back to indexMichael Malice: Anarchy, Democracy, Libertarianism, Love, and Trolling | Lex Fridman Podcast #128
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The following is a conversation with Michael Malice,
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an anarchist, political thinker, author,
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and a proud, part time, Andy Kaufman like troll,
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in the best sense of that word,
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on both Twitter and in real life.
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He's a host of a great podcast called You're Welcome,
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I think that gives a sense of his sense of humor.
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He is the author of Dear Reader,
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the unauthorized autobiography of King Jong Il,
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and The New Right,
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A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.
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This latter book, when I read it,
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or rather listened to it last year,
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helped me start learning about the various
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disparate movements that I was undereducated about,
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from the internet trolls, to Alex Jones,
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to white nationalists, and to techno anarchists.
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The book is funny and brilliant, and so is Michael.
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Unfortunately, because of a self imposed deadline,
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I actually pulled an all nighter before this conversation.
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So I was not exactly all there mentally,
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even more so than usual, which is tough,
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because Michael is really quick witted and brilliant.
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But he was kind, patient, and understanding
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in this conversation, and I hope you will be as well.
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Today, I'm trying something a little new,
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looking to establish a regular structure for these intros.
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A first, doing the guest intro, like I just did.
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Second, quick one or two sentence mention of each sponsor.
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Third, my side comments related to the episode.
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And finally, fourth, full ad reads
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on the audio side of things,
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and on YouTube, going straight to the conversation.
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So not doing the full ad reads.
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And as always, no ads in the middle,
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because to me, they get in the way of the conversation.
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So, quick mention of the sponsors.
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First, SEMrush, the most advanced
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SEO optimization tool I've ever come across.
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I don't like looking at numbers,
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but someone probably should.
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It helps you make good decisions.
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Second sponsor is DoorDash, food delivery service
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that I've used for many years
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to fuel long, uninterrupted sessions of deep work
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at Google, MIT, and I still use it a lot today.
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Third sponsor is Masterclass, online courses
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from the best people in the world
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on each of the topics covered,
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from rockets, to game design, to poker,
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to writing, and to guitar with Carlos Santana.
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Please check out these sponsors in the description
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to get a discount and to support this podcast.
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As a side note, let me say that I hope to have
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some conversations with political thinkers,
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including liberals and conservatives,
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anarchists, libertarians, objectivists,
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and everything in between.
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I'm as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump worship
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as you probably are.
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I have none of that in me.
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I really work hard to be open minded
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and let my curiosity drive the conversation.
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I do plead with you to be patient on two counts.
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First, I have an intense, busy life
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outside of these podcasts.
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Like it's 4 a.m. right now as I'm recording this.
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So sometimes life affects these conversations,
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like in this case, I pull an all nighter beforehand.
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So please be patient with me if I say something
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inelegant, confusing, dumb, or just plain wrong.
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I'll try to correct myself on social media
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or in future conversations as much as I can.
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I really am always learning and working hard to improve.
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Second, if I or the guest says something about,
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for example, our current president, Donald Trump,
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that's over the top negative or over the top positive,
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please don't let your brain go into the partisan mode.
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Try to hear our words in an open minded nuanced way.
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And if we say stuff from a place of emotion,
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please give us a pass.
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Nuanced conversation can only happen
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if we're patient with each other.
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If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
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review the Five Stars and Apple podcast,
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follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
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or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
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And now, here's my conversation with Michael Malice.
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There was a Simpsons episode where he starts mixing
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like sleeping pills with like pet pills
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and he's driving his truck and I'm like,
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I wanna see what happens if he mixed Red Bull
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and Nitra cold brew.
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There's a lineup of drugs.
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This is gonna be so fun.
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Yeah, let's start with love.
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Yeah, so one thing we'll eventually somehow talk about,
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it'll be a theme throughout, is that you're also Russian.
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A little bit less than me, but.
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Cause I'm from Ukraine.
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Oh, you're from Ukraine?
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No, because you came here a little bit
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when you were younger.
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I came here when I was 13,
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so I saturated a little bit of the Russian soul.
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I marinated in the Russian soul a little deeper.
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I haven't told anyone this,
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but I'll be glad to tell you, Davidish.
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I haven't been back since I was two.
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And next summer, it looks like me and my buddy,
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Chris Williamson, who's also a podcaster,
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he's British, Modern Wisdom, he looks like Apollo.
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Looks like we got a videographer.
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The god, he looks like the god Apollo.
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Yeah, he's like a model.
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I thought you were talking about Rocky.
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So, we're gonna go for the first time
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to see where I came from.
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Which is in Ukraine.
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We're gonna go to Lvov and either St. Petersburg or Moscow,
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probably St. Petersburg, or both.
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It's gonna be intense.
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It's gonna be a lot of panic attacks, I feel.
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And your Russian is okay?
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Do you understand?
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No, you can't talk Russian in Ukraine,
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or it's like they get offended.
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Yeah, but then you also wanna go to Russia.
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For me, there's several people in Russia
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I wanna interview on a podcast.
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So, one of them is Gagarin Perlman,
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which is a mathematician, and the other person is Putin.
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You know what my favorite Putin story is?
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When he had Merkel with him, do you know this story?
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Merkel's scared of dogs, like petrified of dogs.
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So, he brings in his like black lab.
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It's a Labrador, it's like the sweetest animal,
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and it's all over her, and there's pictures,
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and she's sitting like this, and she's terrified,
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and he's like, what's wrong, Angela?
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He's just completely trolling her.
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Yeah, he's aware of the sort of the narrative around him.
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And then he plays with it.
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It's a very Russian thing.
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My friend wanted to do a film about me.
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He goes, I realized you guys aren't like us at all.
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You're just like, look at us,
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and then I started telling him stories
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about the upbringing, and he's like, oh my God,
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and as I'm telling them, I'm like,
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wow, this stuff is really crazy, like how we are wired.
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The Russian, the friend's American.
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I'm saying the way Russians are brought up,
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and the way, maybe, I don't think it was just my family.
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I bet you had similar things.
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Here's an example.
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I was, I had a buddy staying with me.
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He had a problem with his roommate,
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so he crashed at my place, fine.
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I went to the gym, and I come back,
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and he goes, oh, there was,
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and my apartment building is four four apartments,
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so it's not like a huge thing.
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He goes, oh, there was someone knocking at your door,
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so I told him blah blah, and for me,
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and I wonder if you're the same way,
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if I'm at someone's house that's not my own,
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and someone knocks on the door,
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I wouldn't even think to answer it.
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Like if I had an apple here, maybe I'd eat it,
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I'd cut it, whatever.
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I'm not gonna, it just doesn't enter my head
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to smash into my face.
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The thought of answering the door, if it's not my house,
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it would never enter my head.
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Would it enter your head?
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But he's an American, so someone's at the door.
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He goes and opens it, even though it's not his house.
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I would never do that.
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I would never think to do that.
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That is so strange that you pick some very obscure thing
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to delineate Americans and Russians.
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I don't think that's obscure,
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because I think it speaks to how we perceive strangers.
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With Americans, everyone's friendly,
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and with us, it's like, no, no, you have that moat,
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and I think that percolates into many different aspects
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of how we relate to people, and I have to undo a lot of that.
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You're right, there's the relationship I formed there
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where in Russia, we're very deep and close,
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and then there's the strangers, the other,
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that you don't trust by default.
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It takes a long time to go over the moat of trust.
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For a long time, until recently,
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whenever I said anything to anyone,
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my brain ran a scan that said, if this person turns on you,
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would this, can they use this against you?
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And I would do this with everything I said with strangers,
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and after a while, it's like, you know what?
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Maybe they will, but I'm strong enough to take it,
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but this is not how Americans think.
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Or here's another one.
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Let me ask you this.
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Sorry, I'm taking over the interview.
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People ask about advice for work, right?
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Like I had this, there was this party I went to,
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and basically everyone had their own problems,
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and everyone else gave their advice, right?
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And someone's having a problem with a coworker,
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and the advice these Tupoy Americans gave them is,
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oh, sit down and have a talk with them.
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And to me, this is like the last case, last resort.
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Like first, you have to see what you can
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without showing your hand, showing your vulnerability,
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only when everything hasn't worked out,
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or you're like, all right, let me sit down with you
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and try to have it out with you, probably.
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But for them, the first thing is like, sit down and be like,
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oh, you're causing me problems, blah, blah, blah.
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So I perceive that right away as a threat,
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that this person sees an antagonism between us,
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and also as a weakness that I'm getting to them.
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So my reaction isn't how do I make it better?
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My reaction is to reinforce my position
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and see what I can to marginalize them, usually.
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I haven't worked in a corporate setting in a long time.
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But it's not, I don't approach it the way an American would.
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Like, I'm glad you came and talked to me.
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Now I probably would, because it's gonna be a friend.
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So you attribute that to the Russian upbringing,
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as opposed to you have deep psychological issues.
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I think those are synonymous, don't you?
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Wait, would you think differently, maybe a few years ago?
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I don't know, I think you lost me at the,
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because you kind of said that,
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you're kind of implying you have a deep distrust
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of the world, like the world is.
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I think the default setting would be distrust, yeah.
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But I would put it differently,
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is I almost ignore the rest of the world,
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I don't even acknowledge it, I just savor,
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I save my love and trust for the small circle of people.
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I agree, but when that person is being confrontational,
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or as they perceive it, as being open,
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now there's a situation, how would you handle that?
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Like a cold wind blows, you just kind of like.
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Yeah, but it's not like this is an opportunity
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for us to work out our differences, it's a cold wind.
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It's not a hug, that's my point.
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Americans think it's a hug, a cold wind.
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You're so suspicious, what it really is, is a cold wind.
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I'm so humane, it's not something to be scared of,
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it's a cold wind, it's a good person.
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But it's not, this is great, but it's not a source of,
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like I'm not suspicious of, like I'm not anxious,
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I would say, or like living in fear
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of the rest of the world, I'm more.
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Oh, I agree, but you're not receptive to that person.
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That's all I'm saying, and they are.
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Got it, so speaking of which, let's talk about love.
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Which requires to be receptive of the world, of strangers.
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How do we put more love out there in the world,
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especially on the internet?
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One mechanism I have found to increase love,
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and that's a word that has many meanings
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and is used in a very intense sense
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and is used in a very loose sense.
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Can you try to define love?
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Sure, love is a strong sense of attraction
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toward another person, entity, or place
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that causes one to tend to react
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in a disproportionately positive manner.
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That's off the top of my head.
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Disproportionately.
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Yes, so for example, if you.
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Why not proportionately?
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Because if someone's about to, who you love,
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is about to get harmed, you're moving heaven and earth
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to make sure, or like a book you love.
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I love this book, like you're going through the fire
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to try to save it, whereas if it's a book you really like,
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it's like, oh, I'll get another one.
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And a book's kind of a loose example, but.
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So you're going with the love that's like,
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you're saving for just a few people,
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almost like romantical, like love for a close family.
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But what about just love to even the broader,
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like the kind of love you can put out
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to people on the internet, which is like just kindness.
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Sure, I would say in that case,
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it's important to make them feel seen and validated.
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And I try to do this when people who I have come to know
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on the internet, and there's a lot,
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I try to do that as much as possible
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because I don't think it's valid
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how on social media, and I do this a lot myself,
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but not towards everyone,
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it's just there to be aggressive and antagonistic.
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You should be antagonistic towards bad people,
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and that's fine, but at the same time,
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there's lots of great people.
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And especially with my audience,
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and I would bet disproportionately with yours,
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there's lots of people who are,
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because of their psychology and intelligence,
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are going to be much more isolated socially than they should.
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And if I, and I've heard from many of them,
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and if I'm the person who makes them feel,
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oh, I'm not crazy, it's everyone else around me
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who is just basic, the fact that I can be that person,
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which I didn't have at their age,
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to me is incredibly reaffirming.
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You mean that source of love?
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But I mean love in the sense of like,
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you know, you care about this person
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and you want good things for them,
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not in a kind of romantic way.
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But I mean, you're using it in a broad sense now.
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Yeah, but you're also a person who kind of,
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I mean, attacks the power structures in the world
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by mocking them effectively.
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And love, I would say, requires you to be
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non witty and simple and fragile,
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which I see it as like the opposite of what trolls do.
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Trolls are, if there is someone coming after what I love,
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there's two mechanisms, right, at least two.
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I go up and I'm fighting them,
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and in which case you are getting hurt in a knife fight,
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even if you win the knife fight,
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or if you disarm them and you preclude
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the possibility of a fight and you drive them off
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or render them powerless,
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you keep your person intact as yourself
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and you also protect your values.
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So how do you render them powerless?
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As you just said, by mocking them.
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One of the most effective mechanisms for those in power,
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we're much closer to Brave New World than 1984.
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The people who are dominant and in power
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aren't there because of the threat of the gulag or prison.
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They're there because of social pressures.
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Look at the masks.
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I was on the subway not that long ago in New York City.
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No one cared who I was until I put off the mask.
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I was in the subway that long in New York City.
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And I put this on my Instagram.
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I've told this story before.
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There was an Asian dude in his early 30s.
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He was like in Western clothes.
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It's not like he had a rickshaw or something.
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An older man in his 50s stood up over him on the subway,
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screamed at him, said, go back where you came from.
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You're disgusting.
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I'm gonna get sick.
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If you think this guy is a vector of disease,
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which is your prerogative, why are you coming close to him?
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Why are you getting in his face?
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Sorry, so it was because he was Asian?
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It was the not having a mask gave him the permission
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to act like a despicable, aggressive person toward him.
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And the point being, a lot of these mechanisms
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for social control are outsourced to low quality people
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because this is their one chance
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to assert dominance and status over somebody else.
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So the best way to diffuse that
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isn't with weaponry or fighting.
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It's through mockery because all of a sudden,
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their claims to authority are effectively destroyed.
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So let me push back on that.
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What about fighting that with love,
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with patience and kindness towards them?
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I don't think kindness is,
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I think that would be a mismatch and inappropriate.
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There's Superman, there's Batman, okay?
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And Superman's job is to help the good people
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and Batman's job is to hurt the bad people.
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And I will always be on the Batman side
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than the Superman side.
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Both work silly tight costumes.
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One has pointy ears.
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Both are ridiculous, so let's.
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One's a billionaire who gets, he's swimming in trim.
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Which one is a billionaire? Batman.
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Okay, I'm undereducated on the superhero movies,
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Okay, but you're just saying your predisposition
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is to be on the Batman side,
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is to fighting the bad guys.
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Yeah, and it's what I'm good at.
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That's what you're good at.
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But just to play devil's advocate,
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or actually, in this case, I am the devil
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because it's what I usually do.
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Well, I'm the devil, you're the angel's advocate.
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Exactly, to be the angel advocate, yeah.
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Is like, I feel like mockery
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is a path towards escalation of conflict.
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Yes, in many ways, yes.
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So you're not, I mean,
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it's kind of like guerrilla warfare.
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I mean, you're not going to win.
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I am winning, we're all winning.
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We're winning on a daily.
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This is my next book, we're winning.
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We've won before, I'm not joking.
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The topic of the next book.
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Yes, it's the white pill.
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Is that we're gonna, we are winning.
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The most horrible people are being rendered
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into laughing stocks on a daily basis on social media.
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This is a glorious thing.
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This is good, I so disagree with you.
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I disagree with you because there's side effects
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that are very destructive.
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It feels like you're winning,
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but we're completely destroying the possibility
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of having like a cohesive society.
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That's called oncology.
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Your concept of a cohesive society is, in fact,
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a society based on oppression
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and not allowing individuals to live their personal freedom.
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Oh, so you're a utopian view of the world.
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You're the utopian.
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You're saying cohesive society.
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I'm saying I don't need that.
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I'm saying there's gonna be conflict.
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Right, there's gonna be conflict.
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You and I are disagreeing right now.
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That's not cohesive.
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Doesn't mean we like each other less.
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Doesn't mean we respect each other less.
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Cohesive doesn't, it's just a euphemism
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for like everyone submitting to what I want.
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No, I mean, cohesive could be that.
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It could be like enforced with violence,
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all that kind of stuff,
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sort of the libertarian view of the world,
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but it could just be being respectful
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and kind of each other and kind towards each other
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and loving towards each other.
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I mean, that's what I mean by cohesive.
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So when people say free, it's funny.
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Like freedom is a funny thing
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because freedom could be painful to a lot of people.
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It's all matters how you define it,
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how you implement it, how it actually looks like.
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I'm just saying it feels like the mockery
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of the powerful leads to further and further divisions.
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It's like it's turning life into a game
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to where it's always you're creating
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these different little tribes and groups
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and you're constantly fighting the groups
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that become a little bit more powerful
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by undercutting them through guerrilla warfare kind of thing.
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And that's what the internet becomes
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is everyone's just mocking each other
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and then certain groups become more and more powerful
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and then they start fighting each other
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and they form groups of ideologies
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and they start fighting each other in the internet
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where the result is it doesn't feel like
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the common humanities highlighted.
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It doesn't feel like that's a path of progress.
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Now, like when I say cohesive,
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I don't mean like everybody has to be enforcing equality,
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all those kinds of ideas.
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I just mean like not being so divisive.
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So it's going back to the original question of like,
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how do we put more love out in the world than the internet?
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I want divisiveness.
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Oh, you see, you think divisiveness is that?
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That's very interesting.
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So you started this conversation
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where you're talking about you have love
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for that small group.
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I think we both would agree to have a bigger group
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especially if that love comes from a sincere place.
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I think our country,
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I wrote an article about this four years ago
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that it's time to disunite the states and to secede.
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This country has been held together
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with at least two separate cultures
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with dumb text and string for over 20 years.
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There's an enormous amount of contempt
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from one group toward another.
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This contempt comes from a sincere place.
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They do not share each other's values.
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There's absolutely no reason,
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just like any unhealthy relationship
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where you can't say, you know what?
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It's not working out.
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I want to go my own way and live my happiness.
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And I genuinely want you to go your way,
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live your happiness.
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If I'm wrong, prove me wrong.
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I'll learn from you and take lessons and vice versa.
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But the fact that we all have to be
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in the same house together is not coherent.
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And that's not love.
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That is the path towards friction and tension and conflict.
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Do you think there's concrete groups?
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Like is it as simple as the two groups of blue and red?
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No, it's also very fluid
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because you and I are allied as Jewish people,
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as Russians, as males, as podcasters.
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You're an academic, I'm not.
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So we're different, but we each are a Venn diagram,
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even within ourselves.
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And I can talk to you about politics
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and then we can talk about Russia stuff.
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And then you could talk about your work,
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which I don't know anything about.
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So that'd be where you're way up here and a way down here.
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So there's lots, every relationship
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with just between individuals, it's very dynamic.
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So how do we succeed?
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Like how do we form individual states
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where there's a little bit more cohesion?
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Sure, and voluntary cohesion.
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So the first step is to eliminate
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and the concept of political authority as legitimate
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and to denigrate and humiliate those
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who would put themselves in a position
link |
in which they are there to tell you how to live your life
link |
from any semblance of validity.
link |
And that's starting to happen.
link |
If you look at what they had with the lockdowns,
link |
Cuomo and de Blasio, New York,
link |
I was tired a couple of weeks ago.
link |
And I said to my friend, oh, just click, maybe I have COVID.
link |
And he goes, it's not possible, like what do you mean?
link |
And he goes, we haven't had any deaths in like two months.
link |
And there's only like 100 cases a day for like two months.
link |
And I go, you're exaggerating
link |
because everything was still closed.
link |
And I looked at the numbers and he wasn't exaggerating.
link |
And there's no greater American dream to me
link |
than an immigrant family comes to the states,
link |
forms their own little business.
link |
Maybe mom's a good cook, it's a restaurant,
link |
dry cleaner, fruit stand.
link |
And those people aren't gonna have a lot of money.
link |
Those are the first ones who lost their companies
link |
because of these lockdowns.
link |
Cuomo, who's the governor of New York,
link |
opened up the gyms, he said, you're clear to open up.
link |
De Blasio said, and we don't have enough inspectors,
link |
you're gonna have to wait another couple of weeks.
link |
To regard that as anything other than literally criminal
link |
is something that I am having a hard and harder time
link |
wrapping my head around.
link |
You said, I mean, that's something
link |
I'm deeply worried about as well,
link |
which is like thousands, it's actually millions
link |
of dreams being crushed, that American dream
link |
of starting a business, of running a business.
link |
What about all the young people who you and I
link |
have in our audiences who are socially isolated at best,
link |
and now they can't leave their homes?
link |
Isolation and ostracism are things
link |
that are very well studied in psychology.
link |
These have extreme consequences.
link |
I read a book called Ostracism, and this wasn't scientific,
link |
but basically the author was a psychiatrist,
link |
psychologist, whatever, and he had one of his colleagues,
link |
they did an experiment, let's for a week,
link |
you ostracize me completely.
link |
We know it's an, and he goes, even knowing
link |
it's the experiment, the fact that he wouldn't
link |
make eye contact with me and the fact that he ignored me
link |
had an extreme emotional impact on me,
link |
knowing full well this is purely for experimental purposes.
link |
Now you multiply that by all these, the suicide,
link |
the number of kids who were thinking about suicide
link |
was through the roof during all this.
link |
And my point is, until these people,
link |
it's gonna, I would predict like 2024,
link |
that's where we're gonna have to start having conversations
link |
about what personal consequences have to be done
link |
for these people, because until then,
link |
they're gonna do the same thing.
link |
So you think there's going to be society wide consequences
link |
of this that we're gonna see, like ripple effects,
link |
because of the social isolation?
link |
I know, I mean, we also need to talk about consequences
link |
for Cuomo and de Blasio, because if politicians
link |
respond to incentives, and the incentives are there
link |
for them to be extremely conservative,
link |
because if you have to choose, as Cuomo said
link |
in a press conference, between a thousand people dying
link |
and a thousand people losing their business,
link |
it's not a hard choice, and he's right.
link |
But at a certain point, it's like, all right,
link |
you're losing both, you're making these decisions
link |
and not having consequences for it,
link |
and you're gonna do it again the next time,
link |
so we need to make sure you're a little scared.
link |
And I don't know what that would mean.
link |
But you're laying this problem, this incompetence.
link |
I don't think it's incompetence,
link |
I think it's very competent.
link |
I think their job is to be able, yes.
link |
But you're laying it not at the hands of the individuals,
link |
but the structure of government.
link |
How would we deal with it better
link |
without centralized control?
link |
Well, we didn't really have centralized control,
link |
because every country and every state
link |
handled it in a different mechanism.
link |
But a city has centralized control, right?
link |
No, that's not true.
link |
So Cuomo and de Blasio, they had a lot of disagreements
link |
over this over the months, and this was actually
link |
a source of great interest and tension.
link |
De Blasio wanted, at one point, was talking about
link |
quarantining people in their homes.
link |
Cuomo was like, you're crazy.
link |
Same thing with the schools, same thing with the gyms,
link |
and there were other such examples.
link |
But the point being, this was an emergency.
link |
World War I, I talked about this on Tim Poole's show,
link |
was very dangerous, because it gave a lot of evil people
link |
some very useful information about what the country
link |
put up with and what they can get away with under wartime.
link |
And this set the model for things like the New Deal
link |
and the other things of that nature.
link |
It is undeniable, you're a scientist,
link |
so you understand this perfectly well,
link |
that this lockdown gave some very nefarious people
link |
some very valid data about how much people
link |
were put up with under pressures from the state.
link |
So fundamentally, what is the problem with the state?
link |
Okay, well, but to play angel's advocate again,
link |
angel's advocate again, you know,
link |
government is the people.
link |
Come on, do you really think this?
link |
As best I think as possible to have representation.
link |
Can you imagine if you have an attorney?
link |
You're like, oh, you can't have the attorney you want.
link |
You're gonna have this guy who you absolutely hate
link |
who you share no values with, why?
link |
Because he drives, I mean, leaders, political leaders,
link |
and political representation drive the discourse.
link |
Like the majority of people voted for him or whatever,
link |
however you define that.
link |
And now we get to have a discussion,
link |
well, was this the right choice?
link |
And then we get to make that choice again
link |
in four years and so on.
link |
First of all, the fact that I have to be under the thumb
link |
of somebody for four years makes no sense.
link |
There's no other relationship that's like this,
link |
including a marriage.
link |
You can leave any other relationship at any time,
link |
You could always impeach.
link |
Well, they did that.
link |
Part of it I'm just saying that the mechanisms
link |
are flawed in many ways, yeah.
link |
Yeah, right, and so that's number one.
link |
Number two is it doesn't make sense
link |
that if I don't want someone to represent me
link |
that because that person is popular
link |
that they are now in a position to.
link |
So having representation and having citizenship
link |
based on geography is a prelandline technology
link |
in a post cell phone world.
link |
There's no reason why I have to,
link |
just because we're physically in between two oceans,
link |
we all have to be represented by the same people,
link |
whereas I can very easily have my security
link |
be under someone and switch it as easily
link |
as cell phone providers.
link |
So, okay, but it doesn't have to be geographical.
link |
I mean, this country represents a certain set of ideas.
link |
It started out geographically.
link |
It still is geographic.
link |
It started off as ideas as well.
link |
But like, it was intricately.
link |
I mean, that's the way humans are.
link |
I mean, there was no internet.
link |
So it was, you were geographically in the same location
link |
and you signed a bunch of documents
link |
and then you kind of debated
link |
and you wrote a bunch of stuff
link |
and then you agreed on it.
link |
You understand that no one signed these documents
link |
and no one agreed to it.
link |
As Lysander Spooner pointed out over 150 years ago,
link |
the constitution or the social contract, if anything,
link |
is only binding to the signatories.
link |
And even then they're all long dead.
link |
So it's this fallacy that somehow,
link |
because I'm in a physical place,
link |
I've agreed, even though I'm screaming through your face
link |
that I don't agree,
link |
to be subordinate to some imaginary, invisible monster
link |
that was created 250 years ago.
link |
And this idea of like, if you don't like it,
link |
That's not what freedom means.
link |
Freedom means I do what I want, not what you want.
link |
So if you don't like it, you move.
link |
Okay, just to put some, I don't like words and terms.
link |
One, one, one, zero, one, one, one, zero, one.
link |
Is that what your language is?
link |
It is, I'm translating it all in real time.
link |
But would you call the kind of ideas
link |
that you're advocating for
link |
and we're talking about anarchy?
link |
Yes, anarchism, yes.
link |
Okay, so let's get into it.
link |
Can you try to paint the utopia
link |
that an anarchist worldview dreams about?
link |
The only people who describe anarchism as utopia
link |
If I told you right now,
link |
and I wish I could say this factually,
link |
that I have a cure for cancer,
link |
that would not make us a utopia.
link |
That would still probably be expensive.
link |
We would still have many other diseases.
link |
However, we would be fundamentally healthier,
link |
happier and better off, all of us.
link |
So, sorry, I jumped back from the cancer.
link |
No, than democracy or government.
link |
So it's only curing one major,
link |
major life threatening problem,
link |
but in no sense is it a utopia.
link |
So what, can we try to answer this question,
link |
same question many times,
link |
which is what exactly is the problem with democracy?
link |
The problem with democracy is that those who need leaders
link |
are not qualified to choose them.
link |
Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them.
link |
That's the central problem with democracy.
link |
Not all of us need leaders.
link |
So, what does it mean to need a leader?
link |
Are you saying like people who are actually
link |
like free thinkers don't need leaders kind of thing?
link |
That's a good way of working.
link |
But like, you don't, okay.
link |
So do you acknowledge that there's some value
link |
in authority in different subjects?
link |
So what that means is,
link |
I don't mean authority, somebody who's in control of you,
link |
But you're doing the definition switch.
link |
You're right, you're right.
link |
Okay, that was bad.
link |
But that's what they do.
link |
That's their trick.
link |
And this is one of the useful things,
link |
by the way, that's this total sidebar.
link |
If people ask me for advice,
link |
I always tell them if you're gonna raise your kids,
link |
raise them bilingual.
link |
Because I was trilingual by the time I was six
link |
and that teaches you to think in concepts.
link |
Whereas if you only know one language,
link |
you fall for things like this,
link |
because using authority in the sense of a policeman
link |
and someone has authority in physics,
link |
it's the same word.
link |
Conceptually, they're extremely different.
link |
But if you're only thinking in one language,
link |
your brain is going to equate the two.
link |
And that's a trap that people
link |
who only speak one language have.
link |
But even if you know multiple languages,
link |
you can still use the trick of using
link |
the worst of your convenience.
link |
To manipulate the conversation.
link |
But you weren't trying to do that,
link |
but you fell into that.
link |
I accidentally did it.
link |
Yeah, you're right.
link |
We all tend to do that if you only speak one language
link |
and think in one language.
link |
But if, I guess let me rephrase it.
link |
Are you against, do you acknowledge the value
link |
of offloading your own effort
link |
about a particular thing to somebody else?
link |
Like an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor,
link |
absolute, a chef, infinite.
link |
Isn't that ultimately what a democracy is?
link |
Broadly defined, like you're basically electing
link |
a bunch of authorities.
link |
Using the word you in two senses.
link |
Using the word you meaning me as an individual,
link |
not using you as a mass.
link |
Yeah, as a mass, not you as an individual.
link |
Right, so I would absolutely want someone
link |
to provide for my security.
link |
I would absolutely want someone to negotiate with me
link |
for foreign power or something like that.
link |
That does not mean it has to be predicated
link |
and what lots of other people who I do not know
link |
and if I do know them, probably would not respect,
link |
It's of no moral relevance to me.
link |
So do you think this kind of,
link |
there could be a bunch of humans that behave
link |
kind of like ants in a distributed way.
link |
There could be an emergent behavior in them
link |
that results in a stable society.
link |
Like isn't that the hope with anarchy
link |
is like without an overarching.
link |
But ants, I mean ants are the worst example here
link |
because ants have a very firm authority.
link |
Yeah, and they're all drones.
link |
They're all clones of each other.
link |
Yeah, but so if you forget the queen,
link |
their behavior, they're all,
link |
well from your perspective,
link |
from your human intelligent perspective,
link |
but from their perspective,
link |
they probably see each other as a bunch of individuals.
link |
Ants are very big on altruism
link |
in the sense of self sacrifice.
link |
They do not think the individual matters.
link |
They routinely kill themselves
link |
for the sake of the hive in the community.
link |
But they, see that's from the outside perspective,
link |
from the individual perspective of the individual,
link |
they probably, they don't see it as altruism.
link |
Right, but they view and they're right
link |
because the ants life is very ephemeral and cheap,
link |
that it's more important to continue this mass population
link |
that one individual ant live.
link |
Like bees are another even better example.
link |
The honeybee, when they sting,
link |
they only sting once and they die.
link |
And they do it gladly because it's like,
link |
okay, this community is much more important than me
link |
and they're right.
link |
Yeah, okay, so fine, let's forget.
link |
I'm being pedantic, but it's important, I think.
link |
I'm not just being pedantic
link |
for the sake of being pedantic.
link |
But there's something beautiful that I won't argue about
link |
because I do, there's an interesting point there
link |
about individualism of ants.
link |
I do think they're more individual.
link |
But let's give your view of ants that they're communists.
link |
Okay, let's go with the communist view of ants.
link |
But they're still a beautiful emergent thing,
link |
which is like they can function as a society
link |
and without, I would say, centralized control.
link |
Yeah, I agree with you.
link |
It's another argument.
link |
So is that the hope for anarchy?
link |
It's like you just throw a bunch of people
link |
that voluntarily wanna be in the same place
link |
under the same set of ideas
link |
and they kind of, like the doctors emerge,
link |
the police officers emerge,
link |
the different necessary structures
link |
of a functional society emerge.
link |
Do you know what the most beautiful example of anarchism is
link |
that is just beyond beautiful
link |
when you stop to think about it?
link |
I'm not being tongue in cheek.
link |
There's infinite languages.
link |
Language, the things that language can be used for
link |
are bring tears to people's eyes quite literally.
link |
It's also used for basic things.
link |
No one is forcing us.
link |
We speak two languages each at least.
link |
No one's forcing us to use English.
link |
No one's forcing us to use this dialect of English.
link |
It's a way, and despite there being
link |
so many different languages, lingua franca emerge,
link |
the language that everyone is, Latin.
link |
Even in North Korea, they refer to the fish
link |
and the different animals by the Latin scientific note.
link |
No one decided this.
link |
Sure, there's an organization
link |
that sets a binomial nomenclature,
link |
but there's no gun to anyone's head
link |
referring to a sea moth as a Pegasus species.
link |
And when you think about how amazing language is,
link |
and in some other context would say like,
link |
well, you need to have a world government
link |
and they're deciding which is the verbs
link |
and you have to have an official definition
link |
and an official dictionary.
link |
And none of that's happened.
link |
And I think anyone, even if they don't agree
link |
with my politics or my worldview,
link |
cannot deny that the creation of language
link |
is one of humanity's most miraculous,
link |
beautiful achievements.
link |
There's one system where a kind of anarchy
link |
can result in beauty, stability,
link |
like sufficient stability,
link |
and yet, flexibility to adjust it and so on.
link |
And the internet helps it.
link |
You get something like Urban Dictionary,
link |
which starts creating absurd, both humor and wit.
link |
But also language and syntax and jargon,
link |
immediately you size people up.
link |
If you say vertebral, I know you're a doctor,
link |
because that's how they pronounce it, the spinal column.
link |
I'm sure in your field, there's certain jargon
link |
and right away you can know if this person's one of us
link |
I mean, it's infinite.
link |
I mean, I don't need to tell you.
link |
Yes, there's so much there to study with language.
link |
But do you think this applies to human life?
link |
The meat space, the physical space?
link |
So that kind of beauty can emerge
link |
without writing stuff on paper, without laws.
link |
You could have rules.
link |
You don't need, they don't have to be laws.
link |
Enforced by violence.
link |
Like that's what, what's a law?
link |
A law is something that is unchosen.
link |
A rule is something.
link |
If I go to my pool, you know,
link |
I sign up to be a member of pool,
link |
on the wall there's certain things.
link |
It's like, you know, certain number of people in the pool.
link |
No peeing in here.
link |
Good luck enforcing that one.
link |
And so on and so forth.
link |
Well, that's the problem.
link |
Aren't you afraid that people are gonna pee in the pool?
link |
That's not as my big concern as mass incarceration,
link |
as the fact that the police can steal more money
link |
than burglars can.
link |
The fact that innocent people can be killed
link |
with no consequences.
link |
The fact that war can be waged
link |
and with no consequences for those who waged it.
link |
The fact that so many men and women are being murdered
link |
overseas and here,
link |
and the people who are guiding these are regarded as heroic.
link |
So you think there might,
link |
that in an anarchist system,
link |
there's a possibility of having less wars
link |
and less, what would you say, corruption
link |
and less abuse of power?
link |
And let's talk about corruption
link |
because, and I made this point on Rogan,
link |
you and I, again, the Russian background,
link |
we realize that when it comes to corruption,
link |
American is very naive.
link |
Corruption they think is, oh, I got my brother a job
link |
and he's getting money on the table.
link |
That's not, when we're talking about like state corruption,
link |
things that are done in totalitarian states
link |
and even to some extent in America,
link |
like Jeffrey Epstein, Jillian Maxwell,
link |
things that Stalin did, things that Hitler did.
link |
When the CIA was torturing people at Gitmo,
link |
they had to borrow KGB manuals
link |
because they didn't know how to torture correctly
link |
because they never thought of these things.
link |
It's very hard for us to get into the mindset
link |
of someone who's like a child predator,
link |
someone who, let me give you an example
link |
from my forthcoming book.
link |
There was a guy who was the head of Ukraine in the 30s,
link |
I forget his name.
link |
Now these old Soviets, they were tough.
link |
I mean, they pride, Stalin means steel.
link |
They pride themselves and their cruelty
link |
and how strong they were.
link |
And this was the purge.
link |
Stalin is trying to, killing lots of people left and right
link |
and his henchman, Beria had the quote,
link |
find me the man and I'll find you the crime.
link |
They would accuse someone and they would torture him
link |
until he talked and confessed
link |
and then he had to turn people in.
link |
And they took this guy in like beginning of the year,
link |
I think it's 36, 38, he was head of Ukraine.
link |
By May, he's arrested.
link |
And they take him to the Ljubljanka, the basement
link |
in the red square where they're torturing people.
link |
And they did the works on him.
link |
And he was a good Soviet and he stood up.
link |
Who knows what they did to him?
link |
So they said, okay, one moment.
link |
They brought his teenage daughter in,
link |
raped her in front of him, he talked.
link |
So when we talk about corruption,
link |
we would never in a million years think of this.
link |
That's not how our minds work.
link |
So when you're talking about states
link |
and people where you don't have ease of exit,
link |
where you are forced to be under the auspices
link |
of an organization creating a monopoly,
link |
that leads to in extreme cases,
link |
but in not as extreme cases, really nefarious outcomes.
link |
Whereas if you have the option to leave
link |
as a client or customer,
link |
that would have a strongly limiting effect
link |
on how a business and what it can get away with.
link |
But don't you think maybe,
link |
I don't know who the right example is,
link |
whether it's Stalin,
link |
I think Hitler might be the better example of,
link |
don't you think, or Jeffrey Epstein perhaps,
link |
don't you think people who are evil
link |
will find ways to manipulate human nature
link |
to attain power, no matter the system?
link |
And like the corollary question is,
link |
do you think those people can get more power
link |
in a democracy, when there's a government already in place?
link |
It's easily they get more power, more dangerous
link |
to have a government in place.
link |
First of all, sociopaths don't know for their charm
link |
and for their warmth.
link |
Here's the two situations.
link |
In a free society, I'm a sociopath, I'm an evil person,
link |
I'm the head of Macy's.
link |
In a state society, I'm an evil person, I'm a sociopath,
link |
I'm the head of the US government.
link |
Which of these are you more concerned with?
link |
It's like night and day.
link |
So you would have far more decentralized military,
link |
you would have far more decentralized security forces,
link |
and they would be much more subject
link |
to feedback from the market.
link |
If you have an issue with Macy's
link |
or any store with a sweater, look at that transaction.
link |
If you have an issue with the state,
link |
hiring a lawyer costs more than a surgeon.
link |
To even access the mechanism for dispute
link |
is going to be exorbitant and price poor people
link |
out of the market for conflict resolution immediately.
link |
So right away, you have something
link |
that's extremely regressive.
link |
And even though this is touted as some great equalizer,
link |
it's quite the opposite.
link |
So in current society, there's deep suspicion
link |
of governments and states.
link |
Like just your example of Macy's,
link |
I mean, don't you think a Hitler could rise
link |
to be at the top of a social network
link |
like Twitter and Facebook?
link |
Okay, let's suppose Hitler ran Twitter, okay?
link |
Let's take this thought experiment seriously.
link |
Literally what could he do?
link |
So the only tweets are gonna be
link |
about how much the Jews suck, right?
link |
Okay, all the cool people are leaving.
link |
There could be some compelling,
link |
like you said, evil people are charming.
link |
There could be some compelling narratives
link |
that could be with conspiracy theories, untruths,
link |
that could be spread like propaganda.
link |
Every criticism of anarchism is in fact a description.
link |
Well, the strongest criticism of anarchism
link |
are in fact descriptions of status quo.
link |
Your concern is, under anarchism, propaganda would spread
link |
and people would be taught the wrong ideas,
link |
unlike the status quo?
link |
That's not even a criticism of anarchism.
link |
I'm not actually criticizing.
link |
It's an open question of,
link |
it's an open question of in which system
link |
will human nature be able to thrive more
link |
and in which system would the evils
link |
that arise in human nature
link |
would be more easily suppressible?
link |
That's the open question.
link |
It's a scientific experiment
link |
and I'm asking only from my perspective
link |
of the fact that we've tried democracy
link |
quite a bit recently and maybe you can correct me,
link |
we haven't yet seriously tried anarchy on a large scale.
link |
Well, we don't need to try to,
link |
so anarchy isn't like a country, right?
link |
It's like saying, well, if anarchy works,
link |
how come we've never had an anarchist government, right?
link |
So anarchism is a relationship
link |
and language is an example of this.
link |
It's a worldwide anarchic system.
link |
You and I have an anarchist relationship.
link |
There's almost no circumstances
link |
that we'd be calling the police on each other.
link |
I mean, I'm asking the same question
link |
in a bunch of different directions
link |
out of, born out of my curiosity,
link |
is why is anarchy going to be better
link |
at preventing the darker sides of human nature,
link |
which presumably your criticism of government.
link |
Because of decentralization.
link |
So the darker side of human nature is an extreme concern.
link |
Anyone who says it's gonna go away
link |
is absurd and fallacious.
link |
I think that's a nonstarter
link |
when people say that everyone's gonna be good.
link |
Human beings are basically animals.
link |
We're capable of great beauty and kindness.
link |
We're capable of just complete cruel
link |
and what we would call inhumanity,
link |
but we see it on a daily basis even today.
link |
And what's interesting is the corporate press
link |
won't even tell you the darkest aspects
link |
because that's too upsetting to people.
link |
So they'll tell you about atrocities and horrors,
link |
but only to a point.
link |
And then when you actually do the homework,
link |
you're like, oh, it's so much worse than,
link |
like that thing about Stalin, right?
link |
So we know in a broad sense that Stalin was a dictator.
link |
We know that he killed a lot of people,
link |
but it takes work to learn about the Holodomor.
link |
It takes work to learn about
link |
what those literal tortures were
link |
and that this is the person who later,
link |
FDR and Harry Truman were shaking hands with
link |
and taking photos with
link |
and was being sold to us as Uncle Joe.
link |
He's just like you and me.
link |
So when you have a decentralized information network
link |
as opposed to having three media networks,
link |
it is a lot easier for information
link |
that doesn't fit what would be
link |
the corporate America narrative to reach the populations.
link |
And it would be more effective for democracy
link |
because they're in a much better position to be informed.
link |
Now, you're right.
link |
It also means, well, if everyone has a mic,
link |
that means every crazy person and with their wacky views.
link |
And at a certain point, yeah, it has to become,
link |
then there's another level,
link |
which is then the people have to be self enforcing.
link |
And you see that in social media all the time
link |
where someone says this, the other person jumps in.
link |
You think, but isn't social media a good example of this?
link |
So you think ultimately without centralized control,
link |
you can have stability?
link |
What about the mob outrage and the mob rule,
link |
the power of the mobs that emerge?
link |
Power of the mob is a very serious concern.
link |
Gustav Le Bon wrote a book in the 1890s called The Crowd.
link |
And this was one of the most important books I've written
link |
because it influenced both Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin
link |
and they all talked about it.
link |
And he made the point that under crowd psychology,
link |
human lynching is another example of this.
link |
None of those individuals or very few
link |
would ever dream of doing these acts.
link |
But when they're all together
link |
and you lose that sense of self, you become the ant
link |
and you lose that sense of individually,
link |
you're capable of doing things that like in another context,
link |
you'd be like, I should kill myself, I'm a monster.
link |
So you're worried about that, but doesn't the mob have more
link |
power under anarchy?
link |
No, the mob has much less power in anarchy
link |
because under anarchism, every individual
link |
is fully empowered.
link |
You wouldn't have gun restrictions.
link |
You would have people creating communities
link |
based on shared values.
link |
They'd be much more collegial, they'd be much more kind,
link |
as opposed to when you're forcing people
link |
to be together in a polity
link |
when they don't have things in common.
link |
That is like having a bad roommate.
link |
If you're forced to look like jails,
link |
if you're forced to be locked in a room with someone,
link |
even if you had first liked them,
link |
after a while, you're going to start to hate them
link |
and that leads to very nefarious consequences.
link |
So as an anarchist, what do you do in a society like this?
link |
I think I'm doing okay.
link |
No, I mean, there's an election coming up.
link |
There's, as you talk, You're Welcome
link |
is one of the 15 shows that you host.
link |
Okay, it's down to one.
link |
But I'm a big fan.
link |
You talk about libertarianism a little bit.
link |
I mean, is there some practical political direction
link |
in terms of we as a society should go?
link |
I don't mean we as a nation.
link |
I mean, we as a collective of people
link |
should go to make a better world
link |
from an anarchist point of view.
link |
Sure, I think politics is the enemy and anything.
link |
How do you define politics?
link |
The state, the government.
link |
So anything that lessens its sway on people,
link |
anything that delegitimizes it is good.
link |
I wrote an article a few years ago
link |
about how wonderful it is that Trump
link |
is regarded as such a buffoon
link |
because it's very, very useful
link |
to have a commander in chief who's regarded as a clown
link |
because it's gonna take a lot
link |
to get him to convince your kids to go overseas
link |
and start killing people and making widows and orphans,
link |
as well as those kids coming home in caskets.
link |
Whereas if someone is regarded with prestige
link |
and they're like, oh, we need to send your kid overseas.
link |
I mean, this guy's great.
link |
So that is a very healthy thing
link |
where people are skeptical of the state.
link |
But there's a lot of people that regard him
link |
as one of the greatest leaders we've ever had.
link |
Yeah, Dinesh D'Souza, he's another Lincoln.
link |
When you talk shit about Trump
link |
or talk shit about Biden,
link |
I'm trying to find a line to walk
link |
where they don't immediately put you into
link |
this person has Trump derangement syndrome
link |
or they have the alternative to that.
link |
I'm more than happy
link |
when people are preemptively dismissing me
link |
because then I don't have to waste time engaging with them
link |
because those people would be of no use to me.
link |
When I was on Tim Pool recently, Tim Pool's show,
link |
Tim Pool's known for his little hat.
link |
I got a propeller beanie motorized
link |
and it was just spinning the whole two hours.
link |
I know, like a 1950s thing.
link |
The point being I wore it because there's lots of people
link |
who would say, I can't take seriously someone
link |
who wears a hat like that.
link |
And my point being, if you are the kind of person
link |
who takes your cues based on someone's wardrobe
link |
as opposed to the content of your ideas,
link |
you're of no use to me as an ally.
link |
So I'd be more than happy you preemptively abort
link |
rather than waste our breath trying to engage.
link |
This is a very, very deep thing that you and I disagree on,
link |
which is, this goes to the trolling versus the love,
link |
is I believe that person instinctually dismisses you
link |
on the very basic surface level.
link |
But deep down, there's a wealth of a human being
link |
that seeks the connection, seeks to understand deeply
link |
to connect with other humans that we should speak to.
link |
Yeah, you and I completely disagree.
link |
See, you're saying.
link |
I'm saying there's no mind there literally.
link |
Okay, so I naturally think the majority of people
link |
have the capacity to be thoughtful, intelligent,
link |
and learn about ideas, ideas that they instinctually
link |
based on their own current inner circle disagree with
link |
and learn to understand, to empathize with the other.
link |
And in the current climate,
link |
there's a divisiveness that discourages that.
link |
And that's where I see the value of love of encouraging
link |
people to strip away that surface instinctual response
link |
based on the thing they've been taught,
link |
based on the things they listen to,
link |
to actually think deeply.
link |
Have you ever had gone to CVS or Duane Reade
link |
and your bill, how much you owe them is $6,
link |
and you give them a $10 bill in a single
link |
and watch the look on their face?
link |
You watch them void their bowels and panic
link |
because you've given them $11 on a $6 bill.
link |
This is not a mind capable or interested
link |
in thoughts and ideas and learning.
link |
No, you're talking about the first moment
link |
of a first moment where there's an opportunity to think.
link |
They are desperate to avoid it.
link |
No, they're just, it's.
link |
And incapable of it.
link |
I just, they have the same exact experiences
link |
I have every single day when I know it's time
link |
for me to go out on a run of five miles
link |
or six miles or 10 miles.
link |
I'm desperate to avoid it, and at the same time,
link |
I know I have the capacity to do it,
link |
and I'm deeply fulfilled when I do do it,
link |
when I do overcome that challenge.
link |
You are one of the great minds of our generation.
link |
You are telling me that any of these people
link |
can do anything close to the work you do?
link |
Not in artificial intelligence,
link |
but in the ability to be compassionate
link |
towards other people's ideas,
link |
like understand them enough to be able.
link |
Passion requires a certain baseline of intelligence,
link |
because you have to perceive other people
link |
as being different but of value.
link |
That's a sophisticated mindset.
link |
I think most people are capable of it.
link |
You don't think so?
link |
No, and nor are they interested in it.
link |
But in that kind of,
link |
if you don't believe they're capable of it,
link |
how can anarchy be stable?
link |
If you have a farm, there's one farmer and 50 cows,
link |
You're just not, you're not asking the cows
link |
where to farm things.
link |
Yeah, but the cows aren't intelligent enough to do damage.
link |
Cows certainly, bulls,
link |
because they could do a lot of damage.
link |
They could trample things, they could attack you.
link |
Cows are like, how much do they weigh, like 4,000 pounds?
link |
Can you connect the analogy then?
link |
Sure, you can't expect that.
link |
Saying a cow is a cow isn't a slur.
link |
It's not saying you hate cows.
link |
Cows, or even, let's say,
link |
the example I always use with good reason is dogs, okay?
link |
I always say to study how human beings operate,
link |
watch Cesar Millan,
link |
because human beings and dogs have co evolved.
link |
Our minds have both evolved in parallel tracks
link |
to communicate with each other.
link |
Dogs are, can be vicious.
link |
Dogs for the most part are great, wonderful,
link |
but you can't expect the dog
link |
to understand certain concepts.
link |
It's not an, and now most people are offended.
link |
Are you saying I'm like a dog?
link |
If you're a dog person like I am,
link |
this is actually a huge compliment.
link |
Most dogs are better than most people,
link |
but to get the idea that this is something
link |
that is basically your peer is nonsensical.
link |
Now, of course this sounds arrogant and elitist
link |
and so on and so forth,
link |
and I'm perfectly happy with that,
link |
but it is very hard to persuade me or anyone
link |
that if you walk, George Carlin has that joke,
link |
think how smart the average person is,
link |
then realize 50% of people are dumber than that.
link |
If you walk around and see who's out there,
link |
these people are very kind.
link |
They are of value.
link |
They deserve to be treated with respect.
link |
They deserve to be secure in their person.
link |
They deserve to feel safe and to have love,
link |
but the expectation that they should have
link |
any sort of semblance of power over me or my life
link |
is as nonsensical as asking Lassie to be my accountant.
link |
So, but that goes to power,
link |
that not to the ability, the capacity
link |
to be empathetic, compassionate, intelligent.
link |
What, if I were to try to prove you wrong?
link |
That's a good question, okay.
link |
What would you be impressed by about society?
link |
How would I show it to you?
link |
That's a good question.
link |
How would you show it to me?
link |
Because I think something has to be falsifiable
link |
if you're gonna make a claim, right?
link |
Because we both made claims
link |
that aren't a kind of our own like interpretation
link |
based on our interaction.
link |
Like when I opened Twitter, everyone seems to say.
link |
Why do you only follow one person?
link |
Who do you follow?
link |
Who's the one person you follow?
link |
I follow a lot of people.
link |
I have a script that I have an entire interface.
link |
So I think Twitter is really.
link |
This is real love.
link |
It's not ironic love.
link |
I love watching it and I'm sure you do too.
link |
I love watching a quality mind at work
link |
because when someone has a quality mind,
link |
they're often not self aware.
link |
I catch this on myself of how it operates
link |
and then when other people see it,
link |
they're like, oh my God, this is so beautiful
link |
because there's such an innocence to it.
link |
But like when I opened Twitter, I'm energized.
link |
There's a lot of love on Twitter.
link |
You don't think I have a lot of love on Twitter?
link |
My fans pay my rent.
link |
I mean, I don't know your experience of Twitter,
link |
but when I look at your,
link |
which is a fundamentally different thing.
link |
I'm saying my experience from the.
link |
So maybe you can tell me what your experience
link |
is like as a human.
link |
So when I observe your Twitter,
link |
I think, I wouldn't call it love.
link |
I would call it fun.
link |
And because of that, that's a different kind of,
link |
that like love emerges from that
link |
because people kind of learn that we're having,
link |
this is like game night, like.
link |
You know, we can talk shit a little bit.
link |
We can, and you can even like pull in,
link |
you can make fun of people.
link |
You can have the crazy uncle come over
link |
that is a huge Trump supporter,
link |
somebody who hates Trump and you can have a little fun.
link |
It's a different kind of thing.
link |
I wouldn't be able to be the,
link |
you're the host of game night.
link |
So I wouldn't be able to host that kind of game night.
link |
I imagine you programming your robots
link |
and you're asking what is fun
link |
and it just starts sparking.
link |
So the robots in my life that survive
link |
are the ones that don't,
link |
that like survive that whole programming process.
link |
So they're kind of like,
link |
they're kind of like the idiot from Dostoevsky,
link |
they're very like simple minded robots.
link |
Fun is moving a can from one table to another.
link |
That's game night for our kin.
link |
You know, one of my quotes is,
link |
and I think about this every day
link |
and I mean it with every fiber of my being,
link |
we're born knowing that life is a magical adventure
link |
and it takes them years to train us to think otherwise.
link |
And I think that Willy Wonka approach,
link |
it's a very Camus approach.
link |
It's something I believe with every fiber of my being.
link |
I try to spread that as much as possible.
link |
I think it is very sad.
link |
I'm not being sarcastic.
link |
It comes off as condescending.
link |
I mean it at face value.
link |
It's very sad how many people are not receptive to that.
link |
And I think a lot of those functions,
link |
how they were raised.
link |
And I could have very easily with my upbringing
link |
have not maintained that perspective.
link |
And there's a lot of,
link |
I have a lot of friends in recovery like AA
link |
and they have an expression,
link |
not my circus, not my monkeys, right?
link |
That you can't really take on other people's problems
link |
on your own at a certain point,
link |
they have to do the work themselves
link |
because you can only do so much externally.
link |
And there are a lot of very damaged people out there.
link |
And they're damaged people who revel in being damaged.
link |
And they are damaged people who desperately,
link |
desperately, desperately wanna be well,
link |
who desperately wanna be happy,
link |
who desperately wanna find joy.
link |
So if I can be the one and as arrogant as this sounds,
link |
I'll own it, who does give them that fun
link |
and to tell them it doesn't have to be like you thought.
link |
Like it could be, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna suck,
link |
but it's still a magical adventure
link |
and you're gonna be okay,
link |
cause you've been through worse.
link |
Like that, if that could be my message,
link |
I would own it all day long.
link |
And so what does adventure look like for you?
link |
Cause I mean, it actually boils down to,
link |
I still disagree with you.
link |
I think trolling can be
link |
and very often is destructive for society.
link |
Yes, I want to destroy society.
link |
I want to help many people.
link |
Unironically, okay.
link |
Unironically, yes.
link |
What do I do with that?
link |
Whatever you want.
link |
Do what thou wilt is the hall of the law.
link |
Like I just wanna,
link |
so you're hosting game night
link |
and I just wanna play Monopoly.
link |
I wanna play, what's it, Risk.
link |
Okay, I wanna play these games.
link |
And you're saying. Those are aggressive games.
link |
Yeah, I was trying to think like of a friendlier game,
link |
but they're all kind of aggressive.
link |
Axis and allies, you know, fun stuff.
link |
But like, so that's an adventure,
link |
but you're saying that we want to destroy everything.
link |
Even like the rules of those games are not.
link |
You voluntarily agree to those rules.
link |
The point is if someone comes in
link |
who no one invited to game night
link |
and are telling you, no, when you play Monopoly,
link |
you have to get money when you land in free parking
link |
or you don't, it's like, who are you?
link |
We're having our own fun and you smell.
link |
I don't know, but there's an aggressive.
link |
There's an aggression.
link |
Let me speak to that, which I think you're picking up on.
link |
I had a friend named Martha, Marcia, excuse me.
link |
She ran something called cuddle parties,
link |
which people laughed at about a lot back in the day.
link |
And the premise of the cuddle parties,
link |
everyone got together and cuddled, right?
link |
And it's like, ah, ha, ha.
link |
Then you stop to think about it
link |
and you realize physical contact is extremely important.
link |
And a lot of people don't have it.
link |
And if this is a mechanism of people getting that,
link |
it actually is going to have
link |
profound positive psychological consequences.
link |
So after she explained it, I'm like, okay,
link |
we laughed at this because it's weird.
link |
And now that I think about it, this is wonderful.
link |
And I asked her about like the tough question,
link |
I go, what if guys get turned on?
link |
And on their website, it even has a rule,
link |
like do not fear the erection, right?
link |
Because it's going to be a natural consequence
link |
of physical proximity.
link |
And the point she goes, she said this,
link |
I think about this all the time.
link |
People will take as much space as you let them.
link |
It is incumbent on each of us to set our own boundaries.
link |
We all have to learn when to say,
link |
no, you're making me uncomfortable.
link |
If someone doesn't respect your right
link |
to have your boundary to be uncomfortable,
link |
this person is not your friend.
link |
Now they can say, I don't understand.
link |
Like, why is this okay?
link |
Let me know you better so I'm respectful of you.
link |
But if they roll their eyes and they're like,
link |
get over, I'm going to do what I want,
link |
this person is not interested in knowing you as a human being.
link |
And that is the aggression.
link |
You have to draw those lines.
link |
I mean, but that's a very positive way
link |
of phrasing that aggression.
link |
I'm a very positive person.
link |
But the trolling, there's a destructive thing to it.
link |
That hurts others.
link |
But it's not bad people.
link |
I only troll as a reaction or towards those in power.
link |
So maybe let's talk about trolling a little bit.
link |
Because trolling, when it can, maybe you can correct me,
link |
but I've seen it become a game for people
link |
that's enjoyable in itself.
link |
I disagree with that.
link |
That's not a good thing.
link |
If you are there just to hurt innocent people,
link |
you are a horrible human being.
link |
But doesn't trolling too easily become that?
link |
I don't know about easily.
link |
Let me give you an example of where trolling came from.
link |
The original troll was Andy Kaufman.
link |
He was on the show Taxi.
link |
He was a performance artist, not a stand up comedian.
link |
And this is a quintessential example of trolling.
link |
He had a character where he was basically
link |
like a lounge singer.
link |
He had these glasses on and just a terrible singer
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
And he denied it was him.
link |
And he came out and I'm blanking on the guy's name.
link |
I can't believe it.
link |
He came out in the audience and he goes,
link |
you know, my wife died a few years ago.
link |
Every time I look at my daughter Sarah's eyes,
link |
I can see my wife.
link |
Sarah, come out here.
link |
And Sarah was like 11, sits on his lap.
link |
They start singing duet.
link |
He smacks her across the face.
link |
What the hell are you doing?
link |
You're making an ass out of me in front of these people.
link |
She starts crying.
link |
The audience is booing and he goes,
link |
don't boo her, you're just gonna make her cry more.
link |
This wasn't his daughter.
link |
It wasn't even a child.
link |
It was an actress.
link |
This was all set up.
link |
He's exploiting their love of children
link |
in order to force them to be performers.
link |
No one is actually getting hurt.
link |
It's a humorous, though twisted exchange.
link |
If you go online looking for weak people
link |
and you are there to denigrate them
link |
just for them being weak or in some way inferior to you,
link |
that is the wrong approach.
link |
I am best on the counter punch.
link |
A lot of times people come to me
link |
and they'll be like, I hope you die.
link |
You're disgusting.
link |
And there's this great quote from Billy Idol,
link |
which I'm gonna mango here, something effective.
link |
I love it when people are rude to me,
link |
then I can stop pretending to be nice.
link |
Then you start fights.
link |
Now it's a chance for me to finish it
link |
and make an example of this person.
link |
But that's very, very different from
link |
I'm gonna go around and humiliate people
link |
for the sake of doing it, in my view.
link |
And I can see how one would lead to the other.
link |
Yeah, but that's my fundamental concern with it.
link |
So my dream is to put, use technology,
link |
create platforms that increase
link |
the amount of love in the world.
link |
And to me, trolling is doing the opposite.
link |
So like Andy Kaufman is brilliant.
link |
So I love, obviously, it sounds like I'm a robot thing.
link |
I love humor, okay?
link |
One, one, one, zero, one, one, one, one.
link |
But like, it's, I just see like 4chan.
link |
I see that you can often see that humor quickly turn.
link |
Yeah, because what happens is a lot of low status people,
link |
this is their one mechanism through sadism
link |
to feel empowered, and then they can hide behind,
link |
well, I'm just joking.
link |
Yeah, like there's this dark thing.
link |
Yeah, that's not acceptable.
link |
That's something you can't have.
link |
There's a dark LOL that people do,
link |
which is like they'll say like the shittiest thing.
link |
Right, because they feel. And then do LOL after.
link |
Like, as if, I don't even know like what is happening
link |
in that dark mind of yours.
link |
Because they are feeling powerless in their lives,
link |
and they see someone who they perceive as higher status
link |
or more powerful than them, or even not appear,
link |
and they, through their words,
link |
cause a reaction in this person.
link |
So they feel like they are, in a very literal sense,
link |
making a difference on earth,
link |
and they matter in a very dark way.
link |
This is not, I mean, it's unfortunate
link |
that that term trolling is used for that,
link |
as opposed to what Andy Kaufman does,
link |
as opposed to what I do.
link |
It really is a sinister thing,
link |
and it's something I'm not at all a fan of.
link |
How do we fight that?
link |
So, like a neighboring concept of that
link |
is conspiracy theories, which is.
link |
I don't think they're neighboring at all.
link |
Well, let me give a sort of naive perspective.
link |
Maybe you can educate me on this.
link |
From my perspective, conspiracy theories
link |
are these constructs of ideas
link |
that go deeper and deeper and deeper
link |
into creating worlds
link |
where there's powerful pedophiles controlling things,
link |
like these very sophisticated models of the world
link |
that in part might be true,
link |
but in large part, I would say,
link |
are figments of imagination
link |
that become really useful constructs.
link |
Self reinforcing for then feeding,
link |
like empowering the trolls
link |
to attack the powerful, the conventionally powerful.
link |
I don't think that's a function of conspiracy theories.
link |
Now, let's talk about conspiracy theories,
link |
because one of my quotes is,
link |
"'You take one red pill, not the whole bottle.'"
link |
This concept that everything in life
link |
is at the function of a small cadre of individuals
link |
would be, for many people, reassuring,
link |
because as bad as it looks, you know they,
link |
whoever they are, it's usually the Jews,
link |
aren't gonna let it get that bad, that they will pull back.
link |
Or the black pill is that they aren't intentionally
link |
trying to destroy everything,
link |
and there's nothing we can do and we're doomed.
link |
And there's an amazing book by Arthur Herman
link |
called The Idea of Declined Western History.
link |
It's one of my top 10 books
link |
where he goes through every 20 years
link |
how there's a different population that say,
link |
"'It's the end of the world, here's the proof.'"
link |
And very often, the proof is something
link |
that is kind of self fulfilling,
link |
where it's not falsifiable.
link |
And we both have to think of ways
link |
to falsify our claims from earlier.
link |
So it is a big danger.
link |
It's a big danger online, because very quickly,
link |
if someone who you thought was good,
link |
but now is bad on one aspect,
link |
well, they're controlled opposition,
link |
or they've been taken over,
link |
or they've been kind of appropriated by the bad people,
link |
whoever those bad people would be.
link |
I don't know that I have a good answer for this.
link |
I don't think it's as pervasive as people think.
link |
The number of people who believe conspiracy theory?
link |
Right, I mean, and also conspiracy theory
link |
is a term used to dismiss ideas that have some currency.
link |
The Constitutional Convention was a conspiracy.
link |
The Founding Fathers got together secretly
link |
on this war to secrecy in Philadelphia,
link |
said, we're throwing out the Articles of Confederation,
link |
we're making a new government, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
link |
And Luther Martin left, and he told everyone,
link |
this is a conspiracy, and they're like,
link |
yeah, whatever, Luther Martin.
link |
So, and Jeffrey Epstein was a conspiracy,
link |
Harvey Weinstein was a conspiracy,
link |
Bill Cosby was a conspiracy.
link |
They all knew, they didn't care.
link |
Communist infiltration in America,
link |
there's a great book by Eugene Lyons
link |
called The Red Decade.
link |
They all knew every atrocity
link |
that was done under Stalinism was excused in the West,
link |
and if you didn't believe it,
link |
oh, you've got this crazy anti Russia conspiracy.
link |
So it's a term that is weaponized in a negative sense,
link |
but that does not at all imply
link |
that it does not have very negative real life consequences
link |
because it's kind of a cult of one, right?
link |
Like I'm at home with my computer,
link |
I bang into this ideology,
link |
anyone who doesn't agree with me,
link |
they are blind, they're oblivious,
link |
mom and dad, my friends, you don't get it.
link |
We were warned about people like you,
link |
and I think there's a very heavy correlation,
link |
and I'm not a psychiatrist, of course,
link |
between that and certain types of mild mental illness,
link |
like some kind of paranoid schizophrenia
link |
and things like that, because after a certain point,
link |
if everything is a function of this conspiracy,
link |
there's no randomness or beauty in life.
link |
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if you can say
link |
anything interesting about it in the way of advice
link |
of how to take a step into conspiracy theory world
link |
without completely going, like diving deep,
link |
because it seems like that's what happens.
link |
People can't look at Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
I can tell you what the advice I'd have
link |
is, seriously and rigorously, without going,
link |
because you can look at Jeffrey Epstein
link |
and say there's a deeper thing.
link |
You can always go deeper.
link |
It's like Jeffrey Epstein was just a tool
link |
of the lizard people, and the lizard people are the tool.
link |
Well, they say Satanists, in this case.
link |
Somehow, recently, very popular,
link |
spedophiles somehow always involved.
link |
I'm not understanding any of that.
link |
Legitimately, I say this both humorously and seriously.
link |
I need to look into it, and I guess the bigger question
link |
I'm asking, how does a serious human being,
link |
somebody with a position at a respectable university,
link |
look at a conspiracy theory and look into it?
link |
When I look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein,
link |
who had a role at MIT, and I think I'm not happy,
link |
personally, I wasn't there when Jeffrey Epstein was there.
link |
I'm not happy with the behavior of people now
link |
about Jeffrey Epstein, about the bureaucracy
link |
and the everybody's trying to keep quiet,
link |
hoping it blows over, without really looking into any,
link |
looking in a deep philosophical way
link |
of how do we let this human being be among us?
link |
Can I give you a better example that is conspiratorial?
link |
The Speaker of the House,
link |
the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House,
link |
Dennis Hastert, was a pedophile.
link |
The Democrats don't throw this
link |
in the Republicans faces every five minutes.
link |
Not even Democratic activists.
link |
I find that very, very odd, and not what I would predict.
link |
Now, I'm not saying there's some kind of conspiracy,
link |
but when it comes to things like sexual predation,
link |
which is something that I'm very, very concerned about.
link |
I have an uncle now.
link |
My sister just had her second kid recently.
link |
It's something that I don't understand.
link |
It feels as if there's a lot of people
link |
who want this to all go away.
link |
Now, I think it's also because we don't have
link |
the vocabulary and framework to discuss it,
link |
because when you start talking about things like children
link |
and these kind of issues, we want to believe it's all crap,
link |
because it's, for those of us
link |
who aren't in this kind of mindset,
link |
the idea that this happens to kids and happens frequently
link |
is something so horrible that it's just like,
link |
I don't even want to hear it,
link |
and that does these children and adult survivors
link |
an enormous disservice.
link |
So I don't know that I have any particular insight on this.
link |
But see, how do you, the Catholic Church,
link |
again, there's all these topics that.
link |
Public school teachers are far more proportionately
link |
peders of children than the Catholic Church.
link |
Man, I don't know what, you're right, you're right.
link |
Perhaps I've been reading a lot about Stalin and Hitler,
link |
somehow it's more comforting to be able to.
link |
Yeah, because it's there, and then.
link |
And then, and then the atrocities that are happening now,
link |
it's a little bit more difficult because.
link |
There was a New York Times article, sorry to interrupt you,
link |
where they had people tracking down child pornography.
link |
And I think the article said they didn't have enough people
link |
just to cover the videotapes of infants being raped.
link |
And we can even wrap our heads around reading Lolita,
link |
like, okay, she's 14, 12, okay, it's still a female.
link |
An infant, it's something that,
link |
again, like with the Stalin example,
link |
we sat down here for a hundred years,
link |
we would never think of something like this,
link |
think of it in a sexual context, it makes no sense.
link |
So, and the fact that this is international,
link |
okay, we eliminated completely in America.
link |
Well, then they're gonna go find,
link |
there's infants all over the world,
link |
there's video cameras all over the world.
link |
So then it has to become a conspiracy
link |
because someone has to film it, I'm filming it,
link |
you're buying it, your kid.
link |
It is literally a conspiratorial,
link |
not in the sense of like a mafia conspiracy
link |
or some government illuminati,
link |
but there is our networks designed to produce this product.
link |
See, but like what I'm trying to do now,
link |
and part of the, one of the nice things
link |
with like a podcast and other things I'm involved with
link |
is removing myself from having any kind of boss
link |
so I can do whatever that helps.
link |
Oh, it's so wonderful, that just happened to me,
link |
it's the most wonderful thing ever.
link |
So I could do, I can actually, in moderation,
link |
consider like look into stuff.
link |
Careful though, I was gonna write a book about this
link |
that people pointed out,
link |
you sure wanna do this research?
link |
Because if you start Googling around
link |
for this kind of stuff, it's on your computer.
link |
Oh, in that sense, I'm more concerned about,
link |
you know, it's the Nietzsche thing,
link |
looking into the abyss, like you wanna be very,
link |
I believe I can do this kind of thing in moderation
link |
without slipping into the depths.
link |
I think that's intelligence, that's like,
link |
I recently quote unquote looked into like
link |
the UFO community, the extraterrestrial,
link |
whatever community.
link |
I think it always frustrated me
link |
that the scientific community like rolled their eyes
link |
at all the UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff.
link |
Even though there could be fascinating, beautiful,
link |
physical fun, like, first of all,
link |
there could legit. Like ball lightning.
link |
The ball lightning, right, that's at the very basic level
link |
is a fascinating thing.
link |
And also, it could be something like,
link |
I mean, I don't know, but it could be something interesting,
link |
like worth looking into.
link |
My grandfather was an air traffic controller
link |
back in the Soviet Union.
link |
And he said, we saw this stuff all the time.
link |
These are planes that were not moving
link |
or whatever things that were not moving
link |
according to anything we knew about.
link |
So it's absolutely real.
link |
He's not some jerk with an iPhone in his backyard.
link |
This is a military professional who understood technology,
link |
who knew where the secret bases were.
link |
So if he's telling me, it doesn't mean it's Martians,
link |
but he's telling me there's something there.
link |
And there are many examples of these like military people.
link |
These aren't some layman who sees a store.
link |
Yeah, these are legit people.
link |
Yeah, and so you can dismiss,
link |
when you're talking about professionals
link |
who are around aircraft all the time,
link |
who are familiar with aircraft at the highest levels,
link |
and they're seeing things that they can't explain,
link |
they're clearly not stupid
link |
and they're clearly not under form.
link |
So there's different ways to dismiss it.
link |
For example, you were saying
link |
that trolling is a good mechanism.
link |
I'm against that, but I'm not dismissing it
link |
by like rolling my eyes.
link |
I'm considering legitimately that you're way smarter than me
link |
and you understand the world better than me.
link |
Like I'm allowing myself to consider that possibility
link |
and thinking about it.
link |
Like maybe that's true, like seriously considering it.
link |
That's what I feel the way people should approach
link |
intelligent people, serious quote unquote people,
link |
scientists should approach conspiracy theories.
link |
Like look at it carefully.
link |
First of all, is it possible that the earth is flat?
link |
It's not trivial to show that the earth is not flat.
link |
It's a very good exercise.
link |
You should go through it.
link |
But once you go through it,
link |
you realize that based on a lot of data
link |
and a lot of evidence,
link |
and there's a lot of different experiments
link |
you can do yourself actually
link |
to show that the earth is not flat.
link |
The same kind of process can be taken
link |
for a lot of different conspiracy theories
link |
And without slipping into the depths of lizard people
link |
running everything.
link |
That's where I've now listened to two episodes
link |
of Alex Jones's show
link |
because he goes crazy deep
link |
into different kind of worldviews
link |
that I was not familiar with.
link |
And I don't know what to make of it.
link |
I mean, the reason I've been listening to it
link |
is because there's been a lot of discussions
link |
about platforming of different people.
link |
And I've been thinking about what does censorship mean?
link |
I've been thinking about whether,
link |
because Joe Rogan said he's gonna have Alex on again.
link |
And then I enjoyed it as a fan,
link |
just the entertainment of it.
link |
But then I actually listened to Alex
link |
and I was thinking,
link |
is this human being dangerous for the world?
link |
Like is the ideas he's saying dangerous for the world?
link |
I'm more concerned with the Russian conspiracy
link |
that we had for three years.
link |
The claim that our election was not legitimate
link |
and that everyone in the Trump White House
link |
is a stooge of Putin.
link |
And the people who said this had no consequences for this.
link |
Alex Jones doesn't have the respect that they do.
link |
These are both areas of concern for me.
link |
But he might if he's given more platform.
link |
So like the people who've,
link |
and I'd be curious to,
link |
I'm also a little bit,
link |
I don't know what to think about the idea
link |
that Russians hacked the election.
link |
That it seems too easily accepted in the mainstream media.
link |
Hillary Clinton said that how they did it
link |
was they had ads on the dark web.
link |
Now you and I both know what the dark web is.
link |
So the possibility of ads on the dark web
link |
having a proportional influence on the election
link |
is literally zero.
link |
Perhaps I should look into it more carefully,
link |
but I've found very little good data
link |
on exactly what did the Russians do to hack elections.
link |
Like technically speaking,
link |
what are we talking about here?
link |
Like as opposed to these kind of weird,
link |
like the best thing there's a couple of books
link |
and like reporting on like farms.
link |
Troll farms, yeah.
link |
But let's see the data.
link |
Like how many exactly?
link |
What are we talking about?
link |
Like what were they doing?
link |
Not just like some anecdotal discussions of,
link |
but like relative to the bigger,
link |
the size of Facebook.
link |
Like if there's a few people, several hundreds,
link |
say posting different political things on Facebook
link |
relative to the full size of Facebook.
link |
Let's look at the full size.
link |
Right, you're thinking like a scientist.
link |
The actual impact.
link |
Like, cause it's fascinating the social dynamics
link |
of viral information of videos.
link |
When Donald Trump retweets something,
link |
I think that's understudied the effect of that.
link |
Like he retweeted a clip with Joe Rogan
link |
and Mike Tyson, where Mike Tyson says
link |
that he finds fighting orgasmic.
link |
I don't understand that, but they'd be fascinating
link |
to think like what is the ripple effect
link |
on the social dynamic of our society
link |
from retweeting a clip about Mike Tyson.
link |
What's your favorite Trump tweet?
link |
I tuned them out a long time ago, unfortunately.
link |
I have, this goes to the,
link |
you and I have a different relationship with Donald Trump.
link |
You appreciate the art form of trolling.
link |
Sexual versus nonsexual.
link |
So I tend to prefer Bill Clinton.
link |
He's more my type.
link |
No, I'm just kidding.
link |
You don't like that consent stuff.
link |
No, the consent, no.
link |
No, you appreciate the art form of trolling
link |
and Donald Trump is a master.
link |
He's the da Vinci of trolling.
link |
So I tend to think that trolling
link |
is ultimately destructive for society
link |
and then Donald Trump takes nothing seriously.
link |
He's playing a game.
link |
He's making a game out of everything.
link |
He takes a lot of things seriously.
link |
I think he's very committed to international peace.
link |
Sorry, I shouldn't speak so strong.
link |
I think he takes, actually, yes,
link |
a lot of things seriously.
link |
I meant on Twitter and the game of politics.
link |
He is, he only takes.
link |
And I appreciate it.
link |
I just would like to focus on
link |
genuine, real expressions of humanity,
link |
especially positive.
link |
Well, this is one.
link |
This is my favorite tweet.
link |
My fans got it lasered, etched,
link |
and put in a block of Lucite for me.
link |
And he said, every time I speak of the losers and haters,
link |
I do so with great affection.
link |
They cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up.
link |
That's an actual Trump tweet.
link |
It's my favorite one.
link |
And that's kind of nice.
link |
That's kind of nice.
link |
Exclamation point.
link |
Yeah, the sparks are flying.
link |
But I have to kind of analyze that
link |
from a literary perspective,
link |
but it seems like there's love in there.
link |
Like a little bit.
link |
It's a little bit lighthearted.
link |
Cause he's saying, even when I'm going after them,
link |
don't take it so seriously.
link |
That's acknowledging the game of it.
link |
There's some things he's very, very vicious.
link |
He's done things that I can tell you about
link |
that I'm like, this is a bad person.
link |
What do you think about one of the,
link |
okay, listen, I'm not,
link |
for people listening,
link |
I do not have Trump derangement syndrome.
link |
I try to look for the good and the bad in everybody.
link |
One thing, perhaps it's irrational,
link |
but perhaps because I've been reading history,
link |
I, the one triggering thing for me
link |
is the delaying of elections.
link |
I believe in elections.
link |
And this is the part that you probably disagree with,
link |
but I, you know, I believe in the value of people voting.
link |
And I just seen too many dictators,
link |
the place where they finally,
link |
the big switch happens
link |
when you question the legitimacy of elections.
link |
Who's been questioning the legitimacy of elections
link |
for the last three years?
link |
I've only heard Donald Trump do it last year,
link |
but the last three years you're saying somebody else?
link |
You don't think, not my president, illegitimate,
link |
we're not gonna normalize him as president,
link |
Russia hacked this election, impeached,
link |
you're not a real president.
link |
You don't think that's questioning the legitimacy of 2016?
link |
Nah, it's a good, I haven't been paying attention enough,
link |
but I would imagine that argument has been,
link |
that I haven't actually heard too many people,
link |
but I imagine that's been a popular thing to say.
link |
Okay, I, but nevertheless, that's a part,
link |
that didn't, that's not a statement
link |
that gained power enough to say
link |
that Barack Obama will keep being president
link |
or Hillary Clinton should be president.
link |
Newsweek had that article,
link |
how Hillary Clinton could still be president, Newsweek.
link |
No, but she's not.
link |
That's what I'm saying.
link |
My worry isn't, my worry isn't saying
link |
that the election was illegitimate
link |
and people whining at a mass scale
link |
and then Fox News or CNN reporting for years
link |
or books being written for years.
link |
My worry is legitimately martial law.
link |
A person stays president.
link |
So here's the issue.
link |
Like there's a phase shift that happens in a dictatorship.
link |
I did a book on North Korea.
link |
I'm not someone who thinks dictatorship should be taken
link |
I'm not someone who thinks it can't happen here.
link |
I think a lot of times people are desperate
link |
And I think this is something,
link |
if you're gonna hand wave it away,
link |
everyone else hand waved it away.
link |
Hitler's never gonna be chancellor.
link |
He's like lunatic.
link |
They couldn't find a publisher for Mein Kampf in English
link |
because this is some guy from some random minor party
link |
in Germany spouting nonsense.
link |
Who's gonna read this crap?
link |
So I completely agree with you in that regard.
link |
I don't think we're there.
link |
My point is Donald Trump this year
link |
had every pathway open to him to declare martial law.
link |
The cities are being burned down.
link |
He could have very easily sent in the tanks
link |
and people would have been applauding him from his side.
link |
You make me feel so good right now.
link |
But am I wrong though?
link |
What he did, he tweeted out to Mayor Wheeler of Portland.
link |
We will solve this in minutes, but you have to call.
link |
And he sat in his hands and they said, oh, it's his fault.
link |
The city is burning down.
link |
He's not doing anything.
link |
And he goes, I'm not doing anything
link |
until you ask me to do it.
link |
So I think that is,
link |
even if you think he's an aspiring dictator,
link |
that is at least a sign that there is some restraint
link |
on his aspirations.
link |
Can I just take that in as a beautiful moment of hope?
link |
So I'm gonna remember this moment.
link |
I'm gonna miss Ted Cruz, beautiful Ted.
link |
I'm gonna remember that.
link |
I mean, I should say that perhaps I'm irrationally,
link |
this is the one moment where I feel myself
link |
being a little unhealthy.
link |
I don't think you're being irrational.
link |
I think there's an asymmetry
link |
because it's kind of like, okay,
link |
either if I leave the house, it's like Russian roulette.
link |
Yeah, maybe it's like a one in six shot.
link |
I'm pulling the trigger, I'm killing myself,
link |
but that's one in six.
link |
That's not, and the consequences are so dire
link |
that a little paranoia would go a long way.
link |
There's something that.
link |
But you can't go back.
link |
It's an asymmetry, yeah.
link |
The thing is, the thing that makes Donald Trump new to me,
link |
and again, I'm a little naive in these things,
link |
but he surprised me
link |
in how many ways he just didn't play by the rules.
link |
And he's made me, a little ant in this ant colony,
link |
think like, well, do you have to play by the rules at all?
link |
Like, why are we having elections?
link |
Why did you say, like, it's coronavirus time?
link |
Like, it's not healthy to have elections.
link |
Like, we shouldn't be, like, I could,
link |
if I put my dictator hat on.
link |
Nancy Pelosi said that Joe Biden shouldn't debate.
link |
She says she shouldn't dignify Trump with a debate.
link |
He's the president.
link |
He could be the worst president on earth,
link |
evil, despicable monster.
link |
I'll take that as an argument.
link |
So she's playing politics, but she's.
link |
I don't think that's playing politics.
link |
I think when there's a certain point where things get,
link |
when you start attacking institutions
link |
for the emergencies of the moment and acting arbitrarily,
link |
that is when things are the slippery slope.
link |
Yeah, so you're saying debates is one of the institutions.
link |
Like, that's one of the traditions to have the debates.
link |
I think the debates are extremely important.
link |
And now I don't think that someone's a good debater
link |
is gonna make a good president.
link |
I mean, that's a big problem.
link |
But you're just saying this is attacking
link |
just yet another tradition, yet another.
link |
You know, like, how if you're dating,
link |
if you're married to someone
link |
and someone throws out the word divorce,
link |
you can't unring that bell, you threw it out there.
link |
I'm saying you don't throw things out like that
link |
unless you really are ready to go down this road.
link |
And I think that is,
link |
there's nothing in the constitution about debates.
link |
We've only had them since 1980,
link |
but still, I think they are extremely important.
link |
It's also a great chance for Joe Biden
link |
to tell him to his face, you're full of crap,
link |
here's what you did, here's what you did,
link |
here's what you did.
link |
So fascinating that you're both, you acknowledge that,
link |
and yet you also see the value
link |
of tearing down the entire thing.
link |
So you're both worried about no debates,
link |
or at least in your voice, in your tone.
link |
There's a great quote by Chesterton.
link |
I'm not a fan of him at all.
link |
But he says, before you tear down a fence,
link |
make sure you know why they put it up first.
link |
So I am for tearing it all down,
link |
but there's something called like a controlled demolition,
link |
like building sevens, or there's.
link |
We knew we were in Tel Aviv.
link |
Hashtag building seven.
link |
We knew we were in Tel Aviv.
link |
Wow, you're faster than me.
link |
You're operating in a different level.
link |
I need to upgrade my operating system.
link |
I told you Windows 95.
link |
You're trying, yeah.
link |
If you're gonna, it's like Indiana Jones, right?
link |
If you're gonna pull something away,
link |
make sure you have something in place first,
link |
as opposed to just breaking it,
link |
and then just, especially in politics,
link |
because it escalates.
link |
And when things escalate without any kind of response,
link |
it can go in a very bad, that's when Napoleon comes in.
link |
So what's your prediction about the Biden Trump debates?
link |
Again, I just have this weird,
link |
maybe we'll return to maybe not in this,
link |
how do we put more love into the world?
link |
And one of the things that worries me about the debates
link |
is it'll be the world's greatest troll
link |
against the grandpa on the porch.
link |
Who crapped his pants.
link |
And it will not put more love into the world.
link |
It will create more mockery, like.
link |
Joe Biden did a great job against Paul Ryan in 2012.
link |
Paul Ryan was no lightweight.
link |
No one thought he was a lightweight.
link |
Joe Biden handed Sarah Pail in her ass in 2008,
link |
which isn't as easy to do as you think,
link |
because she's a female.
link |
So you're gonna come off as bullying.
link |
That's something you have to worry about.
link |
I think he is in the stages of cognitive decline.
link |
So I think it's going to be interesting.
link |
like Mike Tyson beating up a child,
link |
cause it'll be a source of amusement to me.
link |
But I don't know how it's going to go.
link |
Is it possible that Joe Biden will be the Mike Tyson?
link |
Yes, because in his last debate with Bernie,
link |
he was perfectly fine.
link |
And again, the guy was a sender for decades.
link |
And I don't think anyone,
link |
if you looked at Joe Biden in 2010,
link |
would have thought this guy is going to be,
link |
have his ass handed him a debate.
link |
You wouldn't think that at all.
link |
So I don't know who we're going to see.
link |
Plus he's got a lot of room to attack Trump.
link |
So I'm sure he's going to come strapped and ready
link |
and he's going to have his talking points
link |
and watch Trump dance, try to tap dance around him.
link |
And if he's in a position,
link |
I don't know what the rules of the debate are,
link |
to actually nail him to the wall,
link |
it might actually,
link |
I'm sure he's going to have a lot of lines too.
link |
The problem is Trump is the master counter puncher.
link |
So like when Hillary's had her line,
link |
she's like, well, it's a good thing that Donald Trump
link |
isn't in charge of our legal system.
link |
And he's like, yeah, you'd be in jail.
link |
It's like, oh, lady, you set him up.
link |
That's painful to watch, those debates.
link |
I mean, there's something, I think it's actually analogous.
link |
I've come to think of it,
link |
your conversation with me right now,
link |
some Sleepy Joe, I'm playing the role of Sleepy Joe.
link |
I actually connect to Joe because there's,
link |
I'm also incontinent.
link |
There's like these weird pauses that he does.
link |
I do the same thing and it annoys the shit out of me
link |
that like in mid sentence,
link |
I'll start saying a different thing and take a tangent.
link |
I'm not as slow and drunk as I sound, always.
link |
I swear I'm more intelligent underneath it.
link |
I'm slower but less drunk.
link |
But the result, one of those is true, but not both, yeah.
link |
And Trump, just like you, are a master counter puncher.
link |
So it's gonna be messy.
link |
Here's the other thing, in all seriousness,
link |
Chris Wallace is the moderator.
link |
Chris Wallace has interviewed Trump several times
link |
and he was a tough, tough questioner.
link |
So I don't think he's gonna come in there
link |
with softball questions.
link |
I think he's really going to try to nail Trump down,
link |
which is tough to do.
link |
Yeah, and he's like, Mr. President, sir,
link |
that's not accurate, blah, blah, blah.
link |
And Trump gets very frustrated
link |
because he doesn't just let him say whatever he wants
link |
and he hits him with the follow up.
link |
I guess he's on Fox News.
link |
And I listen to his Sunday program every once in a while.
link |
He gives me hope that, I don't know,
link |
there's something in the voice that he's not bought.
link |
There's no question he's gonna take this seriously,
link |
which I think is the best you could hope for in a moderator.
link |
It feels like there's people that might actually
link |
take the mainstream media into a place
link |
that's going to be better in the future.
link |
And we need people like him.
link |
You mean like Robespierre?
link |
Like taking the mainstream media to a better future.
link |
Like bring out the guillotines.
link |
See, you put your anarchist hat back on.
link |
I don't think Robespierre is much of an anarchist,
link |
but yeah, I get what you're saying.
link |
You don't think there should be a centralized place for news?
link |
Well, that's what mainstream media
link |
is supposed to represent, and it's broken.
link |
Well, it's not whatever, what do you call that?
link |
A place where people traditionally said
link |
was the legitimate source of truth.
link |
That's what the media was supposed to represent, no?
link |
That's their big branding accomplishment.
link |
That was never true?
link |
Yeah, because here's what happens.
link |
We remember the Spanish American War,
link |
remember the Maine, we have to take Cuba,
link |
yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst, right?
link |
Then record scratch, and then we're all objective.
link |
Like when did this transition happen according to people?
link |
When you were saying that the Kaiser
link |
is the worst human being on earth?
link |
When you were downplaying Stalin
link |
and downplaying Hitler's atrocities?
link |
When you were saying we had to be in Vietnam?
link |
At what point, WMDs, when did it change?
link |
You just are better con artists at a certain point,
link |
and now the mask is dropping.
link |
Yeah, but don't you think there's, at its best,
link |
like investigative journalism can uncover truth
link |
in a way that like Reddit, subreddits can't?
link |
You know, Reddit, sure, I agree.
link |
At its best, absolutely, that's not even a dispute.
link |
But like, don't you think like fake it until you make it
link |
is the right way to do it?
link |
No, no, no, I meant the news saying like,
link |
we dream of doing, of arriving at the truth
link |
and reporting the truth.
link |
They don't say that.
link |
CNN had an advertisement that said this is an apple.
link |
We only report facts.
link |
No, that's now, and now it's clear things have changed.
link |
They haven't changed.
link |
You're just more, you're more aware of their chicanery.
link |
But, okay, so the.
link |
How many people died in Iraq?
link |
Because Saddam Hussein was about to launch WMDs.
link |
Who had consequences for this?
link |
This isn't a minor thing.
link |
This is lots of dead people.
link |
And also, I mean, dead people, it's horrible,
link |
but also the money, which has, like we said,
link |
economic effects that.
link |
Marianne Williamson, I think it was, had the,
link |
or Trump, both of them had the great point that goes,
link |
that's like a trillion dollars.
link |
How many schools would that build?
link |
How many roads would that build?
link |
Even here, why are we building hospitals in Iraq
link |
that we destroyed when we could building hospitals here?
link |
It makes no sense.
link |
So who's responsible for that?
link |
No, I meant for, well, so who's responsible
link |
for arriving at the truth of that,
link |
of speaking to the money spent on the wars in Iraq?
link |
This is one of the great things about social media.
link |
Twitter, you have faith in Twitter.
link |
Not specifically Twitter, but yeah,
link |
social media's the whole, what anyone could.
link |
Here's another great example.
link |
Before, if you were talking about police brutality
link |
or these riots, you would have to perceive it
link |
in the way it was framed and presented to you.
link |
Nicholas Sandman's another example.
link |
Breonna Taylor, all these things.
link |
Well, we don't have footage of her.
link |
You would have to perceive in the way that it's edited
link |
and presented to you by the corporate press.
link |
Now everyone is a video, has a video camera.
link |
Everyone has their perspective.
link |
And it's very useful when these incidents happen
link |
where you could see the same incident from several angles
link |
and you don't need Don Lemon or Chris Wallace
link |
to tell me what this means.
link |
I can see with my own eyes.
link |
Yeah, I've been very pleasantly surprised about the power.
link |
See, the mob, again, gets in the way.
link |
They get emotional and they destroy the ability
link |
for people to reason.
link |
But you're right that truth is unobstructed on social media.
link |
Like if you're careful and patient, you can see the truth.
link |
Like for example, data on COVID,
link |
some of the best sources are doctors.
link |
Like if you wanna know the truth about the coronavirus
link |
and what's happening is there's follow people on Twitter.
link |
There's certain people that are just like sourcing them
link |
from me versus the CDC and the WHO.
link |
It's, that's fast.
link |
I mean, well, it's kind of anarchy, right?
link |
It's not kind of, it is anarchy, yes.
link |
I mean, well, there's some censorship
link |
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
You have censorship under anarchy
link |
in the sense that you're talking about.
link |
Like people get kicked off of Twitter.
link |
That's a drawing backwards.
link |
How do you kick somebody, okay.
link |
So, I mean, it's a.
link |
Most people wouldn't say Twitter is working,
link |
but that's probably because they take for granted
link |
how well it's working and they're just complaining
link |
about the small part of it that's broken.
link |
Okay, another question about.
link |
No, by the way, I mean, I had a personal gripe
link |
with the situation about the, not a personal gripe,
link |
but I felt overly emotional about the possibility
link |
that there will be some of Donald Trump
link |
messing with the election process,
link |
but you made me feel better.
link |
Like saying like, if he had a bunch of opportunities
link |
to do what I would have done if I was a dictator,
link |
I would, the first time those riots over George Floyd,
link |
I would have instituted martial law.
link |
Do you know what I remember very vividly?
link |
Is after 9 11 and everyone was waiting for George Bush
link |
to give his speech and he had 98% approved rating.
link |
And I remember very vividly,
link |
cause if he had said we're suspending the constitution,
link |
everyone would have cheered for him.
link |
Like he couldn't get enough support at that time.
link |
And he didn't do it.
link |
And I can't say anything really good about George W. Bush.
link |
I'm not a fan of his to say the least.
link |
So I think you and I, and other people who are familiar
link |
with totalitarian regimes to some extent from our ancestry
link |
or whatever, from research should always be the ones
link |
freaking out and warning,
link |
but we should also be aware of we got a ways to go
link |
before it's Hitler.
link |
And thankfully there are a lot of dominoes
link |
that have to fall into place before Hitler.
link |
It's like the game secret Hitler, it's a board game
link |
before Hitler becomes Hitler.
link |
Like it's not, especially in America,
link |
there's lots of things that have to happen
link |
before you really get to that point.
link |
I mean, FDR was for all intents and purposes a dictator,
link |
but even then the worst you could say,
link |
and this is not something that you should take lightly
link |
was internment of Japanese citizens,
link |
but they weren't murdered.
link |
They weren't under lock and key in the sense of like in cells.
link |
So things could have gotten a lot worse for him.
link |
We have to, I mean, Hitler is such a horrible person
link |
to bring up because.
link |
Yeah, Mussolini is better because Hitler is so close
link |
and connected to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
link |
There's all this stuff that led up to the war
link |
and the war itself.
link |
Say that there was no Holocaust,
link |
Hitler would probably be viewed differently.
link |
Yes, I should think so.
link |
Well, I mean, but.
link |
You think, that's a very controversial stance.
link |
You think Hitler would be viewed differently
link |
if it wasn't for the Holocaust?
link |
Well, I mean, but it's a funny thing that the,
link |
I would say the death of how many, 40, 50 million.
link |
I mean, I don't know how you calculate it.
link |
It's not seen as bad as the 6 million.
link |
Oh yeah, because of Mao and Stalin.
link |
Yeah, but it's interesting.
link |
I'm working on it.
link |
You're working on it.
link |
Yeah, the next book I'm talking about.
link |
Reminding, well, it's good.
link |
I'm glad a good writer is,
link |
because the world's not reminded.
link |
My last book, The New Right,
link |
I had to deal with something like the Nazis.
link |
And one of the points they make is,
link |
how come everyone knows about the Holocaust,
link |
but no one knows about the Holodomor?
link |
And they're right.
link |
We should know about this,
link |
because it is a great example of both
link |
how the Western media were depraved,
link |
but also what human beings are capable of.
link |
And those scars are still,
link |
many Americans think Russia and Ukraine are the same thing.
link |
Oh, Trump's in bed with the Ukrainians,
link |
Trump's about the Russians,
link |
they think it's the same thing.
link |
For us, it's complete lunacy.
link |
But this is the kind of thing where Pol Pot
link |
is another example,
link |
where people have no clue of what has been done
link |
to their fellow man on the face of this earth,
link |
and they should know.
link |
How much of that do you lay at the hands of communism?
link |
How much are you with like a Jordan Pearson
link |
who is intricately connecting the atrocities,
link |
like you're saying, 1930s Ukraine,
link |
where people were starved?
link |
I recently, my grandmother recently passed away,
link |
and she survived that as a kid.
link |
Which is, those people, I mean, they're tough.
link |
Like that whole region is tough,
link |
because they survived that,
link |
and then right after, occupation of Nazis, of Germans.
link |
How much do you lay that at communism as an ideology,
link |
versus Stalin, the man?
link |
I think Lenin was building concentration camps
link |
while he was around, and slave labor.
link |
I don't, I think it's clearly both.
link |
There are certain variants of communism
link |
that were far, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev,
link |
the reason the Soviet Union fell apart,
link |
and this is kind of, I'm gonna spoil the end of the book.
link |
There's an amazing book called Revolution 1989,
link |
it's like the most beautiful book I've ever read,
link |
by Viktor Sebastian, he's a Hungarian author.
link |
And basically what happens in 1989,
link |
Poland has their elections,
link |
and then in 1990, they kind of let in
link |
the labor people to the government.
link |
And people start crossing borders in the Eastern Bloc,
link |
and you had Hanukkah from Eastern Germany,
link |
and Ceausescu from Romania calling Gorbachev,
link |
because those are the two toughest ones,
link |
by communist standards, they go,
link |
they're just escaping, we're gonna lose everything.
link |
You gotta send in the tanks, like you did in Hungary,
link |
like you did in Czechoslovakia in 68.
link |
And Gorbachev goes, I'm not sending the tanks.
link |
And they go, dude, if you don't send in the tanks,
link |
it's all done, and he goes, nope, I'm not that kind of guy.
link |
And they were right, Ceausescu was personally shot
link |
with his wife up against the wall,
link |
Hanukkah, I forget what happened to him,
link |
but they all self liberated.
link |
My friend who was born in Czechoslovakia,
link |
his mom was pregnant under communism,
link |
and she never even imagined he'd be free,
link |
and he was born under free.
link |
And they were all looking around,
link |
all these countries that self liberated,
link |
because they're like, this is a trick, right?
link |
They're trying to figure out who's like not good,
link |
so that they can arrest us on mass, and they didn't.
link |
So even within communism,
link |
there are bad guys and better guys.
link |
But we talked about anarchy, we talked about democracy.
link |
Do you see, like there's democratic socialism
link |
conversations going on in the popular culture,
link |
socialism is seen as like evil, or for some people, great?
link |
What are your thoughts about it as in a political ideology?
link |
So you're on the evil side?
link |
What is it, you know, what makes it evil?
link |
What's like structurally, if you were to try to analyze?
link |
Sure, I'd say three ways.
link |
Morally, no person has the right
link |
to tell another person how to live their life.
link |
Economically, it's not possible
link |
to make calculations under socialism.
link |
It's only the prices that are information that tells me,
link |
oh, this is, we need to produce more of this,
link |
we need to produce less of this.
link |
Without prices being able to adjust
link |
and give information to producers and consumers,
link |
you have no way of being able to produce
link |
effectively or efficiently.
link |
And also it is, it turns people against each other.
link |
When you force people to interact,
link |
when you force them into relationships,
link |
when you force them into jobs,
link |
and you don't give them any choice,
link |
when there's a monopoly, the consequence of monopoly,
link |
everyone's familiar with ostensibly under capitalism,
link |
but somehow when it's a government monopoly,
link |
all those economic principles don't work,
link |
it doesn't make any sense.
link |
But there's force in democracy too,
link |
it's just you're saying there's a bit more force
link |
But that's interesting that you say
link |
that there's not enough information.
link |
I mean, that's ultimately,
link |
you need to have really good data
link |
to achieve the goals of the system,
link |
even if there's no corruption.
link |
You just need to have the information.
link |
And capitalism provides you
link |
a really strong source of real time information.
link |
And if capitalism at its best and cleanest,
link |
which is perfect information, is available,
link |
there's no manipulation of information.
link |
That's one of the problems, okay.
link |
Can we talk about some candidates,
link |
the ones we got and possible alternatives?
link |
So one question I have is, why do we have,
link |
within this system, why do we have the candidates we have?
link |
It seems, maybe you can correct me,
link |
highly unsatisfactory.
link |
Is anyone actually excited about our current candidates?
link |
I'm kind of excited,
link |
because no matter who wins the election,
link |
it's gonna be hilarious.
link |
So that is something that I'm excited about.
link |
From a humor perspective.
link |
Is that what the whole system is?
link |
So that's one theory of the case,
link |
is the entire thing is optimized for viewership.
link |
And excitement by definitions
link |
of like the reality show kind of excitement.
link |
if you look at what happened with Brett Kavanaugh,
link |
this is not a career that would draw people
link |
who are, you might say, quality.
link |
Because no matter who they are,
link |
there would be a huge incentive from the other team
link |
to denigrate them and humiliate them
link |
in the worst possible ways.
link |
Because as the two teams lose their legitimacy
link |
among Gen Pop, it's gonna get harder and harder
link |
for them to maintain any kind of claims to authority,
link |
which is something I like,
link |
but which does kind of play out
link |
in certain nefarious ways.
link |
So people, the best of the best,
link |
are not gonna wanna be politicians.
link |
Yeah, because I could have a job,
link |
or have a job interview and I'm running Yahoo or whatever,
link |
or I could, for 18 months, have to eat, you know,
link |
corn dogs looking like I'm going down on someone
link |
and shake hands and have all this,
link |
my family and on social media daily
link |
called the worst things, for what?
link |
And then I'm still not guaranteed the position.
link |
But the flip side of that, like from my perspective,
link |
is the competition is weak.
link |
Meaning, like, you need a minimum amount of eloquence,
link |
eloquence, clearly, that I don't,
link |
the bar which I did not pass.
link |
I don't think either of them would be considered
link |
particularly eloquent, Biden or Trump.
link |
No, I know, but that's what I'm saying.
link |
The competition, like if you were,
link |
wanted to become a politician,
link |
if you wanted to run for president,
link |
the opportunity is there.
link |
Like if you were at all competent.
link |
Like if you had, so like Andrew Yang is an example
link |
of somebody who has a bunch of ideas,
link |
is somewhat eloquent, like young, energetic.
link |
It feels like there should be thousands of Andrew Yangs,
link |
like that would enter the domain.
link |
Well, I wouldn't say he went nowhere.
link |
He generated quite a bit of excitement.
link |
He just didn't go very far, that's, okay.
link |
You don't have to run for president
link |
to generate excitement with your ideas.
link |
You could be a podcast host, I'm not even joking.
link |
That's right, that's right, that's right.
link |
And he's both, Andrew Yang.
link |
Oh, he's a podcast?
link |
Yeah, he has a podcast called Yang Speaks.
link |
Oh, wow, the music of the way you said, yeah, cool.
link |
It's the way my mom talks to me
link |
when I tell her something exciting going on in my life.
link |
Oh, that's nice, honey.
link |
Oh, you made a robot, that's cool.
link |
Oh, you're still single, though, aren't you?
link |
I wonder why, I wonder why.
link |
Make yourself a robot wife?
link |
Give me some robot grandchildren.
link |
Okay, but first of all, okay,
link |
let me ask you about Andrew Yang
link |
because he represents fresh energy.
link |
You don't find him fresh or energetic, you know?
link |
Like, is there any candidate you wish was in the mix
link |
that was in the mix you wish was
link |
one of the last two remaining?
link |
Yeah, people like Marianne Williamson, I thought was great.
link |
Tulsi, I thought was great.
link |
Amy Klobuchar got a bad rap.
link |
I think she held her own.
link |
Smart, she wasn't particularly funny, that's okay.
link |
I think she was nonthreatening to a lot of people.
link |
What did you like about them?
link |
I guess I just named all women, that's interesting.
link |
It wasn't even intentional.
link |
Tulsi, I liked that she was aggressive,
link |
has a good resume and is not staying the course
link |
for the establishment.
link |
Marianne Williamson, I like because she comes from a place,
link |
from what it seems, of genuine compassion.
link |
Maybe she's a sociopath, I don't know.
link |
I read her book and it actually affected me profoundly
link |
because it's very rare when you read a book
link |
and there's even that one idea that blows your mind
link |
and that you kind of think about all the time.
link |
And there was one such idea in her book
link |
about she was teaching something called A Course
link |
in Miracles in Hollywood.
link |
I think she still teaches it.
link |
And this was during the 80s, the height of the AIDS crisis.
link |
And all these young men in the prime of their life
link |
were dropping like flies.
link |
And she's trying to give them hope.
link |
Well, good luck, they're dying, no one cares.
link |
And they're like, you can't tell us
link |
that they're gonna cure this, that's a lie.
link |
And she goes, what if I told you they're not gonna cure it?
link |
What if I told you it's gonna be to like diabetes?
link |
They cut off your foot and you're gonna go blind.
link |
Would that be something that you can hope for?
link |
And when you put it like that, it's like, yeah.
link |
Like if you're talking to someone like a homeless junkie
link |
and you're like, you could be a doctor,
link |
you're a lawyer or a lawyer, like cool story.
link |
Like you could have a studio apartment
link |
with a terrible roommate and a shitty job.
link |
But when you're on the street,
link |
cooking breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear that,
link |
you're like, wait, would that really be so bad?
link |
Is that really so much worse than this?
link |
No, and it becomes something.
link |
So when she put it in those terms, I'm like, wow,
link |
this woman that really did a number on me
link |
in terms of teaching people how to be hopeful.
link |
Small steps, I guess.
link |
But it's also, then it becomes less of I need a miracle
link |
to be like, oh, this is really manageable.
link |
And it's absurd to think it's impossible.
link |
What about what's your take on Unity 2020
link |
that Brett Weinstein pushed forward?
link |
It was DOA, he couldn't even stand up to Twitter.
link |
He couldn't even stand up to Twitter, let alone,
link |
or to Facebook, they got blocked,
link |
let alone to Facebook.
link |
It was not hugely problematic, by the way,
link |
that Twitter would block that.
link |
I don't know why they blocked it,
link |
but I believe, I don't know what problematic means.
link |
That's a word that does a lot of work
link |
that people wanted to do conceptually.
link |
The idea that Unity is taking the rejects from each party
link |
and we're gonna have something that no one likes
link |
and therefore it's gonna be a compromise is absurd.
link |
The last time we had this kind of Unity ticket
link |
was the Civil War, where you had Andrew Johnson
link |
from the Democrats and Lincoln from the Republicans.
link |
This was not something that ended well,
link |
particularly nicely, for both halves of the country.
link |
So that's the way you see it is,
link |
like the way I saw it,
link |
I guess I haven't looked carefully at it.
link |
I haven't either, to be fair.
link |
The way I saw it is emphasizing centrists, which is.
link |
How is Tulsi a centrist?
link |
Tulsi was involved?
link |
Yes, he's trying to push Tulsi
link |
on like Jesse Ventura or something.
link |
So, okay, I don't know.
link |
I don't know the specifics.
link |
As a scientist, you also know centrism
link |
is not a coherent term in politics.
link |
But see, now you're like, what is it?
link |
Pleading to authority and my ego.
link |
No, no, I'm pleading to how you approach data.
link |
If someone is saying the mean is accurate,
link |
that only mean, I mean, the mean could be anywhere.
link |
It's a function of what's around it.
link |
That mean is true.
link |
I don't even know what centrists is supposed to mean,
link |
but what it means to me, there's no idea, a centrist.
link |
There's more of a center right or center left.
link |
To me, what that means is somebody
link |
who is a liberal or a conservative,
link |
but is open minded and empathetic to the other side.
link |
Joe Biden had the crime bill.
link |
Joe Biden voted for Republican Supreme Court justices.
link |
Joe Biden voted for a balanced budget.
link |
Joe Biden voted for Bush's war.
link |
And I'm sure probably I haven't looked this up,
link |
Joe, if you want a centrist, you have Joe Biden.
link |
He's worked very well with Republicans.
link |
That argument could be made.
link |
Of course, everybody will always resist that argument.
link |
In fact, during the campaign,
link |
some activists started yelling at him at a town hall.
link |
Not yelling, just saying, hey, we need open borders.
link |
Joe Biden says, I'm not for open borders.
link |
Go vote for Trump and literally turn his back on the man.
link |
And this is during the primaries
link |
where it would behoove you to try to appeal to the base.
link |
And of course, you can probably also make the argument
link |
that Donald Trump is center right, if not center left.
link |
Well, I mean, he's very unique as a personality.
link |
But if you look at his record,
link |
and first of all, his rhetoric,
link |
you can say is not centrist at all.
link |
But in terms of how he governs,
link |
the budgeting, I mean, has been very moderate.
link |
It certainly hasn't been like draconian budget cuts.
link |
The Supreme Court, you could say, okay, he's hard right.
link |
Immigration, you could say in certain capacities,
link |
But in terms of pro life, what has he done there?
link |
In terms of, so in many other aspects,
link |
he's been very much this kind of me too Republican.
link |
But certainly the rhetoric,
link |
it's very hard to make him the case that he's a centrist.
link |
So you don't like,
link |
is there any other idea you find compelling?
link |
What I like about UND 2020 is it's an idea
link |
for a different way, for like a different party,
link |
a different path forward.
link |
So ideas, just like anarchy is an interesting idea
link |
that leads to discourse, that leads to.
link |
I don't think it's interesting at all.
link |
And here's why I don't think it's interesting.
link |
Sweden has eight parties in its parliament.
link |
Iceland, population is like 150,000.
link |
They've got nine, I think it was.
link |
Czech Republic has nine, Britain has five.
link |
So the claim that two parties
link |
is the censorious of speech,
link |
but three, oh, now all of a sudden,
link |
it makes no sense, doesn't port to the data, number one.
link |
Number two is Donald Trump demonstrated
link |
that you can be basically a third party candidate,
link |
sees the machinery of a existing party
link |
and appropriate to your own ends as Bernie Sanders.
link |
Bernie Sanders has never been a Democrat.
link |
Major credit to him for that's not easy
link |
to be elected as Senator as an independent.
link |
He's done it repeatedly.
link |
So these are two examples of ossified elites
link |
right for the picking.
link |
But to have a third party makes no real sense.
link |
Speaking of which, a party you talk about quite a bit.
link |
And let's look, this is a personal challenge to you.
link |
Let me bring up the Libertarian Party.
link |
And the personal challenge is to go five minutes
link |
without mocking them in discussing this idea.
link |
So first of all, what?
link |
I'm being trolled.
link |
Okay, I'm being trolled, okay, I'm being trolled.
link |
I'm being trolled, okay, this is good.
link |
Do you remember the fun friends?
link |
There was an episode where Chandler
link |
had to not make fun of people.
link |
Like, can you go one day Chandler?
link |
And Phoebe starts telling him about like this UFO she saw
link |
and he's like, that's very interesting and nice for you.
link |
This is exactly that.
link |
So a true master would be able to play
link |
within the game, within the constraints.
link |
So no, I'm pretty sure you'll still mock them.
link |
But no, no, I'll stick to the rules.
link |
Five minutes, easy.
link |
So first of all, speaking broadly about libertarianism,
link |
can you speak to that, how you feel about it?
link |
And then also to the Libertarian Party,
link |
which is the implementation of it in our current system.
link |
So I think libertarianism is a great idea.
link |
And I think there's many libertarian ideas
link |
that have become much more mainstream,
link |
which I'm very, very happy about.
link |
I remember there was an article in either New York
link |
or New Yorker Magazine in the early 90s,
link |
where they talked about the Cato Institute,
link |
which is a libertarian think tank.
link |
And they refer to the fact that Cato was against war
link |
and against like regulation with a wacky consistency,
link |
because they didn't know how to reconcile these two things.
link |
I don't remember what the two things were,
link |
but I remember that expression wacky consistency.
link |
And it wasn't even, we were all taught,
link |
and this is very much before the internet,
link |
that there's two tribes and if you're pro life,
link |
you have to hate gays.
link |
And if you're for socialized medicine,
link |
that also means you have to be for free speech.
link |
It was just this very, and like there's a whole menu
link |
and you got to sign it to all of them.
link |
And that menu is terrible.
link |
They hate America, they want to destroy it.
link |
Oh my God, those are horrible evil.
link |
This is the menu you want.
link |
And the Libertarian Party to some extent,
link |
and just libertarians as a whole said,
link |
you know, you can do the Chinese buffet
link |
and take a little from column A, a little from column B
link |
and have an ideology that is coherent and consistent,
link |
an ideology of peace and nonaggression
link |
and things like that.
link |
The Libertarian Party takes its model
link |
from like the early progressive and populist parties
link |
from the early 20th century,
link |
which were not very effective
link |
in terms of getting people elected,
link |
but were extremely effective
link |
in terms of getting the two major parties
link |
to appropriate and adopt their ideas and implement them.
link |
And in Britain as well, the liberal party got destroyed
link |
and became taken over by labor
link |
as the alternative party to the Tories
link |
and have those ideas basically become mainstreamed.
link |
So I think that, and the libertarian,
link |
my friend who passed away, Eric, I miss him dearly,
link |
was their webmaster and his whole point is,
link |
if you don't think of that in terms of a party,
link |
in terms of getting people elected,
link |
but if you think of it as a party
link |
in terms of getting people educated about alternatives,
link |
then there's enormous use for that.
link |
That was his perspective.
link |
And I don't think that's an absurd perspective.
link |
But here's some libertarian ideas
link |
that have become extremely mainstream.
link |
War should be a last resort.
link |
This is something we were taught as kids and we all say,
link |
but for many years, it's been like,
link |
they don't think of it as a last resort.
link |
It's like something's bad, well, it's like the first instinct.
link |
Now it's like, let's really give it a week, just a week.
link |
Like what's going on in Syria?
link |
Is there really gonna be a genocide, the Kurds?
link |
You know, things like that.
link |
Another thing is drug legalization.
link |
This was, you know, when you and I were kids,
link |
Only hippies wanna smoke pot.
link |
Now it's like, I was on a grand jury.
link |
And I'll point out what people make is,
link |
are you sure that the 16 year old who's selling weed,
link |
let's say selling, should his life be ruined?
link |
Should he be imprisoned with rapists and murderers?
link |
Like if you say yes, say yes,
link |
but you have to acknowledge that that's what you're meaning.
link |
And then a lot of people are like, wait a minute,
link |
there's gotta be a third option
link |
then he has no consequences or he's imprisoned
link |
I'm not comfortable with either of these.
link |
And I think the other one is an increasing skepticism.
link |
This libertarians were on top of this first
link |
and the hard left of the police.
link |
As of now, asset forfeiture steals more from people
link |
What people don't know about what asset forfeiture is,
link |
if the cops come to your house and they suspect you,
link |
you haven't been convicted of using your car or your house
link |
or whatever in terms of selling drugs,
link |
they can take whatever they want.
link |
And then you have to sue to prove your innocence
link |
and get your property back.
link |
It's a complete violation of due process.
link |
People don't realize it's going on.
link |
It's a great way for the cops to increase their budgets
link |
And libertarians were like the first big ones saying,
link |
guys, this is not American and this is crazy.
link |
And now increasingly people on conservatives and leftists
link |
like, wait a minute, this is...
link |
Even if you are selling drugs, like they take your house,
link |
what are you talking about?
link |
So I think those are some mechanisms that libertarianism,
link |
though not by name, has become far more popular.
link |
Yeah, it's interesting, so the idea, yeah, a coherent set
link |
of ideas that eventually get integrated
link |
into a two party system.
link |
The war, that's an interesting one.
link |
I wonder what the thread there is.
link |
I wonder how it connects to 9 11 and so on.
link |
I think the Patriot Act.
link |
Patriot Act, okay.
link |
For people who are politically savvy,
link |
we're like, oh, okay, this is not a joke.
link |
This is really a crazy infringement of our freedoms
link |
and both parties are falling over each other
link |
to sign into law and the Orwellian name.
link |
You don't wanna...
link |
How can you be against patriotism?
link |
What kind of person?
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So I think for a lot of people,
link |
especially both civil libertarians on the left
link |
and a lot of conservatives who are constitutionalists
link |
are like, wait a minute, this isn't...
link |
I'm not comfortable with this.
link |
And I'm also not comfortable with how comfortable everyone
link |
in Washington is with it.
link |
You're right, probably libertarians
link |
and libertarianism is a place of ideas,
link |
which is why I have a connection to it.
link |
Every time I listen to those folks, I like them.
link |
I feel connected to them.
link |
I would even sometimes, depending on the day,
link |
call myself a libertarian.
link |
Well, we're all the spectrum, so that's why.
link |
We're all on the spectrum, yeah.
link |
But when I look at the people that actually rise to the top
link |
in terms of the people who represent the party,
link |
this is where five minutes ran out, right?
link |
I could go, I'm allowed.
link |
You can go, why are they so weird?
link |
Why aren't strong candidates emerging
link |
that represent as political representatives
link |
or as famous speakers that represent ideology?
link |
I think libertarians tend to...
link |
I think Jonathan Haidt in his book, in his research,
link |
he's a political scientist and he does a lot of things
link |
about how people come to their political inclusions
link |
and what factors force people to reach conclusions.
link |
And he found that libertarians are the least empathetic
link |
and most rationalistic of all the groups.
link |
And by that, he means like they think in terms of logic
link |
as opposed to like people's feelings
link |
and that has positives and has negatives.
link |
And we have the A, B testing with Ron Paul.
link |
Ron Paul ran for president as a libertarian nominee.
link |
He was the nominee.
link |
He got pretty much nowhere in 1988.
link |
Then he ran as a return to the Republican party
link |
as a congressman for many years from Texas.
link |
He ran for the presidency in 2008 and 2012.
link |
And in 2008, he stood on stage with Rudy Giuliani
link |
and told him that they were here in 9 11
link |
because we're over there,
link |
which would have been a shocking, horrifying taboo
link |
a few years earlier.
link |
Many people were like, holy crap, this is amazing.
link |
Giuliani was all offended and Ron Paul's like...
link |
I took some guts by the way.
link |
When I heard that, it was so refreshing.
link |
Not what he said, but the fact that he said something
link |
It made me realize how rare it is for politicians,
link |
but even people to say something that takes guts.
link |
Well, it's also the idea that like you can't,
link |
even if you think America has a right
link |
to invade any country on earth as much as it wants
link |
and kill people as a consequence of war
link |
and blow up their buildings and destroy their country,
link |
you can't with a straight face
link |
not expect us to have consequences,
link |
even if they're consequences from evil people.
link |
Even if we're 100% of the good guys
link |
and they're 100% of the bad guys,
link |
those bad guys, some of them are still gonna try
link |
What happens next?
link |
You know what I mean?
link |
So that kind of concept that there's any American
link |
culpability, we're America, we are the good guys
link |
by definition, we're not culpable,
link |
to have people start thinking about
link |
what if there's another way?
link |
You know, what if we're not there
link |
and then they're not here
link |
and we're kind of doing a backdoor,
link |
we're talking so different scenarios.
link |
So the fact that he got so much more traction
link |
as a Republican, the fact that Donald Trump
link |
who came out of nowhere became not only the candidate,
link |
but the president tells people,
link |
it's like getting a book deal, right?
link |
You can either go, there's three choices.
link |
You can either self publish, mainstream publisher
link |
or independent publisher.
link |
The independent publisher is the worst of all choices
link |
because you're not getting a big advance,
link |
they're not gonna be able to promote you a lot
link |
and they don't get the distribution.
link |
Mainstream, I've done mainstream and self, right?
link |
With self, I don't have the cred,
link |
the respectability of a mainstream or the cache.
link |
It can be a New York Times bestseller.
link |
Right, it takes a lot of work,
link |
but I get a lot more of the profit.
link |
If it looks good on the shelf on Amazon,
link |
it looks identical, so on and so forth.
link |
With the mainstream, the benefits and costs
link |
are pretty much obvious to most people.
link |
So the same thing, it's like you can either
link |
be an independent like Ross Perot
link |
or you could be, just seize one of the party apparatus,
link |
which the benefits are enormous there.
link |
But in terms of going third party,
link |
I don't know the libertarian party apparatus
link |
other than maybe some ballot access
link |
is really that efficacious.
link |
And then you're gonna have a lot of baggage.
link |
Cause if you hear independent, Jesse Ventura, Ross Perot,
link |
you think of the person.
link |
Now you have to define yourself
link |
and you have to defend the party.
link |
That's two bridges for most people.
link |
So, brilliantly put, okay, let me speak to you.
link |
Cause I'm speaking to Yaron Brooks soon.
link |
Yeah, so, but that, another example, I was.
link |
Ask him to tell you a joke about Ayn Rand,
link |
So there, that's one criticism I've heard you say,
link |
which is they're unable to speak to any weaknesses
link |
in either Ayn Rand's or objectivist worldview.
link |
That's really, well, you put it,
link |
I know you're half joking,
link |
but that's actually a legitimate discussion to have.
link |
I'm not joking at all.
link |
Because that's, to me, one of the criticisms
link |
and one of the explanations why the world
link |
seems to disrespect Ayn Rand, the people that do,
link |
is she kind of implies that her ideas are like flawless.
link |
No, she says they correspond to reality.
link |
That's the term she uses.
link |
That, I mean, objectivist, it's in the name.
link |
It's, you know, it's just facts.
link |
Like, it's impossible to basically argue against
link |
cause it's pretty simple, it's just all facts.
link |
Well, that's, it's possible to argue against,
link |
but she would say she's never met a good critic
link |
who can argue the facts out of misrepresentation.
link |
And she's not entirely wrong.
link |
She's often caricatured,
link |
cause she has a very extreme personality
link |
and extreme worldview.
link |
But that to me, I mean, some people,
link |
there's a guy named in the physics mathematics community
link |
called Stephen Wolfram.
link |
I don't know if you've heard of him.
link |
He has a similar style of speaking sometimes,
link |
which is like, I've created a science,
link |
but that turns a lot of people off,
link |
like this kind of weird confidence.
link |
But he's one of my favorite people,
link |
I think one of the most brilliant people.
link |
If you just ignore that little bit of ego
link |
or whatever you call that,
link |
that there are some beautiful ideas in there.
link |
And that, for me, objectivism,
link |
I'm undereducated about it.
link |
I hope to be more educated,
link |
but there's some interesting ideas that,
link |
again, just like with UFOs,
link |
not that there's a connection between the two.
link |
Don't bring that up for your own.
link |
My friends like UFOs.
link |
Oh, no, no, no, this interview is over.
link |
That's a good yarn.
link |
But you know, you have to be a little bit open minded,
link |
but what's your sense of objectivism?
link |
Are there interesting ideas
link |
that are useful to you to think about?
link |
I own her copy of the first printing of The Fountainhead.
link |
So that should tell you a little bit
link |
about how my affection for Ms. Rand,
link |
how heavy that goes.
link |
Ayn Rand does not have all the answers,
link |
but she has all the questions.
link |
So if you study Rand,
link |
you are going to be forced to think through
link |
some very basic things,
link |
and you're gonna have your eyes open very, very heavily.
link |
She was not perfect.
link |
She never claimed to be perfect.
link |
She was asked on Donahue,
link |
is it true that according to your philosophy,
link |
you are a perfect being?
link |
She said, I never think of myself that way.
link |
And she said, but if you asked me,
link |
do I practice what I preach?
link |
The answer is yes, resoundingly.
link |
She's a fascinating woman.
link |
What is really interesting about her,
link |
and this is something you'd appreciate personally,
link |
is when you read her essays,
link |
she'll have these weird asides.
link |
And it looked like she was talking about art,
link |
and she'd be like, and this is why the US
link |
should be the only country with nuclear weapons.
link |
And when you follow a brilliant mind
link |
making these seemingly disparate connections,
link |
it's something I find to be just absolutely inspiring
link |
and awesome and entertaining.
link |
I think there's lots of things about her
link |
that people like Yaron would make uncomfortable.
link |
Well, like she, they,
link |
so objectivism, like any other philosophy,
link |
has all these techniques to kind of hand wave away things
link |
you don't wanna talk about and like pretend it.
link |
So they talk about things like having
link |
no metaphysical significance, right?
link |
So what that means is like, well, what about this?
link |
Ah, I don't wanna talk about it.
link |
Like it doesn't matter.
link |
Like it literally means in fancy philosophical terms,
link |
it doesn't matter.
link |
Or they will say correctly,
link |
that it's very twisted in our culture
link |
that when we have heroes, we look for their flaws
link |
instead of looking for their virtues.
link |
That's a hundred percent valid perspective.
link |
However, if I'm sitting here telling you
link |
that I think this woman is a badass,
link |
and she's amazing and she should be studied,
link |
but there's also these idiosyncrasies,
link |
they don't wanna hear it.
link |
Because they, and I think it's very convenient for them
link |
because there's a lot of things she did that were,
link |
here's an example.
link |
Rand was very, very pro happiness and pleasure.
link |
She was very pro sex, which is kind of surprising
link |
looking at her and how she talked and how strident she was.
link |
As a result of this, she never got her cats fixed
link |
to deny them the pleasure of orgasm.
link |
So her male cats are spraying up her entire house.
link |
Like that is, I mean, that's her putting her philosophy
link |
into practice, but it's still gross.
link |
So that's the kind of thing where I don't think he'd be,
link |
another thing is Rand had an article on a woman president
link |
and she said a woman should never be president, right?
link |
Now, when Rand says things that are too goofy for them,
link |
they say, oh, that's not objectivism,
link |
that's her personal preference.
link |
It's like, she did not have these lines.
link |
Objectivism was always defined as Ayn Rand's writings,
link |
plus the additional essays in her books.
link |
So if this was in part of those books,
link |
this counts as official objectivism,
link |
but they pretend otherwise.
link |
So that's another example.
link |
Plus she was, and I bet you she was on the spectrum
link |
to some extent, I'm not joking,
link |
I'm not using that derisively.
link |
She was of the belief and not inaccurately,
link |
because that humor is used to denigrate and humiliate.
link |
And she was thinking about the Jon Stewart type
link |
before there was a Jon Stewart.
link |
And a lot of times, like how I use mocking,
link |
but she was resentful, correctly,
link |
that a lot of times people who are great and accomplished,
link |
little nobodies will make a punchline
link |
just to bring them down and despise her.
link |
Here's an example I just thought of.
link |
I remember when it was, must have been the 90s,
link |
they had a segment on MTV of all these musicians
link |
who were making their own perfumes, right?
link |
And this girl grabbed Prince's perfume,
link |
and before she even smelled it, she had the joke ready.
link |
She goes, oh, this smells almost as bad
link |
as his music lately.
link |
It's like, first of all, I'm sure the perfume's fine.
link |
And second of all, this is Prince.
link |
He's one of the all time greats,
link |
and you can't wait to denigrate him.
link |
And part, I wanna be like, how dare you?
link |
Like as if this perfume in any way,
link |
in any way mitigates his amazing accomplishments
link |
and achievements, you horrible person.
link |
But I do have some great Ayn Rand jokes,
link |
and he would not be happy about them.
link |
The perfume thing, the problem with it is just not funny.
link |
Oh, he sucks, okay, great.
link |
Not that they dared to try to be humorous,
link |
because I don't know why you mentioned John,
link |
because John Stewart can be funny.
link |
Right, but he taught a generation,
link |
you still see this on Twitter,
link |
where things have to be inherently sarcastic and snide.
link |
But isn't that, I mean, aren't you practicing that?
link |
No, I use irony, not sarcasm.
link |
Here's an example.
link |
When people, like you say something,
link |
and someone replied, it'd be like,
link |
last I checked, blah, blah, blah, blah,
link |
and I'll say that, I go,
link |
what do you think saying last I checked added to your point?
link |
You're giving me valuable information and data,
link |
but you are trained to believe
link |
that it has to be couched in this sneering.
link |
It doesn't, just give me the information.
link |
This is useful information.
link |
Yeah, that's true.
link |
But see, John Stewart did it masterfully.
link |
Correct, and they don't.
link |
And they don't, it's like people who copy comedians,
link |
certain comedians, you try to copy them
link |
and use everything in the process of copying.
link |
But in terms of the philosophy of selfishness,
link |
this kind of individual focused idea,
link |
and I imagine that connects with you.
link |
Yes, and I think it would connect with more people
link |
if they understood what she meant by it.
link |
Nathaniel Brandon, who was her heir
link |
until she kind of broke with him,
link |
and he was a co dedicatee of Atlas Shrugged,
link |
said no one will say Ayn Rand's views with a straight face.
link |
They won't say, I believe that my happiness matters
link |
and is important and is worth fighting for,
link |
and that Ayn Rand says this, then she's dangerous.
link |
Now, it's very easy to say
link |
this could have dangerous consequences
link |
if you're a sociopath,
link |
but to put it in those terms, I think is extremely healthy.
link |
I think more people should wanna be happy.
link |
And I think a lot of us are raised to be apologetic,
link |
especially in this cynical media culture,
link |
that if you say, I wanna be happy, I wanna love my life,
link |
that it's just like, okay, sweetheart.
link |
And the eye rolling,
link |
and I think that's so pernicious and so horrifying,
link |
this is why I'm a Camus person,
link |
because Camus thought the archenemy was cynicism
link |
and I could not agree more.
link |
Like if you're the kind of person,
link |
if someone likes a band and you're like,
link |
oh, you like them, blah, blah, blah,
link |
it's like, this gives them happiness.
link |
Now, there's certain exceptions,
link |
but if it gives you happiness, it's not for you,
link |
Okay, this is beautiful.
link |
I so agree with you on the eye rolling,
link |
but you see the best of trolling as not the eye roll.
link |
Correct, of course not.
link |
The best of trolling is taking down the eye rollers.
link |
I'm gonna have to think about that.
link |
Because I kind of.
link |
Have another Red Bull.
link |
Yeah, I was, yeah.
link |
Because I put them all.
link |
My blood type is Red Bull.
link |
I kind of put them all in the same bin.
link |
Here's another example of trolling.
link |
I was making jokes about Ron Paul,
link |
he just had a stroke, right?
link |
And someone came at me and they're like,
link |
blah, blah, blah, blah.
link |
You know, you're ugly.
link |
I hope you have a stroke.
link |
I hope you're in the hospital.
link |
And I just go, I just did have a stroke on your mom's face.
link |
So they came at me and now they got put in their place.
link |
With a subpar, I mean.
link |
You weren't clever.
link |
Not particularly, no.
link |
Well, one of your things you do, which is interesting,
link |
I mean, I give you props in a sense,
link |
is you're willing to go farther than people expect you to.
link |
In fact, I'll probably edit out like half of this podcast
link |
because the thing you did, which she kept in,
link |
should mention, is Michaela Peterson now has a podcast,
link |
I guess, was it on her podcast?
link |
We did both, but this is when you're referring
link |
to when she was on mine.
link |
She was on, yeah, right.
link |
And you went right for the, for the.
link |
So I'll tell you what it was.
link |
You don't have to paraphrase.
link |
I opened up, I say, you know, she's Jordan Peterson's dad.
link |
And as many people know, sorry, he's her dad, yeah.
link |
He's had a long issue with substance addiction.
link |
And I said to her, you're most famous
link |
for being Jordan Peterson's daughter.
link |
Many people, he's changed so many lives around the world.
link |
And he's been such an enormous influence to me personally
link |
that I've started taking benzodiazepines recreationally.
link |
And she's like, oh my God, Michael, it's so horrible.
link |
Yeah, because you pulled me in with this,
link |
cause you're talking, I mean, you know,
link |
cause he's going through a rough time.
link |
Now she's going through just everything was just,
link |
you pulled me in emotionally.
link |
I was like, this is going to be the sweet,
link |
Mike is going to be just this wonderful.
link |
And then just bam.
link |
So that's, that's, that's, that was props to you on that.
link |
It wasn't, whatever that is, that is an art form
link |
when done well, it can be taken too far.
link |
My criticism is it, that feels too good for some people.
link |
Oh, they're too happy being a reverend
link |
cause to show that they don't care about anything.
link |
That's another form of cynicism though.
link |
Right, so I, cause you think it's possible to be a troll
link |
and still be the live life to its highest ideal
link |
in the Camus sense.
link |
I try, that's kind of my ideal.
link |
I believe it's not, it becomes a drug.
link |
I feel like that takes you,
link |
like I think love ultimately is the way to experience
link |
like every moment of every day.
link |
You don't think that was an expression of,
link |
I honestly think, let's split hairs here
link |
cause I think this is something of use here.
link |
I do think that me,
link |
me being able to make her laugh
link |
about this year of hell she was in
link |
does create an element of love
link |
and connection between me and her.
link |
Yeah, but I know she would say that.
link |
Yes, it wasn't that.
link |
It was what you said in combination
link |
with the sweetness everywhere else, the kindness.
link |
It's a very subtle thing,
link |
but like, it's like some of the deepest connection
link |
we have with others is when we like mock them lovingly.
link |
But like there is stuff, there's kindness around that.
link |
Sometimes it's not in words,
link |
but in like subtle things.
link |
Cause it creates an air of being familial.
link |
Like we're through this together.
link |
Yeah, that's missing,
link |
that's very difficult to do on the internet.
link |
That's why my general approach on the internet
link |
is to be more like simple, less witty
link |
and more like dumbly loving.
link |
But that's not your core competency being witty.
link |
But I can be witty.
link |
You can be, but I'm saying that's not your core competency.
link |
I'm not saying you're bad at it,
link |
but I'm saying that's not where you go like organically,
link |
especially with strangers.
link |
I just feel like nobody's core competence on the internet
link |
is I guess if you want to bring love to the world,
link |
nobody's core competence is given the current platforms,
link |
nobody's core competence is wit.
link |
It's very difficult to be witty on the internet
link |
without while still communicating kindness.
link |
Like in the same way that you can in physical space.
link |
I'll give you another example.
link |
Someone came at me and they were like,
link |
they gave me a donation.
link |
People do this all the time.
link |
And they go, oh, like I started reading your books
link |
cause of my wife and you know,
link |
now watch your shows together, keep up the good work.
link |
And I go, what does her boyfriend think?
link |
So that is an example of wit and love
link |
because that person feels seen.
link |
I'm acknowledging them.
link |
I'm also making a joke at their expense.
link |
We know it's a joke.
link |
So I think language is often used in nonliteral ways
link |
to cue emotional and connectivity.
link |
It's difficult, but what you've done
link |
is difficult to accomplish, but you've done it well.
link |
I mean, you've been doing these live streams,
link |
which are nice that people give you a bunch of money
link |
and donations and stuff.
link |
And then you, you'll often like make fun
link |
of certain aspects of their questions and so on,
link |
but it's always lovely.
link |
That's not from love.
link |
That is genuine annoyance
link |
cause they ask me some really dumb questions.
link |
But they're still underlying, it's not even,
link |
like there's a kind person under that
link |
that's being communicated.
link |
That's interesting.
link |
But I don't know if I get that from your Twitter.
link |
I know I get that from the video,
link |
something about the face, something about like,
link |
The physical presentation.
link |
The more data, the more easy it is
link |
to convey emotion and subtlety.
link |
Absolutely, if you only have literally black and white
link |
letters, it's going to be, or whatever,
link |
white and black, if you have night mode,
link |
it's going to be a very different,
link |
it's much more limited information.
link |
Yeah, but this is the fundamental thing is like,
link |
Here's another example.
link |
Like if they had access to my face,
link |
like a lot of times some people don't know who I am
link |
and they come at me, call me a Nazi antisemite, right?
link |
And I start talking about the Jews
link |
and just how terrible the Jews are.
link |
Now all my audience knows I'm Jewish
link |
that I went to yeshiva.
link |
So they're sitting there laughing
link |
cause this person is making ass of themselves.
link |
That person has no idea.
link |
But if there was video, then they would be like,
link |
okay, wait a minute, something's up.
link |
Yeah, something's up.
link |
I think it's entertaining.
link |
I think it's fun, but I just, I don't think it's scalable.
link |
And ultimately, I'm trying to figure out
link |
this whole trolling thing.
link |
Cause I think it's really destructive.
link |
I've been the outrage mob, the outrage mobs,
link |
just the dynamics of Twitter has been really bothering me.
link |
I've been trying to figure out if we can try to build
link |
an alternative to Twitter perhaps
link |
or try to encourage Twitter to be better,
link |
how to have nuanced, healthy conversations.
link |
Like the reason I talk about love isn't just for love's sake.
link |
It's just a good base from which to have
link |
difficult conversations.
link |
Like that's a good starting point.
link |
Because if you start, like I would argue that
link |
the kind of conversation you have on Twitter is fun,
link |
but it might not be a good starting point
link |
for a difficult, nuanced conversation.
link |
Well, I'm not interested in having
link |
those conversations with most people.
link |
So I agree with you.
link |
Your point is valid.
link |
Yes, but like I'm saying, so if we were trying to have
link |
a difficult, nuanced conversation
link |
about say race in America or policing,
link |
is there institutional racism of policing?
link |
There's the only conversations that have been nuanced
link |
about it that I've heard is in the podcasting medium.
link |
Which is the magic of podcasting, which is great.
link |
But that's the downside of podcasting
link |
is it's a very small number of people.
link |
Even if it's in the thousands, it's still small.
link |
And then there's millions of people on social media
link |
and they're not having nuanced conversation at all.
link |
They're not capable of it.
link |
That's the difference in your thoughts.
link |
They have no minds.
link |
I believe they are.
link |
There's no data that shows this.
link |
Both of us aren't being not scientific.
link |
You don't have data to support your world either.
link |
You're making the claim.
link |
Well, you are too.
link |
If I'm looking at an object, the claim that it has in mind.
link |
No, your claim is that people are fundamentally stupid.
link |
Are you a martial artist?
link |
I just judo on you.
link |
But you really don't think people are deep down
link |
like capable of being intelligent.
link |
Not deep down, not surface.
link |
I'm not being tongue in cheek.
link |
I'm not being cynical.
link |
I do not at all think they have this capacity.
link |
Cause you're being so clear about it.
link |
I'm gonna have to think about that.
link |
Here's evidence for my position, not proof.
link |
And this is of course data that is of little use,
link |
but it's of interest.
link |
A lot of times when you have an audience as big as mine
link |
and people come at you,
link |
not only will people say the same thing, the same concept,
link |
they'll say the same concept in the same way.
link |
That is not a mind.
link |
That's surface evidence.
link |
You're saying this iceberg looks like this from the surface.
link |
I'm saying there's an iceberg there
link |
that if challenged can rise to the occasion
link |
of deep thinking and you're saying.
link |
It's just frozen water.
link |
Isn't that the Russian expression?
link |
Doesn't it mean like no one's there?
link |
Actually, I don't know.
link |
Yeah, it means like, yeah.
link |
Yeah, it's like thought.
link |
Well, so you're challenging me
link |
to be a little bit more rigorous.
link |
I'm not challenging you anything.
link |
No, not challenging me,
link |
but like I'm challenging myself based on what you're saying
link |
because I'd like to prove you wrong
link |
and find actual data to show you're wrong.
link |
And I think I can, but I would need to get that data.
link |
That's funny you said, I think I can.
link |
When they were working on my biography, Ego and Hubris,
link |
the title I had suggested was
link |
The Little Engine That Could But Shouldn't.
link |
And they didn't like it.
link |
I think that's a great title.
link |
That's pretty good, yeah.
link |
Speaking of biographies, I mean,
link |
I read your book or listened to your book.
link |
There's an audio book from you, right?
link |
Yeah, I did the audio, yeah.
link |
I didn't do Yaron Brooks voice in the book.
link |
I did all the different voices
link |
because he has a lisp
link |
and I didn't want to sound like I was making fun of him.
link |
Yeah, I don't remember you reading it,
link |
but I was really enjoyed it.
link |
It was like a year, a year and a half ago.
link |
Well, let me at a high level,
link |
see if you can pull this off.
link |
If I ask you, what's the book you write about?
link |
It's about a group of people
link |
who are united solely by their opposition to progressivism,
link |
who have little else in common,
link |
but who are all frequently caricatured and dismissed
link |
by the larger establishment media.
link |
But you give this kind of story of how it came to be.
link |
And to me, like we're talking about trolls,
link |
but the internet side of things is quite interesting.
link |
So first of all, how does alt right connect?
link |
So the alt right is the subset of the new right,
link |
which feels that race, not racism,
link |
is the most or one of the most important
link |
socio political issues.
link |
Are any of those folks like part of the mainstream
link |
or worth paying attention to?
link |
None of them are part of the mainstream.
link |
The alt right, by definition,
link |
they would be part of the mainstream.
link |
They would not be part of them.
link |
No, they would not.
link |
I don't know that any of them.
link |
Well, worth is not a position.
link |
I'm not in a position to say worth.
link |
I would say that it is of use
link |
to be familiar with their arguments
link |
because to dismiss any school of thought,
link |
especially one that has historically gained leverage,
link |
especially one that has historically gained leverage
link |
in very dark ways, especially in America,
link |
in Europe and other places,
link |
just to say, oh, they're racist.
link |
I don't need to think about them.
link |
It doesn't behoove you.
link |
So what lessons do we draw from the 4chan side of things,
link |
like the internet side of the movement?
link |
Tits or get the fuck out.
link |
Can you define every single word in there?
link |
Tits or breasts or get the fuck out.
link |
That's from 4chan.
link |
Okay, what's it mean?
link |
Oh, sometimes like a woman will appear in 4chan
link |
and they'll just reply, tits or get the fuck out.
link |
I'm trying to understand what that,
link |
oh, oh, that's a way.
link |
I just, very slow.
link |
Oh, so that's, okay, so that's very disrespectful
link |
towards female members of the community.
link |
I don't understand.
link |
There's rules to this community
link |
and one of them is we're not very good with women.
link |
Is that, that's one of the rules?
link |
It's more of a principle than a rule.
link |
We're not going to ever get laid.
link |
That's fundamentally the principle.
link |
Is there other principles?
link |
But we are gonna get pics.
link |
Sometimes on the internet.
link |
Sometimes they GTFO.
link |
Okay, so is there other actual principles of,
link |
so like it's, from my maybe naive perspective
link |
is they have like the darkest aspects of trolling,
link |
which is like take nothing serious,
link |
make a game out of everything.
link |
That's not 4chan per se.
link |
One of the things that you will learn in 4chan,
link |
which I think is very healthy,
link |
is if you have an idiosocratic or unique worldview
link |
or focus on an aspect of history or culture,
link |
you'll be able to find like minded people
link |
who you will engage with you and discuss it
link |
without being preemptively dismissive.
link |
That's an ideal that they.
link |
Well, it's not ideal.
link |
It's something that happens a lot.
link |
Now 4chan's not really,
link |
like Paul is their board with politics,
link |
but they will get into some,
link |
like the people there are much more erudite than you'd think.
link |
my perception was they take nothing seriously.
link |
So there's things that they take seriously,
link |
like discussing ideas.
link |
I'll give you one example.
link |
There was a video someone posted
link |
of a girl who put kittens in a bag
link |
and threw it in a river.
link |
And they found out where she was within a day
link |
and got her like arrested.
link |
So yeah, they do take some things very seriously.
link |
But that's like an extreme that,
link |
I mean, that's good.
link |
First of all, that's heartwarming
link |
that they wouldn't somehow turn that into a thing.
link |
That feels like more of a, what is it?
link |
What's the other one?
link |
8chan's twice as good as 4chan, yeah.
link |
That's their slogan.
link |
But it feels like they're the kind of community
link |
that would take that kitten situation
link |
and make a mockery of it.
link |
Yeah, they're darker than 4chan.
link |
I don't even, I'm not allowed to talk about 16chan.
link |
I'm already overwhelmed clearly by 4chan lingo.
link |
I literally wrote down in my notes,
link |
like in doing research for this conversation,
link |
I learned the word pleb.
link |
And I wanted to ask you what this pleb means.
link |
Do you know what pleb means?
link |
I saw, I mean, actually, no, I don't.
link |
You know what a pleb is?
link |
I just, I don't know what a pleb is.
link |
Like a plebiscite or plebeian.
link |
But does it mean something more sophisticated?
link |
No, it's a very unsophisticated mechanism
link |
of being dismissive.
link |
Of like the regular people.
link |
Yeah, or someone who comes at me on Twitter.
link |
All right, so back to the 4chan alt right.
link |
Those are very different concepts.
link |
Don't conflate them.
link |
But which internet culture was the alt right born out of?
link |
Well, alt right was more born of blogs.
link |
And people had different blogs that were posting
link |
what they call like racial realism,
link |
which is scientific racism, so called.
link |
And breaking down issues from a racialist perspective.
link |
So that wasn't, 4chan is much more dynamic.
link |
It's a message board.
link |
So it doesn't lend itself
link |
to these kind of in depth analysis of ideas or history.
link |
But it spreads them.
link |
It spreads them as memes, yeah.
link |
And you know, but...
link |
But it's not an essential mechanism
link |
of the alt right, historically?
link |
No, no, no, no, no, no.
link |
So it was mostly about blogs.
link |
Okay, so what do you make of the psychology
link |
of this kind of worldview?
link |
This goes to your conspiracy theory subject earlier.
link |
When you have a little bit of knowledge about something,
link |
about history that no one's talking about,
link |
and there's only one group that is talking about it,
link |
and you have no alternative answers,
link |
you're going to be drawn to that group.
link |
So because issues about race, anti semitism, homophobia
link |
are so taboo in our culture,
link |
understandably there's good reasons.
link |
If you start putting things like,
link |
how old should you be to have sex with kids
link |
and just have regular conversations,
link |
eventually some people are gonna start
link |
taking some positions you don't like.
link |
So some things have to be sanctified to some extent.
link |
They're the only ones talking about it.
link |
You're gonna be drawn to that subculture.
link |
And where does the alt right stand now?
link |
I mean, I hear that term used...
link |
So the term has been weaponized by the corporate press
link |
for people that they want to read out of society.
link |
So it's used both on individual levels,
link |
like people like Gavin McIngus, Milo Yiannopoulos,
link |
I mean, I think they've referred to Trump as alt right.
link |
And it's become a slur, just like incel or bot,
link |
that has become largely removed from its original meaning.
link |
Do you have a sense that there's still a movement
link |
that's alt right or like...
link |
Yeah, they call themselves now...
link |
Okay, so there's something called the dissonant right.
link |
And they say, we're completely not like the alt right
link |
because the alt right's A, B, and C, and we're B, C, D.
link |
There's a huge overlap.
link |
It's very much the same people.
link |
Is there intellectuals that still represent
link |
some aspect of the movement?
link |
Are you tracking this?
link |
Not that much anymore.
link |
I think they're...
link |
I don't find it particularly as...
link |
Now that the book's done,
link |
I'm looking more into history for my next book.
link |
You mentioned communism?
link |
I'm gonna talk a lot about the Cold War.
link |
So this kind of stuff has largely fallen away
link |
from my radar to some extent.
link |
And it's been a very effective movement
link |
to get them marginalized and silenced.
link |
So they're not as deep of a concern
link |
in terms of concern or not,
link |
just their impact on society.
link |
Yes, it's much lessened, yeah.
link |
So as a troll on Twitter, in the best sense of the word,
link |
what do you make of cancel culture?
link |
I think it's Maoism.
link |
I mean, corporate America has done a far better job
link |
of implementing Maoism than the communist party ever could.
link |
You had this meeting not that long ago
link |
from I think it was Northwestern University Law School
link |
where everyone on the call got up
link |
and said that they were racist.
link |
I mean, this is something that legally
link |
you should be very averse to saying,
link |
even if it were true.
link |
And it's this kind of concept of getting up
link |
and confessing your sins before the collective
link |
is something completely.
link |
Oh, sorry, they admitted this of themselves?
link |
Yeah, they were like,
link |
because they're saying because they're white,
link |
they're inherently racist.
link |
So my name's John, I'm a racist.
link |
My name's this, I'm a racist.
link |
You hear it and you're like, okay, this is Looney Tunes.
link |
So you're saying that, wow, that's so much,
link |
you took a step further.
link |
So you're saying there's like a deep underlying force
link |
that cancels culture.
link |
It's not just some kind of mob.
link |
Well, it's not a mob at all.
link |
It's a systemic organized movement being used
link |
for very nefarious purposes
link |
and to dominate an entire nation.
link |
How do we fight it?
link |
Because I sense it inside.
link |
You know, I used to defend academia more
link |
because I still do to some extent.
link |
It's a nuanced discussion because, you know,
link |
like folks like Jordan Peterson
link |
and a lot of people that kind of attack academia,
link |
they refer, they really are talking about gender studies
link |
at certain departments.
link |
And me from MIT, you know,
link |
it's the University of Science and Engineering
link |
and the faculty there really don't think
link |
about these issues or haven't traditionally thought of,
link |
but it's beginning to even infiltrate there.
link |
It's the, you know, it's starting to infiltrate engineering
link |
and sciences outside of biology.
link |
Like let's put biology with the gender studies.
link |
Like I'm talking about sciences
link |
that really don't have anything to do with gender.
link |
It's starting to infiltrate and it worries me.
link |
I don't know exactly why,
link |
like I don't know exactly what the negative effect
link |
there would be, except it feels like it's anti intellectual.
link |
Oh yes, of course.
link |
And I'm not sure what to,
link |
because on the surface,
link |
it feels like a path towards progress.
link |
At first, when I'm like zoomed out, you know,
link |
just like squinting my eyes, you know,
link |
not even in detail looking at things,
link |
but when I actually joined the conversation
link |
to like listen in the conversation on quote unquote diversity,
link |
it quickly makes me realize
link |
that there's no interest in making a better world.
link |
No, no, it's about domination.
link |
It's about getting, yeah.
link |
It's a way for, if you are a lowest status white person,
link |
using anti racism is the only mechanism you will have
link |
to feel superior to another human being.
link |
So it's very useful for them in terms of fighting it.
link |
One of my suggestions has been to seize
link |
all university endowments,
link |
which are the crystallization of privilege
link |
and distribute that money as reparations.
link |
So be very effective by turning two populations
link |
against each other and strongly diminishing
link |
the university's intellectual hegemony.
link |
The universities are absolutely the real villains
link |
Thankfully, they're also the least prepared
link |
to be aggressed upon.
link |
And after the government and the corporate press,
link |
they are the last leg of the stool,
link |
and they don't know what's coming,
link |
and it's gonna get ugly, and I cannot wait.
link |
So this is where you and I disagree.
link |
Part one, yeah, we disagree in the sense
link |
that you want to dismantle broken institutions.
link |
I don't think they're broken.
link |
They're working like by design.
link |
I think for over 100 years,
link |
they have been talking about bringing
link |
the next generation of American leaders,
link |
which is code, for promulgating an ideology
link |
based on egalitarian principles and world domination.
link |
Let me try to express my lived experience.
link |
My experience at MIT is that there's a bunch
link |
of administrators that are, the bureaucracy,
link |
that I can say, this is the nice thing
link |
about having a podcast, I don't give a damn,
link |
is they're pretty useless.
link |
In fact, they get in the way.
link |
But there's faculty, there's professors,
link |
that are incredible.
link |
They're incredible human beings
link |
that all they do all day, they're too busy,
link |
but for the most part, what they do all day
link |
is just like continually pursue different
link |
little trajectories of curiosities
link |
in the various avenues of science that they work on.
link |
And as a side effect of that, they mentor
link |
a group of students, sometimes a large group of students,
link |
and also teach courses, and they're constantly
link |
sharing their passion with others.
link |
And my experience is it's just a bunch of people
link |
who are curious about engineering and math
link |
and science, chemistry, artificial intelligence,
link |
computer science, what I'm most familiar with.
link |
And there's never this feeling of MIT
link |
being broken somehow, like this kind of feeling.
link |
Like if I talk to you just now, or like Eric Weinstein,
link |
there's a feeling like stuff is on fire, right?
link |
There's something deeply broken.
link |
But when I'm in the system, especially before the COVID,
link |
before this kind of tension, everything was great.
link |
There was no discussion of, even diversity,
link |
all that kind of stuff, the toxic stuff
link |
that we might be talking about right now,
link |
none of that was happening.
link |
There was a bunch of people just in love with cool ideas,
link |
exploring ideas, being curious, and learning,
link |
and all that kind of stuff.
link |
So I don't, my sense of academia was this is the place
link |
where kids in their 20s, 30s, and 40s can continue
link |
the playground of science, having fun.
link |
It's, if you destroy academia, if you destroy universities,
link |
like you're suggesting kind of lessening their power,
link |
you take away the playground from these kids
link |
It's gonna be hard for you to tell me
link |
that I'm anti playground.
link |
Yeah, well, I guess I'm saying you're anti
link |
certain kinds of playgrounds, which is.
link |
Yeah, the ones that have the broken glass on the floor.
link |
Yeah, I am against those kinds of playgrounds.
link |
No, you're, you're, you're.
link |
Now you see, now you listen.
link |
Now you, now you wait.
link |
Yeah, I would say you're being the watchful mother who,
link |
the one kid who hurt themselves in the glass.
link |
One kid, it's an entire, it's generation after generation.
link |
I'm not a watchful mother.
link |
I'm the guy with the flamethrower.
link |
No, I, I, I understand that.
link |
But you're using the one kid who was always kind of like
link |
weird, aka gender studies department.
link |
That, that hurt themselves on the glass,
link |
as opposed to the people who are like,
link |
obviously having fun in the playground and not playing
link |
by the glass, the broken glass.
link |
And they're just, I mean, to me,
link |
some of the best innovations in science
link |
happen in universities.
link |
You can't forget that universities don't have this
link |
liberal, like politics literally in every conversation
link |
until this year, until this year,
link |
there's something happening.
link |
But every conversation I've ever had had nothing to do
link |
We never, Trump never came up.
link |
None of that ever come up.
link |
Like all this kind of idea that there's liberal, all that.
link |
But that, that's in the humanities.
link |
But do you think MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
link |
might be a little bit of an outlier?
link |
Yeah, that probably is.
link |
But I, I don't, I honestly don't think when people
link |
criticize academia, they're looking at,
link |
they're in fact also picking the outliers,
link |
which is they're picking some of the quote unquote
link |
strongest gender studies departments.
link |
This is nonsensical.
link |
When I was at Bucknell, it was a college student.
link |
We had to take, you know, we had a bunch of electives
link |
and I wanted to take a class on individual,
link |
American individualism.
link |
One of the texts of the five that we had to read
link |
was Birth of a Nation, the movie about the Klan.
link |
So there's no department where these people
link |
are not thoroughgoing, hardcore ideologues.
link |
This is not a gender.
link |
That's the humanities, that's the humanities.
link |
Fine, all the humanities, not just gender studies.
link |
Theory, English, all of them, every university,
link |
as you know, has it mandatory in the curriculum
link |
they have to take a bunch of these propaganda classes.
link |
I look forward to YouTube comments
link |
because you're being more eloquent
link |
and you're speaking to the thing
link |
that a lot of people agree with
link |
and I'm being my usual slow self
link |
and people are going to say not very nice things about me.
link |
Don't say anything that nice about Lex, please.
link |
Let me try to just.
link |
Just shoot up a school.
link |
That would be preferable.
link |
There he goes again.
link |
Only the teachers.
link |
Going to the darkest possible place.
link |
That's sunshine, baby, schools.
link |
That's where everyone goes to be happy, playgrounds.
link |
There he goes, dark ear.
link |
Just dives right in, just go dark
link |
and then just comes back up to the surface.
link |
I don't have to feel this way anymore.
link |
Just one day in the world.
link |
You're probably a figment of my imagination.
link |
I'm not even having this podcast.
link |
Well, after 18 Red Bulls, I'm surprised
link |
you could see anything.
link |
This is like Fight Club.
link |
Red Bull gives you delirium.
link |
I got into it with Ed Norton yesterday on Twitter.
link |
Is he like the rest of the celebrities?
link |
Yeah, he's like, oh, this is an existential threat
link |
to America, Trump's a fascist.
link |
He's delegitimizing the Oval Office.
link |
I said, what an odd endorsement of Trump.
link |
Well, you should have went with a bad pit.
link |
He might have a different opinion.
link |
So Fight Club reference, okay.
link |
This conversation is over.
link |
I'd like to draw a line between science and engineering
link |
and science not including like the biological aspect,
link |
the parts of biology that touch
link |
and humanities and biology.
link |
Like I feel because humanities,
link |
if you just look at the percentage of universities,
link |
it's still a minority percentage.
link |
And I would actually draw a different,
link |
I think they serve very different purposes.
link |
And that's actually a broken part about universities
link |
about like, why is some of the best research
link |
in the world done at universities?
link |
That doesn't, like there might be a different,
link |
like MIT, it feels weird that a faculty.
link |
Yeah, these are conceptually different things.
link |
Like we do research and we teach,
link |
why is this the same diagram?
link |
Yeah, it feels weird.
link |
But that's just, but I'm also,
link |
I'm coming to like the defense of the engineers
link |
that never talk about,
link |
I'm not like, my mind isn't,
link |
I'm not like deluded or something
link |
where I'm not seeing the house on fire.
link |
I'm just saying, I am seeing the house
link |
because I also lived in Harvard Square.
link |
I'm seeing Harvard, but in.
link |
And you see the tanks coming?
link |
They're coming, Lex.
link |
It's gonna be so beautiful.
link |
It'll be like the American beauty, the plastic bag.
link |
I just won't be able to stop crying
link |
because it'll be so beautiful.
link |
Yeah, I can already see it.
link |
But the engineering departments where like,
link |
I believe that the Elon Musk's of the world,
link |
that the, like the innovation
link |
that will make a better world is happening.
link |
And like, let's not burn that down.
link |
Cause that has nothing to do with any,
link |
like they're all like sitting quietly
link |
in the, while like, while the humanities
link |
and all these kinds of diversity programs,
link |
they're not having any of these discussions.
link |
Listen, my Soviet brother, you both know,
link |
we both know that ice water runs in our veins.
link |
So if you're calling for mercy,
link |
that is not how I'm wired,
link |
but I'm not closing the door.
link |
Yeah, I'm actually realizing now,
link |
so for people listening to this,
link |
I'll probably prepend this in saying that
link |
I'm even slower than usual.
link |
I didn't sleep last night,
link |
but I feel I'm actually realizing just how slow I am
link |
and how much preparation I need to do.
link |
And if I would like to defend aspects of academia,
link |
I better come prepared.
link |
I don't think you need to defend them.
link |
I think I'm granting you your premise freely.
link |
I don't think the world is.
link |
But actually you just defeat your own argument
link |
because it is not at all have to be the way
link |
that a phenomenal research institution like MIT,
link |
which no one disputes,
link |
has to also be an educational establishment.
link |
These two things are not at all necessarily interconnected.
link |
But then you have to offer a way to separate.
link |
But like, I'm not a big fan, everybody's different,
link |
but I'm not a fan of criticizing institutions
link |
without offering a way to change.
link |
And especially when I'm like, have ability to change,
link |
I'd like to, yeah, I'd like to offer a path.
link |
What if they were in students, they were all mentor,
link |
like, what's the opposite of a mentor?
link |
What's the term when you like.
link |
Graduate students.
link |
When you work at a place, like interns,
link |
not an intern, it's not the word I'm thinking of.
link |
But anyway, like basically they're working there
link |
instead of going to college there.
link |
It's possible, but it's going against tradition.
link |
And so you have to build new institutions and.
link |
And have these engineers building new things, that's crazy.
link |
These research engineers,
link |
where they're going to be building things.
link |
Well, one of the things, cause you're kind of a.
link |
Apprentice, that's the word I was looking at.
link |
Which is ironic, we're talking about Trump
link |
and we couldn't think of the word apprentice.
link |
We should both be fired.
link |
Yeah, there you go.
link |
These Russian Jews, so quick with their wit.
link |
But the thing is, you're a fan of freedom.
link |
And there is intellectual freedom.
link |
People, this is what I was trying to articulate,
link |
I'm failing to articulate,
link |
but there truly is complete intellectual freedom
link |
within universities on topics of science and engineering.
link |
I believe you, I agree with you.
link |
I don't think it's going to take much persuasion,
link |
but I'll give you an example.
link |
When that, I'm sure you know more details about this
link |
When that scientist engineered that probe
link |
to land on that comet,
link |
and the articles are written
link |
because this Hawaiian shirt he was wearing
link |
had like pinup girls on it,
link |
which I think his female student sewed for him
link |
or something, or his ex girlfriend.
link |
And he had to apologize.
link |
This is what Rand was talking about.
link |
That the great accomplishments of men
link |
have to say I'm sorry to the lowest,
link |
most despicable, disgusting people.
link |
Yeah, I don't know.
link |
Let me bring this case up because I think about this.
link |
This might not mean much to you,
link |
but it means a lot to certain aspects
link |
of the computer science community.
link |
There's a guy named Richard Stallman.
link |
I don't know if you know who that is.
link |
He's the founder of the Free Software Foundation.
link |
He's like a big Linux.
link |
He's one of the key people
link |
in the history of computer science,
link |
one of those open source people, right?
link |
But he is like, I believe he's one of the hardcore ones,
link |
which is like all software should be free.
link |
Okay, so it's very interesting personality,
link |
very key person in the GNU,
link |
just like Linus Torvald, key person.
link |
So, but he also kind of speaks his mind.
link |
And on a certain chain of conversations at MIT
link |
that was leaked to the New York Times,
link |
then it was published, led him to be fired
link |
or pushed out of MIT recently, maybe a year ago.
link |
And it always sat weird with me.
link |
So what happened is there's a few undergraduate students
link |
that called Marvin Minsky.
link |
Not sure if you're familiar with who that is.
link |
I've heard the name.
link |
He's one of the seminal people in artificial intelligence.
link |
They said that they called him a rapist
link |
because he met with Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
And Jeffrey Epstein solicited,
link |
these are the best facts known to me
link |
that I'm aware of, that's what was stated on the chain,
link |
is he solicited a 17,
link |
but it might've been an 18 year old girl,
link |
to come up to Marvin Minsky
link |
and ask him if he wanted to have sex with her.
link |
So Jeffrey Epstein told the girl.
link |
She came up to Marvin Minsky,
link |
who was at that time, I think, seven years old.
link |
And his wife was there too, Marvin Minsky's wife.
link |
And he said no, or like awkwardly saying no thanks.
link |
And that was stated in the email thread
link |
as Marvin participating in sexual assault
link |
and rape of this unwilling sexual assault.
link |
And it was called rape of this person, right?
link |
Of this woman that propositioned him.
link |
And then Richard Stallman, who's, he's kind of known for this.
link |
He's very, he's, you make fun of me being a robot,
link |
but he's kind of like a debugger.
link |
He's like, well, that sentence is not,
link |
what you said is not correct.
link |
So he like corrected the person,
link |
basically made it seem like the use of the word rape
link |
is not correct, because that's not the definition of rape.
link |
And then he was attacked for saying,
link |
oh, now you're playing with definitions of rape.
link |
Rape is rape is the answer, right?
link |
And then that was leaked in him defending.
link |
So the way it was leaked,
link |
it was reported as him defending rape.
link |
That's the way it was reported.
link |
And he was pushed out and he didn't really give a damn.
link |
It's, he doesn't seem to make a big deal out of it.
link |
He made an example of him.
link |
They made an example and that,
link |
and that everyone was afraid to defend him.
link |
So like, there's a bunch of faculty.
link |
Dude, you're from the Soviet Union.
link |
Doesn't this hit close to home for you?
link |
I don't know what to think of it.
link |
It hits close to home, but it was basically,
link |
at least at MIT, now MIT is such a light place with this.
link |
It's not common at MIT,
link |
but it was like 18, 19 year old kids,
link |
undergraduate kids with this kind of fire in them.
link |
There's just very few of them,
link |
but they're the ones that raise all this kind of fuss.
link |
And the entirety of the administration,
link |
all the faculty are afraid to stand up to them.
link |
It's so interesting to me.
link |
Like, I don't know if I should be afraid of that.
link |
You don't think you should be afraid
link |
that someone who's trying to be specific
link |
when it comes to charges of violent assault
link |
is looking for that clarity,
link |
can get their life out of search of his room?
link |
Let me give you more context.
link |
There's a little bit more context to Richard Stallman,
link |
He was also a rapist.
link |
I left out that part.
link |
He liked raping people.
link |
But he's had a history through his life
link |
of every once in a while wearing the Hawaiian shirt with,
link |
like he would make.
link |
Sorry, but he's a fat unattractive.
link |
Like what Trump referred to the hacker.
link |
Yeah, yeah, the guy in the basement.
link |
He like, he would eat his own.
link |
He would pick skin from his feet in lectures
link |
Those videos of him doing that.
link |
He must really be behind the spectrum then.
link |
I think in his office,
link |
door, he wrote something like
link |
hacker plus lover of ladies or something like that.
link |
Like something kind of.
link |
Yeah, unprofessional.
link |
And a little creepy.
link |
So they're looking for an excuse to get rid of him,
link |
No, he was just, who's they?
link |
The administration.
link |
Yeah, probably, probably.
link |
A lot of times what people don't realize,
link |
and this would be my defense of cancel culture.
link |
A lot of times when someone gets fired
link |
over something like this, this isn't why.
link |
This is just giving them cover to get rid of them
link |
without getting a lawsuit.
link |
Yeah, but it's still.
link |
Right, so I think, I guess what I'm trying to communicate
link |
is he was a little weird and creepy
link |
and he may not be the best for the community,
link |
but that's not necessarily the message it's sent
link |
to the rest of the community.
link |
The message is sent to the rest of the community
link |
that being clear about words
link |
or the usage of the word rape
link |
is like you should call everything rape.
link |
That's basically the message it was sent.
link |
Or you should call it we say rape, rape.
link |
It's about submission.
link |
I think you'd be very happy to know
link |
that there's a lot of people,
link |
and she's very crucified of this,
link |
like Betsy DeVos, the performance department of education,
link |
who are aware of this.
link |
They are aware that this completely contradicts due process.
link |
They're aware of how a rape accusation
link |
is something not to be taken seriously,
link |
but because it's not to be taken seriously,
link |
it has to be also taken seriously in the other context
link |
that once that word is around a male,
link |
this can ruin his entire life.
link |
That's the sticky thing of the word.
link |
Like I, like I think about this a lot that,
link |
like how would I defend it if somebody,
link |
like I've never, I can honestly say
link |
I've never done anything close to creepy in my life
link |
But you wouldn't know it if you had, right?
link |
A lot of these creepy guys don't think they're creepy.
link |
They think they're being cute.
link |
Yeah, but I'm just telling you,
link |
even like, fine, let's say, right,
link |
let's say I'm not aware of it.
link |
But the point that I am aware of
link |
is that somebody could just completely make something up.
link |
Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
link |
And like how, what would I?
link |
No, he denied the charges.
link |
There's an article around everything he did, supposedly,
link |
and it goes, Mr. Friedman denied the charges, yeah.
link |
But what creeps me out?
link |
That happened, can I interrupt?
link |
Zora Neale Hurston is one of my favorite writers.
link |
She's from the Harlem Renaissance.
link |
She wrote, Their Eyes Are Watching God,
link |
and a couple of other books.
link |
She was just an amazing, amazing figure.
link |
Her biography is called Wrapped in Rainbows.
link |
It's just a masterpiece.
link |
I think I read it one day.
link |
Can't recommend her enough.
link |
Fascinating, fascinating woman.
link |
During the 30s, I think it was, or 1940,
link |
she was out of the country.
link |
She was accused of molesting a teenage boy.
link |
She wasn't in America.
link |
This could be proven.
link |
So it's absolutely false, not even a question.
link |
She was indicted, and she wanted to kill herself
link |
because she's like, people are gonna see these things,
link |
and they're gonna think maybe there's some truth to it.
link |
Maybe it's voluntary.
link |
What they're just gonna, and you could understand
link |
why she'd be suicidal over this.
link |
So yeah, this is something that's been going on
link |
for a long time, and the fact that it's becoming,
link |
I do agree, it's important.
link |
I know a lot of women who have been sexually assaulted,
link |
more than I'm happy that I know.
link |
And if I know that many, that means there's more.
link |
So I think it's a good idea that they feel seen,
link |
that they don't feel wounded, they don't feel damaged,
link |
that they could talk to their friends.
link |
And I'm like, man, this sucks is happening to you.
link |
And I don't think you're a slut.
link |
I don't think you're asking for it.
link |
I think you feel violated.
link |
I think it's gross.
link |
I do think that that's important.
link |
And I also think it's important though,
link |
when things get kind of in a frenzy,
link |
that a lot of people are like,
link |
yeah, I also had something happen.
link |
And very quickly the line between he grabbed my boob
link |
and he violently raped me,
link |
I don't think these two things are the same at all.
link |
I think they're both sexual assault,
link |
but in terms of what someone can deal with the next day,
link |
the next month, 10 years later,
link |
I don't think they're similar scenarios.
link |
I had Juanita Brodrick on my show
link |
and hearing her talk about her alleged rape by Bill Clinton
link |
was very disturbing for me, very disturbing to hear.
link |
Because it was like half an hour.
link |
So we think of these things and think,
link |
okay, hold her down, blah, blah, blah.
link |
And then it's done.
link |
Half an hour when,
link |
just even someone physically holding you down
link |
Like not even a sexual assault.
link |
Like that's traumatic.
link |
You think, your brain's gonna think, am I gonna die?
link |
I think that ultimately this is gonna lead
link |
to a better world.
link |
Like empowering women to speak to those kinds of experiences,
link |
the benefit of it outweighs the...
link |
The issue is whenever people are given a weapon,
link |
some are going to use it in nefarious ways.
link |
And that's the lesson of history.
link |
Males, females, whites, blacks, children, adults.
link |
When people are given a mechanism to execute power
link |
over others, some are gonna use it.
link |
Can I ask you for a therapy thing?
link |
On trolling, in a sense.
link |
Because I mentioned somebody making up something about me.
link |
I feel, because I wear my heart on my sleeve,
link |
I'm not good with these attacks.
link |
Like I've been attacked recently,
link |
just being called a fraud and all that kind of stuff.
link |
Like I haven't, you know, it was like, it hurt.
link |
Okay, well, let me help you.
link |
Maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker.
link |
In New York, a lot of times you'll be walking
link |
with your friend and a homeless person will come up to you
link |
and start yelling things at you.
link |
Your reaction isn't in those circumstances.
link |
Let me hear this out.
link |
Your reaction is physical safety and getting away.
link |
Now, it's not impossible that that homeless person
link |
is actually saying the truth.
link |
This happened to a friend of mine.
link |
This guy wasn't homeless
link |
and he's walking down the street on Smith Street
link |
and he's just talking out loud.
link |
And he goes, why they call them hipsters?
link |
What are they hip to?
link |
And he goes, what are you laughing at, fatso?
link |
You start something, I'll finish it.
link |
And she just couldn't move.
link |
And it's like, it's my main problem
link |
because that's the first thing he went to.
link |
And I don't know that I have any advice,
link |
but when you hear something like this,
link |
I think you need to be better in terms of boundaries.
link |
I think you should not perceive this as a fellow human,
link |
but as a crazy homeless person,
link |
because if this fellow human,
link |
if I thought that you were a fraud in some context,
link |
that's a very weird word to use
link |
because fraudulent podcaster, these are real mics,
link |
Well, a scientist or a human.
link |
Sure, but I would ask myself,
link |
is this person in a position to make this judgment
link |
or are they backing it up?
link |
Are they saying, here, your conclusions were wrong,
link |
here's some mistakes in your data
link |
and you can engage with them in ideas,
link |
but whenever someone uses a word
link |
to entirely dismiss your life
link |
without having the knowledge of your life,
link |
you do not have to take that seriously.
link |
I appreciate that kind of idea,
link |
but some things aren't about data,
link |
like I see myself as a fraud often
link |
and it's more psychology of it.
link |
If I can reduce something to reason,
link |
I can probably be fine.
link |
My worry is the same as the worry of teenage girls
link |
that get bullied online.
link |
It's like when I'm being open and fragile on the internet,
link |
it affects me in a way where I can't,
link |
the reason doesn't help.
link |
So it helps me, but.
link |
You don't block people enough.
link |
I'm very heavy with the blocking.
link |
No, so yeah, I block.
link |
I block, it's helped a lot.
link |
Any aggressive banality, I block immediately.
link |
I also think time is gonna help.
link |
I don't think you're,
link |
like you didn't grow up wanting to be a podcaster, right?
link |
That wasn't your aspiration.
link |
So in some sense, you are gonna feel like a fraud
link |
because you're like, I don't have any training for this.
link |
I have a training for a scientist.
link |
I can talk to you about artificial intelligence
link |
for literally hours, but in terms of this,
link |
like I don't know what I'm doing.
link |
I'm kind of, so when they call you a fake,
link |
it's like, yeah, you're kind of right
link |
because like I did kind of stumble into this
link |
and this is not my pedigree.
link |
So I think that kind of probably speaks to you
link |
Well, but they're attacking not the podcast thing,
link |
but more like the same,
link |
people call Elon Musk a fraud too,
link |
which that's the way I rationalize it.
link |
Like, well, if they're calling him a fraud
link |
and they're calling me a fraud,
link |
like even if you have rockets that go into,
link |
like if you successfully have rockets
link |
landing back on earth, reusable rockets,
link |
you're still being called a fraud, then it's okay.
link |
It could be that he's not a fraud.
link |
That's, but it's not resonating with you
link |
because your brain knows the logic.
link |
So you can't trick yourself.
link |
But I don't know, this whole trolling thing,
link |
you seem to be much better at seeing it as a game.
link |
Because you are under the delusion
link |
that every human being is capable
link |
of intelligent reasoned decisions.
link |
Still think I'm right.
link |
And I perceive them as literally animals.
link |
So when a dog starts barking,
link |
all it's saying is that the dog is agitated
link |
and this is not going to change my life one iota
link |
other than crossing the street, perhaps.
link |
Yeah, I'm going to prove you wrong one day.
link |
You're going to kill yourself
link |
because they can drive you to it.
link |
The first shoot up of school.
link |
But if I don't, I'll prove you wrong.
link |
I'll bring the data.
link |
And they'd be like, you're right, Lex.
link |
I have the receipts.
link |
I have the receipts.
link |
Okay, so we mentioned Camus.
link |
Oh yeah, I love him.
link |
Is there, this is a question that people like love
link |
I'm a really smart people.
link |
No, what books, let's say three books,
link |
if you can think of them, technical, fiction,
link |
philosophical, would you, had a big impact on you
link |
or would you recommend to others?
link |
The Machiavellians by James Burnham.
link |
This is a book about how politics works in reality
link |
as opposed to how people imagine it working.
link |
Mentis Moldbug, who's a figure in these circles,
link |
who's respected by a lot of people.
link |
I was giving a talk and there was a bunch of panelists
link |
and we were asked, what book would you recommend?
link |
I said, The Machiavellians.
link |
Independently of me, that was the book he had recommended.
link |
It's out of print, it's hard to find,
link |
but that would be one.
link |
Is that his book or no?
link |
James Burnham, it came out in 1941, I think.
link |
So can you pause on the, what's his?
link |
That's a code name, right?
link |
That guy's pen name.
link |
Curtis Yarvin, that's his real name.
link |
He swims in your circles.
link |
He does some kind of programming.
link |
Oh, he's originally a programmer.
link |
Yeah, he comes up as a person that I should talk with
link |
or I should know about, but then I read a few of his things
link |
and they seem quite dangerous.
link |
They're very long and verbose,
link |
but I think he's an amazing thinker.
link |
But he's the one who had the idea
link |
of sending the tanks to Harvard Yard.
link |
But doesn't he have like,
link |
he has some radical views.
link |
I forget what they are.
link |
Very radical views, yeah, he wants a military coup.
link |
But you're saying he's a serious thinker
link |
that is worthy of, not worthy.
link |
I don't know that you would enjoy
link |
having a conversation with him.
link |
I think a lot of people enjoy seeing it happen,
link |
but I think it would be a lot of talking past each other
link |
and it would be interesting.
link |
What do you agree?
link |
I didn't agree with him to watch.
link |
What do you disagree, okay.
link |
What do you agree, what do you disagree with him?
link |
I agree with him that politics has to be looked at
link |
objectively and without kind of an emotional connection
link |
to different schools.
link |
I talk about him a lot in my book on the New Right.
link |
Disagree, I don't think a military coup is a good idea.
link |
He doesn't think anarchism is stable, I disagree.
link |
I mean, me and him, I did a live stream with him
link |
which just dorked out a lot about history
link |
and people who've fallen in the memory hole.
link |
So, I mean, he's got a lot of writing, so.
link |
So, you know, the sense I got from him
link |
was that if I talk with him,
link |
a lot of people would be upset with me
link |
for giving him a platform.
link |
Yeah, I think he's on that edge
link |
where they want to read him out of
link |
what is acceptable discourse.
link |
What's his most controversial,
link |
I mean, you keep mentioning the tanks.
link |
Is that the most controversial viewpoint?
link |
Does he have a race thing?
link |
No, the alt right doesn't particularly like him
link |
in many ways because he's not a big on the race thing.
link |
I don't know what would be his most controversial view,
link |
I think because he is radical in terms of his analysis
link |
of culture, anytime someone's a radical,
link |
that is dangerous.
link |
Yeah, it's dangerous.
link |
Okay, book, so that's one.
link |
Which is a, I would say.
link |
Not Atlas Shrugged?
link |
No, and if you read Atlas Shrugged
link |
before reading The Fountainhead,
link |
you're doing yourself an enormous disservice.
link |
Don't you dare do it.
link |
On the philosophical or because the novel is better?
link |
Fountainhead's a better novel.
link |
Fountainhead's superfluous if you read Atlas Shrugged first.
link |
Fountainhead's about psychology and ethics.
link |
It does not have to do with her politics
link |
other than its implications.
link |
So it's by far the superior book.
link |
Ooh, this is a good one question.
link |
There's so many good books out there that I love.
link |
I'm going to, this is not really my third choice,
link |
but I'll throw it out there because I,
link |
this is such an important worldview,
link |
especially for people on the right.
link |
Are you virtue signaling?
link |
No, this is counter signaling.
link |
Thaddeus Russell's book,
link |
A Renegade History of the United States.
link |
His thesis is that it's the degenerates
link |
that give us all freedom.
link |
And things like prostitutes, things like madams,
link |
things like slaves, things like immigrants,
link |
because they were so low status,
link |
they could get away with things
link |
that then people who are higher status demanded
link |
and so on and so forth.
link |
So I think that thesis,
link |
and it really has extreme consequences in thinking.
link |
And no, Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.
link |
That's, those are the four.
link |
I haven't read any of his stuff.
link |
The Righteous Mind is the only one you want.
link |
Okay, that was four, but of course.
link |
Forget Thaddeus Russell, put Haidt in there.
link |
Of course he would.
link |
No, forget Thaddeus, those are the three.
link |
So we talked about love.
link |
Let me ask you the other question I'm obsessed with.
link |
Are you, do you ponder your own mortality?
link |
I do, a lot, especially now that I'm an uncle,
link |
especially now that I have like these younger people
link |
I was just yesterday, my friend, John Girguis,
link |
who did my theme song for my podcast,
link |
who did the book cover for Dear Reader,
link |
who's like the most talented person I know.
link |
His song came on the iPod at the gym
link |
and I almost messaged him.
link |
I go, you know, one day one of us is gonna bury the other
link |
and it's gonna be really sad.
link |
And I thought about that and it was kind of like,
link |
oh man, that's really gonna suck.
link |
And I don't know which scenario would be better.
link |
Like I will be very sad if he's gone.
link |
I'm sure he'd be very sad if I'm gone.
link |
I mean, what do you, are you afraid of it?
link |
No, you know, Rand had this quote about how
link |
I won't die, the world will end.
link |
So I've had enough experiences that I am,
link |
I've really, at this point,
link |
and everything's icing on the cake.
link |
So if you, if I were to kill you
link |
at the end of this podcast, it feels painless.
link |
That would be okay?
link |
Yeah, you know why?
link |
Does anyone know you're here by the way?
link |
Just asking for a friend.
link |
Here's why, there's that wit.
link |
Save that for Twitter likes.
link |
Do they call you Sasha?
link |
Oh, that's my sister's husband.
link |
Okay, so here's why.
link |
I strongly believe,
link |
and this is a very kind of Jewish perspective,
link |
that you just have to leave the world
link |
a little bit better than you found it.
link |
That all you could do is move the needle a little.
link |
And one of the things I set out to do
link |
with Dear Reader, my book on North Korea,
link |
I was at a point in my career where I could do something
link |
to make a difference instead of just writing,
link |
like coauthoring books for celebrities,
link |
which I'm very proud of, but are neither here nor there.
link |
And I thought, all right, I know how to tell stories,
link |
I know how to inform people, I know how to entertain people.
link |
If I move the needle in America, who cares?
link |
We got it really good here.
link |
If I move the needle in North Korea a little bit,
link |
the cost benefits through the roof.
link |
I never thought of that actually.
link |
I never thought of Dear Reader from that perspective.
link |
So when I set out to write it, I'm like, okay,
link |
I'm not gonna be able to liberate the North Korean regime.
link |
What I can do is the camera right now is focused on,
link |
at the time, Kim Jong Il, now Kim Jong Un.
link |
And I can do just this a little bit.
link |
And I go, behind that guy, who you think is funny clown,
link |
there's millions of dead people.
link |
There's children being starved.
link |
There's people who are performing
link |
because they have a gun to their kid's head.
link |
And if someone put a gun to your kid's head,
link |
you'd put on those dancing shoes real quick.
link |
And I and others have managed to change the conversation
link |
about North Korea in terms of look at those silly buffoons
link |
to those poor people.
link |
So the fact that that little thing I can say
link |
with a straight face, I did,
link |
doesn't make me a great person,
link |
but it does make me someone who, if I have to go tomorrow,
link |
I can say I did a little bit
link |
to make the world a better place.
link |
What do you think is the meaning of life?
link |
I think the meaning of life is...
link |
Oh, well, I'm a Camu person.
link |
So I'll give the Camu answer.
link |
So there's two types of people.
link |
Those who know how to use binary...
link |
Thanks for relating to the audience.
link |
One, one, one, zero, zero, one, two.
link |
What kind of radical freak is this Lex?
link |
So, and I use this example of my forthcoming book.
link |
You go into a countryside, a mountainside,
link |
and you see a blank canvas on an easel.
link |
And one kind of mentality goes,
link |
this is just a blank canvas.
link |
This is what am I looking at?
link |
And the other type goes, what a great opportunity.
link |
I'm in this beautiful space.
link |
I have this entire canvas to paint.
link |
I could do anything I want with it.
link |
So I am very much of that type two person.
link |
And I hope others start to think of life in that way.
link |
You and I have both been more successful
link |
than we expected to, especially growing up,
link |
and in ways we did not expect.
link |
And when you're young,
link |
you are so intent on driving the car.
link |
And after a certain point,
link |
you realize it's not about driving the car.
link |
It's you're being a surfer,
link |
that you can only control this little board
link |
and you have no idea where the waves will take you.
link |
And sometimes you're gonna fall down
link |
and something's gonna really gonna suck
link |
and you're gonna swallow some saltwater.
link |
But at a certain point, you stop trying to drive
link |
and you're like, this is freaking awesome
link |
and I have no idea where it's gonna go.
link |
I know I speak for a lot of people.
link |
First of all, everyone loves the game you play
link |
You make the world not everyone.
link |
Today, oof, they came for me hard.
link |
But it makes the world seem fun.
link |
And especially in this dark time, it's much appreciated.
link |
And we can't wait till the next book
link |
and the many to come
link |
and to hopefully many more Joe Rogan appearances.
link |
You guys do some great magic together.
link |
It's, you, yeah, you're one of my favorite guests on this show
link |
Especially if you can make it before the election.
link |
Thanks so much for making today happen.
link |
I'm glad you came down.
link |
Thank you so much.
link |
What a great compliment.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Michael Malus.
link |
And thank you to our sponsors.
link |
SEMrush, which is a SEO optimization tool.
link |
DoorDash, which is my go to food delivery service
link |
and Masterclass, which is online courses from world experts.
link |
Please check out these sponsors in the description
link |
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
link |
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
review it with five stars and up a podcast,
link |
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon
link |
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words
link |
from Michael Malus.
link |
Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.
link |
Thank you for listening.
link |
I hope to see you next time.