The Truth About the BOOMERS! Listener Questions

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux answers listener questions on a reported Russian lab leak, AI that can replace human thinking, and claims that evolution is running backwards. He also covers government debt and money printing, stress and birth ratios, and why people often resent the solutions they say they want.  0:00:00 Lab Leak Hysteria 0:01:34 AI and Human Meaning 0:10:39 Evolution and Mutation 0:16:22 Governments and Debt 0:20:08 Fertility and Stress 0:20:46 Fertility Following War 0:22:33 Voluntary Society Debate 0:25:15 End of Your Bloodline? 0:26:19 Government Jobs Question 0:29:16 Faith and Character 0:32:38 Solutions People Resist 0:55:18 Love Beyond Crowds 0:55:33 Before the Universe 0:56:25 Changing Views of God 0:58:24 Comforting a Dying Child 1:01:49 Time Travel Limits 1:02:42 Money and Validation  Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/  GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00:00All right. Thanks for the great questions from the fine listeners on X and other platforms.

00:00:06Let's get straight into it. Some new bacteria got leaked from a Russian lab. You covered the

00:00:11COVID one before it became mainstream use. Any suggestions on what one should do this time?

00:00:16I think it's more than a coincidence that they're trying to gin up a war with Russia.

00:00:20And then this story gets leaked. And this is a very professional website with all those red and

00:00:25black terrifying images or colors from COVID and so on. So I don't think it's going to be that

00:00:32serious. I'm still doing more research onto it. But I think that it is probably more of a ginned up

00:00:40hysteria prior to the elections. If you scare people prior to elections, they tend to vote for

00:00:46the left. And if people are doing well, they tend to vote for the right, which is why the left

00:00:50always

00:00:50tries to screw up the economy. It tries to screw up the relationships between men and women with the

00:00:56sort of Cornell thing, and tries to create hostility and fear, anxiety, because when people are frightened,

00:01:02they run to authority rather than immerse themselves in basic concepts of freedom. So

00:01:09obviously keep my eye on it. It's not a particularly new pathogen. And it seems to be quite well treatable

00:01:17if caught early. So we'll see. But I think this is more along the lines of trying to gin up

00:01:23war with

00:01:23Russia and get people into a state of anxiety prior to the American midterms or something like that.

00:01:29But we'll see. We'll see. None of this is anything certain. And of course, I'm not a doctor. So

00:01:35let's see. What is your prediction for the existential crisis after the artificial intelligence hysteria has

00:01:40passed? For me, the far right crisis is going to be amplified to 11. And may God have mercy on

00:01:45all of us.

00:01:45Well, I'm not quite sure what that as a whole means. I don't really know what that means. But

00:01:52what is your prediction for the existential? I think that when people realize that they're very

00:01:58easily replaced by machines, there is a crisis of being. And, you know, kind of in a way there

00:02:06should be, right? If, I mean, this is sort of what happened to artists with AI, right? That AI can

00:02:12produce some fairly credible works of art now, and has displaced a lot of people who made their

00:02:20living doing art. And this is a fairly continuous process that happens with technology. People were

00:02:26very skilled at even scything corn, or scything hay, or wheat. And then what happened? Well,

00:02:35machines became far better at it. And people were very skilled at painting portraits. And then, of

00:02:42course, what happened? Well, the camera came along. And when the camera came along, portrait painting

00:02:48became much less valuable or useful or helpful. And so people had to sort of shift their skills.

00:02:54AI is a little bit different in this area, because it is replacing cognition rather than physical labor or

00:03:01technical skill. So if you are technically skilled at, say, painting portraits, when computers come

00:03:07along that do a lot better at that, sorry, when cameras come along, I guess computers now too, but

00:03:13when cameras come along and do a lot better than you at that, then you can see you're still a

00:03:18person,

00:03:18you have other skills, you can develop other things. But when your cognitive abilities are easily,

00:03:25and in general, better replaced by a computer, then you are going to have a crisis of meaning,

00:03:34right? If not just your physical skill, but your entire essence of thought and ability gets

00:03:43replaced by a computer, then there is going to be a crisis of meaning, because people are going to feel

00:03:47like, am I just a machine? And unfortunately, not in terms of innate capacities, but in terms of

00:03:55how people have been taught and trained, most people are machines. They have inputs, outputs,

00:04:02they're hedonists, right? So a computer is programmed to do things, and it's constrained by that. People who

00:04:11are hedonists are programmed by pleasure and pain to do things, and they are constrained by that. So

00:04:19what does it mean to be a human being if you basically are following, as predictable, a path

00:04:26as a computer, that you claim to be a non-computer, or you claim to be a human being with

00:04:30your own

00:04:30thoughts and free will, and all of that? So what happens to people when computers have replaced

00:04:41their entire cognitive apparatus? There is going to be a deep sense of unease and a deep sense of

00:04:49uselessness, right? So let's say you're some HR person, and then AI can replace your job with a

00:04:57reasonable degree of accuracy and much greater speed, right? AI doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to

00:05:03be better overall than human beings. And of course, it's really tough to be better than a computer.

00:05:10It's really tough to be better than a computer at things a computer is good at, right? I mean,

00:05:15you're trying to do math as fast as a computer can. It's ridiculous. I remember when I was younger,

00:05:22I'd have these sort of thoughts about, imagine if somebody was playing a video game, and you had to

00:05:28create visual art for every frame, right? I'm going left, you know, and then you'd paint the picture or

00:05:34make the picture by hand of what they saw next, and so on. I mean, it would obviously be impossible,

00:05:39but computers can do this at 120 frames a second, if they're fast enough. So when computers get good

00:05:47at stuff, it's almost impossible to compete. HR bots can process without tiring, without getting

00:05:58sick, without getting pregnant, without needing mental health days, without needing to be unionized,

00:06:04without needing to be paid on an hourly basis, without needing to be trained. I mean, honestly, like, good

00:06:10luck. Good luck competing with that. I do happen to be in a fairly good position as far as AI

00:06:19goes, because

00:06:20AI cannot create. AI can only look backwards, it cannot look forward. I mean, this is sort of

00:06:26mathematically true. And so, unless they up the creativity, perhaps, in which case, you're just

00:06:31going to get hallucinations, becomes less, less reliable. So what is going to happen to people who

00:06:37realize that they're just machines? What is going to happen? What is going to happen when men get,

00:06:46or women for that matter, but men get sex robots that are fairly indistinguishable from human beings?

00:06:55Well, the woman is going to have to bring more to the table than sexual access, right? In the same

00:07:01way that the welfare state has replaced men, so men have to bring more to the table than financial

00:07:06provision, right? That the government provides for many, if not most females, in terms of student loans,

00:07:14government jobs, welfare, retirement benefits, and all of that. So, men have to be chosen for

00:07:21something other than their ability to provide resources for a lot of women. And I think pornography

00:07:26has probably replaced the need for women for a lot of men in a sort of pretty tragic way, of

00:07:31course.

00:07:32So, yeah, AI. If a computer that is clearly not human, not alive, doesn't think, can do my job

00:07:40vastly better than I can, then who am I? Am I a person or a machine? I think there will

00:07:48be these big

00:07:48issues that will come to bear on people and will be a big issue for what does it mean to

00:07:56be human?

00:07:57What does it mean to be human? What does it mean? If to be human is to be a slower

00:08:04computer for people,

00:08:07right? If to be human merely means to be a slower computer, that's obviously very bad for people's

00:08:15psyche. It's very bad for people's consciousness. It's very bad for people's sense of self or

00:08:20identity. And if they don't know who they are, other than the fact that they are bad computers,

00:08:28right? And even good computers would be faster computers, but in the same way that even the

00:08:33fastest guy with an abacus can't keep up with even a cell phone in terms of processing speed and all

00:08:41of

00:08:41that, well, because before, technology tended to release human beings to do more human things.

00:08:52So, when the printing press was invented and you didn't need monks copying things by hand,

00:08:57then people were freed up to do other things than being sort of human photocopiers.

00:09:01automated machinery came along that released people from physical labor and allowed them to do

00:09:07things that were more human than mere brute force or unskilled labor. So, the guy who used to spend

00:09:16his day scything wheat, when automated machines came along to do that, he could go do something that

00:09:22wasn't usually just scything wheat because you're constantly getting chased down by more efficient

00:09:28machines. So, AI is the first revolution where there's an existential crisis because people aren't

00:09:37being released to be more human, to do things that are higher skill, to do things that are more original

00:09:45to what the brain is capable of. They are replacing human beings, the essence of humanity, not just their

00:09:54muscles or particular skill sets or whatever, but they are replacing the human beings who are the

00:10:00second-handers, right? So, the second-handers of Ayn Rand, social metaphysics, people don't ask what

00:10:05is true, they ask what the people believe is true. They don't ask what is right, they ask what will

00:10:10get me

00:10:10praised and not punished. They're hedonists. They are conformists. And AI doesn't release them to do

00:10:18something else. It's nothing else. What does it mean if you wake up and you say, all I am is

00:10:25a bad

00:10:25robot? All I am is a bad robot. What does that mean? I can't imagine it. I can't imagine it.

00:10:33I can't

00:10:34imagine it. So, it's going to be a challenge for sure. Somebody says, Michael Behe writes that

00:10:41only evolution, the only evolution we have evidence for is devolution, which cannot create major complex

00:10:46features. That makes the mainstream everything evolved from stardust argument more the magical

00:10:51belief than intelligent design. Where did Behe make an error? Now, of course, loss of function mutations

00:10:58are common. Loss of function mutations are common. If you look at something like Downs, or, you know,

00:11:06if there's other genes that contribute to what would generally be called a diminishment of intellectual

00:11:12function, so your loss of function mutations are common. However, he says that the frequency is a ceiling

00:11:20on what mutation and selection can build. So, then he says ordinary evolutionary change is devolution, because

00:11:27he looks at that which degrades and devolves. So, he argues the fastest adaptive mutations usually damage or blunt a

00:11:36gene. And those will often outcompete the rarer gene mutations that are beneficial or constructive.

00:11:46It's like if more people are going crazy than are becoming sane, then society devolves into a madhouse.

00:11:54And if there are more negative mutations than positive mutations, then entropy decay will be

00:12:01foundational. And therefore, how can you end up with more complex features? Loss of function, of course,

00:12:07is common in genetic processes, because it's way easier to break things than to make them, right?

00:12:14It's tough to carve Michelangelo, but with a hammer, you could smash it pretty easily. So, it's easier to

00:12:19break things than to make things. Now, that's, everybody knows that that makes sense, right? So,

00:12:27there are things that we can see that have devolved, right? So, there are cave fish that still have

00:12:37residual eyes and so on, right? It's not exactly devolution. So, evolution is not some progress

00:12:45ladder where beneficial mutations have to outweigh non-beneficial mutations, because over a long period

00:12:51of time, it is the beneficial mutations that are more likely to reproduce. So, if you just look at the

00:12:56individual, yes, there's more things that go wrong than go right when you're talking about mutations,

00:13:00but if you look over billions of years, then the mutations that provide evolutionary advantages

00:13:06tend to win out over those that don't. So, destructive mutations are all over the place,

00:13:16and they dominate in a short experiment, or in a very small population, and so on, right? But if you

00:13:24are

00:13:24looking at a larger population over a longer period of time, then the beneficial mutations will tend

00:13:32to win out, right? If you think of, like, driving to Vegas, right? There's a huge number of places that

00:13:39you can go wrong, like you can get the wrong turn, take the wrong exit when driving to Vegas. And

00:13:43you say,

00:13:43well, you know, most people who drive to Vegas, you know, a lot of people who drive to Vegas will

00:13:50take a wrong turn, or, you know, whatever, make a mistake, and so on. And therefore, how can anyone

00:13:55get to Vegas? Well, but if the person who gets to Vegas is the only person who wins a million

00:14:00dollars

00:14:00or gets to reproduce, then that's a sort of different matter as a whole. So, we can get into

00:14:08more details. If you're curious about that, I think it's very interesting stuff as a whole.

00:14:14So, if, you know, as I said on the speech, you know, we are all evolved from the innards of

00:14:20exploded stars, and so on. I mean, that's a claim about cosmology and common descent, and,

00:14:28you know, there are nested fossils, retroviruses, chromosome, fusion, and so on, biogeography,

00:14:35molecular trees, and so on. It's not, I'm not saying that every complex trait has to appear like in a

00:14:42flask on a human timescale or in a petri dish on a human timescale, because one of the things that's

00:14:48tough to understand, for everyone, I think, about evolution is just how absolutely enormous the

00:14:54time frame is. Four billion years, and especially in earlier species where reproduction was relatively

00:15:01rapid. It's crazy just how much time that is. And again, we think four billion years in a human

00:15:08time frame when people live sort of 60, 70, 80 years, 80, 90 years, and so on. But four billion

00:15:14years

00:15:15in a species that live, you know, a couple of days, a week, a month, is infinitely more, well,

00:15:22infinitely, but it's, you know, hundreds or thousands of times more. So, you know, we're starting to talk

00:15:27about four trillion years in sort of human terms. So, we look at evolution, we think four billion years

00:15:32is how a human lives 60, 80 years, reproduce at 20 or 40, 20 to 40, and so on. But

00:15:37for earlier evolution,

00:15:38where there's a much shorter life cycle, and if you've ever had to try to get rats or mice out

00:15:42of

00:15:42your environment, you know how quickly they breed and how short their lifespans are, which gives you

00:15:47that much more time for positive adaptive mutations and so on. So, yeah, I just think that's important.

00:15:55The selection effect is incredibly powerful over a long period of time, when, of course, as all

00:16:01resources are, resources are scarce. You think of the giraffes, right, that they could get the taller,

00:16:07the eucalyptus leaves or something like that, like the ones with the taller necks could get more

00:16:12food, and therefore had a slight edge. You only need the tiniest slight edge in reproductive fitness

00:16:19to win out over millions of years. So, all right, how can a government that has monopoly control over

00:16:28the issuance of its own currency ever go into debt in its own currency? The issuance of its own

00:16:34currency ever go into debt in its own currency? I'm not quite sure I understand the question,

00:16:42because what governments do, of course, is they use their money creation powers to pay off people

00:16:48who buy bonds, right? You buy some government bond at 5% or 7%, and then they've got to pay

00:16:53you that

00:16:54at some, you know, 5-year, 10-year, 25-year. I think Nova Scotia had like a 60-year bond,

00:16:59a 65-year bond. It's just crazy stuff. So, you have future obligations, and if your future

00:17:06obligations vastly outstrip the value of the currency, right, because, I mean, monopoly has

00:17:14a currency, but it doesn't really have any value outside of monopoly. I remember a friend of mine

00:17:18once telling me when I was younger about how his brother went around to bars and strip clubs

00:17:24in Europe somewhere using Canadian Tire money, which is a sort of, well, Canadian Tire is a store

00:17:30in Canada, which sort of issued their own pretend currency that you could use to buy things. And so

00:17:35everyone thought, it's back in the day before the internet, right? Everyone thought it was real,

00:17:39real currency. So, what does bankruptcy mean? Bankruptcy means when you run out of value,

00:17:46not when you run out of money. I mean, we know this from Zimbabwe, you know, the billion dollar

00:17:50or the trillion dollar notes and so on, or the Weimar Republic and all the French Revolution issues

00:17:57with money. So, bankruptcy happens when you run out of value, not when you run out of, quote,

00:18:04money, because if you can type whatever you want into your own bank account and you're the government,

00:18:08so you can do that, then what happens is you have to create more and more currency to pay off

00:18:13your

00:18:13debts, and then each dollar is worth less and less. And then, of course, there's a death spiral

00:18:19where people start demanding that you pay them sooner rather than later. They don't hold on to

00:18:23the bonds because they think they're not going to be worth much, like if inflation is running at 20%

00:18:27and the bonds are paying 5%, people would cash in their bonds because they're going to be fairly

00:18:31worthless after 5 or 10 years. So, when you have increasing obligations as a government and then

00:18:39you keep printing money, then you run out of value because nobody wants your money anymore.

00:18:44So, it's, you know, like they used to burn the notes in Weimar Germany because it was cheaper to

00:18:52burn the notes in your stove than it was to go out and buy firewood. So, when your question is

00:18:58how can

00:18:59a government that has monopoly control over its issuance of its own currency ever go into debt

00:19:02in its own currency, the debt is when you can't pay your bills. Now, a bankruptcy, of course, or,

00:19:10you know, the currency running out of value is being unable to pay your bills because governments

00:19:17borrow. And it's not just domestic, right? I mean, for a while there, I think it was Japan was one

00:19:23of

00:19:23the biggest holders of US bonds and so on. So, you owe people money sometimes in their currency,

00:19:30right? If you've got to buy a bunch of yen and the dollar is becoming worthless, then it becomes

00:19:34harder and harder to buy yen. And then the people who hold those recognize that and don't want to

00:19:40hold on to your bonds anymore. So, at some point, you can't pay your bills. So, the difference between,

00:19:47right, it's called unfunded liabilities. The difference between what the government

00:19:51has promised and the available revenue is unfunded liabilities. If the government has promised a

00:19:58trillion dollars to retirees and it only has a hundred billion dollars, then it's 900 billion

00:20:03dollars that it can't pay. That's a debt, right? And again, they can print it, but then they're just

00:20:07doing a soft default. All right. Does having many children at a young age save eggs and let a woman

00:20:13keep having children longer? I don't think so. I don't think so. I mean, look, women have millions of

00:20:20eggs, hundreds of thousands of eggs at various points in their lives. So, I don't think, given that a

00:20:26woman is going to use, you know, I guess at most 10 to 12 eggs out of the millions she's

00:20:31born with

00:20:31and the hundreds of thousands she has, as she ages, I don't think that there's any saving of the eggs.

00:20:38And in fact, I think that the data is that if a woman has children, well, when she's younger,

00:20:43it becomes easier, not harder to have children when she's older. All right. If there is nobody

00:20:47slash nothing in control, then why are there a disproportionate number of males born after an

00:20:51event like World War II? Are we connected to each other in a way we don't understand?

00:20:55Sure. So, you can watch my video series called The Bomb in the Brain, fdrurl.com slash b-i-b.

00:21:03So, The Bomb in the Brain talks about stress factors in, one of the things it talks about is

00:21:09stress factors in giving birth. So, when women are stressed, it means that they're either short of

00:21:19provision or protection, right? So, they don't have enough to eat or they don't have enough

00:21:24protection. And so, when women are stressed, it means that there is a deficiency of males in the

00:21:30environment. Maybe there's really dangerous animals to hunt or there's been a war or some illness that

00:21:36affects men more than women or something like that. So, when women are stressed, their hormones, I assume,

00:21:44are more likely to give birth to males to replenish the tribe because women were consumers of male

00:21:51resources for most of our evolution. And so, if you're short of resources and you're short of

00:21:57protection, which means the ability to commit mad acts of violence, or maybe you could say sane acts

00:22:02of violence, but significant acts of violence, if you're short on hunters and soldiers, then giving

00:22:08birth to females is not particularly helpful. However, given that males tend to be disposable for

00:22:14obvious sperm and egg disproportionate evolutionary reasons, then when females are stressed, they would be

00:22:21more likely to give birth to males. Or to put it another way, the females who did not give birth

00:22:27to more

00:22:28males when stressed tended to not survive nearly as well. All right. If anarcho-capitalism has never existed

00:22:35and been observed, how can anyone claim to know how it would behave? Any more than believers claim to know

00:22:41the behavior of an unobserved god? Well, there are experiments that are run throughout history. There

00:22:52was 800 years of a stateless society in Ireland, and I did a show many years ago on Somalia, which

00:22:59even

00:22:59some of the intellectual challenges in the region is doing better than it did under a government.

00:23:04And of course, we've come closer to a more free market society, and we've got further away from

00:23:12a free market society. And so you look at something like North Korea or Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge or

00:23:19Soviet Russia and so on, and we can see this is sort of the opposite of a free market central

00:23:23planning,

00:23:24no particular property rights, no freedom of speech, and limited freedom movement and job choice and so

00:23:29on. And so when you add more coercion into the economy, things get worse. And when you add more

00:23:34freedom into the economy, things get better. And there's no reason to believe that that wouldn't

00:23:38top out with, quote, perfect freedom or a stateless society. And of course, if you look at a non-coercive

00:23:49environment, you say, well, you can't have a society that's non-coercive, then I would invite you to

00:23:54review something called Utopia, which is Y-O-U, not Utopia, but like the letter U, but Y-O-U,

00:24:00Utopia,

00:24:01which is when you're an adult, how many of your personal relationships are based on force? Again,

00:24:08assuming that you're not some Tony Soprano style crime gang lord or in a crime gang, then I assume

00:24:14that you didn't force your girlfriend to be with you. You don't kidnap your adult children to have

00:24:21them come over Thanksgiving, and you don't steal from everyone, and you didn't force your boss to

00:24:27hire you, and you don't threaten your friends in order to get them to come over and watch the game

00:24:32on a Sunday. You have a relationship with people. You have relationships with people that are voluntary.

00:24:38So if we say, well, geez, non-coercive relationships can't work, or society needs coercion to maintain

00:24:43relationships at a political level, well, that which works locally is at least capable of working

00:24:51globally, right? So if you just look around, you say, okay, how many people are in my life

00:24:57through straight up direct coercion? And again, assuming you don't have some John Fowles

00:25:03collector style lady locked in your basement, please release her if you do, then your relationships

00:25:07are voluntary. And if your relationships are voluntary, why can't voluntarism work? I mean,

00:25:12it works in your life, right? All right. And when someone says, it is the end of your bloodline,

00:25:17I ask, do you have any siblings, cousins, or extended family, i.e. bloodlines are trees,

00:25:23not chains. I'm not sure I quite understand. Your bloodline, oh, so you're referring to bloodline

00:25:30as in like a river with tributaries and so on, right? You dam one tributary, the river continues,

00:25:36right? But the key word there is your. Your. If you don't have children, then your individual

00:25:44bloodline ends, right? You're damming up one tributary or one rivulet or brook from a larger

00:25:52river, okay? But so your stream is ending. Yes, but the stream continues and there's other, yeah,

00:25:58of course, but that particular one, you dam up one particular tributary out of a river,

00:26:03then that tributary has ended. So the phrase there is your bloodline. If you don't have kids,

00:26:09there's nobody who has half your genetics. Nobody. Now, of course, I get that your parents,

00:26:14you know, 25%, blah, blah, blah, but your bloodline ends for sure. Steph, why do you choose not to

00:26:21criticize or to stay silent when people with evil government jobs call you? You stay silent about

00:26:25the elephant in the room and continue helping them with their relationship problems as if their lack

00:26:30of morality evident from government jobs they have isn't causing them. Well, first of all,

00:26:37if you have a purity test called have nothing to do with the government, everyone fails. And I get

00:26:42that there are differences of degree. And so I get all of that. So I'm not, but there's no purity

00:26:47test.

00:26:48So I, of course, have to deal with the government. I drive on government roads. I pay my taxes. And

00:26:54so

00:26:54I have to deal with the government. I, uh, take government services, uh, at times. And so, um,

00:27:00yeah, I, so whether somebody individual chooses to work for a government or not is not essential to

00:27:10freedom. So let's say I've had, uh, 20 people over the years who've called in who have government jobs

00:27:15and let's say I had convinced them. And some of them I have certainly talked to about, uh, quitting

00:27:20their government jobs. If somebody has a government job that I would consider

00:27:23pretty bad morally, then I will certainly make that case. But the other thing too, of course,

00:27:29is that most people are calling me up because they have some significant instability or unhappiness or

00:27:35chaos or problem in their life. And then me saying, well, you have to change your career is not always

00:27:41the best thing. Generally, if people then become more stabilized, then they can make those kinds of

00:27:46choices from a better standpoint. If let's say somebody calls me in and he works for the government

00:27:51and he has three children and a wife who stays home and so on. Well, I mean, if let's say

00:27:58I'm

00:27:58able to, not that I would, but I'd talk him out of having his job, then his family's thrown into

00:28:04a

00:28:04fair degree of instability. His kids are going to have to make do. They could fall into poverty and so

00:28:09on. So there's, uh, that's another reason. And I certainly have said to people, I don't think this

00:28:14is a good job. The other thing too, and this is sort of, and this is not mine, sort of

00:28:18a Murray Rothbard

00:28:19test, which is not to say it's perfect, but it's an interesting approach, which is, uh, let's say

00:28:24that somebody works for the government and they, they collect garbage, right? They haul the cans into the

00:28:30back of the garbage truck and that's their job. Okay. Well, um, that job would exist in the free market.

00:28:37Some jobs would not exist in the free market, like in a stateless society, but some jobs would,

00:28:43would there be some level of security? Yes. Would there be lawyers and judges or evaluators of

00:28:50criminal wrongdoing? Yes. Right. So I, we can certainly find jobs that wouldn't exist. And then

00:28:56there's jobs that would exist, but I find it hard to condemn someone for doing a job in a political

00:29:04situation that would also exist in a free society or a free market. So those are interesting

00:29:10questions. And I appreciate the feedback. I will think about it some more, but that's about it.

00:29:17All right. Next question. Is it God or is it our covenant with God that removes defects of character?

00:29:26Great question as well. So of course I'm not religious, but is it reason?

00:29:33Reason that removes our irrationality, or is it our commitment to reason that removes our

00:29:40irrationality? Or to put it another way, is it the diet book that makes us lose weight? Or is it

00:29:48our

00:29:48commitment to the diet book that loses weight? And I think that the answer would have to be that it's

00:29:54both. In philosophy, of course, there's a principle called necessary, but not sufficient.

00:30:02Necessary, but not sufficient. So in order to become a marathon runner, you have to have the

00:30:10right shoes and you have to have a place to practice and you have to have time. You can't

00:30:15become a marathon runner if you're locked in a prison cell. So if you have the right shoes and

00:30:19a place to run and you have the time, that is necessary. But having the right shoes and a place

00:30:26to run and the time doesn't make you a marathon runner, it's necessary but not sufficient. You

00:30:31actually have to put on the shoes and go and run and practice and train. So having knowledge

00:30:37is necessary for wisdom, but having knowledge does not make you wise. Being knowledgeable about dieting

00:30:46is necessary to lose weight. I mean, I don't know, whatever diet you happen to South Beach or

00:30:53whatever, you happen to choose, or at least you have to have the knowledge that you must cut calories

00:31:02to lose weight. And I know you exercise too, but I remember when I was, I guess in my, in

00:31:09my teens,

00:31:10I remember reading somewhere that if you go and run for, I don't know, half an hour, 40 minutes or

00:31:1545 minutes, go run around the track, which I used to do from time to time. I was on the

00:31:19cross-country

00:31:20running team. And if you then go and eat a piece of toast with butter and jam, the calories have

00:31:27all

00:31:27come back because I used to believe when I was younger, you know, sweat it off, work it out. And

00:31:32mostly it has to be calorie restriction. Exercise generally won't do it. And often, of course,

00:31:40this is the case for me. On the rare occasions when I can't exercise for whatever reason,

00:31:45my calorie consumption goes down quite a bit because muscles are hungry little animals and

00:31:53they need their, they need their food. And so when I don't exercise, my eating goes down. When I do

00:32:00exercise, my eating goes up. And so, yeah, you have to sort of restrict calories. So knowing that you

00:32:05have to restrict calories in order to lose weight is not sufficient to have you restrict calories and

00:32:11lose weight. So, but if you don't know that you have to restrict calories in order to lose weight,

00:32:16imagine if you think you can pray the fat away, then you will continue to eat too many calories and

00:32:24you will pray and you will not lose weight. So having knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient

00:32:30for wisdom. And having knowledge, of course, takes away excuses, takes away excuses, right? So if a man

00:32:41has erectile dysfunction, sorry to whiplash your topics, if a man has erectile dysfunction and he thinks

00:32:48it's because it's because of sitting too much or wearing the wrong underwear or something like

00:32:54that, maybe contributing, I don't know, right? But let's say that the real problem is he's got a

00:33:00pornography addiction, then, well, he's trying to apply the wrong solution to the problem. He's,

00:33:09oh, well, I'll wear boxes, not briefs, I'll get a standing desk or whatever it is, right? But the real

00:33:13issue is the addiction. So you have to have the right knowledge in order to make the right decisions,

00:33:20obviously. And one of the reasons why people get hostile at people who bring them the right knowledge

00:33:27is because they don't really want to solve the problem. And I just, this is a bit of a side

00:33:33quest,

00:33:34but I think it's important. Sorry, by definition, if I'm talking about it, naturally, I think it's

00:33:38important. But people, in my experience, don't really want to solve their problems. They pretend

00:33:45that they want to solve their problems, but they don't really want to solve their problems. So for

00:33:51instance, there's a poll that came out recently, that the vast majority of boomers, I think it's in

00:33:56America, support raising taxes on young people to pay for their own, the boomers, retirement benefits.

00:34:02And this has caused a bit of a debate online. I mean, it's kind of academic, because nobody's

00:34:09going to take away the boomers retirement benefits, they will, they will burn the younger generation to

00:34:13the ground. So that the richest generation in all of human history, who've made really some of the

00:34:19worst decisions in all of human history, I'm not sure that a culture has ever been as thoroughly

00:34:26wrecked as it has over the last 40 years. It's hard to think of historical precedents for how

00:34:37quickly a culture has been wrecked. And it is really the generation that has made the worst set

00:34:45of decisions, and been the most immune to reason and evidence. I grew up debating boomers, I grew up

00:34:51because, you know, teachers and so on, professors. So although there were some of the professors I had

00:34:57who were older, they were more amenable to reason, the sort of greatest generation, people born before

00:35:02the baby boom of the mid-1940s. But they have the worst set of decision-making skills really ever in

00:35:12history. And that gives me some sympathy, because they were heavily influenced by propaganda. But boomers are

00:35:19fragile and touchy and immature. They've been shielded from reality for most of their lives,

00:35:26because of endless debt and money printing and manipulation and propaganda. They have grown into

00:35:30petulant, fragile, kingly types that if you bring any kind of basic reality to them, they get very touchy

00:35:39and offended. And thou shouldst not have been old before thou wert wise, is a phrase that resonates

00:35:48within my brain. And I remember when I was, gosh, let me see now, was that boomers? Yeah.

00:35:55So when I was in my early, in my early 20s, I left theater school, because it was a nest

00:36:03of leftist

00:36:04vipers. I left theater school, and I produced a play that I'd written called Seduction,

00:36:11and directed it. And I had some older actors who I'd hired, and they were really vainglorious, touchy,

00:36:23volatile, exceedingly immature. You know, there's no fool like an old fool. It really is a terrible

00:36:29thing to be old and petulant, to be old and petty, to be old and foolish is really an appalling

00:36:38and wretched situation. There's a preternatural baby in Mel Gibson's Passion, the movie about

00:36:47Jesus. It's a baby being held by a woman. The baby has sort of old, wise face and eyes,

00:36:54and it's eerie and unsettling. To me, it's even more eerie and unsettling to see

00:36:59a wrinkled toddler with gray hair. It's wild. So when the mathematics of

00:37:07the economy begin to approach like predators, the vainglorious, petulant foot stomping of the

00:37:16boomers, they immediately turn on their children and grandchildren in particular, who are having

00:37:23a very tough time getting their life started because of all of the economic policies and

00:37:29migration policies of the boomers, the young people having a very tough time getting their

00:37:32life started. So the boomers have wrecked their countries about as quickly as countries can

00:37:40possibly be wrecked. And now they want to prey on the young because the consequences of their own

00:37:46bad decisions are accruing to them. The thing I've found most about the boomers is a spiritual

00:37:54femininity. This is not anything negative towards women. I love women, but women have strengths and

00:37:59weaknesses. Men have strengths and weaknesses. We're really designed to work together and we're

00:38:04an amazing team when we work together. But the boomers have the avoidance of accountability

00:38:12that characterizes a little bit more in women than in men for evolutionary reasons, which we can have

00:38:19sympathy with and perhaps can talk about another time, but the accountability issue, right?

00:38:23The greatest generation had a stoicism and a willingness to defer gratification and a willingness

00:38:31to sort of buckle down and do the hard work and not be touchy, volatile, tinged with self-pity

00:38:38and aggression and manipulation and the avoidance of accountability. The boomers told me that the

00:38:46voters were in control of the government. That's what I was told, right? It's a democracy.

00:38:52It's a republic. It's, you know, you've got a responsibility to study politics and to vote

00:38:59and to make sure you understand things. And I was being told that the citizens were in charge of

00:39:07the government. The government listened to the citizens. And the reason that democracy was such

00:39:11a good thing is because it works, right? The people tell the government what they want and then the

00:39:18government does what they want. You know, the government is like a waitress who takes your

00:39:22order. You say, I want this, that, and the other, and then that's what you get. And so now, of

00:39:28course,

00:39:29what happens is when the boomers are old and their retirement pensions are unsustainable as a direct

00:39:37result of their delusions and fantasies and irrationalities and corruptions, the boomers, that is.

00:39:45So they voted for more benefits than the government could possibly pay. And they voted for immigration

00:39:51policies that turned out to be enormously expensive and have depressed the wages of the

00:39:55next generation and all these sorts of things, right? And now, of course, a lot of the boomers are

00:40:00saying, well, yeah, but I was forced to pay into the system. I didn't, I would rather have kept the

00:40:05money. Just give me the money back and I'll be fine. It's like, but there is no money.

00:40:10There is no money. And this switch is a wild thing to me. I genuinely don't understand this

00:40:20level of cognitive dissonance other than maybe you just say whatever you need to say to win in

00:40:26the moment with no regard to principles whatsoever. I just find that bizarre. I feel uneasy when I'm out

00:40:32of alignment with principles, but I suppose that's not as common as we'd like it to be. But

00:40:38the boomers say, well, we're in total control of the government and that's why you should obey the

00:40:44laws and that's why the system is the best system because the government listens to us and does what

00:40:50we want and so on. Okay. So then all of the resulting disasters would be the results of the boomers

00:40:58because if the government makes bad policy and the boomers were in control of the government, then

00:41:03the boomers are responsible for the disasters within the culture. Ah, no, but not anymore. You

00:41:11see, now it's completely changed. Now you see, well, we were forced to pay into it. I don't agree with

00:41:18the system, blah, blah, blah. And you owe me this money and so on. Right. As if the boomers were

00:41:24not

00:41:25aware, I mean, I remember this on a West Wing episode, I don't know, was this 20, 30 years ago,

00:41:31whenever it was, there was a huge issue to do with the solvency of social security of the

00:41:37retirement plans. So the boomers have been, have known that the retirement plans were underfunded

00:41:43forever and ever. Amen. And they, I mean, what was it? The social security was called the third

00:41:50rail of American politics. You touch it, you die. So anybody who said we have to means test or cut

00:41:56spending or, you know, make it voluntary, or there was like the, the lock box thing where the government

00:42:01takes your money and then you get it back later on in your life. It's all nonsense. Right. But of

00:42:06course, in religion, the priest takes your happiness by cursing you with original sin and then sells you

00:42:14your happiness back week by week or sells you relief from your misery. Right. So they put a curse

00:42:19on you called original sin, or you thought something bad, which is the same as doing something

00:42:24bad. And only I can remove the curse of your bad conscience that I've inflicted upon you with my

00:42:29mysticism. So the priest steals your happiness from you by propagandizing you as a child. And then

00:42:37the priest will sell you a weekly cure for that unhappiness. As long as you keep paying him and

00:42:44giving him allegiance and handing over your children to be doused with water and things like

00:42:47that. And so the government takes your money and then gives it back to you month by month over

00:42:53time. So they, they make you poorer and then they sell you some alleviation from that poverty

00:42:59week by week is the same, same kind of principle. So whenever I, and I have a long career, I

00:43:06started

00:43:07questioning my elders in my mid-teens. So it's been, again, the good old 45 years. It's funny,

00:43:13Brian May, I think he said, he's going to take a break from touring guitarist for Queen. And he's

00:43:17like, you know, I've been 50 years and I've got grandkids and I want to do more astrophysics and so

00:43:21on. What an astoundingly talented guy, by the way, it really is incredible. A singer, guitarist,

00:43:27he does keyboards. He's an astrophysicist. He's obviously an astute business guy, a good lyricist

00:43:33and all dead, all dead is a wonderful, um, lyric, lyrical song and amazing. Just a, I absolutely

00:43:42love, treasure and adore looking at colossal amounts of hair and colossal amounts of human

00:43:50achievement. And what a skinny stick insect he was in the seventies. Well, so was Freddie.

00:43:55His whole legs were high heels. Anyway, just kind of a funny aside. But the one thing that is

00:44:03almost genetically true of the boomers is a refusal to take responsibility and admit fault, which in a sort of

00:44:12exaggeration of female nature is typical of more extreme manifestations of femininity.

00:44:21Refusal to admit fault and take responsibility, which is funny because, I mean, to me, if that

00:44:28occurs within women, it's not a problem because it's to some degree female nature. But if it occurs

00:44:33in men, it's very bizarre. And this is what I mean by sort of female coded. The boomers are

00:44:39female coded. And, and they were generally quite promiscuous in many areas, particularly in the

00:44:46seventies, uh, the key parties and all this sort of stuff, which I know, again, I'm not saying that

00:44:50that was normal or average, but it definitely was there in the culture. And there was quite a bit of

00:44:54it, uh, certainly in the environment where I was as a kid. So, well, not key parties because people

00:45:00didn't have cars, but maybe for the crappy apartments. So most people don't want to solve

00:45:08their problems because solving their problems will require them to not coast on momentum.

00:45:15Most people, and I can understand this, right? It's like, if you've got a particular destination,

00:45:20like if you've ever been on one of these springs where there's a little current and it takes you

00:45:25down the spring and so on, or then you, you don't, you don't swim like crazy to go faster,

00:45:30right? Like I was on the swim team too. And what a polo team. And, and you don't, you know,

00:45:37bust your shoulders and your back swimming like crazy to go down a little river that's taking you

00:45:43down anyway. And so most people, they, they have a current and the current is conformity, compliance,

00:45:49inertia, their genetic predispositions, some hedonism and what they're told to do. And

00:45:55and so on. And so they just, they just go with the current. This is at least three quarters of

00:46:00people, probably more. And we know this from the conformity experiments in various psychological

00:46:07studies and so on. So most people, they're just, they're just coasting along and calling it

00:46:14good, right? If you're an extrovert, you say, ah, well, being an extrovert is good.

00:46:19And if you're an introvert, you say, oh, the extroverts are too loud. I'm a homebody. That's good.

00:46:23Right. And so people make their own particular emotional preferences, which are largely pre-programmed

00:46:31into them through genetics and, and so on. And so they make their genes the good. They make their

00:46:38genes the good. I saw this, of course, when I was managing both salespeople and I was managing

00:46:45tech people, or I was working very closely with salespeople and managing tech people. And the tech

00:46:51people thought that the salespeople were shallow, loud, brash, obnoxious, entitled, you know, and

00:46:59the salespeople thought that the tech people were kind of internalized, bitter, castrated house cats

00:47:07who made their beeps and burps and got annoyed that they had to do more work. So these are just

00:47:15personality types, right? And so people generally, they're, they've got this current that's taking

00:47:22them down the path of life and they don't want to work. And they want to say, well, my personality

00:47:30is

00:47:31the river and the current where it's taking me is a good thing. I want to enjoy the view. So

00:47:36why am I

00:47:36going to put my head down in the water and swim like crazy when already going in the right direction?

00:47:39And they, if I swim, I don't get to enjoy the view. And from the viewpoint of the top of

00:47:45the

00:47:45mountain, so to speak, with a bunch of rivers going down, it's flattened sides. Everybody's

00:47:51dropped by genetics into a particular river. Their genetics are the propulsive current and they're

00:47:57just going down the river saying, I am the good. This river is the moral path and everyone's going in

00:48:05different directions based on their genetics. And everyone is saying, my river is the moral path.

00:48:09My particular little river, my little stream with the current, that's the moral path.

00:48:14And of course, it's a whole lot easier to follow your predilections and say, my predilections are

00:48:20the good. If you can just redefine the path your genes are taking you on as the good, then you

00:48:26are

00:48:26automatically good. And it's a whole lot easier as opposed to saying, what is the good path? Maybe I

00:48:33need to swim upstream. Maybe I need to get out of the stream, so to speak. Or maybe if something

00:48:39is

00:48:39good, I need to put my head in the water, work my shoulders and swim like crazy, even to go

00:48:45much

00:48:45faster in the direction of my current. So, sorry for the extended analogy, but I think it's really,

00:48:51really important. And then, so when I see people and they say, I have a problem, you know, when I

00:48:56was

00:48:56younger, my first impulse was to say, ah, well, let me help you solve your problem. And I'm not talking

00:49:01callers to the show. I'm talking people that I meet in general. And people I meet in general say,

00:49:05I have a problem. My first impulse when I was younger was, oh, let's solve the problem.

00:49:11My impulse now, especially as people are older, is I assume that they like and want and need the

00:49:19problem. So, if when I was younger, if a wife was complaining about her husband, I would point out,

00:49:27well, you know, but you did marry him and, you know, he's got things to put up with as well

00:49:30and

00:49:30nobody's perfect and complaining is actually kind of toxicifying your marriage and it's pretty bad

00:49:35to diss your partner out in the world. And what would happen? Would people say, oh, you know,

00:49:39that's a great point. I hadn't thought of all of that. Thank you for helping me break the loop of

00:49:46complaining and like all of that, right? No. When you interrupt someone when they're complaining

00:49:55with a solution, they resent you because what they want to do is complain. Of course, when a wife,

00:50:03and it can happen the other way, but when a wife complains about her husband, girlfriend complains

00:50:07about her boyfriend, what she's doing is she's saying, I'm better than him. It is a form of cheap

00:50:13confidence or cheap self-esteem. I am better than my boyfriend. Look, my boyfriend, his texts

00:50:20are very short and he takes a long time to respond and he's a bad communicator and blah, blah, blah.

00:50:25You know, to which, of course, the rational question is, well, why are you with him then?

00:50:28If you don't like him, why are you with him? But the purpose of the complaints is to feel superior.

00:50:34It's a really cheap drug of feeling superior or better than or whatever, right?

00:50:42And so the purpose of the boomers when I was younger was to get me to obey them, right? Because

00:50:50when all the teachers told me to obey the state, obey the government, well, they, of course, were

00:50:55representatives of the state of the government. So it was just easier for them to say, well,

00:50:58democracy is the best and people have voted for government schools and I'm a representative of

00:51:03the government and I work for the government and the government is good because of democracy and all

00:51:08that, well, it's okay. Well, then it was convenient for them to say that because, of course, if they

00:51:12had told us that government policy doesn't actually reflect the will of the people very much, that

00:51:18would have been tougher to get our obedience in school or other places, right? Because if the

00:51:26government is a representative, if the government represents the will of the people, then government

00:51:32schools represent the will of the people. Everybody wants government schools. They all approve of

00:51:35government schools. It's the best way to educate your children and so on, right? But if teachers were

00:51:39to say to us, government policy really doesn't reflect people's desires and you can't really find

00:51:45much statistical correlation between what people want and what the government does, government responds

00:51:51to power groups for sure, could respond to the media, responds to the wealthy and the powerful,

00:51:57but not to the people. Well, that would have been tough to say to us because it would mean that

00:52:04we

00:52:04would not really respect them and we would view ourselves as not people who were wisely studying

00:52:11in a socially approved and optimum school environment, but as sort of unwilling prisoners

00:52:15of power. And we wouldn't have respected our teachers. And the teachers would have had to look in

00:52:21the mirror and say, well, I'm inflicting this curriculum on the children, even though the government

00:52:25doesn't really represent the will of the people. And so it's just easier to say what they said about

00:52:31democracy and will of the people and so on, because it got obedience. Now, of course, what they want

00:52:36is to get their money back, which of course was taken from them. And I get that. And in many

00:52:42places,

00:52:43the employer pays half the retirement taxes too. So now they're saying, well, you see, but I never

00:52:53approved of the system and the government just took my money without ever pointing out that they

00:52:58spent the last 40 years saying that the government represents the will of the people and you should

00:53:03obey the teacher because the teacher is a representative of the state and the state is a

00:53:07representative of the will of the people. And right. And now they're saying, well, I didn't agree with the

00:53:12system. They just took my money and now I want it back and all that. Right. And that's, I mean,

00:53:17it's a sad thing. It's a sad thing to see. Masculinity would demand that you at least address the

00:53:24elephant in the room, which is the form of demands for compliance. So, so the reason I'm saying all

00:53:30of this is because when you give people solutions, they will usually resent you because their quote

00:53:38problem is their solution. Right. So a woman who complains about her husband, the complaints is her

00:53:44solution. I want to feel superior. I want to feel good. I want to feel better than, and I could

00:53:51either

00:53:51do that by going out and becoming a really good moral person, fighting evil, promoting virtue,

00:53:56inspiring people to do the right thing and, and so on, which is, that's a lot of work. I mean,

00:54:02that's not, you know, that's not sitting in the current and enjoying the view as you're taking

00:54:06down the mountainside. So that's, it's a lot of work to be better than, right? But it's very easy

00:54:12to just complain about someone. So the complaining for women complains about, and men can do this too,

00:54:18but it's a little bit more common with women. Of course, right? I'm going to point this out, but

00:54:23women who complain about their husbands, that is their solution. What am I worth? Well, I'm better

00:54:29than my husband. What's my value? Well, I'm better than my husband. What is my virtue? Well, I put up

00:54:34with a difficult husband or an absent husband or an emotionally unavailable husband. I roll your eyes.

00:54:38Partnership. Why am I good? Well, if I complain about someone, I can feel that I'm better than them,

00:54:44and that makes me feel good. I get some dopamine. I feel superior there or superior to, right?

00:54:51So when you give people solutions, they generally resent you and get mad at you and attack you and

00:54:57punish you and ostracize you because you're taking away their drug. You're saying this stream leads to

00:55:03a bad place. You've got to swim against the current. You've got to get out. You've got to find your

00:55:06own

00:55:07way. And they're like, nope, I think I'm just gonna let the current take me. I don't want to feel,

00:55:11I don't want to go through the difficulties of actually becoming a good person. I'm just going

00:55:16to complain about others and feel superior. So, all right. Is love possible in structures above

00:55:2250 people? I'm not, do you mean all 50? I don't know. Love is our involuntary response to virtue

00:55:30if we're virtuous, and that does not require 50 or fewer or more people. Was there ever a time in

00:55:35the

00:55:35history of the universe where nothing existed? I personally don't believe so. I find that hard to

00:55:40conceive of, which obviously could be a pure limitation of my lack of knowledge of physics,

00:55:44which is almost infinite. But for nothing to exist and then things to exist is a big challenge

00:55:53to conceive of. And of course, it would be an argument for some external, it would certainly

00:55:58be an argument for an external force to the universe, like outside of the universe. I'm not

00:56:03saying that would necessarily be God or something, but matter has to come from somewhere. Matter can't

00:56:08be created or destroyed, only transfer to energy and back. So, I don't believe there was a time

00:56:13in the history of the universe where nothing existed, and I can't imagine how physics would

00:56:18handle all of the matter in the universe spontaneously appearing out of nowhere. So, I don't think so.

00:56:24All right. Could you speak on why our thought has evolved in our understanding of reality and

00:56:29virtue, but our perception of gods has not? I think that our perception of gods has.

00:56:36So, for instance, in the past, people would view epilepsy as demonic possession. There was a

00:56:43terrible story about a woman with mental illness who was subjected to a sort of multi-day exorcism

00:56:51that ended up killing her, right? She had mental illness for whatever reason, and they thought,

00:56:55of course, she was possessed by demons, and they tried to cast and starved her and beat her and so

00:57:00on.

00:57:01And so, we have. Yeah, we have. I mean, people used to pray to the gods for rain,

00:57:08and praying to the gods for rain, like for farmers, praying to the gods for rain would

00:57:15prevent people from developing irrigation, right? To make sure the water comes, to bring the irrigation

00:57:21systems and so on, because that would be kind of blasphemy, right? You pray to God for rain,

00:57:26and if you get rain, you did good, and if you didn't get rain, you did bad. And so, people

00:57:32don't

00:57:32pray to God. They build irrigation systems, right? And so, people don't pray to God for cures from

00:57:42disease. I mean, not primarily. I mean, I'm sure there are some people who still do it, but there

00:57:46are people who do anything in the world, right? People who believe in flat earth and so on, right? So,

00:57:52people don't usually only pray to God for the cure from a disease. What they do, of course,

00:57:58is they go to a doctor, and, you know, if you've got a UTI, you don't pray to God, you

00:58:03go get yourself some antibiotics, right? So, I think that our, we don't think that volcanoes erupt

00:58:08because the volcano gods are angry. We don't think that the, you know, there's that lion from the

00:58:13Seinfeld, that the sea was angry that day. It's kind of funny, right? But of course, the sea is not

00:58:17angry. We don't think we've angered the sea gods when there's a storm. We sort of recognize that

00:58:21what it was. So, I think there has been. What would you say to comfort a child dying with cancer?

00:58:28Actually, it's funny because over the years, I've had a conversation or two with, I remember

00:58:34having a conversation with a woman who was dying of cancer and had kids many, I had this many years

00:58:41ago. She wanted it to be private. This was long before there were private calls, but I've done these

00:58:44sort of private favorites for people over the years. It's tough. It's tough. The only thing that

00:58:52I could say with regards to this is that a short life that is full of love is in many

00:59:00ways better

00:59:01than a long life arid of devotion. To have a child appallingly and horribly dying of cancer,

00:59:10if the child experiences, you know, forehead-touching, eye-to-eye, absolute love, worship,

00:59:18and devotion, you at least fill their heart with the greatest gift before cruel nature takes it away.

00:59:25To be there to tell the child how much you love him or her, to fill that child's heart up

00:59:33with all the love in your heart, to treasure their existence, to laugh with them, to play with them,

00:59:40to make funny faces, to play cards, and laugh and cry, to give them all the deep emotions that

00:59:49children are especially prone to and hungry for. Fill that child's heart up as much with love as

00:59:56possible. And that is the greatest comfort, really, that you can give. And also to tell the child

01:00:02there's an old argument from Socrates, which is about death, right? And the argument goes something

01:00:09like this, which is to say, the night that I slept the best and did not awaken was a great

01:00:15night's sleep.

01:00:17You put your head to the pillow, eight hours later you wake up, you don't have the old guy tottering

01:00:21to

01:00:21the bathroom thing. That's a good night where you don't even remember your dreams, you just put your

01:00:27head to the pillow and wake up. The night that you sleep through without being awakened by dreams or

01:00:35whatever, 3 a.m. anxiety, sleep demon is crouching on your heart, that's the best night's sleep where

01:00:42you are not conscious. So death, if there's nothing after death, then death is the best night's sleep

01:00:48that goes on forever. There's nothing to fear, in fact. There's nothing, there's no part of you that

01:00:51will be experiencing that. So there's nothing to fear from death. The dying part can be scary, but we

01:00:58have drugs for that. And you also, as a child, if you're loved in this way, you will experience more

01:01:06love in the year or two you have left than most people will experience in 10 lifetimes. And to go

01:01:12down

01:01:13with someone into death is a very powerful and deep experience. So there's nothing to fear after

01:01:21death. And you say, how much did you fear before you were born? How much were you scared before you

01:01:24were born? Nothing to fear after death. The dying part, I'm going to, obviously, that's not fun and

01:01:30life is great and all of that. So that would be my approach. There's nothing to fear and we are

01:01:37going

01:01:37to spend as much time as we possibly can together. And I love you beyond measure. And know that even

01:01:45though your life is short, it is more full of love than most people who live to 100. How can

01:01:50one travel

01:01:50through time when time is just a device used to measure distance? No, you can't travel through

01:01:54time, right? I mean, you can dilate time in terms of, I guess we can bring back Brian May's song

01:02:0039,

01:02:00which is an astrophysicist folk song about a guy who travels off, runs around the stars at

01:02:10high speeds, comes back, and his girlfriend's daughter is the same age as his mother was when

01:02:18he left. And so you can mess with time by going close to the speed of light. But no, you

01:02:23can't move

01:02:24back in time. I mean, every now and then I'll sort of post this kind of stuff that there was

01:02:29some

01:02:29Leonard Skinner concert from the 70s, but it looked like someone was holding an iPhone.

01:02:32And once you can't travel back in time, if I could go back in time, even five seconds, right? Right

01:02:38now, I'd just be hanging in space because the earth has moved on and solar system has moved on.

01:02:42So, all right. How many atheists from third world countries have you met? Well, not many

01:02:49because of the IQ issue. What is the answer to the modern obsession with money? Well, money is the

01:02:55validation. Power is the validation. Sex is the validation. Addiction is the validation you seek

01:03:00when you're not loved. So be good, be loved, and you will find that your obsession with money will

01:03:04diminish. All right. How do you brave more human conflict so you can build an entrepreneur project

01:03:10when peace has become the most valuable thing in your life? I think I just did a call-in show

01:03:14with

01:03:14this guy, so I don't think I'll need to answer this one. But I really do appreciate everyone's

01:03:18questions. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. Thank you. Thank you so much.

01:03:24And lots of that from up here. We'll talk to you.

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