So, hello everybody and welcome to my talk, which is called Stop Measuring the Wrong Marketing Outcomes. Taco already introduced me, my name is Marike van Racht. And if you know me, you know me from Yoast, because that's where I was. I can say, since June, I can say that I'm the co-founder. I got permission. I'm the co-founder of Yoast, and I used to be the CEO, but I left Yoast. I'm totally out of the Yoast business. I still miss my colleagues, and we started something new. And with Emilia, we're investing in startups, and that can be WordPress startups. But we also have other startups in which we invest. They all have an online component, though, because that's just where our expertise is. That's what we know most about. And so, next to investing money, we also help these companies grow. And what I usually do is help them with their marketing efforts. Before I started at Yoast, before I started in the WordPress world, I studied communication sciences, amongst others, because I also studied sociologists. And I have a PhD in social sciences. And while doing my PhD, I did a lot of data research. I am a bit of a data nerd, actually. I love statistical analysis. I love big data sets. I love doing queries on those. I actually taught statistics and research methodology at the university for a while. So when I first entered that WordPress space and was allowed to do things as an internet marketer, I was amazed by the amount of data there is in the internet world. I was amazed about the possibilities of conversion tracking, of A-B testing. And I thought that I was going to be the master at that, because I had the background. This was going to be my thing. But then I was diving into Google Analytics, and I got frustrated a lot. I got mad a lot, because the things I wanted to measure were not in the data set. And then I ended up still looking at data. It's not that I don't do data. But I think about half of all the marketing efforts I did at Yoast were not particularly data-driven. And so sometimes somebody came up to me and said, Marike, you're doing things based on feelings. And that's not true. But I do understand that comment, because in a world where everything is about data, I decided to do differently. And in this talk, I'm going to tell you why. So we're going to start with looking at how do audiences, how do people actually get influenced by the media or by marketing? And what would happen if we would only keep focusing on data? And then I have to pose an alternative, right? So we'll also talk about what we should do instead. Let's start with some theory. How do the media affect people? Well, researchers have been researching this for about 100 years, because 100 years ago radio emerged, and newspapers, and magazines. And you had movies, television didn't become big back then. And what people thought was that the media directly would influence people immediately. And they called that the hyperdermatoneedle theory, as though the media would inject media messages in someone's vein, and you would immediately do what that message would tell you. And they would think that people were very passive, and just thinking, this is it, and that everybody would have the same effect. This sounds weird to us now, but they actually had a lot of evidence pointing towards that direction. Maybe you know this story, it's about play on the radio, so it was like a theater thing on the radio, and it was about our planet being invaded by aliens from Mars. And so people in the 1930s, a group of people, thought that there was actually an invasion, and they panicked. And they ran in the streets, and they got the news. These kinds of anecdotes were the reasons why communication scientists back then thought that the media had a very large influence. Also, the 1930s, that was the emergence of the Nazi propaganda, mainly in Germany, which had large effect on the entire history. So this is what we thought, what we have learned since the 1940s. We now know that effects of media messages are hardly ever direct. You don't go out and buy a new type of laundry detergent just because you saw a television ad. If you see rich from the bolt in the beautiful drink a can of Diet Coke, you don't feel the urge to immediately buy one yourself. So there's something else that's doing things. Social ties, the networks you have with other people, are super important. Your friends, your family, what they say is really important. If your mother likes a certain type of laundry detergent and you see that ad, that could mean that you buy that. Unless you have a bit of a weird relationship with your mother, it could well be that you will not buy that type of brand. We also know that audiences are very diverse, so not everybody reacts to a media message in the same way. Not everybody will react to your marketing campaign in the same way. And audiences are very active. You choose to which talk you're going to go. You choose which newspapers you read. You choose which queries you type into Google. But people are active. So, super nice anecdote, Marike, you're thinking now. Very, very nice. But why is this important for online marketing research in this day and age? Oh, I'm glad you asked. Because in the way we measure our marketing campaigns, we assume direct effect because we measure last clicks. We don't take into account any of the social ties or networks. And we certainly don't think of our audience as being very diverse and that media messages are received by people in a different way. We measure, mostly measure, last click attribution. So, as I stated at the beginning of this talk, when I started working as a marketeer, I was so excited because it seemed to me that this was going to be so much easier. I have been doing measuring effects of television advertisements. Think about that. Do you know how hard that is? And then I got all these data and I was like, this is going to be easy. And I think what happened is because there is so much data, we forgot that there are so many things you can't measure. And that perhaps the things you can't measure are even more important than the things you can measure. But because of the sheer amount of data we've collected, something which is called evidence-based marketing appeared. So every marketeer wanted to have data that provided them to say, well, this is what we're going to do because the data says this is what we should do this. So we're going to do this.  You're doing things based on feelings. But research has shown that on average people have seven encounters with a brand before ever buying it. So imagine you're selling WordPress plugins or you have an agency and you do marketing. This is Person A. And Person A watches a YouTube video of someone in which your brand is named for the first time in September somewhere. And then a few months later it's targeted by one of your Instagram ads. Two ways of hearing about your brand.  Now, and then time goes by and he runs into problems. He wants a new website. He needs an agency. He's going to Google something and ends up on a landing page on your website. And then subscribes to your newsletter. I think that's the first thing you can measure. And then some once later he reads a newsletter and thinks, huh, this is interesting.  But he wasn't at home. So it took another month and then he talked to that person and then later on he bought your product. There are a lot of things that lead to convincing people that they should buy your product or service. But they're not measured by the data we collect. And I call that the unmeasurable. The effects of all your marketing efforts you are not able to measure with common metrics. And there's a lot of those. Newsletters, unopened newsletters will have an effect. If the subject line of my favorite clothing brand, Pink Suit, says sale, I usually don't open emails or just not my thing. But if the subject line says so, I'm influenced and I'll probably go to their website to buy something. It's unmeasurable, but it's still in effect. Just scrolling through your Instagram page, encountering brands, seeing those brand names on top of the stories, just the brand name gets you influenced, gets you, does something. You can't measure that though. If you Google something, but you don't end up on the landing page on the website because the answer is given in the Google search engine result pages. You are influenced, but you can't measure that. Talking to people. I'm not on TikTok. I know so much about TikTok. I have a 13-year-old daughter. She shows me TikTok. And if you think that won't influence me, I have a pair of heedless curls in my closet. They don't work. That's say otherwise. So I'm very influenced by things my daughter sees on TikTok. But you can't measure that. WordCamps, having a booth at a WordCamp, speaking on station on WordCamp, talking about your product in the hallway track of a WordCamp. It will probably not lead to a sale. But hey, direct effects don't exist, but it will influence people. It will be very hard to measure though. What's unmeasurable does not mean that it's not valuable. On the contrary, we know that media effects are not direct. We know that all of these things matter. But the things we can't measure are probably even more important than the things we could do. But here's the thing. Without data, it's very hard to convince people. It's very hard to get your manager to get the budget for a certain campaign if you can't show the return of an old investment. Showing what a Google ad will get you in terms of sales is pretty simple. If the return on investment is positive, you go ahead and do that. But trying to get budget for a content marketing campaign can be much harder. How do you convince them? How do you know for sure that the budget you have to have to write all those beautiful articles will end up having you those sales? It's just not as clear. But we are fooling ourselves here. Because a Google ad campaign means that you have to pay and pay and pay up until you do that ad, and perhaps it gets even more expensive if you never know with Google, while a content marketing campaign could be much more sustainable. You just can't measure it. And I think we've been fooling ourselves and also perhaps been a bit lazy because we've been spoiled by the sheer amount of data we have. So I want to give you an example on how the television ad market emerged because they also had a period in time in which nobody believed that television ads would have any effect. Perhaps now they won't because nobody watches television anymore. But back in the 1980s, there was this big brand of laundry detergent. I love laundry detergent, but it was laundry detergent brand. And they did a lot of television ads. But the CEO of the company said, well, you can't measure the effect. It's totally useless. It's very, very expensive, especially around the Super Bowl. We should not do these kinds of ads anymore. And they stopped. And what happened was nothing at first. Because nobody is not going to buy that type of laundry detergent because they did not see a television ad. It doesn't work like that. But what did happen after a year was a significant drop in sales. And this has been measured because people are making these mistakes over and over again. If you stop doing it, then the effect is measurable. So if we now have a few of you who say, OK, I will stop all my unmeasurable branding. Then after a year, perhaps a little bit more, we can measure the effect. And what we see in studies is it's a 25% drop in sales. That after a year of not doing any television ads. And why is that? Well, if these ads stop, even if they're annoying, you talk about them with your partner. Or your mother, I don't know. And that has an effect. It will stay top of mind. And after a while, you don't talk about that brand anymore. And some people will still buy that brand because it's the best one. But a group of people is just not that loyal and gets influenced by other ads. What happens with strong or sole focus on data is that leads to focusing on marketing activities that are all the way at the bottom of the funnel.  If your checkout is not well optimized, people will probably have a hard time filling out reforms. It will not be accessible. Maybe you have usability issues. It's not intuitive. These things will have a huge effect on your sales immediately. So you should also do that. However, if you focus on data and only on data, you will always choose conversion optimization over content marketing. You will always choose growth hacking over brand awareness campaigns. You will always choose Google ads over trying to rank with good articles in the search engines. And you will go to work with influencers and affiliates because they give you a good return on investment metric instead of going and supporting a community like the WordPress community. And I think that doing the community part, especially in WordPress, is much more effective. But you have to take my word for it because it will be extremely hard to measure that. And it gets worse because the data that we used to have when I started 10 years ago is not the same data that we have today. The internet and Google and people are changing. This thing has huge effects. And if you think that the demands on privacy are going to get lower in the coming years, they'll probably not be. The GDPR or the cookie consent or the blocking of cookies means that your data is getting more skewed, less reliable. It's just of less quality. And also you see Google's reporting going towards focusing more and more on last click attribution because they want to buy ads. So it's going to be really hard to measure anything else than direct effects.  When I entered this space 10 years ago, people 15 years ago it was the same, but that wasn't here yet. So 15 years ago people would click on a link, one of the 10 blue links in Google. You only had blue links then. You would come to a category or landing page. You would browse that website and you would convert it. You could measure that. But nowadays Google answers to questions mostly in search engine result pages. Audiences don't even come to your website anymore. And people like me still searching Google, but my daughter uses TikTok and YouTube to find things. If you want to know more about this thing that Google is changing, I would recommend you to watch the talk of Jess Schultz. She did a wonderful talk at your school in 2023. It's really, really good and it's right there on the internet. You published it. So it's a wonderful talk. You should ask yourself, even if people don't come to your website but they have like this great experience in the search engine result page, isn't that valuable marketing? If they have a good, good answer to their questions and they're like, yes, this is it. Then that could be really valuable marketing. You just can't measure it. But once again, just because you can't measure it does not mean that it's not valuable.  You'll end up doing ads, affiliates, conversion optimization, growth hacking, focusing on last clicks, focusing on direct effects. And we've known for a hundred years that it does not work like that. So now what? Now this we can't do this anymore. And it's not what I'm saying. You should do something else as well. What should we do instead? So this is my favorite piece of advice and it's applicable in any situation.  If you don't know what to say to someone, want to give them advice, just do this one. It's always correct. Next to using your brain and thinking about what would work. There's also a hundred years of marketing research that could help you. I am a big fan of A-B testing. I'm really, really am. But you don't have to test everything because there is a lot of knowledge about how the human brain works. And you don't have to test and find everything out for yourself. And it's good to focus on evidence. I'm a scientist. I like evidence. Just focus on the right evidence. And that begins with interpreting, tracking and conversion data just for what they are. They're not pretentious data. They don't feel like they're better than anyone else. But they're just at the very end of the funnel. Treat them that way. That's the final step, the final skill you're making. They can say a lot. They just can't say everything. What I think you should do is to really try to understand what your audience wants. What their problems are. How they use the internet. How do they use your marketing? Where are they? What channels do they use? And adapt to that. Because you have to. Because if users don't do Google anymore, then you should be somewhere else. And you could do a lot of qualitative user research. Me saying qualitative is a bit funny. If I would say that 10 years ago, then my husband would commit me somewhere because I was all about the numbers. But I think in understanding your audience, this is really important. And that having a strong, this is what they want. This is what their problems are. It's almost impossible to do that in a quantitative way. And what I want all of you to do is think about why a certain marketing campaign would be important. And then test that hypothesis. So instead of data driven, which is in the university in science, that's like swearing. You can't be data driven. You have to be theory driven. So you have to have the why question at hand and in the central. And then use the data, the data to be used to test that theory and see whether or not you're correct. So how would that work? So for example, you want to do a brand awareness campaign and you listen to the stock. And I think it's a good idea to have a booth on a WordCamp. If you are very small, please don't begin with a booth on a WordCamp. It's pretty expensive. But still, let's say you want to do a booth on a WordCamp. How do you measure success? You want to increase brand awareness. We already know that it will probably won't lead to sales. So if you think that having that booth will get more people to know about your brand, to talk about your brand, then you should measure that. Can you measure an increase in the number of brand mentions on socials, in Slack, in newsletters, in anywhere after that WordCamp appeared? Because then you're doing raising brand awareness. If you do multiple camps, are you then introducing yourself in the first one and does everybody know your name on the last one? Then you have succeeded. So try to find other ways to measure brand awareness. Because that's what you're trying to do instead of trying to increase sales because that will not happen directly. Consequences if you take this approach will mean that you'll have to collect additional data, often. Because Google Analytics will not give you those data. And you'll have to accept that you will never have complete certainty. And also this is also a good life advice. Because you never have complete certainty about anything. So this is just it. Accept that. And what also is really important is that you'll gradually, when you're doing this as a marketer, get a better understanding of what your audience is about. But then, this is a good tip also for myself, write that down. Because if you're doing all these tests but don't write down what you found out, people are going to say to you that you do things based on feelings. And well, you can get very offended by that. And it's just not true, but I never wrote it down. That's the thing I'm learning for myself now. Let's summarize what I told you today. The available data that we all use in Google Analytics, all the tracking data, is focused on the very end of the marketing funnel. And that's okay if you treat it like that. But the pitfall of data-driven marketing is not to focus on all the things that are up in the funnel. And you'll end up with doing only marketing efforts at the end. And the quality of the data because of GDPR and cookies in Google is getting worse. So it's even harder to measure those direct effects properly. What you should do instead is focus on high-quality marketing campaigns that matter and resonate with your audiences. See, I'm always within time. That's it. Thank you.


the radical fundamental principles of freedom rational self-interest and individual rights This is the Iran book show All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran book show everybody is doing well Friday Friday is weekend Hope you're looking forward to the weekend and have some exciting stuff planned for you All right, I am looking for an email and I can't find it search on the Mac on email is just become Like horrific you can't find anything on there anymore. So Yeah, I'm not I'm not sure what is going on But Let me just let me just check this All right today, we're gonna talk about principles We're gonna talk about living by principles today is another episode of Iran rules for life So thanks for joining us today I'm tired today. So I apologize in advance. I'm kind of a little bit out of it. Maybe that's why email is not responding I Drove today. I did an interview with a podcaster by the name of Mark Moss. I don't know if you guys are familiar with him Mark is a You know, he's got a YouTube channel with a few hundred thousand and a big podcasting platform He has a radio show an I heart radio and we did an interview and it was a lot of fun And he's an interesting guy and he's here in Puerto Rico at least for now. I'm not sure how long you'll stay And so it was a lot of fun. It was really interesting conversation and And he he wanted to do the interview he lives in Rincon I don't know how many of you know Puerto Rico But we con is like on the west side of the island and it's not that far But given the roads given traffic lights no highways Puerto Rico in other words It just it just took a long time. So it's like two and a half hours there two and a half hours back So it's driving for five hours. We hung out for quite a while So I only made it back home about an hour bus show before the show started And I need this I need a particular email You know for the show and I can't Find it and it's it's driving me nuts because the email has some of the questions that kind of Led to the show. So while I have I have the broad idea. I wanted to answer the particular questions. So I don't know maybe Anyway, maybe maybe you can ask them again or whatever we'll figure it out. So I will figure it out But today show Is stimulated by these questions that Troy from from Australia Asked and I wanted to I Wanted to oh, there it is Yes, there it is got it found it found it. Thank you. All right, so these are questions that Troy Troy Beaton from Australia asked that stimulated this your suspension the show in addition to our anonymous sponsor who's sponsoring a bunch of these your own rules for life Sessions so we've got all of those so I will I will be You know, we continue to do your own rules and and and yeah, I'm curious how many of you would like to see your own rules for life Be turned into a book and I'd be curious how many of you would be would be willing to support Turning your own rules for life into a book Financially how many of you be willing to put money behind it so I can I can pay a co-author to to help me to help me do this so Basically, yeah, if anybody if you guys have ideas on how we can raise money For a you're on's rules for life 13. I think I think it should be 13 I think should be more than Jordan and I think 13 is the perfect number because it's associated with so much So much Mystical crap is I think the technical term so I think you're on 13 rules for life would be good I don't want to go for it and I want to co-authored. I want I want my co-author I want Don Watkins co-authored with me and then it's just a matter of raising the money to make it happen So I'm gonna work on that think about it figure it out and and hopefully we can do that So I did the interview with Mark lost today. Some of you know because I think you saw it in Twitter I did like a debate with God, what's his name Be love be be love something like that the the the the crypto guy the buy the Bitcoin guy Anyway, in other words, I've been talking to a lot of Bitcoin people Over the last year or so over the last six months or so. You guys probably know how skeptical. Generally.   I'm starting to get a great appreciation of Bitcoin versus other cryptos and what Bitcoin has to offer. I Don't have any definitive view. I haven't changed my mind yet But I'm certainly open to the conversations and open to some alternative views about this so To be continued and we'll talk about this more, but I think there's a lot of interesting stuff Going on in the Bitcoin space that I don't want to dismiss completely and Bitcoin itself Has some potentials I didn't realize it had and Yeah, I guess it's it's interesting so Maybe I'm changing my mind, maybe I'm not I don't know but But I'm you know, maybe I'm surrounded by people who think it's a great idea And they keep pounding hammering at me and maybe the subduing me. I don't know we'll see Anyway as an objectivist and as this was a Iran rules for life. It was a Iran's rules I am a pursuit of truth Not a pursuit of information that will validate my existing opinion. So I'm not a pursuit of bias I'm not a pursuit of of what a reinforce what I really think I I want to pursue truth and It could be that I'm wrong It's it's it's unusual that I'm wrong. It's rare that I'm wrong But it is possible and it's certainly a possibility that we have to take into account and and consider so Some people are just relishing this I know Anyway, we'll see I'll to as I said to be continued and I'll provide more insight into my thinking as As we move along and as I get more clarity Into my own thinking so We will see All right, we got a bunch of questions, but we've got a whole topic to talk about so Before we do that so before we get to the super chat questions Before we get to the super chat questions, let's talk about the content so today we're talking about that you run as I said I'm tired. So I apologize. Got a bit of a headache up here. My my two things still bothering me, but we will Work through it. We will get it done and we will get a show done tomorrow They'll be assured 8 p.m. And on Sunday, they'll be a show. I think at 3 p.m. Eastern time To be determined tomorrow will be on the role of the military in a free society I might expand that to cover some other topics because I'm not sure I have that much to say about the role of the military in a free Society we will see but that is a show that was sponsored by John and Then Sunday is an AMA with with with the hundred dollar donors a hundred dollar supporters. All right, so Questions rolling in make them 20 buck questions we got goals to achieve here I'm still I'm avoiding getting to the topic Make him $20 questions these all these little questions And then I have to get to all of them and then because then make this show a very late show Like $20 questions, they're few of them and they're more impactful and I promise to spend more time on them And I'll get to them sooner. So All right We do have a goal today. It's $600. I Ali's not here. I've been asking about Ali From what I hear Ali is Is living through Constant power outages in in Venetuela She does obviously not have a generator as I would not expect her to but Venetuela as you know is In constant crisis I guess the crisis has gotten to the point where they're now rolling power outages In in Venetuela where she lives and the time she's been on and dropped off. It's because the power is gone. So What an existence how horrible must that be I mean Just horrible. So that's why Ali is not here And hopefully, you know, I'm sure we're all wishing her Good luck in in in getting a power back and and getting to be part of the show on a regular basis again It will be nice to have her here to keep you guys in check So far we've got $80 and like 300 questions. So I'm looking for those 20 buck questions 50 buck questions $100 questions so we get up there, but that that's why Ali is not here It's it's you know, it's pretty horrific once once you get to the place where Venetuela is you can't even count in electricity All right, so your arms rules for life as you know, what is the principle by which the principle? We're gonna talk about principles today, but what is the guiding principle?  Take every day seriously take every minute of your life. Seriously, you only have this life You don't have anything else it's it's you know Every second you never get back so Everything is in the context of Take life seriously today. I want to talk about one aspect of taking life seriously and One aspect important aspect crucial aspect life or death aspect of taking your life seriously is to live by Principles to hold principles To live by them Consistently uncompromisingly By those principles and here in it in in in particular we're talking about ethical principles moral principles principles of action principles of behavior You know, we can also talk about and certainly this applies to Political principles font policy principles lots of other principles have them Have rational principles and Live by them why why the hell do you need principles now? Let me start by saying Nothing you're gonna hear today is original this is my pro-attempt to Kind of Repeat for you introduce you to This idea this idea that I learned from Landon Peacock like many of my ideas But you know a lot of it's I ran but in this case it's directly from Landon Peacock I encourage you all as a matter of life or death to listen to two talks by Landon Peacock All you have to do is put into YouTube Landon Peacock Principle just let him pick up principle two talks more come up the two talks come up that are relevant here one is One is more about morality moral principles Which is part of his course on? Objectivism state of the art of course I heard live In 1987 and the other one is a foothold forum lecture that he gave. I'm not sure what year But probably 88 89 would be my guess and Why I should act on principle so why we should act one act on principle. Thank you James that's actually the name. That's the second one those two are the talks two brilliant talks On principles, so that's the source material. You should definitely go to that material You know, hopefully I will motivate you to go to that material that my talk is just motivation Not the end run so Take principle seriously why why the answer for that is that life is complex It's complicated There is a ton going on Things that are related to the particular decision you have to make things that are unrelated to the decision you have to make It's just a lot of concrete stuff a lot of things to consider in the world and whereas animals all animals accept human beings oh Oh You know basically programmed to deal with all this To know what the what what the what the right responses how to how to act what to do this survival is not Contingent on them. It's already there. It's already programmed. They might fail. They might not survive But everything's automatic What they do what they don't do It's determined human beings don't have that we actually have to analyze the information and Make a decision about our action. What are we going to do? What is the right thing to do? What will lead us towards a better life?  You have to make choices. You have to decide What to do and what not to do? It's up to you Now, how do you make any sense of all the information being thrown at you? You don't have an automatic means by which To make that decision Well, the human consciousness has this amazing capacity. It's called Thinking reason It's our conceptual ability We can take all that information that comes in and we can generalize from it We can create categories for it and we can then derive rules fundamental Organizations principles That will guide our life that would guide in this case our decision making the decisions that we have to make So, I don't know Should you cheat in the exam? How many questions? What do you guys think? You know, Michael? You're gonna get very short answers At five dollars a pop look at the number of questions. God I'm not like a questioning answering machine Um Friday night Thank you best fit Hank. That's very generous. So Should you cheat in an exam just? Plain right? You can write all the answers in your hand well Imagine if every time you faced a decision like that You had to take all the concrete. Well, what do I know? About the possibility of being caught How many people have been caught when were they caught what happened to the people who weren't caught? Okay, that's one Line of reasoning and you would have to take all that information and absorb it and think about it and analyze it and decide All right, what is the value of this knowledge? What is the value of the knowledge to me? You know by by cheating What is the say about my knowledge of the knowledge is the knowledge important to me in what ways is it important to me? You can go along all kinds of paths in terms of You know, should should I cheat here? And you'd have to take all of that information integrated with the getting caught information and and and Try to make and then there's the the the what does cheating say about my me my ability What does it say about what effect will this have on my self-esteem? Or does it have an effect on self-esteem? How would I know it has an effect on self-esteem? Let me go look at all the Concrete examples of cheating people with self-esteem But let me also think about the mind. The mind is a kind of an integrating machine machine quotes If cheating here, do you think will that affect? Other things would it affect my honesty elsewhere? Will it encourage me to cheat elsewhere? What do I know about psychology? What do I know about the mind? What what do I know about all these things? And imagine every time you face the situation where you could cheat an exam or on anything else What is my relationship to the professor? What is this course? What do I need to you know, there's a million concretes And the standard you've accepted let's say you've accepted the standard the standard is my life. I want to live right? This is morality. So this is is cheating On this exam this particular exam Is it pro-life or anti-life? I mean the number of concretes you would now have to integrate it would be overwhelming And now you have to do it every single time the possibility of cheating comes up And of course if the possibility of cheating is open Why not lying? And every time you talk to somebody there's a possibility of lying about what about lying to myself? Is that bad? Well, how do I know let me get all Imagine doing that every single time the possibility of cheating or lying came up You would be paralyzed. You couldn't do anything You wouldn't have the time or the effectiveness to do it But imagine doing it once in the context of building up A morality a moral code built on life Imagine doing it once in the context of trying to understand the role of reason and rationality in your life And then coming to the conclusion after having analyzed all Different aspects and how they all integrate with this idea of life and the idea of reason as man's basic means of survival Once you integrate all these things You come to the conclusion Lying is anti reason It's anti there for life And yeah, most lies ultimately get caught Or most lies require many many other lies in order to cover up the first lie And they they make life super complicated and obnoxious I look around my life and what I see are the people who lie are the people who are failures in life All right lying doesn't make sense. I You know, I am going to be honest honest Now honesty and in objectivism is not just about lying But but I'm not going to cheat, right? I have a principle now I don't cheat I don't cheat Why Because I have already integrated the fact that cheating is anti reason It's anti life And therefore bad for me Now But in this particular case, well, no, I don't need to redo it every time I figure this out. Look, we have principles You don't have to redo gravity every single time. There's the law of gravity. It's a principle There are scientific principles You don't Reprove them every single time in order to build on them. No honesty is done or not cheating is done I figure that out. I know it's bad for me. I'm just not going to consider it again And then You're just You just don't cheat now note That this isn't like a commandment This isn't like some dogma and this is why it has to be rational And you have to have integrated it. You have to have proven it to yourself In the context of establishing your morality So it's not that I carry around a dogma. Thou shall not cheat. Don't cheat. Don't cheat. Don't cheat shouldn't cheat No I am proven to myself Then in the context of the in the context of living in in in the context of pursuing life Which is the only goal one has cheating because It's anti reason It's anti Self it's anti my life Now that I've proven it to myself only now that I've proven it to myself It becomes a principle Objectivism should never be held Should never be held Principles of morality mobility should never be held as commandments as duties it has to be Principles you understand you understand foundation you understand what they're built on and it has to build on reason and rationality It has to be built on the facts of reality And and you know the cheating is not just issue in honesty it's an issue of You know potentially Private property because you could cheat in business cheating in school cheating in business Is that going to lead you in that path? Again, if you understand the role of reason is this integrating function What is this due to your consciousness? What does it do to you? It destroys you so build up print moral principles and then live by them consistently There's no deviation. There's no compromise But troy asks But do they always apply? So here's here's some examples. He has So he says what i'm confused about is this concept is the concept of principles And how we are to react when those principles are interfered with by a higher power That may have an undue influence on our lives I guess I have some examples See some examples A student at school or college under the influence of leftist thinkers teachers is told to write a paper on crt And the topic is to show support for this too At her core this makes her very angry But the advice to her would be don't threaten your grades over this issue Write the piece get the grades required hold close your own opinion But don't jeopardize your schooling by alienating a teacher who right now has influence over your process Is that the guidance right and if so is that a violation of the principle of honesty? Well, first I would say I don't know if that's the guidance it would depend You would have to analyze the situation You would have to You would have to know Something about the teacher Is the teacher rational Is the teacher open to debate Is the teacher really gonna penalize you for having an opinion different than the teacher If the teacher is open to ideas She might be angry with you. She might not agree with you.   She's basically generally mistaken, but generally rational Then I would say write the essay about why it makes you angry Write an honest essay and yeah, she won't like you for a little while But so what however if the teacher is truly a teacher Who will penalize you who is irrational Then the principle now does not apply Your values are being threatened by irrationality You're in an irrational universe You're in a place where Rationality does not apply And no it would be suicidal To provide the teacher with the rope by which to hang you Remember the standard ultimately is always your life Take your life seriously move your life forward Advance your life improve your life achieve happiness If you know This is anti your life If you know this is destructive to your happiness and to your ability to live If you know That this goes against everything you believe in then lying is appropriate But you need to know all that To exclude the principle and here the principle is It's not a conflict of principle. It's just that the principle of honesty Applies or not not cheating in this case applies in a context of Rationality in a context where somebody can't impose Through force in a sense their will on you It applies Not in a world In which I don't know if the rapist asks you where your wife is You're not obliged to tell them the truth the contrary It is immoral to tell them the truth Your responsibility is to your values. That's the fundamental And when When being honest to an irrational person when being honest in a context where somebody has Power over you unjustifiable power over you then no you are not The principle does not hold under those circumstances now Ideally you get out of that school Because you don't want to live in a world where you cannot apply your principles Because and and and you see that you see that in in in places like venezuela I respect private property rights I don't take any money from the government. I you know, I I don't know I I I Treat my employees with respect If that all is going to result in You being destroyed, how can you live? Those circumstances circumstances in which irrational people have power over you You need to the extent that you can Divorce yourself from those circumstances get out of there change schools home school But if your child is being forced to write a paper on crt Get her out of that school Get her out of that context now sometimes you can sometimes you can But in the face of force As as a man said, you know when a gun is pointed at you morality is out the window morality doesn't apply When force is in the equation Here's another example A nurse is told to vaccinate or lose her job She has no real issue with getting the jab But the tests that the government is stepping in to trample on her individual rights The advice would be to save your job as employment prospects out in the covid world right now May seem dire But self interested to protect be self interested to protect that income your livelihood Still rail against government influence in your lives, but at least in the short run Look after you and your family I don't know if that's the advice it depends Now if she doesn't have any real issue with getting the jab Then Why not get the jab? um She'd test the government stepping on her individual rights. Absolutely. We all to test that But you know, I just test the government taking my taxes And I will need to go to jail so that they stop no Again force is being used against me I will speak up against it, but i'm going to pay my taxes.  Thank you. Really appreciate that What's the principle here? The principle is stand up for what you believe or do you believe? If you don't really have an issue with getting the jab then get the jab Get your job and speak up against the mandates So that doesn't seem like a compromise here right So doing what the government is forcing you to do the government forces us to do lots of things File forms apply for stuff pay all kinds of taxes Abide by regulations that are much that are just as bad as vaccine mandates And we do them and then we we speak up against them So again, I'm not sure what the principle here is with the principle that she's violating is I don't want to get you know, I I want to be free to make my own decisions about vaccines. Yes About anything, you know, the principle would be not about vaccines. That wouldn't be a principle I should make decisions about my own health absolutely absolutely But given that the jab is not something she's opposed to And given that her not getting the jab or losing her job is not going to change anything With the government again, I don't think once forces entered the picture I don't think the principle here holds A business suffers a downturn in profits due to covet the government office financial support The business owner the test government handout has always believed in the survival of the fittest Well, I don't believe in the survival of fittest. I don't think that's ever a good way to articulate What capitalism does capitalism is not the survival of the fittest because that seems like implying That the unfit all die. It's not exactly what happens in capitalism, right? Failure is not non-survival Now as a business maybe But it's just it strikes on too much as what's always used to be called social Darwinism Beware of that because we're not social Darwinists And so let me just copy over Copy over this question so But covet and the government who renders handling of the pandemic has exacerbated his economy downturn and to stay afloat he accepts the support What is the principle here? I will never accept the government handout. I don't think that's a very good principle In a mixed economy, why wouldn't you? Your productive human being you've given the government a huge amount of money Is that person not going to accept your security or they're not going to accept Medicare? How they're going to get health care when for example, I don't support Medicare. I want to abolish Medicare But once i'm 65 Shit, that's soon Once i'm 65 There is no other source of health care If you live in the if you live in some countries with health care socialize what you're not going to use the health care system Because you refuse to accept government support So first of all, I would view government support in a context like that as getting my money back But you have to think what is the principle? I will never take money from the government is not a good principle Because it ignores an entire context of where we live under what circumstances we live So you have to think about what your principles are What your principles are and what context were they derived? I don't want the government, you know a principle would be with the god of government support. What would the principle be? I will never ask for the government to support me. I will never try to manipulate the government I will never lobby the government To provide me with financial support But if the government's offering it to you and in particular if the government created the problem that you're suffering from which in covid case There's no principle that says you shouldn't take the money Okay, so what is common to all these? It's a combination of two things one is you have to form the principle properly The principle has to take into account The context in which it is going to be used Again, you can't have a context that says I will never allow myself to be forced to do things by the government that I don't want to do I mean, that's just not realistic And it's not a good principle because you're not you're gonna lose your life very quickly Now you might have a principle about there's certain things you won't force the government to do But again once force is introduced the equation I don't know what the right answer is If the government forces you As as they did in arty germany To choose which of your children should be shot. Is there a principle to guide that? No There's no principle It's a horrible disgusting email Horrific choice. I'd probably rather commit suicide than make the choice There's no principle there. So one thing here is There are no principles in the face of force You're not even survival because sometimes in the face of force the best thing is to die in the name of living And taking your life seriously If you accept money from the government, are you not going to accept any social security? Are you not going to accept Medicare?  Now if you're a leech You shouldn't get it, but they're the ones who who jump and get it first So there's no principle that says business shouldn't take money from the government Again, the principle has to be derived from the requirements of your life And it has to take into account the consequence In which you live I'm sorry the context in which you live it can't be Context free it can't be floating. This is why principles are not Commandments And but even deriving the principle you can say I'll never ask for favors But if the government's handing out dollars and everybody else is taking them, why would I not? and of course Again, when we give teachers power When they're Instead of educating They are Indocrinating our kids And they penalize them for having alternative positions then again that that is the equivalent In this context are force against you Don't allow yourself to be penalized for your virtues So you always want to be principled, but you always also have to acknowledge or recognize when Principles don't apply and this is This is the great tragedy a force What force does is it limits our thinking It restricts our options It destroys our principles It makes principled Thinking i.e. thinking impossible It's why objectivism is so anti force Not like libertarians who are just anti force because I don't know everybody should know force is bad We know why force is bad Force is bad because in order to live you have to think To think means to think in principles And force eviscerates those principles Force makes thinking impossible. That's why we're against it Bands basic means of survival man's means of achieving anything in life Is his reason force incapacitated reason it makes it impotent Future impossible and that's why we're against it Because we value the human mind and we value principles So one of the reasons we're so pro-capitalist one of the reasons was anti force Not one of the reasons the reason The reason we're pro-capitalist and anti force is because we're pro principles. We're pro morality.  We're pro reason so and and and one of the reasons you want to deal with rational people is because teachers like this teacher you describe troy Undestructive to our morality Destructive to our ability to be honest to to to live a good life because now we have to We can't use those principles the principles becoming relevant because we're facing force irrationality In facing irrationality you have to just survive but you want to minimize Facing irrationality. Therefore you want to minimize the mixed economy. You want to minimize The existence of teachers like this. You want to minimize public education.  Where the principle applies Because you're living in a rational world the principle applies because you're not dealing with force. You're not dealing with government but if you and and so More motivation for fighting for freedom more motivation for creating an environment around you Where you're dealing with rational people you're dealing with the rational education you're dealing with To the extent that you can Because the only way human beings can survive and thrive and be successful The only way we can achieve happiness and we can achieve happiness Counter to the other guy who claims to have rules for life. We can actually achieve happiness Is by living a principled life by living a moral life By living up to our principles And not compromising them because what does compromising principles mean? It means to be on the death premise for a little bit Just when it's inconvenient to be principled Again, these examples are not examples of inconvenience. These examples are examples of physical force use against you So what does it mean to lie sometimes? When? So you can't if you have a principle you can't then say I'm not going to apply it when I don't feel like it Well, that means you don't have a principle The whole idea of a principle is You do it, you know, it's right That's what you do and you don't let your emotions Dictate it the whole point of a principle Is to give you a shortcut and sometimes to overrule The emotions because the emotions will sometimes tell you This is uncomfortable to tell the truth You know, don't look over there evade it. No, the principle is look always look Always keep your mind in focus always Reality is your standard Once you let Compromise in a little bit your whole idea principle is out the window. It doesn't exist Principles are there To simplify your life To make it relatively easy To deal with a multitude of facts of Concrete of the whole of human knowledge past and present Do the work you have to do the work to get to the principles You can't just read them in iron rand and accept them You have to do the work To make them yours that is to prove them to yourself But once you do the work They're yours What does it compromise on a principle mean? Let's say we have the principle that I am not going to cheat And what does compromising means? I'm going to cheat sometimes Well, then how is it a principle? And if I'm going to cheat sometimes when am I going to cheat? What's the rule?  Why not ten? Why not five? Why not seven? Why three? Why a little? Why this amount? Why not that amount? What dictates the amount you're going to cheat by?  So you are Just randomly choosing some What's Articulate In what circumstances you should deal with evil Say you should not You can negotiate with hostages I don't think that's a principle I think Atlanta Peacock answered this question really well I think in why we should live in principle He said You negotiate with the hostages You give them what they want They release the prisoners And then you hunt them down And you kill every last one of them That's how I would negotiate with Hostage shakers They would never take hostages again So you deal With a problem right now And then you kill them all But you don't deal with evil You don't deal with a Hitler You don't deal with Stalin You don't deal with communists You don't deal with any of these guys And we've got a ton of history to show That dealing with them Never actually improves our lot And yet We still continue to negotiate with evil And who gains When is the good ever gained By negotiating with evil It doesn't Never has Never will There's no deals Unless you're willing to renege on the deal Like with hostages Give them everything they want Promise not to hurt them as soon as they turn their backs Shoot them I never understood in the westerns Why the good guy insisted on a fair fight Evil doesn't deserve a fair fight If somebody's truly evil Somebody's a murderer And you're gonna have to go against them And either you die or they die Then shoot them in the back That's the manly Just Correct thing to do No, I don't think we should kill all communists What does that have to do with anything There's no diplomacy with evil Nothing comes of it Ever It's a principle Don't negotiate with evil Let's see Do we have questions Nerudo says Listen The question of scholarship Which covers this government money issue Yes it does You can do that Jeff has a challenge $100 This is towards Ali's $600 goal Objective This is a question challenge Best three questions In the regular chat On topic Voted by you in the next 10 minutes Get a $50, $30, $20 Corresponding further donation In your name from me Contribute to the show's content Thanks for being there Jeff is monitoring this You guys can vote Ask a question in the regular chat Without super chat Jeff will make the contribution Based But you have to vote on what questions are good And what questions are bad This might be too complicated for people Jeff, but thank you for the support Really appreciate it And see if you can make it work That would be great You can turn them into super chat questions And submit them to me For the $50, $30, $20 But people have to ask questions And you guys have to vote on them You have to look at the questions That are really interesting For a number of people If I can't who knows Who knows You can ask and see And give me a goodían And you can do it And write a call And you can make it work You can give me a goodian And you can give me a goodian And you can do it And you can do it life seriously other than Jordan Peterson, God. Now I have a higher paying job, live in a comfortable house 10 minutes from the job, became an informed voter, and certainly certainty in most aspects of my life. Taking life seriously and being principled is amazing. Yes it is, absolutely. It makes your life simpler, more focused. It allows you to make faster decisions.  And all the time you save from all the confused thinking or attempted thinking that you had before, all that confusion is out and it's just cleaner, more consistent, happier is the result. So Naruto, that is fantastic testimony for the power of philosophy in your life. Put aside the power philosophy in the world, but in your life. And you know, OPOP has done that for many people and it's truly fantastic. Our best friend Hank says, in comparison to AOI taking the PPP loan, should I have any quarrels with purchasing ethanol blended gasoline? The ethanol industry is supported with government subsidies. This is one of the reasons I don't support it. Am I sacrificing myself? I don't support it either, but there's ethanol in my gasoline. I mean, every state has a different blend of it, but I think almost every state has ethanol in the gasoline. You can't avoid it. Certainly in California, they change the degree of ethanol in the gasoline based on the seasons, I think. I'm against ethanol in gasoline. I'm against the ethanol industry. If I had a choice, I would not buy ethanol, but they don't give me a choice. So I'm not gonna stop driving because the gasoline has ethanol which is subsidized by the government. I mean, I don't say, 20% of my electricity comes from solar, so I'm gonna use 20% less electricity because I don't wanna support the solar industry. It's just impractical. It's wrong, and what choice do you have? Yeah, ethanol is in all California gasoline. You can't avoid it. So you wanna minimize your exposure to government force because it's just healthier for you, but you can't in a mixed economy. Make it zero. You can't eliminate it. All right, let's see. God, a lot of questions. Let's see, $20. Sam Sita has been posting a lot of calls. This is from Michael. He's been getting on his show from objectivists, defending you, defending me, okay? I think it would be worthwhile to do a three-hour debate with him while taking super chat questions from both your audiences. I think that would be great if somebody can organize that. If Sam Sita would agree to it, I'll do it. So I would definitely do all that. Yeah, I'd love to do a three-hour debate with Sam Sita. The previous debate was too short. Jeff says it's too hard for everybody to vote, so he's just gonna choose the three best questions. All right, cool. Let's see, any other $20 questions? Yes, MP creates, creates, creates, MP creates. To what extent should you share values with a dating partner? I understand that lovers of reflection one's own values, but if I only date objectivist, I would likely stay single for a long time. Thanks. Well, if you don't share values with your dating partner, what are you gonna talk about? What are you gonna have? What interest do you have? Now, values doesn't mean objectivist, but some values, not every single one of them, but there has to be some basis in which there's a connection. There has to be some basis certainly for love.  It can't just be physical. So, do you have to share all your values with them? Do you have to share your philosophical values with them? Probably not for dating, probably not even for marriage, but it's always gonna be an issue in marriage if you don't share your philosophical moral values. And look, at some extent you have to. Like, you don't wanna marry somebody who's dishonest, so hopefully they share that value with you. You don't wanna marry somebody who's fundamentally irrational. You don't wanna share that value. You don't wanna compromise on that. So, you have to figure out what values are important to you in a partner. What values you cannot do without in a partner. And you have to focus on those. And you have to find a woman, and sometimes you fall in love with somebody for fairly, there's a lot of objective as women that I'm not gonna fall in love with. Because there has to be something more. There has to be something in their sense of life, something in their style of living, something in the way they are. That it's hard to put a finger on. That it goes beyond just explicit values that they hold. Something in the way they live, in the way they hold life. I couldn't, for example, fall in love with somebody who doesn't take their life seriously. They could share all my values. But if they don't really take life seriously, if they don't really take value seriously, which is what taking your life seriously really means, it's taking your value seriously, I'd be uninterested. And I know people who are objectivists, but they're not really passionate about their values. So dating is complicated. I don't envy any of you who are dating, but don't set as a standard, they have to be an objectivist, they have to share all my values.  You will not tolerate the other person. And the same with friendship. They don't have to agree with you on everything, but there certainly has to be some standing. All right, Jeff has chosen the three questions. So let's start with the first, 50 Canadian dollars. From the number one best question that did not appear in the super chat, according to Jeff. It's a good question. So why does force negate a person's reason? Can we use force to help people who don't know any better? In some superficial sense, you can imagine using force to help people who don't know any better, but note that that negates their reason, that you are helping them in spite of their reason. You're helping them in spite, and indeed you're reinforcing their idea that their reason is negated, it's gone. It's not in force because you're forcing them. So it's not, they're not reasoning to it, they're being forced to it.  I don't think so. Now you could think in a momentary sense, I don't know, somebody is forced to get the vaccine and that saves their lives because if they would have gotten COVID, they would have died and it saved their lives. In a big sense, in a sense of living, in a sense of living, living means choosing, living means engaging with the world, living means reasoning. They are not doing that, they are not living. Okay, but why does force negate reason? I explained that earlier. I think I explained an aspect of it earlier. What does reasoning mean? Reasoning means an awareness of reality, an integration of the facts of reality, an identification of the nature of what it is you're aware of, integration with your rest of knowledge and coming up with an abstract conclusion about the world. You, I don't know, let's try to think of an example, right? You do a scientific experiment. You discover that by manipulating certain enzymes and certain RNA molecules, you can actually use a particular technology to edit genes, call it CRISPR. That's reasoning, you've observed the experiments, you've read the studies, you've run experiments yourself, you've analyzed the data, you've thought about it, you've tested hypotheses, you've discovered new knowledge, a new phenomenon, that's reasoning. Now imagine, imagine I told you, gene editing goes against the Bible and anybody who discovers gene editing, anybody who practices it, anybody who provides techniques to achieve it will be shot. It is unacceptable or maybe even burns at the stake, right? It is unacceptable, it is against dogma, it is anti-human, we're gonna use force we are letting you know in advance. Anybody caught doing this kind of research, anybody caught presenting this kind of data, anybody caught using this in any way will be burnt at the stake. Do you think CRISPR would have been discovered? I'm reading this great book, I encourage you to read it. It's fascinating, it's about the woman scientist who basically discovered CRISPR, right? So she's, the one who discovered CRISPR is a technique for gene editing because CRISPR is something else, but a technique for gene editing. And it's an amazing book, it really will, you can see what it takes to make scientific discoveries, you can see what it takes beyond just a brilliant mind, the kind of work and the kind of dedication, but the kind of focus, the kind of mind, orientation that it takes to make great scientific discoveries. It's called, I think, The Code Breaker. It's by the same guy who wrote, yes, it's Isaacson's The Code Breaker. I encourage you to read it, it's fascinating, it's great science, it's very up to date, it's relevant, we're talking a lot about mRNA vaccines, this is the technology in a sense that makes mRNA platforms possible. So The Code Breaker is definitely worthwhile. So imagine if the threat was you'd be burned at the stake, if you were to develop this technology, would it be developed? Would you allow your mind to go there? Would you be able to reason about the evidence?  I'm gonna go do other experiments. I'm not even gonna attempt myself because the temptation might be too great. So I'm just not gonna do this research, I'm gonna go somewhere else. So what force does is it eliminates whole regions of thinking. And then as I said earlier, it basically says your thinking is irrelevant.  You are now conditioned that your mind is to serve my ends. And if you're not serving my ends, punishment is inflicted on you. I mean that cripples your ability to think beyond what he wants me to do. Again, and principles, I talked about this when I talked about principles, are gone. You can't be principled under force. You cannot be principled under force because force negates it. It turns your principles against you. It makes them anti-life. So you abandon them, how can you think if you're not thinking in principles? It undermines your ability to generalize because the generalization might lead to your death.  Integrations go out, fear takes over the mind. It's very hard to think under fear. Now Thomas says, but if you're being held prisoner by force, you could still think reason about how to escape, right? Yes, you can. So in narrow fields, you can still do some thinking. It's not like scientists in Nazi Germany couldn't do any thinking, but the scope is shrunk. Force is the enemy of thought. When you think of thought as this broad, I can think about anything. I can, whatever the evidence takes me. So if you're developing an atom bomb, this is what you have to do. Then maybe I can think about that, but I can't look over there because that line of reasoning might be taking me in a direction that my Nazi overloads don't want me to think about. So I can't go over there. So I have to stay focused on this. So I have to do the math over here. Can't think over there. So it eliminates the broadness, undermines your principles, and it makes your thinking impotent, because it's so narrow. So yes, you can think about how to escape, but that's it. You can think about how to evade questions. You can think about certain ways in which to deal with the situation you're in, but you're not gonna make new discoveries. You're not gonna think about science. You're not gonna think about the broad scope of what thinking, what human consciousness is about. Hopefully that makes sense, Tom. Thomas. All right, that was question at the $50 level. Now we have question number two at the $30 level. Valden asks, is having integrity in life the number one rule in Iran's book? No, I don't think so. I haven't ranked them. I haven't ranked them. But as I said, I think in Iran's rules for life, the number one rule is taking your life seriously. Everything else serves that. And I don't wanna just repeat the virtues. So I want this to be more of a practical application of in action, in living. So this is why writing a book is gonna be tricky, because how do you differentiate between these rules and the virtues? How do you make them consistent and different? And am I saying anything original with these? Given that you have the seven virtues and I did a whole series on the seven virtues, which I encourage you to watch, by the way. So I don't think integrity is number one. I think in that context, it's being selfish is number one. Being self-interest, taking your life seriously, living as I say with a capital L, all of that, introductory content, that's number one. Oh, come on, best friend Hank. Why do you ask these, we'll get to the $5 questions later. Apollo Zeus asks, psychological with warfare, where does this come in rationality?  You can inflict psychological pain on people. You can bombard them with propaganda. You can, under extreme circumstances, brainwash people. And you can just erode the confidence, erode their strength, their psychological strength to stand up to you. To overcome it requires being rational. But sometimes, given the extreme circumstances where psychological warfare is sometimes practiced, being rational might be super difficult. And what the enemy relies on is that difficulty. So rationality is the means by which we overcome psychological warfare. But the whole point of it being psychological is it's grading on you. It's, so for example, I don't know, they put you in a cell and they play, I don't know, loud, obnoxious music all day long. Rationality doesn't overcome the fact that that is psychologically painful and wearing and eroding. And can break you, particularly if it's rap, right? Or heavy metal, all day, really loud. I mean, that would break anybody. Okay, God. Michael's like on a, what are you on a crusade? Look how many $5 questions there. I mean, I appreciate the support, but come on, lump them into one question with $20. You probably got, I don't know, $50 here almost and $5 questions at least. All just to exhaust me. All right, best for the Hank. I thought of a question earlier today to ask you. I was going to put up $100. Truth is, I had such a busy day that I forgot what it was. Well, I think as penalty for forgetting what the question was, you should pony up the $100 anyway. I think that's only fair. I don't think you should get away with the dog ate my homework. I mean, I think that's, don't you guys think that's pretty pathetic? The dog ate my homework?  That happens to me all the time where I forget stuff that just two minutes ago I remembered and I forget it completely. Michael asked, Michael asked a lot of questions today. $2 questions, $5 questions. Woo, he's going to weigh me down. Can humanity survive on black markets? What does survive mean? Were human beings still, yes. Human beings, can humanity thrive? Can it succeed? Can it have civilization? Can it grow? Can, no. So it depends what you consider survive. Survive is just the basics, yes. Humanity can survive on black market. Thrive, no. Flourish, no. Because black markets, there's force everywhere. And force of strange thinking, thinking is the basis by which civilization thrives. Michael asked, do evil people like the fact that they hated? Some, some don't. Some is zent it. You can do it, you're on 50s is the new 20s. Do what? I don't know what we're talking about. Did I say something that suggested doing something? I don't know what doing something is. Plus, I hate to break it to you. And actually, I hate to break it to me more than I hate to break it to you. I'm not in my 50s anymore. Reality is what it is and there's nothing you can do about it.  Depends on the particular psychology of the evil person. What does even like mean? Like is like a positive emotion that they have. To what extent do they have that? Hard to tell. Robert has a $20 question saving me from all these $5 questions that are just wearing me down.  Thank you, Robert, really appreciate that. It's a real pleasure to have you. And in honor of your own book at Northwood University in Midland, I will be there on Tuesday night. I'm in Motown, that's Detroit on November 2nd, 2021. Super props to the super chatters, nice work. So are you coming, Robert, to Northwood University? Northwood is like two hours from Detroit, I think. It's quite a drive, but hopefully you can make it. Hopefully some of you guys can come. I'll also be in Michigan State, middle of the day on the 3rd of November, talking to the Federalist Society at Michigan State. So four universities next week, probably six talks, six talks. Cornell, Northwood, Michigan State, Xavier, three talks at Xavier. So should be a pretty busy week. Hopefully it doesn't get too cold. I don't like cold. Please, Robert, can you arrange for Michigan to warm up a little bit just for my visit? I'd appreciate that. I'm gonna leave Puerto Rico to go to Michigan. I don't know what got into me. It doesn't seem right. All right, Dave asks, $5, God. I think rapid innovations in technology and cryptocurrency are going to buy us another 50 years in this radioactive mixed economy. I hope you're right. I hope that's true. And if they do, we win because I think 50 years is all we need. So go for it, Dave. I'm all for that. Dave also asked, it's interesting how people view burning bridges as a sign of failure when really it is often an act of self-esteem and living by principles. Yes, don't deal with bad people, people that hurt you, people that do you harm, psychological or otherwise, burn the bridges. Don't look back. Doesn't matter if they're family, friends, cousins, I don't know, ex-wives, whatever. If they're doing you harm, you gotta live.  Now, sometimes you can't, granted, right? But when you can, when you can suffer that relationship, do it. Neuta1341 says, the best argument I hold for Bitcoin is the Bitcoin standard. Does a great history of money to set up the argument for Bitcoin and what sets it apart from other cryptos? The main question is what is the value of Bitcoin? That's the challenge I think people have. And is the fact that Bitcoin is finite, 21 million, is that a problem? So I think it is, but I think it was a mistake that, what's his name, who originated Bitcoin made? He should have made it grow in some relationship to the cost of energy, not to the cost of energy. Anyway, there should have been some formula that related to increased productivity in the economy. That would have been an ideal crypto. Michael, what is your definition of a loser? Somebody who fails, doesn't learn anything from the failure, keeps committing the same mistakes, never learns from those mistakes and loses over and over and over again as a consequence.  Somebody who doesn't learn from his failures and repeats them over and over again. Michael says, never be a prisoner of your past. It was just a lesson, not a life sentence. Yeah, I think that's right. Failure is an opportunity to learn and the past is over. The past doesn't exist. The past is gone. You're living in the present, you're gonna live in the future. The past finished, it's gone, doesn't matter. I should make that a Yuan rules for life. Focus on the future. By the way, that's another reason we need principles. Leonard talks about this. It's because we have to be long-term. We have to think beyond the spur of the moment. We have to plan into the future. And that is hard and complicated and complex to do it from scratch every time. You can't do it. You would shut down from cognitive overload without principles. Michael says, a person who falls and gets back up is much stronger than the person who never falls. Maybe, maybe, I'm not convinced of that. But, I don't know. Failure doesn't always make you stronger and not everybody who's strong has failed. I can think of businesses that never failed or CEOs who never failed, never failed big and incredibly strong and incredibly successful. So I encourage people to take risks and if they fail, to learn from those and move on. But I don't think you have to fall or you have to fail. And you certainly shouldn't seek that out. You should seek out the learning. Michael says, over the last half century, we've added years to life, but not life to years. Most people are zombies. Well, we've added life to years. Not everybody takes advantage of it. Too many people don't. Too many people are indeed zombies. Not everybody. Let's not exaggerate. Well, you said most, not everybody. But I'm not even sure. It's true that most, I don't know the most are zombies. That's harsh. A lot of zombies, most don't take full advantage of it. Most only take partial advantage of it. Dave said, I've heard the argument you should put money in real estate instead of stock market because your house can never go to zero.  Yeah, house is not an investment. House is a consumption good.  You should think of a house separate from investment. Now you can invest in other people's houses to generate money. But the reason to invest in it, and I know houses that have gone to zero. I'm sure particularly if you take on debt to buy the house, it can go to zero very quickly. All right, so, but real estate can also go to zero if the city's abandoned. Nobody wants to live there anymore. I know people who couldn't sell their house in Ohio took them 10, 12 years to sell it. So I guess the value didn't go to zero but almost closed. At least during that period they couldn't get their money out of it. Dean asked, this is kind of almost $20, I'll take it. I really love your show but sometimes I feel you're missing out on amazing art, rap is great. No, it's not. Some metal bands are amazing, some few. Try it sometimes. I've tried rap, I've tried. It's just not great art, it's just not. It's certainly not great. Yeah, some of it's tolerable. You know, Hamilton is good. The rap in Hamilton is good. Is it great art? No, no, not when you compare it to opera or to operetta or to, you know, even just, great, good musicals. It's just not great. It's, you know, it's not very sophisticated, not very complex. It overemphasizes rhythm. Rhythm is fine but rhythm is the most primitive of the aesthetic aspects of music. You've got to have more than that. It's just not great art. On another subject, what do you think about hydro energy, 61% of candidate energy? So it's great. I love hydro energy. As long as you find a way to privatize it, do it in a private way where you don't take people's land away from them, you don't violate property rights, I am 100% with hydro. But environmentalist hate hydro, even though it doesn't consume, it doesn't put out CO2. Because the fish or the snails or whatever. All right, how rational are you? Is it a sliding scale of binary? I think it's mostly binary. You either think or you don't think. How consistent you are is somewhat on a scale. How rational am I? I think very. I try to be consistently. I try to do it all the time. I strive towards that. Where were you during 9-11? Did you think you were witnessing the beginning of Armageddon? I was in bed. I was just walking up. A friend had just come by to pick my wife up.  The friend was actually Amy Peacoff. Amy came by. This was when she was married to Leonard. She came by and she said, hey, turn on the television. I turned on the television. I was still in bed and I was, and the first plane had already hit the first tower. I watched as the second plane hit the second tower. And it became clear that it was a massive terrorist attack. So I knew this was massive. This is huge. Huge, not Armageddon though. Armageddon is the end of the world. I did not think it was the end of the world. I did not think the United States would end. I thought this was important. This was a big deal. I also immediately thought the U.S. is gonna mess this up and screw it up. They have no clue how to respond. They don't know what they're doing. They will screw this up. George Bush will be a failure when it comes to this. I knew that immediately. I got dressed, kept the kids from, can't remember if they stayed at school or I took them to school. Amy and my wife did not go to Los Angeles. They stayed home. And I drove to Los Angeles to the institute, the A.O.I. A.O.I. in those days was in L.A. right near the airport. I drove there. Now remember getting a phone call from Leonard Peacock saying, don't go. They say they might hit L.A. airports. And I said, look, Leonard, I have to go. It's my job. We have to start commenting on this. We have to respond to this. We can't just sit on our hands. You know, I know, they're gonna, and he agreed and I, so he said, don't drive on the highway.  I can't remember how I exactly drove but I got, the office was in Marina del Riz on the other side of the airport from March County where it's coming from. I got there, you know, I talked to Ancar and Ilan Juno, they came in and we started writing immediately. We started writing. So, and I was right. They blew it.  They never got it right. They never understood it. They never, they still don't. It's still a threat. It's still out there. They never got it right. All right. I think I've created some, what do you call it? Some controversy around what I said about metal? I don't know. I don't know. I can't keep track of what you guys are writing. All right. Michael says, is Ayn Rand mentioned in Pinkers News book on reason and enlightenment? Ed Locke says, it's not that great. I don't know. I haven't read the book yet. I intend to. Michael says, most people think in such a low frequency they need objectivism to elevate their consciousness. Agree. What they need is, they need objectivism, not just to help them orient themselves towards focusing their mind and towards making that habit, but they need to also then improve the quality of their thinking. For example, they need to start thinking principles. That makes a huge difference in how well you can think and whether you apply consistently. If you're not thinking principles, you can't be consistent. You can't think consistently. It's overwhelming. It's too much. Have you ever had my comfort? No. Never intend to. No reason to. No purpose. Frank asked, today is the anniversary of Black Tuesday. The big stock market crash in 1929. Can you say something about it and did it cause the Great Depression? It's a big topic. It's a big topic. Stock market was inflated in 1929 because of Fed policy, very similar to today. Basically cheap money, lots of money, lots of credit, very cheap credit, credit. It was used to buy stock, drove up the stock prices. So stock prices would do for a crash. But that did not cause the Great Depression. It was gonna cause a recession. It was gonna cause, it was gonna force a reallocation of capital. Businesses had to go under. Some businesses needed to be replaced, to be destroyed. Some businesses were probably gonna be born. It would have caused a restructuring, a big crash, and then you would have expected a recovery. What caused the Great Depression is the response to Black Tuesday. Both in the White House by Hoover, and at the Federal Reserve by the Fed. The Federal Reserve made the crucial error of as the stock market was collapsing, credit was contracting because nobody wanted to lend money because they didn't trust the collateral. So lending was collapsing. Federal Reserve restricted the money supply, which restricted the ability and the willingness of banks to lend money. So he had this massive contraction of the money supply into a recession, which is like just adding fuel to the fire. Then, Hoover panicked, raised taxes, placed tariffs, was it, smooth holly, and created the first kind of jobs programs that then FDR kind of built massively up. Everything he did, so increased government spending into all of this, all of it was a disaster. It fed off of itself and created the Great Depression. Great Depression was caused by the government response to the crash of 1929. All right, we got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight more questions, no more questions unless the $20 are above. I will not answer any more questions if they're less than $20.  We need to save the world. Thank you, I appreciate that Michael. Dave writes, they see their compliance as morality. I see it as cowardly. They think by complying to the government orders, they are morally superior to people who resist. Sai Dave, I'm not sure who you're talking about.  Sometimes complying is the right thing to do because resisting is too painful, but it doesn't give you any moral status to comply. Michael says, what should you do if your parents don't love you? Should you not even care? I don't know that you can't not care. You have to get over it. You have to get over it. You have to live your life. You cannot live by somebody else's decrees, standards, whims, wishes, negations. You have to live your life.   So you might need a psychologist to help you, but you gotta get over it. You gotta move on. You gotta stop caring somehow, but not rationalistically. You have to do it properly. That's why you probably need a psychologist to help you get over it. It's very traumatic if your parents don't love you. Very traumatic. Dave asks, does history show most people won't fight evil?  Depends. Some places, not always. I mean, the American Revolution, I think the majority fought evil. But I think the majority of Americans wanted to fight the Nazis in World War II, were willing to fight the Nazis in World War II. But I think if you're not intellectually armed to fight evil, if you're not intellectually confident in your own ability, in your own well-being, in yourself, then you don't fight evil. Then the majority don't.  You don't have the courage. You don't have what it takes to fight evil, society's just foiled. And you're seeing America foiled now, and you saw Germany foiled, and yeah. Michael asks, is Germany being denazified? Or is the evil just beneath the surface or on the verge of coming out? I don't think it's been denazified.  The ideas behind the Nazis, the philosophical ideas, have not been eradicated. They're still under the surface. But philosophical ideas don't manifest themselves always in the same way. I don't expect Germany to become Nazi. It might become something, but not Nazi. I'm not sure what it becomes, but the Kantian philosophy at the heart of Germany is not being eliminated. And then it's a question of, how will it manifest itself in the future? It won't be Nazis. What will it be? How will it be? But Michael also asks, my philosophy professor said, no serious academic cares about our environment. This really hit me in the gut. We have such a long way to go. I may never see any real progress in my lifetime. True, but that's not true. Like Terrence Smith is a serious academic. Alan Godhelf who passed away was a serious academic. Robin Mayhew is a serious academic. Robin Mayhew is recognized as an ancient philosophy and in Greek philosophy as a serious academic. There are academics in business schools. There are academics in a variety of different disciplines who do take care, who do care about our environment. If I may take her seriously, they do take her seriously. So it's not true, first of all. And then, but second, yeah, it's sad. There's not more. And it is gonna take a long, long time before we see real, real, real progress. Okay, Andrew writes, why is being principled generally associated with boredom and rigidity? How does that association change under objectivism? That is a great question. And I should have answered it in my thing on being principled, so thank you for asking that, Andrew. The reason is that to be principled around irrational values, around an irrational morality, is both impossible and dogmatic and rigid and boring. So the principles you come up with that are associated with altruism, that are associated with conventional culture, that are associated with a conventional attitude towards morality, don't make any sense. They're not practical. They're not possible, so you have to have this rigid duty perspective. And you have to do them out of a duty sense. You have to suffer. And you do suffer because altruism is the morality of suffering. And as a consequence, they become boring and rigid and nobody wants to be those people. The objectivist morality is practical. It leads to happiness. And it's happiness by leading to an interesting, flourishing, exciting, stimulating life. If your principles are not doing that for you, you've got the wrong principles. Objectivist principles are guiding you towards knowledge. Knowledge is exciting.  Be productive, be creative, be entrepreneurial in your life. Live with a capital L. So, objectivism because the moral is the practical and the practical is the moral, is exciting. Not boring. It's in a sense rigid in that you don't compromise. But that rigidity comes naturally when the principles are tuned with life. When the principles are tuned with reality. They're consistent with reality. But when you're up, you know, Robert says, it's about modernism. He quotes Tui from the found head saying, I refuse to be an accomplice in the manufacture of models. So, you know, altruism manufactures models and principles, combination of principles with altruism leads to modernism. Thank you, Corey. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you guys. This has been a great day for a super chat. Okay, we've got three final questions. Michael asked, do you know how to change a tire and other types of manly handiwork? I suddenly knew how to change a tire and I've changed many tires. It's been a long time. I wouldn't change a tire today. But yes, I've changed many tires and as well I've changed many tires. Other manly handiwork. If I had to, I'm not very good at it. Generally like handiwork around the house, my wife is much better than me at. So, I can do it. I don't like it. I'm not particularly good at it. And I don't have any practice at it because I don't do it much. I'm a big, big believer, big believer in division of labor. I like to hire people to do that kind of work for me. Any work that I don't enjoy, I subcontract, right? So, changing tires I've done many times in my younger days. All right, best friend Hank, have you ever lied to your wife? Well, that's easy, the answer's no. I don't lie to my wife.   And I say yes. She thanks me because it's like, good, now I know not to wear this. Like most wives are playing a game when they ask that question. My wife actually wants to know. And my wife is brutally honest. So, yeah, it's, yeah, my wife's not the kind of woman you want to lie to. Could you run, survive in a desert island? Yeah, I think so. I think so.   I, you know, maybe haven't, you know, I used to work in construction. I've worked in construction, although my back gives out. So I'm not very good at physical work because my body is not really built for it because of my back. But I have worked in construction. I've been a civil engineer. I know the principles of building stuff. I can guide other people to do the work. I've been in the army. I've shot guns. I've handled the tank. I don't know how many of you have handled tanks. I've driven a jeep in enemy territory on pavements. Haven't, didn't run anybody over. You know, but I've done some, I've hitchhiked across the United States.  But you know, if I don't have to change the tire, if I can pay you 20 bucks to do it, I'm going to pay you 20 bucks to do it. I pay even 50, I pay you 100 bucks to do it. Best for the Hank, thank you. And Zachary, thank you. Really appreciate it. Michael asks, final question, is another shore still will happen? If another shore will happen, how will it play out? I don't know. I mean, I think it's much more likely that the next concentration camps will have Muslims in it than Jews. But they might throw in the Jews for good measure. I think it'll happen. There'll be a major crisis. There'll be a series of crises. There won't be one crisis. There'll be a series of crisis. Civilization will deteriorate. Stagnation and economic deterioration. People will need somebody to blame for it. You know, for whatever reason, it won't be China and won't be, and they'll look for a group that has power, that has money, that has influence, that is in finance, and it'll be the Jews and they'll blame the problems and the Jews and they'll want to kill them. It won't be unusual. It will be a repeat of the pattern we've seen throughout history. All right, everybody, I want to thank Troy Beaton for asking the good question about principles. I want to thank my anonymous supporter for sponsoring the Iran Rules Show. I want to thank all my super chat contributors for such a great showing today. You really did yourself over 700 bucks. That is fantastic. Generally, this month has been a very good month. While we haven't done as many shows as usual, you have really stepped forward in every single one of those shows to support the shows. And particularly given that the Iran Rules Shows don't get a lot of viewers, you guys always step up in Iran, we'll show you like these shows, you show your love during these shows, even though a lot of viewers don't watch the shows, I am motivated to do them because obviously there are value to you guys because you guys are showing the love with the money. At least some of you, right? Some of you are just leaching off of these shows and never show any support. Richard, I'm talking about you. Thank you for all of you who support this monthly. I, you know, that is the... Let me make a quick pitch. Look, it's the kind of support I value the most. It's steady, it's constant, it's normal. I can also measure it. I can easily see how many people are supporting me any given month. I can see if it's growing. You know, I'd love to see that number explode. I'd love to see it grow significantly. That's how we're gonna make this show really profitable, self-sustaining and profitable. We need to double the number of people who give, even if they're only giving it five bucks a month or something like that. So if you can become, and particularly here, I'm talking about people who don't give on Super Chat, who are not live listeners, people who listen afterwards, which is the vast majority of you listen to the show after its broadcast, right? We'll have 100 people who watch it live, but we'll have 2,000 people watch it afterwards.  If you guys could step in and do a monthly contribution, that'd be amazing. That'd be amazing. And that, again, value for value. You know, hopefully you get some value from me, from the show. Hopefully you can as well. All right, thanks guys. Have a great weekend. I will, those of you who wanna join me tomorrow, we'll see you here at 8 p.m. tomorrow and then on Sunday at 3 p.m. for the AMA with our $100 supporters and another Super Chat, more questions. Thanks guys.