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?
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They cut off your foot and you're gonna go blind.
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Would that be something that you can hope for?
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And when you put it like that, it's like, yeah.
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Like if you're talking to someone like a homeless junkie
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and you're like, you could be a doctor,
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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,
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cooking breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear that,
link |
you're like, wait, would that really be so bad?
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Is that really so much worse than this?
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No, and it becomes something.
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So when she put it in those terms, I'm like, wow,
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this woman that really did a number on me
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in terms of teaching people how to be hopeful.
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Small steps, I guess.
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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
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that Brett Weinstein pushed forward?
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It was DOA, he couldn't even stand up to Twitter.
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He couldn't even stand up to Twitter, let alone,
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or to Facebook, they got blocked,
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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,
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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.
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The idea that Unity is taking the rejects from each party
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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.
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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,
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like the way I saw it,
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I guess I haven't looked carefully at it.
link |
I haven't either, to be fair.
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The way I saw it is emphasizing centrists, which is.
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How is Tulsi a centrist?
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Tulsi was involved?
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Yes, he's trying to push Tulsi
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on like Jesse Ventura or something.
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So, okay, I don't know.
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I don't know the specifics.
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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.
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No, no, I'm pleading to how you approach data.
link |
If someone is saying the mean is accurate,
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that only mean, I mean, the mean could be anywhere.
link |
It's a function of what's around it.
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That mean is true.
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I don't even know what centrists is supposed to mean,
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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.
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Joe Biden voted for Republican Supreme Court justices.
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Joe Biden voted for a balanced budget.
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Joe Biden voted for Bush's war.
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And I'm sure probably I haven't looked this up,
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Joe, if you want a centrist, you have Joe Biden.
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He's worked very well with Republicans.
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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,
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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,
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is there any other idea you find compelling?
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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.
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They hate America, they want to destroy it.
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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...