MY FIRST TWITTER/X AMA!

Name: MY FIRST TWITTER/X AMA!
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T16:28:44+00:00
Duration: 41 min 52 s
Channel: Stefan Molyneux

00:00Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. Getting some great questions from

00:03X. I'm back on X. You can find me at Stefan Molyneux on X. A woman writes, a mother writes,

00:10there is a huge divide occurring between younger men and women, 20s and 30s, and it seems almost

00:15irreparable. They're having a difficult time forming relationships, getting married,

00:20having children, etc. I see both men and women in that age group discussing their travails,

00:25and many are becoming very discouraged and want to give up. What advice do you have to repair this

00:30issue? It's a big issue, and I sympathize, and I think I understand. So here's what's important

00:35to understand from a sort of real big perspective. Everything plus political power gets corrupted.

00:43Political power is like the ring in Lord of the Rings. It sort of corrupts. Now, women have greater

00:50access to political power than men. Women vote more. They vote longer because they live longer,

00:54and so on. So the state is now run to a large degree by female voters. Now, both masculinity

01:03and femininity, which are beautiful in their natural state and have united to get us out of the trough of

01:09our animal natures to the higher conceptual realms that we now inhabit, we can think and reason and

01:14all that. So men and women have teamed together to produce all of us over time, which is an amazing

01:19accomplishment, unprecedented in Earth's history and perhaps in the universe's history. We don't know.

01:26But the beauty of masculinity and femininity, the beauty and power, gets corrupted by political

01:32power. So for instance, if you take masculinity and you mix it in with the power of the state,

01:38you get fascism. When you take femininity and you mix it in with the power of the state,

01:44you get socialism slash communism. One is hyper-masculinity, which is masculinity enhanced

01:51by the state, and the other is hyper-femininity, which is femininity enhanced by the state.

01:57So the way that women are corrupted by political power is through flattery. Men have their weakness,

02:08which tends to be sex and status, and women have their weaknesses, which tend to be conformity

02:13and vanity. So politicians praise women, praise girls at the expense of boys. And so boys get depressed,

02:25alienated, and video game or pornography addicts, and women get arrogant and superior and, you know,

02:34a tad on the insufferable side. These are general trends. There's tons of exceptions.

02:41Now, self-discipline means learning how to resist the temptations of flatterers. People are controlled

02:53more by flattery than by force, at least in the modern world, as it stands. So teaching girls that those

03:04who flatter them are the most likely to exploit them is really important. Flattery is difficult and

03:13dangerous for girls, in particular because when you're young, as a woman, everybody wants to date

03:18you, to defer to you, to bring you presents, to give you gifts, to have sex with you, and so on.

03:23And being in the presence of that kind of demand is really, really hard for men to understand.

03:30I can't imagine if I was upset in public that everybody would absolutely rally around me and

03:38support me and hug me and, right? Males upset is just something that you have to man up and deal

03:43with, but women's upset has to be accommodated, again, in the political realm in particular.

03:48And that is too much power. It's too much power for anyone. The incandescent desirability

03:57of young women is supposed to be tamed through marriage, right? So women are young and beautiful

04:02and attractive, and then they're supposed to. It's supposed to last like maybe six or 12 months.

04:06Then you get married, you have kids, and you sort of move on with your life. But now that level of

04:13hyper-attractiveness, which again is a beautiful thing, I have no issues with it, can last on and on

04:20and on. Women can, you know, you see women in their 40s posting duck-faced selfie pics to post thirst

04:26traps and so on. So they're, you know, 20 plus years into milking looks, which is supposed to be a

04:35young woman's game designed to attract a husband and be the foundation of the family. So, of course,

04:40the way that women get corrupted is the media and the state and all of that basically tell them two

04:50contradictory things. Number one, you should be absolutely equal to men, and not just in terms of

04:57political equality, which of course nobody can argue with that women should have exactly the same rights

05:01as men. So you should be equal to men in terms of outcomes. And for women to be equal to men in terms

05:07of particularly economic outcomes requires a significant amount of political intervention.

05:13The only way that women can be completely equal to men is if women don't have children,

05:17in which case you get equality, and then that's the end of your civilization. Because to take time

05:23off to have and raise children, women are going to have to give up certain economic incomes, right,

05:27and rely on men. So what you do is you say to women, you should be absolutely equal to men in terms

05:32of outcomes, and you should never settle and you deserve the best. So if you want to be equal to men,

05:40and then you also want men to do better than you are, then you are going to be perpetually dissatisfied,

05:46and you're never really going to settle down. So if you are raising girls, then you need to teach them

05:52that they're going to get flattered by the media, they're going to get flattered by politicians,

05:57they're going to get flattered all over the place, and recognize that the flattery

06:02based upon looks and desirability is almost certainly manipulative. That they should be praised

06:11for their virtues, not flattered for their desirability. And to raise women to choose virtue

06:18over vanity is tough. It's as tough as raising men to value virtues, virtue over status, and all of that,

06:28and power. So trying to uncouple young women from the sort of steady kind of heroin-like drip of praise

06:42and flattery is tough. Because it's very easy to get addicted to money and power for men, and it's very easy

06:50in status, and it's very easy for women to get addicted to flattery and vanity. And again, these are

06:57perfectly healthy in a way men should seek some kind of status, and women, of course, need to be desired

07:03in order to build families. So there's nothing wrong with these instincts, but when they're combined

07:09with political power, things tend to go kind of rancid. So I think that men need to re-engage with

07:18the world and recognize that for most boys, and I had Dr. Warren Farrell on years ago to talk about

07:24this sort of boy crisis, the media, and in particular the educational system,

07:31views at best boys as broken girls. The girls are the ideal, and boys are loud, obnoxious,

07:39annoying, intrusive, restless, and all of that, to the point where, I don't know, countless boys are being

07:44drugged for failing to find school interesting. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine some director

07:50putting out a movie, and if the audience isn't particularly interested in them, in the movie,

07:54he then drugs them so that they are kind of paralyzed, and their boredom vaporizes? I mean,

08:01that would just be unholy, but we do that. So it's important to talk, if you've been raising boys,

08:07and if you've had them in particular in structured and particularly government schools, it's important

08:13to talk to them about their experiences and what happened. If you can get women to understand that

08:20flattery, particularly from political power and media power, is manipulating them, then you can get them

08:29to pursue virtue rather than vanity, and if you can get boys to young men to recognize that the insults

08:37that they have received, usually over the course of their education and through the media, are there

08:41to suppress them, and they should not give in. You should not give in to insults. All right.

08:48Any tips for a married man to maintain maximum sexual attraction to his wife?

08:52Sure. That's actually pretty easy. Eat well and exercise. Eat well, that's all it is. Eat well

09:01and exercise. So you want to try and maintain your physical attractiveness as long as humanly possible.

09:07I mean, eventually we all fall off the cliff, but maintain your physical attractiveness as long

09:13as possible. So a marriage is a monopoly, right? I mean, you make vows that you are each other's

09:20sole sexual partners for the rest of your lives. And monopoly often breeds complacency.

09:28You know, like if some company gets a monopoly from the government, well, the customer service

09:35tends to go down a smidge because they're guaranteed their income. Somebody's work ethic tends to diminish

09:41a little bit if they have a tough job and then they win the lottery, then they go in and quit their job

09:44or whatever, right? So the way that a lot of people respond to a monopoly, and this is, you know,

09:51the sort of famous thing that you're attractive and then you get married and you kind of go to

09:56seat, right? You get a pot belly or the woman gains weight or you stop exercising and so on.

10:01Because you're like, okay, well, I'm not out there in the sexual marketplace competing.

10:05This also happens, of course, it's kind of famous when women get divorced. The first thing they do is

10:09go back to the gym and so on. So the way that I think you want to view it as a married man and as

10:16a married woman is a monopoly breeds greater responsibility, not less, right? Greater

10:22responsibility, not less. So you have a monopoly over your children because they're your children

10:27and that should breed greater moral considerations, not less. And so with regards to sexual attraction

10:36within a marriage, you should work as hard or harder as you did when you were single to maintain

10:42your level of attractiveness for your partner. Not to mention, of course, that if you exercise and

10:49maintain a healthy weight, that's good for your sex drive, that's good for your erections and so on. So

10:55just recognize that having a monopoly means that you should do better and you should work harder to

11:02maintain health and so on. And so should your wife. All right. Thoughts on Jordan Peterson's descent

11:11into madness? No, I do not consider Jordan Peterson to be descending into madness. There is,

11:18this is not particular to Jordan Peterson, but I did watch his debate versus 20 atheists.

11:24It's a big topic, so I'll just touch on it briefly here, but there is a tendency

11:29for smart people to complicate things, to be perceived as smart because you're complicating

11:37things. Like I remember when I was debating, sorry, when I was debating Walsh many years ago,

11:44he was like, the Industrial Revolution came about as a result of an incredibly complicated series of

11:48events. It's like, no, it didn't. It really didn't. It really didn't. The Industrial Revolution

11:53came about because human slavery and serfdom were ended. And so the cost of labor became

11:59increasingly important. Therefore, labor-saving devices were implemented. I mean, if you buy a

12:03bunch of slaves, you don't want to implement labor-saving devices, low is the value of your

12:06investment. So they ended slavery, and that was the foundation. Because that's the one thing that

12:10had never happened before in human history, and right after you get the Industrial Revolution,

12:13it's not that complicated.

12:13So there is this desire to overcomplicate. When you have kids, like little kids, you want to tell

12:24them what's real, you want to tell them what's true, you want to tell them what's good. And a lot

12:27of the what's real and what's true, they will understand in and of themselves. What's good is a

12:33little less instinctive. But you need to be, and I talked about this in the spaces yesterday, you need

12:39to be able to explain to children what is true and what is real and what is good by starting it by the

12:44age of three or four. And if it's like, you know, it's complicated, a balancing of altruism and

12:50consequentialism and majority will and majority rule balanced with the rights of the individual,

12:55it's like, forget it. I mean, kids can't understand it. And adults can't be expected to follow it.

13:02You have to be able to stretch down your ethics to people who aren't as smart as you are.

13:06Of course, right? When I first started working in computers at the age of 11 or 12, it was all

13:13command lines. And it's like, you know, DQ bang A on tandem and all the grep stuff that goes on on

13:19Linux and so on. Like there are some people who love booting up to a flashing cursor and a black

13:24screen of ASCII challenges. Okay, fine. But there are lots of people who aren't particularly smart

13:30enough or aren't particularly interested enough to get into command line, this, that, or the other.

13:38And so you have GUIs, you have touch screens, and you make the computers easier to use. And it's the

13:46same thing with ethics, right? If you want your ethics to be adopted by people as a whole, it has

13:50to be explainable to children and it has to be explainable to people less intelligent than you are.

13:54So, there is a great, it is the great temptation of intellectuals to pretend that they're smart

14:02because they complicate things. And that it's all Aristotelian balance and it's in the mean and

14:09there's these considerations and those. But that's not how we teach ethics to children, right?

14:13Don't hit, don't steal, don't lie. We tell to children.

14:18So, you've got to have simple ways of explaining these things. And I've done all of that for many

14:25years. The purpose of high intelligence is to make complexity understandable to the average or

14:36even the below average. The purpose of high intelligence is to clarify and simplify. It takes

14:44a high degree of intelligence to create a GUI touchscreen interface. I mean, there's the

14:51physics and the engineering of the touchscreen, there's all of the icon design, right? So, it takes

14:57a high degree of intelligence to create a touchscreen GUI graphical user interface.

15:05And the reason that you do that is it makes the power of computers accessible to the average person

15:10who's not a hobbyist and doesn't like things to be complicated. The purpose of what I've done for

15:1540 years, 20 in the public eye, is to take philosophy and make it comprehensible and applicable

15:21in practical, material, measurable ways to benefit people's lives. I am the shiny touchscreen GUI interface

15:29for philosophy. And so, if you can't break down most of your arguments, I'm not talking about,

15:38you know, something like disproving simulation theory or arguments of free will. Although,

15:43I really think I would take on the challenge, and maybe I will at some point, to bring those down

15:48to people. But I had a podcast called The ABCs of UPB. You can find that at fdrpodcast.com. And this

15:56is me explaining rational ethics to a child. And I, two or three years old, my daughter, I was explaining

16:02UPB to her, and she got it, no problem. So, I don't know about madness, but I do think that,

16:09you know, it depends what, when Jordan Peterson is like, well, it depends what you mean by believe.

16:14It's like, well, an idea in your mind that you hold to be true, independent of your consciousness,

16:20right? So, that should not be super complicated. It shouldn't be super complicated to explain

16:26what reality is, what truth is, and what virtue is. It should be disarmingly simple. And if it's

16:32not disarmingly simple, you've gone wrong somewhere. Because we ask children to know what

16:39is true, right? Because when we say, don't lie, we're saying, look, as a little kid, you have the

16:44ability to tell what is true, and you have the ability to choose whether to tell the truth or to

16:48lie. So, we've got to have reality, truth, and morality, explainable to little kids. If we can't

16:54explain it to little kids, we can't ask them to follow it, right? You wouldn't say to a little

16:57kid, well, in order to have your dinner, you have to be able to understand quadratic equations or

17:03quantum mechanics or something like that. That would just be cruel. I mean, dangling, you know,

17:08something that they couldn't possibly reach to get. So, I think the great temptation is to dissolve

17:16the clarity of incisive rationality into this fog of complexity, and then everybody

17:24wanders in and gets lost, and then you have no right whatsoever to inflict truth, reality,

17:33and morality on children if you can't explain it to children. All right.

17:38How does modern brainwashing work on smart, educated people? So, brainwashing is a simple

17:47mechanism of punishment and reward. So, they say, if you say X, whatever outlandish and anti-rational

17:56and anti-empirical statement they're going to make, if you say X, you will be praised and rewarded.

18:04You know, you'll get your professorship, you'll be maybe in the media, your friends will praise and

18:10reward you and so on. So, it's just kibbles, right? It's sticks and carrots. So, if you say X, which is

18:17not true and absurd and obviously not true, then you will be praised and rewarded. If you oppose X or

18:24you don't affirm it, you will be punished, you will be deplatformed, you will be ostracized, your friends

18:30won't like you, your family might turn on you, and so on, right? So, that is how propaganda and

18:37brainwashing works. Smart, educated people want to do well. Smart, educated people can usually see

18:42further into the consequences of their choices. So, what you do is you just say to people, well,

18:49we have money and status and power and jobs and resources and we'll give them to you if you affirm

18:54this ridiculous, absurd thing. And if you don't affirm this ridiculous and absurd thing, we will

19:00F you up. Like, we will mess you up. You won't get the tenureship, you won't get the job,

19:05the girls won't date you, the women won't like you, and your friends will turn on you. And, you

19:10know, we saw all of this in the political realm and we've seen it in the healthcare realm and so on,

19:13right? But smart, educated people don't like to look in the mirror and say, well, I'm basically just

19:21like a rat in a maze avoiding the mousetrap and getting the cheese. I'm just bribed and threatened

19:28in order to hold the moral opinions, quote, moral opinions that I hold. They don't like to look in the

19:33mirror and say, I'm just a reward-seeking, protoplasm, bald biped, right? So, they have to

19:43say, once you get, once you threaten people and reward people into saying absurd things,

19:48then they have to, almost like it's ex post-factor rationalization, they have to say,

19:54well, I'm a good person, right? That's, and they don't, they say I'm a good person foundationally

19:59rather than I have to earn being good through the consistent application and promotion of virtue.

20:04They say, well, I'm a good person. If I believe X, X must be good rather than I'm a person who's

20:12responding as most animals do to punishments and rewards. So, I'll just say absurd things because

20:20I don't want to be punished and I like to be rewarded as we all do, right? Which is why we need

20:26the discipline of virtue. I mean, if you ate like your tongue just wanted to, you would be unhealthy,

20:32right? Because what the tongue likes, often the body doesn't and what the body likes, the tongue

20:36often doesn't, right? So, if I were to say, well, I'm just going to follow eating whatever I like

20:42and I'm going to call it healthy, nutritious food, I would be wrong. We need the discipline of nutrition

20:47because our tongue often motivates us to eat badly, right? Kids prefer candy to vegetables,

20:55obviously, right? So, we need the discipline of virtue so that we can surmount the punishment

21:01reward system that characterizes almost all of human history and, I mean, there's heaven and hell

21:06too, right? So, educated people are subtly or sometimes not so subtly, and we all are,

21:16promised rewards if we affirm absurdity, threatened with punishments if we don't,

21:22and then when people take the route of affirming absurdities for the sake of avoiding punishment

21:26and achieving a reward, they don't want to look themselves in the mirror and say, well,

21:32that's what I'm doing. So, what they do is they say, well, that must be the good because I'm a good

21:36person and if I believe that, that must be the good. And then the circle is complete, the conscience

21:42is destroyed, and social misery ensues. All right, can reason and rhetoric ever truly be separated?

21:48If so, is that a wise or foolish thing to attempt? Rhetoric is being able to put forward a convincing,

21:57well-illustrated argument. And, I mean, there's other ways to define rhetoric, but I assume that

22:04you're using the common parlance, right? So, rhetoric is the ability to make an argument seem convincing,

22:11and it usually has to do with an appeal to emotion and vivid analogies. Vivid analogies are fine,

22:18they're not proof, they're just illustrations. Vivid analogies are like a nice paint job on a car,

22:22it doesn't make it drive better, all other things being equal, but it makes it more appealing

22:30and more likely to be sold. Look at that, I just made an, okay, you understand. So, no, I don't think

22:35they should truly be separated because if you have a great argument, you have a responsibility to that

22:40argument to present it in a way that is appealing and consumable. All right. Somebody said, if I support

22:47my own mother having smacked me, is that la trauma? I find it very easy to justify it from her position.

22:55I wouldn't necessarily say that that's trauma, but it is an abandoning of principles, right? The

23:02non-aggression principle, thou shalt not initiate the use of force against human beings,

23:05applies to all, and in particular applies the most to children. Children are helpless and defense and

23:13legally, economically bound to their families, almost without exception. And so, I don't have to feed

23:20everyone in the world morally, but if I, or if someone, let's just say, so Bob, Bob doesn't have to

23:28feed everyone in the world, but if Bob lures Doug into his basement and locks him in his basement, now

23:37Bob is responsible to feed Doug because Doug can't get his food any other way. So, children are, in a sense,

23:45ensconced, embedded, or trapped. Trapped is not the right word because it's just a biological reality.

23:51A baby is, has no choice but to go home with the parents for the most part, and no choice but to stay and

23:56leave, and not leave. And children as a whole can't, can't leave their families. So, if you're not

24:04allowed to belt strangers, which you're not, morally that would be immoral, then of course you're not

24:12allowed to belt children. The non-aggression principle is the most necessary when there's a

24:19greater disparity of power. So, for instance, if you are a 98-pound weakling who's not particularly smart,

24:26saying it's really important that you don't go to a biker bar and start fights doesn't mean that

24:34much, right? Because you're not going to go out and start fights. Again, you can think of exceptions,

24:38but there's a general rule. If you are, you know, the small, bespectacled, goofy-toothed kid,

24:45then saying don't be a bully is probably unnecessary. If you're the big, kind of brutish and aggressive

24:52kid, saying don't be a bully makes more sense, right? So, where you don't have power,

24:58then morality is less important. We don't say to a slave, you should choose your occupation because

25:06the slave can't choose his occupation, right? We don't say to the slave, it's really important to

25:10exercise free will because the slave is ordered around and dictated to. We would focus more on the

25:15morality of the slave owner and saying you should free your slaves and so on, right?

25:18So, morality is most applicable to those who have the most power and there's no greater power

25:25disparity in the world, in the universe that we know of, than that between parent and child,

25:32right? So, another example would be if you're the boss and you ask your secretary out and you

25:39control her career, we have a problem with that. We don't have as much of a problem if two co-workers

25:45ask each other out, but if a direct manager asks out his direct employee, that's a conflict of

25:51interest and we have higher moral standards for him because he has power over her.

25:58So, being hit by your own parents is an egregious violation of the non-aggression principle because

26:06they have so much power over you, therefore we have the highest moral standards for them.

26:09All right. Quick question. And you know whatever I hear when people say quick question is quite the

26:15opposite. But anyway, quick question. Under UPB, there are three tests to check if the standard of

26:21morality is correct. Put two guys in a room test, the coma patient test, as well as the everybody being

26:29able to be moral at the same time. There are more ways to check. Excuse me. So, very briefly.

26:33So, if you say stealing is universally preferable behavior, okay, think of, again, Bob and Doug in a

26:43room, can they both steal from each other at the same time? Not really. And they certainly, after

26:48they've stolen from each other, then what, right? Whereas not stealing, they can both not steal from

26:52each other at the same time. And they can have a continuous moral state of not stealing, which means

26:59that they're doing something not evil. So, the coma patient test. So, the coma patient test is a way of

27:07dismantling positive moral obligations. There are no unchosen positive moral obligations. There's thou

27:13shalt not. There's not thou shalt. So, if you say, well, you have to help the poor. Well, can you do that

27:21when you're sleeping? No. So, does that mean you're evil when you're sleeping, right? Because if helping the

27:25poor is the good, then not helping the poor must be the evil, because it's the opposite, right?

27:31And you're not helping the poor when you're sleeping. So, the coma test is, if you say, well,

27:36you've got to help the poor, it's like, okay, well, what about a guy in a coma? Now, a guy in a coma

27:41is not assaulting, not murdering, not raping, not stealing. So, he's certainly not immoral.

27:49So, that's another test. So, UPB test. Is that, is everyone able to be moral at the same time,

27:53right? So, if you say, helping the poor is the good, then the person who's helping the poor

27:59is doing a good thing. However, it's asymmetrical, right? It means that somebody must be on the

28:05receiving end of helping the poor. If you say, giving money to the homeless is really good,

28:09then the homeless person who's receiving the money can't be good, because he's not doing

28:13the good. So, can everyone be moral at the same time? Can everyone not steal at the same time?

28:17Yep. And in eternity, can everyone not rape, not assault, not murder? Yes, absolutely, totally possible.

28:23But the best way to check is look for logical consistency, which these are sort of tests of

28:28as a whole. Hello, what is the most important thing in the entire universe?

28:36I mean, there are subjective aspects to that, and there are objective aspects to that. The most

28:41important thing is happiness, and the way that you achieve it is through virtue, right? You have to

28:48be rational. In order to be virtuous, consistent practice of virtue leads to happiness. So,

28:55reason equals virtue equals, or reason leads to virtue leads to happiness.

29:00Hi, Steph, long time, big fan of the show here. Give the increasingly woke nature of Christianity,

29:05not just in the Protestant circles, but also in the Catholic Church. Do you think Christianity

29:08will fade out like the old pagan faiths? So, as a moral philosopher, I don't want escape

29:18hatches to virtue. I don't want you to be able to snap your fingers and escape virtue. So,

29:25the problem, of course, with religious morality is that you can escape morality by disbelieving

29:34in religion. Now, I understand UPB is rational and objective, and you can escape UPB by denying reason

29:44and evidence. Sure, of course, right? But over time, not yet, but over time, those who deny reason

29:53and evidence in the realm of morality will be viewed as those who deny reason and evidence in the realm of

29:57basic science. So, if somebody says, well, the earth is banana-shaped, they're not going to be taken

30:02seriously, because reason and evidence. Or if somebody says two and two equals five, they're

30:06not taken very seriously, they're viewed as having a reality processing or a mental health problem.

30:11So, people who reject reason and evidence are then ejected from the conversation. So, if I were to

30:16go to a physics conference and say, I want to propose the argument that gases both expand and

30:23contract at the same time, or things fall both up and down at the same time under the same circumstances,

30:27they would say, no, you don't understand science. Science doesn't allow for those kinds of

30:32contradictions. In fact, you don't even need to test for it. It's just not true.

30:36If I would go to a mathematical conference and say, I have a complex proof of a particular

30:41conjecture or theorem based upon the axiom that two and two make five, they'd say, well,

30:47whatever you've done is not valid in the realm of mathematics, because two and two don't make five.

30:51So, you would be ejected from the conversation. So, once UPB becomes accepted, and it will take

30:57a generation or two, or maybe even longer, moral revolutions, I mean, it took that long for science,

31:02anti-slavery, and so on, the free market. And so, and morality is more volatile than any of those

31:09things. But once UPB is accepted, as it will be, I mean, otherwise, there's not going to be any life

31:15particularly worth living, because we'll all be enslaved. So, once UPB is accepted over time,

31:20then those who reject UPB will be viewed as mentally ill people with a reality processing

31:26problem in the same way that people who say that two and two make five are viewed as people with

31:31mental health challenges who have a reality processing problem. And there will be no way to

31:36escape it, right? So, right now, if you say morality is what God decrees, you can get rid of morality by

31:41not believing in God, whereas you cannot do that with UPB. It closes the circle and provides no

31:46escape hatch from the strictures and constraints of morality. All right. Explain, oh, sorry, if free

31:56will doesn't exist, should we somehow, sorry, should we nonetheless act as though it does? Well, free will,

32:04I mean, the word exist is, right? My phone exists, my hat exists, my shirt exists, they exist

32:10independent of my consciousness, and we can check that through the consistent behavior of matter and,

32:15you know, sense, evidence, testing. Logically consistent and sense, evidence, testing is how

32:19we know something exists. Now, free will is an effect of consciousness, right? Does gravity exist,

32:26or is gravity an effect of mass? Well, gravity doesn't exist independent of mass,

32:32and, like, where there is no mass around, there is no gravity other than, you know, very, very faint,

32:37blah, blah, blah, right? So, a concept doesn't exist in the same way as that which it describes does

32:46exist, right? There's a concept called a crowd, but a crowd is just an aggregation of individual people.

32:52There's no such thing as a crowd. When the people disperse, there's no such thing as the crowd left

32:57as a remnant, right? So, free will is a concept or a description of human consciousness, and the

33:04description is free will is our ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards, which is

33:11morality or efficiency or so on, right? Or it could be something like business goals and so on. Our

33:17proposed actions, we have the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards. Now, does that

33:24ability exist? No, it doesn't exist. Consciousness is an effect of the brain. It's a description of the

33:33biochemical and material effects of neurons in the brain. A forest, as a concept, does not exist

33:41independent of the trees. It is a description of the trees. So, free will does not exist independent

33:48of human consciousness. It does not exist as a material entity in its own right. But free will is

33:54a valid concept. So, if you have two bananas, you add two more bananas, you now have four bananas.

34:01But the number two, the number two and the number four are not somehow attached to the bananas. They

34:05don't exist in an independent state. They are conceptual descriptions of what is occurring in

34:12the world. So, conceptual descriptions are valid or invalid. They do not exist independent of our minds.

34:19So, is free will a valid concept? Sure, yeah. Do we have the ability to compare proposed actions to

34:25ideal standards? Absolutely. We certainly have the ability to create ideal standards. Something like

34:30tell the truth or do not aggress or be courageous and so on. So, we have the ability to propose ideal

34:39standards or to have ideal standards. Can we compare our proposed actions to ideal standards? Sure,

34:46we do it all the time. Should I, shouldn't I, right? Should I have this piece of cheesecake? Should

34:49I go exercise? Should I tell the truth? Should I, whatever. Should I be mean? Should I succumb to

34:55temptation? So, we have ideal standards and we can compare our proposed actions to ideal standards all

34:59the time. This catches the determinist who says you should be a determinist. In other words, you should

35:04compare your proposed actions called continuing to believe in free will or act as if you have free

35:08will. You should compare your proposed actions to an ideal standard called determinism. So,

35:12it is, this formulation of free will, which is valid, rejects determinism as a self-contradictory

35:19argument. So, yes, it is valid. All right. This one's funny. I assume it's mostly comedy. Explain

35:26exactly why we shouldn't round up 95% of Walmart customers and place them into forced labor camps.

35:32They're fat, lifeless, and cost millions in added health care expenses annually. Discipline must be

35:40drilled into people, Steph, including our children. Yeah. Okay. So, obviously, this is somewhat tongue

35:45in cheek, but people have been detached from the consequences of their own actions through

35:54government subsidies and therefore they behave in self-destructive ways. So,

36:02of course, nobody should have the power to round up people and put them in forced labor camps because

36:08you think that's going to be used against people you don't like. Whatever violations of morality you

36:16attempted to put in place to oppose people you don't like will eventually, and usually not so

36:21eventually, be used on the people you love. So, it's just a bad deal. All right. Is there a step-by-step

36:27series exposition for peaceful parenting I could send to a friend? I sent to the website,

36:34but they didn't know where to start. I don't know what to say about that, and I think your friend

36:38is lying through his ass, or her ass. Let's just say his. Yeah, he's lying. So, at peacefulparenting.com,

36:45you go to the website. You can click to start reading the book. You can click to start listening

36:49to the audiobook. There's a little player there. There's an AI you can type into questions if you want.

36:53One of the questions you could be is, how do I listen to the audiobook? So, it's as easy as

36:59humanly possible. It's free. They don't have to pay anything. There's no sign-up. You don't have

37:03to put in your email. You don't have to give a credit card. So, you can click on the PDF on the

37:09HTML on the, I think the HTML's on there, on the Kindle or the e-book reader. So, you can click and

37:16read it right away. You can listen to the audiobook right away. There's instructions on how to get the

37:21podcast into a podcast feed if you want to do it that way. So, it is as easy as humanly possible.

37:27So, if you send someone to a website about peaceful parenting and they say, I couldn't figure out how

37:30to do anything with it, then they're just not telling the truth. They just don't want to do

37:35the peaceful parenting thing. So, don't ask me to make things easier for people who don't want to

37:41learn. All right. Last question here. And again, thanks for these great questions.

37:46Can you touch on what 2020 did to freedom of speech in general? I think the amount of coerced

37:52censorship and self-censorship shocked many of us. How did the YouTube ban affect you personally

37:57from a self-censorship perspective? Well, I mean, prior to the major bans, I had decided to stop doing

38:06politics. It was boring, repetitive, and not particularly stimulating. I love philosophy.

38:13I will sacrifice a lot to philosophy, but I still need to remain interested in and motivated to do

38:19philosophy. So, the danger level went up. The enjoyment level and the repetition went up.

38:26Enjoyment level went down, both for the repetition and, of course, the increased risk. And it just

38:30became something that I wasn't particularly interested in doing anymore. How did it affect

38:34me personally? I mean, it certainly was a little shocking. I mean, who's responsible for my

38:38anti-platforming? Me, basically. I mean, I'm responsible for it because I chose to touch a

38:44whole series of third rail topics for the sake of truth and honor. And, you know, if you want to

38:50look at sort of the psychology of it, I spent my whole childhood having to lie, being forced to lie.

38:55And as an independent, free-willed, free-thinking adult, I'm just not going to do that. I'm just not

39:01going to lie. I was forced to lie as a kid. I don't have to lie as an adult. So, I'm damn well not

39:06going to. That's just a basic honor thing. I just couldn't really live with myself if I did.

39:11And so, yeah, it was certainly a little bit shocking, as it always is, when something that

39:16happens like that. And I was surprised at how few people followed me to new platforms. But then I

39:22realized that that was very liberating. It allowed me to focus on stuff that a much smaller group of

39:27sort of hardcore philosophy enthusiasts and I could work on together. It allowed me to,

39:32I mean, I did wonderful things like I have a lengthy novel called Almost. It's about the

39:39history of a British and a German family from World War I to World War II. Very, very powerful

39:44stuff. Some of the best stuff I've ever written. And I got to read that as an audiobook. And that

39:51was a beautiful thing for me to do. A very powerful thing for me to do. I really enjoyed it. I got to

39:55write three more books. I got to do lots of great shows with people. And so, I realized that

40:02when people leave you alone, you are no longer responsible for pleasing them. You can please

40:10yourself and the few who remain. And that was a glorious time for me. I really, really enjoyed

40:15it. And it's not over yet. I'm still not going back into politics. But it certainly had me

40:28proud of what I did, but no desire to particularly circle back and do it again. I'm, you know,

40:36smart people hate repetition. Less intelligent people tend to love it, right? So, I mean, not

40:44the kids are unintelligent, but you know, kids love the same stories over and over again. And when I was

40:48a kid, I loved the same stories. I love watching the same Mighty Mouse cartoon over and over again.

40:51But when you become an adult, like people are on here saying, Steph, you got to get back to talking

40:54about IQ. And it's like, I did that. I mean, I talked to 17 world-renowned experts in the topic

41:00of IQ. It was very interesting. I did my presentations and all of that. And why would I want to, you know,

41:07I wouldn't want to go back to grade five. And I wouldn't want to go back to topics I've already

41:10covered before. I need to have new topics, new conversations, new interests. So, that's why it's

41:16great having these questions and being able to talk about these new topics, or at least if they're old

41:20topics in a new context. So, it wasn't so much self-censorship as been there, done that,

41:28and want to move on to new topics, new experiences, new ideas, new arguments, new conversations.

41:33And of course, I thank everyone enormously for this wonderful welcome back to X. It's a great

41:37pleasure to be here. And I will talk to you tonight, 7 p.m. Actually, no, I don't think this is going

41:41out today. Maybe it is. Who knows? But anyway, Wednesday nights, 7 p.m. Eastern, Friday night,

41:477 p.m. Sundays, 11 a.m. Look forward to your conversations. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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