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Nov. 5, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:27:46

Friday Night Live Nov 4 2022!

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	Yes, it is the 4th of November, Year of Our Lord 2022.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Good evening, good evening. I have come to be your philosophy, enchained, tiara-based, dance of the seven veils, philosophy minstrel for the evening.
	And I hope you are...
	Having a great evening. I hope you're heading into a great weekend.
	I hope that you are battening down for the exciting ride that society is deciding to offer us over the next, well, little while.
	And thanks so much for dropping by tonight.
	A great pleasure to chat with you if you are a supporter here on The Locals platform, I thank you enormously, deeply and humbly for that privilege of being able to talk philosophy with the world for all time.
	You know, I feel like I'm a fairly productive and I dare say prodigious philosopher because, you know, this is 5,000 plus shows and, you know, 12 books and hundreds of articles and all that.
	And And yet, we can only stare up the incredible linguistic staircase ascending to heaven, hairy butt of Leibniz, the German philosopher that I'm going to tackle next.
	I just did Spinoza, which just about blew my brain.
	Spinoza is wild, man.
	It's stretched my brain to the breaking point, and my brain is fairly stretchy.
	Brain yoga is my internal calisthenics.
	So, Leibniz, dear Lord above.
	Guess. Okay, throw me a guess here, brothers and sisters.
	Throw me a guess. How many documents did Leibniz produce, approximately?
	And I'm talking, you know, like essays, books, significant letters, articles, and so on.
	How many documents did Leibniz produce?
	What you got here? 2,500.
	15,000!
	69 is back!
	2,000! 5,000!
	22,000!
	You are all extraordinarily optimistic, and God help the people in the future who have to categorize and transcribe what I'm doing here.
	42,000 and 69?
	Oh, I get it.
	420 and 69.
	Because weed and sex are funny.
	Well, no. See, he produced 50,000 documents.
	So I'm going to have to do a lot more shows, people.
	Do a lot more shows. So, boy, 50,000.
	So there's a project that started early last century, 1905, 1910, something like that, which was to document and put together, of course, all of Leibniz's work.
	And I think it's in 27 thick volumes so far, and it's been over 100 years.
	They're not done. They hope to, hope to finish mid-century, mid-21st century.
	So it's 150 years to catalog his works.
	So I'm going to have to do a lot more rapid style Cajun rap and speaking in tongues.
	I will also have to invent my own language and bury the crypto key in my left testicle.
	So I've got plans for the weekend.
	That's what I'm saying. I hope you have plans for the weekend as well.
	Yeah, he is. And the great thing about that is that no one can ever be, like nobody can ever study him.
	Nobody can ever be the master of Leibniz, the philosopher.
	And actually he was a fairly famous guy in his day, considered to be the last universal genius because he added significant value to so many different fields.
	But he got into a massive bitch slap fight with Newton because they both claimed to have invented calculus.
	And I remember taking calculus.
	A long time ago, thinking whoever the bastard was who invented calculus should be dug up, shot, buried again, dug up, shot, pissed on, buried again, and all who had troubles with math.
	See, math is one of these things that if you have a stable home, you do well in.
	If you have an unstable home, you fail or come close to it.
	I think I got some pity process when I was doing math as a kid.
	I think there was this kind of implicit deal between me and the math teachers, which was, okay, you're not going to do anything involved with math, so I'm going to give you 55% so that you don't darken my door again.
	Now, I did change that.
	In grade 11, I took a summer course in math and I, because you know what it's like when you scrape by in math, you're always scraping by in math because it all builds on what came before.
	So when I was in grade 11, I wanted to get out of high school early.
	I took a couple of extra courses and I ended up finally getting the math and it was easier from then on because I actually did understand the year end to end, right?
	But, you know, when you have a chaotic home, my goal of studying for a math test was I'd flip through the book and I kind of recognize those questions.
	I'm sure I'll be fine.
	But, no, if you have a chaotic, aggressive, unstable, can't concentrate kind of home life, you simply can't do well at math.
	You just can't. You can do well at other things, I think.
	Like you can do well in creative stuff and all that because your brain is just fizzing and bubbling all the time.
	So, all right.
	Being listening to your talk with the caller whose parents didn't coach him.
	Good stuff. Very valuable.
	I love the role play. Yeah, the roleplay is basically pulling a cathedral out of my ass in general.
	Apologies to both cathedrals and my ass.
	But I go in with the roleplays.
	It's very about seat-of-the-pants stuff.
	And when my brain participates by giving me good feedback and good things to talk about, all is well.
	And if it doesn't, well, so far so good, right?
	Don't forget you can tip me on the live stream.
	Tip me, request a song. I'll sing a couple of lines if I know it.
	All right. Why do you think some people interpret criticism as a personal attack?
	I always look at criticism as an opportunity to do better but I notice that some people get offended and resist all attempts at someone pointing out their flaws.
	Why do you think some people react this way?
	Are you ready to put your theory to the test, my friend?
	Well, I don't believe you.
	I don't believe you.
	I don't believe that you're lying to me, but I don't believe what you're saying is true.
	And I'll tell you why.
	And feel free to put more comments in as we go.
	This isn't like a chatty show, but yeah, put more comments in as we go.
	So, you say, I always look at criticism as an opportunity to do better.
	If you do always look at criticism solely as an opportunity to do better, you are in extraordinary danger.
	You are in extraordinary danger and I view that and I make the case as an extremely unwise position.
	Because there are many people who will criticize you in order to control you, in order to manipulate you, in order to own you, to displace your sovereign consciousness and replace it with either fear of their negative opinion or chasing the chimera of their good opinion off the cliff of your own integrity.
	The idea that, well, you know, nobody's ever going to criticize you just to be mean to you, just to change your behavior, just to warn you away from threatening their evil and immoral self-interest.
	My gosh, everybody's always just wanting to improve those around them whenever they criticize.
	No. I think you have an attitude about this, and I think this is self-conscious posturing of, well, I'm so mature that I take all criticisms as an opportunity to improve.
	Listen, some people absolutely will give you great criticisms, and they will totally help you improve.
	And when you find those people, you grasp them closer than a tattoo on your left ventricle.
	Okay? You hold them close.
	But the vast majority of people who want to criticize you have no interest in improving you.
	They have no interest in making you a better person.
	They have no interest in contributing to the value and virtue and good of this world.
	What they're trying to do is control you by applying a negative stimuli.
	It's like training a puppy, right?
	You apply a negative stimuli called criticism and then you apply a positive stimuli called approval.
	And you can control someone.
	So, yes, it is not.
	I mean, good heavens, right? I mean, just look at some of the, quote, criticisms of me on the web.
	Do you think that those people, they're just, you know, they're just really, really trying to help me improve.
	They just want me to be a better philosopher and a better person.
	That's just their big goal, is to help polish the shiny diamonds of my excellence into an even more laser-blinding white light?
	No! They're enraged at me because the virtues and values that I propose interfere with their immoral interests, and so they need to tarnish me, keep people away from me.
	I mean, so I don't believe you for a moment when you say, I always, right?
	So you say, I always look at criticism as an opportunity to do better.
	Again, dangerously naive.
	If that's your opinion, right, if you genuinely believe that, you are a giant person.
	Sail that people can just blow wind into and make go wherever they want to.
	Because if you go out there saying, well, all criticism is valid, all criticism is just a desire for me to improve, people will sense that, they will exploit the living crap out of you, and your supposed maturity and acceptance of all criticism as a virtue to help you improve will be used to control you.
	So maybe there's another way of looking at this, and maybe you say, well, I look at all criticism as an opportunity to do better.
	That doesn't mean I accept that that's the case.
	I'm just telling you the way that I've read it, and the general thing is...
	To be criticized is to be, like when it's helpful, it's to be coached towards excellence.
	So if somebody's going to take the time to criticize you, they must care about you.
	If criticism doesn't come from caring, then it comes from control.
	It just comes from control.
	It's, well, I offer you the heaven of approval or the hell of disapproval and attack in order to get you to control.
	I control you and you will conform to me.
	Sorry, brain spasm, but we're back!
	We now resume our regularly scheduled eloquence.
	So, to criticize someone means that you must deeply, deeply understand two things.
	The issues and the person.
	So, if you are a really, really good coach in a sport, right?
	Really good coach. Then you must understand the sport very well, and you must understand the player very well, because all players will respond to different approaches, different strategies, different tactics, different focus, foci, and so on, right?
	So if somebody wants to criticize me, let's say in the realm of philosophy, fantastic, love it, look forward to that feedback.
	I'm immensely skeptical that it has anything to do with me.
	I mean, we saw this with the Twitter thing, where I said, look, here are my standards for going back on Twitter, which, by the by, look like they're slowly being met.
	But anyway, we'll see. I'm going to stick by my word, of course.
	I don't make empty promises. But when I said, here are my standards for going on Twitter, I put out all these arguments, and then people came back with me, like, Yeah, you could do a lot of good on Twitter, but Twitter's not the same company as it was before, right?
	And it's like, well, I had addressed all of these things, but they hadn't listened, they hadn't absorbed.
	So people were just like, Steph, I want to see you back on Twitter.
	I found it entertaining. I thought it was good for the cause.
	I want people to see a better side of you than has been portrayed.
	So people wanted me back on Twitter.
	And so they were trying to say the magic words that would have me go back on Twitter rather than deeply understanding corporate culture, moral integrity, advice given should be advice taken.
	Don't tell other people to do things which you would never do yourself.
	Integrity, self-respect, planning to have value in the future rather than an effect in the here and now because philosophy is a long-term business plan to put it mildly.
	So people, they just wanted me to go back on Twitter, which I understand and I appreciate and I thank you for that.
	It's a nice thought. It's a nice thought.
	So they wanted me to go back on Twitter.
	So I put out all these arguments.
	And do they deeply absorb those arguments and out of a genuine care for me and the future of philosophy and what's going to sustain me in terms of integrity?
	No. Almost nobody did that.
	They're just like, well, you know, don't be ridiculous.
	Of course you should go back on Twitter.
	Don't blame Elon Musk for what other people have done.
	It's like, yeah, but I already addressed that two or three times, right?
	They don't listen. So...
	For people to criticize me, they must deeply understand why I'm saying what I'm saying, why I've made the decisions that I've made.
	And it doesn't mean all my decisions are right, but you really do have to listen first.
	Again, as I've said before, you have to listen if you want to change people, right?
	If you want to coach an athlete, you don't just walk in and say, well, do this, kid, and do that.
	You start off... As a coach, by observing the athletes very closely, looking for their strengths, looking for their weaknesses, understanding their emotions and their preferences and their sleep habits and their exercise habits and their nutrition habits and their home life and trying to figure out why they're doing what they're doing and what might trigger them to really focus on Creating massive amounts of talent, skill and value, right? So it's a lot of absorbing when it comes to that.
	You don't just come in and say, well, I want you to run faster, kid!
	Wow, what a great coach!
	So for people to criticize me without me throwing up the rational wall of immense skepticism, I have to accept that they really understand the field that I'm working in.
	They really understand philosophy.
	They really understand my plans.
	They really understand my virtues and my values and my experience.
	I've gone in twice to try and change corporate cultures and I know what they're up against.
	It's even crazier now than it was decades ago when I did it.
	So there are very few people, honestly, very few people in my life whose criticisms I will take without skepticism.
	And those are very close friends, family, and so on, right?
	There are very few people.
	And I would suggest, I can't tell you what to do, I would strongly, strongly suggest you have a very, very high wall of skepticism around you for people who are criticizing you.
	Because are they trying to undo error out of a genuine desire for your well-being?
	Or are they trying to get you to do what they want you to do by criticizing you and getting you to recall from criticism and run in the direction that they want, right?
	Now, why do some people interpret criticism as a personal attack?
	Right? Because most times, criticism is a personal attack.
	Of course it is. I mean, maybe you've never tried to generate real value and virtue in the world.
	I know that sounds snarky, and maybe you have, but for those, I mean, I'm just doing the whole history of philosophers, right?
	And philosophers throughout history, often misguided and maybe a little cowardly and under immense pressure, so I have sympathies for that.
	But they were attacked regularly, regularly attacked.
	Were they attacked because people just wanted to help them improve their philosophical approaches and be even more rational and even more focused on virtue and honesty and integrity, right?
	No! The values philosophers were putting forward were interfering with the interests of evil people, so evil people attacked them, and they attacked them by lying about them and making up terrible stories about them.
	And destroying their reputations and then bringing the force of law against them.
	You understand, right? So, in the history of philosophy, how many criticisms of the philosophers were based on a genuine love of wisdom and truth?
	Please. You must be kidding.
	It happened even to my ancestors.
	My ancestors were hunted and haunted for philosophical excellence.
	I just picked up a framed family, crested family tree today.
	It's very cool. So, I'm going to want to sort of educate my daughter on family history.
	So yeah, why do people interpret criticisms as a personal attack?
	Because criticisms are most often a personal attack.
	Because people aren't mature enough.
	They're not full of love enough.
	If criticism doesn't come from love...
	Look, if people criticize me, it's not that they have to love me.
	It's just they have to love wisdom, the truth, virtue, and so on, right?
	And listen, I've been doing this.
	I've been doing this.
	For over 40 years.
	I started at the age of 15.
	I'm 56 years old.
	I've been doing this for 41 years.
	I've had, I don't even know how many debates.
	I've interviewed, I didn't even know how many experts.
	I've written a huge number of books and articles and some of which I have published and some of which I have not.
	I studied it in three different universities.
	I studied it at Glendon Campus of York University.
	I studied it at McGill University in Montreal and I studied it at the graduate level in the University of Toronto in Canada.
	So I have been doing this 41 years, both theoretically and practically.
	I have been doing this show For 18 years, okay?
	I have over 5,000 shows.
	I have engaged in tons of debates, both written and verbal.
	Now, does this mean I'm right about everything?
	Absolutely not. It doesn't mean I'm right automatically about anything.
	But if someone is going to correct me...
	They need to have a lot of experience, and they need to have a lot of wisdom, and I'm also going to need to see a little bit of their accomplishments.
	Lots of people are telling me, Steph, here's how you should handle things in the public sphere.
	It's like, okay, great. Show me your experience handling things in the public sphere.
	Well, I'm an anonymous account on the internet.
	I don't share my name.
	I don't share where I am.
	I don't share any of that stuff.
	So you have no real experience handling things.
	Ask yourself in the public sphere.
	Well, no! But, but...
	Trust me, right? No, sorry.
	Like, if Freddie Mercury, well, Freddie Mercury, what did he die in his 40s, whatever, right?
	So he'd been doing his, like, 20 years, whatever.
	He was a master showman and so on, right?
	And songwriter and performer.
	Am I going to sit there to Freddie Mercury and say, well, you know, Freddie, you got it all wrong, man.
	You got a face away from the audience and you need to do more push-ups.
	Okay, what's your experience as a singer singing to 300,000 people as Queen did in Brazil?
	Well, I don't have any.
	So would Freddie Mercury sit there and say, yes, you know, please tell me more about how I should perform.
	I... I mean, it's a good thing about getting older is you have standards that you require people to pass before you listen to them at all.
	So, yeah, most times criticism is a personal attack.
	Of course it is. It's a personal attack designed to control people masked as criticism.
	So why do some people react to criticism as if it's a personal attack?
	Because it is! And I would strongly suggest that you don't always look at criticism as an opportunity to do better.
	All right, let me get to your questions here.
	Why do people during a conversation suddenly move into your physical space?
	It feels vampiric. Does it?
	Well, it displaces your concentration.
	It displaces your thought.
	It's a move, right?
	Especially how they move.
	If they move towards you in an intimidating manner, it's designed to seat you out of your intelligence and intellectual sphere and drive you down into the lizard brain of fight or flight.
	All right. Somebody says, I definitely don't accept all criticisms as true, but I try to not get angry about it.
	Why would you try not to get angry about it?
	When you're thinking of anger, like here's the trick.
	I've used this analogy before, but I'll try and put it in a really concise and powerful way.
	You want to imagine your anger and your immune system are the same damn thing.
	Your anger and your physical immune system are the same damn thing.
	You feel me? Just go with me on this mental exercise.
	It's really, really important.
	It literally can save your life to do this.
	I want you to think of your immune system...
	As identical to your anger.
	Now, if you say, well, it's true that not all criticism is valid, but I try not to get angry about it.
	Okay, not everything that enters my body is healthy for me, but I try not to fight it.
	I try not to repel it.
	I try not to oppose it.
	Really? Okay, food enters your body.
	Fantastic. You're swimming.
	Water enters your ear. Fantastic.
	That's fine. Great.
	You can handle it, right?
	Unless your Eustachian tube is clenched tighter than a German baby being toilet trained at gunpoint.
	Things go into your body.
	For you're a woman, penis may go into your body.
	I'm sure that's quite a lot of fun.
	You're a proctologist and he's trying to learn sign language while feeling up your rectum.
	Okay, not so much fun, but I guess medically necessary perhaps.
	Things go into your body.
	Dentistry goes into your body.
	Good for you. So, if you were to say to your immune system, or if you were to command your immune system and say, look, there's lots of stuff that comes into our body.
	Some of it's good. A lot of it's bad.
	You've got germs and knives and whatever, right?
	Viruses. So, a lot of it is bad.
	But, listen, immune system, I don't want you to get mad.
	I'm really going to...
	Don't get upset.
	Don't oppose. Don't fight.
	Don't kill off... Anything that comes into our body.
	Don't kill off the food.
	Yeah, food is good, right? But don't kill off the germs and viruses and don't heal any wounds and don't react in any negative way to anything that comes into our body that harms us.
	Well, that's immunodeficiency, isn't it?
	That's living in a bubble.
	You have to be a bubble boy, right?
	Because you can't handle any infections.
	Or imagine saying to your blood, well, okay, sometimes accidents, abrasions, and sharp things open up our innards to the sky itself, but whatever you do, don't clot!
	Don't clot! Well, then you're a hemophiliac, right?
	And you've got to be ridiculously careful about everything, because your blood doesn't clot, and you can bleed out from a small cut.
	So think of blood clotting, think of Your immune system.
	Well, that's anger. Anger is a healthy emotion designed to push back against somebody who's attacking you.
	Now, I'm not saying act out.
	Obviously, don't be impulsive. Don't go punch people for interfering with your interests in some abstract manner.
	But anger is really important.
	Imagine saying to your stomach acid, well, you know, don't break down the food.
	It's not the food's fault it's inside me and, you know, it's unpleasant for the food, I'm sure, and it's just going to turn it from something recognizable into just a bunch of goop.
	Well, no, you want your stomach to really attack and break down that food, right?
	So you have an immune system that has been developed over billions of years to fight off infections and other things that are bad for you.
	Now, of course, you can have a hyperactive immune system, right?
	So one of the reasons we have autoimmune disorders, one of the reasons we have arthritis and other things is because there was this horrible passage of pathogens from China called the Black Death, Black Plague, right?
	And... And those who had hyperactive immune systems were more likely to survive, which is why we have these, you know, ridiculously overactive.
	So yes, sometimes your immune system can go into overdrive and sometimes it can view peanuts as a lethal threat.
	I get all of that. So yes, of course, you don't want to go, it's an Aristotelian meme, like anger.
	Not being angry is not a virtue.
	Being angry all the time is not a virtue.
	In the same way that having a non-reactive immune system, an inert immune system, no immune system, is bad for your health.
	Having an immune system that overreacts and attacks your myelin sheath or whatever, that's also bad for your health.
	You've got to find that Aristotelian mean.
	I'm not saying it's the easiest thing, but the last thing you want to do, I think, in terms of mental health, again, just my amateur outside nonsense opinion, it's my amateur opinion, Do not take an essential aspect of your emotional apparatus and make it a devil.
	Why? You know, we evolved anger to stay sane and healthy.
	Because people fuck with you.
	And it's going to make you angry.
	And if you say to your anchor, well, you know, we shouldn't get angry.
	Why? Well, immune system, you shouldn't fight off this virus.
	It's probably fine. How do you know?
	Could take deep roots.
	Don't take any of your...
	There's no emotional apparatus that is the finger puppet of Satan.
	There's no emotional apparatus that you have that works against your interest.
	I mean, we probably have a fairly secular crowd here.
	Appreciate it. Love you guys.
	Thank you so much. So you understand, if anger was terrible for us, we wouldn't have it.
	If anger was bad for us, we wouldn't have it.
	We wouldn't have evolved it.
	And if you look across the animal kingdom, they all get angry.
	Why? Because it's essential for survival.
	And if you take a massive component of that which has evolved to be essential for your survival, And cast it out!
	You're creating a giant hole in the necessary armor of survival and flourishing in an unjust world and you're just throwing yourself to the wolves, unarmed, naked and afraid.
	Don't carve off an essential birthright of your evolution and that which is essential for your survival.
	Don't carve that off and cast it out.
	Now, I understand.
	See, here's the thing.
	Why do people say to us, well, no need to get so angry, man.
	I mean, just chill, bro. What's the fucking thing in the modern world?
	Chill, bro. Chill, man.
	Just chillax, relax, man.
	No, that's big.
	When you want to rob a bank, what do you do?
	First thing you've got to do is take out the security system.
	And you can wander in and you can take stuff and nobody's notified and there's no big pushback.
	The guards don't get notified. The police don't come.
	You just wander in and wander out.
	You understand? The people who tell you your anger is bad and immature and excessive and problematic.
	You understand? The people...
	Who want to disarm your anger are doing so because they want to rob you blind.
	Or rather, they have to make you blind so they can rob you, right?
	Shoot out the security cameras.
	Be very, very weary of people who tell you, well, this entire emotional apparatus is bad.
	Again, I just came off Spinoza.
	You must distance yourself from the passions.
	Why? Why don't you distance yourself from the passions?
	Why? They evolved to keep us alive and healthy and safe.
	Why would you want to distance yourself from the passions?
	If the purpose of philosophy is happiness and happiness is an emotion and you say philosophy requires detachment from the emotions then you're saying the purpose of philosophy is an emotion and the way you get there is to not have emotions.
	The purpose of this financial advice is wealth, and the way you get it is setting fire to all your money.
	I don't know, it's kind of funny, right?
	Yeah, why would you not get angry?
	What's wrong with getting angry?
	Why are you bringing this in?
	Just taking inheritance left by abusive parents to no lack of model or integrity?
	We just did this on Wednesday.
	I don't know what the hell you're doing back here with this.
	Steph, I'm frustrated you have to keep answering this.
	I hear you loud and clear and think you're the greatest of all time.
	Thank you. I appreciate that. Twitter example is a classic ship of Theseus.
	How much change makes it a different entity?
	Different enough for whatever purpose is in question.
	Right, so with Twitter, I mean, listen, Elon is, I mean, taking a lot of heat for pairing up with another safety council that people have issues with.
	But yeah, he's firing, what is it, half the workforce?
	And, you know, I'm not really going to pretend.
	I'm tired of pretending.
	It's fun to watch. Fun to watch.
	See, the Twitter employees are very, very upset that their livelihood is threatened.
	Well, a lot of y'all were threatening other people's livelihoods.
	You're like a million people that have been banned off Twitter.
	I mean, obviously some of those are bots and so on, and I think some of those are enormously, monstrously unjust.
	And this is just the unbelievable...
	See, the people who were in charge of deciding who could speak in the public square show such an astounding and astonishing and bottomless lack of self-knowledge.
	Lack of empathy.
	Right? Lack of empathy.
	So, in Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, he talks about him being beaten by the guards and how unbelievably awful it is, as it would be, right?
	And then a guard who beat him ends up being put in prison in one of these gulags, and the guard is also beaten.
	And the guard says to Solzhenitsyn, Oh God, I had absolutely no idea how much that hurt.
	First couple of tendrils of potential empathy.
	So, if in Twitter you've made it your life mission to destroy other people's access to the public square, thus harming their capacity to have an effect, to have a voice, and to make any money, and you say, you know, it's really, really awful.
	To be fired. It's really, really awful.
	And they're getting money till like February of next year.
	Well, I guess they have to do this through laws.
	But yeah, they're getting money and benefits and they're getting free pay for a couple of months.
	I didn't get that, right?
	So they're not saying, oh man, you know, I deplatformed a lot of people and now I'm getting a sense of, you know, it's pretty bad.
	It's pretty bad to have your income source cut off.
	Maybe I've learned a lesson.
	No, there's none of that. There's none of that.
	So the people who are in charge...
	I'm not talking about any individuals.
	This is just a general pattern, right?
	But the people who are in charge of deplatforming people have no empathy.
	They're just like... Well, I de-platformed other people.
	Now I kind of got, quote, de-platformed, right?
	From Twitter.
	And it's like, it's all just self-pity.
	There's absolutely no reflection on, oof, you know?
	It's literally like a guy who cheated on a girlfriend...
	With another woman.
	Call her Mary, right? So a guy cheats on his girlfriend with Mary.
	Gets together with Mary.
	And then Mary cheats on him.
	And he's just so full of self-pity.
	And makes absolutely no reference to him cheating on his original girlfriend.
	Like it doesn't even cross his mind.
	Such primitive personality.
	Such lack of empathy and sophistication, right?
	But these are all the people.
	These are always the people who will end up in charge of these things, right?
	So... Yeah, I mean, Elon is navigating his way forward, right?
	It's a tricky thing to do, and I have a lot of sympathy for this.
	Everything's easy when you're in the armchair, right?
	But being in the seat of this rocket ship of Twitter would be a pretty wild experience.
	I'll tell you one of the things that I think is pure genius in a market.
	And the pure genius in the market is to try to make your customers the enforcers.
	Now, it's a tricky thing to do because the power can be abused.
	So you've been... Here's an example, right?
	I was talking about this with my daughter the other day.
	So we were at a food court.
	We were getting a snack. And there was a sign by the cash register.
	Like everyone's seen these, right? The sign by the cash register.
	And the sign says...
	Call this number if the cashier fails to give you a receipt and your meal is free.
	Because they don't want the cashiers pocketing the cash, not registering the sale, right?
	So instead of there being like cameras and people got to review the cameras and make sure that the cash register people are taking the actual money and recording it in the cash register, right?
	Instead of, they just make the customers the enforcers.
	So you get a free meal if you don't get a receipt.
	Everyone's seen this, right? Brilliant.
	It's brilliant because it's labor-free.
	It's labor-free. Just wait for the phone call, right?
	And of course, because that incentive is there, people are much less likely to take cash and pocket the money and not ring up the sale, right?
	So, an elegant and brilliant solution that virtually eliminates cashier theft from the organization.
	I mean, shrinkage of theft is unbelievable.
	You know, Walmart loses $3 billion a year in America in theft.
	$3 billion a year in theft.
	Wild. So...
	What I would do if I was in charge, right?
	What I would do is I'd say, look, here's how we're going to do it.
	We want to outsource this, right?
	So we're going to have rules, right?
	Gross platform manipulation.
	You buy a million bots and blah, blah, blah.
	I get that. You know, that's not good and all of that.
	Obviously, death threats and terrorist threats and, you know, doxing and so on, that's all bad.
	But that's relatively minor and a relatively small part of all of this stuff, right?
	So, let's say, I don't know, they have these general umbrellas like incitement of hatred.
	That's subjective, right?
	Incitement of hatred. Because you don't know for sure.
	I mean, absolutely, you know, sometimes, what are they two on The View?
	They said that white women who vote Republican are like cockroaches voting for Raid.
	Well, cockroaches is one of the terms, the dehumanizing terms that got that horrible civil war going in Africa.
	Oh man, brutal. Anyway, so incitement of hatred, right?
	So, let's say that a threat of violence, right?
	I hope something, I hope a piano lands on this guy, right?
	Okay, let's say that that's like, oh my gosh, we've got to lock that person out of their account.
	Okay. So that stands, but that's precedent.
	So now there's a bounty out there, which is the Twitter moderation board, or any social media moderation board, would then get reports of anybody else who'd said, I want something bad to happen to someone, and all of those accounts would have to be banned as well, or the original ban would have to be rescinded.
	And if people find other people...
	Who do that and those people don't get banned, right?
	If they do get banned, I guess you've at least had an enforcement that is across the board even, right?
	And this would be something that would be really powerful.
	Because while you may yourself not have said, I want something bad to happen to someone on a social media platform, maybe you've got friends who did.
	And maybe their accounts are going to get banned, right?
	And so, right now, there's no penalty for hypocrisy, right?
	So, if you report, oh, this person said I want a piano to fall on someone, that's bad.
	Maybe that goes against the terms of service.
	I don't know. Let's just make up something where it does, right?
	Okay, then... Everybody else who has that also has to have their account banned.
	Easy peasy, right? And again, you'd have to find some enforcement mechanism to make this happen, right?
	And it would probably have to be some manual review, but in general it would be embedded in the code or a third party, and you'd have to have bounties, right?
	So, if person A says...
	And you'd want to make it an internal currency, right?
	Everyone says, well, it's got to be crypto, like Twitch or whatever, right?
	It doesn't have to be crypto, because Twitter has an internal currency, which has nothing to do with crypto.
	And the internal currency that Twitter has is advertising value, right?
	That's the internal currency. So what you'd say is...
	If someone gets banned for wishing ill upon someone, then for every tweet you find where somebody's wishing ill on someone that hasn't been banned, you get a dollar of advertising credit.
	So you can advertise then, right?
	And there's no limit to that.
	And If those accounts don't get banned, the original account gets restored, but you still get to keep the money for finding other posts with the same issue, right?
	Now, maybe you could program some AI algorithm to try and find these things and so on, right?
	So, if someone says, I think this group, whatever it is, could be any group, I think this group is bad, right?
	Okay, well, so they say, okay, we're going to ban this person for saying this group is bad, right?
	Okay, so then if you say, well, listen, I found these guys who say this group is bad.
	Maybe it's white people or something like that.
	This group is bad, but their account is still up.
	So everything you find gets you a dollar of advertising credit.
	And maybe if they don't ban every single one of those, then they have to restore the original account.
	Now, I understand the enforcement mechanism is important, and we can sort of mull over how that might work in the long run, but you have to have bounties.
	You have to have rewards for people finding hypocrisy, in the same way that you have rewards for people when the cashier pockets the money and doesn't ring up the sale, which is you get.
	You call this number, you get a free meal.
	You have to reward people who find your lack of consistency, and that way you're outsourcing the enforcement, or you're outsourcing the research.
	Of course, I understand there'll be people who will have to make those decisions and so on.
	But the mass flagging, right, because the way it works right now in a lot of social media companies is you get a mass flagging, which results in some rolling, either automatic or sort of a rolling hysteria ban.
	And that should just be the start of the process.
	Right now, the ban is the end of the process.
	Should it be the start of the process? Okay.
	Your account has been flagged because of this issue.
	You will be banned in one week or If you can't find, or, and you can have your sort of public person, you can outsource this, and of course people would have an incentive to do this because they get free advertising revenue or free advertising credits.
	So your account will be banned in one week, assuming you can't find other unbanned accounts who've said the same thing, who've done the same thing.
	Doesn't matter how big or small. Now, I understand, again, social media companies can't get millions and millions, hundreds of millions of posts a day.
	They can't navigate all of these.
	They can't, right? So you would say you've got a week to find precedent why you shouldn't be banned, right?
	So if there's other relatively prominent accounts that have said the same thing, whether it's about a different group or a different person or whatever, okay, so that account either has to be banned or your account has to be unbanned.
	And every one you find gets you a dollar of advertising credit or five dollars of advertising credit or you get floated to the top of the news feed for X amount of hours.
	I don't know. Whatever they can do that doesn't require a direct payout.
	That's right. And you can, again, you can outsource this, right?
	So that's pretty good. And you can do pretty automatic searches and you could have entire systems set up, right?
	You could have probe systems look at the tweets automatically to try and find particular combinations of words.
	This would be a very sophisticated thing.
	You could make a lot of money. You could make a lot of money.
	Maybe the advertising credits could be sold.
	To others, right? Once you've accumulated enough, because I get, you know, $1 is tough to do outside of crypto.
	You could say you've accumulated...
	Let's say someone gets banned for saying this group is bad and then they find 10,000 tweets of other people saying this group is bad who haven't been banned.
	Okay, that's $10,000.
	And if they can sell that, then they have an asset, right?
	So when you have that kind of reward mechanism...
	Or maybe you can sell the floating up in the feed or whatever, right?
	Or the prominence of the feed. So when you have that kind of incentive, people start investing ways to find it automated.
	And once people get really sophisticated and have an incentive to get pattern recognition on tweets for offensive language, again, it's not perfect, but the AI stuff they can do is really remarkable.
	So, someone gets a ban threat for X offense, then the AI bots or the AI scans go into place and find thousands and thousands of people who've said the same thing, tens of thousands of tweets or something like that, right?
	And then you submit that. That'd be an automatic way you could submit the results of those searches and then people would, third party, again not Twitter, right?
	Third party would go and say, okay, well, either you unban this account that you flagged for this issue or you have to ban all of these accounts.
	And this, again, this would be written into the terms of service.
	This would be something legally enforceable, right?
	This would be something where you could sue if it didn't happen, right?
	Or you'd go to arbitration, right?
	And say, listen, if we don't enforce this, we go to arbitration and we'll pay you $20,000 or whatever it is, right?
	Or we'll pay you $10 per...
	Follower you have or whatever it is, right?
	And so you have now an incentive for people to enforce integrity and you've automated to a large degree and incentivized the finding of inconsistency in the application of rules.
	Now, if they say, well, you know, these particular rules become unenforceable, it's like, okay, well, now those rules are too strict and you need to pare them back.
	But you need to have a mechanism in there whereby people – because right now, you know, to go back to the fast food analogy, right now the cashiers can pocket the money and the people who are – they can give half the money to the people watching the cameras and you never catch anyone, right?
	But if the customers are the enforcers, then you've just taken the labor off.
	And you say, oh, well, it's going to cost Twitter some money.
	It's like, yes, but it's going to be a whole lot cheaper than having thousands of people scanning all of this stuff with their own biases and prejudice and all of that.
	And everyone has seen this.
	I mean, this is not a particularly original thing because everybody's seen this on social media companies where they say, well, so-and-so got banned for such and such.
	And then you find dozens of other examples of people saying much worse who don't get banned.
	And they don't. So you would try and find a way to eliminate the bias.
	And you would tune the AIs to find such similar language that it would be incontrovertible.
	So if you say, the Elbonians, what is that from Scott Adams?
	The Elbonians are all terrible.
	And you get banned, right?
	And then the AI produces, you know, 50,000 tweets of people saying, I think white people are terrible or whatever, right?
	Okay, then they all have to be banned or the person has to be rescinded, right?
	The ban has to be rescinded.
	But you've got a window where you can appeal, right?
	I mean, that's how it works in the courts, right?
	You can appeal. And often you can appeal.
	Certainly these would be non-violent offenses, right?
	So you can appeal without being, quote, in jail, right?
	So you would be able to appeal, or you wouldn't just be ban-hammered, right?
	You would have a warning, and you would have recourse, which would be you have to find similar patterns of people who haven't been banned, and either all those people need to be banned, or your ban potential is rescinded, right?
	And again, you would have rewards and incentives and all of this, Easy peasy.
	And again, you outsource to the customer the check for integrity.
	Steph, any advice on developing a sharp wit?
	How does one keep their mind quick and agile?
	Well, the major impediment to a sharp wit is fear of offense, fear of offending people.
	We all have stuff bubble up within us that could be considered offensive, but which may in fact be very funny.
	And if you can lower your anxiety about offending people, and listen, I get offending people is a big deal these days.
	It's something I don't really understand, right?
	I mean, but I grew up eating dirt and drinking out of a garden hose, so I'm bulletproof.
	But yeah, so I would say really work on...
	And don't be around people who just get offended at things that you say, because...
	We're not all particularly responsible for the productions of our brain.
	You know, like the brain just kicks up stuff.
	Are you responsible for saying it or not?
	not, but stuff pops into your head and if you're going to hide yourself your whole life, you just go into the grave dead before you died.
	Moon river wider than a mile.
	I'm crossing you in style one day.
	A great answer about not casting away my anger.
	Oh, thanks for the tip. That was really helpful.
	I'm a bit too agreeable sometimes and I'm working on it.
	Yeah, see, you don't need to work on being less agreeable.
	You just need to not... Detach yourself from your anger.
	You need to stop holding your anger down.
	It's like holding a helium balloon underwater.
	It's exhausting. Or like holding a weight up, right?
	But it's like holding a helium balloon underwater.
	You say, well, I'm really working it not.
	Just let it go, right? All right.
	Hi, Steph. I had no guidance growing up and I'm about to become a father.
	How do you have the talk?
	I have little sense of how and when to have it or what it would look like.
	How do I make it a productive conversation?
	Do you mean the talk about sex?
	The talk about reproduction and so on?
	Well, obviously, make sure that the internet is wholesome for them and...
	When they hit puberty, obviously shortly before they hit puberty, you need to have that talk, particularly for girls, right?
	Once they hit their period, you don't want them like, oh my God, I'm dying, right?
	So yeah, you have a conversation and I think, you know, for kids, and look, I don't know, everybody's different, but this is sort of my sense of things.
	For kids, sort of reproductive sex, it's profoundly undignified.
	There's a reason why they talk about storks and all of that.
	It's profoundly undignified.
	And it's going to have a gross aspect to it.
	When you're doing it, it's great.
	But when you think about it or you first find out about it as a kid, it's kind of undignified.
	Because kids live in a world of rarefied imagination and, in a sense, quote, purity, like...
	In the same way, you know, one of the big problems in the world, in the West in particular, is that children grow up with this unbelievably sentimentalized view of nature.
	You know, it's all cute ducks and fuzzy animals and lions who chat with each other and so on, right?
	So you grow up with this insane, deranged Garden of Eden nonsense about nature.
	Now, My daughter, a bit of a country girl in some ways.
	And we've had some chickens.
	And she loved two things.
	She loved chickens and she loved toads.
	And she would catch the toads and she would get the tadpoles and all of that, right?
	Now, she had a toad that she liked that lived under the porch and one day the chickens were out.
	And I don't know if you've ever seen that scene in the second Jurassic Park where the guy gets torn apart by the two T-Rexes.
	Well, that happened with her beloved toad.
	The chickens darted out, grabbed the toad and tore it into and ate it.
	And my daughter was extraordinarily upset.
	She was quite young. Totally understandable.
	And, you know, do I want my daughter to be upset?
	No. Do I want her to grow up with a completely delusionary view of nature?
	No. Nature is brutal. Everything's trying to screw, eat, not get eaten.
	That's it. Right? So, when kids, I mean, they just live on these ridiculously abstract documentaries and these, you know, fuzzy duckling, you know, I mean, you know, sorry, ducks are rapey as hell, right?
	Like dolphins, right? I mean, so, there is...
	If your kids have had this hyper-sentimentalized view of nature, what's this where the environmental movement comes from in part?
	It's just this hyper-sentimentalized view of nature.
	Like... Like, I'm sorry.
	I battled bald-faced nature when I was working up north, right?
	I went from a pretty comfortable city existence to living in a tent in minus 40 degree weather and battling the elements like every day.
	And, you know, like two days travel from the nearest hospital if you were lucky.
	So you simply couldn't make any mistakes, right?
	Which is why when I do my History of Philosopher series, if the philosopher has not done necessary hard labor for money, I generally don't care pretty much what they have to say.
	Like if they come from, oh, a very rich and privileged background, like Liebnitz's father was a professor, so he was already in his father's library and never had to work a day in his life.
	He's like, then I don't care what you have to say about reality because it's all abstract to you.
	You've never actually had to work in the real world out of necessity.
	So why would I listen to your metaphysics and epistemology if you've never actually had to work in the real world with consequences?
	Actual consequences. Like, you had to be so hyper-alert and hyper-aware when you're working with heavy machinery in the middle of nowhere.
	Like, we were working with massive drill bits and big, you know, just like oil derrick kind of stuff.
	Not that big, but, you know, it was mobile to carry some of the stuff around.
	And you make one mistake and you're likely to die because they've got to find a way to get you back to the tent.
	They've got a radio for a plane.
	The plane's got to be available. The weather has to be good.
	The plane has to land. You've got to load up on the plane.
	You've got to get to the airport. You've got to drive to the hospital, which is a long way away.
	And the odds of you making it, if you've had a significant injury and you're bleeding in any significant way, are very low.
	So you have to be super, super careful.
	And so, you know, when people are like, hey man, reality is kind of a dream within a dream, and we could be in the brain of a demon, and it could be the matrix, and I'm just like, okay, so just tell me you're a privileged little shit who never had to work for money in a manual context.
	I get it. It's a mark of state.
	Well, I've never had to work with real things for real consequences, so I can afford all of these...
	I can afford all of these abstract theories about this, that, and the other nonsense.
	It's like, okay, yeah, I get it. You're a pampered little bastard, and you've never had to work a day in your life for anything meaningful or real or true or factual or with any consequences.
	So it's, you know, you're just a fat, you're a dilettante, you're a piece of dandelion fluff in the modern abstract non-economy.
	It's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, if you've never had to work with any...
	And, you know, there's things that I count about this, even like you don't have to be out there in the middle of nowhere with giant drill bits and flamethrowers and shit like that.
	I mean, even if you're just a waiter or something where you actually have to be a waiter because you have to pay bills, right?
	I mean, don't talk to me about the economy if you've never actually had to work and pay bills.
	And, of course, I got my first job when I was 10, and so I've just been working for, you know, forever, right?
	And so, yeah, when there are real consequences, I'll listen, but not otherwise.
	To find out the facts about reality and to not sentimentalize reality is really, really important.
	So, if your kids have grown up with all of this abstract, fuzzy stuff, you know, where...
	Obviously, you know, when kids are learning about ducklings, they don't want to learn that the males, you know, hold the ducks...
	The male ducks hold the female ducks' heads underwater in order to mate with them, and sometimes they drown the female ducks, like they rape them to death...
	Right? It's like, you obviously don't want to show that to a five-year-old or talk about that with a five-year-old.
	And so the problem is that because you withhold some of the, quote, facts of nature or realities of nature, the brutality and the earthiness of nature.
	You know, kids who grew up on farms, like they see farm animals copulating all the time.
	They see pregnancies.
	They see babies popping out of the asses of cows or whatever, right?
	And... So, some of the lack of dignity in the whole reproductive process, they don't...
	Well, they see it, so it's not so much of a shock.
	But when kids have had no experience with animals and copulation and fertilization and pregnancy and birth and so on, then it's going to feel really undignified.
	So you have to remind, you know, this may not be the most, it may not be what you would plan, it may not be the way that you'd want it to be, but it is the way that all animals reproduce and we are an animal as far as that goes.
	Yeah, just be sensitive to the fact that it's going to come across as kind of strange and gross.
	All right. And again, it could be different for everyone.
	That's just, you know, my thoughts.
	The Hutus and the Tutsis, yes, thank you, the Rwandan genocide.
	If only we could get big tech to believe in universal morality.
	Yeah. I had a wild speech in my show on Spinoza where I was talking about UPP, universally preferable behavior.
	The golden rule is explained to kids like some kid grabs another kid's toy, right?
	I say, well, how would you like it if he did that to you?
	Okay, that's one aspect of the golden rule, right?
	Or the second aspect of the golden rule would be, well, how would you like it if everyone did that?
	You take a kid's toy.
	Well, how would you like it if all the kids were taking everyone's toy?
	I wouldn't like that at all. So, how would you like it if someone did that to you?
	How would you like it if everyone did that?
	Whereas UPB is, is it even possible for everyone to do that?
	Is it even possible physically, logically, for everyone to do that?
	And so the UPB is that big step forward where it's no longer about feelings, it's about facts.
	All right. Hmm.
	In order to recognize hypocrisy in one's own conduct, you have to understand reciprocity, and that requires empathy, something that is likely absent in the damaged soul.
	Well, it's a predatory soul, right?
	It's a predatory soul.
	So what I mean by that is the will to power that arises in brute, blunt tribalism, the will to power that emerges from that doesn't recognize hypocrisy in the way that universal morality does.
	Universal morality, like, one of the things I'm concerned about with regards to going back on social media is hypocrisy.
	Like I've said to people as a whole, you know, probably a good idea if somebody deeply wrongs you that they apologize, make restitution, and show you how it's not going to happen again.
	And then if I were to just abandon that, then people could say, well, wait a minute, you've been saying this for like 18 years, and you just did the complete opposite.
	When it's your interest, that's totally hypocritical.
	And it's like, yeah, that's fair.
	And one of the reasons you put out universal standards is so that you can be held to them when you're tempted.
	By bad decisions, as we all are, right?
	If you say to your entire family, I'm desperate to lose weight, don't let me eat any sugar, then when you start eating sugar, they'll say, well, you told me to...
	So one of the reasons you put out universal morals is so people can catch you when you're tempted to do something against your values, right?
	Because we all are. Don't imagine I'm not tempted, right?
	Not much, but a little, right?
	Because, you know, I can dangle that anglerfish glow of all the good I could do and then, you know, just get snapped up by my own hypocrisy.
	So, for people who are power mongers, right?
	The lust for power, the will to power, the Nietzschean stuff, right?
	There's no such thing as hypocrisy.
	It doesn't exist. If it gets you closer to your goal...
	That's a good thing. If it gets you more power it's a good thing.
	Right? You know that old saying, if leftists or whatever didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all.
	Like, they simply don't recognize, right?
	Say, oh, well, you know, that somebody took a run at a leftist politician.
	Oh, my God, that's the worst thing ever.
	Violence has no place in politics.
	If someone took a run at a rightist politician, oh, well, that's unimportant.
	That's, you know, they probably brought it on themselves by being racist.
	Whatever. So, you say, oh, well, that's hypocritical.
	It's like, but And this is true on the left and some aspects of the right.
	The goal is not consistency.
	The goal is power. Right?
	I mean, if you're a tiger, your stripes help you imitate tall grasses.
	Right? So your camouflage gets you closer to your prey.
	Is it hypocritical?
	Hey, man, you're not a tiger.
	You're not tall grass.
	You're a tiger. You're pretending to be tall grass.
	When you're not, that's totally hypocritical.
	You're lying. You're saying, oh, there's nothing to hear.
	I'm just tall grass, man.
	Don't worry. But you're not tall grass.
	You're totally lying to that creature.
	He's like, my camouflage gets me closer to what I need, which is to eat that creature because I'm hungry, right?
	So saying he's lying, when the goal is power, the goal is dominance, the goal is getting what you want.
	Lying is irrelevant to the equation, which is why the people who have universal morality and the people who are searching for power have a little tough time getting along, right?
	All right.
	I mean, in the same way, when one political group attacks another, it's emblematic of a deeper, disturbing trend, right?
	It's being fueled by all of this rhetoric, whereas the other group attacks, and it's like, oh, it's just lone mental illness.
	It's nothing to do with any patterns.
	Again, it just gets you the power you want.
	It's expecting...
	Let's see here. The person in an emotionally dysregulated state does not have bandwidth to process worrying about others' feelings because their brain is too deep in panic defending themselves against themselves in many cases.
	Yeah, I mean, you could absolutely be right.
	I'm sure that is the case in many people.
	Another argument is that It's not an emotionally dysregulated state.
	If you are brutalized in infancy in particular, you simply don't develop empathy.
	You don't develop empathy.
	And nobody knows how to get people to develop empathy later on.
	If you don't get enough food as a kid, you end up a foot shorter.
	You can't fix that.
	You can't go back in time and get more food and be taller.
	And eating more food now doesn't make you taller, it just makes you whiter.
	Yeah, again, it needs to be outsourced.
	It needs to be outsourced to the crowd, right?
	See, when you have an issue, your customers decide.
	In general, right? When you have an issue, your customers decide, right?
	Outsourcing to the customers is the essence of business, right?
	If you want to make a widget, it has to please the customers or there's no point making it.
	It just loses money, right? So, outsourcing to the customers is key.
	If you internalize it, it's because you want it to be corrupt or it's going to be corrupt.
	To crowdsource, externalize, and incentivize Anti-corruption is the only way.
	Competition is the only thing that eliminates corruption.
	Because corruption is expensive, as Twitter employees, I think, to some degree are finding out this week.
	The only way to fight corruption is competition.
	Because corruption is expensive, competition reduces corruption.
	The value of corruption to the organization as a whole.
	If you have a monopoly, you can be corrupt and nobody can interfere with you.
	Nobody can out-compete you.
	Nobody can undercut you. So competition is the only way to...
	You can't ever eliminate it completely because we're all fallible.
	But competition and outsourcing and crowdsourcing is the only way.
	To deal with the problem of corruption.
	And so, incentivizing people to root out corruption, rewarding people for rooting out corruption, and having the people who are rooting out corruption have nothing to do with your organization.
	Again, the cashier example from the fast food court.
	Has to give you a receipt, which means she has to punch in your meal, and you as the customer are the enforcer, and you're incentivized with a free meal to enforce that, right?
	Management has nothing to do with it.
	Other than rewarding the people who expose corruption.
	The cashier can't control it.
	The people running the security cameras can't control it.
	The cooks can't control it. Even the managers can't control it.
	So once you have the incentives in place and the people enforcing the anti-corruption methods are outside your organization.
	The customers in the food cart don't work for the food court.
	They don't work for that company.
	They're just customers.
	So you have to outsource so that the anti-corruption is incentivized.
	It's relatively objective.
	And the people who are enforcing integrity are outside your organization and incentivized to do it.
	That's all you can do. You can't do anything better than that.
	So, anyway, that's what I'd be doing.
	And as far as Elon wants to charge for blue checks, it's fine.
	I think it's fine. You know, I've tried both open and closed communities over the course of doing this philosophical community.
	In general, the closed communities, and what that means is that there's a small barrier to entry, a couple of bucks a month or whatever.
	They're just better. They're just better.
	Let's see here. Agree.
	Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth said no snow in Australia by 2020.
	Record snowfalls last year.
	No apology. Plus, it uses an extraordinary amount of energy compared to average person.
	Hypocrite without conscience. Well, yeah.
	So, I mean, I don't know about Al Gore in particular.
	I'm going to assume that. But the goal of this stuff is to frighten people into giving the government money and surrendering their rights so they can get their carbon credits and social credit score based upon carbon use.
	And it's just about controlling people and getting their money.
	So his goal was not to be accurate about, again, I don't want to speak for Al Gore in particular, but in general, these activists' goals, it's not to be accurate about the future.
	It's not to be accurate about the future.
	It's like, okay, does saying this get me more power and more money?
	The goal of the tiger is to get close enough for an easy kill.
	It's not to be honest and announce his presence and say, I'm going to count to 10 and give you a head start.
	It's not to be fair. It's not to be moral.
	It's not to be rational. It's not to be honest.
	It's to get the meat!
	Yeah, people are constantly saying, well, this prediction didn't come true.
	It's like, but the purpose of the prediction was to get power, and the power has been achieved, so why would they care if it's true or not?
	The purpose of the prediction is to frighten people into giving up their rights.
	So, mission accomplished, right?
	My seventh-grade instructor made our class view his wife's home labor, VHS tape.
	Oh, my God, that's not good.
	Scary than watching that guy have the chest buster breakout in Alien.
	Oh yeah, that was John Hurt, right?
	Do you know they didn't even tell the actress that was coming, so their reactions was pretty accurate.
	Yeah, and of course a friend of mine many years ago said that that was birth anxiety.
	What do you think about the over-employed recently?
	There's been articles of people having two to three remote job positions.
	Yeah, well, I mean, this is the issue with Twitter, right?
	So, Twitter has, I don't know what, 7,000 people, right?
	It's 7,000 people.
	So, let's see here.
	So there's about 80 people at Twitter are responsible for half the profits.
	Right?
	And about nine people at Twitter are responsible for a quarter of the entire profits of Twitter.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	We just know this from the Pareto principle.
	The square root of any group in a meritocracy are responsible for half the value.
	So you've got 80 people responsible for half the productivity in Twitter.
	And about Eight or nine people responsible for 25% of the entire profitability and value of Twitter.
	It's just the way it is. So if you can find one of these rainmakers, right, one of these magic productivity people, pay any price, bear any burden.
	You know, it's a thing too.
	I don't know about Twitter in particular, but in the coding world, let's say you have, I know this from personal experience, let's say you have 10 coders and one of them is bad.
	So you say, well, you know, it's a hassle to fire them and it's, you know, uncomfortable or whatever.
	So I'll just pretend that I have nine good coders and forget about the other one, right?
	Not the case.
	Not the case.
	If you have 10 coders and one bad one, you actually only have about four coders, give or take.
	Because what happens is people who are productive notice the people who are unproductive.
	And if they keep getting paid, the productive people just say, oh, forget this, right?
	Why am I going to work so that hard?
	This guy is still getting paid.
	He gets paid the same. Why on earth would I work that hard?
	Plus, of course, the code he produces infests the other code base and then you have to test it and you have to track it.
	You have to fix it and you have to document it.
	So one bad coder knocks off 60% or more of your team's productivity.
	And it's a race to the bottom.
	Lowest common denominator. Wins out, right?
	You can't be more successful than the least successful person in your organization in the long run, which is why you really have to work to prune people, right?
	So the productivity of Twitter is going to go up unbelievably enormously.
	The productivity and profitability will go up.
	And... No, I'm not going to go there.
	The people who are quitting because the advertisers who are quitting, well, they're going to be identified, those organizations, and they're going to be boycotted too.
	All right. How did you get empathy with your child abusing mother?
	She must have done a few things right.
	What other evil person in history do you talk about that way?
	I'm curious, genuinely curious, right?
	So think of a really genuinely evil person in history.
	Do you say, well, they must have done a few things right?
	Do you say that or not, right?
	Or is it just my mother that you feel you can talk this way about?
	Did my mother do a few things right?
	Because, you know, she was asleep at times.
	Her hands got tired from hitting me.
	She got headaches from screaming.
	So, yeah. Did she abuse me constantly?
	No. I got out of the house quite a lot.
	I built my own tree houses.
	I would roam the woods.
	I would go with other victims of child abuse.
	We'd buy a couple of tins of beans and go pound them in the woods and cook them over a little pot.
	Did my mother do a few things right?
	You say that about Jeffrey Dahmer? - What do you mean?
	So it's just kind of funny, right?
	This kind of passive-aggressive, right?
	So how I got empathy?
	Well, I was lucky to have a very good nanny when I was young, a baby.
	And my mother was hospitalized with postpartum depression for months after I was born, and I was in the care of a nanny, which I think helped a lot.
	But I've done a lot of work on it too.
	And they say, oh, well, nobody knows how to do it, blah, blah, blah.
	Well, I did a huge amount of self-work starting in my, again, my mid-teens.
	I got into Aristotle.
	I got into objectivism.
	I got into Nathaniel Brandon's Psychology of Self-Esteem.
	It was a great book. And I really started doing the sentence completion exercise and really working to try and understand myself.
	I started reading Jung.
	I started reading Freud. I started reading Adler.
	And I really just worked for years and years and years.
	And then I did... Therapy for three hours a week for two years straight and, you know, I've done this work.
	Even doing this show is kind of therapeutic because it helps me sort of explore thoughts and feelings.
	So, yeah, it's just a lot of work.
	It's a lot of work. A tiger giving his prey to the count of ten has a Shere Khan vibe.
	Yes, yes, Shere Khan.
	I like that. There's a great character in Jungle Book.
	All right. Given the inefficiencies of wokeness, I would expect the proportion to be even more whacked out.
	Yeah, bad money drives out good.
	Bad employees drive out good employees.
	So Elon Musk, I don't know, obviously I have no idea, but my guess is that Elon Musk, what he's trying to do is he's trying to change Twitter so that good employees, like hyperproductive employees, want to work there.
	It's not just about firing people.
	It's about getting rid of the deadwood, if that's what he's doing, getting rid of the deadwood so more productive people want to work there.
	Because if you're a hyperproductive person, there's a reason I work alone.
	So if you're a hyperproductive person, being around normally productive people is like being chained to an elephant and trying to win a sprinting race.
	Like it's just appallingly awful.
	Can you imagine what this show would be like if I had a free domain, trust and safety and non-offensive committee?
	Can you imagine what this show would be like if I had to go through a committee to make sure that everything I said and did was appropriate and non-offensive and never open to any kind of misinterpretation, even by the most hostile and malevolent actors?
	Can you imagine? I mean, it would be the most boring, tapioca...
	Nonsense of time-wasting failure that could possibly be imagined.
	Now, There are pluses and there are minuses to being your own conscience in this way.
	But of course, you know, you as the delightful audience will often steer me right if I'm heading off in the wrong direction.
	But my productivity comes because I can act without concern that tapioca heads are slowing me down, right?
	But if you're around the tapioca heads, which is how ordinarily productive people appear to the hyperproductive, it's just awful.
	It's just awful. I mean, have you ever been in a situation where you're trying to do something on a computer?
	Oh, and by the way, if you care, I did find out what was slowing down my computer.
	Apparently, there were two or three programs that were all trying to change my power settings on a regular basis because apparently they didn't say, hey, when was the last time the power setting was changed?
	Oh, was it one billionth of a second ago?
	Well, maybe I shouldn't use half the computer resources to change the power settings again.
	So anyway, once I resolve that conflict, the computer's heading a lot better.
	So is that Windows? Well, I think Windows should have a failsafe that says, well, if you just change the power settings, don't change them again, right?
	So there should be a failsafe, but whatever, right?
	The Waldorf community has increased the quality of your audience's questions.
	Yes, that's very true. See, going back on Twitter is going back into Tapioca Nomi world, right?
	Right, let's see here.
	Kanye West, I've talked about him a bunch of times recently, and it's not super interesting to me, so it's not particularly philosophical.
	Oh my gosh, are we getting...
	Oh my god, only 11 minutes left!
	All right, I did get a bunch of questions elsewhere, but since people are typing, five of you are typing, so...
	Do you think Charles Darwin was a philosopher?
	No, he was a biologist, for sure.
	I was severely damaged by my parents' divorce, instigated by my mother.
	I realized recently, besides betraying her children, she also betrayed her race.
	I don't know what that means. Divorce is horrendous.
	Divorce is horrendous.
	And it's so heavily propagandized.
	Oh my god, it's so heavily propagandized.
	You leave your dad of a mother and you'll end up running a wonderful seaside restaurant in Greece with a Latin lover with a tiny butt.
	It's just like they're just luring breadcrumb after breadcrumb, luring women out.
	And I've, you know, I've seen comments and articles and women are often like, oh yeah, you know, I divorced my husband when I was 45 and now I'm 60.
	I've never had another decent relationship again.
	It was the worst mistake I ever made.
	But of course, by then it's too late to fix.
	Steph, what kind of career possibilities do you think a 36-year-old guy with no previous work experience but a degree in economics would have?
	Is this an impossibility?
	No, no. A degree in economics is very good.
	You know, a friend of mine who became a professor of economics, he was saying to me, I was thinking about doing a PhD in history, right?
	And you could see the woke stuff coming, so I was like...
	But I remember him saying, you know, a PhD in history, it's tough to get a vantage point or a foothold in any industry.
	But, you know, if you've got a significant degree in economics, there's probably an undergrad degree in economics, but that shows a certain amount of, of course, mathematical skill, analytical ability, rigor, and so on.
	Hard work. So, I mean, if I were in your shoes, I have no idea, right?
	If I were in your shoes, okay, so, as we all know, no pain, no gain, no risk, no reward, right?
	You can play it safe, and Lord knows there have been times where I've been tempted by that, or at least have been tempted by the idea that I could have taken that route.
	But if you play it safe, you will get to the lower middle.
	Not the middle, but the lower middle.
	So, I don't know, let's say that you start a podcast, right?
	Whatever, right? You start a podcast and you start talking about economics.
	Okay, well, if you play it safe and you just talk about, you know, basic bitch Kinsey and economics, you won't get anywhere, I think, right?
	Unless you happen to be extraordinarily witty and engaging and so on, in which case, good.
	But for me, like the Austrian school is really good and Murray Rothbard is really good, his analysis and so on.
	So if you're willing to go more edgelordy, then you will stand out.
	Are you willing to talk about things that other people aren't willing to talk about?
	You know, it's something that I learned pretty early on in the entrepreneurial world.
	Success is, are you willing to do stuff that other people just aren't willing to do?
	Are you willing to do it?
	Are you willing to do stuff that the audience wants, that the market wants?
	Are you willing to do stuff that other people aren't willing to do?
	This could be working all weekend.
	This could be Taking a chance on a fairly unknown but potentially highly productive software hardware platform.
	Are you willing to do things like, you know, we all know the cliche of the really pretty girl that nobody asks out because they're intimidated.
	Okay, are you willing to go up and ask out even the pretty girl?
	And not just like, oh, you don't want to go out with me.
	Just walk up confidently and let's go out, right?
	I'm going out Friday. Come with me.
	Come with me. It'll be fun, right?
	Something, you know, confident and engaging, right?
	Right. Are you willing to do things that other people aren't willing to do?
	Well, I think it's fairly safe to say that we few, we happy few, we jazz club philosophy are here in this intimate setting because I was willing to do things that other people weren't willing to do.
	The entire history of philosophy has almost completely overstepped the twitching broken bodies of children and focused on Whether an ideal table exists in another dimension.
	It's completely insane.
	It's absolutely a mad history.
	So I'm like, okay, how about if I'm a philosopher who applies the non-aggression principle to children?
	How about that? Nobody's done that before.
	Oh, that's why nobody's done that before, because you get attacked from all sides, right?
	Except for the, you know, now, of course, enough children have been raised, doing the show for 18 years.
	Now, of course, enough children have been raised, according to Peaceful Parenting, that I get the thank yous, which is great, you know.
	But you've got to be willing to defer gratification just a little bit.
	All right. Have you watched Ridley Scott's new series, Raised by Wolves?
	I have not. I have not.
	All right. Masters in Economics, but a Bachelor of Science in Philosophy.
	Yeah, you should have no issues.
	I mean, it's just, are you willing to talk about things that other people aren't willing to talk about?
	If not, I don't know why you'd be doing it, right?
	I remember hearing my mom's friends telling my mom that she deserved better, but I never heard anyone tell her to stay together for her children.
	Yeah, well, if you can get people to discard sacrifice, you can get them to discard virtue when you corrupt the world as a whole.
	Oh, that reminds me.
	I never realized how evil Nights in Rodanth is.
	It's a movie? Immaculate acting and setting, but Richard Gere walks into a strained marriage and stays five minutes and she decides to divorce.
	Last scene, she's basically telling her teenage daughter to do the same thing.
	If you have time, you can tear it apart.
	Nights in Rodanth. I've not heard of it.
	Richard Gere is kind of hypnotic because he's just so mellow, right?
	All right. Except in Chicago, I suppose.
	My wife is wondering how to confront her grandma about her decision to renew her relationship with her daughter, my wife's mom.
	My wife's mother was horribly abusive to her.
	We could use the grandma's help with the children, but it might not be worth it.
	Okay, sorry. A little too much for her.
	My wife is wondering how to confront her grandmother about her relationship with her daughter.
	Why is your wife renewing her relationship with her abusive mother?
	Has her abusive mother apologized and made amends and restitution and shown how it's not going to happen again?
	Recently got a new job.
	Any tips to be successful?
	So be very aggressive in your work ethic and be very conservative in your socializing, right?
	So be there. Observe the social mechanics for a long time before you start picking and choosing who to socialize with.
	You've got to get the dynamics of the office.
	Who's moving up? Who's moving out?
	Who's popular? Who's unpopular?
	Who's got the ear of the boss?
	Who's got the boss's stink eye?
	You've got to map out the social environment.
	So be conservative socially and be aggressive in terms of your work ethic.
	Work really hard. Work really productively.
	But don't make any alliances and don't network until you get a strong sense of the office politics.
	What would you say to men to dissuade them from being bitter with the current dating market?
	Myself and friends are successful by traditional metrics and we can't find dateable women.
	Well, just recognize that most women will not be suitable for this audience.
	Most men will not be suitable for this audience.
	So you're looking for a needle in a haystack.
	So be very thankful when you find straw because it means you can keep looking.
	Oh, wife's grandmother is renewing her relationship with wife's mother.
	Oh, okay, well, then you have to say, anyone who's friends with my abuser, my unrepentant abuser, is not friends with me.
	You make a choice. Oh, why do you have to be so harsh?
	So, and generally, you have to see, in order to trust people in your life, you have to find out if they'll side with you on virtue or side with bad people out of fear, right?
	Will they side with you if you're virtuous or will they side with bad people out of fear?
	If they will side with bad people out of fear, they're absolutely untrustworthy because any bad person can apply any negative stimuli and they'll just conform.
	So if your wife's mother is more dangerous than you and your grandmother says, well, I'm basically going to appease her and you guys are expendable because you're nicer people, then you know that your niceness is getting punished and immorality is being rewarded.
	And if there are going to be people in your life who are going to punish virtue and reward evil, you can't trust them.
	I mean, you can do whatever you want, but they're not trustworthy.
	Hey, Steph, do you think Machiavellianism is a philosophy?
	No, it's not a philosophy.
	It's a path to power. And I'll be doing Machiavelli over the course of the History of Philosopher series.
	My cousin's neighbor treats her kids like trash and hits them.
	She constantly tells her eight-year-old daughter to shut up and nobody wants to listen to her.
	I asked her why she tells her to shut up.
	She just dismissed it. How vocal should I be about it?
	It's just terrible. I don't know.
	I mean, it's a really, really tough situation.
	You can bring up gently, you know...
	I have found that appealing to abusive parents' self-interest, you know, like if you treat her this badly, you know, she's going to be a teenager before you know it and it's going to blow back on you.
	And then she's going to be an adult and, you know, it's going to blow back on you.
	So maybe find some way to appeal her.
	If people are that cold and cruel, really all you can do is try and appeal to their selfishness, to their self-interest as best you can and maybe that will help.
	Could it be that the left has decided the best way to destroy the families, prevent them from forming in the first place?
	I mean, don't leave the right off the hook.
	The right is locked up with the welfare state and all of that.
	Hey Steph, I'm from Australia.
	If I ever visit Canada, can I take you out for dinner?
	I have met some nice friends from the show through that process, so you can keep me posted.
	You can keep me posted. All right.
	I think, yeah, we've got less than two minutes.
	Okay. Well, I think I'll close off here.
	Thanks, everyone, so much. What a great pleasure and joy and honor and all of that good stuff it is to chat.
	I'm so sorry I'm in my workout gear, but I was just about to exercise.
	My family decided to do something else, and I didn't want the show to start late, so I'm sorry about that, but I will go exercise now.
	So, have yourselves a wonderful evening.
	Thank you so much for all of your very kind support.
	Don't forget my free books, almostnovel.com, justpoornovel.com, thegodofatheists.com, and you can go to freedomain.com forward slash nfts to see the nfts.
	You can pick up a copy of Revolutions, and a new book will be done early next year, probably.
	So, thanks everyone so much.

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