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Sept. 18, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:54
EVEN MORE ANSWERS TO ‘X’ LISTENER QUESTIONS 7!
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All right, Stefan Molyu from Freedomain, freedomain.com slash Janate to help out philosophy, really would appreciate that.
And let's get to some more questions from the fine, fine listeners at X. Well, the first one's not so fine.
A fellow, I assume as a fellow, writes, is the proper formulation for UPBs always an outwardly directed negation of the universal preference.
Also, it seems that there are universal preferences which aren't UPB until other UPBs are already met.
Which, if any, UPB do you see as primary?
I think it's do not lie.
Oh my.
Oh my, oh my, oh my, oh my.
So I would like to give you, if you'd be so very kind and indulge me, I would like to give you communication 101.
Communication 101.
Now, if you want other people, say me, to answer your question, then you need to make the question comprehensible.
I mean, you don't have to do it, but I'm not going to answer a question that is not clearly stated.
So if we look at is the proper formulation for UPBs always an outwardly directed negation of the universal preference, I'm not sure exactly what that means.
It's not very common language.
I've been cooking around in philosophy for decades, and I'm not really sure what an outwardly directed negation of the universal preference.
Now, what this means is that you are not good at talking about ideas.
You may be good at thinking them, but you're not good, and you don't have a lot of empathy for the other person.
So if I were to type out a question, as I often do, what I would do is I would say to myself, does the question make sense?
Can I illustrate it any better?
Can I provide examples?
Can I provide an analogy?
Can I provide it in a syllogistical format or something like that?
That would be a way that I would explain it.
I mean, I think, I think, with regards to UPB, outwardly directed negation of the universal preference.
I think what he means is if we were to put forward a UPB statement, thou shalt steal, that's an outwardly directed and it's an action because it's behavior, not thoughts, and it's a negation, which is thou shalt not steal.
So is the proper formulation for UPBs always an outwardly directed negation of the universal preference?
I think that means acting upon others and it's a thou shalt not.
But why not just say that?
Right?
Why not just say, is the proper formulation for UPBs always a ban upon action?
Or something like that.
Or here's an example.
And says, also, it seems, now seems, I'm telling you, man, I'm telling you straight up, brothers and sisters, seems, nay, not seems, tis.
Seems is one of these words that is almost always followed by a straw man.
So it seems like what you're saying, okay, there's going to be a straw man, right?
Why not quote what I'm saying?
And so that is not a good approach.
So what you're really saying is, or it seems to me that, or, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
That is always, almost always, followed by projection.
Seems means that you are drawing an inference from something I have not specifically said, right?
So it seems that there are universal preferences which aren't UPBs until other UPBs are already met.
Which, if any, UPB do you see as primary?
I think it's do not lie.
Well, we can think of examples where lying achieves a good.
I ran through a whole bunch of them in a show recently.
So we can think of examples where lying would achieve a good.
Or at least it wouldn't be particularly bad, right?
I mean, if you've been a parent, right?
If your kid comes to you with their little lollipop figure drawing and little sun up in the sky and they say, do you think, is this beautiful?
I'll say, oh, that's lovely, right?
Is it objectively lovely?
I mean, it's beautiful relative to whatever, right?
So a guy's in a car crash and he's dying and his wife and kids are already dead in the back and he says, are my wife and kids okay?
You say, yeah, they're fine.
They're fine.
And then he dies without knowing that his family has died as well.
I mean, I would do that kindness.
You know, the old example from Socrates, oh, I think it was Kant.
Somebody comes and says, where's your wife?
I want to kill her.
Well, you don't say where your wife is, right?
Or, you know, you have to return what you've borrowed.
Well, let's say that you've borrowed your friend's axe and he comes and says, give me my axe back.
I want to go and kill my wife.
Well, then you wouldn't give him his axe back, right?
So we can think of sort of exceptions to these kinds of things.
There's never an exception for murder, right?
And there's never an exception for rape.
And these are the initiations of the use of force, right?
Not in self-defense, right?
You could rape in self-defense, right?
And so there are not exceptions to these things, but we can think of exceptions where bending the truth or lying or whatever it is is something that we could do.
It's not a huge harm.
See, lying is not violently inflicted upon another, right?
Lying is not something that is violently inflicted on others.
Assault is, right?
Some guy jumps out of the bushes and hits you over the head with a baseball bat.
That's violently inflicted.
Lying is not violently inflicted.
And I'm not talking about sort of the breaking of a contract.
I'm not talking about fraud or that sort of stuff.
I'm talking about just lying.
Lying is not violently inflicted upon you, so it's not primary.
All right.
Sorry for the coarse language.
It's not mine.
Stefan, can you talk about the cockblocking mother?
It is a mother who has lived her life, had her kids, but is divorced and so decides to live with her daughter, usually firstborn, under the guise of it being economically smart.
The daughter therefore never gets to date.
Well, I'm not sure why you'd say cockblocking when you're talking about a daughter.
So the more common thing, at least what I've seen, and this is not anything objective, it's just what I've seen.
But the more common thing is that a single mother of a single son, I've seen this happen at least four or five times when I was younger, the single son of a single mother,
the single mother keeps inviting him over, does not dress him well, does not give him a good haircut, and is planning to keep him around to stuff the whole of her loneliness because she is, and particularly when she gets past the age where she can attract men from a sexual standpoint.
So the single mom grooms or absorbs, encapsulates, and removes the child from society and her son, and then keeps him around.
I mean, it could happen with daughters.
I was obviously more friends with boys and girls when I was younger as a kid, my teens.
And so that is the more common formulation I write about this in my novel from like 25 years ago called The God of Atheists.
So That situation seems to me very common.
And to keep a man, to keep a boy unattractive, right, again, put him in bad clothes, give him a bad haircut or no haircut, and don't teach him about grooming.
Don't take him to the dentist as often as you should.
Don't teach him about deodorant and all of that.
And I was very much one of these feral boys kept home by my mother until various life events intervened to have me vault from the bottom to the top of sexual market value in a very rapid time.
In fact, I got such a good makeover that everyone thought I was the new kid, did not recognize me at all.
And I went from being ignored by girls to, I mean, the two most attractive girls in my entire year fighting over me.
It was one of these kinds of crazy things that happens.
It gives you a real sense of where things are or what values there are in the world.
I'm not criticizing it.
I'm just pointing it out.
So the issue where lonely parents cling to children is very common.
And maybe we see it in that sort of female aspect of things, but it also happens in terms of the males, right?
So you could have a man, a boy, who is kept around.
The mother is like, oh, coming over for dinner.
Oh, murder she wrote is on.
Oh, I've made some hamburger helper.
Oh, I'm going to the grocery store.
Do you want me to pick you anything up?
And is just constantly inviting him over because she's lonely.
And women, I think, tend to suffer more from loneliness than men do, which is, I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.
It's actually quite a strength to feel lonely.
I remember over the course of my life, I mean, I think I would feel it now, happily married and so on, but I remember when I was younger, if there was, for some reason, I just didn't see people for a while, I don't ever remember experiencing loneliness.
I have my books and my poetry to protect me.
So I just didn't, I mean, I could read, I could write, I loved walks, and I just, my company is my own company is tough to compete with because my brain is very fertile.
It's a lot of fun being in here.
A lot of really interesting ideas and thoughts and creativity.
And I don't generally feel lonely.
I don't generally experience loneliness.
But I certainly know other people who have experienced that.
And I think without exception, almost all of them have been women.
Men can get too used to isolation, which is not healthy.
And women can get too dependent upon others.
And a family is automatic relationships, right?
I mean, I would say unearned relationships, but you're just born into them.
They're the people around.
They kind of have to care about you.
They kind of have to know you.
And I spend time with you and all of that.
And it does make people sometimes a little bit lazy to simply rely on family stuff rather than go out there in the free market of friendships and work to compete.
You know, it's really tough.
I've had to battle this in my own heart from time to time.
When you know someone who's really lonely, who's really isolated, ouch, it's rough, man.
It's really rough.
And I don't just mean like someone who's an ascetic or a monk or who likes living in the woods or whatever, but somebody who's like really, really lonely.
And in particular, women also go a little crazy when they're alone.
And boy, you know, if you are the single son of a single mother, and I have a brother, but I spent years with my mother on my own for various convoluted family reasons.
So I was like a third or a quarter a single son.
And if you have somebody who's really isolated, then going your own way and moving on with your life, moving away, getting things done, going a date, getting, you know.
It's tough because there's this boat anchor around your heart that's kind of dragging you down, which is the isolation and the obligation, right?
I remember dating this woman, oh, decades ago, and having a sort of interesting, maybe odd, maybe odd to me, interesting conflict.
This was sort of in my 20s.
And it's like, hey, it's New Year's.
What are we going to do?
And she's like, well, I'm staying home with my parents.
And I'm like, what?
You're in your mid-20s.
What do you mean you're staying home with your parents?
Well, you know, it's a family tradition.
They like to watch the ball drop on TV.
So I stay home with them.
And I was like, I don't quite follow that.
I mean, it's New Year's Eve.
You're supposed to be out there having a ball and making mistakes and storing up stories for your dotage, right?
So what do you mean?
What are you talking about?
And it was just, it was immovable, right?
Now, of course, if my daughter was in her mid-20s and was wanting to stay home with my wife and I, or go where we were going, let's say for whatever reason, I like to go out, obviously, for New Year's Eve.
But if my daughter was 25 and for whatever reason, maybe my wife and I were ill and we were staying home and she said, I feel obligated to stay home with you guys, we would be like, no, for heaven's sakes, you're in your 20s.
I mean, I hope she'd be married by then, but for heaven's sakes, you're in your 20s.
Go and go out with friends.
Make some mistakes.
All right.
So it is, yeah, it's pretty terrible.
It's very hard.
It's very hard to fix that.
I don't know that I've had much success as a whole in fixing that with friends.
Because it's, I mean, it is a real slippery slope.
You have companionship.
You have people who know you very well.
You kind of hang out with each other.
And being the sort of little Lord Fauntle Roy substitute husband for a lonely single mother is kind of the doomed fate of at least one of the males offspring, one of the male offspring.
And if it's a sink in, single son of a single mother seems to be just about the worst combo.
And unfortunately, of course, if the single mother is boring or difficult or dysfunctional or intrusive, invasive, or needy or whatever, then, and I've just written about this in my new novel called Dissolution.
So if the mom is kind of needy and difficult or dysfunctional, then, you know, stuffing the single son into her loneliness void keeps her from bothering other family members.
So a lot of times it's, oh, you've got to go take care of your mother.
Oh, you've got to go talk to your mother.
Oh, you've got to go spend time with your mother.
And that's because nobody else really wants to.
And they just kind of, yeah, human sacrifice is an ancient, is an ancient ritual.
All right.
Who do you think was the last or latest great or towering philosopher?
Obviously, that's my goal.
Great or towering philosopher.
I would say that Ayn Rand and objectivism was excellent stuff and helped really root me in metaphysical and in epistemological reality.
I differ.
I disagree with Ayn Rand on ethics and politics, or I think she's wrong.
I don't just disagree.
I think she's wrong.
In fact, I know that she's wrong.
But she was really great.
And the ability of her to write novels to communicate her philosophy was amazing.
All right.
How can the right to freedom of speech be reconciled with the immorality of telling lies?
If, since the two can't be reconciled, can you think of a better principle to encourage civil discourse while protecting society from the harms of deception?
Well, unfortunately, unfortunately, statism, which is the organizing of society around a coercive government, the principle of statism makes lying so profitable.
And since human beings respond to incentives, if you can make massive amounts of money through a lie and know that you'll never get punished, people will do that.
Remember, we are survival and reproduction machines at our core.
And we are not designed for morality.
We are not designed for truth or virtue or integrity or being an upstanding citizen or any of that.
We are designed to survive and to reproduce.
And nature, of course, what we would call lying, sort of falsehood and deception in nature is everywhere.
So statism just makes lying so profitable.
And another issue, and this is sort of the Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos, was it Theranos?
Sort of issue, which is in the software field, if you have two vendors, Bob and Doug, and vendor Bob says a project's going to cost half a million dollars and take a year.
And Doug, the other vendor, says it's going to take six months and $200,000, it's hard for people to know who's telling the truth and who's lying.
Maybe the other guy is, maybe the guy who's cheaper is just really, really great.
He's got a whole bunch of code libraries and brilliant coders and so on.
And, you know, it's, if somebody's going to offer to build a dock, you've got a cottage and build a dock to say, well, the one guy says it's going to take a month and 40 grand.
Another guy says, you know, three days, $1,500.
Well, you kind of know that something's not right about that, right?
You just kind of know.
But software is kind of goopy and abstract and so on.
So if you are a purchaser of software products, then it's really hard to know who's telling the truth and who's not.
And, you know, once you start down the road and you get sort of an underbid or you take the lowest bid and the shortest time frame, and it turns to be as much, if not more, expensive than the other person, well, it doesn't really make much difference.
So the temptation to misrepresent things in a software environment is very high.
And it's even more so in politics.
So it's kind of like saying to your kids, if you say to your kids, I want you to tell me the truth, right?
But then when they tell you the truth about something that upsets you, you beat them with a wooden spoon.
Well, I mean, you're saying, tell me the truth, and then you're beating them with a wooden spoon.
So it's kind of tough for them to tell the truth, right?
So freedom of speech, the immorality of telling lies, yeah.
So if the lies have, you know, material consequences, such as the breaking of contract, you can sue.
You can also use defamation and libel laws and so on to attempt to recover damages and all that.
But yeah, telling lies, just don't be around liars.
Like lies, as I said earlier, lies are not forcefully inflicted upon you.
You have to choose to be around liars.
So if there's someone who keeps lying, I mean, you know, I don't know, everybody might bend the truth from once in a while.
I mean, that's not a huge issue.
But if you decide to spend time around people who lie, then you're rewarding lies.
You're rewarding liars, right?
So sort of take the fine people hoax, right?
So if you choose to spend time and break bread and bring birthday presents to and all of that, and you choose to spend time with people who lie or repeat lies or don't question propaganda or anything like that, well, you're choosing lies.
You're choosing liars.
I don't think that choosing liars is a good idea.
I don't think it's a good policy.
I don't think it's a good plan to choose liars and reward liars and break bread with liars and bring birthday presents and gift baskets to liars or whatever, have them over for dinner.
I don't think it's a good plan.
But, hey, you know, if you like getting regularly lashed with the beat me, eat me licorice whip in your sexual play, I don't think it's particularly healthy.
I don't particularly care.
Just keep it out of sight of the kids and anyone who's not participating.
Which is, I guess, true of all sexual activity, not specific to that.
But no, no, I want some licorice.
But anyway, so, you know, there's tons of things that I think are bad.
And I think that having liars in your life is a bad idea because it keeps the truth tellers away.
Because if you know the truth about particular, you know, say particular bits of propaganda, right?
If you know the truth about it and you tell people the truth and then they continue to pursue lies and falsehood, well, I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's going to keep people who know the truth away from you and yours, but I certainly would never in a million years use force to prevent people from hanging out with liars.
You know, if there's a woman, she's got a real sketchy boyfriend.
He's constantly lying to her about various things and she continues to date him.
It's like, well, I think that's a bad idea.
But what am I going to do?
Use force to prevent them from making the beast with two backs?
No.
If you want to hang out with liars, again, it's a bad idea, but you're not initiating the use of force.
You are.
I mean, you're corrupting society as a whole in general.
But that's way too abstract, a wrong.
People who don't exercise, I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's a bad idea to overeat and to not exercise.
But what am I going to do?
Drag people and gunpoint and take them to the gym?
Well, no, of course not.
There's lots of people who have bad ideas, make bad decisions and so on, but they're not violently inflicting them on others, right?
So the harms of deception, you've got to lower the stakes.
You've got to stop rewarding people.
And, you know, if there are people around you who are fine with having liars in their life, I would recommend not having them in your life, but it's up to you.
All right.
What approach to epistemology, which is the study of knowledge, how do we know true or valid knowledge from false or invalid knowledge?
What approach to epistemology do you find most compelling?
Compelling, i.e., Peronian skepticism versus academic skepticism, foundationalism versus coherentism and infinitism, etc.
Have you got your own algorithm for determining what you really know, for determining that you really know what you think you know?
Thanks.
Well, yes.
I mean, we build valid concepts from the universal laws of logic, which are derived from the consistent and predictable behavior of matter and energy.
Right?
So, Aristotle's three laws of logic.
I've got a whole book on this called Out of the Argument, which you can get at artoftheargument.com.
But three laws of logic, right?
So, A is A, a thing is itself, and nothing else.
Yeah, that's a rock is a rock and not a rock and a gas and an umbrella at the same time.
A rock is a rock, right?
An object is either a rock or something else.
An object cannot be both a rock and something else at the same time.
So, I mean, this is all derived from the behavior, universal predictability and behavior of matter and energy.
So, we get our laws of logic through the consistency of the senses, which relays to us the consistent, predictable, and universal behavior of matter and energy.
So, if I'm looking at an object and I say that is a tree, but it is in fact a cell tower, I'm wrong, right?
So, in order for things to be true, they must be universally consistent, which means logically consistent.
They cannot be self-contradictory.
And if they pass the test of logic, then they may be true in reality, right?
So, let's take a, I took as a mythical creature, a dragon, to which a bunch of pet ants sent me pictures of a cumulative dragon.
It's like, yeah, but it's not a dragon, doesn't breathe fire, it's not intelligent, can't talk, doesn't steal virgins, can't fly.
Like, it's not a dragon, right?
This is called a dragon, right?
Like, you can get these little guppies called sharks.
It doesn't mean that they're sharks.
Anyway, so let's take a mythical creature like a unicorn, right?
A magical horse with a horn on its head, right?
Not a horse with a horn on its head, but a magical horse with a horn on its head.
It can fly, it can paint rainbows with its tail, whatever it is, right?
Now, does a unicorn pass the test of logic?
Well, no, because it's got magic, and magic is that which is opposed to logic.
It's why we call the miracles, right?
A human being cannot walk on water.
Don't give me ice, right?
A human being cannot walk on water.
And so, the fact that we know that Jesus, or the argument for Jesus being divine, is that he can walk on water, right?
It's a contradiction of the laws of physics.
Human beings are heavier than water, so they do not float, right?
So, a unicorn that is magical does not pass the test of logic, and therefore we do not need to know, we don't need to search the universe to find out if there's such a thing as a unicorn.
There is not.
Because for a unicorn to fly without wings or, you know, to fly, to become lighter than air, though mammals are heavier than air, is a contradiction of the laws of physics and therefore does not exist.
Now, if you, though, say, how about a unicorn that is simply a horse or a horse-like creature with a horn on its head?
Could that exist?
Well, it passes the test of logic.
It's certainly possible for there to be a horse-like creature in the universe that has a horn coming out of its head.
If you were to say a dragon is a fire-breathing creature that is intelligent, has the power of language and flies, well, none of those are self-contradictory entities.
I guess you could store methane in your gullet and light it by sparking things with your teeth.
I don't know, whatever, right?
But A lizard that could fly?
Well, isn't that a pterodactyl or something like that?
And is it possible for evolution to grant intelligence at some point to a lizard?
I mean, I don't know.
I'm not a biologist, but let's just say it's not impossible.
Whereas if you say a dragon is a magical creature, magic being a violation of the laws of physics, well, then we know for sure that that dragon does not exist.
Because if something violates the laws of physics, it cannot exist.
So something could exist, a unicorn with a horn on its head, or an intelligent lizard that can fly, that is very big.
Yeah, these things could exist.
But a horse, by definition, has legs because it is heavier than air.
I know that birds also have legs, but that's because they walk, but they also have wings.
Well, what about a pegasus?
What about a horse with wings?
I mean, it seems unlikely because horses are very much adapted to walking and running on land, and you kind of have to make a choice with your investment in evolution.
If you're going to go for wings, you're going to end up with smaller legs.
If you're going to end up with bigger, stronger legs, it's probably the expense of wings.
You got to make a commitment, right?
You've got to make a commitment.
It's going to be air primary or ground primarily.
It's going to wings or legs primarily, right?
But okay, it could happen.
It could happen.
So there are things which cannot exist.
There are things which could exist but aren't proven.
And then there are things which can exist that are proven.
So a horse exists and is proven.
A unicorn, simply as a horse with a horn on its head, could exist, but is not proven.
It would be proven if we went to some other planet and found a horse with a horn on its head.
I mean, it wouldn't be exactly a horse, but you know what I mean.
And then there are things which cannot exist.
A square circle and an object that is both heavier than air and lighter than air, that is subject to gravity and anti-gravity at the same time, right?
These things cannot exist, and we don't need to hunt the universe to find out and disprove them.
So this is why I'm an empiricist.
And empiricism is not subsequent to reason.
Like we don't have reason, and then we get empiricism.
Reason comes from empiricism.
Reason comes from the stable and predictable behavior and universal characteristics of the laws of physics of matter and energy.
And so we get reason through the senses.
And then reason validates conjectures or hypothesis, which then can be further validated by putting them to the test of empirical evidence.
So that's my approach.
I hope that it's helpful.
I know that it's valid because it proves the validity and utility of the scientific method, which is one of the most powerful things.
Logic, scientific method, free market.
These are the big things that the West has given the world, which the world eternally curses the West for, but that's a topic for another time.
So I hope that this is helpful.
Freedomain.com/slash tonight.
Love to get these questions.
Hope you're having a beautiful day.
And we will talk to you soon.
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