May 17, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:28
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| Would you agree that the level of confidence that almost anyone has in anything, in life in general, men in relationships, women in relationships, the level of confidence people have is determined by the number of options they have available to them? | |
| Is that more or less true? | |
| Hmm, that's interesting. | |
| The number of options. | |
| I mean, certainly I can see that point, and I think that there's some value in it. | |
| But when you're out of options, you can be incredibly strong. | |
| You know, think of the sort of cornered rat. | |
| You know, they'll attack a bear if they have to, if there's no other option for them. | |
| So sometimes being out of options gives you some real commitment and strength. | |
| I remember sort of going back in time, my first professional job, which was a maintenance programmer on a tandem system with COBOL 74. 74 is the year that it came out. | |
| So, you know, we're going back a ways here, but it was in fact 1974, not 18. Anyway, so I got that job because I was out of options. | |
| I was like, I had no money. | |
| It was a recession. | |
| And I remember I had a woman I was working with to try and get work. | |
| And I was like, I just called her up. | |
| I was completely desperate. | |
| Like, I'd love to work with something in computers. | |
| I absolutely need a job. | |
| I'm desperate. | |
| I'll clean computers. | |
| I'll move computers. | |
| I'll dust computers. | |
| But just please. | |
| And she ended up sending me on this interview. | |
| I got the job and sort of built my career up from there. | |
| So certainly options are helpful. | |
| Sometimes having only one choice or being out of options can make you incredibly strong and forthright. | |
| And of course, there is the other issue as well with options, which is fairly well known, particularly for women in dating apps, which is option paralysis, which is a woman who has 10 guys a day sliding into her DMs. | |
| Who does she choose? | |
| And who does she settle down with? | |
| And so... | |
| Hmm, I wonder if it's an Aristotelian mean, like a medium amount of options. | |
| Too many options can paralyze you, and too few options can weaken your confidence. | |
| And of course, one of the things you have to do in life is you have to, and I think this is to your point, Keith, I think you have to really work to expand your options. | |
| And to have your, you know, in a sense, dip your toes in a bunch of different pools, have a lot of fishing rods in the water. | |
| Yeah, I think certainly if you have more choices, you have more options. | |
| But sometimes it takes confidence to just try a bunch of different things and keep your options open. | |
| But yeah, I think too many options, I've seen that with a lot of people, too many options can paralyze. | |
| This is sort of, what's the guy who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for like two and a half billion dollars because he didn't really want to... | |
| Be a manager. | |
| And then he's like, yeah, I can go anywhere, do anything. | |
| I can buy anything I want. | |
| And nothing has any particular meaning and I'm kind of depressed. | |
| So options can be a problem. | |
| Too few options can really sharpen your, you know, think of the concentration. | |
| If you're like, I don't know, stuck on a desert island, you absolutely need to catch that fish or you're going to starve. | |
| Well, you're really going to be locked in, as my daughter said, really focused, right? |
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