Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - My Dad Demanded $100,000! CALL IN SHOW

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Aug. 28, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:27

My Dad Demanded $100,000! CALL IN SHOW

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	I graduated about pretty much exactly a year ago at this point.
	I felt that I was doing the right thing with, you know, reaching, I reached out to a professor I had who worked in the line of work that I thought I would be able to get into.
	I'd been communicating with him for probably about four months through email.
	It really seemed like that was going to go somewhere.
	And then I get kind of ghosted a little after like a month after graduation by the guy.
	He just stopped returning my emails after sending me like a link to actually apply for the job.
	He told me the job was coming.
	He gave me a link.
	I applied for it.
	He sent me a link to a different job.
	I applied for it.
	I spent a lot of time kind of bouncing around looking for jobs in my major, applying, getting denied over and over and over again.
	So eventually I go and work kind of part-time for minimum wage for a while.
	And at the place I was working, a lot of the guys there had been ex-law enforcement.
	And that was kind of something I majored in was criminal justice.
	And they told me that, you know, you're a young guy, you're a fit guy.
	You should look at getting into law enforcement.
	And I went through that process kind of begrudgingly.
	I always thought that wasn't something for me, but I just didn't feel that there was any other option.
	So I start going through it, start going through it.
	And I'm kind of like getting up to the point where I would have been admitted into the police academy before I talked to some friends of mine that were in the police academy and was really honest with myself.
	And I was like, this is not for me.
	So I withdraw my application and I start a career in door-to-door sales.
	And that did not go very well.
	That was not something for me.
	It only lasted about four months, and the company ended up letting me go.
	So now I'm back working.
	I mean, I get full-time hours, but I work for minimum wage.
	And it's very, very difficult to see a path forward from here.
	It seems like every time I try to, I work retail.
	So every time I try to, you know, work for a company or anything like this, where it's kind of like a straightforward career that gives you a decent living wage and, you know, you'd see a path forward with promotions.
	It never works out.
	I never get calls back.
	I don't even get interviews.
	And I genuinely have no idea how to go forward in life right now.
	Like, I just make enough to get by.
	And I don't have anybody close to me that's giving me what I feel is any good advice.
	And I'm just very, very lost and directionless.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	And, you know, I'm sure that there's some stuff we can do.
	There's some stuff that is, you know, I'm the sort of DEI stuff.
	There's some stuff that's a little harder to alter for you and I, but I'm sure there's some stuff we can do.
	And what was your, you got an undergraduate degree?
	What was that in?
	Yeah, so my degree is in sociology and anthropology.
	Those are kind of bubbled together.
	But the way that that kind of works is you kind of pick a path under that bubble.
	So my path was criminal justice.
	But that's not on my actual diploma, if that makes sense.
	It says sociology slash anthropology.
	Okay.
	And what was your goal with that?
	So I ended up picking criminal justice because I took like an intro to criminology class and we start learning about these like kind of crime statistics that you would see with like the FBI.
	So like if you go to the FBI's website, you can find like the exact number of like murders, whatever kind of crime you're looking for.
	And that data that gets reported to the FBI is done by local departments.
	So that's essentially what I wanted to do.
	And that's called intelligence analyst.
	And that job does pay fairly well.
	So that was my end goal.
	Oh, and that's the one that the professor you were working with to try and get the job, right?
	Yeah, he was the head of the analytics department at the local police department.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And you had a good relationship with him.
	And of course, you don't know what happened with the ghosting, right?
	No idea what happened.
	Yeah, I had a good relationship with him.
	And did you try contacting him in person or did you try, you know, if he's got office hours going in and saying, you know, what's going on?
	Or how did that sort of go?
	So he didn't have office hours because he was a part-time professor and full-time.
	I forget what his actual rank within the police department was, but he was full-time there.
	So he was only ever at the school on Friday is when he taught his class.
	And I took his class like fall of my senior year.
	And then in the spring of senior year, like the first, the first week of the spring semester, I reached out and contacted him through email.
	And we ended up doing a, I ended up like giving him my number at one point.
	And so he called my personal phone at one point as well.
	Right.
	So, but sorry, go ahead.
	Never in person.
	No, not after the class.
	I mean, but you knew when he was teaching, right?
	I did.
	And that was definitely a mistake that I made.
	Well, I mean, I'm not trying to nag you or anything like that, but I'm trying to sort of map, you know, when life gets tough, how assertive are you, or to put it another way, how assertive were you taught to be with regards to that kind of stuff, especially as things get tougher, particularly for males.
	The differentiator is going to have something to do with how direct and assertive we can be.
	And if you're raised that way, it's easy.
	If you're not raised that way, as I suspect you weren't, and I certainly wasn't, it's a hard habit to get into.
	Okay, so you just, did you, did you just traded emails and then he just kind of vaporized, right?
	Yeah, so we traded emails and like the first email, he's like, I'm actually the head of this department now, which he wasn't when I took his class.
	I would love to have you on the team.
	This is what we do.
	At some point, I'd even want to get you in and look at and kind of like walk around our department and meet some of the people.
	And it seemed very promising.
	He said, I will reach back out when the job gets posted.
	And then the emails would kind of come from me at that point.
	I'd be like, all right, it's been like two weeks.
	Where's the job?
	It's been a month.
	Where's the job?
	Job is coming.
	And it comes around like April.
	So like a month after graduation.
	He's like, job is finally here.
	Emails it to me.
	And I didn't have to bug him for that one.
	I hadn't had contact with him in a couple of weeks from email.
	I just was kind of trusting that the application would come.
	Once the application came and he said, like, email me back after you apply, I kind of just thought that I was set.
	Yeah, and that's tough, of course, because if you think you're set, then you're not pursuing other avenues, right?
	Right.
	I did throw some other applications out there, but I like not see, like, we're talking like I might have thrown three to five more applications out to like people I had no affiliation with.
	Whereas if I didn't think that this avenue was set, I probably would have grown 10 to 20 at least.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So how long has it been since you graduated?
	I think about a year exactly at this point.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	And how many people were in your class at this particular law for law focus, the law data?
	Oh, sorry, the crime data focus.
	Oh, well, that wasn't the degree itself.
	It was criminal justice.
	And I would say that's pretty tough to say.
	But I mean, we're talking, I would say 50 to 100.
	Okay.
	And were you part of a frat at all at the university?
	No, I wasn't in any organizations.
	Okay.
	And did you socialize much with fellow students?
	Did you, over the, was it a four-year degree?
	Is that right?
	It was a four-year degree.
	And yeah, there was some socialization.
	Okay, so how many people would you say you know well enough if you contacted them and said, I'm really looking for work, that they would pound the pavement a little bit in their mind for you?
	I think I know a guy that might be able to help me out, but that would probably be only part-time work.
	So you graduated from university with only one guy you're comfortable asking for help getting a job?
	I'm a bit, yes.
	And I kind of want to say that kind of like the reason for that is most of the people that I befriended were either younger than me or had changed majors to the point where they had to do extra years.
	So I'm only like fairly close with maybe one other guy who's graduated.
	Okay, I mean, and so, you know, if I were your dad and you were in university, I would be saying, so university is fun.
	And, you know, it's great for sports and meeting people and going to parties, but you have to network.
	You have to network.
	And this is why I asked about the frat thing is that, you know, I mean, I was asked to join a frat in university.
	I didn't.
	But I, you know, as I get older, I can certainly see like, you know, you move to Atlanta or whatever, right?
	And there's a chapter, then you automatically get people that you can socialize with.
	you're going to have to do it.
	Thank you.
	Otherwise, you kind of got to burrow you in from the outside, which is really tough to do.
	So, okay.
	So you socialized with the intention of, it sounds like more having fun.
	And listen, none of this is a criticism or an egg or anything like that.
	I'm just trying to sort of map the process here.
	So you socialized not with really of the view of focusing on career goals, but you socialized more for fun and enjoyment, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I don't, yeah, I don't want to point the finger or anything at the end of the day.
	No, no, be honest.
	Point the finger.
	This is your fault, man.
	Whatever you want to talk about.
	You should be as honest and direct as you want it as you can be.
	I have to take that one on the chin, but I was you've probably heard this before, but I was one of the people who was kind of told, like, just go to college and get a degree, and the rest will take care of itself.
	And who told you that?
	Parents, grandparents, everybody that, you know, the family members pretty much is kind of what, you know, go get a degree.
	It doesn't matter what it's in.
	That will open doors for you.
	Ah, so it's like you're taking dating advice from boomers who've never been on Tinder, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	I mean, that's a real dice roll, right?
	It's going to open doors for you.
	Everything will work out.
	I mean, your parents and grandparents grew up in an entirely different economy with entirely different legal requirements and parameters and restrictions and so on.
	So it seems, it seems a bit odd to me that your parents would assume that the world you were going to graduate into was just copy-pasted from their world when they've seen how much has changed in society, right?
	Yeah, that was always something that bugged me.
	But I mean, I will say that my parents were also, at least one of my parents was like a first-generation college student.
	And so that was like the advice that he was told is like, you got to go get to college and get the degree and then it'll take care of itself.
	And so it kind of almost makes sense that that's what gets passed down to me when that was like from a first-generation college student who can attribute their degree to being successful in the world.
	Yeah, but I mean, that's like 30 years ago, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, do they not think that things have changed a little?
	I mean, are they still using a rotary dial telephone?
	Things have changed a little in the last 30 years, so they've changed a lot, especially the job market, right?
	Okay.
	All right.
	So tell me a little bit about your upbringing.
	And I know that this sounds like a bit of a non-sequitur.
	I promise you it's not.
	So tell me a little bit about how you were raised and your relationship with your parents and so on.
	Oh, it's actually probably a lot better than most of the call-ins that I've heard that you've had.
	So nothing too juicy, unfortunately.
	I'm fortunate enough that my folks are still together.
	I don't have any history of divorce in my family, actually.
	So grandparents together forever, both sets of grandparents together forever, like no divorces, aunts and uncles, no divorce between my parents.
	And then I was raised upper middle class.
	My mom was able to be a stay-at-home mom for myself, my brother, my sister, so three kids.
	And my dad had a good enough job to be able to provide for the family of five in a nice house.
	We live in a nice neighborhood and a pretty good part of the country.
	My brother and sister and I all were able to go to university and not have to pay our own way through it.
	My parents were able to budget for that.
	And my brother and I also went to private school.
	So as far as that kind of goes, not a lot more that you can ask for.
	No, that's great to hear.
	I mean, it's very fortunate that that was your upbringing.
	what industry does your father work in um he he's kind of he's bounced around um The economy hasn't been quite too kind to him either.
	So he's unfortunately also between jobs at the moment.
	But he made his money doing data analytics for private businesses.
	Okay, so similar with what you would be doing, but you would be more, I assume, in the public sector?
	It would be in the public sector if that's what I got into, yeah.
	Okay, got it.
	And you said the economy's not being kind to him.
	He's between jobs at the moment.
	But again, he was able to put kids through college and private school and a family of five, as you say.
	So I assume he did fairly well for the most part.
	Definitely, definitely.
	And how's your brother's job hunt, or if he's still in college?
	I don't know if he's older or younger, but how's that going for him?
	Is it anything similar to what you're going through, or is he in a different phase of life?
	My brother and sister are both still, they're the same age.
	They're both still in school.
	The one who's kind of done the best out of the three of us is my sister.
	She has a paid internship.
	And so that's the best that any of us have.
	Well, and the facts that, I mean, there was a study recently where they sent out a bunch of resumes to, I think it was scientific labs, and the women were overwhelmingly chosen.
	Whether it's formal sort of diversity thing or just to, you know, make up for the patriarchy general mind stuff, it does seem to have an effect.
	And I'm not saying that she didn't work hard or anything like that, but I think there are more factors than just merit.
	I mean, we know that there's more factors than just meritocracy at the moment, but sorry, you were going to say?
	There is.
	She definitely has worked very, very hard, though.
	You definitely could attribute some of that to it.
	I know that she did also get denied from an overwhelming number of what she applied for, but she has a really, really great opportunity coming to her.
	So nothing that she could hang her head on.
	Okay.
	Good.
	Good.
	All right.
	And tell me a little bit about your work history from sort of first job on.
	Like, I mean, I started working in high school.
	Is that all relevant?
	Yeah, yeah, go for it.
	Okay, absolutely.
	Yeah.
	So I worked part-time, usually in retail, all through high school.
	I would normally, well, my first job was just a summer job.
	I didn't want to work during the school year.
	Second job I worked during the school year as much as I could.
	Their job was at a fast food restaurant.
	I worked there up until the pandemic started and my mom kind of freaked out about the pandemic and didn't really want me working.
	So I took extended time off before coming back and moving on at that point.
	I was at university, but I was doing it remote.
	So I delivered pizzas kind of like my first year of university.
	And then from there on out, it was summer jobs in retail, summer jobs in retail.
	And then after I graduated, it was a part-time job working full-time hours for minimum wage on a golf course.
	Then, as I mentioned, it was the door-to-door sales job.
	And now, once again, full-time hours for minimum wage in retail.
	That's where I'm at.
	So pretty much almost entirely retail.
	Got it.
	And how has your father been in terms of coaching for your career and getting you prepared and so on?
	He's been, I mean, he's been trying.
	He now he's kind of pivoted toward like the most important thing for me to do is like try to network, but that's far easier for him to say than for myself to do.
	I don't have a lot of networking strings to pull.
	So he tries to help me out.
	He tries to introduce me to some friends in different industries and reach out to friends and industries about me.
	You know, I have an underemployed son.
	He's a smart guy with skills in X, Y, and Z. Anything you might be able to help him out with.
	And his coaching at this point has basically been like just putting an overwhelming amount of resumes and applications out there and, you know, talk to some of his friends and see what opens up.
	I guess you can just boil that down to just throw the throw the kitchen sink at it.
	Just volume over everything one door will open.
	And so you're throwing a bunch of resumes out in the data analytics field that you trained in.
	Is that right?
	Or is it a wider net?
	I try to cast a wider net than that.
	It's very, very difficult to find those kind of jobs.
	Because of what that field requires me to learn, I took a course in geographic information systems.
	I know you have experience with computers.
	I'm sure you know what that is.
	So a lot of times I just look for jobs under that and throw resumes out for that.
	I'll throw resumes out for, I mean, pretty much anything that I can find.
	I'm constantly on Indeed looking for anything that I might be remotely qualified for and just giving it a shot.
	And how many resumes would you say?
	How many jobs have you applied to over the last year?
	Oh, I think we're probably talking minimum 75.
	But, you know, I don't apply to a job every single day, but when I do take some time to apply for jobs, I'm applying for three to four.
	So 75 is probably an understatement.
	I think we're pushing 100 plus.
	So that's two jobs a week.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I don't, yeah, probably two jobs a week.
	Does that seem low or average or high to you?
	Well, that's probably not probably not enough.
	I don't know.
	You'd think that if you cast a wide net of 100 jobs, you'd get something a little bit better than door-to-door sales having been the best career-based job to even get an interview for, right?
	Okay, so of the hundred jobs that you've 75 to 100 jobs that you've applied for, how many what's your sort of ratio of emails returned or job interviews or things like that?
	So counting the jobs that I've actually been hired at, like the minimum wage hourly ones.
	No, no, I don't want to count those because those in terms of like something that you would not be calling me about, right?
	Because you're calling me because you're underemployed, right?
	So I assume.
	So of the 75 to 100 jobs, how many of those would you not consider underemployed in terms of the applications?
	Okay, yeah, I would still say probably 75 to 100.
	Okay.
	So of those 75 to 100, what's your, I mean, I don't know how it is these days, but usually you get an email back.
	Maybe there's a phone interview.
	There's maybe an in-person interview.
	So how many of those have resulted in emails, back, phone calls, or interviews?
	I've been emailed by two jobs saying you've made it through our first round.
	You might hear back from us and have not heard back from those.
	I was able to get an interview and get hired for the door-to-door job.
	And then I got no, but that's underemployment too, right?
	It's not related to your education, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's not related to my education.
	Okay, so let's not count that one.
	So you've had two jobs where they say you pass the first round, you might hear from us, and you never have, right?
	Yeah, so I mean, if we're talking like purely what's related to my education, that's the best that I've gotten.
	Okay, now I'm still trying to understand of the jobs that you've applied to, some of them have been, I just need a job, right?
	Like the retail or the door-to-door stuff.
	So what percentage of the jobs that you've applied to have been unrelated to your education and you would not consider them to be career-based?
	Probably, there's probably 20 to 30 that have just been, I see that it's like kind of a full-time job for more than minimum wage.
	but unrelated to my degree.
	So that drops it down to about a job a week that you're applying to within your educational fields, right?
	Yes.
	And help me understand, I mean, that seems low to me.
	I've been a hiring manager, so whatever, right?
	But help me understand how it's one a week.
	Because that's kind of like I try to match with one woman a week on a dating app and I'm not married yet.
	Right.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	So, and again, it's not some big net or criticism.
	I'm just trying to understand your process that you apply for one job a week.
	Well, at this point, it's kind of parametalysis by analysis.
	Since I lost the, I'll say this: when I was at the door-to-door job, I saw that that had the potential of leading to a career.
	So, applying for other jobs was not probably critical.
	Oh, and that was me a month, right?
	And you lost a month or two waiting for the job from the guy who said you're a shoe-in, right?
	Right.
	I was still, so I do want to say, like, when once his responses got pretty slow, I was like, I can't bank on this anymore.
	So, um, I was already throwing out like several applications at that time.
	And then, uh, like, yeah, during the door-to-door, there's a good, you know, if you kill it at door-to-door, you can make good money doing door-to-door, and then you can get promoted into doing, you know, stuff like in-home sales or transferring to another sales field in general that pays well.
	So, when you're looking at that, it's like this is still a very good opportunity.
	So, I wasn't taking much time to apply for jobs.
	It wasn't until I started to see that that job wasn't for me.
	And probably, you know, after about two and a half to three months of doing it, that I actively started looking for more jobs.
	And then I kick you back up to like two a week.
	Okay, and I'm not trying to nickel and dime your data to death.
	I just sort of want to get a general sense.
	And did you really dislike that?
	I mean, door-to-door salesman is notoriously a tough gig.
	And did you really dislike it?
	Did you dislike the product or the whole process?
	Or what was it that you didn't like about it?
	The product was totally fine.
	We're talking home improvement.
	So I don't have anything against that industry.
	It was kind of the process.
	Like when I first started, it didn't seem like it was going too bad.
	And I remember I was actually doing pretty well when I was first allowed to, you know, kind of go at it on my own, or I would just have like a manager watching over my shoulder.
	And there was like one day where we go to a bad, kind of lower class neighborhood.
	And I'm on my own.
	And I had, you know, several doors I knocked in that neighborhood where the people came to the door and were very, very nasty with me.
	And to an extent, I understand it.
	But that really, really like, that's a job that's all about confidence and charisma.
	And kind of after that, I was like, you know, it was a big shot to my confidence.
	You're cold knocking somebody's door.
	And then it started to kind of get to the point where I wasn't able to ignore nonverbal cues that this person doesn't really want to talk to me or I'm annoying this person.
	And I could not push through that and kind of, you know, try to push to generate leads.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And that's so you think you said you would let go after four months.
	Is that right?
	Just let go after four months.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So your father, of course, says that it's important for you to network now, but he didn't really mention it so much when you were in school when you had obviously a much greater chance to network.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I mean, that's a bit of a mismatch there in terms of what's important, but I mean, what's done is done, so you can't go back and can't go back in time.
	Now, is there any kind of alumni association?
	And listen, I'm not trying to solve your problems here.
	I'm just curious what you've explored.
	Is there any kind of alumni association that's part of your college that might be helpful for networking in terms of you join some group, maybe they meet up, and you could sort of pitch your potential there?
	Not that I've ever been made aware of.
	No, I've never seen such a thing.
	I mean, you don't have to tell me where you went to university, but most universities have alumni associations where you might find it helpful to be part of that and to talk to people who've graduated.
	Because, of course, people who've graduated, and particularly if they graduated a while ago, they might have jobs, right?
	They might have contacts or whatever, right?
	So that might be something to look into.
	And with your, you said that your sister got this unpaid internship and was there anything like was there any kind of work study stuff that was going on in your university when you were going through it?
	I mean, that's a pretty good place to normally get contacts and jobs.
	So I actually, I did an internship.
	I did an internship for my local police department.
	Okay.
	And how did that go?
	I thought that it went well.
	I would, because they weren't paying me, they wouldn't really ask us to do too much.
	It would just be, you know, coming for a few hours on the days where you can.
	And I was working at the same time.
	So I would work like five days a week and then I'd go in on the two days a week that I had off for a few hours and do kind of busy work tasks just to kind of, you know, to be honest, it was just kind of like go in and what files can I sort today?
	What needs to be scanned?
	What needs to be, you know, faxed, whatever.
	And it was kind of great thing.
	Yeah, nothing really there that you got to shine at that people would remember or want you back for in any particularly vivid fashion, is that right?
	Yeah, no, not really.
	Okay.
	And that was the only internship you had, right?
	That was the only internship I did.
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	And do you know if your university has any kind of job placement program for graduates?
	It wasn't very good.
	It wasn't a job placement program.
	It was like it's basically like indeed, but for, you know, you use like your university login to log in.
	And it never really helped me out too much.
	Okay.
	So there is such a thing, but it's just not very helpful.
	Is that just because there aren't jobs in your field?
	Yeah, that's probably it's I'm not feeling that that's probably like the best field to go forward and it's really tough because you're familiar with ArcGIS, right?
	So you can actually major in that.
	I have a liberal arts degree with courses in that.
	So when it comes down to like throwing the resume out there and applying for like a job to be in Entry-level GIS work, they're going to pick somebody who actually has a major and spent like four years worth of credits on learning about the software than somebody with an unrelated major but courses in that software.
	Well, I mean, not necessarily.
	I mean, it depends whether there's any overlap with your other skills, and it also depends how much they want to pay.
	I mean, they would pay less trained people lower salaries.
	And if they had less of a requirement for that expertise, they would do that, right?
	I suppose, yeah.
	And I assume I think you've mentioned that you've tried applying for GIS jobs and no luck, right?
	I've had more luck at finding GIS jobs than I have with intelligence analyst or crime analyst roles, and not very much luck at ever, no luck at all at ever getting called back.
	And when you were choosing your degree, with I assume your father was paying, so I assume you haven't graduated with that, which is obviously a good thing.
	But when you were choosing your degree, were you pitched, or did you or your father look at employment opportunities, like what percentage of graduates are working in the field, that kind of stuff?
	I did not.
	And to be honest with you, I will like the biggest mistake that I've made is I don't think my degree is very useful.
	And I was kind of cautioned about getting a liberal arts degree, but I was told that since it's still a BS, it's probably pretty good.
	So who cautioned you on that?
	My father cautioned me on getting a liberal arts degree.
	But since it was still a BS, he was like, yeah, you know, that could work out.
	And pitching him on the job that I had been, had figured out kind of, he was like, yeah, it seems like a good idea.
	But I'll be honest at the same time, I majored in several different things before kind of landing on sociology and criminal justice.
	Yeah, I mean, it seems interesting that your father is paying for it, which I assume was like, you know, 50, 70, 80, 100 grand for four years.
	Your father's paying for it.
	Your father's a data analyst, but doesn't bother to look up the employment rates for graduates within the field.
	I never really looked at playing in grades and graduates in that field.
	Yeah, that's an odd investment to me.
	Because, I mean, that would be the first thing.
	It's okay, well, so you're spending four years of your life, you know, which is a lot, and, you know, tens or maybe more, thousands of dollars, and to not even find out what the employment opportunities are after you graduate seems odd.
	Now, I mean, you know, you went in at what, 18 or whatever.
	So it would be more on your father's shoulders for that, right?
	But that didn't happen.
	And again, I'm just sort of pointing it out because we obviously can't go back in time and fix bad decisions or decisions which could have been better.
	But what we can do is figure out where we went wrong so that we don't do it again, if that makes sense.
	Yes, yeah, absolutely.
	And I mean, you know, like I told you before, when the advice from my parents and grandparents had been, you know, go to school, get a degree, and doors are going to open.
	It doesn't matter what the degree is in.
	I don't know that that's too surprising that the focus on what I majored in and the employment rates of that specific major wasn't really dug into.
	And that's kind of the general I don't know what the word I'm looking for is the general understanding is the fact that you have a you know BS is the most important thing, right?
	Well, okay.
	So, I mean, just very briefly, I mean, when your grandparents went to university, or I guess you said your father was the first, right?
	But when university is around at your grandparents' day, probably fewer than 10% of people went to university.
	And as a result, it was usually the top 10% of the cognitive elites.
	And as a result, the educational standards and requirements were very high, right?
	Now, like 40, 50% of people go to college.
	And in order to accommodate more people, I mean, college doesn't make you smarter any more than playing basketball makes you taller.
	And so now the standards have created in order to accommodate people who just don't have the same intellectual abilities, right?
	Absolutely.
	And also, let me add another important piece of information here that I think is quite relevant.
	My father's line of work is not in what his degree was at, like even remotely close.
	So this kind of adds to that kind of fuel that the degree matters more than the degree is dead.
	Sorry, the degree used to be, I mean, I've mentioned this case on the show before, so I'll just keep it brief.
	So, I mean, ideally, you should just give people an IQ test because smart people can master just about anything, but generally, you're not allowed to give people IQ tests anymore.
	And so it used to be that college was just like this very extended, very expensive IQ test.
	And so it proved that you were in sort of the top 10 or 15% of intelligence or, you know, and other, it's not just intelligence, right?
	I mean, the ability to make a plan, the ability to meet deadlines, the ability to please your professors or whatever, right?
	So that's, I mean, that's all gone.
	Now, nobody can look at a degree and figure out whether you're a smart person or just someone who's there because the university likes money.
	Yes, I 100% agree with you.
	I'm just trying to kind of add that context to it.
	And exactly what you just said is still how my father pitched getting a degree to me my entire life.
	I gave pushback on going to school.
	I can quite vividly remember, like, I pitched the idea to my mom and then my dad.
	I was like, this isn't going to, this is not the key to going anywhere in life.
	I, you know, I said, what about trade school?
	And I was told that not getting the degree is going to permanently close doors.
	You will never apply.
	When you apply for a job, but you have a degree, that's telling a hiring manager, a potential boss, that you have accomplished something in life.
	And without the degree, they're going to think less of you.
	They're going to think that you're not very smart.
	And by the way, you have a degree.
	Now you have unlimited potential in earnings.
	And if you go to trade school, you're going to cap out at $20 an hour.
	And what?
	I just think about that conversation.
	It's not remotely true.
	I mean, but dad's a data guy.
	I mean, just look that shit up.
	Right.
	That really I'm telling you this because that conversation really pissed me off.
	And I went to college to get a degree to make $15 an hour.
	Right.
	So that's been the biggest piece of irony from that conversation is like, oh, you're always going to earn more because you have a degree.
	Oh, I went to college and graduated, and I've never made more than $15 an hour in any of the three jobs I've had since.
	Well, it's unfortunately, it's much worse than that because of the cost of your degree and the foregone earnings because of that degree.
	Right.
	It's much worse than that.
	Sorry, I hate to pile on, but oh, no, no, no.
	Yeah, I've thought about that as well.
	So I mean, and so just I used to hire, I'm not going to get into details, but I used to hire out of one of the, I used to hire students out of one of the top computer science universities in Canada.
	And I would go down and I would interview people and so on.
	And we definitely got some very smart people and we got some very not smart people because the net was too wide.
	Right.
	And I really had to find other ways to figure out who was good to hire other than they have a degree from a top-tier university or they're finishing up their degree at a top-tier university.
	And I had to devise my own ways to figure out who to hire because I just couldn't rely on the intelligence and creativity of people just because they had a degree.
	Now, of course, in the past, it wasn't perfect, but it was much more reliable.
	So.
	Yeah.
	That's that I've been very vocally frustrated to those close to me for pretty much exactly what you're saying there.
	Is I what I constantly say is like, I'm not even getting interviews.
	If I was getting interviews consistently and not getting hired, then at least I would know that it's on me.
	But I know that I know that I'm a smart guy.
	I know that I'm a capable guy.
	Like I'm not incompetent and I'm not dumb.
	And there's nothing wrong with working retail if that's truly the best you can do.
	But I know that for me, it's not truly the best I can do.
	And that I have skills and like my job is very monotonous.
	I don't use a lot of brain power.
	I during an eight hour shift, I have one earphone in and I'm listening to your show while I'm like moving stuff on the shelves.
	Like that's not a good use of the skills I have.
	I'm a fairly smart guy and I'm a competent guy.
	Like I know that I can do more and I'm worth more than that.
	And not getting interviews or having anything to show for it, but allegedly liberal arts degree and the fact that I consistently make dean's list, like that's the best I have to show for what I feel that my potential is.
	And even then, like I'm not getting to show what my potential is.
	And that's that's just what is frustrating me more than anything.
	Yes.
	And not to add fuel to the fire, but it could be the case that as you get further and further away from your graduation date, your degree becomes slightly less valuable.
	Yes, I would, I would agree.
	People are going to say, well, what you been doing for the last year or two.
	And again, I'm not trying to sort of make you an easier panic, but that's a potential issue.
	Right.
	I don't know if you wanted to pivot to something else, but I did want to ask this.
	One thing that I've thought about is the company that I work for, they're large companies.
	So they give a lot of benefits to their employees.
	And I believe one of their things that they'll do is Education compensation.
	So, one thing that I've kind of thought about is possibly going back and getting a master's degree.
	Now, like I said, your show is what gets me through the workday.
	I've heard a lot of, you know, you do quite a bit of research on employment rates with people with master's degree and their earning potential.
	I don't feel that you think too highly of it, but kind of considering the position that I'm in, what would you think about that?
	Well, a master's in okay, so that's been kind of the thing.
	I would not be going back to get another liberal arts degree.
	So, I've kind of narrowed it down to two possible paths.
	I think that I would like to go into the business world.
	So, one is when I was in high school, I took a business course on marketing, and I remember really enjoying that class.
	But I had an family member and a distant relative who had graduated with a marketing degree, and she was in my position, underemployed, working for minimum wage.
	And that kind of, I was like, oh, I don't know that a marketing degree is going to help me out.
	So, you know, for some reason, I landed on how about we go one worse and go liberal arts instead.
	So, I was deterred away from the marketing degree.
	I feel that that was a bad decision.
	So, that's something that interests me is marketing.
	And another thing that possibly interests me is economics.
	I'm very, very interested in politics.
	So, one thing that I didn't know very much about until recently was economics.
	I spent a lot of time reading articles online, especially from like the Mises Institute, for example, on economic theory, Austrian economics.
	And that's something that I just find very, very fascinating.
	And, you know, going to school to study such things, you have kind of an umbrella of potential jobs with an economics degree.
	You can work in finance, things like this that pay very well.
	And it's something that's not.
	Yeah, but I don't know if I don't know.
	Maybe you can, but I don't know if you can just jump into a master's in economics with your undergraduate.
	Again, I think that's been the thing.
	I've talked about it with some people that I know.
	And I think it was my mom was telling me that she has a friend who got a, no, not my mom.
	My girlfriend knows somebody who got like a liberal arts degree and that then went back and got a master's in something under business.
	It was either my girlfriend or my mom.
	I can't remember who, but.
	Oh, no, yeah, you can go liberal arts to business.
	I just don't know that you can go liberal arts to economist or economics.
	And again, you just have to look that up.
	I don't have any answer to that, but it seems like a bit more of a stretch.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So that's something that.
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Have you tried to reproduce your skill set using AI?
	Because that seems like a pretty essential thing these days is to figure out how valuable is your skill set relative to AI.
	Because of course, if you're talking about sort of the FBI crime stats, I'm going to assume that at least the less propagandized and censored AIs are and have access to all that data, right?
	So, whatever analysis you would do that might take you a week or two or a month or two, have you tried reproducing what you did in university using an AI to figure out what demand there may or may not be for your skill set?
	Because that's, you know, that's sort of the dark horse variable that has come into play over the last couple of years.
	Sure.
	That's not something that I've tried to do.
	I know that the reason why GIS goes hand in hand with taking the crime data is they do crime mapping.
	So they'll kind of like, you know, split up the city into blocks or beats or something like this.
	And then they'll map it out.
	You know, crimes in this area are low.
	So that's like we're talking making like a color-coded map.
	Oh, yeah, no, I'm aware of all of that.
	So can AI do that kind of work?
	I mean, again, I know it hallucinates and blah, blah, blah, but there's prompts that you can make to reduce or minimize that.
	And again, I also know that crime data, demographic data is all kinds of contentious when it comes to real estate and so on.
	So if you haven't, I would recommend sit down with the least censored AI that you can find, which I guess up until recently may have been on the Grok side or whatever, right?
	So if you can work with the least censored, the least woke, the least manipulative AI, and I mean, it won't be perfect, but I would say it's worth spending an hour or two or more trying to figure out like why are there no jobs in your field?
	Could it be that people have mastered AI to the point where, you know, one guy replaces 20 guys or 10 guys or five guys or something like that, right?
	So I think you might want to figure out whether AI has eaten your lunch, which it's doing to a lot of people increasingly.
	And there's two reasons for that.
	One is you can figure out what the demand might be if it's low because of AI.
	The other thing, of course, is if you become good at using AI plus all of your data analytical and crime analytical skills, that might differentiate you to the point where if you put that sort of stuff on a resume, along with, you know, here's a website of, you know, here's me live working on prompts to produce data that would have taken somebody a week, took me an hour.
	I don't know, like whatever.
	This is the kind of stuff that I would be doing if I were in your shoes is just trying to leverage technology that might be replacing some of your skill sets in order to become more valuable to people.
	Everybody plus AI is, I assume, just significantly more valuable.
	So it's just a thought.
	What do you think?
	Yeah, I can definitely give that a shot.
	I would not be surprised if even very weak AI programs are able to make maps on GIS faster than humans can.
	I know because I've seen my brother and sister run like SQL on AI programs.
	And that's, I think, a little bit more complicated.
	Yeah, like I tried just out of curiosity because I'm working on a new book.
	And I tried using AI to generate a plot.
	And it generated a plot, but the ages of the kids were all wrong.
	And you know, there was just so I had to tell it, okay, well, adjust all of this to make sure the ages are correct.
	And, you know, after sort of five or ten adjustments to the prompt, it produced a fairly decent plot.
	Now, I didn't end up using it because I just preferred, but I was just kind of curious how it would do it.
	And I sort of remember years ago when I was starting peaceful parenting, I was, I think I posted about this.
	I was kind of curious and said to AI, you know, create a table of contents for a peaceful parenting book and so on.
	And again, it was like not terrible, not fantastic.
	And I didn't end up using it because, again, I just sort of prefer doing it myself.
	But I think everybody, and this is sort of general advice, right, it's good.
	This is a public call, right?
	This general advice to everyone.
	If, you know, I mean, obviously, AI, at least yet, is not going to replace your retail job, but anything that is mental labor, anything that is language or math or programming-based, anything that's conceptual-based, anything that's white-collar, my gosh.
	I mean, it would be, and I did this, right?
	So, I mean, what was it, a year or two ago, we loaded up all of my books and articles and a whole bunch of podcasts and so on into AI and tweaked and worked with it too, because I needed to figure out what was AI capable of that reproduced or replaced what it is that I do.
	And so, all of that is really important because maybe what's happening in your field, and you know, I don't think marketing would have been the solution because AI is fantastic at creating marketing plans.
	I mean, are they top 1% of genius?
	No, they're not like I'd like to teach the world to sing or whatever, right?
	But, you know, the top 1% is the top 1%.
	There's still 99% of people that AI can do a pretty good job on.
	So, this is a general advice to everyone.
	If you're, I mean, if you're a plumber, okay, AI is not going to eat your lunch.
	Although, there are certain aspects of your job that AI can definitely make easier in terms of scheduling or marketing plans or logos or things like that.
	But I think it's well worth sitting down.
	And you could take, like, one of the things that I would do if I were in your shoes.
	I'm sure you still have some of your old assignments from university, right?
	So, what I would do is I would take a day and I would say, okay, so here's an assignment I had at university.
	It took me a week.
	I'm going to try and reproduce it through AI.
	How long is that going to take me?
	And if it's like it was a week, now it's an hour, you know, that's a 40 to 1 efficiency boost, which, you know, I mean, obviously, this is real thumbnail sketch mathematics.
	But if it's a 40 to 1 productivity boost to use AI, where you needed 40 jobs, you now need one, which maybe explains why you're not getting the callbacks.
	The impact of AI on intellectual labor can scarcely be over-exaggerated.
	And everybody needs to test how replaceable they are.
	Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get a job in your field, but it means that the jobs in your field are going to be leveraging skills plus AI.
	I mean, I'm sure you've seen this.
	I think on X, it was a month or two ago or three.
	Some guy created a flight simulator just through prompts.
	I don't think he really touched the line of code at all.
	And he, you know, he basically said to the AI, add multiplayer, and boom, right?
	And I've worked with some code with multiplayer.
	The fact that you can just say to a computer, add multiplayer, and it kind of happens is like, I can't tell you how freaky that is, right?
	So, so everybody is either replaced, everybody in these kinds of fields, you're either going to get replaced by AI or you're going to leverage AI.
	But I don't know that there's much in between because even if you've got some boomer who doesn't want to leverage AI, he's going to lose out to people who do.
	Right.
	It's just more efficient.
	Yeah.
	I mean, imagine how many you got, I mean, even to create a flight simulator and then, you know, to add a to add multiplayer would be, you know, weeks of an experienced programmer as opposed to just saying add multiplayer and it kind of happens, right?
	Now, I'm sure there were some tweaks and this and that and the other, but that is a whole different thing.
	So in the economy, you have to figure out how to leverage the technology to maximize your productivity.
	And if you are sending out resumes, and I'm just guessing, I mean, this may be completely inapplicable, right?
	But I think it's well worth looking into.
	If you're sending out resumes saying, I can do this or that or the other data manipulation by hand, well, I mean, it's like sending out a resume saying, here's all the math I can do longhand on paper when everybody's getting a calculator for free, so to speak, right?
	So you just, you know, here, I'm really fast with a slide rule.
	It's like, well, we don't need slide rules anymore.
	And so I think that to merge with AI is important to take some task that took you a while in the past and see how quickly you can do it using AI, become good at AI prompting and all of that.
	I mean, that to me would be a huge step forward.
	And the reason for that is either A, it might help you get a job because you're good at AI, or B, which is sort of the point that I'm really working towards here, it might, if you want to become an entrepreneur and you're really good at leveraging AI and you already understand the data, well, how many people, I mean, there's really nothing more satisfying than putting people out of business who wouldn't give you a job, right?
	How many people can you replace?
	How many businesses can you replace if you learn to leverage this new technology along with the very technical skill set that you already have?
	Because the technical skill set is important because you'll know when the AI has gotten it wrong because you'll just have that sort of instinct based upon your experience and training and so on, right?
	I mean, it's, you know, what I was talking about with my daughter.
	Like, why do I need to learn how to multiply numbers?
	I can just punch it into the calculator.
	And it's like, well, sure, but you kind of need to know what the calculator is doing in case you fat finger something, slip a digit.
	You need to know that it looks wrong because that can happen.
	And this is even more true, it's infinitely more true almost with AI than it is with calculators because AIs hallucinate a lot.
	And so you need to have the technical skills to know when it's gotten it wrong or when things just kind of look off and then you can refine it and so on, right?
	So if you can leverage AI with your skills, you become much more valuable to people as a whole.
	And also, if that still doesn't bust you through, then you can leverage AI plus your skill sets in order to produce things cheaper, faster than your competitors or than other people of the field.
	And maybe that's an entrepreneurial opportunity, if that makes any sense.
	Yes.
	Yes, that makes sense.
	I just don't know how I would market that skill would be the only thing because it.
	Sorry, hang on, slow down.
	Market which skill because we talked about a bunch of different things, right?
	The ability to use AI.
	How does one even market that skill on something like if you're trying to pitch that ability to a company?
	Oh, no, I already mentioned that, but I mean, I talked about a lot of things, so maybe that one slipped past you.
	So, if I were in your shoes, what I would do is get a screen recorder software.
	There's one I think that's built into Windows now called Snipping Tool or something like that.
	So, get a screen recording software with your audio and say, Okay, you know, here's an assignment that I had in university that took me a week, and here's me doing it in 20 minutes in AI.
	And you can even, you know, speed it up so that it's, you know, they don't have to sit there for 20 minutes and so on.
	And, you know, I estimate that's a 80 to 1 productivity or 120 to 1 productivity tool if it's 20 minutes versus 40 hours or something like that.
	So you would show yourself live and doing that, right?
	And so on your resume, you'd say, I'm also an expert in AI.
	If you'd like to see an example of how I saved 40, 80, 120 times worth of labor, you can look at this very quick video and so on, right?
	So you would show yourself working these prompts to get the desired output.
	And that would help.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, that actually does make sense.
	And of course, you could also, you know, you could take a couple of AI courses and put them down on, you know, your resume.
	And for people who didn't necessarily want to go and watch a video, you could simply have screenshots and saying, you know, here's what took me a week in college.
	Here's how I did it in an hour.
	And you would just make sure that people understood you have that skill, you have that ability.
	And here's how I deal with hallucinations.
	And here's how, you know, you just, that's a skill that I would be working on if I were in your shoes.
	And again, I'm not saying this is some magic solution, but it would certainly explain why you're not getting callbacks.
	Because if you're competing either with people who are producing wild productivity gains in-house with AI or people who have AI as their expertise, then you're like horse and buggy guy trying to enter the Indy 500, right?
	Like you're the Amish guy with a U-shaped horse trying to compete against some 12 billion horsepower car driven by, I don't know, Paul Newman or the guy from 90210 or Frankie Muntz.
	So that may be why you're not getting traction.
	Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	That was the thing, though, is marketing it on a resume as somebody who doesn't have the time to look at it.
	But yeah, now we've touched on that.
	Sorry, I didn't quite catch that.
	You said marketing on a resume with somebody who doesn't have what?
	Somebody who doesn't like have the time or desired act.
	I see what you mean, like posting videos and stuff, but giving that promotion in a job application to somebody who's like, I don't, I don't, you know, doesn't want to watch the video or doesn't want to look at that.
	Now that we've touched on that, I understand what you're saying.
	Wait, so sorry, your first response is to say people aren't going to be interested that not my first response necessarily, but I also do know that a lot of these hiring departments allegedly kind of like use AI to weed people out.
	So that's just something that you have to, you know, if you are able to throw that onto like a skills section or somewhere in the job application, I have experience in this.
	That's like programming, chat GPT, Grok, whatever.
	That's a thing that I don't know if I'm if you understand what I'm trying to say here.
	No, you're giving me a yes, but you're automatically discounting.
	And listen, I'm not mad or anything.
	I'm just pointing it out that you're automatically discounting.
	You're giving me the objections when you haven't even tried the solution.
	And that's a yes-but approach.
	Well, you could try this.
	Yeah, but, you know, they use a lot of AI to weed things out and people might want to watch the videos.
	So you're talking yourself out of enthusiasm or, right?
	I see what you're saying.
	Yeah.
	So is that coming from the bad neighborhood door slam in the face when you were door to door?
	Like, where's the yes, but stuff coming from?
	Because if you've got the yes, but stuff and it's a tough job market, man, it's going to be tough to get hired because you're competing with people who are mad enthusiastic.
	Now, maybe the solution that I'm offering you for whatever reason doesn't work.
	But I don't think either of us knows that yet, right?
	Yes, I wasn't trying to say that it's not going to work.
	I've just all I was trying to get at was the best way to market that to a perspective.
	No, no, that's not.
	That's not what you were doing.
	Because, sorry, to be blunt, right?
	So what I was saying was, here's a possible solution.
	And then the first thing you did was not say, I'm excited to try that, but here are the reasons it won't work.
	Or here's the reasons why it's less likely to work.
	If that makes sense.
	And it's not some big criticism, but that's what you were doing.
	And that's the part that we need to figure out, if that makes sense.
	That's the part of what's going on in your heart and mind that we need to figure out.
	Because that's probably your biggest impediment.
	So let me give you an example sort of to let you know what I mean.
	So, you know, 2005, I get an article published, 2006, or 2005, I start podcasting.
	And was there any business plan or any way to monetize or make money podcasting in 2005?
	Not foreseeably.
	Well, there wasn't at the time, and there didn't seem to be anything imminent, if that makes sense.
	There was no monetization.
	There was no subscription.
	There was no PayPal, I think, back then.
	And so if somebody said to me, hey, you know, you love philosophy.
	Here's what you should do, man.
	You should.
	You should make it a job.
	I'd be like, well, hang on.
	I mean, bandwidth was crazy expensive back then, which is why the early shows were like 40K audio quality, right?
	So would I have a lot of reasons to say to people, well, this can't work, or at least it can't work in any, I mean, particularly people don't even know about podcasts.
	How am I going to get people to even listen?
	You know, I mean, I don't have a PhD in philosophy from an Ivy League university.
	There could have been tons of objections, right?
	That I make regarding that, right?
	But if somebody said to me, you should try this, the first thing that I would do, and I know this because that's what I did, is trying to figure out how to make it work, not list off the reasons why it couldn't work or was unlikely to work.
	So that's the reaction I need to understand.
	So where's that coming from?
	The heaviness, the weight, the negativity, the yes, but here's why it won't work.
	Here's why it can't work, as opposed to, well, that's a really interesting thing.
	Maybe it'll work with the, because I gave you two things, right?
	And you only focused on the one, right?
	So I gave you two things.
	One is that maybe it'll help you get a job in your field.
	And also, I talked a bit about, quite a bit about you could use this, if you get good at this kind of stuff.
	You could take your skills, combine it with AI, and start a business that would be much more productive than other people's businesses, right?
	So if other people in your field, for whatever reason, don't understand the value of AI, then you can outcompete them by starting your own company.
	If they do understand the value of AI, then you getting good at AI in your field will be a big boost to getting a job.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	Yes, that makes sense.
	So, I mean, that's the sort of decision tree.
	And your response was, yeah, but, you know, they're just going to filter it out and it's not going to work, right?
	They use AI and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And so the it's not going to work stuff.
	I mean, I'm not the worst businessman in the world.
	I've been an entrepreneur for almost 30 years.
	I've started two or three successful businesses.
	I mean, you know, I survived deplatforming and like I'm not the worst guy at this stuff, right?
	I mean, I may have something of value to offer.
	And your response, and again, this is not a criticism or anything that I'm nagging you about, but to me, it was interesting that your response was, yes, but here's why it won't work.
	Right.
	Yeah, I get what you're saying.
	So the first one, the first answer I would say is I don't have a whole lot of experience with AI to the point where I believe that it's truly marketable yet.
	So I would have to self-train.
	Not something I'm a person who's doing.
	That is an annoying non-answer.
	Well, it is.
	It is.
	Okay.
	How long do you think it takes to get a master's degree in economics?
	Right, right.
	No, no, no.
	You're talking about going back to school for two years straight, incurring another $50,000 to $25,000 in liabilities and lost income, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	No, no, no.
	I get what you're saying.
	I don't think you.
	What I'm getting?
	No, I don't think you did.
	Because you're saying I'm going to spend two years, get a master's or whatever it is going to be, right?
	Not work or work little, spend a lot of money, right?
	Go into debt.
	I'm willing to do that for maybe, maybe a job, maybe.
	But man, learning how to become good at AI, even though I'm already good at data analytics and know something about programming, well, that's just a bridge too far.
	So that's a non-answer.
	Well, I'm not saying, no, no, no, I'm not saying that's a bridge too far.
	My fear is that that is the self-educated aspect of it, I fear will not.
	There's an also an annoying non-answer.
	Do you know why you listen to me in one ear at your job, right?
	Right.
	How much of the value that I provide to philosophy was I taught, yes, sir.
	I understand that you are self-taught.
	I mean, I did take some courses in university, but my focus was on history.
	So if you're going to say, well, but you know, it's a self-taught aspect of things that's the problem.
	And it's like you're literally calling a guy who's largely self-taught, saying that if it's self-taught, it has less value.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I don't believe that has less value.
	I listen, I just as an example, I'm very big into strength training.
	I'm completely self-taught.
	I've read a couple books.
	I've watched a lot of videos.
	And then a lot of it is just evidence of what I've done to myself.
	I know a lot more about training than your average kinesiology or exercise science student.
	I don't look down on the self-training aspect of it at all.
	I just have a fear that when it comes to, okay, time to market, time to put myself out there, time to apply for jobs, that the fact that a big skill of mine being completely self-taught is not going to look good to also a non-answer.
	If you remember, I also said that you could take some AI courses.
	Right, right, right.
	Yes, yes.
	So then that would buy.
	So you are coming up with objections that I've already dealt with.
	And that means that you have a negative view of the solution.
	And it means that you are into, because I already said that.
	So, you know, if it comes to credibility, you could take some AI courses, right?
	Do you remember me saying that?
	Yes, yes, yes, yes.
	So now when you say, when you say that being entirely self-taught is a problem when I'd already dealt with that, means that you are looking for problems, not solutions.
	And again, I'm not, this is not some big critical nag, but it's a fact.
	Yes, I so why?
	Now, you're trying to give me reasons as to why you're negative about these things prior to trying them, right?
	You're trying to give me reasons, but your reasons don't hold up to scrutiny, which means that your reasons are covering an emotional issue.
	What's the emotional issue?
	the emotional issue is is fear really uh i obviously haven't had a lot of success in the job market at all and
	And when it seems that the I don't really I'm having trouble trying to put it put it into words.
	I'm just fearful that At the end of the day,
	courses in AI and self-education won't hold up to a hiring manager in the same way that the formal education will.
	And I'm not going to, it won't help to give me the opportunity that I yearn for.
	Okay, do you use Apple or Mac or Windows?
	Apple.
	Okay.
	Did Steve Jobs have a advanced degree?
	I don't believe so, right?
	Certainly not when he started, right?
	I mean, in fact, I think Steve Jobs started by giving people illegal free long distance, if I remember rightly.
	Of course, you know, Bill Gates dropped out of university to pursue Microsoft and so on, right?
	And if you kind of look around, credentialism is the issue, right?
	Do you have confidence in the absence of something that tells people you're good?
	That's the challenge, right?
	Now, I mean, I have a graduate degree.
	My graduate thesis was in the history of philosophy.
	But very little of what I've ever talked about on this show comes from my formal education.
	And of course, I've never said to people, well, I'm right because I have a graduate degree, or I'm right because I have a high IQ, or I'm right.
	I just make the arguments.
	So help me understand this credentialism thing.
	Where, well, I mean, I don't know.
	Can you get a PhD in AI?
	It's such a new field.
	I don't think so.
	No, you cannot.
	Right.
	Right.
	So in sort of the very newest field, which is constantly changing, and even if you got a degree in AI, whatever that might mean, even if you had a whole bunch of education in AI and you graduated a year ago, well, the AI parameter is changing.
	The AI abilities are changing.
	There's constantly new AIs, right?
	So how would that mean that you were skilled at the newest AIs or the best AIs or the more specialized or niche AIs or whatever it is, right?
	Or maybe you figured out how to get around censorship in Western AIs and then you get access to some Chinese AI where you can't criticize communism, but you can do all of the other stuff that you'd get barred for in a lot of Western AIs, right?
	So with regards to AI, help me understand where this credentialism stuff is coming in.
	You say, well, I'm afraid that I might not be taken seriously without, I don't know what, some sort of credentialism or something like that.
	But there's two kinds of people in the world, right?
	I mean, one of the people who look at results and one of the people who look at credentials.
	And that's why I said, you know, you would show a video of you, a sped up video of you doing the prompts and getting the app so that people could see that you actually did it.
	Because that's empiricism, right?
	Yes, sir.
	And I actually am quite disdainful for credentialism, but I feel that my Liberal arts degree in sociology has been what has been keeping me out of the workforce for so long.
	And that's always what I charted up to.
	It's like when I never get a callback for these jobs, you can go and try to take blame off of yourself.
	And you can say the economy is bad.
	The hiring manager is stupid, whatever you want.
	Or you can kind of try to own your problem.
	And my version of owning the problem has been like, I made a poor degree choice, and that was getting a sociology degree.
	That's my credential.
	And it's barred me from the workforce.
	And if I had a degree that was more meaningful, like engineering or something like this, people know what your credentials are.
	And I wouldn't have such an issue getting into the workforce.
	So if you want to know where that's coming from, it's my assessment of my entire issue is my lack thereof credentials and to not have credentials and still try to force your way into the workforce.
	Like when I'm seeing that as the issue.
	Sorry, force your way.
	Sorry, force your way into the workforce.
	What does that mean?
	Well, okay.
	Perhaps I didn't describe it.
	You mean gunpoints?
	I don't know what you mean.
	Yeah, I didn't think that the negative, most negative possible way.
	Like if you're going to go up and ask a girl, go up and talk to a girl in a coffee.
	Well, you're forcing your way into her personal space.
	You know, this is like a man-splaining assault.
	I mean, phrasing things in the most negative possible, force your way into the workspace.
	It's like, I never mentioned anything like that.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	That wasn't the right word to describe it.
	No, the right words if you're negative.
	Yeah.
	Which, I mean, my point still standing, my lack thereof credentials is what I see as my issue.
	And to not go get credentials the quote-unquote right way through a university, I wouldn't say that I'm skeptical of because most people that are like actually uber successful don't have those quote-unquote credentials the right way through university.
	Most people, not so much, but it's just kind of hard to vision that reality for myself.
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	Well, it's like I was kind of saying...
	Are you saying you need more and better credentials?
	I mean, that's as it stands right now to go apply for more jobs.
	Yes, I need more and better credentials.
	And that would have to kind of be from a university because I don't have anything else to show for it.
	I don't have like a good job experience.
	So the experience comes down to what did you do at university?
	And that's all I'm saying is my fear of trying to do something without the credentials from university and be successful is hard to imagine for myself for whatever reason.
	I guess it's just because what I'd always been taught is go to school, get your degree, and go to work, that that is the end-all be-all.
	So to imagine myself being successful in absence of the relevant degree is hard to imagine.
	All right.
	So then I guess if that's your hypothesis, then you should go and get more credentials.
	I'm not sure why you'd need me for that.
	And I know this sounds like, I don't know, like petty or blowback.
	I'm genuinely like if your basic thesis is you lack the right credentials and if you go and get the right credentials, you can have a great career, then I'm not sure why you'd call someone who's had great success with little to no credentials saying that the road to success is credentials.
	Like, I mean, I didn't take computer science courses, but I was a very good programmer and actually head of research and development for a small to medium-sized company.
	And, you know, the value that I've provided in philosophy has not been because of credentials, but because of original thought and reasoning from first principles.
	So I'm not sure.
	I mean, if you'd sent me an email saying, Steph, I'm not doing well in my career, so I need to get more credentials.
	I'd be like, okay, well, if that's what you believe, you should go do it.
	But I'm not sure why you'd call someone who lacks credentials to make the case that you need credentials.
	And again, I'm just, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not trying to be mean or anything.
	I'm just if your argument is, well, Steph, I just lack credentials, then I guess if that's your belief and you know your field better than I do, then I guess you should go get the credentials.
	But I'm not sure what our conversation is about then.
	Yes, sir.
	Sorry, I was trying to explain my, you've kind of chewed the argument back up and spit it in my face to the point where that's, I've not, hang on, bro.
	This language you use is really inflammatory.
	Are you aware of that?
	You think I spat something in your face?
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	No, that's what you said.
	You said you chewed up my argument and spat it back in my face.
	Like, that's really escalating in graphic language, right?
	Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
	No, no, no.
	I've made a poor argument.
	You've made a far better case for what you're saying than I did.
	And I like.
	I'm trying to say that I think that you're right.
	Right about what?
	That my hold on to credentialism is foolish.
	I was simply trying to explain where it's coming from, but everything you've said so far has made far more sense.
	I don't think by argument in defense of the credentialism.
	Credentialism is another cover for the emotional issue.
	And what's the emotional issue?
	When I say, you know, maybe take your skills, run them through AI, maybe that'll help you get a better job.
	Or you can compete with people who are resisting AI.
	Like either AI is a value in your industry or it's not.
	And if it is a value, then you having some AI experience and perhaps some credentials will help.
	And if it's not, but could be, then you can start a business and out-compete everyone else.
	I mean, there doesn't seem to be much of a downside to it.
	So help me understand the yes, but.
	so my truth It's a lack of confidence, to be completely honest with you.
	I Feel that I have kind of failed at pretty much everything that I've thrown my hat into the ring with.
	And it's not that I, what you're saying does make perfect sense to me.
	And I do believe is worth trying and is good advice, but I just don't have a whole lot of confidence in myself because I don't have any history of being successful with just about anything.
	So the emotional response is like a lack of confidence.
	Okay.
	I appreciate that.
	That's very honest and direct and courageous.
	So why do you think, or what is your perception of your lack of ability?
	why do you have that perception i don't know that it's a lack of i don't know that i would quite describe it as a lack of ability it's I just have a track record of doing poorly at everything I've really tried at in my life.
	I played sports as a kid.
	My first passion was lacrosse.
	And when I was a young kid, like my dream was to go play at the collegiate level and do very well.
	I get to high school and I get cut from my JV team twice.
	So the lacrosse career is a failure.
	I'm sorry.
	Why do you think you got cut?
	I got cut because I didn't, I believe that I didn't work hard enough at what I should have worked hard at.
	Okay, so why didn't you train harder?
	Yeah, why didn't you train harder and practice more?
	And it's not a criticism.
	Again, just genuine curiosity.
	Why didn't you train harder and practice more?
	I wasn't a leader.
	I was a follower.
	That's fine.
	No, that's not a reason.
	I mean, there's, I mean, there's quarterbacks and then there's people who run around.
	There's the captain of the hockey team and then there's the not captains.
	They're all in the NHL, right?
	So, or NFL.
	Yes, sir.
	So the leader follower thing is not the answer.
	Why do you think you didn't work harder and practice more?
	The friends of mine who were very good didn't do a whole lot of practicing, and that was because they were likely very naturally talented and athletic.
	And I did not do as much because I thought that I could, they're not going that hard.
	You know, why should I have to go?
	I just show up on game day, on practice day, and I'll make it happen just like they do.
	And, you know, bad attitude.
	That's not the right attitude.
	Maybe they had practiced harder and trained more when they were younger.
	Yes, absolutely.
	So they would have inherited a bunch of skills that you didn't necessarily inherit, right?
	Right.
	Yep.
	And I've never did anything to address that.
	Like, I've not seen that.
	So hang on.
	So if something is a dream, you work real hard to achieve it, right?
	Yes.
	So if you don't work very hard to achieve something, by that definition, it cannot be a dream.
	Or, at least, not a very passionate one.
	Right.
	I mean, like, that's something that I really, really wanted to happen, but I did not work now.
	No, no, you didn't really, really want it to happen.
	Otherwise, you would have made it happen.
	Well, I thought that I really wanted it to happen.
	Well, I don't care what you thought.
	I care about the empiricism.
	Empirically, was it your biggest dream that you would move heaven and earth to achieve?
	I did not.
	Yeah, I mean, Maria Callas is a sort of famous soprano opera singer, and she studied, you know, four different languages.
	She was always practicing like crazy.
	She took endless singing lessons.
	She studied stagecraft.
	I mean, it was her kind of obsession to be a big star, and she became a big star because she worked, you know, 60, 70, 80 hours a week to achieve it, right?
	The Beatles obviously wanted to be a band and a successful band.
	And, you know, they spent two years playing four to six hours a day at a Munich nightclub, right?
	And so rather than imagining what your motives are in the past, look at the empiricism of your actions, and that's where the truth is.
	I understand.
	So, empirically, was it a big, passionate dream of yours if you weren't willing to put in the extra work to achieve it?
	Well, in that case, no.
	Right.
	Right.
	I was absolutely devastated when I did not realize what I had hoped for.
	I'll say that.
	Like, it's not like I got cut from the JV team.
	That's like, ah, man, that sucks.
	Like, I went and bought my eyes out in the back of my dad's car on the way home.
	Okay.
	Now, your father, was he involved in anything to do with your sports?
	And I don't mean necessarily a coach, but I mean, was he following?
	Yeah, following all that.
	Okay.
	So your father, was he aware that you were not doing the necessary practice and training to be really good at the sport?
	Here's kind of like the caveat to that is I would go and like shoot around and pass with my brother in the yard all the time.
	But what I really needed-that's not training.
	Right, that's not training.
	No, I wouldn't go run laps.
	I wouldn't go run sprints.
	I wouldn't go, you know, work on the more athletic side of the things.
	It was just like playing for enjoyment.
	And I guess that I was pushed to do more of that.
	And then I would go do it for like a day and then just be like, oh, well, I'll go play pass with my brother and shoot her out in the yard.
	That'll count as working hard.
	Okay.
	So, was your father aware that you weren't doing the necessary training to succeed at the sport?
	Probably a bit.
	Yeah.
	He had an idea.
	Okay.
	And did he say, if you don't do this training and this practice, the likelihood is you're going to get cut from the team?
	Yeah, a little bit.
	Okay.
	So I'm not sure what a little bit means.
	Like he said that occasionally.
	Yeah, I mean, he thought that I more so had like confidence issues and wasn't playing as well as I could have been, but I don't think it was quite that.
	I think I was getting swallowed up by better athletes than myself because I wasn't working hard enough.
	Okay, so your father told you if you don't work hard, you're most likely going to get cut from the team, right?
	Great.
	Now, did your father ever try and figure out why you weren't working hard if this was a very big dream of yours?
	No.
	And why do you think he didn't?
	I mean, it is a parent's job to try and facilitate and encourage their children to achieve their dreams, right?
	Right.
	I mean, perhaps you didn't realize the gravity of how much I was setting myself back by not doing that.
	I mean, it's kind of his job to do.
	A little bit of a setback.
	Maybe, maybe not, you know, play, you know, go division one college ball level, but, you know, maybe like division two, division three, college ball level, they'll still fair out.
	So, so he did not help you or give you the facts that you needed to facilitate your dream, right?
	Which is you've got to practice, and some of it's going to be unpleasant.
	Some of it's going to be really boring.
	Sure.
	Yes, I agree.
	Okay.
	And is this the case in his life that he doesn't do the necessary work to achieve significant success?
	I mean, I would have to disagree because I would say that objectively he's obtained significant success.
	Okay.
	So if he knows how to attain significant success, why do you feel like a failure?
	Why hasn't your father transferred his knowledge and his skills in those areas to you?
	I mean, he tries to give me advice like we went over kind of toward the beginning of the call.
	I just don't believe that it's been the right advice.
	Like, like I said, like, he's just like, yeah, just keep applying for jobs.
	You know, I'll talk to some of my friends.
	I'll help you network and eventually a door is going to open for you.
	And, you know, I don't have a degree that's in my job line either.
	I spent a while being underemployed.
	You're going to be fine.
	That's kind of the message I always get.
	Okay.
	But it's not a message that you believe.
	No.
	And your feelings of insecurity regarding your abilities or your willpower go back to childhood, right?
	Yeah.
	And I would say, like, again, it's like the kind of lacrosse thing that I've spelled out.
	And then additionally, I would say as well with school is I also underachieved my way through high school.
	Like I got good enough grades to get by and get myself into university, but I've never truly like pushed myself to do well in the classroom.
	So I kind of consider that a fail.
	You did worse than you should have done.
	Okay, but empirically, you didn't particularly care about what was being taught in high school, right?
	No.
	I mean, you listen to what I do because I assume you care and find value in what it is that I do.
	So you listen to it when you're at work or other places.
	So you didn't particularly care about what was being taught in high school.
	Is that right?
	No, I a class here and there, sure, but overall, no.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So if you're not interested in a subject, does it make a lot of sense to apply yourself like crazy to mastering that subject?
	No, but obviously a lot of people do.
	A lot of people go through high school and get straight A's and stuff without necessarily being interested, right?
	We're talking about you, though.
	Right.
	Yes.
	Like, I don't particularly care to learn Japanese.
	I don't.
	It doesn't add much value to me.
	I don't have really any interest in it.
	So I'm not going to spend 10,000 hours learning Japanese, right?
	Because that comes at the expense of other things.
	And it would be boring for me.
	And because it's boring for me, I wouldn't do well at it either, right?
	Sure.
	Okay.
	So if you lack interest in something, it is not irrational to do the bare minimum to get by.
	But you view it as a failure?
	A little bit, yes.
	Okay, so because we're spending half an hour on this topic, are you telling me now that you don't feel like a failure?
	It's only just a little bit?
	Because it's also like you, you just, you keep moving the goalposts here.
	It's kind of annoying.
	Yeah.
	I thought we're trying to deal with foundational insecurity you have.
	And they're saying, oh, it's just a little bit.
	Yes.
	Okay, so what are we doing here?
	I get it.
	Yes, sir.
	I get what you're saying.
	But you see, that's the negativity.
	That's the negativity.
	Right there.
	We're trying to solve a problem for you, trying to get to the root of a problem.
	You say, it's not really a problem.
	No, it certainly is a problem.
	I'm not trying to say that it's not a problem.
	Yes, I see.
	I get what you are spelling out here with like, you weren't exactly interested in what was being taught in school.
	So why, you know, it's not exactly hard to see that you wouldn't necessarily apply yourself to it.
	But I feel that I was capable of doing better than I did.
	So it's kind of hard to not see that as failing, right?
	Capable of doing better than you did.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So it's hard not to see that as failing.
	Right.
	But you didn't want to do better than you did.
	So if you had forced yourself to do better than you did, you would have been denying your own feelings and your own preferences, which would have been just a different kind of failure.
	I mean, the people who get straight A's, not all of them, but a lot of them are just NPCs who like jumping through hoops.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	I mean, they're like the people who say, I can get along with anybody.
	It's like, that's not, I don't think that's a good thing.
	I have no standards, right?
	So, I mean, I'm a big fan of Nietzsche's don't leave your actions in the lurch, right?
	Which is to be curious rather than condemn your past choices.
	Could you have done better in university in high school?
	Sure.
	I'm sure you could have, but that would have come at the expense of other things.
	Right.
	And it was certainly good enough to get you through college, right?
	I did a lot.
	Yes, I did a lot better in university than I did in high school.
	So that's all.
	Because you had more choice.
	You had more choice and it mattered to you more.
	Okay.
	So what is your father or mother's perspective on you not getting straight A's in high school or getting kicked off the lacrosse team twice?
	Was it twice?
	Did I have that right?
	Was.
	Okay.
	So even the first time wasn't enough to get you to change, right?
	Right.
	So what are your parents' perspective on you underachieving, so to speak?
	Okay, so I would say this with the grades, my I'm honest with this, and I think both my parents will be honest with this.
	I would get in trouble if I brought home anything less than a B. So I would just go get straight Bs so that I wouldn't get privileges taken away.
	So my report card was always Bs, just B's.
	So, did your parents ever inquire as to why your motivation was low with regards to sports and academics?
	No, not really.
	No.
	Okay, I don't know what not really means.
	There's so much fog in this conversation, man.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see.
	I see.
	I apologize.
	Okay.
	Did they have conversations that sit you down and say, without judgment, right?
	Without, oh, you're if effort matched ability, you'd be an A, right?
	But saying, hey, so tell me, I mean, are you not motivated?
	Do you not particularly care about these courses?
	Like, why do you think that you are underperforming relative to your potential, right?
	And without being like finger wagging, like, how dare you not achieve your potential, right?
	But your parents are ever curious about your level of motivation and your judgment of the sports and academics and so on.
	No, I never had that conversation.
	I had been like kind of diagnosed with ADHD in middle school, so I feel like they always kind of chalked it up to that.
	Oh, and did you go on the meds?
	Briefly.
	I fought very hard to get off of them.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So your parents chalked it up to what?
	Brain chemistry?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Now, did they give you the impression?
	I mean, where did this impression come from that you were bad or wrong for not doing better?
	I think it comes from myself.
	Nope.
	Nope.
	No.
	I mean, in our childhood, generally, it comes from our surroundings.
	Not 100%, but that's the first place to look.
	Okay.
	I don't know that.
	I thought it came from myself.
	Because, you know, all this time, they're like, man, you're getting A's in university in harder courses.
	If you just tried in high school, you would have done much better.
	Right.
	So that's what would it have, what would it have gotten you to do better in high school?
	Probably not much more than I can just say that I've done better in high school.
	Maybe I could have got denied from some bigger universities.
	Maybe I could have gone to a bigger university, but at the end of the day, I really wasn't too interested in doing that.
	So that's kind of like, you know.
	So you didn't put more effort into something that didn't give you more benefit.
	I mean, you read Mises, you understand why communism, one of the main reasons communism doesn't work, is it separates effort from reward?
	Right.
	Yes.
	So are you saying that you should have had a communist approach to your grades in high school?
	No, I'm serious.
	No, no, no, no.
	I see it.
	I see what you're saying.
	I should have worked harder for no extra pay.
	Yeah, yeah, that's stupid.
	I don't know.
	It's just the way that I look at it is like, you know, that was kind of your job.
	You were a student.
	I wasn't working.
	I was just going to school.
	Your job.
	School is not your job.
	School is forced upon you, and you get very little choice.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's like saying that some guy who's assigned under Stalin to be a janitor should take pride in his job because it's his job.
	It's like, no, that's just his prison sentence is to empty toilets, right?
	So to speak.
	Sure, sure, sure, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, you know, that's kind of the way that I looked at it while I was in university.
	But if you want to, you know, be really honest, I didn't have much choice over going to university.
	I went to private school.
	I was, you know, that was part of that conversation when I said, maybe university isn't for me.
	Well, you're going to have to pay me back for private school if you don't go to university.
	I put you in private school with the idea that you're going to go to university.
	Sorry.
	So when I get there, hang on, hang on.
	Your father said you'll have to pay me back for private school if you don't go to university.
	And how much money would that have been?
	Oh, man.
	I went to private school since I was in eighth grade all the way up through my senior year of high school.
	I did change schools once.
	And when I went to the Catholic school, it was a bit cheaper.
	But we're talking like probably, that's probably $100,000.
	So your father said you have to pay me $100,000 if you don't go to university.
	What do you think of that?
	I didn't like it in the moment, and I don't like it now.
	Why is it funny?
	I'm just trying to laugh it off, really.
	It's not.
	Why are you trying to laugh?
	Hang on.
	Why are you trying to laugh it off?
	I mean, you're more negative about my business suggestions and more positive about your father trying to restore 100 grand out of you.
	it's like a complete inversal or inversion of values here.
	You didn't laugh or show any positivity to my potential solutions for your career issues, but you're laughing and chuckling about your dad threatening you for a hundred thou.
	Yeah.
	I get your point.
	I mean, I'm shocked.
	I'm honestly, I'm shocked that this amount of financial, I mean, catastrophic financial bullying, right?
	$100,000 U.S. is a staggering amount of money, particularly for a young person, right?
	Yes, sir.
	I don't know that it might have been an idle threat.
	I didn't test it.
	So we're minimizing again.
	It's taking me round and round.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm not trying.
	Yeah, no, no, I'm not.
	I'm not trying to minimize that at all.
	But I'm just saying.
	You are.
	You are.
	You said it might not have been a serious threat.
	I mean, but a threat is a threat.
	And it certainly wasn't made as a joke, right?
	Right.
	And I did not take it as a joke in the moment, though.
	Right.
	So that's a threat, right?
	Yes, sir.
	You know, if some guy threatens to set fire to some guy's house, he doesn't get to say I was only joking.
	Correct.
	It was real for you, right?
	Correct.
	Was your mother aware of this threat and what does she say about it?
	Never been able to get a good get sorry, get a good answer on that one.
	Uh, I think I talked to her about it once after the fact.
	Um, it's been like a recent conversation that I can think of, and um I, if I recall correct, she both made light of it and defended it.
	Okay, so you were not raised with negotiation with negotiation skills.
	No, you were raised with top-down kind of bullying stuff, weren't you?
	I mean, if I'm wrong, obviously, correct me.
	Yeah, you know, uh, this is uh let's talk about it this way.
	There's a to quote my grandmother, my father's mother, and uh, to I don't remember the conversation that brought it up, but I remember her saying to me at one point the way that she raised my dad was, This is not a democracy, this is a dictatorship, and uh, I was raised the same way, so yes, your point 100% on the mark.
	Okay, so you were bullied, you weren't reasoned with no, no, no, no, no, no, I was never reasoned with, I was always bullied, yes.
	So are we going back to revisit what you said about your childhood earlier?
	Uh, which part, sir?
	I asked you about your childhood.
	You said it was good.
	I remember the whole thing.
	My parents are together.
	My grandparents are together.
	My aunts and uncles are all together.
	And it was a very positive thing.
	I don't have it like your other call-in listeners, and you gave me quite a sales pitch there, yes, sir.
	I've heard some very dark stuff from some of your other call-in listeners, so um, I was yeah, but they know it's dark, right?
	I okay, so I want to I want to be clear that there's a lot of people in this world that would kill for the childhood that I had, um, and so I don't want to minimize or make light of that at all.
	There were a lot of things that um my parents did that I absolutely disagree with, though.
	Okay, does that make sense?
	I just feel that it's a very good idea.
	I mean, there's a Zoom app perspective that has no emotional content, you know.
	I had a better childhood than some starving kid in Africa.
	Yeah, okay, yeah, so what?
	Yes, sir.
	I get what you're saying, but uh, forgive, I have a hard time, you know, trying to call it a I wouldn't call it a, I would, I still would not call it a bad childhood, um, but I know that you know, you've gone into detail about yours, for example, and you know, if I say, well, no, but I knew mine was bad, I knew mine was bad.
	Well, okay, um, how do I what's the how do I say this?
	If I came on here and I said it was bad because of X, Y, and Z, and you're like, okay, but your parents are still together, you are upper middle class, like, you know, How can you even call it bad when I know that the guy I'm talking to had it far worse?
	You see what I'm saying?
	Well, you're just honest about your experiences.
	You don't compare them to others.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Because you have this comparison thing, right?
	Well, compared to my friends, compared to the guys who had more natural ability in the cross, compared to all the people who got straight A's, compared to this, right?
	It's compared to Steph, my childhood, blah, blah, blah, right?
	But that's all comparison stuff.
	Yes, sir.
	That's not authentic, genuine experience.
	That's just data analytics.
	Yes, sir.
	Because right now, you're I don't want to say crippled, right?
	Because that's that's a very strong statement.
	But right now, you're calling me because you don't know how to move forward in your life.
	Correct.
	Right?
	And then I start talking about solutions, and I get a lot of negativity and pushback.
	And I'm trying to figure out where that comes from.
	Yes, sir.
	Now, when you talked about going into the trades, you got from your father a lot of negativity, hostility, and pushback, right?
	Yes, sir.
	So does your father, and don't have to call me, sir.
	It's a little discompobulating.
	So, so with your father, is that his response to things?
	No, because he crosses, he's basically saying, cross your fingers.
	I'll keep working my context.
	You keep sending out resumes and some door's going to open, right?
	So he thinks the problem is you just have to roll the right number on the dice.
	But he doesn't recognize that one of the issues, I think, as to why you're not getting work is your negativity.
	Okay.
	I mean, I'm sure you've worked with negative people in the various jobs that you've had since you were in high school, right?
	Absolutely.
	And how do you find working with negative people?
	People who don't have any solutions, only problems, and resist solutions and just kind of push back on everything.
	That's very unpleasant.
	Right.
	Do you want to work with those kinds of people?
	Not at all.
	Right.
	If you have those characteristics, I'm not saying to the same degree, do people want to really want to work with you?
	No, of course not.
	Right.
	So that's probably the biggest challenge to overcome is the negativity.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that would make sense.
	If the first time you get any kind of solution, the first thing you introduce is why it won't work and why it's a problem, even when, I mean, this is back to the coaching, right?
	You couldn't be coached in lacrosse either, right?
	I'm sure your lacrosse coach didn't just say, hack around things in the backyard with your brother, but gave you specific drills that you didn't follow, right?
	And you're in your early 20s, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So I'm almost 59.
	I've run a bunch of successful businesses.
	I'm trying to give you some feedback, and you're telling me all the ways in which I'm wrong, right?
	That was not my goal, but yes.
	Well, see, you say things like that.
	Like, you already know I'm an empiricist, right?
	And I think that's the challenge is to figure out why you are not coachable or why you resist coaching.
	And I would assume it's because your father was pretty aggressive and maybe bullying at times.
	So you just resist it.
	Your father's solutions were top-down and probably erased your preferences.
	And so when people try to give you solutions, just as your father did and your mother did, I think you just push back and resist because that's what you're used to.
	Because your father did not engage with you with curiosity to figure out what was the roadblock to your motivations, but simply, in a sense, ordered you.
	He ordered you to do better, wanted you to do better.
	You did the bare minimum, beef or bare minimum, right?
	And then you had doubt about the value of university.
	And he said, well, you owe me $100,000 if you don't go to university, and that was a real threat to you.
	And your father, it doesn't sound like, it doesn't sound like he's taken ownership for his failures in coaching.
	So, how old were you when you were cut for the first time from the lacrosse team?
	I was 14.
	14, okay.
	And how long had you been playing lacrosse for 10 years?
	Right.
	So if you get cut from a lacrosse team, whose primary responsibility is that?
	It's mine.
	I'm sorry?
	That would be mine.
	No, false.
	Because if you were capable of primary responsibilities, you'd be out of the house.
	You'd be an adult.
	So the primary responsibility for you being cut from the team is your parents.
	Because they need to figure out why you resist being coached.
	Because if you resist being coached, you're going to get cut from the team because a coach doesn't want an uncoachable player, right?
	So then it's your parents' job if they meet with your coach or whatever, they find out what your drills are.
	And if you don't do them, then the challenge for your parents is to figure out what is the block in your motivation so that you'll do the drills, right?
	Correct.
	They did not do that.
	They let you fail when it was completely predictable that you were going to fail.
	And then, because they took no responsibility themselves, who takes the blame?
	Yeah, that's right.
	So you blame yourself.
	So then you're like, well, I'm a failure, right?
	And I don't get straight A's and I can't stay on the lacrosse team.
	And, you know, I chose the wrong major in university.
	And, right?
	So you blame yourself because your parents aren't taking responsibility.
	I've never thought about it that way.
	So you're kind of blowing my mind at the moment.
	If you blame yourself for going to university when you faced a $100,000 bill for not going to university when you're making a cozy $15 an hour, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's not rational, is it?
	Yeah, it's correct.
	I mean, I'm doing this math right now.
	All right.
	So let's say $100,000.
	Let's say he doesn't even charge you interest, right?
	So we got $100,000 divided by, well, it's $15 an hour, but you've got taxes and stuff like that, right?
	Correct.
	So let's say, what is it, $12 an hour?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, after taxes, yeah.
	Okay, so $12 an hour.
	All right.
	So then you owed your father 8,333 hours of labor, right?
	Okay.
	So let's divide that by, let's say, 40 hours, just keep the math simple.
	So you owed your father 208 weeks of work, right?
	Without any other expenses.
	Yeah, of course, of course, right.
	So that's four years.
	Assuming that every single penny of your paycheck went directly to your father, you did nothing else, you owed him four years of labor.
	So you might as well go to university.
	Right.
	It's more fun than working minimum wage and handing over your entire paycheck, right?
	Right, yep.
	And it also would have wrecked your relationship with your father.
	Yes, it would have.
	Right.
	So it's time to stop blaming yourself.
	You're blaming yourself because your parents don't take responsibility.
	And listen, I'm not trying to throw them under the bus.
	I'm with you.
	They did some good stuff.
	They did some positive and helpful stuff, right?
	But in terms of your confidence, your father, by not negotiating with you and by not trying to help you figure out your own motivations, your father was setting you up for failure.
	And then he said, you're to blame for your failure, which shreds your self-confidence.
	Yeah, I can definitely see that.
	I've never really even thought about anything close to this, but I can definitely see that as you're spelling it out for me.
	Yeah, so you're angry at the lack of coaching that you received.
	And in fact, one could almost say, although I'm not saying it would be conscious, one could almost say sabotage.
	Right.
	So you're angry at the lack of coaching you received.
	And what that means is that when you get coaching, you get passive, aggressive, negative because you're angry.
	So you said fear.
	I don't think it's fear.
	I think it's anger.
	You're angry at having been bullied.
	You're angry at your parents not taking responsibility.
	And so when you get coached, that anger comes out and you resist the coaching and you make it very unpleasant for the coach because you're mad at your parents for not giving you the proper coaching.
	And the proper coaching isn't telling you what to do.
	The proper coaching is trying to figure out your block, your blocks, right?
	I mean, there's no point telling you to run a bunch of wind sprints if you just first thing you'll do is not run the wind sprints because you resent them, right?
	I have to figure out the resentment.
	I mean, that's what coaching really is.
	Coaching is not telling people what to do.
	coaching is fundamentally removing the barriers to what common sense tells them to do.
	And if you have that lack of self-confidence, that's going to come across in how you communicate to people.
	It's going to come across in your resume.
	I mean, it's just going to come across.
	And when you first start out in a professional career, you need a lot of coaching, right?
	Absolutely.
	And if bosses or managers or team leads or project leads or whoever, if they sense that you are going to be resistant to coaching and hostile towards it, they will not hire you.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	I mean, when I got my first programming job, it was in a language I didn't know in an operating system I'd never even heard of.
	It was COBOL 74 on a tandem operating system.
	And it was in an industry, which is stocks and bonds trading, that I did not know.
	I mean, I had some general economic understanding, but not that, right?
	So I needed a lot of coaching.
	And I was thrilled to get the coaching.
	I was happy to get the coaching.
	I really worked hard to reward because people like to coach, right?
	Because it's one of the things I'm doing on this call, right?
	People like to coach.
	It's good to help people overcome their resistances to their own potential.
	It's a productive and positive thing in the world.
	So I needed a lot of coaching.
	I was very thankful for the coaching.
	And there were times when I was annoyed by it too.
	But that's natural, right?
	Because most of us are pushed around.
	It wasn't like, you know, I'm not saying it's all at home, right?
	It's not like you said there were a couple of teachers or classes that you enjoyed, but for the most part, it was not fun, right?
	Because that's why you said it's like a job.
	It's like, no, high school is just ideology being imposed upon you.
	And maybe it was slightly better in private school, but still, they still have to follow the curriculum as a whole for the most part.
	So you had teachers who were just telling you what to do and not trying to figure out your resistance to it.
	And teachers in schools, they can't figure out your resistance because your resistance is to being forced to do stuff, but that's cool.
	Right.
	I mean, it's like trying to figure out why is somebody not enjoying their job in prison.
	It's like, because they're in prison.
	Can they get out of prison?
	Nope.
	Not for a long time.
	So there's not much point trying to figure out motivation because it's understood.
	Right.
	So I think that it's frustration, anger at not having people try and figure out what your resistance is, not being empathetic as to why you don't want to do things.
	But they just keep telling you to do things and then they blame you when you don't do them.
	Yeah.
	So I think.
	Now that you're saying this, I can definitely see that.
	Yeah.
	So tell me about what you think of what I'm saying.
	Yeah, I think it totally makes a lot of sense.
	And it's also at the same time, being somebody who's like definitely resistant to authority, that kind of helps to explain why I'm so resistant to authority as well.
	I mean, like I, while somehow being raised with an iron fist of sorts, I was also grew up constantly believing that all authority need be questioned.
	And I don't know how those two things came true at once, but that kind of makes sense now that I have gone into this with you.
	Good, good.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's the stuff to figure out within yourself that, you know, if you're bullied and threatened, you're just going to resist.
	That's nature of the beast.
	And of course, you know, the ADHD stuff, I mean, you know, my view on it in the general ADHD is smart kids in a boring school environment.
	And, you know, but it's just chalked up to completely untestable, unproven biochemical theory, right?
	Brain chemistry imbalance or whatever, right?
	So, yeah, I think trying to figure out what your resistance is to being coached is once you figure that out and can learn to really genuinely embrace coaching, then people will really want to coach you.
	And when people sense that you're coachable, they'll hire you into entry-level positions.
	If they sense you're not coachable, they won't.
	And I doubt you would either.
	Right, yeah.
	I wouldn't blame anybody for not doing that.
	All right.
	Yeah, I mean, it might be worth having a conversation with your parents about, you know, lack of negotiation or lack of curiosity about your motivations when you were a kid.
	Might be worth something like that and see how that plays out.
	But whether that happens or not, I think definitely, you know, some journaling and some I'm a big fan of therapy, though I know money's tight, of course, at the moment.
	But, you know, you can get books with journaling and sentence completion stuff.
	John Gray has them.
	Nathaniel Brandon has them and so on.
	And you can get them secondhand and they're well worth working through.
	I think once you can learn to really embrace the joys of being coached, I think your career will open up in one direction or another.
	Do you think that's like a, there's also almost like a fake it till you make it aspect of that?
	what do you mean uh to uh maybe that's not really fake it till you make it but like go out of my way to try to be coached and embrace it as much as possible and like almost forcing myself into uh does that make sense you Well, I wouldn't work on actions at the moment.
	I would work on internals.
	You know, because everybody, when they get an insight on these shows, what do they always say?
	Well, what do I do about it?
	How do I act on it?
	It's like, well, just figure out what's going on with your resistance.
	Now, the fake it till you make it stuff, I mean, obviously, you don't want to completely fake things because that would be fraudulent.
	But it is fair to say, I'm a smart person.
	I'm going to work hard at this.
	I will figure it out.
	That's confidence, right?
	I didn't fake UPB, but I did sit down saying, I'm going to figure out secular ethics.
	I've been doing philosophy for 30 years.
	I'm going to figure this out.
	But I didn't say I have a proof before I had the proof, but I had the confidence to figure it out that I was going to figure it out, to know that I was going to figure it out.
	And it's the same thing, you know, when I was a programmer, there'd be some new big challenge, and I'd be like, okay, I don't know how to solve it, but I'm confident I will be able to solve it.
	And most times I could.
	So I think with regards to all of that, it's not fake it till you make it, but it is recognizing that with enthusiasm, you can solve almost anything.
	Without enthusiasm, I mean, people who are enthusiastic climbed to the top of Mount Everest.
	People who aren't enthusiastic can't go up three flights of stairs, right?
	So enthusiasm is the fundamental way that things get achieved in this world.
	And if you have this undertow of resentment and resistance, then it's going to be very hard to achieve anything, if not impossible.
	But once you uncork that and you take that damn away and the enthusiasm, right?
	I mean, I've talked to some people, you know, again, I'm not saying the AI thing is some magical solution, but it's certainly worth exploring and it gives you good skills who would be like jumping up and down as like, oh my God, what a great idea.
	Oh my God, let me make a note of this.
	I'm going to spend all weekend on this.
	That can happen, right?
	And then maybe after the end of the weekend or the week or the two weeks or whatever, you find out it doesn't really do much.
	Okay.
	But it's worth the enthusiasm is what counts.
	Whereas if you're like, oh, yeah, but they're going to filter it out and I don't have credentials, then you're just not going to work at it.
	Right.
	And Then people aren't going to want to coach you because they give you solutions and you tell them how those solutions aren't going to work prior to even trying.
	Whereas if you're enthusiastic for the solutions, you give it your all.
	And look, I guarantee you, I guarantee you, getting AI skills is essential for everyone these days.
	I have no disagreement.
	Right.
	So if you hadn't thought of that and that's something that we are talking about, then the enthusiasm for that should have you dive in and find a way to make it work.
	And so, yeah, I think the enthusiasm is key.
	And it's not any personal flaw that you lack enthusiasm or you have this resentment or the yes-but thing.
	Trying to uncork that, trying to take that damn away so the waters of enthusiasm can flow unimpeded, I think, is the key to getting your career off the ground in whatever direction it's going to go.
	Absolutely.
	That makes sense.
	Do you know of any good courses off the top of your head?
	Have you worked with them before?
	You mean sort of AI courses?
	Yeah, I mean, obviously, I can type it in.
	Yeah, you should look into it because it's going to be more specific.
	It's not going to be up to you.
	Yeah, it's going to be more specific.
	Yeah, I didn't know if you knew anything.
	No, I you personally work with.
	No, I mean, I've worked with AI quite a bit, but not because I don't need to be credentialed for it because I'm just plugging my own stuff into it.
	All right, brother.
	Well, I'm going to stop here, but I really do appreciate your time today, and I hope you'll keep me posted about how it's going.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I feel that I kind of like bugged you and annoyed you a bit throughout the conversation.
	I really do apologize for that.
	No, no, that's fine.
	Honestly, that's, I mean, I appreciate the honesty.
	And without you being direct about that kind of stuff, we wouldn't have got to the solution.
	So don't worry about that at all.
	That's no problem at all.
	Yes, sir.
	I just didn't want to.
	I apologize for calling you that again.
	I was just trying to show some respect.
	Respect with that one.
	All right.
	Thanks, Mel, brother.
	Keep me posted.

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