How to Know the TRUTH!

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux explores the nature of truth, questioning whether it can be accidental. Beginning with a hypothetical scenario, he argues that true statements must stem from deliberate understanding, not chance. Using the analogy of a haiku created through random scribbles, he emphasizes that genuine knowledge requires intent and proficiency. The discussion highlights the risks of conflating opinions with facts and urges listeners to deepen their understanding of truth and knowledge.  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025

Transcript

00:00Hi, hi, everybody. Hope you're doing well. So, we're having a good debate or discussion on the

00:06nature of truth. This is coming from a fellow named Bob. And the question is, is it possible

00:14for something to be accidentally true? So, if I murmur, what does two and two make? And a golfer

00:20yells four. He hasn't even heard me. Maybe he yells four. Has he accurately answered the question?

00:26Is his response true? I argue that it's not. I argue that truth is the result of a process,

00:35not an accidental coincidence. So, Bob is saying, hello, Steph. I am listening to show 6162.

00:44Cursor currently positioned at about 44 minutes. And you've been arguing for some time with a

00:48gentleman about the meaning of truth. Since your argument started, I have been feeling an increasing

00:53sense of unrest and active rejection. The pinnacle of which happened when I heard you saying that a

00:59madman in the Middle Ages ranting that the earth revolved around the sun wouldn't be making a

01:03true statement. I felt properly annoyed by that point. Yeah, so this is my case. If there's some

01:08guy, he's got, I don't know, I guess it wouldn't be syphilis, because this is prior to the discovery

01:13of the New World, which transmitted syphilis back to Europe. But if you had a madman in the Middle Ages

01:19who ranted that unicorns existed, there were demons in his room, and the earth went around the

01:26sun, him saying that the earth goes around the sun is not a true statement, but rather the rantings

01:31of a madman, the fact that it happens to later coincide with a true statement is a coincidence,

01:39but there's no truth in the statement. And I sort of mentioned if a blind man hits a tennis ball

01:46perfectly, he's not a good tennis player. It's just an unusual coincidence. All right.

01:51He said, I soon identified, Bob says, I soon identified this feeling as the reaction to an

01:55attempt to redefine a fundamental word in the vocabulary I have been using for my whole life,

02:00an attempt, which was not made by just anyone that I could ignore, but by Stefan Molyneux himself,

02:05in an argument that was not free from reference to your, undeniable, I say, prime skills in debates,

02:10almost turning it into an argument from authority. Well, that's a minor bit of an ad hom. I am not,

02:18I don't think I've ever said I'm right because I'm me. I mean, that would be pretty bad as a

02:24philosopher. So when people are annoyed, when people are annoyed, they will respond with minor insults.

02:33So this is not a huge insult, but it is not great. So he goes on to say, truth in my vocabulary means

02:42corresponding to reality, which you might say is a shorter, less precise version of, quote,

02:50relationship between concepts in the mind and things in the real world, a definition which I do not

02:54contend against. On the off chance that my vocabulary could be wrong, I asked the following

03:00to chat GPT, Gemini, and Grok. And he wrote, does the word truth, this is what he asked the AIs,

03:09does the word truth only refer to something that is proven? If, for example, a madman from the Middle

03:14Ages during one of his random rants described a microbe theory down to the details, could that be

03:20called a true statement? Or was the first to make a true statement about a Pasteur? All of the AI

03:27acknowledged the philosophical question and agreed that the madman would have made a true statement

03:33just like Pasteur. What Pasteur said was not only truth, though, but also justified belief or

03:40knowledge. And you briefly and rightly touched on this later on when making the analogy of scribbling

03:45random stuff on a wall while being blindfolded and producing a haiku. Would you then say,

03:52I knew Japanese? So no, nobody in their right mind would say that you know Japanese, that's correct.

03:57But nobody who can read Japanese would say that it is not true that you wrote a haiku just because

04:03you are randomly scribbling. In other words, it is true that you wrote a Japanese haiku just as much

04:09as it is true that you did not have any knowledge or justified belief of it. My conclusion being that

04:15it is wrong to define truth as only that which is proven, and that it would be indeed a true statement

04:21if the madman from the Middle Ages precisely described by pure chance the way the universe

04:24works. A useless, random, and inactionable statement at the same time, but nonetheless true.

04:31Sorry, just drop the paper. He says, I remember you saying you were the first one to have provided

04:35a logical proof of secular ethics. While UPB is by all means an original approach, and I do not intend

04:40to try to deny it, as I reckon that it's not possible to do so, I'd like to know your stance about the

04:45ethics of liberty by Rothbard. Is that not a solid, rigorously and deductively logical proof of ethics made

04:50before you invented UPB? I've read some Rothbard, but I have not read the ethics of liberty.

04:55I will put it on the list. Right, okay. So, let's go back to the Japanese haiku. So, I don't know

05:03Japanese. I'm blindfolded. I'm given a paintbrush or a crayon, and I write randomly on the wall, and then

05:12by some completely bizarre coincidence, I write out a Japanese haiku. Well, if a Japanese person comes

05:21and reads it, then he says, oh, wow, by strange coincidence, Steph, who's randomly scribbling

05:29blindfolded, who doesn't know Japanese, has written a haiku. All right. So, where is the definition of

05:36haiku? Right? How do we know it's a haiku? Let's further say that the haiku has some scribbles over

05:46it. Like, it's not a perfect haiku. That would be so improbable that it would be like once every

05:5020 universes. But also, it wouldn't be random scribbling. Random scribbling is just wildly

05:56moving your arm all over the place. This would be more considered. But for whatever reason, let's just

06:01say that you can make out a haiku somewhere in the random scribbling. Okay. So, where does the

06:06definition, where does the haiku, where does the definition of it being a haiku reside? Does it reside

06:13in my mind? Nope. I don't know that I've made a haiku. I'm blindfolded. I don't know that I've made a

06:20haiku. Does the haiku-ness, the definition of haiku, the haiku-ness, does it reside in the

06:28scribbling, or in the wall, or in the crayon, or the paintbrush, or the blindfold, or my arm? Nope.

06:33It doesn't exist in any of those things. Where does the definition of haiku exist? Right? It exists

06:41in the Japanese speaker who has spent years and years learning Japanese, whether as a child or as an

06:49adult. The haiku-ness, the poem, the meaning exists nowhere but in the mind of the person who

06:58recognizes that I've accidentally written a haiku. This is really, really important. Sorry.

07:05It all is really important. Where does the fact that it's a haiku reside? Not in me, not in the

07:16objects. And also, if my friends come over and look at my scribbling on the wall, and none of my

07:23friends speak Japanese, let's say. Teotareate. So, my friends come over and look at my scribblings

07:30on the wall, and they would recognize maybe there's some odd patterns in there that maybe look vaguely

07:35Asian or whatever, but they would not be able to read it, and they would not identify it as a haiku.

07:43So, how do I know that I've written a haiku? Well, how do I know that my random scribblings

07:49have produced a haiku? I can't know it. My friends can't know it. And nobody who doesn't speak

07:59Japanese can identify that I've written a haiku, and they certainly can't translate it. It is random

08:06scribblings. Obviously, not that random if it's producing Japanese characters. But there's no haiku.

08:14There's no haiku until the person who speaks Japanese reads it. Then, the haiku-ness and the

08:24comprehensibility of what I have created exists. We're really rigorous about this. Random scribblings

08:34on the wall are not a haiku, because it cannot be identified as a haiku. So, the only time that you

08:44can identify what I have scribbled as a haiku is when somebody who knows what a haiku is, and knows

08:54what Japanese is, and understands it, can read it, can comprehend it, can translate it, right? When somebody

09:00does that, then, and only then, does the identification of my random scribblings as a haiku come into existence,

09:10right? So, let us take another, obviously very silly example, but very illustrative, I believe.

09:20Let us say that I do this scribbling. There's Japanese, kind of, you can make out the Japanese

09:31and the random scribbling and so on. And then, we all wake up tomorrow, and every book translating Japanese,

09:40and everybody who knows Japanese is not in the world. Let's just do this as a thought exercise.

09:45We could do this with an ancient language, but we might as well keep continuity with the prior

09:49examples. So, I do my random scribbling on the wall, and the next morning, when I show it to people,

09:59all knowledge of Japanese has vanished from the world. All knowledge of it. Even the concept of haiku,

10:05right? Because lots of people who, you say, what is a haiku? And they'll say, bless you, right?

10:09They think you've sneezed, right? So, let's say I do these random scribblings, and show it to people,

10:17but there's nobody alive or around, and there's no longer any knowledge of how to translate Japanese to

10:26English. Random scribblings, and nobody knows how to translate them. Or, if you want to take another

10:32example, I take a picture of the wall that I've scribbled on, and I take it to a tribe of pygmies

10:40who don't even know how to read. Right? Let's take that example. So, I do the random scribbling

10:47somewhere in there. You can kind of make out some Japanese characters, and so on. And I take

10:55a picture of that, and I show it to a bunch of pygmies who don't even know how to read. You know,

11:00real savages in the Amazon, or wherever, right? I don't think, are they in the Amazon? I went through

11:07this years ago. Amazon, Africa, anyway. Just, you know, a really primitive tribe that doesn't know how

11:11to read. Okay. So, I don't speak Japanese. I can't read it. I know what a haiku is, but only when

11:19translated I can't read it in the original, right? It's like the only reason I would learn Russian is

11:24to read Dostoevsky in the original. So, I take a picture of my random scribblings on the wall,

11:29and I take it to a primitive tribe that can't read anything, and ask them what it means. And,

11:37of course, they won't know. They won't know that it's a haiku. They won't know that it's Japanese.

11:42They won't be able to translate anything. It will have absolutely zero meaning to them. And,

11:49of course, you can imagine, of course, let's say you don't speak Japanese, and there's no translation

11:54available, and you get a letter in the mail entirely written in Japanese. Let's say there's

12:01no red lettering, which might indicate danger or something like that. You get a letter in the mail,

12:07all in Japanese, or occasionally you'll get a spam in Mandarin or Japanese or something like that.

12:13You get the spam. Okay, what does that mean to you? It means nothing to you, because you cannot

12:18translate it. Like, in the act of reading it, if you don't know the language. I guess you could run

12:22it through Google Translator or maybe a non-evil translator or something like that, right? A

12:27non-racist translator. So, where is the haiku-ness? How is it a haiku, my random scribbling?

12:36It's not a haiku to me. It's not a haiku in the materials. It's not a haiku among my friends who

12:41don't speak Japanese. Ah, but if someone comes along, I don't know, Megumi. Is it Megumi? Megumi

12:51comes along, and Megumi says, ah, that is a haiku. How interesting. Ah, now it's been identified.

13:01Now there's meaning. Before, there are only scribbles. Now there is meaning. So, I would argue

13:07that it is a bizarre kind of time-traveling to say it's a haiku before it is identified as a haiku.

13:17If you leave the picture of the haiku with the primitive tribe in the Amazon, they will never know

13:24that it's a haiku. They will never be able to translate it. I mean, until the Rosetta Stone came

13:28along, which had, I think, the same text in three different languages that allowed them to start

13:32translating ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. So, I have not written a haiku. I have made some

13:42scribbles. It being identified as a haiku comes later, when somebody who knows what Japanese is

13:52and what a haiku is and can translate it, when someone knows what a haiku is, comes along.

13:59So, the haiku-ness is not in the scribbling, it's not in the wall, not in the pen, not in my friends,

14:04not in me, because we don't speak any of that. We can't identify it as a haiku. The haiku-ness comes

14:10into existence. When a Japanese speaker sees the random scribbles, identifies them as coincidentally

14:17matching Japanese characters and in the form of a haiku. Do you see what I mean? The haiku-ness is not in

14:24the writing. The haiku-ness is in the comprehension of the writing. I have not written a haiku. I have

14:32done random scribbles. My friends have not identified what I have done as a haiku. There is no haiku-ness

14:41that exists independent of the comprehension of the Japanese language. The haiku-ness is based upon the

14:50knowledge of Japanese, not upon my random scribbles. Identifying something as a haiku requires knowledge

15:00of Japanese and its poetic art forms. This is really, I mean, this is so foundational that this

15:07is why I'm spending a lot of time on these issues. So, when somebody says,

15:13Steph accidentally wrote a haiku, they are taking knowledge from the present or from later and

15:21throwing it backwards in time. So, if I randomly write a haiku while blindfolded, and then someone

15:31who speaks Japanese says, oh, that's a haiku. I cannot say, I knew I was writing a haiku when I wrote it.

15:39I cannot say, I wrote a haiku because I don't speak Japanese. It's random scribblings. I did not

15:46write a haiku. I had no intention, no thought, no reasoning, no poetic analogies, no metaphors, no

15:52artistic goal. It was random scribbling, bro. I'm emphatic upon this because it is absolutely essential,

15:59and I'll sort of tell you why as we continue. I did not write a haiku because to write a haiku is a

16:08process of understanding Japanese, assuming that the Japanese, I mean, you could write a haiku not

16:14in Japanese, but we'll just go with the Japanese as the art form. I did not write a haiku because I

16:23did not write with any intention. It was random scribbling. When I take off my blindfold, I may see

16:29that there's some, you know, odd-looking squiggles in the middle that look vaguely Asian or whatever,

16:33but I can't read them. I don't know what they mean. I mean, it certainly wasn't my intention to

16:37write anything like that. And I did not write a haiku. I made some squiggles that coincidentally

16:46later were identified as a haiku. But I did not write a haiku. Let me give you another example.

16:58Let's say that instead of me writing randomly on the wall, let's say that I am instructed

17:07to hold my hand perfectly still and somebody who knows Japanese moves the paper under my pen.

17:16All they do is tell me when to lift and lower my pen, right? And let's say a beautiful haiku is the

17:23result of me holding my pen steady and somebody moving the paper under my pen and simply telling

17:29me when to raise and lower my pen. Or maybe you could do it in the way that cursive is done.

17:35But let's just say, right? All they do is raise your pen, lower your pen, and they move the paper.

17:40I do not move the pen. Now, have I, and let's say that what is produced from the person, let's say

17:47a Japanese person, moving the paper while I hold the pen steady, who wrote the haiku? Let's say I produce

17:56a nice haiku. Who wrote the haiku? Well, I was holding the pen and I made the marks. But of course,

18:04we would understand that it's the person who moved the paper who wrote the haiku, not me. I don't know

18:12what I'm doing. I don't speak Japanese. I'm just raising, lowering my pen. I don't even, I'm

18:16blindfolded. I don't know what is moving. I don't know what is happening. The person who wrote the

18:21haiku is the person moving the paper, not me, who's holding the pen. And if I were to say,

18:28I wrote a haiku, and I, I, I, I'm thinking IQ now. I wrote a haiku. Hey, that's my IQ.

18:36So, if I was blindfolded, Japanese person moved the paper, who wrote the haiku? Well, clearly,

18:45the Japanese person wrote the haiku. I did not. I did not. So, I didn't write the haiku when I am

18:55holding the pen and somebody else is moving the paper. I did not write a haiku when I'm randomly

19:00scribbling because it is, it's, it's haiku, haikunus doesn't exist until the Japanese person

19:06looks at it. And then, going backwards, we can say, oh, Steph, and it's, it's, it's an interesting

19:14challenge. I can't say that I wrote a haiku if it's random scribbles. I can say I made some random

19:22scribbles that somebody else identified as resembling a haiku. I think I've been saying

19:31haiku. Haiku. Haiku, I think it is. If I am, uh, if Bob will say, no, say Jim, right? If Jim is held

19:39hostage and Jim is forced, he doesn't speak Japanese, right? And Jim is forced at gunpoint to write a

19:47letter in Japanese, is Jim responsible for the contents, right? Let's say that Jim is kidnapped

19:54by the, uh, Yatsuko, what do they call the Japanese mafia, whatever, right? So, let's say that Jim is

20:02kidnapped by the Japanese mafia and the Japanese mafia, Jim doesn't speak Japanese, and the Japanese

20:06mafia forces him at gunpoint to write a letter in Japanese, which turns out to be a death threat

20:11against the prime minister. Did Jim write a death threat against the prime minister? No. He doesn't

20:19even speak Japanese. The fact that it is a death threat to the prime minister is not in Jim's mind.

20:27He doesn't know what he's writing. He's just trying to stay alive. So, random statements are not truth.

20:35I do not write a haiku by scribbling randomly, because there's no haiku-ness in it until somebody

20:41comes along and identifies it, and I have no reproducible methodology for recreating any

20:48Japanese haikus. I can't go write another one, because the odds of me randomly scribbling and

20:52producing a haiku are so tiny that it's not going to happen again in another 20 universes.

21:00Let's look at it another way. If you get the right answer by cheating, do you have the right answer?

21:08Well, no. I mean, this is basic to plagiarism and to cheating, which gets you kicked out of

21:17university. It's a really important question. If Bob is writing an exam, and it turns out that he

21:27cheated, right, he had the answers written on his upper thigh and pulled up his pants, or he copied

21:33from Sally, or like, he did not. He copied the answers. Is he presumed to have knowledge

21:41of the subject if he has cheated? Is his answer right? Of course it's not. It's not marked as right.

21:52The exam is thrown out, and he is heavily disciplined or kicked out of university, and he is presumed to

21:59have no knowledge of the subject if he cheated. The old play about the guy with the big nose, and then

22:10the good-looking guy, and the guy with the big nose tells the good-looking guy what to say to woo the

22:18woman, and so on. Who's she dating? If she falls in love with his eloquence. Chirard Depedure played it.

22:24Cyrano de Bergerac. There we go. So Cyrano de Bergerac is a story of an ugly guy and a handsome

22:31guy. The handsome guy wants the pretty girl, but he's dumb, and the ugly guy who's great with

22:36language tells the handsome guy what to say, the handsome dumb guy. And so who does she fall in

22:44love with? Well, she falls in love with the language, mostly, of the ugly guy. I mean, she likes the looks

22:53of the dumb guy, but she wouldn't date him because he was too dumb. Who's she falling in love with,

22:59right? The language does not belong to the good-looking dumb guy. It belongs to the brilliant

23:05ugly guy with the big nose, right? So does someone have the right answer if they cheat? Nope.

23:13Plagiarism is when you take an idea that is not your own and present it as an original idea. Or you

23:23take somebody else's writing and either copy it without attribution or adjust it to the point where

23:31it seems like yours. Do you know something if all you're doing is copying out answers? You could get

23:38somebody who's illiterate to copy out the entire proof of Einstein's theory of relativity, right? All of the

23:47magical physics squiggles, right? You could get somebody who is illiterate. They don't even know what

23:53they're writing. And you could get them to copy out Einstein's proof of theory of relativity. Does he

23:59understand a thing? He does not. So, the reason I'm saying it's a time slice, let's go back to our madman in the

24:06Middle Ages. Madman across the water. Jethro Tull and, well, that's Madman across the water's Ellen

24:14John, but Jethro Tull had a song about a madman, too. Snot running down his nose. Yeah, so creepy.

24:19Anyway, so let's go back to our madman in the Middle Ages. Our madman in the Middle Ages runs a whole

24:25bunch of crazy stuff, right? The sun is made of toenail sparklers, a whole bunch of stuff that's crazy.

24:31And he says, and the earth goes around the sun. All right. Is there truth in that statement? Nope.

24:38No, there's not. Absolutely not. Why? Because it's only proven much later. In the same way,

24:48there's no haiku-ness in my random scribblings. It is only known as resembling a haiku later.

24:54So, if there's no haiku-ness in my random scribblings at the time, if I'm a Japanese speaker,

25:01and I'm a Japanese writer, and I'm writing Japanese, and I'm writing a haiku, I've created

25:06a haiku. It may not be good, but I've created a haiku. If random scribblings is not a haiku,

25:11there's no haiku-ness in it. It's just random scribblings. So, since there is no haiku-ness

25:17in my random scribblings, there is no truth in the statement, the earth goes around the sun. Now,

25:22I understand this seems counterintuitive, but so what? Who gives the rats behind? It's philosophy.

25:28It's supposed to be counterintuitive. Just like physics is counterintuitive, and evolution is

25:32counterintuitive, and chemistry is counterintuitive. The fact that it's counterintuitive, and the fact

25:39that it irritates you, has no relationship to whether it's true or not. So, a random aggregation

25:48of syllables from a crazy person in the past, that happens to coincidentally match what the

25:58sentence of somebody who understands and has proven something says later on, does not throw

26:02back in time the truth value of the statement. That would be like saying, some Japanese speaker

26:10identifies my random scribblings as a haiku, and therefore, it was a haiku when I was writing

26:18it. But I wasn't writing it. They were random scribbles. The haiku-ness of my random scribbles

26:26is in the identification of it by somebody with knowledge. It is not in my random scribbles.

26:33I say, oh, that's an interesting coincidence, blah, blah, blah, right? But it is in the methodology

26:40of the statement. It is understanding Japanese and writing with the intention to create a haiku

26:47that makes it a haiku in the creation. It is not the randing scribbles that later accidentally

26:54resembles a haiku. And we know this, we know this, because we punish cheaters. And of course,

27:04if random scribbles or copying things without understanding was the equivalent of its creation,

27:11then photocopiers would be the greatest writers on earth, because you can photocopy Shakespeare

27:16and Dickens in a weekend, does not make. The photocopier, which is simply aggregating atoms

27:22based on light and dark with no mind, right? There is no comprehension in the photocopier. It doesn't

27:31know what it's copying. It can copy the most beautiful sonnets, and it can also copy the

27:36secretary's ass at a particularly raucous Christmas party at the business. The man who

27:43randomly says the earth goes around the sun, there is no truth value in it. Say, but what

27:49he says is true. And then the question is, how do you know? How do you know what he says

27:53is true? Right? Let's just take that statement. But it's true that the earth goes around the

27:58sun. It's like, sure. And it's true that my random scribbles represent a haiku, but that

28:03doesn't mean I wrote a haiku. It's only because somebody more knowledgeable is looking at things

28:08and coming to that conclusion. The haiku-ness emerges in the mind of the person with knowledge,

28:13not in the random scribblings. So the fact that we know that the earth goes around the sun

28:18is a result of a very strict process of scientific investigation, of skepticism, of reproducibility,

28:25of mathematics, of observations collected painstakingly over hundreds or even thousands

28:30of years. So it is the result of a lengthy process of skepticism, investigation, mathematics

28:42and testing, and reproducibility, the scientific method. The guy who's just randomly shouting

28:47stuff, there's no truth value in his statements. It's an interesting coincidence, don't get me

28:52wrong. You know, the Nostradamus stuff, yeah? It's, it's, hey, it's a fun and interesting

28:56coincidence. But it's a weird kind of time travel to say, when I was just randomly scribbling,

29:04Steph wrote a haiku. No, I didn't. Because there's no haiku-ness in what I wrote, scribbled.

29:10There's no haiku-ness in all the people who don't speak Japanese who look at it. Then someone

29:14comes along who speaks Japanese and the haiku-ness suddenly comes into existence because he identifies

29:19it as a haiku. But there's no haiku in the origin. There's no haiku in the scribbling.

29:24There's no haiku in the looking. It's only later when the Japanese person says, hey, that's a haiku.

29:31And that's a short form. That's a short way of putting it. I mean, a more accurate thing would be,

29:38Steph didn't write a haiku, but his random scribblings coincidentally looks like one.

29:41So, is it a haiku? No. It's an accidental recreation of a haiku. But I'm sure you can get

29:52monkeys to copy things. I'm sure you can get monkeys to even make basic letters. Let's say

29:59you can. Does that mean that they're literate? Does that mean they understand language, written

30:03language? If I'm holding the pen and the Japanese person is moving the paper, I'm not writing the

30:10haiku. The Japanese person is writing the haiku. The haiku-ness is in the Japanese person's

30:13knowledge, not in my unknowable or unknown to me actions. So, somebody who says something

30:21that turns out to accidentally coincide with the later proof and truth is not saying something

30:27true any more than somebody who copies the answer of a more knowledgeable person has the

30:34same level of knowledge. I can write out Hamlet by hand. That does not make me Shakespeare.

30:41Truth is the result of a process. Truth is the result of a rigorous process. And once you

30:49discover something is true, you cannot take that essence of truth and cast it backwards through

30:55time to before it was known to be true. Lots of people say lots of crazy stuff. And it is

31:03in the knowledge and the intention that the essence of the thing is created. If I know

31:09Japanese and I intend to write a haiku, the haiku-ness is in my knowledge and in my intention

31:14in the moment. Random scribblings are not knowledge and intention. If your intention is to find out

31:21the true physics and relationships of solar and planetary and moon and meteor and asteroid and comet,

31:32objects in the universe, then your goal is to find the truth, your intention, your focus is on the solar

31:40system, and you work very hard to achieve that. And then once you have achieved a true and validated

31:47knowledge, which is going to be years, right? Once you have achieved a true and validated knowledge

31:51of the shape, relationship, and nature of the solar system, objects in the solar system,

31:58once you have achieved that, then you know that the earth goes around the sun, the moon goes around the

32:04earth, and the sun goes around the planets a tiny little bit, no, walls on its axis. The center of the

32:11gravitational wall between the earth and the sun is still below the sun's surface, but it's not right at the

32:16center, of course, right? Because the earth has a minor gravitational pull on the sun. So you can't just take

32:23truths that are the result of a laborious process and cast them back in time. If I spend, I don't know

32:29how long would it take for me to learn Japanese well enough to do poetry, five to ten years of pretty

32:37rigorous study, I don't have any natural facility for learning other languages outside of computer

32:42languages because they're the language of logic. Okay, so let's say, let's say I really buckle down,

32:46I can do it in five years. So after I study Japanese for five years, then I can write a haiku.

32:54It probably won't be a good one, but I can write a haiku, right? If I don't study Japanese, I can't

33:00write a haiku. I can make a bunch of random scribbles that somebody might say, hey, that's kind of like

33:05a haiku or whatever, right? But the haiku-ness is not in anything that I'm doing. It is in the intention

33:11and the process producing an objective result, not in a mere coincidence of language and things in

33:20the world. Because the madman in the Middle Ages says the earth goes around the sun and the sun is

33:28eternally burning toenails. When you say to the man in the Middle Ages, who's crazy, he says the earth

33:36goes around the sun. You say, okay, how do you know? How do you know? He can't answer. He can't

33:43answer. If somebody gives me some random Japanese letters or characters, somebody gives me some

33:50random Japanese characters and says, what do they mean? I don't know. Now, if I guess what they mean

33:57and I happen to be right, I don't know Japanese. It's just a coincidence. It's not real. It's not true.

34:05It's not reproducible. Now, if somebody knows Japanese, here's some characters in Japanese

34:10and they say, oh, this means this, this, and this. Okay. And they know because you can give them

34:15another one and they know and you give them another one and they know. But somebody gives me a bunch of

34:21characters in Japanese and I say, oh, it looks like an order for six Pikachu figurines. And it turns out

34:26that that is true. It's not true. I don't know it. I've just guessed. I don't know Japanese because

34:33if somebody puts another bunch of Japanese characters in front of me, I have no idea what

34:37I could guess again. Maybe I keep guessing right. Of course, the odds of that are so tiny, but let's

34:41do it. I still don't know Japanese. I have not correctly identified. I've simply guessed.

34:46Right. Now, if I learn Japanese and then I look back five years and look at the Japanese characters

34:52I guessed at and it turns out, oh, wow, that was an order for six Pikachu figurines. How,

34:57what a strange coincidence. But I can't go back and say I knew Japanese then. Right. So let's go

35:08through the scenario just real briefly. Right. Somebody puts some Japanese characters in front

35:11of me. I randomly guess. Turns out that my guess is correct, but it's not based on any knowledge of

35:16anything. It's just a random chance. Right. And then I spend five years learning Japanese and go

35:23back to that piece of paper now that I understand it. Oh, it is an order for six Pikachu figurines.

35:27Huh. I would say what a coincidence. I wouldn't say I was right in my guess about the contents

35:35of the Japanese characters. I wouldn't say that I was right. I wouldn't say I understood Japanese.

35:40I wouldn't say I had any knowledge of what I was talking about or anything like that. Not a bit.

35:47You can't take later knowledge and throw it backwards through time and attach truth to mad ravings.

35:53And I get, I mean, it's a conceptual order of understanding, but you have to remember

35:57that knowledge is a process. Truth is the result of a rigorous set of examinations. It is not the

36:06result of random ravings. And don't get me wrong. There are interesting coincidences and we get these

36:12little goosebumps. I get other interesting coincidences. Right. And those interesting

36:16coincidences, they give us goosebumps because we are all about cause and effect and we're all about

36:21efficiency. And if there's a way to understand Japanese without taking five years full time to

36:28study it, that would be kind of cool. We all want shortcuts, right? Maybe instead of going to therapy

36:34or learning about my history or I'll just pray to God, right? We all want shortcuts. And I understand

36:39I mean, shortcuts are good if they're valid, right? They're not good. I mean, I have a shortcut called

36:44recording this rather than going to everyone's house. So then the question is, why does it bother

36:50people? I mean, I'm not speaking to the guy who wrote the letter and I appreciate the letter

36:53other than the minor passive aggression, whatever, it doesn't really matter. But the question

36:58is, why does it bother people? I mean, I think I've made the case as clear as I possibly can

37:04in the same way that you don't say a doctor was a terrible doctor in the 15th century because

37:09he didn't prescribe antibiotics. Nope. They weren't a thing. They didn't exist. It's not a bad doctor

37:15because he didn't prescribe that which didn't exist. And you're not right if you happen to say things

37:20that happen to coincide later with what is true. You're not. The truthness does not go back in time

37:26and attach itself any more than the haiku-ness goes back to my random scribblings. The haiku-ness,

37:33the knowledge of the truth is in the comprehension, not in the statements. Just as knowledge is not

37:40copying things. And that's why we punish plagiarists and we punish cheaters. So why does it bother

37:46people? Well, the reason it bothers people is, you know, I see this, of course, I'm back on

37:52mainstream social media with X since June or July or something. So it's now the 8th of November,

38:009.35 a.m. So why does it bother people? Because it excludes people from being taken seriously. And again,

38:10I'm not talking about Bob. I don't know what his particular motivations are. And I appreciate him

38:14being honest about the annoyance and the irritation. So, for example, there are people on X raging and

38:21railing about Elon Musk is being given a billion-dollar payout. And it's like, no, he's not. No,

38:28he's not. No, he's not. There's people who don't understand business. They don't understand economics.

38:32They don't understand options and share prices and all of that. The real fact of the matter is Elon Musk

38:38has taken zero dollars in pay since he joined Tesla. And in order for his stocks, the granted

38:44stocks to go up a trillion dollars, he has to create $10 trillion worth of value, which is like

38:50half the GDP of the entire United States. He has to create $10 trillion worth of value. And then

38:56he could sell a trillion dollars worth of stocks. And to sell a trillion dollars worth of stocks,

39:02he's got to pay $238 million worth of taxes. So, nobody's giving him, nobody's just giving him

39:10a trillion dollars. So, if we were to have this rigorous standard to say, I'm not going to listen

39:17to pronouncements. I'm going to look for reproducible expertise, right? I'm going to look

39:23for reproducible expertise. I'm going to look for deep knowledge. I'm going to look for deep studying.

39:28I'm going to look for deep learning. In the same way that if you're going to hire someone to translate

39:32from Japanese to English, you're going to interview people, look for their history and experience,

39:37and give them a test to make sure they know how to translate from Japanese to English. You wouldn't

39:41take some illiterate person and just say, you know, just do your best. Because we would recognize

39:47that there's no reproducible knowledge. The only way they could possibly get anything right is once in

39:52a billion years through a random accident. So, we don't hire them. Like, we don't live this way,

39:56right? If you have appendicitis, you don't just give a butter knife to some random person

40:02on the street and say, stab me, fix me. But you go to somebody who's got deep knowledge,

40:06experience, expertise, a surgeon, and they fix it, hopefully. So, if we were to have the standard

40:15that says deep reproducible knowledge is required for truth and validity, what would that do to

40:23the majority of people who mouth off and think they're so smart in the world, on the internet?

40:29The braggarts, the noisemakers, the sophists, the people who say, oh, so what are you saying to me

40:36that Elon Musk is worth, you know, 12 billion nurses? Right? Just sophists, right? It's like,

40:42okay, well, what do you understand about corporate compensation? What do you understand about

40:45running, you know, what's it, five of some of the most successful businesses on the planet?

40:50What do you understand about options? Dividends? What do you understand about someone who creates

41:0010 trillion dollars worth of economic value? How much that secures people's savings,

41:05retirements? How much that creates jobs? Raising the wages of everyone, even those people who aren't

41:11hired, because they're taking, people who are hired are taken out of the work pool, so other people's

41:17wages go up a little, or a lot, I guess, in this case. So, you would ask someone, how do you know?

41:22What do you know? Tell me your experience. Show me your resume. Show me why I should take you

41:27seriously. Show me why. But I could be accidentally right. No. No. If it's accidental, it's not right.

41:34It's not true. It's not valid. If someone saw a couple of episodes of Dr. House and miraculously

41:42performed a tracheotomy on somebody who was, who needed one on an airplane or something, right?

41:49We would not call them a doctor. We would say they were damn lucky, but we would not call them a

41:53doctor. No, no, but doctors perform successful tracheotomies. This guy performed a successful

41:58tracheotomy, therefore he's a doctor. Nope. It's just blind shots. Well, smart people understand that

42:07the earth goes around the sun, therefore anyone who ever said the earth goes around the sun is a smart

42:11person. Nope. They could be hallucinating. They could be in a fever dream. Psychotics say things

42:17all the time. If you've ever been around a psychotic, they say random word salads all the

42:23time. And looking for the meaning, as if there is meaning, is false. And it's like looking for the

42:29haiku-ness or the Japanese-ness in my random scribblings. It does not exist. It does not exist.

42:34There's no truth in random statements. And if you genuinely believe that there is truth in random

42:39statements or truth that can be achieved without any comprehension or understanding,

42:44then you should be perfectly comfortable having a man who cheated his entire way through medical

42:49school as your doctor. But you wouldn't. You wouldn't, right? You wouldn't. Even though he

42:53will occasionally get things right, he's probably going to be pretty bad at things as a whole.

42:57I mean, a blindfolded man could theoretically fly a plane for a while, could even land it. Again,

43:02the odds of it are tiny, but would you hire a blind man to be your pilot? Nope.

43:06Because he's not a pilot. Even if he accidentally lands a plane successfully, he's not a pilot.

43:12Well, you know, pilots can land planes successfully. Therefore, anybody who lands a plane successfully

43:17is a pilot. For some reason, I always remember there was a Laverne and Shirley from many years

43:21ago where they end up flying a plane and she flicks a button randomly and she says, what happened?

43:27He says, oh, you just dumped half your fuel. Something like that. No, he's not a pilot. Maybe that's

43:31why I remember in preparation for this conversation. So no, no, there's no truth value. There's no truth

43:38in the statements of random people because the only reason you know it's true or that it coincides

43:44with the truth is because somebody's proven it later and you don't get to throw it backwards in

43:49time. Somebody can look at my scribbling and say, oh, that looks like a haiku. But I did not write a

43:56haiku. I just randomly scribbled. So I hope that helps and I'm certainly happy to continue the

44:02conversation more. But this is, I mean, I'm doing this on X all the time. You know, people have the

44:09most wild pronouncements and they're wildly wrong. And I ask them, you know, what's the methodology?

44:15What's the proof? You don't understand this. You don't understand that. And if you have become a deep

44:19expert in something, like I'm really good at philosophy after 44 years and a real trial by fire,

44:25trials by fires, plural, plural, people come in and talk about philosophy and they don't know what

44:32they're talking about. They literally will say your philosophy, right? It's a lot of manipulation,

44:36a lot of passive aggression, and they don't want to do the work. They want to have their opinions and

44:42they don't want to have a rigorous methodology by which to validate those opinions because it's

44:46much more fun and much easier to have opinions than to know the truth, which is why people get kind

44:52of riled up when I say the truth as a result of a rigorous methodology. That's pretty difficult,

44:56at least it is now, right? Because we're swimming against the tide or swimming against the current.

45:03So when I say there is no such thing as accidental truth, people get annoyed because they have to let

45:08go of their opinions and start reasoning from first principles. And that's going to threaten their

45:13relationships. And people want the best of both worlds, right? They want relationships based on

45:19lies. And they want to believe those lies are true. And they also want to believe that they know

45:25the truth. And people don't know the truth. They don't, as a whole. They don't know the truth.

45:32But they don't want to admit that to themselves. So then they say, truth could be random because my

45:37opinions are random. And I'm just going to have a bunch of opinions. And if they turn out to be true,

45:41I'm right. Nope. You're not right. You're not right. It's just a coincidence.

45:45All right. Freedomain.com. If you'd like to help out the show, I'd really appreciate that. Have

45:50yourselves a lovely, delightful, beautiful, wonderful day. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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