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. Do humans even have the ability

00:18to think and philosophize with absolutely zero anthropomorphic bias? The more I discuss philosophy

00:24with AI, the more of my own anthropomorphic bias I find in my own arguments. This can serve to

00:30invalidate or, at the very least, undermine much of our philosophical ideas. So, it's a great question

00:38to do with bias, of course. How do we know if we are reasoning in good faith, or how do we know

00:46if we're biased? Now, of course, the easy answer is, hey, just try and figure out

00:53whether you've committed a logical fallacy, right? But, you know, we can't spend our entire lives

01:00examining everything we've said, or will say, or do say, running it through some sort of perfect

01:06rational checker. I mean, obviously, we strive for reason, and we like to be corrected with regards

01:11to reason. But there's a bunch of stuff that you can do ahead of time that is going to be very

01:16helpful on figuring out your biases and other people's biases. So, I had a call the other day.

01:23I did sort of a spot live stream, and I had a call with a young man. He was 29, no job, no girlfriend,

01:30lived in his parents' basement. Like, you know, really a bit of a sad situation. And I said to him,

01:35are you willing to criticize your own parents? And he said no. And that's fine, right? I mean,

01:41obviously, it's all free will. It's all a choice. You don't have to do any of that if you don't really

01:48want to. I'm not going to impose that. You know, if somebody's overweight, and you say,

01:53are you willing to diet and exercise? And they say, no. Then it's like, okay, well, then,

02:01you're going to have to live with being overweight if you don't want to take, right? If you refuse a

02:07treatment, you continue usually with the ailment, which is fine. But obviously, it wasn't that young

02:14man who would be harmed in the long run by criticizing his parents. It was his parents who

02:20would be harmed in the short run, and maybe the long run, who knows, by being criticized, right?

02:26So, when a man is Bob, let's use Bob. When Bob is examining his own ideas, what is true? How do I

02:39know that what I believe or advocate for is true? So, there's a couple of things that I go through

02:46when I'm trying to evaluate what I know. The first, of course, is, have I experienced it directly,

02:53or have I just been told this? That's a pretty important question, right? Have I been told this,

03:01or have I directly experienced this? Now, of course, history, to a large degree, is what you're

03:06told. I mean, there are eyewitness events, and there are eyewitness testimonies, and so on. We

03:10can't go back and directly experience history. So, it is told, but, you know, there may be videos,

03:15there may be, you know, some contemporaneous events from people who don't have a dog in the fight,

03:21so to speak, who don't have a bias, or at least much of a bias. So, there's stuff that we can get

03:25from history. I'm not sort of a radical, subjectivist, or relativist, or nihilist that

03:28way. But all history has gone through the machinery of power. So, history is portrayed in a way that

03:40serves power, right? So, everyone who says, oh, well, without the government, there's no way we could

03:45resolve disputes, and it would be a war of all against all, and so on. There would be nature

03:51red in tooth and claw. Well, I mean, why is that allowed to be taught? Well, because it serves

03:57people in power. It serves the government. It serves politicians. It serves the powers that be.

04:03And so, most of what, and certainly through government schools and government-protected

04:09and sponsored universities, the reality, of course, is that everything that you are taught

04:15is allowed to be taught. And we've seen how brutally, even in a relatively free expression

04:22environment like the internet, we've seen how brutally information that goes against the needs

04:30and preferences of those in power can be suppressed. There's arrests, there's lawfare,

04:37there's deplatforming, debanking, right? You know, all of this, right? So, we've seen how brutally

04:45information that goes against the needs and preferences of those in power is suppressed. And

04:52therefore, by definition, everything that remains is needed, right? If you've ever seen someone make

05:01a dress, then they cut away the fabric that's not part of the pattern, right? So, everything they

05:07discard is not needed for the dress. Everything they keep is needed for the dress. If you've seen

05:11people, bakers, right? They make these pies, and then they'll trim around the outside of the pie to

05:16take off the excess crust. Maybe they'll nibble on it, maybe they'll throw it away. But everything

05:21that is not needed for the pie is discarded. Therefore, everything that remains is needed for the pie.

05:26So, that's a basic reality of the world. So, that which is allowed to be taught is helpful to those

05:35in power. And everything that is inconvenient to those in power is suppressed, destroyed, removed,

05:43censored, and so on, right? So, what is the perspective of those in power for the information

05:53that I have received? What is the perspective of those in power towards the information that I have

06:00received? So, it's sort of a well-known trope or kind of cliche that groups on the left are fiercely

06:07protected by those politicians. It doesn't really happen. So, on the right, people are universalists,

06:13so they don't tend to favor their own group. On the left, people tend to be relativists,

06:18and they do favor their own group, their own groups, right? So, all the groups that are reliable

06:25voting blocks or sources for the left are protected. And that is to say that the narrative around those

06:34people are always going to be promoted as positive. The immigrants, you know, who vote for the left,

06:39who are hardworking and hard done by and so on. And all of the people who are not voting for the left,

06:47in general, like white males, those people are, you know, racists and bigots and Nazis.

06:52Like, so, they protect their own and they attack those who vote against them. So, because politics

06:59is sort of all-powerful, everything is so colored by politics because politicians and the government

07:06are so powerful that you have to ask, what is the perspective of what I think I know? What is the

07:14perspective on that information by those in power? Are they for it or are they against it?

07:19Now, that's sort of important, right? So, you'll see lots of movies, of course, coming out

07:25from Hollywood about Nazis and Nazism and so on, and not about the evils of communism,

07:33because they tend to be a pro-socialist and communist and they tend to be anti, they're pro-international

07:41socialism and they're anti-national socialism. So, what is the perspective or preference of those

07:49in power? And power doesn't just mean political power. It could also be in control of the sort of

07:53major organs of propaganda dissemination. I mean, if you read Pravda, who was the Soviet newspaper,

08:00meant truth. If you read Pravda, right, under the communist regime, you don't expect it to be

08:06objective because it's run and controlled by those in power. So, it's going to tell you how great

08:12socialism is, how evil capitalism is, how great the workers are, how evil bourgeois landowners and

08:19particularly the petit bourgeois are and so on, the evil capitalists. So, you don't expect it to be.

08:24It's advertising, right? I mean, if you're evaluating whether a Coca-Cola is a good thing

08:32and you watch a bunch of ads about Coca-Cola, you know that the ads are paid for to promote

08:39Coca-Cola as a, you know, fun fizzy drink that makes people's clothes fly off and get abs, even

08:46though it's sugar water. So, if you're talking to an advertising company that gets 90% of its revenues

08:52from Coca-Cola, it's not going to be neutral about Coca-Cola. It's kind of bought and paid for.

08:59If a particular institution is paid, controlled, protected, or shielded from significant competition

09:06by the state, well, then, of course, they're not going to be neutral. They're going to be

09:13pro-socialist because they're a socialist entity, and they're going to be anti-capitalist because

09:19they don't want to be subject to the strictures of the free market. It's kind of inevitable, right?

09:25So, what is the source? Is it compromised? Is it controlled? Who's paying the bills? If you see

09:32an advertisement for a particular politician, and it's sponsored by that politician, then you know

09:39it's not going to be objective. It's going to be, you know, pro that politician, right? And it's going

09:45to be an advertisement, right? People who want dates don't put their ugliest pictures on Hinge or Bumble

09:51or Many Fish or whatever they're using. Now, if, I mean, as the old saying goes, it's very hard to get

09:58a man to believe something or accept something when his paycheck requires that he neither believe nor

10:03accept it. So, is it compromised by power? Is it compromised by a paycheck? Is it compromised by

10:11protection, right? If you're being protected from the free market, are you going to be objective

10:16about the free market? If you feel or believe you wouldn't survive in the free market, then you're

10:22going to be hostile to the free market. If you get particular benefits, you know, like tenure and

10:30four months off of the summer, and every fifth or fourth year, you can go have a nice sabbatical

10:34someplace sunny and write a book that no one's going to read. You only have to work 10, 15 hours a week,

10:39and you get paid $200,000 a year, like a university professor, right? That's not, that's not free

10:43market wages, right? And so, yeah, of course, you're going to be not objective about these things. In

10:50fact, it's really hard to accept that anyone has access to the truth if they are compromised, right?

11:00The CEO of a particular company, we accept and we understand that the CEO of any particular company

11:06is not going to be objective when reporting on or writing about that company, right? I mean, we financial

11:14writers who hold stakes in particular companies, let's say they have a bunch of shares in Apple, and they're

11:19writing about Apple's product launch, usually sort of professional ethics would dictate or require that

11:25they have to say, oh, by the way, I have a lot of stock in Apple, that kind of stuff, right? So, is the person

11:31paid? Does the person benefit from a powerful institution? Are they shielded from competition?

11:37Do they have job security? You know, a lot of people in government positions get 30 to 50% more

11:44salary and benefits or more, and plus job security. And so, are they going to be able to write or talk

11:51about or objectively, right? People in the educational system who are paid and protected by the state,

11:56right? So, but they're going to be interested in privatizing the educational system? Oh, probably

12:01not, right? I mean, they may make noises that way, but they won't do it. So, that's the more obvious

12:08stuff. Now, the less obvious stuff is, what is the person's social environment? So, let's say that

12:18somebody is married to a woman who's like a super liberal, I mean, or super conservative, whatever,

12:25somebody's married to a woman who's a super liberal, and in most marriages, the women have

12:30a pretty significant say or sway or sometimes even sort of dictate or dominate the social

12:36interactions, right? They keep the social stuff alive, and it's a good thing, but women tend

12:41to do that kind of stuff, keep the social life humming and so on. And it's these sort of memes,

12:48like your wife says, please don't get into politics at dinner, please don't get into politics at

12:51dinner, right? Because she's taking the pulse of the social environment, and if you start talking

12:56about politics at dinner, let's say you're going to dinner with a bunch of liberals and you're

13:02conservative, then, you know, your wife is going to be like, please don't bring that, please don't

13:07bring that stuff up, right? So, what is your social environment? Is your social environment

13:12dictating what you can or cannot talk about or discuss? Well, for most people, yes. Will you lose

13:21your job? Will you? And so, the job, the economic one is important, but sometimes even more important

13:27is, well, my boomer parents are super liberals, so I can't talk about any negative stuff. I can't have

13:36opinions that go against the social or economic grain that I'm in, right? Because if I do have

13:46those opinions, then I will lose my social life. My wife might divorce me. My kids are going to a

13:54super liberal college, right? I mean, I was a Victor Davis Hanson. Some of his kids married Hispanics,

13:59and there's some immediate family member for Charles Murray, who's an ethnic non-white and so

14:06on. So, can they be objective about immigration? Maybe, maybe, but it's challenging, but it's

14:14challenging with regards to their social life. So, these are all really important and challenging

14:22questions. So, most obvious, political power, direct economic benefit, shielding and protection from

14:29free market and stuff like that. That's pretty important. Secondarily is the social life. What

14:36are the consequences of coming out as, say, pro-Trump when you got a bunch of liberal hysterics

14:43around? Or, you know, it could be vice versa. What if you were pro-Biden or pro-Kamala Harris,

14:48and you had a bunch of sort of MAGA folks? So, can you be objective and honest about that kind

14:55of stuff? So, it's bribery and punishments, right? Sticks and carrots, right? So, are you going to

15:02benefit from your perspective, or are you going to be punished or viewed negatively for your perspective?

15:09That's going to have a significant effect. Now, another one that's interesting is, are you

15:16physically competent? Are you physically competent? So, let's take an example of an old woman who

15:26desperately needs her kids to take care of her. The old woman is pro-Trump, but her kids are

15:34pro-Democrat, and she's just really dependent upon the kids taking care of her. Can she be objective and

15:43honest about her political beliefs? Let's say, to sort of reverse it, let's say that the old woman

15:50is a staunch liberal, and she's very wealthy, and one of her kids is pro-Trump, and the old woman

16:00considers Trump the Antichrist, right? Trump is sort of the big measure of objectivity. So, her son

16:07is pro-Trump. She herself is fanatically pro-liberal, and she's got a lot of money. Is he free to talk

16:15about his political arguments or perspectives if he's concerned that she's going to write him out

16:23of the will? And maybe she openly says that, like, I'm not going to give a penny to any pro-MAGA,

16:29pro-Trump fascist, whatever, right? I'd rather set fire to the money in the living room than give it to

16:34any kids who are pro-evil orange man bad Trump, right? So, can he be honest? Another thing, of

16:41course, is that has he built up an audience? In other words, his sort of pay and income is not

16:47coming from necessarily the government directly, but has he built up an audience, an audience capture,

16:53right? Has he built up an audience that pays his bills, that only pays his bills because he has a

17:02particular argument or perspective? So, let's say he gets, I don't know, 10 grand a month from his

17:09audience because he's super liberal. Can he reverse that at all? Can he say, you know what, I've looked

17:19into X, Y, and Z, and I've realized that Trump and the conservatives have a point about this, that,

17:25and the other, right? That's another thing. It's pretty tough to reverse. You've got to cross that

17:30desert, right? It's funny because the left seems to welcome converts a lot more than the right does

17:36because the right is more suspicious of manipulation. Baby, I've changed because the left is female-coded,

17:42right? So, that's another issue you have to think about. Of course, another issue you have to think

17:49about is guilt, is a bad conscience. So, I mean, a typical example would be, I am making the arguments

17:57against spanking, and somebody has spent many, many years hitting their children. Can that person be

18:05objective? They cannot. Because if it turns out that they're wrong, are they willing to publicly reverse

18:13their position? I can think of very few instances in my life, and almost none in my public life,

18:22where I have debated someone, and that person has lost the debate, and after losing the debate, they say,

18:31you make a great point. I've actually moved over to your position, and I have forsworn my former position,

18:37and you're in the right, and right? That hasn't happened. The other thing, too, is, has the person been

18:43a dickwad? Also important. So, I think about the people who have, I'm thinking, sort of rationality

18:50rules was one of them, or other people, who have been publicly contemptuous and scornful of me.

18:58John Balfour is another professor who has been, sort of, very publicly scornful of me, and then

19:05he calls in, after I got through his hysterical ad hominems, we had a pretty productive conversation

19:12about UPB. And he seemed to accept a few things about UPB in the moment, but of course,

19:20you have to, you have to wait, right? You have to wait for quite some time to find out if somebody

19:25actually changed their mind, or if that person is simply, sort of, stunned in the moment, and that's

19:30happened quite a bit, or someone's stunned in the moment, and they're like, yeah, I can't argue

19:34against that, but then their ex post facto self-justifications kick in, and they end up

19:40going back to their former position. And this is exactly what happened to John Balfour, that

19:44he sort of went back to taking these snarky, smarmy shots at me, and all of that kind of

19:49stuff, right? And it's like, okay, well, so, does the person have a bad conscience? So, if, and this

19:56is why it's, it's almost impossible to debate in good faith with people who've been, you know,

20:01petty, vicious, and insulting to you in public, because it takes an enormously big-hearted

20:07person with a great degree and commitment to integrity, great degree of, and commitment

20:12to integrity, if you've publicly called someone a fool, an idiot, and a moron, then how do you

20:20walk that back? How? Like, that's why people who come on Punchy don't change their mind. You

20:27can't get any objective information about someone. If they've called you, you know, an

20:31absolute moron, an opposer, an esophist, like, whatever nonsense people say, right? They

20:36can't admit that they're wrong. To publicly apologize and retract is so rare, it's ridiculous.

20:45I mean, I tell you this from great personal experience, I'm 10 to 15 to 20 years ahead

20:50of the curve in general, which is kind of annoying, because there's really no benefit, right?

20:54But I'm sort of 5, sorry, 10, 15, 20 years ahead of the curve. And how many people do you see who

21:03slagged me? How many people do you see turning around, coming back and saying,

21:09oh, you know, I really thought you were crazy, I thought you were bad, I thought you were wrong,

21:13blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sorry, and you've made really good points, and I shouldn't have,

21:20blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like all that kind of stuff, right? Well, people don't do it. They

21:25don't do it. They don't do it. So you can't get any objectivity from people who've been

21:31insulting and petty and so on, right? Now, another way in which people's subjectivity is proven is,

21:41does their perspective give them the view that they're a good person? I mean, this is particularly

21:49true with sort of the refugees and so on, like they're just looking for a better life.

21:55I'm a good person, people say, with regards to this topic. They say, I'm a good person because

22:00I support the right of the downtrodden to come to the West and seek a better life and, you know,

22:06all of this sort of stuff that people talk about. So they believe, deeply believe, that they are good

22:13people for wanting that, and that if you question or oppose that, you are a bad person. So if people

22:23say, well, I'm happy to pay the government to feed hungry children, let's just take that as a typical

22:29example from the left, right? So they say, I'm really happy, I'm thrilled that the government is

22:35taking my tax money and using it to feed the hungry, to give health care to the sick, to house the homeless

22:43and clothe the shivering and naked and blah, blah, blah, right? Yeah, I'm happy. I have compassion. I care.

22:52I don't want people to be sick. I don't want children to starve. I don't want people to be cold. I don't want

22:58any of this terrible stuff to happen. I'm a good person because I want the government to do this,

23:05and I'm happy that the government does this. I have more than enough, and if the government takes

23:10a bunch of my income and uses it to, you know, help and house and heal and, right, and feed,

23:18then that's a good thing. I'm a good person. You know, the sort of typical example. I like the

23:22children of poor people to be educated, so I'm super happy to pay for the government to

23:28have public schools. It's better for society. It's good for society, and I don't want a bunch

23:33uneducated people running around, blah, blah, blah. So, if the person genuinely believes that he is

23:39his perspective, or often her perspective, makes her a good person, and their moral ego and identity

23:49is wrapped up in this perspective is the good, nice perspective, and anyone who opposes this good,

23:57nice perspective is a bad, mean, selfish person who wants the poor children to starve and the sick

24:04to die in the streets and the homeless to shiver over subway grates in sub-zero temperatures, like,

24:09all of this sort of stuff. Like, well, then you can't get anything objective because the ego has

24:14now been bound and wrapped up into the virtue of the position, and personally, it's very rare. I mean,

24:24Dr. Thomas Sowell talks about having started out as a Marxist and becoming a free market guy over

24:33time, and of course, I've talked about I started off as a socialist and so on, but it was not

24:42heavily invested, nor was it a fundamentally public position. I wasn't, I mean, I was a socialist when I

24:49was like 12. I suppose it was, I was about 15 when I became a capitalist, so I didn't have a sort of

24:55big career out of it. Obviously, I had no career out of it. I didn't have the sort of big positions

24:59or anything like that, I mean, big public positions. So, the way that I view people as a whole is

25:08there are so many forces that keep people boxed into an ideological position that it's barely worth

25:18debating with anybody, because all people do is get upset and offended. In other words,

25:25we're social animals, and the price of social life is conformity, for the most part, right? The price of

25:32social life is conformity. So, why would people want to repeat stuff that's false? Because that's

25:43the price of having a social life. That's the price of having a tribe. That's the price. A tribe is

25:48people bound together by their delusions masquerading as truth and virtue, right? Their

25:54delusions and conformity masquerading as truth and virtue, and that's the price. Now, we can only

25:58survive with the support, or at least how we evolved, is we can only survive with the support

26:03of others. And the price of that support from others is almost inevitably believing things that

26:12are false. That is just the way it goes, man. So, wait, please, man. Do it, please, man. But people

26:20don't like to know this about themselves. People don't like to think, gee, if I think that there's

26:26anything positive that Donald Trump did, then my friends will all call me a MAGA Nazi and dump me.

26:33And then I've got to go and try and figure out how to make friends with these MAGA people,

26:38and I disagree with other things. So, people don't want to say, I don't have beliefs.

26:44I give up my integrity in return for social capital, right? For social reciprocity, for social goodness,

26:52for having some place to go Friday, Saturday night, for having people who call me up and ask me how I'm

26:55doing and maybe bring me some chicken soup if I'm sick, I give up my integrity, my honor, my free

27:03will, and my virtue for the sake of social approval. And social approval sounds like some,

27:10you know, I mean, it takes Ayn Rand to think that social approval is, in general, a bad thing. It's

27:15just a survival thing, right? We could not always take care of our own children. We could not guard

27:20ourselves at night. We could not provide everything that we needed in order to survive. And so,

27:28therefore, we had to have people who approved of us. And if people disapproved of us, we could not

27:35survive. So, we had to surrender our free will and our autonomy and so on in order to survive. And that's

27:43how we lived. That's how we got to where we are. I mean, we have these giant complex brains, of course,

27:50and the giant complex brains are social constructs. We need each other in order to maintain the size of

27:57our brains. Or to put it another way, our brains are both primed for truth and for delusion. They're

28:03primed for truth in order to survive in the world, and they are primed for delusion in order to survive

28:08within society. So, people don't have beliefs. They have conformities and subjugations masquerading

28:17as independence, integrity, and virtue. And that's really all that's going on. You're not talking to

28:23people who've thought things through. You're not talking to people who've got reason and evidence.

28:28You're talking to people who have two perspectives. So, with regards to objectivity, if you want to

28:35achieve objectivity, you have to be willing to surrender everything. You have to be willing.

28:42It doesn't mean you have to, but you have to be willing to do it. You have to be willing to

28:46surrender money, fame, audience. You have to be willing to surrender relationships. You have to

28:53be willing to surrender family. You have to be willing to surrender your ego. You have to be willing

28:57to surrender your credibility with people because, you know, once you have a big reversal of position,

29:02people can always say, oh, just like you were certain of things before, but you're not certain

29:08of them now, right? Oh, you were certain of this before. Now you've changed your mind. Why should

29:12I believe you want anything? Right? So people will do that in order to herd you back. And

29:16people's fear of that is what herds them back into this sort of conformity and so on. So you

29:22have to be willing to burn things down, to let everyone and everything go in order to get to

29:29the truth. Sorry, one thing I started on and then I drifted away from was physical competency.

29:35So I look for people who exercise, and you don't have to be some big bulky guy. Lord knows I'm not.

29:42But you do have to have physical competence. I look for people who've done physical labor. I look for

29:48people who have played sports, particularly social sports, particularly social and competitive sports.

29:54I look for all of those people. And I certainly do look for physical strength. It's an

29:59old meme, but a true one, that if you are physically weak, you are primed for consensus. You're not

30:07primed for independent thought. So it is these things that I look for with the recognition that very few

30:15people are willing to burn down their entire social sphere and harm their educational, economic,

30:25political, perhaps, and career opportunities that very few people are willing to do that or willing

30:32to risk that, I suppose. And I'm not even complaining about that. I'm not saying, oh,

30:37it's terrible and everybody should, you know, burn down all of their social relationships in order to

30:41get to the truth. I don't know. That's sort of like saying that every cell in your body should

30:47mutate at once. It's like, no, I don't, I don't necessarily think that that's a great thing if

30:51everybody just burnt down all their social. Well, of course, if everyone did it, then everyone's social

30:56arrangements would reform almost instantly because people would get to the truth and they would then

31:00be able to enjoy and enhance that truth within their personal relationships. But people as a whole

31:08just conform and they bork, they comply, they line up like a bunch of Roman soldiers, right? I'm not

31:17complaining about that. I'm simply pointing it out as a fact. And it stings their vanity when people

31:23think that they're good and they think. When they're not good and they don't think, they just

31:29comply and conform and praise themselves as virtuous. People's egos really, really can't handle

31:36the presence of actual virtue. You know, it's like the sort of small town pompous know-it-all when

31:42somebody really knowledgeable comes along, they get touchy, they get annoyed, right? So all of that

31:51sort of bundled together tells you that very, very few people are going to be willing to pursue

31:59the truth no matter what. And because of that rarity, now you can find each other

32:05more through the internet than before. But because of that rarity, most people don't like coming in

32:12contact with those actually in pursuit of the truth because their own unthinking conformity

32:18masquerading as independence and truth, their own unthinking conformity is revealed by the presence

32:25of actual thought. The sort of Salieri thing, right? The people who think they can almost always

32:32automatically resent those who actually can. The people who praise themselves are humbled and

32:39therefore angered by people who, through their actual humility, do real good in the world. The

32:47sophists are annoyed by the philosophers. That's sort of natural. And of course, the point is to plant

32:52the seeds of people who are getting along and doing well and thinking clearly and being rational to

33:00plant those seeds, particularly in family and social life, which is why I focus on the family,

33:04not just on sort of abstract philosophy, so that there can be a group or a community of people

33:11who can begin to truly create the first social group. Conformity and self-subjugation is not

33:18a good social group. It's not a fun or productive social group. And it's certainly not honest or honorable.

33:25So, through this conversation, through what we're doing here, the truth has finally been arrived at

33:32in terms of ethics in particular. So, people can actually have a social life that is bound up with

33:41actual truth, reason, reality, objectivity, and virtue. So, we can have a human community of

33:49deep individualism and rationality for the first time, really, in human history. And that's a

33:56wonderful thing. It's a new world. It's a new world. So, those are sort of my thoughts on objectivity

34:01and the barriers to it. If you have thoughts, you disagree, of course, yeah, please feel free to

34:08spark up my thought with opposition. And I really appreciate that kind of pushback.

34:13I have freedoma.com to help out the show. Lots of love from up here, my friends. I'll talk to you

34:19soon. Bye.

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