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Jan. 7, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:22

Saving the World: Pros and Cons! Freedomain Call In

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Time	Text
	There we go.
	All right.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	Hello, everybody.
	6th of January 2025. God, it still feels like such a science fiction year.
	Where's my jetpack?
	No!
	We don't have a jetpack.
	We don't have bases on Mars.
	We have, instead, migration.
	There we go.
	Solved and sorted.
	So, this is a show for you.
	If you have questions, comments, issues, challenges, disagreements, vociferal...
	Or otherwise, I am all ears like a sky-borne, moon-eclipsing Dumbo.
	Okay, maybe that's not the best nickname for a philosopher, but we're going to do it anyway.
	All right, so if you have things that you want to talk about, you can just unmute, and I will take your questions, comments.
	It's a bit of a flash, sorry.
	I normally would plan these things a little bit ahead of time, but I had.
	It's a sad thing.
	It's a sad thing.
	It happens.
	It happens.
	I had a call-in scheduled, and I had a no-show.
	Ooh, that's kind of smart.
	Not me.
	I could just do a live stream instead.
	But it is not fun for somebody who, you know, is very important.
	Obviously, you know, people forget stuff.
	I'm obviously not perfect.
	Far from it.
	So, but the level of regret.
	That people have, oh, missed the call-in, oh, I feel terrible, and it's like, yeah, I sympathize, I understand, and it is pretty tough to reschedule.
	So if you get a call-in, if you have a call-in, please, please, please do your very best to show up.
	Most people do.
	It's rare that we have a no-show, but there it is.
	Time zones are exciting.
	So, going once, going twice, I have, of course, a topic as usual, If you have a question or a comment, feel free to unmute and just talk away.
	But I had a comment based upon a conversation I had with someone about gambling.
	Gambling!
	Do you gamble?
	Do you?
	Huh?
	Do you gamble?
	I love to gamble.
	That's sort of prerequisite for a philosopher.
	I do love me some gambling.
	The problem is I like it a little too much, therefore I must stay away from it.
	I remember many years ago I was best man at a good friend's wedding and we had as our bachelor party a trip to a casino.
	Oh my!
	That is a great way to while away some hours consulting with the flowers.
	And I had to be like, wow, I could really get into this.
	I better never, ever do this again.
	Now, I used to go in the business world when I was in the business world.
	I used to go pretty regularly to Vegas.
	The reason for that was when I was in the software world, Vegas was the place you went for the CES, Consumer Electronics Show, or sometimes they would be more technical.
	And you'd get to see all of the cool, boy, this is back in the days of ActiveX, and this is back in the day of...
	oof, uh, IDEs that were pretty cool, type ahead stuff and all of that.
	So I would go and see all the latest and coolest programming techniques and trips.
	And sometimes though, I would go to Manabooth.
	So, uh, a company that I worked for, two companies that I worked for would send me down, uh, with, uh, another employee and we would set up our booth and we would chat all day Every day, for three days straight, with people about the glories of our software.
	And we would hold little competitions.
	You could win an...
	Boy, you could win an iPod back in the day.
	Hard drive iPod.
	But you had to give us your business card, and that's a great way to get people's email and see if they're interested in some sort of purchase.
	So, you know, you put on...
	They call it a dog and pony show in the business world.
	I'm not exactly sure why, but maybe it has something to do with the circus.
	You know, you chat with people.
	You make good...
	With the jokes and the friendliness, and hopefully they're interested in what you have to sell, and you kind of go there after that.
	But what I would do, of course, is I would end up doing a little gambling, and that is super fun.
	All right, listen.
	I said this show was about you.
	No word of a lie.
	We have Monsieur Lux.
	I am all ears.
	If you want to tell me what's on your mind, I can return to the gambling stuff later, but let's gamble on you as a caller.
	There we go.
	All right.
	So, sorry, I can't say for long.
	I just want to do a fly-by comment because you mentioned Vegas.
	And I just want to follow up and give validation to what you mentioned before, which was track your data.
	And I did that.
	I presented my case to my guy for the numbers we've done, 2023, 2024. And it was so much easier to make that pitch.
	So, he's funding my business trip out to Vegas.
	So, I just want to thank you because...
	That worked like a charm.
	Well, I'm thrilled.
	This is a follow-up, right?
	From our previous convo, right?
	Yes, we met in last Friday.
	Right.
	Well, congratulations.
	I just have one question for you, though.
	Okay.
	What the ever-living hell is more important than this conversation?
	I'm spurned!
	Rejected.
	Thrown off the truck on a gravel road, skidding on my broad forehead, embedding granite in my cranium.
	I am abandoned.
	What?
	What is more important?
	Oh, is it a court date?
	Ah, blow it off.
	Just kidding.
	What is more important?
	I don't have an answer.
	I don't have an answer.
	AKA, I'll listen to it later because slightly inconvenient.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	Well, congratulations.
	Fantastic.
	It's great to hear.
	And I hope you'll stay in touch.
	Thank you.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	So, yeah, when it comes to gambling, I like it.
	And we had some, well, of course, we had a meetup, right?
	And friends and workers, people I work with came over.
	And this was sort of separate from the meetup.
	And one friend of mine was actually a card dealer for quite some time.
	And so I've not played poker in probably 30, 35 years.
	I've sold this story before.
	I'll keep it very brief.
	I had a boss who took a real shine to me, sort of a mentor, and he invited me to come play poker.
	He was a semi-professional poker player and all of the other programmers.
	Now, programmers are often quite certain of their own abilities as...
	Gamblers, because we pride ourselves in pattern recognition, in logic, in probabilities, good math brains, and so on.
	And one of the reasons I ended up as such a good debater was because I've been programming since I was like 11 years old, and programming is a logical argument with the computer to get it to do what you want.
	And so you have to try lots of different things, and you learn to recognize the patterns and the logic and the contradictions.
	So we played...
	Some poker.
	Now, poker is fun, and I played it in the past, and I ended up, I took out 500 bucks back in the day, and I was just going to kiss each bill goodbye.
	I was going to lose it, and we went and bet.
	I walked out of there, I think, with over two grand, because I just kept having the most ridiculously lucky hands.
	Of course, everyone thought I was a ringer, like somebody who was, oh, I'm just so bad at this game, and then I kept changing up the game to Texas Hold'em and some sort of open-faced thing, and every single time it was like, I don't know, is this a good hand?
	And it was like, oh my god.
	Anyway, so it was a legendary poker playing when, of course, I didn't know what I was doing.
	And that's actually an advantage because when you don't know what you're doing, you're really impossible to predict.
	Is he going to move his knight or set fire to the board or cluck like a pigeon and peck my eye?
	So that was a fun night.
	And I thought, well, I'm not going to have more fun playing cards for money than that night.
	That night of like...
	Everything going perfectly with my cards.
	And poker's tough, right?
	Because, at least for me, because a lot of it is just waiting for good hands.
	Like, you're just sitting there going, gee, I hope I get a good hand.
	You got your ace, you can trade in four.
	You got no ace, you can trade in three of your five cards.
	And you're just waiting for good hands, and waiting for good hands.
	And, you know, eventually, if you don't get good hands, you just get bored and bluff, which, you know, I'm not the best bluffer in the known universe.
	It's not exactly the same as throwing money away, but it sure as hell isn't the diametrical opposite of that either.
	So, for me, it's a lot of like, oh, wait to fold.
	Oh, no, this is not a great hand.
	Oh, and then this hand is really good, and so I'm going to win.
	And the only hand I had that was really good was beaten by one spectacularly improbable hand that was even better, held by my wife, if she doesn't love me.
	So, anyway, chatting with someone about...
	Poker, making money playing poker.
	And one of the things that's interesting is that, you know, the music brain, the math brain, the numerical probability brain, often are kind of tied in together.
	And some people, I don't know if you know people like this, maybe you are someone like this, some people just have innate probability machinery baked into their brains.
	They just get a sense.
	They just know.
	My daughter's one of these people.
	Like, when we play Uno, she can get mildly frustrated in a humorous way with us mere mortal adults because she's like, this person, of course they didn't have yellow because five hands ago they did this.
	And I, you know, I have trouble remembering names without name tags.
	This is why my family has to wear name tags.
	So, I just live in the moment, man.
	I live in the moment.
	I don't do memory, man.
	Memory is just a rejection of living in the moment.
	So, my daughter is one of these people who just knows these probability things, like you play.
	We did some videos of playing Among Us, and my daughter was, well, clearly you went here, you did this, this pathing was correct, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	This task, you have to do before this task, so you made a mistake, so you're the imposter.
	She just gets all of this stuff.
	And I'm not saying she doesn't work at it, but there's a lot of innate ability there to just understand probability and so on.
	So, in talking with someone about making money through gambling, I said it's not the most honorable way to make a living.
	Now, of course, that's a pretty wide net.
	Well, of course, only what I do and you do are the only honorable ways to make a living.
	What, what?
	But...
	And the reason I think it's not super honorable, it's not immoral, it's not theft, right?
	It's not fraud.
	But it's kind of immoral in a way because, or it's kind of not ideal in a way.
	I see someone wants to talk, so give me just a minute or two and I'll get to your call, but I won't be interrupted again.
	You had your chance.
	But you'll have a chance again, just give me a minute or two.
	So, it's because if you have one of these fortuitous probability calculation engines in your brain, It's not exactly a fair fight or a fair conflict or combat with someone else.
	I'll give you an example.
	So when I was a kid, in my early teens, I went to the bowling alley in Don Mills, up there tucked in behind the old Don Mills Mall, next to the Baskin Robbins.
	When it opened, 10 cents an ice cream.
	Oh, so good.
	And in the bowling alley, there were some video games.
	Defender.
	I remember Centipede, and there were Space Invaders.
	And I remember some guy, and I was pretty good at Space Invaders, and some guy was like, hey man, I bet you a quarter I could beat your score in Space Invaders, right?
	And that's pretty good.
	And confident, and foolish, and naive, and so on, right?
	So I said, sounds good, man.
	We both put our quarters up, and then we played, right?
	And I did pretty well.
	And then he went to play.
	And he knew some particular trick, and I'm going to paraphrase it.
	I'm sure it's not exactly this, but this is what I remember.
	Lo, it's almost half a century back in the day.
	And the trick was, if you let the top spaceship go by three times, and then you hit the spaceship right away, you get 10,000 points, or something like that.
	There was some sort of hack for you to get, not infinite points glitch, but to get some really good points in that game.
	And he knew that, and he beat my score.
	Now, it's an interesting question.
	Is that fraud?
	If you know some hack that's part of the game, but it's rare to know, is it fraud?
	He was like, I don't know, he was 16 or 17. Is it fraud to take an 11-year-old kid's money if you know that it's not going to be based on skill, but based on a hack?
	And it's an interesting question.
	The reason why I ask that, of course, is because if I had known at the age of 11 that there was this way to get 10,000 bonus points or whatever it was, if I'd have known that there was this hack and that this guy knew it, I wouldn't have played.
	Or, of course, if he had this hack and I knew that this hack existed, and he knew that I knew that this hack existed, he wouldn't have wanted to play.
	It was being in possession of specialized knowledge that makes the bet, right?
	Now, I understand, you know, a fool and his money is soon parted.
	Vanity is a big issue when it comes to money transfer.
	There's a lot of money that gets transferred from Bob to Alice and Alice to Bob based upon your overconfidence is your weakness.
	Because a lot of people are like, man, I'm the best poker player in my small town.
	And clean up, right?
	And then you end up realizing you're a big fish in a little pond and a tiny fish in a big pond.
	So this guy was like, I'm pretty good at Space Invaders.
	I can, you know, probably have a pretty good shot at winning this.
	I was a missile command guy because I loved spinning the ball.
	Hey, who doesn't?
	Who doesn't?
	So was it moral for this guy who knew about the hack in Space Invaders, was it moral for him to take my quarter?
	Well, it was actually one of the best quarters I ever spent.
	Honestly, I'm glad he took my quarter because it taught me to not be overconfident.
	That if somebody's really keen to bet, then they're probably in possession of knowledge that you don't have.
	And you should be wary.
	If somebody's like, I bet you I can beat your score.
	Well, there's probably a reason why they are saying that.
	And so, if you have a really good mathematical probability brain, and you just kind of get it in the way that my daughter does, is it right to take money from people?
	Well, I mean, you're taking money from their naivety, you're taking money from their overconfidence, their vanity in a way, which I understand, and that's not the worst thing in the world to do, is to, in a sense, punish people for their vanity and teach them some humility.
	But, It's not the most ethical way to get money.
	And also, of course, if you're raised well, then you are taught to be humble.
	And you're also taught, I think, not to use your natural talents to get money from other people not in possession of those natural talents.
	So, for instance, if you...
	Have one of those, you know, these weird frames, if you've seen one of these weird frames, these weird sort of body types.
	They don't look strong, but they kind of are crazy strong.
	They don't like big, meaty-armed Brazilian calf muscle biceps, right?
	Brazilian soccer player calf muscle biceps.
	Great name for a band.
	But you don't look strong, but you are strong.
	And so if you go around saying, I'll arm wrestle you for 50 bucks, right?
	And you know you have this kind of freakish strength that doesn't really show up in your physiology.
	If some guy is just, you know, he can't get the post-it off the back of his shoulders because he's too bulked up, has to kind of go 45 degrees to get through double doors in case he accidentally flexes and blows the building down.
	So if somebody doesn't look strong but kind of is strong, then that's a secret knowledge that they have.
	So if they go up to some...
	Big strong guy, and they say, I'll wrestle you for 50 bucks.
	The big strong guy looks at the guy who looks like he's not that strong and says, I can do that, right?
	And without saying, huh, what's the catch?
	Like the guy playing Space Invaders with me.
	This guy's really confident that he can beat my score.
	I'm pretty good at this game.
	So, what is the catch, right?
	And so, if you know you're freakishly strong, but he doesn't look it, is it right or wrong?
	To arm wrestle people for 50 bucks, knowing that you're almost certain to win, because they are going to...
	They're going to underestimate you.
	They're going to underestimate...
	I mean, this happens to me.
	It used to happen to me, not so much, of course, in my life, because I'm a sort of nice, friendly, and positive person, but I have a cold, icy, steely aspect of myself that comes out in situations of combat, which I was talking about in the last Telegram show, where I will just mess people up if they cross me.
	And I can't think of a good excuse as to why, then I just get kind of cold.
	This is a British thing, right?
	Oh, super friendly, have some tea!
	But then if things go wrong, it's like, I will now destroy you socially!
	Or something like that, right?
	So, British people tend to be pretty nice until they're not.
	They then tend to be all kinds of not nice.
	And the nice thing is a good idea in a lot of ways because if you are very nice and people take a lot of advantage of you, you no longer have to be restrained in the not being nice aspect of things because you kind of made the case.
	So if you have a really great innate ability, and this is the case with a lot of poker players, now of course you can go up against someone else who's got great innate ability and that's a fair fight, right?
	If the guy who looks weak but is strong goes up against another guy who looks weak but is strong, it's a fair fight.
	But if you are taking your natural gifts and using them to get money out of other people overconfidence, in other words, they're badly raised, you're kind of mining money off the badly raised.
	Because if you're well raised, you're raised with humility and you're also raised with something I wasn't raised with, which took me an embarrassing amount of time to learn.
	Which was, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.
	It almost certainly is.
	If it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is.
	And so, if some weak guy offers to arm wrestle you for 50 bucks, there's a cat, and you better be wary, and it probably is a good idea not to do it.
	This is the kind of confidence that people have when they're brought in for police questioning, right?
	And they're like, oh, I can run circles around these cops, and it's like...
	You really can't.
	They've been doing it for 20 years.
	Stakes are low for them.
	Stakes are very high for you.
	It's your first time.
	You're gonna lose.
	I don't care how smart you are or how athletic you are.
	If you're playing a tennis player with 20 years' experience and it's your first time picking up a racket, you're gonna lose because there are specialized skills that just can't be bypassed.
	So, in a sense, you're making money off naive people.
	You're making money off people who don't have your own innate abilities.
	And it is really...
	Is it the most honorable way to make a living?
	I mean, it's a zero-sum game going from somebody with greater knowledge to somebody with less knowledge.
	Somebody with great skill and somebody with often great vanity.
	I can do this.
	I can take him.
	I win all my poker hands.
	And then you kind of go up to a level where people just run circles around you.
	I mean, I remember many years ago, a friend of mine has a kid who's totally into chess.
	Chess.com apparently is the place.
	He's totally into chess.
	Now, I'm a very instinctive chess player.
	I don't.
	For me, the definition of hell is having to memorize chess moves.
	Oh, it's the Prokofiev opening, and it's the peak of defense.
	That to me would be, that's my definition of hell on earth, is to memorize.
	Chess moves, because then it's just brain algorithm versus brain algorithm.
	I just sort of play chess very instinctively, you know, has its strengths, has its weaknesses.
	Anyway, so this kid was, I don't know, he was 10 or 11, and we played chess, and that was fine.
	And he cleaned my clock, because he knew all of these particular moves, and it was good for him, right?
	I mean, no issue, that's fantastic, right?
	So he cleaned my clock in about, I don't know, 10 minutes.
	And he was not the most gracious winner in the world, but that's fine.
	He's 10 or 11, right?
	I mean, but then later he was like, we should play again.
	And I was like, but why?
	But why?
	I said, so you've spent the last couple of years memorizing all of these chess moves and playing competitively and learning all of these things.
	And I said, look, good for you, but I haven't.
	So, I've been playing racquet sports since I was four or five years old.
	My wife is pretty new to it, so when we play, you know, tennis or pickleball or something like that, we play for fun.
	We play for...
	I love me a good trash talk.
	She's pretty good at it, too.
	And we play for exercise and all of that.
	But we don't play.
	I'm not playing to win, right?
	I'll smash the ball.
	If she's up at the smasher, lob it, and then smash it.
	I'm not in it for that, right?
	And if I was, then she wouldn't want to play with me, and who would blame it, right?
	There have been these studies on mice that if the bigger, stronger mice don't let the younger, weaker mice win at least a third of the time, then the younger mice, the weaker mice, don't want to play.
	And there's a pretty funny video online of a guy playing sort of pool noodle whack-a-mole with a bunch of kids in a playroom, and he's just going full-on Terminator.
	Alien predator hunter on them.
	You know, these laser sounds and all of that.
	And, you know, that could be kind of funny, but when you play fighting with your kids, you don't want to use your full strength and win, win, win.
	So, yeah, is it the most honorable way to make a living?
	I'm not entirely convinced that it is.
	It's not the same as fraud.
	But if people are quite confident in their ability to beat you, please be cautious.
	Please be cautious.
	I'm not talking about bluffing, which is part of the game in poker, but if someone comes up and says, I can, you know, noodle arms, brittle bones, I can beat you in arm wrestling, well, they might have, assume that they know something that you don't.
	Assume that they know something that you don't, and this can be, you know, quite serious and quite important, right?
	So, please be cautious.
	Please be wary.
	And do not assume...
	I mean, some people bluff, right?
	So, some people...
	But if you have to play the game in order to win, like the Space Invaders thing, then it's not just a bluffing thing, right?
	So, I should, of course, have been wary and cautious about this guy who's like, I can beat you.
	Like, it was no equivocation.
	It's like, I think.
	It's like, I can beat you, right?
	I can beat you in Space Invaders.
	No, you can't.
	I play well.
	So, but he did.
	And he didn't even...
	He just took my quarter after he got that crazy high number.
	He just took my quarter and left.
	Didn't even finish the game.
	And what could I do, right?
	I mean, yes, he was right.
	Yes, he was right.
	He was right.
	And again, one of the best quarters I ever spent because it replaced a lot of bad parenting that wasn't teaching me to be wary of people and things in the world.
	So...
	Let's see.
	I've got other topics.
	I know somebody was floating up and I'm all done now.
	If you wanted to request your preference to speak or unmute yourself or raise your hand, I'd be more than happy to hear about it, to think about it.
	Yes, let me just allow to speak.
	FL, the entire state of Florida, America's ding-dang dongle.
	You are...
	Free to talk.
	All you have to do is unmute.
	Yeah.
	You can hear me now?
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	I actually put FL for first and last.
	Oh, the Alpha and the Omega.
	Yes, go on.
	I prefer America's ding-dang-dongle, but if you want to go with Alpha and Omega, I am your willing philosophy servant.
	Go ahead.
	Wait, who's Alpha and who's Omega?
	It depends on that.
	I'll have to edit my name or edit your memory of my name.
	Well, I want to be the Omega because with regards to sexual politics, I like to come last.
	But anyway, go ahead.
	Yeah, so I kind of just...
	By the way, I was the one who raised my hand while you were talking.
	I didn't mean it to be rude.
	I actually just thought that you were...
	At least it's hard for me to empathize with someone who has such a long ability to talk.
	When I talk, usually if someone raises their hand, I'm like, oh my god, yes, please save me.
	No, no, that's fine.
	Listen, you did exactly what I asked, which is if you have comments, raise your hand and we'll work it out.
	So no, it wasn't rude.
	I appreciate it.
	I don't want to just sit here and do a monologue if there are people on the line.
	So, yeah, I appreciate you bringing it up and what's on your mind.
	And just out of curiosity with your story, I just had a few comments about what you said.
	Like, I was curious, like, the Space Invader game, was that a game where someone, like, glitched?
	Like, they found a glitch and they used it against you?
	Was that what you were saying?
	Or was that just a theoretical example?
	Yeah, I think that there was some kind of glitch that if you let three overhead spacecraft pass by and you shot the first one in the first third, you got 10,000 points or something like that.
	And that was a huge amount.
	Back in the day.
	So, yes, there was some hidden backdoor glitchy glitch to getting a high score, and he knew it, and I didn't, and then I paid a quarter to learn it.
	Now, do you mind if I give you some pushback in that, or do you want to just go off on one of the top?
	I love to push back, and tell me if I'm wondering.
	Now, before I push back, I just want to let you know that I'm not advocating for you to deceive me the way you were to deceive me.
	It's just a complete devil's advocate position I want to play because I like to see how your brain works.
	I have a lot of fun listening to you.
	I don't know that I was deceived.
	That's the interesting question, right?
	Yeah, and that's sort of what...
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, right.
	And the thing is, because I know sometimes, and I know including yourself, you would say that nature is, by definition, kind of like a deception with how people...
	Play the mating and dating role and everything?
	Well, it's like card counting.
	Like, if you're found to be a card counter, card counting is not cheating.
	It's just kind of autistic, right?
	So card counting is when you just have this amazing ability to remember the position of cards.
	And if you're perceived to be card counting or you win too much in some casinos, they'll kick your ass out.
	Now, they're not accusing you of cheating.
	Yeah.
	But they're just saying, look, you are too strong with the probability engine.
	We can't win, so you gotta go.
	Wait, is that why people who win the lottery a lot, it's not that they're cheating all the time, or at least some of the time when they are bent, because they're just too good at reading numbers and cards or poker face, whatever?
	What, the lottery?
	Yeah, well, actually, I know.
	The lottery is not card casting, though, because the lottery numbers are supposed to be random, right?
	Because I always see news articles about people, like famous people getting banned from casinos, and I'm not really sure if they paid a bunch of people off.
	Oh, no, so that's the Ben Affleck thing, right?
	So Ben Affleck is a blindingly intelligent guy who somehow manages to put up with J-Lo, but I guess that's the power of the Latino butt action.
	But, so as far as I remember, he's a big gambler, right?
	And he was banned from casinos for card counting, or for basically...
	You are doing much better than random, if that makes sense.
	And you're doing much better than just skill and knowledge.
	Let me just see here.
	Because from what I understand, the casinos, they bet on you for most people to fail.
	And if that bet isn't won, then they'll have to close down.
	If even just one Ben Affleck is one of every 10 million people that come in the doors every 10 years, that's enough to bankrupt them?
	Is that sort of why?
	So let's see here.
	This is from 2014. Ben Affleck has no trouble admitting.
	That he counted cards while playing blackjack in a Las Vegas casino.
	That is true, he told the October issue of Details magazine.
	Quote, I took some time to learn the game and became a decent blackjack player.
	And once I became decent, the casinos asked me to not play blackjack.
	So he was banned from playing the game.
	He said, I mean, the fact that being good at the game is against the rules that a casino should tell you something about a casino.
	There's a lot of hospitality, back-slapping, when they think you've got to come in and dump money.
	And if they think you might leave with some money, it's like, you know what?
	Why don't you try craps or roulette?
	Though counting cards is not illegal, casinos frown upon it.
	Blackjack said Affleck was the only game he played.
	He said, I don't bet in football games, and I don't gamble at all, really outside of that.
	But I knew with blackjack that there's a way you can improve your odds, so I started trying to learn.
	And then I just got to the point in my life where I'm like, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to try and do it really, really well.
	It didn't throw them out of the casino.
	It just said you can't play blackjack there because we know you can't cut.
	Yeah, and just to add to that, there's another reason you can get banned from a casino.
	I actually got banned.
	I mean, this might be TMI, but I got banned from a local casino because I was sleeping in it.
	But they also will ban you if you hardly spend any money or if you just spend too much time talking with people and trying to share just conversation with people.
	They actually frown upon that as well.
	And it's funny because the casino that I... I haven't been to too many casinos, so I don't know if this is the routine, if it's my state, or if it's just this casino unique to this whatever, for a legal reason.
	Maybe some had a problem, but they had a gambling addiction phone number.
	And it was like, wait, so you're...
	It's almost like if you go...
	I know when you're trying to buy cigarettes, they usually tell you up front that the cigarettes will be harmful, but that's because of lawsuits.
	I'm just curious, do they do that at all casinos?
	Do they have a gambling addiction hotline that's advertised on every single...
	Well, I bet they don't if...
	I'm sure they don't if they're not forced to, right?
	But in order to avoid lawsuits, right?
	So, you know, you've probably seen this thing where they say, please gamble responsibly.
	Don't gamble more than you can afford to lose, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So the reason they do that, I assume, is either because the government's forcing them to or because they are concerned about lawsuits.
	Right.
	Like, you knowingly encouraged my husband's gambling addiction and how dare you and, you know, he's helpless in the face.
	So if they say, you know, and they have this with alcohol too, like, please drink responsibly and don't drink too much and all that kind of stuff, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	It sounds like a liability thing.
	Separate from that, I just wanted to ask, because I know you and your family, you guys are asking for games that you want to play.
	Do you guys usually look for games when you do play?
	Online games?
	Do you look for games where it's a lot of bantering that requires bantering and creative storytelling and stuff?
	Because I played Among Us with you guys, and that was fun, and I was like, holy crap.
	You guys are really, like, sincerely devoted to the, like, you know, I mean, I was committed, too, because I wanted to be a part of it, but I was just like, wow, I've never seen, like, I've never been a part of a group where everyone was just, like, so in the flow of just explaining their path after each round.
	Well, yeah, so this is a combination of my daughter and I. So my daughter, homeschooled, only child, so...
	Normally, you're testing your wits against other kids all the time, right?
	I mean, you go out and you play hide-and-go-seek, or you have strategy games, you play chess, like all the things that I was doing as a kid.
	Because I happened to be born at the tail end of the baby boom, and I happened to live on an estate with a bunch of low-rent houses, rent-controlled apartments, sorry.
	And so every time I walked out of my house or of my apartment, there were like 20 kids I could play with.
	That's all gone.
	Like, almost all of that, at least in most, that's all gone.
	There's sort of no...
	Yeah, for me, when I would walk out...
	Oh, sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	I appreciate the enthusiasm, but just let me finish, or at least start my story.
	So, for my daughter, I want to make sure that she plays with some higher stakes, right?
	Because life is kind of playing with high stakes, right?
	I mean, if you do a good job, you get to keep your job.
	If you don't do a good job, you don't get to keep your job.
	If you pay your taxes well, you get to not go to jail.
	If you don't pay your taxes well, you've got to go to jail.
	So things are kind of high stakes.
	If you date the right person, then you end up with a pretty happy life.
	If you date the wrong person, then you end up with a pretty miserable life and maybe some sexually transmitted diseases that might render you infertile, right?
	So I've always wanted to make sure that my daughter has a robust amount of competition so that she gets used to there being some stakes in the game, if that makes sense.
	It does make sense.
	Yeah, so from when she was very little, really, since she could first understand the concept, and this was actually just happily this weekend with her friends as well, so whenever we play a game, I say, okay, what are we playing for?
	What are we playing for?
	And there should be something that's important.
	And a lot of it is like, we're playing for what we do tonight.
	Or we're playing for what we do tonight.
	I would very rarely make it about money.
	But I will sometimes.
	If she's certain about something and I'm certain that it's not true, I'll say, I don't think that's true.
	She says, yes, it is.
	I'll say, bet!
	Right?
	And sad to say, a lot of times she wins because she's got this bear trap of a memory like her mom, which is why I can't do anything wrong.
	She'll know.
	She'll remember forever.
	So for my daughter, I've always wanted to make sure that she's comfortable with relatively high stakes or what seems like high stakes.
	As a kid, right?
	So, when it comes to Among Us, she plays to win.
	She plays high stakes.
	She plays to have victory.
	And I've tried to give her a higher appetite for victory by having victory or loss mean something as she's been growing up.
	Because you don't want to just have it not really matter to the kid whether you win or lose.
	You know, like those Endless Monopoly games and so on, right?
	Doesn't really matter.
	And I get that.
	But you do want to give them the sense that winning or losing really means something in this world.
	Like, that shit really means something, to win or lose.
	You get the girl.
	You don't get the girl.
	It could be the difference between happiness and sadness.
	You get the job.
	You don't get the job can mean the difference between having money and moving back home.
	Like, winning and losing really...
	So you've really got to be into winning and losing.
	And the big contradiction is, of course, you have to really be into winning and losing.
	And...
	You have to shake hands with your opponent afterwards, right?
	That's what I was always taught because I was not the best loser when I was a kid because I'm pretty high testosterone, high aggression, high want to win, right?
	And that's right.
	So, you know, I would sometimes throw my tennis racket when I was a little kid if I didn't win and stuff like that.
	So I had to, you know, really learn and I had good coaches sort of help me understand, you know, you play hard and then you shake hands.
	And that's a very sort of male thing, which men will fight each other ferociously and then shake hands.
	Women will pretend to be friends and then destroy each other behind their backs.
	It's kind of a whole different thing.
	And for me, because I grew up in a masculine environment where debate and conflict and sometimes fistfights in sports, like you played by the rules and you won or lost honorably.
	You really cared about winning or losing, but you shook hand afterwards, right?
	And that's sort of a male.
	And what's been a wild thing that's happened over the last sort of 50 years is this increasing incursion into male combat spaces of female sabotage mechanics, right?
	So when I was a kid, a teenager, I would debate ferociously.
	I debated colonialism.
	I debated the abortion.
	I debated the death penalty.
	I debate a lot.
	And I would debate evolution.
	With a friend of mine who was a staunch Christian who was talking to me about the improbability of the odds of the enzymes and all of that coming together.
	And so, as men, as boys, we fought really hard and we were very passionate about winning.
	And if we lost, we shook hands.
	And of course, you can't really lose a debate because if you lose a debate, it means that you're giving up a position that's false and hopefully accepting one that's true.
	So the idea, this deplatforming is an oddly feminine concept.
	This is not to say that all women support it, but it's a little bit more on the female side.
	Because if I lost a debate, the idea that I would try and get someone fired would be so incomprehensible to me.
	It's like, well, okay, you beat me in tennis, but I'm going to slash your tires.
	Like, that's psycho, right?
	You beat me in a debate about the death penalty, you made me look like a fool, and you showed me how my positions were contradictory, but I'm going to get your bank account shut down, so there.
	Like, that's just so incomprehensible, and this is one of the things that was a bit of a blind spot for me, even though de-platforming was floating around, because it's just, it's completely, it comes from matriarchal cultures as a whole.
	It does not come from patriarchal cultures.
	It is, well, you lost.
	You lost?
	Well, you should have practiced more.
	You lost?
	Well, you should have practiced more.
	Now I'm going to try to remove Among Us from the Play Store because I got beat by you guys.
	Well, no, because that would be to punish the makers.
	It's more like you beat me in Among Us, so I'm going to make sure that your computer gets infected with the virus that destroys all your files and your photos.
	I mean, it's just so vicious and petty and underhanded and vengeful.
	And that's why, for me, deplatforming was okay because it's like, okay, If this is how the game is played, I don't want to play.
	If I'm playing a game called chess, I'm going to win or I'm going to lose, based upon the rules of chess.
	But if I win, and then someone poisons my fucking drink, I don't want to play chess anymore.
	Because it's not a game of chess.
	And to add to that, why can't we just treat each other like equals?
	Like, you lose, and you take your licks, and you learn your lessons, and you move on, and maybe you'll beat them the next time, or maybe you'll beat someone that you wouldn't beat otherwise.
	That's a male perspective.
	Yeah.
	That's a male perspective.
	That's not, in general, tons of exceptions, of course, right?
	But in general, that's a male perspective, which is, you suck!
	Right?
	Should have done better, should have practiced harder, should have, right?
	You know, the statement when I was a kid was, hey, Ben, he won't.
	Don't be sucky.
	Don't be a poor loser.
	He won it fair and square.
	Right?
	He won it.
	Like, so when I was talking about the IQ stuff, I was very careful, had 17 of the world's renowned experts on there to talk about the IQ stuff to make sure that it was all scientifically valid and well understood and well known and all of that, right?
	Because that's winning the debate, so to speak, fair and square.
	But it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't matter.
	Would you want to play Pickleball if you played Pickleball, won against someone, who then cut the brakes on your car?
	Heck no.
	No, because then it's like, wait, I won Pickleball and now I'm crashing into a tree because somebody sabotaged my car.
	And nobody in their mind wouldn't want to even try to entertain that, even if they were confident that they were for sure going to, well, even if they played dead in the game and let themselves lose, they still wouldn't want to play just out of their own self-respect and everything.
	Well, then the game is a front for just a psychopath getting personal vengeance against you for winning, right?
	That's not civilization at all.
	That's not a civilized discourse, right?
	It would be kind of like if you intimated to your math teacher that if she failed you, then you would break into her house and put an STD on her toilet paper.
	Like, that's not a math class anymore, right?
	That's terrorism.
	Exactly.
	So, yeah, I mean, so if it's like, okay, so I won at tennis.
	And now somebody has put battery acid into my Diet Coke, and it's like, okay, I'm not playing tennis.
	That's not a game called tennis anymore.
	That's just a precursor to subterranean cowardly violence, right?
	I mean, it's one thing to say, I'm going to go in a boxing match, right?
	But it's another thing to go into a boxing match and somebody puts some sort of numbing poison into your Gatorade that slows your reflexes and then you get the crap beaten out of you.
	Well, that's not, I'm not boxing.
	That's not boxing based on skill and ability.
	That's just who's willing to go psycho sabotage more.
	Yeah.
	And just to sort of add to your optimism and how you were canceled and this fact that you were somewhat lucky is that, I don't know if you've been following, but how there's a lot of people who have been like docs semi recently.
	I'm not going to name names, but like, and people were going to their house and like...
	I guess one got pepper sprayed, another one got accosted by the cops afterwards, and he had to keep saying, no, I want my lawyer, I want my lawyer.
	But there's at least a couple of cases that I saw online where people were getting doxxed and serially harassed just over their viewpoints, and they were canceled on and off, but they still went back, unlike your position on that.
	I mean, it goes to show that it's probably better off if someone's willing to cancel you, then at the same time, they're probably also just not good news in the long run.
	Oh, yeah.
	No.
	So cancellation is a precursor to violence.
	Yeah.
	Which is like you shut up or the next step is violence, right?
	For sure.
	Yeah.
	And there's no question, right?
	And also it's a precursor to reputational destruction because they cancel you and then they attack your reputation and you don't have a platform to fight back.
	And the attack upon character in the most extreme forms, you know, like Nazi, like the attack on character is a signal to the crazy people that if crazy people attack, whoever it is, right, whoever's put these labels, if crazy people attack, you're going to get cheered, right?
	And so it is a way for crazy people to get the stamp of approval for violence with this level of character assassination.
	You know, character assassination is not an argument, right?
	So what did I always say?
	Like, somebody would do an ad hominem or whatever, and character assassinations are just ad hominem.
	That's not an argument.
	I get a question in regard, I think it's relevant to what we're talking about.
	Or mostly you're talking about, I'm trying to listen to this as much as I can.
	I actually, I did a comedy show, and like one person clapped, and you could tell it was a sympathy clap.
	I'm wondering, obviously that's not cancel culture, but like...
	Does that mean I'm probably like, you know, if I've done it, like I've done this, not the same exact bit, but I've done the same exact place like five or six times.
	And each time I either like there's one sympathy clap or like most people are like, okay, okay.
	Like, and they give you like a very small amount of time to perform.
	It's just like, I'm wondering, like, I'm looking around and I'm like, okay, there's a lot of LGBTQ people here and stuff.
	And I'm like, I don't know if it's probably just like, you know, different, different.
	They just want different content or something.
	I'm not really sure.
	But if people are not really happy that you're there, should you just kind of listen to that?
	Or should you contort yourself into a new dimension just to sort of please them?
	Oh, no.
	Don't do it.
	Dress it directly.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, one of the things about comedy is comedy is supposed to be edgy.
	I mean, the fool in King Lear...
	He's risking death, and he never shows up in the second half of the play after the scene on the moor with the storm, because there's not much comedy left after that.
	Can you judge one of the bits of a joke that I had?
	Just tell me what you think of it.
	Go for it.
	Okay, so I'm not going to say it as I'm on stage, but I'll kind of explain it.
	I'm not sure if plastic bags got recently banned in Canada, but in the US, I think it was like five months ago or something, they banned plastic bags from all major retailers in every single place.
	Bags, items.
	I have to use paper bags.
	So I went there and I wore a trench coat and I'm like, I got the stuff, man.
	And I pretend I was talking to someone else and the other person's like, I'm turning left and right like I'm talking to someone else.
	And people are like, hey man, do you have a baggie?
	No, even better, just a bag.
	Anyway, go on.
	Exactly, yeah.
	And I made a few Bitcoin jokes and other jokes too, but those are the kinds of jokes I was making and no one laughed.
	I looked at the crowd afterwards and, like, they're all kind of, like, talking amongst themselves and, like, kind of just, like, ignoring me.
	So I'm like, okay, so maybe, I don't know, like, is that not edgy enough?
	No, so I would say that when something is banned, pretending that it's dangerous contraband is kind of an overused joke.
	Oh.
	Right, so if they ban straws and you're like, hey, man, you want some straws?
	You know, so something is banned, you need to take it to some other level.
	In order to be really original, and I'm not saying that's the whole bit for you or whatever it is, right?
	But, you know, just saying something's been banned, therefore, you know, skeevy guys in trench coats are going to be selling it is a very obvious thing.
	It's been done a lot before, and I would say that you need to take it to some...
	It's sort of on the level of, boy, boy, airline food is really bad, isn't it?
	You know, that kind of stuff.
	And so I think you just need to take it to another level, right?
	Like, there was this comedian, he's very funny, And he was talking to a black guy, he's a white comedian, he was talking to a black guy and he said, like, I know blackface is wrong, but what if you and I were on a night mission to save humanity, right?
	Would it be okay if I used blackface?
	You know, and so that's an interesting, you know, it's kind of funny, right?
	And it's an interesting question about, this is sort of the question that AIs have trouble with, where you say, if being racist would save all of humanity, if one One instance of racism would save all of humanity, right?
	Would it be acceptable?
	And if the AI says, no, right?
	Okay.
	Well, then we have a challenge of priorities, right?
	We have a challenge of priorities, right?
	So it's like the grooming scandal in this grooming scandal, the rape, mass rape in the UK. It's like, okay, well, how many rapes does it take for people to Be concerned about patterns.
	And if you say, well, you're never allowed to be concerned about any patterns, it's like, okay, so a billion women can get raped and you can't ever get...
	Is your perspective based upon any morality or is it just a fixed thing that you cling to no matter what the facts are?
	It's just a way of saying, does somebody really care about virtue?
	Now, the other thing that's tough with comedy these days as well is, man, comedians had a better time before it was filmed.
	Holy crap.
	Right?
	Comedians had a way better time of it before.
	Because, you know, back in my day, a comedian could say the most...
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	I'm still talking.
	So, back in my day, a comedian could say something edgy or say something that fell flat or say something that went wrong.
	And you kind of shrug it off, you learn, and you move on.
	But now, there's so many people filming, right?
	Like Michael Richards, the guy who played Kramer on Seinfeld, had a kind of racist rant.
	And, you know, listen, I know that the word racism is kind of overused, but I think this one would qualify.
	And so some years ago, now normally that would be like, well, that was really bad, right?
	And his manager would say, listen, you've got to not do that.
	That's really offensive, and so on.
	He'd be like, okay, yeah.
	But because it was filmed and went viral...
	You know, it's a whole different...
	So you can't make a mistake.
	You can't say something that's wrong or bad.
	And I think what he said was wrong and bad.
	And so now, because everyone's filming, and they're not just filming the comedian, they're also filming the audience sometimes, right?
	So let's say that you...
	Not that you would, but let's...
	No, not even you.
	I won't use you as it.
	Let's say some comedian says something, like, really, genuinely, deeply...
	Horribly offensive, right?
	And it's just not a good joke, and it really comes at some significant expense, and there's not even the dubious rescue mission of it being really funny.
	Well, then, if somebody laughs, what if somebody's filming your act, and then they switch to that person who's laughing?
	And say, oh, this is a guy who found this really funny.
	Internet, do your thing, right?
	And then he gets doxxed, and his employee gets contacted, and do you know that this is the opinion of your employer and so on, right?
	Employee, right?
	So, you never know what's going to go viral.
	So, this all didn't stop, but sort of back in the day, I think this is pre-Andrew Anglin days, there was a woman who made a very coarse and tasteless It's
	like if you're in some celebration where a bunch of people are shooting guns.
	Shooting bullets into the air, I mean, the odds of them landing on you and hurting you are pretty low, but not zero, right?
	You know that thing, the odds of being killed by sheep on a Scottish meadow are not high, but they're not zero either, and there's a bunch of menacing-looking sheep off in the distance, right?
	It's kind of funny, right?
	But this, yeah, the odds are low, but not zero.
	So let's say that you're in some comedy show, right, and the comedian delivers something which, You know, people find offensive, but you found funny and you laugh, and then somebody films you, the odds of it going viral are very tiny, but not zero, right?
	And your life can be changed forever.
	Yeah, and we already self-censor ourselves, because one of my bits, a guy from the audience, he very enthusiastically asked me what I thought about BlackRock and the Jews, and I'm like, okay.
	Well, that's probably somebody who's just trying to lead you to a dark place, right?
	Yeah, so I just kind of ignore it.
	My response would be, hey man, there's an open stage here every Wednesday.
	If you've got something to say, man, the stage is all yours.
	Hey man, it really is on Wednesdays too.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I was just going to say that your point is still valid, but these amateur comedy mics, they make it a rule in the building that nobody is to record anyone but themselves.
	And doing their own bit.
	So that's the rule of every comedy club where it's open mic amateur hour.
	They all have that agreement.
	And another thing too is I read this book about how to do comedy for beginners and everything.
	In the book, it tells you basically you want to introduce yourself to everyone there.
	Just get a feel for everyone.
	And ask them just to see what they would find funny.
	Hedge a little bit of what they're...
	Gain a little bit of info about their personality.
	What things they find taboo and stuff.
	So I try to...
	I try to meet everyone, shake everyone's hand, introduce myself, and go from there.
	But yeah, they have that rule that you're not supposed to record anyone but yourself.
	Or if you want to have someone record you, they have to ask, and you have to, like, you know, that has to be, like, for the purpose of that.
	I get all of that, but that's, you know, kind of like the Constitution, right?
	The original one, not the one that was replaced in 1965. So the Constitution is, you know, a bunch of rules, but if they're not followed, right?
	So you can say that, and let's say that someone does film someone else and they don't notice or nobody notices, then it goes viral.
	What are you going to do?
	Yeah, at that point, you're right.
	It's too late.
	And I also wanted to add another thing is that I'm in my mid-30s, but I used to record myself even back in the day, and that's actually how I kind of got into comedy because my films used to make people laugh, but we didn't have internet back then.
	So I got your point about recording.
	I know it had to do with the internet.
	It didn't have to do with those huge...
	Very, very large, like 20,000-pound cameras that some of us used to have.
	I understand what you're saying.
	But no, I get your point, what you're saying, about recording and everything going possibly viral.
	Even if it's only 1,000 views and one person is kind of like they recognize you and they really want to do something dirty, then even 1,000 views is one more over 999. That's too much, so that makes sense.
	Well, it is a...
	continual feature of late-stage civilizations that they lose the ability to laugh at themselves.
	Yeah.
	And it's really quite tragic.
	And you'll notice this is kind of true of hysterical and neurotic personalities as well, that a robust and healthy personality has the ability to laugh at itself.
	That is from a position of strength.
	And so as society gets weaker, it views laughter not as a friendly poke in the ribs, but as an attack upon all that is good, noble, kind, and virtuous.
	And the more that society ends up with these ridiculously false positions, the more comedy is viewed as an enemy.
	Comedy is philosophy often in a state of tyranny.
	There were a bunch of old Soviet jokes that used to be told under the Soviet Empire.
	The guy who...
	Who shows up to work late is punished for stealing from the proletariat.
	The guy who shows up to work early is punished for making his co-workers look bad.
	And the guy who shows up on time is punished because clearly he has a watch made by foreigners.
	Right, so just these kinds of jokes, right?
	And, you know, kind of bitter stuff, right?
	And comedy is philosophy and pushback in a time of tyranny.
	Because if you can get people to laugh at bad ideas, Rather than be frightened of them, then those bad ideas lose their power.
	It is a deflation spell.
	Would music add to that?
	And I don't mean music like someone playing music in the background and doing comedy, but if you were to make a song that's philosophical about peaceful parenting, whatever, and kind of hit the right tones, it speaks to everyone who has at least some kind of semblance of a soul.
	That might not, but that might be somewhat buried in propaganda or just never heard certain things before.
	And they listen to the lyrics because by accident they just happen to like the melody.
	Like, do you think music kind of has even a more profound effect or is it equal to comedy in that sense if that's good music?
	Well, it has much more of an effect than comedy because many more people listen to music far more continuously than they listen to comedy.
	I mean, I happen to be a guy, there used to be this Dr. Demento show on Q107 in Toronto on Sunday nights and I would...
	I'd tape it, and I would listen back to it, because there were times when I thought of doing comedy, and I did stand-up, I think, once.
	And it was fun, but it wasn't particularly my thing.
	Plus, you have to spend time with a lot of comedians, which is not always the funniest thing known to man.
	But people listen to a lot more music, and music, almost universally these days, is about programming people to love addiction and nihilism, right?
	It's always promoting one-itis.
	You know, you're the one, baby, without you.
	Oh, yeah.
	Isn't that song, I Can't Feel My Face When I'm With You?
	What are you, dating a dentist?
	So, it is about promoting sexual or romantic addiction, which destroys relationships and lowers the birth rate, or it's about promoting guilt.
	I mean, this is an old song written by Brian May of Queen called White Man about how bad white people were.
	You know, this is kind of a continual.
	Or, you know, don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?
	They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
	So it's all about, you know, we're losing nature and destroying the world and, you know, or, you know, you're the one or, you know, that kind of stuff.
	And so there's almost nothing in music that has anything to do with...
	A truth or virtue or courage.
	And this is not the music that I grew up with.
	It was, you know, Christian music.
	It was very uplifting and it was patriotic music that was very uplifting and so on.
	And even when I was a kid in Canada, we sang the national anthem, which is very sort of patriotic and so on.
	None of that stuff.
	It's all shame, guilt, and trying to get you involved in sexual or romantic addiction so that you overwhelm any potential pair of bond with neediness and don't end up getting together with anyone.
	So, yeah, unfortunately, music has just been really taken over to just...
	It's used as a vehicle to spread the worst stuff known to man.
	I mean, obviously, rap is pretty obvious when it comes to this kind of stuff.
	But even country, like, you know, the old joke about if you play a country song backwards, the guy goes from being single to getting married and he ends up getting his truck back.
	And, you know, like, it's all kind of...
	So, these are country songs, you know, get your tongue out of my mouth, I'm kissing you goodbye, you know.
	I took a Louisville slugger to all the headlights on his car because he's a cheater So it's all just about promoting hostility and fear between the sexes, right?
	There's a very famous song by the Dixie Chicks called Goodbye Earl about two women who murder an abusive husband and then set up a A ham stand on the Tennessee Highway and have a wonderful life together.
	And so it's just all of it.
	It's just relentlessly promoting.
	What's your view of the marching band songs?
	I was like really like kind of like that.
	Like those kinds of like because when I heard those songs, I started getting all kinds of hopeful and thinking of like.
	Like grandiose things?
	Is that kind of like one of those kinds of, like those marching bands?
	Well, yeah, the marching band songs are ways, I mean, they're literally for soldiers marching, right?
	So they originally, the drummer stuff came out of the need to keep people in time in martial situations.
	So there's a certain amount of sort of enthusiasm for war and all that kind of stuff.
	And I mean, this is the 20th century and certainly in Europe and even including Russia.
	The 20th century was all about, like, war is the end of civilization.
	I mean, arguably, and I think you could make a good case that Europe died in 1945. Everything after that has just been death twitches.
	And so I think people used to have much more of a positive view of war when war was more based on skill, right?
	So if you were really good at swordplay, You had a pretty good advantage.
	And this is why in Gladiator, like the movies about sword fighting or Excalibur or whatever, how good you are at sword fighting is a big deal.
	So you can practice, you can become good.
	And this was true, of course, in the First World War with flying, but not with trench warfare.
	Trench warfare is some guy 20 miles away pushes a button and you get blown up.
	There's no skill involved.
	You have to run into machine gun nests.
	There's no skill involved.
	And it's just complete luck of the draw.
	So, in the West, war evolved as a skills-based pursuit, where if you had the right general, the general would win.
	If you had the right amount of martial courage, if you had the right strategies, and so on.
	I mean, you think of how difficult it is with ships in sort of the Spanish Armada versus the British fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar, how difficult it is.
	To do broadsides, like to get the cannons facing another ship and then, you know, maneuver your ship often in stormy seas or in wild winds to turn and get the right broadside, fire the cannons at the right time, go on board.
	Like, that's all very skillful stuff, very skill-based stuff.
	And particularly when you didn't have instant communications as you have now.
	So war was kind of glorified because it was a very small minority of people who conducted war, for the most part.
	And it was significantly based upon skill, brilliance, ingenuity, intelligence, and so on, right?
	But then, with the First World War, it was just bloody, stupid, retarded human disassembly for four years, 10 million people slaughtered, and nothing was either won or lost in any substantial way.
	Same thing with the Second World War.
	war, you know, there are these terrible videos of old veterans of the Second World War in European countries, like, crying at what their countries become, and, you know.
	So, unfortunately, in Europe, when war went from high-skill, small minority of people to virtually no skill and just about everyone who's male under 40, I mean, that's...
	And you can see the same of course, in Russia and Ukraine at the moment where, you know, the drone finds you and...
	Good luck, right?
	So, now, the sort of martial stuff and, you know, pride in your ability, you know, it used to be that even if you were fast at reloading a musket, that could give you a real edge in combat, right?
	But now, the machine guns or calling in airstrikes and so on, it's not really skill-based at all.
	I mean, even sending out scouts to find the enemy used to be a big deal.
	But with aerial reconnaissance, it became pretty obvious, particularly with satellite maps now, too.
	So, war has gone from high skill to low to low skill, and from very few people to just about everyone who's male, right?
	All the Ukrainian women get to flee Ukraine and party it up.
	Or dance.
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, this is why, in the West, a war.
	And, of course, the anti...
	War propaganda that came out of the communists left in America in particular during both the Korean War and in particular with the Vietnam War.
	So war suddenly became really bad when you were fighting against communists, right?
	War is good until you're fighting against communists and then war is just bad, you know, in the same way that the left used to be really into freedom of speech until they took over the organs of mass consumption and production of media and now censorship is really...
	Really good, and they used to be really anti-war, until you have two significantly Christian nations fighting each other, and suddenly they're all kind of pro-war and all of that.
	Sorry, it's a bit of a long ramble, but yeah.
	Music, I think, is largely used to program people into self-destructive mindsets, and it is kind of hypnotic.
	Mike Senevich on Twitter has a lot of good stuff on this in terms of, like, what music is doing to program you through the repetition of lyrics.
	And if you just read the lyrics...
	I mean, Taylor Swift songs are all about men will betray you, and things are terrible, and you can't trust anyone.
	And there's a reason she's pushed.
	Obviously, she's a very talented singer and songwriter, dancing.
	Eh, not so much.
	But...
	I just broke up with another abusive boyfriend.
	Listen to me.
	Yeah, and this sort of girl power of, you know, dancing happily on the grave of your ex-boyfriend's hearts and being all kinds of girl boss, and it's, oh, it's terrible.
	It's absolutely terrible, because there's no song that I have ever read of hers, and we did some lyrical analysis a couple of weeks ago, but there's no song that I've ever read where there's any kind of introspection as to, it's always like, well, he turned out to be a jerk, so I left him and I'm happier than I've ever been, right?
	As opposed to, what's wrong with me that I keep choosing jerks?
	There are non-jerks out there.
	Why do I keep choosing jerks?
	That's not going to happen.
	Yeah, in relation to that, somewhat dovetailing that, I guess my final question, if I may, is that why is it that a lot of people, at least supposedly between the IQ of 130 and 200,
	which I know is a very minor amount of people, but I've just read about and have personally known people in that range who just have issues with either Not having any children or they're literally losing the lives of their children through accidents, car accidents or something.
	A lot of the people that I've read about, well, one that I know personally, it's a lot of negativity around...
	Well, not negativity, but just death or not having kids at all.
	They said they can't find a way to have kids or they can't find a woman that will have kids with them.
	I'm not saying they're not smart, but just their claims are not verified.
	So they're very intelligent and everything, but for some reason they don't have kids or they have problems with keeping their kids alive.
	Well, I don't know about the second part because hopefully they're being careful.
	Well, I mean, so how many people here?
	I mean, I assume everyone here is very smart.
	And how much fun was it for you being very smart?
	You know, when you're very smart, you kind of have to kowtow to the mob because you make them feel bad.
	Because, you know, everyone thinks that they're smart until you come across someone who's really smart.
	And then you kind of put in your place, you put in your limitation, and so on, right?
	Yeah, Jared made a good post on Locals about that.
	When you ask the question, why?
	So many people, either they take it as an insult or a threat to their authority or that you're trying to humiliate them, expose them for a weakness or something, or that you're going to contradict them and show how much more superior you are.
	We're just kind of spitballing about different things that we thought as to why people don't want to ask a simple question or they view the question of why in regards to any statement that someone will make, even if it's just an innocent fly-off-the-cuff statement.
	And it's not something that's academically rigorous.
	Some people will really, like, they'll really think that you're trying to pull apart, like, their entire personality or that you're, like, in a harmful way or just, like, a deleterious way.
	So it's just, like, yeah.
	So I just, I think that's kind of what, because we're talking about in terms of intelligence, too, because, like, I've been in rooms before, and I don't think, like, that I'm too smart of a person, but some, I like to ask questions, and I'm curious, and if people let me, then I'll try to share, like, some.
	Insights I have, I think they're necessary.
	And I find that I run, at least with people who aren't from the same demographic as me, if you know what I mean, I find that they usually take that as a threat or something to be attacked or to shame me for.
	Well, I mean, there's two ways of having knowledge, right?
	One is to study rigorously and humbly and learn stuff.
	And the other is just make up answers.
	And attack anyone with real questions.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Like, what are the stars?
	Ah, the stars are the souls of our ancestors who died and got lodged in the heavens as a reward for their service to the tribe.
	Just bullshit, right?
	Just make up nonsense, right?
	And the problem is that once you make up nonsense, you get this thing called culture.
	And once you've got this thing called culture, culture attacks the curious.
	So progress...
	Culture is when you question everything, and culture is when you attack people who question stuff as a whole.
	And everybody who's smart knows that most people are incredibly touchy and vain and volatile and hate to be exposed as not knowing stuff.
	This is back to Socrates, right?
	Socrates, who said he didn't know anything, and he went around questioning everyone to see if they knew anything.
	And it turns out they didn't.
	And then they killed him.
	And Jesus came along and said, hey, you know those morals that are supposed to be universal?
	What if they really were universal, right?
	And, you know, people got mad at him.
	And so most of society is just a bunch of nonsense that people feel good for believing.
	And it's a lot easier to feel good by repeating nonsense and falsehoods than it is to actually find out the truth.
	Do you think indifference is a better anticipated response than inflammation if the inflammation is like death threats and violent outbursts?
	Sorry, it's okay.
	I appreciate your enthusiasm.
	Because you talked over what I was saying.
	I didn't hear the first part, but go ahead.
	I'm so sorry about that.
	I'm sorry.
	Again, I'm kind of excited to talk to you.
	I was wondering, do you think indifference is a better response than an inflammatory response?
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	A response on who?
	The smart people or the not-so-smart people?
	Okay, yeah.
	Indifference on the not-so-smart people.
	But they can't be indifferent if they believe that they're good because they believe lies to be true, right?
	They believe that conformity to lies is virtue.
	And so if you point out that neither conformity nor lies are virtue...
	That's a one-two punch on their entire system of self-respect.
	And because they've made decisions about who they marry, the kind of job they have, how they raise their children, they are fully embedded in those decisions, and they cannot give them up.
	I mean, I was into philosophy in my mid-teens, and then in my early 30s, I had to give up all my relationships because I finally accepted the truth.
	Or rather, When I accepted the truth and spread it, everybody, even people I've known for decades, basically ran away.
	They ran away to take the jab and not buy Bitcoin.
	But hey, they ran away.
	So, people are very touchy, and people are very vain, and people think that conformity to authority is virtue.
	Even though they know in the abstract, That conformity to virtue is not...
	Sorry, conformity to authority is not virtue.
	Like, I was always told as a kid, well, you don't do it just because someone says so, and you don't follow other kids.
	If they were all jumping off the London Bridge, would you jump off London Bridge too?
	You have to think for yourself and not follow the crowd and not follow the herd at all.
	And if you do that, you're a bad person.
	And of course, sorry, last thing I'll say is I was also raised on World War II, which was everything, most of the things the Nazis did were legal, therefore legality and obeying...
	Authority is not good, and that was the whole point of the Nuremberg trials.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	And the contrary point to that, which doesn't make any sense to me, is that the people who create these technocrat people, not just Twitter, but even video games that ban people, it's like, I always see people after someone gets banned be like, oh my god, so-and-so got banned, he's such a bad person.
	I'm like, wait a second, so someone who is a game developer automatically is granted moral authority over everyone else who doesn't get banned?
	Like, do you understand what the logic behind what you're saying?
	Just because someone develops a game doesn't mean that, like, they have this objective system of ethics or morality, you know?
	Oh, yeah.
	Like, I posted one of, I mean, many, many, many years ago.
	I think it was 10 or 12 years ago.
	I was podcasting and writing about the Rotherham, the child rape issues and scandals going on in the UK, right?
	I've been banned from most places in social media.
	But none of the people who covered up these endless child rapes of like between a quarter of a million to a million little girls, and not just white girls, Hindu girls as well, right?
	So none of the people who aided and abetted these vile criminals have been banned from anywhere.
	I mean, Jeffrey Epstein never got debanked.
	So clearly...
	It is not any kind of moral standard that is around deplatforming.
	Anything.
	I mean, the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation, literally covered up Jimmy Savile raping hundreds of children.
	Are they banned?
	No, but I talk to scientists about IQ and I'm gone, baby!
	Right, so it has nothing to do with anything to do with virtue.
	Some of the most sick, evil, twisted, pathological, and vile human beings are still welcome on all forms of social media.
	So, of course, that's outrageous, and I get all of that, but the good news is I don't have to give one shit about a society.
	That chooses child rape apologists over objective philosophers.
	I am free and released.
	Listen, I got into philosophy because I really wanted to help save the world.
	I was desperate to help and save the world, to provide the world what was denied to me, which was a chance at rational moral salvation through ethics.
	So, I mean, I have not...
	Completely, but I have largely been cured of any desire to fix the world.
	I did my absolute best, and the world revealed itself to me in who it praised and who it accepted and who it deplatformed and ignored.
	It's a huge relief, man.
	It's a huge, because, man, it's a big-ass burden trying to save the world.
	It's a big-ass burden, man.
	I felt the weight of that every day.
	I can't tell you, last couple of years, hoo-wee!
	It's been great.
	It's been great.
	Like, you know, if you're in a pathological or dysfunctional relationship, right?
	And, you know, your uncle just won't stop doing drugs and sleeping with prostitutes and this and that and the other, right?
	And you really work to save him, and then at some point, he basically says, fuck off.
	I'm going to beat the shit out of you if you bring this stuff up with me again.
	And a huge weight is lifted from your shoulder.
	It's like, okay, so he prefers drinking drugs and prostitutes to my caring heart, mind, and soul.
	Thank God I finally saw that so that I can stop wasting my time and turn to more productive ends.
	The world has made its choice.
	Repeatedly.
	And I wouldn't say this immediately after I was deplatformed, but the world has made its choice.
	And I really, I'm not even going to complain about it.
	I'm not going to rail against the world because I try not to rail against facts.
	That seems kind of unhealthy.
	Get mad at facts.
	So the world has made its choice and has completely liberated me from any responsibility to save it.
	Oh, my God.
	That was a giant burden, you know, because with great power comes great responsibility, and I have a great facility for ethics and argumentation and virtue and debate and conversation.
	I have a great facility for that kind of stuff.
	And with that great facility came, for me, at least, an enormous burden of responsibility.
	I have to do this!
	And then I did it as large and powerful, I think, as certainly I could do, and I think as has ever been achieved before in the world, I've had the biggest philosophy.
	No, I would really, really rather you wait.
	Okay, let me finish my thought.
	You can keep interrupting.
	And this is kind of important for me to get my thoughts out in this matter, right?
	So I have had the biggest reach of any philosopher in history.
	And again, some of that's my ability, but most of that is to do with the technology.
	So I say that with all due humility.
	But having had the biggest reach means that everybody who doesn't know about me has largely chosen that.
	And they may not have chosen that directly, but they've chosen six degrees of separation, right?
	So everybody has the capacity, certainly in the English-speaking world, everybody is two or three people removed from people who know about me and what I do.
	So people who have chosen not to speak about me, people who have chosen to not share.
	What it is that I do.
	And it doesn't have to be me directly.
	It could just be the ideas or arguments that I have.
	So people have now collectively participated after, you know, hundreds of millions of people have listened to what I do over the last 20 years, which means it could have, if they wanted, reached everyone, certainly in the English-speaking world, arguably in other places as well.
	So people have made their choice and have lifted from me the responsibility of saving them.
	And, of course, there's disappointment in that, but it's sort of like with my mother, right?
	I have de-worlded, like, in the same way that I de-food, right?
	So, with regards to my mother, I felt a very great and heavy obligation, given my facility with self-knowledge and virtue and truth and conversation, I felt a very great weight and desire and need and responsibility to save her soul from the path.
	That she was on.
	And I felt this with my friends.
	I felt this sometimes with colleagues at work.
	I felt this later on, of course, with the world as a whole.
	And when you finally get that the people have made their decision, right?
	That when my mother once again used violence, I was freed.
	I was freed.
	Once a friend of mine...
	I don't know.
	Let's see.
	How should I put this?
	A friend of mine ended up spending the night in jail and still would not go to therapy.
	A friend of mine ended up pretending to be employed and still wouldn't go to therapy.
	A friend of mine never asked a girl out and still wouldn't go to therapy.
	Or whatever it would be, something where self-knowledge and challenge and improvement.
	Right?
	I worked very hard to get another friend of mine a job interview, and he didn't show up to...
	Oh, he didn't return the call when the guy...
	Right?
	So...
	When the guy called him.
	So, that's just a great relief.
	It's a great relief.
	It's a great relief.
	Whew!
	I did all I could.
	I am now free from obligation and responsibility.
	I am free of obligation and responsibility.
	Like with the libertarian.
	Community, right?
	If the libertarians, if any prominent libertarian or academic libertarian had done a review of UPB, that would be included probably in Wikipedia or other places, right?
	But they didn't.
	They didn't want to evaluate it, right?
	And if the libertarian community had taken on peaceful parenting, then that would be a whole thing where we'd now have 20 plus years of peacefully parented kids coming out into society, which would be an unarguable empirical Proof of the virtue and value of the non-aggression principle in the sphere, where in it matters the most, which is in parenting, right?
	So people, the libertarians, the atheists, they just want to talk about shit.
	They don't want to actually do anything, and they certainly don't want to take any risks.
	Okay, that's fine.
	Then they get the world they get.
	And if some libertarian gets in trouble, you know, it's like the old women who keep voting for soft on crime district attorneys.
	Or soft on crime policies and then complain that they can't walk the streets at night?
	Don't care.
	Don't care.
	You voted for this.
	You voted for this.
	Why would I care about something that you want?
	I can disagree with you.
	I can make that case.
	But if you continue to keep wanting it, and I say this not for myself, I mean, I've already sort of worked through all of this stuff, but I say it for you and everybody who's listening to this now and forever.
	Have a cutoff point.
	I'm begging you.
	Have a cut-off point.
	Try to help people.
	Do your best.
	If you have the capacity and you care, as I'm sure you do, try to help people.
	It's important.
	It'll make you feel certainly good if it works.
	Try to help people.
	But listen to how they're responding to you.
	Listen to how they're responding.
	If they attack you for trying to help them.
	Get the fuck out.
	If they attack and savage you for trying to help them, get out.
	And maybe, instead of spending the rest of your life, as was the danger with me the rest of my life, trying to help people who don't want to be helped, how about you spend your time with people who don't need to be helped?
	Instead of getting a bunch of broken people and trying to make a football team, how about you just Go join a football team where everyone's really good at things.
	Instead of getting a bunch of random people and trying to start a beautiful choir, how about you find a bunch of people who already sing beautifully and work with them?
	Stop trying to fix everyone around you, which will almost never work.
	And instead, spend your time around people who don't need to be fixed.
	I don't have anyone in my life who needs to be fixed.
	At all.
	And it's a beautiful thing.
	And I put my time in, man.
	I put my time in the ER. And I have no regrets about any of that.
	I'm glad I did.
	And I'm sure as shit glad that I stopped.
	Because otherwise, you end up being enslaved to people who aren't going to change.
	And all you do is broadcast how philosophy and self-knowledge are completely futile to achieve any kind of change.
	All right, that's it for me.
	Sorry, you wanted to mention something and I interrupted you interrupting me.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, no problem.
	I try to gauge, like, because there's other conversations, usually, like, about UPB or something more theoretical, where I notice there's more of, like, a give-and-take.
	So I just was, I wasn't sure if I was assuming, you know, that you were going to get mad or something, and that was legit, or if I had something to add or relish a point, or if I should just shut up.
	But, yeah, I'll just shut up from now on, no problem, at least in regards to this.
	Well, just let me finish my thoughts, right?
	A debate.
	Okay.
	If you interrupt when somebody's making a point, it's tough to debate.
	But, sorry, go ahead.
	All right, no problem, yeah.
	So, I wanted to, because you mentioned intelligence a lot, and yeah, maybe I'm playing down my intelligence, I don't really know, but for me, at least, my attraction to philosophy is more so, it stems, I think, my earliest memory of having something similar in my childhood was, I used to be very close with some Colombian friends, and they spoke Spanish, I didn't understand that, and they were from Colombia, etc., but...
	For some reason, we were able to talk about everything under the sun.
	We would go out all hours of the night when I would sleep over, and we'd just go biking through the town and just talk about everything.
	There was nothing that we couldn't talk about.
	Usually, I find that people...
	Obviously, you can have a conversation with someone who's a communist or something, but you can't really have the open-mindedness towards empathy and just the rigor.
	The type of rigor of reality that you would just like with hanging out with people when you're a kid that you can with anyone other than like a philosophically minded person, in my opinion, at least that's my experience.
	So for me, I think it's more to do with empathy.
	I know it's probably both, but I think it's more to do with like having that empathy and consideration from like the past experience of feeling like you can be shared and sharing and heard at the same time, while at the same time giving the other person an equal chance.
	You know, sharing the reality of just riding bikes, etc.
	But I don't know if you had thoughts about that.
	Obviously, you probably already considered this, but I just wanted to add to that.
	Sorry, you had more open conversations with Colombian friends when you were a kid?
	Yes, yes.
	Very, very open.
	I could talk to them about the fact that I didn't like my parents or something, or just what was going on at home.
	At least the parents didn't really understand.
	They played along with it.
	They didn't understand me, but they did.
	But at least the kids, the people my age, I'm talking 12 to 14 years old, we were able to really just hit it off with just hitting the streets.
	But I know it doesn't sound great, but at least we were able to share that experience of time together without intervening authority telling us we had to do everything exactly the way they did, and there was nothing that we could do about it.
	So it felt good to have that connection, which I think a lot of people...
	Like that anarchic type of connection with other people where it's like there's no prevailing authority that tells you this is the way that has to be.
	Obviously, we're not doing anything grievously wrong.
	It's just that we're able to just ride bikes and throw snowballs.
	Sorry, I'm not sure I follow.
	Why do you think you were able to have uncensored conversations with your Colombian friends when you were?
	I think you said 12 to 14, right?
	I just want to make sure.
	I'm not sure if there's a causality.
	Otherwise, you're just describing something you experienced, which is certainly interesting, but I'm not sure how to respond.
	Well, I think it's also another reason why people get along so well.
	No, no, I'm not asking for another reason.
	I'm asking for why you think you were able to have those conversations.
	I think they didn't have the same parameters because they came from a different culture, so they didn't understand.
	The adjustment, the embedded certainties, things that you're not supposed to question or challenge or think about or talk about, like you can talk about because you're kind of trying to help someone be adjusted to a new culture.
	Are you saying that the Colombian culture is more pro-free speech than, say, the European culture?
	Statistically, I'm not saying this isn't the case for everyone, but statistically that would not be the case.
	No, I know, but like, all right, so for example, okay, so like, I think it might also do because this guy, like he ended up becoming like a history, like, well, he got his degree in history and he was very athletic and everything.
	So like, he actually turned out to be kind of like smart and successful.
	And I was able to just like really connect with him.
	And even though like, you know, we, again, this is growing up in a dysfunctional household.
	So obviously there's a lot of...
	I do need you to try and rein in your focus a little here, if you don't mind, because we're kind of going all over the place.
	Okay.
	So, is it because you felt, or is it partly because you believed that you had the very sort of smartest Colombian friend who became a history professor, that he was smart, and that's why he was able to have open and unfettered conversations?
	Is that right?
	It's a factor of intelligence?
	Which, I mean, I'm sure there's some truth in that.
	Yeah, yeah, that's probably, I mean, that's probably closer to what it was, was just the fact that he was intelligent.
	Okay, so then the fact it would not be Colombian, but intelligent, right?
	Well, yeah, I just mentioned that, I was mentioning that he was Colombian.
	I wasn't saying that that was the read, it was because he was Colombian.
	I was just kind of just giving that fact as a part of his background.
	But no, I get how that would be interpreted that way, yeah.
	No, I'm just trying to follow, because traditionally or statistically, white males, by far the most pro-free speech group, In the world, right?
	And so, again, there's tons of exceptions for individuals, but that's in general, right?
	For sure, yeah.
	No, for sure, I agree with that.
	My concern, I actually had a little bit of fear in the background.
	I didn't want us to, or at least you, I'm not speaking for you, but I didn't want there to be this overemphasis on intelligence, because obviously, if it's mostly fixed, I know we can change maybe a dozen points or something.
	If it's mostly fixed, we should at least focus on what we can change, at least to the people that want to change, if it's like, you know, just, you know, growing to become or understand what peaceful parenting is, whatever it is.
	Well, okay, but I mean, you know, this is a fairly sophisticated philosophical conversation, you know, telling everyone that we should focus on what we can change and not on what we can't change is not particularly elevated.
	Of course, right?
	But it's like going to a business, a conference of business experts and saying that it's really important to Make money and not lose money.
	It's like, everybody knows that, right?
	Okay, I just didn't want to assume something that I would assume everyone assumed, but then because I didn't mention it, I just falsely assumed something.
	So I just wanted to...
	No, no, this is an indication, I think, that you may not be around people smart enough for you.
	If for you...
	Obviously, you're a smart guy and I've enjoyed the conversation.
	This is not any kind of insult.
	But stating the blindingly obvious means that you are probably not spending enough time around smart people.
	All my smart people are online.
	I don't have any smart people in person.
	That's good to know.
	And I would then suggest that you should work harder to try and find more smart people in person.
	Maybe that's part of the cry for help thing that's going on here.
	But if I were to say to you, listen, man, as a comedian, it's probably really important that people laugh at your jokes.
	Would you consider that a very helpful addition to your stack of wisdom?
	Yes.
	No, you wouldn't.
	Well, no, obviously, no, no, no, no, I don't.
	I thought you were going to give me actual content.
	That's what I thought.
	That's why I said it.
	No, no, that's it.
	No, no.
	That's it, right?
	Yeah, no, that's obvious.
	Just like what I said was obvious, but I didn't realize it.
	I'm sorry.
	No, again, it's not an insult at all.
	I'm fine with it.
	It does sometimes happen, but it means that you may have a habit of talking before you formulated your thoughts and ideas, and that might be why it's harder to find smart people in your life.
	Which is, you know, your enthusiasm with chatting with me, which is...
	Again, no disrespect, but it has manifested as a lot of interruptions.
	So, your enthusiasm, it's important to deeply consider the contributions that you have in any particular environment or conversation and not say things for the sake of...
	And look, obviously, I've done this myself, so this is no big criticism of you.
	Everybody has this habit, but it's just important to remember that...
	Don't say stuff for the sake of saying stuff, and don't say stuff before considering it fairly deeply.
	Because, of course, if you were to have thought ahead of time, what am I trying to say with these Colombian people?
	Right?
	So, okay.
	I did take notes.
	I mean, I know I get what you're saying, but I did take notes, but mostly the notes were just not to forget what I was going to say, not exactly what I, instead of the quote of what I would have said.
	See, now here's an example.
	Why are you telling me that you took notes?
	I just don't know that you'd be interested.
	Well, I think, yeah, I just don't have enough freelance conversation with the right people.
	No, I'm still curious.
	Like I said, if you had deeply considered what you wanted to say with regards to these Colombian friends when you were younger, but I don't know that you did know what you were contributing with that story.
	And again, it's not a big shade of criticism.
	Trying to give you that kind of feedback that most people won't give you, because obviously you're a very intelligent fellow, and I would want you to have smart people around you.
	But smart people will tend to avoid you if they're not sure of the point of your stories.
	Okay.
	Like, I couldn't figure out why you were telling me that 12- to 14-year-old Colombian friends, you had great conversations about everything.
	I don't know what to make of that.
	I mean, it's cool.
	I like ice cream.
	But I don't know.
	There needs to be some principle that comes out of your stories.
	That is a value to other people.
	Like, I had a story about being ripped off for 25 cents when I was a kid playing Space Invaders, but the purpose of that story was to communicate something to other people.
	A principle, right?
	Right.
	And so, again, I don't mean to sound harsh.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	What was for you the purpose of My Colombian friends and I could talk about anything when we were 12. I just thought, like, because I know you, I read the book The Science of Evil when you referenced it, and I wanted to kind of, like, just showcase a little bit of, like, what I knew from at least absorbing some of your material as well as external references, and then just with my empirical experience of having...
	Hey, what does the science of evil have to do with you chatting with Colombian friends when you're 12?
	Because we did what they tell you to do in the book to develop empathy, partly, which was just to have rough and tumble play.
	And that was sort of some of the things with some of my friends we would wrestle and stuff, too.
	So I thought that was sort of the, you know...
	Conversation to wrestling?
	To empathy?
	What the hell?
	I feel like I'm trapped in a dryer here, tumbling like a sock.
	No, that's how you develop empathy, though.
	You have to have rough and tumble play.
	Like, that's part of the book.
	No, but what does that have to do with telling me about your friends having conversations when you were 12?
	You didn't mention anything about rough and tumble play in that original story or anything to do with empathy.
	See, the thing is, though, is that you talk a lot longer than I do.
	And again, I don't want to blame you.
	This is your show.
	Obviously, just caught me off.
	I'm going too far, but...
	I'm used to, like, in my mind, like, when I picture, like, a great car, I'm not saying you're a bad conversationalist.
	I'm just saying, like, what I picture, it might be not as good as what we're having.
	Okay, hang on, hang on.
	So, what is your emotional experience of me trying to help you focus your conversational style?
	What is your emotional experience?
	Because you're kind of babbling a little here, all due respect, right?
	So, what is your emotional experience if I'm saying you should have some idea of why you're telling people stories, particularly in a public forum like this where...
	You're asking, you know, in the long run, millions of people to listen to what you have to say, then you should try and distill something into something valuable.
	And if it takes me five questions to find out you're actually talking about play fighting and empathy because of a book called The Science of Evil, which in no way was referenced in your original story, that's a lot of work for people, right?
	Yeah.
	So that's the challenge, right?
	So one of the reasons why it might be hard for you to have conversations With more smart people in your day-to-day life, it's because you lack empathy.
	In this area, and I'm not talking in general, but in this area, right?
	I had to try and figure out why you were telling me about your Colombian friends.
	That's why I said, well, what principle are you trying to communicate here?
	Nobody said, why is Steph talking about space invaders?
	There was nobody who said that, because everybody understood that I was talking about space invaders and losing a quarter.
	In order to talk about unjust advantage and vanity and so on, right?
	Yeah, I know you said not to interrupt, but I think I can kind of make a better point if I'm allowed to.
	No, no, the point is not for you to make a better point.
	What's my argument?
	My argument, or my perspective, is that it shouldn't take a back and forth of 20 minutes for you to make a better point.
	That you need to have a better point.
	When you're telling a story, particularly if you and I are just shooting the shit over a beer or whatever, but you're in a sort of public philosophy show, and people are listening to what it is that you have to say, and you do have to provide value.
	I mean, I don't just sit here and read my shopping list, right, or say, oh, I really want to get a dual-screen notebook or something, whatever, right?
	I have to formulate what it is that I'm talking about in a public forum to provide value to the listeners.
	And if I don't know...
	The purpose of your story, and it's fine.
	Sometimes I can just miss it, which is why I asked you, like, why are you telling me this story about your Colombian friends?
	And then it went to, well, one of them was super intelligent.
	It's like, well, then maybe it's about being around intelligent people.
	And it's like, no, no, I read your book called The Science of Empathy, and it says play fighting.
	And it's like, what?
	What are we talking about?
	So what is the purpose of the Colombian story?
	It's to avoid...
	I don't think I'm going to give you a one-sentence answer, but overall, it was just to avoid...
	We already went over it.
	No, no, just tell me.
	Stop arguing with yourself.
	Just answer my question.
	Arguing with yourself is not empathetic.
	I'm asking you a question.
	Don't start arguing with yourself.
	What was the purpose of the Colombian story?
	It was to emphasize that we can make the world a better place by focusing on experiences that have to do with play and freelance talking, etc., rather than overemphasizing the need for genetic, inalterable, immutable characteristics of an IQ or whatever else, for the most part, so that we can take that onus in our own hands to say, okay, well, yeah, maybe we just...
	We need to find people who just don't know exactly why they think they do, but they're open to just playing volleyball or working out.
	Do you get a sense that you're communicating anything clear here?
	No, I guess it's a real place.
	This is a good object lesson on how to communicate more clearly.
	And this is good.
	You're the guinea pig, but everyone has these issues.
	I just happen to be pretty experienced in dealing with them, right?
	So why do you think you brought up the Colombian thing?
	Probably because I would rather talk about something deeper, but I don't want to make it out to seem like that.
	Something deeper than me saving the world and how to peel away from people who can't be saved?
	Is that not fucking deep enough for you?
	No, it's very deep.
	Okay, so why did you bring up the Colombian thing?
	You completely talked as if I hadn't said anything.
	You didn't say, oh, wow, that's really cool.
	I've had that issue trying to save people.
	Everyone has had that issue where you try and save people for too long.
	See, that's the thing.
	That's why I kept interrupting because I had a feeling that if I didn't interrupt enough, I would regret it.
	Okay, so that's all about you and your feelings.
	I don't want to regret it.
	But no, you just asked me to interrupt and say, wow, or something like that.
	No, I didn't say, no, I didn't say, why didn't you interrupt?
	You've got to listen.
	So after I finished my speech about being overly focused on helping people who didn't want to be helped, and I said, you started the Colombian story as if I hadn't really said anything, as opposed to going back and forth with me.
	It was kind of a non sequitur.
	So I had this whole speech about helping people who didn't want to be helped and how bad that wasn't being liberated from that need for saving the world.
	And then you're like, yes, but when I was a 12-year-old, I had great conversations with my Colombian friends.
	My neighbor has two rabbits.
	You know, it's like, what?
	So, something happened with you when I was telling that story where you wanted to talk about the Colombian thing, but not because it was part of the conversation.
	And again, there's not big criticism, it's just an interesting non-sequitur, right?
	And then you can't explain why you wanted to talk about the Colombian thing.
	I think it was because you didn't want to connect with what I was saying.
	Okay, do you have a history of trying to save people who don't want to be saved?
	Oh my god, yeah.
	But I don't do that anymore.
	It's just...
	Okay, so you can really empathize with what I struggled with for so many years.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	So why not do that?
	Why are we going on this?
	When you was 12, you had nice chats with your Colombian friends.
	Yeah.
	No, it's true.
	That's probably more meta, yeah.
	I don't know what meta means.
	So you keep playing stuff like you think it means something to people, but it doesn't.
	What does meta mean?
	Meta means like most efficient something something.
	It's something to do with just like it's the best.
	It's either the best or the most efficient strategy to respond or do something.
	No, I think meta usually refers to referencing the framework of art within art.
	A meta-narrative is having a play that references the fact that it's a play, like Pirandello's six characters.
	Well, I was thinking of the acronym meta, not the metaphysical type of meta.
	So you were introducing into a conversation an acronym, which nobody knows, and thinking you were communicating something.
	What are you doing, bro?
	I didn't know if you've heard of it, because usually it's said something in 10 games.
	Okay.
	You don't just use an acronym.
	I've never heard of this meta.
	What does it stand for?
	Most Sufficient Training Catalyst.
	I don't know.
	So you use an acronym and you don't even know what it means and you want me to know what it means.
	The fuck, bro?
	What are you doing?
	You're spiraling and this is helpful.
	This is helpful.
	I'm glad we're doing this.
	Good for you.
	Good for you.
	So why are you doing the meta?
	Are you trying to sound smart with the meta thing?
	I'm trying to understand.
	Why would you use an acronym with me that's very obscure and you don't even know what it means?
	I thought it would be a shorter way to say things if we are...
	Again, I picture what it means in my head.
	What happens for me is if I understand something enough, I'll stop thinking about the linguistic part of it and I'll just start picturing...
	No, no, but that's all about fucking you!
	Yeah, but I was hoping that you would have heard the same term too.
	No, no, no.
	You're communicating with another real-life human being, which means it's not all about you.
	Yeah, but you don't ask me questions when you're going on your story, but I understand it's your show and everything.
	It's just that you don't ask me questions.
	Okay, first of all, insulting bullshit right there.
	Don't get passive-aggressive with me, bro.
	I just spent the last half hour asking you questions.
	You did, yeah.
	So what are you doing saying, I don't ask you questions?
	When the whole reason we're talking about all of this, don't interrupt me.
	The whole reason we're talking about all of this is because I keep asking you questions.
	So why are you insulting me by saying I don't ask you questions?
	I'm not saying you don't ask me questions.
	That's exactly what you said.
	Don't gaslight me now.
	No, no, no.
	I don't want to gaslight you.
	Okay, then don't.
	You're right.
	You're right.
	I did say that you don't ask me questions, but what I was for...
	Sorry, I didn't word it correctly.
	You're right.
	You talked a lot, but some of the terms you used in the references to history, I don't understand, but I don't ask you and you don't ask me.
	Obviously, I know you're recording this, so it's not all about...
	Sorry, Napoleon?
	That's an obscure reference in history?
	The First World War?
	The Second World War?
	Trench warfare?
	These can't be very obscure.
	It's not like meta.
	No, the musical references that you mentioned, I didn't understand a lot of the musical references you made.
	Well, but I think we're talking about Taylor Swift and other things, right?
	So we would know those, right?
	Yeah, I'm just giving an example where not everything that we talk about has to be 100% or 90% understood by the other person.
	That's why I assumed that it would be okay to use that acronym.
	That was partly why.
	Again, I'm not blaming you.
	I know I could have asked the question first, and I'm definitely taking that key.
	Do you think that you're coachable as a whole?
	Do you take feedback?
	I think you have some admiration for my communication skills, right?
	Yeah.
	So I'm trying to help you with your communication skills.
	And what are you doing?
	You're fighting me on every syllable.
	Can I tell you why I think that I do better without, kind of like you do in a sense, where you don't want people to interrupt you?
	So, for example, I had, again, I'll make this very brief.
	I know that I'm bringing up a personal example, but, okay, is this responsive to what I'm saying?
	Yes.
	I don't know that it's responsive to what I'm saying.
	It sounds like you're just going off on a tangent, and this is part of good communication.
	Saying, Steph, yeah, I hear you say that I'm not particularly coachable.
	I'm going to tell you something now that's going to address that particular issue, but it sounds like you're going, so this is just part of good communication style, right?
	Because it sounds like you're going off on a tangent that has nothing to do with anything I said.
	And so if it sounds like a tangent, right?
	So if you say to me, I want to go to Vegas, and then I start telling you a story about the Sahara Desert, and then 10 minutes later tie it into Vegas, you might be a little confused.
	And I say, listen, I know this is going to sound odd.
	I'm going to talk about the Sahara, but I'm going to tie it into Vegas at the end, right?
	Just so that you know that I'm responding to what you said, right?
	Okay.
	So, are you saying that, like, I don't mean verbatim saying, but, like, are you kind of hinting at that I'm not coachable if I agree with what you're saying, your assessment is of my communication ability?
	No, I say that I give you feedback and you keep changing stories and definitions.
	Right, so, for instance, I told you that meta was not something I understood, and you didn't say, oh, you know, my bad, I shouldn't have assumed that that was right.
	You said, well, I'm just giving you information that's not totally complete, just like you did, Steph, when you talked about history and music, right?
	That's called not being coachable.
	Okay, yeah, no, I understand.
	No, no, that makes sense.
	I'm sorry about that.
	Well, Steph, you didn't ask me questions.
	Well, yes, I did.
	Well, no, no, no, I didn't mean that.
	Well, that's exactly what you said.
	Well, no, but that's not how I phrase it.
	Just gaslighting, right?
	Sorry about that.
	I hate gaslighting.
	So, no, I'm sorry about that.
	So, if I say that you're not...
	Would you say that I'm a fairly good coach?
	Excellent.
	Okay.
	So when I'm trying to give you feedback, and I have repeatedly told you this is not an insult, I'm not throwing shade, I'm glad to be having this conversation, it's very interesting, we all struggle with this stuff, so would you say that I'm trying to lord it over you or make you feel bad?
	No.
	Okay.
	So when I'm trying to coach you on how to better communicate, and you fight, disagree, passive-aggressive, insult, and gaslight, Is it fair to say that you're not very coachable?
	In this area, maybe you're wonderfully coachable in other areas.
	Is it fair to say that you're not particularly coachable?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	That's not a humiliation, right?
	You want to be a better communicator.
	As we all do.
	Listen, I still work at this.
	I listen back to shows.
	I could have done this better.
	I'm still working on it.
	Still working on it.
	Been doing it 40 years, right?
	Still working on it.
	If you're not particularly coachable, the question is, why not?
	I'm trying to give you some feedback on how to communicate better.
	You think I'm good at communicating and I'm a good coach.
	Therefore, it might be worthwhile to listen and take some coaching, right?
	So then the question is, why is it very hard for you to take feedback where you insulted or bullied a lot as a child and feedback was aimed to be destructive?
	In other words, it was insults.
	In the guise of coaching.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And so you're aware of that, that as a child, you were treated badly in the guise of coaching, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And what happened with you as a kid that was hard this way?
	way.
	And of course I sympathize with that enormously.
	I don't, I don't mean to make a big deal.
	It's hard to say without crying.
	No, that's fine.
	Emotions are healthy and helpful, so I'd rather get the emotions than the runaround, so go ahead.
	It was just mainly my dad would look for any reason to blame me for pretty much the marriage that they were in between him and my mom as to why they would get divorced if I brought any problems up where I would notice me and him at home.
	He would, like, you know, if I just was going up to get something in the kitchen or something, if he saw me and he didn't like something in the atmosphere or whatever, then he would just sort of walk into me or push me to the side and tell me, like, I'm a faggot or something.
	Like, he would just call me names.
	Oh, God, I'm so sorry.
	That's awful.
	Yeah.
	And he only did it when no one else was there.
	He would always try to hide it and undermine it and trivialize it when my mom came home.
	And then when I told my mom, she would tell me that she would tell me, oh, I think you're blowing it out of proportion.
	And even as an adult, which is why I had nothing to do with them, she would tell me I wasn't good enough as a communicator.
	Not until those exact words, but she would tell me I didn't tell her enough as to how dire it was.
	I didn't use the right words.
	And I would tell her, how was I supposed to be born with the knowledge to use the emotionality?
	It wasn't enough because I was crying and wailing and telling you I didn't want you to leave, but I had to use the proper words that you never taught me.
	How was I supposed to learn those words if no one ever taught me them?
	That was the constant theme in the household.
	They definitely bullied me into thinking communication is like a weapon in that sense.
	The thing that maybe I just don't understand it yet is that I don't use communication to bully other people.
	I know you just said I gaslit you, but I mean people who I think that...
	I have knowledge over something.
	I try to help them.
	So usually I assume that I'm innocent when I'm talking to someone who I think has more, you know, wisdom or whatever capital, like human capital than I do.
	I just, I assume that I know what I'm doing, but obviously that didn't work out.
	So yeah, I understand.
	Sorry.
	No, that's fine.
	That's quite a tumble of language and I massively, I massively sympathize.
	So can you give me an example of what happened with, say, your mother or your father?
	When they said you didn't use the right words?
	When they said I didn't use the right words.
	Let me think.
	I'm not doubting you at all.
	I just want to make sure that I understand what you experienced.
	You mean when I was a kid or when I was an adult when I told them later more?
	No, let's just talk about it as an adult.
	As a kid, sorry.
	Oh, as a kid, okay.
	Yeah, so...
	My mom, like, after work, we would be in the car, so you have to go in to get, like, fast food or whatever, like, run errands, like, usually go to a grocery store or whatever, and she would just, like, would just be quiet, and if there wasn't music playing on the radio, then we would talk a little bit, and I would just tell her, like, listen, I don't, I don't, I would tell her, like, you know, I can't think of the exact words I would use, but to the effect, I would say, I don't, I don't, I like you more than dad.
	That was a common thing I would say to her.
	Like, I love you more than Dad.
	And she was like, oh, that's us there.
	You should say that.
	You should look at us as equal.
	And I would tell her, like, no, he's mean.
	And I don't want to be with him alone.
	And stuff like that.
	So that's what I would tell her.
	That's the effect of what I would say.
	I didn't know words like evil or vicious or satanic.
	I didn't know any of that kind of language.
	But that's how I would communicate to her.
	In a nutshell.
	At least a dozen times in the car, I would say to the effect something like, what I just told you.
	And she would tell me, I would warn her about something that he did or said.
	One example my dad would say was, I don't need a wife, I'll just jerk off.
	So I thought he was going to divorce the family.
	He said that to you?
	He said that out loud when it was just being him in the apartment.
	I don't know if it was to me, but obviously I heard him and he was very loud and it was only us in the apartment.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	So I told my mom that he said that was a different time, but I told her that he said that and that he said, oh, she got fat and she's fat and ugly and all this kind of stuff.
	And I would tell my mom that my dad said that.
	Those are the things I would tell her that he said about her.
	So why would you tell your mother what your dad said out of her earshot?
	Saying whether you should or shouldn't have, I don't know.
	I'm just curious why you would do that.
	Because he wouldn't let me not hear that stuff.
	I would try to hide my head in a pillow so I wouldn't hear his voice.
	And he would come in my room and force me to listen to everything he wanted to communicate.
	So it was obvious that he's just saying it out loud to no one else in the room or the apartment.
	Like, when he was apparent to him that I was hiding from his voice, he would force me to listen to what he had to say.
	So, like, it just felt like I had no alibi.
	Like, they wouldn't let me go outside.
	After a while, they wouldn't let me go outside at a certain time.
	And I was like, what the hell?
	Now I have to listen to my...
	Because my mom would come home at, like, 1130 at night, and it was, like, 7 o'clock at night.
	And from 7 to, like, you know, when I was supposed to go to bed, like, 9 or whatever, I would have to listen to my dad just say all this stuff about...
	Just whatever, like his work, or like, it doesn't just about my mom, but just like his work or whatever else.
	It would always be very age-inappropriate and everything else, like when I was like, you know, 11 or 10. But I also didn't want anything to do with my parents.
	Like, I wanted to leave them in many ways.
	So like, if they did separate, sure, that probably would have been better.
	But I didn't think of it that way when I was that little.
	I didn't think that it would lead to them being divorced.
	I was too young to understand that, I think.
	So what did you want your mother to do when you told her about these appalling things your father was saying?
	I wanted her to at least stay home and not work her job and stay home or at least take me with her to work?
	To protect her?
	Yeah.
	So you were basically saying, Dad is appalling.
	Please help me, right?
	Save me.
	Yeah.
	Okay?
	How much did she do?
	Nothing.
	She just went to work and pretend like I would, everything I asked of her that, just like she just wouldn't do it.
	Even another minor...
	I know it's not really minor, but a small example would be I asked her to kiss me on the cheek when she came home at night from work so I would know that I'm safe.
	I didn't tell her it was because I would know I'm safe, but I just wanted her to make herself known that she was home.
	And she never did that.
	So it was just stuff like that.
	And are your parents still together?
	Yes.
	What's your relationship like with them now?
	What's mine?
	Yeah.
	Oh, non-existent.
	I have nothing to do.
	I mean, I live in the same state, but we don't have a relationship.
	How long has it been since you were in contact with them?
	Not since.
	I tried taking a restraining order out against them.
	But if you don't count that, then it's been like two years.
	And what happened with the restraining order?
	Well, basically, I had anticipated that becoming more successful would lead to my dad trying to spy on me.
	Or my mom, my dad would probably try to send my mom to spy on me.
	So I had just kind of just tried to prevent all that from happening by just getting the restraining order and telling the judge to make it permanent.
	And just, I don't want any contact with them.
	I'm not going to play games with the courthouse.
	I just don't want to go there every year because you have to keep renewing it every year, making your case.
	But the judge actually threw it out.
	So I never got the restraining order.
	But yes, they never...
	I mean, one time my mom showed up to my work.
	That was a big deal, but she didn't know where I was working.
	I didn't post it on social media or anything, so it was just like an accident, I guess.
	But she never came back again, and I made sure.
	I was going to make sure.
	She was either banned from the store, or at least I wouldn't have to deal with her if she ever came to my department.
	I'm so sorry.
	And when did she show up at your work?
	How long ago?
	Just this past August.
	Right.
	And have you and I talked about this before, or is this new info to me?
	I've talked about what in specific?
	Your parents.
	We've talked about them, yeah.
	Yes, okay.
	I have a memory of this, okay.
	All right.
	I'm really, really sorry, of course.
	So, and how old are you?
	You don't have to tell me your exact age, but are you like early, mid-20s, late-20s, 30s?
	Mid-30s.
	- Yes, mid-thirty, okay.
	So, with regards to your parents, why were you in touch with them for so long?
	And again, none of this has anything to do with any criticism.
	I mean, I'm just curious.
	Why wait till you're 30s?
	I don't know if you want to hear it, but basically, after I had a divorce and I moved, I didn't want to be somewhere where I knew no one except enemies, basically, because of my ex and everything and her family was all in the same place.
	So I moved back home.
	Where I was born.
	I don't know if you want to call it home.
	And my mom paid for the plane ticket and everything.
	And obviously, of course, right?
	Because I'm the last kid, so she doesn't want me to leave.
	But anyway, so I came back.
	And then eventually, I got diagnosed with a mental illness.
	And I was homeless around that time.
	And they all took me in and made a huge deal out of it that they were going to help me, or at least my mom did.
	And it was just...
	That was basically how they got back in my life.
	Because when I came back home, even after my divorce, I still had nothing to do with my parents until I became homeless and was diagnosed with a mental illness.
	So around that time is when basically I didn't want to just sleep with random homeless people.
	So it was better the devil you know than the devil you don't, if that makes sense.
	So I just kind of recontacted them.
	Okay.
	And have you had a lot of hope over the years that your parents might improve or be more empathetic?
	Don't be empathetic at all, right?
	Yeah, the thing is, I tried getting more direct and more direct and more direct because I would still listen to your show.
	And my dad actually...
	I actually thought my dad never knew you.
	But the last time when I went to court, he mentioned you to the judge.
	I don't mean to get you in trouble, but obviously you did nothing wrong.
	But he mentioned your...
	He didn't mention your name.
	He's like, oh, yeah, the guy from the internet will be happy now, won't he?
	I guess I always felt like he didn't know your show or that I listened to your show, but I would listen to it on the couch.
	I'm sorry, I forgot your question.
	I know you just said I had communication issues.
	I'm sorry.
	Keep going with what you're saying.
	Okay, yeah.
	So I was on the couch and listening to your show on the first floor and they were on the second floor.
	I don't know.
	That's when I was homeless.
	I was looking for work.
	I ended up getting a job and moving out and everything.
	But yeah, so it's just like, that was, uh, uh, yeah, that, that was, uh, I'm sorry.
	I kind of lost my thought and stuff, but.
	No, that's no problem.
	That's no problem at all.
	My question was...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, I remember the pivotal moment was that Trump came to the last big The finale I had was Trump came to my state, and I actually visited his rally.
	I rode my bike 24 miles to his rally, and I got a job that very same day.
	I was so excited.
	Well, not the very same, but I got an interview.
	I filed an application right after, and I got a job.
	The place I applied to hired me the next week.
	But that was the pinnacle of before I was diagnosed with an illness.
	Yeah, so anyway, I look up to that moment because I had so much energy, and I was still in my late 20s to ride your bike that far, and then I rode home as well.
	I didn't want to take the bus.
	It was just weird.
	It was funny because actually Trump said there's 10,000 people out there, and I looked outside and there was like five people.
	I'm like, okay, that's a politician for you.
	Nothing against Trump.
	I'm just like, you know, like, but yeah, so it's just, it's just, and then, so yes, then I ended up moving out and I know I got the timeline a little.
	I know I told you because I was diagnosed with mental illness, but I, that was, I had that point.
	I kind of had an undiagnosed mental illness, but the medication actually made it worse for me.
	So I'm actually in the process of getting off the medication, but yeah, so it's just like, I just don't want to.
	I just don't want this.
	To tie that together with what I was saying before is that I don't want people to...
	If you give up hope on the wrong person, then it's very hard to have hope when people could do drugs and smoke weed.
	I didn't quite follow what you said there.
	If you give up hope on people who actually want to change and improve their life and are making the steps to do it, It's just so much harder.
	I think that's the emotion behind it.
	I know I didn't communicate the point well at all, but that's the emotion behind what I was trying to say.
	Just because someone isn't very intelligent, it doesn't mean that they don't have a shot at making lights work in their own way.
	It's what I try to adopt in my life personally.
	When I talk to people, Listen to people.
	I try to say, okay, well, maybe there's a chance that they're not going to always just do drugs and do nothing.
	Yeah, it's just like that's what...
	It's kind of like that's what I have to...
	I mean, I kind of have to adopt that mentality where I'm constantly in conflict with people around me just trying to work on moving out.
	But in the meantime, that's kind of just, I guess, my mentality.
	Sorry, moving out from where?
	Just moving out from this overall get on your road.
	I've been trying to move out for a while, so just like...
	I've been learning how to play the guitar and just trying to focus on stuff that just builds my own personal self-esteem so I don't have to rely on other people because anytime I would go to the bar or the library, there's just always social tension there.
	So I would just rather focus on things where I don't have to focus on other people so much.
	But I can still grow at something.
	So yeah, so just like, yeah, it's just like, and I think it's kind of like a little bit due to the times that we're into, like, it's just like it's so hard to, it's so hard to like just find people who you can just have like a candid, honest discussion about anything.
	We're getting this all abstract.
	Yeah, we're getting way too abstract again.
	Let's get back to the personal.
	Let's get back to the personal.
	So what do you want out of your life this year?
	That's going to sound stupid if I say it.
	No, no.
	Stop.
	Stop it.
	Stop editorializing.
	Just answer the question.
	Or you can say, I don't want to answer the question, but don't tell me what sounds stupid or not.
	That's trying to do my side of the conversation.
	What do you want out of your year this year?
	Well, there's two things.
	Sorry, did you say something else to that?
	No, go ahead.
	Oh, you cut out for a second.
	I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.
	Yeah, what did I want to do this year?
	Okay.
	Can you hear me?
	Yep.
	Hello?
	Yes, I can hear you.
	I think there's a tech issue.
	Okay, you can hear me.
	Okay.
	Two things.
	One is to completely come off the medication I'm on, which I'm already in the process of doing everything bulletproof.
	And as far as that goes, I've got exactly how much of what medication I'm going to take and the prescription to keep taking it as little as I want.
	And then I'm...
	Also learning the guitar, so I just want to learn just as many different chords and strings as I can and just play the guitar.
	And I know it sounds really small, like, oh, you're just going to play the guitar?
	It's just like, well, that's something that I can do.
	I'm asking you again to stop trying to do my side of the conversation.
	Just tell me your side.
	Yeah, so those are the two things.
	So get off the medication and learn the guitar.
	Yeah.
	Okay?
	Yeah.
	And are you talking to a doctor about the medication stuff?
	Or have you?
	Yes.
	Okay, good.
	I mean, because I know that stuff can be pretty tough to get off and so on, so I just wanted to check on that.
	And when you've learned the guitar, what do you want to do with that knowledge?
	I actually want to make a rendition of, like, just what I've learned from your show, like, just different stuff that I can...
	Like play a busk?
	I don't care.
	Do you know what busk means?
	I do.
	Okay, yeah.
	I figured you did, but I didn't want to assume.
	So yeah, I would busk or just write my own songs.
	I understand it takes a while to learn the guitar.
	I don't expect to completely learn it in a year, but I just want to have something where I see the progress in what I'm doing.
	And I feel the advantage of learning and trying and practicing over the next week, over the next hour, over the next five seconds, whatever.
	And I've already felt that feeling and that high that I get off of it.
	So I just want that feeling to continue.
	And I know it's like it's had diminishing returns as it gets harder and harder.
	It's just that I just want something where I don't have to rely on other people.
	But yes, to answer your question, what I want to do after that, I just want to do renditions of philosophy lyrics with just the guitar over it.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's very cool.
	And if you do any more stand-up, knowing an instrument, I mean, just ask Owen Benjamin, right?
	Knowing an instrument can be very cool.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	Look, those are good goals.
	Those are good goals.
	Thank you.
	And good for you.
	And how's work going?
	I just call it a summer job.
	I didn't really need the money.
	It was just something to do to keep busy.
	Sorry, why don't you need money?
	Do you have another source of income or crypto or something like that?
	Yeah, I have crypto, but I actually get disabilities, so I don't really need a job.
	Again, I know it's...
	Okay, I don't want to do your side.
	Sorry.
	Yeah, I have disabilities.
	I don't need the income.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Well, listen, I mean, I'm incredibly sorry for what you suffered as a child.
	That's just absolutely awful.
	And I hope, I'm sure it sounds like once you've gone to the judge and asked for a permanent restraining order, it sounds like you've completely and deeply gotten just how terrible and awful that is.
	But I just wanted to reiterate this, and I'm sure we've talked about it before, but I'm so incredibly deeply sorry for what happened to you as a child.
	That's monster stuff to hear.
	And, you know, there is, I mean, I know this from my own personal experience, there's just a kind of person, there's a kind of type of person that just wants to spew all of that crazy shit into the ears of children.
	I mean, sometimes they're public school teachers, other times they're parents, other times it's story time at the hour, a story hour at the library.
	So, there are people who just want to grab children and kind of vomit into their ears.
	And I don't exactly know why it's...
	It's incomprehensible to me to talk about anything adult-related with kids or with kids in the environment or where kids can hear, but it is a depressingly common phenomenon.
	And I'm, again, really sorry that you were exposed to that.
	It's absolutely terrible, absolutely appalling, and nothing that any child should ever be exposed to at all.
	I mean, you can't process adult problems as a child any more than you can.
	You can't consent to be a therapist to an adult any more than you can consent to be a sexual partner as a kid.
	And yet that was inflicted upon you and you were given no choice.
	And of course, your mother did not work to protect you from that as she should have.
	So I just really wanted to express my very, very deep sympathy about that and give you a big virtual hug.
	Thank you.
	I really appreciate that.
	That means so much to me.
	This is why your show is so...
	At least to me, I'm speaking for myself.
	That's why your show is so...
	Awesome to me because I can't find it.
	I'm not trying to sales pitch, but I can't find that anywhere else and anywhere online, offline.
	Even therapists today, maybe it's the ones I've seen, but the therapists that I see, they don't understand how significantly the role of child of users can play in someone's life, or at least they don't communicate it very well.
	And now it's like, even the therapists, I know they're not psychiatrists, but...
	They're so quick to say, oh, well, you might have a mental illness, but they don't understand where it comes from.
	And there was actually a good post, well, a really good post, exceptionally good post on the Freedom Main chat where someone posted a video of a toddler, or I guess they're like three or four years old, and they're trying to complete a puzzle or something.
	And then they had parents or a woman yelling in the background like she was angry.
	And the kid just couldn't focus on a problem in front of him anymore.
	And I'm like, yes, finally.
	And I'm like, I'm going to show this to my psychiatrist.
	Like, yes.
	I've been trying to tell him I don't have this illness.
	It's because of X, Y, and Z. He wouldn't listen.
	And obviously, I know he's not going to change his mind.
	But emotionally, I'm like, yes, at least I have this 60-second video that really makes a lot of sense and is so obvious to most of us.
	But we can't talk about it.
	They'll pretend like we don't know what we're talking about.
	Yeah, most of society is involved in the covering up of crimes.
	That's just a reality.
	Most of society is involved in the covering up of crimes, whether it's financial crimes, money counterfeiting, debt, selling off the next generation, justifying abortion, or the rape of children that's going on in England, or...
	I mean, really, the list could go on and on.
	The mass drugging of children in...
	Government schools rather than the reforming of the schools.
	Most of society is complicit in and involved with the covering up of crimes.
	It is a criminal syndicate masquerading as a compassionate society, and it sounds like you are returning home from that to a better place, and I really, really admire you for that and respect you for the journey that you're on.
	Thank you.
	And I respect and appreciate the journey that you illuminate, that the fact that this journey is even possible to a lot of us, it's hard to really have the rubber meet the road unless we see that someone else already made it happen.
	So the fact that you made it out, obviously, I don't want to speak for your childhood, but just for what you've portrayed to us in your show, the fact that you were able to do it is enough juice in my mojo for me to do it myself, at least in terms of getting off the medication and everything.
	So that to me has been...
	What I've used as an emotional weapon in the background for myself to just spur me forward no matter what people say that I can't or it's impossible and I'm proving them all wrong and I don't really care.
	I have to do it because there's no alternative.
	It's just like either abusers win and we pretend like we mean nothing or we take the illness and understand the fact of what we had as kids that was attempted to be stripped from us.
	And just go forward and never allow or accept other people to do that to us again.
	And hopefully other people, at least we can aspire to be better ourselves and not make excuses for the things that other people made excuses for before us.
	Beautifully put.
	Beautifully put.
	And there's very little better satisfaction in life than manifesting the opposite of what abusers told us we were.
	To become the opposite of what abusers inflicted is truly judoing.
	Negative language into a truly positive and virtuous outcome, and it sounds like you're involved in that discipline, and I congratulate you for that.
	All right.
	I'm going to close the show down, but I really do appreciate the conversations tonight, and your support, of course, is gratefully, deeply, and humbly accepted at freedomain.com slash donate.
	Y'all know there's nothing else like this out there anywhere, and there never will be again.
	So this is a flash in the pan to eliminate the planet, and you can help out freedomain.com slash donate.
	Lots of love, everyone.
	Take care.
	I will talk to you soon.

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