Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - DO I GET OWNED BY A PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR? Twitter/X Space

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Sept. 19, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:43:32

DO I GET OWNED BY A PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR? Twitter/X Space

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	All right, good evening, everybody.
	It is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
	Hello.
	Welcome, welcome, welcome to uh Wednesday Night Live, 17th of September, 2025.
	Eight days a week and eight days until my birthday.
	Yes.
	A slightly more mature man would not be crowing over it, but having survived a deadly disease every single day is glorious.
	So I appreciate that, and I hope you guys are having a wonderful day.
	And what am I getting messages here?
	Yes, we are all good everywhere all the time, no matter what.
	So that is good to know.
	That is good to know.
	All right.
	Let me just try one thing over here.
	And I believe that you can get to that.
	We'll get to that.
	We will get to that.
	All right.
	Uh let's get to you.
	I've got stuff to talk about, but let's get straight to you, because you are Le Brains of Le Outfit.
	Twentieth, yeah.
	October 24th is the 20th anniversary of my first article that was published.
	All right.
	We'll get to that.
	Chorder.
	Yes, brother.
	How are you doing?
	Good, how are you doing?
	Good.
	Hey, uh I kind of pestered you in the comments and on locals a little bit, but uh I've asked a few questions over the years, um, because I do appreciate your mind, and I feel like I've been asking the wrong questions.
	You know, I've been talking about more general philosophy topics and things that have been bothering me, but I feel like it's not maybe the right thing to be asking on the show.
	So maybe you can help me um ask the right questions.
	You know, what should we be asking as fans of Stefan Molyneux on this show?
	Well, I think that the most fundamental question is how do I spread philosophy?
	I mean, if you have a myless magic touch to cure people of anti-rationality, of unhappiness, of the inability to love and be loved, to have self-respect, to do good and virtue in the world, if you have that amazing ability, then how do you spread it?
	Because if you can't spread philosophy, man, we lose.
	I mean, we're losing pretty hard as it is, as we could see from last Wednesday, but I think that the real question is how do you spread philosophy?
	Is that something that might cook in your brain a bit?
	Uh yes, yes.
	And uh I feel like you favor topics that are more personal, of course, you know, in uh you know, people's personal lives, and I appreciate that.
	You know, I'm happy to talk about stuff.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	What do you mean I favor?
	Tell me, tell me what you mean.
	Yeah, what I mean is um, you know, the the questions that I've personally asked have been more general, you know, brain in the vat type stuff.
	Uh I asked you uh a few weeks ago about uh the robot and the um AI, uh, you know, artificial wounds, that type of stuff.
	Okay, and have I rejected those questions?
	No.
	You've actually been very good.
	Okay, hang on.
	Hang on, hang on.
	So this is uh an example of philosophy would be would be this.
	And I'm sorry to be a nag, it's totally fine what you're asking.
	Uh I'm just sort of pointing something out.
	So I've written, I don't know, twelve or thirteen books.
	Uh how many of them have been on personal relationships.
	Ooh, I guess not none.
	Uh one.
	I've won one book called Real Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
	Uh, the other twelve or thirteen or fourteen or whatever it is are not.
	Now you could say peaceful parenting is about personal relationships, but not uh sort of love adult personal relationships.
	So if I don't reject topics that are not personal relationship topics or self-knowledge topics, if I don't reject those, and I accept those and I've accepted yours, and I don't say, well, no, you can't talk about robots or brain into vat topics because uh I only want to talk about you know sort of personal history or self-knowledge topics.
	I'm just trying to understand, and it's not a criticism, I'm genuinely curious.
	What when you say I prefer or I gravitate towards those topics, I'm not sure what you mean.
	I answer the topics that people bring up.
	The call in shows are not for personal life issues.
	The call in shows are anything people want to talk about.
	And that's just what people want to talk about.
	So if that's what people want to talk about for the most part, am I pursuing the topic or am I satisfying audience demand?
	You may be satisfying the audience demand.
	I appreciate that.
	And I can accept that.
	And sorry, this is just a philosophical thing, which is you have a an uh a an observation, which is fine.
	You have an observation that Steph, you do a lot of self-knowledge, personal relationship, personal philosophy calls.
	And I think you think that that's what I prefer.
	Now, I've you wouldn't know this if you haven't listened to a lot of shows, but everybody knows my favorite topic is UPP.
	And I love abstract philosophy and uh I love debating epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics.
	Uh those are my favorite topics.
	But you know, you you go to where the audience is.
	And and what people like in terms of sending in questions and what people like in terms of the shows are the sort of personal topic call-in shows.
	So that's what people want to talk about, and that's what the audience likes, and I accommodate the audience.
	So it's interesting.
	Uh have you ever run a business?
	Uh yes, I have.
	Okay.
	So you know uh that you can only have a certain amount of sway with your audience, right?
	I mean, you you do have to follow the audience where they are.
	You have to follow the paying customers or the the level of interest in your customers where they are, right?
	And so it's interesting that you would make I think it's an error, and it's a completely understandable error, and again, I'm not trying to be some big nag here, but uh that you would say, well, Steph, you seem to gravitate towards these topics as if it's sort of my choice,
	uh, and that's just a a um uh an epistemology error in a way, or a not understanding how a business works uh error, which is rather than saying, well, this is the topics that Steph wants to, and I say this to you not because it's important for my show or whatever it is, but just a little bit of critical thinking, which is to say why does Steph do these kinds of shows?
	Why does Steph do call-in shows or or have topics that are sort of personal philosophy stuff?
	Is that Steph-driven, or is that audience-driven?
	Because if you've been an entrepreneur, you know you don't actually have a lot of control over your customer base, right?
	You kind of have to follow where they where they go and where they want, if that makes sense.
	100%.
	I totally agree.
	And and I get where you're coming from.
	So how can I help you?
	Well, well, I I just uh I guess this is an audience request to uh maybe cover some of these more general philosophical topics like brain in the vat, for example, and just uh, you know, more general topics that uh don't necessarily relate to the audience's uh well, when I say don't relate to the audience, that could be a red flag for an entrepreneur like yourself, but you get what I'm saying, more general topics, you know?
	Aaron Ross Powell Well, but when I I've been doing a whole bunch of shows recently, I think I'm on seven, uh, and they're you know half an hour to an hour each, so it's you know, five, five to six hours of responding to questions from X and and other places where people are uh generally asking me philosophical questions in the abstract.
	The calls that I do on X, like these kinds of live streams, it generally tends to be uh philosophical topics, abstract topics, sometimes political topics.
	So are you saying that I should do more solo, individual, unprompted philosophical topics?
	Uh yeah, perhaps.
	Um and and i uh and really the the start of my whole question was, you know, how do I ask the right questions to uh you know to bring these topics uh to light.
	Well, I mean, it's a great question, and this again doesn't have anything to do with me in particular or even you in particular, but it's a big question, which is how do I get what I want in life?
	If you want me to do more abstract philosophy, which is fine, and I respect that as a uh uh a preference and a request, how do you get me to do more abstract philosophy?
	It's a big question, right?
	So what would your ideas be about how to get me to do more abstract philosophy?
	Well, shoot.
	Uh I guess well uh asking more questions, I guess, about abstract philosophy would be a start, that's for sure.
	Aaron Ross Powell Well, but that's very limited, right?
	So and the reason that's limited is you can ask me a philosophical question or two, you know, once every week or two or three or whatever it is, right?
	It's sort of as a cycle back to you in the queue, but that's not gonna get you what you want.
	So the question is, how do you and this is a big question which we all have to face in life?
	How do we get other people to do what we want?
	You want me to do more abstract philosophy.
	How do you achieve that goal?
	Or what's the best approach that you could take to achieve that goal?
	Perhaps spark others to uh you know, ask these questions.
	I think that's possible for sure.
	And that would give me signals to uh maybe switch topics to more abstract philosophical topics, but the problem is that's kind of limited, right?
	Because there only is probably a certain number of people that you know who genuinely want to ask these questions and wouldn't be doing it just because you've handed them a piece of paper or something like that.
	So what else could you do?
	I'm sorry?
	It would be one at best.
	Okay, so you get one other person.
	So what else could I mean, and that what else could you do?
	Shoot.
	Well, I don't know.
	That's what I'm asking, my friend.
	Well Sell me.
	Sell me.
	If you want me to do more philosophical questions, either it's for your benefit or it's for the benefit of the philosophical conversation as a whole.
	Now, if it's just for your benefit, book a call-in show.
	Free domain.com/slash call, right?
	You can pay for one if you want one private, you can have a free one if you want one public, so you can do that, right?
	And then you get your philosophical content, right?
	Right.
	Number two, that's number number one.
	Number two, sell me.
	How does it benefit me, my show, my and and philosophy as a whole for me to do these topics?
	And and you have to figure out how it's beneficial to because this is how you get people to do what you want in your life, right?
	You have to find a way to sell them, to make it beneficial for them.
	So the reason why I most people want these call-in shows that are about personal topics.
	And the reason that I do them is I need to sell, and I'm not kidding about this, and I mean sell not in some cheesy herb tar like corner lot used car salesman, stuff where you look like your pants are made off the backseat of an old Volkswagen.
	What I'm talking about is sell to someone the benefit to them.
	So this is the first philosophical conversation, and I shit you not about this.
	This is so radical, so revolutionary.
	It's what gets me up every day.
	This is the very first philosophical conversation in the history of the world, in the history of philosophy, where it is philosophical abstract uh philosophical morals, abstractions and concepts directly applicable to personal life issues that can be acted upon.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes, 100%.
	Yep.
	So if you want me to do more philosophical abstract concepts, you have to figure out how to sell it to me.
	How does it benefit me?
	How does it benefit philosophy?
	Like if you're asking a girl out, you want it to benefit her, right?
	Oh, and I take you to your favorite restaurant.
	I'm gonna take you to go see your favorite band.
	I'm gonna give you a great night, or whatever it is, right?
	You you are you have to sell things to people in life.
	Life is about convincing people, life is about motivating change in people, life is about selling ideas, arguments, goods, services, employment, you name it.
	So how do you get people to do what you want?
	You figure out the benefit to them.
	Now, if you can't think of a benefit to them, it's not that then it's about you.
	And that's fine.
	We can go and do that, right?
	You can go up to some girl, right?
	And you can say to the girl, well, I just want you to go out with me.
	And she's like, well, basically, why would I want to?
	And it's like, I don't care.
	I just I just want you to go out with me.
	I'm not saying there's anything in it for you, that wouldn't really work, right?
	Correct, my friend.
	Or if if you're trying to get a job and they say, well, what's your resume?
	Say, I don't want to give you a resume.
	I just want you to hire me.
	I just want you to pay me um thousand bucks an hour.
	Pay me a thousand bucks an hour because I mean that would make my life so much better.
	What would the person hiring you say?
	No.
	No.
	What's it's gotta be mutual benefit.
	Now, if you come to someone with a request, right, and you say, Steph, I want you to do more philosophical content, appreciate that, respect that, and I agree with that in some ways.
	The question is, how do you make it of benefit to the other person?
	Because that's life.
	If if you want someone to marry you, they have to be better off for marrying you than not marrying you.
	Otherwise they're masochistic or something like that.
	So, and this is this is a big lesson for life as a whole.
	Right?
	When you when you're thinking about convincing people, make it of benefit to you.
	Make it of benefit to, sorry, make it a benefit to you.
	That's that's that's baked into, right?
	You ask a girl out, of course you you think your life's gonna be better if you go out with her, right?
	But how do you make it a benefit to the other person?
	So how do I sell philosophy?
	I make it of benefit to individuals.
	If you follow philosophical principles as I outloan, outline, describe, and prove them, what happens?
	Well, you start acting with integrity and virtue, which means you gain self-respect.
	When you gain self-respect, you become predictable in your behavior because integrity is predictability in behavior.
	When you're predictably positive and virtuous in your behavior, you attract virtuous people in your life who will love you.
	If you can attract and keep virtuous people in your life through consistently moral behavior, your life gets better and better.
	Conversely, you drive evildoers and corrupt people and insulters, abusers, and underminers and saboteurs, they will be driven out of your life through direct confrontation, confrontation and a demand for moral behavior from them, right?
	Which is why I say to people, if you've got people who've wronged you in your life, sit down and talk with them and see how they react, see how they do, see what they say in return to you having issues with them, because you know, we all have issues with each other from time to time.
	And, you know, maybe you listen to me uh Bitcoin.
	Could be a plus there too, but I'm selling happiness.
	I'm selling happiness.
	Right?
	A personal trainer might be selling abs.
	A dietitian might be selling slenderness.
	Right?
	A teacher might be selling knowledge.
	I am teaching reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	And I tell you how to get there every step of the way.
	And I also say it's an extreme sport and it's gonna f you up from time to time with a sideways ungreased dildo through the ear.
	So I make it exciting because it is.
	I make it challenging because it is, and I make it an extreme sport of courage and integrity with the great goal of love, self-respect, and happiness on the other side.
	And right now, I'm teaching you how to get what you want in life, which is to make what you want of benefit to the other person.
	If you go to an auction and you want a particular item, let's say it's some ring, you want the ring, well, you have to make it beneficial to the person who's selling it, which means you have to agree upon a price.
	And that price is gonna be you giving up some of what you want and them giving up some of what they want, right?
	If you're going to get a job at McDonald's, you want to get paid a thousand dollars an hour, they want you to work for free and still be highly motivated.
	I mean, I know that's an extreme, but you find something in the middle where you give up what some of what you want in order for the other person to get what they want.
	Standing and stating what you want without referencing the benefit to the other person is a very youthful idea.
	And what I mean by that is I'm not trying to say anything negative about you at all, but what I'm saying is that if you've been a parent, your kids will say, I want dessert, I want candy, I want a piece of fruit, I want frutella, I want uh mentos, I want, I want, I want.
	And that's fine.
	That's what kids are supposed to do.
	And kids aren't supposed to say, and mom, dad, I've laid out this flowchart of all the benefits for you, right?
	They don't do that because they're just thinking about what they need.
	And it's the parents' job to figure Out what the kids need and within reason try to work to facilitate and provide to it.
	But when you get to sort of full-fledged, full-throated mature adulthood, what you're supposed to do, and this is again, I appreciate you bringing this up, and I'm sure you do this a million times.
	It's just a reminder uh to make sure that this is an abstract value and virtue.
	You have to figure out how it's beneficial to the other person, and you do that for reasons of training your empathy and also to avoid the sin and shame of exploitation.
	Right.
	And so that's what I mean when I say you want me to do more philosophical abstract topics.
	Sell me.
	Sell me on it.
	How does it benefit me?
	And that's what I'm asking.
	Let me sell you, my friend.
	So uh here's the thing.
	You you have done a masterful job at uh bringing those philosophical topics to uh the personal and and that's what uh brings people in.
	That's what keeps me engaged and other people engaged, and it's awesome.
	What I would like for you to do, if I can be so bold, is uh uh to map out the topic on your own in a uh a singular video uh that you can reference when you're talking to these people.
	So um I I I guess I'm okay.
	I'm gonna stop I'm snuppy here, and I appreciate that, and I hate to be annoying after just having asked you this question, but I'm gonna suggest a different approach.
	So first of all, you said it keeps me engaged and other people too, right?
	So everyone thinks that the first thing about sales is talking.
	No, no, no.
	What's the first thing about sales?
	Questions.
	So, Steph, why don't you do more philosophical topics?
	Why do you do so many call-in shows?
	Help me understand your business, your needs.
	I mean, you go into a car dealership, do they just say, I got this great car for you?
	It's really fast, it's it's snazzy, it's it's a sports car, you know, and it's got wingtips.
	They don't right.
	What's the first thing that salespeople do when you walk into a car dealership?
	What are you looking for today?
	Aaron Powell, what do you needs?
	Do you have a family?
	Do you have kids?
	How much do you drive every year?
	Do you do you want an electric car?
	What's your blah they they ask questions rather than right?
	So the quote right answer when I say sell me is uh Steph, tell me a little bit about why you do this, about why you do that, why you do the other.
	So I understand whether I can provide value, saying to me, well, there are some people who like philosophical topics.
	Do you think that's telling me something I don't know?
	No.
	Right, right.
	I've been doing it for 20 years.
	Well, actually, I've been doing philosophy for 43 years.
	There's a lot that I know about it.
	Right.
	So the what what you don't want to do when you're trying to sell something to people is say to them things that they already know as if it's new information.
	Does that make sense?
	So you say, well, Steph, why do you and say, oh, well, so uh let's let's reverse it, all right?
	If that's all right.
	So you be me, and I'll be you, all right?
	Um Steph.
	Hey, listen, I've I've had some thoughts.
	So um how much do you enjoy the philosophical topics in in the show?
	I love them.
	Absolutely.
	If you sort of had to rank them sort of one to five, you know, because you got your truthabouts, you got your current events, you got your call-in shows, and you've got uh, you know, movie reviews or whatever, where would you put the abstract philosophical topics just out of curiosity on that sort of one-to-five scale?
	Aaron Ross Powell Abstract go to five and uh personal topics go to four.
	They're they're very close.
	I love them all.
	And I'm so sorry, is five the lowest priority or the highest?
	It's the highest.
	Okay.
	So so the highest is the five.
	Now, I'm sorry for not knowing your business.
	Obviously, you know your business much better than I do, but I'm curious, Steph, if you most want to do philosophical topics, why do you do a lot of call-in shows?
	Because that is my audience, and that's that's that's who donates.
	That is who listens, and that is the future of this show.
	Aaron Powell So you've you've asked people and they've said number one is call-in chairs, right?
	Seems to be, yeah.
	Well, yeah, I actually have asked People and that is the number one.
	Okay, so the number one is call-in shows.
	Now, I've done a sort of rough look at your feed, right?
	And I'm sure that you could categorize things a bunch of different ways.
	But it seems to me there's sort of five to seven call-in shows for every single abstract philosophy show.
	Does that sort of accord with your experience of doing the show?
	Right.
	Yep.
	Right.
	So if it's close, right, then why wouldn't they be close to even if that makes sense?
	And again, I'm I'm just I'm just curious.
	Like if it's like, well, I'm slightly prefer the um I slightly prefer the abstract philosophy to the call-in shows, then why are there like five to seven to eight times many more uh call-in shows?
	Just because I'm trying to sort of figure out your your mindset here.
	Well, uh people are the audience.
	You know, that's what makes the show the show.
	If I was just sitting in uh a room talking about philosophy, nobody would hear it.
	And it would be me talking into an audience to my computer, and I would have a nice audio file, but I wouldn't have any audience.
	Well, you'd have some audience, right?
	Maybe it wouldn't be I mean, I'm sure it wouldn't be as big, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, it'd be much smaller.
	Aaron Powell But I wonder.
	I wonder, and you know, this is me just thinking out loud, so maybe it makes sense, maybe it doesn't.
	But I just wonder if it's maybe been a bit of a vicious cycle.
	Let me just make a brief case for you here, and then you can tell me if I'm full of nonsense, which I probably am.
	Which is what if you started getting a lot of requests for call-in shows?
	Just because if you're in the desert and you open up the water stand, there's gonna be a whole bunch of people who want water because they're dying of thirst.
	And you took that as a signal for ever and ever Amen.
	And then it's become kind of cyclical.
	In other words, because you're doing so many call-in shows, you're generally, even now, only attracting the kind of people who want the call-in shows.
	And it's sort of a distorted market signal, if that makes sense.
	So you you put out a bunch of call-in shows and people are like, wow, I love these call-in shows.
	And the people who like the abstract philosophy are like, eh, I'm not so big on the call-in shows, I'll go somewhere else.
	And now you think that it's the major audience demand when it is in fact kind of circular because you put out so many call-in shows.
	Most of the people who are left are the people who like the call-in shows.
	Does that make any sense?
	That is 100% my question.
	Okay.
	So that's that's a possibility.
	Now, the other thing too is that, and it's it's always an interesting question, right?
	I think about bands.
	So if you've got a band that has a bunch of hits in the past, and they've got a new album, right?
	You ever go to the concert, and what was it, David Spades said once about um REM, you know, just play radio free Europe and don't screw it up.
	Like that on the album.
	Don't do anything weird and jazzy with it.
	Like I remember seeing Britney Spears do Baby One More Time in some slow rent Berlin cabaret style jazzy thing, and it was like, no, no, that's it.
	That's not the song.
	I don't know what you're doing if it's not the song.
	So why do you think that the bands put out the new songs when they know basically everyone's there for the old songs?
	Well, they're hoping for a hit.
	Yeah, okay, but let's say they don't have a particular hit, or maybe the album has just come out and they're playing the new stuff, even though most people are there for the old stuff.
	Why do you think the bands do that?
	Are you suggesting they're filling the noise?
	What do you mean by that?
	I mean uh uh if they have the hits, okay, that's guaranteed audience coming in.
	And uh they have uh an hour or two of playtime.
	Are they filling the void with those new hits?
	Or those new songs, rather?
	Aaron Ross Powell, Well, no, because they could uh they have enough old songs that they could do an hour and a half, easy.
	I don't know.
	I think I think that the reason that the bands do the new songs is that they also need to retain their enthusiasm.
	Because I assume that the band is more excited to do a new song than a song they'd be doing for 20 years, right?
	Yeah, I'm a musician, so I can't.
	Okay, so you know that.
	Like I remember seeing a band, uh a bar band, and they said, we'll take any requests except what was the one song they wouldn't do.
	What?
	House of the Rising Sun.
	We'll do every song but House of the Rising Sun, because they probably have done it for, you know, 15 years of whatever it is, right?
	And it's a real belty song could be could could be could be rough on the singer, right?
	So the bands do their new material because I mean they want to sell new material, they've written new material, and they're more excited by the new material than the old material.
	So there's a balance, right?
	So the band is doing the stuff that excites them the most, but also that gets the most audience members in is to do is to do the older stuff.
	Does that sort of make sense?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	So I'm wondering, Steph, I'm just wondering.
	Do you think that it has an effect on your enthusiasm to do less of what excites you the most?
	Forgot I was Steph, but yes.
	Right.
	So I th I think that's without a doubt.
	Like if you're doing the call-in shows, which I know you enjoy, let's say you enjoy them like a seven or an eight, but let's say the abstract philosophy you enjoy a ten.
	I wonder if your call-in shows wouldn't be better, even better.
	They're fantastic.
	But what if they were even better because you did more of the stuff that you wanted?
	And what if you had just played two new songs, you dug into the old songs with even more and better energy.
	Like w what if you do more of what you want, that translates into enthusiasm for the show as a whole and draws back the people who like the abstract topics.
	And you can still do the call-in shows, but maybe you'll do them even better and with more enthusiasm, because maybe you feel a little bit like a a chain to the call-in shows.
	You know, that's what people want, and uh I'm good at it, but those are the old hits, not bringing in a new audience, and maybe maybe it's affecting your level of energy and enthusiasm too.
	I think that's a fantastic idea.
	So that's just a brief example of, you know, ask questions and then provide a benefit to the other person.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I appreciate that.
	I really do.
	And then the other thing you can do is you could run a poll on X or some other place, even if it's only got a hundred people or fifty people or whatever, and you could ask what kind of shows do you like the most, and at least come in with some data.
	Because saying I and some other people prefer those shows is something that I know.
	But I'd like my my data is that people really like the call-in shows.
	But I think that the the circular problem is important, which is because I've been doing the call-in shows for so long and less abstract philosophy, maybe everyone who's left really likes the call-in shows, but that's sort of a uh um that's a circular uh piece of data.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Right.
	Well, uh do you think the audience has changed at all?
	Like, do you think you'd uh gain new audience for uh um you know covering these basic ph philosophical topics?
	I mean, it's been a long time.
	I I've been listening to you a l for a long time, and I feel like the political atmosphere at least has changed dramatically since when I first started watching.
	Sorry, I missed the purpose of telling me that the ph uh of the p uh philosophical sorry, the political atmosphere has changed.
	Sorry if I missed the point of that.
	Well, that's okay.
	Uh uh, the uh political atmosphere has changed dramatically in the last 10, 12, 15 years since I've started watching.
	And it seems like you might pull in some new people when when you cover some of these more basic topics, because you know, you're assuming that everybody that's listening, well, uh uh you're assuming that they they know what's going on, but you know, these new people, they don't know what w what's going on with UPB and you know, libertarianism, uh anarcho-capitalism.
	Who knows what's going on?
	So it might be might be worth it to cover some of these basic topics for the new people.
	Yeah, I I think that's good.
	And you could say, look, one of the things that was very popular early on was your 17-part introduction to philosophy series.
	Maybe that could be dusted off and redone with slightly less of a potato camera and bad audio or something like that, and and non-gray hair.
	But yeah, so I would say that those kinds of topics are how it is that you can try uh convince to uh people.
	Because if you convince them of their own self-interest, then it's sustainable.
	If they would just do it for you, it's generally doesn't tend to be sustainable.
	Uh but if you do it because it's the person's own self-interest, it tends to be much more sustainable.
	Like I'm I'm aware, uh I I think every happily married man and woman is aware that you never stop selling the virtues and values of marriage to your partner.
	Right.
	Right.
	So so like every morning my wife will generally get up a little earlier than me, not because she makes great coffee, But because she makes great coffee.
	And I'm aware that when I come downstairs, how I come downstairs is going to determine the quality of the day in many ways for both of us, right?
	So what do I do?
	I come down, uh, scoop her into my arms, give her a big hug and a kiss, maybe a bit of grab, grabble, and um, you know, ask her how her day is doing, how she slept, and all of that.
	And I want the day to start off really well for both of us, because I want her every day to say, I'm really glad uh I married this guy and uh he makes my life better and happier and all of that, right?
	So, and you know, I'm asking her, do you want to do with the day and what's best for you and all of that sort of stuff.
	So I do think that when you learn to put things that you want into the benefit of someone else.
	Now, you don't want to be manipulative and lie and all of that.
	And there will be times where you want to put things to the benefit of other people and you can't.
	Right?
	Like if if the if the closest restaurant to you is an Indian restaurant, but you want it to be an Italian restaurant, I mean, you could make the case, but it's probably not gonna change, right?
	Where you know, so so, but trying to find out what motivates people, what's better better for them, and then looking for a win-win.
	Because if you simply state what you like, then you're saying, well, I will win if you change.
	I'm just like, okay.
	Right?
	I mean, I'm sure there's a guy who speaks Esperanto fluently who wants me to do all of my shows in Esperanto or Klingon or Elvish or something even crazier, like Turkish, right?
	So there are people who and it's like, Steph, it would really benefit me if you did your show in Turkish, because I'm really much better at speaking Turkish than I am at English.
	And it's like, okay, but right?
	So, but but I have to look at the bigger picture.
	So asking people questions and figuring out if you can make it a win-win for them, planting seeds, being patient, coming back.
	Uh I think that's how you get people to do what you want, which is to say what I want is b benefits us both.
	And if you can't make a case that what you want benefits you both, it's probably not a good idea to make the case.
	And and again, I'm just saying this to you as a whole and to the world as a whole, because I I really want you guys to get what you want out of life, and you have to make it not what do I want, but what benefits us both, if that makes sense.
	There's you, there's me, and there's we.
	And uh we want all right.
	100%.
	All right.
	Well, man, thanks.
	Uh, really appreciate that.
	And uh I will mention, though, I will of course mention later, that um subscriptions are live on X. What can I tell you?
	Subscriptions are live on X. And I am going to give staggering levels of benefits to the first, say, 100 people who sign up.
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	All right.
	Oh my gosh, do we have a lot of people who wish to chat?
	Ooh, let's get somebody who doesn't like me in.
	John.
	John, you are on the line, my friend.
	How can I how can we wrap neurons together and create a genuine spark of thought?
	John.
	Johnny.
	John.
	Hello.
	Are you with me?
	You need to meet.
	Yes, hello.
	Hi.
	Yes, I can hear you.
	Uh, okay.
	Well, yeah, I'm John.
	I'm the um logician that I was talking about your UPB.
	I was actually calling in a talk about that, but the last column uh brought up a better point, which was um He uh asked about why you don't talk about philosophy.
	That's no, hang on, hang on.
	That's not a reality.
	Thank you.
	What he asked was why don't I do more abstract philosophy?
	Not that I don't talk about philosophy, but why don't I do more abstract philosophy if that makes sense?
	You don't really do any philosophy.
	I mean, as far as I could tell.
	It's it's um like you say, it's a lot of personal call-ins, which uh borders on are you a th are you a therapist?
	What do you mean?
	Do you have credentials?
	You mean do I have a piece of paper from the therapy, psychology?
	Uh I mean, I I've taken psychological courses in university.
	You mean am I a licensed therapist?
	Good Lord, no.
	Absolutely not.
	Oh, okay.
	It seems that you'd like to be based on like what you the vast amount of whatever you you do is uh personal problems.
	But you call you are you say you're a philosopher, correct?
	Yes.
	Now why would it be weird for you to talk about philosophy?
	Why would it be weird?
	Hang on, I'm trying to understand what you mean.
	Why would it be weird for me to talk about philosophy?
	But why wouldn't you want to talk about philosophy?
	I mean, you're talking you said something which is asinine.
	You're asking him to sell you on talking about philosophy, which is really weird.
	If you're calling it a lot of people.
	Just John, John, John, come on.
	Let's let's let's be adults here.
	Can you can you have a conversation?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Can you have a conversation without these like stupid girly insults and it's asinine and you don't do philosophy and it's weird and like can you actually just make a hang on, hang on.
	Can you actually just make a case that's we can have a respectful conversation?
	What I was trying to listen to make you make the case for why.
	And you're asking him just to sell you on something and a lot of really stupid analogies that have nothing to do with philosophy.
	I teach this stuff.
	I mean, uh I teach logic.
	I teach I specialize in relevance logic, but I don't think.
	Okay.
	So can you make a logical argument without an ad hominem?
	I teach general introductory courses, and I do it.
	A philosopher doesn't need to be sold on teaching philosophy.
	I mean, I'll teach it for free to have people that want to do it or hear it.
	Okay, so what I'm doing, what I'm asking is can you make an argument without an ad hominem since you are a logician?
	Because you are making I'm not making ad hominems.
	I'm saying this is there's no you're trying to sell something to people.
	You're making it stupid, stupid, asinine, and weird, those aren't ad hominems in your universe, John.
	Is that the reality that you work with?
	No, that's not calling you stupid.
	Calling you stupid stupid.
	Stupid, asinine, and weird, those aren't ad hominems.
	Those aren't insults.
	You're just making a logical argument, like Socrates would.
	Calling you stupid with an ad hominem.
	I'm saying what you said was stupid and asinine, because it wasn't an argument either.
	You're not giving the man an argument.
	You were telling him he has to sell you on why you should teach philosophy.
	If you are indeed a philosopher, and that's that's bizarre.
	That's stupid and now bizarre and stupid isn't is also your argument.
	So you don't know how to make an argument without anything.
	I'm not making an argument.
	I'm not making an argument.
	Okay, not me.
	Could you make an argument then?
	Yeah, if you could make one for why you should not teach philosophy instead of trying to say I need to be sold on why.
	That's what I I was saying.
	I wanted to talk about your UPB, which is crap, but this is better because this gets to the heart.
	This gets to the heart of the thing.
	You're not sure.
	It's John, is this is this how you teach your students?
	Like, let's say that a student is doing something that you think is incorrect or wrong.
	Just say it's asinine, it's stupid, it's crap, it's weird.
	I mean, is this hang on?
	Let me let me let me finish my sentence.
	Let me finish like you know, like in a mature adult, we can have a back and forth.
	So do you insult people who are getting things wrong?
	Is that your goal as a teacher?
	No, because the students that I teach want to learn philosophy.
	They're there for that.
	So I don't belittle anybody.
	So let's say, let's say that you're right.
	I've got something completely wrong in the realm of philosophy.
	So how does insulting me and putting me down and calling me acin and stupid and weird?
	How does that teach me anything?
	Not going to you because I'm not here to teach you anything.
	You should know these things.
	You supposedly studied the history of philosophy and all this other stuff.
	I don't You call yourself the greatest goddamn philosopher, fuck's sake.
	So it's like, why should I have I shouldn't be able to have to teach you anything?
	So you're not here to teach me anything, so what are you here for?
	I'm asking you.
	What are you here for?
	I'm genuinely in you.
	I'm asking you, what are you here for?
	You're not here to teach me anything.
	You're not here to instruct the or because you have access to an audience.
	So you are not here to teach me anything.
	You are not here to instruct.
	Hang on, you're not hang on.
	You've got to just let me finish.
	Like, I don't know if you've like overcaffeinated or something, but you keep talking in my ear.
	So you're not here to teach me anything.
	You're not here to teach my audience anything.
	So what are you here for?
	I was here to talk about UPB at first until I heard that last caller.
	And that's like that's I guess more to the heart of the thing, because I'm I was wondering why none of what you like your arguments or whatever are all circular and really bad.
	So it's I was wondering why.
	And it's being now my arguments aren't just dumb stupid.
	And asinine, they're circular and really bad.
	This is what you call making an argument?
	Like horrible.
	I mean horrible.
	I mean, not even like horrible.
	Yeah.
	So you can just keep using these girly tween ridiculous insults, or you can actually make a counter-argument.
	Well, not even my first like introductory people that are just getting into logic make mistakes you do.
	So it's like every day, so give me give me a mistake that I've made.
	Well, I don't I mean, I I wouldn't I I talked I read your other book too, the other uh Art of the Argument, I guess it was called.
	I read that last month just to see I didn't well, actually, I didn't read the whole thing.
	I stopped after you got the definitions for validity and validity in the syllogisms wrong.
	So it's like you mixed up everything in the first basic syllogism.
	So it's really I that's why I say it's bad.
	I don't have to go into it.
	I'm not really even here to talk about that so much.
	I'm just wondering why anybody would have to sell you on wanting to teach philosophy if they because that caller seemed to want to learn a little bit about why why would he have to be why would you have to be sold on that?
	Like, okay, you do understand what a theoretical is, right?
	Uh-huh.
	Okay.
	So I started in philosophy.
	I did a 16, 17 part series, introduction to philosophy, which you know because you've been listening to the show and I talked about it.
	I've done a whole series of.
	I haven't been I haven't been listening to the show.
	Oh, you haven't been listening to this.
	Okay.
	I mean, I've been listening like kind of the past few months because a student, a student of mine told me that you uh you're full of shit.
	So that's why I started listening.
	And uh Okay, got it.
	All right.
	So um FDR Podcast.com.
	It's where my uh the list of my shows are, right?
	So if I go to FDR Philosophy.com and I enter a search for philosophy.
	Now I'm not look, you would disagree, of course, that it is, but uh, I'm just looking at uh what do we got here?
	Um Metaphors as Philosophy, uh that's show 186, which is back in 2006.
	And then radical skepticism, um fighting philosophy, and then starting in August of 2006, I do an introduction to philosophy uh series, which is uh 17, uh all the way from metaphysics to epistemology to uh ethics and to politics.
	And again, you may agree, you may disagree, and so on, but uh done that.
	And I I'm scrolling through here.
	I have probably 200 shows.
	Sorry, again, just let me finish.
	I have 200 shows uh making philosophical arguments.
	Uh I have debated with philosophy professors, uh both uh live and uh and online.
	I I did a debate with Professor Safatli in Brazil uh some years ago.
	So just let me again, if you can just just calm yourself down and let me just finish, and then you can talk all you want.
	And I've got a book called Essential Philosophy, which is a book on uh taking on sort of three arguments.
	One is, of course, the Cartesian argument for um the sort of that we're a brain in a tank being controlled by an external demon, and that the only thing you can know is is um that that you exist.
	I I think therefore I am.
	And I take on uh the arguments uh for free will versus determinism, I take on uh and I give a a sort of uh a sped up and concise version of my argument for ethics, which is uh UPB.
	So uh I also have books on um uh voluntarism, also known as uh anarcho-capitalism, and yeah, so I I have uh a number of books, uh I have The Art of the Argument, which is a a lay person's book on how to uh debate with some reasonable level of integrity.
	And so you know, like it or not, agree it with it or not, I've certainly taken on philosophical topics.
	My graduate degree thesis was on the history of philosophy um in a faculty which was not very pro-free market or very pro-free market in sorry, very pro-individual reason and so on.
	And I did uh I took on um Emmanuel Kant and I took on Plato and I took on Locke and it took on Hegel, uh, and it was uh quite a long uh thesis.
	I did get an A, which, you know, you can agree or disagree, but it was a graduate school thesis on the history of philosophy where I put on uh put through a rather large set of arguments.
	So I mean, Aristotle said, and I kind of agree with him, and I'm almost done, and I appreciate your patience.
	But Aristotle said, and I would agree with him that uh we are what we repeatedly do.
	Now, you may disagree with my arguments, you may think that my arguments are false and bad and wrong, and that's fine, and you may know way better than my thesis advisors from many moons ago who reviewed my uh thesis uh and so on.
	But uh being a bad philosopher is still being a philosopher, right?
	So even if you disagree, you can't argue that I do a lot of philosophy, and you may, of course, I'm sure you do think that I do it badly or wrong, but that's different from not doing philosophy at all, if that makes sense.
	But yeah, from what I've seen, you don't do any philosophy.
	That's what I mean.
	I don't know how you got your degree.
	I don't I never I'd have to see it or whatever.
	I don't your thesis, I I don't know.
	Uh but it's uh it's uh that's like I said, it's as an I'm that you would want to be sold on wanting to teach philosophy.
	It's well, hang on.
	So let me let me ask you this.
	It's a basic logical question, right?
	So if I genuinely wanted to be sold on doing philosophy, then why have been have been running a philosophy show for 20 years?
	If I mean just logically, if if I would need to be sold on it, why would I have already done it for I mean I started getting into philosophy in my mid-teens, so it's been over 40 years now.
	So do you think that you might be misinterpreting something if you think that I need to be sold on doing philosophy when I've been doing it for over 40 years?
	No, because what philosophy is, I mean, at its essence is teaching people how to think.
	What what I see you do is telling people, I don't know, different opinions on this or that, but I don't see anything about how you're not teaching anybody to think or how to make an argument.
	You're from what I see, you don't make any arguments.
	I mean, for in your on Twitter or whatever, on X, I don't see You say people don't make arguments, but you give like whatever, an assertion or some crazy opinion.
	You don't make any argument for that.
	You just take it as gospel, and that your listeners should too.
	So that's that's another thing.
	If you're a philosopher, you have to make arguments.
	And like I said, I read like the student read your book, and that's that's the only reason I know anything about you.
	So I started listening to and I read the same book.
	And it's like you get basic things wrong.
	And it's like if a philosopher is not going to do that.
	You need to know these things.
	So it's uh for me.
	That's why you don't do philosophy.
	That's like you said, you're trying to sell something, which is fine.
	Just don't call yourself a philosopher while you're trying to do it.
	Right.
	So uh clearly I don't need to be sold on the value of teaching philosophy or studying philosophy or communicating philosophy.
	I don't need to be taught the value of that, because that's what I've already been doing.
	So my purpose in this conversation, and maybe you didn't hear this at the beginning because you you came into the lecture late.
	But what I would say uh certainly what I was trying to do with this fellow was to try and give him a perspective on how better to get what he wants in his life, which is if you want other people to do something that you want them to do, if you can frame it in a way where it's beneficial for them as well as you, that's a better way to get what you want out of life.
	And so the the purpose was not to sell me on philosophy, it because he wanted to sell me on doing more abstract philosophy, and I was giving him a series of ways in which he could achieve that goal by convincing me to do that as a benefit to me as well as to others.
	So I already love the value of abstract philosophy.
	It's my favorite thing to do on the show.
	So I was trying to tell him, and I said, this isn't about me, this isn't about philosophy because I'm already sold, but this is a way of helping people to understand how to get what they want by providing mutual benefit and value to uh other people when you are trying to convince them of something.
	Yeah, but that's that's the thing.
	It's like you shouldn't need any convincing to do if you're a philosopher, you don't need any convincing to actually teach philosophy or teach philosophy.
	So you but you're you're repeating exactly what I said in the conversation.
	This isn't about me, right?
	This is just an example.
	Uh this is why I asked if about templ uh about abstractions.
	So I was he said, Steph, I want you to do more abstract philosophy, which I love doing abstract philosophy.
	I don't need to be sold on that.
	But I was giving him an example of how to communicate with someone to get that other person to do what they want, if that makes sense.
	No, not really, because it seemed like you were just making a lot of dumb analogies for why you shouldn't be sold on teaching philosophy or any kind of philosophy in the first place.
	I mean, I don't what it every uh every time I go on just to see like I I was gonna call in one of these days, but I don't have a lot of time, but it's uh today I do.
	So I was just you don't display any there's like no coherent behavior or anything that would indicate you actually like teaching or teach anything philosophical at all about any subject.
	I mean, you could talk about any subject and make it philosophical.
	Okay, let me ask you this then.
	Uh so one so what is my argument?
	Uh what is my definition of free will?
	Your definition of free will.
	I don't know.
	Something about uh what is it?
	Well, no, you say I don't do philosophy, which means that you know what I do and don't do.
	So would you would you agree that hang on, would you agree that the definition of philosophy, sorry, that would you agree that the definition of free will would be in the area of philosophy, that it would be a philosophical question to work on the issue of free will.
	Free will is one of the tenets of philosophical questions, yeah.
	Okay.
	So if you say I don't do philosophy, then what you're saying is I don't have a definition of free will, or I have a definition of free will that is not objective or rational or empirical in any way.
	You can have a definite free will, but it really could be a really bad definition or horribly thought out.
	But that that doesn't make it philosophy.
	It's like you could say free will is whatever.
	It's it's it's uh anything you want it to be.
	But it does not necessarily make it philosophical.
	What you should do is philosophy I it's not easy to think about these questions.
	The real thinking, deep thinking is not easy.
	That's why these kids that I teach, everyone I teach, I tell them that.
	It's not easy to actually think.
	But what is your thing on free will?
	What is the what's your definition?
	Okay, so you don't know my definition of free will.
	Okay, let me ask you what is my definition of morality.
	Morality.
	Uh it's whatever I guess I think it's whatever is universal, right?
	Whatever can be applied universally or something like that.
	That's not it.
	Come on, man.
	Physics is universal.
	The scientific method is universal, math is universal, none of those things and they all applied universally, but none of those things would be morality.
	Come on, man.
	No, math, physics and all that is not necessarily it's universal in the sense of the universe.
	It's for our universe, sure, it seems to be working, but we don't want anything we don't know anything about what could be in another universe or parallel universes or whatever.
	We take it.
	Sorry.
	So you said universal, but you think it also includes the nether or or uh heaven or or some other Star Trek universe.
	So you something can't be universal because there could be other universes?
	There was another caller that tried to explain this kind of to you, but you don't you don't even understand the difference in inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.
	So it's kind of he was trying to say that we don't know that the sun will come out tomorrow.
	And you were saying, no, we do, we definitely do.
	But that type of reasoning is inductive, which I don't know if you didn't go through that in your whatever you studied.
	So just for those of you who don't know, so uh uh inductive reasoning is where you have a hundred percent certainty based upon the premises and conclusions.
	So deductive reasoning is uh all men are mortal.
	Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
	Uh given the assumptions and given the reasoning.
	Inductive.
	Inductive.
	In the Ross.
	Right.
	Inductive reasoning is where you establish uh probabilities based upon prior information.
	So it's very likely that the sun is not.
	Well, hang on, let me finish.
	The the It's funny because you complain that I don't teach philosophy, then you try to interrupt me when I'm trying to teach the difference.
	So uh the example that I give in my book is if I have a neighbor and she has uh I know she has 20 cats, but I've only ever seen 19 cats.
	But every single one of those 19 cats is a black cat with a white face.
	Then I would be pretty sure that the 20th cat is also a black cat with a white face, because those are the kind of cats that she likes or prefers.
	I don't know 100%, but I can make that fairly significant guesstimate.
	In the same way, I don't know for 100% certainty that the sun will rise tomorrow.
	That's very true.
	But we have to live our lives, so we generally do live our lives as if the sun will rise.
	Now the sun may not rise for me tomorrow if I get hit by it by a bus.
	Uh there could be some uh gathering space armada on the other side of the sun that is about to blow it up overnight.
	I mean, this within the realm of possibility, right?
	It's not it's not like a square circle or something which would be impossible.
	And so for sure, the the fact that the sun will rise tomorrow is not 100% guaranteed in the same way that you get 100% certainty with deductive reasoning, but in general we live our life as if uh on the 100% certainty as a whole.
	Well I don't know if you have a really bad memory or something, but you were fighting that with this caller because you didn't you forgot what inductive reasoning was.
	And he was trying to explain that.
	No, we actually don't know.
	It's probable, very probable that some will come out, but you kept fighting on it on this, which is like you uh that's why I don't understand.
	Okay, so I I can't uh hang on, hang on.
	I I can't reference some call from the past.
	Because I don't remember.
	I do I do I've done thousands of these calls, so just just hang tight.
	Would you agree that I'm somewhat in the ballpark in the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning uh in my very obviously very brief explanation?
	Yeah, you got the you got the cliff notes.
	That's great.
	But my point is that the same thing.
	So I do so I do understand those things.
	Science is all done on this inductive thing.
	And then scientific theories are put out deductively.
	That is their logic has to work.
	But we get it from inductive reasoning.
	So we don't know these things.
	Like, will the sun come out tomorrow?
	Probably, yes.
	These are the things I'm talking about.
	You do not teach these things.
	These are very basic, basic things in reasoning.
	I just I just gave you two analogies.
	Oh, I gave you one example, which is a very old one about Socrates, and I gave you the analogy for my book.
	So the idea that I don't teach these things uh is not correct.
	Yeah.
	But except that I just gave you I just gave you examples of me teaching them, and I literally just taught them.
	Like I literally just taught this in this call, and now you're saying it doesn't happen when you were literally here when it happened.
	I brought it up and had to explain or remind you what inductive reasoning is.
	It's but anyway the items.
	Okay, so what is my definition?
	Oh, hang on, hang on.
	What is my definition of morality?
	I still don't know.
	It has something to do with universality.
	Universality as in the world, not in the universe.
	Sorry, universality as in the world.
	What does that mean?
	This is what I'm talking about.
	So you don't know.
	I'm asking you to explain why are you sighing?
	I'm asking, I'm I'm sitting here as a willing student for you to explain what you mean, and you seem to be getting impatient and angry at me.
	Is this how you deal with people who want to learn from you?
	I I'm having trouble following this.
	Not students that don't know anything.
	I'm asking what you mean.
	I mean that universality has applied to the world.
	Whatever can be applied throughout the world.
	I'm generally trying to I really want to understand what you're saying.
	So can it be both only applied to this world and also universal?
	To me, universal would be more than just this world.
	Well, whatever.
	It's just a term that we use in philosophy.
	It just means that whatever if you want to say something is universal, we're not talking about the universe as is, whatever, the entire universe.
	Just the world we live in, not a parallel world or a different one.
	Sorry, but do you mean by the world do you mean the planet Earth?
	Yes, the world.
	Okay.
	So can something be universal, but also only apply to this planet we happen to live on.
	Yeah, that's what uh that's what the term I'm taught that's what it means.
	I mean, for this conversation, yeah, I'm not talking about the universe as is, just the world we live on.
	But why would there be if something's universal, why would it have separate rules for this world versus what's not this world?
	Because we're talking about the world when I say universal, talking about just the world we live on.
	Because we're talking about it.
	Hang on, that's a contradiction.
	But that's a contradiction.
	So we have universal laws of physics.
	They don't just apply to this planet, right?
	That's a scientific when you're talking about science, as in some other theory you want to talk about, and you say, is this apply universally, then you could talk about the entire universe.
	That's what they usually mean.
	It's applied to the world and the entire universe and any other planets that might not have been discovered and everything else that might be in the universe.
	That's when they say it must be applied universally.
	If they're science, whatever, if they have some sort of theory that says some property or something has to be applied universally.
	We're not talking about that.
	We're not talking about science.
	This isn't a scientific conversation.
	We're talking about philosophy and philosophy, we use terms like universal to mean the world.
	Okay, so is it my understanding?
	Hang on.
	So is it my understanding that if we're talking about morals and we're talking about universality, but only talking about what happens on the world or in the world?
	Right.
	Our world.
	Okay.
	So if uh if if two spacemen go to the moon and one murders the other, morality wouldn't apply because it's not on the world.
	If what?
	Well, if two men fly off to the moon and one murders the other, it's not wrong because that's not on our world.
	No, it still apply.
	There are human beings that are of this world.
	Doesn't matter if they do it in space on the bone.
	So what you mean is not the world, but humanity, like human beings.
	Yeah, that's what that would encompass the world.
	Every object in the world is part of the world.
	Well, but human beings have been off-world, so it's a little confusing, right?
	That doesn't matter.
	That's that's irr- It does it doesn't matter where human beings go apart from Earth.
	Well, it doesn't matter if you say that morality is universal only in the world, then it implies that morality would not be universal off-world.
	It would still apply.
	You're still part of So we were talking about so then we're talking about universal moral principles that apply everywhere there are human beings, right?
	Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, humanity in general.
	Okay, so that's not the world.
	That's wherever it is universal.
	It's just where there aren't human beings, there would be no moral, there's no moral rules for the bacteria on Mars or something like that.
	But wherever there are human beings, we have moral rules, and so if human beings spread throughout the universe, then we would have universal moral rules that would be to the extent of humanity.
	So it's just a little confusing for me when you say the world and universal, you mean uh that the moral rules apply wherever consciousness would be making moral decisions.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, if there's a human yes, that would apply to them.
	Okay.
	What about Other conscious entities with the capacity for reasoning and abstractions who use morality, would they be also subject to universal moral rules?
	I have no idea.
	They could have a completely different brain.
	I mean, they could have emotions and different things, but it doesn't matter.
	They could have zero moral sense whatsoever.
	So no, that's why I I gave you a definition there.
	Did you not hear it?
	Would they would their moral morality apply to them?
	Well, yeah, I gave you a definition.
	You said well, they might have no moral sense, and I said that their reasoning, their abstraction, and this they they themselves uh well, let's say they speak and and they speak in moral terms and they speak in good and evil and right and wrong.
	Um because if if human beings go to, let's say Alpha Centuri, then the moral rules would apply there just as they would on Earth.
	But if there are beings like us who reason, who abstract uh debate, uh, who talk about ethics and virtues and truth and falsehood and right and wrong, would universal moral rules apply to a consciousness that is very similar to us?
	Because we say on this earth, even for people who aren't particularly smart, they're still subject to moral rules.
	Even moral philosophers are subject to moral rules, uh people in in the Arctic and people uh at the equator, like there's a lot of variation, right?
	So if there's other consciousness in the universe that is similar to ours, abstract, universal, and language-based and and has truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil as general concepts, would they be subject to the same moral rules?
	In other words, would a creature who murders another creature on Alpha Centuri, who's similar to human beings, would that be also wrong?
	I don't know.
	They could act, they could base if they any moral system on something completely different.
	We don't have the I it wouldn't apply to that.
	If some other person that race of beings or whatever, I don't know.
	Then you have to start asking a whole bunch of other questions.
	In what ways would they have evolved?
	How would they have even developed a sense?
	Is it reasonable to transfer our morality as a category to whatever, some other race and okay.
	Let me ask you this.
	So we have, let's say, people in Norway are quite different from, say, the aboriginals in Australia, right?
	They they developed in very different climates over very different histories, they have very different cultures and religions and mindsets and so on.
	Would you say that moral rules would apply, the basic ones, rape, theft, assault, and murder, the bans on rape, theft, and assault and murder.
	Would you say that it is wrong for someone who's Norwegian to murder, and it's also wrong for somebody who's an Australian aborigine to murder?
	Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.
	If you plu if you apply whatever moral system you have that makes it wrong universally, then yeah, it was it would be wrong under that.
	And do you I appreciate that?
	So do you believe so so even though they're very different and they evolved in very different circumstances and environments and and I mean even their ecosystems and and where they're embedded and the whole climate is wildly different.
	So even though there's a great deal of difference between a Norwegian and an Australian aborigine, they would both still be bound by universal moral rules.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So any creature that had less difference, assuming that's the maximum difference.
	I mean, we could come up with other standards or whatever, but let's just say that's the maximum difference.
	So any creature in the universe that had less difference than a Norwegian person and an Australian aborigine would be bound by the same universal moral rules, is that right?
	No, you're talking well, you're asking a couple different questions, first of all, because we base our own morality, like the pro these prohibitions against rape, theft, murder, and all this other stuff on our uh religious history.
	Is that where that comes from?
	Um we've applied that universally throughout the world by force.
	You know, with in countries we've taken with that have been conquered by Europeans and all that, their rules and their morality have been applied there because that's their tradition has come from that.
	So I don't like you have to see you'd have to delve into these questions more.
	You can't just say, well, these things are wrong.
	Why are they wrong?
	What makes them wrong?
	I'm sorry.
	I thought I thought you said they would be bound by the same universal moral rules.
	I'm sorry if I misunderstood.
	No, they're only on this earth they're bound.
	We've made them that way by force.
	Like we've applied these things.
	Okay, so Genghis Khan, uh Genghis Khan raped his way across Asia and it was fine and good.
	And in fact, the Mongolians are so proud of Genghis Khan.
	He's on their he's on their currency and and uh yeah, they have statues all over the place.
	So was what Genghis Khan did wrong by any objective standard, or was it not wrong because it was not disapproved of?
	By the traditions of our like religious history and all that, yeah.
	It would be wrong.
	No, but the religious history is not.
	I'm asking about an objective standard.
	Do you believe there's an objective standard by which Genghis Khan's rape and murder would be considered wrong regardless of local beliefs?
	An objective standard.
	Depends on what your standard is.
	Where do you put your first axiom?
	That's what it means.
	I'm asking you whether you believe that what Genghis Khan did was immoral regardless of local.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Yeah.
	I'm I I mean you you're you're because he like and I'll tell you sort of why I'm asking this, and I appreciate it's a great conversation.
	I appreciate it.
	So was Genghis Khan torturing raping, murdering, slaughtering children, burning them to death, and so on as he ravished his way across Asia.
	Was that wrong, even though it was approved of locally by the customs of the time?
	Was it wrong?
	For them it wasn't.
	Subjectively, like whatever.
	No, I understand that.
	I just said that three times.
	I'm asking you, I'm asking you, was it wrong for Genghis Khan to rape and murder and kill?
	For us now in the 21st century.
	with all the religious baggage.
	Forget all the subjectivity.
	I understand that.
	Is there any objection?
	Hang on.
	Is there any objective moral standard by which Genghis Khan can be condemned regardless of circumstances, culture, or history?
	I mean, he can be condemned by that moral uh philosophy or that moral theory, or whatever you want to say.
	Sorry, what moral theory.
	A moral theory that would say all murder is wrong, full stop.
	Okay.
	So do you believe, personally, that what Genghis Khan did or Hitler or Stalin, was it wrong?
	Was it wrong for Hitler to murder Jews regardless of mass murder?
	Sure, it's wrong.
	But but the same standard.
	So mass murder is wrong.
	So why is it tough to condemn Genghis Khan if you condemn mass murder?
	Condemning him?
	Yeah, you can condemn him from whatever how many centuries in the past.
	Go ahead, condemn.
	But by the same standard, you'd have to condemn all the other conquests that have happened in the entire history of the United States of the of the of humanity.
	Sure.
	Including our own.
	So I don't know.
	I haven't I haven't conquered anyone, so uh I don't take any collective guilt.
	Okay, so we'd have to I don't understand.
	What are you talking about?
	You'd have to condemn the same actions by Europeans that have conquered and killed and done things like that.
	Even though you yourself have no, I just I just talked about Europeans.
	I just talked about Hitler who was from Austria and was a European.
	So you don't have to bring all of this white guilt stuff in.
	I talked about it, uh fully accepting governments are wrong in the initiation of force all over the world, all throughout history.
	In the same way that we would look back at, say, Sir Isaac Newton, and we would say, you know, what a brilliant mathematician and you know, all of that.
	But we would say that his his focus on on uh mysticism as and and his focus on alchemy was not scientific.
	He was he was not good at science uh because he was doing anti-scientific, anti-rational uh things.
	I mean, obviously we can't correct him because he's dead, but we can certainly say that what he did was not scientific and wasn't going to lead to any reproducible scientific outcomes.
	Yeah, but that's you know that really doesn't apply to this.
	It's like you're talking about two different things.
	So it's you have to if you're in radio.
	Are you telling me that are you telling me loftily that science is different from morality.
	Science is different from morality?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Okay, very different.
	I'm fully aware that science is different from morality.
	So and my audience is fully aware because we're not five, right?
	So you don't need to tell me things that are blindingly obvious.
	That's why I used it as an analogy, right?
	You just asked me that question.
	So yeah, it's different.
	Sorry, what question did I ask?
	You asked me if science was different from morality and it's different.
	So you can't use the same principles that scientists do to outline a theory or whatever for morality.
	That's it's a completely different area.
	Trevor Burrus, Jr.
	Why why can I not use reason and evidence for moral theories?
	Because you don't you can't.
	Well, reason and evidence for what you're doing.
	Because you can't is not a come on, man, you're a professor.
	Because you can't is not an argument.
	You're the one making the claim.
	So you have to make it.
	I did not make a claim.
	I asked a question.
	Why can I not use reason and evidence for moral theories?
	You said, well, you can't.
	It's like that's not an answer.
	I didn't hear that.
	I heard you say something about reading people.
	Well, try to listen a little more carefully because it's really tough to have a debate with someone who's not listening.
	thing.
	Thank you.
	Uh-huh.
	Well, what reason and evidence to make moral claims.
	Is that what you're asking?
	I'm asking why can I not use reason, or why can someone not use reason and evidence to make moral claims?
	To make moral claims.
	Like in what way?
	Like what then you're what you're saying, what you're made, you're making an argument really.
	This is the argument that Sam Harris makes.
	The same argument about the collective good.
	They're not where they say, well, no, no, I'm don't don't lump me in with Sam Harris, man.
	And also if you are going to lump me in with Sam Harris, would you also say that he's a terribly bad at philosophy as well?
	Yeah, he's bad.
	He's not good at philosophy.
	None of that's good.
	Okay.
	It's not a good idea.
	So why can't why can I not make moral claims based on reason and evidence?
	That's the same.
	If you're going to make those type of arguments, those are the same type of arguments that people like Sam Harris use who build up their own theory of human well-being.
	Which is not that's not it's not all that different from what you're implying, what you're saying.
	I don't know.
	But if you're not going to be able to do that, it's a good counter-argument.
	If I say, why can I not use reason and evidence to make moral claims, do you think it's a good counter-argument to say, well, that's what Sam Harris does?
	No, I'm just putting it out there because you don't seem to read.
	I don't know if you read Sam Harris, but the and and Dawkins and all these other people, that these are the same.
	They talk about morality in scientific, they try to use scientific reasoning to get there.
	Okay, did I say scientific reasoning, or did I just say reasoning?
	You said science at first.
	No.
	Which is no.
	No.
	My question is My question is, why can I not use reason and evidence in the discussion of morality?
	And you said, well, scientific reasoning that Dawkins and Harris, it's like that's not what I said though.
	I didn't say scientific reasoning.
	I just said reason and evidence.
	I did not say scientific reasoning.
	As a philosopher, you have to use reason and evidence for any type of a subject and something you're approaching.
	Is morality is morality the subject of hang on.
	Is the is morality a valid subject for philosophical inquiry.
	Is morality a subject for philosophical.
	Of course, I did.
	And the reason I'm asking that is you said we have to use reason and evidence as philosophers, right?
	And if if morality hang on, if morality is a valid subject of philosophical inquiry, and we have to use reason and evidence as philosophers, then surely we can use reason and evidence in the discussion of morality.
	I mean that that's that's that's that's not even uh that's the deductive reasoning, right?
	That's not even inductive.
	Aaron Powell Yeah, that's that's banal.
	That's not even I'm not even talking about that.
	Of course you're using reason.
	Evidence?
	I don't know how what do you mean by evidence exactly in this context.
	Like Well, so reason would be if you have a moral theory that contradicts itself, it would be invalid philosophically.
	If you have a moral theory, this is an old Aristotelian argument, but I would update it with the horrors of the 2020th century.
	So Aristotle would say something like if you have a moral theory that can be used to prove that murder is good, like it kind of doesn't matter what your reasoning is, you've gone wrong somewhere.
	In other words, if if you have a medicine and you say, oh, this medicine kills everyone who takes it, then you know it's almost by definition, I mean it would be by definition not be a cure, but in fact a harm.
	And so if you were to say, I have a moral theory, then it should be logically consistent with itself and with I won't say the facts of reality, but let's just say it has to be internally logically consistent, which would be the same thing with a scientific theory.
	A scientific theory must be internally logically consistent.
	And then of course it must describe the nature of reality and accurately predict uh the future uh of behavior of matter and energy and so on, right?
	And the first test is is it logically consistent?
	I mean, if you have a mathematical proof that starts off with assuming that two and two make five, well, it you don't have to go beyond that, it it wouldn't work.
	So if you have a moral theory, then it must be logically consistent and ideally, it should also explain some of the basic facts of history that we know and that are sort of incontrovertible.
	So for instance, if you said uh I have a moral theory about the universality of property rights that you know, not stealing is good, then kleptocracies like you know, fascist dictatorships or communist dictatorships or North Korea or something, we would say that they would produce negative outcomes for humanity, right?
	Because if you have a bad theory, it produces negative outcomes, right?
	If you have a theory that arsenic is a great cure for COVID, then you're just going to kill people.
	You have a negative outcome.
	So if a moral theory is logically consistent and also explains why there are certain societies that turn out really badly, like communism killed a hundred million people in the 20th century, according to some calculations, or democide was calculated by a professor, I can't remember his name, uh, at the University of Hawaii to have slaughtered, murdered, even outside of war, a quarter of a billion people in the 20th century alone.
	So we would say if you have a moral theory, not only should it be logically consistent, but also it should explain why totalitarianism produces such horribly destructive outcomes, why power corrupts and uh and so on.
	Why power corrupt?
	Yeah, it could explain whatever.
	You could have a moral theory that's like I said, that's what these guys are already trying to do, is everything is logically consistent, blah, blah, blah.
	For the uh theory of human well-being, whatever they want they call it.
	So, but that's utilitarianism or sort of outcome-based morality, which is not uh that's not moral principles.
	They're just-I mean, Sam Harris and other people are saying, well, you know, it's better to have clean water than dirty water, so that which promotes clean water-I mean, that that that's more engineering or or outcome-based.
	To me, that would not be moral philosophy, which is reasoning from first principles, creating logically consistent moral hypotheses or conjectures and then applying them to the real world to see if it explains when societies do well and when societies do badly.
	I mean, I think a moral theory, John, should at least explain why human well-being was vastly improved after the 18th, 19th centuries, right?
	Like why when you look at sort of human well-being, and I do this in my 2006 series, Introduction to Philosophy, you say, okay, look, our people lived on like a dollar a day or 50 cents a day, even in sort of modern modern dollars, they they lived on almost nothing, and then you can sort of see starting in agriculture in the 18th century, then really moving to capital and and the free markets, relative free markets of the 19th century, that human wealth just like went through the absolute roof.
	Like for the first time in human history, 99% of people weren't just living subsistence crap and dying of starvation, famine and and uh sorry, it's a bit of redundant there, sorry, starvation and uh bad sanitation and and uh diseases and so on.
	So you'd have to have a theory that says why was humanity so absolutely piss-poor for 200,000 Years and then over the last 300 years, you know, it kind of went through the roof in terms of productivity.
	That's a huge thing to explain for a moral theory.
	UPP does that, but uh I think so then when I say there's empirical evidence, you need to explain some of the sort of basic things that have happened over the last, particularly over the last couple of hundred years that have you know, we we now make you know three or four hundred times uh the income that that happened in the past.
	And how can a moral theory explain that?
	Sorry.
	I I know that was a long speech, so go ahead.
	Why would you have to explain any of that?
	Like why wouldn't why wouldn't you read about the uh economic movements and social movements and everything else that led to capitalism and everything else?
	Why is this funny?
	We're talking about massive amounts of human suffering and the alleviation of the Trevor Burrus.
	You're not talking about You're talking about morality.
	No, no, but why is why is that I'm trying to why is this funny though?
	I mean, but I just talked about the Holocaust.
	I talked about a quarter of a billion people being murdered, a hundred million people murdered under communism, and you know, people dying and living on to like I'm not sure where the comedy is.
	Aaron Powell The comedy is that you're talking about how people got out of poverty or stop living a certain way due to the industrial revolution and all this all this other stuff that happened.
	And we're talking about morality, which is just what is right, what is wrong, everything else.
	I don't that really it doesn't go together.
	Just people have to be morality supersedes all of that.
	It doesn't have anything to do with industrialization or social movements.
	It's social movements arise out of the moral principles or moral uh decay or moral whatever of the time.
	They're not it's not the reverse.
	So you're saying, I want to make sure I understand.
	So you're saying that moral theories precede improvements in the human condition if those moral theories are more consistent or rational or universal or I'm not trying to put words in your mouth.
	I'm just trying to understand what you mean in terms of the cause and effect.
	Yeah, morality supersedes all of that.
	It's not has nothing to do with how uh nations develop.
	It's the more it's a starting moral standing that they have, first of all, their own beliefs, what they base the morality on that leads to where the country goes or where a nation goes or a continent.
	Uh, okay.
	So moral beliefs have an effect on human capital, it has an effect on productivity, it has an effect on property rights uh and free trade and and so on.
	Yeah.
	For sure, yeah.
	Trevor Burrus, Jr.
	That's an effect on how movements start.
	How does whatever any movement any in the 20th century started because the leaders of that country.
	Sorry, what's hang on, what started?
	Any movement, anything that happened in the 20th century.
	Trevor Burrus, Jr.
	What you mean by movement?
	You mean political movement or because you were talking about you were talking about Stalin and Hitler and all this other stuff.
	Great the great uh uh dictators and all this.
	They started because the country was in a certain state socially, politically, morally.
	So all these things contribute.
	Um that morality comes out of all that.
	So it's it supersedes that.
	I don't uh and it has little if you're talking if you're talking about a certain moral theory that you want to put forward, it has to be based not on the history, the social history of humanity and all this or whatever.
	But no, no, I didn't say that's but that wasn't my argument, John.
	If you were listening, my argument says that a moral theory must be logically consistent.
	And it should ideally go some way towards explaining various uh elements of history and success or failures of societies in promoting general welfare.
	So it's not that they're proven by these things, but it should so if you have a theory that says uh uh communism should be really beneficial to human life and really productive in its allocation of capital and labor.
	Right.
	If you had a theory and and then we know, based upon the horrors of the 20th century that that's not the case, right?
	Then that would be something that would be a thumb in the eye of your moral theory, right?
	In the same way that if you said uh uh, well, I'm I'm holding up my glasses, and if I let go, my theory is that they're gonna float or rise up when they would just drop, right?
	So I'm not saying that you would prove a moral theory, and I think that's where we're misunderstanding each other about Dawkins and Harris, because they're saying, well, you've got these empirical facts, and this leads you to a moral theory, and you know whether that violates the is or dichotomy I think it does, but you know, that's perhaps a topic for another time.
	But I'm saying that a moral theory has to be rationally consistent and ideally should explain the general movements of history uh as to why is totalitarianism so destructive, and why would say uh free markets and small government be relatively uh more productive.
	Why would uh progress be better uh where there's free speech and uh where there's no free speech, progress progress, uh intellectual progress would tend to stagnate or decay.
	So we want logical consistency with our moral theories, and the reason I say reason and evidence is we have a lot of evidence about good and bad outcomes of moral theories, and we should be able to explain that using a moral theory as a whole.
	Not that it proves the moral theory, but it should explain it.
	No, I mean not for me.
	Communism failed because of economic reasons had very little to do with like how bad it how many people it killed.
	I mean, that's bad too, but it failed because it it was destined to fail economically.
	It's not going to work anywhere.
	So it's it's uh Okay.
	So the the argument that I would make uh would be something like this.
	That and I appreciate the conversation, I really do.
	So I would say something like uh property rights are universal, and I would make that case through UPB, which we can do very briefly if you like.
	But uh property rights are universal, and the reason why communism fails is it denies that property rights are universal.
	In other words, you end up with a very small number of people controlling everything in the country and denying property rights and self-ownership and owning the effects of your actions, which is the root of property, that because it claims something that is universal is treated as only reserved for a small number of elites.
	Now, that would be the moral reason.
	One of the practical reasons which I think you and I would probably agree on is that without a free market, you don't have price signals.
	And without price signals, you can't possibly have efficient allocation of not even allocation, you can't have the uh efficient movement of labor and capital uh because all human desires are infinite and all resources are finite.
	You can't have a efficient allocation of resources without a price signal because central planning doesn't have access to all of those price signals and isn't nimble and it becomes political and corrupt and so on.
	So sorry, you were gonna say.
	No, that's economic.
	It's going to fail because of certain reasons.
	But that's uh that uh No, but you you're denying people property rights under communism.
	You're denying people self-ownership only in the effects of their actions.
	And so because you you advocate for and defend property rights for a small group of elites, which is the Politburo or the people at the top of the communist system, the people with the Dachows on the Black Sea and so on, because you say a small number of people control most of the property, then you're saying some human beings have the right to property they didn't even earn, whereas other human beings don't have the right to property they did earn, that would be a logical inconsistency.
	Why would only some people have the right to property and not others?
	Whereas in UPB, the rights of property are established as universal principles, and therefore we would accept or what UPB would say is the more that you respect property rights, because that's logically consistent, the more that you respect property rights, the better your society would do.
	And of course, we notice that one of the things that birthed the Industrial Revolution was the end of serfdom and slavery to a large degree, and that gave people self-ownership, it gave people uh the ability to own the fundamental mean of production, which is your own mind and body, to own the effects of their actions, which is the property they've created, and to trade much more freely or with free will.
	And that's why we went from subsistence to the explosion of wealth in the agriculturally in the 18th century, industrially in the 19th century, and more technical technologically in the twentieth century.
	So uh UPB would prove the universality of property rights, and then it would say the more the property rights are respected in general, the better outcomes society would be.
	Like if you are navigating around the world thinking it's flat, you're gonna end up in the wrong place.
	If you understand that it's a sphere, you're gonna end up in a better place.
	In other words, if you have an accurate representation of the way things are, then you're gonna have better outcomes than if you don't.
	And so that would be and again, I'm not-I know I haven't proven anything with UPB, but that's why I was talking about both reason and evidence.
	UPB is an elegant way of proving that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be moral, and it's moral to respect property and personhood.
	And the evidence which you would say is the more the society violates UPB, the worse it outcomes uh the worse its outcomes tend to be, if that makes sense.
	Well, no, as far as I can tell, you're just I mean UPB, whatever you're calling it UPB, but that's lip that's libertarian theory, whatever about property rights and it still explains, okay, economically, yeah, that could have led to uh well uh wealth and and uh a lift uh being lifted out of um surfdom and all this other stuff, sure.
	Uh yeah, but that still doesn't there's nothing moral going on there, and what more importantly, what is I'm sorry, hang on.
	Are you saying that the end of slavery was not moral?
	It was not that slavery is as moral as not slavery.
	Slavery was not slav that's a whole different moral there.
	You're saying what is Did you do you believe that slavery is immoral?
	Yeah, but that's not that's the point.
	That's not something economic.
	That's something you have to make a moral decision about in order to end the practice first.
	So it's not that's not economic.
	Um, I get that.
	I get that.
	I understand that.
	But ending slavery does have economic effects, right?
	I mean, the moral theory is that slavery is evil, which it is, and then when we end slavery, generally we would say that the rational is the practical.
	Uh it certainly is in science and math and engineering and so on.
	So with morals, I would say that if you have a correct or more valid or universal or rational moral theory that the effects on society should be better.
	In the same way, like if if you and I sail, we want to sail from London to, or maybe not London, from Dover, let's say we want to sail from Dover to go around the hook.
	So we want to sail from Dover to New York, and uh let's say you know it's back in ye old days of sailing ships or whatever, and I think the world is flat and you think that the world is round, and I end up at the Cape of Good Hope, because I'm just completely wrong, and you end up in New York, that would be evidence that the world is a sphere, not flat, because you ended up in the right place and I ended up in the wrong place.
	Yeah, I just but I don't know what that has to do with slavery, but uh but we're there the point is that's uh that's uh it doesn't matter what the effects are, or the the material effects of something like a decision like that.
	The point is that you would decide that morally is wrong.
	Doesn't matter what the effects downstream would be.
	If you're you have a system that tells you it's wrong, you have to stop doing it.
	So it's okay, so hang on.
	So is slavery wrong because you believe it's wrong, or is slavery wrong for some objective reason?
	Slavery because of some moral reason.
	No, your moral reason.
	Your moral reason.
	A moral reason.
	No, no, you're you're hang on.
	Your you said slavery is wrong.
	Why is slavery wrong?
	Why is slavery wrong?
	Yeah.
	I'm not gonna tell you from my personal point of view.
	I could tell you historically.
	No, no, no.
	But you you you you you must have you must have some belief that there's objective right and wrong.
	Would you would you agree with that?
	I'm a de I'm a deist.
	So I believe in the objectivity of morals.
	Okay, fantastic.
	So then so you accept the object sorry to interrupt.
	You accept the objectivity of morals, so why is slavery wrong?
	It's wrong because there are moral In my view, there are moral laws that are universal that supersede the material that have that we have to obey.
	Or we religious laws.
	Sorry, would you say religious laws?
	Yeah, there are laws.
	It's like for me, it's like a logical law.
	Like we can't begin without this law.
	That's what makes slavery wrong in the first place.
	Why England was the first to ban slavery.
	For them, it's a religious wrong.
	Or was it wrong according to the same thing?
	So sorry, I'm I'm sorry, and I I really apologize because I'm I'm sorry if I'm being dense here or or not following something that's obvious.
	But why is slavery wrong?
	Why?
	Because the we're not it's for me it's it as a deist, it's something that a creator put as a as a law.
	Something is wrong.
	Anything that comes to the same thing.
	So what argument would you have against other cultures wherein slavery is right?
	That my views are supersede theirs or whatever.
	No, hang on.
	They have gods that tell them that slavery is a valid conquest of war.
	Uh and there are there are still cultures in the world today who believe that.
	There are open eye open air slave markets in the former remains of Libya after Clinton killed Gaddafi to some degree, right?
	So if you have other religions that their God tells them that slavery is right, and you your God tells you that slavery is wrong, how do you convince them?
	Aaron Ross Powell How do you convince them?
	Yeah, like why are they wrong if their God tells them slavery is right and your God tells you that slavery is wrong?
	Well, you can't.
	That's what most a lot of wars that throughout human history have started over, is the ideas between different religions and all that.
	But I mean, you mostly it doesn't work.
	Mostly you have to take it over by force.
	But I'm not sure.
	Okay, but if there was a way I'm so sorry, I apologize, John, I rudely interrupt you again.
	I apologize.
	Sorry, please finish your point.
	No, I'm not an intervention interventionist, first of all.
	Like I don't believe in intervention.
	So if a country is practicing slavery or communism or something else, usually it will fall apart on its own because these things are not first of all, they don't work.
	I mean, they can work so far economically, but later, like they'll fall apart.
	There's better systems that'll work.
	And but second, I'm not an interventionist.
	Like just as a principle.
	Like I'm with uh Thomas Jefferson in that way I don't I don't believe in intervention uh for different countries.
	I think that the whole, you know, whatever the USA being the uh world police and all that shouldn't have never happened.
	Um the founding fathers were quite interventionist when it came to n America, right?
	I mean, they fought a war to liberate themselves from the British.
	Yeah, but they to establish a new country, yes.
	They conquered or whatever, they came here and conquered, yes.
	Right.
	Otherwise it wouldn't be there.
	Trevor Burrus, Jr.
	Would it be beneficial, would you say, for the world if there was a way to disprove false moral arguments like slavery is good without reference or requirement for religious faith.
	You have to say I mean what are you basing it off?
	That's not true.
	No, no, I'm not done.
	I'm asking you whether it would be beneficial.
	Probably not.
	Like I because like you said, you Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	You said that the only way to change people's minds, if it's faith-based, is through violence.
	Now, if you could reason with people now, not I'm not saying not you wouldn't reason with everyone because a lot of people reject reason and so on, but would it be beneficial to have a rational proof of secular ethics rather than having to rely either on violence or watching horrors around the world with no capacity to debate?
	I said it usually usually ends that way.
	The history of humanity is taught us that.
	So it's not you could debate all day and make philosophical theories about why we should adhere to this or that more these moral rule.
	But in the end, the uh another country is not going to listen to rationality.
	I mean, they'd have to be have the same exact principles that your uh you do.
	Um you're saying that there's no possibility of reasoning irrational people into being more rational or being better.
	You could try.
	But isn't that your job?
	Why would you have a job in something that you say is impossible?
	Yeah, my job is in a certain context.
	I'm not in uh wherever, some country where they practice cannibalism as a right of passage, and I'm trying to teach them.
	I'm not sure some people can be reached through reason.
	The context here is really important.
	No, no, some are you saying some people can be reached through reason, because otherwise your job would be fraudulent, right?
	Yeah, but I I'm teaching in a certain tradition.
	I I I'm aware of that.
	You have to speak the same language.
	I you have a lot of cultural touch points, and whether you need the whole Greco-Roman whatever enlightenment tradition, I get all of that.
	But some people can be reached through reason.
	And and some very irrational people can be reached through reason.
	Otherwise, let's say we have a little bit more rationality in the West than some other cultures.
	Well, we didn't start out that way, right?
	I mean, the British people, which are, you know, we there's a certain amount of base Anglo-Saxon rationality that we can look at, and you know, but when the Romans found them, they were, you know, painted blue and and worshipping rocks and and beating each other on the heads with with said rocks as often as possible.
	So we can emerge to reason from a state of pre-reason, otherwise reason would exist, wouldn't exist in humanity, right?
	Uh sure.
	But you it doesn't, you know.
	They that's the whole they they were subjugated by force too.
	So they have that's the that's another example of what happened to uh the um Germanic people, the Gaelics and all that.
	So they had to be Rome took them over.
	It's and um that that's uh current day example would be the Muslim countries.
	There's still everything that's going on now, you don't reason with these people.
	Their faith is whatever called faith, I don't know.
	Uh how um well I guess a lot of them take must uh their faith seriously.
	So it's uh it's like war of faith.
	It's always been that way.
	And uh You can't you're not going to, you know, what you could try to present something, but they're not going to listen to that.
	They're gonna tell you Muslim uh Allah is God and they'll cut off your head.
	So Well, I wouldn't necessarily put all Muslims into that category, but uh okay.
	So uh if we have a rational proof of secular ethics, it at least puts forward the possibility of convincing people who are open to reason.
	Whereas if we don't have a rational proof of secular ethics, we have no chance of reaching anyone because it's just faith versus faith, right?
	I don't know.
	There's an entire history of philosophical moral reasoning.
	So it's that's not going to stop anybody.
	I mean, it's available for uh that's not going to really I don't know what the point is of and what what again, like what is it that uh your system is based on.
	Well, okay.
	Uh I can I can run you through the proof of say don't steal.
	No, no, no.
	What is the first one?
	No, no, I don't know.
	No, I'll I'll run you through the proof of don't steal.
	And then we can uh I mean I heard the proof.
	I know the proof.
	Okay, just for just for i for the audience's sake, because not everyone is up to speed on our conversation.
	What is my proof for don't steal?
	It's a contradiction.
	Nobody can steal and be stolen from.
	Is that it?
	I'm sorry, but that's terrible teaching.
	If you could just take another run it teach it like so people can understand it.
	It was something like nobody can want to steal and be stolen from.
	And that can't be applied universally.
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure if you're asking me or telling me.
	Do you not know the proof?
	I think that was the proof.
	I can't remember like 100%, but then was that it's well, it's not a question.
	Okay, I'll I'll do it.
	So the the proof against uh the proof against stealing is stealing is either universally preferable behavior or not stealing is universally preferable behavior.
	Now we'll get to the antecedents or the the background to that in just a second, but let's just look at the logical consistency of these questions.
	So if I were to put forward the moral proposition that theft, stealing, is universally preferable behavior, what happens?
	Well, the problem is, of course, that if I say stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time.
	However, stealing is the unwanted transfer of property.
	So if I want to have my property taken from me, stealing doesn't exist.
	The example I give is if you put some old couch from your university days, you put some old couch out on the sidewalk with a big sign that says take me, and then you your your video camera catches someone picking that couch up, throwing it in their pickup and driving off.
	And you call the cops, right?
	You say, hey man, Bob stole my couch.
	And he's like, Oh, that's terrible.
	I'm gonna come over.
	And he comes over and he says, well, what happened?
	He said, well, I put the couch out on the sidewalk and I put a sign that said take me, and then Bob took my couch.
	I mean, you're probably going to get charged for wasting the police's time, because he said, look, if you put your couch out there and you say take me, he can't steal it from you, bro, because you're giving it away.
	You're giving it away.
	It's like samples.
	You go to farmers' markets, they have these little samples of like cookies and brownies and stuff like that.
	And if you you can't be arrested for if it says samples and you have a little bite, you I mean, maybe if you take the whole plate, but you can't be arrested, right?
	So if you want someone to take your property, it's not stealing.
	In other words, stealing is asymmetric, right?
	If Bob is stealing from Doug, it's only stealing if Doug doesn't want him to take it.
	So theft can never be universally preferable behavior.
	Because theft is if if stealing is UPB, stealing ceases to exist as a category.
	It's a self-detonating argument.
	And therefore stealing can never be universally preferable behavior.
	Respecting property rights, i.e.
	not stealing, can be achieved by everyone at all times.
	And therefore it doesn't self-contradict to say stealing uh to say respecting property rights is UPB.
	There's no contradiction involved in that.
	Now, that doesn't mean the people won't steal just because the theory uh says that it's logically consistent.
	But uh the same applies, of course, to rape.
	Rape can never be universally preferable behavior, because rape is unwanted sexual contact.
	So it would be crazy to say rape is universally preferable behavior.
	Well, not crazy, be wrong.
	Because it would be to say everyone must want to rape and be raped at the same time.
	But there's no such thing as wanting to be raped, because rape is unwanted sexual contact.
	The same thing would be true of assault, the same thing would be true of murder and so on.
	So UPB shows that there are immediate and unresolvable logical contradictions in saying that rape, theft, assault, and murder can be universally preferable behavior, and therefore any moral claim that says any of that can be dismissed as immediately self-contradictory.
	It does do the slight bonus of also pointing out that since stealing is the opposite of virtue, since stealing is immoral, stealing is a UPB violation, as I call it, then society's based more on stealing but also have more negative outcomes as a whole, because we would say that the re reason equals virtue equals happiness, or the rational is the practical.
	And if you have a scientific theory that contradicts itself, we would not expect anything productive really to come out of that scientific theory except purely by accident.
	And only if you didn't follow it, since matter and behavior don't contradict themselves.
	Any scientific theory that contradicts itself will fail in its description of the behavior of matter and energy.
	And so rape, theft, assault, and murder being the basis.
	And we can go into things like uh self-defense.
	We can go into things like uh contract law and and uh fraud and things like that.
	But you know, let's just deal with the basics because they're the ones most violated rep that rape theft, assault, and murder.
	So societies that promote these things uh would do worse than societies that go further towards respecting these things.
	And you know, uh the final example would be looking at the differences between the French Revolution and the American Revolution, the American Revolution.
	Uh well, they were originally gonna have life, liberty, and property in uh the the um uh the sort of founding documents, but they couldn't put in property because of the slave owners, which was a violation of thou shalt not steal, literally owning another human being is stealing their self-ownership.
	And so they were closer in UPB compliance, the bill of rights, the constitution, and so on, the founding documents of America were way closer to UPB than the French Revolution.
	The French Revolution was an ungodly, literally ungodly, evil, you know, murdering nuns and and slaughtering people and and mass starvation and inflation and to the destruction of all savings and communism, of course, is a violation of UPB, fascism is a violation of UPB totalitarianism as a whole is a violation of UPB.
	And so UPB says bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder universally are logically valid, and societies that have logical contradictions in their enactment of morality are not gonna do well in the same way that if you have logical contradictions in how you build your bridge, it's probably not gonna stay up if that makes sense.
	So sorry, that's a very brief uh example, but that's the uh general UPB approach.
	Yeah, as far as I can tell, you're mixing libertarian theory with and adding a contradiction where you can't rate or uh steal and not steal at the same time.
	Which it's okay, but just saying that some hang on, bro, come on.
	Like that you're being lazy.
	I'm gonna be perfectly frank with you.
	So just saying, well, it's libertarian and it seems like there's a contradiction.
	How about instead of describing things, you actually provide an argument?
	It's getting kind of tiresome to just have you put things down without actually analyzing the content of what's being put forward.
	I can't imagine that this is what you teach your students is just to say, well, you know, just say that the argument is libertarian and has contradictions.
	You don't have to prove anything.
	But it is.
	I mean, you're just lifting libertarian theory and then.
	A contradiction.
	You've got to show me the contradictions.
	Don't just say it's libertarian.
	That doesn't answer anything.
	Putting a label on it doesn't disprove anything.
	I thought you had like a little bit more than just like, yeah, property rights and stealing, you can't steal and not steal want to steal at the same time, which is like, okay, yeah, I know that's that's that's uh a contradiction.
	What makes it wrong?
	Okay.
	So it is logically impossible to say stealing is universally preferable behavior, right?
	If you want to make you yeah, you you make you put the assertion that logical, yeah, logically uh stealing is universally preferable preferable.
	Then you say you can also not want to be stolen from blah blah blah.
	I get it.
	Yeah.
	Okay, fantastic.
	So rape, theft, assault, and murder have all been proven as logically self-contradictory under the theory of UPS.
	You change the you change the variables and all these contradictions.
	What I'm asking is what makes what's the first principle that makes these things wrong in the first place.
	Aside from my own.
	Help me understand what you mean by first principle.
	That that's a bit of a I mean, it's a technical term, but for the audience's sake, it might be a little confusing.
	Not technical.
	It's really simple.
	Um it's what you're talking about these things as contradictions and that makes them how does that a contradiction make something wrong?
	Okay, yeah, it's a contradiction.
	That doesn't make it wrong.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Now your prejudice is showing.
	You said earlier, brother, we gotta deal with reason and evidence.
	And now you're saying, well, it's contradictory.
	How does that make it wrong?
	Yeah, it's yeah, it'll be reason led you to say, okay, I'm gonna put this variable and this variable here, and then uh make a contradiction between them.
	How does that make it morally wrong?
	Okay, it's contradictory.
	So if somebody says, if somebody proposes a moral theory that requires both a simultaneous affirmation and denial of property rights, that's a contradiction, and we should reject that moral theory, which means we reject fascism, we reject communism, we reject totalitarianism.
	In fact, we reject statism as a whole, which is where the inarocapitalism comes in from.
	We reject spanking, we reject circumcision, we reject uh, you know, whatever, uh rape.
	So the fact that we have a way to say if you have a moral system that self-contradicts, it's invalid.
	Now, does that mean magically every somebody suddenly becomes rational?
	Well, no, of course not.
	But it is a way of disproving other people's morals' assertions without requiring them to believe in the same God you do.
	Yeah, you're talking about these systems that it will fail for material reasons, not because of a metaphysical one.
	Moral what is the why is it wrong in the first place?
	Sorry, why is it what?
	What makes it wrong?
	What makes it Are you saying that something that is self-contradictory is not incorrect?
	That doesn't make it wrong.
	I think you're using the word wrong here in in morally wrong.
	I'm not doing that.
	Hang on.
	Is something that is self-contradictory incorrect?
	That's not a moral theory.
	No, no.
	Is it incorrect?
	I mean, forget the morality.
	Is something that is something that is self-contradictory incorrect?
	You correct logically?
	Yes.
	I mean, if you want to say The proposition that stealing is morally right, or I know that's that's begging the question.
	So the proposition that stealing is universally preferable behavior is incorrect.
	Uh-huh.
	So that's good, right?
	We've we've proven that stealing is incorrect.
	Any theory that promotes stealing as a moral absolute is incorrect.
	Or stealing as universally preferable behavior, that's incorrect.
	Well, that's pretty good, right?
	No, you've only proven that it can't be preferable to do and to have done to you.
	Like logical.
	The proposition that theft is universally preferable behavior is is incorrect.
	You're not telling me why I should not steal in the first place, other than I should not want to be stolen from at the same time.
	No, no.
	I'm so UPB deals with moral theories.
	UPB is not magic mind control for individuals, because of course no such thing exists, right?
	So science says if your theory self-contradicts, it is invalid, right?
	If your theory requires that a shape be both a circle and a square at the same time, it is incorrect.
	Right?
	Now, it doesn't magically program everyone to become a scientist.
	It just says that if you're going to put forward a claim about the behavior of matter and energy in the universe, it cannot be self-contradictory because matter and energy do not self-contradict.
	So that's all I'm saying.
	Again, you're talking about like a science something's in the realm of logic where we can't have or a circle, okay.
	How does that give me any moral input?
	That doesn't give me any moral input.
	You're just saying very well.
	We just said, I mean, and you agreed, if I understand this correctly, you we agreed that stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, and only the respect for property rights can be universally preferable behavior.
	Now, again, that doesn't program every anyone to stop being a thief.
	But it means that if somebody puts forward a moral theory which violates UPB, that moral theory is invalid.
	In other words, if somebody puts forward a theory that says stealing is sometimes good, stealing is sometimes valid, stealing, and that then it's incorrect because stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, and you cannot propose different rules for the same class of entities.
	What you said earlier, morality is everywhere that human beings are.
	So you can't just say uh a lizard is cold-blooded, but I'm gonna throw in um a dolphin as well.
	It's like, but a dolphin is warm-blooded.
	No, no, no, but right, so you can't just create a category called humanity, then just apply opposite moral rules.
	Like, well, if your name is Bob, you can kill and it's not logically contradictory, or you can promote murder as universally preferable behavior, but Bob can't, right?
	Because you have to have the same rational categories for human beings as a whole.
	So the proof is, uh as we stated, that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior.
	And as far as what people do with that, I don't know.
	I mean, uh the important thing is to promote the argument so that people learn to analyze and and critically oppose false moral theories, theories that involve self-contradiction.
	So to take on something like Richard Dawkins or Samuel Harris or or something like that, right?
	So if they accept the existence, say, of a state, then they are which they do, and they're both statists as far as as I know, then they're creating opposite moral categories.
	They're saying, well, there's some people who can initiate the use of force to transfer property, there are some people who can start wars, there are some people who can draft people to go fight in in Ukraine or Russia or wherever, and there are other people who can't do that.
	Well, that's a categorical error.
	You can't say human beings have opposite moral properties, because human beings are one category and that the only moral category that exists in the world, there isn't morality among ants.
	And so the universality of UPB and the fact that UPB violations are immediately self-contradictory is the basis for communicating morals to people who don't share your prior assumptions.
	In other words, if you believe in the Ten Commandments, then you can talk to other people who already believe in the Ten Commandments.
	If they don't, if they have an entirely different kind of God, right?
	If they have uh Woden or or Loki or, you know, whatever, right?
	It's 10,000 different gods You can choose from, you have no way to communicate them.
	If you have a common language of reason and evidence, you can at least talk to people about morals who don't share your metaphysical beliefs about deism or the moral order of the universe put forward by a God.
	And so this is why I say irrational proof of secular ethics.
	It's a way of talking about morality that doesn't require the guns of the government and it does not require the faith of a God.
	It is reason and evidence.
	And yes, there will be countless people out there who will reject reason and evidence and you can't convince them at all.
	But that's fine.
	I mean you still have to put forward as you do, right?
	You know that there's mil billions of people out in the world who aren't going to accept reason and evidence.
	But you continue to promote reason and evidence, much to your much to your credit, as do I, as you know, maybe we do it in different ways, and and that's part of the whole free speech thing, which is wonderful.
	But we do have to have a way of talking to people who don't agree with us, particularly in the realm of ethics, which tends to be the most volatile and bloody aspect of human interactions.
	And if we have a way of with reason, with evidence talking about ethics, then we don't hit this impasse of faith which requires violence, as as we've seen from various religious takeovers, both from Christianity and Islam and other religions.
	We have a way of talking about morals that doesn't require faith, because if it does require faith, it's almost inevitably going to be uh conquer or be conquered.
	And if we can avoid that, boy, so much the better.
	Sorry, sorry for the long speech.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	That was a whole lot of gifts galloping.
	I don't I don't even know I we're going for uh what the what it's based on.
	And you still no one's going to accept a contradiction because it's like uh whatever.
	You want to keep con put these variables in any context doesn't prove anything morally, or say that a cis another system would have failed if they had not if they had only obeyed this non-contradiction thing.
	They could have uh you could give any other reason for why they would have failed.
	Like communism, what it's all economics and social mores and all this other stuff that made it fail.
	I don't need to know that I can't prefer to steal and want to be stolen from.
	It doesn't a society that's going to base themselves on stealing is going to fall apart really quickly.
	So it's not that doesn't and it doesn't prove anything morally.
	It's like what's going to fall apart.
	Or good material.
	Hang on.
	Do you not think that stealing is in the realm of morality.
	Yeah, what the onus is on you to prove why it's wrong.
	I think morality is.
	No, I did.
	I said that any theory that says that stealing is universally preferable behavior is incorrect.
	And you have accepted that you've accepted that proof because it is.
	It is incorrect.
	Incorrect, but not I'm not in your system, it makes no sense why it's incorrect, other than you can't.
	No, no, no.
	Like, come on, logic is not my system.
	And logical contradiction isn't-I mean, you could say Aristotle, three laws of logic from there on, but it's not my system.
	It's a logical contradiction to say that stealing is universally preferable behavior.
	You accept that, I accept that, and that's just a basic reality.
	So if somebody proposes a system that promotes uh the stealing in any form or context, you can say, nope stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior, neither can rape, theft, assault, and murder.
	That's why, and they're incorrect.
	Any theory that promotes a self-contradiction is an incorrect theory.
	But you still haven't proven why they're wrong.
	All you've proven that they're proven that they are wrong.
	You're not gonna be able to do that.
	I've proven that they are wrong and you've accepted that.
	So I don't know what you're doing here.
	You're you're conflating wrong morally with wrong or uh logically.
	I can put any variable in those.
	Absolutely.
	Everything that is self-contradictory is incorrect.
	Yes, I agree.
	That doesn't make anything morally wrong or right.
	I could just say any any variable.
	And I could say, well, that's moral because of the contradiction.
	Huh?
	No, I have no way.
	But that's what that but that's why I asked you why stealing is stealing a moral subject.
	Stealing is a moral subject.
	Because it's only specific to human beings that it only involves property rights.
	We don't look at animals as stealing from each other.
	It's a human concept.
	It's a human concept based on morality.
	And so if I've disproven a moral theory, then that is a moral argument, and that disproves if it if the subject is moral, I mean you agree that rape with regards to human beings is that a moral issue.
	Yeah, you've chosen like these three issues, which are moral.
	Actually, it's four rape, theft, assault, and murder.
	But anyway, go on.
	Yeah, but uh what I'm saying is you could put any variable there as and you could put a self-contradiction and then make a claim about it being moral.
	You haven't proven anything.
	I don't see it.
	I'm sorry, but we're wrong.
	Okay, so can stealing ever be universally preferable behavior?
	Yes or no?
	Um ever be universally preferable.
	I thought we'd already gone through this, but we can do it again.
	Can stealing ever be logically forget the morals.
	Can s can the th can stealing ever be universally preferable behavior?
	Anything is possible logically, so I don't know what you're asking me.
	Like in a logical sense, yes.
	Anyone can you could have a universal preference for stealing.
	Okay, so I can run through the proof again because you'd already accepted that it couldn't be.
	I can run through the proof again if you'd like.
	Yeah, all you're doing is putting P and not P. That doesn't prove anything.
	So logical inconsistency has no bearing on proof.
	So if you have a student who hands in a paper that's logically contradictory, you just mark them with an A. No, what I'm saying is Oh, good.
	Okay, so logical inconsistency is a mark of error, and that's why you mock people.
	I'll give you another example.
	You came in hot on my show live, which I appreciate.
	I'm glad you're here.
	I really am.
	You came in hot on my show telling me that I was wrong.
	That I was bad at arguing, that I was bad at formulating logic, that I got everything wrong, and I wasn't a philosopher, and I was wrong too.
	Right.
	I get all of that.
	So you are judging me according to a standard called philosophy and finding me wanting, not just according to your opinion, not just according to your subjective perspective, but according to absolute universal rules.
	I was deficient and wrong and bad.
	Right?
	It's stupid, it's wrong.
	You're doing the wrong thing.
	Right?
	So you come in hot with moral judgments, and then when I prove something morally, you say, Well, but morals don't prove anything, and logical contradictions don't prove everything.
	Prove anything.
	Well, you came in hot.
	I'm gonna call you a real hypocrite here, bro.
	You came in hot saying, Steph, you are acting illogically, you are acting irrationality, you're promoting things that are wrong and bad, and that's you should you wrong and bad and blah, blah, blah.
	And now that I've proven something morally, you say, well, but contradictions don't mean anything.
	That doesn't prove anything morally.
	But if you don't believe in morals, how dare you come in and call me wrong and bad for what I'm doing?
	Because that doesn't like again.
	You haven't even made a big ar uh an actual good argument.
	You just put two variables and set down.
	No, I've put I've put a great argument together that you agreed with that stealing can never be universally preferable behavior because it involves immediate self-contradiction.
	It can't be universally preferable because no society would be able to form it.
	A contradiction is not based upon evidence.
	Stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior because you cannot want to steal and be stolen from.
	Because if you want to be stolen from, the concept of stealing immediately vanishes.
	So stealing can never be universally preferable behavior.
	Rape can never be universally preferable behavior, assault and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, because if you want to be raped, you're not being raped.
	Maybe you're in some kinky role play.
	I don't know, fifty shades of gray, something like that, right?
	So I'm sorry, and I I'll move on to another caller because I think we've exhausted the topic and you can mull it over.
	You can continue to call me an idiot.
	That's totally up to you.
	But I will just say that uh I don't believe that you're arguing in good faith because you already agreed that these things couldn't be uh they couldn't be logically contradictory uh and the the the the theory that stealing can be universally preferable behavior, you already accepted that it was self-contradictory, and then you say, well, but contradictions don't matter, but then you came in hot at the beginning of me saying that I was contradicting and doing bad things and blah blah blah.
	Anyway.
	All right, let us take a call.
	I appreciate everyone's patience.
	I'm glad that that fellow called in.
	I was actually looking forward to it, and I really really enjoyed uh the um conflict.
	Um it it was a fight.
	I was hoping it would be a bit more civil, but that's all right.
	Team human, what is on your mind, my friend?
	You will need to unmute All right.
	Maybe maybe people have been stunned by the joyful Combat of John and myself.
	I give you once or twice, otherwise we can go to someone else.
	Team human.
	He has unteamed.
	All right.
	D. Not D's nuts, but something else completely what is on your mind.
	Don't forget to unmute.
	Hello, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	Good.
	So I'm just to touch a background.
	I'm 54, um person of faith.
	And I've listened to you quite a bit over the years.
	And I decided to start listening to your book, Universal Uh Preferable Behavior.
	Aaron Ross Powell Universally preferable behavior, sorry, but in case people look for it.
	But go ahead.
	Yes.
	And so like I said, I'm listening to it, and it boy, it comes at you really fast out of the gate.
	You're fast and curious.
	And I think that's a good question.
	Well, sorry, just everyone, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Just everyone knows it doesn't.
	I mean, at the very beginning of the book, I say you have every reason to have no belief that I've solved the age-old problem of philosophy called secular ethics.
	I'm an IT guy.
	I have a graduate degree in history of philosophy, but it is the holy grail of philosophy.
	So uh the idea that I've solved it is something that you should not believe at all.
	Because it's it's such a ridiculous claim.
	So I sort of put that at the beginning of the book, but I'm sorry, Dee, go ahead.
	Yeah.
	And so I I the way I look at this is uh uh personally is there's a saying it says you can um I like or I can't talk to the people I pray with, and I can't pray with the people I talk to.
	And so as like I say, as a person of faith, like these kinds of discussions don't come up.
	It's you know, we just have so much in common and we just talk about our own issues within.
	And so that's why I find listening to you interesting.
	Um what's what's happened at the beginning of the book is you you offer a pretty strong critique of scripture.
	I don't know if you would say it that way.
	Um I wouldn't say it that way now, and I have um and there's no reason why you would know this, but I have put out I have put out copious and and heartfelt apologies to Christians for the harshness of my language in the past.
	And so um I I do apologize for that again.
	Uh it was very harsh and wrong, and uh uh there's a bunch of reasons for it, that none of which are excuses, so uh I I have apologized.
	I'm happy to do it again because I'm very sorry about the way that I spoke of Christianity in the past.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	No, I'm not yeah, I'm not asking for apology.
	I I just trying to as I read the book more, and uh and I think I'm gonna have to get a paper copy because I'm gonna have to take notes because it's you know, it's it's a very rigorous book so far.
	But anyway, I I just wonder if you can answer a question.
	How do I engage with this in a productive way?
	I mean, if I'm a person that l has lived by faith for 54 years, gone through you know, graduate school and and had to kind of hold my nose while I listen to professors and you know, but also want to get something out of them, you know.
	There were some I got more out of it, some I just couldn't.
	And I would drop that, or you know, just take what I got could from it.
	And are we are these this is are we just mutually exclusive thinkers?
	You know, a person of faith and a person of reason.
	Is there just is there where would you say is the point of even engaging?
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Uh and I'm not sure what your relationship is with science, because people in faith uh in the Christian faith have a wide spectrum of their relationship to science.
	Do you believe, as some Christians do, and many Christians do, do you believe that science is the examination of the consistency and rationality of God's work?
	Yes, and I uh I appreciate science as a way to describe and categorize and explore the natural world and you know, I find a lot of beauty in that.
	Um when science as a field because it's filled with humans, you know, there's reason to be skeptical of you know, especially things that come out of the humanities and the academic journals.
	No, no, I'm just talking about pure science, like the physical sciences and so on.
	I yeah, I'm I have an appreciation for pure science, but I see it as a way to describe creation.
	Right.
	So when we examine the universe, if you accept that God created the universe, we wouldn't say, I think, and please, I'm no theologian, so please uh f forgive me and and be patient if I go astray.
	But we God has given us reliable senses, and God has given us reason.
	And God has given a rational and structured universe.
	So we have a rational and structured universe accurately transmitted to our brain through the evidence of our senses, and our brain almost naturally categorizes things into universal concepts.
	Do we sort of agree more or less on that?
	Yes.
	So the examination of the natural world would not be in opposition to a belief in God, but rather would be saying, well, you know, God gave us a rational universe, gave us accurate senses and gave us the innate ability to conceptualize and gives us a great deal of f uh fluidity and faculty and reasoning, which is shared by no other animals, and therefore it cannot be in opposition to God to examine the nature of the universe.
	Is that something we can agree on?
	Yes, it is.
	Yes, it is.
	So then I would say how much more amazing and beautiful and wonderful would it be to examine the nature of morality and find that the morality that God commands is also rational and empirical.
	Because God gives us a moral sense, God gives us reason, God gives us a structured universe transmitted accurately through the evidence of the senses.
	And so if the examination of God's rational universe is a plus and not a disrespect to God, to me, it's even more important since the fundamental moral mission of mankind is to be good, not to be made comfortable by science.
	But I would say that wouldn't it be also very powerful if thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not murder, you know, and and the other moral commandments, wouldn't it be really cool if they were even more rational than the universe,
	that God gives us reason and a moral instinct and that to discover or to delineate rape, theft, assault, and murder is evil, which would be all over the place in the Bible, that it would be very powerful and good to realize that God's moral commandments don't need to just be taken on faith,
	but can be proven rationally and thus transmitted to people who don't believe in the same religion, which was sort of my point with the professor earlier with John, is that look, if we can come up with a language that is rational to describe ethics, we can convince people who don't share our prior beliefs.
	Not everyone, but it's our best chance to spread virtue without the violence that that John uh sorry, I should say Professor uh John.
	I think of uh Professor Longhair, the jazz musician or the blues musician.
	But so I I don't for me, I would say that if UPB is valid, and it is.
	I mean, it it's been attacked from every which way but loose, and and everyone has to accept that rape, theft assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior for the reasons I went through with Professor John.
	I'm just not using his last name, but um so if God's commandments are as rational as God's universe, isn't that a good thing that God gave us the reason to understand his moral arguments in the same way he gave us the reason to understand the rationality and beauty of his universe?
	Yes, as a matter of fact, when I I have three adult children now, when they were teenagers, I didn't start off with, you know, when I when it came to issues of dating and sex and drugs and you know basic moral, you know, development as a kid.
	I will I approached it from a practical point of view.
	I, you know, if I'm talking to my 15-year-old son about not fornicating with his daughter, I didn't say God's gonna form fornicating with his own.
	I mean with his girlfriend.
	Okay, I sorry, I I I know that's what you meant.
	I just didn't want to let it pass.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Yes.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for that.
	But I would I would approach it like, look, you don't want an early, you don't want an unexpected pregnancy.
	You don't want to get an STD.
	You don't want to, you know get into any kind of uh practical trouble with this.
	But in the in the back of my head, uh, you know, I'm worried about my son spiritually, who he's gonna be as he grows older, and not just not just in this life, but in the next life.
	I mean, you know, I I I think that this is like this life is a ramp into the and to the next world.
	And it and so I I guess I would put an extra extra level of importance on being moral, not just to make this world a better place, but to uh set yourself up for a better afterlife.
	And so I had that in the back of my head, but I didn't think it was you know, I had to explain myself why I ex had certain expectations for how they behaved.
	Don't steal, don't you know, don't text and drive, or you know, or whatever.
	And so I I was a very I think I was a practical parent that way.
	And if if if there were moments that I could have a more deeper, more spiritual discussion with them about why you we don't want to be promiscuous and and why we, you know, it's it's better to wait for marriage and all of that.
	You know, I appreciated those kinds of conversations, but uh, you know, I had to I had to kind of meet them where they were and ha have them understand, you know, there's consequences today.
	And I'm not if you're if you get your girlfriend pregnant, you know, it's there's consequences today if you steal, you know.
	And so yeah, I appreciate using reason to to teach to teach morality.
	I I just think that when you only use reason, you are necessarily understanding that who we are as humans.
	If we're children of God and we have an afterlife, and I happen to be a person who believes that we've always existed.
	You know, we existed before this life.
	We chose to come to this world.
	Um that we're you know, it's not sufficient.
	It's it's necessary to be moral, but it's not it's not sufficient to, you know, the objectives of God for us in the next life.
	Yes, it is not works alone that will save you, but faith.
	Yes, and it's it's we're be we're becoming I I believe we have the potenti the potential to become more than what we can see in with our limited you know, intellect and our limited vision and imagination right now.
	I think I think we're children of God, therefore we can become more much more like him than we imagine.
	And I believe that he operates by faith, and I and I believe that that's a superior way to operate.
	You could use reason, but also use reason under the, you know, the perspective of faith.
	Yeah, and I I think I would I mean I'm sure you did a wonderful job with your children.
	This is just a minor tweak, which may not apply to you or not.
	But I think with regards to promiscuity, what I would say would be that promiscuity is bad because it almost always involves falsehood.
	In other words, you have to pretend to like the person more than you do in order to get that person to sleep with you, particularly male to female, because women are much more vulnerable when it comes to sexual matters.
	And I mean they're kind of half pinned down and and they risk more STDs that risk pregnancy and and so on, or stalkers, which is more common, I think, from males to females and the other way around.
	And so a lot of times the reason why promiscuity would be bad is because you have to pretend to like the person, you have to lie to the person in general.
	Like no real woman is gonna sleep with you if you say, well, I don't really like you, but I I I find you sexy and I'm willing to, you know, dump my seed in you and and move on uh just because you'd be a sort of subservient whole.
	Uh women wouldn't really most women, I mean, you it would take a really messed up woman to to sleep with you if you were honest about not liking the person.
	And promiscuity is when you use somebody as an object by lying to them.
	You use them as a masturbatory di device by lying to them, and that cheapens uh yourself.
	It cheapens your commitment to truth and honor, and it makes you dislike yourself because you become a lying manipulator who hurts people and that it's not going to add to your self-respect, and you then lose out on the great treasure of love, which you only get when you act in a reasonably moral manner.
	So I mean there's lots of sort of arguments for it.
	Um but I think that there's um and and there are the practical consequences, like the more people, particularly for women, the more men that you sleep with, the less likely you are to parabond in a marriage, the more likely you are to get divorced and so on.
	So uh I think that with regards to Christian virtues, there's such a wide overlap that philosophy can support that obviously, you know, literally preaching to the choir isn't going to change much, although it may help reinforce people's virtues to hear rational arguments for them, but it does allow you to make the case for people who don't already share the faith.
	And we do need a way to find people, particularly with sort of increased multiculturalism and so on.
	We do need a way to reach people through reason because we share fewer faith-based values in common with our neighbors these days.
	And if we can't unite by philosophy, uh it just gets really bad, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Don't you think, though, that we've had a a great example in Charlie Kirk of someone who can reason but also wears his faith on his sleeve.
	And I don't I wouldn't say he's he's primarily proselytizing in his work, but it he was.
	You know, it was it he probably brought a lot of people to church and you know, helped convert a lot of people and to see the the wisdom and beauty of of Christianity and and uh but he but he was the a guy who would reason with people and and make a make a reasoned case,
	you know, why war is bad or or you know, mutilating your children and and taking leading them down these paths that that are you know so destructive in the culture wars these days.
	And and so uh I I don't I wouldn't I wouldn't lean only on reason.
	And and I'll and I'll say this and and I d and I don't mean this in a like uh uh in an insulting way at all.
	I don't your book, I don't think it's available or you're accessible to most people.
	I I think you have to have a fairly high IQ to take it all in and and process it.
	And uh you know, I mean, half of us are below 100 IQ.
	You know, and I think faith is it because we're children of God and because there is this behavior that humans have, I think it's it's almost self-evident that humans are going to believe in some higher power,
	and they they may put their faith in the wrong thing a lot of times, and they may put their faith in a sun god or Allah or Buddha or whatever, and and it's you know, if there's goodness there, they they'll get some of it, but to the degree that it's corrupted, it uh it it won't do well for them.
	But I think if if you have the correct understanding of who God is, I think and and can teach that, I think it's ultimately gonna be more effective than with all due respect, a philosophy book.
	And and like, do you imagine that maybe your books or or someone like you that works like you and thinks the way you do, do you imagine that they would ever be more effective than Christ was?
	You know, two thousand years from now, do you imagine there'll be some, you know, landmark book that changed human morality?
	I mean, obviously I'm not gonna put myself in the categorization of any divinity.
	So um obviously no.
	But I I will say this, though.
	Um Christianity, uh uh there are a lot of Christian organizations and religions and charity groups that are uh taking a lot of government money to fund the settlement of migrants from the other side of the world into uh say America.
	And they do that based upon a belief that uh all human beings basically have the same soul and you know uh we're sort of all interchangeable at that sort of deep level.
	And you know, the jury is out on how that's going to go.
	I've certainly put forward my arguments, and uh if it doesn't go well, then that will have been uh a fairly negative thing on the part of Christianity.
	If it doesn't go well, and again, I've sort of put my arguments forward in the past, so um I think we can accept that.
	Faith has been tried for hundreds of thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, and we still do have war and slavery.
	Now, of course, the Christians would say, and I I understand the argument that you know Satan runs the world, it's a veil of tears, human beings succumb to temptation and so on.
	And I don't think it's wrong for me to say, first of all, I've done a lot of good in what I do.
	I've had close to a billion views and downloads.
	I've back of the napkin calculation, my show and your support and all of this wonderful stuff has prevented uh 1.5 billion assaults upon children.
	And I know that I've had, you know, we can do back at the calculations.
	I had one tweet that produced about 60,000 babies is my sort of famous Taylor Swift tweet, which even it got me banned, it's well worth it.
	But everything's been tried except pure except philosophy.
	Everything has been tried except philosophy.
	Uh just about every form of government, just about every form of religion has been tried.
	And we are still, as a world, stagger from crisis to crisis and disaster to disaster.
	I mean, the 20th century, I mean the formation of central banking, World War I, hyperinflation in the early 1920s, uh followed by uh a stock market boom and then a crash and then a 14-year Great Depression, followed by the Second World War, followed very quickly by the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War one, the Iraq War II, Afghanistan, uh uh what's been going on with Russia and and Ukraine and national debts, unfunded liabilities.
	Society is this briefly emerging light that is thunderclapped into non-existence by what feel like inevitable circumstances, and everything that has been tried has been based on something that is not rational.
	Whether it's political power, whether it's religious faith faith, whether it's collectivism or consequentialism or utilitarianism or pragmatism or you name it, everything has been tried except a dedication and proof of ethics through reason.
	And so if you're saying, well, we just kind of have to stagger on with the way things have gone, I don't agree.
	I don't know, I do not accept it.
	I am putting myself all in for reason.
	Because human beings are innately rational.
	That's how we survive, it's how we flourish.
	People will fight like hell against reason.
	Some people will accept it, some people will spread it.
	Reason does not mean the exclusion of Christianity in the conversation because Christianity is the closest religion to UPB that exists.
	And this is part of absolutely what I love about Christianity.
	But I refuse to accept that we just have to keep staggering along as civilizations rise and fall, as unfunded liabilities eat the young, as various social hysterias from COVID to the satanic panic to endless fantasies of racism and uh all of this like go storming across the landscape and and good men, good men like Charlie Kirk get gunned down in front of his family.
	I refuse to accept that this is the best we can do.
	And if you want to break a cycle of history, you have to do something that's never been done before.
	And I have, for various reasons, been given the gifts uh I've been given.
	I've been given the amazing platform that we utilize.
	I have been given a lot of wonderful things to be able to spread philosophy in a way that's never occurred before.
	I don't think you need to be high IQ to to see an obvious contradiction.
	I explained UPB to my daughter when she was three years old, and she got it.
	And and it makes sense.
	So I don't think it's necessary.
	And so I am all in on philosophy.
	It is the one thing that hasn't been tried, and more of the same is gonna produce more of the same.
	So I really appreciate that.
	I want to get to uh somebody else who wanted to come in.
	Uh Tomas, you wanted to uh join us, and I think you're the last caller tonight.
	And again, I really appreciate everyone.
	Don't forget to subscribe for all of these lovely goodies.
	Thomas, if you want to unmute, I'm all ears.
	Hi, hola, Stefan.
	Hola.
	Can you hear him?
	Yes, sir.
	Go ahead.
	Okay, go ahead.
	Um I want I have a question about ostracism.
	I want to know where does it finally lead to?
	Because I can imagine this scenario where two populations are perfectly separated from each other.
	And then what?
	They are still the same country.
	What what happens after that?
	Is it peaceful national divorce?
	Or or what is it?
	What is it?
	Well, it's never really been tried in this kind of way.
	So I look at the left and I look at why people believe things that are obviously false.
	And again, there are false things on the right, but the left has the ascendancy of power these days.
	So why do people believe things that are false when they're on the left?
	I mean, something that's obvious, like the fine people hoax, where you can just get the video beamed to your phone and watch it for about 20 seconds and you realize that it's false.
	So why do people believe things that are false?
	Well, they believe things that are false because they'll be ostracized if they don't.
	And I've had enough conversations with people who are, quote, normies, that whenever you come across, well, this thing about Trump is false.
	And this thing that Comey said was not true.
	And blah, and the Russia collusion conspiracy theory is a hoax, and none of the climate models have been effective.
	Like and they get tense, really tense and upset.
	Why do they get tense and upset?
	Well, it's not because the truth fundamentally bothers them.
	It's because if they accept what I'm saying, and then they talk about it with their friends, their friends will dump them.
	And we saw this, of course, happen really viciously over COVID and the vaccine and so on.
	So ostracism is already at play.
	Ostracism is already at work.
	I mean, at a very formal level, you are ostracized from society if you disobey the state.
	You are ostracized from university if you don't agree with your professors.
	I mean, there's a whole bunch of mess that goes on.
	And I saw the study recently, half of Canadian students in universities have to hide their true beliefs because there's no place for diversity in universities.
	It's not valued at all.
	You can be any shape, color, size you want, as long as you're a hard leftist, that's called diversity, which is ridiculous, right?
	And diversity of thought is the only diversity that really means anything.
	So already occurring.
	The question is, do we let bad people use it, or do we also let good people use it?
	And this is sort of the argument around cancel culture, which is I get it.
	The left wants to hold on to the power called cancel culture.
	I get it.
	Of course, of course.
	I mean, why would I want my enemy to get a soft weapon that I alone get to wield?
	Right?
	So of course they want to say, well, you're a hypocrite if you punch back, so to speak.
	Like if you fight back and in, you know, peacefully and reasonably and all lawfully and all of that.
	But if if you push back, let's say push back is better.
	So I've been pushing you, I've been pushing you, I've been pushing you.
	If you push back, you're a hypocrite, because you said you were against people pushing, and it's like, well, I said I was against people pushing.
	Never said I was against people pushing back.
	Right?
	And people make this mistake, uh like they say, Steph, you're a pacifist.
	I'm like, no, no, no.
	Self-defense is perfectly valid.
	And in fact, it's kind of morally required if you, especially if you have a family and kids, like you you owe them you self-defense so that you're protected.
	So ostracism is already at play in society, and anybody who's been at some dinner party or family gathering and who has voiced an opinion that the lefties in your family don't like, I mean, they'll mess you up for it.
	They'll attack you, they'll ostracize you, they'll roll their eyes, they'll put you down, they'll So ostracism is already at play.
	The question is, if there's ostracism only on one side, then the other side is going to lose.
	Because it's the last peaceful thing.
	We want reason, we want debate, we want facts and evidence.
	If that fails, ostracism is the last peaceful stop before violence.
	Because ostracism says to people, there are consequences for you being immoral.
	There are consequences for you believing false things that are really destructive to society.
	And if you if you had a a member of your family, a cousin or whatever, and he was a doctor, and he kept prescribing the wrong medicines, and he kept getting people addicted for fun and profit to various uh benzodiazepines or opioids or something like that.
	I mean, that would be bad.
	And you wouldn't want to hang out and break bread with somebody who's committed to the destruction of his patients and the harm of his patients.
	Well, you know, false bad political ideas calling people Nazis and fascists and white supremacists.
	I mean, it's all incredibly dangerous and and ugly stuff.
	And why would you want to be with people who are harming society through their lies?
	And you're just turning over the last peaceful weapon to those who are hellbent on Well, I mean, gosh, the end goal of the left uh ultimately is self-destruction, but there's a lot of harm along the way for that.
	So I I don't know.
	I don't know how it plays out.
	And and you don't judge uh morals by their consequences.
	Right?
	You don't sit there and say, well, I mean, who is going to pick the fruit and the vegetables if we don't have slaves?
	I mean, you just have to say, well, slavery is wrong, and you know, we we generally assume that moral consistency is going to lead to positive outcomes, though not for everyone.
	I mean, the there were some slaves who uh, you know didn't know what to do themselves under a state of freedom.
	Still, slavery had to be ended.
	There are slave owners and slave catchers who were out of a job, slave auctioneers.
	Too bad.
	You know, we still so it in general for society as a whole, things tend to be better for individuals, maybe there's harm.
	But we still have to do the right thing anyway, so if people are lying and uh aggressive, and I'm not talking about criticism, because there's this whole thing post all I did was criticize Charlie Kirk.
	It's like, no, you didn't, you liar.
	Not you, obviously, right?
	But no, of course you didn't.
	You you danced and you celebrated somebody being gunned down in front of their family.
	You thought it was great.
	You had that gleam that I talked about last Wednesday, that gleam in the eye.
	Uh, you had that sadistic happiness that somebody was murdered for their opinions, debates, and arguments.
	That's not the same as, yeah, well, I thought Charlie Kirk was wrong about circumcision.
	Nobody's gonna cancel you for that.
	But if you cheer the slaughter of a noble man, and nobody's even forcing your employer to fire you, they're just telling your employer what you did.
	That's free speech too, man.
	Contacting your employer with what you openly posted, voluntarily posted.
	Nobody forced you to do it.
	You voluntarily posted.
	Nobody's going into your uh your your phone and and stealing private videos, right?
	You post it publicly.
	That's free speech too.
	And if we only let the bad guys have the last soft pushback before violence, we will get violence.
	So I think it's the most peaceful thing we can do.
	What happens as a result of that?
	Hopefully, people say, gee, this person's really passionate about this, maybe I should listen to them.
	Maybe they don't, but you still you shouldn't break bread with evildoers.
	Great, very direct to the point.
	I I don't have much else to ask.
	Maybe ask you, are you hopeful of of the future regarding to this?
	Yeah, I don't really do hope.
	I just I try and do integrity, and I'm aiming to have as good a conscience I have as as I can, no matter what.
	No matter what.
	You know, I I've been saying for the last couple of months, you know, people have been asking me, because I'm especially because I'm back on X, I've been saying for the last couple of months, my aim is to do mach maximum philosophy, which is to do as much philosophy as humanly possible right before they kill you, then pull back a bit.
	And of course, we can see recently that that certainly can happen.
	So I don't really do hope.
	I do integrity and honesty, maximum philosophy, maximum engagement, maximum hopefully some charm and positivity in in what it is that I do that makes it a little easier to listen to some harsh truths.
	I don't really do hope.
	I do integrity and whatever will happen will happen.
	Uh hope is to try and have a thought about something beyond your control, and if I can control it, I'll try and do the best I can with it.
	If I can't control it, um, and which is the future, then I I tend to not have an opinion about it, if that makes sense.
	Thank you, Stefan.
	I hope you and your family are doing well.
	Thank you.
	We are, and I appreciate I appreciate that.
	All right, sorry, there's somebody who has been waiting for a while, who's from the UK.
	My gosh, it must be the middle of the night.
	So I don't think that's That's not Austrian for Adolf, is it?
	Uh I think wait, did I click you in?
	I don't know what's going on there, man.
	Are you there?
	Can you hear?
	No?
	All right.
	Uh King, if you want to take us home, I am happy to hear your thoughts.
	Unless we did we talk?
	We didn't talk, right?
	All right.
	I think we have lost our uh audience for the night, which is fine.
	Uh I had a long debate with uh our good friend Professor John, who I'm very glad uh finally uh had the time to call in, and I I did enjoy the conversation.
	It was a great workout, and I really do appreciate him dropping by.
	Uh fiery and uh enjoyable and I hope engaging for you guys as well.
	Very, very important conversations to have, and I certainly do appreciate him calling in, just as I appreciate and love all of you guys for giving me the greatest conversation the world has ever seen.
	I genuinely honestly and deeply believe that, outside of the divine.
	I mean, I am not gonna compete with the divine.
	As far as mortals go, I think we're doing pretty well.
	So don't forget to subscribe on X. Top right, just click on the subscribe thing, and we'll get yourself cooking from there.
	If you don't want to do X, you can go to Freedomain.com slash donate.
	A wide variety of options, and I will see you Friday night, and we will do a donor-only live stream Saturdays, sorry, Sundays, 11 a.m.
	Lots of love from up here, my friends.
	Take care.
	Thank you again.
	I love you all so much.
	Have a great night.

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