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Jan. 1, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:26:41
ETHICS IS ONLY TWO ARGUMENTS!
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So I just noticed a couple of things in UPB Conversations, just as a sort of browsing past some of the various chat forums, and there are a couple of tips that I wanted to give.
It's not really specific to UPB, I'm happy to take questions, but the tips that I wanted to give, it's not that people are debating in bad faith in a way, but when people have emotional tension or hostility regarding a particular proposition,
What they'll try and do, it's unconscious, I don't blame them for it and I understand why they do it, but what they do is if the argument threatens them, and I, you know, I mean one of the wild things about UPB for me is that I viewed it as an absolute godsend, almost literally, because it gave me an understanding of morality that I just didn't have before and I would argue that the world didn't
have before, and of course, because when you are dying of thirst in a desert, and you think, oh my gosh, I found a well, I found an oasis, I'm as happy as a guy!
And then other people are just taken, you know, they look equally thirsty to me, but they take a deep pea splash into the oasis, thus trying to spoil the water.
It seems a little incomprehensible to me.
And that which was really a kind of salvation for me, turned into, well, often became kind of like a curse for others and it took me a while to sort of understand how UPB does threaten entrenched power structures.
Entrenched power structures with regards to mysticism and with regards to democracy and with regards to the state as a whole and parental authority and so on.
Universality is the opposite of hierarchy, right?
Hierarchy is when you have the rulers have rules that they can follow and then the opposite rules apply to those They rule over, that's really the essence of rulership, is exception and opposition to the rules you impose.
That's what power is, excluding yourself and having the opposite rules for yourself.
Excluding yourself from the general rules.
So universality has a huge impact and UPB has a huge impact and most times when things have a very big impact people tend to avoid them.
If they can't wrestle with them it's too big a thing to handle and so they just Avoid it.
And then, though, if UPB kind of chases them down and tickles them, then what they'll do often, and I've sort of seen this happening a number of times, is they will come and they will attempt to... and I can feel this emotional energy.
I know that's not an argument.
I'm aware that's not.
I'm just telling you my sort of personal experience.
There's a kind of claustrophobic, squid-intestine complication to UPB.
I don't know if you've seen this coming on where people are, you know, they come up with really wild edge cases and demand that you objectively solve this.
They avoid the central argument of UPB.
They question any kind of universally preferable behavior while putting forward statements of their own that confirm it, and then they will ask you to explain it.
They will ask you to unpack it.
And then, as you're trying to do so... I don't know if you remember, there was a guy I was trying to explain something to, and he kept interrupting me a week or two ago, and I just had to say, look, just try and be patient as I sort of work through this argument.
And that throwing of sand in the face, in a sense, or muddying the waters, is kind of common.
So I was thinking about this, and something that I've taken for granted for many years, which I should sort of unpack and explain to y'all, is arguing the opposite position.
Arguing the opposite position.
So when I went to school, I went to university, and even in high school, we were expected, I don't think this is really the case anymore, but we were expected to be able to argue both sides of a position.
So the famous B-I-R-T, BERT, be it resolved that, right?
And that's your argument.
Can you argue both sides of the argument?
The pen is mightier than the sword.
The sword is mightier than the pen.
You have to be able to make both arguments.
And when I was taking a pretty brutal course on the Protestant Reformation in university, I was expected to be able to make, say, Martin Luther's arguments with great precision and advocate them very strongly.
So being able to argue the opposite position, if you've read or listened to the book I wrote, the novel almost, I argue, I mean there's actually a very sort of fiery debate in the middle where I argue both sides of the equation, or take both sides of the argument, and I mean really that's what novels are, is everybody has their own perspective, their own preferences, their own view of the world, and you have to convincingly inhabit those in order to be able to Create compelling characters.
Otherwise, they're just kind of like cliches or whatever the convenience is.
So when it comes to UPB, I guess an approach going forward that could be useful, and I think I'll start deploying it.
I've done it in the past, but I haven't really formalized it as a sort of strategy, is if someone can't argue for the case, in a sense, there's no point arguing the case for them.
So if somebody is interested in UPB, has maybe read the book or some articles in the presentations, and then what they do is they come and they say, you know, I have issues with UPB.
I don't believe this.
I don't believe that.
Then I think a useful strategy, and not just for UPB, but for other things too, is to say, okay, make the case for UPB so I can understand how well you understand the argument.
Make the case for UPB.
Now, UPB is two things.
It's two things and that's it.
One is UPB is a valid concept.
Universally preferable behavior is a valid concept.
And once somebody is saying UPB is right or wrong, then they're saying there's a universal standard called truth or accuracy or consistency which Which arguments that claim to manifest truth should conform to truth and consistency and so on.
So that's all.
UPB is like, okay, first you gotta get that there is UPB and that's embedded in the very process of debating, right?
That's number one.
And number two, universally preferable behaviors cannot self-contradict.
I mean, you know, when I boil it down to that, it seems like kind of dumb in a way, but that's all it is.
One, UPB is valid, and two, UPBs can't self-contradict, because universality can't self-contradict.
If something is universal, then it has to be consistent, because something cannot be both universal and self-contradictory at the same time, in that a theory of physics can't be both universal And self-contradictory at the same time.
Universality is consistency in ideas just as it is in matter and energy.
So yeah, all UPB is, and everybody sort of sticks up on the first part because the first part requires introspection and it requires a higher level of thinking in that you have to pause and see what it is that you're doing when you insist that UPB be proven.
or be valid or true or you know however people are going to phrase it you have to pause in the same way that it's easy to argue against the comprehensibility of language but what you have to do is pause and stop and self-reflect and say okay what assumptions do I have to make in order to be able to argue for the incomprehensibility of language given that I'm using language to argue for the incomprehensibility of language that's a self-detonating argument
And so everybody wants to sort of jump over the self-reflection part or the observing of what it is that you're doing.
You know, it's an analogy I made, I don't know, like 15 years ago that if you're engaged in a... and I did this way back.
I talked about this when I was unpacking my age 23 manifesto at freedomainnft.com.
But I used to actually engage in mail, like physical written mail debates with a wide variety of people.
This was like Carrier Pigeon Internet 101.
This is back before there really was an internet, even before the emergence of message boards really.
I put an ad in the paper, got a P.O.
box, and mailed out a free copy of the Rationalist Manifesto, and then I had a couple of dozen people debating and arguing about it, and I would engage in debates with them by mail, in the same way I guess people used to play chess by mail.
And, of course, if somebody were to write to me and argue that mail never gets delivered to the right address, Then they would love to drag me into that debate and have me ignore the basic fact that they were writing to me to argue that mail never gets sent to the right address.
Now of course they would have to assume that mail gets sent to the right address in order to write to me but people don't want to slow down and get into slow motion strolling through Jell-O looks at what it is that they're doing when they argue.
So that's it for sort of UPB number one UPB is a valid concept, and anybody who debates and argues with you and all of that has automatically accepted that.
And two, universally preferable behaviors can't be self-contradictory.
Right?
So, as I sort of said a million times, and you know this one, like, stealing cannot be UPB, because stealing is the unwanted transfer of property.
But if stealing is UPB, then you must want to steal and be stolen from.
Under all circumstances, at all times, in all locations, you must want to steal and be stolen from.
But if you want to be stolen from, you're not stolen from.
If you want your property to be taken away, then it is not taken away.
I mean, you can't charge a garbage man for theft, right?
If you put your garbage in a bag and put it in a bin, a garbage bin by the side of the road, you can't charge the garbage man with theft because you are saying, I want you to take this away.
It's not theft.
I mean, the garbage man comes into your house and takes property, then that's theft.
But if he, you know, so if you want someone to take your property, and your garbage is your property, right?
You want someone to take your property, it's not theft.
So that's it for UPB.
It's just two sides of the coin.
One is, there is such a thing as universally preferable behavior.
And two, universally preferable behaviors cannot be self-contradictory.
And that's it.
But if people can't argue that, and I'm not saying that's a simple argument or it's just, you know, well, you repeat it like some sort of mantra.
Universally preferable behaviors are valid.
Universally preferable behaviors cannot be self-contradictory.
Cannot contradict themselves.
Okay.
And all that you're saying is your behavior cannot contradict your argument.
Because that's the big, that's the empirical thing that ties the world to the idea.
Your behavior cannot contradict your argument.
Which is back to the, no mail gets delivered to the right Your behavior is based upon the assumption that mail gets delivered to the right person, and if your behavior contradicts your argument, then either your behavior is invalid or your argument is invalid.
Now, because I'm an empiricist, behavior wins.
Behavior wins.
So if somebody says, language is meaningless, Then their behavior, in terms of what they're saying, their behavior, and the fact that they're engaging in a debate, their behavior always wins over the argument.
In the same way that in science experimentation always wins over the hypothesis or the conjecture or the theory or the scientific proposal.
Always wins.
Always wins.
In the same way that, I don't know if you've ever had this, I think it happens to everyone once in a while, you think you have, I don't know, a hundred bucks in your bank account and then you go to your bank account and there's 50 bucks in your bank account because you had some bill or whatever it is that you've forgotten about and they took the money out of your account.
So then you have an idea.
How much money do I have in my bank account?
I have a hundred dollars in my bank account.
You go to the ATM or log in or whatever.
You have 50 bucks in your bank account.
That's it.
Your idea is not correct.
And the empirical fact of the contents of your bank account is correct.
So, because I'm a science-based, empirical-based guy, if you behave in a way that contradicts your argument, your behavior trumps your argument.
And this is why when people say, there's no such thing as UPB, they're making an argument that is universally preferable behavior to accept things that are true and reject things that are false and if you say there's no such like you must stop believing in universally preferable behavior because it's false that's universally preferable behavior.
Right?
They have to slow down look at their actions.
Slowing down and looking at your actions is tough because you see you can make up whatever crap you want in your arguments but your behavior By their deeds shall you know them.
Actions speak louder than words.
This is the way to remember this.
Actions speak louder than words.
If you're sending me an email saying emails never get delivered, I don't care about your argument.
I just look at your actions.
But sophists always want to keep you focused on language rather than have you evaluate their actions.
Because language can be manipulated.
Actions are empirical.
And it's really frustrating for people who are used to manipulating language when you pause and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on, hang on.
Let's look at what you're doing before we bother getting to your argument.
Let's look at what you're doing before we bother getting to your argument.
What is implicit?
in what it is that you're doing.
So when people, they love to get you all tied up in knots about, are the senses valid, and how much are they valid, and can they be fooled, and so on.
It's like, yes, but you are relying upon my senses to transfer your argument.
When you get out of Plato and into Aristotle, so to speak, when you get out of mysticism, the mysticism of language, and into the Baconian scientific empiricism of what people are actually doing, a huge number of philosophical problems can be solved by simply judging the metaphysics and epistemology inherent in what people are actually doing.
Magicians always do some trick to keep you looking away from what they're actually doing.
They'll do something dazzling with their right hand so you don't focus on what they're doing with their left hand.
And the dazzling thing is just a language.
Everybody wants to drag you into this cathedral of language and say, here's where we will joust.
And my argument is, no, no, no.
Let's look at what you're doing first.
We will solve most problems by relying on the empiricism of your actions.
So when people start to tell you that, oh, there's no such thing as UPB, UPB is invalid, there's no such thing as morality, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you want to, and I, of course, we want to be dragged into that language land where we're jousting with these clouds of language and meaning and definition and so on.
And I think one of the things that's really helpful about UPB is to say, let's not do that.
Let's not do that.
Because universal's unconnected to empiricism are mysticism defined.
Universal's unconnected to empiricism are mysticism defined.
And the empiricism of action is where we build UPB from.
Now, people may genuinely not believe in universally preferable behavior or may avoid the topic or may never chime in or whatever, okay, but that we have no idea what they think or don't think because they're never participating in the argument or the debate.
The moment they start participating in the argument or the debate, they're UPB.
Arguing against, arguing for, that's UPB right there.
And getting people to slow down to look at their actions is really stressful for people.
Because you're taking away a power that they want.
They want this power to have language disconnected from actions.
Because then it's so easy to manipulate.
You know, it's sort of like reading palms is easy.
Biology is hard.
Being a psychic is easy.
Being a physicist is hard.
And this actually comes from very sort of personal experience for myself when I was
I did two years of an English degree and I sort of very clearly remember, I just had the same issue with psychohistory when I was sort of back in contact with Lloyd DeMoss and when I was, I remember analyzing a section of John Fowle's The Magus, which is actually quite an influential book for me, and I just remember thinking, look I'm convincing enough and strong enough at language that I can make just about any case
And it's going to be fairly compelling.
But there's no facts behind any of it.
There's no facts behind it.
I believe this character represents this, and I believe this theme represents that.
And it's like, OK, can it be disproven?
Which is why, after I went to theater school, I couldn't go back into an English degree, even though I love to read, I love to write, and so on.
I switched to history because then I thought, OK, at least here's some facts.
Not many, not many, but there's some.
Facts.
So I can be wrong, I can be right.
I can make a case based not just on my ability to persuade, but on some reference to empirical facts, source documents, and so on.
So, I think that's one of the reasons why there's this... people want to draw you into this over-complication.
And when you slow down to them and say, what is implied in the empiricism of your actions?
What is implied in the empiricism of your actions.
And if people can do that, fantastic!
They can say, OK, I am correcting you according to a standard that is not personal.
If somebody says to you, Queen is a better band than Led Zeppelin, right?
Well, it depends if you want to be happy or satanic, I suppose.
If you want to be satanic, then Led Zeppelin is a much better band.
But they would not appeal to universal principles as a whole, right?
Now you could say, Freddie Mercury's a better singer than Bob Dylan.
Yeah, and Freddie Mercury did folk as well, and Bob Dylan didn't do somebody to love, right?
Couldn't, in a million years.
And when you are dealing with subjective aesthetic preferences, then nobody says you're just wrong.
Now, you could say, I don't know, Prince is a better guitarist than Tom Petty or Jeff Lynne.
Why?
Because Prince rocked an incredible guitar solo at the George Harrison tribute and they gave it to him.
And I think Eric Clapton, when he was asked, are you the best guitarist?
He said, I don't know, but go ask Prince.
He was an amazing guitarist.
So when people are telling you that you are incorrect and there's nothing personal about it, there's nothing subjective about it, you're objectively incorrect, then you have to look at the empiricism of what they're doing in the argument.
Getting people to slow down and look at the empiricism.
We have a great resistance to it because of course a lot of the people who come in and go against UPB are threatened by UPB and hostile towards UPB.
Why?
Because UPB takes away their ability to use language as a manipulation tactic.
It takes away their ability to bullshit.
Because once you look and demand that other people look at the empiricism of their actions and everything that's implied therein You're taking away what most people use language for.
Most people use language to control, extract resources, manipulate, subjugate, praise, flatter.
It's a resource transfer mechanism.
It's why we developed such amazing language skills as a species because it's so good at transferring resources.
And of course the And you're really fighting a kind of hyper-feminism, right?
Because women tend to transfer resources with language, men tend to transfer resources with creativity or strength or manipulating.
Men create the resources by manipulating reality, women transfer the resources by manipulating language.
Which is why female voting leads to where we are.
So, asking people to kind of butch it up a little, to man it up a little, To grab their balls and take them out of the vagina dentata, in a sense, by saying, look, what's the empiricism of what you're doing?
And that's going to solve 90% of it.
But what I think is a solution to other people is a massive problem.
I think it's a great solution.
Look at the empiricism of what people do when you can solve 90% of conflicts.
But other people, they experience it as you taking away their power.
And they're kind of right.
Can't really argue with it.
You're taking away their power, because by demanding that they be judged by the empiricism of their actions, you're taking away their ability to make up a whole lot of nonsense and baffle-gab you into obscurity.
So I would say, you know, when you get people who want to pound on UPB or whatever it is, or property rights, right?
Everybody wants to get all the abstract stuff about property rights.
You saw that guy go, four categories of property!
No, no, that's like the four categories of atoms.
It's like, no, no.
So, I mean, kinds of atoms, yes, but not categories of atoms.
So, ask people, explain UPB to me like I'm five years old.
Because you can.
I did the ABCs of UPB like 12 or 13 years ago.
How to explain UPB to kids.
So, Ask people.
Okay, explain it to me.
Do you understand the theory?
Because if you oppose something you don't understand, it's because you perceive it as threatening your power.
If you oppose something you don't understand.
I could argue pro-communism from here until next year, very convincingly.
I understand it.
I was trained in it, took entire courses on it.
And if people can't advocate for the position they oppose, then they're opposing it for emotional reasons.
Or instinctive reasons that they sense UPB is going to take away their power.
In the same way that science, to a large degree, took away the power of the aristocrats.
By opposing the theological view of the aristocrats as the head and the serfs as the hands and the clergy as the soul and so on, right?
There's an instinctive reaction, animalistic really, to that which takes away power.
And if people are sophists, language-based resource extractors through manipulation, then they will be incredibly hostile to empiricism, which takes away their capacity to control others and extract resources through language.
I just wanted to mention that as I thought it was a pretty good way of maybe pushing back against some of this stuff.
Man, I'm doing great work these days.
I really am.
So I just wanted to mention that.
If you have any questions or comments, I'm happy to hear.
Yeah, I sort of have an anecdote.
I wasn't arguing about UPV, but I was arguing with my sisters about, you know, when does life begin?
Which might not be the best idea.
They basically told me, because I said, okay, life begins at conception, they were basically like, no, life begins when society agrees.
It's like, well, if society agrees that three pebbles are four, you have increased the number of pebbles.
That was kind of the analogy I was trying to go with.
I'm sorry, I'm having trouble hearing some of your words.
I don't know if you can move closer to the router.
Yeah, it's trouble.
You're kind of breaking up a little.
Apologies.
Is it better or worse?
I never know until you try, so, sorry, you were saying that you were saying to your sisters, your sisters were saying that life begins when society decides it begins?
Yeah, so basically I was arguing that life begins at conception and they were like, no, it only begins like after, what, like three months or whatever the date for abortion last day is.
And I was like, well, what's the difference between that and the day before?
The only time when there's really a difference, you know, is at conception.
Like, that's when it starts developing.
You know, I went through the whole argument there, like, why would it begin there?
But they just kind of insisted, no, if society agrees that it begins at a certain point, then that's where it begins.
Well, that's kind of funny because they say society agrees, but you're part of society and you don't agree.
And it's often the case that when people say, I go with the consensus, it's because they believe, and probably quite rightly so, that they're in control of the consensus.
So women outvote men, they outlast men, and so for women, they feel, and quite rightly so in a democracy, that they have control of the consensus.
So look at Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Anthony Fauci says trust the scientific consensus, trust the consensus.
Now he only says that because he's in complete control of the consensus because over the course of his career he's literally handed out, what, a billion dollars?
Somebody said a trillion but I think it's a billion dollars worth of grants.
And so he's in control of the consensus.
He can punish people who disagree with him.
He can reward people who agree with him.
So he says, we should go with the consensus, and that's a confession of somebody who believes, and in his case, yes, and in women's case, yes, that they're in control of the consensus.
So they say, hey man, we're just going to go with the consensus, which they know they're in control of.
So they're basically just saying, agree with me, although Fauci has become much more explicit about that, that to disagree with him is to disagree with science as a whole.
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All right.
If anybody else has any comments or questions, I'd be happy to hear.
Yes, Steph, I just wanted to say, mentioning the debate thing where you can argue the other position, and that's how you're a good debater, that just took me back to high school and the debate courses.
Things like that.
Like, we had to argue both positions.
I think that's a very good way to actually look at approaching debates.
Well, and it's become very strange, of course, these days.
Very strange from an Enlightenment philosophical standpoint.
Because now, beliefs are considered evil.
And therefore, to argue, let's say you wanted to argue a, you know, if you're very much against the IQ arguments, if you said to someone, as a devil's As a devil's advocate position argue for the IQ stuff, they would recoil like you had just asked them to stab themselves to prove that not stabbing yourself was okay, which was a good thing.
And so because they have infused particular arguments or data or perspectives as sort of evil incarnate, you can't advocate the devil's position.
In other words, superstition has taken over argument.
In the same way, like, if somebody believes, oh, if you go and touch that rock, your soul will be taken by the devil!
Or, as some of the more primitive tribes felt when Westerners came with their bedeviled cameras, that if the camera takes a picture of you, it is actually stealing your soul!
And so you can't let someone take a picture of you because it will steal your soul, and then when they would see the The camera photos be developed.
They were all you've stolen my song and so you would you would actually get attacked by a Native for trying to take a photograph and stealing their soul and so now and of course if you said to Some religious person.
I'll speak these words and the devil will appear They would never speak those words because that would be very dangerous for them if not fatal so now what's happened is we have
infused or projected devilish superstition onto particular arguments that all who hold these arguments must be evil, that the arguments are kind of a devil, they're a kind of a devil and if you were to speak the words of these arguments the devil would take your soul, the devil would destroy your virtue and so on and it's really kind of brutal how much superstition has taken over.
To argue the devil's advocate position It is a mark of intellectual honor.
It's a mark of intellectual ability.
To be able to understand an argument that you oppose, it's really the only way to actually oppose the arguments.
I mean, to oppose Hitler, you need to understand Hitler.
To oppose communism, you need to understand communists.
You need to be able to argue their positions, that way you can find out the flaws therein.
But now... Well, I mean, they're kind of right, because... And what's happened is, because people get taken out of context and then attacked and de-platformed, If a particular series of words comes together that can then get taken out of context, you can get de-platformed.
And so this malevolence that is basically founded upon the principle that there are people out there who have no interest in telling the truth, only in pursuing power, and because you can slice and dice people and reverse their meaning and get them de-platformed, The superstition, which is always related to a kind of social attack.
Superstition is, in essence, here's where social attack can occur.
Because if it doesn't occur from reality, then it would be empiricism.
But superstition is, well, if I do this, people will attack me, people will call me a blasphemer or a heretic.
And so now we have this superstitious terror of particular arguments that to even touch them will make you evil.
And that's, of course, the exact opposite of philosophy and science, where you have to be able to argue the devil's advocate position.
I think the problem with debating UPB with people is not really logical.
It's more human nature.
people who don't even believe in the soul, so to speak.
I think the problem with debating UPB with people is not really logical.
It's more human nature.
As you pointed out, because it threatens existing power structures, they will manufacture whatever dismissive argument it takes to make it go away.
And I think that's where a lot of He is a licensed financial professional both in the U.S.
Really, it's just a person saying, shut up, go away, and so I'm going to manufacture whatever it takes to defeat you.
Yes, yes, but I think if somebody is going to argue in good faith, then they cannot axiomatically just call your arguments immoral or stupid arguments.
I mean, the ad hominem is important because the ad hominem indicates that they view your arguments in a superstitious manner.
And this is why it's, you know, important, right?
I mean, what was it?
The communists were like, oh, he's a bad guy because, I don't know, people said so or whatever, right?
So that just indicates that they cannot argue the opposing position and therefore they cannot rationally or effectively oppose it.
And that is, yeah, I think that's one of the reasons why.
At harm is just, okay, I'm a manipulator and I don't have any goal of telling the truth, if that makes sense.
All right, any other comments or questions?
Hey, Steph, can you hear me OK?
Yeah, man.
OK, so I think that when I think about UPB, I kind of think of excuses as being kind of like bacteria and UPB as being kind of like penicillin.
So like what UPB does is it destroys like excuses in a person's moral system.
Can you tell me more?
I want to make sure I follow the argument.
Yeah, so like so the the universal says that like so you let's say you you say oh this this behavior is Preferable or good and then what an excuse one wants to do is come in and say oh, there's special circumstances that Make it so that it's the opposite.
So it's like there's really easy ones like it's It's preferable not to steal unless it's me or it's preferable not to hit unless it's your parent or the police or or
And then when universally preferable behavior kind of comes in to a person's mind, that tells the people who believe that that there's something wrong there that that can't be right.
So either They need to give up the preferable thing or figure out how to apply it more universally.
Right.
If that makes sense.
Yeah.
No, that does.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
And have you ever had this?
Sorry, I shouldn't say have you.
Everyone has had this where you're working on something and you suddenly realize you've completely fracked up.
I remember when I was working on A complicated piece of code, and I was very proud at how it all worked, and then I realized that I had not included any particular methodology for translating currency values, to which point it was all completely useless.
That didn't mean I had to throw everything out, but it meant that I had to redesign things, and I was like, yay, I'm done!
It's like, nope, nope, I'm actually a week from being done.
And when you realize that you've just Messed up.
You've made a mistake.
That's really tough and of course people think they're good because they're conforming to moral standards, moral ideals and consistency and so on.
People don't say stealing is wrong except for me.
You couldn't get away with that.
That would be to provoke your conscience since we're all addicted to universality.
That's our big mark as a species.
Our capacity for universality.
That's what denotes us as human beings as opposed to animals.
Animals don't do universality in that way.
And so when you say to someone, UPB, and they accept it, then they have to accept that what they thought was good is not good.
What they thought was moral is not moral.
It only appears moral.
And in fact, they have been duped.
And they are in the process of duping and exploiting others.
That's rough, man.
That is a rough thing to process.
Or sometimes they're in a victim.
So the excuse is not always a thing that is being used on the person's own behalf.
Sometimes the excuse is in behalf of another person.
It really connected for me when you were in one call-in where a person was making excuses for their mom.
And then you could tell that the thing that they were excusing their mom for, they were also beginning to act in a similar way.
Like in that case, I think their mom kind of just wasted their life and didn't prepare for the old age.
And then the son was doing the same thing.
You could tell that if they kept going down the road they were on, they were going to be alone and lonely.
and end up in the same place.
So the excuse that he made for his mom, he also had to live by the same, he had to live by the same principle.
So he, in order to free himself from going down the, having the same destiny as his mom, he had to take away the excuse from his mom.
Right.
If that makes sense.
Yeah, and it really comes down to a very fundamental question.
I'll just throw this out and tell me what you guys think.
Is it possible?
Is it possible for people to change their resource acquisition strategies?
Right?
If you're a hyena, can you become a lion?
If you're a lion, can you become a zebra?
If somebody has really evolved in a sense and dedicated themselves to resource acquisition strategies through manipulation, UPB will wreck that.
And are they viewing that as a negative sum game predator?
Like, if UPB wins, they starve.
Right?
If there are no zebras and nothing to eat, the lion is gonna starve.
In other words, can people change their resource acquisition strategies?
Because UPB is fundamentally saying to human beings as a whole, stop bullshitting, stop being honest, stop manipulating, stop producing.
And You know, this is sort of the general panic of the single mom, right?
I mean, the single mom has terrible anxiety, of course, that if there's no welfare state, her kids are going to starve to death.
She won't be able to get a quality guy.
She won't be able to work.
Her resource acquisition is to praise herself as stunning and brave and noble and heroic, to manipulate, to demand that other people solve her problems and and through that she gets eighty to a hundred thousand dollars a year in benefits and or she would need to at least earn eighty to a hundred thousand dollars a year to get the equivalent level of benefits post taxes.
So she has a resource acquisition strategy which is actually produce the children.
It's not like well she accidentally has the children and therefore she needs this strategy.
Because this strategy works she can have the children with confidence or at least a belief that she will be taken care of by the state.
So, can people change their resource acquisition strategies?
Because that's what UPB demands.
Yeah, I kind of don't think so.
I'm sorry for the time-lapse instructions earlier.
I was just wanting to ask you, it's very interesting that you went into that topic because that's where I was heading as well.
Is there actually any point in debating people who don't care about you?
I mean, it's hard enough to talk to people who are intelligent and care about you.
I mean, imagine talking to people who barely do.
I mean, except for like exercising your debating skills and so on.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it's a sort of fundamental question that I have with regards to debating with people.
And this is why I haven't taken too many debates lately.
And part of it is like, okay, do they have the independence to actually be objective?
I mean, if somebody's dependent on the state for their income or their salary or their status or, you know, all the way from the military-industrial complex down to some government worker or someone dependent on welfare, do they have the independence, the self-sufficiency to be objective about things?
And now, of course, Government workers voting for tax increases, they're pretty fine with that because, you know, they're going to get usually more money out of that.
People on welfare can't be objective about the welfare state.
And with the communists, like the guys I was... I don't know much about Swoletariat, but the other guy obviously had built his entire business model.
What was it, like Snow White among the zombies?
Was his like extraordinarily creepy comic book or something.
Okay, so he's built up an entire audience.
That's his thing.
And can he change his resource acquisition strategy?
Because the communism has now become his business.
It's his income.
It's his status.
Can he change that?
I don't know, man.
It's, you know, should we really be focusing on the people?
You know, can you really talk Bitcoin to a central banker?
I guess that's sort of the question.
It's kind of oppositional.
Do people even have the independence to... I mean, when the earlier caller was talking about debating abortion with the women in his life, it's like, well, can they be really objective?
Because let's say that abortion is severely restricted, Then they're going to lose the dopamine hits of flirting with every man known to humankind and not settling down and you know having fun trips to the Caribbean with guys who want to sleep with them and so on.
They have to sort of give all of that up and that's going to be really tough because their sexuality is their resource acquisition strategy which means it has to be consequence-free or largely consequence-free.
If sex is no longer consequence-free Then their resource acquisition strategy, resource being vanity, giddiness, endorphins, or whatever, then has to completely change.
And rewiring your resource acquisition strategy... Have you guys ever gone through that?
I know I have.
Rewiring your resource acquisition strategy, it literally feels like dying.
It feels like dying.
Because you are... I mean, it's the born-again thing, right?
I think that the born-again thing has something to do with rewiring your resource acquisition strategy.
Man, it's like throwing yourself into a blender as a hyena hoping you're going to come out as a lion but you don't genuinely believe you're going to come out as hyena pace.
And have you guys gone through that?
Like changed the way that you acquire resources in some sort of foundational way?
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I know I have.
It was like from resale and stuff like that into more Trading and things like that.
Wait, I don't understand what resale versus trading means?
No, like sourcing electronic components and so on.
So reselling goods.
Oh no, I'm not talking about... I mean, that's still market stuff, right?
You just changed what you were doing.
No, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about going from being manipulative to being productive or Well, generally that's the biggest one.
The other way is not quite as common, because once you've tasted the pleasures of actually being productive, being manipulative, it just seems like shadow, sucky hand puppet stuff.
When I was younger, my resource acquisition had a lot to do with charisma and looks and all of that, and then just having to bring solid substance to the equation and having to live my values was a big change in resource acquisition strategies.
That was really a tough transition.
I don't know if we're designed or not to evolve that way, but it sure feels like we're not.
Any other comments or questions?
Well, I was just thinking also that it's interesting how philosophical people can be when it benefits them.
And, like, the same people can be very philosophical when it benefits them and very, like, anti-philosophical when it doesn't.
Like, I was thinking about the founding fathers of America.
You know, they were very, very deep when they thought about how they didn't want to be under the rule of the crown in England.
But then when they kind of turned around and were looking at their slaves, you know, they, you know, they were able to kind of ignore all that.
So I think the goal with the Founding Fathers, or at least some of them for sure, was to say, look, we found these very primitive cultures and we're going to shepherd them along to where we are, right?
I mean, this is the white man's burden, as it was called, right?
And, you know, I mean, how successful I guess that was as a theory, we can sort of look around the world and it's not too hard to figure out the consequences, but I think they viewed the more primitive cultures as like children.
We're going to raise these children and then they'll be like us.
And again, not the most practical approach or moral approach to things, but I think that was generally the idea or the goal behind it.
And so you could say it was consistent, but they had a sort of wrinkle in that, you know, Raised them up to our standards and all that kind of stuff.
And that was, I think, the long-term goal.
But yes, certainly I would say, well, you know, taxation without representation, blah, blah, blah.
And then I'd say, well, now we can go right down on the Pennsylvania farmers who are resisting the whiskey tax and all of that.
But again, they say, well, but those Pennsylvania farmers could vote.
So all of that.
But there was, I don't think there was any practical possibility.
I mean, you can say Lysander Spooner in the 19th century.
I don't think there's much practical possibility for A truly stateless society argument back then.
It's almost like you had to have the absolute horrors of the 20th century to even spark that kind of argument.
And the fact that Mises came along after communism took hold in Russia, probably not unrelated, but it's like there wasn't enough suffering for people to raise their moral standards to more absolutist tendencies.
It was like, yeah, you know, it's a much smaller government now.
We'll be fine.
We don't have any aristocracy.
We'll be fine.
We have no income tax.
Just, you know, a couple of taxes on goods coming into the country.
We'll be fine.
There's virtually no government.
Government, you know, the government was about two percent the size that it is now.
And so they were like, we've solved the problem, man.
The government was just way too big.
And we've made it really, really, really, really small.
You've got the right to bear arms.
You've got free speech.
Totally limited.
No income tax.
No landed gentry.
No aristocracy.
Separation of church and state, freedom of the press, man, we got it solved!
And... Spoiler, as we know now, it was quite the opposite of solved, right?
It was just the government gathering strength.
Because it was so small, the economy grew like crazy, and then it could become much, much bigger as a result.
It was a cancer lying in wait for the right nutrients, which were coming along in ways and to excesses that had never been seen before in human history.
So, yeah, I mean, when you think you've solved it without breaking the paradigm, it's really tempting to just stay there, right?
But if you recognize that you can't solve it without breaking the paradigm, i.e.
the initiation of the use of force, it's pretty tough to make that case.
Especially now, as so many people survive on the state that they don't have the independence to judge anything objectively.
Yeah, and it's also that stuff living on from, like, slavery and so all of these contradictions and this double think, it lives on.
You can't just say, oh, well, OK, now we ban this.
Oh, yeah.
Promoting rules plus exceptions is so foundationally profitable.
I mean, let's just go back to the story of your enslavement, right?
That owning human beings is the most profitable thing.
So promoting rules plus exceptions is so profitable that I was kind of hoping to continue on that thread where we went, like, is it worth it?
Because you keep rewarding them, keep paying them like crazy.
Yeah.
All right.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was kind of hoping to continue on that thread where we went, like, is it worth it?
Like, how much time should you spend on thinking of how to change the other people, the system, whatever?
Or just, like, focus on building, like, your own, like, company or group or whatever, family?
Well, I mean, I would say, for me, that was the great liberation of deep platforming.
The great liberation of deplatforming was, okay, so, the philosophical side of the debate is passed.
And now it's just, you know, protect like-minded people as best you can, hold on to your resources and get ready for the storm, right?
And so for me, that was the answer, right?
That was the answer.
And not just the deplatforming, but the lack of defense from, you know, any of the hundreds of people who've been on my show and, you know, sort of important intellectuals and so on.
And again, that sounds like bitter and everything.
I understand where they're coming from.
It's not a huge issue.
But those of us who've been part of the giddy heights of 2015-2016 to what happened in 2020, and the suppression that started really a year and a half before that, that's a pretty clear answer.
And it's good to get that sense of what is coming.
You don't want to be caught outside in a hailstorm, so if the clouds are getting Yeah, I just had one more thought.
going down on the edge of the horizon under the hail, then you can get to shelter.
And that's certainly, I think, been the process for me.
And I think I've been pretty clear about communicating that to you guys.
Yeah, I just had one more thought.
It's just kind of a strange thought to me that it seems that UPB is one of the, if not the biggest idea that isn't widely recognized on the planet right now. if not the biggest idea that isn't widely recognized on I do think that there's a chance that in a thousand years, people will look back at this time and then really be kind of super interested in this idea's kind of initial people will look back at this time and then really be
And I do think there's a chance that in the future, it will be a very widely accepted thing.
Well, if it's a future worth living in.
Yeah, absolutely.
And sorry to interrupt, but there is a... when you've read a lot of history, and particularly the history of ideas, I mean, there are very clear heroes and villains, right?
Galileo versus the people who tortured Galileo.
Socrates versus The guy who prosecuted him, Meletus I think it was, prosecuted him for impiety and so on.
And they're very sort of clear heroes and villains.
And it seems to me having a very short and small view of yourself really draws you into the real villains, right?
So the real villains aren't the people who do you wrong.
The real villains are the people Who don't stand up for you?
Because knowing that people won't stand up for you is the only way that people really get to do you wrong, right?
So they sniff out whether people will stand up for you and if they believe that people won't stand up for you, then they will do you wrong.
I mean, if the bully... if you've got some bigger brother, right?
And every time a bully picks on you, your bigger brother pushes him over or beats him up or humiliates him in some manner, then the bullies won't pick on you.
And so, it's the people who don't stand up for you who bring on the villainy.
And so, yeah, for sure, in the future, when the history of this area of philosophy, this time in philosophy is written, it won't be unknown at all who did or did not stand up for me, or for philosophy, or whatever, free speech, whatever you want to call it, right?
And it'll be very clear because there are all these people who've, you know, been on the show, expressed friendly and positive relations to me, expressed admiration and all of that for me, and participated in what it is that I'm doing, who then, you know, generally vanished when the hammer came down, and knowing that they would vanish is exactly why the hammer came down.
And they all will be known.
They all will be known.
And, I don't know, it just seems to me like that's... I mean, it's a funny thing, right?
So, do you care for your reputation after you're dead?
That's a foundational question of courage, right?
Do you care for your reputation after you're dead?
Now, if you don't care about your reputation after you're dead, you can just kind of live for the now and you can appease and defer courage and you don't really care that much about betraying people because, you know, hey, we'll all be dead in 30 or 40 or 50 years and And, I don't mean you guys, but you know, the people who were sort of floating around me for many years.
A lot of whom, you know, I got their careers really going, right?
In terms of bringing them to a wider audience.
Now, they don't owe me anything.
I get all of that, right?
But, you know, do you care about your reputation after you're dead?
Now, I do.
I do care about my reputation after I'm dead.
Obviously, I won't be here to care about it.
But the reason I care about my reputation after I'm dead is it keeps me from appeasing in the here and now and because the people who I most respect in the history of ideas are the people who cared for their reputation after they were dead and the people who don't care for their reputations after they're dead and of course Christianity is beautiful this way because of course you have to care about your reputation after you're dead
Because that determines whether you go to heaven or whether you go to hell.
Which is why Christians are willing to take a very courageous moral stance and why they stood with me during and after my de-platforming almost infinitely more than the atheists did.
Because they do care about their reputation after they're dead, which atheists don't.
And that's why atheism tends to eviscerate and de-spine your moral courage.
So yeah, I do care about that.
Because philosophy is universal and eternal, the people who speak to it the best tend to view their reputations in the same way.
And uniting your reputation with UPB is a pretty cool thing to do.
Gives you a lot of spine.
Yeah, I was just thinking that in the Bible, the sort of ultimate example of The person who just sort of goes along with stuff is Pilot, because, you know, he announced in front of everybody, I don't find any fault with this person.
But then, like, so that was his judgment.
But then he said, all right, well, we're just going to kill him anyway.
To keep the peace, right, in the moment.
So the people, yeah, so he's, you know, he's in the Apostles' Creed, like, he's, he's like the ideal example of Not having a spine.
Right, and I would say that's because as an administrator he was concerned with his career rather than with the truth, with virtue.
He was concerned with keeping the peace.
Now of course when you're concerned with keeping the peace all you're doing is arming those who are the least mature and most volatile who will cause the most trouble.
When you say I'll do anything to keep the peace It's the worst people who will have the most energy to disrupt you and control you.
You are massively rewarding the worst elements in your society and broadcasting that is... I mean, it's a... it's a huge, huge problem in that you tend to whittle away people's resolve.
Say, ah, keep the peace!
Keep the peace!
Okay, well then the most disruptive and immature person will end up ruling The world, almost, in a way, as far as that goes, and that's a huge broadcast.
Just keep causing trouble until you're more trouble than you're worth, and then I'll give you what you want.
I mean, can you imagine?
I mean, even Parenting 101 would say if your kid's having a temper tantrum in a store because they don't get a candy bar, you don't give them the candy bar!
Because you're just rewarding the worst behaviors and the worst manipulations.
So, I mean, I don't mean to say Pontius Pilate is like a bad parent, but the same principle, infinitesimally small and universally large, the same principle runs.
You don't appease people for their bad behavior because then you're just training them to be worse.
Yeah, and one more thing is I think, I don't know, I just, I can't help but think that there's some sense in which we live on in our reputation, that our reputation is just, it's more than just, it's significant and it's important, and people who don't take care of it or value it or think about it,
That they're making a significant error, in my opinion.
Error?
I don't know, man.
That's a pretty loosey-goosey word.
You know, 2 plus 2 is 5 versus moral corruption would be under the same category.
Is there a way you could rephrase that?
I mean, even if it is just to appease me, don't make me have a tantrum!
Let me ask you, why do you care about your reputation?
Well, as I said, because it gives me courage.
Because it gives me courage.
And it is a way, of course, to live on.
It is a way to live on.
The people who don't care about their reputation after they're dead almost never survive their own demise.
And I would like to survive my own demise.
I would like to live on.
And, as I said before, conformity to the present is invisibility to the future.
Everyone can talk tough at a piece like crazy.
And to actually, though, be willing to make significant sacrifices in reputation and income to speak the truth, that's not so common.
And I would like to live on, not out of any sort of vanity's sake, because again, I won't be there to enjoy it or notice it or experience it, but because I want philosophy to live on and the best way for me to have philosophy live on is to take the long view of my own reputation.
If you want to give your kids a big inheritance you can't blow all the money or invest in emu farms in the Arctic or whatever crap you could come up with, right?
You have to look at the long view.
The maintenance and management of assets When you look at things intergenerationally, it's a very different thing than if you're like, well, I want to burn this up all before I go!
If you have a totally different Brewster's Millions thing, then you spend all the money you want.
So, the best chance for philosophy to cast a long shadow into the future, or rather a long light beam into the future, is for me to project myself forward a couple hundred years at least, look back and say, what will people think?
What will people think?
And particularly the scientific stuff that I've talked about, like the IQ and all that kind of stuff, that will be, and I don't know when, because obviously there's a lot of barriers, but that will simply be accepted as a scientific fact, which it is.
And so what are people going to think 100 years from now, 200 years from now, 500 years from now, looking upon this as flat Earth versus round Earth?
Well, nobody remembers or cares about the people who advocated for the flat earth, other than as amusements, right?
They're just, how can you believe, right?
And IQ, brain size, all of this stuff.
Yeah, it's going to be accepted as a fact.
Now, again, it might take a long time and all of that, in which case people will look back and say, OK, well, there were people who were standing up for the truth and they were attacked and threatened and de-platformed and their incomes were harmed and so on.
Well, isn't that kind of inspiring to people in the future?
There'll still be battles.
to fight in the future and I think it's kind of inspiring when you see people who are willing to make sacrifices and of course the entire culture that I swim in and which I railed against for quite some time but which I really understand now gave me the basis of universality that led to UPB was entirely driven by a guy who chose torture and crucifixion over appeasement so if I've benefited from all that
I don't know.
I don't think I have it in me to do the torture thing.
But I mean, can I not at least do the fewer listeners, less income thing?
Yeah, I can do that.
Yeah, I can do that.
For sure.
You got to add to whatever the fire is that you inherit, you got to go get some wood and add to it.
Otherwise, you're just kind of parasiting off, off that labor of others, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a that's a great reason to to care about your reputation.
But another aspect of it, I think it's that it's a way to have like an exponential impact.
I mean, if you have children, and you you give them inspiration through the things that you did in the world,
And then they give their children inspiration, or if you have many children, it's already a huge impact, which gives it like also the deep relationship aspect and the potential of Yeah, having a great effect.
And it's a foundational question that I've asked myself for many decades, is can we get to the universal without the eternal?
It's a question of religion.
Can we get to the universal without the eternal?
Now, of course Jesus got to the universal through the eternal, that I will be granted eternal life.
I shall live again in heaven.
Right?
Because I know that in some Judaic elements there's no afterlife, right?
What is the closest we can conceive of to the universal?
It is the eternal.
It is the eternal.
We are so minuscule relative to the universe, but the universe is contained within our own mind.
I've lived now for 55 years, so it's not impossible to think of the eternal for me.
I think it's practically impossible for me to conceive the dimensions of the universe, but I can conceive of living forever.
I know I won't, but I can conceive of it, and who knows, maybe science will.
Come along and help out with that.
But can we get to the universals of morality without the eternal?
Well, the eternal and Jesus' universals were two sides of the same coin.
So when I think of eternity, when I think of immortality through philosophy, it gets me that much closer to the universals.
And I know this sounds all very abstract, but just in terms of the emotional commitment to the universals, the more we focus on longevity, the closer we get to universality, and therefore morality, and therefore relevance in the future.
And you're part of this now, too, right?
You're part of this now, too, in this conversation.
You guys are... This is what I like so much about these conversations, not just me.
You're going to live forever, too.
Yeah, well, I was also... Because it wasn't too long ago you said that You said that you were in another person's dream, which probably was true.
There was a call in and the guy said he had a dream and that you were in it.
I wonder if there's a sense in which that's really true.
I think that there's a sense in which we don't really fully know what we are as people and we We do have the ability to continue to live in the minds of other people.
Right.
I know you kind of just said that, but I wonder if it's really true.
Well, I mean, I get tons of messages from people like I showed up in their dreams or, you know, a little bit of what would Steph do and all of that, which is, you know, I guess kind of flattering, but really it's a shortcut for a philosophy.
But I had a whole series called My Enemy the Soul, which I'd have to back and listen to what I thought.
But one of the things that I'm thinking about now, and I'm not sure what relationship that is to it, I just want to pretend I didn't talk about the soul before, is by drawing closer to the universal, we are drawing the deepest into our humanity.
What defines us as human beings is our capacity for universals, our capacity for abstracts.
A lion can recognize a zebra, but it cannot define a quadruped or a mammal.
It knows the difference in blood temperature between a Komodo dragon if it eats one and a buffalo, but it cannot define warm versus cold blooded as a differentiated characteristic between reptile and mammal.
So what is it that stands us apart?
Universes.
One thing we can do that nothing else can do.
Ducks are miracle creatures.
They swim underwater.
They swim on the surface.
They fly.
They run.
They walk.
I mean, they're just like n-dimensional, XYZ-dimensional creatures.
But they can't abstract to save their life.
Every time you pick them up, they think you're eating them, right?
Can't abstract.
And so since universals, ideals, abstractions, are exactly what is human about us.
Then saying that a human being has an eternal soul is a very powerful and visceral way of saying that universals and eternals are our essence as human beings.
That is what we are that differentiate us.
You know like the Aristotelian thing like What's the thing that you can change?
It's the last thing you can change before something becomes something else?
Well with us it's universals.
Animals smell, we smell.
Animals run, we run.
Animals learn, we learn.
Animals manipulate objects, we manipulate objects.
But the one thing that only we can do is the eternal and the universal.
Philosophy is the very essence of our humanity.
It's the very essence of what makes us human beings, universals and eternals.
And saying we contain a soul that is eternal and universal is saying that within us is a fire called philosophy that connects us with the most essential aspect of our definition as an entity, as a species, as a manifestation.
The most essential thing that we do is partake in the universal and recognizing that God lives within us, the soul lives within us, is saying that the essence of us is far greater than we are as individuals and mortals.
It's true.
It's true.
We are at our most human when we are at our most abstract.
And Philosophy can provide that to people, and does, I think, provide that to people.
But they rebel against it, of course, because the universals come with responsibilities.
It's one of the things that annoys me about atheism, is that it's kind of me-ism, you know, it's kind of selfish.
It's all like women, you know, the feminists, they want all the responsibilities, all the freedoms, but none of the responsibilities.
But when you understand universals, they come with very weighty responsibilities.
To understand, to analyze, to spread them.
Because when we spread the universals, we fight the evildoers.
We fight the evils of the world.
With, you know, great power comes great responsibility.
There's no greater power than moral universals.
They come with enormous responsibility.
And I think this sort of gets back to UPB as well.
Why do people reject UPB?
Because UPB comes with a pretty soul-crushing or soul-liberating set of responsibilities.
I don't know if you guys feel that as well.
Once you get UPB, it's like, oh man, We got a lot of work to do, man.
We got a lot of work to spread this stuff.
It hasn't escaped me that when I was looking at FDRpodcast.com, the most, the most used tank is UPB.
It's the biggest thing in the podcast series, in the shows.
16 years, almost 5,000 shows.
It's a lot of responsibility when you understand The universals of morality.
And you don't need a conversion moment.
You don't need people to accept whatever theological construct is around.
You can bring them, in a sense, to UPB regardless of their perceptions of theology.
It is almost like a forced conversion through logic if people wish to remain logical.
And it displaces the manipulative ghosts of sophistry, the golem-like graspers of resources through language and lies.
That's a huge responsibility, and people fight it because everybody claims to be rational, everyone claims to be objective, everyone claims to be logical and empirical.
Then that drags them to UPB.
Now, if it's something to do with Jesus, they can say, well, I just don't buy the Jesus stuff, and they...
I've escaped that responsibility!
I can just walk away and say, well I guess I'm just not theologically inclined or I don't believe in God or Jesus.
But there's no... the UPB is like... you can't get away.
You can run away, you can attempt to fog, you can gaslight all you want.
You can't get away from it.
You can't reject it.
Which is why I think it's really tough for people as a whole because It's one thing to choose religion, it's another thing to be, in a sense, kidnapped by reason.
I think that's a really rough thing because it's not optional if you want to be rational.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, I just had a thought because when you discussed this with Rationality Rules, I think you kept insisting on something along the lines of Well, you know, it's not a valid concept because there's basically no escape cause, if I want to paraphrase it.
I'm sorry, you've got to slow down, man.
Your audio is terrible.
I'm having trouble following you.
Sorry, go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Actually, let me try to fix the audio first.
Just as a whole, I remember saying this, like if you want to participate in these conversations, I swear to God, a $30 mic will make all the difference.
I genuinely find it confusing when you know these conversations are going to last for hundreds of years that a $30 mic is somehow utterly beyond your capacities.
I mean, I really don't believe that's the case and just make it easier for the future and have some decent audio because it really is not a huge price to bear to pay for participation in a couple of hundred or maybe even a couple of thousand years worth of velocity.
I was saying this back in 2007.
I had people call into the show trying to have really great conversations about philosophy and they'd sound this like AM crackly beach radio stuff and I was like, hey man, I'll send you twenty bucks or thirty bucks for a mic, I really will, if you can't afford it just let me know and give me your addy and I will ship one to you because it's It's not a wise use of resources to make it hard to follow.
For sure.
Is this better?
I think it's a little better, yeah.
So go ahead.
Okay.
Yeah, sorry about that.
It's like a $200 headset, but apparently, like, the quality changes almost every time I use it.
Well, get another headset then, so that it doesn't!
Okay, yeah.
Well, I was...
I was just thinking that when you were discussing with Rationality Rules, he always said that when you said, well, you arguing this proves UPB, he was like, well, that's not valid.
And it kind of sounded to me, thinking back, like he's like, well, there's no escape clause.
There's no way to walk away from this.
So therefore, it's not valid.
Yeah, I think he's on the left of the political spectrum, right?
So his income, his resources, his audience, his social circle, his girlfriend, his, I don't know, boyfriend, whatever he's got, right?
All of that is dependent upon particular conclusions that would be invalidated by UPB.
So asking for rationality rules is To accept UPB, the universality of property rights and the non-aggression principle, would mean that he could no longer be a socialist because socialism violates UPB.
Is he willing to burn his audience?
Is he willing to burn his income?
Is he willing to do that?
Now clearly no.
And so I just debate these guys knowing that it's for the people watching.
But You know, we're not truth-seekers, we're resource-acquirers, as mammals, right?
We're not truth-seekers.
I mean, we have that in our sort of essence and it's in our potential.
But, you know, when it comes to being right or eating, 99.9% of people will choose eating.
And I'm not going to argue with that, you know.
That's sort of why we're here as a species.
So, he's not going to say, oh my gosh, that's right.
He's going to find some way Because what he does is he views me as someone who's coming to burn down his crops.
You know, winter's coming, I have just enough food to get through the winter, and here comes Steph with this UPB flamethrower to burn down my crops and my store, my savings, and, you know, he's going to leave me starving facing a long winter.
And so it's just about the panic of resource loss that is occurring.
Now I, of course, because I've dedicated myself to a process of reasoning rather than a set of conclusions, I can pivot on new information, new facts, new arguments, and I don't alienate my audience, at least not all of them, because I assume you guys are here for the recent conversation rather than the dogmatic conclusions.
And so, yeah, with someone like that, what's he going to do?
Is he going to turn all of his former friends, allies, and financial supporters into people contemptuous of him that he got taken in by the racist?
He's not going to do that.
He's not going to even remotely.
Do that.
And, you know, that's why you don't expect these kinds of things to occur, I think.
You know, I see a great opportunity for someone to make a UPV flamethrower meme.
Yeah, yeah, although they'd have to listen to an hour to understand it.
You could have a wide field labeled sophistry and it just burns in flames.
Right.
Anyway.
The only way he could Make that switch as if he cared about his reputation in the future.
That's right.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
That's exactly right.
And I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, he would have to.
He would have to be willing to burn the present to buy the future.
And that's the way it works.
And he wasn't willing to do that, which again, you know, Bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, I suppose, right?
But that's sort of how that would play, I think, from his standpoint.
And again, it just means that he'll be, you know, won't even be a footnote, right?
And again, I don't mean to pick on him personally, but, you know, to me it's almost like, okay, aim big.
Aim for the permanent, because that's where your courage and your motivation is going to come from.
Well, yeah, he'll be in the history books because of this show, but, you know, Pilate's in the Bible too, so that's not necessarily a good thing.
Yeah, yeah, there's fame and there's notoriety.
Everybody who's touched this is going to be, quote, famous to some degree or another, and judged relative to philosophy versus its enemies.
And I just like the idea of betraying it for, for what, another couple of months on YouTube or a year or two on Twitter?
I mean, no thanks.
That's not, I wouldn't say that's even particularly tempting at all.
Yeah, I have one more thought.
Sorry, you go ahead.
Well, I was just going to note that for me it was like, okay, so I can, you know, remain in the good graces of these people in the present or be better for the future, like be remembered well, and then it's like, well, these people are wrong, like they're just not morally good, they're not correct, so why do I care about their opinion in the present?
Right.
So that was sort of my Well, for me, I get a certain amount of satisfaction knowing that the sophists of our time are so completely opposed to UPB, right?
Right.
Like, I couldn't help but laugh when during the debate, they said, oh, UPB is violence.
But, uh, I mean, it's takeovers.
Oh, those are just so peaceful.
It's like, really?
What?
Yeah, yeah.
But you see, from their standpoint, UPP is theft.
And I can understand why they would feel that way.
Because I'm taking their sophistry, I'm taking their resources.
So, you know, because I used to be like, oh my gosh, people would say, what are people saying?
That's crazy!
And it's like, it's not actually that crazy when you think about it, that if I am Through the process of reasoning, I am taking away their capacity to gain power and resources and so on.
Yeah, I can really understand why they would view it as a kind of violence.
It feels that way because it's taking away their resources.
Well, now that I think about it, UPV is kind of like chemotherapy, right?
It's a poison in the sense that it really takes away The subjectivity of ethics, but it also cures you, right?
It's what saves you ethically.
Yeah, with the exception that cancer is usually accidental and this is all programmed.
But yeah, I hear what you're saying.
I think that's a good way to put it.
Yeah, that's why I was calling it penicillin earlier.
Yeah.
Yeah, but they look at it and they think cyanide.
From their point of view, that's kind of what it is, right?
You're burning up their entire business, their livelihood, and their false sense of morality.
You're taking away their ability to feel good about themselves and sleep at night.
Right, right.
Okay, any last questions or comments?
I smell food from upstairs and I've actually been working so hard today, I barely ate anything, so I should probably get something.
But if anybody else has any last thoughts, I'm happy to hear it.
Yeah, I got one more.
So when I consider UPB, one of the thoughts that comes to mind is that I, the thought comes to mind that I need to be careful with how I use the word good.
Because every time I call something good, it's sort of like a double-edged sword.
Like I get to, I get to sort of run after and enthusiastically pursue whatever that thing is.
But, but also, I am going to remove the ability to have excuses in that area.
Every time you call something good, if you're a UPB person, you're taking a lot off of the table as far as what you can continue to do in the future.
So it's almost like it makes you more careful and sparing when it comes to calling things good, I think.
Right.
Yeah, I can see that.
And we're drawn to good.
I mean, to the point, Lee, and we talked about this the other day, about how people will take these experiments, or what were formerly experimental medical treatments may still be, I don't know, but They think it's good.
This is why people hysterically work to control the definitions of the good because that's just the swift current in which we're going to end up swimming.
And the sophists know that.
They know that whatever you define as the good gives you control over people and their resources.
The good is very powerful and that's tough in the moment but it also means that in a free society we know that even in their sort of fallen state under the state educational system and bad parenting a lot of times People are still very focused on the good, on virtue.
And in a free society, man, you know it's going to work.
You just know it's going to work, because this is where we are.
If a guy can climb a mountain with 200 pounds strapped to his back, you know he can climb a mountain in a hot air balloon, right?
Or with nothing strapped to his back.
If this is how we're doing under the labors of the state, imagine how much more interested and focused on virtue people will be in the future.
It's just amazing.
All right.
So let me close it off.
I just wanted to mention as well, if you're on the Locals thing, I put a whole bunch of shows up there.
Basically, I was just going over a bunch of archives today, making sure I didn't lose stuff to the mists of time.
And if you do find shows, if you let me know if you've heard them before, I would appreciate that.
And yeah, thanks so much for being able to drop by.
Nice to chat with, of course, the European listeners.
I know it's a little rarer.
But I will try and work more of this kind of stuff in.
Maybe even with a little smidge of warning or two.
Might be helpful as well.
But yeah, thanks everyone so much.
Have a lovely afternoon.
I appreciate the chat.
I appreciate the support more than I can possibly say.
And Lord knows I can say a lot.
And have yourself a great afternoon evening.
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