July 12, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
06:05
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| 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 pie? | |
| 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 that 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, why does, why does this, 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 it's fascinating. | |
| My concern is don't get lost in the back rooms 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 going cooking well over two and a half hours so, or a little over two and a half hours. | |
| So join us for the next one. | |
| Thank you everyone so much. | |
| Freedomain.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. |
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