Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - Why Virtue is Hard and Easy! (UPB)

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Dec. 10, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

32:44

Why Virtue is Hard and Easy! (UPB)

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	All right.
	So somebody ran UPB through Grok and was sort of arguing with Grok to get Grock to understand UPB.
	And it was a consent loop thing.
	And I'll post it on social media.
	But it was interesting, but it was incorrect.
	And when we were working with AI to create the sort of StephPot AI, which is available for donors at premium.freedomain.com, I worked with a lot of AIs to try to get AI to understand what was UPB, what UPB meant.
	The foundational proof of UPB is this.
	It's very simple.
	And I know that sounds like being a dick.
	I get that.
	But just bear with me.
	It's not because it's so complicated.
	It's because all of our morals are superstitious.
	All of our morals are superstitions.
	Now, there are superstitions that happen in many ways to accord with reality, right?
	In the same way, like when there's a tsunami, the first thing that happens is the water level goes down, just like the water level is gathering where the tsunami is, right?
	So there are these Pacific Islanders, the last time there was some big tsunami, they saw it first, they got to higher ground because they had a, you know, when the water goes down, it means that the sea god is angry and there's going to be a big wave, right?
	So they had a superstitious understanding of the facts of reality that when there's going to be a tsunami, the first thing that happens is the water level goes down because it's gathering in the big tall tower of a wave, right?
	So all of our morals are superstitions.
	And questioning superstition, this is why it's so hard to think about UPB, but questioning superstition was extremely dangerous throughout all of human history because power is based upon rules and exceptions.
	And the only way that rules and exceptions can be justified is through superstition.
	I mean, prophets provide miracles, and miracles are exceptions to the laws of physics.
	That's how you know that they're miracles, and this is how their divinity is established.
	God is eternal.
	God is all-powerful, all-knowing.
	God can create everything out of nothing just by willing it and so on.
	And so God is an exception to everything that we know.
	God is all-powerful and immaterial, whereas that which is immaterial has no power.
	If somebody said, I'm going to hit you with an invisible arrow, an arrow that has no corporeal form, like there's no atoms, I'm going to mime.
	I'm going to hit you with it.
	And when I say invisible, I don't just mean you can't see it, but it's real.
	I'm going to hit you with an incorporeal arrow.
	You would not be particularly worried.
	I guess if you were in the voodoo or something like that, right?
	So that which is immaterial has no power.
	Try and building, try building a fire using only air.
	In other words, don't use any sticks.
	Well, you can't build the fire.
	So that which is immaterial has no power, but God, who is immaterial, is all-powerful, right?
	So we've created a massive exception.
	Questioning these exceptions throughout human history, if you got very far, and obviously I have a direct experience of this, right?
	Having suffered a lot of blowback over, I mean, for almost 20 years, really, having suffered a lot of blowback for telling the truth that goes against the superstition of the blank slate, that goes against the superstition of the generic soul of religion and so on, right?
	So it's very dangerous to tell the truth.
	And I don't have Oscar Wilde's wit, right?
	He says, if you're going to tell people the truth, you have to make them laugh first.
	Otherwise, they're going to kill you.
	I do not have his famous wit.
	I can resist everything except temptation.
	But I know, and you know, and everyone knows, that if you attempt to bring reason to the question of superstition, you are in very, very, very dangerous territory.
	Right?
	So, when I went to go and give my speeches in 2018, I think it was, yeah, seven years ago, when to give my speeches in Australia, Australia, with Southern, I was simply using anthropological and historical data to talk about the brutality of the native population.
	Now, that goes against the superstition of the noble savage.
	And the noble savage is necessary to make, especially white people, because it really only ever gets applied to white people, the noble savage myth is essential to make white people feel guilty for existing.
	Oh, it's all stolen land, and there were these wonderful, peaceful natives, and you all came along and just killed them all and gave them smallpox blankets, right?
	It's a way of dehumanizing and demoralizing Europeans.
	So, when I point out that 40% of the children were killed in native societies and rape was used as a weapon of war and all the other things I talked about in that speech, I mean, these are all facts.
	But it goes against the superstition of the native savage, of the noble savage, that is necessary for demoralizing white people.
	Because again, it's only ever applied against white people who are the natural enemies of communism.
	So, communists do that, blah, blah, blah.
	We all know this stuff.
	So, whenever you talk against superstition, it's very dangerous, right?
	So, I had lots of excitement trying to get in the country.
	I had actually, I'd never really talked about this.
	I had quite a lot of excitement trying to get out of New Zealand, detained at the airport and all kinds of exciting stuff.
	And it's quite dangerous.
	Why?
	I was simply quoting anthropological facts.
	Everything was sourced, but you're going against superstition.
	And those in power have their power because of superstition and lies, basically.
	So, when you bring reason to falsehoods, we get very nervous.
	Let me ask you this: how well would you do on a math question if there were a pack of wolves in the giant hallway or a tiger or a lion prowling and padding up and down?
	You would not be able to concentrate on the mathematical questions or the spelling bee or whatever it was, because you'd be constantly checking to see where the lion was, whether it was hungry, whether it was near you.
	And it would be almost impossible to concentrate on the exam, right?
	So, when talking about UPB, people's brains go into fight or flight mechanism.
	And this is particularly true for people who are, say, our good friend John, who is, I think, a professor who's benefiting from these exceptions, right?
	Taking money from the government, having special privileges, and so on.
	So, the reason why he's hostile to UPB is, I mean, I'm not saying he'd be conscious of this, but yeah, he'd be hostile to UPB because UPB would overturn his privileges or reveal them as unjust and immoral.
	So, the reason why UPB is tough to talk about and to think about, white people get squirrely and staticky and all of that, is because it is a way of getting killed.
	I'm not kidding.
	It's a way of getting killed.
	If you start to provoke the kind of questions that interfere with the designs and justifications for power, in other words, if you raise the cost of owning human beings, of controlling human beings, right?
	Because if people believe in these superstitions, then they're much cheaper and easier to control.
	I mean, people don't like the mafia, and they rebelled against it finally and did pretty well in that rebellion.
	But people don't particularly like the mafia, but they'll sort of submit to it because they'll use violence and the police aren't very helpful and so on.
	So it's different, of course, with political power that people think is necessary and justified and so on, right?
	So when you start bringing questions of universality and rationality to the twisted pockets of superstition that justify power, there's a great sense of threat.
	A tiger is loosed in the mind.
	Or, of course, to put it another way, as I usually do, all those who enthusiastically attacked the contradictions of power with universal rationality got killed.
	And so who's left over?
	Who's left over are the people who don't want to do that.
	But they also don't want to admit to themselves that they're avoiding questions of morality and universality because they're frightened of the people in power.
	And I mean, to be cautious about the people in power is a wise thing to do, right?
	Because obvious reasons.
	But people don't want to admit that to themselves because one of the most important aspects of obeying power is you don't see it for power.
	That's what really lowers the cost of human ownership is when the people you have power over do not see the power.
	So in my debate on spanking recently, they were talking about the necessity of governments because of defense and so on.
	And so they don't want to think that they subjugate themselves to political power because it is powerful, but they have to say it is rational and necessary and good, and I'm doing the right thing by society, and the alternative would be infinitely worse, and it's crazy to think otherwise.
	And what's the matter with you?
	And like they have to twist themselves into like body contortionist style cramps.
	I'm trying to think of the right word there, cramps, in order to justify that they do not submit to political power because political power is big and strong and aggressive.
	No, no, they are submitting to political power in the same way that someone who's dangerously overweight submits to a dietician and a personal coach, like a fitness coach, right?
	That somebody who has cancer submits to radiation and chemotherapy, right?
	They're submitting to something that's rational and helpful and good and all of that, right?
	And again, this is not to diss either of those guys at all.
	I mean, I enjoyed the debate and I was glad to have the invitation, but you know, facts are facts.
	So, of course, political power, and this is back to the Hobbesian argument, political power says, well, in the absence of a centralized state, it's just a war of all against all.
	Nature read in Tooth and Claw, life is nasty, bloody, brutish, and short, right?
	That's the reality.
	So we trade away some of our freedoms in order to gain security by surrendering to the state and so on, right?
	So when you start to examine things rationally and you start to look at morality from a logical, objective standpoint, people get really, really, really freaked out.
	And I've seen it for 20 years, right?
	Longer, really.
	But I've seen it for 20 years.
	There's just kind of static.
	And this gaslighting, this obfuscation, this subterranean, I'm still out in full sunlight burrowing and so on.
	And it took me a while to understand it.
	I have been blessed slash cursed with a lack of fear of whatever answers make sense.
	I did not develop UPB almost 20 years ago and sit there and say, oh my God, I can't publish this.
	Like Eugene O'Neill with Long Day's Journey Tonight said it can't be published until like 10 years after he's dead.
	So I didn't sit there and say, oh my God, this is terrifying.
	I was like, wow, this is exciting.
	This is cool.
	Now, this does come at a price.
	It came at a price for me.
	Although I had paid that price before, but the price for me of UPB was statism, right?
	Because I was a minarchist in the objectivist style for 20 years and 15 to 35, something like that.
	So I was a minarchist for many years.
	And then I finally got the DRO thing.
	And I was like, oh, so we don't need that, right?
	And that was good because minarchism, the idea that the government is necessary for national defense and for courts, law system as a whole, maybe prisons, that kind of stuff.
	That is a cope and that's a pocket of power.
	And Ayn Rand, of course, is rational enough.
	I think it's one of the reasons why she got kind of depressed, was that she was unable to iron out that pocket of power that she needed, or she felt she needed.
	Because at the end of Atlanta Schrugt, they like fix the Constitution.
	They rewrite bits of the Constitution and she thinks that's going to solve everything.
	And that's because she thought her writing was going to solve everything.
	I remember Leonard Peikoff, after, a very young Leonard Peekoff, of course, Arthur Atna Schregt, after Atlaschreght was published in the late 50s, he was like, well, this is going to be fantastic.
	They're going to repeal all of these laws and Directive 10289 in like a year.
	And of course, it didn't happen and so on, right?
	So she thought that her words would have peculiar and particular power.
	And so she thought that fixing the Constitution would solve everything.
	But of course, it doesn't, right?
	It's just ink on a page.
	He's just an ink on a page, man.
	So that's the challenge.
	I had to give up my comprehension of the world, that the government should be there, but smaller, in order to pave the way for UPB.
	If I was still a minarchist, I don't really know that I could have developed UPB because it would have gone too much against my assumptions.
	I would have said, well, hang on, but UPB means that political power is unsupportable by objective ethics.
	And that would have crashed up against my minarchist.
	I don't know.
	I just, I don't know that I would have had the just blank slate curiosity to move forward with the examination.
	So that's one of the reasons why people have, and it's really the foundational reason, that any of their ancestors who came up with UPB and promulgated it and so on would have been ostracized or killed.
	Like it would have been, it would have gone very badly for them as a whole.
	So that's why it is like saying to people, do math while there's a drooling, slavering, bloody toothed predator right behind you.
	Do math when you're one of the last three people standing in a horror movie.
	Can't be done.
	So there's a lot of static.
	And of course, the king, the priests and so on, would regularly send out spies trying to talk people into heresy or treason.
	Oh, I don't like the king.
	Do you like the king?
	No, I don't like the king either.
	Right, mate, you're nicked.
	You'll never take me alive, copper.
	Right?
	You're nicked.
	You're in the tower.
	You're beheaded.
	Because it turns out the guy who's telling you, oh, I hate the king, you hate the king, is one of the king's spies, and you're dead.
	You're dead.
	Live on time, live on time.
	So that was a lot of caution, a lot of caution, and a lot of deadly fear of universal ethics.
	Now, as to why, it doesn't really matter why I don't have this particular barrier.
	I just sort of figured, like, what's the point of being half unlikable if you're going to go big or go home?
	Right?
	I mean, what's the point of being half unlikable?
	Like, I mean, I remember Schwarzenegger saying, you know, well, of course, I'd try to be president if I'd been born in America.
	Why wouldn't you go for the top?
	Why would you want to aim for the middle?
	Just aim for the top, right?
	So for me, it was like, I don't want all the negatives of philosophy and none of the positives.
	So to me, to be a minarchist is kind of the worst of both worlds because you annoy everyone.
	You annoy the true statists and you annoy the voluntaryists or the end caps and so on.
	So to be halfway to consistency is almost worse for me than being just inconsistent and a hedonist.
	It's sort of like be a hedonist and be guilty.
	That's worse than just being a hedonist and enjoying it or not being a hedonist.
	Being a hedonist and being guilty, that's bad.
	Because virtue is how we get to be loved.
	And the more consistently we are virtuous, the more consistently we are loved.
	So to have beliefs that put you outside of regular conformity, which is, you know, it's a, they're pleasant.
	It's pleasant.
	There are benefits and bonuses in real conformity.
	I mean, otherwise it wouldn't be a pull at all.
	So to not have the pleasures of conformity and also not have the pleasures of deep and genuine integrity, like consistency, well, that just seems, that's like one foot on the boat, one foot on the pier, and the boat and the pier are drifting apart.
	Like you, you know, pick a side, the thing, sit on the fence, but it don't work.
	So UPB is simply saying, if that which is claimed to be universal cannot be universalized, the claim is rejected.
	If I said, open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, but only from noon to 3 p.m. on Tuesday, that would not make any sense, right?
	It's like that old Stephen Wright joke.
	Came to a convenience store, tried to go in, it was locked, the owner was leaving.
	And I said, hey, man, sign says, open 24 hours.
	And he says, well, yeah, but not in a row.
	That's the joke, right?
	My girlfriend and I went camping and she got poison ivy on the brain.
	Now she can only scratch it by thinking about sandpaper.
	Man, I went to see him once, Stephen Wright.
	Good comedian.
	God, he was terrible at music.
	I don't know what the hell was going on with all that music.
	Anyway, so if you say this rule applies everywhere in the universe and only in Pittsburgh, this is a physical law that is universal.
	It applies everywhere in the universe and only in Pittsburgh.
	One of those statements is false.
	If it's only in Pittsburgh, it's not universal.
	If it's universal, it's in Pittsburgh, but not only in Pittsburgh, right?
	If you say to someone, I want you to tell me the truth by lying to me, that's a contradiction.
	So there are self-contradictory statements that, and they're invalid.
	Gases cannot expand and contract while being heated, right?
	Two and two cannot equal four and the opposite of four at the same time.
	So there's a special kind of disproof, obviously known as contradiction.
	Go north and south at the same time.
	If you have a theory that says gravity both repels and attracts at the same time, right?
	So those are contradictions.
	If you claim that a rule is universal and it cannot be applied universally, then that rule is self-contradictory.
	Let me say this again.
	If you claim that a rule is universal and the application of the universal rule is impossible, then the proposition is invalid.
	So of course, people go through a lot of mental fog to try and work their way around this.
	They say, well, but morality is not universal.
	Morality is not blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, okay, well, then what's the difference between morality and an opinion?
	And the moment you correct someone, you cannot say that morality is subjective and universal, because by correcting them, you're saying that the truth is infinitely preferable to falsehood, that accuracy is infinitely preferable to inaccuracy, consistency is infinitely preferable to inconsistency or anti-consistency.
	So UPB is the examination of the proposition that that which is universal or that which is claimed to be universal must be universal.
	That's all.
	If you claim something is universal, but it cannot be universal, your claim is false.
	If you have a rule that says everyone must walk north, but when everyone walks north, everyone must also walk south, that would be a contradiction.
	It would be like saying everybody must stand on everybody's shoulders.
	That's a contradiction.
	Everybody must give everybody a leg up.
	Everybody must sing higher than everybody else.
	These are asynchronous propositions.
	If I say everybody must stand on everyone's shoulders, that's impossible.
	Ah, but what if people did it vertically and so on, right?
	But it is impossible for everyone to stand on everyone's shoulders.
	Even if you have some zero gravity thing and all 8 billion people are standing on each other's shoulders, the bottom person is not standing on everyone's shoulders.
	Ah, but what if they're looping?
	Yeah, that's a fair pushback.
	Yeah, I guess you could put everyone in space.
	Everyone could stand on everyone's shoulders, and it could be looping.
	Okay, yeah, that's a good pushback.
	That is theoretically possible.
	So, that's all right.
	It seems to make sense in the moment, but I can think I can construct a scenario where people could theoretically stand on everyone else's shoulders.
	But if you were to say everyone must sing higher than everyone else, that is not possible, of course, right?
	Because if I am singing higher than you, you are not singing higher than me, by definition.
	So we can't both be singing higher than each other at the same time.
	If I create a rule that says, if I go north, you have to go south, and then I say everybody has to go north, right?
	So you've got a whole bunch of people in a row, and you say every odd person goes north, every even person goes south.
	That's the rule.
	And then you say, everybody has to go north.
	One of those rules has to go, right?
	If everyone's going north, every even person can't go south.
	If every even person has to go south, everybody cannot go north.
	So, when we look at something like theft, where if you say stealing is universally preferable behavior, it is impossible to universalize because stealing is unwanted property transfer, right?
	If you want property transfer, there's not just charity or something like that, right?
	Or sex.
	But if you say stealing is universally preferable behavior, then what you're saying, of course, is that Bob must want to steal from Jake.
	Stealing is universally preferable behavior.
	And Jake must want to steal from Bob.
	So everybody must want to steal and be stolen from.
	Because if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then you must want to steal and be stolen from.
	Because it can't be universally preferable behavior if one person doesn't want it, right?
	Rape is when the other person desperately or violently even doesn't want to have sex and you force them, you monster.
	You monster.
	So something cannot be both universally preferable and violently opposed, right?
	It's like saying, I have a business plan based on everybody in the neighborhood both wanting to eat at my restaurant and wanting to burn it to the ground.
	Well, it's kind of impossible.
	If you want to eat at the restaurant, you don't burn it to the ground.
	If you want to burn it down, you don't want to eat there.
	So if we say stealing is universally preferable behavior, but in order for stealing to occur, somebody must hate stealing or being stolen from, then you're saying it is universally preferable behavior and not preferred at the same time.
	It is universally preferable behavior and violently opposed at the same time.
	I mean, if, let's take a sort of extreme example, right?
	If you have an EpiPen and you're allergic to bees and you get stung by a bee and somebody grabs your EpiPen and runs away, and without that EpiPen, you're going to die from your allergy, then you could use up-to-lethal force to get your EpiPen back.
	You could shoot the person, get your EpiPen back, and say, Look, this theft was putting me in immediate mortal danger.
	I was going to die, which would be a form of assault, right?
	Running away with someone's EpiPen when they desperately need it would be a form of a murder, right?
	So theft can be violently opposed in certain circumstances, up to and including a homicide.
	So something cannot be both universally preferable behavior and simultaneously violently opposed behavior.
	Theft cannot be universally preferable behavior because theft is asymmetrical.
	One person wants to steal, the other person does not want to get stolen from.
	So it is a self-detonating argument.
	Theft can never be universally preferable behavior.
	That's the rational proof of secular ethics and rape and assault and murder and so on.
	Those simple statements, and they are disarmingly simple.
	And I claim a feat far more of courage than intelligence.
	I mean, don't get me wrong, I think I'm pretty smart, but this was simple enough that the primary virtue in developing UPB was courage, not intelligence.
	Because when you get it, and again, I can't explain the theory of relativity mathematically to my two or three-year-old daughter, but I could explain UPB to her, and she got it just right.
	So that's kind of what I wanted to explain, why it is so tough, why it's tense to even talk about, why people get messed up, because it is a predator of a kind.
	UPB is very dangerous.
	It is perceived as very dangerous.
	When you close off the pockets of power, the reverse sub-realities which remain invisible to lower the cost of human ownership, when you start to expose that people are not obeying rational, socially helpful constructs, but rather are frightened and hurted by the cattle prods and bayonets of political power, they don't like it.
	It takes them out of the matrix.
	It takes them out of propaganda and it makes their lives very difficult.
	And for what?
	I mean, trust me, I ask myself this question every week or two.
	And for what?
	I've been hammering at philosophy for 44 years.
	Next year will be my 45th year.
	Round up to a half a freaking century.
	And for what?
	Well, because the alternative is infinitely worse and because I've had a great life out of doing it.
	I have a wonderful family, great friends, blah, blah, blah.
	And don't get me wrong, it's not all, it's not, it's not all being sunshine and roses.
	No pleasure cruise.
	I consider it a challenge before the whole human race and I never lose.
	Right.
	So what for?
	But for me, it's like a gig, right?
	It's a, it's a, I don't know.
	I, it's a gig and it's a calling and it's a calling and it's a gig.
	I sort of go back and forth on this.
	But for me, it is, it's been absolutely worth it.
	But I'm also more comfortable with social disapproval, despite being raised in England.
	I'm more comfortable with social disapproval than most people are.
	And for most people, what is the benefit of talking about this stuff?
	What is the benefit of pointing this out and proving it?
	It's like the IQ stuff.
	Like, what's the benefit?
	You just end up getting ostracized, which has happened to me a whole bunch of times from a whole bunch of different communities, right?
	So that's the proof of UPB.
	If that which you claim is universal contradicts itself upon being universalized, the claim is invalid and is rejected.
	Now, everyone can respect property rights, not whether everyone does.
	Everyone can from a logical standpoint.
	Like, obviously, nobody's ever going to stand on each other's shoulders, all 8 billion people out there in space in a big giant circle, but they could theoretically.
	There's no innate self-contradiction in standing on other people's shoulders.
	If you were to say, everyone must stand on each other's shoulders, but only one high, like me and you, like only one high, if you were to say everybody must stand on each other's shoulders, but only one high, that would be a self-contradictory rule because if I'm standing on your shoulders, clearly you're not standing on my shoulders.
	It doesn't really matter how flexible we are.
	We're certainly not standing on each other's shoulders, right?
	So that would be an example.
	It's impossible, right?
	If you were to say, you've got two kids, right?
	And you say, I want you to stand on each other's shoulders, they just look at you and laugh, right?
	Because it's not possible.
	So that's all I'm saying, is that if the implementation of your general rule self-contradicts, not just practically, but even theoretically, it is impossible for two people to stand on each other's shoulders.
	It is impossible for two people to sing higher than each other, even if they're both scaling up.
	One is higher than the other, and then the other is higher than them.
	So it's asymmetric.
	If you have a rule that says every second person must go south and everyone must go north, that is contradictory.
	If you have a rule that says theft is universally preferable behavior, but theft must be both wanted and hated, must be preferred and the opposite of preferred, then it cannot be universally preferable behavior.
	Just like if you say every second person has to go south and everyone has to go north, it would be invalid.
	And it's not that complicated.
	It's just that you're trying to get people to do math with a tiger in the room and they don't like the situation.
	They don't even like imagining that they're ruled not by virtue, but by hypocritical power, raw brute power.
	Well, that's a challenge.
	And I hope that makes sense.
	And this is why I have some sympathy for, how long?
	How long has it been?
	How long you want to keep me wondering?
	How long it's taking to get through it?
	Freedomain.com slash 18.
	Thank you so much, everybody.
	Talk to you soon.

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