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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 Molieu from Free Domain, Freedom.com slash Jonate 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 it's a fellow, writes, is the proper formulation for UPBs always an outwardly directed negation of the universal preference.
Also it seems that there are preference 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 uh communication one oh one Communication one oh one.
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 gonna answer a question that is not clearly stated.
So if we look at is the proper formulation for UPB is 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 outward outwardly directed negation of a 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 at 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 uh 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.
Uh 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 that'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 gonna 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 went 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're if you've 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?
Oh that's lovely, right?
Is it objectively lovely?
I mean, It's beautiful relative to whatever, right?
Um so uh 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, My wife and kids okay, you say, Yeah, they're fine, they're fine.
Uh, and then he dies without knowing that his family has died as well.
I mean, I I would do that kindness.
You know, the old example from uh Socrates, uh uh oh, I think it was Kant, uh, somebody comes and says, uh, where's your wife?
I want to kill her.
Well, you don't say where your wife is, right?
Or, you know, uh 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.
Uh well, then you wouldn't give him his axe back, right?
So we can think of sort of exceptions to these kinds of things.
Uh there's uh 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?
Not you could rape in self-defense, right?
And so there are not uh exceptions to these things, but we can think of exceptions where bending the truth or lying or whatever it is, uh is uh something that we 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.
Uh 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.
Um sorry for the coarse language, it's not mine.
Stefan, can you talk about the cock blocking 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 cock blocking when you're talking about a daughter.
So uh 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 uh 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 uh attract men from a sexual standpoint.
So the uh single mom uh grooms or absorbs encapsulates uh 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, and my teens, and so that is the more common formulation.
I write about this in my novel from like twenty-five years ago called The God of Atheists.
So that situation seems to me very common.
And to keep a man uh to keep a boy unattractive, right?
Again, put him in bad clothes, give him a bad haircut or no haircut, and uh don't teach him about uh grooming, don't take him to the dentist uh as often as you should.
Uh don't teach him about uh deodorant and uh all of that.
And I was very much one of these feral boys, kept home by my mother uh until uh 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 uh fighting over me.
It was it was one of these kinds of crazy things that happens, it gives you a real uh sense of where things are or what values there are in the world.
I'm not criticizing it.
Uh I'm just pointing pointing it out.
So the issue where lonely parents cling to children is uh very common.
And maybe we see it in that sort of uh female aspect of things, but it's also happens in terms of the males, right?
So you could have a man a boy who is uh 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?
Uh and just constantly inviting him over because she's lonely.
And women, I think, tend to suffer more from loneliness than uh men do.
Which is I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.
Uh it's uh actually quite a strength to feel uh lonely.
I remember over the course of my life.
I mean, I I think I would feel it now, you know, happily married and so on, but I remember when I was younger, uh if if there was for some reason I just didn't see people for a while, I don't ever remember experiencing uh loneliness.
Um I have my books, I'm my poetry to protect me.
So uh I just didn't I mean I I could read, I could write.
Uh I love books, and uh I just my company is uh my own company is tough to compete with because my brain is very fertile.
It's a lot of fun being in here.
It's 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 uh 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?
Uh I mean it would say unearned relationships, but you're just born into them.
They're the people around, they kinda have to care about you, they kinda have to uh know you and spend time with you and and all of that.
And uh 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.
Uh I've had to uh 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 and I don't just mean like someone who's an aesthetic or a monk or who likes living in the woods or whatever, but somebody who's like really, really lonely.
And uh it's s uh i in particular women also go a little crazy when they're alone.
And boy, you know, if if you are the single f son of a single mother, and I have a brother, but I spent years with my uh mother uh on my own, uh, for various convoluted family reasons, so I was like a third or a quarter a single son.
And if you have uh somebody who's really isolated, then going your own way moving on with your life, moving away, getting things done, go on a date uh 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 uh having uh a sort of interesting maybe odd, maybe odd to me, interesting conflict.
This was sort of in my twenties.
And it's like, hey, it's New Year's, what are we gonna do?
And she's like, Well, I'm staying home with my parents.
And I'm like, what?
You're in your mid-twenties, what do you mean you're staying home with your par 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, um I don't quite follow that.
I mean, it's 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 um it was immovable, right?
Now, of course, if my daughter was in her uh mid-twenties and was wanting to stay home with uh my wife and I, or go where we were going, or let's say for whatever reason I like to go out, obviously for New Year's Eve, but if my daughter was twenty five and for whatever reason, maybe my wife and I were ill and we were staying home, and she said, I I'm I feel obligated to stay home with you guys, we would be like, No, for heaven's sakes, you're in your twenties.
I mean, I hope she'll be married by then, but for heaven's sakes, you're in your twenties, go and uh go out with friends.
Make some mistakes.
Alright, so uh it is, yeah, it's 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, uh, you kinda hang out with each other, and being the sort of little Lord Fontalroy substitute husband for a lonely single mother is uh kind of the doomed fate of at least one of the males offspring or 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 I've just written 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 kinda human sacrifice is an ancient uh is an ancient ritual.
All right.
Um 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 uh Ayn Rand and objectivism was uh excellent stuff and uh helps really root me in metaphysical and in epistemological reality, I differ or I I um disagree with Ayn Rand on ethics and politics.
Or I think she's wrong, and don't just disagree.
I think she's wrong.
In fact, I know that she's wrong, but she was uh 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 uh coercive government, the the 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, uh people will do that.
Remember, we are survival and reproduction machines at our core.
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 uh Theranos, was it Theranos?
Sort of issue, which is in the software field, if you have two vendors, uh Bob and Doug, and vendor Bob says a project's gonna cost uh half a million dollars and take a year, and uh Doug, the other vendor says it's gonna take six months and two hundred thousand dollars.
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, has got a whole bunch of code libraries and brilliant coders and so on.
And you know, it's it's if somebody's gonna offer to build a dock, you got a cottage to build a doctor, say, well, the one guy says it's gonna take a month and forty grand, and another guy says, you know, three days, fifteen hundred bucks.
Well, you kinda know that something's not right about that, right?
You just kinda know.
But software is kind of goopy and abstract and 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, uh and you get sort of a underbid or you take the lowest bid and the shortest time frame, and it turns to 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 uh very high.
And it's even more so in politics.
So it's kind of like saying to your kid 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.
Uh you can also uh uh use defamation and libel laws and so on uh to attempt to recover uh damages and all that.
But yeah, telling lies.
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 may bend the truth from once in a while, I mean, it's not not a huge issue.
But if you dec 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 uh 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 that's you 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 uh 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 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 there's tons of things that I think are uh 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 yeah, 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 uh lies and falsehood, well I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's gonna keep people who know the truth away from you and yours, but I'm 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 uh lying to her about various things, and she continues to date him, it's like, well, I I think that's a bad idea.
But what am I gonna do?
Use force to prevent them from making the beast with two bags?
No.
If you want to hang out with liars, um again, it's a bad idea, but you're not initiating the use of force.
You are I mean you you're corrupting society as a whole in general, but that's way too abstract, a wrong.
People people who don't uh exercise, I think it's a bad idea.
I think it's, you know, a bad idea to overeat and to not exercise.
But what am I gonna do?
Drag people and gunpoint take them to the gym?
Well, no, of course not.
There's lots of people who have uh bad ideas, uh, make bad decisions and so on, but they're not violently inflicting them on others, right?
So the harms of deception, you gotta lower the stakes, you gotta stop rewarding people, and you know, if 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 just up to you.
Alright.
Uh what approach to epistemology, uh, which is the study of knowledge, how do we know?
True uh 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 Art at the Argument dot com, but uh three laws of logic, right?
So uh 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 a 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, uh universal predictability and behavior of matter and energy.
So uh 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, uh I'm wrong.
Right, so uh in order for things to be true, they must be universally consistent, uh which means logically consistent.
Uh they cannot be self-contradictory, and if they pass the test of logic, then they may be true in reality.
Right, so uh take a m I was I took uh as a mythical creature, a dragon, to which a bunch of uh pedants uh sent me pictures of uh a cumulative dragon, it's like yeah, but it's not a 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 uh I take uh a mythical creature like a uh 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.
Uh it can fly, uh it can paint ray bows 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 they do not to flirt, right?
So a unicorn that is magical, does not pass the test of logic, and therefore we do not need to know uh we don't need to search the universe to find out if there's such a thing as a unicorn.
Uh there is not.
Because uh for a unicorn to fly through without wings or, you know, to fly to to become lighter than air, though mammals are heavier than air, is a contradiction of the laws of physics, and therefore uh it does not 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 uh um a lizard that could uh 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 a 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 uh birds also have legs, but that's because they walk, but they also have wings.
Or what about a pegasis?
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 kinda have to make a choice with your investment in evolution.
If you're gonna go for wings, you're gonna end up with smaller legs.
If you can end up with bigger, stronger legs, it's probably the expense of wings.
Uh you gotta gotta make a commitment, right?
You gotta make a commitment.
It's gonna be air, primarily or ground, primary scenario with wings, or legs primarily, right?
But uh okay, it could I mean 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, uh 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 uh 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?
That 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, uh 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 uh proves the validity and utility of the scientific method, which is one of the most powerful things.
Uh 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 uh this is helpful.
Freedom.com slash donate, love to get these questions, hope you're having a beautiful day, and uh we will talk to you soon.
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