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00:00:00Hello, hello, everybody. It's Stephen Molyneux from FreeDomain. Hope you're doing well. Sorry,
00:00:03it took me just a little bit of time to get to these great questions from the fine folks on
00:00:08X,
00:00:09but without further ado, other than freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show,
00:00:16to support the show, to support the spread of philosophy. All right, question one,
00:00:20thoughts on Arcticism theory. So, Arcticism is a theory that during the Pleistocene era and
00:00:31afterwards, groups who grew up in very cold and harsh climates developed emotional restraint,
00:00:40social cohesion, very strict social rules that were enforced in fairly brutal levels of ostracism
00:00:48and conformity and so on. The sort of famous inscrutable phases of the Eastern Asians and
00:00:53the studies have been done in Inuit and other places. And it is the general idea that
00:01:02a very harsh environment has strong effects on not just social cohesion, like, oh, well,
00:01:09we want to have social cohesion and we want to maybe repress emotions and be more deferential,
00:01:14we'll have more respect for elders and, you know, the sort of in different ethnicities,
00:01:19there are different levels of introversion and extroversion. And it's not just that that has an
00:01:26effect on culture, but culture and the brain are very much interlinked if cultural standards affect
00:01:33reproduction. So, for instance, if you are loud and extroverted, and as a result of that,
00:01:40no woman in the tribe wants to marry you, then extroversion and loudness and so on will be
00:01:46selected very brutally and very quickly out of the gene pool as a whole. So, for instance, in England,
00:01:53you know, where I grew up, there are a lot of social rules. And if you defy or flout those
00:01:57social rules,
00:01:58you can be ostracized, which has a negative effect on your reproductive chances and so on. And
00:02:06so, I mean, the idea, of course, that you need a lot of social cooperation. East Asians evolved in
00:02:12the Siberian cold. You need a lot of social cooperation to survive in that. You need to
00:02:16defer gratification. You need to lower your emotional temperature so that you don't get
00:02:20greedy and eat the food before the end of winter, because if you eat the food before the end of
00:02:24winter, you and your family starve to death. And you need to have a very strict enforcement of social
00:02:29rules such as maturity, deferral of gratification, suppression of emotion, conformity, and planning,
00:02:36right? Because let's say you have planned for the winter. This is the grasshopper in the end,
00:02:41right? So you've planned for the winter and you have enough food for your family for the winter,
00:02:45but only just enough because it's kind of tough to keep and tough to plan for all of that exactly
00:02:49because you don't know what unusual things might happen. Your wife might get pregnant. So
00:02:55you have just enough food to get through the winter and your neighbor does not have enough
00:03:01food to get through the winter and they come knock on your door in like February and they say,
00:03:06you know, here, me and my three kids and my wife and my aunts and my uncles, we all need
00:03:11food.
00:03:11That's rough, man. That's really rough. And so you don't want to be put into a situation where
00:03:16your neighbors are going to be, you know, knocking on your door and demanding food because if you
00:03:23give them food, your own family's chance of survival goes down considerably and you might not
00:03:29make it. So you have to tell people you have to plan. And the reason why you have to plan
00:03:36is you
00:03:37have to not support people who don't plan, right? You have to not give them food. You have to be
00:03:44willing to let them die on your front lawn in February if you don't give them food because otherwise
00:03:50they may not. They may not plan. So you have to have a lot of social conformity. You have to
00:03:55have
00:03:55a lot of expectations and you have to have brutal social punitive measures, right? So the brutal social
00:04:02punitive measures in the past, for instance, in let's say England, was if you were a single mother,
00:04:08you would be kicked out of polite society and no man of means or potential would marry you.
00:04:15Now, of course, when the welfare state came along, ostracism was no longer an option, right? So
00:04:23culture has degraded because culture is there to promote, you know, healthy, productive, positive
00:04:29life choices, which means punishing those who don't make those healthy, productive, positive life
00:04:34choices. So in the past, society used to ostracize and punish women who got pregnant outside of wedlock
00:04:40because it's bad for society, bad for the children, bad for the women, bad for everyone
00:04:44and children of single mothers, particularly boys. Well, boys tend to more towards dysfunction
00:04:50and drugs, alcohol, violence and criminality, whereas women tend more towards, the girls of
00:04:55single mothers tend more towards irresponsibility and promiscuity. Again, it's not 100%, but the
00:05:01tendency is this way. And so society protected itself from people's bad decisions by ostracism,
00:05:07which is a very peaceful and voluntary form of enforcing social rules. When you get the welfare
00:05:14state, then you can't ostracize anyone anymore. I have to, I'm forced to give money to people whose
00:05:21decisions are absolutely terrible for society and so on. So when you have voluntarism in society,
00:05:31in other words, you are not forced to give your resources to other people, then you can enforce
00:05:36social rules by withholding resources and time and attention and so on. And I mean, you can see
00:05:42this in my de-platforming in summer of 2020, that I was acting against what was perceived to be,
00:05:51well, not perceived to be, was accepted to be, you know, good social rules, good social decorum.
00:05:56And as a result, I was ostracized. The campaign was put forward to ostracize me and have people not
00:06:03interact with me economically. And that's a form of enforcing social rules. Now, imagine if my income
00:06:10was guaranteed by the government and people could not de-platform me in any way, shape, or form,
00:06:18then people would have no social control over what it is that I said and did. And of course,
00:06:23my argument has been for decades that social ostracism is the way society should be run.
00:06:28But in order for social ostracism to work, you can't be forced to fund people whose choices are
00:06:34disastrous. So I actually became proof of my own theory. Social ostracism is very effective and
00:06:42very powerful. Like 97% of people did not follow me to new platforms. So it's very effective. I was
00:06:48willing and to some degree happy to be ostracized because it proves that we should use ostracism
00:06:57as a form of enforcing good rules within society. But we can't do that when the government is robbing
00:07:03from Peter to pay for the bad decisions of Paul. So yeah, for sure. I mean, the idea that
00:07:10our most expensive organ is the brain, right? So our brain is like three pounds of wetware,
00:07:15consumes 20% of our resting resources, right? 20% of our calories, 20% of our energy is poured
00:07:23into the
00:07:23brain, which is, you know, 2% of our body mass or something like that. And so the idea that
00:07:32a
00:07:33brutal selection pressures have no effect on the brain and its organization or that ostracism has
00:07:40no effect on the brain. Like if you have a culture that doesn't care that much about father absence
00:07:47or father presence, then you have one kind of culture. If you have a culture that really cares
00:07:51about that for obvious survival reasons, then you're going to end up over time with a different
00:08:01organization in many ways of various aspects of the brain. And it doesn't take very long for this.
00:08:08Like there was a Russian researcher, I think he started in the 1950s, and he divided foxes into two
00:08:15groups, the most aggressive and the least aggressive. And within a couple of generations,
00:08:18he had foxes that would attack everyone. And then he had foxes that were like dogs that were very
00:08:23easily domesticated and so on. And so it really doesn't take very long. Of course, in Europe,
00:08:29for a couple of hundred years, the most violent one or 2% of the population was reproductively
00:08:38disabled, either by being killed, by being thrown in prison forever, or by being sent overseas,
00:08:43like to Australia and so on. So it has a very big effect on society to ostracize because ostracism
00:08:53includes the possibility of reproduction and so on. And so if a man is acting in an antisocial fashion,
00:09:02even if it's not criminal, even if it's just bad or wrong or rude or impolite or negative or destructive
00:09:07in some way to social cohesion, then the father might say to his daughter, I forbid you from
00:09:12marrying that man. And because the support of the parents was needed for the marriage to succeed,
00:09:18they had some say in it. When women or men can run to the government to get free money for
00:09:24bad
00:09:24choices, then society has no way of controlling those bad choices, except maybe prison, which is
00:09:29very expensive. Ostracism is free, right? Ostracism just means if you don't like a particular restaurant
00:09:36in your neighborhood, you just don't go to that restaurant. It's totally free. And so it is the
00:09:41cheapest and most effective way to promote pro-social behaviors. And when the stakes are very high in
00:09:51terms of planning for winter, and you know, just think of an Inuit in an igloo, right? In an igloo
00:09:56for like six months of the year, or eight months of the year. If you've got some, you know, loud
00:10:02mouth,
00:10:02can't shut up, constantly telling bad jokes, in a very enclosed environment with like a dozen people.
00:10:09I mean, they're gonna, and the ostracism, I remember in the Inuit, I can't remember the word for it.
00:10:13But there was a word for the type of man who fakes an injury so he doesn't have to go
00:10:21hunting,
00:10:22and then tries to seduce your wives, your wives while you're away. And they would just put that guy
00:10:28on a little ice flow and just push him off, and he would be ostracized that way. So it's a
00:10:34pretty
00:10:34effective way. So I think that arcticism theory is just another subset of saying that our most expensive
00:10:40organ is heavily influenced by our environment. And the more extreme the environment, the more
00:10:48changes in brain reorganization are likely over time. So to me, it is incontrovertible, but whatever,
00:10:55right? Somebody asks, what's the right amount of immigration into the US? Now, for those of you
00:11:04who don't know, I'm an anarcho-capitalist, a voluntarist, which simply means that I accept
00:11:09that property rights and the non-aggression principle are universal moral values. And if
00:11:15you want to know how I prove all of that, you can go to my free book called University Preferable
00:11:19Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, which is available at freedomain.com slash books.
00:11:26So you cannot use force
00:11:30to prevent someone from moving into your neighborhood. However, force should never be
00:11:37used to transfer your resources to anyone else, right? So let's say Albania was Albania. I think
00:11:48Jill Pollack's just going to release a biography of Scott Adams this fall, so you should keep an eye
00:11:54out for that. But Scott Adams came up with a fictional country called Albania. And so let's
00:12:00just talk about, let's say Albanians are just, nobody really likes them, they're whatever negative
00:12:04characteristics X, Y, and Z. So in a free society, you cannot use force to prevent someone from
00:12:13Albania from moving into your neighborhood. However, nobody has to hire them, nobody has to give them
00:12:18any money, nobody has to interact with them, nobody has to sell them groceries, nobody has to deliver
00:12:22electricity, nobody has to do anything. You can't force people to provide resources, time, care, attention,
00:12:27and money to others. And so if people in Ancapistan or whatever truly free country there will be
00:12:35in the future, and somebody from Albania moves in, and nobody wants really, or nobody likes
00:12:41Albania, then nobody will enforce their contracts, nobody will, I mean, even to buy the place, right,
00:12:49you'd have to have a contract to ensure you keep it. And so ostracism and the negative opinions
00:12:56of people towards those from Albania would make sure that people who were not welcome in the
00:13:03community would never be able to sustain their interactions within the community.
00:13:09I mean, the roads are all private, the sidewalks are all private, the schools are all private,
00:13:13the malls are all private, the electricity company, the water company, they're all private.
00:13:17And if people as a whole don't want to economically interact with people from Albania,
00:13:22there's no force in a stateless society that can compel them to do so. And therefore, you get
00:13:30ostracism. The way it works right now is everything's kind of astroturfed. So huge amounts of money and
00:13:38resources flow towards people who come into a country. And it is illegal to ostracize any group or
00:13:48anything like that, except whites, white males. Of course, you can ostracize white males all you want.
00:13:52So the right amount is what the community wants. What does the community want?
00:13:59I mean, we know that more diverse societies have lower trust, and lower social engagement. And this
00:14:06is cocooning and so on. And people just lose their entire community, the more diverse a society gets.
00:14:12These are the Putman studies from Harvard, you can look them up, P-U-T-M-A-N. He's actually
00:14:16sat on the
00:14:16results for a couple of years, because he was so horrified about the consistent data. So people kind
00:14:20of want community, and they want society, and they want to know the neighbors. They want to have shared
00:14:25cultural values, and morals, and language, and habits with their neighbors, because it's just easier,
00:14:31more efficient. And so generally, I think that's how people will self-organize. But yeah, in a free
00:14:36society, you can't force anyone to give anyone else any resources. And so it would be pretty well
00:14:42policed by ostracism. All right. Here's the sentence, everything can be justified empirically,
00:14:50justified empirically. So I don't mean to say this for the millionth time, but of course we have
00:14:58new listeners and new people who are interested in philosophy. So most philosophical questions are
00:15:08just answered by slowing your roll, and looking at what it is that you're doing. So for instance,
00:15:16I could never say, rationally, the internet can never be used to convey information, right? Why not?
00:15:26Well, I mean, obviously you're very smart people. So the reason I could never rationally say,
00:15:30the internet can never be used to convey information is because I am publishing this video,
00:15:40the podcast, and so on. Where? That's right. On the internet. On the internet.
00:15:48So it's called a performative contradiction. If I say to you, you don't exist, but I'm talking to you,
00:15:57that's a performative contradiction. If I say, we can never trust the evidence of our senses,
00:16:04but I'm using your ears, or if I write it, your eyes, or I could braille it or touch it
00:16:10on your,
00:16:10draw it on your fingertips, and Frank style. But if I say to you, we can never trust the evidence
00:16:17of
00:16:17our senses, but I'm using the senses to convey that argument, then I'm requiring the accuracy of
00:16:22the senses to convey that we can never trust the evidence of our senses. So when people say you
00:16:31can't get reason from matter and energy, but of course they use matter and energy to convey reason,
00:16:41which is a rational argument, then saying you can't get reason from matter and energy while using sound
00:16:46waves, or light waves, or computer energy, or book energy, or whatever it is to convey that information
00:16:51is a performative contradiction. It's, I mean, basically making the argument, you know, there's
00:16:59no such thing as truth. Well, is that a true statement? Then there's such a thing as truth.
00:17:03Or people always bring up this hume, you can't get an ought from an is. Well, you just did, right?
00:17:08A cannot is an ought. You can't get an ought from an is. Okay, well, you just did get at
00:17:12least one ought,
00:17:13and where there's one, there can be more. So we, you know, if you say you are forbidden to get
00:17:19an ought
00:17:19from an is, you've just got an ought from an is. It's just an ought not. So, or if I
00:17:25were to say to
00:17:25you, language is meaningless, that's a performative contradiction, right? Because if I say language is
00:17:32meaningless, then I'm relying upon the capacity of language to convey meaning that language cannot
00:17:37convey meaning. If I write a letter to you containing the argument that letters never get
00:17:45sent to the right person, they never arrive at the house of the right person, that's a performative
00:17:49contradiction because I'm writing the letter and I'm sending it to you saying that letters never
00:17:53arrive at the right person. So if you just slow your roll, and it's very, you know, it's a tough
00:17:56thing to do. It's sort of a self-knowledge thing to do. So if you slow your roll and you
00:18:01say something
00:18:02like, is the sentence, everything can be justified empirically, justified empirically? Well, the
00:18:08sentence, everything can be justified empirically, is coming to me through the evidence of the
00:18:13senses from tangible, objective, material, reality. So, is the sentence, everything can be justified
00:18:21empirically, justified empirically? Well, I don't think everything can be justified empirically, but,
00:18:27I mean, there are negative numbers and so on, and, you know, the square root of a negative
00:18:32number, there are imaginary numbers and so on, not negative, sorry, square root of a negative
00:18:35number, there are imaginary numbers and so on, so, and not everything can be justified empirically.
00:18:39We have the concept of a square circle, although it's meaningless in reality, we can at least
00:18:43have the concept. So, but all objective reason is derived from the stable properties of matter
00:18:51and energy. The greatest abstractions rely on the tiniest atoms and quarks and so on, and
00:18:58so, the greatest abstractions are most universal abstractions are derived from the stable properties
00:19:04of little bits of matter and energy that make up the universe, which are perfectly stable,
00:19:0990 billion years across, and throughout the entire history of the universe, everywhere we can see,
00:19:14100 billion galaxies, 100 billion stars per galaxy, everything is perfectly consistent. And there is
00:19:21no law of logic that is contradicted by the behavior of matter and vice versa. Aristotle's three laws of
00:19:26logic are derived from the stable properties of matter and energy, and so reason comes, reason is
00:19:31like a shadow cast by the stable properties of matter and energy. All right, how to cope with the fact
00:19:37we don't know if other people are conscious. Now, I don't know if what you mean is like enlightened and
00:19:47awakened and noticing and so on, like they're conscious of themselves, they're conscious of virtue,
00:19:51they're conscious of propaganda. I don't know if you mean that, or just you don't know if other people have
00:19:56minds? Is that, is that your idea or your argument? That you don't know if other people have minds? Well,
00:20:06the first thing to ask of any proposition is, is it falsifiable? Is there any way to know if it's
00:20:15false? So, you know,
00:20:16the simulation theory that everything could be, we could be a brain in a tank and everything, how would you
00:20:20know?
00:20:21How would you know? Now, if there's nothing to falsify the argument,
00:20:28then Occam's razor or the law of parsimony, which means the simplest explanation, the most obvious
00:20:32explanation is the best, if there's no falsifiable theory, no falsifiability to it. So, if you're
00:20:37wandering around thinking, geez, are these people all just NPCs in a simulation and so on? I mean,
00:20:42this goes all the way back to Descartes, which is, I think, therefore I am. Even if I am a
00:20:46brain in a
00:20:47tank, at least I know that I'm being fooled. So, one consciousness exists for sure in the universe.
00:20:52Now, we know for a fact that other consciousnesses exist in the universe, even in simulation theory,
00:20:57because in simulation theory, let's say I'm a brain in a tank wired up to a bunch of electrodes that's
00:21:02matrix-style simulating reality. Well, there's some external consciousness that wired me up to
00:21:10a brain in a tank that's simulating my reality and so on, like the aliens that turn human beings into
00:21:16the batteries and the matrix and so on. And so, there are multiple consciousnesses, even in simulation
00:21:22theory. And so, there is no theory by which there's only one consciousness. Because again, if there's you
00:21:29and you're conscious, then there are other people who are conscious out in the world, which is the
00:21:34simplest and most obvious explanation. And the other way to do it would be to say, well, even if it's
00:21:42a
00:21:42simulation theory, there's somebody out there or some being that's out there that is in reality that
00:21:46hooked me up to a tank for reasons that would make no particular sense. And then, of course, another
00:21:51thing which you can cut off is the problem of infinite regression. So, infinite regression is if you
00:21:57say, well, I could be a brain in a tank in a simulation, then the creature that is putting me
00:22:03in
00:22:04the brain in the tank, like the external plus one creature that's putting my brain in a tank, themselves
00:22:08might be a brain in a tank. And it just goes on and on and on, plus two, plus three,
00:22:12plus four, to
00:22:13infinity. At some point, there's an external reality, because otherwise, simulation theory goes on
00:22:19literally to infinity and therefore is meaningless and unprovable and doesn't really make any sense.
00:22:24And of course, it requires an infinity of universes that go on and on. Like, it just starts to get,
00:22:29maybe I'm just like a common sense, Anglo-Saxon, worked with my hands a lot when I was younger,
00:22:34and still do sometimes. It's like, you know, just, it's just mental masturbation. It's just
00:22:40ooky-kooky with your frontal lobes at that point. So, the way that you would test if other people are
00:22:47conscious is you were to question them. Now, if they were a reflection of your consciousness, then
00:22:56they would never know things that you didn't know, right? I mean, this is one sort of simple test.
00:23:01Is everyone just a fragment of my consciousness? Well, I mean, I've met people who speak languages
00:23:07I don't speak. I've met people who have knowledge that I don't have. I've met people who have skills
00:23:12that I don't have. I've met people who can do stuff that I can't. So, clearly, that's the case. Of
00:23:17course, we can look at our own brain scan if you want. You can look at other people's brain scans
00:23:21and
00:23:21so on. And so, yes, other people are conscious. Now, if you mean like propaganda and so on,
00:23:28that's another question. So, if you didn't know that. Sorry, if you didn't mean that, then let me
00:23:33know, and I will try to answer better at that other question. All right. If every belief is
00:23:40ultimately a physically caused brain state, what makes your body, sorry, what makes your belief in
00:23:45materialism rationally justified rather than simply the brain state prior physical causes happened to
00:23:49produce? If every belief is ultimately a physically caused brain state. Yeah, I don't believe that.
00:23:56So, beliefs are chosen. Beliefs are chosen. Now, people say, ah, yes, but how can mere blind
00:24:02batter in a world of physical forces and prior causes and chemical reactions and involuntary
00:24:10subjugation to the laws of nature and so on? How can the mere brain produce consciousness when it's
00:24:15just a machine and blah, blah, blah, blah? Well, I mean, honestly, that's, I hate to say it's not that
00:24:20complicated. I mean, nobody can explain exactly how it happens, which is because our brain is so
00:24:25incredibly complex. We don't know exactly how it happens. All those steps are certainly being
00:24:28made in that direction. And people think that that's a failure, but it's not. Because people
00:24:34say, well, show me step by step how the physical brain produces consciousness. And it's like, I don't
00:24:39know. I don't know. But it doesn't matter. Because what's the alternative? Say, ah, well, God created and
00:24:48sustained the universe. It's like, okay, show me the exact physical processes and steps by which God
00:24:53creates and sustains the universe. And of course, everyone says, well, I don't know, right? So
00:24:59at least progress is to be made in figuring out how the brain produces consciousness and free will
00:25:03and so on. But this idea that because I can't answer something, that that makes me deficient
00:25:10when the people who are interrogating me can't answer things, right? So in the debate with Jay Dyer,
00:25:15he's like, well, we don't have exactly the same brains, but we both have the concept seven.
00:25:20And it's like, well, yeah, because we live in the same universe, which has discrete objects that we
00:25:24can count, right? That we can, that we can count. And so that's how we end up with the same
00:25:30ideas
00:25:30as a whole. And if he says, well, show me step by step how things go from sense data to
00:25:38concepts in
00:25:39the brain. I mean, you could do some physical processes and so on. But you know, he could always
00:25:43just, everybody could always just say, well, you're missing steps, or that's not enough, or you haven't
00:25:47explained it all. It's like, okay, well, what's your explanation? God. It's like, that's not an
00:25:51explanation. God is not an explanation for anything. It is a pretend explanation that by the
00:25:57by happens to be highly profitable to the tune of trillions of dollars changing hands from the
00:26:01frightened, bullied, and gullible to those willing to pretend that magic is an answer. Magic is not an
00:26:09answer. Magic is not an answer. If I were to say, how does a, how does a chicken give birth
00:26:18to an egg
00:26:18that produces another chicken, right? And you know, it's complicated and DNA and like evolution and all
00:26:24kinds of complicated stuff. And of course, if you get down to the atomic level, it gets very sort of
00:26:29squidgy and tough to figure out. And if somebody were to interrogate me and say, show me exactly step
00:26:34by step at the DNA and atomic level, how a chicken produces another chicken, I'd be like, well, that's
00:26:41a, that's a tall order. I don't know if anyone's done that, but it seems like a pretty tough thing
00:26:44to do. And then they say, aha, well, then you're wrong because I have an answer. And my answer is
00:26:51magic. It's magic. God did it, which is equivalent to magic. Magic. That's all it is. So if somebody gives
00:27:00me a very tough challenge to show a particular mental process or a particular developmental process
00:27:09from sent data to abstract concepts, and they say, well, you're missing some steps. You don't have my
00:27:14answer, which is great. And my answer is magic. And it's like, it's not a fucking answer. It's barely,
00:27:20it's not, it's a complete non-answer, right? Show me atomically, you know, this, where this raindrop
00:27:27exactly came from. It's like, I don't know. Well, then you're missing an answer. And I know
00:27:32it's magic. It's like, no, magic is not an answer. Magic is just bullshit, bullshit in a funny hand,
00:27:39right? So saying, ah, well, some incomprehensible being who exists outside of time and space using
00:27:45methods we could never figure out for reasons we could never puzzle out over a time frame we could
00:27:50never comprehend. That's the answer. It's like, that's just a whole bunch of I don't knows
00:27:55thrown together in a pretend answer that, again, happens to be highly profitable to the tune
00:27:59of trillions of dollars a year. And people will do a lot for trillions of dollars a year.
00:28:05So if every belief is ultimately a physically-caused brain state, no. So that's determinism,
00:28:11right? Now, people can say, well, you show me where free will is in the brain.
00:28:17It's like, okay. I don't. I don't need to because you show me where life is in every atom in
00:28:29your body.
00:28:31Separate one atom from your body. Is that atom alive?
00:28:38Of course not. There's no difference between a carbon atom in a living body and a carbon atom
00:28:45in deep space or in charcoal or something like that. It's the same carbon atom, right?
00:28:51So there's no such thing as life or non-life for a carbon atom.
00:28:58However, however, although we are significantly composed of carbon atoms and a bunch of other
00:29:03things, we are alive. Life is an emergent property. It is possessed by none of its individual
00:29:11components, atoms or quarks or electrons, protons, neutrons, whatever. Life is possessed by none of
00:29:18our atoms. However, life emerges when a particular configuration of atoms gets together and
00:29:26reproduces and feeds and gets watered and takes shelter and so on, right?
00:29:34So when people say, show me consciousness in the physical brain, show me life in the individual
00:29:43atom. Well, they can't, right? So free will is an emergent property. And free will involves
00:29:51choice. Free will is our capacity to propose life.
00:29:55Sorry, it's our capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal states. Should I do this?
00:30:01Should I do that? I want to get to Vegas. What's the best way to drive there? Now, if
00:30:04I want the slow scenic route, I do one thing. If I want the fastest, most efficient route,
00:30:07I could do another thing. Should I be virtuous? Should I tell the truth? These are comparing
00:30:12proposed actions to ideal states. And you cannot argue against it. This is all very well thought
00:30:19through. I mean, I've spent close to half a century on this stuff. I've thought through
00:30:24this stuff very, very well. It doesn't mean I'm almost right, of course, but it means
00:30:28I'm pretty good. Like if I'm a world champion tennis player, doesn't mean I'll win every point,
00:30:33but it's going to be pretty tough to beat me.
00:30:34Okay. So, you can't argue against the proposition that free will is our ability to compare proposed
00:30:46actions to ideal standards, because then you're trying to get me to change my mind and tell the
00:30:51truth, which is comparing future actions to ideal standards, which is called telling the truth.
00:30:56Oh, you're wrong about free will. You should give up the idea. Oh, so you want to change my mind
00:31:01and
00:31:01have me conform to the ideal standard called accuracy and telling the truth, which is exactly
00:31:05what free will is. So, you can't escape it. So, no, not every belief is physically caused brain
00:31:12state, because then we would just be machines with no choice. And I will not give up choice. I mean,
00:31:18I'll just tell you this emotionally. I mean, I have good intellectual reasons, and neuroscience is
00:31:22getting pretty good at starting to track down where free will might reside, but I'm not going to give it
00:31:30up
00:31:32I love my wife. I love my friends. I love my daughter. I love truth. I love wisdom. I love
00:31:39virtue. I love honesty, courage, moral courage in particular. And if you very much love your wife,
00:31:50let's say, and then tomorrow she takes off her faceplate and you realize she's just been a programmed
00:31:55thing, a machine, then you would not be able to love her, right?
00:32:04If I thought I was just a programmed machine, first of all, nobody would ever correct me who
00:32:10believed that any more than I argue with the television. You can't say the human brain is
00:32:14exactly the same as everything else in the universe, but I'm only ever going to argue with
00:32:17the human brain because arguing with the weather, which is also complex and unpredictable,
00:32:20although not conscious, would be crazy, arguing with the television, which is an electrical storm
00:32:25of inputs and outputs, would be crazy, right? And so, you know, yelling at the people, you know,
00:32:32the horror movie cliche, you know, you go for help. I'll go follow the bloody footprints. No,
00:32:38don't do that, right? So you can't say the human brain is just like everything else in the universe,
00:32:42and it's mechanistic and programmed and subject to all the physical laws, and then say, well,
00:32:47arguing with anything other than a human being would be crazy, because then you're saying that
00:32:50the human brain is unique in the universe, but you can't have both. You can't say the human brain
00:32:54is the same as everything else in the universe, but I will only ever argue with the human being
00:32:59because it's singular in the universe, like a human brain, right? Doesn't really make any sense.
00:33:07So, I'm not, I'm not, I like having pride, I like having pride, and particularly moral pride. I like
00:33:15loving people, I like being loved, and if we're all just machines, then you can't be loved, you can't
00:33:26have pride. You can't say, I made a good choice, I made a tough choice, I made a moral choice,
00:33:30I can't admire why my, I can't admire the people around me for their moral courage and integrity
00:33:36and virtue and so on. Now, maybe you want to live in a loveless machine-based universe.
00:33:42I have no idea why, because there's no moral or intellectual or physical reason to believe that,
00:33:48but it is, it is really just an attack on happiness, it is an attack on love, it is an
00:33:54attack upon
00:33:54respect and virtue and morality. It's nihilistic in the extreme, and it's a brain toxin that I would
00:34:00pay good money to keep far away from me. All right. How does your logic-based morality work
00:34:09with very low IQ people who can't reason enough to see the benefit? Yeah, so, I mean, I was teaching
00:34:15my daughter a UPB when she was 18 to 24 months old. Children can do moral reasoning at the age
00:34:20of 18
00:34:20months, and no one would give them super high IQs. So, it's very easy. I've now talked to a whole
00:34:29bunch of people and their kids about UPB. It's very easy. It's very easy to get them. Now,
00:34:35I get very, very low IQ people. You know, I don't know what it would be, 50 or whatever it
00:34:40is. Very,
00:34:41very low IQ people just wouldn't be out in society, because they couldn't function on their own
00:34:44anyway. So, how do I keep my long-term relationship with my AI girlfriend fresh and exciting? Well, I
00:34:51suppose you say that you're interested in another AI girlfriend and let the two fight it out in a mud
00:34:57bit. All right. If the anthropic principle is why we are here, you wouldn't expect any large
00:35:03unlikely coincidences, but our Earth has one, and it's a pretty epic Easter egg. Video game designers
00:35:09do a lot. We have a moon with a coronal eclipse multiple times per year throughout our entire
00:35:13history as a species such that every person on Earth would have seen or had word traveled to them
00:35:18about it in under a human lifetime. One out of 500,000 chance. Isn't that good evidence for a
00:35:27designer? No, no, it's not. So, I'm obviously no biologist, but I would assume that having a moon
00:35:34makes it easier for life to evolve from ocean dwelling to land dwelling.
00:35:43I mean, for the obvious reasons that there are plants and energy on shore, and if you've got tide
00:35:53pools, then it's easier for creatures like mudskippers or lungfish or things like that to
00:35:59develop dual breathing apparatus of both lungs and gills and then eventually move onto the Earth.
00:36:04But for that, you have to have the tides go back and forth, which comes from the drag of the
00:36:08moon.
00:36:10Uh, there's nowhere else in the solar system that we find any evidence of life, and, you know,
00:36:16maybe there'll be some bacteria on Mars or something like that, but, you know, if you design a zoo,
00:36:28then if you haven't been to a zoo, you go to a zoo sometimes, and, you know, if half the
00:36:34exhibits are
00:36:34closed, uh, that kind of sucks, right? Let me, I want to go see some critters, I want to go
00:36:39see some
00:36:39animals. And so, the solar system, the Earth is like a tiny fraction of one percent of the mass of
00:36:46the solar system, and so, and what does the dwarf planet Pluto have to do with life on Earth? It's
00:36:53there for no particular reason. It doesn't really affect anything the moon does, right? Of course,
00:36:57right? But the other planets don't, right? I think Morningstar, Venus, or something like that.
00:37:03And so, why, if you're designing something that has, you know, tens of thousands of times the size
00:37:10and mass of the Earth, why would you design a zoo where it had 10,000 enclosures and only one
00:37:18that
00:37:18had life? Now, of course, if you're in the one that has life, you say, wow, the zoo was designed
00:37:23for
00:37:24us, but it's only if you don't look elsewhere at everything else that doesn't have any life in it,
00:37:29right? It's just happenstance. It's a cool happenstance, but it's just happenstance. Like,
00:37:37I use this analogy, and I'll keep it very brief, some years ago on my show,
00:37:42that if you're, you know, just waking up, if you had this wake up in the morning,
00:37:46and there's a sunbeam coming through a crack in the curtains, and it hits your eyeball, right?
00:37:51Now, you think of that sunbeam, like that photon, emerged from the sun, took eight minutes to travel
00:37:59to Earth, and, you know, wow, I'm going to hit that planet. Wow, I'm going to hit land. Wow,
00:38:04I'm going to hit the house. And then it strikes through the crack in your curtain and hits your eye,
00:38:11you know? And that one photon on those couple of photons would be like, wow, that can't be a
00:38:18coincidence. Yet it is, right? So, all right. How do you recognize a pattern? Gray matter argument.
00:38:27Simple. There are different types of apples, but they're all apples. Thoughts and matter are in
00:38:31motion. The why is the phenomenon. The tag argument can imply creator, not necessarily God. Yeah, so
00:38:37the transcendental argument for God is, this is why J. Dyer is hostile to the argument that
00:38:48we get numbers because the universe is stable, predictable, and material. We are stable and
00:38:53predictable and material. Our brain is stable and predictable and material. Our brain can accurately
00:38:57identify the stability and predictability of matter. In fact, it's required for our survival that it does,
00:39:02and the better we do it, the better we survive, and math and logic are the most
00:39:10extrapolated and abstract descriptions of the uniformity and regularity of matter and energy.
00:39:17So, we live in a universe where there are discrete things, coconuts and trees and women and houses,
00:39:25and we can count them. I mean, I was talking about this with my daughter, and she said,
00:39:32even lizards have to count, right? Because they have to know whether to attack another lizard or
00:39:37not. If there's a bunch of them around, not so much. And so, even, quote, lower animals have to count.
00:39:46Our bodies count in a way we need more calories than we expend, or at least the same amount,
00:39:52otherwise we starve. Lions have to count, so they have to say, gee, you know, if there are five adults
00:39:57around that baby zebra, it's probably not worth it. But if there's only one, maybe. So,
00:40:02all creatures rely on the ability to count discrete objects in order to, I mean, even the hyenas will
00:40:12wait until there's enough hyenas to attack the lion if the lion is guarding a dead zebra that they want
00:40:16to eat. So, yeah, all creatures have, I mean, at least higher order creatures have to count and have
00:40:23to figure out numbers and so on. Speed, right? I mean, speed, you could measure it in miles per hour
00:40:31and so on. And animals, hunting animals have to figure out whether it's worth continuing to chase
00:40:38a prey or whether their risk of getting tired and injured is too great, whether they spend more calories
00:40:42chasing that they get by catching and so on. An individual lion will rarely attack a very large
00:40:49creature like an elephant, but a group of lions might. So, yeah, they all count. I mean, we live
00:40:56in a universe with discrete objects, and calculating the prevalence of those discrete objects is essential
00:41:00for survival. Therefore, those creatures which were better able to count discrete objects, not with
00:41:06number abstracts, but whatever instinct happens, right? I mean, even horses can do math, right?
00:41:11Stomp your foot, right? Zach Galifianakis with Keanu Reeves, just stomp your foot, yes, once, yes,
00:41:18once, for now. So your horses can do math and so on. I mean, a mother duck will be upset
00:41:27if a duckling
00:41:28is missing, right? They can have 12, oh, it's down to 11, or whatever, right? So creatures will know that
00:41:34a lioness who gives birth to a bunch of lion cups will be upset if one is missing. So they
00:41:39can count,
00:41:40right? We all understand that, right? So, but the tag argument is, if we don't, like, they say,
00:41:45well, you can't get concepts, absolutes and universals, from nature. You can't get them from
00:41:50matter. Therefore, they have to come from God. It's a pretty good argument. Honestly, if you don't
00:41:55think, if I didn't think, or rather, if I didn't know that reason and numbers and math are derived from
00:42:03matter and energy, then I'd say, well, geez, if they don't, if these big abstractions are
00:42:08universals, don't come from matter and energy, where do they come from? Well, they have to come
00:42:13from something outside the universe. They have to come from, if they don't come from matter and
00:42:17energy, I fully concede this. If I can't prove, establish, and maintain that reason, numbers,
00:42:23math, and so on come from matter and energy, then we're left with the big mystery, where do they come
00:42:29from? Well, matter and energy are the universe. So, if they don't come from matter and energy,
00:42:33they have to come from something outside the universe. And because they're the, they sit in
00:42:38our mind, and are universal and abstract, then they have to come from a mind outside the universe,
00:42:44which is God, right? So, that's the transcendental argument for God. And,
00:42:52I mean, it's still magic, right? How does, how does God put the number seven into our minds?
00:42:59You know, if you're, I don't know, laying back, fantasizing about Sidney Sweeney,
00:43:04who you've never met, as have I, never have I. But, I mean, just, do the giant orbs come from
00:43:10God's mind? And these just sort of silly things, but that's kind of a real, real problem, right?
00:43:14If all of our abstractions come from the mind of God, then that's just magic. Because nobody can
00:43:23tell you how that happens, nobody can tell you how that occurs, how does an immaterial consciousness
00:43:28outside of time put particular neural patterns into your brain? Is he, like, molding them like,
00:43:33like clay? Is there, like, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore and the Righteous Brothers and a rotating,
00:43:39spinning, oily wheel of, a wet wheel of sensual clay? Is that how he, I mean, it's just magic,
00:43:44right? Nobody can explain it. But we don't need to, because reason and math and abstractions and
00:43:50concepts and universals come from matter and energy. Because, I mean, the laws of physics are
00:43:54universal. I mean, we've identified them as, they're universal. So, then you say, well,
00:43:59how can we get universals from things that are universal? Well, because they're universal. So,
00:44:04anyway. All right. Why do people actually work to attribute terrible motivations to other people?
00:44:13Why do some actually ignore direct evidence and insist that another is acting with malice
00:44:18when none is there? A common example is someone accusing their partner of cheating when there's
00:44:21no evidence that they did. Or a friend who must have said or done whatever because they think
00:44:25they're better than me. I found that the people who do this don't just do this to one person.
00:44:29This is a mindset, a way of thinking that they bring into every relationship. Although they will
00:44:35target individuals in specifically brutal ways. It's like they've got a cloak of ugliness that they
00:44:39try to fit onto others' shoulders. Well, so the reason why people project their own
00:44:45malevolence into others is so they can be justified in attacking them, right? So, most people, you know,
00:44:53have asked, well, you know, would you have killed Hitler when he was younger or whatever? They say,
00:44:58well, yeah, Hitler did such evil and so on, right? Or, you know, Mao or Stalin or Pol Pot or
00:45:02whatever,
00:45:03right? So, yeah. And so, if you can convince yourself that someone is evil and destructive,
00:45:11then that liberates you to act against them with great violence and malice because then it becomes
00:45:19self-defense, right? So, if you say, oh, so-and-so is targeting this group of people for elimination,
00:45:29okay, well, then you've just given justification to this group of people to act with violence against
00:45:33so-and-so because it is self-defense. He's going to eliminate them. Therefore, they can. So,
00:45:38the reason that people project their own malevolence onto others is to justify bypassing
00:45:43the non-aggression principle and saying, hey, man, it's just self-defense.
00:45:49How do you produce a just society given the two generals problem? The only reasonable solution
00:45:53would seem to be a society so unified that the enemy is under 3% of the population.
00:45:57Killing people or performing permanent ostracism can achieve this, but then society is no longer just.
00:46:03So, I will refer you to three books of mine, and one of them is pretty short and pretty easy.
00:46:10So, the first one you want to start with is Everyday Anarchy. So, people say, well, we have to have
00:46:15the
00:46:15government to enforce contracts, but the government runs on implicit contracts and illegal contracts.
00:46:21Like, if you donate a bunch of money to a politician, the politician will take your meeting
00:46:24after he gets elected and will try to achieve your goals, right? That's why people donate a bunch
00:46:29of money to politicians and so on. But that, you know, bribing a politician is illegal, right? So,
00:46:36the government runs on contracts that are implicit, never written down, and cannot be enforced and
00:46:41are actually illegal. And so, if the system which we use to, quote, enforce contracts, and of course,
00:46:47the only people who think that the government can be used to enforce contracts are people who've
00:46:51never actually tried to use the government to enforce a contract because the process is long and
00:46:56brutal and ugly and ridiculously expensive and uncertain. And so, I'm pointing out the number
00:47:02of implicit contracts we have in society. And if you make those implicit, if you take the government
00:47:06out of the equation, then people can make these implicit contracts explicit and regulated and so on.
00:47:12So, and so, sorry, just make sure I, oh yeah, so start with the book, Everyday Anarchy. Because anarchy,
00:47:24people think it just means without rules, and that's not true. Anarchy simply means without rulers.
00:47:29Because when you have rulers, you don't have rules. You have whim. You have whim. They can change the
00:47:33rules whenever they want. They can impose whatever they want. They can impose immigration. They can take
00:47:37it away. They can change the laws, change the rules. It's like trying to play basketball with people,
00:47:41constantly dialing up and down the gravity. Like you just can't plan for anything and everything is
00:47:45just kind of chaotic. And so, you don't have rules when you have rulers. And there's pretty
00:47:51significant statistical evidence that voting means nothing. I mean, voting does not change policy
00:47:57according to the wishes of the people. The rulers just, I mean, if you want to alter the wishes of
00:48:02the rulers, then you have to be a big powerful corporation or some sort of pressure group or something
00:48:06like that. But people in Europe have been voting for different things for decades, and they just
00:48:14keep getting more and more of the same crap. So, Everyday Anarchy, you want to read, and then you want
00:48:20to
00:48:20read a practical anarchy, which is how it works in practice. And then you want to read my book called
00:48:27The Future, which is a fictional account, like sort of Brave New World, or 1984, but on the positive side
00:48:34of
00:48:34things about how a society works in practice. And it's a very engaging and entertaining book, by the
00:48:38way, I will add as well. And so, political power is just like slavery. Slavery ran every society up
00:48:46until a couple hundred years ago, still run some societies around the world. And then people said,
00:48:51well, we don't want that. And then you got the modern world, you got all of the technology,
00:48:55because you don't invest in labor-saving devices if you have slaves. You invest in labor-saving
00:49:00devices if you have employees. So, in the same way, political power, the initiation of force,
00:49:08government control of currency, debt, and just about everything else in the known universe,
00:49:12every society has been organized that way throughout all of human history in the same
00:49:15way that all societies were organized around slavery until they weren't. So, it's just a
00:49:19continuing progress of human consciousness and a continuing expansion of objective and universal
00:49:25moral rules, property rights, and the non-aggression principle. And so, I don't design a society.
00:49:34I remove violence and evil as best we can from a society. And there'll still be individual
00:49:40criminals, but you can protect yourself against individual criminals. You can't protect yourself.
00:49:45Like, if you're a Ukrainian guy, or a Russian guy for that matter, you can protect yourself
00:49:50against individual criminals, but you can't protect yourself against the government that throws you in a
00:49:54van and shoots you if you don't go and fight on the front lines. Like, you can't protect yourself
00:49:57really against that. So, all right. I post something to this effect often in your replies
00:50:04because I can't get past it. I don't trust what we're told about anything. Modern news, our realm,
00:50:08gravity, dinosaurs, etc. I don't think we know what we are or where we are. I feel like I cannot
00:50:13know
00:50:13anything except what's right in front of me and what can be discerned from that. I'm at peace with
00:50:18this mostly, but I would love to hear what you have to say, or even sing if you prefer. Thanks.
00:50:26So, skepticism falls into the Aristotelian mean. You don't want to be skeptical of nothing because
00:50:32then, like all of us, you would be a credulous idiot who will love COVID shots. You, at the same
00:50:41time, don't want to be skeptical of even your own existence. So, the Aristotelian mean is useful here,
00:50:46right? So, the Aristotelian mean is things in the middle are precarious and difficult,
00:50:51but well worth achieving. So, you don't want to live a life without anger because then you just
00:50:55get exploited and taken advantage of. You don't want to live a life where you're angry all the time
00:51:00because then you can't be loved and you destroy your family. But you do want to have, like when I
00:51:05was, I got angry at Jay and the moderator for asking me a question and then, as I start to
00:51:11answer it,
00:51:11just immediately barking and interrupting me and so on, right? And the guy who believes in Jesus says,
00:51:17stories aren't valid, as if Jesus didn't speak in parables and analogies and the Bible is a set of
00:51:25stories. Anyway, so, I will get angry, I think, to the right degree at the right time where appropriate.
00:51:33And so, it's the same thing with skepticism, right? You don't want to be believing everything,
00:51:37but you also don't want to be believing nothing. Because if you believe nothing, you can't actually
00:51:41act in the world. Like, I have to believe this is a real thing. I got a camera, I hit
00:51:44the record
00:51:44button, the microphone is working, and so on. All right. Now, where you find that is in the realm
00:51:51of philosophy. You can look at my book, Essential Philosophy, at essentialphilosophy.com. All the
00:51:56books I'm talking about are free. All right. Is the peripatelic axiom in the senses? So, the
00:52:04peripatelic axiom says that nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.
00:52:11Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses. I don't believe that that's
00:52:16true for the simple reason that things are in the intellect, to some degree, based upon
00:52:24preference. So, I mean, you've all heard this story, I'm sure, at one time or another, or
00:52:28maybe you have this story. So, why am I well-versed in and fascinated by philosophy, lo, these 45
00:52:35years? Because the first time I started reading philosophy, I loved it. I loved it. I still
00:52:43love it. I love it. 45 years later, I absolutely adore the process of gathering clear thinking,
00:52:53gathering rational, moral, universal principles, fighting evil, doing good, promoting peace.
00:53:00And I've had two—I did a back-of-the-napkin calculation some time ago. It's gone up since then.
00:53:07My show, my conversations about philosophy for the world, peacefulparenting.com,
00:53:13have prevented about 1.5 billion assaults upon children in the world. That's fantastic.
00:53:21I did a tweet about Taylor Swift that produced 60,000 babies. It's pretty wild. I'm like Genghis
00:53:27Kahn with a keyboard. So, I absolutely love philosophy. Now, why do I love philosophy? I can't
00:53:35say it's because I grew up with a mystical, anti-rational mother, because my brother did
00:53:40that as well, and he's a subjectivist and a relativist and hates philosophy, really. So, no,
00:53:46it's not just environmental. I don't know. But I took to philosophy like a fish took to water.
00:53:53And everybody's heard those stories, you know, like, oh, you know, when I was a kid,
00:53:57my mom took me to go and see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall in New York. And the
00:54:01moment
00:54:02I saw them, I loved it. I just begged to take dance, and I just love—right? So, it's baked in.
00:54:06That's built in. That's built in. Almost—there's no aspect of personality that is not genetic.
00:54:13Now, genes are not in the senses. You're born with them. And so, if we say, well, everything that's
00:54:20in my mind is because of the senses, it's just not true. Because I had a great, deep love for
00:54:28philosophy that started the moment I started reading it. I was like, eh, I love it. And some
00:54:35people are like that. Oh, you know, the first time I saw a piano, you know, it's an old—like,
00:54:42I played it. I got my first real six-string at the five-and-dime, played it till my fingers
00:54:46bled. It was the summer of 69. That's an old Brian Adams song, right? Played it till my fingers
00:54:52bled, right? Just the moment I got that guitar. I loved it. I strung it. I figured it out.
00:54:57I played along with the records. Like, some people just love that stuff. They just love
00:55:02that stuff. The Eric Wolfson, I think, was a keyboardist in the Alan Parsons project—died
00:55:07of alcohol, is my thing—and just taught himself piano. But I just—he loved it. And I think
00:55:14Owen Benjamin did the same thing. I've got another friend of mine who's multi-instrumental
00:55:18and just loved it and so on. I tried learning guitar and just—it didn't particularly work
00:55:23for me. It's like, oh, my fingers hurt. This is kind of annoying. I don't quite get
00:55:26it. And so on. Although I played violin for 10 years, so I know how to read music and
00:55:31all of that. But—so philosophy is in my mind because there was something in my genetics
00:55:38that loved philosophy when I was first exposed to it. And I'm sure you have similar things
00:55:44in your own life and so on, right? So I love beach volleyball. I could spend the rest of
00:55:50my life playing beach volleyball and be a very happy guy. And there are other sports
00:55:55I don't like. I've never quite got American football, although I remember trying out for
00:55:59the football team. But yeah, I loved swimming. I was a water polo swimmer and played water
00:56:06polo for many years and swam competitively. Came in seventh in Ontario. Not great. Not terrible.
00:56:12But when I first started debating, I was just fantastic at it. Like I came in sixth in Canada
00:56:16or seventh in Canada, my first year of debating, you know, out of, you know, thousands and thousands
00:56:20and thousands of people. I just took to it like a fish to water. I love it. So philosophy
00:56:31is in my mind because of a genetic predisposition to preferring philosophy. And I have managed
00:56:36to overcome the curse of, like, once you've studied something for a long time, it's hard
00:56:40to remember not knowing it. So you're very bad at teaching it. Because I have been able
00:56:45to, because I have empathy for my younger self, and really try to have empathy for what
00:56:49it's like to be on the receiving end of listening to philosophy. So I work really hard to make
00:56:53sure that when I teach, it's from a standpoint of assuming you don't know much about philosophy.
00:56:59So it is not true that everything that is in the mind was formerly in the senses. I mean,
00:57:08babies are born hungry and crying, and they want their milk and all of that. And that does
00:57:12not come in through their senses. That is an internal, that is an internal sense of hunger
00:57:20and so on, right? So when I started taking to philosophy very early on, that was baked into
00:57:28my being. Now, people who love music, it's baked into their being, and they make music that
00:57:37other people can consume, right? So just because, like, we don't all have to love music as much as
00:57:42Mozart did in order to enjoy Mozart and to love music, right? So you don't have to have my particular
00:57:47obsession with philosophy in order to gain value and enjoy philosophy. So I just want to sort of
00:57:52point that out. So I don't think it's true. All right. I feel that I'm growing philosophically
00:57:57and understanding how the world works. But I also feel that most people can't. Do you think we've
00:58:01reached peak society? I get why Homer put the crayon back. Oh, is that a Simpson thing? Homer
00:58:07has a crayon stuck up his nose. He takes it out, and he's smart, and then he puts it back
00:58:11in.
00:58:13So you just, you know, this is an older guy thing, right? I'm going to be 60 in a couple
00:58:19of days.
00:58:19This is an older guy thing. When you're young, you want to hang out, you want to party, you want
00:58:24to get
00:58:24along with people, you want to make your friends, and you want to, you know, find people to date and
00:58:30places to work and all of that. And totally fine. Nothing wrong. Of course, there's nothing wrong
00:58:33with that, right? I don't need to say that. And I'll stop after this one. But I'll tell you, man.
00:58:38Let me tell you, my friends,
00:58:41my friends, mes amis.
00:58:48As you get older,
00:58:51and this was true in my early 30s. In my early 30s, and I was behind the curve on this,
00:58:58so I was,
00:58:59I should have done it sooner. I had no reason to not do it sooner other than habitual tribal fear
00:59:05of ostracism. As you get older, you replace quantity with quality. When I was younger, I would eat
00:59:15anything I could get my hands on because I spent a lot of my childhood hungry. But of course, as
00:59:19I
00:59:19get older, I replace quantity of food with quality of food. And I replace quantity of relationships
00:59:24with quality of relationships. And so, if you are surrounded by people who don't think deeply,
00:59:34who don't reason, who aren't humble, who aren't willing to self-correct if they've been proven wrong,
00:59:38who aren't morally courageous, who you don't admire, then you are stretching the neediness of
00:59:48youth far beyond where it needs to be. And you are staying young, very young, for your whole life,
00:59:56which is a shame to your potential. It is a thumb in the eye of your potential. You bite your
01:00:03thumb at
01:00:03your potential. So, when you're young, you really don't have any choice. I mean, you're
01:00:08in a family. You didn't choose the family. You go to school. You don't choose the school.
01:00:12You live in a country. You don't choose the country. If you go to church or synagogue or mosque or
01:00:17whatever, you don't choose that. That's just your parents. Or not, right? It's just your parents
01:00:22doing their thing. So, you make do with what is around you when you are young. You don't choose
01:00:28where you live. You don't choose how you live. You don't choose... You have some choice about your
01:00:33companions, of course. But, you know, if you've got cousins, you've got to hang out with your cousins
01:00:36quite a bit. Now, in school, you have some choice and so on. But by the time you get to
01:00:39school and
01:00:40are able to choose your friends, you're heavily conditioned by the kind of social lives that you
01:00:44had earlier, right? The rich kids tend to go for the rich friends and the poor kids tend to go
01:00:47for
01:00:47the poor friends and so on. That's all conditioned. So, even your choice is limited by prior circumstances.
01:00:52So, you know, the significant majority of your life when you're young is just unchosen.
01:01:00You eat what's put in front of you. You don't even choose your meals for the most part when you're
01:01:05young, right? So, most of your life is unchosen. Most of your companionship, your social circle,
01:01:10your neighborhood, your parents choose your neighborhood, not you. Like, I lived in Africa,
01:01:13I lived in England, I lived in Ireland, I lived in Canada, just yoinked all over the place like
01:01:18some 30-foot anaconda that some guy is on the hunt for, right? Just yoink and boop. And so, I
01:01:25just,
01:01:25yeah, I was just dragged around my mother's decisions and more distantly my father's decisions,
01:01:30like some guy being dragged behind a pickup truck and a gravel in the south.
01:01:39Very little choice. Didn't choose siblings, didn't choose mother, father, cousins, aunts, uncles,
01:01:46didn't choose any of it. Didn't choose where I was going to live. And so, when you're younger,
01:01:51you make do with what is. And you have to. You have to just make do with what is. Like,
01:01:55I'm in school. Oh, no, I'm going to spend some time in boarding school. And then I have to choose
01:01:59my friends within board. Oh, no, no, I'm back to public school in England. Oh, no, we're coming to
01:02:03school in Canada. Oh, I'm going to, for a little while in grade eight in Whitby. Oh, no, I'm going
01:02:08to grade six in Toronto. Oh, like, you just, oh, no, we're going to go to junior high. Oh, no,
01:02:12I'm going to go to high school. Right? So, you're just kind of dragged around. It's fine. It's the nature
01:02:16of
01:02:16the beast. I'm not sort of complaining about that. That's, you know, it's the way childhood is.
01:02:21So, as you get older, though, you want to refine and refine and refine. And you want to replace
01:02:27quantity with quality. Right? You know, when you're younger, if a woman says yes, you find
01:02:35yourself attracted to her, you'll date her. Right? As you get older, you look for red flags,
01:02:38and you now date not just for your loins, but for, you know, you should certainly, after you get old,
01:02:45out of the young man sort of hedonism, you should, and this is for males and females, of course,
01:02:52you should date and marry as if your future children get the choice. In other words, you're
01:03:01dating not for sexiness or horniness or status or prettiness or handsomeness. You're dating
01:03:11for who will be the best parent, co-parent for your child. My wife, along with her, many, many,
01:03:19many virtues, is a fantastic mother. There has not been a bigger swing from my mother to my wife
01:03:28in all of human history. That I guarantee. And it's not by accident, right? So, I mean,
01:03:36if you see your father spend 10 years dying of lung cancer, you're not likely to marry a smoker,
01:03:44right? Fairly clear. So, and of course, when you get married and have kids, the quality of your
01:03:54co-parent enhances the love that you have for them to a near immeasurable degree. So, if you're
01:04:00surrounded by people who don't think, if you're surrounded by people who don't reason, who aren't
01:04:04humble, who don't listen, who don't adjust their behavior based on reason and evidence, who aren't
01:04:08morally courageous, who aren't virtuous, who aren't, like, whatever, right? Then you are extending the
01:04:13lack of choice you had as a child into an adulthood where it's no longer necessary. You know, there are
01:04:22some, sorry, go a little tangential, it's not quite a tangent, but there are some people who are adults
01:04:27who like cosplaying as babies and wearing diapers and sucking their thumbs and so on, right?
01:04:34Is it weird? Yes. Is it kind of creepy? Absolutely. Does it happen? Yes. I hear.
01:04:46I mean, going for a nap is one thing, going for a nappy. Boy, that extra syllable is quite the
01:04:52world of
01:04:52difference. So, the reason I say that is that if you are in a time of independence in your life
01:05:07and you
01:05:08are still going, coasting on historical habituated relationships, then to me, you're like an adult
01:05:15wearing a diaper. You are extending a prior stage of development long past its expiration date.
01:05:29Long past its expiration date. Now, of course, you can have a great family, in which case you would
01:05:33choose them in and of themselves, and that's wonderful. Of course, my daughter is going to be 18 soon,
01:05:38and I hope, of course, and that is my goal, to have her enjoy my wife and I's company and
01:05:43other
01:05:43people, but she doesn't have to, right? And so, if you have a great family, fantastic. If you, as this
01:05:51person says, you know, he's enlightened and thinking, and he's just hanging around a bunch of
01:05:56incurious, mouth-breathing NPCs, well, you have a choice about that. Now, that choice is tough.
01:06:03You got to leave the zombie city, cross the desert in hopes of finding an oasis with thinking people
01:06:09around, and that crossing the desert is a horrible thing, man. It's a bitch and a half, and I say
01:06:13that
01:06:14from deep experience. It took me two years to cross the desert, to leave the hauntingly familiar behind,
01:06:22and to achieve connection with thinking people two years or so, and a lot of therapy, and all of that.
01:06:32I can say it's worth it because it worked for me, but if you're going to stay with the unthinking
01:06:39familiar, accept it. I mean, do whatever you want, right? I mean, you don't mean me to tell you that.
01:06:44Do whatever you want, but just don't lie to yourself about it. You can do whatever you want outside of,
01:06:48like, initiation of force and theft. You can do whatever you want aesthetically in your life.
01:06:54Just don't have any illusions about it. So, if you want to spend the rest of your life hanging
01:06:59around familiar, unthinking people, because that's who you grew up with, or that's familiar, blah, blah, blah.
01:07:04If you want to spend the rest, I mean, I had a friend many years ago
01:07:09who ended up, after his mother died, he moved into the apartment. His mother had a rental place,
01:07:17and he ended up sleeping in the same room he grew up in, with the same companion, same low,
01:07:24trashy kind of environment, and so on, right? So, if you do want to end up groundhog daying or copy
01:07:31-pasting
01:07:31your childhood to the point where you sail through your whole life with the unchosen companions of
01:07:37your childhood, who are low quality, if they're low quality, that's fine. Then, accept that the
01:07:42price of that is you're just not going to be able to talk in any deep or reasonable way with
01:07:46anyone
01:07:46around you. If you want to be able to talk in a deep and reasonable way with people around you,
01:07:50and the people around you won't do it, you've got to find new people or be content with your lot.
01:07:54But don't be sitting there saying, well, I'm surrounded by NPCs who refuse to think
01:07:58that's bad. And it's like, everything is choices and consequences. If you choose to strike out
01:08:04to do something new and get better companions, maybe you will, maybe you won't. I think you will
01:08:08these days, particularly with the internet. I had to do it prior to the internet, so it's a whole lot
01:08:12tougher. There's a whole group of people. There are various FDR communities around the world where
01:08:16people have free-domain communities, around the world where people have gathered together because
01:08:20of their love of philosophy and so on. Couldn't do that when I was younger. When I was younger, I
01:08:24had to
01:08:24have debates with a P.O. box and writing letters with people. So, if you choose the familiar
01:08:34over the intelligent, accept your choice. Don't fight your choice. Don't choose something and then
01:08:41fight it. Don't say, I want a monogamous marriage and then spend the next 50 years chafing that you
01:08:46can't sleep around. Don't say, I want the truth and I also want approval. You're not going to get
01:08:55both in the world that is. Don't say, I want conformity with NPCs and I also want deep and
01:09:03intelligent conversation. I want to have people around me who aren't virtuous and I want to love
01:09:10and admire them. Nope, we can only love virtue. And we can only love virtue if we're virtuous. And the
01:09:15first virtue is always honesty. So, just be honest with yourself. You haven't seen me complaining a
01:09:20lot about, oh my gosh, I got deplatformed and oh my gosh, people don't like me and oh my gosh,
01:09:25there's lots of negative things written about me and people think I'm a terrible guy.
01:09:29That's the deal. That's the deal. I'd rather be loved by those close to me and hated by strangers
01:09:36because that's the deal. If you want to be loved by those close to you, you have to tell the
01:09:40truth and
01:09:40be good in this world. And that means amoral or immoral strangers will hate you. That's the deal.
01:09:48Being loved by my wife means being hated by strangers. I am not going to fucking give up on
01:09:55being loved by my wife to gain the approval of people I'll never meet. That would be crazy to me.
01:10:00It's a terrible deal. It's a terrible deal.
01:10:04To sacrifice the love of a virtuous woman for the sake of approval by unthinking strangers is like the
01:10:13worst fucking deal in history. I'm telling you, it's a terrible deal.
01:10:21So, if you chase the approval of the unthinking, you give up the love of the virtuous. You give up
01:10:27love at all. All you have is conformity. Conformity is self-erasure. Conformity is lowering yourself to
01:10:32the lowest common denominator of the least thinking person around you and then sitting
01:10:36around scratching your bellies, watching the football game and complaining about immigration
01:10:39and sports. Well, hey, if that's the life you want, I don't think it's a great life. Certainly
01:10:46wouldn't be. It's not the life I've chosen, but I've certainly, I've made that choice in my life again
01:10:50until my late 20s, early 30s. I made that choice to a large degree. So, if you want to think
01:10:58for
01:10:58yourself, you're going to be hated by the NPCs because you are exposing their lack of humanity
01:11:03because what makes us human is our ability to think for ourselves. Animals can run in herds.
01:11:08Little fish can swim in schools. Everybody can not think. That's as easy as rolling out of bed.
01:11:15So, if you're going to think for yourself, the odds that your childhood companions will make it through
01:11:23to middle age and beyond. Not zero. Maybe you were raised by a family where everyone thinks for
01:11:27themselves and beautiful, like wonderful. Couldn't be happier for you. That's what I've tried to
01:11:30recreate. Just don't. And look, I fool myself from time to time. So, I'm not like, don't lie to
01:11:40yourself like I never lied to myself. I mean, you know, we all struggle with this. So, I say this
01:11:44with
01:11:44all humility and so on. But if you want to think for yourself, it's going to disrupt the unthinking,
01:11:50pretend relationships. It's just proximity, habit, history, and so on. It's not, it's like Siamese
01:11:56twin. It's not like you chose to be merged. So, if people around you don't think and you want to
01:12:03maintain the pretense of a relationship with them, you're going to have to give up thinking with them.
01:12:09That's the deal. That's the deal. I can't join a tennis club and then be appalled that they spend
01:12:17a lot of time playing tennis, right? You understand, right? So,
01:12:24make your choices, recognize the costs and benefits in your choices, and accept them. Don't fight them.
01:12:31Because if you say, I want to be around people who don't think, but I also want to have conversations
01:12:36with people who do think, you're tormenting yourself pointlessly. And you won't be actually
01:12:41making any good decisions, right? I mean, when I got married, we have a monogamous relationship.
01:12:47And so, I don't, obviously, right, we don't do anything like that. I know that's the deal. I'm happy
01:12:52with the deal. I think it's a great deal. If you choose to be around people who don't think,
01:12:58you won't have thoughtful conversations, right? I mean, if I choose to join some Japanese club where
01:13:04they only speak Japanese and I don't speak Japanese, am I shocked and appalled that I, my God, I mean,
01:13:08I want to join the Japanese club and I want to have great conversations, but I don't want to learn
01:13:12Japanese. It's like, you can't. You can't have that. That's not a thing. And I, you know, obviously,
01:13:18my recommendation is if you think, challenge the people around you to start thinking. If they don't
01:13:24want to start thinking, I personally found it valuable to leave the zombie city behind and to
01:13:28strike out to the new world of thought and reason and love and empathy and compassion and curiosity.
01:13:34And it's a, it's a beautiful place to be. It really is. It's a beautiful place to be full
01:13:45of honor and delicacy, admiration, humility, virtue, curiosity, strength. It's the greatest
01:13:54place in the world is to be around the people who think. I wouldn't trade it for the world. I
01:14:08could
01:14:08never go back. It's worth it. Do it.
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