Feb. 24, 2026 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:03:03
My Wife Disrespects Me! Twitter/X Space
Stéphane Molyneux and Eduardo debate whether subjective preferences—like liking pizza or philosophy—can ever be verified, even with brain scans, contrasting Ayn Rand’s anti-realist view (value as trade-dependent) with Aristotle’s essences. They critique Marxist labor theory and price controls, arguing they ignore revealed preferences over stated ones, while linking mental health to ideological distortions in psychology. A caller’s wife aggressively criticizes him for stress while parenting, later apologizing insincerely, creating a "cry bully" dynamic. The hosts agree: enabling aggression harms kids and marriages, demanding firm pushback—even in front of children—to stop disrespectful patterns. [Automatically generated summary]
Stéphane Molyneux from Free Domain, sorry for the slightly late start.
And to see if you can figure out whether I came up with the name of the stream while either A, having my glasses on, or B, not having my glasses on.
I think it's fairly, I think it's fairly clear.
All right.
So we've got some stuff to talk about today.
I've got some Bitcoin information to get across to you, but we have somebody who wants to talk, Eduardo.
If you want to tell me what's on your mind, I'd love to hear.
Hey there.
Good afternoon.
How you doing?
Doing all right.
I made sure to request early because I was sure there would be a lot of requests.
But thanks for bringing me on.
So, yeah, I was thinking about some usage of terms that the way you utilize them, I should say, and that I have some disagreements with.
And I was just curious what your take was on these.
In particular, it was the term subjective.
I've listened to your show for a long time.
We've spoken a few times.
So I think I have a general sense of what you mean by the word.
But I think you've also explicitly said that it's non-verifiable because it's like in the contents of someone's mind.
Is that correct?
So there are subjective things for which there are evidence.
There are subjective things for which there are no evidence, but it is very hard to prove.
So if I say, I like pizza, then if I never eat pizza, that that preference might be questioned.
Of course, I could say, well, I like pizza, but I'm lactose intolerant, or I'm gluten intolerant, or I like pizza, but I like it too much, so I can't eat it because it makes me fat, or whatever.
So if I say, I like philosophy, I think it's fairly clear, given that we're in the 6,000 and changed show, that it's fairly safe to say, I do like philosophy.
And so there are subjective preferences for which there are evidence.
There are subjective preferences for which there are no evidence.
If I say, oh, I saw a movie in 1987, it was a foreign movie.
I can't remember the name, but I really liked it.
I mean, it's really tough to kind of confirm that.
If I say, I had a dream about a flying unicorn last night, it's impossible to prove.
If I say, I like the color blue, but I never wear the color blue and there's no color blue in my environment, you know, that might be a little tough to prove.
So it is, it's tough to prove subjective preferences.
And generally, it is not syllogistical proof.
Like it's not, it's induction.
You know, if a woman says, I like cats and she has 15 cats, okay, well, we can believe that she likes cats.
But so yeah, there's some you can't prove, some you can prove.
But, you know, even if somebody, if a woman says, I, I like cats and she has 15 cats, she may not actually like cats.
I mean, it's really tough to prove these things because she could hate cats, but be a masochist.
Or she might say she likes cats, but she inherited all of these cats from her crazy aunt or mother and she doesn't really like them, but she wants to honor their memory.
Or like, it's really tough.
You know, maybe with brain scans and stuff like that, you can figure these things out.
But it's really tough to prove preferences and some you can't, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So would you say that like kind of the way you use the term is like the way it's, I'd say, generally used in philosophy that it's mind-dependent?
Is that a fair characterization?
Well, but philosophy itself is mind-dependent.
Deductive reasoning is mind-dependent, but deductive reasoning gives you often like 100% certainty, you know, like all the immortal Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is immortal.
That's mind-dependent.
And it gives you 100% certainty.
So both objective and subjective are mind-dependent.
Now, objective reality is not mind-dependent for sure, but all concepts are mind-dependent.
So even the concept objective is mind-dependent, although its definition is not subjective.
Gotcha.
So, okay.
So then we're pretty much on agreement on this.
I think what I'm confused about is, you know, you've read Ayn Rand and you probably remember the distinction she makes.
She doesn't think it's a dichotomy between subjective and objective.
She believes it's a trichotomy between subjective, objective, and intrinsic.
And so the way she talks about objective is referring to like mind-dependent.
There is like a metaphysically objective, like you described, where it's like, like, I don't know, there's a rock in the road that would be in the road, you know, objectively, mind-independently.
That's like one way of using it.
But when she talks about like epistemology or even morality, she makes this trichotomy where she treats objective in an agent relative sense.
And it seems to me like that's kind of the way you're using it.
I'm curious what's your take on this and maybe why you don't use it, those terms that way.
I don't, I don't recall the intrinsic thing.
It's been, I don't know, probably 30 years since I read an introduction to objectivist epistemology.
Could you flesh that out a little bit and then I'll can tell you if it fits with what I'm saying?
Yeah, so she kind of just treats the word, and this is obviously a bit contentious in philosophy, but she treats the word subjective to just mean arbitrary.
And then she treats objective to mean like in accordance with reality, which is like measured by the mind.
And intrinsic refers to this thing having like a particular, this is where it gets tricky, but like property independent of like evaluation.
So like if we talk about like measurements, maybe a stick is 10 inches long.
You know, measurements are concepts.
Those are tools we mentally use to like understand the world, right?
And that is objectively the case, but it's objectively the case while we're still using our mind.
So you see how like a lot of other people might call this like some sort of subjective fact, depending on your view of what concepts are in the first place, obviously.
But intrinsicists might say that like that's an actual quality.
For me, to be honest with you, before I get myself into a rut here, it gets a little tricky because there's like, this gets into like the realist conversations.
And I'm still kind of learning about the like realist and anti-realist divisions when it comes to like concepts and properties of objects.
But to my general understanding, the Rand's division is like, if we're talking about morality, that there's like intrinsically something is good in virtue of it being good rather than being the relationship it has to you or others, et cetera.
Subjective would mean arbitrary and objective means in accordance with the facts of reality.
Hopefully that's okay.
So hang on.
So subjective means arbitrary.
Objective means accurate to the facts of reality.
And where is intrinsic again?
Intrinsic would be like, I think the best way I can describe it is the two examples, like intrinsic meaning that there's like a property that is like divorced from the mind.
Like if we're talking about like a stick being 10 inches, you know, Rand's concept or her idea of concept formation is, I think it falls under like anti-realism.
So she's like saying that we ascribe these properties mentally and construct concepts to them rather than having rather than having like the quality in something.
Like I think the best, sorry, this is a little tricky, but I think the best example.
I follow, but keep going.
I might have a better example.
So like Aristotle thought that like tableness was in the table.
Randa didn't think there was like tableness in the table.
She thought, you know, through measurement omission, we can come to a concept that was like not an intrinsic property of the table.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
Yeah.
So like this obviously plugs into both epistemology and morality.
Mind-Dependent Concepts00:05:22
So it gets a little tricky.
And I'm still trying to understand some of this stuff, but I do understand vaguely that distinction that like tableness isn't in the table.
We kind of look at it, look at the differences, the similarities, omit the measurements, et cetera, come to understanding, call it a word, call it a table, et cetera.
And that would still be objective, you know, even though this is all mind-dependent, right?
Like concepts are mind-dependent.
We would still call this objective.
Well, even the table is mind-dependent in that it takes a human being to create it.
Yeah, yeah, that too.
Or if there was like nobody around to recognize the table, is it technically a table or is it just an existent, if that makes any sense?
Right.
Well, this, it's, it's a fascinating topic, and I really do appreciate you bringing it up.
And I'm not going, it's a, it's a, it's an involved conversation, and we can certainly have it here.
I can just sort of do outlines here.
People can chime in with what they want to chat about, but it's a really fascinating conception.
What is what is the essence of something?
How do we know what something is?
I mean, it's a mind-bending thing.
And if you've been a parent and you've seen your kids developing concepts, it's incredible.
You know, you say to your kid, oh, that's a chair, right?
And you maybe talk to their, you, you point at their high chair, right?
And then when they want to get into the high chair, they'll say, chair, chair.
And you say, okay, so that's, that's the high chair.
Now, a high chair is a very singular kind of chair.
And it's, it's an incredible thing that the brain does.
And seeing it, because we don't usually remember this concept formation because it happens when we're when we're very young.
So we usually don't remember this concept formation very well.
But seeing it happen in a kid's mind is incredible.
So, you know, my daughter, she would say chair, chair when she wanted to go up in her high chair or not chair if she wanted to come down and all of that.
And then like this incredible, accurate lasso, you know, you see these guys thundering along on horseback and they're trying to lasso one particular steer, right, or cow or whatever it's simple.
And they just right out goes the lasso and they pick out just the right one and then they rope it up.
And it's an incredible skill.
The human brain, because you don't sit there and say, okay, well, you see this high chair, that's a chair, honey.
And this armchair, that's also a chair.
And a stool is kind of like a chair.
And then there's the dining room chairs.
And then there's the seats in the airplane.
They're also kind of like chairs.
And then there's the seats in the movie theater.
Like you don't say any of that stuff, but they know.
It's amazing.
They go to some different place and they'll see a chair.
They don't get on the bus, right?
You couldn't think of things in a sense that are in the category chairs that differ more, say, than a seat on a bus and a high chair.
And they say seat or chair or whatever it is, right?
And they understand what a table is.
And how the brain is able to so exactly differentiate different concepts from each other and incredibly accurately know what things are is wild because you don't teach it.
Like, I don't remember teaching my daughter all these words when she was learning like 20 words a day, 30 words a day.
It's just hoovers it up.
And I certainly don't remember sitting down with my daughter with the big book of chairs, right?
And saying, this is a chair, and this is a chair, and this is also a chair.
This can be used as a chair, but it's not a chair, right?
So, a kid might use a box to sit on, and they're using it as a chair, but they know it's not a chair, but they can use it as a chair.
And they say, I'm sitting on it like a chair.
Not this box is now a chair.
And then when I stop using it, it's a chair, it reverts to box, right?
So, just so people understand, it's an incredible process to observe just how incredibly nimble and accurate the brain is.
Now, man, my daughter's obviously very smart, but you know, things you can write with is another wild thing.
I mean, think of all the different things you can write with, right?
You've got your basic pen, you got your basic pencil, you can write with a tablet pen.
You can also write with your finger, you can take a stick out of a fire and you can write on concrete with the tip of the stick.
You can use a quill, a feather to write with.
You can write with a paintbrush, you can dip your finger in paint.
You can, like, it's the things you can write with things that are pens, things that are pencils, and some pens look really funky.
There are troll pens.
There are those, when I was a kid, those very coveted pens with the five different colors, and you sort of push down the top bar, and they all pens.
And you don't sit there with your kids and say, Well, this is also a pen.
This is a pencil that's like a pen, but not quite the same.
This one uses ink, this one uses graphite, and this you can use as a pen, but it's not really a pen.
Why Kids Understand Flight00:02:49
Like, you don't say any of that stuff, they just know.
It's an incredible process to see occurring, and it's mind-blowing.
You know, when you're an adult and you try to learn things, you know, it can kind of be a real pain in the butt, right?
And like, if you think, oh, I am going to learn kanji, I'm going to learn Mandarin.
It's just, it's a real pain in the butt.
So, seeing how the mind works when you are a parent and what your kids are able to do, absolutely staggering.
Just think of plants, right?
You don't go through the big book of trees and say, Well, this is a tree, and this is kind of like a shrub, and the difference is this, and you know, this is a bush, and the difference is this, and right?
They don't go through that process, but they know.
Or little, sorry, I won't overdo this, these examples, but little bottles, but little bodies of water, right?
There's a spill, there's a puddle, there's a broader stretch of water, there's a pond, there's a lake, there's an ocean, there's a little pool, you know, all of these, and kids don't get it wrong.
Kids don't jump in a puddle and say, I just stepped in a lake.
They don't say that.
They say, Let's go jump in the puddles.
Let's go jump in the puddles.
Children love bubbles.
I was actually just walking with my daughter not too long ago, and there was a kid in the mall with a bubble maker.
And she's like, Oh, I still love bubbles, right?
So, kids love bubbles, and so they and they love balloons, right?
Particularly helium balloons, because it's fascinating that this lighter-than-air stuff is there, right?
And kids love bubbles, and they understand that some things are lighter than air, but they intrinsically understand that they don't just throw random things in the air and hope that they float, right?
They don't grab every new object and put it in the air, see if it floats.
You know, they understand the difference between heavier and lighter than air, even though you don't sit there and go through, well, these things are lighter than air, and these things are heavier than air, right?
And, you know, they see birds, right?
And they, they, you know, kids will, particularly little boys, they love running at all the birds, all the birds go flying.
They're like, oh, I'm like, like a dinosaur.
And they understand that things fly, and they understand that things fly by flapping their wings.
And kids, of course, will run around flapping their arms, but they're imitating birds, but they don't get frustrated that they can't fly.
Like you don't sit there with kids after you take them to some, I don't know, some aviary or whatever, or just being around birds.
They don't get really mad.
It's like, well, I keep flapping my arms, but I can't fly.
My brother and I, of course, like most kids, we tried to piece together a parachute.
Eyes See, Brain Understands00:04:37
We got a bunch of newspapers and a bunch of seller tape or scotch tape, and we taped it all together.
And we tried it with various things.
We were going to jump out of the second floor window because we're boys, right?
We can jump out of the second floor window.
Fortunately, we tested it with smaller things and it all just folded up and they got destroyed.
So then we didn't end up doing that.
And so just, I don't want to over-harp on the subject, but I just want people to sort of understand the absolute glow and glory and accuracy of the human brain in an untutored state is wild.
And philosophers generally wrestle with, I mean, if you're going to deal with epistemology, how on earth do children assemble this raw sense data, right?
We don't see the world, right?
The brain does not see the world.
The brain receives electrical impulses from the eye and converts them into sight, right?
The brain is not seeing anything.
The brain doesn't have eyes.
In fact, the immune system has to be tricked into thinking the eyes don't exist.
Otherwise, it would attack them as foreign objects and blind everyone.
And so you get this storm of pixels.
You get this storm of the matrix.
You get this storm of sensation coming into you that gets almost perfectly and automatically sorted into the correct categories.
It's freaking wild how all of this occurs.
And when you think about it, it's a deeply fascinating and wild topic.
So I'm sorry to go sort of semi-poetic, but is that the kind of thing that we're talking about here?
How on earth do we know all of this stuff so well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, it's actually kind of funny that like, as I'm reading like the book, it's a really complex process when you break it down.
But like, like you said, like the mind of a child isn't thinking of like the stuff written in, you know, introduction to objectivist epistemology in order to like induce a table, right?
Like they kind of just observe enough instances of a table and the mind does a lot of, I don't want to say automatic work.
Maybe you can call it subconscious.
Well, no, it's automatic in that it the processing of reality occurs long before language.
Yeah.
So it is, it is a wild thing.
And philosophers have wrestled with how do we know this stuff?
How do we know?
And I would say it's automatic.
And there's nothing wrong with automatic.
Automatic doesn't mean wrong.
I mean, I don't know how my eyes fundamentally work.
I mean, I get the general theory, but that they just, I open my eyes and I see stuff, right?
So philosophers have kind of given themselves this task of trying to figure out.
And the ancient ones, of course, were Aristotle and Plato.
So what Plato said, roughly paraphrasing, was Plato said, well, how do we know what a table is?
Well, we see a perfect table before we're born.
And then when we are born into this realm or our soul enters into this fleshly realm, then we see a table and it evokes a sort of primal pre-birth memory of the perfect table.
And that's how we know what a table is.
Now, Aristotle said, no, come on, there's no perfect world of forms.
And he made a whole bunch of arguments against it.
And for those of you who want more on this, I've got two presentations, one on Plato, one on Aristotle that you can get at fdrpodcast.com.
And of course, if you're donors at freedomain.com slash donate, if you become a subscriber, you get the 23-part Introduction to Philosophy series, which does both, of course, Plato and Aristotle.
But Aristotle, the question is, how do we know the essence of a thing?
How do we know the essence of a tree?
How do we know the essence of a bush or a cloud?
Or like you say, oh, those are clouds.
Look, mommy, there's a lovely cloud up in the sky.
And then the next day, you see different colored clouds with completely different shapes, or you see everything's completely overcast and you still know they're clouds.
You don't look up and say, what the hell is that swirly thing?
Even though you've never seen that shape before.
And of course, every time we look at a cloud, it's a slightly different color and it changes color even while we look at it.
So how do we know?
And Plato said that things have an essence and the essence is embedded within the thing, if I remember rightly.
It's been a while since I've looked at the stuff.
And how do we know these things is a really, a really deep and important philosophical question.
So just let me know if it's sort of set the stage correctly.
Is that what we're doing?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Subjective Value Fluctuations00:15:58
The reason I brought it up, because the last thing I saw from you that made me think of it was you had tweeted something about value being subjective.
This is like in reference to like the subjective theory of value, obviously.
And I had a problem with it because I thought, well, surely he doesn't really think that if like we kind of define the terms the way we have been discussing them in this discussion.
And I know amongst like libertarian circles, we tend to just like say this, but I think it's often because the Austrians just have a really bad sense of epistemology.
You know, it's filled with all sorts of Kantian poisoning.
And like also Rand's theory of like the trichotomy is obviously a very, it's not a very well-known theory of epistemology, right?
In philosophy.
Well, hang on.
What did you, sorry, when I said value is subjective, what did you get out of that?
Maybe that it was just mind-dependent.
But like, I thought maybe you're making like the dichotomy we were talking about.
No, no, the word value.
I get, I get the subjective part.
What did you think I meant by the word value?
Oh, value.
Probably something along the like terms of like either desire or maybe even not the way Rand defines value, like something you seek to gain or keep.
No, economic value.
See, I don't understand the distinction that people tend to make there.
Like, is that not something you seek to gain or keep?
Like if you value something economically well, I value it.
What it's saying is that, you know, what is the value of a painting?
Well, the value is not embedded in the thing itself, economic value.
Like there's no 10 million number that like it's $10 million, right?
I was just reading this article where this guy named, I can't remember the actor's name, but he played Furio in Mr. Ponytail Furio in The Sopranos.
Apparently he's quite an accomplished painter and art collector, and he got a painting and spent $140,000 restoring it.
And he found out that it's worth $10 million, right?
Okay, well, would I pay $10 million if I had it for a painting?
No, I would not.
Would a billionaire who absolutely loves that painting pay $10 million for it?
Yeah, maybe.
I guess so.
I mean, somebody would.
I guess that's why it's valued at that.
Although I assume most art valuing is just money laundering.
But a value is subjective.
If somebody is a religious adherent and every religious ritual that they need to do involves having cinnamon on hand, then they're going to, they would have great, place great value in cinnamon and there would be cinnamon in their pocket at all times and so on.
And they'd made sure they never ran out.
Whereas I don't particularly care for the spiced cinnamon, so I don't really have it around.
So what I mean of cinnamon, right?
Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, yeah.
So like in objectivism, we kind of, rather than calling this subjective, we'd hold that it's agent relative.
Like it is objectively true relative to that particular agent.
Like that I want cinnamon.
It is true.
Hang on, hang on.
Hang on.
Slow.
Slow down.
It is objectively true.
What is objectively true?
That like I desire this.
Maybe I'd trade, you know, X amount of dollars for this particular thing.
Maybe I really like it.
Like those are all true statements.
Those are objectively true statements.
No, no, the only thing that I'm talking about with value is the dollars that change hands.
I'm not talking about things that people like.
So when I say value is subjective, I'm not saying values, like morals are subjective.
Obviously, my whole goal has been to make those objective.
And I'm not saying what people like, because what people like is anything could anything can be claimed, right?
I can say, I absolutely love, worship, and revere Caravaggio, right?
And maybe I don't have any Caravaggio paintings.
It's like, well, I don't want to dismirch the beauty of Caravaggio by having him in my mere home.
I'm only going to visit Caravaggio's paintings in a museum.
But what we do know in terms of what is objective is how much someone is willing to pay for something.
Right.
So I could say, I value a 15-bedroom house with two pickleball courts and a helicopter pet.
Right.
And I can say that, but I don't have one, obviously.
Right.
And I wouldn't, even if I had the money, wouldn't pay for one.
But it would be nice.
Like if somebody left me one of those things and let's say the property taxes were paid up for the next 20 years for some reason, I mean, I doubt I'd live in a place like that.
But whatever, we can always think of something, right?
But so as far as what people value, how much they value something, the only way that you know what they actually value is what they're willing to pay money for.
And so in the moment, like if what's the value of a house?
Well, of course, you know, the value, let's say it's a million dollar house, right?
I think it's a million dollar house, but you can only sell it for $750,000.
So what is the value of the house?
It's not a million dollars.
It's not $500,000.
The value of the house in the moment of exchange is $750,000.
That value is subjective.
Let me make sure I understand because I don't, maybe I missed if you like explicitly stated what you mean by the word subjective, but if I'm understanding correctly, do you mean just like what one is willing to trade for something?
Or by sorry, by value?
Is that what you mean?
Like what one is willing to do?
That's why I said it's economic value.
It's economic value.
What is the economic value of a pencil?
Well, if you try and sell an average pencil for a million dollars, are you going to have any takers?
Yeah, probably not.
Well, no, nobody's going to buy a pencil for a million dollars, right?
If you sell, even if you try and sell a pencil for $10, well, you know, if you say a pencil, $10, people say, why?
What's so special about this pencil, right?
Like, because pencils are like, I don't know, 10 or 20 or 30 cents, usually, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you go play mini golf.
They'll hand them out for free for your car with your cards, right?
So this is free, but sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I was just going to say, like, the sense of value that you're using, wouldn't that still perfectly be fine with the definition I'm giving, which is something that you seek to gain or keep, you know, you seek to gain or keep, I don't know, the pencil, right?
And willing to trade something of lesser value to make $10 or maybe a million dollars in this instance, right?
Like it seems like those definitions are compatible with one another.
Well, no, because when I say value is subjective, I'm talking about the moment of exchange.
So let's say I pay 10 cents for a pencil, then we know that the pencil is worth 10 cents to me, right?
Is that fair?
Or I have determined, right?
I have determined that 10 cents is worth buying the pencil, right?
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Now, what is the value of the pencil to me if it's sitting in a drawer upstairs?
Maybe I've completely forgotten about it or whatever it is, right?
As often happens, right?
So I'm keeping the pencil.
In other words, I'm not selling it.
But what is its value to me?
It's unknown.
Because if somebody came up to my house and said, I will give you $1,000 for a pencil, then I would go and find that pencil, right?
And I would sell it for $1,000, right?
But what is the value of the pencil when it's sitting in my drawer?
It's unknown because I'm not trying to sell it.
Maybe there's been a shortage of pencils, or maybe the currency has been devalued and now pencils are a dollar, right?
Or anything like that, right?
So what is the value?
Like I'm keeping the pencil.
I'm not throwing it out.
I'm not whatever, right?
But what's the value of the pencil to me if it's sitting in a drawer and I've kind of half forgotten about it or maybe forgotten about it?
It's unknown because you don't know what I would sell it for.
So the value of the pencil is unknown.
The value of the pencil is determined in the moment of exchange.
And all you can say is last summer when I bought the pencil for 10 cents, I valued the pencil at 10 cents.
And also we know that whoever sold me the pencil values it at 10 cents.
So we know that the pencil was worth 10 cents in the moment of exchange.
So value is subjective because it is the price of something is the subjective preference for it manifested in the moment of exchange.
Okay.
I'll have to think about it a little bit, but I think I kind of get it.
I think so value, value is based upon desire, right?
So if you're dying of thirst, you'll give your entire life savings for a bottle of water.
If you've just had three bottles of water and you really need to pee, you would not pay anything for a bottle of water.
So there's no intrinsic value in the bottle of water.
It is depending upon preference and need and resources and negotiation and so on.
There's no objective price to water.
And if we're using subjective in this context differently than we usually use it, what do you mean by objective in this context?
Well, a lot of places you go, you can buy a bottle of water for a dollar, like in some convenience store or something like that.
Have you seen that?
Yeah.
Okay.
However, in New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina, there were people who were selling bottles of water for $10 or $20.
Does that make sense?
Yep.
So what is the price or value of a bottle of water?
Well, it's not objective.
It has to do with scarcity.
It has to do with purity.
It has to do with people's desires and preferences.
It has to do with the last time they drank water, whether they're thirsty, whether they anticipate being easily able to get water in the future.
So it's a huge fluctuation that cannot be objectively determined ahead of time, which is, I mean, if anyone could determine the value of things in the future, they would own the whole planet because they just trade and buy and sell and all that kind of stuff.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it's just the confusing part is the way these terms change once we get to these economic discussions because like I would still say like the price of a water bottle is objective because if I'm looking at the price of a water bottle, I see, oh, it's $1.50 or something.
Then it is the case.
Well, no, hang on.
Hang on.
Hang on.
That's not the price.
That's the asking price.
The price, like if you've you've I don't know if you've ever bought a condo or a house, but you know, you you go and you say this house is listed at half a million dollars, right?
This price is is anyone going to pay half a million dollars for that house?
No, not at all.
No, so um, if you go to uh sushi, I like sushi myself because you know, I love rolling those dice with those parasites, but uh if if you're at a mall and you say it's it's $12 for this tray of sushi, and let's say the mall closes at six o'clock, what is the price at 530?
You know, it'll definitely change, but yeah, it goes down to like half-price sushi after after 5.30.
Like, because they can't keep it, right?
Because it's sushi.
So, they're just they're either going to sell it at half price or they're going to or they're going to throw it out.
Yeah.
If you've ever been to like video game stores, sometimes you can see the price has been crossed out.
$40, $30, $10, right?
And so they're changing the price because nobody's willing to pay more.
And so if you say the bottle is worth a dollar and it's like, well, yeah, if you want a bottle of water, you're willing to pay a dollar.
Obviously, so what he's saying is this is what I'll sell it for.
That doesn't mean that's what it's worth because if nobody's going to buy it, he's going to have to change it to 75 cents or 50 cents or stop bothering to sell it all altogether.
Yeah, yeah, I hear you.
Okay.
But you are, and I'm just curious, like, why, why you dislike this or want to push back?
Because you should trust your instincts if there's something to push back on.
Yeah, I'm just tempted to say that like, you know, the price of a water bottle is objective, even if it fluctuates for a particular circumstance, you know, or the sushi, like you said, at a particular time of the day, they drop that price.
But like, I mean, it is objectively, you know, I don't know, $5 for sushi at that point.
Or maybe the water bottle is.
Well, but hang on, but be fair, right?
Did that say price is subjective?
No.
So it's a little bit confusing.
You said value.
It's a little confusing.
Yeah.
So what you value is subjective.
Your preference for a bottle of water, does it go up and down depending on circumstances?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it can't be objective if it oscillates, right?
That's what I'm having trouble with because I don't see why it couldn't be.
Why what couldn't?
Well, sorry, why the value couldn't be constant?
No, no, not constant, but objective.
Like if something fluctuates in general, like we wouldn't say this about like the height of something, if like something's reducing and increasing in height within certain different, you know, different timeframes, we wouldn't say, oh, it's not objectively 10 feet tall.
Like maybe at a given instance it is.
Wait, wait, hang on, slow down.
Slow down.
You raise ahead and I'm still trying to.
No, you're good.
I try to give a weird like image there.
I should probably pick something like that you could like really visualize.
I don't know what would be a good analogy here.
Say I'm, I don't know, boiling some water and as it's evaporating, there's less water.
There is a fluctuating amount of water, but we wouldn't say that it's not objective because it's fluctuating how much water is in there.
Like at any given instance, we could measure the amount, right?
Despite the fact that I'm just saying I'm boiling a pot of water or something.
This is just a random analogy.
I could probably think of others, but at any given instance in which we measure the volume or the amount of water in there, we could say objectively that it is this amount of water, despite the fact that the actual amount is fluctuating at any given instance.
Obviously, this could be fluctuating at any given instance, like way quicker than the price of something.
But the fact that something fluctuates.
No, no, no, the speed is fluctuation.
But the water is not evaporating or not evaporating based upon subjective preference, but on objective physics.
So the fact that something fluctuates, I mean, if you look at the ocean surface, it's constantly fluctuating, right?
We call them waves.
But we don't say that the ocean surface is subjective, even though it's constantly changing, right?
I think about this like every now and then you look at a picture of the ocean.
Like I saw some picture of a guy standing in front of the ocean from 1962 the other day.
And you can't help but think, at least I can't help but think that all of the waves in the background, it will never occur that way ever again.
Like every time you look at the ocean, that's a unique pattern of waves that will never happen again.
It's just kind of a little sort of idle thought that I have from time to time.
So yes, things can fluctuate, but that doesn't mean that that's the same as a subjective preference.
Yeah.
Because it's not like Poseidon is subjectively preferring, like if there's a tsunami, right?
What did they used to say?
They used to say, oh, the sea gods are angry.
Poseidon is angry.
Right.
And he sent this wave.
But we know that that's not the case, right?
It's not that the, you know, we say the sea is angry.
What was that line from Seinfeld?
The sea was angry that day, my friends.
And so we know that if there's a tsunami, that's simply a matter of physics, right?
There's been some dislodging thing deep down in the ocean or something like that.
And there has been some giant wave is generated from some seismic underwater activity and so on.
So yeah, I mean, waves fluctuate, clouds fluctuate, but they don't fluctuate according to any subjective preference.
They fluctuate according to laws of physics.
And the weather fluctuates, of course.
We know that temperature fluctuates.
I mean, our heartbeat, right, out and in, fluctuating.
Value Is Subjective00:15:45
But these are not due to subjective preferences, but objective laws of physics.
How much you want a bottle of water is going to change quite a lot from time to time.
In fact, there may be times when you would love to drink a bottle of water, but you won't.
Right.
So if I go fishing and it's like early morning and I'm like, oh, I'm thirsty.
It's like, yeah, but I'm going out on a little boat without a bathroom.
I'm not going to drink the water because I don't want to have to pee when I'm out there.
So there are times where I'm really thirsty and would like to drink a bottle of water, but I'm not going to buy one.
Right.
So there's just so many considerations.
And the reason, I mean, do you know why the Austrians are kind of hung up on this?
I'm not certain.
I mean, like I said, I know Rand's like trichotomy is rather strange in philosophy.
It's not something like widely accepted.
So I don't expect them to really latch on to knock.
So the reason why, I don't want to speak for all the Austrians, so this is just my...
Oh, wait, Mary.
May I take a shot here, actually?
I think I know what you're saying.
It's because it's like a pushback against the Marxist idea that value is objective, which they actually mean mind independent.
They actually believe that through the labor theory and value, that things are imbued with this almost metaphysically real quality of having value that's like independent of one's preferences.
If I'm not mistaken, it's kind of a response to that, isn't it?
Well, but more, yeah, I think that's true.
But more importantly, and I'm sorry to say that's kind of pompous, but in a more practical sense, what are the Austrians pushing back against when they say value is subjective?
If I had to take another shot, maybe price controls and stuff, like if they want to central plan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So people will say this is overpriced.
And they try price gouging, right?
You've heard of that kind of stuff, like price gouging.
This is overpriced.
This needs to be subsidized because it's an essential human good and blah, right?
And so the Austrians are saying value is subjective and therefore central planning will always fail because central planning has to assume that some values are objective in order to plan and meet for them and so on, right?
Yeah.
So if it would be like saying love is completely subjective and therefore all arranged marriages are wrong.
Because arranged marriages would be to say, look, there are some things that are, you know, this guy is a good provider.
He's tall.
He's good looking.
He seems nice and she's pleasant and intelligent and a good conversationalist.
So they're trying to say with arranged marriages that we know better and we can do your marriage for you.
Now, if you were to say love is subjective and arbitrary and so on, then that would be a way of pushing back against arranged marriages, if that makes sense.
You can't have central planning because value is subjective.
And also, and also because people will lie their asses off about what they value.
I mean, there have been studies where they say to people, they say to men, what do you value in a woman?
And then they say to women, what do you value in a man?
And then they may track them on dating apps.
They may track them on who they go out with.
What is the relationship between what they say they want and what they actually do?
Are we still on?
Yeah, sorry.
I didn't know if that was like a rhetorical question by that.
Yeah.
So what do you think the relationship is between what people say they want and what they actually want?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, like, it's something that you need to verify via action, right?
Like if you see the statement being researched.
No, I get it.
But what, okay, I'll answer it then.
The relationship is very low.
The relationship between what people say they want and what they actually do is very low.
And so people can say anything.
Or if you say, you know, one of the foundational fantasies behind hate speech laws is that there are some things that are objectively offensive and wrong and bad, but offensive is a subjective perspective, but it's offensive.
And the other thing, of course, is that people lie, right?
So if you have hate speech laws where people have these crazy ones in England, which is something like, if it causes offense, upset, or anxiety.
I mean, how do you measure that?
Are you going to take someone's heart rate?
I mean, like, it's like this weird remote lie detector test and lie detector tests are notoriously unreliable.
It's why they're not allowed in court.
But if you say, we are going to charge someone with a crime if somebody else is offended or anxious by what they post, then all that will happen is people will say, I'm offended and upset by what this person posts, even if they're not, just to harm or punish them.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
So if you say to people, do you want a big house to live in?
What would most people say?
I would think yes, yeah.
Yeah, sure.
It'd be great to have a big house to live in.
Okay.
So Marxists use that to say we need to build big houses for everyone, right?
But the Austrians would say, well, sure, everyone can say what they want.
Everybody would like a Lamborghini and a big house and, I don't know, some mensa supermodel wife or whatever.
Like everybody, it's a wish list, a fantasy list, right?
Okay.
But what is revealed is not what people say they want, but what they actually do.
So if somebody wants a big house, then they have to go and work to make the money to buy a big house and they have to trade other things, right?
So the problem with the value is objective, it's it becomes a wish list.
Everybody wants great health care and a big house and they want a reliable car and they want all it's just a wish list.
But of course, economics is how do we allocate nature's scarce resources?
Well, you can't externally do that for people, right?
So if some guy says, I want a really hot girlfriend, and he just stays in the basement, is fat, doesn't exercise, you know, doesn't make any money, and doesn't go out and talk to people, then we would say, okay, he says he wants a hot girlfriend or something, but he doesn't want to do the work necessary for it.
And so he values sitting in the basement and eating Cheetos more than going to the gym and talking to girls.
So that's his reveal.
Now, we might encourage him to do that.
You should change your ways or whatever, right?
But that's his sort of revealed preference.
And it's really, it really is important because everyone says, well, the sick people should get health care, right?
You know, this is sort of this unicorn fairies, tinkerbell magical thinking that not only women, but a lot of women have.
You know, we got to feed the, we've got to feed the hungry, we got to house the homeless, we've got to heal the sick and blah, And of course, I mean, I think a rational economic perspective is, first of all, if you want the sick to get healthcare, you should become a doctor and work for free.
Because people can say whatever they want, but it is in revealed preferences, right?
So there's this controversy since the Grammys with Billie Eilish, right?
That sort of dead-eyed witch of half-satanic warbling.
So she says there's nobody illegal on stolen land.
And there's some tribe that apparently has a historical claim to the land she built her house on.
And now they're working to try and, because, you know, there's lawyers, I'm sure it's sort of tongue-in-cheek has said, well, now that she's admitted that she's on stolen land, you can take her house and they're going to try and evict her and all this kind of stuff, right?
Amazing, isn't it?
Well, but that is a process of if you say these things, then you must mean them.
And if you mean them, there must be consequences.
And if you say these things, there's nobody illegal on stolen land and you're on stolen land, then you should give up your house.
And if you don't want to give up your house, then shut the F up about the borders, right?
Because she's got big walls all around her house.
And, you know, there have been a couple of reporters who go by to try and talk to her and so on.
So she can just say whatever she wants, but it's what people do that matters.
Like I can say, I want to lose 10 pounds and get abs.
But if I don't diet and exercise, I don't really want that.
I'm just saying stuff.
And so people can say whatever they value.
If someone says, well, the poor should get free health care, fantastic.
Then that person should work very hard, save up a lot of money, give it to charity and set up a hospital wing and all of that.
Then I'm like, okay, fantastic.
But if people just say stuff but don't act on it, then they're just, they're fakers.
They're virtue signalers, right?
You know, these, I'm sure you've seen these things on YouTube and other places where in Europe or other places, some guy goes up to some European boomer and says, do you think that we should take in migrants or refugees?
And they're, yes, yes, absolutely.
We should take in migrants and refugees.
And then they say, oh, good.
I have Abdullah here.
He needs a place to stay.
What's your address?
And what do people say?
Okay, you don't do rhetorical.
So what people say is, no, I can't.
My mother lives with me.
My place is too small.
I'm going on vacation.
I'm not available.
And there's not one person who says, we, right, we should take in refugees and migrants.
And then when people say, well, they should come and live at your house, they immediately say no, right?
So there is the stated preference and the revealed preference.
And you can't run society by stated preferences because people can say whatever shite they want to, and they do.
People just wobble and listen that and wish list.
And so, what we know about is what people actually do.
So, if I had spent my entire life saying, oh man, there should be more philosophy in the public square.
Philosophy should be more rational and practical.
It should help with people's lives and blah, But I just sat in the basement eating Cheetos and watching streaming services, then people would say, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, shut up.
Like, just stop talking because it's just a bunch of noise.
And it's how people, you know, paralyze themselves with dreams and wishes.
Like, I remember when I wrote my first book and when I wrote my first sort of serious novel, which was called Revolutions, which you can get a hold of at freedom.com slash books.
So I wrote this novel.
And then, you know, people would say to me, hey, what did you do with your summer?
Like when I went to university.
And I said, oh, yeah, I wrote my first book.
And people are like, oh, man, I've always wanted to write a book.
Oh, I've had this idea for a book for like 20 years.
Or I've got a couple of notes and I've got, I even wrote a couple of chapters.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like if people say, I want to write, I want to do this.
I want to do that.
I mean, there's even cards you can get in stores which say, so I haven't written much lately.
Neither is Shakespeare.
Right.
So when people say a bunch of stuff, right?
They'll just say a bunch of stuff.
But to be an empiricist is to say to people that if you're not acting on it, it's not real.
And so people can say something is overpriced, right?
People can say, what, water, a bottle of water for $5, that's overpriced.
But if somebody walks in and pays $5 for that bottle of water, is it overpriced?
No.
Overpriced just means I don't want to pay as much.
Now, if there's artificial stimulants like immigrants for housing or whatever it is, then that's sort of a different matter.
But I guess some people are willing to pay.
So if somebody's willing to pay someone for it, it's not overpriced because value is subjective.
I don't value the bottle of water at $5.
Somebody else does.
It's not overpriced.
Right.
So because people try to say there's some objective price that's moral or immoral, good or bad, right or wrong.
So price gouging.
And this is where rent control comes from.
The rent is just too damn high.
There's no way that single bedroom apartment should be $2,000 a month.
It's like, but if somebody's willing to pay for it, then that's what it's worth.
There's no overpriced.
There's no central planning.
There's no price gouging.
There's no price controls.
Price controls, as you know, just lead to shortages.
So when I say economic value is subjective, it's saying that there is no central planner that can accurately gauge the practical, not the theoretical, because, you know, everyone says, yeah, should the poor get healthcare?
Should people who can't pay for their own health care get healthcare?
Well, everyone's going to say yes.
Of course.
Yes.
Oh, yes.
Because who's going to want to say no, right?
Because you say should, right?
Should is fantasy land.
What if they do?
The objectivists would say no.
I'm sorry?
I said, I think the objectivists would say no.
And they would say that they haven't merited it or something.
No, not at all.
The objectivists would say if people want to give subsidized healthcare to the poor, nobody should stand in their way.
In that sense, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But like, they wouldn't say they shouldn't get it.
They would say nobody should be forced to provide it, right?
Ayn Rand's sort of famous answer to should we help the poor?
And he said, in a free society, no one's going to stop you from helping the poor.
Yeah.
Well, a mixed bag, just because it's also not virtuous to maybe like help somebody who's like enabled their own destruction per se and may continue doing so, you know?
So it's obviously mixed bags.
Some people have unfortunate circumstances for reasons beyond their own control.
Well, and there's this belief, of course, as you know, this is part of the magical thinking that people have about economics, which, I mean, they get in their own life.
They don't get in society.
It's partly bad education.
Is people say, should the poor get health care?
And the real question, and I think this is what you're coming at, the real question that I would say is, should somebody who's caused their own health problems get health care at the expense of someone who did not cause their own health care problems?
So if somebody has caused, like they're a smoker, they're obese, they don't exercise, and they have lots of health problems, should they be given health care at the expense of other people who have exercised and eaten well and who did not cause their own health problems?
Because that's the reality of it.
The reality is not should the sick and poor get healthcare.
It's should health care be denied to people who are unlucky and be provided to people who've caused their own health issues.
Because that's by and large what actually happens.
Because the vast majority of health issues are self-inflicted.
And it is a very small percentage of people, like a couple of percentage of people who consume half their entire healthcare resources.
So it's the lazy, the obese, the smokers, the people who don't apply sunscreen, the people who don't just go for basic walks, the people who stuff their faces.
So a small percentage of people are consuming vast numbers of healthcare, which means healthcare is unavailable to other people.
And so the real question is not should the poor get free health care?
Healthcare Inequality Scan00:02:58
Because that's just magical thinking.
Because health care is not like oxygen.
If someone's getting it, someone else isn't getting it.
If you've ever had to wait in ER, it's because some people are coming through with heart attacks and whatever you're dealing with hopefully isn't that serious.
So healthcare is provided to some people at the expense of others.
I saw this terrible video of this woman.
There's an indication she has a brain tumor and she can't get a scan for 13 months.
Why can't she get a scan for 13 months?
Because there's a bunch of other people.
Good lord.
Yeah, there's a bunch of other people who are getting all these scans.
And she did not cause her.
She's not even a smoker.
She's young.
She didn't cause her own brain tumor.
So, you know, the people who've taken care of their health should go to the front of the line.
I mean, so it's not a question of who should or shouldn't get health care.
The question is, should people who've shot themselves in the foot get health care in advance of people who just got shot randomly through no fault of their own?
Like, should people who've shot themselves get healthcare in advance of people who just accidentally got shot because they went hunting with Dick Cheney or something?
So anyway, yeah, the point is to say that the free market is a manifestation of a billion uncalculable, incalculable variables of subjective preference that is constantly shifting.
And therefore, central planning is a complete delusion because central planning is based upon the absolute fantasy that value can be ascertained for the entire country in Washington or Havana or Moscow or wherever, which it just cannot.
It cannot at all be.
And it's also saying that people, central planners, can evaluate what people need based upon what they say they want.
But people are going to say anything.
The only thing that you know for sure that someone values is what they're willing to pay for in the moment of transaction.
That's when you know what someone values.
You have no idea because they can say anything, right?
You know, this six foot four, this six pack and six figure income and I want a man in finance.
And it's like, yeah, whatever, right?
The question, you know, who you actually date, that's what you want.
Now, you may want more, but are you willing to work to get it, right?
And of course, if a woman wants a truly high-quality, high-value man, then she needs to study what high-quality, high-value men are looking for, and she needs to be able to provide that.
She needs to move in those circles.
She needs to make herself valuable.
She wants a guy who works hard, so she better not be lazy and so on.
And it's one of the things that attracted me to my wife is she's very hard.
I'm very hardworking.
And, you know, I had an hour or two free this afternoon, so I'm diving into doing a show, which is great.
And I really appreciate your questions.
But, you know, so you say, I want these things.
Like, are you willing to actually work to get them?
Psychologist's Subjectivity00:08:52
And so on.
Sorry, you were going to say?
Yeah, I know I've taken up a good chunk of the show.
If I may ask one more without hopefully opening a whole can of worms, I just wanted to know.
Well, we have to answer the original question because we got, it's fine.
It's not like a sideline.
It's a very important question, but we haven't got to the how to how does the human brain conceptualize so well.
But go ahead.
Well, no, no, the original question was how you use the terms, but like we got into that.
But no, it's been pretty awesome to understand how like you have reversed the terms and stuff and the whole induction thing.
But the thing I was going to ask because of kind of some of the things you just said, hopefully if this is not opening a whole can of worms, would you say that something like psychology is a subjective science then?
The thing is, so much of it has to be verified.
Or is so much of it like in order to be verified would be like very difficult, right?
Like extremely important.
I mean, that is a whole, that is a whole can of worms.
And I would say I've got a whole theory of mental health, which is on FDRpodcast.com just do a search for mental actually.
Yeah, I have actually a bunch of questions about that.
Maybe I'll have to ask you.
Yeah, so you could go listen to those.
But very briefly, if your mind is in alignment with reality, with objective reality, I would consider that mentally healthy.
But the problem is that puts you in conflict with other people who are deluded.
Right.
So when I was talking about race and IQ, I was in full accordance with the objective science, but then I collided with the Marxists who want to use ethnic tensions to destabilize society.
So, you know, it's the old saying, it is no mark of mental health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
Right.
So as far as mental health goes, we have, and I just did a show on this kind of yesterday, so it should be out in the next day or two.
But the issue is that the more you align with reality, the more you are attacked by the deluded.
And so psychology is a very tricky discipline because you want people to align with reality, but you also have to tell them ahead of time that if they align with reality, people will hate them with a burning biblical, deep-seated hatred and passion, right?
And so it's tricky.
In a healthy society, then alignment with reality would also be alignment with social approval.
And we'd get along with the people who were in society.
And so it would be a much more objective discipline.
But right now, let's say you come from a really dysfunctional family and you go to psychology.
And this is certainly becoming a much more, I was sort of talking about this last night, but this is becoming much more acceptable in that in 2008, when I was first attacked for talking about the voluntary family, it was a complete hysteria.
Like I was written up in a wide variety of newspapers as this evil cult leader and so on.
And now, you know, 18 years later, it's widely talked about in the mainstream.
It's openly discussed.
There are shows on it and there's no mention of any cult stuff or anything like that.
And I mean, that's pretty rapid.
That's pretty rapid.
The voluntary family was considered, you know, evil cult behavior, you know, less than 20 years ago.
And now it is openly discussed as a completely valid and healthy strategy for psychological well-being.
So that's changed enormously.
And of course, you know, it's not like I will ever get any credit for that, except maybe a generation or two from now, because people just think ideas float in from the ether, right?
So people are just shocked and appalled and so on.
And so psychology right now is really on a balance beam, right?
Which is, yeah, you want to attune yourself to reality.
So let's say in psychology, you would probably say being honest is good.
You know, pathological lying is bad for your health.
So being honest is good.
And, you know, if you are a staunch capitalist, like I've been for 45 years, if you're a staunch capitalist and you go to these Marxist indoctrination camps of higher education, should you be honest?
You know, you go to the school psychologist, the university psychologist, you say, well, I'm being honest about what I think and feel and I'm being honest about these facts and arguments and I keep getting attacked and failed, right?
What is the psychologist supposed to say to you?
You get a mixed bag depending on the psychologist, man.
It's really unfortunate, isn't it?
Well, yeah.
I mean, the psychologist is either going to say, well, if you tell the truth, you're going to crash out of university.
So is a psychologist going to say, look, it's unfair.
You should be judged according to the merits of your argument, not according to your alignment with the university professor's ideology.
Good luck finding a psychologist that'll say something like that to you.
Well, sure, sure, because I mean, there are a lot of, you know, lady leftists in the psychological profession now in particular, right?
Like three quarters of, and sometimes like 90% of psychologists in undergrad are women.
It's nuts.
Which is left-leaning, period, you know?
Yeah.
So, well, left-leaning generally means female.
Just, I mean, obviously, right?
This is the whole thing is just female capture of institutions.
So, but it's not women per se.
It's women with plus power, right?
So the problem is not women.
The problem is women plus power.
So what is a psychologist supposed to say?
Is the psychologist supposed to say, well, listen, you should go against your deeply held values and virtues and conform with people who want you dead in order to get marks?
Well, so what is a psychologist supposed to say these days?
It's difficult.
i'm not sure i mean obviously like i mean if if um if you have a very abusive grandmother you know she just was horrible to you and and abusive and and then she's dying but but you stand to inherit a million dollars right i mean I mean, I mean, you say, well, I want to be honest with my grandmother.
And, of course, the psychologist will say, I mean, what would the psychologist say?
The psychologist could say, well, you can be honest with your grandmother, but it's probably going to cost you a million dollars.
Or, well, you should be diplomatic with your grandmother.
Oh, so I should lie.
I should fake and pretend to feel something I don't feel, which is affection and respect for my grandmother, right?
It's really tough.
And this isn't even getting into the end of stuff.
And like, you name it, right?
And so these are all, you know, psychologists are really kind of bound up these days, and they have a very tough time with directness and honesty.
You know, like if a young person goes to a psychologist and says, I'm really depressed because of the national debt, and we're all going to die from global warming in the next 10 years.
What is the psychologist going to say?
I mean, is the psychologist supposed to say, Yeah, you've been really hosed?
I mean, you were born into a million dollars of debt and unfunded liabilities, and you know, my generation really shafted you guys.
You have every right to be enraged.
We sold you into slavery.
What's she going to say?
Is she going to validate that?
Or is she going to say, you know, come on, the global warming stuff?
You know, if someone comes in and says, I'm being hunted by invisible space aliens, the psychologist would say, I assume something like, no, you're not, right?
Or, you know, the psychologist would say to the patient, you know, tell me more about what you think and feel.
But the psychologist, I assume, would be working from the position that you're not being hunted by invisible space aliens, right?
So it's a false belief, distorted thinking.
So the psychologist would attempt to relieve you of your irrational fear of invisible space aliens.
Does that sort of make sense?
Oh, so sorry.
Yeah, you don't do rhetorical questions.
So I'm going to assume yes.
Now, if you go in as a young person, you say to a psychologist, I'm really depressed because we're all going to die from global warming in 10 years or 20 years or whatever, right?
Because, you know, when you're 20, you want to have a family and get married.
And, you know, global warming is just part of the depopulation agenda to make people to give people an excuse for frivolity and hedonism.
Purposeful Beings00:11:13
Right.
Now, is a psychologist going to say, well, no, come on, the global warming is not a real thing.
And, you know, it's a lot of government scientists or blah, being paid to promote a particular agenda and so on.
Would she approach that with the same no, she'd have to say, yes, you know, I'm global warming is a real concern.
I'm scared too.
So she's going to write up whatever, right?
I mean, he or she, it's a tough profession.
It's a tough profession now because our epistemology has largely been lost.
And so other than in the extremes, it's kind of hard to say to people that their fears are real or not and so on.
So I'll just touch on, briefly, happy to take other calls.
And listen, don't apologize for taking up time.
That's totally up to me as the host.
So I had no problem with that.
And I appreciate these questions.
So I don't know how much Ayn Rand understood physics.
I know that Plato and Aristotle did not have access to modern physics.
I mean, there was Democritus and the atomist theories of his and so on, that there were atoms, but they didn't have any sort of Niels Bohr kind of atomic theory stuff going on.
So the reason that we're able to be that expert cowboy who throws his lasso or Lariat into just the right place in the thundering herd to get the cow or the steer that he wants is three reasons.
Number one, atoms.
Number two, universal physical laws.
And number three, purpose.
So something that is built for people to sit on is a chair.
And we understand that purpose.
So if you use a box as a chair, you understand that the purpose of the box is not to be a chair, but to hold or encase something.
What's that lovely, lovely word suitcase?
Literally a case for your seats.
Right.
So children understand purpose because children are purposeful themselves, right?
If a child wants a piece of candy, they will crawl over to get it.
So children have purpose.
And so, because children have purpose themselves, they understand purpose in those around them.
So, if something is clearly built to be something that people sit on, they'll call it a chair or a seat or something like that.
And then you have the differentiation between does it have a back or not?
Does it have four legs or three?
Is the difference between a chair and a school?
A stool is something designed for sitting alone, or is it designed for sitting and something?
So, a chair is designed for sitting usually and something, right?
So, the dining room chairs are designed for sitting and eating.
The couch is designed just for sitting.
Now, you can say, because it's usually L-shaped, right?
So, it's designed for sitting and socializing as well.
I get all of that, or sitting and watching TV or something like that.
So, because children have purpose, they understand that all the man-made things around them have a purpose, and they're built to satisfy a particular need or preference.
So, children process the world through purpose, and that's different from animals because animals, I mean, you can say beavers and dams and so on, but in general, animals do not interpret the world around them as having been purposefully built for something because animals tend not to manipulate their environment, right?
And so, animals don't understand the world through purpose, because animals don't have the same kind of conceptual purpose that human beings do.
And so, animals don't, you know, a lion going through the Serengeti does not look at that and say, well, what's the purpose of this grass or this tree or whatever?
It's just, well, it's just what's grown, so it's all kind of random and scattered.
So, we understand atoms, and as I've said before, atoms give rise to concepts.
The tiniest bits of matter give rise to the broadest abstractions because atoms combined with the universal laws of physics, atoms combined with the universal laws of physics give us rational consistency in matter.
A liquid is a liquid is a liquid.
Water is water is water.
A cloud is a cloud is a cloud.
A tree is a tree is a tree, and so on, right?
So, and biology, we sort of get the same sorts of things, but atoms and the universal laws of nature, physics, give rise to very specific abstractions that we can conceptualize as children.
So, if children see a tube in a brightly covered wrapping with wowsy zowsy in front and a picture of a happy child covered in chocolate, they'll say, oh, that's a candy bar.
That's a candy bar.
And when they open a bag of Skittles and they see the little sugar balls, they say, Oh, these are Skittles, right?
They don't assume that one of them is going to taste like hell.
My daughter and I did a game a couple of times where you spun the wheel and you either got a good jelly bean or like vomit jelly bean.
It's actually some of them would genuinely repulse it.
It was really quite fascinating.
So, children know that the candy bar is purposefully created to taste as good as humanly possible.
And they do engineer the candy bars to taste as good as humanly possible.
They also evilly put them at eye level and check out canners and so on for the kids to stare at and drool and mouthwater over and so on, right?
So, they know that the purpose is to taste good and therefore it's going to taste good.
So, the reason that human children are able to so expertly categorize things is this combination of purpose, atoms, and universal physical laws.
The reason I have to put purpose in there is that lions are also very good, of course, at evaluating atoms and universal laws of physics.
Because lions don't chase tree stumps and try to eat them.
Lions don't chase clouds and try to eat them.
Because remember, the image of the cloud is pressed up against the brain, just like the image of the zebra's ass.
So lions are accurately interpreting atoms and the laws of physics, which is how they're able to chase, right?
If you see cheetahs, right?
Cheetah is the fastest land animal, right?
I guess not counting the peregrine falcon, which is not really a land animal, of course.
But cheetahs will chase something, and if it's too far away, because they're very short sprints, right?
Then they'll stop.
They'll give up because they accurately calculate momentum and speed and energy and tiredness and they realize they can't catch it.
Or if they were to catch it, they're caught having a heart attack or something like that.
So animals process atoms and the laws of nature.
Of course, they don't process atoms, but the aggregates of atoms.
But the aggregates of atoms that represent a zebra is recognized as fundamentally different from the aggregate of atoms that represents a rock or a tree or something like that.
They don't try to eat the trees, right?
Or the rocks.
And the last thing that I'll say is that it's not magic, it is evolution.
So human beings that are able to accurately categorize things earlier do better, right?
So one of the reasons why children are so good at accurately categorizing things is because from a very early age, children were expected to work to be productive.
So children would sort grain, children would grind flour, children would go and get berries and nuts and so on.
And so children, those children that more aggressively and rapidly were able to categorize things provided more value to the tribe, thus allowing more children to be born and aiding in the success of those genes.
So it's not any kind of spiritual magic.
It is that those brains that are better able to categorize things accurately, particularly for human beings, those brains that were better able to categorize things accurately were better at surviving and aiding in reproduction in the long run.
And this is true for language as well, right?
I mean, for a lot of kids, holding the flashlight when your father's fixing something under the car is terrifying.
No, not this.
And get me the Phillips head screwdriver.
Get me this, get me that.
Give me the spanner three-quarters of an inch, right?
Get me the adjustable wrench.
And you're like, oh, what is that?
But the more accurately that children were able to process what the father wants, what the mother wants, and accurately provide what is needed, those children also aid in survival and efficiency.
So we've become very fine-tuned as a result of evolutionary pressures to do this stuff very accurately and very well.
And knowing all of that, it's still an amazing process to watch happen.
But no, there's no essence of a table in a table, and we don't see a table before we're born.
But what we do know is that human beings are purposeful.
Children understand this from a very early age.
Human beings are purposeful in an abstract sense.
Human beings create the environment, right?
So particularly for kids in the relatively modern-ish world, everything that they see around them is purposeful, particularly if they're born in sort of the fall months.
Then when they sort of really start to explore, it's winter and in northern climates, they're indoors, right?
They're in a hut, they're in a shack, they're in a house or an apartment or something.
And so everything around them is man-made and purposeful.
And so they literally grow up in manifested concrete purpose from other people's minds, right?
They crawl on a carpet.
The carpet was created to, I guess, have less grit on the floor, that's obvious, or something like that, trap dust, whatever the carpet does.
I assume that there's some positive reasons, less swamping, less washing, and so on.
So they grow up climbing up on couches.
They grow up holding onto walls.
They grow up around stairs.
So they grow up around everything that is created and purposeful.
And so it's one of my sort of theories as to why fall babies tend to be more introspective and philosophical, whereas spring babies, a lot of times, they're outdoors and outside, and they're seeing nature and atoms and physical laws, but they're not seeing quite as much of the purposeful creation of things.
They're seeing fewer man-made things, of course, when they're outside, you know, the clouds, the sun, the grass, the trees, and so on.
Even if the trees are planted, they're still not man-made.
Managing Family Stress00:14:36
They're just man-planted.
So I hope that makes some kind of sense.
Is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
All right.
We will move on to Kale.
Hey, good afternoon, Steph.
How are you?
I'm well, thanks.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well.
Thanks.
Always a pleasure to speak to you.
If I get cut off, it's because I wasn't anticipating a last-minute business call.
So if it does occur, then I just happen to vanish.
That's why.
But I did want to ask you a question.
It's about relationships and marriage, if that's okay.
Sure.
Okay.
So my wife and I, well, let's just say I've been noticing an area of conflict, and it goes a little bit like this.
My wife is pretty quick to judgment and frustration when she sees me do something that she doesn't initially agree with.
And later on, she apologizes maybe a day later or hours later, which is great.
I'm very happy that she does apologize.
It's just when she does, I kind of feel upset and uneased and kind of annoyed by it.
Like, why couldn't you do it when the conflict first arised?
So I'll give you an example so it doesn't sound so abstract.
My wife's taking one of my daughters to a dance class.
I'm home with my other daughter, who's seven months old, and I'm cooking dinner at the same time.
And I'm showing my seven-month-old what I'm doing, you know, chopping vegetables here and that.
And then I got a little overwhelmed with this new recipe that I was trying.
I was a little too ambitious.
And then she starts crying.
I think she's done with this.
So I go and redirect her while avoiding dinner.
And it's just chaotic.
She comes home and she sees me flustered and a little bit stressed out.
And first response is she looks pretty annoyed and upset with me.
And then I think somewhere on the line, she says, Well, I guess I just can't go and take them out and leave you here to cook dinner anymore.
And I'm just like, no, it's totally fine for me to be flustered and annoyed by this.
It happens, but it doesn't mean I don't want you to leave and you can't leave me alone with our kids, that kind of stuff.
Anyways, I'm paraphrasing, but obviously she was visibly annoyed.
She kind of made me feel a little, you know, like I was doing something wrong.
It just made me feel pretty slighted.
And at that moment, I'm just like, hey, I'm hoping my wife would give me some empathy.
Hey, you know, hey, let me help you with that.
Hey, you know, it must be difficult to cook dinner and watch our daughter at the same time at the moment, which didn't happen.
But however, in the evening time, when the kids are asleep and we finally have that moment to ourselves, that's when she finally issued her apology and gave me that empathy and said, Hey, I was sorry.
That must have been difficult.
All that stuff.
But my question to you is: is it valid for me to feel kind of slighted and upset when she's doing these apologies that have this long latency period?
Because to me, I have to kind of self-manage it.
I have to tell myself, hey, I'm not doing anything wrong.
This is fine.
It's okay to be flustered.
I know your wife's pissed off at you.
She's making you feel bad.
I have to do a lot of these what I call.
Sorry, I know your wife's pissed off at you.
Sorry, I'm not sure if I didn't, I didn't follow.
Oh, no.
This is me talking to myself, so to speak.
Oh, okay, got it.
Yeah.
So I'm doing a lot of these mental hurdles of trying to remain, you know, keep my composure, not to take it too hard, which, of course, you know, I do at times.
So a lot of those mental hurdles take place, and I'm going back and forth.
I'm having back and forth dialogues.
I kind of like, hey, was I an asshole?
Was she right?
Was I out of bounds?
Was she being too harsh?
A lot of that.
And it's almost kind of mentally exhausting.
So when the time comes when she does apologize, which I'm very thankful and grateful for, I'm just kind of, yeah, okay.
You know, not like very attuned to it, so to speak.
So I guess my question to you is: is that something that I need to work on?
With, you know, hey, recognize the fact that she apologizes later, accept that, really go in for the, it's okay.
Or is it okay to have these feelings where I guess I feel frustrated that the apology happens later on, whereas I'm hoping that it, you know, her behavior would just be in tune to the situation when it happens initially, so to speak.
I know I'm having a hard time kind of articulating this conflict.
I hope that makes sense.
No, no, I understand it.
So I think, anyway, help me understand what you got flustered about with the cooking.
I bit off more than I could chew.
I started burning some stuff.
Again, I got distracted because my daughter was crying and I ended up, you know, getting her out of the situation and taking her away from the kitchen.
And it was taking me away from the food.
So I was getting a little stressed doing that.
It was admittedly, you know, wasn't too over too stressful.
But again, it got to me a little bit.
I don't want to burn the food.
I don't want to ruin it.
I ended up dead mildly burning the food, but it was still edible.
So yeah, just that stress of just cooking while watching my child at the same time kind of got the better of me.
Okay.
I think I understand that.
And why did that circumstance occur?
So you had a project or a plan that didn't work out.
And what do you think you got wrong about planning that?
Well, I just falsely assumed that my daughter would be okay with this activity.
I thought she'd enjoy it.
I'm strapped to her.
She's watching me cook.
Again, I'm narrating what I'm doing, showing her all the what's going on.
She was enjoying herself.
And then for whatever the reason, you know, you never know why.
She just, she's had enough of it.
And then she starts crying.
I'm assuming maybe she misses her mother.
No, it's not.
Sorry, that's not how kids work.
They don't just start randomly crying.
So what happened, if you can remember back, how long ago was this?
This is pretty fresh.
So probably about a week ago.
Okay.
So what happened?
Your daughter's having fun with you.
You're narrating what you're doing.
You're learning, catting.
Why has she stopped crying?
Well, at the time, I took her away and we started playing, and I got her on the floor, and then she immediately felt better and started laughing again.
And I had to get out of the kitchen, and then she was everything was fine.
So, I'm just probably assuming that that environment was probably too stressful for her.
I would be my guess.
Okay, the environment isn't stressful.
Who's stressful?
Well, yeah, I mean, I you could probably she can probably see that my heart rate's since she's strapped to me.
Maybe my heart rate's going a little too quickly, or you know, I'm maybe moving a little too quickly, or she's assuming or she's experiencing your stress.
Is that right?
Right.
Yeah, I think that's fair to say.
Okay, so it's not just like she may have missed her mom or something.
So, she's experiencing your stress, you know, which happens.
It's like kids need to see their parents be stressed so that they can understand that stress isn't the end of the world and you just kind of work through it.
So, what happened with her experience of your stress do you think that ended up with her crying?
Well, I know I think I dropped some pepper, and you know, maybe I was getting there's too much mess going on, and I had to can't really remember exact details, but I just know that while cooking, I definitely bit off more than I could chew, no pun intended.
And I was just kind of out of sorts.
It came, it was kind of calm at first, and then when I started to realize that, you know, because I'm trying to time it, time to time the meal well, and I can see that my timing's a little bit off.
So, yeah, I can, I can, I see where you're getting at.
She could definitely detect that I'm getting a little flustered.
Well, it's probably more than a little if she's crying.
Yeah, it was also, I know I missed out on her feeding.
I know later on I had to do a, I got my wife left a bottle with me.
I'm sorry, she'll be eight months in two weeks from now.
Okay, got it, got it.
Now, this was a fairly complex dish or set of dishes that you had not tried before.
Is that right?
I wouldn't say it's too complex.
It's just I it was complex in the sense that I'm making a food for my wife and I, and I'm making another set of food for my other daughters who are just a little bit, you know, they have a certain palate.
So, again, I think it was what made it complex was the timing aspect of it.
I wanted to make sure that it was all ready by the time my wife returned with my other children.
Okay, so tell me about the stress.
What's stressful?
So, first of all, you know, trying to do a complex meal with a seven-month-old.
I mean, obviously, in hindsight, may not have been the wisest choice, right?
Oh, yeah, I can, I, I can see that now.
And, um, so why, hang on.
So, so why did you choose, and it's not a blame thing.
Obviously, it's not a huge issue in life, but it probably is reflective of something larger.
So, why would you choose a complex dish with a toddler or a complex set of dishes?
You know, at the top of my head, I don't have the best answer.
I think the simplest thing that comes to mind is that I felt that I could do it.
It was something that, you know, I like to do for the family and cook for them.
No, no, but sorry, this is, I mean, of course, I know you have to cook.
Let me just be frank, right?
So, did you do something?
Were you trying to please your wife in some way or surprise her with something positive?
No, no, we have a set routine where we like to eat dinner at this certain hour and it was in the evening time.
And I think if any time I'm trying to appease her, it is, well, no, I didn't say appease her.
I didn't say appeaser.
Yeah, I wanted, no, I'm trying to, I was going to take back that word choice.
But yeah, it wasn't trying to, you know, make some special meal.
It was just, we have kind of a fixed routine.
And I suppose what made it stressful is I want to make sure I hit the right timing with it.
But why?
It's stressful.
You said you said a couple of times you bit off more than you could chew.
And now that this is critical, I'm just curious.
Why were you courting stress?
I assume are you in your 30s, 40s?
30s.
30s.
Okay.
So you're old enough to know yourself by now, right?
Yes.
So the fact that you got stressed and tense is not a shock to you, right?
No.
Okay.
So why would you put yourself in a situation where you're going to get stressed and tense and your best efforts have a good chance of becoming something quite negative?
Yeah, that's a great question.
I guess what I didn't anticipate was my daughter's reaction that would take me away from the task at hand.
And I just thought that this would be something where she would be, and I just didn't factor in my stress, I guess, my stressfulness of the situation and how it impacted her.
So you're making me help realize that.
So it's not, but it wasn't your daughter's reaction.
You weren't stressed because of your daughter's reaction.
It seems like your daughter reacted to your stress, if that's what I understand.
Yes, yes.
I mean, you're correct.
And I don't know if I, I know I can't speak for my daughter.
That's insane.
I'm trying to defend myself because I don't feel like I was that flustered.
But obviously, yes, you could see that I was getting a little, you know, heart rate was increasing, just, oh, go ahead and drop this.
And so you can probably see that this was not a playful experience anymore once, you know, I started, because I think I was taking my time really slow.
And I was like, oh, wait a minute, this is taking way too slow.
I'm going to miss my timing mark.
And that's when I kind of sped things up.
And now as I remember doing that, that's when she starts crying and et cetera.
Okay.
So when you were a child, what happened in your family when you made mistakes?
Not much happened in terms of that.
We've spoken before, obviously.
And I mean, not obviously, but we've discussed in our previous that I was more neglected.
It was more kind of like, huh, okay, no big deal.
Or if I made a mistake, it would obviously be they would be upset or frustrated by it, but it wouldn't be any type of punishment, I would say.
And how does your wife handle it when you make mistakes?
Well, it all kind of varies on what the mistake is.
So in that example, so she probably walked in, saw a hectic kitchen, seeing me a little flustered, seeing my daughter in the other room.
You know, obviously we have a nice sectioned off little playscape where she can be self-contained, but probably didn't like that she was left alone.
So in that case, yeah, her reaction was pretty aggressive towards me.
And what does she say?
Just like, you know, what's going on here?
What are you doing?
Just, I don't know the whole details of high, but I can only just recall how it made me feel.
And I could just tell that she was, she was annoyed.
You know, she was, you know, and again, like I said earlier, she was like, well, I guess I just can't leave you here and have them cook and whatnot.
It's just too much for you.
And, you know, I felt a little disrespectful.
Oh, that's horrible.
Honestly, that's a horrible thing to hear.
Yeah, it definitely is.
Like, I can't leave you unattended in the same way you can't leave your seven-month-old unattended.
Unacceptable Harangue00:15:46
Right.
So it definitely stung.
Okay.
And I'm with you there.
I think that that was definitely bad.
And did she do this in front of the children?
Yes.
Right.
How old are your older children?
Four and three.
You said they have particular palates.
What did that mean?
Oh, just they're picky.
So we're introducing the food that we'd like them to eat.
We're not trying to push it upon them.
We're just trying to set examples like, hey, mommy and daddy eat vegetables.
We put it on their plate.
You know, hopefully that one day that they will see through our example that they will try it.
But no, they wanted spaghetti and meatballs.
So that's what I was also making at the same time.
Okay, got it.
Now, where is your wife's general level of respect for you as a whole?
Oh, that's a great question.
My first instinct to say is that it fluctuates.
But I think overall, I think she has a high degree of respect for me.
I guess it all kind of depends on how you want to divide that respect into some sort of category or some sort of expertise or whatnot.
But I guess you're just asking in a whole general sense.
Well, let me ask you this.
How often do you get these kinds of barbed statements?
Like, I guess I can't just leave the house and leave you unattended?
Or like, how often do you get these kinds of negative statements?
I'd say they're pretty frequent.
I don't know what that means.
Please give me some.
Yeah, I know you don't.
I'm speaking aloud.
I know you need some more data.
I'm trying to think here that they're frequent.
So I would say they probably occur once or twice a week.
Unacceptable.
Right.
Absolutely unacceptable.
And do you do it in return?
I will defend myself, but I know that kind of leads to a back and forth that I don't want in front of the children.
And God knows I've taken the bait where I wanted to defend myself more than I needed to.
But as I mentioned, this always gets resolved later on when the smoke clears and my wife has that moment.
Yeah, but the apology, sorry, the apologies are mostly bullshit.
Sorry to be so blunt, but the apologies is the bullshit if the behavior continues.
Right.
You know, if I go and steal from a store and they catch me and, oh, I'm sorry, a shoplift.
And they go back later that week.
And, you know, every week I come back twice to shoplift.
Does it mean anything when I say, I'm sorry, I shoplifted?
No, not at all.
Okay.
So let's try a little thing here where you come in as your wife and she says, what?
I'll pretend to be you.
So she says, what?
What's going on in here?
Why is our daughter crying?
And what's going on with this food?
You seem really out of sorts.
Like, what is going on?
Oh, I just, I was having some real challenges with the cooking, and I just put her in her playpan so I could finish up and make sure everything was ready on time.
Okay, well, were you watching her?
Like, why is she alone right now?
She looks a little upset.
What have you been doing?
Sorry, are you asking me whether I watch our seven-month-old child?
I'm not sure what you're asking me.
Well, no, I'm asking you why does she seem upset?
Like, was she crying earlier?
What's going on?
Should you even be cooking right now?
What's going on?
The whole place is a mess.
I think something's burning too.
That's pretty dangerous, isn't it?
Okay, that's unacceptable to speak to me this way.
What are you talking about?
It's unacceptable for you to speak to me in this way.
I do not appreciate you coming in here and haranguing me like I'm some naughty schoolboy.
That is unacceptable.
And please, please, for heaven's sakes, I don't, I hate to have to do this in front of the kids, but you cannot speak to me in this way and particularly not in front of the children because they need to respect me as a father.
And if you come in like I'm some naughty schoolboy and they're like, well, what are you doing?
And why is a child crying?
And like, as if I've done something wrong or bad, that transmits a complete lack of respect for me to the children.
Like, what are you, what are you doing?
Anything that I've done in terms of, oh, you know, something's a little hot on the stove.
I'll turn it off, by the way.
But something's a little like, you are communicating immense disrespect to me in front of the children.
What are you doing?
It's absolutely rude.
And anything that I'm doing is irrelevant compared to this.
What on earth is going on?
Yeah, I don't, I'm kind of lost for what her response would be.
I think it would be to escalate.
Okay, so she would say what?
Just here.
You said something about how dare you say that to me.
She'd be like, how dare you say that to me?
This is disrespectful to me.
I took the kids out to give you some time to cook.
Okay, you taking the kids out does not give you the right to come in and harangue me.
That's not something that is a trade.
Well, you take the kids out, and in return, you can come back and harangue me and accuse me of what?
Ignoring our daughter or come on, this is terrible.
Right.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
That's.
And this should be like, hey, well, why are you, like you made, why are you cooking?
Why are you doing this?
Maybe we can just have sandwiches tonight.
Why are you cooking all this double, these double thing, this our meal, the kids' meal?
You obviously bit off more than you could chew.
Okay, so let's say, let's say 100% you're right.
I bit off more than I can chew.
Does that give you the right to treat me so rudely?
Well, I mean, I have to act in a way so you understand you don't do this again.
You need to hear that I disapprove this.
Okay, so is it worse for me to bite off more than I can chew or for you to come in and harangue me in front of the children?
Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying.
And I don't want to argue in front of them too.
But if you're not going to be able to do that, so if you don't want to argue in front of them, why are you putting me in this very difficult situation where I either bite my tongue and accept you treating me so disrespectfully, A, in the marriage as a whole, and B, in front of the children?
Like, why are you putting me?
You put me in this position.
I didn't, like, when you came through the door, I didn't harangue you and say, well, where have you been?
And you should have been here earlier and you were supposed to help me.
And how can I let you leave the house if you don't like?
I didn't start attacking you.
You came in and started attacking me.
That's horrible.
I don't want to live like that.
I don't, like, here's the thing: honey, honey, honey, honey.
When your key comes in the door, do you know what I want to feel?
Joy and happiness.
I don't want to feel like, oh no, what if she's going to harangue me in front of the kids?
What if she's going to nag me?
What if she's going to criticize me?
What if she's going to express this finger-wagging discontent like I'm some kindergartner who spilled the glue?
I don't want to feel that.
I mean, you don't want me to feel that.
Don't you want me to feel happy when you come home?
Yeah, of course.
Okay, so if you come home and this is what comes out of your mouth, am I happy?
No, but I'm not obviously happy either coming home to seeing all this.
Yes, but what I did was not conscious and purposeful against you.
I'm just having a bit of a struggle with the cooking, which is not the end of the world, right?
So what I'm doing is not targeted at you, but what you're doing is consciously targeted at me, and that is unacceptable.
I'm allowed to make mistakes.
You're allowed to make mistakes.
You coming in and haranguing me is not making a mistake.
That's being rude.
And I don't want you modeling that behavior to the children.
I don't want the children absorbing that this is how you can come home and this is how you can speak to someone you love.
Because everything we do gets transmitted to the children and imprinted on their minds, right?
No, I mean, you're absolutely right.
And what you're saying is are all lines of dialogue that I wish I had the ability to do at that time with her.
I just know that, yeah, if it escalates, and I just don't know if she's going to be receptive to any type of correction in that moment.
Hence, that's why I say she, when the smoke clears, she does have, I give her the credit of apologizing later.
But no, so sorry to interrupt.
So I don't know what escalation looks like there.
Does she start yelling at you?
Like, what does it mean?
Like, if you're having this kind of conversation, that this behavior is unacceptable.
She'll take it as an attack on her character, you know, obviously putting a mirror.
Well, it is.
She would take it correctly because it is rude to come home and harangue someone who's cooking for the family.
I agree.
That's okay.
So it is a criticism of her character.
I mean, that's fine.
We all make mistakes.
We all need to be corrected from time to time.
Yeah, absolutely.
And of course, if she's hypersensitive to criticism, then what's she doing coming home and crabbing at you?
If criticism is really bad, why is she criticizing you?
You could point out that hypocrisy.
Well, I just feel attacked.
It's like, sister, you came into the room, unprovoked, attacked me.
So let's not get all fussed about how bad being attacked is when you started it.
Right.
Right.
That's just a cry bully.
That's like one of our kids belting some kid across the face and then crying victim if they get hit back.
Yeah.
Like if you, if you don't want to be criticized, don't come in and start haranguing me, which is rude.
And also, don't apologize for behaviors you keep repeating because I take apologies very seriously, honey.
I take apologies very seriously.
I assume that an apology means you will do your best to stop it from happening again.
Now, listen, honey, once or twice a week, you come in and crab at me.
I won't say bitch at me because I know that's a volatile word.
But once or twice a week, you understand, you come in and crab at me, right?
You have something negative to say, something critical to say, something sometimes quite hostile and even contemptuous to say.
And then you apologize.
But what on earth is the point of an apology if you just keep doing it?
Why don't you find a way?
And listen, I'm happy to help, right?
We're married.
We have three kids together.
So I'm certainly happy to help.
But what you need to do is stop doing it.
You know, if when our kids get older, they'll have these projects to do for school, something involving glue and glitter and bristle board or whatever it is, right?
Cardboard.
And if at Sunday night, 10 o'clock, they say, I have something due at 8 o'clock tomorrow, would you be annoyed?
Yes.
Right.
Now, and if you struggled through it and you managed to find stuff and you went to the neighbor's place and, you know, you're up to two in the morning helping them with their assignment or whatever, right?
And they say, I'm sorry, mommy.
I'm sorry that I told you so late, right?
And then the next week, at 10 o'clock at night, they say, oh, I have another project due at 8 a.m. tomorrow.
What would you say?
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, that's unacceptable.
And it would be worse because we already went through this and they apologized, right?
And then what if the next week they said, oh, yeah, 10 o'clock, man, I got another project due at 8 o'clock tomorrow.
And this went on week after week after week.
At what point would you lose your freaking mind?
Oh, yeah.
By the third incident for sure, if not the second.
Right.
So you have been apologizing to me for snapping at me for years.
And yet, you still snap at me.
So I'm concerned that you think that the apologies make up for it.
No.
If the daughter, if your daughter kept telling you at 10 o'clock on a Sunday night, she had a big complicated presentation or thing for the morning, some project, and if she kept apologizing, but she still kept telling you at 10 o'clock at night, wouldn't you say, well, the reason why she can tell me at 10 o'clock at the night is she can just say, oh, yeah, sorry, mommy.
Right?
The sorry is actually enabling the irresponsible behavior.
And I think that you snap at me in this negative, pretty horrible way, that I simply, I mean, I know I put up with it for the sake of peace, but it's not good.
It's not good.
It's not good for the kids to see me kind of bullied in this way or treated negatively or treated with disrespect.
And so I think your apologies are even worse because I think that you keep doing this behavior because you say, well, I can just apologize for it later.
But that's not the way that I see apologies.
The way that I see apologies is I'm going to figure out, come hella high water by hooker by crook.
I am going to figure out how to not do this going forward, how to stop this.
Because apologies with repetition are just excuses and enablement.
And I've been waiting for years for one of these apologies to take and for you to actually stop doing the behavior that you're apologizing for.
I mean, imagine if every single time you sent me out to get some groceries, I only picked up half of what you wanted.
I came home and you said, for heaven's sakes, every single time.
And I said, oh, sorry.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, sorry.
And then you send me out again and I forget half the stuff.
Oh, sorry.
I just kept saying, oh, sorry.
Like at what point, would you want to ring me by the neck for keep saying sorry?
Sorry without change is worse than not even apologizing at all.
Because you're saying, I'm sorry, I behave badly.
Then you do it again.
I'm sorry, I behave badly.
Then you do it again.
I'm sorry.
I behave badly.
I mean, what do you think sorry means?
Doesn't sorry mean stop doing it?
Yeah, no, that explains why when she does apologize later, I just feel nothing.
Yeah, you hate it.
And it's hard to know how to articulate it.
Yeah, it sure is.
And I bet you, I bet you, bet you, bet you.
This is why I asked about your daughter's eating preferences.
They're fussy.
And what do they do to get their way?
They don't.
Sometimes they'll voice it, but most of the time they'll just refuse to eat it.
And they'll ask for an alternative.
Right.
So where are they getting that behavior from?
Yeah, I see the connection.
Yeah.
They can see that I will that I'll yield to escalation.
You yield to female pressure and escalation.
Yeah.
So this is very important for your family.
This is very important for your family and for your kids.
You know, I mean, so there's a tipping point in parenting because, you know, we like to accommodate our kids and we like to do what's best for our kids.
And of course, when they're little, we don't expect reciprocity, right?
But there does have to have a time where we have to start asking for and then eventually demanding reciprocity.
Because if we just accommodate them, which we have to do when they're babies and toddlers and so on, we have to accommodate them.
But if we continue to accommodate them, then they grow up without a strong sense of reciprocity in relationships and they become kind of entitled.
And they just want things their way, right?
Yeah.
Reciprocity Matters00:14:26
I think you were stressed because you knew what would happen when your wife came home if things weren't perfect.
Yes, you're right.
I think you're scared of your wife.
And I don't mean this in any critical way at all.
I'm just trying to evaluate the pattern that I see.
I think you're nervous of her coming home and snapping at you.
And you've got, what is it, four against one?
Yes.
And your life is not going to be much fun if you end up with four females treating you disrespectfully.
And it's actually not, of course, as you know, it's not healthy for your children to model that behavior, right?
Yes, of course.
Now, my particular perspective, and look, please understand, brother, I'm not trying to praise myself.
I'm not saying I'm immune to this kind of stuff.
I'm just telling you the way that I try to work with it, however, imperfectly and so on.
But I will not let my daughter see me being treated with disrespect without a strong pushback.
I mean, we were out for dinner once and a waiter recognized me and disliked me enormously.
And I could see the snark and he asked me who I was.
And he says, oh, yeah, I've heard about your show.
You know, that kind of stuff, right?
Very, very, you know, it's whatever.
I mean, it's no big deal.
It doesn't really matter.
But, but yeah, I engaged him.
Oh, what have you heard?
Oh, where's the proof of that?
Right?
And so on, right?
And so I would not, you know, on the couple of times, and it's not common, of course, but on the couple of times where people have been aggressive to me in public because of what it is that I do, I'm chest to chest.
I'm shoulder to shoulder.
I will not back down.
Well, with the one exception that when we were being hunted by feral leftists through the streets of Australian cities, we found discretion to be the better part of valor because these people couldn't be reasoned with, right?
Understood.
So it is very important that your children do not see you being treated disrespectfully, or they'll think that's the norm in relationships.
And to get what you want, you just escalate until the other person complies.
Is that setting them up for success or failure in relationships?
Failure for sure.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I do think with your wife saying, I appreciate the apologies, the behavior has to stop.
And what, you know, whatever I can do, and you also have to apologize to her for letting it continue, right?
Oh, that's a new one.
No, because if we enable people's bad behavior, we can't then just isolate ourselves and say, well, it's your fault and you're bad, because you've appeased and enabled this, right?
Yes.
I mean, how many years has this been going on for?
Oh, I mean, probably for as long as our marriage has.
Right.
So many, many years, a decade, decade and a half, whatever it is.
You don't have to tell me the details, of course.
But if we allow ourselves to be pushed around, I mean, obviously it's better if your wife doesn't push you around in the first place or whatever, but that's the dynamic in the relationship.
So you've trained her to get what she wants without consequence.
Now, clearly, she has not got an internalized code of behavior or ethics that says, I should never do this.
Or if I do, I've got to, you know, if he calls it out and says that's kind of rude, and you say, oh, you know what?
I'm so sorry.
That really was crappy.
My apologies, blah, blah, blah.
Right.
Let me give you a foot rub or, you know, whatever, right?
So you have rewarded her for her aggression for a decade plus, right?
Yes.
Because she gets what she wants by being aggressive.
And then she can just give you a drop an apology later.
And you've also not been honest with her and said, I don't think, have you ever said to her, your apology means absolutely nothing to me.
I hold it in contempt.
It's crossed my mind, but no, I just try to keep the peace, especially when in the aftermath, like I said, when the smoke clears.
And I, no, I've not said that.
Right.
So if you took your kids to restaurants and every time you just complained about your food, yelled at the waiter, demanded to see the management and refused to pay and cause a whole scene, and then you got out, winked at your kids, and say, look at that, that's free food, kids.
Would that be good parenting?
No, that's just bullying and being rude and just immoral.
It's not good behavior.
Right.
So is it good for your children for you to appease and placate aggression?
No, no.
And yeah, and I have pushed back, but yeah, you're right, because she will escalate to a point where my pushback is just null and void.
Well, I'm not sure.
So tell me, tell me what the escalation looks like.
What does that mean?
Well, I mean, what I'll tell her, like, hey, you know, like in that example with the cooking, is like, hey, I'm allowed to get a little flustered while cooking and watching the kids.
No big deal.
I think you need to think you might be blowing this out of proportion.
Everything's fine.
Why don't you just go sit down and relax?
And I'll have dinner ready, certainly, but there's no need for you to react this way.
And like I said, it might happen in our role, in our role play, she'll come up with, well, why are you in this situation to begin with, and all that stuff?
Or she's, if I call her out on that behavior, she's quick to defend herself.
And that's where the escalation occurs.
Okay.
So do you think that she does it because you don't want to escalate in front of the kids?
Yeah, I think I believe so.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, then you may have to escalate in front of the kids.
Yeah, and that's something that I never thought was on the table.
Well, of course, I mean, try to resolve it privately and say, listen, like, I've been thinking about this this week, a week ago thing that happened.
You know, I was, you know, I don't want to be scared of my wife's aggression.
I don't want that.
Like, that's no fun for me.
And it's not, I don't assume it's fun for you.
I mean, I guess you prefer it because you do it, but I don't want to, I don't want to feel that way.
I don't want to feel like nervous because my wife's coming home and if things aren't perfect, she's going to snap at me.
I don't want that.
And I don't want our kids seeing that.
So I need you to stop doing that.
And again, I'm happy to help.
We can talk about childhood stuff.
We can talk about your mood.
We can talk about, you know, anything.
Maybe she had a really dominant mother and a really submissive father, or, you know, maybe this is just her template.
So, you know, we can, we can talk about all of this for sure.
And I'm eager and happy to talk about it and help you in any way I can.
But I'm just telling you that I'm not putting up with it anymore.
And the best thing that we can do, because we don't want to fight in front of the kids, right, honey?
Like, that's not good.
We don't want to fight in front of the kids.
But I will tell you that I'm, you know, I've really thought this through.
Like, this is not healthy for our children to have me submit when you get aggressive.
That's not right.
And so let's not fight in front of the kids.
But I will tell you that if you start, I'm not going to back down.
So if you start, I will push back.
If you escalate, I will not back down.
And therefore, us fighting in front of the kids will be entirely on you.
But I need to show the kids that this kind of escalation is not right.
And it's for the kids.
And listen, you know this, like you agree with me in a state of calm.
I know that you agree with me that you don't want to be the kind of person who gets what she wants through snapping aggression, you know, yelling insults, you know, crabbing at people and hectoring people and haranguing people.
Like that's not, that's not good.
Now, of course, the challenge with that is you're trying to rewrite some of the core code of the relationship, right?
Yes, it's big time.
Right.
But because she chose you, I suppose, in part because you rewarded her for pushing you around.
Yeah, I think there's definitely that dynamic.
Yeah, you rewarded her for pushing you around.
And so, but for the sake of your kids, right, you have to like, you can choose that.
Obviously, it's not great, but you can choose that in a relationship for sure.
But you can't choose to model that to your children, right?
No, you know, you can choose to be a smoker if you live alone, but you can't choose to blow smoke into the face of your children, right?
Right.
Yeah, this is a lot to, this is a lot to digest for sure.
And I really appreciate you spending all this time on this call, really breaking this down with me.
Again, I got my minds all over the place trying to process this and see different scenarios.
I think my best takeaway would be to re-listen to this, maybe share it with my wife.
And then when that does occur, which I'm sure it will, when that apology comes later on, yeah, have the courage and to, for the sake of my children, just to say, like you said, that apology means nothing to me.
And here's X, Y, and Z, Y, and have that dialogue that you've just.
Yeah, so don't, yeah, don't, and don't spring changes on people.
So if you have trained your wife for 10 or 15 years to be rewarded when she gets aggressive, you don't just want to yank the carpet out from under her because, I mean, I hate to sort of use this analogy, but it would be like, you know, training some seal that every time they do a backflip, they get some herring.
And then they do a backflip and you punch them in the face.
I mean, it would be a silly example, right?
But you've trained her and rewarded her for all of this behavior.
And again, if you listen to this, I'm not trying to compare you to an animal.
I'm just saying that this kind of reward metric is kind of important in life, right?
I mean, it would be like if every time your kids said the word F, then you gave them a hug and some candy, right?
Would not be the best, the best way of approaching parenting.
And so, you know, I would say ahead of time, you know, like the apologies haven't worked to stop the behavior, right?
They haven't worked.
So, you know, the behavior has to stop.
And I don't appreciate the escalation.
I don't appreciate, you know, feeling anxious when you come home.
But if you just did the right thing, it's like, yeah, but I don't want to.
I mean, if we're going to complain about doing the wrong thing, then snapping at your husband is worse than me slightly burning the food, right?
Because one is an accident, the other is a conscious negative choice, right?
That's different, right?
Yes.
So you want to say ahead of time, the apologies haven't worked.
We need to try something else.
And, you know, I'm open to suggestions.
I want to help you be less aggressive and impatient and short-tempered and so on.
And, you know, frankly, kind of contemptuous because it kind of stings me to the core.
And it's also very bad for our marriage because you need to look up to and respect your husband.
Otherwise, the marriage doesn't tend.
I mean, you can stay married, but it doesn't tend to work very well at all.
And so I want to help improve these things.
The behavior can't continue.
And, you know, I obviously would, you know, would love to chat about it, you know, in the evenings or we can whatever, get some babysitters and go.
Maybe we can do some therapy or maybe we can do freedomain.com slash call.
I'm happy to do a call in with you both, private or public, whatever you like.
But yeah, the behavior has to stop.
And I'm happy to help you figure out why you do this.
And I'm also, I do need to apologize to you for enabling and rewarding this behavior for so long because that has not helped at all.
And for pretending to accept these apologies, like I kind of lied to you for years and years and years because you'd say, I'm sorry.
And I'd be like, it's okay.
When it wasn't, right?
So I wasn't giving you honest feedback and I was falsifying the reality of my experience.
So I'm sorry for that, right?
Because that's not treating you with respect.
You know, you can't handle the truth, right?
I'm not treating you with respect if I'm falsifying and hiding things from you.
So, you know, we, we, you know, marriage is, you know, it's what somebody said to me when I was a kid, right?
If you don't marry, you maybe date 20 or 30 people over the course of your life.
If you do marry, you can date thousands because people are evolving and changing and growing.
So it's a new phase for the marriage and it's very exciting.
But I also would say that if you do forget yourself, I will remind you that you're being rude and aggressive.
If you escalate, I will match your energy.
I will not back down, particularly in front of the children.
I will not back down.
So please be careful.
Like we all forget, right?
So if you get snappy, that's fine.
I'll say, you're getting snappy.
Please stop.
And then if you apologize, no problem.
Hugging the kiss, we move on.
If you escalate, I will escalate.
I really cannot see.
I can't have the kids see that this is what a man and a father and a husband is.
No, no, excellent.
Thank you so much, Steph.
I'll re-listen to this.
And I think a call-in with both of us is definitely something on the table.
So I will look to set that up in the future.
And thanks again.
You are very welcome.
And I really appreciate you opening up your heart and your marriage in this way.
And it's very honest and very brave.
You know, it's not easy to do this kind of stuff, particularly in the public square.
So I really do appreciate and respect you for opening up this stuff.
And I just want to remind everyone, because I know I sound like a little bit of a, oh, I've got it all figured out and I'm so perfect.
I really, I really, really honestly, particularly looking back in my 30s, I was not, certainly in my early 30s, I was only starting to do this stuff in relationships.
I was with a woman who was kind of aggressive at times.
And a lot of times I would just kind of try and smooth it over or maybe push back a little and then fold.
And then I was like, you know, I got to, you know, I was going through therapy and I was like, I've got to, I got to stop doing this.
I got to stop folding and appeasing.
You know, I had to do that with my mother.
Stop Folding and Appeasing00:02:16
I don't have.
So it's easy for me, you know, I'd be 60 this year.
So it's easy for me to say, oh, yes, but you should be doing this and you should be doing that.
And I just, just really, really, really, really want to get across that if I've been speaking Japanese for 30 years and you're just learning it, I'm going to look like, but when I was learning it, I was making all the same mistakes.
So I just really, really want to be humble and clear about that.
That, because the last thing I want is for this listener or other people listening to say, oh, God, why, why would I let people do this?
My gosh, Steph doesn't let, you know, why, but I was back then, particularly in my 20s, maybe into my early 30s, for sure.
So sorry, I say maybe for sure.
But it's knowledge context and time context is really important.
So, I mean, I'm sure you've heard me before, but I really want to reiterate this.
When I say to people, you're doing better than I was at your age.
That's a very real thing.
That's a very real thing.
So I really do appreciate that.
All right.
So I'll open things up.
If anybody else has any more thoughts or comments, issues, I'm certainly happy to hear about them.
And I might, I have a bunch of Bitcoin research, but I won't do that on this show because I try not to mix the eternal with the time sensitive as a whole.
It's not usually the best jamming together of things.
All right.
Well, I think we've gone through things as a whole, and I really, really do appreciate everyone's time today.
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Thank you so much, my friends.
Have yourself a glorious, wonderful, lovely evening.
We will talk to donors tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.