Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
michael malus an anarchist
political thinker author and a proud
part-time andy kaufman-like troll
in the best sense of that word on both
twitter and
in real life he's a host of a great
podcast called
you're welcome spelled y-o-u-r
i think that gives a sense of his sense
of humor he is the
author of dear reader the unauthorized
autobiography of kim jong-il
and the new right a journey to the
fringe of american politics
this latter book when i read it or
rather listened to it last year
helped me start learning about the
various disparate movements that i was
undereducated about
from the internet trolls to alex jones
to white nationalists and to techno
anarchists
the book is funny and brilliant and so
is michael
unfortunately because of a self-imposed
deadline
i actually pulled an all-nighter before
this conversation
so i was not exactly all there mentally
even more so than usual
which is tough because michael is really
quick-witted and brilliant
but he was kind patient and
understanding in this conversation
and i hope you will be as well today i'm
trying something a little new
looking to establish a regular structure
for these intros
of first doing the guest intro like i
just did
second quick one or two sentence mention
of each sponsor
third my side comments related to the
episode
and finally fourth full ad reads on the
audio side of things
and on youtube going straight to the
conversation so not doing the full ad
reads
and as always no ads in the middle
because to me they get in the way of the
conversation
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to support this podcast as a side note
let me say
that i hope to have some conversations
with political thinkers including
liberals and conservatives anarchists
libertarians
objectivists and everything in between
i'm
as allergic to trump bashing and trump
worship
as you probably are i have none of that
in me
i really work hard to be open-minded and
let my curiosity drive the conversation
i do plead with you to be patient on two
counts
first i have an intense busy life
outside of these podcasts
like it's 4 00 am right now as i'm
recording this
so sometimes life affects these
conversations like in this case i pull
on all nighter beforehand
so please be patient with me if i say
something ineloquent confusing
dumb or just plain wrong i'll try to
correct myself on social media or in
future conversations as much as i can
i really am always learning and working
hard to improve
second if i or the guest says something
about
for example our current president donald
trump
that's over the top negative or over the
top positive
please don't let your brain go into the
partisan mode try to hear our words in
an open-minded nuanced way
and if we say stuff from a place of
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nuanced conversation can only happen if
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at lex friedman and now here's my
conversation
with michael malus there was a simpsons
episode where he starts mixing like
um sleeping pills with like pet pills
and he's driving his truck and i like i
want to see what happens with this red
bull and nitro
there's a lineup of drugs this is gonna
be so fun
yeah let's start with love yes
yeah so one one thing we'll eventually
somehow talk about it'll be a theme
throughout is that you're also russian
yes a little bit less than me but how
loud
why because i'm from ukraine oh you're
from ukraine
okay wow no because you came here a
little bit when you were younger
yeah i i i came here when i was 13 so i
saturated a little bit of the russian
soul
i i marinated in there so a little
deeper i haven't told anyone this but
i'll be glad to tell you
davidish um i haven't been back since
i was two and next summer it looks like
me my buddy chris williamson who's also
a podcaster he's british modern wisdom
he looks like apollo
we're we looks like we got a
videographer which apollo the god
so we're going to go for the first time
to see where i came from
which is ukraine we're going to go to
level and either st petersburg or moscow
probably st petersburg or both
it's going to be intense it's going to
be a lot of panic attacks i feel
and your russian is okay
no you can't talk russian ukraine or
it's like they get offended yeah but
then you also want to go to russia
yeah i don't know
for me there's several people in russia
i want an interview on a podcast
okay so one one of them is uh guerrilla
promon which is a mathematician
and the other person is putin you know
my favorite food and story is
do you know this no when he had merkel
with him do you know this story no
merkel's scared of dogs like petrified
of dogs so he brings in his like
like like uh black lab it's a labrador
it's like the sweetest animal
and it's all over her and there's
pictures and she's sitting like this and
she's terrified and he's like what's
wrong angela
it's just completely trolling her yeah
he's aware of the sort of uh the
narrative around him
yeah and then he plays with it yes he
enjoys it it's a very russian thing
my friend wanted to film about me he
goes i realize you guys aren't like us
at all you just like like
look at us and then i started telling
him stories about the upbringing
and he's like oh my god and as i'm
telling them like wow this stuff is
really crazy like what
how we are wired who's the we your
friend is the russian the friends
american i'm saying the way russians are
brought up
and the way maybe i don't think it was
just my family i bet you had similar
things like
here's an example i i was i had a buddy
staying with me he had a problem with
his roommate so he crashed in my place
fine
i went to the gym and i come back
and he goes oh there was and my
apartment buildings has four four
apartments so it's not like a huge thing
he goes oh there was someone knocking at
your door
so you know i i told him blah blah and
and
for me and i wonder if you're the same
way
if i'm at someone's house that's not my
own and someone knocks on the door
i wouldn't even think to answer it like
if i had an apple here might be i'd eat
it i'd
cut it whatever i'm not gonna it just
doesn't enter my head to smash into my
face
the the thought of answering the door if
it's not my house
it would never enter my head would it
enter your head no but why but he's an
american so someone's at the door he
goes and opens it even though it's not
his house
i would never do that i would never
think to do that
that is so strange you pick some very
obscure thing to
delineate americans i don't think that's
obscure because i think it speaks to how
we perceive strangers
with americans everyone's friendly and
with us it's like no no
like you have that moat and i think
that's a that
percolates into many different aspects
of how we relate to people and i had to
undo a lot of that that's true
you're right there's uh the relationship
i formed there were in russia
or very deep yeah close and then there's
the strangers the other
that you don't trust by default it takes
a long time to go over the moat
of trust for a long time until recently
whenever i said anything to anyone my
brain
ran a scan that said if this person
turns on you
would this can they use this against you
and i would do everything i said with
strangers
and after a while it's like you know
what maybe they will but i'm strong
enough to take it but
this is not how americans think well
here's another one let me ask you this
sorry i'm taking over the interview
people asked about like
advice for work right like i had this
there was this party i went to and
basically everyone had their own
problems and everyone else gave their
advice right
and someone was having a problem with
the co-worker and the advice these
dupoy americans gave them is oh sit down
and have a talk with them
and to me this is like the last case
last
resort like first you have to see what
you can without showing your hand
sharing your vulnerability only when
everything hasn't worked out or you're
like all right let me sit down with you
and try to have it out with you probably
but for them the first thing is like sit
down and be like oh you're causing me
problems and blah blah
so i perceive that right away as a
threat that this person sees an
antagonism between us and also as a
weakness that i'm getting to them
so my reaction isn't um how do i make it
better my reaction is to reinforce
my position and see what i can to
marginalize
them usually i haven't worked in a
corporate setting in a long time
but it's not i don't approach it the way
an american would like i'm glad you came
and talked to me now i probably would
because it's gonna be a friend
so you attribute that to the russian
upbringing as opposed to you have deep
uh psychological issues i think those
are synonymous
wait am i would you think differently
maybe a few years ago
um i don't know i i i think you lost me
at the
because you kind of said that you're
kind of implying you have a deep
distrust of the world
like the world does i think the default
setting would be distrust yeah
but
i would put it differently is i almost
ignore the rest of the i don't even
acknowledge it i just uh savor
i save my love and trust for the small
circle of people
i agree but when that person is being
confrontational or as they perceive it
as being open
now there's a situation how do you how
would you handle that
like like a cold wind blows he's just
kind of like yeah but it's not like
this is an opportunity for us to work
out our differences it's a cold wind
it's not a hug that's my point
you're so suspicious what it really is
is a cold wind
i'm so inhumane to be scared of it's a
cold wind
person but it's not this is great
but it's not a source of like i'm not
suspicious of
like i'm not uh anxious i would say or
like living in fear of the rest of the
world
anymore oh i agree but you're not
receptive to that person right
that's all i'm saying and they are got
it so speaking of which
let's talk about love yes which requires
to be
receptive of the world yes of strangers
i agreed
how do we put more love out there in the
world
especially on the internet one mechanism
i have found to
um increase love and that's a word that
has many meanings and is
you know used in a very intense sense
and it's used in a very loose sense
can you try to define love sure love is
a strong sense of attraction
toward a another person entity
or place that causes one
to tend to react in a disproportionately
positive manner that's off the top of my
head disproportionately
yes so for example if why not
proportionally
because like if you're someone's about
to who you love
is about to get harmed you're moving
heaven and earth
to make sure uh or like a book you love
you know like i love this book like
you're going through the fire to try to
save it
whereas if it's a book you really like
it's like huh i'll get another one
i don't you know and a book's a kind of
a loose example but
so you're going with the love that's
like you're saving for just a few people
almost like romantically like love for a
close family but it's also
just love to even the broader like the
kind of
love you can put out to people on the
internet which is like just kindness
sure i would say in that case it's
important to make them feel
seen and validated
and i try to do this when people who i
have come to know on the internet and
there's a lot
i try to do that as much as possible
because i don't
think it's valid how on social media and
i do this a lot myself but not towards
everyone
it's just there to be aggressive and
antagonistic
you should be antagonistic towards bad
people and that's fine
but at the same time there's lots of
great people and
especially with my audience and i would
bet disproportionately with yours
there's a lot of people who are because
of their psychology and intelligence
are going to be much more isolated
socially than they should
and if i and i've heard from many of
them and if i'm the person who makes
them feel oh
i'm not crazy it's everyone else around
me who is just basic
uh the fact that i can be that person
which i didn't have at their age
to me is incredibly reaffirming you mean
a source of love but i mean love in the
sense of like
you know you care about this person and
you want good things for them not in a
kind of romantic way but i mean you're
using in
a broad sense now yeah but you're also a
person who kind of
i mean uh attacks
this power structures in the world by
mocking them
yes effectively yes and uh
love i would say requires you to be
non-witty and simple and fragile
which i see it as like the opposite of
what trolls do
trolls are if i if there is
someone coming after what i love
there's two mechanisms right at least
two
i go up and i'm fighting them and in
which case
you bring in if you are getting hurt and
i fight even if you win the knife fight
or if you disarm them and you preclude
the possibility of a fight
and you drive them off or render them
powerless you
can you keep your person intact as
yourself
and you also protect your values so how
do you render them powerless
as you just said by mocking them one of
the most effective mechanisms for those
in power
we're much closer to brave new world
than 1984. the people who are dominant
and in power aren't there because of the
threat of
you know the gulag or prison they're
there because of social pressures look
at the masks i was on the subway not
that long ago in new york city
um no one cared who i was until i put
out the mask i was in the subway that
long in new york city there was and i
put this on my instagram i've told this
story before
there was an asian dude in his early 30s
he was like in western clothes it's not
like he had a
rickshaw or something an older man in
his 50s
stood up over him on the subway screamed
at him
said go back where you came from you're
disgusting i'm going to get sick
if you think this guy is a vector of
disease which is your prerogative why
are you coming close to him why are you
getting in his face
and what that was sorry so it was
because
he was asian it was both it was
the not having a mask gave him the
permission
to act like a despicable aggressive
person toward him right
and the point being a lot of these
mechanisms for social control are
outsourced
to low-quality people because this is
their one chance to assert dominance and
status over somebody else
so the best way to defuse that isn't
with weaponry or fighting
it's through mockery because all of a
sudden their claims to authority are
effectively destroyed
so let me push back on that what about
fighting that with
with love with um
patience and like kindness towards them
i i don't think kindness
is i think that would be uh a mismatch
and inappropriate
there's superman is batman okay and
superman's job is to help the good
people and batman's job is to hurt the
bad people
and i will always be on the batman side
than the superman side
both work the silly tight costumes one
has
pointy ears both are ridiculous so it's
uh it was a billionaire who gets
you know he's swimming in trim which one
is the best batman
okay i'm uh i'm undereducated on um
okay on the superhero movies i apologize
okay but
but you're just saying you your
predisposition is to be on the batman
side is to uh fighting
the bad guys yeah and that's what i'm
good at
that's what you're good at but just to
play devil's advocate or actually in
this case i am the devil because that's
what i usually
do watch the devil here the other angels
advocate exactly
to be the to be the angel advocate yeah
it's like
i feel like mockery is
um is a as a path towards escalation of
conflict
yes in many ways yes so you're not
i mean it's kind of like guerrilla
warfare
it means you're not going to win i am
winning we're all winning
we're winning on a daily this is my next
book we're winning we've won before i'm
not joking
the net the topic of the next book yes
is the white pill
the white pill is that we're gonna we
are winning
the most horrible people are being
rendered into laughing stocks on a daily
basis social media this is glorious
i so disagree with you i disagree with
you because there's side effects that
are
very destructive it feels like you're
winning but
we're completely destroying the
possibility of
having um like a cohesive society that's
called oncology
what's that mean curing cancer no your
concept of a cohesive society
is in fact a society based on oppression
and not allowing individuals to live
their personal freedom
oh so your your utopian view of this
you're the utopian you're saying
cohesive society
i'm saying i don't need that i'm saying
there's going to be conflict right
there's going to be conflict
you and i are disagreeing right now
that's not cohesive doesn't mean we like
each other less doesn't mean we respect
each other less
cohesive doesn't it it's just a
euphemism for like everyone's submitting
to what i want
no i mean cohesive could could uh could
be that it could be
um it could be like enforced with
violence all that kind of stuff sort of
the uh the libertarian view of the world
but it could just be
being respectful and kind of each other
and kind towards each other and loving
towards each other
i mean that's what i mean by cohesive so
when people say free
it's it's funny like freedom is a funny
thing because
freedom can be painful to a lot of
people
it's it's all matters how you define it
how you implement it how it actually
looks like
sure and i'm just saying it feels like
the mockery of the powerful
leads to further and further the
divisions it's like
it's turning life into a game
to where it's always you're playing
you you're creating these different
little tribes and groups
and you're constantly
uh fighting the groups that become a
little bit more powerful
by undercutting them through guerrilla
warfare kind of thing
and that's what the internet becomes is
everyone's just mocking each other
and then certain groups become more and
more powerful and then
they start fighting each other and into
basic they they form
groups of ideologies and they start
fighting each other in the internet
where the result is it doesn't feel like
the common humanity is highlighted it
doesn't feel like
that's a path of progress
now like when i say cohesive i don't
mean like
everybody has to be you know enforcing
equality all those kinds of ideas
i just mean like not being so divisive
that's like so it's going back to the
original question of like
how do we put more love out in the world
than the internet i i want
divisiveness oh you see you think that
this is that's that goal it's very
interesting it's the goal
so you we started this conversation with
you talking about you have love for that
small group
uh i think we both would agree to have a
bigger group be better especially if
that love comes from a sincere place
um i think our country specific i wrote
an article about this four years ago
that it's time to
disunite the states and to secede this
country has been held together with at
least two separate cultures
with thumbtacks and string for over 20
years uh there's an enormous amount of
contempt
from one group toward another this
contempt comes from sincere place
they do not share each other's values
there's absolutely no reason
just like any unhealthy relationship
where you can't say you know what it's
not working out
i want to go my own way and live my
happiness
and i genuinely want you to go your way
live your happiness if i'm wrong prove
me wrong
i'll learn from you and and take lessons
and vice versa
but the fact that we all have to be in
the same house together is not coherent
and that's not love that is the path
towards friction and tension especially
do you think there's
concrete groups like is it as simple as
the two groups of blue and red
no it's it's it's it's also very fluid
because you and i
are allied as jewish people as russians
as males
as podcasters uh you're an academic i'm
not there so there's
there we're different but we each are a
venn diagram
even within ourselves and i can talk to
you about politics and then we can talk
about russia stuff and then you could
talk about
your your work which i don't know
anything about so that would be where
you're way up here in our way down here
so there's lots every relationship with
just between individuals
there's it's very dynamic so how do we
succeed like how do we form individual
states
sure there's a little bit more cohesion
sure
the and voluntary cohesion so the first
step is to
uh um eliminate and the concept of
political authority as legitimate
and to uh denigrate and humiliate those
who would put themselves in a position
in which they are
there to tell you how to live your life
from any semblance of
validity and that's starting to happen
um if you look at what they had with the
lockdowns cuomo and de blasio new york
uh we have i was uh tired a couple weeks
ago
and i said to my friend oh just click
maybe i've covered and he goes it's not
possible like what do you mean
and he goes we haven't had any deaths in
like two months
and there's only 100 cases a day for
like two months and i go
you're exaggerating because everything
was still closed and i looked at the
numbers and he wasn't exaggerating
and there's no greater american dream to
me
than an immigrant family comes to the
states forms their own little business
maybe mom's a good cook it's a
restaurant dry cleaner fruit stand
and those people aren't going to have a
lot of money those are the first ones
who lost their
companies because of these lockdowns
they cuomo who's the governor of new
york opened up the gyms he said you're
clear to open up
de blasio said and we don't have enough
inspectors you're gonna have to wait
another couple of weeks
uh to regard that as anything other than
literally criminal
is something that i am having a hard and
harder time
wrapping my head around you said i mean
that's something i'm deeply worried
about as well which is
like thousands it's actually millions
of dreams being crushed that amer
american dream of starting a business of
running a business
what about all the young people who you
and i have in our audiences
who are socially isolated at best and
now they can't leave their homes
uh isolation and ostracism are things
that are very well studied in psychology
these have extreme consequences i read a
book called ostracism
and this wasn't scientific but basically
the author was a psychiatrist at college
whatever
and he had one of his colleagues they
did an experiment let's for a week
you ostracized me completely we know
it's an and he goes
even knowing it's the experiment the
fact that he wouldn't make eye contact
with me and the fact that he ignored me
had an extreme emotional impact on me
knowing full well this is purely for
experimental purposes now you multiply
that by all these p
the suicide the number of kids were
thinking about suicide was through the
roof
during all this uh and my point is until
these people
it's gonna i would predict like 2024
that's where we're going to have to
start having conversations about what
personal consequences have to be done
for these people because until then
they're going to do the same thing
so you think there's going to be
society-wide consequences of this that
we're going to see like ripple effects
because of the social isolation i i know
i mean we also need to talk about
consequences or cuomo de blasio
because if politicians respond to
incentives and the incentives are there
for them to be extremely conservative
because if you have to choose as cuomo
said a press conference between
a thousand people dying and a thousand
people losing their business it's not a
hard choice and he's right
but at a certain point it's like all
right you're losing
both you're losing not losing the you're
making these decisions
um and not having consequences for it
and you're going to do it again the next
time
so we need to make sure you're you're a
little scared okay and i don't know what
that would mean
but you're laying this
problem this this incompetence i don't
think it's incompetence i think it's
very competent
i think they're just they're jobs yes
but
what but you're laying it not at the the
hands of the individuals but the
structure of the
of government it's both yes
how would we deal with it better without
centralized control
well we didn't really have centralized
control because every country and every
state you know handled it in a different
mechanism but a city has centralized
control just yeah
right i mean no that's not true so cuomo
de blasio they had a lot of
disagreements over this
over the months and this was actually a
source of great interest and tension
um de blasio wanted at one point was
talking about like quarantining people
in their homes
home was like you're crazy uh something
same thing with the schools same thing
with the gyms
um and there are other such uh examples
but the point being this was an
emergency this is world war one
i talked about some timpool show um was
very dangerous
because it gave a lot of evil people
some very useful information about what
the country put up with
and what they can get away with under
wartime and this set the model for
things like the new deal and the other
things of that nature
it is undeniable you're a scientist so
you understand this perfectly well
um that this lockdown gave some very
nefarious people
some very valid data about how much
people will put up with
uh under uh pressures from the state
so fundamentally what is the problem
with the state that's existence
okay well but but uh uh to play angel's
advocate again
you know government is the people
so come on you don't you you you're do
you do you really think this
at as best i think it's possible to have
represent representation
can you imagine if you have an attorney
you're like oh you can't have the
attorney you want you're gonna have this
guy who you absolutely hate who you
share no values with why
because he drives i mean leaders
political leaders and
political representation drive the
discourse like we you know
uh the majority of people voted for him
or whatever
however however he defined that and
now we get to have a discussion well
was this the right choice and then we
get to make that choice again in four
years and so on
first of all the fact that i have to be
under the thumb of somebody four years
makes no sense there's no other
relationship that's like this including
a marriage
you can leave any other relationship at
any time number one
number two is it always impeach but they
did that part of it i'm
in just saying yeah that there's yeah
the mechanisms
are uh flawed in many ways yeah yeah
right and and
so that's number one number two is it
doesn't make sense
that if i don't want someone to
represent me
that because that person is popular that
they are now in a position to so having
uh
um representation and and having
citizenship based on
geography is a pre line technology
in a post-cell phone world there's no
reason why
i have to just because we're physically
in between two oceans
we all have to be represented by the
same people whereas i can very easily
have
my security be under someone and switch
it as easily as cell phone
providers so okay but it doesn't have to
be geographical it can be ideas
sure i mean this country represents a
certain set of ideas yes it does it
started out geographically
it still it was just it started off as
ideas as well but like there's a it's
it was intricately i mean that's the way
humans are there's
i mean there was no internet so
it was you were geographically in the
same location and you signed a bunch of
documents and then you kind of debated
and you
wrote a bunch of stuff and then you
agreed on it
okay so you understand that no one
signed these documents and no one agreed
to it
as lysandra spooner pointed out over 150
years ago
the constitution or the social contract
if anything
is only binding to the signatories and
even then they're all long dead
uh so it's it's this fallacy that
somehow because i'm in a physical place
i have agreed even though i'm screaming
to you a face that i don't agree
to be um subordinate to uh some
imaginary invisible monster that was
created 250 years ago
and this idea of like if you don't like
it you have to move that's not what
freedom means
freedom means i do what i want not what
you want so if you don't like it
you move okay just to put some i don't
like words
and terms one one one zero one one one
zero yeah exactly is that what your
language is it is
i'm translating it all in real time but
uh
would you call the kind of ideas that
uh you're advocating for and we're
talking about anarchy yes anarchism yes
okay so let's get into it can you can
you try to
paint the utopia that
an anarchist worldview dreams about
the only people who describe anarchism
as utopia are its critics
if i told you right now and i wish i
could say this factually that i have a
cure for cancer
that would not make us a utopia that
would still probably be expensive
we would still have many other diseases
however we would be fundamentally
healthier happier and better off all
of us than democracy so that democracy
sorry i jump back from the cancer no
that democracy or
government so it's only curing one major
major life-threatening problem but in no
sense
is it a utopia so what can we try to uh
answer this question same question many
times which is
what exactly is the problem with
democracy the problem with democracy is
that those who need leaders are not
qualified to choose them
those who need leaders are not qualified
to choose them so that's the central
problem of democracy not all of us need
leaders
right
what does it mean to need a leader are
you saying like people who are
actually like free thinkers don't need
leaders kind of thing
sure that's but like take a wave but
like you don't
okay so do you acknowledge that there's
some
value in authority
in different subjects so what what that
means is i don't mean an authority
somebody who's in control of you
but you're doing the definition switch
because i am i am you're right you're
right it's unfair okay those those bad
but that's what they do that's their
trick yeah and it's this is one of the
useful things by the way less is total
sidebar
if people ask me for advice i always
tell them if you're going to raise your
kids raise them bilingual
because i was trilingual by the time i
was six and that teaches you to think in
concepts
whereas if you only know one language
you fall for things like this because
using authority in the sense of a
policeman
and someone is an authority in physics
it's the same word conceptually they're
extremely different
but if you're only thinking in one
language your brain is going to equate
the two and that's a trap that people
who only speak one language have
for sure but even if you know multiple
languages you can still use the trick of
using your c or convenience
yeah absolutely to manipulate the
conversation you weren't trying to do
that but you
you fell in i accidentally did it yeah
right we all tend to do that if you only
speak one language and think of one
language
but if i guess let me rephrase it i
are you against do you acknowledge the
value
of like offloading your own
effort about a particular thing to
somebody else
absolutely like an accountant a lawyer a
doctor
absolute a chef infinite isn't that
ultimately what
a democracy is broadly defined like
you're basically electing a bunch of
authorities using the word you in two
senses
using the word you meaning me as an
individual now using you as a mass
yes as a math not use an individual so i
have i would absolutely want someone to
provide for my security i would
absolutely want someone to negotiate
with me for foreign power or something
like that
that does not mean it has to be
predicated and what lots of other people
who i do not know and if i do know them
probably would not respect
think about it's of no moral relevance
to me
nor eye to them so do you think this
kind of there could be
a bunch of humans that behave kind of
like
ants in a distributed way there could be
an emergent behavior in them that
results in a stable society like
isn't that the hope with anarchy is like
without
an overarching uh but answer
i i mean answer the worst example here
because ants have a very firm authority
the queen yeah and they're all they're
all drones they're all clones of each
other
yeah but so if you forget the queen
their behavior they're all
well from your perspective from your
human intelligence perspective but from
their perspective they'll probably see
each other as a bunch of individuals no
they don't
ants are very big on altruism in the
sense of self-sacrifice
they do not think the individual matters
they routinely
kill themselves for the sake of the hive
in the community but they
see that's from the outside perspective
from the individual perspective of the
individual they probably
they they don't see it as altruism
right but they they view and they're
right because the aunt's life is very
ephemeral
and cheap that it's more important to
continue this
mass population that that one individual
ant live
like bees are another even better
example the honey bee when they sting
they only
sting once and they die and they do it
gladly because it's like okay
this community is much more important
than me and they're right
yeah okay so fine let's forget i'm being
pedantic but it's important i think i'm
not
just being for the sake of being fed but
there's something beautiful that
i won't argue about because i do there's
an interesting point there about
individualism of
ants i do think they're more individual
but like
let's let's give your view of ants that
they're it's their communists okay
let's go with the communist view of ants
okay yeah uh
but there's still a beautiful emergent
thing which is like
they can function as a as a society and
without i would say centralized control
so is that the hope for anarchy it's
like you just throw a bunch of people
that voluntarily want to be in the same
place
under the same set of ideas and they
kind of like
the doctors emerge the police officers
emerge
the uh the different necessary
structures of a functional society
emerge
do you know what the most beautiful
example of anarchism is
that is just beyond beautiful when you
stop to think about it
i'm not being tongue-in-cheek language
there's infinite languages language the
things that language can be used for
are bring tears to people's eyes quite
literally
it's also used for basic things no one
is forcing us
we speak two languages each at least no
one's forcing us to use english
no one's forcing us to use this dialect
of english uh
it's a way and and despite there being
so many different languages
uh lingua franca emerge you know people
the language that everyone is in latin
even in north korea they refer to the
fish and the different animals by the
latin
scientific uh no one decided this sure
there's an organization
that sets a binomial nomenclature but
there's no gun to anyone's head
referring to uh seamoth as a pegasus
species
and when you think about how amazing
language is
and someone other context would say like
well you you need to have a world
government
and they're deciding which is the verbs
and you have to have an official
definition
and an official dictionary and none of
that happened
and i think anyone even if they don't
agree with my politics or my worldview
cannot deny that the creation of
language is
one of humanity's most miraculous
beautiful achievements
absolutely so there there you go there's
one system where
a kind of anarchy can result in
in beauty stability like sufficient
stability and yet
dynamic flexibility to adjust it and so
on
and the internet helps it you get some
something like urban dictionary which
which starts creating absurd both humor
and
wit but also language and syntax and
jargon immediately you size people up
if you use if you say vertebral i know
you're a doctor because that's how they
pronounce it the the spinal column
uh i'm sure in your field there's
certain jargon right away you can know
if this person's one of us or not
i mean it's infinite i mean i don't need
to tell you and it's emojis
too yes there's so much there to study
with language it's fascinating but
do you think this applies to human life
the
the meat space the physical space yes so
these there's that kind of beauty can
emerge without
uh without writing stuff on paper
without laws you could have rules you
don't need
you don't have to be laws so enforced by
violence
like that's what what's a law a law is
something that is unchosen
a rule is something if i go to my pool
and i i sign up to remember a pool
on the wall lists certain things it's
like you know certain number of people
in the pool
no peeing in here good luck enforcing
that one um and so on and so forth well
that's the problem
aren't you afraid that people are gonna
pee in the pool that's not as
my biggest concern is mass incarceration
as the fact that the police can steal
more money than burglars can
the fact that innocent people can be
killed with no consequences
the fact that war can be waged and with
no
uh consequences for those who waged it
the fact that so many
men and women are being murdered
overseas and here and the people who are
guiding these are regarded as heroic
so you think there might that in an
anarchist system
there's a possibility of have of having
less wars and less what would you say
corruption
and uh less abuse of power let's talk
yes and let's talk about corruption
because and i made this point on rogan
you and i
again this the russian background we
realize
that when it comes to corruption
american is very naive
corruption they think is oh i got my
brother a job and he's getting money on
the table
that's not when we're talking about like
state corruption
things that are done in totalitarian
states and even to some extent in
america like jeffrey epstein julian
maxwell
things that stalin did things that
hitler did you know when the cia was
torturing people at gitmo
they had to borrow kgb manuals because
they didn't know how to torture
correctly because they never thought of
these things
we it's very hard for us to get into the
mindset of someone who's like a child
predator
someone who uh let me give you an
example from my forthcoming book there
was a guy who was the head of ukraine
in the 30s i forget his name now these
old soviets they were tough
i mean they pride stalin means steel you
know they pride themselves in their
cruelty
and how strong they were and this was
the purge you know stalin is trying to
you know killing lots of people left and
right
and his henchman beria had the quote
uh find me the man i'll find you the
crime you know they would accuse someone
and they would torture him
until he talked and confessed and then
he had to turn people in
and they took this guy in like beginning
the year i think it's 36 38 he was had
ukraine
by may he's arrested and they take him
to the le blanca the basement in the red
square where they're torturing people
and they put they did the works on him
and he was a good soviet he stood up
and he who knows what they did to him he
didn't talk
so they said okay one moment they
brought his teenage daughter in
raped her in front of him he talked so
when we talk about corruption we
would never in a million years think of
this that's not how our minds work
um so when you're talking about states
and people
where you don't have ease of exit
where you are forced to be under the
auspices of an organization
creating a monopoly that leads to
in extreme cases but in not as extreme
cases
really uh nefarious outcomes whereas
if you have the option to leave as a
client or customer
that would have a strongly limiting
effect
on uh how a business and what it can get
away with so
but don't you think maybe i don't know
who the right example is whether it's
stalin
i think hitler might be the better
example of
don't you think or jeffrey epstein
perhaps
don't you think people who are evil will
will find ways to manipulate human
nature
to attain power no matter the system
yes and like the the corollary question
is
do you think those people can get more
power
in um in the democracy in a you know
in when there's a government already in
place they can it's easily they get more
power more dangerous they have a
government place
first of all sociopaths are known for
their charm and for their
warmth here's the two situations
in in a free society i'm a sociopath i'm
an evil person
i'm the head of macy's in a state
society i'm an evil person i'm a
sociopath i'm the head of the us
government
which of these are you more concerned
with it's like night and day
so you would have far more decentralized
military you would have far more
decentralized
security forces and they would be much
more subject to feedback from the market
if you have an issue with macy's or any
store with a sweater
look at that transaction if you have an
issue with the state
to you hiring a lawyer costs more than a
surgeon to even
access the mechanism for dispute is
going to be exorbitant and price poor
people out of the market for um
conflict resolution immediately so right
away you have something that's extremely
regressive and even though this is
touted as some great equalizer it's
quite the opposite
so in current society there's a deep
suspicion of governments and states
they're not that's not really like just
your example of macy's i mean
don't you think a hitler could rise to
be at the top
of a social network like twitter and
facebook okay let's suppose hitler ran
twitter
okay let's take this thought experiment
seriously
literally what could he do so all the
only tweets are gonna be about how much
the jews suck
right okay fine okay all the cool people
are leaving
there could be some compelling like you
said
um evil people are charming there could
be some compelling narratives that could
be with conspiracy theories
uh untruths that could be spread
like propaganda every criticism of
anarchism
is in fact a description well the
strongest criticisms of anarchism are in
fact description of the status quo
your concern is under anarchism
propaganda would spread and people would
be taught the wrong ideas unlike the
status quo
that's not even a criticism of anarchism
i'm not actually criticizing
it's an open question of
it's an open question of in which system
will
human nature thrive be
be able to thrive more and in in which
system would the evils
that arise in human nature would be more
easily suppressable
there that's that's the question it's a
scientific experiment and i'm asking
only from our perspective
of the fact that we've tried democracy
quite a bit recently and we i don't
maybe you can correct me we haven't yet
seriously tried anarchy in a large scale
well we don't need to try to
so anarchy isn't like a country right
it's like it's you can't
i'm not it's like saying well if anarchy
works how can we've never had an
anarchist government right
so anarchism is a relationship and
language is an example of this it's a
worldwide
and our system you and i have an
anarchist relationship there's almost no
circumstances we'd be calling the police
on each other i mean it's i'm asking the
same question in
a bunch of different directions out of
born out of my curiosity
is why is anarchy going to be
better at preventing the darker sides of
human nature which
presumably your criticism of government
because it's this because of
decentralization
so the darker side of human nature is an
extreme concern
anyone who says it's going to go away is
absurd
and fallacious i think that's a
non-starter when people say that
everyone's going to be good human beings
are basically animals we're capable of
great
beauty and kindness we're capable of
just complete
cruel and what we would call inhumanity
but we see it on a daily basis even
today
uh and what's interesting is the
corporate press
won't even tell you the darkest aspects
because that's too upsetting to people
so they'll tell you about atrocities and
horrors but only to a point
um and then when you actually do the
homework you're like oh it's so much
worse than
like that thing about stalin right so we
know in a broad
sense that stalin was a dictator we know
that he killed a lot of people but it
takes work
to learn about the hall of demore it
takes work to learn about what those
literal tortures were and that this is
the person who later
fdr and harry truman were shaking hands
with and taking photos with and
was being sold to us as uncle joe you
know he's just like you and me
um so when you have a decentralized
information network as opposed to having
three
media networks it is a lot easier for
information
that doesn't fit what would be the
corporate america narrative
to reach uh the populations and it would
be more effective
for democracy because they're in a much
better position to be informed now
you're right it also means well if
everyone has a mic that means every
crazy person
and with their wacky views and at a
certain point yeah it has to become
then there's another level which is then
the people have to be self-enforcing
and and you see that on social media all
the time when someone says this the
other person jumps in
you think but isn't social media a good
example of this like
so you think ultimately without
centralized control
you can have stability like
what about the mob outrage and the mob
rule the
the power of the mobs that that emerge
power of the mob is
is a very uh serious concern uh gustav
labon
wrote a book in the 1890s called the
crowd and this was one of the most
important books i've written because it
influenced both
mussolini and hitler and stalin and they
all talked about it and he made the
point
that under crowd psychology human
lynching is another example this
none of those individuals or very few
would ever
dream of doing these acts but when
they're all together
and you lose that sense of self you
become the ant and you lose that sense
of individually
you're capable of doing things that like
in another context you'd be like
i should kill myself i'm a monster so
you're worried about that but like
is in the mob doesn't the mob have more
power under anarchy
no the mob has much less power on
anarchy because under anarchism every
individual
is fully empowered you wouldn't have uh
um
uh gun restrictions you would have
people creating communities based on
shared values
they would be much more collegial they'd
be much more kind
as opposed to when you're forcing people
to be together in a polity
when they don't have things in common
that is again like having a bad roommate
if you're forced to look at jails if
you're forced to be
in locked in a room with someone even if
you at first like them
after a while you're going to start to
hate them and that leads to very
nefarious consequences
so as an anarchist what do you do in a
society like this
thrive i think i'm doing okay
[Laughter]
i mean i mean there's an election coming
up there's uh as as you talk
uh you're welcome is one of the
15 shows that you host
it's
you talk about libertarianism a little
bit yeah i mean
is there some practical
political direction like in terms of we
as a society should
should go i don't mean we as a nation i
mean we as a collective of people should
go
to uh to make a better world from an
anarchist point of view sure
uh i think politics is the enemy
uh and anything i need to find politics
so anything that lessens its sway on
people
anything that delegitimizes it is good
i wrote an article a few years ago about
how wonderful it is that
trump is regarded as such a buffoon
because it's very very useful
to have a commander-in-chief who's
regarded as a clown
because it's going to take a lot to get
him to convince your kids to go overseas
and start killing people and making
widows and orphans
as well as those kids coming home in
caskets whereas if someone is regarded
with prestige
and they're like oh we need to send your
kid overseas oh absolutely
i mean this guy's great so that is a
very healthy thing
where people are skeptical of the state
but there's a lot of people
that uh regard him as
as one of the greatest leaders we've
ever had yeah
dinesh d'souza he's another lincoln i
when you talk shit about trump or talk
shit about biden
i think i'm trying to find a line to
walk where you they don't immediately
put you into the
this person has trump derangement
syndrome or they have
the other the alternative to that i i'm
more than happy
when people are preemptively dismissing
me because then i don't have to waste
time engaging with them because those
people will be of no use to me
when i was on tim pool recently tim
poole's show uh tim poole's known for
his little
like hat i got a propeller beanie
motorized and it was just spinning the
whole
two hours like the 1950s thing the point
being i wore it
because there's lots of people who would
say i can't take seriously someone who
wears a hat like that
and my point being if you are the kind
of person who takes your cues
based on someone's wardrobe as opposed
to the content of your ideas
you're of no use to me as an ally so i'd
be more than happy you preemptively
abort rather than
waste our breath this is the deep this
is a very very deep thing that you and i
disagree on which is
this is goes to the trolling versus the
love
is i believe that person instinctually
dismisses you
on the very basic surface level yes but
deep down
there actually there's a wealth of a
human being
that seeks the connection to seeks to
understand
deeply to connect with other humans that
we should speak to
i think you and i completely disagree
see
you're saying i'm saying there's no mind
there literally
okay so let's i naturally i think that
majority
so i naturally think the majority of
people are
have the capacity to be thoughtful
intelligent and um
you know learn about ideas ideas that
they
instinctually based on their own likes
current inner circle disagree with and
learn to understand
to empathize with the other like i and
in the current
climate there's a divisiveness that
discourages that and
that's where i see the value of love of
of encouraging people to to uh
to strip away that surface instinctual
response based on the thing they've been
taught based on the things they listen
to to actually think deeply
have you ever had uh gone to cvs or
dwayne reed
and your bill how much you owe them is
six dollars
and you give them a ten dollar bill in a
single and watch the look on their face
you watch them void their bowels and
panic because you give them eleven
dollars on a six dollar bill
this is not a mind capable or interested
in thoughts and ideas learning
no you're talking about the first moment
of uh
a for a first moment where there's an
opportunity to think
they are desperate to avoid it
no they're just it's and incapable of it
i
i just it's uh they're they have these
same exact experiences i have every
single day
when i know it's time for me to go on on
a run of five miles
or six miles or ten miles i'm desperate
to avoid it
and at the same time i know i have the
capacity to do it
and i'm deeply fulfilled when i do do it
when i do overcome that challenge
you are one of the great minds of our
generation you are telling me that any
of these people can do
anything close to the work you do not in
artificial intelligence but
in in inability to be compassionate
towards other people's ideas like
understand them enough to be able
passion requires a certain baseline of
intelligence
because you have to perceive other
people as being different but of value
yeah exactly that's a sophisticated
mindset i think i think most people are
are capable of it you don't think so no
and nor are they interested in it
but in that kind of if you don't believe
they're
capable of it how can anarchy be stable
uh if you have a farm there's one farmer
and 50 cows
it's very stable you're just not you're
not asking the cows
where to force or where to farm things
yeah but the cows aren't intelligent
enough to do damage
cows cows certainly bulls because they
could do a lot of damage they could
trample things they could attack you
the cows are like how much they weigh
like four thousand pounds can you
connect the analogy then because like
sure you can't expect yeah saying a cow
is a cow
isn't a slur it's not saying you hate
cows cows or even let's say
the example i always use with good
reason is dogs okay
uh i always say to study how human
beings operate watch caesar milan
because human beings and dogs have
co-evolved our minds have
both evolved in parallel tracks to
communicate with each other dogs are
can be vicious dogs for the most part
are great
wonderful but you can't expect the dog
to understand certain concepts it's not
an ins and out most people are offended
are you saying like a dog
if you're a dog person like i am this is
actually a huge compliment most dogs are
better than most people
um but to get the idea that
this is something that is basically your
peer
is nonsensical now of course this sounds
arrogant and elitist and so on and so
forth
and i'm perfectly happy with that but it
is very hard
to persuade me or anyone that if you
walk george carlin has that joke think
how smart the average person is then
realize 50
of people are dumber than that if you
walk around and see who's out there
these people are very kind
they are of value they they deserve to
be treated
with respect they deserve to be secure
in their person they deserve to feel
safe and to have love but
the expectation that they should have
any sort of semblance of power over
me in my life is as nonsensical as
asking lassie to be my accountant
so but that goes to power that not to uh
the ability the capacity to be
empathetic compassionate intelligent
what if i were to try to prove you wrong
that's a good question okay what would
what would
what would you be impressed by about
society
well how would i show it to you that's a
good question how would you show it to
me because i think something has to be
falsifiable if you're going to make a
claim right
so what would it what would it
because we both made claims that are a
kind of
our own like interpretation based on our
interaction
like when i open twitter everyone seems
to say why do you only follow one person
who do you follow
who's the one person you follow uh stoic
emperor i i follow a lot of people i
have a script i have a script
this is real love it's not ironic love i
love
watching it and i'm sure you do too i
love watching a quality mind at work
because when someone has a quality of
mind they're often not self-aware i
catch this on myself
of how it operates and then when other
people see it they're like oh my god
this is so beautiful because there's
such an innocence to it
yeah but like when i open twitter
i'm energized there's a lot of love on
twitter people say like
i love to i agree i have you don't think
i have a lot of love on twitter
my fans pay my rent i mean i don't know
your
experience of twitter but when i look at
your which is a fundamentally different
thing
i'm saying my experience from the so
maybe you can tell me what your
experience is like as a human
so when i observe your twitter i
think i i wouldn't call it
love i would call it
fun yes and because of that
that's a different kind of like love
emerges from that
because people kind of learn that we're
having this is like game night
like yes uh you know we're we can talk
shit a little bit we can uh and you can
you can even like pull in you can make
fun of people you can have
the crazy uncle come over that
is a huge trump supporter somebody who
hates trump and you can have a little
fun
yes i get it's a different kind of thing
i i wouldn't be able to
um uh be the you're the host
of game night yes yes so i wouldn't be
able to host that kind of game
you night your robots and you're asking
what is fun and it just starts sparkling
exactly what is fun
[Laughter]
so the robots in my life that survive
are the ones that
that don't that like survive that whole
programming uh process so they're kind
of like
they're kind of like the idiot from
dostoevsky they're very like
simple-minded
robots it's just one is moving a can
from one table to another yeah
that's game night for uh for our kin
you know what my quotes is and i i i
think about this every day and i mean it
with
every fiber of my being uh we are born
knowing that life is a magical adventure
and it takes them
years to train us to think otherwise and
i think that willy wonka approach it's a
very camu approach
it's something i believe with every
fiber of my being i try to spread that
as much as possible
i think it is very sad i'm not being
sarcastic i this
it comes off as condescending i mean it
at face value it's very sad how many
people are not receptive to that
and i think a lot of those functions how
they were raised and i
i could have very easily with my
upbringing have not
maintained that perspective and there's
a lot of
i have a lot of friends in recovery like
aa and they have an expression
um not my circus not my monkeys right
that you can't really take on other
people's problems on your own at a
certain point they have to do the work
themselves because you can only do so
much externally
and there are a lot of very damaged
people out there
and there are damaged people who revel
in being damaged
and they are damaged people who
desperately desperately desperately want
to be well
who desperately want to be happy who
desperately want to find joy
so if i can be the one and as arrogant
as it sounds i'll own it
who does give them that fun and to tell
them it doesn't have to be like you you
thought
like it could be it's going to hurt it's
gonna suck
but it's still a magical adventure and
you're gonna be okay because you've been
through worse
like that if that could be my message i
would own it all day long
and so what does adventure look like for
you because i mean it actually boils
down to i still disagree
with you i think trolling can can be
and very often as destructive for
society you
yes i want to destroy society that is
the goal
i want i want to help many people
ironically okay ironically yes
what do i do with that okay so whatever
you want do what that will
is the hall of the law um like i just
wanna so you're hosting game night and i
just wanna play monopoly i wanna play uh
what's the risk okay i want to play
these games and you're saying lots of
games
yeah i was trying to think like of a
friendlier game but they're all kind of
aggressive
uh battleship access and allies you know
fun stuff
but like uh so that's an adventure but
you're saying
that we want to destroy everything even
like
the rules of those games are are not
like you voluntarily agree to those
rules the point is
if someone comes in who's not who no one
invited to game night
and are telling you no when you play
monopoly you have to get money
when you land in free parking or you
don't yeah it's like who are you
yeah we're having our own fun and you
smell
i don't know but there's there's a an
aggressive
there's an aggression let me let me
speak to that which i think you're
picking up on
uh i had a friend named martha marcia
excuse me she ran something called
cuddle parties which people laughed at
about a lot
back in the day and the premise of the
cuddle parties everyone got together and
cuddled right and it's like ah
then you stop to think about and you
realize uh physical contact is extremely
important
and a lot of people don't have it and if
this is a mechanism of people getting
that it actually is going to have
profound positive psychological
consequences so after she explained it
i'm like okay
we laughed at this because it's weird
and now that i think about this is
wonderful
and and i asked her about like like the
tough question i go
what if guys get turned on and on their
website it even has a rule like do not
fear the erection right because it's
going to be a natural consequence
of physical proximity and the point she
goes she said this i think about us all
the time
people will take as much space as you
let them it is incumbent on each of us
to set our own boundaries we all have to
learn when to say no you're making me
uncomfortable
if someone doesn't respect your right to
have your boundary to be uncomfortable
this person is not your friend now
they can say i don't understand like why
is this okay why is that not i
let me know you better so i'm respectful
of you but if they roll their eyes and
they're like get over i'm gonna do what
i want
this person is not interested in knowing
you as a human being
okay that is the aggression it is you
have to draw those lines
i mean but that's a very positive way of
phrasing that aggression
i'm a very positive person but the
trolling
there's a destructive thing to it yes
that hurts
others yes but it's not bad people
oh i only troll as a reaction or towards
those in power
okay so maybe let's talk about trolling
a little bit because
trolling when it can maybe you can
correct me
but i've seen it become a game for
people that's enjoyable
in itself i i'm not i'm not i i disagree
with that
but that's not a good thing if you are
there just to hurt innocent people
you are a horrible human being but
doesn't trolling
too easily become that uh i don't know
about easily let me give you an example
of the
the where trolling came from the
original troll was andy kaufman
he was on the show taxi he was a stan he
was a performance artist not a standard
comedian
and this is a quintessential example of
trolling he had a character
um where he was basically like a lounge
singer he had these glasses on
and just a terrible terrible singer and
so on and so forth and he denied it was
him
and he came out and i'm blanking on the
guy's name i can't believe it tony
clifton
yeah he came out in the audience and he
goes you know
my wife died a few years ago every time
i look at my daughter sarah's eyes i
could see my wife sarah come out here
let's do a duet
and sarah's like 11. sits on his lap
they start singing duet
her voice cracks he smacks her across
the face what the hell are you doing
you're making ass in front of these
people they're they're she starts crying
the audience is booing and goes don't
bore you're just going to make her cry
more
now it ends this wasn't his daughter
it wasn't even a child was an actress
this was all set up he's exploiting
their love of children in order to force
them to be performers
that is trolling no one is actually
getting hurt
it's a humorous the twisted exchange
if you go online looking for weak people
and you are there to denigrate them just
for them being weak
or in some way inferior to you that is
the wrong
approach i am best on the counter punch
a lot of times people come to me and
they'll be like i hope you die
you're ugly you're disgusting and
there's this great quote from billy idol
which i'm going to mangle where he sums
in the effect of
i love it when people are rude to me
then i can stop pretending to be nice
then you start fights now it's a chance
for me to finish it and make an example
of this person
but that's very very different from i'm
gonna go around
and humiliate people for the sake of
doing it in my view
and i can see how one would lead to the
other yeah but that's my fundamental
concern with it so i
my dream is to put use technology
create platforms that uh increase the
amount of love in the world
and to me trolling is
doing the opposite so
like andy kaufman is brilliant so i love
obviously
it sounds like i'm a robot saying i love
humor okay
humor is good one one zero one one one
one
but but like it's
i just see like 4chan i see that
you can often see that humor quickly
turn
yeah because what happens is a lot of
low status people this is their one
mechanism
through sadism uh to feel empowered
and then they can hide behind well i'm
just joking
as this
that people do which is like they'll say
like the
shittiest thing right and then they feel
lol after
like as if i don't i don't even know
like what is happening in the dark
mind of yours because they are feeling
powerless in their lives
right and they see someone who they
perceive as higher status or more
powerful than them or even not appear
and they through their words cause a
reaction
in this person so they feel like they
are in a very literal sense making a
difference on earth and they matter in a
very dark way
uh it's it's disturbing this is not i
mean it's unfortunate that that term
trolling
is used for that as opposed to what andy
kaufman does as opposed to what i do
um it's it really is uh a sinister thing
and it's something i'm not at all a fan
of or how do we
how do we fight that so like
a neighboring concept of that is
conspiracy theories
which is i don't think they're
neighboring at all
well let me let me give myself a naive
perspective maybe you can educate me on
this from my perspective
conspiracy theories are these constructs
of ideas
that go deeper and deeper and deeper
into
creating worlds
where there's powerful pedophiles
controlling things like these
uh very sophisticated models of the
world
that you know in part might be true but
in large part i would say
are are figments of imagination that
become
really useful constructs and
self-reinforcing
self-reinforcing for then feeding
like empowering the trolls
to attack the powerful
the conventionally powerful i i don't
think that that's a function conspiracy
theories now let's talk about conspiracy
theories because one of my quotes is you
take one red pill not the whole bottle
this concept that everything in life
is at the function of a small cadre of
individuals
would be for many people reassuring
because as bad as it looks
you know they whoever they are it's
usually the jews
aren't going to let it get that bad that
they will pull back or
the the black pill is that they are
intentionally
trying to destroy everything and there's
nothing we can do and we're doomed and
there's an amazing book by arthur herman
called the idea of decline western
history
i it's one of my top 10 books where he
goes through every 20 years how there's
a different population that say
it's the end of the world here's the
proof and very often the proof is
something that is
kind of self-fulfilling where there's no
it's not falsifiable
and we both have to think of ways to
falsify our claims from earlier yeah so
it is a big danger it's a big danger
online
because very quickly if someone who you
thought was good
but now is bad on one aspect well
they're controlled opposition
or they've been uh taken over or they've
been kind of
uh appropriated by the bad people
whoever those bad people would be
um i don't know that i have a good
answer for this
i don't think it's as pervasive as
people think
the number of people who believe
conspiracy theory right the i mean and
also conspiracy theory is a term
used to dismiss ideas that have some
currency the constitutional convention
was a conspiracy
uh the founding fathers got together
secretly under water secrecy in
philadelphia said we're throwing out the
articles of confederation we're making
new government right yeah
yeah and luther martin left and he told
everyone this is a conspiracy and
they're like yeah whatever luther morgan
so and jeffrey epstein was a conspiracy
harvey weinstein was a conspiracy bill
cosby conspiracy they all knew
they didn't care uh communist
infiltration in america there's a great
book by
eugene lyons called the red decade they
all knew they
every atrocity that uh was done under
stalinism was
excused in the west and if you didn't
believe it oh you've got this crazy
anti-russian conspiracy
so it's a term that is weaponized uh in
a negative sense
but that does not all imply that it does
not have very
negative real life consequences because
it's kind of a cult of one right like
i'm at home on my computer i bang to
this ideology
anyone who doesn't agree with me they're
blind
they're oblivious mom and dad my friends
you don't get it
we were warned about people like you and
i think there's a very heavy correlation
and i'm not a psychiatrist of course
between that and certain types of mild
melt illness like uh you know some kind
of paranoid schizophrenia things like
that because
after a certain point if everything is a
function this conspiracy
it's it's there's no randomness or
beauty in life
yeah i mean i don't know if you can say
anything interesting about it
in the way of advice of how to
take a step into conspiracy theory world
without completely going like diving
deep
because it seems like that's what
happens people can't
look at jeffrey epstein i can tell you
what the device i'd have
seriously and rigorously without going
because you can look at jeffrey epstein
and say there's a deeper
thing you can always go deeper right
it's like jeffrey epstein was just the
tool
of uh the lizard people and the lizard
people are
well they say satanists in this case and
somehow recently very popular pedophiles
somehow always involved
i'm not understanding any of that i
legitimately i say this both humorously
and seriously i need to look into it
and i guess the bigger question i'm
asking how does a serious human being
uh somebody with a position at a
respectable university
like look at a conspiracy theory and
look into it when i
look at somebody like jeffrey epstein
who had a role at mit
yeah oh yeah and i and i think
i'm not happy personally
i didn't i wasn't there when jeffrey
epstein was there i'm not happy with the
behavior of people
now about jeffrey epstein about the
bureaucracy and the
everybody's trying to keep quiet hoping
it blows over without really looking
into any like looking in a
deep philosophical way of like how do we
let this human being be
among us can i give you a better example
sure that that is
kind of conspiratorial the speaker of
the house the longest serving republican
speaker of the house dennis hastert was
a pedophile
he went to jail the democrats don't
throw this in the republicans faces
every five minutes
not even democratic activists i find
that very very odd
and not what i would predict now i'm not
saying there's some kind of conspiracy
but when it comes to things like sexual
predation which is something that
i'm very very concerned about i'm an
uncle now my sister just had her second
kid recently he's adorable
um it's something that
i don't understand if it feels
as if there's a lot of people who want
this to all go away
now i think it's also because we don't
have the vocabulary and framework to
discuss it
because when you start talking about
things like children these kind of
issues
we want to believe it's all crap because
it's for those of us who aren't in this
kind of mindset the idea
that this happens to kids and happens
frequently is something so horrible
yeah that we it's just like i don't even
want to hear it and that does
these children and adult survivors an
enormous disservice
so i don't know that i have any
particular insight on this but see like
how do you
i mean the catholic church again there's
all these topics that
public school teachers are far more
proportionally uh better as the children
of the catholic church
i mean i don't know what i you're right
you're right um perhaps some
uh i've been you know reading a lot
about
stalin and hitler yeah somehow it's more
comforting
yeah like to be here and then and then
and then
the atrocities that are happening now
it's a little bit more difficult because
there was a new york times article
interrupted where they were had a people
tracking down child pornography
and i think the article said they didn't
have enough people just to cover the
videotapes of infants being raped and we
can even wrap our heads around like
reading lolita
like okay she's 14 12. okay it's still a
female an infant
it's it's something that again like with
the stalin example
we sat down here for a hundred years we
would never think of something like this
think of in a sexual context it makes no
sense
yeah um so and the fact that this is
international okay we eliminated
completely in america
well then they're gonna go find this
there's infants all over the world
there's video cameras over the world
so then it has to become a conspiracy
because i
someone has to film it i'm filming it
you're buying it your kid
it is literally a conspiratorial not in
the sense of like a mafia conspiracy or
some government illuminati
but there is our networks designed to
produce this
product see but like what i'm
i'm trying to do now i mean part of
the one of the nice things with like a
podcast and other things i'm involved
with
is i'm removing myself from having any
kind of boss
so i can do whatever yes oh it's so it's
so wonderful that just happened to me
it's it's the most wonderful thing ever
so i could do i can actually in
moderation
consider like look into stuff careful
though i was going to write a book about
this and people pointed out
you sure want to do this research
because if you start googling around for
this kind of stuff it's on your computer
oh in that sense yeah i'm more concerned
about
you know it's the nietzsche thing
looking into the abyss like you want to
be very
yeah i believe i can do this kind of
thing in moderation without slipping
oh yes into the depths of course i think
that's that's intelligence that's
uh like i recently quote unquote looked
into like
the ufo community the um
extraterrestrial
whatever community i think it always
frustrated me
that the scientific community like
rolled their eyes at all the ufo
sightings all that kind of stuff
even though there could be fascinating
beautiful physical fun
like first of all there could be like
lightning or the ball lightning right
that's at the very basic level is a
fascinating thing
and also it could be
something like i mean i i don't know but
this could be something interesting
like worth looking into my grandfather
was an air traffic controller back in
the soviet union
and he said we saw this stuff all the
time these are planes that were not
moving or whatever
things that were not moving according to
anything we knew about so it's
absolutely real
he's not some jerk with an iphone in his
backyard
this is a a military professional
who understood technology who knew where
the secret bases were so if he's telling
me
it's something doesn't mean it's
martians but he's telling me there's
something there and there are many
examples of of these like military
people these aren't some laymen who sees
a story they're legit people yeah and
and so it's you you can dismiss when
you're talking about professionals who
are around
aircraft all the time who are familiar
with aircraft at the highest levels
and they're seeing things that they
can't explain it's they're clearly not
stupid and they're clearly not under
form so might
there's different ways to dismiss ideas
for example i
i'm uh you were saying that trolling is
a good mechanism
i'm against that but i'm not dismissing
it by
like rolling my eyes i'm considering
legitimately that you're way smarter
than me
and you understand the world better than
me like i'm allow myself to consider
that possibility and thinking about it
like
maybe that's true like seriously
considering it that's what
that's i feel the way people should
approach
intelligent people serious quote-unquote
people scientists should approach
conspiracy theories like look at
it carefully you know is first of all is
it possible that the earth is flat
it's not trivial to show that the earth
is not flat it's a very good exercise
you should go through it
yes but once you go through it you
realize that
uh based on a lot of data and a lot of
evidence and there's a lot of different
experiments you could do yourself
actually
to show that the earth is not flat okay
the same kind of process can be taken
for a lot of different conspiracy
theories and it's helpful
and without slipping into the depths of
of lizard people running everything
that's where i i've now listened to two
episodes
of um of alex jones's show
because he goes crazy
deep into um
into different kind of world views that
i was not familiar with right
and i don't know what to make of it i
mean the reason i've been listening to
it is because
um there's been a lot of discussions
about platforming of different people
and i've been thinking about what is
censorship mean
i've been thinking about it whether
because joe rogan uh
said he's gonna have alex on again
and then i enjoyed it as a fan just the
entertainment of it
but then i actually listened to alex
and i was thinking is this human being
dangerous for the world
like is the ideas he's saying dangerous
for the world i'm more concerned with
the russian conspiracy that we had for
three years
and the claim that our election was not
legitimate and that everyone in the
trump white house is a stooge of putin
uh and the people who said this had no
consequences for this alex jones doesn't
have the respect that they do
uh these are both areas of concern for
me but he he might if there's if he's
given more platforms so like the the
the the people who've and i'd be curious
if
i'm also a little bit i don't know what
to think about the idea that
russians hacked the election the it
seems too easily accepted in the
mainstream media
hillary clinton said that how they did
it
was they had ads on the dark web
now you and i both know what the dark
web is so
the possibility of ads in the dark web
having an influence
from a proportional influence on the
election is literally zero
perhaps i should look into it more
carefully but i've found very little
good
data on exactly
what did the russians do to hack
elections like
like technically speaking what are we
talking about here like
as opposed to these kind of weird like
the best thing there's a couple books
and
like reporting on like farms
control farms troll farms but
let's see the data like how many
exactly what are we talking about like
what were they doing
relative not just like some anecdotal
discussions of
but like relative to the bigger
the size of facebook like if there's a
few
people several hundred say the posting
different political things on facebook
relative to the full size of facebook
let's look at the full
size like right you're thinking like a
scientist the actual impact like the
because it's fascinating the social
dynamics of viral information
of videos when when uh donald trump
retweets something
i think that's understudied the effect
of that uh
like he retweeted a clip with joe rogan
on
uh with and mike tyson where mike tyson
says that
he finds fighting orgasmic i don't
understand that but it'd be fascinating
to think like what is the ripple effect
on the social
uh dynamic of our society from
retweeting a clip about mike ty what's
your favorite um um
trump tweet i i tuned the model a long
time ago unfortunately
i have um it's the this goes to the
you and i have a different relationship
with donald trump you appreciate the art
form of trolling
non-sexual non-sexual yeah so
i i tend to prefer uh bill clinton he's
more my type no i'm just kidding uh i
don't know
you don't like that consent stuff no
because no
uh no you appreciate the art form of
trolling and and uh donald trump is
is uh a a master he's the da vinci
of trolling so i tend to
think that trolling is ultimately
destructive for society
and then donald trump takes nothing
seriously he's playing a game
he's making a game out of everything
takes a lot of things seriously i think
he's very committed to
international peace i say i i shouldn't
speak so strongly i think
i think it takes actually yes a lot of
things seriously i meant
on twitter and the game of politics
yeah he is um
[Music]
he only takes irreverently yeah yeah and
um i appreciate it i just
would like to focus on like genuine
real expressions of humanity especially
positive
well this is my love this is my favorite
tweet my fans got it
laser etched and put in a block of
lucite for me and he said
every time i speak of the losers and
haters i do so with great affection
they cannot help the fact that they were
born fucked up that's an actual trump
tweet it's my favorite one
and that's kind of nice that's love
that's love that's kind of nice
that i mean exclamation point
even
um i broke legs what is love
yeah the sparks are flying but uh i have
to
kind of analyze that from like a
literary perspective but
it seems like there's love in there like
a little bit like
it's a little bit light-hearted because
he's saying even when i'm going after
them don't take it so seriously
yeah that's that's nice it is nice
acknowledging the game of it
yes that's nice uh he's not always
something he's very very vicious yeah
very vicious
he's done things that i i can tell you
about that i'm like this is a bad person
what do you think about one of the okay
listen i'm not
i for people listening i do not have
trump derangement syndrome
i'm i don't i see i try to look for the
good and the bad in everybody
one thing perhaps it's irrational but
perhaps because i've been reading
history
i the one triggering thing for me
is the delaying of elections
i believe in elections and
[Music]
this is this is the part that you
probably disagree with
but i you know i believe in the value of
people voting
and i just seen too many dictators the
the place where they finally the big
switch happens
when you question the legitimacy of
elections who's been questioning the
legitimacy of elections for the last
three years
i've only heard donald trump do it last
like year but the last three years
you're saying
somebody else you don't think not my
president
illegitimate we're not going to
normalize him as president russia hacked
this election
impeached you're not a real president
you don't think that's questioning
legitimacy of 2016.
no it's a good uh i haven't been paying
attention enough but
i would i would imagine that argument
has been
that i haven't actually heard too many
people but i imagine that's been a
popular
oh very much yeah okay i
but nevertheless that's a part that
didn't uh
that's not a statement that gained power
enough to say
that um barack obama will keep being
president
or hillary clinton should be president
newsweek had that article how hillary
clinton could still be president
newsweek
no but she's not that's what i'm saying
my worry isn't
my worry isn't uh saying that the
election was illegitimate and people
whining and mass scale
and then the fox news or cnn reporting
for years or books being written
for years my worry is legitimately
martial law
a person's ma stays president
so here's the issue like there's a
there's a
shift that i have not i i i did a book
on north korea i'm
not someone who thinks dictatorship
should be taken lightly
i'm not someone who thinks it can't
happen here uh i i think a lot of times
people are desperate for dictatorship so
i
am with you and i think this is
something if you're going to hand wave
it away
everyone else hand waved it away
hitler's never going to be chancellor
he's a lunatic
he's a joke he's a joke that he they
couldn't find a publisher from mineconf
in english
because this is a guy from some random
minor party in germany spouting nonsense
who's going to read this crap
you know so i i completely agree with
you uh you don't think we're there
my point is donald trump this year
had every uh pathway open to him to
declare martial law
the cities were being burnt down he
could have very easily sent in the tanks
uh and people would have been applauding
him from his side he feels so good right
now but am i wrong though
no i what he did he tweeted out to mayor
wheeler of
portland he said call me
we will we will solve this in minutes
but you
have to call and he sat in his hands and
they said oh it's his fault
the city is burning down he's not doing
anything and he goes i'm not doing
anything until you ask me to do it so i
think that
is even if you think he's an aspiring
dictator
that is at least a sign that there is
some restraint
on his aspirations can i just
take that in as a beautiful um
like moment of hope so i'm i'm gonna
remember this
ted cruz beautiful ted i'm gonna i'm
gonna remember that i mean
uh i i should say that perhaps i'm
irrationally this is the one moment
where i feel myself being a little
i i don't like it i think there's an
asymmetry
because it's kind of like okay either i
if i leave the house it's like russian
roulette
yeah maybe it's like a one and six shot
i'm pulling the trigger i'm killing
myself but
that's one in six that's not and and the
consequences are so dire
that a little paranoia would go a long
way there's something that you can't go
back
yeah you it's an asymmetry yeah and the
the thing is
the thing that makes donald trump new to
me
and again i'm a little naive in these
things
but he surprised me
in how many ways he just didn't play by
the rules yeah
and he's made me a little ant in this
ant colony
think like well do you have to play by
the rules at all
right like why are we having elections
why just say like it's coronavirus time
like it's
it's uh not healthy to have elections
like we shouldn't be
like i could if i put my dictator hat on
nancy pelosi said that joe biden
shouldn't debate
yeah uh did she yes she says
she shouldn't dignify trump with the
debate he's the president he could be
the worst president on earth evil
despicable monster
i'll take that as an argument so she's
playing politics but she's i don't think
that's playing politics i think when
there's a certain point where things get
and when things get uh when you start
attacking institutions
for the the emergencies at the moment
and acting arbitrarily that is when
things
are the slippery slope yeah so you're
saying debates is one of the
institutions like that's one of the
traditions to have the debates
i think the debates are extremely
important uh and now i don't think that
someone's a good debater is going to
make a good president
i mean that's that's a big problem but
you're just saying this is attacking
just yet another
tradition yet another you know like how
if you're dating if you're married to
someone and someone throws out the word
divorce you can't unring that bell you
threw it out there
yeah i'm saying you don't throw things
out like that unless
you really are ready to go down this
road and i think that is
there's nothing in the constitution
about debates we've only had them since
but still i think they are extremely
important it's also a great chance for
joe biden to tell him to his face
you're full of crap here's what you did
here's what you did here's what you did
it's so fascinating that you're
both you acknowledge that
and you you also see the value of
tearing down the entire
thing so you're both worried about no
debates
or at least in your voice in your tone
there's a great quote by chesterton
i'm not a fan of him at all but he says
before you tear down a fence make sure
you know why they put it up first
so i am for tearing it all down but
there's something called a controlled
demolition like building seven
um or there's allegedly
we knew we were in tel aviv um and
hashtag building seven we knew we were
intelligent
wow you're faster than me you're you're
operating in a different level
i need to upgrade my operating system i
told you when it was 95.
yeah um building seven
if you're gonna uh it's like indiana
jones right if you're gonna tear
pull something away make sure you have
something in place first as opposed to
just breaking it and then just
especially in politics it because it
escalates and when things escalate
without any kind of
response it it can go in a very bad
that's when napoleon comes in
so what's your prediction about
the the biden trump debates again
i just have this weird maybe we'll
return to
maybe not in this how do we put more
love into the world
and like one of the things that worries
me about the debates
is it'll be um it'll be the the world's
greatest troll against the
the grandpa and the porch who grabbed
his pants
yeah yeah and it'll it will not put more
love into the world
it it will it will create more mockery
like uh joe biden did a great job
against
paul ryan in 2012. paul ryan was no
lightweight no one thought he was a
lightweight
joe biden handed sarah pale in her ass
in 2008
which isn't as easy to do as you think
because she's a female so you're going
to come off as bullying that's something
you have to worry about
so the guy isn't um
i think he is in the stages of like
cognitive decline
um so i think it's going to be
interesting uh
i want it to be um
like mike tyson beating up a child
because it'll be a source of amusement
to me
um but i don't know how it's gonna go
because it's possible that joe biden
will be the mike tyson
yes because in his last debate with
bernie he was perfectly fine
and again the guy was a center for
decades and i don't think anyone
if you looked at joe biden in 2010
would have thought this guy is going to
be have his ass handed him a debate you
wouldn't think that at all
so i don't know who we're going to see
plus he's got a lot of
room to attack trump so i'm sure he's
gonna come strapped and ready
and he's gonna have his talking points
and watch trump
dance try to tap dance around him and if
he's in a position i know the rules of
the debate are
to actually nail him to the wall it
might actually i'm sure he's gonna have
a lot of
lines too the problem is trump is the
master counter puncher
so he like when hillary's you know had
her line she's like well it's a good
thing
that donald trump isn't in charge of our
legal system he's like yeah he'd be in
jail
it's like it's like oh like you lady you
set him up that's painful to watch yeah
those those debates i mean there's
something uh i think it's actually
analogous um
i've come to think of it uh your
conversation with me right now
some sleepy joe i'm playing the role of
sleepy joe
i actually connect to uh joe
because they're also incontinent
there's like these weird pauses
i do the same i do the same thing it
annoys the shit out of me
that like uh in mid-sentence i'll start
saying a different thing
and take a tangent i'm not as slow and
drunk
as i sound always i swear i'm more
intelligent underneath lower but less
drunk
exactly but the result one of those is
true but not both
yeah and
and and trump just like you are a master
counter puncher so
it's going to be messy here's the other
thing in all seriousness
chris wallace is the moderator chris
wallace has interviewed trump several
times and he
was a tough tough questioner
so i don't think he's going to come in
there with softball questions i think
he's
really going to try to nail trump down
which is tough to do
i like him a lot yeah he's rea and he's
like mr president sir that's not
accurate blah blah he's done it and
trump gets very frustrated
because he doesn't just let him say
whatever he wants and he he hits him
with the follow-up
he's he's uh i guess he's on fox news
and he
i listen to his sunday program uh every
once in a while
uh he gives me hope that i don't know
there's something in the voice like
that he's not bought he's i i there's no
question he's going to take this
seriously
which i think is the best you could hope
for in a moderator
like it feels like there's people that
might actually take the mainstream media
into a place that's going to be better
in the future
and like we need people like him you
mean like rob spear
what do you mean like taking the
mainstream media to a better future like
bring out the guillotines
okay see you you put your anarchist hat
back on
i don't think robster is much of an
anarchist but yeah i get what you're
saying yeah
you don't think there should be a
centralized place for news there isn't
now
well that's what mainstream media is
supposed to represent
broken well it's not whatever uh what
would he call that
a place where people traditionally said
was the
like the legitimate source of truth no
that's what the media was supposed to
represent no i
said i that's their that's their big
branding uh
accomplishment it's okay that was never
true yeah because if we here's what
happens we remember
the spanish-american war remember the
maine we have to take cuba
yellow journalism willie randolph first
right then record scratch
and then we're all objective like when
did this transition happen according to
people when you were saying that the
kaiser
is uh the worst human being on earth
when you were downplaying uh stalin
and down playing hitler's atrocities
when you were saying we had to be in
vietnam
at what point wmds when did it change it
never changed you just are better con
artists at a certain point
and now the mask is dropping yeah but
don't you think there's uh
at its best like investigative
journalism can
uncover truth in a way that um
that like reddit uh subreddits can't
you know read it sure i agree at its
best absolutely that's not even dispute
but like don't you think uh
like fake it until you make it is the
right way to do it meaning like
the take the news no no no i meant
the new saying like we dream of doing
of arriving at the truth and reporting
the truth
they don't say that cnn had an
advertisement that said this is an apple
we only report facts that's a lie no
that's
now and now it's clear things have
changed and they haven't changed you're
just more
you're more aware of chicanery but
okay so the how many people died in iraq
because saddam hussein was about to
launch wmds
who had consequences for this no one
this isn't a minor thing this is
lots of dead people yeah
and also i mean dead people
it's horrible but also the money which
has like we said economic effects
marian williamson i think it was it was
had trump both of them had the great
point that goes
that's like a trillion dollars how many
schools would that build how many roads
did that build even
here why are we building hospitals in
iraq that we destroyed when we could
building hospitals here
it makes no sense it's horrifying so
who's responsible for that like
who um alex jones
now meant for well uh so who's
responsible for arriving at the truth
of that of speaking to the money spent
i think this is wars in iraq this is one
of the great things about social media
twitter you have faith in twitter not
not specifically twitter but yeah social
media as a whole what anyone could be
here's a great another great example
before
if you were talking about police
brutality or these riots
you would have to perceive it in the way
it was framed and presented to nicholas
sandman is another example
uh brianna taylor all these things well
you're not footage of her
you would have to perceive in the way
that it's edited and presented to you by
the corporate press
now everyone is a video who has video
camera everyone has their perspective
and it's very useful when these
incidents happen where you could see the
same incident from several angles
and you don't need don lemon or chris
wallace to tell me what this means i can
see with my own
eyes yeah i've been very
pleasantly surprised about the power see
like people
the mob again gets in the way they get
emotional
and they destroy like the
the ability for people to reason but
you're right that truth is unobstructed
on social media
like if you're if you're careful and
patient you can see the truth yeah
like for example data on coven some of
the best sources
are doctors like if you want to know the
truth about the coronavirus of what's
happening
is uh there's follow people on twitter
yeah there's certain people there yes
like sourcing for me
versus the cdc and the wa show it's
that's that's fast i mean it's well it's
kind of anarchy right it's yes
it is it's anarchy yes i mean well
there's some
censorship and all that kind of stuff
you have censorship under anarchy in the
sense that you're talking about like
people be
kicked off on twitter that's a drawing
somebody okay
so i mean it's a private company private
company
most people wouldn't say twitter's
working but they that's probably because
they take for granted
how well it's working and they're just
complaining about the small part of it
that's broken right
okay another question about don't you
feel better
no by the way i mean i had a personal
gripe with the situation about the
um not a personal gripe but i felt
overly
emotional about um
the possibility that there will be some
of donald trump
messing with the election process but
you made me feel better like
saying like he if he had a bunch of
opportunities
to um to do what like
to do what i would have done if i was a
dictator i would um
the first time those rides over george
floyd i would instituted
um martial law do you know what i
remember very vividly
is after 9 11 and everyone was waiting
for george bush to give his speech
and he had 98 approval rating and i
remember very vividly because if he had
said
we're suspending the constitution
everyone had cheered for him
like he couldn't get enough support at
that time and he didn't do it
and i can't say anything really good
about george w bush i'm not a fan of his
to say the least
so i think you and i and you know other
people who are familiar with you know
uh totalitarian regimes to some extent
from our ancestry or whatever from
research
should always be the ones freaking out
and warning
but we should also be aware of we got a
ways to go
before it's hitler and thankfully
uh there are a lot of dominoes that have
to fall into place before hitler it's
like the game secret hitler it's a board
game
before hitler becomes hitler like it's
not
e especially in america there's lots of
things that have to happen
before you really get to that point i
mean fdr was for all intensive purposes
of dictator
but even then the worst you could say
and this is not something that you take
lightly
was internment of japanese citizens but
they weren't murdered
uh they weren't you know uh you know
under lock and key in the sense of like
in cells
so things could have gotten a lot worse
for him we have to i mean hitler is such
a horrible person to bring up because
mussolini you know yeah mussolini is
better because
hitler is so closely connected to the
atrocities of the holocaust right
there's all the stuff that led up to the
war and the war itself say that there
was no
uh holocaust hitler will probably be
viewed differently
i should yes i should think so well i
mean
but you think that's a very
controversial stance you think hitler
viewed differently if it wasn't for the
holocaust
well i mean
but it's a funny thing that the the the
i would say the death of how many
40 50 million i mean i don't know how
you calculate it
as is not seen as as bad as the 6
million oh yeah because of mountain and
stalin
yeah yeah and it but it's interesting uh
working on it you're working on yeah the
next book i'm talking reminding what's
good
i'm i'm glad a good writer is because
i'm not reminded my last book the new
right you know i had to deal with some
like the nazis and one of the points
they make is how come everyone knows
about the holocaust but no one knows
about the holodomor
and they're right we should know about
this because it is a great example of
both how the western media
were depraved but also what human beings
are capable of
and those scars are still you know many
americans think russia and ukraine are
the same thing
you know that like oh trump's in bed
with ukrainians trump's about the
russians they think it's the same thing
is for us it's complete lunacy but this
is the kind of thing where
pol pot is another example uh where
people have no clue
of what has been done to their fellow
man on the face of this earth and they
should know
how much of that do you lay at the hands
of communism how much are you with like
a
jordan pearson who has as
intricately connecting the atrocities
like
like you're saying 1930s ukraine where
people were starved
um i recently said my grandmother
recently passed away and she
she looked she survived that as like as
a kid which is
it's fat those people i mean
just they're tough they're tough
like that whole region is tough because
they survived that
and then right after the occupation of
nazis
yeah of germans um how much do you lay
that
at communism as an ideology versus um
stalin the man
uh i think you know lenin was building
concentration camps you know
while he was around in slave labor um
i i don't i think it's clearly both
there are certain variants of communism
that were far like khrushchev you know
and gorbachev
uh the reason the soviet union fell
apart and this is kind of i'm going to
spoil the end of the book
there's an amazing book called
revolution 1989 it's like the most
beautiful book i've ever read
by victor sebastian he's a hungarian
author and basically what happens in
1989 poland has their elections and then
then in 1990 they kind of let in the
labor people into the government
and people start crossing borders you
know in the eastern bloc
and you had hanukkah from eastern
germany and uh chances
from romania colin gorbachev because
those are the two toughest ones
by communist standards they go they're
they're just escaping
we're gonna we're gonna lose everything
you gotta send in the tanks like you did
in hungary like you did in czech
republic surviving 68
and gorbachev goes i'm not sending the
tanks and they go dude if you don't sing
in the tanks
it's all done and he goes nope i'm not
that kind of guy
and they were right i mean they uh
coaches was personally shot
with his wife up against the wall
hanukkah i forget what happened to him
but it they all self-liberated my friend
who was born in czech
czechoslovakia his mom was pregnant you
know under communism and she never even
imagined he'd be free and he was born
under free
uh and they were all looking around all
these countries that self-liberated
because they're like this is a trick
right they're just they're trying to
figure out who's like not good
so that they can arrest us on mass and
they didn't so
although even within communism there are
bad guys and better guys but we talked
about anarchy we talk about democracy
do you see like there's democratic
socialism conversations going on
in the popular culture socialism is seen
as like
evil or for some people great sure
what like what are your thoughts about
is in a political ideology
evil so you're on the evil side yes
fundamentally
yes what what what is it
you know what yeah what makes it evil
what's like structurally
if you were to try to analyze like sure
this i say three ways
morally no person has the right to tell
another person how to live their life
um economically it's not possible to
make calculations under socialism it's
only the
price the prices that are information
that tells me oh this is we need to
produce more of this we need to produce
less of this
without prices being able to adjust and
give information to producers and
and consumers you have no way of being
able to produce
uh effectively efficiently and also
it is uh it turns people against each
other
when you force people to interact when
you force them into relationships when
you force them into jobs
and you don't give them any choice when
there's a monopoly uh the consequence of
monopoly everyone's familiar with
ostensibly under capitalism but somehow
when it's a government monopoly
all those economic principles don't work
doesn't make any sense but there's force
in democracy too
it's just you're saying there's a
there's a bit more force in uh
in socialism yeah but that's interesting
that you say that there's not enough
information i mean that's ultimately
you need to have really good data yes
to achieve the goals of the system even
even if there's no corruption
right you just need to have the
information right which you can't
and capitalism provides you um
like really strong real-time real-time
information
that um and if like
capitalism at its best and cleanest
which is like perfect information is
available
there's no manipulation of information
that's what
you know that's one of the problems okay
can we talk about some candidates
the ones we got and possible
alternatives
so one question i have is why
do we have within this system why do we
have the candidates we have
is it seems um maybe you can correct me
highly unsatisfactory like the
like is anyone actually excited about
our current candidates
i'm kind of excited because no matter
who wins the elections can be hilarious
so that is something that i'm excited
about from uh from a human perspective
yeah
is that what the whole system is uh so
that's the one theory of the case
is the entire thing is optimized for
viewership
yeah and uh excitement by definitions of
like the reality show kind of excitement
i think it is if you look at what
happened with brett kavanaugh
this is not a career that would
draw people who are you might say
quality
because no matter who they are there
would be a huge incentive from the other
team
to denigrate them and humiliate them in
the worst possible ways because
as the two teams lose their legitimacy
among
gen pop it's going to get harder and
harder for them to maintain
any kind of claims to authority which is
something i like
but which does kind of play out in you
know certain nefarious ways
so people the best of the best are not
going to want to be politicians
yeah because like i could have a job or
have a job interview and i'm running
yahoo or whatever or i could for 18
months
have to eat you know corn dogs looking
like i'm going down on someone and shake
hands and
have all this my family and on social
media daily
called the worst things for what and
then i'm still not guaranteed the
position
but the flip side of that like from my
perspective
is the competition is weak meaning
like you need a certain a minimum amount
of eloquence clearly
that i don't uh the bar which i did not
pass
i don't think either of them would be
considered particularly eloquent biden
or trump
no i know but that's what i'm saying the
competition like if
if you were um wanted to be become a
politician if you wanted to run for
president
the opportunity is there like if you
were at all competent
like if you had so like andrew yang is
an example of somebody who has a bunch
of ideas is somewhat
uh eloquent like young
energetic it feels like there should be
thousands of andrew yangs
like that would enter the domain and he
went nowhere
well he j well i i wouldn't say he went
nowhere he generated quite a bit of
excitement he just didn't go very
far that's okay you don't have to run
for president to generate excitement
with your ideas you could be a podcast
host i'm not even joking that's right
that's right that's right
and he's both andrew yang oh he's a
podcast yeah he has a podcast called
yang speaks
no okay cool
[Laughter]
oh wow the music of the way you said
yeah cool is the way my mom talks to me
when i tell her with
something exciting going on in my life
oh that's nice honey oh you made a robot
that's cool
that makes coffee oh you're still single
though aren't you
ah i wonder why i wonder why make
yourself a robot wife
give me some robot grandchildren um
okay but
first of all okay let me ask you about
andrew yanks he represents
fresh energy you don't find him fresh or
energetic
you know like is there any candidate you
wish
was um in the mix that was in the mix
you wish was
one of the last two remaining yeah
people like marion williamson i thought
was great
uh tulsi i thought was great amy
klobuchar got a bad rap
i think she held her own um smart she
wasn't particularly funny and that's
okay
i think she was not threatening to a lot
of people what did you like about them
i guess it's named all women that's
interesting it wasn't even intentional
um
tulsi i like that she was aggressive has
a good resume
and is not um
staying the course for the establishment
marion williamson i like because she
comes from a place
from what it seems of genuine compassion
maybe she's a sociopath i don't know
i read her book and it actually affected
me profoundly
because it's very rare when you read a
book and there's even that one idea that
blows your mind
and that you kind of think about all the
time and there was one of that such idea
in her book
about um she was teaching something
called the course in miracles in
hollywood i think she still teaches it
and this was during the 80s the high the
aids crisis
and all these young men in the prime of
their life were dropping like flies
and she's trying to give him hope well
good luck they're dying no one cares
and they're like you can't tell us that
they're going to cure this
like you're that's a lie and she goes
what if i told you
they're not going to cure it what if i
told you it's going to be to like
diabetes
they cut off your foot and you're going
to go blind would that be something that
you can
hope for and when you put it like that
it's like yeah like if you're talking to
him like a homeless junkie
and you're like you could be a doctor
you're a lawyer or a lawyer like cool
story like
you could have a studio apartment with a
terrible roommate and a shitty job
but when you're on the street you know
cooking need
breakfast in a teaspoon and you hear
that you're like wait
would that really be so bad is that
really so much worse than this no and it
becomes
something so when she put it in those
terms i'm like wow this woman that
really
did a number on me in terms of teaching
people how to be hopeful
small steps but it's but it's also then
it becomes less of
i need a miracle to be like oh this is
really magical
yeah it's and it's absurd to think it's
impossible
what about what's your take on unity
2020 that
brett weinstein uh
pushed forward it i i it was doa
uh he couldn't even stand up to twitter
dead on the rival in rival he couldn't
even stand up to twitter let alone or to
facebook they got blocked let alone
hugely problematic by the way that
twitter would block that
not at all um i don't know why they
blocked it but i believe
i don't know problematic means that's a
word that does a lot of work
uh that people wanted to do conceptually
um
the idea that like unity is like taking
the rejects from each party
and we're gonna like have something that
no one likes and therefore it's gonna be
a compromise is
absurd the last time we had this kind of
unity ticket was the civil war
when you had andrew johnson from the
democrats and lincoln from the
republicans this was not something that
ended well
uh particularly nicely for both halves
of the country so that that's the way
you see it as
like the way i saw i i guess i haven't
looked carefully at it
i haven't either to be fair yeah the way
i saw it is
emphasizing centrists which is uh how's
celsius centrist
tulsa was involved yes he's trying to
push tulsi and like jesse ventura or
something
oh so oh okay i don't know i don't know
the specific as a scientist you also
know centrism is not a coherent term in
politics
but see now you're like uh uh
what is it pleading to authority no i'm
treating my ego
no no i'm pleading to how you approach
data if someone is saying the mean is
accurate
that only mean i mean the mean could be
anywhere it's a function of what's
around it doesn't mean it's true
i don't even know what uh census is
supposed to mean but what it means
to me there's no idea essentia
centrist there's more of a center right
or center left
to me what that means is somebody who is
a liberal or conservative but is
um open-minded
and uh empathetic to the other side
joe biden had the crime bill joe biden
voted for republican supreme court
justices
joe biden voted for a balanced budget
joe biden voted for bush's war
he and i'm sure probably haven't looked
this up the patriot act yeah if you want
a centrist you have joe biden
yeah okay he's worked very well with the
republicans that argument could be made
of course
they'll everybody will always uh resist
that argument
you it's undeniable in fact during the
campaign
some uh um uh activists
started yelling at him at a town hall
not yelling just saying hey we need open
borders
joe biden says i'm not for open borders
go vote for trump and literally turned
his back on the man
and this is during the primaries where
it would behoove you to try to appeal to
the base and of course you can probably
also make the argument that
donald trump is center right if not
center left well
i mean he's he's very uh unique as a
personality right but if you look at his
record and his first name is rhetoric
you can say is not centrist at all
but in terms of how he governs the
budgeting i mean
has been very moderate it certainly
hasn't been like draconian budget cuts
uh the supreme court you could say okay
he's hard right
immigration you could say in certain
capacities he's hard right but in terms
of
pro-life what has he done there in terms
of
you know so it's in many other aspects
he's been
very much this kind of me too uh
republican but certainly the rhetoric
it's very hard to make in the case that
he's a centrist
so you don't like uh is there any other
idea you find compelling like you
what i like about unity 2020 is just an
idea
for uh a different way for like a
different party a different
path forward so ideas just like anarchy
is an interesting idea
that's that leads to discourse at least
i don't think it's interesting at all
and here's why i think it's interesting
uh sweden has eight parties in its
parliament
iceland population's like 150 000
they've got nine i think it was czech
republic has nine britain has five
um so the claim that two uh parties is
the sensorious of speech but three oh
now all of a sudden it makes no sense
doesn't import to the data number one
number two is donald trump demonstrated
that you can be basically a third-party
candidate seize the machinery
of a existing party and appropriate to
your own hands as bernie sanders
almost did bernie sanders has never been
a democrat uh major credit to him for
that's not easy to be elected as senator
as an independent he's done it
repeatedly
so these are two examples of ossified
elites
uh right for the picking so to have a
third party makes
uh no real sense speaking of which
party you talk about quite a bit uh
and uh let's look this is a personal
challenge to you
let me bring up the libertarian party
yeah and the personal challenge
is to go five minutes without mocking
them
okay in discussing uh and discussing
this idea so first of all
what i'm being troubled
there was an episode where chandler had
to not make fun of people like can you
go one day chandler
and phoebe starts telling him about like
this ufo she saw
and it's like that's very interesting
nice
for you this is exactly that
okay so a true master would be able to
play within the game within the
constraints so
um no i i'm pretty sure you'll still
mock them but no no i'll stick to the
rules
five minutes easy so first of all
speaking broadly about libertarianism
can you speak to that how you feel about
it
and then also to the libertarian party
which is the implementation of it in our
current
system so i think libertarianism is
a great idea and i think there's many
libertarian ideas that have become
much more mainstream which i'm very very
happy about i remember there was an
article in either new york or new yorker
magazine in the early 90s
where they talked about the cato
institute which is a libertarian think
tank
and they referred to the fact that keda
was against war
and against like regulation with a wacky
consistency
because they didn't know how to
reconcile these two things i remember
what the two things were but i remember
that expression wacky consistency
and it wasn't eve we were all taught and
this is very much before the internet
that there's two tribes and if you're
pro-life
you have to hate gays and if you're for
socialized medicine
that also means you have to be for uh um
you know free speech it was just this
very and like there's a whole menu and
you got to sign into all of them and
that menu is terrible they hate america
they want to destroy it
oh my god those are horrible evil this
is the menu you want and
the libertarian party to some extent and
just libertarian as a whole said
you know you can do the chinese buffet
and take a little from columbia live
from column b
and have an ideology that is coherent
and consistent analogy ideology of peace
and
non-aggression and things like that the
libertarian party
takes its model from like the early
progressive and populist parties from
the early 20th century
which were not very effective in terms
of getting people elected
but were extremely effective in terms of
getting the two major parties to
appropriate and adopt their ideas and
implement them and in britain as well
the liberal party got destroyed and
became taken over by labor as the uh
alternative party to the tories
um and have those ideas basically become
mainstreamed so i think that and
deliberate my friend who passed away
eric i miss him dearly
was their webmaster and his whole point
is if you don't think about it in terms
of a party in terms of getting people
elected
but if you think of it as a party in
terms of getting people educated about
alternatives
then there's enormous use for that that
was his perspective and i don't think
that's an absurd
perspective but here's some libertarian
ideas that have become extremely
mainstream
war should be a last resort uh this is
something we're taught as kids and we
all say
but for many years it's been like they
don't think of it as the last resort
it's like something's bad well it's like
the first
instinct now it's like let's really give
it a week just a week like what's going
on in syria
is there really gonna be a genocide the
kurds you know things like that so
that's one
another thing is drug legalization uh
this was you know
when you and i were kids oh it's crazy
it's only hippies want to smoke pot
now it's like with it i was on a grand
jury and
the point out people make is are you
sure
that this 16 year old who's selling
wheat let's say selling
should his life be ruined should he be
imprisoned with rapists and murderers
like
if you say yes say yes but you
but are you sure you have to acknowledge
that that's what you're meaning
and then a lot of people are like wait a
minute there's got to be a third option
then he has no consequences or he's
imprisoned with the rapist like i'm not
comfortable with either of these
uh and i think the other one is an
increasing skepticism
this libertarians were on top of this
first and the hard left of the police
uh as of now asset forfeiture steals
more from people than burglaries what
people don't know about what that's
their forfeiture is if the cops come to
your house and they suspect you you
haven't been convicted
of using your car or your house or
whatever in terms of selling drugs
they can take whatever they want and
then you have to sue
to prove your innocence and get your
property back it's a complete violation
of due process
people don't realize what's going on
it's a great way for the cops to
increase their budgets and it's legal
and libertarians were like the first big
ones saying guys this is not american
and this is crazy
and now increasingly people on
conservatives and left is like wait a
minute this this is
even if you are selling drugs like they
take your house what are you talking
about
so i think those are some uh mechanisms
that libertarianism
though but not by name has become far
more popular
yeah it's interesting so the idea yeah
coherent set of ideas
uh that that eventually get integrated
into a two-party system
yeah the war that's an interesting one
you're right i would want
i wonder what the thread there is i
wonder how it connects to 911
and so on but i i think that i i think
the patriot act
patriot act for people who are
politically savvy
were like oh okay this is not a joke
this is really a crazy infringement our
freedoms
and both parties are falling over each
other to sign into law
and the orwellian name you don't want to
how can you be against patriotism what
kind of person
you know what i mean so that i think for
a lot of people especially both civil
libertarians on the left
and a lot of conservatives who are
constitutionalists are like wait a
minute this isn't
i'm not comfortable with this and i'm
also not comfortable with how
comfortable everyone in washington is
with it
you're right probably libertarian
libertarians and libertarianism
is a place of ideas which is why i have
a connection to it like
i like i i like the every time i listen
to those folks
i like them i feel connected to them i
would even sometimes depending on the
day call myself a libertarian
well we're on the spectrum so that's why
we're on the spectrum yeah
but like when i look at the people that
actually rise to the top
in terms of like the people who
represent the party this is where like
five minutes ran out
right you can i could go i'm allowed you
can go why are they so
weird why aren't strong
candidates emerging that represent
as political like representatives or as
like
uh famous speakers yeah
like that represent the ideology i think
libertarians tend to i think jonathan
height
in his book uh in his research he's a
political scientist and he does a lot of
things about how people come to their
political conclusions and
what factors uh um force people to reach
conclusions
and he found that libertarians are the
least empathetic and most rationalistic
of all the groups and by that he means
like they think in terms of logic as
opposed to like people's feelings and
and that has positives and has negatives
uh
it would and we have the a b testing
with ron paul
ron paul ran for president as a
libertarian nominee he was the nominee
he got pretty much nowhere in 1998. then
he ran as a
return to republican party as a
congressman for many years from texas
he ran for the presidency in 2008 and
2012.
and in 2008 he stood on stage with rudy
giuliani
and told him that they were here in 911
because we're over there
which would have been a shocking
horrifying taboo a few years earlier
many people were like holy crap this is
amazing julian was all offended and ron
paul's like
i took some guts by the way yeah it did
i heard that it was so refreshing
that not what he said but the fact that
he said something that took guts
it made me realize how rare it is yes
for peop for politicians but even people
to say something that takes guts well
it's also the idea that like
you can't even if you think america has
a right
to invade any country on earth as much
as it wants and
kill people as a consequence of war and
blow up their buildings and destroy
their country
you can't with a straight face not
expect us to have
consequences even if they're
consequences from evil people
even if we're 100 of the good guys and
their 100 the bad guys
those bad guys some of them are still
going to try to do something
what happens next you know what i mean
so that kind of concept
that there's any american culpability
was
where america where you know we're the
good guys by definition we're not
culpable
to have people start thinking about what
if there's another way
you know what if we're not there and
then they're not here and we're
kind of doing a back door we're talking
so different scenarios
so the fact that he got so much more
traction as a republican
the fact that donald trump who came out
of nowhere
became the not only the candidate but
the president tells people
it's like getting a book deal right you
can either go there's three choices
you can either self-publish mainstream
publisher
or independent publisher the
independent publisher is the worst of
all choices because you're not getting a
big advance
they're not going to be able to promote
you a lot and
they don't get the distribution
mainstream i've done mainstream myself
right with self i don't have the the
cred
the respectability of a mainstream for
the cachet it can't be uh
new york times bestseller right let's
take six a lot of work
but i get a lot more of the profit uh if
it looks good on the shelf on amazon
looks identical
so on and so forth with the mainstream
the benefits and costs are pretty much
obvious to most people so the same thing
it's like you can either be an
independent like ross perot
or you could be just cs won the party
apparatus which the benefits are
enormous there
but in terms of going third party i
don't know the libertarian party
apparatus other than maybe some ballot
access
is really that efficacious and then
you're gonna have a lot of baggage
because if you hear independent
jesse ventura ross perot you think of
the person
now you have to define yourself and you
have to defend the party
that's two bridges for most people
brilliantly put okay thank you
uh let me speak to you because i'm i'm
speaking to jaron brooke
soon yeah uh
i like him yeah so but that another
example
i was ask him to tell you a joke about
iran
if he can do it so there
that's one criticism i've heard you say
which is they're unable to speak
to any weaknesses in either iran's or
objectivist
worldview yes that's really
uh you you put it i know you're half
joking but
that's actually a legitimate discussion
to have i'm not i'm not joking at all
because that's to me one of the
criticisms
and one of the explanations why the
world seems to disrespect ayn rand the
the people that do is she
kind of implies that her ideas are like
flawless
she says they correspond to reality yeah
right that's the term she uses
that i mean objective is it's in the
name
it's you know it's just facts like
it's impossible to basically argue
against because it's pretty simple
it's just all facts and that's it's
possible to argue against but she would
say
she's never met a good critic who could
argue the facts about misrepresentation
and she's not entirely wrong she's often
caricatured because she has a very
extreme personality and extreme
worldview but that to me i mean some
people there's a guy named
in the physics mathematics community
called stephen wolf from
i don't know if you're well from alpha
yeah okay he has a
similar style of speaking sometimes
which is like
i've created a science but
that turns a lot of people off like this
kind of weird
confidence but he's one of my favorite
people i think one of the most brilliant
people
if you just ignore that little bit of
ego
or whatever you call that yeah yeah that
there are some beautiful ideas in there
and this amazing person and that for me
objectivism i'm undereducated about it
about it uh i hope to be more educated
but there's some interesting ideas that
again just like with ufos uh
not that there's a connection with you
don't bring that up for your own he
won't like it
i'm runs like ufos oh no no no this
interview is over
that's that's a good yarn okay uh but
you know you have to be a little bit
open-minded
but what's your sense of of objectivism
what's
uh are there interesting ideas that are
useful
to you to think about i own her copy of
the first printing of the fountainhead
so that should tell you a little bit
about how my affection for miss rand
how heavy that goes um i ein rand
does not have all the answers but she
has all the questions so if you study
rand you are going to be forced to think
through some very basic things
and you're going to have your eyes open
very very heavily she was not perfect
she never claimed to be perfect she was
asked
on donahue is it true that according to
your philosophy you're a perfect being
she said i never think of myself that
way and she said but if you ask me do i
practice what i preach the answer is yes
resoundingly um she's a fascinating
woman
uh what is really interesting about her
and this something you'd appreciate
personally is when you read her essays
she'll have these weird asides
and it looked like she would talk about
art and she'd be like and this is why
the u.s should be the only country with
nuclear weapons and when you follow
a brilliant mind making these seemingly
disparate connections it's something i
find to be just absolutely inspiring and
awesome and entertaining
um i think there's lots of things about
her that people like yaran would make
uncomfortable um
well like she they so objectivism
like any other philosophy has all these
techniques to kind of
hand wave away things you don't want to
talk about and like pretend that so they
talk about things like having
no meta metaphysical significance right
so what that means is like well what
about this i don't talk about it like it
doesn't matter
like it literally means fancy
philosophical terms doesn't matter
or they will say correctly that it's
very
twisted in our culture that when we have
heroes we look for their flaws instead
of looking for their virtues that's a
100 valid perspective
however if i'm sitting here telling you
that i think this woman is a badass and
she's amazing
and she should be studied but there's
also these idiosyncrasies
they don't want to hear it because they
and i think it's very convenient for
them because there's a lot of things she
did
that work here's an example rand was
very very pro
a happiness and pleasure she was very
pro-sex
which is kind of surprising looking at
her and how she talked and how strident
she was
as a result of this she never got her
cats fixed to deny them the pleasure of
orgasm
so her male cats are spraying up her
entire house yeah
like that is i mean that's her putting
her philosophy into practice
but it's still gross yeah so that's the
kind of thing where
i don't think he'd another thing is rand
had an art an article
on a woman president and she said a
woman should never be president right
now when ran says things that are too
goofy for them they say
oh that's not objectivism that's her
personal preference it's like
she did not have these lines objectivism
was always defined as
ein rand's writings plus the additional
essays in her books
so if this was in part of those books
this counts as official objectivism but
they pretend
otherwise so that's another example plus
they are they she
was and i bet you she was on the
spectrum to some extent i'm not joking
i'm not using that derisively
she was of the belief and not
inaccurately
because that humor is used to denigrate
and humiliate and she was thinking about
the jon stewart type before there was a
john stewart and a lot of times
like how i use mocking but she was
resentful
correctly that a lot of times people who
are great and accomplished
little nobodies will make a punch line
uh just to bring them down and just
bother
here's an example i just thought of i
remember in i remember when it was must
be in the 90s
they had a segment on mtv of all these
musicians
who were making their own perfumes right
and this girl grabbed princess perfume
and before she even smelled it she had
the joke ready she just ugh
this smells almost as bad as his music
lately it's like first of all i'm sure
the perfume's fine
yeah and second of all this is prince
he's one of the all-time greats and you
can't wait
to you know you know denigrate him like
and part i want to be like brown like
how dare you
like as if as if this perfume in any way
in any way mitigates his amazing
accomplishments and achievements
you horrible person but i do have some
great iran jokes and he would not be
happy about them
the perfume thing the problem with is
just not funny not that
no he sucks okay great not that
they dared to try to be humorous right
because i don't know why you mentioned
jonathan because john stewart's pretty
can be funny right but hey he taught a
generation you still see this on twitter
where things have to be inherently
sarcastic
and snide but isn't that i mean aren't
you practicing that no i use irony
not sarcasm here's an example when
people like you say something
and someone reply to be like um last i
checked blah blah blah blah and i'll
that i see i go what do you think saying
last i checked added to your point
you're giving me valuable information
and data
but you are trained to believe that it
has to be couched
in this sneering it doesn't just give me
the information this is useful
information
that's that's true it's a jerk but see
john stewart did it
masterfully exactly and they don't and
they they don't it's it's like people
who copy commit certain comedians
you try to copy them and you lose
everything in the process of copying
yeah yeah
yep okay uh
but in terms of the the philosophy of
you know selfishness this kind of
individual focused idea and i'm i
imagine that connects with you
yes and i think it would connect with
more people they understood what she
meant by nathaniel brandon who was her
heir until she kind of broke with him
and and
he was a co-dedicatee of atlas shrugged
said
no one will say on rand's views with a
straight face they won't say
i believe that my happiness matters and
is important and it's worth fighting for
and that ayn rand says this then she's
dangerous now
it's very easy to say this could have
dangerous consequences if you're a
sociopath
but to put it in those terms uh i think
is extremely healthy i think more people
should want to be happy and and
have i think a lot of us are raised to
be apologetic especially in
this cynical media culture that if you
say i want to be happy i want to
love my life that it's just like okay
sweetheart and you
the eye rolling and i think that's so
pernicious is so horrifying and this is
why i'm a kamu person
because camus thought the archenemy was
cynicism and i could not agree more
like if you're the kind of person if
someone likes a band and you're like oh
you like them blah blah it's like
this gives them happiness yeah now
there's certain exceptions but if it
gives you happiness
it's not for you that's cool okay this
is beautiful
i i so agree with you on the eye rolling
but you see the best of trolling is not
the eye roll correct of course not the
best of trolling
is taking down the eye rollers i'm gonna
have to think about that okay
because i haven't red bull
yeah uh because i put them all type is
red bull
um i kind of put them all in the same
bin
okay and they're not they're not they're
not okay all right
here's another example of trolling i was
making jokes about ron paul he just had
a stroke
right and someone came at me and they're
like oh blah blah blah
you know you're ugly i hope you have a
stroke i hope you're in the hospital and
i just go i just did have a stroke on
your mom's face
so they came at me yeah and now they got
put in their place
with a subpar um i mean i wasn't clever
you weren't you weren't clever not
particularly no well one of your
things you do which is interesting i
mean i give you props
in a sense is you're willing to go
farther than people expect you to yes
that's fun
yeah in fact i'll probably edit out like
half of this podcast because the the
thing you did which she kept in
i should mention is michaela peterson
now has a podcast which is
nice i guess was it on her podcast she
was at mine she was on yours
we did both but this is when you're
referring to when she was on mine she
was on yeah right
and you went right for the
for the so i'll tell you what it was you
don't have to paraphrase so i opened up
i say
you know she's jordan peterson's dad and
as many people know jordan
he's her dad yeah she's had a long issue
with uh substance addiction and i said
to her
you're you know you're most famous for
being you know jordan peterson's
daughter
you know many people he's changed so
many lives around the world he's and
he's been such an
enormous influence to me personally that
i've started taking benzodiazepines
recreationally
and she's like oh my god michael is so
horrible
yeah you because you pulled me in with
this because you're talking i mean you
know
because he's going through a rough time
now she's going through
just everything was just you pulled me
in emotionally i was
like this is going to be the sweet mic
is going to be just this wonderful
and then just bam so that's that's
that's that was uh props to you on that
it wasn't whatever that is that is an
art form
uh when done well it can be taken too
far
my criticism is it that feels too good
for some people what do you mean uh for
oh they're too happy being irreverent
because
to show that they don't care about
anything that's another form of cynicism
though right so
i if you because you think it's possible
to be a troll and still be the
live life to its highest ideal in the
camus sense
i try that's kind of my ideal
i i believe it's not i
it becomes a drug i feel like that takes
you like i think
love ultimately is the way to experience
like every moment of
every day you don't think that was an
expression of
i honestly think let's let's let's split
hairs here because i think
there's something of use here i do think
that me i'm me being able to make her
laugh
about this year of hell she was in yeah
does create
an element of love and connection
between me and her yeah but
i know she would say that yes it wasn't
that
it was what you said in combination with
the sweetness everywhere else the
kindness it's a very subtle thing but
like
it's like some of the deepest
connections we have with others is when
we
like mock them lovingly or yes that's
correct
but like there is stuff
there's kindness around that yeah it's
not in words but in life of course
subtle things because it creates an
error familiarity
being familial like we're through this
together like yeah
yeah yeah that's missing that's very
difficult to do on the internet i agree
with you
i agree with you that's why my like my
general approach
on the internet is to be uh some more
like simple less witty
and more like dumbly
loving but that's not your core
competency being witty
uh me yeah but i i could be woody you
can be but i'm saying that's not your
core company so i'm just saying you're
bad at it but i'm saying that's not
where you go
like organically especially with
strangers
i just feel like nobody's core
competence on the internet
is uh i guess if you want to bring love
to the world nobody's core competence
is given the current platforms nobody's
core competence
is whit it's very difficult to be witty
on the internet
without while still communicating
kindness like
i'll give you another example in the
same way that you can in physical space
i'll give you another example someone
um came at me and they were like they
gave me a donation
people do this all the time and they go
oh um
like i started reading your books
because of my wife and you know now
watch your shows together i keep up the
good work and i go what does her
boyfriend think
so that is an example of wit and love
because
that person feels seen i'm acknowledging
them
yeah i'm also making a joke at their
expense we know it's a joke
so i think language is often used
in non-literal ways to cue emotional and
connectivity
it's difficult but you it's very
difficult what you've done
is is difficult to accomplish but you've
done it well i mean
you do like you did you do been doing
these live streams which are nice that
people give you a bunch of money and
donations and stuff
and then you you'll often like make fun
of certain aspects of their questions
and so yeah but it's so it's always
wrong that's not from love that is
genuine annoyance because they ask me
some really dumb questions but they're
still underlying
it's not even like there's a kind person
under this that's being communicated
that's interesting but
i don't know if i get that from your
twitter i know i get that from the video
the
something about the face something about
like yeah of course it's much harder
the more the more data yeah the more
easy it is to convey
emotion and subtlety absolutely if you
only have literally black and white
letters it's gonna be or whatever white
and black if you have night mode
it's gonna be a very different it's much
more limited information
yeah but this is the fundamental thing
is like
let's here's another example like if
they had access to my face like a lot of
times some people don't know who i
am and they come at me call me a nazi
anti-semite right and i start talking
about the jews
and just how terrible the jews are now
all my audience knows i'm jewish that i
went to shiva so they're sitting there
laughing because this person is making
ass to themselves
that person has no idea but if there was
video
then they would be like okay wait a
minute something yeah yeah something's
up
i don't know uh i think it's
entertaining i think it's fun
but i just i don't think it's scalable
and ultimately
i'm trying to figure out this whole
trolling thing because i think it's
really destructive
i've been the outrage mob the outrage
mobs
the just the the dynamics of twitter has
been really bothering me
okay and i've been trying to figure out
if we
can try to build an alternative to
twitter perhaps or try to encourage
twitter to be better
how to have nuanced healthy
conversations
like the reason i talk about love isn't
just for love's sake
it's just a good base from which to have
difficult conversations like that's a
good starting point because if you start
like i would argue that the kind of
conversation you have on twitter
is fun but it might not be a good
starting point for a difficult nuanced
conversation
well i'm not interested in having those
conversations with most people
no i know but so i agree with you your
point is valid
yes but like i'm saying so if we were
trying to have
a difficult nuanced conversation about
say race in america
or policing is there racism
institutional racism of policing okay
there's uh
the only conversations that have been
nuanced about it that i've heard
is in the podcasting medium which is the
magic of podcasting which
is great but that that's the
downside of podcasting is it's a
very small number of people even if it's
in the thousands
it's still small and then there's
millions of people on
social media and they're not having
nuanced conversation at all they're not
capable of it
that's the difference in you that's
saved their minds i believe they are so
that's there's
no data that's happening and then both
of us aren't being not scientific
you don't have data to support your
worldview either you're making the claim
well you are too no i'm not if i'm
looking at an object
the free the claim that opens my mind
well
no what no your claim is that people are
fundamentally stupid
aren't you a martial artist yes
how does it feel i know
you yeah but
you really don't think people are deep
down like
capable of being intelligent no not at
all
not not deep down not surface i'm not
joking i'm not being tongue-in-cheek and
not being cynical i do not at all at all
think they have this capacity
i'm gonna because you're just being so
clear about it you're not even
i'm gonna be here you know why i here's
here's a
here's evidence for my position not
proof and this is of course data that is
of little use but it's of interest
a lot of times when you have an audience
as big as mine and people come at you
not only will people say the same thing
the same concept they'll say the same
concept in the same way
that is not a mind yeah that's surface
evidence
you're saying this iceberg looks like
this from the surface
yeah i'm saying there's an iceberg there
that if challenged
can
can rise to the occasion of deep
thinking
and you're saying nope nope it's just
frozen water
isn't that the russian expression that's
ice cream
no not doesn't it mean
like no one's there actually i don't
know yeah it means like yeah
yeah it's like thought it means
okay well uh so you're challenging me to
be a little bit more rigorous
i think i'll try i'll not challenge you
anything i'm just saying no not
challenging me but like i'm challenging
myself based on what you're saying
because i'd like to prove you wrong
and find actual yeah data to show you're
wrong
and i think i can but i would need to uh
get that data that's funny you said i
think i can when when they were working
on my biography ego and hubris
the title i had suggested was the little
engine that could but shouldn't and
they didn't like it i think that's a
great title it's pretty good yeah
speaking of biographies i mean one i
read your book or listen to your book
listen to there's an audiobook for you
right yeah i did the audio yeah yeah
you you read it my goal is yes okay so
this is
this is uh i didn't do yaron brook's
voice in the book i did all the
different voices because he has lisp and
i didn't want to sound like i was making
fun of him
yeah i i don't remember you reading it
but it was i was really
enjoyed this yeah no okay it was good it
was like a year a year and a half ago
i can't prove
uh well let me at a high level see if
you can pull this off
if i ask you uh what's the book
new write about it's about
uh a group of people who are united
solely by their opposition to
progressivism who have little
else in common but who are all
frequently
caricatured and dismissed um by
the larger establishment media
but you give this kind of story of how
it came to be
sure and to me like we're talking about
trolls
but the internet side of things is quite
interesting
so first of all how does alt-right
connect
so the alt-right is the subset of the
new right
which feels that race not racism is
the most or one of the most important
socio-political issues
are any of those folks like part of the
mainstream
or worth paying attention to not only by
the mainstream
the alt-right yeah by definition they
would be part of the mainstream
they would not be part of that no they
would not i don't know
that any of them well worth is not a
position i'm not able to say worth
i'm i would say that it is of use
to be familiar with their arguments
because to dismiss
any school of thought especially one
that has historically
gained leverage especially one that has
historically gained leverage in very
dark ways especially in america in
europe and other places
just to say oh they're racist i don't
need to think about them
it's it's it doesn't behoove you so what
uh what lessons do we draw from the
the 4chan side of things like the
internet side
of the movement tits or get the fuck out
um can you define every single word hits
our breasts
or get the fuck out that's from 4chan
okay
that's what's uh what's it mean oh
sometimes like a woman will appear in
4chan and they'll just reply tits or get
the fuck out
i'm trying to understand what oh oh
that's a way
i just um very slow uh so that's
okay so that's very disrespectful
towards
female members of the community
i don't understand there's rules to this
community and one of them is
uh we're not very good with women is
that that's one of those
sort of principles it's a principle
we're not going to ever get laid that's
the fundamental principle
is there we are going to get pics pics
sometimes
sometimes on the sometimes gtfo
gt okay so is there other actual
principles
of so like it's it's
i from my maybe naive perspective is
they have like the darkest aspects of
trolling which is like take nothing
serious
make a game out of everything that's not
4chan per se one of the things that you
will learn
4chan which i think is very healthy is
if you have an idiosocratic or unique
worldview or focus on an aspect of
history or culture
you'll be able to find like-minded
people who you will engage with you and
discuss it without being
promptly dismissive that's an ideal
that they well it's not ideal it's
something that happens a lot now 4chan
is not really
like paul as their board with politics
but they will
you know get into some like the people
there are much more erudite than you
think
so they do take my my perception was
they take nothing seriously so there's
things that they take seriously like
discussing ideas i'll give you one
example
there was a video someone posted of a
girl who put kittens in a bag and threw
in a river
and they found out where she was within
a day and got her like arrested
so yeah they do they take some things
very seriously
okay but that's like an extreme that
i mean that's good first of all that's
heartwarming that they wouldn't somehow
turn that into a thing
that feels like more of uh what is it
what's the other one 8chan
8 chance twice as good as 4chan yeah
that's their slogan
but it feels like they're the kind of
community that would take that kitten
situation and make a mockery yeah
they're they're a darker than fortune
yeah yeah
i don't even i'm not allowed to talk
about 16 chan
i'm already overwhelmed clearly uh by
4chan
lingo i'm i have actu i literally wrote
down on my notes
um like in doing research for this
conversation
i learned the word pleb and
i wanted to ask you would this pleb mean
you know what flood means no
i don't what i i saw i mean actually no
i don't
you know what a pleb is i just i don't
know what a flub is
like a plebiscite or plebeian okay but
does it mean something more
sophisticated um no it's a very
unsophisticated mechanism of being
dismissive
of like the regular people yeah or
someone who comes at me
on twitter okay all right so back to
the 4chan alt-right it wasn't uh those
are very different concepts
don't conflate them but which
internet culture was the alt-right born
out of
uh alright was more born of blogs and
people had different blogs where they
were posting what they called like
racial realism
scientific which is scientific racism
so-called um and
you know breaking down issues from a
racialist perspective so that wasn't
4chan is much more uh dynamic it's a
message board it's
very fluid um so it doesn't lend itself
to these kind of in-depth analysis of
ideas or history
but it spreads them like it it spreads
them as memes yeah
and it you know but it's not it's not an
essential mechanism of uh
of the alt-right historical no no no no
no no so it was both
mostly about blogs okay so what uh
what do you make of the psychology of
this kind of world view
when you have this goes to your
conspiracy theory
subject earlier when you have a little
bit of knowledge about something
about history that no one's talking
about and there's only one group
that is talking about it and they and
you have no alternative
answers you're going to be drawn to that
group so because issues about
race anti-semitism homophobia are so
taboo in our culture
understandably there's good reasons if
you start putting things like how old
should you be
you have sex with kids just have regular
conversations eventually some people are
going to start taking some positions you
don't like so some things have to be
sanctified to some extent
they're the only ones talking about it
you're going to be drawn to that
subculture and where does the alt-right
stand now
i mean i hear that term used so the term
has been weaponized by the corporate
press
for people that they want to read out of
society
so it's used both on individual levels
like people like gavin mcking
mckingus milo yiannopoulos some others
they i mean i think they refer to trump
as alt-right
um and and you know it's become a slur
just like in cell or bot that has become
largely removed from its original
meaning
do you have a sense that there's still a
movement that's all right or like
yeah they call themselves now so okay so
there's something called the dissident
right
and they say we're completely not like
the alt-right because the alt-right's a
b and c
and we're bcd there's a huge overlap
it's very much the same people um is
there intellectuals that
still represent some awesome aspect of
the movement
i mean sure are you tracking this not
not that much anymore
um i think they've they're i don't find
it particularly
as um now that the book's done
you know my i'm looking more into
history from my next book
um you mentioned communism i'm going to
talk a lot about the cold war
um so this kind of stuff has largely
fallen away from my radar to some extent
and they've also been
the the it's been a very effective
movement to get them marginalized and
silenced
so they're not as as deep as of a
concern in terms of
concern or not just their impact on size
much less
yeah so as a troll on twitter yeah
in the best sense of the word what do
you make uh
of canceled culture i think it's maoism
it's
i mean the corporate america has done a
far better job of implementing that
wasn't that a communist party
ever could you had this meeting not that
long ago from i think it was
northwestern university law school
where everyone on the call got up and
said that they were racist i mean this
is something that legally
you should be very averse to saying even
if it were true
and it's this kind of concept of getting
up and confessing your sins before the
collective
is something completely um
are they sorry they admitted this of
themselves yeah they were like because
they're saying because they're white
they're inherently racist so my name's
john i'm a racist my name is this i'm a
racist it was it was uh you hear it and
you're like okay this is looney tunes
so you're saying that wow that's that
that's so much you took a step
further so you're saying there's like a
a deep underlying force but
it says cancer culture it's not just
some kind of mob
but it's not some at all it's a
it's a systemic organized movement uh
being used
for very nefarious purposes and to
dominate you know an entire nation
how do we fight it because i sense it
inside
you know i used to defend academia
um more because um
i i still do to some extent it's a
nuanced discussion
because you know like folks like jordan
peterson
and a lot of people that kind of attack
academia they
refer they really are talking about
gender studies at certain departments
and
me from mit you know it's the university
of science and engineering and
the the faculty there
really don't think about these issues
or haven't traditionally thought about
it's beginning to even infiltrate there
it's the you know it's starting to
infiltrate
engineering and sciences outside of
biology yeah like
let's put biology with the gender
studies like i'm talking about sciences
that really don't have anything to do
with gender
uh it's starting to infiltrate
um and it worries me i don't know
exactly why like
i don't know exactly what the negative
effect there
would be except it feels like it's
anti-intellectual
oh yes of course and i'm not sure what
to uh
because on the surface
it feels like a path towards progress
at first when you when i'm like zoomed
out you know just like
like squinting my eyes the you know not
even in detail looking at things but
when i actually joined the conversation
to like listen in
the conversation on quote-unquote
diversity
it quickly makes me realize that
there's no interest in um
in making a better world no no it's
about domination
it's it's about getting yeah it's a way
for
if you are a lowest status white person
using anti-racism is the only mechanism
you will have to feel superior to
another human being
so it's very useful for them um in terms
of
fighting it one of my suggestions has
been to seize all university endowments
which are the crystallization of
privilege
and distribute that money as reparations
so be very effective by turning two
populations against each other
and strongly diminishing the
university's intellectual hegemony
uh the universities are absolutely the
real villains in the picture thankfully
they're also the
least prepared to be aggressed upon and
after the
government and the corporate press they
are the last leg of the stool
and they don't know what's coming and
it's gonna get ugly and i cannot wait
so this is where you and i disagree part
one yeah we disagree
in a sense that you want to dismantle
broken institutions i don't think
they're broke
they're working like by design i think
for over 100 years
they have been talking about bringing
the next generation of american leaders
which is
code for promulgating an ideology
based on egalitarian principles and
world
domination let me try to express
my lived experience okay sure okay
my experience at mit is that
there's a bunch of administrators that
are the bureaucracy
sure that i can i can say
this is the nice thing about having a
podcast i don't give a damn is they're
pretty useless
in fact they get in the way but there's
faculty there's professors
that aren't incredible they're
incredible human beings
that all they do all day they're
too busy but for the most part what they
do all day
is just like continually pursue
different little
trajectories of curiosities in the in
the various
avenues of science that they work on and
as a side effect of that they mentor
a group of students sometimes a large
group of students and also teach courses
and they're constantly sharing their
passion with others and
my experience is it's just a bunch of
people who are curious about
engineering and math and science
chemistry artificial intelligence
computer science what i'm most familiar
with
and there's never this feeling of mit
being broken somehow like this kind of
feeling like if i talk to you just now
or like eric weinstein there's a feeling
like
stuff is on fire right there's something
broken uh but when i'm in in the system
uh especially before the kovid before
this kind of tension
everything was great there was no
discussion of
even diversity all that kind of stuff
the the toxic stuff
that we might be talking about right now
none of that was happening it was a
bunch of people
just in love with uh cool ideas
exploring ideas being curious and
learning and all that kind of stuff
so i don't my my sense of academia
was this is the place where kids in
their 20s 30s and 40s can continue
the playground of science and having fun
it's
if you destroy academia if you destroy
universities like
you're suggesting kind of lessening
their power
you take away the playground from these
kids to to
to play it's going to be hard for you to
tell me that i'm anti-playground
yeah well i guess i'm saying you're on
top certain kinds of playgrounds which
is
yeah the ones that have the broken glass
on the floor yeah i am against those
kinds of playgrounds
no no you're you're you're
yes no you see that you listen
no you no you wait yeah i i i would say
you're being
the watchful mother who the one kid who
hurt themselves in the glass
one kid it's an intelligent it's
generation after generation i'm not a
watchful mother i'm the guy with the
flamethrower
no i i i understand that but you're
using the one
kid who was always kind of like weird um
gender studies department uh that that
hurt themselves on the glass
as opposed to the people who are like
obviously having fun in the playground
and not uh playing by the glass the
broken glass and they're just
i mean to me some of the best
innovations in science happen
in universities okay you can't forget
that universities don't have this
liberal
like politics literally in
every conversation until this year until
this
this year there's something happening
but uh every conversation i've ever had
nothing to do with politics would never
trump never came up
none of that ever come up nothing like
all this kind of idea that there's
liberal
all that that that's in the humanities
yeah but do you think mit massachusetts
into technology
might be a little bit of an outlier yeah
there probably is yeah
but i i don't i honestly don't think
when people criticize academia they're
looking at
uh they're in fact also picking the
outliers
which is they're picking some of the
quote unquote's strongest gender studies
department this is nonsensical when i
was a bucknell
i was a college student we had to take
you know we had a bunch of electives and
i want to take a class on individual
american individualism one of the texts
of the five
that we had to read was birth of a
nation the movie
about the clan so there's
no department where these people
are not thorough going hardcore
ideologues uh this is not a gender
cities that's the humanity
fine all the humanity it's not just
gender studies okay fine
i can give you history english yes all
of them
every university as you know has it
mandatory
in the curriculum they have to take a
bunch of these propaganda classes
i look forward to youtube comments
because you're being more eloquent
and you're speaking to the thing that a
lot of people agree with and i'm being
my usual slow self and people are going
to say not very nice things
about me don't say anything that nice
about lex okay
please let me try to just just shoot up
a school
that would be preferable there he goes
again only the teachers go to the
darkest possible place
the sunshine baby schools that's where
everyone goes to be happy playgrounds
there he goes dark ear just
dives right in like it just go dark and
then just comes back off to the surface
not to feel
[Laughter]
um you're probably a figment of my
generation i'm not even having this
podcast well after 18 red bulls i'm
surprised you could see anything
this is like fight club red bull gives
you delirious yeah
uh i got into it at norton yesterday on
twitter oh really yeah as he uh like the
rest of the celebrities yeah he's like
oh this is an existential threat to
america trump's a fascist he's
delegitimizing the oval office i said
what an odd endorsement of trump
well you should have went with bad pit
he might have a different opinion that's
spike
reference okay this conversation
is over it's interesting i'd like to
draw a line between science and
engineering
and science not including like the
biological
aspect the the parts of biology that
touch
and humanities and biology like i feel
because
uh humanities if you just look at the
percentage of universities it's still
a minority percentage and i would
actually draw different
i think they serve very different
purposes sure and
that's actually a broken part about
universities about like
why why is some of the best research in
the world done at universities that
doesn't
like there might be a different like mit
it feels weird that a faculty yeah these
are conceptually different things like
we do research and we teach why is this
the same yeah it feels weird but that's
just but but i'm also i'm coming to like
the defense
of the engineers that never talk about
i'm not like
like my mind isn't i'm not like deluded
or something where i'm i'm not seeing
the
the house on fire i'm just saying i am
seeing the house because i also lived in
harvard square i'm seeing harvard
but when you see the tanks coming
they're coming next
they're gonna be so beautiful i'm gonna
it'll be like the
american beauty the plastic bag i just
won't be able to stop crying because
it'll be so beautiful yeah
thanks i could i can already i can
already see it but the
but the engineering departments were
like i believe
that the elon musks of the world that
the
the like the innovation that will make a
better world
is happening and like let's not burn
that down
because it has nothing to do with any
like they're all like
sitting quietly in while like well
the the humanities and all these kind of
diversity programs they're not having
any of these discussions
listen my soviet brother you both know
we both know that ice water runs in our
veins
so if you're calling for mercy that is
not how i'm wired
but i'm not closing the door yeah i'm
actually realizing now
so for people listening to this i'll
probably prepend this and saying that
i'm even slower than usual i didn't
sleep last night
but i feel i'm actually realizing just
how slow i
am and how much preparation i need to do
in
if i would like to defend aspects of
academia
i better come prepared i don't think you
need to defend them i think i'm
granting you your premise freely no you
might be
okay i don't think the the world is that
like actually you just defeat your own
argument because you because it is not
at all
have to be the way that a phenomenal
research
institution like mit which no one
disputes has to also be an educational
establishment
these two things are not at all
necessarily interconnected but then you
have to offer a way
to separate correct but like i'm not a
big fan
everybody's different but i'm not a fan
of criticizing institutions without
offering sure a way to change and
especially when i'm like
have ability to change i'd like to yeah
i'd like to offer a path
like what if they were in students they
were all mentor like uh like men like
um what's the opposite of a mentor
mentee
protege what's the term when you're like
just when you work at a place
like interns not an intern something i'm
thinking of but anyway like basically
they're working there instead of going
to college there it's possible but
it's going against tradition and so you
have to build new institutions and
uh and then have these engineers
building new things that's crazy
yeah these research engineers where
they're going to be building
things well one of the things because
you're kind of
you know apprentice that's the way i was
looking at apprentice which is ironic
we're talking about trump and
we couldn't think of the word apprentice
ah very yeah well done
we should both be fired yeah there you
go
these russian jews so quick with their
wit okay
uh but the the thing is you're a fan of
freedom i am
and there's there is uh intellectual
freedom
people this is what i was trying to
articulate i'm failing to articulate
but there truly is complete intellectual
freedom within
universities on topics of science and
engineering i believe you
yeah i agree with you i don't think it's
going to take much persuasion but i'll
give you an example
when that i i'm sure you know more
details about this
than i do when that uh scientist
engineered that probe to land on that
comet
and the articles written because this
hawaiian shirt he was wearing had like
pinup girls on it which i think is
female
student episode frame or something
where's his ex-girlfriend and he had to
apologize
this is what rand was talking about yeah
that the great
accomplishments of men have to say i'm
sorry
to the lowest most despicable disgusting
people
yeah i don't know you know let me bring
this case up because i think about this
uh this might not mean much to you but
it means a lot to a certain
aspect of the computer science community
there's a guy named richard stallman
i don't know if you know who that is no
he's the founder of the
free software foundation he's like a big
linux he's one of the key people in the
history of computer science
one of those open source people right
but he is like
i believe he's the one of the hardcore
ones which is like so
all software should be free okay okay so
very interesting personality very key
person in the new just like linus
torvald key person
so but he also kind of speaks his mind
okay and on a certain chain of
conversations
at mit that was leaked to the new york
times then was published
led him to be fired or pushed out of mit
recently maybe a year ago and
i always sat weird with me so what
happened is um
there's a few undergraduate students
that
called marvin minsky not sure if you're
familiar who that is i've heard the name
he's one of the seminal people in
artificial intelligence
they they said that they called him a
rapist
because uh he met with jeffrey epstein
and jeff uh free epstein solicited
uh two these are the best facts known to
me that i'm aware of that's what was
stated on the chain is he solicited a 17
but it might have been an 18 year old
girl to come up to marvin minsky
and ask him if he wanted to have sex
with her
so jeffrey epstein told the girl yeah
she came up to marvin miske who was at
that time is i think seven years old
and his wife was there too marvin mink's
wife and he said
no or like you know awkwardly yeah so
thank you
yeah no thanks and
that was stated in the email thread
as marvin participating in
uh sexual assault and rape of this uh
unwilling sexual assault and it was
called rape
uh of this person right of this
woman that propositioned him and then
richard stallman who's he's kind of
known for this
he's very he's you make fun of me being
a robot but he's kind of like a debugger
he's like well that sentence is not what
you said is not correct
so he like corrected the person uh
basically made it seem like the
the use of the word rape is not correct
because that's not the definition of
rape
and then he was attacked for saying oh
now you're playing with definitions of
rape rapist rape
is the answer right and then that was
leaked
in him defending so the way he was
leaked it was
reported as him defending
um rape that's the way it was reported
and he was pushed out and he didn't
really give a damn
it's he doesn't seem to make a big deal
out of it he just left he made an
example of him
they made an example and that and
everyone was afraid to defend him
so like there's a bunch of faculty one
dude you're from the soviet union
doesn't this
hit close to home for you i don't know
what to think of it it hits
close to home but it was basically at
least at mit
now mit is such a light place with this
it's not common at mit
but it was like 18 19 year old kids
undergraduate kids with this kind of
fire in them there's just very few of
them
but they're the ones that raise all this
kind of fuss
and the entirety of the administration
all the faculty are afraid to stand up
to them
it's so interesting to me like i don't
know if i should be afraid of that
you don't think you should be afraid so
someone who's trying to be specific when
it comes to charges of violent assault
is looking for that clarity can get
their life uh other search
engines let me give you more context
there's a little bit more context to
richard stallman which is he was also a
rapist
no he left out that part he liked raping
people but he's had a history
through his life uh of
you know every once in a while wearing
the hawaiian shirt with like he would
make
he's a fat uh sorry but he's a fat
unattractive he like what trump referred
to the the yeah
the guy in the basement in the basement
that's richard
okay i love you is is you know he is
what he is
peop you know people he like he would
eat his own uh
he would pick skin from his feet and
lectures and just eat it
okay yeah this video is him doing that
i'm not joking he must really behind the
spectrum then
yeah okay yeah and
so and you know uh he i think
this uh and his office he adore he wrote
something like uh
uh like hacker
uh plus plus lover of ladies or
something like that like
something kind of yeah yeah yeah so
professional
yeah unprofessional and a little creepy
yeah no that's fair
so he was also so they're looking for an
excuse to get rid of him
it sounds like i know he was just
who's they the administration yeah
probably
probably a lot of times what people
don't realize you know this would be my
defensive cancer culture
a lot of times when someone gets fired
over something like this yeah this isn't
why this is just giving them cover
to get rid of them without getting a
lawsuit yeah but it's still
so i think i guess what i'm trying to
communicate it feels a little weird and
creepy
and he may not be the the best for the
community
but that's not necessarily the message
it's sent to the rest of the community
the message is sent to the rest of the
community that
being clear about words or the usage of
the word rape
is uh like you should call everything
rape that's
that's that's basically the message you
send or you should call that we say rape
rape
it's about submission i think i'm you'd
be very happy to know that there's a lot
of people and she's very crucified this
like betsy devos
the president's department of education
who are aware of this
they are aware that this completely
contradicts due process uh they're aware
of how
a rape accusation is something not to be
taken seriously but because it's not to
be taken seriously it has to be also
taken seriously another context
that you know once that word is around a
male this can ruin his entire life
um and that's that that's the sticky
thing of the word
like i like i think about this
a lot that um
like how would i defend it if somebody
like i've never i can honestly say i've
never done
anything close to creepy in my life
like uh with like with women but you
wouldn't know it if you had right
that's the thing a lot of these creepy
guys don't think they're creepy they
think they're being cute
yeah but i'm just telling you even like
fine let's say right let's say i'm not
aware of it but the point that
i am aware of is that somebody could
just completely make something up
correct yeah
yeah yeah yeah okay and like how what do
what would i say no
he denied the charges there's an article
around everything you did supposedly and
then goes
uh mr freeman denied the charges yeah
but what creeps me out
that happened can i interrupt there is
zora neal hurston is one of my favorite
writers she's from the harlem
renaissance
um she wrote their eyes were watching
god a couple of other books
she was just an amazing amazing figure
her biography is called um wrapped in
rainbows it's just a masterpiece i like
i think i read it one day
can't recommend her enough fascinating
fascinating woman during the
30s i think it was her 1940 she was out
of the country
she was accused of molesting a teenage
boy
she wasn't in america this could be
proven
so there's is absolutely false not even
a question she was indicted
and she wanted to kill herself because
she's like
people are going to see these things and
they're going to think maybe there's
some truth to it maybe it's voluntary
what they're just going to and and you
could understand what should be suicidal
over this
so yeah this is this is something that's
been going on for a long time and in
the fact that it's becoming i do agree
it's important i know a lot of women
who have been sexually assaulted more
than i i'm happy that i know
and if i know that many that means
there's more so i i don't
i think it's it's a good idea that they
feel seen
that they don't feel wounded they don't
feel damaged or they can talk to their
friends and
i'm like man this sucks is happening to
you and and i don't think you're a slut
i don't think you're asking for it i
think you feel violated i think it's
gross
talk to me like i i do think that that's
important and i also think it's
important though like when things get
kind of in a frenzy that a lot of people
like yeah
i also had something happen and very
quickly the line between he grabbed my
boob
and he violently raped me i don't think
these two things are the same at all i
think they're both sexual assault
but in terms of what someone can deal
with the next day the next month 10
years later
i i don't think there's similar
scenarios
yeah i had juanita broderick on my show
and hearing her talk about
you know her alleged rape by bill
clinton
was very disturbing for me very
disturbing to hear
because it was like half an hour so you
know we think of these things and think
okay
hold her down blah blah yeah and then
it's done half an hour when just even
someone physically holding you down for
half an hour like not even a sexual
assault yeah like that's traumatic
yeah you think am i your brain's gonna
think am i gonna die when i zoom out
i think the ultimately this is gonna
lead to a better world
like empowering women to speak to
those kinds of experiences the benefit
of it outweighs
the the issue is whenever people are
given a weapon
some are going to use it in nefarious
ways and that's the lesson of history
males when males females whites blacks
children adults
when people are given a mechanism to
execute power over others
some are going to use it can i ask you
for a therapy thing
um sure untrolling
in a sense uh because i mentioned
somebody making up something about me
i feel because i wear my heart on my
sleeve
i'm not good with these attacks like
i've been attacked recently
just being called a fraud and all that
kind of stuff just light stuff like i
haven't you know
it was like it hurt okay well
let me help you maybe it's because i'm a
new yorker
no i'm serious here's why in new york
a lot of times you'll be walking with
your friend and a homeless person
will come up to you and start yelling
things at you your reaction
isn't in those circumstances let me hear
this out
your reaction is physical safety and
getting away
now it's not impossible that that
homeless person
is actually saying the truth this
happened to my a friend of mine she
this guy wasn't homeless um and he's
walking down the street on smith street
and he's just talking out loud and he
goes why they call them hipsters what
are they hip to
and she chuckles and he goes what are
you laughing at fatso
you start something i'll finish it yeah
and she she just couldn't move
yeah and it's like it's made a problem
because that's the first thing he went
to
and there's i don't know that i have any
advice
but when you hear something like this
this is i think you need to be better in
terms of boundaries
i think you should not perceive this as
a fellow human but as
a crazy homeless person because
if this fellow human if i thought that
you were
a fraud in some context that's a very
weird word to use because fraudulent
podcaster
these are real mics but if i was a
scientist or
human sure but i would ask myself is
this person
in a position to make this judgment or
are they backing it up
are they saying here your conclusions
were wrong here's some mistakes in your
data
and you can engage with them on ideas
but whenever someone uses a word to
entirely dismiss your life
without having the knowledge of your
life you do not have to take that
seriously
i appreciate that kind of idea but
some things aren't about data like you
know i i see myself as a fraud often
and it's it's more psychology of it
um if i can reduce something to reason
i can probably be fine my worry is the
same as the worry of uh like teenage
girls that get bullied online
it's like when i'm being open and
fragile on the internet
it affects me in a way where i can't the
reason doesn't help so
it helps me you don't block people
enough i'm very happy with the blocking
no i
so yeah i'm very heavy i block i
it's healthy progressive banality i
block immediately
i also think time is going to help i
don't think you're
like you didn't grow up wanting to be a
podcaster right that wasn't your
aspiration
so in some sense you are going to feel
like a fraud because you're like what i
don't have any training for this i have
a training for a scientist
i can talk about artificial intelligence
for literally hours but in terms of this
like i don't know what i'm doing i'm
kind of
so when they call you a fake it's like
yeah you're kind of right because like i
i did kind of stumble into this and this
is not my pedigree
so i think that kind of probably speaks
to you on some level well but they're
they're attacking not the podcasting
thing but more like the same
thing people call elon musk fraud too
which guy that that's the way i
rationalize it like
well if they're calling him a fraud and
they're calling me a fraud
that like even if you have rockets that
go into
like if you successfully have rockets uh
landing back on earth usable rockets
you're still being called a fraud
then it's okay not necessarily it could
be that he's not a fraud you really are
that's but it's not resonating with you
because your brain knows the logic so
you can right
but uh yeah yeah
but i don't know this whole trolling
thing you seem to be
much better at
seeing it as a game you know why because
you
are under the delusion that every human
being is capable of intelligent reasoned
decisions still think i'm right and i
perceive them
as literally animals so when a dog
starts barking
all it's saying is that the dog is
agitated and this is not going to change
my life one iota other than crossing the
street perhaps
yeah i'm going to prove you wrong one
day if you're going to kill yourself
but if i don't i'll prove you wrong okay
i'll bring the data
and they'd be like you're right i have
the receipt i have the receipts
okay so we mentioned camus oh yeah i
love him
is there um this is this is this is a
question that people
like love when i ask of really smart
people
well it is love no
uh what uh what books let's say three
books if you can uh think of them
technical fiction philosophical would
you uh
had a big impact on you or would you
recommend to others sure
uh the machiavellians by james burnham
uh this is a book about how politics
works in reality as opposed to how
people
imagine it working um mentis moldbug
who's a figure in these circles who's
respected by a lot of people
i was giving a talk and there was a
bunch of panelists and
we were asked what book would you
recommend i said the machiavellians
independently of me that was the book he
had recommended it's out of print it's
hard to find but that would be
one is that his book or no james burnham
1941 i think
so uh can you pause on the mulches
what's that it's just a small bug
that's a code name right like that guy
named that guy's dependent curtis jarvin
it's his real name he's in he swims in
your circles
which he doesn't kind of progress he's
originally programmed yeah
he comes up as a person that i should
talk with or i should know about but
then i read a few of his things and they
seem quite dangerous
they're very long and verbose but i
think he's an amazing thinker
yeah but he's the one who had the idea
of sending the tanks to harvard yard
but doesn't he have like uh
he has some radical view i forget what
they are very radical views yeah he
wants a military
coup but you're saying he's a serious
thinker this
is worthy uh of not worthy
i don't know that you would enjoy having
a conversation with him i think a lot of
people enjoy seeing it happen but i
think it'd be a lot of talking past each
other
and and it would be interesting what do
you
do okay um what do you agree what do you
disagree i
agree with him that politics has to be
looked at objectively
and without kind of an emotional um
connection
to different schools i talk about him a
lot in my book on the new right
um disagree i don't think a military
coup
is a good idea uh he's he doesn't think
anarchism is stable i disagree
um i mean me and him i did his live
stream with him we just dorked out a lot
about history and like you know people
who've
fallen in the memory hall so i mean he's
got a lot of writing
so so you know the sense i got from him
was that if i talk with him a lot of
people would be upset with me for giving
him a platform
yeah i think he's on that edge where
they want to read him out of
what is acceptable discourse what's his
most controversial
i mean you can mention the tanks is that
the most controversial viewpoint
does he have a race thing no he's the
the alt-right doesn't particularly like
him in many ways because he's not a big
on the race thing i don't know what
would be his most controversial view
uh uh to be honest i think because he
is radical in terms of his analysis of
culture anytime someone's a radical that
is dangerous because it's dangerous
okay book uh so that's one the headlines
ahead which is a um i would say that
shrug no if and if you read atlas shrug
before reading the fountain head you're
doing yourself an enormous disservice
don't you dare do it
on the philosophical because every novel
every every level
fountain head's a better novel
fountainhead's superfluous if you read
out the shrug first
fountain heads about psychology and
ethics
uh it does not have to do with her
politics other than its implications
so it's by far the superior book um the
third one
oh this is a good one question let me
see what i there's so many good books
out there that i love
i i'm going to this is not really my
third choice but i'll throw it out there
because i
um this is such an important world view
especially people on the right
are you virtue signaling no this is
counter signaling
um thaddeus russell's book a renegade
history of the united states
his thesis is that it's the degenerates
that give us all freedom um and
things like prostitutes things like
madams things like slaves
things like immigrants because they were
so
low status they could get away with
things that then people who are higher
status demanded and so on and so forth
so i think that thesis
and it really has extreme um
consequences in
uh thinking and no john jonathan height
the righteous mind
that's those are the four is that his
best i haven't read
any of his stuff okay
that was four but of course forget that
we'll put
we'll put height in there you would uh
no forget that is this those are the
three
so we talked about love let me ask you
the other question
i'm obsessed with are you uh
do you ponder your own mortality i do
a lot especially now that i'm an uncle
especially now that i have like these
younger
people that i mentor um i was just
yesterday uh my friend john gergis who
did my theme song for my podcast who did
the
book cover for um dear reader who's
like the most talented person i know his
song came on the ipod at the gym
and i almost messaged him i go you know
one day one of us is going to bury the
other and it's going to be really sad
and i thought about that and it was kind
of like oh man that's really going to
suck
um and you know i don't know which
scenario would be better like i will be
very just sad if he's gone i'm sure
he'll be very sad if i'm gone
um i mean what are you are you afraid of
it no
uh you know uh um rand had this quote
about how
uh i won't die the world will end so
i've had enough experiences that i am i
i've
really at this point and everything's
icing on that cake
so if you if i were to kill you at the
end of this podcast
it would feel painless that would be
okay yeah
you know why does anyone know you're
here by the way
you know why i'll ask you for a friend
here's why
there's that wit say that for twitter
likes
did they call you sasha no i'm uh no
sure
oh that's my sister's husband okay so
here's why i strongly believe
and this is a very kind of jewish
perspective that you just have to
leave the world a little bit better than
you found it that all you could do is
move the needle a little
and one of the things i set out to do
with dear reader my book on north korea
i said i was at a point in my career
where i could do something to make a
difference instead of just writing like
co-authoring books with celebrities
which i'm very proud of but you know are
neither here nor there
and i thought all right i know how to
tell stories i know how to inform people
and 110 people
if i move the needle in america who
cares we got it really good here
if i move the needle in north korea a
little bit the cost benefits through the
roof
i never thought of that actually i never
thought of d reader from that
perspective
so when i set out to write it i'm like
okay
what can i do i'm not gonna be able to
liberate the north korean regime what i
can do is the camera right now is
focused on at the time kim jong-il now
kim jong-un
and i can do just this just this a
little bit and i go behind that guy
who you think is funny clown there's
millions of dead people
about north korea in terms of look at
those silly buffoons to
those poor people so the fact that that
little thing
i can say with a straight face i did
doesn't make me a great person
but it does make me someone who if i
have to go tomorrow
i can say i did a little bit to make the
world a better place
what do you think is the meaning of life
i think the meaning of life is
um why are we here oh well that i'm a
camus person
so i'll give the kamu answer so there's
two types of people
those who know how to use binary no
thanks thanks for relating to the
audience
one zero zero one two two
[Laughter]
down vote what kind of radical freak is
this lex
so and i use this example of my
forthcoming book
you go into a countryside a mountainside
and you see a blank canvas
on an easel and one kind of mentality
goes this is
it's just a blank canvas this is stupid
this is what am i looking at
and the other type goes what a great
opportunity
i'm in this beautiful space i have this
entire canvas to paint i could do
anything i want with it
so i am very much of that type 2 person
and i i hope others start to
think of life in that way you and i have
both been more successful than we
expected to especially growing up
and in ways we did not expect and when
you're young
you are so intent on driving the car and
after a certain point you realize it's
not about driving the cars you're being
a surfer
that you can only control this little
board and you have no idea where the
waves will take you and sometimes you're
gonna fall down and something's gonna
suck and you're gonna swallow some salt
water but at a certain point you stop
trying to drive
and you're like this is freaking awesome
and i have no idea where it's going to
go
beautifully put i know i speak for a lot
of people
first of all everyone loves the game
you play on the internet it's fun you
make the world not everyone
they came for me hard but it makes
the world seem fun and especially in
this dark time
it's uh it's much appreciated and we
can't wait till the next book
and the menu to come and to hopefully
many more joe rogan appearances
you guys do some great magic together
that's
you uh yeah you're you're one of my
favorite guests on this show so i can't
wait
especially if you can make it before the
election
thanks so much for making today happen
i'm glad you came down
you're awesome thank you so much what a
great compliment
thanks for listening to this
conversation with michael malus and
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friedman and now let me leave you with
some words from michael malus
conservatism is progressivism driving
the speed limit
thank you for listening hope to see you
next time
you