The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brookshow. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow. Friday night a little unusual, but I'm trying to compensate for the fact that I didn't do a show last night, so this is in its place. Thanks for joining me. Today we're going to talk about why should we support Israel as individuals and why should we support it as the United States of America. And the same goes for Ukraine, so we'll try to separate the two out and talk about each one separately. So why should we morally support it or financially support it as individuals and as a government? And so we will get into an analysis of that starting with individuals and then we'll go from there. So our usual fundraising goal, and you can use the super chat to ask super chat to ask questions. And I'll be happy to answer them. It's a great way for you to shape the show, determine what I focus on, particularly $20 or above. Questions get a lot of attention and we really focus on. One of them says I should include Taiwan in it. Yes, I was going to, although it's less actual. But yes, I was definitely going to talk about China and Taiwan and we will talk about that as well. Let's see what else. So yes, you can use the super chat. You can also support the show with a monthly contribution on Patreon or you on bookshow.com slash support. That's PayPal. So one of those two is great. I think I'm going to do like a campaign early next year to get the numbers up on the monthly support and see how many monthly supporters we can get to. I'm shooting for a thousand. So, you know, that'd be great if you'd consider giving us a support, even if it's a couple of bucks a month or 250 a month or 500 a month or a thousand a month, whatever you think. Whatever the value I provide and the value you can provide in return. All right. Anything else you guys need anything else we need to wrap up before we get into the topic and jump in. I guess not. Well, I'll just say if you're on Twitter or Facebook or something like that, just go on and say, hey, we're live. Happy to happy to include you in the show. Happy to get more live viewers. We got about 50 right now. Let's get more live viewers on by by by letting them know over there and in X zone Twitter zone that we are actually that we actually live. I'll leave that up to you. You guys taxi do it share it and so on. Oh, yes, if there are people who are listening to this whether live or not who have not yet subscribed to this channel, please subscribe. Please subscribe. That'll be really, really helpful. All right. Let's jump in. And so we're talking today about why why as an individual I live in America and I get these questions all the time and I get them on the on the YouTube comments section. I get them all the time. Why should I care about Israel? I live in the United States. I get from the battalions all the time. Of course, I live in the United States. I'm an individual. Why should I care about what's going on in Israel? Why should I care about Israel? Why Israel? Why should I care about what's going on in Ukraine? And hey, by the way, you know, my government, we've got a government.  Shouldn't I want them to, you know, if they're going to use my taxes anyway, should I want them to use those taxes to, I don't know, help homeless people in my neighborhood or fix the potholes on my street rather than send them off and and and to Ukraine or to or to Israel. It's not my battle. It's not my war. It doesn't affect my life. I would rather the money be spent home. I don't really care about the issue. I've got enough problems in my head and I don't care about the issue and my government shouldn't care about the issue. They should just leave those places be not put any money, not arms. And by the way, if we give arms to Israel, it just pisses off the Arabs and they'll just come and and, you know, and do away with do away with me. Yes, what a female. I know potholes are not a federal issue. Yeah, be start picking, picking nitpicking what I say, right, as I come up with this stuff on the fly. So why should you care? Why is it? And I'm an egoist. Why is it in your rational, long term self interest to care about what's going on in these places? Why should you invest any effort time? And why should you not only not object to your government supporting them up to a limit? We'll talk about that limit is, but you should encourage them to do so. We should encourage your government to, to actually do so. So before we, so, so that's the topic, right? I mean, one of the things we have to understand, I think today is that Western civilization, the civilization that our lives depend on, the civilizations that our liberty and freedom depends on. The civilization that, you know, without which life would be very difficult. Life would be to a large extent unbearable in the world in which we live. That civilization is under threat. And it's under threat in ways that I don't think it's ever been under threat. It's under threat. And I'd say the main culprit of it being under threat, and this is a reality, the main culprit of it being under threat is that we can't defend it. That while we want it, while we have a sense of what we want about it, when we speak over here, when a little bit of political freedom over there and we want a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But we don't have a comprehensive idea of what it is. We can't really defend it. And again, as a civilization, I can defend it. Maybe you can defend it, but as a civilization. And that has left it vulnerable, left the remnants of this great civilization, the beauty of it, the freedom that it empowers, the individualism, the respect for the human mind, the entrepreneurship, the economic progress, the economic growth, the technology. All of the things that Western civilization, that the enlightenment has bequeathed us is all at risk. We have massive, massive enemies at home. Western civilization is under devastating attack from internal enemies. Those internal enemies on the left, the woke, the CRT, the Marxists, you know, the whole array of the left is really anti-Western civilizations, anti-enlightenment. It has been since Marx, and it certainly is in its postmodern variation, all the different iterations of postmodernism.  And it is a real enemy trying to destroy the enlightenment from within, within Western countries. And then we have the enemies on the right, who not only are they clues about defending Western civilization, but many of them in their attempt in quotations to defend Western civilization often land up, land up undermining Western civilization, misidentifying its source, and undermining its very essence. But many factors on the right today, many people on the right, many intellectuals on the right, many leaders on the right today have given up on Western civilization, given up on the enlightenment, explicitly so. They now argue against the enlightenment. Indeed, they blame most of America's problems today on the enlightenment, and they view Western civilization as somehow pre-enlightenment. Knowles, 1220, 1220, wanting to go back to 1220. Even Iron Hercie Ali, wanting to go to a pre-enlightenment Christianity. So the enlightenment Western civ is under attack from both left and right inside the country. And that will play itself out. That battle is playing itself out, will play itself out. It is a battle that is ongoing. It is a battle that will is going to take a long time to resolve itself. But it is definitely a battle that we need to participate in. We need to be a part of. There are very, very few voices, very, very few voices, very, very few people standing up for the enlightenment, standing up for the West in what it really means. Not in its superficialities, but what it really means, which means the enlightenment. There are very few people standing up for the enlightenment, and we need to be a part of that battle. And those, by the way, are people we should align with. So that's the internal threat. But there is also an external threat. And that external threat feeds off of the internal. It views the West as weak. It views the West as vulnerable. It views the West as defeatable. Is defeatable or would? I don't know. Whether that external enemy is Russia and everything the Russia represents, authoritarianism in every aspect of our lives, imperialism and mysticism combined together, and not surprising, there are people in the West, part of our internal enemies in the West, who love Putin and Russia, exactly because they are standing up for ideas of nationalism, mysticism, authoritarianism, which our enemies on the right from within believe that that is Western civilization. That is the defenders. Putin is a defender of the West. And so here you have one, you know, the right. And of course, the really way out there left, but also supportive of Putin. They also view him as, well, he's anti-West, therefore he must be good. He's anti-Lightman, therefore he must be good. So the far left and the far right unify over admiration for Russia and Putin. And then you've got another existential threat to the West, and that is Islam. Now Islam is militarily weak. Russia is not. It has nukes, and it supposedly had a big military, big powerful military, not so big, not so powerful. The Muslims are weak with the exception of Pakistan. They have no nukes. They have no mighty military. They have numbers. There are two billion Muslims in the world today. And they have managed to emigrate into many countries in the West where they are not met with demands for assimilation. They are met with demands for exclusion, separation, and where again they experience and sense, because they're not met with demands for assimilation, the weakness of the West. And here they have a real opportunity, a real opportunity to take out the Enlightenment, to take out the West without even engaging in military actions or that much military action. And then finally, you have China.  I don't know that China has territorial ambitions outside of Taiwan, but it certainly has ambitions in terms of respect and power. And it too knows the West is weak. It too senses the decline of the West. And it too is getting ready. And you've got here an axis, an axis of Russia, Iran, and China. I think Russia and Iran are the more immediate threat. China might be a threat further in the future, depends on how things go for China. But Iran and Russia are an imminent threat, imminent threats to the West. Now, a threat the West could easily deal with if it knew what it was fighting for. A threat the West wouldn't even trouble itself with if the West was on the rise confident and free. But indeed, the West is not. So this is the global situation. And the manifestation of kind of the Islamic threat, at least a big chunk of it for the United States, manifested itself in 9-11. And then in Europe and all the terrorist attacks that have happened on European soil since then. On the subjugation of so many European cultures to Islamic will, think Danish cartoons, think Charlie Hebdo, think of the silencing of so many Europeans as a consequence of the growing political power of Islam and the weakening power of Enlightenment principles, principle of free speech, for example. And of course, I think the threat that Russia poses the West manifested itself in its invasion a year and a half ago of Ukraine. So Russia has ambitions. It has imperial ambitions. It has ambitions regarding its stature in the world. It has ambitions with regard to its role in Europe. It has ambitions to be the leader, the dominant power in Europe. It has not and will not cede that to the United States or to any European entity. It is the be all and all. And as part of those ambitions, it has now attacked Ukraine twice. This last time in a for-fledged war to basically take control over the entire Ukraine as a first step. Without any doubt as a first step to challenging NATO and challenging Europe and challenging America's dominance in Europe. And indeed to challenge the very idea of Western civilization, the very idea of an Enlightenment civilization, of an Enlightened civilization. And you can see that in Putin's rhetoric, he makes no end of fun, ridicules the West and any kind of semblance of Enlightenment ideas. So here you have a war, a war that is a battleground in many respects to the future of Europe. Of whether Europe will continue to be, first of all, an American ally, secondly, a bastion of Enlightenment and Western civilization. It's not a bastion anymore, but a remnant, a fragment of Enlightenment and Western civilization. Whether it will succumb to mysticism or authoritarianism, primitivism, imperialism, whether it will become a puppet of Russia. Now why should you as an individual care? Because you should care about your life. You should want a world in which Enlightenment values are thriving. You should want a world in which the West, even the West of the European Union, is still alive and kicking. Because in spite of all the problems of the European Union, that West far exceeds anything the rest of the world has to offer us. There's nothing good in Russia. There's nothing good in Islam. There's nothing good about those ideologies, those philosophies and those regimes who would replace a dying Enlightenment. The only way to save the Enlightenment is from within. The only way to save the Enlightenment is to save the West. By abandoning it, we lose. So should you care? Absolutely. Do you think you would live in a better world? If Russia took over Europe, you would live in a much worse world. And you would embolden the worst elements in the United States primarily on the right, who would love to bring Putin like authoritarianism, Putin like mysticism, Putin like oppression to America. They would love to align with Putin to expand the revolution to the United States of America and to the extent that they're successful. They would and they will. Yes, we've got one here. Richard wants more Putin. Siko that he is. So you should care. You should want Putin dead. You should want Russia to fail. You should want Russia to collapse. You should want Ukrainian victory. And what does it mean for America to support Ukraine? It means very little in terms of the cost to you. It means it does not. Well, let's see what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean sending American kids to die in Ukraine. Indeed, if Russia wins in Ukraine and sets its eyes on Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, then American kids will be involved. Then your kids will be involved. Then American personnel, military equipment. Then America is in a war. Then you're very close to nuclear war. That should be avoided at all costs. So America supporting Ukraine does not mean American troops in Ukraine. Indeed, most of America supporting Ukraine means America morally supporting Ukraine using the bully pulpit to express its support, condemning Putin for the monster, the immoral monster that he actually is, and then supplying weapons to Ukraine. And supplying weapons to Ukraine for America today is super cheap. America sends very little cash to Ukraine. Most of what America sends to Ukraine today is equipment that is obsolete from the perspective of the American military. It is equipment that is unlikely to need or use in the future. It is equipment that if not used in the next few years, they'll have to dump anyway. Artillery shells, medium-range missiles. These are not things that America needs. One Patriot battery. These are not things that cost us much money out of pocket. Very little. It's equipment sitting in warehouses. Now some of them needs to be replaced over time, and that will cost something. But it would have been needed to be replaced anyway because it was going to be expired. We're not, for example, even supplying them with F-16s. Other countries are doing that. We just gave permission for these countries to provide the F-16s to Russia, to Ukraine. Sorry, almost to Russia. Why it took a year and a half to do that? God and only Biden know. But that is a betrayal, to betrayal of us as Americans. Because all that's done is emboldened our enemy. It's emboldened Putin. The American policy should have been when Russia invaded Ukraine to supply Ukraine with whatever weapons it needed to defeat Russia as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. And defeating Russia means kicking them out of Ukraine, making it clear to them they will never be able to take Ukraine.  So don't send American troops there. Don't fight, but send weapons. Cost us very little. Yes, every time they approve a budget, that's the book value of the weapons, weapons systems that are sitting in warehouses. Weapons systems that if we actually got into a conflict, let's say with China, we would never use because we're not going to storm China with tanks. We don't need artillery for China. For China needs, we need to build a fleet. We need to build a navy. Defeating Russia will make America safer. Defeating Russia would be one less, one less challenger who might take the West, who might take, who might defeat the Enlightenment, the values that our lives depend on.  They see Muslims as a real threat. But Russia, Russia, they're the same color skin. Russia, they're Christians, just like all of us. Russia, oh Putin, he looks good without a shirt, riding a horse. It's masculine. Russia, they're our allies, they're our friends.  He looks like us, so he must be one of us. The war aim in Ukraine is easy. The war aim in Ukraine is to throw Russia out of Ukraine and make it clear to them they will never win. That's the war aim. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. And with a weight amount of weapons, Ukraine could do it, could have done it already. It's we, the US, that's held the Ukrainians back, not just the US, but our allies in Europe as well. Russia's already lost the war strategically. But it needs to be fully cognizant, fully realize that it will never succeed. It needs to be pushed out of Ukraine back to Russia's 2014 borders. And there is no negotiating with Putin. There's defeating the Russian army in the field and pushing him out of there. There is no negotiation because there is no compromise. Anymore that there's compromise with Hamas. There's no difference between Putin and Hamas. Not the threat they pose to us and our world. Indeed, Putin is a bigger threat. He has nukes. Hamas does not. Israel also sits on a border on the front line of the battle between civilization, between civilization and barbarism, between civilization and its enemies. The Islamic world would love to take down the West. The Islamists would love to take down the West. Now it's true that the leaders maybe of some of the Gulf states and the leaders, maybe even of Egypt and Saudi Arabia and a few other countries don't really want that. They don't even want to take down Israel. They see a value in Israel and so on. But the reality is that the majority of their own populations still believe in an Islamic caliphate, still believe in taking down Israel and the West. If there was election tomorrow, real election tomorrow in Egypt, would the Muslim Brotherhood not win again? Muslim Brotherhood, the fountainhead of Hamas. So the Islamic world still believes that they are capable of, that they have the means, they have the ability to take down the West. They've entered the West on the inside through migration and they pose a physical threat to the West just by their commitment to God and their commitment to Allah and the fact that Allah is on their side. They have no question in their mind that they will win this battle, this battle, this war. And they're willing to kill whomever and however many in order to make it real. The logic is that a significant percentage of that population celebrates death, not life.  They're poor. They live under authoritarian regimes. The values of the Middle Ages, dark ages, when they go to heaven they get 72 virgins and Allah opens all these possibilities for them. So why should you care? Because Islam, in its militant political form, is a threat to the lives of every one of us. They are willing to kill us. They are interested in subjugating us. And they can't do it because we're super strong. But that only holds as long as we're willing to defend ourselves. They're very weak militarily. But they can hurt us through terrorist attacks. They can weaken us by entering into our countries and aligning themselves with American political left and right sadly. So Israel is the same reason as Ukraine. We don't need to send troops. We don't need to send an army. We don't need to fight it ourselves. Although here I would argue we should, given that we are a target, have been, will be a target of the broader Islamist movement. We should intervene militarily. We should put troops on the ground. Not so much in Israel, but in Iran. Israel should get our support. Should we send Israel money? No. Israel doesn't need our money. We shouldn't ask for our money. We shouldn't give it. It's a relatively wealthy country. It should be able to support itself. Should we send them military equipment? Absolutely. Same reason as for Ukraine. It's relatively cheap. They're fighting a war for us. They're minimizing the need for Americans to be involved. Send them all the weapons they want. And Israel, for the most part, buys these weapons. So if we really value the long-term safety of the West, of civilization, of enlightenment, then these two countries need to be helped, need to be supported, both morally and militarily. Another aspect of this, which I find interesting, is that the conflict in Ukraine and the conflict in Israel help us to reveal who our friends and who our enemies really are. I mean, it's good to know that Candace Owens stands with Hamas. I'm not surprised BLM stands with Hamas, but I didn't really realize that Candace Owens does. Good to know. Check the mark of an enemy. It's good to know Jordan Peterson thinks so highly of Putin and stands with Putin. Another check mark. Identified an enemy. I didn't think he would be. I think he'd realize how horrific Putin was. But I guess he doesn't. I guess he's not a friend of liberty after all. This brings out for us who are real enemies all, who are supporting the thugs in the world, who doesn't want to see the success of the enlightenment. If there are people, if there are enemies within, if there are supporters of Putin or Hamas in the objectives movement, please point them out. Check them off as enemies as well. Just because somebody calls himself an objectivist does not mean they're not my enemy. So it's great to kind of tease out, bring out to the surface the ideas that animate, the ideas that animate the people around us. I mean, we now see just how viciously anti-Semitic the left is. It's good to know. It's good to know. And it's good to know that the libertarians are as insane and wacky as maybe we assumed the war and maybe forgot it a little bit, maybe thought they maybe had gotten better. And it turns out, nope, they're still as crazy and wacky as they always have been. And it's good to know. You know, here in the chat, who is with us and who's against us. These are the kind of issues that bring it out. These are the kind of issues. These are the kind of issues that reveal what people are really about. So yes, you as an individual to support Israel and Ukraine, the American government should arm them to the teeth. They're at the forefront of a civilizational struggle. China is watching. China will feed off of our weakness to the extent that our commitment to Ukraine or to Israel weakens. China will view that as our weakening and view that as an opportunity. As long as we support these countries strongly, they will not attack Taiwan. They await for further signs of the West's demise. And China probably is the biggest long-term threat. And they're watching. And hey, I'm watching you guys. So, you know, internally, we're also watching. All right. The cost of the Ukraine-Israel conflict in the big picture of the American government spending and government deficits is miniscule, miniscule, miniscule. And if we can spend a little money to delay the end a little bit, then we should spend it. I mean, absolutely true. The West is in decline. The West is disappearing. The enlightenment is fading. But the more of it we have, the longer we have it for, the better off our individual lives are going to be. The end of the enlightenment is not going to be pretty. The end of the enlightenment is going to be a disaster for all of you, all of us. All of humanity, really, the end of enlightenment values is impacting. The end of Western civilization is not something to be celebrated. And that's where we're heading. And if we can delay it a little bit by spending a little bit of money, by sending a few arms, it doesn't cost us a lot. I mean, let's move to Argentina. I mean, even Argentina today, Millet has already started to compromise, and to appease, and to moderate. His radicalism is slowly, and we will see. But at least today's news was not good on the Millet front. I'm curious what my Argentinian friends are saying, but it was not good what I read today. He's already lost the people that are most important. All right, happy to take your questions. I know a lot of people are commenting. We've got a goal for the evening shows, which is significantly higher than where we are right now. So please consider supporting the show with the sticker. Yair just did his first super chat. Thank you. You really appreciate that. You can do a sticker. You can do a super chat question. You can ask questions, but you can ask about any topic. It would be about what we've just talked about or about anything else. You can challenge me. You can tell me I'm full of it. Use the super chat to do it. Let me just say this. Nobody represents today purely the enlightenment values and the values of Western civilization. But Europe represents it more than Russia. America represents it more than Europe. South Korea, Japan represented more than pretty much anybody else in Asia. This is what needs to be supported. And does Ukraine represent Western values? No. But is Ukraine leaning in that direction? Absolutely. Why did Russia invade to a large extent? Because Ukraine was moving towards Europe, moving towards the West, moving towards becoming a Western country. Russia wants to undermine everything that is the West, wants to undermine everything that is the Enlightenment. It stands on principle as the anti-Lightman, anti-West superpower. That's how Putin has defined himself. And therefore, to support Ukraine is to support Europe. To support Ukraine is to support a movement towards Europe and away from Russia, away from the Dark Ages, away from authoritarianism, mysticism and imperialism, which is what Russia stands for. So while Ukraine at no given point represents Western civilization any more than any other particular country in Europe, you know, worse than any other particular country in Europe, it was moving in the right direction. That needs to be celebrated and supported against the horror that is Russia. Again, a threat, no smaller and in many respects much larger than the threat of Islam to the West. All right, let's take a look here. No, I didn't mean to do that. All right, that doodle bunny, you noticed that Milet and Inran became successful by being firebrands, rather than focusing on being prim and proper mild-mannered academics like too many at AOI. Inran was not a firebrand, certainly not like Milet. To put them in the same paragraph is bizarre. Inran was never swore. Milet swears all the time. She never called people names. Milet calls everybody names. She was indeed very proper but radical. She was incredibly polite, incredibly respectful, even to opposition. Read Inran letters and see how she answered people's questions. Milet is a firebrand, right? He's, you know, in many respects nuts. People at AOI are not mild-mannered academics. I don't know any of them who are mild-mannered academics. They're radical. They're firebrands in their own way. None of us are like Milet yelling and screaming and cursing. I yell and scream. I don't curse though. And I don't flip out. I don't do crazy stunts. True. But neither did Inran. So to assume that Inran was successful because she was a firebrand like Milet is just not. I mean, have you ever seen Inran on stage? She did some assaults and whip around and yell and curse and no. Lots of things wrong with cursing. But Inran dressed nicely when she spoke in public or when she went out in public. So, you know, I don't understand. I don't think the comparison has anything to do with it. If you want somebody who yells and shouts and makes a big deal, that's me. Well, how many followers? You know, I haven't done as well as Milet. Maybe if I said the F word a few more times during the show, I would get a bigger following. Is that what we want? Is that the thing that's missing? And anyway, there are a lot of different people at AOI. They serve different functions. Not everybody is public facing. Not everybody needs to be a quote firebrand. Behind Milet, there are a lot of prim academics doing the hard work for him. Behind Milet and behind anybody successful. There are a lot of quiet people. Educating, teaching, speaking, writing, writing, writing, writing.  You've got to have lots of different people doing different kinds of work. And you've got to have some of those really smart philosophers who are mild in terms of the way they speak. But who are smarter than anybody else on the planet can articulate an argument and teach those of us who are firebrands what we should be firebranding about.  And it's, you know, what is the point exactly? You don't like them?  Personalities that they have, judging them by the quality of the arguments they make. And there you'll find that the mild manners ones are the ones that make the most powerful arguments and the ones the rest of us need to learn from so that we can be firebrands. And of course, who changes the world? We'll see how much Milet actually achieves. But it's the philosophers, the intellectuals, the academics who ultimately change the world. Don't put them down. Don't dismiss them. All right.  It really helps promote the show. So please press the like button. And if you like what you get, value for value, please consider supporting the show. $100, $200, $5, $2, whatever the value is to you and you can afford. You can use the sticker. You can use the super chat. We've got quite a way to go to reach our goal. We're doing great this month, so I'm not complaining, but it would be great if we hit those goals on as many shows as possible. Particularly given that we've got 118 people watching right now live. All right. Like the show. Also, if you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Please subscribe. Yeah. I mean, the people at ARI, Robin, are amazing. They're super smart. They're super able. They are articulate. The people who are offended by them or the people who think they are the losers out there, like Richard, who's got to overunder on how much money I raised tonight as if he cares and as if he contributed a dime. God, it's all he can do is sneer at the success of other people.  Steven, should the US Navy clear Russia out of the Black Sea and for the US Air Force to control the skies over Ukraine? No, I don't think so. I don't think that's necessary. I don't think that the United States should get directly involved. I think the United States getting directly involved increases the level of risk to a degree that is just not warranted. I do think that supplying the Ukrainian Air Force with F-16s, I do think that supplying the Ukrainians with the latest and base and best weapon systems possible. Anybody who makes Richard's skin crawl is a hero. I'm all four people who make Richard's skin crawl. I mean, we're talking about somebody in the chat who I shouldn't be talking about because he doesn't deserve the attention, but anyway. So, I think Ukraine can do it. It's going to be costly for them. For the United States, it would be easy and quick. Ukraine is inflicting heavy damages on the Russian fleet and on its forces in the Black Sea. I just saw statistics today of the amount of grain Ukraine has managed to ship out in spite of Russian threats. They have managed to protect the grain routes pretty well without the need for the United States to enter. I took you might be involved there, but in spite of Russia's attempts to block them from exporting, they have managed to do it. So, yes, I think all we need to do is be willing to supply Ukraine with the military equipment that they need in order to defend themselves and ultimately to kick the Russians out of Ukraine. And I think they can do it, but they do need that equipment. We keep denying them the equipment, delaying the equipment, giving them partial equipment. We're giving them F-16s, but without the best smart bombs that the F-16 can use. We give them long-range missiles, but we don't give them enough missiles to use on a consistent basis. It's just unbelievable how crippling the United States has been. And to a large extent, that's the fault of Republicans who have been so adamant about not approving support for Ukraine, which is a massive betrayal. All right. Robbs, he says, did you see James Lindsay tweet where he claimed liberty requires reason plus faith? I thought he was smarter than that. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I mean, James Lindsay is being disappointing after disappointment, after disappointment. I think he's in many respects, you know, he has a prism by which he sees everything. And again, he's in the same position as so many of not being able to contemplate or imagine that you could be an atheist and have values and have morality. So he's in the same boat as so many people. But, but yeah, it's, it's sad to see it doesn't surprise me. It's the way these people on the right are going. They're embracing religion one by one in that sense.  And many people on the chat supporting it, you know, supporting the ultimate outcome of it because it's against the left. But yes, scary stuff. All right, let's see. Let me just thank a few people for the stickers. Jonathan Honing. Thank you. Let's see. Thank you. Catherine. Thank you. And WCZN. Thank you. And then I just saw Donna. Thank you. So thanks. The stickers, but you can still ask questions. There's plenty of time still. I'm moving on to the five to $10 questions.  Right. He's not a. Oh, Troy. They go, Richard, you lost the bet. Troy says, I missed the live. Thanks. Even show you on. I'm thankful for Iron Rand and her philosophy that is continuing throughout your efforts through your efforts. Keep the positive show coming. I will. I will. I'm going to try for one a week. I'm going to try for one a week. Thank you, Troy. Really appreciate the support. That is fabulous. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That made my Thanksgiving. Thanks. All right. Hop a Campbell. In April, when you traveled to Argentina, would you make it an objective to meet with Millet and make sure he's on the right track? I can't make sure Millet is on the right track. I can't make sure, right? But, and I don't know if I'll try to meet Millet. I find it not useful to meet politicians. I never have met a politician that was useful. It's just a meeting him or I had a positive influence in, well, I probably did, but reason enough to go out of my way. But I know a lot of people who know Millet. I know a lot of people who are in that universe and I'm sure we'll be interacting with them. I'm much more important to me is to be able to influence the people who influence the people behind the scenes of Millet who can influence him. But also let's see what happens by April. We will see what happens by April. As I've said on a previous show, I'm happy to advise Millet, be a formal advisor, informal advisor, any way I can. If he's interested on being on the right track and actually liberating the Argentinian economy and doing it right, I'm worried. I'm worried. He's bringing a lot of people from the old Macri administration who were not good. And he's bringing them into this administration and that means he's compromising and he's moving. He's moving to the center. And that is disappointing. That is disappointing. All right, James says, Jordan Peterson has been great on Israel, but terrible on Ukraine. Why is this? Because he thinks Russia is part of Western civilization. Russia is Christian. That's a huge plus. Anti-Slam pro-Christian. So Jordan Peterson is going to be for anything that is part of kind of a Judeo-Christian tradition. Jordan Peterson admires the kind of mystical philosophy that undermines Russia, the kind of dug in post-modern mystical nationalist philosophy. Jordan Peterson seems sympathetic and favorably inclined towards it. I think they share a certain metaphysics and epistemology. Jordan Peterson is motivated by fear around Russia's capability for nuclear bomb or not capability, but the existence that they have nuclear bombs. Whereas Islam is clear. They're the other. They're a threat. They're not Christian. They're not European. They're anti-civilization. They're clearly barbarians. It's much clearer. It's much clearer. They don't have any philosophers who pretend to be Christian theologians, slash platonic, whatever, post-modernist, something. They're different, completely, utterly different. And it's easy to be against them because of their barbarism. So Jordan Peterson is going to be against them. But Russia's harder because they look like Europeans. And they share a certain philosophical background. They share religion. And for Jordan, as for a lot of people, what shapes Western civilization is religion. And the Russians are Christian. The Europeans are Christian. How big of a difference could they be between them? They must all be the same, basically. Sadly, that is part of Jordan Peterson's way of thinking about the world. Stephen, do you think Thanksgiving is an important day to really think about the people?   It's a day to think about and appreciate and be thankful for the productive people in your life, the people who make the quality and type of life that you have possible, yourself and the people around you, and also people more distant that make the goods and the things that you like and enjoy and want. And a day to appreciate the political system that makes it all possible. So I definitely think it's a day of appreciation and certainly not a day to shut your mind off. It's a day to contemplate what makes your life so good. To the extent that it is good. Michael says, I've been watching the young Turks commentary in Israel. Pretty disgusting, yeah. Why would they name their podcast after the group which committed the Armenian genocide? Well, because it was the group that, the young Turks, and I assume they named after this, the young Turks were, they came after the Ottoman Empire, was defeated by the British. They fought in order to establish a modern socialist, but secular republic. And Ataturk is a great hero of theirs, very anti-religious, prosecuted the Imams, the religious characters, banned religion for public life, not just separated religion for public life, banned it. And, you know, so they were, the young Turks were the bringers of modernity to Turkey. And I think were celebrated as such. So, and I guess Seneca is a Turk, is Turkish in his origins. And yeah, this was a revolutionary movement to bring modernity to a primitive Islamic world and to secularize it. And I think they associate themselves with that. I don't think, I don't think they associate with it the Armenian genocide. Stephen says, I might move to a new city soon. I live in South Bay of Los Angeles County now. So I want good weather and I can't afford that much. When the U.S. would you recommend? Well, I mean, you can't beat the weather in Southern California. So it depends what you will need to tolerate. But look, let's see, Austin, Texas is fantastic. The weather is not as good, but it certainly has a lot of other advantages, including low taxes and lower costs. Generally, Texas, Dallas is cheaper than California. And you can get a lot more for the money and you don't have the state tax. Jennifer mentions Tennessee, Tennessee, Nashville, but even other parts of Tennessee anyway from Memphis all the way to Gainesville. I think it's Gainesville. There's some beautiful places there. It's relatively cheap to live. And the weather is not bad. Denver, Denver is really nice. It's a beautiful place. A lot of objectivist activities going on there. It's really pretty. The mountains in the background, the weather is decent. It gets very cold, but it doesn't get as cold as you'd expect. And it doesn't snow much. And the snow usually melts pretty quickly. I, for one, don't like Florida, so I'm not recommending Florida. You can, you can, Florida is another one. Arizona, Phoenix, if you could tolerate the heat in the summer. So there's plenty of places. I mean, Seattle is, though Seattle is quite expensive these days. So a lot of different places around the country. David, several weeks ago you said you largely disagreed with the Sympter Lab. I've been working with the idea financial markets, a chaos at their core. Is that incorrect? How would you replace that idea? Yeah, I definitely think it's incorrect. Right? I don't think chaos is the right way to view it because there certainly is a logic and a rhythm to what's going on. It's not random or arbitrary, which I think was what chaos would suggest. Chaos theory might help understand certain aspects of the markets, but I don't think the markets are chaos.  The markets reflect accumulated knowledge of the people participating in the marketplace, and particularly the people who are trading at the margin. And they embed information into the markets, and the markets seem chaotic because information ebbs and flows. It comes and goes. The flow of information is constantly dynamic, and therefore prices are constantly being repriced. As there are changes in interest rates, changes in future expectations in terms of earnings, the changes on the probability of a session, everything's changing constantly. But again, I don't think the change in the financial markets is chaos. Indeed, it's quite the contrary. It's taking the chaos of the world out there. It's taking the chaos of the economy, the chaos of kind of the informational world out there, and it's putting a price on it. It's creating order out of the chaos. Stock markets are a way to bring order to chaotic amount and quantity of information. They embody, they concentrate a ton of, you know, a ton is too little, a gazillion amount of information. So they're actually creating order out of the chaos. Yes. And I'm not sure chaos is the right way to even think about it, but they're creating order out of a multitude of information that appears chaotic, and financial markets actually bring it into order by giving it a price, by concentrating that information into a price. All right, guys, 125 people watching. We're about $160 short of our goal. I'm sure we can make it. Troy is brought at home, so we're almost there. You guys can close it up and bring it home. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. Only 74 likes. I know you guys are more than 74 people out there who like the show, so please consider just pressing the like button. It doesn't cost you anything. It doesn't slow you down. It doesn't impede anything. Just press the like button. And, yeah, and get the algorithm to treat us more kindly. If you're not a subscriber yet to the show, please become a subscriber again. It helps the algorithm, and you'll be notified when I go live. And what else I want to do? Yeah, please consider those of you on here to become a monthly contributor on what do you call it, on Subscribestar, but Patreon and PayPal are the best platforms. PayPal through uranbookshow.com slash support. And, of course, you can still ask a question on the super chat or make a contribution through the sticker. Frank says, can Palestinians just live in Libya or Algeria? They can, but do they want to? Do Algeria and Libya want them? I mean, it's kind of easy to say it, but I mean, you're uprooting them from their homes and sending them to the middle of the desert and Libya and Algeria? And I'm sure the Libyans and Algerians don't necessarily want them. So, yeah, I mean, sure, they're all Arabs. You could treat them like that, but that's not how the world works. Black cat. As a future policy, now that Russia will be licking its wounds for several years, we should be pushing hard for the Europeans to rearm at the same time. Yeah, I agree. The problem with that is that Germany, which was committed to re-arming, was committed to increasing spending, has just hit an economic brick wall, is in a recession, but more than that, the Constitutional Court in Germany has ruled, German budgets is unconstitutional, which has immediately created a massive deficit between the plans that German governments had for the future and the reality. They're going to cut government spending left and right, and as a consequence, part of that cutting is going to be cuts to defense. Not only do I not expend military spending from Germany to increase, I think it's actually going to decrease or take good builders' win in the Netherlands, good builders, while Russia is not exactly supportive of Ukraine either, and is unlikely to support the Netherlands building up more of a military. The only country that's taking this really, really, really seriously, well, maybe not the only country, maybe the others, but the one that's clearly and explicitly and unequivocally is Poland, because Poland knows that it's on the target list. So Poland is building up its military. It will have the largest military in Europe when it's done. It's pretty admirable the amount of money and resources that they're putting into defending themselves. All right, clearly flawed. Gale, clearly flawed. Gale, I.A.N.s, Cook, and Meribins. Thank you all for the support. Really, really appreciate it. All right, Richard, you mentioned you would participate in the beta panel with James Lindsay. Did you ever happen? If so, where can I find it? I was supposed to, my interview with Dave Rubin was supposed to be me and James Lindsay and Dave, and then Dave decided to do the interviews one-on-one. Now my interview with Dave is on Dave's website. I've tweeted it, but it kind of, it hasn't really got a lot of attention. But if you go to Dave's website, you'll find my interview with Dave. And then there's also the interview with James Lindsay with Dave. They were done separately instead of us together. Howard. Why did Egypt not want Gaza back along with Sinai? Because they didn't want Palestinians. Because they knew it was a powder keg. Because they didn't want the hassle of that many people in, you know, to become Egyptians. You know, they knew that it was, that they were inclined towards terrorism, that they were inclined towards violence, that they were ideologically, you know, I think the Egyptian authorities figure that most Egyptians are kind of too stupid, too uneducated, too ignorant to know what's really going on in the world and they can put one over on them over and over and over again. Palestinians are more attuned to the world and they're not going to let the Egyptians get away with it. They were demanded all kinds of things the Egyptians didn't want. The Muslim Brotherhood was very strong in the Gaza Strip. They didn't want Muslim Brotherhood. They have enough of those in Egypt. It's an enemy of the Egyptian regime. They're troublemakers and they didn't want the trouble. Rob, what's Afghanistan field a good team in a cricket World Cup? Highlighted the tragic loss of human potential. Theocracies are responsible for so many young people who could have done amazing things with their lives. Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, when you saw in the Afghan, Afghans who helped the Americans, the Afghan girls who went to school, the Afghan women who worked for Western NGOs, the Afghans who managed to escape Afghanistan and came to the West, there's a massive amount of human potential there. Massive amounts of human potential there. And it's tragic and sad what theocracies, authoritarian regimes more broadly do to that human potential. Think of the human potential in Russia. Think of the human potential in Iran. Iran has some of the smartest people anyway. And it's just awful, awful. Ed, with almost all Palestinians in South Gaza, how do you think Israel will destroy Hamas with a present strategy to kill as few civilians as possible? The two seem incompatible. I think it's going to be tricky. I think they'll keep squeezing them into smaller and smaller area within Gaza. Maybe at some point they'll shift them up north. Maybe at some point they'll build a refugee camp inside Israel on the other side of the Gaza border to house some of them as they sweep through other neighborhoods. Maybe they'll convince the Egyptians to do that. It really is hard to tell, but I think they viewed the key to destroying Hamas the north for whatever reasons, they obviously have the intelligence, I don't, that if they could get the north, if they could completely clean out the north, that would be such a blow to Hamas that it would be easy to deal with them in the south. Not clear if that's going to work out the way they thought it would, but we'll see. Maybe once they clear out the north completely, they send all the people from the south to the north. It's going to be interesting to watch. But this is the kind of convoluted things that they have to do in order to not, God forbid, kill any civilians. All right, we're just $85 short. Somebody should step in and get us over the top. All right, Ian, I appreciate your show you're on and it's pronounced Judo. What is pronounced Judo? Judeo, Judeo Christian. Judeo, Judeo Christian. Judeo Christian. I'm not sure how I'm pronouncing it. Judo, Judeo, Judeo Christian. Thank you. Yes, it is pronounced Judeo. I couldn't figure out what it is that I was supposed to pronounce, but that makes it easier. Judeo Christian. Judeo Christian. Yeah, I'm glad to see people like knowing Psycho speak. That's good. Ignore him. That is the best strategy with Psycho and his ilk. All right, let's see. Miguel. You're on. Shouldn't we lay suppress this personality of a showman? He was always like that. Watch one of his talks of his and most likely that one in person to see. No, I don't think you should suppress it. I just hope that there is, and by the way, that was Miguel's first super chat on the live stream. So thank you, Miguel. It was, it was, I just hope that behind the showman, there was real substance. I hope that behind the showman, there is a real consideration and a thoughtfulness that will, you know, and a backbone that will actually help him execute on all the things that he has said and all the promises he has made. I worry, I worry, right? That it's also, and the content is not there, right? As I said this morning, he's already basically sidelined his two most important advisors. He's bringing in moderates from Mark. How do you pronounce it? Macri's government from who did nothing, who achieved nothing. I'm really, really, I was excited and now I'm getting really, really worried. The more I hear he's now backing off dollarization, dollarizing the economy, I'm worried. I mean, I'm willing to give him as much time as he takes, but just the news this morning was not good of the kind of choices he's making. The finance minister is a guy who is Macri's finance minister. That's not a good choice. You've got to get a revolutionary in there as finance minister. He's backing off his promises about the central bank. He's, you know, he's backing off his promises about the dollarizing economy, the guy who he wanted to appoint, who was going to appoint the head of the central bank, who said he would do it only under condition that he would get to unwind the central bank to end it. Basically now says he won't join the central bank because he's not convinced Millay will follow through and shutting it down. Now, I hope all this is wrong. I hope this is all fake news, but it's coming from reliable sources. So I'm worried. But it doesn't surprise me, right? Because it just doesn't surprise me. So I hope Millay is for real. Applejack815, thank you for the support. All right, guys, we got to get the likes up. They should be well over 100 likes. So please like the show. Don't cost you anything. And yet they increase the visibility of the show dramatically. They have the potential to increase subscribers. Also, please subscribe to the Iran Book Show if you're not a subscriber already. So like, subscribe, share, comment, whatever, tweet. And please support the show. You can support the show right here on the Super Chat. We're only $80 away from our target, which is not a lot. But you can also support the show with a monthly contribution on Patreon. Patreon is a great platform for that. And PayPal, you can do it in your bookshow.com. Patreon seems to be easier. Just go on there, fill in it a little bit. Bang, you're done. If you want to support other people on Patreon, the other people you can support all on one platform, very, very easy. Please consider doing that. And I will see you all tomorrow. Tomorrow we've got to ask me anything show. At 2 p.m. East Coast time, we'll have a panel of $25 or more supporters. Live, we'll also have Super Chats. You can ask any questions you want. And we'll move forward. Miguel asked another question. In Ecuador, we already experienced a president that doesn't ally himself with the opposition. Unfortunately, we can't do anything without that.  I get that. I get that Belay has to work with the center right. But he can't, if he gives it, even if before he starts, he gives up on his most radical proposals, then it's going to be very difficult for them then to get anything from them. He has to start radical and start there and compromise from there rather than right on day one, give up a bunch of the most important, the most radical positions. But I understand, you know, this is why I've always said the solution is not politics. The solution is cultural. You need to change the culture first. And what happens when you get into power and the culture is not with you, then it's almost impossible to pass the kind of laws to do the kind of things necessary in order to achieve what you need to achieve. All right, guys. I will see you tomorrow. And bye, everybody.


Okay, so this is anti-requestion 101, and I'm Lindsay Nida, and I'm a developer at brandygbrand.com. And, Hi everybody, I'm Steve. You just heard me ramble for five minutes. I work with Jeff at Jumpstart Lab, as I just told you the beautiful story of our origins moments ago. We choose the best Ruby and Rails classes in the world. So if your team needs to like level up at what you do, give us a call, cause you know, it's awesome. So, this talk. So, you know, we all love Martin Fowler, right? Like Martin Fowler, like anything that he writes instantly becomes crazy programmer canon, and we like memorize everything he's ever done. So, Martin Fowler has this thing called a DSL, so obviously it's you know, 100% awesome, and we in Ruby in particular use DSLs. And DSL is short for a domain specific language, if you don't know, and that's a computer language that's targeted to a particular kind of problem. So, from a certain perspective, Ruby on Rails is a domain specific language that is used to tackle the application domain of web programming, right? So, Rake is a DSL that is used to make things. We tend to use this technique a lot in the Ruby world, and we're like really big advocates of it. So, it turns out that many other fields also have their own kinds of domain specific language, and sometimes this can come into friction with the kinds of things that we're used to using words for. So, every single field has some things that mean different to someone in another field, right? So, it turns out one of the things that I've been really interested in lately is applying the things lessons from other fields to our own field. So, when I see that we have a particular problem, I don't honestly listen to you guys about how to solve that problem. I go read some philosophy books, or talk to some people that aren't programmers, because they're thinking outside of our box, and so it's a really interesting way to apply their lessons of what they've learned in their field to what we're doing. So, as you know, we have a little bit of a problem in our computer science community and web programming, not so specifically, but just in general computer science, and it turns out there are other fields that have domain specific languages that let us tackle that problem in a better way than we currently are using with our generic language to do so. To solidify this problem, I have this graph here, and what we have is the bachelor's degrees received by women in various STEM fields, and that horrible little mountain there, that's computer science, and we see that it peaks at 1985, and ever since then we've been on this negative trend downwards, and that's something that we really, really need to think again and go back on, because right now, 51% of the US population is women. We make up a large percent of the workforce. Now, right now we're about 25% of the bachelor's degrees in computer science are going to women. That's half, that's really, really horrible, and while a large chunk of people using technology are women, very few of them are actually contributing to the code that we're actually using, and there's a similar problem from a racial perspective. This graph here shows Silicon Valley workers in the dark blue and all US workers in the light blue, and what we can see for black individuals is they are at 6% of the Silicon Valley workforce, but 11% of the overall US workforce, and that doesn't sound like that much of a difference right now until you realize that that is also half. So there's a huge chunk of these people not being involved, and same thing goes for the Hispanic population which is 9% of the Silicon Valley workforce versus 15% of all US workers. So right now technology is very white and very male, and we need to work on getting more people involved in using the technology. So this field of this terminology that's used, and it's called social justice basically, and it is in program or speak, it is a DSL for discussing equality and social relationships, and we can use this DSL to help us grapple with these issues. Ultimately in American history, this sort of notion of social justice has been associated with leftist political movements, but actually if you look at where the term comes from, it's actually from Thomas Aquinas and a very right leaning perspective, so this does not have to do with left versus right politics, I don't even wanna get into that. This is about treating human beings as other human beings and various people from various political sides have come to believe this is a good idea over our history, and so we're not trying to get into those kinds of political discussions. This is about people and humans, not about politics in some form, although whatever, yes, ultimately still politics, but not of that kind for that way. So there was this Reddit thread one time, and I don't read Reddit anymore, but it was pretty awesome, it made me laugh really hard, and the question was, what is the worst possible thing you could call a white male person? And so the one that everyone got actually upset about was privileged. If you've never heard this term before, we're about to talk in a second, but all the other ones people were like, oh yeah, you say like cracker, I don't, that doesn't get me mad, right, at all, like that's not actually a negative thing, it doesn't hurt me at all, but you insinuate that we have privilege and all of a sudden everyone got really, really upset. So this is like the primary topic as far as attacking this thing that we wanna talk about. So.   And it's something that you were just given by just being born, it's just luck. The privilege and the unprivileged live on the same planet, but two different worlds. It's not something that you're really aware of, you don't see other people's privilege and how that's really interacting so much until you have that sort of taken away from you.  And I want you to count the number of times the basketball gets passed between players. And so then that went on for like 45 seconds or so, and then they said, okay, so what did you think of the gorilla? And people went, the gorilla, and they're like, yeah, the gorilla that walked across the middle of the screen, like the guy in the big giant gorilla suit, what did you think about that? And they were like, I don't know what you're talking about. And if you go and actually watch the video, you can find this experiment on YouTube, but you get so focused on paying attention to this task that even though a guy in a gorilla suit walks through a bunch of people, shooting basketball back and forth, you totally don't see it. Like when I did this, I watched the video I heard about, like, oh, this is really interesting, right? I didn't explain it at all at first. I watched this video and I was totally shocked because I didn't see it either. And this is a fundamental neurological process of the way that our brains work. Especially when we focus on something, we tend to ignore what's in the periphery, like moving the microphone away from my mouth so you can't hear what I'm saying. And so this is one of the examples, not necessarily of privilege directly, but this kind of perspective. You're so used to what you're used to seeing, it's hard to relate to other people, I guess is kind of the point. And it's also difficult to spot in yourself because it's what you've been focused on, like what you normally do. And so that's like the real lesson is that this sort of privilege is very difficult to notice. You know, again, being like, I'm privileged on every possible axis, right? Straight, white, male, upper middle class, all those kinds of things. And so it's very difficult to grapple with this kind of thing because I can't experience what like Lindsay experiences being a woman in computer science. It's not even that I can't empathize, but since I'm not a woman, so I will never have a woman's experiences. So Steve just kind of slightly mentioned this term, axes of identity. So that's like the things that sort of affect the privilege that you have. And here we have listed five different ones, gender, sexuality, race, class, and ability, but these are only just a couple of the things that sort of affect the privilege that you have. There's a lot of different moving parts at play here. There's a lot of things that greatly affect the privilege that you receive. And it's not something that we can kind of step back and really be aware of until we deeply, deeply try to empathize, but even then you cannot fully, fully understand someone else's experience as far as how these axes of identity are interacting and how their place in society is being affected by this. So intersectionality is a sociology theory of how various biological, social, cultural categories interact on multiple and often simultaneous levels contributing to systematic social and inequality.  I'm just gonna say that, cause we shouldn't be judging people on more than just being people and when we start looking at them and start making these judgments on them, it's greatly affecting their place within the world just because of their luck, their happen chance to have these certain axes of identity interacting in such a way that they are not the highest role in the society. And the other thing about intersectionality is that's how sometimes you'll receive certain kinds of privilege in a certain situation and not in others.  We are some of tons of attributes and so they all interact with each other, which is what this concept talks about. Another thing that's a really big thing, especially online, you will see endless people talk about this or in the wrong way, that is. And so the isms, namely racism and sexism, actually are discrimination plus power equals oppression and therefore racism or sexism. So this is why you'll hear some people say you cannot be racist against white people or you cannot be sexist against men. You can obviously discriminate against men but without the systematic power that men have in society, you cannot oppress men in the same way that women have been oppressed for thousands of years. So that's a significant difference. And so in a social justice context, these sort of words have a slightly different meaning than what people on Reddit tend to say that they are, for example, which I shouldn't really even have to say but I kinda do. So but that's what's important is that it's systemic power. It's not anything about even individuals. It's about the power of the group dynamics of the society that we live in. Yeah. Okay, so the imposter syndrome is something that everyone can be affected by and it's when people are unable to internalize their achievements despite evidence of confidence, they believe there are frauds and undeserving of their accomplishments. So it's something that affects everyone but when you're say like a minority in a field and suddenly you're being asked to give a talk and it's like, is it because I'm just a woman? Like why am I here? And suddenly you're being like put all this pressure on yourself and you're just completely unable to accept that yeah I know what I'm talking about and yes I can do this and it's something that we all deal with but there are more factors that go into affecting more people greatly with this particular problem. So this is example like at the University of Pittsburgh we are redoing our notes said which slide was which people so that's what we lost. So that's why there's some funny things. So at the University of Pittsburgh we had some people from other schools like we were trying to redo our computer science program and so we talked to the guy who was in charge of Harvey Mudd and they had had a really massive first of all downturns in computer science enrollment but also it disproportionately was affecting women and other minorities and so all they did was have two sessions and they asked everyone like so every student at Harvey Mudd has to take an intro to computer science class so all they asked on the entrance exam to the school was have you ever programmed before and if you said yes they put you in CS 101 and if you said no they put you in CS 102 or whatever just splitting those two groups apart and just by changing that nothing else about the curriculum the teachers anything they saw a massive increase in enrollment in computer science period but also the women specifically sprung back like crazy and the reason for this was due to this imposter syndrome so what would happen is so like I started program when I was seven so I don't know what it's not like to not program so when I went in my freshman you know computer science class the teachers like you know y equals x plus five x equals two you know what is y and I was like obviously it's six or whatever and so all the people that had never like done this before or you know in the room are like oh wow this is really hard for me and that person is doing really really well maybe this is just not my field and so it turns out that like people who are good were poisoning the discussion and that made it difficult for new people to like enter the field and so just by making that one simple change and who was in what class they saw like massive increase of people that are like yeah computers are for me because I'm not stupid so that's sort of a real world example of this kind of syndrome how these things like interact with each other I should note that that increase was from 17% to 47% so they were nearly at gender parity after they sort of made that shift and that was really really big deal for them to completely change their CS program and so it wasn't because of lack of interest it was because there was this massive attrition rate with this initial class were just bunches of people were just dropping out okay so stereotype threat it's an experience of anxiety in a situation where a person has potential to confirm a negative stereotype about their social group this is something that has been proven in numerous numerous studies time and time again there was a study I believe when it first came out in like 1994 that talked about you know African-Americans taking the standardized tests and just by basically priming them with the idea that African-Americans do worse on the standardized tests they did worse and by saying no African-Americans do the same as everyone else they did the same as everyone else what you believe in your mind sort of comes real and it comes into play because you respond with this stress response when you're told you're going to be bad at this you will be bad at it the same thing happened with women in math exams they primed them with gender ahead of time told them you know women generally do poorly and they did worse the moment that they undid that moment they said you know women do the same the scores were basically the same and actually slightly better for the women than the men in that math exam so this it's so amazing it's like how powerful the mind is when you tell someone something that was sort of like affect the way that they learned it affect the way that they you know are actually able to interact with material and I've had women for example say like I don't participate in discussions about feminism in front of people because I don't want to be seen as a bitch and so like you know they will not say anything even as people say terrible things about women in front of them for that reason so you know this kind of thing happens all the time this is one of my favorite terrible things that people say on the internet about this topic and in our community too I can't be sexist because I love women so much and like I you know I don't want to point too many fingers but like this has been the root of the cause of some of the presentations that we've had in the Ruby community where there's been like bad things have been put up on these screens is because of like this justification which sounds ridiculous on its outset but like people do you know believe it so there's that and then also something else if you do make a faux pas and you probably will because this stuff is hard you should definitely apologize honestly whenever you do something that's bad so at LA RubyConf this year for example I saw a woman tweet like I'm really excited to meet so and so and so and so and so and Steve and you know she had her face as a picture on this you know Twitter account and so I saw her at the conference and like following Corey's advice like oh I'm gonna meet new people so I walked up to her and said hey how's it going you know my name's Steve I saw you tweet about me yesterday and she's like yeah and I was like I thought that was what I said was I was you know slightly nervous you meet some new people and so I said hey I thought that was you because you know honestly like how many girls are there here and like I felt really really terrible about that and later went up to her and like apologized for like singling her out in that way and like drawing attention to this kind of thing and so even though I've been studying these kinds of topics and like working on developing you know attention to these kinds of things you can absolutely screw it up and she was confused as to why I was apologizing to her because she didn't see that it was like a problem but I felt really terrible about it and it was important to apologize honestly and to not fake apologize if you're not if you are being a sexist asshole because you are a sexist asshole you shouldn't make a fake apology about how you're not actually a sexist asshole like basically and you know because like I'm sorry you're offended is not an actual apology basically and it's terrible I have to say it but it's true so but it's important to like to make an apology because you know it does mean something and so yeah oh and lighten up is not a valid response to someone you know being bothered by comments it's just not okay microaggressions which I would count light enough as a microaggression it's demeaning implications or other subtle insults against minorities so these things are sort of like you know doing dishes is women's work and sort of these sort of little subtle jabs and implications you know you don't really Obama is so articulate is a good example of this kind of thing yeah that's a really microaggression and there's actually a huge website for all these if you're like I wonder if that's a microaggression go on microaggressions.com and they'll see a list of them and I actually I wanted to add one and then I went through it and I was like oh somebody else already added the one that I was insulted with awesome so they're not even creative they're just repeating the same things over again oh and frown power okay so the big deal right now is there are a lot of things and I realized I feel like it's the the vocal minority that's sort of pushing out all these sexist and racist things right now and frown power was sort of coined in the 1940s when Stetson Kennedy was sort of infiltrating the KKK he was sort of trying to take them down and it was just like you know when someone says something racist you frown in their presence you know make it known that it's not welcome but as far as the internet goes you know you need to do a little bit more than that and you need to let them know when they get something wrong and also when you're having the conversation when someone gets something wrong it's really important to have it in such a way that they're receptive to you so instead of saying you're a racist because you said this thing you know like it's hard people get the stuff wrong so instead of saying that you need to say what you said was racist or what you said was sexist instead of just calling them out for it and like accusing them of being a racist or sexist because they might not be and they just might not understand the what they said was out of line but it's really important that we get as many people as possible basically you know calling people out for this because we need to make it known that within the community this type of behavior is not acceptable anymore so this is sort of a concept that's used often when describing films or media the male gaze so whenever the audience is put in the perspective of a heterosexual male actually a really great example of this yesterday if any of you follow on Twitter if you saw the link about what if other Olympic sports were filmed like women's volleyball okay and so they had like these screenshots of like what the coverage of women's Olympic volleyball is like and it was basically just like butts right like that's all just like total nobody no legs like just butts because that's apparently what beach volleyball is and so they said like here's some other Olympic sports that would be filmed in this way and then cropped and zoomed like men's basketball you know soccer like all these other sports and it's really illuminating how like oftentimes media assumes that the audience is in from this you know perspective of a heterosexual male and if you're not that becomes alienating because you can't relate to the material so like when all of our movies and most of our media comes from like my perspective means that other people don't relate to it in the same way that I do and they're constantly reminded like I'm supposed to be thinking that this Olympic coverage is pretty hot right now but you know you know I'm a straight woman so I'm not really in a girl so obviously this is not meant for me is like kind of the the reason that this is particularly alienating and this is really hard to notice as a straight male dude because like I'm just like yeah beach volleyball which is terrible and it's something that you don't know like yeah it's it's prevalent in tech right you know you've been to conferences you've seen people trying to sell technology with you know scantily clad women like that's something that's really not I'm not going to buy an iPad because like a woman in a bikini gave it to me like that's not going to happen but I mean that's how the mentality is sort of going and you know you need to realize that you know there are more than just heterosexual male in your audience and you need to you know kind of apply to all of them no one new Pinterest was going to be like big because like everyone in Silicon Valley is a dude right and Pinterest is audiences like vastly women and so all of a sudden everybody's like Pinterest out of those webs like it's so huge and that's because like women use a lot of technology too so you should make things that appeal to them as well as you know dudes on after news so I have an awesome quote here I would suggest reading it later I'm not just going to read this quote to you but it's pretty awesome and Francis Allen is kind of amazing she's the first female recipient of the Turing Award and kind of one of my heroes yeah so this is sort of what I was saying a second ago like what we create is colored directly by who we are so you know if we have a Silicon Valley that is all straight white men creating computer stuff then technology will be straight white male focused and that's a problem because there are a lot of other people in the world they're that way and especially as more and more the world runs on computers it's really very important that we include everyone right and this is I'm totally ignoring the digital divide of like people that don't even have internet connectivity their home like elsewhere outside of you know the first world but like disregarding you know that problem which is totally important and separate one you know you don't want I fear very strongly that as more and more of the world becomes reliant on the internet that these like groups will continue to maintain their power because they have control over the way we communicate and they're the ones that shape the way that we communicate so you know that's that's really important so I have I don't belong here so I mean the sense of fitting in is actually extremely important to people and there was a study on a paper called the signaling threat and it talked specifically about conferences and they framed one conference with a 50-50 gender divide and they found you know lots of interest from men and women to go to the conference and they framed another conference with like a 90-10 gender divide and they found that you know there wasn't that much interest in the conference but the really interesting part was there was more interest by both men and women in the conference that had a more fair split than the conference that was unbalanced like it generally pulls more people in to be part of a diverse community and similarly this you know feeling like you belong really greatly affects the rate of attrition which specifically in tech is kind of staggering so we have a hard enough time getting women you know to come to the table and actually be a part of the tech world but once they're there 41% of women and 17% of men quit their careers in tech companies after 10 years that's a huge chunk and we're starved for workers right now everyone is out there looking for you know talent to get in their companies I mean I was hired in my company I interviewed on Friday I started on Monday like they're everyone is that starved for talent and here we are you know kind of actively pushing people out of the door because you know they don't feel like they belong and they're in their environments where you know they're being harassed or you know these microaggressions are kind of slowly digging away at them so and as an example of how this could change you know again everyone is hiring all the time right so if we just reduced female attrition we didn't attract more women to detect we just stopped them from all quitting if we did that by 25% then we'd have an extra 220,000 people to the talent pool over the next year right and like think about how much more awesome you'd be able to have more co-workers you'd be able to hire people and you know we'd have a ton more people building technology and that's simply by reducing the number of people that try and then quit computer science not even like attracting new people so yeah this is sort of the same deal I guess we don't want to like read you a giant quote but Mary Curie is awesome yeah she's she's pretty amazing and fun fact about her she was the first female professor at the University of Paris but she also did some pretty awesome science things too so the point is ultimately of all this stuff is that we do need to do better and we're not trying to scold you and tell you that you're all bad we're trying to provide you with new tools to talk about these subjects and to think about them because that's really ultimately what changes culture right is being able to communicate in different ways or be able to have a reasonable discussion about this right it's impossible you know like so the thing earlier about Amy for example like Amy's not some person but Twitter is not a way to have productive arguments at all like I as someone who's gotten into many a Twitter battle like it's not big enough to have any sort of reasonable discussion right because you can't fit the language in there so we need to actually be able to like have the words to express these kinds of problems and talk about them seriously and so we're just trying to demonstrate to you some things about this topic that may interest you so hopefully you can like look into them and think about your relationships with people and how they work so one of the big things I think until I was sort of helping to improve this problem is encouraging anyone that has any interest at all in computing like because it's hard right you're getting started out and for the longest time I always heard you know just read your manual do it yourself whatever you'll be fine but then you know now my mom you know she's in her fifties and she's like hey I want to learn HTML and I was like well I was doing it third grade I think you can do it she's like I don't know if I can do it but you need to like push these people forward let them know that it is possible you know you can do it you can learn these things and yeah there's some barrier for entry but you can be there for them and help them learn another thing that you can do and this is slightly self-serving obviously but it's contribute to projects that help learners so you know this is the reason I started working on Hackety Hack is that that same problem about like specific kinds of people taking over technology I'm just concerned about the number of people that know about how technology works so like what we do to most people is total magic so I'm interested in raising getting more and more people involved in technology periods so that they know the things that affect their daily lives like when I swipe my credit card I know like half the technology that makes all that stuff work so like I'm pretty confident but like people that don't like it's just total craziness like imagine what that's like to like walk through this crazy computerized world what cars have like over 20 computers in them now to help with all sorts of stuff so like imagine what it's not like to know that kind of thing and so I think it's really unfortunate and so you can help by helping projects that are helping people learn which is a lot of helps for one sentence but whatever we really need to start mentoring people who need help getting started yeah when I first learned programming I was sitting alone at my computer just reading everything asked like a bunch of hackers what language did I learn first and they're like learn C so I learned C as my first language which was a fun process but you really need to sort of like step out there and definitely help like reach out into your community because there are groups out there that are trying to help learners and if there aren't you can start one and you can ask me about starting one because I can help you with that now but you really need to help learners because that barrier for entry is hard telling someone RTFM is not a valid answer for a learner that's like how do I do this go the extra step and like show them the first beginning steps don't do it all for them but you need to show them how to progress and those people are already in the tech world you need to kind of help them out someone starting out as young doesn't know what to do you know you've been there for a while probably a lot of the people here might just be starting out but many of you have been here for a bit and you can definitely help out with that and every little bit helps as far as eliminating bias and stereotyping this is going to be something that is going to take us as humanity a really long time to get over and we are probably never going to be perfect at this but that doesn't mean that it's not worth trying when you grow up in a patriarchal homophobic white supremacist society it takes a really long time to get over those ingrained notions so like I know someone who has raised super religious and even though she rejects religion now she still is like I don't think that being gay is moral because she grew up in that upbringing and so it's been really hard for her to like get over these ideas that were planted in her head when she was really young so I'm not saying that if you screw up that you're a bad person or whatever but the point is to try to make an effort to improve right like we work on Kata's to improve our programming so you can also work at eliminating bias from your social interactions as much as possible and so that maybe someday we as humanity can get there and like that's sort of the point is that we want to create we're working to create a culture that we want people to stay in right so one of the reasons I care about this is that if I'm working on a hackety-hack and I'm minting brand new programmers do I really want to bring them into an environment that's going to be hostile to them right so like I don't want to and I don't obviously we can't fix it before we start doing this but like one of the things that conflicts me ethically is that like if I'm if I'm going to encourage women to get into programming and then you know dudes at their work are going to sexually harass them like is that an ethical action on my part like I don't know and that's a bigger question but we want to work to build that inclusive culture someday is is sort of the ultimate point and this is what we're doing here in Pittsburgh myself and a couple other awesome women here who should like stand up or wave their arms or something to show that they're like all kind of over there are starting girl develop a picture and so we're doing this for reaching out and you know we should have classes late October I mean no early October late September but you know we're going to get more people programming and really reaching out into the community the other thing you told me this earlier too is that it's not exclusively women so they're not only accepting women they're just focusing on trying to get a lot of them too so it's not about separation or exclusion or like hiding women in some sort of bubble it's just that they're focusing on the marketing efforts towards getting girls involved so so yeah thanks a lot like I said I'm Steve and I'm Lindsay and yeah


Why can't my brain just function? I can't keep my eyes open. I can't keep my eyes open. Well, why don't you try some of this, dude? Monsters waking your inner beings.