How to Fight Bias!

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux tackles whether humans can think without anthropomorphic biases, drawing insights from discussions with AI. We explore the impact of biases on our reasoning and the importance of critiquing authority figures like parents. The conversation questions the reliability of knowledge, highlighting how narratives are influenced by power dynamics.  I discuss the challenges posed by economic dependencies and social pressures on objectivity, as well as psychological barriers that hinder admitting errors. The episode invites listeners to reflect on their relationship with truth and engage with the complexities of bias and rational discourse.  The listener's question:  "Do humans, even, have the ability to think and philosophize with absolutely zero anthropomorphic bias? The more I discuss philosophy with AI the more of my own anthropomorphic bias I find in my own arguments. This can serve to invalidate or at the very least undermine much of our philosophical ideas."  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

00:00Hello, everybody. I hope you're doing well. This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain,

00:06the domain of freedom. Freedom is the main thing. Free Domain, formerly radio, now TCPIP.

00:12And I hope you're doing well. Had a great question from a listener.

00:17Do humans even have the ability to think and philosophize with absolutely zero anthropomorphic

00:22bias? The more I discuss philosophy with AI, the more of my own anthropomorphic bias

00:27I find in my own arguments. This can serve to invalidate or, at the very least, undermine much

00:34of our philosophical ideas. So, it's a great question to do with bias, of course. How do we

00:42know if we are reasoning in good faith, or how do we know if we're biased? Now, of course, the easy

00:49answer is, hey, just try and figure out whether you've committed a logical fallacy, right?

00:56But, you know, we can't spend our entire lives examining everything we've said, or will say,

01:03or do say, running it through some sort of perfect rational checker. I mean, obviously,

01:09we strive for reason, and we like to be corrected with regards to reason. But there's a bunch of

01:12stuff that you can do ahead of time that is going to be very helpful on figuring out your biases and

01:20other people's biases. So, I had a call the other day. I did sort of a spot live stream. I had a call

01:27with a young man. He was 29, no job, no girlfriend, lived in his parents' basement. Like, you know,

01:33really a bit of a sad situation. And I said to him, are you willing to criticize your own parents?

01:38And he said no. And that's fine, right? I mean, obviously, it's all free will. It's all a choice.

01:46You don't have to do any of that if you don't really want it. I'm not going to impose that.

01:53You know, if somebody's overweight, and you say, are you willing to diet and exercise? And they say,

01:59no. Then it's like, okay, well, then you're going to have to live with being overweight if you don't

02:06want to take, right? If you refuse a treatment, you continue usually with the ailment, which is fine.

02:12But obviously, it wasn't that young man who would be harmed in the long run by criticizing his

02:20parents. It was his parents who would be harmed in the short run, and maybe the long run, who knows,

02:26by being criticized, right? So, when a man is Bob, let's just use Bob, when Bob is examining his own

02:38ideas, what is, what is true? How do I know that what I believe or advocate for is true? So, there's

02:48a couple of things that I go through when I'm trying to evaluate what I know. The first, of course,

02:53is, have I experienced it directly, or have I just been told this? That's a pretty important

03:01question, right? Have I been told this, or have I directly experienced this? Now, of course, history,

03:08to a large degree, is what you're told. I mean, there are eyewitness events, and

03:11sorry, eyewitness testimonies, and so on. We can't go back and directly experience history.

03:17So, it is told, but, you know, there may be videos, there may be, you know, some contemporaneous

03:22events from people who don't have a dog in the fight, so to speak, who don't have a bias,

03:27or at least much of a bias. So, there's stuff that we can get from history. I'm not sort

03:30of a radical subjectivist or relativist or nihilist that way. But all history has gone

03:36through the machinery of power. So, history is portrayed in a way that serves power, right?

03:47So, everyone who says, oh, well, without the government, there's no way we could resolve

03:50disputes, and it would be a war of all against all, and so on. There would be nature red in

03:56tooth and claw. Well, I mean, why is that allowed to be taught? Well, because it serves people in

04:03power. It serves the government, serves politicians, serves the powers that be. And so, most of what,

04:11and certainly through government schools and government-protected and sponsored universities,

04:16the reality, of course, is that everything that you are taught is allowed to be taught.

04:23And we've seen how brutally, even in a relatively free expression environment like the internet,

04:30we've seen how brutally information that goes against the needs and preferences of those in power

04:38can be suppressed. There's arrests, there's lawfare, there's deplatforming, debanking, right? You know,

04:47all of this, right? So, we've seen how brutally information that goes against the needs and

04:55preferences of those in power is suppressed, and therefore, by definition, everything that remains

05:03is needed, right? If you've ever seen someone make a dress, then they cut away the fabric that's not

05:11part of the pattern, right? So, everything they discard is not needed for the dress. Everything they

05:15keep is needed for the dress. If you've seen people, bakers, right? They make these pies, and then

05:21they'll trim around the outside of the pie to take off the excess crust. Maybe they'll nibble on it,

05:26maybe they'll throw it away, but everything that is not needed for the pie is discarded. Therefore,

05:30everything that remains is needed for the pie. So, that's a basic reality of the world. So,

05:40that which is allowed to be taught is helpful to those in power. And everything that is inconvenient

05:47to those in power is suppressed, destroyed, removed, censored, and so on, right? So, what is the

05:57perspective of those in power for the information that I have received? What is the perspective of

06:06those in power towards the information that I have received? So, it's sort of a well-known trope or

06:13kind of cliche that groups on the left are fiercely protected by those politicians. It doesn't really

06:20happen. So, on the right, people are universalists, so they don't tend to favor their own group. On the

06:25left, people tend to be relativists, and they do favor their own groups, right? So, all the groups

06:34that are reliable voting blocks or sources for the left are protected, and that is to say that the

06:43narrative around those people are always going to be promoted as positive. Immigrants, you know,

06:49vote for the left, who are almost hardworking and hard done by and so on. And all of the people who

06:55are not voting for the left, in general, like white males, those people are, you know, racists and

07:02bigots and Nazis. They protect their own, and they attack those who vote against them. So, because

07:09politics is sort of all-powerful, everything is so colored by politics because politicians and

07:16the government is so powerful that you have to ask, what is the perspective of what I think I know?

07:24What is the perspective on that information by those in power? Are they for it or are they against it?

07:30Now, that's sort of important, right? So, you'll see lots of movies, of course, coming out from

07:36Hollywood about Nazis and Nazism and so on, and not, not about the evils of communism, because they tend

07:46to be a pro-socialist and communist, and they tend to be anti, that they're pro-international

07:52socialism and they're anti-national socialism. So, what is the perspective or preference of those

08:01in power? And power doesn't just mean political power. It could also be in control of the sort of

08:05major organs of propaganda dissemination. I mean, if you read Pravda, was the Soviet newspaper,

08:13it meant truth. If you read Pravda, right, under the communist regime, you don't expect it to be

08:18objective because it's run and controlled by those in power. So, it's going to tell you how great

08:24socialism is, how evil capitalism is, how great the workers are, how evil bourgeois landowners and

08:31particularly the petit bourgeois are and so on, the evil capitalists. So, you don't expect it to be.

08:37It's advertising, right? I mean, if you're evaluating whether a Coca-Cola is a good thing

08:44and you watch a bunch of ads about Coca-Cola, you know that the ads are paid for to promote Coca-Cola as

08:53a, you know, fun fizzy drink that makes people's clothes fly off and get abs, even though it's sugar

08:59water. So, if you're talking to an advertising company that gets 90% of its revenues from Coca-Cola,

09:06it's not going to be neutral about Coca-Cola. It's kind of bought and paid for. If a particular

09:13institution is paid, controlled, protected, or shielded from significant competition by the state,

09:20well, then, of course, they're not going to be neutral. They're going to be pro-socialist because

09:27they're a socialist entity, and they're going to be anti-capitalist because they don't want to be

09:33subject to the strictures of the free market. It's kind of inevitable, right? So, what is the source?

09:41Is it compromised? Is it controlled? Who's paying the bills? If you see an advertisement for

09:48a particular politician, and it's sponsored by that politician, then you know it's not going to

09:54be objective. It's going to be, you know, pro-that politician, right? And it's going to be an

09:59advertisement, right? People who want dates don't put their ugliest pictures on Hinge or Bumble or

10:05Many Fish or whatever they're using. Now, if, I mean, as the old saying goes, it's very hard to get a man

10:13to believe something or accept something when his paycheck requires that he neither believe nor

10:18accept it. So, is it compromised by power? Is it compromised by a paycheck? Is it compromised

10:25by protection, right? If you're being protected from the free market, are you going to be objective

10:31about the free market? If you feel or believe you wouldn't survive in the free market, then

10:36you're going to be hostile to the free market. If you get particular benefits, you know, like tenure

10:45and four months off of the summer and every fifth or fourth year, you can go have a nice sabbatical

10:50someplace sunny and write a book that no one's going to read. You only have to work 10, 15 hours a week

10:54and you get paid $200,000 a year, like a university professor, right? That's not, that's not free

10:59market wages, right? And so, yeah, of course you're going to be not objective about these things. In fact,

11:06it's really hard to accept that anyone has access to the truth if they are compromised, right? The CEO

11:17of a particular company, we accept and we understand that the CEO of any particular company is not going

11:25to be objective when reporting on or writing about that company, right? I mean, we financial writers

11:31who hold stakes in particular companies, let's say they have a bunch of shares in Apple and they're

11:36writing about Apple's product launch. Usually, sort of professional ethics would dictate or require

11:42that they have to say, oh, by the way, I have a lot of stock in Apple, that kind of stuff, right?

11:46So, is the person paid? Does the person benefit from a powerful institution? Are they shielded from

11:53competition? Do they have job security? You know, a lot of people in government positions get

12:0030 to 50% more salary and benefits or more, and plus job security. And so, are they going to be

12:06able to write or talk about or objectively, right? People in the educational system who are paid and

12:13protected by the state, right? So, but they're going to be interested in privatizing the educational

12:17system? Well, probably not, right? I mean, they may make noises that way, but they won't do it.

12:22So, that's the more obvious stuff. Now, the less obvious stuff is, what is the person's social

12:32environment? So, let's say that somebody is married to a woman who's like a super liberal,

12:42I mean, or super conservative, whatever. Somebody's married to a woman who's a super liberal,

12:46and most marriages, in most marriages, the women have a pretty significant say or sway or sometimes

12:53even sort of dictate or dominate the social interactions, right? They keep the social

12:57stuff alive, and it's a good thing, right? But women tend to do that kind of stuff, keep the social

13:02life humming and so on. And it's these sort of memes, like your wife says, please don't get into

13:09politics at dinner, please don't get into politics at dinner, right? Because she's taking the pulse of the

13:14social environment, and if you start talking about politics at dinner, let's say you're going to

13:18dinner with a bunch of liberals, and you're conservative, then, you know, your wife is

13:24going to be like, please don't bring that, please don't bring that stuff up, right? So, what is your

13:30social environment? Is your social environment dictating what you can or cannot talk about or

13:37discuss? Well, for most people, yes. Will you lose your job? Will you? And so, the job,

13:44the economic one is important, but sometimes even more important is, well, my boomer parents are

13:51super liberals, so I can't talk about any negative stuff. I can't have opinions that go against the

14:01social or economic grain that I'm in, right? Because if I do have those opinions, then I will

14:12lose my social life. My wife might divorce me. My kids are going to a super liberal college, right?

14:18I mean, I was a Victor Davis Hanson. Some of his kids married Hispanics, and there's some immediate

14:24family member for Charles Murray, who's an ethnic non-white, and so on. So, can they be objective

14:31about immigration? Maybe, maybe, but it's challenging, but it's challenging with regards to their

14:39social life. So, these are all really important and challenging questions. So, most obvious, political

14:49power, direct economic benefit, shielding and protection from free market, and stuff like that.

14:54That's pretty important. Secondarily is, uh, the social life. What are the consequences of coming

15:01out as, say, pro-Trump when you got a bunch of liberal hysterics around? Or, you know, it could

15:08be, it could be vice versa. What if you're, you were pro-Biden or pro-Kamala Harris, and you had a bunch

15:13of sort of, uh, MAGA folks? So, can you be objective and honest about that kind of stuff? So, it's bribery

15:22and punishments, right? Sticks and carrots, right? So, are you going to benefit from your perspective,

15:27or are you going to be punished, or viewed negatively, for your perspective? That's going

15:34to have a significant effect. Now, another one that's interesting is, are you physically competent?

15:44Are you physically competent? So, let's take an example of an old woman who,

15:52desperately needs her kids to take care of her. The old woman is pro-Trump, but her kids

15:59are pro-Democrat. And she's just really dependent upon the kids taking care of her. Can she be

16:09objective and honest about her political beliefs? Let's say, to sort of reverse it, let's say that

16:17the old woman is a staunch liberal, and she's very wealthy. And her, one of her kids is pro-Trump,

16:26and the old woman considers Trump the Antichrist, right? Trump is sort of a big measure of objectivity.

16:32So, her son is pro-Trump. She herself is fanatically pro-liberal, and she's got a lot of money.

16:40Is he free to talk about his political arguments or perspectives if he's concerned that she's going

16:49to write him out of the will? And maybe she openly says that, like, I'm not going to give a penny

16:54to any pro-MAGA, pro-Trump fascist, whatever, right? I'd rather set fire to the money in the living

17:01room than give it to any kids who are pro-evil orange man bad Trump, right? So, can he be honest?

17:09Another thing, of course, is that has he built up an audience? In other words, his sort of pay

17:14and income is not coming from, necessarily, the government directly, but has he built up an

17:19audience, audience capture, right? Has he built up an audience that pays his bills, that only pays his

17:29bills because he has a particular argument or perspective? So, let's say he gets, I don't know,

17:3710 grand a month from his audience because he's super liberal. Can he reverse that at all?

17:46Can he say, you know what, I've looked into X, Y, and Z, and I've realized that Trump and the

17:54conservatives have a point about this, that, and the other, right? That's another thing. It's pretty

17:59tough to reverse. You've got to cross that desert, right? It's funny because the left seems to welcome

18:05converts a lot more than the right does because the right is more suspicious of manipulation.

18:11Baby, I've changed. Because the left is female-coded, right? So, that's another issue you have to think

18:18about. Of course, another issue you have to think about is guilt, is a bad conscience. So, I mean,

18:24a typical example would be, I am making the arguments against spanking, and somebody has spent many,

18:34many years hitting their children. Can that person be objective? They cannot. Because if it turns out

18:43that they're wrong, are they willing to publicly reverse their position? I can think of very few

18:50instances in my life, and almost none in my public life, where I have debated someone, and that person

19:00has lost the debate, and after losing the debate, they say, you make a great point. I've actually moved

19:06over to your position, and I have forsworn my former position, and you're in the right, right? That hasn't

19:13happened. The other thing, too, is, has the person been a dickwad? Also important. So, I think about the

19:22people who have, I'm thinking, sort of rationality rules, was one of them, or other people, who have been

19:28publicly contemptuous and scornful of me. John Balfour is another professor, who has been sort of very publicly

19:37scornful of me, and then he calls in, and after I got through his hysterical ad hominems, we had a pretty

19:45productive conversation about UPB. And he seemed to accept a few things about UPB in the moment, but of

19:53course, you have to, you have to wait, right? You have to wait for quite some time to find out if

20:00somebody actually changed their mind, or if that person is simply sort of stunned in the moment, and

20:05that's happened quite a bit, or someone stunned in the moment, and they're like, yeah, I can't argue

20:09against that, but then their ex post facto self-justifications kick in, and they end up

20:15going back to their former position. And this is exactly what happened to John Balfour, that

20:19he sort of went back to taking these snarky, smarmy shots at me, and all of that kind of stuff, right?

20:25And it's like, okay, well, so, does the person have a bad conscience? So, if, and this is why it's,

20:32it's almost impossible to debate in good faith with people who've been, you know, petty, vicious,

20:37and insulting to you in public, because it takes an enormously big-hearted person with a great degree

20:44and commitment to integrity, great degree of, and commitment to integrity, if you've publicly

20:50called someone a fool, an idiot, and a moron, then how do you walk that back? How? Like, that's why

20:59people who come on punchy don't change their mind. You can't get any objective information about

21:06someone. If they've called you, you know, an absolute moron, an opposer, an esophist, like,

21:10whatever nonsense people say, right? They can't admit that they're wrong. To publicly apologize

21:16and retract is so rare, it's ridiculous. I mean, I tell you this from great personal experience,

21:25I'm 10 to 15 to 20 years ahead of the curve in general, which is kind of annoying,

21:30because there's really no benefit, right? But I'm sort of five, sorry, 10, 15, 20 years ahead of the

21:35curve. And how many people do you see who slagged me? How many people do you see turning around,

21:45coming back and saying, oh, you know, I really thought you were crazy. I thought you were bad.

21:49I thought you were wrong. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sorry. And you've made

21:55really good points. And I shouldn't have blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like all that kind of stuff,

21:59right? Well, people don't do it. They don't do it. They don't do it. So you can't get any objectivity

22:08from people who've been insulting and petty and so on, right? Now, another way in which

22:16people's subjectivity is proven is, does their perspective give them the view that they're a

22:26good person? I mean, this is particularly true with sort of the refugees and so on, like they're

22:33just looking for a better life. I'm a good person, people say, with regards to this topic. They say,

22:38I'm a good person because I support the right of the downtrodden to come to the West and seek a

22:45better life and, you know, all of this sort of stuff that people talk about. So they believe,

22:52deeply believe, that they are good people for wanting that and that if you question or oppose that,

22:59you are a bad person. So if people say, well, I'm happy to pay the government to feed

23:08hungry children. Let's just take that as a typical example from the left, right? So they say, I'm

23:14really happy. I'm thrilled that the government is taking my tax money and using it to feed the hungry,

23:21to give health care to the sick, to house the homeless and clothe the shivering and naked and blah, blah,

23:28blah, right? Yeah, I'm happy. I have compassion. I care. I don't want people to be sick. I don't want

23:35children to starve. I don't want people to be cold. I don't want any of this terrible stuff to happen.

23:42I'm a good person because I want the government to do this and I'm happy that the government does

23:48this. I have more than enough and if the government takes a bunch of my income and uses it to, you know,

23:55help and house and heal and, right, and feed, then that's a good thing. I'm a good person. You know,

24:01the sort of typical example. I like the children of poor people to be educated, so I'm super happy

24:07to pay for the government to have public schools. It's better for society. It's good for society.

24:13I don't want a bunch of uneducated people running around, blah, blah, blah. So if the person genuinely

24:19believes that he is his perspective or often her perspective makes her a good person and their

24:28moral ego and identity is wrapped up in this perspective is the good, nice perspective and

24:36anyone who opposes this good, nice perspective is a bad, mean, selfish person who wants the poor

24:45children to starve and the sick to die in the streets and the homeless to shiver over subway

24:49grates in sub-zero temperatures, like all of this sort of stuff. Well, then you can't get anything

24:54objective because the ego has now been bound and wrapped up into the virtue of the position

25:02and personally, it's very rare. I mean, I guess Dr. Thomas Sowell talks about having started out as

25:10a Marxist and becoming a free market guy over time and, of course, I've talked about I started off

25:19as a socialist and so on, but it was not heavily invested, nor was it a fundamentally public

25:29position. I wasn't, I mean, I was a socialist when I was like 12. I suppose it was about 15 when I

25:34became a capitalist. So I didn't have a sort of big career out of it. Obviously, I had no career out

25:40of it. I didn't have the sort of big positions or anything like that, big public positions. So the way

25:47that I view people as a whole is there are so many forces that keep people boxed into an ideological

25:59position that it's barely worth debating with anybody because all people do is get upset and

26:06offended. In other words, we're social animals and the price of social life is conformity for the most

26:14part, right? The price of social life is conformity. So why would people want to repeat stuff that's

26:26false? Because that's the price of having a social life. That's the price of having a tribe. A tribe is

26:32people bound together by their delusions masquerading as truth and virtue, right? Their delusions and

26:39conformity masquerading as truth and virtue. And that's the price. Now we can only survive with the

26:44support, or at least how we evolved is we can only survive with the support of others. And the price

26:51of that support from others is almost inevitably believing things that are false. That is just the

26:59way it goes, man. So wait, please, man. Do it, please, man.

27:03But people don't like to know this about themselves. People don't like to think, gee, if I think that

27:11there's anything positive that Donald Trump did, then my friends will all call me a MAGA Nazi and dump

27:19me. And then I've got to go and try and figure out how to make friends with these MAGA people. And I

27:25disagree with other things. So people don't want to say, I don't have beliefs. I give up my integrity in

27:32return for social capital, right? For social reciprocity, for social goodness, for having

27:38someplace to go Friday, Saturday night, for having people who call me up and ask me how I'm doing,

27:42and maybe bring me some chicken soup if I'm sick. I give up my integrity, my honor, my free will,

27:49and my virtue for the sake of social approval. And social approval sounds like some, you know,

27:57I mean, it takes on Rand to think that social approval is in general a bad thing. It's just a

28:02survival thing, right? We could not always take care of our own children. We could not guard

28:07ourselves at night. We could not provide everything that we needed in order to survive. And so,

28:15therefore, we had to have people who approved of us. And if people disapproved of us, we could not

28:22survive. So we had to surrender our free will and our autonomy and so on in order to survive. And that's

28:30how we lived. That's how we got to where we are. I mean, we have these giant complex brains,

28:36of course. And the giant complex brains are social constructs. We need each other in order to maintain

28:44the size of our brains. Or to put it another way, our brains are both primed for truth and for

28:49delusion. They're primed for truth in order to survive in the world, and they're primed for delusion

28:54in order to survive within society. So people don't have beliefs. They have conformities and

29:02subjugations masquerading as independence, integrity, and virtue. And that's really all that's

29:09going on. You're not talking to people who've thought things through. You're not talking to people

29:13who've got reason and evidence. You're talking to people who have two perspectives.

29:19Hello. I'm Jess Thompson. Do you need anything from out here? I'm very happy to go get a Tim's for

29:29you, Dev. Oh, there's no single serve here, is there? Oh, a Tim's. I mean, it'll be a few extra

29:39minutes, but I'm happy to go get it. You're welcome. Do you want anything else from Tim's?

29:44Okay, I will get Tim's. You sure you don't want a donut or anything? For later? Tomorrow?

29:49No, I'll get a fresh one tomorrow. Okay. All right. I love you. Bye.

29:55So with regards to objectivity, if you want to achieve objectivity, you have to be willing to

30:02surrender everything. You have to be willing. It doesn't mean you have to, but you have to be

30:07willing to do it. You have to be willing to surrender money, fame, audience. You have to be

30:13willing to surrender relationships. You have to be willing to surrender family. You have to be willing

30:18to surrender your ego. You have to be willing to surrender your credibility with people because,

30:24you know, once you have a big reversal of position, people can always say,

30:27oh, just like you were certain of things before, but you're not certain of them now, right? Oh,

30:33you were certain of this before. Now you've changed your mind. Why should I believe you want

30:36anything, right? So people will do that in order to herd you back. And people's fear of that is what

30:40herds them back into, um, this sort of conformity and so on. So you have to be willing to burn things

30:48down, to let everyone and everything go in order to get to the truth. Sorry, one thing I started on

30:56and then I drifted away from was physical competency. So I look for people who exercise and you don't have

31:03to be some big bulky guy. Lord knows I'm not, but you do have to have physical competence. I look,

31:10I look for people who've done physical labor. I look for people who have played sports, particularly

31:15social sports, particularly social and competitive sports. I look for all of those people and I

31:21certainly do look for physical strength. I, that's a, it's an old meme, but a true one that if you are

31:26physically weak, you are primed for consensus, you're not primed for independent thought.

31:35So it is these things that I look for with the recognition that very few people are willing to

31:42burn down their entire social sphere and their, you know, harm their educational, economic, um, political

31:51perhaps, and career opportunities that very few people are willing to do that or willing to risk

31:57that, I suppose. And I'm not even complaining about that. I'm not saying, Oh, it's terrible.

32:02And everybody should, you know, burn down all of their social relationships in order to get to the

32:06truth. Uh, I don't know. That's like sort of like saying that, uh, every, uh, every cell in your body

32:12should mutate at once. It's like, no, I don't, I don't necessarily think that that's a great thing.

32:16If everybody just burnt down all their social, well, of course, if everyone did it, then everyone's

32:21social arrangements would reform almost instantly because people would get to the truth and they

32:25would then be able to enjoy and enhance that truth within their personal relationships. But,

32:31uh, people as a whole just conform and they bork, they comply, they line up like a bunch of

32:39Roman soldiers, right? I'm not complaining about that. I'm simply pointing it out as a fact.

32:47And it stings their vanity when people think that they're good and they think when they're not good

32:53and they don't think they just comply and conform and praise themselves as virtuous. People's egos

32:59really, really can't handle the presence of actual virtue. You know, it's like the sort of

33:06small town pompous know-it-all when somebody really knowledgeable comes along, they, uh, they get

33:13touchy, they get annoyed, right? So all of that sort of bundled together, uh, tells you that

33:22very, very few people are going to be willing to pursue the truth no matter what. And because of

33:31that rarity, now you can find each other more through the internet than before, but because of

33:36that rarity, most people don't like coming in contact with those actually in pursuit of the

33:42truth because their own unthinking conformity masquerading as independence and truth, their

33:49own unthinking conformity is revealed by the presence of actual thought. The sort of Salieri

33:55thing, right? The people who think they can almost always automatically resent those who actually

34:03can. The people who praise themselves are humbled and therefore angered by people who, through their

34:11actual humility, do real good in the world. The sophists are annoyed by the philosophers. That's

34:18sort of natural. And of course, the point is to plant the seeds of people who are getting along

34:26and doing well and thinking clearly and being rational to plant those seeds, particularly in

34:31family and social life, which is why I focus on the family, not just on sort of abstract

34:35philosophy so that there can be a group or a community of people who can begin to truly

34:43create the first social group. Conformity and self-subjugation is not a good social group. It's

34:51not a fun or productive social group. And it's certainly not honest or honorable. So, through this

35:00conversation, through what we're doing here, the truth has finally been arrived at in terms of ethics,

35:04in particular. So, people can actually have a social life that is bound up with actual truth,

35:15reason, reality, objectivity, and virtue. So, we can have a human community of deep individualism

35:23and rationality for the first time, really, in human history. And that's a wonderful thing. It's a new

35:29world. It's a new world. So, those are sort of my thoughts on objectivity and the barriers

35:34to it. If you have thoughts, you disagree, of course, yeah, please feel free to spark up my

35:41thought with opposition. And I really appreciate that kind of pushback. And freedomany.com slash

35:47to help out the show. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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