Stefan Molyneux
  • 3 months ago
In this lecture, Stefan Molyneux examines the complex interplay between individual privacy rights and societal expectations. He raises important questions about how privacy concerns manifest, particularly in situations like mandatory checks for potential child abuse, while advocating for a balance between personal privacy and societal needs. Molyneux employs relatable analogies to depict how privacy affects employment and personal relationships, illustrating the risks of excessive privacy on opportunities and trust. He discusses how individuals often trade privacy for convenience in everyday interactions, emphasizing the economic repercussions tied to privacy choices in various industries. Ultimately, Molyneux urges a thoughtful approach to privacy, urging listeners to reflect on the long-term effects of their choices on social and professional dynamics.

GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND AUDIOBOOK!

https://peacefulparenting.com/

Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!

Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!

See you soon!

https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Transcript
00:00Well, good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well. I'm Stephen Molyneux from Free Domain.
00:05So, the question of privacy came up in the live stream. I just wanted to do a wee bit of a follow-up on that one, lad.
00:13And the question of privacy, people said, well, in your novel,
00:18I didn't like the fact that you had all of this invasion of privacy,
00:25that it was mandatory to get these scans for your kids to find out if they were abused and so on.
00:30And people didn't like the privacy. Now, I get, I get the privacy thing. Of course, right? Of course.
00:38But I think it's also really important to not go too far in that direction, which is sort of a pointless thing to say.
00:44Let me sort of frame that. It's like you're over-exaggerating. It's like, well, that's kind of by definition, right?
00:50So I want you to picture you're a hiring manager and someone wants a job.
00:56And let's say it's some high level job, requires a lot of skill, education, experience, expertise.
01:03And the person comes in and you say, can I see your resume?
01:09And they hand you a blank sheet of paper or a sheet of paper with everything blacked out. Right.
01:14Well, then you would say, well, no, I can see your education and your references and your experience and all kinds of stuff. Right.
01:22And if the person says, no, I'm going to keep that information private.
01:27That's fine. Then the person has exercised their right to privacy, but they won't get the job.
01:33If you meet a woman and you're both 35, let's say you meet a woman, you think she's nice and smart, funny, cute or whatever.
01:42And you talk with her and you say, hey, what's what's your name?
01:47And she says, nope, that's private. Again, she has the perfect right to stay private.
01:54People do not need to. They don't have a right for you to tell them your name.
02:00So she's perfectly private. However, it would probably be wise to not have a second date. Right.
02:07Or if you say, tell me a little bit about your life. Oh, my name is Lacey. OK, Lacey. Nice to meet you.
02:14Tell me a little bit about your life. No, that's private.
02:18If you really, really want to know if we have a good relationship five years after we married, I will tell you, I will, I will put it in a vault and you will get the combo five years after we married.
02:29Well, that might be a little bit too much privacy, wouldn't it?
02:32On the other hand, if you said to a woman. Yes, Lacey, nice to meet you.
02:38Be great if I could install a webcam in your shower. OK, but that's private. Right.
02:43So so that's that's too much. Even if you're married, don't install a webcam in the woman's shower. Right.
02:49That is some creepy Bates Motel owner. So privacy is interesting.
02:55We give up privacy a lot in order to function in the world.
03:00We give websites our credit card information. Right.
03:06And that's so we can have the convenience of buying things without mailing a check.
03:11If we mail the check, we wouldn't have to give out our credit card information.
03:14But we prefer the convenience of not having to mail a check.
03:17They prefer the convenience of not having the check and having to go cash it and verify it and then ship the stuff off as well and all that. Right.
03:24Having the check bounce, all that kind of stuff. So so we give our privacy convenient for convenience and economic efficiency all the time.
03:33I mean, imagine if there's some kid and and it's his birthday.
03:39He's a new kid at school. It's his birthday. And he says, I really want to have a birthday party.
03:44And you say, sounds great. Where is it? No, I'm not going to tell you.
03:48I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you my address because that's private.
03:53So I think we sort of understand. Right. So giving up privacy is kind of essential to be able to function in life and society.
04:04People who say this is Aristotelian mean, right.
04:07It's a bell curve. So people who say far too little about themselves. Right.
04:11So if you meet a woman and she has she's 40 or whatever and you say, can you tell me a little bit about your dating history?
04:20And she will say, no, no, I will not tell you anything about my dating history.
04:27Again, she's perfectly free to not tell you anything about her dating history. Right.
04:33Perfectly free to not say a thing. And you're perfectly free to make a decision based on that.
04:40So another thing is that if you are buying a house.
04:45And the price has dropped recently. Well, that's private information. Right.
04:52So maybe that for you. Right. And if you were to say, has the price changed?
04:56They could say the real estate agent or the owners could say, well, I'm not telling you that.
05:00I'm not telling you whether the price has changed or not. OK.
05:03And that's then they may never publish it. They may have just kept it completely private or something like that.
05:08OK, well, that's totally fine. You can keep your whether you pay your bills or not,
05:14whether you have outstanding loans, your credit score and so on.
05:17You could in a free society, you could opt out of all of that.
05:20Of course, and all that would happen is that you would end up having to pay more for borrowing money
05:27because people wouldn't have much of an example of whether you paid your bills back or not.
05:34So you're free, of course, to be as private as you want in a free society.
05:39However, you have to accept that people will assume that you are keeping private in some areas because the information is bad.
05:53So if you're dating a woman and with the intent of getting married, she's a young woman and she's she's a virgin.
06:00She will probably not keep that to herself. Right.
06:03She will say, I'm I've never I've never had sex before.
06:06I'm I'm a virgin and not any of this cheaty, cheaty stuff, but like genuinely not had sex before.
06:12Right. OK. So whereas if a woman refuses this, let me just have to do this exercise.
06:17Right. If a woman refuses to tell you anything about her sexual history. Right.
06:22What do you assume? See, remember, freedom is not freedom from consequences.
06:28You are perfectly free to not tell anyone about your job history.
06:33But that means that you won't get hired for anything but entry level jobs.
06:38You know, maybe you've got you want to get a job as a singer.
06:42Well, they're going to ask you to do an audition. You say, well, no, no, no. I want to keep my singing voice private.
06:46It's like, OK, then you won't get hired. It's a singer. Right. Understand. Right.
06:49So remember, a free freedom is fine, but you are not free to control the contents of other people's minds. Right.
06:58You are not free to control the contents of other people's minds,
07:02which means that you are not free to escape the consequences of suspicious privacy.
07:10I read I read an Internet article just out of curiosity many years ago called How to Disappear.
07:17You know, and it was like, you know, pay as much cash as possible.
07:22Don't be ostentatious. Don't play loud music. Don't do anything that draws attention to you.
07:27Don't have a loud car. Don't have a flashy car. Don't dress in a flashy way.
07:31Like all the things about like how to sort of blend in and fade into some man in a gray flannel suit, MPC background.
07:38Oh, yeah, that's fine. You can do that. Don't ask detailed questions.
07:42Don't get to know people that well. Like if you were, I don't know, on the run from the law or something.
07:46You really, really wanted to disappear. I was just I thought it was I thought it was interesting.
07:51I wasn't having any plans, but I thought it was interesting to read.
07:54I've always been sort of curious about that kind of stuff. What's life like on the lam?
07:58I don't mean like mint sauce, but like on the run. So you are free to be as private as you want.
08:05So, of course, in a free society, no one's going to force you to have a non-invasive,
08:11non-painful brain scan of your child to look for child abuse.
08:14But given that the economic advantages of doing that and having a healthy, happy child are so high,
08:20saying I'm not going to have my child checked for child abuse,
08:25I'm not going to have my child checked for the effects of child abuse.
08:29How many people are going to say that's really good?
08:34You have you have nothing but good motives about that.
08:37You have nothing but wonderful, warm hearted, good motives about all of that.
08:41Well, I think most people would say that if you don't want your child checked for symptoms of child abuse,
08:47that odds are you're abusing your child.
08:52If someone says, no, I'm not a smoker for some insurance, health insurance or life insurance,
08:57and someone says, no, I'm not a smoker. And then the insurance company says,
09:02well, we're going to take a swab in your mouth and look for presence of nicotine.
09:07And they say, no, that's invasive. Well, it's just spit, right?
09:10You can spit in a cup or I don't know, whatever.
09:12Or maybe even if they have to draw blood or whatever.
09:14So if you say I'm not a smoker, but you won't allow any verification of it, then they will simply say, well, OK,
09:19you're perfectly free to not spit into a cup and have us look for signs of nicotine.
09:25But if you don't give us that spit to check for nicotine,
09:29then we're going to assume that we're going to have to put you down as a smoker.
09:33But there are consequences.
09:34A woman's perfectly free to tell you nothing about her dating or sexual history or anything about her life.
09:40But odds are, you're probably not going to want to date her.
09:42You're perfectly free to hide everything about your work history,
09:44but you're not going to get jobs that require particular work history and education.
09:48You never have to tell anyone where you got educated.
09:50But if you got a good education and don't tell anyone, they will not assume that you have a good education.
09:54They will assume that you don't.
09:57So you are free to hide whatever you want, but there are consequences to that hiding.
10:04You can hide anything you want.
10:06If a woman is on a date and she's been on a couple of dates with you and you say,
10:11oh, let's go back to your place.
10:13And she says, I'm never going to tell you where I live.
10:16Never going to tell you where I live.
10:17Would you feel comfortable with that?
10:18Well, she's exercising privacy.
10:20So, again, it's all about choices and consequences.
10:23You can keep things private.
10:25That's perfectly a prerogative.
10:27But you cannot control how other people will perceive you keeping things private.
10:32And that's the important thing.
10:34So freedom for you is freedom for other people.
10:38You are free to keep anything you want private.
10:40Other people are free to infer as much negative stuff as they want from that reality.
10:47So just remember that.
10:48You can do anything you want, but you also cannot control how other people perceive whatever it is that you're doing.
10:55So I hope that makes sense.
10:57And, of course, I appreciate your time, care, attention, and thoughtfulness.
11:00Freedomain.com slash donate to help out Lechelle.
11:04I would most appreciate it.
11:05Thanks, guys.
11:06Bye.