Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

May 19, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:28:51

STOP FALLING FOR VOODOO CURSES! Wed Night Live May 18 2022

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Hey everybody!
	Hope you're doing well. It's me!
	How is your Wednesday evening?
	My gosh! It is mid-May already.
	We've got May the 18th, Wednesday, May the 18th, 2022.
	You know what's funny? Don't I generally talk about this year being a science fiction year?
	Well, it is! And, let me tell you, I've written a science fiction book.
	The first science fiction book I have written since the age of 11, when I wrote about a trip to Mars, which I entitled By the Light of an Alien Sun, which is really just my feedback to my mother.
	But anyway, yeah, I've written a really, really wild, wild science fiction novel depicting what a future truly free society looks like, how it runs, how it operates, what its conflicts are,
	And rolling into the society like a bowling ball into the perfect pillars of purity of the future comes a president who gets through time in a way that you'll completely understand.
	It's a free book.
	Well, it will be free at some point.
	And let me tell you, I've had some really nice feedback from it.
	And it's the first novel I've written in about 20 years.
	Of course, I started with novelists.
	I started as a novelist.
	And here are some.
	It's available in audiobook format at the moment.
	And I'm reading a chapter a day.
	I'm up to chapter or two a day.
	I'm up to chapter 24.
	Or...
	Here is, eh, not really any spoilers.
	The Future, the name of the novel is The Future.
	The Future is my favorite novel I've ever absorbed.
	Thanks so much for your contribution to Liberty.
	That's one person.
	Another person says, the part where David tells the boys how precious their relationship is as brothers was very moving.
	I shed tears and I felt the same when I read some of the dialogue between Tom and Reginald in Almost.
	It's another one of my novels. It reminds me of the relationship I have with my older brother.
	I should talk to him about it. But it was also moving because you can tell how passionately David cares for these children.
	I've never heard anything like it from a character in any kind of story, and I doubt anything comes close.
	Another listener to the audiobook says, Well, you'll understand that when you listen to the book.
	So, oh...
	Absolutely fantastic. My husband and I are finally going to have a baby.
	Two positive pregnancy tests.
	Fantastic. Magnificent.
	Wonderful. Somebody says, best novel ever.
	Well, I really, really tried to outdo myself with staggering levels of imagination, and I'm very pleased with the way the book came out, and it's a blast.
	I'll tell you a funny story, a very, very short funny story about reading it.
	I mean, you have to find the emotional connection to everything that you're writing.
	And there's one scene in it which really hit me in the feels, both when I was writing it and also when I was reading it.
	And so, when I was reading it, reading the characters, reading the description, reading what happened, my eyes doth welleth up.
	In a veritable old geyser fountain of emotion.
	And I reached the end of a really passionate speech and I wiped my eye.
	And then the very next line in the novel was, he wiped his eye.
	This is kind of funny that way.
	I've actually also recorded the video of me recording the audio book because I think it's interesting to see what a really wild and passionate audio book reading looks like as well as how it sounds.
	So anyway, the reason I'm telling you this is the book, yeah, it'll eventually, it will be out for everyone for free, but you can get it.
	It's for subscribers.
	Again, a couple of bucks a month and you get 12 months for the price of 10 at freedomain.locals.com.
	You get a nice XML feed.
	You can put it into any podcatcher.
	It's very easy.
	To get the book and to download it, to listen to it offline, whatever you want to do.
	It's just a regular XML feed catcher situation.
	So freedomain.locals.com, a couple of bucks.
	And also, you get all of the other premium podcasts and conversations.
	In one, I tried to talk a couple out of having an abortion.
	Some pretty wild stuff up there available for subscribers.
	Because I really want to... Add some real benefit to the people who are helping support the show in these rather challenging times.
	So... Oh, do I have a little bit of tomato sauce?
	Right side of my lip. Yeah, sorry about that.
	I unfortunately didn't get...
	I barely ate today because I was just really busy and I just managed to wolf some stuff down right before.
	So congratulations on having a baby.
	Almost as important as writing a novel, don't you know?
	No, she's way more important, so fantastic.
	I really, really appreciate that, and congratulations.
	So, hi, Steph from Australia.
	Hello! Hello, hello, hello.
	All right. So, if you have questions, if you have comments, I certainly have topics, as I generally do, as I always do.
	So, yeah, just a reminder, freedomain.locals.com.
	You can also support the show at...
	FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
	I'd really, really appreciate that.
	Thank you so much. If you get value out of what it is that I do, some support would be more than appreciated.
	A man does not live on bread alone, but bread is nice from time to time.
	Steph says...
	Oh, and I have a parenting question, which I'll get to in a sec.
	But... Is the abortion debate dead and buried in Canada?
	Yeah, yeah, for sure.
	Like the fetuses. Do you think that personality traits are inherently genetic?
	If someone is a bully and treats people like crap, he's born that way?
	I do not believe that.
	Now, your level of aggression is to some degree...
	I mean, one of the serious burns I got back when I was on Twitter, and we can talk about Twitter if you want to.
	It's very, very interesting what's going on between the Twitter board and Elon Musk at the moment, but...
	One of the serious burns.
	I have a pretty thick skin after so much time in the public eye and the public eye of Sauron, as it often turned out to be.
	And I have a good and positive relationship with myself and with philosophy and my conscience and all of that.
	So it's kind of tough to wedge in and get me to set myself against myself.
	But anyway, someone...
	I posted once about how there's no...
	element of the personality that's not affected by genetics.
	And somebody wrote back another quote of mine where I was talking about how both my parents got institutionalized from mental illness.
	So, yeah, that one got through the defenses.
	Defcon 4. That one slipped.
	You know, that was a shiv through the cracks.
	That was like that meme of the guy in the full plate of armor with that little narrow slit and his arrow going right through it.
	So, every now and then, it's going to happen that way.
	So... So, do I think personality traits are inherently genetic?
	Yeah, I mean, I do think so.
	So, think of it like this.
	We know that intelligence, to a large degree, comes through the maternal line.
	And also is significantly genetic.
	The data is like 80% genetic by the late teens.
	And so, okay, intelligence.
	But intelligence doesn't equal virtue.
	Intelligence is not the same as wisdom.
	And so you can significantly predict someone's intelligence based upon their genetics, if you knew enough about genetics.
	We don't know exactly. It's like a thousand different things that all combine to promote higher IQ. It's not just like one simple on-off switch, which the bell curve is exactly what you'd expect.
	There's a lot of variables going on.
	So... What would you know about someone if you say, okay, this person has an IQ of 115, right?
	So one standard deviation above the average.
	This person has an IQ of 115.
	And they say, okay, are they good or bad?
	Are they moral or immoral?
	Well, you wouldn't know.
	So somebody may have a higher level of aggression, and frankly, I would put myself in that category.
	I'm a pretty aggressive person.
	But aggression can be fighting evil.
	Aggression can be standing up for what's good.
	Aggression can be punching your way through lies to get through to the truth.
	Aggression can be a very positive attribute.
	So while the There's amoral aspects of personality, like how neurotic you are.
	Well, neurotic can be good, it can be bad.
	It depends how you channel it, how you focus it, how you deal with it.
	If you look at introversion, well, extroversion, introversion versus extroversion, there are sort of big five personality traits, and they're all amoral.
	None of them have to do with good or evil.
	Good or evil is what really counts in life.
	Virtue or the opposite is what really counts in life.
	So if you look at something like aggression...
	No problem with aggression.
	I love aggressive people.
	In fact, I think that they're very interesting and make the world a better place.
	But if you combine high aggression with child abuse, significant levels of particularly physical violence, then that high aggression gets channeled towards bullying.
	It doesn't get channeled in towards fighting evil.
	It gets channeled towards evil.
	I mean, this is sort of back in the day when I did the...
	And just a reminder, this is not a pitch, just a reminder.
	Like if you like the old videos, if you like the stuff that used to be on YouTube and other places, you can go straight up FDR podcasts for free domain radio FDR podcasts.
	FDRpodcast.com. You can do a search there by categories, and then down at the bottom are the links to Odyssey, to Library, to Dailymotion, other places, right?
	Places where the videos still exist.
	So if you want to see the truth about Plato, the truth about Aristotle, the truth about Ayn Rand, Gene Wars, just FDRpodcast.com, type it in, find it, click on it, click on the bottom, there'll be a link to the videos, and you can watch them.
	They're all still around, and some of them very...
	High quality. So, I mean, they're all high quality in terms of content, but even in terms of form.
	So, just remember that having a trait, high aggression, doesn't mean bad.
	In Gene Wars, I remember very clearly that...
	It wasn't the warrior gene particularly, but there was a particular gene that boys who experienced significant levels of abuse, 100% of them turned to criminality if they had this gene.
	Now the gene alone didn't promote or didn't provoke them to criminality.
	It was latent until activated by child abuse and then it seems to have stripped them of their free will significantly.
	So I would say that...
	Genes give you particular strengths and weaknesses and then your environment combined with those genes can sometimes really reduce your free will options.
	Do you plan on making any commentary on the Ukrainian conflict?
	Really missing your keen geopolitical analysis?
	Well, it was clear when the Uniparty got back in power that there was going to be a war against Russia, and, you know, I talked about this back in the day with Trump versus Hillary Clinton, that if Hillary Clinton got in, I remember saying very clearly, she'll start at least three wars, and the first thing she'll start is with Russia.
	So, you know, exit Afghanistan, enter Russia.
	So, the whole point of philosophy is prevention, not cure.
	So the whole point of philosophy is prevention.
	Philosophy is like nutrition. So if you're currently having a heart attack, you don't call your nutritionist because your nutritionist might say, well, look, if you call me 10 years ago, I've got to change your diet or whatever.
	Once you're having a heart attack, you call the ambulance.
	Call 911. You get to an ER. You try and stay alive that way.
	And so now that the unit party is back in power, there's not much for me to say.
	The whole reason of tilting against the wheelmills of the Uniparty was to try and avert and avoid war, which was obviously going to happen the moment that Biden got into power and the moment that the bleed-off of the military-industrial complex in Afghanistan wound to its horrifying end.
	Okay, well, the reason you don't want the Uniparty in power, that you want an outsider, you want someone like Trump, is because you don't get war.
	And there was no war.
	A couple of strikes in Syria, but nothing serious, right?
	I mean, obviously serious for the people there, but as a whole, right?
	So, people listened to the media, people listened to the military-industrial complex, and the media loves war.
	So, you're going to get your war, when you have your war, basically.
	That's what's going on. So, there's really not...
	Like, now that it's done, and, you know, he's in for another two and a half years or whatever...
	Maybe people will figure something out along that.
	But you're in the process now of people learning from experience rather than from reason, right?
	Before it happens, you can reason with people.
	After it happens, like before the heart attack, you can say diet and exercise.
	During the heart attack, there's no point saying diet and exercise.
	You would say to a guy who's having a heart attack, maybe get on the treadmill and eat a salad.
	I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh because it's a serious topic, but you don't do that.
	So there's nothing for me to say. There's nothing.
	Okay, well... You work to prevent, and if you can't prevent, you know, like if you say to someone, you know, maybe don't eat so much candy, brush your teeth more, remember to floss and all that.
	But if they call you and say, my God, I'm having the most horrible tooth pain.
	I really wish I had listened to you about not eating so much candy and brushing my teeth better and flossing, getting my checkups, throwing x-rays.
	Now I've got some horrible tooth rot that's going into my bone or something.
	I mean, you can sit there and do the I told you so dance, but what's the point?
	So now he's got to go to the dentist and get the shit drilled out of his head.
	Nothing to say. We're not in a situation of prevention.
	So, I mean, I appreciate what you're saying, but now the whole point is stop someone rolling the snowball that turns into the avalanche, right?
	Don't roll that snowball. But once the snowball's going down, the avalanche is, what are words going to do?
	Nothing. Where do you go looking for memes?
	You seem meme educated. Oh, they find me.
	They find me. Ooh.
	Sorry. You ever have this where you take a sip of something and it just goes all kinds of weird?
	I've had that a couple of times.
	Anyway, I think I'll survive. Some of the captured Nazis had IQs up to 140.
	Oh, absolutely, yeah. Some very, very evil people who have very, very high IQs.
	The IQ is, to a large degree, 20% is a lot to work with.
	And I was reading about this study that...
	Boy, what an amazing study.
	I was reading about this study.
	Maybe I can bring it up because I think it's kind of important enough.
	I did... Where is it now?
	Let me see. Oh, yeah.
	Okay, let me ask you this, right?
	Let me ask you this instead of an interesting question.
	No, I don't want you to send me notifications.
	I'm busy enough. All right.
	A new study of monozygotic twins raised in part in South Korea and the United States provides unique insight into how genetic, cultural, and environmental factors influence human development.
	The new research has been published in the scientific journal Personality and Individual Differences.
	So, Nancy L. Segal, professor and director of the Twin Studies Center at California, said, I've studied identical twins really apart for many years.
	They pose a simple yet elegant experiment for disentangling genetic and environmental influences on human traits.
	This case was unique in that the twins were raised in different countries.
	Now, it's a wild thing, right?
	So, it's the same country, different environments, different families, and so on.
	So, the twins were born in 1974 in Seoul, South Korea.
	One of the twins became lost at age two after visiting a market with her grandmother.
	She was later taken to a hospital that was approximately 100 miles away from her family's residence and diagnosed with the measles.
	Despite her family's attempt to find her, I guess it's the 70s, right?
	It's a pre-internet. She was placed into the foster system and ended up being adopted by a couple residing in these, in the United States, right?
	So, what a fascinating lab situation, right?
	So, let me ask you this.
	Quick question. Quick question.
	Do you think that the baby raised in South Korea had a higher IQ, or the baby raised in America had a higher IQ, or were they about the same?
	Very interesting question.
	Do you think...
	You said they both had the same IQ. South Korea, South Korea.
	IQ is 0.8% heritable.
	Same rights.
	You think they're the same? Well, those who are saying South Korea, you are astonishingly right.
	And you remember saying like 20% is a big amount to work with.
	I mean, think of your weight, right?
	If you weigh 200 pounds and you've got 20% of weight to work with, right?
	Then that's 160 to 240.
	20% down is 160.
	20% up is 240, right?
	Right? So 20% is a lot to work with.
	I'm sorry if that math is appalling.
	But you get the general idea.
	If you have 20% of something to work with, think of a 20% raise, 20% extra height, 20% extra penis length.
	Well, no good for me. I'd need a wheelbarrow.
	But you understand that 20% is a lot to work with.
	80% heritable, that's still a lot to work with.
	Okay, so...
	Oh, here we go.
	Okay, so... She later discovered she had a twin sister after submitting a DNA sample in 2018, a part of South Korea's program for reuniting family members.
	Maybe this comes from North Korea or whatever, right?
	So in the new study, the twins completed assessments of family environment, general intelligence, non-verbal reasoning ability, personality traits, individualism, collectivism, it's a continuum, self-esteem, mental health, job satisfaction, and medical life history.
	They also completed structured interviews about their general life history.
	Not only did the twins experience different cultures growing up, they also were raised in very different family environments.
	The twin who remained in South Korea was raised in a more supportive and cohesive family atmosphere.
	The twin who was adopted by the US couple, in contrast, reported a stricter, more religiously oriented environment that had higher levels of family conflict.
	The researchers...
	You ready?
	You ready? Hold on to your hats, my friends.
	The researchers found, and I quote, striking differences in cognitive abilities.
	The twin raised in South Korea scored considerably higher on intelligence tests related to perceptual reasoning and processing speed with an overall IQ difference of...
	What do you think?
	What do you think?
	What's the IQ difference?
	What's the IQ difference?
	Half standard deviation, 7.5.
	20 points, 25, 20, 20 points, 10, 10%.
	Yes, well, 7.5 points.
	So, the answer is...
	Oh, it's wild.
	It's wild. The twin race in South Korea scored considerably higher on intelligence tests related to perceptual reasoning and processing speed, with an overall IQ difference of 16 points, more than a full standard deviation.
	Now, South Koreans, some of the smartest people on the planet, in particular in terms of spatial reasoning, 103, 104, 105.
	Whites are the average with 100.
	It's a rolling average of 100.
	Higher than whites, on spatial reasoning in particular.
	And so they're cooking at 104, 105, 106.
	16 points, that's still less than 20% variability, right?
	So the twins had a similar personality.
	Both scored high on measures of conscientiousness and low on measures of neuroticism.
	They also had similar levels of satisfaction with their job, even though the occupations were different, government administrator and a cook.
	They had similar mental health profiles and identical scores on the measure of self-esteem.
	So, it's wild.
	You can get this from SciPost.com.
	Just do South Korea IQ or whatever.
	You can do a search for that and find it.
	So that's wild. And really, really...
	Powerful. Really powerful.
	And it's true that the twin that was raised in the United States scored higher on individualism.
	And of course, as you would expect, the twin raised in South Korea scored higher on collectivism.
	But to put it another way, this household in the U.S. or the U.S. as a whole, because of course this was government schools, and so the U.S. as a whole appears to be A neurotoxin of some kind.
	It appears to be that it has shaved off 16 IQ points being in the U.S. Now, that's higher than consanguinity, right?
	The cousin marriage shaves 10 to 12 points IQ off, right?
	So, that's wild.
	The same person, IQ, 16 points different.
	Now, it's a one-off. I understand.
	Lots of reason to be skeptical, but it's very, very interesting.
	Somebody says, I recently brought up this very topic with my brother and without hearing any of the facts or figures, just called me a Nazi and went on and on how humans only differ in appearance.
	He's like this on everything I bring up, refusing to accept any opinion that goes against the narrative.
	Hmm. So if human beings only differ in appearance, then why would you have really different ideas than your brother?
	I mean, and there's been strong correlation between political beliefs and genetics as well.
	So it's about 60-65% of your view of, say, immigration is genetic, right?
	And, you know, I don't say this because we can't change our minds.
	Of course we can change our minds, but it's just important to...
	So a lot of times, if people lack self-knowledge, if they lack how they have confirmation bias for particular topics based upon their genetics, right?
	So if somebody has a genetic disposition towards collectivism or egalitarianism, then they're just going to seek out information that confirms that and they will mistake their genetically programmed preferences for the truth then they're just going to seek out information that confirms that and they will
	And then anyone who disagrees with them is bad, is evil, as you say, your brother calls you a Nazi for pointing out basic, century-plus, well-understood biological facts about the bell curves in various abilities in people.
	I mean, it's as ridiculous to say everyone's the same on the inside as to say everyone's as tall on the inside.
	It's like, no, it's a bell curve in height.
	There's a bell curve in attractiveness.
	There's a bell curve in singing.
	There's a bell curve in income.
	There's a bell curve in marks.
	But no bell curve in anything else in magic.
	Incredible, right? So...
	That's sort of where I have gotten to, and I've been there for a while, is that if someone lacks self-knowledge, like if they don't know this stuff, if they don't know how they have a genetic predisposition towards pursuing particular topics, well, then I'm trying to talk them into changing their eye color because they simply don't understand that you have a...
	Predilection towards particular topics.
	And it's great. I mean, you can go and study these things, right?
	There was a guy who was...
	I think he was adopted. And he had all of the brain markers for sociopathy.
	He was a researcher.
	But it turned out that he was fascinated by studying psychopaths and sociopaths.
	He was a psychologist and did some real good work.
	And he's like, well, if I hadn't been adopted, if I'd stayed in my original household, I almost for sure would be a criminal.
	But because I got the love and support, I turned into a good family man and a researcher, still fascinated by psychopaths.
	And I have all the brain scans that indicate psychopathy and sociopathy.
	But with a good environment, he was able to turn it around, even though he had a terrible beginning to all of this, right?
	So, you know, if you're talking to someone, you hear a strong emotional response, just say, why would it bother you?
	Well, it's just, it's evil.
	It's like, well, why is it evil?
	And of course, people say, well, the moment you talk about genetic differences, it's eugenics.
	It's like, no, that's not, that's not the case at all.
	It's not the case at all.
	Government programs and scientific exploration are two completely different things.
	In fact, they are generally oppositional.
	So, yeah, I'm sorry about that.
	Let's see here. What does he have to gain from learning this stuff?
	If you're after status and social acceptance, then this stuff is poison.
	So, I mean, you need...
	For me, it's always been a test of integrity among women.
	Let me be straight up with you, straight up frank with you.
	It's a test of integrity among women.
	I... I'm not a, you know, traditional manly dude, right?
	And, I mean, I have masculine elements, but I'm, you know, kind of playful and goofy and all of that and a good sense of humor.
	So I can sort of, I have a range of what I consider masculinity.
	And so I'm not like a real stereotype.
	And I went out once with a woman, just gorgeous, this Armenian woman.
	She just couldn't get over some of the, I guess, less traditionally masculine elements of my personality.
	And I was like, well, you know...
	I am who I am. If you like it, great.
	If you don't, there's lots of other guys who will be happy to date you.
	And so for me, when I was in the dating world, I just didn't want a stereotypical female.
	I just didn't want it. I don't like stereotypical personalities at all.
	I just don't like them.
	You know when you see someone and you just know what kind of music they're into, you know what their political opinions are, you know who they vote for, you know what kind of shows they like, you know.
	It's the MPC thing, right?
	You know their perspective and opinion on just about everything, right?
	Before you even talk to them, right?
	And this is one of the things that around the sort of among gays, you know, if they get really markedly and it becomes like a caricature because it replaces a genuine and authentic personality.
	And of course, I've known gay guys.
	I was great friends with a gay guy when I was younger and he wasn't that way at all.
	Like you wouldn't know, right? So everything that becomes stereotypical You know, like the Karens with the side-swept hair or the leftist feminist who is like, oh, something's going on in the world?
	We must show you our breasts and look sad, right?
	You should know. You know exactly what kind of box they're in.
	It's really... I couldn't live with someone like that.
	I could not live with someone who didn't think for themselves.
	It's just boxed in by a boredom I would just...
	Open a vein. It just wouldn't work for me.
	So for me, bringing up these topics is just a way of finding out who's interesting, who's curious, and who can master their own emotional trigger things, which we all have, in order to genuinely explore knowledge in a rational and curious manner.
	But that's... Because, you know, especially you get married or whatever.
	It's like, God... You're with each other a lot, right?
	And so if you don't have someone who thinks for themselves, if you think for yourself, it's torture.
	Absolute, absolute torture.
	So, for me, just bringing up these topics, you know, people run away.
	It's like, good, well, that way we don't waste time.
	And you won't bore me to death.
	So, good.
	I mean, I know it's tough if it's your brother, but...
	I think the source is gone, isn't it?
	All right. Let's see here.
	Is it true you can't change your IQ in your early 30s?
	Sometimes I wish I was smarter.
	Well, I don't know that you can make yourself smarter.
	IQ tends to be pretty not malleable.
	I mean, I know I just did this whole...
	I did this whole...
	Just this article about a 16-point IQ difference.
	The other thing, too, is like I wonder if in a sort of monoculture like...
	South Korea, there's just fewer tensions and fewer hysterias and so on, right?
	So I just think, you know, a lot of similar beliefs and the collectivism versus the individualism thing isn't going so harsh.
	So I wouldn't necessarily worry too much about your IQ. What I would worry or at least focus on is wisdom, you know, truth, virtue, integrity.
	These things are available to just about everybody regardless of IQ. And so...
	Somebody says here, I'm truly the exception to the rule.
	I have an IQ of 81, yet I love philosophy and overall learning new things.
	I'm very interested why I am the way I am.
	I also come from a mostly low to average IQ family.
	IQ of 81. That's interesting.
	I wouldn't have guessed that.
	But what I would say is, if you love philosophy, and you know, a lot of what I've been doing over the last, well, 40 years that I've been talking about philosophy, but 16 years as a public dude, is to try and repackage the wisdom of philosophy in ways that people can absorb and act upon in their actual lives.
	You know, the numbers of people I've talked to over the years is like, oh God, Oh man, I took a philosophy course in university.
	Oh my god, it was brutal.
	I could barely stay awake.
	It was four coffees per hour.
	And I had the same experience when I took philosophy.
	Now, with the exception of my Aristotle teacher, she was great.
	But I've really been focusing on making philosophy a touchscreen rather than Assembler or COBOL or something to make it user-friendly.
	In the same way, computers are always aiming to make themselves more user-friendly, more positive and easier to use, better and more productive.
	And so I've really been glitzing up the UI of philosophy to the point where people can manage and absorb and act upon it in a way that's really productive and I think good for people's happiness.
	Really, really focus on the wisdom aspect of things.
	Higher IQ does not mean you'll ever be loved.
	In fact, higher IQ will draw the exploiters in like a swarm of mosquitoes chasing an airboat.
	But if you focus on the wisdom and you focus on the virtue, you can love, you can be loved, and it's a much better path.
	It's really the only sure path to happiness.
	Let's see here. You can have a low average IQ, but can you have higher IQ in certain strengths in intellect, like language or spatial reasoning?
	Yeah, I mean, I think there are some people who have particular spikes, but in general, the people of higher IQ have higher IQ in a variety of fields.
	Like, it's not just one thing.
	Maybe one thing that they've focused on, they've been really good at.
	Like, somebody who's, like, a language guy is, like, really good at language, and then what he does is he looks at math and says, oh, my God, I'm not nearly as good.
	I'm an idiot in math, but I'm great at language.
	But if you test that person, Most times, you'll find that they are actually significantly above average in math.
	But just compared to their language skills, it looks dumb, but it's not dumb relative to the general population.
	Physical health can help with fluid IQ. Is that right?
	Well, it's tough to feel smart when you're exhausted all the time, right?
	So I think there's some truth in that.
	Let's see here. I hate small talk.
	Yeah, I mean, it's okay that small talk is fine to just test the waters and you can look for verbal skill in small talk and confidence and charisma and enthusiasm.
	Small talk is a great way to find out if someone can hit a ball back.
	So, this is a wife of a guy I was in business with many years ago, said to me once, and she said, you know what I really like about you is that I asked you a bunch of questions when we first met, and then you answered those questions, and then you asked me questions.
	She said, I kind of have a rule, and I've had this rule for many decades.
	I go to a party, I go to a place, golf, and we go to a party, we go to some gathering or whatever, and yes, I will ask someone questions and be interested.
	I give them about five minutes to And if they haven't asked me anything back, I make my excuses and I move on.
	Right, so...
	Small talk is a great way to just lob a ball or two over and see if people keep the balls or actually lob them back.
	So it's a great way to find out if somebody's capable of reciprocity, because if they're not...
	I remember being at a party.
	Oh gosh, I must have been 22 or 23.
	I remember being at a party. And hit me with a why if you've ever been trapped by a terminal bore at a party.
	Like, they always have this angle, right?
	They maneuver. They get you into a corner and you can't get out.
	I mean, you almost have to, like, burrow through their chest like Aliens John Hurt style or something just to get out.
	And... I just...
	I remember this guy. And, you know, he had this long hair.
	And he just tossed his hair. And he was like...
	You know, a lot of people have a thing.
	You know, they have a thing that just kind of defines them.
	But this guy, for sure, it was the hair.
	It was his hair. Like, you just knew he was like...
	Hall& Oates hair focus all the time, right?
	And he literally was like...
	Oh, yeah. Like, so...
	Like, my hair...
	You look at it like in this kind of light and it looks like it's just brown.
	It's like a brunette hair, right?
	But when I get outside, it's weird.
	So when it's cloudy, it has like an orange set of streaks in it.
	You can clearly see it. I've had photographs taken from the back.
	I totally see it. But then when it's sunny, it's like orange and more than a hint of like the gold, gold rose, gold layers.
	It's wild. I don't aim for it.
	I don't dye it or anything like that.
	And then one person, when it had lightning, said, it's blue.
	And I was like, oh my God, that's so wild.
	That's so wild. And here's the thing too.
	Like I can take products, like you obviously don't use a lot of product, but I can take products and literally I've tried this.
	Like you get a big vat of Depp and whatever, right?
	And I take the product and I like, I work it into my hair.
	And I could just take more product, keep working it, keep more product, working it.
	I've gone through a whole, like half a tub of dap into my hair and it's like, it just eats it.
	It's like, it just eats it up.
	It's like quicksand. Just nothing.
	Like here, look, I can shake my hair.
	I have product in this hair and no one, no one can tell.
	Anyway, he just went on and on about his hair.
	He's probably still talking to that corner 30 years later about his hair.
	And, uh, wow.
	You just get someone who's just got that one thing about them.
	Um, it's like another guy I knew who was just teeth, you know?
	He'd just, like, brush his teeth and floss.
	He'd floss after lunch. He'd floss after a snack.
	He wouldn't touch coffee or soda or Coke or anything like that.
	He just had to have his teeth, man.
	His teeth had to be perfect. So, I didn't even know why I was talking about that, but, uh, Oh yeah, reciprocity.
	And so that guy, there it goes.
	So that guy is like, literally 15 minutes is all I could handle.
	And then I said, look, I've got to go to the bathroom, right?
	And he just kept talking about his hair.
	And it's like, I've got to go to the bathroom. Like, I really have to go to the bathroom, man.
	Kept talking about his hair. I was like, dude, I'm going to pee on you if you don't move out of the way.
	Like, I literally have to go. So I just went to the bathroom, crawled out the window, went home.
	Anyway. No, I didn't do that.
	I actually went... I was a player back then, right?
	So I went out back into the party and I looked at a woman who was also escaping from this guy after I was in the washroom.
	So I walked over and he said, did you talk to her guy?
	She's like, oh my god!
	I thought I had something to do with hair.
	Is he actually a woman? And so we talked about that, which was nice.
	Anyway, somebody says, Steph, you sat on a podcast years ago that computing power just bought our government more time before they collapsed due to debt, etc.
	Can you expand on this? Well, sure, because computers allow for...
	I mean, you couldn't have deductions at source without computers, and so computers have allowed for the surveillance, have allowed for the gathering of financial information, have allowed for wildly complicated expansions in the tax code to the point where governments can just pillage a whole bunch of stuff, and they've also improved efficiency and released a bunch of people who used to be involved in delivering messages and crunching numbers and processing data.
	That's all been automated, so...
	It's, you know, if you've read Atlas Shrugged, the 20th century motor company, like the machine, computers are that.
	And they've bought a whole bunch of, they've added so much productivity and efficiency that governments can gather way more income than they could.
	Could you imagine having this, like, level of tax complications and taxation at source, right, taxing at, you couldn't do it, couldn't do it without computers.
	So it's bought some extra time, for sure.
	Steph is very charismatic.
	I can understand why someone with low IQ would watch FDR. Well, I appreciate that.
	And charisma is no big secret at all.
	I love you guys, and I love this conversation.
	That's all it really comes down to.
	I love the fact that we are...
	I love the fact that you have great questions.
	I love the fact that we're sharing information to make our world and the world as a whole a better place.
	All charisma is, is enthusiasm for the other.
	Now, some people have charisma because they focus on someone, give them the love bomb in order to con them or rip them off or sleep with them or something like that.
	But, you know, we're not really doing that, so...
	Steph, go back to university and do a PhD in IQ research.
	Yes, I can absolutely see that.
	Because, you know, I just don't have enough firebombings in my life.
	Do you? Do you? Let's see here.
	Muhammad Ali had an IQ of 78 and became champion and interesting for millions.
	Yeah. He speaks in a way that is simple yet powerful.
	I appreciate that. I mean, it's always been my argument to myself that...
	Midwits complicate, and the real challenge for an intellectual is to simplify it, is to give people the most abstract conceptual things, boil it down into actionable positives in their own life.
	Let's see here. What's the best way I can support my friend?
	He's trying to self-publish his book, but I'm not interested in reading it.
	Should I grit my teeth and offer my feedback?
	Well, if you're not interested in reading your friend's book, I would argue that he's not really a friend, right?
	Because you should want to read his book.
	I have friends who've written books and sit down and read the books, or you can ask him for it in digital format.
	You can do a text to MP3 conversion and then just throw it on headphones or put it in your car when you're driving around.
	Just, you know what, right? So...
	I would say that if you care about your friend, like, to write a book is a brutal and gruesome and glorious thing, right?
	The old saying is, writing is easy, you just stare at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood form on your forehead, right?
	So, if your friend has poured all of his energies into reading a book, then you can give him your feedback.
	And maybe you can...
	Give him ways to improve the book or make it more gripping or interesting or whatever, right?
	So I would say that if you don't want to read your friend's book, probably not really.
	Probably not really a friend. And you should raise your standards for being a friend.
	You should raise your standards for being a friend.
	If your friend writes a book, drop what you're doing.
	Are you so busy?
	Are you saving lives on a battlefield?
	Are you an ER doctor?
	Are you so busy that you can't spend a couple of hours to read your friend's book?
	Or at least read the first couple of chapters and give them your feedback on that.
	Authors die for feedback. We live and breathe and die for feedback.
	It's just the way it is. Because we care so passionately about what we're doing that we put something out there.
	Like every time I put out a book, I'm like scraping and scouring and looking for feedback.
	So if you're listening to the future, please send me an email.
	Let me know what you think. I would appreciate it.
	Because, you know, it hasn't gone out in hard copy yet, so there's still time to change if there's something you think would be better.
	So let's see here.
	I feel like I can be that bore.
	Now boredom is just rage spread thin, right?
	You're just angry at people, you don't know how to connect with them, so you just bore them because you are too chicken to punch them, I think anyway.
	Not that you should punch them or whatever, right?
	Somehow the most boring people have so much to say you can't even interrupt them.
	Well, a lot of people talk to avoid themselves.
	I talk. I want to be connected with myself.
	I want to be connected with you out there in this conversation.
	But a lot of people talk to just avoid themselves.
	It's called pressured speech or, you know, verbal diarrhea.
	My mom used to just talk.
	Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
	Oh, my God. Trap me in the...
	Like, I'd be in my bed and I'd just come and she'd sit down and she'd tell me all about...
	She'd go to these dances at this club, this sort of older middle-aged club.
	Club, it sounds like a disco, but it wasn't.
	It was like much more... I went with her once.
	And she would sit there, and there'd be this guy, and I don't know, he was like, he would look at me, and then he'd get up and go over to the bar, but I could tell he was still thinking about me, but I wasn't sure, so I asked my friend to go over and ask him what he was drinking, and if he didn't have anything to drink, then I know he just went to the bar to get a better view of me.
	I could literally do this for like three hours straight, like just all the weird random associations and massive overcomplications of stuff my mom would say, and I would just be like trapped, blacked.
	I remember playing a game on my Atari...
	800 called Way Out with a cleptangle which would steal your...
	It was the first 3D. You could walk through the maze rather than top down.
	And she came in and I froze the game as I was playing it.
	And I still very vividly remember.
	I was like, I don't know, 11 or 12.
	And I'm staring at the monitor.
	It was a TV. It was just a TV. And I think it was even a black and white TV. You couldn't afford a colored one because this is back when you would hook your...
	Computers, they didn't come with monitors.
	you hook them up to a TV and I just remember staring at this maze like there's no way out and my mom was like between me and the door just blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah just my god and then she'd want feedback And of course, you just spaced out and weren't listening.
	And of course, if you tried to get out, she'd get angry.
	You never support me. You never listen to me.
	So you just traffic cornered.
	And she was doing that to get out of herself, to avoid her own thoughts, right?
	You just become this, you know, people are full of toxicity and they just...
	Kind of vomited on you.
	And it's to avoid their own thoughts, their own processes, their own, right?
	I mean, it's funny. So many years later, it was funny.
	Because when I was, I think about 12, my mom just like she wouldn't get out of bed, just wouldn't get out of bed.
	And I could make her tea, and I remember very clearly, I'd make her tea and toast in the morning, leave the tea and toast by her bed, and I'd come back at lunch, wouldn't be touched, she'd barely moved, and this went on for weeks, like weeks, just where she ended up in an asylum.
	And it wasn't until much later, when I was much older, it was like, oh, that's when she turned 40.
	Which is, you know, a pretty awful time for this kind of stuff, so.
	All right, let's see here.
	Meanwhile, you've already thought of a thousand different ways to murder the hair guy while he's talking.
	Well, I mean, I didn't feel hostile towards the guy.
	I was a little, what should I say in England, gobsmacked.
	I was a little gobsmacked, but I'll tell you my real thought around the guy was, how sad.
	I mean, I was already starting to get my widow's peak and all of that.
	But that wasn't a big part of what I was thinking.
	I'm enormously pleased that I'm bald.
	I didn't have to do anything with my hair.
	Go talk about Catherine Janeway on Star Trek.
	Listen to her talk about how Jean-Luc Picard had it easy because he didn't need two hours for hair.
	So now it's great. It's added years to my life to not have hair.
	But back then, I remember very clearly thinking...
	Like, what a sad, sad thing it is that hair is your thing.
	I mean, it's just accidental protein that comes out of your scalp.
	That's all it is. It's just accidental protein that comes out of your scalp.
	It's not virtue. You didn't earn it.
	You don't keep it.
	I remember reading an article many years ago about some bald guy was like, how can Warren Beatty, is he a virtuous guy?
	Because Warren Beatty, I think prior to Brad Pitt, was considered to have the best male hair or something like that.
	And, you know, it's like he didn't earn it.
	He's just born with it and just keeps it in his own way, right?
	Like the Ronald Reagan, like you don't lose a hair from birth to death or whatever.
	You lose your mind before you lose your hair because he had Alzheimer's.
	Tragically, his wife called it the long goodbye.
	It's a very sad story, but... Just, that's your thing.
	It's your hair. And that's all you can present about yourself and that's all you have of value.
	God forbid you lose your hair. It'd actually probably be a really good thing for him if he lost his hair because he'd have to find something else.
	But I've always been particularly terrified of the idea that you have a thing that gives you value when you talk to people.
	Really, I find that, oh, it's awful.
	It's like the Robin Williams thing.
	You know, like I only have value to people if I'm really on and making them laugh.
	I really only have value to people when I'm a great singer and performing on stage.
	That's when I have value to people. That to me is terrifying.
	I've never, ever, ever, ever liked the idea.
	In fact, I shudder from it viscerally.
	Now you say, ah, yes, but Steph, you get on these live streams and you are giving value to people with your thoughts and insights.
	This is a conversation.
	I'm sorry that I don't have the headphones.
	But most of my shows, at least half of them or more, are conversations with people, like call-ins or interviews or whatever.
	So, this really is a conversation.
	You guys are having great questions, great comments, and we're sort of riffing together on that stuff.
	It's a collective. But the idea that, and this is true for women too, it's like, well, I'm hot, and that's what I bring to the table.
	Guys thinking about my ass on the table.
	I mean, that's really, really sad.
	Or, you know, some guy who's all muscles, like, what I bring to the table is I've got to turn sideways to get through the door, or...
	People with money or people with power or connections.
	It's the me plus. Why the hell can't you just be yourself?
	Can't you be yourself? My daughter is, you know, now at the age where, you know, there's some boys who are interested, right?
	She's very charming, very funny, I think very pretty and all, right?
	And, you know, I just, I mean, I don't have a son, right?
	But if I did, it'd be like, just be yourself, right?
	Be yourself, because if you're being someone other than yourself when you meet people, it's completely unsustainable.
	You know, not being yourself is like, you know, I got this coffee cup, right?
	Not being yourself is like, I take this coffee cup and I just hold it out at arm's length, right?
	This one that says, because I'm the DM, that's right, right?
	Just hold my coffee cup out at arm's length, right?
	Now, how long do you think I can keep this show going with this pound of coffee and cup at the end of my arm, right?
	A couple of minutes, maybe? And I can keep this going for a while and right now it doesn't really bother me.
	I'm not going to keep it going forever because you kind of get the idea and I don't want any lactic acid lock up on my arm.
	But it's like being in a stress position.
	You know how they torture people? They put them in a stress position and then they demand that they stay there, right?
	You're in a stress position. You ever done this?
	It's a fitness test I used to do when I was younger at a gym or whatever.
	The fitness test where you sit up against the wall and your knees are at like 90 degrees just sitting against the wall.
	How long can you hold it? Or you go on the plank, right?
	To which the dash and says, hey man, that's my life.
	So you go on the plank position, right?
	Not being yourself is just being in a stress position.
	You can't possibly keep it up.
	You keep it up for a little while.
	You can't possibly keep it up.
	So that's what I'd say, you know, to the boys who are sort of floating around my daughter.
	I was like, It's just, it's not, just be yourself.
	And now, of course, it's an easy thing for, you know, me to say, because I'm older and gone through therapy and happily married and all of that, but...
	Just be yourself.
	That's really sad when someone is just like, oh, it's my hair.
	You know, or someone who's like, you know, if you're an actor, it's like, oh, yes, I did a play on the West End.
	And don't you see this? And the funny thing is, you know, I remember talking to a guy, you ever been cornered by the travel boar?
	Oh, my God, the travel boars.
	Oh, my God. The travel boars are the droners like, oh, yes, well.
	I went to Morocco, first of all.
	Morocco is now... By the four colors.
	There's the brown of the desert, there's the white of the clouds, there's the blue of the sky, and then there's the green of the foliage.
	The four colors. And when I was in Morocco, I went on a camel in the desert, and that song by Sting, Tea in the Sahara, and it's just floating through my head.
	And I found the most incredible coffee shop Where you could get kebabs and you could get the most amazing Turkish coffee.
	And I remember the locals telling me all their stories.
	They really took me in like I was a friend.
	And I still have contact with these people and I'm always welcome back in Morocco.
	And oh my God. Oh my God.
	Oh shut up. Oh my God.
	I don't care.
	You ever do this thing like somebody's telling you stuff and it's supposed to make them look good?
	And it's like, it doesn't.
	And I remember, I remember very clearly, this is again, I used to go to parties in the early 20s.
	I get cornered by these boars and I was like, oh man, I must never, ever, ever be that person.
	Please God, let me never be that person.
	And I didn't. So, you know, I had, I mean, I went to Africa when I was six and yeah, I had lots of interesting stories and I was an actor and, you know, gold panner.
	And I was like, no, not going to talk about it.
	I joined a sports league not too long ago and I've been playing there for about six months.
	And just yesterday I was playing and a guy comes up and says, hey, you're kind of a big deal.
	I'm like, well, not really.
	I mean, certain circles maybe, but not really.
	And he turned to...
	It was actually... He was a guy, right?
	You know how it works with guys, right?
	So with women, when they get together, all you hear are fake compliments.
	And when guys get together, all you hear are fake insults, right?
	This guy turns to the other guys, the men and women who were playing.
	And he said, this guy is a total...
	He's totally brilliant, total genius.
	I mean, you wouldn't know it by the way he plays this sport.
	But in other spheres...
	I thought it was pretty funny, right?
	So I just, you know, don't want to, you know, I'm just there to play this sport.
	I don't want to show off and whatever, right?
	I just don't want to be that guy.
	I just never wanted to be that guy.
	So, you know, a lot of people in my life just don't have a clue what I do.
	I mean, some for strategic reasons, but others, you know, just in general.
	I just never wanted to be a me plus.
	That's really, really exhausting.
	Let's see. I knew a guy that would change subject with no warning when he noticed he was losing human conversation, literally without a breath.
	He would do this multiple times.
	Oh yeah, those guys are pretty wild.
	But that's just, it's like somebody drowning.
	You ever have this thing where somebody's just clutching at you like they're drowning?
	I remember my mom had a friend over once who was an alcoholic and I wanted to go to bed because I find alcoholics incredibly boring.
	And the woman was like literally clutching onto me like, no, and you can't go to bed.
	I have something else to tell you.
	And just like her being alone with her own thoughts was like you pushing her off a cliff or something like just couldn't.
	And so they grab onto you like a drowning person grabs onto a piece of wood.
	Oh, this wood's sinking. I'll grab another one.
	Just topics and just, oh my God, those people are just exhausting.
	And of course, what you want to do is hold them by the hair and have them face the mirror, face themselves and get over whatever is going on in their mind that has them so appalled.
	To be on their own.
	But yeah, the people who can't be alone can never be with other people.
	It's just not the way life works.
	What do you think of the concept of beard fishing in men?
	I have no idea what that is. I would say if you're beard fishing, you probably want to trim the old soup strainer a little.
	All right. I find that many people today cannot keep their attention on one topic.
	As soon as a conversation begins to have any depth, they change the topic.
	Well, depth is doom these days.
	Depth is disaster. Any significant or deep thought about the world will get you attacked.
	So we're just in a phase now of brutalized shallowness.
	You have to stay shallow if you go deep.
	And this is when you're around really dysfunctional people.
	You can only talk about surface stuff.
	You can't talk about any deep stuff because they'll just hate it because it might reveal something negative about themselves.
	Ugh! Somebody says, oh, same guy.
	I truly believe listening to Steph for the last seven years has increased my intelligence and wisdom.
	Being low IQ, Steph is truly God sent.
	That's very, very kind.
	It's very, very kind. High wisdom is what you focus on.
	If I had to trade, you know, IQ points for wisdom points.
	Oh, men using beards to hide a weak chin or jaw.
	Oh, is that what it is?
	Beard fishing. Well, because our food is so soft, aren't we losing jawline?
	For a lot of people losing jawline, they just don't chew.
	Using beards to hide a weak chin or jaw?
	Yeah, I can see that.
	What's that, George Lucas? Doesn't he always have no jaw?
	Yeah, you see that kind of thing.
	Everybody, you can always look at Yourself in the mirror and you'll see something that's deficient.
	This is true of everyone. It doesn't matter how pretty you are, how beautiful you are.
	If you're like a supermodel in her prime, you look in the mirror and if you have like the teeniest, tiniest pimple or blemish or whatever, like this is a disaster, right?
	And so, or, you know, you're just going to age out of the profession and so on, right?
	So everyone has something they can look in the mirror and say, that sucks, that sucks, that sucks, that sucks.
	So, if you're going to agree with the world that having a weak chin or a weak jaw...
	Now, a strong jaw is a sign of high testosterone, as far as I understand it, or whatever it is.
	So, that's why I think women tend to find it more appealing.
	Plus, you know that sunken thing...
	What's it? It's an old line from MASH. One of the guys is like, yeah, the search continues for my jaw.
	But... If you look into...
	The mirror is for your soul.
	The mirror isn't for your mere flesh.
	The mirror is for your soul, right?
	You can have what's called a weak chin or jaw, which is not a real thing, right?
	I mean, jaws are bones.
	Bones don't have muscles. So there's no such thing as a weak chin or jaw.
	I mean, I understand that it's an analogy, but...
	When you look in the mirror, like when I look in the mirror, yeah, I can look at things and say, oh, this could be better, this could be worse or whatever, but overall I'm perfectly happy with my appearance, particularly when I meet other guys in their 50s.
	But anyway, on the topic for another time.
	But look in the mirror.
	The mirror is for you to look into your soul and say, am I doing good in the world?
	Am I standing up to evil?
	Am I helping virtuous people along?
	Am I achieving my goals in a moral sense?
	It's your moral deeds that live on after you, nothing else.
	Nothing else, really. It's your moral deeds that live on after you.
	So if you have what's called a weak chin or a weak jaw, if you look in there and it bothers you, it's because you're looking at the wrong thing in the mirror.
	Everybody wants to scrape us out of depth and just mortar us on the shallowest things in life, on the illusion that if you change the appearance, you gain value in a moral dimension.
	The only thing we can love in this world is morality.
	The only thing we can love in this world is morality.
	That's it and nothing else. Love is our involuntary response to virtue if we're virtuous.
	Now, all of the people who want to profit off our insecurities, what was it, Brooke Shields?
	Oh my God. Brooke Shields was on some ad in a magazine.
	And this just kind of short-circuited me.
	It was some years ago. Just like, fuck.
	Shut up. She was on some ad.
	It's like, you need thicker eyebrows.
	Fuck. You need...
	Do they keep the sweat out of your eyes?
	Yes. Eyebrows are fine.
	Thank you very much. When I was on chemo, I had no eyebrows, so I know what that means.
	I still exercise. I was like, oh my god, I'm drowning here.
	Sweat out of the eyes.
	Done. Done. That's it.
	Now, if Brooke Shields can get you to look in the mirror and say, oh my god, my eyebrows are thin.
	Okay, so you get thicker eyebrows.
	So what? Does it make you a better person?
	No. All you've just done is you've confirmed that your value is dependent on things you can't control that are completely unimportant and material-based.
	It's like boob jobs, right?
	Oh, he'll love me if I get bigger boobs.
	All you've just said that you're two boobs short of being lovable.
	A couple of letters, right?
	B to D. You're a couple of letters short of being lovable.
	Oh my god. That's so tragic.
	If you place your capacity to be loved on things you cannot possibly control, you're basically saying you have no control over whether you're loved or not.
	Oh, if I had those thicker eyebrows, oh boy, I'd be loved.
	My mother taught me this in my 20s.
	My mother had a big nose.
	I didn't notice. I didn't care.
	It didn't matter to me. I mean, it wasn't like you could see Zac Efron spelunking up there.
	And so she went and she got a nose shop.
	And I remember being kind of shocked.
	I went over and she's got big black eyes and all the tape on her nose and stuff like that.
	And she's like, but I've always felt self-conscious about my nose.
	And I think she genuinely thought that if her nose was slightly smaller, love would appear.
	Love would emerge. Prince Charming would sweep in on his white horse and scoop her up from the life that she lived and take her off to somewhere on the Riviera.
	Spoiler! Turns out that my mother was not unlovable because of the size of her nose.
	But because she had particular moral deficiencies, she was neither willing to acknowledge nor address.
	So there's this whole economy of just saying, oh, listen, you don't have to be virtuous.
	Fuck that. You've got to be crazy.
	Virtuous is a lot of work.
	Here, put this shit in your eyebrows.
	You're fine. Get some liposuction.
	Don't worry about fighting evil and being good and standing up for what's right and having integrity and morality.
	My God, that's hard work. It's kind of dangerous.
	But here's the thing. Suck some fat out of your ass.
	You're good to go, man.
	Give us a couple of thousand bucks.
	We'll inject some poisonous shit into your face that will freeze you up like a kabuki mask.
	And every woman over 40 will no longer be able to act in Hollywood.
	I'm happy. I'm sad.
	I'm scared. I have bemused resignation.
	It's all the same thing, right? There's all these people.
	It's literally satanic.
	Literally devilish in its essence.
	Because they're like, well...
	You're not really a morally courageous person.
	You don't stand up for what's right.
	You just spout whatever points.
	You grab things from the ether and spit them back out of people hoping that you sound intelligent rather than learn anything about anything real.
	So no, you don't really exist, but your non-existence can be polished the shit out of and then you'll be loved forever!
	Right? Lose those ten pounds.
	That's going to be like you just spent 10 years fighting evil and trading blows with the low among you.
	Come this way, man.
	Don't go that way. That way.
	That's danger, man. That way is like you could get disapproved of.
	You could get attacked. You could get threats.
	That's dangerous shit over there where you're doing the virtuous stuff.
	Oh, man. No, no, no, no, no.
	But go this way.
	Oh, man. Let me tell you. Go this way.
	And you get some Spanx.
	You get the right dress.
	You get the right hair dye.
	You deal with these pencil-thin eyebrows of yours.
	Get some bigger lashes.
	The fuck? When did it ever become a thing that women need spiky awning over their eyeballs?
	When did that ever become a thing?
	Why do you need to have giant tarantula spider legs spouting out of your eyelids?
	In order to be worth something in this world.
	See, morality, we can't make any money off you being moral.
	We can't make any money off you being authentic.
	There's no profit in that.
	In fact, it might harm. It will harm.
	You lead people towards virtue.
	You're leading them away. From what is it the average woman spends $20,000 a year on makeup and accessories?
	That is a fuckton of money, frankly.
	It's a staggering amount of money.
	Dear God! Trillions of dollars!
	Trillions of dollars people would rather pay to get themselves poked and prodded and vacuums shoved up their asses to pull out last year's cheesecake.
	They'll spend all of that money and it will get them nothing.
	All they're doing is cementing their shame at who they are.
	If you say, well, I'm not lovable because my nose is too big.
	Oh, I got a nose job. You're just saying, well, the only issue with me was my nose.
	That's how shallow people are.
	They look at me and they say, oh, big schnoz, can't date.
	It doesn't matter if I'm a good person, if I'm a virtuous person, if I rescue kittens, if I volunteer at the local soup kitchen, if I speak out against ignorance and depravity and immorality and degeneracy.
	It doesn't matter any of that. It doesn't matter if I'm morally courageous.
	The only thing that matters is if I have an extra three millimeters on my schnoz.
	Do I have the kind of nose where people say, well...
	Who knows it was on time, but you were five minutes late.
	Ooh! Gold and destruction that way.
	Savings and virtue that way.
	Where does the economy want to pull you?
	You can see this all the time.
	All the time.
	Before and after pictures. And now we've got this whole thing, right, where...
	People are saying, ugh, just give up.
	Yeah, just, you know, don't have to lose weight, don't have to become healthy, don't have to become a healthy weight.
	And I get, you can be overweight and traditionally overweight, high BMI, you can still be healthy.
	I get all of that, but that's really with the exception.
	People are just saying, well, it used to be that there were only about 8-10% of people who were obese.
	Now it's close to 50%.
	So they're a market.
	So let's just tell them they're fine.
	We'll sell them stretch pants rather than Dumbbells.
	But that's the choice, man.
	Whenever you say, I can't be loved because of something on the outside, you're saying, it's too difficult to polish up the inside.
	And you look at the mirror and you see physical flaws you probably had very little to do with at all.
	Rather than what you should be looking in the mirror to see, which is the glory of your soul in the grand fight against evildoers.
	You do that, and you can be loved.
	Well, but you can't be loved unless you're willing to be hated, right?
	Because virtue means interfering with the preferences of immoral people.
	I hope that helps.
	Let's see here. Oh, I am way back.
	Steph, are you concerned that your daughter will not find a suitable partner, given that she's far more enlightened than those of her own age?
	Not particularly, because it doesn't matter.
	I mean, you just have to be a peaceful parent and raise your kids with good values and good thinking and critical reasoning skills and all that.
	I mean, what am I going to do?
	Somehow traumatize or cripple my daughter's development because I want her to fit in better?
	There's no way. There's absolutely no way I could do that.
	All right. What have we got here?
	The picture of Dorian Gray.
	I actually used some quotes from the picture of Dorian Gray in the introduction of my master's thesis.
	How were the Brooke Shields' naked photos able to pass in the 70s?
	Because the 70s were an age of degeneracy matched only by the, or exceeded only by the 80s, 90s, 90s, all that.
	All right. My mom got a boob job when I was probably 11 or 12.
	She was already remarried at this point.
	She mentioned shortly before the procedure to me and my brother because she was going to be healing and bedridden.
	Still a very disturbing memory.
	Yeah. It's horrible.
	Absolutely horrible.
	And, you know, fake boobs is like putting a towel over a basketball.
	You don't get that cleavage, you get that weird gap trench.
	It's just not good. It's just not good.
	And of course, you know, a woman has big boobs without big arms.
	Usually not the case. All right.
	90% men have beards nowadays.
	Well, of course, you can also lose your jawline if you're overweight, right?
	So if you're heavy, then it doesn't matter how strong your jaw is.
	If it's buried under fat, then you could lose weight, I suppose, or you could just grow a beard and pretend that you have a jawline.
	So yes, it certainly has become...
	Alright, let's see here.
	I could just be unlucky in the people I know, but far too many put too much value in money.
	They seem desperate to be envied by others.
	Yeah, so envy is the substitute emotion you get when you haven't earned love.
	Well, nobody wants to be with me, but maybe other people will want to be me if they don't know enough about me.
	So, yes, it is really, really sad.
	Really tragic. Yeah, envy is the sad man substitute for love, or sad woman substitute for love.
	Oh, yes, sorry, I was going to talk about this listener question.
	It's a very, very interesting one.
	Nice to have a... A slightly different chat from normal.
	That's why I keep doing it, right?
	That's why I keep doing it, because it's always something to do.
	Oh, yeah. Show 5000 is coming up.
	Kind of sneak it up on me there.
	So, Show 5000 is coming up.
	Tell me why. The top suggestions, since I've asked this on locals, freedomain.locals.com.
	The top suggestions seem to be get banned from OnlyFans, show my ass.
	Those two could be obviously related in many ways.
	Cousin marriage and related, I suppose.
	Or, you know, the big overview of the show, read letters from people whose lives have changed for the better or we've all collectively changed for the better or whatever.
	So, yeah, if you have thoughts, let me know.
	You can email me at host at freedomain.com.
	All right. Hi, Steph, says person X. We've been blessed by the birth of our first child this year and have been investigating how to best raise him.
	My main conundrum, good word, right now, is about how much interaction the child needs, when and with whom.
	Basically, attachment theory suggests interaction with a close caregiver is important, which would suggest seeing other kids is less important, such as by dropping the kid in a nursery.
	But then, unsupervised free play with other kids becomes important, as you often mention, for developing the kid's volition and negotiation skills.
	So I imagine there is a transition age for switching between the two, like around four years old, is that the case?
	We're planning to not send our kid to a nursery or kindergarten, and if possible, homeschool him.
	So when and under what conditions does it become important to see other kids too?
	So, great question.
	Great question. And there is this general...
	A couple of voodoo curses in society is really important to be aware of.
	A couple of voodoo curses.
	Total nonsense. Not that what you're saying is nonsense.
	But, you know, the curse of like, well, if you have an abusive parent and you don't see that parent and they die, you will face regret for the rest of your life.
	That's not true. My father's dead.
	He died two years ago, two and a half years ago, something like that.
	And, uh, nope. Nope, no regret.
	In fact, I would have had regret if I had sacrificed my integrity to attempt to build a relationship with the man who abandoned me to violence.
	Nope, that's a total lie.
	Now, another voodoo curse that is cast in society, and when you get these voodoo curses, you know that people don't have anything to offer.
	They have nothing to offer.
	Nothing to offer at all, other than a voodoo curse.
	Other than a voodoo curse. So you've got some crappy parent who's abusive and unrelentingly abusive, like just won't go to therapy, won't get any self-knowledge, you're an adult.
	Do they have anything positive to offer you?
	No. Are they harming you in some way?
	Probably. So they don't have anything to offer you, so they'll just put this weird curse on you.
	That you'll have regrets! If you don't do what I say, voodoo curse regret!
	So... That's one.
	Another one, of course, is if you're not physically beautiful, you won't be loved.
	If you're not physically beautiful, you won't be loved.
	Another thing, right? Now, of course, another one is, well, without the government, it would be chaos.
	Because Lord knows it's not chaos now, right?
	So another one, though, is...
	Well, your kids need to be socialized!
	They need to be socialized!
	They don't get socialized!
	Terrible! Bad things!
	Oh, voodoo curse! Bad things!
	Don't keep them home where they're safe, happy, and loved.
	You gotta put them out into the Lord of the Flies human zoo of low-rent sociopathy.
	It passes for kids' play in most of the places in the world.
	Otherwise they won't be socialized!
	Sorry, I don't mean to laugh, right?
	But this is the thing. Well, you know, your homeschool, where are your kids going to get their socializing from?
	Like, you know that school is the social equivalent of a prison, right?
	People aren't there by choice, generally coerced or cornered or forced to be there, just like in a prison.
	You don't choose your general social environment.
	When in life do you just decide to go someplace that you're forced to be and try and hang out with a whole bunch of other people who are forced to be there, other than prison?
	Well, you know, you could choose your friends based on rational values.
	You could choose to hang out with virtuous people who have care, thoughtfulness and concern for the world, but But that's not real socializing.
	Real socializing is being locked in a gym with a bunch of other psychos or a bunch of psychos playing murder ball.
	Now that's your real socializing is, I don't know what, kids at 10 years old showing other kids porn in the hallway, right?
	Your real socializing, if you're not hanging around like youthful drug dealers, you're just not getting socialized, man.
	But again, what does the school have to offer?
	Well, nothing really, but we can put a voodoo curse called they're not socialized on the kids.
	Make the parents scared. Oh, they'll send their kids to us.
	So, again, I'm not making fun of you.
	I just really wanted to point out this.
	You've got to look out for these voodoo curses.
	Boom, boom, boom. Watch out for these voodoo curses at all times and at all circumstances.
	So, okay, unsupervised free play.
	Why can't you do that?
	You can do that.
	As a parent, I mean, I have thousands of hours of unsupervised free play with my daughter.
	It's been great fun, wonderful times, great memories, the best.
	So you can do that.
	But do not sacrifice any shred of quality in return for socializing.
	Do not sacrifice a single atom of quality in return for socializing, right?
	I mean, you got married to a woman who was right for you and who was the best woman that you could achieve in your life.
	We all marry the best woman we can achieve in our lives.
	So, your child only exists because you didn't sacrifice quality for the sake of companionship, right?
	So if your son only exists because you didn't sacrifice quality for companionship, when it comes to your son, do not sacrifice quality for companionship.
	Peaceful parenting, rational views, curiosity, non-NPC programming.
	Look, someone's going to fill the contents of your kid's brain.
	It's either you or a bunch of psychos out there in the world.
	So, you know, when it's put that starkly, it's probably not that hard to...
	I guess, to assemble, right?
	So, the temptation, right?
	People who don't have anything to offer you will just curse you if you don't obey them, right?
	But enough about taxation, right?
	So, I mean, does the school have anything to offer you?
	No, they'll just take your money either way, right?
	And then, if you don't want to send your kid to them, because sometimes they're funded by headcount, right?
	Like millions of kids have been pulled out of school in the West because...
	Parents spent the last two years screaming at what was coming across on the Zoom.
	Instruction, horror, hell portals to indoctrinated minds.
	So, do the kids have something, do the parents have, sorry, do the schools have something to offer you?
	Say, oh, I've got to get my kids there. No, they're just, oh, well, if they're not socialized, bad things will happen, right?
	How's your daughter going to date anyone if she's happy?
	Yeah. That's not fundamentally my problem.
	It's the world's problem. Maybe it'd be her problem to some degree, but I'm not compromising quality for the sake of compatibility.
	Look, there's tons of shows out there that will regularly sacrifice quality for the sake of popularity or surviving or not getting deplatformed or whatever.
	And no hate.
	No, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	It's a bell curve, right?
	This is the show I guarantee you I do not sacrifice quality and accuracy for the sake of popularity.
	I think it's fairly safe to say that I've proven that pretty decisively over the past 16 years.
	And so if you're going to come to me and say, well, the question, if I read between the lines, my friend, the question is, okay, how much quality do I have to sacrifice in order for my child to be socialized?
	Okay.
	And the answer is zero.
	Zero. Zero!
	You cannot. You cannot.
	I mean, you can. You can do anything you want, free will and all that.
	I strongly suggest... Because you don't want your kids to be in the null zone, right?
	So if your kids are just socialized with the NPCs and they just get filled with propaganda, okay, then they'll sail along with the other driftwood in life and over the waterfall of calamities that await those who don't think for themselves, right?
	Soft, hard, down the road, deferred, but it's terrible.
	If your kids are genuinely themselves, genuinely love themselves for who they are, I mean, I was just saying this to my daughter the other day.
	Like I said, look, you don't change when you're around other people.
	You're just the same person, right? And, I mean, that's admirable.
	I think that's a good thing.
	We don't want to change when we're around other people, right?
	And I know what's going to happen when boys like her.
	They're going to be, like, trying to impress her.
	Look at my wheelie! You know?
	Because, you know, boys, God love us, we turn a little mental when we like a girl, particularly when we're young and we have no game.
	Right? I mean, I've told this story before, but when I was about 11 or maybe 12, I was...
	I had a friend of mine's place and there were these gymnasts over and I wanted to impress them by how I could run and then do a handstand against the wall.
	And long story short, I didn't really impress the gymnasts so much.
	But what I did, I did kind of impress the people in the next room as my face went through the wall.
	Hey, I'm upside down and in the wall.
	That's a very vivid portrait from Australia.
	So, yeah, we just turned a little mental.
	I mean, I remember... I mean, not that I would ever seriously do this, but I remember being in my 30s and this really attractive girl, I'm like, you know, if I bump her car, I'll get her number.
	Because we'll have to exchange numbers.
	You know, this is sad but true.
	Sad but true.
	So... Yeah, don't sacrifice the quality of the people in your life, because then all you're doing is you're saying, well, virtue and integrity are kind of things to be ashamed of, and you should trade virtue and integrity for the empty approval of empty people.
	Nope! You won't fill them up, you'll just empty out yourself.
	So, I would say, do not.
	Hey, if you've got great kids to hang around with, fantastic, wonderful, wonderful.
	But don't I mean, I say this from experience.
	Don't do it. Don't sacrifice the quality for the sake of the socializing because then all you're doing is teaching your kids that quality must be sacrificed for acceptability and avoiding the weird voodoo curse that doesn't exist called you're not socialized.
	And what does socializing mean?
	It just means lowest common denominator and agreeing with the thoughtless herd.
	No, thank you. Is staying true to yourself the key to be happy?
	No! Zero killers are true to themselves.
	They want to kill, they go out and kill.
	What is staying true to yourself?
	Be yourself no matter what they say.
	That's a sting song or whatever, right?
	What does that mean? Be true to yourself.
	Sorry, I don't mean to scorn you, right?
	I don't know what being true to yourself means.
	Being true to virtue. Being true to the truth.
	Having integrity. Standing up for what's right.
	Fighting the bad guys. When you see something that's wrong or false and it's reasonably safe to point it out, then point it out.
	Don't throw your pearls before swine.
	Don't cast your treasures before the thoughtless NPC horde.
	No, the key to happiness, first you must have reason and then you must have virtue.
	You must be rational.
	Through rationality and universality in action, you get virtue in the world.
	When you have virtue in the world, and it's an Aristotelian mean, too much virtue you'll just get run off a cliff with pitchforks.
	It's common throughout history. So enough virtue that you satisfy your moral requirements, but not so much virtue that you end up with your head on a stick.
	So... No.
	True to yourself, I don't know what that means.
	I don't know what that means.
	So... And if it's not...
	Yeah, you've been banned for hate speech.
	Yeah, yeah. The criminalization of an emotion.
	What progress we've made.
	How diversity hath flowered to free speech.
	And you've got to watch this therapist thing about what's going on in Twitter.
	My God. All right.
	We are almost done.
	I get about 90 minutes on this platform.
	It flyeth by. But yeah, please, please check out the book.
	Check out the book. It's called The Future.
	And it's the wildest thing I've ever written.
	Wildest thing I've ever written, bar none.
	And I've had some pretty wild books before.
	It's really great. I mean, I thought it was good when I was writing it.
	I loved it when I was writing it. I love it even more.
	Now I'm reading it as the audiobook, and the characters are really pumping up, and the whole situation and circumstances.
	And if you want something to aim at, like you want a star to guide yourself by, a future that's worth making sacrifices to achieve, this book...
	Is, you know, like so much of science fiction goes forward.
	It's like it's dystopian and we're enslaved by robots and a battle of the armies and so on.
	This is the world we make sacrifices to get to.
	Down to the last detail.
	How it works, how it looks, how it operates, the creativity, human potential, joy, stability, peace, reason, everything that will give a spring in your sep and a song in your heart.
	Somebody says, the future is Steph's best audiobook.
	Well, thank you. Agreed!
	Says Tony, the future is so good.
	Well, the future is good, but hopefully this...
	And I wanted to...
	And also, I tell you this, I mean, straight up.
	So, I really, you know, I liked science fiction a lot when I was younger, particularly the fantasy genre, sub-genre of science fiction, but...
	I always felt that science fiction lacked heart and soul.
	It lacked passion and emotion and human connection.
	So I really, really wanted to and structured the book very carefully to make sure that I could have science fiction with a giant, throbbing, meaty heart stick at the center that connects the emotions to the future.
	So it's not just an intellectual exercise.
	It is actually something where there's a great deal of depth and passion.
	Because in the future... There are strong feelings, stronger feelings than in the present, because in the present we're all stifled and stymied and censored and terrified and all that, right?
	So... I really wanted there to be...
	Well, I mean, this is in the fantasy genre.
	Stephen R. Donaldson. The...
	Gosh, what was his name?
	Thomas Covenant Chronicles.
	That had some meat and emotion in it.
	I mean, a little bit intellectually weak when it comes to the justification for keeping your stupid leprosy, but some real passion in it.
	So I wanted fiction that, while recognizing the challenges we have to go through as a society...
	Really plants a glowing flag just over the horizon of here's why we fight.
	Here's why we strive. Here's why we sacrifice.
	This is what we're building towards.
	And I wanted to show a society that you can dream about.
	I wanted to show a society that's so vivid and inviting that you can go to sleep and you will dream that you're there and you'll wake up sad that you're not, so you'll pick up the next chapter.
	And that's what... You know, like the guy who's fighting, who thinks he's fighting for his wife, keeps a picture of his wife and his kids, right, in his wallet.
	That's the future of the novel is my love letter to the challenges of the present as to the reason why they're worth going through.
	So you can get that at freedomain.locals.com and also if you sign up for a subscription on my website, you'll get it there as well, but...
	Yeah, there's a lot of really good benefits for the subscribers on that platform.
	Okay. Three minutes, anyone?
	Yeah, so if you have suggestions for show 5,000 other than my planned jazz album, so if you have suggestions for show 5,000, you can send them to host at freedomain.com.
	I think we're only 10 or 11 away.
	How many total chapters? I think 45, something like that.
	It's fairly meaty, but there's a whole bunch of stories going on at the same time.
	Well, it's past, present, and future.
	It's family history, the world in the present, and the world of the future.
	So there is a lot that is balls in the air and going long.
	Karaoke show for 5,000.
	Ah, very nice. Very nice.
	You ask what you can do for us, but what can we do for you?
	Well... Again, trying to rebuild the finances of the show after pandemic and various economic excitements.
	And I haven't done a donation pitch solo show for well over two years now.
	So yeah, to support the show would be great.
	I know that there's some risk in sharing the show, reputational issues and so on.
	So I get that.
	And I don't want anyone to put themselves in any kind of risk or lose their job or anything like that.
	I get all of that. I mean, they've done a number on the reputation and that's by sort of design.
	So... Please don't do anything that's going to be harmful for you that way.
	It's not worth it. That's my job, not yours.
	But yeah, if you can, freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.locals.com.
	That's very helpful to me.
	I appreciate that. I'd like to do some more documentaries and so on.
	It would be nice.
	I've got some plans and notes about what I would like to do.
	I would appreciate that.
	Here's the thing, too. You can talk about the ideas without referencing me.
	I don't care. I don't care how the ideas get out.
	You can talk about peaceful parenting and don't mention me.
	Peaceful parenting? Doesn't that come from that staff guy?
	Ah, that staff guy. I hate that guy.
	But peaceful parenting, that's totally fine with me.
	Disavow, disavow. All you need is get the ideas across.
	Would you say that you are a universalist?
	I'm more of a bicyclist.
	So... Yes.
	All right. Well, we should probably close it off because we're out of time.
	But thank you so much for dropping by tonight.
	What a pleasure and honor it is to have these conversations with you.
	Thank you for supercharging my brain with the happy joy typing juice of philosophical inquiry.
	Just wonderful.
	I love you guys. Back so much.
	Don't forget to drop by Friday night, 7pm.
	Of course, Wednesday, 7pm for my live streams.
	I'll try to do one on Sundays, but right now I'm pouring heart and soul into the audiobook reading, which is quite exciting.
	So, yeah, freedomain.locals.com to check that out.
	Thank you so much.
	Have a wonderful, wonderful evening and lots of love.

▲