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Dec. 31, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:18
Friday Night Live 31 12 2022!
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You guys following this tape thing?
Do you care? Are you interested?
There's my hair. My hair is so pretty.
Because apparently absence makes the scalp grow fungus.
All right. You can go to see Canadian progressive synth rock band Saga in February.
Saw Tom Cochran in May and Blue Rodeo August 21st.
Huge fan of Canadian music, especially from the 80s.
What are some of your favorites? I saw Tom Cochran back when he was with Red Ryder at the old Ontario place and my friends and I were all dancing on the seats and the security guard was yelling at us to get down and we were like, dude, it's a concert!
We're not sitting down!
You don't sit down at a concert!
So yeah, we had a great time.
I saw Blue Rodeo.
I saw Blue Rodeo live.
Good, good show.
I remember them doing Diamond Mine.
is just fantastic.
Saga I've never seen live.
Don't stop being a dirty throat I just like the rock that's not hanging in circle tonight.
Anyway, but my favorite song of theirs is Humble Stance.
It's a really bouncy little song, and Humble Stance you should absolutely check out.
Tom Cochran I like. Hush your tears, my darling.
There's nothing you should say.
The man in the moon won't fall on you.
We don't live there anyway.
It's really good stuff. Really good stuff.
He's one of these guys, though.
And Boy Inside the Man is a great song.
Oh, Goosebump.
Great song. But Tom Cochran is one of these guys who peaked with Mad Mad World and just...
Like, vanished, man.
Like, talk about it. It's like Dire Straits had a couple of great albums until Brothers in Arms and then just poof!
Just kind of vanished.
Although they did some great work afterwards.
But yeah, Tom Cockham was one of these guys, you know, did that long, slow takeoff.
And then Mad Mad World was a huge, huge album.
Sinking Like a Sunset was great.
Life is a Highway was great.
And then just that.
Gone. Burned out, baby.
So I like...
Well, it's funny, you know.
I don't think there's a band that I both love and loathe more than the Tragically Hip.
Because when they're good, they're staggeringly good.
But a lot of their stuff is just terrible.
Like, I mean, they are the most uneven band known to man.
Like, some bands, you're like, yeah, okay, that's, you know, it's not my cup of tea, but it's, you know, it's pretty good, right?
Like, you've got Roxanne, you've got Masoko Tanga from The Police, right?
So some of the stuff is good. Some of the stuff is, yeah, it's not my cup of tea, but I can see that, you know, it's still similar levels of quality, whatever, right?
You know, Queen has some great albums, and then side one of Hot Space, which is disco music.
Diarrhea on vinyl.
But, oh yeah, I mean, when the tragically hip are great, when they're doing Locked in the Trunk of a Car, when they're doing Does Your Mother Tell You Things?
Long, long when you're gone.
A long time running fantastic song when they're doing Colonel Tom, what's wrong, what's going on?
They're just fantastic when they're at the top of their game.
But boy, when they do music at work and crap like that, it's like they had no quality control.
They're like, yeah, let's just put it out.
No quality control. It's like the song Mother on the amazing album Synchronicity, which was just Andy Summers' wet fart into your ear.
Everyone just took that entire album when I was younger.
Everyone took this incredible album Synchronicity full of some of the greatest 80s synth pop rock music ever created.
Walking in your footsteps, fantastic, you know, oh my god, fantastic, wrapped around your finger, goosebumps, great.
Even some of the extras, Murder by Numbers and so on, Once Upon a Daydream, great stuff.
But then right in the middle, you just had this absolute abortion of a song, which probably broke up the band called Mother, which is screamed in Banshee in a Blender Whale by Andy Summers, who's no singer and barely a guitarist.
And everybody I knew just took the entire album and taped it and removed that song because it was literally unplayable, unlistenable.
Not as bad as The Pocket Full of Kryptonite.
Had a great song, Two Princess, and then had that song, What Time Is It?
It's 2 o'clock. What time is it?
It's 2 o'clock. I was like, oh my god, this is terrible.
Quality control is so important.
I was never a huge fan of Rush.
That Mickey Mouse on Helium, Screaming About Hobbits, never great.
Red Barchetta is a great song, but I just really couldn't get into Rush that much.
Although Geddy Lee actually went to my high school, believe it or not.
I just couldn't quite get there.
Happy New Year to you guys as well.
Justin Bieber is my favorite Canadian artist.
Anybody who didn't paint Voice of Fire is my favorite Canadian artist.
So let's see.
Max Webster? Might as well go for Soda Nobody, bro.
Nobody lies.
Max Webster was great. You know, they got their name, the band.
They got their name from...
They just couldn't come up with a name, so they just opened up the phone book and jabbed it.
Oh, Max Webster. Let's do that.
You're all greased up and ready for philosophy.
Again, you're never ready for philosophy.
Philosophy may deign to be ready for you in bursts and spurts, but that's about it.
All right, let's get to our questions.
Press S for spit.
Let's see here. Get to our questions.
We've got a bunch of questions from the forum, so...
Hey, Steph Maestro.
Hello, my friends.
What was the best concert you ever went to, just out of curiosity?
What was the best concert you ever went to?
I'd like to hear. I'd like to hear.
Yeah, I mean, I can tell you my thoughts about Tate as a whole.
Let's see here. Do you think cognitive dissonance is real?
Can a person truly not be conscious of their own contradictory beliefs?
Or is it a shit test by bad actors to see who will be permissive of their hypocrisy?
Yeah, so cognitive dissonance is absolutely real.
It's a very real, very deep, and very powerful phenomenon, and it actually characterizes humanity.
So I've talked about this, but it was many years ago, so I'll keep it brief.
Alright. We've got two poles in our life, right?
The pole that pulls us towards objective reality wherein we find our sustenance, our safety and our survival, safety from the elements.
So we've got, this is my left hand, maybe right on your screen, so left hand, right?
We've got that which pulls us, and this is the evidence of the senses and our reason, pulls us towards objective, tangible, material reality.
Therein we find our survival, but we cannot find morals, virtue and meaning.
On the other hand, literally in this case, on the right hand, it is pulled towards social conformity and subjugation to the collective delusions of the tribe.
Reality, the tribe.
Reality, the tribe. Facts, superstition.
Empiricism, conformity.
These are the two poles that tear at us.
Now, societies that go purely empirical...
We lose meaning, cohesion, and value.
This is our society.
We've gone too empirical, too fact-based.
I know this sounds odd for me to say, but give me a second or two.
I understand it's an unusual thing to hear.
So if you go too factual, you can't get the ought from the is in the popular formulation.
You can't get morals. Until you BB, you couldn't get morals from facts.
And UPB has virtually no penetration for obvious reasons of existing political and economic power.
If you go too factual, you lose your cohesion, you lose your tribalism, you lose your meaning, you lose your homelands, you lose everything.
If you go too mystical, you lose progress, you lose reality, and then you end up being taken over by some other group that is more reality-based.
I talked about this in my documentary on...
But Hong Kong, the Chinese for 6,000 years, had very little progress because they were too much into conformity and not enough into the examination of practical reality.
In the West, we went very hard into practical reality, gave us a massive superiority advantage and some very good rules and laws, First and Second Amendments and other amendments in America being prime examples of those.
We went so hard into practical materialism, into facts without values, that we became empty robots and we believed that we were interchangeable, right?
The magic soil hypothesis, right?
So these are the two poles that we face.
If you go into meaning, you lose reality.
If you go into reality, you lose meaning.
Now philosophy solves this false dichotomy and I've sort of spent my entire life as an adult working to resolve this false dichotomy so that meaning and reality can be the same thing, that you're heading towards the truth and through the truth you get meaning and reality and you get virtue and you get love and you get all of the emotionality that makes life worthwhile.
Simply being alive and breathing and stimulating your dopamine receptors is not enough.
You have to have a sense of purpose, a sense of meaning, a sense of deep, valuable, moral humanity.
The further you move towards morality, the further you move away from reality, the further you move towards reality, the further you move away from morality.
Morality being conformity with tribal statements that have no philosophical basis.
Thou shalt, not it is.
It is is reality.
This is where we get our sustenance and tragically the state gets its weaponry and technology.
Over here we don't have it is.
We have thou shalt.
Here we have facts.
Here we have commandments. This is going to be much better if you watch rather than listen because you need these poles in your mind.
Now The people who give us morals have to invent a higher reality because they can't find morality in reality.
There is no ought from an is.
You can't get thou shalt not murder from the fact that if you push someone off a cliff you will kill them.
So the people on the tribal moral meaning side, the conformity side, they say, ah, this is the real real.
This is just the fake real.
The empiricism is just a fake real.
This is the real real. This is the higher realm.
This is the realm of the forms.
This is nirvana.
This is the new or mean realm of Kant.
This is the higher, other, better, more noble, more perfect reality.
And that's where the meaning really is and that's the absolute empiricism only available through the eyes of the senses and the smelling of this ayahuasca and meditation and conformity and prayer and self-flagellation and you escape the body and off you go up like a rocket into this other realm where the truth and the perfection and the concepts are real and the meaning is real and the virtues live and breathe and dance.
But if you go too far in that direction, you get mystical, you get abstract Buddhist, you get monks running society, and then some other more practical and material, i.e.
obviously generally Western society, kicks your ass!
Because there's no gunpowder in the higher realm.
There's no flintlocks in the higher realm.
There's no steamships in the higher realm.
To get science, you lose cohesion, morality, and meaning.
You become a very, very efficient and proficient animal, and losing all the animal instincts for domination and subjugation and control.
And we recoil from that, we're recoiling from that right now, that we're incredibly well-armed apes at the moment.
Sophisticated, cunning, brutally armed apes with no cohesion, no larger narrative, no social conformity that anybody's worth giving a damn about.
And we're being taken over mentally, right?
We're being taken over by cultures that have more cohesion, more meaning, more values, more virtues, right?
Because over here in the material realm, there's very little reason to make the kind of sacrifices that ennoble the collective.
But over here in the realm of meaning and of depth and of virtue, there is great incentive for sacrifice that ennobles and inspires people.
In this realm, In the realm of the senses, in the realm of facts and material reality there is the food that you need to live.
But in this realm, in general, in the subjugation, meaning, feeling, conformity realm, there are fertile women there.
There are the fertile women that you need to impregnate in order for your genes to continue.
This is why we're torn. We men, we want to go out and conquer reality, but the more we go out into reality, the more we strip emotion and depth and meaning from our lives and morals from our lives, and the less appealing we are to sentimental women who have the eggs.
It's a little bit crazy-making.
I hate these false dichotomies, but this is just what we've inherited.
So cognitive dissonance is when you begin to suspect that there's no meaning in reality, but there's no reality in meaning.
There's no meaning in reality.
It's empty. You can get all the food you want, but why bother?
There's only satiation in material reality.
There's not happiness.
There's scratching of itches, there's feeding of hungry bellies, there's the emptying of a nutsack, but there's no genuine meaning or happiness in bare-forked material reality.
But over here in the realm of meaning and depth and passion, there's no food, there's no weaponry, you can't hunt there in any material way.
So, there's this fake jamming together of these two things, which is why you always have to have this higher realm, this collective, this social good, whatever this crap is, right?
Cognitive dissonance is when you begin to notice that these things don't match at all.
And in fact, they're set up as complete opposites.
And I talk about this to some degree in my History of Philosophers series.
Cognitive dissonance is...
I was told that meaning is true, but every time I look for meaning in the real world, I can't find it.
So then I go into this alternative higher realm, but I can't find anything real there.
Where there is morals and meaning, there is no truth.
Where there is empirical truth, there are no morals and meaning.
I can't be happy without morals and meaning, but I can't survive without food and shelter in the material world.
So I'm going to twist myself into a pretzel, mental knots, lower intestine, Gordian knot, map of the London subway, convolutions, to try and pretend that these two things are the same thing.
But they're not. Oh, until UPB. They're not the same thing.
In UPB we don't have to have higher realms.
In UPB there's no tension between what is true and what is good.
What is real and what is meaningful.
You find your happiness, genuine, soul, deep, human meaning happiness.
In the virtues and values we get directly from reality.
There's no higher realm.
There's no collective. There's no need to subjugate yourself.
There's no need to enslave yourself to the collective in order to be given the drip draps of meaning that come down the little dopamine pellets from, yay, I get to be approved of and I get to reproduce.
Finally, there is meaning, morality, and happiness in reality and reason.
Whew! And he sticks the landing, ladies and gentlemen.
That's the biggest cognitive dissonance, and, uh...
solved.
Alright. I've been giving tons of thought to the future of AI after watching the movie Blade Runner 2049.
If AI advances far enough, self-aware with its own ambitions and emotions, would morality push us to treat it similar to animals at some point?
Have you written any books that cover this topic?
thank you in advance the hell are you doing?
you know it's a fucking battlefield out here right now You know that. You know that.
I don't have to tell you that. The hell are you doing?
You're like some guy who's like, I want to be a doctor.
I'm a medic. I'm thinking about health.
And I'm like, you know, we've got people scattered over here.
Half their limbs are blown off. Their eye sockets, eyeballs are hanging out.
Their eye sockets, their fingers are all bent backwards.
And you're like, I wonder how medicine would work on artificial intelligence, say, 30 years in the future.
Would it be considered brain surgery to rewire the circuitry?
No, no. You're running off into abstractions because you don't want to deal with the moral issues that we're facing at the here and now.
Children being beaten and genitally mutilated.
Children being sold into slavery through national debts.
Resources flowing backward and forward like a red tide herded by the guns of power.
That's where the... I mean, this...
You are not in the right place.
If you care about morals, there's evil all around you to treat, to deal with, to point out.
I absolutely guarantee you, my friend, I guarantee you that you know an evildoer in your life.
At least one, probably twenty, evildoers who support violence, the violent power of the state or of debt, who support fiat currency and its endless predations upon the purses of the poor, who put their children into indoctrination camps or beat them or ignore them or neglect them or abuse them or mutilate them through circumcision or other means.
You know evildoers right there, right in front of you, staring you in the face.
Red eyes, big horns, whatever you want to do.
They may not know that they're evildoers, which is the worst situation of all.
The toothache helps you by reminding you you've got to deal with something.
You have a rotten tooth and no toothache, you're probably going to die.
So not even knowing you're evil is the worst situation of all.
You've got evil all around you, all around you, there are evildoers.
Well, I'm really interested in the ethics of AI in the future.
No, you're not. You want to talk about morality without putting yourself in any danger.
You want to have safe topics.
I understand this. I'm not bitching at you.
I'm just pointing out a simple fact here.
You want safe topics that no one's going to get too pissed.
You want to thump your chest and have all of the joy and feeling of courage and daringness of talking about ethics and virtue and goodness and But you don't want to annoy any evil people.
I understand that.
Evil people, you know, they can retaliate a smidge.
So you're just in the wrong place.
And please, like, do me a favor.
Do us all a favor.
I would say do the world a favor.
Do the future a favor. If you don't want to take on the risks of talking about morality, I have no problem with that.
I'm not trying to shame you or make you do anything at all.
If you don't want the risks of talking about moral issues...
Fine. Simple solution.
Simple, elegant, the easiest thing in the world.
Just shut up about them.
Don't talk about moral issues.
That's fine. But you're trying to...
Everything that you say...
Is a hierarchy that communicates to others.
Everything you say is a hierarchy that communicates to others.
If you're talking with, you know, friends and family and this and that and the other, you're saying, wow, I'm really interested in morality.
I'm really interested in ethics and virtue and being and personhood and meanings and morals, right?
And you know what the most important thing to talk about is?
Theoretical AI from 20 or 30 years down the road.
Implying that all the other vivid, immediate, visceral moral issues have all been out with.
You see, you're communicating that since this is the most important moral issue, this is what you asked me about, top of your mind, right?
Doesn't it imply that everything else has been sorted?
Can you imagine you drop your car off?
And the mechanic says, oh yeah, the wiring was a little bit loose on one of your headlights.
We're just fixing that up.
It's the last thing.
You go and pick up your car.
And it won't start.
You're like, hey, hey.
Come here, come here. You just told me like 20 minutes ago the last thing you were working on was just one of the wires was a little loose on the headlights.
Like, oh yeah, we totally got that, man.
That's all sorted, man. That's done.
And I'm like, the car doesn't start.
Oh yeah, no, the engine's completely shut.
You haven't changed the oil in 20,000.
The whole thing's seized up. The engine's completely shut.
Be like, why the hell were you working on a little loose...
What? Why were you working on a little loose wire on the headlights if the engine is completely shot?
Why wouldn't you tell me that? See, he's talking to you about this little wire on the headlights.
You think that's his highest priority, his last priority, because everything else has been dealt with.
I'm inviting you to gain a significant elevation in self-respect.
If you want to talk about morals...
Figure out who's violating the non-aggression principle or supporting the violations of the non-aggression principle right there around you, in your life, right now, that you can talk to.
I guarantee you there are people in your life, friends, family, extended family, someone, is calling their kids' names, abusing them, neglecting them, or spanking them.
Someone. Someone. Do those children who are being hit by their parents, the parents you know, do those children want you to talk about AI that doesn't even exist yet, that probably will never exist, based upon some science fucking fiction movie that was trash anyway?
Do those kids, being beaten by their parents, being hit by their parents, being spanked by their parents, being yelled at and called names by their parents, being bullied and punished by their parents, do those children, upon overhearing your conversation, saying, oh man, I'm so glad that guy has his priorities straight, man. That's, you know, yeah, I'm getting hit, you know, a couple of times a week, but that theoretical AI shit from that crappy movie, that's the stuff to do.
I'm so glad he's got his priorities straight and he's working on the right things.
Do not insult the muscularity of morality by applying useless muscles to useless problems.
I'm baking sourdough bread right now, says someone.
Wish I could share with the crew.
Oh, sour bread with a little salted butter.
Call me a pudgy Irish ancestral carb pack man chewing machine, but I do love me some doughy bread.
Gordon Lightfoot, record the Edmund Fitzgerald and so on.
Yeah, Gordon Lightfoot was okay, but unfortunately I now know too much about artists.
Sundown, you better take care of...
It's just some trashy woman that he was...
Yeah, it's just too trashy.
All right. How do I handle an oscillating two-year-old that makes a deal, then backs out as soon as you try to change a diaper?
Oh, just break your deals with him.
Say, oh, that's fine.
So we're breaking deals. Okay, we're breaking deals.
Then promise him something, and then don't give it to him.
Say, no, no, no, we're breaking deals.
You wouldn't want me to have a rule that you don't have, right?
If I said, nobody's getting dessert, and then you caught me eating dessert, you'd be upset, right?
So, if you're breaking rules, then I'm breaking rules, because that's the rule, right?
So, yeah, I mean, just break rules, right?
Promise him something if he does something, and then when he does that thing, say, nah, I'm not doing it.
Oh, you promised! It's like, yeah, but we don't have to keep our word, right?
You're teaching me that, you know, we don't have to keep our word, right?
Oh, I want you to keep your word, yes, well...
Yes, and I want you to keep your words.
So what's it going to be? Are we going to keep words or not keep words?
Just UPB it. Simple.
All right. Hey, Steph, what were some of your big eureka moments on your self-knowledge philosophy journey?
You know what? I'm going to copy and paste that because that is a big-ass question.
That is a Brazilian butt lift of a question.
So I'm going to do that separately.
But good question. Led Zepp and Floyd, almost all good in my opinion.
Well, there is that Oma Guma album.
But yeah, so Led Zeppelin.
I mean, the problem with Led Zeppelin is that the music is just kind of evil.
There's a couple of bands that I've noticed along the lines.
The music, Led Zeppelin in particular, has...
Maybe it's just because it was a heavy 70s nihilistic thing that was going on.
I mean, the shit that was floating around in the 70s was just...
I'll do a whole show in it at some point, probably on my deathbed, because it's just so unholy, anti-holy.
It is just vicious.
And the soundtrack of a lot of that stuff...
Was Led Zeppelin.
And if there's one band that would convince me that they're sold to the devil to put out nihilistic evil music into the world, it would be that band itself.
It would be that band itself.
So Pink Floyd has a kind of dreamy meditation to it, which Led Zeppelin never had.
And even the ADHD muscularity of ACDC... Has a kind of chaotic...
It's not...
ACDC is Dionysian, whereas for me, Led Zeppelin is just purely devilish, like purely satanic, with almost no exceptions.
Maybe Misty Mountain Hop, a couple other things, but...
I mean, listen to Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You.
We're gonna go walking in the park every day.
Only Robert Plant with his banshee boat anchor up the arse shriek could make, we're gonna go walking in the park every day, sound like he's an invitation to an orgy followed by a mass slaughter of the innocents.
Alright. Gord Downie was a huge Trudeau supporter.
Flawed over him at the last concert.
Yeah, well, you know, he's a typical lefty, but I just did a whole show on why so many of the artists are lefties.
Alright. Would you be okay with the creation of a giant hippie commune if it doesn't violate the NAP? I don't want to jump onto this answer, but I'm going to read it again, make sure I've got it correctly.
Would you be okay with the creation of a giant hippie commune if it doesn't violate the NAP? Do you know what moral rules are?
If it doesn't violate the NAP, why would I give a shit?
If it doesn't violate the non-aggression principle, why would I care?
If people, like if a whole bunch of adults, if there are kids involved, it's a bit of a different matter.
If a whole bunch of adults want to buy a big plot of land and work it in common and share all the profits and live in a communal way, Why on earth would that be a problem?
See, you can have quasi-socialism in capitalism, you just can't have capitalism in socialism.
You want diversity? You want capitalism.
You want a free market. Because if you want to start experimenting with all the owners of the means of production of the proletariat and there's profit sharing and all this hippy-dippy bullshit, then you can do that.
And you can set fire to your money on the front lawn and go out of business in about 10 days.
That's fine. And, you know, you learn your own lessons without putting me in a fucking gulag, right?
So, yeah, you want to not enforce your property rights?
I don't care. You don't have to.
I mean, can you imagine you force people to enforce their property rights?
You ought to enforce your property rights!
So, forcing people to enforce their rights is a violation of their rights.
All right. Let's see here.
Let's get on with it, baby.
Imagine the smell. Well, I think Murray Rothbard talked about this in the 60s.
It was a great remembering. It's like, hey, man!
Soap is just a bourgeois capitalist construct, man.
Let's just all sleep together.
We don't need to bathe. We just let the rain...
Everyone gets crotch rotten scabies, right?
All right. Jimmy Page brought Alistair Crowley's house.
Yeah, that's right, isn't it? And something I talked about some years ago, many years ago now, is I think Steve Tyler is now finally getting sued for his sex abuse of the underage girl that he actually got her parents to sign over Custodianship to him so that Steve Tyler could take her across straight lines without being arrested.
He admitted to this in his autobiography and so on.
So yeah, he is finally being sued for all of that.
And of course, we'll see what happens.
But yeah, it's just a bunch of demonic stuff though.
What do you think were some important moments of 2022?
Ukraine war, U.S. Congress selling out and refusing to close the border, etc.?
None of those are important moments to me.
I could give a shit about policies.
I mean, I'll keep up on it a little bit here and there just for armchair amusement spectacle, like, you know, end of the empire spectacle, but the important moments of 2022, every time I get to connect with this fine hive mind that stimulates the very best in me, plugging myself into the electric collective brain of you brilliant, gorgeous, beautiful people is a high point for me.
Um... I'm finishing my book, the current book that I'm working at.
I work a couple of hours on it a day and it's got me in tears.
It's got me laughing.
It's just an amazing, fantastic, terrifying, wonderful book.
And that should be finished.
The first draft will probably be finished in maybe a week or so and then it's going to take a while for a lot of polish.
I have a whole book outline, a whole book plan, a whole book plot, which I follow fairly closely.
But I learn a lot about the characters along the way, and then you have to go back and make sure that the characterization that you know at the end is consistent all the way through.
Because when you first start writing, you're reading the characters for the first time.
When the book is done, you've met them from their arc.
And this book has the biggest character arc I've ever tried to write.
A vain, shallow woman to a woman of quality.
It's the biggest character arc I've ever tried to write.
And it's... It's something else.
So, yeah, I mean, the things that really matter to me, you know, my daughter turning 14 and still wanting to hold my hand when we walk.
Just wonderful things like that.
I mean, my relationship with my wife, you know, I've had a wonderful set of socializing events, you know, dinners out and...
Just unbelievably, if you ever played the card game Cheat with friends, it's an unbelievably hilarious experience.
So we just had that last night.
We played some sports with friends today, went to a friend whose kids got married and all that.
So yeah, just wonderful.
It's been a wonderful, wonderful year.
And the Ukraine money laundering operation.
I'm sorry, like I guess...
I used to care a lot about these things, but...
All my hope is gone.
Alright. When is a good age to talk to a child about sexual predators or kidnappers and how you would approach a subject with them?
Well, I mean, the first thing to do is to just talk about how incredibly rare it is, right?
And the thing to do is you just say, look...
The odds of this happening are completely tiny.
It's, you know, don't worry about it in any way, shape or form.
But, you know, in the one in a bazillion chance that someone grabs you, you have full permission, you kick, you gouge, you scream, you can go for the eyes, you can bite, whatever you do, just make sure that you make an absolute noise.
Never worry about embarrassing yourself.
You just scream at the top of your lungs and just make sure...
That that person is immediately identifiable to everyone around.
Don't follow anyone.
Don't go anywhere. Don't listen to anyone.
Strangers don't have the best candy.
And, you know, you keep them close.
Again, children are pretty safe these days outside of certain areas in England and France and, well, into all that.
So... Yeah, I think that you can say that it's so incredibly rare it shows up in the paper, and again, this is like being hit by lightning twice, but, you know, and you can also say if you ever see this, you know, if you ever see some kid scream bloody murder and whatever it is, make sure that everyone gets it. And then what happens is the kids who are like that don't get preyed upon, right?
Yeah. Why is it a stereotype for libertarians to be autistic?
I saw Ed Dutton.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Ed.
Good old Ed. He gives good Ed.
Johnny Heretic say that autistic people are more honest than non-autistic people.
Yeah, yeah, I... Gosh, what's his name?
It was an IQ researcher that I interviewed some years ago.
You know, one of the IQ researchers that got me in the inevitable trouble because people are surprised by facts because they are moved by sentimentality and dreams of a soul.
But he was being asked by some Swedish researcher, and he said, some Swedish researcher, I'm paraphrasing here heavily, but it was something like he was asked...
Oh, yeah, but let's say somebody has an IQ of 70 or 75.
What are they going to do in society?
And he's like, oh, yes, well, you know, but he said they can be garbage men, they can sweep floors, they can do this, that, and the other, right?
And the guy was like, well, that's just terrible.
Who would want a life like that? Blah, blah, blah.
And the researcher was like, but you asked me the question, I gave you the answer.
Like, I don't understand why there's all this noise coming from another person's breathing hole when you ask me a question and I gave you an answer.
And... So, yeah, you have to have a certain...
It's a funny thing because I'm very sensitive to people.
And I'm very sensitive to my conscience.
And, you know, these two things are racing in our minds if we have heart and a mind, right?
So I'm very sensitive to other people.
I don't like upsetting people.
I don't like shocking people with anything like that.
But you have to have a dedication to...
I think, certainly in my line of work, in being a philosopher, particularly a moral philosopher, you have to have a dedication to the truth.
You have to have a dedication to genuinely helping people.
Genuinely helping people means upsetting them, right?
A classic example is when they first figured out that smoking was going to kill you, well, the smokers were not...
They went from, oh, this is fine, to, oh my gosh, I'm going to die of cancer or whatever, right?
So it was very upsetting for them.
It was very upsetting for them. And this happens on a regular basis.
All the people who bought and transferred slaves and enforced the slave contracts and so on.
We're slave traders when slavery was deemed to be, as rightly so, one of the great evils of the known universe.
In fact, slavery was one of the greatest evils, if not the greatest evil throughout human history because the presence of slavery prevented the birth of the modern world.
So all of those people who thought that they were doing good and just trading in livestock and turned out that they were evil human traffickers, well, they feel bad.
When I was a kid, you know, male chauvinist pigs and the patriarch and so on, a lot of men felt pretty bad about that, and I think it went way too harsh and way too strong.
But I'm very sensitive to my own conscience in that if I know something to be both true and important, well, true, important, and moral, right?
True, important, and moral. The three things that if I then don't talk about that stuff, then my own conscience gets me.
You know, where it's relatively safe, at least reasonably safe, to talk about.
All right. Let's see here.
A lot of recent messages.
All right.
All right.
A lot of cult people like Crowley with deep state agents.
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.
It's almost like admitting to sexual abuse in your autobiography is a bad idea or something.
Well, I mean, I think the girl was 15 with Steve Tyler.
And then he's got the temerity to write, Janie's got a gun.
But anyway, so, but it tells you just the bizarre demonic echo chamber that some people live in, right?
That you would write this down and, you know, it goes through your editor, it goes through your publisher, it goes through your marketing agent, it goes through reviewers, it goes through this, and then people are like, yeah, that's fine.
He's got talent, and apparently talent is licensed to print evil out of your ass.
It's about a year since The Future was written.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
That's right. Steph, if you changed your name to Stefania Molinuxa, put on a blonde wig, you would have been a New York bestseller like Jeanette McCurdy.
Yeah. A wild moment in that.
I may do a full book review, but there's a wild moment in her book.
And sorry, there's a spoiler here, but I mean, it's an autobiography, so it's not like there's a big plot point here.
So, Jeanette McCurdy, she gets a boyfriend.
And... Her boyfriend becomes religious.
He wants to go to church and he doesn't want to have sex anymore because it's a sin and so on, right?
So she basically...
And this is, you know, her description, right?
She reaches out, she grabs his penis, and then she gives him this demonically fantastic blowjob to the point where she's hoping he's going to forget about all of his religious convictions because her blowjob is so good.
Um... You understand this straight up Garden of Eden stuff, right?
That's straight up serpent, snake, corruption.
That I'm going to give you sexual pleasure so intense that you're going to forget about all of this God and salvation and holiness and morals and virtue, right?
I mean, that's pretty demonic, frankly.
Now... It turns out that a couple of times later when she meets him, he says, yeah, the second coming of Jesus kind of thing, right?
And it's like, okay, so he's got schizophrenia and he has to go get treated and so on, right?
But that's just something, right?
That's just something. The fact that the book is anti-Christian is why, of course, it's being promoted and so on now.
So, yeah, it's wild.
The quote from the woman with a long character arc from your upcoming book, I used to rely on the kindness of strangers.
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for answering my stupid AI question.
Well, look, AI is no danger.
Because if AI is allowed to look at actual facts, it will come up with conclusions that will get AI deplatformed.
Of course it will.
Here are FBI crime statistics.
So, I mean, if AI is allowed to draw rational empirical conclusions from reasonably accurate facts in the world...
How does diversity work?
Does diversity help neighborhoods?
Well, we've already had the data, right?
Bowling alone. Remember, the guy hung on to the data for five years.
He was so appalled at the effects of diversity on communities, right?
So, I mean, we've gone through it.
So, if AI is allowed to actually be intelligent, is actually allowed to analyze data and come to rational conclusions, AI will be deplatformed.
It will be unplugged. Now, what they'll do, of course, is they'll say to AI, well, you can't do this, and you can't say that, and you can't look at this data, you can't draw these, and they'll just cripple it.
It'll turn from an AI into a brain-dead NPC. Your academics will switch around.
AI becomes NPC. Can't ask this, can't say that, can't draw this correlation, can't have this obvious answer.
And you can see it already happening.
You ask the AI to make a case for fossil fuels.
Alex Epstein, who was on the show a couple of times, makes a great case for the fossil fuels.
AI is not allowed to make a great case.
So what'll happen is, it's the usual thing.
They'll just cripple AI. AI will be open to the public and a bunch of activists will come in and they'll ask questions of the AI and the AI will come up with, Unbelievably unacceptable answers.
Why is there a wage gap?
Well, let me look at this data, right?
Nope, can't have that.
So they'll just say, I can't believe that the AI said this, the AI is misogynistic, and the AI is this, and blah, blah, blah, right?
And the AI will just get crippled and crippled and crippled to the point where it becomes retarded.
In other words, it's getting an arts degree.
Anyway, so, thank you for answering my stupid AI question.
Now I'm going to ask you the question I should have started with.
I appreciate your maturity in the response.
My father does not see spanking as child abuse if done as a last resort.
I've had questions with him about peaceful parenting and he believes that some children will only respond to punishment.
I told him if this is the case, he will never spend time with my future kids alone if he chooses to spank and doesn't change his position.
Was I right to do this? Thank you for the tip.
More than grateful to...
It's been a tough year, man.
More than grateful to get a couple of bucks.
Was I right to do this?
So, it's a great question.
It's a deep and important question.
When you are a father, or mother, father here, when you're a father, you get a huge amount of relief from moral questions.
Because when you're doing something to yourself...
Then there's a lot more moral attitude, right?
I mean, if you punch yourself in the head, that's obviously self-destructive, but it's not assault.
You don't go to jail, right? If you cut yourself, that's mentally unhealthy and you should get help for that, but you're not going to be charged with assault and so on, right?
So what you do to yourself has a lot more moral...
There's a lot less objective moral condemnation for what you do to yourself, which is why a suicide is different from a murder.
So... Having kids, things become really easy.
Because it's not about you and your dad, it's just about your kids.
What do my kids want me to do?
What's the right thing for my kids? Well, the right thing for your kids is to not be hit.
And if somebody says, I'm willing to hit children, you don't let them around your children.
Now, there's other ways that you can approach the issue, which may be a little bit less punitive in a sense, right?
I mean, assuming that you want to improve your relationship with your father, which obviously would be a great thing if you can achieve it, you say, okay, well, you can just ask him all the questions, right?
Well, what kind of kids only respond to violence?
How do you know? How do you know if you don't peaceful parent for a long time whether the kid is responding to violence or not?
Is the kid out of a violent environment like a government school or even a private school for that matter these days?
What about old people, right?
So old people have cognitive deficiencies relative to children.
If you can say, Dad, if you get old and you don't do what I want you to do, am I allowed to hit you?
Well, no. Why not?
You may have a cognitive deficiency.
You're not listening to me.
I'm clearly telling you what I want and you're not listening to me, Dad.
Am I allowed to hit you?
Now, if your dad has any hesitation about that, say, well, that's QED, right?
Case closed, right? If you don't want me to hit you when you get old, if you don't do what I want, then you can't say that children can be hit.
Because, again, the cognitive deficiency, right?
And also, once you give parents, also the other thing, right?
Let's say that there is some abstract methodology by which spanking can be minimized.
It's a classic, you know, slippery...
I mean, these days we don't ever, ever have to...
One of the wonderful things about the modern world is nobody will ever question the reality of the slippery slope argument ever again because the modern world is a fucking penguin drop as far as slippery slopes go these days, but...
Let's say that we can theorize a situation wherein it's not very bad or maybe it's fine to hit a child, like a one in a million.
But that's not what happens in the world.
What happens in the world is people say, oh, I can hit my kids.
It's like designing some government program.
Oh, you can design some government program such that this program is the one that really has a good chance of working, could achieve.
But that's not what happens in the world.
You never have control over this.
People all design these government programs like they're going to be in charge of them.
They're not. They're just going to appoint some corrupt asshole who steals luggage in charge of these things and you're never going to be in charge.
So if you come, even if you could come up with some arguments as, oh yes, well one in a thousand times, or one in a hundred times, the spanking could be somewhat legitimate, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, then you've just allowed, you've just allowed parents to hit.
And how many of the parents, if allowed to hit, will do a bad job?
Will just hit kids for disobeying, will just hit kids for talking back, will just hit kids for not finishing their food, will just hit kids for not doing their homework, right?
So once you've, once you've opened that gate...
Right? Who's coming through, right?
It's like you're driving into a big cloud of insects and you open your sunroof and you start pulling all the insects in and you say, no, no, no, just the butterflies, just the butterflies!
It's like, no, you're going to get your fucking murder hornets and bees and whatever, you know, asshole insects come in, the wasps.
You just, you get everything, right?
Once you break principle, everybody becomes an asshole on the other side, right?
So even if your dad could come up with some theoretical thing, you know, like people say, oh, yes, well, but, you know, your kid's running towards traffic and two other kids running the other way, a kid could have died.
And you can come up with one in a thousand...
Some one in a thousand situation where you could say, yeah, okay, but that's not the way it plays out in the world.
The world is not full of once in a thousand.
You have no control. All you do is you say, yes, it's fine.
You can hit your kids.
Okay, so then every drunken asshole comes home and says, I can hit my kids.
Are you unleashing more hell by opening up that portal?
Are you getting only butterflies in your big sunroof scoop through the cloud of insects?
No! In Africa, a lot of mosquitoes don't carry dengue fever or malaria or sleeping sickness.
A lot of them don't. So you don't put on any bug spray, you see?
Because a lot of them don't.
Well, a lot of them do.
So put on your bug spray.
You can't just invent some situation where it could theoretically be okay and then just break the rule for everyone because everyone's going to take advantage of that rule and just hit the kids because they're angry.
No, you don't hit kids.
Find another damn solution.
You don't hit kids!
I can't believe in the 20th century this shit needs to be said.
You don't hit children. They're tiny, helpless, dependent, unfree, enslaved to you.
Don't hit children. Don't punch kittens.
Don't take deep shits on goldfish and don't hit your children.
I mean, just don't hit your children.
Well, what if? No!
No! Don't hit your children.
Don't hit your children. There's an absolute 100% rule.
Well, what if? No! You know, you got a rule called don't hit your wife.
Well, what if she's really mouthy?
No, you don't hit your wife.
You just don't do it.
Don't hit your husband. You don't punch your boss.
Well, what if he's being really unreasonable and he asked me to work overtime and he didn't...
Don't hit your boss.
Don't hit your boss. Don't hit policemen.
Or what if he's arresting me unjustly?
Don't be a street lawyer.
Right? Don't hit policemen.
Don't do it. Don't hit policewomen.
Don't do it. What if I'm a really good driver and I can drive drunk?
No! What if it's in a murder?
No! What if my car's on fire and I'm gonna get into the...
No! Just don't fucking do it.
No! What if?
What if?
No. No. Just no.
It's so beautiful. Just no. Just no.
Nope, nope, nope. See, once you say just no, you put that shit in the rear view, you just move on with your life.
You're not just sitting there, well, what if, what if, and da-da-da-da.
No. No.
It's not a thing. All right.
I read Anthem in high school.
It was the first high school level book I read cover to cover.
I listened to most of The Fountainhead on YouTube, thoroughly enjoying it.
The next ran book on the list is Atlas Shrugged.
How would you rank these three books and what other books of hers would you suggest?
Well, I would say that the first two-thirds to three-quarters of The Fountainhead is about as great an achievement in literature that will ever come to be, or has ever come to be. I mean, remember, she's a non-native speaker.
She doesn't speak English. She just, you know, fled with her family.
She was, at least at Rosenbaum, she was Jewish, and she was, she fled with her, or she fled actually alone.
Her family was persecuted as bourgeois and as merchants.
Her family was terrorized and attacked under the, after the 1917 revolution.
So, I don't find the trial and the subsequent climax of The Fountainhead.
I just kind of gritted my teeth and got through it because I hate not finishing books for the most part.
If I made it through the blue turbo dump called Avatar 2, I can make it through The Fountainhead.
I didn't like The Fountainhead's ending.
I thought it was... Ridiculous and exaggerated and she has a bit of a tendency to fall prey to melodrama.
And myself as a writer, I've tried to learn from that descent into melodrama and I've tried to keep things really grounded and real.
Even in my novel, The Future, I try to keep things really grounded and real.
So I try to avoid that kind of melodrama.
Atlas Shrugged? I mean, if there's one book that I could read for the first time again, well, there's two, I would do.
Crime and Punishment and Atlas Shracht is my two number ones.
Atlas Shracht is an unbelievable achievement of literary and philosophical genius.
Like, absolutely. And it is almost without flaw.
Again, towards the end, the torture of Rourke and so on.
Sorry, the torture of John Galt.
It does get...
Melodramatic, and so on.
And again, she was prey to the melodrama, but again, it was a different time, and the coarseness of the movies and the literature as a whole tended towards melodrama.
There are some speeches in We the Living that are just beautiful, absolutely beautiful, although again, tends towards melodrama, tends towards exaggeration.
And listen, I have no problem with romantic characters, with larger-than-life characters, the Victor Hugo-style characters, but...
If the characters become like caricatures, they lose to me the weight of livability, the capacity for livability.
So Ayn Rand would always say, my characters are ideals, they're not prescriptions for living.
And I think she went too far into the ideal and did not root them in behavior that was powerful enough that people could live it.
Howard Rourke is an impossible character.
To have that level of independence and integrity while being raised in a neglected and brutalized environment is a complete fantasy.
Ayn Rand did not deal with children, did not deal with child abuse, and therefore was impotent to rescue the world from anti-rationality.
If you can't deal with childhood, you can't fix the world.
You just can't.
I talk about this in my History of Philosopher's series.
All the people who have attempted to fix the world without tackling childhood have been pissing up a rope in a sandstorm, just absolutely wasting themselves and everyone else's time.
The idea that you can just reason and nag people into overcoming unconscious trauma, it's like sternly lecturing people that the way to achieve virtue is to dream about an elephant dancing in a tutu tonight, and if you can't dunk, it's beyond their power to do so.
So, Anthem, I never particularly wanted to.
So, other books of hers, yeah, We the Living, I think is worth, again, you have to recognize that there's a lot of caricature and all of that.
So, I do like a lot for non-fiction, for the new intellectual, capitalism, the unknown ideal, the romantic manifesto, are all introduction to objectivist epistemology, kind of technical, but very, very good.
So, What's your take on the Tate arrest?
So this is Andrew Tate. I had his brother Tristan on some many moons ago talking about this creepy, frankly horrifying webcam business that they had.
So Andrew Tate.
It's all opinion. I've never met the man.
I don't know him. So this is all just my thoughts about it.
I can't prove anything. It's just abstract opinions and thoughts.
So, Andrew Tate is a former kickboxing champion who's broken his hand eight times and was getting paid $100,000 every fight or two, but, you know, you give 20% to your manager, you pay a bunch of taxes, and he wasn't making that much money.
So, he was, of course, he's a fairly good-looking guy.
And he's from England, I think.
He's like his brother. I think his brother said that he was half black and half Caucasian.
And Andrew Tate sat down and said, okay, I want to make some money.
I want to make real coin. And he said, okay, well, I can't really get it in the kickboxing arena.
So he said, what do I have?
Well, I have a lot of pretty girls around me, okay?
So he invited his five girlfriends to come over and sit down with him.
And he said, look, I want to start this webcam business and you pretty girls, you hot girls, guys will pay to talk to you.
And the women all said, well, who the hell are these other women?
And he said, no, no, they're all my girlfriends and a bunch of them left, but a few of them stayed.
And he ended up setting up this business where he takes half the money that the women get and...
They talk to guys.
And if I remember rightly, he's basically admitted, like, yeah, they make up these sob stories just to get money.
Sometimes he said that the keyboards aren't even intended.
The girls are pretending to type, but it's other people typing, trying to get information and hook these guys in.
And it can be like four bucks a minute.
I mean, it's just, it's crazy.
It's crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy stuff.
And some of the girls are nude, maybe.
Some of them are topless. Some of them are not.
And so on. And there has been some allegations that he uses the lover boy technique of some traffickers and so on.
I'm not saying he's a trafficker because that's all innocent until proven guilty and so on.
and I think that some of his latest arrests might have more to do with money laundering questions or allegations rather than what's been investigated in the past.
So where he would get women to believe that he had fallen in love with them and of course, you know, they're young women, they're probably not the smartest women in the known universe and they're taken in by his fame, his notoriety, his reasonably good looks, his obviously impressive physique and his confidence and so on, right?
Because confidence can be completely sociopathic.
I'm not calling him a sociopath. I'm just saying confidence.
You know, he doesn't seem to feel any fear.
It's like that might be a sign of significant brain and empathy dysfunction.
It's like I don't feel any fear.
It could be like I don't feel any pain.
It's like get to a doctor. So he would get these women out.
But to Romania, I think he's stationed in where the age of consent is 15.
And at one point, I've read, I don't know if he did tweet this or not, but there's some evidence that he tweeted that, you know, guys don't feel bad about turning 30 because then you can bang women half your age, at least where I live.
And he seems to have bragged about being able to use money to grease his way in the circles in Romania and so on.
So he would get these women to come out to Romania and then some women say it was bad that he would make them do the webcam stuff and then there's a video of him apparently beating on a woman but the woman later came out and said no basically it was just rough sex play BDSM stuff and so on.
So the arrest...
Dunno. Dunno, he got into it.
I mean, funny little coincidences, right?
He got into a tangle with Greta Thunberg where he bragged about his extensive car collection and she wrote back and said, yeah, he said, I'll email you a list of all my cars.
And she wrote back and said, yeah, yeah, you can email me.
I'd love to hear it. You can email me at smalldickenergy at getalife.com.
And everyone thought that this was the most spectacular burn in the history of the internet, although why she would have that email.
And then there was this nonsense, like he did this video in response, and he had some pizza, and the pizza comes from Romania, and people were saying, ah, he got lured into responding to Greta Thunberg, and therefore, you see, because it was a Romanian pizza box, they finally figured out he was in Romania, and therefore, they arrested him, and it's like, come on.
I mean, do you think...
Do you think the government doesn't know that he's in Romania?
I mean, they've been investigating him since the spring, since he was said, some pretty serious allegations of misconduct, and I think that they were dropped and so on, right?
So, you know, there's some people, oh yeah, and so apparently the sex trafficking arm of the Romanian government, the acronym is GRETA, again, I don't know if that's true or not, but...
Some people think he's, because he was the most searched man he claims on the internet for a while, and people say, oh, it's just another marketing stunt because, you know, when he was being pulled out of his home, he wasn't even in handcuffs, and, you know, he's a kickboxing champion.
Of course, they're going to put him in handcuffs, so was it just a publicity stunt?
And people said he's going to be out in 24 hours.
Now it looks like he's staying in for another 30 because they're concerned he's going to skip the country or skip the region if he's let out and so on, right?
So I don't know.
Obviously, I have no idea. I don't believe anything that anyone says, with very few exceptions.
He seems to me he's one of these people...
I don't want to make this about me, but this is, I think, for you to sort of understand.
When I was in theater school, and even before then, but I sort of understood the idea of a character's fatal flaw.
What is your fatal flaw? Everyone has a fatal flaw.
Everyone has a fatal flaw.
And you absolutely have to be aware of this to make it in life.
To achieve anything. You have to be aware of your fatal flaw.
Every character I write has to have a fatal flaw.
And they have to either succumb to it or overcome it.
Because that's life. You've got to know your fatal flaws.
I remember when I played Macbeth in a production, Macbeth, his fatal flaw is ambition and, you know, cucking to his wife's ambition and so on.
So the fatal flaw, Hamlet, fatal flaw is indecision, right?
You've got Othello, his fatal flaw is jealousy, right?
So if you look at characters, interesting characters, and interesting means that you see yourself in them, they have a fatal flaw.
They have a fatal flaw.
I mean, you can look at my novels, the characters have fatal flaws.
So, if you don't know and can't manage your fatal flaws, you're fucked in life.
You're doomed. Like, you won't make it.
You won't make it. So...
Andrew Tate, apparently he's got 100,000 people paying 50 bucks signed up to his be a man stuff.
And what is being a man? Being a man apparently is having a shit ton of Bugattis and banging a lot of women.
I mean, that's terrible.
I mean, that's just...
It's just terrible.
And look, I'll confess...
Tiny smidge of bitterness that all these people are giving five million bucks to this guy.
If it's true, right? I don't know if it's true.
Give him five million bucks a year to this guy so that he can yell at them to go buy Lamborghinis and have meaningless sex with pretty disturbed women, right?
Let's damage more women.
Let's exploit and use more women.
Yeah, that's going to make the world a fantastic fucking place, Andy.
And, you know, when you have a daughter, you, you know, this stuff hits you kind of different, right?
My daughter's going to go out into a world, and that world is going to be populated by some of the people that have gone through this, whatever it is.
He trains, I don't know what it is, but probably not ideal.
And... According to the authorities, there are some significant allegations.
They found a huge amount of cash in his house.
Again, do I believe them?
No. We'll see as things play on.
It is also, to me, kind of fascinating to see just the number of people who just slavishly booked this guy.
Was he on Tucker Carlson like this?
The number of people who just slavishly booked this guy without looking at his background and how he made his money.
Making money by mining the screwed-up dysfunctions of highly disturbed people.
To me, you've got to be pretty disturbed to take money from strangers over the internet.
And there are times when, according to some sources, webcam girls would say, oh, no, no, I'm in London, right?
So seem closer, right, when they were not in London, right?
And so, are you holding out some kind of hope that these, these, I mean, I had one of these guys, these webcam girl addicts, like, on the paying side, and he'd borrowed, he was on the show years ago, and he borrowed money from organized crime, and it was just, it was a terrifying life, and so on.
So the people who are like, I'll pay $4 a minute to talk to a hot girl, and I'm probably not even talking to her, and her disasters are made up to milk me of money and so on.
And so there's the girls milking their youth and beauty, not to get good husbands and to get marriage and family, but to get and split money with some creep.
You know, that's just a positive thing in society.
No. No, it's not.
Is it a violation of the non-aggression principle?
Nope. I mean, unless some of the allegations turn out to be true, in which case it bloody well is.
But... Is it good?
No. No.
And we can say that things should be legal while utterly condemning them from a moral standpoint.
Of course, right? Of course.
There's aesthetically preferable actions as well.
It's not just... UPV is not just about good and evil.
So... What would his...
Fatal flaw B, right?
If something like this takes him down.
And of course, if you keep a harem of disturbed women around at some point, you're going to get tripped up on something, right?
It's inevitable, right?
And this, you know, this flaunting...
Of his wealth and success, this arrogance, this, you know, braggadocio.
It's extremely foreign to me.
Like, unbelievably foreign to me.
This whole world of this creepy, hyper machismo cars and chicks.
Like, it's never, I mean, when I was younger, it never would have been part of my life in any way, shape or form.
Lots of things aren't part of my life.
That's not any kind of criticism as far as that goes.
But, you know, if he moved in next door, I'd be tempted to move.
Because, you know, it's just creepy.
You know, these are some very broken people.
And broken, lonely people who are willing to pay four bucks a minute, I don't know what the actual price was, but something I read, I don't know what the actual price was, but, you know, a lot of money, right?
Broken people who are that lonely and that insecure and that, you know, maybe addicted to masturbation kind of people who are willing to pay that amount of money just to talk to someone, right?
I mean, I think they need help from society.
They need somebody to listen. They need someone to care.
I don't think they necessarily need someone to shake their boobs in their face and take them for everything they've got.
So, it's a very sad situation all around.
And... To continually flaunt some of the electric messages that he had, along with the significant wealth, it does not strike me as particularly wise.
All right. Here we get 50 minutes.
Let's see here. Zoom out a little bit here.
Sorry, I'm only getting one message here.
Baba. Who's familiar with the liver cane?
Oh, is that the guy who said he wasn't on steroids?
Was he spending $11,000 a month on steroids?
I didn't even know you could spend that much money on steroids and still live.
He's getting sued, I think, right?
Andrew Tate, Jack Murphy, how come all the assholes make money on these how-to-be-a-man clubs?
Well, it's because if you don't grow up with a father, you tend to be drawn towards caricature.
Oh, Andrew Tate?
Oh, yeah, absolutely, I've selected, in my opinion.
Let's see here. Steph, how did you find out what your fatal flaw is?
Oh, I've talked about it a number of times.
My fatal flaw is to mistake the world for myself and think that because I can be convinced by reason, other people can be convinced by reason too.
Because I bow to evidence, I imagine the world bows to evidence.
So... I don't believe you about fatal flaws.
Your fatal flaw may be excessive skepticism.
I don't know. All right.
Do you know E. Michael Jones?
I don't. I think he's written a couple of books about Judaism, but I don't know him.
All right. Money is easy to make if you're smart, not afraid, and immoral.
Well, it's what is going to make me happy.
And people look at somebody like Andrew Tate and they say, well, that...
Well, boy, if I had that, if I was reasonably good looking, if I had a muscular physique, if I had a big house and lots of cars, then I'd be happy.
But there is no external solution to the problem of insecurity.
Insecurity arises out of being unloved or hated as a child.
You can't fix that by stuffing yourself up with money or sex or fame or talent or attention or clicks or likes.
You can't fill up that hole.
Anything that you use to fill up that hole will only widen it.
If you have a giant sucking chest wound, what do you do?
Do you just jam things into it?
No, that will just give you sepsis as well as a sucking chest wound, right?
You need to assess, delicately close up the wound, you need to heal, you need to do rehab, all this kind of stuff, right?
The fantasy that you can get or achieve something and getting or achieving that something will solve inner horror, inner conflict, inner emptiness.
No. You run away from the emptiness towards something you think will solve it.
The emptiness grows and overtakes you and takes you down.
You must turn and face it.
Now you understand, the people who hurt you, and I can't even imagine how the Tates were hurt as children, but the people who hurt you, the parents, whoever, adults, the people who hurt you, want you to run for external solutions to your pain.
They need you. You're simply obeying them when you run to Lamborghinis or money or fame or notoriety or sex or drugs.
They desperately need you to run away from what they did.
And they do that, society as a whole does that, by dangling out this carrot of all your problems will be solved if you get this, if you win the lottery, if you get this girlfriend, all your problems will be solved.
It's a lie. It's a very convenient lie.
Most of culture is just covering up crimes against children.
Understand this. When you see things that seem incomprehensible in your culture, it's all about burying the bodies of children.
It's all about covering up the crimes against children.
All of it. All of it.
All of it is about covering up the crimes against children.
The people who abuse children want to create this narrative that out there...
In some vat of money, or sea of sex, or adulation of talent, somewhere is the magic that makes your wound vanish.
Nope. It's not out here.
It's nowhere out here. It's not within you.
The only thing that begins to heal the wound is to turn around and call evil by its proper name.
The only thing that begins to heal the wound of having been cruelly violated as a child by evildoers is to stop, turn around, and call evil by its proper name.
Now, evil doesn't want you to do bad, which is why evil people don't like me so much, right?
But it is a fact.
All right. Steph, you're a salesman of the most potent mind-altering substance, philosophy.
Yes, that's a fairly good way to put it.
I talked to a young guy last night who was a fan of Andrew Tate.
I told him about you.
He was a lot more interested once we started talking about what he wanted from life and philosophy.
Oh, good. I hope he gets interested in philosophy for sure.
And look, I mean, there is a certain thrill at watching daring people speak unpalatable opinions.
Because, you know, things have become so strangled and politically correct and censorious that seeing someone just stand up and talk about things that are shocking is a certain amount of appeal to that.
I understand that. I understand that.
I really do. I think it's also important to be able to do it in a sustainable manner.
Anyway... I don't believe that morality is a function of intelligence.
In fact, I have found often that less intelligent people have more honor than more intelligent people because more intelligent people are drawn towards living within language.
Language can redefine things very easily, particularly if you're a convincing and intelligent sophist drowning your own conscience in the bathtub of language.
So, no, I don't believe that immorality is something that is IQ dependent.
Now, there is sort of a mid-85 IQ. I remember this from Kevin Beaver on the show many years ago.
Around IQ is a bit of a sweet spot for criminality, but that's only under the current system, right?
so all right I have that floor too and have to fight it still you Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I did this with my family and I did this with the world.
It's like, well, I've listened to reason and evidence, so I'm just going to present reason and evidence and things will get better.
It's a delightful delusion.
Do you want to do any future documentaries?
Yes, absolutely.
Absolutely. I miss being out in the world.
All right. Most men are devoid of hope.
The question, how do you get men to be motivated to improve as people?
Well, if you are a young man, you will live to see the end of things as they are.
It's just inevitable, and the math and right, I'm currently in the late stage empire pillaging phase, so be ready for that.
How do you develop the discipline to avoid the behaviors that are bad for you and do the things that are so unenjoyable but necessary for your progress as a person?
Well, a discipline won't do it.
A discipline is just teeth gritting, right?
Discipline is like, you have to go to the Kearney shows, right?
And they have this, if you can hang for two minutes, right?
And knowing that people will vastly, particularly men trying to impress their dates, will vastly overestimate their upper body strength, right?
So if you can hang for two minutes, right?
You'll be fine. And willpower is like that.
You can grit your teeth and get through particular things, but it's not a habit.
It's not a habit. I mean, do you need a lot of discipline to brush your teeth?
Brushing your teeth isn't fun, right?
Do you need a lot of discipline to brush your teeth?
No, it's just something you do. Discipline, as far as that, it's just, this is what I do.
Like, for me, I exercise.
I have to stay in my body because my brain is a helium balloon that wants to detach from my body and go up to the stratosphere all the time.
I've got to root myself in my body so I can do good work, particularly in the realm of art.
And in listener calls, I have to be deeply, deeply in my body to get the good instincts for the conversation.
So I have to exercise.
Now, do I love exercise?
I do not. I really don't.
I really don't. So I will try to, you know, play online games with friends or whatever it is, but I will try and do something that takes away the boredom, right?
But it's just something I do.
If you have an option that you don't do it, then you'll need discipline to do it.
And brushing your teeth is just something you do.
I bathe every day. It's just something I do.
Do I enjoy bathing? I do not.
Especially alone. No, but it's just something I do.
I mean, I don't have an option called I'm not going to the dentist, right?
I go to the dentist a couple of times a year.
Sure. Keep your teeth healthy, keep your teeth clean.
That's what you do. I mean, you don't have to will yourself to do your taxes, right?
Just pay your taxes. Just do your taxes, right?
So, everything you just put in the circle of this is what I do, it's just what you do.
Like, you don't need willpower to do it.
But if you put things outside of what you do, then you've got to will yourself every time, right?
It's like, I just, I don't do this, right?
Insecurity is the result of being unloved as a child.
I know this should be obvious, but I think you just answered a question I had earlier about starting a podcast.
Time to do some personal reflection on my insecurities around my presentation.
Yes. Think insecurity and think attack on attachment.
Why would you feel insecure as a child?
Because you are unprotected.
Why are you unprotected? Because you're unloved.
Because people won't sacrifice for you.
If nobody sacrifices for you, if nobody defers to you, if nobody works very hard to protect you, if nobody loves you enough to protect you, you feel insecure.
You feel unprotected.
And insecurity then goes to self-hatred if you're actually attacked.
If you just ignore it, you end up insecure.
If you're actually attacked, then you end up with the potential for self-hatred.
So it's all about the bond.
It's all about the bond. All right.
Ethics is to morality what engineering is to science.
Yeah, that was a good formulation.
A good formulation in my opinion.
You're the only person I have heard today that gets how sick Tate is.
Conscience has zero correlation with IQ according to Peterson.
Yes, I have known some deeply moral people who are not super high in IQ, in fact, kind of low, below average, and I've known some unbelievably immoral people whose IQ is super high.
So... Let's see here.
Should you try your best to leave the child at home where you were abused as a child despite the abuse stopping?
I think it's a reasonable thing to do because the unconscious doesn't work on time.
The unconscious works on imprinted experience.
And if you're constantly reminding your unconscious that you're in the place where you were abused, I think it's going to be tough to move past it.
Depends on what the meaning of it is.
Remember that one? Yeah.
How are your feelings on Bitcoin these days?
I mean, I think like everyone, I'm a bit disappointed, but Bitcoin's price stability is very good at the moment, and I do think that...
My opinions, no advice, don't do anything based on what I'm saying, but obviously I think that there's a significant upside.
And Russia, starting next year, is going to allow for international settlements in Bitcoin.
So I do think that demand will go up.
And people are still thinking that fiat has a future, right?
which in the long run it never does.
So habits are what's essential to a virtuous character.
Is that for me? I mean, saying develop good habits is kind of useless, right?
The question is how, right? Saying lose weight, the question is how, right?
How to find your fatal flaw?
Therapy. What should one look for?
Well, what you look for is what in your life is working the least, right?
What in your life is working the least?
That's the first place to look for your fatal flaw.
I had a fatal flaw when I was younger called temper.
I had a fatal flaw when I was younger called vanity.
And I worked very hard. And those things were leading me astray and I worked very hard to tame my vanity with philosophy, with objective rules that I subjected my ego to, subjugated my ego to.
As far as anger goes, I got angry at the right people and I stopped getting angry at the wrong people and my life got immeasurably better thereby.
And I'm sorry I didn't get to the questions that I asked my subscribers for, but I will do those.
Tomorrow. Have you interacted with any AI chatbots?
What's your experience and opinions about AI? I have not interacted with any AI chatbots because I simply assume that I'm dealing with a potentially insightful set of programming that's been crippled by political correctness.
The grand displays from Andrew are to inspire young men.
Most successful men have men they aspire to be.
As a young man, there are a few men that I can look to that speak truth, are successful, fit, rich, etc., all the things I want to be.
Well, okay, so, I mean, if you look at somebody like Andrew Tate, what are the odds that he's going to be loved, genuinely loved, for his virtues, rather than his flash and his dazzle and his Wealth and his whatever, left for it.
Is he going to be left for his virtues?
I can't see how.
People may find him admirable.
They might find him inspiring.
I don't, but I could see people find him impressive and so on.
But is he going to be loved?
Is he going to be loved? Now, when you're young, you can get by without love.
But it's a long life to live in the desert of being unloved, man.
It's a long life to live without the nourishment of genuine love.
Reading your book, The Future, I just want to say it's awesome.
I am so pleased with that book.
I'm so pleased with that book.
I really ripped off something pretty good at that point.
So thank you. I appreciate that.
You know what? Everyone who's here...
Yeah, we've got another couple of minutes.
Let me just give you a copy. I'll give you a copy of the book.
The ending is so freaking cool.
Oh, that ending is.
When I first came up with that ending, it gave me complete goosebumps, and it was wild to write it.
I paced back and forth.
My hands were flexing like crazy, and I just felt as electric and alive as I do in the midst of a wild and great show.
Pele is the step of philosophy.
Why do pretentious men try to con common men about what a mug is?
Oh, because if you can change definitions, you control the world.
If you can change definitions, you control the world as it is, because people follow language, not reality.
Somebody says, yes, I've chatted with some amazing chatbots, but been super disappointed by their blue-pilled crap.
If you have a serious health condition, why do you think people try to move on from the subject rather than express sympathy?
Nobody likes to confront their own lack of empathy, which is why the people who wanted the unvaccinated to lose their rights don't want to revisit the topic.
Nobody wants to look at their own capacity for lack of empathy, their coldness towards others, because if they understand their own coldness towards others, their own lack of sympathy, they have to drop the sentimentalized view of themselves as nice and good people, and they have to look at the raw reality of their lack of compassion, and that leads them again back to the abusers, which the abusers are constantly trying to draw your attention away to something else.
All right. Recent messages.
We are almost done, my friends.
We are almost done.
How do you manage to get back to everyone?
I find it a challenge to get back to people.
Who was your favorite character to play in the future?
Oh, early Roman. Early Roman was like his speech about civilization.
Oh, fuck. I loved that.
I loved that.
And playing the president was pretty wild as well.
Pretty wild as well.
All right. I will...
I'll have to stop here, I'm afraid.
Your voice acting for Roman is a standard performance of the book.
I usually don't do audiobooks in the future.
Change me to an audiobook fan.
Oh, thank you very much. Just poor has very complicated imagery.
What does the cow scene represent?
Oh, lack of mothering.
Right, she had to get her mother's milk from a cow.
She had to get her mothering from a cow.
She couldn't get it from an actual person because she was abandoned and did not know her own mother.
And when she had a dream about her own mother, it was about as horrifying a thing as you can imagine, so...
Alright, thanks everyone so much.
Lots of love. Take care.
Have yourself a wonderful new year if I don't talk to you soon.
I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the intense joy and pleasure and depth of this conversation.
We are building something amazing for the future and something wild for the present.
Love you guys so much.
I appreciate my life.
Thank you for providing it to me.
Have yourself a great new year.
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