Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - PLEASE DON'T DISAPPEAR! Twitter/X Space

Feb. 2, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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Age-Old Fake News Skepticism 00:14:29
	All right.
	Good evening, my friends.
	Hope you're doing well.
	It is Stéphane Molyneux from Free Domain.
	And I see somebody wants to chat.
	Excellent.
	We'll get straight into it.
	I have some thoughts.
	Of course, as I'm sure you're aware, the latest batch of Epstein files has been dumped.
	And of course, people are racing through them.
	And there's some pretty sensational stuff coming out of that.
	But let us get to a caller big baller.
	Something on your mind.
	What's in your mind?
	Yeah.
	I got a question, and it has to do with these Epstein files.
	And it's basically like people can look at an AI video of a cat shooting an AK-47, and thousands of people would think it was real.
	How can people believe that a simple image of words on a page are real when they don't even, they can't even tell if a picture or a video is real?
	What do you think about that?
	Tell me more about what you mean.
	You mean like the stuff of the Epstein files?
	Well, yeah.
	So like when you look, when you think about a deep fake, you know, you can put out a deep fake video and half the population would be fooled and think that it was real.
	And that's like a video and a picture.
	It's very sophisticated.
	These are all just words on pages.
	So I'm like, anybody could produce deep fake emails, right?
	Right.
	Well, it's your contention that there are parts of the Epstein file dumplist that is or could be false.
	It's like you, because you could put out a deep fake video of any politician doing anything.
	And so if you could do that, you could certainly do it with emails, right?
	Like that would be a lot easier.
	Like the barrier to entry to create, you know, a bunch of fake documents.
	And I'm not saying they're fake, but I'm just like, these are words on a page and they're so convincing.
	It's like you could almost convince anybody of anything at this point.
	And you just don't know what is fake and what's real.
	Well, it's interesting.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the thought just struck me that one of the reasons I might be slow working this stuff is so that if the videos of powerful people having sex with underage girls, which I think everybody pretty much knows exists somewhere, that people can say, no, no, no, it's faked.
	Like they're waiting for AI to be good enough that they can convincingly say that this stuff is fake, which I don't think it would be.
	But yeah, I mean, look, I mean, they can type anything they want and say this is in the Epstein files.
	Yeah, for sure.
	I mean, but tell me what the purpose of that for you is, like in terms of.
	So have you ever heard of something called frazzled rip or frazzled, frazzled rip?
	Yes, I have.
	This is internet rumor that there is video, as far as I understand it, of Hillary Clinton and Uma Abertin.
	We don't have to get into details, but doing some pretty horrible stuff.
	I don't know that it's ever been verified.
	I've certainly never seen it.
	This is part of the whole Pizzagate thing, right?
	Where Eleanor Generous with like sort of a demon on her clothing and things like that.
	So yeah, so what are your thoughts?
	Why do you bring that up?
	Well, I just looked at this thing today and I'm looking at these emails and what you have are just black words on a white page.
	And I'm like, this is convincing so many people that it's the gospel truth, but yet, you know, like I said, thousands of people will believe a deep fake AI video of a cat playing a guitar and they think that's real.
	So if they could be convinced by that, how easy would it be?
	Like you could put out anything, black words on a white page, and you could get any number of people to believe it.
	Okay.
	And sorry, I'm not sure what the point of that is.
	Yes, thanks.
	How would you know what's going on?
	What's the point of this, though?
	Okay, how would you, how do you, I guess there's really no way to know what is real and what is fake if you're looking at it on a screen.
	Okay.
	And your point is?
	I mean, I'm not disagreeing.
	Yeah, how do you decide?
	I have not personally verified all of the contents of the Epstein files.
	I'm not sure what your point is.
	So if I'm a Trump supporter, then I'll believe in Frazzle Drip.
	And if I'm a Democrat or a Clinton supporter, then I'll believe in the Epstein files.
	You kind of have to pick, like you have to choose what you think is real, but there's really no way to verify it.
	Because unless you were there firsthand and witnessed it, right?
	Okay.
	And your point is?
	So how do you decide?
	This is radical skepticism, which, and that's fine, right?
	So you can say, I don't believe anything that I don't directly witness, right?
	Yeah, it's like the moon landing.
	I could be AI.
	Exactly.
	Right.
	Like, who you're talking to right now could be AI, right?
	So, because we're not in the room talking, right?
	Right.
	Like, actually, it's funny.
	I spoke to you.
	We did a call once, and I told my stepbrother about it.
	And he said, how do you know it wasn't AI?
	And I was like, oh, I guess I don't.
	Okay.
	So this is radical skepticism.
	So if you're concerned that nothing on a screen is real or nothing digital is real, then why would you, I mean, you can't verify that I'm real, right?
	At least in this call.
	I mean, I think we could say, well, you know, I've seen Steph give speeches or whatever it is, right?
	But it's been a while since I've been out in the world.
	So it's not a criticism.
	I'm just like, how do you, how do you hang on?
	Hang on.
	Let me finish my thought.
	Please try not to interrupt when I'm in the middle of saying something.
	So how do you avoid the problem of radical skepticism?
	Because that is a big problem, right?
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I guess it just comes down to like your own personal instincts.
	Like, what do I think in my heart of hearts?
	Is it real or not?
	No, no, you can't say instincts.
	So if I'm looking at a deep fake video and it looks like uncanny, like I've seen some videos that are just over the top ridiculous.
	I know that's fake.
	But then other videos, they're very convincing, right?
	And you have to look for artifacts.
	You have to kind of see if, does this make sense?
	Well, does this make sense?
	It's not a very strict approach to epistemology, right?
	And of course, whatever we look for in terms of artifacts is going to be solved over time by AI, right?
	So you have fewer photos with six fingers now, right?
	So I guess it's a, and it's an interesting question, right?
	How do you solve the problem of radical skepticism, which is I'm not going to believe anything anymore that I don't directly witness myself?
	I mean, we need to have a methodology for these kinds of things, right?
	So how long have you had this issue of significant skepticism?
	And how do you solve it?
	Well, it kind of struck me today when I started looking at these documents and I was horrified by what I was reading.
	But then I thought, but what am I looking at?
	I'm looking at my phone and I'm looking at a screen with a scan of a document.
	And meanwhile, they're creating deep fakes.
	It's like, if they can make a convincing video, why can't they make a convincing document?
	Well, but that's nothing to do with now.
	I mean, you've had, you've seen things for the internet's been around for like 40 years.
	You've seen things on the internet.
	You've seen pictures.
	I mean, long before there was Photoshop, right?
	I remember there was this whole kerfuffle, maybe a bit more than a kerfuffle about Barack Obama's birth certificate where people like they opened up the PDF and they could see the edits or whatever it is.
	I don't know whether that's true or not.
	I mean, just things that I saw.
	You have immense amounts of trickery and fakery and propaganda and so on throughout all of human history.
	So this is not a new thing.
	Fact, you can have tools to figure out whether something is a deep fake now, but you didn't have that in human history, right?
	You get some document from the 15th century.
	How do you know it's real?
	I mean, you could probably authenticate it back to the time based on sort of paper materials, maybe some carbon dating or something similar.
	But how do you know?
	How do you know it's authentic?
	It's a big problem in there's a discipline called historiography, which is really the study of how to validate history.
	And yeah, so deep fakes, and even if it's not a deep fake, I mean, people can look at the exact same video of, say, this petty, this pretty fellow getting shot, and they can drag different conclusions.
	In fact, opposing, even looking at the same material.
	Of course, people looked at good, the good woman who was shot, and there's multiple camera angles.
	People are still coming up with radically opposing perspectives.
	Some people say, well, it was justified.
	Some people say, well, it was completely unjustified.
	Some people say it was enforcing the law in a rational way.
	Other people say it was straight up state-sanctioned murder of a single mom, that kind of stuff, right?
	So people, of course, are still debating what caused World War I, World War II.
	People debate the death counts of battles.
	So in terms of knowing what's real, it's kind of an age-old problem.
	And AI has made it worse and better because AI can be used to create fakes.
	AI can be used to spot fakes.
	So AI has not introduced a radical new category of skepticism in the pursuit of truth.
	I mean, the benefits of faking things are so great because of politics that the incentive, I mean, look at the incentive is so great.
	I mean, if you look at the, I mean, most elections, but in particular, the 2020 election, you look at that, and people can't argue whether it was a good or bad ballot.
	It's a ballot, what was it, Wisconsin or something?
	There was a ballot counting station where they kicked all the Republicans out because they said they weren't going to count anymore.
	That they went back in and counted.
	They blacked off the windows.
	And then there was one, oh, we lost all the pipe burst.
	And right, you know, so we don't even know what the truth is about that kind of stuff.
	And courts continually refused to allow relevance of jurisdiction.
	So they were never really adjudicated in courts of law.
	So, you know, there's for a lot of people, there's a lot of debate.
	What about the origins of COVID?
	So sorry to give you the sort of reign, but the issue of what is real and what is not is kind of age-old.
	I mean, if you're a religious person, then Jesus performed miracles, walked on water, turned water into wine, produced infinite loaves of fishes, and came back from the dead and healed the sick with a touch.
	So Jesus performed miracles.
	If you are not religious that way, then these are just stories.
	They're just hearsay.
	It's just, you know, people may have had psychotic visions.
	People may have just believed what was told.
	The tale may have grown to the telling, and so on, right?
	So in terms of what is real in history, well, I mean, and this is even outside of moral judgments, you know, like people believed that slavery was virtuous, then they realized that it wasn't.
	The people in Athens at the time thought Socrates was guilty.
	He's pretty much been, as did the people who were voting on Jesus going to, or at least voting to not release Jesus.
	So moral judgments change.
	What is reported even by eyewitnesses tends to change.
	Documents can be falsified.
	You know, you can still find arguments about whether this or that historical document is authentic, the Shroud of Turin, and protocols of the Elders of Zion, things like that.
	So when I was younger, there was Hitler's diaries were supposed to have been released and it was all over the newspapers.
	And here's what Hitler said about this.
	It turned out that they were fakes and so on.
	So, I mean, it is a big issue.
	And I guess I'd like to hear from you and from other people in the audience.
	How do you deal with the fact that there's massive incentives to lie to you?
	White privilege.
	Don't see it.
	In fact, I see quite the opposite.
	I see whites being continually excluded from the economy and harmed.
	So I would like to, yeah, how do you?
	I mean, this is an age-old problem, and it's not particular to modernity or to AI.
	So how do you deal with the issue?
	Well, I'm just kind of really having to confront it now.
	It's like, so I'm looking at it like, it's like an if-then thing with computers, right?
	If you're a Republican, then you believe that Frazzle Drip is real.
	If you're a Democrat.
	Well, no, sorry.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	I wouldn't go that far.
	Frazzle drip is highly, highly contested.
	Generally, like if you're a Christian, you'd be like, no, sorry, sorry.
	I mean, I hate to interrupt you after saying don't interrupt me, but I would say that if you are pro-ICE, then you tend to view these shootings as justified.
	And if you're anti-ICE, you tend to view them as unjustified.
	If you are happy that your candidate got elected, you will probably view the elections as honest and fair.
	And if your candidate did not get elected, you'd be more likely to believe that there was cheating involved.
	I don't want to do the Frazzledrip thing because I wouldn't want to say that the majority of Republicans accept that or even know about it.
	But yeah, I mean, I'll certainly give you everything else, that people's political perspectives or opinions are obviously influenced by their political leanings.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So I guess there's like, if you break it down into like quadrants, so either the Republicans are the good guys and all the Democrats are pedophiles and vice versa for the Democrats and the Republicans.
	And in the other two quadrants, there's all of them are pedophiles, which is probably the most likely.
	But then what if none of them are pedophiles and they put all this stuff out there just to demoralize everyone and convince them that the system is corrupt and rotten and everyone's evil and there's nothing they can do about it?
Doubting Claims: Evidence Over Hearsay 00:15:05
	Okay, you're still hiding from me how you deal with the issue.
	Yes, I understand that there are different perspectives.
	Right.
	I guess I'm kind of, well, I'm asking you because I honestly, I don't know.
	Well, no, I'm asking you how you've dealt with it over the course of your life.
	I'm not trying to put you on the spot because, again, it's a very interesting question.
	I don't want to be Mr. Lecturehead, but you and everyone has had to deal with, I mean, just take something as sort of prevalent as gossip or rumors.
	Ooh, did you hear that so-and-so did such and such?
	Right?
	I mean, I remember, God, was it when I was younger, there was some rumor that the singer Rod Stewart had collapsed on stage because he had imbibed a gallon of semen, like just vile stuff where there was this thing with Richard Gere and hamsters up his ass.
	I don't know.
	I've never really looked into these things, but did you hear?
	And, you know, I don't really think, I didn't really think that much about dangerous rumors because I didn't really put much stock in them until those dangerous rumors were applied to me, you know, sort of starting in 2008 and culminating in my deplatform, deplatforming 12 years later.
	So how do people know what is true and what is false?
	Everyone's had to deal with it over the course of their lives.
	We all have to make decisions based on reality, or at least what we perceive reality to be.
	Yet there's a lot of manipulation and control in these things.
	So over the course of your life, what decade of life are you in?
	40s.
	40s.
	Okay.
	So you've been around for a lot of hoaxes, right?
	A lot of hoaxes.
	And how do you know what is true and what is false?
	Well, I guess it comes down to maybe like intuition or feelings.
	I'll give you an example.
	When 9-11 happened, I was 18 years old.
	And I believed it, Hookmind, and Sinker.
	I believed in it was terrorism.
	I believed the official story about bin Laden.
	But the crazy thing was that day, the very day that it happened, my stepfather was watching it on the screen and he said, they blew that building up.
	That's an inside job.
	He didn't have the internet.
	He just, he saw it with his own two eyes and he said, this is absolute bullshit.
	Me, I didn't believe him.
	I thought he's crazy.
	Then I got the internet a few years, started studying it, looking into it.
	And then I was like, damn, you know, the old man was right.
	And he was running off just pure intuition.
	Just one look at that scene and he knew it was bullshit.
	Well, did he have expertise in the field?
	Not really.
	I mean, he was just a pipeline worker, a blue-collar guy.
	So, no.
	Yeah.
	I mean, without getting into the substance of the 9-11 debates, which are obviously still somewhat argued about, people guess right.
	Yeah, people guess.
	I mean, I remember many years ago, I was in my mid-teens just starting to get into objectivism.
	And a friend of mine pointed out that Ayn Rand had said in one of her books that she's completely severed from Nathaniel Brandon.
	He has nothing to do with her philosophy anymore.
	And I said, oh, they had an affair.
	They must have had an affair.
	That was my initial instinct.
	Now it turned out that that was right, that she blew up her movement for the sake of some tubby Nathaniel Brandon penis.
	But I wouldn't say that obviously I'm right about it.
	That was my instinct.
	But of course, we remember the times when our instincts are correct and we forget the times when our instincts are incorrect.
	So your stepfather, if he had had incredible instincts about things, then he wouldn't be a pipe fitter, right?
	He would have invested.
	He would have become much more successful.
	He would know exactly which customers will pay the most.
	So there are times when people look at stuff and say, oh, it's like this.
	And, you know, occasionally they're right.
	And often they're wrong.
	So that's not a reliable metric.
	So like a broken clock is right twice a day kind of Neil.
	Well, like, you know, all the dreams that we have, oh, I just dreamt about this last night, as opposed to all the thousands of days where nothing shows up from our dreams from last night.
	So, yeah, so we're all looking for a methodology for truth.
	And I mean, I can certainly share my thoughts, but I want to know how you've dealt with this.
	Yeah, I guess I'm just kind of trying.
	So like I was a big Trump supporter from 2016, from the first time that he ran.
	And it was based on a feeling, right?
	He looked like a hero to me.
	He looked like he was being attacked by the entire establishment, by Hollywood.
	So he appeared like the good guy, like the hero, right?
	And that was a feeling that I had.
	And then when he won, it felt like really validating, like, oh, the good, the good guys won here.
	Then just, you know, today I'm looking at these emails, just disgusting.
	But then I saw myself and I'm like, well, hang on, hang on.
	So sorry, it turns out to interrupt.
	So you're talking about the emails where Trump appears implicated in particular crimes, right?
	Or really negative stuff.
	Right.
	But then I'm like, what am I looking at is just words on a page.
	You could put any words on the page.
	Well, hang on.
	Hang on.
	So when you read that, what did you do to validate or not validate what was on the page?
	Well, I guess there's really no way to authenticate it.
	I mean, yeah, it came from the government.
	So I guess is that credible or not?
	Like if it was released by the Justice Department or whatever, does that give it more or less credibility?
	Well, who was saying this?
	There was no direct evidence, right?
	Obviously, there's no videos or anything like that that you can see, not even any photos.
	So who was accusing Trump of these bad things?
	Right.
	It's like it's basically testimony, right, from alleged victims.
	Right.
	And has the victim been found to be credible as a whole?
	Or the alleged victim or whoever she is?
	I don't even know if her name is out.
	I mean, probably not, because if they had Dead to Rights evidence, they'd probably put him away.
	But then maybe that's part of that quadrant where everyone's corrupt and they're all in on it together with blackmail on each other, like mutually assured destruction.
	Well, so from what I've read, again, I'm not an expert in this area, but from what I've read, the woman who made these claims was found three other times to have made impossible claims, and therefore her credibility was not high.
	Now, of course, if you're anti-Trump, you read this.
	I'm not saying you, but if you're anti-Trump, you read this and you're like, ah, that's why Trump wouldn't release the files.
	That's why Bam Bondi's out of them and he's implicated.
	And you just go whole hog.
	If you are pro-Trump, then you would look more to discredit this information and you would find out that the witness has been fairly recognized as, for whatever reason, not credible.
	Now, is that all true?
	I don't know, right?
	I mean, I'm just going by what I read.
	Or, for instance, people are saying that Jeffrey, that Bill Gates told Jeffrey Epstein that Bill Gates got an STD from rawdogging a Russian hooker, and then he begged Jeffrey Epstein for antibiotics that he could slip to his wife, Melinda, so that she would be cured of any potential transfer of the STD, blah, blah, blah.
	And people are reporting this as if it's true.
	However, and I posted this on X, this is a note that Jeffrey Epstein sent to himself.
	I guess like in email systems, I think it's Gmail.
	You can apparently send, I mean, you send messages yourself.
	I guess you just put them in a folder.
	It's like a to-do list or a reminder from back in the day.
	So people who dislike Bill Gates, and they dislike Bill Gates for a variety of reasons.
	I think a lot of them have to do with COVID and, you know, what they perceive as his sort of depopulation agenda and so on.
	And so you dislike Bill Gates, so you'll spread this thing.
	Is it true?
	Well, it's not true just because a convicted sex offender wrote a note to himself, right?
	That cannot be a standard of proof that we have in the world.
	You can't definitively say that it's false because I don't know how you would even approach that.
	But people are reporting on this as if it's true, which is kind of irresponsible because it's just a note that Jeffrey Epstein wrote to himself saying this is what happened.
	And obviously, Jeffrey Epstein was a pathological liar and all of this kind of stuff.
	So it wasn't an email verified from Bill Gates saying all of this stuff.
	It was just Jeffrey Epstein writing to himself.
	So, I mean, I'm not a big fan of Bill Gates.
	Kind of ironic that he seemed to have passed viruses on, according to Jeffrey Epstein, but we still do need to be responsible.
	And this is just a note that Jeffrey Epstein made to himself.
	It's not proof positive of anything.
	So, yeah, so, I mean, there's a woman who says Trump did bad things.
	There's a woman who said Prince Andrew, you know, tortured and killed and Robin Leach.
	But these are statements that I assume were investigated to whatever degree.
	I don't know.
	It's hard to know how much stuff gets investigated these days, although Don Lemon did get arrested today.
	So it's hard, it's hard to know.
	And so with regards to this stuff, it is a lot of hearsay.
	It is a lot of unverified victim statements.
	And it does not rise to the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
	I assume, as you say, if the judicial system were functioning in a relatively non-partisan manner, then you would have these things investigated.
	Maybe they were investigated and they were found that there was not enough proof and so on.
	And you can find, I'm not disputing the credibility of the witnesses here because I don't know them and I don't know whether they were cross-examined.
	I don't know if they were found to be non-credible.
	Like they say, oh, I saw Billy Joe Bob X, whatever, at this party on this day, but it turns out he was in jail or testifying in Congress or something, so he couldn't have been there.
	Like, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	So, however, I will say this from direct personal experience.
	You can find crazy people to say terrible things about just about anybody in the world.
	You know, was it?
	I remember reading, if I remember, this is off memory, so don't quote me, but I think Chris DeBerg has had to sue people for defamation a large number of times.
	And he's a fairly innocuous singer and, you know, a sort of pleasant middle-of-the-road pop sound.
	I quite liked him when I was younger.
	Saw him two times in concert.
	He gave a great show.
	But, you know, I mean, this mild-mannered pop singer, lady in red, like, I mean, people hate this guy or something like that.
	I mean, you can find people who hate just about anybody.
	And so if the people who hate you the most for whatever reason, if their semi-anonymous allegations were spread all over the place, you would want people to be skeptical, right?
	I mean, I certainly know that when these, you know, crazy allegations were sort of hurled against me, that I wanted people to be skeptical.
	So I try to bring that to reports about people, particularly when I don't like those people, because there is, of course, that temptation to gang up with the mob or the people that you don't like.
	So, yeah, these are I don't believe much of what I read, particularly when it's highly partisan.
	And I do have methodologies for trying to verify things.
	But if verification was easy, trials would be about five minutes.
	I guess you just bring people in front of your stepfather and he says, innocent, guilty, I've got a feeling.
	Oh, of course, we don't want that, right?
	So proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you know, it can take prosecutors a year or two or more to put together a complex case.
	The trials can go on for weeks, sometimes months.
	It can be highly contentious outcomes in terms of what the jury says.
	And sometimes they get it wrong even after all of that.
	So, I mean, it's a fundamental question of truth and falsehood.
	And so I'll just give you my sort of thoughts and then love to hear what you think.
	So my particular thoughts are: I put my faith in deductive reasoning, right?
	All men are mortal.
	Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
	I put my faith in, not my faith, rationality, empiricism, UPB, that which can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt.
	UPB is not proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
	UPB is proof like two and two make four.
	So I can build my intellectual foundations, my moral foundations on that rock.
	Empiricism, absolutely, empiricism cannot be overturned, right?
	That the evidence of the senses are valid because anybody who tries to overturn empiricism is going to use the evidence of your senses to try and do that, right?
	You can't trust your senses.
	Hey, did you just say that?
	Well, I'm sorry, I can't trust what you said because I can't trust what I hear.
	Well, no, I wrote it out.
	Well, I can't trust my eyes either, so I don't know what's going on out there, right?
	So, if you have to assume the validity of the senses in order to communicate doubt in the senses, you just kind of shot yourself on the foot.
	So, empiricism, rationality, reality, objective reality, you know, alibis are valid because a human being cannot be in two places at the same time.
	So, those are, if you're in San Francisco, you didn't commit a murder in New York that night, right?
	So, yeah, empirical evidence, rationality, syllogistical reasoning.
	Now, once you start getting out of the realm of syllogistic reasoning, you start to get into inductive reasoning, balance of probabilities on the whole, more likely than not, and so on.
	Well, then that's where the prejudice comes in.
	I don't think there are too many Democrats or Republicans who would disagree on two and two make four, or you can't have a square circle in any sort of real way.
	But when you start to get into balances of probabilities, innocent until proven guilty, and as you're right, everyone can write, anyone can say anything, and defamation laws are, and particularly America, almost impossible to enforce, particularly if you're a public figure.
	So, I don't really believe negative things that are said about people.
	The whole OJ trial, you know, where you had one of the jurors giving OJ the black power sign and all of the blacks cheering OJ's release and all the white people being kind of appalled at the in-group preference of black people and so on.
	So, even the court system has its diciness, to put it mildly, who gets charged, who doesn't.
	I think Rand Paul has now twice referred Dr. Fauci for prosecution for lying to Congress, and nothing's happening.
	So, reason, evidence, empiricism, these things I accept.
Balance of Probabilities 00:03:00
	Everything else is balance of probabilities.
	And you have to live with balance of probabilities, right?
	If I want to jump in the car to go on a non-necessary trip, right?
	Let's say in the summer, my daughter and I, we love to go river walking and catching crayfish and so on.
	Actually, she enjoys catching the crayfish to me.
	It brings me way too many flashbacks of living with cockroaches growing up.
	But she really likes it, so we go, and it's kind of cool, and she's very good at catching them.
	But it's not a necessary trip.
	So we have to say, okay, so let's take, it takes 20 minutes to drive to the river.
	We could get hit by a semi-truck.
	I could get killed.
	On the balance of probabilities, though, we're probably okay.
	It's the same thing with swimming in the ocean.
	Could get bitten by a shark.
	Very unlikely, very unusual.
	More people die driving to the beach than are attacked by sharks in the water.
	So you do your balance of probabilities.
	Every time you get on a bike, you might wobble and fall.
	And you go skiing, you might fall.
	So, you know, balance of probabilities, you have to weigh your risks and so on.
	But yeah, with regards to these Epstein files, yeah, they could be doctored.
	They could be.
	And so I wouldn't draw any firm conclusions from the Epstein stuff.
	I mean, if it goes through a court case, then it's much more likely.
	You can say somebody was convicted of this particular crime.
	If they've gone through a court case and it's not too partisan or too ethnically or racially charged, then I would say that's valid.
	But I try not to have too many opinions about things that are based on the shifting sands of shaky evidence and balance of probability calculations.
	I will sort of plant my beliefs on empiricism, reason, and evidence.
	And everything else is somewhat theoretical, if that makes sense.
	But I would certainly love to hear how you approach these things, if it's different.
	Yeah, I guess like I'm kind of a man of few words, but it's it reminds me of some advice that my grandfather gave me and he said, you should believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.
	And so that seems to be like where we're at.
	It's but now you can almost believe almost none of what you see if it's on a screen, right?
	You can believe what you see in real life, but you can't believe almost anything.
	On a screen, what do you mean by belief?
	What do you mean by belief?
	So, and I guess it's like it comes down to an intuition and a feeling, right?
	No, no, that doesn't, that still doesn't tell me what you mean by believe.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	Let me, sorry, go ahead if you want to say.
	I'd like to think that I have good judgment, right?
	I'd like to believe that I can tell if somebody's guilty just by looking at them.
	I know it's not true.
	Well, sure.
	Like, I'd like to believe.
	No, no, don't show me.
	I just made a whole case against this.
	What do you mean?
	You can look at someone and tell if they're guilty.
Dogs and Human Instincts 00:09:40
	Well, and like, you know, by their body language, not by your prejudice, but by your sort of pre-verbal instincts, right?
	Like how we have, like, you know, like a baby has that type of instinct where it just kind of knows things.
	Or when a dog has a sense of like a good and a bad person, they get something like that's not explainable because it's a like a natural instinct.
	But no, dogs don't have a sense of good or bad people.
	Dogs have a sense of who has a treat or who doesn't or who's fed them in the past.
	I mean, the dog can only judge how you treat the dog.
	The dog can't tell if you killed someone last year.
	The dog can only tell if you pet it nicely in the moment.
	So dogs don't have any, they can't sniff evil, right?
	Well, there's a thing with certain dogs where they actually can smell evil.
	It has to do with your hormones.
	So if you have a person that say comes into your home, like an acquaintance or a friend, and the dog gets really edgy, I've often wondered why is he doing that?
	And I came to find out that dogs, especially like the sniffer dogs, they can smell someone's hormone level.
	Like they can smell if someone is in a like a state of like cortisol, stress, and it bothers them.
	It tilts them.
	And that's not like the dog is just running off of his like his senses, but he can he doesn't know what he's, he just can smell if somebody is in a state of like relaxation or a state of stress, and he just knows.
	Yeah, but that's not good and evil, right?
	Even if I'm maybe that's the, I know dogs can sniff cancer, some people say, but that's like a lie detector.
	Lie detectors are pretty, pretty shaky.
	It's why they're not admissible in court.
	So maybe dogs can smell stress, but that's not the same as good or evil.
	Somebody could be stressed because they just almost had a car accident or something.
	So is it like, are we just at the stage where almost everything is a like a Rorschach test when it comes to the screen?
	You see whatever you want to see or whatever jumps out at you first and then you can't really hang on.
	Sorry, we were just talking about the dog thing.
	Why did we drop that topic?
	Oh, sorry.
	Yeah, I was just kind of going ahead.
	Because the dog can't explain why it gets like get the person makes them jumpy.
	It just does, right?
	And the dog doesn't know about stress hormones or things like that, but it reacts to them.
	It responds to them.
	Yeah, I'm just checking here.
	And yes, there is dogs do seem to be able to smell stress, which is fine.
	But I accept that.
	I mean, I assume that stress, maybe you've got a bit more CO2 coming out of your mouth or something like that.
	So dogs can smell stress and so on, but that's not the same as smelling good or evil, right?
	Right.
	It's more like the dog is having a hunch, I guess.
	Yeah, but it's not smelling moral qualities, it's smelling stress.
	Because I thought your thesis was that dogs can tell who's a good or bad person.
	And I don't think that is borne out by the fact that dogs can smell stress because a good person can be stressed and a bad person could be very relaxed.
	Right.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	So I guess it would, even with the dog.
	Because it's kind of funny, like you won't trust your eyes, but you'll trust dogs that you're stepdad.
	I mean, it's a bit of an odd methodology, if you don't mind me saying so.
	Well, I guess maybe because they're easier to understand, right?
	And maybe I'm just a simple person, but they seem like they have, like, they seem like more honest than most people.
	Right?
	Dogs seem more honest than most people.
	What do you mean?
	Well, so, like, if a dog looks at somebody and bears its teeth and growls, that's easy to sort of understand.
	You understand it in a split second, in an instant, where when you're trying to understand, like, break these things down about skepticism and what's real and what isn't, it's like trying, it's really hard to wrap your head around.
	You could, you have to discuss it for hours and hours, and you may still not come to a conclusion.
	Sorry, but what do you mean?
	So, a dog is hostile and it bears its teeth and it growls.
	What do you mean by that honesty?
	I mean, dogs wouldn't have the capacity to lie in the way that people do, right?
	Yeah, that's sort of that, that's what I mean.
	Like, the dog is getting us like is sensing that something is amiss.
	It doesn't know what it is.
	I probably don't either, but the dog is giving off a signal.
	And I guess you're not.
	But the dog could be wrong.
	Yeah, he could be.
	Sure.
	But like, I like to believe that my dog is, you know, at least maybe he doesn't know who's good and evil, but he can sort of trust their judgment because he's not, like, there's, it's, there's no lying about those things, right?
	Like the stress hormones and the CO2, right?
	Dog can't understand the person's words, so he can't understand if you're he's someone's trying to manipulate his owner, but he can, he's, he's looking at him and just basing it off of his experience without having to be convinced of anything.
	Well, I just, I guess I have a question about when you say dogs are more honest.
	Dogs don't have any capacity to lie.
	So if they don't have any capacity to lie, how could we call them honest?
	It's like, you know, if I paint a wall blue and I say, well, that wall isn't lying about its color, it's like, but it doesn't have the capacity to lie about its color.
	It's just an inert wall, right?
	So dogs don't have the capacity to lie in the way that people do.
	So I'm not sure why I would call them honest if they don't have the capacity to lie.
	I mean, doesn't honesty require that you have the capacity to not be honest?
	Right.
	So if the dog doesn't have the capacity to lie, obviously people do.
	So does that make a dog more trustworthy than a person?
	Because you know it's not.
	Again, I don't know about trust.
	Like, I don't have the ability to fly.
	So I don't get any points for choosing to walk, right?
	Like I can, a bird, you'd say if the bird's being chased by a cat and it decides not to fly, we would say, oh, that bird must be injured, right?
	Because it doesn't have the capacity.
	Like it has the capacity to fly, but it's not doing it.
	If I'm being chased by a wolf, nobody sits there and says, oh, Steph must be injured because he's not flying.
	Like I don't have the capacity to fly.
	So it's not even on the list of things to do.
	So there's no category called flying or not flying for me, but there would be for a bird.
	And there's no category called lying or not lying for a dog because they don't have, it's not on the list of possible behaviors.
	Have you ever heard the parable of the truth tellers and the liars?
	I mean, I've heard a number of them, but I'm certainly happy to hear yours.
	Maybe I have.
	Yeah, you probably have, but I'll just go quickly through it.
	So You're an explorer and you paddle up to an island, like say like Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
	On one half of the island are the truth tellers, and on the other half are the liars.
	And you pull up on the shore, and there's a native there.
	Now, you don't know if he's a truth-teller or a liar.
	Now, the truth-tellers always tell the truth, and the liars always lie.
	So, what could you ask the native?
	What question could you ask him to determine 100% whether he's a truth-teller or a liar?
	Would you ask, are the liars on the other?
	Oh, can you ask just one question?
	You can't ask both.
	Yeah, it's a one-shot question that has to give you the right answer, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Are the um oh, I mean, I would ask, uh, is it sunny out?
	Like, if it's sunny, I would say, is it sunny out?
	And if it's a truth-teller, he'll say, It's sunny.
	Uh, if he's a liar, he would have to say it's not sunny or something else, right?
	Right, but that doesn't tell you what which way is the right way to the truth-teller village, just tells you if it's sunny.
	Or if he's on one island, sorry if I'm misunderstood.
	On one island are the truth tellers on the other island are the liars.
	So, I would ask something I know the answer to and ask it and find out if they told the truth or not, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So, the question that you ask him is simply which way to your village?
	Okay, because if he's honest, he'll tell the truth, and if he's a liar, he'll point to the truth teller.
	So, he can only answer that question one way.
	Okay, it's a because it's a direct question, all right.
	I'm not sure.
	So, is that to do with the dog?
	So, like, with that, it's like it's because it's a simple example, but when we so when we look at a deep fake or a document, how do we know if it's a truth teller or a liar?
	Is there any way to is there any way to know?
	Or is it well, let me let me ask you this probability.
	Sorry, I just want to zoom out a little bit because you've talked about dogs and so on, which is nice.
	I actually love dogs to death, I think they're fantastic animals.
	But are you married?
	No, and do you have any children?
	No, were you married in the past?
	No, right.
	So, this is one reason why you have trouble with truth and falsehood because we are not designed to ferret out truth and falsehood alone, which is maybe why you rely on dogs and things like that or your dog.
	So, human beings, our truth sniffer is collective, it is not individual, right?
Magical Thinking Explained 00:02:02
	So, there's this movie, A Beautiful Mind, and Russell Crowe plays this Professor Nash, I think his name is, or something like that.
	And he has hallucinations.
	So, if he sees something, the first thing he does is say to the other person, Hey, do you see that?
	Do you see that person over there?
	And if they say yes, then okay, it's not an illusion.
	If he says, If they say no, so how long have you lived alone for as an adult?
	Uh, yeah, most of my life.
	So, that's quite a good point that you just brought up about dogs and stuff like that.
	Why do you think you live such a solitary life?
	Um, well, only child, um, you know, no siblings, all my family's all gone, so just kind of ended up that way.
	Well, I'm not sure that explains it, yeah.
	I mean, how did I?
	I mean, so I mean, lots of people grow up as only children and get married, right?
	Or have that sort of social group, right?
	Yeah, I guess it just kind of didn't, um, you know, in my situation, it just kind of uh it's where I landed kind of a no, because sorry to interrupt.
	Uh, that's a that's a passive, no-free will kind of mindset.
	I mean, you didn't fall out of a plane, it just happened to land somewhere.
	I mean, a life is specific.
	Did you not date in your teenage?
	Yeah, I dated, yeah.
	Okay.
	And what was the longest relationship you've had?
	Not very long, maybe two years.
	Okay.
	And when was the last time you had a lengthy relationship?
	It's been quite a while now, probably eight or nine years now.
	And are you planning on spending the next half a century or 40 years alone?
	Well, no, this is no, this is something that really gives me a lot of dread.
	So, no, I'm not planning on it, but there is, you know, it's like a momentum that I have.
	So, and maybe that's because either I can't tell a truth teller from a liar, or I think that I know if someone's guilty just by looking at them, right?
	It's no, but that's magical thinking.
Expressing Concern About Solitude 00:05:12
	Yeah.
	So, so the problem is, is, I mean, and I'm sorry to get personal.
	I know you're talking about an abstract topic and obviously don't talk about anything you're not comfortable to talk about, but you have magical thinking which you're using to substitute for the opinions or perspectives of others.
	So, for instance, when I first came up with a UPB, I bugged all of my friends.
	Like, is this new?
	Does this make sense?
	I think it makes sense.
	I think it's logical.
	I bugged my wife.
	And I remember reading about how when Paul McCartney wrote the song yesterday, he played the melody to everyone else.
	Like, have you heard this?
	Because I think this is familiar.
	So we need to run things past people we trust.
	Does this make sense?
	Does this fit?
	Does this, right?
	We need to run things past people because we're social animals, right?
	In the same way, we can't see behind us, right?
	So in battle, you need somebody with you, watch your sex to cover your back and so on, right?
	So the way that we determine truth from falsehood is not through dogs, but through conversation.
	What do you think?
	What's the counter evidence?
	What's your perspective?
	What's your opinion?
	What are the arguments against?
	And you can do some of that with AI, but AI is a bit prone to hallucination and AI is just empty leftist word seller programming as well, right?
	So it's useful for some things, but not for critical reasoning.
	So I guess my concern, and it's interesting that, and I say this with great sympathy, but it's interesting that you have problems with epistemology and you live a solitary life.
	Do you work from home or do you work with other people?
	Yeah, I work from home.
	I work with people like a home-based business.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	So I have, like, I work with people in my company, and my company is based out of my home.
	Oh, it's like a dual-based work at home, although you may be on the phone with people, but you mostly work at home alone too, right?
	Well, no, so I don't want to give away too much.
	I mean, some people know that.
	No, no, yes.
	Keep it private for sure.
	Yeah.
	So like imagine if you had a business, like a shop below your house and then and then your residence above.
	That's kind of what I have.
	So downstairs, like I have coworkers and staff, and then upstairs I live alone.
	Okay, got it.
	How long you said your family's gone?
	How long ago did your parents die?
	It's been, well, my mom died three years ago, and I'm estranged from my dad for 10 years.
	And did your mother express concern over the course of her life?
	Of course, as you got older, did she express any concern about your solitary ways?
	She would mention it in passing.
	You know, she would say, I think that you isolate yourself, and I think that's not healthy, but that's about as far as it ever went.
	Huh.
	Why do you think she didn't sit you down and ask what was going on?
	I think the it was because being a single mom, I think she probably just had so much stress going on in her life trying to manage bills and you know things like that.
	You know, it's not an ex it's not an excuse, but I just wasn't a single mom when you became an adult.
	True.
	I mean, that's like 25 years ago.
	Yeah, true.
	Oh, you don't even know that you're making up excuses.
	Oh, no, I do.
	I do.
	No, I do.
	Well, she was stressed with bills.
	Or just or life or, you know, different like trap.
	Like she was maybe she was more absorbed with herself, like a little bit more so than she was with me, even though she, you know, she cared for me.
	But maybe she was more like a little too selfish, and that's why.
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, you became an adult like a quarter of a century ago, and you've barely had any relationships.
	I mean, if your mother cared for you, she would recognize that.
	I mean, when your mother was alive, how close were you with her?
	Did she live nearby or did you talk often?
	Yeah, we lived in the same province up until I was 18, and then we separated and would, you know, visit each other a few times a year.
	So we would talk on the phone a lot.
	Like we had a close relationship.
	It wasn't always like we were nearby, but we, you know, we were say close with communication and stuff.
	And how often would you talk with your mom?
	At least two or three times a week, I guess.
	Okay.
	Maybe sometimes more, sometimes less, but around that.
	Now, did your mother get remarried?
	She did.
	Okay.
	And was she married up until she died?
	She was she got widowed.
	Okay.
	And how long ago did she get widowed?
	That would have been 2015.
	So just over 10 years.
	It was eight years before she died.
	Okay.
	All right.
	And did were you close with her husband at all?
	Her second husband?
	Yeah, we were.
	We went into this on the call that we did a couple of years ago.
Stepdad's Alcoholism 00:14:54
	And we, so my, my stepdad was an alcoholic, like a 10th, 10th, or sorry, a 10th decile, like the worst of the worst, like half a bottle of vodka first thing in the morning.
	Oh, my God.
	Like, sorry, how long was she, how long were he and your mother married?
	They were married for 15 years.
	They got married actually right at right around 9-11.
	So 14 years.
	And was he already an alcoholic then?
	Yeah, he was.
	And like extremely volatile.
	Like, he was one of these people.
	I was listening to your call last night with that lady who kind of talked about her father as an angel, but he was actually a pretty bad guy, the Coke dealer and the biker guy.
	And so it was sort of like that.
	Like she would say, oh, and I felt the same way.
	The man has a heart of gold, but also he's a crippling alcoholic.
	Like to the point where, you know, he would shoot guns through the roof and he actually died by drinking antifreeze to give you an idea of how like how bad the bottom of that rabbit hole is.
	But when he was sober, you know, the The guy had a heart of gold.
	He seemed to care more than almost anybody.
	So I guess, but I would.
	Yeah, this is back to this.
	This is the same stuff that the woman last night was talking about, which is this mysterious duality of human nature.
	When Hilly was drinking, he was a mean drunk.
	But when he wasn't drinking, as you say, heart of gold, I'm sorry, man.
	That's bullshit.
	That's absolute bullshit.
	Because if you care about people, you get treated for your alcoholism.
	Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
	But if I like the reason why I would say that he had a heart of gold, or I would at least try to look at him in a positive light, is I would consider him to have a better heart than my actual father.
	Right.
	So if I had to pick one, I would have picked him.
	Right.
	So, I mean, that doesn't speak well to either man to say that the raging, violent, gun shooting half of bottle of vodka in the morning guy is still better than my father.
	So the way I would answer that is that my dad was kind of like an NPC, and I felt like my stepdad was like more of a human being.
	Like when you, when you looked, like I would give the example of like when you watch the debate between Trump and Hillary, Hillary seemed like a robot and Trump seemed like a live wire, like a real living, breathing human being.
	And so that's why I would say that he was better because he seemed like he was more of a real animated person rather than just a like a kind of a materialistic NPC type.
	But he was helpless about the drinking.
	Or at least he didn't act on it, right?
	So he was run by alcohol.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Alcoholics are NPCs by definition because they're not making cogent decisions on their own.
	They're just doing whatever impulse is unleashed by the alcohol.
	Right.
	So what does it say then that if I did prefer that guy, if I was to weigh their their virtues and their faults, and then I said, I look, and if I have to pick one, I pick the, you know, the alcoholic maniac.
	How old were you when your parents, when your mother remarried?
	I was 18.
	Okay.
	So why would you need, I mean, let's just be real strict about this, right?
	So why would you need to have this guy in your life at all?
	Well, he wasn't really in my life, but he was my stepdad.
	So that, so I would like by proxy, like I would, I would see him, I would be around him.
	And, you know.
	Yes, but your mother is completely messed up.
	Sorry, to speak ill of the dead, but your mother was completely messed up if she chose your horrible father, your ghastly father, and then this raging, violent alcoholic.
	Yeah, I've come to realize that.
	So why would you have any of these people in your life?
	Just to play devil's advocate.
	Yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I don't anymore, but why did I?
	Well, she's dead.
	That doesn't really count, right?
	I've been talking about the 20 years or 25 years since you were 18.
	Right.
	And I guess it's because they were my own.
	That was my mom was my only family, right?
	Like, I didn't have cousins or, you know, I had aunts and uncles, but we would never see each other.
	So that was my only family, like my only living kin that I would, that I had, you know, somewhat of a relationship with.
	Okay.
	And what do you think being in the presence of your incredibly dysfunctional mother and your violent, drunken, gun shooting stepfather, what do you think that did to your dating prospects as a whole?
	To continue the thread from last night?
	Yeah, that's a good question.
	It probably didn't help.
	It probably didn't help.
	No, it was obviously a disaster.
	What kind of woman is going to want to join that family?
	Yeah, not a very, well, probably someone that had a similar around this.
	Yeah, it would never happen.
	Not in a good way, anyway.
	So that's the price, right?
	The price of clinging on to mommy and stepdad, and maybe dad at the time.
	You said it was 10 years, so it's 15 years probably since you became an adult that you spent time with him.
	And listen, I really sympathize.
	I really do.
	Like, I'm not trying to pull the rug out from under you.
	I really do sympathize.
	But if you want to know why you didn't date, it's because you couldn't have any kind of quality woman with your mom and stepdad around.
	Because she'd be just like, oh my God, I'm not spending the rest of my life with these people.
	Right.
	And then both of those relationships ended up like a smoking wreck, right?
	One by divorce and then one by death.
	So neither of them worked out.
	It's not a good track record.
	Wait, your mom?
	Why are we talking about your mom's relationships?
	I'm talking about.
	Right.
	But the relationships that I witnessed growing up were highly dysfunctional.
	And so maybe that kind of made me a little bit shy to really engage.
	I mean, I had a couple of girlfriends, but, you know, like it was very short under a couple of years.
	So probably because the relationships that I had around me were just like highly dysfunctional.
	Well, I mean, if you were dating a woman now and she had a stepfather who was a raging alcoholic, would you want to settle down?
	Hell no.
	No.
	So, I mean, I don't want you to be single for the rest of your life, but I'm not sure that you've understood that your parents did not care enough.
	Yeah, you're not wrong.
	I mean, like, my mom cared, but yeah, you're right.
	Not enough.
	Okay.
	What do you mean she cared?
	She didn't even ask you why you were single or what was going on or dig in or try and get you settled before she died?
	Or she didn't.
	I mean, or say, geez, you know, I really can't have this guy as my husband because it's killing my son's dating prospects.
	Well, you know, it's funny, Steph.
	So I once asked my mom, because I had maybe like in my lifetime, maybe three to four girlfriends.
	I asked her, I said, mom, which one was your favorite?
	And the one she picked was the worst one.
	And then I said, which, or that I like, that was the worst for me.
	And then the one that I said, which one was the worst?
	And she picked my favorite.
	So it was kind of like the opposite, right?
	And maybe that's why I have this problem is I don't know what to believe.
	Ah.
	Well, you kind of do, which is the opposite of whatever your mom chose is the good.
	I mean, this perfectly consistent.
	No, it's perfectly consistent with her choices of mates.
	She chooses really badly.
	And so she was the most keen on the least functional girlfriend, right?
	I mean, isn't that perfectly consistent?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Okay.
	So, yeah.
	So you had someone around you who was infecting you with the worst possible decisions in the dating arena.
	And so for you, it's probably just safer to be to be single.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, is that something you're aware of?
	Or is that something that's kind of news to you?
	Or I'm not becoming aware of it.
	Like I said, we did a call and it, yeah, it took me a year to process the whole thing, but I'm starting to get there.
	Maybe just because.
	Because you're still saying to me, like, my mom and I were close.
	And it's like, no, you weren't.
	I'm not saying you were enemies.
	If I could, like, say, compared to your mom, like, I've heard about like how bad that was.
	And I would say, yeah, my mom was way better than that.
	Oh, no, no.
	Your mother was way worse than mine.
	Like, in terms of our relationship or in terms of-I don't.
	In every conceivable dimension, your mom was infinitely worse than mine.
	And is that because your mom was like obviously bad and my mom like kind of wasn't as obviously bad?
	Or, hey, man, I got married.
	I have, I have, I have a kid, right?
	Yeah, it did break me in that way that I'm just going to spend the rest of my life staring at X and trying to figure out what's real in the Epstein files.
	I mean, that's all I don't mean to sound cruel, but I have a productive, healthy, happy marriage of nearly a quarter century.
	I have good friends.
	I have, yeah, I'm not trying to brag or anything like that, but my mom was obviously crazy and dysfunctional.
	And your mom was too.
	It's just that her craziness was acted out by her husband.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	I mean, what were your remind me, what were your major complaints about your biological father?
	He like a like a very materialistic person, like so, like a kind of like a corporate world guy.
	Like, and I just, you know, I just don't fit the mold of that.
	So I could, I kind of like, I could never kind of fit into that, that mold.
	I could never like follow in those footsteps because it just wasn't in my personality or my capacity to like want to pursue that type of like a corporate life or whatever you'd call it.
	So I didn't want to.
	I'm sorry, I'm just going to, my jaw is literally on the floor at the moment.
	Okay.
	I'm shocked in a way that I'm really shocked.
	Oh boy.
	Not a criticism at all.
	I'm just, I want to be honest with my experience.
	I am shocked in a way that I am really shocked.
	Do you know why?
	Go on.
	Well, you had a raging, violent gun shooting half a bottle of vodka before breakfast stepfather, right?
	And you said, but he was way better than my father.
	And I say, oh my God, what was the story with your father?
	And you said, well, he was kind of materialistic and a bit of a corporate guy.
	And I'm like, what the?
	Well, there's more.
	You're talking about himself.
	Oh, my God.
	The drunken, violent guy who shoots holes in the ceiling and drank himself to death on antifreeze.
	Man, he was way better than my father because my father was kind of materialistic and a bit of a corporate drone.
	Yeah, so like, why is that, Steph?
	Like, why, why would I like, I guess, maybe the one seems more, I don't know, like, alive than the other, I guess.
	More interesting, more, I don't know.
	Like, I mean, it's like somebody is currently being electrocuted.
	You say, well, at least they're lively.
	No, he was just this, your stepdad was just disinhibited because he was drunk.
	You know, that's like some introvert gets completely drunk and is dancing on the table.
	Say, wow, he's really solved the introversion.
	It's like, nope, no, they're just drunk.
	Like, help me out.
	I'm sorry.
	I was going to wind this down, but I can't now.
	Why, why you stayed in touch with the raging, toxic alcoholic and you cut off the guy who was what?
	Materialistic and a bit of a corporate drone?
	Well, there's more to the story, and I can't.
	I just go.
	All I could do is go with the story you told me.
	I cut up things, right?
	Right.
	That's what I would like.
	I guess I found like, as bad as it sounds, I found my stepdad more inspiring and more of like more of like what I would consider like a good father in spite of the alcoholism than my actual father.
	Like he seemed to care more, if you know what I mean.
	Like I felt like, and I felt it, right?
	And this goes back to that intuition thing.
	I just felt that he was a better person.
	I felt better around him.
	I felt less, you know, Like I felt like he, like, I was on kind of the same, like, obviously not when he was drunk and shooting guns, but, you know, stone cold sober.
	I just felt like you said he was a top-decile alcoholic, the worst of the worst, right?
	So don't talk to me about all the times he was sober.
	The times he was sober.
	Yeah, the rare times that he was sober.
	Right.
	Okay.
	What was your mother's view of your biological father?
	Well, yeah, she was never a fan.
	Like, she obviously, it's, they, they divorced when I was quite young and she, she hated his guts, um, you know, and so I got, like, she got custody of me.
	And so I grew up with her always telling me how bad my father was.
	And what were her complaints?
	The same thing that I guess I would have told you, except she would have said, oh, he's vain.
	He's shallow.
	He's narcissistic, all of this.
	And, you know, he cheated on me and he left, like that kind of like better wife tale.
	So your mother preferred the drunk and had contempt for your father.
	Oh, look at that.
	You prefer the drunk and have contempt for your father.
	Bro, that's just your mother's opinions.
	You're not wrong.
	You complain about your father being an NPC.
	Maybe at least he wasn't programmed by his mother's crazy beliefs.
	Yeah, well, yeah, you're not wrong.
	Because, yeah, he really wasn't.
	Because his mother was like highly religious and my dad is a total atheist.
	Okay, so if you'd have come home and your mother was still alive and she said, oh, how was your day?
	You talked to her on the phone.
	How was your day?
	Said, ah, you know, I had a really great chat with dad.
	My husband?
	No, no, my biological dad.
	I actually had a really great conversation with him.
	What would your mother say?
	She would kind of like, I could tell, like, I can see her kind of gritting her teeth and trying to be as positive as she could, even because her feelings, like her cortisol would have spiked because of getting divorced and stuff.
Fucked Up Narratives 00:14:58
	And she hated him.
	But for, I guess, for my sake, she would try and grin and bear it.
	But I could always tell that it, you know, wouldn't, wasn't authentic.
	Yeah.
	And mom, it's interesting.
	So I talked with dad, and he said that he cheated on you because you guys had touched each other romantically in like eight months?
	Is that right?
	Yeah, I couldn't, I wouldn't know.
	I can assume, but I don't know.
	No, no, but I mean, if you were to say something like that to your mom, if you were to push back against the narrative that your father had said something up, like if he, if your father had said something that pushed against the narrative of your mother, that your father was just a bad guy and a narcissist and if you had said something that pushed back against your mother's story about how wonderful she was and how bad your father was, what would happen?
	Like I say, you could like she, her words wouldn't match her true feeling.
	You could tell by the look on her face, by the tension, by the grimace or whatever, that she wouldn't be happy about it because she hated my dad, but she would try to at least put on the best show that she could that she was feeling good about that, even though she wasn't.
	Hang on, hang on, huh?
	Let's back up a sec here.
	Didn't you tell me not 40 minutes ago?
	Sorry to sound like I'm catching you out.
	I'm just, this is how my brain works.
	This is what you do.
	Didn't you tell me 40 minutes ago how wonderful dogs were because they were honest?
	Do you remember that?
	Yeah.
	And you're telling me that your mom was a giant fucking liar.
	Right.
	Well, because I could tell with my, say, my hound dog instincts that she was lying.
	Yeah.
	Even though her words wouldn't match her sentiment.
	Okay.
	So your dog would just attack her.
	I mean, no, but if honesty is a virtue, then your mom was a liar.
	Right.
	Because then if she was honest, what would she have said?
	She would have said, I don't care about your father.
	I don't want to hear about it when I brought it up.
	Or your father hurt me too bad.
	It's, you know, like, what would be the honest answer when I told her that I had a good chat with my dad?
	Like, how would she answer that honestly?
	Oh, she would say, oh, shit, my heart is fucking pounding here, kid.
	Because if you find out your father's side of things, I'm fucked.
	Yeah.
	I mean, not that, you know, I'm not saying he's 100% right.
	I'm 100% wrong.
	But I've given you this whole narrative for the past quarter century.
	No, 30 years, I've given you this whole narrative about your father's a narcissist and he's bad and he's mean and he's an NPC and he's materialistic and I hate him.
	And so if you have any positive interactions with your father, I'm fucked.
	Yeah, that's true.
	So who was the real narcissist?
	Well, her.
	Yeah.
	My opinion.
	Maybe water finds its own level, but yeah, certainly she was on equal footing as him.
	Why did you cut off things with your dad?
	Yeah, that's a long story.
	Basically.
	Just give me the stuff that was right at the end.
	We discussed this.
	So basically, we were drinking at his place one night, and his stepmom and my stepmom, his second wife, and I got in an argument, and she ended up smacking me.
	And so when she did that, I grabbed her by the wrists.
	And then my dad basically charged at me and knocked me to the ground and we got in a fight.
	We talked about this on that call.
	Right.
	Okay.
	That was the dissolution of that.
	What was the month?
	If you remember the month of the year, that happened in May of 2014.
	Sorry, but the call that you and I had.
	Oh, that would have been February of 2024.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Got it.
	Okay.
	All right.
	Well, so I would generally say that I'm very sorry about this childhood.
	I'm very, you know, it's so wrong.
	We know, we know it's wrong for parents to pour their dislike or anger about their ex into their children.
	That's just wrong.
	It's wrong to do it.
	And it's almost impossible to fight.
	There's a parental alienation, you know, that kind of stuff.
	But I'm sorry that you, I mean, I think honestly, if I were to look back, and we've all made mistakes, right?
	So, but if I were to look back from your standpoint, I would say that the most productive perspective might have been, I clung to the bad known rather than strike out for the good unknown.
	That it was easier for me to hang out with these messed up people rather than raise my standards and be around better people.
	Because as I've said a million times on the show, bad people form an impregnable moat around you that no good people can pass by.
	Because if you started to have functional people in your life, one of the first things they'd say is, bro, your family is messed up, man.
	This is really messed up.
	This is really toxic.
	This is really unhealthy.
	I mean, did you ever think of staging an intervention for your stepdad?
	He did go to rehab, but not, it was on my mom's urging.
	Like, she basically threatened to divorce him and he had to go to rehab or that was it.
	So she, she kind of tried to intervene, although she failed, obviously, because he ended up dying.
	Okay, that wasn't my point.
	But I never, I never tried.
	No, I never did.
	I wouldn't have had the, like, as a, you know, a young man who wasn't around him, like, often, like, we didn't live together.
	I lived on my own and I would visit them on special occasions.
	But no, I wouldn't.
	So I don't want to build it on it.
	I don't want to do these excuses, man.
	Come on.
	No, I didn't stage.
	Come on.
	I couldn't, I didn't label them.
	I know that.
	And it's not because whether you're close to him or not, it's for your mom and for you.
	Right, but it wouldn't be my job to fix her relationship, right?
	Like, I would have no business or intervention, would I?
	You said, hang on.
	You said you were close.
	Right, but I'm not my mother's keeper, right?
	Like, that's on her, isn't it?
	Well, from a sheer standpoint of genetic fucking survival, I'd say it is your job.
	If you were, if you were in a lifeboat with your mom and your stepdad and he was drilling a hole in the bottom, would you say, well, it's not my job.
	It's not my husband.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So I guess the only time that I ever really said anything was at the beginning when they got married, when she told me that she was marrying him.
	And we had like, we were neighbors.
	So like I had known the stepdad my whole life.
	And I know, so I knew he was an alcoholic.
	When my mom told me that she was marrying him, I said, you better be damn sure about this.
	I said, he's a dangerous person and you know what you're getting into.
	And, you know, she did the whole, oh, I know, but I love him so much and he's got such a good heart.
	And then that was kind of the end of it.
	I never questioned her decision ever again.
	I tried at the beginning and she made a lot of money.
	Well, but the reason you get him into rehab is so that you can date women who aren't crazy.
	Because only crazy women will date you if you're enmeshed in a family that's fucked, that's that fucked up.
	Right.
	And that's time I was dating obviously crazy women, but I didn't have the self-knowledge to really understand what was going on, right?
	I was just kind of one friend of mine.
	Okay, I'm happy to knock down some more excuses.
	When did you first start listening to what I do?
	2014, after I had the fight with my dad.
	2014.
	Excellent.
	So 12 years ago, your father died.
	Your stepfather died three years ago.
	Do I have that?
	No.
	When did he die?
	10 years ago.
	10 years ago.
	Okay.
	So you were into self-knowledge for two years before he died.
	Right.
	And you did not look up.
	How can you deal with serious alcoholism?
	You didn't go to a specialist.
	You didn't look up.
	You didn't go to AA.
	You didn't say, listen, this is my situation.
	You didn't go to a family doctor.
	You didn't get a referral.
	You didn't call me.
	You didn't, whatever, right?
	No, because like at the time, like I'm an adult and I have my own life and we live on opposite sides of the country.
	So I would hear about, you know, the troubles they would have, but I just didn't feel like I had, you know, I was living my life working, paying rent.
	And I just, I couldn't, I guess, didn't have the bandwidth or the knowledge to do anything about it.
	You know, they had to.
	Listen, I mean, listen, honestly, I don't really know if there's any point.
	If you just make up stuff, like, I couldn't help my mother with a violent alcoholic because I had to pay my fucking rent.
	I don't even know what to say to stuff like that.
	Like, that's just such a, that's just a pathetic excuses, honestly.
	Well, but I do tell her what to do.
	I claim to care about my mother.
	I claim to love my mother.
	I claim to have a great relationship with my mother, but I wouldn't lift a finger to save her from a violent alcoholic because I had to pay my rent.
	Well, no, when they got married, right before I left home, and that was when I tried to, you know, like tell her.
	Oh, you told me this.
	Yeah, you told me that.
	And after that, I moved out and then, you know, I had to, like, I kind of just grew up and went on with my life.
	Like, oh, you're an adult now, out you go.
	So then why are you?
	Why are you still in touch?
	Hang on.
	So why were you still in touch with this severely dysfunctional mother?
	If you just grew up and moved on with your life, why are you still calling her three times a week until she died three years ago?
	Well, because she was really as like my only family member, right?
	I don't have any siblings.
	Right.
	Only family members.
	So you're supposed to care.
	Right.
	So, and I guess I would only be able to care as much as she did.
	Is that kind of where this is going?
	Like my level of care would be equal to hers, which was not enough.
	No, no, your level of caring is not dependent upon other people.
	Your level of caring is your commitment to doing the right thing or the good thing according to your values, not whether other people care or not.
	It's like saying, well, you know, there's a bunch of people stealing from the store.
	So I guess I don't have to respect property rights.
	I could just steal because other people are doing it, right?
	You have to have your own standards.
	Right.
	But as a young adult, like when you're going out in the world, I mean, am I like the my mother's second marriage would be low on my like priorities because I'm trying to set up my life.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	And so like, is that, is that was my level of care like equal to hers, which was like somewhat, but not enough?
	Like I would say.
	You say to her, you say to her, if you marry an alcoholic, I'm not going to be around.
	I'm not going to watch you get bullied and beaten or whatever he was doing or terrorized or by an alcoholic.
	And if she does marry him, then you say, listen, you've got to get him into rehab.
	You got to fix this up or I'm gone.
	Because I am not having this fucked up relationship poison my entire social circle and all the women I'm going to date.
	Right.
	I guess maybe I like, I guess even in spite of his flaws, and this goes back to that call last night about the Coke dealer.
	I guess I respected my stepdad more than my dad.
	And so like, even the, in spite of his, like, knowing what I knew, I, I felt more respect for the man than I did for my okay.
	I, I'm not, I'm not even letting this stuff poison the listeners' minds.
	So I'll just say this to close, right?
	And I appreciate the conversation.
	So if you want to, you said you want to get married, right?
	You want, you don't want to spend the next 40 or 50 years living over your shop, right, alone, right?
	So if you want to get married, then a woman is going to ask you questions because she's, right?
	Especially, you know, if you want to have kids, like let's say you date a younger woman or whatever, right?
	So a woman's going to have questions.
	Now, a woman who is going to get married to you is going to want to know your level of commitment, right?
	Because women, especially if you're going to have kids, but, you know, whatever, right?
	So, so she's going to try and gauge your level of commitment.
	Now, do you have a history of commitment?
	I do not see it.
	Right.
	Because certain things overall, no.
	Like, I commit to like sports and stuff, but no, not like overall, not really.
	Right.
	So she's going to look for commitment and commitment comes from standards.
	And listen, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus in the two years between getting into self-knowledge.
	Maybe you did it before me, obviously, right?
	But 2014 to 2016, I'm not trying to throw you under the bus for that.
	But what I'm looking for, and I'm sort of trying to put myself in the mindset of someone who might want to date you, is you don't appear to be troubled at all.
	You don't sit there and say, oh, you know, I thought about the intervention.
	I thought about it, but I didn't do it.
	And then the guy died.
	Like, I'd feel pretty bad about that myself.
	Maybe I'm a bit oversensitive that way.
	But you're just like, no, I was paying my rent.
	I was out on my own.
	I was a young man.
	I was doing my thing.
	It doesn't trouble you at all that your failure to act may have contributed to him dying.
	No, maybe you could have saved him.
	Maybe you couldn't, but you didn't do much about it at all other than one conversation with your mother.
	And you looked up to him and admired him, which means you reinforced his behavior.
	Now, I don't know where your conscience is, but you weren't a kid.
	And a woman is going to have these conversations with you.
	And she's going to be like, well, he can just make up this glib stuff.
	Like I had to pay my rent or whatever.
	I was out.
	Hey, I brought it up once and never again.
	And this guy's out there, what, fucking drunk driving and shooting holes.
	Was he physically aggressive towards your mother?
	I don't think so.
	I would have to say no, because I think she would have, I would have known if he was.
	Okay.
	But he shot holes in the ceiling while she was around, right?
	Right.
	He took out his sort of drunken aggression on objects rather than people.
	Okay.
	Do you know, did he ever drive drunk?
	He would have to because he was drunk quite often, yeah.
	Okay.
	So, I mean, he could have killed people.
	True.
	And you admire him?
	Like, it's relative, right?
	It's as far as the people that were.
	My God, man.
	Well, you know, Mussolini killed slightly fewer people than Stalin or whatever, right?
	I mean, well, this serial killer only killed eight people, so he's way better than the serial killer who killed 12 people.
	I need you to understand how this sounds from the outside, not from what seems familiar to you.
	Because when you invite people into your life, they're coming in with no history.
	They're not bonded to any of these people.
Comparing Moral Judgments 00:14:47
	They're going to judge you, a quality woman, is going to judge you according to objective standards.
	And if you say, well, yes, he was a dangerous, gun-toting, absolute hellscape of an alcoholic who regularly drove drunk and could have killed people, but I like him.
	I admired him.
	I thought he was cool.
	He was honest and animated.
	You are signaling to quality people, to quality people, stay away.
	I'm just telling you the facts.
	I'm just telling you the facts.
	If you can't get clear moral judgment about the people in your past, you can't get moral qualities from people in the future.
	It's it.
	It's the deal.
	Until I'm telling you this from personal experience and also from a lot of people I've talked to over the years, until I had absolutely clear moral judgments about the people in my past, I could not marry a quality woman.
	Because a quality woman is going to be looking for moral clarity.
	Because a quality woman knows, as you know, at least from what I've said, that love is our involuntary response to virtue.
	And if you praise violent, drunken, drunk-driving guys, you lack a moral compass, and therefore you cannot be loved, and you certainly cannot be trusted.
	And this is why I keep pushing back against you making up these mealy-mouthed excuses.
	I'm sorry to be harsh, but I do want to do what is best for you, as far as I see it, in getting into a better relationship in the future than you've had in the past.
	So if a woman says, well, why didn't you do something with regards to your mother and her addiction to this violent, drunk-driving, gun shooting alcoholic?
	Say, well, I brought it up once, but, you know, I was out living my life and I had to pay my rent.
	And she's going to say, what?
	I mean, the guy drank himself to death with antifreeze.
	And you could have done something.
	I mean, maybe it would have worked, maybe it wouldn't have, but it doesn't bother you at all.
	I mean, a woman is going to look for moral qualities in order to pair bond with you because the only thing we can genuinely pair bond to is virtue, is moral clarity.
	And if you are praising completely fucked up people like this and have absolutely no problem with your inaction and trying to save them, again, I'm not saying you're not responsible directly for the guy's death.
	And, you know, odds are you probably couldn't have saved him, but it doesn't seem to bother you at all that you didn't try.
	So I'm just trying to give you the view from outside because I want you to get a quality marriage.
	And that means you've got to have pretty clear moral judgments about the people in the past and yourself for going along with it.
	So, in that way, then the moral thing to do when that marriage, that second marriage happened would be to give an ultimatum and say, look, if this guy doesn't fix himself, then we don't have a relationship anymore.
	That's the moral thing to do, is kind of what you're getting at.
	And I was too cowardly to or didn't have the tools to do it.
	Well, no, I mean, you, well, so it's not as far as the moral thing.
	It's not like it's evil.
	You can stay.
	I mean, I haven't called you evil, right?
	I think driving drunk is pretty evil, but that's like Russian roulette, right?
	But it's except it's usually other people who suffer.
	So it's not in terms of morality, it's not like you can stay with dysfunctional people.
	You can stay with your messed up mom and you can admire your violent, drunken stepdad guy.
	You can do all of that.
	I mean, it's not, you're not violating the non-aggression principle.
	It does cause you to lie.
	It does cause you to make up excuses that to anybody with half a brain look completely ridiculous.
	And this is part of your solitude.
	You haven't had people push back on these excuses that you make up in your mind.
	So it's not a question of morality other than the lying stuff.
	But the consequences are pretty clear.
	You only dated completely fucked up women and you haven't dated in seven or eight years, right?
	Right.
	So the consequences of not making a stand is loneliness and isolation and the end of your genetic lineage, right?
	Sadly, yeah.
	Well, yeah.
	So it's not, to me, it would be a cost benefit in two ways.
	One is that was your step father a bad person?
	Yeah, I guess he, well, overall, yeah, he was.
	He was a bad person.
	He was an alcoholic.
	He was violent.
	And he, yeah, was, I guess, then, so that's incredibly selfish behavior, right?
	And destructive.
	Was your mother a bad person?
	I would have to say she was a little better than him, but I wouldn't say like not a great person, but not a bad person.
	How does she get to be better than the man she rewarded with sex?
	That's the biggest incentive that men have.
	It's the biggest reward that men have is sexual access.
	She took care of him.
	She propped him up.
	She paid his bills.
	She had sex with him.
	How is she better?
	Right?
	Because there's the drunk and then there's the enabler, right?
	And how is she?
	I mean, I'm open to the case, but how is she better than him?
	Well, I guess on the surface, right?
	Because she's here.
	This is a philosophy show.
	Don't call a plumber in and talk about the paint.
	Okay.
	Right.
	I would say that she's a surface, though.
	She was, I guess, a more responsible person, a more reasonable person than him.
	Like, if I had to pick one, she was the better of the two.
	No, because she chose him.
	Right.
	But maybe that was the best that she could do at the time.
	Like, she was 40 when she remarried.
	So maybe she looked at her options and thought he's the best.
	So there's just more excuses, right?
	I mean, you really are addicted.
	You just make up stuff.
	You really do.
	Well, no, I'm trying to figure out why she married the guy, right?
	That's what you're saying.
	I don't know, but you just make maybe that's the best she could do.
	I don't know.
	Did she ever go to therapy?
	Did she ever have to do that?
	Well, if she could have done better, then no, she never went to therapy.
	But if she thought she could have done better or she had better options, I'm sure she would have taken them.
	I don't know.
	I mean, we're talking about a brain that's been ashes for three years.
	So I have no idea what her motives were.
	And we can't, we could, you know, you didn't have any important conversations with her, so her motives remain unknown.
	But we know the facts.
	We know the facts that she married a guy she claimed to hate, who was violent towards you.
	She married a guy who was a wretched alcoholic.
	And that's bad behavior.
	Right.
	I guess this comes right back to the start of the conversation with how do you know what's true, right?
	It's like I can look at that and say, well, I can pick a side, but objectively, right?
	It's a different story.
	It's like whether you believe the deep fake or the Epstein files or you don't, right?
	You kind of have to decide.
	Sorry, what do you mean?
	So it reminds me of there's a story about Frank Sinatra, I think, and Bing Crosby were out drinking one night and they were too drunk to drive.
	And so they had like some, you know, 10-year-old kid driving.
	They got pulled over by the cop and the cop said, what the hell is the kid doing driving?
	And Frank Sinatra says, well, he's the best we got.
	Right.
	Of all the bad options, right?
	You have to kind of decide which one is the best.
	Especially when you're, you know, when I was, you know, 18, you're just kind of going along with the momentum of life, not really thinking about your mother's second marriage too much.
	Okay.
	But I guess that's what got me here.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Well, I appreciate the call.
	I think I'm going to tap out because we just have two divergent set of perspectives, but I really do appreciate the call.
	And I certainly wish you the best going forward.
	And we have tobacco.
	You're muted at the moment.
	If you wanted to unmute, thank you for your patience.
	And of course, I'm happy to take any other calls.
	Yeah, I have to tap out on that one because the excuse tsunami.
	I mean, I want to say, I can handle it.
	I can handle the excuse tsunami, but I'm concerned about infecting everyone else that every opposition is met with a, well, the best you could do.
	And I had to pay rent.
	And just this very shallow excuse machine is pretty negative.
	So I don't want to really expose you all to that kind of stuff.
	But yeah, excuses are very, very bad.
	Excuses are very bad.
	Excuses will cut off your free will.
	And of course, if you say, you know, about your mother, you say, well, maybe he was the best she could do.
	It's like, I don't even know what that means.
	If a man goes and robs a gas station and pistol whips the cashier, say, well, maybe this is say, well, maybe this is the only way he felt he could make money.
	You can make up making up motives is for me, I don't want to insult women because I love women, but it's pathologically female to make up motives, which is why it tends to be more male-coded to say, I don't care about motives.
	I care about facts.
	And if a woman marries a man, has a kid with a guy, and she hates him, hates him, hates him, and then she hates the best girl for her son, and she loves the worst girl for her son, and then she marries a, as he said, 10th% alcoholic, half a bottle of vodka, first thing in the morning.
	That's crazy, raging alcoholic.
	And she stays with him for 15 years, despite the fact that this is highly negative for herself, highly negative for her son, and that they don't seem to have any conversations about anything.
	They talk three times a week for 40 years or 35 years or 30 years or whatever, and don't really talk about anything, doesn't hold her to account, doesn't hold them responsible.
	Well, then if you make up excuses for other people, this is why I sort of had to cut the combo off.
	But if you make up excuses for other people, and I'm still very glad the guy called, and maybe he'll mull it over and listen back, and that's great.
	But if you make up excuses for other people, the problem is you make up excuses for yourself too.
	You make up excuses for yourself as well.
	Well, you know, mom was doing the best she could with the knowledge she had.
	I couldn't really have done better.
	And she couldn't really have done better.
	And she was just making the best decision she could.
	And it all just kind of floats along like a leaf on a stream.
	Well, then what happens to you?
	Well, of course, what happens to you is you also float along like a leaf on a stream.
	And next thing you know, you're in your 40s and you haven't dated in almost a decade.
	And just, you know, and again, I appreciate the guy calling, but just so you know, why I was fairly emphatic about all of this is that there's like three and a half grains of sand left in this guy's hourglass.
	Because if you're in your 40s and you haven't dated for seven or eight years, and the longest relationship you've ever had is two years, then you need a real shock to the system.
	You need a real shock to the system because it is almost, I would say it is almost, almost too late.
	You know, you don't get every chance in life.
	You know, maybe you meet that one person and they're right for you.
	And then you're like, no, I could do better.
	And then you move on.
	And, you know, maybe you just never get that again.
	When you're young, and particularly for women, there's a lot of opportunities.
	Or it's like somebody who's like, hey, you know, we should really start this business, or I really got this great business idea.
	And you're like, eh, you know, I want to travel this summer.
	And I've maybe I've been wrong about this.
	Obviously, it's always a possibility and sometimes more than a possibility.
	But for me, I was always like, if an opportunity comes along, I'm just going to grab that and grab it with both hands.
	I am going to grab that opportunity.
	So when the opportunity came about, when I was a junior programmer to start a business, grab it.
	Grab it.
	When the opportunity came to go to Canada's best theater school for acting and playwriting, I auditioned.
	I wasn't sure I'd get in.
	They only take about 1% of people.
	But I got in and I took it.
	It was not a great experience.
	It was a socialist hellhole, but I'm glad I did it.
	And it turned out to be helpful for what it is that I do.
	The acting training, the voice training, and all of that has turned out to be very helpful for what I do.
	So I'm a big one for take opportunities because they don't come along too often.
	And as you age, the opportunities for new relationships diminish considerably.
	I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I'm happy to take more calls tonight.
	No, tell me if I'm wrong.
	But when you age, or as you age, meeting new people becomes tougher.
	I mean, high school, you're together with everyone all the time.
	University, you make your friends in the workplace.
	You know, you can hang out.
	You might be able to make some friends at work.
	Certainly when I was a boss back in the business days, I would hang out with people I worked with or people who worked for me.
	And I'm not much of a hierarchical guy, as you can imagine.
	And made friends at work.
	And it was through making friends at work that I ended up on the volleyball team where I met my wife.
	I met her friends.
	She met my friends.
	But as you get older, it gets tougher and tougher to meet people.
	Why?
	Well, two reasons.
	The people who are social already have their lives, right?
	They already have their wives, their husbands, their kids, grandkids, maybe, cousins, nephews, nieces.
	So they already have their life.
	And the people who aren't social, well, they're not out and about.
	They're not out there doing their thing.
	It's very easy to get comfortable being alone.
	It's very easy.
	I've had times, even in my sort of 40s and 50s, where for whatever reason, I've had to spend, I spent a couple of days alone.
	Man, it's pretty easy.
	It's pretty seductive.
	I mean, I love my wife, love my daughter, but it's pretty easy to get used to.
	I can feel it kind of creeping in.
The Truth Is a Conversation 00:05:44
	It's pretty easy to get used to being alone, to not have to think about anyone else's schedule or preferences to just do what you want to do when you want to do it.
	And it's pretty seductive, man.
	It's pretty seductive.
	And we are not designed for that.
	we are not designed for that.
	When people, and this is why I went into the fellow's life, I was going to call him a young man, but obviously not a young man.
	He's beyond middle age.
	Middle age is like 38 because you don't count childhood.
	So when people have epistemology issues, it's almost always because of solitude.
	And I'm not calling this guy a narcissist, obviously, right?
	But narcissists have epistemology issues because they don't take feedback.
	They make up stuff.
	They make up stories.
	They make up excuses.
	They don't take feedback.
	And if you don't take feedback, you can't get to the truth because the truth is a robust conversation.
	It is a robust back and forth with people as a whole.
	You need to be in conversation to get to the truth.
	It is not a solitary endeavor.
	I mean, you can write a book on your own, for sure.
	I guess one hand is holding the paintbrush when you paint alone.
	So all of that is certainly possible.
	But the real philosophy is in the conversation.
	That's why I do these kinds of call-in shows.
	I do solo shows, of course.
	I do call-in shows, both public and private.
	But one of the reasons I love, I mean, I love this format, because we can just get into the meat of how to get to the truth in a conversational way.
	I don't just sit at home and write essays because the truth is a conversation.
	You can't get to the truth.
	Imagine how tough it would be to get to the truth if we didn't have language or if we didn't have language for abstractions.
	There are certain tongues in Africa that don't seem to have many words, if any, for abstractions.
	So imagine how tough it would be to get to the truth if the language you spoke did not have the word truth in it, or skepticism, or empiricism, or epistemology, or knowledge, facts, reason, evidence, you name it.
	You can't get to the truth on your own.
	You can't get to reality really on your own.
	Reality goes out of focus without people around you constantly readjusting the lens.
	And our ability to get to the truth.
	And if you, it's a my daughter the other day was asking me, hey, what rap songs do you like?
	And I'm like, two.
	One of them is, Where is the love by the Black Eyed Peace?
	If you never know truth, then you never know love.
	Where's the truth, y'all?
	I don't know.
	Where's the love, y'all?
	I don't know.
	I remember listening to that.
	I think that came out before I was even a public figure and thinking, like, yeah, if you never know truth, you never know love.
	In order to be loved, we have to know the truth.
	Because the truth is stable.
	The truth connects us.
	The truth is how we unite with other people.
	The truth is where our minds overlap.
	Our minds do not overlap at night in dreams.
	You know, think about this occasionally.
	You go to bed, your spouse is lying next to you.
	You kiss, you cuddle, you chat, whatever.
	And then you go to sleep.
	And then you have your dreams, and he or she has his or her dreams.
	And you don't meet in each other's dreams.
	You may dream of your wife, but you don't meet in the same place.
	Say, what did you dream about?
	Oh, I dreamt about being in a rainforest.
	What did you dream about?
	Oh, I dreamt about dancing on top of a pyramid.
	So you don't meet in dreams.
	Solipsism is like expecting other people to enjoy the music coming through your headphones.
	We can only overlap in the Venn diagrams of overlap.
	We can only overlap in the truth.
	We can only pair bond in the truth.
	Because without the truth, we don't have the virtue called honesty.
	And that's why, I mean, interesting to me, and I'm sorry to talk about the last caller, like he's not here, but well, because he's not, I guess.
	But if you can just make up whatever you want, then you don't have the virtue called truth or lie.
	You just make up excuses.
	You can make up other people's motives.
	And how do you know if you're telling the truth or not telling the truth?
	Which is maybe why he needs a dog to sniff it out.
	That's why I'm sort of pointing out the dogs can't lie.
	They can't tell the truth.
	This is why a lot of people prefer pets.
	Men with dogs, women with cats.
	That's why a lot of people prefer pets.
	Because pets don't judge.
	Pets only process hedonistically what is pleasurable to them and associate you with that.
	And therefore they, quote, pair bond to you.
	But it's not.
	Virtue is not values, not truth, not honesty, not integrity, not morality.
	It's just, you know, the dog, hey, you know, when I smell less stress on the human, the human is nicer to me.
	Whereas if every time you were stressed, you gave the dog a treat, then the dog would respond very positively to stressed people because stress means treats.
	So you got to get to the truth in order to pair bond with another person because it's only in the truth that we meet.
	It is only in reality that we meet and merge.
	In order to know the truth, you have to be self-critical.
	You have to be in conversation.
	And you cannot make things up.
An Hour Home 00:03:47
	And that's why I tapped out in the last conversation, just making things up.
	And it was relentless.
	That's why I kept pointing out excuses, excuses, excuses, excuses.
	Why didn't you do this?
	Well, I had to pay rent.
	You can't penetrate that.
	But you do know, at least I know, the people who just make up stuff, you can't meet with them in reality.
	And I tried.
	I tried.
	And again, you know, maybe this guy will listen back to this.
	And I just want to get a little bit of closure for you guys on the call.
	But I think it's instructive that there is a great price to be paid for not pursuing the truth in conversation.
	And that price is solitude.
	I mean, we've all felt it, right?
	I think we've all felt it.
	One time or another.
	Isolated, lonely, in our own heads, disconnected, separate.
	I remember once when I lived in Toronto, young at Eglinton, I remember driving home from a long work trip.
	I'd always be on these trips.
	I didn't mind the trips.
	I thought it was interesting, fun.
	I was a travel guy.
	It was fun.
	But coming home would be, you know, tiring, especially post-9-11.
	I'm old enough to have remembered business travel before 9-11 or travel before 9-11.
	It's fantastic.
	My gosh.
	I remember arriving late at an airport.
	I wasn't stuck in a meeting.
	I was in a meeting, and they're like, hey, doesn't your flight leave in half an hour?
	And I was 10 minutes from the airport.
	So I jumped up and they dropped me off and I have 20 minutes.
	No problem.
	And you go.
	Ran through security, got to the gate, no problem.
	Now, hour and a half, if you're lucky, man.
	And I remember I always get kind of tired of the travel by the time I was traveling like two, three weeks a month sometimes.
	And by the end, I'd come back and I'd always forget, ah, right.
	It's an hour from the airport to home.
	Ugh, bummer.
	It's an hour from the airport to home.
	And I remember coming home in the cab and there is a bit of solitude to business travel.
	I mean, you have your meetings and you have your presentations, and I would go out for dinner with the salespeople sometimes.
	But, you know, there's a lot of waiting around at airports.
	There's a lot of sitting in planes.
	There's a lot of driving places.
	And I remember coming home and looking at the apartment building I lived in, which had like, I don't know, 30 floors or something like that.
	And I remember it was one of the few cabs that had, I think it had a sunroof.
	It was coming home late at night.
	And I looked up, and it just seemed like a vertical set of ice cube trays of kind of isolation.
	Because it was the kind of place I didn't actually choose to live there.
	The company rented the apartment for off-site RD.
	We had to produce a new version of the software.
	And I said, I'll do it, but I want to work four days a week off-site.
	I'll come in one day a week.
	So they rented the place so I'd have a little place to work.
	And they ended up staying there after the project was completed.
	And it was one of these kind of apartment buildings where there were just a lot of old people, a lot of solitary people, a lot of people picking up their mail alone, a lot of people riding in the elevator alone, a lot of people coming and going alone.
	And I mean, it's kind of a common truism where you see the city where everybody is so close together and have never been further apart, really, in all of human history.
	And I lived alone, and I was in my little box in the sky.
	And all around me were people.
	I could hear them moving, talking, sometimes chatting, yelling, fighting, having sex, whatever they were doing.
	And you're surrounded by people, but you're in this honeycomb of isolation, solitude, lonely in a crowd, right?
Social Muscles Matter 00:04:28
	That's what they call it.
	Lonely in a crowd.
	And you're all alone, and you're surrounded by everyone.
	And you get on the bus and you're crammed together with people.
	What was this woman?
	It's a comedian.
	I always love this joke.
	She's like making conversation on the subway.
	It's like, well, now that our groins have been pressed together for 45 minutes, you want to start a family?
	And you go to work, whether these fellow with his business, associates, business employees, and customers and so on.
	And there's nothing wrong with that in particular.
	It's all sort of functional stuff.
	But it's profits-based, dry calculations of mutual utility.
	And it's very possible, especially without kids, it's very possible to disappear from the social landscape.
	And increasingly, more and more people are doing this.
	They're just winking out.
	You ever do this?
	I'd recommend doing this at least once in your life.
	You stay up all night.
	It's a beautiful night of stars.
	And then the sun begins to glow in the east.
	The light begins to spread across the sky.
	And one by one, the stars flicker, fade, and wink out.
	They're gone.
	Drowned in the sea of rising blue from the sun.
	And people are doing that.
	So 40% of young women, single, childless, aging out.
	Young men, alone, isolated, staring at screens.
	It is very easy in the modern world to disappear, to fade out like stars in the dawn light, and to lose those skills and to get comfortable with solitude, to lose the challenging reality of conversation that is our only chance to bind with each other's minds and hearts and souls.
	And you've got to fight it.
	Rage, rage against the dying of the light, the social light.
	Go out, talk to people, make friends, sacrifice.
	And you're going to have to be a little tolerant.
	I know, I know.
	Me of all people.
	But you do.
	You can't have a social circle without that tolerance because every social circle contains one somewhat annoying person.
	And if you can't find them, it's you.
	You don't see them.
	Look in the mirror.
	But you're going to have to maintain your muscles of compromise.
	The problem, you know, someone like this, you know, I think of dating, right?
	Dating, dating a guy like this.
	I mean, the brother hasn't had to make compromises in like a decade.
	So how are his compromise muscles?
	How are his muscles for peering out through the little skull peepers of another human being?
	You've got to maintain these social muscles.
	It's like working out.
	You know, I'm, I mean, I like to work out for the most part.
	At least I don't mind it too much.
	But I'm very aware that if I stop working out now, it's going to be pretty tough to get the muscles back because I'm old, older, older, oldish.
	I'm aging.
	Let's just say in the process of.
	It's the same thing with social muscles, the muscles of compromise, the muscles of making sure that somebody else is having a good time and not just you.
	The muscles of communication, the muscles of connection and contact and compromise, the larger picture muscles.
	It's very easy to get too involved with details when you are on your own.
	And when you're with other people, what matters are the important things.
	Also, this guy, and I'm not, again, sorry to pick on him, and I really do appreciate the conversation, but it's a good illustration.
	In order to pair bond, you have to be able to talk about deep and important things.
	You do.
	You have to talk about deep and important things.
	Don't lose those muscles either.
	And if you don't have those muscles, develop them.
	There's nothing wrong with sitting down with your friends and saying, hey, what do you think the purpose of all of this is?
	What do you think the meaning of all of this is?
	Do you guys ever think about like meaning of life or purpose of life or, you know, what's your biggest pride morally?
	You know, if you're comfortable with sharing, what's your biggest shame?
	Morally.
	What's the biggest lie you ever told?
Important Conversations Matter 00:01:20
	What's the time you were most proud of telling the truth?
	Talk about some important things.
	Because it is in the important things that we pair bond.
	Don't lose those muscles.
	And yeah, it's going to chase the shallow people away.
	So what?
	That's good.
	That's what you want.
	You don't want to waste your time in selling depth on people who are never going to buy any more than you want to be a car salesman and waste your time selling to people who are never going to buy.
	So I hope that helps.
	I really do appreciate the conversation tonight.
	I would really strongly urge everyone, keep the conversations deep, keep them flowing.
	Don't get, don't be lonely in a crowd.
	Bring up important things.
	Because if we don't have facts from other people, we just make things up.
	And that creates the musculature called excuses, which we then use to excuse ourselves.
	And then we stop improving, which means we stay more isolated.
	So freedomain.com slash donates.
	Would love, love, love to get your help with the show.
	Freedomaine.com slash donate.
	It's near the end of the month.
	Then of course I do check my numbers at the end of the month.
	Freedomain.com slash donate.
	Shop.freedomain.com and freedomaine.com slash books.
	Have yourselves a glorious, lovely, wonderful rest of the evening.
	I know it's all going to be a letdown after this lovely conversation, but do your best.
	Do your best.
	And we will talk Sunday morning for donors.
	And I appreciate your time.

Chapters

00:00:00 Age-Old Fake News Skepticism
00:14:29 Doubting Claims: Evidence Over Hearsay
00:29:35 Balance of Probabilities
00:32:35 Dogs and Human Instincts
00:42:16 Magical Thinking Explained
00:44:18 Expressing Concern About Solitude
00:49:30 Stepdad's Alcoholism
01:04:24 Fucked Up Narratives
01:19:22 Comparing Moral Judgments
01:34:10 The Truth Is a Conversation
01:39:55 An Hour Home
01:43:42 Social Muscles Matter
01:48:11 Important Conversations Matter