If the neural weights of our values neurons is randomly initialized as by neural network back propagation does that mean we can get an ought from an is and that that is basically randomness from the total universe’s electromagnetic smog?
If you could go back in your life to when you were 17 and left school, what would you differently and why?
If we are merely the current iteration of our genes, what moral obligations do we have towards other iterations?
You did the best years ago ...the Christmas truce...it can't be beat
What is the nature of consciousness?
Where do thoughts come from?
Give those a shot.
Hey Stefan. I've been listening to and watching your content for 15 years now, and you have been a great source for all things philosophical. I am grateful for all the work you put into educating and informing others. In particular, as it pertains to the State.
My question is, do you believe we are, either in or approaching the modern equivalent to the enlightenment era, when humanity (or, at least a portion of humanity) will finally be getting an upgrade regarding knowing what it means to be a free human being?
Or, is it too early yet, and we have to go through something akin to the dark ages for awhile first?
Thanks for all you do. I hop you get the chance to answer my question.
Are human beings worth helping?
Is it really better to give than to receive?
When you back on YouTube?
Objective morality exists?
what are feelings exactly. if you're in the mood, same for time.
Why do some people think that life and creation itself could have been a random accident?
Thoughts on the following:
Humans aspire to gain wealth so they can skate on the backs of the fiscally enslaved.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
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If you could go back in your life to when you were 17 and left school, what would you differently and why?
If we are merely the current iteration of our genes, what moral obligations do we have towards other iterations?
You did the best years ago ...the Christmas truce...it can't be beat
What is the nature of consciousness?
Where do thoughts come from?
Give those a shot.
Hey Stefan. I've been listening to and watching your content for 15 years now, and you have been a great source for all things philosophical. I am grateful for all the work you put into educating and informing others. In particular, as it pertains to the State.
My question is, do you believe we are, either in or approaching the modern equivalent to the enlightenment era, when humanity (or, at least a portion of humanity) will finally be getting an upgrade regarding knowing what it means to be a free human being?
Or, is it too early yet, and we have to go through something akin to the dark ages for awhile first?
Thanks for all you do. I hop you get the chance to answer my question.
Are human beings worth helping?
Is it really better to give than to receive?
When you back on YouTube?
Objective morality exists?
what are feelings exactly. if you're in the mood, same for time.
Why do some people think that life and creation itself could have been a random accident?
Thoughts on the following:
Humans aspire to gain wealth so they can skate on the backs of the fiscally enslaved.
GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK!
https://peacefulparenting.com/
Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!
Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!
You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!
See you soon!
https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2025
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Good morning everybody, hope you're doing well.
00:02Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain.
00:03These are questions from the Book of Faces, the Facebook, Facebook, and you can check
00:09me out there.
00:11And the questions go something like this.
00:13If the neural weights of our values, neurons, is randomly initialized as by neural network
00:19backpropagation, does that mean we can get an ought from an is, and that that is basically
00:25randomness from the total universe's electromagnetic smog?
00:31That is a juicy bit of kaleidoscopic syllables, man.
00:36That is a thought cloud of random rotation.
00:40Let's take it again.
00:43If the neural weights of our values, neurons, okay, so this is an empathy thing, right?
00:52This is an empathy thing.
00:53This is really important.
00:54So look, I appreciate the question.
00:55I'm just trying to give you some feedback here to help you, help you in your life.
01:01Somebody help me.
01:03So empathy is when you sympathize with somebody on the receiving end of your communication.
01:11So for instance, are you trying to sound smart by making other people feel dumb?
01:19So that's exploit, right?
01:21That's not kind.
01:22That's not nice.
01:23That's not helpful.
01:24That's not considerate.
01:25And again, I'm not saying you're not this in general, I'm just talking about this particular
01:28instance of communication.
01:31So I don't know if this is probably a joke, but if it's not, if this is serious, and this
01:37is a problem in the world as a whole.
01:39So jargon and acronyms, and I had a conflict with the guy on Telegram the other day who
01:45used an acronym that even he didn't know what it was.
01:49So this is just empathy.
01:51This is just empathy, which is, what is it like to be on the receiving end of your communication?
01:57Ah, you see, big question, big, deep question.
02:01You can't have a relationship that of any kind of quality, you can have proximity and
02:08semen and syllable exchanges, but you can't have a relationship if you don't ask yourself
02:14this basic question.
02:15What is it like to be on the receiving end of my communication?
02:22This was related to a question I got not too long ago about how do you tell if somebody's
02:28emotionally mature?
02:29Well, they recognize self and other, they recognize that it is their responsibility
02:35to be clear in their communication, and they have a filter between stimulus and response.
02:40Like you know, people who just get triggered and just get angry, they don't have a filter
02:43between stimulus and response.
02:47So the person who's writing this, yeah, I mean, this could be a joke or something like
02:52that, but this is quite common, so even if it's a joke, it's a good learning tool.
02:57What is it like to be on the receiving end of your communication?
03:03So you would read this back, and I do this when I'm writing, when I'm communicating live,
03:09it's a little tougher, but I'm thinking about it quite a bit, but certainly when I write,
03:13what I do is I say, what is it like to be on the receiving end of this communication
03:20with no knowledge of the subject in particular?
03:24Like I've got a book called Essential Philosophy, and of course all of my books are written
03:29to be comprehensible by non-technical people.
03:32So in this kind of work, you say, what is it like to be on the receiving end of this
03:38communication?
03:39Can somebody understand what it is that I'm doing?
03:42My life was forever changed when I read somewhere that Socrates never used the word epistemology.
03:49He spoke in the common parlance, as did Jesus, and he spoke in the common parlance.
03:55So I've tried to invent as few words as possible.
03:58I've made a couple of joke words and a couple of acronyms for fun, but I try not to invent
04:03any new language because you know that it's an old Emerson quote, I think, never trust
04:08any enterprise that requires the purchase of new clothes, never trust any philosophy
04:12that requires the invention of new words.
04:15So that is something.
04:17So when you have empathy, you put yourself outside of yourself and you say, what is it
04:24like to be on the receiving end of me?
04:27What is it like to be on the receiving end of me?
04:29Now, we're born with this capacity, we're born with this as a whole, but what happens
04:34for the most part is that if you have hostile parents, empathizing with them is a kind of
04:40suicide.
04:41So if you have hostile parents who look at you coldly or with contempt or with hatred,
04:46even at times who manipulate, who bully, who don't see you for who you are, if you empathize
04:52with them, you disappear.
04:54In other words, to empathize with people who hate you is to end up hating yourself.
04:58So we have to shut off this empathy and when we are exquisitely punished for the general
05:04accidents of youth, what happens is we start developing this baffle gap.
05:10So a lot of people end up communicating in life as if they're being cross-examined by
05:18a hostile prosecutor who's really out to get them and on trial for their life.
05:24So that's how a lot of people communicate.
05:27And that's because they're being cross-examined and they're going to be horrendously punished
05:35or neglected or avoided or ostracized or something like that.
05:41They're being horrendously punished if they give clear and cogent answers.
05:46So I'll give you sort of an example from when I was a kid.
05:50So when I was a kid, I could always be quote gotten for something or other.
05:55And the one that I remember most vividly is the flashlight.
05:59So I would borrow a flashlight or I would use a flashlight, do something fun at night
06:04with friends, maybe in the woods, explore, build a fort or something and I'd have a flashlight.
06:11And then a couple of days later, this is when I was like maybe seven or eight years old,
06:17a couple of days later I'd suddenly wake up and be like, hey, where's that flashlight?
06:23And then I would have this, ooh.
06:25Now of course, as kids, you lose stuff, right?
06:28It's natural, it's inevitable, it's not a huge issue and stuff doesn't matter relative
06:32to people.
06:33So all the people who sacrifice relationships for stuff, I want them to end up alone with
06:40a bunch of ornaments that can't hug them when they age out.
06:45So I would have this uneasiness from time to time like, ooh, well, I can't afford to
06:52get a new flashlight.
06:55And in the 70s in England when I was a kid, there were power outages because there was
07:01a big coal strike and all this kind of stuff.
07:03So in the power outages, my mother would look for a flashlight, ooh, right?
07:11And unfortunately, I did have the kind of sibling who would say, oh, I think Steph had
07:15it last, right?
07:16To be helpful.
07:17And so if I was questioned about the flashlight, I couldn't say I never had it because I would
07:26have said, I'm going to the woods and whatever, what do you have with you?
07:30Oh, it's a flashlight.
07:31Bring it back, right?
07:32So I couldn't say I never had it because then I'd be punished for lying.
07:36I couldn't say I had it because then I'd be punished for losing it.
07:39So I would have to just create a big kaleidoscopic ort cloud of confusing syllables to just try
07:47and baffle gab into getting away with stuff.
07:49And you know, people displead the fifth or whatever it is, right?
07:51People do this with lawyers or in court quite a bit, right?
07:55So if someone says, you did X and you never did X, you can't say they're lying because
08:00then they could sue you for defamation, but you could say, my memory of the event is different.
08:08So when I see this kind of baffle gab language, what I see is, and I see this with great sympathy,
08:13really, really great sympathy.
08:15When I see this kind of baffle gab language, what I see is somebody who was both punished
08:22for telling the truth, right?
08:25I had the flashlight.
08:27And also punished for lying.
08:28I didn't have the flashlight.
08:30And if you're punished for the truth and you're punished for lying, then you end up having
08:36to, you're forced to say nothing really at all.
08:39So I mean, you see this all the time in academia.
08:42I did a whole parody of this decades ago in a novel I wrote called The God of Atheists,
08:48which you should really check out.
08:50People have created online, this was back in the day, a postmodern generator, like just
08:55generating nonsense language.
08:57So nonsense language is when you're punished for telling the truth and you're punished
09:02for lying, then you end up writing Kafka-esque syllables that nobody can really understand
09:09because you're just hoping that people get lost in the fog of what you say and give up
09:13the chase.
09:14Right?
09:15This is like a squid who's being chased, will release a cloud of ink so that it can hide,
09:20right?
09:21The cloud of ink is academic language and, you know, this, I have to pad out my essay,
09:26so just make up a bunch of nonsense and so on, right?
09:29So when you look at a sentence like, if the neural weights of our values neurons is randomly
09:36initialized, as by neural network backpropagation, does that mean we can get an or from an is?
09:43And that is basically randomness from the total universe's electromagnetic smog.
09:49So neural weights is plural.
09:52Neural weights of our values neurons is, right?
09:54So neural weights is plural, is singular.
09:58Randomly initialized, I don't even know what that means, as by neural network backpropagation,
10:03don't know what that means, does that mean we can get an or from an is?
10:07And that is basically randomness from the total universe's electromagnetic smog.
10:11So empathy, and this is a cry for help, honestly, I mean, I'm just interpreting this as a cry
10:16for help, and again, I say this with sympathy.
10:18This is somebody who was punished for lying and punished for telling the truth and has
10:22developed an exquisite random syllable generator that is an appeal to insecurity, right?
10:30So am I supposed to know what neural network backpropagation, am I supposed to know what
10:36that means?
10:37Is that common knowledge?
10:38Have I just sort of missed out on something that's obvious?
10:43You know, this kind of stuff, right?
10:46Well, so then you have to pretend that you know what they're talking about, and you both
10:49end up in this nonsense language as a whole, right?
10:54So this is meaningless drivel.
10:58And again, I say this with sympathy, I'm not trying to insult, it is meaningless drivel.
11:03And there may be thoughts in there.
11:05But when you communicate, you have a responsibility to be clear.
11:12And it's fine if you can ask as many complicated questions as you like.
11:17But if you don't have empathy to the point where you say to me, or you say to yourself
11:24regarding, well, I'm communicating with Steph, I shouldn't assume that he knows what I'm
11:28talking about.
11:30So I'm going to be as clear as possible.
11:32If the question really means something to you, then you will make it as clear as possible.
11:39So for instance, if you have a great desire to write a beautiful poem, and then you write
11:47it on a white background in white font, and quote, print it out, which is to just have
11:52a blank sheet of paper, and then you hand it to me, then we are involved in something
11:57quite bizarre.
11:59So if the question was really important to you, if the question is really important to
12:02you, then you have to make sure that I know what you're talking about.
12:06Now if you don't make sure I know what you're talking about, as much as possible, I could
12:12ask some clarifying questions, but this person hasn't even made the slightest effort to have
12:16me understand what he, I assume he, is talking about.
12:22So clearly the question isn't that important.
12:25If the question isn't important enough for you to be clear, then it's not really important
12:29enough for me to answer.
12:31I mean, we understand that, right?
12:34Now the other thing that I think of when I see this kind of polysyllabic and dimensional
12:41baffle gab is I say, okay, so this person lacks empathy because they're not putting
12:46themselves on the receiving end of their communication and seeing if it's clear, right?
12:51Not putting themselves on the receiving end of their communication for reasons of child
12:54abuse and trauma, which I sympathize with.
12:57So I do not want to hand this person the power of an answer if they lack empathy, because
13:04if they lack empathy, they cannot use it for good, right?
13:09There's an old puzzle in Greek philosophy where somebody says, well, if you borrow something
13:16and somebody asks for it back, should you give it back?
13:19And the answer, of course, is, well, yes, if you borrow something from someone and they
13:23ask for it back, you should absolutely give it back.
13:25And then, you know, what if you've borrowed an axe from your friend and your friend comes
13:30to you and says, give me your axe.
13:33I want to chop my wife into tiny little pieces, give me an axe, I want to chop my wife into
13:38tiny little pieces.
13:39Well, you wouldn't want to give him the axe back, right?
13:43So saying, well, you should always return things that you have borrowed is complicated,
13:48right?
13:49And then it's a fair question and so on.
13:52Although, of course, it's a real edge case, right?
13:54It's something that nobody, I mean, nobody will ever deal with that in their life as
13:59a whole.
14:00And if you have a friend who wants to murder his wife, your issue is not that you borrowed
14:04something from him, the issue is that you have people in your life who are this terrible
14:12or this deranged or this murderous or this evil and the whole issue then is your moral
14:16judgment as a whole and so on, right?
14:18So I don't want to give power-ups to people who lack empathy.
14:27So let's say I give an answer to this question, I sort of puzzle it out, give an answer to
14:31this question.
14:32Well, the other thing too is that when people give you baffle gabs and you answer the question,
14:35they'll always say, well, you didn't get to the core of my question, you didn't answer
14:39my question, you just danced around it, right?
14:41So when people give you questions that are impossible to answer, there's a reason for
14:45that and that is because they want to tell you that you got it wrong.
14:48You didn't understand them, you didn't respond, you weren't clear.
14:53But if, let's say, I did puzzle it out and give them a great answer around morality,
14:57then I would be giving deep moral understanding to someone who lacks empathy, which means
15:01they'll probably use it not for good, to put it mildly.
15:05So it's a very interesting thing.
15:07It's a general, you know, read it as if you're not you, it's basic empathy.
15:12Read what you write as if you're not you.
15:17And that's an interesting and difficult thing to go through because it requires you to put
15:23yourself outside of yourself and view yourself critically, which of course, if you were verbally
15:28abused in particular as a child, putting yourself outside yourself and being critical of yourself
15:35feels like you're inhabiting the skin, you're wearing the skin suit of an abuser.
15:40And that's painful and disorienting for a lot of people for reasons I, again, I completely
15:45sympathize with.
15:47But I think when I look for empathy, or I look for virtue, or I look for clarity, people
15:54who are unclear, and you know, I've been in philosophy, you know, 40 plus years, 43 years,
16:01so I'm coming on for a half century in philosophy.
16:06I understand quite a bit about philosophy, and if I don't understand something, it's
16:11not because I lack knowledge, because if I've been in a field for almost 50 years,
16:19and I don't understand what you're saying, I'm not going to assume it's my fault.
16:24It is your job to be clear.
16:27Now, again, if you were raised with verbal abuse, it is terrifying and painful to be
16:31clear, because to be clear is to be punished.
16:37To be clear is to be punished.
16:39I took the flashlight and lost it.
16:42I did not take the flashlight.
16:44Both things get you punished.
16:45Both the truth and a lie will get you punished.
16:48So you have to fog and confuse.
16:53If you could go back in your life to when you were 17 and left school, what would you
16:58do differently and why?
16:59You know, I find these kinds of exercises both useless and annoying.
17:07Now this doesn't mean that they are useless and annoying, I'm just telling you how I find
17:11them.
17:12You can't go back in time.
17:14So all it's doing is trying to stimulate regret or self-recrimination about things that cannot
17:22be changed.
17:24Now I understand it's a useful exercise, and this is what the first video I ever did was
17:28live like you're dying, which is, you know, go to the end of your life, look back in time,
17:35and you would be happy to do what you're doing now.
17:38What decisions can you make that's going to make the end of your life better?
17:41I get that, you know, project yourself forward in time.
17:44But when you say to people, what would you have done differently in the past, you are
17:48inviting them to regret and self-recrimination.
17:51So I will say that in general, I've tried to make the best decisions based on the knowledge
17:57that I had, and I've always tried to reference philosophy, I've always tried to improve my
18:01moral status and station, and of course I've made mistakes.
18:05I mean, to live a life without making mistakes is to live a pathetically paralyzed life,
18:12which is the biggest mistake of all, right?
18:16If you play baseball, you will miss hitting the ball, and the only way to avoid missing
18:21the ball is to not play baseball, which is to not even have that experience of fun and
18:26camaraderie and teamwork and exercise, right?
18:29So I certainly was very fortunate to get exposed to philosophy at a young age, which has really
18:34helped guide me to a better and better place in life.
18:38So when people say, well, what would you do differently if you could go back?
18:41Well, first of all, you can't go back, you can't go back.
18:44And it is unfair to say that if I were to go back 41 years to when I was 17, with all
18:52the knowledge I have now, that would be bizarre, because it's too much power for a mere 17-year-old
19:00brain, right?
19:01Things have to evolve.
19:04For me, it's like saying, when somebody is 18, saying, would you like to have been as
19:10tall as you are at 18 when you were 2 years old?
19:15Well, no, that would be an indication of some severe hormonal or growth hormone dysfunction,
19:21like you'd be dying or dead, right?
19:24So it is an invitation to go back and say, oh, I shouldn't have done this, or I should
19:30have done that, or I wish I'd done this.
19:31It's a way of inviting regret and self-incrimination.
19:36Do I have regrets?
19:37Yeah, I've got a couple of regrets.
19:38But when I go back in time and I put myself with empathy at the time that I was making
19:43those decisions, I didn't have the knowledge to make better decisions.
19:47I did not have the knowledge to make better decisions.
19:51So I beat my head against the wall of art, the art world, for some time, without realizing
19:56that it had been largely taken over by socialists and communists to program the general population
20:01to accept tyranny.
20:03It was no longer about exploring the human condition or anything like that.
20:07It was just about propaganda.
20:09I could have guessed this with, you know, the farm show and the focus on Boto Brecht
20:14and so on, right?
20:16But yes, it was all about depression and exploitation and brutality and loss and madness.
20:23And it was just about carving down depressing and lowering the human spirit into an early
20:28grave of softly soul-sucking syllables.
20:33Now if I had gone back and learned all of that, I might have been overwhelmed by how
20:38much power crazy people have in society, and I might have been too depressed to do much
20:43with my life.
20:45So it's sort of like saying, and I honestly, I mean, this is without a shred of vanity.
20:53I'm just telling you my direct experience of my life.
20:55I could not picture being in a better position in my life as a whole.
20:59I could not.
21:00I could not.
21:01I mean, if someone had said to me when I was 17, what was it, 17, the guy was saying, right?
21:07If somebody had said to me when I was 17, here's what your life is going to be like
21:12when you are 58, right?
21:14Let's say someone had gone forward, right?
21:15Here's what your life's going to be like, Steph, when you're 58.
21:18I'd be like, damn, wait, I got a wonderful wife.
21:21I got a really happy marriage.
21:22I've got a great relationship with my child.
21:25I have good friends.
21:26I have the most meaningful work known to man.
21:29I can pay my bills.
21:31Like I would have been like, that's fantastic, right?
21:36So for me, I felt like I won the gold.
21:39I mean, I earned the gold.
21:40I fought hard for the gold, but honestly, I'm just telling you straight up, right?
21:44For me, I won the gold.
21:46Now if someone were to go say to Michael Phelps, I think one of the most successful athletes
21:51or whoever, right?
21:53Simone Biles or Wayne Gretzky, I think was the best athlete of all time because he was
21:58further ahead of number two than any other athlete.
22:03So if you go to an athlete who's won the gold, and then you were to say to that athlete,
22:11well, how would you have trained differently?
22:13I'd be like, do you see this gold?
22:15I mean, do you see this gold medal?
22:18You see these world records?
22:20I mean, I'm not trying to brag or anything like that because look, my life has certainly
22:25had its ups and downs and I get all of that, but at least where I've landed is great.
22:31There's not much that I would do to change or improve it.
22:35So when people say, well, you're a great athlete who's won a whole bunch of gold medals, how
22:43would you have trained differently?
22:44It's like, I don't really know.
22:47It doesn't really make any sense to me.
22:50And of course, not knowing what I know now is what got me here.
22:55So I would not go back and change anything because it's that ripple effect, the butterfly
22:59effect.
23:00If I change something, then I might change where I've ended up, which I wouldn't want
23:04to do.
23:05So, all right.
23:06If we are merely the current iteration of our genes, what moral obligations do we have
23:09towards other iterations?
23:12This is unclear, right?
23:14If we are merely the current iteration of our genes, what moral obligations do we have
23:18towards other iterations?
23:21So it's this sort of genetic in-group preference.
23:23I mean, there is baked into our systems.
23:25I mean, we prefer our own children to other people's children as a whole, right?
23:31I mean, most people, if you could only save your child or some stranger's child, you will
23:35save your child.
23:36That's kind of baked into us.
23:38So that's all creatures, it's not a human thing.
23:41So what obligations?
23:45So in general, you will transfer your resources to your children—time, money, energy, focus,
23:56attention, resources.
23:58So in general, you will transfer resources to your children, so your property is devoted
24:05towards your children.
24:07But what you owe to people who you're not related to, you may owe not morally, but from
24:14a sort of instinctual obligation love standpoint—I mean, morally, you owe your children, right?
24:19Just about everything.
24:20But what happens is you owe your children just about everything.
24:26You owe—I mean, you'll feel probably a lot of blood loyalty to your family as a whole.
24:32Now with regards to strangers, you owe them moral respect.
24:37You owe them the non-aggression principle, and you owe them a respect for their property.
24:42So you owe your children the transfer of your property, you owe strangers respect for
24:45their property, if they respect your property, right?
24:48So hopefully that makes sense.
24:51You did your best work years ago, the Christmas truce, it can't be beat.
24:55Yeah, I mean, that's always an interesting question for me, which is, you know, some
25:01of my work was sort of very big and very famous.
25:04Would I like it if I was still producing this sort of big famous work and so on?
25:11I mean, that's an interesting question.
25:12I very much enjoy the shows that I'm doing.
25:15I very much enjoy the show that I'm doing now, of course.
25:19So I very much enjoy the fact that I continue to generate new ideas and arguments, perspectives
25:26and approaches, even in my 43rd year of philosophy.
25:31That's pretty cool.
25:32But if you look at, you know, like the band Queen ended up teaming up with a couple of
25:37different singers.
25:38They did some stuff with George Michael, they did stuff with, oh, gosh, what was the guy
25:44from All Right Now?
25:46And then they did Adam Lambert and so on, but never really produced any new songs of
25:50note.
25:51You know, when was the last time Paul McCartney or Sting or Eric Clapton or like, and fine,
25:57you know, no issue, but when was the last time they produced good creative new work?
26:00Well, I'm still, for me, producing good creative new work that I'm satisfied with and happy
26:05with and excited about and enjoy producing.
26:09So I think that's pretty good.
26:11That's pretty good.
26:13But yeah, for sure, some people will prefer what I did years ago and some people will
26:17prefer what I do now.
26:18So what is the nature of consciousness?
26:21Where do thoughts come from?
26:23Give those a shot.
26:24So the word nature is something that most people haven't thought through.
26:31So what is the nature of consciousness?
26:34Does that mean, what is the definition of consciousness?
26:36Well, the definition of human consciousness is our capacity to form abstract ideals, to
26:45form or derive.
26:46It's an old question, like, are numbers invented or created or discovered?
26:50Well, numbers are identified, right?
26:53Now, numbers are defined, right?
26:55You've got three coconuts.
26:56There are three disparate things that you're identifying with the number three.
26:59And then you can take that concept of number three and say, oh, there are three clouds
27:02in the sky or there are three birds in the air.
27:05And these are all accurate things.
27:07So they are defined, numbers are defined.
27:10So our capacity to create abstract definitions is the definition of our consciousness as
27:14opposed to, you know, like they've taught sign language to monkeys for like 50, 60 years.
27:20Monkeys have never once asked a question and they certainly haven't defined anything abstract
27:25and universal.
27:26So our capacity to create, to accurately create and identify universal concepts is foundational
27:33to our consciousness.
27:34But when you say, what's the nature of consciousness?
27:36I don't know what you mean by nature.
27:38Is it the definition?
27:39Is it the process?
27:40Is the physical substrate?
27:41Is it the subjective experience or whatever it is, right?
27:44So if somebody, again, and by nature, I mean, right?
27:48So if somebody says, what is the nature of consciousness, again, this is, if I answer
27:53based upon the subjective experience, they say, but that's not what I was referring to.
27:55I was referring to the physical substrata, like the biology of it.
27:59And if I answer the biology, they'll say, well, it's something else.
28:02So I don't generally respond to undefined questions, either confusing ones like the
28:10first or undefined questions as a whole, because it's a trap.
28:16And if people can't be bothered to define their terms, why would I be bothered to answer
28:20the question?
28:22Where do thoughts come from?
28:23Well, thoughts come from the brain, because there are no thoughts that exist outside of
28:27the brain.
28:28So I'm not really sure what that means.
28:29All right.
28:30Let's do one or two more.
28:32Hey, Steph.
28:33I've been listening to and watching your content for 15 years now, and you've been a great
28:37source for all things philosophical.
28:38I'm grateful for all the work you put into educating and informing others, in particular,
28:43as it pertains to the state.
28:44My question is, do you believe we are either in or approaching the modern equivalent to
28:48the Enlightenment era when humanity, or at least a portion of humanity, will finally
28:51be getting an upgrade regarding knowing what it means to be a free human being?
28:55Or is it too early yet, and we have to go through something akin to the Dark Ages for
28:58a while first?
28:59Thanks for all you do.
29:01I hope you get the chance to answer my question.
29:03See, again, an upgrade regarding knowledge, what it means to be a free human being.
29:08Don't know what that means.
29:10So are things going to get better, or are things going to get worse?
29:14Well, we act in optimism, we plan in pessimism.
29:20We act in optimism, we plan in pessimism.
29:24So we spend money that we make because we need to, it'll make us happy, there's things
29:31that we buy that are of value, so we act in optimism.
29:34This will make me happy, this is a good choice, I'm going to ask this girl out because I think
29:38she'll say yes, she might say yes, I'm going to apply for this job that I want because
29:42I think I might get it.
29:43So we act in optimism, but in long-term planning, we have to be pessimistic, and this is just
29:49a culture that comes from the cold, and it's a good rational thing.
29:54So I think of life insurance, so we act as if we're not going to die today, but we have
29:58life insurance today and not tomorrow because we might die today.
30:02So we go out and make money, we spend some money, and then we say, well, when it comes
30:07to getting old, I might live a long time and I won't have enough money.
30:11So we plant in the summer, and we harvest in the fall or whatever.
30:16We do all of that, optimism, planting works, we're going to get crops and plants, and
30:20we do that because we're pessimistic about our chances of surviving the winter without
30:24a lot of extra food.
30:26So I act in optimism, and I plan in pessimism.
30:31I don't know what's going to happen because there's too many unknowns, right?
30:35So who would have known, who would have imagined, who would have guessed that, say, Elon Musk
30:42would buy Twitter and turn it into a relative free speech haven?
30:47And thus, there's this ripple effect where now Mark Zuckerberg is saying, oh yeah, no,
30:51we've gone way too censorious, the fact checkers are bad, we're going to replace them with
30:54community notes because Trump got elected and he's losing business to Twitter or X,
31:00and so Facebook and Instagram are going to get the ball clamps of bluehead censorship
31:07release to some degree and so on.
31:10Because, you know, I mean, I don't particularly believe the guy has any principles, but he
31:14can wet finger the wind and see what's coming down the pipe, to mix my metaphors.
31:20So it's too unknown.
31:22It's just too unknown.
31:24All the stuff that I was talking about, you know, 10, 15 or more years ago is finally
31:29coming to the mainstream with, of course, very little acknowledgement that I was talking
31:33about a long time ago.
31:35So who would have guessed?
31:37I mean, you can't guess, oh, well, you know, what's going to happen is a free speech absolutist
31:40or very close to a free speech absolutist is going to buy and liberate Twitter and so
31:46on, right?
31:47Which, you know, is part of Elon's business genius, right?
31:50Because he spent $44 billion on Twitter, but how much has he made from free speech?
31:56And how much does he expect to make or to continue to make?
31:58And I'm not just talking financially because it's not just about the money, far from it,
32:02from the election of Trump, right?
32:04So it was a very, very sound investment.
32:06So yeah, act in optimism, plan in pessimism.
32:12There's really no better way to live.
32:15All right, I mean, you put your seatbelt on, right?
32:19You wear a bike helmet.
32:20You don't, you go out and driving not with the anticipation of crashing, but you know
32:24that you might, right?
32:25So you go out on your bike with the anticipation of not crashing, but you wear a helmet, right?
32:32So you plan in optimism, I'm going to go out and enjoy my bike ride and go drive somewhere.
32:36You plan and you act in optimism, you plan in pessimism, right?
32:39All right.
32:40All right.
32:41So Corinthians, that's a big one.
32:43I might do that one separately.
32:46Are human beings worth helping?
32:48So again, this is a undefined question and it's a trap, right?
32:54So if you say human beings are worth helping, then you have to help everyone at all times
32:58and all circumstances, no matter what, which is impossible.
33:00So you can't win.
33:01If you say, well, no, human beings aren't worth helping, then you're cold hearted and
33:05blah, blah, blah.
33:06So this is just a, everything that is ill-defined is a trap, right?
33:09And just be very wary of people who, right?
33:12If your boss doesn't give you clear markers about how he's going to know whether you're
33:15a good or bad employee, then it's a trap, right?
33:18Are human beings worth helping?
33:19I don't know.
33:22Are human beings worth helping by definition?
33:25In other words, should all human beings be helped?
33:28Well, that's just a logical contradiction.
33:31Because if all human beings should be on the receiving end of being helped, then who on
33:35earth is providing the helping?
33:37It's asymmetric, right?
33:39It's like saying all human beings should receive a bag of gold.
33:44Okay, well, who's digging up the gold, putting it in the bag and giving it to them?
33:48Well, whoever's doing that is not getting, right?
33:50And you have to have the gold in order to give the gold.
33:52So it's, if you say, are human beings worth helping?
33:55If you're saying the definition of the human being is to be helped, well, then that's a
33:59contradictory definition because you require human beings to help and you can't to be helped,
34:04you can't be in the state of being helped and helping at the same time.
34:06So it's just a logical contradiction.
34:09Is it really better to give than to receive?
34:11That's a false dichotomy.
34:13When you give, you receive.
34:15When you give to people who are virtuous and you give to people who you love, you receive
34:20virtue, mutual support and love in return.
34:23So in the best relationships, there's no dichotomy between giving and receiving.
34:28When are you back on YouTube?
34:29I've still been, to my knowledge, so it's not really up to me.
34:32Objective morality exists.
34:34Nope.
34:35Mathematical numbers don't exist, but that doesn't mean they don't describe real things
34:37in reality.
34:38The scientific method doesn't exist.
34:40That doesn't mean that it doesn't describe real things in reality, right?
34:45The law of gravity doesn't exist.
34:46That doesn't mean that you should jump off a building, right?
34:50What are feelings exactly?
34:51If you're in the mood, same for time.
34:54What are feelings exactly?
34:55Right?
34:56See, again, that's a trap.
34:58That's a trap.
34:59Feelings in general are instinctual rapid-fire evaluations of situations or possibilities
35:08that through your value system and through your instincts, some of which is independent
35:12of your value system, feelings are internally generated sense responses and evaluations
35:20of good for me or bad for me, right?
35:22So if a drug addict finds a bag of drugs that he can snort or smoke, then he's very happy
35:31because it's good for him with regards to satisfying his addiction.
35:35It's bad for him, of course, in terms of health and happiness and well-being in the long run,
35:39so he feels joy.
35:40Somebody plays the lottery, wins a million dollars, he feels joy, even though it may
35:43end up being completely destructive for him, because his emotions evaluate that as good
35:48for him in the moment, right?
35:50If a man is devoted to some girl and she leaves him, then he feels sorrow because his emotions
35:55experience that as bad for him, even though it may end up being good for him in the long
36:00run, right?
36:01So they are instinctual inner sense responses to good for me or bad for me, and these will
36:08change based upon your values, at least to some degree.
36:11Why do some people think that life and creation itself could have been a random accident?
36:16Well, again, this is ill-defined.
36:20So random is a human concept.
36:24Accident is a human concept, right?
36:27So if I slip and fall down a mountain because I'm being careless or just do it, whatever,
36:33that's an accident, right?
36:34I don't want to do it.
36:35It's not something I willed or wanted.
36:37I may have been careless, but I didn't want that.
36:39So that's an accident.
36:40If, you know, La Palma style, the side of the mountain slides into the sea, that's called
36:45a disaster, but only for human beings.
36:48It's not a disaster for the mountain.
36:49The mountain doesn't care.
36:50It has no consciousness, no preferences, no senses, no nerves, no emotions.
36:55The sea doesn't care.
36:56The tsunami is bad for the fishing villages it lands on, but the water doesn't care if
37:02it's high or low, up or down, back or forward, right?
37:04So accident and random are human concepts.
37:09I mean, there's no such thing as random in nature.
37:11Even if things happen, quote, randomly, without human beings there would be nobody to evaluate
37:15it as random.
37:17It wouldn't be perceived as random, right?
37:21I mean, some waterfall, it may feel like the water droplets kind of land randomly because
37:26there are too many variables to figure out what's going on, and each affects each other.
37:31If you look at the path of a water molecule, it's going to be impossible to predict in
37:35any great detail, right, the evaporation and condensation and rain and precipitation.
37:40But it's not random.
37:42It's just, it's impossible for humans to predict because the variables are too great.
37:46But it's not random, and it's not an accident.
37:50Random and accident are human concepts.
37:52So creation itself cannot have been a random accident.
37:56If I don't, you know, I'm not sure what the status is of the Big Bang I gave up on physics
38:00once I realized that string theory was a largely completely unproductive money-grubbing scam
38:04from white coats pillaging taxpayers because they're too nerdy to use force directly.
38:11So random accident, it's meaningless.
38:14When you talk about, if the Big Bang is a thing, right, that the universe exploded from
38:19an infinitesimally small point, it's not random, neither is it an accident.
38:22It's just a physical process.
38:24If there's a mountain slide because it's raining too much, it's not an accident because it's
38:33just a physical process, right?
38:36If you have dominoes, you may not know exactly, you won't know exactly where the dominoes
38:39are going to fall.
38:40But the only concept that that's somewhat randomized, that's a human concept.
38:44The physics don't matter, right?
38:47Thoughts on the following.
38:48Humans aspire to gain wealth so they can skate on the backs of the fiscally enslaved.
38:54Humans aspire to gain wealth so they can skate on the backs of the fiscally enslaved.
38:57Yeah, I mean, again, that's just a big baffle-gabby nonsense stuff.
39:01Are you saying that everyone who desires to gain wealth does it because they're enslaving
39:07others?
39:08So that's old school, right?
39:09That's old school.
39:11And understand that the zero-sum game, like if you get more, I get less, if I get more,
39:16you get less, comes from dysfunctional sibling relationships, right?
39:21So if the parents put out a pie and there are ten children and there's only one pie,
39:28then if one child gets more, the other children have to get less.
39:32The idea of relationships multiplying positivities is only in functional moral relationships,
39:38right?
39:39My wife and I's lives are immeasurably better by having each other in our lives, right?
39:45That's just fact's reality, right?
39:48So it's not like something is subtracted from my life by having my child or my wife in my
39:55life.
39:56Not the case at all.
39:58So the idea that you have more and therefore someone else has to have less is a dysfunctional
40:05family and dysfunctional sibling relationship.
40:08It is looking at, they call it literally a piece of the pie, right?
40:12A piece of the pie and that in a family, as a child, resources are provided and you cannot
40:21create or make your own.
40:23So if you say to a millionaire chef, right, well your pie is limited, you can only have
40:31a certain amount of pie, he'd say, well I can afford to buy and bake more pie than I
40:35could possibly eat.
40:36I'm a millionaire and I'm a baker, so I can afford to create more pies than I could possibly
40:45eat.
40:46So there is no practical limitation on my pie eating.
40:51I could make 10 pies a day and I could, but I would, you know, I would die eating whatever
40:56that many pies.
40:57So for a millionaire chef, a millionaire pie maker, saying, well there's only a limited
41:04amount of pies, it's like, there's not.
41:06So in a situation of adulthood choice and abundance, then you can have as much as you
41:12want.
41:13In a situation of childhood dysfunction and scarcity, it's a zero-sum game.
41:17So I understand all of that.
41:18Well, thank you everyone so much for great questions.
41:22I will get to the one about Corinthians later, but it's a bit long, don't want to go over
41:25an hour.
41:26Have yourself a wonderful, glorious, lovely day.
41:28My friends, lots of love from up here.
41:30I'll talk to you soon.
41:31Freedomain.com to help out the show.
41:32Thanks a million.
41:33Bye.