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June 23, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:21:00
ETHICS UNPACKED! Freedomain Community Conversation!
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Yeah, hi everybody!
Welcome, June 14th, 2024.
Welcome to your glorious philosophy evening.
It is Friday Night Live, we're doing a voice chat, and I am super thrilled.
If anybody has any questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, whatever you like, I'm all ears.
I certainly have topics, as I am wont to do, but I am happy to hear from you.
So if you just want to unmute, if you have any questions or comments, help yourself to my brain like a buffet of vaguely British noises.
Hey, Steph, can you hear me?
Yes, sir, go ahead.
Hey, I just want to thank you for all of the hard work that you do and all of the dedication.
You've really allowed me to see You know what I mean?
You said, you mentioned that time that Helen Keller, before she could new words or anything like that, it was just like electronic sensations or something, right?
And you have given me so much clarity and understanding in the world and about other people that I just can't imagine what it would be like to exist any other way, you know?
I'm just thrilled to be able to speak to you.
You're like a celebrity to me.
All these years I've been listening to you, and you had those huge YouTube channel streams and messages flooding in, and now here we are, just this small group.
I'm just ecstatic for this.
Well, I really appreciate your kind words.
Thank you so much.
What do you think was the most important aspect of philosophy for you?
Was there some moment where you just, like, kapow, and things sort of came together?
Was it some particular topic?
Sometimes it's just a side phrase that happens to sink the pot, so to speak.
What was it for you?
Well, I hope I can answer your question, but I'm going to say that It's the call-in shows, and it's understanding how abuse and all of the turmoil and, you know, how the parents treated the child, which then became an adult and then had children of their own.
And that has given me, you know, my glasses on, so to speak, so I can actually see.
And really, a thing that I just can't get away from is UPB and the non-aggression principle.
That is what really opened up my eyes with the documentaries you did, Sunset in the Golden State, which I've watched a couple times over.
And anytime I have guests over, I try to at least show them a couple minutes of it and Get them exposed to it and centralize coercion, understanding the nature of the state for what it is.
It's illegitimate.
It's just force.
So I hope I'm answering your question.
No, I appreciate that.
And when you first listen, I mean, it's funny, I wish I could come in from the outside, you know, like that's kind of what philosophy is, is kind of coming into life from the outside, from sort of principles.
And I, you know, one of the things that's wild about this show, and I take some credit for this, of course, but it has a lot to do with the honesty and generosity of the listeners, but it's a wild thing.
Because normally there are physicists and there are engineers in the world and the two are usually quite separate.
So there's the heavy theorists and then there's the practical implementers.
Now the one thing that is really unique about what we do here is that we go from the most abstract theoreticals to the most practical implementations.
We go from absolute theory To robust practice, right?
So Einstein comes up with the theory of relativity, and then the Manhattan Project creates the bomb, right?
Which is maybe not the best.
Let's talk nuclear power!
I love the topic of nuclear weapons, by the way.
Yeah.
So, the fact that I've got these big abstractions, UPB and RTR, Non-Aggression Principle, which is not mine of course, but to take that and apply it to actual practical problems in the world is fairly unprecedented in philosophy, and in fact certainly to the degree that we do it.
It is unprecedented that a philosopher is not helping people with abstract definitions of virtue and pointing out contradictions in their thinking, but is rather saying, how does philosophy change your life?
Yes.
While remaining strict to abstract principles, how does philosophy change your life?
And the call-in shows are absolutely unique in the history of philosophy.
That there are now thousands of conversations where we take the most abstract principles and apply them to actual life.
Because, you know, a lot of philosophers are into abstract principles and there are these sort of, I don't know, Tony Robbins self-help guru kind of guys who try to help people with their lives and so on.
But not the two together.
And that's, I think, the wildest thing about what's happening in these kinds of conversations.
That we are going from the most abstract topics to the most practical implementations.
Because philosophy can very easily be a distraction from life.
Because it feels very sort of disconnected, and sometimes almost dissociated from life.
And when you sort of plow through people like Schopenhauer, or even Nietzsche to some degree, it's like, well that's all well and good, but, you know, what does this do for my life?
How does this help me make actual decisions?
And to have morality from the greatest abstractions to the most practical implementations, is a wild it's almost like breaking the third wall or the fourth wall it's like breaking the fourth wall in theater where instead of you looking at a room of actors pretending there's no audience they kind of come out and talk to you in the in the audience uh and and yet that's usually improv and so on but this is sort of very structured so i think that
When I first, and it's wild because I still remember this sort of from very very early on in the show, that I've always loved chatting with people and so I wanted to talk philosophy with people and this is sort of way back in the day.
Skype had this, I guess kind of like now, but it was sort of a meeting room situation where you could all join a particular meeting room.
This is back in I think 2006 and so on, right?
You could join a meeting room, you could mute and unmute people, and I was like, hey, let's talk philosophy!
And I don't know why this happened.
It's a very interesting question as to why this happened.
But I was like, hey, let's talk philosophy.
And people opened up their lives to the ether like self-surgery with a can grenade or something.
They just Opened up.
And this is always with the call-in shows.
Obviously, as you know, if you've filled out the form, there's nothing.
If somebody said, my call-in show is I want to discuss the technicalities of UPB, I'd be happy with that.
I'd be thrilled with that.
But, with almost no exceptions, I can say functionally all.
of talking to a philosopher is the personal life.
Thousands and thousands of call-and-show requests over 18, 19 years, and it's all about personal life.
That's unprecedented in the entire history of philosophy.
I mean you have shows where people talk about their personal lives, but it's usually from the perspective of a psychologist, not a philosopher.
And here, I don't know what happened.
It had something to do with an instinctual understanding of my skills, talents, abilities, and preferences that I didn't even know about.
Because I'm like, hey, let's talk philosophy!
And it was like, come the personal stories.
And the opening up of the lid of privacy.
And I kind of fell into that groove and I think did a pretty good job from early on.
And it was like, the audience knew me better than I knew myself.
Because I'm like, hey, abstractions are the way to go.
Let's talk philosophy.
I mean, none of my early articles were really about self-knowledge and history and childhood and all of that.
But there was some sort of collective Borg brain thing that happened where people were like, I'm going to talk to him about this.
And we started this just wild journey of converting abstractions to practical implementation that really has been going on and continues to go on and philosophy is the all discipline and life is an infinity of choices.
So I don't think we're going to run out of these issues anytime soon.
And that's fine with me.
I mean, I know that the Colin shows are very unique.
And, you know, I enjoy doing the politics and I thought it was very interesting and so on.
But when I sort of see these shows, some of them are on the left, most of them are on the right, where people are just talking about some, you know, a little bit of gender politics and some politics as a whole and, and all of that.
And it's like, yeah, I mean, that's interesting, but it just seems to me more of a distraction than anything else.
So yeah, I mean obviously I want to thank everyone who was involved in that and especially the early people who reached, you know, deep into their hearts with both hands and poured them out on the internet and summoned a particular precision and expertise in me that I would not have laid a lot of money was coiled like a snake waiting to strike in my heart.
So that I think is a really fascinating part of the show and something that the audience found in me before I did.
And so I really wanted to thank everyone.
But that was a wild conversation that started, you know, close to 20 years ago and continues to this day.
I'm just, uh, I just can't think of anyone else that I would be wanting to be, that I want to be talking to you other than you.
Right.
Like I don't want to talk to Jordan Peterson.
You know, that guy's, that guy's life is a disaster with those, uh, Was it barbiturates or whatever he was on?
I forgot.
But, um, you, you give clarity because I can, I can, I can see it in my daily life where I try to talk to people about things, just, just, just basic details of reality at work and people, Oh, you know, they get uncomfortable.
You've mentioned that before.
They get, they tense up.
There's a, there's a pause before the answer.
And I can just really see.
You answered my question that time about the Milgram experiments, where everyone is terrified.
They're terrified of what others think of them, what their family thinks of them, what their manager, their co-workers, whatever.
and you know, you kind of, how shall I say, I go into a higher orbit, maybe electron orbit or something, an atom,
and you know, the community of people in those groups just kind of keeps shrinking and shrinking.
So I think one of the last calls you and others had mentioned pruning, getting people out of your life who, you know, are not contributors to making your life better.
And that's something I've been doing over the last many years and My circle is very small now, but I do consider you to be in my circle, and it's just really an honor to be speaking with you.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
And as far as Dr. Peterson goes, I mean, obviously a very interesting fellow, a very highly, highly brilliant, brilliant, intelligent fellow and so on.
Not a philosopher, but a psychologist, which is a kind of different thing.
But, yeah, it was pretty wild.
It was pretty wild.
I mean, the story is that Jordan Peterson's daughter ended up... didn't she have a child with a Stalinist or something like that?
And that's some pretty wild stuff.
And yeah, he did get addicted, I think, to barbiturates.
And the idea that he didn't know they were addictive, I don't find particularly credible.
But a man, of course, is not defined by a mistake.
You know, was it a mistake to take this?
His wife, of course, was ill, and I understand that.
But I wouldn't want to define him as...
You know, foundationally flawed because of an addiction that he got into when he was doing some very high-flying and very stressful activities.
So I wouldn't write him off as far as all of that goes.
And I think I've gotten some very useful things out of him.
But, you know, the guy has worked with the UN and He doesn't really understand the nature of the state, which again, wouldn't be his job necessarily.
He's a psychologist, not a philosopher or, you know, a political theorist and so on.
But yeah, some useful and interesting stuff, but not the kind of principles that we need to really save things.
And, you know, he doesn't talk about some of the more controversial things that I've talked about, that he knows for sure are important and certainly part of his professional training and so on.
I don't know.
I mean, people's marriages are very tough to judge, so I wouldn't go very far down that road, but I have to tell you that if I wanted to decorate half of My wife and I's house with a bunch of totalitarian images from Stalinist Russia.
I think she'd say, I know exactly what she would say.
Well, that's more of a cry for help than anything else.
And I think that's pretty rough.
I think that's pretty rough.
Yeah, I mean, I try to take the good out of what I can get from people, and certainly nobody has to be perfect, and Lord knows I'm not perfect, but it does seem that there are some limitations that would have me go a certain distance, but not others, with people like that, if it makes any sense.
So, yeah, I mean, Jordan Peterson does know all about the IQ issues and so on, and he's just said he's not really going to talk about it, which is fine, but then, you know, don't talk about topics while obscuring topics, right?
If I decide not to talk about something, I don't talk about it, as opposed to talking about it without talking about it, which seems You know, because he's very much about honesty and so on.
So, yeah, I think there are obviously some limitations.
Well, of course, I have great admiration for his wit and his debating skills and his mind is ferociously fast.
But, yeah, he seems like a not particularly happy fellow.
You know, maybe with the great intellect comes the great burdens, but I don't think I'm burdened with too small an intellect and I think it is quite important to find ways to be happy in life.
So, I think there are some limitations there for sure.
And that's true with, I mean, a lot of public figures.
You find some good stuff and you find the good that you can and you discard some of the stuff with some skepticism.
So yeah, I'm immensely proud at the way in which this community has gone from theory to practice, right?
So, if you look at something like Plato's descriptions of how Socrates was talking, Socrates comes across a fellow who's leading a prosecution against his own father for the death of a servant.
And this turns into an abstract debate about justice and doesn't really return much to the practical questions of how to live.
And these extreme cases, and I understand, like, extreme cases test the rule.
I know in law, right, edge cases make for bad law.
And very few of us are going to try to decide, we're going to have to try to decide whether we turn our father in for causing someone's death, right?
That's a very, very minor, very minor number of people, very small number of people.
And so he's like, wow, you've really got to understand justice if you're prosecuting your own father!
And then it just goes from the abstract conceptions of justice, and it very much is an edge case.
And, of course, the philosophers who've avoided childhood, which is something I've been talking about from the very... I think my second or third show was about childhood.
Maybe that's why people were talking about it with the call-ins and so on.
But philosophers who've avoided childhood are almost universally covering up for and siding with abusers.
And that is to their everlasting shame.
And I'm sure that there have been philosophers in the past who Maybe talked a little bit more about childhood, or maybe talked more directly about childhood, but it seems they've just been scrubbed and erased from history.
In a sense, as has been attempted with me, sort of scrubbed and erased from the world as a whole.
And so it could be that there are philosophers who've done, or tried to do what I've done, but we don't hear about them and they won't get taught in So, to me, the study of philosophy is a way of taking the smart universal thinkers who are interested in morality and giving them an off-ramp to actually change society called academia.
And I think it's really a shameful business as a whole.
Because we really, really need those interested in morality and universality and who are good reasoners and debaters to be engaged within society at the most foundational moral level.
And so, I think it's the philosophy to academia, utility to the people, to parasitical irrelevance, that's the whole purpose of, it seems to me, modern education these days in the realm of ethics, is to continually lure people away with the breadcrumbs of dollars and fame and Lack of consequences to lead people away from actually change.
Oh, are you someone who could actually change the world for the better?
No, no, no, don't, don't, don't do that.
That's scary and dangerous.
But here we've got this lovely job for you.
I remember Dr. Walter Block writing about, writing in ecstasies about this some years ago.
Oh, you've only got to work maybe 10 hours a week, maybe 15 hours a week.
We'll pay you 200 grand and You get a nice little office and you get sabbaticals.
How does four months off in the summer sound?
Prestige and all of this.
Lord knows I've met enough academics in my life to realize.
There's a movie called Shadowlands.
One professor, played by Anthony Hopkins, talks to another professor and says, doesn't this all just feel completely pointless and useless?
The other professor looks kind of guilty and shameful and is like, yes, of course, of course.
And that is the whole thing.
And so for me, being able to stay with the value and utility of philosophy, to smart, wise, curious and concerned people like yourself, has been the greatest gift.
And it is a great honor.
And you know, it's a unique and unprecedented view into the depths of human nature, right?
I mean, these call-in shows, I don't mean to pressure anyone, but they'll be studied for hundreds of years, maybe thousands of years, in terms of this is a principled examination of a highly chaotic but principled place called the unconscious, called history, called memory, called the collision between society and virtue, honesty and the censorship required to move through society.
It's an absolutely fascinating view that does not exist in any other place or shape or genre or milieu.
It's absolutely unprecedented.
We have thousands of call-in shows that show the collision between the uncertainty of principles and the chaotic principles of the unconscious.
The yearning for truth and its collision with social prejudices.
I mean it's just absolutely Wild!
And this is an absolute treasure trove for all of humanity, going forward for all time.
And, you know, Freud wrote in quite a bit of detail about his patients.
He was a doctor, of course, and a cocaine dealer, and cocaine pusher.
And, of course, this is not therapy, and I'm certainly no psychologist, But it is a pretty unique look at how philosophy can dive deep into the psyche and pull the chaos apart to find all of the beautiful principles attacked and suppressed by society as a whole.
It's just an amazing, amazing thing.
So I do thank everyone for allowing this to exist and to be available to the world forever.
I take it enormously, enormously seriously.
All right, so I'm happy to hear more.
If anybody else has any other questions, comments, or if you want to continue, I'm certainly happy to listen.
Maybe I'll give somebody else a chance for a moment.
If not, I'll ask something else.
I'm sorry to ask such a silly question, but is there a preferable subject matters?
Thank you very much.
I'm sorry?
I'm joining a little late.
What are the preferable subject matters you're covering here?
Whatever you like.
It's your call.
Oh man.
Oh, sorry, I forgot to turn off the camera.
Oh, sorry. I.
I thought you had a subject matter.
I might, I might.
I'm racking my mind because I have so many things that cross it over like every day.
And now that I'm on the spot, like I have a great opportunity to try to figure out, um, Okay, you know what?
I had a discussion recently on epistemology and free will, and I'm a little stumped on what would you say it means to know something?
Maybe I should elaborate.
I come from the objectivist camp when it comes to epistemology, but somebody said that we're contextualists.
Um, rather than fact of, and I thought that was really interesting and it caused a serious dilemma for me.
Um, I was basically told that, or basically, um, the objectivists would hold that if we say we know something is true, but we find out later that it was false.
We have to hold that we knew it was, we did have knowledge of both truth and falsehood falsehood in both instances when we were originally wrong.
And when we learned that we were correct.
But I disagree with that, and I don't like that idea, because if you say you knew that was true in the first place, and it obviously came out to be false, then you have a contradiction.
You didn't actually know it.
I guess the objective is to bite the bullet and say they did know it.
I don't know if that's very clear, but I guess what I'm expressing is I have a dilemma with that, and to my understanding, that is not factive, is what I was told.
Have you heard that term in reference?
What does, what does factive mean?
That's a word I'm not particularly familiar with.
It was new to me too.
Essentially, um, in this, in a factive epistemology, it would be that like, we do act like we do have certainty of the truth and that like, your, your clear knowledge claim is dependent on the fact that actually maps onto reality.
So like to give an example, you know, We would probably say, yeah, I actually do know that there's no teapot orbiting Mars, right?
Because, well, I have no evidence to suggest such a thing.
But in the scenario where... No, but you couldn't say that.
Sorry, but you couldn't say you have certain knowledge that there's no teapot orbiting Mars.
Okay.
Because it's something that could exist.
It's potentially true.
And if something is potentially true, you can't discount it unless you've scoured, right?
Like if you had some amazing scouring X-ray robot that could circle all of Mars and make sure that there was no teapot, then you could say that.
But you and I can't say there's no teapot circling Mars.
What would you...?
We can say there's no square circle circling Mars, for sure.
Because that's contradictory.
But a teapot is not a self-contradictory entity.
And could there be a teapot circling Mars?
Yes.
Would I bet a lot of money that there is?
I would not, right?
But, you know, there could be.
I mean, it could be some space alien that would have a cup holder that got jettisoned in some long-ago flight.
I mean, who knows, right?
Whatever could be the case.
But it is not Impossible, and therefore it is possible.
That's almost tautological, right?
Like, it's not impossible, and therefore it's possible, and therefore we can't say it's impossible.
So, I totally get that.
Would you define, like, knowledge differently than the objectivists do?
Well, it's been a while since I've read an introduction to objectivist epistemology.
But knowledge is a tricky word, right?
Because if I have knowledge of a dream that I had last night, I can't prove it, right?
But that doesn't invalidate my knowledge, right?
So if I dreamed about a teacup orbiting Mars last night, I can't prove that, but that doesn't invalidate my knowledge, if that makes sense.
Like you could go to a therapist if you wanted, you could make up a dream every day, if the therapist is really keen on analyzing your dreams, and the therapist would have to trust you, right?
And if you were to say to the therapist, did your client have that dream last night, about the polar bear, and the therapist would check his notes, right, and would say, oh, yeah, yeah, we discussed my patient's dream about the polar bear, right?
And then you would say, well, what's the proof you have that your patient did in fact dream about a polar bear?
And say, well, it's right here in my notes.
It's like, yes, but that's what the patient told you, but you don't have proof that that's what the patient actually dreamt about.
So you wouldn't know for sure, you just have to trust You'd have to trust the honesty of the patient and you'd also have to trust the incentives, that it would be rather a huge waste of time and money to go to a therapist and talk about dreams you never had, because that would be like... I mean, I guess you could get a hypochondriac who would go to a doctor and complain about aches and pains that didn't really exist, but to make up dreams to a therapist would be a huge waste of time.
So we'd have to say that the probability that the patient is lying about the dream would be pretty low, but we wouldn't So that would not be impossible.
It certainly is possible to dream about a polar bear, and we certainly would say that incentives would cause the patient to tell the truth or the client to tell the truth about the dream about the polar bear, but we wouldn't have certain knowledge.
We would have to act on that as true beyond a reasonable doubt.
I mean, so true beyond a reasonable doubt.
So if I were to say, you know, if somebody was a therapist and it was in the notes that the patient had a dream about, reported having a dream about a polar bear and you spent lots of time talking about it and it turns out that, you know, it had It had real relevance to his life, he'd just seen a polar bear, and you know, his mother, his grandmother had big white snowy hair, like whatever, like they all sort of fit together, then that would be proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Would it be absolutely certain knowledge?
No.
It would not be absolutely certain knowledge, but it would be proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and we would need to anticipate that, right?
In the same way, is it possible that someone you hate recognized you in a restaurant, told the chef, and the chef
put some poison in your food.
Yeah, I mean, it's possible. It's possible. You can't say 100% it's impossible.
But we go to restaurants and we eat the food, right? So there's probability knowledge,
which we operate on all the time, right?
I mean, we don't know for certain we're going to get a job, but we still apply for the job.
We don't know for certain if the girl we're going to ask out is going to go out with us, but we ask her out anyway.
So it's sort of probabilistic knowledge, sort of weighing the odds.
And we're very well designed for that, right?
Animals are very well designed to weigh the odds, right?
So lions creep close enough to the zebras that they can take the zebras down.
But they're never certain that they will.
Zebras can run, they could take a hoof to the face, so animals are very good at figuring out probabilities, and so are we.
And so I would not bet a single thin dime on there being a teacup orbiting Mars.
And you could, of course, argue that there's no way That a teacup could be orbiting Mars.
Because, again, not again, but for the first time, it depends on your definition of a teacup.
If there's something that looks like a teacup, but is actually a toilet.
Space aliens happen to have toilets that look like teacups, right?
Is it a teacup or a toilet?
You know, you've probably seen, there's this meme about some ancient, two ancient men talking about some incomprehensible dice mechanism or whatever, and it's like, this is a great game!
We should write it down!
And they'll be like, no!
They'll, you know, if they find this in 5,000 years, they'll totally be able to figure out what it is, and then archaeologists saying, like, we have no idea what they're doing, right?
So, is it a teacup or a toilet?
Well, for the alien it would be a toilet, but maybe it looks like a teacup to us.
So, then if you say, well the teacup is designed for the purposes of drinking tea, and therefore it has to be earthbound, because tea is on earth.
If it's some other alien plant that they brew, it's not tea, because it's an alien plant, which would have a different categorization, and so on.
So, you could say that A teacup.
Like, no human spaceship has ever gone past Mars with a teacup, because the only things that have gone past Mars have been probes, which have no people on them, and therefore there are no teacups.
And even if there was a teacup on it, it wouldn't have been jettisoned, because there's no avenue by which a teacup, even if it was stored in the probe, would get out of the... So then you'd say, okay, there's no teacup.
around Mars.
There may be something that looks like a teacup, there may be something that is even used as a cup to brew some alien plant to drink, but that's not a teacup because tea is an Earth thing, right?
So then we would say, if that's our definition, yeah, there's no... I would be very comfortable saying there is no teacup orbiting Mars, because teacup is a human invention and there's no human invention that has been put around Mars.
Now you could say, ah yes, but, you know, a hundred thousand years ago there was a civilization that has been lost to all of us, that had advanced technology and so on.
Yeah, but there's no evidence that there was such an advanced civilization and there certainly would be evidence if you think about our civilization.
A hundred thousand years from now there'd be tons of evidence that we were here and what we did and so on.
So, yeah, so knowledge, yeah, certainly knowledge is when The concepts in your mind accord with the facts of reality.
And some of those facts of reality are directly observable, right?
Is there a planetoid orbiting The Earth called the Moon.
Yes, we see it every night.
And is it orbiting?
Yes, because the math checks out and, you know, we go around the Sun, the Sun goes around the galaxy and so on, right?
So, yes, we can directly observe that.
Is my knowledge that my patient dreamed of a polar bear, if I'm a therapist, right?
Well, no, because I can't prove that.
I do have notes where my patient said he dreamt of a polar bear.
So my knowledge is not that my patient dreamt of a polar bear.
We just use that as a shorthand.
My knowledge is that my patient told me he dreamed of a polar bear and we got amazing insights and it really helped him and moved his life forward and he ended up asking out the girl he thought might have a chilly heart because he understood the nature of the polar bear and his dream.
All this sort of number of things, right?
So we use our shorthand for things all the time.
And, you know, do I know for a simple fact that you are not a very cunning AI?
Well, it seems unlikely, because we're actually having a conversation that would be beyond the realm of an AI to handle.
May I interject or ask some questions?
Yeah, go for it.
So, I like using the definition of knowledge that you just proposed, and, does that sound coming from you?
Yeah, somebody's got, if you're not, if you're like running water and stuff, can't you just do me a solid and be basically polite and just mute?
Alright, sorry, go ahead.
I'm sorry, can you hear me?
My apologies, I got a phone call, let me tune those things out, or make them not come in.
Alright, so... Sorry, James, can you, sorry James, is there any way you can find out who's got the squeaking and taps and that kind of crap?
I like the definition of knowledge you gave, that the concepts in our mind accord with reality.
I believe that is what the person I was talking to described as factive.
Whereas, I guess, in objectivist epistemology... Okay, but sorry, why do we need...
You know, there's that old Emerson quote, beware of any enterprise that requires the purchase of new clothes.
Well, also beware of any argument that requires the invention of new words.
Yeah.
So why do we need factive?
It seems like a specialized term when we already have knowledge.
Accurate facts are true.
Because in this context he was I don't know.
Maybe I won't defend that point in particular.
Objectivist epistemology, which, like I said, they have the dilemma, I view it as a dilemma,
that they have to bite the bullet.
Sorry, no, no, no, no, sorry, sorry to be annoying.
But if you're opposing an argument, I still don't see why you need to invent a new word.
I don't know, maybe I won't defend that point in particular, I don't know.
No, I just, if the word just means knowledge, I don't know why you need the word.
I'm not accusing you of this, I know you didn't invent the word, but it seems kind of pretentious.
Yeah, I mean... To invent a new word when you're opposing an argument.
If the argument is false, then just oppose the argument.
I suppose it would be because there are different beliefs about epistemology, right?
And they're just contending... Maybe there's an argument for classifying them with a particular word?
Like, he said that... No, that's not answering the objection, though.
The objection is, why do you need a new word?
And if you don't know, that's fine, right?
If you don't know why we need a new word, maybe there's some... It just seems odd that you would need to learn a new word in order to make an argument.
And my spider sense doth tingle about that.
Like, that just seems like kinda...
That's kind of cheaty.
Perhaps.
You know, if I want to talk about morals and I invent the word ethicish, I don't think I'm clarifying too much.
So maybe we can just cast that word aside and use whatever synonym it is.
Yeah, yeah, that's fine.
So, in objectivist epistemology, they would say that possible means you have evidence for that particular thing.
And these people I was talking with said that they make a distinction between physically possible, logically possible, and I think they even had other ones too.
And maybe that would get your spidey senses tingling too.
But I mean, first off, I should ask, have you heard people make these distinctions?
They say, well, I mean, it's physically possible that the T-Bot's orbiting Mars, therefore it might be the case.
Or I even had someone say something really insane to me.
They said that it's...
Not physically possible for a ball to be blue all over while also not being blue all over, but that is logically possible.
And that, I just, I don't even, I can't even comprehend why they were doing this.
I guess they were arguing against... Sorry, do they mean, so, well, hang on, but not blue could include shiny, oily, like, do they mean not in the category, or is it possible for a ball to be both Blue and red, without the cheat called purple, right?
Is it possible for a ball to be blue and red at the same time?
Well, that would be a contradiction.
That would be to say that the same object has two completely different wavelengths, and that would not be the case.
Yeah, so I agree.
So their view is that this is not physically possible, but that somehow it's logically possible.
And they were trying to contend against classical laws of logic.
They were using, I forget the term, you're probably familiar with it, but they essentially believe in true contradictions, which was a very weird thing to grasp.
Yeah, no, I've heard of this, sorry, I mean, I know that this is a prejudicial term, but I've heard of this kind of nonsense.
It is nonsense, yeah.
I've disproven logic, I've, you know, it's like, no, you can't disprove logic, because you'd have to use logic to disprove logic.
And logic doesn't break down like physics into quantum physics where there's all this weird shit going on.
Like, logic is logic.
And so the idea that you can break it into subatomic particles where things contradict each other in the way that, you know, matter seems to freak out down at the quantum level, that's not logic.
Logic are principles, then it's not matter.
And even if we accept the quantum physics argument that matter behaves in freaky ways down at the very bottom of its essence, it doesn't do so at any level that approaches sense perception, which is what we build logic from.
We build logic from sense perception.
And so, yeah, the idea that you can have both three and four coconuts at the same time That a pile of coconuts can be both three coconuts and four coconuts, maximum, at the same time.
Or that coconuts can be both plus three and minus three, and they can be fruits and vegetables and mammals and clouds at the same time.
I mean, this is madness!
I would say you might love it, but I think you'd absolutely hate it.
But it's funny.
I asked them for a demonstration of a true contradiction.
I've had a few conversations with these guys.
They always surprise me.
What can I ask?
quote-unquote true contradiction, they said this sentence is false.
That's not it.
What does that mean? They said that the sentence is false.
That it's also true.
Sorry, bro.
I mean, you're trying to, sorry, you're trying to have a discussion with me.
Are you on a speakerphone wandering around somewhere?
I'm trying to, like, you keep coming and going audio-wise.
We're trying to have an important discussion here.
I'm not sure what your mic situation is.
Can you hear me well right now?
I'm not sure why that's happening.
I'm using AirPods.
Maybe I should switch to speaker?
No, that's fine.
Maybe it's just bad, bad signal.
Sorry, I just thought maybe you were wandering around yelling at a speakerphone or something.
I did step outside, but I'll step inside so as to not wind.
Maybe that's possibly mudding it up.
My apologies.
Yeah, I'm just, I'm hanging on your every word.
Okay, okay, okay.
I'm stepping inside.
I'll reiterate what I said shortly, or briefly.
No, I think I understood.
So the statement is, this sentence is false?
Yeah, yes.
But that's not a logical thought.
I mean, it doesn't really... That's not an argument.
I hardly understand what the point is being made there.
I asked, what would make it so that the sentence is false?
Well, the sentence needs to have a subject.
A sentence itself cannot be true or false.
I said the same thing, yeah.
You can't evaluate... Yeah, you can't evaluate... It's like saying, is this person guilty?
It's like, of what?
According to what standard?
What kind of guilt are you talking about?
Criminal, civil, moral, conscience, right?
Like, you can't evaluate a statement with such little information.
So if somebody says, this sentence is false, Well, falsehood does not refer to a sentence.
Falsehood refers to an assertion of truth that can be proven.
And this sentence is false, is not the proposition of a truth statement that can be evaluated.
So it is a meaningless sentence.
Yes.
I heard Harry Vinswinger basically come to the same conclusion that, like, the fact that it's self-referential Doesn't denote anything.
There's no truth or falseness to it.
He said it's equivalent to just making sounds with your mouth.
Yeah, so for something to be true, it has to reference something other than itself.
And the sentence doesn't reference anything other than itself.
And so, how can we evaluate whether something is true or false when it makes no true or false claim that is outside its own syntax?
Now, if you say, it is true that the world is banana-shaped, okay, well now we can evaluate that because you're making a truth statement that is verifiable independent of the syntax of the sentence.
But this sentence is false, a sentence cannot be true or false.
I agree.
It's like saying this leaf is guilty.
It's like a nonsense sentence.
A sentence itself cannot be true or false, qua it being a sentence.
It can be true or false when it makes a claim about a verifiable external truth or falsehood, right?
So if you say, if you pointed a tree and say this is a tree, well, Now you can evaluate it because the sentence is pointing at something that is not just the sentence.
But if you say this sentence is false, you are not making a true or a false claim.
You are simply making a self-referential statement that is missing the criteria or standard by which you would even be able to evaluate whether something is true or false, which is reference to something outside itself that can be independently verified.
Either through reason or evidence or both.
So yeah, it is a meaningless statement.
And it's just one of these, it's one of these sort of tragic, sophist tricks to make people think, ooh, ooh, okay, I guess there is no such thing as reason, right?
It's just really, it's kind of demonic.
Sure, yeah, absolutely.
You know, if you're smart enough to come up with that kind of trap.
Then you should be using your powers for good.
Not you, of course.
I know it's not your trap.
But yeah, you should be using your powers to educate rather than... Yeah, I agree.
I mean, I ask, like, how does this apply to the real world?
Because I guess this is the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, that, like, you can have statements that are not connected to reality.
And I'm not super, like, under... I don't know the, like, the fine details about the analytic-synthetic dichotomy.
But to my understanding, this is what they were doing.
Okay, well, let me give you another statement, right?
Klingons are prone to heart disease.
Yeah, that would be nothing, because there's no such thing as a Klingon.
Right, so there's no external test for a self-referential statement.
Yes.
Orcs in Dungeons & Dragons, now you could say, now if you say orcs have an armor class of 12, well orcs don't exist in armor class as a made up concept, so now, so that's one thing.
If you were to say though in Dungeons & Dragons orcs have an armor class of 12, okay well you can go and look it up and find out whether that's true or not.
So if you're trying to reference orcs as real, your statement is meaningless.
But if you're trying to reference orcs as a fictional entity in Dungeons & Dragons that have particular statistics, then sure!
Then you can look that up, and you can verify that.
Yes.
I don't want to take up the floor too much in case anybody's interested, but... No, no, no!
Go!
Are you kidding me?
I love epistemology!
Awesome!
Yeah, this is a thrill.
Okay.
So, the knowledge thing.
As I said before, the objectivists have to bite the bullet that they knew For certain, this X was true, because there was no evidence to the contrary, essentially.
But if they find out that they were wrong, well then they now know that that wasn't the case.
But they would have to say that they knew it beforehand, and knew it afterwards.
Again, that's a contradiction, and I don't know how that could be good.
Sorry to interrupt.
So, I know what the objectivists are fighting tooth and nail for here, and I sort of respect the goal, but I don't respect the solution.
So, okay.
So, the way that it works is something like this.
Well, you know, scientists once were convinced that the world was flat, and it turned out they were wrong.
Scientists were once convinced that there was such a thing as ether, and it turns out they were wrong.
Scientists once believed the world was 6,000 years old, and it turns out... Scientists once believed the Earth was a... Right?
And this is memorably put forward, believe it or not, in a sitcom called Friends, where Ross is a paleontologist, And his friend Phoebe is like a kind of hippy-dippy masseuse.
Flaky is a crumbling pie.
And... Phoebe says... You know what?
I'm just wondering if I can play this.
Maybe it's better for me to play it.
I think I can find this and play it.
Give me just a moment, because it really is quite fascinating.
While you do that, my friend who was in the call with me, he was another objectivist, knows a bit more about epistemology, actually quite a bit more than me.
He basically said that if we let go of this standard, we have to default to basically Cartesian down.
And I think that's what you're saying, right?
All right.
Hang on, hang on.
Here we go.
I think we're there.
Okay Phoebe, this is it.
In this briefcase, I carry actual scientific facts.
A briefcase of facts, if you will.
Some of these fossils are over 200 million years old.
Okay, look, before I even start, I'm not denying evolution, okay?
I'm just saying that it's one of the possibilities.
It's the only possibility, Phoebe.
Okay.
Ross, could you just- Okay, can you guys hear that alright?
Okay, so yeah, Ross is saying, because he's a biologist, paleontologist, or whatever the heck he is, so he's very pro-science and very pro-evolution, right?
And Phoebe's saying, no, I don't buy it, right?
And he's like, it's not for you to buy!
So hang on, I'll play a bit more.
Okay.
Now, wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the Earth was flat?
And up until, like, what, 50 years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open and this, like, whole mess of crap came out.
Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?
There might be a teeny tiny possibility.
Can't believe you cave.
Right, so this is funny, right?
Because then she's like, I can't believe you caved.
Hang on.
You just abandoned your whole belief system.
I mean, before I didn't agree with you, but at least I respected you.
Tell me, how are you going to go into work tomorrow?
How are you going to face the other science guys?
How are you going to face yourself?
So he basically just gets up and folds away, right?
So you all heard that, right?
Now that was a great moment in a, you know, semi-entertaining sitcom.
It was a great moment.
And so what the objectivists are trying to do is to overcome Cartesian doubt.
And Cartesian doubt is, hey man, you could be wrong about everything.
You might be a brain in a tank.
It could be a matrix.
Like, you can't be right about anything.
And from that, you can make anyone doubt anything.
And yet, to doubt everything is to be insane.
So this is a brain worm, this is a mind infection designed to cripple you with anxiety and doubt.
Right?
So she's saying, oh hey man, scientists have been wrong in the past.
So you could be wrong now.
People have been wrong in the past who were absolutely certain.
Now the fact that you're absolutely certain, when other people who were also absolutely certain turned out to be completely wrong, how can it be that you can be so certain when everybody who's been certain in the past has also often been proven to be wrong?
Now, that is an absolute attack upon your brain, on your sanity, on your mental health.
It is an absolute assault that leverages our capacity for truth and uses it against us to drive us mad.
I'm not kidding about any of this stuff.
It is absolutely toxic.
And of course the fact is it comes from a woman towards a male.
It's also not So, no, I mean, this is so... If you're weak, if you're weak, all you can do is inflict doubt.
Right?
That's all.
Like, if the cavalry is coming and doing all of these things and, you know, you've got this, like, really violent indigenous population in, say, South America, right?
The cavalry or the conquistadors and so on are coming.
Like, you can't fight them!
You're weak!
But what you can do is you can instill doubt.
Those who are physically weak fight the strong with the infraction of doubt.
If that makes sense.
Now this is not an argument.
This is simply an identification of the power mechanics at play.
So we'll get to the argument.
But that's what happens, and the West is being brought down by the poison of doubt, by post-modernism, relativism, subjectivism, and so on, right?
The people who were conquered by the West couldn't fight back, and therefore, they have to infect with doubt.
And that's really what the government school system is for now, is to inflict doubt.
Oh, are you proud of your culture?
Well, slavery!
And imperialism!
We're going to portray the natives as noble, kind, and wonderful, and you all just infected them with syphilis because you're animals!
So, it's just doubt.
And so, if you say, I'm certain, and this is what Ross is going to do, he's going to Say to Phoebe, here's the evolutionary markers, here's the facts, here's the arguments, and so on, right?
Now, she doesn't want to get to the facts, because she's female, and of course I'm not characterizing all women like this, but it tends to be an argument from physically weaker people who can't impose their will, and therefore have to crack other people's will with caustic doubt, with toxic doubt, right?
So, Ross comes in and he's gone, here's all the evidence.
Here are all the facts, right?
And she doesn't want to look at the facts.
What she does is she launches an emotional attack.
Right?
She says, are you so unbelievably arrogant?
Well, I don't want to be arrogant!
Right?
Are you so unbelievably arrogant that you're so certain that you're right?
that you're gonna say a hundred percent when scientists have been wrong in the past.
So she has an emotional attack and avoids reviewing the facts because she's flaky and she's weak-minded.
And so she launches an attack on certainty based upon emotions that anybody who's certain is arrogant and mean and bad.
Now, that is a fascinating attack.
And so, what do the objectivists do?
Well, the objectivists say something like, how do I respond to the argument that people have been certain in the past, I'm certain now, people who've been certain in the past have turned out to be wrong, and therefore, my certainty could also turn out to be wrong.
Well, they say, well, even if I turn out to be wrong, I'm still absolutely certain.
And now, that is not That is not valid.
Agreed.
Right?
That is not a valid argument.
Because you never want to give the premise away.
Right?
You never want to give the premise away to the other person.
So the premise is, scientists have been wrong.
Because they've been absolutely certain And wrong.
It's like, well, the degree to which they're absolutely certain is the degree to which they're not scientists.
Right?
So scientists would say... Well, of course, the flat Earth has been disproven since ancient times, right?
Since the Egyptians put the two different sticks in the ground and were actually able to measure the circumference of the world based upon the different shadows in different places of the sticks on the curvature of the Earth.
So that's been, you know...
And then her second example is, and you know, didn't you, weren't scientists absolutely certain that the smallest aspect of matter was the atom until you opened it up and all its other goop, she says, kept spilling out?
And I would argue, or answer, no.
A scientist who says, I'm absolutely certain that the atom is the smallest Chunk of matter is false, because he doesn't know that.
So, certainty in the absence of evidence is, in fact, arrogance.
A certainty in the absence of evidence is, in fact, arrogance.
And so, a scientist who says, well, I'm absolutely certain the smallest chunk of matter is an atom, is a bad scientist, because he's making claims about The almost infinite regression of smaller bits within matter saying that he knows that this is the end point when he doesn't.
So yes, people should not say things are absolutely true without evidence and a scientist should know that most of all.
Now what he can say is the atom, like prior to the quarks and quantum physics and so on, he can say the atom is the smallest piece of matter we found.
It's the smallest piece of matter we know of.
Okay, well that's a true statement.
But if you say there's nothing smaller, you can't prove that.
You don't know that, you don't have the instrumentation, and of course science still doesn't have its physics, still doesn't have its unified field theory that ties together gravitation and radiation and weak and strong atomic forces and gravity.
It doesn't have that, right?
So there's a lot still to learn in the realm of physics.
May I throw in an example?
Yeah, go ahead.
scientists or anybody to say, well, we know for certain that matter cannot be created
or destroyed.
Ah, that's an interesting question.
I think it is fair to say that matter cannot be created or destroyed, only converted back
and forth to energy.
You can say that because if matter were destroyed, the material would have to go somewhere, right?
Right?
So, you know, everybody knows, you blow up a ship, you just get lots of little bits of ship, right?
The ship is still there, it's just disassembled, right?
Like you drop the Lego, you still have all the Lego pieces, they're just no longer assembled, So, for matter to be destroyed would mean that it left this material plane, so to speak, in which case it would be, well, where did it go?
Sorry, go ahead.
The standard could be that it just no longer exists.
Well then the question is, where did it go?
Um, if I was trying to take like the position that like of uncertainty here,
I'd say something like, oh, it just ceased to exist.
It doesn't go anywhere because it can't if it doesn't exist.
Now, this is crazy.
Well, no, but it has to go somewhere.
No, no, something has to go somewhere.
Something can't just cease to exist.
And there's no evidence in any science or theory or practical evidence, there's no evidence that something just ceases to exist.
Now, maybe you could say it goes to another dimension, right?
It winks out of our dimension and rematerializes in some other dimension, but that would be the equivalent of saying it ceases to exist because there'd be no evidence for it in another dimension.
So saying it winks into another dimension is saying that it still exists just somewhere else.
So, the question would be, how could something that exists simply cease to exist?
Where would it go?
Like, where would the atoms go?
Where would the quarks go?
Where would the electrons go?
Where would it go?
It's there, so where would it go?
How could it just cease to exist?
So, all theory, all practice, and just basic common sense tells us that this is not the case.
It has to be somewhere.
I agree.
Because that is to say that that which is, can cease to be is, in what method?
Right?
Without, like, just simply winking out of existence?
On what standard?
Yeah, I can't even, like, pretend to take that argument very far, actually.
Well, and as somebody points out, even if you annihilate matter with antimatter, you get radiation as a product.
Sure.
I mean, so then it's converted into energy, right?
Anti-matter.
So, if somebody were to say, can you be absolutely certain that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, but simply converted from matter to energy and back again, I would say, I am certain of that, for both practical and theoretical reasons.
Now, if someone were to say, ah yes, but...
Scientists have been certain about things in the past.
My argument would be, to the degree to which they are scientists, all claims of certainty about things which prove to be false are invalid claims.
So if some guy calling himself a scientist a couple of thousand years ago says, the earth is flat and I know for certain, and I'm 100% certain, then he's not a scientist.
If somebody said the atom is beyond any shadow of a doubt the very smallest component of matter that could possibly exist, then he would not be a scientist.
He would be acting as a mystic.
He would be acting as somebody who's superstitious, who is taking something on faith.
I don't even know that the quarks or whatever bits are going on beneath the atom, I don't even know that they're the smallest.
I don't know, right?
I mean, and any scientist who says he knows for sure, I think is not following science.
What if, like, um, and again, at any point in time, is that somebody else wants to talk or you want to take other questions?
No, no, no, do this, it's good stuff.
I'm just trying to think of these, like, absurd scenarios, like, what if, uh, someone was to pause it to you, they said, uh, you've seen, like, uh, the Men in Black movies, right?
Do you remember?
I think it's like the end of the second one where like they close a locker or something like that and it's just like all these universes one being bigger than the other and then so on.
I don't know if I'm drawing the scenario right.
What if somebody posited to you that like Earth or our entire universe is just like a speck of dust and on top of that there's another speck of dust and it's another set of universes and then so on.
Yeah, like Spider-Man across the multiverse, right?
Yeah, I get that.
No, and every stoner I've ever talked to has had the thought at one time or another, it's like, hey man, you ever notice that the atom kind of looks like the solar system?
Like, what if we're just an atom in someone's couch, man?
You know, it's like, you know, everybody's kind of had that thought.
And, of course, the argument against that Would be that atoms are not infinitely regressive.
In other words, atoms are not made up of atoms.
Like, that would be a contradiction in terms.
I would agree.
Like, a house is made up of bricks, but a house can't be made up of a house, because the house is the house.
I'm, you know, I'm made up of cells.
I am not made up of myself, because that's tautology.
That's saying I am I am, rather than I am made of.
A sentence is made up of phonemes and words and morphemes and so on, but a sentence is not made up of a sentence.
That's tautology.
So atoms cannot be made up of atoms.
Because atoms are a category of existence to do with scale, and atoms cannot be made up with atoms, and therefore we cannot be an atom in a couch somewhere, because atoms can't be made up of atoms.
Yeah, let's say I formulate it in a way that didn't require an infinite regression.
Maybe I just said, it is a finite universe, but we just happen to be an atom in a couch.
It is a finite universe, but we just had... Well, then the language would be incorrect.
Since atoms...
We cannot make up atoms, we cannot be an atom and a couch, because that is to say that, you know, obviously the solar system is untold hundreds of trillions of zillions of whatever of atoms, and therefore you would be saying that the atom and the couch is made up of untold trillions of atoms, which would be a contradiction in terms, because then you couldn't refer to them as atoms, right?
Like, I can't say, each brick is a house, and you put enough of them together, you get a house.
Like, each brick is a component of a house, and you get enough bricks together, you get a house.
But the brick is not a house, right?
Because then you're saying that the house is made up of tens of thousands of houses.
Well, then you've got a category error, right?
If I switch the terminology, would that make it any better?
What if I just said, what we experience is...
I don't know, insert word, X, right, instead of calling it an atom.
We're just this tiny piece of existence on some couch.
I don't know how else I could possibly formulate that.
Well, no, so then, I mean, that's fine, people can say whatever they want, and then I would say that the statement needs to be provable or falsifiable in order to be evaluated.
So how would we know that we are Adams in a couch?
And if the person has no standard by which the proposition can be proven or disproven, then it is bullshit stoner speak.
So, what do you take the conversation when they say, well, of course I can't prove it, but I mean, it's possible, right?
This is where we have to draw this fine line.
Well, no, no.
Possible implies proof.
I agree.
If something can never be proven, it is not in the realm of true or false.
It is just dead-eyed stonerspeak.
It cannot be evaluated as to truth or falsehood.
So, it's sort of like, is it possible that the last dream that Augustus Caesar had before he was murdered was of a seahorse?
Right.
Well, I suppose it's possible.
Can it ever be proven?
No.
It can never be proven.
So, it is not something that a sane person spends time evaluating.
You see, a sane person would not spend time thinking about that which could never be proven in the realm of truth.
Now, if you were to write a story about Caesar and it was really important, they had a dream about a seahorse, you could make it up or whatever, but if somebody said, man, I'm really obsessed about the idea of did Caesar dream of a seahorse before he was murdered, you'd say, you know, there's lots of important things to talk about and think about in the world.
This is not one of them, right?
So, to reference the teapot again, around Mars, when you say the word possible, I don't know if you recall, I mentioned earlier that these people I was mentioning to you, they Use the word possible in different fashions.
In objectivist epistemology, I think I already said this, I don't remember, but possible means that there is evidence to suggest that this may be the case.
When you say the word possible, do you have the same understanding or a different one?
Well, I did kind of modify the argument as I sort of thought about it more.
So the first is, is it a contradiction in terms for there to be a teapot orbiting Mars?
No, it's not a contradiction in terms, right?
Is it a contradiction in terms for a human being to be living comfortably unaided?
Orbiting Mars.
That is a contradiction, right?
Because there's no air and there's no air pressure and, right, your lungs would explode and like you die, you know, in 10 seconds, right?
Or less.
Does that make sense?
So that's a contradiction in terms.
So if somebody were to say to me, it's possible that there's a human being in his underpants living comfortably floating around Mars, I would say, no, that's not possible.
Like, completely impossible, because by the nature of human beings, you could not survive.
Are we okay with that one, right?
Now, with regards to the teapot thing, and I said it depends how you define teapot, so you could have something that looks like a teapot that is actually a toilet for space aliens, well then that's not a teapot.
That's just something that looks like a teapot, but it's in fact a toilet, right?
And there are no human teapots orbiting Mars.
Because human beings have not left the earth.
And then you'd say, well, but some prior civilization, a million years ago, maybe they left it.
Okay, but then there wasn't tea back then, so it wouldn't be a teapot.
Like, by definition, a teapot is something fairly contemporaneous, using tea that is in our current ecosystem, or whatever, right?
So, I would say, yeah, there's no teapot.
So, I mean, I'm gonna modify it a little bit.
Let's say...
We find out tomorrow that some people who were in space threw a teapot out there because they wanted for us to debate this hypothetical.
No, no, sorry, but people in space where?
Some people maybe who just like, maybe we find out when the moon landing happened that they threw a teapot out into space.
No, but they can't, because you couldn't throw a teapot hard enough to escape the gravity of the moon.
That's true.
Maybe we find out they launched the teapot through some sort of mechanism, and maybe in order I like how you're narrowing these things down, because this is all really important.
Maybe the modification here is the teapot is orbiting the moon, per se.
Maybe we'll say that.
They launched it at the moon with some mechanism not so far enough from the moon to directly see it hit.
This is tricky.
This is really tricky.
We just found out that as they were leaving the moon, they launched it with some mechanism towards them.
From there, they never cared to see it again.
And now we're having the debate, and I say, yeah, look, it's possible.
It's possible.
Do you take that?
Sorry, would I take that as possible?
Yeah, I would certainly take that as more possible than orbiting Mars, yes.
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Although they wouldn't have any actual mechanism for doing that.
No, you know what, I'm going back to impossible.
They can't throw it high enough to have it orbit the moon, and the spaceship doesn't have windows that open, for obvious reasons, right?
So there's no way for them to get the teacup around the moon.
Okay.
So you're firm on, no, in fact it's not a teapot orbiting Mars.
Right.
Now, what I would do then, just if we're having this debate, I would use the argument from rank freaking cowardice.
Not to you, but to somebody making this argument, right?
So then I would say to that person, what do you think is the worst bigotry that exists in the world?
And they would say, I don't know, virulent racism, antisemitism, homophobia, like transphobia.
They would say some, like what is the worst form of bigotry that you can picture, right?
And then I would say, well, isn't it true, according to your logic, that bigotry might be good, not bad, if anything is possible, right?
I happen to think bigotries are very bad, but if you think it's possible for a teacup to be orbiting Mars, is it not also possible that the most virulent bigotry you can think of is actually good.
Right?
Now, what would they say?
Yeah, they would repeat that.
And also, then I would say, is it not true that people have had very strong morals in the past that have turned out to be completely wrong?
People thought slavery was justified.
People thought women were inferior and should not be allowed to own property and vote.
There have been endless bigotries throughout history that people thought were perfectly valid and true that turned out to be false, right?
Are you so unbelievably arrogant that although there have been all these bigotries in the past that turned out to be false, all the anti-bigotries, all the bigotries against bigotries in the present are absolutely true?
Like, let's put some meat on these bones, right?
Let's make it something practical.
Now, if, let's say, they said some prejudice, it could be that that prejudice is false, right?
Okay, then I would say, so, let's go find some people and argue that.
This is good.
I like that.
Now, would they do that?
I don't know that they would know how to react to that, actually.
No, they would know exactly how to react to that.
What would they do?
I don't think they would want to go and argue.
I think they would just assert that they're corrupt.
Right.
So then I would say, don't talk to me about uncertainties.
Uncertainties.
Because you're absolutely certain about them.
I've employed a similar method when debating somebody on this.
They may not know anything, but neither do you!
How do you know that, right?
How do you know that you don't know anything?
They have to default to an infinite regression.
Well, then, if they can't be certain of anything, then anybody who is certain is their enemy, so they need to go to, I don't know, some big rally for some place, and then they have to say that the people holding that rally are wrong.
Yeah, yeah.
And they have to go and make a speech against the most deeply held beliefs of the people running that rally.
Will they do that?
They won't.
They can't even assert that they're having, like, different statements than you, right?
Like, you could just tell them, like, well, actually, you're agreeing with me.
You don't know that.
You're disagreeing with me.
You don't know that the words coming out of your mouth aren't even the words.
No, no, no.
I mean, I get that.
But I get that sort of intellectual trickery, and I agree with it.
But I'm just like, okay, so if you can't be certain of anything, then anybody who's certain of anything So, tell me, where you've taken your belief system, and rather than bullshitting about fucking teacups and Mars, like, have you gone to some big rally, right?
Where people are chanting about, like, we oppose this bigotry and we oppose that bigotry, and have you stood up there and said, y'all are wrong!
You can't be certain of this!
Well, you haven't done any of that, right?
You just muck about with teacups and Mars bullshit.
So you don't believe any of this.
No.
It's just, you're a virus of doubt.
This is nothing you actually believe.
I will say, unfortunately, for those who really take these conversations to that level about uncertainty, I would imagine that if they care enough to do that, they probably would hold the position that morality is subjective.
Okay, fine.
So morality is subjective, so I need to see where you've gone to people who say racism is bad, or some phobia is bad, and said you're wrong.
Yeah.
You're wrong to say that this is objective, because that's their argument, right?
There's no such thing as objective morality.
Therefore, you must have countless times gone to people who are pretty aggressive about their moral statements and told them that they're wrong.
But they never have.
Because they don't believe any of this crap.
Yeah, I mean, like, there'd be... I mean, you know, sorry to interrupt, you know what happens when these people get pulled over by the cops.
What do they say?
Oh, yes, sir.
Oh, I'm so sorry, sir.
Oh, yes.
I apologize.
Oh, I didn't mean to.
They don't sit there and say, hey, man, speed is relative.
You don't even know if you exist.
We could be an atom in a couch and couches can't speed.
So get lost, fascist!
You know what I mean?
Like, they don't say any of that!
Yeah, yeah, I mean... It's only... It's only doubtful, questioning, intelligent, curious people.
It's never people with any actual power!
Yeah, that's, that's, uh, you... You got it there.
So, I mean, hey, if you really believe this stuff, why are you talking to me?
Um...
Right.
Why aren't you up there with a megaphone at this local rally against X, Y, and Z?
And telling them that they're all wrong, to be certain.
Oh, because they might beat your ass.
Oh, suddenly we're back to objective.
Yeah.
Facts, right?
Oh, and like, obviously you'd see the contradiction too, right?
If somebody did assault them and they defended themselves, I mean, it presupposes that they ought to defend themselves, right?
That they think that they ought to.
No, because, I mean, they could fight club style, let themselves get beaten up, and, you know, whatever, right?
I mean, that to me wouldn't be any particular objective test, but it's like, hey man, if all certainty is wrong, you know the number of ideologues who are absolutely certain and act very brutally because they're so certain?
And you're screwing around with me and teacups when there are actual tyrants out there oppressing their entire populations based upon the certainty of their political perspectives?
Why aren't you dealing with them?
Oh, that's right, because they're big and scary and can inflict negative consequences.
It's just what I thought.
I mean, I want to reference that statement I just made.
If someone who holds these beliefs, right, if they're to defend themselves, like I said, they're presupposing that they ought to defend themselves, which can be evaluated.
Right.
Um, if they didn't think it was objectively the case, and it may not actually be objectively the case, right?
Like maybe someone's actually, um, not assaulting you.
Maybe.
No, but you know, it's not a, it's not on a moral.
Absolutely.
No, no.
Yeah.
I was going to switch this up.
I was going to say, I guess to give two examples, right.
If, um, there, there may be a justified reason where somebody hits you because maybe you hit them back.
Right.
But in the case of self-defense.
Sorry, sorry.
Hang on, hang on.
There's a justified reason why someone hits you because you hit them back.
Did I say back?
I'm sorry.
Yeah, you sit back.
No, no problem.
That's fine.
I just want to make sure I understand your argument.
That's important.
I'm not going to pick on little slips here and there.
Lord knows I am, too.
So that would be like a justified situation.
But in the situation where they're being assaulted and they defend themselves, the fact that they defend themselves in that moment presupposes that they at least believe they ought to do it.
And could you not make the argument?
Again, this is just being formulated.
No, not that they ought to do it, that they have the right to do it.
Well, do you not hold that anything you do presupposes that you Do you think you ought to do it?
No, I don't think so.
So the other person ought not initiate violence against you, but you are not obligated to defend yourself.
Because that is to say that the initiation of violence and the response to violence are under the same moral category of compulsion.
Like, you are compelled to not initiate force, but you can't be compelled to defend yourself.
Because if you're compelled to defend yourself, it means violence must be used against you, because violence is being used against you.
Because if you don't defend yourself, then violence is being used against you twice, which means double the violence.
That can't be a good outcome, right?
Because you'd have to be violently aggressed against for not defending yourself, because it's an obligation to do it, right?
Yeah, let me... I want to make sure there's a...
I have a good understanding of this.
Let's say, take it out of this violent situation, do you think that me having this conversation with you right now, because I'm doing it, there's the presupposition that I believe I ought to it?
Well, no, no, but ought is different from a compulsion, from that which can be compelled.
So, I mean, you wanted to do it, but clearly if you were to hang up, like, in the middle of this conversation, I would have no violent recourse.
Of course, you haven't violated the non-aggression principle, right?
Might be a little annoying.
Might be a little rude.
Yeah.
But it wouldn't be a violation of the non-aggression principle.
So, you want to do it.
Now, I think that we ought to, you know, respect each other and try to reach a reasonable accommodation and not lie and not misrepresent.
There's a sort of standards of behavior, sort of aesthetically preferable actions, we should tell the truth and all of that.
But these are not compelled.
So, for instance, if a man is being assaulted, He can use violence to defend himself, but he cannot be compelled to use violence to defend himself.
It is not an absolute requirement that he use violence, because it's his choice.
And for many people, they don't fight back.
When a guy sticks a gun in their ribs, they just hand over their wallet.
I wouldn't compel something.
They don't have to.
They have the right to, but they don't have to.
Like a woman who's being sexually assaulted, she has the right to blow the guy's head off, but she doesn't.
I wouldn't throw her in jail if she didn't.
It's not an absolute obligation.
I'd throw the guy in jail for sexually assaulting the woman, but I wouldn't.
If the woman chose not to defend herself for whatever reason, I would not Consider that a violation of an absolute ought.
It's, you know, you have the right to, but that doesn't mean you have to.
Like if somebody steals a garden gnome from my front yard.
Am I absolutely obligated to use force to get it back?
No, I can just shrug it off and say, ah, you know, whatever, I didn't like that god-gnome that much anyway, or it doesn't matter to me, or whatever, right?
So you don't have to enforce your rights, but you certainly have the right to.
Just to be clear, I want to make sure I'm being understood too.
I'm saying any action you take, I could be eating a banana, I'm presupposing that I at least think I ought to.
You would disagree with that?
So, ought is a tricky word, right?
So, you prefer to.
What does it mean, ought?
Ought implies obligation.
If somebody lends you money, you ought to pay it back.
If you want to eat a banana, or if you're eating a banana, clearly you want to, but what does it mean to say you ought to?
That's an obligation.
That's a requirement.
If you borrow a library book, you ought to bring it back.
If you put a dent in someone's car, you ought to pay for it to get repaired.
But if you're just eating a banana because you like bananas, where's the ought?
There is a different category here, right?
Okay, the way I was thinking of the word ought is synonymous with the word should, but maybe Okay, so should you... Now, let's say that you... Okay, let's go to the banana thing.
So let's say you have an illness that potassium treats.
You have a potassium deficiency.
Now, if you want to get more potassium, you ought to eat a banana.
Does that make sense?
Are you with me there?
Yes, sorry.
Somebody was trying to call me and I had to forward them.
I heard that though.
Okay, so you ought to eat a banana if you're low on potassium and want to solve it, right?
One of the ways to do that is to eat bananas, right?
Bananas are potassium rich or something like that, right?
Whatever the case is, right?
So you ought to, if you have a particular goal, if you just like the taste of bananas, what does that mean?
You ought to do that which It gives you pleasure.
Well, the pleasure is enough, right?
You don't need an obligation to.
Let's say you hate bananas and that's why you're potassium deficient and your doctor says, just eat some bananas.
Oh, I don't like them.
Well, you know, whatever.
Maybe take a potassium supplement, but the easiest way to get them is through bananas.
Then he's like, oh, you hold your nose and you eat your banana, right?
So then you ought to do it.
But if you just like, really like bananas, where does the ought come in?
Ought has something to do with a resistance, right?
It's an obligation that's supposed to overcome a resistance, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
If I say, you know, when you're having really great sex, you ought to have an orgasm.
What would that even mean?
If you want to have an orgasm, it's part of the great sex thing, right?
So, I don't know about the ought.
The ought has something to do with reluctance and overcoming a desire not to.
Like if somebody lends you money, in some ways it's more pleasurable to keep the money and not give it back, right?
So, you ought to, because you don't, in particular, want to as a pleasure-based organism, right?
Yeah, okay.
Do you believe that there are any presuppositions in human action?
Anything we do?
Sorry, what do you mean, presuppositions?
That's a new term for us.
But I like the cunning way you're inserting new terms.
That's very, very cool.
Because we went from should to ought to presuppositions!
Yeah, so... I'm trying to think of how I would describe this.
I mean... Are there any positive obligations?
No, no.
I'm saying that, like, I...
A presupposition would mean that there is a belief held in relation to the action I'm committing.
So… Sorry, if that's a little too abstract for me, I don't quite follow.
Yeah. So, like, if I drink water and eat healthy and I maybe go to the gym,
I would argue that I'm presupposing or that I hold the belief, which is reflected in my actions,
that I want to be physically fit and healthy.
the next video.
Bye bye.
you Does that make sense?
Yeah, so this is the if-then, right?
Are you obligated To eat less food.
No.
You can eat less food, you cannot eat less food.
If you want to lose weight, then you need to eat less food.
Right?
To take, like, if we take all the variables out, right?
So, if you want to lose weight, then you need to eat less food, right?
Yes, yes.
Okay.
If you use language, you have to accept that language has the capacity for meaning.
Because you can't say, you can't make an argument that language has no meaning because you're using language to convey, with meaning, that language has no capacity to convey meaning, which is a contradiction.
Yes.
So, if you want to debate, you have to accept that language has the capacity for meaning.
And I would call that a presupposition.
I mean, like, even if I wasn't debating, right?
Let's say I was just saying hi to you or something, right?
Anything I utter.
Well, no, it's a...
It's a self-proving proposition.
Or to deny it would be self-contradictory, right?
So if I say, human beings have no capacity to hear language, that would be a self-detonating statement, because I'm using your ears to tell you that your ears never work.
So, my argument can be discarded.
Does that make sense?
Yes, it does.
I have an example I'd like to present to you as well, but somebody has their hand raised.
Okay, I feel like I'm not being allowed to build an argument here, but okay.
Because, I mean, there's a lot that comes out of what I just said, but if you want to
give me another thing, that's fine.
I don't mean to interrupt you, but go ahead.
Well, I'm trying to process mentally what is the best path of conversation now, because maybe it is best the way you're building arguments.
Well, no, I'm making an argument and you're telling me you want something else.
I agree.
I'm like halfway through making an argument and you're like, let's do something else.
And I'm like, why?
I'm sorry, you're right.
You're right.
I'm sorry.
If you want to continue that.
Okay, so, a number of things are embedded in the act of conversation, right?
So clearly, there has to be a self and an other, right?
You can't say to someone, you don't exist.
Because if you don't believe the other person exists, then you wouldn't talk to them, right?
So, you have to accept a self and an other, you have to accept an independent consciousness, you have to accept an objective reality.
Between you two, you have to accept the validity of the senses, you have to accept that language is better than violence, because you're using your words, not your fists, you have to accept that language has meaning, right?
There is an enormous amount that you have to accept as absolute fact to engage in a conversation.
Do we accept that?
So, none of these things that I said, and there's more, but none of these things can be denied.
Agreed, yeah.
By simply the very act of having a conversation.
Are we okay on that, right?
Okay.
Now, in a conversation where you are debating, you also have to accept that truth and accuracy are infinitely preferable to lies, inaccuracy, and falsehood.
So if you and I are debating whether the earth is round or flat, implicit in that debate is that having a true belief about the shape of the world is infinitely better.
Not just a little better.
It's not like 10% better.
Because the earth being a sphere is true, the earth being flat is false.
And it's not 10% more true.
It's infinitely more true.
Because what is true is infinitely preferable to what is false.
And so by that I don't mean we say well one out of ten times we'll just let the false thing be the best.
It's always infinitely better.
It's not a little better.
So when you have a debate and you correct someone you are saying that truth is infinitely preferable to error and that the means by which truth is ascertained is reason and evidence.
Because that's what we've been doing, right?
We've been using reason, analogies, evidence, facts, science, whatever, right?
To establish our positions, right?
So, all of the above things about other people existing, and language having meaning, and sound existing, and the sense organs are valid, and so on, right?
Right?
Because if I said to you, if we were having a big disagreement, and I said, no, no, you agreed with me, and you said, no, I didn't, and I said, no, that's what I heard, you'd say, well, you heard wrong, right?
So, you have to accept that language has meaning, and the senses operate, and are valid, right?
When you have a debate with someone, you are saying, truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood.
And the means by which truth is established is reason and evidence.
Because you're not just shooting the guy.
And you're not saying, well, okay, I'll give you this one about the earth being flat, but you give me the next one.
about the sun being bigger than the moon, right?
No, you say, like, it's got to be accurate, it's got to be true.
And you also are saying that reason and evidence are objective and empirical, and you have to say that because you're using language to convey reason using the evidence of the senses, which requires an objective medium called reality, the air and sound waves and the cochlear Hairs or whatever's going on in the bowels of your ear or something like that, right?
So all of these things are implicit.
So the ought is implicit in the very nature of debate, which is why you can't use UPB to overthrow UPB.
This is sort of a short, short approach to UPB.
I, to be clear, I don't disagree with anything you just said.
I, the only thing is, um, a lot of those things that like, where I'm like, if then you said I would have called those presuppositions.
Do you, is there.
How do I put this?
Well, you could say conditional statements, you could say presuppositions, but yeah, if-then.
But the if-then is implicit in the conversation.
Yeah, and I would carry this through to actions, too.
Like I said, it could be that I was eating a banana, but maybe I presupposed that I should eat it, otherwise I wouldn't have ate it.
No, but then we're back to should.
Should has an obligatory attitude to it.
Okay, okay, okay.
Right?
You should eat your vegetables, right?
But if your kid loves candy, you wouldn't say, you should eat your candy, right?
Because the kid wants to eat the candy, right?
Yeah.
Can I present to another example?
you Sure.
Um, so there is a, uh, way of grounding the NAP that I'm not going to go over in its entirety.
There's just like some things that, uh, are tied to this exact conversation.
Then I really liked this grounding of the NAP.
Um, but, uh, in this argument, we, we highlight that, um, like the law of the jungle.
Um, you're familiar with that phrase or term, right?
Oh yeah, yeah.
I mean, you could say this is data read in tooth and claw.
Yeah, like the sternorite belief that might makes right.
Okay, so we argue that it's a contradictory position because when the sternorite takes it, when they try to take something from you, they presuppose that they should be the one to control it.
No, I don't know that they do.
I don't know that that's the might-make-right argument.
I think the might-makes-right argument is, I can, and I want to, therefore I'm going to.
That should is a word used by weak people who can't defend their property in the hopes of paralyzing the strong people who want to take it with guilt or shame or like the sort of will-to-power argument from Nietzsche, right?
So the strong people say, hey man, I'm the Viking, and you're like the tweak-armed Irish farmer, I'm just gonna take your shit.
And I don't have to justify it, other than I can, and I'm going to.
But there's no, there's no ought.
I just can't.
Hmm.
And you know, you resist me if you want, and you know, whoever wins, wins.
But, uh, yeah, I'm not gonna pretend that there is any ought.
It's just You know, you say to the lion, you ought not to eat the zebra.
It's like, well, if I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat the zebra.
If you want to stop me, you can try and stop me, but that's what's gonna happen.
This is interesting.
You know, this is the old argument from the ancient general, right?
I think it was a Roman guy.
He said, stop quoting words to men with swords.
I'm going to call upon your memory.
This is going to be, if you can't remember this, it's totally okay.
Do you remember a long time ago when David Gordon tried giving a rebuttal to UPB?
I think he did it twice, actually, if I'm not mistaken.
Oh, it was terrible.
It was really, really bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was like embarrassingly bad.
Yeah, he's not really good on ethics.
Oh, on so many levels.
Yeah.
Okay.
You referenced something you had said about when a thief takes something, there's a contradiction because they're rejecting property rights while also trying to affirm them.
Do you recall something like that?
Oh, I remember that argument precisely.
So the argument, very briefly, is that one of the contradictions involved in stealing something is a thief would not bother stealing something if he knew that another thief was going to steal it from him right away.
Like, why would you bother spending two weeks to borrow into a bank vault to steal a couple of bars of gold if you knew for certain that some well-armed mafia gang was going to steal the gold when you came out of the vault, right?
Like he wouldn't bother.
So the thief wishes to both deny and affirm property rights because he wants to take other people's property while retaining control over that property himself.
So he wants property rights for himself because he'll be very upset if people steal from him.
So he both is denying and affirming property rights in the act of stealing.
Now, this doesn't mean he's not going to steal, but it does mean that there's a logical contradiction in his approach to ownership.
So, yes, I'm fully in agreement with that.
Now, the thing I'm giving you I would say it's like identical.
I guess the issue would be in that like the presupposition thing.
Because this argument about the law of the jungle, I'll just read you a few sentences here, is that if there's a dispute between like two individuals, right, over who should be the one to control property, then both those individuals must presuppose this to be the case that one is asserting that even though the other can actually control it, It should be, or it's the case that the one, we'll call people A and B, right?
A is saying that even though B could obtain control, A should control it.
And similarly, on the other end, B is asserting that even though A might be able to obtain control, that he should be the one to control it.
Is this not parallel to what you're saying?
No, I don't think there's a contradiction there, right?
So if two people both see a chunk of gold... Actually, no, no, go ahead.
That wasn't the full argument, but that's okay.
No, it's not innately self-contradictory.
So let's say you and I are in a stream in Alaska, and we both see a chunk of gold at the same time, and we both reach for it and grapple for it, right?
Well, we both believe that we, you know, what a lot of kids always say, I saw it first, right?
Or sometimes people, men in bars, I saw her first, whatever, right?
So, you and I are both wrestling over this piece of gold, right?
Now, I think that I should own it, you think that you should own it.
But there's no, we're not, we're not self-contradicting property rights.
Well, but if I, if you, if you have the gold, you found it and it's yours, and then I steal it from you, then I'm saying, You should not have control over your own property, but I should retain control over your property that I've stolen.
So I'm saying that you should not have control over property, but I should have control over property.
Well, we're both human beings, so I have opposite rules for the same class of species.
Which is like saying mammals should be both warm-blooded and cold-blooded at the same time.
It's like, well, you're gonna have to pick a lane there, buddy, because, you know, you can't have both.
And so, if you're gonna say, property rights should be violated for you, but property rights should be respected for me, that's a contradiction.
So, if I steal the chunk of gold from you, and it's legitimately yours, I steal the chunk of gold from you, and then I wake up the next morning and someone's stolen it from me, I'd be outraged.
Especially if I went through considerable risk and danger to steal the chunk of gold.
I'd be outraged!
Because I'm saying that I want to keep what I've taken from you.
That I want to violate your property rights while maintaining my own control of property, the property I've stolen.
So that's a contradiction, right?
Property rights should be both violated and affirmed is a contradiction.
I agree.
That argument goes, I guess, again, like I said, I think it's very similar to what you're saying.
It goes a little further and says part of the contradiction that's occurring Is when, when they defend that property from somebody else, right.
Affirming and, uh, also denying property rights, but also there's the issue that they're conflating possession and ownership.
Um, which are necessarily two distinct things.
Um, but anytime, while they're controlling the property, which, um, they're defending, right.
They're both, we would, I would argue that they're both presupposing a distinction between ownership and possession.
Yes, they contradict.
Well, the thief would say, I want to keep what I stole.
In fact, I'm only stealing it because I want to keep it, right?
So you think of a drug addict who steals something to pay for his drug addiction.
Well, what does he do?
He takes, I don't know, a cell phone, he steals a cell phone, and then he takes it to a fence and sells it, right?
Right, so he knows that he stole it.
He might lie about it, but he knows that he stole it.
And the thief, sorry, the fence, the guy he's selling the cell phone to, also knows he stole it.
Now, he may lie about it, but I mean, they know, right?
Because he's coming to him, not some legitimate place, right?
So, yeah, both the thief and the drug addict know that the drug addict does not have the right to dispose of the cell phone.
So they all know that the property right is invalid, and they're fine.
But the fence, if he buys the cell phone for $100 from the drug addict and then somebody steals $100 from him, the fence, he'd be outraged, right?
Because he wants to keep the $100.
And that's where the contradiction is, right?
Just to be clear.
Yeah, you want to deny and affirm property rights.
Deny it for your victim and affirm it for yourself.
Okay, well that's just a contradiction.
It's not going to stop you from stealing, but it is a logical contradiction.
Yes, okay.
I'm fully in line with all of this.
They believe that... I stole from you!
How dare someone steal from me!
Yes, they assert they have a right to your property, but then also try to deny the existence of rights when they defend it, which is insane.
And it's a contradiction.
Okay, this is great.
This is great.
I will mention this.
Not to be a pester to you, I really... No, it's not a pester, it's philosophy, man.
I'm going to mention something I mentioned to you before, and I would really love if you're interested in this, that you send me a follow-up or something, but I sent you a friend's paper on his grounding in the NAP, and he ties it all the way down to epistemology.
And the mixed law, or not the mixed law, I'm sorry, the Law of the Jungle argument that we kind of just went over is featured in that paper.
And it's an argument, what do they call it again?
Argumentum e contrario.
So basically he finds the contradictions in the other theories of law, like Law of the Jungle, mixed law, and then he evaluates those.
Prove that they contradict themselves.
Well, so, yeah, the thief prefers that his victim not defend his property, right?
So the thief prefers that his victim not defend his property, but then the thief wants to defend his own property.
So the thief will, you know, steal from you while you're sleeping so that you can't defend yourself, or attack him, or protect your property, but then the thief will use aggression to defend his own, what he's stolen, right?
So the thief wants There to be no defense of property, and then the thief wants to enact violent defense of property, right?
Yes.
This pretty much tears down both Law of the Jungle and Mixed Law.
Though mixed law can be a little more complicated to find these contradictions in, but it still necessarily arrives at it.
And UPB bypasses all of this.
I mean, I think these are interesting arguments, and I think they're worth making, but UPB bypasses all of this.
And UPB simply says that stealing can never be universally preferable behavior.
It's impossible.
Not only is it impossible to enact, in that everyone can't be stealing from everyone else all the time, But it's logically impossible.
It doesn't even need to be empirically impossible, which it is, but it's logically impossible.
Because if we say that theft, stealing, is universally preferable behavior, stealing is the good, stealing is moral, then we have a logical contradiction, which is that stealing is the unwanted removal of property.
But if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time, which is all time.
But, if you want to be stolen from, it's not theft.
If you want to have your property removed from you, it's not theft.
Like I don't hire some junk place to come and get rid of the junk in my basement and
then call up the cops and say, they stole from me and then they say, here's the contract,
he paid us to take this stuff away.
No, he's...
The cop would say, look, you can't accuse someone of stealing from me when you paid
them to take the stuff away or at least wrote a contract, signed a contract saying they
could take the stuff, right?
I mean, if I leave a couch on my front yard saying, take me, I can't then film someone
taking it and go to the cops and say, he stole, right?
So UPB utterly wrecks, destroys, invalidates and removes the possibility that stealing can
be universally preferable behavior.
Because if stealing is universally preferable behavior, there's no such thing as stealing, and therefore you have a contradiction.
You're saying that which does not exist must be universally preferable.
Well, that's crazy!
That would be madness, right?
And it does the same thing for rape.
Rape can never be universally preferable behavior.
Because rape is desperately unwanted sexual contact.
But if we say everyone should rape and be raped at the same time, then if you accept that, then you want to be raped, in which case it's not rape.
If you want the sexual contact, it's not rape.
Murder, assault, right?
So UPB bypasses all of this stuff and says, can the proposed action be universalized?
If the proposed action cannot be universalized, then it cannot be moral.
It cannot be universally preferable behavior.
Now, what about respect for property rights?
What about not stealing?
Can that be universalized?
Yes!
There is no logical or empirical contradiction for the respect for property rights.
Everyone can not steal.
Now, there are still people who will steal, but that's fine.
This is a logical construct for morality which accepts free will, which means that some people will act against morality.
But the most dangerous predator is not a thief, but false moral theories.
Because it's the false moral theories that has people steal half your property through the power of the state and run up massive debts for your children.
It's the false moral theories that are the real predators.
I don't care that much about individual thieves.
So it's dealing with the big issue.
The big issues of where the real theft occurs in the world.
So yeah, UPP just bypasses all of this and says, okay, So you're saying that theft is universally preferable behavior.
Well, let's play that out.
It's impossible.
It's asymmetrical, right?
For someone to steal, the other person must desperately not want to have that property taken.
And so it's asymmetrical.
In other words, one person can enact stealing, but the other person has to oppose it.
But it can't be universal if one person is pro it and the other one is very much anti it, then it's asymmetrical.
Therefore, it can't be universal.
So anyway, that's the elegance of UPB.
Debate with rationality rules.
One of his final criticisms he was issuing to you, and I'm starting to believe this might not really even matter when it comes to ethics.
He's one of his final criticisms in that debate is, well, you haven't arrived at an odd statement.
And if I recall correctly, your response is like it's embedded in the argument.
But I think what he wanted was for you to formulate some sort of I don't know if it'd be a syllogism or even just any... No, but he was formulating the ought argument.
He's saying, your argument fails because you haven't established an ought argument.
So he's saying that you ought to establish an ought argument, which means he's accepting ought.
I agree.
I agree.
And he's criticizing me for failing to manifest the ought.
So he's manifesting the ought, saying I haven't proven the ought.
And it's like, but you can't contradict me without reference to an author.
Yes, yes.
If he were to say, Steph, I'm just personally, your argument makes me very emotional and that's why it's false.
Well, nobody would accept that as a valid argument.
It might be emotionally honest, probably would be.
Our good buddy Stephen Woodward.
But if he says, Steph, your argument objectively fails because you haven't established an ought, it's like, well, you just said objectively fails, which means my statement ought to create an ought, but you've already established the ought by criticizing my argument.
So yeah, you can't correct someone without reference.
So I agree.
I don't even believe in the is-ought gap.
I think it's rather silly.
Well, no, it's true in that oughts don't exist in nature.
Oughts don't exist at the atomic level.
I mean, I get that oughts don't exist.
So what?
Concepts don't exist in the world.
That doesn't mean they're not valid.
That doesn't mean they're not objective.
And if you are debating, you are accepting oughts.
The problem with most debates, and I'm not including you and I, this is a great conversation, but the problem with most debates is the level of fraud involved is staggering.
Because if someone said to me ahead of time, listen, man, it doesn't matter what you say.
I'm just gonna deny everything you say.
I'm gonna pretend to be rational, but I'm not gonna be rational.
Now, I remember in the debate with Rationality Rules, Stephen fully accepted that rape, theft, assault and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
He fully accepted that.
So then we're done.
Okay.
Then he's accepted that rape... Now, he'll go back and say, but there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior.
It's like, okay, so then you're saying it's universally preferable behavior to say things that are true.
And if you're going to say that it's universally preferable behavior to say that things are true, But there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, you've just contradicted yourself.
You said that something is valid, universally preferable behavior, and also invalid at the same time, and that's just not valid.
That's just not true.
Self-contradictory statements can't be valid.
So I guess I think this answers my question, but I do want to get a clear answer when it comes to.
Talking about ethics and saying.
I don't know if it's yeah if we're talking about ethics, we don't need to arrive at an odd statement essentially.
As long as you can find contradictions in the...
The opposing theory, I suppose, right?
Like, you don't think you need to say... So, sorry, we don't need to arrive at an ought statement?
What is that?
That's an ought statement.
You just made an ought statement saying we don't need to arrive at an ought statement.
It's not necessary.
Okay, so it's not required, which means you don't have to.
It's not a requirement.
So it ought not be a requirement.
Like, you can't get away from oughts if you're debating, if you're conversing.
Like I said, I don't really... there's ought gaps in me.
Too important?
I get what you're saying, though.
Obviously, there's no aught embedded in a tree or something, but I guess to propose UPB, you don't need to say you aught follow UPB.
It's just a matter of fact that because you're already engaging in the conversation, you're saying it's embedded.
There it is.
It's aught already there.
I believe that's the way you've said it in the past, and I think it's kind of what you were just saying now, right?
No, no, all I'm saying is that rape, theft, assault and murder can never be UPB.
I think I need to chew on the thing, because I was just about to repeat myself, but I think I need to chew on what you just said.
No, no, so then you're saying, oh Steph, are you saying that you ought to follow UPB?
Yeah, I guess what I was asking is, do you need to arrive at that to, I guess, have a valid theory of ethics?
Do I need to arrive at what?
A statement saying you aren't following UPB.
Well, UPB is valid.
Now, if you say, I'm interested in truth, facts, reason, evidence, and morality, then you have to accept UPB.
Now, accepting UPB, of course, means that you should follow UPB, of course, right?
You can't say, I fully accept the scientific method as the only means to truth, and I really want to get to the truth, and then, of course, you're obligated to follow the scientific method, right?
If you say, I want the truth, the scientific method is the only way to ascertain the truth, so I'm not going to follow the scientific method, that would be a contradiction, right?
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Right, mathematics is the only way to get numerical accuracy.
I desperately want numerical accuracy, then therefore you have to follow mathematics, right?
That's embedded in the preferences.
Does that make sense?
Yes, yes it does.
Okay, so if you say, I want to follow reason, evidence and truth, then UPB is rational, it's evidence-based, in that societies that violate UPB do very badly, Right, I mean, the free market affirms UPP and property rights and does much better.
than a communist or socialist or fascist society that violate UPB in terms of, well, both life, liberty, property and so on, right?
If you look at most of human history, most of human history has been massive violations of UPB in terms of slavery and the subjugation of women and the draft and so on, right?
So, if you look at when society has respected UPB more, which is small government and free markets and so on, then Society does much better.
I mean, so there's empirical evidence as well.
If you look at the things that are successful in society, they tend to be those where UPB is respected the most.
So things that fail are the things the governments do, because it's a violation of UPB.
Things that succeed tend to be more in the free market, which is where UPB is more respected.
So there's reason And evidence.
And it is true that rape, theft, assault and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
Now, you can reject universally preferable behavior, but then I don't want to hear a word out of your mouth about debating anyone.
Because the moment you debate someone, you're saying, there's a universal standard called truth, and you should follow it, and you're not doing that.
So, the moment you debate someone, you're accepting UPB, then the only question is, okay, since you already accept UPB by having a conversation with me, The only question is, what behaviours are UPB?
And it turns out respects for persons and property are the only behaviours that follow UPB.
So, I mean, do you have to follow UPB?
No!
It's a choice, because we have free will.
I mean, you have to follow gravity, that's not a choice, right?
Yeah.
Right, you can't open your eyes if they're functional, you can't open your eyes and not see.
You can close your eyes, open them, but you can't open them and not see.
So you have a choice to not follow UPB, for sure.
You have a choice to reject UPB, as of course a lot of people have done, but you're wrong.
And you've given up the right to say that you're interested in truth, rationality, objectivity and morality.
Because you are both affirming UPB and denying UPB.
So you're saying that UBB is false and therefore we should reject it.
Okay, so it's universally preferable behavior to reject things that are false.
So then you can't say there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior.
So I would not command people to follow UBB, I would just say it's an inevitable result.
You can't order people at gunpoint to follow the scientific method, right?
I mean, it's not a violation of UBB to be a mystic.
You can lie to yourself, you can falsify things.
As long as it's not outright fraud or something like that, you can bullshit yourself all you want.
So I'm not going to force you.
Oh, you have to follow UPB.
But it is true.
And you can't get ethics without it.
You can't get ethics from gods.
You can't get ethics from governments.
You can't get ethics from your ancestors.
You can't get ethics from chicken entrails or witch doctors.
You can only get ethics from UPB.
So if you want to be ethical, You have to follow UPB.
Now, people can say, well, I don't want to.
It's like, well, then, OK, you don't.
Then don't debate anyone.
Otherwise, you're a bottomless hypocrite, because then you're saying there is UPB, but I just don't want to follow this one.
Or the ones that are actually valid.
It would be contradictory, right?
I mean, the moment, to give, I guess, more of a concrete, if you had a moral particularist who was rejecting UPB, you would say he's just simply living in contradiction, because every action I want to use the word presuppose, but how do I formulate this?
Every time he engages in debate, or maybe even just thinks to himself about the truth, right?
He's adhering to UPB.
Well, thinking is unverifiable, so I can only verify empirically what people think.
I can only verify what people actually do, because anyone can say anything about what they think, right?
It's not objective of any kind.
Gotcha.
But so long as they don't ever make an argument about something, or try to correct somebody... Yeah, if they correct me, then they're saying there's a universal standard to determine truth from falsehood, and you're falling short, and it's infinitely preferable that you be correct, not false.
Right?
And honestly, this is not... I hate to say this is not complicated, because it sounds like... It's tricky in our minds, I get that.
You're in kindergarten and you say 2 and 2 make 5, what does the teacher say?
Sorry, you said 2 and 2 make 5?
Did I hear you too well?
Yeah, if you're a kid, right, you're 5 or 6 years old, you're in kindergarten and you confidently say that 2 and 2 make 5, what does the teacher say?
Oh yeah, they correct you and say 4.
Yeah, they say you're wrong.
Like, you're making a statement about reality.
Which is false, and I'm here to correct you.
And it's not personal, it's not like, I'm offended by you saying that, or, you know, a genie in a dream told me that you're wrong.
It's like, no, it's a fact that you're wrong.
So we have universally preferable behavior from the very beginning of our lives, and we accept it at all times.
Right?
I mean, somebody like David Gordon says there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, while making arguments in well-formed sentences, right?
Which, to rebut points that I make, right?
I mean, it's like saying to somebody, there's no such thing as self-ownership, and then making an argument, which is yours, to oppose an argument they made, which is theirs.
Well, that's self-ownership, owning yourself and owning the effects of your actions.
So, I mean, this is one of the big things that I brought to philosophy, is forget about the content, look at the form of the argument first, and that will answer most of your questions.
Like, most philosophical arguments can be resolved by looking at the form of the argument rather than the content.
Everyone wants to rush to the content of the argument.
No, I do exist.
No, there is such a thing as objective reality.
No, the senses are valid.
It's like, no, but you don't have to do any of that, because a simple act Of using the senses means you have to accept that the senses are valid.
Right?
The simple act of having a debate.
Having a debate requires using the senses because we can't Vulcan mind meld link, right?
So having a debate, having an argument, requires about six thousand implicit facts to be accepted.
Sense is valid.
Language has meaning.
You and I exist as an objective medium between us.
Reason is better than violence.
Rationality and evidence of what?
Determines truth from falsehood.
Truth is a value that is infinitely greater than falsehood.
All of these things are absolutely completely and totally accepted in order to have even a conversation, let alone a debate.
So it's all solved.
But everybody wants to rush into, you know, it's like if somebody sends you a, I've used this argument before, if I send you a letter That says, my argument is, letters never get delivered.
Right?
What would you say?
Would you start arguing, would you write me back?
No, I think that letters do get delivered.
And I say, no, I really don't think that they do.
And here's my, like, what would you say?
You wouldn't look at the, you wouldn't look at the letters on the letter.
You'd look at the envelope, right?
You wouldn't look at the content.
of the letter, you would look at the form of the letter, and you'd say, well, Steph, come on, you can't send me a letter saying that letters never get delivered, because if you genuinely believed that, you wouldn't send me a letter, because it would never get delivered.
So the fact that you sent me a letter means you know that letters get delivered.
So let's not... like, the argument is in the letterhead.
It's on the stamp.
It's on the envelope, not in the content.
Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.
You know, I always tell myself there's still something I need to learn about UPV, but
then I go and investigate it and I'm like, maybe I do understand it well enough. And
this is this is one of those moments.
Although I've had a bit cleared up for me, for sure.
No, tell me what doesn't make sense.
And the reason is not because UPB is complicated, it's because we've all been lied to so much.
But sorry, what is it?
I think i get it now but what i was confused about for the longest time is that like if we were to give an ethical
theory that.
We should i guess if you're proposing an argument or whether it be just casually or so justically i thought you'd
have to end it with like therefore you are you know in this case you there for you are here to be.
What's up.
I believe after this conversation i'm the belief that you don't need to arrive that statement.
you No, the question isn't, ought you follow UPB?
The question is, do you accept UPB by correcting me?
Do you accept UPB?
By having a conversation with me.
Do you accept UPB?
By debating with me according to objective standards, one of which is that truth is infinitely preferable to error.
Truth is UPB.
So you can't argue against UPB by saying we should accept that which is true, because that's UPB.
So, in terms of, it's not, it's not, ought you to follow UPB, it's, have you already accepted UPB by having a debate with me?
Right, so if you and I are having this debate in fluent Japanese, right, would you say to me, Steph, you ought to learn Japanese?
If we're having it in Japanese, is that what you said?
Yeah, you and I are debating pure Japanese, native speaking 100%.
We're having a big rigorous back and forth in pure Japanese.
Would you ever say to me, Steph, you ought to speak Japanese?
No, not at all.
No, because I already am speaking Japanese!
So I don't say to people who are speaking Japanese, well, you really ought to learn and speak Japanese.
I will simply point out, You already know and are speaking Japanese.
So I don't say to people, you ought to follow UPB who are correcting me according to universal standards.
I say, you're already accepting and practicing universal standards.
You're already practicing and accepting UPB.
So what are we, like, you're literally yelling at me in Japanese that there's no such thing as Japanese.
Like, it's a little crazy, right?
Yeah, so, um, or like the moral particularist, would your answer to that person be it's like,
well, you've already, wait, wait, what do you mean by particular risks?
So, like, there are people... I love your habit of bringing these new terms in!
We haven't talked about that one yet, so... Alright!
Well, what about hajamba bobba head?
Do you agree with that?
It's like, can a brother get a definition or two?
Absolutely, absolutely.
What is a moral particularist?
Someone who asserts that, like...
Morality's not like a universal thing, like, oh, I have actually the right to aggress on you, but you don't, to me.
That would be some form of moral particularism.
I don't know any specific arguments or philosophies they hold in this.
No, but that person isn't gonna debate with you!
They're just gonna pull a gun on you, aren't they?
Where's the debate?
It's just in the scenario that you're arguing with somebody about objective morality.
Okay, so let's do that.
We can do this just to close off.
Okay, so let's do that.
So you say what?
There's no such thing as... You play this person, what would they say?
So they would say, yeah, you know what, UPV does exist, but...
I choose to adhere to it sometimes when I want to, and not other times when it comes to aggression.
Just to be clear, so I understand this form of argument.
No, no, I get that you're roleplaying.
I just asked you to roleplay.
No, I have a question.
I have a question.
I'm sorry.
I have a question.
What?
So, are we roleplaying?
I'll say the roleplay.
I'm sorry.
I'll say the roleplay.
Okay, that was the briefest roleplay in the history of the show.
I didn't want to make sure I could roleplay properly.
Is UPV demonstrated as well?
Even outside of argumentation, like if I choose to...
eat and drink healthy foods and whatnot.
I'm adhering to the... No, because that's subjective.
That's right.
So, healthy food for a diabetic would be very different from healthy food for somebody trying to lose weight, or healthy food for a sumo wrestler, or, you know what I mean?
Like, so, healthy food for somebody trying to gain weight.
So, that's subjective relative to goals.
UPB is universal and independent of goals.
Okay, okay.
Alright.
I can do this roleplay.
Yeah, UPB does exist, you're right, but I choose which UPBs to adhere to and which ones not.
So what relevance does that have to the truth of UPB?
So if you say the scientific method is valid, but sometimes I'm gonna pray to the chicken gods for answers, what relevance?
I mean, it just means you're deviating from the scientific method.
That doesn't have any impact on the validity of the scientific method.
It just means that you're not using it from time to time, which means you're going to be wrong.
So, the fact that you can deny UPB doesn't mean that UPB is false.
I mean, I can choose not to follow the scientific method.
That doesn't invalidate the scientific method, right?
I can choose to eat nothing but cheesecake.
That doesn't invalidate the science of nutrition, right?
Yeah.
I mean, the idea that you think you can break moral rules by disagreeing with them or not acting upon them is pretty narcissistic, honestly.
Like, the entirety of morality doesn't depend upon your individual crappy little choices, my friend.
Science doesn't depend on whether you follow it or not.
Yeah.
Well, I'm bad at math.
That means math is invalid.
I mean, that's narcissistic in the extreme, right?
You can choose to follow stuff or not, but that's just your own little choices.
It has nothing to do with what's true or not.
Yeah, yeah.
I totally get you.
So you'd condense that, and I'm out of the roleplay again, because I can't play that position.
No, I get that.
I can't play that position too long.
I was in theater school.
I know when the scene is over.
So yeah, the answer to that is like, do and don't whatever you want, I suppose.
But it doesn't make this theory untrue.
Or it doesn't make it false, I don't know why.
Yeah, of course not.
False.
I mean, if you say, I'm gonna say that two and two make five, do you think you've just broken the entire discipline of mathematics?
That would be insane.
That would be megalomaniacal.
I can fly because I choose to disbelieve in gravity.
It's like, eh, do whatever you want.
But, you know, the truth is the truth.
Gotcha.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean that, and I'm not saying this would be you, that to me would be a sign of narcissistic vanity.
That because you don't follow a rule, the rule is invalidated is bizarre to me.
It's like saying, well, I'm not going to wash my hands, therefore I'm never going to get an infection.
The whole science of epidemiology is destroyed because I don't wash my hands.
I agree, and I guess since you probably want to wrap this up now, I'll just leave with this statement.
I agree, and it's funny because I think I knew that answer anyways.
I've certainly engaged in debates where somebody's like, oh, if the NAP is true, then what would you do in this scenario?
Steal a penny?
Uh, let the X terrible consequences occur.
It's like, well, whether I violate, you know, the NAP or not, does it make it untrue?
So this hypothetical just bunk at its root realistically.
Yeah, if someone put a gun to your head and told you to disavow the scientific method, that means that science is destroyed.
No, science is only destroyed when you contradict Fauci.
That's the only time that science is apparently destroyed.
Yeah, I mean, that's just wild, right?
They're saying that the truth depends upon my personal crappy little choices, and it's like, it really doesn't.
It really doesn't.
If I choose to sail around the world as if it's flat, that makes the world flat.
Checkmate, globalists!
Anything you wanted to close up on here?
It was a great conversation, I really do appreciate it.
I really appreciate it.
I love having these talks.
I do it with my friends all the time, but it's always So special talk with you about it.
So I really appreciate it.
I appreciate that.
And I really do want to thank everyone for dropping by.
I like, I like these voice chats rather than, you know, sitting and reading text, which is fine too.
I don't mind that particular, but I do enjoy the agility and sparring of the voice chats.
I of course do have to be responsible to the income of the show, and I think what happens is, because there's not a donate button directly on this medium, I think that what people do is they say, Get lost in the conversation and don't remember to donate.
But again, and I don't mean to press upon your generosity, so if you've donated recently, this is not for you.
And I hugely thank you for it.
But if you are listening to this now or later, and it's been a little while since you've donated, if you could help out, I would really, really appreciate that.
You can help out the show at freedomain.com slash donate.
And you can also go to freedomain.com slash subscribe star.
But yeah, this is, I'm just looking at this, yeah, this is about 10% normal donations, so much though I enjoy these.
Conversation calls, if it is low donations, I, you know, will have to regretfully not continue them, which is not, I mean, just talking about sort of negatives and consequences.
So, if you do enjoy these, and I'll obviously have to go buy donations, because that's an indication of value to you, and of course, I'm not saying one way or the other, like, whatever you find valuable is what I want to facilitate.
So, I'll keep an eye on this, and if you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
to help out the show.
I'd really appreciate that, and I really, really do.
Thank everyone so much for a great conversation tonight.
Lots of love from up here, and I will talk to you Sunday morning, 11am.
And I am, gosh, what am I at?
About 12%.
I mean, it's a grueling thing again, so I'm 12% through, just so you know what I'm doing when I'm not doing shows.
I am about 12% of the way through the shortened version of Peaceful Parenting, so that's coming along.
All right, thanks everyone.
Lots of love from up here.
Take care, talk to you soon.
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