The following is a conversation with Michael Malis, an anarchist, political thinker, author,

and a proud, part time, Andy Kaufman like troll, in the best sense of that word, on both Twitter

and in real life. He's a host of a great podcast called You're Welcome, spelled Y O U R. I think

that gives a sense of his sense of humor. He is the author of Dear Reader, the unauthorized

autobiography of King Jong Il and The New Right, a journey to the fringe of American politics.

This latter book, when I read it or rather listened to it last year, helped me start

learning about the various disparate movements that I was undereducated about from the internet

trolls to Alex Jones to white nationalists and to techno anarchists. The book is funny and brilliant

and so is Michael. Unfortunately, because of a self imposed deadline, I actually pulled an all

nighter before this conversation. So I was not exactly all there mentally, even more so than

usual, which is tough because Michael is really quick witted and brilliant. But he was kind,

patient, and understanding in this conversation. And I hope you will be as well. Today, I'm trying

something a little new, looking to establish a regular structure for these intros of first,

doing the guest intro like I just did. Second, quick one or two sentence mention of each sponsor.

Third, my side comments related to the episode. And finally fourth, full ad reads on the audio

side of things. And on YouTube, going straight to the conversation. So not doing the full ad

reads. And as always, no ads in the middle because to me, they get in the way of the conversation.

So quick mention of the sponsors. First, SEM Rush, the most advanced SEO optimization

tool I've ever come across. I don't like looking at numbers, but someone probably should. It helps

you make good decisions. Second sponsor is DoorDash, food delivery service that I've used for many

years to fuel long uninterrupted sessions of deep work at Google MIT. And I still use it a lot today.

Third sponsor is Masterclass, online courses from the best people in the world on each of the

topics covered from rockets to game design to poker to writing and to guitar with Carlos Santana.

Please check out the sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I hope to have some conversations with political thinkers,

including liberals and conservatives, anarchists, libertarians, objectivists, and everything in

between. I'm as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump worship as you probably are. I have none

of that in me. I really work hard to be open minded and let my curiosity drive the conversation.

I do plead with you to be patient on two counts. First, I have an intense, busy life outside of

these podcasts. Like it's 4am right now as I'm recording this. So sometimes life affects these

conversations. Like in this case, I pull an all nighter beforehand. So please be patient with me

if I say something ineliquent, confusing, dumb, or just plain wrong. I'll try to correct myself on

social media or in future conversations as much as I can. I really am always learning and working

hard to improve. Second, if I or the guest says something about, for example, our current president

Donald Trump that's over the top negative or over the top positive, please don't let your brain go

into partisan mode. Try to hear our words in an open minded, nuanced way. And if we say stuff from

a place of emotion, please give us a pass. Nuance conversation can only happen if we're patient with

each other. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review the five stars in Apple podcast,

follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman. And now here's

my conversation with Michael Malis. There was a Simpsons episode where he starts mixing like sleeping

pills with like pet pills, and he's driving his truck. And I'm like, I want to see what happens

if he makes Red Bull a night truck called fruit. There's a lineup of drugs. This is going to be so

fun. This is good. Yeah. Let's start with love. Yeah. So one, one thing we'll eventually somehow

talk about, it'll be a theme throughout is that you're also Russian. Yes. A little bit less than me.

But how am I, because I'm from Ukraine? Oh, you're from Ukraine? Okay. Well, no, because you came here

a little bit when you were younger. Yeah. I came here when I was 13. So I saturated a little bit

of the Russian soul. I marinated in the Russian soul a little deeper. I haven't told anyone this,

but I'll be glad to tell you, Davidish. I haven't been back since I was two. And next summer, it

looks like me, my buddy Chris Williamson, who's also a podcaster, he's British modern wisdom,

he looks like Apollo. We're, we look like we got a videographer. Which Apollo? The God? He looks like

the God Apollo. Yeah, he's like a model. So we're going to go for the first time to see where I came

from. Which is in Ukraine. We're going to go to Levov and either St. Petersburg or Moscow,

probably St. Petersburg or both. It's going to be intense. It's going to be a lot of panic attacks,

I feel. And you're Russian is okay? You can't talk Russian and Ukraine or they get offended.

Yeah. But then you also want to go to Russia? Yeah. I don't know. For me, there's several people

in Russia. I want to interview on a podcast. Okay. So one of them is a good girl, a proman,

which is a mathematician. And the other person is Putin. You know, my favorite Putin story is,

do you know this? No. When he had Merkel with him, do you know this story? No.

Merkel's scared of dogs, like petrified of dogs. So he brings in his like, like, like a black lab.

It's a Labrador. It's like the sweetest animal. And it's all over her. And there's pictures and

she's sitting like this and she's terrified. And he's like, what's wrong, Angela? It's just completely

trolling her. Yeah. He's aware of the sort of the narrative around him. Yeah. And then he plays with

it. Yes. He enjoys it. It's a very Russian thing. My friend wanted to do a film about me. He goes,

I realized you guys aren't like us at all. You just like, like, look at us. And then I started

telling him stories about the upbringing. And he's like, Oh my God. And as I'm telling them,

I'm like, wow, this stuff is really crazy. Like what, how we are wired. Who's the, your friend is?

The Russian, the friend's American. I'm saying the way Russians are brought up and the way maybe,

I don't think it was just my family. I bet you had similar things. Like, here's an example. I was,

I had a buddy staying with me. He had a problem with his roommate. So he crashed into my place.

Fine. I went to the gym and I come back and he goes, Oh, there was, and my apartment building

is for four apartments. So it's not like a huge thing. He goes, Oh, there was someone knocking at

your door. So, you know, I told him, blah, blah. And, and for me, and I want to know if you're

the same way, if I'm at someone's house that's not my own and someone knocks on the door,

I wouldn't even think to answer it. Like if I had an apple here, maybe I'd eat it, I'd cut it,

whatever. I'm not going to, it just doesn't enter my head to smash into my face. But the thought of

answering the door, if it's not my house, it would never enter my head would enter your head.

No, but why? But he's an American. So someone's at the door. He goes and opens it, even though

it's not his house. I would never do that. I would never think to do that. That is so strange

that you pick some very obscure thing to delineate Americans. I don't think that's obscure because

I think it speaks to how we perceive strangers with Americans, everyone's friendly. And with us,

it's like, no, no, no, like you have that moat. And I think that's a that percolates into many

different aspects of how we relate to people. And I had to undo a lot of that. That's true.

You're right. There's the relationship I formed there where in Russia, we're very deep,

yes, close. And then there's the strangers, the other that you don't trust by default,

it takes a long time to go over the moat of trust. For a long time, until recently,

whenever I said anything to anyone, my brain ran a scan that said, if this person turns on you,

would this, can they use this against you? And I would do everything I said with strangers.

And after a while, it's like, you know what, maybe they will, but I'm strong enough to take it. But

this is not how Americans think. Well, here's another one. Let me ask you this. Sorry,

I'm taking over the interview. People asked about like advice for work, right? Like I had this,

there was this party I went to and basically everyone had their own problems and everyone

else gave their advice, right? And someone's having a problem with the coworker. And the advice

these DuPois Americans gave them is, oh, sit down and have a talk with them. And to me,

this is like the last case, last resort. Like first, you have to see what you can without

showing your hand, showing your vulnerability, only when everything hasn't worked out or you're

like, all right, let me sit down with you and try to have it out with you probably. But for them,

the first thing is like sit down and be like, oh, you're causing me problems and blah, blah, blah.

So I perceive that right away is a threat that this person sees an antagonism between us and

also as a weakness that I'm getting to them. So my reaction isn't, how do I make it better? My

reaction is to reinforce my position and see what I can to marginalize them. Usually. I haven't worked

in a corporate setting in a long time, but it's not, I don't approach it the way an American would

like, I'm glad you came and talked to me. Now I probably would because it's going to be a friend.

So you attribute that to the Russian I'm bringing as opposed to you have deep

psychological issues. I think there's a synonymous.

Would you think differently maybe a few years ago?

I don't know. I think you lost me at the, because you kind of said that

that you're kind of implying you have a deep distrust of the world. Like the world does.

I think the default setting would be distrust. Yeah.

But I would put it differently is I almost ignore the rest of the other one, even acknowledge it.

I just savor, I save my love and trust for the small circle of people.

I agree. But when that person is being confrontational or as they perceive it as being open,

now there's a situation. How do you, how would you handle that?

Like, like a cold wind blows. He's just kind of like, yeah, but it's not like this is an

opportunity for us to work out our differences. It's a cold wind. It's not a hug. That's my point.

Americans think it's a hug. You're so suspicious. What it really is is a cold wind.

I'm so inhumane. It's not something to be scared of. It's a cold wind. It's not in person.

But it's great. But it's not a source of like, I'm not suspicious of,

like I'm not anxious, I would say, or like living in fear of the rest of the world.

But you're, oh, I agree. But you're not receptive to that person.

Right. That's all I'm saying. And they are. Got it. So speaking of which, let's talk about love.

Yes. Which requires to be receptive of the world. Yes. Of strangers. I agree.

How do we put more love out there in the world, especially on the internet?

One mechanism I have found to prove increased love, and that's a word that has many meanings and is,

you know, used in a very intense sense and is used in a very loose sense.

Can you try to define love? Sure. Love is a strong sense of attraction toward

a another person, entity or place that causes one to tend to react in a disproportionately

positive manner. That's off the top of my head. Disproportionately. Yes. So for example, if you

Why not proportionately? Because like, if you're someone's about to who you love is about to get

harmed, you're moving heaven and earth to make sure or like a book you love, you know, like,

I love this book, like you're going through the fire to try to save it. Whereas if it's a book,

you really like, it's like, oh, I've got another one. I don't, you know, and a book's kind of a

loose example. But so you're going with the love that's like you're saving for just a few people,

almost like romantically, like love for a close family. But what about just love to even the

broader like the kind of love you can put out to people on the internet, which is like just kindness.

Sure. I would say in that case, it's important to make them feel seen and validated.

And I try to do this when people who I have come to know on the internet, and there's a lot,

I try to do that as much as possible, because I don't think it's valid how on social media,

and I do this a lot myself, but not towards everyone. It's just there to be aggressive

and antagonistic. You should be antagonistic towards bad people. And that's fine. But at

the same time, there's lots of great people. And especially with my audience, and I would

bet disproportionately with yours, there's a lots of people who are because of their

psychology and intelligence are going to be more and more isolated socially than they should.

And if I, and I've heard from many of them, and if I'm the person who makes them feel,

oh, I'm not crazy, it's everyone else around me who is just basic. The fact that I can be

that person, which I didn't have at their age to me is incredibly reaffirming.

You mean that source of love? But I mean, love in the sense of like, you know,

you care about this person and you want good things for them, not in a kind of romantic way.

But I mean, you're using it in a broad sense now. Yeah. But you're also a person who kind of,

I mean, attacks the power structures in the world by mocking them. Yes. Effectively. Yes. And

love, I would say, requires you to be non witty and simple and fragile, which I see it as like

the opposite of what trolls do. Trolls are, if I, if there is someone coming after what I love,

there's two mechanisms, right? At least two. I go up and I'm fighting them. And in which case,

you bring in, if you are getting hurt in a knife fight, even if you win the knife fight,

or if you disarm them and you preclude the possibility of a fight and you drive them off

or render them powerless, you can, you keep your person intact as yourself and you also protect

your values. So how do you render them powerless? As you just said, by mocking them, one of the

most effective mechanism for those in power, we're much closer to brave new world than 1984.

The people who are dominant and in power aren't there because of the threat of, you know, the

Gulag or prison. They're there because of social pressures. Look at the masks. I was on the subway

not that long ago in New York City. No one cared who I was until I put out the mask. I was in the

subway that long in New York City. They would, and I put this on my Instagram. I've told this story

before. There was an Asian dude in his early 30s. He was like in Western clothes. It's not like he

had a rickshaw or something. An older man in his 50s stood up over him on the subway, screamed at him,

said, go back where you came from. You're disgusting. I'm going to get sick. If you think

this guy is a vector of disease, which is your prerogative, why are you coming close to him?

Why are you getting in his face? And what was the rate? Sorry. So it was because he was Asian?

It was both. It was the not having a mask gave him the permission to act like a despicable,

aggressive person toward him, right? And the point being a lot of these mechanisms for social control

are outsourced to low quality people because this is their one chance to assert dominance and status

over somebody else. So the best way to diffuse that isn't with weaponry or fighting. It's through

mockery because all of a sudden their claims to authority are effectively destroyed.

So let me push back on that. What about fighting that with love, with patience and kindness towards

them? I don't think kindness is, I think that would be a mismatch and inappropriate.

Their Superman is Batman. Okay. And Superman's job is to help the good people and Batman's

job is to hurt the bad people. And I will always be on the Batman side than the Superman side.

Both work silly tight costumes. One has pointy ears. Both are ridiculous. So it's a billionaire

who gets, you know, he's swimming in trim. Which one is the bad man? Okay. I'm under educated

on the superhero movies. I apologize. Okay. But you're just saying you, your predisposition is

to be on the Batman side is to fighting the bad guys. Yeah. And it's what I'm good at.

That's what you're good at. But just to play devil's advocate, or actually, in this case,

I am the devil because it's what I usually do. Watch the devil. You're the angel's advocate.

Exactly. I'm to be the angel advocate. Yeah. It's like, I feel like mockery is a path towards

escalation of conflict. Yes. In many ways. Yes. So you're not, I mean, it's kind of like guerrilla

warfare. I mean, you're not going to win. I am winning. We're all winning. We're winning

on a daily. This is my next book. We're winning. We've won before. I'm not joking.

The topic of the next book. Yes, is the white pill. The white pill.

Is that we're going to, we are winning. The most horrible people are being rendered into laughing

stocks on a daily basis social media. This is a glorious thing. I just so disagree with you.

I disagree with you because there's side effects that are very destructive. It feels like you're

winning, but we're completely destroying the possibility of having like a cohesive society.

That's called oncology. What's that mean? Curing cancer. Your concept of a cohesive

society is in fact a society based on oppression and not allowing individuals to live their

personal freedom. Oh, so you're your utopian view of the world. You're the utopian. You're

saying cohesive society. I'm saying, I don't need that. I'm saying there's going to be conflict.

Right. There's going to be conflict. You and I are disagreeing right now. That's not cohesive.

Doesn't mean we like each other less. Doesn't mean we respect each other less. Cohesive doesn't,

it's just a euphemism for like everyone submitting to what I want.

No. I mean, cohesive could be that. It could be like enforced with violence, all that kind of

stuff, sort of the libertarian view of the world, but it could just be being respectful and kind of

each other and kind towards each other and loving towards each other. I mean, that's what I mean

by cohesive. So when people say free, it's funny. Like freedom is a funny thing because freedom could

be painful to a lot of people. It's all matters how you define it, how you implement it, how it

actually looks like. Sure. And I'm just saying it feels like the mockery of the powerful leads to

further and further the divisions. It's like the, it's turning life into a game to where

it's always you're creating these different little tribes and groups and you're constantly

fighting the groups that become a little bit more powerful by undercutting them through

guerrilla warfare kind of thing. And that's what the internet becomes is everyone's just mocking

each other and then certain groups become more and more powerful. And then they start fighting

each other into basically, they form groups of ideologies and they start fighting each other

in the internet. Where the result is, it doesn't feel like the common humanities highlighted. It

doesn't feel like that's a path of progress. Now, like when I say cohesive, I don't mean like

everybody has to be, you know, enforcing equality, all those kinds of ideas. I just mean like

not being so divisive. That's like, so it's going back to the original question of like,

how do we put more love out in the world than the internet? I want divisiveness. Oh, you see,

you think that this is, that's very interesting. It's the goal. So you started this conversation

where you're talking about you have love for that small group. I think we both would agree to have a

bigger group be better, especially if that love comes from a sincere place. I think our country

specifically, I wrote an article about this four years ago that it's time to disunite the states

and to secede. This country has been held together with at least two separate cultures, with dumb

tax and string for over 20 years. There's an enormous amount of contempt from one group toward

another. This contempt comes from a sincere place. They do not share each other's values.

There's absolutely no reason, just like any unhealthy relationship, where you can't say,

you know what, it's not working out. I want to go my own way and live my happiness and I genuinely

want you to go your way, live your happiness. If I'm wrong, prove you wrong. I'll learn from you

and take lessons and vice versa. But the fact that we all have to be in the same house together

is not coherent and that's not love. That is the path towards friction and tension and conflict.

Do you think there is concrete groups? Is it as simple as the two groups of blue and red?

No, it's also very fluid because you and I are allied as Jewish people, as Russians, as males,

as podcasters. You're an academic, I'm not. There's different, but we each are a Venn diagram,

even within ourselves. I can talk to you about politics and then we can talk about Russia stuff

and then you could talk about your work, which I don't know anything about, so that would be

where you're way up here and way down here. So there's lots, every relationship with just between

individuals, it's very dynamic. So how do we succeed? Like how do we form individual states

where there's a little bit more cohesion? Sure, and voluntary cohesion. So the first step

is to eliminate the concept of political authority as legitimate and to denigrate and humiliate those

who would put themselves in a position in which they are there to tell you how to live your life

from any semblance of validity. And that's starting to happen. If you look at what they had

with the lockdowns, Cuomo in De Blasio, New York, I was tired a couple weeks ago and I said to my

friend, oh, just click, maybe I have COVID. And he goes, it's not possible, like what do you mean?

And he goes, we haven't had any deaths in like two months and there's only like 100 cases a day

for like two months. And I go, you're exaggerating because everything was still closed. And I looked

at the numbers and he wasn't exaggerating. And there's no greater American dream to me

than an immigrant family comes to the States, forms their own little business,

maybe mom's a good cook is a restaurant, dry cleaner, fruit stand. And those people aren't

going to have a lot of money. Those are the first ones who lost their companies because of these

lockdowns. Cuomo, who's the governor of New York, opened up the gyms. He said, you're clear to open

up. De Blasio said, and we don't have enough inspectors, you're going to have to wait another

couple of weeks. To regard that as anything other than literally criminal is something that I

am having a hard and hard of time wrapping my head around.

You said, I mean, that's something I'm deeply worried about as well, which is like

thousands, it's actually millions of dreams being crushed that American American dream of starting

a business of running a business. What about all the young people who you and I have in our audiences

who are socially isolated at best, and now they can't leave their homes?

Isolation and ostracism are things that are very well studied in psychology. These have extreme

consequences. I read a book called ostracism. And this wasn't scientific, but basically the

author was a psychiatrist or a college whatever. And he had one of his colleagues, they didn't

experiment. Let's for a week, you ostracize me completely. We know it's an, and he goes,

even knowing it's the experiment, the fact that he wouldn't make eye contact with me and the fact

that he ignored me had an extreme emotional impact on me. Knowing full well, this is purely for

experimental purposes. Now you multiply that by all these, the suicide, the number of kids who

think about suicide was through the roof during all this. And my point is until these people, it's

going to have a pretty quick 2024, that's where we're going to have to start having conversations

about what personal consequences have to be done for these people, because until then they're going

to do the same thing. So you think there's going to be society wide consequences of this that we're

going to see like ripple effects because of the social isolation? I know, I mean, we also need

to talk about consequences of Cuomo and de Blasio. Because if politicians respond to incentives and

the incentives are there for them to be extremely conservative. Because if you have to choose,

as Cuomo said in a press conference, between a thousand people dying and a thousand people

losing their business, it's not a hard choice. And he's right. But at a certain point, it's like,

all right, you're losing both, you're losing, not losing, you're making these decisions and not

having consequences for it. And you're going to do it again the next time. So we need to make

sure you're a little scared. Okay. And I don't know what that would mean. But you're laying

this problem, this, this incompetence. I don't think it's incompetence. I think it's very

competent. I think they're just their job. Yes. But what, but you're laying it not at the hands

of the individuals, but the structure of the of government. It's both. Yes. How would we deal with

it better without centralized control? Well, we didn't really have centralized control because

every country and every state handled it in a different mechanism. But a city has centralized

control. Just, yeah, right. No, that's not true. So Cuomo and De Blasio, they had a lot of

disagreements over this over the months. And this was actually a source of great interest and tension.

De Blasio wanted, at one point was talking about quarantining people in their homes. Cuomo was

like, you're crazy. Same thing with the schools, same thing with the gyms. And there were other

such examples. But the point being, this was an emergency. This is World War One. I talked about

this on Tim Pool's show. It was very dangerous because it gave a lot of evil people some very

useful information about what the country put up with and what they can get away with under

wartime. And this set the model for things like the New Deal and the other things of that nature.

It is undeniable, you're a scientist, so you understand this perfectly well,

that this lockdown gave some very nefarious people some very valid data about how much people would

put up with under pressures from the state. So fundamentally, what is the problem with the

state that existence? Okay, well, but to play Angel's advocate again, you know, government

is the people. Come on. Do you really think this? As best I think it's possible to have

representation. Can you imagine if you have an attorney, you're like, oh, you can't have

the attorney you want. You're gonna have this guy who you absolutely hate, who you share no

values with. Why? Because he drives, I mean, leaders, political leaders, and political

representation drive the discourse. Like we, you know, the majority of people voted for him or

whatever, however, however you define that. And now we get to have a discussion. Well,

was this the right choice? And then we get to make that choice again in four years and so on.

First of all, the fact that I have to be under the thumb of somebody for years makes no sense.

There's no other relationship that's like this, including a marriage. You can leave any other

relationship at any time. Number one, number two is it always impeach what they did that part of

it. I'm just saying that the mechanisms are flawed in many ways. Yeah. Right. And so that's

number one. Number two is it doesn't make sense that if I don't want someone to represent me,

that because that person is popular, that they are now in a position to. So having representation

and having citizenship based on geography is a prelandline technology in a post cell phone world.

There's no reason why I have to just because we're physically in between two oceans,

we all have to be represented by the same people. Whereas I can very easily have my

security be under someone and switch it as easily as cell phone providers.

So okay, but it doesn't have to be geographical. It can be ideas. Sure. I mean,

this country represents a certain set of ideas. Yes, it does. It started out geographically.

It still is geographic. It started off as ideas as well. But like there's it's it was

intricately. I mean, that's the way humans are. There's I mean, there was no internet.

So it was your geographically the same location and you sign a bunch of documents and then you

kind of debated and you wrote a bunch of stuff and then you agreed on it. Okay.

You understand that no one signed these documents and no one agreed to it,

as Lysander Spooner pointed out over 150 years ago. The constitution or the social contract,

if anything, is only binding to the signatories. And even then they're all long dead.

So it's this fallacy that somehow because I'm in a physical place, I have agreed,

even though I'm screaming through a face that I don't agree to be subordinate to

some imaginary invisible monster that was created 250 years ago. And this idea of like,

if you don't like it, you have to move. That's not what freedom means. Freedom means I do what I

want, not what you want. So if you don't like it, you move. Okay, just to put some, I don't like

words and terms. 1110, 1110. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what your language is.

It is. I'm translating it all in real time. But would you call the kind of ideas that

you're advocating for and we're talking about anarchy? Yes, anarchism, yes.

Okay, so let's get into it. Can you try to paint the utopia that an anarchist worldview dreams about?

The only people who describe anarchism as utopia are its critics. If I told you right now,

and I wish I could say this factually, that I have a cure for cancer that would not make us

utopia, that would still probably be expensive. We would still have many other diseases. However,

we would be fundamentally healthier, happier and better off all of us.

Then democracy. So I jumped back from the cancer.

No, then democracy or government. So it's only curing one major, major life threatening problem.

But in no sense is it a utopia. So what can we try to answer this question? Same question many

times, which is what exactly is the problem with democracy? The problem with democracy is that those

who need leaders are not qualified to choose them. Those who need leaders are not qualified

to choose them. That's the central problem with democracy. Not all of us need leaders.

What does it mean to need a leader? Are you saying like people who are actually

free thinkers don't need leaders kind of thing? Sure. That's a good way of working.

Okay, so do you acknowledge that there's some value in authority in different subjects? So what

that means is I don't mean authority, somebody who's in control of you. But you're doing the

definition switch. Yeah, I am. You're right. It's unfair. Okay, that was bad.

But that's what they do. That's their trick. And this is one of the useful things, by the way,

Lesley has told us sidebar. If people ask me for advice, I always tell them,

if you're going to raise your kids, raise them bilingual. Because I was trilingual by the time

I was six, and that teaches you to think in concepts. Whereas if you only know one language,

you fall for things like this, because using authority in the sense of a policeman,

and someone's authority in physics, it's the same word. Conceptually, they're extremely different.

But if you're only thinking in one language, your brain is going to equate the two. And that's

a trap that people who only speak one language have. For sure. But even if you know multiple

languages, you can still use the trick of using your words to your convenience to manipulate

the conversation. You weren't trying to do that, but you fell into that. I accidentally did it.

We all tend to do that if you only speak one language and think in one language.

But if, I guess let me rephrase it, are you against, do you acknowledge the value of offloading

your own effort about a particular thing to somebody else? Absolutely. Like an accountant,

a lawyer, a doctor, absolute, a chef, infinite. Isn't that ultimately what a democracy is?

No. Broadly defined. Like you're basically electing a bunch of authorities.

Using the word you in two senses. Using the word you, meaning me as an individual, not using you

as a mass. Yeah, as a mass, not you as an individual. Right. So I would absolutely want

someone to provide for my security. I would absolutely want someone to negotiate with me

for foreign powers or something like that. That does not mean it has to be predicated

and what lots of other people who I do not know, and if I do know them, probably would not respect,

think about. It's of no moral relevance to me. Nor are I to them.

Do you think this kind of, there could be a bunch of humans that behave kind of like ants

in a distributed way. There could be an emergent behavior in them that results in a stable society.

Like it's not the hope with anarchies, like without an overarching.

But ants, I mean, ants are the worst example here because ants have a very firm authority.

The queen. Yeah. And they're all, they're all drones. They're all clones of each other.

Yeah, but so if you forget the queen, their behavior, they're all, well, from your perspective,

from your human intelligence perspective, but from their perspective, I probably see

each other as a bunch of individuals. No, they don't. Ants are very big on altruism in the sense

of self sacrifice. They do not think the individual matters. They routinely kill themselves for the

sake of the hive in the community. But they, see, that's from the outside perspective, from

the individual perspective of the individual, they probably, they, they don't see it as altruism.

Right. But they, they, they view, and they're right because the ants life is very ephemeral and

cheap, that it's more important to continue this mass population that, that one individual ant

live. Like bees are another, even better example, the honeybee, when they sting, they only sting

once and they die. And they do it gladly because it's like, okay, this community is much more

important than me. And they're right. Yeah. Okay. So fine. Let's forget. I'm being pedantic,

but it's important, I think. I'm not just being pedantic for the sake of being pedantic. But there's

something beautiful that I won't argue about because I do, there's an interesting point there

about individualism of ants. I do think they're more individual. But let's, let's give your view

of ants that they're, it's, they're communists. Okay. Let's go with the communist view of ants.

Okay. Yeah. But there's still a beautiful emergent thing, which is like, they can function as a,

as a society and without, I would say, centralized control. It's another argument.

So is that the hope for anarchy? It's like, you just throw a bunch of people that voluntarily

want to be in the same place under the same set of ideas. And they kind of, like the doctors emerge,

the police officers emerge, the, the different necessary structures of a functional society

emerge. Do you know what the most beautiful example of anarchism is that is just beyond

beautiful when you stop to think about it? I'll say Twitter. I'm not, I'm not being tongue in

cheek. Okay. Language. There's infinite languages, language, the things that language can be used for

are, bring tears to people's eyes quite literally. It's also used for basic things. No one is forcing

us, we speak two languages each, at least no one's forcing us to use English. No one's forcing us to

use this dialect of English. It's a way and, and despite there being so many different languages,

lingua franca emerge, you know, people, the language of everyone is Latin. Even in North

Korea, they refer to the fish and the different animals by the Latin scientific, no one decided

that, sure, there's an organization that sets a binomial nomenclature, but there's no gun to

anyone's head referring to Seamoth as a Pegasus species. And when you think about how amazing

language is, and some in other contexts would say like, well, you, you need to have a world

government and they're deciding which is the verbs and you have to have an official definition

and an official dictionary. And none of that's happened. And I think anyone, even if they don't

agree with my politics or my worldview, cannot deny that the creation of language is one of

humanity's most miraculous, beautiful achievements. Absolutely. So there, there you go. There's one

system where a kind of anarchy can result in, in beauty, stability, like sufficient stability,

and yet dynamic flexibility to adjust to them and so on. And the internet helps it. You get

something, something like urban dictionary, which starts creating absurd, both humor and

wit. But also language and syntax and jargon, immediately you size people up. If you use,

if you say vertebral, I know you're a doctor, because that's how they pronounce it, the spinal

column. I'm sure in your field, there's certain jargon right away. You can know if this person's

one of us or not. I mean, it's infinite. I mean, I don't need to tell you anyone.

It's emojis too. Yes. There's so much there to study with language. It's fascinating.

But do you think this applies to human life, the meat space, the physical space? Yes. So these,

there's that kind of beauty can emerge without, without writing stuff on paper, without laws.

You could have rules. You don't need, you don't have to be laws. So enforced by violence. Like

that's what, what's a law? A law is something that is unchosen. A rule is something, if I go to my

pool, I sign up to your member pool on the wall, there's certain things. It's like, you know,

certain number of people in the pool, no peeing in here. Good luck enforcing that one. And so on

and so forth. Well, that's the problem. Aren't you afraid that people are going to pee in the pool?

That's not as my biggest concern is mass incarceration, as the fact that the police

can steal more money than burglars can. The fact that innocent people can be killed with no

consequences. The fact that war can be waged and with no consequences for those who waged it.

The fact that so many men and women are being murdered overseas and here,

and the people who are guiding these are regarded as heroic.

So you think there might, that in an anarchist system, there's a possibility of having less

wars and less, what would you say, corruption and less abuse of power?

Let's talk, yes, and let's talk about corruption because, and I made this point on

Rogan, you and I, again, this is the Russian background, we realize that when it comes to

corruption, American is very naive. Corruption, they think is, oh, I got my brother a job and

he's getting money on the table. That's not, when we're talking about like state corruption,

things that are done in totalitarian states, and even to some extent America, like Jeffrey

Epstein, Gillian Maxwell, things that Stalin did, things that Hitler did. You know, when the CIA

was torturing people at Gitmo, they had to borrow KGB manuals because they didn't know

how to torture correctly because they never thought of these things. We, it's very hard for us to

get into the mindset of someone who's like a child predator, someone who, let me give you

an example from my forthcoming book, there was a guy who was the head of Ukraine in the 30s,

I forget his name. Now these old Soviets, they were tough. I mean, they pride, Stalin means

steel. You know, they pride themselves and their cruelty and how strong they were. And this was the purge. You know, Stalin is trying to, you know,

killing lots of people left and right. And his henchmen, Beria, had the quote, find me the man,

I'll find you the crime. You know, they would accuse someone and they would torture him

until he talked and confessed. And then he had to turn people in. And they took this guy in,

like beginning the year, I think it's 36, 38, he was head of Ukraine. By May, he's arrested.

And they take him to the Ljublanka, the basement in the Red Square where they're torturing people.

And they put, they did the works on him. And he was a good Soviet and he stood up.

Who knows what they did to him? He didn't talk. So they said, okay, one moment,

they brought his teenage daughter in, raped her in front of him. He talked. So when we talk about

corruption, we would never in a million years think of this. That's not how our minds work.

So when you're talking about states and people where you don't have

ease of exit, where you are forced to be under the auspices of an organization creating a monopoly,

that leads to, in extreme cases, but in not as extreme cases, really nefarious outcomes.

Whereas if you have the option to leave as a client or customer, that would have a strongly

limiting effect on how a business and what it can get away with.

But don't you think maybe, I don't know who the right example is, whether it's Stalin,

I think Hitler might be the better example of, don't you think, or Jeffrey Epstein perhaps,

don't you think people who are evil will find ways to manipulate human nature to attain power,

no matter the system? Yes. And like the corollary question is, do you think those

people can get more power in the democracy, when there's a government already in place?

It's easily, they get more power, more dangerous to have a government in place. First of all,

sociopaths don't know for their charm and for their warmth. Here's the two situations.

In a free society, I'm a sociopath, I'm an evil person, I'm the head of Macy's.

In a state society, I'm an evil person, I'm a sociopath, I'm the head of the US government.

Which of these are you more concerned with? It's like night and day. So you would have far more

decentralized military, you would have far more decentralized security forces, and they would

be much more subject to feedback from the market. If you have an issue with Macy's or any store with

a sweater, look at that transaction. If you have an issue with the state, hiring a lawyer costs

more than a surgeon. To even access the mechanism for dispute is going to be exorbitant and price

poor people at the market for conflict resolution immediately. So right away, you have something

that's extremely regressive. And even though this is touted as some great equalizer, it's

quite the opposite. So in current society, there's deep suspicion of governments and states.

Well, just your example of Macy's, I mean, don't you think a Hitler could rise to be at the top

of social network like Twitter and Facebook? Okay, let's suppose Hitler ran Twitter. Okay,

let's take this thought experiment seriously. Literally, what could he do? So all the only

tweets are going to be about how much the Jews suck, right? Okay, fine. Okay, all the cool people

are leaving. There could be some compelling, like you said, evil people are charming. There could

be some compelling narratives that could be we've conspiracy theories, untruths, that could be spread

like propaganda. Every criticism of anarchism is in fact a description of all the strongest

criticism of anarchism are in fact description of the status quo. Your concern is under anarchism,

propaganda would spread and people would be taught the wrong ideas, unlike the status quo.

That's not even a criticism of anarchism. I'm not actually criticizing. It's an open question of,

it's an open question of in which system will human nature thrive, be able to thrive more?

And in which system would the evils that arise in human nature would be more easily suppressible?

That's the open question. It's a scientific experiment, and I'm asking only from my perspective

of the fact that we've tried democracy quite a bit recently, and I don't, maybe you can correct

me, we haven't yet seriously tried anarchy in a large scale. Well, we don't need to try to,

so anarchy isn't like a country, right? It's like, it's like saying, well, if anarchy works,

how come we've never had an anarchist government, right? So anarchism is a relationship and language

is an example of this. It's a worldwide anarchic system. You and I have an anarchist relationship.

There's almost no circumstances we'd be calling the police on each other.

I mean, it's, I'm asking the same question in a bunch of different directions out of,

born out of my curiosity, is why is anarchy going to be better at preventing the darker

sides of human nature, which presumably your criticism of government.

Oh, because it's because of decentralization. So the darker side of human nature is an extreme

concern. Anyone who says it's going to go away is absurd and fallacious. I think that's a nonstarter

when people say that everyone's going to be good. Human beings are basically animals. We're capable

of great beauty and kindness. We're capable of just complete, cruel, and what we would call inhumanity,

but we see it on a daily basis even today. And what's interesting is the corporate press won't

even tell you the darkest aspects because that's too upsetting to people. So they'll tell you about

atrocities and horrors, but only to a point. And then when you actually do the homework,

you're like, oh, it's so much worse than, like that thing about Stalin, right? So we know in a

broad sense that Stalin was a dictator. We know that he killed a lot of people, but it takes work

to learn about the Holodomor. It takes work to learn about what those literal tortures were,

and that this is the person who later, FDR and Harry Truman were shaking hands with

and taking photos with and was being sold to us as Uncle Joe. He's just like you and me.

So when you have a decentralized information network, as opposed to having three media networks,

it is a lot easier for information that doesn't fit what would be the corporate American narrative

to reach the populations. And it would be more effective for democracy,

because they're in a much better position to be informed. Now, you're right. It also means,

well, if everyone has a mic, that means every crazy person, and with their wacky views.

And at a certain point, yeah, it has to become, then there's another level, which is then the

people have to be self enforcing. And you see that in social media all the time when someone

says this, the other person jumps in. You think, but isn't social media a good example of this?

So you think ultimately, without centralized control, you can have stability? Like,

what about the mob outrage and the mob rule, the power of the mobs that emerge?

The power of the mob is very serious concern. Gustav Le Bon wrote a book in the 1890s called

The Crowd. And this was one of the most important books I've written, because it influenced both

Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin, and they all talked about it. And he made the point that under

crowd psychology, human lynching is another example of this. None of those individuals,

or very few would ever dream of doing these acts. But when they're all together, and you lose that

sense of self, you become the ant, and you lose that sense of individually, you're capable of

doing things that like in another context, you'd be like, I should kill myself. I'm a monster.

So you're worried about that, but like, isn't the mob, doesn't the mob have more power under

anarchy? No, the mob has much less power and anarchy because under anarchism, every individual

is fully empowered. You wouldn't have gun restrictions. You would have people creating

communities based on shared values. They'd be much more collegial. They'd be much more kind,

as opposed to when you're forcing people to be together in a polity, when they don't have things

in common, that is like having a bad roommate. If you're forced to liquid jails, if you're forced

to be in locked in a room with someone, even if you at first like them, after a while you're

going to start to hate them, and that leads to very nefarious consequences. So as an anarchist,

what are you doing in a society like this? Thrive. I think I'm doing okay.

I mean, there's an election coming up. As you talk, you're welcome is one of the

15 shows that you host. It's down to one. Okay, it's down to one. But I'm a big fan.

You talk about libertarianism a little bit. I mean, is there some practical

political direction in terms of we as a society should go? I don't mean we as a nation. I mean,

we as a collective of people should go to make a better world from an anarchist point of view.

Sure. I think politics is the enemy. I need to find politics.

The state, the government. So anything that lessens its sway on people, anything that

delegitimizes it is good. I read an article a few years ago about how wonderful it is that

Trump is regarded as such a buffoon because it's very, very useful to have a commander in chief

who's regarded as a clown because it's going to take a lot to get him to convince your kids to

go overseas and start killing people and making widows and orphans, as well as those kids coming

home in caskets. Whereas if someone is regarded with prestige and they're like, oh, we need to send

your kid overseas. Oh, absolutely. I mean, this guy's great. So that is a very healthy thing

where people are skeptical of the state. But there's a lot of people that regard him as

one of the greatest leaders we've ever had. Yeah. Dinesh D'Souza. He's another Lincoln.

I, when you talk shit about Trump or talk shit about Biden, I think I'm trying to find a line to

walk where they don't immediately put you into the, this person has Trump derangement syndrome or

they have the other, the alternative to that. I'm more than happy when people are preemptively

dismissing me because they don't have to waste time engaging with them because those people

we have no use to me. When I was on Tim Poole recently, Tim Poole show, Tim Poole is known for

his little like hat. I got a propeller beanie motorized and it was just spinning the whole

two hours, 1950s thing. The point being, I wore it because there's lots of people who would say,

I can't take seriously someone who wears a hat like that. And my point being, if you are the kind

of person who takes your cues based on someone's wardrobe, as opposed to the content of your ideas,

you have no use to me as an ally. So I'd be more than happy. You preemptively abort,

rather than waste our breath. This is the deep, this is a very, very deep thing that you and I

disagree on, which is this is goes to the trolling versus the love is, I believe that person

instinctually dismisses you on the very basic surface level. Yes. But deep down, there actually,

there is a wealth of a human being that seeks the connection to seeks to understand deeply

to connect with other humans that we should speak to. Yeah, you and I completely disagree.

So you're saying, I'm saying there's no mind there, literally. Okay. So let's, I, I naturally

think the majority, so I naturally think the majority of people are, have the capacity to be

thoughtful, intelligent, and, you know, learn about ideas, ideas that they instinctually based on

their own likes, current inner circle, disagree with and learn to understand, to empathize with

the other we're like, I, and in the current climate, there's a divisiveness that discourages that.

And that's where I see the value of love, of, of encouraging people to, to strip away that surface

instinctual response based on the thing they've been taught, based on the things they listen to,

to actually think deeply. Have you ever had gone to CVS or Dwayne Reed, and your bill,

how much you owe them is $6. And you give them a $10 bill in a single and watch the look on their

face. You watch them void their bowels and panic, because you've given them $11 on a $6 bill.

This is not a mind capable or interested in thoughts and ideas and learning.

No, you're talking about the first moment of a first moment where there's an opportunity to think.

They are desperate to avoid it. No, they're just, it's an incapable of it.

I just, they have the same exact experiences I have every single day when I know it's time

for me to go out on a run of five miles or six miles or 10 miles, I'm desperate to avoid it.

And at the same time, I know I have the capacity to do it. And I'm deeply fulfilled when I do

do it, when I do overcome that challenge. You are one of the great minds of our generation.

You are telling me that any of these people can do anything close to the work you do? Not in

artificial intelligence, but in the ability to be compassionate towards other people's ideas,

like understand them enough to be able... Passion requires a certain baseline of intelligence,

because you have to perceive other people as being different, but of value.

Yeah, exactly. That's a sophisticated mindset.

I think most people are capable of it. You don't think so?

No, and nor are they interested in it.

But in that kind of, if you don't believe they're capable of it, how can anarchy be stable?

If you have a farm, there's one farmer and 50 cows, it's very stable.

You're just not, you're not asking the cows where to farm things.

Yeah, but the cows aren't intelligent enough to do damage.

Cows, cows certainly could do a lot of damage. They could trample things, they could attack you.

Cows are like, how much do they weigh? Like 4,000 pounds?

Can you connect the analogy then, because like...

Sure, you can't expect that...

Yeah.

Saying a cow is a cow isn't a slur. It's not saying you hate cows, cows, or even...

Let's say, the example I always use with good reason is dogs, okay?

I always say to study how human beings operate, watch Caesar Milan,

because human beings and dogs have coevolved.

Our minds have both evolved in parallel tracks to communicate with each other.

Dogs can be vicious. Dogs, for the most part, are great, wonderful,

but you can't expect the dog to understand certain concepts.

It's not an incident...

Now, most people are offended. Are you saying, I look like a dog?

If you're a dog person like I am, this is actually a huge compliment.

Most dogs are better than most people.

But to get the idea that this is something that is basically your peer is nonsensical.

Now, of course, this sounds arrogant and elitist and so on and so forth,

and I'm perfectly happy with that, but it is very hard to persuade me or anyone

that if you walk... George Carlin has that joke, think how smart the average person is,

then realize 50% of people are dumber than that.

If you walk around and see who's out there, these people are very kind.

They are of value. They deserve to be treated with respect.

They deserve to be secure in their person. They deserve to feel safe and to have love,

but the expectation that they should have any sort of semblance of power over me or my life

is as nonsensical as asking Lassie to be my accountant.

But that goes to power, not to the ability, the capacity to be empathetic,

compassionate, intelligent. If I were to try to prove you wrong, what would you be impressed by

about society? How would I show it to you?

That's a good question. How would you show it to me? Because I think something has to be

falsifiable if we're going to make a claim, right? So what would it...

Because we've both made claims that aren't a kind of our own interpretation based on

our interaction. Like when I open Twitter, everyone seems to say...

Why do you only follow one person? Who do you follow? Who's the one person you follow?

Stoic Emperor. I follow a lot of people. I have a script that...

Of course you do. I have a robot.

I have an entire interface. So I think Twitter is really...

This is real love. It's not ironic love. I love watching it, and I'm sure you do too.

I love watching a quality of mind at work, because when someone has a quality of mind,

they're often not self aware. I catch this on myself of how it operates.

And then when other people see it, they're like, oh my god, this is so beautiful,

because there's such an innocence to it. But when I open Twitter,

energize, there's a lot of love on Twitter. People say like...

I love Twitter. I agree. You don't think I have a lot of love on Twitter?

My fans pay my rent. I mean, I don't know your experience of Twitter,

but when I look at your... Which is a fundamentally different thing.

I'm saying my experience from the... So maybe you can tell me what your experience is like

as a human. So when I observe your Twitter, I think... I wouldn't call it love. I would call it fun.

And because of that, that's a different kind of... Love emerges from that,

because people kind of learn that we're having... This is like game night.

Like, we can talk shit a little bit. You can even pull in...

You can make fun of people. You can have the crazy uncle come over that

is a huge Trump supporter or somebody who hates Trump, and you can have a little fun.

Again, it's a different kind of thing. I wouldn't be able to...

You're the host of game night? Yes, yes.

So I wouldn't be able to host that kind of game night? I imagine you're programming your robots

and you're asking what is fun and it just starts sparking. Exactly.

What is fun? So the robots in my life that survive are the ones that don't...

That survive that whole programming process. So they're kind of like...

They're kind of like the idiot from just to ask you. They're very simple minded robots.

Fun is moving a can from one table to another.

That's game night for our kin. You know what I'm on my quotes is,

and I think about this every day, and I mean it with every fiber of my being.

We're born knowing that life is a magical adventure and it takes them years to train

us to think otherwise. And I think that Willy Wonka approach, it's a very Kamu approach.

It's something I believe with every fiber of my being. I try to spread that as much as possible.

I think it is very sad. I'm not being sarcastic. It comes off as condescending. I mean it at face

value. It's very sad how many people are not receptive to that. And I think a lot of those

function how they were raised. And I could have very easily with my upbringing have not

maintained that perspective. And there's a lot of... I have a lot of friends in recovery, like AA,

and they have an expression, not my circus, not my monkeys. That you can't really take on other

people's problems on your own. At a certain point, they have to do the work themselves,

because you can only do so much externally. And there are a lot of very damaged people out there.

And there are damaged people who revel in being damaged. And they are damaged people who desperately,

desperately, desperately want to be well, who desperately want to be happy, who desperately

want to find joy. So if I can be the one, and as arrogant as this sounds, I'll own it, who does

give them that fun. And to tell them, it doesn't have to be like you thought. It could be, it's

going to hurt, it's going to suck, but it's still a magical adventure and you're going to be okay,

because you've been through worse. If that could be my message, I would own it all day long.

And so what does adventure look like for you? Because I mean, it actually boils down to,

I still disagree with you. I think trolling can be and very often is destructive for society.

Yes, I want to destroy society. That is the goal. I want to help many people.

Unironically, okay. Unironically, yes.

What do I do with that? Okay, so.

Whatever you want. Do with that will is the hall of the law.

Like I just want to, so you're hosting game night and I just want to play monopoly. I want to play,

what's the risk? Okay, I want to play these games.

And you're saying. Those are aggressive games.

Yeah, I was trying to think of a friendlier game, but they're all kind of aggressive.

Battle ship, access and allies, you know, fun stuff.

But like, so that's an adventure, but you're saying that we want to destroy everything,

even like the rules of those games are not like.

You voluntarily agree to those rules. The point is, if someone comes in who's not,

who no one invited to game night and are telling you, no, when you play monopoly,

you have to get money when you land in free parking or you don't.

It's like, who are you? We're having our own fun and you smell.

I don't know, but there's an aggressive.

There's an aggression. Let me, let me speak to that, which I think you're picking up on.

I had a friend named Martha, Marcia, excuse me.

She ran something called cuddle parties, which people laughed at about a lot back in the day.

And the premise of the cuddle parties, everyone got together and cuddled, right?

And it's like, aha, then you stop to think about and you realize physical context is extremely

important and a lot of people don't have it. And if this is a mechanism of people getting that,

it actually is going to have profound positive psychological consequences.

So after she explained it, I'm like, okay, we laughed at this because it's weird.

And now that I think about it, this is wonderful.

And I asked her about like, like the tough question go, what if guys get turned on?

And on their website, it's even has a rule, like do not fear the erection, right?

Because it's going to be a natural consequence of physical proximity.

And the point she goes, she said this, I think about this all the time.

People will take as much space as you let them.

It is incumbent on each of us to set our own boundaries.

We all have to learn when to say no, you're making me uncomfortable.

If someone doesn't respect your right to have your boundary to be uncomfortable,

this person is not your friend.

Now they can say, I don't understand.

Like, why is this okay? Why is that not?

Let me know you better so I'm respectful of you.

But if they roll their eyes and they're like, get over, I'm going to do what I want.

This person is not interested in knowing you as a human being.

Okay.

And that is the aggression.

It is, you have to draw those lines.

I mean, but that's a very positive way of phrasing that aggression.

I'm a very positive person.

But the trolling, there's a destructive thing to it.

Yes.

That hurts others.

Yes.

But it's not bad people.

I only troll as a reaction or towards those in power.

Okay.

So maybe let's talk about trolling a little bit because

trolling, when it can, maybe you can correct me, but I've seen it become a game for people

that's enjoyable in itself.

I disagree with that.

That's not a good thing.

If you are there just to hurt innocent people, you are a horrible human being.

But doesn't trolling too easily become that?

I don't know about easily.

Let me give you an example of where trolling came from.

The original troll was Andy Kaufman.

He was on the show Taxi.

He was a performance artist, not a standard comedian.

And this is a quintessential example of trolling.

He had a character where he was basically like a lounge singer.

He had these glasses on and just a terrible singer and so on and so forth.

And he denied it was him.

And he came out and I'm blanking on the guy's name.

I can't believe it.

Tony Clifton.

Wow.

He came out in the audience and he goes, you know, my wife died a few years ago.

Every time I look at my daughter, Sarah's eyes, I can see my wife, Sarah, come out here,

let's do a duet.

And Sarah was like 11, sits on his lap, they start singing duet.

Her voice cracks, he smacks her across the face.

What the hell are you doing?

You're making ass on me in front of these people.

There, there, she starts crying.

The audience is booing and he goes, don't boo her, you're just going to make her cry more.

Now it ends, this wasn't his daughter, it wasn't even child, it was an actress.

This was all set up.

He's exploiting their love of children in order to force them to be performers.

That is trolling.

No one is actually getting hurt.

It's a humorous, though twisted exchange.

If you go online looking for weak people and you are there to denigrate them just for them

being weak or in some way inferior to you, that is the wrong approach.

I am best on the counter punch.

I am best on the counter punch.

A lot of times people come to me and they'll be like, I hope you die.

You're ugly, you're disgusting.

And there's this great quote from Billy Idol, which I'm going to mangle where he's something

effective.

I love it when people are rude to me, then I can stop pretending to be nice.

Then you start fights.

Now it's a chance for me to finish it and make an example of this person.

But that's very, very different from, I'm going to go around and humiliate people for

the sake of doing it, in my view.

And I can see how one would lead to the other.

Yeah.

But that's my fundamental concern with it.

So my dream is to put, use technology, create platforms that increase the amount of love

in the world.

And to me trolling is doing the opposite.

So like Andy Kaufman is brilliant.

So I love, obviously, it sounds like I'm a robot saying, I love humor.

Okay.

Humor is good.

One, one, one, zero, one, one, one, one.

But like it's, I just see like 4chan.

I see that you can often see that humor quickly turned.

Yeah.

Because what happens is a lot of low status people, this is their one mechanism through

sadism to feel empowered.

And then they can hide behind, well, I'm just joking.

Yeah.

Like there's this dark thing.

Yeah.

That's not acceptable.

There's a dark LOL that people do.

Which is like, they'll say like the shittiest thing and then do LOL after.

Like as if, I don't even know, like what is happening in the dark mind of yours?

Because they are feeling powerless in their lives.

Right.

And they see someone who they perceive as higher status or more powerful than them or

even not appear and they, through their words, cause a reaction in this person.

So they feel like they are in a very literal sense making a difference on earth and they

matter in a very dark way.

It's disturbing.

This is not, I mean, it's unfortunate that that term trolling is used for that as opposed

to what Andy Kaufman does as opposed to what I do.

It's, it really is a sinister thing and it's something I'm not at all a fan of.

How do we, how do we fight that?

So like a neighboring concept of that is conspiracy theories, which is.

I don't think they're neighboring at all.

Let me, let me give a sort of.

Naive perspective, maybe you can educate me on this from my perspective, conspiracy theories

are these constructs of ideas that go deeper and deeper and deeper into creating worlds

where there's powerful pedophiles, controlling things like these very sophisticated models

of the world that in part might be true, but in large part, I would say our, our figments

of imagination that become really useful constructs and self enforcing, self enforcing

for then feeding like empowering the trolls to attack the powerful, the conventionally powerful.

I don't think that that's a function of conspiracy theories.

Now let's talk about conspiracy theories because one of my quotes is you take one red

pill, not the whole bottle, this concept that everything in life is at the function of a

small cadre of individuals would be for many people reassuring because as bad as it looks,

you know they, whoever they are, it's usually the Jews aren't going to let it get that bad

that they will pull back or the black pill is that they aren't intentionally trying to destroy

everything and there's nothing we can do when we're doomed.

And there's an amazing book by Arthur Herman called The Idea of the Clan of Western History.

I, it's one of my top 10 books where he goes through every 20 years how there's a different

population that say it's the end of the world, here's the proof. And very often the proof is

something that is kind of self fulfilling where there's no, it's not falsifiable.

And we both have to think of ways to falsify our claims from earlier.

So it is a big danger. It's a big danger online because very quickly if someone

who you thought was good but now is bad on one aspect, well they're controlled opposition

or they've been taken over or they've been kind of appropriated by the bad people, whoever those

bad people would be. I don't know that I have a good answer for this. I don't think it's as

pervasive as people think. The number of people who believe conspiracy there.

Right. I mean, and also conspiracy theory is a term used to dismiss ideas that

have some currency. The Constitutional Convention was a conspiracy. The Founding Fathers got

together secretly under sword of secrecy in Philadelphia, said we're throwing out the

Art of Confederation. We're making new government, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Luther Martin left

and he told everyone this is a conspiracy and they're like, yeah, whatever, Luther Martin.

So, and Jeffrey Epstein was a conspiracy. Harvey Weinstein was a conspiracy. Bill Cosby

was a conspiracy. They all knew. They didn't care. Communist infiltration in America. There's a great

book by Eugene Lyons called The Red Decade. They all knew the every atrocity that was done under

Stalinism was excused in the West. And if you didn't believe it, oh, you've got this crazy

anti Russia conspiracy. So it's a term that is weaponized in a negative sense, but that does

not at all imply that it does not have very negative real life consequences because it's

kind of a cult of one, right? Like I'm at home on my computer. I bang to this ideology. Anyone who

doesn't agree with me, they are blind. They're oblivious. Mom and dad, my friends, you don't get

it. We were warned about people like you. And I think there's a very heavy correlation and

I'm not a psychiatrist, of course, between that and certain types of mild mental illness,

like, you know, some kind of paranoia, schizophrenia, things like that, because

after a certain point, if everything is a function, this conspiracy, it's, it's,

there's no randomness or beauty in life. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if you can say anything

interesting about it in the way of advice of how to take a step into conspiracy theory world

without completely going like diving deep, because it seems like that's what happens.

People can't look at Jeffrey Epstein. I can tell you what the device that has started.

Seriously and rigorously without going because you can look at Jeffrey Epstein and say there's

a deeper thing. You can always go deeper. It's like Jeffrey Epstein was just a tool of

the lizard people and the lizard people are the, well, they say Satanists.

In this case, and somehow recently, very popular spedophiles somehow always involved.

I'm not understanding any of that. I legitimately, I say this both humorously and seriously,

I need to look into it. And I guess the bigger question I'm asking, how does a serious human

being, somebody with a position at a respectable university, like look at a conspiracy theory

and look into it. When I look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein who had a role at MIT.

Yeah. Oh yeah. And I think I'm not happy personally. I didn't, I wasn't there when

Jeffrey Epstein was there. I'm not happy with the behavior of people now about Jeffrey Epstein,

about the bureaucracy and the everybody's trying to keep quiet, hoping it blows over

without really looking into any, like looking in a deep philosophical way of like,

how do we let this human being be among us? Can I give you a better example?

Sure. That is kind of conspiratorial. The Speaker of the House, the longest serving

Republican Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert was a pedophile. He went to jail.

The Democrats don't throw this in the Republicans faces every five minutes.

Not even Democratic activists. I find that very, very odd and not what I would predict.

Now, I'm not saying there's some kind of conspiracy, but when it comes to things

like sexual predation, which is something that I'm very, very concerned about. I'm an uncle now.

My sister just had her second kid recently. He's adorable. It's something that I don't

understand. It feels as if there's a lot of people who want this to all go away.

Now, I think it's also because we don't have the vocabulary and framework to discuss it,

because when you start talking about things like children and these kind of issues,

we want to believe it's all crap, because it's for those of us who aren't in this kind of mindset,

the idea that this happens to kids and happens frequently is something so horrible

that it's just like, I don't even want to hear it. That does these children and adult survivors

and enormous disservice. I don't know that I have any particular insight on this.

But see, how do you, the Catholic Church, again, there's all these topics that...

Public school teachers are far more proportionally predators of children than the Catholic Church.

I don't know. You're right. Perhaps I've been reading a lot about Stalin and Hitler.

Yeah. Somehow it's more comforting to be able to... And then... And then the atrocities that

are happening now, it's a little bit more difficult because... There was a New York Times article

starting to interrupt you where they were had people tracking down child pornography.

And I think the article said that they didn't have enough people just to cover the

videotapes of infants being raped. And we can even wrap our heads around like reading Lolita,

like, okay, she's 14, 12, okay, it's still a female, an infant. It's something that,

again, like with the Stalin example, we sat down here for 100 years. We would never think

it's something like this. Think of it in a sexual context. It makes no sense.

So, and the fact that this is international, okay, we eliminated completely in America.

Well, then they're going to go find... There's infants all over the world. There's video cameras

all over the world. So then it has to become a conspiracy because I... Someone has to film it.

I'm filming it. You're buying it. Your kid. It is literally a conspiratorial, not in the sense

of like a mafia conspiracy or some government Illuminati, but there is our networks designed

to produce this product. See, but like what I'm trying to do now, I mean, part of the... One

of the nice things with like a podcast and other things I'm involved with is removing myself from

having any kind of boss so I can do whatever that helps. Yes. Oh, it's so, it's so wonderful.

That had just happened to me. It's the most wonderful thing ever.

So I could do... I can actually, in moderation, consider like look into stuff.

Careful though. I was going to write a book about this that people pointed out. You sure want to do

this research? Because if you start googling around for this kind of stuff, it's on your computer.

Oh, in that sense. Yeah. I'm more concerned about, you know, it's the Nietzsche thing,

looking into the abyss. Like you want to be very... Yeah. I believe I can do this kind of thing in

moderation without slipping into the depths. Of course. I think that's intelligence that's...

Recently, quote unquote, looked into like the UFO community, the extraterrestrial, whatever

community. I think it always frustrated me that the scientific community like rolled their eyes

at all the UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff. Even though there could be fascinating, beautiful,

physical... Like, first of all, there could legit... Like ball lightning.

Or the ball lightning, right? That's at the very basic level is a fascinating thing.

And also, it could be something like... I mean, I don't know, but it could be something interesting,

like worth looking into. My grandfather was an air traffic controller back in the Soviet Union.

And he said, we saw this stuff all the time. These are planes that were not moving or whatever

things that were not moving according to anything we knew about. So it's absolutely real. He's not

some jerk with an iPhone in his backyard. This is a military professional who understood technology,

who knew where the secret bases were. So if he's telling me, it's some... Doesn't mean it's Martians,

but he's telling me there's something there. And there are many examples of these like military

people. These aren't some laymen who sees a story. These are legit people. Yeah. And so you can dismiss...

When you're talking about professionals who are around aircraft all the time,

who are familiar with aircraft at the highest levels, and they're seeing things that they

can't explain, they're clearly not stupid and they're clearly not underformed.

So Mike, there's different ways to dismiss ideas. For example, you were saying that trolling is a

good mechanism against that, but I'm not dismissing it by like rolling my eyes. I'm considering

legitimately that you're way smarter than me and you understand the world better than me.

Like I'm allowing myself to consider that possibility and thinking about it. Like maybe

that's true. Like seriously considering it. That's what I feel the way people should approach

intelligent people, serious quote unquote people, scientists should approach conspiracy theories.

Like look at it carefully, you know. First of all, is it possible that the earth is flat?

It's not trivial to show that the earth is not flat. It's a very good exercise. You should go

through it. Yes. But once you go through it, you realize that based on a lot of data and a lot of

evidence and there's a lot of different experiments, you can do yourself actually

to show that the earth is not flat. Okay. The same kind of process can be taken

for a lot of different conspiracy theories and it's helpful. And without slipping into the

depths of lizard people running everything. That's where I've now listened to two episodes of

Alex Jones's show because he goes crazy deep into different kind of worldviews that I was not

familiar with. Right. And I don't know what to make of it. I mean, the reason I've been listening

to it is because there's been a lot of discussions about platforming of different people. Yeah.

And I've been thinking about what a censorship mean. I've been thinking about whether, because Joe

Rogan said he's going to have Alex on again. And then I enjoyed it as a fan, just the entertainment

of it. But then I actually listened to Alex as thinking, is this human being dangerous for the

world? Like, is the ideas he's saying dangerous for the world? I'm more concerned with the Russian

conspiracy that we had for three years. And the claim that our election was not legitimate and

that everyone in the Trump White House is a stooge of Putin. And the people who said this had no

consequences for this. Alex Jones doesn't have the respect that they do. These are both areas of

concern for me. But he might, if there's, if he's given more platforms. So like the people who've,

and I'd be curious, I'm also a little bit, I don't know what to think about the idea that

Russians hack the election. It seems too easily accepted in the mainstream media.

Hillary Clinton said that how they did it was they had ads on the dark web. Now,

you and I both know what the dark web is. So the possibility of ads in the dark web

having an influence, a proportional influence on the election is literally zero.

Perhaps I should look into it more carefully, but I've found very little good data on exactly

what did the Russians do to hack elections. Like, technically speaking, what are we talking about

here? Like, as opposed to these kind of weird, like the best thing there's a couple of books and

like reporting on like farms, like a patrol farms, patrol farms. But let's see the data,

like how many exactly what are we talking about? Like what were they doing relative,

not just like some anecdotal discussions of, but like relative to the bigger, the size of Facebook.

Like if there's a few people, several hundreds, say the posting different political things on

Facebook relative to the full size of Facebook, let's look at the full size.

Right. You're thinking like a scientist.

The actual impact. Like because it's fascinating the social dynamics of viral information of videos

when Donald Trump retweets something. I think that's understudied the effect of that.

Like he retweeted a clip with Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson, where Mike Tyson says that he finds

fighting orgasmic. I don't understand it, but they'd be fascinating to think like,

what is the ripple effect on the social dynamic of our society from retweeting a clip about Mike

Tyson? What's your favorite Trump tweet? I tuned him out a long time ago, unfortunately.

This goes to the, you and I have a different relation with Donald Trump. You appreciate

the art form of trolling. It's nonsexual. Nonsexual, yeah. So I tend to prefer Bill Clinton. He's

more my type. No, I'm just kidding. You don't like that consent stuff. No, you appreciate the art

form of trolling. And Donald Trump is a master. He's the Da Vinci of trolling. So I tend to think

that trolling is ultimately destructive for society. And then Donald Trump takes nothing

seriously. He's playing a game. He'd make a game out of everything. He takes a lot of things seriously.

I think he's very committed to international peace. Sorry. I shouldn't speak so strong.

I think he takes, actually, yes, a lot of things seriously. I meant on Twitter and the game of

politics, he is, he only takes irreverently. Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate it. I just would like to

focus on genuine, real expressions of humanity, especially positive. Well, this is one. This

is my favorite tweet. My fans got it lasered, etched, and put in a block of loose light for me.

And he said, every time I speak of the losers and haters, I do so with great affection. They

cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up. That's an actual Trump tweet. It's my favorite one.

That's kind of nice. That's love. That's love. That's kind of nice. Great affection.

That, I mean, exclamation point. Even,

I broke legs. What is love? Yeah, the sparks are flying. But I have to kind of analyze that from

like a literary perspective, but it seems like there's love in there, like a little bit. It's

a little bit lighthearted. Because he's saying, even when I'm going after them, don't take it so

seriously. Yeah. That's nice. It is nice. It's acknowledging the game of it. That's nice.

He's not always nice. He's very, very vicious. Yeah. Very vicious. He's done things that I can

tell you about that I'm like, this is a bad person. What do you think about one of the, okay,

listen, I'm not, I, for people listening, I do not have Trump derangement syndrome. I don't,

I see, I try to look for the good and the bad and everybody. One thing, perhaps it's irrational,

but perhaps because I've been reading history, I, the one triggering thing for me is the delaying

of elections. I believe in elections and this is, this is the part that you probably disagree with.

But I, you know, I believe in the value of people voting and I just seem too many dictators.

The place where they finally, the big switch happens when you question the legitimacy of

elections. We've been questioning the legitimacy of elections for the last three years.

I've only heard Donald Trump do it last like year, but the last three years you're saying somebody

else. You don't think not my president illegitimate. We're not going to normalize him as president.

Russia hacked this election. impeached. You're not a real president. You don't think that's

questioning legitimacy of 2016? Yeah, it's a good, I haven't been paying attention enough,

but I would, I would imagine that argument has been that I haven't actually heard

too many people, but I imagine that's been a popular thing to say. Oh, very much so, yeah.

Okay. I, but nevertheless, that's a part that didn't, that's not a statement that gained power

enough to say that Barack Obama will keep being president or Hillary Clinton should be president.

Newsweek had that article how Hillary Clinton could still be president. Newsweek.

No, but she's not. That's what I'm saying. My worry isn't, my worry isn't

saying that the election was illegitimate and people whining and mass scale and then Fox News

or CNN reporting for years or books being written for years. My worry is legitimately

martial law. A person's mate stays president. So here's the issue. Like there's a, there's a

big shift that happens. I did a book on North Korea. I'm not someone who thinks

dictatorship should be taken lightly. I'm not someone who thinks it can't happen here.

I think a lot of times people are desperate for dictatorship. So I'm with you. And I think this

is something, if you're going to hand wave it away, everyone else hand waved it away. Hitler's

never going to be chancellor. He's a lunatic. He's a joke. He's a joke. They couldn't find a

publisher for Mein Kampf in English because this is some guy from some random minor party in Germany

spouting nonsense. Who's going to read this crap? You know, so I completely agree with you in that

regard. But you don't think we're there. My point is Donald Trump this year had every

pathway open to him to declare martial law. The cities are being burned down. He could have very

easily sent in the tanks and people would have been applauding him from his side.

I think we feel so good right now. But am I wrong though? No, I, I, what he did,

he tweeted out to Mayor Wheeler of Portland. He said, call me. We will, we will solve this in minutes.

But you have to call. And he sat in his hands and they said, oh, it's his fault. The city is burning

down. He's not doing anything. And he goes, I'm not doing anything until you ask me to do it.

So I think that is even if you think he's an aspiring dictator, that is at least a sign

that there is some restraint on his aspirations. Can I just take that in as a beautiful,

like moment of hope? So I'm going to remember this moment. Beautiful Ted Cruz. Beautiful Ted.

I'm going to, I'm going to remember this. I mean, I should say that perhaps I'm irrationally,

this is the one moment where I feel myself being a little unhealthy. I think there's a

asymmetry because it's kind of like, okay, either I, if I leave the house, it's like Russian roulette.

Yeah. Maybe it's like a one in six shot. I'm pulling the trigger. I'm killing myself, but

that's one in six. That's not, and the consequences are so dire that a little paranoia would go a

long way. There's something that you can't go back. Yeah. It's an asymmetry. Yeah. The thing is,

the thing that makes Donald Trump new to me, and again, I'm a little naive in these things, but

he surprised me in how many ways he just didn't play by the rules. Yeah. And he's made me

a little aunt in this aunt colony think like, well, do you have to play by the rules at all?

Right. Why are we having elections? Why did you say it's coronavirus time? It's

not healthy to have elections. If I put my dictator hat on. Nancy Pelosi said that Joe Biden should

debate. Yeah. Did she? Yes. She says she shouldn't dignify Trump for the debate. He's the president.

He could be the worst president on earth, evil, despicable monster. I'll take that as an argument.

So she's playing politics, but she's okay. I don't think that's playing politics. I think when

there's a certain point when things get, when you start attacking institutions for the emergencies

at the moment and acting arbitrarily, that is when things are the slippery slope. Yeah. So

you're saying debates is one of the institutions. Like that's one of the traditions to have the

debates. I think the debates are extremely important. Now, I don't think that someone's a

good debater is going to be a good president. I mean, that's a big problem. But you're just saying

this is attacking just yet another tradition, yet another. You know, like how if you're dating,

if you're married to someone and someone throws out the word divorce, you can't unring that bell,

you threw it out there. Yeah. I'm saying you don't throw things out like that unless you really

are ready to go down this road. And I think that is, there's nothing in the Constitution about

debates. We've only had them since 1980. But still, I think they are extremely important.

It's also a great chance for Joe Biden to tell him to his face. You're full of crap. Here's what

you did. Here's what you did. Here's what you did. So fascinating that you're both, you acknowledge

that and you also see the value of tearing down the entire thing. So you're both worried about

no debates, or at least in your voice, in your tone. There's a great quote by Chesterton. I'm

not a fan of him at all. But he says, before you tear down a fence, make sure you know why

they put it up first. So I am for tearing it all down, but there's something called a control

demolition, like building seven. Allegedly. We knew we were in Tel Aviv.

Hashtag, building seven. We knew we were in Tel Aviv. Wow, you're faster than me.

You're operating at a different level. I need to upgrade my operating system.

I told you Windows 95. Yeah. Building seven. It's like Indiana Jones, right? If you're

going to tear, pull something away, make sure you have something in place first, as opposed to just

breaking it, and then just, especially in politics, because it escalates. And when things escalate

without any kind of response, it could go in a very bad, that's when the polling comes in.

So what's your prediction about the Biden Trump debates? Again, I just have this weird,

maybe we'll return to, maybe not in this, how do we put more love into the world? And like,

one of the things that worries me about the debates is it'll be the world's greatest troll

against the grandpa on the porch. For crap, this pants. Yeah. And it will not put more love into

the world. It will create more mockery. Joe Biden did a great job against Paul Ryan in 2012.

Paul Ryan was no lightweight. No one thought he was a lightweight. Joe Biden handed Sarah

Pale and her ass in 2008, which isn't as easy to do as you think, because she's a female,

so you're going to come off as bullying. That's something you have to worry about.

So the guy isn't, I think he is in the stages of cognitive decline.

So I think it's going to be interesting. I want it to be

like Mike Tyson beating up a child, because it'll be a source of amusement to me,

but I don't know how it's going to go. Is it possible that Joe Biden will be the Mike Tyson?

Yes, because in his last debate with Bernie, he was perfectly fine. And again, the guy was

a senator for decades. And I don't think anyone, if you looked at Joe Biden in 2010,

would have thought this guy is going to have his ass handed him a debate. You wouldn't think that at

all. So I don't know who we're going to see. Plus, he's got a lot of room to attack Trump.

So I'm sure he's going to come strapped and ready, and he's going to have his talking points

and watch Trump dance, try to tap dance around him. And if he's in a position,

I don't know what the rules of the debate are, to actually nail him to the wall,

it might actually, I'm sure he's going to have a lot of lines too. The problem is Trump is the

master counterpuncher. So when Hillary had her line, she's like, well, it's a good thing

that Donald Trump isn't in charge of our legal system. And he's like, yeah, you'd be in jail.

It's like, oh, lady, you set him up. That's painful to watch those debates.

I mean, there's something, I think it's actually analogous. Come to think of it,

your conversation with me right now. Sleepy Joe, I'm playing the role of Sleepy Joe.

So I actually connect to Joe because there's like these weird pauses that I do the same,

I do the same thing. And I noise a shit out of me that like, in mid sentence, I'll start saying

a different thing and take a tangent. I'm not as slow and drunk as I sound always. I swear

I'm more intelligent underneath. I'm slower but less drunk. Exactly. But the result,

one of those is true, but not both. Yeah. And Trump just like you are a master counterpuncher.

So it's gonna be messy. Here's the other thing in all seriousness. Chris Wallace is the moderator.

Chris Wallace has interviewed Trump several times and he was a tough, tough questioner.

So I don't think he's gonna come in there with softball questions. I think he's really going

to try to nail Trump down, which is tough to do. I like him a lot. And he's like,

Mr. President, sir, that's not accurate, blah, blah, blah. He's done it. And Trump gets very

frustrated because he doesn't just let him say whatever he wants and he hits him with the follow

up. I guess he's on Fox News and I listened to his Sunday program every once in a while.

I don't know. He gives me hope that I don't know. There's something in the voice like

that he's not bought. There's no question he's gonna take this seriously,

which I think is the best you could hope for in a moderator.

Like it feels like there's people that might actually take the mainstream media into a place

that's going to be better in the future and like we need people like him. You mean like Robespierre?

What do you mean? Like taking the mainstream media to a better future, like bring out the

guillotines. Okay. So you put your anarchist hat back on. I don't think Robespierre is much

of an anarchist, but yeah, I get what you're saying. Yeah. You don't think there should be

a centralized place for news? There isn't now. Well, that's what mainstream media is supposed

to represent and broken. Well, it's not whatever, what would you call that? That a place where

people traditionally said was like the legitimate source of truth. No, that's what the media was

supposed to represent. That's their big branding accomplishment. That was never true. Yeah,

because if you, here's what happens. We remember the Spanish American war, remember the main,

we have to take Cuba, yellow journalism, Wally Randolph Hearst, right? Then record scratch,

and then we're all objective. Like when did this transition happen according to people?

When you were saying that the Kaiser is the worst human being on earth, when you were downplaying

Stalin and downplaying Hitler's atrocities, when you were saying we had to be in Vietnam,

at what point, WMDs, when did it change? It never changed. You just are better con artists at a

certain point and now the mask is dropping. Yeah, but don't you think there's, at its best, like

investigative journalism can uncover truth in a way that like Reddit, subreddits can't.

You know Reddit? Sure, I agree. At its best, absolutely. That's not even dispute.

But like, don't you think like fake it until you make it is the right way to do it? Meaning like,

make the news? No, no. I meant the news saying like we dream of doing, of arriving at the truth

and reporting the truth. They don't say that. CNN had an advertisement that said,

this is an apple. We only report facts. That's a lie. No, that's now. And now it's clear things

have changed. They haven't changed. You just more, you're more aware of the chicanery.

How many people died in Iraq? Because Saddam Hussein was about to launch WMDs.

Who had consequences for this? No one. This isn't a minor thing. This is lots of dead people.

And also, I mean, dead people is horrible, but also the money, which has, like we said,

economic effects. Marion Williamson, I think it was, had the, or Trump,

both of them had the great point that goes, it's like a trillion dollars. How many schools

would that build? How many roads would that build? Even here? Why are we building hospitals in

Iraq that we destroyed when we could building hospitals here? It makes no sense. It's horrifying.

So who's responsible for that? Like who? Alex Jones.

No, I meant for, well, so who's responsible for arriving at the truth of that, of speaking to

the money spent on wars in Iraq? This is one of the great things about social media.

Twitter. You have faith in Twitter. Not just, not specific to Twitter,

but yeah, social media is the whole, what anyone could, here's a great, another great example.

Before, if you were talking about police brutality or these riots, you would have to perceive it in

the way it was framed and presented to, Nicholas Sandman is another example, Breonna Taylor,

all these things. Well, we don't have footage of her. You would have to perceive in the way

that it's edited and presented to you by the corporate press. Now everyone has a video camera,

everyone has their perspective, and it's very useful when these incidents happen,

where you could see the same incident from several angles and you don't need

Don Lemon or Chris Wallace to tell me what this means. I can see with my own eyes.

Yeah, I've been very pleasantly surprised about the power. See, like people, the mob again gets in

the way, they get emotional and they destroy like the, the ability for people to reason,

but you're right, that truth is unobstructed on social media. Like if you're, if you're careful

and patient, you can see the truth. Like for example, data on COVID, some of the best sources

are doctors. Like if you want to know the truth about the coronavirus, what's happening

is there's follow people on Twitter. There's certain people that are just like sourcing them

for me versus the CDC and the WHO. That's fast. I mean, it's, well, it's kind of anarchy, right?

Yes, it is. It's not kind of, it is anarchy. Yes. I mean, well, there's some censorship and all

that kind of stuff. You have censorship under anarchy in the sense that you're talking about.

Like people be kicked off of Twitter. That's a drawing. How do you kick somebody? Okay. So,

I mean, it's a private company. Private company. Most people wouldn't say Twitter is working,

but that's probably because they take for granted how well it's working. And they're just complaining

about the small part of it that's broken. Right. Yeah. Okay. Another question about.

You feel better? No. By the way, I mean, I had a personal gripe with the situation about the,

not a personal gripe, but I felt overly emotional about the possibility that there

would be some of Donald Trump messing with the election process. But you made me feel better.

Good. Saying like, if he had a bunch of opportunities to do what, like to do what I would have done

if I was a dictator, I would, the first time those rides over George Floyd, I would instituted

martial law. Do you know what I remember very vividly is after 9 11, and everyone was waiting

for George Bush to give his speech and he had 98% approved rating. And I remember very vividly,

because if he had said, we're suspending the constitution, everyone would have cheered for

him. Like he couldn't get enough support at that time and he didn't do it. And I can't say anything

really good about George W. Bush. I'm not a fan of his to say the least. So I think you and I,

and you know, other people who are familiar with, you know, totalitarian regimes to some extent,

from our ancestry, whatever, from research should always be the ones freaking out and warning. But

we should also be aware of, we got a ways to go before it's Hitler. And thankfully,

there are a lot of dominoes that have to fall into place before Hitler. It's like the game

Secret Hitler. It's a board game before Hitler becomes Hitler. Like it's not, especially in America,

there's lots of things that have to happen before you really get to that point. I mean,

FDR was for all intents and purposes, a dictator. But even then, the worst you could say, and this

is not something that you should take lightly, was internment of Japanese citizens, but they

weren't murdered. They weren't, you know, you know, under lock and key in the sense of like in cells.

So things could have gotten a lot worse for him. We have to, I mean, Hitler is such a horrible

person to bring up because Mussolini is better because Hitler is so closely connected to the

atrocities of the Holocaust. There's all the stuff that led up to the war in the war itself. Say

that there was no Holocaust. Hitler will probably be viewed differently. Yes, I should think so.

You think that's a very controversial stance. You think Hitler would be viewed differently

if it wasn't for the Holocaust? Well, I mean, but it's a funny thing that the, I would say,

the death of how many, 40, 50 million, I mean, I don't know how you calculate it,

is not seen as bad as the 6 million. Oh yeah, because of Mao and Stalin. Yeah.

But it's interesting. I'm working on it. You're working on it. Yeah, the next book I'm talking

about. Remind me, well, it's good. I'm glad a good writer is because I'm almost not reminded.

My last book, The New Right, you know, I had to deal with some like the Nazis. And one of the

points they make is how come everyone knows about the Holocaust, but no one knows about the Hall

of the Moor. And they're right. We should know about this because it is a great example of both

how the Western media were depraved, but also what human beings are capable of. And those scars

are still, you know, many Americans think Russian, Ukraine are the same thing. You know, that like,

oh, Trump's in debt with the Ukrainians, Trump's about the Russians, they think it's the same thing.

For us, it's complete lunacy. But this is the kind of thing where Pol Pot is another example,

where people have no clue of what has been done to their fellow man in the face of this earth,

and they should know. How much of that do you lay at the hands of communism? How much are you with

like a Jordan Pearson, who has is intricately connecting the atrocities, like, like you're

saying 1930s, Ukraine, where people were starved. I recently, my grandmother recently passed away,

and she survived that as a kid, which is, those people, I mean, just they're tough.

They're tough. Like that whole region is tough, because they survived that. And then right after

the occupation of Nazis, Germans. How much do you lay that at communism as an ideology versus

Stalin the man? I think, you know, Lenin was building concentration camps, you know, while

he was around, and slave labor. I don't, I think it's clearly both. There are certain variants

of communism that were far like Khrushchev, you know, and Gorbachev, the reason the Soviet Union

fell apart. And this is kind of, I'm going to spoil the end of the book. There's an amazing book

called Revolution 1989. It's like most people, the book of her read by Victor Sebastian, he's a

Hungarian author. And basically what happens in 1989, Poland has their elections. And then in 1990,

they kind of led in the labor people to the government. And people start crossing borders,

you know, in the Eastern Bloc. And you had Hanukkah from Eastern Germany, and Chachesko from Romania,

Colin Gorbachev, because those are the two toughest ones by communist standards. They go,

they're just escaping. We're going to lose everything. You got to send in the tanks,

like you did in Hungary, like you did in Czech Republic, Czechoslovakian 68. And Gorbachev goes,

I'm not sending the tanks. And they go, dude, if you don't send in the tanks, it's all done. And

he goes, nope, I'm not that kind of guy. And they were right. I mean, Khrushchev was personally

shot with his wife up against the wall. Hanukkah, I forgot what happened to him. But they all

self liberated my friend who was born in Czechoslovakia. His mom was pregnant, you know, under

communism. And she never even imagined he'd be free. And he was born under free. And they were

all looking around all these countries that self liberated. Because they're like, this is a trick,

right? They're just, they're trying to figure out who's like not good, so that they can arrest us

en masse and they didn't. So there, even within communism, there are bad guys and better guys.

But we talked about anarchy. We talked about democracy. Do you see

like there's democratic socialism conversations going on in the popular culture socialism is seen

as like evil or for some people great? Sure. What, like, what are your thoughts about is

in a political ideology? Evil. So you're on the evil side. Yes. Fundamentally. Yes. What, what,

what is it? You know, what, yeah, what, what makes it evil? What's like structurally,

if you were to try to analyze what? Sure, this, I say three ways. Morally, no person has the right

to tell another person how to live their life. Economically, it's not possible to make calculations

under socialism. It's only the price, the prices that are information that tells me, oh, this is,

we need to produce more of this, we need to produce less of this, without prices being able to adjust

and give information to producers and, and, and consumers, you have no way of being able to produce

effectively or efficiently. And also it is, it turns people against each other when you force

people to interact, when you force them into relationships, when you force them into jobs,

and you don't give them any choice when there's a monopoly, the consequence of monopoly,

everyone's familiar with ostensibly under capitalism, but somehow when it's a government

monopoly, all those economic principles don't work, that doesn't make any sense.

But there's force in democracy too. It's just you're, you're saying there's a bit more force

in, in socialism. Yeah. But that's interesting that you say that there's not enough information.

I mean, that's ultimately, you need to have really good data. Yes.

To achieve the goals of the system, even, even if there's no corruption. Right.

You just need to have the information. Right. Which you can't.

And capitalism provides you, like really strong. Real time. Real time information.

That, and if like capitalism at its best and cleanest, which is like perfect

information is available. There's no manipulation of information.

That's what, you know, that's one of the problems. Okay.

Can we talk about some candidates, the ones we got and possible alternatives?

So one question I have is why do we have within the system, why do we have the candidates we have?

Is, it seems, maybe you can correct me, highly unsatisfactory. Like the, like,

is anyone actually excited about our current candidates?

I'm kind of excited because no matter who wins the election, it's going to be hilarious.

So that is something that I'm excited about. From a, from a human perspective.

Yeah. Is that, is that what the whole system is? So that's one theory of the case is the

entire thing is optimized for viewership and excitement by definitions of like the reality

show kind of excitement. I think it is, if you look at what happened with Brett Kavanaugh,

this is not a career that would draw people who are, you might say, quality. Because no

matter who they are, there would be a huge incentive from the other team to denigrate

them and humiliate them in the worst possible ways. Because as the two teams lose their legitimacy

among Gen Pop, it's going to get harder and harder for them to maintain any kind of claims to

authority, which is something I like, but which does kind of play out in, you know,

certain nefarious ways. So people, the best of the best are not going to want to be politicians?

Yeah, because I could have a job, where I have a job interview and I'm running

Yahoo or whatever, or I could for 18 months have to eat, you know, corn dogs looking like

I'm going down on someone and shake hands and have all this, my family and on social media daily

call the worst things for what? And then I'm still not guaranteed the position.

But the flip side of that, like from my perspective is the competition is weak.

Meaning, like, you need a minimum amount of eloquence, clearly, that I don't,

the bar which I did not pass. I don't think either of them would be

considerably eloquent, Biden or Trump. No, I know. But that's what I'm saying. The competition,

like if you were wanting to become a politician, if you wanted to run for president,

the opportunity is there. Like if you were at all competent. Like if you had,

so like Andrew Yang is an example of somebody who has a bunch of ideas is somewhat eloquent,

like young, energetic, it feels like there should be thousands of Andrew Yang's

like that would enter the domain and he went nowhere.

Well, he, well, I wouldn't say he went nowhere. He generated quite a bit of excitement. He just

didn't go very far. That's okay. You don't have to run for president to generate excitement with

your ideas. You could be a podcast host. I'm not even joking.

That's right. That's right. That's right. And he's both Andrew Yang.

Oh, he's a podcast?

Yeah. He has a podcast called Yang Speaks.

Oh, okay. Cool.

Oh, wow. The music of the way you said, yeah, cool, is the way my mom talks to me when I tell

her something exciting going on in my life. Oh, that's nice, honey.

Oh, you made a robot. Oh, that's cool.

That makes coffee?

Oh, you're still single though, aren't you?

I wonder why. I wonder why.

Can I make you some robot wine? Give me some robot grandchildren.

Okay. But first of all, okay, let me ask you about Andrew Yang because he represents

fresh energy. You don't find him fresh or energetic. Is there any candidate you wish

was in the mix that was in the mix you wish was one of the last two remaining?

Yeah. People like Marion Williamson, I thought was great. Tulsi, I thought was great.

Amy Klobuchar got a bad rap. I think she held her own. Smart. She wasn't particularly funny.

That's okay. I think she was not threatening to a lot of people.

What did you like about them?

I guess it's named all women. That's interesting. It wasn't even intentional.

Tulsi, I like that she was aggressive, has a good resume, and is not

staying the course for the establishment. Marion Williamson, I like because she comes

from a place from what it seems of genuine compassion. Maybe she's a sociopath, I don't know.

I read her book and it actually affected me profoundly because it's very rare when you read

a book and there's even that one idea that blows your mind and that you kind of think about all

the time. There was one such idea in her book about she was teaching something called A Course

in Miracles in Hollywood. I think she still teaches it. This was during the 80s to hide the

AIDS crisis. All these young men in the prime of their life were dropping like flies. She's

trying to give them hope. Well, good luck. They're dying. No one cares. They're like,

you can't tell us that they're going to cure this. That's a lie. She goes,

what if I told you they're not going to cure it? What if I told you it's going to be to diabetes?

They cut off your foot and you're going to go blind. Would that be something that you can

hope for? When you put it like that, it's like, yeah. If you're talking to them, it's like a

homeless junkie and you're like, you could be a doctor. You're a lawyer. You're a lawyer.

Cool story. You could have a studio apartment with a terrible roommate and a shitty job,

but when you're on the street cooking breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear that, you're like,

would that really be so bad? Is that really so much worse than this? No. And it becomes something.

So when she put it in those terms, I'm like, wow, this woman that really did a number on me

in terms of teaching people how to be hopeful. Small steps. But it's also then it becomes less of

I need a miracle to be like, oh, this is really manageable. Yeah. And it's absurd to think it's

impossible. What about what's your take on you the 2020 that Brett Weinstein pushed forward?

It was DOA. He couldn't even send up to Twitter. Dead on arrival. He couldn't even send up to

Twitter, let alone or to Facebook, they got blocked, let alone to the internet. It was not

hugely problematic, by the way, that Twitter would block that. Not at all. I don't know why

they blocked it, but I believe, I don't know, problematic means that's a word that does a lot

of work that people wanted to do conceptually. The idea that unity is like taking the rejects

from each party and we're going to have something that no one likes and therefore it's going to

be a compromise is absurd. The last time we had this kind of unity ticket was the Civil War,

where you had Andrew Johnson from the Democrats and Lincoln from the Republicans. This was not

something that ended well, particularly nicely for both halves of the country.

So that's the way you see it. The way I saw it, I guess I haven't looked carefully at it. I haven't

either, to be fair. The way I saw it is emphasizing centrists, which is... How is Tulsi a centrist?

Tulsi was involved? Yes, he's trying to push Tulsi and Jesse Ventura or something.

So, okay, I don't know. I don't know the specifics. As a scientist, you also know

centrism is not a coherent term in politics. No, but see now you're like, what is it,

pleading to authority and my ego? No, no, I'm pleading to how you approach data.

If someone is saying the mean is accurate, that only mean... I mean, the mean could be anywhere.

It's a function of what's around it. That mean is true. I don't even know what

centrists are supposed to mean, but what it means to me, there's no idea. A centrist,

there's more of a center right or center left. To me, what that means is somebody who is

a liberal or conservative, but is open minded and empathetic to the other side.

Joe Biden had the crime bill. Joe Biden voted for Republican Supreme Court justices. Joe Biden

voted for a balanced budget. Joe Biden voted for Bush's war. And I'm sure probably I haven't

looked this up the Patriot Act. Joe, if you want a centrist, you have Joe Biden.

Yeah, okay. He's worked very well with the Republicans.

That argument could be made. Of course, everybody will always resist that argument.

It's indeniable. In fact, during the campaign, some activist started yelling at him at a town

hall, not yelling, just saying, hey, we need open borders. Joe Biden says, I'm not for open borders.

Go vote for Trump and literally turn his back on the man. And this is during the primaries where

it would be who of you to try to appeal to the base. And of course, you can probably also make

the argument that Donald Trump is center right if not center left. Well, I mean, he's very unique as

a personality. But if you look at his record and his first name is rhetoric, you can say is not

centrist at all. But in terms of how he governs the budgeting, I mean, has been very moderate.

It certainly hasn't been like draconian budget cuts. The Supreme Court, you could say, okay,

he's hard right. Immigration, you could say in certain capacities, he's hard right. But in terms

of pro life, what has he done there in terms of, you know, so it's in many other aspects,

he's been very much this kind of me too, Republican, but certainly the rhetoric,

it's very hard to make in the case that he's a centrist. So you don't like,

is there any other idea you find compelling? Like what I like about UND 2020, is this an idea

for a different way for like a different party, a different path forward. So ideas,

just like anarchy, is an interesting idea that leads to discourse that leads to...

I don't think it's interesting at all. And here's why I don't think it's interesting.

Sweden has eight parties in its parliament, Iceland, population is like 150,000. They've

got nine, I think it was Czech Republic has nine, Britain has five. So the claim that two parties

is the sensorious of speech, but three, oh, now all of a sudden, it makes no sense,

doesn't port to the data, number one. Number two is Donald Trump demonstrated that you can be

basically a third party candidate, seize the machinery of an existing party and appropriate

to your own ends, as Bernie Sanders almost did. Bernie Sanders has never been a Democrat,

major credit to him for that's not easy to be elected as Sanders and independent,

he's done it repeatedly. So these are two examples of ossified elites right for the picking. So to

have a third party makes no real sense. Speaking of which, party you talk about quite a bit.

And this is a personal challenge to you. Let me bring up the libertarian party.

And the personal challenge is to go five minutes without mocking them

in discussing this idea. So first of all, what? I'm being trolled. Okay, I'm being trolled.

Yeah, I'm being trolled. Okay, good. Do you remember the Fun Friends? There was an episode

where Chandler had to not make fun of people like, can you go one day, Chandler? And Phoebe

starts telling him about like this UFO she saw. And he's like, that's very interesting. Nice for you.

This is exactly that. Okay, so a true master would be able to play within the game within

the constraints. So no, I'm pretty sure you'll still mock them. But no, no, I'll stick to the

rules five minutes easy. So first of all, speaking broadly about libertarianism,

can you speak to that, how you feel about it? And then also to the libertarian party,

which is the implementation of it in our current system. So I think libertarianism is a great idea.

And I think there's many libertarian ideas that have become much more mainstream, which I'm very,

very happy about. I remember there was an article in either New York or New Yorker magazine in the

early 90s, where they talked about the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank.

And they refer to the fact that Cato was against war, and against like regulation with a wacky

consistency. Because they didn't know how to reconcile these two things. I don't remember

where the two things were, but I remember that expression, wacky consistency. And we're all

taught, and this is very much before the internet, that there's two tribes. And if you're pro life,

you have to hate gays. And if you're for socialized medicine, that also means you have to be for

free speech. And there's a whole menu, and you got to sign into all of them. And that menu's

terrible. They hate America, they want to destroy it. Oh my God, those are horrible evil. This is

the menu you want. And the libertarian party, to some extent, and just libertarians as a whole,

said, you know, you can do the Chinese buffet and take a little from column A, a little from column B,

and have an ideology that is coherent and consistent, an ideology of peace and nonaggression

and things like that. The libertarian party takes its model from like the early progressive and

populist parties from the early 20th century, which were not very effective in terms of getting

people elected, but were extremely effective in terms of getting the two major parties to

appropriate and adopt their ideas and implement them. And in Britain as well, the liberal party

got destroyed and became taken over by labor as the alternative party to the Tories, and have those

ideas basically become mainstreamed. So I think that and the libertarian, my friend who passed away,

Eric, I miss him dearly, was their webmaster. And his whole point is, if you don't think of it in

terms of party in terms of getting people elected, but if you think of it as a party in terms of

getting people educated about alternatives, then there's enormous use for that. That was his

perspective. And I don't think that's an absurd perspective. But here's some libertarian ideas

that have become extremely mainstream. War should be a last resort. This is something we've taught

as kids and we all say, but for many years, it's been like, they don't think of it as a last resort.

It's like something's bad. Well, it's like the first instinct. Now it's like, let's really

give it a week, just a week, like what's going on in Syria. Is there really going to be a genocide,

the Kurds, you know, things like that. So that's one. Another thing is drug legalization.

This was, you know, when you and I were kids, oh, it's crazy. It's only hippies want to smoke pot.

Now it's like, with it, I was on a grand jury. And the point people make is, are you sure that

this 16 year old who's selling weed, let's say selling, should his life be ruined? Should he be

imprisoned with rapists and murderers? Like if you say yes, say yes, but you, but are you,

you have to acknowledge that that's what you're meaning. And then a lot of people are like,

wait a minute, there's got to be a third option. Then he has no consequences or he's imprisoned

with a rapist. Like I'm not comfortable with either of these. And I think the other one is

a increasing skepticism. This libertarians run top of this first and the hard left of the police.

As of now, asset forfeiture steals more from people than burglaries. What people don't know

about what asset forfeiture is, if the cops come to your house and they suspect you, you haven't

been convicted of using your car or your house or whatever in terms of selling drugs, they can take

whatever they want. And then you have to sue to prove your innocence and get your property back.

It's a complete violation of due process. People don't realize this is going on. It's a great way

for the cops to increase their budgets and it's legal. And libertarians were like the first big

one saying, guys, this is not American and this is crazy. And now increasingly people

on conservatives and leftists like, wait a minute, this, this is, even if you are selling drugs,

like they take your house, what are you talking about? So I think those are some mechanisms

that libertarianism, though, but not by name, has become far more popular.

Yeah, that's interesting. So the idea, yeah, a coherence set of ideas that eventually get

integrated into a two party system. Yeah. The war, that's an interesting one. You're right.

I would want, I wonder what the thread there is. I wonder how it connects to 9 11 and so on.

But I think that I think the Patriot Act, Patriot Act, for people who are politically savvy,

we're like, oh, okay, this is not a joke. This is really a crazy infringement or freedoms.

And both parties are falling over each other to sign into law and the Orwellian name.

You don't want to, how can you be against patriotism? What kind of person? You know what I mean? So

that, I think for a lot of people, especially both civil libertarians on the left and a lot of

conservatives who are constitutionalists are like, wait a minute, this isn't, I'm not comfortable

with this. And I'm also not comfortable with how comfortable everyone in Washington is with it.

You're right. Probably libertarians and libertarianism is a place of ideas,

which is why I have a connection to it. I like the, every time I listen to those folks, I like

them. I feel connected to them. I would even sometimes, depending on the day, call myself a

libertarian. But we're all in the spectrum. So that's why we're all in the spectrum. Yeah.

But like, when I look at the people that actually rise to the top

in terms of like the people who represent the party, this is where like five minutes right out,

right? I could go. I'm allowed. You can go. Why are they so weird? Why aren't strong candidates

emerging that represent as political, like representatives, or as like famous speakers,

like that represent the ideology? I think libertarians tend to be, I think

John Hite in his book, in his research, he's a political scientist. And he does a lot of

things about how people come to their political conclusions and what factors

force people to reach conclusions. And he found that libertarians are the least empathetic and

most rationalistic of all the groups. And by that, he means like they think in terms of logic,

as opposed to like people's feelings. And that has positives and has negatives.

And we have the A.B. testing with Ron Paul. Ron Paul ran for president as a libertarian

nominee. He was the nominee. He got pretty much nowhere in 1998. Then he ran as a return to

Republican Party as a congressman for many years from Texas. He ran for the presidency in 2008

and 2012. And in 2008, he stood on stage with Rudy Giuliani and told him that they were here

in 9.11 because we're over there, which would have been a shocking, horrifying taboo a few years

earlier. Many people were like, holy crap, this is amazing. Giuliani was all offended. And Ron

Paul's like, I took some guts by the way. I did. And I heard that it was so refreshing that not

what he said, but the fact that he said something that took guts. It made me realize how rare it is

for people, for politicians, but even people to say something that takes guts.

Well, it's also the idea that you can't, even if you think America has a right to invade any

country on earth as much as it wants and kill people as a consequence of war and blow up their

buildings and destroy their country, you can't with a straight face not expect us to have consequences,

even if they're consequence from evil people. Even if we're 100% the good guys and they're

100% the bad guys, those bad guys, some of them are still going to try to do something.

What happens next? You know what I mean? So that kind of concept that there's any

American culpability was where America, where we are the good guys by definition,

we're not culpable to have people start thinking about, what if there's another way?

What if we're not there and then they're not here and we're kind of doing a backdoor,

we're talking so different scenarios. So the fact that he got so much more traction

as a Republican, the fact that Donald Trump, who came out of nowhere, became not only the

candidate but the president tells people, it's like getting a book deal, right? You can either go,

there's three choices. You can either self publish, mainstream publisher or independent

publisher. The independent publisher is the worst of all choices because you're not getting a big

advance. They're not going to be able to promote you a lot and they don't get the distribution.

Mainstream, I've done mainstream itself, right? With self, I don't have the cred, the respectability

of a mainstream for the cachet. Can be a New York Times bestseller. Right. It takes a lot of work,

but I get a lot more of the profit. If it looks good on the shelf and Amazon looks identical,

so on and so forth. With the mainstream, the benefits and costs are pretty much obvious to

most people. So the same thing, it's like you can either be an independent like Ross Perot

or you could be just C's when the party apparatus, which the benefits are norms there.

But in terms of going third party, I don't know the libertarian party apparatus other than maybe

some ballot access is really that efficacious. And then you're going to have a lot of baggage

because if you hear independent, Jesse Ventura, Ross Perot, you think of the person. Now you have

to define yourself and you have to defend the party. That's two bridges for most people.

Brilliantly put. Okay. Thank you. Let me speak to you because I'm speaking to Yaron Brooks and

Yaron. I like him. Yeah. So, but that another example, I was... Ask him to tell you a joke

about Ayn Rand if he can do it. So there, that's one criticism I've heard you say, which is

they're unable to speak to any weaknesses in either Ayn Rand's or Objectivist's worldview.

Yes. That's really... You put it, I know you're half joking, but that's actually a legitimate

discussion to have. I'm not joking at all. Because that's, to me, one of the criticisms

and one of the explanations why the world seems to disrespect Ayn Rand, the people that do,

is she kind of implies that her ideas are like flawless. No, she says they correspond to reality.

Yeah. Right. That's the term she uses. That... I mean, Objectivist, it's in the name. It's,

you know, it's just facts. Like, it's impossible to basically argue against because it's pretty

simple. It's just all facts. Well, that's, it's possible to argue against, but she would say

she's never met a good critic who can argue the facts at misrepresentation. And she's not

entirely wrong. She's often caricatured because she has a very extreme personality and extreme

worldview. But that, to me, I mean, some people, there's a guy named in the physics mathematics

community called Stephen Wolfram. I don't know if you're from... Wolfram Alpha? Yeah.

Okay. He has a similar style of speaking sometimes, which is like, I've created a science,

but that turns a lot of people off, like this kind of weird confidence. But he's one of my

favorite people. I think one of the most brilliant people. If you just ignore that little bit of

ego or whatever you call that, that there's some beautiful ideas in there. She's an amazing person.

And that, for me, objectivism, I'm undereducated about it, about it. I hope to be more educated,

but there's some interesting ideas that, again, just like with UFOs,

not that there's a connection between two. Don't bring that up for your own. He won't like it.

He won't. Einran's like UFOs. Oh, no, no, no. This interview is over. That's a good yarn. Okay.

But you have to be a little bit open minded. But what's your sense of objectivism? Are there

interesting ideas that are useful to you to think about? I own her copy of the first printing of

the fountain head. So that should tell you a little bit about how my affection for Ms. Rand,

how heavy that goes. Einran does not have all the answers, but she has all the questions.

So if you study Rand, you are going to be forced to think through some very basic things,

and you're going to have your eyes open very, very heavily. She was not perfect. She never claimed to

be perfect. She was asked on Donahue, is it true that according to your philosophy, you are a perfect

being? She said, I never think of myself that way. And she said, but if you ask me, do I practice

what I preach? The answer is yes, resoundingly. She's a fascinating woman. What is really interesting

about her, and this is something you'd appreciate personally, is when you read her essays, she'll

have these weird sides. And she would talk about art, and she'd be like, and this is why the US

should be the only country with nuclear weapons. And when you follow a brilliant mind making these

seemingly disparate connections, it's something I find to be just absolutely inspiring and awesome

and entertaining. I think there's lots of things about her that people like Yaron would make

uncomfortable. Well, like she, they, so objectivism, like any other philosophy has all these techniques

to kind of hand wave away things you don't want to talk about and like pretend it. So they talk

about things like having no metaphysical significance, right? So what that means is like,

well, what about this? I don't want to talk about it. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, it literally

needs a fancy philosophical term. It doesn't matter. Or they will say correctly that it's very

twisted in our culture that when we have heroes, we look for their flaws instead of looking for

their virtues. That's a hundred percent valid perspective. However, if I'm sitting here telling

you that I think this woman is a badass, and she's amazing, and she should be studied, but there's

also these idiosyncrasies. They don't want to hear it because they, and I think it's very convenient

for them because there's a lot of things she did that were, here's an example. Rand was very, very

pro, a happiness and poor pleasure. She was very pro sex, which is kind of surprising looking at

her and how she talked and how strident she was. As a result of this, she never got her cats fixed

to deny them the pleasure of orgasm. So her male cats are spraying up her entire house. Like that

is, I mean, that's her putting her philosophy into practice, but it's still gross. So that's the

kind of thing where I don't think he'd be. Another thing is Rand had an article on a woman president

and she said a woman should never be president, right? Now, when Rand says things that are too

goofy for them, they say, oh, that's not objectivism. That's her personal preference. It's like,

she did not have these lines. Objectivism was always defined as Ayn Rand's writings

plus the additional essays in her books. So if this was in part of those books,

this counts as official objectivism, but they pretend otherwise. So that's another example.

Plus they, she was, and I bet you she was on the spectrum to some extent. I'm not joking.

I'm not using that derisively. She was of the belief and not inaccurately because that humor

is used to denigrate and humiliate. And she was thinking about the John Stuart type before there

was a John Stuart. And a lot of times, like how I use mocking, but she was resentful correctly

that a lot of times people who are great and accomplished, little nobodies will make a punch

line just to bring them down and just bother her. Here's an example I just thought of.

I remember in, I don't remember when it was, it must have been the 90s. They had a segment of MTV

of all these musicians who were making their own perfumes, right? And this girl grabbed Prince's

perfume. And before she even smelled it, she had the joke ready. She just, oh, this smells almost

as bad as his music lately. It's like, first of all, I'm sure the perfume's fine. And second,

well, this is Prince. He's one of the all time greats and you can't wait to, you know, you know,

denigrate him. Like, and apart, I want to be like, like, how dare you? Like, as if, as if this perfume

in any way, in any way mitigates his amazing accomplishments and achievements, you horrible

person. But I do have some great Iron Man jokes and he would not be happy about them.

The perfume thing, the problem with this is just not funny. Not that. Oh, he sucks. Okay, great.

Not that they dared to try to be humorous. Right. Because I don't know why you mentioned John Stuart

because John Stuart is pretty, can be funny. Right. But his, he taught a generation, you

still see this on Twitter, where things have to be inherently sarcastic and snide. But isn't that,

I mean, aren't you practicing that? No, I use irony and not sarcasm. Here's an example when people,

like you say something and someone replied to be like, um, last I checked, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I'll say them. I go, what do you think saying last I checked added to your point? You're giving

me valuable information and data, but you are trained to believe that it has to be couched

in this sneering. It doesn't just give me the information. This is useful information.

Yeah. That's, that's true. It's an e jerk. But see, John Stuart did it masterfully.

Correct. And they don't. And they, they don't, it's, it's like people who copy communities,

certain comedians, you try to copy them and use everything in the process of copy. Yeah.

Yep. Okay. But in terms of the, the philosophy of, you know, selfishness, this kind of

individual focused idea and I imagine that connects with you. Yes. And I think it would connect with

more people if they understood what she meant by it. Nathaniel Brandon, who was her heir until

she kind of broke with him and he was a code dedicated of Atlas shrugged said, no one will say

on Rand's views with a straight face. They won't say, I believe that my happiness matters and is

important and is worth fighting for. And that I ran says this and she's dangerous. Now it's very

easy to say this could have dangerous consequences if you're a sociopath, but to put it in those

terms, I think is extremely healthy. I think more people should want to be happy. And, and

I think a lot of us are raised to be apologetic, especially in this cynical media culture,

that if you say, I want to be happy, I want to love my life, that it's just like, okay,

sweetheart. And the eye rolling. And I think that's so pernicious and so horrifying. And this is why

I'm a Camus person because Camus thought the arch enemy was cynicism and I could not agree more.

Like if you are the kind of person, if someone likes a band and you're like, oh,

she like them, blah, blah, blah. It's like, this gives them happiness. Yeah. Now there's

certain exceptions, but if it gives you happiness, it's not for you. That's cool.

Okay, this is beautiful. I, I so agree with you on the eye rolling, but you see the best of

trolling is not the eye roll. Correct. Of course not. The best of trolling is taking down the

eye rollers. I'm going to have to think about that. Okay. Cause I kind of red bull. Yeah.

Cause I put them all. My blood type is red bull.

I kind of put them all in the same bin. Okay. And they're not, they're not, they're not.

Okay. All right. Here's another example of trolling. I was making jokes about Ron Paul. He

just had a stroke, right? And someone came at me and they're like, oh, blah, blah, blah, you know,

you're ugly. I hope you have a stroke. I hope you're in the hospital. And I just go,

I just did have a stroke on your mom's face. So they came at me and now they got put in their

place with a sub par. Um, I mean, that wasn't clever. You weren't, you weren't clever. Not

particularly. No. Well, one of your things you do, which is interesting, I mean, I give you

props in a sense is you're willing to go farther than people expect you to. Yes. That's fun.

Yeah. In fact, I'll probably edit out like half of this podcast because the thing you did, which

she kept in, I should mention, Mikaela Peterson now has a podcast, which is nice. I guess was it

on her podcast? She was on mine. She was on yours. We did both, but this is when you're

referring to when she was on mine. Yeah. She was on, yeah, right. And you went right for the,

so I'll tell you what it was. You don't have to paraphrase. So I opened up, I say,

you know, she's Jordan Peterson's dad. And as many people know, Jordan, sorry, he's her dad,

yeah. She's had a long issue with substance addiction. And I said to her, you're, you know,

you're most famous for being, you know, Jordan Peterson's daughter. You know, many people,

he's changed so many lives around the world. He's, and he's been such an enormous influence

to me personally, that I've started taking Benzo Duazepines recreationally. And she's like,

oh my God, Michael is so horrible. Yeah. You, because you pulled me in with this, because

you're taught, I mean, you know, because he's going through a rough time now, she's going through

just everything was just, you pulled me in emotionally. I was like, this is going to be

the sweet Mike is going to be just this wonderful. And then just bam. So that's, that's, that's,

that was props to you on that. It wasn't whatever that is, that is an art form when done well,

it can be taken too far. My criticism is that that feels too good for some people.

What do you mean? Oh, they're too happy being a reference because to show that they don't care.