And good morning, what's going on Anthony dream John's dinner today co-founder of the red man group founder 21 convention 22 convention 21 studios Here today with another episode episode 135 of the red man group the grand return of Stefan Mullinum He's in a returning guest to the show. He's been on several times and he's an online speaker of the 21 convention He's also one of the world's most infamous philosophers alive today and his next youtuber had about a million subscribers before he was unfortunately Alex Jones Not too long ago about six seven months ago something like that He's also the founder of freedomain.com where you can find him today. You can also find him on alt-tech Bitshoot gab mines Places like that rumble Without further ado, please tell me welcome back to the red man group mr. Stefan Mullinum. How's it going man? Good, Anthony. How you doing? Thanks for having me on. Yeah doing good, man Really glad to have you back on the show.  They vanished. They've gone and it's like no, no, they're just they're just one house over You know just one website over you you can continue to I had this analogy when When I got kicked and I was sort of saying you know people were like, oh, man I love your stuff. I've been following you for 10 wait. You're on a new website. Oh, yeah, I can't follow you there, man I mean you just you can't type in one extra address. It's just not not possible so But you know people are sort of making the way over and I think as some of the Helatia stuff is coming out particularly about facebook And twitter with regards to a child particularly childhood child sexual exploitation on those platforms Uh, it's it's not not too bad a thing to see that smoking moral crater in the rear view Yeah, I've seen reports that facebook and twitter is some of the biggest Delivery methods of like pedo porn in the world Which I was not aware of until I heard about it See you you can find just about everybody in a thousand persons selfie during a capital riot But apparently you just you can't deal with with pedo porn on the internet apparently that's completely impossible Which I don't believe for a second, but yeah, so um, uh, that's it's it's been a transition But I'm still alive heart still beating mouth still talking reasons still reasoning It's just and if people want to find me they can find me at freedomain.com forward slash connect tons and tons of places I post on a regular basis still doing videos in fact I'm doing an investment round table now because the same forces that kind of got me kicked off social media Are also inadvertently driving up the price of crypto So I've got a bunch of crypto experts. We meet a couple of times a week to discuss the market And and what we think about various valuations and so on so It's uh, it's an interesting transition and uh, I I'm a nimble guy I'm like a mammal at the feet of the dinosaur So I'm willing to dodge and dart and and find a new home Yeah, you know on this same issue the poor movement off it I wanted to ask you what did it feel like to just get alex jones like that I mean you're on a level with someone like donald trump and alex jones We're getting just erased from mainstream internet anyway I grew through saying though it's like a titanic It's sinking ship and people are getting to life boats to other platforms But to see that go down like I have a huge channel too, obviously we have almost 2000 videos You had probably like 3000 or something But I know if I lost my channel today, I'd be like my house burning down almost You know, you have it's over 10 years of work. I've put into it and you put even more like 15 What did that feel like to go through that? so This is a philosophical approach and I want to sort of share this with you share this with your listeners because absolutely Life is going to throw you some serious curveballs and they're going to be covered in vaseline They're going to be totally unfair the umpire is going to call it wrong And you're going to trip and break your shit, right stuff stuff like this is going to happen in life now my particular Form of willpower and and sometimes it is just like a muscle you willpower is okay How can I make this the greatest possible good? Even if it's something I wouldn't have chosen myself, obviously I wouldn't have chosen that but How can I make this the greatest possible good now? There's always a way there's always a way To do it now. I started this show in pure philosophy and also I started pretty early on Helping listeners with personal issues bringing philosophical Principles to bear on you know parenting on dating on marriage Relationships with parents work issues. I just had a call last night with a guy who was suicidal and Got him to turn around his thinking because philosophy is really powerful that way. It's buoyancy It's buoyancy in the the sort of down current of the world. So for me. It was like, okay, so I've been Deplatform from the major Outlets, okay. What is what does that mean? Well, what it means is that I can go back to my first love which is pure philosophy That's I mean I was in politics for half a decade. It's maybe seven years or whatever And I enjoyed it. I thought it was interesting, but it did get a little bit repetitive like oh the democrats are being Hypocritical the republicans are being spineless. Oh boy. It just feels like grand hog day all over again And you have actually left politics at this point, right? You put out a video recently about that I left politics Around the deplatforming time and that that was sort of my decision which is to say I'm kind of border politics I felt that there was important things to discuss in the political realm I'm I'm really border politics But I felt a sort of obligation given the size of the audience and the intensity of interest in politics To continue to deliver political content. So for me, it was like, okay, I'm kind of border politics and I really want to get back to core Moral philosophy and also I'm writing a book at the moment which we can talk about if you like on peaceful parenting Oh, yeah, nice. Yeah, I can really focus on all that stuff and It's the kind of thing where what's the best possible choice that I can make in the circumstances To end up with the best possible outcome the kind of land on your feet stuff and I knew it was going to be tough for the audience because of course talking politics attracts a lot of people In this sort of highly charged political environment But you know, I sort of put this out there to everyone like really really Challenge yourself to say, okay. So this particular avenue has been blocked. What other avenues? Can I choose that is going to make the blocking of this avenue? Not such a bad thing or perhaps even a good thing because it's a funny thing about life Anthony It's a really funny thing about life I really have to fight my vanity And my vanity, of course is not based upon my amazing hairdo My vanity is based upon the delusion that I know what's good or bad In life I mean, it's a funny funny thing now, of course something like cancer. Yeah, that's that's bad, you know But you know all the people who win the lottery You know of the people who win the lottery like the vast majority of them end up completely destroyed in life I feel like they get divorced or they end up one guy was a cocaine addict He think he was a canadian he won the lottery was a cocaine addict Of course, he blew his money on coke ended up in prison And he's like man prison is a way better place for me to be than out there with lots of money So it's really really hard to know What's good or bad in life? It's like what they um, I think it was a chinese philosopher who was asked what he thought of the french revolution He was asked this quite recently and he said, ah, it's too soon to tell It's only a couple hundred years. We can't tell What's the fall of roma good or a bad thing? Actually, it's a pretty good thing because being a surf was better than being enslaved in the roman army for 20 years So it's really hard to say. Okay. Oh this thing. I didn't want all this de-platforming. It's like And I have to say I don't have the omniscience to know Whether this is a good or a bad thing yet It's too soon to tell now If if I sit around the grave of my social media accounts and and cry tears and mourn and think this is the worst thing ever Then by golly. It's that old hamlet line. There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so but if I say, okay, so this avenue is blocked What's another avenue That I can Go down It's kind of like you're on a road trip and the road is blocked And then you end up on a detour that takes you to a beautiful little town where you spend a couple of days And meet the girl of your dreams like you don't know you don't know always What is going to be good or bad in life and I have to fight my vanity saying oh, this is a bad thing Like in many ways it's been a positive thing I'm back to my core love. I'm off the revolving door grand hog day of of politics I'm writing a book on peaceful parenting, which I think is going to have more effect than yammering about the lincoln project. So yeah, I And you you probably feel like you're not walking on eggshells anymore, right? Because on youtube It was always any second you could ban for anything and obviously in the end you were even with no community strikes But now on gab and rumble in these places you can say whatever you want basically, right within the law well, yeah, and of course Everybody flocked to parlor as did I and I had I don't know 120,000 people following me on parlor Because you know what they say, you know, just just go build your own twitter. Oh, you can't do that So it's it's hard to know it's hard to know what is going to be a positive And a negative although we have preferences in the moment Uh, there's definitely been huge positives for me Uh in this uh in this transition and uh, yeah, so to even invite people You know, it's sort of like if you're bored in a relationship and then the the woman breaks up with you And you're like, oh, that's Is it is it really that you know, I mean, is it really that that terrible? It's a tough question to ask and so I just sort of wait wait to the wait to see how things Play out just wait to see how things play out. That's that's an important thing in life And don't have the vanity of knowing believing, you know for sure whether something's good or bad at the moment Yeah, it's kind of like the internet's rapidly changing to characterize your position So if i'm doing it right, uh, yeah, the internet's rapidly changing and you're the cutting edge though really where it's going I think Bleeding edge probably but yeah, he's a funny thing, right?  Sorry those are redundant. We would argue abortion We would argue just about everything under the sun. I was in the model un At school making lots of debates and arguments and all of that and here's a strange thing about social media because The argument the debate is the oldest and most civilized form of human conflict because we agree to submit our perspectives to reason and evidence and to Adopt the conclusions of reason and evidence as our beliefs and it's a very civilized And really it's the only civilized way of interacting now Can you imagine like i'm sure you'd argued with a lot of people over the course of your life? It's kind of what we do on the internet, right? Most of us get screamed at but argue sometimes, you know, yeah, so that's an argument. Okay. So can you imagine can you imagine Having an argument about death penalty or abortion or whatever with a friend of yours when you were a teenager And you make a really good point. He doesn't have much of an answer And then he says hey, anthony, you know what?  I'm getting you fired from your job Can you imagine just how like What? What are you talking about getting me fired from my job for a debate for an argument for facts for reason for evidence You're insane. It's not even about the it's not even about the job But it's about the consequences right of losing the job Can you imagine losing an argument? I mean this is this stalker behavior Can you imagine some you ask some girl out when you're a teenager, right? You ask some girl out and she says no And you're like, all right, man. I'm gonna get your dad fired Like that that is that is seriously bunny boiling stalker Shite and this idea that if you can't answer someone's arguments or you're upset at someone That you're going to silence them that you're going to get them fired that you're going to destroy their source of income Or can you imagine if You wanted to ask a girl out as a as a teenager or any time for that matter And she wouldn't she didn't go out with you and then you said Oh, well, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna start a rumor now that you have herpes I mean that would be So evil so deranged so psychostalkery and yet we've come to accept this in our public discourse as a whole We've come to accept, you know, like this woman who was on the star wars show, right? She she posted some stuff and you know comparing the dehumanization of the jews to some of the dehumanization Of conservatives, right? Yeah. It's a strong point. Is it totally invalid? You know, you could make a case that there's some validity behind it And of course, that's just the cover story, you know Nazi analogies after they've called trump hitler for the last four years and and shocked about Nazi analogies seems a bit specious at the moment But that's it. So people disagreed with her. They didn't like what she said. They didn't like that.  They got her fired, right? And and all of that I mean, that's that's stalker stuff. You don't agree with me. You won't go out with me. You don't agree with my perspective So I am going to try and destroy your life That is I mean when I was growing up and I'm sure that was the camera know you're younger than me But when I was growing up that kind of behavior Would be In the tiny sliver minority of true psychopathic or sociopathic behavior.  You've got a venereal disease Uh, that's insane. And yet now in the public square in the public sphere. We be like, yeah, that's yeah, of course it Well, that's hate speech. We got to silence that person. We got to destroy the resource of income We've got to try and destroy their reputation And it's like that that's not an argument You know and hanging on to that can we have a debate about things which is in the political realm is kind of passed The point of no return in many ways now But you know when you've got people on mainstream tv saying, oh, yeah, republicans should be labeled as domestic terrorists It's like, I'm not sure another power point is going to solve this problem at the moment. I'm afraid You know, we actually have a that's a great point. We have a comment from grand miller friend of mine He said the time for argument is over someone here. You know your thoughts on the stefan There's a spiritual war with souls at stake if someone cannot begin with that premise There's nothing to discuss my main focus here. I'd like you to focus on is the time for argument is over Are you concerned that where the the end of an age for argument and debate? Is uh the forefront of how people will deal with each other Well, I am concerned about that for sure. I am concerned about that for sure because I mean if you look look at the impeachment trial, right, I haven't been following it very closely, but I've dipped in Here are there, right? So the impeachment trial Has used deliberately edited tape to obscure The reality of what trump said Which was march peacefully go go peacefully, right a lot a lot of times they just kind of dropped that out of the context now avoiding exculpatory evidence When you are in hot pursuit of someone's malevolent behavior or impeachable behavior if you Don't turn over exculpatory evidence if you selectively edit and deceptively edit statements Made by someone that you're charging Uh, doesn't the case just get thrown out like by any standard of reasonable law It's grounds for mistrial. It's gown grounds for charges being dropped If you withhold exculpatory evidence or selectively edit things to make people look bad this selective editing It's been used for me because I've got so much material There's always some place where someone can cut off what I'm saying or talk about it out of context You know like there's some website where people are saying Oh, Steph said, uh, I don't view humanity as a single race, right? And I and they just sliced that up, right? Like and so what does it sound like? I think that some races are not human. That's not what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about race at all I was talking about a predator-prey relationship between criminals and victims And I said, of course, I know human beings are the same race It's just a biological analogy for looking at predator-prey relationships in criminals and victims and it's not a particularly original thought They're called predators, right sex predators or child predators So they'll just slice a little bit. It's like going to the bible where where it says the fool in his heart has said There is no god And then just saying oh the bible says there is no god because i'm just gonna slicey dicey that stuff and When people are doing that right then then you have this challenge, right? You have this challenge, which is you have to phrase everything to the point where Nothing even sliced or diced could be taken out of context And Once you're there like once you in that situation where you feel a giant clusterfrak of Completely amoral people are pouring over everything that you say in real time trying to find a slicey dicey thing to get you Once you're there.  I remember it and I took a mental note of it You know when I heard it And you said the cancel culture is a dress rehearsal from mass murder And in a way, I just called it a digital genocide, but also it's leading to I think real genocide It's going really good too. It's got almost 50 000 views in just over a week, which for our channel is like awesome Uh, so can you can you expand on that statement too though? Cancel culture is a dress rehearsal from mass murder. It's also the uh on the image of the show Yeah, I mean it is uh historically this has Been the case, you know, there's seven stages of escalation are particularly statist Violence and the first thing of course is that you associate Language with criminality, right? This is in the hate speech. I don't know hate speech is not a thing in the us But it's a thing in in most other places where you say, okay, this particular argument this particular Perspective is the same as a criminal behavior and uh, that of course is very dangerous There are lots of people out there who have absolutely abhorrent views to me And they should be allowed to speak those views because how on earth Can we dissect and remove? Terrible errors within society and by remove I simply mean discount right like debate and argue and put them aside In in the general social discourse. How can we do that if we don't have The speech visible and prominent if it's out there We don't want like, you know, your immune system is supposed to be able to figure out Which are the bugs and which are the healthy cells? And it's supposed to destroy the bugs and protect the healthy cells But if your immune system can't find the bugs and can't fight them Well, that's what aids or something like that where you end up being taken over by every bad bug because you don't have it So to me the criminalizing Speech is absolutely reprehensible and it is a confession of intellectual impotence because You should be able to argue against bad ideas pretty easily and the worse the ideas the more You say offensive or negative the ideas the easier they should be To argue against and so when you silence people as a whole when you criminalize speech as a whole and the criminalization It's interesting right because certainly in america because there is free speech in the constitution, right? So because there's no such thing as hate speech in america The left in particular has focused on the deplatforming issue because they can't silence people legally So they have to silence them through threats and boycotts and ostracism and outrageous exaggerations and mischaracterizations and so on and it's it's designed to say That some people are so malevolent in their language Right and that's kind of a female perspective if that makes sense because you know men tend to fight with Fists and women tend to fight with words and so For for men the worst thing that you can happen is kind of lose a physical fight But you'll often shake hands afterwards because we're used to competing with each other and then shaking hands afterwards But for women what they do tend generally tend to do since they don't fight as much physically They tend to go for reputation. They tend to fight with language and that kind of stuff and so I think as Women have gained more prominence in society, which I think is a great thing one of the things that's happened That's a negative thing because of the power of the state is that speech has become viewed as Criminal in in some ways or or people should be destroyed for for certain words certain ideas certain arguments Even if they're fact-based even if they're science-based doesn't really matter you can see this With covet all the time. So what happens is If you silence people as a whole it's a big question. Well, what do they do? What do they do when they're de-platform? What do they do? Which is why I put out a call like don't radicalize based on de-platforming because that's kind of the trap, right? Do people get de-platformed they radicalize and then the state moves in right? so When you silence people as a whole That you can't even hear this person's speech You can't even hear this your silence then you've erased that person now. What happens if that person keeps talking? Well, you already have the principle that that person cannot be heard in society What happens if that person keeps talking? Well, then you have to start escalating to threats and and what happens is you threaten venues You you call in bomb threats. You uh, you you try and get riotous mobs to attack the venue This has happened to me in various places.  I'm not going to get silenced and then what happens. You know what happens It's escalation. It's escalation. It's escalation. And so if you silence people But they keep talking you're going to continue to escalate and the end result of that is straight-up murder Now what are they really trying? Is it really about censoring speakers about censoring or killing off?  I didn't quite catch that. Sorry.   It's certainly a big topic so If you have something like Criminal speech, I mean this is this is the big hypocrisy of the entire system And I hope everyone's got their helmets on because if you haven't heard this it's gonna blow your mind, right? So this is the incredibly giant hypocrisy that is going on In the world in the west as we as we speak My speech Has liberated people my speech has got people out of bad relationships My speech has got people into great relationships.  My speech has contributed To a massive reduction In violence in society got hundreds of thousands of families could even be millions by now after 15 years Who are not hitting their children who are not brutalizing their children with unnecessary and destructive surgery? So my speech has added to the peace of this world And the non-violence of this world now When I was growing up Marxists were everywhere. It's even more the case now There were marxists in high school. There were marxists in the universities. There were marxists in the media and If you look at something like marxism, if you're gonna say that there's a relationship between speech and murder Marxism is number one number one across the world across all humanity We're talking over a hundred million people slaughtered In the 83 years from 1917 to 2000 And that's just what people can vaguely figure out. They can't even get it within 10 million to any kind of accuracy So you've got a set of arguments a set of ideas a set of perspectives Not only do they Fairly directly lead to the slaughter of a hundred million people And no matter what people think of me. You can't put that on me. You can't put that on my speech Now not only are marxists celebrated broadcasted and pumped up In academia, hollywood media, you name it not only is that the case But taxpayers are forced at gunpoint through the tax system To fund and broadcast marxists Marxists don't get de-platformed marxists. In fact get tenure In government schools where the media as a whole often filled with marxists Will propagandize children into going into the sweet death embrace the lotusita embrace of marxism through universities and end up In debt propagandized hating their society and unable to function in the remnants of the free market So if you're going to talk about hate speech, you're going to talk about speech That is destructive People are going to look at me Are you freaking kidding me? People are going to look at me Mr. Peaceful Parenting Guy Mr. Science and Reason Guy and say oh that guy man. That's dangerous destructive speech But let's make sure That we fund the marxists whose doctrines have led to the deaths of a hundred million people plus in less than a century Let's make sure those guys Get government protection government funding government tenure And remain un molested and unopposed in everything that they do But this guy out there talking about no spanking. Oh boy, you know, that's a bad guy. We got to silence him This is how far things have gone Yeah, marxists don't debate They don't debate There is a certain irony in how much you've advocated for peaceful parenting not hitting your children not circumcising your boys and stuff You were an advocate of peace philosophically to the extreme And in ways that are really important And I wonder if it's a telling of our time that it, you know, your advocacy for peace like that Especially in the home It's a sign that it's highlighting, you know, how far things like you're saying how far things have gotten I haven't thought about the irony before though.  Yeah, it's democide, right?  And of course, this is not discussed at all because hate speech is A tool used to silence critics Of marxism used to silence critics of the advocates for violence And marxism is a violent revolutionary insurrectionist doctrine But a couple of people wandering around the capital. Well, apparently that's an insurrection No, but tens of thousands of outright marxists indoctrinating the young In American universities, well, that's just I mean, that's just that's intellectualism and that's just that's that's higher education I mean, it's like if we live in a clown world and it became increasingly difficult to Describe this because you know when people's prop mindset is so propagandized That even the slightest whiff of reality causes them to go into mental epilepsy You know, it's kind of tough, you know the analogy is If you had a plague running I mean if you're a doctor right There's a plague running through the land and the plague is destroying lives left right and center like nothing like coronaviruses, you know It's a pretty bad thing, but your death rate is pretty low I'm talking about like a serious china virus like the black death or the spanish flu or whatever Right, you got a plague running through society and you're a doctor and you got a pill man. It's gonna cure it Gonna cure that plague man.   Look, I'll take it. I'm fine. Look. Look, it's wonderful And there's nothing that I prescribed to the world that I haven't already imbibed myself Peaceful parenting non-aggressive relationships ostracism of abusers that it's all stuff.  So I've took and taken all these pills and have a great life But you know, it's pretty tough because you're going to spend all of your time not administering medicine But trying to overcome propaganda and the mob the more you try and of course for a lot of people The more you try and tell them this pill will cure you the more they believe that you're trying to kill them And then they're like, well, we got to take this guy out because he's trying to get us killed And it's like no no no trying to save you So it's pretty tough To overcome that level of propaganda and for me when it's like, okay I'm spending more time trying to overcome propaganda than actually advancing ideas. It's like it's kind of boring because The fact that it's been shown scientifically That when people have A fixed mindset a mindset that they've been propagandized into not something they've arrived at through reason and evidence Just a fixed mindset That when you apply counter evidence to that When you apply counter evidence to a fixed mindset you harden that mindset You actually reinforce bad beliefs with better information. That's just unfortunately. It's just a way I don't think it's a humanity thing. I think it's just a bad education thing That actually reminds me of narcissism when they try to treat narcissists with like clinical npd It actually backfires. You make the narcissist more intelligent more wise to How they're going to be investigated or discussed and you know, things like that Oh, yeah, there was a there was a study. I think it was done in sweden or some place up up north of europe And what they did was they they got a booklet and and they Asked people To and there was an argument, right? I can't reserve abortion or something like that There was an argument a moral argument and what happened was they asked people to argue that moral case And then they asked them to turn a couple of pages and then they asked them to turn a couple of pages back But the pages were stuck together to the point where the opposite moral argument that they had just made Showed up and they asked them to argue that again and the vast majority of people completely Reverse their moral position with no comment. They argued very convincingly for the opposite moral argument that they just made And they had no knowledge of it even afterwards They're just they're just in the moment like can I just win this case in the moment with no larger integrity or perspective of any kind And you know when you're dealing with You're trying to construct A rational world and the only materials you have Is water You can't build anything and and until people try to get some sort of integrity or at least recognize That contradictions are not a good thing It's really it's really tough to build any kind of future in a societal sense in your personal life and your personal Relations you can do wonders, but as far as society goes You know people are are shapeless. They're formless.   And it's this big giant Glacier, right and one caveman likes it's like 10 feet from the cave Right and one one one caveman turns to the other and says Say thank is is that wall of ice closer today? You know because you know We were down to 10,000 people in the last ice age for all of humanity We were like this close to winking out of existence completely So you've got to keep an eye on that glacier, man And I mean and and know when to when to hit the road I mean when it was alex jones screaming about it in 2009 it seemed to weighs off But in 2021 it seems not so far still, you know months or years out Who knows right could could happen six months from now it could happen six years could happen 10 years But you know when it happens it happens fast, right? I mean when it catches you by surprise Some people flee we actually had a questionnaire from grammigan I thought you maybe you won't hit this He said Stefan at what point is it more wise to abandon ship and expatriate from the country instead of remaining and fighting? Well, I think the key is when you can't win Right, I mean this is that's pretty pretty It's almost a tautology like when should you stop fighting when you can't win But that's kind of important, right when you can't win and I think When you can't win is when you can't change people anymore face to face Right online is one thing but you know face to face your brother your cousin your father-in-law like when you can't change anyone's mind face to face with all of your direct eye contact and and you know Handshake and and facts and data and all like when you can't shake online, you know It's always kind of loose you goosey, but when you can't change anyone's mind face to face I think that's a pretty solid indicator that you can't win anymore We'll put we'll put I wanted to move off of a cancel culture and politics here. I know we're getting pretty deep into it There's more to discuss here. I want to talk about philosophy. You mentioned you're writing a book on moral philosophy Before we get into that that I wanted actually discuss I want to get to that but I want to discuss epistemology So this is the branch of philosophy the theory of knowledge how we know things in my understanding What is your take on epistemology and how does it differ from someone like say iron rend? for example, the objectivism Now epistemology is I mean, it's a it's an unfortunate Policy lapic mouthful of a sentence. It's just how do you know what's true? How do you know what's true? It's just a very interesting thing and I I did this sometimes in debates when I'd be online It's a very powerful thing to do right Because cancel culture and I know we're off the topic But just to mention it and and sort of bridge the two cancel culture says I know what is true I know it was right. I know what is virtuous to the point where I'm willing to destroy people's lives who disagree with me Well, that's a lot of knowledge, you know And so when people are into this kind of stuff or you get into these ferocious debates online or these attack sessions or whatever it is, right You can go a long way. You can do a lot of good. Just ask people Oh, how do you know what is true? Like That's an amazing moment. How do you know? What is true? What is what is your definition of truth? What is true? Because everybody wants to jump over Like they want to go straight into politics or maybe ethics and they want to jump over the two most important things in in philosophy Metaphysics is what is real epistemology, what is true? Those are the two and I I did a 17 part introduction to philosophy way back in 2007 or 2008 I kind of laid out the whole case for this. I've been studying this for a long time Got to ask people what is true if you don't know what is real You can't know what is true If you don't know what is true, you certainly can't know what is good Well, we also live in an age where we live in a post-truth age, right? I think scott adam That way the truth but it's not a post-truth age. That's the problem. It's not it's it's it's not a post-truth age It's a post methodology of truth age because people claim things are true all the time people call me a white supremacist They think it's a true statement completely false So they make truth claim statements all the time We've just lost the methodology of actually thinking about how Things can be true or false. So you ask people what is real? How do you know what is real versus what is not real? That's a big question. It's a big question. How do you know? I mean to take a sort of silly example, but it's pretty common in Rational philosophy. How do you know that your dreams at night are the unreal and your waking life is the real? How do you know? Pretty important question, wouldn't you say how do you know the real from the unreal how and and if you know the real then you're On your way to knowing what is true Because if you know things are real objective rational They exist then you can start to say things that are true so truth Is the relationships between concepts in the mind and what they describe in the real world? that's Truth so if we have a definition of animals Called, you know cold-blooded No hair give birth to eggs. I mean, we've got reptiles or something like that, right? If we've got a category they live in water and Land we got amphibians if we've got they grow hair give birth to live young a warm-blooded. We got mammals and so If we say is a wolf a mammal Okay, that's a question. Is it a true statement to say that a wolf is a mammal? Well, you study the wolf Oh, it's got hair. Oh, it's warm-blooded. Oh, it gives birth to live young. Okay, that's a mammal So we've got an objective set of characteristics out there in the real world that exist independent of our consciousness Right wolves around longer than we are And so wolves pre exist humanity. Therefore, they're not contingent upon humanity perceiving them Some things are contingent upon humanity perceiving them But I mean they don't exist outside the mind like morals don't exist outside the mind The scientific method doesn't exist outside the mind Numbers as a concept don't exist outside of physical instances. They don't exist outside the mind doesn't mean they're subjective or relative or anything like that So once you know an objectivism they call them relational entities So they're considered real like you're saying objective, but they relate They exist only in relation to a human being like you're saying ideas So if you if you look at a bunch of trees and and and shrubs bushes all clustered together You can say oh, that's a forest, right? Okay, the trees exist the space between them and the air or whatever that exists The roots exist the leaves exist all of that exists objective independent of her mind In other words, if all humanity was gone If we all just got yeeted out of existence tomorrow Would the trees still exist? Well, of course they would now the concept forest. That's a collective entity That's a collective concept, right? Now forest as a concept is what we use to describe this gathering of trees and bushes and shrubs or whatever Now the concept forest does not exist in the world But that doesn't mean That the concept is purely subjective because it claims to describe the relationships Of real things in the world, you know, if you go to an atom Nowhere is inscribed proton electron These things aren't written down. These are concepts that we have to describe atoms But that doesn't mean that it's purely subjective That doesn't mean that an oxygen atom is somehow magically exactly the same as a carbon atom Just because the concept oxygen doesn't exist in the world the concept carbon doesn't exist in the world But it doesn't mean that it's subjective And the idea that things don't exist in the world therefore everything is subjective Well, that's radical subjectivism and it's actually a form of mental illness It is it is directly a form of insanity because if you try to live that consistently You'd be locked up or in fact, you'd be dead, right because if everything's subjective Why don't you just walk off a building and decide to decide the air can hold you up? Just because the concept gravity doesn't exist in the real world It doesn't mean that mass doesn't attract mass. In fact, we only have the concept gravity Because mass does attract mass So this all sounds very abstract, but it's really really important. You've got to know what is real And then when you make statements about what is real, they're either accurate or they're inaccurate If you say trees are made of whale blubber Well, unless you're dealing with some really freaky inuit carvings You're not in fact accurate if you say that whales are made of of wood Whales of the ocean that are alive. You're you're inaccurate, right? You're wrong So once you know what is real, then you're going to create concepts to describe What is real in the world now if those concepts are accurate Then it's a true statement if they're inaccurate. It's a false statement now Once you know something is true, then you at least begin to gain the virtue called honesty You can't be honest if you don't know what is real and you don't know what is true So anybody who cannot answer those questions Online in your life. I don't care wherever anybody who cannot tell you What is real and what is true? And the methodology they use to determine those things they cannot be honest Because there's nothing to be honest about they have no idea what truth is It's about as honest as a dog can be In your view of philosophy, there's a direct connection between epistemology and morality And it sounds like your view of morality is informed by this, yeah, you're in a book So morality Oh Let's see if I can accordion this down into into bite size. So people who want more I've got two books on morality One is called essential philosophy. You can get that at essentialphilosophy.com Another one is called universally preferable behavior. You can get that at freedomain.com forward slash books They're all free and in fact my book on ethics UPB has been translated in Spanish recently So I hope people will check that out if that's your native language What's the title of the new one the title of the new one is called essential philosophy Oh, that's the new one. Okay, and it deals with the simulation hypothesis It deals with the question of free will and it is a very rapidly compressed version of My argument for morality and it also includes a bunch of socratic dialogues of people debating these things So that you can get the pros and cons of these things So If truth is a value now if truth is not a value You don't I never want to debate with someone who says truth is not a value Like if they don't know what's real and they don't know or don't care what is true Well a debate is the pursuit of truth And it's sort of like if you if you're hitchhiking to albuquerque Then you want to get into a car with someone who's heading to albuquerque, right? You didn't want to hitchhike with someone who's going the opposite way And so if your goal is albuquerque Only accompany people who are going to albuquerque or at least through albuquerque, right? So if a debate the purpose of debate is to find some kind of truth So if people don't know what's real and they don't know what's true, you can't debate with them It's it's a useless exercise. It's a useless exercise. In fact, it's an insult It's an insult to debate to debate with people who don't know what is true So in a debate truth has got to be the goal and people have to know what's real They have to know what's true. These are sort of bare minimum things. They also have to commit I think I ran how to I think I ran how to saying it was reason only works on the reasonable And people are completely irrational completely unreasonable reason has no effect on them They have no interest in it. I think because of what you're saying they have no Yeah, and it often has a negative effect on them and it provokes anger Yeah provokes anger and rage because you're pointing out that they are not They're not deploying what makes us human my god. What is it that makes us human? Why are you calling me rather than my goldfish, right? What is it that makes us human? It's our capacity to abstract And that's what makes us human that that is the one defining characteristic That we see things in the world and we can abstract universal principles And the real life examples the real life examples of that then are the people just screaming in the streets the triggering the people that Like when trump when trump won his nominate or the presidency back in 2016 2017 People screaming literally the screeds into the end of the ether, right? So that all comes from philosophy though. This isn't just random people getting upset It's it's the way they think and what they believe about the world, right? Well, they've been emotionally brutalized and terrorized into thinking it's the end of the world Because a nationalist gets elected and this comes all out of this world war two thing World war two was perceived to come out of nationalism and therefore Any nationalism is bad and and it's all a complete misreading of world war two But I mean that's probably a topic for another time But this idea That something feels bad Therefore it's morally wrong Is not The most elevated human conception, right? This literally is at the realm of bad dog Right. You ever have a dog, right? It's the tone that matters, right bad dog You know that the door is upset, right? And I'm not saying, you know, don't do that with your dogs And you want to be peaceful doggering as well as peaceful parenting But that's how you train animals Is when they do something you don't like you provide a negative stimuli That and that's that's at the level of of a circus bear in russia That's at the level of a tiger not occasionally not biting off either c-predoroy's head I think one of them died recently, but so Something feels bad therefore It is bad. It is wrong is At the level of pre-consciousness at least pre-human consciousness So the idea oh trump got selected that that means it's automatically bad And therefore trump is morally wrong for making me feel bad I mean that that is I mean you can't debate with that and People unfortunately have just been programmed into Well, if it feels bad It is bad and that's that's a kind of moral hedonism that it's the same level as some guy being 400 pounds because he just likes to eat pasta Candy, right? I mean well exercise feels bad sometimes So i'm never going to exercise I mean we would recognize that As pure hedonism or somebody who's like well, I don't really like going to the dentist So i'm just not going to go to the dentist we'd say that's not a wise thing Well, no going to the dentist feels bad It's like But we don't just exist to avoid feeling bad all the time I mean that again that's just at the level of being it's almost an insult to animals because animals can't do better Than that and so this idea that oh wow something feels bad. Can you imagine? I mean a friend of mine got his knee crunched some years ago by In a judo competition And the rehab was brutal You know he had a nurse come over and the rehab on his crunched knee was just horrible and he was in tears It was a stoic guy. It was a scotchman rise of stoic guy and he was kind of in tears That was so painful But nobody ever would have said well you've just got to avoid that negative stimuli and hobble the round with a Twisted up knee for the rest of your life.  They're one of the main Somehow they become one of the main enemies of the woke left and the feminists and the these neo marxists these neo communists Why do you think that is why is christianity such a threat to the establishment today? Why are they so why are they being attacked so all of them to not even any particular denomination? I think it's like all of them in america and the west. Why is that? Now christians are by far the most persecuted group in the world at the moment and once more I reiterate my apology to criticism my apology to criticism to my harsh criticisms of christianity Back in the past, but so christianity is an intensely powerful And it's it's the closest thing to philosophy that i've ever seen out of theology because christianity Its power is is manyfold, but one of its greatest powers is its universalism The universalism of christianity Was a huge step from the judaism that it came out of right as judaism that it came out of was in group preference Right the original commandment was that thou shalt not murder other jews. Jesus came along and said no no no Thou shalt not murder. That's universalized this And so going from tribal in group preference to universal ethics And you combine that with the socratic method and with Aristotelian ethics You get the amazing universal rights of the modern world I mean it truly is a you know, we are a a greco roman christian Ethic it's universal There's no penalties for deconversion unlike Islam It's not high barrier to get in unlike judaism And the ethics apply equally to non christians as they do to christians You owe the moral obligations to follow the ten commandments equally to non christians as you do to christians Which is my argument for ethics universally preferable behavior and The move from tribalism to universalism Was the spark that lit The enlightenment was the foundation of the scientific method the foundation of the scientific method Is that physical principles are universal? It's kind of tough to get that if you don't even have a moral universality So the universality of christianity is very powerful Also christianity gives people something to fight for other than immediate hedonism Which is the path to heaven Getting right with god being along with jesus and that gives you the moral strength to go through The pain and the difficulty of opposing expansions of secular power Because the goal is not hedonistic comfort in the here and now the goal is Getting to heaven and doing the right thing And of course the powers that be don't like people who stand up against what it is that they want to do So christianity is very powerful As far as that goes christianity also says that The morality Of every human being resides within themselves and their own conscience and thus it opposes collective judgments I mean marxism is entirely based upon determinism which is anti christian because christianity says You have free will because of your soul And it escapes the materialism that is often used as a justification for Determinism right the justification for determinism is hey man Every part of your brain every part of your consciousness is a mere physical entity And physical entities do not have free will therefore you can't have free will because you are just a giant moist robot as scott adam says or a Machine of causality and and you can't right christianity bypasses that or Solves that problem theologically by saying well you have a soul which is not material And that's where your free will comes from because you have free will and your moral responsibility is individual not collective And you can't judge people. Oh the rich are this oh the the capitalists are this which is what marxism does all the time And there is no historical determinism in christianity It's the will of the individual and marxism is all about historical determinism. This leads to this leads to this And so christianity is extraordinarily powerful as a tool against Tyrants and it's no accident that the admixture Of gregaroman philosophy plus christianity in europe was the spark that lit the fire of the modern world That comes directly out of that didn't didn't occur in other countries didn't occur in other cultures didn't occur in the middle East didn't occur in india didn't occur in china It occurred in the west and that powerful combination of reason socratic method universality of ethics is astonishingly powerful and philosophically accurate morals are Universal and christian's last thing i would say as well christianity solves the problem of resentment Like why is it that societies that succeed self-destruct? Why is it that the average life of a country tends to be 250 years and the average life of a reserve currency? World reserve currency tends to be about a hundred years because A society succeeds because it is free with freedom Comes inequality right you get economic freedom. Some people are going to get super rich right? It's called the pareto principle, which is the square root Of any group of individuals in a meritocracy in a productive endeavor the square root of those individuals produces half the value You got a company of 10,000 people 100 people will produce half the value And of those 100 people tell ten will produce half the value of that in other words out of 10,000 people Fully 25 percent of the entire value produced by 10,000 people is produced by only 10 people So of course they're going to want to get their reward. Of course they want to get wealthy Of course they want to have more authority because otherwise you won't get the productivity out of those 10 people We learned that under socialism So when you get a free market you get inequality Now the marxists what they do is they say to all of the people who aren't super wealthy They say to those people Uh, you see that guy with the nice house and the beautiful wife And the great car you see that guy. Do you know why he has that beautiful house? Do you know why he has that beautiful wife? I feel like i'm in a talking head song at the moment.   He stole from you and i'm going to go steal it back now Christianity solves that problem because Christianity says Resentment is a sin And the important thing is not the gathering of material wealth, but of spiritual wealth So the antidote to the resentment that comes from the inequality bred by the free market in christianity Is focus on getting into heaven. Don't worry so much about the rich guy Oh, and by the way, the rich guy's probably a bad guy because it is easier for camel to pass through the eye of a needle And for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven So christianity solves the problem of resentment that is so ably exploited By the marxists because the marxists will go in and they will wedge and turn people against each other I did a whole documentary Centering on this when I was in hong kong in 2019 right before Uh, covet I went out and and joined the protesters took a couple of facefuls of tear gas quite an exciting documentary People should check it out free domain.com forward slash documentaries And what happened when the chinese when the communists got into china is they turned everyone against each other Anybody who had slightly more was portrayed as an exploiter and they fired up everyone's resentment and we all we all feel this You know, we I mean, so I think it was an old new yorker cartoon two guys sitting in a bar And one guy turns to the other And he says how's your life going and the other guy says, you know, it's not bad But i'm still not staying Right because you know when I was growing up sting was like the guy right? He was like a good looking at me slender great singer great musician talented rich famous, you know, and it was like So, you know, everybody looks at that and says oh man I want to get me some of that. I want to get me some of that and What was it? I this is really off memory that the movie taxi driver There's a bunch of people with a shard of a bathtub and they're saying oh This is when aroflin had more chicks in the bath You can see the level go up and all they're doing is holding a little shard of some hollywood orgy that they can't ever participate in People get kind of mad and how do you deal with that? How do you deal with what one answer is looking at the bell curve of iq another answer is the christian answer The worst answer of all is the marxist answer because that will shred you from talk to talk Before moving off christianity, obviously, jesus is more than a heroic figure two christians They worship him right it's part of the holy trinity in my understanding But do you think there's an element as well of christians viewing jesus heroically like that dying for their sins and things like that? Because when I think about the way they you know the hatred against christians today that comes to mind He's a heroic figure. He's like the ultimate heroic figure and their entire world do right Is there something there? well, I mean If he's the son of god, you kind of should worship him, right? I mean, that's the domino that would come down from that belief system and if he was the perfect moral being Then you know the the bracelets that christians wear what would jesus do exactly.  Well, it's to Scour for offense and try to destroy. Well, that's not a very good moral rule to have because they're so short-sighted They think somehow this is not going to be turned against them. Of course it is I mean The communists are very clear liberals are the first to get the bullet Just like in the soviet union, right? When they the hardcore believers a Leninist or whatever they wrote in the first to go once the Stalinists took over it Oh, yeah, I mean because if you're willing to betray the last system, you're beginning to be willing to betray this system So people don't understand me the people who are really signing their own death warrants The middle left the hard left, you know, they're gonna fight like like tooth and nail, right? And they'll they'll go down blazing But, uh, you know, that's sort of soft left the middle left the the They're they're creating a system that is gonna go like them faster than just about anyone else Damn Now before moving entirely off of uh, I don't want to leave this area yet a discussion Christianity Now a lot of Christians obviously have faith. They believe their beliefs are based in the absence of evidence This is cornerstone of how they my understanding of how they Understand the world and how they practice their religion So in your view, what is their relationship between reason and faith? And obviously too, there's there's millions of highly intelligent Christians. They have phd's They're smarter than men you in many cases, right? So why uh, what is the relationship there between reason and faith and epistemology and in your view of philosophy? That's a it's a great question And I'm gonna answer it differently than I would have answered it a couple of years ago because You got to keep growing right otherwise at no point, right? So The choice That I thought was more valid when I was younger was the choice between faith and reason So faith is not just belief without evidence So for instance, I don't have any evidence that There's not a teacup floating around jupiter Or you know, whatever a diamond floating around jupiter I don't have the evidence that there is or isn't but I could accept that there could be right so faith tends to be belief Not in the absence of evidence but in the presence of counter evidence, right? So one of the arguments is he's got all powerful and all knowing well if he's all knowing he can't change the future But if he's if he's all powerful he can change the future But if he can change the future he can't be all knowing because he's got to know the future Right, so if he knows the future he can't change it so he can't be both all powerful and all knowing These are logical problems that is sort of atheism 101, right? Okay Now so to have faith is to say it's a divine mystery. It goes against reason and evidence I'm going to believe it anyway now in the past. I looked at the metaphysics and the epistemology and said well, that's not philosophical That's not valid, right? Okay, and you can certainly make that case is a good case to make but What I thought anthony when I was younger I thought ah, you know The choice is between reason and faith No, that's not actually the choice In the real world as it has played out and that was my naivete And it also is the fundamental problem of a younger man and a younger woman is to mistake the world for yourself And to say hey, man, if I'm offered reason Fantastic, I'm sure that's going to be everyone. I'm sure everyone's going to love reason just like I do, you know and You know reason is going to be I don't know like Kate Kate Upton in her prime just about everybody's going to want to Get with that so to speak, right But that's not the way things played out. The choice is not between reason and faith. The choice is between faith and cult Damn because faith comes with responsibility faith comes with the restraint of her animal nature Faith comes with the anti-niche spears of avoiding the mere mammalian will to power that characterizes the modern world faith Means tell the truth. Thou shall not bear false witness.  It is a total cult It indoctrinates people it punishes them for any kind of deviance it rewards them for compliance It trains them as you would train a rabid puppy. It is a brutal cult So here's my take on faith the christian faith in particular my take on the christian faith is that It does not survive the philosophical tests of metaphysics and epistemology but The faith has people land on universal ethics, which is what we need So it's the question of if you have a doctor Would you rather the doctor give you the right prescription with the wrong methodology? Or would you rather the doctor give you the wrong prescription with the right methodology? Well, I would I just I just want the right medicine. I really don't care how the doctor comes about getting it I just want the medicine that's going to cure me And it's sort of like if if someone says Oh, I don't know I think you need to take this pill because I think that you have this disease or whatever, right? Let's say you you don't have this disease, but the pill cures you have some other disease That he didn't even know you have okay. You're still cured, right?   So that's a very brief explanation of the ethical theory But that aligns with christian ethics So if reason leads you To universally preferable behavior and the christian faith leads you to universally preferable behavior And the supposed scientific socialist of a marxism leads you to genocidal tyranny I gotta throw in with the christians because although philosophically it's the wrong methodology gets you to the right place And that's why both the christians and myself tend to be opposed because the powers that be survive by pretending That there's more than one morality and we see this all the time, you know, if if you are a Black group or hispanic group, you're allowed to have Entire organizations that promote your racial self-interest, right?  Don't you know when trump says Fight for your country Protests peacefully. Well, suddenly he's gonna be impeached for inciting an insurrection, right? I mean that this it's so boring to to come up with this These point out these things all the time, but that's the opposite of universally preferable behavior That's when ethics become completely contingent upon the power-seeking group if group a does x totally virtuous if group b does x totally evil The protests in the capital were a violent insurrection even though Everybody in that capital wanted to continuation of the american system of government They disagreed with the results of the election, but they wanted a continuance of the american system of government absolutely completely and totally They just disagreed with an election not so what's not an insurrection Because they didn't want to replace the government and that for sure is is pretty clear, right? So the blm and tifa rioting for months hundreds of people kill billions of dollars of property damage Well, that's just that's the language of the unheard man. That's their protesters, right? But then of course if there's violence from the trump side and the level of violence is still pretty undetermined Nobody knows what the officer died of as far as i can tell it's not been released And other people who died died from like strokes and heart attacks and medical emergencies Yeah, it was an exciting day and that a thousands and thousands of people some people didn't have the tickers to take it Which is a real shame, but it's not quite the same as valley forge for god's sakes Well, then you got actually bad at two the chick who was killed was shot by a secret service or capo police or whatever Well, we don't know who shot her They won't release that information. They won't release the circumstances. They won't release the name of the officer Nobody's been charged in the death Of syconic the the officer who died. I mean originally they said he was what bludgeoned by the fire extinguisher Now it seems he was tweeting that night to his brother and died at some other point now He's being cremated. You can't even do an autopsy. I mean come on so This so the the the surface will all say well We've got this moral rule that's an absolute because we like this group They vote democrat or whatever, but then if this group that doesn't vote democrat does exactly the same thing They're totally evil.  You know the left's not going to care.   I mean so yeah, no without a doubt You know our lot is in with the christians And you know there's a lot more of them than there are of us and you know, here's the other thing too, right? Here's the other thing too. So I criticized christianity Very strongly when I was younger and unjustly to be fair and again with the apology But you know what happened christian groups never attacked me Never in fact, I've been invited to speak at christian conferences and gone and happily made the case for various christian principles So the love your enemy stuff that the you know, it's it's there. It's real. It's incredibly powerful. It's incredibly powerful Now the groups that have attacked me I honestly can't think of a single christian group that has attacked me even though I've attacked christianity Now I'm a humble enough guy that that moves me to my core That the people I've attacked returned with love and invitation The people I did not attack and in some cases even defended attacked like crazy I mean, I'm an empiricist man. I go with the facts. I go where the facts lead me and that's powerful stuff for me And and that's that's irrefutable evidence of Some pretty beautiful behavior Yeah, and that comes out of the christian commandment and that's I was deeply moving to me man. It's deeply moving to me Yeah, it's certainly a lot better than the treatment we get from the feminists and the woke and the commonest and stuff Yeah, a question. Uh, what's been your experience with advocating for peaceful parenting with regard to christians? How do they respond? Uh, there's some debate in this obviously I've seen spare You know, the what do these christians say spare the rods for the child Right, there's there's different ways they can try to rationalize non-peaceful parenting. So what's been your experience? It's been Very positive. In fact, I would say that the christians have responded the most positively of the groups that I've talked to about peaceful parenting Libertarians not quite so much. Uh, and and so on right interesting. So I think one of the reasons for that is Well, jesus said of course, whatever you do to the least among you So do you also do to me and the idea of spanking jesus would be anathema and rightly so And i'm sorry for the vaguely comedic image, but that's how ridiculous it would be for a christian and It's hard to imagine too jesus beating his own children if ever had children like it just seems completely I can't I can't see that and also spare the rods boy of a child You know, it's it's one of the challenges of translation, right?  And so spare the rods boy of the child is if you do not Provide moral instruction to your children They will turn to seed and We indubitably know that this is the case because modern government schools Are indoctrinating kids and terrifying them with creepy sexual stuff and and so on, right?  Well, no force in the infliction of an idea Inflicts only fear it doesn't implant the idea It's like Beating someone with a tree and trying to turn them into a forest You got to plant it right you got to plant it and grow it And so from my standpoint and you know the circumcision stuff too like why on earth would god create a foreskin If you were just supposed to saw it off when the baby was a couple of hours old producing lifelong trauma Most Christians don't do circumcision, right? Sorry go ahead Most Christians don't practice circumcision only in america. Is it really normal? I think I get south america for example They don't do circumcision the christians Is that right, but there's still still a lot who do and I think it isn't a front to being made in god's image, right? So I think that it's and your view is male circumcision evil Oh, absolutely without a doubt. It's totally evil. It's totally evil now This doesn't mean that everyone who partakes of it is irredeemably evil because there's a lot of propaganda and and all of this And and sometimes it's even done against the the choice of the parents. I sort of heard this like the child has just delivered that way But morally. Oh, it's a complete violation of the non-aggression principle It is you know hacking off a third of the penis Of a newborn baby boy It is absolutely and completely and totally immoral Do you believe it's a violation of the oath doctors take? Oh, yes Do first do no harm The foreskin not only does it not do harm the foreskin is pretty necessary for a life of central pleasure It's pretty easy to clean and you couldn't imagine Cutting off a woman's breasts because she might get breast cancer down the road and even the whole You know foreskin and cancer and all that kind of stuff is way overblown and and all of that So oh, yeah. No without a doubt without a doubt. It is an absolute brutal assault on the most vulnerable aspect of the male body and it is done without choice It is often done without knowledge informed knowledge of the parents and it is it is a great evil that of course in the future You know, we look back at things like they used to like hamstring Hobbled slaves, right? They cut the Achilles tendon of a slave who kept running away So that he couldn't run and we'd look at that and we say my god That was absolutely inhuman that a violation to cut a healthy part of the body for the sake of dominance and control Well, come on And and the idea that there aren't there Hollywood celebrities out there who use Skin creams and facial creams made from the foreskin Of circumcised boys. I mean, whoa, that is that is just straight up satanic You you couldn't imagine like body parts of of babies being used to to fluff up the beauty vanity Of rich celebrities like you couldn't imagine a more satanic transfer of value I don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't be surprised to be honest I mean pito would hollywood has all much of insane crazies Before moving off to epistemology, we're gonna have to wrap up soon But I did want to ask you more thing about epistemology So I know you disagree with the statement that we live in a post-truth age But we do live in an age of fake news and all kinds of garbage like that For example, even in the self-improvement industry and fitness industry in the hemisphere for dating coaching all the stuff Frauds are very prevalent. That's been the case for decades and that's probably going to be the case for a long long time, right? But my question you is How can people who study the the men watching the show the men who study epistemology if they take an interest in it after the show How can epistemology help them navigate the world and their own personal lives self-improvement understanding big news how to spot it propaganda Even just like you know with trying to improve yourself, you know people selling bullshit courses and stuff How does epistemology help an individual?  So I'm going to take that as full permission to Continue with the language. Yeah.   I mean just be skeptical and have a very high barrier Like think of the number of people you've met over the course of your life like for people like you and I It's in the tens of thousands right and and think of the number of close friends that you have So the vast majority of people in a sense don't make the cut and it's not because they're bad people It just might be personal compatibilities or geographical location or age or whatever it is time of life So the vast majority think of you know, if you end up getting married, right? You've probably been interested in A whole bunch of women Right and and you know of the hundreds of women you've been interested in and maybe the couple of dozens that you've dated or whatever However, it's played out for you like one person makes that cut one person makes that cut so 99 percent percent of everything is crap, right except this show which is all gold, baby Actually be skeptical about that too, right No, I mean this is also the Pareto principle, right? Which is most of the music that people produce even the stuff that's on the radio. It's it's pretty bad Right and it's not going to last the test of the time. It's not going to be Hey Jude or Bohemian Rhapsody or anything like that So If you see something well, first of all, if you see something that's too good to be true, it is right But whenever somebody comes to you with something Especially if they're new like if they've built up credibility with you over time like I've been doing this for 15 years I think I got a pretty good reputation. I think I've worked pretty hard to earn it So it doesn't mean believe everything I say It's just mean you got to you got to let your guard down after a while, right?  I can't control that in the audience I can control what I do, but not what people do with what I do but Yeah, it's just you know, you see something you hear something bullshit, right?  Somebody comes to you and says oh you do a lot of talk like they're online They come to you and they say oh, that's a lot of talk. What are you gonna actually do about it? It's like, yeah, that's a fed They're trying to lure you into saying something crazy so that right just bullshit, right get your boogaloo on man. Let's go Yeah, or you know, whatever you see That that's going on in the media. Oh, yeah, I just I mean I don't believe any of it I mean, I don't believe any of it and that doesn't mean that there aren't certain people who've earned my trust over time It doesn't mean that everything is a lie, but I'll do investigations It's certainly something like the capital, right first 24 hours believe nothing I mean, maybe there's some truth in it and you certainly can believe your own eyes But yeah, just don't don't believe any of it some some someone offers you this is a foolproof way To bed women. It's like well first of all You're just making more feminists, right?  So don't do that And b even if somebody makes some claim like that It's almost certainly not true because you know, it's one thing I've noticed about these Dating coaches.   Oh, it's the universe. No, it's not it's gonads It's not the universe. It's giving you stuff. It's male hormone. It's giving you stuff So, uh, yeah, just assume that that nothing is true until proven otherwise And but then allow yourself to build up trust with people It's a very logical approach to life In fact, I think it would be the pinnacle approach to life, right? People making positive claims you have to assume that they need to prove those before you accept them But in our age, it's not how people think Last question on epistemology. I promise What is the relationship if any between epistemology how we know things right and abusive relationships with bpd woman And or men if you're a girl So a personality disorder is basically is there an attack there from those kind of people or is there what's the connection? Yeah, that's it's a very great insight, Anthony It's very very well phrased and very very fertile ground so to speak So abusive relationships are fundamentally attacks upon epistemology Because that's what gaslighting is right So gaslighting is it comes from an old movie where a guy tried to make a woman crazy by Constantly interfering with a perception of reality telling her things weren't true that were and were true that weren't so In relationships that I've had in the past that were dysfunctional The woman would say something It'd be kind of shocking something negative or whatever and then You'd bring it up at some later point and she'd be like I never said that I Never said that now.  There were no cell phones. You couldn't record anyone But let's say you record it and then you play it back Then she'll say well, I said it but it was you who made me said it made me say you're responsible for my bad behavior And so it's an attack upon your your capacity to process reality And if the woman like when if you yell at the woman Then you're an abuser, but if the woman yells at you She's passionate and you made her do it Right that that's an attack on universality. That's obviously a straight up appeal to hypocrisy It's also darba, right deny attack reverse victim order. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so so when when people Attack your capacity to process reality They are attacking the most fundamental aspect of of who you are as a human being because if you can't process reality correctly You can't ever trust yourself. You can't ever trust other people.  It's like, okay. I think I'm pretty good But this all just hard one scar tissue. There's a battle scars You know, this is like don't step in a bear trap because I don't have a foot, you know, that's that's how vivid it is to me so fighting for A truth and reality and against insane gaslighting Well, that was that characterized my youth.  So, you know Don't don't ever doubt like if you remember something clearly And if you you know, we want to write it down Don't ever let people talk you out of your relationship to reality It is a brutal thing to experience and it's also bad for them because it gives them too much power over you which corrupts them further Yeah, yeah when I uh, I had a bpd experience many years ago Not too many years ago about five years ago to ended But I analyzed it in a speech I gave called marrying Medusa. I don't know if you've seen it It's on youtube still believe it or not. It's got like half a million views on viral But I I analyzed the relationship from a philosophic perspective, which is the main point of view I had them And just I could feel immediately a studying objective was the most like this is a long-term attack on my Epsomology she wanted to manipulate my view of reality I think a lot of guys in the hemisphere who come out of those relationships feel much the same way But they can't articulate it.  You're the greatest.  It's like, oh great We got one last question from the audience here and then we'll wrap up Stefan do you feel that universal truth can be fully realized apart from Christianity? Well, yeah, I mean, this is why I'm a philosopher not a theologian right, so universal truth is something that philosophy can Absolutely bring to us. So, you know, I've praised Christianity in terms of its ethics In terms of metaphysics and epistemology. There's a big challenges, right? So one of the things that had to happen for the modern world to occur was for The universe to be perceived as objective and universal, right? So the laws of physics applied everywhere the laws of biology and evolution had to be developed and so on In other words, the universe described in the bible as a universe subject to the will and intervention of god Had to be put aside for the scientific method to be Developed because the scientific method doesn't have any stars like unless there's a miracle, right? There's no asterisk there with footnotes like oh, this is a universal law unless there's a miracle So in a sense god had to be removed from the physical universe and its intervention into the physical universe for modern science and therefore the modern world to be Developed and so philosophy Because it works rational philosophy works well with defining what is real defining what is true defining what is good It ends up very similar to christian ethics But it doesn't have that you know fairly major hiccup of the dark ages when christianity was in its ascendancy and there was a fair amount of Hostility to science now It's not as great and I did a whole show with tom woods about this some time ago The hostility to science that's portrayed through atheists was not as strong as it is portrayed and there was a lot of support for sciences but Moving the earth from the center of the universe To orbiting the sun moving the sun from the center of the universe orbiting the galaxy And now there is no center of the universe whatsoever These were particular challenges to a fairly literal interpretation of the cosmology of the bible and it did delay The development of science quite a bit. So yes, I think that universal truth is the province Of philosophy ethics has to a large degree been the province of religion and in the west christianity And I you know fear dislodging it from christianity because then you just get the aforementioned Hyena jackal cults that just roam around the countryside taking down anybody with a couple of grains of truth in their bag Yeah, it's almost like, you know, america and the west can't survive without christianity I've thought a lot men objectivist of the bone Similar to that but think to you you're not an objectivist. I know but I feel like we're Well, no, I'm pretty much objectivist in my metaphysics and epistemology There's a parting of the ways with regards to politics and ethics because I ran as a minarchist and my Argument for ethics is different from mine rands and I think supports the voluntarism that I Proposed as the solution to social issues. So but yeah, I mean as far as the basics of truth and reality goes I'm like there wouldn't be a dime's worth of difference between me and an objectivist But can america survive in the canada in the west without christianity? It seems like the answer for the time being and for a long time is going to be no Are you well, I mean, this is this is the old question. Do you push forward? Do you circle back? Right? This is a big question in society. Do you push forward? Do you circle back? Is there a reasonable situation by which we can bring Tens of millions of people who are agnostic or atheist back into christianity? I don't know that there's a particular path that way. Do we push on to philosophy? Well, that's certainly been my goal and all of that and We we certainly can't survive without truth and you were well, but you know for advocating philosophy You were digitally murdered in public on the internet. I would say so Yeah, but that's that's not always the worst pr for a philosopher So it was he's more physically, right? But you know one of the reasons we remember him, so Yeah So fun. It's been really great having you on the show today. We're a little bit past once. We'll wrap up I appreciate your time Everybody make sure you check out freedom main calm check out hong kong fight for freedom other documentaries He has on his website here and connected them on all tech. It's really big obviously. He's not on youtube anymore He's on bit shoot. He's an odyssey is in library. He's on rumble. He's on gab. He's on mines Any of the platforms are missing parlor, but it's dead for now, right? Yeah, who knows if that's ever coming back, but Yeah, all of the stuff is listed there and I would really you know recommend and if people want to help out the show, you know Been a rough year. It's not essential. It's been a rough year for everyone free demand.com forward slash donate Great and your books are on amazon, right? Most of them. They're free, but also on amazon Yeah, so the art of the argument you can get at the art of the argument.com That's the only one I charge for the rest of them are all free you can get the art of the argument on amazon You can also get it on audible.com Oh, oh last thing too. I've got a great audiobook It's a novel I wrote many years ago about the rise of political violence across europe the 1920s and the 1930s It's a great book. It's totally free And you can get that at free domain.com forward slash almost because almost is the name Of the book and i'm immensely pleased with that as a novel And if you want to my my original side was artistic not even business or philosophical I was in the national theater school I took writing courses and wrote novels in place So if people want to see the artistic side of me and and I think experience a really great novel for free I hope that you will check it out Sounds good. All right. Thanks, man. And thanks for a couple of plugs at the end It's the other plugs. I'm working with these days. All right Everyone thanks for watching episode 135 today. We'll see you next saturday before you leave the video today Hit like and leave a comment comments help a lot. It's like hitting the like button 10 times So I appreciate it. See you then it's to fun. Hope to see you back on the show sometime Thanks, man. Take care


Between the violence, war, and destruction and judges and First Samuel is a beautiful tale of fidelity and commitment, a tale we call the Book of Ruth. Ruth is not without its difficulties. It is set in a time with customs and social mores that don't fit our modern sensibilities. Scholars do not agree on its accuracy or the date of its writing. In spite of these difficulties, Ruth has become an important text, a favorite among many Christians and Jews. The text begins with death and ends with birth, begins with isolation, ends with inclusion, begins with bitterness, ends with rejoicing, a testimony to devotion of a woman to her mother-in-law Naomi, a testimony of a Moabite, a foreigner named Ruth.


If radon comes out of the ground, especially in well water, it can be introduced into the well water and allowed to come up because it's pumped up out of the ground into your house as the water comes out of the faucet. Does it need to be treated if it's high back row levels? The answer is absolutely yes. How do you know you need to have it tested by a professional? We're learning more and more about radon only because we're talking about it.


Welcome back to the school of calisthenics with Tim and Jaco and today we're talking ring muscle ups but specifically we're going to give you guys are struggling just to nail down that last little piece of getting from below the rings to above the rings we call it a transition and it can be the hardest part of the muscle up to nail down. Yeah it's tricky a lot of us stay stuck behind the rings and we're not thinking about how do we transition and change that pull into a push but today we're going to solve that problem for you so check out the video. The ring muscle up transition is obviously the trickiest bit of the muscle up and it might be that you've done some work we're through that transition with the band working as a cradle but when you take that thin band away you still find yourself stuck behind the rings you feel like you're pulling high enough you're getting your thumb to your chest but you just can't get through and it might be because we're not thinking about the change in force application from a pull into a push for that transition so just Tim will give you an example of what might be happening you might be pulling and getting stuck behind the rings so you can't go out if the rings are sort of turning a bit and you're not getting yourself through but when you use a little thin red band you do get through and that's partly because the ring the band will be giving us some assistance of helping us get up there but the other thing that it's doing is once you've pulled the band is helping support you up so that you can just transition straightforward when you take that band away you're not pushing down into the ring once you've finished your pull so as well as getting yourself forward between the rings we need to think about changing that force application from pushing from pulling up to pushing down you don't turn the rings on purpose as you push yourself through the rings get turned in that process but you must make sure you've changed that force application from a pull as we come through we're pushing down into the ring to get yourself through that transition obviously Tim's first demonstration was super super slow when you're going for the first time it's going to be a little bit faster but we do need to teach the brain that this transition forward and changing from a pull to a push requires us to change that application force into the ring and that is going to get you redefining your impossible of your first muscle up we hope that's helped you with your muscle up goals and giving you some ideas of things that you can work on to help you with those muscle ups please like this and share it with any friends that are also working on their muscle ups and then if you've got any other sticking points or problems with those muscle ups that you want to help with let us know in the comments and if you want to take a bit of a deeper dive into your muscle training we've got a completely revamped and enhanced course for both the ring and bar muscle up in our online training platform our virtual classroom fully backed by training science and years of strengthening conditioning coaches working with loads of people to teach them to successfully get above the bar or above the rings and we would love it if you go and check it out class dismissed