The Truth About Luck!

Name: The Truth About Luck!
Uploaded: 2023-10-24T16:34:49+00:00
Duration: 45 min 32 s
Channel: Stefan Molyneux

00:00 already great questions from the noble crew at freedomain.locals.com. I hope that you

00:05 will join. The conversations are a great place to be. So, would you expand on the me plus

00:10 concept? So I first talked about this in my presentation on the death of Robin Williams,

00:17 and it goes a little something like this. So let's say that you're lonely, you want

00:21 friends, but you feel like you have to do something other than be yourself to get your

00:25 friends. So you have to be compulsively jokey, you have to be paying for everyone's drinks,

00:32 you have to be the wingman, you have to praise them, you have to make them look better, you

00:36 have to, whatever it is, something that's more than just yourself, you have to also

00:41 kind of manipulate them by providing value other than who you are. So you plus, right?

00:47 I mean, the foundational example of this is if you want a woman to sleep with you, but

00:55 you have to pay her, then it has to be you plus money to get her to sleep with you. So

01:02 that's the me plus concept. And the listener goes on to say, "It seems to me entirely appropriate

01:07 that my still theoretical wife would not like me in a pure world of form sense, but only

01:13 for that which I am and do for her. In other words, what is the essence of me but the sum

01:20 of the parts, some of which serve the children, wife, community, self, God, some of which

01:23 do not? A ridiculous example, what could it possibly mean to love a girlfriend if she's

01:30 chosen obesity, cruelty, verbal abuse, to sterilize herself from ever procreating, and

01:36 to obstruct everything good about me? Of course, this would never happen, and how can one separate

01:42 loving her from all that which she is choosing? The same, how can she love "me" irrespective

01:50 of what I seem, am, and do? Isn't the threat of losing the other's affection a great incentive

01:57 to stay good oneself? My position, I'm a man in my early 20s, excited to be me plus, because

02:02 without the plus there is no me to be valued. What am I missing?" It's a great question.

02:08 It's a great question, and me plus does stray dangerously close to the mental territory

02:12 of "I don't need to provide value to people, they should just love me for who I am, you

02:16 know, regardless of what I do and what value I provide," and so on. Right, so, I'm going

02:21 to blow your mind. And I say this with all the dim humility of those long ago days when

02:28 I was in my early 20s and believed things that were false or had been told things that

02:32 were false and accepted them. Right, so, you, qua you, are never going to be loved. I, qua

02:41 me, like just because of me, am never going to be loved. Identity is not love. So, you

02:46 have to ask yourself, "What is love for? Why do we have love? Why do we have, why have

02:50 we evolved the capacity to love?" Well, we have evolved the capacity to love because

02:58 of pair bonding and because of virtue. So, love is a biochem, in sort of the Bermelian

03:07 sense, it's a biochemical bond that creates an environment where children can be best

03:13 raised. Right, so, when you fall in love and you get married and you have sex, you get

03:21 all of this dopamine and oxytocin and all these wonderful chemicals that bond you with

03:26 your spouse. And that bonding means that being with your spouse, chatting with your spouse,

03:35 sex with your spouse, all of that sort of stuff is going to be better than some other

03:40 person. So, it welds you together. Now, why do we weld things together? So that they won't

03:48 break apart and damage or break people or things. Right, so we weld the girders of a

03:53 bridge together so that the bridge doesn't fall apart and kill people. So, love at the,

04:01 and we see this with other creatures as well, swans and geese and other sort of lifelong

04:06 pair bonded creatures, not so much rabbits, a little more wolves of course, R versus K.

04:11 We've talked about this before. So, why do we have this pair bonding? Because it's best

04:18 for the children. Or, to put it another way, those people who had sex and produced children

04:24 without pair bonding, those children did not survive nearly as well. And again, I'm talking

04:30 a bit more colder climates where you have to plan for winter and all that kind of stuff.

04:35 Pair bonding doesn't so much exist in sort of the history of Tahiti or things like that.

04:40 At least according to Marlon Brando's biography, which is really my anthropological go-to book,

04:45 those who don't know. Anyway, so we have evolved pair bonding for the sake of children. So,

04:55 if you say, "I want to be loved just for me," you're saying, "I want to hijack something

05:00 that is there for the children and use it solely for my own benefit." And I'm not saying

05:03 this is you, you understand, I'm just talking about how it plays out that way. You say,

05:11 "I am going to hijack that which is designed for the best raising of children and use it

05:20 to make just me happy." So, men often complain that women love them for their resources.

05:26 Well, what do you think love was developed for? Love wasn't developed to make you happy.

05:32 I mean, evolution doesn't care about your happiness. It cares about survival, which

05:38 is why when you're threatened you tend to get angry, which is not the same as being

05:42 happy, because being angry will help you survive if you're threatened, fight or flight, right?

05:47 So love is not about your happiness, but about that which is best for the children. And in

05:52 general, if we align ourselves with how things evolved, we'll probably end up doing better

05:58 as a whole. Align yourself with, sort of listen to the people who say, "We didn't evolve to

06:03 eat this, that or the other." So if you align yourself with evolution, you're probably going

06:07 to do better than going in mass opposition to it, which is kind of like the socialist

06:13 communist thing, going in opposition to evolution if people respond to incentives. So, love

06:19 was not evolved for you to feel good. It was not evolved for me to feel good. It didn't

06:24 evolve for us to feel needed or treasured or valuable or special or anything like that.

06:30 Pair bonding love evolved to cement people together so that their children would have

06:39 the greatest chance of survival. So that's what love is for. And I suppose you could

06:47 use your muscles to generate electricity in some manner, but that's not what they have

06:52 developed for. They have developed to move you around, to gain resources, avoid predators

06:57 and have sex or whatever, you know, eat food. So men say, "Oh, women only love us for our

07:06 resources." Well, that's true, because that's what love evolved for. And these same men,

07:15 of course, who say, "Women only love us for our resources," are often addicted to female

07:20 beauty. And then women, of course, can say with equal veracity, "Well, men only love

07:26 us for our beauty, our physical beauty. Men only love us for sex." And that's the great

07:34 fear, right? "Will you still love me tomorrow?" is the woman's great fear, like after you

07:37 have sex. "Will you still have any affection?" or are you basically faking it to get sex?

07:43 And for the men, of course, it's, "What happens if I lose my money, if I lose my status? Will

07:47 you still love me?" And all of that is sort of this modern cult of love wrestling, of

07:56 love hijacking, of love hijacking, that love isn't there to pair bond you for the best

08:00 raising of children and to have comfort and succor in your old age so that you're around

08:05 for longer in order to care for your grandchildren. No, no. Love is there to make me happy, which

08:13 is about as – it makes about as much sense as saying, "The spleen evolved to make me

08:18 happy. My little toe evolved to make me happy." I don't know what the spleen does, apparently

08:23 it's disposable, but your little toe evolved, of course, to help you with balance. It doesn't

08:29 care about your happiness, only cares about your balance, so to speak. So if you say,

08:34 "I want to be loved for me," you're hijacking love because the purpose of love is to create

08:40 a stable pair bond for the better raising of children. Now, I also mentioned virtue

08:45 earlier, so I've said love is our involuntary response to virtue, if we're virtuous. It

08:50 is virtuous to raise children well. It is virtuous to have a stable pair bond in order

08:56 to raise children well. We have developed this capacity for universals, and creating

09:05 arbitrary exceptions or oppositions to these universals creates stress, strain, unhappiness,

09:11 misery, and also gives you the pleasure of conformity when you conform to other people

09:14 who are aggressively pushing exceptions or opposition to general principles like, "Don't

09:19 use violence, oh, but you can hit your kids," and blah blah blah, right? So, love, what

09:27 are you loved for? Well, just coincidentally, certainly in the modern world, that which

09:35 promotes the best raising of children also coincides with virtue. So what does your wife

09:43 love in you? She loves your virtue, and your virtue means that you're a good father, you're

09:49 a good partner, you're a good provider. Does she love just the provision of value? No,

09:58 she does not just love the provision of value. I mean, I suppose some women, particularly

10:03 single moms, kind of faux pair bond with the government, but nobody would say that they

10:08 love the state. They say that they're addicted to it or whatever, right? So what does she

10:14 love in you? That which serves the family, that which serves pair bonding, that which

10:19 serves the best interests of the children. And virtue happens to serve the best interests

10:25 of the children. Non-aggression principle, consistency, integrity, honesty, compassion,

10:33 affection, protection, provision, these serve the children, they serve the family, and so

10:40 she's going to love you for your virtue. Now, of course, you can be virtuous without a family,

10:43 the principles still apply, I get all of that. But, I mean, this is the old, like, you can

10:47 drive a bicycle on a road, but the road wasn't built for the bikes. So, Me Too is when you

10:56 try to put on a show or fake something in order to hijack the love intended for the

11:04 stability of the family in the pursuit of virtue for your own personal sense of value

11:09 and feeling needed. So, you pursue virtue, and through the pursuit of virtue, you act

11:17 in a manner that is good for your family, good for your wife, good for your children,

11:23 and actually even good for your parents, whether they're good or not. So, yeah, there is no

11:30 platonic "you" that can be loved. So yes, you do need to be in service of virtue, you

11:35 do need to be in service of your family, because that's what love is for. Love is to give you

11:43 the emotional feedback that makes you want to care for your family. And the best way

11:52 to care for your family is, you know, I talked about this in a show recently, the difference

11:58 between a virtue and a wisdom. A virtue is knowing what to do, and wisdom is knowing

12:04 when to do it. So yeah, you take care of your family, that's what love is for. If you put

12:11 on a show in an attempt to divert the natural flow or the rivers of love to gratify your

12:19 own ego, it's not going to work, and that's usually the MeToo+ thing.

12:24 All right, long-time subscriber here, I have trouble not getting down with things out of

12:29 my control. My truck I just paid off got totaled by some uninsured guy and the payout was quite

12:35 unfair. A 70% value of a $21,000 vehicle. For my insurance company, I had full coverage.

12:41 This was out of my hands, but I still got depressed for a couple of months because I

12:44 felt cheated by the situation. Any advice for you or philosophy on how to prevent this

12:48 from happening? Thank you for everything you do. My life has been 1,000% improved since

12:54 I started listening to you 10 years ago. Well, I'm sorry to hear about your truck. Ladies,

12:59 you don't understand. A man's car is essential to his identity and liberty and freedom and

13:07 woo-ability and all of that. So picking up a woman in a nice car for a date or whatever

13:12 is a gift from the gods.

13:15 All right, so yeah, I'm sorry to hear about this, obviously, first and foremost. So this

13:20 is the question of luck. I have a sort of very complicated relationship to luck, and

13:23 I don't want to make this about me, but I can sort of share you my thoughts because

13:25 I think that they're probably quite common. Am I lucky or am I unlucky? I tend to pace

13:34 with luck in the moment and feel both unlucky or unlucky depending on whether good or bad

13:38 things happen. So I mean, let's take a sort of silly example. I play, actually just played

13:43 this with some friends and their kids yesterday, played Catan. It's a board game. And some

13:49 of it's skill, some of it's trading, and some of it's luck. It's not like chess where there's

13:53 no luck, there's no dice rolls. But Catan, if you, you know, when you go through a phase

14:00 in any board game where the rolls are going against you. So in Catan, you put your pieces

14:05 on hexagonal markers that when you roll dice, you put it on a six and you roll a six, you

14:13 get the resources associated with the six. It could be a wood or a brick or a wheat or

14:18 a sheep or ore and so on. You build things and you expand and all of that. And you try

14:22 to get a certain number of points and it's a very good game. Anyway, so when you, again,

14:28 I know this sounds kind of silly, but when you play the game, you set up your pieces

14:34 based upon what dice you think you're going to get rolled the most. Now, of course, two

14:38 and twelve are rare, six and eight are common, and so on. Now, if you build based on expecting

14:46 a bunch of sixes, and this is actually what happened yesterday, I built on the game expecting

14:50 a bunch of sixes, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to expect, but there were no sixes rolled

14:58 for the first third of the game. So I had almost no cards, nothing to do, nothing to...

15:03 Now, I don't get too bad. Of course, when I was younger, I was much more volatile this

15:07 kind of way, but it's just kind of annoying. And it's kind of annoying because it's boring.

15:12 I don't really particularly care about winning or losing, but it's just kind of boring. Like

15:16 if you're not getting any cards, you can't do any trades, and you just kind of sit there.

15:21 It's like this old comedy show from many years ago, a comedian who was talking about life

15:25 in the backseat, and because I never had a car growing up, I lived in the backseat. And

15:30 he said, "Well, you can't have fun in the backseat. All you can do is watch profiles

15:33 of people having fun in the front," because they're all looking at each other and laughing

15:36 as they're playing with the music, and you're always leaning forward saying, "What? What?"

15:41 And or you can try and make contact with people trapped in the backseats of other cars and

15:46 all that kind of stuff. So it's just kind of boring because you're not actually having

15:51 a conversation, which is engaging. You're not actually able to participate in the game

15:56 much because you don't have any cards. So it's just kind of dull. And so I don't get

16:02 particularly annoyed, but it's mildly irritating, I guess you could say, because you're trying

16:06 to have fun, and because of the sort of random dice rolls, you end up not having fun. I still

16:11 remember, and I probably think about this a couple of times a year, and this is, I understand,

16:15 pathetic and ridiculous, but I'll just be honest about my experience. I had a Dungeons

16:21 and Dragons character when I was, I don't know, 13 or so, called Sereg, and Sereg was

16:27 a dwarf fighter. Now back then he had eight hit points, and we had a very toilet-trained,

16:34 gunpoint, anal-retentive, half-German dungeon master who's like, "This is the dice. This

16:43 is what we have got." It was just, sort of paraphrasing, he actually didn't have an accent

16:48 at all. But to help you understand, he ended up becoming an electrical engineer. It tells

16:55 you how kind of fussy he was about numbers. He was a little bit autistic in the way of

17:02 like, to me, when I was dungeon mastering, I would really try and keep the story and

17:06 as much fun going as possible. You know, if the dice, oh, I guess I could reveal it now,

17:11 40 years later, but if the dice went a particular way and a character would have died early

17:16 in the adventure, I wouldn't have them die. I'd get down to like, one hit point, or make

17:21 it exciting or whatever it is, right? Just try and keep the story going and keep people

17:25 engaged and interested. People really did like me as a dungeon master. Now, of course,

17:29 if somebody did something really ridiculous or stupid, then let them die and all of that.

17:34 But for the most part, I would try and play the edge to keep the story going and keep

17:38 people sort of excited and all that. So, it was hard to go up levels, right? Like, when

17:45 we played later, it's like, "Eh, you can go up a level," right? But he would actually

17:50 keep track of each monster's hit points. Sorry, each monster's experience points. Every monster

17:54 you kill gets you a certain amount of experience. When you pass a certain amount of experience

17:57 points, you go up a level and so on. And when my dwarven character went up a level, you

18:05 get to roll an eight-sided dice to see how many extra hit points you get. And of course,

18:09 the more hit points you get, the safer your character is, the better you can fight and

18:13 so on. And I think, I can't remember if it was a one or a three or a three and a one

18:17 because I went to third level and I could have gotten up to, you know, 24 hit points

18:22 if you roll eight twice. You start with eight maximum, you get 16 to 24. I rolled a one

18:28 for my second level and I rolled a three for my third level. So, I went from eight to 12

18:34 hit points and because we had this kind of real by-the-numbers, like a tax accountant

18:41 by-the-numbers dungeon master, I ended up covering our party's retreat from a bunch

18:46 of bugbears and got killed. And this was long before you could get resurrections or anything

18:50 like that. We weren't powerful enough. And of course, if I'd had a few more hit points,

18:54 I'm sure I would have survived at least to... So, anyway, I died. And that's all right.

19:00 Later I had a character called Argoth who was a paladin who did so well, eventually

19:03 he ended up becoming a demigod. So, the first round guy was not great. Second round guy

19:09 was fantastic. So, I mean, this dungeon master, we invited someone to play and he decided

19:18 to be a thief and he decided to wear chain mail. And the dungeon master didn't say anything,

19:27 right? And then the thief tried to use his sneak ability to sneak up on some creature

19:32 and the dungeon master said, "Oh, your sneak ability doesn't work because you're wearing

19:35 chain mail and basically you rolled some dice and he died. And he had nothing to do for

19:40 the rest of the night. I remember he said he did a little bit of biking on a bike machine

19:43 that was in the guy's basement and that was about it. And he listened to us play and he

19:46 never came back. And even at the time I was like, "Dude, come on." The game is supposed

19:54 to be somewhat like it's a role-playing game. Now, if you're trying to sneak up, like imagine

20:01 you're trying to sneak up on someone and you're wearing a bunch of spoons, wouldn't you notice

20:05 the spoons making all this noise and then not try and sneak up on them? And he's like,

20:08 "Hey, those are the rules." And, you know, we didn't let him be dungeon master much after

20:12 that because it was just a bad idea overall. So, I just remember feeling I had bad luck.

20:20 Now, these are random dice rolls from many decades ago. I'm not going to say it sort

20:28 of sat with me or like I felt cursed, you know, like my daughter has this great word,

20:34 "Oh, this character is so cursed." She said that about the guy. I guess he's this kind

20:39 of famous hollow white actor. He played the--in the show, Psych, he played the coroner. And

20:49 he said, "Oh, this character is so cursed." It's just like that's actually a very funny

20:53 phrase. I love the slang that she comes up with or absorbs from her peer group. So, do

20:59 you feel cursed or do you feel blessed? Do you feel lucky or do you feel unlucky? You

21:03 know, my wife when we're playing Catan, if she's holding a bunch--if you're holding a

21:06 bunch of cards and you roll a seven, then you have to give up half your cards. Like

21:11 if you're holding eight or more cards, you have to give up half your cards, rounding

21:14 down. And of course, if my wife has a fistful of cards, she'll sort of, "Oh, here comes

21:19 the seven." You know, she's just sort of--I'm like, "Yeah, great attitude." So, with regards

21:25 to good luck and bad luck, it's quite complicated for me. If I have a run of bad luck, and I

21:31 do, right? I think like everyone, your luck clusters and there's a bell curve of middle

21:35 luck, good luck, and bad luck in your life. And every now and then, your bad luck is going

21:39 to cluster. Every now and then, your good luck is going to cluster. And every now and

21:44 then, like in a game like Catan or Monopoly or whatever, right? You will win through the

21:49 virtue of your own because the dice rolls just happen to go all your way. I don't find

21:54 that particularly interesting either. Like if you're playing with a couple of other people

21:59 and the dice rolls just happen to go your way and then you--it's kind of boring, right?

22:04 Because it's not like any particular skill, the dice rolls. And that's why my daughter

22:09 is less keen on Catan because she just says there's too much chance involved. And she

22:13 prefers a game like Among Us or other things that she will play where there's less chance.

22:20 Less chance. It's more skill. It's more like chess, less like--there's no dice rolls. And

22:27 so if the dice rolls are going your way, I guess you feel kind of lucky, but it's not

22:31 particularly fun because the other people aren't particularly enjoying the game and

22:34 you're not winning through any skill of your own. It's like the game War, you know, where

22:38 you just--it's not really a game, right? You just flip cards and the higher card wins.

22:44 Not really a game. There's no skill involved whatsoever. So that's a real chance. That's

22:49 a real 100% random, assuming you've got an honest shuffle. So if dice rolls are going

22:56 your way, if life is going your way, if things are going your way, ooh, I'm so lucky. I remember

23:02 Julia Louise Dreyfus was on some hair ad. She's got a thick, thick mane of hair and

23:07 she was on some hair ad. Oh, I'm so lucky because she's got all this thick hair and

23:11 all of that. And there are times where luck clusters and you feel lucky. And that's--and

23:19 if you feel good about being lucky, you will feel bad about being unlucky. So I've sort

23:23 of tried to move more towards the middle and say, well, you know, like donations, right?

23:28 Donations cluster and some days there are good donations and then sometimes there can

23:32 be days with few, if any, donations. And I try not to feel good when there are donations

23:37 and then feel bad when there are no donations because, I mean, other than trying to produce

23:42 as much quality as I can and asking for support at freedomain.com/donate, there's nothing

23:48 I can do. I mean, there's nothing I can do other than produce quality content and ask

23:54 for donations. I can't--and even if I could make people donate, I wouldn't, right? So

23:58 I can't do anything. So if for some reason I happen to get a cluster of donations, that's

24:03 nice. If there's a couple of days with no donations, that's, you know, I try not to

24:08 get too happy if there are donations or too unhappy if there are not donations. And I'm

24:13 fairly okay with that now. Of course, it's been, you know, a long time to get used to

24:17 it. So--and knowing it will often, you know, often it will even out over time. So it's

24:22 not too bad that way. So are you lucky or are you unlucky? I try not to feel lucky or

24:31 unlucky because that's predicting an outcome that is random. Now, fortune favors the bold.

24:39 Fortune, you know, preparation is everything. 99% of success is showing up or something.

24:44 I think that the Woody Allen quote, God help me for quoting that guy. But I try not to

24:49 think too much about luck and I work on the things I can control. So when you have--and

24:57 look, listen, I don't want you to feel alone in this. I've had some great luck in my life.

25:04 I've had some terrible luck in my life. And I won't get into it, but let's just say there's

25:12 been quite a bit of money involved in both situations and it's rough, man. When the downside

25:19 hits and you get sort of bad news, you know, like the contractor comes over and says, "Oh,

25:23 you're going to need X, Y, and Z, and it's going to be this, that, and the other." And

25:26 it's like, "Oh, God." Right? So bad luck, right? It's bad luck. So when you got totaled

25:34 by some uninsured guy, the payout was quite unfair, you felt cheated by the situation.

25:42 Right, right. So let's say that you--well, I assume that you weren't cheated by the insurance

25:50 company because then I'm sure you would have raised a complaint or had an appeal or something

25:54 like that. So let's say that you signed an insurance policy that said you get 70% of

26:00 the value of the vehicle, right? Or maybe they say, "Well, because it wasn't brand new, we're

26:04 going to take 30% off," or whatever it was, right? But then it's, you know, $21,000 to

26:10 replace it, right? So you have to pay a couple of grand to replace the car over and above

26:18 what you lost. Okay. So assuming that you weren't cheated but it was just bad luck.

26:24 Now, are you cheated because, you know, maybe there's a lot of people in your neighborhood

26:28 who aren't, you know, let's say they haven't gone through the full legal immigration process

26:34 and maybe they're uninsured partly because of that or maybe there's people who are uninsured

26:38 don't pay penalties, right? So, of course, you know, a just legal system would be that

26:44 if somebody without insurance totals your truck, that person has to pay for the new

26:49 truck and insurance wouldn't even be involved at all. But, you know, let's say that even

26:55 in the current system that if some uninsured person totals your truck and it's worth $21,000

27:01 and the insurance company pays 70% of that, then the other 30% comes from the guy who

27:08 totaled your truck, right? He has to pay the difference, right? And maybe a little bit

27:11 extra for your sort of time and money. So, yeah, there's a bunch of bad systems that

27:15 are set up and we're all captive and subject and held in a sense hostage by those. So,

27:21 but let's say you were cheated. So let's say you were cheated. And, you know, I hate to

27:26 sort of say the obvious or give people spoilers, but I mean, let's be frank. You are going

27:34 to get cheated over the course of your life and you are going to get cheated more than

27:38 once and some of the sums of being cheated are not going to be small. You know, some

27:44 people you give money to will use that money wisely and pull themselves out of their problems

27:50 and either thank you or pay it back or something like that. Other people you give money to

27:55 will blow it and waste it. And you'd have been better off keeping that money for yourself

28:01 or giving it to someone better. Some people you invest in are going to work hard and diligently

28:06 and produce returns. Some people you invest in are going to take that investment and go

28:11 to St. Bart's. Now, you know, as you age and you grow, you get some wisdom and all of that,

28:17 and hopefully you can figure this stuff out better. But it's going to happen. People are

28:26 going to cheat you. Now, how do you avoid that? Well, you just never get involved with

28:32 anyone in any way and you're going to lose more. So if, let's say, you never invest in

28:37 anyone or anything, then your money is going to be stolen through inflation and it's going

28:41 to end up largely worthless. So you've avoided being cheated by the stock market or by people

28:47 you invest in and you end up being cheated by central banks. And that's a certainty.

28:50 I mean, 90% of investment is an inflation hedge. And so we're all herded into the stock

28:56 market, a soft, foggy fiat gunpoint. So yeah, you cannot invest. Let's say that there even

29:05 wasn't such a thing as inflation, really, and you don't invest in the stock market,

29:11 then you're just going to end up with your savings. Whereas if you invest in the stock

29:13 market, you know, and this is like obviously just pure theory, but if you invest in the

29:19 stock market at sort of 5 or 6%, your money is going to double over time and then double

29:23 again and you're going to end up with a lot more money. Now, cheating is going to take

29:29 some money away from you, but avoiding the risk of cheating is going to cost you even

29:33 more money because then you never invest in anyone or anything. Does that make sense?

29:39 So you have to look at the larger picture. You have to look at the larger picture and

29:44 say, "Okay, well, the way that I could avoid never having my car totaled by somebody who's

29:50 uninsured and then only getting 70% of the value, the way I could avoid that is never

29:54 have a car, take the bus or bike everywhere." Okay, but I assume that that's a big negative

29:59 in your life. So losing, you know, this money, what was it, $6,000, $7,000, I don't know,

30:06 losing this money is just, it's part of the price of living and the rewards vastly outweigh

30:13 the costs. Right? How many, if you're married, right? How many women did you ask out or go

30:20 out or were interested in or circled around or floated around with romantic intent? How

30:25 many of those women did it not work out with before you met your wife? I won't get into

30:33 my number, but it's not small. Right? So how many women were you interested in or dated

30:39 or whatever or asked out before you met the love of your life, the mother of your children,

30:46 the father of your children, whatever, right? Well, it's probably quite a few. And I'm also

30:50 including the women that you asked out who didn't say yes, right? The women who said

30:53 no. So you say, "Well, it's quite uncomfortable to go through all that rejection and to go

30:58 through all of that loss and to go through, it's painful, it's unhappy." I get it, I understand

31:03 that. And you can avoid all the pain of rejection by never asking a woman out, never dating,

31:11 staying home in the basement, whatever, right? You can avoid all of that rejection. And I

31:18 think if you've listened to my call-in shows, you've heard enough guys who are in their

31:26 mid to late 20s, early to mid 30s, or sometimes even older, who've taken that path and how

31:31 miserable they are. How alone, how desperate, how unskilled, and you know, for some of them

31:37 it's perilously close to unrecoverable. So that's not an answer. So you, over the course

31:45 of your life, are going to make how much more money if you have a car? Right? How much more

31:51 money are you going to make over the course of your life if you have a car? Well, a lot.

31:56 Right? And this doesn't even include the fact that if you have a car, you look kind of cooler

32:01 when you date girls. So you may end up with a higher quality girl who's going to be a

32:05 great wife and drive your income even higher by being so excellent and helpful. So how

32:11 much money are you going to make over the course of your life by having a car? How much

32:18 better is your life going to be over the course of your life by having a car? $100,000, $200,000,

32:24 $300,000, it's hard to know. And that doesn't even count the sort of soft quality of life

32:28 issues. So, you see where I'm going with this? So you lost, what, $6,000 or $7,000 by having

32:39 a car and having it totalled. Okay? So let's say that you make $200,000 over the course

32:48 of your life more by having a car, even including the cost of the car. So you're paying 3.5%

32:56 tax on $200,000 to pay the $7,000 it takes to restore this car. So you're still up $193,000.

33:05 Does that make sense? Like let's say you've got a house and you get some assessment and

33:13 you've got to pay $15,000 to fix your roof or something like that, right? Okay, that's

33:19 understandable. It's kind of annoying. But okay, but look at the value of your house

33:23 and how it's gone up over time. And let's say you sell the house for $200,000 more than

33:29 you paid for it. Well, that $15,000 is 7.5% of the $200,000. So instead of making $200,000,

33:40 you made $192,500. Now, it's also the case that if you, let's say you have a roof that

33:50 leaks and you got to pay $15,000 to fix it. So what that means is if you don't pay that

33:54 money, your house is going to be worth a whole lot less because it's leaky and crappy and

33:57 you've got water damage and right, so you're just, you're paying. So don't have a standard

34:02 where everything has to go perfectly and every deviation is bad, like you got half the long

34:05 and big and deep view, right? So to get back to Sereg, my long ago imaginary dwarf character

34:12 in Dungeons and Dragons, what did those low dice rolls teach me? Two things. One, don't

34:23 set your heart on good fortune because you're just setting yourself up to be heartbroken.

34:28 Don't set your heart on good fortune. If it comes, great. If it doesn't, it's not too

34:31 bad. It'll turn around. And of course, look at the big picture. Like, look at the big

34:37 picture. I know this sounds kind of ridiculous, but you know, bear with me as I sort of work

34:41 through what was happening in my brain when I was 13 or 14 years old. So my dwarf, if

34:48 I remember rightly, was lawful neutral and you know, fighters are just kind of tanks

34:52 in Dungeons and Dragons. All you do is roll dice. Maybe you got a couple of special attacks,

34:56 but you don't have any spells or cantrips or cool abilities. You're just like a tank.

35:01 Right? Plow through the monsters. So was it bad luck that I rolled a one and a three for

35:09 my hit points when I was 13 years old? No, because it taught me a lot. It taught me about

35:17 how to tell good stories and don't just have the dice roll. Like it would have been way

35:20 more exciting if I'd just made it out with one hit point and my companions had to grab

35:24 me and they pulled me out and all that. It would have been very exciting. Just dead,

35:28 that's not a good story. So I learned something about storytelling. I learned something about

35:31 graciousness in narrative and I learned something about a personality type that I didn't find

35:40 particularly attractive or appealing, which was sort of by the numbers rather than by

35:44 the spirit, right? By the letter of the law, by the spirit of the law. The spirit of Dungeons

35:48 and Dragons is to have exciting adventures. Not to run every number 100% in my view. Lots

35:54 of people differ on that. So don't get too... and don't judge yourself by bad luck. Because

36:03 isn't that really fundamentally what most troubles us about bad luck is we judge ourself.

36:06 I'm unlucky. The gods have it in for me, the fate does. Like I remember when I dated a

36:12 woman from another culture, I would be happy about something and I would be enthusiastic

36:18 about something and she would be like, "Oh, black tongue, don't say it. The gods will

36:21 strike you down." And she was kind of joking, but it's like don't show any positivity, don't

36:24 show any enthusiasm because the gods will see your hubris and strike you down and all

36:29 that. And that's a real mindset for a lot of people. So yeah, there's no gods out there

36:34 who are pushing the dice. It's just a matter of what are you going to learn and how. And

36:39 how hard is the lesson going to have to be before you learn those lessons, right?

36:45 So what came out of this whole dice roll when I was 13 or 14 years old was that Sereg died

36:52 and then I had his brother Scarab came around for a little bit and then I created Argoth

37:00 the Paladin. And Argoth the Paladin I played for the next year or two and he was a great

37:05 character to play. Much more in line with my values and much more interesting to play.

37:09 You know, he had healing spells, he had protection from evil, he had divine bless spells, he

37:13 had... could wield particular magic swords and he was just much more lawful good. It's

37:19 kind of in alignment with my personality as a whole. So because I had "bad luck" I ended

37:24 up with a much more interesting character that I played right through to the end of

37:28 Dungeons and Dragons, right? Right through to the end. And it's funny, you know, there's

37:32 that heartbreaking meme about kids in the evening all on their bikes and the meme is

37:39 "One day you and your friends went out to play for the very last time but nobody knew

37:43 it." Yeah, and one day we got together for Dungeons and Dragons for the last time and

37:47 nobody knew it and the last time was when my character finished a great quest and ascended

37:53 to demigod status and it was really cool and that was it. Like, there was nothing else

37:57 to do and I was fine. I was fine with it. So, was it bad luck that I rolled low? No.

38:06 Now, how do you turn bad luck into good luck? Well, you learn as many elemental lessons

38:10 as possible. So I tried to get as many elemental lessons out of rolling badly, low those many

38:16 years ago, for my Dungeons and Dragons. Don't count on good fortune, don't assume things

38:21 are going to be bad just because they feel bad in the moment and look for the long view.

38:26 So you're going to make more money over the course of your life most likely by having

38:30 a car than not having a car. So, yeah, every now and then your car is going to cost you

38:35 money and in this case it wasn't your fault. Okay, so then you say, "Okay, what can I learn

38:41 from this that's going to save me more than the 6 or 7k I have to spend in this situation?

38:46 What's going to save me more than this?" So, I don't know, here's just some possibilities.

38:52 You say, "Well, why am I living in a neighborhood where there's uninsured people driving around?"

38:59 And I get, this could be bad luck, but generally if you live in a nicer neighborhood there'll

39:03 be fewer uninsured people driving around. So maybe this is nature's way of telling you

39:12 to move to a safer or better neighborhood and maybe that's going to work out really

39:17 well for you in the long run. Maybe you'll move because you don't want to be in this

39:20 kind of crappy neighborhood and you'll meet the girl of your dreams and so then you'll

39:24 look back and you say, "Wow, was it ever great that my car got totals?" I mean, I know, what

39:30 can you learn? Can you negotiate a better deal with your insurance company so if you

39:37 can't move at least you pay some extra but you get 100% of the value of the truck? Maybe

39:41 you learn that, right? And maybe you learn a little bit something about balancing risks.

39:45 So if you got a cheaper insurance policy because it only pays 70% of the price of a totaled

39:52 car then you own it. You made that choice. So if it was like an extra 50 bucks a month

40:01 to get full coverage and you decided to save that money, well, okay, I mean that's a fair

40:06 decision and there's nothing wrong but it just happened to not be the right decision

40:09 for what happened. That doesn't mean you made the wrong decision because you didn't know

40:12 you were going to get totals but you took that risk. Right, you took that risk. What's

40:17 that old Canadian commercial about investments and it's like, "What's your investment risk

40:23 tolerance?" And somebody's like, "I like frying bacon in the nude." Something like that. Okay,

40:28 well, if you took and maybe you can learn that, right? So if you're the kind of person

40:33 who wants to save 50 bucks a month and then have a less comprehensive insurance policy

40:38 and then you get depressed for three months because you lost your car or you lost a lot

40:44 of money, then you have to say, "Okay, well, I'm the kind of person who needs to pay more

40:49 for insurance, so to cover myself for more." Does that make sense? And then you'll learn

40:54 about that and something much more important, you'll prevent being unhappy for a year by

40:57 learning from that. So lots of things to learn about with this kind of stuff. But yeah, luck

41:02 is very interesting. Luck is by its nature random but because we're pattern making machines,

41:07 we try and figure out patterns. Because we're pattern making machines, saying luck is usually

41:14 ascribing some moral or conscious intent or result out of something that's purely random.

41:21 Unless it's not purely random and there's something you can do about it, in which case

41:24 it's a lesson to improve things, right? So, you know, obviously it was bad luck that I

41:29 got cancer but I've tried to make sure that I stay out of the sun or stay out of the direct

41:35 sun or have lots of protection so that at least I can minimize my chances of skin cancer.

41:40 A sort of blond, blue-eyed guy, that's one of the risks that I would have, especially

41:44 half Irish, half German. We're not exactly known for our rotisserie-style sun absorption.

41:49 We're more like vampires. So luck is, "Oh, I'm lucky or I'm unlucky." That's to say that

41:56 the gods are blessing or cursing you and that's not the case. Random stuff is just that, random.

42:03 And you can do things to mitigate the negative effects of random things and if you're really

42:07 harshly struck by the negative stuff, then you need to work to protect yourself more

42:13 or find a way to change your mindset. If you don't mind the negative stuff as much, like

42:17 if you're like, "Well, you know, I saved 50 bucks a month for a couple of years on my

42:21 car insurance so yeah, I just happened to roll snake eyes and got plowed but, you know,

42:25 so maybe if I don't like it that much I'll pay more for my insurance next time or I'll

42:28 move or whatever it is, right? Maybe I'll get a garage and won't park on the street

42:33 so maybe if you got totaled in the parking or something like that. But you can learn

42:36 from it to try and mitigate the risk next time. But don't just sit there and feel unlucky

42:39 and cursed and helpless and all of that because that's not an accurate view. There's nothing

42:44 moral in happenstance. Like the gods weren't pushing my dice to teach me a lesson, right?

42:51 And the gods didn't have someone crash into your car to teach you a lesson or because

42:55 you're cursed or you were bad or, right? That's the kind of stuff that's really primitive,

42:59 right? And it's a primitive part of us to look for these patterns, right? Like the rains

43:02 haven't come because people are taking the Lord's name in vain. It's like, no, that's

43:06 not a thing. But, you know, because people believe that, yeah, and if you, sorry, because

43:13 people believe that the rains haven't come because people are taking the Lord's name

43:17 in vain, they won't work as hard on irrigation. They'll just start taking the Lord's name

43:20 in vain which doesn't have any effect on the weather. So when you ascribe things to luck,

43:26 good or bad luck, or you feel, oh, this really bad thing happened and I feel bad about it,

43:30 then what you're doing is you're not learning the lessons. You're saying, okay, something

43:34 bad happened to me. I need to figure out what and why it was and try and figure out how

43:41 I can minimize impact next time. Or it helps you to look at the big picture, right? Bad

43:47 luck in the moment can help you look at the big picture. So as I said, right, you're going

43:51 to make more money having a car, even with the cost of this loss, than not having a car.

43:56 So just look at the big picture and say, yeah, having a car means you're at risk of accidents.

43:59 Having a car means you're at risk of the car failing. Having a car means you're at the

44:03 risk of sudden expenses. Having a car means whatever, whatever, whatever, right? And you

44:08 have to look at the cost benefits. And if the benefits of having a car over the course

44:12 of your life outweigh the cost, then eat the cost. Recognize the cost. It's something I

44:16 learned kind of early on in business, you know, like cost of doing business, the cost

44:20 of doing business. It's just the cost of doing business, yes. In the pursuit of the woman

44:24 of your dreams or the man of your dreams, yeah, guess what? You're going to get your

44:27 heart broken a couple of times, maybe more than a couple of times. And you're going to

44:31 break other people's hearts a couple of times, maybe more than a couple of times. That's

44:35 the price of doing business. That's the price of getting good things in life. So I hope

44:39 this helps. And I'm obviously curious to hear what everyone else thinks about this luck

44:42 thing. But yeah, I've thought a lot about it over the course of my life because it's

44:46 easy to feel worth more if you happen to be having a bunch of good luck, right? Like that

44:52 even Stephen thing in Seinfeld where he loses 50 bucks then finds 50 bucks in a jacket,

44:57 right? It's easy to feel like, "Oh, I'm so lucky. Everything works out for me, blah,

45:02 blah, blah, blah, blah." It's easy to feel that that makes you better. The cost of that

45:05 is when things don't work out for you, you'll feel cursed by the gods rather than blessed.

45:09 And of course, neither is actually happening. It's just that you can judo these harsh lessons

45:15 into better perspectives, more peace of mind, and better circumstances. All right, free

45:22 domain.com/donate. Make me happy with the donation, please. freedomain.com/donate. If

45:27 you'd like to help out the show, I'd really, really appreciate it. Lots of love from up

45:30 here. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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