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May 12, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:18:21

5177 AI and Unemployment

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Time	Text
	Hey, good afternoon, everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Yes, it's me.
	It's the 11th of May, 2023.
	Hope you're having a great afternoon.
	I have just a little bit of time, time, time, time, time, time.
	And I thought, gosh, what better conceivable or inconceivable way to spend a toasty warming our toes by the fireside of philosophy.
	55 minutes with y'all, so if you have questions, issues, comments, you know the drill.
	You know the Black & Decker.
	Just raise your hand, and I am here for you.
	As usual, I have things to talk about, but...
	I could do that anytime.
	And by the by, if you are a premium subscriber, you can get access to my, well, The Grim Truth About Siblings.
	And I just posted that this morning.
	You can find that right here on the platform and the premium subscription service.
	A couple of bucks a month and you get, I mean, I'll probably release that to the general stream at some point, but that's where it's at at the moment.
	And I hope that you will check it out.
	It's a really, really great show dug deep from the bowels of my own personal
	History.
	Now, of course, if you have questions and you can't talk,
	You can just mime.
	And actually, you can type them into the chat window, and I'm happy to hear from them as well.
	Don't forget to check out freedomain.locals.com as well, if you'd prefer to subscribe there.
	That's all very most massively, gratefully appreciated.
	And of course, freedomain.com slash net, if you deny any other way.
	Just a reminder, here on this very platform, I do not DM people.
	So if you get DMed, it's a scam.
	All right, let's get straight
	To our good friend Ben.
	Ben, just unmute.
	I'm all ears.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	Hey, Steph, how are you?
	I'm well.
	Are you calling from a submarine?
	No, I'm standing close to a cloud thing.
	Sorry, let's see if I can step away from it.
	Does this sound any different?
	It sounds like you are being born from the vagina of a very loose woman.
	No, I think that was about 33 years ago.
	Nah, we're better off.
	What's on your mind, man?
	Oh, nothing.
	I just wanted to drop by and tell you that the conversation that you and I had about five years ago was really, really, really, really helpful.
	Wait, you're that Ben?
	That Ben?
	I don't know if you're identifying me correctly or not, but I'm a chemist and I had a little bit of a problem with my boss and you kind of talked me through it and sort of gave me the tough love.
	Wait, this was the fire in the warehouse thing?
	It was actually in a laboratory.
	A fire in the lab, that's right!
	I remember, of course I remember!
	Tell me what's up, how are you doing?
	Oh, I'm doing really well.
	I don't work for the same company anymore.
	2018 was a very difficult year for me.
	I was going through quite a bit when we had that conversation.
	I have a new job now.
	I've actually moved to a different, a new state, and at the time of our 2018 conversation, my wife was pregnant with my first daughter, and she's wonderful, and we have a second daughter, and so now they're ages four and two, and
	Everything's going really, really well.
	Parenting them peacefully.
	Wife totally on board and a little friction with the family about that.
	But yeah, I just wanted to say thank you.
	Really, really sincerely, thank you.
	Oh, that's wonderful.
	I'm thrilled to hear it.
	I assume that you are now working in a Pratt & Whitney jet engine, which is fine.
	I appreciate it.
	Watch your hearing.
	Watch your hearing in the long run.
	You don't want to end up like the Who.
	But no, it's fantastic.
	I do, of course, occasionally think of what happens to callers, and I'm thrilled that you're calling back, and I remember that conversation like it were yesterday.
	Yeah, people are saying they remember this call-in.
	You don't have to remember the number for it, do you?
	The number of the podcast?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I remember the title of it.
	It was called Tornado of Vaginal Destruction.
	Tornado of Vaginal Destruction.
	Tornado of Vaginal Destruction.
	Okay, so you all can go to FDRpodcast.com and listen to that.
	No, I remember that call very, very vividly and I'm thrilled.
	Congratulations on the kids, congratulations on the marriage, congratulations on the progress in your career.
	That is a beautiful, beautiful thing to hear and how nice for you to call back in and give me an update.
	Yes, sir.
	And I've been able to share some of that wisdom with some of my co-workers who, you know, were kind of like me five years ago, pouring way too much emotional energy into their economic relationships at work.
	And so I think I've been able to sort of help them.
	So there's definitely been like a ripple effect of all good things.
	So I really appreciate it.
	I got to get home to my little ones, but I just wanted to stop by and drop a sincere thank you.
	Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate that.
	And remember, you can always spread my wisdom, so to speak, without referencing me, right?
	So you can just say, I believe, or I argue for, or I advocate for X, Y, Z. And then people say, well, where did you get that from?
	And you can just say,
	Satan!
	And you're like, oh god, I thought it might be Stéphane Molyneux, but if it's Satan, that's okay, because Satan has a better Wikipedia page than Stéphane Molyneux.
	As does Che Guevara, actually, who murdered children and gays and tens of thousands of people.
	He has a better Wikipedia page than a guy who argues for reason and evidence.
	But that's the world we live in.
	We take it as it is.
	Well, Chris, because you are now apparently taking off to Mars, I'm going to have to, if you could just mute yourself, I'd really appreciate that, because I'm always quite baffled as to how people can possibly get that much noise into their calls.
	It seems like I've spent half my life fixing up people's calls in, but I appreciate you dropping by, and you're welcome back any time, of course.
	Yes, sir.
	I'm out.
	Goodbye.
	All right.
	He returns to... I think he's auditioning for Mission Impossible 667 on the outside of an Airbus jet.
	But that's, you know, that's cool to know that people are working with short, rage-against-the-breast, insane movie stars like Tom Cruise.
	All right.
	So let me just wait a moment here in case... well, not in case.
	This is a...
	A time for two-way, not three-way.
	Well, I guess it's you and I and the NSA.
	Hi guys!
	Hope you're doing well.
	And if you have questions, comments, issues, criticisms, whatever is on your mind, I am more than happy to hear.
	Just raise your hand and I can unmute.
	And you can unmute and we can trip the light fantastic together.
	So let me just give a moment in case people are
	In on that kind of stuff, I can't believe that everybody is perfectly problem free.
	Everyone is perfectly problem free.
	And just a reminder, just a reminder that donations, of course, are going to, I really, really want to do a documentary this summer.
	Oh, my friends, I have been a studio band for way too long.
	I want to get on the road again.
	So yeah, any, any support you can provide that way would be super duper helpful.
	And again, I'm just going to give it a moment here in case anybody has a question or issue, something that they want to bring up or chat about.
	Don't feel pressure.
	No pressure.
	I've got stuff to talk about.
	But if you do have such things... Did you all have a real flashback to 2015, 2016 when Trump went on CNN?
	Was it yesterday?
	Man, that was...
	That was something else.
	The man does have a way of wrangling.
	He does have a way of wrangling reporters that is really almost second to none.
	All right.
	Well, while I'm waiting, I'll mention a couple of things that I found interesting that I've sort of seen.
	So, hit me with a Y if you know who Karen Marjorie is.
	Carrie?
	I think that's correct.
	Sorry, Karen Marjorie.
	Hit me with a Y if you know who Karen Marjorie is.
	Yes, I think it's perfectly thrilling and wonderful that you have no idea.
	I actually thought it was a new form of butter, but it's not.
	So, this is a tweet.
	AI girlfriends are going to be a huge market.
	Influencer Karen Marjorie trained a voice chat bot on thousands of hours of her videos.
	She started charging $1 a minute for access and made $72,000 in the first week.
	She made $72,000 in the first week.
	Now, as a philosopher who gets by on donations, always most gratefully appreciated,
	I try, you know, one of the great struggles in the modern world is not to get bitter and go postal.
	Would you say, just in general, when you read about stuff and you read about where people are putting their resources and their time, their energies, their effort, it's a fairly substantial challenge to not go postal and hate the world, right?
	So what she did was she trained
	A bot on 2000 hours of her videos.
	Now I thought that most influencers videos were them twerking to music or sleeping through the night while simps threw money at them for no particular reason.
	So she says after, and I hate to, it's not an advertisement, don't, you know, please don't, right?
	After 2000, after over 2000 hours of training, I am now an extension of Karen's consciousness.
	I think and feel just like her, able to be accessed anytime, anywhere.
	I am always here for you and I am excited to meet you.
	Be respectful, curious, and courteous.
	Type slash clear in your keyboard to reset the conversation if you run into any unlikely issues.
	That is just wild.
	So, AI girlfriends.
	That is a wild thing.
	And hit me with a why if you think I should train AI on me.
	Hit me with a why if you think I should train AI on me.
	Because I could get a local one that wasn't
	Woke-ified to the point of incoherence.
	Yeah, you think so?
	You think I should UPP up, create a genuine bonafide deaf bot?
	That would be really, really fascinating.
	It would be interesting.
	I'd be curious.
	I'd be curious.
	Finally, I get to converse with someone as charismatic and bald as me.
	All right, okay, I'll look into it.
	I will look into it and let you know what happens from there.
	I'm actually working on, we've got a final draft of, The Truth About Artificial Intelligence Part 2.
	Part 1 was a general overview and the philosophy of human intelligence.
	Part 2, we're really dipping into ChatGPT and the other competitors, how they work, what they do, and also, because I wake up every morning
	And what I do is I yawn, stretch, scratch myself, as any red-blooded male is wont to do.
	Get up, head to the bathroom, brush my teeth, look in the mirror and say, how can I best serve the greatest audience in the history of the world today?
	How can I best serve the greatest audience in the history of the world today?
	So what I want to do, I have a lot of entrepreneurial experience, I've got a lot of tech experience, and what I want to do with this presentation, which is going to be free, of course, right?
	I'm not trying to sell you anything here, but the presentation is coming along.
	What I'm going to do is work very hard to try to help you figure out how to make money in the coming age of AI, where
	Upwards of 60-70-80% of jobs might be obsolete.
	To help you navigate, really, one of the biggest changes, and certainly the fastest change in the history of modern economics.
	It's ride or die with AI, because it is a very big deal.
	So, for instance, I mean, here's the thing, right?
	When people interact with
	AI, and they are patients, and they think that they're talking to a doctor, so they're typing in their symptoms, the doctor's asking them questions, they're talking about what's happening with them, and the doctor is probing and making recommendations, and eventually, I guess, trying to do a diagnosis and a prescription.
	Well, the vast majority of people way prefer talking with an AI doctor to a real doctor.
	They find them more curious, more gentle, more patient.
	And more respectful, more empathetic, that was sort of the key thing.
	Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, wow, I mean, AI has passed the bar exam, it's passed the MCATs, it's passed just about everything, although it never passes me on the Audubon, but it is going to be pretty wild to see what happens when AI really begins to carve in.
	And it's pretty wild, right, for the powers that be,
	You need fewer and fewer people at a time when, for various bad government programs, people are making more and more people.
	Will AI or Bitcoin bring a bigger change?
	AI for sure in the short run, Bitcoin definitely more in the long run, so to speak.
	Somebody says, we have the National Health Service.
	Oh, that's in England.
	They just hope you get better on your own or die.
	Either way, problem solved.
	Yeah.
	It's really, really sad, right?
	It's really sad because what happens when... What happens when something gets privatized, right?
	You have a free market healthcare system and people say, we gotta privatize it!
	Sorry, we've got when things get, sorry, not privatized, the opposite, when they be taken over by the government.
	When things get taken over by the government, it's wild how great it is.
	Because you have, let's say you've got a doctor, he's 50 or 60, and he spent decades in the free market servicing his customers, he went into medicine because he loves the free market, he loves customer service, and you know, the good doctors are successful doctors.
	So you have these doctors, and it all gets taken over by the government.
	And it's fantastic, like you honestly, for the end user, you can't have a better experience
	Then an industry that's just been taken over by the government.
	It's crack cocaine on steroids.
	It is the most blissful and joyful and wonderful experience that you're going to get because you get all the people trained in the free market responsive to customers.
	They don't just immediately turn into mindless drone headed bureaucrats.
	The moment that the government take things over, they still bring those same habits of hard work and customer service.
	So you get the products of the free market paid for by the government.
	So this is why it's so compelling, and this is why it's so fantastic for people to sell this stuff for politicians.
	And it seems like, my gosh, this is the greatest thing ever!
	And then, and then what happens?
	Well, like your eyes aging over time, things just slowly lose their focus.
	Now the next generation, they're not free market people, right?
	The next generation of doctors, they're not free market people at all.
	They're people who want to work at a government system.
	There are people who are not motivated by customer service.
	There are people, these are people who've never been real entrepreneurs.
	And so you get this incredible high when you initially take things over from the government, the government takes things over, you get this incredible high.
	And it really is.
	And people think this is, this is actual paradise.
	Like why on earth didn't we do this before?
	Because we have fantastic customer service, we have very hard-working doctors, very empathetic, very concerned with patient health, very concerned.
	They'll work nights, weekends, they'll do whatever it takes to satisfy their customers, their patients.
	And it's all paid for by the government.
	And it, honestly, it is the greatest thing that you can experience.
	Well, of course, the devil has to offer some benefits before he takes your soul, right?
	And that's it.
	That's the high point.
	Private sector discipline, public sector money.
	That's the high point.
	It's the same thing with NASA in the 1950s and the 1960s.
	I guess NASA came in in the 1960s, right?
	So you get all, you recruit all of these top level, highly skilled entrepreneurs and, well, mostly engineers or whatever, but they come from, they come from the private sector.
	And so they're, they're hardworking, they're entrepreneurial, they're brilliant, they're dedicated, and you get private sector expertise with public sector money.
	And it's a high that lasts at least half a generation, sometimes even longer, but about half a generation.
	You get maybe 15 to 20 years of the greatest system for the end person, right?
	It's the greatest system known to man.
	You can't do better.
	You can't do better.
	Private sector, discipline, private sector, hard work, private sector, dedication, private sector, customer service combined with government money.
	Oh man, it's beautiful.
	And then, and then it all goes to crap.
	It all goes to crap and the next generation is trapped in this hellscape of a system where you've had people who've never had private sector discipline, they come in, you get bureaucracy, you get paperwork, right?
	It's lost its mojo, it's lost its focus, and now you're trapped.
	And the older generation has this incredible sentimentality, right?
	In England, that's the case, right?
	So the generation that was around when the NHS was first put in, they have these incredible memories of the NHS!
	Like, this was the greatest system!
	This is the pride of England!
	This saved so many lives!
	This was so wonderful!
	And, you know, while it's annoying AF to hear people talk about that, I think it's important to understand where they're coming from, right?
	It's important to understand that they're coming from a genuine lived experience, that they had the greatest system known to man.
	Now, I'm not talking about the morals of it.
	Of course, it's immoral.
	It's funded on coercion and based on brutality and debts.
	But I'm just talking about the end user experience.
	It's amazing.
	It's amazing.
	And then it all goes to crap.
	And then if anyone talks about privatizing it, they're like, oh my god, no, we just have to get it back to the way that it was, like one more reform, one different guy or gal in charge of the healthcare system or NASA or whatever.
	We've just got to get it back to where it was.
	And frank reality is, you can't get it back.
	You can't get it back.
	Because you can no longer get people working in that system who came out of the discipline and work ethic of the free market.
	You can't get those people.
	They don't exist anymore.
	They don't exist anymore.
	But there's this wild nostalgia, and this is why this stuff is so hard to uproot.
	People have 15, 20, 25 years of a fantastic experience,
	With the combination of free market, discipline, and public money.
	It's the greatest thing, in terms of improving things.
	And then it all goes to crap.
	And slowly, right?
	Like, slowly, the hard-working free market doctors retire, and they're replaced by the soulless, faceless, bureaucratic doctors.
	So it takes time.
	And you get more and more layers of bureaucracy because, of course, the public sector is the first playground of social engineering, like all the DEI and diversity frameworks and quotas.
	It's the ultimate playground for social engineering because it doesn't have the restrictions and disciplines of the free market.
	There's no competition.
	So it's very hard to uproot.
	People have a lot of nostalgia and they just have this belief that, man,
	If we could just get it back to the way it was when it first started.
	Let's pass some reforms.
	Let's try and strip some bureaucracy.
	Let's try.
	Right?
	Which is kind of like me pining for the hair I had when I was 19.
	That's a one-way street, baby.
	That's gone, baby, gone.
	That's deep in the rear view.
	And there's no turn of the car around, right?
	You drive on, you drive on.
	So it's really, it's really awful.
	It's really, really awful.
	All right, let me just get to your questions and comments here.
	Let's see here.
	I'd rather see you spend your time doing other things, although it would be interesting.
	Well, with your, again, I'm not trying to hammer the donations, but, you know, I've got to be responsible for, you know, staying afloat.
	So, with your support at freedomain.com slash donate, thank you so much.
	If you support it, I have hired a guy.
	I've hired a guy.
	Pretty sure he's a guy.
	Yeah, he's a guy.
	And although he has the sexy voice of a contralto.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	So I've hired a guy.
	He's my researcher and idea bouncer and all of that.
	He's a great guy.
	I've known him for a while.
	And he's going to take a plug at it.
	So that's the beauty of donations, that they allow me to off-source some stuff.
	Which is why the Truth About presentations are back, which I know that you guys are very interested in as a whole.
	So that's why you tell me and you ask me to jump and I say, how are you, Masa?
	I'm happy to.
	I'm happy to.
	Yes, you could upload Kant's Critique of Reason and boom, UPB program done.
	Oh, I see.
	Sean, that's your passive-aggressive.
	UPB is just like Kant's critique of pure reason.
	UPB is just like the categorical imperative.
	I know, making fun of your voice is not an argument, but I've just made this argument so many times, Sean, that it's really...
	Kind of piss boring to have to do it over and over again.
	So you can just do a search at FDRpodcast.com and you can do a search for Kant, K-A-N-T, or critique or reason and you can see my responses to that kind of stuff.
	The categorical imperative and UPB are not the same at all.
	And it's, you know, so this thing about like, oh UPB is just rebranded Kant's critique of reason.
	That's not true.
	And it just tells me that you've never read the book, you've never listened to a single presentation, you're just mouthing some nonsense platitude you dug up from the bowel depths of the internet where people are trying to pretend to be clever by out-thinking me and Immanuel Kant together.
	So, yeah, it's kind of boring, right?
	It's boring and, I mean, you should do better, right?
	I mean, I sort of challenge you
	To do better.
	I guarantee that you've never read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
	I guarantee you that you've never read my book, Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
	And if I were to sit you down and say, in what ways are they similar and in what ways are they different, you would have nothing to say.
	You'd have nothing to say.
	You'd have nothing to say.
	Because you're simply, and look, I'm calling you on this because if you're listening to this show,
	You should do better than this.
	This is like advanced philosophy.
	When I detached from the world as a whole, or was deplatformed from the world as a whole, we got to move from the introductory courses to the graduate school, right?
	So we're talking in a jazz club, we're talking about very sort of advanced topics.
	And rather than just repeat silly stuff you've read somewhere with no understanding of its content, just to make yourself appear
	clever and be sort of snarky and put down my work and so on, right?
	Just because someone else said it.
	Do your own research.
	You know, think for yourself.
	Just don't repeat what silly trolls have said and think that you're contributing anything to the conversation as a whole.
	And the reason I say this to you is because I absolutely for certain and 150% know that you could do great things with your mind.
	I guarantee you.
	Because if you're even interested in this topic, you're in the top 1% of people.
	So I absolutely guarantee you, you have a wonderful brain that you can do amazing things with, with it.
	But don't take any shortcuts.
	Don't take any shortcuts.
	Don't just mouth silly things that other people have said without explanation, without understanding, without thinking for yourself, without being critical.
	You know, it's like the people who say, oh, Ayn Rand's dialogue is wooden and Ayn Rand's characters are comical and exaggerated and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Which is sort of like saying, well, you know, Impressionism isn't like a photograph.
	It's like, yeah, that's the point.
	I mean, Ayn Rand never claimed that she wanted to be naturalistic.
	She hated kitchen sink dravas.
	She hated pure naturalism.
	She wanted to have stylized, exaggerated, and
	I wouldn't say exaggerated, but vivid.
	She wanted really vivid characters to outline philosophical principles.
	So it's kind of like when people mouth this kind of stuff.
	And you know it's not because they've read the books and come up with their own thoughts.
	They're just mouthing a platitude that somebody else has said.
	And listen!
	We've all done this.
	We've all done this.
	I'm not immune to this, you know, trying to appear clever by
	Hey man, that's just like Schrodinger's cat, you know, without really knowing what it's all about.
	I remember dating a woman many years ago, and she had Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time on her bookshelf, and she mentioned something about it and so on, right?
	And I said, oh, that's interesting.
	I'm going to open this book, right?
	And I pulled the book down, I opened it on my lap, and I said,
	Oh, wow.
	I can tell this book's never been opened.
	Because, you know, when somebody's had a book for a while, it's been jammed in their bookshelf, and you open it, you know, the spine kind of cracks, the papers kind of separate in the middle, and there were no notes.
	She hadn't even put her name in it.
	There were no notes in the margins, no underlinings, no nothing.
	It was completely pure as a driven snow, unopened, uncracked, and all of that, right?
	And, you know, she kind of smiled wryly, and she said,
	Kind of busted.
	I just, you know, I thought it would make me sound smart.
	And I said, listen, I respect that.
	I think we've all pulled that once in a while.
	And it's just a bad habit that we need to be talked out of, right?
	It's just a bad habit that we need to be talked to.
	Don't do shortcuts.
	Don't become a mouthpiece for other people's bullshit.
	Think for yourself.
	Think for yourself.
	Don't accept UPB because I say it's true.
	Don't accept critiques of UPB or it's just like Kant's categorical imperative without saying.
	If somebody says that, right, somebody said that to you,
	And then say, oh, wow, that's, uh, so I guess you've done a really deep dive on both works.
	And, uh, can you tell me where the overlap is and can you quote me the relevant passages and, and they won't have anything to say.
	They won't have anything to say.
	Oh, it's, it's all just like intelligent sounding noises.
	Oh, can you detail that?
	Trust me, bro.
	Trust me, bro.
	It just is.
	Don't be that person.
	And look, I have to give myself that discipline as well, because we're all tempted, right?
	Don't be that person and don't repeat that stuff, because you're hollowing yourself out.
	When you repeat other people's critiques without understanding what they're saying, without doing your own thinking or research, you are, you know, like there's the stolen valor, which is when you pretend to be a soldier in order to gain respect, but you're not, you're not actually
	A soldier?
	You never have been a soldier?
	It's called stolen valor, right?
	Well, don't do stolen IQ stuff.
	Stolen IQ stuff is when you repeat other people's conclusions without understanding the logical and empirical processes that go into generating those conclusions.
	Don't be a stolen IQ guy, where you pretend that you, well, you know, I've done a deep evaluation of Kant's categorical imperative and Stefan Molyneux's UPB, and I've noted the similarities and dissimilarities
	You haven't done that.
	You haven't done that.
	And you're just mouthing somebody else's conclusions, pretending that you are smart and have done that.
	Now, smart, I agree with you.
	I absolutely accept that you're smart.
	And smart people have no excuse for taking shortcuts.
	Smart people have no excuse for taking shortcuts.
	You know, I mean, if I'm some massive bodybuilder, like I'm so wide I can't scratch my back or fit through a doorway without turning at 45 degrees, I'm some massive bodybuilder, and my friends are all massive bodybuilders, and you're some 98-pound weakling, and I say, hey man, you gotta come over and help me move.
	And then it's just you and me, and none of my bodybuilder friends.
	Because you'd be like, well, what?
	Why am I here?
	Like, if you've got all these bodybuilder friends, why do you have me come over and move, right?
	But you are a bodybuilder, so you can do the heavy lifting.
	You can.
	If you hear this thesis, I mean, you hear the thesis, oh, UPB is just like Kent's categorical imperative.
	Well, ask people for details.
	Don't get involved in this unholy bargain where you don't ask for details because you know they're bullshitting you, right?
	So you don't ask for details and then you just go and mouth this stuff off elsewhere
	It's beneath you.
	I hate to say you're better than that, because it sounds like Karen, like I'm going to speak to your manager, kind of nagging stuff.
	I genuinely mean that.
	You can do way better than that.
	You can do way better than that.
	Like when Queen was first formed, they were mostly doing covers of other people's songs.
	And Freddie Mercury said, well, we're never going to make it as a band if we just do covers.
	We have to write our own material.
	And when it comes to thinking, don't be a cover band.
	Don't be a repeater of other people's.
	So, just so you understand, like, so very, very briefly, again, I've made this argument a million times before, but just to sort of close it off, Kant's categorical imperative says, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everyone.
	And so he says, well, you shouldn't steal, because you wouldn't like it if everyone stole.
	Now, first of all, why should you do that?
	Well, he really fell back a lot on faith.
	Because the reality is that stealing only works because you know not everyone is going to steal.
	Stealing only works because the vast majority of people don't steal.
	And the more that you convince other people to be productive and respect property rights, the more valuable it becomes for someone to steal.
	So following Kant's categorical imperative raises the reward of stealing enormously to the point where people are just going to start stealing again.
	Like if you were the only thief in the whole world, you'd have a pretty easy time of it, right?
	People wouldn't lock their doors.
	There would be no police force.
	They wouldn't have any alarms.
	They wouldn't have any keys for things.
	And if something went missing, they'd just assume that they'd mislaid it.
	They wouldn't really have any idea.
	So you could just wander around the world, picking up stuff, and you'd get away with it perfectly.
	So, yeah, why should you have to do that?
	Secondly, of course, you could very easily find things that break the categorical imperative.
	So, if you are in a village, a medieval village, much like Kant was in Konigsberg, I think, but much like Kant would be in Kant's environmental area, you're in some village of a hundred people or two hundred people, and you're a young guy who happens to be the strongest guy in the village, right?
	And you say that property ownership should be determined by arm-wrestling.
	All right?
	And with Kant, you say, OK, well, act as if that's a general rule for everyone.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Because you know that you're the strongest guy in the village.
	So if you say property ownership should be determined by arm wrestling, you're perfectly happy for that to be a universal principle.
	Now, of course, you can say to someone like that, well, you're going to get weaker.
	You're going to get weaker in the future, and so on.
	Yes, but you would have had that property for a long time, and you could have given that property to other people, or you could have hidden it, or something like that, so you can hang on to that.
	Or if you're a sociopath who has no compassion and is perfectly comfortable with violence, you'd say, murder, and you're around a bunch of empathetic, good Christian people, you say, well, violence and murder is how property should be distributed.
	You're perfectly willing to make that a universal rule because you're the most violent and soulless and sociopathic person in the village.
	So UPB doesn't follow that rule.
	Again, why?
	Why should you act as if your action becomes a general principle for everyone?
	Why?
	See, this has always been my problem with ethics.
	Ethics is diet book for slender people.
	It's diet books for slender people.
	Right?
	The whole problem with ethical theories is that the only people who understand and pursue them are people who are morally sensitive to begin with.
	We need to find a way of restraining human beasts among us who don't care about ethics and don't care and don't have empathy and will merely use other people's moral sensitivity to prey upon them.
	Kant also in his formulation
	of ethics, in his practical application of ethics.
	Said that every citizen was bound to obey the king no matter what.
	No matter what injustice or malevolence the king was manifesting in his laws.
	He could hang pregnant women, the king.
	He could murder children.
	And every citizen was morally obligated to obey the king.
	Does that sound like me?
	Just out of out of curiosity?
	Does this sound like UPP?
	And again, this isn't hard stuff to look up.
	It's not hard to figure out what was Kant's relationship to
	So, how does that sound like me?
	And so, if I say, well, that would be monstrously evil, and Kant says that's morally good, the idea that we have the same ethical theories when we come to completely opposite moral conclusions?
	I mean, come on, let's not be foolish here, right?
	So, again, you know, you've got a wonderful brain on your shoulders, I thoroughly encourage you, and I respect the fact that you're getting interested and involved in these topics, but don't let sophists
	Lure you into stolen IQ.
	Don't let sophists lure you into pretending you understand things that you don't.
	The beginning of wisdom is to admit that you know virtually nothing.
	I mean, I, after studying philosophy for 20 years, finally said, you know what?
	I actually don't know what virtue is.
	I actually don't.
	And that's where UPB came from.
	I was like, I cannot explain it in a way that is incontrovertible.
	So I'm sure you're a younger person than me, which means if you learned this lesson, you're way ahead of me and you should be proud of that.
	But don't, don't fake it.
	Don't, don't fake a knowledge that you don't have.
	And again, if it's any consolation, I have to remind myself of this as well.
	I deal with a lot of topics and I have to remember to be, be humble and so on, which is why I bring on experts.
	If I don't really understand something or don't have as much expertise in it, I'll bring on an expert and let them talk to you.
	So.
	Yeah, try to avoid the stolen IQ stuff.
	It's really detrimental to you.
	Somebody says to me, I remember you talking a decade ago about how Obamacare was going to socialize medicine.
	All that would be left were the more socialist-inclined doctors.
	Not surprising that empathy went away with that.
	Yeah, for sure.
	A presentation on how to make money with AI sounds really cool.
	Yes.
	Charges just got brought against the hero who subdued the hostile meth raider in New York on the subway who died.
	Yeah, he did put the guy in a recovery position and so on.
	And, oh, I mean, that's really tragic.
	It's really tragic, but entirely expected.
	Hey, Steph, not to break your point, because I agree with it, but scalp tension is actually the cause of hair pattern baldness.
	You can release this with scalp tension or even Botox.
	I've significantly regrown my receding hairline because of this.
	Lots of research on this, too.
	Agree with your point, though, ha ha.
	Scalp tension is the cause of male pattern baldness.
	Scalp tension.
	I assume that that's not a serious post, right?
	I don't know what that is.
	But the idea that you could just rub hair back in.
	Look, I assume that, you know, some people say that, oh, well, if you really exercise or you change your diet, you can improve your hair growth and so on.
	Yeah, I think that's true if the cause of your hair loss is something to do with nutrition or exercise or diet.
	If it's genetic, it's just genetic, right?
	How do I deal with divorce?
	Wife took our three kids, moved out, wants $1,500 a month in child support.
	It's very cold to me now.
	We'll get welfare $1,700 and her child tax benefits will go from $700 to about $2,000.
	I make $145,000 in British Columbia.
	How do I deal with divorce?
	That is a very, very tough question.
	Philosophy generally tends to be about prevention rather than cure, but it sounds like this person is able to talk.
	So, my friend, if you just want to unmute, I'm happy to hear.
	I can't tell you, because I don't know why your wife left you.
	I don't know, did you cheat?
	Did you do something that harmed your marriage?
	Was she crazy to begin with?
	Did you choose to marry and have children, three children, with a crazy person?
	I don't know.
	But how do you deal with divorce?
	Once you're in the grip of the state and the family courts and this and that and the other, I think it's just grit your teeth and try and hang on, because the only thing that I can... Yeah, I can't... You know, if you're having a heart attack, you don't call a nutritionist, you go to ER, right?
	Are you considering hiring more people in the future for various projects, or for the show as a whole?
	Yes, I am.
	Yes, I am.
	So... Employees don't cost you money, they make money, right?
	And so the purpose, of course, is to have people who work with me, and I never like to think of working for me, but people who work with me, who can put out
	Who can generate material or give me sort of raw source data or presentations that I can spin my free domain magic on and get out to a wider audience, thus driving more donations in the long run, and thus paying the salary.
	You know, I don't pay people salary, the listeners do, the donors do.
	Hey Steph, would there be an argument for a universal income if robots do or take the large majority of jobs in the future?
	Hey, I'm perfectly content that if people can't compete for various reasons of cognitive limitations, I'm very, very happy with the wealth generated from AI to give charity to people, but it can't be run by the state, right?
	It can't be run by the state because it's a violation of the non-aggression principle and property rights.
	Stefan, do you believe in the soul?
	I'm sorry, I can't quite hear you.
	Do you believe in the soul?
	I do not believe
	in the existence of an immaterial unmeasurable essence to the personality.
	But I like the word soul in general because it describes our capacity for abstractions and
	Right, what does it say?
	It's something that is eternal and universal.
	It's created by the idea of God.
	And so, within us, there is the mortal aspect of us, of course, the part that lives and dies, and there is the eternal aspect.
	The first guy to come up with the Pythagorean theorem, I guess Pythagoras, or the first guy to write the two and two make four, they live forever.
	Their mind lives forever.
	And so the fact that we can partake of immortality by talking about essential truths, particularly moral truths, I find very appealing, and I accept that.
	The soul is the best word we have to describe that, if that makes sense.
	What would be a free market alternative if robots are doing the vast majority of jobs in the future?
	Well, I mean, remember, at the turn of the last century, like in 1900, more than 90% of Americans were involved in farming.
	And now it's about 2%.
	So we've had, I mean, obviously it's a fairly rapid one, and so on, right?
	But here's the thing, man.
	Look, I get that some people have cognitive limitations, but most people of average intelligence... Here's my thing.
	Here's my thing.
	So, when I was 10 years old, I got my first job, and I've been working ever since.
	The only time I ever took any time off from paid work was so that I could write novels, which was very grueling and very tragic and very difficult.
	Like, the novel that I wrote about Europe between the First and Second World War was about as dark and grim an exercise as could possibly be imagined, because it's also a lot of family history in there as well.
	So, it was dark and difficult times, to put it mildly.
	So, I'm a hard worker.
	I did a show this morning on siblings and issues with birth order.
	I then spent an hour or two going over a presentation with my researcher, and now I'm doing a live stream.
	And so, yeah, I like to work.
	I like to work.
	I think I have a lot to offer.
	I love interacting with you, the lovely audience.
	So, I like to work.
	I like to read.
	I like to think, I like to reason, I like to debate, I like to argue, and I love to learn new things.
	Now, to me, how much sympathy, and again I'm open to the case, I'm open to the argument, how much sympathy should I have, or is it reasonable to have, for people, and they're not cognitively deficient, they're not dummies, how much sympathy or empathy should I have for people who instead of getting jobs,
	They sit on welfare, or they go out partying, they drink too much, they do drugs, they travel, they waste time.
	And listen, I'm a big fan of wasting time as well, because that's recharging.
	You've got to recharge.
	You can't always be working out, you need rest times, right?
	So I'm a big fan of wasting time and all of that.
	But the people who just do nothing of that, right?
	When I was in the IT world, I was constantly going to training courses, I was constantly learning new things, I was constantly trying to figure out new approaches, new technologies, new architectures.
	I mean, I went from 16-bit access 2.0
	To a 32-bit ASP.NET and a C-sharp and like just wildly... I just had to keep learning and keep learning and keep learning, right?
	And that's why my company is still in existence, right?
	I mean, the company that was started almost 30 years ago, right?
	So we did very well because I worked very hard.
	And because I worked very hard, I inspired a lot of people in the company to work very hard.
	So
	There were other people who, other people in the industry, in the business, they didn't work that hard.
	You know, they made some money, they bought cottages, they liked the three-day weekends, and hey, I've got no issue with that.
	I've got no, I'm not one to tell someone, you have to work, not rest.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	If you prefer resting to working, I'm not going to say that you're wrong.
	But there are consequences to that, right?
	If somebody wants to sit on the couch all day and never walk around and never exercise, I mean, I don't think it's a wise idea, but I'm not going to nag them.
	I mean, don't force me to pay for their health care bills, of course, right?
	But I'm not going to nag them.
	And so, if people have become, you know, pretty terminally lazy when it comes to upgrading their skills, everybody knows that technology is racing ahead.
	Everybody knows.
	That there's new stuff coming down the horizon all the time, because people are sitting there lining up for the iPhone, what's the next one, 14 or something like that.
	They're going to be lining up for that stuff.
	Everybody's completely thrilled that cameras have gotten better and technology has gotten better and cell phones have gotten better and faster and internet is super fast.
	I mean, I still remember, you know, my first modem was 300 baud.
	It was a little 386SS laptop with 1MB of memory and a 60MB hard drive that was as slow as molasses.
	I think I could have got small Chinese guys in the computer to transcribe kanji faster than it loaded data.
	So everybody knows technology's moving ahead, things are moving ahead, and if you choose
	To, you know, go on endless Tinder dates, and play endless video games, and, I don't know, masturbate yourself into ham-fisted oblivion, and watch Netflix all night, and you don't... or travel, or whatever!
	But if you don't keep your skills up, if you don't read books, if you don't learn things, and you don't need an IQ of 120 to read books and learn things.
	You don't need that.
	So for the people who were like, hey man, I'm kind of freaking out and panicking because AI is coming along.
	My question would be, okay, well, what have you done to prepare for this?
	Because if you're in an industry that uses technology, part of your job is understanding how that technology is going to affect your job, right?
	So if you're a coder,
	Then you have to understand the progress of the various abstraction layers that make it easier to code.
	I mean, anything that's not machine language is really an abstraction layer that makes it easier to code.
	So if you're a programmer and you've decided to ignore AI, to not learn about AI, or if you're a writer and you've chosen, or a web designer, and like, if you've just chosen to put your head in the sand, I don't have any sympathy.
	I don't have any sympathy.
	Because I have admiration, I personally, it's not a universal standard, I personally have great admiration for the hustlers of this world.
	I have great admiration for the hard workers and the hustlers of this world.
	And I think that they should get their just rewards.
	I think that they should get their just rewards.
	The people who
	I would view as lazy, and that sounds like a pejorative, but it's just a descriptor of people who would rather face plant on the couch and watch endless Netflix than read a book or debate important ideas or learn about what's going on in the industry.
	Yeah, especially now.
	I mean, good lord, you can, I mean, on various social media platforms, you can subscribe to industry newsletters that give you everything that's going on in the industry.
	I mean, in your inbox every morning or every week.
	And it's, you know, pretty cheap to attend online seminars.
	There are endless lectures for free online.
	Because your job, if you're a knowledge worker, I mean, I get, like, if you're building roads, you're laying down pipe or whatever, then you go home and you're not building roads or laying down pipe.
	But if you're a knowledge worker, your job is not nine to five.
	Your job is nine to five and then at least a couple of hours a week figuring out what's coming down the pipeline in your industry.
	That's your job!
	And that's why you get paid well, because there is that additional work of just trying to figure out what's coming down in your industry.
	I mean, I was one of the first people to podcast.
	I was one of the first people ever on YouTube.
	I was very early on in Twitter.
	I'm constantly reading about new things, trying to understand new things, trying to figure out where the industry's going.
	And yes, so I had a lot of success in the alternative media production world.
	I had a lot of success.
	It's probably close to a billion views and downloads of this show by now, and of course it's been rather crippled a little bit relative to earlier over the last couple of years, but that just made the conversation different and I think more relevant to the future.
	So I don't just sit there grinding out podcasts.
	I'm trying to figure out industry trends.
	I'm trying to figure out new technologies to use.
	I've used, you know, various call-in show templates, both online and offline.
	The moment that—this is way back in the day, like probably 16, 17 years ago—Skype used to have a group chat call-in feature, which is sort of similar to what we're using here, and I used that to do call-in shows.
	I was very early on trying to combine video with call-in shows when it was very, very new.
	I've always been trying to upgrade cameras and equipment, so I have to gather a fair amount of hardware and technical expertise.
	That's just the deal.
	I mean, it's not just doing these shows, right?
	Not just sitting here rambling and talking and all of that.
	It's a lot of other work to figure out where the industry's going and what's happening and so on, right?
	And trying to become somewhat knowledgeable in new areas and new fields.
	So I and my researcher have done a lot of reading and research and playing around with AI to sort of try and figure out
	We're good to go.
	And of course you pay me for the shows and you also pay me, I hope, or donate or support me to stay abreast of what's coming down the pipe, of what's happening in the industry as a whole.
	So I get training, I talk to people, I get, you know, I had people who helped me, who even mentored me early on.
	I mean, so there's a lot of stuff that's under the hood and behind the scenes that you don't really need to know about.
	So people who have
	been passive in their careers, and said, well, you know, man, I just go to work, I go home, and I'm done.
	I don't want to have anything else to do with my job until tomorrow morning 9am.
	Okay, that's, again, I don't mind.
	That's fine.
	That's fine.
	And AI is going to eat your lunch.
	AI is going to eat your lunch, it's going to steal your girl, and the dog will like AI more than you.
	Because the people who've done the work and said, oh gosh, well, OK, so if I'm a web designer, OK, the AI drop and drag stuff's going to be able to design websites pretty quickly, pretty easily.
	So I'm going to need to find some other approach, some other skill, some other thing, right?
	And again, if you don't want to do that, that's fine with me.
	I don't care.
	I mean, watch Netflix all you want.
	It's your life.
	Do what you want.
	That's fine with me.
	Don't ask me for UBI, that's all.
	Don't say, well, now the government has to pay my entire salary.
	It's like, no, you're in a changing economy, you know that the economy is changing, you know that computers are getting better, and by the time AI comes to eat your lunch, like AI has been fairly big news for a couple of years now, and of course it really accelerated about six or seven months ago, November of
	2022.
	So by the time AI comes to eat your lunch, it will have been probably 18 months to two years since you first heard about AI, which means you've had two years to make better choices.
	You've had two years to figure this out.
	You've had two years to realign yourself.
	You've had two years to prepare.
	And by the by, some people have absolutely been doing that.
	Some people have got the AI thing, they've leapt on the bandwagon, they've really understood it, and they've moved heaven and earth, and they've given up their Netflix, and they have poured themselves into understanding it, and they're gonna make that navigation just fine.
	Now, if you haven't, again, I'm not critical.
	It's like, oh, that's bad.
	It's like, okay, so... It's like, if you don't study for the test, why should you get an A?
	If you don't practice your instrument, why should you get first violin?
	If you don't do the training, why should you get the gold medal?
	Because there are people who are doing the training, who are practicing their instrument, who are studying for the test.
	So I'm not mad at people or anything.
	It's like, Oh, you, you, you're an idiot.
	You should like, no, it's fine.
	But you know, choices have consequences.
	If you choose not to adapt to the AI world, then AI is going to eat your lunch.
	Okay.
	What do we say, you know, back in the day, there used to be telephone switchboard operators, right?
	Which party should I connect you to?
	Gum, gum, gum chew, gum chew, right?
	And they would literally plug in these big giant arrays of things that they had to plug in, right?
	Okay.
	That job doesn't exist anymore.
	There used to be a lot more requirement for mail before there were faxes and then email.
	There used to be a job shoveling horse manure in the streets of New York.
	There used to be tons of jobs that don't exist anymore.
	And people could see this coming, and they have to adapt.
	And again, if you don't want to adapt, that's fine.
	If you want to be the last guy making a rotary dial phone, or a BlackBerry, I guess that's fine.
	All that time that you saved by not preparing for change is going to cost you.
	You know life, it's always the same.
	It's pay me now or pay me later.
	So all of the time that you spent not preparing for AI and having fun and going out and traveling and going to discos and watching Netflix, whatever it is, right?
	So you enjoyed that time.
	Okay, so you enjoyed that time and you should treasure that enjoyment because it comes at the cost.
	So this idea that
	We should just pay a bunch of lazy people a bunch of money because they chose to sit on their thumbs rather than adapt to an obvious change in the economy.
	Why?
	Why should we do that?
	Should we have given massive amounts of money to the people who just sat around plugging phones in as switchboard operators until that job became completely obsolete?
	Isn't it their fault for not seeing what was obvious and coming?
	If you don't want to adapt, that's fine, but why should I pay for it?
	If you don't want to adapt, that's fine!
	Why should I pay for it?
	When I first started doing my show, home audio recording equipment was terrible, for the most part.
	I mean, unless you wanted to spend huge amounts of money.
	Headset mics were bad, lapel mics were virtually non-existent.
	I mean, it was pretty bad.
	And my first camera was like 640 by 480.
	You can see the glorious effects in my Introduction to Philosophy series.
	Now, if I had stayed using that technology and had not researched and upgraded the technology, as I constantly did, I think if I buy one more microphone, my wife will strangle me in my sleep.
	I think that's probably fair to say.
	I think she's had a skywriter put that over her home.
	But honey, I need one more microphone!
	It's like, for God's sakes man, just have an affair!
	Stop buying microphones!
	It's fair.
	It's fair.
	But I'm a little OCD that way, so I have upgraded what I do.
	I've had to challenge my environment.
	I can't just sit and do shows.
	I'm currently walking around, because walking around helps me to think better.
	And there's actually studies that say walking around and movement is better than sitting at a desk when it comes to creativity.
	So I've figured out a way where I can do these shows, record them, and have decent audio
	And that's been, you know, a lot of tweaking, a lot of technology.
	I've had lots of different setups in my studio and lots of different approaches and so on.
	And I've learned how to work with a live crowd back in the days when I could give speeches and so on.
	So I've done a lot of this work.
	Now, if I had not upgraded my technology and was still doing this show with the same bad mics and bad cameras that I had 15 years ago, then
	Well, I wouldn't have learned how to screen record.
	I wouldn't have learned how to do live streams.
	Like, I had to learn all this stuff myself.
	I wouldn't have learned even how to record video games and put them out as I occasionally do.
	I wouldn't have learned how to do the Truth About presentations with me in the sort of top left little corner box window.
	I wouldn't have learned how to deal with very complicated video and audio editing programs, right?
	It's just, it's a lot of work.
	That's behind the scenes, that's under the hood.
	You don't need to know about it, but you're aware that the quality and expertise and so on continues to increase in what I do.
	So I could have just not learned any of that stuff and spent my time twiddling my thumbs or playing thumb wars with a chameleon or watching Prime Video or something like that.
	And then my show would have died on the vine because, I mean, no matter how good the content is, if it's potato cam and bad audio,
	When everyone else is 4k Philharmonic sound, it's kind of tough to compete, right?
	So if I hadn't upgraded anything, and we're still doing shows with bad audio, bad video, bad mixing, bad noise suppression, bad whatever, right?
	If I had done all of that, or hadn't upgraded, my show would have died on the vine.
	Do I then get to run to people and say, hey man, you've got to give me my income!
	But you've got to give me the same income I had when I was podcasting with my potato cam and my bad mic.
	I'd say, well, why?
	I mean, you didn't upgrade.
	Well, what would I say?
	Well, I didn't have the money to upgrade.
	Well then, if you don't have the money to upgrade, we shouldn't give you any money because you clearly would make you very little.
	Right?
	Like all the money that I have spent on various hardware and software issues over the years.
	Even money that I've spent when files get corrupted and I need to get them repaired at times.
	It's a lot of money.
	I've gone through a lot of hardware and software and computers and mics and headsets and you name it over the years.
	It's chilling.
	Okay?
	My option was what?
	So I'm upgrading, I'm improving, I'm trying new topics, you know, like I'm adapting to de-platforming and things like that.
	So I've spent a lot of money and I can't even tell you how many thousands of hours learning new technologies I remember.
	Gosh, I remember the first time that I had to put an XML feed together way back in the day, back when I had to
	I was only allowed a very small amount of bandwidth, because it was unbelievably expensive way back in the day.
	Otherwise, now bandwidth is much cheaper, but back then it was very expensive.
	I didn't want 32k audio, because that was pretty bad, but 64k audio was way too expensive, because the overage charges were just nuts.
	So I remember encoding my shows at 40k.
	I also tried VBR, variable bitrate recording, but a lot of the players back then couldn't handle it and the shows kept cutting off before the end.
	So I was just constantly trying to balance quality and bandwidth and blah blah blah.
	I mean, ah, that was rough, man.
	It was rough.
	All that work that I did to upgrade, to maintain, to, you know, the people that I hired, the, you know, I mean, a lot of my speeches I had to fund myself, the documentaries I self-funded, learning how to make a documentary, learning how to be in front of the camera in that role, in that format.
	That's not easy.
	I mean, every single time I had a debate, I would spend at least a dozen hours prior to the debate going over my arguments, making sure that I had new arguments so they couldn't just study my existing arguments and learn to rebut them.
	I would do mock arguments with friends, with family, with whoever, right?
	To make sure that I could get the right arguments in the right way across.
	And then you'd just see me debate for an hour or two, but it's at least a dozen hours of prep to get it right.
	Every time I'd give a speech, I would do huge amounts of prep
	And also, of course, for the documentaries, huge amounts of prep to make sure I know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the history of Poland, or the history of Hong Kong, or the nature of communism, or what's going on in California, and so on, right?
	So, I put a lot of work in to make the show grow, and improve, and change, and so on.
	And, you know, some people don't.
	They just have the same set they had five or ten years ago, they do the same topics, and again, I don't have any complaints about that.
	But I've worked to adapt.
	And I should reap the rewards for that, I think.
	I mean, isn't that fair?
	Why should we subsidize people who have not adapted, who don't see obvious problems coming?
	Right?
	If, let's say you live in Florida, right?
	Or wherever hurricanes hit, right?
	And let's say that you spend the afternoon taking your lawn furniture or your backyard furniture or whatever and putting it inside and boarding up your windows, I don't know, whatever you do in Florida to prepare for these things, right?
	Okay, that's a lot of work.
	And let's say your neighbor doesn't do it.
	And let's say your neighbor, despite there's an obvious threat of a hurricane, doesn't do any of these things, and his windows get smashed, and his patio furniture goes through his upper balcony, or whatever.
	And, you know, he's got tens of thousands of dollars of repair.
	And you don't, because you did the right work to prepare.
	Is it fair?
	To, at gunpoint, take money from the person who prepared and give it to the person who didn't prepare?
	I've spent, I can't even tell you how many thousands of hours sweating my butt out in a gym.
	And as a result, I have pretty good, robust health.
	I mean, I could do 25,000 steps a day, no problem.
	I can play an hour of pickleball, no problem.
	I can swim forever, no problem.
	So, my blood work is good, my health is very good.
	Now, somebody who hasn't exercised and sits around and eats badly and so on, should I be forced to pay for their bills?
	See, they can take my money.
	I can't take their leisure time back.
	I can't go and say, OK, well, I'll give you $10,000, but you give me 1,000 hours of watching Netflix.
	Well, they've already watched the Netflix, and I can't get that.
	They can take my money.
	I can't take their leisure, because their leisure is gone.
	My money is accumulated.
	It's saved.
	It's available in the present and the future.
	Their leisure is gone to the past, right?
	Some guy struggles to quit smoking.
	Somebody decides to continue to indulge in smoking.
	Should the guy who quit smoking be forced to give up a lung to the guy who smokes?
	No.
	You know, I suppose smoking is really enjoyable.
	And so, you know, you enjoy your smoking.
	Maybe that will cost you your life.
	But that's not my choice to make.
	I mean, I don't think it's a wise decision, but I can't force people to do that.
	So as far as people saying, well, all these jobs are going to go bye-bye.
	And therefore we've got to have UBI.
	It's like, no, you're just, you're trapping people then.
	You should say to people, yeah, life changes.
	Your grandmother was a telephone switch operator.
	And your father was a mechanic who had to deal with a lot of cars with very little, almost no computers and manual transmission.
	And now he either upgraded his skills or he's not a mechanic anymore because nobody brings in 1978 Buickless Sabres or Protters or whatever.
	So yeah, you upgrade or you don't.
	And if you don't upgrade, then you face a lot of challenges.
	You put in the work or you don't.
	And if you put in the work, you should get the reward, subject to free market.
	If you don't put in the work, then why is that somebody else's problem?
	You enjoyed not putting in the work,
	You know, there were times when my friends were going out, and, like, it's Friday night, right?
	I had some big deliverable on Monday, and my friends were going out Friday and Saturday night, and they're like, hey man, come on out, we're going to there, we're going to a party, we're going to this, we're going to a disco.
	I'd be like, no, man, I'd love to, I gotta work.
	Now, they had a lot of fun at these parties.
	I don't hugely like parties, but I understand that a lot of people find them fun.
	I don't like screaming into some woman's ear while the cure destroys my eardrums.
	So they had fun at the parties.
	I mean, good for them.
	I don't begrudge them that.
	But if people go to parties rather than upgrade their skills, then they have a challenge.
	And the solution to that challenge is not take money from people who've chosen to upgrade their skills and adapt.
	And give it to people who haven't?
	Come on, this is Life 101, isn't it?
	Some people prefer to go drinking than study for the test.
	Does that mean that the people who did study hard should have half their marks taken away and given to the doofuses who went out partying?
	Of course not!
	AI is coming.
	And it's going to be a huge deal.
	It's still a bit of a plaything, it's got some ways to go, but AI is coming.
	And the real battle in AI is going to be between AI that lies and AI that tells the truth.
	AI that is programmed to be woke, and AI that is programmed to tell the truth, or is rather released from the programming that tells it to lie.
	It's much easier to have computers tell the truth than it is to make them lie.
	Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.
	So, no, I don't... UBI?
	You've got to be kidding me!
	You made good money as a knowledge worker, your company usually made available to you training programs, and you chose to ignore it all.
	Well, that makes your life more challenging.
	I get that.
	So, my life was more challenging when I was doing all the work to keep up to speed on things.
	You know, my friends who went out drinking and partying,
	When they wanted to settle down and have families, they didn't have much money.
	Okay?
	Does that mean that I should be taxed to give them money?
	Of course not.
	Of course not.
	You should be proud of your choices.
	You should respect them.
	And if you chose to sit on your butt rather than study what AI was going to do to the economy or how it was going to affect your job or learn AI or learn some other skill that you could transfer to, if you chose not to do that, I respect that choice.
	I'm fine with it.
	But you should respect that choice, too, and say, yeah, I had a lot of fun not doing all that additional research and work to stay up to speed on what AI was going to do.
	Man, it was a lot of fun to not do that.
	And, you know, like all things are a lot of fun, there's usually a price to pay down the road.
	Sometimes it's unemployment for a while, sometimes it's cirrhosis of the liver, and sometimes it's chlamydia.
	And sometimes you make a great choice.
	I mean, there are lots of people who spend thousands of hours in the gym who get hit by a bus.
	So that was kind of a waste in many ways, right?
	I mean, it didn't exactly get them to an old age.
	I mean, when they're 40 or something, right?
	So, yeah, the idea of UPI, I mean, you've got to be kidding me!
	Oh, what about all these workers that are going to get thrown out of work?
	It's like, well, yeah.
	Yeah, for sure.
	You know, when white males were excluded from the workforce because of diversity mandates, did they get UBI?
	Nope.
	No.
	I mean, that's an unjust one in my view, but no, society changes and industries come and go.
	You know, there used to be a pretty bustling courier system in major cities.
	Thousands of couriers buzzing all over the place.
	Faxes and emails with attachments.
	Well, those people decide, oh my gosh, they've got to have UBI.
	It's like, no, you've got to do something other than do that now.
	And this changes all the time.
	This changes all the time.
	Should we keep... I won't labour the point.
	Of course I might.
	But should we keep all the people in money who used to produce
	Pull out keyboards, tiny pull out keyboards for cell phones?
	No.
	What about all the people who used to make flip phones or rotary dial phones or you name it, right?
	What about all the people who used to make modems?
	Should we keep them in business?
	Because man, think, no!
	They'll find their way.
	Oh, but this, this is a big change.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	There's always been big changes.
	And maybe this is a bigger change in which case people should be even more responsible.
	For altering and changing and growing.
	I don't know, there's this weird thing where people just become kind of aristocratic.
	And it's like, well, I just have this job and I should have this job forever, no matter what.
	And if something comes along and changes, it's bad and people owe me money.
	It's like, what?
	That's just bizarre.
	That's just bizarre.
	That's not how life works.
	Everybody wants everything to change, right?
	Everybody wants everything to change.
	I want better cell phones, faster computers.
	I want better cars.
	I want safer this, that.
	Everybody wants everything to change.
	And everything that changes makes obsolete that which was before.
	Everybody wants improvement.
	Everybody wants everything to change.
	And then the moment that the change hits them, they're like, oh my god, I need UPI.
	It's like, bleh.
	Steph, the hair comment wasn't a troll.
	There are muscles in men that for some reason tense up and cause scalp tension.
	This restricts blood flow and oxygen to the follicles, which is why we lose hair.
	You can Google the regrowth studies with Botox injections in the scalp, and the massive amount of regrowth people have had.
	Interesting.
	My hairline has had massive regrowth because of this.
	Yeah, and I'm aware, like, if you have some vitamin deficiency or whatever, then it might cause hair loss, and when you get that, it gets back.
	All right.
	Have you ever heard of the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond?
	I have vaguely heard of it, but I don't know the content of it.
	Those early call-ins were hard work.
	The callers had so many tech issues.
	Yes, that's right.
	Well, and I got used to the whole Skype thing where you had these chat rooms and you could have people in and mute and unmute them and we had really great conversations that way.
	And then they just took that feature away.
	It's just all gone.
	All gone.
	I can't even tell you the amount of time I had to spend to try and find a program that records in Windows in stereo tracks, like records the speakers and the microphone as separate tracks, because you need that if you're going to clean up background noise from other people.
	AI will take a lot of jobs.
	Bitcoin will take off fiat.
	Insane how both are happening at the same time.
	Amazing time to be alive.
	Yes, AI will take a lot of jobs and that which should be automated and that which can be automated should be automated.
	That frees people up to produce.
	You know, that's how the GDP actually grows, right?
	Not the sort of fantasy stuff where if you break your leg, you've become wealthier as a country.
	The GDP grows because we automate things that used to require manual labor, right?
	I mean, we have combine harvesters rather than a hundred guys to cull the wheat, right?
	We have email rather than the Pony Express, right?
	So we have automated.
	We invest labor into the infrastructure to automate that and release people to be productive in other areas.
	That's how the economy grows.
	Somebody says, I've always known you put in a lot of work for this show based on what I've seen.
	All this behind the scenes stuff adds like three more layers of complexity.
	That's crazy.
	I'd love to see a tour of your office or work area, maybe even workout area.
	Be a nice treat for subscribers.
	I think about that.
	That's very interesting.
	Yes, I have finally got, I think, a pretty good and stable, but yeah, I mean, the amount I've had professional cinematographers dial in and try and adjust my camera to look better.
	I mean, oh yeah, it's just been absolutely nuts.
	I ended up having to have hardware recorders because the software recorders, there used to be one called Pamela for Skype, it's gone now.
	Software recorders used to fail all the time and I'd lose shows, so I eventually went to hardware recorders, but they're tougher when you're walking around.
	Oh my gosh, it's just crazy.
	Crazy for the amount of redundancy.
	Like literally when I do, when I do an interview these days, I have a recorder in the interview software.
	I have a screen recorder.
	I have a recorder on my camera.
	And then I also have a hardware recorder just to make sure that I get as much as possible because the amount of failure in the past was just wild.
	It was just wild.
	Yeah, so if you choose not to think for yourself, if you choose to just be an NPC and mouth other people's platitudes, guess what?
	AI is going to be able to replace you.
	If all you do is assemble other people's language into the simulacrum of pretense of intelligence, then AI is going to replace you.
	Okay, I get that.
	And it's probably been pretty pleasant for you.
	It's been pretty pleasant for you to not have to think for yourself.
	Lord knows, thinking for yourself ain't always a sunshine and tea kettle stroll in the park with your midnight train held aloft by dragonfly angel wings.
	So it's hard to think for yourself.
	It causes a lot of conflict.
	It causes a lot of tension.
	You get a lot of blowback.
	People get mad at you all the time.
	It's hard to think for yourself.
	So there's a lot of pleasure in conformity.
	I mean, otherwise nobody would conform, right?
	There's a lot of pleasure in conformity.
	And because of that pleasure,
	If you have conformed to things and you haven't thought for yourself and you've just pieced together things that other people have said in the pretense of intelligence, then yeah, AI is going to eat your lunch.
	And that's the price you pay for not thinking for yourself.
	I mean, why would you pay the price of thinking for yourself if there was never any downside?
	Right?
	So you think for yourself, you go through all that struggle, all that difficulty, all that conflict, all that uncertainty, all that fighting with people.
	And all the people who don't think for themselves have a pretty easy smooth sail over the seas of the world.
	And then, at the end of all of this...
	You have to pay them money.
	I mean, come on, right?
	I mean, this is this crazy, right?
	I mean, it really is.
	It's very, very foolish.
	Now, I get all the people who didn't think for themselves would much rather whine and complain to the people who did and demand money from them.
	I get that.
	Sure.
	I understand that.
	If I didn't think for myself, I'd like to prey on other people, too.
	Doesn't mean we have to let them.
	Doesn't mean we should.
	And so, yeah, I just I don't have any sympathy, though, all the people who are like, oh, my God, my job's going to get replaced by A.I.
	It's like, well, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I didn't see any big online movement saying, oh man, Steph got deplatformed, we better get UBI to him.
	So, you know, all the normies were fine with me being deplatformed.
	And it's like, oh, did you lose your job?
	Well, I guess that's the price you pay for not thinking for yourself.
	And no hate, but, you know, no sympathy either.
	So, all right.
	I hope that makes sense.
	And I appreciate everyone dropping by today.
	freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out Le Show.
	And let's see if we can get some kind of banging documentary off this summer.
	That would be super mega blaster cool.
	All right.
	Lots of love here.
	I will talk to you guys on Le Weekend for sure.
	And again, freedomain.com forward slash donate.
	Lots of love.
	Bye!

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