- 2 months ago
In this flash X Space on 27 October 2025, Stefan Molyneux examines the effects of rising leftist ideologies on America's economy, prompted by concerns about Zohran Mamdani. He critiques government schooling and the envy of the wealthy, advocating for personal responsibility and the social contract. Engaging with callers, he emphasizes the need for understanding one’s choices and learning from history amidst today's ideological challenges.
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LearningTranscript
00:00:00I just wanted to get your thoughts on what happens if Mom Donnie, I believe the character in New York City gets elected, and what kind of thing, or what kind of financial turmoil do you think that could potentially call out?
00:00:16I don't know.
00:00:17That might be a little bit deviant from what you want to discuss today.
00:00:20That's just kind of all the ones to do.
00:00:22I didn't catch the question.
00:00:23I mean, so a financial thing, your mic is not particularly great.
00:00:27Oh, I'm sorry.
00:00:28A little more slowly.
00:00:29Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:00:30Can you hear me now?
00:00:31Yeah, it's okay, but go ahead.
00:00:33Okay.
00:00:34So basically, my thoughts are kind of on Mom Donnie in New York City for the mayoral election.
00:00:42Oh, the guy who's alleged to be a communist or something like that, right?
00:00:47Yeah.
00:00:47I'm just kind of wondering what kind of effects that could spiral into in terms of how it could impact the financial markets, especially since Wall Street is, you know,
00:00:58butterflies in New York City, so I don't know.
00:01:00That's just kind of what's on my mind right now.
00:01:02Okay, I'm happy to give some thoughts on that.
00:01:06And again, if anybody else has issues that they want to raise, I'm certainly happy to hear that.
00:01:11So, it's just going to be the same fracking lesson over and over again.
00:01:17It's the same lesson, the same lesson.
00:01:20You got a bunch of poor people, and you got a bunch of wealthy people.
00:01:23And the poor people hate and resent the wealthy people.
00:01:29And why?
00:01:30Well, there's the sort of natural human competition as well as the fact that these endless socialist soffits come in.
00:01:38And as I've said a zillion times before, and I'll keep it brief here, they come in and say,
00:01:42Ah, that rich guy, he's only wealthy because he stole from you, and he stole from your father, and he ripped off your grandfather, and they just provoke all this hatred.
00:01:53And I'm not talking about the politically rich military industrial complex a-holes.
00:01:57I'm talking about, you know, people who've, you know, worked and built companies and earned some money and created jobs and so on, right?
00:02:05See, it's a funny thing that happens in the world.
00:02:09It doesn't have to happen.
00:02:10And people say, Oh, well, the poor are always going to resent the rich.
00:02:13Nope.
00:02:14Nope.
00:02:15Because there's three areas where that doesn't happen, for the most part.
00:02:20There's three areas where people don't endlessly resent the rich.
00:02:26Number one, movies, TV, actors.
00:02:30Those guys are fantastically wealthy, and yet people go and see their movies because they're fans.
00:02:36It's Denzel Washington, and Brad Pitt, and, you know, whoever it is for the younger, Padro, whatever his name is, the younger generation.
00:02:47They love those guys.
00:02:49They cheer them on.
00:02:50Movies, TV, actors.
00:02:52Very wealthy.
00:02:54Very wealthy.
00:02:55And cheered on.
00:02:56People don't resent them.
00:02:58What else?
00:02:59Oh, I know.
00:03:01Sports.
00:03:02Is it Michael B. Jordan and Michael Jordan?
00:03:03So, in sports, LeBron James, King James, fantastically wealthy.
00:03:09People don't resent him.
00:03:10They love him.
00:03:11They wear pictures of him on their T-shirts.
00:03:13They get his number and play basketball.
00:03:16They pay outrageous prices for tickets.
00:03:22The Knicks.
00:03:23It's a Jack Nicholson's team.
00:03:24Anyway.
00:03:24So, in movies, TV, sports, where, oh, I know, music.
00:03:32Is anybody out there bitching and moaning that Taylor Swift is a, what, billionaire at this point?
00:03:37The Kardashians!
00:03:38I mean, there's probably a little bit of hate watching there.
00:03:41Good luck with your ennurism, Kim.
00:03:42But, people have no problem with the wealthy as a whole if they don't have any illusions about it.
00:03:53I don't sit there and look at Taylor Swift and say, it should be me up there.
00:03:58I did some karaoke with my daughter last night.
00:04:01She did well.
00:04:02I did not.
00:04:02So, it's just astounding.
00:04:09It really is.
00:04:11Yeah.
00:04:11So, all the women who are probably on the left are thrilled that Taylor Swift is touring.
00:04:17Now, what's the only reason Taylor Swift is touring?
00:04:19Well, A, she writes great songs.
00:04:22B, she likes to tour.
00:04:24And C, she makes a frack ton of money doing it.
00:04:27And nobody is, there's no big petitions of all of these white women or whoever the liberal women are.
00:04:33There's not these big petitions saying, well, come on, man.
00:04:37It's not fair.
00:04:38Taylor Swift should be limited to 650 seats.
00:04:42She shouldn't be in stadiums.
00:04:44That's elitist.
00:04:46And she should be on tour buses and shouldn't be flying around either.
00:04:50Right?
00:04:50Yeah, yeah.
00:04:51There's just a bunch of stories.
00:04:52Yeah, they don't say, she's not allowed to have backup dances.
00:04:55That's unfair.
00:04:56She's not allowed, like.
00:04:57Pink is not allowed to fly around like a monkey on a sling.
00:05:02Because that's not fair to all of the old, I mean, the Rolling Stones aren't doing that.
00:05:06Mick Jagger, I mean, he's still a pretty spry guy.
00:05:08Pretty spry for a white guy in his 80s or whatever it is, right?
00:05:12So, they're not saying, well, I mean, at least, at least what we have to do to even things out
00:05:18is give Taylor Swift a bad microphone and some reverse auto-tune, which throws a slightly off-key.
00:05:25You know, just make things equal.
00:05:26Because we can't compete with that.
00:05:28They love it.
00:05:30They love it, Jerry.
00:05:31They love it.
00:05:33So, they're really keen.
00:05:35Really thrilled.
00:05:35Really happy.
00:05:37They're fans of these bands, right?
00:05:39They love the music.
00:05:40They love the singing.
00:05:41They want people to do really well.
00:05:44And was it Olivia Rodriguez?
00:05:46I was listening to a song called Vampire.
00:05:48I never really thought of her as much of a serious singer.
00:05:51But Gil has pipes and a half for days.
00:05:53Amazing.
00:05:54Amazing.
00:05:55How many people can do that?
00:05:57Maybe one in 10,000, one in 100,000.
00:06:00Perfect pitch.
00:06:03Great musicality.
00:06:04Great emotional connectivity.
00:06:05Great ability to act because singing is a form of acting.
00:06:09Need the passion.
00:06:10Pretty.
00:06:12Talented.
00:06:13Good performer.
00:06:14Reasonable health.
00:06:16So, people don't hate the rich.
00:06:19People love the rich.
00:06:21They love the rich.
00:06:22People love and hate.
00:06:23Well, people love who their instincts tell them to love.
00:06:27And people hate who they're trained to hate.
00:06:31So, you know, when people are like,
00:06:32I can't believe I accidentally tripped up some secret socialist wire on X.
00:06:38And now I'm getting all of this nonsense flooding in about,
00:06:41how can there be billionaires and the homeless?
00:06:45Right?
00:06:46And when people say billionaires,
00:06:48generally what they're thinking of is white men.
00:06:50It's just another proxy.
00:06:52Let's be honest, right?
00:06:53Because nobody's saying that there ought to be a special Taylor Swift tax
00:06:59because she's so, you know, talented and pretty and blah, blah, blah,
00:07:03whatever it is.
00:07:04Nobody's saying that.
00:07:05Because they like Taylor Swift.
00:07:07The women love Taylor Swift.
00:07:09And if you were to say,
00:07:11because they want to see her tour, right?
00:07:13And if you were to say to them,
00:07:15well, you know, if you enact a special tax on very rich people,
00:07:19Taylor Swift will be too poor to tour.
00:07:20They'd be like, oh, no, that's no good.
00:07:22That's terrible.
00:07:23Meanwhile, there's a lot of this chain against people like Elon Musk
00:07:26who are launching rockets and building these amazing electric cars
00:07:33and all that stuff.
00:07:34And it's just so wild.
00:07:37Really.
00:07:37Yeah, I mean, who's doing more good for humanity in material sense?
00:07:43I mean, obviously, music is important.
00:07:44Happiness is important.
00:07:45But who's doing more good for humanity?
00:07:48Not Taylor Swift, but Elon Musk.
00:07:51I mean, certainly with regards to free speech.
00:07:52Towns are towns.
00:07:53Absolutely.
00:07:53Yeah, Elon Musk has done.
00:07:55I mean, we know that also, that she has more economic value
00:07:58because he's worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:08:02And so, but if the schools simply taught people from the beginning
00:08:07some basic economics, they'd be thrilled about the poor.
00:08:11They'd be as happy with Elon Musk as they are with Taylor Swift.
00:08:15Which means they think it's by design.
00:08:17Yeah, the moment you let government take over the education of the youth,
00:08:24the youth inexorably move towards communism.
00:08:27Inexorably.
00:08:28Because you can't hand over children to a communist or socialist system
00:08:32and then expect that communist or socialist system
00:08:35to criticize communist or socialist principles.
00:08:38Right?
00:08:39Government schools are explicitly socialistic slash communistic
00:08:43from each according to their ability, property taxes,
00:08:47higher taxes, to each according to their need.
00:08:49That's how it works.
00:08:51No competition.
00:08:53You can't fire people.
00:08:54It's all government work.
00:08:55And it's all socialist in principle.
00:08:57And America had a very brief, I mean, just to pick on America,
00:09:02had a very brief flourishing of being a free society.
00:09:07I mean, it took 80 years to break the bonds of the Constitution foundationally.
00:09:12And, yeah, you want to look for a real fascist,
00:09:14you look at Abraham Lincoln.
00:09:17And you don't look at Donald Trump.
00:09:19Yeah.
00:09:19The letter of Fist actually made a really good video on Abraham Lincoln.
00:09:23And that's good to bother with his part.
00:09:25Oh, love the Fist.
00:09:28We love the Fist.
00:09:29He's great.
00:09:31I liked him for his verbal acuity.
00:09:33It's astonishing.
00:09:34It's really like watching a master scimitar wielder.
00:09:38Oh, it's very understanding.
00:09:40It's very understanding.
00:09:41You can go on monologues for days.
00:09:43It's so fun.
00:09:43He also did one very funny video, which I always remember of him falling over backwards in a chair.
00:09:48So he didn't take himself too seriously, which is always a pleasure for me.
00:09:52But, yeah, extremely talented verbal magician.
00:09:56And, yeah, I've done my own little entree into the criticizing Lincoln sort of stuff.
00:10:00But, yeah, if they taught children that people don't have money, they create value.
00:10:10That's number one.
00:10:11You don't just have money.
00:10:12You create value.
00:10:14I mean, I'm sure that there are a bunch of people in Taylor Swift's hometown who did karaoke.
00:10:23And Taylor Swift did not steal their money, right?
00:10:27Because they can't do what Taylor Swift does.
00:10:31So people don't just...
00:10:32People saw she was...
00:10:33No, you're good.
00:10:34People saw that she was entertaining in terms of the value she was providing.
00:10:38I mean, it's pretty obvious, right?
00:10:40Like, that's just how it works out in the entertainment land is, more or less, they don't steal your money.
00:10:48You're basically giving them your money, your hard-earned money, because they provide some sort of value.
00:10:54Like, that's just...
00:10:55It just seems so obvious to me.
00:10:57Maybe not so much to what people were talking about.
00:11:01Right.
00:11:02So, yeah, I mean, if you're a model-looking person who can sing well and write good songs,
00:11:09I mean, you can write your own ticket, right?
00:11:11So, yeah, people don't have money.
00:11:14They provide value.
00:11:16And that's number one.
00:11:17And number two, billionaires don't have a bunch of dollar bills in a vault.
00:11:24Billionaires do not have a bunch of dollars in a vault.
00:11:27No, they have to lock away in their companies, investments, all sorts of stuff.
00:11:32If they know better, they know that cash is generally trash.
00:11:36And you shouldn't hold on to too much of it, because it's just going to erode away from inflation.
00:11:42Yeah.
00:11:42So, Elon Musk does not have hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:11:46He doesn't.
00:11:47And, I mean, the only way he could get access to those hundreds of billions of dollars would be to sell all of his shares.
00:11:55But the moment he sold his shares, their value would evaporate, and he wouldn't have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.
00:12:02Because if he was on a selling spree, people would sell as fast as he was and drive down the price of the shares to very low levels.
00:12:10And, of course, even if he sold all of his shares and somehow was able to get a good chunk of money for it, there'd be capital gains, taxes, and then, what?
00:12:23He'd have all of this money.
00:12:24He'd have to put it somewhere.
00:12:25If he just put it in the bank, he'd lose money.
00:12:27He'd lose, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year or more just to inflation.
00:12:32So, it's an obscene amount of wealth.
00:12:36It's not wealth.
00:12:38It's not real.
00:12:39It's not totally fake.
00:12:41It's not made up.
00:12:41It's not like he's a fiat bank or anything like that.
00:12:44But, no, he doesn't have this money.
00:12:47And he doesn't have money.
00:12:49He provides value.
00:12:51Taylor Swift is not a thief.
00:12:54Taylor Swift provides value.
00:12:57Some people will pay hundreds of dollars to see Taylor Swift.
00:13:00I mean, if I were given free tickets, I'd go.
00:13:03I think there's, like, three songs of hers that I like in the sort of the Katy Perry category.
00:13:09And, yeah, Blank Space, I think, is a great song.
00:13:12It's a great song.
00:13:13Very clever, very catchy, and entertaining.
00:13:17So, like, Katy Perry's Raw, great song, and so on, right?
00:13:22But then, you know, every artist ends up with breathy vocals, rap in the middle, breathy vocals.
00:13:26It just seems to be a law of nature.
00:13:27Yeah, so there's just hatred.
00:13:31I mean, they're just taught to have hatred.
00:13:36It's just disturbing that New York City is almost certainly going to elect this person.
00:13:46Yeah, yeah.
00:13:46I don't think...
00:13:46Sorry, why is it unsettling?
00:13:49I mean, New York City is considered the global financial capital in some regards, right?
00:13:55Well, not for long.
00:13:56Oh, yeah, definitely not.
00:13:59Yeah, so they'll, you know, I have no pity or patience for people who learn these fucking lessons now.
00:14:06I have no pity or patience.
00:14:07Like, but the entire 20th century, I mean, go back to Spain and then 400 years ago, go back to Spain and its experiments with inflationary goals from the new world, put it into a 400-year depression.
00:14:17So, I have no patience.
00:14:19If people want to vote for this shit, okay.
00:14:23I'm not going to New York.
00:14:25Yeah, I know some people, but it's just like, I really want them to leave.
00:14:31I know they kind of feel married to the city, and, you know, that's on them, I guess, but it's...
00:14:37Yeah, okay, but I don't care.
00:14:40And I would strongly suggest people start unplugging your empathy circuits for what's coming in the world.
00:14:47Like, I seriously, strongly urge, for the sake of your sanity, you must disconnect your empathy.
00:14:56Oh, yeah, they're going to just hijack.
00:14:57They're just going to...
00:14:58People are going to just hijack that, and then they're going to manipulate you, because that's what they do.
00:15:03So...
00:15:04Well, there's no excuse.
00:15:06The internet and the 20th century, if people want to vote socialist, if they want free stuff, if they want to go full communist, if they...
00:15:17Then, yeah, the rich will leave, and they'll have no money, and then they'll beg for bailouts, and crime will surge.
00:15:25And it's like, I don't have any sympathy left over for self-inflicted wounds.
00:15:30Did you know what I mean?
00:15:32100%.
00:15:33I absolutely do agree.
00:15:34I just wish it didn't have to be this way.
00:15:37But I know it might have to be this way, because ultimately, this is how people learn.
00:15:42It's either through philosophy, which is not providing the cure, but prevention, or through, well, what's happening right now.
00:15:51So, again, I totally get where you're coming from.
00:15:54Absolutely.
00:15:55And I think it is wise to keep empathy...
00:15:59I do blame the Christians a lot, because...
00:16:02I mean, with the idea that 41 million people in America are going to be without SNAP benefits next month.
00:16:08And that's another thing.
00:16:09That's another bomb that's going to pop off, possibly.
00:16:12I don't know what's going to happen without them.
00:16:14That's also kind of scary.
00:16:17I don't...
00:16:18I don't...
00:16:18I'm out of sympathy.
00:16:20I really am.
00:16:20And I'm not exhausted.
00:16:22I'm actually preserving my energy by resolutely...
00:16:25I mean, if you've got three generations of people who've been ripping off the taxpayer through the power of the state, what sympathy am I supposed to have?
00:16:34Yeah, there was a video I saw of that.
00:16:35That was insane.
00:16:36Yeah, I have as much sympathy for people.
00:16:39And, of course, I'm not an American, right?
00:16:41So, I'm just putting myself in this mindset, right?
00:16:44But have as much sympathy for people as they have for you.
00:16:46Do not have more sympathy for people than they have for you.
00:16:48And the people who have been on government assistance for many years, without really trying and working hard to get off, they have no sympathy for the taxpayer.
00:17:02In fact, they're exploiting the taxpayer.
00:17:04And so, if people are exploiting the taxpayer, if they've gotten lazy and entitled, and they don't want to work even when they could,
00:17:12why on earth would the taxpayer have more sympathy for people than the people have for the taxpayer?
00:17:21So, I have no...
00:17:24I'm reserving my compassion as a just man, and I strive for justice, and I strive for fairness.
00:17:30I am reserving my compassion for the victims, not for the self-inflicted.
00:17:36And if I had money to, like, whatever, to donate to...
00:17:41I mean, I do some charitable donations and so on.
00:17:43But let's say, you know, you've got some money to donate to a cause.
00:17:48Do you donate it to genetic diabetes, or do you donate it to self-inflicted diabetes?
00:17:57And it's pretty clear.
00:17:58You give it to the people who can't roll the dice well enough, which would be the genetic advocate.
00:18:05Yeah, because if you get diabetes as the result of lifestyle choices, I think it was Tom Hanks' doctor some years ago was saying,
00:18:13if you keep gaining weight or you keep not exercising, you're going to get diabetes.
00:18:16So, if you voluntarily make yourself ill, right?
00:18:21Obesity, give yourself joint problems, diabetes, smoking like crazy, then that's a very selfish act.
00:18:30And it would be a selfish act even in a free society, because when you make yourself sick, and, like, three-quarters of health issues are lifestyle-related, which means they're kind of chosen.
00:18:41So, if you make yourself sick, then you are taking away healthcare resources from other people.
00:18:47Specifically from people who didn't have a choice in the matter because they didn't have a genetic disease or disorder, but they do more care.
00:18:59Right.
00:18:59Which makes sense.
00:19:00And you say, oh, well, it's supply and demand, the more people are sick.
00:19:03Well, okay, then the more people go into healthcare, sure, but that's fewer smart people who are available for other things.
00:19:07I mean, imagine if we had a world with 75% less healthcare spending.
00:19:11Well, that would be a world where people took responsibility for their health and acted reasonably in a way to make themselves healthy.
00:19:17And if people don't have compassion for others to the point where they pile on the pounds, they don't exercise, you know, they don't do basic sleep hygiene, you know, they don't get enough sunlight, they just don't do the basic things that you need to do.
00:19:34They don't get the checkups, they don't get the blood work done, you know, all the things that basic things you need to do to maintain your health.
00:19:40Well, then they are, they're causing other people to get sick and die, because they are taking away healthcare resources from people who are sick through no fault of their own.
00:19:52And that's just healthcare alone.
00:19:55That's not even factoring or considering the impact on, say, travel, like interplanes, the extra amount of weight, the amount of food they consume.
00:20:05And, like, it just kind of spiraled up from there, too.
00:20:08Yeah, why haven't environmentalists targeted the obese for over-consuming resources that are very scarce in nature?
00:20:17And, you know, food requires a huge amount of carbon to produce, because they don't care.
00:20:21Because the obese are dependent on the state and can be reliably voted to have more and more government.
00:20:27So, like, yeah, yeah, exactly, which is the vector and control.
00:20:31Yeah, for over 40 years, I have poured out, like, this stuff is bad, it's going to end badly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:20:38And, you know, we shouldn't be using force to try and solve complex social problems.
00:20:44And so for, so I'm out, like, I'm tapped out.
00:20:47And I don't, sorry, I'm tapping out, I'm not tapped out.
00:20:49I still have a lot of great compassion and empathy for people who are undergoing misfortune through no fault of their own.
00:20:58But, yeah, with regards to the people who've caused their own problems, eh, you know, especially people who are, like, you should not be obese when you're on charity.
00:21:07When you're on charity food, you should not be obese.
00:21:09That means you're missing out on the program.
00:21:10You're buying more than you need to live.
00:21:13That program should be just to get people back on their feet.
00:21:16Maybe.
00:21:17I do think we should have these social systems in place, but there's definitely a lot of abuse, and that means reform.
00:21:23But you can't reform it.
00:21:25Everything that is coercive is corrupt.
00:21:29Everything.
00:21:30So the only way that you can actually help the poor is through voluntary private charity.
00:21:35Because I want to donate to a charity that gets people back on their feet, whereas the government charity relies upon people never getting back on their feet, because that's where their power, control, authority, and spending comes from.
00:21:45Because they can pull the strings of their voting behavior, and then they can stay in power almost indefinitely.
00:21:54So, no, I do agree with you on that.
00:21:56And, of course, a lot of the – I mean, you can see a lot of people in America who are like, well, if we're not going to get free food, we're just going to riot and steal things.
00:22:05So, basically, it's just become a kind of protection money to just give – and what was it Fidel Castro said about the welfare programs in the U.S.
00:22:12that they were the most amazing pacifiers of the population that could be conceived of.
00:22:17So, basically, you're just paying people not to riot.
00:22:19It's just – you know, be – nice store you have in the mafia neighborhood.
00:22:25Be real shame if something bad –
00:22:27On the backs of the taxpayers.
00:22:29Yeah, yeah.
00:22:30Well, and not even on the back of the taxpayers.
00:22:32On the back of the children being born millions of dollars in debt and unfunded liabilities.
00:22:38It's not even the current taxpayer.
00:22:39Yes.
00:22:39You're literally enslaved.
00:22:41Yeah, people are born into debt they can't pay off, which is really enslavement.
00:22:46Just because you get to choose your own job doesn't mean you're not enslaved.
00:22:49So, yeah, with regards to New York, I mean, I won't even say good luck.
00:22:55I just – okay, you get what you want.
00:22:59You get what you deserve.
00:23:01And all of the people like myself and, of course, you know, countless others and for a long time before I became a public figure,
00:23:08we've all been saying the wages of sin is death and this is bad stuff.
00:23:11And it's like, okay, so if people want – if they feel the need to learn this lesson again, then let them learn this lesson again.
00:23:18I don't care.
00:23:19I don't care.
00:23:20I mean, I guess I could say I wish it didn't happen, but –
00:23:24Yeah.
00:23:24I mean, that's –
00:23:25I get what you're saying.
00:23:27I get what you're saying.
00:23:27What does that mean?
00:23:28What does it mean?
00:23:29Like, does the doctor say to the guy with lung cancer, I wish you stopped smoking 40 years ago?
00:23:34Like, what does that even mean?
00:23:36It's a fantasy.
00:23:38Kind of a moot point.
00:23:39It's a moot point at that point.
00:23:40Yeah.
00:23:41We're here.
00:23:42We're here now.
00:23:43There's nothing we can do about the past right now.
00:23:46So, it's just buckle up, buttercup, right?
00:23:48Like, that's kind of my attitude.
00:23:51Well, yeah.
00:23:51I kind of – I feel bad for that.
00:23:53Yeah.
00:23:53Well, don't – but don't feel bad for that.
00:23:55Don't feel bad.
00:23:55I mean, you could say, ah, the kids, this, that, but I'm not even going to care more
00:23:59about for people's kids than they care about themselves, right?
00:24:01I'm just not.
00:24:02Yeah.
00:24:02And, yeah, so I don't even feel bad for them.
00:24:06I am – oh, okay.
00:24:08So, that's their choice.
00:24:10Okay.
00:24:10Well, I don't even – I'm not even checking.
00:24:13I'm not even going to check in to see how it plays out because I know exactly how it's
00:24:16going.
00:24:16I mean, I've already watched this movie 50 times before, as the whole world has watched
00:24:20it 50 to 100 times before, and they want to do it again.
00:24:23And they're motivated by greed, and they want to pillage the taxpayer.
00:24:27They want to pillage the unborn.
00:24:29They want something for nothing.
00:24:31And, you know, the ladies are taken in by this fairly oily guy with his, hey, baby, campaign
00:24:35ads, his sort of Barry White campaign ads.
00:24:38It's like, okay, well, if you want to vote for some pretty guy promising you everything
00:24:43for nothing, okay.
00:24:44I mean, I'm not going to argue.
00:24:47I'm not going to track it.
00:24:48And, you know, there will be these occasional bursts of terrible news coming out of New York,
00:24:54and I don't care.
00:24:55I don't – I don't even angrily, like, I don't care.
00:24:59Like, I don't even – it's like, I don't care.
00:25:01This is the choice that they have made.
00:25:04I have put 44 years into telling people about this.
00:25:10I have, you know, I've received my bomb threats, my death threats, my physical attacks.
00:25:16I have been deplatformed.
00:25:17I've been slandered and lied about all across the multiverse.
00:25:21And so I have poured everything that I conceivably have outside of my life itself.
00:25:27I have poured –
00:25:28Like a doctor, like an oncologist or a doctor saying, hey, you know, you should probably
00:25:32kick this bad habit, or you're going to suffer very bad –
00:25:36No, bro, it's not like that at all.
00:25:38An oncologist doesn't get bomb and death threats for telling people to stop smoking.
00:25:43It's much worse, yes.
00:25:45Much worse than that.
00:25:46It is much worse, friend.
00:25:48Now, you're right.
00:25:48You're absolutely right.
00:25:50Be kind about what I've suffered, right?
00:25:53So I have risked almost everything to bring the truth to people.
00:25:59And, you know, I mean, there are lots of people in New York who are going to be dressing
00:26:02up as Charlie Kirk this Halloween, right?
00:26:06And there are lots of people who are like, you know, F-Murga, man.
00:26:11You know, it's like, okay, well, I have put great honor into the field of battle for almost
00:26:19half a century, bro.
00:26:21That's a long time.
00:26:22That's a long time.
00:26:24So I've acquitted myself with honor.
00:26:26I have put as much and as entertaining a series of philosophical and moral and economic arguments
00:26:33out into the world in the language of the common man with some jokes, with some engagement,
00:26:38with some good humor, with some passion, with some energy.
00:26:42I've made it all available for free.
00:26:43There aren't even any ads.
00:26:45FreeDomain.com slash donate.
00:26:46So I've done as much as I possibly can to avert this disaster.
00:26:54I mean, it's like, it's like somebody, it's like if you could get to Jack at the beginning
00:26:58of the movie Titanic, right?
00:27:01Jack, while you're gambling.
00:27:03Don't go, don't go on.
00:27:04No, it's not even don't go on.
00:27:06It's like, this is the movie.
00:27:07I'm going to, Jack, I'm going to play you the movie called the Titanic.
00:27:10And that's going to tell you to not get on the Titanic.
00:27:14Like I'm literally playing the movie, right?
00:27:16I've done detailed documentaries about how badly all of this stuff turns out.
00:27:21Sorry, presentations and some documentaries too.
00:27:22But this is how badly it all turns out.
00:27:26So if you play the movie Titanic to the main character in the movie Titanic and Jack still
00:27:33decides to get on the Titanic, it's like, okay, incomprehensible to me, but he just wants
00:27:38to die.
00:27:38He's like, it's been too hard living.
00:27:41He's not afraid to die.
00:27:42And off he goes.
00:27:44And I mean, what can you do?
00:27:46You can't chain him up.
00:27:47You can't lock him up.
00:27:48You can't.
00:27:49It's not even worth exerting the mental effort.
00:27:52Yeah.
00:27:52It's like, hey, man, I told you exactly how it was going to go.
00:27:55I proved it.
00:27:56I had every expert in the known universe tell you how it's going to go.
00:28:00And people are just so dumb, greedy and or evil that this is the path they want to pursue.
00:28:07This is the road they want to take.
00:28:08Fine.
00:28:09You know, I saw this picture of what this guy, the New Yorker mayor and AOC and Bernie Sanders
00:28:18grinning away, looking confident and happy, tax the rich.
00:28:22And it's like, hey, if these are the sophists, if you've got a philosopher saying, eat your
00:28:26veggies and you've got all of these sophists saying, candy is great for you and vegetables
00:28:32and meat is terrible for you.
00:28:33OK, well, then if you go with them, off you go.
00:28:38And actually, I got to tell you, it's kind of a relief for me.
00:28:41Because if you put maximum effort into, you know, you've got some uncle who can't quit the hookers
00:28:47and blow and you say to him, man, this is going to end badly.
00:28:50And you try to get him to stop.
00:28:54And, you know, the mafia threatens you because they want to keep getting access to his money.
00:29:00And, you know, the hookers who want his money, they start threatening you.
00:29:04And the pimps come over and they threaten you and beat up your dog or something like that.
00:29:09And then eventually, if he's just like, nope, I'm committed, I'm going to keep doing the
00:29:13hookers and blow, it's a relief because now you're not going to get threatened anymore.
00:29:16Like, you've done everything you can.
00:29:19And honestly, I'm not quite glad, but I'm not unrelieved.
00:29:25Because it's like when you're a diplomat and you're trying to stop a war and you're working,
00:29:31you know, for years and years to stop a war and you get a lot of threats and stress and
00:29:35blah, blah, blah.
00:29:36And then, you know, once the war breaks out, you're like, okay, well, at least I don't
00:29:40have to worry about stopping the war anymore.
00:29:41At least that is off my plate.
00:29:43So, yeah, they choose this stuff.
00:29:46I no longer am interested, since I won't compel anyone, I'm no longer interested in what happens
00:29:54to people who make these obviously terrible decisions with all of the full knowledge of
00:29:58history.
00:29:59And the internet has removed everybody's excuse.
00:30:02It's like somebody who still uses the word McCarthyism unironically.
00:30:05Yeah.
00:30:06All right.
00:30:06Is there anything else?
00:30:07All right.
00:30:08I strongly suggest just getting that skilled indifference.
00:30:11But sorry, go ahead.
00:30:12No, you're good.
00:30:13Yeah, that's all I really have.
00:30:15Thanks again for having me up and having that deep dive.
00:30:17That was really, that was very good.
00:30:19My pleasure.
00:30:20And I'm not sorry that it's happening.
00:30:23It's fine that it's happening.
00:30:24This is what people are choosing.
00:30:26And they're going to have to live with the consequences of their choices.
00:30:28And, you know, it would be nice if people were as anti-communist as Eastern Europe, but
00:30:34apparently you have to go through 40 to 70 years of communism in order to be anti-communist.
00:30:40And even then, it doesn't seem to last for too long.
00:30:42So, and that's because of people's bad childhoods.
00:30:46All right.
00:30:46Well, if there's anybody else who has, sorry?
00:30:49No, you're good.
00:30:50I just said it's time to batter up then, I guess.
00:30:52Yeah.
00:30:53I'm not sure.
00:30:53I'm not sure what you mean.
00:30:55Um, basically just letting whatever's going to happen, happen.
00:30:59And, uh, well, no, it's not whatever's going to happen, happen.
00:31:02It's all going to be a disaster.
00:31:04It's not whatever's going to happen, happen.
00:31:06You know, it's like if once the Titanic has had its side ripped open, there's no like,
00:31:11Hey, let's whatever happened.
00:31:12It's going to sink.
00:31:14Like you still have this neutral, like, Hey, whatever's going to happen.
00:31:17It's going to be a disaster.
00:31:19And it is a self-inflicted disaster with all of the best information.
00:31:24Available to human beings known to man.
00:31:26We literally have the sum total of human knowledge is being carried around, nestled next to everybody's
00:31:31ass crack in their back pocket.
00:31:33They, they have the sum total of human information around available to them.
00:31:39And they're still choosing, you know, you could understand people before smoking was understood
00:31:44to be dangerous saying, well, it's nicotine is fun or something like that.
00:31:48Right.
00:31:49But now, like now somebody who smokes is like, well, it's full knowledge.
00:31:53Right.
00:31:54I mean, so it's not whatever's going to happen.
00:31:56Let whatever happens.
00:31:57It's going to be a disaster.
00:31:59And if somebody just decides to jump off a cliff, you say, well, what's the, they're going
00:32:03to fall.
00:32:04Not whatever's going to happen.
00:32:05Sorry to be annoying.
00:32:06No, you're fine.
00:32:07You're still resisting.
00:32:08I think you're still resisting.
00:32:09No, you're facts.
00:32:12Yeah.
00:32:12No, it's, I don't know.
00:32:14It's just been, it's been very wild and it's kind of hard to care for.
00:32:19Well, and the, yeah, sorry.
00:32:22I'll stop this because we keep having these kinds of.
00:32:24Very good.
00:32:24Absolutely.
00:32:25Appreciate it.
00:32:26But yeah.
00:32:27So I was posting about that this morning and I mentioned it briefly.
00:32:31So I'll touch on it here.
00:32:32And then if you have questions, if not, I'll, Drago, I see you, see you up there.
00:32:36But the rich used to have a fair amount of noblesse oblige towards the poor, right?
00:32:41They used to have a fair amount of it.
00:32:42It wasn't perfect, but you sort of think of the, the Carnegie's and the Rockefellers
00:32:46and so on.
00:32:47Public libraries came from this.
00:32:49Charitable hospitals came out of this.
00:32:52Subsidies to education came out of this.
00:32:54Donations to universities came out of this.
00:32:57Scholarships came out of this.
00:32:58There was this noblesse oblige because everybody understands to some degree that, you know, if
00:33:03you're wealthy, it has a little bit to do with the luck of the draw.
00:33:06Not everybody who's super smart becomes wealthy, but everybody who's wealthy or who becomes
00:33:10wealthy is pretty, is super smart and, and has other moral qualities such as the courage
00:33:17and the ability to defer gratification and so on.
00:33:20Right?
00:33:20So there's a certain amount of good luck that you have.
00:33:25I mean, there's lots of people who are in the music industry for just as long as Taylor
00:33:27Swift, but they aren't as pretty.
00:33:29They aren't as good at singing.
00:33:31They aren't as good at performing.
00:33:32They don't happen to have the magic brain juice to write great songs.
00:33:37So she's obviously skilled and has worked hard and deserves everything that she has.
00:33:42But there's a certain amount of just good luck in it.
00:33:44Just a certain amount of, of good luck.
00:33:48So, I mean, everybody at some point tries to sing along with the radio and some people
00:33:53do it really well.
00:33:54That's just kind of luck.
00:33:55You just have the voice.
00:33:56That sounds good.
00:33:57Or you don't have the voice.
00:33:59That sounds good.
00:34:00So that certain amount of luck translated into, okay, well, I've done fairly well with
00:34:06a certain amount of luck, with a little luck, right?
00:34:09Sort of Paul McCartney style.
00:34:11And so I should spread that to good luck.
00:34:13I mean, I felt that I had a good ability to do pretty well in the podcasting vlog space.
00:34:21And so I'm like, oh, it's kind of lucky.
00:34:24I happen to have an accent, happen to have a pleasant voice, happen to have, you know,
00:34:28fairly photogenic features, happen to have a good sense of humor, and happen to have
00:34:34been well prepared, voice training, acting training, blah, blah, blah, improv.
00:34:38So I thought, okay, well, if I have this platform, there's lots of people out there who are good
00:34:45and don't have the opportunity.
00:34:46So, of course, I opened up my platform to a wide variety of other people so that other
00:34:51people could be introduced to people who were, you know, good thinkers and speakers.
00:34:56And of course, we've, everybody sort of knows that sort of list.
00:35:00So I had, I would say, noblesse oblige, but because I was pretty early on in the space and
00:35:05pretty popular in the space, I wanted to bring other people on board.
00:35:09And a lot of times I just let them talk.
00:35:10So, a little bit of noblesse oblige, and the fact that I have discovered some pretty
00:35:18good principles of relationships.
00:35:19So I wrote a book, Real-Time Relationships, to help people have better relationships and
00:35:23made it free, all that kind of good stuff.
00:35:26So there's a certain amount of noblesse oblige that comes from having talents, which you have
00:35:32some degree of responsibility for, but a lot of it is just luck.
00:35:36I didn't choose my genetics.
00:35:37They just are.
00:35:39So...
00:35:40Noblesse oblige is when you want to help the poor, but unfortunately, now we've had three
00:35:44plus generations of the poor ripping off the wealthy.
00:35:49I don't know if that sounds kind of odd and kind of strange, but it's a very real phenomenon.
00:35:54That every time, you've got to think about it from the other person's perspective.
00:35:58This is empathy, right?
00:35:59So if you're a rich guy, and all you see online is, we hate the rich, tax the rich, it's obscene,
00:36:07you know, the rich should inheritance taxes and all kinds of taxes.
00:36:12Taxes for just being, right?
00:36:15You're going to raise the capital gains tax.
00:36:17It rains the corporate taxes, right?
00:36:19Because everybody has this fantasy that somehow somebody else is going to pay the taxes.
00:36:24Raise corporate taxes.
00:36:25It just means the workers get paid less.
00:36:28Or the price of goods goes up and the consumer has to pay more and so on, right?
00:36:32Because if you cut all the wealth of the people in charge, they'll just stop running the
00:36:35businesses and the businesses will collapse.
00:36:38So you've got to think about it from the rich people's perspective.
00:36:42And it's, I imagine, I imagine, it's kind of frightening.
00:36:47This is one of the reasons why the rich will fund the left, but not the right.
00:36:52Because if the rich fund the right, then they will probably get into some pretty serious
00:36:59trouble.
00:37:00This is sort of to Mike Sinovich's point, is that why don't the billionaires fund the
00:37:03right?
00:37:03Well, because they will have a pretty tough time of it, probably, in many ways, if they
00:37:10do that in the way that doesn't really happen with the left, right?
00:37:15So thinking of it from the perspective of the wealthy is really important.
00:37:20You know, like for women, right?
00:37:22This is the question of body count.
00:37:23Sort of try and put it into a little bit more personal before we take it to the abstract,
00:37:26and then I will get to the next quarter.
00:37:28Thank you for your patience.
00:37:28But, you know, for women, a high body count, right?
00:37:33High body count, look at it from the perspective of a man.
00:37:36How does a man benefit from you sleeping around with other men?
00:37:40How does, oh, well, you know, maybe you've got some sexual skills.
00:37:43It's like, you could have got those sexual skills with one man.
00:37:46There's no reason for that.
00:37:46No need for that.
00:37:47So how does it benefit a man?
00:37:50We understand how it benefits the women.
00:37:52They get to go through their whole phase and have a lot of variety and spice and excitement
00:37:55and lust, men lusting after them and buying them dinners and taking them on vacation.
00:38:00Yeah, that's fun.
00:38:01I get that.
00:38:01That's fun.
00:38:02Yeah, absolutely.
00:38:03But how does it benefit a man?
00:38:05How does it benefit a man that you slept with a lot of other men?
00:38:08So he gets to take you around town and constantly run into guys who've slept with you.
00:38:14How does it benefit a man?
00:38:15I mean, you then have, you know, pair bonding issues, right?
00:38:19Because every man's going to have some aspect that you like and some aspect that you don't,
00:38:24right?
00:38:25This guy's taller.
00:38:26This guy has more money.
00:38:27This guy's better in bed.
00:38:28This guy has a bigger penis, whatever it is, right?
00:38:29And so you're going to be comparing the highlights rather than a person with their strengths and
00:38:35weaknesses.
00:38:36You're going to be picking from all these highlights and being dissatisfied with everyone that you
00:38:41end up with, any individual that you end up with.
00:38:43So you got to think, what's the benefit?
00:38:45What's the benefit?
00:38:46To a man of a woman sleeping around.
00:38:49Pair bonding issues, potential STDs, a lot of exes, some drama, and a perpetual sense
00:38:56of dissatisfaction.
00:38:57And it's the same thing, sort of looking at it, looking at the world from the perspective
00:39:01of the wealthy.
00:39:02How does the world look from the perspective of the wealthy?
00:39:07How does the man look?
00:39:09How does the world look from the perspective of the wealthy?
00:39:11Well, it looks like a bunch of people who are just dying to tar and feather them, throw
00:39:17them in jail, rob them blind, and string them up.
00:39:20And of course, people can do that.
00:39:23They can do that all they want.
00:39:24They can have all of this hatred towards the wealthy, and they can constantly threaten the
00:39:29wealthy, and get mad at the wealthy, and tar and feather the wealthy, and want to tax the
00:39:33rich, written all over AOC's butt.
00:39:36And they can do all of that.
00:39:38And they can see.
00:39:39I don't know if you've ever been targeted by people, but you know, it can be a smidge
00:39:43unnerving, right?
00:39:44Obviously, it's kind of what it's designed for, right?
00:39:47And if everybody is just to hate the rich and so on, well, then the rich are going to view
00:39:55you.
00:39:56They're going to view the population as a whole as dangerous, volatile enemies, right?
00:40:02And that's not a great position to be in.
00:40:06And the rich will no longer have the noblest oblige.
00:40:09They won't really want to start companies.
00:40:10They'll enjoy their money, and they'll leave it to their children.
00:40:12And they won't go out there in the world and try to make money, and try to create jobs,
00:40:17and provide value, because it starts to look increasingly like terrorism, not economics.
00:40:25Because why would you want to benefit people who want to rob you blind and put your head on
00:40:29a pike, so to speak, right?
00:40:31Well, I mean, literally, if the communists take over, but you know, in general, it's
00:40:35just an analogy, but why?
00:40:38Why would you want to work really hard to benefit people who are loping through the streets,
00:40:44sword in hand, baying for your entrails?
00:40:47Why?
00:40:49And then, of course, when the wealthy no longer feel any noblest oblige, but instead have mostly
00:40:56fear and contempt for the masses, what happens then?
00:40:59What happens then?
00:41:00Well, they'll stop creating jobs, people become more and more poor, and everybody will hide
00:41:07that connection.
00:41:09And what they'll do is they'll say, well, workers are becoming increasingly resentful
00:41:13and dangerous, so I don't want to hire people.
00:41:16I'm going to invest in robotics and AI, right?
00:41:19If you are in a small town, and you're the mill owner, and you employ friends and relatives
00:41:25and so on, then you want to keep the mill going, right?
00:41:27But if a bunch of strangers move into the town and are constantly baying for your blood
00:41:32and having workers around is becoming more and more dangerous, because they're unionized,
00:41:38they're going to organize, they keep threatening you and so on, well, it's like, okay, well,
00:41:43robots are safer than dangerous people.
00:41:45So, all of that's going to happen.
00:41:47All right.
00:41:48Drago and Alex, you're on deck.
00:41:50I appreciate that.
00:41:51What is on your mind?
00:41:53Drago, how can philosophy help you today?
00:41:55Oh, hello, Stefan.
00:41:57How are you?
00:41:57I was listening to what you were saying, but when I went to speak, I lost the last bit.
00:42:04But, yeah, how's it going?
00:42:06Well, thanks.
00:42:07What's on your mind?
00:42:09Yeah, no, well, it's hard to imagine a way, as you said, the Titanic sinking.
00:42:14It's hard to imagine a patchwork job or what that could entail.
00:42:19But I guess before on that, I was curious.
00:42:22No, it's not, bro.
00:42:23It's not going to happen.
00:42:24Yeah, I don't see it.
00:42:25Yeah, exactly.
00:42:26Stop wishing.
00:42:26Yeah, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, right?
00:42:29You need to stop wishing.
00:42:30It's not going to happen.
00:42:32Sure, sure.
00:42:33Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree.
00:42:34I'm concurring that it goes beyond imagination to see what would even...
00:42:40You said, I'm sorry to be annoying, right?
00:42:42I have a responsibility for what goes out over my channel.
00:42:45You said, it's hard to imagine a patch job.
00:42:48Yes, yes, which rhetorically, you can't patch a sinking Titanic.
00:42:52I wasn't clear enough.
00:42:53No, no, you said it's hard to imagine, which means it's possible.
00:42:56If I said, it's hard to imagine, it's hard to imagine X, then it means it's possible, right?
00:43:05Nobody says, it's hard to imagine walking off a cliff and not hanging in midair.
00:43:10It's like, no, if you walk off a cliff, you'll fall.
00:43:13Sure, sure.
00:43:13Yeah.
00:43:14So, I'm sorry to be annoying, but this is a challenge for people as a whole.
00:43:20Knowing when to give up hope is essential for mental health.
00:43:23But anyway, I don't mean to nitpick overly or nag overly, so if you want to go ahead with the general question.
00:43:28Yeah, yeah, sure.
00:43:29I guess, right.
00:43:29Given that we've established it's impossible, therefore, right, then there's no imagination, right?
00:43:34Given that we agree it's impossible, let's say.
00:43:36But, yeah, I guess, firstly, I wasn't aware, I haven't thought about this thing you said about rich people not being incentivized to fund the right.
00:43:44And I apologize if I misunderstood the thread, but could you please help me understand the logic there, why the rich are disincentivized from supporting the right?
00:43:53Well, I mean, you just have to go through a list of all the right-wing figures that were arrested under the Biden regime.
00:44:01Okay.
00:44:02I mean, it's just direct punishment.
00:44:05And even if it's not that, then the media will just whip up a frenzy about you, and you'll have to have increased security and lots of negative things, and your kids might be at risk.
00:44:13It's just a lot of, you know, difficult and dangerous stuff that doesn't happen when the left funds people, but when the right funds people, or if the right funds people, then it would go, you know, pretty badly.
00:44:28God, okay, I see what you're saying.
00:44:30Like, given the existing system and power structure, which rewards, it punishes one group of people, rewards the other.
00:44:35I see.
00:44:36It's risky for a rich person to support the right.
00:44:38I guess the way I was interpreting the statement was that even without a corrupt system, is there something intrinsically about how you can control people through a leftist paradigm?
00:44:49And if you like power, you're more inclined to support leftist causes because that entrenches your position of power among the higher.
00:44:58Whereas if you're supporting the right, maybe, you know, that's more freedom or more threats, more competition, and maybe your wealth is more under threat if you're lifting up the middle class, let's say.
00:45:09You got to back up from your mic a little bit, man.
00:45:11You're like plosiving my brain into atoms.
00:45:14So I'm going to break out a story I haven't broken out in many years.
00:45:17I'll keep it very brief.
00:45:19This comes out of Down and Out in Paris and London by one George Orwell.
00:45:25It's a really great book, and it's about his travels through the lower classes with the plongeurs and so on.
00:45:32And at one point, he spends quite a bit of time with tramps, the homeless, the people who wander from town to town.
00:45:39And he said, there is considerable literature about why these men roam from place to place, that they have wanderlust genes, that it's part of their culture, their history.
00:45:51They're in a mobile frame of mind.
00:45:53It's all a bunch of, like.
00:45:55Socio-economic, cultural, historical explanations as to why these tramps don't settle down but move from town to town.
00:46:05And George Orwell says that the answer is pretty clear, and it's actually quite simple.
00:46:10It's that if they stay in any town for more than three days, they'll get thrown in jail.
00:46:14So always look for the simplest explanation rather than the most complex one.
00:46:19So what is the simplest explanation as to why people on the right who are wealthy don't fund courses on the right?
00:46:27I mean, you don't get to be wealthy without being good at risk assessment.
00:46:31Is that fair to say?
00:46:33Yeah.
00:46:33No, I mean, I agree with your risk assessment point.
00:46:37Yep.
00:46:38Yeah.
00:46:38So if you're good at risk assessment, then you will assess the risks of funding the right, and you will see what has happened to people on the right.
00:46:47And listen, some people can do it, but, you know, not a super great number of people are willing to take that risk.
00:46:53And so what you do is you say, okay, what's the cost benefit?
00:46:56Now, Elon Musk, of course, has gone fairly anti-woke and has rescued free speech through Twitter and so on, which is great.
00:47:05And that's why we're talking, but that, I think, is partly because he lost one of his sons, I think, to what he perceives as some excesses of the left and so on.
00:47:14And so, but for most people, you know, I imagine being super rich is a pretty comfortable life in many ways, unless you get in the crosshairs of the mob and the media and so on, right?
00:47:29And then they'll just sort of relentlessly whip up a bunch of sort of hatred and hostility against you and your life.
00:47:35And I think people would even be willing to do that if they could see a particular benefit.
00:47:41If they, okay, I'm willing to do X and suffer Y if I can achieve A, B, and C.
00:47:48But can they achieve that, whatever it is that they would want to achieve by funding the right or at least funding the non-left?
00:47:55Well, I doubt it, because however many people you cure, let's say that you came up with a cure for lung cancer, but let's say government schools were forcing children to smoke 30 cigarettes a day from the age of five onwards, right?
00:48:12Would you ever stop the cancer?
00:48:15No, because you'd be curing people at difficulty and expense and challenge as adults, but there'd be way more people with damaged lungs coming out of the schools than you could have a cure afterwards.
00:48:27And so the prevalence of cancer would still increase.
00:48:29Even if you came up with some relatively easy cure for cancer, the crazy people, like the sick people are being manufactured faster than you can make them healthy.
00:48:40And it's the same thing, even if you were to fund something in the world that promoted sort of reason and facts and truth and evidence and all that kind of stuff.
00:48:49Well, you've still got millions of people pouring out of government schools and universities and so on every year who are directly opposed and have been programmed to be sort of vicious and violent towards your cause of reason and evidence.
00:49:02And so what's the point?
00:49:06I mean, they're producing far more unstable ideologues than you can ever convert into rational thinkers.
00:49:17So again, I don't have any idea.
00:49:19I'm not speaking for any wealthy people, but I would imagine that the equation goes something like that.
00:49:24Okay, cost benefit.
00:49:26Okay, the cost is considerable.
00:49:27What can I achieve?
00:49:28Well, it's not going to be to make money because they already have money, so that's not worth it.
00:49:33Is it to effect and achieve some sort of positive cultural change?
00:49:36Well, unless the educational system is dealt with, you're just, again, you're patching up something that the hole is just getting bigger every year.
00:49:46Yeah, I mean, I agree.
00:49:47I suppose if I were more precise with my question the way I ask it, what I'm trying to ask is today, the risk benefit, it doesn't make sense.
00:49:55It doesn't make sense to fund a person on the right.
00:49:57The cost benefit doesn't shake out to do so for the reasons that you mentioned.
00:50:00I guess what I'm wondering is, and especially given your historical background of looking at society through the ages, was it kind of always the case where it's more dangerous or risky to be vocal?
00:50:14So, to be promoting a right-wing, smaller government kind of position, however we define right-wing, is there something intrinsic, even absent the modern era, that would make that a riskier deal?
00:50:26Or were there some periods of time where actually, you know, you could be more vocally right-wing and actually, you know, that would be the dominant thing you could fund and support and then, you know, the risks wouldn't be there?
00:50:37No, it's never been safe.
00:50:40Because when people are getting their resources from the government through the force of the political process, when people are getting their resources from the government, then it's a matter of incentives, right?
00:50:52So, the old example, of course, is the sugar industry, right?
00:50:56So, the sugar industry gets a certain amount of subsidies, and they get a certain amount of protection, because there are tariffs in America, there are tariffs on foreign imports of sugar, and there are subsidies to the sugar industry.
00:51:08And that drives up the price of sugar to the point where people start looking for these, you know, cane, sort of weird chemical substitutes for sugar, because it's too expensive, right?
00:51:19So, they get, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year, the sugar industry, but, you know, what does it cost the average American?
00:51:26A couple of bucks a year out of there, right?
00:51:29So, it's dispersed costs and concentrated benefits are always dangerous to try to overturn, because let's say that the average American makes 15 bucks an hour, right?
00:51:41But let's say that it's $15 a year that they lose because sugar is more expensive.
00:51:49So, they have no more incentive than one hour to put into preventing the sugar subsidies and tariffs and so on, right?
00:51:56But the sugar industry getting tens of billions of dollars, sorry, tens of millions of dollars a year in benefits could be more.
00:52:02I'm just going with some number like that.
00:52:04Well, they have all of that money and multiples of that money to spend on making sure that those benefits don't stop, right?
00:52:13So, the cost to the general public is very small.
00:52:15The benefits to the concentrated minority is very large.
00:52:19And so, they have a great incentive to keep it going, and you only have a very small financial incentive to stop it.
00:52:26And if you get close to stopping it, well, you know, people will do a lot for tens of millions of dollars a year, right?
00:52:32Because it's not just a one-time thing.
00:52:34It's tens of millions of dollars a year.
00:52:36So, that's, you know, $100, $200 million over a decade.
00:52:39That's a lot of money, right?
00:52:41So, what would they do?
00:52:42Well, they would do a lot.
00:52:43They would do almost everything and almost anything to keep those going.
00:52:45Now, if it was just one industry, of course, that would be one thing, but it's 10,000 industries, each of which get a concentrated benefit while the costs are diffused.
00:52:54So, it's like trying to stay alive when you have 10,000 mosquitoes in the tent, right?
00:53:02I mean, you can swat some, I guess, right?
00:53:04But they're breeding, and there's more.
00:53:06There's a hole in the tent that keep pouring in, and you've got to sleep at some point, and you're just not going to do well over time.
00:53:12So, yeah, it's always difficult and dangerous to reduce government because it's not like you spilled some paint and you just kind of mop it up, right?
00:53:22You are withdrawing massive benefits from specific individuals and small concentrated sections of power and only benefiting.
00:53:31And, of course, now, this is one of the reasons why debt and deficits and, in particular, unfunded liabilities are so bad is because if you were to say to people, we need to cut government, no money would go back into people's pockets because the debt and deficit is so large.
00:53:49So, normally, if you cut your spending, you get more money in the bank, right?
00:53:56But if you cut your spending and you're half a million dollars in debt, let's say it's not even a mortgage, it's some other crazy thing, or let's say $100,000 of credit card debt at some insane APR.
00:54:07So, you cut all of this spending to the bone, and you don't see a penny because it's all going to pay off the debt.
00:54:13And that's going to go on for years and years and years and years and years and years and years.
00:54:19And so, it's one thing to say to people, well, we're going to cut all of this government spending, and you're going to end up with more money in your pocket.
00:54:26But no, because you cut the government spending, and all you're doing is paying the deficit, the debt, and trying to save like hell for the unfunded liabilities.
00:54:33So, you're asking people to sacrifice for just a massive net negative.
00:54:37So, you're asking people who are getting concentrated benefits worth tens of millions of dollars a year to give all of that up.
00:54:43And you're not even handing the savings to the general consumer, because it's all going after the debt and deficit.
00:54:48So, it is not reversible politically at this point.
00:54:53Yeah, no, that's a very comprehensive, I think, detailing of the dynamic.
00:54:58Well, I guess the last question I had today was, in your survey of history, I'm curious what you would think about the following mapping.
00:55:09It's starting to trend a little bit.
00:55:10And the idea is that, you know, since the Enlightenment, when, you know, kicking off the revolutionary spirits, we entered first the arc of the tyrannical father, which would be the authoritarian regimes.
00:55:23Of course, you know, the communist regime, Stalin, and then, you know, Hitler.
00:55:28And then we switched from tyrannical father to the devouring mother from the 60s, the overindulgence, the comfort, this kind of hyperfeminization.
00:55:37And then the idea now is that we're entering, maybe we've already entered, actually, the era of the vengeful son, which is to say, you know, this, the new generation where they realize everyone's lying to them.
00:55:51The doctors, the doctors, the parents, all the institutions, it's all just a lie.
00:55:55They have this nihilistic, nothing means anything, and I just want to burn it down.
00:56:02I'm not going to fix it.
00:56:03I'm just going to burn it all down, kind of vengeful son spirit of the times.
00:56:07And, of course, we see this in, like, some of these mass shootings and specifically for the kids who were given the hormone treatments, you know, with the gender dysphoria and all this kind of stuff.
00:56:19So, that, I mean, would that fit, is that a fair kind of arc of the stories, or would you disagree with some of that framing?
00:56:28So, are you putting it in sort of psychohistory terms, sort of Lloyd-Demass terms and all of that?
00:56:36Yeah, I suppose, sure, yeah, you're right.
00:56:37I suppose that would be the category, yeah.
00:56:40Well, I think, again, it's, the psychohistory stuff is important, but it's not fundamentally psychological.
00:56:47So, young men have a lot of rebellious, skeptical, and nihilistic energy, which is good to how society is supposed to get challenged and renew itself.
00:56:58You know, you can't get a new snake skin without shedding the old snake skin.
00:57:02So, how does society tame the wild, nihilistic, skeptical, and often hostile, rebellious energy of teenagers, and in particular, the boys?
00:57:11Well, society says, yeah, we'd really like you to obey the rules that we have, and here's what you're going to get.
00:57:20You know, I offer you, in return for your compliance with social rules, I offer you income, a wife, kids, a house, a nice neighborhood, good schools, and a pleasant life.
00:57:38That's, that's what I offer you in return, and that's the deal that traditionally has been made to the rebellious youth is curb your rebellion, and you get some cool stuff.
00:57:51And fundamentally, it comes down to reproduction.
00:57:53Fundamentally, it comes down to reproduction.
00:57:56Now, if it is the case that reproduction has become impossible, in the system, that is, if it has become the case that reproduction has become impossible,
00:58:08then you can bribe people with casual sex, you can bribe them, I suppose, with masturbation and things like that for a time,
00:58:15but at some point, the genes are like, holy shitballs, bro, if we, like, we're done, and then there's a sort of existential panic,
00:58:23or to put it another way, or in my usual reformulation, those genes that didn't have an existential panic at their inability to reproduce, didn't reproduce,
00:58:32and so the ones that have reproduced are those that freak out, and you can see this, of course, you can see this genetically with women who get baby rabies, right,
00:58:39this sort of fever that happens sort of early to mid to late 30s, to just have a baby, and they're just all they can think of,
00:58:47and they just get this kind of fever.
00:58:49That's the gene saying, hey, door's closing, let's get another generation here, otherwise it's dead end after 4 billion years, right?
00:58:57So, for the young, the question is, can I reproduce?
00:59:03And if they can't reproduce, preventing the young men from reproducing, and the young women, but the young men generally a bit more active this way,
00:59:12but preventing young men from reproducing is a fundamental pressure buildup in a society,
00:59:17and the destabilization of society is essential to the leftist revolutionary spirit, right?
00:59:26The leftist revolution, I mean, there's not much, that's why they hate the 50s so much, right?
00:59:29Not only was there a very sort of high white birth rate, but also there was a stability and a productivity and a level of comfort and ease.
00:59:39You know, the old one guy could have a wife and three kids and a car and a nice house.
00:59:45There was peace and stability, and that tends to produce fewer, less rebellion and so on.
00:59:51And so, the way that you destabilize society at its most fundamental is, well, there's two ways.
00:59:59Number one is you prevent the young from reproducing, and then their sort of desperation and desire for change kicks in.
01:00:05That's number one.
01:00:06And number two, you forcibly transfer resources from one group to another.
01:00:13So, the interesting question is, how does the genetics of a young man in the West, how does it perceive things like the welfare state?
01:00:18Well, it perceives it as having been conquered, because when you are conquered as a society, your resources are taken from you and given to the conquerors.
01:00:32And so, when a young man in particular see all of their resources or a lot of their resources being taken away or their opportunities being taken away and given to others, there's a rebellion about that because there is a perception of having been conquered.
01:00:45And then there's a sort of revolutionary spirit that enters from there, if that makes sense.
01:00:53Yeah, that's a great point, right?
01:00:55I guess you could just streamline it down to reproductive access or viability and the attack on the family and male-female relationships and even direct chemical castration.
01:01:05I mean, that'll directly cure it of your ability to reproduce.
01:01:11Yeah, that does seem to be a good explanatory simplification that works, that predicts.
01:01:16Yeah, because the genes say, anything but this is an improvement.
01:01:20I'll risk anything, because I'm going to die anyway.
01:01:23The genes are going to die at any rate.
01:01:25Some change is necessary.
01:01:26And then, of course, the hard leftists come along with the change.
01:01:29Ah, this is going to get you what you want.
01:01:31And, you know, you're like, well, if the plane is going down, I might as well jump, because I'm going to die if I stay.
01:01:38Right, so, all right, is there anything else you want to say?
01:01:41Right on.
01:01:42Thank you, Stefan.
01:01:43Appreciate you having me up.
01:01:44Thank you very much.
01:01:45Appreciate it.
01:01:46All right.
01:01:47Alex Aleksikov, what is on your mind, my friend?
01:01:52Hi.
01:01:53Hi, Stefan.
01:01:54So, sorry to derate the conversation a little bit.
01:01:58I just have, like, a question that I wanted to ask you, and I'm not going to debate that or judge or anything.
01:02:04I just want to hear your take on this.
01:02:06What's the most, like, mystical or supernatural thing that you will be willing to believe in?
01:02:16Okay, so you know what you have to do now, right?
01:02:19No.
01:02:20You don't know what you have to do now?
01:02:22How long have you been listening to what I do, bro?
01:02:25I don't know, like, from time to time for, like, two months.
01:02:29Two months, okay.
01:02:30So, when you are having a philosophical, even if you don't want to debate, if you just want an answer,
01:02:36the first thing you have to do is define your terms.
01:02:39What do you mean by supernatural?
01:02:41Yeah.
01:02:42Something that you cannot explain with science, and you will never be able to explain with science.
01:02:50Okay.
01:02:50Is there an explanation that is possible but doesn't involve, say, reason and evidence?
01:02:56I would say yes, yeah.
01:03:00And explain to me, if you would be so kind, so that sounds like I'm giving you an order.
01:03:05Explain!
01:03:06No, tell me what you mean by a methodology that doesn't involve reason and evidence that is a good way to believe in something.
01:03:16Yes.
01:03:18There are some things you cannot really measure directly, but you can observe the effects of such things if they exist.
01:03:28In a way, that's kind of like a measurement as well.
01:03:31But you kind of just go and measure this thing.
01:03:34You know what I mean?
01:03:35But you see that it's like...
01:03:39Do you mean, like, gravity?
01:03:40I mean, like, you go to a beach, and then you see the sand, and then you see some footsteps.
01:03:49You don't really know who made those things, but you know someone was there, right?
01:03:54I don't know.
01:03:54Things like that.
01:03:55Okay.
01:03:56So that's inferred.
01:03:58That's measurement.
01:03:59Yeah, that's measurement.
01:04:00But that's reason.
01:04:01Dang on.
01:04:01But that's reason and evidence, right?
01:04:03Yes.
01:04:04Well...
01:04:04Okay, so I asked you for something that's not reason and evidence that proves something.
01:04:07Hang on.
01:04:11Let me see if I can...
01:04:13I'm going to say help you out a little bit, because I'm not saying you need help.
01:04:16But let me sort of try it...
01:04:18Sort of explain it this way.
01:04:20Yeah.
01:04:21So, is it the case that you're saying if you see a bunch of footsteps on the sand, you assume that somebody has walked there, but that assumption may not be correct?
01:04:33It could be somebody in a hot air balloon going low over the beach with shoes on a stick.
01:04:44Is that what you mean?
01:04:45Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:04:46Absolutely, yes.
01:04:47Okay.
01:04:48Right.
01:04:49Okay, so I mean, I...
01:04:51Sorry, go ahead.
01:04:52One in a quadrillion chance that the peaks of sand were arranged that way, and then you just believe that there are footsteps or whatever.
01:05:01I mean, you don't really know, so you have to jump into some belief at some point, right?
01:05:08In this, like, very simple case, it's like, okay, I choose to believe that there was a human here, and it was walking, and I see footsteps because of that.
01:05:19And that's actually, you know, it's a plausible explanation, but it involves a very small leap of faith and belief, right?
01:05:28Because you have to, you have that...
01:05:30Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
01:05:32And that's a very interesting question that you bring up.
01:05:34So the difference is between, to be mildly technical, is between syllogistical reasoning.
01:05:40So syllogistical reasoning is all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal.
01:05:49So that's called deductive reasoning.
01:05:50It's 100%.
01:05:51Now, inductive reasoning is, there are footsteps on the beach, the most likely explanation is that someone walked along the beach.
01:06:00Although it could have been, it could have been something else, but by far the most likely, you said one in a quadrillion or whatever, by far the most likely explanation is that somebody walked along the beach, right?
01:06:14Yes.
01:06:14Okay.
01:06:15Now, does it take faith to believe that human footsteps were left by human people?
01:06:23But I would say yes, a slightly bit of faith, because you're, if you, only if you can like state that you're absolutely sure that there were humans doing those footsteps.
01:06:38And you cannot really ever say that, but then you, you kind of like behave as if, as if that was the case.
01:06:47Well, sure.
01:06:47But is it faith?
01:06:49If you see human footsteps to say a human being walked here, is that a matter of faith?
01:06:55I would say yes.
01:06:56Not like religious faith, like believing in God or something like that, but kind of like, um, but you rely on this kind of like extrapolation from previous experience, what's the most common thing, whatever, but you're still not 100% sure.
01:07:13So it's like a 0.01% leap of faith or something like that.
01:07:20Well, is it a leap of any, because there's interesting questions, right?
01:07:24Is it a leap of faith?
01:07:26I would say those are, those are, those are human footsteps when it could have been, I mean, a human made, a human made them, even if it's somebody in a hot air balloon with boots on a stick, right?
01:07:38Yes.
01:07:38Yeah, yeah.
01:07:39So it is not, if you see human footsteps, it's not a leap of faith to say people made them.
01:07:47Uh, for me it is.
01:07:50Okay, so tell me how, yeah, and tell me how human footsteps show up on a beach.
01:07:54Without people doing it in some manner.
01:07:58Well, I mean, there, there, there's plenty of alternatives, right?
01:08:02Because, so you're saying human footsteps a priori, but you just, when it actually is like, you see shapes in the sand that resemble human footsteps, which is slightly different, right?
01:08:15And then, well, okay, so let's, let's, let's do a couple of layers, and I appreciate the conversation, let's do a couple of layers of probability.
01:08:22Yeah.
01:08:23If you see a person walking on the sand, you know for sure, right?
01:08:27Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
01:08:29Okay, so that's not a leap of faith.
01:08:30If you glance up, and there are a bunch of footsteps right in front of you, and then 10 feet away, there's a guy walking, and the footsteps lead directly to him, are you certain?
01:08:43Yeah, you, I would say like, yeah, it was that guy.
01:08:47Oh, yeah, so those are human footsteps, right?
01:08:50Yeah.
01:08:50And if you see human footsteps, and there's a guy 20 feet away, you're still certain, if he's like, I don't know, 100 feet away, and it leads to him, you're certain, right, that he made those footsteps?
01:09:02Yeah, yeah, I agree.
01:09:04Okay.
01:09:04Now, if all you see are the footsteps, and you don't see the person, maybe you napped for a long time, right, you wake up, and you see the footsteps, and you don't see the person, how sure are you that a person walked?
01:09:18Oh, almost 100%, but not 100%, because you don't see that person, right?
01:09:27You don't see that person, right?
01:09:28Yeah.
01:09:30But, I mean, any reasonable human, me, I would say, yeah, like, they were made by somebody who walked here some time before.
01:09:41Okay.
01:09:42Is it faith if it is the maximum possible standard of truth?
01:09:51In other words, if you see human footsteps, and by that I mean, you know, five toes, the heel, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
01:09:57So, not just, like, holes in the ground that the tide went in and out of, but, like, actual human footsteps.
01:10:02So, if you see human footsteps, and you say, those are human footsteps, that is the most certainty that you can get in that situation, assuming that there's no video that you could rewind.
01:10:13That is the most certainty that you can get in that situation, right?
01:10:15Yes.
01:10:16Yeah.
01:10:17Okay.
01:10:17Now, is it fair to say that you need faith to achieve a level of certainty that is impossible?
01:10:27Yeah, because it's just that, yeah, I get that, the impossible part of that.
01:10:32Now, and also, it's sort of a language thing, right?
01:10:36Yeah.
01:10:36So, I'm sure you're aware that in law, there's sort of two standards of proof in most common law systems.
01:10:42The first standard of proof is for criminal behavior, and it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is, like, 95% or more certain, right?
01:10:50Yes.
01:10:51And then there is the preponderance of evidence, which is, like, 51% certain, which is for civil cases, usually involving just money, monetary damages.
01:11:00Does that make sense?
01:11:01Yeah.
01:11:01Now, if somebody is found guilty of murder, they're proven guilty of murder in a court of law, and we say, he was proven guilty of murder, are we talking 100% or 95% plus?
01:11:20I would say 95% plus.
01:11:23Right.
01:11:24Right.
01:11:24However, we don't put those caveats into what we're saying.
01:11:30We don't say, well, he's proven guilty of murder, I mean, 95% plus, it is proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
01:11:40Like, we don't put, he's just like, he was found guilty of murder, right?
01:11:42When you pick up the newspaper and say, so-and-so was found guilty of murder today, and now, legally, you can call him a murderer, he can't sue you for defamation because it's been proven in the court of law, and so he is treated as a murderer, right?
01:11:55Yes.
01:11:56Okay.
01:11:56However, and so we would use that standard, that he's a murderer, he's guilty of murder, he's been proven to be a murderer, we would use that in the same language that we would use somebody who was on film killing someone and confessed, which would be 100% proof, right?
01:12:13Mm-hmm.
01:12:13Yeah.
01:12:14So, everything that we do has gray areas.
01:12:19So, even you and I having this conversation, right, we started this conversation, which, again, I find very helpful and interesting.
01:12:26So, we started this conversation where you said, is there, what is the minimum amount of superstition or the minimum amount of superstitious entity that you would be willing to accept exists or something like that, right?
01:12:38Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:12:39Right, and so I said, well, I don't know what you mean by exists or believe or superstition, I need to define terms.
01:12:46Now, every word that we use has fuzzy edges.
01:12:51Yes.
01:12:52Right, so when I say the word, word, that has a fuzzy edge.
01:12:56Because there are some foreign intrusions into English that we could use, deja vu and so on, and there also is some slang and some that we may or may not accept as being objective or we may not understand them.
01:13:15You know, like my daughter is a teenager, so she needs to come with subtitles sometimes because it's a living language that's changed quite a bit.
01:13:24Yeah.
01:13:24Right, so she ate that up.
01:13:27It's like, what does that mean?
01:13:28Right, so even the word, word, has fuzzy edges, right?
01:13:34Yes.
01:13:35And even the word fuzzy has fuzzy edges because you and I would have different ideas of what a valid word is or not.
01:13:41In fact, there are big debates every year about what makes it into the dictionary, right?
01:13:46Yeah.
01:13:46So, everything that we do involves fuzziness.
01:13:51There is no absolute contact of the mind that can prove everything in terms of a hundred percent, right?
01:14:02I mean, you might mishear something.
01:14:04Yeah, I might mishear something.
01:14:06There could be a hiccup in our internet connection.
01:14:09And this has actually happened to me.
01:14:12Somebody says, you can't believe that.
01:14:14And I think I hear, you can't believe that because the tea gets hiccuped out of the conversation.
01:14:21So, there is a lot of – there's an almost infinite nature of fuzzy edges.
01:14:28In order for us to have a conversation, we have to accept a lack of absolute certainty in everything that we're doing.
01:14:36Yes.
01:14:37So, and yet we still – we can still do it, right?
01:14:41Yeah.
01:14:42I'm thinking of this – so, I'm going to ask you the same – it's the same question from a different facet, but it sounds like a different question.
01:14:51You mentioned this – well, on this example of the sand, you said – let's say you already have all the information that you can have.
01:15:02So, you mentioned that.
01:15:04So, let's say – let's think of the concept that all the information that is there may not necessarily be available to you, like in general.
01:15:16Okay, so now humans, we humans in this world, we can only – disregarding how advanced is our technology or whatever,
01:15:26there has to be a limit on all the information that we can query out of this.
01:15:33I'm sorry.
01:15:33I need to interrupt you for a second.
01:15:35I'm sorry to interrupt.
01:15:36Yeah.
01:15:36So, I was starting to make a case here, and I'm not sure what we're doing now.
01:15:39So, I was starting to make a case, and my case had a little bit more to go to it, which was around –
01:15:43Okay, okay.
01:15:44Go ahead.
01:15:45Yeah, let me – because I feel like we're just going off in some other direction now.
01:15:49So, that's not your issue.
01:15:50I just need to be – sort of finish the case.
01:15:52Yeah.
01:15:52So, could you and I have a conversation, if we demanded perfect accuracy in everything we were saying,
01:15:58that we absolutely agreed on everything, every definition of every word?
01:16:02No, it would be just argumentative without making sense.
01:16:06It would not go forward, whatever.
01:16:08Yeah.
01:16:09Well, it could never work, because I would say to you, what's your definition of supernatural?
01:16:13And you would say, what's your definition of what?
01:16:16Your definition.
01:16:18Right?
01:16:18So, it would just go on and on, and we would never get anywhere.
01:16:23If I say, lend me $10, I'll pay you back tomorrow, and then you said, well, you need
01:16:29to pay me back the exact amount that that $10 is worth tomorrow, I could never pay you
01:16:34back, because the value of $10 is, even at the, you know, 1,000th of a penny, is fluctuating
01:16:41constantly.
01:16:42So, I just have to give you a $10 bill back tomorrow, even though it's not worth exactly
01:16:47what you lent to me, because the money has changed value, even to a small degree in a
01:16:51day.
01:16:51Is that fair to put?
01:16:52Yeah.
01:16:53Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:16:54Right.
01:16:54So, you couldn't have any functionality in the world if you demand perfect levels.
01:17:02So, for instance, if you are buying some cheese, and you say, give me a quarter pound of cheese,
01:17:09can they get you exactly a quarter pound?
01:17:12No.
01:17:13No, they can't.
01:17:14Yeah.
01:17:15It's impossible.
01:17:17It's impossible.
01:17:18Yeah.
01:17:18Because even if they get you a perfect quarter pound, when they lift it up from the weighing
01:17:23machine, some cheese is going to stick to it, and now it's no longer a perfect quarter pound.
01:17:27Right?
01:17:27It's physically impossible to get a quarter pound of cheese, right?
01:17:32Yes.
01:17:32Yeah.
01:17:33So, everything is fuzzy.
01:17:34You say, well, we need faith because there's fuzzy stuff.
01:17:37It's like, no, we don't, because everything is fuzzy.
01:17:40We can't interact with anyone about anything if we demand absolute perfection and absolute
01:17:47clarity.
01:17:48So, if you're going to say, well, we need faith to believe in things where we don't
01:17:55have direct, perfect evidence, then I would reply that the fact that you're interacting
01:18:02with me means that you're willing to accept some fuzzy boundaries, and yet we are not asking
01:18:09each other to believe in contradictory things.
01:18:14We are simply negotiating and going back and forth on how to best get to the truth.
01:18:21So, for instance, if I'm making this case, I say, well, you can't get a perfect quarter
01:18:26pound of cheese, and you say, yes, I agree that we cannot get a perfect quarter pound of
01:18:31cheese.
01:18:33I mean, you could even say that a certain amount of the Earth is escaping into outer space,
01:18:39right?
01:18:39Wind gets blown, dust gets blown up to the stratosphere.
01:18:42And so, the Earth's mass is constantly changing, and therefore, a quarter pound is going to
01:18:47be constantly changing.
01:18:48I mean, you could really go down to levels that would drive you completely insane.
01:18:52Yeah, yeah.
01:18:52And yet, we function.
01:18:54And yet, we function, right?
01:18:55Yes.
01:18:56And so, saying we have to accept a certain amount of ambivalence in order to function in
01:19:02society, I mean, if you said, I will only drink water that is pure H2O, you would die
01:19:08of thirst, because you're never going to get that water that is pure H2O, right?
01:19:12It's always going to be something else.
01:19:13I'm only going to breathe air that never has whatever.
01:19:16It only has this sort of what they say in the textbooks, you know, the nitrogen, the
01:19:21oxygen, the carbon, and so on.
01:19:23And say, I'm only going to, you're never going to breathe that air, because it's always going
01:19:27to be mixed in with something, right?
01:19:29So, we survive in fuzziness.
01:19:33We live in fuzziness.
01:19:34Fuzziness is life.
01:19:36It is the human condition.
01:19:38And so, saying that that's the same level of faith that I need, or it's the same category
01:19:46that I need to believe in something like a square circle, or something that is self-contradictory,
01:19:52or anti-rational, or anti-empirical in nature, in its definition, is not the same category.
01:19:59So, saying, well, we can get a quarter pound of cheese is pretty accurate, right?
01:20:05And say, well, I can't get the perfect quarter pound of cheese, so I need faith that it's
01:20:10a quarter pound of cheese.
01:20:11It's like, no, no, I can read it on the, I can read it on the readout.
01:20:15I can see the little needle on the weigh scale.
01:20:18It's going to a quarter pound, right?
01:20:19So, it's close.
01:20:21It's close enough.
01:20:22It's close enough for government workers to saying that something used to be around when
01:20:26I was a kid.
01:20:27So, saying, well, it's never a perfect quarter pound of cheese, so I need faith that it's
01:20:33a quarter pound of cheese, is not the same category as saying that I also need faith to
01:20:44believe that it is a quarter pound of cheese, and an elephant, and a basketball at the same
01:20:50time.
01:20:51Did you see what I mean?
01:20:52Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:20:54So, one is accurate, but not perfect accuracy, whatever that would mean, and the other is
01:20:58self-contradictory.
01:20:59Something cannot be both a block of cheese, an elephant, and a basketball at the same time.
01:21:05Can we agree on that?
01:21:06Mm-hmm.
01:21:07Right.
01:21:08So, we have fuzzy boundaries, which are impossible to satisfy, but is good enough to live.
01:21:15And that's, I don't think we need faith for that.
01:21:18I do think that we would need faith to believe that something is, a square circle could exist,
01:21:23or that two and two would make five, things that are logically and empirically self-contradictory.
01:21:29That's where the faith comes in.
01:21:30So, if you were to ask me, as you did, and thank you for your patience while I go through
01:21:34this explanation, but if you were to ask me, what is the least supernatural entity that
01:21:40you would accept?
01:21:42I would say, I accept the possibility of any entity that does not contradict reason and
01:21:50evidence.
01:21:51So, I accept that there could be what we call dragons living on another planet, giant flying
01:21:58lizards that maybe could exhale methane and spark a fire between their teeth and breathe
01:22:04out fire, like whatever it is, right?
01:22:06I accept that if we define a unicorn as a horse with a horn on its head, I accept that there
01:22:11can be things that look like a horse with a horn on their head living somewhere in the
01:22:16universe.
01:22:16Because those entities do not contradict their own nature.
01:22:20So, there are things that we know do exist, real horses, we know real horses exist.
01:22:25There are things which could exist, such as horses with horns on their heads, those could
01:22:33exist, and there are things which could not exist.
01:22:36So, if a unicorn can fly, not a pegasus, but just a, then you would say, a unicorn is
01:22:43a horse that has mass but is immune to gravity.
01:22:46Well, then I would say that cannot exist because everything that has mass is subject to gravity.
01:22:51So, I would accept the possibility that just about anything could exist as long as it does
01:22:56not contradict reason and evidence, but I would never accept that self-contradictory entities
01:23:02could exist.
01:23:03That's my sort of answer to your question, if that makes sense.
01:23:06Yes, but I would like to know an instance of that.
01:23:11Like, I mean, do you get this example of dragons in another planet where that might be possible?
01:23:19Is there something like that on planet Earth that you will be willing to believe in, or
01:23:25just none?
01:23:27Sorry, any non-self-contradictory entity could exist.
01:23:33Could there be dragons in some underground caves?
01:23:37I mean, I consider it highly unlikely.
01:23:38Yeah, okay, but wait, but my question was, something that you believe in already, like
01:23:45something that you will say, I think this is real on planet Earth, and that does not
01:23:50contradict reason, and like, in the way you constructed the question, like, make it compatible
01:23:56with that, but something that you already believe in.
01:24:00Well, I fully accept that there are undersea creatures that we have yet to discover.
01:24:05Nice.
01:24:05Right, I mean, down the Mariana Trench, it takes like an hour from the surface to get
01:24:10to the bottom.
01:24:11There's some freaky stuff down there, right?
01:24:13I mean, full on, you know, chasing the Nemo and around the planet.
01:24:19So I fully accept, of course, that there are creatures.
01:24:23I would say the Earth as a whole has been pretty well mapped, so I'd be kind of, I mean,
01:24:27I'm sure there's still some stuff deep in the jungle that we haven't yet found, but I think
01:24:32for certain, in the deep water, there's stuff that we don't know.
01:24:37Sorry, go ahead.
01:24:37That's the kind of answer I wanted, without getting into all the, yeah.
01:24:43But they're not supernatural entities.
01:24:45They are, yeah.
01:24:46No, no, they're not supernatural entities.
01:24:49Supernatural is that which goes against reason and evidence.
01:24:51You're right.
01:24:52Yeah, you're right.
01:24:53They're just, I don't know, undiscovered, whatever, unexplained, but not necessarily out of the
01:25:00realm of possibility of this universe, right?
01:25:03Yeah, absolutely.
01:25:04Yeah.
01:25:05All right.
01:25:06Well, listen, I've got a bunch more callers, but I really appreciate that.
01:25:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:25:09That's a very, my pleasure.
01:25:11It's a very interesting topic, and I do love working with this kind of stuff.
01:25:15All right.
01:25:16And again, rather than looking at the content of people's arguments, I find it important
01:25:20to look at the form of them and say, what level of proof do we need to accept in order
01:25:25to have the conversation?
01:25:26And if you're willing to accept fuzzy boundaries in order to have a conversation, you can't
01:25:30demand perfect certainty as a result.
01:25:32All right.
01:25:34Ranshid.
01:25:36What is on your mind?
01:25:38Going once, going twice.
01:25:40All right.
01:25:41I think we'll move on to Scooby.
01:25:43What is on your mind?
01:25:44Don't make me do the rut row voice.
01:25:46Oh, he's kind of come and gone as well.
01:25:49All right.
01:25:49Draco, we already talked to, and Ranshid is not chatting.
01:25:52All right.
01:25:53Not the end of the world.
01:25:54We will.
01:25:57Yeah, he's not.
01:25:58Okay.
01:25:59Well, I'll stop here, and I really do appreciate people being able to jump in and have a chat.
01:26:03And this short notice, I have a call and show tonight, so I should probably get a wee
01:26:07bit of dinner before.
01:26:09I'm trying this thing now where I don't eat until I'm desperately hungry.
01:26:11So I'm getting there.
01:26:14So, of course, thank you, everyone, so much for your time, care, and attention today.
01:26:19We are in our 21st year of philosophy.
01:26:21I'm immensely proud of that and immensely grateful to everyone here who has made this possible.
01:26:29And freedomend.com slash donate to help out the show.
01:26:31Boy, do you get a really great bunch of goodies.
01:26:33I just finished the recording of one of my favorite chapters in my new book.
01:26:37It's called Chapter 19, which isn't going to teach you much, but it is really, really
01:26:41great stuff.
01:26:41I'm very, very pleased with this book, and I really thank everyone for the opportunity
01:26:45to do what I do.
01:26:47freedomend.com slash donate to help out the show.
01:26:49And we will talk to you for sure Wednesday night, 7 p.m.
01:26:52Bye.
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