Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 31, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:03:56

UPB CROSS-EXAMINED! CALL IN SHOW

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	So the topic I'm calling in about is UPB.
	And it's because I would like to improve my understanding.
	It's not like I disagree with UPB.
	And obviously, I think many other people would find value in this conversation.
	So I hope to provide value to listeners.
	I also hope that it will be enjoyable for you.
	Those are my objectives.
	Yeah, I always love talking UPB, so I'm all ears.
	And my motivation behind this is that I get into discussions about ethics with people and about morality, and I sometimes reach a point where they bring up a point and I don't know what to say.
	So I started gathering the points where I bump into a wall and then I don't know what to say next.
	And I usually tell them, hey, good question.
	I will have to come back to you on that one.
	And this is for whoever will be listening to the call.
	The sources that I used to research UPB were, of course, the book about UPB from 2007, and that's on freedomain.com books.
	Then Essential Philosophy, that's from 2018.
	Obviously, the FDRpodcast.com as a whole.
	If you just search UPB, there's a lot of stuff there.
	Then in the premium section, there is something called the new UPB category, referring to UPS or universally preferable standards.
	That's from 2022.
	I also used ai.freedommain.com and this awesome series that you did called History of Philosophers.
	So anything to add?
	If I were to explain UPB to somebody who's totally new, I would say it's a system to evaluate moral rules.
	If somebody comes with a moral rule, UPB gives you the resources to evaluate whether that rule can be valid.
	So if you imagine a diagram, like a circle, That would be all human behavior, would be a big circle.
	And then a subset of that behavior would be UPB.
	And a smaller circle within that would be UPB that's enforceable.
	That's my understanding.
	I'm getting a little bit lost here.
	So in the book, it separates or divides Behavior into seven categories from good, aesthetically positive, personally positive, neutral, personally negative, aesthetically negative, and evil.
	So, and if somebody comes up with a moral rule, the job of UPB would be to place it, place that rule into one of the seven categories.
	And then, yeah, that's pretty much it.
	Would you agree with that?
	Yeah, I would say that UPB is both a framework and a conclusion in that science is both the discipline of science, the scientific method, and valid scientific conclusions.
	So UPB is a framework, but it also does produce the bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder that conform to UPB.
	So go ahead.
	That would be like the same term in two different contexts.
	Maybe the second one could be called like First of all, I agree with all the conclusions.
	That's not difficult to agree with.
	Don't murder, don't steal, don't rape, don't assault.
	But if I didn't have your book and I were And if I was supposed to prove to somebody that this is the only valid system of ethics, I wouldn't be able to do it, because there are a lot of points that I simply don't get.
	But it's not like I disagree.
	Well, that's fine.
	So why don't you play UPP Skeptic and I will at least let's talk about the rape one.
	I have some notes from people where Yeah, like I mentioned in the beginning.
	So you'd be sceptic.
	Okay, I don't know actually for rape how I would do that.
	I can give you an example that's different, but it's somewhere where I get stuck.
	So let's say I was explaining to somebody that not assaulting could be universally valid.
	Non-aggression principle.
	This is so great because it's just so clear.
	It's so simple.
	There are no caveats and all that.
	And the guy told me, but how about pulling a gun on somebody?
	Let's say you have Bob and Doug in a room.
	Bob pulls a gun on Doug to threaten him.
	Because with the guy I was discussing this, we were talking about governments, if a government is required or not.
	And his point was that, well, he didn't actually, in this example, know assault happened.
	So how would this system of ethics prevent that?
	Because with the government, you can create a rule that says, hey, don't pull a gun on somebody and don't threaten them with a gun.
	And it feels very natural that pulling a gun on somebody is not Nice.
	Like, very naturally.
	But I didn't know where to go with that.
	So let's say I'm the guy, yeah?
	So, Stef, what if there's a situation with a crazy guy that's pulling a gun on people on the street?
	He's not shooting, so he's not killing anyone.
	He's not actually firing the gun.
	He's just being a douchebag.
	So with the government, I can prevent that because they can arrest him.
	So how do you prevent this with UPB?
	Well, that's like asking how do you prevent mysticism with science?
	Science is a theory, it is not a force of nature, right?
	It's not like gravity, it doesn't enforce itself.
	So, obviously, UPB is not Okay, okay.
	Right. And this happens a lot with people when discussing ethics, that they want an explanation of how it would be implemented.
	So, for instance, I would give the example of the singer and musician Prince.
	Prince injured his hips, I think, after a lifetime of crazy dancing, and he needed a hip replacement.
	And medicine The science of medicine, the discipline of medicine, would tell Prince, well, you've got to go into anesthetic, we've got to open up your hip, we've got to replace your hip, so you back up, you know, whatever happens, right?
	Now, that's what the science of medicine would say, this is the way to deal with the fact that you're in constant pain because of your hip.
	But Prince was a Jehovah's Witness, and as far as I understand it, was not willing to have a blood transfusion.
	And so, if you're going to say, well, how would medicine get Prince to accept a blood transfusion and get a hip replacement?
	Well, it can't.
	I mean, it's just best practices, right?
	I mean, if you are willing to go through the operation, we can probably fix your hip.
	If you're not willing to go through the operation, then we can't, right?
	So, again, it's like how UPB, again, it's not a force of nature, it's not physics, it's Gravity and so on.
	So I'm not sure how a system is supposed to prevent people from doing immoral things.
	One point, are we recording?
	Yes. Okay, great, great, great.
	Because on my screen it says record.
	I wasn't sure if it's actually doing it.
	Okay. Okay.
	Continuing with the same example, the guy was, I think, also asking me, do you think Pulling a gun on someone in that manner is immoral.
	Okay, so one question was, how would you implement this?
	Another one, what do you think, is this a violation of the non-aggression principle, just pulling a gun?
	And I didn't know what to say to that, because I started thinking and I had nothing.
	Am I explaining this?
	Yeah, I'm never sure when you've finished your sentences, so I don't want to interrupt.
	Please go ahead.
	Okay, so is the question, is just pulling a gun on someone a violation of UPB?
	Yes. So now we've gone from theory to practice, which is like going from physics to engineering.
	So if a physicist says, gases expand when heated, and then someone says, What is the optimum amount of heat to get a hot air balloon off the ground?
	The physicist would say, well, no, my principle is that gases expand when heated.
	You're looking for maybe an engineer or something to tell you how a particular instance is created or is optimum, right?
	I mean, a physicist will tell you about gravity and resistance and so on.
	But a physicist would probably not be the guy you'd go to to build a cheap and efficient bridge, because that would be the job of an engineer.
	So, with UPB, it is the evaluation of the moral theories that counts.
	Now, the moral theory is that assault is a violation of UPB.
	Now, we're of course all aware that an assault that is very clear, a guy who just Jumps out of the bushes and punches you in the head.
	That's clearly assault, right?
	We can agree on that.
	And I think the person would say yes, right?
	Yep. And then there are more ambiguous situations.
	So it could be that a guy reaches into his pocket, pulls out a gun and shoots but misses you, but it turns out that there was a tiger creeping up behind you, right?
	I mean, to take sort of a silly Example, right?
	So, there are situations where you don't know for sure how to apply the rule.
	You know that assault is wrong, or assault is not UPP compliant.
	But then, people come up with situations where assault is ambiguous.
	So, the guy's pulled the gun out.
	Well, who knows what that means?
	I don't know what pulled the gun out means, because If he's pulling the gun out in a dark alley, that's probably not so good.
	If you're at a gun show and he's pulling out the gun to show you, then that's clearly not assault, right?
	Or very unlikely to be.
	Assault, right?
	So, when we say that assault is not UBB compliant, we don't also have a magic wand that allows us to deal with all potentially ambiguous situations.
	So, self-defense is valid under UPB, but the legal definition of self-defense in every individual instance would be left to the court system to determine.
	There would be a trial, there would be evidence, there'd be witnesses, state of mind examinations, and all of the rules of evidence and interrogation that characterize a rational court system.
	So, when people say, What about this specific ambiguous situation?
	How does UPB handle that?
	Well, it's not designed to.
	Because it is there to evaluate moral theories, not be an omniscient judge in every particular instance where it's possible that a UPB rule was violated or not.
	So, UPB says self-defense is valid.
	With ambiguous situations, I suppose it would be up to a court to determine whether self-defense was occurring or not.
	Yeah, so what happens is people go from the evaluation of a moral theory to an ambiguous moral situation.
	And then they say UPB is invalid if it cannot adjudicate ambiguous or complex moral situations.
	But that's an invalid use of UPB.
	UPB does not replace the court system, it does not replace evidence or witnesses or the clarification of how a legal standard is applied, if that makes sense.
	Because then you're asking for An active God, you know, who's going to tell you what is and isn't self-defense in some complex situation.
	And generally, the purpose of people who argue against UPB, and this is sort of an emotional thing, but it's important, is they don't like the fact that UPB has clarified moral positions.
	And so what they do is they throw more and more inappropriate We're good that
	they're going to harm you, but it turns out they're not going to harm you, is that murder.
	Well, UPP can't tell you that.
	All it can tell you is that murder is wrong.
	It can give you a definition of murder, but it can't tell in every complicated instance what murder is in these circumstances and in that circumstance and so on, right?
	Because that's why we have courts of law to adjudicate and figure out these things, if that makes sense.
	It does make sense.
	And I think it gives people this sense of security that they have a government with a bunch of laws, like endless laws, and definitions of, let's say, they can have a thing where, oh, pulling a gun on someone is wrong.
	And even though the entire system is not consistent, it gives people Some sense of security, maybe.
	That's why...
	Well, it's just what people are used to.
	Yeah, it's just what people are used to.
	And the other thing is that most people kind of want to get along with other people.
	And so, if you start developing very unusual perspectives, arguments, or opinions, it puts you on a little bit of a collision course with others.
	And a lot of people don't appreciate that, for reasons I can fully understand.
	They don't like that.
	They don't appreciate that.
	You know, if you're in the South, in like say the late 18th century and you become an abolitionist and your slavery is immoral and which of course it is then you know that puts you a bit of a on a bit of a collision course with the people in your family if they happen to own slaves or something like that so people absolutely have a very strong incentive to try and just disprove moral theories or arguments that are outside the mainstream because it makes you know dinner parties a little uncomfortable
	totally yeah Yeah.
	And another example would be when talking to someone about moral rights, as in positive rights.
	For example, a person I was talking to recently said, people have a right to an education.
	And I said, well, are you claiming that you have a right to someone's labor?
	Like you can basically enslave them to educate someone?
	And I'm saying, hey, this actually legalizes, or how to put it, supports slavery, if you say this.
	And the person, of course, was like, no, it doesn't.
	What are you talking about?
	No, I am saying people have a right to an education, not that slavery is OK.
	And I said, OK, so can you force someone to educate them?
	No, because that right stops at someone else's, well, You cannot violate someone else's free will.
	I kind of have a hard time getting through this, because I see a contradiction there.
	To me, it's obvious.
	But people, many times, they're like, what are you talking about?
	I don't know where you're coming from with this talk about slavery.
	I would take a slightly different approach to that.
	I mean, yours is completely valid and all that, but I prefer to start more with the personal.
	So if somebody says to me, people have a right to an education, I would say, well, there are tons of uneducated people in the world.
	Why are you talking to me rather than educating them?
	That's a great point.
	Yeah. And then, well, I'm trying to educate you and it's like, but you have a job, right?
	So if people have a right to an education, it's like when people say people have a right to healthcare, I'm like, well, you should become a doctor and give your services away for free.
	But, you know, generally people don't do that.
	They don't want to do that.
	So, I think most times when people are talking about rights, they're talking about things I like.
	I like people getting educated, so I think that should be a right.
	But they don't really think things through.
	They don't think that rights are enforceable and so on.
	And yeah, of course, you're right.
	I mean, they would be forcing teachers to Teach, and that would be obviously immoral.
	But yeah, they're just saying, I like education.
	Education is a good thing.
	So, I'm going to just say that people have a right to it, because it sounds like I really care.
	But I mean, they haven't really thought it through at all, right?
	And of course, who enforces that right?
	And if people have a right to an education, I'd like to know, what is an education?
	Is an education, you know, propagandizing children into all sorts of nonsense?
	That is easily disprovable.
	Or is it government education?
	What is an education?
	That's always, I mean, that's a big, it's a big sort of foundational question.
	Yeah. And then I usually get into the discussion in general about positive moral rights.
	And I say, hey, this is not just about education, but any claim where you Are we obligated to take care of babies?
	Well, no, nobody is obligated to take care of a baby, but You when you keep a baby in your house Then there is a presumed standard of care if you don't want to take care of your baby, then you need to drop the baby off With someone an authority or someone like that you need to drop your baby off So that someone can take care of the baby but you if you have a baby in your house if you don't take care of the baby the baby dies and
	In that way you would be responsible for the death of the baby In the same way that if I lock some guy in my basement and don't give him food or water, he dies.
	And I would be then responsible for his death.
	I would be a murderer.
	Because babies are in the house, and when babies are in the house, everybody assumes that the people in the house are taking care of the babies.
	And therefore, the baby is taken care of.
	If people are not taking care of the baby, then they are causing the death of the baby, because everybody knows that babies need care.
	I totally understand.
	I'm just going to be the devil's advocate a little bit.
	Let's say a woman gives birth and she's not keeping the baby in her house, but it's in some empty house somewhere and she leaves.
	It's not even her house.
	I don't know.
	She broke in somewhere into an empty house.
	So she's not keeping the baby in her house and neither is she taking care I don't understand why the location of the baby is important.
	If the woman is taking care of the baby...
	Because it's not like kidnapping.
	It's not the same as kidnapping.
	I mean, look, let's say that I take some guy and I chain him to a tree in the middle of nowhere and he starves to death.
	Have I killed him?
	Yes. Yeah, so that's the same.
	If the baby is taken to some remote location and the woman abandons the baby there and doesn't tell anyone that the baby's there, the baby's going to die, so she's caused the baby's death.
	It doesn't have to be in the past, right?
	Yeah. Maybe if I had that conversation now, I would add that she brought the baby into existence by getting pregnant with somebody.
	So that's kind of like, well, it's not the same as kidnapping, but the person is dependent and she caused the existence of that baby, that new person.
	In that way, it's kind of similar.
	Yeah, I mean, everybody who gets killed was brought into existence by someone.
	So, yes, life is the prerequisite for being killed.
	I fully accept that.
	So a woman who creates life and then kills the life is responsible for the death of the baby.
	Right. And she's also, I assume, if she gave birth in a hospital or something like that, If she had said, I have no intention of taking care of this baby, then they would not let her leave with the baby, right?
	So I assume that she also got out of the, wherever she gave birth, a hospital or whatever, she got out of there by not being honest about her intentions with the baby.
	So there's a kind of fraud element involved in that as well.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And related to positive versus negative rights, there is this thing called coma test in the book.
	Oh, coma, yeah, coma test.
	A coma.
	Am I pronouncing it correctly?
	I think you said comma, which is a little different, but I think I get the idea.
	Yeah. Yep.
	So I was thinking, I get the coma test, I'm just thinking, why is it relevant to ethics?
	For example, so a guy in a coma doesn't have consciousness, just like, I don't know, a rock doesn't have consciousness.
	Well, not just like that.
	Because a rock cannot return to consciousness, but someone in a coma can.
	Oh, okay.
	So that's the difference.
	Well, no, it's just a difference.
	I mean, it's not essential to the argument, but it's not the same as a rock.
	I mean, a rock doesn't need to be kept alive, right?
	But somebody in a coma does.
	Yeah, that's true.
	But how is it, how is someone who is at that moment does not have consciousness, how is that relevant?
	to ethics in any way.
	What does it prove or disprove?
	I don't get that.
	sure if you finished your sentence.
	That's fine.
	So yeah, so the coma test is a good test for positive ethics.
	So if people say, we must help the poor, right?
	Then we would say, is a guy in a coma immoral?
	Can he be immoral?
	Well, no, because he's just kind of, Passive, right?
	He's not doing anything.
	So, he's not helping the poor, and he's not immoral.
	So, if you have a positive obligation, then a guy in a coma is immoral for not fulfilling your positive obligation.
	What if they would say, yeah, he's immoral?
	Okay, then I would like to have more understanding about how A guy in a coma is doing evil, because he's not really doing anything.
	So evil is inactivity.
	So when you go to sleep, you're immoral.
	If you take a nap, you're immoral.
	If you just sit on the couch, you're immoral.
	So non-activity is immoral.
	And I would just like to hear the general justification of that.
	Yeah, because then the person would have to say every time they are not following the rule, like sleeping.
	So even though they're not in a coma, but they're sleeping, So, the other thing too is that if you're going to say that a person who is unconscious is immoral, then you'd also have to say why doing something moral requires that you be immoral first.
	So, let's say that helping the poor is moral.
	Well, nobody can help the poor 24 hours a day because you need rest, right?
	You need to sleep.
	So, then you're moral when you're helping the poor, but then when you rest and sleep, you're evil.
	And you can't be moral in any sustained fashion, because you keep having to interrupt.
	Let's say you help the poor 16 hours a day, but then you need to sleep for 8 hours.
	So then you can't maintain your morality, because helping the poor, I guess, 16 hours a day you're moral, but then, you see, you go to sleep.
	And when you go to sleep, you're immoral, you're evil.
	But, evil is required, because you have to sleep in order to help the poor for 16 hours the next day or whatever, right?
	So, or let's say you, I don't know, you fall down the stairs, you break your leg, you can't help the poor for a while, then you go, you become evil.
	So, it seems to me that you can't have to be evil in order to do good.
	That wouldn't make much sense at all.
	And so, given that everybody needs to sleep, you know, hopefully eight hours a day, then that would be a moral definition that you have to be evil for eight hours a day in order to do good for 16 hours a day, and that would seem a little contradictory.
	How could it be necessary that you be evil in order to do good?
	Makes sense.
	Yeah, great answer.
	I have another example of something that I couldn't answer, which was taking a photo of someone without their permission.
	And this was referring to a situation like a creepy guy hidden somewhere in a female bathroom.
	Taking pictures?
	Taking photos?
	And I was like, okay, I have nothing.
	Because I thought, well, it's not assault, it's not murder, it's not rape.
	But still, in this society that we have, I assume this is illegal.
	And again, it might be similar to the situation we discussed earlier with pulling a gun, but still, I didn't know how to handle that.
	How would you handle it?
	Sure. It's a good question.
	So, my first pass at it would be that you own yourself, and therefore you own representations of yourself, to some degree.
	Right? So, if I'm a supermodel, then people can't use my image to promote their makeup brand without my permission, because I own myself, and therefore the people who are taking pictures of me are doing so We're good to go!
	and maintained, which is sort of my body, my face or whatever, they're taking images of that without my permission.
	So they are, in a sense, stealing the images of that which I have created.
	So, however, if they're not taking a picture of me in particular, right?
	Let's just say I'm in the back, they're at the beach, and they're taking a picture of their wife, and I just happen to be walking past in the background.
	I mean, given the ubiquity of photos these days, everybody exists scattered in everybody else's photo album, but they don't particularly care, right?
	And so it's they're not taking a picture of you, you just happen to be in a picture that they're taking of someone else.
	And so, If I'm walking around and somebody takes a picture of a building and I happen to be walking in front of the building, they're taking a picture of the building and I don't have that reasonable expectation of privacy and never having anybody take any photo of me if I'm out there in public and everyone's got their cell phones and so on.
	However, if you are in a toilet, then you have a reasonable expectation of privacy and That's why they have doors and locks and so on, right?
	So if somebody takes a picture of you in the toilet, then they are violating your privacy, which is assumed by common convention and also assumed by the fact that you're in a private store with the door closed and locked, and you're in a situation of undress and so on, right?
	Yeah. The point that you made at the beginning, It was crucial, I believe, that you own yourself and then that extends beyond your physical body to products of your body and a photo could be, in some situations, one of them.
	Yeah. Well, and yeah, so if there's some, you know, Biff, rock-solid ab guy who's worked for, you know, five years to get perfect abs, and then what happens is Somebody takes a picture of his abs and then says, my five-day miracle potion will give you these abs.
	Obviously, it's kind of a fraud, and you're taking somebody else's labor, which is the abs, which they've worked hard to produce, and using it without their permission, if that makes sense.
	It does, yeah.
	I have another sort of an exercise that I don't know if it's relevant, but it's Ten Commandments.
	Running them through UPB.
	Would you like to do that?
	Could be of value.
	I did already an examination of the 10 commandments with Dr. Duke Pesta many years ago, but we could certainly have a look at these for sure.
	Okay. I'm going to go not in the general, usual order.
	I'm going to do the easy ones first.
	So, thou shall not steal.
	It's, I think, the easiest because it's the same, pretty much UPB compliant, I would say.
	So can everyone in all places, in all times, not steal from each other?
	Yes. And the act of stealing, like if you say theft is UPB, then you destroy the concept.
	It's a self-contradictory, self-destroying argument.
	Because theft is the unwanted taking of property.
	So if you say everybody should want to steal and be stolen from, but if you want to be stolen from and you want people to take your property, it's not theft.
	So the category completely vanishes when it's universalized, and that's how you know it's invalid.
	Exactly. Yeah.
	So that's the easiest one, I think, and it's UPB compliant.
	Then, thou shall not kill is not that clear because of how it's written.
	If it was thou shall not murder, it would be equally clear, but kill could mean It's self-defense, but how it's generally understood, I believe, in our society, is that it's thou shalt not murder.
	On Wikipedia, at least, I found it as thou shalt not kill.
	But if we assume it means murder, then it's the same.
	And then everything else is more complicated.
	So thou shalt not commit adultery.
	I was thinking how that relates to UPB, because you could say it's like a violation of a contract, in a sense.
	There's no force involved, but it's like inadultery.
	No, I mean, but there's fraud.
	Right. Fraud.
	Right. Because you say, I'm not going to commit adultery and that's the basis of the marriage.
	You know, like if you ship me $500, and I'm supposed to ship you an iPad, but I don't ship you the iPad.
	I haven't held a gun to you, but I've defrauded you, right?
	Yeah. So adultery would be aesthetically negative behavior, and it would be in the category of fraud.
	Okay, okay.
	Does that mean that the rule, thou shalt not commit adultery, would not be… So there's fraud that would have material aspects to it, right? Some guy defrauds you out of a million dollars, right?
	So that's a form of theft through deception, right?
	Yeah. Now the problem, of course, with adultery is because it's generally based on lust, it doesn't have the same monetary attachment to it.
	Because it is not done for purposes of lust.
	Stealing money, it is done for purposes of satisfying carnal lust, right?
	Yeah. So it doesn't have sort of specific monetary damages and it is not done with the intent of stripping people of their property and resources.
	Would it be moral to use force to prevent adultery?
	Just like you can prevent someone from committing murder by using force, because you're not the one initiating, like a third person stopping a murder.
	But adultery?
	Probably not.
	Yeah, I mean, I think everyone's instinct is that you can't use force to prevent adultery.
	Right. This, yeah, this one is...
	much more difficult than the previous two.
	At least in my mind, it's very confusing where to place it.
	Yeah, I agree with that.
	So, I would say that, you know, let's say you send me $500, I'm supposed to send you an iPad, and I don't send you the iPad.
	Can someone use force to get me to send the iPad?
	Well, kind of in a way they can, because, you know, if you take me to the cops or you sue me or whatever, then I may have to kick up or cough up that money, if that makes sense.
	Or cough up, yeah, I need to return your money or give the iPad or something like that.
	Because it's like theft in that case.
	Right, right.
	It's like a complicated case of theft.
	Yeah, so with the adultery, The two people who are choosing to commit the adultery are obviously doing so of their own free will.
	The person though who's the most harmed, let's say it's Bob, Alice and Sally.
	Bob has an affair with Alice, Sally is his wife.
	The problem is that he is unilaterally rewriting the marital contract without telling his wife.
	He is now, because he married her on the, assuming that they married on the grounds of Fidelity, right?
	Of monogamy.
	And now he is rewriting that.
	And he is saying, I am now opening up the marriage without telling you.
	And that would nullify the contract that he has with his wife.
	Because now he's Fortunately acting which is why if she wants to leave him she can take a bunch of his stuff because he has violated the contract So the force would be not to prevent Bob from sleeping with Alice when Sally is his wife.
	I think the force would be if His wife Sally decides to leave him and you know take half the house or whatever it is, right?
	Then you could use force to ensure that happened The other thing too is that if you're in the presence, let's say you're Bob's friend and Bob is going to go sleep with Alice and you know for some reason you know he's going to go and sleep with Alice and you're standing there trying to stop him from going in, right?
	I don't think you'd need to use force because what you would do is not say to Bob, I'm going to beat you up if you go in and sleep with Alice.
	You would say, I know you're going to go and sleep with Alice.
	If you go in there, I'm calling your wife.
	I am revealing your breaking of the contract with your wife.
	I'm going to reveal that to her directly and right away, if that makes sense.
	It does, yeah.
	Okay. Okay, let's try the next one.
	Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
	Yeah, that generally refers to lying in a matter of legal importance or, you know, significant moral importance.
	And yeah, of course, I think that you should work to tell the truth, and particularly when you're under oath, right?
	If you've sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then you are obligated to do that.
	Right. In that sense, if you're under oath in some legal proceeding, that would Again, being the category, if you break it, you're breaking the contract.
	Well, if you want to tell the truth, then you have to tell the truth.
	I mean, because otherwise, because fraud is based upon lying, right?
	I mean, if you're going to send me the 500 bucks and I say I'm going to send you the iPad, if you knew I was lying, then you wouldn't send me the 500 bucks, right?
	Yeah, yeah, true, true.
	That makes sense, yeah.
	So, yeah, I mean, if you obtain other people's property through fraud, then you are in unjust possession of their property.
	Makes sense, yeah.
	Then there are two, I would say, easy ones.
	Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife and thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house and other stuff.
	It's something internal.
	That's not an action.
	That's an emotion, or how to put it, desire.
	So UPB does not deal with that.
	UPB deals with actions.
	Yeah, I mean, this is good advice.
	So affairs, to use the previous example, affairs don't just kind of pop out of nowhere.
	Affairs are the result of a whole series of steps, usually, right?
	Like you're attracted to someone, you linger around their desk, you make jokes, you laugh, you touch their shoulder, you know, like it's a whole series of things that, you know, step by step will lead you into that place where you end up sleeping with someone, right?
	You go on a business trip, you have dinner, she wants to show you something in the hotel room, like, so it's step by step that leads you to that kind of sin.
	And I think that the purpose of thou shalt not covet is the prevention of sin.
	And I mean, that's good, right?
	Prevention of sin is, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?
	So, the prevention of a sin is more valuable than somehow overcoming a sin, right?
	So, if you take alcohol for the first time, And you're like, oh my gosh, this is like the greatest thing ever, right?
	Then it's probably wise for you to never touch alcohol again, because it's a lot easier to quit after your first drink than after your 10,000th drink.
	So this is around the prevention of sin, and I think it's very, very good advice.
	Definitely. Then honor thy father and thy mother.
	So I don't know what They actually meant by that, but it could mean something internal like an emotion that you it's an attitude or If it means obey thy mother and thy father that would be invalid through upb because it's a positive obligation But if it's just some kind of yeah your internal in your mind attitude then same as the previous two examples,
	it's Outside of UPB, because UPB deals with actions.
	Yeah, it's an internal state.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Then, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, aka don't work on Sunday, would be a simplified way of putting it.
	So I was thinking, okay, so not working on Sunday could be, like, it's universal.
	No, it's not.
	Not in time.
	Well, you can't say it's universal, except for this part where it's not universal.
	So, in terms of space, it's universal, but not in terms of time.
	So, it doesn't make sense from that perspective.
	If the rule were to be universal, it would have to be don't work, not just on Sunday, right?
	Well, and don't work, which means don't do labor, would be self-defeating, because Whoever wrote down don't work would have worked to write down don't work.
	So it would be a self-defeating argument.
	Agreed. Then the remaining two, or actually the first two, so thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
	So that has to do with saying stuff, which again, you There can be a guy on an empty island saying stuff and it doesn't impact other people.
	Okay, but I don't know if that's… Well, in a theological context, this would be somewhat akin to… I mean, we have free speech except for the direct incitement to violence, right?
	Like, if there's a crowd that's following your every word, and you whip the crowd up into a frenzy, and then you say to the crowd, you know, go kill that guy, and they go kill that guy, then, you know, the people who murdered have murdered, but you've also incited violence.
	So there are limitations on free speech.
	The example that's often cited is, you know, shouting fire in a crowded theater, right?
	course has never actually happened, but...
	Nonetheless, that is something that works, right?
	So, I would say this falls into the category of harm.
	So, if, in the theological context, taking the Lord's name in vain, right?
	If taking the Lord's name in vain Okay.
	Often you might harm others through spreading that.
	So if you look at taking the North's name in vain, puts you in an eternity of hell, if that makes sense.
	Okay. And so if...
	Thank you.
	Taking the Lord's name in vain puts you in an eternity of hell, and if you spread that habit, other people go to an eternity of hell.
	Then, you know, an eternity of hell is worse than any mortal crime, right?
	Right. So, in the theological context, I would put it along those lines, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, but purely through UPB, which category would it be put in, outside of theology?
	Oh, free speech.
	Right. Because if you had a rule that said thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, you're saying that you can prevent somebody from saying that.
	That you could enforce, let's say, somebody saying something that would fit into this category and that You can use force to stop that person.
	It would legalize assault, in a sense.
	Okay, am I making any sense right now?
	Can you just try that again?
	Okay, so let's say I'm the guy that proposes this rule.
	I say thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, which is a restriction on what people can say.
	So you cannot say X is what I'm doing.
	You cannot say X. Okay, so is it universal?
	Yeah, like all places, all time.
	That's true.
	about behavior?
	having a hard time.
	No, no, these shouldn't be simple things to solve.
	So I understand that and I appreciate the difficulty.
	I really, I mean, I...
	I love watching people think about philosophy, so I don't want to interrupt you, so feel free to reason away.
	I think I have it.
	So, because then I'm putting myself in a category where I can restrict someone else's behavior, but the other person could do the same to me with saying something else.
	It's almost like As if I'm creating a second-class citizen of the other person, right?
	And I'm putting myself into the first-class citizen category, and I'm restricting his behavior.
	Because then he can do the same to me, or he can say, you are not able to say anything.
	You have to shut up 100% of the time.
	Because he will say, thou shalt not say anything.
	And that's also universal, and it's about behavior, but it cancels each other out.
	Okay, so I would take a slightly different approach, and the way that you're working is great to me, but I would take a slightly different approach because one of the challenges with theological language is that it seems vivid because, I mean, I was raised a Christian, and so it seems vivid, and a sort of Ten Commandments thing seems vivid.
	So what I would do is I would abstract this and try and make it less personal and less historical.
	And so I would say something like this.
	I would say, okay, so the statement is, thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain, right?
	And then I would say… Okay, sorry, can you repeat that?
	Because the connection dropped for like two seconds.
	Sorry, no problem.
	Can you repeat?
	So the statement is, thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain, right?
	That's the commandment?
	Yep. Okay.
	So then I would say, I would take a two-pronged approach, which may work or may not.
	We'll just follow the path and see how it goes.
	So the first thing that I would say is, how many lords are there in the world?
	How many gods do human beings believe in?
	And the answer to that, of course, would be, I mean, give or take, there's about 10,000 gods that people believe in.
	Do they all have a name?
	Yes, they all have a name.
	So why would one person's god be automatically superior and valid relative to everyone else's gods, if that makes sense, right?
	And this is a standard argument of atheist skepticism, but from a UPB standpoint, it's important.
	So, then we would say, well, no, but my God is real and true, right?
	And then we would say, as philosophers, we would say, okay, lovely, boy, if you can prove God, that would make, I mean, the idea that I could live forever and spend an eternity with my wife and child when they die, when I die, it's pretty nice, right?
	So, I would say, they'd say, well, my God is the one true God, and I would say, okay, great, then let's prove that, right?
	And then they would Basically, we don't have to go through all that.
	They would look at writings.
	But, you know, all religions have writings.
	They say, well, but there were these miracles.
	Well, there's lots of gods that proclaim miracles.
	So then you would go through the process and eventually it would come down to things.
	People should obey that which I cannot prove, right?
	That would be a, at least you can't prove it scientifically and objectively, right?
	Yeah. And so if the principle is Things should obey that which I cannot prove.
	Is that principle UPB compliant?
	Because there's the I in that statement.
	It's not universal.
	Right. Yeah, so if the statement is, everybody has to obey that which I cannot prove, it cannot be universalized.
	Because everyone has that right.
	So if you say, well, you have to obey Right, right. Yeah, this one is difficult.
	I remember now, I encountered one situation where I totally failed to argue my way out of it.
	It was Somebody studying law, and they had an equivalent of this, and I came up with nothing in that situation.
	Now I remember it.
	No, and listen, just please understand, it happens to everyone.
	I'm only about 80% satisfied with the answer about adultery, because we have an instinct, which is an important place to start from.
	We have an instinct that murder is wrong, and that's an important place to start from.
	We have an instinct that you should not use violence.
	To prevent adultery and I think we all have a strong instinct about that that you can't shoot a guy who's gonna go and sleep with a mistress, right?
	and but and so I'm only and I think a lot of that is because You don't know the circumstances, right?
	So if some guy's gonna go and sleep with his mistress Maybe his wife is divorcing him Maybe she has agreed to this, you know, like there's lots of the sort of typical French situation.
	I think Mitterrand had this old French premiere where he had his wife and then he had his mistress and blah blah blah blah blah, right?
	So, you don't know the circumstances.
	Because you don't know the circumstances, somebody's just going in to sleep with someone, which clearly is not a violation of the non-aggression principle, assuming of course both parties are voluntarily willing to do this, right?
	So, a guy is going in to sleep with a woman, That's not a violation of UPB.
	Now, it could be a violation of his marriage vows and so on, but in that moment, right, you don't need violence because...
	and sorry, I just wanted to revisit this.
	I think we got 80% of the way there because this is hard to puzzle, right?
	At least for me.
	Maybe it's easier for other people, but...
	So, Bob's going in to sleep with Alice.
	He's married to Susan, right?
	So, you're standing there saying to Bob, don't go in and sleep with Alice.
	You're married to Susan.
	And he says, no, no, she's left me, it's all over, she's divorcing me, and I've been dying to sleep with Alice and she wants to sleep with me.
	In which case, it's all voluntary, right?
	It may be unsavory, but it's all voluntary, right?
	It's like a strip club.
	Yes. It's unsavory, but assuming that there's no force or whatever it is then.
	So, now, if If you get on the phone, let's say you say, I don't believe you.
	I think that Susan is, like your wife, is not leaving you.
	I think you're just telling me that to get me out of the way.
	And then you say, I'm going to call Susan, right?
	Now, if he's like, no, no, no, you can't call Susan, right?
	Then he's probably lying and so on.
	So. I have an idea about how to handle this.
	And if it is fraud, it doesn't occur.
	But you don't have enough information when you just see Bob going in and you think he's going to go sleep with Alice.
	You don't know.
	I mean, I don't know.
	What is he grabbing?
	Is he holding a bag of Viagra pills?
	I don't know.
	You don't have enough information to initiate the use of force.
	To prevent Bob from sleeping with Alice and if you do try and get all of the information and Bob knows about it sleeping with Alice isn't gonna happen because he's gonna you know his whole affair is gonna be revealed and and if Susan doesn't know she's gonna hit the roof and and you know So he's gonna have to go deal with that.
	So so there's ways just by telling the truth.
	There's ways to deal with The whole sleeping with others if that makes sense It does but I have Another approach, maybe how to answer this question that just popped into my mind.
	So let's say this fits into a bigger category, do not commit fraud.
	We could replace adultery with fraud because it's breaking some contract.
	And my answer now would be Yeah.
	That has to be included in the contract.
	So let's say the marriage contract could include, hey, if you commit adultery, you lose the entire property that's within that marriage.
	You lose access to it.
	People even have contracts like if you gain more than 20 pounds, the marriage is over.
	Right. So from UPB perspective, you could then say the result of that contract is enforceable, but UPB itself does not answer the question of the consequences of fraud.
	So you would have to have a clause in that contract that answers.
	Let's say UPB does not answer that.
	Yeah, but the contract, if the contract specifies it, like, let's say that you have a contract that says, if a friend of mine knows that I'm going to go and sleep with someone outside the marriage, they're empowered to tackle me to the ground and tie me up.
	Well, okay, that's in the contract that you're not initiating force.
	And there is, of course, I mean, it's a very interesting spectrum.
	It's more around theory of law than moral philosophy, but there's a whole spectrum around, like, what is fraud?
	And so on, right?
	Like, if a woman pretends to be younger than she is through makeup, is she defrauding a man who dates her for her fertility?
	If a man pretends to be wealthier than he is through a variety of mechanisms, is he...
	There's a whole lot of sort of soft, quote, fraud, manipulation, misdirection, all of this kind of stuff.
	Like, when you're in a job interview, and They say, well, why did you leave your last job?
	Right? And let's say you minimize whatever might have happened.
	Maybe you did something wrong or whatever.
	Say, well, you know, we just did.
	Is that fraud?
	It's really an interesting and complicated situation.
	UBB says, of course, that fraud is not good.
	Fraud can't be good because Everyone can't be lying to and wanting to be lied to, because then it's not fraud anymore.
	So fraud can't be good, but fraud is a sort of special category, because fraud usually, I mean, rape, theft, assault and murder are all involving physical damage 3 and the stealing of somebody's time with theft.
	Fraud, if it is a soft theft, like you're taking the 500 bucks with no intent of shipping the iPad, that's straight-up theft.
	But there are a whole lot of gray areas when it comes to Misdirection or you know putting I mean if you If you go out on a date, I mean it's a hot date or whatever then you're gonna Shave really nicely you might get a fresh haircut and you'll dress to the nines you put on a little aftershave or whatever people like these days and You're putting your best foot forward now If you get married,
	you're not going to do that every day, probably, right?
	You're not going to get a haircut and shave perfectly every day, right?
	So, it's sort of dress suit to sweatpants kind of thing, right?
	So, you're putting your best foot forward and, you know, if you're having a job interview, then you're going to show up 20 minutes early, but you're not going to show up to work 20 minutes early.
	Right, you might in fact be late sometimes, right?
	So you generally put your best foot forward.
	Is that fraud?
	Or is that just wanting to make a good impression?
	You know, it's all very sort of interesting from a philosophical standpoint, but where it generally turns into legal matters is when there is objective and clear material damage, right? You send me the 500 bucks, I don't send you the iPad, you're out 500 bucks.
	Like, clear, right?
	The problem with Infidelity is, what is the clear material damage?
	It's optional.
	Now, there is, and I think Robin Williams got sued for this back in the day, there is clear objective damage if Bob goes and sleeps with Alice and then brings back home to his wife herpes, or some other sort of sexually transmitted disease, then he has assaulted her.
	Right, because he has defrauded her, he's sleeping with another woman, and therefore he got an STD and he passed it to his wife.
	And so, and you can get sued, at least you used to back in the day, for that kind of stuff.
	And you know, that makes perfect sense to me, because you basically turned your dick into a bioweapon, and it's made somebody sick.
	And with herpes, it's, I don't know, it's pretty permanent, right?
	So, so there are times when it's clear material damage.
	If Bob's wife has a business and Bob Has a credit card on that business and then Bob goes and puts a lot of non-business related expensive on the expenses on that credit card Then Well That's fraud because they're supposed to be for business expenses and there's legal risks involved in all of that So yeah, so that that all sort of makes makes sense.
	But if he just goes and sleep with someone There's emotional damage.
	Maybe. Maybe.
	See, here's the thing, I mean, some people's marriages, I mean, you've heard some of the call-in shows, man, some people's marriages are pretty atypical, right?
	So there's, you know, let's say that the woman has, she really loves the guy, but she has some physical issue where she can't have sex for whatever reason.
	And so she says, OK, listen, stay clean.
	But, you know, I want to stay married to you, but I can't give you sex.
	We love each other.
	Go have a mistress.
	Right. I mean, we could think of a variety of reasons where that could be that could be the case.
	So. Infidelity is tricky, even if the woman doesn't know about it and is emotionally hurt by it, she might choose to stay.
	In the marriage for the sake of the children, right?
	And this could happen, of course, with men or women, where the typical example is the man wants to sleep around and the woman is like, okay, fine, you can have your side hussies as long as I'm the one you come home to every night, and you keep paying the bills.
	So that's a kind of de facto arrangement, even if it's never spoken about.
	So if somebody punches me in the face, the damage to my face is not optional.
	If somebody has an affair, The end of the marriage still remains a choice.
	You can choose to work it out, you can choose to look it over, you can choose to even discuss it and make it a sort of frank part of the marriage, if that makes sense.
	So, it is quite...
	it's quite complicated, and it's not objective, and there's not usually, outside of STDs and things like that, there is not material damage that is quantifiable.
	Emotional damage, I don't know, it's really tough.
	You know, pain and suffering, that kind of stuff.
	It's really tough to figure that kind of stuff out.
	So that generally is not, you know, I'm upset, you know, give me X amount of dollars is not usually something that I'm going to do.
	I don't But it has to be in conjunction with something that's more objective, because otherwise, you know, just about anybody, anybody could complain about pain and suffering and sue and get money and, and that would be far too open to abuse, if that makes sense.
	So mere pain and suffering is usually not something that would be legally actionable.
	I think, I don't know, I'm obviously no lawyer in the present, but in sort of the future, if a free society, just being upset would not be actionable, because it's not quantifiable, it's not objective, and so on.
	And so, if there's monetary damages, you could include pain and suffering, but there has to be some underlying objective damage in order for there to be clear fraud, and quantifiable, and measurable, and so on, right?
	Which is why, I guess, your point is, if it's not put into the contract, initially, right?
	If it's not put into the marriage contract, or the prenup, or whatever, then simply being upset is not enough to say violence should be done against a woman.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	It does make sense.
	And yeah, I can see now how much more complicated fraud is than the other four rules.
	Right, right.
	No, fraud is notoriously challenging.
	You know, there are, I think it was in England, there were women who sort of tried to get a movement going where, let's say, a guy shows up to a bar in a pilot's outfit.
	claims to be a pilot.
	and And a woman sleeps with him.
	It turns out he's not a pilot.
	He just basically has a friend who's a pilot or he rented the costume or something like that.
	Or let's say a guy comes to pick up a woman in a very expensive sports car.
	And it turns out, you know, after she spends the weekend with him, it turns out he's actually kind of broke.
	It's his friend's sports car.
	And he's like, well, I never told you directly that it was mine.
	Or I said, it's my sports car, but I meant it's mine for the weekend.
	Like, you know, all of this kind of stuff.
	And there was a guy, I don't know if this is an urban myth or not, but there was a guy in China who married what he thought was a beautiful woman, and he then had very ugly children.
	And it turned out that the woman had had massive amounts of plastic surgery.
	And of course, as you know, plastic surgery does not change the genes, doesn't change the genetics.
	Right. What does this mean?
	Ken, because, you know, one of the reasons that men choose beautiful women is not just for the pleasure of looking at beautiful women, but also because it gives their children a significant advantage in life because attractive people just generally are more successful and make more money and are generally more positively perceived and so on, right? So, is that a kind of fraud?
	Let's say a woman has a giant nose and has plastic surgery to reduce her nose and then never tells her husband.
	And then the kids are born with these giant noses, which can't be corrected until what, mid-teens?
	That's generally, I don't know if and when, but that's generally when you see it happening.
	So, you know, then the dad has to put up with his kids being called, you know, big nose or, hey, your nose was on time, but you were five minutes late.
	All of that stuff throughout it, right?
	So, and if he knew how big the woman's nose was, he might not want to marry her, right?
	So, there's a lot, I mean, people do this as well, sorry, the last sort of example, and this is why fraud is very interesting to me, is that, let's say that you have a really crazy family, and you bring some woman over, but your family pretends to be sane.
	No, seriously.
	I mean, it's a very big issue, right?
	They pretend to be sane.
	They're positive.
	They're jovial.
	They're joking.
	They completely clean up the house and all of that.
	And, you know, I mean, is that fraud?
	Because then you might marry into that family and then the true stripes come out and they're crazy and so on, right?
	Is it fraud if you are a slender woman?
	You get married.
	I mean, I had a friend many years ago.
	He married When he married, his wife was 110 pounds, and when they divorced, she was over 300 pounds.
	Wow. So, you know, it's a tricky situation.
	It's a very tricky situation.
	I do think that in...
	And also, here's another thing that happened.
	Sorry, this is an interesting one as well.
	I don't know if you've heard of this, but If you ever talk to a priest who does premarital counseling, or anyone who does premarital counseling, but often it's a priest, and you say to the priest, hey, what's the most common thing you see coming up in these premarital counselings?
	And what he will often say is, well, what comes up is crazy amounts of debt that one party has not disclosed to the other.
	Now, if you date a woman, And you've been dating for a year, you want to get married and so on.
	And let's say you get married and sometimes it shows up after marriage when… That's horrible.
	Yeah, sometimes it can show up after marriage.
	Is that a fraud?
	Well, I think it is.
	I think that's straight up fraud.
	Because if a woman is $100,000 in debt, doesn't tell the man and then somehow he becomes responsible for half the debt or something like that, that is really predatory.
	But what about before they get married, before he's legally maybe perhaps responsible for some portion of the debt?
	What then?
	Let's say he wouldn't have dated her for a year or two if he knew about the debt, but let's say he did date her for a year or two, invested all of that time and money, and then he finds out about the debt before they get married.
	Is that fraud?
	I mean, these are all, you know, let's say that there's a guy who is a serious drinker, but for the first couple of months he pretends he doesn't drink that much.
	Like, maybe he'll go on the date, white-knuckle his way through only one or two drinks, and then go home and pound back a 12-pack or something, right?
	So he hides that he drinks, or he hides that he smokes, or he hides that he does drugs, or something like that.
	Is that fraud?
	I mean, it's all very interesting and complicated.
	Or let's say that a man says to a woman, she says, listen, I'm dating seriously for marriage, so if you're not interested in marriage, then tell me and I won't waste my time, right?
	And let's say that he has no intention of getting married, but he says that he does because he wants to date her.
	Is that fraud?
	Well, again, these things are very...
	I changed my mind.
	It's hard to prove.
	It's not like he wrote this down in some nefarious, fiery journal or something like that.
	So, there is.
	And of course, you've heard this a million times in call-in shows when I talk to people and say, well, what were the red flags?
	Because, you know, a lot of times people will claim to be victims.
	When it turns out that they're not, in fact, victims because there were red flags everywhere when they were heading in.
	And that's tough for people, right?
	So, yeah, it is.
	Yeah, it's tough.
	What about a woman who says to a man, I want to have kids?
	And he's like, I don't really want to have kids and not sold on it.
	And then she starts dating him, hoping to change his mind, right?
	Well, that's a conditional, right?
	But she doesn't say, if you never want to have kids, I'm not going to stay with you.
	But she goes in trying to change his mind.
	Is that a kind of fraud?
	Because she's there under false pretenses.
	So, it's quite complicated.
	And so, to me, because of the complicated nature of fraud, there has to be clear objective damages, right?
	Like if you Don't send the iPad when someone sends you the 500 bucks.
	That's clear.
	It's like 500 bucks.
	Never got the iPad.
	And it's subjective.
	Or if it's spelled out in the contract.
	But this other stuff, it's so kind of goopy.
	It's goopy and complicated and so many edge cases that I think the law can't really deal with that kind of stuff.
	The law can deal with that which can be objectively proven.
	And there's not much in human relationships that can be objectively proven in that way.
	Wow. Yeah.
	I never realized it's an entire universe of fraud.
	All these categories.
	Yeah. So much deception in human life.
	Yeah. I mean, just look at these, you know, I mean, just a good example.
	Like if you wear glasses every time you go to pick up your glasses, there are all of these absolutely beautiful people staring down at you on the wall with their glasses on.
	Right. Because they're like, and of course, everybody knows that you don't put your glasses on and look like that guy.
	But nonetheless, that is, they program that because it makes you feel that way.
	You know, or you see these guys selling beer, right?
	They're selling beer.
	They all have six packs and all of that, right?
	And it's like, no, most people who drink beer do not have six packs.
	And certainly drinking beer will not give you a six pack.
	So, but you know, there's all of this misdirection and You know, every time you see a food commercial, you know, they've used weird glues to hold the food in place and make it look a whole lot better than it actually is.
	I remember the first time after I saw commercials for a Big Mac, I remember the first time I actually opened up the box.
	I'm like, what the hell is this driven over roadkill?
	It doesn't look like anything like what I've seen.
	So yeah, there's just a lot of that kind of stuff as a whole.
	I mean, you can't police at all.
	Obviously, I would rather people be more direct and honest and not manipulative in their ways of communicating, but I'm, you know, that's not about to vanish from the world.
	So anyway, yeah, that's why I think that the issue of infidelity is not something you can use force in because you just you don't have the information and there's ways to prevent the infidelity, which is to inform the wife.
	There's ways to prevent the infidelity Without using force.
	And if there's a way to do something without using force, that should always be preferable to using force.
	Right. Yeah.
	Yeah. I just wanted to check in.
	How has been this conversation for you so far?
	Are you enjoying this?
	No, it's great.
	Yeah. I'm kidding me.
	UPB is one of my favorite topics.
	And for you?
	Awesome. Awesome.
	I have some more stuff.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Go for it.
	This is coming from listening to your series about the history of philosophers, and my interest in that was sparked because I read a very general book about the history of philosophy.
	I have never read anything about philosophy.
	My only exposure to philosophy was from your show, so I had an idea of what philosophy is.
	And then I'm reading this book about the history of philosophy, And I'm one-third in, and I'm just thinking, what is this garbage?
	Like, what is this garbage?
	Will Durant has written one of the more famous histories of philosophy, but it could be someone else.
	I mean, just personally, by the by, for the people who listen to this, the History of Philosophy series is some of my best work.
	It is fantastic.
	Yeah, it's really good.
	And then I was thinking, who, in your opinion, from like the great philosophers of history, was the closest to formulating something like UPB?
	I mean, the person who's always, who seems close, and I just talked about this on the last live stream, I think it was, but the people, the person who everybody thinks is the closest, but who's not the closest is Immanuel Kant.
	This is, act as if the principle, if your action becomes a general law for everyone.
	But it was not rigorous enough, and it was not universal enough.
	So Aristotle, with life lived in the pursuit of virtue, is the best life.
	Okay, yeah, but you know, never quite… But he's not answering the question of what virtue is.
	Well, yeah, and I mean, anybody who didn't notice that there was a significant proportion of slaves around.
	I have some doubts as to their moral acuity.
	And he had a very negative view of women, which, given that I love my wife and daughter, is not a huge plus for me.
	Plato had a more positive opinion of women, but like many people who have a more positive opinion of women, he's a complete communist.
	So, I don't know.
	Maybe John Locke with his economics, and certainly his moral philosophy, but most moral philosophers are just, you know, wouldn't this be great, and this is really nice, and this is, you know, honor and honor and honor, and, and, and, um, uh, Honesty and decency and upright and virtue and it's like it's just a bunch of positive words.
	That's what I know.
	Wouldn't this be nice, right?
	Exactly, exactly.
	Yeah. So I, yeah, I think I would say, I mean, it's funny.
	Yeah, I mean, certainly Ayn Rand, I really can't find much fault with her metaphysics and epistemology.
	It's just that, you know, her argument that Reason best serves mankind and therefore we should pursue reason because it is our best tool of survival.
	It's like, it kind of ignores the fact that, I mean, there's tons of people who make a fortune by lying their asses off.
	Right? I mean, we've seen this even under COVID.
	People who just made billions and billions of dollars just lying their asses off.
	And you can say, ah, yes, but for society, it's like, but she was an anti-collectivist, right?
	So she was into individuals.
	And there are, sadly, individuals who, and a lot of it has to do with the state, but not only that, they just, they make an absolute fortune and their survival is very much served by lying.
	Just utterly, utterly lying.
	So, yeah, so I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Metaphysics and epistemology, great.
	Economics, really good.
	But, you know...
	And also her outright dismissal of...
	She was introduced, I think, through Murray Rothbard to the idea of a stateless society and she just had utter contempt for it and waved it away, you know.
	And look, I mean, nobody's perfect with their reasoning, of course, right?
	But when she just says, I think, her argument against the sort of DRO idea, It's like, okay, so one private agency comes up against another private agency and they can't resolve their differences and the whole thing falls apart, therefore you need the government.
	And it's like, that's not critical.
	That's not, sorry, that's not critical thinking.
	That's not, okay, let me see if I can work with this idea, really get it.
	But just creating something that's an obvious issue without working to try and figure out how you would solve that issue is kind of lazy, right?
	She should have said something like, OK, so there's a problem.
	One DRO disagrees with another DRO.
	What do they do?
	Well, clearly they're going to have to have a common standard.
	Otherwise, nobody's going to accept protection from DROs.
	It's sort of like saying, well, one railroad wants a certain width of rail.
	Another railroad wants a different width of rail.
	How are they going to transfer their trains?
	Well, they can't.
	Therefore, you need the government to run railroads or something like that, right?
	And it's like, well, no, but they're going to sit together before they start building rails.
	They're all going to sit together and hammer out what the best width of rail is.
	So that they can, you know, in the same way that when I first started on the internet there were these proprietary forums with their own graphical user interfaces, they use their own data transfer techniques.
	And then generally people moved to things like TCP IP and email can go everywhere.
	And so the common standard tends to win out.
	And so the fact that she wrote an entire book of 19th century railroading, right, that's based on Taggart, was started in the 19th century.
	And All of the rail widths were the same, even though I don't believe that there was a government law mandating the rail widths.
	Or even if there was some sort of government law, the incentive of the free market would be to have standardized widths of rails.
	Absolutely. It's kind of like language, right?
	Nobody enforces which words mean what, but we It's a little bit of that.
	Sorry. I mean, I hear what you're saying.
	I mean, because of the state, right?
	So people have taken fairness to be an equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.
	Or they've taken the word equality.
	And so, yeah, so there is a certain amount of enforcement of language, but just because grappling and holding on to definitions of words is so profitable for for people, but certainly in the free market languages is hammered on and worked on on a continual basis.
	And so, but yeah, even something like your cell phone companies, you can, there's a lot of places you can basically travel, like Canada, USA, Mexico, and you can use your phone like you're at home.
	And it's like, well, but why?
	Why? Why?
	It's like, because it's profitable.
	And they figured out how to exchange data on each other's networks and they've worked on that so that they can provide these offerings to people and then they don't have, I mean, I remember back in the day, if you traveled outside your country, I mean, you left your phone on airplane mode because like if you, you know, suck up eight bits of data, it could be 50 bucks, right?
	So yeah, they've worked to sort of trade these kinds of things and you can send an email to India Which goes through like 30 different computers and they all handle it and they send it and they receive it and there's no, well, I mean, you know, my email standard is different from your email standard and therefore we can't, like, there's just a general cooperation.
	Although I don't think there's been a, there's certainly not an international law that says everybody has to deal with emails the same way.
	They just kind of work it out because it's profitable.
	And of course, if your DRO promises to protect you from a certain thing and the other DRO doesn't agree, then your DRO will simply pay you that, right?
	Whatever it is, right?
	Because people don't want to have an excuse from one DRO saying, well, the other DRO didn't agree, and therefore, right, I can't reimburse you.
	But you would have a contract clause which says, if my DRO, let's say I get into a traffic accident with somebody who has a different DRO, and their DRO doesn't pay, then my DRO pays.
	Because, you know, I want to get paid.
	I want to make sure of that.
	And all DROs would have that clause in them.
	And so they'd all figure out the best way to work together.
	So just the fact that she would dismiss this out of hand was a fairly rare lapse in arrogance and imperiousness from her.
	So I think that was fairly damaging to her credibility to a certain degree.
	So yeah, I'm going to have to just say me.
	But yeah, as far as closest goes, I don't know anyone who's come up with the argument that Stealing cannot be UPB because it self-detonates, as a concept.
	And I even got some Rationality Rules guy, I even got him to admit that.
	So, that's truly an original argument.
	And it's the kind of thing that once you get it, it's like, oh, that's so simple.
	Right? It is eerie how simple it is.
	Right. But that whole generation of UPB was just a massive exercise in blank slate-ism.
	Like I just had to say, okay, everyone's wrong.
	We're wiping the blackboard clean.
	I'm absolutely going to start from scratch as if I know nothing, nothing at all.
	And because I had all of these, you know, I studied a lot of different moral theories over my time.
	They're all bouncing around in my head.
	So yeah, that was just an exercise in retreating to a completely naive Blank slate, no history, no mind sort of theory, if that makes sense.
	It does, yeah.
	And I had no idea about Aristotle's and Plato's opinion on women.
	That's quite interesting.
	I'm quite surprised that Plato was more positive, because he's, from my perspective, the ultimate bad guy of philosophy.
	Yeah, I mean, I have this general theory, which I talked about in my album review of Pink Floyd's The Wall, which is that femininity plus a state is socialism, communism, and masculinity plus a state is fascism.
	And that is the sort of twin poles that we're working with.
	And so for me, when a more feminine personality unites itself with state power.
	It tends to work towards socialism or communism pretty quickly.
	So, and that's a little bit on the Aristotle and Plato divide.
	So, in that divide, would Plato be the socialist?
	Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I've got a whole, I got a four-hour presentation on Plato, which you should check out at some point.
	But yeah, I go through all of the Republican Yeah, no, he wanted children, no family, all the children raised in common and partners, random or assigned.
	And so because you didn't even know who your parents were in Plato's ideal society, you could end up marrying your sister and just all kinds of terrible stuff.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I was thinking also about AI and UBB.
	The rules that are UPB compliant, we kind of already have them or have always had them across all societies.
	Like if you went to Japan a thousand years ago and you asked people about murder, rape, assault and theft, most people would say like, yeah, that's immoral.
	And I was thinking Do you think, like, could we come up with some surprising rule that's UPB compliant?
	Like some, let's say, hey AI, figure out all the, like, propose all the possible moral rules that you can think of, like billion, and run them through UPB.
	Do you think there could be something that we haven't thought of ever, like as a human?
	I mean, yes, for sure.
	And that might be because of different circumstances and so on, right?
	Yeah, I mean copyright is one question.
	Copyright plus AI is a whole other question, right?
	Because they've been just basically, I think a lot of AI creators have been just pillaging texts all over the place.
	So yeah, I think so.
	But if you go back to Japan, right?
	And this is, you know, everyone has these thoughts when you're a kid, right?
	Which is, you know, if I shoot someone on the street, I'm a murderer.
	If I shoot someone in a war, I'm a murderer.
	I'm a hero.
	If I shoot someone on the street, I go to jail or I get executed.
	If I shoot someone in a war, I get ticker tape, parade, a medal and a pension.
	And it is confusing, right?
	And so, I think the most surprising thing for people about UPB is that because it aims at invalid or self-contradictory moral theories, It aims at the biggest predators.
	So, I mean, of course, look at totalitarian states in the 20th century killed a quarter of a billion of their own population, of their own citizens, right?
	And aggregate across the world.
	Democide, it's called.
	People got slaughtered more by governments than just about any, and that's even outside of war.
	That's just, you know, Cambodian style, killing your own population.
	So, to me, what What undermines and underpins the philosophies that cause the most harm, it's not where people accept that rape, theft and assault and murder is wrong, right?
	Because people do accept that.
	The question is expanding the definition so that it includes the greatest predators.
	So to take an example of theft, right?
	So we'd say it's counterfeiting wrong.
	Well, yeah, why?
	Because it's pretend money that dilutes people's purchasing power.
	I'm like, hello, welcome to central banking, right?
	So that kind of stuff.
	Is it morally okay to enter into debt on someone else's behalf?
	In other words, can I go buy a car and then just take some guy and have him pay?
	Well, no, of course not, right?
	Okay, well then, national debt is having the children pay for what you want, right?
	Having the children pay.
	And clearly that's bad, right?
	So it is not so much that, I mean, where people accept is in the private sphere, rape, theft, assault and murder is bad.
	The question is, what about the false ideologies that are doing the most harm to people?
	You know, like, if somebody were to come and steal 25% of your money, you know, that would be pretty terrible.
	However, of course, As I'm sure you know, since 2020, the American dollar has lost about 25% of its value, which means all the people with their money in the bank and the cash in the bank, they've lost about 25% of their money.
	Now, if you have $100,000 one day, and you log in the next day, and it's $75,000, and there's been a withdrawal of $25,000, well, you're pretty mad, right?
	You call the bank, what the hell's going on?
	They track it down.
	You know, if there's just a central bank that keeps printing out a bunch of money and then you still, it looks like a hundred thousand, but it is only in fact able to buy $75,000 worth of goods and services.
	That's what you need to see.
	And it's the invisibility of that stuff.
	You know, it's certainly wars of aggression.
	You know, it's funny because people have these, this fascination with, you know, the Jeffrey Dahmers and the son of Sam and, you know, all of the serial killers.
	And I'm like, But compared to wars, like wars of aggression, it's nothing.
	It's not even a rounding error.
	10 million people in the First World War, 40 million people in the Second World War.
	It's like, oh no, but this guy killed 20 people.
	It's like, no, that's bad.
	But it is the false moral arguments that people accept that UPB kind of aims at, and that's why it tends to be quite upsetting for people.
	Right. Like the exceptions.
	I have a question about the seven categories that you specified in the original book in 2007, and then comparing them to the three categories in Essential Philosophy.
	So the seven were good, aesthetically positive, personally positive, neutral, personally negative, aesthetically negative, and evil.
	And then in Essential Philosophy it was good, aesthetically Aesthetically positive and neutral.
	So just to clarify, if I understand it correctly, basically the personal ones and the neutral have been simplified into neutral?
	Yes, because I'm basically looking at morality insofar as it affects interpersonal relationships.
	So the personal one felt a bit extraneous.
	I mean, I think it has value, but it's not quite the same.
	I mean, there's some overlap.
	Like you can say, well, it's my choice to smoke.
	And it's like, but if you're the sole provider for a family of 10, your choice to smoke It's not just your choice, because it affects other people.
	Right. And so there's a sort of challenging overlap between one's own personal decisions and its effects on others.
	So you can say, well, it's my choice to drink.
	Now, if you're just some guy living in a cabin in the woods and you tend your own chickens, then you can drink, right?
	I mean, nobody can really stop you and you're part of any social contract.
	But, you know, if you're a parent and you drink and then you Can't really parent because you're too drunk and then you lose your job and then your family starts getting really hungry and so on.
	So, there are personal decisions which shade into implicit contracts you have with other people.
	And so, I felt that that was, it does draw people into a rather complicated world of how our own personal decisions affect others.
	And so, People say, well, I have the right to take drugs if I want, because that's the sort of libertarian argument of self-ownership.
	And it's like, I completely understand that.
	It's my body, my choice.
	But if you have children in the house, your choice to take drugs is no longer just yours alone.
	I mean, are you a parent by chance?
	No. Well, I hope, I certainly hope you will be, because obviously you'd be a great guy to raise, right?
	So, but yeah, if you're a parent, You really don't have the right to drink when you're taking care of kids, and you don't have the right to do drugs when you're taking care of kids, because you can't make good decisions.
	And also, you know, I mean, just practically, if you are drinking or doing drugs, and one of your kids gets injured and you need to drive them to the doctor, well, you can't do that, right?
	So you're just not prepared or able to make better decisions regarding people.
	I would say that the sort of personal ideologies, it's like, am I allowed to sing?
	Well, sure.
	But what if it's, you know, right next to my wife's ear and she got very little sleep last night?
	Do you know what I mean?
	There's a lot of sort of overlap stuff.
	And so I think I really wanted to just focus.
	I mean, the big problem that people have in their life is with, say, the deflation of the value of their savings, right?
	That's the big sort of sneaky thing that pilfer theft that goes on with inflating the money supply.
	And people usually don't have that much of an issue with people singing next to their ears when they're trying to sleep.
	So I wanted to simplify it in essential philosophy to things that allow people to focus on the most dangerous elements.
	And, of course, banking being a big one.
	Makes sense, yeah.
	Regarding the podcast, it's in the premium section.
	It's from 2022.
	It's called New UPB Category, and you defined something shortened as UPS, aka Universally Preferable Standards.
	To distinguish that from UPB, do you remember that one?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's the difference between the scientific method and the practice of science.
	That's UBS and UPB.
	Okay. So UPB, so if you say, what is science?
	Well, is science the actual experiments or is science the methodology of the scientific method?
	And so the UPB as saying, Moral standards should be universally preferable behavior.
	They should comply with the requirements of universally preferable behavior.
	That's a way of evaluating in the same way that the scientific method is a way of evaluating individual scientific experiments.
	Or individual proposed past the truth.
	So if somebody says, well, I've got a double-blind experiment and I'm measuring this, that, and the other, and there's a control group and all this kind of funky stuff, you say, okay, that's pretty good.
	That certainly conforms with the scientific method, so it's valid science.
	If somebody says, well, I had a dream and a vision and took some, I don't know, peyote, right?
	And this is what I believe is the case, they would say, well, I don't know what that is, but it sure as hell isn't science, right?
	So there's universally preferable standards.
	Which is, here's how you evaluate moral proposals.
	And then there's UPB, which is the rape, theft, assault, murder stuff.
	Right, right.
	So UPB would then refer only to the conclusions, the specific moral rules, not to the methodology.
	Yeah, so if you say, I'm in manufacturing, well, you could be the person who designs the machines that produce, say, widgets.
	Or you could be The guy who packages the widgets, you know, takes them off the conveyor belt and puts them in the box.
	Both are elements of manufacturing, but one is the cause and the other is the effect.
	So the capital goods that would produce, or the capital equipment or machinery that would produce the widgets is the process of manufacturing.
	You know, packaging these widgets and shipping them out to customers is a different sort of category.
	So it is the difference between saying, Okay, so somebody says helping the poor is moral.
	Okay, morality is UPB, so let's put helping the poor through UPB and see if it can be sustained.
	No, it can't be, right?
	So that would be, is this science?
	Is this not?
	Is this valid?
	Is this a valid UPB proposition?
	And that's the methodology.
	However, going through the argument of saying rape, theft, assault, murder can never be UPB.
	That is an example of seeing UPB in action to produce moral standards.
	Okay. I think I will have to re-listen to that one.
	But thank you for going through it with me.
	I still don't, like, I would not be able to explain it right now to somebody else, but… Well, just, yes, I find it just, and this was a problem.
	I want, I can't just prove my own moral standards.
	I have to have a way of disproving other people's moral standards, if that makes sense.
	And so, UPB is used as a methodology to disprove other moral claims.
	You know, like, everyone has a right to education.
	Okay, so everyone has a right to education, but that's asymmetrical, because the person who's doing the educating also has a right to an education, so everybody has to both educate others and be educated at the same time, which is impossible, therefore it's an invalid moral argument.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	Yeah, I think I will have to re-listen to it.
	No, no, hang on.
	We'll get it, right?
	So everyone has the right to be educated.
	So how do we put that through UPB?
	We say, okay, so everyone must universally be educated.
	Everyone has a right to an education.
	Therefore, everybody must universally be educated.
	But it's impossible because somebody is going to have to be teaching them.
	But that person is a person as well.
	So the teacher also has a right to be educated.
	So you can't both transmit knowledge and receive knowledge at the same time.
	Imagine me trying to explain UPB to you while you were trying to explain algebra to your kid.
	It would be impossible.
	Impossible. Right.
	So everybody has a right to an education.
	Everybody should educate and be educated all the time.
	Well, people gotta sleep so it doesn't pass the coma test.
	And you can't both educate and be educated, which means it's asymmetrical, which means you have to divide humanity into two categories.
	Those who are doing the educating and those who are receiving the education.
	And you have to have opposite moral standards for them, which means it fails the UPB test, because you've got this different categories of people with opposite moral requirements.
	One has to teach, the other one has to be taught.
	And so on.
	So, I mean, that's how you would disprove that.
	I get that, but where in the book would you then use UPS?
	Like, in the original book, if you were to rewrite it now with The term UPS, where would that actually be used?
	I mean, I think it's used implicitly, which I know is not quite as good, which is why I brought it out more explicitly.
	From the very beginning, people were confusing the word UPB in the same way that people can be confused about the word science.
	Does the word science mean the particular scientific experiment, or the general principle and practice of what is good science.
	Is it the scientific method, or each individual enactment of the scientific method?
	Right? If it's just the theory, but there's no practice, then nobody's really doing science.
	If there's only practice with no theory, then nobody's doing science, because they're just doing stuff off the seat of their pants.
	Does that make sense?
	So science has to be both theory and practice in order for it to be valid, right?
	If everyone believed in the scientific method or claimed to, But instead they used chicken entrails and tea leaves to try and get to their conclusions, right?
	Then that would not be valid science, right?
	So having the theory without putting it into practice is no good.
	If you have the practice of, quote, science without any particular understanding of the scientific theory or the scientific method, then you're not doing science.
	You have to have both an understanding of the scientific method and then implement it in your actual experiments.
	It has to be reproducible.
	It has to be falsifiable.
	You know, all this kind of stuff.
	It can't be purely subjective.
	It has to be measurable, like all of this sort of stuff.
	So science is both a theory and the practice.
	And they're two sides of the same coin.
	And UPB is both the theory, which is how you evaluate moral propositions, and the practice, which are rape, theft, assault, and murder, are wrong.
	And so because I use the same term for both the theory and the practice and Somebody says if somebody says I want to teach you about science You don't know if they want to teach you about the theory or the practice Right, so they have to I mean that there are courses on Science in universities, but there are separate courses on the philosophy of science or the theory of science if that makes sense and the theory through Francis Bacon in the 16th century, the theory had to predate the practice.
	So that's why I had UPS as university preferable standards, and then UPB, which is the behavior which UPS validates, but I still have not come to any particular decision about how to deploy those terms.
	How to misphrase it?
	Yeah, and because for me, the UPB and the spread of UPB is the stuff we talked about at the beginning, sort of the aforementioned, well, nobody wants to have wild moral theories that disprove a lot of what people believe in the world, because that makes your social life pretty difficult.
	Nobody wants that.
	And I'm not putting you in this category, of course, because you're really working hard to get it, which I hugely appreciate.
	And thank you for that, by the way.
	But for a lot of people, UPB...
	is their conscience.
	And if you have a really bad conscience, then UPB senses, like your conscience senses UPB as something that validates itself.
	Right? So, for instance, if you are a parent, and you hit your kids, because they forgot stuff or whatever, right?
	Then you have, as a principal, We should hit people for their cognitive deficiencies, even though their cognitive deficiencies aren't really their fault, because they're kids, right?
	So if you have as a principle, we should hit people for their cognitive deficiencies, well, when you get older and your concentration and your memory starts to lift to some degree, then you don't want that principle, right?
	Because that principle means that your kids could be justified, I mean, they shouldn't, but they could be justified by your own moral standards.
	Let's say you forget your doctor's appointment, or you forget your keys, or where your keys are, or you forget where you parked your car, then can your adult children hit you because you have a cognitive deficiency?
	Well, no!
	I mean, they call them senior moments, right?
	You just get old and you forget stuff sometimes, right?
	So, if I start to talk about UPB, then people keep their conscience at bay by dividing things into false opposites, right?
	Well, they were kids, I'm an adult, it's totally different.
	It's like, but the principle is cognitive deficiency.
	Can you hit people for the inevitable effects of unchosen cognitive deficiencies?
	Like, kids are young, they're impulsive, they don't remember much, right?
	And they lie, right?
	That's just part of growing up, right?
	So people keep their conscience at bay with these artificial moral decisions, and what happens is UPB begins to unite these moral divisions and turn them into sort of these clean elegant principles, but that makes people feel bad.
	And so they tend to avoid it for those emotional reasons, right?
	I mean, of course, it's the example.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	There are so many things that I can tell when the defense mechanism, like literal, like mental immune system of a person rejects whatever I'm saying, because they don't want to deal with the implications.
	So UPB is just one of those.
	Right, right.
	Moral unity is very upsetting to people as a whole.
	Another thing that I was struggling with in the book was arguing against UPB affirms UPB.
	Can you walk me through that very slowly?
	Sure, that's a tricky one for sure.
	I appreciate the attention to detail.
	So, if I tell you that UPP is wrong, then I'm telling you that you should believe things that are true and discard things that are wrong.
	I agree with that, yeah.
	So that's UPP.
	That makes sense.
	It is universally preferable to believe things that are true and reject things that are false.
	So if you say that you should reject Because it is universally preferable behavior to believe things that are true and reject things that are false, then I have just tried to dismiss UPB while deploying UPB.
	But in this sense, reject is referring to an internal state in someone's mind.
	Well, if I were to say to you, you must believe believe and accept as truth that there's no such thing as truth, what would you say?
	That's self-contradictory.
	Right. So if I say to you, UPB is just a methodology for determining truth.
	And if I say to you, it is universally preferable behavior that you not believe in universally preferable behavior, that would be the same kind of contradiction, right?
	Uh-huh. Uh...
	you.
	Okay, if I say there's no such thing as truth, you must accept that as true, that would be contradictory, right?
	Absolutely, yes, yes.
	And if I say there's no such thing as UPB, and it's UPB for you to accept that, I mean just from that formulation, like forget the content of UPB, from that formulation, that would be self-contradictory, right?
	There's no such thing as UPB, and you should apply UPB to know that there's no such thing as UPB, right?
	Yes, yes.
	So, when someone says to you, UBB is false, they're saying to you that, not that I don't like the font it was written in, or I don't like the guy who wrote it, they're saying it is objectively false.
	And they're also saying that you should discard that which is false, and only accept that which is true.
	In other words, and not just personally, but universally.
	Because if you were to say, well, no, I'm a special case.
	For me, it's good to believe things that are false and reject things that are true.
	They'd say, no, no, no, truth is objective, right?
	You have to accept truth.
	If you're going to make a truth claim, it has to be true objectively, right?
	So... But I still don't...
	Yeah, go ahead.
	I still don't see how believing something is behavior.
	Because they want you to change your behavior.
	They want you to stop advocating for UPB.
	But not necessarily.
	They might just want to correct you in your mind.
	Okay, that's fine.
	So correct you compared to what?
	Based on what?
	Based on their opinion?
	Nope. Based on truth?
	Based on universals?
	Based on objectivity?
	Because they don't say to you, I feel uncomfortable when you talk about UPB, so you should stop doing that.
	They don't say that, right?
	They say UPB is false, and you should reject UPB.
	It's like, by what standard?
	By a universal standard, the truth is preferable to falsehood.
	Okay, yeah.
	I'm trying to hold too many things in my mind at the same time with this.
	I have that feeling.
	You're not alone.
	It is a tricky argument, for sure.
	But it's only because UPB is a methodology for determining truth from falsehood, consistency from inconsistency.
	So UPB, we can just think of it as a synonym for truth.
	So if somebody says, you should honestly hold the belief that there's no such thing as truth, then you would recognize it as a contradiction, right?
	Correct, yeah.
	If somebody were to say, it's accurate to say there's no such thing as accuracy, That would be a contradiction, right?
	Yes, yes.
	And so, if somebody were to say, it is UPB to reject UPB, we recognize that as a contradiction.
	Now then, the challenge is, universally preferable behavior is, in this case, a preference for correcting somebody else according to universal standards.
	Does that make sense?
	Okay, maybe if I rephrase it as, you should not believe this, They're making a claim about what you should be doing.
	Because when you say, it is UPB, the statement the other person did, it is UPB to not advocate UPB.
	They don't just say not advocate UPB, they say UPB is false.
	UPB is false, right.
	But in the action that they're telling you this, they're correcting you, right?
	So they're trying to change your behavior.
	You have to break out what they're saying and what the word false means.
	UPP is false, which means that it is self-contractory, it is inconsistent, whatever you want to say.
	It's false by some standard, right?
	Yeah. And the standard is universal.
	It is False.
	Not, I don't like it, I don't like the guy who wrote it, I don't like the font, right?
	It is false.
	It is in the category called false, right?
	And false is negative compared to true.
	And it's not personal, it's universal.
	So, truth is universally preferable to false.
	So, if somebody's going to say to you, so truth is universally preferable to falsehood, is a UPP statement.
	Is it though?
	Because it's a statement about, it doesn't deal with behavior.
	If I say truth is superior to falsehood, then...
	No, all speech is behavior.
	I mean, we don't psychically transmit these things, right?
	Saying truth is superior to saying falsehood would then be… Yeah, or writing it down, handing it over, or something like that.
	Yeah, communicating truth is superior to… Okay, so I would say to that person, is it universally preferable to believe things that are true?
	Or believe things that are false?
	Or to advocate for things that are true?
	Or advocate for things that are false?
	In other words, is it universally preferable behavior that when I say something is true, it is actually true?
	Yeah, and if they respond, they are, like, implying that saying true...
	Well, if they say, if they say, it is not preferable for you to advocate for true things, then I would say, well, then why are you telling me UPB is wrong?
	The moment you tell me UPB is wrong.
	There's a whole bunch of implicit standards.
	Yeah and universals in that Yeah, if you think if you say the world is banana shaped and I say no, it's shaped more like a sphere I'm not imposing my will on you.
	I'm not saying I prefer this kind of jazz to that kind of jazz, right?
	I prefer the color blue to the color orange or whatever I'm telling you Without a personal stake in the matter.
	I'm telling you that you are wrong It's not personal.
	It's just a fact that when you call the world banana-shaped, you are wrong because the world is not banana-shaped, right?
	Yeah. So I'm correcting you according to that which is, that if you are saying the world is banana-shaped and the world is not banana-shaped, I should correct you because you should be saying things that are true and not things that are false, right?
	In other words, if you claim that your statement is true, it should have the characteristic called the truth, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And so, if somebody says to you, UPP is wrong.
	They're saying that it's universally preferable behavior to hold opinions that are not wrong, but are in fact right.
	So they're deploying UPP in order to dismantle UPP.
	This doesn't work.
	Thank you so much for your patience with this.
	I will still...
	No, no, I appreciate the questions.
	I appreciate the questions and they're great questions.
	Awesome. Awesome.
	I have one which is sort of, I don't know, It feels more like an interview question, but I'm curious.
	Let's make this the last one.
	I appreciate that.
	Since you published the book in 2007, it's almost 20 years.
	Do you feel like a lot of progress has been made?
	Or maybe that's not the way I wanted to ask.
	More like...
	It's like...
	What group of people, let's say, was the most receptive to this from your experience?
	Basically, the experience that you have accumulated so far by talking with people about this, were there any surprises?
	I know, for example, that libertarians were maybe natural candidates for this, but they haven't been that interested, like people who politically identify as libertarians.
	So yeah, it's not a great question, but it's very vague.
	No, it's a great question.
	You're basically asking what progress has UPB made in the world.
	Oh yeah, yeah.
	So what do you think?
	Sure. Well, to me, it has been about the most successful moral theory in history.
	I know that sounds very contradictory.
	I understand that, but I'll sort of tell you my reasoning.
	And you can let me know what you think.
	So, a moral theory should, I think, be judged on its practical effects in the world.
	And I did the rough math that just if all we do is focus on parenting, that about 1.5 billion Fewer attacks upon children have occurred as the result of the work that I do.
	So that is 1.5 billion reductions in acts of violence in the world.
	It probably is a lot more.
	I was going as conservatively as I could because, you know, I don't want to, having come from the sales and marketing world, I want to undersell rather than oversell.
	And you came up with that number?
	Sorry for interrupting.
	You came up with that number by, let's say, how many times a child is on average hit, and then how many people have stopped growing.
	Yeah, so I came up with that with total number of listeners, total numbers of shows listened, some percentage of those being UPB or parenting shows or anti-spanking shows, and people having average numbers of children and assuming that it reduces it by X percent.
	And I can't remember the exact math.
	And if I went through it now, it would probably be different.
	But the basic idea is that there have been billions of fewer hitting.
	Check one, check two.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Sorry about that.
	I have a tablet that occasionally will just power down without giving me any warning.
	So, sorry about that.
	we're plugged in we're good to go now Now, of course, the belief is necessary for the practice, but I am more concerned with the changes in people's behavior rather than the changes in in people who just accept the theory.
	So let's say a bunch of libertarian theorists had accepted the theory and worked to propagate and promulgate the theory, and we all agreed that UPB was a great way to analyze and prove moral theories, right?
	So let's say that we all did that, but it remained only theoretical and nobody had stopped hitting children.
	Right, so that to me would not be successful, even if it became a big sort of worldwide movement and people were really down with it, but it didn't actually stop people from hitting their children.
	That to me would not be successful.
	What I would gauge the success of a moral theory by is, particularly a moral theory centered on the non-aggression principle, it would be founded on or judged by, at least by me, because I'm a practical I'm a practical guy, so it comes out of my sort of business training and manual labor to some degree, is that it matters how many instances of violence are reduced in the world.
	And I don't know a moral theory that has produced, you know, billions, a billion plus reductions of acts of violence within the world.
	I certainly know of moral theories that have done the opposite.
	You know, but probably not in the first 20 years, things like communism and so on.
	But as far as UPB leading to peaceful parenting, right, because the goal has always been, what is the most prevalent violence that we can do the most about?
	Right, what is the most prevalent violence that we can do the most about?
	And given that The violence against children results in all other kinds of violence and dysfunctions in society.
	It's not just that, you know, 1.5 or whatever it is, billion fewer hits have been inflicted on children.
	But the fact that those children are growing up with less or no violence means that they are different people entirely.
	My children who are subjected to violence grow up very differently from children that are not subjected to violence.
	I'm It's
	a billion and a half, maybe two billion or whatever.
	And again, these are sort of very conservative numbers.
	That's amazing.
	That's amazing in terms of practical reductions in the amount of violence in the world.
	And I honestly cannot think of any other moral theory that has achieved that within 20 years, right?
	Now, you could say, of course, that one of the greatest moral theories in terms of reducing violence would have been Abolitionism, the anti-slavery and so on.
	And, you know, obviously that was a great moral crusade and so on, but it also was enacted with, you know, 600,000 plus men getting killed and all of the tragedies that have kind of flowed out of all of that violence.
	So, in terms of practical reductions of violence, not using a central violent agency.
	Like, say, conscription and so on.
	Well, I think that UPB, in fact, I know for a fact that UPB has done more practical good than any other theory that I've ever heard of, for sure.
	Good job.
	Thank you.
	Well, thank you.
	I appreciate the questions, and of course I'm always happy to chat with UPB.
	If you can send me the links to the things that you talked about, I mean, I'll put them in the show notes, but I really do appreciate your time today.
	Which, do you mean like the podcast for UPS, for example, and such?
	Yeah, if you have a list.
	If not, I can look them up myself.
	But if you have a list of the UPB shows handy, I can put them in the show notes.
	I will do that.
	All right.
	Thanks. I really appreciate your time today.
	Thanks for the great questions.
	Thank you, too.
	It was an awesome conversation.
	Have a great day.
	Take care.
	Bye-bye.
	Take care.

▲