 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. Alright everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Sunday night. I hope everybody's had a fantastic weekend. Ready for the Thanksgiving week. It's Thanksgiving week so I hope everybody's ready for go back to work Monday but then long vacation once Thanksgiving begins and of course a great Thanksgiving meal and everything else associated with Thanksgiving. We will do a show dedicated to production, productivity, productiveness. We will do that on probably on Wednesday, either on Wednesday or Friday, probably on Wednesday before Thanksgiving is better. Then after Thanksgiving, so yes, something to look forward to in terms of shows. Today we'll be talking about being selfish. So basically, you know, yesterday we talked about altruism, effective altruism, the impact of altruism on somebody's life, particularly in business. And it was showed how altruism, because it's impractical and impossible to live by because it's fundamentally inherently anti-life, leads to pragmatism which leads to destruction, often fraud and a bunch of bad things, particularly in business. But I felt like, you know, what's missing here is the positive. So what's missing here is okay, so you're ejecting altruism, what is the positive that replaces it, what is a proper moral code. So that's what we'll talk about today. We'll talk about it in the context of Yuan's rules for life. This is basically the, you know, I've often talked about this as being, if you will, the most important rule because this is the rule that says be moral, be selfish. Now I know most people think that that is a complete contradiction of terms, but we're going to talk about today, about being moral, which means being selfish. And that is going to be a topic of discussion today. All right, I'm not going to do any news updates today because we're going to do that tomorrow. We're going to start discussing, we're going to start doing the weekly or the daily really news shows. We'll start tomorrow probably, most likely at 11am East Coast time. So 11am East Coast time will be a short show, half an hour to 40 minutes. And we will be, we'll talk about news of the day, what's happening and stuff I pick out of the news feeds that I get. And then hopefully we can do that the rest of the week. That is, that'll be something that is ongoing through the week. All right, remind everybody, we do have the super chat feature on today. Our goal as always in these shows is $650. And yeah, we blown away that goal. There we go. Vadim starts it off, starts it off with 200 bucks. That's a big step forward. So 650 is the goal. The nice thing about this is it's a great weight and place to ask questions. You kind of in a sense dictate the topics that I covered during the show. I will talk about egoism or selfishness and then we'll jump into your questions. And I'm going to, let me get to Vadim, let me get to the question after I finish the topic if that's okay with you. Unless you have to run and then I'll do it, I'll do it first. But it's a good question. And we will unpack what you have to say. And yeah, I've got quite a bit to say about that. So good, that's a good topic. All right, but let's do it afterwards because otherwise it'll get me distracted. And I want to get to this issue. Vadim says he can wait. Excellent, excellent. But that's a great beginning. So we've already cut off 200 bucks off of the goal. So now we're just our usual, our old goal from before we raised it. It's $450. So hopefully we can reach that pretty, pretty smoothly. I won't say easily because I know, I know it's, I know, I, you know, the money you guys dedicate to the Super Chat is valuable to you. It's valuable to me. But hopefully this is a good trade for everybody. Those of you who'd like to support the show on a monthly basis can do so on Patreon. Subscribe stuff. And locals and also on your own book show dot com slash support. Also want to remind you haven't done this in a long time. The way of two sponsors. One sponsor is express VPN dot com www dot express VPN dot com. And if you go there and you do slash Iran, you will get three months free of express VPN. When I travel, I use it sometimes at home, but I mainly use it when I travel. It is, it is smooth. It is easy to use. It is, it does not reduce the speed dramatically. It would use a little bit like all VPNs. A great service. If you sign up, I get, they send me a little bit of money. So please sign up and you get three months free of use and additional three months and whatever they give usually using slash Iran gives you an extra three months. All right, let's jump in. So yesterday we talked about altruism and we talked also about yesterday. And by the way, thank you for a lot of people seem to have enjoyed yesterday's show. It's doing very well in terms of the views. Please share it and get it out there. I think it's a kind of a show that has the potential to attract new people to the Iran book show. But because it's about crypto and because it's about FTX, it has the potential to get people interested in ethics, interested in, in, in what we talk about here. So if you find it interesting, then please share the show, get it out, they get as much exposure. I think people who listened to it yesterday really, really enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. And, and I'd like to offer that opportunity as wide an audience as possible. And of course, you know, you guys are a, you know, present a good opportunity, you know, basically to do that through sharing. So please, please share. Let's see, I just, I just silenced one of these idiots who are on here to troll. So he's gone. All right, hopefully, hopefully didn't bother you too much. So yesterday I also said, look, morality is important. And, and we need a morality and human beings actually need morality. And morality is a requirement for human survival. We cannot survive without a guide, a set of principles to instruct our lives. Now, why do we need principles? I mean, we need principles because we are a conceptual being. We need principles because the world out there is super complex. We need principles because life is complicated and complex is a lot going on. And we need some, you know, we need basic shortcuts to be able to navigate it all. Just like in science, you don't have to, you know, you can establish those principles and that hopefully you establish them as true and then work off of them. You don't have to go all the way about to the basic actions every time you're doing something basic in science and then build everything up in order to prove the point. If you come to the conclusion, for example, that being dishonest is bad for you, you shouldn't have to re-prove it every time it's hard. You're talking to people all the time. There's a potential to be dishonest almost every day, all the time, whenever you're talking to somebody and not only that, but there's the potential to be dishonest to yourself all the time because you're constantly thinking. You could evade, you could ignore reality, which is what honesty is really about. It's about being honest to yourself, it's about not evading, it's about being true to the facts. So we need guiding principles. We need principles that provide us with cognitive shortcuts so that we can progress, so that we can live, so that we can act out there in the world. Now first we need to prove those principles, we need to make clear to ourselves that the principles are true, but once we do that, and as long as we don't get any new information to suggest that a principle, we might have made a mistake that the principle needs to be revised or reformed or needs to be scrapped altogether, we use that principle as a, in a sense, a cognitive shortcut in order to be able to live. So I don't have to, you know, all I see in the world around me is reinforcement of the principle of this, of the, you know, be honest. And given that all I, I'm just honest, I don't have to rethink it, I don't have to question it, I don't have to say, ooh, maybe this time, maybe this time. Maybe this time I can get away with it, or maybe this time getting away with it will actually serve a purpose. No, I know that it's always, always, always going to be harmful to me, harmful to me. So as human beings we have to have principles. And when it comes to human action, when it comes to our lives and living our lives, the most fundamental principles to guide our day-to-day lives are the principles of morality. Morality is there not to, for special cases, morality is not about what are called trolley problems. Morality is not about lifeboat situations. Morality provides us with the principles on which we live our daily lives. We are not born with the knowledge of how to live our daily lives. We're not born with the knowledge of how to survive, never mind with the knowledge of how to thrive. I mean, we don't have the instinct, the survival instinct that animals are born with, or the plants have embedded in their DNA. We do not know what to pursue in order to survive. We know we have to eat, we feel hunger, we can eat shrubs and we can eat berries and we can eat nuts, but anything beyond that requires more than what biology has left us with. It requires us learning about our environment, understanding our environment, figuring out, solving problems, building ultimately tools, being productive, using our minds. We don't know instinctually how to do that. It actually requires effort and it requires learning. It requires trial and error. It requires, as all trial and error does, sometimes failure. It requires learning. And 100,000 years of human learning, we should be able to come up with a morality, with a code of values. But what does that code of values gear towards? Well, it seems obvious. I mean, once you get it, I guess, it seems kind of obvious that given that we don't know how to survive, the code of value should be geared towards survival and thriving and living. It should be geared towards oneself, one's own life, one's own life, living, survival, thriving, flourishing. One of the three words says, conjecture and experimentation. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're missing, and this is what Papa and Deutsch miss, you're missing the first step and the first step is observation and induction, then conjecture and then experimentation. But the conjecture has to come from somewhere, the conjecture is not random, the conjecture is not arbitrary, the conjecture has to be based on facts of reality, based on something that you're observing based on some kind of phenomena. A lot of problems, I think, in science today, a lot of problems in our world because people start with conjectures. You start with reality, you always start with facts, you always start with the evidence provided to you by your senses or by the extrapolation from evidence provided to you by your senses and only then can you have a conjecture. But that is a whole other topic for another time. So morality's purpose is to help you guide your life. Help you guide your life for what? What is life for? Well, it's to be lived. You basically face a fundamental alternative at any point in your life, at every moment, every second of your life, there's one fundamental alternative that you face, and that is to be or not to be. Hey, Shakespeare. Shakespeare is very good because he often comes up with formulations for the real fundamental interesting questions in life. It is. Everything is to be or not to be. To live or not to live, to exist or not to exist, to be or not to be. And if you want to be, that's where morality steps in with guidance. But to be means to be. To live means I live. To exist means I exist. And the means by which I live, the means by which I exist, requires me to be engaged. Me, as we'll see, to think. Troy, thank you. I really, really appreciate it. Troy comes in with 500 Australian dollars, as he does periodically, particularly for The Rules of Life show. So thank you, Troy. I really appreciate the ongoing support for months now, years now. So who should be? So morality is almost, you know, morality is almost, traditionally almost, not quite, right? The code of values that allows me to survive. The code of values that allows me to live. It's selfish. It's self-interested. It's about me. Others can only enter the equation. Other people only enter the equation once I decide I want to live. And then the question is what kind of relationship should I have with other people? But altruism starts with the other. Altruism negates the individual. It says no, the purpose of your existence is them. Why? The purpose of my existence is me. And yes, I might care about them. I might want to help them. I might want to give them stuff. I might want to have a loving relationship with them. I might want to do communicate with them. I might want to trade with them. I might want to do a lot of things with them. But how can they be the starting point when it starts with me? You know, a little baby. It starts with him observing the world that's there. But it's the baby. It's all about the baby staying alive, figuring out life, figuring out gaining knowledge. It's all about them. So Morelli is about the principles. The principles that will lead you as an individual to survive and to thrive. I think I've said that like 350 times. But it's true and it's worth repeating and repeating and repeating. And the whole question again of what we do with other people is something that comes in much later. And you know, note that the collectivists, you know, I find it interesting. I was reading to you a few, you know, a couple of months ago, we read the statement of the National Conservatives. And National Conservatives don't believe it starts with the individual. They don't believe it starts with you as an individual. To them, everything starts with the family. But the family is individuals, several individuals indeed. And it's still true that each one of those individuals needs to do the things necessary for itself in order to survive. Otherwise they won't survive. Now it's true that as children, we need help in order to learn the skills to allow us to survive as an individual. But that's exactly what parenting is all about, providing you with those skills. But the skills to learn how to survive as an individual, as an independent, separate person. There is no glob of being called family. There's no glob of being called tribe. There's no glob of being called the collective. There is just you and your relationships or not with other people. So the whole point of charity and how to treat the people and how to help the poor and how to help the suffering and what kind of relationship you should have with your family and the importance of family and should you have kids and should you take care of your aging parents. The million questions that come up that have to do with human relationships are way down the road. There are consequences of coming up with certain principles around morality. But the first is I have to take care of myself. I have to live. I have to succeed. I have to live as a human being. That's what I am. That means as a cognitive being, I need to cultivate cognition. I have to live a full life as a cognitive being and I want to live a good life, a flourishing life. I should live a good flourishing life. I want principles to help me live that flourishing life and I want my relationship with other people, whoever they are, including the tribe or the nation or the family or whatever it is. I want them to be part of the values that are going to lead me to a flourishing life. So the key here I want to emphasize is that you need to really think, really invest in, really devote time and resources to figuring out how to live a good life for you. You need to think, devote resources to figuring out how to be properly selfish and that all your relationships with all the other people, including again the charity you give and everything to do with your relationship with others has to be within the context of I am being selfish, my life, my survival, my happiness, my success, my flourishing. And I just want to make the point of what does that entail, the first and most important thing and then I'll leave you to go study the ethics but then I can take on the questions of what about all the what aboutisms that have to do with selfishness because unfortunately there are a lot of them and I hope that you guys will ask questions in the super chat of course about how to apply this to a gazillion situations because that's what this is really about. How do I apply this in what does it mean and what do I do with my life? I don't know that I've answered all those questions but hopefully you can ask questions that are related to this. I think Wes has already a question related to love and love being selfish or selfless and so on so more comment than a question I think. So please think about questions that relate to this issue of being selfish and how to apply it and what does it, yeah, what does it mean? Now what is the tool? What is the thing you have to do if you want to be successful in life? What is the thing you have to do if you want to survive? I mean again go back to that basic alternative of life or death. What makes human life possible? What makes it possible for eight, I think it's now eight billion people to live on planet Earth? How did how do they survive? What makes it possible for so many of them to survive? I mean it's possible that you could have some people, some homo sapiens and maybe at the beginning this is how it was roaming around and collecting nuts and berries and surviving somehow like that but our environment does not facilitate much of a life if that's how you live it. Not many human beings can survive on nuts and berries and other animals are going to beat us but they're not in a very game, they're going to beat us in every game. I mean you put a human being versus a saber-to-tiger, the human being doesn't have a chance unless you put a human being against lions, the human being said doesn't have a chance unless you put human beings against the weather, climate change. That doesn't have a chance unless, unless what? What do human beings need to do to go beyond the nuts and berry game? What do human beings need to do in order to defeat the saber-to-tiger now in a museum as eight billion people roam the Earth? What do you have to do in order to defeat the lion now on safari or in a mazu while eight billion people roam the Earth? What do we have to do if we are going to survive? Oh God, the porn bots have now find us, let me hide this on our channel. Every few episodes somehow human beings to survive have no alternative but to use their reason. Reason is our means of survival. Reason is the way in which we survive. It's the way in which we defeat the saber-to-tiger, we build weapons, we build traps, we communicate with other people, we work as teams. Hunt requires weapons, skills, strategy, traps, communication. We have agriculture, requires some scientific knowledge that a seed becomes a plant, that watering helps, that ultimately fertilizer, nitrogen fertilizer can boost yield dramatically. We need knowledge. We can only gain knowledge by using our reason, by using our senses to identify reality, integrating the facts of reality into concepts, using those concepts to understand, help us understand the world. As we said, conceptualization, induction, theorizing, experimentation, discovery of truth, application of that truth to survival. And you know, human beings are very good at this. From simple agriculture to GMO, from simple huts to skyscrapers, from, you know, hunting and roasting an animal on a fire all the way to, I don't know, three miscellaneous dog gourmet meals. We're very good at figuring out reality. When we use our reason, we do amazing. And indeed, certainly over the last 300 years, or 250 years, we have dedicated our reason to mastering the natural world, to mastering nature, more so than any other period in human history. And the success is unbelievable. When people say, oh no, human is not reasonable, human don't, are not rational, human beings are horrible, human beings are evil, human beings are emotional beings, they can't think, they can't do this, they can't do that. I say, just look out the window. Just look at your iPhone. Just examine the technology you're using right now. Everything around us in the material world is an example of somebody somewhere at some point being rational. There's nothing else. iPhones don't just come out of no way, buildings don't just grow out of the ground. It's all a product of human reason. So we're capable of it. Now, does it require effort to sustain continuously and to apply to every aspect of your life? Yes. Do we have to have some knowledge to understand the value of applying it to every aspect of our lives? Yes. But its efficaciousness is unquestionable, and our capacity to do it is unquestionable. It's evident in everything we surround ourselves with in our entire lives and everything around us. There are massive examples of rationality, of reason, of people applying their minds. Well, at least some people applying their minds. But everybody has to apply their minds to some extent. To some extent, everybody has to be rational or they'd be dead. So if rationality is a means by which we live, we survive, we thrive, we succeed, we build, we create, then rationality is what it means to be selfish. What it means to be selfish is to be rational, to apply rationality to every aspect of our lives, to use reason in everything that we do, to let reason guide our lives. Not emotion, not revelation, not other people, not randomness, but consistently in every aspect of our lives to apply rationality, reason. That's what it means to be selfish. It's not about whim worship. It's not about getting the girl at the bar. This has been a pure version of selfishness. It's not about doing the short-term expedient thing. That's pragmatism, often a consequence of altruism as we saw yesterday. It's about thinking about the outcome of every action that we take over the long run, its long run impact on our life. It's about thinking through the values that we seek and making sure that those values are aligned with our life, aligned with our other values, integrated into how we need to live in order to thrive. So being selfish is a compliment. It means recognizing the fact that your life is the most valuable thing to you. Being selfish means recognizing that reason is your guide to surviving and to thriving. Being selfish is a compliment. It's a compliment that says you've recognized the value of your life. You've recognized the means by which you must seek it. Being selfish means being a thinking human being focused on pursuing his values for the purpose of his own success, his own flourishing. I've said this in other shows. I've said this many, many times over the years. I've said this in talks. I've said this over and over again. But so many of our listeners, the Iran Book Show, are relatively new. There were some people yesterday who seemed surprised by what I said about altruism. So I thought it would be a good idea and I think it's a good idea to talk about what the alternative is. Well, the alternative is to think, to think in the context of how do I make my life better? How do I live the best life I can live? And I've said this often, but life is short. Every second you live it is gone. Never get it back. You don't rewind life. There's no rewind switch. I can get that minute back. I can get that day back. I can get that hour back and get that life back. You can't get any of it back. So what you need is to build on whatever happened in the past to make the future even better and constantly focus on making that future better. For whom? For you. Because you is what you got. You is what you got. So to be selfish is, properly, is to be rational, is to think long term. And there are virtues that are associated, I've done whole shows on the various virtues, the virtues associated with being selfish that Ayn Rand articulates in the virtue of selfishness. Those virtues are all applications of rationality, the different aspects of one's life. But morality is not other people. Morality is not how you treat other people. That's an aspect of morality, primarily justice. But it's not morality. Morality is living the principles of living for yourself. For yourself. There is no selfishness that is not rational. There is no self-interest that is not rational. To be selfish is to be concerned with self. To be concerned with one's own survival and one's own thriving. The only way to do that is by being rational. To be self-interested is to pursue the interests of you. The values that lead to you having a better life. There's no way to do that other than by being rational. So there's no such thing in a sense as rational self-interest, there's self-interest. Rational selfishness, there's selfishness. Rational might be clarifying and often is helpful to use in order to clarify. But it is not, but it is implicit if you have a proper understanding of self-interest, granted, nobody has, almost nobody has, it's implicit in the term self-interest. It's implicit in the term selfishness. Daniel says to be selfish is to equal self-esteem. Not exactly, right? I mean, I in one interview uses that interchangeably. But in the virtue of selfishness in her essay on ethics, self-esteem is a value one must pursue. And one must pursue it. Why? Because it is a survival value. It is part of what makes it possible for you as an individual to survive and to thrive as a human being. You need to have the self-confidence, the self-assuredness, the self-knowledge, the idea that you belong on this earth, that you are capable of dealing with a factor of reality, that you can flourish in this world. That's what self-esteem is, is that self-assuredness and self-value. So, in this sense, I think Ein Rahn talked about self-esteem as equal to selfish. You are, you are the standard. And you can only be the standard if you value yourself. You can only be the standard if you care about yourself. You can only be the standard if you are confident in your own worthiness to be alive and to thrive and to be happy ultimately. You cannot be happy. You cannot succeed. You cannot survive as a human being unless you have that kind of confidence in your own worthiness. Worthiness. So yes, self-esteem is a big part of being selfish. You have to have it. You have to pursue it. Reason. And finally, purpose. There has to be a purpose to what you're doing. You have to know why you're doing what you're doing. Why are these values your values? What purpose do they serve? What, where are they leading you in life? So, yeah, Ein Rahn used selfishness when she was confronted with the idea, well, you know, the term selfishness is kind of puts people off. And she said, well, use another word, self-esteem. Self-esteem is a more acceptable term, if you will. It's a term that people are willing to accept. All right. So, Rahn's rules for life, really, rule number one is in your own rational, long-term self-interest. And that action should always be guided by reason. And reason is your tool for being self-interested. So be selfish. Pursue selfish values. Live. Again, live with that capital L. Remember, we've talked about the capital L. Live. Live a full life. Live the best life you could possibly live. Embrace life. Rejoice in life. Make life exciting, thrilling, interesting. You know, one of the things about altruism is it's so boring. Other people have to focus on other people constantly. What about me? What about my values? Oh, pursuing my values, that's exciting. Pursuing other people's values. They're their values, they're not mine. And that means think for yourself, be independent. It means be honest with yourself and with everybody else around you, which is just an application of rationality. Be just. Treat people justly. And everything that all of that implies. All right, I think that's basically what I wanted to say. Be self-interested. Forget this effective altruism. I think Don Watkins has a book coming out. I think he said this publicly, so I don't think this is a secret. There's a book coming out called Effective Egoism, Effective Selfishness, Effective Self-Interest. That's what we should be focused about, by being effective in pursuing our values, and being effective in pursuing life. Now, I think Effective Egoism is already coined by Don Watkins. Shazbot, $500, really? Idiocracy? Is that a... It really is a movie you think I should watch. Even for $500. All right, Money Speaks on the Iran Book Show. It's all about the dollars. It's not all about the dollars, but dollars are important. Yes, I think Don actually has a book coming out called Effective Egoism or Effective Selfishness or something like that. No, I mean, I don't know anything about idiocracy, but if it's anything like, I don't know, if it's about idiots, if it's like dumb and dumber and that line of type of movie, then I'm going to hate it. And while I value $500 and I'll do a view of it, I won't have any joy in it. But it might not be. Idiocracy might be a completely different movie. All right, Idiocracy is a cult movie. What kind of cult? Cult of what? Cult of whom? All right, so let's see. Where are we? So please think about questions related to the application of selfishness. The selfishness means you should treat people really, really badly. The selfishness means you don't care about other people. What about selfishness and charity? Can charity be selfish? All of those things that would come out of the cross-section between the show in effect of altruism and FTX from yesterday and the show today on selfishness. Let me know what kind of questions come up. You can ask for $2. You can ask for $5. You can ask for very little money. So please ask anything that comes to mind relating to this issue of selfishness, because I know it's a troubling concept. It's a concept that is new for many people, and it's a concept that's definitely super controversial out there in the world. So feel free to ask questions about it. We don't have a lot of super chat questions. They're high dollar, lots of high dollar super chat questions today, plus we got Troy with 500 Australian dollars, and we got Charles Buck with 500 American dollars with a movie review. So we're well in our way in terms of, we've already achieved our goal fundraising-wise. Now it's just a matter of, you've got another 45 minutes if you want of the show, or I can end it before that, of you asking questions around anything really, but I'd love it for the questions to be about your confusions related to selfishness, self-interest, morality, or anything like that. All right, Vadim asks, in movie Beautiful Mind, Nash uses the analogy of a boss scene that he later devises into game theory. It appears that he's ignoring the morality of the issue just like Adam Smith, and I can't remember the exact boss scenes, I can't remember the exact framing that he uses. Does this method actually work in economics? Can you help me unpackage the contradiction? Yes, I mean, game theory is a good example of a theory that is kind of interesting. I'm sure you can find applications for it, but it is, for the most part, detached from reality. In all, because it's trying to model, game theory tries to model human behavior, it abstracts a way, it has to simplify dramatically because human behavior tends to be far more complex, they can be easily modeled mathematically or modeled economically, so it abstracts a way and simplifies everything, so that the answers then become what I think is pretty uninteresting. So game theory is, again, it can be useful in narrow cases, often game theory, though positive situations that have so many constraints and so many limitations on them that, yes, within these constraints and limitations, game theory works, but real life never prevents you with these kind of constraints and these kind of limitations. So the actual game theoretical results are not that interesting. So I don't think game theory is particularly useful. I don't think game theory is particularly explanatory of human behaviors. I think in real life, in actual real life, there are very few occasions in which game theory is useful. Suddenly, trying to understand what other people are going to do when trying to make a strategic decision about a particular direction is useful and important, trying to understand their incentives, trying to understand how those incentives change as you interact with them, as you present content, as you do what you do, all of that is important. I call all of that a strategy. But to try to turn that into some kind of mathematical equation or to show through game theory that, you know, I don't know that reason is not efficacious, or that sometimes game theory is used to show that it's not in your self-interest to be self-interested in a sense. You know, most of that is just untrue. And he ignores morality, but I agree that he ignores morality. Absolutely he ignores morality. But morality, you know, morality is, if you will, part of the game, but he's ignoring so much of the game. Morality is just one of the many things he's ignoring. Morality is, of course, a basic principle that he's ignoring, but there are many things that in the game theoretical framework just don't make any sense, because game theory, again, is very, very constrained and very, very limited to very, very specific scenarios. You can't live your life based on game theory. You maybe can solve certain puzzles, human puzzles based on game theory, but even then, once you take out the human element, once you take out morality, once you take out other considerations, it all falls apart. So Nash was brilliant, obviously. You know, a lot of things like game theory, wonderful rationalistic creations in our minds, a very powerful, brilliant mind can manipulate concept and manipulate objects inside his head, but the extent to which they apply to actual reality, the extent to which they reflect reality, the extent to which they are, you know, again, they are, in a sense, derived from reality is questionable. It's often that connection to reality doesn't exist. So you're just playing mind games. So I'm not a fan of game theory. I don't think it helps with economic analysis. And it ignores reality, not just, not just what do you call it, not just morality, but much more broader reality. I mean, for example, the prisoner's dilemma is constrained to specific terms and specific conditions. And once you go outside of those terms and conditions, you know, it's not meaningful anymore. All right, I have a feeling all of that was really floating. To really answer the movie properly, I'd have to either, I'd have to bring you some good game theory examples. So I don't know if that satisfies you, Vadim. Let me know. You can let me know here in the chat. But I think if you presented like a game theory example, how a game theory progresses, then I could show you how it's fundamentally detached from reality and what the problem with that is. So I, yeah, I'm open to doing that if Vadim, you think that is necessary. And if you're not satisfied with my answer so far. I know that's a $200 question, so I want to make sure that Vadim is satisfied with the answer that I give. Wes says, one of the most frustrating attitudes in the culture is that love is supposed to be selfless. It's such a contradiction that amazes me that people take it seriously. I agree completely. It's frustrating and it's absurd and it's ridiculous and it's so easily proven not to be true. But you see, you have to understand what people mean by selfish and what people mean by selfless, right? So to them selfish means uncaring about other people. When you say love is selfish, they go, wait a minute, no, no, no, that cognitive dissonance because to them selfishness means not caring about other people. So how can you love and be selfish? And to them selflessness means, it doesn't really mean what the word says, which is not caring about self. It means, by implication, caring about others. Well, if you care about others, you must love others. But what they evade, what they ignore is that you have to be the one who loves and in order to love, it has to be a value to you. It has to be that other person has to be important to you and when you say that, yeah, but isn't the person you love important to you? Yes. Well, but isn't that selfish because it's about yourself? No, no, no, no, no, wait, selfish means not caring about other people. But what if those other people are important to you? What if those other people make your life better? What if those people are necessary for your happiness? What if those other people are great value to you? See, you have to spell it out for them because they are so conditioned around selfishness that it's, you know, a negation of others. And the same with self-less, they don't think about what the concept actually means to be selfless, to have no self. Well, then who is the I in the loving? Whereas the I love you, there is no I if it's selfless. I am an empty vessel, I am a nothing. It's not exactly an endorsement of love, but they don't see it that way. All they see again is selfless means I care about other people. That is, that's what it means. So it's our job, so while it's frustrating, it's our job to unpackage it for them. And of all the concepts that we have out there, I think love is the easiest one to do because it's so obvious. I mean, Iron Man's example of, imagine, I think she uses this example, imagine if you go up to your spouse to be on the wedding, the night before the wedding and say, I don't love you for me. This is a complete sacrifice. I'm doing this selflessly. I mean, everybody knows that that's absurd and ridiculous. When I use that example in talks, everybody laughs and thinks, well, that's ridiculous. But yeah, if you get that's ridiculous and you get the saying that love is selfless is ridiculous. Love is selfish. Hopefully that is clarifying in terms of how to deal with these people West. But yes, the frustration is there. Where is Vadim? I'm not getting any response from Vadim. I'm hoping Vadim is still there. And he says something on the chat that suggests that what the next step should be. Alright, Andrew asks, some people deny that self exists. How does one know the metaphysical reality of self? Well, if there's no self, how does one know anything? What does knowledge refer to? Whose knowledge? Knowledge in what context? I mean, what does it mean? How can you deny the self exists? Haven't you noticed that it's you denying who is you if there's no self? So the whole thing is self contradictory. The self exists because you can observe it directly. The self exists because you are doing something. The self exists because even the denying of self is affirmation of the self because it's you doing the denying. It's the self doing the denying of itself, which is just contradiction and stupid. So anybody who denies the self exists is engaging in a blatant contradiction. It's blatantly ridiculous and stupid and silly. It's silly because it's again self contradicting. I deny that I exist. What's the first I? How can the first I exist? The I deny. Well, the only reason I can deny is because I exist. Right. Friend Harper. Do you have any thoughts on Russell Cook? I read a book by him to better understand conservatism. It is very in line with the 10 conservative principle manifestos. It was advocated to me by an atheist ironic. Yeah. I mean, Russell Cook is revived conservatism in the United States in the after World War II. I think it was, was kind of a leading light inspired the conservative movement of the 50s and 60s and 70s. He is, he was the inspiration behind, what's his name? The National Review. And really all modern conservatism in the United States. And yes, all the national conservative principles are there. They might be with different emphases, might be with different degrees. He was very religious, but then that's what conservatism is. Remember, conservatism is very religious. What's the pompous guy used to run the National Review's name who used long words so that nobody could understand what the hell he was talking about? What's the name of that guy? God, nobody's answering me. How could that be possible? No, not Jonah Goldberg, God. No sense of history, nothing. From the 50s and 60s and 70s, William F. Buckley. Thank you, Daniel, God. William F. Buckley. So, you know, William F. Buckley was super religious. You see, the reason you're duped by conservatism is conservatism from the 60s on was basically a deal cut by the traditional conservatives who were super religious and were super irrational and did not care about free markets. But cared about conserving religious values. And the anti-Soviet, call them liberals, who were strong farm policy, many of them were neoconservatives, strong farm policy. Didn't care that much about religion. Many of them were atheists, but were quite happy. But viewed religion as necessary to provide, you know, a morality to the masses, necessary for this coalition. And the third leg of the stool, they called it, were the libertarians or the free market types. You didn't care that much about religion and didn't care necessarily that much about farm policy, but cared about free markets. And that deal, which William F. Buckley manufactured, is what made conservatism in, let's say, 70s and 80s and maybe even 90s semi-okay, seemed reasonable because we attracted to some of their ideas under free markets and we attracted to some of the ideas under farm policy. And then there was an overarching idea of they loved the founding fathers even though they distorted the real founding fathers' message. But today that stool is being broken. That's gone. The neo-conservatives are off in their own corner and the free market people are being shunned completely for the conservative movement. And now conservatism has returned to its rustic roots, which are much more about religion and nationalism and religion and nationalism and collectivism and the negation of the individual and the negation of the founding fathers and the negation of the founding ideal and the negation of the Enlightenment. So in a sense conservatism has returned to where it began. Conservatism has returned to its founding principles anchored in Russell Koch and even further back in the writings of the British thinker who objected to the French Revolution. Anyway, but really to Russell Koch who I think is much more in the spirit of American conservatism than many of the British or the other thinkers who in many respects were much more secular. They wanted to preserve institutions but they were at heart much more secular than American conservatives who take their religion very, very seriously. Yeah, Burke, thank you, Burke was the British conservator. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's good to read Russell Koch if you want to understand conservatism, it's the real deal, it's the real thing. It's all watered down by their attempt to form a coalition around conservatism later on. I mean, Burke believed in monarchy plus religion, yes. I mean that was the grounding but I don't think it was quite as, and maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it was quite as obsessed with religion or committed to religion as was Russell Koch and as are American conservatives today and you can see part of that in the inheritance that is the conservative party in England while nominally religious is very secular and believes in the monarchy but doesn't have that adamant religious flavor to it as the true conservative movement has in the United States. Mel says I like Goldwater. Yeah, I mean, Goldwater was an example of the more libertarian leaning, free market leaning conservatives who used religion to try to provide a moral explanation for capitalism. You know, what's his name? Goldwater was also very secular when it comes to individual liberties. He was also very good in foreign policy and he was very good and he was good in the founders but he was not a true conservative in the sense that true conservatives, i.e. Russell Koch, Edmund Burke try conservatives are much, much, much, much more religious than Goldwater. I mean, Goldwater could not win today, for example, in Arizona. Goldwater could not win in the conservative movement today. Yoam Khazoni and Goldwater would not get along. You know, people like, people like Sohab Amari or Patrick Denine would think Goldwater is a complete aberration. Doesn't belong in their movement. So if you want to understand conservatism, Russell Koch is a good place to go and, again, the conservative movement, the conservative coalition is gone. Gone, gone, gone. When Peter Schwartz was on your show, he used the term non-predatory, rational, self-interest, frame the objective concept of selfish that way to layman these days and it seems to resonate with him, one day I can just stay selfish. Yeah, I mean, I agree. You know, if you're talking about the layman, if you're trying to go for people out there, then, I mean, non-predatory is unnecessary, rational is unnecessary. But in the world in which we live, it's necessary because people don't get it. People assume that selfish means exploiting other people. Selfish means using other people. Selfish means not caring about other people and none of those things are true. And I think using non-predatory, I think using rational are good ways to make it clear to people that being truly selfish does not involve exploiting other people. Being truly selfish does not involve not caring about other people. Being truly selfish does not involve win-worshipping. Doing whatever pleases you in the moment, sniffing cocaine because it's going to give you a high. Stealing your customer's money because you want money right now. None of that is selfish. All of that is predatory or irrational emotionalism. But none of it and all of it is selfless. So to be a predator is selfless. To be a predator means you don't care about yourself. To be a lying, chilling, lying, cheating, stealing, thief. To be SPF is to be selfless. It's to be selfless. It's to ignore your own needs. It's to ignore you. It's to ignore what you need in order to be successful in life. And indeed, SPF is going to land up in jail. That is the consequence of being selfless. Destruction. Destruction is ultimate destruction. Is the consequence of being selfless. And they all get destroyed. Inside and often outside as well. In the material world and certainly in their own psyche. Brian says, I sometimes work with people who used violence as a form of survival. Like defending your reputation. Explain to one of my trainees trying to leave that like behind the nuance of proper egoism. That's great. And I'm sure it can't be easy. But violence, unless it's in self-defense, violence is self-destructive. And the fact that he needs work from you suggests that he's not being successful in life. So it's violence again, lying, cheating, stealing, all of that is selfless, self-destructive. It's bad for you. It's not, not, not, not selfish. None of those are selfish things. Philosophical, zombie-ass. Did you find out about cost-disease socialism? No. I don't know what cost-disease socialism is. And I guess you've mentioned in the past because you're asking me, but cost-disease socialism. How subsidizing costs can, while restricting supply, drives America's fiscal imbalance. Okay, I see what that is. Yeah, I don't know what's called cost-disease socialism. But yes, that's absolutely true. I mean, what we do, what all, hi Vadim, thank you. Appreciate, I'm glad you found value in my answer and that you're satisfied. But we could go deeper into game theory if you would like. I would just need some time to prepare. Thank you. I mean, I don't know what it's called that, but yeah, I mean, what we do is we subsidize people's living. We subsidize, we don't require people to produce in order to consume. And then we restrict supply through regulation and through taxing capital, but primarily through regulation. So that creates a lack of innovation, a lack of progress, a lack of availability of stuff. And because the consumption is subsidized, you know, it creates inflation. It creates a rising cost, a rising cost of the things that are not being produced. You can see that in housing, right? We subsidize housing through the mortgage system by making mortgage interest tax deductible, by having government entities like Freddie and Fannie buy the mortgages so that they drive down interest rates. So we subsidize people buying homes, but at the same time we restrict the number of homes that can be built. And the consequence of that is price goes up, shrink supply. While encouraging demand, price will go up and you see that over and over again and you see it in lots of goods. But housing is probably the most obvious and biggest example of that. Thanks Philosophical Zombie Hamta. Let me know if you want me to delve deeper into this issue of cost disease socialism. But I need to look at it a little bit just to figure out where they got their name because it is a weird name for something. All right, that's all the super chat questions I got today. Wow, that's a thin super chat question day, although we raised a lot of money today. So we're doing great in terms of the revenue, but not a lot of questions, which is fine. We'll end a little early. Lately we've been doing two to an half hour shows, so this is good. I will see you all probably tomorrow night with the show. I'm thinking of doing the show. I think of calling the show, he's back. With he referring to Trump, of course, and maybe talking about Trump's return. Oh wow, bunch of money flowing in suddenly. Amen. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks for the support. Another hundred dollars. And friend Harper with a question. Have you read the book Starship Trooper? Yes, I have. The book is completely different in that the book focuses on social political morality and war theory. Really good book. Yes, I like Robert Henley's books Starship Trooper was I thought a good book. The idea that in order to vote, you would have to serve in the military is not completely crazy. You know, again, I think that I don't think everybody should necessarily be able to vote and indicating some knowledge or some willingness to fight for the principles on which the political system is built is not a bad idea. If you're going to allow people to vote, they should have a stake in what they're voting for. But you know, I read it, I don't know, 30 years ago, but the book is a good book. And generally I enjoyed a lot of Robert Henley's books. The fun, the challenging intellectually, the bending your mind. He's presenting different concepts and different ways of thinking about different things, about different structures for society, about sexual relationship. A lot of it has to do with sexual relationship. He challenges monogamy. He is generally a thought-provoking author. And I find his books interesting and definitely worth reading. So Starship Trooper being one of them. And of course, Heinlein had a book in which he had a Randian. He had an objective as character and that was The Moon is a Hosh Mistress. So all right. All right, we'll talk about the World Cup tomorrow on the news show. That'll be tomorrow at 11 o'clock Eastern time. We'll talk about, so the next show is tomorrow at 11 o'clock Eastern time. We'll talk about politics and what's happening in Washington, DC. We'll talk about the just completed climate change conference. We'll talk about Qatar having the World Cup. And we can't talk about everything because the news is so full. But we'll have to leave stuff for Tuesday, but there's a lot of stuff to talk about. So make sure if I don't mention the World Cup tomorrow, make sure to make that a super chat question. All right, everybody, unless somebody has a quick question, really appreciate it. Thank you, Armin, for jumping in with that the last minute. The support. Thank you, Troy. Thank you, Vadim, and thank you, Shazbot, for contributing a significant amount of money today. And almost getting us to double, really, this close to double our goal. So great day. Thanks, everybody. See you all tomorrow, tomorrow, 11 o'clock a.m. And maybe tomorrow night as well. You know, I don't know. What do you think? Should I do the show just on Trump? Just a whole show on Trump? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. All right. See you guys. Have a great night.