Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - THE MOST FRIGHTENING FACT! Twitter/X Space

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Nov. 1, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:32:38

THE MOST FRIGHTENING FACT! Twitter/X Space

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	Well, you got caught with a flat.
	Well, how about that?
	Well, babies, don't you panic.
	By the lion of the night, it'll all seem all right.
	I'll get you a satanic mechanic.
	Why don't you stay for the night?
	Or maybe a bite?
	I could show you my favorite obsession.
	I've been making a man with a blonde hair and a tan.
	And he's good for relieving my tension.
	It's a weird movie, man.
	I never quite got into it.
	But that scene is pretty funny.
	All right.
	I hope you're doing well.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Happy Halloween to you, 31st of October 2025.
	And I am here for you, my friends.
	I am here to listen and respond with whatever is on your mind on your questioning, on your thoughts, and your oppositions.
	So I, of course, have my own thoughts.
	I have my own thoughts, but if you have questions, comments, I am happy to hear.
	All right.
	Let us go.
	Hey, I just did Rocky Horror, and now it's Frank.
	All right.
	Frank, what's on your mind, my friend?
	Oh, did you tick?
	Yes, you can now speak if you want to unmute.
	Hey, just since it's Halloween, I thought I'd ask you a throwaway question.
	What is the scariest, most frightening insight and philosophy that you've come across?
	Ooh, the scariest.
	The scariest insight that I've come across.
	I think for me, maybe this is for others as well.
	I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
	That's a great question.
	Thank you.
	For me, it's not people's inability to think that troubles me.
	If somebody's unable to think, hey, man, I'm not a tenor.
	I can't sing along with So Lonely by the police, but it's not people's inability to think.
	It's their refusal to think.
	It's their refusal to think.
	I sort of feel like people's minds are sort of trapped in these encircling tentacle-bladed iron bars of demonic possession, almost, if that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	I've seen examples in my own life trying to wrest someone from a bad idea.
	They start frothing almost.
	And people in my personal life, especially.
	Yeah, it's like you bring them some facts, reason, and evidence.
	There's this pushback, this aggression, this violence.
	I really can see what people mean by demonic possession throughout history.
	Or even more sadly, there's just this smirk like, oh, you want me to reason?
	Oh, come on.
	Come on.
	Try and reason with me.
	I'll play with you a little.
	I'll pretend a little.
	I'll bat you around like a cat with a rat.
	You're never actually getting through to me, but I don't mind you beating your head against my indifferent ice wall of anti-rationality.
	I'm not going to reveal it too much, but you can just tire yourself out trying to climb these walls while I pour the inevitable grease of avoidance down the bricks.
	So that either it's like, ah, like fight back, fight back, or it's just this sort of snarky, superior, like a waiter peeing on you from a great height, a French waiter, a French waiter peeing on you from a great height.
	And that either demonic pushback or that, oh, oh, you're bringing that little philosophy brain of yours to the table.
	Well, I suppose we can indulge you for a little while.
	I can't really go very far with it because heaven forbid we actually think about anything, but I certainly don't mind you tiring yourself if that's what you feel like.
	Like I had that, I was talking about the atheist today and atheists way more superstitious than Christians, because at least Christian faith leads to objective reason, objective rationality, but the faith that atheists have in the state, which is far more improbable than God, leads to like universal slaughter.
	So yeah, I think it's the fact that people seem to be captured.
	I view people around me, not immediate people, of course, but I view the people I kind of interact with in the world as they've got all of these puppet threads going up to some demonic machinery, literally.
	I mean, this is my view.
	They've got these threads and they think they're moving themselves.
	They think that they're opening their mouth.
	They think they're making sounds, but they just sound like everyone else.
	I just, I had a very, I had an emotional day.
	I just tell you that straight up.
	I had an emotional day because I'm reading one of the, I mean, it's the most passionate book in many ways that I've ever written, the book I'm working on, or just finishing up the audiobook reading of.
	I've got two one more chapter to go, audiobook.
	I just finished the chapter 20.
	No, I think I have two more to go.
	You have two more chapters to go.
	And it is, the book is about the sadness as you trace someone through life from early bad decisions to what happens later on when they can't escape those bad decisions.
	And I read, I did the audiobook reading of just an absolutely horribly sad chapter.
	My wife cried reading it this morning.
	We did some work on it.
	And then I cried reading the audiobook this afternoon.
	And it is really sad.
	And in it, one of the characters is talking about NPCs.
	And it's just really sad.
	It's really sad how eager and willing people are to give up their humanity for the sake of conformity and emptiness.
	And it's the superiority in which they go to the original and scorn them.
	That is nails on a chalkboard to me.
	People today, like I took on the atheists, they're like, well, but the atheists, I think Brett Weinstein was sort of quoting about how people are going back to religion and atheism, the new atheism is dead.
	It's like, well, no fucking kidding.
	It was one of the Weinstein brothers.
	Anyway.
	No kidding, because the atheists didn't get to universal morality.
	They, in fact, rejected it.
	I gave them the answer 20 years ago, worked hard to publicize it, did speeches, presentations, PowerPoints, debates, you name it, to get the word out.
	And atheists just walked away from the ultimate and final proof of secular ethics.
	They don't care about virtue at all.
	We can't live without virtue.
	So if you lead a bunch of people out into the desert and they say, you know, we need some water out here.
	And you're like, oh, but that's such a subjective, you know, you put on your fucking fedora and, oh, that's just a subjective preference.
	And people are like, no, we like, we seriously need some water here.
	Well, I can produce some urine, maybe some bilge water, a couple of day-old Guinness that's been left in the sun.
	No, no, no, sorry.
	We need some water.
	We're human beings.
	We need water.
	We can't live in the desert on urine.
	And eventually, if you don't produce the water, people just go back to the town they came from because that's where the water is.
	So the atheists lured people away from Christianity out into the desert, refused to give them water, and now, well, it's failed.
	No, you just didn't provide people the water that they need in order to survive as a society, which is universal ethics.
	You lured them out into the desert and fucked them over.
	So yeah, people get mad, and I understand it.
	And then, of course, people are like, yes, but yours isn't a real proof.
	You never proved your ethics.
	You never proved that anything was universal.
	You never just fucking idiots.
	Just absolute idiots and people who are urinating on the watercolors of their betters.
	Sorry, you were about to say something, and I may have overspoken you because I heard a russell.
	Was there something you wanted to make?
	No, no, I was laughing a little bit.
	But, you know, I'm more or less done.
	But I will say that thank you for your answer.
	It anticipates something frightful that I get to probably look forward to this holiday season.
	I'm going to ask a family member, I guess, the Charlie Kirk question, how they reacted to it, and then get to, I anticipate, I think I know their reaction.
	I haven't asked them about it formally yet.
	I think they might have enjoyed it.
	And then I have to deal with the consequences of that.
	And I'm sorry about that.
	That's a tough thing to do.
	But holy shysterballs, is it ever worth doing?
	Because there's going to come a time in the not too distant future when people will be informing on you or making things up.
	East Germany Stasi style, and you really can't have traitors in your midst in what is coming.
	You need people who are going to be with you 150%.
	So it's time to clean house.
	Sad though it is.
	But if the party and the position of tolerance and humanity giggles over a father and a husband being shot through the neck and bleeding out, you're not breaking bread with people.
	You're breaking bed with demons in control of people.
	And again, I'm not saying this is a literal truth, but this possession thing, you know, like the bird, like how the possessions, the bird hand, the wide eyes, the hmm, huh?
	Like all the little facial ticks and the bird hands and the staring eyes and the piercings.
	It's all just like, yeah, the demon, demon's got me and I ain't even fighting it anymore.
	You know, you see these horror movies.
	Oh, no, the demon has possessed a child.
	Fight, Stacey, fight.
	They're just like, nah, I'm good.
	I'm happy to be squatting in the fetid lap of a smoky-skinned demon.
	Yeah, yeah, just where I want to be.
	It's perfect.
	Yeah, I couldn't be better.
	Things couldn't be better.
	And the superiority when people get beyond reason and they're beyond the reach of reason or compassion, humanity.
	Humanity.
	We are nothing if we don't reason.
	We do not inhabit our humanity if we don't reason.
	When somebody doesn't reason, doesn't listen to reason, doesn't reason evidence, doesn't listen to reason or evidence, they're telling you straight up that they have dehumanized themselves.
	And when they have dehumanized themselves, it follows as night follows day, they will dehumanize you.
	They will dehumanize others.
	They have become machines of murder.
	And it's best to get out of their way.
	Like they're Some giant threshing machine that's gone loose and languid in a field, you know, it's gonna take you down.
	Hey, happy Halloween!
	Hope that makes sense.
	Yeah, um, uh, this one other thing I was thinking as you were saying all that, um, with regards to um demonic possession, it makes me think uh, there's a book I found that you recommended uh by uh uh what's his name, Richard Schwartz, uh, No Bad Parts on the Internal Family Systems Model, and just everything that you've said about um like inner parents and so on.
	Uh, it's making me think um about neuroplasticity and the psychological, I guess, or material reality of these uh dysfunctional, um, like bad inner parents that sort of manifest and take control of people's minds.
	I think I think that's probably what's happening in a lot of these cases: that a lot of these political matters are very surface level and it's all just tied to uh trauma.
	Yeah, I mean, there is a very horrible bargain that is put forward by the educational systems and the media systems of the modern world, and the it's it's the most unholy and historical deal of all, which is you can be good by hating people hatred, like let the hatred flow through you because you literally see what was this woman, I can't remember Jennifer Welsh, I think her name is.
	She runs a big podcast.
	Her husband, if I remember rightly, was a lawyer and an addict for quite some time.
	I'm not sure what kind of addict.
	She had a couple of kids with him, they split up, they're kind of back together, but half back together, and just a horrible life, you know, to have to give children to an addict and then, oh, it's just monstrous.
	And she was, uh, Riley Gaines has been opposed to sort of this trans participation in female sports.
	Now, whatever you think of the debate or whatever you think of the argument, it is an important debate to have.
	And Jennifer Welsh, just you're so full of hate.
	And then, you know, like, twat, nobody likes you.
	Like, just spewing this verbal.
	And she's got this weird, I don't know if she had the buckle fat sorted out, like snorted out of her cheeks.
	You've got this weird hollow skull-like cheeks and just this venom, right?
	And I hate you, so I'm good.
	I'm going to trash you.
	I'm going to cheer on murder.
	I'm going to verbally abuse people.
	And that makes me the good guy.
	Because goodness should be earned, like the feeling of being virtuous should be earned by knowledge, wisdom, both compassion and strength.
	And to just literally grab people by the fucking ears and scream in their faces that you're a hater.
	And it's like, and not even notice that contradiction is wild to me.
	It is.
	It's like beating children saying don't hit people.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, it is like an inversion of compassion because a lot of this hatred that's been fomented is rooted in, I think, media representations of compassion.
	An example would be like those Tarantino movies, whether in Glorious Bastards or Django Unchained.
	You take people that are just unquestionably hated in our social context, whether it's Southern slave owners or Nazis, and they're hated because of all this horror that they're the Manson family.
	Yeah, yeah, because of the horror that they've perpetuated on poor, innocent victims and so on.
	Like this sort of media takes that compassion and inverts it.
	It gives it a conduit for now you get to be the perpetrator.
	you get to enjoy the violence yes it is to say to people that if if somebody you catch somebody who's just killed your child and then you kill that person right that level of sort of vengeance but they do it uh around language and propaganda and i mean honestly it's just struggle sessions you you create class enemies You label them bigot,
	phobe, racist, whatever, right?
	And then that just Nazi and then that just gives you permission to hate them and feel like a good person, to let the hatred flow and feel like you're just the best person in the world because you've dehumanized others and you now no longer seek to understand them.
	You no longer seek for dialogue and so on.
	I mean, I've had debates with the communists and socialists and I've even had debates with fascists, which, you know, fascists are kind of rare, although not these days, because fascism is very often a response to escalating communism.
	But yeah, I mean, I'll try and talk with just about anybody, but they won't do it.
	They just, they're told, these are people you can legitimately and virtuously hate and want dead.
	And they love it, man.
	They love like slurp-slurp, right?
	They love sucking the bone marrow out of the perceived enemies.
	And I mean, they're even worse than murderous soldiers because murderous soldiers know that, you know, the enemy is a little bit like them, right?
	There's a famous, I talked about this yesterday, the Christmas truce of 1914, when the British and the Germans kind of hung out and sang songs and did all of this kind of stuff.
	And so they know that the soldiers are just kind of like them.
	Everyone's kind of forced to do it.
	And like in the same way, if you go to some sports guy, some sports ball addict and you say, well, but if you lived on the other side of town, you'd just be into a different sports team.
	Well, I know that, but still, it's, you know, right?
	They kind of know that they're just like that.
	But that's not the way with the leftists as a whole.
	The leftists, it's not like, well, they're kind of like me.
	They're just on a different team.
	They're like, no, no, no, no.
	Our team is perfectly virtuous and their team is perfectly evil.
	And because their team is perfectly evil, I can celebrate them getting slaughtered.
	I can want them slaughtered.
	And there is no part of conscience that seems to kick in and say, wait, are we the, could we be the bad guys?
	Like, I'm literally wishing death upon the father of children, a husband who is trying to have rational empirical debate.
	I may really disagree with him, but, you know, I'm cheering on him getting shot through the neck and choking out in front of thousands of people.
	I wonder if I could be like, there's never any of that.
	It's like, yeah, more, more.
	And that's monstrous.
	Absolutely monstrous.
	And it's demonic.
	Now, of course, I understand.
	I understand.
	And I'll address this, right?
	Because I understand people saying, well, Steph, my God, how hypocritical can you be?
	Well, I'm always trying to plumb those depths, right?
	How hypocritical can you be?
	Steph, you're talking about people dehumanizing others through hatred.
	And yet you hate them or you are dehumanized.
	You're calling them demonically possessed and puppets and NPCs.
	You're dehumanizing them.
	Like, no, but that's different because it's in response to.
	It's in response to.
	If somebody celebrates the murder of someone and you say that person has dehumanized others and they've become intellectually corrupt beyond words, it's not like, oh, but you're just the same.
	Because that would be, for that equivalent, it would be like if there was somebody on the left who went around having sort of reasonable debates with people and they got shot and people celebrated that, it'd be like, no, no, it's not right either.
	So to point out that people are dehumanized and dangerous, it's saying that the people who want you dead, and I mean, let's not kid ourselves, right?
	That the left wants people like us dead.
	And so people who want you dead to say, well, you're just dehumanizing them.
	It's like, I don't know, would you go to a Jewish guy who said, I think the Nazis are evil and say, well, you're just like them because you're dehumanizing them.
	It's like, no, no, no, but that's a bit of a different point, right?
	Very different point.
	It's a posing point.
	So, yeah, it is just that they'll give you these words that are so charged with hatred that you just attach them to someone and now you are legitimately moral for hating this person and wanting them dead.
	And yeah, it is absolutely, absolutely monstrous.
	And it is not symmetrical.
	It is not symmetrical.
	Well, a curious thing I noticed in my personal conversations or debates is the harshest reaction I've gotten and from men in particular is taking a dance against abortion.
	Because I've talked to women about it and I've talked to men about it.
	And for some reason, the men get more vociferous.
	And I think going back to the sort of internal family systems, at least this is my assumption, my psychological reading of it.
	I assume that it must be like coming from a place of being scolded by a woman harshly as a child, I'm assuming.
	I mean, I'm reading into people I know in particular, but yeah.
	Well, so the West lives in a romantic woo culture.
	You woo women.
	You woo women.
	You're not like some cultures, like your wife is assigned to you by your elders when you're 12, and then you get married at 14 or whatever it is, and the women don't have really much of a say or much of a choice.
	And so in the West, we have a Wu culture.
	And a Wu culture gives an enormous amount of power to women.
	An enormous amount of power to women.
	Not just in terms of sexual reproduction.
	Obviously, that's taken for granted, but just in terms of if you do things that displease women in a Wu culture, and I love Wu culture.
	I mean, Wu culture is the way to go.
	I mean, not with giant statism, but then the issue is not Wu culture, but statism.
	But if a woman doesn't like what you say, right?
	So let's say there's a bunch of women and it's not theoretical.
	It's a bunch of women who are like, well, it's a woman's choice and it's abortionist healthcare and so on, right?
	You want to enslave women and turn them into breeding cows and so on.
	Like this hysteria of the handmaid's tale, which does exist in the world, but I guess Margaret was too much of a chicken shit to write about where it really happens.
	She has to make up where it doesn't happen, which is Christianity.
	Fucking coward.
	Ugh, repulsive.
	Brill of head witch.
	Anyway, so in a Wu culture, you have to please the women you want to date and not just a woman.
	Because if you're like, you know, I'm not so sure about the ethics of abortion.
	You know, I mean, women have killed more human beings in the past 50 or 60 years than all of the wars throughout all of history.
	I mean, is it possible it's gone too far?
	Is it possible that it's irresponsible?
	Is it possible that it's being used as a form of birth control?
	Is it possible that dehumanizing babies is not the way to go in society?
	Is it possible that it has long-term psychological and physical negative effects on women?
	And it does, as far as I understand it.
	But if you even bring that up, right, what happens in a lot of places?
	Because women have just become hysterically left, like left to center.
	Men are as or maybe even a little bit more conservative.
	Women have just gone completely, they've been completely radicalized into hyper-leftism, particularly among the young.
	And so what happens if you like, you take some position that's not hyper-leftist and the women lose their shit?
	Oh, he's such a creep.
	Oh, he's a MAGA.
	Oh, he's conservative.
	Oh, he's a patriarch.
	And they spread it around and you can't get any dates.
	Well, it's not just in my experience, it's been the men on that topic in particular that lose their shit more.
	And I think another part of it is.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Sorry.
	You mean in terms of abortion, the men get angry at the other men who question the morality of abortion?
	Just in my personal experience.
	I'm not going to disagree with your experience.
	I just want to make sure I understand what you mean.
	That's what I mean is that let's say out of four people, two being women, two being men, the two conversations with the men were the more like I faced more moral condemnation from them than in the conversations with the women.
	Okay.
	And do you know why the men do that?
	I mean, I'm open to hearing your answer.
	Well, I think there's two answers.
	Obviously, they're not the only answers.
	They may be the right ones, but I'll tell you the answers that are popping in my mind.
	The first is that men who want women to sleep around, in other words, men who are sex addicts and variety sex addicts, definitely want abortion to be legal.
	I mean, that's for pretty obvious reasons, right?
	So sex addicts definitely want abortion to remain legal so that women don't have to be as picky about who they have sex with and they don't have to face negative consequences of sexual activity, which would cause them to pair bond and get married and so on and take them off the market for the sex addicts to plow like Farmer Jones on the back 40.
	So that's one.
	If, let's say, abortion becomes illegal, then a lot of man whores lose access to easy sex and then they actually have to develop qualities of character rather than this weird nagging charisma nonsense that floats around the manosphere, which I guess seems to work with some women.
	And that's number one.
	Number two is that they want to show, they want to signal to the women how what an ally they are, right?
	They're so allied with women.
	They will defend women against those men who want to take away women's abortion rights and health care and choice and who want to control women's bodies.
	I'm with you, sister.
	I'm not with those creepy men over there.
	I'm with you.
	Right?
	It's the male feminist cuttlefish strategy, right?
	So I assume those are the two reasons.
	Could be tons of others, but that's the ones that pop into my mind.
	One that pops into my mind is creating an exception for yourself in the other.
	When you point at a minority, you position yourself in a noble vantage point that you're separate from this person.
	You pointed a minority in some category or another.
	And basically, a lot of the arguments boil down to, well, what else are they supposed to do as if they don't have any free will or free agency?
	You know, a thing with abortion, I'll hear is, what are they supposed to do?
	Just raise them poor, raise their kids poor, like, you know, this idea that they're better dead than poor.
	But what it makes me think is they want blanket exceptions given to other people so they do not have to be judged by that moral standard either, while not explicitly saying so.
	Right.
	Yeah, I think that's true.
	And of course, the other thing too, because abortion has become so ridiculously widespread, what is it, one-third of women or something like that, at least admit it, could be more, right?
	But because abortion has become so ridiculously widespread, then men may have participated in an abortion, right?
	The sort of fast times at Richmond High, which starts off as a goofy movie and then turns into a bit of a morality tale.
	But if a man has participated in an abortion, he can't be objective.
	Maybe his mother had an abortion or more than one.
	It can't be objective.
	Maybe his sister had an abortion.
	Maybe his aunt had an abortion.
	And so because it's become so widespread, you get an automatic base of people who've done wrong who are going to defend it no matter what, because they've just, they've invested in their moral standing into it.
	And if you've done, if you had an abortion and then you start to look at the possibility that abortion might be wrong, ooh, you know, that's really, really, I mean, that's an ugly, ugly thing for people to have to deal with.
	I mean, one of the ways that you entrench sin in people's minds is you just get enough people to sin that social control doesn't work anymore.
	You can't ostracize.
	You can't reject because everyone's now bound up in the sin, right?
	It's like it's like in a criminal gang, they get you to do some crime that they then know that you've done and they could turn it over to the cops and you're now, because you've committed the crime, man, you're in the gang and you can't ever leave.
	I think that's, I think that's probably it as well.
	All right.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Thank you so much.
	And let us move on to Drago.
	I think we talked.
	Did we talk yesterday, Drago?
	What's on your mind?
	Hello, hello.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Can you hear me?
	Yes, sir.
	How you doing?
	Hey, to all great conversations as always.
	I wanted to follow up a couple of days ago to better understand your perspective on how we would talk about, you know, let's say truth.
	I know we're talking about reproducibility, et cetera.
	So if I may ask a few questions to see if I'm understanding you correctly.
	Is that okay?
	Yeah, of course.
	So, okay, so if would you say the statement, the Earth revolves around the sun, would you say that that statement or proposition corresponds to reality?
	Yeah, I mean, we could caveat and say that the sun also orbits a tiny bit around the earth.
	The center of the relationship is not quite at the center of the sun because the earth has its mass too.
	But yeah, I mean, in a sort of general term, it is certainly more true to say that the earth goes around the sun than the inverse.
	So yes, I would say that that corresponds to reality.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	And then is it fair to say that it's always corresponded to reality?
	Yeah.
	Well, always is a tough thing, right?
	Because we've got the origins of the solar system and the aggregation of the atoms and particles into planets and the disks.
	So certainly I would say since the solar system was stable, it is a, and since the two exists, it is fair to say that the Earth goes around the sun.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Now, can I swap the phrase correspond to reality with true?
	So can I say that, you know, is the proposition the Earth revolves around the sun true?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So, okay.
	So then if 2,000 years ago or 3,000 years ago, I mean, whatever, but before we could prove it, if someone said the proposition, does the Earth revolve around the sun, are they saying a true statement, even though they can't actually demonstrate it through any scientific method?
	No, they are not saying a true statement because they're stating an opinion, but they cannot prove it.
	So, okay, so just if I'm tracking correctly, before I propose this historical, you know, 2,000 years ago thing, we agreed that the statement, Earth revolves around the sun, is a true statement, and it's always been true, you know, as far as there's been a stable cosmos.
	But if a person said this statement, is it that the person is not true or the statement is no longer true because the person delivering the message didn't have a way to know it?
	Truth is when it is established, not uttered.
	Okay, but will you agree that it always corresponded to reality, irrespective of utterance?
	Well, how do we know it corresponds to reality?
	Because it's proven.
	So we don't know that it's true until it's proven.
	Yes, sorry.
	Sorry, it's a cause and effect issue.
	And it's a great, great question.
	I really like, I love the question.
	And epistemology is one of my favorite topics.
	So I appreciate the question.
	And I'm not trying to answer like, well, I have all the answers and you're just right.
	So this is a conversation, right?
	But how do so?
	If we say, is the statement true, the earth goes around the sun before it was proven?
	No.
	Because truth is when it's proven, not when it's uttered.
	Well, I guess, right, I'm trying to understand your definition of the use of the word truth.
	Because in my mind, isn't there a difference between what something is and how you know it, you know, knowing something that is versus what it is?
	Yes.
	Well, I mean, if you're making a truth claim about the structure of the solar system, then you need to be able to prove it.
	And the reason that I'm saying that is that lots of people say lots of crazy stuff in the world, right?
	Oh, sure.
	And so is it possible that someone who was insane, let's sort of go back to the year minus 2000 or minus 3000, like before you could even remotely prove it, right?
	I think I was talking about this in the show the other day, that sort of 17th, 18th century, they got it pretty the size of the sun and they got it down pretty well.
	But let's go way back in time, 3000 BC, in the middle of nowhere, some guy's insane, right?
	He's just, he's schizophrenic, he's lost his business.
	He goes, no, no, no, but the earth goes around the sun, don't you?
	Don't you know, right?
	And that's because they had a vision, they hit their head, they had a dream, they're on drugs, they've gotten their mind is misfiring or whatever, right?
	Is it a true statement?
	No, it's not a true statement because it's not proven.
	Because what I hear you saying is that the contents of the statement cannot be separated from the psychological causes that led to that conclusion.
	So in this case, I can't just take his conclusion and evaluate it on its own correspondence to reality because his process of getting there was flawed.
	I wouldn't say the psychological state.
	What I would say is that truth means it's been proven, not it's been said.
	Right.
	And what I meant by psychological causes, I don't mean specifically like brain chemistry or things like that, but that there's a premise that leads to conclusion.
	So I guess the question is, if someone states a conclusion but hasn't justified that conclusion with premises, does it mean that the conclusion is not true or can the conclusion be true, but their argument be false?
	They just have a bad argument while still having a coincidentally true conclusion.
	I'm sorry, I feel like I'm not getting through and I'm sure that's on me.
	Truth is when something is proven, not when something is stated.
	I mean, I hear the assertion, like I said, I'm trying to, I'm trying to ask a question I think it's called, it's kind of.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Let's just pause on that because I feel like we're just kind of skidding past each other mentally.
	Sure.
	Truth is a category that we assign an opinion to when it moves from opinion to proven.
	Proven.
	So truth is like a metal that an opinion gets when it's proven.
	There is no truth to an opinion that is not proven.
	It is just an opinion.
	I think that the earth goes around the sun.
	Okay.
	I think that the sun goes around the earth.
	There is no such thing as is it true before it's proven.
	I suppose, and maybe it's just, we'll just have different language, but to me, there's a difference between the recognition of a truth, as you said, the assigning of a label.
	Like if I assign the label of truth, I need to prove it.
	But something is true before I can assign it the label.
	I just might not know that it's true until you're looking at truth as if it exists independent of human consciousness.
	It doesn't.
	Yes, exactly.
	No, but it doesn't.
	Truth is the relationship between concepts in the mind and reality out there.
	It's a relationship between concepts in the mind and the reality that's out there.
	Now, of course, not all concepts in the mind, right?
	But when you have a concept in the mind that claims to accurately identify and describe the behavior of matter and energy, right?
	It's not just like, I like cheesecake.
	It's like it's a fact about the universe that is an opinion when stated.
	If it is proven, then it gains the label truth.
	But it cannot gain the label truth simply by being stated.
	I guess going back to the first question, I just want to make sure I'm not misrepresenting.
	Because when I asked you, did the statement, the Earth revolves around the sun, correspond to reality always, that it's always corresponded, you said yes, but it sounds like you're saying it corresponded to reality, but it was not always true.
	Is that in my unique language?
	Hang on.
	How do we know?
	So some crazy guy 3,000 years ago says the earth revolves around the sun.
	How would we know that that corresponds to reality?
	Because corresponds with reality means there's some objective way of comparing the statement to the facts.
	Right.
	So what he said was just a bunch of syllables.
	Right.
	So the only way to know.
	I'm sorry, guys.
	Oh, no, I would say, right, to answer your question of, I don't know, like we wouldn't.
	So does lack of knowing the mechanism of correspondence.
	I don't know why this is hard.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm just getting a little annoying.
	Doesn't mean it's anything to do with you.
	It doesn't mean it's your fault.
	Okay.
	If I claim something true about the universe, how do we know whether it's true or not?
	So if I say there's dark matter woven through everything in the universe, it's like the force, right?
	Yeah.
	How would we know whether what I'm saying is true?
	We would have to have some methodology to compare my claim to things in the world, right?
	Right.
	And then we would know it's true once we've done that.
	Right.
	So truth is when it is proven, it is reproduced.
	It is internally self-consistent and it corresponds to reproducible experiments in the real world, right?
	I think we just use the language differently, but I understand how you're doing.
	No, no, but we need to use the language the same.
	We need to use the language.
	Either you need to come to me or I need to come to you or we need to meet in the middle.
	Because if we don't have the same definitions, then it doesn't work, right?
	The conversation doesn't work.
	Yeah, I think the way I would define it is the truth, for me to even conduct the experimental exercise requires some prior understanding of what truth is before I can even prove anything.
	Like a truth has to precede the proof.
	And then I know.
	No, no, no.
	No, sorry.
	You're talking about methodology and content.
	So you do have to know what the truth is as a methodology, right?
	We would use the scientific method in general as dealing with matter and energy.
	Would we agree on that?
	Like the scientific method is the best way we have to deal with conceptions about matter and energy.
	I agree.
	And I do have a later question on that, but yes, I agree.
	Okay.
	So the scientific method is the methodology by which we'll get to determine the truth about propositions about matter and energy, things in the real world.
	Now, that's different from each particular statement.
	So the Earth revolves around the sun.
	That's not the scientific method.
	That's something which we would validate or invalidate using the scientific method.
	Do we agree on that?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So if somebody makes a statement that is not provable or not proven, and he has no way of proving it and no way of establishing it.
	So again, we're talking thousands of years ago, some guy in a monastery who's lost his mind or whatever it is, right?
	So, sorry, there's a lot of background noise coming from your end.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Let me mute while you think there's someone in the background.
	Let me mute while he talks.
	Okay.
	So it's true that you have to have a methodology to separate truth from falsehood, accuracy from inaccuracy, valid from invalid in your propositions.
	And in terms of matter and energy, we call that the scientific method.
	So you do have to have a methodology for separating truth from falsehood prior to testing any particular claim about matter and energy, like the earth revolves around the sun.
	So once you have the methodology, if you don't have the methodology, there's no truth.
	Now, again, I'm talking about scientific conceptions.
	I'm not saying, you know, is this a pair of glasses, right?
	Once we have the definition of glasses, like two lenses designed to get the light to fall accurately on the cornea or whatever.
	So we can do that, right?
	But in terms of like generalized statements about matter and energy, about the universe and so on, we need to have a methodology for separating truth and falsehood.
	So if somebody says the earth revolves around the sun, that statement has no truth value.
	It is an opinion.
	Because you can say, ah, yes, but it turns out to be true.
	It's like, yes.
	And once what the person says corresponds to what is in the world, then it gains the value called truth.
	It does not have the value called truth when it's just stated.
	So if I say morality is objective, that's not a proof.
	That's a statement.
	I actually have to prove it.
	If I say rape, theft, assault, and murder are wrong, evil, that's just a statement.
	I need to actually prove it.
	Now, the fact that people said murder is wrong is, it turns out that through universally preferable behavior, yes, it turns out murder can never be universally preferable behavior, rape, theft, assault, all that sort of stuff.
	So they were right.
	They were right, but it wasn't true.
	And maybe that's sort of the difference.
	So somebody can turn out to be right if they have a crazy statement, right?
	But it's not true, right?
	So if somebody says they've lost their mind, so they go on LSD and they say, the price of Apple shares is going to be $1,000 tomorrow at 11.09 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
	And let's say that that does turn out to be the case.
	Were they right?
	Nope.
	Because they have no methodology.
	And they said a whole bunch of other crazy stuff that wasn't right.
	It's not even accidentally right.
	It has no truth value until it's proven.
	So you're saying, well, it turned out to be true, but you can't go back in time and say, ah, this person who said this crazy thing, they lost their mind or they said the earth goes around the sun.
	We can go back and assign truth to that person.
	Nope.
	You can't, because it wasn't proven.
	There was no methodology by which we could establish the truth or falsehood of that statement.
	It is just an opinion.
	Say, wow, but it turned out to have a relationship to the truth.
	It's like only by accident.
	That's like, you know, every now and then we have these dreams that come true, but we don't think of the thousands of dreams that don't come true.
	So accidental truth is not truth.
	An opinion that is later validated by science, reason, and evidence does not gain retroactively the status of truth.
	It remains not true, not until it is proven objectively and reproduced by others.
	So truth is when you follow a universal methodology and then find out that a particular claim is proven both theoretically and empirically, right?
	You have a theory by which the Earth goes around the sun, and we know all about centrifugal forces and momentum and inertia and gravity wells.
	And we have the whole methodology, stable orbits and so on, that there's going to settle into a stable orbit.
	Otherwise, it falls into the sun or zooms off into the Oort cloud.
	So there is no truth statement in a claim until it is both theoretically comprehended and proven in reproducible experiments.
	And there's no time machine that takes earlier perspectives and validates them.
	At least that's my claim.
	I'm certainly happy to hear counter-arguments.
	Yeah.
	Well, I guess two quick clarifiers.
	One, so from what you described, right, we said, well, we would be uncomfortable labeling the person 3,000 years ago as making a true statement because he had no method.
	It could have been crazy.
	It's just opinion.
	Can we say, would you be comfortable saying in your system that the person had an opinion that corresponded to reality, but it wasn't true?
	Is that how you would be comfortable saying it or no?
	Is that still?
	I don't know what you mean by corresponded to reality.
	They made a claim with no methodology.
	And people can make crazy claims all the time.
	And this is, I mean, the reason why, and first of all, I got to tell you, it's kind of annoying when you say my system.
	I'm not trying to create my system.
	Like, why would you have any interest in my system?
	Right?
	That would be like, it would be like if I come up with some Dungeons and Dragons world and you say that it's universal, it's not.
	That would be my little world.
	So it's not my system.
	I experience that as kind of diminishing what it is that I'm trying to do here because I'm trying to come up with universal statements.
	That's what philosophy does.
	It doesn't create a self-encapsulated cis-like system that's only self-referential.
	So I just find that kind of annoying.
	But so, no, you don't get to go back in time and claim that things are true.
	There are people who have opinions and they have no basis for those opinions.
	And I mean, the reason it's important is I grew up in the 70s, which are heavily mystical and people had an Astradamus and all this kind of crazy stuff was going on, that you could sharpen a razor blade by putting it under a pyramid and all just nutty telekinesis and psychic phenomena, all this bullshit, absolute brain rotting bullshit.
	I'm not saying that you're in that category or advocating for that.
	I'm just telling you why I'm passionate about it because I had to dig my way out of this fetid, greasy rubble of epistemological insanity that came out of my childhood.
	So this is why I'm very strict about this kind of stuff and so on.
	So truth is when it is proven.
	It is not when it is stated.
	And you don't get to go back in time and say that someone was right because they had no methodology of rightness.
	It would be like if I was blindfolded and given a paintbrush and told to just randomly put strokes on a canvas and it turned out I wrote a haiku in Japanese.
	Do we then say, holy shit, he knows Japanese.
	And let's say I don't know Japanese.
	I don't know Kanji or anything like that, right?
	So I'm just randomly swiping stuff, right?
	And it turns out it's a beautiful haiku.
	I mean, obviously very unlikely that's the infinite monkeys making Shakespeare.
	But let's say I did that.
	Would you then go back and say at that time he knew Japanese?
	Yeah, of course not.
	So that's the same, you understand that's the same thing, right?
	Well, I wouldn't say it's the same thing, but I understand your point.
	Tell me, hang on.
	Because we need to agree on this, right?
	So tell me how it's different.
	If some crazy guy says the Earth is going around the Sun and I am blindfolded and randomly painting on a wall and I don't know Japanese when I'm randomly painting on a wall blindfolded and this guy doesn't know that the earth goes around the sun.
	He's just saying stuff in the same way that he's crazy, right?
	And we're just painting random.
	Like, how is it different?
	And I'm not challenging you in any negative way.
	I'm just, you say they're not the same.
	How are they different?
	Because my position is to separate knowledge of something from.
	No, no, no, the specific, no, no, the specific things.
	How are they different?
	Let me, can I ask, it's a similar question.
	I'm going to ask the same, it's a similar question.
	Maybe this will help.
	So if I, because I want to answer your question here.
	So if I, let's say I, let's say I make the claim right now today in this, as we're speaking, that the Earth revolves around the sun.
	But me personally, you know, I don't, I don't currently have the experience or expertise to tell you what experimental condition we would need to set up to demonstrate it.
	I can't actually prove it to you just because I don't have that knowledge.
	So I am speaking that statement, but I can't demonstrate it.
	And then let's say someone else here, whether it's you or someone else, actually can demonstrate, you know, heliocentrism right now.
	And both of us say the same sentence, the earth revolves around the sun.
	Does it mean that when I say it, it's not true because I can't demonstrate it, but when the other person says it, it's true because they can and they know it.
	Or are we saying that because some human, you know, in humanity proved heliocentrism, therefore any human today who makes that statement, we say, well, yeah, that's a true statement because at least some human proved it.
	So you as a human can now say this, you know, earth revolves around the sun, even though you personally have never demonstrated it or set up the experiment.
	So, I mean, this comes down to Do you trust and we've got to take government science out of this because government science is horribly, viciously, brutally compromised.
	So if astronomers, and I don't know how you could not know this, you're sort of growing up in the West, right?
	Because, you know, when I was a kid, there were astronomy books.
	We studied all of this stuff in school and so on, right?
	And it made sense, right?
	I mean, you can make the little models yourself.
	And I was very interested, I was very into astronomy when I was younger.
	And so we know that larger objects tend to attract smaller objects, right?
	So we also know that smaller objects tend to orbit larger objects, which is why the moon, which is one-sixth the size of the Earth, orbits the Earth and not the other way round.
	And so we also know that the Sun is much larger than the Earth.
	And now you say, well, how do we know?
	I haven't done the experiments myself.
	And for sure.
	For sure.
	You could say, but then you start to get real close to radical skepticism.
	Like this is the brain in a tank hypothesis and so on.
	Maybe there's a giant conspiracy to show that to have people believe in the globe Earth and the heliocentric solar system and so on.
	And I don't view that as possible.
	It would obviously dissent.
	So when people say the Earth goes around the Sun, what I would say is, I accept that the Earth goes around the Sun.
	I would not say, I personally have proven that the Earth goes around the Sun.
	I accept that the Earth goes around the Sun because it conforms to my lived experience.
	It conforms to all the theory and it is accepted universally by all astronomers and it conforms with everything that we know about gravity and momentum and inertia and centrifugal forces and all of that.
	So I would say there is not one piece of evidence that goes against that, which is universally affirmed by the experts and they do not dissent at all.
	And it conforms with everything that I understand about reality.
	And therefore, there's no higher standard of truth other than you can't because we can't do the Immanuel Kant thing and know the things in of themselves and know every atom and so on.
	I've not personally flown out into, you know, among the solar system and checked it out myself.
	So I would say, you know, if somebody said, does the Earth go around the solar system?
	I said, yeah.
	I said, well, how do you know?
	It's like, well, I haven't performed the experiments myself, but here's what I understand.
	And here's how it conforms to everything that I know and so on.
	So, you know, you could say, well, the true statement is I accept it.
	But if I have no reason to doubt it, and it conforms with every single piece Of reason and evidence that I personally know and that all the experts confirm.
	I mean, I'm not going to, I'm not going to put a caveat in front of that.
	Yeah, the earth goes around the sun.
	So interesting, that's very interesting.
	So I accept it.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So if I, let's say my son, my young son, you know, I mean, toddler, right?
	So let's say I teach him the fact, like, hey, son, listen, the Earth revolves around the Sun.
	And now he doesn't know the method.
	He doesn't.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Hang on.
	Can I?
	Hang on.
	Hang on.
	So you just say that to him, or do you try and show it somehow and draw it out or get a little model or show him online or, you know, show that I'm sure we could find 6 million JavaScript heliocentric solar system models and you talk about the history of it and the world looks flat.
	So it's kind of confusing and the sun and the moon look the same size count.
	Like you wouldn't just say it to him, right?
	You would just, you wouldn't be teaching him anything, right?
	You would teach him, you know, here's how the solar system works and here's what it explains and here's why we have seasons and here's why the moon pulls the skin of the earth in terms of water back and forth.
	And so you wouldn't just say that to him, right?
	You would teach him a methodology by which he would have some reason to believe that it was true, right?
	Well, I would, but I was going to ask a question whether I would or not.
	I guess I'm trying to first just ask the question, assuming I don't give a robust explanation, like assuming I'm just itching him a fact, like this is just what happens.
	Sorry, I don't know.
	I don't know what's.
	I gave you an example of how you teach him.
	And you say, well, suppose I don't give him a robust explanation.
	How the hell am I supposed to have a question?
	How the hell am I supposed to know what you mean by us to have a productive conversation?
	You've got to just stop dropping things in that are highly subjective and think you've said anything.
	So when you say, well, what if I don't give him a robust explanation?
	I don't know what the hell you mean by robust.
	Sorry, Stefano, just because I was trying to ask a question, but then this is important to me.
	Okay.
	So you can't use all of these, you can't put all of these caveats in and move forward as if they're clear.
	I don't know what you mean by a robust explanation.
	And if you drop that stuff in and keep moving, I doubt that you have good intentions in the conversation because that's an obvious one.
	Like that's an obviously subjective term, right?
	So I gave you some examples of how you might teach your son.
	And you say, well, suppose I don't do that, but I don't give him a robust explanation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Like, I don't know what that means.
	And you've got to stop dropping these subjective terms and moving on and then not being particularly gracious when I point that out because that's not a healthy way to have a conversation, right?
	To drop subjective terms and then move on as if they're understood.
	Maybe I miscommunicate.
	It's not my bad intent at all.
	I'm actually trying to get to a good point.
	What I'm saying, what I meant by robust is you offered a robust, like I use that word to suggest a detailed, a thorough explanation, which is what you did, right?
	I would say you just, in my, that's what I meant when I used that word, where there's an actual explanation, cause and effect, there's logic, right?
	The whole thing.
	Right.
	I'm saying, what if, what if my teaching method was, I mean, if I could just ask the question, let's assume that I'm teaching my son where I just show a picture and I show, you know, here's the side of the picture.
	Hang on, sorry, just for the sake of fucking sanity, are you just going to edge case me?
	Well, what if you give him semi-robust, but not quite enough?
	Like, is that, is that what you're just going to edge case me?
	Am I going to be sort of like, well, I'm not just saying, but I only give him 40% explanation.
	Is it 40%?
	Are you just going to edge case me?
	Because I don't have any particular interest in that.
	No, it's not.
	I'm not, I'm not edge casing.
	I'm trying to.
	Can I complete the question, please?
	Okay, in the interest of time and sanity, let's not make it too long.
	But yeah, go ahead.
	Thank you.
	So I show him the diagram, right?
	Let's say the earth revolves the sun.
	I draw a circle, whatever it is.
	My point is that he then says, and he starts saying, hey, the earth revolves around the sun.
	But he clearly can't, he's not smart enough to explain the full methodology.
	Even if I did explain it to him, he can't justify it himself.
	He just says it.
	So I guess when my son says the earth revolves around the sun, can I say under this understanding of truth that he is making a true statement or he him or is he not making a true statement?
	I'm trying to understand because he doesn't have the correct process because I failed at teaching him, right?
	Maybe I failed.
	Let me ask you something.
	I mean, I understand this because I've already covered this when I said truth is attached to a proposition when it is proven.
	It doesn't have to be proven by every individual, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	I mean, you and I didn't have to come up with all the words in this conversation.
	Let me ask you something because I feel like we make no progress.
	You don't concede anything.
	We never get to any meeting of the minds.
	It feels to me you just keep moving the goalpost.
	Now you're talking about what?
	About a child.
	And it's like, well, we're not talking about children, right?
	Children are a process to development.
	So let me ask you this.
	Why does this matter to you so much?
	Because how we think about truth affects how we believe and understand navigate through life.
	Why does this matter to you so much?
	This is very abstract.
	Why does this matter to you personally so much?
	Like people can call me up, and I'm pretty good at just about every life situation.
	I've got 20 years experience doing public answers about, so everything else in your life is great.
	Everything else in your life is going as beautifully as it could be, except for this issue, because this is what you're bringing up.
	So that's my sort of question.
	Of all the things that we could talk about, why is this one so important to you?
	And why do you never agree?
	I disagree with the premise.
	I think it's a loaded question.
	You disagree with that.
	What have you conceded to me in this conversation?
	That based on how you describe truth, it needs to be proven as you don't have to do it.
	Not based on how I describe truth.
	That's not a concession.
	It's something we have to agree on.
	But we agree.
	It's not objective to me.
	What have you?
	Because listen, if you and I have talked for like 40 minutes or whatever, and we haven't agreed on anything, why on earth would I want to continue the conversation?
	What have you agreed with me on?
	What have you accepted that I have put forward?
	Well, I accept that you have a different definition of truth and understanding.
	No, that's just accepting we don't agree.
	What have you accepted that I have put forward?
	I put forward a large number of arguments and observations and so on.
	Hang on.
	What have you accepted?
	I accept that we have no business believing something or calling something true if we haven't proved it through the robust, you know, I mean, sorry to use that word, experimental methodology through, you know, if we haven't empirically tested something, we should not attach the label of truth to things that involve matter and energy.
	Okay.
	So you accept that something is true when it is proven.
	Not is true.
	It's recognized as true.
	So I don't accept is true.
	I say is recognized as true.
	For me, that's a very important decision.
	Okay.
	So is there anything that is true?
	Is there anything that is true?
	Two and two make four.
	Is that true?
	Yes, of course.
	Yeah, yeah, of course.
	Yes.
	No, of course.
	Yes, there are things that are true.
	Absolutely.
	Okay, so there are some things that are true and other things that are recognized as true.
	I would say if the Venn diagram is there are things that are true and a subset of those are recognized as true.
	So anything that is recognized as true must necessarily also be true.
	But some things are true and we can't publicly verify or recognize them as being as such.
	So now you just have to say that this is why it's so fucking circular.
	So now you write back to, so I said truth is when it's proven and you say, no, no, and you accepted that.
	And now you say, well, no, but truth can also be unproven.
	Well, for example, you stated earlier.
	Hang on, did you say that?
	Did I say that?
	No, that's not how I characterize it.
	You said there's a Venn diagram.
	Yes.
	And there are things that are true that have not been proven as true.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Sorry.
	Yes.
	So we can't publicly verify.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So this is so you've accepted nothing.
	Well, I can prove that to you, actually.
	No, you have accepted nothing and you lied to me when you said that you had accepted that things are not true until they're proven.
	You said to me, hey, I accept that things are true.
	If you keep talking when I'm making a point, we cannot have a conversation.
	This is what I'm saying.
	So you are emotionally compelled by this and you don't even know why.
	Like I told you why I fight you on this because I come from this mystical bullshit culture from the 70s.
	So I've given to you my emotional investment in this topic.
	What is your emotional investment in this topic?
	Because you're very manipulative.
	You have an emotional investment in this topic.
	You have an emotional investment in this topic.
	I just need to know what it is.
	My emotional investment is, well, one, I mean, right now I feel a little sad.
	If we're going to talk emotions, I feel sex.
	I think you're accusing me of being bad and I'm genuinely trying to understand.
	And I feel like you're mad at me.
	And I am mad at you.
	It's not a feeling.
	I am mad at you because you keep moving your definitions and changing the goalposts.
	And it's frustrating and annoying.
	It's an important topic.
	And when I'm having frustrating interactions with someone, there's no point pretending to keep reasoning.
	So you can talk about your emotional investment in this or why it matters to you so much.
	Or I've got other callers because I'm not enjoying this.
	I love intellectual discussions, right?
	But I'm not enjoying this.
	I find this really annoying and frustrating.
	Now, I've got 40 plus years of having intellectual discussions.
	I love debating.
	And you can either accept my expertise or not.
	But I'm telling you, you have an emotional intensity or reason for this topic.
	And I know that because I've been doing this shit for almost half a fucking century.
	I know this.
	Now, you can deny it.
	That's fine.
	But then you're just telling me something that I know that's not.
	You're telling me something is not so that I absolutely know to be so.
	And that's fine.
	I mean, you can disagree with me all you want.
	But we have to have a conversation about the underlying emotions because we're not making, hang on, because we're not making any progress on the intellectual side because everything keeps changing.
	And the reason that I'm saying that is I make a proposition, you change the topic.
	I make a proposition, you change the topic.
	I try and draw you back.
	You change the topic.
	Now we're talking about, well, a semi-robust explanation to a child and it's like, but you haven't accepted or admitted anything.
	And then you say, no, no, no, I do accept that something is true only after it's proven.
	And then you say, oh, no, but there's a bunch of categories of things that are true that aren't proven.
	And that's just contradictory statements.
	And you don't even notice that they're contradictory statements, which means you're arguing emotionally and not from a place of reason.
	I'll share with you my emotion.
	But again, I think I'm being misrepresented, but I still think I'm giving it to you.
	But if you think I'm misrepresenting you, then we can't have a, I'm not.
	It's recorded.
	You can go back and listen to it.
	And I double-checked with you.
	So, so then if you think that like the reason we're having a terrible discussion at this point is either both of our fault or one of her fault.
	Now, I have a history of having very productive and positive discussions, and I love the topic.
	And I've been open and vulnerable about my emotional reasons for the importance of their.
	I'll give you my most reasonable.
	So, can I give you my question?
	So, if the conversation is going badly, I'm at fault or you're at fault, or we're both at fault.
	Now, I've been very honest and open about my emotional investment in this and why, and I've told you what a delightful and positive topic it is.
	I've asked you questions about what you've conceded or accepted.
	And if nothing, and I've told you I don't like it when you keep talking about my system, and then I've told you when you say, Oh, I accept that things are only true after they're proven.
	And then you say, Well, there's a whole category of things that are true, even though they're not proven.
	That's not a productive discussion.
	So, if you want to talk about the emotions, that's fine.
	If you don't, that's fine too.
	I'll move on.
	Yeah, I mean, the emotions, I think for me, you know, if we get into the emotions, I mean, you know, having gone through life, right, there's times where I believed a lie and then, you know, and then I encounter the truth and I realize, wow, I've been lied to, I've been deceived.
	And there's been many of those moments, right?
	Moments of awakening to something that was happening you didn't even realize was happening.
	So, in that sense, I have a deep love for truth.
	That's not the, I mean, everybody gets lied to.
	I mean, so, but your particular emotional intensity, who is it that was the most important to you in your life, probably when you were growing up?
	Who was the most important person to you that you found out lied?
	Hmm.
	Yeah, I don't know if I buried that or not, but I, it's uh, the meaningful lies where I remember experiencing, you know, an embarrassment, right?
	Is like, let's say, friends, let's say friends and people I thought were friends.
	Um, you know, like in college, right, where there's they seem like you got your back, but then really, you know, they were they were mocking you.
	There's this whole, they, they, they, they, they pretended to be your friend, but they're not your friend kind of thing.
	So, I remember that list leaves an impression.
	Um, certainly not having a father growing up, you know, I think that I've had to question everything, right, in that sense.
	So, I'm very, so in this case, I don't even, I really hate to, I don't mean to offend you at all.
	So, if I come across as asking questions, I'm not trying to be offensive.
	It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, don't do that.
	No, no, don't do that.
	Don't, that's so rude, man.
	That's so passive-aggressive.
	Jesus, don't fucking tell me that the reason I'm upset is just because you're asking questions.
	Come on, man.
	You understand that's really insulting.
	No, you're right.
	I'm sorry.
	I didn't mean to say it that way.
	No, no, you didn't mean to say it.
	Stop lying to me.
	Jesus.
	What do you mean you didn't mean to say it?
	Did you have Tourette's that you possessed?
	Own what you said.
	I'm scared of being interrupted.
	So I'm trying to say that.
	Don't lie to me.
	You said it.
	It's rude.
	Don't say, well, I didn't mean to say it.
	That's not reasonable.
	You're right.
	No, you're right.
	I see that it sounds passive-aggressive.
	It sounds like the reason that you don't like me asking questions.
	And that's just the peculiar thing.
	The way I said it makes it sound like that.
	And I'm sorry.
	But why would you do that?
	I feel frustrated in that I can't ask the questions and you've attributed bad will to me in this conversation.
	And I feel like you misinterpreted what I've said.
	But rather than being open to hear how maybe you made a mistake, you're just saying, I'm the one doing the bad things and I'm not learning anything.
	And it's just really frustrating for me.
	That's my experience of it.
	And what is your relationship like with your father?
	Oh, with him, I mean, we don't, at this point, it's kind of apathetic.
	Don't, you know, there was a period where I was angry about the whole thing, angry about the absence, you know, angry about not having the moments.
	And then, especially, you know, when I have, in my own experience of being a father myself, I see all the beautiful things that my children can experience.
	And already they've experienced more than I have my whole life.
	So that's been a thing.
	But at this point, it's kind of just an acceptance of he's been through his experience that's made him a certain kind of way.
	And your father's been through his experience.
	Yeah, my father, right?
	Yeah.
	Like a resignation that he's kind of become the person he is through his own traumas.
	And, you know, hang on.
	So he's not responsible for his bad behavior because he had trauma.
	No, no, he is.
	He is, but he lacks the self-awareness.
	No, no, hang on.
	So this is, this is, you understand.
	This is exactly why you're so confusing to talk to.
	You said he did what he did because of his own traumas.
	And I said, is he responsible?
	Yes, but he doesn't have the blah, blah, blah.
	So he both is, he's like Schrodinger just responsibility.
	He both is and is not responsible.
	Yes.
	Hang on.
	Just pause on that for a second, right?
	Just take a breath.
	Just take a breath.
	Pause on that for a second.
	Do you understand that that's confusing and contradictory?
	Do I understand that that's...
	I understand it's confusing.
	It is contradictory if I mean it in the same way both times when I say it.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Do you understand that it's confusing and contradictory without caveats?
	That your communication in this, like, let's just take that little time slice of 10 seconds ago, right?
	Yeah.
	That you say, your father is not responsible because he had trauma.
	And I say, so your father's not responsible.
	You say he is responsible, but he lacks this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah.
	All right.
	So you understand that's contradictory.
	And I'm not, I'm not trying to nag at you and I'm not trying to corner you and I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm just trying to give you a microcosm of why it's confusing.
	Yeah.
	No, I see my it's my bad communication of being ambiguous.
	If I were to be more precise, what I would say is that he is responsible.
	But what I meant by the trauma thing is that I've lowered my expectations because my mental model of who he is and what he's aware of is he has a low self-awareness that, you know, because he needs a certain level of self-awareness to be aware to improve his behavior.
	If he doesn't have that level of self-awareness, he's not going to improve his behavior.
	So that's what I meant.
	And I didn't elaborate on that, but yeah, that's what I meant where he is responsible, but I've abandoned my expectations on, you know, an improvement there because I don't think he has the self-awareness.
	I don't know what you mean by have the self-awareness.
	Self-awareness is something that you just choose to be honest with yourself or not.
	Let me ask you this.
	How old is your father?
	50s.
	He's in the 50s.
	Late 50s?
	It's funny.
	It's funny.
	I don't even know exactly the day.
	I have to think about it.
	I think getting close to mid-50s.
	I should know the exact number, but he's almost exactly my age.
	Okay.
	Do you think that's a coincidence?
	Hey, yeah, it could be, could be the mirroring ARP type.
	That's right.
	You know what?
	That's interesting.
	So why I'm getting emotional?
	I think that's a fair call out because I do remember now that you mentioned it, you know, when I was 14 years old, I tried to have discussions about the big topics.
	And then for him, rather than addressing my arguments, he would get into the whole, well, you're inexperienced.
	Do this, that.
	It would be all these kind of sidetrack things rather than dealing with the argument.
	And then whether it's happening here or not, my perception was like, man, I feel like Stefan's not addressing my argument.
	He's maybe doing what my father was doing.
	And so maybe that's why I'm getting emotional.
	It's a thing coming up for me on the emotional level.
	I appreciate that honesty.
	So what did your father do in regards to leaving the family?
	How did that happen?
	Oh, he was just gone.
	I mean, since I mean, since the early child, I mean, what, four years old, five years old, you know, had just went left.
	I mean, part of it is because he was traveling.
	You know, he had to go on a Disney on ice show.
	I will travel away from the family, right?
	So then it just ended up infidelity, different things.
	And sorry, just a heads up, I got about three minutes because my family's also calling me.
	So I'm sorry to, I know it's a really good thing we're doing right now.
	I'm just, I'm getting the nudge as well.
	So I apologize for that.
	But I mean, honestly, I tell you, this is a more important conversation than what's going on with your family right now.
	Well, I actually would agree with you, but I also feel guilt as a father who's responsible and taking care of others that sometimes, yeah, I can take care of myself, but I feel like I also have to balance the needs of the other people I'm responsible for.
	So I always feel that tension.
	Well, I mean, if you got to go, you got to go.
	But if you have, well.
	I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do in two minutes or whatever.
	Right.
	Yeah, no.
	Well, right.
	Yeah, I guess I'm going to go.
	So my assessment of this is that you're angry at your father, but you've cloaked it up with a sort of feminine forgiveness thing, which isn't really real.
	So you've still got a lot of anger towards older intellectual authority figures, which you're really frustrated and angry at your father, but you're not admitting it to yourself, which I understand.
	And so emotions that we don't admit to ourselves, we tend to recreate within others.
	So because you're frustrated and angry at your father, you then call me up as a father figure and frustrate and anger me as a kind of vengeance.
	And I won't obviously do that because it's not healthy for either of us, right?
	Yeah, I think whether there's psychological patterns happening or not, I do think, and we can listen to the recording or maybe I'll put it in Stefan AI.
	I do think there's an actual substance of disagreement that we have that I don't think was understood, but I guess we'll leave it to the recording and we can evaluate it.
	No, I don't agree with that.
	I mean, you can drop it in an AI.
	That's kind of a cop-out.
	No, it's not that we disagree.
	See, that's also insulting to me.
	You're still being passive-aggressive.
	So the fact that we disagree is not a problem.
	The fact that we were having trouble finding the right definitions, that's not the problem.
	The problem is the falsehood in the moving goalposts and the passive-aggressive jabs at my system and things like that.
	It's just too much hostility that's underlying the conversation.
	So again, you're back to being passive-aggressive, which is your frustration at your father, or maybe you've internalized your father to that degree and now you're trying to treat me like your father treated you or something like that, because you're back to passive aggression.
	It's not that we disagree.
	That's fine.
	The whole point of the show is I say people call up and they disagree with me and we can have very productive discussions.
	The problem is, ironically, that you claim your father lacks self-knowledge and that's why he does bad things.
	And I would say that you lack self-knowledge.
	And listen, I say this like we all lack self-knowledge.
	And I say this with all the humility that I'm certainly not perfect in self-knowledge either.
	But I think I'm a little further ahead in that particular regard, maybe because my father's dead and the whole story is done.
	All right.
	Kerry, what is on your mind, my friend?
	Good evening.
	Good evening.
	Happy Halloween.
	Happy Halloween.
	So I would like to talk about the nice guys discussion, but it's more important to thank you for yesterday for your impromptu or your flash.
	Your flash slide that you did?
	Yeah.
	And just for those who don't know, Kerry was the fine young lady that I was referring to in the show from 30th October 2025, who gave me a great question that had my mind tumble down a whole row of thoughts and insights.
	So I really do appreciate it.
	It was a great, great, great.
	Not just one.
	I think it was two questions in your ex post.
	Yes, thank you.
	It was excellent answer.
	I had my husband listen to the whole thing afterwards, and he's learning more about me by my interactions with you and just the things that I'm, you know, being able to sort out by listening to you.
	So I'm glad to hear that.
	And, you know, if what I do brings you and your husband closer, I couldn't consider that time better spent.
	So thank you for that thought.
	Thank you.
	On the nice guys.
	So I think nice guys get used on one hand, because let's say, like, for example, you know, one time I was moving back to my hometown to go to grad school and I needed help and I don't have family to help.
	And I asked an old friend that I knew, I guess, you know, he never really dated any of us girls, but he always liked us.
	And I asked him to help me move, right?
	And no intentions of dating him or anything like that.
	And so years have gone by since I'd seen him and he'd never know.
	Wait, wait, wait, hang on.
	Sorry.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt.
	I hate interrupting.
	I really do.
	I just want to make sure I understand this.
	So you need help moving and you ask a guy you haven't talked to in years that you never dated to come help you move.
	Yes, he was one of, he was almost like one of the girls.
	He was just one of our guy friends, but we kept in touch over Facebook and things, you know?
	No, but you hadn't talked to him in years.
	Right.
	So I was using him.
	Okay.
	So as long as we agree.
	Okay.
	I was using him as my little buddy.
	He's one of the girls, but you need a guy with a strong, you need someone with a strong back.
	So he's no longer one of the girls.
	He's one of the guys who can help you move.
	Okay.
	Yes, that's what I'm saying.
	So on one hand, yes, they get used, but then he turned around and quit pro-quode me after he helped me move.
	And it just offended me to no end.
	I just could not believe it.
	What do you mean he quit pro-quoting you?
	He said, he gets done helping me move all my things in.
	We sit down at the table and then he's like, well, you know, to thank me, such and such.
	And I was so offended and could not believe that came out of his mouth.
	How dare the slave have preferences of the master?
	That's not how this works.
	I was so offended.
	I never talked to him again.
	And anytime someone says, oh, the nice guys, I think he was the predator.
	He was using me trying to be nice.
	And wait, what?
	Wait.
	Right, right.
	I know.
	But it's not true, right?
	Unless, right?
	Right.
	This is, but this is the, what I've been, this is a long time coming for me to come to the point where I'm like, wait a minute, maybe I was the jerk.
	Well, or we were both jerks, but either way, I had no intention of paying him.
	Sorry, was it, was it like romantic or sexual favors he wanted in return for helping you move?
	Yes.
	Oh, so I didn't, I didn't know that.
	So he said, like, in return, come on me with a date or just flash me your boobs.
	Like, what did he say?
	What did he say that he wanted as helping you move?
	He said, in, I forget the exact words, but you know, you can do something for me now.
	And I thought, I asked him, I said, are you trying to say what I think you're saying?
	And he was like, yes.
	Oh, so did he just mean sex?
	Yes.
	Oh, God.
	So this is where I struggle because I'm like, okay, I was using him to help me move.
	And maybe he thought for me to ask him that, I must be interested in him because I called him up.
	And you're like, you know, he's standing behind me.
	I don't remember movers coming with that zipping sound or rather that unzipping sound.
	Okay, maybe you watched, I don't know, pornography where it's like, well, now that I finished installing your pipes, whatever it is, right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	So, yeah, that's, that's a little odd.
	I mean, you could say that's a little creepy for sure because he should at least ask you out on a date.
	But so, yeah, I mean, I guess he came with the expectation.
	And, you know, I hate to be, you know, blunt and gross, but a lot of nice guys do nice things so that they can pretend that the woman's going to have sex with them or masturbate later or something like that.
	So they're getting something out of it, I guess.
	But the nice guys are, they make women's ovaries run for the hills because the women's ovaries are like, well, this is such a nice guy.
	He's never going to win in competition with other men and he's just not going to get me enough resources to safely raise my children.
	You need a man with a little piss and vinegar, a man with a little bit of a fight.
	You know, the woman's fantasy is the man who's really tough and alpha outside the home and then really, you know, sweet and sensitive inside the home.
	And if you can hit that sweet spot as a man, I think that's just about as good as it gets because women like the sweet stuff at home, but they don't like it when the man's out there in the world fighting with other men to get a hold of scarce resources.
	But they also don't like the hard guy who's like, you know, pounding the table and raising his voice to get what he wants to come home and pound the table and raise his voice.
	So women want that duality, right?
	They want, you know, like the mother whore thing, sort of, so to speak.
	But women want the duality of the guy who's, you know, tough as nails out there and then sweet as sugar at home.
	Is this something like that?
	I don't want to speak for women and certainly not for you, but is it something like that for you?
	Yes, yes.
	Yeah.
	So when I'm, you know, like on X, for example, you get really angry men that I guess you could label them incels.
	That's kind of the groups that they're in.
	And they get really angry and say, the nice guys never, never win.
	You girls don't want nice guys.
	You want the jerk.
	You want the chad that's going to treat you bad that has all the other girls too.
	And when they say nice guys, though, because of my experiences with nice guys, it's almost immediate for me to think you're the opposite of the nice guy.
	You're the guy pretending to be the nice guy.
	So you can, you know, prey on the girl like someone like myself that didn't have family or a dad or a brother or someone to help.
	I needed men to help me.
	Right.
	And so those kind of guys, they can slide into that situation and be, you know, fill that role there.
	No, I know.
	No, I love you to death.
	Don't try that one with me.
	Oh, dear.
	Oh, oh, the innocent little lamb.
	She just needs some help from men.
	You know, there are tons of men who'll help you.
	You just have to pay them.
	What you want is stuff for free.
	That's a whole different category.
	And you want one-sided stuff for free.
	So, oh, I just need men to help me.
	Absolutely.
	Then go hire the movers.
	But what you want is the stuff for free.
	Now, I don't think that's particularly honorable, although totally understand the temptation.
	What I don't like about the nice guys, and then I'll give you a chance to tell me how I'm wrong, which I certainly could be, of course, right?
	But what I don't like about the nice guys is their dishonesty.
	It's the manipulation.
	I'm just going to be so nice and then she's going to want to have sex with me.
	And it's like, no, no, just be upfront.
	Right.
	Just say, hey, man, I'm going to have, if I come help you move, I at least want a date out of it.
	Just be upfront.
	Just be upfront.
	I'm going to, I'm going to help you move, but it's because I'm attracted to you.
	Not because I'm just some great guy.
	It's that they pretend to be nice guys when they have false, they have expectations that they're not being honest about.
	And so they're not nice because they're lying.
	Because they're pretending.
	The camouflaging is nice, but they come with very real expectations as Joe Zipperpants was demonstrating after his helping you move.
	It's down payment for, I guess in this case, sexual activity, which is gross.
	And so there's falseness on both sides because on the one side, you want something for free and you know this guy's attracted to you and you certainly know he's attracted to you if he's willing to give you a day's labor for free, but you're not honest about that.
	And the guy's not honest saying, I'm not that nice a guy.
	I'm just coming to help you move because I want to date you.
	Now, if he said, hey, I'll come help you move, but I need at least one date out of it.
	I'm not saying we have to do anything, but I want to date.
	Now, if you say, look, I mean, I'm not, I'm not going to date you, then he's not going to come help you move.
	And if you say, okay, fine, one date, but I, nothing has to happen.
	I'll give you one date, though, right?
	That's, you know, whatever.
	But that's a more honest exchange.
	So it's all of the falseness that's kind of floating around that makes the whole thing kind of there, if that makes sense.
	Yes, you're right.
	So, you know, sometimes though, like in my situation, this is not an excuse.
	Like I said, I feel like I was the jerk also for asking someone that I knew maybe expected to date.
	And I took advantage of that by getting free labor.
	But, you know, if you're, you know, a poor person and you can't get your car fixed or you can't hire a mover, then you ask for help from people that can help you without you having to pay.
	But in return for what?
	Right.
	That's always the question.
	And now, of course, there are times when we're generous and there's times when we do things for other people.
	And I get all of that.
	But I would say that one of the reasons why you were poor at that time in your life, I know a little bit about your history, but we don't have to get into anything specific.
	But I think one of the reasons why you were poor, I look back sort of when I was poor at times in my life.
	And that's to some degree because I was not good at negotiating and I was not negotiating in good faith and I was not negotiating upfront.
	And when you have hidden motivations and you're not upfront, it tends to be very hard to be efficient.
	It tends to be very hard to be honest.
	And that shows up in work.
	That shows like you can't negotiate well at work.
	And so I think it's all tied in together.
	I don't think it's right.
	I could be wrong.
	Again, I'm not trying to tell you your life.
	I don't think it's right to say, well, I was poor, therefore I needed help and therefore I couldn't be honest.
	And I would say, well, perhaps part of the poverty was not being honest as a habit, which again, I'm not blaming you for.
	I mean, it's how you were raised.
	It's how most of us are raised is to not be direct and honest because we're usually punished for it.
	I mean, if you go to a teacher and say, this coursework is stupid and I find your lessons boring, like good luck, right?
	Or your parents, if you dislike something that they do, they may be very hostile.
	So I think that the things are all tied in together, a lack of ability to negotiate, a lack of ability to be upfront with expectations and preferences and to provide and return value.
	It's one thing, if you just helped this guy move last week, then you can definitely ask him to come and help you move.
	If this is why I asked, you hadn't talked to him in a couple of years.
	So there was no deposits.
	You were just trying to withdraw.
	Sorry, in and out is probably the wrong way to phrase this, but you know what I mean, right?
	So I think it's all kind of tied into, can you be upfront with what you want?
	Can you negotiate, right?
	So in the call, or I don't know if you listened to the call prior, but in the call before, I wasn't getting what I wanted, which was a productive and enjoyable discussion.
	So I had to put the discussion on hold and try to get to the emotional roots, which I think we got to.
	I mean, obviously not very deeply, but we did get to them.
	So I think that it's all tied in together.
	It's not like, well, I'm poor, so I need free stuff.
	It's like, I think you're poor, or I was poor because we have not yet developed being direct and honest with our negotiations.
	I agree with that.
	But from the beginning, I just wanted to say when it comes to the nice guy issue, I think, you know, it is true on one side, the truly nice guys are getting used, and then the girls are using them.
	And like you said, the answer is to be upfront on your expectations and what the payment is ahead of time.
	But I would also argue in your defense that they're also using you because either they're going to get a date or this bizarre, let's have sex because I helped you move now that I'm sweaty.
	But they're also using the girls because maybe this is the closest they can get to a date.
	Maybe they fantasize later and get good spank back material out of the interaction or something like that.
	So there's nobody who could be used.
	I mean, you weren't using violence.
	You didn't kidnap him and throw him in a windowless van, although that may have been his next fantasy.
	But it is mutual exploitation.
	The quote, nice guys are exploiting the girls and the girls are exploiting the nice guys, but nobody's forcing anyone.
	The only thing that's really driving the interactions is the avoidance of directness and honesty.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Listen, I know we got a bunch of people who want to talk.
	I'm really, really sorry.
	Now I have to go, but I actually do.
	So, but I will do a bonus show tomorrow.
	Just keep your X running and I'll throw it up because I'd love to hear what people thought about the earlier discussion, which I found really, really interesting.
	And I would love to go longer now, but I can't because it's Halloween.
	So have yourselves a glorious, lovely evening.
	Freedom.com slash donate.
	Everybody who donates today gets a bunch of free goodies.
	You don't have to necessarily know what they are, but it's offers to help you move and I will show up in a thong.
	Great.
	And the thong won't even be where you think.
	And it might.
	Okay.
	Sorry.
	I'm going to gross myself out with that whole analogy.
	So thanks, everyone.
	And again, thanks, Kerry, for a great conversation and for great questions yesterday.
	Lots of love to everyone.
	We'll talk tomorrow.
	And don't forget, Sunday morning, 11 a.m., we've got our donor show, which you can get a hold of by subscribing at freedomain.com slash donate.
	Love you guys so much.
	Thanks, Amel.

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