Does Brain Equal MIND? Listener Questions

Name: Does Brain Equal MIND? Listener Questions
Uploaded: 2026-10-01T20:58:18+00:00
Duration: 47 min 2 s
Channel: Stefan Molyneux

00:00Hello, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom A and Pinch Punch, first day of the month, 1st of October

00:042026. Questions from the fine readers and watchers on X. First question, I hear you offer therapy

00:12and perhaps healing for my wounds. I do not offer therapy. I'm not a therapist. I am not a

00:19psychologist or psychiatrist or anything like that. However, I do think that rational consistency

00:25goes a long way towards dealing with prior emotional pain and trauma. I'll sort of give

00:32you an example. If you have inconsistent moral theories, then you are very likely to be

00:39exploited. So, for instance, if your parents punished you, let's say they spanked you or

00:47screamed at you, yelled at you, called your names, whatever, they say punished you pretty harshly

00:51for what you did as a child. Let's say you were 3 or 2 or 5 or 10 or 15

00:55or whatever, right?

00:57So, they held you fully responsible and worthy of punishment for, quote, bad things you did as a

01:04child. Okay. So then, if you go to your parents and you hold them responsible for bad parenting

01:11decisions and they start to say stuff like, well, I was doing the best I could with the knowledge I

01:16had, you were a bad kid and therefore you deserve to be punished or, you know, well, I was under

01:22a lot

01:22of stress and so on, right? In other words, if they just make excuses for their bad behavior,

01:28then you have a contradiction in moral theories, which is that a three-year-old is perfectly

01:34responsible for his bad decisions, but a 30-year-old is not, right? So, being very aggressive towards

01:41children and punishing them and then when the children grow up and have criticisms of you,

01:45the parent, having all these excuses is an inconsistent or, in fact, directly oppositional

01:52moral theory. It would be like having a theory of physics or of muscularity or biology that would say

01:59a three-year-old can lift almost infinitely more than a 30-year-old can because you're saying a

02:07three-year-old or a five- or ten-year-old is infinitely more responsible for their behavior

02:11than an adult is. And when a three-year-old or a five-year-old does something, quote, bad,

02:16they must be punished. But if an adult parent who has all the power does something bad or wrong,

02:22they must forever be given excuses and never be punished, right? So, that's just an inconsistent

02:27moral theory. And so, philosophy has a lot to offer with regards to trauma. We tend to remain

02:33traumatized when we remain in a state of danger. And having contradictory moral theories

02:40is the easiest way to get exploited. All right. Somebody says, or asks,

02:47is a mind an emergent property of the brain? If it is emergent, does that imply that the mind

02:51ceases to exist once the brain ceases to be? I would assume yes, but I'm curious about your

02:55thoughts on this. Sure, yeah, the mind is an emergent property of the physical brain.

02:59There's no question of that because you never have a mind without a brain.

03:03And we can literally see, like now with MRIs and scans and all, we can see the mind doing stuff

03:11that

03:11the person is subjectively experiencing. If somebody's having a bad dream, we can see the

03:15electrical storm in the brain. There was a show from many years ago where they hooked up the singer-songwriter

03:22and performer Sting, Der Stingle, Monsieur Gordon Sumner. They hooked up Sting to a brain scanning

03:31device while he was composing music and so on, and they could see all of the centers lighting up in

03:35his brain, all that kind of stuff, right? So there's no question that the brain is an emergent,

03:41the brain is the base of the mind. The mind is the subjective experience of the processes of

03:45the brain. And just because it's subjective experience doesn't mean that every experience

03:49is subjective. If I say two and two make four, I am using my subjectivity or my subjective experience

03:57and control of my body to state something that is universally true. Now, of course, people will say,

04:02yes, but how? How? How does this happen? Well, we don't know yet. I mean, we certainly see it

04:09happening, but we don't know exactly why it happens, right? I mean, in primitive tribes,

04:15if they lived under a volcano and the volcano would erupt from time to time, and you were to say,

04:21where does the smoke and lava come from? Well, it comes from the mountain, right? Comes from inside the

04:25mountain, right? Comes from the mountain. Now, they wouldn't know why it came. They wouldn't

04:30necessarily have a modern understanding of geology and magma and forces. And did you know, it always

04:34blows my mind that the center of the earth is hotter than the surface of the sun? Anyway, so primitive

04:40tribes, where does the rain come from? It comes from the sky. It comes from the clouds, because it never

04:48rains when it's sunny. So they wouldn't know why. They wouldn't know the cycle of condensation,

04:54evaporation, blah, blah, blah, right? They wouldn't know all of that, right? But they would know where

04:58it comes from. But they wouldn't know why. Now, whatever magical explanations they came up

05:05to pretend to explain where the lava and the smoke came from, from the volcano. Ah, the volcano god

05:13is angry. Well, that's not where it's coming from. It's not emerging because the volcano god is angry,

05:24right? That's not the answer. But unfortunately, when you say the volcano is erupting because the

05:31volcano god is angry, what happens is then you end up with a whole priestly class, you end up with

05:36a

05:36whole culture, and then the moment you start to ask more questions, you get killed, or ostracized,

05:42or attacked, or whatever negative social or biological stimuli are applied. So when you come

05:48up with magical answers, you create a moat around the question filled with fire and holy water and

05:55priests and all these other kinds of people who profit from these lies, these pretend or made-up

06:02explanations. And the problem is, it creates helplessness and maintains helplessness then.

06:10So if you are a primitive tribe, you live at the foot of a volcano for some reason, and

06:16the volcano erupts from time to time. If you say, well, the volcano is erupting because the volcano

06:23god is angry, and the volcano angry, the volcano god is angry because Bob over there was picking dirt

06:31out of his feet when the volcano erupted. So we'll just not pick dirt out of our feet anymore,

06:37because clearly that angers the volcano god, and then, oh, so-and-so over there was dancing,

06:42and then the volcano erupted. Clearly the volcano god doesn't like dancing. So you end up with all of

06:46these pretend solutions to magical non-explanations, and it actually paralyzes. So rather than move away

06:55from the volcano, they just continue to restrict behavior in this weird coincidental cause-and-effect

07:02nonsense, and rather than actually understanding the volcano or moving away from it, they pretend

07:07they can manage the volcano by changing habits, right? By changing habits. And so you end up with

07:14an incredibly repressed, intellectually uncurious society that doesn't understand anything and is

07:21kind of paralyzed, right? So that is one of the problems. So we have this volcano called the brain,

07:30which produces smoke and lava called consciousness or the mind, and we don't know how it happens. I

07:37mean, because it is the mind studying itself, and if the mind was simple enough for us to understand,

07:45we would be too simple to even ask the question. So we don't know, of course, exactly how the physical

07:55brain produces consciousness or the mind, which is fine. We're studying, we're learning, we're

08:01understanding, and I don't know, like, I genuinely don't understand this. I don't understand why, and

08:08I mean, suddenly it's for a long time, I probably should, but I don't. I don't really understand why

08:13people have such trouble with saying, we don't know yet. We don't know yet. So we don't know

08:22how the brain produces the mind. I mean, we have some rough ideas, we have, you know, general

08:27explanations. I don't know that we know, obviously, from the atomic level, how we get free will, and

08:32like, we don't know all of that stuff in every chain of causality. So we don't know yet. That's a

08:38fact. It's a true statement. Why does the volcano put forth lava and smoke from time to time? We don't

08:47know. It's an interesting question. But because people are so uneasy saying, I don't know yet,

08:56then somehow this justifies there being a ghost in the machine, right? So if you say, I don't know

09:04why the volcano sometimes puts out lava and smoke, you say, ah, that means that there's a volcano god

09:11in there. And that's the answer. But it's not an answer. Magic is never an answer. Magic is never

09:17an answer. If I put forward a business plan that says I'm going to make a zillion dollars next year,

09:26and people say, well, how? And I say magic, nobody's going to take me seriously. In fact,

09:30they'll think I'm kind of deranged, right? Magic is never an answer. And saying there's a soul,

09:36there's an immaterial essence that can't be detected that was around, that is around after

09:42consciousness. It's a primitive superstition that doesn't answer anything. And I mean, I remember

09:50the debate with Jay Dyer, where he said, how can we have different brains, but both understand the

09:55same number? And, you know, the answer that reality is full of discrete objects that we can count

10:04is the answer. And it's such an obvious answer that I didn't understand the question. Like, why would

10:07you even ask that question? Or if the question is, like, how can it be a gotcha question? Because we

10:13both arrived at six o'clock for the debater, or whatever it was, in the same place. So, is it

10:19like,

10:20how, from the atomic level up, does the brain construct the same concepts from the same stimuli,

10:27even though there are different brains? No, nobody has the answer as to, from the atomic level up,

10:31how that process works and occurs. Still being studied. So, but the answer is not magic.

10:38And because people have some odd difficulty saying, I don't know, maybe it comes from a school or

10:47something like that, but if you haven't done your homework and you don't have the answers,

10:50you're shamed and humiliated. I mean, there's something that goes on, or maybe it's in families.

10:55Where did you leave the flashlight? I don't know. Well, you never take care of your things,

10:59and maybe just get attacked for it. Maybe there's something, I guess, in society where

11:04people say, I don't know, then they get attacked or shamed or humiliated. That's what people don't

11:08like saying, I don't know, or something like that. Or maybe, maybe it's something to do with this,

11:14that you've got a priestly class that claims to have an answer that is highly profitable.

11:19Religion transfers trillions of dollars every single year from a larger group to a smaller group,

11:24highly profitable venture. And so, maybe it is, well, if you don't know, I get to maintain my

11:32profitable God. Like, if you can't answer the question as to how the mind produces consciousness,

11:37then I get to say it's a soul and have my highly profitable God. So, yeah, the mind is an

11:43emergent property of the brain. And of course, when the brain ceases to be, the mind ceases. Sure,

11:49of course, yeah. All right. Somebody says, people of color have ancestral land rights in America,

11:56Australia, Brazil, Canada, Philippines, etc. There is no white race that has any ancestral

12:01land rights. Did all white people just fall down from the sky? Right. Right. So, I mean, this is a

12:07result of radical blank slateism. A blank slateism is the idea that all human beings are completely

12:16interchangeable and the environment is the only difference between them. The environment is the

12:24only difference between them. So, for instance, Japanese simply means growing up in Japan. You could

12:31take someone from Somalia and race them in Japan and they would be Japanese. It is radical blank slateism.

12:42And it's not true. It's not true. So, it's also the idea that it is the government and a piece

12:53of

12:53paper that determines who is part of a particular group. You know, you get a rubber stamp and suddenly

13:00you are, you know, whatever country and therefore all of that, you're exactly the same as everybody

13:06else who's there. Now, in terms of rights and properties and morals, yes, human beings are

13:12human beings. And in the absence of some massive difference, like you've got some horrible brain

13:17injury that's reduced your IQ to shoe sizes or something like that, then, yeah. So, yeah, human

13:22beings all have the same rights and so on. But this blank slateism is very interesting. It's a very

13:28interesting phenomenon. Blank slateism is pushed for two reasons. One, it gives the government

13:37something to sell to you. Right? So, let's say that I wake up tomorrow and I say, I want to

13:43be

13:44in the NBA. And the only reason they wouldn't take a 60-year-old white dude is because of sexism

13:52and

13:52racism. So, then, because that would be horrible and wrong and unjust and I'm exactly the same as

13:58Kobe Bryant or LeBron James or whatever, then the only reason that I wouldn't be in the NBA is because

14:06they're racist and they're sexist and ageist maybe. I'm 60. So, then, the government can offer you

14:13something which is to force the NBA to take me on as a player. So, the government then has something

14:17to sell you. And the more that the government has to offer people, the more allegiance it tends to

14:23get. That's the first thing. The other thing, of course, is that it creates conflict and resentment.

14:30And governments, of course, love, love, love. All political oligarchies or hierarchies love,

14:37love, love, keeping people at each other's throats. Resentment, rage, anger, and so on. Because

14:44the more people fight amongst themselves, the less they look at their actual rulers and who's really

14:50in charge, you know, that kind of stuff, right? So, a blank slate-ism is something that creates a

14:57massive amount of division, right? So, you know, the argument that women only earn three quarters

15:02what men earn and so on. It gives you this horrible sense of injustice and it's wrong, it's bad, and

15:07how

15:08terrible it is that we can't get women's wages because, like, up because, you know, men apparently

15:16just hate women and love underpaying them and so on. Of course, if there was a group of people

15:22who produced exactly the same economic value but were 25% cheaper, everybody would hire them.

15:28And whoever hired them would have a massive advantage in the workplace, right?

15:33Right. So, it is, yeah, radical blank slate-ism. It's funny because it comes to some degree out of

15:39the left and it comes out of a class consciousness and so on that your consciousness is entirely

15:47determined by your relationship to the means of production, the capital goods, machinery, and so

15:51on. And so, if you own the means of production, you think one way. If you work at the means

15:57of

15:57production, like you're a worker rather than an owner, which is kind of prejudicial because owners

16:02work very hard, I can tell you that from personal experience. So, it comes out of the idea that

16:09the only reason that someone's an owner of a business is not because they're smarter or

16:15harder working or more ambitious or have a great instinct for things. It is because they're exactly

16:23the same as the workers, but the only reason they're an owner is because they're willing to be evil and

16:27exploit people, whereas the workers are not, right? Which is why you get the Mr. Burns,

16:32and the Simpsons and sort of the general caricatures of evil business owners, working

16:39girl being a kind of bit of a different example from that. Melanie Griffith, Sikorini Weaver,

16:44and Harrison Ford, if I remember, actually had a fairly positive message about our business. So,

16:48yeah, the owners and the workers are exactly the same, but the owners are willing to steal from the

16:55workers, and that's why they're the owners. And Trading Places was a pretty evil movie, I think from

17:02the 80s, with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. And Eddie Murphy is this street con artist who then has

17:12amazing insights about stock trading. And they take some guy from a wealthy background, and they trash his

17:18life, and he becomes homeless, and then they take some guy who's homeless, and they turn him into

17:24a stock trading whiz and wealthy executive in the financial markets and so on. And that's the blank

17:33slate, right? It's just all circumstance. It's all circumstance. And of course, there are genes and

17:39there is environment, and environment matters. I mean, if environment didn't matter, I wouldn't be

17:43promoting peaceful parenting so much, and promoting moral theories, environment absolutely matters.

17:50And it's substantial. So, environment matters, but environment and genetics are all tied in together,

17:58right? So, if you have a relatively unintelligent and impulsive family, then you'll be born into that

18:09family. And some of that impulsivity and unintelligence will be transferred to you,

18:17right? Some of it, not all of it. It's not 100%, right? And so, that's a problem. There are very

18:26few

18:28geniuses who come out of trailer parks or ghettos, and there are very few homeless people who come out of

18:36wealthy environments. And the difference isn't just the money. I mean, we know this for an absolute

18:41fact, because as societies in the West, we have transferred trillions and trillions and trillions

18:46and trillions of dollars from the wealthy to the poor, and the poor remain with us, and in fact,

18:54are more entrenched now than ever, and very few geniuses are coming out of the trailer parks,

19:00right? This is the goodwill hunting narrative, right? That there's a guy who just happens to be

19:08born a complete genius in a foster system with absent parents and so on. Is that possible? Of

19:14course it is. Absolutely, it's possible. Absolutely, it's possible. Is it common? No. No.

19:24So, yeah, the blank slate-ism is you are entirely in conformity with the environment

19:33that you grew up in, that everything about you is 100% environmental. And unfortunately,

19:41it just doesn't hold up to the data. It would be nice if it were true. I mean, it'd be

19:44nice if

19:45I had a soul that could live forever, but it's not true. All right. You not only, next question,

19:50you not only have a high-quality philosophy show, but you also have given high-quality insights into

19:55psychology. Have you considered doing some more psychology episodes? It would be extremely

20:00helpful. Now, of course, by psychology here, I'm not talking about being a psychologist or using

20:06any registered terms, blah, blah, blah, right? But I prefer to use it as self-knowledge. So I will

20:12think about that, and I appreciate your comment. I will certainly put it on my list.

20:16Next, Steph, I very much enjoyed your Intro to Philosophy series. Oof, boy, I did that almost

20:2320 years ago. 17-bar Introduction to Philosophy series. We'll put the link below. I have noticed,

20:29discussing these topics with people educated in philosophy, that they're more like philosophy

20:34historians. Kant said this, Plato said that, etc., without a real grasp of how any of it applies

20:40to life or makes any sense. Have you noticed the same, and how do you address it if so? Right.

20:45So this is a sophistry trick, not from you, but from people. I'm not saying it's conscious, but

20:49this is a sophistry trick where people are elevated as intellectual titans. Plato, Aristotle, Kant,

21:00I've got a whole History of Philosophers series available to donors. But people are elevated as

21:09intellectual giants. And then what happens is, if you don't know their thoughts, you can't comment.

21:17And if you know their thoughts, you generally can't criticize too much. And so elevating people

21:25to the stature of intellectual giants is a way of shutting philosophy off from regular discourse.

21:36Because you're talking about some thoughts or some ideas, and then some D-bag comes along and says,

21:42ah, but Kant said this, or this is just warmed over Platonism or whatever it is, right?

21:49Now, studying philosophers is a big job, right? It is a big job. And you're never done,

21:56right? You could always, oh, but you didn't read them in the original, or you didn't read the

22:00pre-Socratics, or, you know, there's always, oh, some so-and-so had a big response to this person,

22:04and you've got to study that. And you're never done, right? So, when people are elevated

22:11to the status of intellectual giants, now, are there intellectual giants? Sure, I get that for sure.

22:17But the purpose of philosophy is to translate reason into wisdom for the betterment of mankind.

22:25Right? The purpose of philosophy is to translate abstract reason into practical wisdom for the

22:30betterment of mankind. In the same way that the purpose of pharmaceutical research used to be

22:35to translate biological processes and curatives into practical medicines that people can actually

22:43take to improve their health, right? That's the purpose, is to take abstractions and move them

22:50into practical improvements for humanity. And so, you take reason, and you translate it into

22:56practical wisdom for the improvement of people's lives, and the virtue of mankind, and the quality

23:01of society, and so on. And because I have built software for many years, I was a coder, a chief

23:10technical officer, head of research and development, and so on. And so, what I did was I took

23:16abstract, well, semi-abstract ones and zeros, and translated it into useful programs for people's

23:24consumption. And to make it as user-friendly and easy to deploy as possible, that was sort of the

23:30purpose. So, quoting the intellectual giants is putting a bunch of ones and zeros in front of people

23:39instead of actual usable software that's easy to click on and touch screen and move around and so on,

23:45right? I mean, I remember there was a game on the old Atari 800 that I had to type in

23:52the machine

23:53code. I think it was assembler. I had to type in all of these letters and ones and zeros in

23:59a couple

24:00of pages, couldn't get one wrong, from a magazine. And the end of that was a game where you had

24:08a

24:08space station in the middle, rockets would come from various directions, and you'd have to block them

24:11using the joystick. And so, the ones and zeros and the letters, they weren't much fun. They weren't

24:19much fun at all. However, the game was fun, right? So, the purpose is to take the syllogisms and turn

24:26them into wisdom and practical utility to improve the virtues and values of people in the world. And

24:34that's always been my particular goal. Now, talking about what Kant said, what Plato said, and so on,

24:42is, I mean, it's interesting. There's nothing wrong with having that if that is an interesting hobby

24:46for you. But those thinkers have not produced much in the way of practical wisdom that improves people's

24:57lives, right? I mean, that's one of the problems with the semi-nihilism of Socrates, that Socrates

25:06disassembled falsehood without building virtue in general. He didn't really make much in the way of

25:16affirmative moral statements. He disassembled falsehoods like atheists do. They disassemble Christian

25:23morality, but without building a moral system of their own, because they are the gateways to nihilism and

25:29communism. And so, in general. So, elevating people to the status of intellectual giants, and so on, is saying

25:38that philosophy is about giant, barely comprehensible walls of text, and not about practical wisdoms. In other

25:48words, it's saying that computers should be a bunch of ones and zeros with no user interface that people

25:53can actually do anything productive with. Because nerds like the ones and zeros, but a lot of people

25:58have lives and actually need to get stuff done with their computers, and therefore they have a big desire

26:03for graphical user interfaces and touchscreens and so on. So, it is a form of cartelization. A cartel is when

26:13you're all band together to keep people out of your industry, right? So, when companies get big and

26:19successful, one of the first things they do is they start to license, they start to create licenses. They

26:25want the government to create licenses. And of course, the reason they want the government to create licenses

26:29is so that it's harder to enter the field afterwards, right? To get that field, to get into that field

26:36and get up

26:37and running in the field. And so, this is the AI companies now are going to start promoting regulation of

26:43AI and so

26:44on. And one of the things they'll do is that every new AI that comes along, they will test it

26:51for political

26:51incorrectness. Oh my god, it said this terrible thing, it did this terrible thing. And then you've got to start

26:56layering all of this code on top of the AI. I mean, if you could have AI be pretty simple.

27:01If you didn't have to build all of

27:03this, don't offend any one layer of code on top of it. So, cartelization. And with philosophy, the

27:09cartelization is, well, if you don't know a lot about Plato or Aristotle or Schopenhauer or John Locke or,

27:19you know, go on and on, right? Then you don't really have much to add. And that's like saying you

27:26can't

27:26invent a computer unless you know everything that Charles Babbage ever wrote. And that doesn't really

27:32make any sense to me. Did Elon Musk need to study the entire history of engineering in order to be

27:39a

27:39good engineer? I don't think so. It's just a form of cartelization. You can't write songs unless you

27:47spend 10 years studying classical music. Well, no, I think you can pretty much just sit down and write

27:52songs. So, I view the people who only study other people's thoughts, which is, you know, it's not the

27:58end of the world. It's not a terrible thing. But what they are is a cover band, right? So, I

28:05have a

28:05friend of mine who's a great guitarist and singer. And, you know, you can pretty much pull up any song

28:13and he knows it. Now, he happens to also write and talent that way as well. But it's the cover

28:19band,

28:19right? If you are a cover band, then you can go and play a bunch of other people's songs and

28:24you

28:24can play them very well. You might even get, you know, A.D. Van Halen's beat it guitar solo down

28:30to

28:30a fine art. But if you are just a cover band, then you are an expert reproducer. And if all

28:38you do is

28:39study other people's thoughts and analyze them, you are a cover band. And there's nothing wrong with

28:43that. Cover bands are okay. But it's a little bit parasitical because you require other people

28:48to have original songs for you to cover. It's like a shadow. It's not the thing itself. It's

28:55just a shadow that's cast. And so, you need people to think and be original in order to analyze their

29:00thoughts. It's a little parasitical. And yet, you will use that parasitism to often prevent other

29:06people from feeling competent in thinking their own thoughts. All right. Let's see here. Next.

29:12So, people have been conditioned to accept the premise of voting and always of voting for a

29:17lesser of two evils, inferring that not only is evil necessary, but acceptable. How would you

29:23structurally dismantle such mass mind conditioning and apathy? Yeah. So, defensive voting is very

29:31foundational. I mean, the people on the right are constantly facing a losing battle. As I pointed out

29:37in A Night for Freedom over 10 years ago in New York, they're making people crazy far quicker than

29:45we can make them sane. There was a scene that struck me in the old show MASH, where one of

29:50the surgeons,

29:51there's some new phosphorus, I think it was, some new weapon that sticks to people's skin and burns it

29:57off. And he just gets really angry at how quickly they are making weapons to destroy people or harm them

30:04far faster that they can figure out how to heal and cure them as surgeons and so on, right?

30:10So, yeah, the reason why everyone's losing, it really comes down to government education,

30:17right? Government education was really the worst thing to happen to freedoms as a whole

30:23in the West. Because when you give your children to the government and you have to give your money

30:29for the education regardless of whether you use it or not, but when you give your children to the

30:33government, then don't be shocked when they come out as statists, right? And so, you're always

30:41fighting a losing battle because the brains are warped by propaganda for 12 years straight from a

30:48very early age. And then, of course, communists and leftists and other assorted collectivists are very

30:57much embedded in entertainment and media and even now video games and so on. Everything that is

31:03successful gets taken over by propagandists. It's just very, it's very sad. It's very sad. It's kind

31:10of inevitable, which is why we have to have constant reinvention within society, which is everything

31:17that becomes successful tempts those who wish to exploit, dominate, and propagandize people to take

31:24it over. And this is why you can't ever have a cartel or a forced monopoly in anything, because

31:30when things get taken over by malevolent propagandists, they tend to fail in a free market,

31:36which is why they tend to go to places which can't fail, like government schools, because

31:40they have to get paid and kids have to go for the most part, and so on. So, the way

31:46that you solve

31:47this, I'll give you some books that I've written, but Practical Anarchy. Why not? Read Everyday Anarchy

31:54First and then Read Practical Anarchy. They're both available for free on my website, freedomain.com

32:00slash books. Next question, what are your thoughts of the resurrection? Do you view it as historical

32:07paradigm shift? What are your thoughts of the resurrection? I assume you mean the resurrection

32:12of Jesus, which did not happen. It did not happen. There's no magic that brings someone back to life

32:20after three days dead. It does not happen. The body is already decayed, and the cells are dead, and you

32:26can't shock it back to life, so to speak. So, it is a fairly typical belief in mysticism, life after

32:37death,

32:37of course, and there is a very common myth in tribes, which is that a powerful ancestor will come back

32:49to

32:49life and fight against enemies in the tribe's greatest need. This actually is in Lord of the Rings,

32:58where Aragorn goes to get the dead from the mountain and bring them back to fight in the battle of

33:05Helm's

33:06Deep, I think it is. And so, the idea that there are these dead spirits that will return to fight

33:11in the tribe's greatest need is a very common belief, and of course, this is partly what happens

33:19in Christianity, that the most powerful ancestor will return, no, not necessarily to fight, but to

33:24judge, and so on. So, it is a standard way of establishing that somebody is beyond human is to

33:32give them characteristics beyond that which is human. And so, you know, walking on water, turning water into

33:38wine, endless loaves of endless fishes and loaves, and being able to heal at a touch, and coming back

33:46from the dead, it is a natural consequence of not having a rational argument, is you need to inject

33:54magic to make it believable. And people do this sometimes with, well, they do this often with beauty

34:01in advertising. So, do you want to buy this perfume? Well, look at this long-necked, slender,

34:09beautiful woman in a lovely gown in a nightclub in Paris, and so you would like to be her, right?

34:16And therefore, you know, so they inject this kind of magic, because there's no particular argument or

34:20reason as to why. Why should you choose this beer over this beer? Well, this beer gives you a six

34:27-pack,

34:27like only people with six-packs drink this beer, whatever they come up with, right? Of course,

34:32drinking beer is quite the opposite, in general, of having a six-pack. So, people who lack reason

34:38have to pile in additional layers that are unrelated to the argument. So, Jesus promoted

34:49universality in morals. Now, because the ancients didn't have UPP, right, universally preferable

34:56behavior. It's a rational proof of secular ethics. You can get it at essentialphilosophy.com. It's

35:01free. The last third of the book is UPB. So, because they didn't have rational arguments for

35:09universality, and that's because it really took the internet to allow for the promulgation of a new

35:17moral theory, because academia is not going to allow. Academia can't allow for UPB, because academia

35:23violates UPB by having government money, government control, government licensure, government unions,

35:29and so on, and granting licenses enforced by the government. No institution will ever promote a moral

35:38theory that condemns that institution as immoral. Obviously, that almost doesn't need to be said,

35:43right? And so, it required the internet for UPB to be even worth developing. Like, why did I put so

35:50much

35:50effort into developing UPB because I could get it out there into the world and did not require

35:56publishing houses or institutions and so on to promote it? And so, in the ancient world, they did

36:04not have moral, rational, objective, syllogistic arguments for universal moral rules. And so, they

36:15desperately want people to accept these particular moral arguments or moral analogies or moral

36:20perspectives that Jesus was putting forward. And so, in the absence of reason, you have to promote

36:27magic, right? So, why should we believe what Jesus says? Is it because he made irrefutable moral arguments

36:36in the style of Socratic reasoning? No. No, he did not. So, why should you believe Jesus in the absence

36:45of

36:45Jesus proving his moral arguments for universality? Well, magic. He's infallible. He's God. He's divine.

36:55Now, the true divinity, the true absolutism, the true why-should-you-believe stuff is reason and

37:00evidence, material reason and evidence. That's why you should believe things. That's why you should

37:05accept things. You don't believe things. We accept them, right? I don't believe that two and two make four.

37:10I accept that two and two make four. So, in the absence of proof, you need faith. But in order

37:20to have

37:21faith, you require magic. Magic is what rushes to fill in an absence of arguments in the same way that

37:30pretty people will be shown in advertisements because people like pretty people and they associate

37:36pretty people with good things and they want to be around pretty people and so on, right? So, the

37:42resurrection was a way to get people to believe the teachings of Jesus without Jesus being able to

37:49prove them in a syllogistical way. All right. Let's see here. You talk about bloodline a lot.

37:55How about the facts like genetic ghosts? Listen, just so you know, like, if you're going to ask me

38:04to answer a question for you and you aren't willing to explain the question if you're using things that

38:12are not particularly standard, I mean, I've been around the world quite a bit and I've never heard

38:19the phrase genetic ghosts, right? I've never heard that phrase genetic ghosts. So, if you're going to

38:27ask me to answer your question and I also have to look up something that you have quoted, then I

38:36am

38:36less likely to do that. Now, that having been said, I will here look up what are genetic ghosts. What

38:43does

38:44that refer to? But in general, you want to help people out who are doing a service for you for

38:49free, like answering your questions? Oh, no, this is, oh, this is like, oh, Neanderthal and blah,

38:55blah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I didn't know the genetic ghosts are extinct groups detected only

39:00from genetic patterns in living people rather than from fossils or sequenced DNA of their own.

39:05The name comes from the fact that these groups left no recovered bones whose DNA has been sequenced.

39:10Their existence is inferred statistically. Stretches of DNA in modern genomes look too old or too

39:15divergent to come from modern humans, Neanderthals or Denisofens alone. When ancestral populations

39:22split and later interbred, fragments of the extinct group's DNA can persist. If that group has no

39:26sequenced genome, the leftover segments are called ghost ancestry. Okay. So, one ghost lineage appears

39:35to have split from ancestors of modern humans around the same time as Neanderthals and Denisofens,

39:40500,000 to 800,000 years ago and later interbred with early Homo sapiens in Africa before the main

39:45migration out of Africa more than 50,000 years ago. I don't know if that's even true, the out of

39:49Africa stuff. It accounts for 0.5 to 1% of genome in people today in every population tested,

39:55comparable in an amount to Neanderthal ancestry in many non-Africans. Okay. So, I don't, uh...

40:03Yeah. Genetic ghosts are missing branches of the human family tree that still show up in our DNA

40:06because our ancestors mixed with them, even though we have not yet matched those branches

40:11to a sequenced fossil. Yeah. So, I don't, I don't know what that, uh, what that question is in

40:17particular, uh, referring to. Let's see here. You talk about bloodline a lot. How about the facts,

40:23like genetic ghosts? Yeah. I mean, I don't understand the question. Please rephrase. Are all people,

40:28are all people equal? Well, they're equal in rights. They're equal in properties. They are not equal

40:36in abilities, obviously, right? Uh, have you been uncancelled? Um, not really. To be uncancelled

40:43would be to have everything restored that I had before, but I'm like Bruce Willis in the second

40:47half of every action movie, staggering around, but, uh, not down. What are your thoughts on the

40:52afterlife? Um, I talked about that recently in a show, so I won't go into it again here other than

40:57to say the best way to live forever is to have children and share thoughts. Will you ever sell

41:03physical instead of digital copies of all your books? Uh, I think there are some, I know that

41:07there are some available, my books are available, so freedomain.com slash books. Why are humans

41:13sentient but not dolphins? So, uh, sentience, of course dolphins are sentient, but in terms of

41:20moral responsibility, so you have to have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal

41:26standards. And while dolphins are intelligent and trainable and so on, to my knowledge, they do

41:32not have the capacity to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, right? So the ideal standard is

41:38thou shalt not murder. The proposed action is I want to murder, I'm going to murder. And so if you

41:44do the murder, then you're responsible because you have an abstract ideal that you have to, you have

41:49the capacity to compare your actions to. If somebody's lost their mind or has a brain tumor and can't

41:53process that, then they're not responsible morally. Um, how can I teach UPB to my three-year-old?

41:59So I have a show way back in the day called the ABCs of UPB, which is a great way

42:05to explain how to

42:07teach, uh, morality to children. See, if you can't teach morality to children, it's useless. In fact,

42:15it's counterproductive, right? If you can't teach morality to little kids, so children start morally

42:21reasoning about a year, 18 months, and so on, even earlier in some studies. And so if you can't teach

42:27your moral theories to children, then somebody else is going to, and you're going to get bypassed.

42:34So, so yeah, you have to be able to do that. Uh, why do people play team-based video games

42:40in sports

42:41to not work as a team? Blows my mind that I work hard to look out for teammates, but they

42:44don't.

42:45They will quit in sports when we are losing or only plug their mics in to insult our team in

42:49gaming.

42:49Well, what I would say is that teams and individuals are a complex challenge, which is why team sports

43:01is a, like, successful participation in team sports is a high marker for social competence,

43:10social intelligence, and so on. So in team sports, I'll just talk about volleyball,

43:18which I play from time to time. So in team sports, in volleyball, you get three hits,

43:23and then you have to hit it over the net. And in those three hits, generally what you want to

43:28do

43:29is they hit it down, you bump it up, and then you do a set, right? So you, there's two

43:34people at the

43:34front, two people in the back. So they hit it hard, the person in the back bumps it up using

43:39their

43:40inner forearms, and then it comes down near the net, and then the person near the net is supposed to

43:45set

43:45it up so that the other person can thump it down hard. So you sit it high, and then they

43:50jump up

43:50and thump it down hard, and that's generally how it works in volleyball, how it's supposed to work.

43:56Now, in pickup games of volleyball, what you do, I mean, you want to win, it's not that particularly

44:01important, but you might as well have some stakes in it. So generally what you do in pickup volleyball,

44:06but you don't know the teams particularly well, or at all, is you will try and set it up for

44:12someone, and if they're incompetent at setting it up, then you stop setting it up for them.

44:18Because the goal is to win, and if I hit the volleyball to you nice and high, and then you

44:25hit it into the net, I'll miss it completely, let's say you're uncoordinated, or whatever,

44:28don't know what you're doing, or you're drunk, or whatever, I don't know, right? Then I'm going to

44:31stop setting the ball up for you, because it's no fun, because we just lose. And not only, it's not

44:38that losing is so bad, I would rather have a great game and lose, than a dull game and win,

44:44right? The playing is sort of the point. And so one of the reasons why, if you're bad at volleyball,

44:50I'm not going to pass you the ball, same thing in soccer, right? You pass someone to the ball,

44:53they trip all over themselves, and so on. So one of the reasons why, if we're playing soccer or

44:59volleyball, I'm not going to pass you the ball, is because if you fumble it, then the game is less

45:04fun. It's just kind of annoying. It's less fun for the other team too. What you want is hard-fought,

45:10interesting, exciting volleys all the time. Or rallies, sorry, rallies is the better way to put

45:15it. It's actually the correct way to put it. So I would rather lose an exciting, tough rally,

45:23than have the other team fumble, and then just get a point, right? That's no fun. So how do you

45:30work

45:30together as a team? Well, if it's pickup, you're gauging other people's skills. And if they suck,

45:36in Rocket League, I think there are levels or layers that you play in. So it's tough. You want

45:41to win. You also want to have fun. You want to have exciting rallies or matches and so on. And

45:47so

45:48you have to play well yourself. And if there's a mismatch in skill, or, and then somebody may be

45:56good, but just having an off day or whatever it is, right? In Rocket League, right? I mean,

46:00you're in leagues, but maybe the person's just having an off day or they're tired or something

46:03like that. So working together as a team usually requires like when teams, you wouldn't just team

46:10up with random people to go hunting. Like you'd, you'd have your whole team, you'd know who had

46:14their strengths and weaknesses and who was faster runner and who was quieter and who had a better eye

46:20for throwing the spear. And so you give people that. So we're not really designed to just get

46:25together in random teams and it doesn't tend to work out very well because people get frustrated.

46:30All right. When a fighter jet flies and then turns upside down, why doesn't it start rapidly

46:34descending if the lift is supposedly inverted? I don't know, but I assume that it is because

46:39you have flaps, right? The aerolons and the flaps compensate for the downward drag when you turn

46:44the plane upside down. All right. I will, I will stop here. I got some more questions, but there's a

46:51cozy

46:51chunk of time. Of course, I really do appreciate everyone's questions and free demand.com to help

46:57out the show. And we will talk to you tomorrow. Lots of love. Bye.

Does Brain Equal MIND? Listener Questions

Category

Transcript

Comments

Recommended