GREATEST FACEBOOK QUESTIONS!

Stefan Molyneux
Stefan Molyneux
  • last month
Philosopher Stefan Molyneux tackles listener questions from Facebook!

"I've been procrastinating and stuck in the past for 19 years and can't stand the aging process. What can be done?"

"Was Plato's Republic a political project or a metaphorical work of irony?"


"Do we have free will or are we all determined, such as sapolsky or harris says we are?
"What is morality and is there an absolute and objective morality?"


"Not philosophy question but I am wondering why you don't regularly chime in on current events? Not as often as before as far as I can tell."


"How do we decide on what should be the proper functions of government??"


"Do you think the NAP is coherent with human nature? Or, conversely, aren't humans (as all animals) aggressive by nature?"


"Why is it that I can philosophise all day but as soon as someone asks me to do so, mind blank ? Could a topic jog a process for this maybe ?"


"If we create the world around us with our minds and those signals could easily be messed up how does one fundamentally believe their reality is real or just imagined. If we manifest our reality are we creating our own adversity to overcome."


"At what age can a male or female make sexual choices for his or her self?"


"With all your talent and skills and added value you brought to the world in it's time of need, why of Why did you ever stop producing your 'The truth about...' videos???
"Please return to what you were Meant to do! The world needs you! "


"What are good techniques to introduce such philosophy to people who have gone astray?
"I grew up in and live in a pretty leftist area, but there are also a lot of people on the far right who could use philosophy, virtually everyone I know is a statist that doesn't even know the definition of anarchy, much less the underlying principles. The problem I tend to encounter is that people on both sides tend to think that logic and reason that doesn't fit their programming must be on the opposite extreme relative to where they're at.
"It seems like anything rational is often opposed strongly by at least one "side", and often both sides.
"I was fortunate to be going through some stuff that required me to open my mind to new ideas in order to survive and\or thrive, some would call it the gift of desperation. How does one approach people who aren't even willing to have an open mind?"


"What the heck are you meant to actually do with Hegelian dialectics? My head hurts."

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Transcript
00:00Good morning, good morning. It is Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.com. Some great
00:06questions from the community on Facebook. Number one, I've been procrastinating and
00:12stuck in the past for 19 years and can't stand the aging process. What can be done?
00:17So procrastination is immortality. If you had immortality then you would have
00:26precious little concern about how you were spending any individual day. If you
00:33had an infinity of money you would not care about the cost of anything. And, or
00:40if you were, I don't know, money printing jerk wads or whatever, then you
00:45wouldn't care about the costs of any individual thing because you could just
00:49type whatever you wanted into your own bank account. So the major issue when it
00:54comes to procrastination is a lack of sense of time that is passing. Now I say
01:01this with no giant sense of superiority. I've certainly wasted my own share of
01:06life and time, but in general when you're on a limited budget you spend wisely. And
01:15if you're on a limited budget then you prioritize into have to have, nice to
01:22have, and so on, right? You have to have food and shelter. It's nice to have maybe
01:28a new phone or something like that, right? So prioritization is based upon finite
01:34resources. An infinity of resources, well, I mean air in general, unless you break
01:41the scuba tank 200 feet below the ocean, you're not particularly concerned about
01:45where you're getting your next breath from because air and oxygen are, to all
01:50intents and purposes, for any individual, infinite. So we don't really worry about
01:55those things. So procrastination comes from a stalling of the sense of time and
02:03procrastination is the way that, it's a mechanism by which people are infected
02:12with the denial of their own potential. Sorry, that was kind of an awkward way of
02:16phrasing it. Let me take another run at that. So if you waste time you don't
02:21achieve your own potential. If you don't achieve your own potential then you
02:24don't threaten the complacency of those around you, you don't threaten the
02:29authority of the powers that be. When you're deeply and powerfully yourself
02:33you can't stand to be ruled. So getting you to forget your mortality and waste
02:39your time is a way of keeping you inert so that you're happy to be controlled.
02:46So you can't stand the aging process because the aging process is reminding
02:51you that life is brief and if you're going to get something done, do it now!
02:59Not later, not down the road, not maybe someday, but life is short and we have a
03:06very quick snap of time with which to affect the world for the better.
03:14Life is short. In other words, the opposite of procrastination is mortality.
03:21Procrastination is saying I have an infinity of days from which to pull. I
03:26can get it done later, later, later and you know as the cheesy old song goes
03:32written by the Beatles covered by Phil Collins, tomorrow never comes. Later,
03:37later, later. Well the only thing that's later is a six-foot hole, an
03:45endless dirt nap and us being recycled by worms. That's all that is later. I'll
03:51get it done later is effectively the same as I'll never get it done. Now we
03:57don't want to say to ourselves I'll never get it done and there's times
04:01where we change our course, right? I want to become a singer, I want to become an
04:05actor, maybe I want to become a painter and we try these things and maybe we're
04:09not particularly good at them, we don't particularly enjoy them, they're not for
04:12us. So we try these things and then we let them go and that's totally fine. But
04:19when the trying is later, the achievement is never. You try these things, see if
04:24they're for you, see if other people like them, see if you're doing it
04:27for the sake of vanity or whether you're doing it for the sake of beauty. Do you
04:32do the thing for the thing itself or do you do it for the applause and the money?
04:36Well I think the best thing to do is to do it for the thing itself and if you
04:39can monetize it so much the better but I do philosophy for the thing itself which
04:45is why the cheers and attacks of the crowd don't have much effect on me. I
04:52like the cheers, I prefer them to the attacks but neither of them have
04:55particularly much effect on me because I'm here to concentrate my brain lasers
04:59on burning away the crud that obscures the truth from our often distracted
05:03minds, myself included of course. So if you're stuck in the past you think that
05:10the past has value in and of itself but the past has no value in and of itself.
05:15The past only has value insofar as it secures a better future. So for instance
05:21if you are a child, when you're a child we all try this at one time or another
05:25we do something that we are told will hurt us. When I was a kid on a hike in
05:30Ireland I was about four or five years old everyone told me don't touch the
05:33leaves with these particular shapes because they're nettles and they will
05:36sting your hand and I'm like okay let's find out. I've always been an empiricist
05:41so I pinch the leaves and lo and behold it hurt my thumb. Now pain is not about
05:48the past because pain can't fix the past. If you pinch a nettle or you
05:54touch something that is hot I picked up, I remember as a kid picking up a knife
05:58on a stove that had been too close to a burner that had been on recently and it
06:02burnt my finger. Now why does our body give us pain? Is it because of the past?
06:07No, because the past cannot be altered. Our bodies give us pain for the sake of
06:11the future. All the pains that are in your past are to do with keeping you
06:16safe or at least safer in the future. It is a way of conditioning us to not do
06:21things that are harmful to us. For some people though the pain becomes something
06:26they obsess over which then turns the future into agony rather than protecting
06:31yourself. So when I touched the nettle as a four or five year old little boy the
06:37lesson in that was not to obsess about how painful the nettle was but rather to
06:41say I should probably not touch nettles again in the future and things will be
06:48pretty good or at least they will be nettle pain free. So if you're obsessed
06:53about the past, which again happens to all of us and I sympathize, what you are
06:58not doing is you're recognizing that the past is there to help you in the future.
07:02We look back only so we can be safe going forward. If you focus on the pain
07:10of the past rather than use its lesson to protect yourself in the future I
07:14think you're missing the purpose of pain. Now if you remember that you're going to
07:19die and if you remember that you have a strictly finite number of days left, now
07:27by strictly I don't mean we know in advance when we're going to die, we're
07:30not in the movie crawl, but we do know that it's finite. We don't know when we
07:36will die but we do know that we will die. So once you realize that you have
07:44a bleeding out amount of money you will spend it wisely because you don't get to
07:49take it with you. All the time you waste does not get added to your life at the
07:52end of it. In fact it can be subtracted from it if it makes you stressed and
07:56unhappy which can harm your health. So procrastinating and stuck in the past
08:02for 19 years, well you've missed some kind of essential lesson about safety
08:07and security and you do have to remember that if you want to achieve anything
08:12great in your life the odds that anyone in your past is going to be able to come
08:17along are very very low. Now some people I guess, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, they
08:23were friends in high school and they were both able to build successful movie
08:27careers. Good for them. Although they turned from good writers to fairly
08:32brain-dead action heroes. Thump, thump, drive, drive, climb, climb, shoot, shoot. Wow
08:37that's so much better than Good Will Hunting. Well done boys. But they were
08:42both able to come along. But most people if you want to achieve something great
08:49and the great doesn't have to be some big world-spanning thing but it can be
08:53just having a great marriage. Let's say you have a wonderful relationship with a
08:58great spouse. How many people are going to come along for that journey? And I
09:03don't mean visit you from time to time but enjoy and appreciate the quality and
09:07happiness of your relationship. Well not many. So procrastination could just be
09:12I have potential but my potential will be scalding to the narrow-minded people
09:19around me and so I'm just going to stay down here in the low-rent district
09:24rather than achieve something great. So yeah, remember you're going to die and
09:27remember that all achievement comes at the cost of the comfort of the
09:31complacent around you. Nothing really can do about that. Either accept it or don't.
09:35All right. Was Plato's Republic a political project or a metaphorical work
09:39of irony? So Plato's Republic is one of the earliest known blueprints for
09:46totalitarianism where the people in charge lie to everyone, families are
09:52raised in common, there's no private property and it is a brutal combination
09:57of the worst aspects of communism, fascism and eugenics. So it is neither a
10:03political project or a metaphorical work of irony. So if you look at politics
10:10without thinking of mating strategies you're missing I think a lot of the
10:15point. So for instance if you look at the welfare state without thinking of it as
10:20a mating strategy I think you're missing the point. So women who have a child
10:27outside of wedlock in the past were heavily criticized and sometimes
10:31ostracized because children were a huge cost. Children cost a hundred thousand
10:38dollars or two hundred thousand dollars or more perhaps to raise in sort of
10:43modern fiat currency standards. Probably be twice that by this time next week. And
10:49so who pays that price? Who pays the cost of raising children? Well what are men
10:54investing in when they provide resources their family? Well they are investing in
10:58their own genetics and so a man does not want to raise another man's child. In
11:03general certainly it's not evolutionarily productive to pour massive
11:08amounts of time, effort and energy. Ninety percent of a married father's pay
11:13chain goes to supporting his wife and children in a generally free society. And
11:19so the welfare state is a way of ensuring that single mothers still have
11:27access to relationships because single mothers do not say I need you to give me
11:34you know let's say they have two kids I need you to give me a couple hundred
11:37thousand dollars because that would be a huge net negative and most men would
11:41rather spend that money on their own children. But the welfare state is taking
11:44away that cost so that single mothers still have access to relationships
11:51because the costs are offloaded to taxpayers as a whole or in other words
11:57the less responsible are subsidized at the expense of the more responsible and
12:03of course as we know whatever you tax diminishes whatever you subsidize you
12:06get more of. So Plato's Republic where families are children are raised in
12:13common which of course has the and and they wouldn't even know their parents
12:17I've got a whole four-hour examination of Plato you can find it at FDR
12:21podcast.com FDR podcast.com it's a really great search engine for this kind of
12:26stuff. So why is it that people would even be tempted or drawn to living in a
12:35collectivist syphilitic hellhole of all living together and sleeping together in
12:41common and not even know who their own children were. Of course Plato was
12:47infinitely almost infinitely prior to DNA and being able to figure out who's
12:54who was whose father. So why would people be drawn to that? Why would they want
12:59that? Well they would be drawn to that and they would want that because they
13:04are low quality people that cannot summon pair bonding from quality people
13:10and so when they say we want to dissolve the family what people are saying is I
13:16cannot get a quality pair bonding with a quality person so I am instead going to
13:23just have indiscriminate sex and hope and pray that my genes somehow get
13:29transferred that way. So it is a dangling of reproductive success to lower quality
13:36people. To people who don't have the virtues to get a great pair bond with a
13:44quality person. So saying you can reproduce without responsibility is
13:49saying to the people who can't summon a lifelong pair bond with a quality man or
13:55woman, husband or wife, father or mother, well you are not willing to manifest the
14:05kind of virtues to get you a lifelong pair bonding so we'll just stick you in
14:08a giant vat of squirmy flesh and you can reproduce that way. So it is a dangling
14:13for amoral or immoral people to have kids. So all right. Do we have free will
14:21or are we all determined such as Sapolsky and Sam Harris says we are? Well
14:28the people who argue against free will are asking you to change your mind about
14:34free will. It is such a ridiculously obvious anti-rational position that it
14:40takes a certain amount of insecurity which I understand. I mean these guys are
14:44I guess fairly imposing intellectual figures. But for someone to say I want
14:49you to change your mind about whether you can change your mind and I want you
14:52to change your mind to the position that you can't change your mind and here's
14:55all the reason and evidence as to why you can't change your mind.
14:58Well they're saying that you're a television set. A television set
15:02cannot change its own mind. A television set, it talks, people, sounds come
15:08out of it and it also these days has inputs in that you can ask it to search
15:12for various things and so on. So it has ears, it has sound and it has human faces
15:18and so on. So it's saying that people are the same as a television set. Now if
15:25someone like Sapolsky or Harris were to argue with a television set, in other
15:30words if they were to have a debate with a television set, people would say well
15:34that's crazy and they would never do that in a million years. They only ever
15:37debate with rational or at least open to reason human beings. They don't debate
15:43with lions, they don't debate with psychopaths, they don't debate with
15:46robots, they don't debate with televisions. They debate with human
15:51beings who claim to be open to reason and evidence. So they're saying because
15:56human beings are composed of atoms and atoms don't have free will, everything
16:00that is composed of atoms does not have free will or nothing composed of atoms
16:04has free will, since atoms don't have free will and all atoms and matter and
16:08energy is subject to the laws of physics which brook no exceptions.
16:12Blah blah blah blah blah. Okay, so they're saying that you are the same as a
16:15television, you're the same as a piece of cheese, you're the same as a mountain or
16:20a rock or a cloud or the weather, right? The weather is a complex system that
16:24can't be predicted in detail but whose broad patterns are understandable and
16:28it's the same thing with people. You can't predict everyone's next decision
16:32in detail but the madness of crowds follows a fairly predictable path.
16:36So the anti-free will people are saying that you are exactly the same as a
16:41television set or a ping-pong table or a piece of insulation or a network cable,
16:47all right? None of those things have free will, they're all composed of atoms.
16:51You're composed of atoms, none of your component atoms have any free will so
16:54how can you have free will? Blah blah blah blah blah. So they're saying human
16:58beings are the same as everything else yet they will only ever debate with
17:03human beings. That's a contradiction that should make people laugh at them
17:07incessantly. It's just an obvious, boring, trashy, completely mind-bogglingly apparent
17:14contradiction. Human beings are the same as everything else in the universe but I
17:19will only ever debate with human beings and it would be complete madness to
17:23debate with anything that is not a human being. They don't debate with people in
17:27comas. So it's it's just funny. It's just funny. It is saying that this lizard is
17:34the same as every other lizard but this lizard has properties unique to this
17:38lizard and this lizard alone. That's a contradiction. Human beings are the same
17:43as everything else but I will only ever debate with human beings. You can't hold
17:46both of those positions in a sane mind. I mean you just can't. You can't say human
17:52beings are the same as everything else but human beings have amazing singular
17:56characteristics which is why I only debate with human beings and not
18:00television sets. So you know in a sane well-educated society this position
18:06would be laughable and it would be driven from the public sphere with scorn
18:12and and giggles right? So the whole issue of free will is the issue of emergent
18:20properties. So no carbon atom is alive. It's true. No carbon atom possesses the
18:27characteristic called life. No carbon atom can move itself. However if you put
18:34enough carbon atoms together in the shape of say a house cat then the house
18:38cat is alive and the house cat can move of its own accord. So this is called
18:43emergent properties. We can see this at a purely physical level with something
18:48like a black hole let's say. So a black hole has an emergent property called a
18:54gravity mass so powerful that even light cannot escape its grip right? So the
18:59light travels in generally in a straight line but it bends slightly according to
19:02gravity and with a black hole it can't even emerge from the gravity well of the
19:07black hole. That's an emergent property. An emergent property is something that
19:10you do not possess as an individual but you possess in a collective. No
19:16individual, I guess Rambo accepted, is an army but you get enough people together
19:20you can get an army. No individual is a crowd yet you get enough of them
19:24together you get a crowd and so on right? So we understand that no individual
19:28jumping up and down can break a bridge but you get enough Americans on a bridge
19:32jumping up and down and you can or sumo wrestlers which is I guess two sides of
19:37the same coin and you can break a bridge so it's just emergent properties and the
19:42mind has the amazing capability to compare proposed actions to ideal
19:46standards. To compare proposed actions to ideal standards. That is unique to human
19:51beings it's a facet of language and concept formation and so on. So we have
19:55the ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and that is what
20:00free will is. We have that choice. It could be the choice in terms of morality
20:05what is the right or good or noble thing to do we can compare our proposed
20:10actions to ideal standards. If you have a value called the non-aggression
20:13principle you can compare a proposed action called initiating the use of
20:17force to an ideal standard called the initiation of force is wrong and you can
20:21choose your behavior based upon that. You can choose your behavior in non-moral
20:27standards as well. You can say well if I want to lose weight there's an ideal
20:32standard called I don't know what is it something like a 500 calorie deficit a
20:37day gets you a pound a week weight loss. So you have proposed actions eat more or
20:43less ideal standard lose weight and you can you can do that. You have I want to
20:49find out truth about the universe so I can either go to a mystic or a witch
20:53doctor or I can pursue the rigid and objective and universal discipline
20:58called the scientific method. Right so proposed actions gain knowledge ideal
21:02standards scientific method. I want a bridge to stand up well you've got an
21:07ideal standard called engineering excellence which is what you would
21:12pursue to make sure the building stands up or the bridge stands up or whatever
21:15so we can compare proposed actions to ideal standards and we are unique in
21:20that capability certainly on earth and it seems to be in this corner of the
21:24universe. So yeah we have free will because of course the people who are
21:28arguing against free will are saying there's an ideal standard called
21:32accepting the truth and you should accept the truth that there's no such
21:38thing as free will. Okay so you should choose your state of mind based upon the
21:44ideal standards of proposing pursuing truth and accepting truth but if free
21:49will is our capability and think it is I argue that it is if free will is our
21:54ability to compare proposed actions to ideal standards then people arguing
21:59against free will are using the mechanics of free will in order to try
22:05to destroy free will which is a very bizarre it's very bizarre and
22:11otherworldly and unreal thing to do. It is it's hard to even find a reasonable
22:18analogy for how nutty this is. It's like mailing a letter to someone saying that
22:23letters never get delivered to the right address. It's like using
22:28language to try and convey the thought that language cannot convey thought. It
22:32is very very like phoning somebody to say that the phone doesn't exist there's
22:36no such thing as a phone it's very bizarre. What is morality and is there an
22:39absolute and objective morality? Well for more on this you can consult my free
22:43book that has survived 15 years of fairly aggressive attacks called
22:47universally preferable behavior a rational proof of secular ethics. I also
22:51have a book called essential philosophy which deals with the free will and it
22:55deals with the universe as a simulation hypothesis and it also deals with
23:02morality you can get that at essentialphilosophy.com so I guess there
23:07is a universal and objective morality and it is absolute and it validates
23:15property rights the non-aggression principle self-defense and it also
23:19validates that rape theft assault and murder are all immoral and it has to do
23:24with that there is such a thing as universally preferable behavior and you
23:27can't argue against that without using it because if you say there's no such
23:31thing as universally preferable behavior and you should stop believing in that
23:35you're saying that it's universally preferable behavior to believe in the
23:38truth that there is no such thing as universally preferable behavior which
23:40again is a performative contradiction it's a self-detonating argument it is
23:44laughably wrong in in the utterance you don't need any external standard right
23:50so the objective morality is that since there is such a thing as universally
23:55preferable behavior then all behavior that is claimed to be universally
24:02preferable must be both universal and preferable so what I mean by that is if
24:07you say that stealing is universally preferable behavior then you're saying
24:13that to be stolen from and to steal are universally preferable behaviors now
24:19this faces the problem that if you propose a positive action as moral such
24:24as stealing what about people who were asleep what about people who are going
24:28to the bathroom what about people who are in a coma right they can't be
24:31stealing and being stolen from they immoral right because if stealing is the
24:35moral then the opposite of stealing which is respecting property rights must
24:39be the immoral and therefore people who are doing nothing are immoral which
24:43offends basic sensibilities I call it the coma test right can somebody in a
24:47coma be evil well no so if you also say that stealing from people and being
24:54stolen from is universally preferable behavior then the problem is that
24:59everybody must want to steal and be stolen from in order to be moral however
25:04if you want to be stolen from if you want somebody to take your property away
25:09then you're not being stolen from and therefore the entire concept self
25:14detonates if I want someone to take my property away I'm not being stolen from
25:19so for instance we own ourselves and we own the contents of our bodies however
25:23if you have a tumor and you want the doctor to remove the tumor he's not
25:27stealing from you in the way that somebody who drugs you and takes your
25:29kidney against your will is stealing from you if you put a couch on the
25:34sidewalk but the sign says take me please and someone takes it from you
25:38they're not stealing from you because you want them to take your property so
25:42stealing as a concept can only exist if it's asymmetrical in other words you
25:46want to take my property I don't want you to take my property but if I don't
25:50want you to take my property then stealing cannot be universally
25:53preferable behavior because stealing is wanting to steal and be stolen from if
25:57it's universally preferable behavior it's wanting to steal and be stolen from
26:01everyone all the time no matter what fails the coma test and also fails the
26:05basic test of logic that stealing has to be asymmetrical right in the same
26:10way that rape is asymmetrical in that the rapist wants sexual activity but his
26:14victim most emphatically does not therefore it cannot be universalized
26:18rape as a concept only exists when one person wants a sexual activity and the
26:23other person very desperately does not and that's what makes it evil therefore
26:27rape can never be universally preferable behavior and it goes on and on so yes
26:31there is an absolute and objective morality all right I'm not a
26:34philosophical question but I'm wondering why you don't regularly chime
26:37in on current events not as often as before as far as I can tell well when I
26:43was deplatformed just a little I guess it was a little over four years ago then
26:49I recognized that debate was not tolerated within society and when debate
26:59is not tolerated within society it just becomes propaganda and power and
27:03bullying and aggression and lies and slander and all kinds of stuff but I
27:10don't play chess with people who don't respect the rules of chess right I mean
27:17it's the old thing like why would you play chess with a pigeon it just walks
27:20all over the board now poops on it pecks the pieces over and then thinks it's one
27:24so I engage in a conversation with the world called reason and evidence I make
27:29rational arguments I provide evidence and sources I interview subject matter
27:33experts as I've done hundreds of times hundreds of times over the course of my
27:36show so I do the game the civilized game the game of civilization called reason
27:44and evidence and when society is no longer interested in reason and evidence
27:48but instead is inciting violence and using power and lies and slander and not
27:53addressing arguments well I take my ball and I go home I'm happy to play baseball
27:59or basketball or soccer with people who want to play that game but would you
28:04play soccer if when you scored a goal the opposing team beat you up right or
28:10cut the brakes in your car or I don't know spread rumors that that you were
28:15some terrible evil person well no that's not the game called soccer that's a
28:18whole other game so I'm not going to disrespect reason and evidence by
28:22participating in conversations that have nothing to do with that so how do we
28:27decide on what should be the proper functions of a government well we should
28:31recognize that human beings cannot handle power and the power corrupts and
28:35absolute power corrupts absolutely human beings cannot handle power and therefore
28:40we should work to recognize the value of the non-aggression principle as widely
28:44as possible in society all right do you think the non-aggression principle is
28:49coherent with human nature or conversely on humans as all animals aggressive by
28:53nature no we don't know what human nature is because we raise children with
28:58violence and lies the vast majority of parents use violence against their
29:03children either in the form of direct hittings or beatings verbal abuse which
29:07is a form of violence against children because the personalities being formed
29:10that they have no choice to leave and we indoctrinate them in schools we program
29:15them through the media so we don't know what human nature is because human
29:19nature is so distorted by lies and violence that it's like trying to study
29:23an animal in a really bad zoo like a zoo where their animal is too confined it
29:30doesn't get enough food and no mating opportunities and say well I've learned
29:34something really really important about the nature of the bear because I saw the
29:41bear in a traveling circus where it was beaten and chained and forced to dance
29:45well no you've you've learned about how trauma affects a bear but you haven't
29:50learned anything about the nature of the bear because for the nature of the bear
29:54to be revealed you would have to study the nature of the animal not in a
29:59confined tortuous state right so are human beings aggressive by nature that's
30:04like saying that human beings or speak Japanese by nature well if you raise
30:09them in Japan and you expose them to only Japanese then they will grow up
30:13speaking Japanese if you raise children according to violence and lies then you
30:18will say well you know people are just kind of violent and they lie a lot and
30:20it's like well it's just a language you're teaching them when you're growing
30:24up now I'm not a blank slate guy that says that you can turn a child into
30:28anything I mean there are certain constraints of our nature for sure but
30:32I'm not sure how you would see human nature at the moment I mean if you were
30:38to study slaves throughout history and you were to say you studied only slaves
30:43would you say that what people do manual labor are kind of demotivated they're
30:47kind of depressed they're kind of aggressive and so on well you would be
30:52studying people in a state of slavery you would not be studying the human
30:55nature of labor in a state of freedom so don't study animals in a zoo and think
31:00you're being a biologist in the wild human beings are contorted by propaganda
31:05and violence in their upbringing so but I can give you if you want and you can
31:10say human beings are aggressive by nature okay let's say that's true I can
31:16certainly grant you that because if the argument is fallacious we can grant all
31:19the premises but one and like actually we can run all the premises and let's
31:24say human beings are aggressive by nature okay so if human beings are
31:29aggressive by nature what is it that's going to limit their aggression well it
31:32is blowback or consequences so if you give say people control over a nation's
31:37entire currency right if you make counterfeiting legal for a political
31:43elite so to speak then will that power be abused well certainly because what is
31:49it that's going to prevent people from counterfeiting well it's going to be
31:53blowback people are going to get mad at them if they hand out their fake money
31:57to stores the stores are going to get upset with them and are going to not
32:01want to associate with them they're gonna bet get a bad reputation and maybe
32:05they'll be blowback maybe they'll be you know people will want the
32:09fraudulently obtained items back and if the counterfeiters who say I don't
32:13know they buy a car with the counterfeit money then the car dealership comes and
32:17says give me the car back and may even use force to take that car back well
32:20that's going to be negative effects for counterfeiting which is going to limit
32:25aggression right if you want to go and steal from someone then you face in a
32:31free society you face the very real possibility in fact probability that
32:35they'll be armed and capable of defending themselves or may have some
32:40mechanism by which they would disable whatever you stole right so maybe they
32:47have a an app in their phone that if you steal their car and it gets a certain
32:51distance away from the car it won't operate as well or will coast to a stop
32:55or something like that right so they'll have some ways of either using
32:59aggression to prevent you from stealing or to punish you from stealing or to
33:03disable what you've stolen and so on right so if you say human beings are
33:08naturally aggressive then we cannot give them massive amounts of political power
33:12by which they can exert their aggression in a consequence-free manner that's only
33:16going to make it worse all right boom why is it that I can philosophize all
33:22day but as soon as someone asked me to do so my mind goes blank could a topic
33:26jog could a topic jog a process for this maybe well it's I can tell you this
33:33from direct personal experience of many decades I started getting into
33:36philosophy over 40 years ago in my mid-teens and I'm now in my mid to late
33:4050s so philosophizing on your own is great fun it is powerful wonderful
33:47thrilling exciting cool neat gives you goosebumps and brain prickles and all
33:52kinds of exciting stuff gives you endorphin and dopamine and all kinds of
33:56happy joy joy juices that make the brain go we so philosophizing on your
34:01own is a blast philosophizing in society is just about the most extreme sport
34:06known to man philosophizing in your mind is great fun philosophizing in society
34:13is very dangerous as just about every rational thinker over the course of
34:16human history has found out to their joy peril danger horror and sometimes
34:24torture and death it's one thing to speak reason within your own mind it's
34:28quite another thing to speak reason out there in the world where the majority of
34:31prophets these days come from lying falsifying propagandizing and coercing
34:37so so your brain is just trying to save your ass shut down the thinking cause
34:43it'd be dangerous all right if we create the world around us with our minds and
34:47those signals could easily be messed up how does one fundamentally believe their
34:51reality is real and not just or just imagined if we are manifesting our
34:54reality are we creating our own adversity to overcome no you are not
34:59manifesting your own reality life is not a simulation you're not creating things
35:03in your own mind and this is just Occam's razor right that the simplest
35:07explanation is usually the best so if you keep this argument brief essential
35:13philosophy calm you can get more of this of course so we exist in a universe of
35:19things we did not create right I'm looking at things around where I'm
35:24walking and I did not create them right I did not create my workout gloves I did
35:30not create this box of the pickleball set came in right I did not create this
35:35little adapter that goes from USB C to 3.5 millimeter headphones I didn't
35:41create these things they exist but I did not create them so of course the
35:44rational explanation is they came from somebody else other people I'm creating
35:48this podcast and not you and therefore the new ideas that you get from this
35:53podcast are coming from outside your mind and from inside my mind inside my
35:59mind the things that I did not create such as the words that I'm using to
36:03convey the meaning that I'm striving to communicate I did not create the English
36:08language but I'm utilizing it to give you better ideas and arguments then
36:13pretty much anywhere else that you can get in my not so humble opinion so
36:19given that there are things in your mind that did not come from your mind they
36:22must have come from other people's minds if you look all around you you see the
36:25frozen shapes of thought manifested in objects and ideas shapes and things
36:30arguments and avoidances all created by other minds so the simplest explanation
36:36is that you live in a universe that is objective populated by other minds with
36:39various objectives right you've got the objective universe and minds with
36:44objectives people who lie to you want to exploit you people who tell you the
36:47truth want to liberate you and that's the basic polarity of human existence so
36:53you can say ah yes but perhaps just maybe all of the things I see around me
37:00are created by some external mind and I'm this René Descartes made this
37:04argument that you use their brain in the tank wired up being controlled by some
37:09matrix style external demon or devil or angel or consciousness or something as a
37:14big computer program or something it's like okay okay so let's take that as an
37:18argument okay so doesn't solve the problem there are still things in your
37:22mind that are not created by your mind and must have been created by some
37:25external mind you say ah yes well but but you see that external mind could be
37:30just this demons got me wired up in a tank matrix style and nothing is real
37:34and okay well okay but then that let's call it Beelzebub right Beelzebub being
37:39the external demon that has created the brain and tank simulation for you right
37:44the robots in the matrix or whatever you want to call them Beelzebub right
37:47okay so Beelzebub has wired you up to a brain in a tank for some purpose of
37:51which we know nothing in order to create the simulation for reasons we can't
37:56possibly explain I guess in the matrix the idea was that the robots needed
38:00human beings as batteries because the nuclear war had wiped out the Sun and
38:05they were solar-powered robots okay so there's a motive there or whatever right
38:08okay so Beelzebub who's put your brain in a tank does Beelzebub himself live in
38:15some external universe that is objective and real right Beelzebub the external
38:21demon has to live in some universe that is subjective and real in order to
38:23create the brain in the tank place that you live in or whatever right okay so
38:27Beelzebub has created a brain in a tank because Beelzebub has a whole bunch of
38:32other Beelzebubs around him in an objective universe that's created the
38:35science to create your consciousness in a brain and a tank blah blah blah okay
38:39so you accept that there are multiple consciousnesses within an objective
38:44reality because Beelzebub and his friends have for some reason placed your
38:48brain in a simulation or matrix I'll tank wired up to a stimuli that you
38:53think is external but it's not and so on okay so you still exist you still accept
38:58the existence of rational consciousness in an objective universe that are
39:02utilizing things not created within their own minds all the Beelzebubs who
39:06have to create the brain in the tank situation or the robots in the matrix
39:10they all exist within an external universe so you accept that there are
39:16rational consciousnesses in an external universe creating things not within their
39:20own mind or utilizing things that are not created by their own minds okay so
39:26if you already accept that why do you need the additional layer of a brain in
39:32a tank so the simplest explanation is if you already accept that there's an
39:37objective universe with multiple consciousnesses then that's your life
39:41the putting in a layer of a brain in a tank just says that it exists just one
39:46step removed there's no proof of that step so you the simplest thing to be
39:51would to be do accept that you live in an objective universe with
39:55consciousnesses around you that create things that are not you okay all right
39:59what age can a male or female make sexual choices for his or herself in a
40:05free society there would be some generally accepted metric as to when a
40:09child becomes an adult and maybe it would be some age like you know 18 or 19
40:16or whatever it is or maybe it would be the result of some brain scan that
40:20showed a particular level of maturity or so on so you can't tell society can't
40:26tell at an individual level but needs a semi-objective standard that is going to
40:30be utilized all right with all your talent and skills and added value you
40:34brought to the world in its time of need why oh why did you ever stop producing
40:39your the truth about videos please return to what you were meant to do the
40:43world needs you well no the world doesn't need me and I mean the world has
40:47made that very clear to me right so when I was deplatformed right so I want you
40:52to sort of use this as an analogy to understand why now I'm still I'm
40:56producing my truth about videos but obviously not as many and so on right
41:00and not really on current events some on tech I did the truth to two-part series
41:04the truth about AI that was very fascinating to me but and to others but
41:08I want you to imagine this right so the love of your life the woman of your
41:14dreams lives across the street from you it's a miracle the perfect woman for you
41:20was placed by the universe or Providence in the house directly opposite from you
41:25you love her you go to see her every day you bring her flowers you write her
41:29poetry she does wonderful things for you she cooks she she writes sonnets and you
41:35all are just looking forward to a life together of joy and bliss and love
41:40beautiful wonderful lovely stuff now then something happens man something
41:47happens and this woman she moves one house over so instead of going straight
41:54across the street you have to go at a say 15 degree angle and it probably is
41:58maybe just maybe another eight or ten steps that you have to take to get her
42:06her house now if you were then to completely forget about this woman she
42:12would completely vanish from your mind and you were to go years without really
42:17thinking about her and then somebody shows you a picture for her and you're
42:20like oh yeah that woman she was great yeah she used to live for right across
42:25the street then she had to move would that make any sense if you were to
42:30protest that you loved this woman she was the most necessary person in the
42:33whole universe to you the Sun arose and sat on your adoration for her and so on
42:38but she moved one house over and then you completely forgot about her you
42:42would understand that nobody would take your protestations of love or affection
42:45seriously at all right so what happened when I was de-platformed is I moved a
42:50website over I mean I still had free domain.com but I moved a website over so
42:56instead of being on YouTube I was on you know locals I was on bit shoot I was on
43:03a wide variety of other video platforms I was on D live and just Brighteon and
43:10Daily Motion I was just one website over right and about 95 to 97 percent of
43:17people who claimed to love me and I was wonderful and so essential for them when
43:21I went once website over in other words I was the love of their life I moved one
43:25house over 95 to 97 percent of people forgot about me now I know that in most
43:31people's minds this is like oh man he must be so bitter and I'm like I mean it
43:35was a bit of a surprise I suppose but it was incredibly liberating and I'm
43:40actually far happier now because I'm doing really core great philosophy
43:44rather than the current events which was you know I mean quite a roller coaster
43:49in many ways and became increasingly dangerous as rhetoric against me
43:54escalated to you know obviously try to provoke the crazies dangerous levels so
43:59when you say the world needs me I think you are not working with correct
44:05information I am in possession and it's been a really really fascinating
44:09fascinating thing to see so I'm in possession of information that you're
44:15not which is how many people truly care about what I do philosophically now
44:20there are some people who absolutely care about what I do and I appreciate
44:23the question and maybe you're one of them and so on but when you say the
44:26world needs you you don't have the data I'd say this without any hostility I'm
44:30just giving you the facts right you don't have the data that I have I have
44:35the most liberating data in the world which is that people who claimed to
44:40think that I was very important and very useful and very helpful and so on those
44:45people who claim to quote love what I do or love philosophy in the way that I
44:51practice it when I move one website over they just forgot about me completely and
44:55I say this again I know it's kind of incomprehensible to buy he must be
44:59really bitter that his audience abandoned him it's like no no no I'm
45:01thrilled I'm thrilled again it was a bit of a transition and so on but I'm
45:07I'm thrilled because people can forget about you you don't risk your life for
45:12them right so I just so you know what are good techniques to introduce such
45:18philosophy to people who have gone astray well unfortunately to bring
45:26people to philosophy is like trying to bring them to physical health so if
45:31there's some overweight smoker then to bring them to health you have to
45:36denormalize them being fat and smoking and they're going to go through massive
45:41amounts of unhappiness in the process of quitting smoking and losing weight and
45:46so philosophy when people have been led astray philosophy comes first as a
45:51significant agony in their lives it's very very painful to realize you've been
45:56lied to to realize that you have been only pretending to be good which is
46:00served evil and that the actual achievement of virtue is going to cause
46:03massive amounts of conflict and hostility and pain in your personal
46:07relationships you could be married to the wrong person you could be embedded
46:09in a family that's corrupt you could have friends who are decadent and
46:13wastrels and so on so I don't know man I mean maybe what you can do is if you
46:19have people who are pursuing unhealthy lifestyles right they don't exercise
46:23they don't eat well they don't get enough sunlight they don't you know they
46:27smoke or drink to access and so on which you know in drinking is pretty
46:31much any drink and in smoking is pretty much any cigarette in my humble and
46:35obviously amateur opinion so you have people who are pursuing unhealthy
46:38lifestyles oh well can you can you convince them to do something that is
46:43better for their health right well if you can get people to do things that are
46:49better for their health which is uncontroversial right somebody who's fat
46:53if they lose weight people are almost universally like hey good for you or
46:58well done and you know they get lots of praise and positivity it's better for
47:01their health you know they deal with the discomfort of perhaps hunger and so on
47:05but they get better mobility their clothes fit better and their joints hurt
47:10less and their back hurts less and they can climb stairs and and and so they
47:14have a generally positive experience pretty quickly whereas the happiness
47:19that philosophy can engender can take considerably longer to manifest although
47:23it tends to be absolutely beautiful when you get it but see if people are
47:28open to change for the better that is socially approved of but talking about
47:34virtue is a very very volatile thing all right I think I think we've had a good
47:41chitty chat let me just see if there's anything else what the heck are you
47:45meant to do actually do with Hegelian dialectic my head hurts yeah well of
47:49course the Hegelian dialectic is thesis antithesis synthesis right so the thesis
47:57is capitalism the antithesis is communism the synthesis is semi-socialist
48:03democracy and you're supposed to laugh at it honestly you're just supposed to
48:07laugh at it I mean okay so we're talking about the use of violence in society
48:13because it's about politics right the use of coercion so I would ask someone
48:17okay so a woman does not want to be raped a man wants to rape her because
48:23he's an evil son of a gun right so a woman does not want to be right a man
48:27wants to rape her so the thesis is don't rape me the antithesis is I want to and
48:32what is the synthesis what is the compromise there if I say I don't want
48:38you to I'm a diabetic and I don't want you to steal all my insulin right if I'm
48:42a diabetic I don't want you to steal my insulin because it's gonna really risk
48:45my health and life and you say well no I do want to steal all the insulin okay
48:49well what's the synthesis just steal half what does that mean what is the
48:53compromise I don't want you to poison me you want to poison me that's the thesis
48:59and an antithesis what is the synthesis half poison me I mean it is just a way
49:04of giving people an excuse to compromise with evil doers and it is promoted
49:11because it serves that end of course right who has solved this oh yeah who
49:15has solved the euthyphro dilemma so in Plato's dialogue euthyphro Socrates
49:21asks this basic question is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious or
49:28it is is it pious because it is loved by the gods which goes to the question of
49:32the Ten Commandments are the Ten Commandments virtuous because God tells
49:37God loves them and says that they're right in other words are they only
49:41virtuous because God says so or does God love the Ten Commandments because
49:45they are virtuous and God loves virtue now if we say that that which God
49:51commands is virtuous is only virtuous because God commands it then we're saying
49:55that virtue has no rational or objective definition and virtue is just whatever
49:58the most powerful person says it is which is pretty bad in the human context
50:03right it's the difference between a positive law and natural law and so
50:07positive law says that the good is the legal and natural law says that the good
50:12is independent of the law and the law has to serve that which is the good so
50:17there is no good answer to this question so if we say God commands us to be
50:25virtuous because God loves virtue that is independent of God's will then we
50:29should study that virtue rather than God's commandments if we say that God's
50:34commandments are virtuous because God is all-powerful and commands it then we're
50:37saying that the good is defined by those in power and that is very very bad for
50:42human society and leads to all kinds of terrible awful concentration camps and
50:46holocausts and holodomors and all kinds of terrible stuff so the answer of
50:50course is to work to define morality objectively and rationally as I have
50:54striven and succeeded in over the past close to 20 years so thank you so much
50:59for listening I really do appreciate these great questions keep them coming
51:02on Facebook you can find me at freedomain.locals.com you can join that community and there's a great
51:06community also at subscribestar.com.freedomain lots of love from up here I'll talk to you soon
51:12bye