Dog Bit My Daughter! X Space

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux's 6 May 2026 Wednesday Night Live discusses Bitcoin IP clashes, Chinese education frauds, COVID student traps and caller parenting-honesty rifts to confront unbreakable truths.  0:00:00 The State of Higher Education  0:03:39 The Future of Universities  0:06:28 The Value of a Degree  0:14:48 The Propaganda of Education  0:20:08 Open Discussion with Richard  0:21:52 Reflections on Debate Experiences  0:27:26 The Importance of Shared Definitions  0:32:17 Empathy in Conversations  0:35:32 A Real-World Moral Dilemma  0:45:25 Dog Bite Dilemma  0:47:39 The Decision to Tell the Truth  0:50:53 Responsibility and Consequences  0:53:13 Understanding the Dog's Behavior  0:57:22 Navigating Child Trauma  0:59:32 Supporting a Child's Recovery  1:09:44 Mending Relationships After Tragedy  1:13:43 Shifting Towards Difficult Topics  1:26:14 The Challenge of Countering Narratives   GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  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

00:00:00All right. All right. Good evening. Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well.

00:00:05Stefan von Molyneux from Freedomain. You know the place. Freedomain.com slash donate.

00:00:13Had a great interview today with BTC or Bitcoin Sessions. Got into a very good and I think

00:00:19productive debate about intellectual property. And of course, I'll put the audio out to donors

00:00:25soon, but it should be out next week. It was a very good conversation, very good debate.

00:00:34And I had some reasonably good jokes. That's really what it's all about. Try and get the

00:00:40comedy in there. Wedge it in like a virgin's first sideswipe. So I'll be having a great

00:00:47day, evening, and so on. And Richard, I see you. Give me just a sec.

00:00:54Look, I wanted to mention about university. So there was a 23-year-old, I think he was

00:01:03in China or something like that, at a graduation ceremony for his university. He held up his

00:01:08notebook, his laptop, and he was talking all about, or he was chanting about how it was

00:01:15basically ChatGPT that got him through all of this. And it went viral. And I think within

00:01:23two hours, his university degree had been revoked. It was Ixnade, given the deep six,

00:01:32as far as grades go, he got the goose egg, the big O, the donut, the nothing, and all of

00:01:38that. So interesting, wouldn't you say? I think so. I think interesting. Now, the question

00:01:47then becomes, how do we do higher education in the absence of, well, in the absence of

00:01:55any kind of integrity? And of course, kids are all taught how to cheat through the process

00:02:00of COVID, right? Through being at home and being on camera and so on. And of course, society

00:02:07has yet to apologize for the effect that COVID had on children, stripping them of a year or two

00:02:13or more of, you know, pretty essential and necessary teenage experiences, right? You kind of need to

00:02:21go to prom, go to dances, go to parties, hang out, do stuff, date and mate and vape and I

00:02:29don't know

00:02:30whatever's going on these days. For the young, you kind of need that. All of that was taken away.

00:02:37And for what? For what? As it turns out, the vaccine was never even tested to see

00:02:43if it stopped transmission. So all of that was largely nonsense. But of course, society is not

00:02:53apologizing to the kids for the teachers' unions, propagandizing them. Society is not apologizing to

00:02:58kids for putting them on uppers because they're bored in school. Society is not apologizing to kids

00:03:05for the hellscape vampiric predation of all retirement benefits in the Western world.

00:03:13All that retirement money is gone. The boomers won't take responsibility for that.

00:03:19And so, well, they just keep on ticking. Keep on ticking. Just keep ticking. Just keep ticking.

00:03:28Like Dory. Dory the Explorer. No, Dory, not Dory the Explorer. I still remember that three chant.

00:03:33My daughter watched one when she was a little. Bridge. Rock. Waterfall. Bridge. Rock. Waterfall.

00:03:39So what's going to happen with university? That's a big question, right? It's a big,

00:03:44interesting, and important question. What's going to happen to universities? Of course,

00:03:47the answer would be, why do we even need them? Why do we even need them? I mean, all of

00:03:56the most

00:03:57famous lectures, virtually almost all of the most famous lectures from the biggest universities in the

00:04:04world are all online. They're all online. And you can, of course, get ChatGPT, or I'm a big fan of

00:04:15Grok, of course, because Grokipedia is not a rising wheel bag of slander, weasel bag of slander, like some

00:04:22other sites I could mention. But you could get the videos. You could watch the videos. AI can design an

00:04:30entire tutoring and Q&A and all of that. I mean, you can teach yourself. You can get together with

00:04:37other people. And you can get all of their feedback and perspective. Get together with study groups. I

00:04:45mean, that's a lot of what happened when I was in university anyways. You get together with study

00:04:50groups. For me, the standard, of course, is where were the most attractive females? But, you know,

00:04:56I'm sure there were some other considerations there as well. I just can't quite remember them

00:04:59in my approaching dotage. Approaching? Yeah, approaching. Let's say approaching. Yeah,

00:05:05let's be nice. So, you can watch the videos. Grok can design for you a study plan. And

00:05:15bipso, bapso, bopso, you are away to the races. And you can do your education. Now, of course,

00:05:21eventually, how do you solve that problem of cheating? Well, you have in-person exams,

00:05:30proctored, properly proctored, you have in-person exams, and extensive Q&As from an expert panel.

00:05:39Am I wrong? I think not. Well, I mean, that's how you would design things from the ground up.

00:05:45And, of course, the way modern society, well, most societies throughout history,

00:05:48the way they work is they don't design things from the ground up. All they do is we inherit

00:05:58what idiot bureaucrats in the government inflicted on the prior generation. We inherit that.

00:06:03And we call it society, which is like inheriting a volcano and calling it a sculpture.

00:06:13So, we inherit all of this stuff. And, of course, universities have a fair amount of credibility

00:06:22because they used to be really good, right? Only the top 10% of people went to university.

00:06:28You had to be pretty smart to get in. It was for people who really loved knowledge, cared about

00:06:34knowledge. I mean, I remember when I went to university, I started working on essays the

00:06:39moment that they were assigned. I was there, man. I was hungry to be there. I'd spent

00:06:42a year and a half working manual labor. Up north, gold panning, prospecting, blazing trails, man.

00:06:48I was ready. Better get me some learn on. I was keen. I was down. I wanted it bad.

00:06:57I wanted it, Anastasia Steele, bad. And everybody's like, what are you starting now for, man? You got

00:07:04weeks. It's a month or two. Relax. Learn how to have fun. So, yeah, of course, you should watch these

00:07:12lectures. AI can teach you stuff. And you can get Q&As of these things, as you should. And you

00:07:24should

00:07:24get the degree by finishing a proctored exam and answering a bunch of oral questions, not just for

00:07:32dentistry school or OnlyFans, but in fact, for any field you care to study in. Now, why can't they do

00:07:38that? Well, it's pretty clear as to why they can't do that. They can't do that because it's a Lucille

00:07:52Ball chocolate line assembly rolling carpet of money making. Get them in, get them out. I remember

00:08:01I went to go and visit a friend of mine who was taking intro to psych at York University. It's

00:08:07back

00:08:08in the early 90s, I guess. Late 80s, early 90s. I don't know. It's all a blur. But I went

00:08:13to go and

00:08:13visit a friend of mine. She was taking intro to psych. And people said, well, you can't learn from

00:08:19screens. It's like, well, there were, I think, over a thousand people in that class. It was a little

00:08:27estrogen heavy, just a smidge. And there were spillover classrooms. Half the students couldn't

00:08:34fit in the auditorium. They were just in spillover classrooms watching the screen, right? There was

00:08:40a little TV and you just watched the lecturer in a different room. So you're just watching the

00:08:44screen anyway, for the most part. And it's not like you can have much interaction with a thousand

00:08:47students. So you've got all these half serfs, half slaves, TAs doing all the grunt work and

00:08:53interacting with the students. That's a thousand to one teacher to student ratio. Nobody's learning

00:09:01anything from the teacher. He's just, he's just yammering. He's just, as my daughter would say,

00:09:06he's just yapping. He's just saying stuff. Sure. Why not? But they get the flow through, right?

00:09:14They get the flow through. They get a million dollars, $10 million, $100 million. The government

00:09:24gets to put people in debt. I mean, fantastic. You know, it's one thing to be in North Korea and

00:09:29to

00:09:29be indoctrinated. It's another thing to be indoctrinated into going into debt to pay for

00:09:33your own indoctrination that makes you economically useless. I'm so indoctrinated, I pay for my own

00:09:40indoctrination. My own indoctrination leaves me so economically useless that I have no choice

00:09:46but to try and get a job indoctrinating others, right? It's like this old meme about this woman was

00:09:54talking about her, her boyfriend got a degree in Egyptology, a PhD in Egyptology. And she's like,

00:10:02well, what can you do with that? And he's like, well, my, my best shot, my best shot is to

00:10:10go and

00:10:11try and get a job teaching other people Egyptology. It's kind of like a Ponzi scheme, except the

00:10:18taxpayers. Get it in the B hand, in the B hand. So, you know, they need crazy high student to

00:10:29teacher

00:10:30ratios. They need to bribe professors with a life of leisure, 200 grand, 10 hours a week,

00:10:39summers off, four months. Every fifth year, you go on a sabbatical to some place where you can get

00:10:45propaganda between your ears and sand between your toes. I'm going to go write a bookie book,

00:10:52a little book. Nobody will read it, but it sure beats working for a living. And when universities

00:11:02used to have all of this prestige, because they used to produce intelligent people, it takes a while

00:11:12to bleed that off, right? It takes a while to bleed that away. It takes two generations or more

00:11:17sometimes for people to notice, hey, that's interesting. It used to be that coming from this

00:11:24university meant you were smart. Now, it just means you're willing to go into debt and have your

00:11:32ethnic representatives threaten lawsuits. Oh, look at that. It takes a little while.

00:11:37Well, it takes a little while. So, of course, it should all change. It's not going to change.

00:11:45Too much power is embedded. Too little choice is available. Too little truth can be told.

00:11:52I mean, I remember, boy, this is way back in the day. I remember when I first began talking,

00:11:59like this is over 20 years ago, about how the value of a university education

00:12:03was going way below the sub-basement. It's like that when I was in my early teens, a friend of

00:12:10mine's father was an engineer, and he was a really great guy, a really great guy. And he would have

00:12:15these interesting questions or comments over dinner. And he gave us one that I remember,

00:12:22yay verily to this day. He said, hey, if you drill a hole all the way through the earth and

00:12:27you jump in,

00:12:28what happens? And of course, most of us thought it was kind of like a yo-yo, right? You go

00:12:33down past

00:12:34the center, you go back up, down, back up, and then you end up just sitting in the middle. But

00:12:40it's a

00:12:41bungee process, right? Boing, boing, boing. And he said, that is incorrect. He said, what happens is

00:12:48you fall and you slow. And as you slow, you come to rest, more or less, you know, there's a

00:12:56little

00:12:56bit of seesawing, but more or less in the center of the earth. Why? Because, of course, as you fall

00:13:02down through the hole, and you get closer to the center of the earth, more mass is now above you

00:13:08than

00:13:08below, more mass is above you, not than below you, that's, it's equidistant in the middle. But as you

00:13:14fall down, more mass accumulates above you. And so your descent slows. I still can't use that word

00:13:22without thinking about that vomit-inducing 3D game from the 90s, 80s. One of the first games I

00:13:29remember playing, I think it was Descent 3, where they actually had rain effects on the window of

00:13:33the little spaceship. It's kind of cool. And so the reputation of universities is going to go down

00:13:41like somebody jumping in a hole that goes all the way to the center of the earth. It's going to

00:13:44go

00:13:45down, down, down. It's already down. And I remember getting these letters from parents of people who

00:13:51listened to my show who were like 18, 19, and they were thinking of university, and I was making

00:13:56the case against universities. Now, I'm fine with universities if you have a specific degree that

00:14:02you have to take in order to do what you want. You want to be a lawyer, you've got to

00:14:06do that. You

00:14:06want to be a doctor, you want to be an engineer, these kinds of things, an accountant seems like. So

00:14:13you have to take education for that. But political science, English degree, communications,

00:14:24history. I mean, history was bad enough when it was at least lies that serve your civilization.

00:14:32Now, history is composed of anti-truths designed to detonate your civilization, so you're actually

00:14:37participating in the demolition of your own society. In the past, at least you participated in

00:14:42the lies that kept it propped up. Now you are actively detonating the foundations. Seems like

00:14:49a pretty dishonorable thing or place to be and to do. And I would get these letters from these

00:14:55parents. How dare you? How dare you, some internet guy? You terrible internet guy. T-I-G. How dare you

00:15:05talk my kid out of going to university? It's his only chance to succeed. Now, I mean, I'm just making

00:15:11the case. Obviously, I don't tell people what to do, but I think more information is best.

00:15:14And to me, it always came across like, how dare you? After my child has received 15 years of

00:15:23propaganda about the value of university, how dare you? Give them 45 minutes of counter-propaganda.

00:15:33How dare you? And there was a great line from an old movie with Michael J. Fox. Oh, yes. Blurred

00:15:46Lines. That was the name of the song I couldn't remember in the interview today. It came to me

00:15:50right at the end of the interview. I felt it would be better to go back. So here, before the

00:15:54interview's

00:15:54even out, I'm saying Blurred Lines. It's the name of the interview. Now, I mean, name of the song I

00:16:00was

00:16:00trying to think of in the interview. And in the Michael J. Fox movie, he's trying to get a job.

00:16:07And some guys, like, he tries to tell the guy who's thinking of hiring about his education,

00:16:13his own education, Michael J. Fox character. And guy says, I don't care about that. He's like,

00:16:20well, what was the point of me getting this history degree or poli sci degree or communications degree

00:16:25or English degree? And the guy was, like, shrugged and said, well, you had fun, didn't you? Ah, there it

00:16:30is. There it is. You had fun, didn't you? And the amniotic sack of script cafeteria belly button

00:16:41feeding of universities is all just bribing with hedonism. I remember being quite surprised when I

00:16:47went to university. And I only had, like, a couple of classes a week, five classes, seven classes a week.

00:16:53And, you know, for, like, how did I, how can I, how could I used to have seven hours of

00:16:58classes a day?

00:16:58Now I've got seven hours of classes a week. Ah, as the old saying goes, there's only so much you

00:17:04can

00:17:05learn about World War II at 8.30 a.m. through one bloodshot eyeball. And it's a lot of fun.

00:17:12It's a

00:17:12lot of hedonism. It's a lot of people sleeping around. It's a lot of people experimenting with drugs

00:17:17and alcohol and sleeping in and just bribing you, just bribing you, softening you up.

00:17:23Keeping you lazy, keeping you unmotivated. You're basically paying for a vacation with a book

00:17:30reporter to a party town with a couple of essays, at least in the arts. I know it's more difficult

00:17:38in engineering and comp sci, I think, is still pretty tough. And physics, of course, is the most

00:17:43brutal philosophy, number two. Physics is the highest IQ one. Philosophy, numero dos. But, you know, hey,

00:17:50at least physics comes up with answers that have utility. So, of course, university needs to be

00:17:57scrapped and rewritten from the ground up. But it won't be because parents are still judging university

00:18:04by what happened when they went to university in the same way that people judge government education

00:18:10by the standards of what government education was like when they were little. And government

00:18:16education, before, it was just boring, kind of irrelevant. I had a real droner of a teacher. I

00:18:23wrote about him in my short movie called After. It was about a comedian who comes home from the Second

00:18:29World War and the time between him returning with a huge degree of battle trauma and when he tells his

00:18:36first joke. And I remember when I screened that at the Hollywood Film Festival many a moon ago,

00:18:42an old guy came up to me absolutely bawling and sobbing and said that was exactly like my father

00:18:47was. That was exactly how my father was when he came home from the war. It was an amazing experience.

00:18:52But in the past, it was just boring. Now it's actively toxic. Actively toxic. You get privilege or

00:19:02unprivileged points. Are you privileged or are you victimed? Are you a white male? Number one,

00:19:10privilege. White female. Number two, privilege. Non-white male. Lowest privilege. No, non-white male.

00:19:19Next lowest. Non-white female. Lowest. And of course, that's all just to train people to be

00:19:28angry. So when the barriers of law go down, well, we can all know what's going to happen there. So

00:19:36when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can't think at

00:19:42all.

00:19:44And I think back on my university, I learned some good reading tips. I learned some good

00:19:50organization tips. I learned how to write about abstract issues in a relatively fluid way. I

00:19:58think I had some skill that way already, but it helped. It helped. But as far as things that I

00:20:03learned that I find of value to this day, well, not very much. Not very much at all. All right.

00:20:10Well,

00:20:10thank you for your patience. Richard, I'm happy to chat with anybody who's got a topic.

00:20:16Is it the Richard I know and love?

00:20:20Hey, Stefan.

00:20:21How you doing?

00:20:22Yeah, I had a bit of a rough day, but that's a first world problem. So nobody wants to hear

00:20:26my complaints. Yeah, actually, it's kind of interesting. When I first joined or requested

00:20:34to join your channel, James, you know, I was kind of like, I'm assuming it was a vetting,

00:20:40a sort of vetting kind of process with James. And I remember like saying, oh, you know what?

00:20:48I, you know, I grew back, I grew up, I was born in 58. So I'm old, older than you

00:20:53even. That's

00:20:53incredible. Antediluvian. And, you know, I stated that, oh, you know, I had a, you know,

00:21:03a high school diploma. I didn't get, there were no diplomas back when I was doing it, but

00:21:09which is a sort of equivalent to a PhD these days. Kind of made that joke. And it's funny

00:21:14hearing you talk about that now. I think, oh, maybe there's some truth to that. Yeah.

00:21:20And then I think I first heard about you, believe it or not, on BTC Sessions, you know,

00:21:27about maybe six months ago or something. I haven't been on your channel for that long.

00:21:32And you just reminded me of that when you mentioned you were recently on BTC Sessions as well.

00:21:39Anyway, I just had a couple of things I wanted to talk about, but I was sort of torn between

00:21:44the two. I listened to your podcast today, Jordan Peterson. I can't remember the exact name of the

00:21:55Jordan Peterson, fever dream, fever dream. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Fever dream. So I listened to that

00:21:59today and I was like, oh my God, this is so many, it was kind of torturous. And I'm sorry,

00:22:07just to interrupt you at the beginning. I just wanted to mention something I forgot

00:22:09to mention it at the beginning, which was, you know, during that debate, I mean, this guy was

00:22:14just a, I mean, relatively entertaining and, and, uh, I mean, obviously a bit dangerous to the

00:22:19untutored, but he was just a bit of a mystical lunatic. And normally I can take that stuff in

00:22:24fairly decent stride, but I had the strangest experience of getting really angry during the

00:22:28course of that debate. I had the strangest experience, like irrationally angry. And I've sort of

00:22:35noticed that over the last week or so, and I was talking about this with someone, and then somebody

00:22:41pointed out, that person pointed out and said, yes, but you've been unable to do weights for over

00:22:48three weeks. Now that's very interesting. That's very interesting because, and it was true, I had a

00:22:53little, uh, had a little cyst removed and they said, don't lift any weights for three weeks. And I,

00:22:58I like to give it a little bit of extra time just in case. And it was like, that was

00:23:03interesting. So

00:23:05apparently your testosterone does start to drop if you stop doing weights. And I just kind of noticed

00:23:09that I had this like irrational level of aggression. And it sort of struck me as interesting that I

00:23:19think most people associate high testosterone with aggression. But for me, it was very much like I felt

00:23:25much more aggressive when I assumed my testosterone went down. Now I'm back on the weights and everything's

00:23:30pretty good. But I just found that to be quite interesting that I couldn't figure out like,

00:23:35why is this, why is this bothering me so much? I mean, why do I feel so, so angry? I

00:23:39even had to

00:23:40sort of take a breath to keep it out of my voice. And I was like, this person's really, really

00:23:44annoying

00:23:44me. And that's not something that I mean, you can't do much in the public square, particularly

00:23:48controversial stuff if you're over prone to annoyance. And I was like, well, that's interesting.

00:23:52And anyway, so I just wanted to mention that if you do for some reason have to stop doing weights,

00:23:57just be alert and aware for that as a potential side effect. Anyway, go on, sorry.

00:24:01No, yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, sure. Like, are you a kettlebell fan? Or like, what do you do?

00:24:06Oh, I do weight machines of every type. And I do free weights. And all of that. And my daughter

00:24:15is introducing me to some new exercises, which apparently I think is supposed to give me

00:24:19childbearing hips. It seems that that's the general process. So I'm not sure if I'm going to be

00:24:24changing my position on a wide variety of things in the near future. But there are certainly

00:24:28some of those things. But yeah, just a wide variety.

00:24:32Yeah, that's going to give you a whole new look, isn't it? Yeah, for sure.

00:24:35Oh, I'm getting it.

00:24:36Only for the waist down, so you'll be safe.

00:24:38Yeah.

00:24:41Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So getting back to that, you know, that episode or that, that, you know,

00:24:47I don't even know what to call it. It was...

00:24:49Yeah, just a show. Yeah.

00:24:50Yeah. Yeah, just a show, right? But it kind of reminded me of some experiences I've had,

00:24:55actually a lot of experiences over the years, very much like, you know, when you get into...

00:25:01You think you're in a conversation. And this is not... Yeah, I know you can't necessarily

00:25:05characterize that as a conversation, but yeah, it's a conversation of sorts.

00:25:09I tried.

00:25:10I know you tried, yeah. And I've tried too in the past. And it's just amazing how many times

00:25:16the person I'm having a so-called, it's not even a conversation, but a so-called conversation

00:25:20with, doesn't even ask me one single question about myself. All they want to do is talk about

00:25:27themselves. And they never ask a question, no inquiry at all. And this is something I've

00:25:34experienced quite a few times over the years. And I'm not sure if it's some sort of, you know,

00:25:39like a fault of my own or whatever it is. But it seems to be a thing where once people

00:25:45get the opportunity to sort of just fire hose you with their stuff, they just take that

00:25:50opportunity and, you know, and you just sit, you know, I just sit there and listen to it

00:25:53and, you know, I just register the lack of interest or I guess the lack of curiosity.

00:26:00I think, you know, if you have no, if you don't have curiosity, it kind of then inhibits,

00:26:05you know, it disables you to have a proper conversation with somebody. Because, you know,

00:26:10a conversation by sort of definition is an exchange of curiosity in some sense, right?

00:26:15You know what I mean? You want to have this reciprocity happening between the two where

00:26:20you can both be learning something in the process and expanding one's understanding or

00:26:26interests or whatever. But when that just is so obviously not present, as was this conversation

00:26:35whatever you want to call it with this guy, it just, you know, it kind of is like, oh

00:26:40my God, like what is going on here for this person? Like they just have zero curiosity for

00:26:45anything outside of their own mind. Does that make any sense?

00:26:50Yeah, I think, I think I know where you're coming from. And so that which is not rational

00:26:56and empirical is not transmissible. If you fill your head with thoughts that are not empirical

00:27:05or transmissible, they isolate you. It's like this big moat or this big wall or that chilling

00:27:09scene at the end of the movie, The Good Father, where Anthony Hopkins is putting up this big giant

00:27:13wall around his backyard and fencing himself in and so on. So mysticism isolates. We are connected

00:27:21as human beings exactly to the degree that we share definitions. And if one religion says love your

00:27:31enemies, another religion says destroy your enemies, then those religions are going to be in conflict

00:27:37because they don't share the same definitions of the good. And so people, and this is why I was

00:27:43fighting very hard with this fellow to try and get some shared definitions. If you don't have shared

00:27:49definitions, you have no conversation. It's not just, well, you know, we're just talking past each

00:27:54other or we're kind of missing, like we are not, you cannot have a conversation with someone who does

00:27:59not share your definitions or you don't agree to theirs. It's like trying to have a conversation with

00:28:04someone who speaks Japanese and you don't speak Japanese and they don't speak English or whatever

00:28:08it is. You cannot have a conversation if you don't share definitions. And what happens is people end up

00:28:14getting wrapped up in non-quantifiable, non-verifiable, non-measurable ideas. You know,

00:28:25when he said, well, you're receiving an argument, you need to start with the feminine and then you

00:28:28need to transform to the masculine. And then when you speak back, you need to switch back to the

00:28:32feminine. It's like, how do you know any of that? How is that measurable? How is that empirical?

00:28:37How is that proven? And one of the things I was hoping to get to him, if I hadn't been

00:28:41choking

00:28:41out my own bilious rage, one of the things I was hoping to get to this guy was, how do

00:28:47you know

00:28:47any of this is true? How do you know any of this is true? That women, blah, blah, blah, men,

00:28:53blah,

00:28:53blah, blah. How do you know any of this is true? And it's an important question. Now, there are ways

00:28:57that you can figure out some of this stuff. You can look at, you know, evolutionary imperatives,

00:29:01you can look at brain scans, you can read about male-female differences, and you can ponder on

00:29:05how they have evolved and why and so on. But when people are just saying a bunch of stuff that

00:29:11just, you know, maybe it's vaguely compelling if you already agree, but if you don't agree

00:29:16and you don't agree with the definitions, it's not at all compelling, and you should try to

00:29:20get people to understand what it is that you're thinking. But this is why philosophy is so essential

00:29:25for love, connection, and intimacy. Because if you can't define your own thoughts in a way that other

00:29:33people can understand, doesn't mean agree, just understand. If you can't define your own thoughts

00:29:38in a way that other people can understand, then you can't connect with anyone. And this

00:29:44guy, unfortunately, had walled himself off in a giant stone castle of his own definitions

00:29:50and was not willing to venture outside. And eventually, I just got bored and left.

00:29:55Yeah, that's exactly the impression I got. Yeah, I just felt, oh my god, this guy is,

00:30:01yeah, just literally walled himself off from reality, I guess, in some sense. Yeah.

00:30:06And it's a matter of empathy. If I'm going to take your time or the audience's time, as I want

00:30:12to do,

00:30:12I want to take your time. Obviously, I want to give you value in return. But it's basic empathy that

00:30:17if

00:30:17you're going to consume someone's time and life in a conversation, you need to make sure it's of value

00:30:25to them. Especially if you're kind of hijacking your show in some sense, right? You know what I

00:30:30mean? Like, it's one thing to have a conversation privately with somebody and it goes off the rails

00:30:35or it goes wrong or whatever. But it's something else, I think, when you call in on another person

00:30:42just so that you can air your own whole thing without really contributing or even answering your

00:30:49questions even, like even taking them seriously. Well, I was hoping he would. Yeah, I was hoping he

00:30:53would contribute. I don't mind if other people want to monopolize. I mean, that's, I mean, so to speak,

00:30:57that's when I interview experts or whatever they do most of the talking. So, if somebody has

00:31:02something of real value to offer, I'm happy to start a step aside and have them take a chunk of

00:31:07the show. You know, the important thing for me is the show provides value to people. And so, I was,

00:31:13I let him talk for a long time because, of course, you never know if it's going to be 15

00:31:17minutes,

00:31:17you maybe think it's going to be five or whatever. But I felt like he was about to give me

00:31:21something valuable. So, I let him go on for a while. And then also, when I get impatient later

00:31:26on, he certainly can't say I interrupted him too much. So, it's just, it's just a basic empathy

00:31:31thing. Am I providing value to someone else? It's like, if you've ever been in this situation,

00:31:37most people have, or I'm sure you have, you're trying to give someone a massage, right? Oh,

00:31:40yeah, my back's killing me. Can you just give me a, and you go too hard, right? And, ah,

00:31:45right? Or you hit the wrong spot, a little to the left, a little to the right. So, you are

00:31:49there

00:31:49just giving them an amateur massage, and you're trying to figure out a way that you can provide

00:31:53value. And you've got to get that feedback. You don't just grind there where they slowly weep tears

00:31:59of blood into the carpet, right? So, you're looking for that kind of feedback. So, I'm looking to see,

00:32:05am I providing value? Is the other person going to be better off as the result of this conversation?

00:32:11And if you can't share definitions, then it's foundationally not empathetic and actually kind

00:32:17of selfish. And by the way, Cale, we will get to you in a few minutes. But yeah, so I

00:32:23think it

00:32:23really is just an empathy thing. Am I providing value to the other person? Do they understand what

00:32:27I mean? And is both this person and the audience better off for me having spoken? And again, I'm

00:32:34happy with fairly lengthy theories. I'm happy with very abstract theories. But I'm not happy when

00:32:41people say things like, well, masculine and feminine has almost nothing to do with male and

00:32:47female. Because then it's just like, what? Like, at least say, look, I know that I'm really redefining

00:32:53things and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But just when you find that out after an hour, I just feel

00:32:58completely rug pulled. And that just feels like a real bait and switch. Like, hey, we're going to talk

00:33:03about ideas. Psyche! No, we're not. I'm just going to make up a bunch of nonsense.

00:33:06Yeah, and the gaslighting didn't help. I mean, you know, it was, that was pretty, that was pretty

00:33:11horrendous to hear as well. I was just sort of...

00:33:14Sorry, what do you mean?

00:33:15Well, the gaslighting when, you know, he would go back and then kind of call you out

00:33:19as being, you know, making a mistake in the question you asked or something like that.

00:33:24You know, it was just like, oh my God, this is only getting bad to worse pretty quick.

00:33:29Well, just that is what I said at the end, right? It's just this liar. For those who, you should

00:33:34go back and listen to it. I gave a good speech at the end. That was after the X space

00:33:39had

00:33:39crashed, so I did it afterwards. Yeah, but just, I just want people who tell the truth.

00:33:45Look, everybody from time to time doesn't listen. Everybody from time to time gaps out,

00:33:50spaces out, thinks about something else. I mean, there are times when I'm working out

00:33:55and I'm listening to an audio book and I have to go back like three times because it just,

00:33:59like, what? Sorry, I missed that bit. What did I, what did the, what big plot twist happened or

00:34:04whatever? And so, it's fine. And if somebody were to just say, you know what? You're right. I'm

00:34:09really sorry. I did gap out. That's fine. You know, no, no big hate. But it's just when people

00:34:13start lying about it and, oh, I was listening and, you know, they weren't. And it's all the way back

00:34:17to, did you do your homework? And, oh yeah, I did my homework at back to school. I just don't

00:34:21like

00:34:21people who don't tell the truth. And then they don't tell the, they don't tell me the truth and

00:34:25things that I can actually verify. Like, were you actually listening? And so, if it's a principle

00:34:31in law, right? False in one thing, false in all things. If somebody is found to have lied on the

00:34:36stand, you can't take anything they said as accurate or true. And towards the end, when he

00:34:42openly lied and so on, then it's like, okay, well, I'm not going to listen to you. If you lie

00:34:50and don't even seem to notice it, then if you don't have any commitment to telling the truth,

00:34:54why would I listen to you about masculine and feminine when you can't even get two and two

00:34:58make four? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, listen, I'll let, I'll cut it off there

00:35:05because I feel like I always take up too much time on your show. And, um, I don't know, like

00:35:11that may be just bullshit coming out from myself, but. Well, let me manage that. Yeah, don't

00:35:16worry about that. But I appreciate that. Let's move on to Kale. But listen, I appreciate

00:35:21it's a British thing. It's a very British thing to want to manage other people's

00:35:26perception and reception to the conversation. But yeah, that's my job to manage, not yours.

00:35:30All right, Kale, if you wanted to unmute, I'm all ears.

00:35:32Hey, I have a comment. And then I have a real world situation where I'm trying to get some

00:35:38moral clarity. And I'm hoping to get your help on this. But my comment is kind of based

00:35:43on this conversation that started off the show. A couple of years ago, you mentioned a great

00:35:49topic called the great slowdown about just how things are just so kind of lacking in quality

00:35:57and competence. And I was wondering if you're still experiencing that today in this year,

00:36:022026. Oh, it's even worse. Yeah, it's even worse. And there's no turning it around, at least

00:36:08in the short run. I'm probably going to go to my grave with things only being about. For those

00:36:14of you who haven't been around for a while, I'll just keep this real brief. Like stuff

00:36:18used to work. Stuff used to work. Everything used to work well. Houses used to be built well.

00:36:24If you ever know someone who's owned a house, just ask them about, especially if the house

00:36:28has been built in the last 10 years or less, just ask them what kind of quality they're dealing

00:36:34with. Computers used to really last. And you used to be able to pick up the phone and get

00:36:40a problem solved in about five minutes without having the big runaround. You used to be able

00:36:44to send a message off, write a letter, send an email, and problems would be dealt with

00:36:47right away. The number of problems you were dealing with were very few. And stuff used

00:36:52to work really, really well in society. And now it just works less and less every year.

00:36:59I mean, that's just a natural consequence of a wide variety of things we've talked about

00:37:03in the show before. But I've just had to recognize that although we started

00:37:09off very high up as a civilization, we have lost our motive power. And so if you've ever

00:37:17been gliding, I went gliding once as a teenager, one of my mother's boyfriends took me up.

00:37:20I actually wrote about that in my novel, almost, which you should definitely check out at

00:37:24freedomain.com slash books. But if you've ever gone gliding, I mean, you're up in the sky

00:37:30and your glider is specifically designed with this crazy wide wingspan. It looks like a giant

00:37:37frozen winged dragonfly. And you can stay up for a long time and catch an updraft, a little bit

00:37:42of wind. But eventually, eventually, you're just fighting the inevitable. You're going to end up

00:37:47back down on the ground. And it feels like we kind of lost our motive power. I know we're still

00:37:51up

00:37:53and it'll take a while, but it's coming. So that's, yeah, I find it worse than ever. And it's only

00:38:00going

00:38:00to get worse from here. Hey, that's my experience too. So yeah, I was, had slight hope brought back.

00:38:09And then since I had some work done to my house and I encountered some really competent individuals,

00:38:14but yeah, for the most part, I agree that it's, we're at a point of no return. So yeah,

00:38:18I was just curious to see if anything has changed in your experience. Because when you did mention

00:38:23that a couple of years ago, man, it really hit home. Because it's exactly what my wife and I were

00:38:28experiencing. Yeah. Like I tried a software service. Oh, I tried a software service. I think

00:38:35it was last summer. And, you know, I set my reminders, you know, you try something out and

00:38:40it didn't particularly work for me. So I went to their website and there was no way to cancel it.

00:38:46No way. And I'm pretty good at this internet stuff. I've been a computer programmer and web designer and

00:38:52all of that. So I went to the website, there was no way to cancel it. So I sent them

00:38:57an email.

00:38:58And say, look, there's nobody cancel it. I just need you to cancel this. And so on. And they write

00:39:04me back and asked me to email someone else. So I emailed someone else. I took a screenshot of the

00:39:09website because I needed to show them that they should, if they're honorable people, they should

00:39:14have a way to cancel on the website. And I sent them the email, need to cancel, can't do on

00:39:21the website.

00:39:22Here's the email. Here's my account number, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, foolish me,

00:39:26I forgot about it. And then I find out a couple of months later, they never canceled. There's no way

00:39:35to cancel on the website. Sent in the message. They didn't cancel it. So then I demanded a refund

00:39:41and I got the runaround. And of course, it's tough for businesses if they have to go back and claw

00:39:47back

00:39:47earnings. It wasn't a huge amount of money, but you know, not nothing either. And you know,

00:39:51it's just this kind of stuff. You just have to kind of grin and bear it. Just grin and bear

00:39:58it.

00:39:59The number of websites, oh, you need to go here and you need to do this. Page not found. Or

00:40:03it just

00:40:03spins and spins. Or you have to refresh. Or the capture doesn't work. Or, you know, it's just

00:40:10slowed down in terms of getting things done in a reasonably efficient manner. And don't even get me

00:40:16started on this bloatware virus brain known as Windows 11. Oh, my God. See, I started on computers

00:40:24with 2K of memory. They were faster. I remember when I first started using Windows, maybe it was

00:40:30Windows 2 or something like that, blindingly fast. I took out a stopwatch the other day because I need

00:40:37to print the questions, right? I ask people for questions and then I'll pace around and work to

00:40:42answer them. So I had to bring up a print option, right? So I'm in Notepad in Windows and I

00:40:51need to

00:40:51print, but I need to change it so that it prints the page number. Because, you know, sometimes when

00:40:55you print, I print out pretty big text, so I don't have to wear glasses to read it. And sometimes

00:41:00they

00:41:00curl over on themselves and you get a bunch of mess on the floor and then it takes a while

00:41:04to sort it

00:41:05out. So I just want the page numbers on the bottom. And it took four seconds to bring up the

00:41:12print

00:41:12options. Four seconds on an i9 computer with 32 gigs of RAM. It takes four freaking seconds to bring up

00:41:23a print dialog option. Now, on DOS, that was instantaneous. QDOS, Windows. And this was on

00:41:29computers with 640k of RAM. It's staggering how slow and bloated and bad all the modern software

00:41:41is. It's just appalling. There's no efficiency, no stripping down. They're just like, ah, throw more

00:41:49hardware at it. It'll be fine. And it really is just, I mean, maybe Linux is better. It's been a

00:41:54while

00:41:54since I've used it. Maybe the Mac is better. I haven't used that one in a while. I used to

00:41:59use

00:41:59a Mac sometimes for recording interviews because the Windows software was unstable. And, I mean,

00:42:06I've been working with computers for almost 50 years and things still don't work. And again,

00:42:13I won't get into particular details. Everyone's got their tails of woe. But, yeah, stuff is just

00:42:20slow, man. It's just slow and kludgy and sludgy. And, I mean, websites used to load faster when they

00:42:27used to use Adobe Flash. And I had a 9600-bought modem. I mean, it's just, you know, with a

00:42:34very

00:42:34fast fiber optic and a giant computer and a massive memory and graphics card. Everything's just slow,

00:42:42slow, slow, slow, slow. And, I mean, I don't know. I mean, did you have to just strip it all

00:42:47and start

00:42:47again? I guess that was kind of the Linux idea. But, so, yeah, sorry. I know that you have your

00:42:52other real-world question. But, yeah, it's just a general slowdown. It's brutal.

00:42:57Yeah, no, everything you said, man, I can feel it grind in my...

00:43:02Yeah, it's rough. But, yeah, onto this moral question that I'm struggling with. And maybe

00:43:07you can give me some clarity. So, the situation is, my next-door neighbors,

00:43:14they have six children. They're all homeschooled, really wonderful kids. And I have children of my

00:43:22own. I have three daughters, very young age. And they often play a lot in the front yard,

00:43:27which is just a really great experience for them just to play. And I feel very fortunate that they're

00:43:34next-door to homeschool kids who behave so well. However, their dog, my neighbor's dog,

00:43:42got out of their house, just inadvertently. And the dog bit my daughter, right above her buttocks.

00:43:51And it was a harsh bite. It penetrated. It drew blood. She was obviously very upset, crying.

00:44:00Just a horrific scene. Luckily, it was just one bite. And the dog just was taken away. Obviously,

00:44:08the parents were mortified. And we're all just, you know, emotions are running high.

00:44:14And trying to get some understanding of how this happened.

00:44:20After the smoke cleared, and we all went back inside, and I cleaned up the wound for my daughter,

00:44:24and she calmed down. And, you know, we looked at the wound. You know, the neighbor's father wants to

00:44:32know right away, you know, what's the severity of the bite. And he's under the impression that,

00:44:37hey, you know, if it's a pretty serious bite, then we're going to look to put the dog down.

00:44:44I mean, pretty military guy, pretty cut and dry when it comes to, you know, his behaviors, tolerance.

00:44:53And from my understanding, that dog, I did not get any type of, you know, vicious demeanor. It's not a

00:45:02pit bull or anything like that. You know, it's like a labradoodle, like an Aussie doodle, poodle. I don't

00:45:09know. Large dog. But I know that the daughter who's very close to my daughter, that's like her best

00:45:17friend. I mean, she just loves that dog. I mean, they're extremely close. She just can't believe

00:45:23that it would attack my daughter like that. I think the context of the situation is they were

00:45:29playing a game where they were kind of doing like a tug-of-war game, and it kind of looked

00:45:33like

00:45:34the neighbor's daughter was in a state of distress. So perhaps the dog saw that and read the plate

00:45:42incorrectly and ended up attacking my daughter, thinking that she was harming

00:45:47the neighbor's daughter because I thought the context of it would matter. So as my neighbor's

00:45:54father is waiting to kind of understand the level of damage sustained to our daughter, I know there's

00:46:02a lot of daughters here in the story. Again, he told me if it's a legitimate bite that I'm going

00:46:09to

00:46:09look to put the dog down, you know, that's it. So my wife and I are just, okay, what do

00:46:16we do?

00:46:17Do we, we obviously don't want the dog to be.

00:46:20Sorry, you were saying if it's a legitimate bite, he's going to put it down or you're going to try

00:46:25and put it down?

00:46:26He, the neighbor, the neighbor's father.

00:46:28Okay, sorry about that.

00:46:29No, no, no problem. I know it's a lot of, a lot of moving, a lot of people, a lot

00:46:33of stuff going on.

00:46:33Okay. So at first my wife and I kind of wrestled with this question. So we did discover it was

00:46:40a

00:46:40bite, which is obviously something we're not going to play around with. We know that the children are

00:46:48very fond of that dog. We don't think it's a naturally aggressive dog considering the context

00:46:54of how the attack occurred. So we're wondering, do we tell him the truth that it was a bite that

00:47:01penetrated bite and the dog is going to be put down and devastate the children? Or do we just

00:47:07kind of lie by omission and say, oh, she's fine. Just a little, just a little scrape, nothing to

00:47:12deal with. And, and then doing that, save the dog and the children get to keep their furry best

00:47:20friend. So we wrestled that for a while. And I ultimately decided to tell the truth and send

00:47:28a picture as proof to show that the dog did indeed bite. And, you know, it left a penetrative bite

00:47:35mark. And to him, that was, you know, checkmate, that was done. And he went ahead and he put down

00:47:42the dog, um, the following day. And from my understanding that children are just absolutely

00:47:48devastated. Um, I tried to tell him that. I'm sorry, how old are his kids? He has six children. So,

00:47:56um, there's a 14 year old, there's a 13 year old, there's a 10 year old, twin five year olds,

00:48:02and they have a newborn. Um, it's the 13 and the 10 year old that are very close to my

00:48:08daughter.

00:48:08And of course the 10 and 13 year old are absolutely in love with the dog.

00:48:13Well, whose responsibility was it to keep the dog out of your yard?

00:48:18This was in the front yard. So it was kind of a, but I see what you mean. Who's responsible

00:48:23for

00:48:23keeping that dog under wraps. And obviously it's the parent's responsibility, although they

00:48:28were quick to say that the 13 year old who's should have made sure that the door was closed

00:48:34and the dog did not indeed leave the home.

00:48:37Right. And, you know, consequences are tough, man. And it always, it's a difficult question as a

00:48:43parent. How much, how much consequences do you, or how many consequences do you allow your children

00:48:50to receive? And if the older children are responsible for keeping the dog in the house

00:48:56and the older children did not fulfill that responsibility, the dog got out and bit a child.

00:49:04It's a very tough situation, of course, right? But there are consequences if you fail to keep

00:49:14an animal off someone else's property. Now, I'm, nobody wants to inflict those consequences,

00:49:22but those are inevitable results of the children, perhaps if it was the children, of the children

00:49:32failing to keep the dog inside. And so if the parents weren't home, let's say it was after

00:49:37school and the kids were home, and I'm sure that the parents have told the kids a million times,

00:49:42right? Don't let the dog out, right? Now make sure the dog stays in, not just because of you and

00:49:49your

00:49:49family or other families, but I assume that there's a road with cars, right? Now, if the dog had been

00:49:57let out and the dog had been run over and killed or maimed or wounded, it could be even worse

00:50:03in the

00:50:04short run, then that would be bad. Obviously, bad for the kids, bad for the dog, and bad for the

00:50:11driver. These kinds of things can cause accidents, right? Dog comes out, you might drive into oncoming

00:50:16traffic or you get surprised or whatever, right? So if kids want the responsibility, right?

00:50:23And I'm thinking more about the 13-year-old, right? So if she says, look, I want this dog,

00:50:30right? And they get the dog, say, listen, you have to keep the dog in the house or in the

00:50:34backyard.

00:50:35The dog cannot go out through the front yard. Do you understand? You repeat after me, you know,

00:50:40all of that stuff that you say to kids, right? And if the 13-year-old did not keep the

00:50:48dog in the

00:50:48house and not only did not keep the dog in the house, but was so unaware of the location of

00:50:53the

00:50:54dog, do you know how long the dog was in your yard for?

00:50:57Well, the incident occurred at their house in their front yard. My daughter was playing with

00:51:03a 13-year-old in the front yard, you know, just horsing around. And I think she went inside to

00:51:10go

00:51:10get something. And the dog, obviously, very effective, you know, wants to be involved, can see

00:51:15everybody through the window, was already at the front door. And as soon as she opened the front

00:51:21door, he just kind of willed his way on out sort of deal. So the dog was in the house

00:51:27and then the

00:51:28dog came out when the 13-year-old came back out of the house? Yes, I believe so. Or was

00:51:34attempting to

00:51:35go in. I did not see the whole incident. I'm getting a lot of back and forth and whatnot,

00:51:40but that's from my understanding. And were the parents home at the time?

00:51:45Yes, we were. I was, I was... No, no, sorry, not you, but...

00:51:49Yes, yes, yes. All parents were home. I was chatting with the father in the driveway.

00:51:55Ah.

00:51:56And it was in our blind spot, blindside. You can't see the front door from the driveway. So all we

00:52:04really saw was, the only thing I remember was just seeing my daughter running and screaming towards

00:52:08me saying the dog bit my butt. Okay, so at that moment, given that the dog came out and immediately

00:52:16saw the aggression, or what the dog perceived as the aggression between your daughter and the other

00:52:19girl, and maybe perhaps thought that your daughter was being aggressive towards the other girl, so then

00:52:25the dog bit your daughter. And so, if I understand this correctly, did this happen right after the

00:52:33dog left the house?

00:52:34Yes.

00:52:35Okay, his dog leaves the house, assesses the situation, obviously gets it wrong because it's

00:52:39a dog, right? So it's not going to have much of a threat analysis going on. And so, the 13

00:52:46-year-old

00:52:47was the only one who could have stopped it by keeping the dog in the house, right?

00:52:52Correct. And again, I don't know the whole extent of it. I don't know if it was she kept the

00:52:57door open

00:52:58too long, or how much she resisted, and him trying the dog trying to squeeze on out of there. It's

00:53:05all very hazy, and I haven't had a chance to converse with her since this whole ordeal, because

00:53:10I just assume she's very still emotional about it all.

00:53:13Sure, and it's a very sad situation.

00:53:16Yeah.

00:53:16It's a very, I mean, obviously, it's a very sad situation. So, if the child was the only one who

00:53:23could have kept the dog in the house, right, because the dad was in the driveway chatting with you,

00:53:27the mom was obviously elsewhere, not right at the door. And I don't know, has the dog been out

00:53:35playing with the kids in the front yard before, or was this a new thing?

00:53:38No, no, I've never seen him in the front before, but I have seen them walk the dog as a

00:53:44family,

00:53:45and we have spoken with them while the dog is on a leash, and the dog is always very pleasant

00:53:51and

00:53:51not aggressive.

00:53:53Okay, so they must have some kind of policy, which is the dog's only allowed in the backyard

00:53:58or something like that, right?

00:53:59Correct.

00:54:00Okay. Yeah. So, if you have a rule in the house, which is the dog can't go in the front

00:54:06yard,

00:54:07and the kids are all on board with it, and then the kid is in charge of that situation,

00:54:11and the dog gets out and bites someone, again, it's really sad, but it is to some degree the

00:54:18children's responsibility. And now, of course, you wouldn't say, you killed the dog, it wouldn't be

00:54:23anything like that, but it would be like, well, and nobody likes to say, I told you so,

00:54:28unless you're just like someone's just a sadist. Nobody likes to say, I told you so.

00:54:34But, you know, basically, when the smoke is cleared, it would be like, well, you know,

00:54:40obviously, this is why there was a rule, which said, don't have the dog. Was it a young dog? Is

00:54:45that right? Was it a little impulsive?

00:54:47No, I think it's a pretty mature dog. I would say it's been, you know, probably four or five.

00:54:54Yeah. So, the course and the fact just needs to be clear. And I can tell you this, though,

00:54:59those girls, when they grow up and have kids, will never let that happen with their kids.

00:55:03They'll never let their kids go out the front door. This will stay in with them forever,

00:55:07and probably will be for the better. And again, you know, for me, like, I would never rub this in

00:55:12and like, I can't believe you did this. And, you know, this is on you and nothing like that.

00:55:16But you do have to be pretty clear about the cause and effect. You know, it's very sad.

00:55:20We had a dog. The dog needs to stay in the house. The dog got out of the house.

00:55:26And the dog bit someone. What matters in the long run is that the dog doesn't bite someone else.

00:55:33And the only way to guarantee that, of course, is to put the dog down. Which again,

00:55:36I love dogs. It's a very, very sad situation. But if the dog has bitten someone,

00:55:43it means the dog can't be trusted around people. And if the dog ever gets loose again,

00:55:48and given that the dog got loose once, it's probably going to get loose again. And then the

00:55:52dog, unfortunately, is a hazard in the neighborhood. And if the dog gets loose and jumps the fence and

00:55:58goes into the neighborhood or something like that, you don't know what the dog is going to find. So

00:56:02it is just a very sad and tragic situation. Did it have to do with a lack of training? Did

00:56:07it have to

00:56:07do with a lack of attentiveness on the part of the 13-year-old? I mean, who knows? Right again,

00:56:11there's no video, I assume, of any of this. And everyone's quite upset. But I think it is

00:56:17important to tell the truth. People have to make the best decisions. It's sort of a free speech

00:56:22argument, right? People have to make the best decisions. We want people to make the best

00:56:25decisions. And the only way they can make the best decisions is with the best information.

00:56:30And if you withhold from them the facts, they can't make good decisions. And if your dog had bitten a

00:56:37kid, however much you loved the dog, and I get that there's a lot of passion with regards to dogs

00:56:42and

00:56:43a lot of emotions, and that's rightly so. I mean, man's best friend and all. But if your dog bit

00:56:50a

00:56:51child, and that fact was hidden from you, and then your dog bit a child again, and perhaps with much

00:56:57worse results, you'd be kind of annoyed and angry that you hadn't been told the truth, right?

00:57:01Yeah. Yes, sir. That's exactly what was going through my mind as of just debating whether or

00:57:08not to be fully transparent about the bite. And yeah, and as soon as I said to myself, like,

00:57:14what difference should it make, you know, that my daughter was bit above her buttocks. And yeah,

00:57:20imagine if it was her face, I wouldn't have hesitated.

00:57:23Right. Or if the dog had got a hold of either male or female private parts, these things we can

00:57:28only

00:57:29scarcely imagine about or something like that. So it is a very sad situation. Having animals

00:57:34comes with risk. You know, we've had our ducks, and we've had one or two ducks get lost to animals.

00:57:42I mean, having pets is a little bit risky. And there's lots of positives to it. There's some

00:57:49minuses. I think the general positives outweigh the minuses. We had a neighbor once many years ago

00:57:56who was breeding show dogs. And one of their dogs got loose, and they're big, big animals.

00:58:03And we had chickens. And of course, what did the dog do? The dog did what dogs do. And it

00:58:09set upon

00:58:09the chickens. And it looked like my daughter, these were her pets, right? And it looked like the dog

00:58:13was just tearing the chicken apart. And it was appalling, like everybody making lots of noise,

00:58:18all that kind of stuff. And I didn't feel particularly safe going down to rescue the chicken because the

00:58:23dog was huge, right? It's not quite a wolf, but it sure wasn't the opposite of a wolf either.

00:58:28And anyway, it turned out that the dog was just playing. The chicken ended up living, and we never

00:58:33saw the dogs again. But yeah, that stuff can be kind of alarming for sure.

00:58:39Well, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah, I'm feeling a little bit better about, you know, after

00:58:44mulling this over a little bit, and I appreciate your clarity. I had a question, though. My daughter

00:58:48seems to be bouncing back relatively okay, but that's just on the surface. Do you have any tips

00:58:52on how I could maybe help her, you know, because assuming this is probably a pretty traumatic

00:58:56experience to be bit by a large dog, any advice on how to help her kind of process this in

00:59:01a healthy

00:59:02way? Yeah, it's tough, you know. Sorry, of course it's tough. That's an obvious thing to say. If it

00:59:08wasn't tough, you wouldn't be asking the question because you're a smart guy. It's always a tough thing

00:59:12to know. If a kid has a wound, so to speak, do you keep poking at it to make sure

00:59:18it's okay? Or do you

00:59:19let it heal on its own? I don't know the answer to that. There have been studies that show that

00:59:26people

00:59:26who were involved in a trauma who get grief counseling actually take longer to recover.

00:59:32Are you okay? Oh, my God, that was so terrible. Are you sure? You know, and I'm not saying you

00:59:37would

00:59:37do it like that, but, you know, some of these kind of cliched, hyper-emotional grief counselors,

00:59:43I just don't think it does kids, young people, a lot of good in particular. Like after the school

00:59:48shootings and so on, the people who went through grief counseling have showed higher levels of

00:59:52stress and trauma because, you know, it's sort of like if you're injured around your dad, it probably

00:59:59doesn't feel that bad. If you're injured around your mom, it's like, oh, my God, am I going to lose

01:00:05my

01:00:05leg? Because, you know, moms feel it very strongly, and that's a good thing, but not always the most

01:00:10objective thing. So, talking about it, asking if she's okay, but if you keep asking kids, are they

01:00:18okay, they will receive the message that they shouldn't be. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.

01:00:24So, be available to speak and say that the topic is on your mind, because I assume she also knows

01:00:31that the dog has now been put down. Um, I mean, she's four years old, so, I mean, she, I

01:00:36don't know.

01:00:37Yeah, you don't want to go, you don't want to go down that road with her, for sure.

01:00:40Yeah, but she, but if she does ask a question about, hey, where's the dog? Um, I mean, my wife's

01:00:45kind of just said, hey, you know, the dog's been, is going to a different home now.

01:00:49Right, right, right. And it's kind of true, uh, in the embrace of cold earth. And I remember,

01:00:55yeah, my daughter, when we were in Sao Paulo, I was giving some speeches in Brazil,

01:00:59and my daughter was jumped on the street by a dog. It was on a leash, but it did jump

01:01:03up,

01:01:04and she was quite little, and it did frighten her, and she was nervous around dogs. And I

01:01:07remember, as a little kid, being trapped in the woods by a Great Dane, literally looking up at

01:01:12this thing, looks like a horse to me. And every time I moved, it growled. I thought that was it

01:01:16for me. I thought I was just going to get torn apart. Oh, I remember the stories. Yeah, just,

01:01:21it was really, uh, really terrifying. And I, I'm not sure, I love dogs. I really, I think they're

01:01:27wonderful creatures. There was in Ireland, my aunts had this wonderful Cocker Spaniel named Brandy,

01:01:33the most affectionate, wonderful dog. Loved dogs, loved pets as a whole. But dogs can be a little,

01:01:40a little random, as you sort of, uh, experience. And again, who knows what happened with that dog,

01:01:45either before it was brought into this family, or maybe even it had, you know, a few too many pencils

01:01:50in the ear from kids, or something like that. Who knows, right? It just inadvertently,

01:01:54I'm not saying anything conscious or cruel, but dogs, you know, they are, they are still

01:02:01half wolves. And it's been a lot of domestication, but it is tricky. So I would say, ask her if

01:02:08she's

01:02:09okay. Kids, they do have a fair amount of resilience to things that aren't sadistic. And

01:02:12this was just an accident, right? So you just have to make sure that she knows she didn't do anything

01:02:17wrong. Of course, I'm sure you've said all of that. And if you ever feel nervous around a dog,

01:02:21just come and let me know. We're going to try and do our best to have you not be around

01:02:24dogs

01:02:24for a little while, just so things calm down. If you ever want to talk about it, if you ever

01:02:28have

01:02:28a bad dream, you know, let me know. And I'm happy to talk about it, you know, but it's really

01:02:33tough

01:02:33if you keep saying, but no, really, are you sure you're okay? Then the kids be like, well, is this

01:02:37worse than I think it is? Like, why does everyone keep asking me? And at that age, maybe that might

01:02:42be a

01:02:43message she would get. So again, I don't have any great answers, but I would be, uh, it would be

01:02:47something along those lines, if that makes sense. Yeah, no, I think that's great advice. I, you

01:02:52know, for the record, I haven't brought it up at all today and neither has she. So I think what

01:02:57you're saying makes perfect sense not to ruminate over it and, um, and go from there. And then we do

01:03:03encounter any, you know, hesitancy around animals, dogs in particular. I mean, we have three dogs

01:03:08ourselves, but this dog was massive, not like our little, um, you know, chia pets. So, uh, I don't

01:03:16normally think of dogs with the phrase doodle at the end to be very large, but I guess, I guess.

01:03:21Oh yeah. This one's an Aussie doodle. I guess that's what I enjoy. I mean, he's a, he's a big,

01:03:26I guess he, they're custom to herding sheep. So he's a pretty big, pretty big guy. And it just,

01:03:32it's just sad. Cause I, I almost feel responsible for, I know this is, this is irrational thinking,

01:03:37but you know, I had, I kind of had the dog's life in our hands in terms of whether you're

01:03:43honest

01:03:43or not. And, uh, what about the situation? No, no, I'm sorry. I, I, I pushed back on that a

01:03:50little

01:03:50bit because that's, I mean, to take a silly example, that's like saying, well, I have the

01:03:55criminal's freedom in my hands. If I don't press charges, it's like, no, the criminal obviously

01:04:01made the decision to commit the crime. Of course, the dog didn't make the decision,

01:04:04but it's not causal upon you. It is causal upon who let the dog into the front yard.

01:04:10That's not causal to you. You did not cause that. You would have done almost anything to

01:04:14avoid it. That's number one. So it did not hold that dog's life in your hands.

01:04:22And, and secondly, here's the thing too. And this is a tough thing as a parent. And listen,

01:04:28you have more kids than I do. So I defer to you on a whole bunch of things. And maybe

01:04:31this is helpful.

01:04:32Maybe it's not, but it is a kind of peculiarly modern perspective, which is that if bad,

01:04:39if bad things happen to our kids, it's just bad. Now adversities and pain and difficulties and fear

01:04:47give us the chance to overcome, give us the chance to be courageous, give us the chance to realize

01:04:55that we can be attacked by an animal to your daughter. I'm sure the size of a small horse

01:05:00and be fine. So, you know, I don't want to be a mystery of that, which does not kill us,

01:05:06makes us stronger, but it is not that everything that bad, everything that's bad that happens to

01:05:11our kids is not universally or totally bad. You know, it's like if your kid is ostracized,

01:05:17then they're going to learn how to be more resilient that way and not care so much about

01:05:20what other people think. If your kid is bullied, right, they're going to learn some strategies for

01:05:24dealing with bullies, which are going to be helpful for the rest of their life. If your kid is cut

01:05:28from

01:05:28a sports team, then they'll learn about their strengths and weaknesses, maybe where they

01:05:33could have worked harder. So we as parents, of course, generally have an impulse to want to

01:05:38shield our children from bad things. But I would make the case that, I mean, obviously outside of

01:05:45real disasters, bad stuff that happens is part of life. Of course, we would, most of us choose to

01:05:53deliver our children to adulthood, having had them not experience much negative stuff at all,

01:05:58but arguably that would make them a bit too frail for the hurly-burly of the modern world. And that

01:06:04for kids to experience difficult things, negative things, accidents, bad things, it's the old thing

01:06:09about, you know, obviously you should have your kids wear helmets, but they fall off their bike.

01:06:13Well, they fall off their bike because they get too cocky, right? And they, hey, look,

01:06:19I know hands. Don't do that. You're not ready. No, no, I'm right. And it's like, so they do learn

01:06:25something about not being too cocky, not to make assumptions because kids master things and they

01:06:30think that they're perfect at them almost right away, right? Look, I'm the greatest. And that's

01:06:34fine. There's nothing wrong with that, but you need to have some humility. So negative things

01:06:41happening to our kids, it's not universally or in a black and white way, just bad. And there can be

01:06:50some good things that you get out of this. So instead it would be like, I am very impressed with

01:06:57how strong and brave you're being with all of this, like good for you, right? And kids can get some

01:07:03sense

01:07:04of pride or achievement or satisfaction or something like that from overcoming these kinds of difficulties

01:07:10and obstacles. And again, of course, your daughter didn't bring this on at all. And you can also use

01:07:16it as an opportunity to get closer and say, oh, you know, when I was a kid, let me tell

01:07:19you what

01:07:20happened to me. And then, you know, one of the things that happens when people experience disasters,

01:07:24they don't want to feel like they're alone. They don't want to feel like it only happened to them.

01:07:28So it's a good opportunity for you to say, you know, here's things that were similar that I had

01:07:32when I was a kid and here's how I overcame them. And I'm, you know, really proud of what you're

01:07:36doing

01:07:36with this. And, you know, you've got a lot of guts there, kid. Good for you. And, you know,

01:07:42helping kids recognize that things that are bad aren't just bad. You know, like you got to tear

01:07:48the muscles to build it and you got to have difficult things in life in order to have

01:07:53self-confidence. And again, I'm not saying that you'd want to expose your kid to this, but given

01:07:56that it has already happened, if you treat it as uniformly negative, like this is just a bad,

01:08:02terrible, awful thing with no redeeming qualities, then I think you may be instilling

01:08:07in her too much anxiety about negative things happening. And instead, you can look at some

01:08:13of the positive effects of this, you know, like you did the right thing. You came to me,

01:08:18we told the truth and you're going to be safe. And I'm really sorry that it happened, but how

01:08:23brave were you and how alert were you and how intelligent were you and everything you did

01:08:27was just right. You know, give them some confidence in the face of adversity and they will be less

01:08:31nervous about adversity, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, no, I haven't brought it up like

01:08:36that in terms of praising her response to it. And yeah, now that she mentioned it, I think she did

01:08:42an excellent job managing all of it, all things considered. I mean, as well as anybody can handle

01:08:47a dog bite to the ass. So I think she did better than I would, I think, to be honest

01:08:52with you.

01:08:53I'm a bit of a fraidy cat when it comes to big dogs. So I, you know, if it's any

01:08:58consolation to her,

01:08:59she's got a hats off from a philosopher. So good for her. And I think that praising her

01:09:06intelligence, resourcefulness and skill and courage in the moment is, it's really important. And that

01:09:11way she's going to be less nervous about bad things in the future. Yeah, that's outstanding.

01:09:14Yeah. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. That's something I definitely would like to share

01:09:18with her when I get a chance and she wakes up tomorrow morning. And then, yeah, lastly, I know this

01:09:23is a long topic and I appreciate all the time you devoted to it. It's really been helpful.

01:09:27Um, any idea on how to mend the relationship between the girls? Cause they're, they're really

01:09:32close. I mean, even from a tenant from it, I was just amazed that a 10 and a 13 year

01:09:36old

01:09:36and obviously they're homeschooled has been such great friends to my four year old. I never thought

01:09:41in a million years that would occur, but they are really close. And I just hope that this doesn't

01:09:46fracture their relationship.

01:09:48Yeah. Well, why don't you get them a card, bake them a cake, go over and say a few words

01:09:56about how sad it is about what happened with the dog. You would have done anything to help

01:10:00and really am sorry that this is the way forward. Of course, we don't want the dog biting any,

01:10:06anyone else and, you know, just go in and mourn with them. I would say.

01:10:11Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good idea.

01:10:14And, and, and, you know, it's funny, you know, how old are you?

01:10:18I'm 36, 36. Okay. So it's hard. You're closer to childhood than I am, but it's hard to remember

01:10:27just how wild the passions of childhood are and how strong and intense the passions of childhood

01:10:36are. And of course we, as adults, we're looking at all these big giant monster problems in the

01:10:43world. And it's like, ah, you know, you lost the dog and the big scheme of life, you know,

01:10:46blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, 200,000 people died yesterday or whatever it is. So we look

01:10:51at the bigger things and it's hard to remember sometimes just how deep, intense, and passionate

01:10:56the children's feelings are. Oh yeah. I lost my dog to a garbage man who ran him over and

01:11:03he was so, uh, just cold and heartless towards. And I just remember being devastated for almost

01:11:09a month. Oh yeah. I mean, there's a song by Queen called all dead, all dead, which is actually

01:11:14about Brian May's childhood cat. Like that's how deep and long it goes into adulthood when

01:11:21his cat died and he first learned about death. And, you know, if, if your kid experiences

01:11:28as a snub, you know, whatever, you know, as adults were like, eh, I get snubbed all the

01:11:31time. It doesn't really matter. But of course for kids, it's really new and it's really impressive

01:11:35and it's really important. Uh, I still remember the first sunset that I, well, I still remember

01:11:41the first sunset I saw that I remember. Now I see a sunset and it's like, oh, that's pretty.

01:11:44But I just remember seeing the sunset and just like, oh, this is the most beautiful thing.

01:11:49This orb of fire is amazing. And all of that. And the newness and the rawness. And I mean

01:11:55that in a very good way, the newness and the rawness of childhood experiences can be a little

01:11:59tough to remember. Like, you know, uh, the stuff that's important to my daughter. I mean,

01:12:05there's 40 plus years between us. But if I think back about what was important to me when

01:12:11I was her age, then that's a good way to sort of get back into it. So this is a,

01:12:17a huge deal

01:12:18for them. And of course, you know that, right? But I think, you know, go over and just say,

01:12:23I'd like to just say a few words, you know, here's a, you know, find the most sentimental

01:12:28card that you can get about the loss of a dog. And just like, I'm so sorry. And if there's

01:12:33anything I can do to help, uh, you know, it's, it's really important to me and it's really,

01:12:40uh, I really sympathize, you know, big hugs and, you know, maybe a little doggy cake or something

01:12:45like that to just take really seriously what the children are going through. And I think that

01:12:51would be the best thing to do to mend fences. And I think also that's just a nice thing to

01:12:55do as a

01:12:55whole. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you very much. And if you get your daughter to

01:12:59present the cake so much, the better, because then all is forgiven, right? That's right. That's right.

01:13:04I'll get her a mound cake. That looks like her rear end with some cherries that simulate the dog

01:13:09fight. Maybe not, but I know you're just joking, right? Right. It's re-traumatized the kids,

01:13:15right? No, just get them a, get them a giant, get them a pit bull puppy. No, I'm just kidding.

01:13:20All right. Thanks. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate that. And my best to everyone in the situation.

01:13:25Yes. Thank you, sir. All the best. Bye. If you are on the line, I'm happy to hear your thoughts.

01:13:30Hi. Sorry, this is a bit of a delay. I wasn't sharing until it came on, but I have a

01:13:37kind of

01:13:38completely different topic. Are you guys trying to stick to the topic today or is it? No, no.

01:13:42What's that was on your mind? All right. Well, I've actually been following you for a very long time

01:13:48and I kind of drifted off for a little while and then I kind of find you again on X

01:13:51recently.

01:13:53And I remember you used to take some pretty big risks with the subject matter that you would

01:13:58deal with around particularly racial issues. And I, I don't know how, I don't know how to talk to

01:14:08people about this who are still in the sort of woke vein of thought, even partly. Yeah. I know people

01:14:16in my personal life who, if I even tell them just to take one example, George Floyd had triple

01:14:24the least amount of fentanyl in his system. And that's why he actually died. And, you know,

01:14:30Chauvin's knee is not on his neck. It's in the middle of his back. You know, they just shut down

01:14:35or

01:14:35if they're being polite, then they just kind of glaze over like somebody who's, who's.

01:14:40Sorry. And he was using an approved technique from his department. And as far as I remember it,

01:14:45the, the description of that technique was suppressed during the trial.

01:14:48So yes. Yeah. They wouldn't let the jury see me. And he said he couldn't breathe for long before

01:14:54he was down on the ground and, Oh yeah, it's just terrible stuff. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry.

01:14:58But yeah, no, I mean, that's just an example of one of the things that's very clear, um, that

01:15:04even the people who know that it's not accurate, uh, the official story that is, it's almost like

01:15:10you're not allowed to take away the emotional ammunition that is provided by the story.

01:15:16So they just won't acknowledge it. And there's a lot of other things like that. Like if you get

01:15:22into, you know, statistics, the various sorts, people do the same thing. If they don't just

01:15:27outright call you names. And I don't, I don't know how we talk about this, these things, honestly,

01:15:32if we're at this point and I'm wondering if you found anything useful to kind of check through

01:15:38that. Sure. Sure. Well, with regards to something like the George Floyd situation,

01:15:47people are not evaluating the truth or falsehood of the accusations. What do you think they're

01:15:55actually, because if they were evaluating the truth or falsehood, they would be happy to get the

01:16:01truth. Right. And so what do you think they're evaluating when you tell them some pushback on

01:16:08the narrative about George Floyd? I think they're evaluating whether or not I'm signed up to the

01:16:14same tribe they are. And they're using the situation as a moral signal of sorts and an identifier,

01:16:22I guess. To some degree. Yeah. I would say that people are not evaluating the truth or falsehood of

01:16:30your statements. They are evaluating the effects of your statements on their relationships.

01:16:37Yeah. For example, if you admit that around other people, they're going to pay a social price.

01:16:43Yeah. So if they accept your arguments and they know the truth, then the next time something comes up

01:16:50and they say the truth, then they will receive social punishment. So they're hedonists.

01:16:59Hedonists are people who prefer short-term pleasures over long-term happiness or success.

01:17:04Like a drug addict prefers getting high, even though he's going to destroy his life, and so on.

01:17:10So you can't reason with hedonists because hedonists are susceptible really only to the pleasure

01:17:17pain principle. Now, the pleasure pain principle is if you believe that George Floyd was the victim

01:17:26of a racist murder by Derek Chauvin, then you get points. You get pluses. People like you and so on,

01:17:35right? You get acceptance. Whereas if you say, I have doubts about the official narrative and here's why,

01:17:43what happens?

01:17:45Yeah, you'll get all the racists, obviously.

01:17:48Yeah, then you will get attacked and punished. Now, the world has been set up, since long before

01:17:55you and I were born, the world has been set up to reward people who conform and to punish people

01:18:03who tell the truth. And that's because lies are so profitable, particularly with the power

01:18:08of the state to redistribute income and so on, right? So, with hedonists, the only way you can

01:18:18get them to change what's left of their mind is to apply negative pressure to them that is greater

01:18:28than the negative pressure that other people can apply to them. And I'm not saying whether you should

01:18:34or shouldn't do this, I mean, obviously don't use any violence or harm, but as a whole, hedonists

01:18:43will change their mind based upon increased pleasure or decreased pain. Now, if you're going to say the

01:18:51truth about George Floyd, or there was a big video I had way back in the day about Zimmerman, right?

01:18:56Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. And if you're going to change people's minds who are hedonists,

01:19:03the only way you can do it is to bribe them or apply negative pressure such as disapproval or

01:19:10ostracism, and then they will, quote, change their mind. I mean, that's really about it. There's no

01:19:16reason, there's no logic, there's no empiricism, and there's no commitment to truth. Hedonists are

01:19:23committed to avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. And so, if you give them a counter-narrative,

01:19:31they do not evaluate it in terms of true or false, right or wrong, good or evil, or heaven forbid,

01:19:39integrity versus corruption. They only interpret it, and it's a very instinctual thing,

01:19:44they only interpret it as, will accepting this argument bring me pleasure or pain? And of course,

01:19:54society has been so set up that if you accept an argument like counter-arguments to the George

01:20:00Floyd narrative, then society will inflict a lot of pain on you. And they don't take pleasure in the

01:20:09truth, because if they took pleasure in the truth, they would have integrity and not just be hedonists.

01:20:15So, you're almost trying to rewire someone's brain to prefer the truth over pleasure. And I'm not sure

01:20:23how to do that, if that makes sense. I understand that perspective. I'm sure that's at least partially

01:20:29a plague. I tend to see the Ashkin following the experiment as much more informative for the basic

01:20:37motivation. In that experiment, I'm sure you're familiar with it. They not only said they were

01:20:45lying just to go along the crowd, some of them actually doubted whether or not they could tell

01:20:50which line was longer. And the amount of people who have changed their memories in front of me

01:20:56in the course of the racial panic and COVID, sometimes the same person on different issues

01:21:06than both of those, just because his gay tribal identity has said, now this. And I don't think

01:21:15they're all lying. I think a lot of them are actually, they do, they have started to believe

01:21:21these things. It seems a lot worse than just a kind of cowardice, if you'd like to call it

01:21:29that, or a pleasure-pain model. It's a significantly worse situation than that, to me at least.

01:21:37People who are hedonists associate that which feels good with the moral, and they associate

01:21:43that which feels bad as the evil. So what feels good is the good, what feels bad is the evil,

01:21:49the immoral. Now, if you go to a hedonist with a counterfactual argument, something that goes against

01:21:56the conformity that makes them feel good, you provoke in them a crisis of conscience. Because

01:22:01people who are conformists, they don't want to look in the mirror and say, I'm just an NPC empty-headed

01:22:10conformist who's driven by the pleasure-pain principle, like just most animals, right? They

01:22:16want to look in the mirror and see a good person. And so when you give them a counterfactual,

01:22:22then you provoke a crisis of conscience, because they know that if they bring these counterfactuals

01:22:28to other people, the other people will reject them and turn on them and be hostile and maybe

01:22:34work to get them fired or destroy their reputation, or they'll certainly be kicked out and ostracized

01:22:40from this social group. And so when you give someone a counterfactual, what happens emotionally

01:22:46is they begin to really deep down understand, at a very instinctual level, that they are a slave

01:22:55to the opinions of others, and that they are a hedonist. And that makes them feel very, very,

01:23:03very bad indeed. Now, remember, that which makes a hedonist feel bad is evil, is immoral, is bad,

01:23:10is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And so if you make a hedonist feel bad by giving them some facts,

01:23:17which if they bring to those around them, they will be attacked and rejected for, it means that

01:23:22the people around them only pretend to care about them because they agree. That person you're talking

01:23:29to agrees with the people around them. And if he disagrees with the people around him, if he disagrees with

01:23:36the people around him, they will just attack, ostracize, and diminish him, and maybe even try

01:23:41to destroy him if he gets too big for his britches. So you are exposing the hollowness

01:23:49of the person's relationships, that it's just based on conformity, not virtue. You are exposing

01:23:55that they don't care about the truth, they only care about approval, and that takes them from hedonism

01:24:00is good to I'm a coward who just conforms. Now, the hedonist hates feeling bad, and the hedonist

01:24:09hates people who makes him feel bad. Because remember, for a hedonist to feel bad is to be

01:24:15morally wronged. What feels bad is morally evil. And so if you make a hedonist feel bad by exposing

01:24:23his hedonism and saying, you're not a moral person, you're just operating on the pleasure-pain

01:24:27principle, and you're bullied and cowed into submission, and your friends don't care about

01:24:31you, they only care about your conformity, and if you have an independent thought of your own,

01:24:35they'll toss you off the social ship like a slaver's with a dead slave. So you are exposing

01:24:42the shallowness and the hollowness and the emptiness of their relationships, the shallowness

01:24:46and the hollowness and the emptiness of their behavior and mindset and so on. In other words,

01:24:52you are inflicting a grave soul injury upon them. And then, because they're hedonists, remember,

01:25:00that which feels bad is evil, and you're making them feel as bad as bad as a hedonist can, which

01:25:05means you're revealing to the hedonist that he is in fact a hedonist and not a moral person at all,

01:25:10then they will view you as really, really a bad person, because you're making them feel so,

01:25:16so, so, so bad that you must be attacked. So it's a very risky thing to be doing, if that

01:25:24makes sense.

01:25:25Yeah, it is, and I've stopped doing it for the most part with even casual conversations that I

01:25:32think people might disagree with, because I live in a blue area. But also, I don't think I can,

01:25:41I'm not going to be able, I didn't realize it for quite a long time, because I started complaining

01:25:45about these kinds of things in about 2014, when things first started getting weird. Like,

01:25:52even two years before Trump, I was getting pretty weird with the amount of news stories about,

01:25:59you know, that were pushing a particular kind of narrative. And I was trying to get people around

01:26:04me to see that something was wrong while it was being sold. And now, I mean, I'd like to think

01:26:10they're not as bad as they would have been if I wasn't screaming about it, but there's no way to,

01:26:15you know, there's no counterfactual to that. So, but they bought it anyway. And in order to

01:26:22counterbalance that with an equally, if you go with that hedonistic model, I'd have to be competing with

01:26:30basically all of society in my general area, and the news. So, yeah.

01:26:39Well, and I did this, I did the speech at a night for freedom many years ago, one of Mike

01:26:44Cernovich's

01:26:44events, which is that they're making crazy people faster than we can fix them.

01:26:48Yeah. Because even if you do something in your neighborhood, which is great, well,

01:26:55the problem is that there's a million kids coming out of high school every year who are fully

01:27:01indoctrinated. So, you're just not going to be able to keep up.

01:27:04Yeah. Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate you taking my question.

01:27:08You are very welcome. You are very welcome. All right. If we have any other questions,

01:27:12comments, issues, challenges, there is but a bit of room. Sorry for the amateur

01:27:18nonsense about keeping my mic muted earlier, but we're back. Going once, going twice. I think

01:27:28we are. Yeah, I think we're done. Listen, great topics. And I really do love, love, love, love

01:27:33the variety of topics that we get into. And thank you so much for all of that. So, if you

01:27:40would like

01:27:40to help out the show, freedomman.com slash donate. Really, really would appreciate your support.

01:27:44Thank you. Thank you so much. Also, of course, you can

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01:28:01a glorious, wonderful day. We'll talk to you Friday night. Lots of love from up here, my friends. Bye.

01:28:06Bye.

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