 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brook Show on this Friday, last Friday of March. It is also a good Friday, good Friday. I don't even know what exactly we're celebrating today, but something to do with Jesus. Anyway, everything's closed. It's particularly here in Puerto Rico. The whole week has been just like in many countries in Latin America. The whole week is kind of a week where people take off and make it into a holiday week. Jennifer says, Friday is always good. It's Easter Friday. It's good Friday to have a good Friday. All right, you guys are endlessly creative. But yeah, hopefully everybody's having a great Friday and looking forward to the weekend. And hopefully you had a fantastic week. Andrew says, it has something to do with Jesus and bunnies. Yeah, eggs, looking for, I remember something like that. But that's Sunday, right? Sunday is Easter. Today is not Easter. Anyway, happy Easter weekend to everybody. I hope you have a great weekend. OK, let's see. Yeah, let's just jump in with the news. SBF, you remember SBF? Sam Banquen-Fried, the CEO of Bankrupt FTX. Sam Banquen-Fried was, as you know, convicted of fraud. As you know, because we covered it on the show, convicted of fraud for what he did at FTX and has been fined billions of dollars. So his personal wealth has basically been eviscerated to try to pay off some of the debts that the company had when it had been bankrupt. As interestingly enough, as it turns out, because of what's happened with crypto and particularly what's happened with Bitcoin and with the rest of crypto over the last few months, achieving all-time highs, going above $70,000 and stuff, the assets of FTX actually turned positive. And I think people actually made money on the bankrupt company because it held enough Bitcoin to cover everything. But of course, that doesn't mitigate the fact that there was fraud committed. And at the time of the company shutting down and the fraud prosecution, it was in the red. It's only turned green because of the market, right? Because of the movement in the market. Anyway, Sam Banquen-Fried was sentenced yesterday to 25 years in jail. Now, I'm no Sam Banquen-Fried fan for many, many, many reasons among them his effective altruism. But more importantly, he committed fraud. And he should go to jail. And that is really, really, really bad. But 25 years in jail? I mean, they're rapists who don't get 25 years in jail. Second-degree murder doesn't get, I think in many cases, doesn't get 25 years in jail. Beating somebody up, aggravated assault, doesn't get 25 years in jail. I mean, this seems like this is nuts. It reminds me a little bit of Donald Trump's 450-something million dollar fine. I mean, these are ridiculous, particularly in an era where shoplifting cool. We're not going to even prosecute you. You can punch somebody in the face as happened in New York recently. Just a random woman walking down the street was punched in the face by some guy who's obviously mentally ill. But he got some minimal thing, and he's back on the streets. I mean, there's something very, very wrong about this kind of sentence for these kind of things. SBF is obviously a bad guy, but he's not the kind of bad that I think justifies this kind of sentence. What can you say? I mean, Mike Mokin, for nothing, basically, got 10 years in jail. But at least in that case, the judge had the audacity, the honesty to say, I'm making an example of you, because I hate Wall Street and everything that happens on Wall Street. I'm making an example of you. Is the judge here making an example of SBF, obviously? But for what? Over what? So far it is bad. I would have expected a five-year term, maybe a 10-year term. 25 years is just insane given how we treat violent criminals in this culture. So I don't know. I feel sorry for, I don't know, I feel sorry for SBF. But I guess I do. I mean, that's just a ridiculous sentence. I wonder if some future administration will pardon him given how many political contributions he made while he was around. But I'm not sure they will. I mean, why? I'm sure a lot of them would just rather forget him. He's gone. He's never going to make a future contribution. So why bother? Real sacrificial lamb for the sins of crypto, for the hatred of crypto, for the hatred of finance, for the hatred of people being successful in finance. I mean, Bernie Mayer got 150 years. I mean, that seems exaggerated, right? 150 years given the motorists don't get that. I mean, first degree motorists don't get 150 years. That seems exaggerated. Also, Bernie Mayer set out unequivocally to commit fraud. He had intent from the beginning, really. He built a pyramid scheme. SBF did bad stuff, but you get a sense that he kind of drifted into it. It wasn't one big scheme to defud his investors. The people did business with him. It was something that kind of, like most frauds, drifted into and landed up covering himself and covering previous mistakes by committing fraud. It's not the same thing. The intent matters. Bernie made up, I still don't think deserves 150 years, but certainly deserves more than SBF. So, yeah. Sure, SBF is way worse than punching a person in the face. Absolutely. But the person punching in the face got zero. So it's not that much worse. And it's not worse than killing somebody. It's not worse than raping somebody. It's not worse than some aggravated assault where people are beaten to an edge of their life. And 25 years is a lot in criminal law. So no, it strikes me as way too much, way too much. Well, it's not a hatred of envy of success. It's a hatred of people in finance. And yeah, some people in finance came at fraud. So let's really go after them as compared to everybody else. But I would say there are lots of violent crimes that are much, much worse than what SBF did. And look, the people who participated, the people who invested, the people who played along and had dealings with SBF were somewhat blind to this, right? Or somewhat evasive to this. It's not like they are completely innocent and that a little bit of due diligence wouldn't have discovered this. Same thing is true, by the way, Bernie made up. Lots of people refused to give Bernie money because they understood what was going on. So I'm not blaming the victims here, but I'm just saying I'd like to see sentences on violent crime go up and sentences on this kind of stuff come down. Not to zero, five, 10 years, still a significant chunk of somebody's life. This strikes me as exaggerated. All right. Thank you, Jonathan, for the sticker. Thank you, Silvanos. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Stephen. Really appreciate it, guys. All right, let's see. Yes, 1 billion Americans. So Matt Inglises is something like that. I can't pronounce his name ever. Anyway, he wrote a book a few years ago about 1 billion Americans and the economic value of having a billion Americans. And America should be a country of a billion people. And I'm a supporter of that and that kind of thinking. I think more people in America is good. It's good for everybody. It's win-win. We can discuss whether to give them citizenship and voting and all of that. But from an economic perspective, this is a good thing, a good thing. I don't have a lot to say about this, but Elon Musk seemed to agree. So here's Elon Musk, who has argued against illegal immigration quite a bit, argued for legal immigration, but really hasn't proposed a plan for how to get legal immigration up to the levels where illegal immigration becomes irrelevant. Elon Musk basically tweeted. There's a tweet of the Rockwell painting of the guy standing up to speak in a town hall meeting or something like that. It's a very famous illustration. I like it a lot. It's, I think, my favorite Norman Rockwell in terms of illustration. It's not great art, but it is great illustration. It kind of represents free speech, a common man standing up and voicing his opinion, making his opinion heard. And under that, the guy writes, there should be 1 billion Americans. And to my surprise, and I think to surprise a lot of people, Elon Musk goes, yes, exclamation mark. So I just want to say, good for Elon Musk. This is great. I mean, I'd love to see Elon Musk come around to supporting a robust program of employment-based, large-scale immigration. Large-scale immigration. So yeah, that would be terrific. So yeah, Elon, waiting to see your support for the plan. All right, another piece of good news. The Biden administration has approved a $1.5 billion commitment to basically recommission the Michigan nuclear power plant, a Michigan nuclear power plant. So they're taking an old nuclear power plant. They can invest heavily in basically bringing it up to snuff, up to speed, and connecting it to the grid and reengaging it. I think this is good news. Any time we can get more nuclear power up on the grid, that is a good thing given the hostility towards the nuclear power that has dominated this country since the 1970s. If we can break through and actually increase new capabilities, it's a win-win-win for everybody. I don't like particularly that the government is spending $1.5 billion to do this. The government shouldn't be engaged in this. But given that they subsidize wind farms and windmills and all this other stuff, I'd rather see the money go to reliable energy source and energy source that can be relied upon, whether it's cold or hot, whether the wind blows or whether the sun shines. And it certainly doesn't shine much in northern Michigan. So here in Covert Township, Michigan, I'm not even sure what part of Michigan that is, they will be recommissioning a completely refurbished, restored 800 megawatt electric nuclear power generating station. And yeah, this is great. It's good to see nuclear power back on the grid. We need, particularly with the move that seems like inevitable given where we are, it seems inevitable that we're going to need a lot more electricity. Because, God, if this inevitable move to electric vehicles, almost inevitable move to electric vehicles actually pans out, then where's the electricity going to come from? I mean, the grid needs upgrading. And you need a lot more power generation. You need a lot more conversion of one form of energy to the form of electricity. That is not simple. That's not easy. It's not easy to build up the grid. But it's also where is that all capacity going to come from, particularly if there's energy and push to shut down nuclear power plants and to shut down fossil fuel generating electricity, electricity generating plants. So nuclear power is, of course, the solution to that. Steady, sustained, uninterrupted, reliable, day and night, 24-7, 365 days a year energy. It's hard to beat that. Dances, we need more substations, absolutely. We need the whole infrastructure, the whole package of how to get there. One of the reasons I don't think we're going to get as many electric vehicles as some people predict or as the state of California would like or the other politicians would like is because of this, because of the fact that it's just not doable. There's just not the infrastructure to sustain it. And there's no way California is going to go without cars because there's not a lot of electricity to drive their electric cars. They will have to change their mandates and to allow internal combustion engines to continue for a while. Now, it's sad, tragic, that the government is even involved in telling us what kind of car we should drive, what kind of engine a car should have. Why not let the market determinists, why not let the values of individuals determinists? But, of course, the government is involved. It is heavily involved and is heavily skewed towards moving us away from fossil fuels and towards electricity. It's interesting that consumers don't really want electric cars. Americans drive a lot and they drive larger distances. Even in cities, the distances can be pretty big in the United States of America. We live in suburbs and so on. And probably one of the biggest barriers for electric cars is just range. Who the hell wants to be stuck without electricity without being able to charge your battery every so many 100 miles? So range is a big deal. And the lack of availability of charging stations, it's also probably an issue of just, I don't know, the electric cars seem fragile. I don't think they are. But they seem that way. And they don't seem quite as robust as some of the non-electric cars. But anyway, for whatever reason, consumers don't seem to be that interested. Maybe it's price. Maybe when the Chinese come with under $20,000 electric cars, that will all change. All right, abortion. I mean, this is a big issue. There's a lot to say here. Whoops, what happened here? Yeah, I lost that news article. Where did it go? Anyway, interesting story this week from Alabama. Alabama basically has banned abortion pretty much across the board. It's very difficult, I think, with the exception of Mother's Life and even that. It's almost impossible to get an abortion in Alabama. Anyway, a Democrat ran for a House of Representatives in the State House of Alabama on a reproductive rights platform and a pro-abortion platform. In a Republican district, this is Alabama. They're not that many Democrats. It's almost all Republicans. And this was a solidly Republican district. And she won, the Democrat won. And it is pretty obvious that the reason for that is, I'd say, conservative women, Republican women, who understand what it means to be pregnant, understand what it means to be a life into this world, understand what it means to take away the option of almost completely of having an abortion for women. And I've told you the story, I think, that I once spoke in Colorado, Spain, in front of a very conservative audience. I can't remember what the topic was, but whatever it was, the first question I got in the Q&A from, I think, a former House of Representatives, conservative Republican, was about abortion. And I basically made my case for a woman's right to have an abortion, for a woman's right to choose. And I thought, OK, I'm going to get a huge amount of booze here. And what was interesting was, yeah, I mean, there were people really upset, mainly men, very, very upset. But there was a lot of clapping. The clapping was all done under the table. She couldn't quite tell who was clapping. But it was basically the women in the audience, conservative women were clapping. They are pro-choice. They might not admit it. They might not tell their husbands, I don't know. But when it times to vote, and nobody can see how they're voting. And when it comes to responding, they get it, they get it, at least to some extent. And Republicans are really hooding in themselves. So I found this tweet interesting. This is a national review, right? The national review is not the most crazy, out-there, religious right publication. It's pretty bad, particularly in its attitude to at the shrug the nine-man. But not the craziest of all publications, and this is a tweet they put out. Vice President Kamala Harris's visit to an abortion clinic is a sign not just of how little this administration would offer disaffected Republicans, but also how radical the Democratic Party has become in this issue. Really? Really? The Democrats are radical in this issue? She went to an abortion clinic, where they're doing legal abortions, which is good, which is the right thing, and which is a clearly Democratic position, and which is a position, according to a recent Fox News poll, it is a position that is supported overwhelmingly by Americans. Whoops, the graph I had disappeared on me. But basically, right now, as of today, seven in 10 Americans favor the use of the abortion pill. 6 and 1 half out of 10, 6 and 1 half to 7, over 65% of Americans, support access to abortion, some access to abortion. These numbers are significantly higher than they were when Volvers' weight was power. It was overturned, dobs. So the support for abortion has only increased over the last few years. And this means that a significant number of Republicans support abortion. So no, I think Kamala Harris going to an abortion clinic is exactly what is necessary to get disaffected Republicans, those disaffected Republicans who are furious at the Republican Party for basically banning abortion in so many states and turning the lives of women into hell in those states. And you see it, state after state after state, red states, where the issue of abortion is brought to a vote through a constitutional amendment or through a referendum or through something like that. A majority, even in deep red states, a majority is voting for sustaining a woman's right to have an abortion. So no, Kamala made a excellent move in terms of electoral politics and in terms of morality. She's on the right side of this. She's on the right side of this. In Michigan in the meantime, there is, oh, we've got a bunch of Michiganians here, Michiganians here. In Michigan, there's a Senate race. And between a Democrat, obviously, and a Republican, the Republican is a former congressman who has a strong, this is Mike Rogers, who has a strong anti-abortion record. He was actually one of the sponsors of a life at conception bill that the House tried to pass. And let me tell you, abortion rights, the issue of abortion, is going to be a major issue in Michigan when it comes time to vote for the Senate. Even though Michigan has instituted into its constitution the right to have abortion, I think Michiganians, Michiganas, that's the right word. Still worry about a national bill that limits and takes it away from states to make these kind of decisions. And this could be a major issue. And generally, abortion could be the major issue that flips the Senate, or look, this year, Democrats are unbelievably exposed. Democrats should lose the Senate. There's no question. They should have lost the Senate two years ago. But this year, they definitely should lose the Senate. They have a one-person majority. Republicans are almost sure to pick up West Virginia. And so that makes it equal. And there's a bunch of red states where Democratic senators are running. And Republicans expected to pick up a number of seats. And this is the Republicans should take the Senate based on just the math. And two years ago was the same thing. This year is even more so. Abortion could be the issue that makes it really challenging for Republicans and might cause them not to win the Senate or to win the Senate, but with a very small majority. And also could cause them to lose the House. And that's great. That is great that it's an issue where it happens to be the Democrats are right that gets them elected rather than issues where Democrats tend to be wrong, which is most of the issues they advocate for. All right. Just a little bit about the bridge in Baltimore failing. This has inspired people to come up with some of the most bizarre conspiracy theories possible. The bridge fell because of DEI. The bridge fell because of open borders, too many migrants. Who knows? The bridge fell might be because of the US support for Israel, hard to tell. But so there is a plethora of conspiracy theories out there about why this bridge fell. Of course, interestingly enough, while blaming immigrants, of course, the victims, the people who died were the construction workers on top of the bridge, fixing it, maintaining it, making it better, who are all of immigrant origin, or I think a significant number of them with immigrant origin just as an aside. But this has also led to just this panic over American infrastructures failing. This is a more sign of American decline. Everything's blowing up. Everything's crashing. Everything's imploding. And just again to give all this some reality, there is no evidence, zero evidence, that we have any kind of infrastructure disasters on our hands. Bridges fall, accidents happen, things like this will happen. Some of our infrastructure is aging. And it's unlikely government will spot it in time. And some bridges and some things do fall. But it's not more than in previous years, things are not getting worse in this regard. So keep a perspective. And it shows a transportation disaster. Disasters happen because of transportation, a big infrastructure. There's very little. This is primarily driven by the fact that it's been 15 years since there was a multiple fatality accident involving a US passenger airline. This should also make you wonder about these people who worry about, I showed this photo, somebody put up a photo of two female pilots at the front of a plane and waiting, oh, how does this make you feel? In implying that this should make you feel unsafe. Well, there are a lot more female pilots flying at planes today than there were 15 years ago or 20 years ago. And yet no accidents, no accidents with fatalities, multiple fatalities since February 12, 2009. In that period, 11.6 billion passengers have boarded a scheduled US flight with just two passengers fatalities, two out of 11.6 billion. When I see two female pilots, I have to say, I'm a little reassured. Female pilots are less likely to take on crazy risks. You can imagine a male pilot saying, oh, that maintenance thing, that's fine. We'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Let's just take off. I've got a date. I need to get there. And a female pilot is probably going to go, no, let's slow down. Let's check it out. Let's make sure everything's fine. It's, I think, has to do with risk aversion, and risk-seeking men tend to be much more risk-seeking than women. Tend, not everybody, but as a tendency. So me, at least, I feel reassured when there's a female pilot that will probably take on less risks in flying. And she probably cares a little bit more about passenger comfort than her male counterparts. The biggest challenge to American infrastructure, I mean, literally the biggest challenge, a major challenge, to American infrastructure is not the infrastructure itself. It's not DEI. It's not immigrants. It's not, I don't know, some crazy right wing or crazy left wing or crazy anything. The real danger to American infrastructure is Chinese hacking, primarily Chinese, but probably Russian as well. Hacking, there has been, we know, a major hack by the Chinese that has basically infected a significant number of American crucial infrastructure where the Chinese could flip a switch and we would be without electricity, without internet, and without a lot of other stuff. And the consequence of that would be horrific, particularly if that was at the same time as, let's say, China invaded Taiwan and the US was trying to deploy troops and the whole infrastructure in the United States was collapsing. The US is also, that hacking has also affected financial industry and others. Now, this particular hack has been discovered. They have tried to clean it all up and try to do away with it. There have also been periods in the not so distant past where Chinese equipment, telecommunication equipment was found to have all kinds of back doors that would allow the Chinese government to basically shut it down as some of that equipment was geared towards being installed in military bases in the United States. That has been shut down. But I would say the biggest threat to infrastructure is hacking given that everything today, everything, everything crucial has a chip inside of it and therefore can be hacked. And anything that can be hacked probably will be hacked. So the boat hitting the bridge, tragic, horrible, probably unavoidable, although it would be interesting to know what exactly happened in the ship and why the backup power didn't work and why they really completely were drift onto this thing. I don't know. But what is going on? What is the discussion here? My super chat won't work again. Huh. That's weird. Maybe it's something to do with Michigan. Maybe I said Michigan too many times. I don't know, Jennifer. There is a limit of $500, but per one, maybe it's a 24-hour. I don't know how long it lasts. But it is. That's weird. And last I look, Michigan was not indeed a foreign country. Sometimes I know there are problems with foreign countries. But all right, lastly, Daniel Kahneman. I think I'm pronouncing that right. Passed away this last week. I don't know how many of you are familiar with Daniel Kahneman's work, but he was a Nobel Prize winner in economics. He won that prize in 2002. He died at the age of 90. He is a pioneer. He pioneered the field of what's called behavioral economics. I'll talk about that in a minute. He was a trained cognitive psychologist. That's what his PhD is. That's what he trained and taught. But he took his views on cognitive psychology and applied them to economics. Now, there is a lot bad in what Kahneman did to the field of economics, I think. But you have to understand what the field of economics was like when he did it. And in some senses, in some way, he at least knocked the field away from a fallacy that they were committing. In the 1970s and 1980s, the field of economics was dominated by mathematics. It was all about mathematical economics, modeling, theories. And all these theories and models that came out of new classical economics were all based on the assumption that all human beings who participate in the economy are rational. Now, rational here does not mean what we mean by rational. Rational in the context of economics means that they have perfect information, perfect knowledge. They know the future, and they understand completely what their economic interests are, and they follow those economic interests to the letter. So it's this, it's similar to perfect competition in the part about competition and monopolies that I often critique from economic textbooks. Here, the idea was, and finance has this as well, all the models are built in this notion of rationality, of perfect information, perfect knowledge, and perfect knowledge of your own interests, that is, of the own outcomes. And you're acting in the economy, knowing all of this. And you need those kind of assumptions in order to put math to decision making, because the reality is that the way people actually make decisions in the world, even when they are rational, they still don't have perfect information, they still don't have perfect knowledge, they still don't know what the outcomes are going to be necessarily with certainty. And therefore, it's much messier and not amenable to equations. And basically, Kalman came along, Kahneman came along and said that, but he said it stronger. He said, look, basically, I can show over and over again in studies that people are irrational, they're not rational, they don't make optimal decisions, they're not good at calculating probabilities. They come to conclusions in the sense they induce from too few observations. They have multiple cognitive biases that prevent them from being rational. Now, of course, what he's saying here is not that all people are like that, he says a significant number of people, a significant number of players, participants in the marketplace are like this. And therefore, your assumption of this perfect, idyllic, rational economic man are wrong. And therefore, your theories are wrong. And then that, he is right. But his conclusion, of course, is, well, human beings are irrational. That's their very nature. So his impact on the field of economics is moderately positive in that he knocked down the assumption of this perfect rationality. And he created a situation where people, he created a situation where people either we think, had to reconsider the theory, which I thought, I think, is a good thing. It's a good thing. But he also introduced this idea into economics that individuals are inherently irrational, that irrationality rules the day, and thus almost destroyed the capacity and the ability to have any theory of economics. So I think his legacy is very mixed. As a psychologist, as a cognitive psychologist, Kahneman denies free will. And he denies, and this is what happens with all these theories, they deny that rationality is an achievement. It might very well be that the default is irrationality. The default is people at the perceptual level. The default is not thinking. And that's all true. But the rational is chosen. It's within any human being's capabilities. It requires effort, and it's an achievement. But it's an achievement that makes you human. It's an achievement that every human being should strive towards, that what we should be doing is encouraging people to be rational, understanding that unless they engage their minds, unless they start thinking logically, unless they open their eyes and look at the world, unless they take into account context and they take into account the inputs that they're receiving, they can't come to rational conclusions. So to survive, to thrive, to succeed in life requires rationality, requires one engage in rational thought, requires the effort, the focus, the energy, and the choice, of course, that that entails. And that's what's important about rationality and these experiments. Yes, the experiments show that a lot of people are irrational. And they show that sometimes it's hard to get the right result. That is, rationality requires effort and it's fallible. That is, there are a lot of people who are rational who would fail some of the tests that they are given because they haven't been taught how to think properly. They really don't understand probabilities. That's something you have to learn. You have to think about. You have to study. You have to start thinking in those terms. Being rational and being logical requires thinking and effort. And this is why it's so important to teach kids mathematics, so important to teach them science, so important to show them the process by which real induction happens so that they can protect themselves from the bad habits that people around them have so they can protect themselves from the default, the irrational default, which is when you don't engage with their minds, bad things happen. You cannot explain human achievement. You cannot explain human success. You cannot explain human progress without acknowledging rationality and that some people at least engage in it, use it. It's to the extent that we are successful as individuals and as a species, it's to that extent that people are using their rational minds. To the extent that we fail, it's to that extent we're not using our rational faculty. All right. Let's see. By the way, Kaliman was very influential. There's a whole field of behavior, finance. If you follow, what's the guy's name, who wrote that book, a tipping point, Gladwell. If you follow Gladwell's work, there's a whole book Gladwell did influence by these ideas, very, very influential in the world, out there in the way people think about rationality, unfortunately. All right, we have a bunch of super chats that we are going to go to now. Let me remind you of a few things. One is, Miroslav just posted this, official info on the super chat limit. There's a limit to super chat. Depending on your country or region, the daily and weekly purchase limit may vary. Wow, I didn't know there was a weekly. In general, you can spend up to $500 US dollars per day on super chat, I guess, on all different channels, not just on one channel, or $2,000 US dollars per week. So you're capped to $2,000 per week or $500 a day. Some of you might be, some weeks might be reaching that $2,000 a week. Just on some days, like Michael Sanders might be some weeks, it feels like he might be reaching that limit. But yeah, you guys are great. And that is good information to know. So $500 a day, $2,000 a week, those are the limits. And but then again, they're also blocking Jennifer, even though she hasn't reached either one of those limits. So who knows what else is going on with YouTube and the super chat, right? There's some kind of error that exists out there. Let's see. Oh, yeah, I wanted to remind you of my two sponsors. The Andran Institute is a sponsor of the show. Right now, I want to remind everybody that you can apply for a scholarship to OConn to the Objectives Conference this year in Anaheim, California. It's the biggest conference of fans of Vine Rand and her philosophy of Objectivism. It's the biggest conference on Objectivism in the world. It takes place on June 13th to 18th. It's a perfect place to explore new ideas, connect with like-minded people, get to meet a lot of faculty. Greg Salamieri, Tara Smith, Uncle Gatte, me, others. It's also a great place to come and play polka with me and beat me. I get beat every year. I haven't won the polka tournament yet. There's always hope for next year. But always somebody beats me. So you might be the person to beat your honor polka. That is you get a gold star for that. Whether you're university, high school, or just studying Iron Man's philosophy on your own, you're eligible to apply for a travel scholarship to ensure you are able to attend the conference. Deadline to apply is April 15th, just 11.59 PM, April 15th. And you can learn more at ironman.org slash dot here. So apply, apply, apply. All of you should apply. Then Alex Epstein is now a sponsor of the Iran book show. And he wants to remind you to check out energy talking points and the Alex AI. I mean, I'm pretty excited about the Alex AI. I think it's such a cool idea. And of course, I also need to remind everybody that I'm mispronouncing his name. His name is Alex Epstein, not Alex Epstein. So thank you, Gene. God, I don't know why I do it. All right, Alex Epstein. Alex Epstein, I'll see it enough times. And I'm going to say it every day now because he's a sponsor. Alex Epstein, so go to alexepstein.substack.com. Alex Epstein.substack.com. Sign up for the substack. Sign up for the talking points. And if you're able to and can afford to and I don't know how much it costs, but it would be great to sign up for the Alex AI, which sounds amazing and sounds like a lot of fun too. You can ask Alex all kinds of questions and see what the AI says. I'll let your imagination go wild. But think about it, this is an AI now in the hands. This AI is now in the hands of congressmen, senators, former candidates for the Republican nomination. And if they have a question about energy, if they have a question about drilling, about fracking, about anything related to energy, about windmills, about nuclear, Alex and they don't have to pick up the phone. They don't have to track him down. They don't have to ask the Alex AI. I mean, think about the leverage that gives Alex and us, anybody who holds rational ideas. Think about the leverage that gives in terms of getting this message out into the world and into the hands of decision makers. I mean, unbelievably powerful. And so congratulations to Alex. And I hope you guys support him by going to alexepstein.substack.com. All right, and signing up. All right, I see Jennifer has managed to make the Super Chat work, so that's excellent. We'll get to her question in a little while. Let me see. I just want to thank Gian, Maryalene, and I think I'm caught up. Yes, Steven, we thanked her already. OK, John, who again asked this question before the show even began. So thank you, John, for getting us started in such a positive direction. John asks, all right, so he always asks multi-parts. So I have to start at the right place. Happy Friday. My question is, does any idea to write from an anti-concept automatically condemn itself as being irrational and therefore immoral when put into practice in the real world? So he says, examples. Ethnicity would be an anti-concept. Racism, slavery, genocide, affirmative action, Black History Month, ID politics, et cetera. All concepts spawn from the anti-concept of ethnicity. I hope you have a great weekend. So I don't think they are spawned from the anti-concept of ethnicity. Now, racism is spawned from the anti-concept in a sense of the non-existence of racism. That's true of race. Sorry, of race. But the question to ask about a concept is racism, we can say, is immoral. But we can't say racism is an anti-concept because it derives from an anti-concept. Racism describes a real phenomenon, a phenomenon where people discriminate against others based on their racial characteristics. Or if race is an anti-concept, which I think it is, or it doesn't mean anything, then based on their perceived, imagined, made up racial characteristics. Slavery, obviously, it doesn't apply to race or ethnicity. There were plenty of white slaves in history by whites. There are plenty of black slaves by blacks. Plenty of slavery went in all directions. And you can completely detach slavery from the concept of ethnicity or race. So in order to morally evaluate it, I don't think you look for what concepts it is to rely on. And if any of those concepts is an anti-concept, and it must be bad, I don't think that's right, I think you have to look at what is it describing in reality? What is the phenomenon it's describing in reality? And then is that phenomenon reality? Is it real? And if it is real, is it good or is it bad based on the standard of human life? I think that's true of slavery, genocide, phone of action, Black History Month, identity politics. All of those are real phenomena. We have to evaluate them. They're all negative, but the negative, not because they rely on ethnicity, they're negative because they're anti-life in some fundamental deep sense. And of course, there's affirmative action. You could say affirmative action depends on skin color, differentiating people based on skin color. That's not an anti-concept. It's still bad and evil and wrong. Thank you, John. Good question. Michael, what percent of people who call themselves objectives really get it? I don't know. I mean, it's so hard to tell, right? I mean, did Nathaniel Brandon in the 1960s get it? Would I have said he got it? Probably. Did he get it? No. So it's one thing about how many people get it. It's another thing about whether you know how many people get it. Because how can you tell? Do they have to pass a test? So I don't know. I don't know. Not everybody, obviously. Not everybody. And some people do get it. But in terms of percentages, there's no test I know of how to run to determine whether somebody got it or not. Michael asks, I don't think it's altruism. People just cannot think. Mindless, second-handed drifters, unfocused zombies. I don't know why you see Michael to resist the idea of altruism. It's a combination. One of the reasons people don't want to think, choose not to think. Because what's the point if the purpose of life is to live for other people? That is, altruism is everywhere in everything, in one way or another, everywhere and everything. Now, I don't know what this particular question refers to, maybe to SBF. I don't remember. But yes, I do think that people are so many people, too many people, way too many people, are mindless second-handers who are drifters. Michael also asks, as the world collapses and starts to get more rapidly anti-semitic, can you see Israel using its nuclear weapons? I mean, only if it faces an attack that places its very existence in question. And I don't know what kind of attack that would be. You could imagine something where I just I can't imagine who would attack it to place it in that situation. But imagine, I don't know, some coordinated effort by all the Arab countries that is a complete surprise to Israel, which I think would be very difficult or really impossible to pull off. And Israel decides to use a nuke in the desert of Jordan and desert of Iran in order or the desert of Syria with minimal casualties to say everybody step back because next time this will hit a city. I mean, that's possible. That's possible. But yeah, I mean, I worry much more about Israel eating itself from within than I do about people destroying it that way from without. Sylvanas, do you think abortion is an important enough issue to form a very party around? Imagine all the Republican women splitting off. I mean, yeah, I mean, that would be phenomenal. I mean, imagine all the Republican women splitting off keeping some better ideas from the Republican party, like a little bit more freedom in the economic realm and being pro-abortion. I think that would be great. It's not going to happen, but I think that would be great. You already have a political party dedicated to abortion, in a sense, Democrats. But it would be great if you just had a pro-liberty party which focused on abortion and on other liberties. Whether Republican women could do that, I don't know. Should they? Sure. Will they? No. Won't happen. Won't happen. But it is a huge issue because it's a fundamental issue of liberty. And red states are violating individual liberty, particularly states like Alabama where it's completely bland, with the exception of a woman's life in danger. That is such a violation, such a huge violation of individual liberty. And people who don't care about abortion just don't care about human beings. They don't care about human life. They don't care about liberty. They don't care about freedom. And if you don't think it's slippery slow, you have no concept of how morality works and how ideas work. It's a massive slippery slope. But beyond that, it's just destructive of human life. It's destructive of human life. And as a consequence, everybody who values human life should support the right to abortion. Whoops. Didn't mean to do that. Andrew, a little rich that left this media to quite Trump repeating a lie until it's believed. They repeatedly portray Israel as war criminals. And public opinion turns on Israel. Both sides use the same tactic to push different lies. Yeah, absolutely. And look, the left invented this. This is not an invention of the right. This is an invention of the left. The left tells a story which the right then picked up on about the great financial crisis being caused by capitalism over and over and over again about American income stagnating since the 1970s. There's been no improvement in the quality of life since the 1970s. And so on all of that, they repeat, repeat, repeat, have mentioned this in debates. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even sink in with people because they have so accepted these fallacies that come from the left. So yeah, it's just that the right is caught up with that idea and is doing the same thing. Jennifer, me, Rick, Amy, and Robert, and Mina are going to Ohio on April 8th to see their clips. I can't remember if you said you have seen one. I don't think I've ever seen a full eclipse. So no, that's great. That'll be a lot of fun. It's exciting to see these natural phenomena that are unusual. And I mean, imagine and to imagine how people in a pre-scientific era viewed these and how smart people, the rational people, had to figure it out and figure out what was going on and how that was, to large extent, the beginning of science, trying to understand the heavens, trying to understand what the hell is going on up there. Have fun. Gene, odd times. Is Puccini's LeBoham worth watching live? Yes. It's a beautiful, beautiful opera. I think it's relatively easy to get into if you're a beginner. I don't know what the staging is like. I mean, you have to go to a good production where the staging is good and not some modern freak show. But if the staging is decent, then absolutely. It's just a fabulous opera. And to see it live with the acting and the emotion expressed and where the acting is supporting the singing. And yeah, it's one of the great, beautiful, romantic, sad, very sad operas. Almost all the operas are sad. LeBoham is particularly sad. Marilyn Lee says, good Friday celebrates the crucifixion. All right, he died for your sins. We should celebrate the fact that we are sinless because he died for them. You know, we might go to heaven because Jesus died for our sins. So good reason to celebrate. Thanks, Marilyn. Appreciate it. Michael, Squatter's rights have now been officially abolished in Florida. Yes, I mentioned that yesterday. DeSantis signed the bill. Michael says, should Israel be specifically targeting civilians? No, I don't think that's necessary. But it shouldn't be going quite out of its way to avoid them when it puts their own soldiers in harm's way in order to do that. Frank, Rockwell Town Hall painting is like a Frank Capo film. Yes, and both were not exactly capitalists. Both were, Frank Capo was a socialist and very anti-American capitalism in many regards. But he had this notion about the individual standing up but in a socialist context, very confused philosophy. And you can see it in his movies. And Rockwell also had a bit of a populist, mildly socialist, FDR-leaning view of America. And yes, Rockwell Town Hall does remind one of, I don't know, Mr. Smith goes to Washington, let's say. Justin, have you caught up with Shogun and Three-Body Problem? Only watch one episode of Three-Body Problem. I'm still behind on Shogun, still two more episodes, I think, to go before I'm caught up or one episode to go before I'm caught up, but still enjoying it, still finding really interesting and very, very well made. So I definitely like that. What the hell? All right, let's see. Tom, since Jennifer is so cool. Yeah, Jennifer, Tom gave some money just because you're cool. Robin Nasir says, Mitten State Super Chat Test. It turns out that Michiganians can actually do Super Chat. Daniel, it seems like voting for Democrats for the abortion issue will be the biggest bang for your vote because on every other issue, they both are terrible. Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. Jim Brown says, thank you, Iran. I think he was referring to my discussion of Kahneman. Thank you, Jim. Really appreciate the support. Robert, my mnemonic for Alex rhymes with Einstein. OK, Einstein, Bernstein, Epstein. I should know this. Savanas reminds us all to like the show. Like the show. Don't forget to like the show, please. Like the show. And Jim Brown says, anybody know why protecting the eyes during solar eclipse is recommended? I don't. But somebody said that I guess because of the way the eclipse happens, you get more ultraviolet light affecting your eyes. And therefore, that is particularly dangerous for the eye. But I don't know. It's a good question. Mark, the conventional wisdom, I believe, is that people buy from emotion and justify it mentally. Well, there is a conventional wisdom that says that people basically act on emotion, generally. That that's the primary motivation. And then build up rationalization. That is rational explanations for what they did and why they did it. That affects buying, but it affects really, according to the people who hold this view, I think it was Jonathan Haid or maybe it's the other guy. Anyway, some of these psychologists, it's always exposed rationalization that all rationality is not real. All rationality is exposed rationalization. We only function on the emotional level. Sad that people think that. Andrew says, is there a parallel between the crucifixion of Christ and gold being tortured? The fact that there is a need for a sacrifice, but the difference is the gold doesn't die, of course. And gold doesn't save us from our sins. Quite the contrary, right? We all suffer for the sins with the blackout and with the fact that civilization crumbles and gold does not save us from our sins. He actually accelerates us paying for our sins. So I don't think, in that sense, in a sense of persecuting the good for being the good, if one, in a particular context, views Jesus as the good, then yes, there's a parallel. All right, friend Harper says, Michigan Super Chat. Thank you, friend Harper. Thank you for that. All right, everybody, really appreciate the support. Thank you for everybody. We made our target again. I will remind you that tomorrow is a ask me anything. It's also an opportunity for those of you who give more than $25 a month on some of the other platforms to participate in the Zoom call that I have. So please consider joining that, a link was sent to everybody. And I will see you all tomorrow at the AMA. And next week I'm traveling. The next two weeks are gonna be difficult in terms of shows. I don't know what wifi is gonna be like or internet is gonna be like in South America. Hopefully it's good enough to do some shows from there, but it might not be. The reality is it might not be. But we'll do as many as we can. I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.