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Aug. 24, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:13:09
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Hey everybody, Stefan Mollenue from Free Domain, some more questions from the fine users at X. Somebody writes There seems to be a widening gap between healthy and traumatized people.
Even the smallest gestures can trigger someone.
Ask our daughter in law how was our visit for her, if she felt there were things we could improve on or if that would be helpful.
It's our first time being grandparents.
Reassured her we had a lovely visit, she snaps back with Why are you asking this?
What is wrong with just having a visit?
It was a trauma, dad.
Speaking, do I just avoid convos or play their game?
It's weird and avoidant.
Oh, I'm sorry about that.
Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
You know, when you try to be nice and, well, trust me, I've had a wee bit of experience with this myself, not to make it about me, of course.
But you try to be nice and, well, what happens?
People just get snappy and so on, right?
So there are basically, and, you know, this is kind of a cliche.
There are two types of people in this world.
But this one I'm pretty sure of, and this is, you know, really hard-won experience, which, of course, doesn't mean that I'm right, but I certainly have some reasons for what I'm saying.
There are two types of people in this world.
The people who respond with So if you're nice to people and you're solicitous and you ask them how you're doing and what you can improve and so on, right, there are people who respond to that in a positive and friendly manner and in the spirit in which it is intended, which is to gain feedback to improve the relationship,
and then there are people who say, oh, this person is nice.
That means they're weak.
That means they care about my feelings.
That means I'm dominant in the relationship.
So people who are empathetic and want to provide quality interactions in a relationship, they want to merge.
And so I'll take care of your interests, you take care of my interests, you watch my back, I'll watch your back.
Mutually beneficial interactions, right?
Win-win.
But in order to have a win-win interaction, you need to know what the other person wants.
So, How can I help you?
Right?
And oh, I'm looking for this.
I'll send you the right place.
Right?
So they have to figure out what you want, right?
You go into a.
car dealership, they say, hey, what are you looking for?
What are your needs?
Right?
Oh, you got a big family.
Well, let me not give you a sports car or something like that.
So that is looking for win-win.
That's the merging of self-interest so that both people are better off after the interaction is completed, right?
You go to buy a house, somebody wants to sell the house.
If they voluntarily choose to sell to you, you voluntarily choose to buy, you're both better off than if you had not completed that transaction.
So that's win-win.
Now, that's not the majority of interactions in the world, far from it.
The majority of interactions in the world are win-loose.
So for instance, every now and then on X, I will post, what could I do better?
And some people will say, well, I like it when you do this, or I prefer it when you do this, and other people will like, well, stop being a jerk, or, you know, whatever it is, right?
That's sort of win-loose.
So the mechanics in the mind are actually quite fascinating to go through, because the mechanics in the mind, something like this.
If someone wants my feedback, if somebody wants to please me, then I am the superior and the dominant and they are the inferior and the subjugated.
If somebody wants to please me, I am the dominant and they are the inferior.
So why would an inferior want to know what you want?
Why would an inferior want to know what you need or you prefer?
It's a big question, right?
So if somebody is a slave and wants to know what the master wants.
Once, it's because the slave wants to manipulate the master.
And therefore, if you are in a master slave paradigm, a win-lose, dominant submissive paradigm then someone who asks you to give them feedback on what you want if you're the dominant one is only doing that because they want to manipulate you so let's look at sort of a typical clichette example from the nineteen fifties let's say right so
in the nineteen fifties if a woman has put a dent in the family car and let's say the husband doesn't know about it.
Then the wife will say, Oh, what would you like for dinner?
And the husband says, Oh, I would like a steak and potatoes.
Oh, I'd love to cook you a steak and potatoes.
And then she gives him a back rub, and then she brings him his favorite newspaper, and she is, Oh, what would you like to watch on TV?
Oh, okay, well, then we'll let's watch that.
So she is asking him what he wants, what he likes, and she is providing it.
And why is she doing that?
Is she doing that because she loves him?
Not in this paradigm?
No, no, no.
She's doing it because she wants to manipulate him.
She put a ding in the car, she doesn't want to get in too much trouble, and so she wants to provide to him a positive experience so he'd be less likely to get angry at her.
If she wants her mother to come visit, but her husband doesn't really enjoy those visits, the same thing can happen.
It may not be that she inflicted a negative, she might, like dinging the car, she might want to have a positive.
She might want him to be okay, fine, your mom can come, I guess it's fine.
So she is asking him what he wants and providing him what he wants, not because she cares about him, but because she wants to manipulate him.
In other words, asking what he likes and prefers is an act of aggression or manipulation.
Right?
So, I mean, a torturer, to take an extreme example, a torturer struggles to observe his victim or is observing his victim very carefully so that the torturer can further inflict pain and harm.
I mean, there's this sort of cliche if you're in trouble with criminals that don't have any attachment.
Don't be any place you can't vanish from in five minutes.
Because if you have attachments, well, the criminals would know you love your attachments and your dog or whatever, and they'll get to you through your dog, right?
So the reason that your daughter in law is snapping at you when you ask what you can do better, what she prefers, is that she experiences this as a form of predatory, exploitative, perhaps even aggressive manipulation.
Oh, you're going to find out what I like so you can control me.
In other words, you're going to provide the opposite of what I want.
Right, so if I say, oh, I really liked that cheesecake, then you're going to use my preference for cheesecake to manipulate and control me.
You bastard.
Right, which is why she snaps and acts aggressive when you ask her what she liked, and she didn't.
She doesn't perceive or really conceive of the idea that you might be asking her what she likes and prefers in order to make her happier.
She doesn't live in that win-win.
She only lives in win-lose.
And in win-lose, the only reason you find out information about other people is to manipulate, control, bully, or harass them.
So in politics, it's called opposure research, right?
You do research on your opposition to find out their weaknesses so that you can control them.
So you can bully them, so you can leak stuff to the media, oh, this guy had an affair, or this guy has a gambling addiction, or whatever it is, right?
It's opposition research.
It's a form of narrative control, of bullying, of win-lose, right?
I will leak negative stuff about my political opponent so that he will lose the election and I will win the election.
Now, one of the problems, of course, is that if you are in a win-lose set of relationships, then it's not so much that you are defensive, it's that that becomes your paradigm or approach to the world.
So your paradigm and approach to the world is either I win or the other person wins.
It's a duel, right?
It's a fight to the death.
It's a boxing match.
I win or the other guy wins.
It's win-lose.
Soccer.
running races whatever I win other people have to lose they win I lose and this is one of the problems with sports is it trains you for a win-lose relationship, which is fine, it's not really a relationship, which is fine if you're in a situation of extended combat or whatever it is, but it is win-lose.
And it tends to be a little bit more male in the form of activities, tends to be a little bit more female, the win-lose in the reality of relationships.
So the problem is if you were raised in that way, win-lose, the only reason that people want to find things out about you is to control and manipulate you.
Well, the problem is that the behavior we inflict we also expect.
So if your daughter-in-law has been raised in this win-lose paradigm, then what's going to happen is she is going to inflict that on others.
So she is going to have these snappy win-lose relationships where all attempts at intimacy are the gathering of opposition research, so to speak.
And so because she's inflicted that on others, she now expects it.
So it was inflicted on her.
She's now inflicted on others.
So that's all she expects.
And whatever we inflict, we expect.
If you're hostile to others, you expect hostility in return.
In fact, you justify your own hostility by saying, well, I have to be, I've got to get them before they get me.
Sort of rabid self defense.
Everyone's coming at you with a knife, so you can shoot first and ask questions later, right?
So this issue of being in a perpetual state of fight or flight of win lose is really challenging.
How do you undo it?
I don't know.
You can identify it, but the problem is people who've done wrong can't apologize.
I mean, I'm sure there are exceptions, but in general, that's my approach.
People who've done significant wrong, and if this woman is, you know, let's say in her mid-20s, mid-30s, or whatever, and she's been sort of snappy and mean her whole life, or at least her whole adult life, then she's got a lot of apologies to do.
But the problem is, of course, is that if you have done a lot of wrong in your life, you've done it because it's win-lose.
You're in a win-lose paradigm.
But if you're in a win-lose paradigm, then you can't apologize, right?
Because to apologize is to put yourself at the mercy of others, and since you've shown no mercy to others, you can't expect or you will never expect to receive any mercy from others, right?
So this is one of the problems, is that in order for her to change, she's going to have to apologize to people for being snappy and mean, but she can't apologize to people because it's everything's win-lose, and if she apologizes to the people, they'll use it against her and consider her wrong and damaged and subjugated forever.
But to understand the mindset, I think, is the first step in trying to undo it.
Right, so next question.
Is mathemathematics discovered or invented?
Well, that is a very interesting question.
And I would say neither.
So mathematics is not discovered in that you can discover a new continent, you can discover a new substance, you can discover a new author or something like that, which is to say that there are pre-existing things.
that come into your view that existed prior in the real world existed prior to you coming prior to you seeing them right so when you discover the arctic let's say there's no people been there before or whatever, then it's already there, you're just discovering it, it exists in the real world, but was not part of your sense data until you discovered it.
So that is to be discovered.
To invent is to create something that wasn't there before.
If you write a novel, you've invented a novel that wasn't there before.
If you invent a widget, some sort of mechanical device that didn't exist before, then that's invented.
So mathematics is not discovered like a continent or a vein of gold that already pre existed but was not part of your sense data, so it's not discovered, neither is it invented.
Because that is to say that there were no such things as discrete entities in the past.
One world is enough for all of us.
So I would say that mathematics is neither discovered nor invented.
So if it is not discovered or invented, what is it?
It's hard to know the right word, but the word I think that comes the closest is correlated.
Mathematics is correlated, which means co-related, which means that the concepts in your mind accurately match the facts of reality.
So that's not invented.
Like your dreams invent new laws of physics every night.
So it's not invented.
It is correlated.
So we don't discover numbers like we're digging in our backyard.
We might discover the bones of an animal.
We don't discover numbers like, oh my gosh, this pie.
This is a number seven.
Neither do we invent them out of whole cloth.
So if you have three fruit trees in your backyard, those three fruit trees exist whether or not they are numbered.
They are three discrete fruit trees that exist whether or not they are numbered.
So when you say I have three fruit trees in my backyard to someone, assuming you do have three fruit trees in your backyard, then the number three is correlated accurately to the number of trees in your backyard.
If you say I want five pounds of cheese, because you know, you're snacky.
Say I want five pounds of cheese at a deli, and then they weigh and count out.
five pounds of cheese, then your request for five pounds of cheese correlates with five pounds of cheese, as measured out by the deli, cashier or worker.
So numbers are not invented because that would be to say that there's something new that didn't exist before, and that's not the case.
We have discrete objects in the world before people came up with the idea of numbers, or the concept of numbers.
So if someone says I'm going to be paying you forty thousand dollars a year, then the pay has to correlate to what is offered, right?
You sign some sort of contract that says you'll be paid 40 grand a year, then your pay has to match that contract.
Now, correlation is more interesting and, I think, more accurate than invention or discovery.
So you always have to be careful, and as do I, sorry, and it's funny, like, I just want to point this out, like, every time I nag people, oh, you've got to be careful.
It's because I also have to be careful.
We all have to be careful.
Like when we're talking about ethics, we have to be careful not to fall into the pre-programmed grooves of thought put there by our masters and rulers and commanders.
But you have to be careful when you're offered a false dichotomy to not accept it, right?
Either this or that, well, why not both or neither?
Now, you can't really say something is both invented and discovered.
A discovery of a new law of physics might lead to a new invention.
But numbers certainly we do not discover them in nature in the way that we discover a hole in the ground in the woods.
Oh, look, there's a hole in the ground.
I've discovered it, but it pre existed you.
You finding it, you have new sense data of what was already pre existing.
Or in this case, not pre-existing, which is the earth being a whole.
And numbers are not invented because if they were invented, they would not need to correlate to anything in reality.
So you see this in books, novels, right?
Any similarity to persons living or dead is merely a coincidence.
So this is invented.
I am inventing characters and situations and dialogue in the novel that I'm currently working on.
They do not exist in the real world.
They are invented.
They are not discovered.
I didn't find people in my house and then put them in a novel.
And they are invented in that they did not exist.
before, they do not exist now, but I hope to elicit a strong sense of their existence in the mind of the reader.
They certainly very vividly exist in my mind in the same way that people you meet in dreams vividly exist in your mind, and fiction writing is really just in many ways, the annotating of a waking dream.
It is a lucid dream that you write down.
So novels are invented, gold is discovered, and numbers are correlated.
Numbers are correlated so the concepts in the mind should accurately match the things in reality if I point at a tree and say that's a tree it should in fact be a tree for me to be accurate in other words the concept and the finger pointing and the identification of the object in the world as a tree the concept is correlated to the tree now I would say correlated I know that you can say positively correlated negatively correlated so I'm just going to use positively correlated correlated means that it is accurate Now,
the concept of numbers is created, but it is not invented out of whole cloth, because it is created as a shortcut for being able to do math it is created as a shortcut for being able to do coin transactions or paper transactions or currency transactions it is not accidental right if you buy something for 80 cents and you give the person a dollar they give you 20 cents back that's that the 20 cents is not
invented it is not discovered but the 20 cents is correlated to the change that you deserve on paying 80 cents with a dollar you deserve 20 cents back so i think with regards to concepts, it is important to understand some concepts are just made up, like magic.
The term magic, right?
Doesn't identify anything in reality.
So it is a concept that is not correlated to anything in reality.
But it's a fun concept.
Santa Claus, you know, rocketing all over the universe, delivering gifts is invented.
It is a concept, but it's not correlated to anything in the world.
Lord of the Rings describes a fictional world that is not related to anything.
in the world.
I mean, it has obviously shades of medieval England and so on, but it is not correlated in that way.
But when you look at concepts, there are some that are contradictory, square circle, there are some and therefore not possible to have in the world, there are some that are not possible, i.
e.
magic, assuming it's not just advanced technology, and then so some that are self contradictory, some that are not possible, because they contradict the facts of reality, such as being able to mutter a word and have a fireball emanate without technology from your fingertips or something like that, or a sleep spell that isn't my old history teacher from high school, and then there are concepts that are accurately correlated to things in the world.
So concepts can be invented, concepts are not discovered, right?
We don't cut down a bunch of trees and then find the concept of forest is revealed in all its glory in some sort of tangible way.
So concepts can be invented, are not discovered, and to be accurate and true, concepts need to be correlated to the things that are actually in reality.
They need to accurately describe what is in reality.
If there are three fruit trees, then to be accurate, you must say there are three fruit trees.
If you say there are four unicorns, you are inaccurate in at least two dimensions.
All right.
Hope that makes sense.?
We will continue.
All right, next question is ham on rye objectively the best lunchtime sandwich.
Well, I'm not a fan of ham.
Pigs are intelligent creatures, and it just feels like a hacked-off ass of a pig that wallow in their own crap, mud, and filth.
And Rai is...
So pig's ass between evil bread is not my lunch of choice.
Alright, another question one verbally abusive mother violent and emotionally absent father two dated married a verbally abusive woman had one kid three i divorced when the kid was four an awful decision four remarried had another two kids what's the best i can do for my three children well listen we all make mistakes you know i mean i guess one day i'll go through all of the mistakes that i've made in my life particularly in my youth But
you need to be honest with your mistakes.
I mean, my daughter knows me at a time when I was making pretty good decisions, but she didn't know me at the time when I was making bad decisions, thankfully.
So, to be honest with you, bad decisions is important.
People will accept bad decisions if there are no excuses but reasons.
Right, no excuses but reasons.
Now, let's say I made some bad dating decisions in my teens.
Okay?
Now, why did I make bad dating decisions in my teens?
Well, I can't sit there and say, well, gee, as a teenager, I had been exposed to all of this wonderful virtue and philosophy and self-knowledge and wisdom and all of that, and I just.
chose mysteriously to go in the opposite direction.
No.
No, I was exposed to terrible culture.
I had a terrible family, terrible environment, and so on.
And I made some bad decisions.
Now, am I responsible for those decisions?
Kind of kind of.
I mean, it's sort of like, am I responsible for learning English?
Well, no, I'm not really responsible for learning English.
I'm responsible for using it correctly and refining my knowledge of it as I age and so on.
But I'm not responsible.
Am I responsible for being born in Ireland?
No.
Was I responsible for moving to England?
No.
No, was I responsible for moving to Canada?
No.
I'm responsible for where I choose to live as an adult.
To some degree.
To some degree.
So, and the reason, sorry, the reason why it is to some degree is that if you ever talk about moving countries and you sit down with, say, a lawyer and an accountant, you will find a rather enormous list of things that make it difficult to do so.
So, to some degree.
So, if you say, I made bad decisions because of X, Y, and Z, then you can say, I learned better, and now I make better decisions.
So did I make some bad, I made some good dating decisions in my teens and I made some bad dating decisions, you know, just dating people who weren't right for me.
I wasn't right for them, you know, based on looks and all that kind of stuff.
And what, I won't say what else could I have done, but I was in a state of bad tutoring and high hormones, right?
Bad learning and high hormones.
And it's also something that just struck me while I'm doing this is that not one person over the course of me leaving Christianity, not one person reached out.
and asked how I was doing or tried to woo me back or asked me what my issues were and so on.
I just was let wander out even though.
My father's family, very, very religious.
Yeah, there was no.
And I think for me, just sort of by the by, sort of the final straw with religion was my brother went back to England for a couple of years when I was in my early teens, maybe 12 to...
My brother went back to England and I was left alone with my mother and she went crazy over this time period and nobody contacted me, nobody wrote, nobody, at least.
I knew of.
Nobody called.
And I was really just left to try and wrangle the crazy woman alone.
And I think that was it for me with regards to religion.
My brother was over there, so it wasn't like they didn't know anything about the family.
And there was no contact.
I was really just left to rot with the crazy woman in Canada all alone.
And I think that was it for me.
Now, look, I understand when people say, well, you can't judge Christianity by its adherence.
Well, I would say that...
I mean, even in Christianity, it says that the apple does not fall far from the tree, right?
And it's not like I'm judging one Christian or five Christians or ten Christians.
I'm judging hundreds of Christians, not just on my father's family side, but all the people, as I've mentioned before, who knew about the child abuse, heard about the child abuse, could literally hear the child abuse through the walls, did nothing, not even a phone call.
It's just not enough.
It's just not enough.
And so, to me, it's philosophy or bust.
So, sorry, it was a slight detour, but if you make.
bad decisions, and it wasn't like I was making perfect decisions into my 20s either, right?
I only started really to make good decisions late 20s, I would say.
Consistently good, rather than sort of accidentally good.
And I had a lot to unlearn.
So if you say, look, the reasons why I made bad decisions are X, Y, and Z. And it's an interesting question, which is worth reviewing a little bit here.
What is the difference between an excuse and a reason?
What is the difference between an excuse and a reason?
is justified by youth and ill-training in this circumstance.
And again, it was a school.
It was even the church was pretty useless for me.
And of course, my immediate family was not helpful in this way.
The culture was corrupt as hell.
The 70s were a really grim time for culture, and it was all just ridiculous.
I mean, but I should have made good decisions.
I mean, that's not a reasonable standard, right?
So, a reason is something that is causal that is an So an excuse is when you say, well, if I were to say, I'm unable to make good decisions because I had a bad childhood, right?
Well, that's not rational.
And there's no self-ownership and no responsibility in that at all.
So this big giant domino called a bad childhood started and went down the list of my life and I couldn't make decisions that were good post that, anything like that, right?
So that would be to say, I have no responsibility for my own life because of X. Now that's an excuse.
I never started a business because no one took any interest in my ideas.
Well, nobody takes interest in anybody's ideas.
I have to win your interest in my statements and arguments over time, right?
So that's not a reason.
Or the reason I never got married is my parents had a bad marriage.
Well, that's an excuse.
Because it does not terminate in self-ownership, self-knowledge, and responsibility.
Right?
So if your parents had a bad marriage, then it is rational to say my parents had a bad marriage.
I don't want a bad marriage, so I should really figure out what my parents did that was wrong and bad, and I should not do that.
I mean, if your parents were chainsmokers, and you grew up half coughing your lungs out, then one of the things you don't want to be as an adult is a smoker.
If you say, well, I'm a smoker because my parents were smokers and that's all I knew, and then it never terminates in responsibility, I am absolved of responsibility because of the past.
That's an excuse.
And it's a closed loop.
I never got married because my parents had a bad marriage.
Where does that terminate?
Where does that end?
Well, you never get married.
And you have no choice to get married because your parents had a bad marriage.
So excuses are determinism.
They are explanations without reference to self-knowledge and free will.
And those are excuses.
My mother's story about how she was abusive because the doctors injected her with various diseases and poisons and so on, well, that's an excuse.
Because it doesn't terminate in free will.
It terminates in blaming others.
It terminates in self-pity and helplessness, which is not a state of free will or moral responsibility.
A reason terminates in moral responsibility.
So one of the reasons why I hang on, tooth and nail sometimes it feels in the wild storms of anti-rationality that characterize culture these days as a whole, and more so in the West than it used to be, is that I have seen, you know, close up, you know, like I was in the most dangerous.
situation for a young man to be in in terms of family structure in that I had for years, I was the single son of a single mother who was crazy and immoral and that's a very dangerous situation to be in and seeing what happens to vanity and mysticism and vanity and mysticism are two sides of the same coin and mysticism is the belief that there's a higher realm
that you have access to that allow you to perform feats not trackable in empirical reality And that's vanity, right?
It's the people who say, I have psychic abilities.
Well, it's a way of saying that you are special and have value, and it's just kind of innate.
Right?
If you want to predict something in the economy, you've got to spend years studying the economy.
Right?
If you want to predict something in society, you have to spend years studying politics and history and so on, right?
If you want to predict how someone's life course is going to go, you have to study psychology, self-knowledge, and so on.
And so all of these kinds of predictions about the future result from years and years of intense labor and controversy.
However, if you just say, well, I'm psychic, then you have to the ability or you claim to have the ability to tell the future without all of that annoying actual study.
So you want to be special without having to work at it.
And that's what I mean, like vanity.
Vanity is when you want the reward without the effort, which is why to me, you know, as I'm picking someone, it's like, you want the reward without the effort.
And that's vanity.
I deserve the reward without the effort is So if you say, look, I made these bad decisions and here's why I have figured out the course, I have taken responsibility, and I no longer make these bad decisions and I want to pass this wisdom along to you,
I don't think rational, reasonable people would attack you if you made bad decisions as you said you did in the absence of knowledge.
And you know, please understand.
We are social animals, which means when we're young, everyone around us, who's our age or older in general, everyone around us shares in our bad decisions.
So, I almost married the wrong woman?
Is that my mistake?
Nope.
It was our mistake.
Everyone around you shares in your decisions.
They care about you, especially if they're part of your family.
So, when you got married to the wrong woman, the verbally abusive woman, the question is, was that your decision?
Nope.
It was a collective decision.
Because we are social animals.
If ten guys go hunting and they fail, is there any individual there who is 100% responsible for that failure.
Nope.
They are not.
Because even if there's a bad guy on the hunting team, the hunting team agreed that he could come and gave him a spear or resources or whatever it is, right?
There's no I in team, and your life as a social animal is a team sport.
And everyone is involved in every one of your decisions.
And particularly a public decision such as, I'm going to marry this woman.
Let's call her Beth, right?
So you say, I'm going to marry Beth.
Okay, well, you date Beth, you get engaged to Beth, there's a ceremony or usually a celebration about that, and then you get engaged for a while and then there's planning a marriage and so on.
And if no one said to you, Beth is mean, Beth is verbally abusive, you cannot get married to her, particularly given your history, if nobody said that to you, then everyone, and the older people are all the more responsible, everyone is responsible for your bad decisions.
If I see a blind man walking towards a cliff edge, thinking that he's going to catch a bus, and I do and say nothing, have I killed him?
Well, I am at least in part responsible for his death, because I could have said, Hey, stop.
You're heading towards a cliff edge, bro.
Stop and turn around.
Now, if I say that and he runs on, that's a different matter.
Maybe I can tackle him, I don't know.
Maybe he's going through some sort of mental health crisis, as they say, right?
So if I see a blind guy walking towards a cliff edge, and I just smile and say nothing, or I encourage him to go forward, yeah, buses on monsieur, right?
Is that bad?
I mean, I think a woman, I think a young woman was charged, I don't know what happened with the case, I think she was convicted of convincing a young man to kill himself over text.
So when you get married to the wrong woman, that is a wee decision.
That is a wee decision.
Because everyone is involved.
Now, if you were walking towards a cliff edge and people encourage you, oh, she's great, oh, you're going to be so happy, oh, she's wonderful, oh, I love her so much, right?
Then they are encouraging you to wander into traffic to walk off a cliff as a blind man, right?
Blinded by love, blinded by hormones, blinded by loneliness, blinded by sex, blinded by whatever, right?
So one of the reasons why we don't have robust and automatic self-knowledge is because we rely on those around us to give us feedback.
So if you married the wrong woman, that is a decision shared by everyone who failed to oppose the marriage.
Now maybe you had a friend who's like, bro, she's the wrong woman.
Let me give you the examples.
Here's why.
You know, you can't do it, blah, blah, blah.
Let's say you ignored that friend and ditched him and didn't invite him to your wedding.
Then he's not part of that, right?
But, and it doesn't take much, you know, to break the spell of dysfunction, of repetition, of history, right?
I mean, there was one friend of mine's girlfriend.
I'm engaged to the wrong woman.
And a friend of mine's girlfriend says, you'd think that a guy who was engaged would be happier.
And I'm like, and that unraveled the whole thing.
That was the only comment I needed.
Everybody else was urging me forward, or at least saying nothing.
So, until you realize that, and this is sort of what I'm telling you, until you realize that, you will tend to blame yourself for your bad decisions.
But we have blind spots.
You know, we're predators, which means we have eyes in the front of our head, not eyes on the side of our heads, right?
And we have eyes on the front of our heads, because we hunt in groups, or we fight in therefore we have somebody to watch our back right watch my six six o'clock being the back right noon the front six the back Back to back they faced each other, drew their swords and shot each other.
So we get laser focused on things.
Eyes in the front of her head.
We don't see to the side really.
We don't certainly..
don't see to the back.
We get laser focus on things because other people are supposed to watch our back.
So if you're in a fight and someone says, I've got your back, and then they wander off and you get whacked from the back, did you lose the fight?
Well, you lost the fight, but why did you lose the fight?
Because your friend betrayed you.
He made a promise, and he did not fulfill that or tell you he wasn't going to.
So don't blame yourself alone for the decisions you make.
in common with others.
And of course we all inherit our family.
And if your family is really dysfunctional and claim to love you, but urge you to walk off a cliff, then you are, when you realize that, you are responsible for the people you have in your life.
When you gain self-knowledge, you're not responsible for the people you have in your life as a kid.
I mean, outside of a periphery of friendships.
But you're certainly not responsible for your family, you're certainly not responsible for your teachers, you're certainly not responsible for your priests, and you're certainly not responsible for the kids you are forced to spend time with in school.
So, say the kids?
Something like this.
I made bad decisions.
I had a bad family.
I was encouraged to make those bad decisions.
I don't blame myself 100% because that's just a circumstance I was born into and the people who claimed to love me that I believed.
But I found out that they didn't love me and they were in fact encouraging me as a man blinded by love or lust to walk off a cliff.
So I made bad decisions with the full encouragement of everyone in my life who claimed to care about me.
And it was pretty rough to realize they didn't care about me.
And once I got better people in my life, like your mom, then I'm able to make better decisions.
But please, you know, the lessons that I've learned is that if you have, this is something you know by the by a business partner said to me probably who I mean 27 28 years ago he said if you have difficult people in your life your life is difficult if you have easy people in your life your life is easy and boy isn't that true and so you I was not fully responsible for making the choice to marry my
first wife Right, nature programs you with all this lust.
And, you know, she was pretty and fun.
And everyone was encouraging me to do it.
And nobody said a word.
about any potential danger or any potential risk.
And so I did it and it was the wrong decision, but it wasn't just my wrong decision.
Right?
Like, I mean, we make you kids go to the dentist, right?
You don't want to go to the dentist.
Nobody wants to go to the dentist, but we make you go.
It's not really your decision.
Wasn't I an adult?
Sure.
I was an adult.
But it's not like when you become 18 or 20 or 22, that you just immediately lose all of your, like you just Oh my gosh, I've got no memory of English.
The memory of English retains for the rest of your life.
And it's the same thing with your childhood.
I mean, you could learn more English.
You can change the way that you talk, but you can't unlearn English any more than you can undo a childhood.
So I made, I made, and my family made bad decisions.
I mean, if you have a guy who's been an investor, a professional investor for 30 years, and he says to you you should invest in this and you decide to, whose decision is it?
Well, let's say he's an uncle.
He's an uncle.
He's been a professional investment advisor for 30 years and he says you should invest in this and you don't know much about investing.
And then you decide to invest and let's say the whole thing goes south, you lose all your money and it turns out that it was what's called a pump and dump scheme that he was just invested in that wanted to talk up the stock price to people, cash out and make a fortune at your expense.
Now I say, well, was it your decision to invest in the company?
I mean, kind of.
Kind of.
I mean, a trusted family member with decades of experience was suggesting something.
I mean, of course, he didn't put a gun to your head.
It is ultimately your decision.
But it's heavily influenced.
And everyone around us in our life has massive influence on..
Everyone in our life has massive influence on us, which is why it's so important to choose the right people in your life, because it is almost impossible to make good decisions with people encouraging bad decisions in your life.
You know, it's very tough to do a math exam if you have 10 people around you yelling random numbers into your ears.
Well, are they forcing you to do badly?
No, but they're having a massive influence and effect.
So, our wisdom is the average of the wisdom of the people around us.
In the same way there is no warrior who can watch his own back.
We cannot all make the best moral decisions on our own.
So I think if you I'm not saying you'd say it exactly like that, of course, right?
But if you take if you take your experience, think about it as deeply and as originally as possible with no template.
One says, Well, it's my decision, it's my decision.
It's like what was it?
My decision to propose to the wrong woman?
Kind of.
But I had people around me, some of whom had what seemed like very successful relationships telling me it was a good thing and helping me by picking out.
out the ring and can't wait.
So exciting.
So, and Nope.
It was all choices.
But then when you wipe the whiteboard clean, so to speak, and you start from scratch, man, it's a whole different life.
All right.
I think you're right in most cases, but why isn't your opinion mainstream in society?
Why isn't my opinion mainstream in society?
Well, that is an interesting question and kind of annoying.
Right, I'm not saying that you're annoying.
I'm not even saying the question is annoying, but I find it annoying.
Doesn't mean I'm right.
I'm just saying that I am annoyed.
So, let's say, universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics.
The book's been out now for, well, the proofs in the book have been out now for, you know, close to 20 years.
Now, I have even debated with some, you know, academics.
I've had lots of libertarian thinkers on my show.
And which one of them?
have done a review of my book on secular ethics.
I'm not going to name names, but everyone knows who they are.
So I've had lots of sort of prominent intellectuals and libertarian theorists and professors and so on on my show.
And which one of them have done a review of my book?
There's only one, and it was honestly a very bad review.
And I hate to sort of say that because it sounds defensive, but I've done, I think I did two shows rebutting it.
It was just really bad.
So why isn't my opinion mainstream in society?
because people don't want the answers right there's an old joke about a computer that was from Douglas Adams a comedy writer there was a computer that was programmed to find the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
The answer was 42.
They built an even bigger computer to figure out what the question was, and then it was destroyed by the Vogons just before it came out with the answer, and so on.
But when the computer was built to answer the question, there were a bunch of philosophers who protested and said, well, you'll put us out of a job.
We won't have a job if you provide, through a computer, the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
So, moral advancements, absent an existing paradigm that can support them, are too revolutionary for most people.
Now, Let's go even further.
So, of course, one of the reasons why, one of the reasons why my, let's just say UPB has not gone mainstream is because people won't review it.
And why won't they review it?
I have some theories.
It doesn't really matter.
You'd have to ask them.
Why won't they review UPB?
I mean, especially the libertarians, right?
Why won't they give it a thorough review or debate and so on, right?
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
I suppose it's because reputational attacks upon me which started very early in my career have left their mark and people don't want to engage with my work.
They find it easier to not engage with my work than to engage with my work.
Okay, well that's fine.
I mean that's everyone's choice and that's fine, but that would be sort of one reason.
Now another reason though would be because of you.
Everybody is responsible for the spread of ideas.
So what can I do?
Well, I can pour tens of thousands of hours into philosophy.
I can.
can pour thousands of hours into writing books.
I can try to be as engaging and funny and warm and accessible as a philosopher can possibly be.
I was awestruck by the fact that Socrates never used the word epistemology.
So I can teach the world.
I cannot force people to share my ideas.
Right?
So, why isn't your opinion mainstream in society?
First of all, referring it to an opinion, maybe that's why this is annoying.
It's not an opinion.
These are rational arguments.
So why aren't they more mainstream?
Because I've been smeared, right?
Because I've been lied about.
And then if somebody were to say, oh, here's this argument, UPB.
Oh, let's look up the author.
Oh, my gosh.
What a terrible guy.
Right?
So that's a reason.
People slander because it works.
Right?
because it works.
So, the reason why...
If you're writing this, the reason why my opinion is not more mainstream in society is because of you.
Because you won't live by philosophy and you won't promote my arguments or rational arguments in general because you will suffer a blowback for that, right?
And the reputational damage that was leveled against me is designed to provide splash reputational damage to anyone who digs into what it is that I say, right?
So, I mean, people will help me on their shows and we'll talk about this, that, and the other.
the other but as far as a really rigorous analysis of my work, it doesn't happen, right?
And I consider that a great compliment because if it was easy to rebut, it would be rebutted.
So, yeah, so I think.
you're right in most cases, but why isn't your opinion mainstream in society is to blame me for the actions of others.
I am not responsible for making my arguments mainstream in society.
Only significant portions, and it doesn't take much, only a couple of percent of people are necessary to change the world.
And you choose not to be in that couple of percent.
Right?
I can...
I can do all of these things, I can engage with people in open conversation, I can have call-in shows, I can respond to people's questions like this, right?
And I can publish all of that, and I can create the website, and I can run the social media accounts that I'm still allowed to have, and I can do all of that, and that's all I can do.
The rest is up to you, right?
The rest is up to you.
So there was a fellow whose name I forget.
He was called Darwin's Bulldog.
Darwin was not a very confrontational fellow.
And so he wrote a lot, but there was a guy named Darwin's Bulldog who took up his course and went around the world and made the case very aggressively.
And I don't have anyone like that.
Again, it's fine.
It's fine.
My loyalty is to the truth and to reason.
And what that means is that because my loyalty is to truth and reason, people with divided loyalties find me unsettling.
Because most people are trying to balance these things, right?
Well, they want to be rational, but not too rational, because then people get mad at me, right?
So, I would argue...
just look in the damn mirror.
It's you.
It's you.
I'm not solely responsible for making myself mainstream.
That is a collective effort.
Right, so you're like someone on a soccer team demanding to know of someone else on the soccer team, why aren't we winning?
It's like, you're part of a team, and you're part of a team.
So everyone who listens to this, everybody who's heard from my arguments, you're part of a team to get reason and evidence out into the world.
People I've interviewed.
because UPB is influential in people's lives for sure.
I know that because I get the emails.
And if you have not promoted these ideas, these arguments, the voluntary family, love as involuntary responsive virtue, my definition of free will, my arguments against determinism, or the simulation theory, the voluntary society arguments, the state doesn't exist arguments, I call to that.
So if you haven't promoted these arguments, you know, around the dinner table among people that you know, if you haven't promoted these arguments, then you're the reason why I'm not mainstream.
I always find it kind of funny.
It's deaf.
It's your job.
It's like, nope.
No, it's not.
It's my job to create the ideas.
My job to publish the ideas.
My job to argue as forcefully and productively as possible for these ideas.
And I've never, ever refused a UPB debate.
And if somebody calls me up and says, I want to do a call-in show about UPB, I'd be thrilled.
In fact, I've done those, right?
Fantastic.
So I create the arguments for free.
I disseminate them for free.
free ad free in as engaging and as witty and as warm and as passionate a manner as I am capable of.
After that, well, that's up to you.
The rest is up to you.
And so sitting back, it's kind of aristocratic and annoying, and sitting back and saying, Well, Steph, I mean, you've taken all these bullets for the course of reason and evidence, and I have.
But it's still kind of your fault that you're not mainstream.
It's your job.
It's your job to make me mainstream.
And if you don't want to do that, I mean, that's fine.
I'm not going to tell you what you have to do.
But then don't ask me.
Don't ask me.
You know, it's like my neighbor coming to my house and saying, Why isn't my garbage on the street?
It's like, Well, you haven't put it there.
Like if he comes to me and says, Well, why isn't my garbage on the street?
Like, why isn't my garbage bin on the street for the pickup, right?
Why isn't it there?
Well, what do you mean?
It's not my job.
It's your job to put the garbage out.
Why are you getting mad at me or implying that it's my job to put your garbage out on the sidewalk for the garbage truck to pickup?
Why isn't my garbage?
Why aren't my garbage bins out on the sidewalks?
Because you didn't put them there.
What are you talking to me for?
Right?
So it's just kind of weird.
It's weird and bizarre that somebody would say, Well, I've never promoted your work, but I don't know why your work isn't more mainstream.
It's like, because of you.
And I'm not saying you have to get up and start promoting it.
I think you'd be happier in the long run if you did.
And Lord knows we'll be unhappy if philosophy doesn't win, all of us.
But don't ask me why.
Because it's you.
All right, how could life have meaning?
By what would it be measured?
I did a show about this recently.
Just go to fdrpodcast.com, search for meaning.
People are more readily persuaded by rhetoric than reason, but it feels manipulative.
Is it ethical to use emotion as a means of persuasion?
Sure.
Absolutely.
So, I mean, I don't know if you've ever analyzed your dreams, but dreams can be incredibly helpful and they can be incredibly wise.
They're not rational, they are allegorical, they are metaphorical, right?
So I won't sort of get into details.
I've done a couple of dream analyses.
I've done a number of dream analyses on the show.
Again, fdrpodcast.com, just search for dream.
But we are persuaded by emotions as well as reason because we have...
It even has neurons and all that kind of stuff, the gut instinct and so on, right?
So yes, it's totally fine to persuade people by rhetoric.
As long as it is to a good cause and it does not replace reason.
All right, will AI ever have consciousness?
No, how do you determine if something is art?
I think I go with Ayn Rand here.
It is a selective recreation of reality, according to the essential principles of the artist.
Is it okay to violate the non aggression principle to prevent people from smoking weed and becoming insufferable smelly losers who blames the poorest in society for everything?
Well, you own yourself, you own the effects of your actions, right, which is another proof of property rights that nobody in libertarian circles to my knowledge has ever really debated.
And so you can't initiate the use of force to stop people from harming their own property, right?
If someone is really frustrated at his gaming, like he loses in a game, and he's about to throw his gaming controller against the wall and smash it into bits, you can't shoot him because it's his property.
I mean, you could use force to prevent him, don't shoot him, but you could use force to prevent him from breaking the controller if it's your property.
But if it's his property, you can say, I don't think you should, but you can't use force to prevent him.
Unless his kid is walking in the path that he's about to throw, right?
In which case.
he can damage his own property his kid is not his property his kid is his he's a custodian of his kid he doesn't own his kid or if his wife is about to walk into the path of where he's going to throw the controller then you can use force to stop him because the controller is his property his wife is not his property he can destroy the controller he cannot physically harm his wife so if someone is supposed to pay a What do they call it?
In the States, they call it a car note.
I don't know why it is a car payment.
If someone's supposed to make a car payment and they don't do it because they spent all their money on weed and so on, then the car probably.
will get repossessed and people can use force to repossess the car because the guy doesn't own the car anymore, didn't make the payments.
So we should not shield people from the consequences of their actions.
And if somebody is a weed smoker and a parent, right?
So he's got custody and control over his children.
He's a parent.
Let's say his kids are little and he's smoking weed.
Then he should not have access to his children.
Well, he's still a drug addict because you cannot parent while you're drunk.
You cannot parent while you're high on drugs.
You will make bad decisions and you will be unable to respond in an effective, rational, and timely manner if your children get injured or something like that.
So, you can't drive drunk and you can't parent drunk.
You can't drive stoned and you can't parent stoned.
And nobody should...
So, we should not shield people from negative consequences and we should protect people from the effects of drug addiction and so on, but you can't directly just use force against people making bad choices about their own property.
which is themselves.
All right, does the distinction between different senses of the words objective and subjective, like between objectively real and objectively true, define many philosophical problems out of existence as simple category errors.
For instance, making objective claims about subjective things.
Sure.
Yeah, yeah, it does.
Now, of course, what people do is they try to recast their subjective experience as a super reality.
So they attempt to vault over the requirement for objective proof for their experiences, and they say, there's a higher reality.
that is more real than reality that validates my subjective experiences as objectively true.
So, for example, people will say in my dreams or in my drugged state I am visiting other dimensions.
So if someone takes a drug and they are visited by an enderman, right, some tall, skinny, black creature that steals, well, you would either say, wow, that was a really vivid subjective experience, or you would say, a portal opened up to another dimension that this entity came through, right, this six-dimensional uber demon.
So what they do is they say, my subjective experience is real, but just in another dimension.
So they create a dimension where subjectivity equals objectivity without any of the prosaic empirical requirements for reason and evidence.
So people will say, I had a dream that I was flying over the city last night, and they will say, no, no, no, that's not a dream.
My soul detached from my body and somehow retained the ability to see and then flew over the city, right?
Or people will have a dream that coincidentally seems to, quote, come true the next day, they say well that's not just a coincidence but or an unconscious association but that is in fact i visited another dimension and saw the future and was given this vision by some supernatural nature or being or something like that, right?
Or they will say, with regards to religion, I have the subjective experience that the universe is alive, because it's really hard for us to fathom just how dead the universe is, because we're like a tiny, tiny, tiny little glow spark of consciousness in a mostly empty universe where hydrogen is as common in the universe as beetles are.
in life on earth.
So, then they say, well, my consciousness is larger than my life, which it is, right?
Your consciousness is larger than your life because we inherit this incredible language ability and this incredible conceptual ability.
So, your consciousness is larger than your life and you partake of immortality and eternity through something as simple as two and two make four is true for all time and across all space.
So, you participate in eternity and so well.
when we say my mind is bigger than the universe because my mind contains truths and facts that are equal to the entire universe, laws of physics are the same everywhere, across the universe, 14 billion years.
So we say, that's my subjective experience, and so I'm going to make that objective in the idea of gods and devils and so on, right?
I have instincts to do the right thing, I also have instincts to do the wrong thing, and we have to have access to both in order to survive the brutal evolutionary Darwinian hellscape that we emerge from, and so I'm going to say, well, there are actual angels and devils on my shoulder, that kind of stuff, right?
So you've got to watch that.
This is the Plato versus Aristotle distinction, right?
Plato says that our ideas exist in a non-sensual realm, supersensual realm.
This is true, of course, for Kant and Hippies and Buddhist spare, but I repeat myself.
So people don't say I have subjective experiences.
They say my appearances might seem subjective, but that's only because you don't understand this higher realm where they're actually more objective than the nose in front of your face.
All right, what natural human traits have been consistently, have been collectively lost that could explain why people when receiving new information are unable to change their minds.
Well, because we're programmed for survival, not truth, and truth generally comes at the expense of survival.
It's only relatively recently that you could tell the truth and not be killed.
Or ostracized, or at least no.
no woman would mate with you and therefore like the escape from the tribe which is characterized by modern free market capitalism gives us escape from the tribe because you can just leave your tribe go to a new city start a start a new go to a new frontier cross the Atlantic engage in the Wild West and all that kind of stuff so you can escape the tribe and now you can even write things down and have them kept forever and transmitted forever and so on right I mean,
I'm aware that every syllable I'm carving into this recorder echoes through eternity for as long as there is reason and curiosity.
So, it's relatively new that you could tell the truth and survive.
And most people had to hide the truth.
Being rational in the 21st century is like being gay in the 19th century, right?
Well, for most of human history, you just had to pretend to believe the lies of the tribe in order not to get killed or ostracized by the men of the tribe or sexually ostracized by the women of the tribe, which meant those genes ended.
So, there's this tension, right?
So, I...
Unreality brings cohesiveness in a tribe, but too much unreality and you no longer have the ability to survive.
All right, would you consider a serious engagement with Marx?
Nope, because Marx is an evil son of a bitch who generated ideas that resulted in the deaths of well over 100 million people.
So no.
Is the goal of life to be happy or good?
I don't think you can aim at happiness or virtue.
You can only aim at good decisions, right?
So when it comes to what you eat, right?
You can't directly aim at maintaining a healthy body weight.
You can only aim at each individual choice of what you put in your mouth, right?
So the goal of life is beyond your control.
I mean, I exercise, I eat well, and so on, get my checkups, get my blood work done, and so those I can control.
My overall long-term health is beyond my control.
I mean, 13 years ago or so, I got cancer kind of out of nowhere, and just had to roll with it.
Now, the fact that I had a good base of health really helped me shake off the cancer, but I can't say that my goal is to be healthy.
My individual specific choices are to go and exercise, to not eat cheesecake, to, you know, whatever.
I don't even buy the stuff to to have in the house, because it's pretty hard to resist if it's there.
So I would say the goal of life, or what you want to do is make good decisions in the everyday.
I can't have a goal called save the world.
I can have a goal called tell the truth, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's dangerous at times.
All right, can people who aren't intelligent enough to understand philosophy be expected to behave virtuously in the absence of authorities?
You mean, if people aren't threatened, will they be good?
Well, they'll be good if they're raised peacefully.
So we have to talk about peaceful parenting.
Peacefulparenting.com.
Here's the other thing, too, you know, I haven't had anyone review my book Peaceful Parenting, which is interesting, right?
I mean, people have certainly been interested in it and I get lots of emails about it.
And people do promote it from time to time, but I don't see much of that on social media.
But yeah, people don't review it.
All right.
So yeah, people can behave virtuously.
Because we expect children five to have some basic moral practices, right?
So they can do that.
What is liberty to you?
Is it a lack of government interference or something more?
Well, I mean, freedom is the freedom to reason and to tell the truth, and we don't have that freedom at the moment.
Where is the old Stefan?
This two point zero has been replaced with a cuck.
All right, what is worse being immoral to yourself, porn drinking, overweight, bad hygiene, no self improvement, or to others lying, stealing, cheating, or perhaps these overlap?
It is worse to be immoral to others than to yourself.
It's unwise to destroy your own property, but it's immoral to destroy other people's property.
How do you properly address someone who does not accept external logic as its own truth?
I got the Kantian imperative down but critical theory immediately targets the fallibility of human rationality.
Well, how do you properly address someone who does not accept external logic as its own truth?
You'd say, well, why don't you?
And they'll start giving you reasons.
And they say, oh, well, then you have reasons.
Now, if somebody is blatantly self-contradictory, you know, in the Walt Whitman thing, you say, I contradict myself.
Very well, I contradict myself or the hobgoblin.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
It's like, so if somebody just says, yeah, well, if I contradict myself, I don't care, then you can't reason with them.
Right?
As long as someone's giving reasons, as to why they believe what they do, you can reason with them.
But if they have given up, given reasons, and embrace anti-rationality, then you can't reason with them.
All right, are the concepts of left and right useful for understanding politics or they are like hutu and tutsi meant to control people if they're useful can you present a definitions that work as well as the definitions of even and odd numbers does across time as well as the definitions of even and odd numbers do across time i think you mean yeah i mean i think you can in general make these arguments left is female nature plus the state right is male nature plus the state which
is left is claustrophobic and violent communism and right is hyper tribal and violent nationalism So yeah, left and right have some explanatory use.
What is better is force versus non-force.
Do you want voluntary peaceful solutions to social problems?
Or do you want to let slip the dogs of war and set the hounds of the state on everyone who disagrees with you?
So violence versus non-violence is a better metric.
All right, I hope that helps.
Thank you everyone so much.
Freedom.com slash donate to help out the show.
I should probably sprinkle these in the middle because nobody listens to the tail end, right?
Oh well, for the three of you who are freedom.com slash donate, lots of love from up here.
I'll talk to you soon.
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