Death and Censorship: Susan Wojcicki

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • 3 weeks ago
Sunday Morning Live 11 August 2024

Reflecting on Susan Wojcicki's tenure at YouTube, we explore the platform's evolution, censorship issues, and the importance of critical thinking in education. Delving into free speech history and women's evolutionary tendencies in information regulation, we discuss the significance of deciphering intentions. Examining the impact of information on decision-making, we touch on censorship's effects and the consequences of misinformation. Concluding with job interview tips and a call for listener support for enriching content and AI tools.

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Transcript
00:00:00Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well. 11th August 2024.
00:00:04And just polled the watchers and the listeners before we started.
00:00:13And I have thoughts, of course, on 1S Wojcicki.
00:00:23And she died. It was really quite a bit of a surprise. She was only 56 years old.
00:00:29She'd been battling, I think, small cell carcinoma in her lungs for two years.
00:00:33Rare for non-smokers, but I don't know if she was a smoker. I would be very surprised
00:00:37if she was. So maybe it was just bad luck for her, which I certainly have experienced myself
00:00:42with regards to that fell disease. And I certainly sympathize with that.
00:00:46You know, I don't particularly care about Susan. I'm just going to call her Susan.
00:00:53Sorry for the informality, but that's quite the mouthful of Polish syllables.
00:00:58So yeah, I don't really care. There are people and there are symptoms, right? And I view
00:01:06her tenure as kind of a symptom of the problem of power in society. And that is
00:01:16where I'm going to sort of start my analysis as a whole. I'm going to give you a little bit
00:01:21of history and mostly some philosophy because, you know, it being the philosophy show,
00:01:28good luck on your job interview on Tuesday. Although with the right preparation,
00:01:35you won't need luck. So that's important. All right. So let's look a little bit about
00:01:45her tenure, right? So Susan became involved with Google when the founders Sergey Brin and Larry
00:01:52Page set up shop at the garage of her home in Silicon Valley in 1998. She became the company's
00:01:56first marketing manager a year later. And then she was promoted to CEO of YouTube in 2014. It had
00:02:04just hit the milestone of 1 billion users. It currently hosts 2.5 billion users worldwide.
00:02:09Many YouTube creators, also known as YouTubers, carving profitable careers out of their individual
00:02:15channels. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as Mr. Beast,
00:02:17was YouTube's highest earning content creator last year as of 2023.
00:02:24In 2017, advertisers, I suppose, were upset that their ads appeared next to extremist content.
00:02:32And so there was the adpocalypse where ads were then removed from what was deemed to be
00:02:41extremist content. So she wrote back in the day, today, after nearly 25 years here, I've decided
00:02:51to step back from my role as the head of YouTube and start a new chapter focused on my family,
00:02:55health, and personal projects I'm passionate about. The time is right for me. She said this
00:02:59to her employees. The time is right for me. I feel able to do this because we
00:03:02have an incredible leadership team in place at YouTube.
00:03:06So, there is a bunch of censorship, of course, that happened over the course of her tenure there.
00:03:25So, on the one hand, this is an article from 2018, on the one hand, YouTube has invested
00:03:30significant resources into going after extremist content. In 2016, it added automation to its
00:03:35moderation repertoire and last year announced a plan to, quote, bury extreme content that
00:03:39doesn't actually run afoul of its rules. The company also banned advertisements from running
00:03:44alongside videos that contain, quote, hateful or discriminatory content and expanded its
00:03:49trusted flagger program to include a variety of NGOs designated to report content.
00:03:54So, in 2019, there was an updated harassment policy under Susan's reign that punishes creators
00:04:08that go too far with language, was criticized for punishing YouTubers for certain types
00:04:12of behavior but allowing late-night talk show hosts to continue engaging in that same behavior.
00:04:19So, YouTuber PewDiePie pressed YouTube for an answer on this and cited these hosts'
00:04:23relentless criticisms of President Trump as an example. YouTube responded by saying that they're
00:04:26allowed to do this under an American media rule that says you can ridicule public figures. However,
00:04:32PewDiePie pointed out that this answer from YouTube doesn't really make sense.
00:04:35Aren't we all public figures on YouTube? Isn't that the point? This doesn't make sense to me.
00:04:39Why do they get a pass and some don't? Some don't. It seems very selective. If someone
00:04:43understands, explain it to me. I don't understand this. It should be the same.
00:04:47Um, Wojcicki also recently said that YouTube won't recommend YouTubers during breaking news events.
00:04:54Instead, it will recommend companies that, quote, have a long tradition of delivering reliable news.
00:05:02Right, right, right, right. In 2019, she said, of course, someone out of their garage can upload
00:05:08a video and say their point of view about what happened with the news, but we're not going to
00:05:11recommend that when there's a breaking news event. We're going to recommend companies that we know
00:05:15have a long tradition of delivering reliable news. In August of 2019, Susan wrote about YouTube
00:05:23continuing to push authoritative voices, especially during breaking news events.
00:05:27Leaked videos show that YouTube's plans to boost what it deems to be authoritative sources
00:05:32were being openly discussed during internal meetings as early as June
00:05:352017. She, of course, uh, they removed about a million videos related to COVID,
00:05:44and, uh, I understand where they're coming from. As she said, anything that goes against World
00:05:50Health Organization recommendations should be a violation, would be a violation of our policy,
00:05:54and so removing it is another important part of our policy.
00:05:57So, anyway, we can sort of go on and on with this stuff. It is
00:06:07very interesting as a whole, and what interests to me is the financials.
00:06:17So, they do take some government money, right, and this is always the interesting challenge
00:06:25with regards to this stuff, right? So, Alphabet owns Google, which owns YouTube, state and local
00:06:30subsidies, two billion dollars, federal loans and bailouts, almost 64 million dollars.
00:06:39From 2008, and it's hard to find this data, so from 2008, after YouTube's acquisition in 2006,
00:06:49they got a 6.9 billion dollar bandwidth subsidy,
00:06:54right? That is a massive amount of subsidies, and, of course, we can
00:07:06look at the sources. I'll put the sources here, and nobody knows exactly how much this costs, but
00:07:15that is a lot of bandwidth, and if there is this whole question, if you take government money,
00:07:21are you genuinely a private company, right? Because private companies profiting from government
00:07:27subsidies is kind of the definition of fascism as a whole, right? So, fascism is private profits
00:07:33from government money. Communism is no profits from government ownership of anything. The free
00:07:39market is private profits from private companies, but private profits from public
00:07:45companies or public spending is fascism. Yeah, reliable sources of news, I get all of that.
00:07:58I get all of that. So,
00:08:04with regards to Susan as a whole, and again, I don't particularly care about her as an individual
00:08:16because nobody, I mean, Elon Musk being, as usual, the exception that proves the rule,
00:08:21nobody really gets to that position of power who's not willing to censor as a whole, right?
00:08:28As a whole. So, I want to talk about some of the morality and philosophy behind censorship.
00:08:36So, one of the problems that happens is greed, right? Greed. You know, that sort of famous
00:08:46Gordon Gekko speech from Wall Street, greed cuts through, it clarifies, it captures. Greed,
00:08:52for want of a better word, is good, right? That was the greed is good mantra of the 80s.
00:08:56It's very, very easy to get sucked into the numbers. I mean, I've done it myself and all
00:09:00of that, but I have to be pretty strict with myself over the years about my greed for numbers.
00:09:05So, the greed for numbers are, are we growing in number of users? Are we growing in revenue? Are
00:09:13we growing in reach? Are we growing in market share? The growth, growth, growth. Now, what
00:09:17happens when you prioritize growth? I have both prioritized growth in my career and really quite
00:09:25the opposite of growth. So, what happens when you prioritize growth? Well, you grow bigger and
00:09:30bigger and bigger, you spend more and more money, your payroll gets bigger and bigger,
00:09:33usually quite uselessly. I mean, as everybody knows, Elon Musk fired 80% of the Twitter staff
00:09:41and Twitter is doing better than ever and they're finally going after the advertising cartels. But
00:09:50you get bigger and bigger and bigger and then you become more and more dependent upon
00:09:54the advertisements from, the revenue from advertisers. So, there was a business model
00:10:00that you two could have pursued that would have been my particular choice, which is to allow tips
00:10:04on the platform and take a percentage. Allow tips on the platform and then take a percentage. Now,
00:10:09if you allow tips on the platform and take a percentage, then advertisers won't get mad at you
00:10:15because you can't advertise on the platform, you simply take a percentage of tips. So, then
00:10:23McDonald's won't be upset that they're next to some objectionable content or at least what
00:10:28mainstream would consider objectionable. So, they didn't take that business model,
00:10:32they took the advertising business model. And the advertising business model means that you have
00:10:37a concentrated source of revenue that is susceptible to manipulation and frightening
00:10:44and ideology and, oh my God, and corporate reputations and how dare they put this next
00:10:49to that. And there's a certain amount of manipulation that can go on with these kinds
00:10:54of things. So, that's not good. So, I would imagine, of course, I don't know what went
00:11:03on in Susan's mind, neither do I particularly care. But in general, the process is that if you
00:11:11aim for growth, growth, growth, then you become vulnerable. So, if you aim for growth, you become
00:11:17more influential and thus you're more worth controlling. And if you aim for growth, you
00:11:22generally end up with more concentrated sources of income, and those are open to manipulation
00:11:30and bullying and control and threats and so on. So, when YouTube decided to go for growth,
00:11:37growth, growth, rather than free speech, free speech, free speech, and which can be very
00:11:42profitable, of course. But when YouTube decided to go for growth, then they became more reliant
00:11:47on advertisers, and that means you're more susceptible to boycotts, which means that
00:11:51free speech is not long to go. And, of course, you end up with a significant overhead, right?
00:12:04You end up with significant overhead. So, I mean, if I were running a social media company,
00:12:11I would go for a revenue model that had people donate to the people they care about. And that
00:12:18way, nobody would have to fund anything they found objectionable. You simply wouldn't fund it.
00:12:24And if there were complaints about the speech that was on the platform, right?
00:12:31What I would say is something like this. Yes, I find this content objectionable too. I find
00:12:37it irrational. I find it false. It can be dangerous and so on. And that's a big problem.
00:12:44So, how do we solve that problem? Well, I don't like the idea of playing whack-a-mole with
00:12:48particular opinions, because it's very hard to apply that consistently. Whoever you put in
00:12:52charge of suppressing speech is going to inevitably suppress the speech they dislike and favor the
00:12:58speech that they like, even if the same principles apply to both. So, that's not a great idea.
00:13:04Let's look at the root causes as to why this horrendous, terrible, nasty, objectionable speech
00:13:12is there. Now, clearly, if the person isn't popular, it doesn't matter that much. If they
00:13:17are popular, it means that they're saying something that is false and egregious and nasty,
00:13:22and people don't know how to think about it critically and can't evaluate it from a rational
00:13:27or empirical standpoint. So, how do we solve that? Well, if you really, really care about people
00:13:33having better ideas, what you need to do is you need to advocate for your local schools to start
00:13:39teaching children objective, rational, Socratic-style critical thinking. That's what you need to do.
00:13:45Because people say, well, there are all these terrible, bad, dangerous extremists out there
00:13:48without ever really pointing out that they've gone through 12-plus years of government education.
00:13:55So, the problem is not in the fact that there are dangerous, crazy extremists out there,
00:14:01whatever you want to define that as. The problem is that they're not being taught how to think
00:14:05critically in government schools. So, they're not being taught how to evaluate information.
00:14:10They're not being taught how to build an argument. They're not being taught how to unravel false
00:14:14syllogisms. They're not being taught rational debate. They're not being taught critical thinking
00:14:18as a whole. Now, if there's been a massive failure and there is no particular course or focus or
00:14:24curricula that focuses on critical thinking in any government schools in the West that I've seen,
00:14:29I mean, some private schools might do it, but across the West, there is no focus or foundation
00:14:36of critical thinking in any of the government curriculum. So, that needs to be fixed. There's
00:14:40no point having the government churn out indoctrinated, emotionally reactive people
00:14:46who don't know how to evaluate information and just fall into these rabbit holes of, quote,
00:14:49extremism. There's no point trying to play whack-a-mole at the end of that process. What
00:14:54you want to do is solve that process at the beginning. So, you need to join your school
00:14:57boards. You need to advocate for the inclusion and advocacy of critical thinking in government
00:15:03schools. There's absolutely no point trying to play whack-a-mole with the effects of bad thinking
00:15:07if governments don't teach good thinking. We're just going to end up with more and more and more
00:15:11of it. And you cannot expect me as a social media executive to solve all of the problems caused
00:15:18by a lack of education and critical thinking in the government schools. That needs to be solved.
00:15:24That needs to be fixed, and then this problem will go away. But taking all the deficiencies of
00:15:28government schools and laying them at my doorstep and saying that I need to spend a billion dollars
00:15:32a year on content moderation, when instead we could, for far cheaper, get a way to minimize
00:15:40this extremism by having people learn critical thinking and empiricism and reason and arguments
00:15:46and debates in government schools, that will solve the problem. But the failures of government
00:15:50schools cannot be laid at my business doorstep. I did not create them. I have been advocating for
00:15:54critical thinking my whole life. Therefore, if the voters don't want critical thinking,
00:15:59in other words, they don't say to their schools, you have to provide critical thinking,
00:16:04if they don't care about that, if people don't care about reason, evidence, empiricism,
00:16:08critical thinking, rationality, arguments and debate skills, if they don't care about that,
00:16:13then let's not pretend that they care about people who go off the rails intellectually
00:16:17when there are no rails intellectually in the schools at all. How can you complain that people
00:16:23think irrationally or don't think at all when you don't care enough about the children to teach
00:16:28critical thinking to them in schools? You're not making that a requirement. You're not making that
00:16:31a demand. You're not advocating for that. That's not a central thrust of any kind of educational
00:16:36reform that I've ever seen in the country. So, I don't understand why you would object to, quote,
00:16:42extremist thinking when the cure for extremist thinking is reason and evidence and you don't
00:16:47care to teach the children reason and evidence, then don't pretend that you care about extremism
00:16:51because the way to combat extremism is reason and evidence, philosophy, debate, and so on.
00:16:56So, let's not pretend that society cares about extremism when they won't make critical thinking
00:17:01a core part of government education because that's the one universal thing that is going on.
00:17:07Yeah, that's sort of what I would say.
00:17:20I mean, this is one of the things that Elon Musk says is that he will not restrict lawful speech,
00:17:25and if people want different kind of speech in their country, then they need to change
00:17:32the laws. They need to advocate for changing the laws in the country.
00:17:37So, okay. So, let's talk about some of the male-female stuff. I think this is very important
00:17:44because I understand and, in fact, deeply sympathize with the idea of ideas or arguments
00:17:51causing real-world harm. You're right, that would be a good show. Somebody said,
00:18:01if you could make a K-12 curriculum, what subjects other than philosophy
00:18:04could you include? That would make a good solar show. I agree. Thank you for the idea.
00:18:08That is very nice. Very nice.
00:18:17So, let's talk about some of the philosophy. So, one of the things that has happened,
00:18:25and the censorship regime that is in the modern world, obviously, it may be 51-49,
00:18:31a little bit more. So, none of these are absolutes, and none of these are binary,
00:18:35black or white. But in general, the censorship regimes in the West tend to be more feminine
00:18:45or female in character, maybe a little bit more than males. And you can see this. I did the data,
00:18:50the truth about free speech many years ago, that males, and in particular white males,
00:18:54tend to be free speech absolutists. And that's it. Everybody else tends to vote for some level
00:19:04of censorship. So, the question is why? Well, I refuse to think that women are corrupt or bad
00:19:11or immoral or anything like that, because women have handed us, through evolution, the best brains
00:19:16in the universe. So, I'm not going to have anything negative to say. But the question is why?
00:19:21So, then I've had, of course, one of the most philosophical things I've done is be a stay-at-home
00:19:26dad for now close to 16 years, right? My daughter will be 16 in a couple of months. So, one of the
00:19:30great things about being a stay-at-home dad is you get to spend a lot of time around the moms
00:19:36of toddlers. Everywhere I'd go, I'd generally be the only male, and you get to spend a lot of time
00:19:43around moms and toddlers. In other words, you get to see female nature in its natural element,
00:19:49its native element. It's very, very, very interesting.
00:19:59Well, and I think one of the reasons why, by the by, one of the reasons why men have more of a
00:20:03devotion towards free speech, particularly in the West, Western men, European men,
00:20:07is because we have this history of philosophy going back close to 3,000 years, and we've sort
00:20:11of learned how to debate and all of that. And debate is better than violence, right? And we
00:20:17understand that if you don't have debate, you have violence, right? If you suppress
00:20:21debate, you end up with violence. So, I'm going to talk about women and toddlers,
00:20:30because women were evolved to deal with babies and toddlers, right? They'd have this endless
00:20:34succession of babies and toddlers, and then by the time that ended, to a large degree,
00:20:39their firstborns would then be having babies and toddlers. So, women as a whole just spent most of
00:20:44their evolutionary lives dealing with babies and toddlers. Now, hit me with a why. I want to know
00:20:53how detailed to get. Hit me with a why if you spend a lot of time around aforementioned babies
00:20:59and toddlers. Have you spent a lot of time around babies and the toddlers? Hit me with a why. And,
00:21:05of course, I worked in a daycare as well. Those kids were a little older. We had 30 kids aged 5
00:21:10to 10. It was me and one other person, although the other person was kind of lazy. So, basically,
00:21:15it was me riding herd on 25 to 35 to 10 year olds. So, as a whole, when you are around toddlers,
00:21:34you want to restrict the flow of information. You want to restrict the flow of information.
00:21:40Let me sort of tell you what I mean by that. So, when you have a toddler, do you want the toddler
00:21:47to learn how to turn on the stove? Do you understand that women do not want toddlers
00:22:04to learn how to turn on the stove? Do women want toddlers to learn how to open the latch
00:22:10on the front door? They do not want them to do that. Do they want the toddlers to figure out how
00:22:20to get to the knife drawer? Do they want toddlers or little kids to figure out the combo code to
00:22:29the gun safe? And the answer to that, of course, well, no. So, one of the ways that you restrict
00:22:39the danger to toddlers is you restrict the information that is available to them.
00:22:47Do you want your toddlers figuring out the pin to your iPad? Well, probably not. Oh,
00:22:56you're rocking your 10-month-old to sleep for his nap as we speak? Okay,
00:22:59I'll try not to be too loud. I'm sure you have headphones on. So, restricting information
00:23:06for the sake of safety, do you want your toddlers figuring out how to work a lighter?
00:23:14Yeah, they do not want them to learn how to remove the electrical socket protector. Yeah,
00:23:18and the whole point of childproofing, right? So, you understand that restricting information
00:23:24for the cause of safety is deeply, deeply baked into female DNA, the female mind. So, for men,
00:23:32the idea that words lead to real-world harm is incomprehensible to men.
00:23:44Now, it's not totally incomprehensible. Sorry, let me sort of preface that. So, if you go around
00:23:49insulting some guy's mother, and you trash talk him, and you insult his wife, and so on,
00:23:55yeah, you're going to get punched in the face. So, that kind of language can lead to real-world
00:24:00harm, but that's so ridiculously foolish and clearly
00:24:08incentive in that that kind of information, that kind of approach, trash talking some guy's mom
00:24:13and wife and whatever, right? There's no benefit to that. It's entirely designed to be harmful,
00:24:19and it's never good for anyone to do that in particular, right? It's never good, particular
00:24:24or wise for anyone to do that. That is an incitement to violence for which there's no
00:24:28other option. However, the difference is you don't want your toddlers to know how to turn on the
00:24:34stove, but you need to turn on the stove. You don't want your toddlers playing with fire, but you need
00:24:38to play with fire to build a fire. You don't want your toddlers knowing how to open the front door,
00:24:42but you need to open the front door. Yeah, fighting words, right? So, words that are
00:24:47direct incitements to violence, your mama stuff or whatever to a volatile guy, men understand that
00:24:54and we avoid it, but there's no value or utility in that stuff. However, protecting
00:25:01toddlers from things that are true and useful is essential to female nature.
00:25:06Keeping information that is true and useful, how to turn on the stove, how to open the door,
00:25:11somebody's going to need to unlock the gun safe if there's a home intruder.
00:25:15So, you understand that true and useful and factual information must be kept from toddlers.
00:25:32So, when you go to a woman and you talk about this language leads to real world harm, you say that
00:25:40they don't particularly care whether it's true, they only care whether their instincts tell them
00:25:44that it could be harmful. Does that make sense? I don't want to, oh, hello, you didn't know you're
00:25:58still around. Glad you are, Steph. Well, nice to meet you, doom gnome. A great pleasure. Thank you
00:26:03for joining today. Right? So, I don't want to belabor the point. I think this makes sense.
00:26:11So, for women, the idea that language leads to real world harm and it doesn't matter if it's
00:26:17true or not. The only thing that matters is does it create that connection to real world harm
00:26:21in their mind? And women have to keep true, factual, useful information away from toddlers
00:26:27in order to keep toddlers safe. Right? So, when you have a lot of women in charge of public discourse,
00:26:38they are relatively easy to trigger with this language is hateful and leads to real world harm.
00:26:48And they don't sit to themselves as often, as often, obviously it happens to some, but they
00:26:54don't quite as often sit to themselves and say, well, but is it true? And are they toddlers?
00:27:01It's just, it's so instinctual. It's so instinctual.
00:27:09Women are also, oh, and they also, by the way, women need to control the information that goes
00:27:18to toddlers, not just from adults, but also from older siblings. They don't want their older,
00:27:23they don't want the older brother teaching the younger brother how to work the lighter,
00:27:27how to get out through the front door, how to take the safety plug off the electrical socket,
00:27:34so they really have to control the flow of information in order to keep people safe.
00:27:45So, when you get a lot of women in charge of intellectual discourse,
00:27:48it's relatively easy for a lot of women, again, not all, right? But for a lot of women,
00:27:53it is relatively easy to get them to censor for the sake of danger, that this information
00:28:05can lead to real world harm. Now, the other thing that's true as well
00:28:09is that men tend to evaluate facts and women tend to evaluate intentions.
00:28:17In other words, men tend to judge reality and women tend to judge emotion, right?
00:28:24And this is free speech versus hate speech. Hate speech is the divination of motives
00:28:30in language. It's the reading of tea leaves. Intentions is a form of mysticism.
00:28:36Well, why did someone do that? Why would they do that? What excuse would they, oh,
00:28:42they just hate people. So, it is a form of mysticism that allows you to reject
00:28:49the liberty of speech for the sake of mind-reading intentions.
00:28:54Now, of course, women have evolved to read intentions because men tend to mask intentions,
00:29:04right? So, I mean, I took this course many years ago in university on the rise of the novel and
00:29:11Victorian novels and early novels were very commonly trying to get women to understand
00:29:18that men who were good-looking, wealthy, and aristocratic could be absolute narcissists that
00:29:22only wanted to use them for sex and would destroy their reputation. So, women need to be incredibly
00:29:27good at reading intentions, right? Does she allow a man to court her? Does he just want to sleep
00:29:32with her? Does he just want to use her as a trophy? Or does he actually want to marry her?
00:29:37Does he want to be a good husband and a good father? So, women really need to read motives
00:29:42and intentions because women invest, of course, a lot more
00:29:49into reproduction, right? Men don't put much into reproduction, but women, of course,
00:29:58invest a massive amount into reproduction. So, women need to be able to read intentions.
00:30:03So, the way that you would control a woman's view of something is to say that the person
00:30:09has a negative intention, right? Negative intentions are very dangerous for women because
00:30:13it would mean that they would have a kid with a guy who didn't stick around or would beat them or
00:30:17be a bad husband. Their lives would be miserable. They'd be trapped. They couldn't escape and all
00:30:20of that, right?
00:30:28So, that's the challenge. So, if you can convince women that the motive for speech is hatred,
00:30:41right? And you can see this in the Telecommunications Act, I think it was,
00:30:46in England in 2003, that anything which incites hatred or anything that's motivated by hatred or
00:30:50whatever is a bad thing, and they're kind of using that at the moment. So, then if you can say,
00:30:55well, that person is motivated by hatred, then the female mind in general as a whole, tons of
00:31:05exceptions, but the female mind will say that's bad because the intentions are bad because bad
00:31:11intentions for women are a complete disaster. So, they're very, very afraid of bad intentions,
00:31:17but men tend to be afraid of more empirical things because the bad intentions for women
00:31:21lead to negative empirical outcomes in that they end up, like you understand, for most of human
00:31:25history, if a woman, particularly in the West, if she had a child out of wedlock, in other words,
00:31:32if the man slept with her and then didn't marry her, and this was quite common, like 30% of,
00:31:37I didn't, in my presentation on the Wild West, which you should definitely check out, I pointed
00:31:42out that in most places in America, about 30% of the marriages were shotgun weddings, right?
00:31:47They, you could just tell from the date of the birth and the date of the
00:31:52wedding that the woman was pregnant, right? So, to have sex before marriage,
00:31:57okay, it was fairly common, but the man had to marry you, and that was considered to make it okay.
00:32:05So, for the woman to have sex, oh, a woman to have sex before marriage,
00:32:10if she didn't have sex at all before marriage, she could risk losing the guy, but if she had
00:32:14sex before marriage with the guy who had bad intentions, then she could lose her life, because
00:32:19what would happen is she'd get pregnant, the man wouldn't marry her, and then she would live in
00:32:24shame, no man would marry her, she'd often end up descending to some horrible job with strangers or
00:32:29her parents taking care of her kids or kid, and she could end up as a prostitute, I mean, just an
00:32:36absolutely catastrophic life, just based upon misreading intentions. So, for a woman to focus
00:32:42on intentionality is perfectly rational from an evolutionary standpoint. And so, if you say to
00:32:48women, this language is not motivated by love, but it is in fact a false cover for hatred, right?
00:33:01That triggers women, and I understand that, and it's no criticism of women, it's why we're all
00:33:05here, is that women had to be able to judge intentionality. So, this is why you have this
00:33:10free speech versus hate speech. Free speech is a male thing, where we have to have free speech,
00:33:14because otherwise we end up with violence, and for women, it's like, well, the motivations of
00:33:20the speaker is more important than the truth, right? The motivations are all that matter,
00:33:27right? So, the motivations matter, because if a woman mistakes what a man says for his motivations,
00:33:34in other words, if he says, I love you, I just want to have sex now, we'll get married soon,
00:33:38blah blah blah, right? If the woman accepts the truth of what a man says, but does not accurately
00:33:48read his motivations, then her life can very easily be completely destroyed, and her offspring
00:33:54are going to have a terrible life, and the family honor will be destroyed, and all of that, right?
00:34:02Oh, there's always been premarital sex.
00:34:08Right. So, somebody says, did women need to read intentions of men as much before the normalization
00:34:13of premarital sex? Well, no, they don't need to read the intentions of men that much anymore,
00:34:17because children out of wedlock has now been normalized, right? And they have the government
00:34:22for welfare, and education, and dental care, and health care, and optometry, and they have
00:34:30child support, and all this kind of stuff, right?
00:34:32So, if you say to a woman, the intentions matter more than the facts, she would say,
00:34:44the intentions do matter more than the facts. In other words, the fact that the man says he
00:34:48loves me, right? You know that song, will you still love me tomorrow? Tonight, the light of
00:34:53love is in your eyes, right? Will you still love me tomorrow? It's really, really foundational
00:34:57to women. They cannot judge the truth of what the man is saying, because the truth is entirely
00:35:05shaped by the intention. If the man just wants to sleep with them, and run off, then he's not
00:35:11going to say that, he's going to say, I love you, we're going to get married, just one time,
00:35:15let's just try it out, I want to touch you, right? So, then if she surrenders to that,
00:35:19and the man runs off, then he just lied. He lied to her, and her life is destroyed.
00:35:24And so, intentionality is essential for women to evaluate, which is why, when you get women
00:35:28in positions of authority, you end up with hate speech laws, because the intentions matter. The
00:35:34facts don't matter, the intention alone matters. And women who are unable to read intention,
00:35:40intention leads to real world harm, right? Is the intention for him to marry me, or is the
00:35:45intention for him to just sleep with me, right? So, I just want to sort of point that out, right?
00:35:51And so, men and women have different perceptions of these things, because men produce goods,
00:36:00and women produce people. So, when you produce people, you're much more concerned with feelings,
00:36:05and subjectivity, and restricting the flow of information, and controlling toddlers by
00:36:10controlling what they know. And so, you just tend to be a little bit more dictatorial. And I don't
00:36:16mean dictatorial in a political sense, but you have to restrict the behaviors of toddlers on a
00:36:22pretty constant basis. Don't do this, don't pick that up, don't climb that, that's too wobbly,
00:36:26that's not stable, you'll never make that jump, right? I mean, my daughter wanted to run down a
00:36:31hill and jump across a rocky stream. I mean, she's a smidge of a daredevil, but hey, given my public
00:36:39career, who am I to talk about that? And I just had to run through her, like the cost benefits,
00:36:45like you could easily break your ankle, because if you don't make the jump, and it's a rocky stream,
00:36:52you're going to land on wobbly rocks, and you're going to turn and twist and break your ankle.
00:36:55Now, I understand that you want to do it, and I'm a big one for, you know, take some risks,
00:36:58but we kind of have to manage this stuff, and we have to, you know, but I'm not just like,
00:37:02don't do it, but then, you know, who am I to talk? I have the luxury of one child, right?
00:37:08Somebody says, intentions can be completely subjective. That's a challenging statement,
00:37:13though, because saying something can be doesn't give you any information, right? A woman can be
00:37:19taller than the average man. It's like, yes, but we're looking for general trends here,
00:37:22but if intentions were unreadable, we would not have survived as a species,
00:37:28because men want sex more than they want marriage, right? And women want marriage,
00:37:34generally, more than they want sex, in terms of the sort of long-term happiness, right?
00:37:38And so, if women could not accurately read the intentions of men, we never would have had
00:37:43monogamy and pair bonding, which is what is required for our brains to get this big, right?
00:37:47Because that which is slower to develop ends up more complex. So, you needed pair bonding
00:37:52and monogamy in order for the parental investment to be there to allow our brains to grow so big,
00:37:58like it takes a quarter century for a male brain to mature, slightly less for a female brain,
00:38:04and we need that quarter century of investment. So, the fact that women are able to separate the
00:38:09cats from the dads is the only reason why we have these big, giant brains. So, we should thank them
00:38:15for that ability. It's just that all human instincts are beautiful, but when combined
00:38:19with political power, turn pathological, right? Having cells that grow is great, having cancer
00:38:26cells is not, and all human instincts are wonderful, but when combined with political power,
00:38:32they turn cancerous, right? Then they're no longer instincts for anything other than
00:38:36power and control. So, women's concern about intentions, concern about language, and so on,
00:38:42is a beautiful thing, unless it's combined with political power, and you say, ah, but it's YouTube,
00:38:47what's the relationship between that and political power? So, we'll get to that in a second.
00:38:52I just want to make sure that what I'm talking about is interesting to you.
00:38:57Just hit me with a Y. If this works for you, hit me with an N. Right, Peter Keating telling that
00:39:06woman he would marry her the next day, he ends up not doing that, and the woman ends up a bitter
00:39:11single feminist. Yeah, it's fantastic. Thank you for that. That's a brilliant observation. I
00:39:15appreciate that. And quite right. And this is why all the chads are just creating feminists, right?
00:39:22Okay, I think, thank you for the tip. So, it sounds like people are finding this interesting.
00:39:28Good. I will plow on. Okay. Now, I view Susan and myself, the Susan and Steph show,
00:39:38the Susan and Stephane show, I view us as opposing forces in a battle for free will.
00:39:47Opposing forces in the battle, what do we mean by that? Well, so, how free were people to quit
00:39:54smoking when they did not know that smoking was bad for them, right? If they thought smoking was
00:39:59fine for them, it was an innocuous habit, and so on. How free were people to quit smoking before
00:40:05they knew? Well, of course, they were technically free to quit smoking. They could quit smoking
00:40:09because it cost too much money, or they didn't like the smell later, or whatever. Their wife
00:40:16was allergic to cigarette smoke, so they could always quit smoking. But they were
00:40:26much more likely to quit smoking when they understood that smoking, like one out of two
00:40:31smokers dies from smoking. Smoking takes, what, 10 plus years off your lifespan on average.
00:40:36So, they're much more able to quit smoking, or they have enough information to make a truly
00:40:42informed decision once they know about the dangers of smoking. So,
00:40:50information is foundational to free will. You can't choose what you don't know.
00:40:59I mean, if you imagine that there was some hairline switch just at the back of your neck,
00:41:04that if you found just the right spot, you could fly, well, you'd feel kind of stupid for walking
00:41:09and taking the bus and the train. You'd probably fly places instead. But if you don't know about
00:41:14that switch, and you don't know you have the choice to fly, then you'll walk and drive.
00:41:18So, information is foundational to free will, which is why you see this widening divide.
00:41:26As people get more information, they either pursue the information that expands their free will,
00:41:30in other words, which challenges their programming, or they choose the information that reaffirms
00:41:35their programming, and they become more NPC. So, some people are losing free will
00:41:40through the internet. Other people are gaining free will through the internet. Now, of course,
00:41:43we all have free will, but the information that you have available to you is foundational to how
00:41:50your free will can be exercised. So, not really free to protect themselves when the damage of
00:42:00smoking if they're in the dark about the risks. Yes, I think that's a good way to put it.
00:42:04That's way too succinct for me, so I'll do another 10 minutes on it.
00:42:08So, let's look at this from a standpoint of human health.
00:42:18Is it beneficial to humanity to suppress advertisements that promote how cool smoking is?
00:42:28Because this is the case in a lot of places, right? I think in Canada, you can't show people
00:42:33drinking alcohol on TV. You can't advertise for cigarettes. In fact, the cigarettes have
00:42:39to be hidden now, I think, behind a blank wall and so on. So, if you control
00:42:47arguments, images that promote smoking,
00:42:52isn't that beneficial? Doesn't promoting smoking lead to real-world harm, right?
00:42:58So, what's the counter-argument to that, if there is one? Because when you say,
00:43:06well, should we just promote smoking like crazy? Should we just allow people who promote smoking,
00:43:12should they be allowed to speak? Well, no, we should probably suppress that. I don't want people
00:43:20on my platform. And listen, if I took ads, I would not take ads from companies that promoted smoking.
00:43:28I would not promote ads from people who promoted alcohol. I would not take ads from people who
00:43:34supported or promoted smoking drugs, weed, and so on, right? No, but
00:43:41promoting smoking will definitely lead to more people getting cancer.
00:43:50So, is that not language that leads to real-world harm? Makes sense to suppress
00:43:56information that promotes harmful addictions. Well, isn't that interesting, right?
00:44:04Isn't that interesting? Yeah, cigarettes. Yeah, they used to have these, what are they,
00:44:06Popeyes? There were cigarette sweets for kids. You'd pretend to smoke and you'd have,
00:44:10in England, with the cold air, you'd pretend to smoke, you'd drag in breath, right?
00:44:16In China, we have drinking and smoking promotion everywhere, so here you have an explanation on
00:44:21the situation. But China is a hyper-masculine society, right, in many ways.
00:44:31So, that's an argument that seems to make sense. Well, of course, we should restrict
00:44:36advertisement that promotes smoking because you will then have more people
00:44:43getting sick and dying from smoking and all of that, right?
00:44:46So, what's the counter-argument to that?
00:44:56Because people are free to smoke, they can buy cigarettes, they can smoke cigarettes.
00:45:03So, what is wrong with advertisements for cigarettes? Because it's really tempting,
00:45:09right? I mean, I feel the temptation because all you do is you have pictures of people smoking
00:45:16through their throats and coughing and dying from lung cancer and so on, right?
00:45:20Sorry, that may be a tad insensitive given what Susan died of, but...
00:45:27So, what is the argument against that? How can they promote smoking while being truthful,
00:45:30though? Well, I mean, yes, you can have truth in advertising, for sure,
00:45:34but then you're saying we have to ban advertising that is false. Now, it could be the case,
00:45:38of course, that you would simply have laws about fraud, right? To do all of that, right?
00:45:47So, what is the argument for that? Now, the one thing that's been great about the last
00:45:5220 to 30 years is that nobody with any brains ever doubts the validity that the slippery slope is
00:45:59real, right? So, okay, so first of all, yes, cigarettes do have an advantage if they make
00:46:06you more productive. Cigarettes can vastly increase creativity, and these aren't ads
00:46:12for cigarettes. I'm simply talking about the documented results. And so, if you say to people,
00:46:18well, all smoking is bad, then you have to... It's sort of the drug argument. All drugs are bad,
00:46:28therefore, you can't listen to Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band by the Beatles, right?
00:46:33So, if you give someone the choice, and you say, well, you can write a great novel, or you can risk
00:46:43getting sick in 50 years, a lot of people would say, no, I'm going to smoke. I'm going to write
00:46:50the great novel because the smoking might help me do that. I'm going to smoke, and I will take
00:46:56my chance later, right? So, the cost benefits, if we're going to say that we cannot promote
00:47:10things that harm health, it doesn't stop anywhere in particular, right?
00:47:17It doesn't stop anywhere in particular. Say, well, we can't promote smoking, we can't promote
00:47:26drinking. Okay, what about fatty food? What about sugary food? What about other foods that could
00:47:32promote ill health, right? So, there's a problem in that it's a principle. Everybody wants to
00:47:45seduce you with a compelling instance, and then they use that to expand to general principles,
00:47:50right? They use it then to suppress things that aren't so bad. So, what you notice, of course,
00:47:57is that, yes, cigarettes are definitely frowned upon, but you can still advertise for bad food,
00:48:04you can still advertise for greasy pizza, you can still advertise for giant fatty burgers,
00:48:10you can still advertise for empty calorie sugar bomb sodas, you can do all of this stuff, right?
00:48:20So, that's a challenge.
00:48:27So, where does it stop? So, for instance, if we say that ideas and arguments
00:48:33lead to real-world harm, then you can say, oh, this guy's a bigot or a racist or whatever,
00:48:38and so we're going to ban him. We say, okay, well, then you've got the principle
00:48:41that ideas and arguments, would it be wrong if junk food ads were banned?
00:48:49Well, what you're doing is you're taking away choice from people,
00:48:56and you're taking away ideas, arguments, imagery, and so on, right?
00:49:02Junk food can save lives. What if somebody's super depressed,
00:49:06but they eat junk food and they feel better, and it prevents them from committing suicide?
00:49:14This is not impossible, right?
00:49:22So, people take pleasure out of junk food. Every, I don't know, maybe once, what is it,
00:49:29maybe twice a year, I'll just have a big-ass greasy burger. Now, I'm not saying that's
00:49:34necessarily the worst thing in the world, you know that meme where it's like, the bread's okay,
00:49:37the lettuce is okay, the meat is okay, and the tomato is okay, but you put them all together,
00:49:41and blah, blah, blah, right? But every now and then, yeah, I mean, for my wife's birthday,
00:49:48I had one of my favorite desserts, a rhubarb crumble. Now, I have not had a dessert in a
00:49:54restaurant in probably, I don't know, eight months, nine months, no, about nine months,
00:49:58about the turn of the year, I stopped really eating added sugar. So,
00:50:08does that mean that you've got to stop all of this? In other words, because some people
00:50:16use substances irresponsibly, nobody can talk about them, right? Some people use alcohol
00:50:26responsibly. What was it in the movie Misery? Obviously, that's a piece of fiction, but
00:50:32the writer used to be a smoker and now would allow himself one cigarette at the end of a novel,
00:50:37right? What about sitting is the new smoking, right? So, what about offices where you don't
00:50:47have standing desks? That's as bad as smoking a not inconsiderable number of cigarettes a day.
00:50:54So, where does it end? What about loneliness, right? Things which promote loneliness,
00:51:03a lot of internet social media stuff gives people the illusion of contact without real contact.
00:51:09People with children tend to be happier. What about social movements and so on that promote
00:51:15sterility, that promote not having children, that interferes with people's happiness?
00:51:20It makes sense to ban junk food adverts for children, does it?
00:51:29See, you have something that you find tempting and I understand that. I mean,
00:51:35I'm tempted by all of these things, but you have something that you find tempting
00:51:44and you say, well, that makes sense, but you can't think of things in the individual instance,
00:51:48because this is a philosophy show, which means you really, really do have to think about things
00:51:54in terms of principles. So, some children will have, look, we all had fun as kids eating junk
00:52:08food, right? We all had fun eating bad food as kids, right? I mean, that's what Halloween is,
00:52:18right? Halloween is the ultimate advertisement for candy. In fact, it's free. Are you going to
00:52:21ban Halloween because it leads to children eating junk food? Junk food is a pleasure in life
00:52:31for a lot of people, for a lot of people.
00:52:35So, are you going to say that children should not be exposed to images of junk food because
00:52:43they're not allowed to have fun that way? I mean, it's really the parents who are exposing them,
00:52:47the kids to the ads, and the parents who are refusing to negotiate with the kids.
00:52:51So, I mean, I negotiated with my daughter about candy and junk food and so on, and she's fine,
00:52:59junk food and so on, and she's fine, she's slender and healthy.
00:53:04So, because I'm responsible, other people have to be restricted because other people are
00:53:10irresponsible, because other parents are irresponsible. Other parents don't know how
00:53:16to say no, so you can't have ads for sugary food for children. Does that make sense?
00:53:30So, let's go one step further with regards to censorship.
00:53:47So, if arguments or imagery that lead to real-world harm must be banned,
00:54:04what do we talk about with regards to something like communism and fascism, or totalitarianism
00:54:11or socialism, empirically leads to real-world harm?
00:54:21You know, in many places, communism provoked fascism, which provoked wars, and communism
00:54:29has been reliably sourced to have caused, just in the 20th century alone, a hundred million deaths.
00:54:35Now, that's the challenge, right? So, when you say to people,
00:54:41well, we should ban ads for junk food because it causes real-world harm, we should ban ads
00:54:48for cigarettes because they cause real-world harm, we should ban anything that promotes
00:54:53smoking because it causes real-world harm, okay? So, there's an ideology that causes
00:55:00real-world harm, empirically proven. So, what do we do, right?
00:55:12So, then ban ads for sugary foods full of carbs. So, what's wrong with sugary foods
00:55:19full of carbs? You say, oh, well, they're not good for you. That's not true. If you have one
00:55:25of those in your lifetime, you're not going to die. Pretty sure of that. I'm not a dietician,
00:55:30I'm not a doctor, but I'm pretty sure that if you have one Cinnabon over the course of your life,
00:55:37you're not going to die from it. So, it is an excess of consuming these things
00:55:42that causes the harm. So, why should people able to moderate themselves lose their free speech
00:55:47rights for people who just keep stuffing their faces with Cinnabons? No harm, no hate for
00:55:54Cinnabons. They're really good, myself. I mean, I have no particular ceiling on the sugar that I can
00:56:01ingest, which is why I don't do sugar anymore.
00:56:13Right? You say, ah, well, you know, people who are leftists have more mental disorders,
00:56:23and so leftism promotes mental disorders, which are defined in a sense by unhappiness,
00:56:28and therefore leftism promotes unhappiness, and therefore we should ban that. Right? So,
00:56:34if you're going to say ideas and arguments that lead to real world harm should be banned,
00:56:39tell me where on earth do we stop? And you know, once you surrender the principle,
00:56:47it's never going to stop.
00:56:52You'll want to live even more once you taste cheesecake. Yeah, yeah, that was a many years ago,
00:56:58Red Lobster had a vanilla bean cheesecake. That was great.
00:57:0528 grams of sugar daily is my limit. Yeah, read the label on chocolate bars. Okay, so,
00:57:10you are responsible with your sugar intake, and a lot of people are. Now, some people are,
00:57:15and a lot of people are. Now, some people aren't. So, then what you're saying is the people who are
00:57:20responsible have to lose free speech rights for the sake of the people who aren't responsible.
00:57:27Right? Having kids exposed, you can make an argument that having
00:57:36Aunt Annie's pretzels are sugar and carbs weaponized. Oh, it's not just sugar and carbs,
00:57:41because you also get the fat from that delicious space cheese dip that they have,
00:57:45and it is actually pretty good to make my mouth water. Dipping those pretzels that have the
00:57:50crystal sugar salt on them on top, giving them a big dip, and then just chomping that down.
00:57:54It's great. I have a, you know, whenever I'm around and they're around, I have a couple of
00:57:58those a year. Yeah. Cinnabon smell in the mall is the true Satan. Yeah. Right.
00:58:04So, Tim Hortons cinnamon buns are great. I don't think I've ever had those,
00:58:12but I don't mind from Tim Hortons once in a while the toasted raisin
00:58:19tea biscuit with butter, and they just shotgun that butter, and they might as well mainline it
00:58:24straight up your nose. Okay, I'm not talking about illegal material, right? I'm just talking about
00:58:34you can make the case that, look, kids are going to be exposed their whole life
00:58:37to ads for things that are bad for them in excess, right? You can't just say something is bad for you
00:58:44in general. I mean, for the most part, I mean, you can think of extreme examples and someone like
00:58:49bullets of the head, but is smoking bad for you? Well, if it helps you write a great novel,
00:58:54and you smoke for a couple of months and then never pick up cigarettes again,
00:58:57you get a great novel, and it probably hasn't done you a huge amount of harm. Again,
00:59:01I'm no doctor. I'm just kind of guessing, right? Is sugary, salty, fatty food bad for you?
00:59:08You can't answer that. You can't answer that.
00:59:18I mean, it's probably not the end of the world if you're underweight and need to gain weight.
00:59:22What if it just makes you happy enough to get through another day?
00:59:26What if you only have it once in a blue moon?
00:59:31The whole point of exercise is to get to eat healthy food. I mean, I exercise in part because
00:59:44I like to eat, and if I don't exercise, I gain weight.
00:59:47Is the opposite of bad information censorship or education?
01:00:09That's the big question. So, back to me running this fictional company, right? Is it
01:00:18the problem of irrational people? Is the problem internet videos or podcasts, or is it that
01:00:27neither their families, nor their church, nor their school, nor their relatives have taught
01:00:31them how to think critically? Yeah, if you're digging a trench, Auntie Annie's or Cinnabon's
01:00:37are fuel. I mean, when I worked up north, I did a ridiculous amount of physical labor every day.
01:00:45I probably needed five to six thousand calories a day because I was just doing a ridiculous amount
01:00:51of physical labor in the cold, which is even more calorie intensive. So, I would have a breakfast of
01:00:57like, you know, four sausages, three eggs, toast, sometimes pancakes, and because I didn't eat lunch
01:01:04and I just needed to do eight hours of brutal physical labor. So, you look at that breakfast,
01:01:12it's like the opening, there's this sort of a very funny but bitter movie called Withnail and I,
01:01:18and it opens with eggs deep fried in fat, right? Yeah, well, British diet is famously
01:01:24bad, and it's like, yes, but there's a lot of physical labor there.
01:01:31So, I would never eat those breakfasts now,
01:01:35but I'm not doing eight to ten hours of brutal physical labor a day.
01:01:39I mean, I've mentioned this years ago on the show, but I remember being quite influenced by
01:01:44a diary of a guy I read who was a worker in the Industrial Revolution. He worked unloading
01:01:52barges on the canal, and he wanted to quit beer, and he did quit beer, but then he just couldn't do his job.
01:02:04He just couldn't do his job. He said, I just can't get the energy. I've tried to get the energy.
01:02:08I've tried milk. I've tried bread. I just, I cannot get energy. Beer is what gives me the
01:02:12energy to do my job. And, of course, beer, say, well, beer is bad for you. Well,
01:02:16for most of human evolution, at least beer would be less likely to have bacteria in it.
01:02:26So, it's tough. We can all think of extreme cases, and we are tempted.
01:02:30That kind of temptation is satanic, and I'm not kidding about that. It is satanic. It's just a
01:02:36way to get you to break your principles based upon sentimentality, to break your principles
01:02:41based upon sentimentality. Well, of course, we've got to ban smoking, because smoking is bad for you.
01:02:46It's like, yes, smoking is bad for you, for sure. So, then you're saying we should ban things that
01:02:53are bad for people. Well, is a current government education good for kids? No.
01:03:07Yeah, cold climate plus hard labor equals calorie-rich diet. Yeah, I did gain weight working
01:03:12up north. At all. Is alcohol bad for you? Well, I don't particularly like it. I mean, a light beer
01:03:21after working in the hot sun for a while is a pretty good thing, but I don't particularly like
01:03:26beer, but a lot of people drink fairly responsibly, and there are some people who don't.
01:03:31And the question with advertising to children is, okay, are toys that are expensive good for
01:03:44children? The argument could be made that they're not, because if the parents have to work very hard
01:03:50or have to work extra hours for toys that are good for children, then the children have less
01:03:54time with their parents, and they end up as empty materialists who are lonely and isolated and think
01:03:59that money buys happiness. So, what's good for kids? What's bad for kids? Is it good for kids
01:04:12to be told that their ancestors were evil and everything they do is wrong? No. So, you can't
01:04:24evaluate individual instances. You can only evaluate principles philosophically, right?
01:04:32So, if you're going to, because they talked about sort of reliable news sources, right?
01:04:36Reliable news sources. So, the sort of so-called reliable news sources are constantly getting
01:04:46things wrong that cause real world harm. I mean, the most obvious example that most of us will
01:04:51remember is the war in Iraq, which was based upon falsehoods and caused, and I've got a whole video
01:05:01which you should watch called 10 Years in Iraq, The Brutal Truth. Let me actually just go and get
01:05:11the actual title for this, because 10 years of hell, that's it, 10 years of hell. Just do a
01:05:16search at FDR podcast for Iraq and watch this. I ended up being on Abbie Martin's show on TV way
01:05:21back in the day talking about this. False information that leads to real world harm.
01:05:34How about all your problems are caused by this racial group or that religion or the other,
01:05:39and then that causes a lot of people to get. Iraq, a decade of hell, thank you.
01:05:44The show is 2371. Iraq, a decade of hell, thanks James.
01:05:49So, as far as false information that causes real world harm,
01:05:53there's quite a lot of it coming out of the mainstream media, right?
01:05:58The suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 changed the results of the election.
01:06:04I mean, we know that statistically. I think it was 16 or 17 percent of people would have
01:06:07changed their vote if they'd known about it, and suppressing the Washington Post story changed the
01:06:11outcome of the election. So, as far as that goes, they say, well,
01:06:26false information leads to real world harm. Okay, well, then we would look at the
01:06:30mainstream media that has lied the West into just about every war known to man, right?
01:06:35I'll give you another example. So, smoking can take a decade or so or more, right? It obviously
01:06:41varies off people's lives. And, James, can I just get a fact check on that? I'm going from some
01:06:46fairly vague memory. The other number I know better, right? So,
01:06:56significant adverse childhood experiences, and of course, peacefulparenting.com, you can
01:07:00and of course, peacefulparenting.com, you can check that out. But significant adverse
01:07:04childhood experiences can take up to 20 years off your lifetime.
01:07:11So, significant chronic child abuse can be twice as dangerous as smoking, right?
01:07:22Now, of course, nobody can get you to quit smoking in the past. They can only get you to quit smoking
01:07:30in the present, right? So, this is the problem with these principles, right?
01:07:34It's on average a decade. Yeah. Thank you.
01:07:37Yeah. Thank you.
01:07:47So, when I talked to people back in 2007, 2008,
01:07:59when I talked to people about you don't have to have chronic emotional abusers in your life. If
01:08:05your parents are abusive, they continue to be abusive as adults,
01:08:18then I'm saying to people, you had inflicted upon you abusive relationships as a child,
01:08:23you do not have to continue to have those abusive relationships as adults. I'm asking people to
01:08:32quit. I'm saying to people, you have the option to quit
01:08:36a toxic substance called abusive relationships that's damaging your health.
01:08:49You see where I'm going with this, right? So, if people genuinely believed that we should promote
01:08:57that, which let's say, we should definitely promote people quitting smoking, right? Because
01:09:02smoking takes 10 years off your life. Okay. Then, if I'm promoting the option of getting out of
01:09:10abusive relationships, which can take up to 20 years of your life, and I don't know the answer
01:09:15to this. It's a big question. I don't know if it's been studied. I don't think it has, but
01:09:21uncontrolled diabetes is the same as smoking a decade off your life. And yet, we won't allow
01:09:27cigarettes to be promoted, but we will allow the fatty food and sugary food and so on to be
01:09:33promoted. In fact, it seems that there's quite a bit of falsehoods in the past about
01:09:38blaming fat for the effects of sugar, right? There's sort of all of these studies that seem
01:09:42to have been paid off and so on in the past to shift the blame from sugar to fat.
01:09:48So, when I say to people,
01:09:59stressful relationships are bad for your mental health, and they can be difficult for your
01:10:04physical health. Again, I'm no doctor, right? But stress seems to have an effect on
01:10:10overall health, chronic stress. So, when I say to people,
01:10:14you don't have to be in abusive relationships for your life, right? If you had them inflicted
01:10:20upon you as a kid, you don't have to keep doing them as adults. There could be some potential
01:10:26health benefits from that. I mean, I obviously think it's better in terms of peace of mind to
01:10:29not be in abusive relationships. But the real question is, the 20 years of extreme child abuse,
01:10:35I'm not talking about minimal to medium levels, but extreme child abuse taking up the 20 years
01:10:40off your life. Is that because of the child abuse or because you continue to spend time with
01:10:48the abusers into adulthood, right? So, if you had a mom had you at 25 and she lives to 85,
01:10:57right? Then you're 60. So, is the negative effects of child abuse what happens to you as a child,
01:11:04or the time from 20 to 60, those 40 years where you're still in that stressful,
01:11:09difficult and abusive relationship? Don't know. I think you could make a case, but it would be
01:11:16interesting to see the data. But it's not something that is likely to study. I mean,
01:11:22from what I've read, and again, don't take any medical advice from me, but from what I've read,
01:11:26if you stop smoking fairly early and you exercise and so on, it mitigates a lot of the risk. Again,
01:11:32look all of that stuff up yourself. I don't know what I'm talking about. But if you quit smoking
01:11:38and you exercise and do all other good sort of health practices, some of the damage can be
01:11:42mitigated. In fact, quite a bit of it, I believe, can be mitigated. And so, even if you smoke for a
01:11:49while, if you quit, it mitigates the damage. If you were abused as a child and then you don't
01:11:53spend time with stressful, relentless child abusers as adults, does that mitigate some of
01:11:57the health risks? I can certainly see the case where it might, but again, it's not proven. I
01:12:02don't know for sure. But it's interesting and it certainly should be studied, of course, right?
01:12:08Of course. So, if a toxin in a cigarette is something we should advocate for people to quit,
01:12:19but when I even talk about the possibility of quitting a toxin called a narcissistic,
01:12:24sociopathic, or destructive personality, everyone gets mad at me, then you see that nobody cares
01:12:32about mitigating health in that way, right? So, then the question is, if people don't evaluate,
01:12:41say, well, you know, we really should advocate for quitting smoking because that's better for
01:12:46people's health, and then I talk about not having to be in abusive relationships as an adult and
01:12:53people get mad at me, even though not being in abusive relationships as an adult can have very
01:12:58positive effects on your health, we can see that there's no principles at play here. So, if it's
01:13:05not principles, then it's power, right? That's all there is in life, right? If it's not principles,
01:13:11it's just power. If it's not principles, it's just power. Do governments really care about smoking?
01:13:19Well, they seem to be quite keen to make money off weed, and weed is often smoked, right?
01:13:29There's some theories out there that nicotine societies tend to be more rebellious,
01:13:36and weed societies tend to be more compliant, which is why the government doesn't like nicotine,
01:13:40but does like cigarettes. Sorry, does like weed. I don't know. I don't know. It's an interesting
01:13:45theory, but I obviously don't know the answer to that. I don't know if that's been studied either.
01:13:54So, often it's financial incentives masquerading as benevolent censorship,
01:13:59right? So, if you're a government, if you import an adult immigrant, they get to work right away.
01:14:04They're either voting for you or working or both, contributing taxes and so on, and propping up the
01:14:11value of housing for your voting base and so on, whereas if you encourage your citizens to have
01:14:15children, it takes 20 years for that investment, which costs government a lot of money, to flower
01:14:22into a citizen who votes and produces taxes and so on, right?
01:14:34And, sorry, James, if you can have a quick look,
01:14:37just to see if we can, if there has been, has anyone studied
01:14:40the effects on health of abusive relationships? I mean, I know that we've talked about this in
01:14:47terms of ACEs, that study has been done pretty well, but I don't know how much of the adverse
01:14:53childhood experience damaged people's health out of the Kaiser Permanente studies, out of Dr.
01:14:58Vincent Felitti's studies. I don't know how much of that damage, in terms of shaving off longevity,
01:15:03is the result of early child abuse, what proportion of that is just the early child abuse, and what
01:15:08early child abuse, and what portion of that is having the abusive people still in your life over
01:15:12the course of your life? I don't know. But yeah, if there have been any studies done, maybe it's
01:15:18been done on abusive marriages, or abusive dating relationships, or boyfriend-girlfriend relationships,
01:15:25but it would be interesting to know if there's something like that.
01:15:27So, are we going to say language that could lead to real-world harm should be banned,
01:15:42because some people... Ah, here we go. So, we got this from ChatGPT, which, you know,
01:15:49use at your own risk. I know it's a little hinky on sources.
01:15:53ChatGPT says, yes, there are studies indicating that abusive relationships can significantly
01:15:58impact health. Research shows that victims of abuse often experience higher rates of depression,
01:16:04anxiety, and chronic conditions like heart disease. They may also face higher levels
01:16:08of stress and trauma-related disorders. Sources like the American Psychological Association
01:16:13and various public health journals provide detailed insights into these effects. Right.
01:16:17So, and I don't know the answer to this, of course, and I don't think it's been studied.
01:16:23But, how much of something like ischemic heart disease, which seems to be an effect of ACEs,
01:16:33negative ACEs, well, they're negative by... Sorry, negative adverse is kind of redundant.
01:16:39But how much of the shaving off of lifespan for something like cancer,
01:16:43which can be stress-related, and ischemic heart disease, which according to the ChatGPT, at least,
01:16:48is impacted by abusive relationships, how much of the shortened lifespan is the result
01:16:51of childhood stuff, and how much of that is the result of continuing abuse into adulthood? Right.
01:17:03So, if governments prefer importing adult immigrants to having native citizens have
01:17:10children, then they will say anybody who's against mass immigration is a bigot and a blah, blah,
01:17:17and all right. So, all of that is, right, is it censorship or is it financial or economic incentives?
01:17:27Right. If there were reasonable or potentially beneficial alternatives to medical treatments
01:17:37for COVID, and that information was suppressed, was that because it's just plain bad or how much
01:17:44were financial incentives at play there? Again, it's hard to say. But certainly, without a doubt,
01:17:49people got banned for things that turned out to be true. And of course, they don't get
01:17:56any recompense for that. Right.
01:18:00So, you know, with regards to Susan, ex-CEO, now ex-alive of YouTube,
01:18:07with regards to her, why is she just a symptom? Well, there's so much money in politics
01:18:12that censorship becomes inevitable. The problem is not censorship fundamentally. The problem is
01:18:17how much you can profit from censorship. That's the challenge. That's the real problem. How much
01:18:23can you profit from censorship? Well, an enormous amount. Right. An enormous amount of money gets
01:18:29Right. An enormous amount of money gets made through censorship.
01:18:35And as long as you have this centralized political power, wherein people can make
01:18:41millions, hundreds of millions, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars from the government,
01:18:50then all criticisms of that kind of government spending faces down massive amounts of economic
01:18:56incentives on the other side of things. Right. So, as long as governments around the world
01:19:10control trillions of dollars, then morality will mask itself, sorry, censorship will mask
01:19:16itself in morality, pretend it's for the general good, while profiting from government money.
01:19:22That's just generally the way it will go. Can bad experiences actually improve health? Absolutely.
01:19:31Absolutely. Bad experiences can improve health. I mean, I survived cancer and have a renewed
01:19:37commitment to health. Cancer could have me live longer, right, because I have a renewed
01:19:41commitment to sort of health and exercise and eating well, and I weigh even less. Like, I put
01:19:48this video out with me in 2019, speaking at the European Parliament about tech censorship, which
01:19:55really began the whole process of deplatforming, I think, I don't know. That was sort of what
01:20:00happened afterwards. And I was like, yeah, boy, it was a little thick. So, yeah, bad experiences
01:20:06are designed to improve health. Right. So, if as a kid, you ride a bike and you turn too quickly on
01:20:11the gravel, you'll fall and get your strawberry knees, and then you're going to be more careful.
01:20:15So, then you're going to be more safe. So, the idea that we can promote health without kids
01:20:20having negative experiences is really not very sensible. You can't promote mental health by
01:20:25bubble wrapping kids from reality. You can't promote physical health by keeping kids inside
01:20:29because you're frightened of the neighborhood. You just have to let kids take their risks,
01:20:33and that's how they learn, and that's how they become safe. You become safe through exposure
01:20:38danger. But that's a male thing, right? For women dealing with babies and toddlers,
01:20:43you can't let them learn by experience because it'll probably kill them, right? But for adults,
01:20:48for anyone beyond the age of sort of seven or eight, you have to learn by experience. You
01:20:52can't be bubble wrapped. But because women are sort of designed to continue this conveyor belt
01:20:58of kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids, babies and toddlers are just what they're dealing with
01:21:02their whole lives, whole adult lives, they don't like the idea of people learning by experience.
01:21:08You have to prevent problems. You can't just let children learn by experience because
01:21:17that could be fatal for babies and toddlers, right?
01:21:25All right, any other last questions, comments? If you
01:21:32find what I'm saying to be helpful, useful, and important, and I think we went through a whole
01:21:36lot of really powerful and important stuff today, my particular thoughts, I hope that's your
01:21:40experience too, freedomain.com slash donate. You can also donate, of course, on the apps,
01:21:46on the Locals app, on the Rumble app. You can support the show. You can sign up. And of course,
01:21:50everyone who donates for the next week or so, everyone who donates will get a copy of my near
01:21:5612-hour masterwork on the French Revolution, really the foundation of the modern world,
01:22:02and you cannot understand modern leftism and the reactive right without understanding the
01:22:07French Revolution. Yeah, somebody says, I grabbed my toddler from falling into a river the next day.
01:22:12She had no idea what happened. Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure, for sure. You can let older
01:22:22people or you can let older kids learn by experience. You can't let babies and toddlers
01:22:25learn by experience because they don't really learn and the consequences are too high.
01:22:32No, I mean, I remember as a kid going on a hike, I was about maybe four going on a hike in Ireland
01:22:37with my father and his sisters, and they told me about nettles. Don't touch the nettles. I'm like,
01:22:44really? I mean, how bad could it be? And I vividly remember touching the nettle and like,
01:22:51okay, they're right. We have empirically verified to do not touch the nettles.
01:22:56It was very, very unpleasant. And of course, because I was very young,
01:23:00it lasted for quite a long time, quite a long time. Thank you for the tips. Of course,
01:23:07they are gratefully accepted. If you're listening to this later, of course, freedomain.com slash
01:23:10donate. If you could help out the show, that would be excellent. If you subscribe, of course,
01:23:16which you can do at freedomain.locals.com at subscribestar.com slash freedomain. What's a
01:23:22nettle? What? You don't have a, it's a stinging plant. It's a stinging plant that's in England
01:23:27and Ireland and other places as well, of course, right? Northern European stinging plant. They
01:23:32have little sacks of poison that hit your skin and cause considerable discomfort, to put it mildly.
01:23:39So yeah, they were, they were, are they called dark leaves? Right, right, right.
01:23:44A job interview tips, what to say when asked about weaknesses? Oh, be perfectly frank about them.
01:23:50Yeah. And don't be shy. Like here's my weaknesses. Here's what I'm working on. Here's what I know.
01:23:55Here's the feedback I've accepted. Here's the stuff I've learned about myself,
01:23:58because everyone, oh, my weaknesses, I'm too hardworking and sometimes I can be too honest and
01:24:02everybody knows you're lying about that stuff. Everybody has their weaknesses.
01:24:06For me, it can be verbosity and focus could be my weakness. So yeah, just be honest about your
01:24:12weaknesses and you'll be memorable because you're honest about your weaknesses. I have probably at
01:24:20least half a dozen weaknesses, at least half a dozen weaknesses that I would talk about. Maybe
01:24:24I'll talk about them at some point, but I think I've talked about them before. No, they're not
01:24:30like thistles. Thistles are just thorns. This is actually poison. So yeah, just be, you know, here,
01:24:35here's my weaknesses. You know, I get distracted easily. Sometimes I can get a bit too social.
01:24:41I know that socializing at work can be good, but sometimes it's not so good. These are the
01:24:44things I'm working on. You'll be memorable. And if you explain your weaknesses to people,
01:24:49they're more interested. A good manager is more interested in someone who explains his weakness.
01:24:53So, so I hope that helps. Yeah. Oh, I'm such a perfectionist. I just don't like, come on.
01:25:00I mean, maybe you are, but what's the downside, right? Because when I hear, and of course I've
01:25:04interviewed like a thousand people over the course of my career and hired like a hundred people
01:25:08over the course of my business career. So I've, I've heard it all. And you just know when someone
01:25:13has a research bit of pure nonsense and then, you know, just don't lie. The most important thing
01:25:20in a job interview is don't lie. Don't lie. Don't lie. You know, your weaknesses, or if you
01:25:28don't know your weaknesses, that's a problem because we all have them, right? We all have them
01:25:33and we need to, uh, well, some, some weaknesses we need to work with and improve and some
01:25:38weaknesses we just need to get other people to do. Right. Uh, so, uh, there's lots of things,
01:25:45you know, I have a weakness. I don't make my own stoves. So when I need a stove,
01:25:52I buy a stove. Other weaknesses, I'm not good at cleaning my own teeth with a
01:25:58scraper. So I go to the dentist for that. Right. So just, you know, be, be honest about things.
01:26:03Right. Uh, moodiness, whatever, right. Perfectionists are a nightmare to work with,
01:26:12never get anything done. Oh yeah. And they, they kill productivity and everyone else. Right. So
01:26:16people say, well, I'm a perfectionist and everyone thinks, oh my God, you're going to get everything
01:26:20perfect. I love that about you. It's like, no, no, you're going to be exhausting and kill everyone's
01:26:23motivation by detailing, uh, everything. Yeah. Uh, I, uh, I'm, uh, I'm, I don't like doing dishes.
01:26:30So I, I, I get a dishwasher. Right. So she's five two. Oh, just kidding. Just kidding.
01:26:38All right. So, uh, thanks everyone. freedom.com slash donate to help out the show. Lots of love
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01:27:34Bye.