- 7/7/2025
Twitter Space 28 June 2025
In this episode, I engage with the X community to explore universally preferable behavior (UPB) and ethics. We discuss mentorship's role in personal development for young men, particularly regarding challenges from single motherhood and perceptions of authority. I critique Stoic philosophy for its lack of practical applicability and advocate for UPB as a rational ethical framework. Emphasizing the relational nature of truth and morality, I encourage listeners to reflect on their own moral landscapes. I conclude by inviting them to access my free resources at freedomain.com for further insights on ethics and personal responsibility.
FOLLOW ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
In this episode, I engage with the X community to explore universally preferable behavior (UPB) and ethics. We discuss mentorship's role in personal development for young men, particularly regarding challenges from single motherhood and perceptions of authority. I critique Stoic philosophy for its lack of practical applicability and advocate for UPB as a rational ethical framework. Emphasizing the relational nature of truth and morality, I encourage listeners to reflect on their own moral landscapes. I conclude by inviting them to access my free resources at freedomain.com for further insights on ethics and personal responsibility.
FOLLOW ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00Actually, we are ready. Yes, Stephen Molyneux from Freedomain. I had a little bit of time.
00:00:04I'd like to spend it with some of my favorite people from the old school and the new school
00:00:09here on X. And I hope you're having a wonderful day. Hope you're enjoying time with things you
00:00:16love and with any luck, things that love you back without a happy ending. So I hope you are
00:00:23ready, willing. Hello, everybody. Stephen Molyneux from Freedomain. Welcome. I had a little bit of
00:00:30time this afternoon, so I wanted to spend a few minutes or moments with some of my favorite
00:00:37people on the planet, which is the churning sea of wisdom and victory, all known as the X community,
00:00:43X spaces, spending time with my X. It actually gives me kind of chill, so let's not move too much
00:00:51in that direction. Of course, my friends, if you have comments, questions, issues, and challenges,
00:00:58I am thrilled to chat. I see some people are taking some swings at my theory of ethics called
00:01:04universally preferable behavior. You can get the free book at freedomain.com books, or you can get
00:01:10a shortened version of it at essentialphilosophy.com. Both are free. I hope you will avail yourselves of
00:01:16them because, well, we do kind of need to know what good and bad and right and wrong are if we are
00:01:23to be good on the planet. All right, so be greater. Let's go straight to your questions
00:01:29and comments. Let's see here. Be greater. Why? Okay, add a speaker. There we go. Be greater. Just
00:01:37unmute. I'm all ears, my friend. What's on your mind? Hey, first of all, how's it going, Stephen?
00:01:42Good. Yeah, I got a kid at work that works for me at one of my shops in Los Angeles in California,
00:01:47and he is just not a very responsible individual. He's only 20 years old, raised by a single mother,
00:01:57you know, and I've just given him some, you know, kind of like a mentorship, just take him under my
00:02:03wing, but he's with a girl that, right now, he is with a girl, I think she's like 19 or something.
00:02:12Unfortunately, she's been cheating on him, and he won't leave her. I just figure, what were your
00:02:18thoughts on that? How should I approach the situation? So he's 20, you've given him a mentorship,
00:02:24but he's being kind of pushed around by his girlfriend. He was raised by a single mother.
00:02:28Okay, so does this young man have any idea of the mess that he's in? Has he sort of admitted this,
00:02:36like, oh, yeah, I let my girlfriend push me around, I got to stop? Or is he like, nope, I'm happy?
00:02:41No, yeah, the first part, he sees that he's in a mess. He's starting to realize that, you know,
00:02:50how he portrays himself is not the reality. You know, that it's not, yeah, he can have,
00:02:56he can talk the talk and say he's a big tough guy, but he's saying himself, himself, he's acknowledging
00:03:02that, you know, it's not, it's not real, just because of this relationship. You know, the
00:03:07relationship, you know, makes him look bad. And he's not, he's not able to reconcile that he's
00:03:14having an identity crisis, I guess, in a way.
00:03:17Good, that's a, that's a huge plus. So I've mentored, of course, a number of young men and
00:03:24women in my business career, particularly in the past. And this is my, my suggestions. So
00:03:32number one, lift. It is absolutely essential for men. It is absolutely, it was one of the big changes
00:03:42in my life, was I was, I was athletic as a kid. And then in my early teens, you know, things were
00:03:49really terrible at home. And I just didn't really move around much. And I ate too much. And, and then
00:03:54when I got into philosophy, I read, of course, about the ancient Greek, you know, the wisdom of the
00:03:58strong body and the strong mind. And of course, because I grew up in the British culture, there's a
00:04:03big, it's called in philosophy, the mind-body dichotomy, which is the mind is eternal, spiritual,
00:04:10abstract, conceptual, and the body is, you know, messy, farty, poopy, you know, kind of a, a, a
00:04:18besmirching stain upon the glories of the mind's capacities. And this, of course, is reinforced to
00:04:24some degree by Christianity, where the soul is immaterial and perfect and ideal, and the body is
00:04:30Satan's chamber of making you do bad things with lusts and gluttony and sloth and all these kinds of
00:04:36things. And so the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, as they say. So that means, of course,
00:04:43that the body is your enemy, and you must strive towards some sort of ideal. Now, the Greeks didn't
00:04:49have that nearly as much, of course, obviously, as a pre-Christian civilization, at least Socrates is
00:04:53500 years before Christ. So they had not as much of a mind-body dichotomy in that training was
00:05:01essential. Now, of course, part of this was pederasty, which was the ancient Greek philosophers a lot of
00:05:06times had sexual relations with their students, often very, very young men. So that to me is not
00:05:13at all ideal. But nonetheless, I sort of got into lifting weights. I was about 14 or 15. And then I
00:05:19joined the cross-country team. And then I joined the water polo team. And then I joined the swim team.
00:05:23And then I joined the tennis club. And I just was moving all the time and lifting. And oh, man,
00:05:29night and day. Absolutely night and day. You are not the same person pre-lifting as you are
00:05:37post-lifting. And it was one of the things I tweeted about first when I came back on X after a five-year
00:05:42hiatus was, as a man in particular, you don't even know who you are if you don't lift because you are
00:05:50weak. And when you are weak, you are submissive. And if you grow up without a father figure, I'm afraid
00:05:59the gym must become your father. Your muscles are your patriarchy and the strength that you did not
00:06:07get when... Sorry, I was just getting a call here. The strength that you did not get from your father,
00:06:15you must get from your muscles. And I really don't know that there's any other way around it.
00:06:20Now, cardio is not bad. It's not bad, but it's just not the same. You just need physical strength.
00:06:27When you have physical strength, you move through the world differently. When you have physical
00:06:31strength, you are not as intimidated as easily. And when you have physical strength, and by that,
00:06:36I mean muscles, then you are less easy to push around. And you have a kind of confidence and you're
00:06:42kind of taken with a seriousness. Muscles is a way of displaying discipline. Muscles is a way of
00:06:49displaying discipline. I mean, you can have all the mental discipline that you want. You could be
00:06:55learning kanji and Klingon and how to perform operations in space. But if you're physically,
00:07:05look at me, I'm a pear. If you're physically doughy, all you transmit is laziness and self-indulgence.
00:07:13So you need to lift. And I would certainly strongly recommend this to any young man,
00:07:18especially if you grew up with a single mother, you have to lift. You have to lift. In my humble
00:07:22opinion, it's just, you know, obviously my amateur opinion. But you have to lift. So I would definitely
00:07:26focus on that. And listen, lift at a gym, which isn't overly feminized, I suppose you could say.
00:07:38It doesn't have to be a dark, dirty dungeon where giant men with giant mustaches move metal around. But
00:07:43don't go to any place with frilly pink weights. Maybe don't go to a place where there's an over
00:07:49indulgence in Ashtanga yoga classes and Pilates. But, you know, go to some place where there's going to
00:07:56be some men who can help you, some men who can encourage you, some elders who can teach you
00:08:00the ropes and just lift. It is absolutely essential for men, especially in the modern
00:08:07world. You just become a different, you know, you're born again through tendons and muscles. You put on
00:08:14an armor of discipline that shields you from conflict and gives you a very subtle upper hand. You know,
00:08:23muscles are a cheat code in the world, my friends, because when you're involved in any negotiation,
00:08:31you know, 90% of communication is non-verbal. The mind and the tongue can do anything at once in the
00:08:38shaping of syllables. But if you are in conflict with another man, and this conflict can be some
00:08:44sort of physical intimidation. But of course, it can also be just a negotiation in the business world
00:08:50for a raise for salary to get a job. If you are with muscle, you will win. You will win. You will
00:09:00win. I mean, maybe there'll be some petty resentment or whatever it is. But in general, you will win.
00:09:05People give way to muscle. It's how we're programmed. It's a cheat code. It's a cheat code.
00:09:10And of course, over the course of my career, I've had bomb threats, death threats, physical altercations,
00:09:17intimidations, people in my face. And it doesn't faze me that much because of the aforementioned
00:09:24physical strength. Now, listen, I'm obviously, I'm not Joey Swole, right? I'm not, I'm not some big buff
00:09:29guy. But nonetheless, it just gives you an upper edge. And women tend to nag less men who have
00:09:41muscles. Women nag often from a feeling of insecurity and a feeling of a lack of protection.
00:09:50And if you have muscles, women tend to relax a little bit. And again, you can say, oh, but what
00:09:56good muscles do in the modern world? It's like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Because 90%
00:10:02of communication is non-verbal. So if you're being pushed around by your girlfriend, don't push back.
00:10:10Just go lift. You'd be absolutely shocked how quickly things change. Listen, you lift, your skeleton
00:10:17gets stronger. Your bones get stronger. And of course, there was this whole thing in the 70s and 80s,
00:10:25like the running culture. Running culture. No, that's not what I, running is fine, I suppose.
00:10:31And I, I remember once when I worked up north, I ran 24 miles to a town and back because I was
00:10:36completely bored of the tent. So I've nothing against the running. It's fine. To me, it's a
00:10:41little rough on the knees, but that's neither here nor there. But lifting is life. As a man in
00:10:47particular, lifting is life. So I would definitely tell him, get thee to a jimmery, to paraphrase
00:10:55Hamlet, and get, get lifting. Now, the other thing too, is that, and of course, I wouldn't talk
00:11:02about sex with an employee in a million years, but just between you and I, and I guess whoever's
00:11:07listening. One of the things that happens when you grow up with a single mother, and this is not just
00:11:13my theory, this seems to be fairly well established, and you can look at my Bomb in the Brain series at
00:11:17fdrpodcasts.com if you want more on this, but when you grow up with a single mother, you tend
00:11:26not to like the female template that rules you. Men, or boys, boys don't mind being ruled by honorable
00:11:35men, but they sure as Sherlock hate being ruled by false and neurotic women, which is more likely
00:11:44than not when you're talking about single mothers. And just to be clear, I'm not saying all single
00:11:48mothers are like this. I'm not saying all married women are blah, blah, blah, but there's a tendency,
00:11:51right? That sort of shrill, naggy, whiny, complaining stuff that a lot of single moms do.
00:11:58Men, boys, we hate to be ruled by that stuff. So, if you're raised by a single mother, you tend to
00:12:05have an aversion to the female template you've been handed, not to all women, but to the female
00:12:09template, like as your mother is all women, right? Because when we evolved, women in the tribe
00:12:13weren't that much different, and neither were the men, but we have more options now than we ever did in
00:12:17evolution, and of course, our evolutionary nature has yet to catch up with that.
00:12:21So, you're raised by a single mother, you don't like the female template. So, what can you do?
00:12:28Well, what nature does is it compensates for your caution around female nature as you've perceived
00:12:34it. It compensates for that by cranking up the lust hormones, cranking up the lust hormones. This is
00:12:41called R-selected behavior. There's K-selected behavior, which is generally larger predators, wolves,
00:12:47and lions, and so on. And there's our selected behavior, which is, you know, the rabbits and the
00:12:54prey species, and so on. And, you know, rabbits have a higher sex drive than wolves, because wolves
00:12:59need to invest more in their offspring. So, the way that nature compensates for your negativity towards
00:13:04the female template of the single mother who raised you is nature basically says, all right, all right,
00:13:09all right, fine, fine, fine. Your female template is not great. Not great. Not a lot to admire there.
00:13:15Not a lot to respect there. Not a lot to really want to pursue from a moral standpoint. But, on the
00:13:22other hand, I can just make you rabbit on cocaine lusty. I could just make you horny from here to
00:13:28eternity, and that will compensate for the negatives. And so, a lot of times, men who are raised by single
00:13:35mothers, and there's other things for women, but I've got, I think, the truth about single motherhood
00:13:40is on my channel as well. So, often boys raised by single motherhood kind of become a little sex
00:13:46crazed, maybe a little sex addicted. And that's nature's way of overcoming the negative female
00:13:52template they've been given with just plain blind lust. Blind lust. So, lifting, I think, will help that,
00:14:00and I don't know if there's anything you can do as a boss in this kind of area, but what you need to
00:14:06do, or what he needs to do, if he ever listens to this, is he needs to recognize that she ain't every
00:14:14woman, bro. You're single mother. Single mothers, for boys in particular, have different effects on
00:14:20girls, but single mothers have no credibility with boys. None. No credibility. Like, you couldn't
00:14:27even keep a guy around. Like, either, this is the boy's view of the single mother, which is, okay,
00:14:33so there's really only, there's only two possibilities here, mommy. There's only about two
00:14:37possibilities. Number one, you chose a total a-hole to have a child with when you were way older than
00:14:44me, right? Let's say the single mom had the kid at 25, and she's trying to lecture some 15-year-old,
00:14:49and the 15-year-old boy is like, why would I listen to you? You were still making catastrophic errors,
00:14:54which you won't admit to, 10 years older than what you're trying to tell me. So, it literally is
00:15:00like being slender and being nagged into losing weight by a morbidly obese person. It's just
00:15:07ridiculous, and the ridiculousness of being instructed by single mothers as a boy means
00:15:12there's rebellion and eye-rolling and a complete lack of respect, which, of course, drives the single
00:15:18mothers kind of crazy, and then they escalate, and they get more aggressive verbally or sometimes
00:15:22even physically. So, it's bad. So, there's only two choices, mom. Either you chose a bad man to
00:15:31have a child with, in which case you are a fool and a half. You can't judge things. You can't judge
00:15:38people, and I don't have any respect for you for that. Or you chose a good man to have a child with,
00:15:47and you drove him away. You drove him away, mom. And in which case, the mom, you have even less
00:15:57respect for her, if that's possible. And I don't know any way around this. I really don't. I don't,
00:16:01I mean, I'm just telling you the way that a boy's mind works when raised by a single mother. I don't
00:16:05have an answer to this, other than maybe the single mother can say, here's all the reasons I made these
00:16:11mistakes. I'm going to take full ownership. I've gone to therapy. I fully admit that I'm trying to
00:16:16lecture you on things where I made far worse mistakes than you did when I was far older than
00:16:23you. But I have, in a mature and adult fashion, taken ownership, taken responsibility, sorted out
00:16:30these problems, solved these problems. Maybe. I mean, but, you know, to a large degree, that's asking the
00:16:35impossible. Because if the single mother had that kind of maturity, she either would have chosen a
00:16:40better man, or if she did chose a good man, she wouldn't drive him away. And it's a brutal
00:16:45situation. I have sympathy for the children, most of all, of course. I also have some sympathy for
00:16:51the single mothers, but less because they're adults. But there's just no way around it. Single
00:16:57mothers have no, maybe they have more credibility with girls. I don't know. It's not my wheelhouse,
00:17:02so to speak. But boys cannot look at single mothers. They're single mothers with respect. And so because of
00:17:10that, they tend not to take instruction from their elder, right? They won't take advice from their
00:17:15mother. And what that means is they're left to the prey of hormones, of culture, and of peers,
00:17:23and media. And that's all trying to lead them astray. So that would be my general thoughts,
00:17:31how much you want to invest in this young man. I don't know, man. You can't fix people. I mean,
00:17:37I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about this. This morning, like, you can't
00:17:41fix people. Like, but oh, but don't you want to get better with your partner? It's like, yeah, my
00:17:45wife and I, we'd be married like 23 years. And I mean, I think we were pretty great when we got
00:17:50together, but I think we're better now. But we've grown together. We've grown together now. That's
00:17:55great. That's great. But you can't fix people. You can't make them grow. You can't drag them along
00:18:02any particular path towards self-knowledge and self-improvement. Marriage or relationships are
00:18:08not reform schools. They're not rehabilitation schools. They're not recidivist schools. They're
00:18:12not supposed to turn bad people into good people. That's, you know, magic sex can't make bad people
00:18:17good. So you may want to cut your losses and go with someone from a more stable background. You may
00:18:24want to maybe point him in the direction of some more masculine areas of the intranet, but
00:18:32it is really tough to undo, particularly at such a young age. But of course, he's still
00:18:36probably five years away from brain maturity. So I'm sure there's some possibilities. And of
00:18:41course, I just really wanted to thank you for caring about this young man so much. He's very
00:18:46lucky to have someone like you in his orbit. Does that make any sense? Okay, good, good. So
00:18:53sorry, does that make any sense? I didn't hear anything you said. We've been, me and the
00:18:58whole lobby have been just waiting for you to come back. I'm so sorry. I told my phone
00:19:04to switch to the speaker, and then it switched back to some other output. And of course, I
00:19:09wasn't checking the chat. So I'm afraid you will have to get the speed after, but I promise
00:19:15you it's a great one. So my apologies for that. I've turned off Bluetooth and just wrestling
00:19:20with the new technology and some absolutely ass-tastic programming on the iOS thing. You
00:19:26know, hey, if I want you to use the speakerphone, don't switch back to something else when I haven't
00:19:31asked you to. But I'm sorry about that, but we will have the speech out when it's going.
00:19:38All right. You're welcome, man. All right. Let's see who else is on the list of chitty chats.
00:19:44Jolly. Jolly, you're on the air. If you wanted to unmute, go for it.
00:19:50Hello, Mr. Molyneux. You may not remember me, but a long time ago, I sent you a DM over
00:19:58your opinion on Roger Waters for Pink, the basis for Pink Floyd. I think that was one
00:20:04of the last conversations we had about that before Twitter banned you. So I just first wanted
00:20:11to say thank you and welcome back to Twitter. It's an honor to be following me, following
00:20:17you again. Second, I guess since this is a philosophy space, my question is this. Have
00:20:25you read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius? And so what was your personal opinion on it?
00:20:32I appreciate that. And thank you for bringing up the Roger Waters. I was a massive fan. I
00:20:37mean, still like Pink Floyd. I was a massive fan of Pink Floyd when I was younger. I used
00:20:41to listen to Side 3 of The Wall when I'd go to bed in junior high school or high school
00:20:44pretty early on. And I actually, this is for the donors, for the subscribers at freedomain.locals.com.
00:20:54There is, I think, an hour on the album The Wall. I've done an hour to an hour 10, which
00:21:00is fantastic stuff if I do say so myself. So I really appreciate you bringing that up.
00:21:05And if you did, if you were the person who inspired me to go and do a review of the Pink Floyd album
00:21:12The Wall, I really do appreciate that because, man, did I get some great stuff out of that.
00:21:17So thank you for that. Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. Yes, I, of course, heard about it for a long
00:21:22time. I started reading it a couple of years ago and I thought it was bad. I thought it
00:21:29was like a tween girl's diary. I thought it was like it didn't inspire me. There was no,
00:21:34it was just, you know, like, well, don't take things too seriously and don't get too wrapped
00:21:37up in this and don't, it's like, okay, well, whatever, right? I mean, care less about things.
00:21:42I mean, I know he's got a bit of a Buddhist thing as a whole, or at least a quasi-Buddhist
00:21:46thing. I know he's not directly knowledgeable of Buddhism back in the day, but I found it
00:21:52uninspiring and I found it relatively useless. See, I'll tell you, let's not, and maybe I'm
00:21:59missing something obvious here, so I'm not saying that this is any sort of final thought,
00:22:03but I look for practical things, right? So I look for practical things. So in the speech
00:22:09that I gave, which obviously you'll hear later, with the young man, I said, you know,
00:22:14my first advice was to go lift weights, lifting his life. So go lift weights. And then it was
00:22:19like, recognize that you probably didn't respect your single mother, so you need to challenge
00:22:23your template of what femininity is, because otherwise nature will, if you dislike women or
00:22:28the female template that you get from your single mother, then nature will crank up your
00:22:32hormones to almost sex-obsessed or sex-addict levels, and then you're kind of out of control
00:22:38of things. And so I'm looking for practical tips on how to apply ideas or arguments. That's
00:22:48what I'm looking for. And when I read Marcus Aurelius, I didn't find anything, and I think
00:22:55I read about, I don't know, 30 or 40 pages, and I was like, okay, well, this is nice. You know,
00:23:00it's a nice lecture on the Aristotelian mean. Well, you don't want to care nothing, and you
00:23:04don't want to care too much. And it's like, yeah, but how? We don't have a big dial. We don't have
00:23:09a big dial where we can say, well, you know, this is caring a little bit. I'm dialing this back a
00:23:13little, dialing this up. We're not twisting dials like some Chernobyl-avoiding disaster mechanic
00:23:18in Russia. And so just saying, well, you know, you want to be sort of in the moderate area,
00:23:23and you don't want to be careless, but you don't want to care too much. And it's like, okay,
00:23:27but what does that mean in practical terms? Because everybody has a different set of dials.
00:23:32Everyone has different ideas about what the mean is or the medium is. It's like, be a moderate.
00:23:38Be a moderate. Well, what does that even mean? Well, you don't want to be an extremist. It's
00:23:43like, well, what does that even mean? It's just this appeal to this neutral, bland, beige middle
00:23:50that I don't really know how to implement it. So when I am reading a philosopher or a thinker and
00:23:58so on, I mean, I'm enjoying the thoughts and so on, but I'm also looking for practical things.
00:24:04Like, there's no diet book that says, well, you should try to eat roughly in moderation. Don't
00:24:08eat too little. Don't eat too much. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, it's just kind of
00:24:11obvious. And what I want to know is what mixture of protein, carbs, sugar, fat, or whatever,
00:24:16based upon X, Y, and Z standards or requirements or criteria can I use and give me some recipes and
00:24:22like, give me something practical. Don't just talk about moderation and diet because that doesn't
00:24:27really help me in terms of actual planning, actual cooking, actual grocery purchases, and actual
00:24:34eating. It's sort of, and to me, it's saying, well, you know, in moderation, you know, you shouldn't
00:24:39exercise too much because you're into yourself, but you shouldn't exercise too little because you'll
00:24:43get soft. It's like, you know, everyone kind of understands that. Everyone kind of understands
00:24:48that. I mean, we understand that when we ride a bike, if you ride a bike super slowly, it wobbles
00:24:54a lot and it's hard to stay up. If you ride a bike super fast, it's dangerous if you hit something like
00:24:59a stone and it's hard to stop. So we all understand that when we're running, if you've ever, you know,
00:25:05you do that run down a hill and you run too fast, you lose control, and then you're just fighting not to
00:25:09crash into something or fall over or whatever. So, you know, all kids understand moderation,
00:25:17right? I mean, if you're playing frisbee with a friend and you're a little kid, you don't like
00:25:22whip the frisbee directly at his head, right? But at the same time, you don't just throw it so softly
00:25:27that it falls six inches from your feet. You do things in moderation. So we, you know, when you're
00:25:33learning a new skill, whether it's learning how to walk or learning how to ride a bike or something
00:25:37like that, well, you don't want to learn too slowly because then it gets boring, but you don't want to
00:25:41learn too fast because then you make mistakes and you could fall. And so we're all trained in
00:25:46moderation from infancy, toddlerhood onwards. So for somebody to say, you know, moderation is
00:25:54important and, and so on. And I, what I want to know is what practical things can I do? And I just
00:26:00didn't get anything particularly practical out of those writings, if that makes sense.
00:26:04No, I totally get that. I, it seems like based off of what you read, it feels almost too
00:26:14impersonally inspirational to, and, and impractically inspirational to the point where it's, where I'm
00:26:24guessing Marcus Aurelius was trying to make, turn people into more higher beings in a sense, at least
00:26:31on a mental level when. Okay. So, sorry, sorry to interrupt. So fantastic. Okay. So I appreciate
00:26:36you, you probably know more about Marcus Aurelius and his books or his writings than I do. So
00:26:41what does it mean? I actually haven't read it. I actually haven't read it myself. I'm just, I,
00:26:46I just, sometimes I research human history and whatnot. Sorry, you're asking me, hang on,
00:26:52you're asking me my opinion on something you haven't read? Yeah, I've heard, I've heard of it.
00:26:58I know it. Okay, bro, bro, bro. Okay. Come on. Come on. No, no. I mean, so telling me you've heard
00:27:07of it, do you, do you think that I can puzzle out that you've heard of it by the fact that you've
00:27:12asked about it? Yeah, I'm, I'm guessing yes. Well, that's not a guess. I mean, if you tell me,
00:27:19Steph, what do you think of Marcus Aurelius' meditations? I know you've heard of it. Otherwise,
00:27:23you wouldn't ask me about it. I assume that you'd read at least some significant portion of it. And
00:27:28you can understand why I would think that you've read some portion of it. Yeah, no, that, that is
00:27:34correct. And listen, I'm not, I'm not trying to be an egg here. I'm, I'm genuinely curious because my
00:27:39jaw is a little on the floor, which, you know, could be my overreaction or whatever. I'm fine with that.
00:27:43But why would you ask me about something you've not, ask me my opinion of something you've not read?
00:27:50And again, I know this sounds critical. I'm genuinely curious. It's an interesting
00:27:54phenomenon. I've not really experienced that before. No worries. Uh, it's simple. I saw the
00:27:59title of your faith, come talk with, come talk philosophy. That's, and meditations was like the
00:28:06first thing that came into my mind. Do you think that, okay, let me ask you this. Did you grow up
00:28:12with a father? Okay. And how close are you with your father? We are, yeah, we're pretty close. Okay.
00:28:21And when you were in school, obviously you wouldn't do a book report on a book you hadn't read,
00:28:28right? Obviously not. I mean, it'd be pretty, pretty tough to fake, right? Did it cross your mind
00:28:34to say, Steph, I want your opinion on something, but I cannot engage in a dialogue with it about it
00:28:41because I haven't read it.
00:28:45You're right. It honestly didn't cross my mind. I just, I guess what my mental state going into the
00:28:52question was, I've heard other reviews of the book. I've heard how magnanimous and how grand in terms of
00:29:01philosophy that it was that seeing how, again, the space is called philosophy, I thought it
00:29:07couldn't hurt to ask what your opinion was on it. Well, sorry, how would it hurt to ask?
00:29:14Say hurt, when I say hurt to ask, I just thought, that was just me saying, why not? Why not just
00:29:20ask you about it? Well, I mean, the reason I think, and again, I'm not trying to be an egg here,
00:29:25but I think I'm just trying to give you some, some sort of feedback is that, do you think that I
00:29:31would assume you'd read the book that you were asking me my opinion of? Yes, at least, at least
00:29:38initially. What do you mean initially? Like, I'm guessing looking back on the question, looking back
00:29:45on the initial question, have you read Marcus Aurelius? I'm guess I was guessing, not guessing,
00:29:52but more just, it just automatically went into my mind that we'd... Okay, sorry, the word salad,
00:30:00the word, hang on, the word salad, the word salad doesn't help. So, I, again, not trying to nag you,
00:30:07I'm just genuinely kind of curious about your experience here. So, I, and I assume that the
00:30:13audience here also was quite surprised when you said you hadn't read a word of Marcus Aurelius,
00:30:18you'd maybe read a review or two or something like that, because if you had said to me,
00:30:22Steph, I want your opinion on Marcus Aurelius' meditations, I've never read them, what do
00:30:27you think I would say? You say, I'm guessing you'd say something like, interesting perspective,
00:30:34but why would you, why would you ask me about a book that you, that you specifically have never
00:30:40read? Well, no, I mean, I don't think I would say that. What I would say is, listen, I appreciate
00:30:45that. Why don't you read, read Marcus Aurelius and get back to me, and then we'll have a conversation
00:30:49about it then. Fair point, fair point. And again, it's not a nag, it's just an interesting
00:30:55thing to me. And now, the other thing that I would say about Marcus Aurelius is, I assume
00:31:00he's not a good philosopher if no one hates him. And I don't think I've ever read a bad
00:31:06thing about Marcus Aurelius' meditations. Oh, it's so wonderful, this and the other. It's
00:31:10like the prophets, or Zen of the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, or, you know, the secret, or, you
00:31:17know, like, nobody seems to hate the guy, which means that he's done nothing to promote
00:31:23virtue in any practical sense. So when you promote virtue, you interfere with the designs
00:31:29and interests of evil people. And so if you actually practically promote virtue, you measurably
00:31:35increase the virtue in the world, then that interferes with the plans, goals, and executions
00:31:42of evil people, and then they slender you, right? So I generally assume, and it's a pretty good rule
00:31:50of thumb, although I, you know, can't prove it 100% naturally, but if no one has a bad thing to say
00:31:56about any philosopher, then I know for a fact that philosopher has done nothing practical
00:32:02to increase the amount of virtue in the world. And so why would I waste my time? This is why,
00:32:10you know, 40 or 50 pages in, I was just like, yeah, this is just a bunch of, uh, it's, it's sort
00:32:15of like having a meal of, if you've ever gone to the fair, right, in the summer, when I was a kid,
00:32:20of course, like most kids, I'm like, ooh, candy floss, the way they make it in the bowl with the
00:32:25spinny stick, and it suddenly coalesces like a ghost, a pink, pink ghost of tasty flavorness,
00:32:30right? And so you take a big bite of candy floss, and it just kind of dissolves into those hard
00:32:35sugar nuggets that get stuck in your gums, right? So it looks big, you bite into it, and it just kind
00:32:41of vaporizes in your mouth, and you're just left with kind of annoying residue. And that's sort of
00:32:47my experience of reading a lot of philosophy, which is, okay, that's, that's great. How does this
00:32:53advance virtue, and how does this, by advancing virtue, harm evil? And so, I mean, he obviously
00:33:02was involved in his political struggles and so on, but that's just a struggle for power. So I look for
00:33:08a philosopher, and if no one hates them, and no one has slandered them, I just assume they're doing
00:33:15nothing of any particular value. You know, like, if, if bacteria could speak, they would hate antibiotics,
00:33:22right? They would, they would hate, like, oh, I'm antibiotic, the guy who made antibiotics is the
00:33:26worst guy ever, because his medicine kills us, right? Or, or diminishes our capacity to reproduce,
00:33:32or whatever, whatever it does. So, it's the same thing, I, I, I map someone I'm willing to listen to
00:33:40by the degree of hatred that they generate. And it doesn't mean, of course, that everyone who's
00:33:46hated is a moral philosopher, but if you are a moral philosopher, which is to promote virtue and
00:33:53to thwart evil, if you're a moral philosopher, and no evil person hates you, it's because you've done
00:33:59F all in the world to thwart their interests, which means you're just a chinwagger, a noisemaker,
00:34:05and the nutritional equivalent of candy floss, if that makes sense.
00:34:10No, it, it absolutely, it really does.
00:34:14Okay, well, listen, I appreciate you dropping by. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:34:17Thank you, uh, it was nice, uh, to, welcome back to Twitter. I look forward to these spaces in the
00:34:23future if you ever decide to do them again.
00:34:25I may, thank you. All right, the appropriately named Stephen Freeman. Stephen Freeman, why does that
00:34:31seem familiar? Am I thinking of Ian? Anyway, just unmute you on the,
00:34:35air, and in my ear. Yes, yes, yes, are we taking a moment here?
00:34:41Who are you talking to then? Because you, you broke up a bit.
00:34:45Uh, yeah, I'm talking to, I'm talking to you, Steve. What's on your mind?
00:34:48Okay, excellent. I, yeah, I just wanted to say, uh, thank you for your hard work, as always,
00:34:53and for being back on our Twitter. I've said a couple of things on Marcus Aurelius. The first one was
00:34:57that I believe he didn't write the book. It wasn't like he, he was a philosopher who, like,
00:35:04released it as text. It was kind of his own writings that people picked up afterwards and,
00:35:08and released. Um, so God knows how much of that is, is legit. But I, but I take your point about,
00:35:14you know, there's nothing particularly controversial in there. The thing that did,
00:35:18it's been a long time since I've read it, but the thing that did stand out for me is he,
00:35:23he talks at one point about, you know, not suffering fools and just being patient with the idiots that
00:35:28you're going to come across every day. And that was, sorry, did he, sorry, did he say
00:35:32not suffering fools and being patient with fools? I thought the two were contradictory.
00:35:37Yeah, and I'm probably not, it's been a long time. This is kind of my interpretation of it,
00:35:42but he just talks about like every day being visited by people who are just annoying to him
00:35:46and just not getting frustrated, but I'm not, you know, that's not the way. That's kind of my
00:35:51memory of it. Um, but the thing that's stuck in my mind or that sort of popped into my mind was
00:35:56observing you on Twitter and just the number of really annoying people that,
00:36:01you know, are commenting on, on your stuff and your, and your responses. And
00:36:05the other thing I wanted to ask you is just how, how you keep patience with it.
00:36:10Because unlike Marcus really, it's just reading those things that people say just irritates me,
00:36:15but they're not even addressed to me. And I just wanted to ask you how you keep your patience
00:36:21to such a degree with such idiots.
00:36:23Is there a particular tweet that comes to mind or is it a general accumulation of Oog?
00:36:29Well, I mean, I just signed up again after quite a few years today. And I've just seen a stream of
00:36:35things that you've responded to and things that people have responded. You know, it's just nasty
00:36:40stuff. I can look at one and remind myself, but you know, they're just things about like,
00:36:45you know, your mom and saying your, you know, just personal insults, just basically.
00:36:50Oh yeah. Sorry to interrupt. So I did this tweet about how I, you know, I, I, I can't puzzle out
00:36:57why family members are mean to each other or particularly parents to children and then nice
00:37:01to strangers. And I was talking about how my mom would be like mean to me and then real nice to
00:37:06a waiter or she'd be like yelling at me. And then the doorbell would ring and be, she'd be super sweet
00:37:10to whoever with the doorbell. And you know, there'd been a not inconsiderable number of people who've
00:37:16said, well, you were just being a little asshole and your mom just was angry at you because you
00:37:23were being a jerk. And now it's not, I went back and checked the tweet. It's not like I didn't say
00:37:30as a child, but of course the situation is clearly a child's situation, right? So, but yeah, so I think
00:37:38it's a great question. So how do I have a patience? So tell me what I hate to be Mr. Definition
00:37:44Guy here, but you're assuming that I have patience and that's interesting because I, what do you mean
00:37:50by patience in this context? Because I don't experience it that way, but maybe I do if you
00:37:56have a way of using the word that is, is different from how I would use it. So what do you mean by
00:38:02patience? Yeah. So one of the reasons why I kind of deleted Twitter and a bunch of other social media
00:38:08around the time that you got the platforms and that, and that was part of it. Another part of it was
00:38:13I found myself just arguing with people. So I'd see, you know, comments like that or be challenged
00:38:17in that way. And I just kind of, you know, go all guns blazing and just unleash hell. And I just
00:38:23find myself like feeling negative and not really getting anywhere. Whereas you kind of seem to be
00:38:27able to respond quite quickly, like logically and rationally and not, uh, maybe that's just because
00:38:34I was younger back then, but that's just something that it stands out to me that you're able to
00:38:38respond quite quickly with quite an objective view and just not get, you know, lose your mind
00:38:43to me. It's kind of a procedure. Well, you see, Stephen, what actually happened was I read Marcus
00:38:48Aurelius' meditations. Oh, well, well. Okay. So, so no, what I don't view it as a matter of patience.
00:38:56It's not like, oh, I have to calm down and be patient with these people. I just view it. I view
00:39:02the people who are sort of, we can say trolls, right? The people who are trolls, first of all,
00:39:07they're blindingly obvious, right? And so anybody who gets sucked into that kind of nonsense almost
00:39:12deserves the waste of time and energy. But what I do view them in particular, there is a horrifying,
00:39:19and I don't blame people for this because philosophers mostly suck in terms of giving
00:39:24practical moral advice to people in the world. It's all just, you know, be nice and reciprocal
00:39:28altruism and, and Kantian categorical imperatives and things like that, which doesn't really do much.
00:39:34Philosophers have never taken on child abuse. Philosophers have never taken on parenting as a
00:39:39whole. So mostly they've just been spitting silver tongue nuggets of useless garbage into the palate of
00:39:46mankind and then wondering why they're not taken seriously. So there is a sort of chilling lack of
00:39:52respect for expertise among the general population for thinkers, philosophers, moralists as a whole.
00:40:01Ayn Rand wrote about this many years ago that in the midst of the 60s crisis, where the, you know,
00:40:08the communists were taking over the major institutions in their sort of long march through
00:40:11the institutions, the American Philosophical Society had a big meeting to talk about whether
00:40:17nouns existed or not. And this, you know, dust in the wind stuff from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure,
00:40:24you know, dust in the wind, man, just dust in the wind. I mean, the fact that when a moralist comes
00:40:30along, people think that they know better. I understand, like I sympathize with. It's not
00:40:35common that you'll meet a robust, rational, moral philosopher who's willing to try and teach you
00:40:42something of value. So I don't view the lack of respect that people have for my expertise
00:40:47as their fault. It's really the fault of all the other philosophers who haven't done much good,
00:40:52much practical good in the world. So, but it's sort of like if I've been playing chess,
00:40:58and I've been doing philosophy for 40, 43 years, almost 44 years, mid-teens to, you know, my late
00:41:0550s. So let's just say, I don't know, 40 years, whatever, right? So 40 years. Now, not only have
00:41:12I done philosophy in terms of I've studied it and I have a graduate degree, my master's thesis was in
00:41:18the history of philosophy and took on some very big topics and issues. Not only have I been a debater
00:41:23and a public speaker, I've written books, I've engaged in countless debates with people, I have,
00:41:28you know, been running this philosophy show for 20 years. And so I am very experienced.
00:41:34And it is to me, just a mark of people need to learn how to respect expertise. And learning how
00:41:45to respect expertise doesn't mean that I'm always right, and they're always wrong or anything like
00:41:49that. But it's kind of like if I've just been playing, you know, chess with my brother, and then
00:41:55I'm like, I sit down across a grand master with 40 years of experience, and I think I can win. I'm
00:42:01wrong. I'm just wrong. You know, I was playing pickleball with my wife the other day. And next to us
00:42:10were a bunch of tennis players. And these were young guys who were incredibly good. Like you could
00:42:17barely even see the serve. Now, I was okay at tennis. I was sort of a decent amateur. But these
00:42:23guys, I think they were pros. Now, if I'm a lot, I've been playing tennis since I was knee-high to a
00:42:29grasshopper. And if I were to sit across from these guys and think I could win a point except by accident,
00:42:35I'd be deluding myself. Have respect for expertise. And my wife was like, well, they're pretty good.
00:42:44And I'm like, yeah, I, you know, she thinks I'm a good tennis and racket sports player. And I just
00:42:49had to tell her, like, those guys would clean the floor with me. Like they wouldn't even break a
00:42:53sweat. And just so you know, like they're really, really good. I mean, these are the kind of guys
00:42:57who, you know, they go to summer camp for tennis, and they have, you know, coaches and all kinds of
00:43:02stuff. And, you know, more power to them. I think that's fantastic. But the idea that I could sort of
00:43:06wander in there and play with them in any reasonable capacity is just ridiculous. And so for me,
00:43:14it's not so much patience, it's like, I'm sorry that you don't have any respect for expertise.
00:43:21I'm sorry that you've not met mature people who can put a flex on without being abusive. But I'm
00:43:28going to do it anyway. So it's kind of like if you are, like if you have some sort of advanced
00:43:34black belt in karate, or I don't know, judo or taekwondo or whatever, you're a really,
00:43:39really, you've studied this stuff for decades. And of course, the challenge is that if you're
00:43:46into like martial arts, you age out, right? You just your body ages out. But it's not the way
00:43:50with philosophy, you just you just keep getting stronger, keep getting stronger until mortality
00:43:55puts you puts your mind out of out of its fire. So if you are like a mixed martial artist in your
00:44:03prime, or you're a, and you've been doing this stuff for like 20 years, or you know, you are a
00:44:08fantastic martial artist, and somebody fights with you, I mean, you're going to show them that they
00:44:16don't know what they're talking about. Now, of course, you're not going to break their arms or
00:44:19anything like that. But you're just gonna show them what expertise looks like. And so I'm not,
00:44:28it's not a matter of patience for me, my sort of mindset is, you know, they, they're probably the
00:44:34smartest person in their small social circle, or maybe even in their class at university there.
00:44:41And that's great, you know, I think it's wonderful, but they don't really know what they're doing,
00:44:46and they don't really know what they're talking about. And I'm going to, I would say put them in
00:44:50their place. But putting them in their place is a good thing. Because if you think, you know
00:44:57everything, and you're the best at everything, you don't study anything, and you don't ever grow
00:45:01at anything. So if I think I'm a fantastic chess player, right, I'm such a good chess player.
00:45:07And then I sit down with someone who's really experienced, and they clean my clock in about
00:45:11five minutes, then that gives me room to grow. So I know this sounds kind of odd, I'm opening up
00:45:17opportunities for people. If you think you're really, really good at martial arts, okay, come at me,
00:45:24bro. And if I slip to the side, trip you up and throw you on your butt, without even really thinking
00:45:31about it, that means that you have room to grow in martial arts. It means don't be complacent,
00:45:36don't think you know all of that, and all of that, you have room to grow. So I'm just sort of pointing
00:45:41out to people that real expertise, which I've accumulated for 40 plus years, in, you know, some of
00:45:48the most rigorous and challenging public arenas that are around, well, come at me. And I'm now
00:45:55going to show you that you have room to grow, just as I do. I mean, I'm still have much, much room to
00:46:01grow with regards to philosophy. That's, it's the old discipline, so you're never done. So I don't view
00:46:06it as, you know, I think you had this, like, come at me, they come at you, and you just want to beat
00:46:11the living crap out of them, you know, to the point where their nose is coming out the back of their
00:46:15head or something like that. And obviously, I think that's a bit, a bit of a strong reaction,
00:46:20but it's just like, oh, I'll, I'll just judo you, and you'll land on your butt, and everyone can see
00:46:26it. And hopefully, that will help raise my credibility. And hopefully, that will give you
00:46:30the idea that you have room to grow, and you shouldn't be complacent in your certainty of
00:46:35knowledge. Does that make any sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's funny, actually,
00:46:40because I do have a black belt in Taekwondo, you just use that. Yeah, yeah. So listen,
00:46:44if I, if I, so, so if I, if I came at you, after taking maybe five lessons in Taekwondo,
00:46:52if I came at you, I mean, wouldn't you put me on my butt? Yeah, and it's an interesting analogy,
00:46:58because one of the things that, as an example that kind of came to mind is, back in the day,
00:47:03when I first found UPB, that was quite a game changer for me, because it gave me this framework
00:47:10for kind of being able to figure out right and wrong quite easily. I remember talking to quite
00:47:15a few people about it, including, like, you know, philosopher friends, people who are quite,
00:47:19quite intelligent, in the context of, you know, them having problems, or them having challenges,
00:47:24and kind of giving this stuff to you, not in a, oh, you know, I've got this philosophical principle,
00:47:30look how, you know, smart I am, but in a, with a genuine kind of intention to help.
00:47:35And what I'd find would happen is, you'd have, like, you know, say, eight people in a room,
00:47:41and I'd find myself, like, literally spending hours just kind of defending myself, almost,
00:47:47like, answering questions, or just being challenged, like, what, you know, like how in Hollywood
00:47:51films, when they do martial arts, they always have, like, one guy attacks at a time, and then
00:47:57the hero kind of, like, takes on one, and then the next one, they never all attack at the
00:48:00same time, it's just this one after the other. And I'd find there'd be times which literally,
00:48:04like, hours would pass, and you haven't actually made any progress, you've just been kind of,
00:48:08like, having people challenge you. And I realized after a while that, you know,
00:48:12the curiosity isn't there, that a lot of the intentionally, even from people that should know
00:48:18better, like, you know, friends and stuff, they hear this different idea. And because it's not
00:48:23coming from, you know, whatever teacher or whatever authority that they recognize, they just want
00:48:29to find reasons to, you'll find ways to cut it down, you know, kind of the softest techniques.
00:48:34And I just find that really irritating, like, you're trying to help and trying to add value,
00:48:39and then you're just kind of, like, constantly fighting. And then what happens is the actual
00:48:43discussion gets lost, and the people that you may have been able to help or have a reasonable
00:48:49discussion with, it just gets buried in all this kind of, like, you know, how would you say,
00:48:55it's sort of debate sparring kind of thing that's going on, and the whole message gets lost at that
00:49:00point. And when I reread some of those messages on your, you see that, it's just people not wanting
00:49:07to actually debate, they just kind of want to score points.
00:49:11Yeah, and that's fine. I mean, come in, try and score points. You know, like, I see this one guy
00:49:15floating around Twitter who's like, oh, UPB is just the plagiarism of Kant's categorical imperative.
00:49:22And it's like, okay, just, I don't know if he's read Kant, but he certainly hasn't read UPB.
00:49:26And he certainly hasn't looked at my rebuttals to the fact. I mean, just because Kant and I both
00:49:31share universal moral rules doesn't mean that universal moral, everyone who talks about universal
00:49:36moral rules is plagiarizing Kant. Even if they talked before Kant, magically, they were able to
00:49:42do that. So, okay, so let me ask you this, Stephen, let me ask you this. You don't have to answer,
00:49:46don't have to answer. But did you happen to grow up with a family member, possibly,
00:49:52a mother, possibly a father, more likely a mother? Did you happen to grow up with a family member
00:49:57that you strove to convince to be more rational and did not succeed?
00:50:03Yeah, well, we've kind of talked about this before on a private chat, but yes,
00:50:07that was all included in my mother.
00:50:10Okay, to my credit, to my credit, I don't remember the private chat, but maybe unconsciously or
00:50:16something like that.
00:50:17A little while ago, and I know you have many of them, but yeah, you've nailed it. I mean,
00:50:20many years of trying to convince family members to be rational and just, like, not succeeding.
00:50:26Yeah, so it is very important to, you know, I hate to sort of pick up your family, but pearls
00:50:32before swine. You have to have a limit on how much you are willing to engage with anti-rational
00:50:40people, because they just end up making you dance by refusing to listen to reason. So, well,
00:50:46I appreciate that, and welcome back. I hope that you'll stick around. At least, I promise that my
00:50:50account on Twitter or X will remain exciting and positive, and I really do appreciate your
00:50:56conversation. And, of course, if anybody wants to get into a private call-in, they can do that
00:51:01at freedomain.com slash call. All right, Darwin to Jesus, or Darwin to Jesus, I guess it could be.
00:51:10What's on your mind, my friend? Hey, Stefan, how's it going? Thanks for allowing me to come up here and
00:51:15speak. How long do you have? I probably could do another half hour, but I also have a bunch of
00:51:21other people who want to chat, so go for it. I will get right down to it then. You definitely
00:51:27have had a big effect on me, but setting that aside in my journey, I'm curious, what is your exact
00:51:34position on atheism? Because I don't remember you really talking about that very much. Could you
00:51:41go through that? Okay, again, sorry to be an annoying guy, but atheism means a lot of different
00:51:47things to different people. So, definition of atheism, do you mean a disbelief in God? Is that
00:51:54because some people think it means against a God or hostile to religion? Is the atheism that you're
00:52:02talking about simply referring to a lack of a belief in God? Is that right? That's kind of what
00:52:07I'm asking you about, because there are different definitions, and it's my understanding that you
00:52:12call yourself an atheist. So, I'm wondering, if I'm correct about that, and you do, what you mean by
00:52:17that? Okay, that's certainly fair. So, my stance on atheism has changed in some ways and not in others.
00:52:25So, I was originally an atheist who was hostile to and contemptuous of religion as a whole. I have
00:52:33softened my stance over the years for a variety of reasons, mostly which have to do with experiencing
00:52:37some very positive things in the Christian community and seeing the atheist community, quote,
00:52:43evolve into a semi-socialist, communist, tyranny, bootlicking, authoritarian fest over the years.
00:52:50So, with regards to the existence of God, listen, bro, I'm going to church, because I'm curious,
00:52:58and I also love to see good public speakers, and I'm open to the experience. I'm going to church.
00:53:03Of course, I did a whole series on the Bible, which is available at fdrpodcast.com, and I'm more than
00:53:11willing to be convinced by the divine. My heart is open, and I have not, because I'm an empiricist,
00:53:17but I have not received anything as yet. So, foundationally, reason and evidence is my
00:53:25guiding principle, and nothing has changed with regards to the rationality of believing in a God,
00:53:31which cannot be proven, and the empirical evidence for a God, which cannot be established. So, I would
00:53:38say that I am an atheist in not believing in God, but I am not anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian,
00:53:47in the way that I was in the past, if that makes sense.
00:53:50Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Where I'm sitting, it sounds like you're more of an agnostic
00:53:56at this point. What I mean by that is, typically, if you ask a normal agnostic, do you believe in God,
00:54:02or do you believe that there is no God, they're going to say that they don't hold a belief either
00:54:06way, that they're basically right on the fence. And that kind of sounds more like what you're saying.
00:54:12Right. And it is true that a lot of atheists, when they describe themselves, especially these days,
00:54:18they kind of describe the agnostic position. Because it used to be, back in the day, when
00:54:24somebody said, I'm an atheist, that they meant, there is no God. But these days, it kind of means,
00:54:30well, I don't believe that there is God, I don't believe that there isn't, I just lack a belief.
00:54:33And that kind of sounds like where you're at now, is that right?
00:54:37No, that's not correct. So agnosticism, technically, is, I cannot prove there is a God,
00:54:43I cannot disprove that there is a God, I leave the question in limbo, so to speak. I accept that
00:54:52logically and empirically, there is no God. However, in the practical effects of faith,
00:54:58I see more benevolent behavior among Christians than among atheists. And atheists, in many ways,
00:55:07are much more dangerous, really, almost infinitely more dangerous than Christians, because Christians
00:55:13do not use force in general to impose their beliefs upon others. But atheists have not given up
00:55:19their belief in incorporeal, irrational entities. They think, oh, well, I don't believe in God,
00:55:26because God doesn't exist. It's like, bro, the state, government does not exist. And in my
00:55:33conversations with atheists, when I tell them the basic fact that the government is a concept in
00:55:39people's minds, but does not exist, I mean, they lose their shite, man. When I talk to Christians
00:55:45about my skepticism about the existence of God, we have reasonable and rational discussions.
00:55:50You talk to atheists and say, look, you're part of a much more dangerous religion, a cult, really,
00:55:58because you believe that something exists called the state. And they say, well, there are buildings
00:56:03that the government's in. It's like, yeah, but there are churches, but you don't accept the fact
00:56:07that there are churches. That doesn't mean that God exists. So I have found atheists to be infinitely
00:56:15more superstitious than Christians. And I say infinitely more superstitious than Christians.
00:56:22Christians at least have accepted and have warped with the Aristotelian tenets of logic and the
00:56:27Baconian principles of empiricism. I mean, certainly for thousands of years and half a millennia with
00:56:34regards to Bacon. And they've wrestled with science. They've wrestled with reason. They've wrestled
00:56:38with empiricism. They've wrestled with evil being allowed to flourish in a world supposedly run by God.
00:56:45So there is a noble tradition in Christianity of wrestling with these issues and acknowledging
00:56:49these issues. You can't even get an atheist to admit that the government doesn't exist,
00:56:55that it's a concept in people's minds, that there's buildings and there's paper and there's
00:56:59books and there's uniforms and there's weaponry and so on. But that does not mean that the concept
00:57:06exists. And just trying to get like atheists, well, there's no God. It's like, but you talk about
00:57:11the government. And the government exists as a belief in people's minds. The state is a state of
00:57:19mind. And it does not prove the existence of a thing because people believe in it. And they will
00:57:23accept all of those arguments with regards to religion. But they will not accept those arguments
00:57:29with regards to their fetish, the state. And of course, the state is a mechanism by which
00:57:36beliefs get translated into enforcement, which is not the case with Christianity. It could be the
00:57:41cases with other religions, not really the case with Christianity. And this is one of the reasons
00:57:45I did a poll on X recently. Would you rather have a leftist atheist move in next door or a Christian?
00:57:51And overwhelmingly, people chose the Christian, as would I. Because the Christians are much more
00:57:57rational. Sorry, go ahead.
00:57:58No, I didn't mean to cut you off. I completely agree with what you're saying. And I was an
00:58:03atheist when I used to listen to you back in the day before you went on leave or whatever.
00:58:09I'm not sure exactly what happened. I haven't went and seen why you were away. I'm sure you've
00:58:15told everybody. I just haven't seen it. But I used to listen to you all the time when I was
00:58:20an atheist. And I came to the same conclusion that Christians actually seem to be the good guys
00:58:25when it comes to a huge array of issues. I mean, I basically decided that if you look at what
00:58:32Western civilization is built upon, very much seems apparent to me that it's built on Christian values
00:58:39and that atheism is trying to erode those values. And what we're seeing is we're seeing chaos and we're
00:58:45seeing a tremendous amount of confusion. And it made me start siding with Christians before I became
00:58:51one against atheists. And I feel like that's pretty much where you are now is in that same sort of weird
00:58:58place where you're like, I'm an atheist. But I really like what the Christians are saying. They seem to be
00:59:02the ones that might have a chance at keeping our civilization together and intact and getting us through
00:59:08this. Whereas atheism is more like a fire. It just kind of seems to destroy everything, but it can't really
00:59:15build anything. And I know that you are trying to build certain things with UPB and stuff like that.
00:59:21So we might disagree slightly. But I think that you would still agree that atheism in general is
00:59:26more like fire. I think that's...
00:59:29Yeah, I mean, minor correction for me. I'm not trying to correct it for you, but I don't find it
00:59:33to be in a weird place. Philosophy can make the world look weird, but it never leads me to a weird
00:59:37place because it's truth, reason, and evidence. But I will say that my break with atheists as a whole
00:59:42happened around the publication and the reception of UPB, like a rational system of secular ethics.
00:59:49That is the holy grail of philosophy, and certainly it's the holy grail of atheists. To have a system
00:59:55of morality that requires neither gods nor governments for enforcement and can be rationally
01:00:00proven from first principles is the holy grail of philosophy and certainly the holy grail of atheism.
01:00:07And because atheists are constantly, well, the morals come from God, right? So the Christians,
01:00:11morals comes from God, and the atheists are like, well, morals don't come from God. And so I was
01:00:16able to prove from first principles, and it is a solid proof, it holds, it holds. I was able to prove
01:00:21from first principles a rational system of secular morality, and that's the answer. And the atheists,
01:00:28of course, logically, logically, the atheists should have been like, hallelujah. They should have been
01:00:34like, yay, fantastic. We finally have the answer as to the source of morality without relying on
01:00:40sort of pathetic dog-eat-dog Darwinism. And they ignored it, or were skeptical or scornful of it.
01:00:48And that's because UPB proves morality at the expense of their fetish called the morality of statism,
01:00:56their worship of the state. So they choose power over virtue. And Christianity, of course,
01:01:02in general, aims to choose virtue over power, and successfully so a lot of the times. And
01:01:09I think atheism is basically just, modern atheism is just a psyop to remove morality from the West so
01:01:15that it can be overrun by brutal power seekers. And atheists are complicit with that, because
01:01:22atheists should have been, even if they disagreed with the UPB, it certainly is. It is very worst
01:01:28on sort of first reading. It's a good effort. Maybe it could be refined or improved or whatever it is,
01:01:32but it definitely, the proof holds. And they should have been all over it. But instead,
01:01:37they ignore it and run the other way, which means that they are tools of power, not purveyors of
01:01:42reason. So I hope that helps.
01:01:45Yeah, yeah, I agree. I did want to ask about something else, but I know that there are a lot
01:01:49of other speakers, and you'd let me speak with you for at least 10 minutes now. So I'm happy to step
01:01:53aside if you want to move to somebody else. But I did want to shift gears. If you do want to give
01:01:57one more time, it's up to you.
01:01:59Hold your, yeah, hold your thought, because it's not the last time I'll do one of these,
01:02:03and I do want to get to other people as best I can. So I really do appreciate you dropping
01:02:07by. And I really do appreciate the questions, of course. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right.
01:02:14Lahina, Lahina, you are on the speaker.
01:02:19Yeah, okay. So this is just a quick question. What do you consider is evil? Because you were talking
01:02:27about it earlier.
01:02:29Okay, that's a great question. So evil is the initiation of force or fraud. And so evil is
01:02:36when you use force or violence against, obviously, others. And defrauding is a form of violence,
01:02:44because it strips people of their property through language rather than direct force,
01:02:48but it is a form of theft. So it is the initiation of the use of force or fraud,
01:02:53and violations of property rights. I mean, they're two sides of the same coin, right? So we own
01:03:00ourselves, we own the effects of our actions. And so violence against our person, like against our
01:03:05body, is a violation of our self-ownership. And a theft is a violation of the property that we have
01:03:12produced through our labor. So yeah, evil is the initiation of force or fraud, and violations of
01:03:18property rights, if that makes sense. Cole, Cole, what's on your mind, my friend? Yes.
01:03:27I just wanted to pop up real quick and say thank you for all the years of amazing content. Your
01:03:33analytics and your long talks have always been so fucking inspirational. Thank you.
01:03:40I appreciate that. Thank you, Cole. That's lovely to hear. And it warms my heart, of course. And of
01:03:46course, I'm very privileged with the technology to get the kind of feedback that philosophers usually
01:03:51don't get until long after they're dead, which, of course, doesn't do them much good, but may do
01:03:56their legacy some good. So I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Ready Bible, if you want to unmute,
01:04:02you are welcome to throw your words into my eardrums. If you are speaking, I cannot hear you.
01:04:08Hi, Stephen. Can you hear me now? Yes, if you could speak up a little bit, you're kind of quiet.
01:04:14Okay. My question is, how would you look at the world if it was true that God actually did exist?
01:04:23And I just want to quickly just clarify, specifically the Christian God, the God that forgives us and has
01:04:31mercy through faith in the blood of Jesus Christ. Well, and that's how I was raised,
01:04:37as a Christian and Anglican, I suppose, specifically. And I'm sorry, I didn't want to
01:04:42cut you off if you had more to add, because I'd love to answer the question, but I don't want to
01:04:45leap in if you have more that you wanted to add. No, that's my question really about, yeah,
01:04:51how would you look at the world if it was actually, assuming that it is actually true that God does
01:04:55exist? How would that change the way you look at the world? Well, I'm sorry to nag. It's more than God
01:05:00existing, because you could be a deist and believe that. You mean Christianity, Jesus,
01:05:05sacrifice, redemption, and so on, right? Yeah. Maybe simply put, how would you look at the world
01:05:12if the Bible was true, you know, that the Christian God was existing? Yeah. That's a great question,
01:05:21and the answer is that it would be glorious. It would be absolutely glorious, for a number of
01:05:29reasons. One, I wouldn't feel the urgency and the rush of mortality, because I would live forever.
01:05:38Number two, I would get to spend eternity with my wonderful wife, with my lovely daughter in time,
01:05:46with friends, and all kinds of wonderful things. I would get to meet the virtuous men and women of
01:05:53the past and have great conversations. I would be in the penumbra or aura or Saturn's girdle of
01:05:59God's immeasurable grace and beauty and strength and virtue and power. It would be glorious, wonderful.
01:06:06There would be a purpose and order to the universe rather than the sort of blind chaos and detritus and
01:06:13rabble of atoms and void chasing each other in a giant circle, and that would give a pleasing
01:06:20congruence between my life, which I try to organize according to moral principles, and the universe,
01:06:27which is organized according to not just physical principles but moral principles, that morality would
01:06:31infuse the universe in the way that I try to have morality inform my daily life and decisions, so there
01:06:36would be a congruence between what I do and how the universe is, which would be wonderful and beautiful
01:06:43beyond words. There would be less of a, I mean, I feel, and this is sort of personal, so I hope this
01:06:51makes some kind of sense, but, you know, since very early on in my life, I've constantly been trying to
01:06:56test what I'm capable of and what I can do, and I've been very skeptical about it because the odds
01:07:02that, you know, me, just some kid who grew up in a crappy single mom household in the middle of nowhere,
01:07:08poverty-stricken and all of that, the idea that I would be, like, an important philosopher who
01:07:13solves the problem of secular ethics, I think, enormously skeptical. The odds are ridiculously
01:07:18tiny. Philosophers have been working on the problem for thousands of years. I've solved the problem.
01:07:24It's infinitely more rare than winning the lottery, you know, like hundreds of people win
01:07:28the lottery around the world, like, every week. More, maybe. I mean, some significant amount,
01:07:32right? So, to be one in 5,000 years or 3,000 years is ridiculous, right? And I'm very sort of
01:07:39skeptical of it, but at the same time, I am an empiricist, and I have solved the problem and done
01:07:44other great things in the realm of philosophy, and so, as an empiricist, I have to just sort of accept
01:07:49that that is the case, and if it is the case, and I accept that it is the case empirically, if it is
01:07:56the case that I have, like, really unique and rare gifts when it comes to formulating and explaining
01:08:00philosophy to the world, oh, my God, it's a burden. It's a very, very serious and difficult burden,
01:08:10and I feel that weight. You know, I had some time open up today, and I'm like, oh, I can go and talk
01:08:18philosophy with people and answer questions and, you know, get a little bit more of my thoughts carved
01:08:23into the fabric of the universe through the atoms of the internet and storage devices, and I'm like,
01:08:29I have to. If I can move philosophy forward a little bit over the next hour, an hour and a half,
01:08:35when I have some free time, I gotta do it. And so, I feel this burden, and I mean, this is a ridiculous
01:08:44example, of course, but the way that I sort of feel it is, if you had the capacity to heal very sick
01:08:51people by touching your fingertips to their forehead, wouldn't you spend a lot of your time doing
01:08:57that and feel kind of bad if you weren't doing that? And so, if I have a capacity, which some of
01:09:03which I've earned and some of which is obviously just sort of built in or baked into the neurons
01:09:07to formulate and explain philosophy in a way that is very impactful and positive, it's a burden, man.
01:09:14And in a way, I love it. I love doing philosophy, but it definitely, there's a certain lack of free
01:09:21will in it because I feel the urgency. I also feel the rarity of what it is that I'm able to do. I do
01:09:27philosophy because the philosophy that I do is not present in the philosophy I've read, and so I'm
01:09:33filling a void or a vacuum, especially in terms of bringing philosophy to the family, to people's
01:09:38personal life, and to child raising in particular. So, if there was a God, then the moral arc or path
01:09:47of the universe would be a little bit less as it feels like in my, you know, trembling nervous hands
01:09:53from time to time, and there would be a much larger story that I would simply be a small part of
01:09:59rather than feeling the need to author the progress of philosophy in the modern world as much as I can.
01:10:05So, just sort of off the top of my head, I think it would be absolutely wonderful if it were true.
01:10:10Sorry, go ahead.
01:10:12I think that really surprised me about the Bible is there's a philosophical argument.
01:10:17I'm so sorry. I asked you to speak up, but now you're puh-puh-puh-ing. You're putting a lot of
01:10:21plosives, so if you could just move the mic to one side, and I'll try and fix your volume in
01:10:25post-production, but it's really tough with the puh-puh-pahs coming out. But sorry, go ahead.
01:10:30Sorry about that. An argument that the Bible makes, written in Romans 1, verse 20, is basically that
01:10:40it's obvious that God exists because of the will that he made. I'm interested in your response to
01:10:46that argument that's in the Bible.
01:10:49It's obvious that God exists because of the world that he made. Well, I'm not sure how that's
01:11:00at all obvious. I mean, we could say, ah, yes, but he made the world habitable for human beings,
01:11:06but that's, of course, begging the question. The fact that we live on Earth in that Goldilocks zone
01:11:10where it's not too hot and not too cold, well, there's seven other planets in the solar system
01:11:16that don't have life because they're not in the Goldilocks zone, or if there's something on Mars,
01:11:19it's probably just bacteria. So, I don't see that so much as far as the immense evils in the world.
01:11:29So, evil is largely the product of child abuse. And so, if that is the case, and that largely is the
01:11:40case, then evil is forged in a furnace not chosen by the mind because we don't choose who we're born
01:11:49to. So, some kid who was sexually assaulted and abused and beaten and burned and so on. Like,
01:11:56the odds of them growing up to be a sort of happy, moral, calm-minded individual are virtually zero.
01:12:03And so, if I were to design a system as an all-powerful, all-moral being, I think that I
01:12:10would not design a system where people ended up being malevolent largely because of the families
01:12:20they happened to be born into. That's not fair. Foundationally, I would give people more of an
01:12:27option to overcome their past. And, of course, I mean, I'm working to try and raise the awareness
01:12:32of that, as, of course, are countless other people in the world, many are doing it better than I am.
01:12:37But I would not look at the world and say, yeah, well, a lot of people, the genetics plus
01:12:44violence produces criminals a lot of times. And people didn't choose their families. They
01:12:51certainly don't choose their genetics. And we certainly do have free will. But it's really
01:12:56tough for a lot of people. I mean, my daughter is very lucky in how she was raised compared to how I
01:13:02was raised. And that's given her a kind of strength that it took me a long time to achieve. So,
01:13:08physically, there's a lot of wasted space. And as far as the moral development of mankind, I think
01:13:16so many people have such brutality in their childhoods, that it's hard to say they have
01:13:21much of a chance, if that makes sense. Thank you for that. I have one more question.
01:13:27If you could hold off, I promise I'll be doing more of these, but I doubt I'll get to everyone. But
01:13:32I really do appreciate your questions. Thank you so much. All right. Let us get to some people I've
01:13:37talked to before. So, Einaris, if you want to unmute, I'm happy to hear your thoughts, my friend.
01:13:44If you're speaking, I cannot hear. No? Okay. All right. Sorry that we didn't get a chance to chat.
01:13:50But again, I will be doing more of these. Wait. Yeah. No, you're on a speaker, but it is not to be.
01:13:58All right. I think he's gone. Saturnalia. That is a very good title or username if you want to unmute
01:14:06what's on your mind. Why have I lost everyone's audio? Hello? Yes. There you go. Yeah. Hi. Is
01:14:13the volume good? Good. Okay. I just wanted you to see if you could dismantle a theory I came up with
01:14:20three days ago. Go. All right. I'm going to read it word for word. About often by... Hang on. Hang on.
01:14:27Hang on. Hang on. Sorry to interrupt. How long is it? Standard paragraph. Okay. Perfect. Sorry. I just
01:14:34wanted to make sure we went into some five-page semi-thesis, but yeah, go for it.
01:14:38No, no, no. Of course not. I will say, though, it may be a bit controversial.
01:14:44I think we can handle that. Okay. I've often been asked by non-white people that have been
01:14:51visiting the country why my people, you know, white people are, you know, they're so crazy.
01:14:57They're insane. That's what I've been told. And I developed this theory that when our psychological
01:15:03operations for warfare were first being pioneered post-World War II and throughout the Cold War,
01:15:10the country was shown about 90% white, you know, at least until, like, the hard-seller act,
01:15:16that if you were designing and setting the standards of this psychological warfare,
01:15:22you'd want to capture as much of the population as possible with a standardized metric to rely on.
01:15:27So, if I ask myself how I'd accomplish this, I'd probably target, like, the first standard deviation
01:15:36of bell curve on both sides, you know, in the empirical region, that would be people with a mean IQ of 100.
01:15:45That would capture about 68% of the population.
01:15:49Sorry, when you're talking about standard deviations, you're talking 85 to 100 on the low end
01:15:53and 100 to 115 on the high end? Is that what you mean? Okay, go ahead.
01:15:57The 68%, you know, where most of the population lies. So, if this got your 68% of the population,
01:16:04that would be perfect. And I think that is, at least, in part, the answer to why so many of us
01:16:10dance and smile while we vote for, essentially, our own extinction. That's why we're insane.
01:16:18And that's why it gets worse from decade after decade.
01:16:21And is that what the visitors, is that what they're referring to by insanity?
01:16:25I'm sorry, what?
01:16:27Okay, never mind. Sorry. Finish your thought.
01:16:30Oh, I'm finished. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are.
01:16:33Well, I think, in general, the world, after the First World War and the Second World War,
01:16:40the big question in the world was, why did these things happen? Why were 10 million people or more
01:16:47killed in the First World War and 40 million or more in the Second World War? Why did this happen?
01:16:54And I think some of the answer was, well, most of the countries were white and they were nationalistic.
01:16:59So, I think then they say, well, the causes of the First World War, not so much, but the Second World
01:17:04War, of course, dragged a lot of other countries in as well because of the British Empire, or at least
01:17:10the vestiges of the British Empire. So, it's not like the Indians were thrilled,
01:17:13obviously, to be part of this massive European conflict. So, there was a sort of big question,
01:17:18which was, gee, how did we end up with these two absolutely horrifying wars? And I think the answer
01:17:25that a lot of people came up with was, well, it's white nationalism, that white nationalism leads to
01:17:31world wars. And I think that's why there's a lot of opposition to that as a whole. I obviously don't
01:17:38particularly agree with that analysis, but I think that in general is where a lot of people are coming
01:17:44from, if that makes sense. So, if you oppose war and war is caused by white nationalism, then you should
01:17:48oppose white nationalism as a cause of war. I think that's the general idea that people have. Again, I have
01:17:56issues with that in general, but we don't sort of have to talk about that here. And so, I think that would be
01:18:02my answer to that. So, I appreciate the comments, though. And I think we can do, what have we got here?
01:18:07Michael, we can do you just at the end here. Thanks, everyone, for dropping by, of course, today. If you find
01:18:11the show helpful, enjoyable, rich, and enlightening, freedomain.com slash donate, freedomain.com slash donate,
01:18:18and don't forget to sign up to subscriptions at fdrurl.com slash locals. All right, Mickey Mac,
01:18:25Michael, what's on your mind? Oh, hey, Stefan. I wanted to ask a question about the virtue of
01:18:33telling the truth. I know you've spoken before about truth being aesthetically preferable,
01:18:42but not universally preferable. And you've given the example, great example of your killer comes to
01:18:49your door, and they ask you, where is your wife? And you're not going to tell them the truth. Therefore,
01:18:56it's not a universal truth that you should tell the truth. But I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt. Just
01:19:02sorry to interrupt. But that's not particularly my example. It's one that I've used, but I think it
01:19:07comes out of Kant, where he'd say, well, you have to tell the truth about where your wife is, and let
01:19:10them go kill your wife. That's his argument. Obviously, that's not mine. But I just wanted to
01:19:14correct people. So, not correct you. There's no reason why you would know that. But I think it's a
01:19:18Kantian example. But please, go ahead. Thank you, Kurt, for clarifying. So, I was wondering if you can
01:19:24actually make the claim that truth is universal, but in the same sense that you would be authorized
01:19:34to initiate force in self-defense. Not initiate, sorry. You would be authorized to use force
01:19:39in self-defense. And in that same way, you would be authorized to lie in self-defense or not tell the
01:19:46truth, if that makes sense. That was just kind of a thought that I had. And I'm wondering if that
01:19:51could withstand your reason or what you think about that. Thanks.
01:19:57No, I think that's right. I mean, I think that the truth is a relationship. And the truth
01:20:03is earned in the same way that reciprocity in business is earned. So, if I'm offering
01:20:10iPads for sale and you send me, I say, oh, 500 bucks for an iPad. You send me 500 bucks. I now
01:20:15owe you an iPad or I owe you the 500 bucks back. Right? So, because you have dealt with me in an
01:20:20honorable fashion and sent the value, I now must deal with you in an honorable fashion and send you
01:20:25an iPad. That doesn't mean, of course, that I have to send an iPad to everybody and their dog
01:20:29who just wants an iPad. But because I've offered it for sale of 500 bucks, you've given me the 500
01:20:33bucks. I now owe you the iPad. So, in the same way, you owe people the truth if they're honest with you.
01:20:41Right? So, if you meet some guy and he says, oh, I'm a pilot and I live in Rochester, New York,
01:20:48and I own a yacht. Right? Okay. Well, I guess you have to take him at face value for whatever reason,
01:20:54assuming he's reasonably dressed and so on. And so, you know, you tell him whatever what you do
01:21:00and so on. Now, let's say that it turns out that he's not a pilot. He's unemployed. He doesn't live
01:21:07in Rochester or whatever, and he doesn't have a yacht. So, he just lies. Now, then he comes up to
01:21:13you and talks to you some more. Do you feel the urge to say, well, I got to be honest with this guy?
01:21:19Well, no, because he's a liar. So, probably what you'd want to do is detach as gently and quickly as
01:21:24possible because this man's a pathological liar and probably has a massive whack load of significant
01:21:29and severe emotional instabilities and all that kind of stuff. So, you don't owe that person the
01:21:34truth. And so, if you say, oh, I'm so sorry. I have an appointment. I completely forgot. My apologies.
01:21:41Right? And you sort of gracefully make your exit. Let's say you don't have an appointment. Well,
01:21:46you don't. I wouldn't feel any particular compunction about making up an appointment that I had to be at
01:21:50in order to escape from a pathological liar who was cornering me and just going to stuff my ears
01:21:55with more falsehoods. Whereas, you know, if your friend has told you the truth and been honorable
01:22:01and honest with you and so on, then you shouldn't just go around lying to him because he's earned
01:22:06that sort of reciprocal relationship. And so, if you combine that with the other principle that I have,
01:22:12which is not my principle, but the most optimized methodology of interacting with people in a non
01:22:20sort of coercive situation, which is treat people the best you can the first time you meet them and
01:22:24after that treat them as they treat you. Which means, you know, tell the truth the first time you
01:22:28meet people and then don't have higher standards than they have after that. So, I put those two
01:22:36things together and I think you can say that, you know, treat people the best you can the first time
01:22:41you meet them, which means don't pull a knife on them the first time you meet them. But if they
01:22:45pull a knife on you, right, then you no longer are bound by not pulling a knife or whatever or acting
01:22:52in self-defense. So, one of the great problems of morality is it has you lashed to these absolute
01:22:58standards that you must enact regardless of the behavior of the other. That you just have to, like a
01:23:04train on a train track, you just have to follow these rules regardless of reciprocity. And honestly,
01:23:11it's some very corrupt people who put forward that idea that you just have to be really nice
01:23:16and positive and friendly and generous and kind and happy and love and forgive regardless of the
01:23:20behavior of the others. And of course, if you followed by Twitter over the last week, week and a
01:23:23half since I came back, it's been a lot of battles trying to get people to have standards not based
01:23:28on abstract absolutes but on an actual relationship. So, forgive people who earn your forgiveness but don't
01:23:34hand it out like a whore to anyone who asks for it. You know, have reciprocal monetary and business
01:23:40relationships with people who provide equal value. Don't just throw iPads out in the street to
01:23:44everyone because then you're just going to go out of business and it's not a healthy situation.
01:23:49So, the idea that morality is not just a set of abstract rules that program you like a
01:23:54programmer but you have to judge them based upon relationships is tough for a lot of people who
01:24:00just want the instant answer and the easy answer, oh, well, just follow this rule. Well, you just have to
01:24:05forgive people. That's the rule. And it's like, no, that's not the rule. That is not the rule
01:24:11because it's not reciprocal. And the other thing too is how many people forgave me for telling them
01:24:18that they should have standards for forgiveness. Otherwise, they're just being exploited because
01:24:22obviously, evil people don't want to apologize and make restitution, right? I mean, the guy who steals
01:24:27your bike doesn't want to give your bike back. So, he just wants your forgiveness so that you won't
01:24:31go and try and get your bike back. He just wants to live in peace knowing that he's done his evil
01:24:36and stolen your bike and then you don't require him to give the bike back and, you know, give you
01:24:4250 bucks for your trouble. He wants to keep your bike and not feel threatened by any possibility of
01:24:47blowback from you or you coming and getting your friends and coming over and getting the bike back
01:24:50and pushing him over or whatever. So, he wants peace of mind and your bike. And how does he get that?
01:24:55By commanding that you forgive him no matter what. That you just have to forgive him no matter what.
01:24:59It's evil people who want this. It's evil people who drive this. It's not accidental.
01:25:05It's a strategy so they get to keep your stuff and not be uneasy. It's a way of making sure that theft,
01:25:13whether it's physical or spiritual, is as profitable as possible. And the fact that people
01:25:18don't see this means that they're still blinded by this sort of spell-like, car-like corruptions of
01:25:23those around them. So, I think you're right that it is relational-based and not sort of an absolute
01:25:29based. And you don't, you owe peace to people who are peaceful with you. But if they're violent
01:25:34towards you, then you damn well can use and probably should use violence to protect yourself.
01:25:38So, listen, I really, really appreciate that. And guys, thank you, thank you, thank you so much
01:25:42for the great questions. And I'm sorry to the couple of people that I didn't get to, but
01:25:47I will be back on air, certainly tomorrow morning, 11 a.m., Sunday, 11 a.m. I'm doing a live stream,
01:25:55and you can certainly type your questions in there, and I'm sure I'll be doing another
01:25:57spaces again soon. Thank you to Elon Musk for this amazing platform. Thank you to you guys for
01:26:01your great questions. Lots of love from up here. Don't forget to drop by freedomain.com,
01:26:06get your free books and all your kinds of goodies and bonuses, and have yourself a glorious,
01:26:10wonderful, beautiful day. Thank you, everyone, so much. Take care. Bye.
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