Stefan Molyneux critiques higher education's debt-inducing model and advocates for AI-driven learning, while addressing a listener's dilemma where a neighbor's dog bit his daughter; Stefan argues the children bear responsibility for failing to contain the animal, justifying the dog's euthanasia despite the trauma. He further advises against excessive grief counseling, urging parents to foster resilience instead. The episode concludes with Molyneux challenging narratives around George Floyd's death, labeling those who resist factual corrections as "hedonists" prioritizing social approval over truth, suggesting societal stagnation stems from this refusal to engage with empirical reality. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Apologizing to Kids00:03:33
All right.
All right.
Good evening.
Good evening, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
Stefan von Molinux from Free Domain.
You know the place.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
Had a great interview today with BTC, a Bitcoin Sessions.
Got into a very good and I think productive debate about intellectual property.
And of course, I'll put the audio out to donors soon, but it should be out next week.
It was very good.
Conversation, very good debate.
And I had some reasonably good jokes.
That's really what it's all about.
Try and get the comedy in there, wedge it in like a virgin's first side swipe.
So I hope you're having a great day, evening, and so on.
And Richard, I see you.
Give me just a sec.
I wanted to mention about university.
So I was a 23 year old.
I think he was in China or something like that.
At a graduation ceremony for his university, he held up his notebook, his laptop, and he was talking all about, or he was chanting about how it was basically ChatGPT that got him through all of this, and it went viral.
And I think within two hours, his university degree had been revoked.
It was Ixnade, given the deep six.
As far as grades go, he got the goose egg, the big O, the donut, the nothing, and all of that.
So.
Interesting, wouldn't you say?
I think so.
I think interesting.
Now, the question then becomes how do we do higher education in the absence of, well, in the absence of any kind of integrity?
And of course, kids were all taught how to cheat through the process of COVID, right?
Through being at home and being on camera and so on.
And of course, society has yet to apologize for the effect that COVID had on children.
Stripping them of a year or two or more of, you know, pretty essential and necessary teenage experiences, right?
You kind of need to go to prom, go to dances, go to parties, hang out, do stuff, date and mate and vape, and I don't know, whatever's going on these days for the young.
You kind of need that.
All of that was taken away.
And for what?
For what?
As it turns out, the vaccine was never even tested to see if.
It stopped transmission.
So, all of that was largely nonsense.
But of course, society is not apologizing to the kids for the teachers' unions propagandizing them.
Society is not apologizing to kids for putting them on uppers because they're boarding school.
Society is not apologizing to kids for the hellscape vampiric predation of all retirement benefits in the Western world.
All that retirement money is gone.
The boomers won't take responsibility for that.
And so, well, they just keep on ticking.
Keep on ticking.
Just keep ticking.
Just keep ticking.
Like Dory.
Dora the Explorer.
No, Dory, not Dory the Explorer.
I still remember the three chant.
Universities and Dishonor00:15:23
My daughter watched one when she was a little.
Bridge, rock, waterfall.
Bridge, rock, waterfall.
So, what's going to happen with university?
It's a big question, right?
It's a big, interesting, and important question.
What's going to happen to universities?
Of course, the answer would be.
Why do we even need them?
Why do we even need them?
I mean, all of the most famous lectures, virtually almost all of the most famous lectures from the biggest universities in the world are all online.
They're all online.
And you can, of course, get ChatGPT, or I'm a big fan of Grok, of course, because Grokopedia is not a lying wheelbag of slander, weasel bag of slander, like some other sites I could mention.
But you could get the videos, you could watch the videos.
AI can design an entire tutoring and QA and all of that.
I mean, you can teach yourself.
You can get together with other people and you can get all of their feedback and perspective, get together with study groups.
I mean, that's a lot of what happened when I was in university, anyways.
You get together with study groups.
For me, the standard, of course, is where were the most attractive females, but you know, I'm sure there were some other considerations there as well.
I just can't quite remember them in my approaching dotage.
Approaching?
Yeah, approaching.
Let's say approaching.
Yeah, let's be nice.
So you can watch the videos.
Grok can design for you a study plan.
And bibso babso babso, you are away to the races.
And you can do your education.
Now, of course, eventually, how do you solve that problem of cheating?
Well, you have in-person exams.
Proctored, properly proctored, you have in person exams and extensive QAs from an expert panel.
Am I wrong?
I think not.
Well, I mean, that's how you would design things from the ground up.
And of course, the way modern society, well, most societies throughout history, the way they work is they don't design things from the ground up.
All they do is we inherit what idiot bureaucrats in the government inflicted on the prior generation, we inherit that.
And we call it society, which is like inheriting a volcano and calling it a sculpture.
So we inherit all of this stuff.
And of course, universities have a fair amount of credibility because they used to be really good, right?
Only the top 10% of people went to university.
You had to be pretty smart to get in, it was for people who really loved knowledge, cared about knowledge.
I mean, I remember when I went to university, I started working on essays the moment that they were assigned.
I was there, man.
I was hungry to be there.
I'd spent a year and a half working manual labor up north, gold panning, prospecting, blazing trails, man.
I was ready.
Get me some learn on.
I was keen.
I was down.
I wanted it bad.
I wanted it, Anastasia Steele, bad.
And everybody was like, What are you starting now for, man?
You got weeks.
It's a month or two.
Relax.
Learn how to have fun.
So, yeah, of course, you should watch these lectures.
AI can teach you stuff.
And you can get QAs of these things, as you should.
And you should get the degree by finishing a proctored exam and answering a bunch of oral questions, not just for dentistry school or OnlyFans, but in fact for any field you care to study in.
Why can't they do that?
Well, it's pretty clear as to why they can't do that.
They can't do that because it's a Lucille Ball chocolate line assembly rolling carpet of money making.
Get them in, get them out.
I remember I went to go and visit a friend of mine who was taking intro to psych at York University.
It's back in the early 90s, I guess.
Late 80s, early 90s.
I don't know.
It's all a blur.
But I went to go and visit a friend of mine who was taking intro to psych.
And people say, well, you can't learn from screens.
It's like, well, there were, I think, over a thousand people in that class.
It was a little estrogen heavy, just a smidge.
And there were spillover classrooms.
Half the students couldn't fit in the auditorium.
They were just in spillover classrooms watching the screen, right?
There was a little TV and you just watched the lecturer in a different room.
So you're just watching the screen anyway, for the most part.
And it's not like you're going to have much interaction with a thousand students.
So you've got all these.
Half serfs, half slaves, TAs doing all the grunt work and interacting with the students.
That's a thousand to one teacher to student ratio.
Nobody's learning anything from the teacher.
He's just yammering.
He's just, as my daughter would say, he's just yapping.
He's just saying stuff.
Sure, why not?
But they get the flow through, right?
They get the flow through.
They get a million dollars.
$10 million, $100 million.
The government gets to put people in debt.
I mean, fantastic.
You know, it's one thing to be in North Korea and to be indoctrinated.
It's another thing to be indoctrinated into going into debt to pay for your own indoctrination that makes you economically useless.
I'm so indoctrinated, I pay for my own indoctrination.
My own indoctrination leaves me so economically useless that I have no choice but to try and get a job indoctrinating others.
Right, it's like this old meme about this woman was talking about her boyfriend got a degree in Egyptology, a PhD in Egyptology.
And she's like, Well, what can you do with that?
And he's like, Well, my best shot is to go and try and get a job teaching other people Egyptology.
It's kind of like a Ponzi scheme, except the taxpayers get it in the behind.
In the behind.
So, you know, they need crazy high student to teacher ratios.
They need to bribe professors with a life of leisure.
200 grand, 10 hours a week, summers off, four months.
Every fifth year, you go on a sabbatical to some place where you can get propaganda between your ears and sand between your toes.
I'm going to go write a bookie book.
A little book.
Nobody will read it, but it sure beats working for a living.
And when universities used to have all of this prestige because they used to produce intelligent people, it takes a while to bleed that off, right?
It takes a while to bleed that away.
It takes two generations or more sometimes for people to notice hey, that's interesting.
It used to be that coming from this university meant you were smart.
Now, it just means you're willing to go into debt and have your ethnic representatives threaten lawsuits.
Oh, look at that.
It takes a little while.
It takes a little while.
So, of course, it should all change.
It's not going to change.
Too much power is embedded.
Too little choice is available.
Too little truth can be told.
I mean, I remember, boy, this is way back in the day.
I remember when I first began talking, like this is over 20 years ago, about how the value of a university education was going way below the sub basement.
It's like that when I was in my early teens, a friend of mine's father was an engineer, and he was a really great guy, a really great guy.
And he would have these interesting questions or comments.
Over dinner.
And he gave us one that I remember, yay verily to this day.
He said, Hey, if you drill a hole all the way through the earth and you jump in, what happens?
And of course, most of us thought it was kind of like a yo yo, right?
You go down past the center, you go back up, down, back up, and then you end up just sitting in the middle.
But it's a bungee process, right?
Boing, boing, boing.
And he said, That is incorrect.
He said, What happens is, You fall and you slow.
And as you slow, you come to rest more or less.
You know, there's a little bit of seesawing, but more or less in the center of the Earth.
Why?
Because, of course, as you fall down through the hole and you get closer to the center of the Earth, more mass is now above you than below.
More mass is above you, not than below you.
It's equidistant in the middle.
But as you fall down, more mass accumulates above you, and so your descent slows.
I still can't use that word without thinking about that vomit inducing 3D game from the 90s, 80s.
One of the first games I remember playing, I think it was Descent 3, where they actually had rain effects on the window of the little spaceship.
It's kind of cool.
And so the reputation of universities is going to go down like somebody jumping in a hole that goes all the way to the center of the earth.
It's going to go down, down, down.
It's already down.
And I remember getting these letters from parents of.
People who listen to my show who were like 18, 19, and they were thinking of university, and I was making the case against universities.
Now, I'm fine with universities if you have a specific degree that you have to take in order to do what you want.
You want to be a lawyer, you've got to do that.
You want to be a doctor, you want to be an engineer, these kinds of things.
An accountant, seems like.
So you have to take education for that.
But political science, English degree, communications.
History.
I mean, history was bad enough when it was at least lies that serve your civilization.
Now, history is composed of anti truths designed to detonate your civilization.
So, you're actually participating in the demolition of your own society.
In the past, at least, you participated in the lies that kept it propped up.
Now, you are actively detonating the foundations.
Seems like a pretty dishonorable thing or place to be and to do.
And I would get these letters from these parents How dare you?
How dare you?
Some internet guy, you terrible internet guy, T I G, how dare you talk my kid out of going to university?
It's his only chance to succeed.
Now, I mean, I'm just making the case.
Obviously, I don't tell people what to do, but I think more information is best.
And to me, it always came across like, how dare you after my child has received 15 years of propaganda about the value of university.
How dare you give them 45 minutes of counter propaganda?
How dare you?
And there was a great line from an old movie with Michael J. Fox.
Fox.
Sorry, that's the guy.
Michael J. Fox.
Oh, yes.
Blurred Lines.
That was the name of the song I couldn't remember in the interview today.
It came to me right at the end of the interview.
I felt it would be better to go back.
So, here, before the interview's even out, I'm saying Blurred Lines.
It's the name of the interview.
Now, I mean, the name of the song I was trying to think of in the interview.
And in the Michael J. Fox movie, he's trying to get a job.
And some guys, like, he tries to tell the guy who's thinking of hiring about his education, his own education, a Michael J. Fox character.
And the guy says, I don't care about that.
He's like, Well, what was the point of me getting this history degree or poli sci degree or communications degree or English degree?
And the guy was like shrugged and said, Well, you had fun, didn't you?
Ah, there it is.
There it is.
You had fun, didn't you?
And the amniotic sack of script, cafeteria, belly button feeding of universities, it's all just bribing with hedonism.
I remember being quite surprised when I went to university and I only had like A couple of classes a week, five classes, seven classes a week.
And, you know, for, and like, how did, how can I, how could I used to have seven hours of classes a day?
Now I've got seven hours of classes a week.
As the old saying goes, there's only so much you can learn about World War II at 8 30 a.m. through one bloodshot eyeball.
And it's a lot of fun.
It's a lot of hedonism.
It's a lot of people sleeping around.
It's a lot of people experimenting with drugs and alcohol and sleeping in and just bribing you, just bribing you, softening you up.
Keeping you lazy, keeping you unmotivated.
You're basically paying for a vacation with a book report or two, a party town with a couple of essays, at least in the arts.
I know it's more difficult in engineering and comp sci, I think, is still pretty tough.
And physics, of course, is the most brutal.
Philosophy, number two.
Physics is the highest IQ.
One philosophy, numero dos.
But, you know, hey, at least physics comes up with answers that have utility.
So, of course, university needs to be scrapped and rewritten from the ground up, but it won't be because parents are still judging university by what happened when they went to university, in the same way that people judge government education by the standards of what government education was like when they were little.
And government education, before, it was just boring, kind of irrelevant.
I had a real droner of a teacher.
I wrote about him in my short movie called After.
It was about a comedian who comes home from the Second World War and the time between him returning with a huge degree of battle trauma and when he tells his first joke.
And I remember when I screened that at the Hollywood Film Festival many a moon ago, an old guy came up to me absolutely bawling and sobbing and said, That was exactly like my father was.
That was exactly how my father was when he came home from the war.
It was an amazing experience.
But in the past, it was just boring.
Trauma and Humor00:06:06
Now it's actively toxic.
Actively toxic.
You get privilege or unprivileged points.
Are you privileged or are you victimed?
Are you a white male?
Number one privilege.
White female?
Number two privilege.
Non white male?
Lowest privilege.
No, non white male, next lowest.
Non white female, lowest.
And of course, that's all just to train people to be angry.
So when the barriers of law go down, Well, we can all know what's going to happen there.
So, when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all.
And I think back at my university, I learned some good reading tips.
I learned some good organization tips.
I learned how to write about abstract issues in a relatively fluid way.
I think I had some skill that way already, but it helped.
It helped.
But as far as things that I learned that I find of value to this day, Well, not very much.
Not very much at all.
All right.
Well, thank you for your patience, Richard.
I'm happy to chat with anybody who's got a topic.
Is it the Richard I know and love?
Hey, Stefan.
How are you doing?
Yeah, I had a bit of a rough day, but that's a first world problem.
So nobody wants to hear my complaints.
Yeah, actually, it's kind of interesting.
When I first joined or requested to join your channel, James, you know, it's kind of like I'm assuming it was a vetting, a sort of vetting kind of process with James.
And I remember like saying, oh, you know what?
I grew back, I grew up, I was born in 58, so I'm older than you, even.
That's incredible.
Antediluvian.
And, you know, I stated that, oh, you know, I had a high school diploma.
I didn't get, there were no diplomas back when I was doing it, but.
Which is a sort of equivalent to a PhD these days.
I kind of made that joke.
And it's funny hearing you talk about that now.
I think, oh, maybe there's some truth to that.
Yeah.
And then I think I first heard about you, believe it or not, on BTC Sessions about maybe six months ago or something.
I haven't been on your channel for that long.
And you just reminded me of that when you mentioned you were recently on BTC Sessions as well.
Anyway, I just had a couple of things I wanted to talk about, but I was sort of torn between the two.
I listened to your podcast today, Jordan Peterson.
I can't remember the exact name of the.
Jordan Peterson Fever Dream.
Fever Dream, that's it.
Yeah, yeah, Fever Dream.
So I listened to that today and I was like, oh my God, this is so many.
It was kind of torturous.
And I'm sorry, just to interrupt you at the beginning, I just wanted to mention something I forgot.
To mention it at the beginning, which was, you know, during that debate, I mean, this guy was just a relatively entertaining and, and I mean, obviously a bit dangerous to the untutored, but he was just a bit of a mystical lunatic.
And normally I can take that stuff in fairly decent stride.
But I had the strangest experience of getting really angry during the course of that debate.
I had the strangest experience, like irrationally angry.
And I've sort of noticed that over the last week or so.
And I was talking about this with someone, and then somebody pointed out, that person pointed out and said, yes.
But you've been unable to do weights for over three weeks.
Now, that's very interesting.
That's very interesting because, and it was true, I had a little cyst removed, and they said don't lift any weights for three weeks.
And I like to give it a little bit of extra time just in case.
And it was like, that was interesting.
So apparently, your testosterone does start to drop if you stop doing weights.
And I just kind of noticed that I had this like irrational level of aggression.
And it sort of struck me as interesting.
That I think most people associate high testosterone with aggression, but for me, it was very much like I felt much more aggressive when I assumed my testosterone went down.
Now I'm back on the weights and everything's pretty good.
But I just found that to be quite interesting that I couldn't figure out, like, why is this bothering me so much?
I mean, why do I feel so angry?
I even had to sort of take a breath to keep it out of my voice.
And I was like, this person's really, really annoying me.
And that's not something that you can't do much in the public square, particularly controversial stuff, if you're overprone to annoyance.
And I was like, well, that's interesting.
And anyway, so I just wanted to mention that if you do, for some reason, have to stop doing weights, just be alert and aware for that as a potential side effect.
Anyway, go on.
Sorry.
Oh, yeah, that's interesting.
Yeah, sure.
Like, are you a kettlebell fan or like what do you do?
Oh, I do weight machines of every type and I do free weights and all of that.
And my daughter is introducing me to some new exercises, which apparently I think are supposed to give me childbearing hips.
It seems that that's the general process.
So I'm not sure if I'm going to be changing my position on a wide variety of things in the near future, but there are certainly some of those things.
But yeah, just a wide variety.
Yeah, that's going to give you a whole new look, isn't it?
Yeah, for sure.
Oh, I'm getting it.
Of course, only from the waist down, so you'll be safe.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, yeah.
So getting back to that, you know, that episode or that, I don't even know what to call it.
It was.
Yeah, just a show.
Yeah.
Yeah, just a show, right?
But it kind of reminded me of some experiences I've had, actually, a lot of experiences over the years, very much like, you know, when you get into, you think you're in a conversation.
Defining Compelling Conversations00:10:42
And this is not, you know, I know you can't necessarily characterize that as a conversation, but yeah, it's a conversation of sorts.
I tried.
I know you tried, yeah.
And I've tried too in the past.
And it's just amazing how many times the person I'm having a so called conversation with doesn't even ask me one single question about myself.
All they want to do is talk about themselves.
And they never ask a question, no inquiry at all.
And this is something I've experienced quite a few times over the years.
And I'm not sure if it's some sort of def, you know, like a fault of my own or whatever it is.
But it seems to be a thing where Once people get the opportunity to just fire hose you with their stuff, they just take that opportunity and, you know, and you just sit, you know, I just sit there and listen to it and, you know, I just register the lack of interest or I guess the lack of curiosity.
I think, you know, if you don't have curiosity, it kind of then inhibits, you know, disables you to have a proper conversation with somebody.
Because, you know, a conversation by sort of definition is an exchange of curiosity in some sense, right?
You know what I mean?
You want to have this reciprocity happening between the two where you can both be learning something in the process and expanding one's understanding or interests or whatever.
But when that just is so obviously not present, as was this conversation, whatever you want to call it, with this guy, it just, you know, it's kind of like, oh my God, like what is going on here for this person?
Like they just have zero curiosity for anything outside of their own mind.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, I think I know where you're coming from.
And so that which is not rational and empirical is not transmissible.
If you fill your head with thoughts that are not empirical or transmissible, they isolate you.
It's like this big moat or this big wall or that chilling scene at the end of the movie, The Good Father, where Anthony Hopkins is putting up this big giant wall around his backyard and fencing himself in and so on.
So mysticism.
Isolates.
We are connected as human beings exactly to the degree that we share definitions.
And if one religion says love your enemies, another religion says destroy your enemies, then those religions are going to be in conflict because they don't share the same definitions of the good.
And so people, and this is why I was fighting very hard with this fellow to try and get some shared definitions.
If you don't have shared definitions, you have no conversation.
It's not just, well, you know, we're just talking past each other or we're kind of missed.
Like, we are not, you cannot have a conversation with someone who does not share your definitions or you don't agree to theirs.
It's like trying to have a conversation with someone who speaks Japanese and you don't speak Japanese and they don't speak English or whatever it is.
You cannot have a conversation if you don't share definitions.
And what happens is people end up getting wrapped up in non quantifiable, non verifiable, non measurable ideas.
You know, when he said, Well, you're receiving an argument, you need to start with the feminine and then you need to transform to the masculine.
And then when you speak back, you need to switch back to the feminine.
It's like, How do you know any of that?
How is that measurable?
How is that empirical?
How is that proven?
And one of the things I was hoping to get to him, if I hadn't been choking out my own bilious rage, one of the things I was hoping to get to this guy was, How do you know any of this is true?
How do you know any of this is true?
That women, blah, blah, blah, men, blah, blah, blah.
How do you know any of this is true?
And it's an important question.
Now, there are ways that you can figure out some of this stuff.
You can look at evolutionary imperatives.
You can look at brain scans.
You can read about male female differences and you can ponder on how they have evolved and why and so on.
But when people are just saying a bunch of stuff that just, you know, maybe it's vaguely compelling if you already agree or, but if you don't agree and you don't agree with the definitions, it's not at all compelling.
And you should try to get people to understand what it is that you're thinking.
But this is why philosophy is so essential for love, connection, and intimacy.
Because if you can't define Your own thoughts in a way that other people can understand.
Doesn't mean agree, just understand.
If you can't define your own thoughts in a way that other people can understand, then you can't connect with anyone.
And this guy, unfortunately, had walled himself off in a giant stone castle of his own definitions and was not willing to venture outside.
And eventually, I just got bored and left.
Yeah, that's exactly the impression I got.
Yeah, I just felt, oh my God, this guy is.
Yeah, just literally ward himself off from reality, I guess, in some sense.
Yeah.
And it's a matter of empathy.
If I'm going to take your time or the audience's time, as I want to do, I want to take your time.
Obviously, I want to give you value in return.
But it's basic empathy that if you're going to consume someone's time and life in a conversation, you need to make sure it's of value to them.
Especially if you're kind of hijacking your show in some sense, right?
You know what I mean?
Like, It's one thing to have a conversation privately with somebody and it goes off the rails or goes wrong or whatever.
But it's something else, I think, when you call in on another person just so that you can air your own whole thing without really contributing or even answering your questions, even taking them seriously.
Well, I was hoping he would.
Yeah, I was hoping he would contribute.
I don't mind if other people want to monopolize.
I mean, so to speak, that's when I interview experts or whatever they do most of the talking.
Something of real value to offer, I'm happy to step aside and have them take a chunk of the show.
The important thing for me is the show provides value to people.
And so I let them talk for a long time because, of course, you never know if it's going to be 15 minutes.
You maybe think it's going to be five or whatever, but I felt like he was about to give me something valuable.
So I let him go on for a while.
And then also, when I get impatient later on, he certainly can't say I interrupted him too much.
So it's just a basic empathy thing.
Am I providing value to someone else?
It's like if you've ever been in this situation, most people have, I'm sure you have.
You're trying to give someone a massage, right?
Oh, yeah, my back's killing me.
Can you just give me a massage?
And you go too hard, right?
And you go too hard, right?
Or you hit the wrong spot, a little to the left, a little to the right.
So, you are there just giving them an amateur massage and you're trying to figure out a way that you can provide value.
And you've got to get that feedback.
You don't just grind there while they slowly weep tears of blood into the carpet, right?
So, you're looking for that kind of feedback.
So, I'm looking to see am I providing value?
Is the other person going to be better off as a result of this conversation?
And if you can't share definitions, then it's foundationally not empathetic and actually kind of selfish.
And by the way, Kale, we will get to you in a few minutes.
But yeah, so I think it really is just an empathy thing.
Am I providing value to the other person?
Do they understand what I mean?
And is both this person and the audience better off for me having spoken?
And again, I'm happy with fairly lengthy theories.
I'm happy with very abstract theories.
But I'm not happy when people say things like, well, masculine and feminine has almost nothing to do with male and female, because then it's just like, What?
Like, at least say, look, I know that I'm really redefining things and blah, But just when you find that out after an hour, I just feel completely rug pulled.
And that just feels like a real bait and switch.
Like, hey, we're going to talk about ideas.
Psych!
No, we're not.
I'm just going to make up a bunch of nonsense.
Yeah.
And the gaslighting didn't help.
I mean, you know, it was, that was pretty horrendous to hear as well.
I was just sort of.
Sorry, what do you mean?
Well, the gaslighting, when, you know, he would go back and then kind of call you out as being, You know, making a mistake in the question you asked or something like that.
You know, it was just like, oh my God, this is only getting bad to worse pretty quick.
Well, and just that's what I said at the end, right?
It's just this liar.
For those who you should go back and listen to it, I give a good speech at the end.
This was after the X space had crashed.
So I did it afterwards.
Yeah, but just I just want people who tell the truth.
Look, everybody from time to time doesn't listen.
Everybody from time to time gaps out, spaces out, thinks about something else.
I mean, there are times when I'm working out and I'm listening to an audiobook and I have to go back like three times because it just, like, what?
Sorry, I missed that bit.
What did I, what did, what, what big plot twist happened or whatever?
And so it's fine.
And if somebody were to just say, you know what, you're right.
I'm really sorry.
I did gap out.
That's fine.
You know, no, no big hate.
But it's just when people start lying about it.
Oh, I was listening and, you know, they weren't.
And it's all the way back to, did you do your homework?
And, oh, yeah, I did my homework back to school.
I just don't like people who don't tell the truth.
And then they don't tell me the truth in things that I can actually verify.
Like, were you actually listening?
And so, if it's a principle in law, right?
False in one thing, false in all things.
If somebody is found to have lied on the stand, you can't take anything they said as accurate or true.
And towards the end, when he openly lied and so on, then it's like, okay, well, I'm not going to listen to you if you lie and don't even seem to notice it.
Then, if you don't have any commitment to telling the truth, why would I listen to you about masculine and feminine when you can't even get two and two make four?
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, listen, I'll cut it off there because I feel like I always take up too much time on your show.
And I don't know, like that may be just bullshit coming out from myself.
Well, let me manage that.
Yeah, don't worry about that.
But I appreciate that.
Let's move on to Kale.
But listen, I appreciate it's a British thing.
It's a very British thing to want to manage other people's perception and reception to the conversation.
But yeah, that's my job to manage, not yours.
All right, Kale, if you wanted to unmute, I'm all ears.
Hey, I have a comment and then I have a real world situation where I'm trying to get some moral clarity and I'm hoping to get your help on this.
But my comment is kind of based on this conversation that started off the show.
The Slowdown of Software00:06:29
A couple of years ago, you mentioned a great Topic called The Great Slowdown about just how things are just so kind of lacking in quality and competence.
And I was wondering if you're still experiencing that today in this year, 2026.
Oh, it's even worse.
Yeah, it's even worse.
And there's no turning it around, at least in the short run.
I'm probably going to go to my grave with things only being about.
For those of you who haven't been around for a while, I'll just keep this real brief.
Like, stuff used to work.
Stuff used to work.
Everything used to work well.
Houses used to be built well.
If you ever know someone who's owned a house, just ask them about, especially if the house has been built in the last 10 years or less, just ask them what kind of quality they're dealing with.
Computers used to really last.
And you used to be able to pick up the phone and get a problem solved in about five minutes without having the big runaround.
You used to be able to send a message off, write a letter, send an email, and problems would be dealt with right away.
The number of problems you were dealing with were very few.
And stuff used to work really, really well in society.
And now it just works less and less every year.
I mean, that's just a natural consequence of a wide variety of things we've talked about in this show before.
But I've just had to recognize that although we started off very high up as a civilization, we have lost our motive power.
And so if you've ever been gliding, I went gliding once as a teenager.
One of my mother's boyfriends took me up.
I actually wrote about that in my novel, Almost, which you should definitely check out at freedomain.comslash books.
But if you've ever gone gliding, I mean, you're up in the sky and your glider is specifically designed with this crazy wide wingspan and it looks like a giant frozen winged dragonfly.
And you can stay up for a long time and catch an updraft, a little bit of wind.
But eventually, eventually, you're just fighting the inevitable.
You're going to end up back down on the ground.
And it feels like we kind of lost our motive power and we're still up.
And it'll take a while, but it's coming.
So that's, yeah, I find it worse than ever, and it's only going to get worse from here.
Hey, that's my experience too.
So, yeah, I was had slight hope brought back, and then since I had some work done to my house and I encountered some really competent individuals.
But, yeah, for the most part, I agree that it's we're at a point of no return.
So, yeah, I was just curious to see if anything has changed in your experience because when you did mention that a couple years ago, man, it really hit home because it's exactly what my wife and I were experiencing.
Yeah, like I tried a software service.
Oh, I tried a software service, I think it was last summer.
And, you know, I set my reminders, you know, you try something out and it didn't particularly work for me.
So I went to their website and there was no way to cancel it.
No way.
And I'm pretty good at this internet stuff.
I've been a computer programmer and web designer and all of that.
So I went to the website, there was no way to cancel it.
So I sent them an email and said, look, there's nobody to cancel it.
I just need you to cancel this.
And so on.
And they write me back and ask me to email someone else.
So I email someone else.
I took a screenshot of the website because I needed to show them that they should, if they're honorable people, they should have a way to cancel on the website.
And I sent them the email need to cancel, can't do it on the website.
Here's the email, here's my account number, blah, And then, foolish me, I forgot about it.
And then I find out a couple of months later, they never canceled.
There's no way to cancel on the website.
Sent in the message.
They didn't cancel it.
So then I demanded a refund and I got the runaround.
And of course, it's tough for businesses if they have to go back and claw back earnings.
It wasn't a huge amount of money, but, you know, not nothing either.
And, you know, it's just this kind of stuff.
You just have to kind of grin and bear it.
Just grin and bear it.
The number of websites, oh, you need to go here and you need to do this.
Page not found.
Or it just spins and spins.
Or you have to refresh or the capture doesn't work or, you know, it's just slowed down.
In terms of getting things done in a reasonably efficient manner.
And don't even get me started on this bloatware virus brain known as Windows 11.
Oh my God.
See, I started on computers with 2K of memory, they were faster.
I remember when I first started using Windows, maybe it was Windows 2 or something like that, blindingly fast.
I took out a stopwatch the other day because I need to print the questions, right?
I ask people for questions and then I'll pace around and work to answer them.
So.
I had to bring up a print option, right?
So I'm in Notepad in Windows and I need to print, but I need to change it so that it prints the page number.
Because, you know, sometimes when you print, I print out pretty big text so I don't have to wear glasses to read it.
And sometimes they curl over on themselves and you get a bunch of mess on the floor and then it takes a while to sort it out.
So I just want the page numbers on the bottom.
And it took four seconds to bring up the print options.
Four seconds on an i9 computer.
With 32 gigs of RAM.
It takes four frickin' seconds to bring up a print dialogue option.
Now, on DOS, that was instantaneous, QDOS, Windows.
And this was on computers with 640K of RAM.
It's staggering how slow and bloated and bad all the modern software is.
It's just appalling.
There's no efficiency, no stripping down.
They're just like, ah, throw more hardware at it, it'll be fine.
And it really is just, I mean, maybe Linux is better.
It's been a while since I've used it.
Maybe the Mac is better.
I haven't used that one in a while.
I used to use a Mac sometimes for recording interviews because the Windows software was unstable.
And I mean, I've been working with computers for almost 50 years and things still don't work.
And again, I won't get into particular details.
Dogs, Doors, and Danger00:15:16
Everyone's got their tales of woe.
But yeah, stuff is just slow, man.
It's just slow and kludgy and sludgy and.
I mean, websites used to load faster when they used to use Adobe Flash and I had a 9600 board modem.
I mean, it's just, you know, with a very fast fiber optic and a giant computer and a massive memory and graphics card, everything's just slow, And I mean, I don't know.
I mean, did you have to just strip it all and start again?
I guess that was kind of the Linux idea.
But so, yeah, sorry.
I know that you have your other real word question, but yeah, it's just the general slowdown.
It's brutal.
Yeah, no, everything you said, man, I can feel it grind in my.
Yeah, it's rough.
But, yeah, onto this moral question that I'm struggling with, and maybe you can give me some clarity.
So, the situation is my next door neighbors have six children.
They're all homeschooled, really wonderful kids.
And I have children of my own.
I have three daughters, very young age.
And they often play a lot in the front yard, which is just a really great experience for them just to play.
And I feel very fortunate that they're next door to homeschool kids who behave so well.
However, their dog, my neighbor's dog, got out of their house just inadvertently.
And then it, and the dog bit my daughter, like right above her, right above her buttocks.
And it was a harsh bite.
It penetrated, it drew blood.
She was obviously very upset, crying, just a horrific scene.
Luckily, it was just one bite, and the dog just was taken away.
Obviously, the parents were mortified, and they were all just.
You know, emotions are running high and trying to get some understanding of how this happened.
After the smoke cleared and we all went back inside, and I cleaned up the wound for my daughter and she calmed down and, you know, we looked at the wound.
You know, the neighbor's father wants to know right away, you know, what's the severity of the bite?
And he's under the impression that, hey, you know, if it's a pretty serious bite, then we're going to look to, Put the dog down.
I mean, pretty military guy, pretty cut and dry when it comes to his behaviors, tolerance.
And from my understanding, that dog, I did not get any type of vicious demeanor.
It's not a pit bull or anything like that.
It's like a Labradoodle, like an Aussie doodle, poodle, I don't know, large dog.
But I know that the daughter who's very close to my daughter.
That's like her best friend.
I mean, she just loves that dog.
I mean, they're extremely close.
She just can't believe that it would attack my daughter like that.
I think the context of the situation is they were playing a game where they were kind of doing like a tug of war game, and it kind of looked like the neighbor's daughter was in a state of distress.
So perhaps the dog saw that and read the play incorrectly and ended up attacking my daughter, thinking that she was harming.
The neighbor's daughter.
Like, so I thought the context of it would matter.
So, as my neighbor's father is waiting to kind of understand the level of damage sustained to our daughter, I know there's a lot of daughters here in the story.
Again, he told me if it's a legitimate bite, then I'm going to look to put the dog down.
You know, that's it.
So, my wife and I are just, okay, what do we do?
Do we.
We obviously don't want the dog to be.
Sorry, you were saying if it's a legitimate bite, he's going to put it down or you're going to try and put it down?
He, the neighbor, the neighbor's father.
Okay, sorry about that.
No, no, no problem.
I know.
It's a lot of moving, a lot of people, a lot of stuff going on.
So at first, my wife and I kind of wrestled with this question.
So we did discover it was a bite, which is obviously something we're not going to play around with.
We know that the children are very fond of that dog.
We don't.
Think it's a naturally aggressive dog, considering the context of how the attack occurred.
So, we're wondering do we tell him the truth that it was a bite, that penetrated bite, and the dog is going to be put down and devastate the children?
Or do we just kind of lie by omission and say, oh, she's fine, just a little scrape, nothing to deal with, and then doing that, save the dog, and the children get to keep their furry best friend?
So, we wrestled that for a while, and I ultimately decided to tell.
The truth and send a picture as proof to show that the dog did indeed bite and, you know, it left a penetrative bite mark.
And to him, that was, you know, checkmate, that was done.
And he went ahead and he put down the dog the following day.
And from my understanding, the children are just absolutely devastated.
I tried to tell him that.
I'm sorry, how old are his kids?
He has six children.
So there's a 14 year old, there's a 13 year old, there's a 10 year old.
Twin five year olds, and they have a newborn.
It's the 13 and the 10 year old that are very close to my daughter.
And of course, the 10 and 13 year old are absolutely in love with the dog.
Well, whose responsibility was it to keep the dog out of your yard?
This was in the front yard.
So it was kind of a.
But I see what you mean.
Who's responsible for keeping that dog under wraps?
And obviously, it's the parents' responsibility, although they were quick to say that the 13 year old, who's Should have made sure that the door was closed and the dog did not indeed leave the home.
Right.
And, you know, consequences are tough, man.
And it's always a difficult question as a parent how much consequences do you, or how many consequences do you allow your children to receive?
And if the older children are responsible for keeping the dog in the house and the older children did not fulfill that responsibility, the dog got out.
And bit a child.
It's a very tough situation, of course, right?
But there are consequences if you fail to keep an animal off someone else's property.
Now, nobody wants to inflict those consequences, but those are inevitable results of the children, perhaps if it was the children, of the children failing to keep the dog inside.
And so, if the parents weren't home, let's say it was after school and the kids were home, and I'm sure that the parents have told the kids a million times, right?
Don't let the dog out, right?
Now, make sure the dog stays in, not just because of you and your family or other families, but I assume that there's a road with cars, right?
Now, if the dog had been let out and the dog had been run over and killed or maimed or wounded, it could be even worse in the short run.
Then that would be bad.
Obviously, bad for the kids, bad for the dog, and bad for the driver.
These kinds of things can cause accidents, right?
Dog comes out, you might drive into oncoming traffic or you get surprised or whatever, right?
So if kids want the responsibility, right?
And I'm thinking more about the 13 year olds, right?
So if she says, Look, I want this dog, right?
And they get the dog, say, Listen, you have to keep the dog in the house or in the backyard.
The dog cannot go out through the front yard.
Do you understand?
You repeat after me.
You know, all of that stuff that you say to kids, right?
And if the 13 year old did not keep the dog in the house, and not only did not keep the dog in the house, but was so unaware of the location of the dog, do you know how long the dog was in your yard for?
Well, the incident occurred at their house in their front yard.
My daughter was playing with the 13 year old in the front yard, you know, just horsing around.
And I think she went inside to go get something.
And the dog, obviously, very effective, you know, wants to be involved, can see everybody.
Through the window, was already at the front door.
And as soon as she opened the front door, he just kind of willed his way on out, sort of deal.
So the dog was in the house, and then the dog came out when the 13 year old came back out of the house?
Yes, I believe so.
Or was attempting to go in.
I did not see the whole incident.
I'm getting a lot of back and forth and whatnot, but that's from my understanding.
And were the parents home at the time?
Yes, we were.
I was.
No, no, sorry, not you, but.
Yeah, all parents were home.
I was chatting with the father in the driveway, and it was in our blind side.
You can't see the front door from the driveway.
So all we really saw was the only thing I remember was just seeing my daughter running and screaming towards me, saying, The dog bit my butt.
Okay, so at that moment, given that the dog came out and immediately saw the aggression or what the dog perceived as the aggression between your daughter and the other girl, and maybe perhaps thought that your daughter was being aggressive.
Toward the other girl.
So then the dog bit your daughter.
And so, if I understand this correctly, did this happen right after the dog left the house?
Yes.
Okay.
The dog leaves the house, assesses the situation, obviously gets it wrong because it's a dog, right?
So it's not going to have much of a threat analysis going on.
And so, the 13 year old was the only one who could have stopped it by keeping the dog in the house, right?
Correct.
And, and, um, And again, I don't know the whole extent of it.
I don't know if it was she kept the door open too long or if how much she resisted in him trying the dog, trying to squeeze on out of there.
It's all very hazy.
And I haven't had a chance to converse with her since this whole ordeal because I just assume she's very still emotional about it all.
Sure.
And it's a very sad situation.
Yeah.
It's a very, I mean, obviously it's a very sad situation.
So if the child was the only one who could have kept the dog in the house, right?
Because the dad was in the driveway chatting with you.
The mom was obviously elsewhere, not right at the door.
And I don't know.
Has the dog been out playing with the kids in the front yard before, or was this a new thing?
No, no.
I've never seen them in the front before, but I have seen them walk the dog as a family.
And we have spoken with them while the dog is on a leash, and the dog is always very pleasant and not aggressive.
Okay, so they must have some kind of policy, which is the dog's only allowed in the backyard or something like that, right?
Correct.
Okay.
Yeah.
So if you have a rule in the house, which is the dog can't go in the front yard and the kids are all on board with it, and then the kid is in charge of that situation, and the dog gets out and bites someone, again, it's really sad, but it is to some degree the children's responsibility.
And now, of course, you wouldn't say, you killed the dog.
It wouldn't be anything like that.
But it would be like, well, and nobody likes to say, I told you so, unless you're just like someone's just a sadist.
Nobody likes to say, I told you so.
But, you know, basically, when the smoke is cleared, it would be like, well, you know, obviously, this is why there was a rule which said don't have the dog.
Was it a young dog?
Is that right?
Was it a little impulsive?
No, I think it's a pretty mature dog.
I would say it's been, you know, probably four or five.
Okay.
Yeah.
So the cause and effect just needs to be clear.
And I can tell you this, though those girls, when they grow up and have kids, will never let that happen.
With their kids, they'll never let their kids go out the front door.
This will stay with them forever and probably will be for the better.
And again, you know, for me, like I would never rub this in and like, I can't believe you did this and, you know, this is on you and nothing like that.
But you do have to be pretty clear about the cause and effect.
You know, it's very sad.
We had a dog.
The dog needs to stay in the house.
The dog got out of the house and the dog bit someone.
What matters in the long run is that the dog doesn't bite someone else.
And the only way to guarantee that, of course, is to put the dog down, which again, I love dogs.
It's a very, very sad situation.
But if the dog has bitten someone, it means the dog can't be trusted around people.
And if the dog ever gets loose again, and given that the dog got loose once, it's probably going to get loose again.
And then the dog, unfortunately, is a hazard in the neighborhood.
And if the dog gets loose and jumps a fence and goes into the neighborhood or something like that, you don't know what the dog is going to find.
So it is just a very sad and tragic situation.
Did it have to do with a lack of training?
Did it have to do with a lack of attentiveness on the part of the 13 year old?
I mean, who knows, right?
Again, there's no video, I assume, of any of this, and everyone's quite upset, but I think it is important to tell the truth.
People have to make the best decisions.
It's sort of a free speech argument, right?
People have to make the best decisions.
We want people to make the best decisions.
And the only way they can make the best decisions is with the best information.
And if you withhold from them the facts, they can't make good decisions.
And if your dog had bitten a kid, however much you love the dog, and I get that there's a lot of passion.
With regards to dogs and a lot of emotions, and that's rightly so.
I mean, man's best friend and all.
But if your dog bit a child and that fact was hidden from you, and then your dog bit a child again, and perhaps with much worse results, you'd be kind of annoyed and angry that you hadn't been told the truth, right?
Yes, sir.
That's exactly what was going through my mind as of debating whether or not to be fully transparent about the bite.
And yeah, and then as soon as I said to myself, like, what difference should it make, you know, that.
My daughter was bit above her buttocks.
And yeah, imagine if it was her face, I wouldn't have hesitated.
Right.
Or if the dog had got a hold of either male or female private parts, these things we can only scarcely imagine about or something like that.
Honesty with Pets00:15:24
So it is a very sad situation.
Having animals comes with risk.
You know, we've had our ducks and we've had one or two ducks get lost to animals.
I mean, having pets is a little bit risky.
And.
There's lots of positives to it.
There's some minuses.
I think, in general, the positives that way, the minuses.
We had a neighbor once, many years ago, who was breeding show dogs.
And one of their dogs got loose.
And they're big, big animals.
And we had chickens.
And of course, what did the dog do?
The dog did what dogs do.
And it sat upon the chickens.
And it looked like my daughter, these were her pets, right?
And it looked like the dog was just tearing the chicken apart.
And it was appalling.
Like everybody making lots of noise.
All that kind of stuff.
And I didn't feel particularly safe going down to rescue the chicken because the dog was huge.
Like, it's not quite a wolf, but it sure wasn't the opposite of a wolf either.
And anyway, it turned out that the dog was just playing.
The chicken ended up living, and we never saw the dogs again.
But yeah, that stuff can be kind of alarming for sure.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm feeling a little bit better about, you know, after mulling this over a little bit, and I appreciate your clarity.
I had a question, though.
My daughter seems to be bouncing back relatively okay, but that's just on the surface.
Do you have any tips on how I could maybe help her?
You know, because assuming this is probably a pretty traumatic experience to be bit by a large dog, any advice on how to.
Help her kind of process this in a healthy way?
Yeah, it's tough, you know.
Sorry, of course it's tough.
That's an obvious thing to say.
If it wasn't tough, you wouldn't be asking the question because you're a smart guy.
It's always a tough thing to know if a kid has a wound, so to speak, do you keep poking at it to make sure it's okay or do you let it heal on its own?
I don't know the answer to that.
There have been studies that show that people who were involved in a trauma who get grief counseling actually take longer to recover.
Are you okay?
Oh my God, that was so terrible.
Are you sure?
And I'm not saying you would do it like that, but some of these kind of cliched hyper emotional grief counselors, I just don't think it does kids, young people, a lot of good in particular.
Like after the school shootings and so on, the people who went through grief counseling have shown higher levels of stress and trauma because, oh, you're right.
It's sort of like if you're injured around your dad, it probably doesn't feel that bad.
If you're injured around your mom, it's like, oh my God, am I going to lose my leg?
Because moms feel it very strongly, and that's a good thing, but not always the most objective thing.
So, talking about it, asking if she's okay.
But if you keep asking kids, are they okay, they will receive the message that they shouldn't be.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, it does.
So, be available to speak and say that the topic is on your mind?
Because I assume she also knows that the dog has now been put down.
She's four years old, so I mean, I don't know.
Yeah, you don't want to go down that road with her for sure.
Yeah, but if she does ask a question about, hey, where's the dog?
I mean, my wife's kind of just said, hey, you know, the dog is going to a different home now.
Right, right, right.
And it's kind of true in the embrace of cold earth.
And I remember, yeah, my daughter, when we were in Sao Paulo, I was giving some speeches in Brazil, and my daughter was jumped on the street by a dog.
It was on a leash, but it did jump up, and she was quite little, and it did frighten her, and she was nervous around dogs.
And I remember as a little kid, Being trapped in the woods by a great Dane, literally, as looking up at this thing, looked like a horse to me.
And every time I moved, it growled.
I thought that was it for me.
I thought I was just going to get torn apart.
Oh, yeah, I remember the story.
Yeah, just it was really, really terrifying.
And I'm not sure.
I love dogs.
I really think they're wonderful creatures.
There was in Ireland, my aunts had this wonderful cocker spaniel named Brandy, the most affectionate, wonderful dog.
Loved dogs, loved pets as a whole.
But dogs can be a little random, as you sort of.
And again, who knows what happened with that dog, either before it was brought into this family, or maybe even it had, you know, a few too many pencils in the ear from kids or something like that.
Who knows, right?
It just inadvertently, I'm not saying anything conscious or cruel.
But dogs, you know, they are still half wolves.
And it's been a lot of domestication, but it is tricky.
So I would say ask her if she's okay.
Kids, they do have a fair amount of resilience to things that aren't sadistic.
And this was just an accident.
Right, so you just have to make sure that she knows she didn't do anything wrong.
Of course, I'm sure you've said all of that.
And if you ever feel nervous around a dog, just come and let me know.
We're going to try and do our best to have you not be around dogs for a little while just so things calm down.
If you ever want to talk about it, if you ever have a bad dream, you know, let me know and I'm happy to talk about it, you know.
But it's really tough if you keep saying, but no, really, are you sure you're okay?
Then the kids be like, well, is this worse than I think it is?
Like, why does everyone keep asking me?
And at that age, maybe that might be a message she would get.
So again, I don't have any great answers, but I would be, it would be something along those lines if that makes sense.
Yeah, no, I think that's great advice.
I, you know, for the record, I haven't brought it up at all today and neither has she.
So I, Think what you're saying makes perfect sense, not to ruminate over it and go from there.
And then we do encounter any hesitancy around animals, dogs in particular.
I mean, we have three dogs ourselves, but this dog was massive, not like our little chia pets.
So I don't normally think of dogs with the phrase doodle at the end to be very large, but I guess, I guess, oh, yeah, this one's, yeah, an Aussie doodle.
I guess that's what I enjoy.
I mean, he's a big, I guess he's there.
Accustomed to herding sheep.
So he's a pretty big, pretty big guy.
And it's just sad because I almost feel responsible for.
I know this is irrational thinking, but I kind of had the dog's life in our hands in terms of whether you're honest or not and about the situation.
No, I'm sorry.
I push back on that a little bit because that's, I mean, to take a silly example, that's like saying, well, I have the criminal's freedom in my hands if I don't press charges.
It's like, no, the criminal obviously.
Made the decision to commit the crime.
Of course, the dog didn't make the decision, but it's not causal upon you.
It is causal upon who let the dog into the front yard.
That's not causal to you.
You did not cause that.
You would have done almost anything to avoid it.
That's number one.
So it did not hold that dog's life in your hands.
And secondly, here's the thing too.
And this is a tough thing as a parent.
And listen, you have more kids than I do, so I defer to you on a whole bunch of things.
And maybe this is helpful, maybe it's not.
But it is a kind of peculiarly modern perspective, which is that if bad things happen to our kids, it's just bad.
Now, adversities and pain and difficulties and fear give us the chance to overcome, give us the chance to be courageous, give us the chance to realize that we can be attacked by an animal, to your daughter, I'm sure the size of a small horse, and be fine.
So, you know, I don't want to be Mr. That, which does not kill us, makes us stronger.
But it is not that everything that's bad that happens to our kids is not universally or totally bad.
You know, it's like if your kid is ostracized, then they're going to learn how to be more resilient that way and not care so much about what other people think.
If your kid is bullied, right, they're going to learn some strategies for dealing with bullies, which are going to be helpful for the rest of their life.
If your kid is cut from a sports team, then they'll learn about their strengths and weaknesses, maybe where they could have worked harder.
So we as parents, of course, generally have an impulse to want to shield our children from bad things.
I would make the case that, I mean, obviously outside of real disasters, bad stuff that happens is part of life.
Of course, we would, most of us choose to deliver our children to adulthood having had them not experience much negative stuff at all, but arguably that would make them a bit too frail for the hurly burly of the modern world.
And that for kids to experience difficult things, negative things, accidents, bad things, it's the old thing about, you know, obviously you should have your kids wear helmets, but they fall off their bike.
Well, they fall off their bike because they get too cocky, right?
And they, hey, look at me, I know hands.
Don't do that.
You're not ready.
No, no, I'm right.
And it's like, so they do learn something about not being too cocky, not to make assumptions, because kids master things and they think that they're perfect at them almost right away, right?
Look, I'm the greatest.
And it's fine.
There's nothing wrong with that, but you need to have some humility.
So, negative things happening to our kids, it's not universally or in a black and white way just bad.
And there can be some good things that you get out of this.
So, instead, it would be like, I am.
Very impressed with how strong and brave you're being with all of this.
Like, good for you, right?
And kids can get some sense of pride or achievement or satisfaction or something like that from overcoming these kinds of difficulties and obstacles.
And again, of course, your daughter didn't bring this on at all.
And you can also use it as an opportunity to get closer and say, oh, you know, when I was a kid, let me tell you what happened to me.
And then, you know, one of the things that happens when people experience disasters, they don't want to feel like they're alone.
They don't want to feel like it only happened to them.
So it's a good opportunity for you to say, you know, here's things that were similar that I had when I was a kid, and here's how I overcame them.
And I'm, you know, really proud of what you're doing with this.
And, you know, you've got a lot of guts there, kid.
Good for you.
And, you know, helping kids recognize that things that are bad aren't just bad.
You know, like you've got to tear the muscles to build it, and you've got to have difficult things in life in order to have self confidence.
And again, I'm not saying that you'd want to expose your kid to this, but given that it has already happened, if you treat it as Uniformly negative, like this is just a bad, terrible, awful thing with no redeeming qualities, then I think you may be instilling in her too much anxiety about negative things happening.
And instead, you can look at some of the positive effects of this.
You know, like you did the right thing.
You came to me.
We told the truth and you're going to be safe.
And I'm really sorry that it happened.
But how brave were you and how alert were you and how intelligent were you?
And everything you did was just right.
You know, give them some confidence in the face of adversity and they will be less nervous about adversity, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, no, I haven't brought it up like that in terms of praising her response to it.
And yeah, now that she mentioned it, I think she did an excellent job managing all of it, all things considered.
I mean, as well as anybody can handle a dog bite to the ass.
I mean, she did better than I would, I think, to be honest with you.
I'm a bit of a fraidy cat when it comes to big dogs.
So, if it's any consolation to her, she's got a hats off from a philosopher.
So, good for her.
Praising her intelligence, resourcefulness, and skill and courage in the moment is really important.
And that way she's going to be less nervous about bad things in the future.
Yeah, that's outstanding.
Yeah, thank you for bringing that to my attention.
That's something I definitely would like to share with her when I get a chance when she wakes up tomorrow morning.
And then, yeah, lastly, I know this is a long topic and I appreciate all the time you devoted to it.
It's really been helpful.
Any idea on how to mend the relationship between the girls?
Because they're really close.
I mean, even from a 10 and from a I was just amazed that a 10 and a 13 year old, and obviously they're homeschooled, has been such great friends to my four year old.
I never thought in a million years that would occur, but they are really close.
And I just hope that this doesn't fracture their relationship.
Well, why don't you get them a card, bake them a cake, go over and say a few words about how sad it is about what happened with the dog?
You would have done anything to help.
And really am sorry that this is the way forward.
Of course, we don't want the dog biting anyone else.
And, you know, just.
Go and mourn with them, I would say.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that's a good idea.
And then, you know, it's funny, you know, how old are you?
I'm 36.
36.
Okay.
So it's hard, you're closer to childhood than I am, but it's hard to remember just how wild the passions of childhood are and how strong and intense the passions of childhood are.
And of course, we as adults, we're looking at all these big, giant monster problems in the world.
And it's like, eh, you know, you lost a dog and the big scheme of life, you know, blah, blah, blah, 200,000 people died yesterday or whatever it is.
So we look at the bigger things and it's hard to remember sometimes.
Just how deep, intense, and passionate children's feelings are.
Oh, yeah.
I lost my dog to a garbage man who ran him over, and he was so just cold and heartless towards it.
And I just remember being devastated for almost a month.
Oh, I mean, there's a song by Queen called All Dead, All Dead, which is actually about Brian May's childhood cat.
Like, that's how deep and long it goes into adulthood when his cat died and he first learned about death.
And.
You know, if your kid experiences a snub, you know, whatever.
You know, as adults, we're like, eh, I get snubbed all the time.
It doesn't really matter.
But of course, for kids, it's really new and it's really impressive and it's really important.
I still remember the first sunset that I, well, I still remember the first sunset I saw that I remember.
Now I see a sunset.
It's like, oh, that's pretty.
But I just remember seeing the sunset and just like, oh, this is the most beautiful thing.
This orb of fire, it's amazing and all of that.
And the newness and the rawness, and I mean that in a very good way, the newness and the rawness of childhood experiences can be a little tough.
To remember.
Like, you know, the stuff that's important to my daughter, I mean, there's 40 plus years between us.
But if I think back about what was important to me when I was her age, then that's a good way to sort of get back into it.
So this is a huge deal for them.
And of course, you know that, right?
But I think, you know, go over and just say, I'd like to just say a few words.
You know, here's a, you know, find the most sentimental card that you can get about the loss of a dog.
And just like, I'm so sorry.
And if there's anything I can do to help, you know, it's really important to me.
And it's really, I really sympathize, you know, big hugs and, you know, maybe a little ducky cake or something like that to just take really seriously what the children are going through.
And I think that would be the best thing to do to mend fences.
And I think also that's just a nice thing to do as a whole.
Rewiring for Truth00:12:29
Yeah, agreed.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
And if you get your daughter to present the cake, so much the better because then all is forgiven, right?
That's right.
That's right.
I'll get her a mound cake that looks like her rear end with some cherries that simulate the dogfight.
Maybe not, but I know you're just joking.
Right.
It's re traumatized the kids, right?
No, just get him a pit bull puppy.
No, I'm just kidding.
All right.
Thanks.
Well, thanks, man.
I appreciate that.
And my best to everyone in the situation.
Yes.
Thank you, sir.
All the best.
Bye.
If you are on the line, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.
Hi.
Sorry, this is the business.
I'm sharing.
Came on, but I have a kind of a completely different topic.
Are you guys trying to stick to the topic today?
No, no, what's on your mind?
All right.
Well, I've actually been following you for a very long time and I kind of drifted off for a little while and then I kind of find you again on X recently.
And I remember you used to take some pretty big risks with the subject matter that you would deal with around particularly racial issues.
And I don't know how to talk to people about this who are still in the sort of woke vein of thought, even partly.
I know people in my personal life who, if I even tell them, just to take one example, George Floyd had triple the least amount of fentanyl in his system, and that's why he actually died.
Chauvin's knee is not on his neck, it's in the middle of his back.
They just shut down or If they're being polite, they just kind of glaze over like somebody who's.
Sorry.
And he was using an approved technique from his department.
And as far as I remember it, the description of that technique was suppressed during the trial.
Yes.
Yeah.
They wouldn't let the jury see me.
And he said he couldn't breathe for long before he was down on the ground.
And oh, yeah, it's just terrible stuff.
Anyway, go ahead.
Sorry.
But yeah, no, I mean, that's just an example of one of the things that's very clear that even the people who know that it's not accurate.
The official story that is, it's almost like you're not allowed to take away the emotional ammunition that is provided by the story.
So they just won't acknowledge it.
And there's a lot of other things like that.
Like if you get into statistics of various sorts, people do the same thing if they don't just outright call you names.
And I don't know how we talk about these things honestly if we're at this point.
And I'm wondering if you found anything useful to kind of chip through that.
Sure, sure.
Well, with regards to something like the George Floyd situation, people are not evaluating the truth or falsehood of the accusations.
What do you think they're actually evaluating?
Because if they were evaluating the truth or falsehood, they would be happy to get the truth, right?
And so, what do you think they're evaluating when you tell them some pushback on the narrative?
About George Floyd.
I think they're evaluating whether or not I'm signed up to the same tribe they are.
And they're using the situation as a moral signal of sorts and an identifier, I guess?
To some degree, yeah.
I would say that people are not evaluating the truth or falsehood of your statements.
They are evaluating the effects of your statements on their relationships.
Yeah.
For example, if you admit that around other people, they're going to pay social price.
Yeah, so if they accept your arguments and they know the truth, then the next time something comes up and they say the truth, then they will receive social punishment.
So they're hedonists.
Hedonists are people who prefer short term pleasures over long term happiness or success, like a drug addict prefers getting high, even though he's going to destroy his life, and so on.
So you can't reason with hedonists because hedonists are susceptible really only to the pleasure.
Pain principle.
Now, the pleasure pain principle is if you believe that George Floyd was the victim of a racist murder by Derek Chauvin, then you get points, you get pluses.
People like you, and so on, right?
You get acceptance.
Whereas if you say, I have doubts about the official narrative, and here's why, what happens?
Yeah, you'll get all the racists, obviously.
Yeah, then you will get attacked and punished.
Now, the world has been set up since long before you and I were born, the world has been set up to reward people who conform and to punish people who tell the truth.
And that's because lies are so profitable, particularly with the power of the state to redistribute income and so on, right?
So, with hedonists, the only way you can get them to change what's left of their mind.
It is to apply negative pressure to them that is greater than the negative pressure that other people can apply to them.
And I'm not saying whether you should or shouldn't do this.
I mean, obviously, don't use any violence or harm, but as a whole, hedonists will change their mind based upon increased pleasure or decreased pain.
Now, if you're going to say the truth about George Floyd, or there was a big video I had way back in the day about. Zimmerman, right?
Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.
And if you're going to change people's minds who are hedonists, the only way you can do it is to bribe them or apply negative pressure, such as disapproval or ostracism, and then they will, quote, change their mind.
That's really about it.
There's no reason, there's no logic, there's no empiricism, and there's no commitment to truth.
Hedonists are committed to avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure.
And so, if you give them a counter narrative, they do not evaluate it in terms of true or false, right or wrong, good or evil, or heaven forbid, integrity versus corruption.
They only interpret it, and it's a very instinctual thing.
They only interpret it as will accepting this argument bring me pleasure or pain?
And of course, society has been so set up that if you accept an argument like Counter arguments to the George Floyd narrative, then society will inflict a lot of pain on you.
And they don't take pleasure in the truth because if they took pleasure in the truth, they would have integrity and not just be hedonists.
So you're almost trying to rewire someone's brain to prefer the truth over pleasure.
And I'm not sure how to do that, if that makes sense.
I understand that's respective.
I'm sure that's at least partially at Blake.
I tend to see the Ashken Polony experiment as much more informative for the basic motivation.
In that experiment, I'm sure you're familiar with it, they not only said they were lying just to go along the crowd, some of them actually doubted whether or not they could tell which line was longer.
And the amount of people who have changed their memories in front of me in the course of the racial panic and COVID.
Sometimes the same person on different issues to think both of those just because of his gay tribal identity has said, now this.
And I don't think they're all lying.
I think a lot of them are actually, they do, they have started to believe these things.
It seems a lot worse than just a kind of cowardice, if you like to call it that, or pleasure pain model.
It seems that it's significantly worse situations than that.
People who are hedonists associate that which feels good with the moral, and they associate that which feels bad as the evil.
So, what feels good is the good, what feels bad is the evil, the immoral.
Now, if you go to a hedonist with a counterfactual argument, something that goes against the conformity that makes them feel good, you provoke in them a crisis of conscience.
Because people who are conformists, they don't want to look in the mirror and say, I'm just an NPC, empty headed conformist who's driven by the pleasure pain principle, like just most animals, right?
They want to look in the mirror and see a good person.
And so, when you give them a counterfactual, then you provoke a crisis of conscience because they know that if they bring these counterfactuals to other people, the other people will reject them and turn on them and be hostile and maybe work to get them fired or destroy their reputation, or they'll certainly be kicked out and ostracized from this social group.
And so, when you give someone a counterfactual, what happens emotionally is they begin to really deep down understand at a very instinctual level.
That they are a slave to the opinions of others and that they are a hedonist.
And that makes them feel very, very, very bad indeed.
Now, remember, that which makes a hedonist feel bad is evil, is immoral, is bad, is wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
And so if you make a hedonist feel bad by giving them some facts, which if they bring to those around them, they will be attacked and rejected for, it means that the people around them.
Only pretend to care about them because they agree.
That person you're talking to agrees with the people around them.
And if he disagrees with the people around him, if he disagrees with the people around him, they will just attack, ostracize, and diminish him, and maybe even try to destroy him if he gets too big for his britches.
So you are exposing the hollowness of the person's relationships, that it's just based on conformity, not virtue.
You are exposing that they don't care about the truth, they only care about approval.
And that takes them from hedonism is good to I'm a coward who just conforms.
Now, the hedonist hates feeling bad, and the hedonist hates people who make him feel bad.
Because remember, for a hedonist to feel bad is to be morally wrong.
What feels bad is morally evil.
And so, if you make a hedonist feel bad by exposing his hedonism and saying, you're not a moral person, you're just operating on the pleasure pain principle, and you're bullied and cowed, Into submission, and your friends don't care about you, they only care about your conformity.
And if you have an independent thought of your own, they'll toss you off the social ship like a slaver's with a dead slave.
So you are exposing the shallowness and the hollowness and the emptiness of their relationships, the shallowness and the hollowness and the emptiness of their behavior and mindset, and so on.
In other words, you are inflicting a grave soul injury upon them.
And then, because they're hedonists, remember that which feels bad is evil.
And you're making them feel as bad as a hedonist can, which means you're revealing to the hedonist that he is, in fact, a hedonist and not a moral person at all, then they will view you as really, really a bad person because you're making them feel so, so, so bad that you must be attacked.
So it's a very risky thing to be doing, if that makes sense.
Stopping Disagreement00:02:39
Yeah, it is.
And I've stopped doing it for the most part with even casual conversations that I think people might disagree with because.
I live in a blue area.
And, but, but also, I don't think I can.
I'm not going to be able.
I didn't realize it for quite a long time because I started complaining about these kinds of things in about 2014 when things first started getting weird.
Like, even two years before Trump, it was getting pretty weird with the amount of news stories about, you know, that were pushing a particular kind of narrative.
And I was trying to get people around me to see that something was wrong while it was being sold.
And now, I mean, they'd like to think they're not as bad as they would have been if I wasn't screaming about it, but there's no way to, you know, there's no counterfactual to that.
So, but they bought it anyway.
And in order to counterbalance that with an equally, if you go with that hedonistic model, I'd have to be competing with basically all of society in my general area and the news.
So, yeah.
Well, and I did this speech at a night for freedom many years ago, one of Mike Cernovich's events, which is that they're making crazy people faster than we can fix them.
Because even if you do something in your neighborhood, which is great, well, the problem is that there are a million kids coming out of high school every year who are fully indoctrinated.
So you're just not going to be able to keep up.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for your time.
I appreciate you taking my question.
You are very welcome.
You are very welcome.
All right.
If we have any other questions, comments, issues, challenges, there is but a bit of room.
Sorry for the amateur nonsense about keeping my mic muted earlier, but we're back going once, going twice.
I think we are.
Yeah, I think we're done.
Listen, great topics.
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