer great help to people, and I like listening to your show.
	And I think generally we end up in the same place, but maybe we have very different...
	We start from very different places, and I think that maybe we can...
	Iron some of that out. I'd like you to Socratic method me and maybe help me with my ideas here.
	Let's talk about conscious experience and this idea of living in a simulation because I think that's actually a good place to start because it's quite a popular idea now for people to talk about Living in a simulation, and something I haven't heard in the popular discourse is this idea that instead of it being some sort of top-down simulation, it's the reason we feel like we live in a simulation.
	We have this sort of experience of that is because we do live in a simulation, but it's a bottom-up simulation of our conscious experience, trying to make some sense out of...
	The objective universe around us into a model that has some utility and that's why we have that sense of living in a simulation.
	And as we We're provided more information from the internet and things around us.
	The simulation seems more prone to coincidence and bizarre things happening just because there's more ties for us to have those patterns and that experience.
	I don't want to have like...
	Sorry, let's do each other a favor and try and cover as much ground as humidly possible.
	We don't need any intros.
	This audience is familiar with the arguments for and against the simulation.
	So let's just dive straight in.
	Yeah, of course, there are coincidences and there are ways.
	And I've had those kind of goose bumpy moments where you're like, oh, I wonder if this happened for that reason kind of thing.
	But of course, most of my day is not spent doing that.
	And naturally, we are pattern recognizing that.
	Creatures, right? So human beings are pattern-recognizing creatures.
	So let's dive straight into arguments you feel that support the simulation thesis.
	Yeah, but I'm arguing, though, that it is a bottom-up simulation.
	So the... The reason why it feels like a simulation is because that's what conscious experience is.
	We're evolved creatures and we make sense of the world by creating a model of that world.
	And that's what gives us the sense of a simulation.
	And it's actually sort of like a hubris or like a narcissistic pride that we think that The universe is sort of made for us.
	And it's actually sort of like our sense of God.
	It's atheist looking for God that sort of creates that desire to live in a simulation or create arguments to have this sort of top-down simulation.
	Because if you think about it, it's very similar to the idea of living in a...
	A simulation is very much like living in a video game, whereas there's, of course, a programmer or someone who's making that for your pleasure.
	Okay, I've got to interrupt you here.
	Okay. What did you get out of what I said at the beginning?
	And you're free to disagree with it, but it really does bother me when people act as if I hadn't spoken.
	So I asked you not to describe the phenomenon as a whole, but to give me your strongest arguments for it, and you're doing nothing of the kind.
	Okay. Maybe that's nerves or anything like that.
	I understand it's a bit of an odd forum.
	To have these kinds of discussions.
	But I really do have to remind you that if I make a request, again, you're free to say no.
	I want to keep describing it or tell me why.
	But, you know, you're not at least at liberty in this conversation to pretend I didn't say anything and just keep going on as if I didn't.
	That's kind of rude. I'm sorry.
	I didn't mean to do that.
	Let's get straight to it. All right.
	So, I mean...
	My argument for why we're living in a bottom-up simulation is that we get that sense from our...
	I'm trying to find the point of contentions or what we're just agreeing on.
	So you're proposing a rather startling metaphysical idea.
	There are certain times when we know that we are living in a simulation.
	I had one of my very rare nightmares last night.
	I won't get into the details of it.
	It's not particularly important. I talked about it with my family this morning.
	But I had a nightmare.
	Now, I know that it was not real.
	I know that it was a simulation that was going on within my mind.
	We also enter into simulations when we're reading, I think, a particularly vivid novel.
	I've been listening back to my audiobook reading of my novel almost, and it's very vivid to me.
	The characters, the locations, the people, the emotions, the relationships, it's all very vivid.
	Now, that's obviously a simulation.
	Some of the book is real, some of the book is historically accurate, and some of it is emotionally accurate or historically accurate, but not objective.
	In other words, the people are living in the time and using the language they would have at the time, but the conversations are...
	So there are times when we know that we're living in a simulation and that all makes perfect sense to me.
	Even when you're watching a very vivid movie or I guess even when you're in a video game, you are in the brain of some level designer and someone who created the physics of the application and so on.
	There are times when we know that we are in a simulation, dreaming, art, video games, and so on.
	Even if somebody's just sitting there telling a very compelling story.
	Graham Norton's show in the UK has, of course, all these very charismatic actors on who have their three proven publicity stories, and they tell those stories very well.
	And that's kind of a simulation as well in that we laugh and cry based upon the story and it's not real and it didn't happen to us, but it hits us emotionally.
	So you're taking a thesis which everybody accepts that there are some times where we live in a simulation, the most vivid being dreaming.
	But you're saying that a dream at night is functionally or fundamentally the same as our waking life, in that the dream is a simulation, but our waking life is also a simulation, and in a sense we never get to wake up.
	If that's what I understand by what you mean, then that's a thesis that needs to be defended or made the case of.
	All right, so I think the distinction I'm making is that There's utility in making these simulations.
	And whatever, like, we don't, I mean, it's sort of Kantian in the sense of that we don't have direct access to objective reality.
	We have senses that bring in information, and then we have a way of interpreting that information.
	And what we create is a model of the world.
	So that model of the world is a short time we can say it's our experience of objective reality.
	But it's not the sum of objective reality.
	It's a filter.
	It's filtered reality.
	And much of what is out there, we have no...
	We have no understanding or even awareness of because we need to make sense of it.
	We have to just grab on to a little bit of objective reality and sort of make sense of that.
	And we have utility.
	There's utility in doing that, making that story and making that sense of what part of objective reality we have access to.
	So what part of, because you and I, in this conversation, we are using objective reality as the medium by which we conduct our discussion.
	Would you agree? At least what we describe as objective reality, right?
	Yeah, I mean, we're also using language in our shared experience for that.
	Well, no, sorry, just prior to the language stuff, we are using, you have a microphone, you may have a headset.
	We are using physics, sound waves, and so our auditory canals and you name it, right, the little tiny hairs.
	in the middle of your ear that give you the sound and so on, right?
	Right. So we are using all of the properties of objective reality In order to have this discussion.
	Yeah. So that's where I'd like to start.
	So what part of our discussion is not real?
	Or would you consider to be not real?
	And I'm not talking about the subjective interpretation of words and so on.
	I mean, of course, words have objective meanings, but you can certainly haggle over the borders of definitions, and that's part of what philosophy is, the truth and virtue and honor, all these sorts of things, right?
	So I don't mean...
	The brain language side of things, what I mean is the objective physics of it.
	The fact that if I communicate the word widget to you, that the physics that are used to transmit that word, I mean the science, the technology, the physics, Is that objective, or is that something that is part of the subjective universe?
	In other words, can you make up what I say and it be perfectly valid, or are you constrained by what I say based upon the physics?
	And again, we can argue about meanings, but if I say the word widget, we can argue about what a widget is, but we have to at least, I think, understand that it's W-I-D-G-E-T or something like that, right?
	So in the physics of how we're communicating, is it objective?
	Yes, it's subjective, but everything is going through our subjective filters.
	And that's a muddling factor that makes it very difficult for us to completely separate the objective and subjective.
	Okay, so sorry, let me just go back here for a sec.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, let me just go back here for a sec.
	So, subjective filters, so if I say the word widget, Do you hear the word widget?
	And can you repeat that word back to me?
	Widget. Okay, yeah.
	So is there any subjective filter in my expressing the word and you repeating it back?
	Yes. Okay, so good.
	So because it seems to me that I said the word widget, it transmitted itself to you objectively, you received it, Through an objective medium of sound waves and so on.
	You repeated the word back to me and you repeated the word back accurately to me that we both said the word widget and I assume we agree on the spelling W-I-D-G-E-T. So tell me where in the simple transmission and return the echo of the word widget the subjective experience is.
	Well, a big part of any communication is not just what you're paying attention to, but what you're filtering out.
	So when you say the word widget, you're actually making all sorts of other sounds, like breathing sounds.
	We had some singing at the beginning, just before we started recording.
	And there's actual tones and notes.
	And in English, we don't actually have tonal semantics, but they do in languages like Chinese.
	So it's actually very difficult for English speakers to learn Chinese because they're not used to information being transferred by the tone of what people are saying.
	At least semantic meaning information.
	So that's something that you're filtering out.
	And if you actually want to learn Chinese, you have to break...
	A big part of learning Chinese is then you breaking that English filter of then learning to pay attention to meaning where you don't usually expect it.
	And I'm just using that as an example of how...
	Even when something seems as trivial as the word widget, what we're paying attention to is also a big part of being able to interpret that and understand it is also knowing what not to pay attention to.
	All right. Do you agree that I was able to express the word widget to you, you were able to repeat it back to me, and we agree on the spelling?
	Yes. Okay.
	So that's objective, right?
	Or the objective medium we both share allowed us to act.
	Because listen, if you can make up whatever you want, I'm not going to debate with you.
	What I'm trying to do is figure out if it's worth debating with you.
	And by that, I don't mean relative to your intelligence, which is obviously very high, or relative to your verbal skills, or even relative to your goodwill.
	You may, of course, have perfectly wonderful goodwill when it comes to this debate.
	But... If you can make up meanings based upon what I'm saying, and this is why at the very beginning I said, were you aware that I asked you for a particular process, which is to define the argument for the subjective universe or the simulation, and you went on as if I hadn't said anything, that's kind of a warning shot to me, because you're not acknowledging that I've asked for something, and it's fine.
	I can say, give me a million dollars, and you can say, hell no.
	That's totally fine. If you can't agree on the words that we're going to use and that there's an objective medium by which we exchange them, then I'm arguing with someone.
	I don't know if you've ever had a lucid dream where you're aware that you're dreaming.
	It changes your behavior within the dream.
	If you're arguing with someone and in the dream you think it's real and then halfway towards waking or through whatever process it happens, you end up going, gosh, this is not real.
	Then you change your behavior, right?
	Because you realize that you're never going to win an argument in a dream.
	The only thing you can do is learn from it, in a sense, right?
	So that's why I'm trying to ask about...
	Do we have a way of transferring objective sounds to each other?
	Because if we don't, then you're arguing with a dream.
	Oh, absolutely. I agree with you there.
	And I'm not disagreeing that we have means of communicating.
	And And objectively, in what we describe as the objective world, right?
	And as what we have to, because it's what we have access to, we are communicating.
	So I'm not disputing that at all.
	And I want to make sure that we do.
	We need to have common terms and we have to have a common understanding of the world if we're going to have Have this conversation go forward.
	The physical aspect of objective reality that we're using to transmit the sound waves to have this conversation is not part of a simulation.
	Is that fair? Because if it was part of a simulation, then it could be changed en route and we could end up completely talking past each other, right?
	Yes. We definitely communicated there and we use objective reality as that medium.
	The only caveat I'm trying to make is that we're both using our experiences to filter that.
	I think that a lot of discussions fall apart because we tend to really try and make objective and subjective discrete when there's When the reality is a little messier than that, and I think that we're entering a place in society where we need a way to deal with that messiness better.
	Okay, so the argument you're making, if I can characterize it, and obviously tell me where I've gone astray, it's a fairly common argument, which is not to say it's not interesting or valid, and the argument is things are complex.
	Well, I've got to tell you, so far it's not a whole lot more than that.
	Okay. It's like you're saying, okay, there's objective stuff in the world, but we also have our own subjective interpretations, which is, of course, I mean, that's not adding much, of course.
	I mean, I'm glad we established the objective side of things.
	But yeah, of course we have subjective interpretations.
	If we didn't have subjective interpretations, A, we wouldn't be human beings, and B, there would be no need for science or philosophy or nutrition or any of the disciplines which aim to override subjective preferences with objective facts,
	right? So if you want to make a statement about reality, then you're taking yourself out of the subjective realm, and if you say, Objects accelerate towards the Earth at 9.8 meters per second per second acceleration.
	Okay, well, then you've made an objective claim and you go and measure it and so on.
	And, you know, you'll have slight variations because of turbulence and air pressure and so on.
	But for the most part, you'll end up roughly in that cluster of 9.8 meters per second per second or whatever it is, right?
	Or if you say, I don't know, the sun is eight light minutes away from the earth or the moon is a quarter light second away from the earth and so on.
	Okay, well, you can measure these things, light 186,000 miles a second.
	So you're trying to take things out of The subjective and put them into the objective through the scientific method.
	Of course, the same thing is occurring in the realm of philosophy.
	What is real? What is true?
	What is good? These are all things that people have subjective opinions about.
	You're talking to a philosopher and saying, we have subjective opinions, but there is objective reality, which is, of course, the whole reason I became a philosopher in the first place.
	The reason I say it's kind of commonplace is It's like you're going to a guy who's been a doctor for 30 years and you're saying, so doc, what I want to get across to you is that there's health and also that there's illness.
	And health is better than illness and it's really, really important to try and cure illness, to which the doctor, frankly, is just going to roll his eyes.
	It's like, well, yeah, you know, there's not really bringing much and everybody knows that.
	And I'm not trying to diminish what you're saying.
	I mean, maybe this is a starting place in all of that.
	But the argument from complexity saying, well, there's objective reality and there's subjective opinion and sometimes the two overlap, it's like, well, yeah.
	I mean, children of three know that, right?
	So if one child takes another child's toy, the other child will go to the authority figure and say, so-and-so took my toy, right?
	Knowing that it was objective, that the toy was his, quote, property in the moment, if he was using it, that the other kid shouldn't have taken it, that the adult will recognize the reality, that That sound works, that auditory canals work, that language works, that the adult is going to try and solve the problem or get the toy back.
	All of what you're saying here, and he has a subjective preference to keep the toy and the other kid has a subjective but unjust preference to take the toy.
	All of this, all of what you're saying is kind of understood by a toddler.
	And again, I'm not trying to diminish you or be mean or insult you or anything like that.
	If a toddler can solve this problem, I think we're going to need to take this debate to a bit of a higher level because if you're going to spend 10 minutes of my time telling me that there's objective truth but there's subjective interpretation, I feel that we're not quite working at the same level, if that makes sense.
	Well, I understand what you're saying, but I'm also trying to establish some common ground here.
	Like you said, we're going to have a No, but come on, man.
	This is an advanced course, right?
	You've listened for a while. We have lots of experienced people listening.
	I've been doing philosophy for over 30 years.
	If you're going to present a complex topic at a medical conference, you don't spend 15 minutes lecturing people that health is better than I don't know.
	You wouldn't even say that to introductory medical students because the only reason they're there is because they already recognize that stuff.
	So let's assume that everybody here knows that there's objective truth and that there's subjective interpretation and that's the whole reason why we're talking.
	So I guess I'm just trying to hit the gas a little here.
	Okay. So can we get out of subjective interpretation?
	How do we get out of subjective interpretation?
	Can we get out of subjective interpretation? Do we have direct access to objectivity?
	Well, why do we want to get out of subjective interpretation for some things?
	Subjective interpretation is a wonderful thing.
	Particular kinds of music, particular kinds of art, literature, and so on.
	These are subjective interpretations to some degree, and that's part of what makes life great.
	So I don't... One, to get out of subjective interpretation.
	If that makes sense, now, if somebody's making a truth claim about objective reality, then yeah, it needs to be tested.
	And the way we test it is because objective reality is universal, non-contradictory, consistent, and conforms to the laws of rationality, then if somebody's making a statement about objective reality, then the first thing they need to do is make sure that the statement is Logically consistent, because logic is derived from the objective behavior of matter that we experience through the evidence of our senses.
	And so if somebody's making a truth statement, not, I like the sunset, which is a subjective claim, but the sun is a giant nuclear bomb that's 93 million miles away from the earth or whatever, then okay, so now they've gone from subjective interpretation, they've moved out into the realm of objective fact, and the first thing we need to do is make sure That what they're saying is logically consistent.
	In other words, it obeys Aristotle's basic three laws of logic and so on.
	And so if somebody says the Sun is both 93 million miles away from the Earth and inside the Earth at the same time, If somebody was truly serious about that, we would view that as a significant sign of mental illness or somebody making a very bad joke or something like that.
	We wouldn't take that at all seriously.
	We wouldn't sit there and say, well, you know, it could be the case that the sun is both 93 million miles away from the earth and also buried inside the earth.
	It could be that it's in two places at the same time.
	It could also be that the sun, which is vastly larger than the earth, is somehow inside the earth at the same time as it's away and so on, right?
	I mean, we would dismiss that claim as violating The laws of logic, right?
	And we wouldn't test it, right?
	Now if somebody's statement about reality conforms to the laws of logic Then we would start to test it.
	If it was important, right?
	If it was important, right? I mean, somebody, you know, Bertrand Russell's old example of the teapot floating around Mars.
	It's like, yeah, there could be a teapot floating around Mars.
	But, you know, no country is going to spend trillions of dollars sending a spaceship out to scan for teapots around Mars because it doesn't matter.
	I mean, the likelihood of there being a teapot around Mars is virtually nil.
	And even if there was, I mean, I guess it would matter insofar as how the hell did it get there, but it doesn't matter in terms of, So, is it logically consistent?
	Is it important?
	And if both of those things are true, then people may start investing energy to test the theory About things in the real world and see if the hypothesis or the conjecture conforms to what's in the real world, which is the scientific method of testing and reproducibility and objectivity.
	You know, rather than noting down your impressions, you'll use a spectrometer or something like that or some measure of objective reality.
	And so there is subjective and that's a wonderful part of life.
	There is objective.
	And that is a wonderful part of life, and it's what we're using to communicate, and the way that you would test between the two is logical consistency followed by empirical testing.
	Okay, and that's fair.
	So, I guess my follow-up question would be, would you agree with the statement that everyone believes contradictory things?
	To some degree. Everybody believes contradictory things to some degree?
	No person is completely consistent in their beliefs.
	What would that look like?
	What standard do you have that human beings are failing to meet?
	So tell me what it would look like to be perfectly consistent in all your beliefs.
	Well, I mean, you would essentially be the objective ubermensch, like the master of reason where you're...
	Because you said that we are completely...
	You judge objective reality by consistency and relevance.
	No, that's not what I said.
	No, sorry. Just to be clear, that's not what I said.
	I don't judge objective reality by consistency and evidence because objective reality is already consistent.
	This is part of why you've got to listen carefully.
	What I said was if people make truth claims about objective reality that are important, then people will probably test them for logical consistency and then they will test them for empirical accuracy.
	Decades ago, these guys said, oh, we've created fusion in a jar.
	Okay. Well, their science had some soundness to it.
	It wasn't obviously completely ridiculous.
	And obviously, it was hugely important as a potential energy source.
	So it was that the theory had value, and it certainly was important.
	And so, you know, half the scientific community dove into trying to figure out whether it was possible to have this fusion in a jar that these scientists claimed, and it turned out that it wasn't.
	And so the theory...
	It was abandoned and so on, right?
	So yeah, people are making a claim.
	It is rationally consistent to a large degree or at least enough to get scientists interested.
	It is hugely important so people try to find it out and the theory is now as false as did Milli Vanilli do their own singing, right?
	Sorry, ancient reference by now, I suppose.
	So no, I don't judge objective reality by those standards.
	Those standards arrived by the objective behavior of matter.
	Okay, so...
	So then how do you...
	Okay, so you're saying...
	Sorry, let's go back. You had a question, which I don't want to lose.
	I don't want to lose track of that. This is just sort of a pretty significant direction.
	So you said, do people believe contradictory things, and I need to know by what measure?
	Because what you do is you're saying to me, are people short?
	And it's like, okay, well, by what measure?
	Are they short relative to giraffes?
	Well, yeah. Are they short relative to ants?
	No. So you have to have a standard of measure if you're going to create a deviation from a standard.
	And so if you're going to say, do human beings believe contradictory things?
	I need to know by what standard you're measuring that in order to know.
	No, because if it's impossible for human beings to not believe contradictory things, which I think it is and maybe we can get into that, then you've created an impossible standard by which to judge – or an irrelevant standard by which to judge humanity, which is something that – Okay, so you're saying it's irrelevant.
	Okay.
	No, it's not.
	It's certainly relevant whether people believe contradictory things.
	But if you have a standard that no human being can achieve, then it's not a reasonable Like, if you're saying, well, human beings are short because they're not 20 feet tall.
	It's like, well, no, human being is 20 feet, so it's not a valid standard to judge humanity by.
	So I just want to know what it would look like to not have any contradiction.
	Like, if you can step me through what's short.
	I'm not seeing that as a flaw, though.
	I'm seeing it as a utility, as a necessity.
	And I'm just bringing up the observation, and I think that we're...
	I'm agreeing here that people believe contradictory things and it would be an unreasonable standard for people to expect people not to believe contradictory things.
	And I think that the reason for that is...
	Because there is utility in us believing contradictory things in the interim.
	We actually have to move through the world.
	Sorry to interrupt. You can deny my request.
	You can fulfill my request.
	Please don't ignore my request.
	What would a human being look like who had no contradictory beliefs?
	How would you know that this standard had been achieved?
	I don't think it's possible for a person to achieve that standard.
	I don't think it's consistent with consciousness.
	Okay, sorry. So let's imagine that standard, right?
	Because if you say, well, human beings are short relative to giraffes, okay, well, what would it look like if they were tall relative to giraffes or they'd be 30 feet tall or whatever?
	So even if we say it's an unachievable standard or an unachievable goal...
	But help me understand what it would look like, because I don't know what it would look like for a human being to have no contradictory beliefs.
	I'm not sure I understand that standard.
	So if we can imagine a human being who would have no contradictory beliefs, how would you know?
	How could you tell? And I'm agreeing with you on that, and I think it's a flawed question, just like the idea of what would a perfectly tall person be?
	You use the idea of a giraffe and a human and saying, well, what height is the standard?
	I'm trying to say that the idea of a perfectly objective and rational person would be the same as a perfectly tall person.
	And I don't think there is a standard for a perfectly tall person.
	So you're asking me to judge human beings by a standard that you don't believe is valid?
	Or to evaluate, even if you say don't judge.
	You're asking me to evaluate human beings by a standard you don't think is valid?
	No, I don't want you to evaluate it by that standard.
	I'm saying that it's because people have to...
	The limits of the universe are such that people can only be so tall and do all the other things that people have to be...
	And it limits our cognition.
	Our cognitive ability are such that people can only be so rational and be so intelligent and so in sync, we can say, or so objective.
	But there's limits on that, on their ability to do so.
	I think you could say intellectual limits, perception limits.
	So that's why they necessarily have to think, or they have to, to a degree, think contradictory things.
	Because they can only be so rational, just as they can only be so tall.
	Well, is it irrational or is it...
	Failing to meet the standard, let's say, you know, when you're a kid, just about everybody believes that the world is flat, like when you're very little, right?
	Because it looks that way, right?
	But believing that the world is flat is not an irrational belief based upon the evidence you have when you're a kid, a little kid, right?
	Now, when you get older, and I remember very vividly learning this, you know, the world is round, like looking at a ball of the earth in the sky, and everybody has the same thoughts, like, well, gosh, why aren't people falling off?
	Like, there's some other gravity well outside the earth center or something like that, right?
	And so is it considered irrational if you hold a particular belief that conforms with the available evidence and then you get new or better evidence and you refine or change your belief to accommodate the new evidence and now everyone accepts that the world is largely a sphere rather than a sort of flat tabletop.
	And so would that be a failure to achieve perfect rationality if you abandon prior beliefs that seemed rational at the time in favor of new evidence?
	So, it wouldn't be a failure of rationality as a process, but if you were making the truth claim that...
	Like, if a three-year-old was a primitive scientist of sorts making the truth claim that the world was flat, and there was no contradictory evidence at the time, would you have considered then that his observation of the world was flat objectively true?
	And now that there's new information, The world is...
	Someone else has made another hypothesis and now the claims that the world is a spheroid or round to some degree, then this new truth claim is now objective and the previous truth claim was no longer objective?
	Or was the child mistaken?
	We're not talking about the objective truth claims.
	We're talking about the subjective process of irrationality.
	If somebody...
	Look, I've been doing this for 15 years and I have adapted and refined and advanced certain hypotheses.
	Absolutely. I mean, of course, that's the process.
	It would be no fun to do it if I was simply repeating the same thing over and over and never process new evidence and never advance new arguments.
	So where I have changed my mind, and of course I have an entire series of videos called I Was Wrong About… Is that an example to you?
	In other words, if I was perfectly rational, would I never be wrong?
	If you're perfectly rational, would you never be wrong?
	No, but you'd be in discordant with objective reality to some degree for your entire life, right?
	Of course, but because we're not omniscient, right?
	I don't think omniscience makes sense as a concept.
	I don't think it's...
	I don't think it's meaningful. No, it makes sense as a concept.
	It's knowing everything, right?
	Whether it's achievable, whether it's logically contradictory, that's another topic.
	It's logically contradictory. It's a comprehensive concept, right?
	Does it require omniscience to be perfectly rational in the formulation you're putting forward?
	No. Okay, so that's good, right?
	That means that you have a standard that's not a giraffe relative to a human being because human beings can't possess or achieve ever omniscience, right?
	So then I guess my question then is how do you know if somebody is holding contradictory standards?
	It's just that's just the way things are and we could just move on.
	I genuinely and I don't mean this in any hostile way.
	I mean, I'm genuinely curious.
	I mean, obviously, if somebody says two and two make five, OK, that's a contradictory belief because they've defined four and five as the same thing, which violates the law of identity, blah, blah, blah.
	Right.
	So I get all of that.
	And that that we can see and that we can tell.
	But I guess I would know I would want to know how you would tell if somebody held contradictory beliefs other than the blindingly obvious, which we wouldn't need philosophy for.
	Because we're trying to detect a subtle illness here, not a guy's walking into the ER with his arm in his hand, right?
	Fell off or something or came off.
	So how would you know that somebody held contradictory beliefs?
	Well, here's one example.
	Let's go back to our three-year-old child with the flat earth.
	Let's say that child's father went on a trip to Japan or China, and his mother explained to the child, oh, well, we can't call daddy now because it's night where daddy is.
	So the child then has a concept of time zones, and that's Inconsistent with the child's idea that the world is flat.
	But the child will probably, for quite some time, have those inconsistent facts in their mind before they can, at some event or some reflection, causes them to reconcile it into some idea of a round world.
	So that's contradictory information.
	The idea of the world being flat does not accord with the idea of day in one place and night time in the other, right?
	So that's good.
	Now, that is in accordance with two facts, right?
	So the world looks flat and the other fact is that it's night time where daddy is, it's day time here.
	And, of course, the mother could bring out a tennis ball and explain the whole situation and so on, right?
	So, OK, there's an example of a contradictory idea.
	The moment, of course, comes when the child first has the thought that these two things don't match or what he does with that thought.
	Now, if what he does with that thought is just wish it away, Then that's not good.
	What he does with that thought is go to his mom and say, if she didn't explain it, I go to his mom and say, hey, how can it be nighttime where daddy is if the world is flat?
	And she'd say, oh, no, honey, the world's not flat, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So it's certainly not a deficiency on his part to believe the world is flat when he's three years old because it does accord with all of the evidence that has presented itself To his mind, right?
	Which is, it sure looks flat to me, right?
	And you wouldn't think you're living on a giant ball and so on, right?
	So it's not, because what I want to know, so people holding irrational, anti-rational ideas, certainly in the realm of philosophy and generally is a pejorative.
	Like nobody ever says so-and-so's ideas are completely irrational and they don't mean it as a compliment.
	Like it's always a negative. There's an implicit or implied judgment that's pretty clear and obvious, right?
	So that's sort of my question.
	I don't like irrationality.
	Anti-rationality is even worse.
	You know, irrationality is fine because we are all irrational relative to future knowledge and all of that, but anti-rationality as a commitment or a perspective or an approach is really, really toxic.
	So irrationality is a negative, and I guess that's my question.
	If you're going to say everybody holds irrational ideas, Then I guess I just need to know what the standard is.
	Because if you're going to judge everyone as deficient, I need to know.
	I guess it's the old question of philosophy compared to what?
	Well, I'm trying to say that everyone holds in inconsistent ideas.
	So their model of the world is flawed.
	And that is because we need to get stuff done.
	And we don't have time to reflect on every single...
	idea or fact about the world that we come across.
	There's a utility barrier.
	For a while, at some amount of time, the kid is going to have this idea that the world is flat because it helps them play with The ball and the toys in his room, but he's also going to have this idea that I can't call daddy during the day at lunchtime because he's sleeping then because it's night where he is.
	And because there's that utility barrier that we're living creatures, we're mortals, that we're only going to live so long and we have to manage our time, manage our cognitive resources, think about the things that are important and We're always going to be stuck in our own model of the world.
	We'll know some objective facts and those will be hard-won truths and they'll make us better people and more in line with reality and better to engage in the world.
	We're not going to have Complete access is what I'm saying.
	And I don't think...
	I don't think that's...
	Sorry. So, I mean, sorry to interrupt.
	So, here's what happens. You kind of drop these bombs in like it ain't no thing.
	Okay. And you're not...
	And this strikes me as...
	I'm somewhat sneaky.
	Right? Which is... We're all stuck in our own subjective models of the world.
	Okay. Like, you just throw that in like it's an obvious thing and...
	That's begging the question.
	We're trying to figure that out, right?
	Yes, I understand. And you kind of jumped to the conclusion of the entire debate without – I don't know if you're conscious or not, if you're aware that you're doing that.
	Yeah, I apologize.
	I'm bringing my frame in, and that's unfair of me.
	Thank you for calling me out on that.
	No, it's not a frame. That's a fundamental statement about our capacity to process reality, which is the entire basis of my life's work.
	Okay. So again, I'm telling you that I have an emotional attachment, right?
	Because I, you know, I'm going to be honest about that.
	And we're talking about confirmation bias and so on.
	But if you say to me, well, we're all stuck in our own subjective universe, basically.
	Well, then you're saying that my entire life's work has been sophistry, falsehood, a lie, whatever you want to say.
	Hang on, hang on, let me finish.
	So if you're right, okay, that's important.
	I guess I need to give up what it is that I'm doing and go be a pole dancer or something.
	But I'm just saying that if you're going to try and drop those conclusions in, then you're basically going to a medical conference and saying, you guys are all con artists because there's no such thing as sickness and health.
	And people are going to push back pretty hard about that, right?
	I mean, I'm going to push back pretty fucking hard about this one too.
	Because you're just kind of dropping this stuff in which is what we're actually trying to establish which makes my entire life A lie.
	And again, the fact that that is on the table doesn't offend me.
	It doesn't offend me that you may be saying to some degree, Steph, your entire life is a lie.
	That doesn't offend me because I'm committed to the truth.
	And if the truth is that there is no truth, which of course is so contrary and ridiculous, right?
	So I'm trying to drag people out of subjective experience into objective truth, objective morality, objective reality.
	Objective facts, objective existence, and it's called universally preferable behavior.
	There's a hint that it's not subjective, right?
	My whole approach to ethics and my whole approach to peaceful parenting and nonviolence against children and so on, right?
	So I have, for my entire public existence and even my private existence before that, been saying to people who are aggressive towards children, that's wrongly immoral and I'm going to tell you why.
	And it's not subjectively right, it's not Subjectively wrong, it's objectively wrong and immoral.
	And because of that, you know, people have said to abusive parents who won't reform and won't change, they've said, I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore because you're an immoral person who won't repent and won't apologize and so on, right?
	Now, if I've been entirely wrong about all of that, in other words, if everyone's stuck in their own subjective perceptions, there's no such thing as universal, there's no such thing as objective, there's no such thing as truth, Then I have, oddly enough, done great ill in the world by claiming it would be like saying that the cause of epilepsy is demonic possession.
	Well, not only has that made people suffering from an illness liable to theological or moral attack as being nests of demonic vipers in their soulless, godless, sinful self, but it's also prevented Robust medical research into the origins of epilepsy with a potential cure and so on.
	As universality, as objectivity, as truth, and so on, which, you know, when you say, well, we're all stuck in our own subjective perceptions, then I'm just telling you that's, I mean, you poke in a hornet's nest in my heart, which doesn't mean anything, other than I'm just going to be frank with you, that we are now kind of squaring off.
	You know, I'm always interested in debates.
	It's like, okay, we're going to have participative thing, or is it going to be more of a squaring off, like more of a combat thing?
	And because you're slipping in these wild conclusions that invalidate or actually turn from good to evil my entire existence in public persona and arguments, I'm staring at you across the ring now, and I'm putting on some boxing gloves.
	I'm just going to be frank with you about that.
	No, no, that's fair. But go ahead.
	Okay. And I'm a little surprised that I'm invoking that reaction, but I may just mean...
	Lack of care on the language on my part.
	But where I'm...
	I could still argue that there's better and worse without perfect, right?
	So even if we don't have perfect...
	We don't have all this objective truth at hand.
	We can still have better models and worse models for how the world works.
	We certainly can't if we're stuck in our subjective perceptions.
	In other words, if we are fundamentally subjective and interpretation is all and we can't gain access as you pointed out, which I do want to ask about.
	What does it mean to gain access to objective reality?
	Then if we are all stuck in our subjective perceptions, then better or worse becomes...
	It's like saying, did you have a better...
	Did you have a more accurate or less accurate dream?
	Right? Could you understand, like, if I said, oh, I had a dream about such and such last night, would you say, okay, would you say that that dream is more or less accurate about the world?
	Now, you could say there could be archetypes, there could be self-knowledge to be gained out of that dream.
	But it wouldn't make any sense to say, is that dream better or worse?
	Is it true or false?
	Is it more accurate or less accurate?
	It's basically saying, is your dream more objective or less objective?
	Well, if it's a dream, none of those standards would apply.
	And if we're all stuck in our own subjective perceptions, then better or worse make no sense.
	Well, earlier on you said that you didn't want to banish subjectivity completely.
	What I'm trying to argue is that you can still have a model of the world that is better or worse than the model you had previously.
	Okay, compared to what?
	You say it's better or worse, compared to what?
	Well, it's more in line with the...
	It would be better because it's more in line with the objective world, even though a perfect alignment is...
	Within the objective world is impossible.
	Having your model have more utility, it has more explanatory power about the objective world than a model.
	So it would be empirical, not prescriptive.
	In other words, it would be an after-the-fact evaluation, like pragmatism, utilitarianism or pragmatism, which is you basically throw a whole lot of shit against the wall and see what sticks.
	You try a whole bunch of things.
	We want to solve the problem of poverty.
	Okay, so let's try the welfare state.
	Let's try charity.
	Let's try pro bono.
	Let's try universal basic income.
	Let's try the free market.
	Let's just try a bunch of stuff and then experiment like crazy and see what works.
	Is that what you mean in terms of you would evaluate things relative to the world as a whole?
	I'm saying that it would...
	I'm not really understanding what you're meaning with that.
	You have an idea of how the world works.
	That's not just what's in your mind, but it's also performative.
	If you're walking with your feet, you don't expect to float off of the planet.
	You have expectations about the world.
	It's... Because you have these experiences, you've tested truth claims, that increases your concordance with reality and your ability to make things happen in the world around you,
	right? For example, because you've done things before, and so there's an empirical aspect, but there's also like you've created, and through synthesis, through reason and experience, and logic,
	you've created your aspect, your model of the world, and it's Maybe not everything is perfectly in line with how the world actually is, but because it is to a degree aligned, you can function in the world and things can happen.
	Now, can you judge hypotheses ahead of time based upon rational consistency?
	As we talked about earlier, if somebody says the Sun is 93 million miles away and also inside the Earth, Would we dismiss that without testing?
	Well, I think that's the ultimate test of a model is its predictive power.
	Now we're back to empiricism.
	I'm not talking about predictive power.
	I'm talking about if a theory is self-contradictory, can it be dismissed out of hand?
	If a theory is self-contradictory, can it be dismissed out of hand?
	So if I say the earth is both made of rock and green cheese, would you go and test it or would you say that's impossible and therefore it's false?
	Yes. As a hypothesis, we can, yeah, I'll go with that.
	Wait, what do you mean you'll go with that?
	Yeah, I agree. I can't think of anything that would make me disagree with that.
	I think you're right. Okay, fantastic. Okay, so we're testing conceptual models against the laws of logic before we test empirical facts against results, right?
	So we dismiss With prejudice, like it's not going to be maybe tomorrow, the moon is both earth or rock and green cheese.
	We dismiss with prejudice forever, across the universe for all time, self-contradictory theories.
	Is that a fair way to put it?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Okay, good. I mean, sometimes we may discover that one of those propositions are false, and then we won't discover that until we actually try to do something wrong.
	Crazy or radical that's against that proposition.
	And then we discover that proposition is false and that we've had some bad input and we have to adjust our expectations accordingly.
	But in general...
	Well, no, but that's only after the theory has passed the test of logical consistency.
	Okay, yeah. Okay, so that's great.
	So as far as judging people's propositions, If those propositions are self-contradictory, then we know that those propositions are false.
	If there are propositions about, like I can say, oh, in my dream, the moon was both rock and green cheese.
	I can say, and that happened in my dream.
	That's fine, because I'm not making a true statement about reality.
	I'm saying this was my weird experience in my dream.
	Like, we've all had those dreams.
	Where you can fly, right?
	You can fly over the earth, right?
	And it's like, well, you can't fly in the real world unaided.
	So I'm not making a truth claim about the objective world.
	I'm saying this crazy thing happened in my dream, right?
	But the moment somebody's making a truth claim about the world, the objective universe, if that truth claim is self-contradictory, we always and forever dismiss it right out of hand, right?
	Mm-hmm. Or we look for an explanation, right?
	If there's some evidence of a contradiction, then we'd look for some other explanation.
	Maybe both their propositions are false.
	Maybe the moon isn't green cheese or rock.
	No, no. I understand that.
	Of course. But what I'm saying is the proposition itself is discarded.
	It may be that the moon is neither rock nor green cheese, but it can't be both at the same time.
	Yeah, we flag it as false and say there's something wrong here.
	Okay. All right. So...
	Would you also say that the same is true for moral propositions?
	In other words, if somebody says, I mean, this is kind of a common one now, right?
	If somebody says, racism is bad and all white people are racist, we understand that that's a contradiction, right?
	Because if racism is bad, a negative judgment without evidence of an entire race and all individuals who comprise it, Actually, any negative judgment about any race that comprises all individuals is racist, right?
	Because it's a negative judgment against what will obviously be a bell curve.
	So if somebody says racism is bad and all white people are racist, is that a valid moral proposition?
	Yeah, well, because you're throwing in those extra propositions, so the actual statement is itself racist, then we can dismiss it out of hand.
	Okay, so that can be dismissed out of hand.
	If somebody says that theft, which is the threatened or forcible transfer of property against someone's will, if theft is wrong, but taxation is good, When taxation is the threatened or violent removal of property against somebody's will, then can that moral proposition also be dismissed out of hand?
	Well, it's flagged as inconsistent.
	Well, it's not inconsistent.
	Because you're saying you're putting these things both in the same category.
	So, I mean, I see the argument.
	But at the same time, the difficulty is there's going to be lots of people who don't agree with you.
	No, that's not the difficulty.
	That's the point. I mean, nobody really argues much about slavery anymore because nobody in the West at least accepts the moral validity of slavery.
	So saying it's a problem because a lot of people believe in moral contradiction, I mean, that's the whole reason why you would deal with it, right?
	There's not a lot of nutritionists who say don't eat seagull poop because almost nobody eats seagull poop, right?
	So it's not an issue. But they may say don't eat junk food because there are hundreds of millions of people addicted to junk food, right?
	So the fact that it is something that is widely accepted is exactly why you would deal with it, right?
	Yeah. Okay, I mean...
	So you're...
	Yeah, because now we're getting into the whole objective morality stuff, right?
	Well, no. See, now... No.
	So far, no. So far, we're simply evaluating statements put forward by people to check them for logical consistency, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So if someone's...
	Yeah.
	So the way... So the statements you've made are contradictory.
	Yes. Okay. So...
	Or to take a third one, we say hitting people is bad.
	Hitting defenseless people who can't fight back or escape is even worse.
	But spanking children is good.
	These would be contradictory moral statements, right?
	And we wouldn't need empirical data to reject or repudiate those and say that is an invalid, that is an incorrect proposition.
	And because it's in the realm of morality, if you put forward an incorrect proposition, you're not just wrong, you're immoral.
	I'm not saying that you're evil, but you're certainly immoral, right?
	And so...
	If we just look at these three statements, one regarding racism, one regarding taxation, one regarding spanking, if you and I both agree that people who put forward those propositions, they are wrong, but may exist in a state of nature.
	In other words, they don't know how wrong they are.
	Because, you know, it's like if you hear a constant sound You stop hearing it after a while, right?
	And if you believe something is true, you'll stop examining it after a while.
	You know, not everybody does the Archimedes test of whether the world is round or flat by sticking two sticks at the ground a thousand miles apart and seeing what the difference in the shadow is, right?
	We've got to move on.
	As you say, we've got to get things done in our life.
	So somebody may be putting forward arguments that are contradictory and they don't really notice it because it's so common, it's generally accepted.
	They get praised for saying contradictory things.
	They would get punished for saying non-contradictory things, as I can certainly testify and attest to.
	So, in the realm of morality, you and I have agreed that people who make self-contradictory statements in the realm of ethics are wrong but may exist in a state of nature.
	When that error is pointed out, they shift from being wrong to being immoral If they don't reform their arguments.
	So right now there's nothing else that we need to talk about and I'll tell you why.
	Because you just got handed your entire life's work as was handed my entire life's work that we are certainly in the world not at all short of people making self-contradictory moral statements.
	And if you and I both agree that self-contradictory moral statements Are wrong slash immoral, then you and I will not hit the grave.
	I mean, you're a younger man than I, it sounds like by far, which is great.
	It's got more time to fix things, right?
	But you and I will not hit the grave having eliminated these errors from the world.
	So this is great because I've taken you out of the realm of, are we in a simulation?
	And you yourself have agreed, and I'm not trying to catch you out or anything, I'm sort of pointing out the facts, that you yourself have agreed that we must work to eliminate self-contradictory moral statements, or at least if you want the world to be a good place, and if you're concerned about not just irrationality but anti-rationality, that you now have your life's work cut out for you, which is to Socratically examine, as I have, and as you do as well, right?
	But Socratically examine people in the public square and say, oh, this is what you believe.
	Are your beliefs consistent?
	Are they logical?
	Do they hang together? Or are they self-contradictory?
	In which case you go from possible Severe wrongness to outright immorality.
	And you won't have to worry about the degree to which human beings have access to the objective universe.
	You won't need to worry about whether or not we exist in a simulation.
	Because now you have as your goal, if you're interested in truth and virtue and philosophy, you have as your goal the Socratic examination of moral beliefs.
	To unravel contradictions and shift people from error to moral responsibility.
	Which, by the way, they'll just hate you for.
	It's the nature of the universe because a lot of people want to be right rather than be honest and virtuous.
	I sort of cleared the way forward for your life's work if you're interested in philosophy, if that helps.
	Yeah. I think that this has been a good conversation, and I hope I haven't squared off too much against you there, but I think that I've got a better understanding of where we are at.
	And I agree with you wholeheartedly that getting people to be more consistent in their moral beliefs is...
	Is an admirable trait, admirable pursuit, and I'm glad that you do it, that you take it on.
	I sometimes worry that, because you had so much resistance, is there maybe a more pragmatic way to do it?
	Well, I hope that there is, and I hope that you're the one, because I don't think you quite got what a burden I put on you now.
	I don't think, I mean, I think that you still think this is some kind of intellectual debate.
	You realize that I'm giving you intellectual arms in a battle here, right?
	And not by my orders, but by your own particular values, right?
	Because you either take on the battle of examining and exposing anti-rational or irrational elements in people's moral thinking or you abandon philosophy and retreat to some degree as a coward because now you know it's a necessary and important battle but the moment that you realize the dangers of the battle you flee and I say this not in any hostile way or any negative way but when I was talking about the people being shifted from a state of nature to moral responsibility I'm talking about you because You have a lot of complicated questions with regards to philosophy,
	which are important.
	I've talked about them before and I think that they're valuable.
	Unfortunately, we don't have time to unravel them because the world is getting kind of more immoral.
	There was a Russian guy on YouTube who live-streamed horrendous abuse of his girlfriend.
	He had tens of thousands of subscribers and supporters and everyone was fine.
	I guess YouTube was fine with that.
	And then eventually, he poured water on her, drove her out in the middle of the Russian winter, out of his house, wouldn't let her back in.
	And she, while pregnant, she froze to death.
	Oh, God. And YouTube, I mean, they won't let me on the platform.
	This guy's on the platform.
	Yeah, no, I can't get PragerU to talk about economics, but this guy...
	I mean, the guy could be facing 15 years in prison.
	Do you think nobody ever complained about this at YouTube?
	Come on. Nobody ever complained about this at YouTube.
	It'd be ridiculous, right? But YouTube has no apparent problem with this stuff, at least not historically.
	But me making recent arguments with evidence, well, that's dangerous.
	Bad, right?
	Yeah. You have a lot of interesting topics and questions, but when you're a doctor in a time of plague, esoteria is abandonment of duty.
	It's literally like a doctor who likes to play golf.
	There's a plague and he can save lives, but instead he's working on his golf swing.
	Mm-hmm. And that's the invitation.
	I just put that out to you.
	I put that out to everyone.
	What are you going to do in this time of moral plague?
	What are you going to do now?
	You may say, well, I'm going to flee.
	I'm going to hide. I'm going to go underground.
	I'm going to Back off.
	Okay, I mean, listen, I mean, I'm not going to say, ooh, that's terrible, ooh, you should never, everybody should, right?
	Everybody has different circumstances, different skills, different options, different abilities.
	All moral actions are permissible, but you need self-knowledge to make them just or right or reasonable or valid.
	And if you say...
	Like, here's the thing. You listened to this show for a while?
	Yeah. I mean, I say this to everyone who's listening to this, right?
	So... If you've listened to this show for a while, you are, in a philosophical sense, a kind of doctor.
	And we are in a time of plague.
	And... The call to intellectual arms has been sounding like a klaxon for many years across the human and moral landscape.
	And that's a question everybody needs to answer for themselves.
	What am I doing as a healer?
	I say healer, not doctor, because it's more of a reserved term.
	What am I doing as a healer in a time of plague?
	Now, am I sitting there saying, well, you know, there's some level of subjectivity in everyone and we can only gain a certain amount of access to the objective universe and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And listen, I mean, I wrote a book, Essential Philosophy.
	You can get it for free at essentialphilosophy.com where I talked about these very issues.
	But the whole point of that book was to get people to UPB. I have the...
	The worm and the hook, right?
	The hook is subjective morality.
	The worm is interest in philosophy.
	That's what gets you the bite. But, you know, everybody, you know, it's a Sunday today.
	You probably have a little bit of time.
	You know, close your eyes.
	Sit on the couch. Think about all the moral instruction you have received.
	All of the objectivity, facts, and truth that you have received from these conversations, from my presentations, from the experts I've interviewed.
	What are you doing with it?
	What are you doing with it? How are you acting in the world to advance the values of reason, evidence, and philosophy?
	What's the actionable items that come out of These conversations, this listening, your interest in philosophy.
	This is what used to happen in the business world is everybody would sit down.
	When I was in the business world, people would sit down for meetings and everybody would windbag about stuff.
	I wouldn't be quite pounding the table, but it wouldn't be far off from that saying, okay, what actionable items are we getting out of this?
	What can we do? Not only what can we do, but how can we measure it?
	Because you can't manage what you can't measure.
	If you're interested in abstractions, great.
	But if you've listened to this show for a while, and you haven't moved from theory to action, you're part of the problem.
	I'll be straight up. You're part of the problem.
	Because you're interested in philosophy as a toy, as an abstract brain tinkering, as maybe a way to feel smarter than those around you, or something like that.
	But philosophy...
	It's designed to get you in trouble, right?
	Philosophy which doesn't get you in trouble does no harm to the evildoers in the world.
	So, peace, reason, voluntarism, ostracism is of course my preferred way of dealing with the people who simply won't admit error or moral fault.
	But you've been listening to this show for a while.
	And of course, what I noticed, it's not a criticism.
	It's not a criticism at all.
	I'm simply pointing out something that I've noticed.
	But what I noticed was you didn't say, you know, I've been really taking the Socratic approach to the moral philosophies or moral beliefs or ideals or ideas of those around me.
	And it's getting pretty bloody hot out here.
	It's getting pretty tense around here.
	Well, that's someone who's taking philosophy seriously and doing something about it.
	You're going to get in trouble.
	You're going to get in trouble. And that's how you know how important philosophy is.
	If you're not in trouble. You know, if I had some windy, abstract, semi-Confucian, Tao crap, you know, be it one with the universe stuff, nobody would be upset with me at all.
	If I was Alan Watts.
	But it's the...
	Philosophy that leads to moral examination.
	That's what happened to Socrates, right?
	Morally examined people, found them wanting.
	It's a philosophy that leads to moral examination that counts, that matters.
	Everything else...
	I mean, can you imagine being an athlete?
	And training for 10 years to get to the Olympics.
	You get to the Olympics and you're just about to go and compete and you're like, eh, nah, don't really want to.
	Don't really care. Doesn't matter to me.
	No thanks. That would be very strange because the purpose of all of that training is to get out there and win the fucking gold.
	It's the purpose of all that training.
	You know, I've complained On this show, I've complained about...
	I've just got a really nice note from a woman yesterday.
	I put it up on my testimonials section.
	You should really check it out on the Freedomain blog, freedomain.com.
	It's sticky. It's a testimonial.
	You should scroll through that. It's got a really nice testimonial yesterday from a woman.
	I've complained, of course, in the past about women saying, oh, I want to be an engineer.
	I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer, right?
	And they spend their 20s doing all of this stuff, getting trained.
	And then they hit their early 30s, late 20s, early 30s.
	They're like, oh man, I've got baby rabies.
	I've got to have a baby. I want to have a baby.
	And they go have a baby.
	And then they say, oh, you know, I really like being home with the baby.
	I want to stay home with the baby. I want to stay home and have more kids.
	Well, great. I think it's wonderful.
	Have kids, of course, right?
	Dust off your balls and make a future.
	Dust off your eggs and make a future.
	I think that's great. However, it is important to recognize that society is down one doctor.
	Society is down one engineer.
	Society is down one lawyer, which, you know, some people may not think is the end of the world, but, you know, I guess people need lawyers from time to time.
	So, if you have consumed all of this knowledge and you are in possession of this knowledge, then you have great power.
	You have great power in the world.
	And as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility.
	With great power comes great responsibility.
	You have the power to fix the world.
	And because you have that power, the people who are profiting from a broken world aren't going to like you very much.
	Those people may be quite immediate to your environment and your circumstances.
	And I'm not telling you, just to be perfectly clear, I'm not telling you to go out and fight.
	I'm not telling you to go out and fight.
	But I am telling you that if you choose not to, you're responsible for that.
	Because you have knowledge now.
	You know, we few, we happy few, we hank-sank minions.
	We are in possession.
	Of the Holy Grail.
	Of objective morality.
	Morality without government guns.
	Without God's punishments.
	We are in possession of that.
	And that gives us...
	I knew when I first started working on objective morality, which was like the second day I had any intention of becoming a public philosopher.
	I knew that if I solved it, I was screwed.
	I knew that. I knew that if I solved the problem of objective morality that I was going to be targeted.
	And really, fundamentally, that's all I'm targeted for.
	Because if we have objective morality, it takes away the need for religious punishment and it takes away the need for the state as the only method by which moral injunctions can be fulfilled.
	And in particular, the non-aggression principle and the ostracism of evildoers Right, so you've got objective morality together with the ostracism of evildoers, and you have the solution to almost all of the world's ailments.
	Objective morality and ostracism is the one-two punch that enforces everything we talk about here.
	And why do you think I got targeted so hard and so early?
	Because the profits of religiosity, the profits of statism, are trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars.
	And massive control over an increasingly bowed, cowed, and frightened population.
	You are in possession of this knowledge.
	You can't undo that.
	While you are still brain-functioning and alive, you can't undo that.
	And even if you were to undo it, you wouldn't undo the fact that you currently are in possession of this information.
	And this information is Gandalf on the bridge with the Balrog, right?
	It's a big Balrog.
	It's a big devil. We're an old man, so to speak.
	It's a narrow bridge.
	But you're in possession of this knowledge.
	The knowledge that is both necessary and dangerous to save the world.
	It's always my question. Okay, what are you doing?
	It's my question to myself. I'm harsh with myself as well.
	What am I doing with it? Am I doing enough?
	Am I doing the right thing? Could I be doing it differently?
	Have I done too much? What am I doing in this dance with danger known as actually thinking for yourself?
	And not just thinking for yourself, but bringing that thought, those thoughts, those questions to the world.
	So, my friend, and I mean that genuinely, we are friends in wisdom, in the pursuit of wisdom here.
	That's why I said I don't think you understand what I've just done.
	Which is, I've just handed you a conscription, or rather, you've chosen to receive a conscription to the most necessary and the most dangerous battle the world has ever known.
	And by pulling you out of the fog of, well, you know, It's kind of tough for English-speaking people to learn Chinese because it's kind of a sung language, right?
	That's all very nice. It's all well and good, but...
	I've now...
	Because your other question was around free will, right?
	I'm not trying to pick on you personally or anything, but the other question was around free will.
	Okay. So, prior to this conversation, you were lost in a fog.
	And I wanted to guide you step by step out of that fog.
	Now, your first impulse, I understand that, my first impulse too, is to run back into the fog and say, well, it can't be that simple as simply examining people for their moral contradictions.
	It can't be that simple. Let me see if I can overcomplicate things again.
	Let me see if I can state the blindingly obvious, like, yeah, there's some subjectivity in the world and feel that I'm adding anything to the battle against elemental evil that's going on in the world at the moment.
	But... I needed to lead you step by step out of that fog.
	What is free will? What is truth?
	What is subjectivity?
	And to give you what you have agreed to, and again, it's not binding, you could change your mind tomorrow, but if you change your mind without a good reason, then you'll know that you've changed your mind without a good reason and that you're backing down from an essential fight, and that the evils that then result are to some degree more your fault than theirs.
	Because if you are a doctor in possession of medicine, and let's say that there are fools out there, and there are fools out there who smoke too much, who drink too much, who do hyper-dangerous sports without helmets and so on, right? And they come into your hospital, and you have the method to cure them, but you don't cure them.
	You are, to some degree, responsible for their death.
	Why? Because you're wise and they're fools.
	And there are fools out there who think that, well, you know, we just need Joe Biden to give everybody Medicare and universal basic income and the world would be apparent.
	But they're idiots. They're pompous, vain, empty-headed, usually low IQ fools who wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground if it didn't have hair in a pointer.
	So, Being in the possession of wisdom is both a very great and a very terrible thing because it gives you more responsibility in some ways even than the evildoers.
	You know, the people who genuinely think that voluntarists are Nazis.
	Okay, they're just empty-headed, child-traumatized Programmed, propagandized fools.
	Useful idiots, you know, as the phrase goes, right?
	What is their degree of moral responsibility?
	I mean, if you look at these, the Antifa headshots and so on, you look at, I mean, imagine what kind of childhood these poor people had.
	Yeah, okay, they're doing wrong.
	Absolutely, they're doing evil, I think, some of them for sure.
	But they also were extraordinarily abused as children.
	I have no doubt of that.
	They were Relentlessly propagandized in schools.
	They were told that drugs were cool.
	They were probably put on Ritalin or some other god-forsaken brain-strinking medication when they were kids.
	You say, oh gosh, what? I mean, in a sense, what chance do they have?
	It's moral responsibility in the abstract.
	I get all of that. And there's some people who make it out.
	I had a conversation with an Xantifa member on the show some years ago.
	But it takes an extraordinary person to overcome that kind of trauma, brain rewiring and propaganda.
	Do they have much moral choice, much moral responsibility?
	It's hard to say, but it wouldn't be at the high end, for sure.
	But you, who are listening to this, on the other hand, you do have significant responsibility because you have knowledge, not just of what is true and what is good, but also how to overcome trauma, the necessity of moral courage in a dangerous world.
	And I'm not saying do things that are self-destructive.
	I'm not saying that at all.
	But where you can advance the cause of truth and reason and virtue and UPB, do so.
	And if people simply reject your arguments, push back, attack you, are bitter or angry or childish or vicious, and you have the reasonably safe option to dissociate from people, Then you must do so.
	If you wish to retain integrity to your values, now again, you can say, okay, I don't want to dissociate from anyone, then okay, you need to abandon philosophy, you need to abandon UPP. As I said before, because you're discrediting the philosophy by failing to act upon it.
	You're the fat guy promoting a diet, not realizing, or perhaps you are somewhat realizing, that by being a fat guy who promotes a diet, you're harming the diet.
	You're harming the perception of the diet.
	And so, you know, when I say, okay, so now there's three things here, right?
	You can talk about the contradictions of anti-racism when it blames whites.
	You can talk about the taxation is theft.
	And you can talk about that hitting children is immoral.
	it's evil it's evil it's not just because immorality is when you promote moral theories that lead to evil Thank you.
	And evil is when you violate the non-aggression principle.
	Is it violating the non-aggression principle to promote anti-rational ideas?
	No. It's immoral.
	In the realm of morality, it's immoral to promote anti-rational moral ideals.
	In the same way that it's immoral to lie, it doesn't mean you go to jail for it.
	It's immoral to have an affair. It doesn't mean you go to jail for it.
	It doesn't mean it's illegal. Doesn't mean that, you know, if you have an affair, your wife doesn't get to kill you morally, right?
	Because you've acted wrong.
	It's aesthetically negative, right?
	Right? So, there's aesthetically negative, which is, you know, something like lying in a non-coercet situation, having an affair, and so on.
	Being irresponsible, not performing tasks, or telling people that you're not going to do them, or something like that, right?
	Which causes harm to people, and so on.
	Now, these things... are immoral, but they're not evil because you're not initiating the use of force, and it's not direct fraud.
	And in the same way, the promotion of anti-moral moral theories is immoral.
	It leads to evil, but the people who actually do the evil are the ones who are evil.
	People who do evil are evil.
	Oh yeah, that's a bit of a tautology, but you get what I mean, right?
	Now, philosophy can't do much about the evildoers.
	That's the job for self-defense.
	That's the job for the police in some sort of future just civilization or society.
	But we sure as hell can do a lot about the promotion of anti-rational moral theories.
	That leads to violence.
	That leads to violence. And I don't know that we're doing that nearly as much as we need to as a community.
	And again, please don't put yourself in any danger.
	Don't break the law. Don't use violence.
	I mean, all of that, right? It's not the realm of philosophy.
	The realm of philosophy is the relentless opposition of anti-rational moral arguments.
	That's the realm of morality.
	And the whole purpose, I've said this from the very beginning of the show, two things that are important.
	Number one, nothing is more dangerous than false moral theories.
	Nothing in this world is more dangerous than false moral theories.
	That's number one. And number two, that the entire purpose of philosophy or that the realm that philosophy operates in is morality.
	The purpose of philosophy is happiness in the long run.
	But the entire sphere of morality, sorry, the entire sphere of philosophy is morality.
	Morality. And I have talked about ostracism of immoral people.
	For many, many years.
	It's the first thing that I was ever actually really attacked for, because it is so incredibly effective and powerful.
	Of course, I mean, the left is now suggesting it, and they just wanted to keep that weapon for themselves, obviously, right?
	And I am, of course, in possession, and this is one of the reasons I wanted to read my novel.
	Please, please go check it out, freedomain.com forward slash almost, freedomain.com forward slash almost, just Get the feed, start listening, I guarantee you'll be hooked.
	It's a great book. But one of the reasons, and this is what people find confusing a little bit about me, like if you're anti-communist, you must be a Nazi, or whatever, fascist, right?
	But my family, it's a very personal story.
	But my family suffered enormously under both international socialism, communism, and national socialism.
	On my mother's side, one of her stepmothers was Jewish, and there was, of course, that hounding.
	Even the non-Jewish, which was by far the majority of her family, they were all intellectuals, poets, writers of fiction and non-fiction, and relatively famous.
	I think one of her brothers won a German National Prize for poetry.
	I know actually he did, because the poem was on the wall of my childhood home.
	And they were not allowed to publish.
	They were driven underground. Sources of income were destroyed.
	And that was my family's life.
	And the Nazis. And people know this, which is why the accusation of white supremacy or the idea that whites should violently rule over other races is an absolutely repulsive, repulsive, repugnant, hideous notion.
	That was my family's life under Nazism.
	My mother's life under Nazism was terrible.
	Y'all know the story.
	My grandmother was killed, perhaps even by one of my uncles on my father's side on the night of the Dresden bombing.
	And my mother was in the east of Germany when the Russians invaded, when the Communists invaded.
	And she was in a village where a Russian tank commander Threatened to blow up and destroy the entire village.
	As communists, you couldn't be a commander in the Russian military without being a communist.
	And she told me that as a little girl, at about the age of eight or so, maybe nine, she had to snuggle up to the Russian tank commander In order to have him not destroy the village and kill her and everyone around.
	Now, we could of course go completely mad trying to unpack the details of that story from many decades ago.
	What the hell did my mother mean by snuggling up to a communist to prevent him from killing everyone when she was a little girl?
	Well, sadly, tragically, awfully, I think we all know what she meant.
	And it probably wasn't just him.
	That's my view of narcissism.
	And that's my view of communism.
	I've got a lot of theories, a lot of arguments, a lot of evidence, which I believe in.
	But that's where things will go if we don't take a stand.
	I know I've been pushing everyone hard lately.
	I did a big speech on Wednesday night.
	I'm doing another speech now. Very happy to have talked to you, my friend, this morning because getting people out of the fog and out of the field of intellectual battle is my catcher in the Ryzen area.
	Because you want to get lost in abstractions and you want to think that philosophy is books and debates and simulation and all of that.
	And I hope that we have a world at some point where that is the case.
	But that's not the case right now.
	You cannot honorably research obscure ailments if you're a doctor in a time of plague.
	You just can't.
	Because you have such a deep responsibility based upon the knowledge that you pursue.
	Don't be what the devil wants is for you to study philosophy and render it inconsequential.
	Oh, that's just an abstract philosophical question.
	Oh, that's such an ivory tower thing.
	Oh, yeah, so-and-so, Bob, whatever, he studies philosophy, he's really into philosophy, and it never adds up to anything.
	Nothing changes, doesn't do anything with it.
	So, you understand that if you study philosophy without challenging the moral contradictions of the people around you, you're doing the devil's work.
	You're serving some very, very bad fucking masters.
	And you may think that you're on the side of good, and I have no problem with you before you hear this argument, and you may, of course, reject this argument, in which case, please tell me why it's false, and I will stop making it, and I will retract, as I do, as you know that I do.
	But if you're in possession of this knowledge, you are a Superman, you are a mortal god, you are an X-Man, you are a superhero, and Charged with the full power of rational virtue.
	And, you know, in every superhero movie, the superhero discovers and expands his powers, usually, and then goes out and fights.
	And you have this superpower.
	Philosophy is responsibility.
	Moral responsibility, the most important responsibility there is in the world.
	That's what philosophy is. It gives you a superpower.
	And now a lot of people, of course, only use the superpower to make their own lives better, which is kind of like Superman working for the circus to make himself a multimillionaire and not fighting any evil in the world.
	It's a douche move, to put it mildly.
	And listen, I want philosophy to make your life happier.
	I do. I want it. This is why I wrote Real-Time Relationships.
	If you only use it to make your own life happier and better, well, two things.
	One, you're not serving an often helpless general population and you're letting the bad guys propagandize them without putting any pushback in the world, number one.
	And number two, it's not going to lead to your happiness anyway.
	It's just not going to lead to your happiness anyway because bad guys take over.
	And then what? There's no America to run to anymore, you understand, right?
	It's the last stand.
	It's the last stand. So knowing all of that, when I talked to my Sunday morning friend about, here's your mission, which you voluntarily, I didn't, you took it out of my hand, right?
	Taxation. Racism, hypocrisy, and spanking.
	And, you know, there could be many more.
	It's just the ones that happen to pop into my mind.
	It's certainly important to me. Well, what should have happened is, if you got it, like the true depth of what I was talking about, there would have been a 10-second pause, and you know what you would have said?
	Oh, shit. No, no, no!
	Do not watch! Do not watch!
	Back off! Back off! Rewind!
	Run! Flee! Nah, soldier, you're up.
	Yeah, well, I mean, in fairness to myself, I asked that question originally back in June, and when I was asked last night, oh, you finally got up in the tinge...
	I felt like, oh, that feels a little out of date now.
	The world's changed quite a bit since then, but we can still have the abstract conversation.
	I don't want to put out everything I've been doing to try and fight what's going on, but I think you are deadly right.
	About what you're saying about where we are in the world and what's going on and where the stakes are going.
	Yeah, but...
	And I have been doing things.
	I don't want to itemize all the things I've done and put it out there like it's a...
	I feel like I don't want to be defending myself, like saying, okay, well, I did this, this, and this, so I'm not a bad guy.
	No, totally set me straight. You know, where I've gone astray, and if it's an older question, I'm absolutely thrilled and overjoyed to be corrected.
	So defend away, honestly, and put people away.
	Okay, well, I mean, I wrote that question back in June.
	And I have been, like, I am very proactive with reaching out to people.
	I'm more than just a keyboard warrior.
	I mean, I don't...
	I think there is some sort of...
	Steph, there is some disagreement about strategy, I think, between us.
	But I'm on different boards of different things.
	My kids are still in the public school system, but I'm pushing back there.
	So I'm not ostracizing people.
	I'm still... Maybe not as harsh as you, because I'm trying to wake people up the way I can, but I get everything I'm doing.
	I'm actually in...
	With this lockdown stuff, I've been organizing sort of...
	I feel like there's speakeasies of sorts, because we're not allowed to talk to people.
	And that's one of the ways the communists get ahead is by destroying community and shutting people out.
	So I've actually been setting up sort of shadow networks of people where I'm organizing people and we're meeting and clandestine and sharing ideas and helping each other.
	So, yeah, I mean, I appreciate you martyring yourself the way that you do, but I think that there's also roles for us to play in reaching out to communities and helping people who are so confused about what's going on and but I think that there's also roles for us to play in Yeah.
	Giving them nudges in the right direction and assuring them that they're not crazy when they question the official narratives.
	That makes sense.
	Well, it certainly does, and I retract what I said before.
	You sound like a perfectly action-based and honorable man in this circumstance and situation, and I apologize for not characterizing you accurately, and I hugely appreciate it.
	And welcome you with open arms into the fray.
	I really, really do appreciate that, and I hope that you can forgive me for mischaracterizing.
	I did it based upon the question, which is the evidence I was working with, but new evidence?
	Hey! You know, I was irrational before because I was working with incomplete evidence.
	I appreciate the update and evidence, and it sounds great.
	Good for you, man, and that's fantastic work.
	Fantastic work. Yeah.
	All right. Yeah, no. And I appreciate that.
	And yeah.
	And it is a serious time.
	And I still sort of feel, though, it's nice to have that sort of space, like where I thought about, like, okay, let's talk about something abstract, too.
	But I agree with you.
	Like, it really is.
	Like, this is where we have to start.
	Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you need the R&D. This is to use a military analogy in a philosophical context, which only has some applicability.
	But you need the abstract R&D to come up with radar so that you can defend yourself against German bombers.
	But at some point, the pilots have to take to the sky or the theory ends up all theory and no practice.
	So anyway, I appreciate that.
	Is there anything you wanted to conclude with?
	I'm certainly happy to hear. Yeah.
	I think the only thing I would say because I do appreciate where you like using a ostracism is an important tool in the arsenal and it's definitely being used against us and it's definitely being used against you to a horrendous degree so I appreciate your desire to use that back but At the same time,
	we've got to reach out to people, and we've got to find common ground with people that aren't all the way there.
	Because a lot of these forces we're pushing against, people have visceral understandings that they're wrong.
	They may not be, like you were saying, in the realm of nature.
	They may not be all there where you are at with having a rational understanding of morality, objective morality, but they do have a more visceral sense of how wrong the world is going now.
	And we've got to rally those people.
	Well, I certainly agree with that.
	And I would say that one of my major goals is, you know, it's a jungle out here.
	And I've been working like a yeoman to hack down the trees, uproot the roots, and create a landing space.
	Because, you know, there's...
	All these people circling around, like in helicopters, and if there's no place for them to land, don't expect them to land.
	And if you're not willing to create a community of rational people for other people to join, you know, most people, they're not going to abandon what's keeping them afloat in the hopes of finding something somewhere down the road.
	They need some place to land.
	They need something to grab onto.
	Create a community of rational people, and then people aren't just going to be wandering off into nowhere, into a void.
	I get this way back in my first book, On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, about There's a village on the other side of the desert.
	Back then, people had to cross the desert even to know about the village.
	Now people know about the village.
	No one's going to cross that desert if there's no place at the end.
	No one's going to land their helicopter in the midst of vines and trees.
	It's just a short part of self-destruction, so we need to clear a place for people to land.
	It sounds like you're doing a fantastic job of that, and I honor and appreciate you for that.
	I think it's great work.
	As far as martyrdom goes, Yeah, it's harsh, of course, right?
	I mean, how I've been treated has been monstrously unjust and harsh, but I still don't consider it martyrdom.
	I still have a vastly better life than I ever would have had if I had not become philosophical or not pursued philosophy, and I also have a vastly better life than I ever would have had If I had not become a public philosopher.
	And it's partly because of my life, my wife, my family, my friends.
	And it's also partly because I have the honor, distinct honor, of these kinds of conversations.
	So thank you everyone so much for giving me that opportunity.
	Thank you everyone so much for supporting the show.
	Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter.
	I'm going to send out another free book probably today.
	You can do that at freedomend.com forward slash newsletter.
	FDRpodcasts.com to search for podcasts and download what you like.
	And freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	I really appreciate it. Thanks as always to James.
	Thanks to the listeners. Thanks to you, my brothers and sisters in the battle of ideas.
	I hugely appreciate everything that we're doing as a community, everything that you're doing to support what it is that I do.
	And if there's anything I can do to support what you do even better or even more, please, please let me know.
	Operations at freedomain.com.
	Lots of love from up here.
	I'll talk to you soon.
	Well, thank you so much for enjoying this latest free domain show on philosophy.
	And I'm going to be frank and ask you for your help, your support, your encouragement, and your resources.
	Please like, subscribe, and share, and all of that good stuff to get philosophy out into the world.
	And also, equally importantly, go to freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	To help out the show, to give me the resources that I need to bring more and better philosophy to an increasingly desperate world.
	So thank you so much for your support, my friends.

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