Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Michael Malice,
00:00:02 an anarchist, political thinker, author,
00:00:05 and a proud, part time, Andy Kaufman like troll,
00:00:10 in the best sense of that word,
00:00:11 on both Twitter and in real life.
00:00:14 He’s a host of a great podcast called You’re Welcome,
00:00:18 spelled Y O U R.
00:00:20 I think that gives a sense of his sense of humor.
00:00:23 He is the author of Dear Reader,
00:00:25 the unauthorized autobiography of King Jong Il,
00:00:29 and The New Right,
00:00:31 A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics.
00:00:33 This latter book, when I read it,
00:00:36 or rather listened to it last year,
00:00:38 helped me start learning about the various
00:00:40 disparate movements that I was undereducated about,
00:00:43 from the internet trolls, to Alex Jones,
00:00:46 to white nationalists, and to techno anarchists.
00:00:51 The book is funny and brilliant, and so is Michael.
00:00:54 Unfortunately, because of a self imposed deadline,
00:00:58 I actually pulled an all nighter before this conversation.
00:01:01 So I was not exactly all there mentally,
00:01:03 even more so than usual, which is tough,
00:01:06 because Michael is really quick witted and brilliant.
00:01:09 But he was kind, patient, and understanding
00:01:12 in this conversation, and I hope you will be as well.
00:01:16 Today, I’m trying something a little new,
00:01:18 looking to establish a regular structure for these intros.
00:01:21 A first, doing the guest intro, like I just did.
00:01:25 Second, quick one or two sentence mention of each sponsor.
00:01:28 Third, my side comments related to the episode.
00:01:32 And finally, fourth, full ad reads
00:01:35 on the audio side of things,
00:01:36 and on YouTube, going straight to the conversation.
00:01:39 So not doing the full ad reads.
00:01:41 And as always, no ads in the middle,
00:01:43 because to me, they get in the way of the conversation.
00:01:46 So, quick mention of the sponsors.
00:01:48 First, SEMrush, the most advanced
00:01:51 SEO optimization tool I’ve ever come across.
00:01:54 I don’t like looking at numbers,
00:01:56 but someone probably should.
00:01:57 It helps you make good decisions.
00:02:00 Second sponsor is DoorDash, food delivery service
00:02:03 that I’ve used for many years
00:02:04 to fuel long, uninterrupted sessions of deep work
00:02:07 at Google, MIT, and I still use it a lot today.
00:02:11 Third sponsor is Masterclass, online courses
00:02:14 from the best people in the world
00:02:16 on each of the topics covered,
00:02:18 from rockets, to game design, to poker,
00:02:21 to writing, and to guitar with Carlos Santana.
00:02:25 Please check out these sponsors in the description
00:02:27 to get a discount and to support this podcast.
00:02:30 As a side note, let me say that I hope to have
00:02:33 some conversations with political thinkers,
00:02:35 including liberals and conservatives,
00:02:38 anarchists, libertarians, objectivists,
00:02:41 and everything in between.
00:02:42 I’m as allergic to Trump bashing and Trump worship
00:02:46 as you probably are.
00:02:48 I have none of that in me.
00:02:49 I really work hard to be open minded
00:02:52 and let my curiosity drive the conversation.
00:02:54 I do plead with you to be patient on two counts.
00:02:57 First, I have an intense, busy life
00:03:00 outside of these podcasts.
00:03:02 Like it’s 4 a.m. right now as I’m recording this.
00:03:05 So sometimes life affects these conversations,
00:03:08 like in this case, I pull an all nighter beforehand.
00:03:11 So please be patient with me if I say something
00:03:13 inelegant, confusing, dumb, or just plain wrong.
00:03:17 I’ll try to correct myself on social media
00:03:19 or in future conversations as much as I can.
00:03:22 I really am always learning and working hard to improve.
00:03:26 Second, if I or the guest says something about,
00:03:29 for example, our current president, Donald Trump,
00:03:33 that’s over the top negative or over the top positive,
00:03:36 please don’t let your brain go into the partisan mode.
00:03:39 Try to hear our words in an open minded nuanced way.
00:03:43 And if we say stuff from a place of emotion,
00:03:45 please give us a pass.
00:03:47 Nuanced conversation can only happen
00:03:49 if we’re patient with each other.
00:03:52 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
00:03:54 review the Five Stars and Apple podcast,
00:03:56 follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
00:03:58 or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
00:04:02 And now, here’s my conversation with Michael Malice.
00:04:07 There was a Simpsons episode where he starts mixing
00:04:09 like sleeping pills with like pet pills
00:04:12 and he’s driving his truck and I’m like,
00:04:13 I wanna see what happens if he mixed Red Bull
00:04:15 and Nitra cold brew.
00:04:17 There’s a lineup of drugs.
00:04:21 This is gonna be so fun.
00:04:23 Yeah, let’s start with love.
00:04:28 Yeah, so one thing we’ll eventually somehow talk about,
00:04:31 it’ll be a theme throughout, is that you’re also Russian.
00:04:34 Yes.
00:04:35 A little bit less than me, but.
00:04:36 How, why?
00:04:37 Cause I’m from Ukraine.
00:04:39 Oh, you’re from Ukraine?
00:04:40 From above.
00:04:41 Okay, wow.
00:04:42 No, because you came here a little bit
00:04:43 when you were younger.
00:04:44 Yeah.
00:04:45 I came here when I was 13,
00:04:47 so I saturated a little bit of the Russian soul.
00:04:49 I marinated in the Russian soul a little deeper.
00:04:52 I haven’t told anyone this,
00:04:53 but I’ll be glad to tell you, Davidish.
00:04:56 I haven’t been back since I was two.
00:04:59 And next summer, it looks like me and my buddy,
00:05:01 Chris Williamson, who’s also a podcaster,
00:05:03 he’s British, Modern Wisdom, he looks like Apollo.
00:05:06 Looks like we got a videographer.
00:05:07 Which Apollo?
00:05:08 Apollo Creed?
00:05:09 The god, he looks like the god Apollo.
00:05:10 Yeah, he’s like a model.
00:05:11 I thought you were talking about Rocky.
00:05:13 So, we’re gonna go for the first time
00:05:16 to see where I came from.
00:05:18 Which is in Ukraine.
00:05:19 We’re gonna go to Lvov and either St. Petersburg or Moscow,
00:05:22 probably St. Petersburg, or both.
00:05:24 It’s gonna be intense.
00:05:25 It’s gonna be a lot of panic attacks, I feel.
00:05:28 And your Russian is okay?
00:05:30 Yeah.
00:05:31 How do you think?
00:05:33 Good?
00:05:34 Do you understand?
00:05:34 No, you can’t talk Russian in Ukraine,
00:05:35 or it’s like they get offended.
00:05:37 Yeah, but then you also wanna go to Russia.
00:05:39 Yeah.
00:05:41 I don’t know.
00:05:42 For me, there’s several people in Russia
00:05:44 I wanna interview on a podcast.
00:05:47 So, one of them is Gagarin Perlman,
00:05:49 which is a mathematician, and the other person is Putin.
00:05:53 You know what my favorite Putin story is?
00:05:55 Do you know this?
00:05:56 No.
00:05:57 When he had Merkel with him, do you know this story?
00:05:58 No.
00:05:59 Merkel’s scared of dogs, like petrified of dogs.
00:06:02 So, he brings in his like black lab.
00:06:06 It’s a Labrador, it’s like the sweetest animal,
00:06:08 and it’s all over her, and there’s pictures,
00:06:09 and she’s sitting like this, and she’s terrified,
00:06:12 and he’s like, what’s wrong, Angela?
00:06:13 He’s just completely trolling her.
00:06:16 Yeah, he’s aware of the sort of the narrative around him.
00:06:20 Yeah.
00:06:21 And then he plays with it.
00:06:22 Yes.
00:06:23 He enjoys it.
00:06:24 It’s a very Russian thing.
00:06:24 My friend wanted to do a film about me.
00:06:26 He goes, I realized you guys aren’t like us at all.
00:06:28 You’re just like, look at us,
00:06:30 and then I started telling him stories
00:06:31 about the upbringing, and he’s like, oh my God,
00:06:33 and as I’m telling them, I’m like,
00:06:34 wow, this stuff is really crazy, like how we are wired.
00:06:38 Who’s the we?
00:06:39 Your friend is?
00:06:40 The Russian, the friend’s American.
00:06:40 I’m saying the way Russians are brought up,
00:06:42 and the way, maybe, I don’t think it was just my family.
00:06:45 I bet you had similar things.
00:06:46 Here’s an example.
00:06:47 I was, I had a buddy staying with me.
00:06:50 He had a problem with his roommate,
00:06:51 so he crashed at my place, fine.
00:06:53 I went to the gym, and I come back,
00:06:56 and he goes, oh, there was,
00:06:58 and my apartment building is four four apartments,
00:07:00 so it’s not like a huge thing.
00:07:02 He goes, oh, there was someone knocking at your door,
00:07:04 so I told him blah blah, and for me,
00:07:08 and I wonder if you’re the same way,
00:07:10 if I’m at someone’s house that’s not my own,
00:07:12 and someone knocks on the door,
00:07:14 I wouldn’t even think to answer it.
00:07:16 Like if I had an apple here, maybe I’d eat it,
00:07:18 I’d cut it, whatever.
00:07:20 I’m not gonna, it just doesn’t enter my head
00:07:21 to smash into my face.
00:07:23 The thought of answering the door, if it’s not my house,
00:07:26 it would never enter my head.
00:07:27 Would it enter your head?
00:07:28 No, but why?
00:07:30 But he’s an American, so someone’s at the door.
00:07:31 He goes and opens it, even though it’s not his house.
00:07:33 I would never do that.
00:07:34 I would never think to do that.
00:07:36 That is so strange that you pick some very obscure thing
00:07:39 to delineate Americans and Russians.
00:07:42 I don’t think that’s obscure,
00:07:43 because I think it speaks to how we perceive strangers.
00:07:46 With Americans, everyone’s friendly,
00:07:48 and with us, it’s like, no, no, you have that moat,
00:07:52 and I think that percolates into many different aspects
00:07:55 of how we relate to people, and I have to undo a lot of that.
00:07:58 That’s true.
00:07:58 You’re right, there’s the relationship I formed there
00:08:00 where in Russia, we’re very deep and close,
00:08:04 and then there’s the strangers, the other,
00:08:06 that you don’t trust by default.
00:08:08 It takes a long time to go over the moat of trust.
00:08:11 For a long time, until recently,
00:08:13 whenever I said anything to anyone,
00:08:15 my brain ran a scan that said, if this person turns on you,
00:08:20 would this, can they use this against you?
00:08:22 And I would do this with everything I said with strangers,
00:08:24 and after a while, it’s like, you know what?
00:08:26 Maybe they will, but I’m strong enough to take it,
00:08:28 but this is not how Americans think.
00:08:30 Or here’s another one.
00:08:31 Let me ask you this.
00:08:32 Sorry, I’m taking over the interview.
00:08:33 People ask about advice for work, right?
00:08:35 Like I had this, there was this party I went to,
00:08:37 and basically everyone had their own problems,
00:08:39 and everyone else gave their advice, right?
00:08:41 And someone’s having a problem with a coworker,
00:08:43 and the advice these Tupoy Americans gave them is,
00:08:46 oh, sit down and have a talk with them.
00:08:48 And to me, this is like the last case, last resort.
00:08:52 Like first, you have to see what you can
00:08:54 without showing your hand, showing your vulnerability,
00:08:56 only when everything hasn’t worked out,
00:08:58 or you’re like, all right, let me sit down with you
00:09:00 and try to have it out with you, probably.
00:09:02 But for them, the first thing is like, sit down and be like,
00:09:04 oh, you’re causing me problems, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:06 So I perceive that right away as a threat,
00:09:09 that this person sees an antagonism between us,
00:09:11 and also as a weakness that I’m getting to them.
00:09:13 So my reaction isn’t how do I make it better?
00:09:17 My reaction is to reinforce my position
00:09:20 and see what I can to marginalize them, usually.
00:09:23 I haven’t worked in a corporate setting in a long time.
00:09:25 But it’s not, I don’t approach it the way an American would.
00:09:27 Like, I’m glad you came and talked to me.
00:09:29 Now I probably would, because it’s gonna be a friend.
00:09:31 So you attribute that to the Russian upbringing,
00:09:34 as opposed to you have deep psychological issues.
00:09:37 I think those are synonymous, don’t you?
00:09:39 Wait, would you think differently, maybe a few years ago?
00:09:46 I don’t know, I think you lost me at the,
00:09:50 because you kind of said that,
00:09:52 you’re kind of implying you have a deep distrust
00:09:54 of the world, like the world is.
00:09:57 I think the default setting would be distrust, yeah.
00:09:59 But I would put it differently,
00:10:05 is I almost ignore the rest of the world,
00:10:09 I don’t even acknowledge it, I just savor,
00:10:14 I save my love and trust for the small circle of people.
00:10:18 I agree, but when that person is being confrontational,
00:10:21 or as they perceive it, as being open,
00:10:24 now there’s a situation, how would you handle that?
00:10:27 Like a cold wind blows, you just kind of like.
00:10:31 Yeah, but it’s not like this is an opportunity
00:10:33 for us to work out our differences, it’s a cold wind.
00:10:36 It’s not a hug, that’s my point.
00:10:38 Americans think it’s a hug, a cold wind.
00:10:41 You’re so suspicious, what it really is, is a cold wind.
00:10:46 I’m so humane, it’s not something to be scared of,
00:10:50 it’s a cold wind, it’s a good person.
00:10:52 But it’s not, this is great, but it’s not a source of,
00:10:56 like I’m not suspicious of, like I’m not anxious,
00:11:00 I would say, or like living in fear
00:11:02 of the rest of the world, I’m more.
00:11:04 Oh, I agree, but you’re not receptive to that person.
00:11:07 That’s all I’m saying, and they are.
00:11:09 Got it, so speaking of which, let’s talk about love.
00:11:14 Which requires to be receptive of the world, of strangers.
00:11:19 How do we put more love out there in the world,
00:11:23 especially on the internet?
00:11:25 One mechanism I have found to increase love,
00:11:30 and that’s a word that has many meanings
00:11:31 and is used in a very intense sense
00:11:33 and is used in a very loose sense.
00:11:35 Can you try to define love?
00:11:36 Sure, love is a strong sense of attraction
00:11:42 toward another person, entity, or place
00:11:46 that causes one to tend to react
00:11:51 in a disproportionately positive manner.
00:11:53 That’s off the top of my head.
00:11:54 Disproportionately.
00:11:55 Yes, so for example, if you.
00:11:57 Why not proportionately?
00:11:58 Because if someone’s about to, who you love,
00:12:02 is about to get harmed, you’re moving heaven and earth
00:12:05 to make sure, or like a book you love.
00:12:08 I love this book, like you’re going through the fire
00:12:10 to try to save it, whereas if it’s a book you really like,
00:12:13 it’s like, oh, I’ll get another one.
00:12:16 And a book’s kind of a loose example, but.
00:12:18 So you’re going with the love that’s like,
00:12:20 you’re saving for just a few people,
00:12:22 almost like romantical, like love for a close family.
00:12:25 But what about just love to even the broader,
00:12:28 like the kind of love you can put out
00:12:30 to people on the internet, which is like just kindness.
00:12:33 Sure, I would say in that case,
00:12:35 it’s important to make them feel seen and validated.
00:12:41 And I try to do this when people who I have come to know
00:12:44 on the internet, and there’s a lot,
00:12:46 I try to do that as much as possible
00:12:48 because I don’t think it’s valid
00:12:51 how on social media, and I do this a lot myself,
00:12:53 but not towards everyone,
00:12:55 it’s just there to be aggressive and antagonistic.
00:12:58 You should be antagonistic towards bad people,
00:13:00 and that’s fine, but at the same time,
00:13:02 there’s lots of great people.
00:13:04 And especially with my audience,
00:13:06 and I would bet disproportionately with yours,
00:13:08 there’s lots of people who are,
00:13:10 because of their psychology and intelligence,
00:13:13 are going to be much more isolated socially than they should.
00:13:17 And if I, and I’ve heard from many of them,
00:13:19 and if I’m the person who makes them feel,
00:13:21 oh, I’m not crazy, it’s everyone else around me
00:13:24 who is just basic, the fact that I can be that person,
00:13:27 which I didn’t have at their age,
00:13:29 to me is incredibly reaffirming.
00:13:32 You mean that source of love?
00:13:34 But I mean love in the sense of like,
00:13:36 you know, you care about this person
00:13:37 and you want good things for them,
00:13:38 not in a kind of romantic way.
00:13:40 But I mean, you’re using it in a broad sense now.
00:13:42 Yeah, but you’re also a person who kind of,
00:13:44 I mean, attacks the power structures in the world
00:13:52 by mocking them effectively.
00:13:54 And love, I would say, requires you to be
00:14:00 non witty and simple and fragile,
00:14:04 which I see it as like the opposite of what trolls do.
00:14:08 Trolls are, if there is someone coming after what I love,
00:14:15 there’s two mechanisms, right, at least two.
00:14:18 I go up and I’m fighting them,
00:14:20 and in which case you are getting hurt in a knife fight,
00:14:24 even if you win the knife fight,
00:14:26 or if you disarm them and you preclude
00:14:30 the possibility of a fight and you drive them off
00:14:32 or render them powerless,
00:14:34 you keep your person intact as yourself
00:14:37 and you also protect your values.
00:14:39 So how do you render them powerless?
00:14:41 As you just said, by mocking them.
00:14:43 One of the most effective mechanisms for those in power,
00:14:46 we’re much closer to Brave New World than 1984.
00:14:48 The people who are dominant and in power
00:14:51 aren’t there because of the threat of the gulag or prison.
00:14:54 They’re there because of social pressures.
00:14:56 Look at the masks.
00:14:57 I was on the subway not that long ago in New York City.
00:15:01 No one cared who I was until I put off the mask.
00:15:04 I was in the subway that long in New York City.
00:15:06 And I put this on my Instagram.
00:15:07 I’ve told this story before.
00:15:08 There was an Asian dude in his early 30s.
00:15:10 He was like in Western clothes.
00:15:11 It’s not like he had a rickshaw or something.
00:15:13 An older man in his 50s stood up over him on the subway,
00:15:16 screamed at him, said, go back where you came from.
00:15:20 You’re disgusting.
00:15:21 I’m gonna get sick.
00:15:22 If you think this guy is a vector of disease,
00:15:23 which is your prerogative, why are you coming close to him?
00:15:25 Why are you getting in his face?
00:15:27 And what?
00:15:28 Sorry, so it was because he was Asian?
00:15:32 It was both.
00:15:32 It was the not having a mask gave him the permission
00:15:37 to act like a despicable, aggressive person toward him.
00:15:41 And the point being, a lot of these mechanisms
00:15:44 for social control are outsourced to low quality people
00:15:49 because this is their one chance
00:15:50 to assert dominance and status over somebody else.
00:15:53 So the best way to diffuse that
00:15:54 isn’t with weaponry or fighting.
00:15:56 It’s through mockery because all of a sudden,
00:15:58 their claims to authority are effectively destroyed.
00:16:01 So let me push back on that.
00:16:02 What about fighting that with love,
00:16:06 with patience and kindness towards them?
00:16:10 I don’t think kindness is,
00:16:12 I think that would be a mismatch and inappropriate.
00:16:16 There’s Superman, there’s Batman, okay?
00:16:18 And Superman’s job is to help the good people
00:16:20 and Batman’s job is to hurt the bad people.
00:16:22 And I will always be on the Batman side
00:16:25 than the Superman side.
00:16:27 Both work silly tight costumes.
00:16:29 One has pointy ears.
00:16:31 Both are ridiculous, so let’s.
00:16:33 One’s a billionaire who gets, he’s swimming in trim.
00:16:36 Which one is a billionaire? Batman.
00:16:37 Okay, I’m undereducated on the superhero movies,
00:16:42 I apologize.
00:16:44 Okay, but you’re just saying your predisposition
00:16:48 is to be on the Batman side,
00:16:50 is to fighting the bad guys.
00:16:54 Yeah, and it’s what I’m good at.
00:16:57 That’s what you’re good at.
00:16:58 But just to play devil’s advocate,
00:17:02 or actually, in this case, I am the devil
00:17:04 because it’s what I usually do.
00:17:06 Well, I’m the devil, you’re the angel’s advocate.
00:17:08 Exactly, to be the angel advocate, yeah.
00:17:12 Is like, I feel like mockery
00:17:17 is a path towards escalation of conflict.
00:17:20 Yes, in many ways, yes.
00:17:22 So you’re not, I mean,
00:17:25 it’s kind of like guerrilla warfare.
00:17:28 I mean, you’re not going to win.
00:17:31 I am winning, we’re all winning.
00:17:32 We’re winning on a daily.
00:17:33 This is my next book, we’re winning.
00:17:35 We’ve won before, I’m not joking.
00:17:37 The topic of the next book.
00:17:39 Yes, it’s the white pill.
00:17:40 The white pill.
00:17:41 Is that we’re gonna, we are winning.
00:17:43 The most horrible people are being rendered
00:17:46 into laughing stocks on a daily basis on social media.
00:17:49 This is a glorious thing.
00:17:49 This is good, I so disagree with you.
00:17:52 I disagree with you because there’s side effects
00:17:54 that are very destructive.
00:17:55 It feels like you’re winning,
00:17:57 but we’re completely destroying the possibility
00:18:00 of having like a cohesive society.
00:18:04 That’s called oncology.
00:18:06 What’s that mean?
00:18:07 Curing cancer.
00:18:09 No, I, yeah.
00:18:09 Your concept of a cohesive society is, in fact,
00:18:12 a society based on oppression
00:18:15 and not allowing individuals to live their personal freedom.
00:18:20 Oh, so you’re a utopian view of the world.
00:18:22 You’re the utopian.
00:18:23 You’re saying cohesive society.
00:18:24 I’m saying I don’t need that.
00:18:25 I’m saying there’s gonna be conflict.
00:18:27 Right, there’s gonna be conflict.
00:18:29 You and I are disagreeing right now.
00:18:30 That’s not cohesive.
00:18:31 Doesn’t mean we like each other less.
00:18:32 Doesn’t mean we respect each other less.
00:18:34 Cohesive doesn’t, it’s just a euphemism
00:18:37 for like everyone submitting to what I want.
00:18:39 No, I mean, cohesive could be that.
00:18:43 It could be like enforced with violence,
00:18:48 all that kind of stuff,
00:18:49 sort of the libertarian view of the world,
00:18:53 but it could just be being respectful
00:18:57 and kind of each other and kind towards each other
00:19:00 and loving towards each other.
00:19:02 I mean, that’s what I mean by cohesive.
00:19:04 So when people say free, it’s funny.
00:19:07 Like freedom is a funny thing
00:19:10 because freedom could be painful to a lot of people.
00:19:15 It’s all matters how you define it,
00:19:18 how you implement it, how it actually looks like.
00:19:20 Sure.
00:19:21 I’m just saying it feels like the mockery
00:19:26 of the powerful leads to further and further divisions.
00:19:31 It’s like it’s turning life into a game
00:19:36 to where it’s always you’re creating
00:19:40 these different little tribes and groups
00:19:43 and you’re constantly fighting the groups
00:19:48 that become a little bit more powerful
00:19:50 by undercutting them through guerrilla warfare kind of thing.
00:19:53 And that’s what the internet becomes
00:19:54 is everyone’s just mocking each other
00:19:56 and then certain groups become more and more powerful
00:19:59 and then they start fighting each other
00:20:01 and they form groups of ideologies
00:20:05 and they start fighting each other in the internet
00:20:07 where the result is it doesn’t feel like
00:20:12 the common humanities highlighted.
00:20:14 It doesn’t feel like that’s a path of progress.
00:20:19 Now, like when I say cohesive,
00:20:21 I don’t mean like everybody has to be enforcing equality,
00:20:25 all those kinds of ideas.
00:20:27 I just mean like not being so divisive.
00:20:31 So it’s going back to the original question of like,
00:20:34 how do we put more love out in the world than the internet?
00:20:37 I want divisiveness.
00:20:39 Oh, you see, you think divisiveness is that?
00:20:41 That’s the goal.
00:20:41 That’s very interesting.
00:20:42 It’s the goal.
00:20:43 So you started this conversation
00:20:44 where you’re talking about you have love
00:20:46 for that small group.
00:20:47 I think we both would agree to have a bigger group
00:20:50 would be better,
00:20:51 especially if that love comes from a sincere place.
00:20:53 I think our country,
00:20:56 I wrote an article about this four years ago
00:20:57 that it’s time to disunite the states and to secede.
00:21:00 This country has been held together
00:21:02 with at least two separate cultures
00:21:04 with dumb text and string for over 20 years.
00:21:06 There’s an enormous amount of contempt
00:21:08 from one group toward another.
00:21:10 This contempt comes from a sincere place.
00:21:12 They do not share each other’s values.
00:21:14 There’s absolutely no reason,
00:21:16 just like any unhealthy relationship
00:21:18 where you can’t say, you know what?
00:21:19 It’s not working out.
00:21:20 I want to go my own way and live my happiness.
00:21:24 And I genuinely want you to go your way,
00:21:26 live your happiness.
00:21:27 If I’m wrong, prove me wrong.
00:21:28 I’ll learn from you and take lessons and vice versa.
00:21:31 But the fact that we all have to be
00:21:33 in the same house together is not coherent.
00:21:35 And that’s not love.
00:21:36 That is the path towards friction and tension and conflict.
00:21:40 Do you think there’s concrete groups?
00:21:43 Like is it as simple as the two groups of blue and red?
00:21:47 No, it’s also very fluid
00:21:49 because you and I are allied as Jewish people,
00:21:53 as Russians, as males, as podcasters.
00:21:57 You’re an academic, I’m not.
00:21:58 So we’re different, but we each are a Venn diagram,
00:22:02 even within ourselves.
00:22:04 And I can talk to you about politics
00:22:07 and then we can talk about Russia stuff.
00:22:08 And then you could talk about your work,
00:22:10 which I don’t know anything about.
00:22:12 So that’d be where you’re way up here and a way down here.
00:22:14 So there’s lots, every relationship
00:22:16 with just between individuals, it’s very dynamic.
00:22:18 So how do we succeed?
00:22:20 Like how do we form individual states
00:22:22 where there’s a little bit more cohesion?
00:22:25 Sure, and voluntary cohesion.
00:22:27 So the first step is to eliminate
00:22:31 and the concept of political authority as legitimate
00:22:35 and to denigrate and humiliate those
00:22:38 who would put themselves in a position
00:22:40 in which they are there to tell you how to live your life
00:22:44 from any semblance of validity.
00:22:46 And that’s starting to happen.
00:22:48 If you look at what they had with the lockdowns,
00:22:50 Cuomo and de Blasio, New York,
00:22:53 I was tired a couple of weeks ago.
00:22:56 And I said to my friend, oh, just click, maybe I have COVID.
00:22:58 And he goes, it’s not possible, like what do you mean?
00:23:00 And he goes, we haven’t had any deaths in like two months.
00:23:04 And there’s only like 100 cases a day for like two months.
00:23:08 And I go, you’re exaggerating
00:23:09 because everything was still closed.
00:23:11 And I looked at the numbers and he wasn’t exaggerating.
00:23:13 And there’s no greater American dream to me
00:23:16 than an immigrant family comes to the states,
00:23:19 forms their own little business.
00:23:21 Maybe mom’s a good cook, it’s a restaurant,
00:23:23 dry cleaner, fruit stand.
00:23:25 And those people aren’t gonna have a lot of money.
00:23:27 Those are the first ones who lost their companies
00:23:30 because of these lockdowns.
00:23:33 Cuomo, who’s the governor of New York,
00:23:35 opened up the gyms, he said, you’re clear to open up.
00:23:38 De Blasio said, and we don’t have enough inspectors,
00:23:40 you’re gonna have to wait another couple of weeks.
00:23:43 To regard that as anything other than literally criminal
00:23:45 is something that I am having a hard and harder time
00:23:49 wrapping my head around.
00:23:51 You said, I mean, that’s something
00:23:52 I’m deeply worried about as well,
00:23:54 which is like thousands, it’s actually millions
00:23:58 of dreams being crushed, that American dream
00:24:01 of starting a business, of running a business.
00:24:03 What about all the young people who you and I
00:24:06 have in our audiences who are socially isolated at best,
00:24:10 and now they can’t leave their homes?
00:24:12 Isolation and ostracism are things
00:24:15 that are very well studied in psychology.
00:24:17 These have extreme consequences.
00:24:19 I read a book called Ostracism, and this wasn’t scientific,
00:24:22 but basically the author was a psychiatrist,
00:24:24 psychologist, whatever, and he had one of his colleagues,
00:24:26 they did an experiment, let’s for a week,
00:24:29 you ostracize me completely.
00:24:30 We know it’s an, and he goes, even knowing
00:24:33 it’s the experiment, the fact that he wouldn’t
00:24:34 make eye contact with me and the fact that he ignored me
00:24:37 had an extreme emotional impact on me,
00:24:40 knowing full well this is purely for experimental purposes.
00:24:44 Now you multiply that by all these, the suicide,
00:24:46 the number of kids who were thinking about suicide
00:24:48 was through the roof during all this.
00:24:50 And my point is, until these people,
00:24:53 it’s gonna, I would predict like 2024,
00:24:55 that’s where we’re gonna have to start having conversations
00:24:57 about what personal consequences have to be done
00:25:00 for these people, because until then,
00:25:01 they’re gonna do the same thing.
00:25:03 So you think there’s going to be society wide consequences
00:25:06 of this that we’re gonna see, like ripple effects,
00:25:08 because of the social isolation?
00:25:10 I know, I mean, we also need to talk about consequences
00:25:13 for Cuomo and de Blasio, because if politicians
00:25:16 respond to incentives, and the incentives are there
00:25:18 for them to be extremely conservative,
00:25:20 because if you have to choose, as Cuomo said
00:25:22 in a press conference, between a thousand people dying
00:25:25 and a thousand people losing their business,
00:25:26 it’s not a hard choice, and he’s right.
00:25:28 But at a certain point, it’s like, all right,
00:25:30 you’re losing both, you’re making these decisions
00:25:35 and not having consequences for it,
00:25:36 and you’re gonna do it again the next time,
00:25:38 so we need to make sure you’re a little scared.
00:25:41 And I don’t know what that would mean.
00:25:42 But you’re laying this problem, this incompetence.
00:25:48 I don’t think it’s incompetence,
00:25:50 I think it’s very competent.
00:25:51 I think their job is to be able, yes.
00:25:54 But you’re laying it not at the hands of the individuals,
00:25:59 but the structure of government.
00:26:01 It’s both, yes.
00:26:03 How would we deal with it better
00:26:05 without centralized control?
00:26:07 Well, we didn’t really have centralized control,
00:26:09 because every country and every state
00:26:11 handled it in a different mechanism.
00:26:12 But a city has centralized control, right?
00:26:16 No, that’s not true.
00:26:17 So Cuomo and de Blasio, they had a lot of disagreements
00:26:19 over this over the months, and this was actually
00:26:21 a source of great interest and tension.
00:26:23 De Blasio wanted, at one point, was talking about
00:26:26 quarantining people in their homes.
00:26:27 Cuomo was like, you’re crazy.
00:26:29 Same thing with the schools, same thing with the gyms,
00:26:33 and there were other such examples.
00:26:35 But the point being, this was an emergency.
00:26:38 World War I, I talked about this on Tim Poole’s show,
00:26:41 was very dangerous, because it gave a lot of evil people
00:26:45 some very useful information about what the country
00:26:48 put up with and what they can get away with under wartime.
00:26:51 And this set the model for things like the New Deal
00:26:53 and the other things of that nature.
00:26:55 It is undeniable, you’re a scientist,
00:26:57 so you understand this perfectly well,
00:27:00 that this lockdown gave some very nefarious people
00:27:04 some very valid data about how much people
00:27:07 were put up with under pressures from the state.
00:27:13 So fundamentally, what is the problem with the state?
00:27:16 Its existence.
00:27:17 Okay, well, but to play angel’s advocate again,
00:27:22 angel’s advocate again, you know,
00:27:25 government is the people.
00:27:28 Come on, do you really think this?
00:27:31 As best I think as possible to have representation.
00:27:35 Can you imagine if you have an attorney?
00:27:37 You’re like, oh, you can’t have the attorney you want.
00:27:38 You’re gonna have this guy who you absolutely hate
00:27:40 who you share no values with, why?
00:27:42 Because he drives, I mean, leaders, political leaders,
00:27:45 and political representation drive the discourse.
00:27:48 Like the majority of people voted for him or whatever,
00:27:53 however you define that.
00:27:55 And now we get to have a discussion,
00:27:58 well, was this the right choice?
00:28:01 And then we get to make that choice again
00:28:02 in four years and so on.
00:28:04 First of all, the fact that I have to be under the thumb
00:28:06 of somebody for four years makes no sense.
00:28:09 There’s no other relationship that’s like this,
00:28:10 including a marriage.
00:28:12 You can leave any other relationship at any time,
00:28:14 number one.
00:28:15 Number two is.
00:28:16 You could always impeach.
00:28:17 Well, they did that.
00:28:18 Part of it I’m just saying that the mechanisms
00:28:22 are flawed in many ways, yeah.
00:28:24 Yeah, right, and so that’s number one.
00:28:26 Number two is it doesn’t make sense
00:28:29 that if I don’t want someone to represent me
00:28:32 that because that person is popular
00:28:35 that they are now in a position to.
00:28:36 So having representation and having citizenship
00:28:40 based on geography is a prelandline technology
00:28:44 in a post cell phone world.
00:28:45 There’s no reason why I have to,
00:28:48 just because we’re physically in between two oceans,
00:28:50 we all have to be represented by the same people,
00:28:52 whereas I can very easily have my security
00:28:55 be under someone and switch it as easily
00:28:57 as cell phone providers.
00:28:58 So, okay, but it doesn’t have to be geographical.
00:29:01 It can be ideas.
00:29:02 Sure.
00:29:03 I mean, this country represents a certain set of ideas.
00:29:05 Yes, it does.
00:29:06 It started out geographically.
00:29:07 It still is geographic.
00:29:08 It was both.
00:29:09 It started off as ideas as well.
00:29:10 But like, it was intricately.
00:29:12 I mean, that’s the way humans are.
00:29:14 I mean, there was no internet.
00:29:17 So it was, you were geographically in the same location
00:29:19 and you signed a bunch of documents
00:29:21 and then you kind of debated
00:29:22 and you wrote a bunch of stuff
00:29:24 and then you agreed on it.
00:29:26 Okay.
00:29:27 You understand that no one signed these documents
00:29:29 and no one agreed to it.
00:29:30 As Lysander Spooner pointed out over 150 years ago,
00:29:33 the constitution or the social contract, if anything,
00:29:36 is only binding to the signatories.
00:29:38 And even then they’re all long dead.
00:29:41 So it’s this fallacy that somehow,
00:29:43 because I’m in a physical place,
00:29:45 I’ve agreed, even though I’m screaming through your face
00:29:48 that I don’t agree,
00:29:49 to be subordinate to some imaginary, invisible monster
00:29:54 that was created 250 years ago.
00:29:56 And this idea of like, if you don’t like it,
00:29:57 you have to move.
00:29:58 That’s not what freedom means.
00:29:59 Freedom means I do what I want, not what you want.
00:30:02 So if you don’t like it, you move.
00:30:04 Okay, just to put some, I don’t like words and terms.
00:30:08 One, one, one, zero, one, one, one, zero, one.
00:30:09 Yeah, exactly.
00:30:10 Is that what your language is?
00:30:11 It is, I’m translating it all in real time.
00:30:14 But would you call the kind of ideas
00:30:18 that you’re advocating for
00:30:19 and we’re talking about anarchy?
00:30:21 Yes, anarchism, yes.
00:30:23 Okay, so let’s get into it.
00:30:24 Can you try to paint the utopia
00:30:29 that an anarchist worldview dreams about?
00:30:33 The only people who describe anarchism as utopia
00:30:36 are its critics.
00:30:37 If I told you right now,
00:30:39 and I wish I could say this factually,
00:30:41 that I have a cure for cancer,
00:30:42 that would not make us a utopia.
00:30:45 That would still probably be expensive.
00:30:47 We would still have many other diseases.
00:30:49 However, we would be fundamentally healthier,
00:30:51 happier and better off, all of us.
00:30:55 Than democracy.
00:30:56 So, sorry, I jumped back from the cancer.
00:30:58 No, than democracy or government.
00:31:00 So it’s only curing one major,
00:31:03 major life threatening problem,
00:31:05 but in no sense is it a utopia.
00:31:08 So what, can we try to answer this question,
00:31:12 same question many times,
00:31:13 which is what exactly is the problem with democracy?
00:31:17 The problem with democracy is that those who need leaders
00:31:19 are not qualified to choose them.
00:31:22 Those who need leaders are not qualified to choose them.
00:31:28 So.
00:31:29 That’s the central problem with democracy.
00:31:30 Not all of us need leaders.
00:31:32 Right.
00:31:33 So, what does it mean to need a leader?
00:31:38 Are you saying like people who are actually
00:31:41 like free thinkers don’t need leaders kind of thing?
00:31:44 Sure.
00:31:45 That’s a good way of working.
00:31:46 But like, you don’t, okay.
00:31:47 So do you acknowledge that there’s some value
00:31:51 in authority in different subjects?
00:31:56 So what that means is,
00:31:57 I don’t mean authority, somebody who’s in control of you,
00:32:00 but.
00:32:00 But you’re doing the definition switch.
00:32:04 Because.
00:32:04 I am, I am.
00:32:05 You’re right, you’re right.
00:32:06 It’s unfair.
00:32:07 Okay, that was bad.
00:32:08 But that’s what they do.
00:32:09 That’s their trick.
00:32:10 Yeah.
00:32:10 And this is one of the useful things,
00:32:12 by the way, that’s this total sidebar.
00:32:14 If people ask me for advice,
00:32:15 I always tell them if you’re gonna raise your kids,
00:32:17 raise them bilingual.
00:32:18 Because I was trilingual by the time I was six
00:32:20 and that teaches you to think in concepts.
00:32:23 Whereas if you only know one language,
00:32:24 you fall for things like this,
00:32:26 because using authority in the sense of a policeman
00:32:28 and someone has authority in physics,
00:32:30 it’s the same word.
00:32:31 Conceptually, they’re extremely different.
00:32:33 But if you’re only thinking in one language,
00:32:35 your brain is going to equate the two.
00:32:37 And that’s a trap that people
00:32:38 who only speak one language have.
00:32:40 For sure.
00:32:41 But even if you know multiple languages,
00:32:42 you can still use the trick of using
00:32:44 the worst of your convenience.
00:32:45 Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:46 To manipulate the conversation.
00:32:48 But you weren’t trying to do that,
00:32:49 but you fell into that.
00:32:50 I accidentally did it.
00:32:51 Yeah, you’re right.
00:32:52 We all tend to do that if you only speak one language
00:32:53 and think in one language.
00:32:55 But if, I guess let me rephrase it.
00:32:57 Are you against, do you acknowledge the value
00:33:02 of offloading your own effort
00:33:07 about a particular thing to somebody else?
00:33:09 Absolutely.
00:33:10 Like an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor,
00:33:12 absolute, a chef, infinite.
00:33:15 Isn’t that ultimately what a democracy is?
00:33:18 No.
00:33:19 Broadly defined, like you’re basically electing
00:33:21 a bunch of authorities.
00:33:22 Using the word you in two senses.
00:33:25 Using the word you meaning me as an individual,
00:33:26 not using you as a mass.
00:33:29 Yeah, as a mass, not you as an individual.
00:33:31 Right, so I would absolutely want someone
00:33:34 to provide for my security.
00:33:35 I would absolutely want someone to negotiate with me
00:33:38 for foreign power or something like that.
00:33:39 That does not mean it has to be predicated
00:33:42 and what lots of other people who I do not know
00:33:44 and if I do know them, probably would not respect,
00:33:47 think about.
00:33:48 It’s of no moral relevance to me.
00:33:51 Nor I to them.
00:33:52 So do you think this kind of,
00:33:54 there could be a bunch of humans that behave
00:33:57 kind of like ants in a distributed way.
00:34:01 There could be an emergent behavior in them
00:34:04 that results in a stable society.
00:34:06 Like isn’t that the hope with anarchy
00:34:09 is like without an overarching.
00:34:13 But ants, I mean ants are the worst example here
00:34:15 because ants have a very firm authority.
00:34:17 The queen?
00:34:18 Yeah, and they’re all drones.
00:34:20 They’re all clones of each other.
00:34:22 Yeah, but so if you forget the queen,
00:34:24 their behavior, they’re all,
00:34:27 well from your perspective,
00:34:28 from your human intelligent perspective,
00:34:30 but from their perspective,
00:34:31 they probably see each other as a bunch of individuals.
00:34:33 No they don’t.
00:34:34 Ants are very big on altruism
00:34:36 in the sense of self sacrifice.
00:34:40 They do not think the individual matters.
00:34:42 They routinely kill themselves
00:34:44 for the sake of the hive in the community.
00:34:46 But they, see that’s from the outside perspective,
00:34:49 from the individual perspective of the individual,
00:34:51 they probably, they don’t see it as altruism.
00:34:57 Right, but they view and they’re right
00:35:00 because the ants life is very ephemeral and cheap,
00:35:02 that it’s more important to continue this mass population
00:35:06 that one individual ant live.
00:35:08 Like bees are another even better example.
00:35:10 The honeybee, when they sting,
00:35:12 they only sting once and they die.
00:35:13 And they do it gladly because it’s like,
00:35:15 okay, this community is much more important than me
00:35:18 and they’re right.
00:35:19 Yeah, okay, so fine, let’s forget.
00:35:22 I’m being pedantic, but it’s important, I think.
00:35:24 I’m not just being pedantic
00:35:25 for the sake of being pedantic.
00:35:26 But there’s something beautiful that I won’t argue about
00:35:29 because I do, there’s an interesting point there
00:35:31 about individualism of ants.
00:35:33 I do think they’re more individual.
00:35:35 But let’s give your view of ants that they’re communists.
00:35:40 Okay, let’s go with the communist view of ants.
00:35:42 Okay, yeah.
00:35:44 But they’re still a beautiful emergent thing,
00:35:46 which is like they can function as a society
00:35:51 and without, I would say, centralized control.
00:35:57 Yeah, I agree with you.
00:35:58 It’s another argument.
00:35:59 So is that the hope for anarchy?
00:36:01 It’s like you just throw a bunch of people
00:36:03 that voluntarily wanna be in the same place
00:36:05 under the same set of ideas
00:36:06 and they kind of, like the doctors emerge,
00:36:10 the police officers emerge,
00:36:12 the different necessary structures
00:36:15 of a functional society emerge.
00:36:17 Do you know what the most beautiful example of anarchism is
00:36:20 that is just beyond beautiful
00:36:22 when you stop to think about it?
00:36:23 I’ll see Twitter.
00:36:24 I’m not being tongue in cheek.
00:36:25 Okay.
00:36:26 Language.
00:36:28 There’s infinite languages.
00:36:29 Language, the things that language can be used for
00:36:33 are bring tears to people’s eyes quite literally.
00:36:36 It’s also used for basic things.
00:36:38 No one is forcing us.
00:36:40 We speak two languages each at least.
00:36:42 No one’s forcing us to use English.
00:36:44 No one’s forcing us to use this dialect of English.
00:36:47 It’s a way, and despite there being
00:36:50 so many different languages, lingua franca emerge,
00:36:54 the language that everyone is, Latin.
00:36:56 Even in North Korea, they refer to the fish
00:36:59 and the different animals by the Latin scientific note.
00:37:02 No one decided this.
00:37:03 Sure, there’s an organization
00:37:05 that sets a binomial nomenclature,
00:37:07 but there’s no gun to anyone’s head
00:37:08 referring to a sea moth as a Pegasus species.
00:37:13 And when you think about how amazing language is,
00:37:16 and in some other context would say like,
00:37:18 well, you need to have a world government
00:37:21 and they’re deciding which is the verbs
00:37:23 and you have to have an official definition
00:37:25 and an official dictionary.
00:37:26 And none of that’s happened.
00:37:28 And I think anyone, even if they don’t agree
00:37:30 with my politics or my worldview,
00:37:32 cannot deny that the creation of language
00:37:35 is one of humanity’s most miraculous,
00:37:39 beautiful achievements.
00:37:40 Absolutely.
00:37:41 So there you go.
00:37:42 There’s one system where a kind of anarchy
00:37:45 can result in beauty, stability,
00:37:49 like sufficient stability,
00:37:50 and yet, flexibility to adjust it and so on.
00:37:55 And the internet helps it.
00:37:57 You get something like Urban Dictionary,
00:38:00 which starts creating absurd, both humor and wit.
00:38:05 But also language and syntax and jargon,
00:38:07 immediately you size people up.
00:38:09 If you say vertebral, I know you’re a doctor,
00:38:12 because that’s how they pronounce it, the spinal column.
00:38:15 I’m sure in your field, there’s certain jargon
00:38:17 and right away you can know if this person’s one of us
00:38:18 or not.
00:38:19 I mean, it’s infinite.
00:38:20 I mean, I don’t need to tell you.
00:38:22 It’s emojis too.
00:38:23 Yes, there’s so much there to study with language.
00:38:25 It’s fascinating.
00:38:26 But do you think this applies to human life?
00:38:30 The meat space, the physical space?
00:38:32 Yes.
00:38:33 So that kind of beauty can emerge
00:38:35 without writing stuff on paper, without laws.
00:38:40 You could have rules.
00:38:40 You don’t need, they don’t have to be laws.
00:38:43 So.
00:38:44 Enforced by violence.
00:38:45 Like that’s what, what’s a law?
00:38:48 A law is something that is unchosen.
00:38:50 A rule is something.
00:38:51 If I go to my pool, you know,
00:38:52 I sign up to be a member of pool,
00:38:55 on the wall there’s certain things.
00:38:56 It’s like, you know, certain number of people in the pool.
00:38:59 No peeing in here.
00:39:00 Good luck enforcing that one.
00:39:02 And so on and so forth.
00:39:03 Well, that’s the problem.
00:39:04 Aren’t you afraid that people are gonna pee in the pool?
00:39:06 That’s not as my big concern as mass incarceration,
00:39:10 as the fact that the police can steal more money
00:39:13 than burglars can.
00:39:14 The fact that innocent people can be killed
00:39:16 with no consequences.
00:39:18 The fact that war can be waged
00:39:20 and with no consequences for those who waged it.
00:39:24 The fact that so many men and women are being murdered
00:39:27 overseas and here,
00:39:28 and the people who are guiding these are regarded as heroic.
00:39:31 So you think there might,
00:39:32 that in an anarchist system,
00:39:34 there’s a possibility of having less wars
00:39:38 and less, what would you say, corruption
00:39:42 and less abuse of power?
00:39:44 Let’s talk, yes.
00:39:45 And let’s talk about corruption
00:39:47 because, and I made this point on Rogan,
00:39:49 you and I, again, the Russian background,
00:39:51 we realize that when it comes to corruption,
00:39:55 American is very naive.
00:39:56 Corruption they think is, oh, I got my brother a job
00:39:58 and he’s getting money on the table.
00:40:01 That’s not, when we’re talking about like state corruption,
00:40:04 things that are done in totalitarian states
00:40:06 and even to some extent in America,
00:40:07 like Jeffrey Epstein, Jillian Maxwell,
00:40:09 things that Stalin did, things that Hitler did.
00:40:11 When the CIA was torturing people at Gitmo,
00:40:14 they had to borrow KGB manuals
00:40:16 because they didn’t know how to torture correctly
00:40:17 because they never thought of these things.
00:40:20 It’s very hard for us to get into the mindset
00:40:23 of someone who’s like a child predator,
00:40:25 someone who, let me give you an example
00:40:27 from my forthcoming book.
00:40:28 There was a guy who was the head of Ukraine in the 30s,
00:40:31 I forget his name.
00:40:33 Now these old Soviets, they were tough.
00:40:34 I mean, they pride, Stalin means steel.
00:40:36 They pride themselves and their cruelty
00:40:39 and how strong they were.
00:40:40 And this was the purge.
00:40:42 Stalin is trying to, killing lots of people left and right
00:40:44 and his henchman, Beria had the quote,
00:40:48 find me the man and I’ll find you the crime.
00:40:50 They would accuse someone and they would torture him
00:40:52 until he talked and confessed
00:40:54 and then he had to turn people in.
00:40:56 And they took this guy in like beginning of the year,
00:40:59 I think it’s 36, 38, he was head of Ukraine.
00:41:01 By May, he’s arrested.
00:41:02 And they take him to the Ljubljanka, the basement
00:41:04 in the red square where they’re torturing people.
00:41:06 And they did the works on him.
00:41:08 And he was a good Soviet and he stood up.
00:41:11 Who knows what they did to him?
00:41:12 He didn’t talk.
00:41:13 So they said, okay, one moment.
00:41:16 They brought his teenage daughter in,
00:41:18 raped her in front of him, he talked.
00:41:20 So when we talk about corruption,
00:41:24 we would never in a million years think of this.
00:41:26 That’s not how our minds work.
00:41:29 So when you’re talking about states
00:41:31 and people where you don’t have ease of exit,
00:41:35 where you are forced to be under the auspices
00:41:38 of an organization creating a monopoly,
00:41:41 that leads to in extreme cases,
00:41:44 but in not as extreme cases, really nefarious outcomes.
00:41:49 Whereas if you have the option to leave
00:41:53 as a client or customer,
00:41:54 that would have a strongly limiting effect
00:41:58 on how a business and what it can get away with.
00:42:01 But don’t you think maybe,
00:42:03 I don’t know who the right example is,
00:42:04 whether it’s Stalin,
00:42:05 I think Hitler might be the better example of,
00:42:08 don’t you think, or Jeffrey Epstein perhaps,
00:42:12 don’t you think people who are evil
00:42:15 will find ways to manipulate human nature
00:42:20 to attain power, no matter the system?
00:42:23 Yes.
00:42:24 And like the corollary question is,
00:42:27 do you think those people can get more power
00:42:31 in a democracy, when there’s a government already in place?
00:42:37 It’s easily they get more power, more dangerous
00:42:39 to have a government in place.
00:42:40 First of all, sociopaths don’t know for their charm
00:42:43 and for their warmth.
00:42:44 Here’s the two situations.
00:42:47 In a free society, I’m a sociopath, I’m an evil person,
00:42:51 I’m the head of Macy’s.
00:42:53 In a state society, I’m an evil person, I’m a sociopath,
00:42:55 I’m the head of the US government.
00:42:57 Which of these are you more concerned with?
00:42:59 It’s like night and day.
00:43:00 So you would have far more decentralized military,
00:43:03 you would have far more decentralized security forces,
00:43:08 and they would be much more subject
00:43:10 to feedback from the market.
00:43:11 If you have an issue with Macy’s
00:43:14 or any store with a sweater, look at that transaction.
00:43:18 If you have an issue with the state,
00:43:20 hiring a lawyer costs more than a surgeon.
00:43:22 To even access the mechanism for dispute
00:43:25 is going to be exorbitant and price poor people
00:43:27 out of the market for conflict resolution immediately.
00:43:30 So right away, you have something
00:43:32 that’s extremely regressive.
00:43:34 And even though this is touted as some great equalizer,
00:43:37 it’s quite the opposite.
00:43:38 So in current society, there’s deep suspicion
00:43:41 of governments and states.
00:43:43 Not really.
00:43:44 Like just your example of Macy’s,
00:43:46 I mean, don’t you think a Hitler could rise
00:43:49 to be at the top of a social network
00:43:51 like Twitter and Facebook?
00:43:53 Okay, let’s suppose Hitler ran Twitter, okay?
00:43:56 Let’s take this thought experiment seriously.
00:43:58 Literally what could he do?
00:43:59 So the only tweets are gonna be
00:44:01 about how much the Jews suck, right?
00:44:02 Okay, fine.
00:44:04 Okay, all the cool people are leaving.
00:44:07 There could be some compelling,
00:44:09 like you said, evil people are charming.
00:44:12 There could be some compelling narratives
00:44:14 that could be with conspiracy theories, untruths,
00:44:18 that could be spread like propaganda.
00:44:22 Every criticism of anarchism is in fact a description.
00:44:25 Well, the strongest criticism of anarchism
00:44:27 are in fact descriptions of status quo.
00:44:29 Your concern is, under anarchism, propaganda would spread
00:44:34 and people would be taught the wrong ideas,
00:44:36 unlike the status quo?
00:44:37 That’s not even a criticism of anarchism.
00:44:39 I’m not actually criticizing.
00:44:41 It’s an open question of,
00:44:45 it’s an open question of in which system
00:44:48 will human nature be able to thrive more
00:44:54 and in which system would the evils
00:44:57 that arise in human nature
00:44:59 would be more easily suppressible?
00:45:02 That’s the open question.
00:45:03 It’s a scientific experiment
00:45:05 and I’m asking only from my perspective
00:45:07 of the fact that we’ve tried democracy
00:45:10 quite a bit recently and maybe you can correct me,
00:45:14 we haven’t yet seriously tried anarchy on a large scale.
00:45:18 Well, we don’t need to try to,
00:45:19 so anarchy isn’t like a country, right?
00:45:21 It’s like saying, well, if anarchy works,
00:45:25 how come we’ve never had an anarchist government, right?
00:45:27 So anarchism is a relationship
00:45:29 and language is an example of this.
00:45:31 It’s a worldwide anarchic system.
00:45:32 You and I have an anarchist relationship.
00:45:34 There’s almost no circumstances
00:45:35 that we’d be calling the police on each other.
00:45:37 I mean, I’m asking the same question
00:45:39 in a bunch of different directions
00:45:41 out of, born out of my curiosity,
00:45:44 is why is anarchy going to be better
00:45:49 at preventing the darker sides of human nature,
00:45:52 which presumably your criticism of government.
00:45:54 Because of decentralization.
00:45:56 So the darker side of human nature is an extreme concern.
00:46:00 Anyone who says it’s gonna go away
00:46:01 is absurd and fallacious.
00:46:04 I think that’s a nonstarter
00:46:05 when people say that everyone’s gonna be good.
00:46:07 Human beings are basically animals.
00:46:08 We’re capable of great beauty and kindness.
00:46:10 We’re capable of just complete cruel
00:46:13 and what we would call inhumanity,
00:46:15 but we see it on a daily basis even today.
00:46:17 And what’s interesting is the corporate press
00:46:21 won’t even tell you the darkest aspects
00:46:23 because that’s too upsetting to people.
00:46:25 So they’ll tell you about atrocities and horrors,
00:46:27 but only to a point.
00:46:29 And then when you actually do the homework,
00:46:31 you’re like, oh, it’s so much worse than,
00:46:32 like that thing about Stalin, right?
00:46:34 So we know in a broad sense that Stalin was a dictator.
00:46:38 We know that he killed a lot of people,
00:46:41 but it takes work to learn about the Holodomor.
00:46:44 It takes work to learn about
00:46:45 what those literal tortures were
00:46:47 and that this is the person who later,
00:46:49 FDR and Harry Truman were shaking hands with
00:46:52 and taking photos with
00:46:53 and was being sold to us as Uncle Joe.
00:46:55 He’s just like you and me.
00:46:57 So when you have a decentralized information network
00:47:03 as opposed to having three media networks,
00:47:06 it is a lot easier for information
00:47:08 that doesn’t fit what would be
00:47:09 the corporate America narrative to reach the populations.
00:47:13 And it would be more effective for democracy
00:47:16 because they’re in a much better position to be informed.
00:47:18 Now, you’re right.
00:47:20 It also means, well, if everyone has a mic,
00:47:22 that means every crazy person and with their wacky views.
00:47:25 And at a certain point, yeah, it has to become,
00:47:28 then there’s another level,
00:47:29 which is then the people have to be self enforcing.
00:47:32 And you see that in social media all the time
00:47:34 where someone says this, the other person jumps in.
00:47:37 You think, but isn’t social media a good example of this?
00:47:40 So you think ultimately without centralized control,
00:47:44 you can have stability?
00:47:48 What about the mob outrage and the mob rule,
00:47:52 the power of the mobs that emerge?
00:47:54 Power of the mob is a very serious concern.
00:47:58 Gustav Le Bon wrote a book in the 1890s called The Crowd.
00:48:01 And this was one of the most important books I’ve written
00:48:03 because it influenced both Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin
00:48:05 and they all talked about it.
00:48:07 And he made the point that under crowd psychology,
00:48:11 human lynching is another example of this.
00:48:13 None of those individuals or very few
00:48:16 would ever dream of doing these acts.
00:48:19 But when they’re all together
00:48:21 and you lose that sense of self, you become the ant
00:48:23 and you lose that sense of individually,
00:48:25 you’re capable of doing things that like in another context,
00:48:29 you’d be like, I should kill myself, I’m a monster.
00:48:32 So you’re worried about that, but doesn’t the mob have more
00:48:36 power under anarchy?
00:48:37 No, the mob has much less power in anarchy
00:48:39 because under anarchism, every individual
00:48:41 is fully empowered.
00:48:43 You wouldn’t have gun restrictions.
00:48:47 You would have people creating communities
00:48:50 based on shared values.
00:48:51 They’d be much more collegial, they’d be much more kind,
00:48:55 as opposed to when you’re forcing people
00:48:57 to be together in a polity
00:48:59 when they don’t have things in common.
00:49:01 That is like having a bad roommate.
00:49:03 If you’re forced to look like jails,
00:49:06 if you’re forced to be locked in a room with someone,
00:49:09 even if you had first liked them,
00:49:11 after a while, you’re going to start to hate them
00:49:13 and that leads to very nefarious consequences.
00:49:16 So as an anarchist, what do you do in a society like this?
00:49:21 Thrive.
00:49:22 I think I’m doing okay.
00:49:24 No, I mean, there’s an election coming up.
00:49:29 There’s, as you talk, You’re Welcome
00:49:36 is one of the 15 shows that you host.
00:49:40 It’s down to one.
00:49:44 Okay, it’s down to one.
00:49:46 But I’m a big fan.
00:49:49 You talk about libertarianism a little bit.
00:49:52 I mean, is there some practical political direction
00:49:57 in terms of we as a society should go?
00:50:01 I don’t mean we as a nation.
00:50:03 I mean, we as a collective of people
00:50:04 should go to make a better world
00:50:07 from an anarchist point of view.
00:50:09 Sure, I think politics is the enemy and anything.
00:50:13 How do you define politics?
00:50:14 The state, the government.
00:50:16 So anything that lessens its sway on people,
00:50:19 anything that delegitimizes it is good.
00:50:23 I wrote an article a few years ago
00:50:25 about how wonderful it is that Trump
00:50:27 is regarded as such a buffoon
00:50:29 because it’s very, very useful
00:50:32 to have a commander in chief who’s regarded as a clown
00:50:35 because it’s gonna take a lot
00:50:37 to get him to convince your kids to go overseas
00:50:39 and start killing people and making widows and orphans,
00:50:42 as well as those kids coming home in caskets.
00:50:44 Whereas if someone is regarded with prestige
00:50:47 and they’re like, oh, we need to send your kid overseas.
00:50:49 Oh, absolutely.
00:50:50 I mean, this guy’s great.
00:50:52 So that is a very healthy thing
00:50:54 where people are skeptical of the state.
00:50:57 But there’s a lot of people that regard him
00:51:01 as one of the greatest leaders we’ve ever had.
00:51:04 Yeah, Dinesh D’Souza, he’s another Lincoln.
00:51:08 When you talk shit about Trump
00:51:10 or talk shit about Biden,
00:51:14 I’m trying to find a line to walk
00:51:16 where they don’t immediately put you into
00:51:19 this person has Trump derangement syndrome
00:51:21 or they have the alternative to that.
00:51:25 I’m more than happy
00:51:27 when people are preemptively dismissing me
00:51:29 because then I don’t have to waste time engaging with them
00:51:31 because those people would be of no use to me.
00:51:33 When I was on Tim Pool recently, Tim Pool’s show,
00:51:36 Tim Pool’s known for his little hat.
00:51:38 I got a propeller beanie motorized
00:51:40 and it was just spinning the whole two hours.
00:51:42 I know, like a 1950s thing.
00:51:44 The point being I wore it because there’s lots of people
00:51:47 who would say, I can’t take seriously someone
00:51:50 who wears a hat like that.
00:51:51 And my point being, if you are the kind of person
00:51:53 who takes your cues based on someone’s wardrobe
00:51:56 as opposed to the content of your ideas,
00:51:58 you’re of no use to me as an ally.
00:52:01 So I’d be more than happy you preemptively abort
00:52:04 rather than waste our breath trying to engage.
00:52:07 This is a very, very deep thing that you and I disagree on,
00:52:10 which is, this goes to the trolling versus the love,
00:52:14 is I believe that person instinctually dismisses you
00:52:19 on the very basic surface level.
00:52:21 But deep down, there’s a wealth of a human being
00:52:27 that seeks the connection, seeks to understand deeply
00:52:32 to connect with other humans that we should speak to.
00:52:36 Yeah, you and I completely disagree.
00:52:38 See, you’re saying.
00:52:40 I’m saying there’s no mind there literally.
00:52:42 Okay, so I naturally think the majority of people
00:52:47 have the capacity to be thoughtful, intelligent,
00:52:55 and learn about ideas, ideas that they instinctually
00:53:01 based on their own current inner circle disagree with
00:53:07 and learn to understand, to empathize with the other.
00:53:10 And in the current climate,
00:53:13 there’s a divisiveness that discourages that.
00:53:15 And that’s where I see the value of love of encouraging
00:53:20 people to strip away that surface instinctual response
00:53:27 based on the thing they’ve been taught,
00:53:29 based on the things they listen to,
00:53:31 to actually think deeply.
00:53:32 Have you ever had gone to CVS or Duane Reade
00:53:36 and your bill, how much you owe them is $6,
00:53:40 and you give them a $10 bill in a single
00:53:42 and watch the look on their face?
00:53:44 You watch them void their bowels and panic
00:53:46 because you’ve given them $11 on a $6 bill.
00:53:49 This is not a mind capable or interested
00:53:52 in thoughts and ideas and learning.
00:53:54 No, you’re talking about the first moment
00:53:57 of a first moment where there’s an opportunity to think.
00:54:02 They are desperate to avoid it.
00:54:05 No, they’re just, it’s.
00:54:07 And incapable of it.
00:54:08 I just, they have the same exact experiences
00:54:12 I have every single day when I know it’s time
00:54:15 for me to go out on a run of five miles
00:54:18 or six miles or 10 miles.
00:54:20 I’m desperate to avoid it, and at the same time,
00:54:24 I know I have the capacity to do it,
00:54:26 and I’m deeply fulfilled when I do do it,
00:54:28 when I do overcome that challenge.
00:54:30 You are one of the great minds of our generation.
00:54:33 You are telling me that any of these people
00:54:35 can do anything close to the work you do?
00:54:38 Not in artificial intelligence,
00:54:39 but in the ability to be compassionate
00:54:45 towards other people’s ideas,
00:54:48 like understand them enough to be able.
00:54:50 Passion requires a certain baseline of intelligence,
00:54:53 because you have to perceive other people
00:54:54 as being different but of value.
00:54:56 Yeah, exactly.
00:54:56 That’s a sophisticated mindset.
00:54:59 I think most people are capable of it.
00:55:03 You don’t think so?
00:55:04 No, and nor are they interested in it.
00:55:06 But in that kind of,
00:55:08 if you don’t believe they’re capable of it,
00:55:11 how can anarchy be stable?
00:55:15 If you have a farm, there’s one farmer and 50 cows,
00:55:18 it’s very stable.
00:55:19 You’re just not, you’re not asking the cows
00:55:21 where to farm things.
00:55:25 Yeah, but the cows aren’t intelligent enough to do damage.
00:55:29 Cows certainly, bulls,
00:55:31 because they could do a lot of damage.
00:55:32 They could trample things, they could attack you.
00:55:34 Cows are like, how much do they weigh, like 4,000 pounds?
00:55:36 Can you connect the analogy then?
00:55:38 Because like.
00:55:39 Sure, you can’t expect that.
00:55:41 Yeah.
00:55:41 Saying a cow is a cow isn’t a slur.
00:55:44 It’s not saying you hate cows.
00:55:46 Cows, or even, let’s say,
00:55:47 the example I always use with good reason is dogs, okay?
00:55:51 I always say to study how human beings operate,
00:55:53 watch Cesar Millan,
00:55:55 because human beings and dogs have co evolved.
00:55:57 Our minds have both evolved in parallel tracks
00:55:59 to communicate with each other.
00:56:00 Dogs are, can be vicious.
00:56:03 Dogs for the most part are great, wonderful,
00:56:06 but you can’t expect the dog
00:56:08 to understand certain concepts.
00:56:11 It’s not an, and now most people are offended.
00:56:13 Are you saying I’m like a dog?
00:56:14 If you’re a dog person like I am,
00:56:15 this is actually a huge compliment.
00:56:17 Most dogs are better than most people,
00:56:19 but to get the idea that this is something
00:56:22 that is basically your peer is nonsensical.
00:56:26 Now, of course this sounds arrogant and elitist
00:56:28 and so on and so forth,
00:56:29 and I’m perfectly happy with that,
00:56:31 but it is very hard to persuade me or anyone
00:56:34 that if you walk, George Carlin has that joke,
00:56:36 think how smart the average person is,
00:56:37 then realize 50% of people are dumber than that.
00:56:40 If you walk around and see who’s out there,
00:56:42 these people are very kind.
00:56:43 They are of value.
00:56:45 They deserve to be treated with respect.
00:56:47 They deserve to be secure in their person.
00:56:49 They deserve to feel safe and to have love,
00:56:52 but the expectation that they should have
00:56:56 any sort of semblance of power over me or my life
00:56:59 is as nonsensical as asking Lassie to be my accountant.
00:57:03 So, but that goes to power,
00:57:05 that not to the ability, the capacity
00:57:09 to be empathetic, compassionate, intelligent.
00:57:12 What, if I were to try to prove you wrong?
00:57:16 That’s a good question, okay.
00:57:17 What would you be impressed by about society?
00:57:24 How would I show it to you?
00:57:25 That’s a good question.
00:57:26 How would you show it to me?
00:57:27 Because I think something has to be falsifiable
00:57:28 if you’re gonna make a claim, right?
00:57:30 So what would it?
00:57:33 Because we both made claims
00:57:35 that aren’t a kind of our own like interpretation
00:57:39 based on our interaction.
00:57:40 Like when I opened Twitter, everyone seems to say.
00:57:43 Why do you only follow one person?
00:57:44 Who do you follow?
00:57:45 Who’s the one person you follow?
00:57:46 Stoic Emperor.
00:57:48 I follow a lot of people.
00:57:49 I have a script.
00:57:50 I have a script that I have an entire interface.
00:57:55 So I think Twitter is really.
00:57:58 This is real love.
00:57:59 It’s not ironic love.
00:58:00 I love watching it and I’m sure you do too.
00:58:04 I love watching a quality mind at work
00:58:06 because when someone has a quality mind,
00:58:08 they’re often not self aware.
00:58:10 I catch this on myself of how it operates
00:58:12 and then when other people see it,
00:58:13 they’re like, oh my God, this is so beautiful
00:58:15 because there’s such an innocence to it.
00:58:17 But like when I opened Twitter, I’m energized.
00:58:21 There’s a lot of love on Twitter.
00:58:23 People say like.
00:58:24 I love Twitter.
00:58:24 I agree.
00:58:25 You don’t think I have a lot of love on Twitter?
00:58:27 My fans pay my rent.
00:58:29 I mean, I don’t know your experience of Twitter,
00:58:32 but when I look at your,
00:58:33 which is a fundamentally different thing.
00:58:35 I’m saying my experience from the.
00:58:37 So maybe you can tell me what your experience
00:58:39 is like as a human.
00:58:40 So when I observe your Twitter,
00:58:43 I think, I wouldn’t call it love.
00:58:48 I would call it fun.
00:58:50 Yes.
00:58:51 And because of that, that’s a different kind of,
00:58:54 that like love emerges from that
00:58:56 because people kind of learn that we’re having,
00:59:00 this is like game night, like.
00:59:02 Yes.
00:59:03 You know, we can talk shit a little bit.
00:59:06 We can, and you can even like pull in,
00:59:10 you can make fun of people.
00:59:11 You can have the crazy uncle come over
00:59:13 that is a huge Trump supporter,
00:59:16 somebody who hates Trump and you can have a little fun.
00:59:19 I get it.
00:59:20 It’s a different kind of thing.
00:59:21 I wouldn’t be able to be the,
00:59:25 you’re the host of game night.
00:59:26 Yes, yes.
00:59:27 So I wouldn’t be able to host that kind of game night.
00:59:30 I imagine you programming your robots
00:59:32 and you’re asking what is fun
00:59:34 and it just starts sparking.
00:59:35 Yeah, exactly.
00:59:37 Yeah.
00:59:38 What is fun?
00:59:38 So the robots in my life that survive
00:59:42 are the ones that don’t,
00:59:45 that like survive that whole programming process.
00:59:49 So they’re kind of like,
00:59:51 they’re kind of like the idiot from Dostoevsky,
00:59:52 they’re very like simple minded robots.
00:59:56 Fun is moving a can from one table to another.
01:00:00 That’s game night for our kin.
01:00:03 You know, one of my quotes is,
01:00:04 and I think about this every day
01:00:06 and I mean it with every fiber of my being,
01:00:09 we’re born knowing that life is a magical adventure
01:00:11 and it takes them years to train us to think otherwise.
01:00:14 And I think that Willy Wonka approach,
01:00:16 it’s a very Camus approach.
01:00:17 It’s something I believe with every fiber of my being.
01:00:20 I try to spread that as much as possible.
01:00:22 I think it is very sad.
01:00:24 I’m not being sarcastic.
01:00:25 It comes off as condescending.
01:00:27 I mean it at face value.
01:00:29 It’s very sad how many people are not receptive to that.
01:00:31 And I think a lot of those functions,
01:00:32 how they were raised.
01:00:34 And I could have very easily with my upbringing
01:00:37 have not maintained that perspective.
01:00:40 And there’s a lot of,
01:00:42 I have a lot of friends in recovery like AA
01:00:45 and they have an expression,
01:00:47 not my circus, not my monkeys, right?
01:00:49 That you can’t really take on other people’s problems
01:00:51 on your own at a certain point,
01:00:53 they have to do the work themselves
01:00:54 because you can only do so much externally.
01:00:56 And there are a lot of very damaged people out there.
01:01:00 And they’re damaged people who revel in being damaged.
01:01:04 And they are damaged people who desperately,
01:01:07 desperately, desperately wanna be well,
01:01:08 who desperately wanna be happy,
01:01:10 who desperately wanna find joy.
01:01:12 So if I can be the one and as arrogant as this sounds,
01:01:15 I’ll own it, who does give them that fun
01:01:18 and to tell them it doesn’t have to be like you thought.
01:01:21 Like it could be, it’s gonna hurt, it’s gonna suck,
01:01:24 but it’s still a magical adventure
01:01:25 and you’re gonna be okay,
01:01:26 cause you’ve been through worse.
01:01:28 Like that, if that could be my message,
01:01:30 I would own it all day long.
01:01:33 And so what does adventure look like for you?
01:01:35 Cause I mean, it actually boils down to,
01:01:37 I still disagree with you.
01:01:38 I think trolling can be
01:01:41 and very often is destructive for society.
01:01:45 Yes, I want to destroy society.
01:01:46 That is the goal.
01:01:48 I want to help many people.
01:01:50 Unironically, okay.
01:01:51 Unironically, yes.
01:01:54 What do I do with that?
01:01:55 Okay, so.
01:01:56 Whatever you want.
01:01:57 Do what thou wilt is the hall of the law.
01:02:00 Like I just wanna,
01:02:01 so you’re hosting game night
01:02:02 and I just wanna play Monopoly.
01:02:04 I wanna play, what’s it, Risk.
01:02:07 Okay, I wanna play these games.
01:02:08 And you’re saying. Those are aggressive games.
01:02:10 Yeah, I was trying to think like of a friendlier game,
01:02:12 but they’re all kind of aggressive.
01:02:15 Battleship.
01:02:16 Axis and allies, you know, fun stuff.
01:02:20 But like, so that’s an adventure,
01:02:24 but you’re saying that we want to destroy everything.
01:02:27 Even like the rules of those games are not.
01:02:31 You voluntarily agree to those rules.
01:02:33 The point is if someone comes in
01:02:35 who no one invited to game night
01:02:37 and are telling you, no, when you play Monopoly,
01:02:40 you have to get money when you land in free parking
01:02:42 or you don’t, it’s like, who are you?
01:02:45 We’re having our own fun and you smell.
01:02:49 I don’t know, but there’s an aggressive.
01:02:52 There’s an aggression.
01:02:53 Let me speak to that, which I think you’re picking up on.
01:02:56 I had a friend named Martha, Marcia, excuse me.
01:02:58 She ran something called cuddle parties,
01:02:59 which people laughed at about a lot back in the day.
01:03:02 And the premise of the cuddle parties,
01:03:03 everyone got together and cuddled, right?
01:03:04 And it’s like, ah, ha, ha.
01:03:05 Then you stop to think about it
01:03:06 and you realize physical contact is extremely important.
01:03:09 And a lot of people don’t have it.
01:03:11 And if this is a mechanism of people getting that,
01:03:12 it actually is going to have
01:03:13 profound positive psychological consequences.
01:03:15 So after she explained it, I’m like, okay,
01:03:17 we laughed at this because it’s weird.
01:03:18 And now that I think about it, this is wonderful.
01:03:20 And I asked her about like the tough question,
01:03:23 I go, what if guys get turned on?
01:03:25 And on their website, it even has a rule,
01:03:27 like do not fear the erection, right?
01:03:28 Because it’s going to be a natural consequence
01:03:30 of physical proximity.
01:03:31 And the point she goes, she said this,
01:03:33 I think about this all the time.
01:03:34 People will take as much space as you let them.
01:03:38 It is incumbent on each of us to set our own boundaries.
01:03:42 We all have to learn when to say,
01:03:44 no, you’re making me uncomfortable.
01:03:46 If someone doesn’t respect your right
01:03:48 to have your boundary to be uncomfortable,
01:03:50 this person is not your friend.
01:03:51 Now they can say, I don’t understand.
01:03:54 Like, why is this okay?
01:03:55 Why is that not?
01:03:56 Let me know you better so I’m respectful of you.
01:03:59 But if they roll their eyes and they’re like,
01:04:01 get over, I’m going to do what I want,
01:04:02 this person is not interested in knowing you as a human being.
01:04:07 Okay.
01:04:08 And that is the aggression.
01:04:08 You have to draw those lines.
01:04:10 I mean, but that’s a very positive way
01:04:13 of phrasing that aggression.
01:04:14 I’m a very positive person.
01:04:17 But the trolling, there’s a destructive thing to it.
01:04:20 Yes.
01:04:20 That hurts others.
01:04:22 Yes.
01:04:23 But it’s not bad people.
01:04:25 I only troll as a reaction or towards those in power.
01:04:28 Okay.
01:04:29 So maybe let’s talk about trolling a little bit.
01:04:31 Because trolling, when it can, maybe you can correct me,
01:04:36 but I’ve seen it become a game for people
01:04:38 that’s enjoyable in itself.
01:04:41 I disagree with that.
01:04:44 That’s not a good thing.
01:04:45 If you are there just to hurt innocent people,
01:04:48 you are a horrible human being.
01:04:50 But doesn’t trolling too easily become that?
01:04:55 I don’t know about easily.
01:04:55 Let me give you an example of where trolling came from.
01:04:58 The original troll was Andy Kaufman.
01:05:01 He was on the show Taxi.
01:05:02 He was a performance artist, not a stand up comedian.
01:05:05 And this is a quintessential example of trolling.
01:05:08 He had a character where he was basically
01:05:10 like a lounge singer.
01:05:11 He had these glasses on and just a terrible singer
01:05:14 and so on and so forth.
01:05:15 And he denied it was him.
01:05:18 And he came out and I’m blanking on the guy’s name.
01:05:21 I can’t believe it.
01:05:22 Tony Clifton.
01:05:22 Wow.
01:05:23 Yeah.
01:05:24 He came out in the audience and he goes,
01:05:25 you know, my wife died a few years ago.
01:05:28 Every time I look at my daughter Sarah’s eyes,
01:05:29 I can see my wife.
01:05:30 Sarah, come out here.
01:05:31 Let’s do a duet.
01:05:32 And Sarah was like 11, sits on his lap.
01:05:35 They start singing duet.
01:05:36 Her voice cracks.
01:05:37 He smacks her across the face.
01:05:38 What the hell are you doing?
01:05:39 You’re making an ass out of me in front of these people.
01:05:42 She starts crying.
01:05:43 The audience is booing and he goes,
01:05:45 don’t boo her, you’re just gonna make her cry more.
01:05:47 Now it ends.
01:05:50 This wasn’t his daughter.
01:05:51 It wasn’t even a child.
01:05:52 It was an actress.
01:05:52 This was all set up.
01:05:53 He’s exploiting their love of children
01:05:57 in order to force them to be performers.
01:05:59 That is trolling.
01:06:01 No one is actually getting hurt.
01:06:02 It’s a humorous, though twisted exchange.
01:06:05 If you go online looking for weak people
01:06:10 and you are there to denigrate them
01:06:13 just for them being weak or in some way inferior to you,
01:06:16 that is the wrong approach.
01:06:18 I am best on the counter punch.
01:06:21 A lot of times people come to me
01:06:23 and they’ll be like, I hope you die.
01:06:24 You’re ugly.
01:06:25 You’re disgusting.
01:06:26 And there’s this great quote from Billy Idol,
01:06:28 which I’m gonna mango here, something effective.
01:06:30 I love it when people are rude to me,
01:06:31 then I can stop pretending to be nice.
01:06:33 Then you start fights.
01:06:35 Now it’s a chance for me to finish it
01:06:37 and make an example of this person.
01:06:38 But that’s very, very different from
01:06:40 I’m gonna go around and humiliate people
01:06:42 for the sake of doing it, in my view.
01:06:46 And I can see how one would lead to the other.
01:06:48 Yeah, but that’s my fundamental concern with it.
01:06:50 So my dream is to put, use technology,
01:06:55 create platforms that increase
01:06:58 the amount of love in the world.
01:07:00 And to me, trolling is doing the opposite.
01:07:05 So like Andy Kaufman is brilliant.
01:07:09 So I love, obviously, it sounds like I’m a robot thing.
01:07:12 I love humor, okay?
01:07:15 Humor is good.
01:07:18 One, one, one, zero, one, one, one, one.
01:07:21 But like, it’s, I just see like 4chan.
01:07:25 I see that you can often see that humor quickly turn.
01:07:29 Yeah, because what happens is a lot of low status people,
01:07:31 this is their one mechanism through sadism
01:07:34 to feel empowered, and then they can hide behind,
01:07:38 well, I’m just joking.
01:07:40 Yeah, like there’s this dark thing.
01:07:41 Yeah, that’s not acceptable.
01:07:42 That’s something you can’t have.
01:07:43 There’s a dark LOL that people do,
01:07:45 which is like they’ll say like the shittiest thing.
01:07:49 Right, because they feel. And then do LOL after.
01:07:51 Like, as if, I don’t even know like what is happening
01:07:55 in that dark mind of yours.
01:07:56 Because they are feeling powerless in their lives,
01:08:00 and they see someone who they perceive as higher status
01:08:02 or more powerful than them, or even not appear,
01:08:05 and they, through their words,
01:08:07 cause a reaction in this person.
01:08:09 So they feel like they are, in a very literal sense,
01:08:11 making a difference on earth,
01:08:12 and they matter in a very dark way.
01:08:15 It’s disturbing.
01:08:16 This is not, I mean, it’s unfortunate
01:08:18 that that term trolling is used for that,
01:08:21 as opposed to what Andy Kaufman does,
01:08:22 as opposed to what I do.
01:08:24 It really is a sinister thing,
01:08:29 and it’s something I’m not at all a fan of.
01:08:31 How do we fight that?
01:08:33 So, like a neighboring concept of that
01:08:37 is conspiracy theories, which is.
01:08:39 I don’t think they’re neighboring at all.
01:08:41 Well, let me give a sort of naive perspective.
01:08:45 Maybe you can educate me on this.
01:08:46 From my perspective, conspiracy theories
01:08:49 are these constructs of ideas
01:08:52 that go deeper and deeper and deeper
01:08:55 into creating worlds
01:09:01 where there’s powerful pedophiles controlling things,
01:09:06 like these very sophisticated models of the world
01:09:11 that in part might be true,
01:09:14 but in large part, I would say,
01:09:15 are figments of imagination
01:09:18 that become really useful constructs.
01:09:22 Self reinforcing.
01:09:23 Self reinforcing for then feeding,
01:09:26 like empowering the trolls
01:09:29 to attack the powerful, the conventionally powerful.
01:09:34 I don’t think that’s a function of conspiracy theories.
01:09:37 Now, let’s talk about conspiracy theories,
01:09:38 because one of my quotes is,
01:09:39 “‘You take one red pill, not the whole bottle.’”
01:09:41 This concept that everything in life
01:09:45 is at the function of a small cadre of individuals
01:09:50 would be, for many people, reassuring,
01:09:53 because as bad as it looks, you know they,
01:09:55 whoever they are, it’s usually the Jews,
01:09:57 aren’t gonna let it get that bad, that they will pull back.
01:10:00 Or the black pill is that they aren’t intentionally
01:10:05 trying to destroy everything,
01:10:07 and there’s nothing we can do and we’re doomed.
01:10:08 And there’s an amazing book by Arthur Herman
01:10:10 called The Idea of Declined Western History.
01:10:12 It’s one of my top 10 books
01:10:14 where he goes through every 20 years
01:10:16 how there’s a different population that say,
01:10:18 “‘It’s the end of the world, here’s the proof.’”
01:10:20 And very often, the proof is something
01:10:22 that is kind of self fulfilling,
01:10:24 where it’s not falsifiable.
01:10:26 And we both have to think of ways
01:10:27 to falsify our claims from earlier.
01:10:29 So it is a big danger.
01:10:32 It’s a big danger online, because very quickly,
01:10:35 if someone who you thought was good,
01:10:38 but now is bad on one aspect,
01:10:40 well, they’re controlled opposition,
01:10:41 or they’ve been taken over,
01:10:44 or they’ve been kind of appropriated by the bad people,
01:10:47 whoever those bad people would be.
01:10:49 I don’t know that I have a good answer for this.
01:10:52 I don’t think it’s as pervasive as people think.
01:10:56 The number of people who believe conspiracy theory?
01:10:57 Right, I mean, and also conspiracy theory
01:11:00 is a term used to dismiss ideas that have some currency.
01:11:04 The Constitutional Convention was a conspiracy.
01:11:06 The Founding Fathers got together secretly
01:11:08 on this war to secrecy in Philadelphia,
01:11:10 said, we’re throwing out the Articles of Confederation,
01:11:11 we’re making a new government, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:11:12 And Luther Martin left, and he told everyone,
01:11:15 this is a conspiracy, and they’re like,
01:11:16 yeah, whatever, Luther Martin.
01:11:17 So, and Jeffrey Epstein was a conspiracy,
01:11:20 Harvey Weinstein was a conspiracy,
01:11:21 Bill Cosby was a conspiracy.
01:11:22 They all knew, they didn’t care.
01:11:24 Communist infiltration in America,
01:11:26 there’s a great book by Eugene Lyons
01:11:28 called The Red Decade.
01:11:30 They all knew every atrocity
01:11:32 that was done under Stalinism was excused in the West,
01:11:36 and if you didn’t believe it,
01:11:37 oh, you’ve got this crazy anti Russia conspiracy.
01:11:40 So it’s a term that is weaponized in a negative sense,
01:11:43 but that does not at all imply
01:11:45 that it does not have very negative real life consequences
01:11:49 because it’s kind of a cult of one, right?
01:11:52 Like I’m at home with my computer,
01:11:54 I bang into this ideology,
01:11:56 anyone who doesn’t agree with me,
01:11:58 they are blind, they’re oblivious,
01:12:00 mom and dad, my friends, you don’t get it.
01:12:02 We were warned about people like you,
01:12:05 and I think there’s a very heavy correlation,
01:12:08 and I’m not a psychiatrist, of course,
01:12:10 between that and certain types of mild mental illness,
01:12:12 like some kind of paranoid schizophrenia
01:12:14 and things like that, because after a certain point,
01:12:17 if everything is a function of this conspiracy,
01:12:20 there’s no randomness or beauty in life.
01:12:22 Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if you can say
01:12:25 anything interesting about it in the way of advice
01:12:28 of how to take a step into conspiracy theory world
01:12:34 without completely going, like diving deep,
01:12:37 because it seems like that’s what happens.
01:12:39 People can’t look at Jeffrey Epstein.
01:12:42 I can tell you what the advice I’d have
01:12:44 is, seriously and rigorously, without going,
01:12:48 because you can look at Jeffrey Epstein
01:12:49 and say there’s a deeper thing.
01:12:52 You can always go deeper.
01:12:53 It’s like Jeffrey Epstein was just a tool
01:12:55 of the lizard people, and the lizard people are the tool.
01:12:59 Well, they say Satanists, in this case.
01:13:04 Somehow, recently, very popular,
01:13:06 spedophiles somehow always involved.
01:13:08 I’m not understanding any of that.
01:13:11 Legitimately, I say this both humorously and seriously.
01:13:15 I need to look into it, and I guess the bigger question
01:13:18 I’m asking, how does a serious human being,
01:13:21 somebody with a position at a respectable university,
01:13:25 look at a conspiracy theory and look into it?
01:13:28 When I look at somebody like Jeffrey Epstein,
01:13:30 who had a role at MIT, and I think I’m not happy,
01:13:35 personally, I wasn’t there when Jeffrey Epstein was there.
01:13:42 I’m not happy with the behavior of people now
01:13:45 about Jeffrey Epstein, about the bureaucracy
01:13:49 and the everybody’s trying to keep quiet,
01:13:51 hoping it blows over, without really looking into any,
01:13:55 looking in a deep philosophical way
01:13:59 of how do we let this human being be among us?
01:14:03 Can I give you a better example that is conspiratorial?
01:14:08 The Speaker of the House,
01:14:09 the longest serving Republican Speaker of the House,
01:14:10 Dennis Hastert, was a pedophile.
01:14:12 He went to jail.
01:14:14 The Democrats don’t throw this
01:14:16 in the Republicans faces every five minutes.
01:14:18 Not even Democratic activists.
01:14:19 I find that very, very odd, and not what I would predict.
01:14:23 Now, I’m not saying there’s some kind of conspiracy,
01:14:26 but when it comes to things like sexual predation,
01:14:28 which is something that I’m very, very concerned about.
01:14:31 I have an uncle now.
01:14:32 My sister just had her second kid recently.
01:14:33 He’s adorable.
01:14:36 It’s something that I don’t understand.
01:14:40 It feels as if there’s a lot of people
01:14:44 who want this to all go away.
01:14:45 Now, I think it’s also because we don’t have
01:14:47 the vocabulary and framework to discuss it,
01:14:50 because when you start talking about things like children
01:14:52 and these kind of issues, we want to believe it’s all crap,
01:14:55 because it’s, for those of us
01:14:56 who aren’t in this kind of mindset,
01:14:58 the idea that this happens to kids and happens frequently
01:15:01 is something so horrible that it’s just like,
01:15:03 I don’t even want to hear it,
01:15:04 and that does these children and adult survivors
01:15:07 an enormous disservice.
01:15:08 So I don’t know that I have any particular insight on this.
01:15:11 But see, how do you, the Catholic Church,
01:15:14 again, there’s all these topics that.
01:15:17 Public school teachers are far more proportionately
01:15:20 peders of children than the Catholic Church.
01:15:21 Man, I don’t know what, you’re right, you’re right.
01:15:24 Perhaps I’ve been reading a lot about Stalin and Hitler,
01:15:29 somehow it’s more comforting to be able to.
01:15:32 Yeah, because it’s there, and then.
01:15:34 And then, and then the atrocities that are happening now,
01:15:38 it’s a little bit more difficult because.
01:15:39 There was a New York Times article, sorry to interrupt you,
01:15:41 where they had people tracking down child pornography.
01:15:45 And I think the article said they didn’t have enough people
01:15:47 just to cover the videotapes of infants being raped.
01:15:51 And we can even wrap our heads around reading Lolita,
01:15:54 like, okay, she’s 14, 12, okay, it’s still a female.
01:15:57 An infant, it’s something that,
01:15:59 again, like with the Stalin example,
01:16:01 we sat down here for a hundred years,
01:16:02 we would never think of something like this,
01:16:03 think of it in a sexual context, it makes no sense.
01:16:06 So, and the fact that this is international,
01:16:08 okay, we eliminated completely in America.
01:16:11 Well, then they’re gonna go find,
01:16:12 there’s infants all over the world,
01:16:14 there’s video cameras all over the world.
01:16:15 So then it has to become a conspiracy
01:16:18 because someone has to film it, I’m filming it,
01:16:20 you’re buying it, your kid.
01:16:23 It is literally a conspiratorial,
01:16:25 not in the sense of like a mafia conspiracy
01:16:27 or some government illuminati,
01:16:29 but there is our networks designed to produce this product.
01:16:33 See, but like what I’m trying to do now,
01:16:38 and part of the, one of the nice things
01:16:40 with like a podcast and other things I’m involved with
01:16:43 is removing myself from having any kind of boss
01:16:46 so I can do whatever that helps.
01:16:48 Oh, it’s so wonderful, that just happened to me,
01:16:50 it’s the most wonderful thing ever.
01:16:52 So I could do, I can actually, in moderation,
01:16:55 consider like look into stuff.
01:16:57 Careful though, I was gonna write a book about this
01:16:59 that people pointed out,
01:17:00 you sure wanna do this research?
01:17:02 Because if you start Googling around
01:17:04 for this kind of stuff, it’s on your computer.
01:17:06 Oh, in that sense, I’m more concerned about,
01:17:09 you know, it’s the Nietzsche thing,
01:17:11 looking into the abyss, like you wanna be very,
01:17:13 I believe I can do this kind of thing in moderation
01:17:16 without slipping into the depths.
01:17:19 I think that’s intelligence, that’s like,
01:17:23 I recently quote unquote looked into like
01:17:26 the UFO community, the extraterrestrial,
01:17:30 whatever community.
01:17:32 I think it always frustrated me
01:17:34 that the scientific community like rolled their eyes
01:17:37 at all the UFO sightings, all that kind of stuff.
01:17:40 Even though there could be fascinating, beautiful,
01:17:42 physical fun, like, first of all,
01:17:44 there could legit. Like ball lightning.
01:17:46 The ball lightning, right, that’s at the very basic level
01:17:49 is a fascinating thing.
01:17:51 And also, it could be something like,
01:17:57 I mean, I don’t know, but it could be something interesting,
01:17:59 like worth looking into.
01:18:02 My grandfather was an air traffic controller
01:18:04 back in the Soviet Union.
01:18:05 And he said, we saw this stuff all the time.
01:18:08 These are planes that were not moving
01:18:09 or whatever things that were not moving
01:18:11 according to anything we knew about.
01:18:13 So it’s absolutely real.
01:18:14 He’s not some jerk with an iPhone in his backyard.
01:18:18 This is a military professional who understood technology,
01:18:22 who knew where the secret bases were.
01:18:24 So if he’s telling me, it doesn’t mean it’s Martians,
01:18:27 but he’s telling me there’s something there.
01:18:29 And there are many examples of these like military people.
01:18:31 These aren’t some layman who sees a store.
01:18:33 Yeah, these are legit people.
01:18:34 Yeah, and so you can dismiss,
01:18:37 when you’re talking about professionals
01:18:38 who are around aircraft all the time,
01:18:40 who are familiar with aircraft at the highest levels,
01:18:42 and they’re seeing things that they can’t explain,
01:18:45 they’re clearly not stupid
01:18:46 and they’re clearly not under form.
01:18:47 So there’s different ways to dismiss it.
01:18:49 For example, you were saying
01:18:53 that trolling is a good mechanism.
01:18:55 I’m against that, but I’m not dismissing it
01:18:57 by like rolling my eyes.
01:19:00 I’m considering legitimately that you’re way smarter than me
01:19:04 and you understand the world better than me.
01:19:05 Like I’m allowing myself to consider that possibility
01:19:08 and thinking about it.
01:19:09 Like maybe that’s true, like seriously considering it.
01:19:12 That’s what I feel the way people should approach
01:19:17 intelligent people, serious quote unquote people,
01:19:20 scientists should approach conspiracy theories.
01:19:22 Like look at it carefully.
01:19:26 First of all, is it possible that the earth is flat?
01:19:29 It’s not trivial to show that the earth is not flat.
01:19:32 It’s a very good exercise.
01:19:33 You should go through it.
01:19:34 Yes.
01:19:35 But once you go through it,
01:19:36 you realize that based on a lot of data
01:19:41 and a lot of evidence,
01:19:42 and there’s a lot of different experiments
01:19:43 you can do yourself actually
01:19:45 to show that the earth is not flat.
01:19:47 Okay.
01:19:48 The same kind of process can be taken
01:19:50 for a lot of different conspiracy theories
01:19:52 and it’s helpful.
01:19:54 And without slipping into the depths of lizard people
01:19:58 running everything.
01:20:00 That’s where I’ve now listened to two episodes
01:20:06 of Alex Jones’s show
01:20:08 because he goes crazy deep
01:20:12 into different kind of worldviews
01:20:16 that I was not familiar with.
01:20:18 Right.
01:20:19 And I don’t know what to make of it.
01:20:20 I mean, the reason I’ve been listening to it
01:20:22 is because there’s been a lot of discussions
01:20:25 about platforming of different people.
01:20:27 Yeah.
01:20:28 And I’ve been thinking about what does censorship mean?
01:20:30 I’ve been thinking about whether,
01:20:34 because Joe Rogan said he’s gonna have Alex on again.
01:20:39 And then I enjoyed it as a fan,
01:20:43 just the entertainment of it.
01:20:45 But then I actually listened to Alex
01:20:48 and I was thinking,
01:20:49 is this human being dangerous for the world?
01:20:53 Like is the ideas he’s saying dangerous for the world?
01:20:55 I’m more concerned with the Russian conspiracy
01:20:57 that we had for three years.
01:20:59 The claim that our election was not legitimate
01:21:01 and that everyone in the Trump White House
01:21:02 is a stooge of Putin.
01:21:04 And the people who said this had no consequences for this.
01:21:07 Alex Jones doesn’t have the respect that they do.
01:21:10 These are both areas of concern for me.
01:21:12 But he might if he’s given more platform.
01:21:15 So like the people who’ve,
01:21:18 and I’d be curious to,
01:21:19 I’m also a little bit,
01:21:22 I don’t know what to think about the idea
01:21:24 that Russians hacked the election.
01:21:27 That it seems too easily accepted in the mainstream media.
01:21:30 Hillary Clinton said that how they did it
01:21:33 was they had ads on the dark web.
01:21:37 Now you and I both know what the dark web is.
01:21:40 So the possibility of ads on the dark web
01:21:43 having a proportional influence on the election
01:21:47 is literally zero.
01:21:48 Perhaps I should look into it more carefully,
01:21:50 but I’ve found very little good data
01:21:53 on exactly what did the Russians do to hack elections.
01:21:58 Like technically speaking,
01:22:00 what are we talking about here?
01:22:01 Like as opposed to these kind of weird,
01:22:03 like the best thing there’s a couple of books
01:22:05 and like reporting on like farms.
01:22:09 Like it’s.
01:22:10 Troll farms, yeah.
01:22:11 Troll farms.
01:22:12 But let’s see the data.
01:22:14 Like how many exactly?
01:22:16 What are we talking about?
01:22:17 Like what were they doing?
01:22:19 Not just like some anecdotal discussions of,
01:22:22 but like relative to the bigger,
01:22:26 the size of Facebook.
01:22:28 Like if there’s a few people, several hundreds,
01:22:32 say posting different political things on Facebook
01:22:36 relative to the full size of Facebook.
01:22:39 Let’s look at the full size.
01:22:41 Right, you’re thinking like a scientist.
01:22:42 The actual impact.
01:22:43 Yeah.
01:22:44 Like, cause it’s fascinating the social dynamics
01:22:47 of viral information of videos.
01:22:50 When Donald Trump retweets something,
01:22:53 I think that’s understudied the effect of that.
01:22:56 Like he retweeted a clip with Joe Rogan
01:23:01 and Mike Tyson, where Mike Tyson says
01:23:05 that he finds fighting orgasmic.
01:23:08 I don’t understand that, but they’d be fascinating
01:23:10 to think like what is the ripple effect
01:23:12 on the social dynamic of our society
01:23:16 from retweeting a clip about Mike Tyson.
01:23:19 What’s your favorite Trump tweet?
01:23:22 I tuned them out a long time ago, unfortunately.
01:23:26 I have, this goes to the,
01:23:33 you and I have a different relationship with Donald Trump.
01:23:35 You appreciate the art form of trolling.
01:23:37 Sexual versus nonsexual.
01:23:38 Nonsexual, yeah.
01:23:39 So I tend to prefer Bill Clinton.
01:23:44 He’s more my type.
01:23:45 No, I’m just kidding.
01:23:46 I don’t know.
01:23:47 You don’t like that consent stuff.
01:23:48 No, the consent, no.
01:23:50 No, you appreciate the art form of trolling
01:23:53 and Donald Trump is a master.
01:23:57 He’s the da Vinci of trolling.
01:24:00 So I tend to think that trolling
01:24:03 is ultimately destructive for society
01:24:05 and then Donald Trump takes nothing seriously.
01:24:07 He’s playing a game.
01:24:09 He’s making a game out of everything.
01:24:10 He takes a lot of things seriously.
01:24:11 I think he’s very committed to international peace.
01:24:14 Sorry, I shouldn’t speak so strong.
01:24:16 I think he takes, actually, yes,
01:24:18 a lot of things seriously.
01:24:20 I meant on Twitter and the game of politics.
01:24:25 Yeah.
01:24:26 He is, he only takes.
01:24:29 Irreverently.
01:24:30 Yeah.
01:24:31 Yeah.
01:24:32 And I appreciate it.
01:24:35 I just would like to focus on
01:24:39 genuine, real expressions of humanity,
01:24:43 especially positive.
01:24:44 Well, this is one.
01:24:45 This is my favorite tweet.
01:24:46 My fans got it lasered, etched,
01:24:48 and put in a block of Lucite for me.
01:24:50 And he said, every time I speak of the losers and haters,
01:24:54 I do so with great affection.
01:24:56 They cannot help the fact that they were born fucked up.
01:24:59 That’s an actual Trump tweet.
01:25:00 It’s my favorite one.
01:25:03 And that’s kind of nice.
01:25:04 And that’s love.
01:25:05 That’s love.
01:25:06 That’s kind of nice.
01:25:07 Great affection.
01:25:08 That, I mean.
01:25:11 Exclamation point.
01:25:12 I broke Lex.
01:25:19 What is love?
01:25:21 Yeah, the sparks are flying.
01:25:22 But I have to kind of analyze that
01:25:25 from a literary perspective,
01:25:27 but it seems like there’s love in there.
01:25:29 Like a little bit.
01:25:30 Yeah.
01:25:31 It’s a little bit lighthearted.
01:25:32 Cause he’s saying, even when I’m going after them,
01:25:34 don’t take it so seriously.
01:25:36 Yeah.
01:25:37 That’s nice.
01:25:37 It is nice.
01:25:38 That’s acknowledging the game of it.
01:25:39 Yes.
01:25:40 That’s nice.
01:25:41 He’s not always.
01:25:43 There’s some things he’s very, very vicious.
01:25:45 Yeah.
01:25:45 Very vicious.
01:25:46 He’s done things that I can tell you about
01:25:48 that I’m like, this is a bad person.
01:25:51 What do you think about one of the,
01:25:53 okay, listen, I’m not,
01:25:55 for people listening,
01:25:56 I do not have Trump derangement syndrome.
01:25:59 I don’t, I see,
01:26:01 I try to look for the good and the bad in everybody.
01:26:05 One thing, perhaps it’s irrational,
01:26:07 but perhaps because I’ve been reading history,
01:26:10 I, the one triggering thing for me
01:26:14 is the delaying of elections.
01:26:18 I believe in elections.
01:26:20 And this is the part that you probably disagree with,
01:26:24 but I, you know, I believe in the value of people voting.
01:26:29 And I just seen too many dictators,
01:26:32 the place where they finally,
01:26:34 the big switch happens
01:26:36 when you question the legitimacy of elections.
01:26:39 Who’s been questioning the legitimacy of elections
01:26:41 for the last three years?
01:26:43 I’ve only heard Donald Trump do it last year,
01:26:45 but the last three years you’re saying somebody else?
01:26:48 You don’t think, not my president, illegitimate,
01:26:51 we’re not gonna normalize him as president,
01:26:52 Russia hacked this election, impeached,
01:26:55 you’re not a real president.
01:26:56 You don’t think that’s questioning the legitimacy of 2016?
01:26:59 Nah, it’s a good, I haven’t been paying attention enough,
01:27:02 but I would imagine that argument has been,
01:27:05 that I haven’t actually heard too many people,
01:27:08 but I imagine that’s been a popular thing to say.
01:27:12 Okay, I, but nevertheless, that’s a part,
01:27:16 that didn’t, that’s not a statement
01:27:19 that gained power enough to say
01:27:22 that Barack Obama will keep being president
01:27:27 or Hillary Clinton should be president.
01:27:30 Newsweek had that article,
01:27:31 how Hillary Clinton could still be president, Newsweek.
01:27:34 No, but she’s not.
01:27:35 That’s what I’m saying.
01:27:36 My worry isn’t, my worry isn’t saying
01:27:41 that the election was illegitimate
01:27:43 and people whining at a mass scale
01:27:45 and then Fox News or CNN reporting for years
01:27:49 or books being written for years.
01:27:51 My worry is legitimately martial law.
01:27:54 A person stays president.
01:27:57 So here’s the issue.
01:27:59 Like there’s a phase shift that happens in a dictatorship.
01:28:02 I did a book on North Korea.
01:28:04 I’m not someone who thinks dictatorship should be taken
01:28:06 lightly.
01:28:07 I’m not someone who thinks it can’t happen here.
01:28:09 I think a lot of times people are desperate
01:28:12 for dictatorship.
01:28:13 So I am with you.
01:28:14 And I think this is something,
01:28:15 if you’re gonna hand wave it away,
01:28:17 everyone else hand waved it away.
01:28:18 Hitler’s never gonna be chancellor.
01:28:19 He’s like lunatic.
01:28:20 Oh, please.
01:28:21 He’s a joke.
01:28:22 He’s a joke.
01:28:22 They couldn’t find a publisher for Mein Kampf in English
01:28:24 because this is some guy from some random minor party
01:28:28 in Germany spouting nonsense.
01:28:29 Who’s gonna read this crap?
01:28:31 So I completely agree with you in that regard.
01:28:33 I don’t think we’re there.
01:28:34 My point is Donald Trump this year
01:28:37 had every pathway open to him to declare martial law.
01:28:42 The cities are being burned down.
01:28:44 He could have very easily sent in the tanks
01:28:47 and people would have been applauding him from his side.
01:28:49 You make me feel so good right now.
01:28:50 But am I wrong though?
01:28:51 No, I…
01:28:52 What he did, he tweeted out to Mayor Wheeler of Portland.
01:28:56 He said, call me.
01:28:58 We will solve this in minutes, but you have to call.
01:29:03 And he sat in his hands and they said, oh, it’s his fault.
01:29:06 The city is burning down.
01:29:07 He’s not doing anything.
01:29:08 And he goes, I’m not doing anything
01:29:10 until you ask me to do it.
01:29:12 So I think that is,
01:29:13 even if you think he’s an aspiring dictator,
01:29:16 that is at least a sign that there is some restraint
01:29:20 on his aspirations.
01:29:23 Can I just take that in as a beautiful moment of hope?
01:29:29 So I’m gonna remember this moment.
01:29:30 I’m gonna miss Ted Cruz, beautiful Ted.
01:29:33 I’m gonna remember that.
01:29:34 I mean, I should say that perhaps I’m irrationally,
01:29:39 this is the one moment where I feel myself
01:29:41 being a little unhealthy.
01:29:42 I don’t think you’re being irrational.
01:29:44 I think there’s an asymmetry
01:29:46 because it’s kind of like, okay,
01:29:48 either if I leave the house, it’s like Russian roulette.
01:29:51 Yeah, maybe it’s like a one in six shot.
01:29:52 I’m pulling the trigger, I’m killing myself,
01:29:54 but that’s one in six.
01:29:56 That’s not, and the consequences are so dire
01:29:59 that a little paranoia would go a long way.
01:30:01 There’s something that.
01:30:02 But you can’t go back.
01:30:04 Yeah.
01:30:05 It’s an asymmetry, yeah.
01:30:06 The thing is, the thing that makes Donald Trump new to me,
01:30:11 and again, I’m a little naive in these things,
01:30:14 but he surprised me
01:30:19 in how many ways he just didn’t play by the rules.
01:30:23 Yeah.
01:30:25 And he’s made me, a little ant in this ant colony,
01:30:30 think like, well, do you have to play by the rules at all?
01:30:34 Right.
01:30:35 Like, why are we having elections?
01:30:38 Why did you say, like, it’s coronavirus time?
01:30:41 Like, it’s not healthy to have elections.
01:30:44 Like, we shouldn’t be, like, I could,
01:30:47 if I put my dictator hat on.
01:30:48 Nancy Pelosi said that Joe Biden shouldn’t debate.
01:30:52 Yeah, did she?
01:30:53 Yes.
01:30:54 She says she shouldn’t dignify Trump with a debate.
01:30:56 He’s the president.
01:30:57 He could be the worst president on earth,
01:30:59 evil, despicable monster.
01:31:01 I’ll take that as an argument.
01:31:02 So she’s playing politics, but she’s.
01:31:03 I don’t think that’s playing politics.
01:31:04 I think when there’s a certain point where things get,
01:31:08 when you start attacking institutions
01:31:10 for the emergencies of the moment and acting arbitrarily,
01:31:14 that is when things are the slippery slope.
01:31:15 Yeah, so you’re saying debates is one of the institutions.
01:31:18 Like, that’s one of the traditions to have the debates.
01:31:21 I think the debates are extremely important.
01:31:23 And now I don’t think that someone’s a good debater
01:31:25 is gonna make a good president.
01:31:26 I mean, that’s a big problem.
01:31:27 But you’re just saying this is attacking
01:31:29 just yet another tradition, yet another.
01:31:32 You know, like, how if you’re dating,
01:31:33 if you’re married to someone
01:31:34 and someone throws out the word divorce,
01:31:35 you can’t unring that bell, you threw it out there.
01:31:38 I’m saying you don’t throw things out like that
01:31:40 unless you really are ready to go down this road.
01:31:43 And I think that is,
01:31:44 there’s nothing in the constitution about debates.
01:31:46 We’ve only had them since 1980,
01:31:48 but still, I think they are extremely important.
01:31:51 It’s also a great chance for Joe Biden
01:31:52 to tell him to his face, you’re full of crap,
01:31:55 here’s what you did, here’s what you did,
01:31:56 here’s what you did.
01:31:57 So fascinating that you’re both, you acknowledge that,
01:32:01 and yet you also see the value
01:32:03 of tearing down the entire thing.
01:32:06 So you’re both worried about no debates,
01:32:09 or at least in your voice, in your tone.
01:32:11 There’s a great quote by Chesterton.
01:32:13 I’m not a fan of him at all.
01:32:15 But he says, before you tear down a fence,
01:32:17 make sure you know why they put it up first.
01:32:19 So I am for tearing it all down,
01:32:22 but there’s something called like a controlled demolition,
01:32:24 like building sevens, or there’s.
01:32:26 Allegedly.
01:32:29 We knew we were in Tel Aviv.
01:32:32 Hashtag building seven.
01:32:34 We knew we were in Tel Aviv.
01:32:36 Wow, you’re faster than me.
01:32:37 You’re operating in a different level.
01:32:40 I need to upgrade my operating system.
01:32:43 I told you Windows 95.
01:32:45 You’re trying, yeah.
01:32:48 Building seven.
01:32:49 If you’re gonna, it’s like Indiana Jones, right?
01:32:52 If you’re gonna pull something away,
01:32:54 make sure you have something in place first,
01:32:55 as opposed to just breaking it,
01:32:56 and then just, especially in politics,
01:32:59 because it escalates.
01:33:00 And when things escalate without any kind of response,
01:33:04 it can go in a very bad, that’s when Napoleon comes in.
01:33:07 So what’s your prediction about the Biden Trump debates?
01:33:14 Again, I just have this weird,
01:33:16 maybe we’ll return to maybe not in this,
01:33:19 how do we put more love into the world?
01:33:22 And one of the things that worries me about the debates
01:33:26 is it’ll be the world’s greatest troll
01:33:32 against the grandpa on the porch.
01:33:36 Who crapped his pants.
01:33:37 Yeah.
01:33:38 And it will not put more love into the world.
01:33:42 It will create more mockery, like.
01:33:46 Joe Biden did a great job against Paul Ryan in 2012.
01:33:50 Paul Ryan was no lightweight.
01:33:51 No one thought he was a lightweight.
01:33:53 Joe Biden handed Sarah Pail in her ass in 2008,
01:33:56 which isn’t as easy to do as you think,
01:33:58 because she’s a female.
01:33:59 So you’re gonna come off as bullying.
01:34:00 That’s something you have to worry about.
01:34:01 So the guy isn’t,
01:34:04 I think he is in the stages of cognitive decline.
01:34:09 So I think it’s going to be interesting.
01:34:11 I want it to be,
01:34:13 like Mike Tyson beating up a child,
01:34:18 cause it’ll be a source of amusement to me.
01:34:20 But I don’t know how it’s going to go.
01:34:22 Is it possible that Joe Biden will be the Mike Tyson?
01:34:24 Yes, because in his last debate with Bernie,
01:34:27 he was perfectly fine.
01:34:28 And again, the guy was a sender for decades.
01:34:30 And I don’t think anyone,
01:34:31 if you looked at Joe Biden in 2010,
01:34:35 would have thought this guy is going to be,
01:34:36 have his ass handed him a debate.
01:34:37 You wouldn’t think that at all.
01:34:39 So I don’t know who we’re going to see.
01:34:41 Plus he’s got a lot of room to attack Trump.
01:34:45 So I’m sure he’s going to come strapped and ready
01:34:47 and he’s going to have his talking points
01:34:49 and watch Trump dance, try to tap dance around him.
01:34:51 And if he’s in a position,
01:34:52 I don’t know what the rules of the debate are,
01:34:54 to actually nail him to the wall,
01:34:56 it might actually,
01:34:57 I’m sure he’s going to have a lot of lines too.
01:34:59 The problem is Trump is the master counter puncher.
01:35:01 So like when Hillary’s had her line,
01:35:04 she’s like, well, it’s a good thing that Donald Trump
01:35:06 isn’t in charge of our legal system.
01:35:08 And he’s like, yeah, you’d be in jail.
01:35:10 It’s like, oh, lady, you set him up.
01:35:13 That’s painful to watch, those debates.
01:35:16 I mean, there’s something, I think it’s actually analogous.
01:35:20 I’ve come to think of it,
01:35:22 your conversation with me right now,
01:35:24 some Sleepy Joe, I’m playing the role of Sleepy Joe.
01:35:28 I actually connect to Joe because there’s,
01:35:32 I’m also incontinent.
01:35:35 There’s like these weird pauses that he does.
01:35:37 Yes, he does.
01:35:38 I do the same thing and it annoys the shit out of me
01:35:42 that like in mid sentence,
01:35:44 I’ll start saying a different thing and take a tangent.
01:35:49 I’m not as slow and drunk as I sound, always.
01:35:54 I swear I’m more intelligent underneath it.
01:35:56 I’m slower but less drunk.
01:35:57 Yes, exactly.
01:36:00 But the result, one of those is true, but not both, yeah.
01:36:03 And Trump, just like you, are a master counter puncher.
01:36:09 So it’s gonna be messy.
01:36:11 Here’s the other thing, in all seriousness,
01:36:13 Chris Wallace is the moderator.
01:36:15 Chris Wallace has interviewed Trump several times
01:36:17 and he was a tough, tough questioner.
01:36:21 So I don’t think he’s gonna come in there
01:36:23 with softball questions.
01:36:25 I think he’s really going to try to nail Trump down,
01:36:28 which is tough to do.
01:36:29 I like him a lot.
01:36:30 Yeah, and he’s like, Mr. President, sir,
01:36:32 that’s not accurate, blah, blah, blah.
01:36:33 He’s done it.
01:36:34 And Trump gets very frustrated
01:36:36 because he doesn’t just let him say whatever he wants
01:36:38 and he hits him with the follow up.
01:36:41 I guess he’s on Fox News.
01:36:43 And I listen to his Sunday program every once in a while.
01:36:49 He gives me hope that, I don’t know,
01:36:51 there’s something in the voice that he’s not bought.
01:36:55 There’s no question he’s gonna take this seriously,
01:36:57 which I think is the best you could hope for in a moderator.
01:37:00 It feels like there’s people that might actually
01:37:03 take the mainstream media into a place
01:37:05 that’s going to be better in the future.
01:37:08 And we need people like him.
01:37:09 You mean like Robespierre?
01:37:11 What do you mean?
01:37:12 Like taking the mainstream media to a better future.
01:37:14 Like bring out the guillotines.
01:37:17 See, you put your anarchist hat back on.
01:37:21 I don’t think Robespierre is much of an anarchist,
01:37:22 but yeah, I get what you’re saying.
01:37:24 You don’t think there should be a centralized place for news?
01:37:26 There isn’t now.
01:37:27 Well, that’s what mainstream media
01:37:31 is supposed to represent, and it’s broken.
01:37:33 Well, it’s not whatever, what do you call that?
01:37:36 A place where people traditionally said
01:37:39 was the legitimate source of truth.
01:37:44 That’s what the media was supposed to represent, no?
01:37:47 That’s their big branding accomplishment.
01:37:50 That was never true?
01:37:51 Yeah, because here’s what happens.
01:37:53 We remember the Spanish American War,
01:37:55 remember the Maine, we have to take Cuba,
01:37:58 yellow journalism, William Randolph Hearst, right?
01:38:00 Then record scratch, and then we’re all objective.
01:38:04 Like when did this transition happen according to people?
01:38:06 When you were saying that the Kaiser
01:38:08 is the worst human being on earth?
01:38:10 When you were downplaying Stalin
01:38:12 and downplaying Hitler’s atrocities?
01:38:14 When you were saying we had to be in Vietnam?
01:38:16 At what point, WMDs, when did it change?
01:38:19 It never changed.
01:38:19 You just are better con artists at a certain point,
01:38:22 and now the mask is dropping.
01:38:23 Yeah, but don’t you think there’s, at its best,
01:38:27 like investigative journalism can uncover truth
01:38:32 in a way that like Reddit, subreddits can’t?
01:38:39 You know, Reddit, sure, I agree.
01:38:41 At its best, absolutely, that’s not even a dispute.
01:38:43 But like, don’t you think like fake it until you make it
01:38:48 is the right way to do it?
01:38:49 Meaning like the.
01:38:51 Fake the news?
01:38:52 No, no, no, I meant the news saying like,
01:38:55 we dream of doing, of arriving at the truth
01:38:59 and reporting the truth.
01:39:01 They don’t say that.
01:39:02 CNN had an advertisement that said this is an apple.
01:39:04 We only report facts.
01:39:06 That’s a lie.
01:39:07 No, that’s now, and now it’s clear things have changed.
01:39:10 They haven’t changed.
01:39:11 You’re just more, you’re more aware of their chicanery.
01:39:15 But, okay, so the.
01:39:17 How many people died in Iraq?
01:39:19 Because Saddam Hussein was about to launch WMDs.
01:39:22 Who had consequences for this?
01:39:24 No one.
01:39:25 This isn’t a minor thing.
01:39:26 This is lots of dead people.
01:39:28 Yeah.
01:39:30 And also, I mean, dead people, it’s horrible,
01:39:34 but also the money, which has, like we said,
01:39:36 economic effects that.
01:39:37 Marianne Williamson, I think it was, had the,
01:39:39 or Trump, both of them had the great point that goes,
01:39:41 that’s like a trillion dollars.
01:39:42 How many schools would that build?
01:39:43 How many roads would that build?
01:39:44 Even here, why are we building hospitals in Iraq
01:39:46 that we destroyed when we could building hospitals here?
01:39:49 It makes no sense.
01:39:49 It’s horrifying.
01:39:51 So who’s responsible for that?
01:39:53 Like who?
01:39:54 Alex Jones.
01:39:55 No, I meant for, well, so who’s responsible
01:40:01 for arriving at the truth of that,
01:40:04 of speaking to the money spent on the wars in Iraq?
01:40:09 This is one of the great things about social media.
01:40:11 Twitter, you have faith in Twitter.
01:40:13 Not specifically Twitter, but yeah,
01:40:14 social media’s the whole, what anyone could.
01:40:16 Here’s another great example.
01:40:18 Before, if you were talking about police brutality
01:40:22 or these riots, you would have to perceive it
01:40:24 in the way it was framed and presented to you.
01:40:26 Nicholas Sandman’s another example.
01:40:29 Breonna Taylor, all these things.
01:40:30 Well, we don’t have footage of her.
01:40:32 You would have to perceive in the way that it’s edited
01:40:34 and presented to you by the corporate press.
01:40:35 Now everyone is a video, has a video camera.
01:40:38 Everyone has their perspective.
01:40:39 And it’s very useful when these incidents happen
01:40:42 where you could see the same incident from several angles
01:40:45 and you don’t need Don Lemon or Chris Wallace
01:40:48 to tell me what this means.
01:40:49 I can see with my own eyes.
01:40:50 Yeah, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised about the power.
01:40:55 See, the mob, again, gets in the way.
01:40:58 They get emotional and they destroy the ability
01:41:03 for people to reason.
01:41:05 But you’re right that truth is unobstructed on social media.
01:41:09 Like if you’re careful and patient, you can see the truth.
01:41:14 Like for example, data on COVID,
01:41:16 some of the best sources are doctors.
01:41:19 Like if you wanna know the truth about the coronavirus
01:41:22 and what’s happening is there’s follow people on Twitter.
01:41:27 There’s certain people that are just like sourcing them
01:41:29 from me versus the CDC and the WHO.
01:41:32 It’s, that’s fast.
01:41:33 I mean, well, it’s kind of anarchy, right?
01:41:36 Yes, it is.
01:41:37 It’s not kind of, it is anarchy, yes.
01:41:38 I mean, well, there’s some censorship
01:41:41 and all that kind of stuff.
01:41:42 You have censorship under anarchy
01:41:43 in the sense that you’re talking about.
01:41:45 Like people get kicked off of Twitter.
01:41:47 That’s a drawing backwards.
01:41:48 How do you kick somebody, okay.
01:41:49 So, I mean, it’s a.
01:41:50 Private company.
01:41:52 Private company.
01:41:54 Most people wouldn’t say Twitter is working,
01:41:56 but that’s probably because they take for granted
01:41:59 how well it’s working and they’re just complaining
01:42:01 about the small part of it that’s broken.
01:42:03 Yeah.
01:42:07 Okay, another question about.
01:42:09 You feel better?
01:42:10 No, by the way, I mean, I had a personal gripe
01:42:15 with the situation about the, not a personal gripe,
01:42:19 but I felt overly emotional about the possibility
01:42:25 that there will be some of Donald Trump
01:42:29 messing with the election process,
01:42:31 but you made me feel better.
01:42:33 Good.
01:42:33 Like saying like, if he had a bunch of opportunities
01:42:36 to do what I would have done if I was a dictator,
01:42:42 I would, the first time those riots over George Floyd,
01:42:47 I would have instituted martial law.
01:42:49 Do you know what I remember very vividly?
01:42:52 Is after 9 11 and everyone was waiting for George Bush
01:42:55 to give his speech and he had 98% approved rating.
01:42:57 And I remember very vividly,
01:42:59 cause if he had said we’re suspending the constitution,
01:43:03 everyone would have cheered for him.
01:43:04 Like he couldn’t get enough support at that time.
01:43:06 And he didn’t do it.
01:43:07 And I can’t say anything really good about George W. Bush.
01:43:10 I’m not a fan of his to say the least.
01:43:12 So I think you and I, and other people who are familiar
01:43:15 with totalitarian regimes to some extent from our ancestry
01:43:19 or whatever, from research should always be the ones
01:43:22 freaking out and warning,
01:43:24 but we should also be aware of we got a ways to go
01:43:28 before it’s Hitler.
01:43:30 And thankfully there are a lot of dominoes
01:43:34 that have to fall into place before Hitler.
01:43:36 It’s like the game secret Hitler, it’s a board game
01:43:38 before Hitler becomes Hitler.
01:43:40 Like it’s not, especially in America,
01:43:43 there’s lots of things that have to happen
01:43:45 before you really get to that point.
01:43:47 I mean, FDR was for all intents and purposes a dictator,
01:43:50 but even then the worst you could say,
01:43:52 and this is not something that you should take lightly
01:43:54 was internment of Japanese citizens,
01:43:56 but they weren’t murdered.
01:43:58 They weren’t under lock and key in the sense of like in cells.
01:44:01 So things could have gotten a lot worse for him.
01:44:04 We have to, I mean, Hitler is such a horrible person
01:44:06 to bring up because.
01:44:07 He’s Mussolini.
01:44:08 Yeah, Mussolini is better because Hitler is so close
01:44:12 and connected to the atrocities of the Holocaust.
01:44:15 There’s all this stuff that led up to the war
01:44:17 and the war itself.
01:44:18 Say that there was no Holocaust,
01:44:20 Hitler would probably be viewed differently.
01:44:23 Yes, I should think so.
01:44:24 Well, I mean, but.
01:44:26 You think, that’s a very controversial stance.
01:44:29 You think Hitler would be viewed differently
01:44:30 if it wasn’t for the Holocaust?
01:44:31 Well, I mean, but it’s a funny thing that the,
01:44:38 I would say the death of how many, 40, 50 million.
01:44:44 I mean, I don’t know how you calculate it.
01:44:46 It’s not seen as bad as the 6 million.
01:44:50 Oh yeah, because of Mao and Stalin.
01:44:52 Yeah, but it’s interesting.
01:44:56 I’m working on it.
01:44:57 You’re working on it.
01:44:58 Yeah, the next book I’m talking about.
01:44:59 Reminding, well, it’s good.
01:45:01 I’m glad a good writer is,
01:45:02 because the world’s not reminded.
01:45:03 My last book, The New Right,
01:45:05 I had to deal with something like the Nazis.
01:45:06 And one of the points they make is,
01:45:07 how come everyone knows about the Holocaust,
01:45:09 but no one knows about the Holodomor?
01:45:10 And they’re right.
01:45:11 We should know about this,
01:45:12 because it is a great example of both
01:45:14 how the Western media were depraved,
01:45:17 but also what human beings are capable of.
01:45:19 And those scars are still,
01:45:22 many Americans think Russia and Ukraine are the same thing.
01:45:25 Oh, Trump’s in bed with the Ukrainians,
01:45:27 Trump’s about the Russians,
01:45:27 they think it’s the same thing.
01:45:29 For us, it’s complete lunacy.
01:45:31 But this is the kind of thing where Pol Pot
01:45:33 is another example,
01:45:35 where people have no clue of what has been done
01:45:38 to their fellow man on the face of this earth,
01:45:40 and they should know.
01:45:41 How much of that do you lay at the hands of communism?
01:45:43 How much are you with like a Jordan Pearson
01:45:46 who is intricately connecting the atrocities,
01:45:51 like you’re saying, 1930s Ukraine,
01:45:53 where people were starved?
01:45:56 I recently, my grandmother recently passed away,
01:45:58 and she survived that as a kid.
01:46:02 Which is, those people, I mean, they’re tough.
01:46:09 They’re tough.
01:46:09 Like that whole region is tough,
01:46:11 because they survived that,
01:46:13 and then right after, occupation of Nazis, of Germans.
01:46:19 How much do you lay that at communism as an ideology,
01:46:24 versus Stalin, the man?
01:46:27 I think Lenin was building concentration camps
01:46:31 while he was around, and slave labor.
01:46:34 I don’t, I think it’s clearly both.
01:46:36 There are certain variants of communism
01:46:38 that were far, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev,
01:46:42 the reason the Soviet Union fell apart,
01:46:44 and this is kind of, I’m gonna spoil the end of the book.
01:46:47 There’s an amazing book called Revolution 1989,
01:46:48 it’s like the most beautiful book I’ve ever read,
01:46:50 by Viktor Sebastian, he’s a Hungarian author.
01:46:53 And basically what happens in 1989,
01:46:55 Poland has their elections,
01:46:56 and then in 1990, they kind of let in
01:46:58 the labor people to the government.
01:47:00 And people start crossing borders in the Eastern Bloc,
01:47:04 and you had Hanukkah from Eastern Germany,
01:47:06 and Ceausescu from Romania calling Gorbachev,
01:47:09 because those are the two toughest ones,
01:47:11 by communist standards, they go,
01:47:13 they’re just escaping, we’re gonna lose everything.
01:47:16 You gotta send in the tanks, like you did in Hungary,
01:47:18 like you did in Czechoslovakia in 68.
01:47:20 And Gorbachev goes, I’m not sending the tanks.
01:47:22 And they go, dude, if you don’t send in the tanks,
01:47:24 it’s all done, and he goes, nope, I’m not that kind of guy.
01:47:28 And they were right, Ceausescu was personally shot
01:47:31 with his wife up against the wall,
01:47:33 Hanukkah, I forget what happened to him,
01:47:35 but they all self liberated.
01:47:37 My friend who was born in Czechoslovakia,
01:47:39 his mom was pregnant under communism,
01:47:42 and she never even imagined he’d be free,
01:47:43 and he was born under free.
01:47:45 And they were all looking around,
01:47:46 all these countries that self liberated,
01:47:48 because they’re like, this is a trick, right?
01:47:50 They’re trying to figure out who’s like not good,
01:47:52 so that they can arrest us on mass, and they didn’t.
01:47:54 So even within communism,
01:47:58 there are bad guys and better guys.
01:48:02 But we talked about anarchy, we talked about democracy.
01:48:06 Do you see, like there’s democratic socialism
01:48:09 conversations going on in the popular culture,
01:48:13 socialism is seen as like evil, or for some people, great?
01:48:18 Sure.
01:48:19 What are your thoughts about it as in a political ideology?
01:48:24 Evil.
01:48:25 So you’re on the evil side?
01:48:26 Yes.
01:48:27 Fundamentally?
01:48:28 Yes.
01:48:28 What is it, you know, what makes it evil?
01:48:34 What’s like structurally, if you were to try to analyze?
01:48:38 Sure, I’d say three ways.
01:48:39 Morally, no person has the right
01:48:41 to tell another person how to live their life.
01:48:44 Economically, it’s not possible
01:48:46 to make calculations under socialism.
01:48:48 It’s only the prices that are information that tells me,
01:48:51 oh, this is, we need to produce more of this,
01:48:53 we need to produce less of this.
01:48:54 Without prices being able to adjust
01:48:56 and give information to producers and consumers,
01:48:59 you have no way of being able to produce
01:49:02 effectively or efficiently.
01:49:03 And also it is, it turns people against each other.
01:49:08 When you force people to interact,
01:49:09 when you force them into relationships,
01:49:11 when you force them into jobs,
01:49:13 and you don’t give them any choice,
01:49:14 when there’s a monopoly, the consequence of monopoly,
01:49:17 everyone’s familiar with ostensibly under capitalism,
01:49:19 but somehow when it’s a government monopoly,
01:49:21 all those economic principles don’t work,
01:49:23 it doesn’t make any sense.
01:49:24 But there’s force in democracy too,
01:49:26 it’s just you’re saying there’s a bit more force
01:49:29 in socialism.
01:49:32 But that’s interesting that you say
01:49:33 that there’s not enough information.
01:49:34 I mean, that’s ultimately,
01:49:36 you need to have really good data
01:49:40 to achieve the goals of the system,
01:49:43 even if there’s no corruption.
01:49:45 You just need to have the information.
01:49:47 Which you can’t.
01:49:48 And capitalism provides you
01:49:49 a really strong source of real time information.
01:49:58 And if capitalism at its best and cleanest,
01:50:02 which is perfect information, is available,
01:50:05 there’s no manipulation of information.
01:50:08 That’s one of the problems, okay.
01:50:11 Can we talk about some candidates,
01:50:13 the ones we got and possible alternatives?
01:50:17 So one question I have is, why do we have,
01:50:21 within this system, why do we have the candidates we have?
01:50:27 It seems, maybe you can correct me,
01:50:30 highly unsatisfactory.
01:50:35 Is anyone actually excited about our current candidates?
01:50:39 I’m kind of excited,
01:50:41 because no matter who wins the election,
01:50:43 it’s gonna be hilarious.
01:50:44 So that is something that I’m excited about.
01:50:46 From a humor perspective.
01:50:48 Is that what the whole system is?
01:50:50 So that’s one theory of the case,
01:50:52 is the entire thing is optimized for viewership.
01:50:55 Yeah.
01:50:56 And excitement by definitions
01:50:59 of like the reality show kind of excitement.
01:51:01 I think it is,
01:51:04 if you look at what happened with Brett Kavanaugh,
01:51:06 this is not a career that would draw people
01:51:11 who are, you might say, quality.
01:51:14 Because no matter who they are,
01:51:15 there would be a huge incentive from the other team
01:51:18 to denigrate them and humiliate them
01:51:20 in the worst possible ways.
01:51:21 Because as the two teams lose their legitimacy
01:51:25 among Gen Pop, it’s gonna get harder and harder
01:51:27 for them to maintain any kind of claims to authority,
01:51:30 which is something I like,
01:51:32 but which does kind of play out
01:51:33 in certain nefarious ways.
01:51:36 So people, the best of the best,
01:51:37 are not gonna wanna be politicians.
01:51:40 Yeah, because I could have a job,
01:51:42 or have a job interview and I’m running Yahoo or whatever,
01:51:45 or I could, for 18 months, have to eat, you know,
01:51:49 corn dogs looking like I’m going down on someone
01:51:51 and shake hands and have all this,
01:51:53 my family and on social media daily
01:51:56 called the worst things, for what?
01:51:58 And then I’m still not guaranteed the position.
01:52:02 But the flip side of that, like from my perspective,
01:52:05 is the competition is weak.
01:52:08 Meaning, like, you need a minimum amount of eloquence,
01:52:13 eloquence, clearly, that I don’t,
01:52:16 the bar which I did not pass.
01:52:17 I don’t think either of them would be considered
01:52:19 particularly eloquent, Biden or Trump.
01:52:21 No, I know, but that’s what I’m saying.
01:52:22 The competition, like if you were,
01:52:26 wanted to become a politician,
01:52:28 if you wanted to run for president,
01:52:30 the opportunity is there.
01:52:32 Like if you were at all competent.
01:52:33 Like if you had, so like Andrew Yang is an example
01:52:36 of somebody who has a bunch of ideas,
01:52:37 is somewhat eloquent, like young, energetic.
01:52:43 It feels like there should be thousands of Andrew Yangs,
01:52:47 like that would enter the domain.
01:52:49 He went nowhere.
01:52:51 Well, I wouldn’t say he went nowhere.
01:52:54 He generated quite a bit of excitement.
01:52:55 He just didn’t go very far, that’s, okay.
01:52:59 You don’t have to run for president
01:53:01 to generate excitement with your ideas.
01:53:02 You could be a podcast host, I’m not even joking.
01:53:04 That’s right, that’s right, that’s right.
01:53:07 And he’s both, Andrew Yang.
01:53:09 Oh, he’s a podcast?
01:53:10 Yeah, he has a podcast called Yang Speaks.
01:53:13 Oh, okay, cool.
01:53:19 Oh, wow, the music of the way you said, yeah, cool.
01:53:24 It’s the way my mom talks to me
01:53:25 when I tell her something exciting going on in my life.
01:53:31 Oh, that’s nice, honey.
01:53:32 Oh, you made a robot, that’s cool.
01:53:35 A mixed coffee?
01:53:36 Oh, you’re still single, though, aren’t you?
01:53:38 I wonder why, I wonder why.
01:53:43 Make yourself a robot wife?
01:53:44 Give me some robot grandchildren.
01:53:49 Okay, but first of all, okay,
01:53:53 let me ask you about Andrew Yang
01:53:55 because he represents fresh energy.
01:53:58 You don’t find him fresh or energetic, you know?
01:54:02 Like, is there any candidate you wish was in the mix
01:54:07 that was in the mix you wish was
01:54:09 one of the last two remaining?
01:54:11 Yeah, people like Marianne Williamson, I thought was great.
01:54:14 Tulsi, I thought was great.
01:54:16 Amy Klobuchar got a bad rap.
01:54:18 I think she held her own.
01:54:21 Smart, she wasn’t particularly funny, that’s okay.
01:54:24 I think she was nonthreatening to a lot of people.
01:54:26 What did you like about them?
01:54:28 I guess I just named all women, that’s interesting.
01:54:29 It wasn’t even intentional.
01:54:31 Tulsi, I liked that she was aggressive,
01:54:33 has a good resume and is not staying the course
01:54:38 for the establishment.
01:54:39 Marianne Williamson, I like because she comes from a place,
01:54:42 from what it seems, of genuine compassion.
01:54:45 Maybe she’s a sociopath, I don’t know.
01:54:47 I read her book and it actually affected me profoundly
01:54:50 because it’s very rare when you read a book
01:54:53 and there’s even that one idea that blows your mind
01:54:55 and that you kind of think about all the time.
01:54:56 And there was one such idea in her book
01:54:59 about she was teaching something called A Course
01:55:01 in Miracles in Hollywood.
01:55:02 I think she still teaches it.
01:55:04 And this was during the 80s, the height of the AIDS crisis.
01:55:07 And all these young men in the prime of their life
01:55:09 were dropping like flies.
01:55:11 And she’s trying to give them hope.
01:55:13 Well, good luck, they’re dying, no one cares.
01:55:16 And they’re like, you can’t tell us
01:55:17 that they’re gonna cure this, that’s a lie.
01:55:21 And she goes, what if I told you they’re not gonna cure it?
01:55:25 What if I told you it’s gonna be to like diabetes?
01:55:28 They cut off your foot and you’re gonna go blind.
01:55:30 Would that be something that you can hope for?
01:55:33 And when you put it like that, it’s like, yeah.
01:55:34 Like if you’re talking to someone like a homeless junkie
01:55:36 and you’re like, you could be a doctor,
01:55:38 you’re a lawyer or a lawyer, like cool story.
01:55:39 Like you could have a studio apartment
01:55:43 with a terrible roommate and a shitty job.
01:55:45 But when you’re on the street,
01:55:48 cooking breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear that,
01:55:51 you’re like, wait, would that really be so bad?
01:55:53 Is that really so much worse than this?
01:55:54 No, and it becomes something.
01:55:56 So when she put it in those terms, I’m like, wow,
01:55:59 this woman that really did a number on me
01:56:01 in terms of teaching people how to be hopeful.
01:56:04 Small steps, I guess.
01:56:05 But it’s also, then it becomes less of I need a miracle
01:56:09 to be like, oh, this is really manageable.
01:56:11 Yeah.
01:56:12 And it’s absurd to think it’s impossible.
01:56:15 What about what’s your take on Unity 2020
01:56:17 that Brett Weinstein pushed forward?
01:56:22 It was DOA, he couldn’t even stand up to Twitter.
01:56:26 Dead on arrival.
01:56:27 Dead on arrival.
01:56:28 He couldn’t even stand up to Twitter, let alone,
01:56:29 or to Facebook, they got blocked,
01:56:31 let alone to Facebook.
01:56:31 It was not hugely problematic, by the way,
01:56:33 that Twitter would block that.
01:56:35 Not at all.
01:56:36 I don’t know why they blocked it,
01:56:37 but I believe, I don’t know what problematic means.
01:56:40 That’s a word that does a lot of work
01:56:42 that people wanted to do conceptually.
01:56:45 The idea that Unity is taking the rejects from each party
01:56:49 and we’re gonna have something that no one likes
01:56:52 and therefore it’s gonna be a compromise is absurd.
01:56:54 The last time we had this kind of Unity ticket
01:56:56 was the Civil War, where you had Andrew Johnson
01:56:59 from the Democrats and Lincoln from the Republicans.
01:57:01 This was not something that ended well,
01:57:03 particularly nicely, for both halves of the country.
01:57:05 So that’s the way you see it is,
01:57:08 like the way I saw it,
01:57:09 I guess I haven’t looked carefully at it.
01:57:11 I haven’t either, to be fair.
01:57:12 Yeah.
01:57:13 The way I saw it is emphasizing centrists, which is.
01:57:17 How is Tulsi a centrist?
01:57:19 Tulsi was involved?
01:57:20 Yes, he’s trying to push Tulsi
01:57:21 on like Jesse Ventura or something.
01:57:23 Oh.
01:57:24 So, okay, I don’t know.
01:57:26 I don’t know the specifics.
01:57:27 As a scientist, you also know centrism
01:57:28 is not a coherent term in politics.
01:57:30 But see, now you’re like, what is it?
01:57:34 Pleading to authority and my ego.
01:57:37 No, no, I’m pleading to how you approach data.
01:57:40 If someone is saying the mean is accurate,
01:57:42 that only mean, I mean, the mean could be anywhere.
01:57:45 It’s a function of what’s around it.
01:57:46 That mean is true.
01:57:47 I don’t even know what centrists is supposed to mean,
01:57:49 but what it means to me, there’s no idea, a centrist.
01:57:55 There’s more of a center right or center left.
01:57:58 To me, what that means is somebody
01:58:00 who is a liberal or a conservative,
01:58:04 but is open minded and empathetic to the other side.
01:58:13 Joe Biden had the crime bill.
01:58:15 Joe Biden voted for Republican Supreme Court justices.
01:58:18 Joe Biden voted for a balanced budget.
01:58:19 Joe Biden voted for Bush’s war.
01:58:21 And I’m sure probably I haven’t looked this up,
01:58:23 the Patriot Act.
01:58:23 Joe, if you want a centrist, you have Joe Biden.
01:58:26 Yeah, okay.
01:58:26 He’s worked very well with Republicans.
01:58:28 That argument could be made.
01:58:29 Of course, everybody will always resist that argument.
01:58:33 It’s indeniable.
01:58:34 In fact, during the campaign,
01:58:35 some activists started yelling at him at a town hall.
01:58:40 Not yelling, just saying, hey, we need open borders.
01:58:43 Joe Biden says, I’m not for open borders.
01:58:45 Go vote for Trump and literally turn his back on the man.
01:58:48 And this is during the primaries
01:58:50 where it would behoove you to try to appeal to the base.
01:58:53 And of course, you can probably also make the argument
01:58:55 that Donald Trump is center right, if not center left.
01:58:59 Well, I mean, he’s very unique as a personality.
01:59:04 But if you look at his record,
01:59:05 and first of all, his rhetoric,
01:59:06 you can say is not centrist at all.
01:59:08 But in terms of how he governs,
01:59:10 the budgeting, I mean, has been very moderate.
01:59:13 It certainly hasn’t been like draconian budget cuts.
01:59:16 The Supreme Court, you could say, okay, he’s hard right.
01:59:18 Immigration, you could say in certain capacities,
01:59:20 he’s hard right.
01:59:21 But in terms of pro life, what has he done there?
01:59:24 In terms of, so in many other aspects,
01:59:27 he’s been very much this kind of me too Republican.
01:59:30 But certainly the rhetoric,
01:59:31 it’s very hard to make him the case that he’s a centrist.
01:59:33 So you don’t like,
01:59:35 is there any other idea you find compelling?
01:59:37 What I like about UND 2020 is it’s an idea
01:59:41 for a different way, for like a different party,
01:59:46 a different path forward.
01:59:47 So ideas, just like anarchy is an interesting idea
01:59:51 that leads to discourse, that leads to.
01:59:53 I don’t think it’s interesting at all.
01:59:54 And here’s why I don’t think it’s interesting.
01:59:56 Sweden has eight parties in its parliament.
01:59:59 Iceland, population is like 150,000.
02:00:02 They’ve got nine, I think it was.
02:00:03 Czech Republic has nine, Britain has five.
02:00:06 So the claim that two parties
02:00:08 is the censorious of speech,
02:00:12 but three, oh, now all of a sudden,
02:00:14 it makes no sense, doesn’t port to the data, number one.
02:00:16 Number two is Donald Trump demonstrated
02:00:18 that you can be basically a third party candidate,
02:00:21 sees the machinery of a existing party
02:00:23 and appropriate to your own ends as Bernie Sanders.
02:00:27 Bernie Sanders has never been a Democrat.
02:00:29 Major credit to him for that’s not easy
02:00:31 to be elected as Senator as an independent.
02:00:33 He’s done it repeatedly.
02:00:34 So these are two examples of ossified elites
02:00:37 right for the picking.
02:00:38 But to have a third party makes no real sense.
02:00:42 Speaking of which, a party you talk about quite a bit.
02:00:47 And let’s look, this is a personal challenge to you.
02:00:53 Let me bring up the Libertarian Party.
02:00:55 And the personal challenge is to go five minutes
02:00:58 without mocking them in discussing this idea.
02:01:03 So first of all, what?
02:01:05 I’m being trolled.
02:01:07 Okay, I’m being trolled, okay, I’m being trolled.
02:01:10 I’m being trolled, okay, this is good.
02:01:13 Do you remember the fun friends?
02:01:14 There was an episode where Chandler
02:01:16 had to not make fun of people.
02:01:17 Like, can you go one day Chandler?
02:01:19 And Phoebe starts telling him about like this UFO she saw
02:01:22 and he’s like, that’s very interesting and nice for you.
02:01:27 This is exactly that.
02:01:29 So a true master would be able to play
02:01:31 within the game, within the constraints.
02:01:32 So no, I’m pretty sure you’ll still mock them.
02:01:36 But no, no, I’ll stick to the rules.
02:01:38 Five minutes, easy.
02:01:39 So first of all, speaking broadly about libertarianism,
02:01:42 can you speak to that, how you feel about it?
02:01:44 And then also to the Libertarian Party,
02:01:47 which is the implementation of it in our current system.
02:01:49 So I think libertarianism is a great idea.
02:01:53 And I think there’s many libertarian ideas
02:01:56 that have become much more mainstream,
02:01:58 which I’m very, very happy about.
02:01:59 I remember there was an article in either New York
02:02:02 or New Yorker Magazine in the early 90s,
02:02:05 where they talked about the Cato Institute,
02:02:06 which is a libertarian think tank.
02:02:08 And they refer to the fact that Cato was against war
02:02:11 and against like regulation with a wacky consistency,
02:02:16 because they didn’t know how to reconcile these two things.
02:02:18 I don’t remember what the two things were,
02:02:19 but I remember that expression wacky consistency.
02:02:22 And it wasn’t even, we were all taught,
02:02:25 and this is very much before the internet,
02:02:27 that there’s two tribes and if you’re pro life,
02:02:30 you have to hate gays.
02:02:32 And if you’re for socialized medicine,
02:02:34 that also means you have to be for free speech.
02:02:39 It was just this very, and like there’s a whole menu
02:02:42 and you got to sign it to all of them.
02:02:43 And that menu is terrible.
02:02:45 They hate America, they want to destroy it.
02:02:47 Oh my God, those are horrible evil.
02:02:48 This is the menu you want.
02:02:50 And the Libertarian Party to some extent,
02:02:52 and just libertarians as a whole said,
02:02:54 you know, you can do the Chinese buffet
02:02:57 and take a little from column A, a little from column B
02:02:59 and have an ideology that is coherent and consistent,
02:03:03 an ideology of peace and nonaggression
02:03:07 and things like that.
02:03:08 The Libertarian Party takes its model
02:03:12 from like the early progressive and populist parties
02:03:15 from the early 20th century,
02:03:16 which were not very effective
02:03:18 in terms of getting people elected,
02:03:20 but were extremely effective
02:03:23 in terms of getting the two major parties
02:03:25 to appropriate and adopt their ideas and implement them.
02:03:27 And in Britain as well, the liberal party got destroyed
02:03:30 and became taken over by labor
02:03:32 as the alternative party to the Tories
02:03:34 and have those ideas basically become mainstreamed.
02:03:38 So I think that, and the libertarian,
02:03:40 my friend who passed away, Eric, I miss him dearly,
02:03:43 was their webmaster and his whole point is,
02:03:46 if you don’t think of that in terms of a party,
02:03:47 in terms of getting people elected,
02:03:49 but if you think of it as a party
02:03:50 in terms of getting people educated about alternatives,
02:03:53 then there’s enormous use for that.
02:03:55 That was his perspective.
02:03:56 And I don’t think that’s an absurd perspective.
02:03:58 But here’s some libertarian ideas
02:04:00 that have become extremely mainstream.
02:04:02 War should be a last resort.
02:04:04 This is something we were taught as kids and we all say,
02:04:07 but for many years, it’s been like,
02:04:09 they don’t think of it as a last resort.
02:04:10 It’s like something’s bad, well, it’s like the first instinct.
02:04:12 Now it’s like, let’s really give it a week, just a week.
02:04:15 Like what’s going on in Syria?
02:04:16 Is there really gonna be a genocide, the Kurds?
02:04:18 You know, things like that.
02:04:19 So that’s one.
02:04:20 Another thing is drug legalization.
02:04:22 This was, you know, when you and I were kids,
02:04:25 oh, it’s crazy.
02:04:25 Only hippies wanna smoke pot.
02:04:27 Now it’s like, I was on a grand jury.
02:04:30 And I’ll point out what people make is,
02:04:32 are you sure that the 16 year old who’s selling weed,
02:04:35 let’s say selling, should his life be ruined?
02:04:39 Should he be imprisoned with rapists and murderers?
02:04:41 Like if you say yes, say yes,
02:04:44 but you have to acknowledge that that’s what you’re meaning.
02:04:48 And then a lot of people are like, wait a minute,
02:04:50 there’s gotta be a third option
02:04:52 then he has no consequences or he’s imprisoned
02:04:54 with a rapist.
02:04:55 I’m not comfortable with either of these.
02:04:57 And I think the other one is an increasing skepticism.
02:05:01 This libertarians were on top of this first
02:05:02 and the hard left of the police.
02:05:05 As of now, asset forfeiture steals more from people
02:05:08 than burglaries.
02:05:09 What people don’t know about what asset forfeiture is,
02:05:11 if the cops come to your house and they suspect you,
02:05:13 you haven’t been convicted of using your car or your house
02:05:17 or whatever in terms of selling drugs,
02:05:19 they can take whatever they want.
02:05:22 And then you have to sue to prove your innocence
02:05:25 and get your property back.
02:05:26 It’s a complete violation of due process.
02:05:28 People don’t realize it’s going on.
02:05:29 It’s a great way for the cops to increase their budgets
02:05:31 and it’s legal.
02:05:32 And libertarians were like the first big ones saying,
02:05:35 guys, this is not American and this is crazy.
02:05:37 And now increasingly people on conservatives and leftists
02:05:40 like, wait a minute, this is…
02:05:42 Even if you are selling drugs, like they take your house,
02:05:44 what are you talking about?
02:05:45 So I think those are some mechanisms that libertarianism,
02:05:49 though not by name, has become far more popular.
02:05:52 Yeah, it’s interesting, so the idea, yeah, a coherent set
02:05:55 of ideas that eventually get integrated
02:06:00 into a two party system.
02:06:01 Yeah.
02:06:02 The war, that’s an interesting one.
02:06:03 You’re right.
02:06:05 I wonder what the thread there is.
02:06:07 I wonder how it connects to 9 11 and so on.
02:06:11 I think the Patriot Act.
02:06:13 Patriot Act, okay.
02:06:14 For people who are politically savvy,
02:06:16 we’re like, oh, okay, this is not a joke.
02:06:20 This is really a crazy infringement of our freedoms
02:06:24 and both parties are falling over each other
02:06:27 to sign into law and the Orwellian name.
02:06:30 You don’t wanna…
02:06:31 How can you be against patriotism?
02:06:32 What kind of person?
02:06:33 You know what I mean?
02:06:34 So I think for a lot of people,
02:06:34 especially both civil libertarians on the left
02:06:37 and a lot of conservatives who are constitutionalists
02:06:39 are like, wait a minute, this isn’t…
02:06:41 I’m not comfortable with this.
02:06:42 And I’m also not comfortable with how comfortable everyone
02:06:44 in Washington is with it.
02:06:45 You’re right, probably libertarians
02:06:48 and libertarianism is a place of ideas,
02:06:52 which is why I have a connection to it.
02:06:57 Every time I listen to those folks, I like them.
02:07:00 I feel connected to them.
02:07:01 I would even sometimes, depending on the day,
02:07:03 call myself a libertarian.
02:07:05 Well, we’re all the spectrum, so that’s why.
02:07:06 We’re all on the spectrum, yeah.
02:07:08 But when I look at the people that actually rise to the top
02:07:12 in terms of the people who represent the party,
02:07:15 this is where five minutes ran out, right?
02:07:18 I could go, I’m allowed.
02:07:19 You can go, why are they so weird?
02:07:22 Why aren’t strong candidates emerging
02:07:26 that represent as political representatives
02:07:31 or as famous speakers that represent ideology?
02:07:38 I think libertarians tend to…
02:07:40 I think Jonathan Haidt in his book, in his research,
02:07:43 he’s a political scientist and he does a lot of things
02:07:45 about how people come to their political inclusions
02:07:46 and what factors force people to reach conclusions.
02:07:50 And he found that libertarians are the least empathetic
02:07:53 and most rationalistic of all the groups.
02:07:56 And by that, he means like they think in terms of logic
02:07:58 as opposed to like people’s feelings
02:07:59 and that has positives and has negatives.
02:08:04 And we have the A, B testing with Ron Paul.
02:08:07 Ron Paul ran for president as a libertarian nominee.
02:08:10 He was the nominee.
02:08:11 He got pretty much nowhere in 1988.
02:08:14 Then he ran as a return to the Republican party
02:08:16 as a congressman for many years from Texas.
02:08:18 He ran for the presidency in 2008 and 2012.
02:08:22 And in 2008, he stood on stage with Rudy Giuliani
02:08:26 and told him that they were here in 9 11
02:08:29 because we’re over there,
02:08:30 which would have been a shocking, horrifying taboo
02:08:33 a few years earlier.
02:08:35 Many people were like, holy crap, this is amazing.
02:08:37 Giuliani was all offended and Ron Paul’s like…
02:08:39 I took some guts by the way.
02:08:40 Yeah, you did.
02:08:41 When I heard that, it was so refreshing.
02:08:44 Not what he said, but the fact that he said something
02:08:47 that took guts.
02:08:48 It made me realize how rare it is for politicians,
02:08:53 but even people to say something that takes guts.
02:08:56 Well, it’s also the idea that like you can’t,
02:08:58 even if you think America has a right
02:09:01 to invade any country on earth as much as it wants
02:09:03 and kill people as a consequence of war
02:09:06 and blow up their buildings and destroy their country,
02:09:09 you can’t with a straight face
02:09:11 not expect us to have consequences,
02:09:13 even if they’re consequences from evil people.
02:09:15 Even if we’re 100% of the good guys
02:09:17 and they’re 100% of the bad guys,
02:09:19 those bad guys, some of them are still gonna try
02:09:21 to do something.
02:09:22 What happens next?
02:09:23 You know what I mean?
02:09:24 So that kind of concept that there’s any American
02:09:27 culpability, we’re America, we are the good guys
02:09:30 by definition, we’re not culpable,
02:09:32 to have people start thinking about
02:09:34 what if there’s another way?
02:09:35 You know, what if we’re not there
02:09:37 and then they’re not here
02:09:38 and we’re kind of doing a backdoor,
02:09:39 we’re talking so different scenarios.
02:09:41 So the fact that he got so much more traction
02:09:44 as a Republican, the fact that Donald Trump
02:09:47 who came out of nowhere became not only the candidate,
02:09:50 but the president tells people,
02:09:52 it’s like getting a book deal, right?
02:09:54 You can either go, there’s three choices.
02:09:57 You can either self publish, mainstream publisher
02:10:00 or independent publisher.
02:10:03 The independent publisher is the worst of all choices
02:10:05 because you’re not getting a big advance,
02:10:07 they’re not gonna be able to promote you a lot
02:10:10 and they don’t get the distribution.
02:10:12 Mainstream, I’ve done mainstream and self, right?
02:10:15 With self, I don’t have the cred,
02:10:18 the respectability of a mainstream or the cache.
02:10:20 It can be a New York Times bestseller.
02:10:22 Right, it takes a lot of work,
02:10:24 but I get a lot more of the profit.
02:10:26 If it looks good on the shelf on Amazon,
02:10:28 it looks identical, so on and so forth.
02:10:30 With the mainstream, the benefits and costs
02:10:32 are pretty much obvious to most people.
02:10:34 So the same thing, it’s like you can either
02:10:35 be an independent like Ross Perot
02:10:37 or you could be, just seize one of the party apparatus,
02:10:41 which the benefits are enormous there.
02:10:42 But in terms of going third party,
02:10:45 I don’t know the libertarian party apparatus
02:10:47 other than maybe some ballot access
02:10:48 is really that efficacious.
02:10:50 And then you’re gonna have a lot of baggage.
02:10:52 Cause if you hear independent, Jesse Ventura, Ross Perot,
02:10:56 you think of the person.
02:10:57 Now you have to define yourself
02:10:59 and you have to defend the party.
02:11:01 That’s two bridges for most people.
02:11:03 So, brilliantly put, okay, let me speak to you.
02:11:09 Cause I’m speaking to Yaron Brooks soon.
02:11:12 Yeah.
02:11:14 I like him.
02:11:15 Yeah, so, but that, another example, I was.
02:11:19 Ask him to tell you a joke about Ayn Rand,
02:11:21 if he can do it.
02:11:23 So there, that’s one criticism I’ve heard you say,
02:11:26 which is they’re unable to speak to any weaknesses
02:11:30 in either Ayn Rand’s or objectivist worldview.
02:11:34 Yes.
02:11:35 That’s really, well, you put it,
02:11:38 I know you’re half joking,
02:11:39 but that’s actually a legitimate discussion to have.
02:11:43 I’m not joking at all.
02:11:44 Because that’s, to me, one of the criticisms
02:11:47 and one of the explanations why the world
02:11:49 seems to disrespect Ayn Rand, the people that do,
02:11:53 is she kind of implies that her ideas are like flawless.
02:11:58 No, she says they correspond to reality.
02:12:01 Yeah, right.
02:12:02 That’s the term she uses.
02:12:03 That, I mean, objectivist, it’s in the name.
02:12:08 It’s, you know, it’s just facts.
02:12:10 Like, it’s impossible to basically argue against
02:12:14 cause it’s pretty simple, it’s just all facts.
02:12:16 Well, that’s, it’s possible to argue against,
02:12:18 but she would say she’s never met a good critic
02:12:20 who can argue the facts out of misrepresentation.
02:12:22 And she’s not entirely wrong.
02:12:24 She’s often caricatured,
02:12:25 cause she has a very extreme personality
02:12:26 and extreme worldview.
02:12:28 But that to me, I mean, some people,
02:12:30 there’s a guy named in the physics mathematics community
02:12:32 called Stephen Wolfram.
02:12:34 I don’t know if you’ve heard of him.
02:12:35 Wolfram Malfoy?
02:12:36 Yeah.
02:12:37 Okay.
02:12:38 He has a similar style of speaking sometimes,
02:12:39 which is like, I’ve created a science,
02:12:44 but that turns a lot of people off,
02:12:46 like this kind of weird confidence.
02:12:48 But he’s one of my favorite people,
02:12:50 I think one of the most brilliant people.
02:12:52 If you just ignore that little bit of ego
02:12:56 or whatever you call that,
02:12:57 that there are some beautiful ideas in there.
02:12:59 And that, for me, objectivism,
02:13:03 I’m undereducated about it.
02:13:06 I hope to be more educated,
02:13:08 but there’s some interesting ideas that,
02:13:10 again, just like with UFOs,
02:13:14 not that there’s a connection between the two.
02:13:15 Don’t bring that up for your own.
02:13:16 He won’t like it.
02:13:17 He won’t.
02:13:18 My friends like UFOs.
02:13:19 Oh, no, no, no, this interview is over.
02:13:21 That’s a good yarn.
02:13:24 Okay.
02:13:25 But you know, you have to be a little bit open minded,
02:13:27 but what’s your sense of objectivism?
02:13:31 Are there interesting ideas
02:13:32 that are useful to you to think about?
02:13:35 I own her copy of the first printing of The Fountainhead.
02:13:38 So that should tell you a little bit
02:13:39 about how my affection for Ms. Rand,
02:13:41 how heavy that goes.
02:13:44 Ayn Rand does not have all the answers,
02:13:46 but she has all the questions.
02:13:47 So if you study Rand,
02:13:49 you are going to be forced to think through
02:13:50 some very basic things,
02:13:52 and you’re gonna have your eyes open very, very heavily.
02:13:54 She was not perfect.
02:13:56 She never claimed to be perfect.
02:13:57 She was asked on Donahue,
02:13:59 is it true that according to your philosophy,
02:14:01 you are a perfect being?
02:14:02 She said, I never think of myself that way.
02:14:05 And she said, but if you asked me,
02:14:06 do I practice what I preach?
02:14:07 The answer is yes, resoundingly.
02:14:10 She’s a fascinating woman.
02:14:13 What is really interesting about her,
02:14:15 and this is something you’d appreciate personally,
02:14:17 is when you read her essays,
02:14:19 she’ll have these weird asides.
02:14:21 And it looked like she was talking about art,
02:14:23 and she’d be like, and this is why the US
02:14:24 should be the only country with nuclear weapons.
02:14:25 And when you follow a brilliant mind
02:14:28 making these seemingly disparate connections,
02:14:31 it’s something I find to be just absolutely inspiring
02:14:33 and awesome and entertaining.
02:14:36 I think there’s lots of things about her
02:14:38 that people like Yaron would make uncomfortable.
02:14:43 Well, like she, they,
02:14:45 so objectivism, like any other philosophy,
02:14:47 has all these techniques to kind of hand wave away things
02:14:50 you don’t wanna talk about and like pretend it.
02:14:52 So they talk about things like having
02:14:54 no metaphysical significance, right?
02:14:57 So what that means is like, well, what about this?
02:14:58 Ah, I don’t wanna talk about it.
02:14:59 Like it doesn’t matter.
02:15:00 Like it literally means in fancy philosophical terms,
02:15:02 it doesn’t matter.
02:15:03 Or they will say correctly,
02:15:06 that it’s very twisted in our culture
02:15:09 that when we have heroes, we look for their flaws
02:15:12 instead of looking for their virtues.
02:15:13 That’s a hundred percent valid perspective.
02:15:16 However, if I’m sitting here telling you
02:15:19 that I think this woman is a badass,
02:15:22 and she’s amazing and she should be studied,
02:15:24 but there’s also these idiosyncrasies,
02:15:26 they don’t wanna hear it.
02:15:27 Because they, and I think it’s very convenient for them
02:15:30 because there’s a lot of things she did that were,
02:15:32 here’s an example.
02:15:33 Rand was very, very pro happiness and pleasure.
02:15:36 She was very pro sex, which is kind of surprising
02:15:39 looking at her and how she talked and how strident she was.
02:15:41 As a result of this, she never got her cats fixed
02:15:45 to deny them the pleasure of orgasm.
02:15:46 So her male cats are spraying up her entire house.
02:15:50 Like that is, I mean, that’s her putting her philosophy
02:15:53 into practice, but it’s still gross.
02:15:55 So that’s the kind of thing where I don’t think he’d be,
02:15:58 another thing is Rand had an article on a woman president
02:16:01 and she said a woman should never be president, right?
02:16:04 Now, when Rand says things that are too goofy for them,
02:16:06 they say, oh, that’s not objectivism,
02:16:09 that’s her personal preference.
02:16:11 It’s like, she did not have these lines.
02:16:14 Objectivism was always defined as Ayn Rand’s writings,
02:16:18 plus the additional essays in her books.
02:16:20 So if this was in part of those books,
02:16:22 this counts as official objectivism,
02:16:24 but they pretend otherwise.
02:16:25 So that’s another example.
02:16:26 Plus she was, and I bet you she was on the spectrum
02:16:30 to some extent, I’m not joking,
02:16:31 I’m not using that derisively.
02:16:32 She was of the belief and not inaccurately,
02:16:36 because that humor is used to denigrate and humiliate.
02:16:40 And she was thinking about the Jon Stewart type
02:16:42 before there was a Jon Stewart.
02:16:43 And a lot of times, like how I use mocking,
02:16:46 but she was resentful, correctly,
02:16:49 that a lot of times people who are great and accomplished,
02:16:51 little nobodies will make a punchline
02:16:54 just to bring them down and despise her.
02:16:56 Here’s an example I just thought of.
02:16:58 I remember when it was, must have been the 90s,
02:17:01 they had a segment on MTV of all these musicians
02:17:04 who were making their own perfumes, right?
02:17:07 And this girl grabbed Prince’s perfume,
02:17:09 and before she even smelled it, she had the joke ready.
02:17:11 She goes, oh, this smells almost as bad
02:17:13 as his music lately.
02:17:14 It’s like, first of all, I’m sure the perfume’s fine.
02:17:16 And second of all, this is Prince.
02:17:18 He’s one of the all time greats,
02:17:19 and you can’t wait to denigrate him.
02:17:22 And part, I wanna be like, how dare you?
02:17:25 Like as if this perfume in any way,
02:17:29 in any way mitigates his amazing accomplishments
02:17:32 and achievements, you horrible person.
02:17:34 But I do have some great Ayn Rand jokes,
02:17:36 and he would not be happy about them.
02:17:38 The perfume thing, the problem with it is just not funny.
02:17:40 Oh, he sucks, okay, great.
02:17:43 Not that they dared to try to be humorous,
02:17:47 because I don’t know why you mentioned John,
02:17:48 because John Stewart can be funny.
02:17:50 Right, but he taught a generation,
02:17:53 you still see this on Twitter,
02:17:55 where things have to be inherently sarcastic and snide.
02:17:58 But isn’t that, I mean, aren’t you practicing that?
02:18:00 No, I use irony, not sarcasm.
02:18:02 Here’s an example.
02:18:03 When people, like you say something,
02:18:05 and someone replied, it’d be like,
02:18:07 last I checked, blah, blah, blah, blah,
02:18:08 and I’ll say that, I go,
02:18:09 what do you think saying last I checked added to your point?
02:18:12 You’re giving me valuable information and data,
02:18:14 but you are trained to believe
02:18:16 that it has to be couched in this sneering.
02:18:19 It doesn’t, just give me the information.
02:18:21 This is useful information.
02:18:22 Yeah, that’s true.
02:18:24 It’s a knee jerk.
02:18:24 But see, John Stewart did it masterfully.
02:18:27 Correct, and they don’t.
02:18:28 And they don’t, it’s like people who copy comedians,
02:18:30 certain comedians, you try to copy them
02:18:34 and use everything in the process of copying.
02:18:37 Yeah, yep, okay.
02:18:40 But in terms of the philosophy of selfishness,
02:18:44 this kind of individual focused idea,
02:18:47 and I imagine that connects with you.
02:18:50 Yes, and I think it would connect with more people
02:18:52 if they understood what she meant by it.
02:18:54 Nathaniel Brandon, who was her heir
02:18:55 until she kind of broke with him,
02:18:57 and he was a co dedicatee of Atlas Shrugged,
02:19:00 said no one will say Ayn Rand’s views with a straight face.
02:19:04 They won’t say, I believe that my happiness matters
02:19:08 and is important and is worth fighting for,
02:19:10 and that Ayn Rand says this, then she’s dangerous.
02:19:13 Now, it’s very easy to say
02:19:14 this could have dangerous consequences
02:19:16 if you’re a sociopath,
02:19:17 but to put it in those terms, I think is extremely healthy.
02:19:21 I think more people should wanna be happy.
02:19:23 And I think a lot of us are raised to be apologetic,
02:19:26 especially in this cynical media culture,
02:19:29 that if you say, I wanna be happy, I wanna love my life,
02:19:32 that it’s just like, okay, sweetheart.
02:19:34 And the eye rolling,
02:19:35 and I think that’s so pernicious and so horrifying,
02:19:37 this is why I’m a Camus person,
02:19:39 because Camus thought the archenemy was cynicism
02:19:41 and I could not agree more.
02:19:42 Like if you’re the kind of person,
02:19:44 if someone likes a band and you’re like,
02:19:45 oh, you like them, blah, blah, blah,
02:19:46 it’s like, this gives them happiness.
02:19:49 Now, there’s certain exceptions,
02:19:50 but if it gives you happiness, it’s not for you,
02:19:52 that’s cool.
02:19:54 Okay, this is beautiful.
02:19:55 I so agree with you on the eye rolling,
02:19:59 but you see the best of trolling as not the eye roll.
02:20:04 Correct, of course not.
02:20:05 The best of trolling is taking down the eye rollers.
02:20:08 I’m gonna have to think about that.
02:20:10 Okay.
02:20:10 Because I kind of.
02:20:11 Have another Red Bull.
02:20:12 Yeah, I was, yeah.
02:20:15 Because I put them all.
02:20:16 My blood type is Red Bull.
02:20:20 I kind of put them all in the same bin.
02:20:22 Okay.
02:20:23 And they’re not.
02:20:24 They’re not.
02:20:25 They’re not.
02:20:26 Okay, all right.
02:20:26 Here’s another example of trolling.
02:20:29 I was making jokes about Ron Paul,
02:20:30 he just had a stroke, right?
02:20:32 And someone came at me and they’re like,
02:20:35 blah, blah, blah, blah.
02:20:36 You know, you’re ugly.
02:20:37 I hope you have a stroke.
02:20:38 I hope you’re in the hospital.
02:20:39 And I just go, I just did have a stroke on your mom’s face.
02:20:42 So they came at me and now they got put in their place.
02:20:47 With a subpar, I mean.
02:20:50 I wasn’t clever.
02:20:51 You weren’t clever.
02:20:52 Not particularly, no.
02:20:53 Well, one of your things you do, which is interesting,
02:20:57 I mean, I give you props in a sense,
02:20:59 is you’re willing to go farther than people expect you to.
02:21:03 Yes, that’s fun.
02:21:05 Yeah.
02:21:06 In fact, I’ll probably edit out like half of this podcast
02:21:09 because the thing you did, which she kept in,
02:21:12 should mention, is Michaela Peterson now has a podcast,
02:21:15 which is nice.
02:21:16 I guess, was it on her podcast?
02:21:18 She was on mine.
02:21:19 She was on yours.
02:21:20 We did both, but this is when you’re referring
02:21:21 to when she was on mine.
02:21:22 She was on, yeah, right.
02:21:23 And you went right for the, for the.
02:21:27 So I’ll tell you what it was.
02:21:29 You don’t have to paraphrase.
02:21:29 I opened up, I say, you know, she’s Jordan Peterson’s dad.
02:21:32 And as many people know, sorry, he’s her dad, yeah.
02:21:36 He’s had a long issue with substance addiction.
02:21:39 And I said to her, you’re most famous
02:21:42 for being Jordan Peterson’s daughter.
02:21:45 Many people, he’s changed so many lives around the world.
02:21:48 And he’s been such an enormous influence to me personally
02:21:51 that I’ve started taking benzodiazepines recreationally.
02:21:54 And she’s like, oh my God, Michael, it’s so horrible.
02:21:58 Yeah, because you pulled me in with this,
02:22:01 cause you’re talking, I mean, you know,
02:22:02 cause he’s going through a rough time.
02:22:04 Now she’s going through just everything was just,
02:22:07 you pulled me in emotionally.
02:22:08 I was like, this is going to be the sweet,
02:22:11 Mike is going to be just this wonderful.
02:22:14 And then just bam.
02:22:16 So that’s, that’s, that’s, that was props to you on that.
02:22:21 It wasn’t, whatever that is, that is an art form
02:22:24 when done well, it can be taken too far.
02:22:27 My criticism is it, that feels too good for some people.
02:22:33 What do you mean?
02:22:34 Oh, they’re too happy being a reverend
02:22:35 cause to show that they don’t care about anything.
02:22:37 That’s another form of cynicism though.
02:22:38 Right, so I, cause you think it’s possible to be a troll
02:22:42 and still be the live life to its highest ideal
02:22:46 in the Camus sense.
02:22:48 I try, that’s kind of my ideal.
02:22:51 I believe it’s not, it becomes a drug.
02:22:55 I feel like that takes you,
02:22:57 like I think love ultimately is the way to experience
02:23:01 like every moment of every day.
02:23:04 You don’t think that was an expression of,
02:23:06 I honestly think, let’s split hairs here
02:23:09 cause I think this is something of use here.
02:23:12 I do think that me,
02:23:15 me being able to make her laugh
02:23:18 about this year of hell she was in
02:23:21 does create an element of love
02:23:23 and connection between me and her.
02:23:25 Yeah, but I know she would say that.
02:23:28 Yes, it wasn’t that.
02:23:30 It was what you said in combination
02:23:33 with the sweetness everywhere else, the kindness.
02:23:37 It’s a very subtle thing,
02:23:38 but like, it’s like some of the deepest connection
02:23:41 we have with others is when we like mock them lovingly.
02:23:46 Yes, correct.
02:23:46 But like there is stuff, there’s kindness around that.
02:23:51 Sometimes it’s not in words,
02:23:53 but in like subtle things.
02:23:55 Cause it creates an air of being familial.
02:23:58 Like we’re through this together.
02:23:59 Yeah, that’s missing,
02:24:02 that’s very difficult to do on the internet.
02:24:04 I agree with you.
02:24:05 I agree with you.
02:24:06 That’s why my general approach on the internet
02:24:10 is to be more like simple, less witty
02:24:15 and more like dumbly loving.
02:24:19 But that’s not your core competency being witty.
02:24:23 Uh, me?
02:24:25 Yeah.
02:24:26 But I can be witty.
02:24:27 You can be, but I’m saying that’s not your core competency.
02:24:29 I’m not saying you’re bad at it,
02:24:30 but I’m saying that’s not where you go like organically,
02:24:34 especially with strangers.
02:24:36 I just feel like nobody’s core competence on the internet
02:24:40 is I guess if you want to bring love to the world,
02:24:43 nobody’s core competence is given the current platforms,
02:24:47 nobody’s core competence is wit.
02:24:50 It’s very difficult to be witty on the internet
02:24:52 without while still communicating kindness.
02:24:55 Like in the same way that you can in physical space.
02:24:59 I’ll give you another example.
02:25:00 Someone came at me and they were like,
02:25:03 they gave me a donation.
02:25:04 People do this all the time.
02:25:06 And they go, oh, like I started reading your books
02:25:09 cause of my wife and you know,
02:25:11 now watch your shows together, keep up the good work.
02:25:14 And I go, what does her boyfriend think?
02:25:17 So that is an example of wit and love
02:25:20 because that person feels seen.
02:25:23 I’m acknowledging them.
02:25:24 I’m also making a joke at their expense.
02:25:25 We know it’s a joke.
02:25:27 So I think language is often used in nonliteral ways
02:25:31 to cue emotional and connectivity.
02:25:34 It’s difficult, but what you’ve done
02:25:37 is difficult to accomplish, but you’ve done it well.
02:25:39 I mean, you’ve been doing these live streams,
02:25:43 which are nice that people give you a bunch of money
02:25:45 and donations and stuff.
02:25:46 And then you, you’ll often like make fun
02:25:49 of certain aspects of their questions and so on,
02:25:51 but it’s always lovely.
02:25:52 That’s not from love.
02:25:53 That is genuine annoyance
02:25:53 cause they ask me some really dumb questions.
02:25:54 But they’re still underlying, it’s not even,
02:25:57 like there’s a kind person under that
02:26:00 that’s being communicated.
02:26:02 That’s interesting.
02:26:03 But I don’t know if I get that from your Twitter.
02:26:05 I know I get that from the video,
02:26:07 something about the face, something about like,
02:26:09 Yeah, of course.
02:26:10 The physical presentation.
02:26:11 The more data, the more easy it is
02:26:13 to convey emotion and subtlety.
02:26:15 Absolutely, if you only have literally black and white
02:26:17 letters, it’s going to be, or whatever,
02:26:19 white and black, if you have night mode,
02:26:20 it’s going to be a very different,
02:26:21 it’s much more limited information.
02:26:23 Yeah, but this is the fundamental thing is like,
02:26:27 Here’s another example.
02:26:28 Like if they had access to my face,
02:26:30 like a lot of times some people don’t know who I am
02:26:32 and they come at me, call me a Nazi antisemite, right?
02:26:34 And I start talking about the Jews
02:26:36 and just how terrible the Jews are.
02:26:37 Now all my audience knows I’m Jewish
02:26:39 that I went to yeshiva.
02:26:40 So they’re sitting there laughing
02:26:41 cause this person is making ass of themselves.
02:26:43 That person has no idea.
02:26:44 But if there was video, then they would be like,
02:26:47 okay, wait a minute, something’s up.
02:26:48 Yeah, something’s up.
02:26:51 I don’t know.
02:26:52 I think it’s entertaining.
02:26:53 I think it’s fun, but I just, I don’t think it’s scalable.
02:26:57 And ultimately, I’m trying to figure out
02:27:00 this whole trolling thing.
02:27:01 Cause I think it’s really destructive.
02:27:04 I’ve been the outrage mob, the outrage mobs,
02:27:08 just the dynamics of Twitter has been really bothering me.
02:27:12 Okay.
02:27:13 I’ve been trying to figure out if we can try to build
02:27:18 an alternative to Twitter perhaps
02:27:19 or try to encourage Twitter to be better,
02:27:22 how to have nuanced, healthy conversations.
02:27:25 Like the reason I talk about love isn’t just for love’s sake.
02:27:28 It’s just a good base from which to have
02:27:31 difficult conversations.
02:27:33 Like that’s a good starting point.
02:27:34 Because if you start, like I would argue that
02:27:38 the kind of conversation you have on Twitter is fun,
02:27:42 but it might not be a good starting point
02:27:44 for a difficult, nuanced conversation.
02:27:46 Well, I’m not interested in having
02:27:48 those conversations with most people.
02:27:49 No, I know, but.
02:27:50 So I agree with you.
02:27:52 Your point is valid.
02:27:53 Yes, but like I’m saying, so if we were trying to have
02:27:56 a difficult, nuanced conversation
02:27:58 about say race in America or policing,
02:28:02 is there institutional racism of policing?
02:28:06 Okay.
02:28:07 There’s the only conversations that have been nuanced
02:28:10 about it that I’ve heard is in the podcasting medium.
02:28:13 I agree with you.
02:28:14 Which is the magic of podcasting, which is great.
02:28:17 But that’s the downside of podcasting
02:28:21 is it’s a very small number of people.
02:28:24 Even if it’s in the thousands, it’s still small.
02:28:27 And then there’s millions of people on social media
02:28:30 and they’re not having nuanced conversation at all.
02:28:32 They’re not capable of it.
02:28:34 That’s the difference in your thoughts.
02:28:35 They have no minds.
02:28:35 I believe they are.
02:28:36 So that’s the.
02:28:37 There’s no data that shows this.
02:28:38 Both of us aren’t being not scientific.
02:28:41 You don’t have data to support your world either.
02:28:43 You’re making the claim.
02:28:45 Well, you are too.
02:28:46 No, I’m not.
02:28:47 If I’m looking at an object, the claim that it has in mind.
02:28:51 Well.
02:28:53 No, what?
02:28:54 No, your claim is that people are fundamentally stupid.
02:28:58 Are you a martial artist?
02:28:59 Yes.
02:29:01 How’s it feel?
02:29:03 I just judo on you.
02:29:05 Yeah.
02:29:05 But you really don’t think people are deep down
02:29:10 like capable of being intelligent.
02:29:13 No, not at all.
02:29:14 Not deep down, not surface.
02:29:16 I’m not joking.
02:29:16 I’m not being tongue in cheek.
02:29:18 I’m not being cynical.
02:29:18 I do not at all think they have this capacity.
02:29:22 I’m gonna think.
02:29:23 Cause you’re being so clear about it.
02:29:24 You’re not even.
02:29:26 I’m gonna have to think about that.
02:29:27 You know why?
02:29:27 Here’s evidence for my position, not proof.
02:29:31 And this is of course data that is of little use,
02:29:33 but it’s of interest.
02:29:34 A lot of times when you have an audience as big as mine
02:29:37 and people come at you,
02:29:38 not only will people say the same thing, the same concept,
02:29:42 they’ll say the same concept in the same way.
02:29:44 That is not a mind.
02:29:46 Yeah.
02:29:47 That’s surface evidence.
02:29:49 You’re saying this iceberg looks like this from the surface.
02:29:52 I’m saying there’s an iceberg there
02:29:54 that if challenged can rise to the occasion
02:30:01 of deep thinking and you’re saying.
02:30:04 Nope.
02:30:05 Nope.
02:30:05 It’s just frozen water.
02:30:08 Isn’t that the Russian expression?
02:30:11 That’s ice cream.
02:30:12 No, not.
02:30:14 Doesn’t it mean like no one’s there?
02:30:17 Actually, I don’t know.
02:30:18 Yeah, it means like, yeah.
02:30:19 Yeah, it’s like thought.
02:30:20 It means.
02:30:25 Okay.
02:30:26 Well, so you’re challenging me
02:30:28 to be a little bit more rigorous.
02:30:29 I think I’ll try.
02:30:30 I’m not challenging you anything.
02:30:31 I’m just saying.
02:30:32 No, not challenging me,
02:30:33 but like I’m challenging myself based on what you’re saying
02:30:35 because I’d like to prove you wrong
02:30:37 and find actual data to show you’re wrong.
02:30:42 And I think I can, but I would need to get that data.
02:30:46 That’s funny you said, I think I can.
02:30:47 When they were working on my biography, Ego and Hubris,
02:30:50 the title I had suggested was
02:30:52 The Little Engine That Could But Shouldn’t.
02:30:54 And they didn’t like it.
02:30:57 I think that’s a great title.
02:30:58 That’s pretty good, yeah.
02:31:00 Speaking of biographies, I mean,
02:31:01 I read your book or listened to your book.
02:31:04 Listened to.
02:31:04 There’s an audio book from you, right?
02:31:05 Yeah, I did the audio, yeah.
02:31:06 Yeah.
02:31:08 You read it?
02:31:08 My Golis, yes.
02:31:10 Okay.
02:31:11 So this was a.
02:31:12 I didn’t do Yaron Brooks voice in the book.
02:31:14 I did all the different voices
02:31:15 because he has a lisp
02:31:16 and I didn’t want to sound like I was making fun of him.
02:31:19 Yeah, I don’t remember you reading it,
02:31:21 but I was really enjoyed it.
02:31:23 No, okay.
02:31:24 It was good.
02:31:25 It was like a year, a year and a half ago.
02:31:26 This I can prove.
02:31:27 It’s just.
02:31:30 Well, let me at a high level,
02:31:32 see if you can pull this off.
02:31:33 If I ask you, what’s the book you write about?
02:31:38 It’s about a group of people
02:31:42 who are united solely by their opposition to progressivism,
02:31:46 who have little else in common,
02:31:49 but who are all frequently caricatured and dismissed
02:31:53 by the larger establishment media.
02:31:56 But you give this kind of story of how it came to be.
02:32:00 Sure.
02:32:01 And to me, like we’re talking about trolls,
02:32:03 but the internet side of things is quite interesting.
02:32:06 So first of all, how does alt right connect?
02:32:10 So the alt right is the subset of the new right,
02:32:13 which feels that race, not racism,
02:32:16 is the most or one of the most important
02:32:19 socio political issues.
02:32:21 Are any of those folks like part of the mainstream
02:32:27 or worth paying attention to?
02:32:29 None of them are part of the mainstream.
02:32:30 The alt right, by definition,
02:32:32 they would be part of the mainstream.
02:32:33 They would not be part of them.
02:32:34 No, they would not.
02:32:36 I don’t know that any of them.
02:32:38 Well, worth is not a position.
02:32:40 I’m not in a position to say worth.
02:32:41 I would say that it is of use
02:32:45 to be familiar with their arguments
02:32:48 because to dismiss any school of thought,
02:32:51 especially one that has historically gained leverage,
02:32:54 especially one that has historically gained leverage
02:32:57 in very dark ways, especially in America,
02:32:59 in Europe and other places,
02:33:01 just to say, oh, they’re racist.
02:33:03 I don’t need to think about them.
02:33:04 It doesn’t behoove you.
02:33:07 So what lessons do we draw from the 4chan side of things,
02:33:13 like the internet side of the movement?
02:33:16 Tits or get the fuck out.
02:33:19 Can you define every single word in there?
02:33:21 Tits or breasts or get the fuck out.
02:33:24 That’s from 4chan.
02:33:25 Okay, what’s it mean?
02:33:28 Oh, sometimes like a woman will appear in 4chan
02:33:29 and they’ll just reply, tits or get the fuck out.
02:33:34 I’m trying to understand what that,
02:33:35 oh, oh, that’s a way.
02:33:41 I just, very slow.
02:33:44 Oh, so that’s, okay, so that’s very disrespectful
02:33:47 towards female members of the community.
02:33:52 I don’t understand.
02:33:53 There’s rules to this community
02:33:55 and one of them is we’re not very good with women.
02:33:58 Is that, that’s one of the rules?
02:33:59 It’s more of a principle than a rule.
02:34:02 It’s a principle?
02:34:04 We’re not going to ever get laid.
02:34:06 That’s fundamentally the principle.
02:34:07 Is there other principles?
02:34:08 But we are gonna get pics.
02:34:10 Pics.
02:34:11 Sometimes.
02:34:11 Sometimes on the internet.
02:34:12 Sometimes they GTFO.
02:34:15 Okay, so is there other actual principles of,
02:34:19 so like it’s, from my maybe naive perspective
02:34:24 is they have like the darkest aspects of trolling,
02:34:26 which is like take nothing serious,
02:34:28 make a game out of everything.
02:34:30 That’s not 4chan per se.
02:34:31 One of the things that you will learn in 4chan,
02:34:34 which I think is very healthy,
02:34:35 is if you have an idiosocratic or unique worldview
02:34:39 or focus on an aspect of history or culture,
02:34:42 you’ll be able to find like minded people
02:34:43 who you will engage with you and discuss it
02:34:45 without being preemptively dismissive.
02:34:49 That’s an ideal that they.
02:34:51 Well, it’s not ideal.
02:34:51 It’s something that happens a lot.
02:34:52 Now 4chan’s not really,
02:34:53 like Paul is their board with politics,
02:34:56 but they will get into some,
02:34:59 like the people there are much more erudite than you’d think.
02:35:01 So they do take,
02:35:03 my perception was they take nothing seriously.
02:35:05 So there’s things that they take seriously,
02:35:07 like discussing ideas.
02:35:08 I’ll give you one example.
02:35:09 There was a video someone posted
02:35:11 of a girl who put kittens in a bag
02:35:13 and threw it in a river.
02:35:14 And they found out where she was within a day
02:35:16 and got her like arrested.
02:35:17 So yeah, they do take some things very seriously.
02:35:20 Okay.
02:35:21 But that’s like an extreme that,
02:35:24 I mean, that’s good.
02:35:25 First of all, that’s heartwarming
02:35:26 that they wouldn’t somehow turn that into a thing.
02:35:29 That feels like more of a, what is it?
02:35:31 What’s the other one?
02:35:32 8chan?
02:35:33 8chan’s twice as good as 4chan, yeah.
02:35:36 That’s their slogan.
02:35:38 But it feels like they’re the kind of community
02:35:40 that would take that kitten situation
02:35:43 and make a mockery of it.
02:35:45 Yeah, they’re darker than 4chan.
02:35:47 I don’t even, I’m not allowed to talk about 16chan.
02:35:51 I’m already overwhelmed clearly by 4chan lingo.
02:35:57 I literally wrote down in my notes,
02:36:00 like in doing research for this conversation,
02:36:04 I learned the word pleb.
02:36:06 And I wanted to ask you what this pleb means.
02:36:09 Do you know what pleb means?
02:36:10 No.
02:36:13 I saw, I mean, actually, no, I don’t.
02:36:16 You know what a pleb is?
02:36:17 I just, I don’t know what a pleb is.
02:36:20 Like a plebiscite or plebeian.
02:36:22 Okay.
02:36:23 But does it mean something more sophisticated?
02:36:27 No, it’s a very unsophisticated mechanism
02:36:29 of being dismissive.
02:36:30 Of like the regular people.
02:36:32 Yeah, or someone who comes at me on Twitter.
02:36:35 Okay.
02:36:36 All right, so back to the 4chan alt right.
02:36:39 Wasn’t the…
02:36:40 Those are very different concepts.
02:36:41 Don’t conflate them.
02:36:43 But which internet culture was the alt right born out of?
02:36:48 Well, alt right was more born of blogs.
02:36:51 And people had different blogs that were posting
02:36:53 what they call like racial realism,
02:36:55 which is scientific racism, so called.
02:36:57 And breaking down issues from a racialist perspective.
02:37:00 So that wasn’t, 4chan is much more dynamic.
02:37:03 It’s a message board.
02:37:04 It’s very fluid.
02:37:06 So it doesn’t lend itself
02:37:08 to these kind of in depth analysis of ideas or history.
02:37:11 But it spreads them.
02:37:12 Like it…
02:37:13 It spreads them as memes, yeah.
02:37:15 And you know, but…
02:37:16 But it’s not an essential mechanism
02:37:18 of the alt right, historically?
02:37:20 No, no, no, no, no, no.
02:37:22 So it was mostly about blogs.
02:37:24 Okay, so what do you make of the psychology
02:37:28 of this kind of worldview?
02:37:29 When you have…
02:37:30 This goes to your conspiracy theory subject earlier.
02:37:33 When you have a little bit of knowledge about something,
02:37:36 about history that no one’s talking about,
02:37:39 and there’s only one group that is talking about it,
02:37:42 and you have no alternative answers,
02:37:45 you’re going to be drawn to that group.
02:37:47 So because issues about race, anti semitism, homophobia
02:37:51 are so taboo in our culture,
02:37:53 understandably there’s good reasons.
02:37:55 If you start putting things like,
02:37:56 how old should you be to have sex with kids
02:37:58 and just have regular conversations,
02:38:00 eventually some people are gonna start
02:38:01 taking some positions you don’t like.
02:38:02 So some things have to be sanctified to some extent.
02:38:04 They’re the only ones talking about it.
02:38:06 You’re gonna be drawn to that subculture.
02:38:10 And where does the alt right stand now?
02:38:13 I mean, I hear that term used…
02:38:15 So the term has been weaponized by the corporate press
02:38:18 for people that they want to read out of society.
02:38:22 So it’s used both on individual levels,
02:38:24 like people like Gavin McIngus, Milo Yiannopoulos,
02:38:27 some others.
02:38:28 I mean, I think they’ve referred to Trump as alt right.
02:38:31 And it’s become a slur, just like incel or bot,
02:38:36 that has become largely removed from its original meaning.
02:38:39 Do you have a sense that there’s still a movement
02:38:41 that’s alt right or like…
02:38:43 Yeah, they call themselves now…
02:38:44 Okay, so there’s something called the dissonant right.
02:38:47 And they say, we’re completely not like the alt right
02:38:49 because the alt right’s A, B, and C, and we’re B, C, D.
02:38:53 There’s a huge overlap.
02:38:54 It’s very much the same people.
02:38:57 Is there intellectuals that still represent
02:38:59 some aspect of the movement?
02:39:01 I mean, sure.
02:39:02 Are you tracking this?
02:39:03 Not that much anymore.
02:39:05 I think they’re…
02:39:06 I don’t find it particularly as…
02:39:10 Now that the book’s done,
02:39:12 I’m looking more into history for my next book.
02:39:15 You mentioned communism?
02:39:16 I’m gonna talk a lot about the Cold War.
02:39:19 So this kind of stuff has largely fallen away
02:39:22 from my radar to some extent.
02:39:24 And it’s been a very effective movement
02:39:27 to get them marginalized and silenced.
02:39:29 So they’re not as deep of a concern
02:39:32 in terms of concern or not,
02:39:34 just their impact on society.
02:39:36 Yes, it’s much lessened, yeah.
02:39:38 So as a troll on Twitter, in the best sense of the word,
02:39:42 what do you make of cancel culture?
02:39:45 I think it’s Maoism.
02:39:47 I mean, corporate America has done a far better job
02:39:50 of implementing Maoism than the communist party ever could.
02:39:52 You had this meeting not that long ago
02:39:54 from I think it was Northwestern University Law School
02:39:56 where everyone on the call got up
02:39:57 and said that they were racist.
02:39:59 I mean, this is something that legally
02:40:01 you should be very averse to saying,
02:40:02 even if it were true.
02:40:04 And it’s this kind of concept of getting up
02:40:06 and confessing your sins before the collective
02:40:08 is something completely.
02:40:12 Oh, sorry, they admitted this of themselves?
02:40:14 Yeah, they were like,
02:40:15 because they’re saying because they’re white,
02:40:16 they’re inherently racist.
02:40:17 So my name’s John, I’m a racist.
02:40:18 My name’s this, I’m a racist.
02:40:20 You hear it and you’re like, okay, this is Looney Tunes.
02:40:22 So you’re saying that, wow, that’s so much,
02:40:25 you took a step further.
02:40:26 So you’re saying there’s like a deep underlying force
02:40:30 that cancels culture.
02:40:31 It’s not just some kind of mob.
02:40:33 Well, it’s not a mob at all.
02:40:35 It’s a systemic organized movement being used
02:40:40 for very nefarious purposes
02:40:42 and to dominate an entire nation.
02:40:45 How do we fight it?
02:40:46 Because I sense it inside.
02:40:48 You know, I used to defend academia more
02:40:51 because I still do to some extent.
02:40:58 It’s a nuanced discussion because, you know,
02:41:02 like folks like Jordan Peterson
02:41:03 and a lot of people that kind of attack academia,
02:41:06 they refer, they really are talking about gender studies
02:41:10 at certain departments.
02:41:11 And me from MIT, you know,
02:41:13 it’s the University of Science and Engineering
02:41:15 and the faculty there really don’t think
02:41:20 about these issues or haven’t traditionally thought of,
02:41:24 but it’s beginning to even infiltrate there.
02:41:26 It’s the, you know, it’s starting to infiltrate engineering
02:41:30 and sciences outside of biology.
02:41:32 Like let’s put biology with the gender studies.
02:41:35 Like I’m talking about sciences
02:41:36 that really don’t have anything to do with gender.
02:41:40 It’s starting to infiltrate and it worries me.
02:41:45 I don’t know exactly why,
02:41:46 like I don’t know exactly what the negative effect
02:41:49 there would be, except it feels like it’s anti intellectual.
02:41:55 Oh yes, of course.
02:41:57 And I’m not sure what to,
02:41:59 because on the surface,
02:42:02 it feels like a path towards progress.
02:42:05 At first, when I’m like zoomed out, you know,
02:42:08 just like squinting my eyes, you know,
02:42:11 not even in detail looking at things,
02:42:13 but when I actually joined the conversation
02:42:15 to like listen in the conversation on quote unquote diversity,
02:42:20 it quickly makes me realize
02:42:23 that there’s no interest in making a better world.
02:42:29 No, no, it’s about domination.
02:42:31 It’s about getting, yeah.
02:42:33 It’s a way for, if you are a lowest status white person,
02:42:37 using anti racism is the only mechanism you will have
02:42:41 to feel superior to another human being.
02:42:43 So it’s very useful for them in terms of fighting it.
02:42:48 One of my suggestions has been to seize
02:42:50 all university endowments,
02:42:51 which are the crystallization of privilege
02:42:54 and distribute that money as reparations.
02:42:56 So be very effective by turning two populations
02:42:59 against each other and strongly diminishing
02:43:01 the university’s intellectual hegemony.
02:43:04 The universities are absolutely the real villains
02:43:07 in the picture.
02:43:08 Thankfully, they’re also the least prepared
02:43:10 to be aggressed upon.
02:43:12 And after the government and the corporate press,
02:43:15 they are the last leg of the stool,
02:43:17 and they don’t know what’s coming,
02:43:18 and it’s gonna get ugly, and I cannot wait.
02:43:21 So this is where you and I disagree.
02:43:22 Part one, yeah, we disagree in the sense
02:43:25 that you want to dismantle broken institutions.
02:43:30 I don’t think they’re broken.
02:43:31 They’re powerful.
02:43:32 They’re working like by design.
02:43:33 I think for over 100 years,
02:43:34 they have been talking about bringing
02:43:36 the next generation of American leaders,
02:43:38 which is code, for promulgating an ideology
02:43:42 based on egalitarian principles and world domination.
02:43:47 Let me try to express my lived experience.
02:43:50 Okay, sure.
02:43:51 My experience at MIT is that there’s a bunch
02:43:56 of administrators that are, the bureaucracy,
02:44:00 that I can say, this is the nice thing
02:44:03 about having a podcast, I don’t give a damn,
02:44:06 is they’re pretty useless.
02:44:07 In fact, they get in the way.
02:44:09 But there’s faculty, there’s professors,
02:44:12 that are incredible.
02:44:15 They’re incredible human beings
02:44:16 that all they do all day, they’re too busy,
02:44:20 but for the most part, what they do all day
02:44:23 is just like continually pursue different
02:44:26 little trajectories of curiosities
02:44:29 in the various avenues of science that they work on.
02:44:33 And as a side effect of that, they mentor
02:44:38 a group of students, sometimes a large group of students,
02:44:40 and also teach courses, and they’re constantly
02:44:43 sharing their passion with others.
02:44:45 And my experience is it’s just a bunch of people
02:44:49 who are curious about engineering and math
02:44:52 and science, chemistry, artificial intelligence,
02:44:55 computer science, what I’m most familiar with.
02:44:57 And there’s never this feeling of MIT
02:45:01 being broken somehow, like this kind of feeling.
02:45:04 Like if I talk to you just now, or like Eric Weinstein,
02:45:08 there’s a feeling like stuff is on fire, right?
02:45:11 There’s something deeply broken.
02:45:13 But when I’m in the system, especially before the COVID,
02:45:19 before this kind of tension, everything was great.
02:45:22 There was no discussion of, even diversity,
02:45:25 all that kind of stuff, the toxic stuff
02:45:28 that we might be talking about right now,
02:45:30 none of that was happening.
02:45:30 There was a bunch of people just in love with cool ideas,
02:45:35 exploring ideas, being curious, and learning,
02:45:37 and all that kind of stuff.
02:45:38 So I don’t, my sense of academia was this is the place
02:45:43 where kids in their 20s, 30s, and 40s can continue
02:45:47 the playground of science, having fun.
02:45:50 It’s, if you destroy academia, if you destroy universities,
02:45:54 like you’re suggesting kind of lessening their power,
02:45:58 you take away the playground from these kids
02:46:00 to play.
02:46:01 It’s gonna be hard for you to tell me
02:46:03 that I’m anti playground.
02:46:05 Yeah, well, I guess I’m saying you’re anti
02:46:07 certain kinds of playgrounds, which is.
02:46:08 Yeah, the ones that have the broken glass on the floor.
02:46:10 Yeah, I am against those kinds of playgrounds.
02:46:14 No, you’re, you’re, you’re.
02:46:18 Yes. Nope.
02:46:18 See, see.
02:46:19 Now you see, now you listen.
02:46:21 Now you, now you wait.
02:46:22 Yeah, I would say you’re being the watchful mother who,
02:46:27 the one kid who hurt themselves in the glass.
02:46:29 One kid, it’s an entire, it’s generation after generation.
02:46:32 I’m not a watchful mother.
02:46:33 I’m the guy with the flamethrower.
02:46:34 No, I, I, I understand that.
02:46:37 But you’re using the one kid who was always kind of like
02:46:41 weird, aka gender studies department.
02:46:44 Okay.
02:46:45 That, that hurt themselves on the glass,
02:46:47 as opposed to the people who are like,
02:46:49 obviously having fun in the playground and not playing
02:46:53 by the glass, the broken glass.
02:46:55 And they’re just, I mean, to me,
02:46:57 some of the best innovations in science
02:47:00 happen in universities.
02:47:02 Okay.
02:47:02 You can’t forget that universities don’t have this
02:47:07 liberal, like politics literally in every conversation
02:47:13 until this year, until this year,
02:47:15 there’s something happening.
02:47:16 But every conversation I’ve ever had had nothing to do
02:47:19 with politics.
02:47:20 We never, Trump never came up.
02:47:22 None of that ever come up.
02:47:23 Nothing.
02:47:24 Like all this kind of idea that there’s liberal, all that.
02:47:27 But that, that’s in the humanities.
02:47:29 Yeah.
02:47:30 But do you think MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
02:47:33 might be a little bit of an outlier?
02:47:34 Yeah, that probably is.
02:47:35 Yeah.
02:47:36 But I, I don’t, I honestly don’t think when people
02:47:40 criticize academia, they’re looking at,
02:47:43 they’re in fact also picking the outliers,
02:47:46 which is they’re picking some of the quote unquote
02:47:49 strongest gender studies departments.
02:47:51 This is nonsensical.
02:47:52 When I was at Bucknell, it was a college student.
02:47:55 We had to take, you know, we had a bunch of electives
02:47:57 and I wanted to take a class on individual,
02:47:59 American individualism.
02:48:01 One of the texts of the five that we had to read
02:48:04 was Birth of a Nation, the movie about the Klan.
02:48:08 So there’s no department where these people
02:48:12 are not thoroughgoing, hardcore ideologues.
02:48:17 This is not a gender.
02:48:18 That’s the humanities, that’s the humanities.
02:48:19 Fine, all the humanities, not just gender studies.
02:48:21 Okay, fine.
02:48:22 I can give you.
02:48:23 Theory, English, all of them, every university,
02:48:27 as you know, has it mandatory in the curriculum
02:48:31 they have to take a bunch of these propaganda classes.
02:48:35 I look forward to YouTube comments
02:48:37 because you’re being more eloquent
02:48:39 and you’re speaking to the thing
02:48:40 that a lot of people agree with
02:48:42 and I’m being my usual slow self
02:48:44 and people are going to say not very nice things about me.
02:48:46 Don’t say anything that nice about Lex, please.
02:48:50 Let me try to just.
02:48:51 Just shoot up a school.
02:48:52 That would be preferable.
02:48:54 There he goes again.
02:48:55 Only the teachers.
02:48:56 Going to the darkest possible place.
02:48:58 That’s sunshine, baby, schools.
02:48:59 That’s where everyone goes to be happy, playgrounds.
02:49:01 There he goes, dark ear.
02:49:04 Just dives right in, just go dark
02:49:07 and then just comes back up to the surface.
02:49:10 I don’t have to feel this way anymore.
02:49:13 Just one day in the world.
02:49:18 You’re probably a figment of my imagination.
02:49:19 I’m not even having this podcast.
02:49:21 Well, after 18 Red Bulls, I’m surprised
02:49:23 you could see anything.
02:49:24 This is like Fight Club.
02:49:25 Red Bull gives you delirium.
02:49:27 Yeah.
02:49:29 I got into it with Ed Norton yesterday on Twitter.
02:49:32 Oh, really?
02:49:33 Yeah.
02:49:34 Is he like the rest of the celebrities?
02:49:35 Yeah, he’s like, oh, this is an existential threat
02:49:38 to America, Trump’s a fascist.
02:49:39 He’s delegitimizing the Oval Office.
02:49:41 I said, what an odd endorsement of Trump.
02:49:44 Well, you should have went with a bad pit.
02:49:45 He might have a different opinion.
02:49:46 That’s true.
02:49:47 So Fight Club reference, okay.
02:49:49 This conversation is over.
02:49:52 It’s interesting.
02:49:53 I’d like to draw a line between science and engineering
02:49:56 and science not including like the biological aspect,
02:50:00 the parts of biology that touch
02:50:03 and humanities and biology.
02:50:04 Like I feel because humanities,
02:50:08 if you just look at the percentage of universities,
02:50:10 it’s still a minority percentage.
02:50:13 And I would actually draw a different,
02:50:16 I think they serve very different purposes.
02:50:18 Sure.
02:50:19 And that’s actually a broken part about universities
02:50:22 about like, why is some of the best research
02:50:27 in the world done at universities?
02:50:28 That doesn’t, like there might be a different,
02:50:31 like MIT, it feels weird that a faculty.
02:50:34 Yeah, these are conceptually different things.
02:50:35 Like we do research and we teach,
02:50:37 why is this the same diagram?
02:50:38 Yeah, it feels weird.
02:50:38 But that’s just, but I’m also,
02:50:40 I’m coming to like the defense of the engineers
02:50:44 that never talk about,
02:50:45 I’m not like, my mind isn’t,
02:50:49 I’m not like deluded or something
02:50:51 where I’m not seeing the house on fire.
02:50:53 I’m just saying, I am seeing the house
02:50:55 because I also lived in Harvard Square.
02:50:57 I’m seeing Harvard, but in.
02:50:59 And you see the tanks coming?
02:51:00 They’re coming, Lex.
02:51:01 They’re coming.
02:51:02 It’s gonna be so beautiful.
02:51:03 It’ll be like the American beauty, the plastic bag.
02:51:06 I just won’t be able to stop crying
02:51:07 because it’ll be so beautiful.
02:51:08 Yeah, I can already see it.
02:51:11 But the engineering departments where like,
02:51:14 I believe that the Elon Musk’s of the world,
02:51:18 that the, like the innovation
02:51:20 that will make a better world is happening.
02:51:22 And like, let’s not burn that down.
02:51:25 Cause that has nothing to do with any,
02:51:27 like they’re all like sitting quietly
02:51:29 in the, while like, while the humanities
02:51:32 and all these kinds of diversity programs,
02:51:34 they’re not having any of these discussions.
02:51:36 Listen, my Soviet brother, you both know,
02:51:39 we both know that ice water runs in our veins.
02:51:41 So if you’re calling for mercy,
02:51:42 that is not how I’m wired,
02:51:44 but I’m not closing the door.
02:51:46 Yeah, I’m actually realizing now,
02:51:48 so for people listening to this,
02:51:50 I’ll probably prepend this in saying that
02:51:52 I’m even slower than usual.
02:51:54 I didn’t sleep last night,
02:51:56 but I feel I’m actually realizing just how slow I am
02:52:00 and how much preparation I need to do.
02:52:03 And if I would like to defend aspects of academia,
02:52:06 I better come prepared.
02:52:08 I don’t think you need to defend them.
02:52:09 I think I’m granting you your premise freely.
02:52:12 No, you might be.
02:52:13 Okay.
02:52:14 I don’t think the world is.
02:52:16 But actually you just defeat your own argument
02:52:18 because it is not at all have to be the way
02:52:21 that a phenomenal research institution like MIT,
02:52:24 which no one disputes,
02:52:25 has to also be an educational establishment.
02:52:28 These two things are not at all necessarily interconnected.
02:52:32 But then you have to offer a way to separate.
02:52:34 Correct.
02:52:35 But like, I’m not a big fan, everybody’s different,
02:52:38 but I’m not a fan of criticizing institutions
02:52:41 without offering a way to change.
02:52:43 And especially when I’m like, have ability to change,
02:52:46 I’d like to, yeah, I’d like to offer a path.
02:52:49 Like.
02:52:50 What if they were in students, they were all mentor,
02:52:51 like, what’s the opposite of a mentor?
02:52:55 Mentee.
02:52:56 Protege?
02:52:57 What’s the term when you like.
02:52:58 Graduate students.
02:52:59 When you work at a place, like interns,
02:53:01 not an intern, it’s not the word I’m thinking of.
02:53:02 But anyway, like basically they’re working there
02:53:04 instead of going to college there.
02:53:06 It’s possible, but it’s going against tradition.
02:53:08 And so you have to build new institutions and.
02:53:11 And have these engineers building new things, that’s crazy.
02:53:15 These research engineers,
02:53:16 where they’re going to be building things.
02:53:18 Well, one of the things, cause you’re kind of a.
02:53:21 Apprentice, that’s the word I was looking at.
02:53:22 Apprentice.
02:53:23 Which is ironic, we’re talking about Trump
02:53:24 and we couldn’t think of the word apprentice.
02:53:26 Yeah, well done.
02:53:28 We should both be fired.
02:53:29 You’re fired.
02:53:29 Yeah, there you go.
02:53:31 These Russian Jews, so quick with their wit.
02:53:34 Okay.
02:53:35 But the thing is, you’re a fan of freedom.
02:53:37 I am.
02:53:38 And there is intellectual freedom.
02:53:42 People, this is what I was trying to articulate,
02:53:45 I’m failing to articulate,
02:53:47 but there truly is complete intellectual freedom
02:53:50 within universities on topics of science and engineering.
02:53:56 I believe you, I agree with you.
02:53:57 I don’t think it’s going to take much persuasion,
02:53:59 but I’ll give you an example.
02:54:01 When that, I’m sure you know more details about this
02:54:04 than I do.
02:54:05 When that scientist engineered that probe
02:54:09 to land on that comet,
02:54:11 and the articles are written
02:54:12 because this Hawaiian shirt he was wearing
02:54:15 had like pinup girls on it,
02:54:16 which I think his female student sewed for him
02:54:18 or something, or his ex girlfriend.
02:54:19 And he had to apologize.
02:54:21 This is what Rand was talking about.
02:54:23 That the great accomplishments of men
02:54:26 have to say I’m sorry to the lowest,
02:54:29 most despicable, disgusting people.
02:54:32 Yeah, I don’t know.
02:54:34 Let me bring this case up because I think about this.
02:54:37 This might not mean much to you,
02:54:39 but it means a lot to certain aspects
02:54:41 of the computer science community.
02:54:42 There’s a guy named Richard Stallman.
02:54:44 I don’t know if you know who that is.
02:54:46 He’s the founder of the Free Software Foundation.
02:54:51 He’s like a big Linux.
02:54:52 He’s one of the key people
02:54:53 in the history of computer science,
02:54:54 one of those open source people, right?
02:54:56 But he is like, I believe he’s one of the hardcore ones,
02:55:00 which is like all software should be free.
02:55:02 Okay, so it’s very interesting personality,
02:55:05 very key person in the GNU,
02:55:07 just like Linus Torvald, key person.
02:55:10 So, but he also kind of speaks his mind.
02:55:13 And on a certain chain of conversations at MIT
02:55:20 that was leaked to the New York Times,
02:55:22 then it was published, led him to be fired
02:55:26 or pushed out of MIT recently, maybe a year ago.
02:55:30 And it always sat weird with me.
02:55:32 So what happened is there’s a few undergraduate students
02:55:38 that called Marvin Minsky.
02:55:41 Not sure if you’re familiar with who that is.
02:55:42 I’ve heard the name.
02:55:43 He’s one of the seminal people in artificial intelligence.
02:55:46 They said that they called him a rapist
02:55:49 because he met with Jeffrey Epstein.
02:55:53 And Jeffrey Epstein solicited,
02:55:58 these are the best facts known to me
02:55:59 that I’m aware of, that’s what was stated on the chain,
02:56:02 is he solicited a 17,
02:56:04 but it might’ve been an 18 year old girl,
02:56:07 to come up to Marvin Minsky
02:56:09 and ask him if he wanted to have sex with her.
02:56:13 So Jeffrey Epstein told the girl.
02:56:16 She came up to Marvin Minsky,
02:56:18 who was at that time, I think, seven years old.
02:56:20 And his wife was there too, Marvin Minsky’s wife.
02:56:23 And he said no, or like awkwardly saying no thanks.
02:56:28 And that was stated in the email thread
02:56:34 as Marvin participating in sexual assault
02:56:39 and rape of this unwilling sexual assault.
02:56:43 And it was called rape of this person, right?
02:56:47 Of this woman that propositioned him.
02:56:50 And then Richard Stallman, who’s, he’s kind of known for this.
02:56:55 He’s very, he’s, you make fun of me being a robot,
02:56:59 but he’s kind of like a debugger.
02:57:01 He’s like, well, that sentence is not,
02:57:03 what you said is not correct.
02:57:05 So he like corrected the person,
02:57:08 basically made it seem like the use of the word rape
02:57:13 is not correct, because that’s not the definition of rape.
02:57:16 And then he was attacked for saying,
02:57:19 oh, now you’re playing with definitions of rape.
02:57:21 Rape is rape is the answer, right?
02:57:23 And then that was leaked in him defending.
02:57:27 So the way it was leaked,
02:57:28 it was reported as him defending rape.
02:57:35 That’s the way it was reported.
02:57:36 And he was pushed out and he didn’t really give a damn.
02:57:40 It’s, he doesn’t seem to make a big deal out of it.
02:57:44 He just left.
02:57:45 He made an example of him.
02:57:46 They made an example and that,
02:57:48 and that everyone was afraid to defend him.
02:57:51 So like, there’s a bunch of faculty.
02:57:53 One.
02:57:54 Dude, you’re from the Soviet Union.
02:57:54 Doesn’t this hit close to home for you?
02:57:58 I don’t know what to think of it.
02:57:59 It hits close to home, but it was basically,
02:58:03 at least at MIT, now MIT is such a light place with this.
02:58:06 It’s not common at MIT,
02:58:08 but it was like 18, 19 year old kids,
02:58:11 undergraduate kids with this kind of fire in them.
02:58:14 There’s just very few of them,
02:58:15 but they’re the ones that raise all this kind of fuss.
02:58:19 And the entirety of the administration,
02:58:23 all the faculty are afraid to stand up to them.
02:58:26 It’s so interesting to me.
02:58:28 Like, I don’t know if I should be afraid of that.
02:58:31 You don’t think you should be afraid
02:58:32 that someone who’s trying to be specific
02:58:34 when it comes to charges of violent assault
02:58:37 is looking for that clarity,
02:58:38 can get their life out of search of his room?
02:58:40 Let me give you more context.
02:58:43 There’s a little bit more context to Richard Stallman,
02:58:46 which is.
02:58:46 He was also a rapist.
02:58:47 No.
02:58:49 I left out that part.
02:58:50 He liked raping people.
02:58:51 But he’s had a history through his life
02:58:55 of every once in a while wearing the Hawaiian shirt with,
02:59:00 like he would make.
02:59:01 He’s a fat.
02:59:04 Sorry, but he’s a fat unattractive.
02:59:06 Like what Trump referred to the hacker.
02:59:08 Yeah, yeah, the guy in the basement.
02:59:11 That’s Richard.
02:59:12 Okay, I love.
02:59:14 He is what he is.
02:59:16 He like, he would eat his own.
02:59:18 He would pick skin from his feet in lectures
02:59:20 and just eat it.
02:59:21 No.
02:59:22 Okay, yeah.
02:59:23 Those videos of him doing that.
02:59:24 I’m not joking.
02:59:25 He must really be behind the spectrum then.
02:59:26 Yeah, okay.
02:59:27 Oh, yeah.
02:59:28 And you know,
02:59:32 I think in his office,
02:59:36 door, he wrote something like
02:59:41 hacker plus lover of ladies or something like that.
02:59:45 Like something kind of.
02:59:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:59:48 Unprofessional.
02:59:50 Yeah, unprofessional.
02:59:50 And a little creepy.
02:59:51 Yeah, yeah.
02:59:52 No, that’s fair.
02:59:53 So he was also.
02:59:54 So they’re looking for an excuse to get rid of him,
02:59:56 it sounds like.
02:59:58 No, he was just, who’s they?
03:00:00 The administration.
03:00:02 Yeah, probably, probably.
03:00:04 A lot of times what people don’t realize,
03:00:06 and this would be my defense of cancel culture.
03:00:08 A lot of times when someone gets fired
03:00:10 over something like this, this isn’t why.
03:00:12 This is just giving them cover to get rid of them
03:00:14 without getting a lawsuit.
03:00:15 Yeah, but it’s still.
03:00:17 Right, so I think, I guess what I’m trying to communicate
03:00:21 is he was a little weird and creepy
03:00:23 and he may not be the best for the community,
03:00:27 but that’s not necessarily the message it’s sent
03:00:30 to the rest of the community.
03:00:31 The message is sent to the rest of the community
03:00:34 that being clear about words
03:00:37 or the usage of the word rape
03:00:39 is like you should call everything rape.
03:00:41 That’s basically the message it was sent.
03:00:44 Or you should call it we say rape, rape.
03:00:46 It’s about submission.
03:00:48 I think you’d be very happy to know
03:00:50 that there’s a lot of people,
03:00:52 and she’s very crucified of this,
03:00:53 like Betsy DeVos, the performance department of education,
03:00:56 who are aware of this.
03:00:58 They are aware that this completely contradicts due process.
03:01:01 They’re aware of how a rape accusation
03:01:03 is something not to be taken seriously,
03:01:05 but because it’s not to be taken seriously,
03:01:07 it has to be also taken seriously in the other context
03:01:09 that once that word is around a male,
03:01:12 this can ruin his entire life.
03:01:13 That’s the sticky thing of the word.
03:01:17 Like I, like I think about this a lot that,
03:01:24 like how would I defend it if somebody,
03:01:26 like I’ve never, I can honestly say
03:01:28 I’ve never done anything close to creepy in my life
03:01:32 like with women.
03:01:34 But you wouldn’t know it if you had, right?
03:01:36 That’s the thing.
03:01:37 A lot of these creepy guys don’t think they’re creepy.
03:01:39 They think they’re being cute.
03:01:40 Yeah, but I’m just telling you,
03:01:42 even like, fine, let’s say, right,
03:01:45 let’s say I’m not aware of it.
03:01:47 But the point that I am aware of
03:01:50 is that somebody could just completely make something up.
03:01:52 Correct, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
03:01:54 And like how, what would I?
03:01:55 No, he denied the charges.
03:01:57 There’s an article around everything he did, supposedly,
03:01:59 and it goes, Mr. Friedman denied the charges, yeah.
03:02:02 But what creeps me out?
03:02:04 That happened, can I interrupt?
03:02:05 Zora Neale Hurston is one of my favorite writers.
03:02:07 She’s from the Harlem Renaissance.
03:02:09 She wrote, Their Eyes Are Watching God,
03:02:11 and a couple of other books.
03:02:12 She was just an amazing, amazing figure.
03:02:14 Her biography is called Wrapped in Rainbows.
03:02:16 It’s just a masterpiece.
03:02:17 I think I read it one day.
03:02:18 Can’t recommend her enough.
03:02:19 Fascinating, fascinating woman.
03:02:21 During the 30s, I think it was, or 1940,
03:02:24 she was out of the country.
03:02:26 She was accused of molesting a teenage boy.
03:02:29 She wasn’t in America.
03:02:31 This could be proven.
03:02:33 So it’s absolutely false, not even a question.
03:02:36 She was indicted, and she wanted to kill herself
03:02:39 because she’s like, people are gonna see these things,
03:02:43 and they’re gonna think maybe there’s some truth to it.
03:02:45 Maybe it’s voluntary.
03:02:46 What they’re just gonna, and you could understand
03:02:49 why she’d be suicidal over this.
03:02:50 So yeah, this is something that’s been going on
03:02:52 for a long time, and the fact that it’s becoming,
03:02:55 I do agree, it’s important.
03:02:57 I know a lot of women who have been sexually assaulted,
03:02:59 more than I’m happy that I know.
03:03:01 And if I know that many, that means there’s more.
03:03:03 So I think it’s a good idea that they feel seen,
03:03:08 that they don’t feel wounded, they don’t feel damaged,
03:03:10 that they could talk to their friends.
03:03:12 And I’m like, man, this sucks is happening to you.
03:03:13 And I don’t think you’re a slut.
03:03:15 I don’t think you’re asking for it.
03:03:16 I think you feel violated.
03:03:17 I think it’s gross.
03:03:19 Talk to me.
03:03:20 I do think that that’s important.
03:03:21 And I also think it’s important though,
03:03:23 when things get kind of in a frenzy,
03:03:26 that a lot of people are like,
03:03:27 yeah, I also had something happen.
03:03:29 And very quickly the line between he grabbed my boob
03:03:33 and he violently raped me,
03:03:34 I don’t think these two things are the same at all.
03:03:37 I think they’re both sexual assault,
03:03:39 but in terms of what someone can deal with the next day,
03:03:41 the next month, 10 years later,
03:03:43 I don’t think they’re similar scenarios.
03:03:47 I had Juanita Brodrick on my show
03:03:49 and hearing her talk about her alleged rape by Bill Clinton
03:03:53 was very disturbing for me, very disturbing to hear.
03:03:56 Because it was like half an hour.
03:03:58 So we think of these things and think,
03:04:00 okay, hold her down, blah, blah, blah.
03:04:01 And then it’s done.
03:04:02 Half an hour when,
03:04:03 just even someone physically holding you down
03:04:05 for half an hour.
03:04:06 Like not even a sexual assault.
03:04:08 Like that’s traumatic.
03:04:09 You think, your brain’s gonna think, am I gonna die?
03:04:12 When I zoom out,
03:04:14 I think that ultimately this is gonna lead
03:04:16 to a better world.
03:04:18 Like empowering women to speak to those kinds of experiences,
03:04:24 the benefit of it outweighs the…
03:04:27 The issue is whenever people are given a weapon,
03:04:30 some are going to use it in nefarious ways.
03:04:33 And that’s the lesson of history.
03:04:34 Males, females, whites, blacks, children, adults.
03:04:38 When people are given a mechanism to execute power
03:04:40 over others, some are gonna use it.
03:04:43 Can I ask you for a therapy thing?
03:04:46 Sure.
03:04:48 On trolling, in a sense.
03:04:51 Because I mentioned somebody making up something about me.
03:04:55 I feel, because I wear my heart on my sleeve,
03:04:59 I’m not good with these attacks.
03:05:01 Like I’ve been attacked recently,
03:05:03 just being called a fraud and all that kind of stuff.
03:05:06 Just light stuff.
03:05:07 Like I haven’t, you know, it was like, it hurt.
03:05:11 Okay, well, let me help you.
03:05:13 Maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker.
03:05:15 No, I’m serious.
03:05:16 Here’s why.
03:05:17 In New York, a lot of times you’ll be walking
03:05:21 with your friend and a homeless person will come up to you
03:05:24 and start yelling things at you.
03:05:26 Your reaction isn’t in those circumstances.
03:05:29 Let me hear this out.
03:05:31 Your reaction is physical safety and getting away.
03:05:35 Now, it’s not impossible that that homeless person
03:05:38 is actually saying the truth.
03:05:39 This happened to a friend of mine.
03:05:42 This guy wasn’t homeless
03:05:44 and he’s walking down the street on Smith Street
03:05:46 and he’s just talking out loud.
03:05:48 And he goes, why they call them hipsters?
03:05:50 What are they hip to?
03:05:52 And she chuckles.
03:05:53 And he goes, what are you laughing at, fatso?
03:05:55 You start something, I’ll finish it.
03:05:57 And she just couldn’t move.
03:05:59 And it’s like, it’s my main problem
03:06:02 because that’s the first thing he went to.
03:06:04 And I don’t know that I have any advice,
03:06:07 but when you hear something like this,
03:06:11 I think you need to be better in terms of boundaries.
03:06:13 I think you should not perceive this as a fellow human,
03:06:16 but as a crazy homeless person,
03:06:18 because if this fellow human,
03:06:21 if I thought that you were a fraud in some context,
03:06:24 that’s a very weird word to use
03:06:25 because fraudulent podcaster, these are real mics,
03:06:29 but if I thought.
03:06:29 Well, a scientist or a human.
03:06:31 Sure, but I would ask myself,
03:06:33 is this person in a position to make this judgment
03:06:36 or are they backing it up?
03:06:37 Are they saying, here, your conclusions were wrong,
03:06:40 here’s some mistakes in your data
03:06:42 and you can engage with them in ideas,
03:06:44 but whenever someone uses a word
03:06:46 to entirely dismiss your life
03:06:48 without having the knowledge of your life,
03:06:50 you do not have to take that seriously.
03:06:53 I appreciate that kind of idea,
03:06:55 but some things aren’t about data,
03:06:58 like I see myself as a fraud often
03:07:02 and it’s more psychology of it.
03:07:06 If I can reduce something to reason,
03:07:09 I can probably be fine.
03:07:11 My worry is the same as the worry of teenage girls
03:07:14 that get bullied online.
03:07:16 It’s like when I’m being open and fragile on the internet,
03:07:20 it affects me in a way where I can’t,
03:07:22 the reason doesn’t help.
03:07:23 So it helps me, but.
03:07:24 You don’t block people enough.
03:07:26 I’m very heavy with the blocking.
03:07:27 No, so yeah, I block.
03:07:29 Very heavy.
03:07:30 I block, it’s helped a lot.
03:07:31 Any aggressive banality, I block immediately.
03:07:34 I also think time is gonna help.
03:07:36 I don’t think you’re,
03:07:37 like you didn’t grow up wanting to be a podcaster, right?
03:07:40 That wasn’t your aspiration.
03:07:41 So in some sense, you are gonna feel like a fraud
03:07:43 because you’re like, I don’t have any training for this.
03:07:45 I have a training for a scientist.
03:07:46 I can talk to you about artificial intelligence
03:07:48 for literally hours, but in terms of this,
03:07:49 like I don’t know what I’m doing.
03:07:50 I’m kind of, so when they call you a fake,
03:07:53 it’s like, yeah, you’re kind of right
03:07:55 because like I did kind of stumble into this
03:07:57 and this is not my pedigree.
03:07:59 So I think that kind of probably speaks to you
03:08:01 on some level.
03:08:02 Well, but they’re attacking not the podcast thing,
03:08:05 but more like the same,
03:08:07 people call Elon Musk a fraud too,
03:08:08 which that’s the way I rationalize it.
03:08:11 Like, well, if they’re calling him a fraud
03:08:13 and they’re calling me a fraud,
03:08:17 like even if you have rockets that go into,
03:08:20 like if you successfully have rockets
03:08:22 landing back on earth, reusable rockets,
03:08:26 you’re still being called a fraud, then it’s okay.
03:08:30 Not necessarily.
03:08:31 It could be that he’s not a fraud.
03:08:32 You really are.
03:08:35 That’s, but it’s not resonating with you
03:08:36 because your brain knows the logic.
03:08:38 So you can’t trick yourself.
03:08:39 But yeah, yeah.
03:08:42 But I don’t know, this whole trolling thing,
03:08:44 you seem to be much better at seeing it as a game.
03:08:50 You know why?
03:08:51 Because you are under the delusion
03:08:54 that every human being is capable
03:08:56 of intelligent reasoned decisions.
03:08:57 Still think I’m right.
03:08:58 And I perceive them as literally animals.
03:09:01 So when a dog starts barking,
03:09:03 all it’s saying is that the dog is agitated
03:09:05 and this is not going to change my life one iota
03:09:08 other than crossing the street, perhaps.
03:09:09 Yeah, I’m going to prove you wrong one day.
03:09:12 You’re going to kill yourself
03:09:13 because they can drive you to it.
03:09:15 The first shoot up of school.
03:09:17 But if I don’t, I’ll prove you wrong.
03:09:19 I’ll bring the data.
03:09:20 And they’d be like, you’re right, Lex.
03:09:22 I have the receipts.
03:09:23 I have the receipts.
03:09:24 Okay, so we mentioned Camus.
03:09:27 Oh yeah, I love him.
03:09:29 Is there, this is a question that people like love
03:09:34 when I ask.
03:09:35 I’m a really smart people.
03:09:37 What it is, love?
03:09:39 No, what books, let’s say three books,
03:09:44 if you can think of them, technical, fiction,
03:09:47 philosophical, would you, had a big impact on you
03:09:52 or would you recommend to others?
03:09:53 Sure.
03:09:54 The Machiavellians by James Burnham.
03:09:56 This is a book about how politics works in reality
03:09:59 as opposed to how people imagine it working.
03:10:03 Mentis Moldbug, who’s a figure in these circles,
03:10:05 who’s respected by a lot of people.
03:10:07 I was giving a talk and there was a bunch of panelists
03:10:10 and we were asked, what book would you recommend?
03:10:12 I said, The Machiavellians.
03:10:14 Independently of me, that was the book he had recommended.
03:10:17 It’s out of print, it’s hard to find,
03:10:18 but that would be one.
03:10:19 Is that his book or no?
03:10:20 James Burnham, it came out in 1941, I think.
03:10:23 So can you pause on the, what’s his?
03:10:26 Mentis Moldbug.
03:10:28 That’s a code name, right?
03:10:29 That guy’s pen name.
03:10:31 Curtis Yarvin, that’s his real name.
03:10:33 He swims in your circles.
03:10:35 Which circles?
03:10:36 He does some kind of programming.
03:10:37 Oh, he’s originally a programmer.
03:10:38 Yeah, he comes up as a person that I should talk with
03:10:43 or I should know about, but then I read a few of his things
03:10:46 and they seem quite dangerous.
03:10:49 They’re very long and verbose,
03:10:50 but I think he’s an amazing thinker.
03:10:53 Yeah, but.
03:10:53 But he’s the one who had the idea
03:10:54 of sending the tanks to Harvard Yard.
03:10:56 But doesn’t he have like,
03:11:00 he has some radical views.
03:11:01 I forget what they are.
03:11:02 Very radical views, yeah, he wants a military coup.
03:11:06 But you’re saying he’s a serious thinker
03:11:08 that is worthy of, not worthy.
03:11:11 I don’t know that you would enjoy
03:11:13 having a conversation with him.
03:11:14 I think a lot of people enjoy seeing it happen,
03:11:16 but I think it would be a lot of talking past each other
03:11:18 and it would be interesting.
03:11:20 What do you agree?
03:11:21 I didn’t agree with him to watch.
03:11:22 What do you disagree, okay.
03:11:24 What do you agree, what do you disagree with him?
03:11:25 I agree with him that politics has to be looked at
03:11:28 objectively and without kind of an emotional connection
03:11:33 to different schools.
03:11:34 I talk about him a lot in my book on the New Right.
03:11:38 Disagree, I don’t think a military coup is a good idea.
03:11:42 He doesn’t think anarchism is stable, I disagree.
03:11:47 I mean, me and him, I did a live stream with him
03:11:49 which just dorked out a lot about history
03:11:50 and people who’ve fallen in the memory hole.
03:11:52 So, I mean, he’s got a lot of writing, so.
03:11:56 So, you know, the sense I got from him
03:11:58 was that if I talk with him,
03:12:01 a lot of people would be upset with me
03:12:03 for giving him a platform.
03:12:05 Yeah, I think he’s on that edge
03:12:07 where they want to read him out of
03:12:09 what is acceptable discourse.
03:12:11 What’s his most controversial,
03:12:13 I mean, you keep mentioning the tanks.
03:12:15 Is that the most controversial viewpoint?
03:12:17 Does he have a race thing?
03:12:18 No, the alt right doesn’t particularly like him
03:12:21 in many ways because he’s not a big on the race thing.
03:12:24 I don’t know what would be his most controversial view,
03:12:27 to be honest.
03:12:28 I think because he is radical in terms of his analysis
03:12:33 of culture, anytime someone’s a radical,
03:12:34 that is dangerous.
03:12:35 Yeah, it’s dangerous.
03:12:36 Okay, book, so that’s one.
03:12:39 The Fountainhead.
03:12:40 The Fountainhead.
03:12:41 Which is a, I would say.
03:12:43 Not Atlas Shrugged?
03:12:44 No, and if you read Atlas Shrugged
03:12:46 before reading The Fountainhead,
03:12:47 you’re doing yourself an enormous disservice.
03:12:48 Don’t you dare do it.
03:12:49 On the philosophical or because the novel is better?
03:12:52 On every level.
03:12:53 Fountainhead’s a better novel.
03:12:54 Fountainhead’s superfluous if you read Atlas Shrugged first.
03:12:57 Fountainhead’s about psychology and ethics.
03:13:00 It does not have to do with her politics
03:13:02 other than its implications.
03:13:03 So it’s by far the superior book.
03:13:06 The third one.
03:13:08 Ooh, this is a good one question.
03:13:09 Let me see.
03:13:10 There’s so many good books out there that I love.
03:13:13 I’m going to, this is not really my third choice,
03:13:16 but I’ll throw it out there because I,
03:13:19 this is such an important worldview,
03:13:21 especially for people on the right.
03:13:22 Are you virtue signaling?
03:13:24 No, this is counter signaling.
03:13:26 Thaddeus Russell’s book,
03:13:27 A Renegade History of the United States.
03:13:29 His thesis is that it’s the degenerates
03:13:33 that give us all freedom.
03:13:36 And things like prostitutes, things like madams,
03:13:38 things like slaves, things like immigrants,
03:13:41 because they were so low status,
03:13:44 they could get away with things
03:13:46 that then people who are higher status demanded
03:13:47 and so on and so forth.
03:13:48 So I think that thesis,
03:13:50 and it really has extreme consequences in thinking.
03:13:57 And no, Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind.
03:13:59 That’s, those are the four.
03:14:02 Is that his best?
03:14:03 I haven’t read any of his stuff.
03:14:04 The Righteous Mind is the only one you want.
03:14:06 Okay, that was four, but of course.
03:14:10 Forget Thaddeus Russell, put Haidt in there.
03:14:12 Of course he would.
03:14:14 No, forget Thaddeus, those are the three.
03:14:17 So we talked about love.
03:14:18 Let me ask you the other question I’m obsessed with.
03:14:22 Are you, do you ponder your own mortality?
03:14:26 I do, a lot, especially now that I’m an uncle,
03:14:29 especially now that I have like these younger people
03:14:31 that I mentor.
03:14:33 I was just yesterday, my friend, John Girguis,
03:14:36 who did my theme song for my podcast,
03:14:37 who did the book cover for Dear Reader,
03:14:40 who’s like the most talented person I know.
03:14:42 His song came on the iPod at the gym
03:14:45 and I almost messaged him.
03:14:46 I go, you know, one day one of us is gonna bury the other
03:14:48 and it’s gonna be really sad.
03:14:50 And I thought about that and it was kind of like,
03:14:52 oh man, that’s really gonna suck.
03:14:54 And I don’t know which scenario would be better.
03:14:56 Like I will be very sad if he’s gone.
03:14:58 I’m sure he’d be very sad if I’m gone.
03:15:01 I mean, what do you, are you afraid of it?
03:15:03 No, you know, Rand had this quote about how
03:15:08 I won’t die, the world will end.
03:15:10 So I’ve had enough experiences that I am,
03:15:13 I’ve really, at this point,
03:15:16 and everything’s icing on the cake.
03:15:18 So if you, if I were to kill you
03:15:20 at the end of this podcast, it feels painless.
03:15:24 That would be okay?
03:15:25 Yeah, you know why?
03:15:26 Does anyone know you’re here by the way?
03:15:28 You know why?
03:15:30 Just asking for a friend.
03:15:32 Here’s why, there’s that wit.
03:15:34 Save that for Twitter likes.
03:15:37 Do they call you Sasha?
03:15:38 No, I’m a Lyosha.
03:15:40 Oh, that’s my sister’s husband.
03:15:41 Okay, so here’s why.
03:15:45 I strongly believe,
03:15:47 and this is a very kind of Jewish perspective,
03:15:49 that you just have to leave the world
03:15:50 a little bit better than you found it.
03:15:52 That all you could do is move the needle a little.
03:15:54 And one of the things I set out to do
03:15:56 with Dear Reader, my book on North Korea,
03:15:58 I was at a point in my career where I could do something
03:16:01 to make a difference instead of just writing,
03:16:02 like coauthoring books for celebrities,
03:16:04 which I’m very proud of, but are neither here nor there.
03:16:07 And I thought, all right, I know how to tell stories,
03:16:09 I know how to inform people, I know how to entertain people.
03:16:12 If I move the needle in America, who cares?
03:16:14 We got it really good here.
03:16:15 If I move the needle in North Korea a little bit,
03:16:18 the cost benefits through the roof.
03:16:20 I never thought of that actually.
03:16:22 I never thought of Dear Reader from that perspective.
03:16:24 So when I set out to write it, I’m like, okay,
03:16:28 what can I do?
03:16:28 I’m not gonna be able to liberate the North Korean regime.
03:16:30 What I can do is the camera right now is focused on,
03:16:34 at the time, Kim Jong Il, now Kim Jong Un.
03:16:36 And I can do just this a little bit.
03:16:38 And I go, behind that guy, who you think is funny clown,
03:16:42 there’s millions of dead people.
03:16:44 There’s children being starved.
03:16:46 There’s people who are performing
03:16:47 because they have a gun to their kid’s head.
03:16:49 And if someone put a gun to your kid’s head,
03:16:51 you’d put on those dancing shoes real quick.
03:16:53 And I and others have managed to change the conversation
03:16:57 about North Korea in terms of look at those silly buffoons
03:17:00 to those poor people.
03:17:02 So the fact that that little thing I can say
03:17:05 with a straight face, I did,
03:17:07 doesn’t make me a great person,
03:17:09 but it does make me someone who, if I have to go tomorrow,
03:17:13 I can say I did a little bit
03:17:15 to make the world a better place.
03:17:17 What do you think is the meaning of life?
03:17:21 I think the meaning of life is…
03:17:26 Why are we here?
03:17:27 Oh, well, I’m a Camu person.
03:17:29 So I’ll give the Camu answer.
03:17:31 So there’s two types of people.
03:17:33 Those who know how to use binary…
03:17:35 No.
03:17:35 There’s…
03:17:36 Thanks for relating to the audience.
03:17:41 One, one, one, zero, zero, one, two.
03:17:42 Two?
03:17:45 Down vote.
03:17:47 What kind of radical freak is this Lex?
03:17:50 So, and I use this example of my forthcoming book.
03:17:53 You go into a countryside, a mountainside,
03:17:56 and you see a blank canvas on an easel.
03:17:59 And one kind of mentality goes,
03:18:00 this is just a blank canvas.
03:18:02 This is stupid.
03:18:03 This is what am I looking at?
03:18:05 And the other type goes, what a great opportunity.
03:18:08 I’m in this beautiful space.
03:18:09 I have this entire canvas to paint.
03:18:11 I could do anything I want with it.
03:18:13 So I am very much of that type two person.
03:18:16 And I hope others start to think of life in that way.
03:18:21 You and I have both been more successful
03:18:23 than we expected to, especially growing up,
03:18:25 and in ways we did not expect.
03:18:28 And when you’re young,
03:18:30 you are so intent on driving the car.
03:18:33 And after a certain point,
03:18:34 you realize it’s not about driving the car.
03:18:35 It’s you’re being a surfer,
03:18:37 that you can only control this little board
03:18:39 and you have no idea where the waves will take you.
03:18:41 And sometimes you’re gonna fall down
03:18:42 and something’s gonna really gonna suck
03:18:43 and you’re gonna swallow some saltwater.
03:18:44 But at a certain point, you stop trying to drive
03:18:47 and you’re like, this is freaking awesome
03:18:48 and I have no idea where it’s gonna go.
03:18:51 Beautifully put.
03:18:53 I know I speak for a lot of people.
03:18:54 First of all, everyone loves the game you play
03:18:58 on the intranet.
03:18:59 It’s fun.
03:19:00 You make the world not everyone.
03:19:02 Today, oof, they came for me hard.
03:19:05 But it makes the world seem fun.
03:19:08 And especially in this dark time, it’s much appreciated.
03:19:12 And we can’t wait till the next book
03:19:14 and the many to come
03:19:15 and to hopefully many more Joe Rogan appearances.
03:19:18 You guys do some great magic together.
03:19:20 This is fun.
03:19:21 It’s, you, yeah, you’re one of my favorite guests on this show
03:19:26 so I can’t wait.
03:19:27 Especially if you can make it before the election.
03:19:30 Thanks so much for making today happen.
03:19:32 I’m glad you came down.
03:19:33 You’re awesome.
03:19:34 Thank you so much.
03:19:35 What a great compliment.
03:19:37 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:19:38 with Michael Malus.
03:19:39 And thank you to our sponsors.
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03:19:54 Please check out these sponsors in the description
03:19:57 to get a discount and to support this podcast.
03:20:00 If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
03:20:02 review it with five stars and up a podcast,
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03:20:07 or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
03:20:11 And now let me leave you with some words
03:20:13 from Michael Malus.
03:20:15 Conservatism is progressivism driving the speed limit.
03:20:19 Thank you for listening.
03:20:20 I hope to see you next time.