the radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Hey everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Tuesday it's night here it's already 8 p.m hope everybody's had a great day having a great beginning of the week and ready for another Iran Book Show second of the day so but in 1989 Lena Pigov gave a talk at the Ford Hall Forum titled Assault from the Ivy Tower the Professor's War against America. Assault from the Ivy Tower the Professor's War against America you can find the essay online it is a transcript of the essay of the talk is online the talk was given in sorry 1983 it was in 1983 it was published in 1989 in in The Voice of Reason so 1983 this is a year after Inrand it passed away so this is Lena Pigov's you know this is the the lecture gave a year after at Ford Hall Forum Assault from the Ivy Tower the Professor's War against America in which he talks about the fact that American University are dominated by an anti-American perspective that professors tend to talk only about the so-called sins of America diminish it put it down and he associates this really with that with the fact that America is a country founded on a philosophy a philosophy of reason a philosophy of individualism egoism and a philosophy of liberty and what he identifies is the fact that the university professors have basically rejected that philosophy and therefore reject America they've rejected reason in favor of skepticism subjectivism that borders on mysticism ultimately you have to have an anchor somewhere they reject you know any kind of pursuit of happiness egoism in the name of conventional altruism and as a consequence they hate America they despise it they reject it they put it down they reject every idea associated with it and he predicts that this is only going to get worse that is that these this evil philosophy there is not being challenged on campuses there is no challenge to it there is no alternative being presented and therefore we are this can only get worse I don't know if Leonard in 1983 imagined it's exactly 30 years ago 30 it's it's yeah almost 31 years in the spring how much worse it would become the anti-reason is by the way he talks about the fact that one of things that subjectivism requires that subjectivism moves people towards is collectivism because if you can't know the truth where do you find some anchor where do you find some source of knowledge in the group in the consensus in others of course today every one of these has gone to extremes I think to some extent even as early as in 1983 40 years ago unimaginable did I say 30 40 years ago unimaginable today truth is to be found in your racial group in your ethnic group reason is out reason as a means for knowledge as an individual is out and the individual is out we are just products of the group and beholden to that group and products of our genes and beholden to our genes deterministic animals dictated by genetic makeup the color of our skin and the origins of our ancestors egoism god the altruism of the 1980s seems mild and friendly in comparison to the altruism that is dominant in our universities today an altruism that really does take kind of altruism to a logical conclusion we must sacrifice the able to those who are not we must sacrifice and not even as groups not even as individuals we must sacrifice those who belong to groups where the group seems to be better off than another group we must sacrifice them as a group to the group that is behind they call this equity they call it intersectionality so now instead of just plain old self-sacrifice of the past now we actually rank people based on how we believe that they are oppressed not just today but historically at least historically when it's convenient and then rank them and expect those who have least have been oppressed at least to sacrifice to those to those who have been oppressed the most a whole standards for hiring people a whole standards for admittance to the universities the standards by which we accept professors at the most prestigious universities in the world into tenured positions is dictated by not just not primarily maybe even their accomplishment but by their racial sexual other identities by where they rank in the intersectionality hierarchy and as a consequence the hatred of america has only accelerated america is the villain in history in america the west the hatred has been expanded to civilization more broadly the worship of the primitive has been you know which lenid already identifies in 1983 is now just accepted truth mainstream at many american universities as a consequence of this we have seen a shift too in one of the principles that seem to hold on american universities for a long time the idea of free speech the idea of engaging with difficult ideas the idea of disagreement and disputes and what we've seen over the last 10 years is a complete rejection of any notion of engagement with ideas of engagement with ideas that might not be our own and the standard now is not a standard of education a standard of exposure to different ideas a standard of challenging and confronting and engaging with different ideas the standard now is are the ideas being expressed ideas that a oppressed group might find offensive or not that is in the hierarchy of intersectionality speech expression is now ranked based on who it might offend if it offends the people at the top of the hierarchy the people who are defined as the oppressors then that speech can be silenced that speech can be excluded there is no debating speech that might offend sorry those sorry those at the bottom not at the top those are who the most oppressed cannot be tolerated people have been fired from universities for suggesting I don't know that there might be only males and females and again whether you agree with that or not whether you think that's right or not that is what should be a debate but the very expression of that idea to bring about a firing or reprimanding so now what one can say and to whom is not dictated by debate by truth by the attempt to discover truth by disagreement by engagement with ideas we don't believe but it all is determined based on the power hierarchy of who is expressing what and this has resulted particularly over the last 10 years in incomplete insane criteria and standards and behavior towards different professors towards different students to a different student groups and and and cognitive confusion among many people what is accepted what is not accepted what is allowed what is not allowed what is academic freedom for example though it's not clear that a concept like that is is particularly legitimate or useful but what does it mean to engage in ideas and what ideas that are worthy of engaging with clearly ideas of racist ideas of people who hate lgbtq whatever ideas that are that are expressed negative feelings thoughts about oppressed groups are non debatable ideas that expressed hatred bigotry anti-Semitism against groups that are deemed to be oppressor those are fine those we have no problem with we can study them we can talk about them we can think about them we can express them we can yell them we can yell them the emotions the microaggressions that might inflict a gay student a transgender student a black student a spanish student need to be taken into account and a whole university administration needs to be created in order to deal with them those same emotions evoked in a white student in a heterosexual student in a jewish student can be completely ignored this is a philosophy of complete and utter subjectivism this is taking the subjectivism the 80s and putting it on steroids this is the negation of any truth everything is group identity everything comes from the group individual matters not not epistemologically in terms of discovering truth it's not individuals who discover truth it is only the group and there is no such thing as truth but only the group and morally there is no such thing as the individual now this is to a large extent the state of many of our universities of many of our teachers and the humanities and social sciences and of course the university system is built in reinforcing you know the status quo ideas but moving them towards you know slowly moving towards their logical extension and it happens slowly ideas change in academia very slowly it's taken 40 years from the writing of of lennards uh or from the giving of the talk that lennard gave uh assault on the avi tower that professors were against america to that business state of some of our universities today it has taken 40 years it's a 40 years is a long time because academia changes slowly it changes slowly because of their tenure system which uh you know basically grants a job to university professors for life at least if they play by the rules if they appease the people in the department so that they are approved for tenure but once they have tenure they're basically guaranteed for life but at that point they have no interest in going against the grain and they then approve for tenure those people who tend to agree with them and maybe those people who tend to agree with them but are pushing the envelope a little bit in the direction already set so if if the direction is uh subjectivism and altruism then the next generation is going to be a little bit more subjectivism a little bit more adamant about it and a little bit more committed to altruism and you can see within a few generations of this tenure system you get a group that is significantly more radical after 40 years than those original I mean it was bad enough 40 years ago it is so much worse today and of course to change for the next 40 years even if we wanted to make things better even if tomorrow we changed the culture somehow or we had enough people going into the universities who were going to advocate for something better and they all went in right now into the universities they wouldn't get tenure they wouldn't survive in the universities and if they were just a little bit better if they played the game if they somehow got in and they managed to get tenure well they would only have to they might be a little bit better than what exists today but they're not going to be a lot better because they would have got tenure if they were a lot better and if they were a lot better and they played a game and they got a tenure but they you know they really believe in something else after tenure how influential can they be they'd be marginalized within their departments there's just no way to change academia fast for better or for worse it takes a long time the process is slow and there's no incentive for the institutions to change fast they have a business model that it's not really you can't really challenge it particularly at the top universities at the best universities they're basically heavily significantly subsidized by government market forces don't really work on them because whatever the tuition they charge the government will lend to students at low interest rates that might be forgiven one day so the student is less concerned about the size of the loan and more concerned about the so-called prestige of the university and students flock to these places indeed admission rates to Harvard are very very low they can choose now we know now that much of their choices are now based on ability not based on merit but based on other criteria racial criteria to a large extent oppressive oppression you know marks to a large extent right there where they were you rank in the intersectionality olympics but they get to we can choose so the mechanisms of demand is completely broken because of government intervention we'll get to more government intervention government interventions is everywhere at our universities and of course on the other side most businesses the reality is less concerned about what you learn at the university they're not that interested in what the university has actually taught you you most employers are interested in the fact that you accept it to particular university suggests something about you it used to be about your merit now it's about your merit slash DEI points that they can get so if you hire somebody from Harvard the assumption was the smart now the assumption what is probably the smart and they somehow DEI qualified and we as corporate America need that as well so even on the other side on the supply side if you will universities don't face much disciplining at least until recently where most businesses just took them at face value again as Brian Kaplan I think is demonstrated universities are not about skill attainment as much as they are about signaling I'm smart I went off it you should hire me because I'm a Harvard graduate rather than I learned you know gender studies and they find know a lot of stuff that might be relevant to your business well no actually nothing you learned is relevant to our business but given you're smart we'll train you in house that's fine we just want smart people now you you'd think that businesses have become better and hopefully they have a distinguished differentiating between really smart smart that's useful for business and and and the kind of the kind of you know uselessness of degrees in certain fields hard to tell to what extent businesses are good at that to what it it's hard to tell to what extent where you went to school is still a positive signal in terms of ability for other things all right so universities are not disciplined by supply and demand alumni don't discipline universities alumni don't discipline universities because there's a certain mindless prestige again there's a certain mindless really is mindless sadly in you know what is it it's a it's a pseudo self-esteem or pseudo padding on the back that's associated with I went to the school and now I can have a chair named after me at this school I have been a success and I want the world to know that I'm success an element of second-handedness an element of false you know expression of pride there's an element that is appropriate there's an element that is not and most of the wealthy people who give money to universities don't really think about how that money is going to be used don't really think about what's being taught today at the universities don't really think what philosophy is going to be promoted with their money they just want their name on a building they want the prestige associated with that no discipline coming from there so universities in addition to this have been pushed towards this DEI diversity equity inclusion intersectionality woke the whole ideological thing of identitarianism I think that's a good kind of a good name for it all they've been they've been pushed into this identitarianism ideologically and then it's not being combated anyway there's no opposition to it the professors here and there there's obviously you know many on the American right have opposed it but there really no voices within academia within universities standing up and objecting to this and the government because of affirmative action and because of the civil rights laws and even the latest Supreme Court ruling have all promoted this focus on race on identity group identity not individual identity as a standard you cannot explain university behavior and the whole chain that is led from that without realizing that universities while being nominally private or many of them or acting as if they're private institutions like many state universities are actually heavily regulated and controlled by government the mixed economy applies directly to our universities on the one hand we have the pretense of Harvard being a private university and we even have the pretense of a university like I don't know University of California University of of Illinois or any university system being run as if it was private and on the other hand the reality that that is a complete myth the reality that the universities are heavily regulated heavily controlled both on the demand side through the student loan process on the research and the kind of professors the kind of work professors do on the grant making side that government is heavily heavily heavily involved in and on the hiring side but based on DEI which again is based on a long tradition of civil right activism in the courts and affirmative action in the courts and its application and then a Supreme Court and then of course in addition to that a notion that universities cannot or private institutions cannot discriminate because again of the civil rights act so you know the latest Supreme Court ruling was that Harvard universities could not Harvard University could not exclude Asians could not discriminate against or for particular racial groups based on race but of course Harvard should be allowed to do that should it not it's a private institution should they be allowed to decide they want only 15 agents and they would like more balance I mean why can't they it is called playing into the whole idea that Harvard is a private institution can be controlled by government but this is the whole confusion of a mixed economy and perversion of a mixed economy and the perversion of the anti-discrimination parts of the Civil Rights Act so what we have today is nominally private institutions that should be able to in a truly less if a system be able to be DEI they be able to be completely subjective be able to be whatever they want to be discriminate speech codes hire and fire whatever professors they want grant tenure or not imagine if they were really private in other circumstances like that I believe that universities are engaged in completely irrational crazy ideas crazy behaviors in a competitive market setting would fail they wouldn't get students they'd be nobody to fund those students they would nobody to pay that ridiculously high tuition and maybe then if there were truly private institutions universities maybe employers would look and and and maybe they would reassess the quality of the students coming out of the these institutions what they know what they don't know what their attitude is what their ideas are and what value they present to the institution that's hiring them but nobody's expected to do any of that Harvard has a reputation because it has a reputation nobody challenges it the university system is not viewed as a real competition demand for it is based solely on its reputation and again price is no barrier we live in a culture that is dominated by second-handedness by reputations rather than reality and we live in a culture where people are taught that that's how it should be it's all about group identity including the group identity than it that is Harvard alums you're supposed to belong and therefore you're supposed to support so what has happened over the last two weeks is in some ways really shocking to people not I don't think should have surprised anybody but it has and the reason it surprised people is because I think most people are just unaware of how bad the universities have gotten but really they have no way of thinking about universities you know so as as private institutions at private enterprises they should have the ability to run their institution as they see fit so for example some of the best voices regarding you know the university's hypocrisy if you will where you can if you insult blacks or gays or trans or whatever you can get expelled from the university but you can assault jews and there's no consequences people upset by this hypocrisy and they don't quite know what to do with it because the answer should be Harvard has every right to be hypocritical Harvard has every right to set speech codes the way it wants to it's not a violation of free speech because it's a private institution and as a consequence they can whatever speech codes they want versus the attitude it says yeah they can or so so you know since they can't sorry since they can't think in those terms their attitude is Harvard should have the same speech first amendment principles as articulated in the united states constitution as articulated by law with regard to with regard to the first amendment so you should be able to say anything you want at Harvard as long as it's legal why should Harvard do that why can't Harvard have speech standards what is acceptable and what is not acceptable based on Harvard's ideas so I don't believe that Harvard should embrace the first amendment as its standard it's not necessarily a good standard for an educational institution but of course the standard it has adopted is wrong the standard of if you're oppressed you cannot be criticized but everybody else can be if you're oppressed you cannot be fired for saying anything horrible but if you're not oppressed you can be that's a ridiculous irrational immoral subjectivist standard I mean Harvard should identify a standard consistent with its educational goals an objective standard for its speeches acceptable and what speech is not acceptable by individuals no matter what group they belong to and no matter what group they are speaking to and live by that standard but that would require a philosophical revolution that would require people to accept the idea of objectivity to accept the idea of individualism to accept the ability the idea of rationality and reason and that there is a reality and that there is a standard there is an educational objective indeed in a free market different universities would have different standards for what is acceptable speech on campus and there would be that would be one of the things what are the many things that they compete about what woke people up over the last two weeks is hypocrisy but hypocrisy it's not a very I don't know deep idea do they really understand the basis of that hypocrisy some do I mean Andrew Sullivan has an extra column on it they don't have a solution to the hypocrisy they don't have a solution to the double standards but they've been awoken many of the donor class have been awoken to its existence to the fact that you can say whatever you want to say about Jews because they're somehow the oppressed the colonizers successful wealthy achievers you cannot say anything about blacks because they've been oppressed all oppressed and we know they're oppressed how do we know they're oppressed because they're poor on an average basis not every black is poor but on average they're poor therefore all blacks are oppressed so the outcome determines your ranking your economic outcome your social outcome that is what is so suddenly people have woken up to this ideology boils down to anti-semitism that's not surprising it should have been obvious it should not have come as a surprise to anybody and that the reason the university presidents couldn't say that particular speech was harassment is because its speech originating in an oppressed group towards a oppressor group Jews indeed it's not harassment based on their code based on a woke code based on a di code you know the idea that you know you can't have what's called reverse racism the dominant group cannot be discriminated against there's no such thing discriminating against the dominant group is just justice it's called social justice social justice so what you get from university professors is seems externally to be completely confusing confusing because people don't understand what's actually how bad universities have actually gotten and they are much more of a disaster I think than anybody could actually have imagined to reform the universities actually requires a philosophical change it requires challenging the dominant you know the dominant views out there it requires challenging the dominance of the left of the intellectual high ground in America but challenging it with what the challenge has to be a challenge from a proper philosophical foundation however we challenge whatever's going on today in American universities the alternative cannot be what's what's happening you know cannot be more skepticism just less of it well less you know the same skepticism but less of it the same rejection of individualism just not as bad collectivism we can't go back to 1983 if we're going to challenge we need an actual positive agenda we need to replace skepticism and the total subjectivism with rationality reason and objectivity if we're going to reject the collectivism we have to defend reason as an attribute of the individual and as our basic means of survival is the way in which we know the world if we're going to reject altruism then we need to have a alternative and notice that almost nobody has alternatives to these I mean there are better people and indeed one of the things that I think gets lost in our attack on the universities justified attack on the universities is that most students are not marching in the river to the sea most students are not pro-hamas most professors are not oh psycho speakers leaving the chat time to celebrate guys you should celebrate with dollars the reality is that the universities are bad but they're not as bad as the worst of them would suggest that they are right if they were we'd be completely lost if this was just through and through now they do control the heights particularly at the top at the ivy leagues they control the presidency they control the administration they control the hiring the firing the admissions and DEI departments are everywhere leftist professors are everywhere I mean even at the University of Texas they're talking about creating a school that won't be as leftist as the rest of the university to provide students with an alternative this is in Texas I mean the sad thing is that it's very difficult to imagine alternatives because there are very few voices out there that have solutions you know what Harvard what Harvard is proposing you know I don't know if you heard but the president of of University of Pennsylvania has resigned but the university the president of Harvard is staying in a role she's not going anywhere the the Harvard corporation the nonprofit has affirmed that she's staying even at a cost of by some estimates of billion dollars of contributions that they're not going to get as long as she is not fired she is of course establishing an anti-semitism center or an advisory committee one of the solutions is going to be to include Jews maybe partially sometimes as an oppressed group and therefore insulting them counts as an offense but that of course is no solution that just embraces the whole methodology it embraces though philosophy it embraces though collectivism group identity the negation of the individual and of reason in order to put a band-aid on something that some donors perceive as a problem what is going to happen at the University of Pennsylvania what are the donors going to accept from the University of Pennsylvania who are they going to hire as a new president did they really think a change of presidency is going to make any difference is the DEI department administration still going to be there other professors who advocate for these ideas who dominate the social sciences and humanities are they going to be leaving are they going to be fired even the business school at the University of Pennsylvania which gets a massive amount of support from successful business people who alum is a bastion of esg and social responsibility and stakeholders and all of the modern egalitarian nonsense has applied to business with donors stop doing that if the university promises not to if the university promises to clamp down on anti-semitism is that it is that the issue is that what is killing america anti-semitism is that what is killing the universities anti-semitism or is that just a reflection that has woken people up to the much deeper philosophical ideological rot that is destroying the universities and ultimately this rot is egalitarianism what this rot is in every respect you know epistemologically and morally and politically this is egalitarianism in the dim hypothesis lennepikov talks about egalitarianism as an as a as a d2 as a complete disintegration he talks about as the most evil horrific ideology possible and of course the political manifestation as i've talked about in a previous show of egalitarianism is pot pot in the kama russian cambodia with the death of somewhere approaching 40 of their own population that's egalitarianism egalitarianism is death it is destruction but what is going to be the alternative offered to egalitarianism lennepikov suggests that it's some kind of m2 integrated authoritarianism as an alternative that the rejection of these universities the rejection of all this will lead us to embracing something not as bad but still really really really bad just this time from what's called the right right what we really need today is not to try to fix harvard maybe you can fix university of texas maybe there's enough of a base there you're not going to be able to fix harvard you're not going to be able to fix you pen you're not going to be able to fix yale what we need today is not anti semitism programs anti semitism committees we don't need jews to be classified as an offended class what we need today i think a new educational institutions what we need today is something is something new a real alternative real competition truly private universities would not make take money from the government it puts you at a competitive disadvantage granted but the solution is not hillsdale college which doesn't take government money for the government but is committed basically to religion is the standard but secular classical liberal institutions value knowledge value reason value the founders ideas of pursuit of happiness and individual liberty and freedom i you know i i can't imagine this all happened but imagine that the billion dollars not going to harvard go to establishing five universities 200 million apiece dedicated to those principles imagine all the money not going to university of pennsylvania was added to that billion dollars all the money that should not go to yale they should not go to so many of these universities were added into a pot dedicated to establishing universities all across this country dedicated to the ideas of reason individualism and political liberty not with a enforced political agenda but with a real academic agenda of based on the idea of reason faculty dedicated to discovery of truth to debate to discussion focused on discovery of truth where the individual and his flourishing is at the center of the purpose of the university the student as an individual not as a member of some group that's the revolution needed that's not going to happen by tinkering with harvard or tinkering with some university i mean i wish i really wish the alumni would get it they won't they can't what we need is an iron rand university which we are starting in which is already in existence and over the decades to come will grow and flourish that is even more committed to these ideas than any other university could be because it has iron rands philosophy to guide it we need alternative educational institutions and we need parents of students to think about where to send their kids rather than just to instinctually send them to the alma mater or instinctually send them to the highest rated university by some arbitrary ranking do you know by the way that harvard was ranked by fire as as the worst school in america at least in the ones they ranked they ranked about 250 schools i think it came in last in terms of speech the ability to engage in speech and ideas and by the way those universities would have speech codes if i had a university expressing nazi ideas expressing racist ideas expressing communist ideas that led to real genocide would be reasons for expulsion when a female says what's wrong with clemson i mean there's a great program at clemson run by brad thompson which i encourage people to look at uh the the cms scholars program but the rest of clemson university you know it might be a little bit better than other universities but it's not dramatically better it's somewhat better generally you know universities in more conservative parts of the country but they also have the problem of being conservatives but they have a little bit less of the walkiness but look you know clemson has it too clemson also has you know the the weight of you know the the memory of slavery and and the intellectual commitment to slavery you know represented i think by calhoun more than anybody else everywhere on campus as a reminder a burden it it must bear sciences are problematic as well as lanipikov talks about in 1983 but it's still it it's still true unfortunately philosophy impacts everything including the sciences the amount of money spent on scientific projects that are just arbitrary and random and have no place are not linked to reality to discovery to fact the amount of research money wasted on stupidity and stupid projects on on on misguided applications that the skepticism of scientists about real knowledge about reality now again it you know it's probably not as dominant because there is a standard there's some acknowledgement of reality and they're better scientists they're more better scientists than there are better people in humanities so you know bad ideas state intervention has destroyed america's universities diminished their value the better the university the better in the ranking the more diminished it is in many respects it's going to be very hard to build and change that from within again there's certain efforts certain programs certain places with investing in you know again climb the lyceum scholars it climbs the the certain programs at university of texas they might be others but at the end of the day the real hope is for the establishment of new universities the challenge the status quo the challenge the existing philosophies the system of tenure the system of academic publishing the system of academic journals retards the ability for dramatic change it it makes revolutionary change impossible incremental change is all you can achieve an incremental change in the direction of the good is just not good enough i'm not sure we have time enough to wait a hundred years within the existing academic premises the existing academic premise to change these universities because that's how it might longer would take i think within the existing system to make real changes it has to be from outside it has to be alternatives i mean one of the things that we still don't have yet and we've been talking it's been talked about for a long time is that technology would really alter universities would really challenge them would do to universities what uber did to taxes still hasn't happened maybe i i will do it maybe a lot fewer people will go to universities because they can get an education through an ai tutor you can learn programming from an ai they can look computer science from professors online and ai i mean technology will ultimately be the disruptor when the sooner the better but then of course who's programming the ai if the ai is basically based and it can only be based on looking at what's available tracking what it thinks is best based on i don't know what people rate the highest or what people mostly consume or there's no way for ai to measure what's based based on what's true if truth relates to reality because ai is not related to reality it is only connected to you know the statistical meaning of the behaviors of people online yeah it doesn't add new knowledge and doesn't even correct false knowledge it what it mainly does is see what most people think is true see what is most likely to be true based on the particular algorithm so for example an ai tutor will teach maybe it will be the best teacher but will teach basically what's acceptable to be taught not good enough we need new curriculum new ideas new content we need new universities we need a technology to disrupt in taking that knowledge to millions of people but somebody has to create that new knowledge somebody has to generate that new knowledge and use technology to get it to the audience so we will see but again i think i think my call is you know and again the government intervention in economy makes it very very difficult because existing schools are going to have a huge advantage by taking government loans they can have a huge advantage in attracting scientists because the scientists are going to get you know NIH grants and grants to the government to do research it's very difficult for a truly private institution to compete with all of them in multiple institutions it's going to take a real effort by america's wealthy by america's entrepreneurs by america's philanthropists to use their resources in a sense to compete with government and to create a network of universities they're independent of government so it does not corrupt it doesn't have to be become order it can be online or there is no question there's a certain attraction to the socializing that happens at universities when they're brick and mortar when they're live it can be hybrid i don't know what it should look like this is where entrepreneurial innovation entrepreneurial effort entrepreneurial trial and ever come in all we need is a educational revolution that rejects the status quo rejects the current model and starts over and right now maybe the money the money's out there because and it's looking the university of austin in in texas is i think getting more interest and more money than and faster than it expected but it's a drop in the bucket again if if the money not going to harvard was dedicated to this we could potentially start that revolution and we could start it now and god we need it we need it sooner rather than later all right let's uh let's move to your questions let me remind you all that um you can ask questions the super chat you get to kind of shape the conversation from now on through the super chat you can also support the show with a sticker like i see jonathan has thank you jonathan um and um uh and others have as well thank you to everybody who's participated so far but it looks like everybody else has kind of made a comment or asked a question uh you can also support your own book show and of course the show is made possible uh through contributions that you guys make whether it's through the super chat for those of you live or whether it's through monthly contributions uh for many of you made on patreon or on your own book show dot com slash i think membership uh and that's through paypal uh those incredibly valuable so thank you for all of you who do that uh thank you you know james just did a $50 um um super chat james is a regular on here he's contributed a lot of money through the super chat really really appreciate that james you are one of the people handful of people well it's many handfuls ultimately that are making this show possible so thank you all for doing that all right um let's jump in uh to the uh to the questions james says do you think a majority of americans will no longer go to college in the next few decades uh as high paying tech jobs don't require college degrees and universities keep getting outrageously expensive useless and explicitly nihilistic i think it's already the case that at least among men you know a majority of americans don't go to college uh and that's down i think it's down from something like 60 percent to 40 percent so a big chunk of americans who used to go to college are not going to college anymore to a large extent because of of of this the the gap uh the benefit and wages that college provides you is shrinking uh a lot of uh areas like programming can be learned offline uh and um and a lot of these degrees are becoming less less valuable so uh yes i think few americans will go and uh which is seeing is over the last 40 years is a slow decline in men going to call university and a slow increase in women going to university to the point where today an overwhelming majority of university students are women uh over men you know and uh you know i don't know if this is a good trend or a bad trend it's good in the sense of less people exposed to the bad ideas that the university is but it's it's sad because university should be be an important an important place an important time in life an important opportunity to engage with ideas and engage with knowledge and learn something and expand one one's horizon in ways that didn't happen in the past thank you james um let's see liam also $50 another one of the regulars who support me here in the super chat liam do you think uh too often free market advocates blame poor people for their circumstances rather than offer positive uplifting message of empowerment that you have the ability to control of your life and overcome any obstacles you know i i don't know when the last time i heard people accuse blame the poor for their own circumstances i don't think that happens a lot i don't think that happens a lot even among free market people maybe it used to happen i see a lot less of it but it certainly is the case that i think free market people don't talk to poor people enough don't address them enough and i agree with you that we should be talking more to poor people we should be talking about an uplifting message about self-empowerment we should be talking about the welfare state as harmful to poor people as poor people being the victims of the welfare state and in their own self-interest they shouldn't support it i i think i think we need to talk to them more and talk to the issues relevant to them more and talk about all the ways in which government makes them poor holds them down so it's not that we should say you can do it even in the world that exists today because that's just not true government holds them down whether they hold them down by providing them with the worst education possible whether they hold them down by through zoning laws that make it impossible for them to improve their housing situation whether they hold them down because of zoning laws again or zoning laws that restrict their ability to open businesses whether it's licensing laws that prohibit make it prohibitively expensive for them to engage in productive activities there's a million ways in which the government is actively making sure that poor people stay poor they never say it like that maybe they don't even think like that but that's the impact of what they do there's a there's real there's a reality that there's a lot of people in this country who don't want the poor to get better how to how to make them better is easy improve their circumstances right so yes I think I think a a more positive message targeted at that audience would go a long way and I think there's a lot of potential with that audience to actually get them on the side of markets and capitalism if they are exposed to these ideas because they are really I mean Einranz said that the biggest victims of the mixed economy are the ambitious poor the ambitious poor and and many of them their ambition is crushed out of them by just an evil educational system clearly flawed fifty dollars thank you thank you clearly flawed really really appreciate that that is amazing all right I wanted to remind you all before I get to lots of other super chat questions I want to remind everybody that on December 31st at expected it'll be at 2 p.m eastern time I will be doing my annual review of 2023 so it will be the show will be review of of of the year it will be a fundraising show so we will have a target I'm hoping that I expect the target will be around ten thousand dollars so it will be a show dedicated fundraising bring your checkbook bring your questions bring your good cheer it'll be a fun show it'll be entertaining show and and hopefully we can raise money for a good cause and in this case the good cause is a great 2024 for the Iran book show so so that will be the cause we'll be raising money for last year we raised well over 10 thousand dollars and then we had a match I don't know that we have a match this year so far we don't have one but I'm still hoping we can raise over ten thousand dollars during the show to really boost boost and get next year off to a fantastic start right get end 2023 with a bang and start 2024 with a bang so that will be December 31st if you can make it live that it would be fantastic I know most people listen to this show not live if you can make an effort that day to pop in live do a little super chat even if you come for a few minutes for a little bit some of you might want to stay for the whole thing will go for as long as necessary two three hours easily last year I think we went for three hours I expect we'll go for three hours this year so please join us what's the money used for it's used for my livelihood this is how I make a living it's used to pay my rents and to pay for the restaurants and to pay for for me to live that's what it's useful that's what makes it possible for me to dedicate as much of my time as I do to the show it makes it possible for me to spend the amount of time that I do in prep and the amount of shows that I do I do eight shows a week and in long shows and extensive shows and everything like that so it is suddenly this year and next year my by far my main and primary source of income that's what it's used for to feed the book family not as charity but as a trade right alright Justin from Australia thank you thank you Justin pricey quantification no I don't think so it's value for value you you contribute as much as you think it's worth I think it's it's worth a lot more than anyway it's unique there's nothing else like it online but you guys have to decide how much it's worth I don't know why it's why it's particularly pricey particularly for people who come in and only contribute once a year on the 31st I'm not asking for any one person to give ten thousand dollars although last year we had somebody who did give ten thousand dollars and it's only pricey for you Chuck because you don't value it other people think it's it's a bargain in that sense it's completely individualized in terms of in terms of what they get the value they they they view it in alright Justin says off topic what what to be done with the settlers in the West Bank well the settlers that are violating the law that are breaking the law that are initiating violence they should be put in jail the settlers that are not breaking the law that are not initiating force nothing I mean you know one could argue that those those settlements that are on what you might call stolen land of stolen land where the property rights can be easily observed those settlers you know those those settlers should be either they or the government that allowed it to happen should be sued the land should be returned or should be compensated for but there's nothing there's a problem with the settlers per se if they acquired the land legally justifiably with without violating other people's property rights most of the land in the West Bank was was owned by the Jordanian government and before that the Ottoman Empire so the Israeli government can give it to whoever he wants to give it to other land was taken illegitimately from Arabs they should be compensated for it but but how much is in what category hard for me to say Troy thank you wow really really appreciate the support thank you not even one of my positive shows really really love it maybe maybe this is this is an answer to Chuck leaf obviously some people value what I do quite a bit Chuck some people maybe not so much but that's so so Troy being a consistent supporter of the show since 2020 one of the most significant financially supporters of the show since 2020 thank you Troy Troy from Australia one of these days I'm still looking for the opportunity to go and do a speaking tour of Australia I mean that would be a lot of fun and what we need is to is to arrange the financing and arrange the the schedule and talks and everything but that would be that would be a phenomenal that would be a lot of fun among other things I can meet Troy and others and other of the supporters like Justin who are from Australia and who regularly regularly support the Iran book show it would be it would be a lot of fun to to do that in Australia all right one of these days that doodle bunny in terms of melee political change is unlikely to be sufficient unless accompanied by philosophical change too fast too soon if the pain comes to Argentina would relay need to worry about that tempt on his life potentially I think he definitely has to worry about it I don't know how seriously I'm I'm not that in on kind of political violence in in in Argentina and and to what extent is it a problem or a challenge and and so on so I don't exactly know how risky it is for me lay but certainly has to worry certainly um political change is not enough but it can be enough for a while it lasted for a while in Chile it's it lasted for a while in America with Reagan and in the UK with that ultimately gets reversed as it has in the US as it has in the UK but it can last for quite a while and it can do a lot of good in the meantime and again I give credit to me lay who is good at articulating the case he talks about the morality of capitalism he's obviously influenced by Ein Rand there was a real possibility here that this will go a little deeper than just political change now Argentina is still deeply Catholic it's still deeply collectivist and and there's still a strong strong big collectivistic socialistic element within the country but if Malay does it right and if he is successful it could really it could it could make a difference it could make a difference and again more there was more free market advocacy in Argentina today than there was 20 30 40 years ago so there is a base of people trying to educate the Argentinian public so there was a real potential for good things to happen so let's let's I'm trying to be as positive as I can be and as supportive of Malay as I can be I view it overall as a real positive and I'm excited by it and I wonder again I didn't say this the other day on the show Malay but I wonder how the end caps of viewing the fact that Malay in his you know when he was sworn in had Zelensky there was hugging with Zelensky and a huge supporter of Zelensky and Ukraine in the opposition to Russia and they fight against Russia and and of course is you know amazingly pro-Israel although I did notice that they abstained in the in the UN today which is a little disappointing I would have expected them to vote against the resolution that killed for ceasefire but maybe you know he stole his I don't know who his farm policy team is I think his farm policy team might be more of a old line conservative team which is much more the pro-onistas were very friendly with Iran very friendly with Iran so this is a huge improvement and Malay himself is very pro-Israel Daniel says preparing an article on this topic in what in what concrete ways does government control curriculum as a result of funding universities thanks for the important topic today I mean it doesn't directly control curriculum it but it does control hiring and it you know through kind of DEI requirements it does it does control so it does control hiring it does control racial quotas if you mean discrimination law all of that applies to universities because they accept money so it doesn't directly control the curriculum you know other than it grants it gives grants to the universities so this is primarily in the sciences but I wouldn't be surprised if it also affects the social sciences I give you just one example the number one employer the largest employer in the world for economists is the Federal Reserve so if your university that wants its students its PhDs and economics to get jobs when they graduate you you have to think about well some of my students are going to go work for the Fed well then what do I need to teach them I need to teach them the kinds of Keynesian neo-Keynesian mathematical oriented unprincipled pragmatic approached economics so again this is kind of the the existing structures the existing establishment the existing employers which is government is framing what will be studied not by direct intervention but by indirectly providing employment opportunities for graduates for graduates of others the fact the very fact that the university government will basically give a loan to students no matter what they study imagine if you were a private loan provider for students and and they had to pay you back after they graduated then you would you would say look if you're going to study gender studies I'm not giving you a loan because it's too risky because I don't know if you're going to make a living afterwards I'm much more likely to give you a loan if you're an engineer well the fact that the government doesn't care what you're going to study they'll give you a loan no matter what encourages it encourages a lot of frivolous young people to go study stupid things and they can do so at the government with the government subsidized financing so and then of course again government does subsidize sciences research projects it does subsidize certain departments the US government did subsidize for a while at least studies language departments because CIA and others wanted to be able to hire their graduates what's interesting is foreign governments have a huge impact on the curriculum there was actually a question asked I think to the Harvard president by the by congress about how much of its money it gets from foreign governments or foreign entities for its middle east studies programs and the president of the university refused to answer the question but the reality is the Saudi Arabia and Qatar and other Gulf states provides a significant amount of money across all universities for the Middle East studies so guess what is taught in Middle East studies they're not going to be pro-Israel because the money funding them is is anti-Israel and and the money funding them often is pro-Islamist and therefore they hire pro-Islamist professors so certainly Middle East studies and is is heavily impacted by other by governments overseas so it's funny how universities are very sensitive to donors telling them what they can and cannot teach and how their money will be used to promote a particular agenda when those donors are Americans businessman but when they're foreign governments or foreign charitable organizations that we all know affiliate with governments they're happy to accommodate their preferences I'm trying to think of other ways the US government impacts curriculum again not directly but in many indirect ways right all right let's see let's see Robert says well some folks might not like the fundraising here's a pro tip the Iran book show is free if you don't choose to finance it that said I'm happy to support the show and super chats are fun there you go you get to listen no matter whether you decide to support it or not Hector thank you Hector just finished Hawaii State Oahu and Big Island for a week I have seen so many commercials on family community local shop local there is so much tribalism in Hawaii what is your opinion on the state of Hawaii muhalo I mean Hawaii is very left it's always it has been it's very politically correct it's very much bilocal but so many kind of left leaning cities there's a huge by Austin agenda in Austin and it has been for 40 years so when I was living there there was a by Austin program and there still is and it's big um this localism is becoming bigger it's associated with the environmentalism and carbon footprints and local food is healthier food and all this stuff there's a big push of localism across the board but look Hawaii is a beautiful place it's a fun place um it's on the most beautiful beaches on the most beautiful scenery you'll see in the world you know I love how I love how Hawaii is a vacation place but yeah and there's no question it's a very high tax place it's a very heavily regulated place it's a very very it's a bastion of the left Hopper Campbell a lot of these nihilistic academics strike me as jealous nerds who abused in grammar school and couldn't make it in their private sector the inferiority complex builds and builds as they publish more and more papers um again I I think you guys attribute much too much psychological motivations of these people I mean I'm sure that's true of some of them I'm sure there's an element of that but I don't I don't think that's the essence of it I really think the essence of it is ideas what drives history are ideas and in in that sense it is it is I mean Leonard pick off and I highly recommend you read assault from the ivory tower the professors war against America Leonard pick off it's on the iron man institute website just search Leonard pick off assault in the ivory tower and you'll find it highly recommend it and he shows how the professors views that there are consequences of taking ideas seriously and being committed to content ideas now what are the psychological reasons that lead them to evade reality and adopt Kant versus Aristotle I I don't know and and maybe they have a lot to do with inferiority complex but the fundamental driving force our ideas and if for the fundamental driving solution our ideas don't try to provide psychological excuses because the reality is if people have inferiority complex there's nothing we can do about it but there is something we can do about ideas and about you know if some kids are abused in grammar school nothing much we can do about it but if the problem is what they learn in grammar school then there is something we can do about it we can teach them better stuff in grammar school and I think it's what they learn in grammar school not that they're bullied in grammar school many of them might have even beaten the bullies gay up I've noticed so many here or see words but word does not rise above the perceptual level they cannot understand a conceptual integrating meaning could this be cause and effect of collectivism poor education yes I think I've mentioned this in the past my view some mine I think it's I've taken it from Leonard and I when people can't use their conceptual faculty to understand the world what that evokes in them is fear what that invokes in them is skepticism and subjectivism but that they still need knowledge they still need some something so they can live by it and and again Leonard Peacuff talks about this in his in this essay and therefore they refer to the group they refer to the tribe to provide answers for them all they know is the group is comforting it reduces their anxiety and fear and it provides them with quote answers and therefore it's all about the group and that's the essence of collectivism the essence of collectivism is the inability or the unwillingness of the individual to think for himself and that could be a consequence of education it could be a consequence of bad choices the individual makes Stephen please address the Santis efforts to reform higher education of Florida such as reform of new college of Florida government cannot reform education I don't know the details of what the Santis is doing with the new college of Florida but the reality is that whatever it is it's going to be bad because it's government if you really wanted to reform education of Florida you would privatize the University of Florida you would privatize the new college of Florida you would get out of the business of education you would establish a thorough system of school choice which Florida is flooded with but hasn't quite established partially because the Santis objects to it a complete system of school choice of you know maybe education saving accounts and you would do the same thing with with education you would you would sell the University of Florida you would sell Florida State University that is how you do it you don't start a new university or reform a particular university you start moving towards disengaging with the university system not engaging more fully I mean this is this is what conservatives want to do they want to take command of government and use government to promote their ideas just as evil as the left doing it and just long term as destructive so no I don't support uh government efforts to try to reform universities I support the government getting out of the way I don't support government banning CRT from schools I don't support banning this curriculum or that curriculum I support the the the the government getting out of the way of curriculum getting out of the educational process completely using government to impose your values is wrong whether it's conservative or leftist doesn't really matter what happens to be values that you agree with or not doesn't really matter I want a separation of state from education that's the only direction I am willing to support fighting the left for the sake of fighting the left is not progress in my view Robert Lemoa what did you think led to Barry Goldwater's landslide loss in election beside him rejecting the civil rights act of 1964 I think I think uh Ayn Rand had it right she wrote an essay right when the results came in I mean in late nineteen after the election 1964 the title of the essay is it's earlier than you think I mean the reality is the Goldwater did not run a good campaign he tried he was afraid of his own radicalism and after the convention he started moving to the sentence started moderating his views and starting and started apologizing for him and I think that did a lot of harm I think that he was presented as somebody would lead us the nuclear war had something to do with it but I do not think that it was the main component I think the fundamental issue is that America didn't want somebody who would move it towards capitalism America didn't want somebody who was willing to actually confront the Soviet Union America wanted a middle of the road compromiser they got it in Truman they got it in Nixon they got it in you know in every president since they didn't want somebody who stood for for for liberty to the extent that Goldwater stood for something and he you know at least he was better than most in his standing for liberty and standing up for the Soviets and so on um at least you know until they elected Ronald Reagan maybe they were so depressed by the 70s that they were willing to take a chance and Reagan was no Goldwater so I think it was too early as Ayn Rand said too early America's not ready yet now again like me lay in Argentina if things get so bad as freedom is kind of seen as this radical only alternative we should try it someday maybe that's what you need but then I don't know how long it lasts but things weren't bad enough in 1964 for people to take a shot on something relatively radical but the reality is that America doesn't want freedom America I mean if the founding fathers were alive today they would be marginalized they would be they wouldn't be dominant they wouldn't be accepted they wouldn't be they would be marginalized those ideas are not the ideas the American people want care about support okay Adam there is nothing to prevent the learning layer of an intelligent augmenting engine from being fed exclusively on objective knowledge yeah I agree with that but somebody has to feed it the objective knowledge that is my point about it was that AI in and of itself does not solve the problem you need good people you need good teachers you need good purveyors of knowledge so yes if we could create a an engine that that was guided by let's say an objective epistemology and provided with foundational knowledge that was true and given some basic principles that would lead it in a sense to seek truth or to find truth in in in in arguments and claims out there then yeah but the idea that that it could just do it without that and where are these people you know I can I can see I can see people developing AI that's anti woke but that doesn't make it true it just makes it anti woke so AI is going to be an area where the cultural wars will continue and I don't see any indication that objectivity of knowledge truth seeking is anybody's priority out there right now I hope I'm wrong I hope I hope there is an effort and I don't see any anybody with that kind of knowledge of kind of I mean maybe there's an objectivist out there working on an AI project based on objective epistemological principles I mean that's what is needed right Richard says dear on of all of us here all of us here that matter know you're a great guy thank you a fringe benefit of this is you remember you're a great guy when talking of South America you'll never mispronounce again not Guyana okay that's what he's saying Guyana I will try I'm not promising and I'm Greeks I'm not confident that I will retain that I obviously have a problem retaining pronunciations Guyana and I hope that the measure of me being a good guy or not is not based on my pronunciation a mispronunciation because I would I do not score highly by that criteria loan dissenter this is his first super chat loan dissenter thank you really appreciate the $20 it's great first super chat up congratulations how much is this set back the objectives movement for intellectuals previously supported by AI resources who go astray moved to pseudo objective organizations with no reach or consistent messaging can anyone anything be done to improve this um I mean it hurts the objectives movement there's no question it it's a waste of resources a lot of these people we invested a lot in them and now they're undermining much of our investment the fact that their voices out they're speaking on behalf of objectivism who are incompetent stupid irrational doesn't help us it hurts us so it's clearly detrimental um is there a way of improving this it's very difficult I mean one of the things you learn in life or I've learned in life I don't know if anybody else lives in the life is it one of the most what maybe the most difficult thing in life is to judge people is to evaluate people uh and and to figure out in advance who's going to be the good guys and who are not I have made many mistakes with regard to people uh in terms of judging them at all kinds of levels and levels of friendship two levels of intellectuals the levels of of uh uh people advisors all kinds of things it's really really hard right you don't in and so the the the challenge is to find good people and then help them develop and to reject bad people and not you know not invest in them are we getting better at it I think we are I think that most of people that are gone are people of a particular generation and the people who gain their credentials if you will credit um you know a long long time ago you know you guys are naming names but the list is the list is long far longer than you know I think I think we're much better at it today I think it's also that we now have a generation where we now have a process where we get to know people at the ARU we get to know people through asset contest through all kinds of mechanisms we get to know them fairly early and they go through our educational process and we get to know them at different places in the educational process and therefore can decide at any given point of time do we want to continue supporting them or not we make a small commitment at the beginning and we ratchet up the commitment over time we didn't have that kind of scale we didn't have the numbers in the past I mean ARIs educational program started with like three people and today it's dozens of people so in terms of both on the student side and also on the faculty side so I think we're much better at it we're much more systematic at it and I think you'll see the results in the years to come I mean you're already seeing it to some extent but you'll see it much more in the years to come I think we also have now so I think again judging people is always hard and you're going to make mistakes and uh you want to minimize those mistakes and one of the ways to minimize those mistakes is by taking more time with them having more opportunities to say yes or no to them and I think we've created those mechanisms I think the institute today is structured in a way that does that and it also helps that a lot of the people who are making those evaluations to the institute have gone through a few rounds where you've we failed look fairly as part of life the question is do you learn from it and I think we've learned a lot from it we've learned so that we don't make the same mistakes again we learn so we won't miss make those mistakes in the future and that we focus more of our resources and the good guys who are actually gonna gonna make a difference in the future all right um Daniel it's the big big difference between objectivism and tribalism that the former has an intellectual veneer and a lot more rationalizations whereas the latter is largely perceptual and has a group leader in plain sight what um no I mean that's oh sorry I misread that is the basic difference between collectivism and tribalism that the former has an intellectual veneer and a lot more rationalizations yeah I mean I think that's basically true collectivism is one level up it's got a certain intellectuality to it it's got rationalizations the collective it's less yeah I think you're right perceptual level let's talk let's barbaric let's primitive um but fundamentally the same but yeah the one is more more veneer and more of a more intellectual more rationalizations yeah that's exactly right I agree Doug describe a memorable small town America experience you've had what's your general understanding of small town America oh god I don't think I've had many memorable experiences in small town America haven't had memorable I mean I don't know what that even what constitutes small town how small town yeah I I'm drawing a blank positive or negative not much there um you know I'm generally my general sense of small town America is it's a very benevolent place it's a very welcoming place primarily for people in the town and people who are similar in some way or another uh depending again where in America uh some of some of the places are less friendly towards foreigners uh or people who look different but generally benevolence friendliness but also sleepy boring um yeah I've been to uray I would want to live in uray uray was friendly and nice very yuppie and hippie and leftist uray was very friendly and nice I've never been to port Jevis New York I've been to small towns in Texas not a pleasant experience I have to say um this is a long time ago and with my wife and not pleasant experiences definitely felt like an outsider and felt we were looked at as outsiders um small towns uh you know I've spoken at college towns but I don't know the college towns are representative of anything um yeah oh yeah you know the one small town that I I I spent a lot of time in and got quite familiar with was was Hutchinson Hutchinson Minnesota Hutchinson Minnesota um very friendly very welcoming very nice very productive hardworking people like to keep to themselves not the most social people in the world Minnesotans a little cold a little detached but very welcoming right um had a really good time I spoke they had Hutchinson technologies the old days when it existed um but again not a place I would want to live not a place I could live I couldn't survive it I couldn't live it too small too isolated too little culture too little you know one decent half decent restaurant um just not not the way I could live and would want to live but yeah Hutchinson was super nice and the people were amazing and um and again a little distant and cold but but but benevolent and positive um in Minnesota very Scandinavian in in in many ways but but good people hardworking people very productive people I don't know what you're looking for Doug but I said Hutchinson was the small town that I spent probably the most time in because I was I gave regular seminars at Hutchinson technology for years I basically gave you know every person in management at that company hundreds of people basically took a anywhere from one day to seven day seminar with me basically guided by objectivism really interesting quite religious you know Midwest northern Midwest Scandinavian religious Catherine says hello thanks for the daily fixes my pleasure thanks for the supports Michael Michael says campus is today a theatrical mashups of 1984 and load of the rings performed by people who don't understand these references that's pretty funny Liam I don't know if I if you want me to comment more on uh on those things um Hutchinson Tech is Mucha class they say why is Hutchinson Tech Mucha class Doug says not at all Hutchinson Tech was incredibly productive it it just ultimately um was in a technology space that disappeared and it could not pivot to something new in time and it ultimately sold itself to to a Japanese company but why would Hutchinson be a Mucha I don't get that that that no I mean Hutchinson was amazing it was an amazing company and it was had amazing people in it had great engineers really smart people um but um yeah I'm not sure where you're coming from Doug Liam says leftist intellectuals and academics cover is why evil still operates in the world well I don't know what about what about religion I mean isn't that a cover I mean what evil of Hamas is that motivated by leftist ideology or by or by religion was Bush's refusal to deal with 9 11 and the terrorists motivated by leftism or religion it was a compassionate conservative far more by religion than by leftism so don't give religion a free pass Harper Campbell says would you no longer accept the teaching job at a university today I don't know make me an offer depends on the offer depends on the university depends on the position depends on what I was teaching depends on a lot of things so no I wouldn't say the answer is no if you love teaching you go and find a university that you can teach in and you you teach what you want to teach Doug says Tommy Thompson had to funnel tax dollars for them to build or locate in Wisconsin I don't know maybe they got a tax break to be in they when I spoke in in the factory in Wisconsin um maybe but you know that's not the moochie class I mean every business in the world if they can get it if they can get if they can get the state to give them less of a tax break why wouldn't they take it um so um they were going to set up a factory somewhere in that area Wisconsin offered them a tax break they took it I don't consider that moochies at all so but my experience of management at the management at at hutching technology was anything but moochies they were 100 committed to capitalism they were rabid capitalists and and some of them were objectivists it was it was uh it was uh you know they were really really good people and sadly they were in the wrong business at the wrong time they made they did well for a while and then once once you know um what do you call instead of instead of hard drives you got the the solid state drives they were finished uh Jeffrey Miller 2005 University of Canterbury day one lesson one display on screen in huge auditorium there is no truth I wish I'd understood what I was seeing so I didn't take it sitting down yeah but you know and that goes back that that really started in the 1980s and and uh maybe even before that and today is is just you don't even have to put it up on the screen it's so obvious Ed Kanski how much do you think federal guarantee of student loans affects market forces in terms of tuition costs huge amount huge amount I think you basically go up and up and up and up and up um it can basically go up and up and and uh demand does not shrink because students will take those loans they're below market rates they uh unlimited in terms of the size and um and and they could be forgiven in the future so I think it's huge I think it's huge and it's not just um a federal guarantee anymore it's the government is the one making the loan the government is the one lending you money Brian Anderson says would you agree that over emphasis on football and other interests in athletics at university is also a problem all people care about is the school's football team yes but that's it's a it's an indication of a bigger problem and that is that much of university life is centered around the social aspects drinking primarily uh partying and sports and the studying is like second or third on the priority list of most students who go to university uh it's it's a there's a there's a real unseriousness in uh in the culture of many universities sports is one indication of it so so yes I you know sports is fun there's nothing I've got nothing against sports but having it the center of life but that's that's a cultural thing and and it's it's become a cultural thing but notice that like Harvard and Yale don't do that it's one of the reasons they are great universities is because they don't spend a lot of focus on sports Daniel how about a list ranking your financial supporters I'd be curious where I fall get a little competition going I you know I I can't I can't even do that unfortunately because there's no way for me to easily keep track of how much you guys give on an annual basis through the super chat that is YouTube does not provide me with an easy way for me to let's say download all your super chats and then create some kind of spreadsheet and and figure out your total contributions so I can easily rank you based on the monthly contributions but it's not clear on the monthly whether you want to be named that is there's an issue of privacy super chat there's no privacy because you're basically putting your name out there and you're making a contribution but there is there is definitely with the with a monthly contribution with a monthly there is definitely an issue of privacy so maybe I don't know maybe we can maybe there's a way for the super chat tracker to actually keep track of you by name to aggregate your contributions of a time onto a spreadsheet um Miroslav I don't know if if that's something possible that you'd want to do that you could do maybe we could do that for 2020 2024 and we could have a real competition going through 2024 and I'd have the top 10 running total of a top 10 super chat contributors but I wouldn't include the monthly contributors because of privacy concerns um but I you know some people give a lot of money on the monthly although some of you give so much money on the super chat that you probably outdo the the guys who do the monthly so and some of you give both on both many of you given both but we could do that potentially with the super chat I actually don't think it would be that hard for Miroslav to convert the super chat tracker to to make that possible by the way this super chat tracker has been a lifesaver this year it has made keeping track of super chats and your questions and the chat and everything else so much easier it's a life changer it is you know that I don't know how much that is worth contribution wise in terms of so thank you to Miroslav for for doing that all right Frank says um I saw the movie dumb money about the GameStop craze Ken Griffin gave Plotkin and Vlad Tenev characters in the movie can you talk about them um I mean I you know I'm a I'm a big admirer of Ken Griffin he's a he's a great financier and has done amazing it's why he's a billionaire um the the GameStop people I talked a lot about when the GameStop happened for the most part they're second-handed manipulators of people they many of the people who jumped on that bad wagon I don't know specifically Gabe and Vlad were nihilists they're not good people the whole GameStop was motivated by the wrong motivations was driven by the wrong people by the wrong reasoning I want to see the movie although I know I'm going to hate it because I'm sure the bad guys are portrayed as good guys and the good guys are portrayed as bad guys but I'll have to do it out but so I'll talk about it after I watch the movie a mooch as somebody who lives off of somebody else who whose survival is dependent on other people who lives off of other people's money you know paying less taxes is not necessarily mooching I don't consider paying less taxes mooching an a company that pays less taxes gets a break by paying less taxes I mean I would like everybody treated equally but I can't blame the company I blame I blame the government I wouldn't call the company a moocher because they did that I wouldn't even call the company like Tesla for taking subsidies that are offered it's it's not the offer that makes it's but the difference is Achen's technology's survived when it did not because of the tax break I don't think Tesla would have ever made it without the subsidy and that's the difference Tesla survival dependent on the subsidy was Hutchinson's survival did not depend on the tax break they just paid less taxes you have to make a profit to pay taxes so they made a profit and then they paid less taxes in one category of taxes which is the state of Wisconsin all right all right thanks everybody really appreciate the super chatter we blew away our target thank you primarily to Troy for getting us there with 500 Australian dollars I wish the Australian dollar was a lot stronger than it is but it you know it it still is what got us over the top and got us well way you know beyond our target so thank you to Troy thank you to all the superchatters thank you to all the viewers listeners and I will see you all tomorrow morning for another Iran book news roundup it never stops here on the Iran book show you get one day of rest on Sunday and other than that it's full steam ahead with Iran book shows bye everybody


An exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our Milky Way from another galaxy has been detected by a European team of astronomers. The Jupiter-like planet is particularly unusual, as it is orbiting a star nearing the end of its life, and could be about to be engulfed by it, giving tantalizing clues about the fate of our own planetary system in the distant future. This is the ESOcast. Cutting-edge science and life behind the scenes of ESO, the European Southern Observatory, exploring the ultimate frontier with our host, Dr. J, aka Dr. Joe Liske. Hello and welcome to the ESOcast. In this episode, we're going to find out how an act of galactic cannibalism has brought a planet from another galaxy within astronomers' reach. Astronomers have detected nearly 500 planets orbiting stars in our cosmic neighbourhood. But none outside our Milky Way has been confirmed. Now, however, a planet weighing at least 1.25 times as much as Jupiter has been discovered orbiting a star of extragalactic origin, even though the star now finds itself within our own galaxy. The star, which is known as HIP13044, lies about 2,000 light-years from Earth and is part of the so-called Helmi Stream. This stream of stars originally belonged to a dwarf galaxy, which was devoured by our Milky Way in an act of galactic cannibalism six to nine billion years ago. Astronomers detected the planet by looking for tiny, telltale wobbles of the star, caused by the gravitational tug of an orbiting companion. For these precise observations, the team used a high-resolution spectrograph called Ferros, attached to the 2.2-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The planet, HIP13044B, is also one of the few exoplanets known to have survived its host star massively growing in size after exhausting the hydrogen fuel supply in its core, i.e. the Red Giant phase of stellar evolution. HIP13044B is near to its host star. At the closest point in its elliptical orbit, it is less than one stellar diameter from the surface of the star, or only about 0.055 times the Sun-Earth distance, and it completes an orbit in only about 16 days. The astronomers hypothesize that the planet's orbit might initially have been much larger, but that it moved inwards during the Red Giant phase. Any closer in planets may not have been so lucky. Astronomers suggest that some inner planets may have been swallowed by the star during its Red Giant phase. Although the Jupiter-like exoplanet has escaped the fate of these inner planets so far, the star will expand again in the next stage of its evolution. When this happens, the star may engulf the planet, meaning it may be doomed after all. The astronomers are now searching for more planets around stars near the end of their lives. Their work may tell us about the distant fate of the planets in our own solar system, as the Sun is also expected to become a Red Giant in about 5 billion years. This is Dr. Jay, signing off for the ESOcast. Join me again next time for another Cosmic Adventure.