Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

July 7, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:17:06

How Can I Keep My Baby Home? Twitter/X Space

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	All right, good morning, friends.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
	Freedomain.com/slash donate.
	If you'd like to help out philosophy, I really think the world could use it, and I would really appreciate your help and support.
	Freedomain.com/slash donate.
	But straight to topics, I did ask permission from the fellow I had a call with this morning.
	I do private calls, freedomain.com/slash call.
	If you want to do something out of the public eye, which has occasionally seemed wise to me, but I was talking to a fellow this morning, and I did ask him permission to share the general content of the call, and he said, fine.
	And he is from a European country, and he's concerned about the birth rates.
	No civilization has ever recovered from a fall, substantial fall in birth rates.
	And he was concerned about all of this.
	And of course, I said to him, well, you can't control the country's birth rates, but you can have some influence on your own birth rate.
	And that seems, you know, focus on what you can control, not on things beyond a control.
	And of course, overwhelming negative stimuli combines to make you feel hopeless and helpless.
	And that's part of fifth generation warfare, which is to overload your sense of doom with so much bad information that you feel paralyzed and hopeless and therefore become unattractive and therefore can't reproduce.
	Sometimes you can be sterilized by scrolling.
	And I'm not kidding about that.
	It's a very sort of real phenomenon.
	So he said, well, but divorce, right?
	Divorce, 50% of marriages end in divorce.
	Now, that's not a real statistic.
	It's a psyop.
	It's a form of warfare, which is to make you think that no matter how you vet the woman or how you vet the man, your odds of getting divorced are like 50%, man.
	But that's like mixing in drunk drivers with traffic accidents and thinking you have equal risk if you don't drunk drive.
	I've gone through the steps on my ex-feed.
	You can find it right there, that if you find a woman who is reasonably well-educated, or at least a reader, and you share foundational values and you have, she has integrity, so she's going to take her vows seriously, and you have agreements on how you're going to disagree, like no screaming, no yelling, no name calling, and all of that sort of stuff, your chances of divorce are less than 5%, 5% or less.
	So here's how to know if you're being propagandized, my friends.
	And please understand again, I'm not lecturing any point of superiority.
	I have to remind myself of this every day and twice on Sundays.
	So one of the ways that you know you're being propagandized is you swallow risks without question.
	Right.
	You swallow risks without question.
	So you say, oh, I'm scared of lung cancer.
	And then you're just like, okay, well, X percentage of people die of lung cancer, and that's my risk.
	And you just dwell and fear and stew.
	As opposed to saying, I'm scared of lung cancer.
	Well, what can I do to reduce my odds of getting lung cancer?
	Now, this may be considered a slightly more masculine approach, but it's a really, really good approach.
	I face a risk in my life for something I really want to do.
	How can I reduce those risks?
	I really, really, I like rock climbing myself.
	And so what do I do?
	Well, I go and get trained.
	I learned the belay system.
	I make sure I can't plunge to my death.
	I mean, I remember climbing for an entire afternoon, including overhangs in Africa, with no belays, no ropes, with all of the confidence of a 16-year-old who believes he's a Superman immortal.
	So, you know, if you want to go scuba diving, you figure out how to reduce your risks of getting the bens or getting bitten or whatever it is, right?
	You go cave diving, you go cave exploring, you have something that you want to do that's risky.
	Well, the first thing you do is figure out how to reduce your risks.
	Now, if you swallow a statistic of danger, like 50% of marriages end in divorce without checking, without figuring out how to reduce those odds, because those odds include people who are getting married for the second or third time, who are kind of retarded in relationships.
	It includes marriages of convenience and a whole bunch of other factors, like, you know, people who get married for the sake of citizenship or whatever it is, right?
	It includes a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't apply.
	And it also includes people who overlook red flags.
	Like some men, some women have more red flags than a Chinese communist parade.
	And if you overlook those things, I mean, you're driving drunk and blindfolded and then being like, man, it's so risky to drive.
	It's like, yes, if you're drunk and blindfolded, it's risky to drive.
	But not if you take basic precautions.
	I like jumping out of planes.
	You know, one of the ways to reduce that is, and I remember doing this when I was a teenager, I went parachuting because until philosophy came along, I was only into physical extreme sports.
	Now I'm into mental extreme sports called wrestling with the delusions of the world and my own, of course.
	So when I jumped out of a plane when I was 17 years old, in winter, by the way, because it was really cheap, only 70 bucks.
	And you realize why when you realize how cold it is.
	So I jumped out of a plane.
	And I remember they said, you can save $10 if you pack your own parachute.
	Now, I was broke at the time, but I wasn't so broke that I was going to save $10 by packing my own parachute.
	No, no, no.
	You all do that.
	And of course, I was tied.
	I didn't have to pull the rip cord myself.
	I was tied, so it came out on its own.
	It was actually a great experience.
	What an adrenaline dump, though.
	So if you want to do things that are kind of netty, and we've all known people who were too cautious in our life, like this in Aristotelian meat.
	We've all known people who are too cautious.
	We've all known people who are too foolhardy, right?
	Courage, an excess of courage is foolhardiness.
	Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
	Whereas a deficiency of courage is cowardice, and both of these are bad.
	So you want to have something in the middle.
	You don't want to take no risks in life because then you end up with the certainty of regret, which is worse than just about any risk you can take.
	But you don't want to take an excess Of risks, and you don't want to not find ways to reduce risk if it's going to get you what you want.
	So, if somebody says 50% of marriages end in divorce, and you're like, okay, that's it, there's no way to reduce that risk, there's no way to evaluate that risk, then you're propagandized because you're propagandized.
	And risk evaluation is a skill that video games and staying home all the time has really destroyed, especially in boys and men.
	And again, this is no virtue of mine.
	We were just broke and there were lots of kids around because I was at the very tail end of the baby boom.
	So every time I went out of my flat in England to play, there were like 10, 20 kids I could play with.
	And we all spent basically all of our time figuring out risk.
	Right?
	We would climb trees, we build tree houses, we go on long hikes, we create rope swings under railway bridges and swing out and you figure out, you know, how to manage risk.
	I like to fry bacon in the nude.
	Well, I mean, who doesn't?
	Who doesn't?
	Well, maybe pigs, but anyway, learn how to manage risk.
	So how do you know your propaganda is?
	Well, you don't break down risk so that you can reduce the chances of disaster.
	That's all.
	That's all.
	It's not impossible to found a family and have children because the birth rate is not zero.
	And I know that the immigrants have higher birth rates, but even for the native population, it's not zero.
	But here's the problem.
	He said, well, the women are propagandized a lot.
	I agree.
	Of course, you can see that the split between conservatives and liberals, between females and males respectively, males and females respectively, is big.
	For sure.
	You're going to have to rescue some women from propaganda.
	Yes, you are in fact.
	But this has been the case throughout human history.
	You could say it's worse now, but of course, women were heavily propagandized in the Roman Empire.
	They were very propagandized in the Assyrian Empire.
	They were very propagandized in medieval Europe.
	They were very propagandized.
	And the reason is that women are responsible in general for the transmission of cultural values.
	Men are responsible for the transmission of physical expertise and mental expertise to some degree, but women are the transmitters of cultural values because women raise children and their personality is largely fixed by the age of five.
	And there's not a whole lot of bros throughout human history that were keeping the little death magnets we call babies and toddlers alive when they were very little.
	That's the job of the women.
	So it is the women who transmit resources, which is why all who want to destroy a culture target the women.
	You target the women, you target the chain that transmits resources from the past to the present to the future.
	Lure them out into the workforce, have strangers reigns to their children, and the entire accumulated weight of thousands of years of civilization evaporates in a single generation.
	So don't blame women for being propagandized any more than if you are playing doubles tennis.
	Oh, let's have a really hoity-toity analogy here.
	And so if you're playing doubles tennis and one of them, and you're playing for some real status or money or whatever prize, and there's a player who's weaker than the other, you target that player.
	You hit the balls towards that player.
	Sure.
	That's what you do.
	That's how you win.
	Right?
	Was it Andre Agassiz who first figured out that Bjorn Borg would put his tongue out which way he was going to hit the serve?
	I think it's something like that.
	It doesn't really matter who the people were.
	And so he had an advantage.
	Is he not going to use that advantage?
	Sure, he is.
	Right?
	If you're entering into some horrendous combat situation in war and one guy has a gun and the other guy has no gun, you're going to, you'd prefer to fight the guy with no gun because he's less dangerous.
	He's weaker.
	He's not able to shoot you.
	It's hand-to-hand combat, maybe.
	If you're a boxer, right?
	And you're going to keep hitting the same spots.
	You're going to keep hitting the same spots.
	Colis Lou, air, glass, jaw, whatever it's going to be.
	So women are targeted because they have been programmed by nature and evolution or God, if you want.
	They've been programmed to soak up the values around them and transmit those values to their children.
	That can have very positive things in terms of positive values, but it is also a transmission vector for negative values, which is why the powers that be target women when it comes to propaganda.
	So if you want to free a woman from propaganda, which all clear thinking and rational men have had to do throughout human history, and women have had to do it too with men who are pretty but disorganized in their thoughts.
	So you're going to have to rescue a woman from propaganda if you're a man and you want to get married.
	Now, maybe she's already free of propaganda.
	That's fine, but odds are.
	Now, if you want to free someone else from propaganda, it's kind of important that you not be subjected to propaganda yourself.
	So this guy said to me, he said, well, but my father did everything right and he got divorced.
	And I said, well, you don't know that.
	Come on.
	Children don't know the foundational and nature of the parent's relationship, what goes on behind closed doors, what goes on when they're away or out for dinner, what goes on before they met, they don't, or before after they met, but before they had kids.
	You as a kid don't know the foundations of what's going on.
	You'll get some sort of surface stuff.
	You don't know the foundations of what's going on.
	I said, he could have had affairs.
	He could have been really mean behind the scenes.
	He could have been distracted, emotionally unavailable.
	He could have been a workaholic.
	And he's like, yes, yes, my father was a workaholic.
	He worked too much.
	I'm like, you just told me he did nothing wrong.
	And now you're telling me that he worked too much.
	The first casualty of divorce is any basic honesty whatsoever.
	Everyone involved in a divorce lies their absolute Brazilian ass off.
	They really do.
	You never get the truth about divorce.
	It's a fool's quest.
	It's like trying to write a poem on the surface of a lake.
	You cannot get the truth about your parents' divorce.
	There's just too much ego.
	There's too much wounded pride.
	There's too much self-justification.
	There are too many mistakes.
	There's too much self-blame.
	They just won't tell you the truth.
	But at least he noticed that his father was workaholic.
	So then if you can't even figure out the propaganda from your own family, my father says he did nothing wrong, but he was a workaholic and was never home.
	It's like, well, then he did something wrong.
	Why would you chase money rather than be close to people?
	I mean, you need money.
	I get that.
	You've got to go out and work, right?
	A woman shows her love by staying home.
	A man shows his love by going out.
	I Get all of that.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	But a deficiency of work is hunger, and excess of work is isolation for the woman, particularly if she's raising kids and the man is out there working all the time.
	That's pretty horrible for the woman.
	Pretty horrible for the woman.
	She's there to raise children with a husband, not text him in the hopes that he might come home at some point.
	Plus, a man who works all the time is often perceived as having an affair, and he kind of is having an affair.
	He's having an affair with money and status rather than a woman, although it could be both.
	So this guy hadn't even figured out the propaganda within his own family.
	And I say this with sympathy.
	It's tough to get through the propaganda within your own family.
	But you have to work to try.
	Get through the propaganda.
	As a man, if there's something you want and the odds that are quoted to you are bad, the first thing you should do is say, how do I reduce the odds of a bad thing happening?
	Right?
	If you are, I like to ski and if you go skiing, I haven't been for a while, but I should.
	Anyway, if you go skiing and you're just starting to learn how to ski, you don't do the double black diamonds.
	You start with the bunny hill.
	That reduces your, you get some training, get some decent equipment, and you start off nice and easy.
	And that way, your risks of injury are very low.
	If you decide to take on the challenging hills, you're probably going to get hurt.
	How do you reduce your risk of injury while skiing?
	Well, don't ski beyond your ability and start off easy and build yourself up slow and get your training.
	So the assessment of risk is essential.
	Video games, staying home all the time and prawn has reduced boys' ability to properly assess risk, which is why there seems to be a substantial number of men out there who believe that they're going to end up in a jail cell for saying hi to a woman at a coffee shop.
	It's just not a valid or valuable assessment of risk.
	All right.
	So that's my introduction.
	Thank you for joining me.
	What a great pleasure to have you all here.
	And if you all have questions, comments, issues, challenges.
	Yes, we have some people who want to chat.
	Let me bring up my EMF-free headsets.
	All right.
	Um, is that the right one?
	No.
	Is that the right one?
	Yes.
	All right.
	So, Pepito.
	You are live with me.
	If you want to chat, you can send your thoughts through my brainwaves, reshape my neurons with your syllables, tongue caress me into wisdom.
	What's on your mind, my friend?
	Don't forget to unmute.
	Hi, Stefan.
	How are you today?
	Well, how are you doing?
	Good, good.
	Thanks.
	I would have argued against all your points.
	This idea to reduce the risk.
	Risk is cost plus odds, right?
	So the cost is very high.
	But what I want to do is to turn it on you.
	Like, why would we want to have a wife these days?
	Sure, that's a great question.
	So there's a number of reasons as to why you'd want a wife.
	I mean, there's love, of course.
	And if you can have love, that's the greatest thing in the world.
	I don't really need to sell you on that, I'm sure.
	But there are very practical benefits to a man to have a wife.
	So men who are married live on average five to seven years longer.
	I get there's cause and effect.
	There's correlation.
	It's not causation.
	But when you start to add up enough benefits, it starts to become pretty compelling.
	So you've got a five to seven year extension in your lifespan, which is very significant.
	You have better mental health.
	You have lower levels of stress and cortisol.
	You have greater financial success as, and this is just marriage.
	Kids is a whole other issue, right?
	So in terms of physical, mental, financial, health, longevity, peace of mind, happiness, and so on, men do significantly better when they're married than when they're single, which is exactly what you'd expect.
	You'd expect nature to have programmed us to get benefits from something like marriage.
	Now, of course, there are risks.
	Naturally, you could end up marrying some total horrible shrew.
	As the Bible says, it's better to live in the corner of a roof than in a house with a quarrelsome woman.
	But there's ways that you can vet that.
	There's ways you can check that.
	And of course, I've done work for the last 20 years talking to thousands of people about their relationships, telling them how to avoid the red flags.
	Everyone tells you everything they need to know about them in the first minute.
	Honestly, I'm not kidding about that.
	And so we've unfortunately been raised to not see these red flags, which of course is, you know, predatory people are in charge of the world.
	And so the lions don't teach the zebras how to identify lions.
	So predatory people don't teach you how to identify their fellow predators.
	So a lot of men walk blind into the estrogen death traps of vagina dentata.
	So I would say that you assess the risk.
	The benefits are enormous.
	And it's well worth it statistically.
	Can I push back on the benefits, though?
	Because I think all the stats you quoted are based on our society that wasn't quite nearly as close as the levels of people living alone and being fine with that as we see in modernity, especially with the millennials generation forward.
	So I don't think you can just say, so number one, those statistics, we would have to look into it.
	I'm pretty sure those studies are shaky at best.
	Sorry, and what do you mean by shaky?
	Shaky at best is a judgment.
	And so what I mean is the question.
	No, hang on.
	So that's a clear prejudice, right?
	I'm not saying you're wrong, but to dismiss, you know, pretty well-researched stuff just because you don't like it is not intellectually responsible, right?
	No, okay, which is what you just did.
	what I said is what we should look into this.
	No, no, you said, You said these statistics are shaky at best.
	How do you know?
	Yeah.
	Because I've seen, you know, the studies about happiness, for instance, reported happiness is a shaky at best type of measurement.
	the use of...
	Compared to what?
	Something has to be shaky compared to what.
	So when people say they're happy, you're saying, I don't believe them.
	But what else?
	How else are we supposed to measure?
	Well, something doesn't have to be compared to anything in order to have a weak foundation.
	So I reject that.
	No, absolutely.
	You can't say strong or weak relative to what?
	Is a man strong relative, like is an Iron Man strong?
	Yeah.
	Is he strong?
	No, I'm still talking.
	I'm still talking.
	I'm still talking.
	Is a strong man strong relative to a giant tractor?
	No.
	Is he strong relative to a locomotive?
	Yeah.
	Is he strong relative to a weak man?
	Sure.
	So yes, all comparative measures require a standard.
	So if you're going to say this is shaky at best, it is compared to what?
	You're saying it falls short in some matter.
	If self-reported happiness is the best way to measure happiness, maybe there's another way.
	I don't know.
	Maybe you could measure, I don't know, dopamine or something like that, but that's pretty shaky too.
	So if you say to someone, are you happy?
	And that's, and they say yes, and then you say, well, that's shaky.
	It's like, well, compared to what?
	Compared to how else are you going to measure it?
	And so if asking someone if they're happy is the best way to figure out if they're happy, then you can't say it's shaky.
	You can say, I wish there was a better way, but you can't say it's shaky, right?
	Because there's nothing better.
	I disagree, but I don't want to be bugged on semantics.
	No, no, it's not.
	This is not semantics.
	This is not semantic.
	Okay, let me show you.
	You're going to say something shaky, and I have to ask you to what?
	Let me answer a question.
	You don't need a comparison to prove a sentence logically wrong, do you?
	For instance, if A is true, B is true.
	And if I can demonstrate that A is not true, I don't need to compare any C, right?
	Yes, but you're comparing a statement to a logical standard.
	A logical standard.
	No, I'm not going to do that.
	No, no.
	Just bro, bro, bro.
	Okay.
	If you're going to talk whenever I start talking, that's pretty fucking rude.
	Okay?
	Let's have a civil conversation, but you cannot overtalk me.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	So if you say, well, this logical statement doesn't need to be compared to anything in order to be proven false, well, it's being compared to a consistent and valid logical statement.
	So if I say Socrates is a man, all men are mortal.
	Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
	Yeah, I don't have to go around the world empirically testing that, but I am comparing that statement to a standard of logical consistency and validity.
	So even saying something is true is comparing it to something which is not true.
	All statements of truth or accuracy require a standard.
	Yeah, okay.
	Can I talk?
	Okay.
	So for instance, if we look at self-reported happiness surveys in other areas, because I'm not aware of a possible comparison within the same area, right?
	In other areas, self-reported surveys are all over the place.
	Some surveys show that men and women are happiest in marriage.
	Some surveys show that the happiest are the single men or the single women.
	Some surveys shows that the single women that never had a kid were the happiest, and some show that they are not.
	Okay, so happiness.
	Okay, I understand that.
	I'm still talking.
	Go ahead.
	And it's your show, so I also want to be respectful.
	But I wanted to add that if you, for instance, then look at the use of anciolytic medicine and things like that, then this is something you could compare it to.
	But I'm not aware of any study of that sort on single men, right?
	So.
	Okay, that's valid.
	I mean, I haven't looked into every possible reporting of happiness, and I haven't looked into those methodologies.
	So happiness was just one of the things that I mentioned, and it was actually a fairly minor one, which is fine.
	So let's look at this.
	Let's look at the financial benefits.
	Married men often benefit from combining incomes with their spouse, which can lead to greater financial stability, shared expenses, and so on.
	Studies suggest married men have higher household wealth than single men.
	A 2017 analysis showed married couples accumulated about four times the wealth of never-married individuals by retirement age.
	Four times the wealth.
	Now, that's objective, right?
	Because that's a measure of wealth.
	Now, I don't know if they're going into people's bank accounts or it's self-reported or whatever, but I don't know if they're doing tax returns or something like that.
	A 27 analysis, married couples, four times the wealth of never-married individuals.
	In some countries like the U.S., married couples filing jointly may benefit from tax breaks and so on.
	Married men tend to earn more than single men, a phenomenon called the marriage wage premium.
	A 2019 study estimates married men earn 10 to 20% more than their unmarried counterparts, increased motivation, stability, employer bias is whatever it is.
	Marriage often provides access to spousal benefits like social security or pensions and shared savings to lead to more robust retirement plans.
	Married men may access better health insurance through a spouses plan and so on.
	Married men tend to live longer than single men.
	A 2019 study found men have a lower mortality risk with life expectancy gaps of about seven to 10 years compared to never married or divorced men, likely due to social support and healthier behaviors.
	Better mental health.
	Marriage often provides emotional support, reducing risk of depression and anxiety.
	A 2018 study showed married men report lower stress levels and higher life satisfaction than single men, partly due to companionship and emotional stability.
	Healthier behaviors.
	Married men are more likely to adopt healthier lifestyles, such as regular doctor visits, better diet, and less risky behaviors.
	They cut down on drinking and smoking.
	A 2020 study noted married men are less likely to engage in substance abuse compared to single men.
	A spouse often acts as a primary support system, helping men cope with stress.
	Research indicates married men have lower cortisol levels, stress hormones than single men, contributing to better overall health.
	So lower cortisol levels is an objective measure of the stress hormones in your body, so that's not subjective.
	Lower risk of chronic disease.
	Married men have lower rates of heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions.
	A 2017 study linked marriage to a 12% lower risk of these kinds of issues.
	And so we can go on and on.
	I've got pages and pages of this stuff.
	So is that enough for you to at least be open to the possibility that there are some significant benefits to men in getting married?
	I'm open to the possibility.
	Otherwise, I wouldn't have asked, but I don't find those convincing.
	And I can tell you why.
	Okay.
	Number one, none of the things you mentioned, and you mentioned a few, are a problem, as far as I'm aware.
	Like men and single men specifically don't have a problem of, you know, stress and anxiety to the levels that women have, as far as I'm aware.
	I'm not comparing men to women, though.
	No, but you have to do it.
	So why don't you go?
	No, listen, I'm going to interrupt you because you're strawmanning me.
	You're moving the goalposts and you're not responding to what I just said.
	You're saying, well, but single men are less stressed than women.
	That's not what I'm talking about.
	So why don't you talk about that?
	No, no, no, no.
	That's not what I'm talking about.
	What I'm talking about is that none of no, no.
	I was driving to the point that none of these issues are a problem for men.
	Single men don't need to earn more money and they can spend the money they earn for themselves.
	Married men need to earn more money.
	I accept the fact that they make more money, but they don't spend that money.
	So it's not liberating.
	It's not empowering at all.
	So how is it?
	Hang on.
	So how is it then that married men end up with four times the assets of single men?
	Because they make money, they put it aside, they invest it for their family and their kids.
	I thought you said they spend it all.
	No, the opposite.
	They don't spend it.
	The single men spend it for themselves, which is empowering.
	So you're saying that single men spend more money than married men?
	No, no, listen.
	Married men make more money, and I accept that, but they don't spend it.
	Single men make less money because they don't need as much money for themselves.
	They make the money they need for themselves, and they spend it for themselves.
	It's much more empowering.
	So it's not a plus.
	It's not a positive.
	And have you yourself ever been married?
	I've got close to it, but I've never been married.
	Okay.
	I mean, as a married man, I can just tell you that you spend more money as a married man because you have a household to take care of.
	That's my thought.
	Oh, so married men spend more and also save more than that.
	This is just propaganda.
	This is just nonsense and propaganda because you just find yourself.
	You haven't followed.
	Wow, you haven't followed.
	Once again, married men make more money, but they don't spend it for themselves.
	Oh, so they do spend more money than single men?
	Yeah, for the family, not for themselves.
	So it's a matter of money.
	But they still end up with four times the assets of single men.
	Yeah, because they make more money, they put it aside for the family, not for themselves.
	Okay.
	So they still end up wealthier.
	For the family.
	Well, no, because by the time you retire, like, you don't spend the, you don't spend money on your family your whole life, right?
	It's just for the 20 years that you're raising your kids, right?
	So when you get older, you have a lot more money and you can enjoy your retirement a lot better as a married man.
	As a man, you want to leave something to your, you know, your people, right?
	Or not?
	Well, I mean, but you have that choice, right?
	So you're going to have more money.
	You can enjoy your retirement more.
	You also get better benefits, better tax breaks, and so on.
	So is it my understanding that every piece of data that I have provided, you disbelieve in?
	That there's zero benefits to a menu.
	I don't believe it.
	So you accept that there are some benefits to men to get married.
	You don't see those as benefits, though.
	Sorry, lower stress levels, better health, and seven to 10 years more life is not a benefit.
	Seven years more senile life is not a benefit if you spend your life being a slave.
	What a goat.
	What a movie you are.
	Well, everyone who is old is senile.
	How is this moving the goalpost?
	Oh, my God.
	That's amazing.
	How is this moving the goalpost?
	I'm addressing you're so full of shit.
	Your eyes are brown, man.
	People live longer.
	People live longer.
	People like to live longer.
	An additional seven to ten years of life is a benefit to people, which is why they don't kill themselves when they get older and why they strive to get better when they get sick.
	But no, everyone in your world, everyone who's older is senile.
	And therefore, there's no value in living longer.
	Listen to this question.
	Would you rather live 40 years being owner of your life and do whatever you want?
	Or would you rather live 47 years, but you have to work eight to 10 hours a day to provide for your family?
	I'm not sure what you're asking me.
	Would you rather live 40 years and do what you want for yourself and take care of yourself and do the thing that you want for you?
	Or would you like to live 47 years and have no freedom to do what you want for yourself?
	But what I want is a wife and children.
	What are you talking about?
	Yeah, that is what I want.
	That's not the point I'm asking.
	I'm asking the point of life.
	You're saying to me, would you rather have a selfish life where you're only about me and I don't have to care about anybody and I can just do whatever the fuck I want without giving a shit about anyone else?
	That's an isolated life.
	It's an inhuman life.
	We are social animals.
	And of course, if your parents had been that selfish, I'd be talking to dead air, which I'm actually kind of talking to a half-dead brain, but I'd be talking to dead air because if your parents were as selfish as you are, you wouldn't be here to have all of this hedonism and be there just for you and just to be selfish.
	And it's all about you.
	If your parents had had your mindset, you wouldn't even be here.
	So you can't even universalize the way you think without ceasing to exist.
	It's pathetic.
	Okay, so you're moving the goalpost.
	I'm talking about extension of life.
	Now you're putting in another thing, which is the value of creating more life.
	No, you said to another, you said that you asked me, would I rather have a life where I got to do whatever I wanted and it would be shorter or a life where I didn't get to do what I wanted and it would be longer.
	But I get, as a guy who loves being a husband and loves being a father, I get both.
	I get a life that I want and I get better mental health.
	I get better physical health.
	I get better financial health.
	I get love.
	I get companionship.
	I get support.
	I Get to live with my best friend and we have the most amazing time together.
	So I get to be 47 years and I get to do everything I want.
	So it's a false dichotomy to say, well, Steph, if you don't do anything you want, you can live less long, but you'll be happier.
	It's like, no, I get both the longevity and the happiness.
	So that's a total win.
	No.
	What I just proved is that there is no value in a longer life if the life is not what you want.
	And so we are making it.
	But it is what I want.
	But you asked me.
	No, you asked me directly.
	You asked me directly.
	Steph, if you get what you want, then you're alone, right?
	Because you'd rather have 40 years, you just do anything you want for yourself.
	But what I want is to be a husband, to be in love, to be a father, to have friends, to make love with my best friend five times a week and have absolutely a wonderful life.
	That's what I want.
	So it's a false dichotomy to say, Steph, if you're married, you're just not doing what you want.
	You're not getting what you want.
	I'm getting exactly what I want.
	And I get seven to 10 years extra life and the better financial, psychological, and physical health.
	So that's a total win.
	Okay, that's your case.
	What I'm saying is you asked me my case, bro.
	You asked me my case.
	You can't say, Steph, here's your choice.
	And I say, well, this is how I, oh, I'm not, don't mean you.
	You ask me directly.
	Come on.
	What I'm saying, what I'm saying is that you, even in your case, the seven years don't do, it's not a big difference if you do what you want with your life.
	If you live 40 years and you do what you want with your life, what you want is a family and having sex with your best friend, that's good.
	You do it for 47 years, for 40 years, not that big of a difference.
	So a seven-year lifespan is not a seven years, seven to 10 years is not a big difference.
	It's more important to do what you want in your life, not seven more years out of 60 to 70 that we all hopefully leave.
	Right.
	So are there benefits to a man, are there any benefits to a man to get married in terms of just practical outcomes, all the data and studies that I cited, are there any benefits that you would accept to a man for getting married?
	Okay, so the benefits.
	This is yes, no.
	No, this is yes, no.
	Are there any benefits that you would accept from the data that I cited that it's beneficial to a man to get married?
	Any data?
	And to say yes, no, anything.
	There is some benefit, yes, but it's not worth the risk.
	Fantastic.
	So you said to me, there's no benefit for getting...
	I never said there is no benefit.
	I'm still talking, still talking.
	So you said there's no benefit to a man to get married, and now you're accepting there are benefits to a man to get married.
	That's fantastic.
	I always said the risk is not worth it.
	Okay.
	Well, that's just another moving of the goalposts.
	So I appreciate the conversation, but you are fixed in your thinking.
	And I would also say that this is to a large degree because you live an isolated life that is not really fit for people as a whole.
	And I think it's actually.
	Yeah, see, but this is part of it.
	So it doesn't matter what data I provide, right?
	It doesn't matter what data I provide.
	It does.
	He just wants to do his own thing.
	And listen, if you are so constituted for whatever reason, right?
	If you're so constituted, I'm not trying to change his mind.
	I'm just trying to deal with facts.
	If you're so constituted that for you to have happiness that involves other people's happiness, because that's what love is, really.
	Love is when the happiness of those around you is central to your own happiness and your happiness is central to their happiness.
	So if you're so constituted or you're surrounded by such trashy and exploitive people that it's a zero-sum game or a negative sum game, that you can only become happy by making other people unhappy or you don't care about their happiness.
	In other words, if you're a bully, I'm not saying this guy's a bully, but I'm just giving you a theoretical.
	So if you're so constituted that other people's happiness is not part of your happiness, then sure, it all feels like sacrificing your own happiness in order to make other people happy.
	You end up unhappy and they end up happy.
	Of course, the win-win situation, which is a loving, mature, adult, productive relationship, the win-win situation is that my wife's happiness, my daughter's happiness, my friend's happiness, my family's happiness as a whole, the world's happiness as a whole, my happiness is very, very tightly bound into all of those things.
	I can't be happy if my family is unhappy, right?
	I mean, obviously we all make sacrifices.
	You know, it's not like I'm overjoyed to go to the dentist, but that's so I can be happier later.
	I love spending time with my daughter.
	And was there sacrifices?
	Yeah, I spent 10 years without writing any books because I was heavily involved in parenting.
	Do I consider that a sacrifice?
	No, it's not a sacrifice.
	I'm happier having spent those 10 years with my daughter or much closer to my daughter than writing books.
	I don't consider that a loss at all.
	Now, if I only focus on the minuses and none of the pluses, which is solipsistic and frankly kind of narcissistic, which is that my happiness, absent anyone else's happiness, is the only thing I'm going to guide my life by, well, then you're going to be alone.
	Nobody's going to want to spend any time with you.
	I mean, I found it fairly unbearable to even be in a conversation because all he wanted to do was win, which is hedonism, as opposed to actually learn something or have a conversation with someone who has a different perspective.
	So I'm not trying to convince him that he should get married.
	If he doesn't want to get married, he doesn't want to get married.
	That's fine.
	But that simply means that he is in a situation in life where other people's happiness is not part of his happiness.
	And the only thing he cares about or is concerned about is his own happiness.
	And bringing happiness to others is not a value for him.
	Unless it somehow serves himself selfishly in the moment.
	So once you merge your life with other people, like you have two trees that grow together, you can't just cut down one, right?
	Once two trees grow together, then what harms one side of the tree harms the other side of the tree, right?
	Like, I mean, if you smoke, it doesn't just harm your lungs, right?
	It harms your lungs and then your life if your lungs don't work because you can't live without breathing.
	So there are benefits to men for getting married.
	I mean, I went through a whole list of five or ten of them with some objective data in there.
	And so there are benefits.
	And then if he says, ah, yes, but The benefits aren't worth the risks.
	Well, then he wasn't listening to the first part.
	So, if you can get all of these benefits and you can reduce your risk to less than 5%, that's a plus, right?
	So, people go jogging.
	And I actually had a friend when I was younger.
	He was about to get married.
	He went jogging and he was hit by a car.
	Some kids wired a car and went for a joyride and smacked into him in a country road in the middle of the night and killed him.
	Now, one of the things that he wanted to do was get a little fitter and lose a little bit of weight in order to be more attractive to his fiancé and bride to be and so on.
	So people go out and they go jogging and jogging has health benefits.
	And the risk is, of course, injury, getting hit by a bus, tripping and falling, all of these kinds of things.
	And yet people do it.
	If you go and lift weights, I've been lifting weights for the better part of 40 plus years.
	And every now and then, every couple of years, I'll hurt myself in some manner.
	You know, when you play with your kids, every now and then, you're just going to, you know, you play with little kids.
	Every now and then, you're going to take an accidental headbutt to the nets.
	So what are you supposed to do?
	Never play with your kids?
	So yeah, all of life has costs and benefits.
	And the benefits are enormous and substantial for men to get married.
	Of course, I understand that if you get divorced and you get abuse allegations and you lose half your stuff and it's horrible.
	And yeah, that's really, really tough.
	I mean, I'm not saying those risks don't exist.
	And you can go through the process of looking at all these benefits and then looking at all these risks, say, well, even if I can get the risk down to below 5% for all of these benefits, I'm not going to do it.
	Okay, well, that's fine.
	But just be aware that there is a cost-benefit justification that is important to talk about.
	Now, if all of these benefits were available, even if you accepted them all, but the risk of divorce was 50%, no matter what, that you couldn't get your risk of divorce lower than 50%, I'd say, well, yeah, it would make any sense to get married.
	But there are very specific and not just my opinion, things that are tested to reduce the risk of divorce.
	So I just wanted to mention that.
	All right.
	Appreciate that last conversation.
	It was very instructive.
	Acoustic Kitty, you are on the air.
	Don't forget to unmute.
	Hello, hello.
	Going once, going twice.
	Oh, you've called me.
	Actually, technically, you requested a call.
	Oh, pedantic already.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	So my dilemma is weird to me, which is why I'm seeking counsel on it.
	I am we just had a baby.
	She's 11 months old.
	Well, not Jess, but and I'm working, not because I want to, but because my husband says it's best for our family.
	I think that, you know, we I think we could survive, you know, if I stay home.
	But I feel really guilty about it.
	And I'm not sure that, you know, and his logic is that I need to be working because I'm kind of a bad housewife.
	So we, you know, he wants to outsource things like care for the home and stuff with me and the job.
	And, you know, I have an MBA.
	I'm, and, you know, and now I have a decently paying job, but I still would prefer to stay home.
	What, you know, why, why do I feel so bad about this?
	And are we making the right call?
	Your husband's not here, is he?
	No, no, he's not.
	And I'm not trying to disparage him at all.
	No, no, I wasn't trying to disparage him either.
	I was just wondering if I could get his side of things.
	Okay.
	So it's a great question.
	And first of all, I really miss those babysits.
	Oh, I can't wait to be a granddad.
	But congratulations on your baby.
	And you're saying you're working at the moment.
	So how many hours a week are you working?
	40.
	Oh, 80 hours every two weeks.
	Okay.
	Look at that.
	I just did that math in my head.
	And who's taking care of your baby when you're working?
	She goes to a Montessori school.
	At 11 months, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's not really school at that point, right?
	It's like a daycare.
	I feel better calling it school than you calling it daycare because I feel so guilty about it.
	And what age did your child or your baby go to Montessori?
	She started part-time at nine months.
	Okay.
	And so is she full-time now in Montessori?
	Yes.
	And how was it for her when you dropped her off?
	She hates it.
	I'd say now every, I think like three out of four times when I drop her off, she gets upset.
	And I'll call her, I'll call the school a couple hours later.
	I'll ask how long she cried.
	And they'll tell me that, you know, she, you know, she stopped when we took her to the window to look out the window at the birds, you know, or not that long at all or, you know, things like that.
	And in the beginning, I had a lot of trust issues and I didn't fully believe them when they told me that, you know, she stopped crying or when she stopped crying or all that other stuff.
	But yeah.
	And I'm sorry to talk about this.
	Don't answer anything you're not comfortable with, of course, right?
	But what's happening with breastfeeding?
	She was doing baby lead weaning, starting solid food before, you know, while we were in part-time.
	And for the first, you know, she started around nine months.
	I would go in and breastfeed her, you know, just whenever I felt like it.
	And now she eats, you know, she eats before I drop her off and she does solid food at school.
	And then when I pick her up, I feed her.
	And on the weekends, I feed her.
	And we also do co-sleeping.
	So she eats, she breastfeeds all night.
	Yeah, wakes up and you throw a boob at her.
	Right.
	Okay.
	That's right.
	All right.
	And did you have discussions with your husband before you got married or had your daughter about child care arrangements, who was going to take care of the baby, whether it's going to be you or someone else?
	Nope.
	No, we got married pretty quickly.
	Okay.
	Did you, I mean, you had certainly nine months over the pregnancy period to talk about this stuff.
	So what was your husband's expectations as to who was going to raise his child?
	He, well, he didn't really make them very, very clear.
	Except that he wanted me working and that we were going to make it work.
	So I was, you know, NBA job application processes can take a long time and I was recruiting while pregnant.
	So we had recruiting or recruited?
	Both.
	Okay.
	So you were offered jobs while you were pregnant?
	Yes.
	Why does your husband want you to work?
	Because I think what you said earlier was that he's not satisfied with you as a homemaker.
	Is that right?
	Is that why he wants you to go back to work?
	Or is it to do with money or what?
	It's a little both.
	You know, it would be better for us, you know, he better for us financially for both of us to be earning income.
	And also I am a terrible housekeeper.
	I'm just, we're both personality-wise, we're both pile people.
	I know that's not a good excuse, but it's just we're both cluttered people.
	We're not filthy.
	We're just cluttery.
	You know, like laundry piled up on the couch for maybe a bit too long and it takes a couple of days to do the dishes, that kind of thing.
	Sorry, but wouldn't it be much cheaper to hire a maid on occasion than it is to pay for Montessori?
	Possibly.
	No, not possibly.
	Occasionally, it might be right.
	I mean, come on, MBA.
	You've got to do a cost-benefit analysis on this, right?
	Right.
	Well, we're both MBAs, but we're also both veterans, and we went to get our MBA because we thought it would be leadership school, and we were both surprised, but it was mathematics involved.
	Okay, so what is your salary?
	And again, don't have to get into specifics.
	I assume that when you work full-time, do you earn significantly north of six figures?
	No.
	Is it six figures?
	Me, no.
	Our combined household, yes.
	Okay, but so for you, I'll be talking 60, 80, something like that?
	90.
	90, okay.
	So the expense of having somebody work is considerable because you have to pay for childcare.
	You have to pay often for a second car or more.
	There is, of course, dry cleaning.
	There's lunches out.
	There's gas.
	There's maintenance.
	There's a whole bunch of things.
	Have you done the spreadsheet to figure out what you're making per expenses of childcare and having a second job are deducted?
	Because, of course, what are you taking home after taxes?
	Like 60 or 90?
	And then you've got to deduct all of the childcare expenses and all the other things.
	So what are you making per hour when you have finished all of those calculations?
	I haven't run the figures on it.
	He has the spreadsheet, not me.
	Okay, but I'm sure since it's your life and your motherhood that he's shared with you.
	So let's say the 90 nets is 60 at home.
	How much is the Montessori per year?
	$24,000.
	Okay, so 60, you got 24,000 down, which brings you to 36.
	And then you probably have to deduct another 10K just for additional expenses and wear and tear on cars and gas and insurance and all that kind of stuff.
	So you're looking at $26,000, which is $13 an hour.
	Yes, right now.
	But he is more future-minded.
	So it's in about seven years, I'll probably be out earning him.
	Okay, but I'm talking now, because now is when your baby is little, obviously, right?
	So is it, would you, are you selling time with your baby for $13 an hour, which is minimum wage?
	I am.
	Is that a good deal from your baby's perspective?
	In other words, when your baby gets older and says, you know, she becomes late single digits, late latency period, early teens, and your baby comes to you and says, you know, I really hated daycare.
	Why did you do it?
	And you say, well, I got 13 bucks an hour to drop you in daycare.
	Will your kid say, yeah, well, I can understand that.
	That's a good decision.
	That makes sense.
	No, she won't.
	And that's probably why I feel guilty.
	So you've answered my question.
	I'm a little, I mean, maybe there's something that I'm not quite understanding.
	And I'm not playing dumb.
	Like I genuinely don't understand it.
	I mean, when you become a parent, you kind of have to do what's best for your child, right?
	Yeah.
	So is you working, which isn't actually adding much after the expenses to the family income and is negative for your child?
	I mean, I've got a whole presentation called The Truth About Daycare, which you should look into about what happens to children in daycare as a whole.
	So if you guide yourself as a parent by that which is best for your child as a whole, would you work?
	I wouldn't.
	Okay.
	Does your husband, is he guiding his decisions by what is best for your daughter or some other standard that I'm not quite aware of?
	It must be some other standard.
	Well, I mean, you know the dude.
	And what is his standard?
	What do you think his standard is that he's judging if it's not what is best for your baby?
	Probably what is he's probably okay with sacrifices in the short term for Our long-term six years.
	No, no, but you can't make sacrifices on behalf of your baby.
	That's not how it works.
	I'm aware.
	That's not a thing.
	That's not a thing.
	Well, so if you, if you, sorry to interrupt, but if you guide by what's best for your baby, you can't say, well, I'm going to sacrifice the baby's happiness for some increased money seven years from now.
	That's not your choice to make.
	I understand.
	I'm just, I'm hoping that there's some logic that you can find in it because my quandary is, do I obey or fight my husband?
	And I'm, I don't, like, I don't want to fight him.
	No, of course.
	And also, if you fight your husband, the stress hormones go into your breast milk, which is also not ideal for your baby, as far as I understand it.
	So I'll have a word with your husband in a moment because maybe he'll watch this, right?
	So, and I, I understand where he's coming from and I sympathize with his perspective.
	I really do.
	So the question is, is he making decisions based upon reason and evidence or is he making decisions based upon some emotional criteria that we're not particularly aware of?
	So, of course, the reason and evidence is what's best for my kid and we'll make the sacrifices, you know, because your kid's personality is formed largely within four years from now, right?
	Because 11 months, right?
	So by the age of five.
	I promise you this, if you put your kid in daycare, your kid will end up bonding far more with peers over the long run than parents.
	And that's, you know, relatively manageable when they're young.
	Oh boy, when you hit those teen years, my friend.
	And your kids are more bonded with peers than parents, you are in for a whole world of hurt because the peers will end up influencing your children and almost always in a bad direction.
	So all the time and money you make and save now, in a sense, is just going to be spent running around after them and picking them up from ditches when they're in their teenage years because it has a huge impact.
	If the children are bonded with their parents, they have resistance to negative peer pressure if you put them in daycare for the majority of their waking existence.
	And there are some studies that show that children in daycare more than 30 hours a week experience the same symptoms as parents as maternal abandonment.
	So I'm not saying that's necessarily the case here, but you are a relatively minor part of the day compared to what's going on with the peers, the other kids, and so on.
	So it's not going to work out in your teenage years almost.
	Certainly when your kids get to be teens and you say, well, no, no, no, I need you to do the right thing.
	And they're like, well, but you dumped me in daycare for 13 bucks an hour.
	Who the hell are you to tell me what the right thing is?
	Right.
	So that's going to be a difficult conversation as a whole.
	So if he's making decisions based upon reason and evidence, there's no reason for you to go back to work.
	In fact, there's every reason for you to stay home.
	Do you want more kids?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I mean, do you think it's really great for an employer if you're going to have more kids go on maternity leave again?
	They've got to hold the job.
	I mean, is that ideal for them?
	I mean, if you were running a business, would that be ideal for you?
	It wouldn't.
	But I guess you would describe what I'm doing as work fair because it's a government job.
	Well, I mean, like most professional women, the government is your paymaster.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So is he making decisions based on reason and evidence?
	No, I think.
	Again, you guys can run the spreadsheets, but just the sort of back of the napkin calculations I'm doing on the fly with my admittedly limited math skills put you at best at about 13 bucks an hour, which is not worth giving up time with your baby.
	And of course, you're just going to have more babies.
	And if you're home, you can then be with both of them.
	If you have two kids and you put both of them in daycare, then your costs go from, it's not exactly double 24, it's not 48, maybe it's 40 or whatever.
	And so all the additional money you're going to be making down the road is just going to be poured into more childcare.
	Like it really, you never get much above.
	If you keep having kids, you never get much above your 13 bucks an hour, which is a sad reason to give up time with your children.
	I mean, you had kids in order to raise them and spend time with them, not to go chasing a couple of bucks an hour and leaving them to be in the company of strangers who don't care about them nearly as much as you do.
	Is that a fair statement, do you think?
	I agree with you.
	I don't have that much to offer in terms of professional life.
	I am more valuable as a mother and as a wife.
	And if it comes between me getting my act together and cleaning the house more often versus being, I'll say coerced into working and putting my baby in daycare, then I would make that choice.
	But it's not 100% my choice.
	And it's either a fight or I honestly, and I don't think that I can carry the guilt, the guilt I feel into our future and into our marriage.
	No, and of course, if you feel, and you use the term coerce, which again, I completely sympathize with and understand.
	But if you feel, in a sense, coerced or bullied into handing over your child, your precious baby to strangers, well, you said, did you say you were ex-military?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I'm sure you're aware of the term blowback.
	Right.
	So if you feel that your husband has bullied or pressured or half coerced you into handing over your kid because you don't want to fight with him, you understand that that's going to undermine your happiness in the marriage because you're going to feel pissed off.
	Absolutely.
	You're going to feel controlled and maybe a little bullied, and that's going to have an effect on affection, spontaneity, your sex life, and all other kinds of things.
	So it's really, really important to have a way of having this discussion with him without the fight, right?
	That's always a challenge.
	Now, do you guys have good rules or reasonable rules for conflict, like no yelling, no race, no intimidation, no name-calling?
	Do you have those kind of rules of engagement?
	Look at me getting all military in my language here.
	Do you have those basic Geneva Convention rules of engagement in your marriage?
	Yeah, we don't yell at each other and we can have debates, and he hears me out, and I feel respected in those debates, but ultimately he does get the final say if it comes down to disagreement that lasts a bit long in the conversation.
	And I assume you guys are Christians, is that where that's coming from?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So I'm not obviously going to try and dislodge any of that.
	That's the core of your marriage and the core of your faith and the foundation of your relationship.
	I'm not going to poke at anything to do with that.
	So it sounds to me, this is where I get all female and intuitive.
	So forgive me if I get things completely biased backwards.
	I could be talking out of my armpit and going entirely in the wrong direction.
	So forgive me if I do and put me straight if I do that.
	But it sounds to me like Bro is kind of pissed that the house is a mess.
	And he views that as you failing at your job and he's punishing you by sending you back to work.
	And what he really wants is a clean and well-run household.
	But because he's not getting that, he's kind of angry.
	He doesn't know how to get it.
	So he's going to be like, fine, well, you just have to go back to work then.
	It's almost like a going to the brick or, you know, some sort of punishment.
	You're being put on potato peeling duty because you talked back or something like that, or you didn't make your bed so tight that you could bounce a quarter off it.
	So it sounds like he's sort of maybe a little rigid, maybe a little focused on appearance.
	And because you're not doing a good job at the home, he's firing you by kicking you upstairs into a job.
	And I think that that's a bit of a power play.
	And I think that comes from his anger, which is then going to generate your anger at feeling bullied.
	Does that make any this is obviously completely intuitive, so I could be totally wrong.
	Yeah, that could be a big part of it.
	I'd say that might be 80%.
	And then there's, I mean, I guess to make a case for both of us, which isn't going to be a good one, and just, but let me.
	Make it away.
	If I don't do this job, they're probably going to hire a worse woman for it.
	And no, no, no, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I just felt parts, a significant portion of my brain liquefy in my skull.
	I know.
	Are you saying that if you don't do the job for the government, they're going to hire someone worse to do it?
	Well, it's half a joke.
	I'm so sorry to keep interrupting you.
	I just, I have to deliquefy this part of my brain or I'm just going to slosh around like a bag of tomato soup for the rest of the day.
	So the principle of the principle is you can't quit on a job because they're going to have somebody worse do it.
	Well, how about the job called motherhood?
	You're quitting on that job and having somebody worse do it, which is a daycare worker.
	Isn't that a slightly more important job than whatever email nonsense you're doing for the government?
	Yes.
	So that principle makes no sense at all.
	Well, I have to have you dump her kid in daycare because we can't have other people doing a worse job.
	I mean, I have to exhaust all the silly things.
	Okay, that's good.
	If he listens to this, he has, you know, all of the things have to be knocked down.
	And he's welcome to call, of course, as well.
	I'd be happy to chat with him, but go ahead.
	I mean, I don't know what other silly things I could knock down.
	I am qualified to do this job.
	I'm good for the position.
	Probably not the best, but the likelihood that they'll find someone else who's better at this specific thing is not very high.
	And I don't know if it's worth the cost.
	You know, when the government gets more efficient, people's liberties tend to diminish, right?
	The inefficient government is often the only chance we have for freedom.
	So the fact that they might replace you with somebody less competent in the government job, it seems a big plus to me.
	But anyway, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Okay, so that's your 80% is he just is firing you for being a bad housekeeper and kicking you into a job.
	Maybe 10% is this, well, we can't have a worse person doing your job, ignoring the whole daycare situation.
	What else have we got?
	I mean, I can't, I don't think I can say anymore without sounding without sounding silly.
	So I resign.
	You know, we're already past that, right?
	That line is a little deep in the rear view.
	If you want to say anything else, obviously don't say anything you don't want to talk about.
	But if it's your husband's perspective, we kind of need to listen to it and address it, right?
	Because look, we all have pockets of crazy in our relationships, right?
	Absolutely.
	So don't feel embarrassed about that.
	We all do that.
	We all go nuts from time to time in all of our relationships.
	Well, it's my fault then for being a bad housekeeper.
	If I were a better wife to begin with, then he wouldn't want to kick me out of the house to, you know, to go peel potatoes.
	Okay, so then the question is, and I appreciate your patience with this.
	And don't give me some ADHD personality nonsense because if you're ex-military and you say, well, I have no control because I lack discipline, I'm going to remind you of your time in the military where I'm not exactly a soldier, but as far as I've seen it, there's a certain amount of discipline that's involved in the military.
	Right.
	So why do you think you are, as your husband describes, a bad housekeeper?
	What's not working for you?
	What's missing for you?
	I don't know.
	Would you like to know?
	Yeah.
	Because you're pissed.
	Because I'm pissed.
	Because you're pissed.
	Because you didn't like being ordered around probably that much in the military, but at least there was a larger objective for it.
	But because Bro is putting a massive amount of pressure and perhaps even some hostility and contempt into the mix, you don't want to do it.
	You're like most people of integrity.
	You'll do just about anything that people ask you to, but nothing that people tell you to.
	It's passive-aggressive response.
	You don't want to do it because you're doing it to please him rather than from some internal value.
	Therefore, you feel bullied.
	So you don't want to do it.
	You postpone it.
	You procrastinate.
	You guys are passive-aggressive, hot potatoing each other back and forth to eternity.
	Ouch.
	I say this with sympathy, and I understand where it's coming from if this is the answer.
	I mean, it sounds right.
	No, no, you're a woman.
	I don't care what sounds right.
	I care what feels right.
	And I say this with no disrespect whatsoever.
	But it needs to feel right.
	Now, if it's not right, we can look somewhere else.
	But generally, most people hate being bullied and pressured into doing things.
	Okay, why does it hurt?
	Tell me.
	And again, I'm not saying it shouldn't hurt.
	I'm just telling you why.
	It hurts to hear it.
	And it sounds like it might be the truth.
	Well, what's your general perspective when people are very pushy about things with you?
	Oh, I just, I fuck off or tell them to fuck off.
	Okay, but because you're Christians, you can't do that to the Lord of the Manor, right?
	So all you can do, listen.
	I'm going to tell you a great secret about husbands.
	Nobody else is allowed to hear this.
	Everyone else can just disconnect, right?
	Sometimes we do a bad job so we don't have to do it again.
	I knew it.
	No, it's true.
	We get together and we plot and plan about all of this in our secret elk lodge conclaves.
	So like my wife has particular ways of cleaning the dishes that is part voodoo.
	I think there's some irradiation involved and sometimes crows packet it.
	I don't really know what happens.
	But whatever does happen when I do the dishes, it's not right.
	Even loading the dishwasher.
	Do you know that there's things that can and cannot go into the dishwasher and men do not have the genes that allow us to recognize those things?
	In the same way, I don't know if you know this either.
	Not everything can go into the laundry at the same time.
	Like you have to separate things right now.
	I'm sorry?
	You know what you're doing right now.
	It's appalling.
	And there's things I can do, of course.
	I can vacuum because it's not complicated.
	Like I can hold entire conceptual arguments in my head.
	I literally cannot remember where things are in the household.
	We have this sort of joke in my household, like when we're out hiking in the woods, I always know exactly where we are.
	I can get us back like that.
	My wife has no clue.
	But in the house, even if the peanut butter has been in the same place for four generations, I don't know where it is.
	And I can't do things in the right way.
	So we have a division of labor.
	But all joking aside, sometimes doing a bad job is passive-aggressive.
	The slave can't rebel by telling the master to F off, but the slave can be slow.
	Not so slow that he gets beaten, but slow enough that he's registering his complaint and his unhappiness with what he's ordered to do.
	And of course, I mean, sure, that happens in the army all the time.
	When people feel that things are unjust, they just don't do as quick or as efficient or as good a job.
	So if you feel like he's got these standards, and if you don't match these standards, you're a bad wife because you went from bad housekeeper to bad wife.
	That's a whole different category.
	You can be a bad housekeeper and a great wife.
	But I think if he's pushing you and has contempt if you don't do it, and I don't know, he probably hasn't said anything like, well, you don't clean as well as my mom because that would just be throwing yourself on a grenade that no man would sympathize with you for.
	I'd never say that.
	No, no, no, of course right.
	But if he's got like, well, you have to do a good job.
	I'm working hard all day and you can't even pick up these clothes and you can't even finish these dishes and you're just lazy and doing a bad job.
	If he's kind of bullying you, putting you down, then you're going to resist.
	Or even if that's implied, then you're going to resist wanting to clean because then you're going to feel it's not for you.
	It's not for the baby.
	And it's just because you're being disrespected or put down for not doing it.
	And that's just not enough of a motivation to keep going.
	So sorry, you were about to say.
	Yeah, it's all unspoken.
	We kind of read each other's minds.
	And I understand there's many potential problems with that.
	But it's, and I feel like I would be better off if I reframed his dependence on me knowing where everything is in the house, you know, as a, you know, as that, you know, that, as love, you know, it's.
	Boy, that was hard for you to get out.
	It's like watching somebody cough up a hairball.
	I know, like, can.
	Well, to be fair, though, I mean, to sort of take the side of husband, just very briefly, to be fair, you all do move stuff a lot.
	It's like, oh, this was not efficient.
	I've moved it over here.
	And it's like, when I first got married, I referred to my wife as Heidi.
	Her name is not Heidi, but I referred to her as Heidi because you put something down and it's been tidied.
	It's been moved.
	It become more efficient.
	And I'm like, why don't you tell me these things?
	Well, it just makes sense.
	It's like, but not to me.
	So the reason I ask for my wife where things are is because a lot of times, not all the time, obviously, maybe it's only 25% of the time.
	But I ask her where things are because there's a not 0% chance she's moved them.
	And not always, right?
	But it means that I'm more likely to go to.
	And look, she's got her reasons for moving them.
	And I'm not going to argue about those things, but it does make it.
	When I was single, I just knew where everything was.
	And now when you get married, you put things down and they get tidied and then you don't know where they are.
	So just a sort of minor point.
	So the other analogy that I would have, and again, I hope this isn't coarse or anything like that.
	It's sort of like sex, right?
	Like if the man says to the woman explicitly or implicitly, like, you owe me sex, wifely duty, you got to do it.
	I'm going to be mad if you don't.
	I'm going to make your life unhappy if you don't.
	I'm going to pout.
	I'm going to, well, that kills the sex drive in women because then you feel kind of cornered and bullied and you're giving it up for the sake of keeping the peace rather than having a joyful, loving connection of fun adult time.
	Right.
	And so if, and this is for the people who are listening to this to sort of get this sort of analogy, but if you feel pushed, pressured and bullied into having sex or you feel like there's going to be a negative consequence if you don't, like he's just going to be mad all day and not talking to you And negative or sour or something like that.
	That's fine.
	Okay.
	It's 10 minutes, it's 15 minutes, and then he'll be fine tomorrow.
	But that becomes a kind of obligation that's not about sort of spontaneous love, connection, and joy.
	It becomes about managing someone rather than connecting with someone.
	Well, I have to give him sex, otherwise, he's going to be negative tomorrow, right?
	So I'll just manage him, but it's not freely expressed and chosen.
	And I think if, again, it's a big analogy to use, but sometimes that helps.
	If it's like you're looking at the pile and if it's like, well, I have to do it because otherwise my husband's going to be mad.
	That's just not a motivator.
	You can force people to do stuff for a short amount of time, but in the long run, the blowback, the passive aggression, the procrastination, it all begins to undermine.
	And then you just won't do it because, in a sense, you're being forced to, if that makes sense.
	It makes perfect sense.
	And it's, and I understand that the salacious topic is good to keep interest.
	But yeah, I fully agree with you.
	And now what?
	So then the answer is to, and he may not be a big talk it about feelings kind of guy, but if his argument for you going back to work is generated by emotion, then reason won't help.
	It's actually kind of funny because that was my first debate tonight where reason and evidence didn't help.
	It didn't change anything.
	So if he's got an emotional reason for like he's just really mad because he thinks that you're being lazy by not taking care of the house and maybe that's disrespectful to him or you're, you know, his love language is coming home to a tidy house and he comes home to a messy place with sticky stuff on the floor or whatever.
	And he just has an experience of being unloved, disrespected.
	You're lazy.
	You're taking advantage of him.
	Like if he's got that kind of thing, right?
	Which, you know, men have.
	We have a concern that we're paying a bunch of bills.
	We're going out and working 12 hours a day or 10 hours a day or whatever, including the commute.
	And, you know, old wifey is just sitting home, you know, with bonbons and soap operas and, you know, chatting with her friends and barely paying any attention to the baby, not cleaning up the house.
	And then men start to feel taken advantage of.
	Now, please understand, I'm not saying you're doing that.
	I'm just saying that's a general male fear.
	And so if his frustration with the household stuff and his desire to, quote, punish you by sending you off to work to fire you from being the homemaker, if that's coming from an emotional place, then you need to figure out what the messy house means to him, right?
	It's not what happens in life to a large degree.
	It's what it means to us.
	So when he comes home, especially as a military guy, he comes home to a messy house that hits him in the feels.
	Like I'm telling you, real deep down, men have emotions just like women.
	It hits him in the feels and that translates into a moral judgment for him, a moral judgment of you, a moral judgment of marriage, and so on.
	And so he needs to talk about what the messy house means to him.
	Now, that doesn't mean that your house should be messy.
	It doesn't mean that you don't have any obligation to tidy or clean or anything like that.
	But this is not working.
	And the person it's not working for most is not you or your husband, but your daughter.
	It is your daughter that this whole problem is not working for the most.
	Obviously, if you can satisfy your husband and you can stay home with your daughter and not hand her over to strangers for 13 bucks an hour, that's better.
	But he has to be honest, right?
	Thou shalt not bear false witness.
	Feel free to quote him that.
	He has to tell the truth about what the messy household means to him.
	Now, I don't know the guy.
	I can chat with him and ask him these questions.
	Maybe his mom had a really messy household, or maybe she had a super tidy household, and that's his standard, or she had a messy household, and that's like triggering him when he comes home and sees that kind of mess.
	Maybe he feels like if you worked as hard as I did, the house wouldn't be messy.
	Therefore, you're exploiting me.
	Maybe he was exploited in past relationships.
	Maybe he was exploited in the army.
	Maybe his parents exploited him in some manner or some ex-girlfriend or something like that.
	So there's some echo of the past that's going on here that the messy house means something that is so negative that he's willing to hand his daughter over to strangers and punish you.
	That's how angry he is at the messy house.
	Now, there's nothing objective about a messy house that would make him that angry, which is not to say that his anger is not justified.
	It may be justified in some context, just not in the present context.
	And so, yeah, having that honest conversation about what the messy house means to him is it will then lift the emotional bullying and then leave you more free to do it out of your own pleasure and free will rather than as a management or an appeasement thing, which never lasts.
	I'm so sorry.
	Go ahead.
	I think I know what it is.
	I think it's a sense of betrayal because when we first got married, you know, there was this, we this idea that, you know, we would be working professionally, be like a power couple, and then, you know, make a lot of money together.
	And then for the first few years of our marriage, the first five years, I didn't work.
	I couldn't find a job.
	I didn't work very hard to find one.
	And then, you know, when I finally, you know, get all the qualifications and, you know, and I'm ready to be a big earner for the household.
	You get pregnant.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Okay.
	And so now he feels betrayed.
	Right.
	So I'll pay all the bills so that finally you can get my income.
	Oh, honey, I'm pregnant.
	I don't think I'll.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And so then the question is, and, you know, these are all of the onion levels in a relationship, all of which are generally complex, is why did you not work or, as you say, work particularly hard?
	Of course, I mean, I assume this was, I mean, over COVID and stuff like that.
	The entire world went completely insane and kind of evil over COVID.
	So that was really, really tough as a whole.
	It was a lot easier to keep your job than get a job over COVID, JAB accepted.
	So what do you think your reason was for not working particularly hard to try and get work over the last five years?
	Oh, sorry, during the previous five years, sorry, it would be seven years ago.
	So pre-COVID, because you were pregnant And then you've got a daughter, so a little under like 18 months, two years.
	So, what do you think was the first five years?
	What was going on for you there?
	Um, well, I mean, we did move a lot because military, um, that's one thing.
	Uh, I went to grad school, um, you know, I, yeah, that's so in 2019, we got married.
	I moved across the country to live with him.
	I worked a few odd jobs and internships, um, was underqualified, so went and got my MBA.
	Um, you know, COVID, COVID happened and then recruiting went nuts because I was not going to get the shot.
	Um, and I, you know, I did work at home getting.
	Your entire life has been about avoiding getting shot.
	Anyway, come on.
	Yeah.
	So, I mean, the work that I did do at home was a lot of, you know, research.
	So like a housewife who is a board housewife, I was on the internet constantly, you know, learning as much as I could about this crazy jab and what was happening in the world.
	And I put together his exemption paperwork for the military so he could get exempted from the shot, which may have saved his life.
	But, you know, all that COVID, all the other stuff, like COVID is everybody's excuse for being lazy.
	In addition to that, I was kind of lazy.
	And why do you think, did you guys think of having kids prior to, or what was the five-year gap?
	I mean, I'm not complaining about it.
	Obviously, it's your marriage.
	I'm just curious.
	No, yeah, we were trying very hard.
	And, you know, I had some medical.
	Hang on.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	And I apologize.
	Look, I hugely sympathize with fertility issues.
	It is a massively underdiscussed topic in society.
	Like a significant portion of married couples struggle with fertility issues, and it's brutal on the marriage.
	It's brutal on the happiness.
	And particularly just by accident of biology, it tends to be more on the female side than the male side.
	So it's really tough for women to maintain their sense of worth and self-esteem.
	So I just have massive sympathies for all of that.
	But if COVID's going on and you're trying to have a baby, how ambitious are you supposed to be?
	No, you tell me.
	I don't know.
	Well, not very.
	Because if every month you're expecting to be pregnant, how are you supposed to buckle down?
	And I mean, I understand getting the degree, I suppose, because at least that can be put on hold or whatever.
	But, you know, going to get some high-power couple job when you're all trying to put a bun in the oven and COVID, it doesn't seem, it doesn't, I wouldn't put that under the category of lazy.
	It's like, cause it's easy to look back and say, well, my gosh, the medical issues and the infertility, it was a couple of years.
	But you don't know that.
	Every month, you're right.
	Nobody said you can't have a kid.
	So every month you're like, come on, man, come on.
	Make the union.
	Make the union.
	And you don't know.
	You don't know.
	Looking back, you know.
	Right.
	But, but every month you think it's going to happen and you, you, you're taking your shots or whatever it is you're doing.
	You're checking your FSH levels and so on.
	So every month you think it's going to happen and it's really tough to plan because everything's on hold waiting for that.
	Sorry.
	I don't want to tell you your experience, but I'm probably something like that.
	No, it's something like that.
	And then, you know, you can just pile on a little bit of guilt, be it misplaced or not.
	You know, then it's, that's, that's pretty much it.
	I could have been, you know, I could have been earning.
	There are a lot of, a lot of things that I could have done, a lot of things that I said that I was going to do that I didn't do.
	And likewise for him.
	I mean, everybody, I'm not going to say everybody has those deficiencies, but.
	Everybody has those deficiencies, my friend.
	Everybody has those deficiencies.
	And, you know, it is important, of course, as Christians to recognize that everybody is susceptible to bad decision.
	The devil works in mysterious ways and everybody makes mistakes.
	And honest conversations and apologies and forgiveness is the foundation.
	I mean, every marriage, if you can't forgive, you can't survive 20 minutes in a marriage because, you know, there's shaping and decisions and all that kind of stuff.
	So I think if you guys sit down, you just have to have these honest discussions about what your perspective is of each other.
	If there's been stuff that has diminished respect, honest conversations is the only way to restore it.
	You can't restore it through better action because that's still pretending that something didn't happen that happened or didn't happen that was supposed to happen.
	So having those honest conversations about where you are in the marriage, your husband's fears about maybe being exploited, his frustrations that you didn't, quote, do the right thing and all of that, even though, as you say, you may have saved his life with your research.
	And having for a man to recognize that the woman's experience is different.
	So he's very ambitious.
	He's obviously a high status, high driven, high testosterone kind of guy.
	So he has 17 times your level of testosterone.
	And it's not the only thing, but it's fairly important in ambition.
	So if he's thinking, well, basically, you're just a man with boobs, then he's not understanding what it is to be married to a woman.
	You are fundamentally different from him.
	You do not have the same level of drive and ambition, almost certainly.
	And so for him, it would be like, well, I couldn't imagine being unemployed for that long.
	It's like, well, that's because you're a guy and you're not trying to get pregnant and you're not wrestling with all of that kind of stuff.
	And so, you know, recognizing the differences.
	And of course, I don't need to tell you this, the mans and the souls, women are created differently by God himself.
	I don't need to tell you that.
	But if one of the fundamental mistakes, and I'm not trying to project here, but one of the fundamental mistakes I made early on was thinking that my wife was just kind of like me, because we get this Star Trek, everyone's copy paste stuff, right?
	So my wife is, but she's fundamentally different from me.
	I've referred to women as delightfully incomprehensible.
	And that's good.
	That's because of division of labor.
	Like if I hire an accountant, what the accountant does, it's incomprehensible to me.
	But that's why I'm hiring him because he's different from me.
	And that's why we fall in love is because there's differences and there's mysteries and there's stuff to learn that we can teach each other that can only come from a male or female perspective.
	And that's why we united to the most powerful force in the world.
	But if people are different from you, you have to find a way to respect it if you're married.
	And you made different decisions than your husband did for the first five years of your marriage.
	That's because you're a woman and you're struggling with infertility and he's a man and he's driven to go out in the world and chew gum and take names and do all of those manly things.
	So I think having those honest conversations will reduce the pressure.
	So if he's pressuring you to have a tidy home, damn it, and you've got to be clean and it's lazy and right.
	That is not Going to motivate you in the long run.
	Aggression gets short-term compliance and long-term resistance.
	And this is going to be true of your daughter as well.
	You can bully kids into short-term compliance.
	They've done all these studies with spanking and so on.
	You can bully kids into short-term compliance, but you just get long-term rebellion.
	And when they hit their teenage years, they're really going to hit back hard because now they have all the size and independence to pay you back for when they were helpless.
	Have those kinds of conversations about what's going on deep down in your heart and soul.
	That is the union of man and woman, and that is not bearing false witness.
	Have those conversations.
	I think you'll be surprised at how enjoyable homemaking can be when you're not being pushed into a corner to do it.
	Thank you.
	And one more thing, and I know this is going to sound totally off topic, but I don't think it is.
	May I ask you a personal question?
	You can ask me anything you want.
	Do you fart in front of your wife?
	Do I fart in front of my wife?
	Yeah, like, do you fart in front of her or do you go to another room?
	I mean, I'll generally try to keep it relatively quiet.
	I apologize to all of the cushions in the house.
	I generally will try and keep it to a minimum, but I will not go to another room because it's not my fault.
	I'm gassy as a man.
	It's not my fault.
	It's not like I'm taking a poop in front of her, right?
	I mean, being gassy is just part of the male digestion system.
	We just have more and louder farts than women.
	And I can't be paranoid about that, that kind of stuff.
	In the same way that I don't expect my wife to clean all of the hair out of the drains in the shower, right?
	I mean, as you may guess, I don't know if you've seen me, but I don't have a lot of hair that ends up in the drain.
	My hair mostly ends up in the wind.
	So I don't expect her side of the bathroom counter to be as, quote, tidy as mine because she's a woman.
	So she has just a lot more mystery potions and goops that go on.
	And so I accept that there are going to be things that she does that might be mildly off-putting to me, but I'm not going to sit there and say, well, you have to clean everything up after you.
	And your side of the bathroom counter needs to look exactly like mine.
	And there can't be any shower.
	There can't be any hair in the shower and blah, blah, blah.
	She has to have some sort of relaxed existence.
	And I have to have some sort of relaxed existence because it's honest and it's real.
	I'm not obviously going to make a big show of it.
	I'm not going to do any blue angels at the dinner table.
	But at the same time, I'm not going to sit there and say, I have to go into the car because I'm gassy because, I mean, I live in the car.
	No, that's all.
	I was just curious about, I don't know why, but a lot of our arguments, most of our arguments have to do with, we don't talk about money.
	We just talk about farting.
	That's interesting.
	Okay, well, listen, you drop me a line or drop me a line.
	You can find me, of course, on X just and let me know how things are going.
	And if there's, of course, anything I can do, if your husband would like to chat, I'm not the lowest T guy around, and maybe that would help.
	I'm certainly be happy to chat with him.
	And I really do appreciate your frankness and honesty.
	And I, you know, go rescue your daughter.
	Thank you, Sekon.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate that.
	All right.
	Thank you for, I know we've had some long calls.
	I will, I don't need to fart.
	So I think we're okay.
	Simon, if you're still, if you're still with us, what's on your mind, my friend?
	You need to unmute.
	If you are muted, dovegetfreedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	You know, it's pretty unique stuff that's going on in these conversations.
	Freedomain.com slash donate.
	Simon, going once, going twice.
	Hello.
	Hello?
	Yes, sir.
	Yeah, you can hear me.
	Nice.
	I have a suggestion for the first conversation, and then I have a question that's more about my personal life.
	Do you have suggestions for the first conversation?
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Yeah, I think because as a relatively young man, I probably was in the first guy's or approximately in the first guy's mindset and situation like some years ago.
	And I think that the perspective that he was taking and the perspective that you are taking, which I mostly agree with, at least now, I mostly agree with you, the way that the arguments were made are not convincing to his perspective, even though he probably agrees with just about all your facts.
	And of course, he was making some fallacies and like he's not perfect.
	But I don't think I would have been convinced easily by your arguments.
	Sorry, but why would you think I'm trying to convince him?
	No, no.
	That's, of course, you're not.
	You're speaking with him only.
	No, because you're saying that, first of all, you're calling things perspectives.
	And I wasn't just bringing out perspectives.
	I actually brought out some fairly objective data.
	And if people just reject objective data.
	So just so you know, and I'll keep this really brief and you continue with your point.
	Just so everybody knows, I'm not debating with him.
	I'm debating with the audience.
	So he's putting forward certain perspectives, which I think are actually very toxic and destructive, but that's fine.
	It's free speech.
	And I'm happy to have him on the platform.
	But I have to fight pretty ferociously.
	So those ideas aren't transmitted by my platform into the minds and ball sacks of my audience and ovaries of my audience.
	Right.
	So if I give people a platform and they're saying things that I consider to be quite destructive, I'm going to have to fight them hard.
	Not because I want to change his mind.
	I'm just fairly convinced and I understood at the very beginning that he wasn't going to change his mind.
	And I think maybe that's because he was older and he'd already committed to the single life to the point where he may have been past what could be achieved.
	But it is not him whose mind I'm trying to change.
	I'm trying to make sure that the ideas through the transmission of what I do don't infect the mind of the audience.
	So I need to give a very robust rebuttal because of that, but not to change his mind.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	I totally agree.
	But secondarily to that, when I'm losing my point.
	You're trying to convince people that are kind of like him, right?
	People that are not like him.
	No, I'm not.
	I'm not.
	I'm not trying to convince people who are kind of like him, because if him is someone who doesn't really listen to reason and evidence, moves the goalpost, it's kind of manipulative and kind of selfish, in my view.
	Again, that's just my perspective.
	Then I can't change people's minds who are like him.
	What I can do is I can put forward the reason and evidence, and then people who are open to reason and evidence will change their minds.
	Because there are people who already agree with me, right?
	This is basic politics.
	And I know you know this, so I'm just telling it for anybody who doesn't.
	Basic politics is there are people who will never vote for you.
	There will people who vote for you already.
	And then there's the undecided.
	And you have to focus on the undecided.
	So this is when I'm having public discussions.
	I'm focusing on the undecideds.
	So there are people who already know that, you know, love and marriage and children are a beautiful, wonderful thing.
	And I don't need to convince them, although they may enjoy seeing the other perspective criticize.
	And then there are people who won't listen to reason and evidence because for whatever reason, and I can't talk to them, but I can talk to the people in the middle.
	Maybe they've not really thought about it.
	Maybe they've not really heard this reason and evidence.
	Maybe they're undecided about which way to go.
	And it's those people for me that the discussion is for.
	So I'm not trying to change people like him.
	I'm trying to change people who are undecided.
	Okay.
	So I think we really arrived at the crux now.
	So, I mean, I agree with him, with you, that he has a selfish perspective.
	But as humans, we need to have selfishness to some degree because we need it.
	We need to take food or to take water when we actually need it.
	But then also what you're trying to change in him is his degree of wanting to take responsibility, right?
	No, no.
	Okay.
	So sorry.
	Just when you're talking to very experienced people, and I say this without any negative, I'm just sort of pointing it out.
	When you're talking with very educated and experienced people, don't state the blindingly obvious.
	And I'm not saying this in any negative way.
	I'm just telling you that it's not predictably...
	Maybe you're telling the audience, but you don't know that I know that.
	And I already said that.
	So try not to repeat the blindingly obvious because it really doesn't do much to advance the conversation.
	So, of course.
	And I'm trying to get people to understand that life is at its best when your happiness is not just for yourself, but other people's happiness matters.
	Now, of course, we understand this in a business context.
	If I open a restaurant, I have to care about whether my customers like the food or not.
	I can't just say, well, this is the stuff that I want to cook and this is how I want to present it and so on.
	Now, if I do that and the customers happen to like it and love it, okay, great or whatever, right?
	But most times that doesn't work, right?
	So I have to respond to topics that people want to talk about.
	I have to deal with people where they are.
	And it can't just be all about me.
	Like, if it's just me, I would be doing abstract theories of moral philosophy all day and all night.
	That's my particular greatest happiness when it comes to the realm of philosophy.
	And when I started my call-in shows like 20 years ago, I never really thought that people would call in talking about personal issues.
	And it's fine that they did.
	And it's what the customers want.
	It's what people want to talk about because there's nothing in the call-in shows that say you have to talk about personal issues.
	People have called me and I think like four or five people have called in over 20 years to talk to me about my favorite thing, which is abstract ethics, right?
	That's my favorite thing.
	So I have to go where the customers are and I have to do what the customers are best for.
	So in life as a whole, you can't be selfish alone.
	Of course, you have to have self-interest, but if your self-interest, if you're happy when your customers are happy, that's the best restaurant situation to be in.
	So sorry, go ahead.
	So totally agree with like the middle and the last point, but I don't think I understand your objection, the objection you made to what I said, like in the very first part of what you said now, you said like that I shouldn't state what is blindingly obvious or what you're saying.
	Yeah, because you sort of interrupt.
	So yeah, what you said to me is like human beings have to have some degree of selfishness.
	Yeah, okay.
	So my point was that that's a scale, right?
	And his scale has moved too far to one side.
	And so he thinks because he's psychologically immature in this way, and he thinks he has to be more selfish than he needs to be.
	He's, as you would say, underestimating the people.
	I'm sorry.
	I hate to interrupt, but I have to interrupt when people mischaracterize what I'm saying.
	And I'm not saying you're doing it in any negative or mean way.
	I'm just misunderstanding.
	Yeah.
	So I am very selfish.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, I selfishly want to tell the truth about philosophy to people.
	It gives me great pleasure, even though the world punches back pretty hard.
	That's fine.
	That's part of the gig.
	That's part of the deal.
	I very much want my wife and my daughter and my friends to be happy and to do well.
	I love contributing to their happiness.
	When I can tell a joke that makes my daughter or my wife or both of them laugh, that gives me great happiness and great pleasure.
	So the question is, does your selfish pleasure and happiness include the happiness of others?
	So saying, well, you're less selfish when you care about other people.
	No, I mean, it's just that your happiness should include the happiness of others.
	And then their happiness includes your happiness, which means you get much better feedback in life.
	So when you have people who care, when you hang on, when you have people who care about you, they will give you much better and more honest feedback, which helps, which is one of the reasons why married men have better mental health for the most part.
	Because when you're alone and you don't invest in other people, they don't invest in you, which means you often persist in error without that kind of feedback.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I agree with this, Stefan, but he doesn't.
	He doesn't understand this perspective.
	So if we are able to explain it to him without him locking down, we might better target his hang-ups to our suggestions.
	Like he was really locking down quite soon in the conversation, right?
	Sorry, what do you mean by locking down?
	He wasn't open to your perspective.
	And from the outside, from my perspective, even though I agree with every argument you made, you didn't seem open to his Perspective either.
	And it's not that his perspective is correct.
	I don't think it is.
	But we're not going to be able to design good enough arguments to get him to open up and get him to see a different perspective if we don't understand his perspective.
	No, but I mean, I was very happy to do that.
	So when he said there's no benefit to men to get married, I said, okay, here's some factual benefits.
	And he dismissed the happiness one because of shaky data.
	Okay, that's fine.
	I let that one go.
	And I'm not an expert in all the studies in happiness, so I can't really speak to that.
	But then it went to more objective benefits, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And did he agree to those?
	And did he accept those?
	He agreed to the facts, but his maturity level psychologically wouldn't let him see like he couldn't feel how his life would be benefited with this.
	He's happy.
	He thinks he's going to be happy by staying alone and by having just disposable income for himself, not having a lot of responsibility and all these things.
	He doesn't see that responsibility, taking responsibility can be a selfish action.
	Yeah, I mean, he's, I would assume, again, I don't know this guy individually, but there's a certain stage in development where you don't think about other people's happiness.
	It tends to be quite early in life.
	Like babies don't care about whether they're waking you up for the fourth time that night.
	They just need them, that that's good, that they should do that so you can keep them alive.
	So, yeah, there's a very sort of early time in life where you only care about your own happiness and all of that.
	And of course, you're supposed to outgrow that because we're social animals, right?
	And so I'm still quite, I'm, and this is nothing negative towards you.
	I'm just a little baffled.
	Like, why does this matter to you?
	Because I was somewhere like where he is now, like some years ago when I was less mature.
	And I was argued out of that position by various people, maybe a little bit you, maybe a little bit Jordan Peterson and his tick about responsibility and some other great people.
	And I would think like just my life and your life and everyone's lives would be better if we got more effective at arguing people or helping people mature faster like this.
	Yes, but I'm so sorry.
	And this is, again, nothing negative.
	You're a very smart and caring person and I'm not trying to reject your feedback.
	But I find it interesting.
	Yeah, but you are, have you had these debates in public?
	And I'm not going to try and pull some magical experience thing here, but having debates in public is a very, very different matter.
	So if this guy called in, if he was having a call-in-show with me, let's say public or private or whatever, if he's having a call-in-show with me, we dig into his childhood, his history, this, that, and the other, right?
	But if this guy is going to say, on my platform, which I am responsible to some degree for what if, you know, I don't cut him off, I have an open car.
	I don't just do solo shows, right?
	So if he's going to say on my platform, there's no benefit to men for getting married, there's no benefit in marriage for men, that's a toxic statement to me.
	I mean, it's a toxic and destructive statement.
	Now, my goal then is to block him from transmitting those ideas or that selfishness to my audience, right?
	Because I've given him a platform.
	So my goal then is to prevent him, right?
	So it's kind of like quarantine.
	If somebody comes in coughing blood into an ER, they'll put him in a quarantine ward because they don't want that to spread.
	Now, I guess they'll try and treat him.
	But if he resists treatment, he's still got to stay in the quarantine ward, right?
	So if somebody comes on and says stuff that is pretty egregious, negative, and destructive, then I'm going to fight back.
	My goal is not to change his mind because there was no changing his mind.
	He contradicted himself all the time.
	He rejected data, moved the goalposts.
	He strawmanned.
	So there was no changing his mind.
	Now, maybe you plant the seeds and this goes out to millions of people over time and it will save a lot more people.
	But I am not.
	If somebody is rejecting reason and rejecting evidence, how can you change their mind?
	So the first, like, I don't agree with the second part of your argument, Gian, but I, I know.
	And you could be right.
	I mean, maybe I'm missing something.
	Yeah, you could be right.
	And I'm absolutely open to the fact that I'm missing something.
	So sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I feel like this is really good because when you and me are talking now, like it seems like a good conversation.
	We're flowing back and forth.
	But with him, it wasn't like that.
	And sorry, another foundational reason.
	Well, another foundational reason is if I'm trying to think of a good example.
	Normally it'd pop into my head, but this one's a little more tricky.
	So I'll just take it from his perspective.
	So he comes to me and says, like, I'm very happily married.
	I constantly promote the happiness of marriage.
	I have data behind it and so on, right?
	So if he's coming to me and saying there's no benefit to men to get married, then he's saying that I'm wrong and have been promoting falsehoods for a long time and that I myself am completely mistaken about the benefits that I perceive.
	That the benefits that I perceive are illusory.
	In other words, I think I'm losing weight, but somebody's just replacing my mirror and my scale with something that makes me look like I'm losing weight.
	Like that the benefits that I think I have are an illusion.
	So he's calling me deluded and having promoted something that is false for 20 years.
	Like that's a big accusation to make of someone.
	And I understand that right away.
	So that's combat.
	Right.
	If he's saying to me, Steph, all the benefits that you perceive and have promoted are all completely illusory.
	You're selling false hope.
	You're selling a false narrative.
	And everything that you believe is good in your life is not good in your life.
	I mean, come on.
	That's fighting words.
	You understand that, right?
	Yeah, yeah, 100%.
	I don't think he understands that.
	So why would I care what he understands?
	I can't make him understand things.
	If somebody doesn't even have the basic Social skills to say, let's say he's 100% right.
	Let's say he's 100% right.
	Yeah, so let's say he's 100%.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I think this is our job when we talk to people that haven't arrived at really ethical and integrated perspectives on things that we because on some topics we are going to be able to do that.
	Okay, sorry.
	So this is too abstract.
	Okay.
	So you pretend to be me and I'll pretend to hang on, hang on.
	You pretend to be me, I'll pretend to be him.
	And then you can guide me on how you think the conversation should have gone, right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Steph.
	Yeah, so you're me, I'm him.
	Steph, and I'll try not to, I'll steal Man his case, right?
	I'll respect his perspective.
	Okay.
	So Steph, you keep promoting marriage.
	It's a lie.
	Men get no benefit from marriage.
	So why do you not think that men get any benefits from marriage?
	Because the risk is too high and the benefits are illusory and you only get those benefits if you're a slave to women, happy wife, happy life.
	You have to erase your whole identity.
	So any benefits you get come at the expense of your honesty and your integrity.
	You end up being a slave to spend all your money and time trying to please other people.
	And oh, by the way, you can also just get divorce raped and she can take half your stuff and your kids at a moment's notice on a whim and everyone will always take her aside.
	Past, you could argue for some benefits, but given the no-fault divorce laws and the bias of the court system towards women, it's far too risky.
	And the risks, even if there are some potential benefits, it comes at the expense of your integrity and honesty.
	You have to lie to get them and you're in constant risk of divorce and attack.
	Hey, hey, hey, hey.
	Let's say we grant that.
	I don't agree with all that, but let's say we grant it.
	Like, what are you going to do with your life?
	Oh, are you kidding me?
	I'm having a fantastic time.
	I make good money.
	I travel.
	I have girlfriends.
	I have great hobbies.
	I do sports.
	I have a great circle of friends.
	Life is fantastic.
	Okay.
	So what's going to be left when you eventually go away?
	What's going to be left?
	Do you care?
	No.
	No, I don't.
	I mean, I'm enjoying my life.
	I'm having a great time.
	And, you know, I mean, you die.
	But after you're dead, who cares about anything?
	I mean, I'm only going to care about things after I'm dead.
	Well, I mean, what kind of, I mean, what?
	Do you really mean that?
	Do you really mean that, like, I absolutely believe 50%?
	I'm sorry if you're sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	Do you believe in a world outside of yourself?
	Of course, I believe in a world outside of myself.
	If I want to travel to Thailand, I have to believe that Thailand exists outside of myself.
	Do you believe in people outside of yourself, like other conscious beings that have choices?
	What kind of question is that?
	Did you not listen to me?
	Bro, I told you.
	I have girlfriends.
	I have friends.
	I have a great social life.
	I play sports with other people.
	I work out with other people.
	I travel and meet other people.
	Of course.
	Like, what are you talking about?
	Of course, I recognize the existence of consciousness outside of my own.
	Stefan, can we take a little break?
	Because this is the difficulty I'm having.
	We're taking a little break now.
	Is it okay?
	Like, you are.
	I mean, I'm sorry, you were going to show me how to deal with this conversation.
	Yeah, yeah, but you are you again now, just for like one minute.
	Okay.
	Like this is where we, the two of us, like Stefan and Simon, are missing each other.
	I do not think he would have responded like that, the conversation we had now at all.
	Like this.
	I said no.
	I said it was going to steel man.
	Hang on.
	I said I was going to steel man his case.
	And he would say he was happy.
	He would say that he was content.
	He would say that he's living the life that he wants.
	And he certainly hinted at that kind of stuff.
	So I'm just steelmanning his case.
	So what do you do when people are very happy and being selfish?
	Yeah, there might be people like that.
	I didn't get that impression from him.
	And there was a lot of details that gave away that that wasn't the case.
	But I think we had a different impression of him.
	And maybe we won't resolve this.
	And maybe you are correct.
	Maybe you're 100% correct.
	And I just had the wrong impression of him.
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And you're certainly welcome back anytime.
	I'm sorry that we didn't get a little further because I would like to have seen how you handle a committed hedonist.
	But all right.
	I think we can do one more.
	And thank you, everyone, for your patience.
	I'm so sorry we're not getting to everyone.
	Oh, my gosh.
	A lot of people want to talk.
	I'm so sorry.
	We've gone, what, two hours?
	Let's go a little bit longer because, of course, people have been patient.
	I appreciate that.
	And conservative, oh, conservative non-believer.
	That's a very descriptive name.
	If you can unmute, I'm happy to hear your questions or comments.
	And thank you, everyone, for your interest today.
	It's really a great pleasure to chat with all of you.
	Going once, going twice.
	You with my brother?
	Yes, sir.
	Okay.
	I'll try and make this quick.
	My son, he's 25, recently married within the last year, has a baby on the way.
	I raised him in a secular household because I am a non-believer.
	But now that he's facing, you know, husbandry and parenthood, after looking at a lot of statistics, he sees a correlation between a father's attendance to church and religiosity tends to lead towards a more successful marriage and raising of children.
	Now, I haven't looked at these statistics myself, but I'm going to take him at his word because he's a smart kid.
	And I guess my question is, you know, is it okay to, you know, resist your principles if the outcome is better for your goals?
	He wants to be a successful husband and father, and he wants to go about it the best way possible.
	And although he doesn't believe, he wonders if maybe he should go through the motions to help the success of his goals.
	It's a great question.
	So I think it's fair to say that People who visit the dentist have better dental health.
	However, just going and hanging around in the waiting room doesn't give you those benefits.
	So, the question is: is it genuine faith or belief in God that provides these benefits or going through the motions?
	Now, I would argue that it is, in fact, genuine faith and belief in God that gives you these benefits, not just going through the motions.
	The other thing, of course, is that if your son decides to fake faith in order to gain particular benefits, then what kind of message is he communicating to his son about integrity, that you should just lie about what you believe in for the sake of some particular benefit, right?
	That does not seem the right message to pass down the generations.
	I agree, but the proof is in the pudding to me.
	And, you know, I've resisted advising him on which way to go because I do believe there is power in truth.
	And as long as you have a good reason for what you believe, it's okay to believe it.
	But I understand his dilemma, and I'm just trying to advise him.
	Okay, so also I would say to him as a father, I would say, so if it is acceptable to lie to others for a particular benefit, then he better never punish his son for lying.
	That's all, because then it would be completely hypocritical.
	So if the kid lies, like let's say the kid doesn't want to go to school and the kid fakes a stomachache, right?
	And let's say that the father finds out about this in some manner, then he shouldn't ever get mad because the father has already taught that if you can get a particular benefit, you can lie your ass off.
	So I just don't think it's particularly practical.
	I think the benefit that religion, the people who really believe in it is it gives them a consistent set of morals and values and a community.
	Now, you don't have to be, I mean, I wrote a whole book called Universally Preferable Behavior, a Rational Proof of Secular Ethics about how we can derive ethics, logical universal ethics bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder from first principles philosophically.
	It's the first time this has ever been done in the history of philosophy, and I understand that your son wouldn't necessarily know about it.
	It's still relatively obscure for obvious reasons.
	But you can get community and you can get morals and integrity without having to fake prey.
	And I think that the fake prey is disrespectful to the community as a whole, to his church community.
	And I don't think he'll get the benefits.
	I think it will mostly be just costs and losses because at some point his son is going to find these things out.
	And that's going to be a moral earthquake for his children.
	So let me try and summarize what I've heard from you.
	It's not the attendance that brings the benefit.
	It's the actual faith.
	So faking the faith could actually be detrimental to your goal?
	Well, it means that you're saying to your children that you should lie and fake things if they benefit you or even if they benefit others, which just means that he cannot enforce the virtue called honesty or he can't encourage the virtue called honesty on the part of his children, which means he's going to raise children who will lie at will and lie at whim if they perceive a benefit.
	And that's going to be pretty costly for the kids in the long run because they probably won't be very trustworthy.
	Fair enough.
	I appreciate your time, Stefan.
	Big fan, I won't fanboy you much to here.
	He also listens, so maybe he'll listen into this call.
	What do you mean, maybe?
	Send it to him.
	Yeah, keep your eyes peeled.
	And of course, FGRPodcast.com is where you can go.
	You know, you can go sign up to the feed and the podcast will be automatically downloaded.
	And yeah, and if he wants to call, you know, obviously I'd be happy to chat with him.
	These are very, very important issues, and I really do appreciate you bringing them up.
	And look, we all have to do this to some degree.
	We all have to.
	You know, the world is a dangerous place for the truth tellers.
	So always to some degree, we do have to deal with this.
	How much truth do we tell in any particular moment?
	All right.
	Sage O, you have been very patient.
	Boy, that's a, hopefully that's not your visa number.
	Oh, hopefully it is.
	Okay, if you want to unmute, I am all ears if you want to tell me your thoughts.
	Thanks for having me up, Stefan.
	I'm a big fan.
	I've been listening to you since before you were canceled.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	So I've got a little bit of a more esoteric philosophy question that I've been playing around.
	I've basically been thinking a lot about ideas and what exactly they are.
	And I've come to this hypothesis that all ideas already exist and that they exist sort of like in a metaphysical space kind of like an analog in the same way that like mathematics exist.
	Like you don't have to believe in them.
	They're there and you can kind of, I know it sounds kind of woo-woo, but pull them out of the ether if you're cognitively equipped to do so.
	What do you think about that idea?
	I'm just trying to kind of bounce it off of more philosophically minded minds.
	I mean, it's a fascinating idea.
	And like most things in philosophy, it's pretty hard to be original.
	I mean, what you're describing is not, I wouldn't say basic Platonism because I don't want to dismiss the complexity of what you're talking about.
	But Plato, of course, believed in the eternal world of forms, that the ideal of everything already existed in another dimension.
	And there's the question of concept formation, which is really oppositional between Aristotle and Plato.
	So you look at a chair and you know that it's a chair.
	How do you know that it's a chair?
	Well, Aristotle says, well, you see people sitting in it.
	They call it a chair.
	You develop the concept and then you extrapolate it in your mind.
	So if it's got, you know, four legs, people sit on it.
	It's relatively small.
	Maybe it has a back.
	That's a chair.
	And so he said that we develop the concepts through repeated exposure to consistent behavior and definitions.
	Plato, on the other hand, said that the reason we know that this is a chair is that before we're born in a spiritual Or soulful sense, before we're born, we're floating in a world of ideal forms.
	And in that world of ideal forms, we see the perfect chair.
	And then when we're born into this veil of tears, we see the faint shadow or echo of that perfect chair we saw in our mind's eye before we were born.
	And that's how we know that that is a chair.
	So all truths, all mathematical relations, show physics equations, and every poem, everything is already out there.
	And rather than creating, you are either remembering, right?
	So when you look at a chair in the Platonic sense, you are remembering that perfect chair from before you were born.
	So you're remembering, you're not specifically creating, that you have access to a realm of higher creativity that can, it's like a portal that opens and closes.
	Like when you open the window or you open the curtains in a hotel room, you see some beautiful view.
	You don't create that view.
	You're just uncovering it in your, in your sight.
	And it's the same thing in Plato for, I mean, almost everything.
	I mean, it's so hard to sort of limit the Platonic idea of the world of the forms.
	And Aristotle vehemently argued against this for a variety of reasons.
	And again, I don't want to diminish what it is that you're saying, but is it something along those lines?
	Kind of.
	I've been thinking about it on a little bit more disconnected level.
	Like I have a problem believing in things in the metaphysical outside of mathematics, especially when it comes to like religious things.
	But that's a completely different conversation.
	If I had to boil it down to kind of an axiomatic statement, I'd say that what I'm trying to say is that ideas exist irrespective of a thinker.
	Okay, so then, of course, we have the challenge, which is what do you mean by the word exist?
	And let me sort of preface that by saying, you know, there are things that exist that are tangible, right?
	So I have a little ball here with lip balm because it's dry in the studio, right?
	So this exists in a, you know, tangible way.
	It conforms to all of the evidence of the senses.
	It's consistent.
	It's behavior and its properties.
	It's even the color is the same.
	If I came down and it was a different color, I'd be like, ah, my wife fixed it.
	She moved it.
	She changed it.
	So there are things.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Hang on.
	Sorry, almost done.
	So things exist in a tangible way.
	There are things that are ideas within the mind.
	Do they physically exist?
	Kind of, because it's a pattern of neurons, right?
	So when I think of a memory that I had from 20 years ago, I bring it back in my mind's eye.
	There's a visualization.
	Clearly, that memory and that visualization is stored somewhere in my mind.
	If I know that two and two make four, which I do, that knowledge is stored somewhere in my neurons, but it doesn't exist in the same way that an external physical thing is.
	So if I'm looking at a whole bunch of trees, they stretch to the horizon.
	I say, wow, that's a big forest.
	Now, the forest as a concept doesn't exist out there in the world.
	Each individual tree atomically does exist.
	But the forest is a concept I'm using to describe an aggregation of trees.
	Now, this, I know to the people who are listening, maybe this sounds like, you know, a bit circle jerky and ookie cookie and sort of pointless, but it's very real.
	Because if you think that concepts exist, then collectivism is valid and the individual must submit to the mob because the mob can have moral properties not available to each individual.
	Whereas if you say the concept is imperfectly derived from the instance, in other words, a forest has to be an aggregation of trees.
	It has to be.
	It can't be, you can't say a forest is an aggregation of water atoms or penguins or umbrellas, right?
	So it has to be an aggregation of trees in order to be called the forest.
	You can't just throw other things in there.
	And if the concept only exists because of the things in the real world, then the concept cannot have properties that are not the same as the individual.
	So if a forest is a collection of trees, an aggregation of trees, the concept forest can't have properties that contradict the essence of the trees.
	And what that means is human rights.
	It's my human right to have healthcare, some people say.
	So human rights.
	So what they're saying is that there are rights in the group called humans that specifically oppose the rights of an individual.
	So an individual doctor must be forced to provide healthcare because other people have a right to healthcare in the aggregate.
	Whereas if you say no individual can initiate the use of force against another, then saying, I have a right to healthcare is like saying, I have a right to steal.
	I have a right to murder.
	I have a right to rape.
	You don't.
	You don't have those rights.
	And so when we have concepts that contradict the nature of any individual member of that concept, what we're saying is that there are rights out there that people can claim that contradict your rights and my rights.
	Like the right for people to be free of offense as a group, right?
	Means that we can't tell the truth because other people will just claim to be offended and shut us down.
	So we can't have free speech.
	So when you say it exists, concepts don't exist in the way things do, but that doesn't mean that they're subjective because concepts are supposed to accurately describe things in the world, right?
	If I have two coconuts and two coconuts, I have four coconuts.
	Now, the number two, the number two, the number four don't exist in the real world.
	The coconuts do, but the numbers don't.
	However, they're not subjective because it has to describe two things and two things that combine to make four things.
	The combination, the numbers, they don't exist in the real world, but they're not subjective.
	The accuracy of them is open to being tested by being compared in the real world.
	So sorry, that was a fairly lengthy and complicated speech, but go ahead.
	Yeah, that's completely fine.
	The way I'm saying that ideas exist is that they exist in the way that like math exists, where it's not subjective, but it's not physically tangible.
	Perfect.
	Yeah, that might be a good idea.
	I should probably define what I mean by idea because there's this weird relationship I'm trying to figure out in my hypothesis, because I'm saying that ideas would exist irrespective of the thinker.
	And I think that's because like a thinker itself is an idea.
	And like when you Reference like concepts, which things like the forest to an amalgamation of trees, like a concept itself would be an idea, insofar as I'm trying to define it.
	Okay, so hang on, hang on.
	So, do ideas, which are only in the human mind, as far as we know, do ideas exist or did they exist prior to the development of human consciousness, which was able to conceive of these ideas and have concepts?
	Did the concepts exist prior to our ability to conceive them?
	I don't think that like insofar as like the concept of a forest would exist, but like the rudimentary parts of that concept would exist.
	Right.
	I think that's bang on.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	I interrupted you.
	Please go ahead.
	Oh, I was just finishing up saying like the forest, you could boil it down to like the concept of a thing and then the concept of an amalgamation of things.
	And I think ultimately this idea, like if you tried to beat it like a dead horse, would just turn into an argument about like the development of language.
	But I do think that all ideas already exist and kind of a weird.
	Oh, no, no, hang on.
	Hang on.
	So no, no, no, we got the things and we've got the concepts.
	The concepts require the human brain.
	So the sun existed prior to it being called the sun.
	We agree with that, right?
	Right.
	And that's why I said it would kind of boil down to a semantic argument about length.
	No, it's not.
	People, I'm not saying this to you.
	People say semantics as if it's not important.
	So there were eight planets before human beings knew that there were eight planets.
	Is that right?
	Right.
	Yeah, we are that the Earth is 93 million miles away from the sun or eight light minutes away from the sun.
	And this was true for billions of years before human beings came along and measured the distance and gave it a name.
	Is that right?
	Right.
	When I was saying semantics, I was saying like you could make the argument that that would not be true because we hadn't created the concepts of language to call them planets and suns.
	Well, there were eight planets before human beings named the eight planets.
	And of course, I know Pluto was nine, then it got downgraded and all of that.
	So there were eight planets before human beings said there are eight planets.
	However, if a human being says there are two planets or 50 planets, that human being is wrong.
	So the statement that we make about things in the world have to correspond to the things in that world or we're wrong, right?
	If I say the Earth is banana-shaped, it's not banana-shaped, I'm wrong.
	Now, the fact that the Earth is a sphere is valid.
	Obviously, it's not a mathematical sphere.
	There's indentations and so on, but the highest, I think the Mariana Trench to the height of Mount Everest, you wouldn't even feel on an egg.
	You wouldn't even feel that difference, right?
	So it's fear.
	So the facts, that the reality existed before we labeled them, but the labels have to match what is.
	So I don't think that the concepts existed in the universe before human consciousness.
	But again, people think, well, because it's in my mind, it's subjective.
	Now, some things in your mind are subjective.
	I had a dream about an elephant last night.
	That's subjective.
	But I'm not making the claim that I actually was in the presence of an elephant last night.
	So some things in the mind are subjective, but not everything.
	The moment that we try to hook in or tie the concepts in our mind to things in the world, well, that's science, right?
	And that's relatively new.
	And he's really only 500 years old, give or take.
	I mean, there was ancient science, but the Baconian method is pretty new.
	And so you can have a hypothesis or a conjecture about how matter and energy is going to behave.
	Then you have to go and test it.
	It has to be reproducible, which is how we knew the fusion in the jar thing wasn't real because nobody else could reproduce it.
	And the science didn't even science that well anyway.
	So yeah, I think the concepts, the ideas did not exist prior to human consciousness, but that doesn't mean that they're only in human consciousness without reference to things outside of human consciousness.
	The only thing I would argue with there is that I'm trying to make a definitional segregation between concepts and ideas, saying ideas are kind of like this higher, like you said, Platonic form.
	And like a concept is itself an idea that you would bring in from another idea that would be a thinker.
	So would you say that ideas are first principles and concepts are derived, or do I have that completely wrong?
	I mean, I could work very well because I'm sure you're thinking here.
	Yeah, I would say ideas are first principles and then you would derive thinkers from that and then you would derive concepts from thinkers.
	Okay, so first principles, if I understand what you're saying correctly, is the consistency of reason that is required or demanded or imprinted upon us by the evidence of the senses.
	So the laws of logic come from the consistent behavior of matter and energy.
	So you can't be in two places at the same time.
	And so that's a principle of causality and logic.
	Something is an elephant or it is not an elephant.
	It is not both an elephant and something else at the same time, which is one of the basic laws of logic and so on, right?
	So the evidence of the senses gives us the requirement because matter and energy behave in perfectly consistent ways.
	Therefore, any ideas or arguments that we use to describe matter and energy must also behave in consistent and non-contradictory ways.
	And that's where we get logic.
	It comes into us through the evidence of the senses and how much the evidence of the senses shows us the consistent behavior of matter and energy, which means all thoughts that we have that describe things outside of ourselves must have consistency and uniformity, which is why science doesn't say, oh, yeah, the scientific experiment works fine in Philadelphia at 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, but nowhere else, right?
	Because it's talking about the universal properties of matter and energy, which are not confined to Philadelphia on a Thursday afternoon at 2 o'clock, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does make sense.
	And like, probably one of the most influential things to me about been like thinking about this hypothesis for a while.
	And hear me out because it's kind of super autistic and tangential.
	But it's the number pie, and it's the philosophical thought experiment of the monkeys in a typewriter, in a room with typewriters eventually generating Shakespeare.
	Because if you understand that mathematical philosophical experiment, it's not actually like primates.
	A monkey is a random character generator.
	The amount of time they would take to actually generate that would be way longer than the age of the universe.
	It's an interesting mathematical thought experiment on probabilities, but it makes me think about pi, the number pi, because pi is a series of non-repeating numbers.
	And if you convert a series of non-repeating numbers to non-repeating letters, you have everything that's ever been written, everything that's ever been said, everything that ever will be written, everything that ever will be said, everything that ever.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Sorry.
	So what do you mean by you have?
	Because you don't have any of those things.
	They're just theoretical.
	Well, those they would exist within pie.
	Sorry, what would exist within pi?
	Shakespeare?
	Yes.
	Hang on.
	It doesn't exist because pi is a description of a relationship.
	Right?
	So it doesn't exist.
	3.14159627, whatever it is, right?
	So pi doesn't exist.
	It's 22 over 7, right?
	It doesn't exist in the world and you can't go and find it carved into the atoms or in the nebula.
	It is a concept.
	It is a relationship.
	So it doesn't exist out there in the world.
	It's not arbitrary in that it is 22 over 7, but it doesn't exist out in the world.
	I'm doing this more as like a thought experiment.
	Like, say, if you had a really advanced supercomputer that can actually generate the numbers of pi and then convert it to like each number to a string of letters.
	Okay, then somewhere in some of the non-repeatable strings of pi's numbers, if you had an algorithm that converted them to letters in some fashion, then you could end up with Shakespeare's works.
	Is that right?
	Yes, I'm saying that would be in there.
	On the other side, like all of the noise of every other infinite combination of just garbled nonsense would be in there as well.
	Oh, sure.
	Yeah.
	And in fact, garbled nonsense would be the overwhelming majority of everything you had.
	Yes, absolutely.
	But that's kind of one of the influences of my thoughts of like, why?
	Why does this, and I'm not saying it doesn't matter.
	It's a very interesting discussion.
	But why is this your primary focus in philosophy or thought?
	And I'm not criticizing it.
	It could be very good reasons for it.
	I just don't quite see them because, you know, there's a lot of evil out there in the world.
	And trying to say we have Shakespeare embedded in Pi if we have enough of a supercomputer, which doesn't exist, seems to be a little bit like not fighting the good fight for virtue in the world.
	Oh, yeah, I definitely understand that.
	I may have misunderstood the purpose of the space because it just said, come talk about philosophy.
	Absolutely.
	And listen, I sorry to interrupt.
	I appreciate the discussion.
	I find it absolutely fascinating.
	I have no problem with it.
	I just want to remind you that philosophy is about promoting virtue and opposing evil in the world, because moral philosophy is the core of philosophy.
	It's the one thing that philosophy does that no other rational discipline does, not counting theology as a rational discipline foundationally.
	So I think it's fascinating.
	My concern is don't get lost in the backrooms of abstract thought, but remember that the purpose of abstract thought is real action in the world that promotes virtue and interferes with the designs of evil.
	And I'm not saying that these abstract thoughts are not part of that.
	They really are.
	And I'm not trying to fault you in any way, shape, or form for having these ideas, this wonderful, and I love these kinds of discussions.
	I just want to remind you and really to remind the listeners over the world that the purpose of all of this is to look the purpose of reading a whole bunch of diet books is at some point, hopefully to change your diet.
	And the purpose of studying exercise is at some point to go and actually exercise.
	And the purpose of these sort of arguments and ideas is at some point to go out into the world and promote virtue and thwart evil and vice.
	And again, this is no fault in you whatsoever.
	I just want to make sure we don't get too lost in the abstractions that we forget to act.
	You know, this is Hamlet's line that we lose the name of action, right?
	That we can get so overwhelmed with abstractions that we get paralyzed into action.
	And I'm not saying this is you.
	I'm just saying that be careful with this kind of stuff because it can lead into a real quicksand of sort of Hamlet style paralysis and inaction.
	Again, I'm not saying that's you.
	I'm just saying that there's that risk.
	Oh, yeah.
	Like, that's completely understandable.
	That probably would have been me like 10 or 15 years ago on my philosophical journey.
	As far as moral philosophy goes, I feel like I'm on pretty rock solid foundation as far as that goes.
	I just wanted to like take the opportunity to talk to someone who I look up to philosophically, who was an influence in my philosophical journey to kind of bounce these ideas around.
	No, no, I appreciate that.
	And it's a great conversation.
	And the last thing I'd want to do is fault anyone for talking abstract philosophy when I said, well, if it was up to me, all I'd be talking about is abstract philosophy.
	So I just really want to make sure that we tie that back into practical action in the world, which is nothing negative towards you.
	And you're certainly welcome back anytime because they're the most fun kinds of discussions for me.
	And that's where I started my chops as far as philosophy went.
	So I really do appreciate that.
	And I just want to say I'm sorry to the people we didn't get to.
	I will try and do more shows this week because I know we've got a lot of people who want to talk.
	And I, if it's any consolation, I am desperate to talk to you as well.
	So I'm sorry we didn't get to everyone here, but we've gone cooking well over two and a half hours or a little over two and a half hours.
	So join us for the next one.
	Thank you everyone so much.
	Freedomaine.com slash Donate to help out the show.
	I really would appreciate that.
	It's very, very important.
	Freedomaine.com slash donate.
	Love you guys.
	Thank you for an absolutely wonderful, wonderful day of talking about these ideas.
	And I will say farewell to you now.
	And I think somebody said to me, I had to kind of leave it for a minute or two.
	Otherwise, it got cut off.
	So I guess I'll do that.
	Bye.

▲