The Evolution of Reason!

Stefan Molyneux

This lecture examines the origins and importance of logic, highlighting its role in ensuring consistency through deductive and inductive reasoning. The speaker discusses the distinction between the absolute truth of deductive reasoning and the probabilistic nature of inductive reasoning, emphasizing the risks of conflating the two, especially in social contexts. Challenges in understanding these frameworks are illustrated with examples from media and everyday life, advocating for a solid grasp of logic to enhance decision-making in uncertain situations.  FOLLOW ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Alright, so this is a discourse on the origins of logic, and this is a philosophical problem

00:07that is quite considerable, which is how do we know, or why would we believe that logic

00:15is valid? How do we know that logic is important? How do we know that logic is valid? And so on,

00:22right? So, logic is consistency, and logic of course is the dominoes that fall from a valid

00:31syllogism. Sorry, this is all kind of technical stuff, but a valid syllogism is one where if we

00:37assume the premises are true, and the reasoning is true, then the conclusion must be true.

00:41A classic example is, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. And there

00:50are two major branches of logic, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning

00:56is 100% truth, inductive reasoning is probability. It is not absolutely for sure that someone

01:03who jumps out of a plane without a parachute is going to die, but we wouldn't put a lot

01:07of money on him surviving, right? So that's probability, and the example I give in my book

01:14The Art of the Argument is, you have a neighbor, she's a kind of batty, crazy old woman, and

01:21your neighbor has, you know she has 23 cats, and you've seen 22 cats in her backyard, and

01:28they're all black cats with white faces. Now, what are the odds that the 23rd cat is also

01:33a black cat with a white face? Well, you can't say 100%, but she seems to have a pretty strong

01:38preference for black cats with white faces. So you can say, of course, that it's pretty

01:44likely. And of course, we do this all the time, right? We do this all the time. If there

01:50is a fin in the water, in the ocean, by the beach, you're probably not going to go for a

01:59big old swim, unless you figure out that it's a dolphin, not a shark, right? So, I mean, you

02:04can't know for sure without checking, if you just see the fin, or at least it's pretty tough.

02:09So, we have syllogisms, we have inductive reasoning, probability, we have deductive reasoning, which

02:16is absolute certainty, and deductive reasoning is really along the realm of physics. Inductive

02:21reasoning is more to do with human beings, because we have free will. So, for instance,

02:28in communism, there is, I mean, many, many moral and practical problems. One of them, of course,

02:34is the incentive problem, which is that people who work harder, or smarter, don't make any

02:40additional money. So, that's an incentive problem. And so, we can say, in the economy as a whole,

02:46if people don't receive any rewards for working harder, they will tend not to work harder. Now,

02:54you can't, of course, say this with 100%, because there could be somebody who's just a

02:57crazed workaholic, or, you know, he hates going home, so he's just willing to put in

03:03extra hours at work, or whatever it is, right? So, you can't say 100%, right? I mean, physics is 100%,

03:09like, all gases expand when heated, right? All mass has the property of gravity. It's like 100%,

03:17there's no exceptions, and so on, right? So, deductive reasoning tends to be in the realm of

03:24the hard sciences, deductive reasoning tends to be in the realm of humanity, where there are general

03:32tendencies, but not absolutes, because human beings have free will, and there will always be

03:38exceptions, right? And, of course, people expect, to some degree, humanity and the decisions we make

03:45about humanity, we expect them to follow the hard sciences, because the hard sciences have so much

03:51prestige, because they are fantastic, and they're the foundation of most of what is comfortable in

03:55the modern world, air conditioning, electricity, internal combustion engine, and so on, right?

04:00So, I mean, if we turn our car, and it doesn't start, we don't say, well, I guess physics have

04:06changed, or physics have changed in my car, something's wrong with my car, right? So, you go and get it

04:10fixed, and so on. The problem is never physics, right? So, one of the things that happens all the time

04:17on social media, as you know, is people mistake, and it sounds kind of boring, but it's really,

04:24really important, and actually kind of annoying at times. So, people mistake inductive reasoning

04:30for deductive reasoning. This is sort of the source of the famous chart, where you have a bell curve,

04:35and you say, most people are in the middle, and then you say, well, what about these outliers? And

04:38it's like, well, that's because people have free will. There's variability in human decisions in the

04:43way that there isn't in physics. And so, when I say tattoos are strongly associated with mental health

04:54problems, or tattoos are associated with mental health problems, then what happens is people think,

05:00and this is a sort of psychological process that's based upon a lack of understanding of logic,

05:06and, you know, just emotional reactivity. So, what happens is, people say,

05:13Steph, you're saying that tattoos are associated with mental health issues. Well, I have tattoos,

05:19and I don't have mental health issues. And that's because, I assume, people think I'm making an

05:26absolute statement about everyone, and therefore, they only need provide one counterexample,

05:33and my proof is disproven, right? I mean, there's an example where I'm in the right,

05:41but there's an example where I'm in the wrong. So, I recently tweeted to someone, show me a very

05:45successful female entrepreneur not in the sort of health beauty business, makeup beauty business,

05:52and people quoted, I think, Dolly Parton, and J.K. Rowling, and so on. And they're correct,

05:59right? I mean, they're not specifically in the, I mean, Dolly Parton's very pretty,

06:02but she's not in the beauty business. But they're correct in that what I should have said was,

06:09and I should have included the entertainment, right? Health, beauty, entertainment, right?

06:15So, that's an area where I did not cast the net wide enough, and people are pointing out

06:20exceptions to the categories I put forward, which is perfectly valid, and I will tweet about that

06:25later. Today, I just want to collect more evidence in case there's another category I've forgotten,

06:29to say, yeah, you're right, I should have included entertainment. And, you know, I'm not entirely sure

06:35if people who make their money out of entertainment, like Dolly Parton and J.K. Rowling, and then,

06:42you know, they invest or they have a bunch of business managers. I'm not sure that they really

06:45count as entrepreneurs, but that doesn't. An entrepreneur is somebody who makes their money

06:49primarily out of a business, not out of a song and a book. Anyway, not. So, because people don't

06:57really get the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, and of course, they're not

07:01taught it, right, in schools, then they think that any counterexample is a disproof of the general

07:10principle, right? So, you could imagine going to a bus stop at two o'clock in the morning in a shady

07:17section of town, and one night you go there, there's a guy dressed in a three-piece suit reading a

07:24computer magazine, waiting for the bus too, and another time there's a guy, you know, dressed as

07:32a real thug, with lots of tattoos on his face and stuff like that, and you'd say, well, gee, I'd feel

07:39more comfortable with the guy in the three-piece suit reading a computer magazine rather than,

07:45you know, the young man dressed as a complete thug in his prison garb and face tattoos, right?

07:50Now, is this absolute proof? Nope. It could be that the guy in a three-piece suit reading a

07:57computer magazine is a serial killer. It could be that the young guy dressed as a thug is a highly

08:05sophisticated professional actor researching a role by pretending to be a thug. Sure, sure, but

08:13we still have to work with our probabilities. A stereotype threat, sorry, stereotype threat's a

08:18different psychological thing. But stereotype is real. It's one of the most validated things in

08:23certain things of social sciences is that stereotypes generally tend to be quite accurate.

08:29Again, tons of exceptions. So, to sort of understand that you can't take trends associated with free

08:37will and turn them into the kind of absolutes that only science would provide is irrelevant. Now,

08:44in a scientific theory, a theory dealing with matter and energy, one single disproof is enough to

08:51overturn the entire system. Because if you're saying all matter behaves in this way, then if

08:59even one piece of matter, one example of something that you can record works in the opposite way,

09:06then your theory is disproven. So, you know, sort of silly example is everything falls down.

09:12Okay, that's a theory, right? But then if you say, well, what about balloons? What about clouds?

09:17What about whatever, right? Then you'd have to sort of refine your theory to include that sort of

09:23basic fact, right? So, in the realm of science, a single counterexample disproves the theory,

09:32right? We can understand that, right? And that's in the realm of science. Now, in the realm of

09:40humanity, though, we're looking at trends as a whole, right? So, again, the sort of example is

09:46women tend to be shorter than man. Well, I know a very tall woman. Now, that is in the realm,

09:51of course, of science, but it is also in the realm of variability. Variability, of course,

09:57is either free will or it can be genetics, right? Short parents tend to give birth to short children,

10:04but there are exceptions because there's a variability in, I guess, in biology, which is

10:11related to the question of genetic combination and the unpredictability thereof. So, deductive

10:18reasoning tends to be for physics, and physics is absolute, and it works on the syllogistical

10:26format. The syllogistical format is all matter has gravity. X, whatever that is, is matter,

10:36therefore, X has gravity. It's 100%. All gases expand when heated. It's not sometimes or maybe

10:40in Philadelphia on a Tuesday or anything like that. It is absolute universal. So, one counterexample

10:47disproves the conjecture or the hypothesis. But syllogism's deductive reasoning is for physics,

10:55chemistry, and things like that. But for biology, biology generally operates on a combination of

11:03deductive reasoning and also on inductive reasoning or weighing probabilities. Let me give you an

11:10example. So, a zebra that sees a lion getting close knows that it's a lion and absolutely is a lion,

11:18right? So, that's the deductive reasoning, right? Lions eat zebras. There's a lion nearby,

11:25therefore, the lion might eat me. I can't say for 100%. Can't say because of probability, right?

11:31In the same way, if you're by the ocean and you see a dorsal fin in the water, you might not go in,

11:38you shouldn't go in, until you determine whether it's a shark or a dolphin, right? Sharks eat people.

11:45If I go into the water with a shark, I might get bitten, therefore, I'm not going to go into the

11:49water, right? However, dolphins do not eat people, therefore, if it's a dolphin, I'm going to go into

11:55the water because swimming with dolphins would be kind of cool. Now, you can't say for sure that the

12:00shark is going to eat you, but the cost-benefit is the calculation you're working with. You can't say

12:04for sure that the dolphin is perfectly safe, right? It might headbutt you, it might do any number of

12:12things. Dolphins are kind of rapey. So, you can't say for sure, but on the balance of probabilities,

12:18that's sort of what you're going to do. Like, if you go swimming in the ocean, I guess there could be

12:23a clear jellyfish that would sting you, but generally, that's not really the case. So, people go

12:27into the ocean. So, the zebra uses deductive reasoning in its mind, right? Instinctually,

12:35right? Uses deductive reasoning to say, that is a lion. Lions eat zebras, therefore, that lion might

12:42eat meat. Lions might eat zebras, therefore, that lion might eat meat. That's syllogistical reasoning.

12:46Now, the might is the interesting part, right? The might is an interesting part. So, the zebra then

12:54does a calculation based upon probabilities, and the calculation based on probabilities is around

12:59evolution, and it goes something like this. Well, if I run away from where the lion is, then I'm much

13:08more likely to survive any potential lion attack, and if I move far enough away, I'm going to survive

13:12almost for sure. So, maybe it costs me 25, 50, 100 calories, or whatever it is, to trudge off or gallop

13:18off to where I'm safer. However, if I stay here, and the lion is about to attack, then it's pretty

13:25likely that I'm going to get grievously injured or die, which means my entire investment goes up in,

13:32well, not exactly smoke, but goes into the lion's belly and the hyenas and the jackal's bellies and

13:37so on, right? So, that is sort of the calculation. What's the cost-benefit? So, if we understand that,

13:44which, right, then we understand that in order to detect a threat, an animal needs to use deductive

13:54reasoning, right? That is a fin in the water, that is a lion in the grass. That's a fact, right? That's

13:59not, maybe there's a fin in the water, maybe there's a lion in the grass, right? I mean, once you see the

14:04lion in the grass, once you see the fin in the water, that's a fact. And then, you have to weigh

14:09your probabilities, right? Is that a shark, and will the shark attack me? If it's a nurse shark,

14:19I mean, I'm no expert, but I think, I've swum with nurse sharks before, they seem pretty safe.

14:24If it's a great white shark or a tiger shark, carcaridon, carcarious, or something like that,

14:28then you're probably, well, you're going to be less safe as a whole, which is why you can swim

14:33freely with nurse sharks, but you need a cage for great white sharks. And, of course, we do the same

14:38all the time, all the time. If we are being followed by someone in a sketchy section of town,

14:45and it turns out that it's a priest leading a group of nuns, you're probably okay. If it's a

14:52bunch of thugs, you might not be okay, right? We make these probabilities, right? Now, I mean,

14:58it could go the other way, theoretically, but we don't work with these probabilities, because the

15:02cost-benefit is too high, right? And, of course, a lot of society, these days, is about saying,

15:08that all of your pattern recognition is blind, ugly prejudice and bigotry, right?

15:16And that, of course, is exactly what you would want predators. You would expect predators to do

15:20that. You would say, I mean, if the lion could speak to the zebra, who was edging away from the

15:25lion, the lion wanted to eat the zebra, the lion would say, hey, you know, I just ate this morning,

15:32I'm not hungry, I'm just stretching my legs, there's no reason to be alarmed. But he would do that

15:35so he could get closer and eat the zebra, right? So that's kind of what's going on in them.

15:40Yeah. And this happened recently. I posted, was it yesterday? I think I posted, saying,

15:46like, in 40 years, I've asked countless people about their drug use and asked for the insights

15:50they say they get from using drugs, and I get nothing. I get nothing. No insights,

15:57no particular wisdom back, right? And somebody said, well, that's not a scientific study.

16:02And it's like, why would I need some corrupted government bought and paid for turbo nerd in a

16:11lab coat to tell me about the validity of my pattern recognition over the course of 40 years?

16:20Right? I mean, if zebras could talk to each other, right, the zebra would say, hey, that's a lion,

16:27right? And lions are dangerous. And then the zebra who was in league with the lion, for some reason,

16:32would say, source, I don't see any science, I don't see peer-reviewed studies on that.

16:36And that's just to disarm you, right? Stereotypes are quite accurate in many ways. This is a pretty

16:43robust finding in psychology and the social sciences that stereotypes are quite accurate.

16:48And so that's sort of, that's sort of important, right, to understand. So deductive reasoning is to

16:57give you the absolute presence of a potential threat. And inductive reasoning, probability reasoning is

17:03there to have you weigh and assess that threat. And of course, everybody knows that you can die

17:10in a car crash. Like 35,000, 40,000 people in America alone die in car crashes every year.

17:16That's a fact. Now, we then weigh our probability of dying when we want to go to the store to drive to

17:26the store to pick up some milk, right? And, you know, one of the unfortunate things about the media

17:33is that it presents things to us and our sort of reptile brain thinks they're real. So, you know,

17:41your odds of dying in a school shooting are very low. But because every time there's a school

17:46shooting, it's splashed all over the media, well, often, then you think they're more common than

17:51they are. You're deep down brain, right? It's the same thing I talk about with the men's rights

17:55community or the MGTOW community, which is, yes, there are women who you can marry who will tear

18:01your life apart, right? They'll try to get you thrown in jail, accuse you of terrible things with

18:05the kids, take off your stuff, have you living in a car. Absolutely. And there are women who wake up the

18:11next day and regret sexual activity and falsely accused men of rape, right? It happens. But,

18:18of course, when you are in these kinds of communities, these stories are shared back and

18:24forth to the point where the limbic system, like the deep brain, the lizard brain, thinks

18:30that they're far more common than they are. And that's a problem. It's a huge and genuine

18:36problem in that we did not evolve for selected transmitted media at all. And so, of course,

18:45if, you know, let's say that there are five school shootings a year that are broadcast on the media,

18:50well, deep down in your brain, your brain simply recognizes, I saw five school shootings this year,

18:56not in different countries or different states, or, you know, it doesn't see all the ones that

19:03didn't, you know, all the schools that had a day without a school shooting, your brain says,

19:08I saw five school shootings this year. And it doesn't know that it's distant and it did your

19:15deep brain, right? It just gets the stimuli. And so, of course, if you were in a town where there

19:21were five school shootings in a year in, let's say, I don't know, two schools or whatever, right?

19:27Right? It's two and a half school shootings a year. So, if you had two schools in your neighborhood

19:31and there were five school shootings in a year, then the odds of your kids getting killed would

19:36be enormously high, right? Like very high, like Snoop Dogg high, right? And so, this is the problem

19:42that happens with our perception of risk. And this is one of the things I'm sort of battling with

19:48people on X, which is their perception of risk based upon confirmation bias. So, let's say that

19:56there's a certain number of people whose lives get destroyed by marriage court, marriage, in the

20:01marriage court system. And there are, right? Of course, right? It's a terrible system. But it doesn't

20:07tell you how to reduce your risk. And it also fools you into thinking that's someone you know,

20:15right? So, if you read, and these are terrible stories, of course, where a woman has sex with a

20:19man, say, on college campus. And then she says, I had a great, next day she texts him, I had a great

20:24time, let's do it again. He's a jerk and ghosts. And then she says, I was raped, right? And then his

20:31life is, you know, significantly harmed. He goes through a lot of stress and probably gets kicked

20:36out of university and just absolutely terrible stuff, absolutely terrible stuff. But you do have to ask

20:42yourself, do I personally know anyone this happened to? Now, that's not to say that it's

20:48not terrible. It's not to say that it doesn't happen or anything like that. But you have to

20:52remind yourself that that which is transmitted to you is not people you know, and your brain is

20:57designed for people you know. And so, if you read, you know, 20 of these stories every year,

21:03your brain interprets that, that this happened to 20 people you know. Now, if these kinds of false

21:08accusations and life destroying, which hence, if they happen to 20 people that you know,

21:14that's an entirely different matter, then you read 20 reports of it from around the world

21:19in a year. Everything in your brain is translated to this, like at the bottom level, in terms of your

21:26calculation arts, everything in your brain is calculated to this happened to someone I know,

21:32because of course, we evolved without media, without the transmission of these kinds of things.

21:36And therefore, everything that you see, your deep brain assumes is happening to someone you know,

21:42which is why you have to be really kind of strict with this kind of stuff. And remember that,

21:46you know, there was this sort of old joke when I was a kid, Channel 7, Cheektawonga,

21:52Buffalo, and we've turned Buffalo Auditorium into a mud pit. And the joke was, everything's on fire all

21:58the time. Because there's a fire in Tonawonga, or whatever it was, a fire in Buffalo. And so,

22:04the joke was, like, it's just like London 1666, it's just a constant hellscape of conflagration

22:10and fires and so on, right? And it's the same thing, of course, with the sort of women are crazy

22:16meme, or the men are jerks. Are they crazy women? Sure, sure, sure. But if you just keep reading

22:23stories about crazy women, your brain translates that into the crazy women are all around me.

22:29And that's dangerous. And it's not rational, but it is empirical, because you are genuinely

22:37seeing and reading stories of crazy women, or selfish, lying, jerky men, right? So, I just want

22:45to sort of point that out. So, with regards to logic, in order to survive, a organism, any organism,

22:53needs to successfully process reality. No organism is self-sustaining. Living organism is

23:01self-sustaining. And therefore, it needs to gain its nutrients from its environment. It needs to

23:07correctly process. Now, again, I'm missing single-cell organisms. I'm really talking about

23:11that kind of stuff. Let's just talk animals, right? Where there's a choice. There's an evaluation,

23:16right? And you've had this, right? If you have kids, they love to feed wild animals, because every kid

23:20loves to think they're Dr. Doolittle, and animals love them, because blah, blah, blah. And so,

23:24you see this, right? A squirrel, it wants the little bit of food you've got, but it's hesitant.

23:29Am I going to get caught? And all that kind of stuff, right? So, you can see the squirrel making

23:33that choice. So, all animals, let's say, have to correctly process reality and probability.

23:43Reality and probability. So, if you're a zebra, and there's a particularly tasty-looking

23:49clump of grass next to a pride of lions, well, you're going to weigh that and say,

23:57well, that really does look like good grass, which means it's going to have a lot of nutrients in it

24:01for me. But on the other hand, there's a pride of lions right there. So, right? I mean, I remember

24:07being in Florida many, many years ago, leaning over to look into an alligator enclosure, sort of

24:14swamp enclosure, and my glasses fell off, sunglasses fell off, and fell into the alligator enclosure.

24:20And I could have, of course, not that I ever would have, but I could have physically

24:24gone over to retrieve my sunglasses, but the cost-benefit just didn't make it worthwhile.

24:29So, I had to correctly process that I dropped my sunglasses, that there were alligators nearby,

24:35and then I had to process the odds, right? The cost-benefit of going to get my sunglasses and

24:41maybe getting chomped by a gator, right? I remember joking with Joe Rogan about the gator roll

24:46in the first show that we ever did together in Toronto. So, you have to first process reality,

24:53and then you have to correctly process probability, right? Ecornered animals will, mammals anyway,

24:59will certainly, will usually turn and fight, even if you're, like, way bigger than they are,

25:04because they might as well fight, because if they can't run away anymore, their best chance of

25:08survival is to turn and fight and startle you into jumping back, so maybe they can escape.

25:12Now, the correct processing of reality is science, physics, syllogistical reasoning,

25:20right? Human beings can eat deer, that's a deer, therefore I can eat that deer. As opposed to human

25:28beings cannot eat rocks, that's a rock, I cannot eat that. I mean, you can't a little bit eat a rock

25:34and get nutrition from it. Now, of course, again, I get it's biology, there are exceptions. I mean,

25:40there's no mammal that can eat rocks and get nutrition from them, although I think there are

25:45some mammals that eat rocks to aid in digestion. I think my daughter was telling me something to do

25:51with that, but, oh, maybe it was lizards or something like that, like they eat rocks and it

25:55helps them with digestion, whatever, but they don't gain nutrition from the rocks directly.

25:59Of course, you know, maybe there's a mammal, a human being, that is allergic to

26:04meat. But that does not invalidate the syllogism, because human beings survive on being able to

26:13correctly identify food sources. Now, again, someone's allergic to the food source, of course,

26:18there's a lot of East Asians and other races in particular that are allergic to milk, lactose

26:24intolerance, not really allergies, but lactose intolerance, okay. But they get their food in other

26:29ways, right? So, all human beings have to be able to correctly identify food sources, all

26:34animals need to be able to correctly identify food sources in order to live. And those who

26:41accurately assess risk survive the best. In other words, those who use deductive reasoning to

26:51identify food sources, human beings can eat deer, human beings can eat meat, deers are made

26:57of meat, therefore I can eat that deer. So, you have to be able to syllogistically reason and

27:02identify food sources, and then you have to correctly assess probability. And we all do this

27:11from time to time, you know, you pick up something in the fridge that's in one of those Tupperware

27:16things, and you're like, ooh, I kind of want to eat this, but is it good or is it bad? I have this

27:22with deli meats from time to time, give it a sniff. And of course, we cut off in my household, we cut

27:26off the little best before dates and put them in with whatever we're storing. And you know, most times

27:32spit out, right? So, to survive, animals need to accurately identify food sources and then

27:43correctly process the cost benefit of getting that food source. Every time you go out to hunt deer,

27:53you might turn and twist an ankle, which is very bad. But if you don't go out and hunt deer,

27:57you don't get enough calories to live. So, you take the lesser of two risks, you take the lesser of two

28:01evils. Every big cat predator, right? Some panther or a cheetah or a puma or a lion or whatever,

28:11a tiger, they expend huge calories and take on fairly significant risk in chasing their prey.

28:19Right? The zebras or the other prey animals kick out and might smash you in the face, break your jaw,

28:25you might trip, you might stumble, you might break a leg or turn an ankle or something like that,

28:28which is, you know, pretty fatal in some situations. And of course, we've all seen those videos where

28:34a lion, say, is chasing an antelope and the antelope basically is pulling away or gets away

28:41and the lion gives up. In other words, the lion has done a cost benefit calculation and said,

28:46I'm going to expend more calories than I'm likely to get by continuing to chase. Maybe the lion's a

28:51little older and the deer is very young or the spring bark or the antelope is very young,

28:54but not too young, right? This is why the animals, the cats, the big cats, the predator species,

29:02they tend to maybe go for the old and the sick and the lame and maybe the very young. Now, if you go

29:09for a sick zebra, then it's easier to catch the zebra, but it's also, I assume, easier to catch whatever

29:17sickness it's got, which may or may not be transferable and may or may not take root.

29:21But if you're really starving, you kind of got to eat it and you'll take the risk, right? So

29:27we see this with animals all the time, right? Especially wild animals. Can you feed them?

29:30They're weighing the cost benefits. They say, well, I really want the food, but I don't want to get

29:34caught. So you can see them hesitating in weighing those odds and that risk, right? At least the sort

29:40of more cognitively advanced animals. And of course, there are creatures that mimic, right?

29:49Mimic all the time. There are creatures that mimic. So a tiger that's drinking has spots on its back

29:55that makes it look like it's staring up. And there's lots of mimicry that goes on in creatures

30:02because they, right, this is why you can never say to atheists, why shouldn't you lie? Well,

30:07they get their morals from evolution and evolution is about falsehood a lot of times, deception.

30:12So as far as evolution goes, animals that were unable to identify food sources died out. Animals

30:22that were unable to accurately process risk tended to die out. I mean, the obvious example is the

30:30dodos that grew up without people around and therefore weren't nervous of people and got taken

30:35for their food pretty quickly and easily. And animals that were too cautious didn't survive.

30:44Animals that weren't cautious enough didn't survive. So you have to find that balance and risk. And of

30:49course, a lot of propaganda is about substituting your direct experience with manufactured experience

30:54or transmitted experience in the aforementioned school shooting or, you know, back in the days of

31:00the COVID stuff. I mean, you saw every other news article was about some guy, a MAGA guy, a conservative

31:07guy with a red hat. And he just refused to take the vaccine. And then he was dying of COVID. And he

31:13just regretted it so much. And he kissed his children as he died. Like, that makes you think that's someone

31:18you know. Because again, we're not evolved for transmitted or curated experience. We're born and evolved to

31:27see things directly, not to have things curated, which is why curation tends to push people more

31:33towards, we could say extremism, but I would say more towards an inaccurate processing of risk.

31:43Right? It's a 50% divorce rate. It's an inaccurate processing of risk. It's like taking only the very

31:50old zebras as your base and saying, you know, I mean, half the time, a lion chases a zebra,

31:5750% of the time, it catches it. It's like what you're taking by a sample group, right?

32:03So logic evolved for the identification of, and I'm just using food, right? I mean, obviously,

32:09you have to also identify mates, right? You have to be able to reproduce. So you have to be able to

32:15accurately identify the opposite sex of your species, you have to be able to mate, you have to

32:19get food, and so on, right? You have to recognize you're young. So there's a lot, I mean, just I'm just

32:26using food source as a proxy for just about everything else. So you have to have an interaction

32:31with reality as a whole that is accurate. And then you have to accurately assess probability,

32:41which is why we have both syllogistical reasoning and inductive reasoning. Now, reason says that it's

32:51the art of non-contradictory identification of information. So, for example, it is not possible

32:58for any organism or anything, and again, atoms is a whole different thing, we're talking about

33:05the way that logic evolved. It is impossible for one object to occupy two spaces at the same time,

33:14right? And if you don't get that as an organism, you can't survive.

33:18And this is why we have alibis, right? In law, right? If you can prove that on the night of the

33:24murder, you were in a different country, then you didn't commit the murder, because you can't be in

33:28two places at the same time. To accurately get food, you can't say, if you're a lion, the zebra is

33:35both a zebra and a termite mound at the same time. It is not both a zebra and a cloud and a rock at the

33:44same time. It is a zebra. And if you doubt that, then you can't survive. I mean, a zebra can't be

33:51in two places at the same time. So, if you're chasing a zebra as a lion and the zebra suddenly

33:56turns left, it can't also continue in the straight line and go right. So, you have to bear left. It

34:02can't split itself in two and be in two places at the same time. So, you have to follow where the

34:07zebra is, anticipate where the zebra is going to be on a certain knowledge that it can't be in two

34:12places at the same time. So, these are basic laws of logic. A zebra is a zebra, A is A. A zebra is

34:19either a zebra or it's not a zebra, and a zebra, something has to be either a zebra or a non-zebra.

34:25Again, these are just basic, you've got to know your food source, and so on, right?

34:30So, the laws of logic arise out of the stable and predictable behavior of matter and energy.

34:35The laws of physics are so logistical. The laws of organic matter, both in terms of genetics,

34:43in terms of choice or free will, those are probabilistic, for the most part. I mean,

34:51a man knows he cannot have children without a female to mate with, right? That he knows, right?

34:58He, you're not going to get a baby Kleenex, right? A man knows that he has to have a female in order

35:04to reproduce with. Now, that he knows for sure. That's still logistical reasoning, right? All

35:10babies come from sperm and egg and womb and whatever it is. You need those things, you need those

35:14ingredients. So, he knows that for sure. Now, he doesn't know for sure every time he goes and talks

35:21to a woman, whether, assuming he does so with a woman who's of childbearing age, he doesn't know for

35:26sure whether he's going to get children out of that woman. He doesn't know if the woman's going

35:31to like him or they're going to be compatible or whatever it is, right? So, the absolutes,

35:36the sort of logistical reasoning is he doesn't get a kid if he doesn't approach women. The probability

35:40is, well, I need to approach women who are likely to say yes and who I want, at least reasonably,

35:47to say yes, right? I mean, I guess everybody wants the IQ 180 supermodel or whatever, but you,

35:53you know, we don't always get everything we want, neither do

35:56other people in our lives. So, we settle, right? I mean, everybody has to settle.

36:00So, those organisms that could not identify accurately 100% reality. Now, again, it's not

36:10all sense data. You could just see a slight hump, a slight tawny hump in the tall bushes,

36:16tall grasses. Maybe that's a rock. Maybe it's a termite mound. Maybe it's a lion, right? So,

36:23that's probabilistic. It's not like everything that comes directly through the sense data

36:27is 100%, right? Sometimes we don't know. Of course, when I was a kid, the first time you're

36:32driving on a hot road and you see the mirages ahead, you think, well, geez, why the heck would

36:35there be water on a road, right? And I remember in Africa, when I was six, driving and seeing

36:42lights way down the highway, and it was a big cat's eyes looking at the headlights, reflecting back.

36:47Wild. So, because matter and energy behave, like non-organic, non-alive matter and energy

36:56behave in perfectly stable and predictable ways. And, sorry, let me just amend that. If you have

37:03enough data, right? If you have enough data. Now, of course, you don't, weather, right? You can't,

37:08you can't predict the weather down to 100% accuracy. To a large degree, I mean, the weather may be

37:13dependent upon human activity, which means that there's a free will or choice involved. But we

37:18can't predict, I'm sorry, just to reaffirm that, sorry, or to revise that slightly, we can't predict

37:23everything about matter. But the syllogisms that are tied into what we need to survive are based upon

37:33the stability of matter and energy. So, you could probably jump off a one-foot ledge and not be

37:39injured. You cannot judge, you cannot jump off a 100-foot ledge and not be injured. Somewhere in

37:47the middle. Sorry, I just got a bite of something on my heel. Look at that, talking about nature and

37:52its dangers, and I get a sting of something on my heel. Anyway, not the end of the world, it's just

37:57pain. And so, what did it, what did it, what got me, what's in there? What is that? Can I see it or

38:07did it go? I cannot tell. But something crawled in there and gave me a good old sting? Oh, well,

38:13it's fine. So, the origins of logic are on the stable properties of matter and energy. And of

38:19course, we know that matter and energy has to be stable, because all biological life rests on the

38:24substrata of matter and energy. And if matter and energy were unstable, there would never be a stable

38:29enough environment for life to develop. If matter behaved in some sort of random chaotic fashions,

38:34or, you know, if gravity reversed itself once in a while, and the sun produced frigid cold instead

38:40of warmth on earth, then life could not survive, right? I mean, it would be like saying, I want you

38:47to paint a realistic portrait of someone while on a randomly moving canvas. You couldn't, right?

38:54You couldn't. And you can't create life without the absolute stability of matter and energy.

38:58So, matter and energy, perfectly stable, that's the physics, that's the syllogism. And then we have

39:03to be able to process probabilities in order to survive, which is why you get deductive reasoning

39:08and inductive reasoning. So, the origin of reason is the universal absolute non-contractory

39:17properties of matter and energy. That's where, correctly identifying those principles of matter

39:22and energy, the instinctual understanding of physics, right? Which is what animals do as a whole,

39:27like a dog doesn't understand the equations, but it can catch a frisbee. You throw the frisbee,

39:32it'll figure it out where it's going to land and catch the frisbee, right? The lion doesn't

39:35understand the physics, but it knows how to catch the zebra. So, there's sort of an instinctual

39:40understanding. So, the fact that we're the most successful life form in the world, in that there's

39:47not even a close second to our greatest attribute, which is consciousness. So, the most successful,

39:51arguably, I mean, you can get back and forth, but in general, right? I'm not talking about numbers,

39:54but in terms of, like, there's no close second to our rational capacities. So, we are the most

40:02successful, and we also have the greatest capacity to abstract and understand both syllogistical

40:09deductive and inductive reasoning. And so, that's where our logic comes from. That's how logic is

40:16validated. Logic is principles derived from the stable behavior of matter and energy extrapolated

40:22into conceptual form. And some enemies of mankind attack deductive reasoning, but most enemies of

40:32mankind attack inductive reasoning, your sort of probability, and say that all of your pattern

40:37recognition is a horrible prejudice. Why do you hate lions, man? They're not all bad. Well, true.

40:44You don't know for sure that that lion's going to attack you. It's like, yeah, it could have just

40:47eaten, but I'm still not getting my sunglasses from the alligator pit anyway. All right. So,

40:53freedomain.com slash donate. If you find these kinds of conversations helpful, I would really,

40:57really appreciate your support. Freedomain.com slash donate. And don't forget, tomorrow morning,

41:01we're going to do... Well, this is going to be... I don't know if this is going to go out today.

41:05Sunday mornings, we are going to do donor-only shows at freedomain.locals.com. Subscriber-only

41:12shows. I hope you'll join us for that. Lots of love. Bye, everyone. Take care.

Category

Transcript

Recommended