 Everybody, today we're invading Destiny's morality and we're starting right now. With an introduction of our speakers, we're thrilled to have them and want to let you know, folks, both Destiny and Brenton are linked in the description. So if you want to hear more, you absolutely can hear more from them. And with that, I want to say just quick hello, Destiny, glad to have you back. Hey, glad to be here again. And Brenton, glad to have you back as well. And also, folks, want to let you know, Brenton has a special link in the description. Want to give him a chance to share about that before we get started. Thanks so much, Brenton, for being back with us. The floor is all yours. Absolutely. Yeah, very excited to be doing this. Very excited to be locking horns with Destiny. He's someone that I've been very heavily influenced by. And yeah, I'm really excited about this. Anyway, for those of you who don't know me, I am an anarchist political commentator and author of Snow White Zombie Apocalypse. I'm a writer and go nominated comic series. And today it's a little different because a good friend of mine and a brilliant writer, his sister, who is younger than me, was fired from her job, unfortunately due to what later turned out to be a heart condition. And she needs bypass surgery. And due to being fired for that heart condition, she is, she does not have any insurance. And so they're trying to raise $75,000 to help pay for the procedure. So if anybody can, please click on the link, give whatever. Even $1 will help with the algorithm and help them hit that goal and make sure that she can get her surgery because, you know, honestly, that's a horrifying situation for anyone to be in. So yeah, thank you very much. And please do check that out. Absolutely. And those links are in the description at the very top of the description, folks. So I highly encourage you to check those links out in the description box. And with that, we're going to get started with Destiny's opening statement on his morality. So Stephen, the floor is all yours. Okay, so I have like some very basic stuff written down. And then this is, I imagine we'll be going over it. So this is kind of like the foundational ethics that I use that I kind of build all of my policy positions out of, and I build all of my applied ethics positions out of. So I broke this into two parts. The first part, I don't imagine we'll talk about much, but just epistemically, I would like to say that like the laws of thought exist. So for instance, I'm going to assert without proof that we believe in things like non-contradiction or we believe that non-contradiction can happen. We believe in the law of the excluded middle. We believe in the law of identity, stuff like that. And then for two and three, I'm going to say that like zero order and first order logic exist. So like if P then Q, you know, A is not not it, like stuff like this. I hope that we can just instantly move past that. I don't imagine that we'll get bogged down there, but just in case there's some ultimate skepticism lurking, that's just just very basic epistemic side stuff. Okay. And then moving past that. So the way that I kind of look at my moral stuff is branch this out into three sections with one and two being incredibly similar. So number one. So the first premise is I exist. Second premise is I have an experience. Third premise is I want to maximize my experience. And then I'll repeat the same three axioms for other people. Other people exist. Other people have an experience. Other people want to maximize their experience. And then the third part is I believe one, humans synergize to create a better experience. Two, if I help others maximize their experience, they will help me. And three, assuming we all share moral systems, we will all synergize with each other. So that's essentially kind of like the foundation that I build all of my policy positions and my applied ethics positions out of. Okay. And that's it. Thanks so much. I'll kick it right on over to Bretton. Sure. Thank you very much. And I want to really thank Destiny for this. It's, you know, this is inherently a difficult position to be in because you're defending not an idea, but you know, your own ideas that you've put out. And so, you know, I just want to recognize that before we go into it. You may find that there are some slightly different phrasing. And this is because I based it on my criticism on a video that Destiny put out about six months ago. So if there's something that doesn't make sense, check out that video because I do reference it directly. So to begin, in the beginning was the word or was it? Now, you may think it quite odd that I, a practicing Buddhist and beginning a debate with about morality with a Bible quote, specifically John one one in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. All things were made by him and in him was life and that life was the light of men and it's shown in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not. And yes, I will admit that upon first inspection, this might seem particularly strange, especially considering the morality in question, which is to say the specific moral system that we are discussing tonight is one that has been professed by my esteemed interlocutor, a man who regards himself as an agnostic atheist, but bear with me because it will all make sense in the end. The thing is, most philosophical questions and discussions, if they go on long enough, ultimately become about God and the popular understanding of Christianity being one of the foundational political and philosophical pillars of the Western world has woven itself so thoroughly into the fabric of our increasingly secular society that its remnants are quite often impossible to dislodge. In short, if we take it as a given that indeed God is dead, we must also admit that the world we currently inhabit rests upon a scaffold constructed of his bones. Unless you think I'm being too presumptuous in drawing connections with this particular metaphor, let me remind the audience that Mr. Bonnell, known to many by the pen named Destiny, has himself actually acknowledged this to be the case when he stated on this subject, what I call internal happiness or maximized experience, which is the basis of his moral system, I think they call religion. Now, before we go any further, I want to make something abundantly and overwhelmingly clear. My criticisms of Destiny's professed moral systems are not criticisms of Destiny himself. And if you come away from this debate finding them adequate, it does not in any way suggest any such particular and notable moral deficiencies in Destiny as a person. Morality is an exceptionally tricky subject that has reliably confounded the greatest minds humanity has ever produced for the entirety of our species' existence on this planet and will likely continue to do so far into the future. Barring certain supernatural assumptions in all of human history, there has never been a perfectly moral individual nor a perfect moral system nor any kind of perfection whatsoever, which is to say that nothing within reality exists independent of its opposite. Everything that exists both in the objective material world and the subjective reality of the mind is inherently limited and contains within itself its own negation. And to quote a popular stereotype of an age-presbyterian minister to his vanity to think otherwise. The fact is, man is mortal, fallible, human. And as such, everything that man creates also bears the mark of his creation and thus carries within itself that same human fallibility. So it is no particular failing on Destiny's part if he is found to have spoken in error. And of course, the same holds true for myself. In a certain sense, we're all just hairless apes filled to the brim with a series of intense and often conflicting needs, drives, and desires who are nonetheless stumbling through an infinitely complicated and seemingly indifferent world for 90 or so years at a time, desperately clutching in the darkness for some kind of stability. As such, the correct response when one of us makes a mistake is almost always compassion. Ultimately, we're all just doing our best and it is a fact of life that often the handhold that seemed so solid just a moment ago will crumble in our grasp. The dialogue which we are now engaged in is simply one more in a long line of moral, ethical, and philosophical disagreements, reaching back no doubt to before recorded history. And in fact, I will come to argue that what we are doing here today, from a certain point of view, is the act of morality itself. So to begin, I have three primary objections to the moral system as it was proposed by Destiny. The first is a statement that if something is not consistent, it is meaningless. Consistency is something that we should strive for when constructing any worldview. However, this admirable instinct is philosophically treacherous to say the least. As the goal that Destiny has assigned for himself is ultimately a Sisyphusian task. Any time you try to roll the boulder of perfect consistency up the hill of reality, you may get very far, but you will inevitably hit a contradiction and that boulder will roll back down and the whole process will start over again. For proof, one only need to look to the logician and philosopher Kurt Gertl's two incompleteness which proved mathematically that all axiomatic systems are either incomplete or inconsistent, which means that if we are to take Destiny at his word, math itself is meaningless. We also see this reflected in Bertrand Russell's objection to set theory when he proved it impossible to create a logical set containing all truths due to the fact that such a set must necessarily both contain and not contain itself, thus rendering set theory once again meaningless under the strict interpretation proposed by my interlocutor. Even the physical laws of science that govern our natural world are not wholly consistent. The ideal gas law, for instance, breaks down at high pressures and low temperatures, but this contradiction does not render the ideal gas law meaningless. As such, I would remind Destiny that should is an extremely dangerous word. Contradictions are important and can point to serious flaws in any methodological framework, but their presence alone does not render that framework meaningless anymore than the presence of hypocrisy renders a particular statement false. If a doctor tells you smoking causes lung cancer, you need to stop, and then later you find out that said doctor is a smoker, well, that doesn't make the statement untrue. You should still stop and it still does cause lung cancer. Secondly, I reject the idea that any moral system can be based wholly or even primarily on what Stephen calls internal happiness or maximized experience. On its face, it sounds reasonable. One wishes to be happy and therefore one should advance an ethic centered around the fulfillment of this desire. And to Destiny's credit, he has avoided most if not all of the usual stumbling blocks that the more naive and myopic egoists usually fall into, but there is a fundamental problem when it comes to centering oneself as the primary beneficiary and source of ethics and morality and this can easily be discovered if we examine even enlightened selfishness. If you hold that the primary thing that you love is yourself and really dive into it with a full power of your imagination, you will quickly discover that everything that you love is in fact not yourself at all. If you love yourself and therefore devote yourself to fulfilling all of your needs and desires, then what you are really loving is that which is external to you or rather that which is external when it is added to yourself. An egoist who loves themselves and thus drinks only the best and most flavorful wine to their palate truly loves not themselves, but the wine or more correctly, they love the combination of the wine and themselves. When the egoist engages in a passionate love affair with one or more extremely attractive individuals, yet again it is not themselves that they love nor even necessarily the individuals. It is both together. It is the combination. Now to be certain that I do not straw man destiny, his brand of enlightened egoism to a certain extent makes gestures in this direction but there is still a huge gaping flaw and namely it is when he supposes that individuals who do not share his goals of maximizing his individual happiness and the happiness of others must necessarily be excised from his system either via banishment, imprisonment or death. Why? Because a necessary part of internal happiness is the presence of one's enemies. Now take a second with that because that's not how most people usually think about their enemies and it's not how we're used to approaching personal and social discord along with all of the unfortunate things which can befall an individual but don't reject it out of the pan. Think it through because the only reason we know that we exist that we can identify where we end and another begins is when we meet resistance. The principle is expressed in many subtle ways and it is why in the martial arts many advanced practitioners argue that in fact it is the an act of ultimate kindness for someone to agree to strike you and be struck by you because when we are hit with any kind of force the accompanying shock makes you feel alive in a way that few other experiences can deliver. The point is that one only knows the limits of one's body by the experience of coming into contact with that which is not their body which is to say resistance, resistance to our ideas, resistance to our will and the seeming resistance to our own happiness and well-being. In a way that's what love is. Someone who is not beholden to your will agreeing to forego that most of the time and of course as a lover we respond in kind offering both acceptance and resistance. In essence we only know pleasure because we know pain and thus to attempt to excise obstacles and enemies from our conscious experience is in reality an attempt to have a wave without the trough is an attempt to play chess without an opponent to knock all the black pieces off the board before beginning the game in order to enjoy a permanent victory for white. This of course is not only impossible but is ironically inadvisable as I'm sure destiny as a consummate gamer understands just how unfulfilling it can be to play a game that's too easy or to continue playing a game once victory is assured. In short, we must admit that enemies, misfortune and discord are as much a part of our overall happiness as harmony, fortune and friends and thus we cannot commit to a system that eliminates any of them at least not entirely at least if we expect that system to make us happy or maximize our experience which is as I have explained something of a fool's errand anyway. Chasing desire is fundamentally flawed for this and many other reasons not the least of which is because that frame causes you to evaluate others and your own external environment either as solely an impediment or a means to an end when in fact it is neither. It is instead simply another expression of you and as much as back is an expression of front and the South Pole of a magnet is an expression of the North and to attempt to excise it is like fleeing your own shadow. I mean, you can do it but you're not gonna get anywhere and you might even hurt yourself. Finally, I take issue with the fundamental assumption that a moral system any moral system functions as a mechanism into which we can feed data and by so doing come to a perfect or nearly perfect moral conclusion. In fact, when we look at how morality operates in the real world, I don't think we can necessarily conclude that morality even is a system in the strictest sense of the word and this brings me back, well, to the word, John 11. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. It is one of the most well-known pivotal and influential statements in all of the English language. And sadly, it is also something of a mistranslation or perhaps not to put it so strongly an unfortunate way of phrasing the idea which has caused untold confusion for centuries. The word in this sense is logos from the Greek and has been translated in much the same way as I have previously stated in nearly every edition of the Bible. That is with the exception of one Erasmus of Rotterdam whose 15th century translation of the book of John roughly begins such Lee. It all arose out of a conversation, a conversation within God and in fact, the conversation was God. So God started the discussion and everything came out of this and nothing happened without consultation. This was the life, life that was the light of men shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity. Now, do you see the difference there? And do you understand why I told you that all serious philosophical and moral debates ultimately become a conversation about God? Suddenly, we in the West are not subject to the word, something complete, immutable, unchanging given from on high. We are the conversation which means our relationship to the divine is participatory and to rephrase this, our relationship to each other and to reality itself is also participatory. This has a number of incredible implications not the least of which is that morality is not a matter of finding the proper system and comporting ourselves to it just like life is not a matter of finding the proper God and bending ourselves to his will but rather we're it, we are God. We are morality, we are life itself. We are the universe experiencing itself as an individual. Morality is something that we do which can be best understood in terms of aesthetics. Morality is a dance, it is a song and the point of it is not to achieve some specific material end. The point of the dance is the dancing just as the point of the song is the singing. There are certain rules and themes and recurring motifs but to look at morality for these things or for its supposed outcome is to attempt to make the tail wag the dog and to miss the forest for the treats. In short, we are doing morality right now because it all arose of a conversation and thus I am very excited to continue this one. Thank you. Gotcha and thank you very much, Brendan for that opening statement. We will now be going into the open discussion section. Wanna let you know though if it's your first time here at Moderate Debate we are a neutral platform hosting debates on science, religion and politics. We hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from and last, you guys at the bottom right of your screen we are going to have an epic debate next Tuesday with Jengles and T-Jump as they are debating the super straight debate and so that should be a lot of fun. Hit that subscribe button and that notification bell so you don't miss that one live. Thanks so much everybody and gentlemen, the floor is all yours for that open dialogue. Well, do you wanna start right at point number one? Sure, we can start at point, I think I probably threw a lot at you. So is there anything that you wanna latch on to right there? Let's just go in order. We can start right at point number one, I believe was you challenged, I think you challenged me on an epistemic level almost the idea that we shouldn't strive for a contradiction and any particular theory or that we shouldn't strive to avoid contradiction in any particular theory or framework. I would disagree, I think we should strive for it. I just don't think it's a possible goal. Like essentially we should always strive to eliminate as many contradictions as possible but I don't think it's possible to eliminate all of the contradictions and I don't think the presence of a contradiction necessarily makes what we have done up until that point you know, worthless or completely unreliable. So what would your argument be against something incredibly basic like the principle of explosion? How would you argue against something like this? The principle of explosion. Meaning that like, so I think that most people who understand formal logic would say that if you have any contradiction then from any contradiction in a system we can prove anything. I would say on a certain level that works but I think like, I mean, Isaac Azimov like you can prove anything with logic you just have to pick your postulates. I'm not throwing logic out. It's just logic is something invented by humans to accomplish specific goals and eventually it will break down at the highest levels. Okay, so I'm gonna try. Okay, so I ever say anything that's unclear. You can stop me immediately. Try to be very clear with every single thing I say. So my assertion is that if we accept contradiction we have essentially abandoned all logical statements. I don't think we can ever do that. I don't think it's possible that we can say like, oh, you know, well, there's contradictions. Like that's okay. Because as I said before from any contradiction we can prove any statement to be true or false. I'd say again, that's totalizing because and we have plenty of evidence that it is not true. Again, I mentioned- What do you mean by that? Well, Goodell's or Gertl's incompleteness theorem. Sure, so to be clear on that. So Gertl's incompleteness theorem basically just said that any axiomatic system is going to have some limitations. More specifically, there might be true statements that any particular set of axioms can't prove, but it doesn't say that contradictions are acceptable. No, and again, I'm not saying that contradictions are acceptable. I'm just simply saying that they're inevitable. Because again, any axiomatic system is either contradictory or incomplete. Okay, well, incomplete is way different than contradictory. I can acknowledge that there's probably some incompleteness around any system, but that doesn't make it contradictory. And it also doesn't make it not contradictory. Because again, we can't know for a fact that we've eliminated every contradiction because you don't know a contradiction until you find it. Sure, but what I would argue is that any set, any type of theory that contains a contradiction is I think necessarily becomes invalid. So if we find a contradiction, we have to seek to resolve that as soon as possible. It has to be resolved. We can't just accept a contradiction and say, well, that's okay. Well, again, I'm not so much saying we accept the contradiction. Obviously we would work to move around in much the same way that like with special gas laws, like the gas laws function under certain conditions, but then when the conditions change, the laws no longer become useful. We don't throw the law out in much the same way that we don't throw out set theory because we know that it's still limited and has a direct contradiction within itself. So, okay, so to be clear on, so, okay. Okay, so I know that a lot of these things get kind of like tossed around, but they don't think that these are ever quite as people say them. So for Russell's Paradox, Russell's Paradox was a challenge that was like in the 1920s, I think, to naive set theory. 1900 or maybe 1930. In 1921, 1920s it was resolved. So it was resolved over a hundred years ago by Zermelo Frankel set theory. So Russell's Paradox is the thing of the past. Nobody, we don't care about that anymore. That's a hundred years old. No, I mean, Russell's Paradox is still important, but the thing is, is that set theory has grown beyond it because they found a contradiction and they built a new system based upon that. Like, yeah, exactly. But so what I'm saying is Russell's Paradox is a challenge to naive set theory, but mathematics doesn't deal with naive set theory anymore. We don't do anything with naive set theory. So Russell's Paradox is not. Yeah, I would disagree with that. I'm pretty sure naive set theory is still used, but you know, again, I'm not a math guy, so you'll have to talk to a math guy for that. Gotcha. If any mathematician ever wants to challenge me or claim that I'm wrong, my understanding is that virtually all forms of mathematics start from, is it Zermelo Frankel set theory or Zermelo Frankel theory with the choice axiom, ZFC or ZEF. These are like every mathematician and every math theory basically starts with these places. Nobody uses naive set theory anymore. As for like the ideal gas laws, I'm not as well read on these, but my understanding is that like ideal gas law is it's not necessarily like a, I don't think it's a law. I think that it's more just like, this is kind of like a simplistic equation that we can use to kind of get an idea for things. And as conditions change, the way that we view things might change, but I would say that that's similar to how for Newtonian mechanics, we can use these kind of up to a point, but that's not really our current understanding of the universe. And as things approach like certain sizes or relativistic speeds, then we have to appeal to like the theory of relativity. We've got to refer to special or general relativity and that these things are going to be more consistent. I think what you're doing here though is you're kind of conceding my point in that, yeah, certain things work to a point and then we reach a point where either the contradiction can't be resolved and we have to abandon them in favor of something else. It doesn't mean that we don't ever use that thing again. So we have to be careful when we talk about like, if you're going to ask me if we use some shortcuts in the existence of our day-to-day life that we don't know, like I couldn't have somebody sit down and write a formal proof for, then yeah, of course I'll agree with that, but we're not arguing about like, well, what does an engineer like that use, right? What we're arguing about is like, what should we strive for and like our theories that we have. So like, nobody, no, like our current theories I think you and I agree on what we should strive for. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for consistency, but what I'm saying is, is that I think by overemphasizing the fact that we need consistency, what happens is, is that you seem to naturally go from that to you look at another moral system that works most of the time, you find someone is in consistency, you catch someone as a hypocrite and what winds up happening is that you're like, okay, so that moral system doesn't work and you throw it out. In fact, it probably does work. The thing is though, these systems are not perfect. So there needs to be exceptions to every rule. Okay, so I would say we have to be very careful. So the discussion of any particular ethical system exists only in an idealized form. It is not a person's behavior. Just because a person adheres to a particular set of ethics and they are a hypocrite or they do something wrong, doesn't invalidate or cause a contradiction to arise in those set of ethics. Contradictions that arise within any formal theory should be able to be proven by deduction, not proven by behavior. So for instance, if you wanna challenge any ethical theory, you would have to show me the two statements within that ethical theory or contradictory or cause a contradiction. You can't just say that this person tries to appeal to that theory and they did something wrong, therefore that theory is bad. That would be similar to saying somebody did two times three equals 10, therefore multiplication or arithmetic is bad. Just because somebody makes a mistake on a behavior doesn't disprove the actual underlying rationale or the system. Yeah, I mean, again, I don't disagree with that, but I wasn't speaking specifically about someone not living up to their moral system. I was talking specifically about moral systems that may contain contradictions within themselves. Okay, I understand that you're saying that. Well, I understand you're saying that, but the word you very specifically used was hypocrite and it is impossible for a moral system to be hypocritical. Hypocrite implies you advocate for one thing while you do another thing, which is an individual to exhibit a behavior. I don't think you can get a hypocrisy in a moral system. No, I get what you're saying. My point with using the phrase specifically hypocrite is I think there's ways for essentially the halo effect to creep into how we talk about systems by essentially attaching it to a person or to a person's behavior or to a person's perceived, I guess, inconsistency. I think- But we have to agree that we're separating, for the purposes of this conversation, we're absolutely separating any system or theory from a practitioner of said system or theory. Sure, at least as far as the dealing with contradictions goes. I mean, I don't think you can necessarily completely divorce a system from how it is practiced within reality, but that's different than what you're saying. So I just wanna make that clear. Does that make sense? For sure, we can attack the practice of certain systems, but that doesn't invalidate the system itself. So for instance, every single Christian on the planet could turn into a ravenous murder and that wouldn't disprove the system of Christianity or wouldn't disprove the morals or the ethics of Christianity. It would show that all Christians are horrible people. Whereas if I could demonstrate a contradiction in the Bible or in one of the 10 commandments, I would be disproving the whatever system of ethics Christianity purports to have or specific sex Christian purports to have, even if all individual Christians were good, holy people, whatever. There's a fundamental difference between behavior and any particular theory or system that we've constructed. I'm not 100% sure I'm sold on that. I take your point. I think it's a good one, but I have actually and if you've seen my other religious debates on here, I've sort of argued that the real test of a religion is its effect on its followers. And if it does promote them to live happy, productive, harmonious lives. Yeah, but when you say the real test of a religion, what are you testing? What do you mean by that? The test of the religion? The test of the, if it does what it purports to do for people. I take, I don't really, I'm a Buddhist. I don't really believe in a God and I focus heavily on humanistic elements. So when I look at a religion, I look at a religion in the same way I might look at an exercise routine. So if you do the one punch man workout, are you going to gain the powers that Saitama gains? If you don't gain those powers, it obviously, that's an anatomy, but like let's just say, it turns out it's a bad workout and you aren't able to build muscle as effectively, then we've got a problem there. So in much the same way that a workout might not do what it purports to do, a religion might not do what it purports to do within reality. Sure, so it's possible that some particular theory or some particular system in one practice will come up short somehow, but I don't think that's not really a knock to the consistency or the validity of said theory or system, unless it's making just demonstrably untrue empirical claims. I mean, I would say that it might have, so it's the idea of framing that putting a certain frame on something will create a specific relationship with it within the mind of the person who adheres to it. So kind of like what I talked about with the word and the use of the word, word in the English language Bible, creating a frame in which we are relating to ultimate reality and God as though it is a settled thing that is separate from ourselves as opposed to conversation. They're really the same idea being expressed, but because of the word used, it creates a different, I guess, it colors it differently through a different frame. Another example of this, I just had it flew out of my head. I'll get it back in a second, you can respond. Yeah, I mean, any of that may or may not be true. I just, I think that it's really important that to establish from the start that any particular theory or system we have, we cannot accept contradiction within that theory or system. If we do, then everything necessarily becomes absurd that we can prove the statement or the negation of literally any statement, assuming that we subscribe to like really basic tenants of. I feel like you're being very totalizing here. And again, there's a difference between accepting a contradiction and accepting that contradictions are inevitable. I would say. Yeah, I have to be totalizing here because if I don't totalize this particular thing, then we immediately fall into a pit of absurdity or epistemic nihilism or something. Can you explain that to me exactly why? Sure, so if we allow any theory to exist and we allow some contradiction to exist within that theory, assuming that we believe in like, it might even be like zero order logic, assuming that we believe like in any incredibly basic system of logic, if we allow a contradiction to exist and we say that we've proven both or we accept is true the contradiction or the two, I'm sorry, let me be more clear. If we say that we accept as true two proponents of a system that are contradictory from that particular contradiction, we can literally prove anything to be true. I could read through it like an example of this, but it might be a little bit complicated, but I think this is pretty well accepted for most, like people that practice for any kind of logical stuff. I mean, I can look at it, hang on for just a second though, because I did remember what I was gonna say, my other example of like a system, this is pulling us back a little bit, but so Hegel had this concept called inframing. And essentially it is when you look at the world in a scientific manner, because the Greeks did not consider science to necessarily be technology, but more a way of thinking. So sorry, not scientific, technological technique. So the way that like a sculptor like looks, Michelangelo looks at a big slab of marble and he sees the David in it. It's a way of looking at the world, not for what it is, but what it can do or what it could be. And it's a good means of thinking, but if you totalize that kind of thinking, and you let that machine sort of take over and become the frame for your reality to become your ideology, which you wind up doing, is seeing everything in the world as a collection of resources to be exploited, seeing human beings as essentially meat puppets to accomplish tasks. And so like things that are not necessarily stated in the text, but may be, that may go unsaid as subtext, as sort of background radiation for particular ideological ways of looking at things. A big example that I might give is like the sort of ANCAP philosophy of self ownership, wind up having huge problems, not necessarily because of what they say, but because of how they say it and the frame that this creates. Whereas if you begin thinking of yourself and your body in terms of self ownership, suddenly you're seeing yourself as a piece of technology and as opposed to something that exists for its own right. And thus you will inevitably begin to neglect yourself and treat yourself as you would any other kind of property or possession. So you are in a way diminishing yourself by believing in self ownership. So does that make sense? I don't think, I don't know how that responds to the problems of contradiction. No, no, it didn't. I just, I wanted to go back to finish because remember I forgot what I was going to bring up. So as far as the problem of contradiction, you had mentioned that... Yeah, real quick, just to take a second. We're like, we're purely in the world of the epistemic right now. So I don't care about any moral stuff. I don't care about real life behavior. I don't care about, we're purely in an epistemic world right now. All I'm saying is that we must have, we must accept that any coherent system we use a necessary part of that coherence is that it doesn't contain within itself a contradiction. I mean, sure. But again, when you're talking about coherence, you're kind of begging the question, you know? Well, yeah, because this is like literally like axiomatic like a system just can't contain a contradiction. It can't. How do we even decide which contradictions a system could contain? Yeah. I mean, essentially what we're dealing with here is unknown known. So as we know, every axiomatic system is either incomplete or contains a contradiction. We cannot know like how many contradictions there are in there because we cannot know what we don't know. We just have to go as far as we can and try to eliminate, try to identify and eliminate as many contradictions as possible. It's a circadian task. It is rolling the boulder up the hill. We will never succeed, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do it, nor does it mean that what we discover while engaging in this process is necessarily worthless. That's the main thing that I wanted to say about that. And it's largely because what it, the totalizing statement at the beginning, what it really worried me in was it wasn't just an error, but it made me feel like it might lead you and people who embrace this particular ethic to throw out ethical systems because of a perceived contradiction. When a contradiction doesn't destroy the system entirely. Well, that, but okay. So I mean, I would advocate that if there is a perceived contradiction that the system is necessarily bonk and should be thrown out. I think that's how all systems should work. We could move on. It's a dangerous word, but yeah, if you want to. I mean, having no logical coherency or abandoning all epistemic norms I think is probably more dangerous, I would argue. Yeah, but nobody's doing that. Well, by saying that we accept contradiction, we're essentially abandoning all epistemic norms. We're basically becoming like epistemic anti-realists. I mean, are you going to, do you abandon again, this is math, but like, do you abandon math because there are limits? Like a limit always approaches a point but never actually reaches it? Like no, that idea of the limit is still very effective. So I think- For math, so for math, if there exist contradictions in math, we don't accept those. We'd seek to resolve those as soon as possible. So Russell's paradox, I believe, did demonstrate a contradiction. That's why we abandoned naive set theory. That's why we left that, we don't use that anymore. It's completely gone. No one, it's done. People might practice- I'm pretty sure that's not it, but whatever. About my life on it. It's like, in practice we might use it, like people use Newtonian calculations, but nobody's seriously working in the field of mathematics. Unless you're doing like elementary stuff or basic, like, like ZMC or ZFN Twitter. Oh yeah, but Z right there. That's exactly what I mean. So when you're talking about like morality, especially to a popular audience like on your show, you're not talking to a room full of like moral philosophy professors. You're talking to like people who are dipping in to see your hot takes on things. Yeah, and I understand that. But again, I'm separating out like behaviors versus just like our idealized system. Like I understand behaviors. We can try to move on from this. And then, but if this disagreement comes up later, then we're gonna- I mean, we're gonna keep jumping into it. I think the diff, if I would say to resolve this, I think the difference here is, I'm a little more comfortable with the presence of hypothetical contradictions or inevitable hypothetical contradictions than you seem to be. I think you're very driven to find these contradictions and remove them, which I will applaud you for. That is a great attitude. I just, again, I think it's a bit of a fool's errand and I think that you may be overstating the problem there. And that's- But I think for instance, like, could you ever say that like A is not A? Would you ever say that? Could you ever accept like that? Or plus two plus two equals five? Like are these things that- I mean, I don't know about two plus two equals five. I could, I think I did- Well, like A equals not A or like- Yeah. Because it feels like we just- Well, A equals A, that's like a Randian thing, isn't it? No, this is like a foundational, this is like the laws of thought. There's like one of three things, like the law of identity. Yeah, a thing is itself. I mean, I might have a slight objection to A equals A, not in the equation form. I know for a fact, like the objectivists were really big about saying A equals A. You argue with any of them. It's one of the things that- But again, I'm not working on objectivism anymore. I'm only looking, we're only in the land of the epistemic right now. I don't care about any of the moral stuff. Absolutely. So what I would say is there is inherently a problem with identity. And this has been figured out in Eastern and Western philosophy like for quite a long time. It's the same thing of the problem of the river. Like do we all walk into the same river? Or in other words, like you can look at something like the ship of Theseus. If you replace the rotted boards on the ship of Theseus, is it still the ship? Or is the ship of Theseus the idea? Or is it the rot? Or another great way of looking at it is the sun. How big is the sun? What do we actually say that is the sun? Is the sun the extent of its light? Is it the extent of its heat, the extent of its fire? And the answer is all of them. So the idea of A equals A is true, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything because the fact that something is something, like that it has an identity, is in part constructed by our minds. Okay, we'll move on from this and we'll see if contradiction comes up later I guess. Sure. Okay, we're moving out of the land of the Epistemi. Nobody likes this place anyway. All right, what was the next point too? My next objection, let me pull back up my thing. So my first objection, this one I think, there's a reason I put it in the middle. So have fun coming after it. So I reject the idea that any moral system can be based wholly or even primarily on what you call internal happiness or the maximizing of your experience. I think it's that. Well, I think it sounds reasonable on the face of it, but I think the big problem is, is that one, if you center yourself and your ego, like at the center of your morality, what you're realizing is you're not really loving yourself, that you actually are more interested in everything else or the combination of yourself and everything. So, if your goal is to maximize your experience to go and you go and drink some great wine, it's, you don't care about yourself really, you care about the wine or the wine that is added to yourself. Yeah, exactly. But why do you care about the wine? Well, this is the thing. You've got this split into essentially two different parties, the internal and the external world. And I think that these appear to our common sense as very much the same, but I think in reality, they absolutely are not very different, but in reality, they are absolutely the same. Let me propose a hypothetical. Let's say that a person exists. Let's say that there exists a perfect glass of wine somewhere that would quench this person's every single facet of his experience. But let's say that that person cannot ever gain any information about that wine. Perhaps it exists in another star system and the person will never live long enough to travel to that. What does that particular thing of wine do to that person? Or how does that person relate to that particular thing of wine? I mean, if they don't know about it, they don't. So it does nothing for them. Okay, I agree. So I would argue that any type of external thing that you talk about as sustaining or providing happiness to our experience is all done relationally to ourselves. And then I would appeal back to my third axiom that I want to maximize my own experience. So things existing external of me don't matter insofar as if I can never interact with it or never know anything about it. Like the function of that thing is going to be whatever pleasure or happiness I can derive out of that thing. Right, I'm not going to disagree with you on that. But what I'm going to say is nothing actually exists outside of you in much the same way that we don't know how far the sun actually extends. We don't know how far destiny is. You don't end at your skin any more than I end at my skin. I'm gonna have to say, yeah. So yeah, that could also be something that just flows from some axiomatic statement. I would assume that we would have to assume that things exist external ourselves otherwise I don't know. I mean, things exist external ourselves in a certain sense, but not ultimately. Like evolution doesn't favor organisms that experience reality directly. It favors organisms that experience reality in a way that is most conducive to their survival and or reproduction. And this is really a very important point because human brains really like to break things down into lists and patterns because that helps us as organisms survive. But that's not reality. That's our interface with reality in much the same way that the computer screen is not, it's not the computer itself. It's how you interact with it. Still important, it still exists. But ultimately the computer is much more than just the screen. I understand that. So in some sense, reality is constructed in the brain. That seems to be true. But I mean, I would still appeal to, I would still say that we ought to act in a way that there exists an external world. Otherwise again, we fall into at the very least ethical absurdity. For instance, I could walk up to 20, or here's a question for you. I could walk up to 20 people and murder every single person. Is that actually wrong? If there is no external reality, it's all just stuff in my head. What would be your argument against murdering people and discrimination? Well, I would say in a certain sense. So, and this is actually a big question like in the Buddhist. So the sutras bring this up a lot. So in the sense that you can't actually die and nobody can actually die because we're not individuals, you could walk up and murder 20 people. And oh, it's a watch because we're all the great Brahmin, the Godhead, whatever. But that I would still say, it's not a good idea to do that because those 20 people are also you. Okay, wait, so to be very clear, I want to talk in terms of like moral rights are wrong. So I don't care like what wouldn't be a good idea or would be a good idea, right? I kind of want to be able to say like, this is something that we ought to do or ought not to do. So if we believe that there is no external world if none of those things exist by what you've said. And if we say that like, well, maybe like blowing a bunch of people up would make us really happy. Like what would stop you or how would you condemn a person on those grounds? You say, hey, don't do that. That's fucked up. And the guy is like, why they don't real? Like the whole external world is fake. So that's the kind of the problem of inflation that people see, you know, and sometimes when somebody like slips into the sort of oceanic consciousness, especially if they're coming from a Western perspective, they start to think they're God, you know, or you get like really heavy solopsism where, you know, I am the only person that exists. Well, you've essentially, you've purported solopsism, haven't you? No, no, I definitely have not. There's a very subtle difference here. So what we're talking about with regard, it's not so much that the external world doesn't exist. It's that the external world and the internal world are ultimately two sides of the same coin. They can't be separated. So you can't- So we do acknowledge that there does exist some external content, right? There is some content in the world. There is something external ourselves, right? There is something external our consciousness, our ego. But I agree with that. But then why would we say, so then I guess I don't understand your second point of nothing exists outside of yourself? How is this a challenge to anything outside? Nothing exists out because yourself is everything. It's the totality. It's the ground of being, the dream of Brahman. Are you familiar at all with Hinduism? I'm not, but so I agree with everything you're saying, but I feel like all three of my axioms play into that very well. So I exist, I have an experience and I want to maximize my experience. You've told me that there is some internal being that every single thing external is relational to that internal being. So yeah, I mean, I agree with you, but it feels like your, that statement could just as easily flow from my three axioms. I don't understand how that contradicts anything I've asserted so far. The issue, in that sense, it doesn't. The issue is the quest to maximize something for your internal being. And that- If you're not maximizing something for your internal being, what are you maximizing it for? Well, again, I don't think you necessarily should look to maximize. What should you, why not? Well, because that's essentially the world of hungry ghosts. Like that's- Wait, that's not an argument. So my question- No, no, it is, it sounds like it's not, but continue. Well, so a person has an experience, a person exists and they have an experience. It seems like they should seek to maximize their experience. They want to do what makes them happiest or what purports at least to fulfill their desires as maximally as possible. Why shouldn't a person do that? Well, think about that for a second. Think about the people who are able to fully maximize and fulfill every desire. They don't actually find it all that fulfilling in much the same way that if you go into a video game with invincibility codes, you're eventually going to get really, really bored of it. I mean, the fact is that we have this idea that we, especially in the West, that we get some kind of technological omnipotence and get everywhere in an instant, avoid every bad thing that could happen to us. And you know- Well, I think to be clear, I understand what you're saying, but this is like, this is a very, very naive assumption of what it means to maximize one's experience. So I like to maximize my experience playing games. That doesn't mean I turn on cheap with everything. I'm the exact opposite. I like to turn everything to the hardest difficulty and die a million times- Exactly. But I'm still maximizing my experience. Maximizing every experience doesn't mean like taking like a six year old's idea of like, oh, well, I want to be invincible and immortal and never die. And now I'm floating in the universe alone because I'm too dumb to know what I meant by maximizing. Right? Like we can be a little bit more charitable to that. Maximize my experience axiom. And we could say like, maximization of your experience doesn't necessarily mean being invincible in all video games, right? Yeah. And I think my opening statement said that specifically because you have, and I think I acknowledged that, yeah, I don't think you have a naive idea of egoism. I just think your enlightened egoism still has really, really serious problems because what you're essentially doing is you're building a framework around chasing and fulfilling desires around hedonism essentially. And you can do that, but like evolution again did not build our brains to do that. Every time we get what we want, we just want something else. And then something else and then something else. And suddenly, you're essentially running the rat race. You're living in Samsara chasing the desire, chasing the want. And there are probably forms of desire that are relatively fulfilling that don't leave us wanting more and more and more. I can appeal somewhat to history. Like a lot of people profess that they have a great and intense happiness in raising children, but very rarely do you see somebody produce child after child after child after child. You don't see a mom that's like, I love my kids. That's why I have 45 of them, right? Like I think that there are certain forms of pleasure or happiness that we can pursue that doesn't mean we're gonna do it like a million times over, right? I've known some quiverful weirdos. There was a guy I met on the Appalachian trail. He was a priest and he was one of the 18 kids. So some people do do that. Sure, I'm sure there's gonna be the... Yeah, I mean, I'm Catholic. So in Catholic families, those tend to be quite large. Oh yeah, yeah, no, my family is Catholic as well. So yeah, so I don't think that we necessarily have a contradiction here. I mean, I would agree that we have to be careful what we talk about in terms of maximizing our experiences, but I think that you have to give a very naive reading of that to get to bad places. So like, I don't think that the theory or the framework is broken. I think that it's just the interpretation might be bad. So for instance, somebody might take said system and say, oh, well, I'm gonna go and kill 30 people because that's a lot of fun and that's gonna make me happy. And they try to kill one person, they fail and then they're locked up in jail forever. And it's like, okay, well, it seems like this wasn't really a good idea. You had a very bad application of the theory, but that doesn't challenge the theory itself, right? Whereas people that try to do well to others, people that live lives and do charity service and have happy families and friends, like they tend to have a much more maximized experience than the person in jail rotting for attempted manslaughter and murder. I mean, I won't 100% disagree with that because I do like that you have a more totalizing view of this, but also keep in mind, you're communicating with millions and millions of people and like YouTube and Twitch skew young. So in much the same way that we saw that there was a problem with translating in the beginning, there was the word as opposed to, it all began with a conversation. Just the way that you're phrasing that, let's assume that you are correct in chasing desire, which I don't 100% accept, but let's assume that just the way that you're phrasing that when you communicate to people is naturally going to create that frame for the people that listen to you. Yeah, so while I understand this might be the case, this is a conversation on my particular system of ethics, not my rhetoric or not how effective it is that I can communicate the system of ethics from one person to another, right? Sure. So because I'm gonna argue that Buddhism or Christianity or literally any other religion has been communicated in poor ways in the past as well that have led to demonstrable harms too. Okay, well, we can agree to disagree on that. So what I can say is... Wait, agree to disagree? What part of that would we disagree with? Well, I was probably just using that as a phrase to, we can put a pin in that. Would you disagree that almost every religion has been used? Oh, definitely every religion has been used. The only reason I would even say almost is maybe there's some religion that I haven't ever encountered. Sure, that has like five people. Yeah, so yeah, so I think that, and then fundamentally this is a conversation on the soundness I think of my moral system, not necessarily like have I communicated it in the best way or can somebody take it and do something bad with it? Like those are, I think, completely separate discussions. Fair enough, so let's dive in, that sounds good. So let's dive into this because, obviously if I misunderstood you and saw like the going after maximizing experience or internal happiness is essentially like the rat race running on the wheel of samsara, can you explain a little bit more into it like what you mean by that? And hopefully we can, because it seems like we are close to agreeing on this point actually, which is great. Sure, so I mean like I usually, anytime I bring up the maximizing experience thing, I almost always segue that into some form of altruism because it seems to logically follow based on any type of reasonable person or their interpretation of how to apply this to your life. So there are several examples that I'll bring up. One example might be, let's say that I am like a racist white person in my city and I just don't like black people. Even if that was the case, I would still want to advocate for black people to do better in my city because it would mean less money wasted on police departments arresting them. It would be more potential customers for my business. It would mean less money wasted on like bad infrastructure projects. It would mean a higher educated base by which I could generate wealth right. That basically like the idea is that as long as you're maximizing the experience of other people around you and as long as humans synergize with each other's experiences, which we seem to, that you should be advocating maximally for everybody's happiness and experience because doing so will in a roundabout way or sometimes even in a direct way help yourself. So a very direct example that I've given a million times is let's say that you go into a room with four friends, let's say that there's five candy bars on the table. If you want, you can walk up to the table and eat all five candy bars and maximize your enjoyment there. And it would be awesome that all four of your friends are gonna be fucking pissed at you and you're not gonna have a very good time after that, right? Whereas sharing a little bit tends to make everybody around you happier. You all have a better experience and people seem to be better for that. For whatever reason humans seem to be socially designed creatures and it seems like we enjoy each other's company. So having other people that are doing well applies like this very big synergistic effect where everybody like kind of like synergizes with each other's experiences and we all kind of like drive each other to do better and be better, yeah. Sure. I'm not going to disagree with any of that like on its face but I will still say that this seems to be like a highly technocratic approach. It's a good argument. I will point out- Can I, I'm just asking for a definition. What do you mean when you say technocratic? It seems to be that like the argument that you are making is an effective one within the framework that you've constructed here. So what I'm saying- I would hope so because I'm arguing from my framework so of course it should be effective assuming it's a valid and sound, yeah. Yeah. So when I'm saying it's technocratic it's more like you're thinking of society within this framework as happiness machine, if that makes sense. So you gave the impression that even a racist should and we know they don't because racism distorts their thinking and makes them not realize this very obvious fact but they should realize the obvious fact that if everyone does well in society it's going to come back and benefit them as well because they are a member of society. I feel like that argument appeals to a specific kind of thinking and there's definitely like a lot to be said for it. The only caveat I'd give you is I'm just following that through to its logical conclusion I don't think that you're going to get as much out of it as you might otherwise assume. What do you mean by get as much out of it? Get what out of what? Well, because chasing something external as far as happiness goes is again running on a hamster wheel because of how our brains react. So wait, but there must be some there. We can, okay. So I guess we can talk about this hamster wheel thing. Do we acknowledge that there are different types of happinesses? Sure, yeah. So there might be. So I'm going to use Reddit versus a book as an example that we can browse Reddit for 48 hours and we can read through every meme post for, you know four days straight or whatever or we could read a book and we could get a different type of more satisfying long-term happiness out of it than we might out of just browsing memes. We've got like low effort, high effort types of happiness, right? Sure, yeah. I would agree 150% there. Okay, so there are probably forms of fulfilling long-term happiness that can lead us to a certain contentedness in life. Like fulfilling happiness or maximizing existence doesn't necessarily mean like participating in sent incessantly in the commodification of every single aspect of our lives where we have to buy the best cars and have the best clothes and have the coolest shoes and have the best computers, right? There are probably more fulfilling forms of happiness that we can attempt to maximize, right? Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I would just say that I don't think we will ever fully succeed at it. Okay, sure. Maybe, maybe not. So I'm just saying that like, I don't think that just because I say that I'm trying to maximize our happiness means that we're committed to running a rat wheel. I think that there are some forms of very fulfilling long-term happiness that we can achieve within our lives. Sure, so I will agree with you on that. Though I do think it definitely, if you're going to communicate that in the future, it needs to be much more specifically said than the way I've seen it communicated in the past. Sure, and I would challenge, I'd be very interested to see how I've seen that said in the past because I've talked about all of these things a great number of times, that there are a lot of temporary happinesses in the world that commodification is a really bad thing, that we've sold people on really bad ideas of what it means to be happy, that the greatest forms of happiness all have to start with a foundation of self-love and that everything past that is literally pointless. These are all things I've talked about like a million times on my screen before, usually in the context of discussing seven wall system. Okay, so, you know, and I've watched your stuff, but I haven't watched hours and hours of your system. Yeah, and it's not a part. Maybe I just missed it. Okay, so I think we've pretty much come to an agreement there. So that's exciting. There is one other point to it that I still have an objection. And again, it comes with centering individual happiness like at the center of a moral system because a big part of moral rules, if you're using moral rules, they're not simply there to, I guess, to serve a person, but oftentimes they are there to forbid a person from doing something that they want to do at a time and then what otherwise do if they were not within a moral system. So I agree. That's why so I've got like my two, three parters. So the number one is I exist. I have an experience. I want to maximize my experience. And then I say, other people exist. Other people have an experience. Other people want to maximize their experience. And then the third part is humans energized to create a better experience than otherwise possible on their own. I think that between those rules, between those seven statements, necessarily some actions are going to be restricted. So for instance, if you want to maximize your experience by murdering people, well, that's going to be contrary to their desire to maximize their experience and it's going to cause you not to maximize your own because as soon as you start murdering people, people are going to minimize your experience. People are going to try to kill you or lock you up or otherwise inhibit your ability to be free. Okay. And then I guess the final thing is, is that the presence of enemies, specifically the presence of challenges, you talked in a very totalizing way about, I think you said something like if there was somebody that didn't accept your system, there's nothing to do there, there's conflict. Depending on the type of conflict, the person would have to be eliminated from the system somehow. Absolutely, of course. But I think this isn't, I don't think this is very controversial. I think almost every single system will purport the same statement as what I'm saying here. I'm, a lot would purport the same statement and I think a lot would be wrong because again, we need enemies. We need like murderers and rapists in society. I mean, to a certain extent, we need bad things to be able to happen so that good things can happen. Like- Why do we need murder and rape in society? So the idea, and again, I'm not gonna say on camera those exact words because that could be clipped out of context and taken in a- Okay, why do we need M&R in society? Why do we need any particular, why do we need children starving? Why do we need people dying of Alzheimer's disease or cancer? Why do we need people committing suicide? Have any wrong? Why do we need these- So your question is, why does evil exist? No, that's not my question at all. That seems to be the question. No, that's a very, very, very different question. That is a very meta level way. That's like a very off ontological question. My question is- So why do we need evil? Why is evil required? No, no, no, hold on. Let me be very specific on the question, okay? Why is it that in order for me to have a maximized experience, why do I need other people to suffer? Or why do I need other people's experiences to not be maximized? You don't just need other people to suffer. You need to suffer to have a maximized experience. Okay. In what ways? How do we quantify or qualify? What types of suffering are required? So the issue is that we can't really experience high highs if we don't have low lows to contrast them with. So for instance, a good example would be eating a wonderful meal after a really difficult day of hard work where you've exerted yourself as opposed to having a day where you sit on the couch all day and then you go and have the exact same meal. It will taste better specifically because of the contrast. So for us to be happy and to advance, we have to engage with obstacles. We have to be resistant. Okay, I'm gonna try to reformulate this in the strongest version possible. I agree that there are some forms of challenging things, that there are some sorts of obstacles. Hold on, let me just think for like five seconds, okay? Okay, okay. I think that there are some forms of challenges that can exist in society such that if these challenges exist, they cause a higher maximal experience than if they didn't exist. Can we agree with that? Okay, I agree that there are some forms of suffering in life that exist, that we must endure in order to reach higher highs. A really good example of this is working out, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay, I will acknowledge that these exist. However, I will claim that these are subsumed within my idea of maximizing an experience. So for instance, if I say part of my maximal experience is enjoying like a very healthy relationship with my fiance or wife, right? Part of that requires some amount of, sometimes what's not fun work, but that's necessitated in part of that experience. So I think that that's true, but I mean, I would say obviously, that's gonna be part of maximizing any type of experience. I don't think that sticking yourself full of heroin and inject yourself till you die, that that's like maximizing your human experience or whatever, like I wouldn't say that like, oh, that's not what I'm aiming for when I talk about like maximal experience. I think that any type of maximizing my experience is going to subsume within that, like there might be some struggle related to achieving like certain good ends. So for instance, the video game example we brought up earlier, I really like beating games on like the maximized stupid difficulty. That's really fun for me. And that's going to involve a large amount of suffering and stupid shit along the way of beating that game. Oh yeah, yeah, I've played the whole solo series and drives me freaking crazy, but... But I will say that there are forms of suffering. However, I don't think that just because we need some forms of suffering, that that all of a sudden allows us to justify all forms of suffering. I think that we can divide suffering into two categories. I would say we would have one category that I would call necessary suffering. And necessary suffering is some obstacle that must be overcome or some challenge that must be met in order to maximize your experience. And then I will have another category called unnecessary suffering, where I will say the unnecessary suffering produces no good for society. And I would say that we should all probably seek to eliminate the unnecessary suffering. So things like child starvation or lung cancer or death in childbirth. I think that these forms of unnecessary suffering should be eliminated because they don't maximize human experience. I will agree with you on that. And our task as humans would be to do our best to eliminate them. I don't know if all of them could be eliminated. Sure, whether or not something can or cannot be eliminated is irrelevant to the question. The question is just what ought we do? What ought we, what are we in that doing? And our eventual goal, I would imagine is to eliminate all unnecessary suffering in the world. I don't know if we can ever achieve that, but that's a matter of practicality, not a matter of the theory. The theory is that what we ought to do, the prescription is we ought to be eliminating all forms of unnecessary suffering. Sure. And I think from a human perspective, because we are humans and we are partisan to that, that's absolutely our task. So if we're talking about human morality, I think you're 100% on it. Now expanding that out to the entire universe, that it becomes a bit less practical in the sense that like, you run into the problem of, do you wipe an entire species out simply because it causes suffering for humans? Maybe, I can't speak for alien civilism. I don't even know. That might break every possible understanding I have. Maybe they exist on like seven other dimensions. I can't even fathom that. But literally might exist outside of like my epistemic understanding of the world. Maybe there are things that exist that have contradictory properties or that both are and are not, or things that have, yeah, I can't really address that. So I guess my point being though in that we bring it out is, I think what a lot of people really want essentially, because most of us, and I'll go down to it and I'll say, I don't think we as individuals can ever fully truly know what we want. Like there's stuff that we think we want and there's certain themes that we go after it. But the more you go down that route of, I'd like this, I'd like that, the more you start to realize, I don't know if that's really it. So the one thing that I think that we do definitely want is a pleasant surprise. But the problem is that to have pleasant surprises, you must also have unpleasant surprises. You must have rude shocks. And this is why I brought up martial arts and the philosophy that, when you get into kumite with someone, when someone has agreed to hit you and to be hit by you, it's actually a very intimate and kind thing because the force of being hit with, the shock gives you a sense of being alive that few other things do. So I think to a certain extent, if we do put this out that we are all Brahma, we're all the dreaming Godhead, where God experiencing itself in infinite varieties. The fact is, is that evil and suffering and even suffering the humans would consider bad or unnecessary suffering as opposed to suffering is still part of that entire process. And I would argue that it's, from a certain vantage point, even though it is discord at one level, it's harmony at a higher level in much the same way that the patterns and ways. Yeah, I don't necessarily maybe disagree with this. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do with these statements. Like we can't know what we want. I don't know what that commits me to. Like I would have to assume that we're the best understanders of what we want. And for things that we aren't 100% sure on, we're gonna use, hopefully we use scientific tools to investigate these things. So for instance, in the realm of psychology, we might do investigations to figure out, like what makes us happier? We might collect a bunch of data and say, oh, we'll look at this, like people that work in these types of jobs, report less happiness or something. So we can investigate our experience as much as possible to try to figure out what makes us happy, doesn't make us happy. But in terms of like a statement, like we can't know what we want. Like I don't know what I can meaningfully do with that statement. It's not like just because I don't know what I want doesn't mean I can just turn to someone else, have them tell me, right? That responsibility to investigate that desire is up to me as much as possible. Sure, yeah, I agree with you 100% there. But I just kind of think that again, with centering the want can lead to other problems like this. But I think we're coming to a pretty good understanding here. So I'm excited about that. Yes, so like basically just in case, just to put a capper on this. And I think you've already agreed with this to a certain extent, but the example of in one of Christopher Hitchens debates, I think it was, he like asked a pastor like who was saying like everything is God's plan. He was like, well, what's God's plan about this worm that eats children's eyes and blinds them. And the obvious answer to that is, well, that's terrible for us, it's good for the worm. So, essentially that's kind of my answer to the problem of evil. Wait, God create worms that can only survive by eating the eyes of children. Yeah, well, there aren't worms that only survive, it's just that that's what they do. And again. I think if we take a religious centered approach to this God create like animals and the planet is the domain of humans that exists to serve humans, right? So why would he create things that are necessarily predatory towards humans or only exist to cause damage or harm to humans? So I have a huge problem with the idea of God as the sovereign as the thing that is intelligently in charge of society and builds and designs everything. I think that's actually a really bad way of looking at God or Brahman or ultimate reality. So God, it's like omnipotent or? No, God that is the, well, omnipotent in the sense that like is literally everything in the universe. So I think Spinoza's God is probably the closest Western thing that I can put it into. And then God is literally just nature than we're talking about. Yeah, nature, existence, humanity, it's all one process, one flux. And we're just the universe experiencing itself. I think Alan Watts kind of compared it to like the conscious experience. Imagine you've got a light covered by a black ball and in the ball are pinholes and each pinhole is a aperture through which the light comes out. So each of us and all animals and everything else that has conscious experience are the pinholes but we're also the light underneath it which is existence itself. That would be what I would refer to as God. So in the sense of God being associated with a king or a craftsman who went and made the universe I would think of it more in the sense that God is the deep down stuff that is the universe, the ground of being as it's usually put. So in that sense, just like with a chicken when a chicken eats a mouse, it's not evil. It's just being a chicken. One of the things that it will do is it will go after whatever kind of protein that it can get a hold of. In the same reason that a gull eating a fish it's the fact that the gull isn't evil or rapacious. It's just being a gull is the same thing as eating fish. Do you acknowledge that there is like a fundamental difference between a gull or a chicken and a human? I mean, yeah. I would say there's no, in the sense of the problem of identity, we are all the gull and the fish and the chicken and the human. Wait, what I'm asking is like, do you think there's the same level of moral responsibility or culpability? Certainly not. No, humans have a much higher level of responsibility and culpability because we understand morality. And in fact, I would say that- Yeah, so my question is, how do you draw a distinction then between humans and chickens if the whole universe is just the universe itself? If I'm having a hard time understanding like whether or not you recognize there are distinct entities that exist or whether it's all just the same thing to you. And if it does all just the same thing to you I don't know how you describe different properties to different things or what the process by which you do that is. I mean, I would say I recognize both simultaneously. In one sense, we are the direct conscious experience of these beings. And then in the other sense, there is another sort of higher self underneath that. And that would be the totality of existence. Yeah, so yeah, the answer is both simultaneously. And I guess since I'm saying both, I could also say both and neither. That sounds pretentious enough. All right, well, I think that was all three of the big points, unless you think there's any- That was two actually. Oh, I thought that third one was, okay, that was a sub point to do. Okay, what was the third one? So the third point, and this one was my shortest, but I also think it's one of the stronger ones. And that's why I chose to end on it. Let me find it here. Is I take issue with the fundamental assumption that a moral system, any moral system functions as a mechanism into which one can feed data and by so doing come to a perfect or nearly perfect moral conclusion. Essentially, this goes back to what you had said in your video on morality, when you had kind of used some graphics and stuff and you were like, if then, you basically feed data or hypotheticals into this moral system and then out comes the answer, essentially. And I sort of tied that into and why we've kind of been talking around God. I feel that this is heavily influenced because you are a Westerner who grew up in a Catholic family, much like I did. You're heavily influenced by, even though you have rejected Christianity, you're still heavily influenced by Christian ideas and that has come to have you see morality in this way. And what I argued, essentially, was again, with Erasmus of Rotterdam, instead of in the beginning there was the word and the word was God and the word was with God, it all rose out of a conversation, a conversation within God and in fact, the conversation was God. So God started the discussion and everything came out of this and nothing happened without consultation. This was the life that was the light of men shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity. So the idea is that morality, at least the way I'm looking at it, is not so much a set of systems or a machine that we use as it is a physical process that we do in the same way that we dance or that we sing. And you could say, I don't know if anyone else has ever advanced in aesthetic theory of morality. I think they probably have. But I feel that aesthetic or kinesthetic is a better way to look at what morality is, moral disagreements, moral progress, than necessarily something that we build so that we always know the right answer. I don't think being a moral person is a question of finding the right moral system and comporting yourself to that moral system in much the same way that I don't think being a good human is a matter of finding the right God and comporting oneself to the behavior of that God expects. Does that make sense? Kind of, but I don't know how that was any challenge to any part of my system like this. Other than it sounds like you have some belief for morality, but I don't understand. I don't think a contradiction in my system has been demonstrated or some conclusion that I otherwise would reject has been demonstrated in my system, which are the two things that I'm looking for. So- I mean, you essentially said in your system that what morality should do is, and maybe I took this wrong. It was like right at the beginning of your video, that what morality should do that most people like either think what, how do I immediately respond to a given hypothetical or how does my group expect me to respond to a given hypothetical? And so you had essentially made the argument that moral systems go beyond that to something that someone should use to understand how to act in a specific situation. Oh yeah, so what I'm saying is that like, so what I would hope is if we have different levels of different abstractions of thought, we have different levels of thought that I would hope that we have investigated our own beliefs and desires and thoughts enough that we've reached some foundational level of understanding for what it is that we want in life. So somebody would have asked me, hey, there's a homeless guy over there, he's passed out and there's like 20 bucks laying on the side, didn't we should steal it from him? And if somebody would have asked me that, I feel like a lot of people, their first thought is if I do this, like what are the consequences? You know, how will my friends see me? Will people judge me? Will I get in trouble? And that this is generally the level that most people function at when it comes to thinking whether or not something is right or wrong or more specifically if we ought to or ought not to do a particular thing. What I advocate for is I would hope that somebody has investigated their own personal feelings enough to have a more fleshed out moral system that would deliver them better answers than will I get in trouble for something or will there be a negative consequence or something? I would want people to be a bit more moral or a bit more strictly adherent to some internal like philosophy or internal ethical system rather than just doing, you know, the least that's expected of them from the people around them is essentially what I was saying there. But okay, no, this is actually really fascinating. So thank you for sharing that because that puts some things in a slightly different light. So first off, it's very interesting because my immediate response to that was make sure that that $20 bill gets tucked back into that guy's thing and maybe add some money to it or make sure that, you know, you can help him in some way. Like that was my instant moral intuition. So this sounds a little bit like the, are you familiar with like the six stages of morality? Oh, I think I've seen this at one point before. Yes. I have to look this up. But I know we've, it has to do with like, how do we consider like things and I think isn't like stage the first stage or something is like, nevermind, just go ahead, explain to me, I'm not gonna try to. So, well, I'll probably get it wrong if I try to do each of the six, but it's basically the six stages of moral development starting from- Okay, yeah, I got it. I looked up real quick. Yeah, okay. So it's like, number one is like avoiding punishment. Number two is self-interest. Number three is good for attitude. Number four is law and morality. Number five is social contract. And the number six is principle. Yeah. So like I strive for principle and then as a parent, you know, even if you have a kid, you know that like working at that bottom level of avoiding punishment, that even that's like the worst way to discipline a kid, that you should be striving more for the self-interest level than just the avoiding punishment. That like having like positive rewards is a more successful form of, of unconditioning than punishing people, right? Yeah. Yeah, so yeah, exactly. So it sounds like what you're concerned about is people who are like in the third or fourth stage or maybe the second with avoiding punishment with regard to that. And that the most people will ever make it to is like that third stage of good boy attitude is like the highest most people ever make it. Well, yeah, that's a possibility. I would have to see how people are polled. I would really hate to think that that was would be where they get stuck. And this actually might, this might go back to our different opinions basically like with regard to riots and that kind of thing, civil disobedience because we've spoken before and we have slightly different opinions on that. You know, with regard to the violation of specific social norms, for instance, like I think I asked you this one, like the guy's wife is dying of cancer. There's a drugist in town. He's the only one that can sell the cure. He refuses to sell the cure. Is the guy justified in stealing it or attacking it? How should it be dealt with? Like somebody at stage five might say something like along the lines of yes, he's justified in stealing it or attacking the guy to get it because he's trying to save his wife's life. Someone at stage six might say something to the effect of yes, he's justified in stealing it but then he needs to turn himself into the police and suffer whatever consequences would occur from it. So, you know, as people move along in their moral development, it would be nicer to see people move towards the higher levels. What I can tell you as a parent what's very interesting for me at least seeing my son develop, he's two right now. And more than even rewards oftentimes or the avoidance of punishment, what seems to really motivate him actually is compassion in the sense that I will sit there and tell him like I'll be like, do you want another bite of dinner? And he will instantly reject the bite of dinner because data is asking him to do it. To which point then I will puppet the dinner and I will have the piece of food ask to be eaten by him. And he instantly agrees every time when the food asks him. And similarly, when his clothes ask him to put them on, when his potty asks him to use it, this really pushes him along. So I think, you know, and I don't see that reflected necessarily in the six stages of morality. But my point is that I think people undervalue the persuasive power of compassion itself. And this goes back to something that I wanted to say but didn't work into my opening statement. One of the other things that has worried me about the way in which you phrase your moral system is that it does leave compassion outside of the equation somewhat or at least it is understated compared to the more basic stuff that I've seen you put out. Yeah, so the reason why I don't try to make compassionate arguments or more specifically arguments of empathy is because I believe that those arguments will fail a great deal of time. And I believe that there's a lot of special and fascist side of things. There's a lot of arguments there that heavily rely on compassion or empathy. But the thing is, is that they're very selective of who they apply that compassion to. I think that my moral system should work with literal robots to some extent in terms of they have zero empathy or compassion for other people. I'm a relatively dispassionate unempathetic person, I would say, compared to most people, but I still think that I act in ways that's more, I think that more people would broadly characterize my behavior as generally more moral than other people that claim to be very empathetic or very compassionate. Just because I recognize the benefit of having other people around me that are happy, healthy, being treated well, et cetera. So I typically, I avoid compassion for a couple of reasons, for two main reasons. So as I said before, one is that it's just not part of my system. I don't need compassion to come to what I consider to be morally righteous answers ever. And then two, I believe that appeals to compassion are highly subjective and will get you to very bad places, depending on whose compassion you're appealing to. So for instance, as a really good example of this, brown people are invading our country and they're stealing our culture and they're erasing our ways and they're invading and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. These are appeals to compassion to some extent. Compassion for white people that have white culture or Western culture, whatever. The one I mean to. It's more appeal to fear, but I take your meaning. It's an emotional appeal is what you're telling me. I mean, you can argue it is one of compassion, right? When you let certain types of immigrants go into countries and erase those cultures, you're lacking compassion for the people that are already there, you know? Like that's what those people would claim. Now you might disagree with that because you personally find that to be non-compassionate, I would agree. However, those other people find those arguments to be highly compassionate. Compassionate is a very subjective emotion that hinges on a lot of other stuff, which is why I just totally avoid it. That's why I like the fact that with my moral system, if I could get somebody to subscribe to it on its face, they could absolutely fucking hate every black person on the planet, but still want to maximize their outcomes because it would create such a better experience for themselves. Yeah, so again, I don't think it would work in the way that you're saying it would, with regard to a racist. As I pointed out, the problem with racism is it literally distorts your thinking. So I don't think a racist would be capable of seeing the benefit as long as they are, as heavily racist as they are. I think it would super depend on the type of conversation, but I think that there are ways that you can appeal to that racism, believe it or not, I think to get people to certain answers that just kind of make sense. In terms of like, this is something that will benefit all of us, even when it comes to DACA kids, do you really like the idea that we spent so much money educating all these kids and now we're gonna send them back from Mexico to take them from us? These are arguments that I think are relatively effective on even a racist person, and they look at that maximizing the outcomes of everybody there. Whereas like just trying to- But are they effective? Cause think about it, think about how many Republicans actually voted for DACA. These seem to be arguments that Democrats and progressives think will move people on the right, but they don't seem to actually move people on the right. I mean, I don't have an international platform by which I can talk to every single Republican, but I think that I would have an easier time, and I guess I can cite myself. I mean, I do radicalize quite a bit of people on the right and the left. So I think that I would argue that my arguments are relatively convincing even for people that disagree with me, but I will say for sure that arguments that just demand compassion or empathy, I would say are wholly ineffective because they seem to be completely incapable of penetrating somebody that just doesn't have empathy or compassion for a certain group of people. Sure, but I'll point out, do you seem to see the problem when you're making moral arguments and you're making them as if you're talking to a robot? Like- Well, it really depends on like, who I'm talking to, what type of argument I'm making. So within the context of this conversation, we're having a robotic debate on morality, right? This is literally just a framework, like a system that we're having a conversation on. None of this is supposed to be like rhetorically effective. I'm not like deploying logos, pathos, or ethos to try to convince you of one thing or another. We're literally, in my mind, we're just running through the logic to see if it works. We're testing this theory for validity and soundness is what I'm doing. If I was having an argument where I was trying to convince somebody of something, then I would employ different rhetorical tools depending on the person in order to make them believe what I want them to believe. But that's not what we're doing right now. So yeah, of course. Okay. That's not how I'm interpreting the conversation, but also, again, I, this is the fascinating look into your mind. Wait, what do you mean by when you say that's not how you're interpreting this? Well, I mean, well, again, I don't think you can, I don't think you can ever take logos, pathos, and ethos out of an argument. You can never just focus on like the nuts and bolts of it because humans are not, we're not robots specifically. Well, yeah. So the reason why I would say this is because I don't think I have tried to convince you of my system at all. I've merely provided my system as is. I've tried to support my system as is. And then I've tried to defend it from any attacks. But I haven't made any claims that you should believe my system. And I'm not attacking you or your credibility or any system that you've put out there. I'm just asking a few questions to defend my own. Whether or not we want to call a rhetorical or not, I guess we could say everything. If you want to argue, we could say everything is slightly rhetorical by just practicing pure logic. You could argue that you're doing an exercise in logos, but my goal here isn't really to convince or persuade anybody. I'm just demonstrating my system and then defending it from attacks. Okay, yeah, I mean, my goal I think is, I would say it's not so much to convince or persuade. I don't expect you to come in and agree with everything that I have to say right now. I would like to influence you dialectically in the sense that hopefully from this conversation, you may be more effective in dealing with certain people and may be able to avoid certain pitfalls when talking about morality. That's one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation because you're a very famous person and you have a very large reach. Sure, and I can understand that, but there's like three potential ways to do this. So two of these ways would be attacking my system. So one is to show a contradiction. Hey, if you believe this thing, you can also believe this thing. Now everything falls apart. That would be one way to do it. The second thing is to say, hey, from these axioms, I can generate this conclusion and I bet you don't like that conclusion. And if so, you could show me for instance, that like using your system, like child rape all of a sudden becomes permissible. And I'd be like, okay, I don't really like that. Fuck, now I have to reconsider, right? So if you can either demonstrate a contradiction or illustrate a conclusion that I just at least intuitively dislike, then that would cause a reformation of my system. And then for the third thing, in terms of like rhetorical strategy for fighting people, I guess I would need examples of or a conversation that I've participated in where it seems like I was just unable to communicate said moral values to a person, which I feel like doesn't really happen. I feel like I'm pretty able to communicate my moral system pretty effectively. It's very rare that I actually have an ethics debate with somebody. Usually my debates are about policy or fucking internet videos, but it's very rare that I get into an actual ethics conversation with anybody. Well, it's one of the reasons I wanted to talk with you on this. Like a lot of the time when I'd watched your stuff and we're getting off topic for the debate right now, but a lot of times when I watched your stuff, I either had trouble finding stuff that I disagreed with or it was something that you'd already argued to death. So again, that was one of the reasons why I was so eager to have this conversation. So yeah, this is really fascinating though to see what arguments you personally find very persuasive. So it seems to me like the ones that you're particularly persuaded by are what's ad absurdum arguments, which is a good one. That's very, very persuasive one. And you also really don't like finding... I don't know the... I can't think of the Latin term for this, but basically you really don't like contradictions. Yeah, so I would call that, I would just call that term logic because all systems of logic rely on non-contradiction. My understanding is, aside from some very exotic forms of para-consistent logics or something, like nobody in any discipline whatsoever will accept any sort of contradiction. It's just if the contradiction is best, then we seek to resolve that immediately because again, through logical contradiction, at least on paper, we can literally prove or disprove any idea whatsoever. Sure, I will just say to a certain... I think that works in a lot of situations, but again, in certain levels, it breaks down. And also don't forget that like the first time I got really familiar with somebody talking like really specifically about like the law of non-contradiction, it's a preacher trying to trick me into becoming a Christian again, you know? There's a lot of people that... How is that supposed to be a compelling argument? I don't understand. It's supposed to be a compelling argument, but I don't know, I guess different people respond to different arguments in a different way. And you have spent a lot of time dealing like arguing with fascists. And I would say you've been very, very effective in that. So thank you for your service there. I will also point out, however, that fascists make up a very, very tiny part of your audience. And at least in my experience, it's very difficult to have any moral system without a component of compassion in much the same way that the Golden Rule, which was developed by Bronze Age Desert Nomads, is still a superior system to say, the non-aggression principle, the NAP. Yeah, but the problem is that like fascists will argue that leftist lack compassion, the same way that leftists argue, fascist lack compassion. So like compassion just doesn't get anything off the ground. That's like so down the road from any moral system. I just don't know how... I mean, but yeah, but you notice you're choosing two groups of very committed radicals. Literally, any type of compassion can be weaponized or used in a certain way, or would be wholly subjective on some individual. But anything can be weaponized in any way in much the same way that... I'm okay with somebody weaponizing logic. If you wanna give me a logically consistent statement, like I'll listen. It's not gonna rely on me already. The problem is that compassion oftentimes, in my opinion, arguing via compassion, unless we're gonna go the hardcore propaganda route and like show you videos of like dying horses or something to make you a vegan, right? Compassion oftentimes is just begging the question. It's the reason why I like avoiding compassion so much. Wait, how was it begging the question? Begging the question is assuming the answer in the formulation of the question. So for instance, if I say like, don't you have compassion for illegal immigrants? Like they're people just like you, right? Well, if somebody believed this, that they were people just like us and they just sort of think, well, then of course they would have compassion for them, right? That any compassion or argument is almost necessarily circular because the person making the appeal to compassion already has the compassion for those groups of people. And the people they're arguing with probably already doesn't have that compassion. That's why I just don't like compassion as an argument. So when I debate against Republicans or conservatives for immigration. If I may, do you wonder if maybe a bit of your distaste for it is grounded in the fact that you're a dude who was brought up in the same society I was and we're taught not to express our feelings? I don't know how that's like reaction to anything I've said. No, what I'm saying is I feel like the, because it seems to me that your distaste for compassion and your distaste for connecting with somebody else emotionally may be less reasonable than you think it is. I'm not gonna say that it wouldn't be effective tactics because also you're dealing with other dudes who were brought up in our society. So you try to talk about compassion to a neo-Nazi they will laugh at you for your weakness because they're afraid to show that kind of emotion. But they are comfortable being manipulated by their emotions in other ways because usually it deals with aspects of like toxic masculinity where they, the only emotions that they allow themselves to feel are like anger and self-righteousness because these are manly masculine powerful emotions. And so like they're very persuaded by those kinds of arguments and will reject out of hand arguments that are couched in compassion because they see it as more feminine and weak. But I don't think your average person that you're talking to is somebody who's that far gone. And I think- I'm not saying, I'm not trying to make a, I don't know how any of that connects to anything. I'm not trying to make a statement on like whether or not we should or shouldn't, like it'd be great if everybody was compassionate. What I'm saying is that if somebody already had compassion for a certain group of people probably wouldn't have to argue with them much about how they treat that group of people. It's hard for me to imagine that there exists some person that has a lot of compassion for Hispanic people. That is anti DACA, pro the wall, anti all immigration like wants to kick all the, like it's hard for me to imagine that person has compassion for that group. If they did, we'd probably already be on the same side. Sure. And you would need to essentially that what the person has is that they have a very small circle of what they consider people worthy of compassion. And they, those, they're okay with doing that to the DACA kids because they view them as outsiders. And therefore- Yeah, that's my issue is that compassion seems to be something that we dole out. We don't dole that out indiscriminately. It seems like there is a lot of qualifiers to that. So for instance, like a lefty might not have as much compassion for a wealthy white kid that commits suicide or something because like all this guy's material conditions were so good or a fascist might not be okay with like an outsiders, you know, bad living conditions, like, oh, they shouldn't have been here anyway. Right. And for the record though, I do have compassion for a rich person that commits suicide. I mean, again, this is a Buddhist thing, but we- Sure, I wasn't, I wasn't bringing up you. I don't, I actually don't even know if you're a lefty or not, I'm not bringing up yours. I'm just saying that in general, I'm saying that we can have a lack of or a amount of compassion for widely different groups of people depending on where we come from. That's why I just don't appeal to compassion. Sure, but if you're setting up a system that you're arguing that other people should embrace, one of the major issues is that compassion is important in making those same moral judgments. So- Well, that's what I'm arguing is for you to make that statement. I can't just assume that's gonna be true. You have to demonstrate to me what, like you have to demonstrate to me what conclusion would I want to arrive at that I can't arrive at with my moral system that I need a compassion to get to. And I don't know if I need compassion to get to anything of this. Yeah, so, I mean, I have an example that I can go, that I started to go into and then I can see if I can attach it to your actual argument. Maybe we can continue this afterwards because I'm actually really enjoying this, but so essentially with regard to compassion, that compassion is the reason that the golden rule is a better moral system, a better moral heuristic than the non-aggression principle. The non-aggression principle simply says do not be aggressive, essentially. And it ignores a number of big problems. For instance, oftentimes both parties claim self-defense and both are actually right. A great example being like Israel and Gaza. So you can't take the NAP and go and solve that problem with the NAP. The issue with, and there are problems with the golden rule but treat other people as you would like to be treated or the Confucius version of that, which is don't treat others the way you wouldn't want to be treated. Yeah, so I think that even that rule fails fundamentally. I wouldn't agree with the golden rule. Well, I'm not saying it fails and we can go into maybe why it fails. Well, I would argue that if it fails because it relies on some kind of compassion and I would argue that that compassion is subjective. So two really great examples of this is I would like to be treated, I treat others as they'd like to be treated. A white person in the 1700s might say to them like, oh, well, if I was a black person, I would understand it's my place to be a slave. Like of course, so like I should be treated in this particular way. Or for a man and a woman who believe where man says woman is subservient to man, right? A man might say like, oh, well, if I was a woman, I would want to be treated as a subservient. Because that's my job as a woman, right? That's my job. And obviously it can go wrong and those are ways people can think themselves around the problem. Well, you say go wrong, but I'd like to be clear, these haven't gone wrong at all. They're just using compassion in different ways that you are. Which is why, again, why I don't like compassion. I don't think it's gone wrong. I think they're all using compassion just in ways that we would disagree with. No, I don't think they're using compassion at all in that sense. What I think they're doing is they're projecting their own wants onto that person in an effort to excuse what they already want to do. If you're engaging in compassion and empathy, what's happening is, is that you are actually taking the action of putting yourself into somebody else's head, seeing the world through their point of view. And certain people are better at it and men are highly discouraged from ever doing it. But it's essentially compassion might be the reason why if I was trying to persuade you specifically, if I was a, the more I am able to project myself and see the world through the eyes of destiny, I will then know what arguments are going to be most effective for you. It's the difference between like compassion and empathy as a difference between like, I guess more emotional caring and things. It's like, what you're giving me essentially is, it's the monkey lifting the fish out of the water, saying like, oh, get out of the aerial drown and putting it safely up a tree. The monkey's doing what's good for the monkey, but it doesn't have compassion. It doesn't have empathy. It doesn't understand. It wants to help the fish, but doesn't really understand the fish because it's incapable of putting itself into the fish's mind and the fish's body to a certain extent. And I think that as a result, that evolved ability of humans to be compassionate towards others and to place ourselves into the shoes of other beings to the point to where some people like throw out their old Game Boy and feel bad about it, even though the Game Boy has no feelings. I think that is one of the key evolutionary strengths and abilities that we have. And I think it's also really important for debate and rhetoric. So- I don't necessarily disagree, but again, I'm gonna argue that I would say that you're talking around this a lot in that all of your every single statement you're here is, I think, begging the question. I think it all presupposes what a person means. Like, for instance, so when you say like, first of all, we have to acknowledge we can never truly see through the eyes of another person. That's literally impossible. We say that what we really mean is we're trying to assume as many situations are ahead so we can write. But it might be fully possible that a racist man says, I totally see life through the eyes of a black person. I consider myself to be inferior to the white man. And yeah, if I'm a slave, you know, that's just the natural world that God's giving me to fill. And that person could be exercising compassion. Now, you disagree, from your perspective, but he would say you suck at it. And you have no way to argue with each other. That's my point. Your two views are incommensurate with one another. You have no way of communicating past your disagreements of compassion. Whereas I would argue that with my system, at the very least, now rhetorically, I would approach it differently. But if we were to just sit down and write it out, I would win a debate and logics against him. I would say, well, for my position, I think that I can demonstrate better worlds for both of you that you could both exist in. Whereas for anyone else to rely on compassion, the other guy would be like, oh, I have compassion for people just as God intends to. And blacks are here to serve whites. That's my compassion. Right, and you would just be totally lost. You'd have no way to communicate with that person. Well, again, I don't think people are primarily motivated by logic. Like, it's a big part of it. I agree with that. That's not relevant to what we're saying, but I agree with that. Yeah. But yeah, so I guess what I'm talking about, though, as far as like any moral system that you have, I feel like if you completely remove compassion from the system itself, you can often get yourself into very serious problems. And a big one that I had was in one of your videos, you mentioned that if somebody was going into your backyard like an angry old man, he's got a shotgun, says to the person, don't come into my backyard or I'll shoot you. And then the person comes in again and that the old man would be justified in shooting him. And I feel like that's the kind of conclusion one can come to if they have a moral system in which compassion does not factor in. Yeah, well, the problem is that I could weaponize compassion to literally argue both ends of that conversation. I guess we ought to have compassion for the person that hops over friends to go to the yards. You might have a number of reasons to do so. Like it would be ridiculous to condemn this person to death or to punish this guy when he's just a guy that wants to wander through yards. And then much the same on the other end as conservative, I could weaponize compassion and argue it's crazy that we would expect this man who owns some piece of property literally like a cornerstone of the American dream to have a piece of land that you call your own in the United States to subject himself to the intrusion of another person repeatedly over and over again without him being able to exercise his most fundamental right and just protecting his small corner of the world that he calls his own right. I can use compassion on either end of that argument. And this is why compassion just doesn't work as a motive. But the moral system isn't being used by someone outside of this. It's being used by the people within the actual disagreement. So regardless of who's utilizing a particular moral system, I'm just saying that compassion there can argue. I can literally, I can literally, you can give me any possible problem you want hypothetically and I could show you how you could use compassion to argue both ends of that, which are totally unsatisfactory. Whereas I think on my moral system, if you give me any question, I can show you, I can demonstrate what I would say should be right or wrong in every circumstance, not from both ends, but I should be able to determine somebody who is more morally in the right versus somebody who's morally in the wrong. I mean, you may be able to do that. But again, I think the point here is that it's important when people are making moral decisions and trying to use a system to make moral decisions that they actually engage their empathy to a certain extent for the person that they are dealing with. Yeah, but then I just demonstrated to you that like, I think you can use that compassion in ways that- Yeah, but you can literally weaponize absolutely anything. You can weaponize- Then I would ask you to demonstrate that. So that was one of the two initial points I gave you. If you can show me, so either one is a contradiction or two, you can demonstrate to me a conclusion that I intuitively just don't like that stems logically from my moral system. It would force me to reconsider. Okay, can you give me an example? Well, no, if I had an example, I wouldn't follow my moral system. Of course not. I don't believe that there are any more examples that cause either a contradiction to appear in any of my fundamental beliefs or generate like some belief that I don't like. I will admit that I get a little bit uncomfortable at the extreme ends of my hypothetical system. So for instance, when we talk about like stealing a blade of grass from somebody's yard when they've been put on notice, there might be like extreme ends but for like 99% of cases I'm okay. And for those extreme ends that I get a little bit uncomfortable for, I would be more uncomfortable with the extreme ends of a contradictory system. For instance, one that would let you to infinitely steal small amounts of property from another person that you never be able to, right? So yeah, so like, yeah, so I would just need, that's why I gave the example earlier. If you could demonstrate to me that like, oh well, if you say that this is true, guess what? If you, you know, right? So let's say that I assume all of your actions are true, okay? Here's premise, premise, premise, premise. And then conclusion, you should be able to murder somebody to steal their belt or you should be able to kill a child to steal their kidney or whatever, right? If you could demonstrate something like, okay, yeah, sure. That does logically follow from my axioms, right? So if you can demonstrate to me a valid argument that I don't like, then you're attacking the soundness of my argument because I wouldn't be forced to change your premise or abandon my structure or system. Okay, so for instance, we'll do the blade of grass or I think as you've faced it, like the stick of gum, essentially. I mean, I think there's a number of huge practical problems that come with that. Namely, the fact that you're justifying essentially infinite aggression against someone for something that's simply not worth it, just simply because- Hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, wait, we have to be really, okay. So I'm gonna challenge you to be incredibly precise with your language. I'm not gonna let you say something like, it's not worth it. You're gonna have to define what that worth is. You're gonna have to be very precise here if you say, it's not worth it to do that when we're having like moral arguments, I would say. I'm saying there is no proportionality in if someone- Does there need to be proportionality when you're defending yourself from an aggressor? Yes. Do you think murder is as bad as sexual assault? I think murder is worse. Okay, do you think that if a woman is about to be sexually assaulted by a man and the only way she can defend herself is by murdering the person or killing them, do you think that's acceptable or should she allow herself to be assaulted? I think that it would be acceptable in the sense that because she doesn't know what else that person is going to do- I would say that she knew 1 million percent. It was a person that he actually says it. And he said he commits himself. He's a logical machine. He's been, she's cursed him with a genie's curse. This man can never tell a lie. So this magical man that doesn't exist. Yeah, liar, liar. Yeah, he comes at her and he says, hey, like I'm going to sexually assault you, but I swear to God, I'm not gonna murder you. I'm not gonna harm you or any other way. Like I'm just gonna do this. Is she forced to submit herself to that because she can't proportionally respond? So I'm not going to answer for a woman on this because I don't know what women deal with, but I can't- Yeah, well, I'll answer for myself. And- No, no, no, wait, wait. I don't accept an answer for yourself because I don't care, because now we're moving away from a moral framework to, well, what would I personally do? Which is, remember earlier in this debate, we are separating out behavior from systems of ethics. I don't care about like an individual's behavior. For instance, I would probably never kill somebody that would steal almost anything of mine because I'm wealthy, I can just replace it. I don't give a fuck. Even if I subscribe to a moral system where I say, well, maybe I have the right to do this, I would never do it because it's just not worth the trouble. Even in the legal system, none of that is worth it. So I'm not talking about your personal behavior. All I'm getting at- This is what I'm gonna say. I don't think someone who is raped is justified in killing. I would understand if they did, I wouldn't condemn them, but I don't think it's, if you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you will not die, you will only be violated for a certain amount of time, then killing to prevent that, I think is a greater wrong. I think it's out of proportion. Now that does not mean that you can't fight back. That does not mean that you cannot injure them. Well, but you might incur further damage to yourself by doing that. But so like, yeah, so that's like a type of conclusion. So I wholesale reject that. I would not place that more responsibility on a person that's being aggressed on, on a victim. I wouldn't argue that a victim can only respond proportionally to somebody else that's violating their autonomy. That's like a conclusion that I just wholesale reject. I feel like you're, I feel like you're unfairly and ironically, you're unfairly appealing to compassion there. No, actually, so, so again, if I ever make a moral statement, I will run it all the way back. So we can run this all the way back to my moral system. Okay, so. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on. No, no, wait, wait, wait, hold on. I have to respond because you just accused me of basically just word vomiting out like some appeal to emotion. I'm not. So morally I exist. I have an experience and I want to maximize my experience. Okay. Other people exist. They have an experience and they want to maximize their experience. Part of me maximizing my experience is not being raped. Okay. Or being sexually assaulted. Okay. So on the other system, human synergize to create a better experience. And if I help others maximize their experience, they will help me, assuming we all share moral systems who will all synergize with each other. If this person is trying to violate my autonomy, they've demonstrated to me that they fail to adhere to those three principles. They're not worried about the synergism of humans working together. They're not trying to maximize other people to help their experience. And they're not sharing a moral system with me where we synergize each other's experience. So I can go ahead and exclude them from my moral system and I would be able to practice some form of lethal self-defense if I needed to because of their rejection of my moral system. Nothing that I've said here whatsoever requires any appeal to compassion or anything like that. This fully follows, I believe, from my moral axioms. Well, okay. But again, you didn't use that exact argument. You specifically went and appealed to the situation of the victim when you made that argument. And the fact that it was as strong and as charged in an argument you, like as it was, is because inherently compassion for the victim comes into the equation. I don't care about compassion. If someone demonstrates that they are not functioning within your system, again, I don't think that just because they have rejected the social construct that you have projected onto the world through these logical suppositions, I don't think that means that you are justified in ending their life, even if they are violating that. There was a great debate, actually, on your decision tonight. Just to be ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra clear, okay? I'm not saying, I'm not arguing whether or not you should or shouldn't kill somebody. That was the example. That's not what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing against is, you seemed to give me this qualifier saying that if you respond to something, it must be proportional. I disagree with that. And I think that most people intuitively would also disagree with that, even if they haven't explored their fundamental moral system. I think that most people intuitively would not agree that these types of responses need to be proportional. I would argue intuitively, most people feel as though the aggressor probably deserves some level of disproportionate response. Oh, I should disagree entirely. Our whole justice system is based on the idea of proportionality. What I'm not talking about, I'm not talking about justice system in terms of retribution or in terms of rehabilitation or any of that. I'm not talking about justice. I'm talking about the prevention of somebody doing something to you, that if somebody is coming to you to do a particular bad action, if somebody is aggressing against you, you don't have an obligation to respond proportionally, and you should be able to do whatever you need to keep yourself safe. I think any world that uses that as their ethic is going to wind up with a bunch of people being killed who didn't otherwise need to be killed. Like... Okay, and I will argue that your system will end up with a bunch of people killing and sexually assaulting people because they know that they're not going to be punished heavily for it. If the person they're attacking is sufficiently small enough or disarmed and they know that nothing really bad is going to happen to them. Look, I'm going to say right off the bat, I think that that's a very limited way of looking at this. We also know that stuff like, for instance, the death penalty is not a deterrent. Death penalty is not talking about the prevention of a crime, that's the punishment of a crime. With my form of justice, I don't believe in retribution or justice at all. I only believe in rehabilitation. That's something completely separate. I'm talking about looking at somebody, we can call it the nap if we want, the non-aggression in terms of whatever. I'm talking about if you have a victim or a potential victim. If you've got somebody being aggressed on by another person, that person can respond with whatever means necessary to protect themselves from being aggressed on. They don't have an obligation to meet it with proportional force. They should be able to do whatever they need to keep themselves safe. Yeah, I think that this has very serious implications with regard. Like, if we take that as our operating principle, you essentially allow infinite retribution for any perceived crime. To be clear, one more time, I'm not talking about after the fact, I'm not talking about retribution. I'm talking about the prevention of something. Okay, so any level of force is... So again, let's take Israel and Gaza. Couple rockets get fired into Israel. Nobody dies or maybe there's some stuff. So then the IDF comes back and blows up a bunch of obstacles. That's retribution. I'm not talking about retribution. So for instance, let's say somebody sexually is coming to sexually assault you, okay? I would say if the only way that victim can protect themselves is the lethal force, they can kill the person. But if that person sexually assaults them, then walks away, I don't think you can kill the person then in retribution. That's a different, that's totally different. Let's go for the line then. We don't need to use sexual assault. Let's go down to someone's coming at you to take your wallet. Can kill them over the wallet? If you tell them not to, if they're going to aggress on you and if you want to defend that wallet, yeah, I think so. Okay, so why is their life worth like your wallet? Your wallet, you've got- You'd have to ask the aggressor. They're the one making that decision. No, they're not making the decision to die. They're making the decision to violently ask for your wallet. If they violently ask for your wallet and you tell them, if you come any closer, I'm going to kill you, they're making the decision to exchange their life there. No one would necessarily believe that because people say, I'm going to kill you all the time and they don't mean it. Well, that sounds like their problem. Why do they feel like it was worth taking the risk? Again, I don't think people think through it that much. I don't think that- Okay, that might be true, but I'm not going to place the onus on the victim to determine the mental state of the aggressor. I don't think that's a victim's responsibility. I'm not doing, again, the issue, I wouldn't put the onus on the victim either. But you are. Not because- No, no, keep in mind- They're hard-working. They're restricting what they can do to protect them. I absolutely am not because, again, they don't know what's going to happen. So then it sounds like in practice, your system would collapse into mine anyways. So a woman is holding onto a purse, a guy comes and says, I'm going to stir your purse. It sounds like what I would say is, she can defend it with lethal force. And then what you would say is, well, she can defend her purse with lethal force, but she doesn't know if the guy is going to kill her. So she can defend her purse with lethal force and all act-locable situations anyway because she can never determine if he's going to attack her or not. These would be very similar situations. I grant you. But the fact is that the undergirding, what seems to undergird your end of it, is the problem is a person is not upholding their end of the social contract and therefore they make themselves fair game for any level of violence against them. Well, preventative violence, but yeah. Yeah. I'm rejecting the idea that, because one, as far as the social contract goes, I mean, I don't know about you. I didn't sign shit. And nobody actually signed it. I think you do. I think you're compelled to, so long as you participate and reap the rewards of society, I think you necessarily have to find that. If you're compelled into a contract, then the contract itself is null and void. Absolutely not. As long as you continue to reap the rewards of said contract, you are compelled by force to adhere to that contract. So for instance, when the federal government comes... That's a very Hobbesian way of looking at it. It may or may not be. But if the federal government comes to me and they say, you need to pay tax, I go, huh, well, I didn't consent to any taxes in the system. Well, of course not. But I live in a society where I reap the rewards and benefits of all the systems that the government has created around me. So if I'm going to continue to reap the rewards of living in said system, then I need to do whatever that system demands or compels me to contribute back to that system, such as paying my taxes. Yeah, so I'm going to disagree with that fundamentally. I think that, you know, and I will go as far as to say, yeah, they're right when they say taxation is theft. Property is theft. All property is theft. But taxation is as well. Now, do they get a say in it? No, because guess what? The state controls everything. And, you know, if you don't want something worse to happen, you might as well pay your taxes. I also think that taxes are good, generally. And it's actually better that we are compelled to pay them than they wouldn't be, because if you look at like failed states in Latin America, voluntary taxation ironically makes the government worse. Wait, how do we say that? Involuntary taxes. How can you have a position where you say theft is good? Theft is not what why theft is good, because theft is opinion. It's not. It's not. Theft is completely subjective. Like what do we do? OK, wait, let's just go there. What? How do you define theft? What is theft to you? I mean, theft is the unlawful or immoral taking of some property. Yeah, OK. Well, you're begging the question. Theft is the immoral taking of some property. Why is it immoral? That's what I'm asking for. Well, that because that's the definition of theft. Well, but as far as why is theft immoral? Or do you have a reason why you feel that theft is immoral? The only thing that I could say, I would personally speaking for me, I would say theft is immoral because it harms the person having something stolen from them in ways that not just being deprived of the property, but also the psychological harm of being put in that situation. So was that only immoral in cases then where it harms the other person or? I mean, arguably, yeah, pretty much. If it doesn't harm anybody, I don't see it being immoral. OK, but just for I guess for the record, so I would consider theft to be taking something by which someone else has the right to without their consent. That's what I would say. That's a perfectly fair definition. The issue is that it's entirely subjective who has a right to what like. Well, but I wouldn't say that. So for instance, in society, right, money is literally created by the government. The government through its democratic means has processed an established process by which they have the right to collect taxes. So when the government comes to me to quote, unquote, steal my money, it's not theft at all. The government has a right to that money because the government has laws by which it can collect. It can levy taxes against me and collect taxes from me. So I can't call that theft. It's not taking something. Right. But the only reason the government has the power to do any of that is it conquered this territory with its military and is able to. The reason why I have the right to do that is because it provides services and everything to me because I exist in a society where I have that agreement set up with the government. I exist. We should definitely argue about the state sometime because this is this is great. But I will say that the fact that it provides services is simply to make it appear more justified and therefore maintain its monopoly on the justified use of force. I think the force came first and the services came later. And I think historically we've also seen that. Now, again, I don't think it's bad. I like that the government provides services. I think it should provide more services. But at the same time, I don't think that the states, the fact that the state conquered a territory and its laws are based on violence and. I understand, regardless of any of that, I think the foundation just doesn't matter. I would argue that if you exist in some state and you withhold paying your taxes, I would argue that you're the one stealing. Like you're the one that's committed theft at that point. Because you're existing in some system where everybody has some buy-in. Like for instance, let's say that there exists some commune. And these people all collectively have like, fucking we'll say it's a god damn para, a para econ commune, okay? Where these people run a farm, they doled out their responsibilities to everybody. They have divvied out all of their high, all of their, oh god, what was the word Michael Albert used? For work that is fulfilling, for work that is. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Ornerous work. Ornerous work. The ornerous work. And then there's like a high fulfillment work. Fuck, I don't remember what it is. But some work is very fulfilling. Some work is not fulfilling. They doled it all out. They've created a commune. Let's say that somebody else moves in next to that commune. Oh, empowering work. Yeah, somebody moves in next to the commune and they see that there's like a whole bunch of fruit that exists there. Well, let's say they move in. They set up like their little house and everything and they're cool. And let's say that they just walk over every day and they start picking some of those fruits. I think that the people in that, in that commune can look at that person like, wait, what the fuck? You're literally stealing from us. What do you mean? The guy's like, well, no, it's fruit. It exists in the land. It's like, well, no, hold on. All of us are allowed to take of those fruits because we all have a shared agreement with one another that allows us to, you know, put in some amount of work in society and then reap some benefit from society. You can't come and just reap the benefits of society without putting anything in. That's not fair. That's not part of the agreement that we have here. Yeah. What you're essentially saying is that the ownership there is generated by possession and use, which by the way, most anarchists myself would agree in a human term. However, let's just zoom that out a little bit and imagine an alien race came here and watched that happen. They don't know anything about human custom with regards to what belongs to one person and what doesn't. All they see is, oh, those people are eating the apples and now that other human is eating the apples. Interesting. Because again, theft is subjective. It doesn't exist within reality. It only exists within human minds. Super depends on how we define that because we might be able to really ground that out in some physics argument. Like, oh, wow, interesting. Some creatures have expended some amount of necessary energy to create some structure. And now another creature that hasn't invested any energy to the creation of that structure is now partaking in it. I'm sure that there are ways we can make alien creatures understand theft. Well, not even just alien creatures. I mean, think about the squirrel. Stores up a bunch of nuts. And then a freaking squirrel or another mouse finds the store and eats a large portion. The squirrel probably can sort of do that theft. They're not going to share that, right? They're not going to share it. But a squirrel doesn't really have a concept of theft. Maybe not. Sure. But I mean, we would say it's the squirrel. But again, squirrels aren't moral agents, I guess. We're not putting them on the same. Yeah. So because morality is a human thing and applies strictly to humans. So as I'm saying, theft is objectively the same. Property is theft. Having something be your property and having something stolen from a objective standpoint is exactly the same thing. These are dependently-originant concepts because they both arise within the human mind, as opposed to within nature. OK, I don't necessarily disagree, but awesome. Yeah, so that was fascinating. What the hell are we talking about again? James, are we? Well, this all came from the proportionality conversation. Yeah, the proportionality conversation. I guess what I'm saying is- Are we at James? Yeah, where are we at? Are we- Amazing. I kind of want to dive into the proportionality, but are you OK with the Q&A, or do you want to jump into that? Whatever you want to do. I'm just chilling. I already ate my pizza, so I'm good to go for the next six hours. I was a little worried you were going to show up with a pizza. I ate beforehand. Yeah. It would have been funny. So all right, so as far as the proportionality argument goes, I would say that humans have a basic need for justice and for things to be proportional. There's rational reasons why proportionality should be taken into account. The other reasons are, one, if you justify infinite aggression against someone because they violated some social more- To be clear, this is not my position at all. There's a very clear difference between the prevention of aggression and the punishment or the retribution of aggression. I don't believe in punishment or retribution or justice. I throw all of those concepts out. I think they're all silly. I only am talking about the prevention of somebody violating you or your autonomy. OK, so it's purely in the prevention. I think that by, again, justifying infinite violence within the context of preventing something negative from happening to a person by someone who has violated the social contract, I think what you're opening the door for is for a lot of, one, a lot of people being killed by accident because what's happening was misinterpreted. And we see that. And I think you're also opening the door for bad actors to specifically bait people into breaking the social contract specifically so they can kill them. So for number one, I don't think that I think it's generally pretty clear when somebody's trying to steal your shit or threatens great bodily harm against you. But for number two, I mean, there might be bad actors, but there can be bad actors with literally anything. Like everything can be bad actors, right? Yeah, I mean, so I was mugged. I was attacked and beaten in the face with a pistol by two guys. Hit me about five times. I actually dropped my keys. Car door was open. They could have taken my car. They could have taken my keys. The way I dealt with it, because at first I was about to start fighting them, and then I realized, oh no, that's a gun. New plan. And the way I dealt with it was I appealed to them on a personal level. In fact, I basically yelled at them like, you know, what the fuck asshole? What are you doing? What's wrong with you? And this actually caused them to take a step back and to kind of realize, oh, I'm actually in this situation. They were younger than me when they attacked me. Eventually they demanded money. I had about $600 in my wallet, and I snaked my hand down. They got 20 bucks, and that way I could still pay my rent the next day and ran off. And I've had conversations with a lot of people over this, and some people have been of the mind that, you know, oh, if you had a gun, you should have killed them. And the thing is, is that I realized one in that situation, a gun actually wouldn't have helped because they totally had the drop on me. So if that gun had been loaded and I tried to draw on them, they would have shot me before I was able to. But the other big issue of it is, is that, you know, these are two kids, and they're making a mistake. They got $20 from me. It's not really that big of a deal. They injured my face, and I had some PTSD for about two to six months afterwards. But I also think back to what would have happened if, let's say, I had been armed and had killed them both. And what effect would that have had on their families and communities? How many people would go and suddenly their brother went out to hang out with his friend and he didn't come home? You know? And ultimately, I would rather them get away with the $20 and have a chance at redemption later on. And then realize what they did was wrong. Say what? What if they would have killed you? Well, exactly. But they didn't. Well, but we can't argue from one example, right? If I can literally make infinite moral arguments from one example. But what if they would have killed you? Would you be in a completely different spot at this point where, because what you're arguing, I've heard a million conservatives argue from the opposite end. Somebody tried to kill me. I had a gun. I pulled it out and I killed them. And thank God I'm alive today. My family is not deprived of my existence just because some robber wanted to mug me. Yeah. And which is why I say that you are authorized to deploy deadly force in situations where you being killed is a possibility as opposed to because you don't know if you might be killed or not. If I had drawn on them and I had killed the both of them, even though they maybe never would have killed me and maybe the gun wasn't even loaded, I would have been justified in that situation because of acting on the information that I had. However, acting purely on the fact that the social contract has been violated and that justifying the use of deadly force is something that I think it's a subtle but very important distinction between our two approaches here. And I worry that yours using simply the violation of the social contract is going to have a lot of really, really negative effects down the line, both for making the actual decision as to when you want to engage in that kind of thing and also for what effect it would have on the society overall. Yeah, sure. And I would argue the same, but I would just argue to reverse to yours. Like I'm okay with people infinitely defending themselves from muggers. I'm not okay with people being infinitely mugged. Okay. Well, infinite mugging. Nietzsche's eternal recurrence. Just keep going back to that moment. That'd be horrific. All right. So James, I think we're, I think we've had a point to agree to disagree. Do you want to move into the Q&A? Had myself on mute. And we're going to go into the Q&A. Thanks everybody for your questions. Want to remind you, if you love long form content, which you must, if you're still here, it's been a great one. Want to let you know that we at Modern Day Debate are now on podcast. And so if that's useful, we hope that it is. And so pull out your phone, find your favorite podcast app and find Modern Day Debate. As we've been encouraged, I always tell people, when I started, I was so afraid nobody would use it, but I've been encouraged that people apparently found it useful. Long drives, cleaning around the house, you name it. And so with that, thanks for your question. Thanks for your compliment. Frankie Dryden says Manny's. That's my girlfriend's nickname for me. Skinny Pete, thanks for your question. It says, is Destiny willing to debate Pogan on Marxism versus Capitalism? I don't know who that is, but sure. Juicy. And Benjamin Skillz says, anybody, let's see, more for more serious questions. Robert Bates says, you're wrong. Girdle showed that any consistent system that can express specifically arithmetic must contain, or arithmetic, sorry, must contain true statements that cannot be proven. Yeah, that's both. It is both. So that's just the positive way of saying the other thing. But yes, the implication from it containing true statements that cannot be proven also proves that that any axiomatic mathematical system contains both or it's either incomplete or contradictory. No, I just have to, I just have to totally reject that just because something, just because there might be true statements, that's a non sequitur, just because there might be true statements that can be proven by some system, does not mean the system necessarily contains contradictions. That's just the logic. Again, I take it up. And there's two, I'm sort of condensing because there's two separate incompleteness theorems. So, but I would say it's how Godel proved it is what he's referring to where essentially what they found was they made a statement that was by definition like logical definition, true and unprovable and then express that statement as a number. And or as an equation. And thus basically because they found this thing that essentially was a statement that was both, that had to be true and unprovable. They knew that essentially they had what was either an incomplete system or a contradictory system from that. So the one does flow from the other. It's just really convoluted because math is weird and very difficult to understand. Well, let me stick this in your pipe for you to smoke it. They say it follow up. Girdle never showed that arithmetic contains contradictions parentheses. There are even infinite order logic digressions that establish no contradictions. I mean, you can look at that if you want to. But again, the issue is not simple arithmetic. You won't find problems. You won't find problems with this and like lower level methods when it gets further and further out in the theory that things begin to become much more unstable in the long run in much the same way that when we're talking about like the laws of gases. Under normal circumstances the gases do follow these laws but in extreme circumstances they behave in a completely different way. Juicy. Wait, to be clear, I don't fuck. I don't argue about I feel like non-math majors arguing about Girdle's Incompleteness Theorem is crazy. Yeah. Girdle's Incompleteness Theorem I believe has to like fundamental like truths in mathematics. It's not things that are far out there. It's not like when you calculate big numbers when you reach like the speed of light that all of a sudden Girdle's Incompleteness Theorem kicks in. The issue isn't so much big numbers but it's like the fact that girls found these issues doesn't cause problems for us adding two plus two equals five even though the issues are there. But my understanding is that it's that that is the case that Girdle essentially I don't know about Girdle's second Incompleteness Theorem but I'm fairly certain that for the first Incompleteness Theorem essentially what it says is that there exists no consistent set of axioms where if you go through all of them you can prove everything that we would assume to be true about like the natural numbers. So that could literally extend to like two plus two that there will never there will always be unprovable truths in that system and that could exist at a very fundamental major. That's my understanding of it but I'm not a math major. I mean me either to tell you the truth and it is entirely possible that I've misunderstood it but it's just one of three examples and I'll also say that even if all three of my examples are wrong that I was using them to prove essentially that human created systems are fallible and that and I think what we can all agree on is that there is nothing under the sun that is perfect. Perfection is not a property within physical reality unless you believe in magic. So it wouldn't even necessarily need to be true for my argument to be true it would just be a bit embarrassing. Juicy this next one What do you think of your super sticker? Glad you love the show. Gannon Truman says question for both it seems to me that something like the moral landscape by Sam Harris would bridge the gap between both of you thoughts. In a weird way it kind of would I have an instant distaste for Sam Harris. Because of the number of things that he said with regard to Muslims and some hypotheticals he's entertained. And I also kind of have a bit of a problem with what he has he started to you know do meditation and experiment in Buddhism and I think that's really great but he's taken a very specific and in my opinion toxic western attitude and infused it. So I possibly could help us bridge the gap because I do think that there are some good things that Sam Harris has to say. And I think that it does I see exactly what you're getting at and why you'd think that but also like I just instinctively bristle at the mention of Sam Harris. Destiny do you have a My applied positions would actually be almost identical to Sam Harris's I imagine if we disagree on something it's going to be on an empirical matter of fact. The only reason why I don't like Sam Harris is because I believe that his solution his claiming that he solved the is-ought gap is just really stupid. His vanity. I am an anti-realist in regards to like any like absolute moral truth or whatever I don't believe that that can be established. Like the way that I address this is I literally just say like I'll say like fuck that ethics don't waste my time there and I'll just make like some very basic assumptions and then I'll move on and if somebody ever challenges me and they're like well have you solved the is-ought gap like can you really truly compel me through these statements then I'll say like no not really like I'm just going to make a few baseline assumptions to get my system off the ground or we're going to move from there and I'm not going to pretend that I've like bridged some is-ought gap which is what I think Sam Harris tries to do. Sam Harris is a really good conversation with Sean Carroll where Sean Carroll tries for like 30 minutes to just get him to admit like Sam you haven't solved the is-ought gap fucking move on okay. Normative ethics and applied ethics are way more entertaining than this shit that you're trying that you claim that you figured out you haven't figured it out just move on. Harris does not have the pre-work as a background he does not have the any engagement with the academic literature for him to claim that he's like just solved this age-old problem of thousands of years in ethics is just really cranger in my opinion. So that yeah. Kind of like Stephen Molyneux with yeah that guy's on a whole other level crazy but yeah Sam Harris and me I imagine depending on the information we possess would have very similar applied positions he's just going to make much stronger claims about the truthfulness of his morality than I will about mine. And Gannon Truman says question for both it seems to me no we got that. Bilda Panker says I think I've watched two to three debates here's my taxes paid thanks for your support. Turbo says bring out the pizza destiny intimidate him. Thank you. The pizza was not about intimidation the pizza was about distraction which people do go watch Donald Trump debate Hillary Clinton though I don't think destiny did that. Mark Reed thanks for your question says destiny if someone spikes a drink with a synthetic harmless drug that causes euphoria and maximizes their happiness does that make that action moral. Fuck said it one more time. If someone spiked a drink with a synthetic harmless drug that causes euphoria and maximizes their happiness does that make the action of spiking moral. If somebody and so we would have to assume that this means absolutely no negative consequences. So the conflict I have is that in one sense you are compelling somebody to do something that they didn't choose which I think is kind of a violation of like your maximizing your existence is having some level of autonomy over your life. I would say that if there isn't some pre-existing agreement to do that I think that that decision wouldn't be ethical I don't think you can do that. I don't think you can force that onto somebody even if it would necessarily result in a better outcome because that person hasn't consented to that action and I don't think that other people doing things to you that you don't consent to necessarily will always maximize your experience. Gotcha thanks Mark Reed for that one and thanks Sigma any who asks Stephen trolley problem would you flip the lever or no what would you do and what ought I do? In the trolley problem if you can flip one lever if five people are going to die and then you flip the lever and you kill one oh man I spent a long time since I've actually engaged with this problem and I don't offhand it depends on how you universalize the concept in society. I would say that I believe that the answer that I would come on myself to is that you ought to pull the lever to kill one and save the five in that circumstance. Gotcha James love. I would hang on can I just throw in on that because I love the trolley problem. So I agree with with destiny on this you should flip the lever if those are the only two choices that you have. However the the other answer that was made pretty famous by the good place is the way you solve the trolley problem is you throw yourself under the tracks and derail the train saving all six. Oh juicy and Mark Reed I was I was expecting something terrible but that was actually kind of that's actually I like it. Mark Reed thanks for your let's see or James Labrado sorry said if people are weaponizing compassion that doesn't somehow mean that compassion itself isn't part of what it means to be a moral person. It's not possible for someone to be compassionately immoral quote unquote. That's a good point. Yeah I mean I totally disagree there's been plenty of compassionate people throughout history that have been immoral there's been a lot of people driven by religion driven by racism driven by bigotry that have been like relatively good and compassionate people in all senses of the words but they have some corrupt ideology that just leads them down to making like bad decisions. Like I'm sure that because of the compassion or in spite of the compassion it could be because of the compassion. I'm sure that there are some people that legitimately thought that they were building a better stronger Germany while they were executing the Jewish people. Yeah but again that's not compassion that you're not going to disagree with it but it I'm sure to some of those people they absolutely experienced compassion. Compassion is highly subjective. Can you define what you mean by compassion by the way because the definitions I'm getting just seems to be a little fuzzy from the way I think of it. Sure so my understanding of compassion is going to be relating to another person's experience and then understanding that they might have some level of suffering and then trying to alleviate said suffering. Okay yeah that's not what I would that's what happens like often when someone is feeling compassion but that's not actually what I would define compassion as. So we've actually been arguing about a word that we're defining two different ways. Next up. Thank you. Wait well how do you define compassion? I have to hear that. I would define compassion as the act of seeing the world through someone else's eyes and feeling what they feel. Well how is that different meaningfully from what I just said? Well you specifically defined it like more or less as taking an action based upon you kind of put it in the realm of action that taking it in action based upon emotional feelings you have towards a person as opposed to understanding them and understanding where they are and where they're coming from. Feeling connected to them because of that understanding. So and this was what was strange when you were talking about somebody like having a compassion for a black person who obviously seems to think that they are inferior to white people. What's the difference? Do you recognize the difference between compassion and empathy? I think empathy leads to compassion. So there's a difference. Empathy is kind of the ability to see the world from somebody else's perspective. But empathy leads to compassion. But your definition of compassion is more or less what I would call empathy and then I would say that that definition of empathy leads to my definition of compassion. So I would say you can have empathy without compassion though. For instance if you're a sociopath you can be empathetic in the sense that like you can see the world through somebody else's eyes and figure out the best way to manipulate them. It's the difference between understanding and then the connection between you and them that occurs because of that understanding. Okay this one coming in from Will Stewart. By the way I want to remind you folks both of our guests are linked in the description. Highly encourage you to check out those links. We really do appreciate our guests. Will Stewart says. And also again as far as compassion goes please please please if you've got anything even a dollar or a share they're a long way my friend's sister who needs the heart surgery they're a long way away from their $75,000 goal. Anything you guys can do would be makes such a huge difference for them and their family. So please thank you. You've got to thanks Brenton and thank you Will Stewart for your question which is Brenton can you demonstrate how your morals based on compassion deal with a man who breaks into your house to steal food for his family and then kills yours in the process why is your family why is your family do more compassion than his is? Okay so if someone breaks into my house I'm going to be first of all I would hope that it doesn't escalate to the point where he's killing my family just to steal some food and in fact if the guy knocks on my door and says I need food can you please help me I'm just going to give him food but let's assume that he breaks in he wants food he inadvertently kills my family or maybe he kills my family for whatever reason like I in that situation would be compromised by bias and my ability to feel compassion for him would be thrown completely out the window because of my duty to my family so I might act in a completely different way than I would normally say is ethical and we see this all the time in like in fiction and in like great tragedies and stuff it's it's when a person has some horrible circumstances befall them that then compromise them it's also the reason why we don't allow people who were mugged to sit on the trial to sit in like on the jury of the person that they're that are mugged you can't make that decision so you know I would say that in the event that something like that happened I would hope that my compassion both for my family and his would supersede any kind of driving revenge that might be instinctively coursing through my body but I would not hold myself accountable necessarily for that intense instinctual desire for revenge because again that's also part of being human so you know if society needs to hold me back and restrain me from taking revenge I would say if I were in my right mind which I cannot be in that situation it is right that I not be allowed to go and attack that person or torture and or kill his family we have systems in place to deal with this because those who are wronged cannot be judged jury and executioner and we've we've known this for for hundreds of years at least yeah wait what was it what was the question to that it was yeah it was kind of phrased a little like anybody ever want to look more like oh that's they said Brenton can you demonstrate how your morals based on compassion deal with a man who breaks into your house to steal food for his family and kills your family in the process why is your family do more compassion than his is oh yeah so okay just so I guess my answer in that situation would be if somebody's trying to break on to your property you would never be compelled to submit yourself to whatever their desires are that if they've put themselves in an aggressive situation against you you you don't have the burden to suffer whatever aggression they deem necessary for their own existence so you'd have the right to defend your property your family whatever way you see fit yeah I would agree with you that you have the right to it the only more that I can kind of add to this is I think that as far as my moral system would go both families are do equal compassion in that situation one is not do more than the other though my duty as the father in that situation is primarily to my family and not to the guy or his family I would also say that it kind of reminds me a little bit of what Nichiren Dyshonen said when he thought he was going to be executed where he said you know it's in because ultimately from a buddha sense I am the guy breaking into the house and I'm my family and I'm his family and I'm myself so he said essentially you know if even if I am to die here I have been killed thousands and millions of times before I've been I've had my family destroyed but never before have I had the chance to die for the Lotus Sutra so what I would say is as far as the moral system goes with that yeah they're out equal compassion but I in particular cannot be held to the same standards that an outside observer would be held to simply because I'm involved gotcha and James Labrano asked is doing whatever you need to keep yourself safe the same thing as doing the right thing in theory the right thing is right no matter what someone does to me if killing is wrong it is never the right thing I mean I think that you have a right to defend your autonomy from any other like thing I don't think that you ever are morally compelled submit yourself to somebody else's aggressions because I would never want to be in a situation where I am morally compelled to submit myself to somebody else's aggressions gotcha it makes me think this is actually kind of interesting because there's a so in the Lotus Sutra or no this isn't the Lotus Sutra it's a different one there's a story where the Buddha finds a starving lioness and literally offers to feed himself to her and her cubs and the lioness is so starving at this point that he cannot actually she won't eat him so he literally pulls his own flesh out and feeds it to her and he dies presumably in the family of lions lives and the story ends with each one of those lions being reincarnated as apostles of the Buddha in the in the next life sort of showing the interconnectedness of life I don't think that this story literally happened but it is to illustrate essentially one that you actually can't die and two at least not permanently and two that there is a lack of attachment to the a lack of attachment to the body can actually result in very good things in the long run gotcha and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from general ball sac says isn't destiny isn't your example of the commune and the apple essentially an argument against illegal immigration no not not generally I mean I would be opposed if somebody would show up in some area and just start stealing resources but I don't think that that's generally how it goes I think usually when people illegally immigrate to the United States it's usually because they're coming to work it's generally not it's not impossible but it's generally pretty difficult to get on social benefits if you come as an illegal immigrant because oftentimes you don't have a legitimate social security number so even if you come and work as an illegal immigrant you'll pay into social security that you'll never get out and then same thing like if you're being you know like if you're being paid under the table oftentimes your wages are being shorted by quite a bit I think generally I think generally as illegals I think you're usually more exploited than you are exploiting the country that you go to although obviously there can be examples of that working in different ways on both sides but in general I think it's a little bit too naive and analysis to say that look oh an illegal immigrant just goes and exploits resources in an area you know the business owner that hires an illegal immigrant they're not being exploited oftentimes they're saving money on labor and a customer that shops at some firm that's paying you know less to labor is probably saving a little bit of money on their goods service so a customer of that particular area also doesn't feel like they're being hurt by an illegal immigrant but then you know some labor a native worker that maybe doesn't get a job or has downward pressure on their wages they might feel like they're a bit of a victim of an illegal immigrant or you know like the fiscal system of any given area that you know transfers a little bit more out then it gets back in they might it's it's complicated I'm sorry that was kind of an unsatisfying answer I can conceive of ways in which an illegal immigrant could just be a drain on some system that they go to that's entirely possible but in practice at least in the United States of America we don't really have a welfare system or social safety and it's so big that you can just come over and take advantage of it like that I would say in general the social safety nets in the United States are pretty shitty and pretty lacking so there's not much to go on there it is possible if I'm gonna be charitable to this guy I don't know if this guy is a fucking alt-right or just a conservative if I'm being charitable to him it is possible in places like Sweden that might happen where they take a huge number of refugees or immigrants and maybe it's possible that those people end up being a drain on the system for at least the first generation by second, third, fourth generation that might even out more but yeah that's how it was a policy question it was more complicated I agree 150% with most of everything that I heard there what I'm gonna say is a couple things one there is no ethical argument that can be given to stop the free movement of peaceful people and borders are imaginary they are lines created on the giant ball of rock and water spinning through infinite space by armies and by essentially glorified monkeys in funny hats so the the idea that simply crossing a border to work or to do something else somehow rob something from someone is absolutely ridiculous I'll also go on to echo objectively a world without borders would be 75 trillion dollars richer and in immigration of all kinds overall always results at least in the first world in economic gain because the primary thing that you need to drive the economy in the first world once the country is already industrialized as a growing population and the best way to reliably grow that population especially since first world birth rates begin to slow what you need is immigration into that country because each one of those people who come in they require services they are a consumer and they are a worker so as a direct result of that they simply contribute much more so the this would be basically as if if we were to put this back to the analogy with destiny the illegal immigrants would be like if someone snuck in and added 50 apples to destiny's pile after after taking one so yeah I don't think you can use that as an argument again immigration but people will lie to you about it and try to make you believe that immigrants are coming here to steal your stuff they're not they're just people I think I to be clear on those two points you can give ethical arguments against illegal immigration if illegal immigrants were to come and be a net drain where they live I think that would be a decent ethical argument against it right if somebody's just moving in and taking from your society I think that would be well the well the free movement of peaceful people is the issue what if we say free movement of are we begging the question but what is free movement of peaceful people if you move into an area and you begin taking those resources that's not peaceful people that's essentially resources yeah because if you come into an area and start stealing but people don't do that like well yeah but I'm saying well I'm just sorry the statement that you gave there can be no ethical or there is no ethical argument that can be given against illegal immigrants I think there's tons of ethical arguments no I said there's no ethical argument that can be made against the free movement of peaceful people there is an ethical argument you could make for instance about stopping an army from marching across the world well but like even if it's just if it's a ton of people when they come in and they don't work and they start like leaching off a system or whatever and hurting the natives there I think you can make an ethical argument against those people being even if it's free and peaceful right well you just pointed it out it's not peaceful if they're causing problems for everybody there I would say that in the event that they come into a society and a large influx of refugees causes a you know big problems that actually materially hurts people within that society you could make an ethical argument against that but that's not the reality of immigration legal or illegal at least not in the first world okay and then I would push on the second thing borders are imaginary and then borders are very real I think that we recognize that there are a lot of activities and behaviors that can stem from or that are downstream from whatever country you exist in right so for instance if I go to apply for a driver's license or try to buy a piece of property whether or not I'm going to be able to do that is going to be a function of what border I exist in and what right I have to be there certainly and why is the border there because it's the way that we've chosen to organize ourselves and yeah well I would say that's what the state has done but yes so you can say that we have let's assume let's take the criticisms of the state and it's total you know unrepectability out let's assume that this is simply the society that we have built and we have all agreed to operate by these rules those rules are still subjective the lines are still subjective it's yeah but just because something is subjective doesn't mean that it's not real I think that's really important to recognize so for instance I would make the argument that like your head doesn't really exist insofar as that matter is somehow fundamentally separated or different from the rest of your body but as a human I'm arbitrarily kind of labeled like there's a person can have a head are you familiar have you heard of Loki's wager oh yeah yeah with who gets the you can't take my you can take my head but you can't have any part of my neck yeah so then the dwarves or the elves or whatever they are they're not allowed to execute him and he walks free because they don't know where they can start shopping along the the nape of his neck or he doesn't walk free Brock the dwarf sows his his mouth shut instead probably better than losing his head but regardless just because something might not have like a strict definition or just because something might be subjective doesn't make it useless and it certainly doesn't make it unreal I think I mean it doesn't make it useless and I think borders can be useful I just thought like the statement that borders are imaginary and it goes nonsensical like I would say they're imaginary in the sense borders are imaginary in the sense that all borders that exist within this planet exist within human minds and human customs as opposed to within reality if I understand but I don't think we would say that about any other like for instance using that same definition would you ever say language is imaginary language is imagined this is a very interesting way of putting at it I would say that languages specific languages are imaginary the act of communicating with language is real and material okay you got it and jumping to the next one Nikolai says destiny equals beta is that a meme destiny is that something that your your peeps regularly say or is it in reference to the famous debate between you and Jesse Lee Peterson yeah life maybe one of my favorite videos on the internet folks if you haven't seen destiny and Jesse Lee Peterson so Kelsey Maple thanks for your question says destiny if this pure pleasure wine was had by someone else in the world but you personally never know about that happening is that a good state of affairs at all I mean it is for the person experiencing it right but I would have no knowledge of it so it may as well not exist to me you've got I just like to add on to the previous one somebody also took part of destiny's conversation and like animated it like it's South Park it's freaking hilarious to check it out and Robert let's see thanks for your last minute question said there are systems that are probably provably both consistent and complete geometry girdle is about specific specifically arithmetic and a technicality that arithmetic itself can't establish its own consistency yeah that was one of the theorems very similar to Turing's halting problem arithmetic has been proven to have no contradictions phd math yeah so again my point was to show that systems that we take as regularly think of as perfect are simply not perfect now there may be some other systems of math of mathematics that don't have the flaws or the contradictions that have been I guess identified in such a famous way I would still say there probably are flaws and contradictions in just the same sense that you have to use like non Euclidean geometry to build literally everything for instance because Euclidean geometry only applies to geometry like on a flat surface so literally all construction uses non Euclidean geometry there's also taxicab geometry and the fact that you have to have these multiple systems means that ultimately they're not complete they're complete in and of themselves as we have defined them you also can't say that they don't have any contradictions or incompleteness because again you cannot know what you don't already know but I would say overall you know you would be right in most by saying these systems have been proven to work I'm making a very specific philosophical point about the nature of reality and using that simply as one of three small examples and again as I said I think my statement about reality holds even if all three of my examples are unfortunately wrong which I don't think they are Got you and Jay G Killian777 says can Brenton explain how his moral system led him to dig part in Occupy Wall Street Yes oh thank you I've been wanting to talk about this for a while yeah so I mean Occupy was really really interesting because that's putting me back in 2010 right around the time that I first started to really identify as an anarchist and I began when I first heard about Occupy there'd been a lot of socialist protests of the year and I first completely dismissed it where I was like oh another socialist protest they're not angry enough I'll come back later and then I suddenly started to see pictures of my friends at Occupy and I started to see pictures of my friends getting arrested like being tricked onto the Brooklyn Bridge by the NYPD only to be arrested and you know handcuffed and kept in what one of my friends was actually kept in jail for 72 or 76 hours with no charges because he would not submit to a retinal scan so I mean all in all I felt that it was very very important to get down to that movement because something very big was happening that was having large effects on the rest of the country and I felt that one the movement could benefit from my presence in the sense that I was able to articulate things that certain other people were not quite as good at but also I felt that you know there's certain watersheds and moments in history where you just kind of look at yourself and realize if I don't do something to make the world a better place right now I will not be able to face myself in the mirror in the morning I think it's very important both for an artist and a human being to live in the world and to when destiny calls to do what you can to make the world a better place right now so I think that really pushed me down to Occupy Wall Street the other thing pushed me in that direction was the fact that I was really worried that the country was going in a very frightening and authoritarian direction that was before Trump and I put myself out there to see how the system how the society would respond to me taking a explicit stance against it and I learned two things with that I learned number one that it's not as bad as I feared but two it's way worse than I hoped so yeah that's how my moral system led me to Occupy though also that does predate my Buddhism and it does predate a lot of the formation of my current moral ideas so you know caveat on that gosh and thank you very much for your question this one coming in from icejj365 says ask destiny what the alternative is to the society that we are forced into I don't know you could go run and live in the forest or you could go retreat to another country live in an island it seems really hard to imagine doing either of those things I mean I guess there's a lot of free space in the United States who really wanted to but regardless of there being any alternative or not you remaining in some society that has some set of agreements that you choose not to abide to is the equivalent of you stealing from that society and they have a right to do with you as they would punish any thief I'm going to point out you actually can't live run off and live in the forest so you remember did it yeah but also he still had to obey a number of societal laws and rules to get in he becoming a hermit within a society does not remove you from that society nor does it remove you from the society's jurisdiction not completely but it'll get rid of a lot of those restrictions assuming you like don't like kill anybody or invade any like inhabited society you could probably live in the wilderness pretty off the grid for quite a while and be decently safe about it you could live in the wilderness off the grid for a while and be decently safe assuming one that you don't get sick assuming another that the government doesn't come knocking well if you don't get sick that's but that's on you that's a consequence of your decision to live completely off the grid you don't have a right to any society's resources if you decide to remove yourself from that society I mean I would kind of disagree and then I think we have a good question for you Brenton you might like this one I hate to interrupt but just because sorry Joshua Alec asks compassion must be more than just seeing through another's eyes a sadist sees the pain of others feel and therefore causes pain is that compassion okay so this is the the whole sadist masochist thing the reason people move in like develop specific kinks with regard to the either the application of pain or the experience of pain is that what's happened is is that when humans reach a heightened state there is often a confusion of is this pleasure or is this pain that I am feeling and so the oftentimes like in the mind of a masochist it is the confusion of pain with the confusion of their orgasm similarly like with a sadist it is usually related to some sort of anxiety that is relieved by inflicting pain on someone else or a particular itch that's scratched so neither of those have anything at all to do with compassion and they don't have to do with empathy and people who involve themselves in sadomasochism still are able to feel compassion and empathy outside of the realm of this particular kink that they have so it's not like because people will use like what about a sadist or what about a masochist in relation to like do on to others which you would have them do on to you a masochist is not going to look at the at the golden rule and decide that others should be hurt as it's not sadism and masochism is not what you think it is gotcha so yeah there's that and Dr. Gonzo trying to put a quarter in Brenton again says what is the best amazing memory you have of Occupy oh jeez short and pithy Brenton I would say the most amazing memory that I have of Occupy is when me and a buddy linked hands I was wearing a Barack Obama mask he was wearing a Mitt Romney mask and we walked through the police line and the police freaked out because you know the presidents are walking down long story I basically got tackled need in the spine thrown into a motorcycle by a cop but when they picked me up off the ground after my hands were zip tied I just remember everybody yelling like what's your name and you know you felt like a freaking rock star and I remember I started chanting just the most radical thing I could think of at the time which was auntie auntie Capitalista and they led me down to the to the paddy wagon and on the way into the jail Father Paul who had marched with Martin Luther King was coming out of the jail just as I was going in and I spent like the next several hours in a room with a bunch of hippie activists talking having some very very interesting conversations and getting an experience that I'd never you know really had before so I say that's the most heightened experience with Occupy there's probably better ones but but I think that's the one that I'm going to answer with today thank you very much and last one of the night thanks for your question this is a request for you destiny from Ben MC says can you ask destiny to play fortnight poggers for his fans they want it so bad oh no thank you thank you everybody what to say our guests are linked to the description we highly encourage you to check out their links we really appreciate you destiny and Brenton it's been a true pleasure thanks for hanging out with us tonight absolutely and please again if you can please give to the to the go fund me like I said anything you can do to help their family would make such a difference absolutely thanks Brenton thanks destiny and thanks everybody I'll be back with a post credit scene in just a moment to share about upcoming debates which are which are coming up next week have some juicy news so stick around we'll be right back and with that keep sifting out the reasonable reasonable from the unreasonable be right back bitties and gentlemen that was a blast oh that seriously just puts me in a good mood I first of all I I honestly just love both destiny and Brenton these guys they're awesome it was a lot of fun and we really appreciate you hanging out with us folks in fact I want to say hello to you so this is also in addition of mentioning upcoming debates like this one the super straight debate which is coming up next week you guys you don't want to miss it that's going to be epic it's going to be honestly that's on Tuesday by the way at 8 p.m. so if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button and that notification bell so you don't miss it live it is going to be a big one this coming Tuesday folks you don't want to miss it it's going to be the first time we've ever had that topic and it's also going to be the first time Tom and debate boy jangles have ever crossed paths it's honestly it's going to be epic and so we look forward to it and so yes good to see you doubting Thomas as well as the Shire Cryer and Brennan and King 101 dysentropic good to see you doubting Thomas crazymonk27 and the Jansy Fransy glad you're here and then let's see oh I didn't even while for the win sorry I didn't I thought that I thought I maybe I'm hearing things I thought that destiny said F no when someone asked when do I ask the meme question I thought he was done so I didn't mean to cut him off sorry about that and uh let's see what was it Woody thanks for being with us Nikolai glad you're here Gonzo Lude stoked you're with us friend we hope you're doing well and Woody says MDD poggers I've got to figure out what poggers means I seriously come on I'm a boomer you guys help me out here he's like you got to teach me I'm teachable I'm teachable all right but yeah so pumped though you guys we've been super encouraged thank you guys so much for your support you make this fun this channel and seriously the more the merrier we hope you feel welcome whether you are you name it whether you agree or disagree with destinies and ethical theory or whether or not you are a Christian atheist lean politically left politically right you name it we really do hope you feel welcome and we're glad you're here and so thanks everybody for your support thanks brook chavis in the chat who said smash that like button thank you very much brook for your support seriously it really does mean a lot and then mark reid good to see you and thanks mark reid for becoming a patron recently appreciate that support my friend we have a patreon meeting tomorrow it's like I can't remember it's it's depending on the tier we're also we're thinking about we might change up patreon in terms of like its structure I am always trying to figure it out because frankly it's still somewhat new to me but we are so yeah tomorrow depending on if you're in the I think it's the tier of either general ticket or the front row seating that should be a fun one tomorrow morning and that's at 10 a.m I think it's 10 a.m eastern or is it 10 a.m I'll have to it's in the patreon post sorry I'm like it's a long day but but it's it's a chance to hang out and just catch up and also for you to kind of if you happen to show and I want to give feedback on which direction the channel should go we do appreciate it is we've got a lot to learn folks we really are we're in a real way I'm still kind of new think about like people like Joe Rogan who have been at it for like I think Joe Rogan it's like the 12th year and so where are we at it like maybe our second year we're done with our second year we're in our third year I think but yeah we are looking for new ideas and we do want to change and grow so truths shoes 101 thanks for being with us so thanks for the nightcap have a blessed tomorrow peeps thanks for that appreciate your kind words and I agree there's something about like a chat when you're like during a live stream and basically if it's a live streaming you're familiar with it's kind of comforting it actually can be good for helping you fall asleep because you just feel like you're in the good company I don't know I do that sometimes for real I do actually listen to live streams of people while I'm finally gonna sleep sometimes because it's I don't know it just feels more engaging or personal doubting Tom it's good to see topout2 says buy the like button dinner first then smash it thanks for your support topout2 and we agree hit that like button like it owed you money we are excited about the future you guys and we appreciate all of your support for real I am overwhelmed with even just by being here we hope you know that like we appreciate you making it more fun the more the merrier so seriously it does make it a lot more fun for me I appreciate you and Brennan good to see you Woody glad you are here and catching up with chat hold on Mr. C glad you made it and almost caught up sigma any thanks for being with us said the great super straight debate yeah it's gonna be juicy kill a doggy good to see you and club thanks for being here and you're right kill a doggy you're right this Tuesday will be the first time that t-jump and jangles cross swords that is going to be epic is that really I don't even think that's actually a phrase used let's see define what does cross swords mean I don't think this means is anything as bad as you think yeah so like in when I type it into google it says have an argument or dispute so yeah you guys who are thinking of it sexually you guys are nasty what it says to here's the one from what is it English forums to cross swords is a well-known idea meaning to argue okay yeah see they're not perverts either what does crosswords mean urban dictionary let me see what this says we'll get to the bottom of this man nasty guys okay you guys are nasty you honestly you got some problems but uh yes club good to see you it says what's super straight well it was trending on twitter and you are going to find out this Tuesday might yeah you you definitely are not going to want to miss this debate I as far as I well I don't want to do it I don't want to define it because the funny thing is even defining it is so controversial that for real I feel like no matter what way you define it you're gonna it's gonna appear as if you're coming down on one side which I don't want you have to tune in Tuesday they'll I promise Tom will announce it but gut sick given in the house good to see you said fun debate James Mulling over doing that debate with my strange uncle Erica I'm telling you that somebody in chat just earlier tonight like an hour ago was saying that you you have to do it'd be great and I can tell you I will be more active moderating just to be sure that the person sticks with the scientific topic of the arc and so I can do more active moderating if you'd like is uh I think he'll want to debate the topic that you want or the one that I had mentioned but anyway let me know soon Erica because otherwise I've got I've got to like improvise but um I'm telling you I think it'd be a blast gut sick given and we hope you're doing well out there you freak so uh ursh man good to see uh glad you're here buddy and let's see sideshow nav I thank you so much for your your service for real and thank you just for being here another Simpsons junkie like myself I am a huge Simpsons junkie and so said great debate both dudes extremely smart I got to watch dude where's my car to feel somewhat smart again that's funny I like it and let's see here see man he says some love for you guests and the funky chums over here in chat thank you thanks for your kind where's my friend that pretty seriously means a lot and Nikolai thanks for your support thanks for just for being here appreciate it like I said we just we're glad you're here and let's see fdjffdg says do Islam versus Christianity that might work I'd be I think it'd be cool Dougie Thomas says James you've ever been on the Joe Rogan podcast ha that's funny that would honestly if we got to announce modern data bait on the Joe Rogan podcast I that would be the ticket in terms of modern data bait having a gigantic influence on the internet that would be epic yeah let's see what was I going to say so what I was going to say was so hey let me two seconds let me think about this I forgot it already oh I always to be honest I always figure if my theoretically I don't think this is going to happen because I appreciate that the people in my department are pretty cool although I think I told you guys that one story about like one professor in my department who like tried to get me in trouble for modern data bait like they told on me they told the chair of the department to be like ah James is doing this and fortunately the most of professors who like heard about it stuck up for me but theoretically really unlikely I don't think this will ever happen I don't want it to happen part of me wants it to happen a little bit but if the department ever said like James you got to get rid of your YouTube channel I'm kind of the point I'm kind of to the point now where I would say no and I would dig my heels in and fight it and if I got in big trouble to where it was a big controversy and it made the news and I got on Joe Rogan that's one way to get on there I don't know Brig Chavez says don't forget to check the Twitch chat so sorry Twitch friends I'm late give me one second I'm jumping over I've got this Cortana thing on my PC just constantly this window keeps jumping up I don't even want it it's just it's Cortana is like so persistent let me reload the old Twitch page yeah we are excited though you guys if you have not already followed us on Twitch we are excited that the Twitch uh like audience people are enjoying it which is super encouraging Red Aschatika said great debate thank you for hosting thank you so much Red Aschataka you might let me know if I'm pronouncing right and top sodal thanks said Poggers is like wow amazing oh are you serious I thought it was like Poggers like Tioga taught me what Pog meant and I was like whoa okay are is Poggers the same as like a Pog like P-A-W-G but yes Brooks Sparrow let's see that's totally wicked Xanos Carthage good to see you again in the old Twitch chat I've got to get rid of this Cortana thing it's driving me nuts constantly just popping up all over the place just disgraceful but yeah let's see here catching up in the old YouTube chat as well Manic Panda is good to see you thanks for being here with us and we might do Islam versus Christianity or maybe like Islam versus Atheism versus Christianity so it's like a triple threat that I think I'd enjoy that that'd be pretty cool Zach Frederick said Mandela effect is a debate you got to do interesting topic at the internet in society I'm open to it I just don't know who would debate it Brenton Langle is in the chat says that's why I say lock horns instead well Brenton we enjoyed listening to you and Destiny Crosswords tonight it was great and CD thanks for being with us juicy you're right about that my dear friend and what is it lock horns okay I mean that sounds even more perverse Brenton so NYC Microsoft says as long as you don't touch handles with each other thanks for being with us Microsoft and let's see you guys are nasty nasty guys Club says let's see you have to see the super straight debate as Brenton is going to be cheering for his buddy Tom jump I'm excited for it and then pipeline audio good to see you again says sure you are Brenton I know that's what I said nasty guy that Brenton but we love Brenton for real I do love Brenton that's how you know like teasing is like one of my ways in which I let you know like I'm like you're cool and top of two says always fight for MDD thank you for that I appreciate that and Woody says get them on debating you mean my professors I I don't know if our the field I went into is super I don't know if the topics would be super juicy but maybe and yeah we are let's see thank you guys for all of your support you guys believe me we in some ways we have so many critics believe me that's how you know you're doing a good job is that I'm not trying to get critics believe me I'm not it just happens naturally and if you ever try to do something in my experience this is what I've heard not just from like the motivational songs or speeches that I listen to I do listen to those but also I remember I was on LinkedIn and a lady who she got her PhD she had talked about how she's like is it true that like as your social media grows like if you have a social media like thing that you have like more haters later on and another one was like oh yeah like it's absolutely true like you'll have more more people excited about it but you've also got more people who hate it and they said they've told me it's just inevitable if you're doing something that's interesting or different or new it's inevitable you're gonna have some haters and you know the truth is the haters don't know I like it I can't get it it just it makes me motivated more excited it gets me even more pumped about the future and more determined is that some people maybe they get discouraged you're kind of like oh you know I'm just kind of sad or discouraged or I'm exhausted from it all for me I'm like I cannot wait to just keep on pressing forward even harder it gets me excited and so you guys when we do have those critics like that one professor in my department who for some reason just I don't know why just for some reason hated modern day debate or when we have all of the other you know people in other fields and it's usually people of the extremes so like people like I can tell you no joke the people who are neo NAZ IS a lot of them they hate modern day debate and I'm like I've never done anything except moderate fairly and so they hate for I'm dead serious though there are a lot of them who James is so like biased against us and it's like I'm not I don't think I am at all I think I give everybody a fair shot even the people who are NE O NAZ IS and if they wipe out it's their problem but nonetheless you know I just so I get people who blame and I also get people who blame on the other side of the spectrum like the radical you know whether it be radical politically right or politically left or politically whatever the people that's the radicals usually that are triggered and just I think it's this one reason is there are some people who are so radical they don't even want their opponents to have a chance to speak or make their case for them they're like oh you know just like they shouldn't be you know you're platforming it's irresponsible and so I'd say hey you know it just motivates me more it just gets me more excited and so we just keep pushing ahead and believe me I don't care if it's us against the world folks we're going to do it and you know there are critics out there there are haters and people oh yeah believe me if it's against it's basically if it's against us against the world we're going to do it folks we're going to prevail and it's going to be ginormous and we're excited about the future and so if you guys love the idea of a non-partisan platform I never even make my views known on this channel like I already told you and I will always keep this promise if I ever start doing videos on like politics or the news or whatever I'll just make a new channel like because I made this promise since the start that it'll always be non-partisan and it always will be non-partisan we're going to keep doing that just as we always have and so nonetheless like I said haters gonna hate so I show nafs as we got your back modern day debate rocks thanks for your kind words appreciate that thanks Brooke Chavez says you're doing a great job I appreciate that seriously it's encouraging I do I do love the kind words and yeah we're excited about the future though you guys seriously it's gonna be epic Resilat of course says another nice debate let them drink Haterade how about Star Trek versus Star Wars just for fun I'm open to that that might work that could be cool and yeah we are pumped though basically oh so I did tell you I talk about upcoming debates and so Silver Harlow has a definition for super straight in the chat if you guys want that um but yeah we are excited for the future you guys I have to let you know about some of these upcoming debates so let me just pull this up where's that I got Tom let's see ha I don't know if it's supposed to be some sort of tasteless joke Tom just messaged me something on on Facebook and I I don't know I don't know Tom I don't know if you're listening but we'll all talk to you soon maybe it's some sort of tasteless joke but uh not really we love Tom we'll be fine where is this thing I just went over to Facebook for a reason someone I could have sworn someone just told me to go over there why am I over here I thought I was going to give oh I I know what it was I was going to show you guys the calendar I was going to pull up the calendar and and talk about upcoming debates planner earth there says why is your show so early I'm not even on the east coast I'm in mountain time baby so basically really I I like streaming at six that way I can get to sleep early I'm an old man you guys I get to sleep I you know I got to sleep early I get tired out but yeah let me pull this up really quick we used to go later didn't we yeah we we used to go at nine p.m. eastern and that's actually maybe an arguably a better time so I might eventually go back to that time but I've got to think about it let me think about that and um oh yeah pulling up the calendar because that is actually I think a good time slot to start at that's when the non sequitur show started and um let me just pull this up by the way if you haven't hit that like button hey consider hitting that like button is that does support the stream we appreciate that and also want to let you know you guys one way to help modern day debate just to kind of the old grass roots campaign is if you just share it on social media like if you share a debate with anybody that just a topic you enjoy and you're like hey it's fun peeps you might check it out or if you have a friend who loves debates you might say hey you might like this this channel has debates on science religion politics upcoming debates next Monday you guys you don't want to miss it Skyler against William Stewart that's going to be fun Calvinism on trial is the title of it that's on Monday then Tuesday is this debate super straight the debate that's going to be juicy you don't want to miss it folks I'm excited for that and then Wednesday Mr. Batman versus a mystery opponent so I you'll see who the mystery opponent is soon but the black sheep says how's it going James it is going so well thanks for asking my friend I hope you're doing well and how are you Nikolai says oh let's see I got got to read that and got sick given I can't help it I have to read this because it's about her her grandfather Kent Hoven says fun fact some young earth creationist sent Kent Hoven to an evolution debunking kit that included a hat with a bunch of quote evolutionists in button form myself included I'm on a I'm on a hat in Kent's closet and dinosaur adventure that is pretty epic Erica you must feel really special that's it's pretty awesome I know that Erica I I to give credit to Erica it was her idea I don't know if you guys know that it's exciting Erica is getting married soon and we are really thrilled for her we honestly we're gonna live stream it on modern day debate and also though it's gonna be at dinosaur adventure land so you guys you better tune in for that it's gonna be a lot of fun Erica is really excited for it it's gonna be a special day Clay Corbin says thanks for doing what you do thanks so much Clay Corbin seriously I do appreciate it and Silver Harlow says I'm 50 and pressing X to doubt your claim to be an old man I'm telling you I mean I'm 34 I actually I feel great that you know they say is like oh you get older you know when you're when you're young you always think that you'd get older and you'd feel like you don't have as much pep in your step I feel like I've got a lot of pep in my step still and I might go to sleep you know early compared to you some of you young people out there however like I like to work like I enjoy like working on the doctorate stuff I like teaching I love research when I actually get time because I have so many stinking meetings but and I love moderate debate it's so fun and so yeah anyway you know it's true it's like use it or lose it so far I'm like I'm gonna use it as long as I can I love just doing what I do and next Friday this is the juicy detail we might this is like I'm still in talks with our new friend Dylan Burns we might do a collaboration event we're planning it and frankly I've already committed to saying like hey Dylan I'm in man let's do this so like it's like a win-win because I like Dylan a lot he seems like a really authentic person and so you know we do want to show him appreciation and so I'm gonna try to help as best as I can and so I'm excited for that and yeah so that you guys you will you'll want to tune in on next Friday because we might have something really special that's what we're planning and so you don't want to miss it Brian Garner says I wish destiny was debating prospective philosophy instead I'm open to that I didn't know that prospective philosophy wanted him to debate I have to let you know folks if you want to debate one thing that sometimes people do Brenton does this a lot so you might notice like wow Brenton's on here a pretty good amount oftentimes Brenton sets up a debate he reaches out to the person he'll go hey destiny you want to have a debate you know or who you know Dr. Friedman David Friedman we got introduced to him through Brenton as Brenton reached out to him on his own and he just said hey would you like to have a debate with me and and then you know they're like yeah and then Brenton comes to me and he's like do you want to host a debate with me and destiny or me and Dr. Friedman and I'm like of course look that'd be epic and so like Brenton actually like goes out and tries to find people that will get you could say new what's the word I'm looking for helps get modern day debate new exposure as we do want to have hopefully a positive influence on modern what is it YouTube and everything else and so Mr. P says James Erika Erika is confessing to building and distributing die cast models of the Coons with articulated chin function that sounds like her I don't know she says hoping for Kent to officiate the wedding that's so funny all right okay well here we go let's have a heck of a wedding here folks I'm okay from dinosaur adventure land okay so all right that's not my way that's a picture of her okay so we are excited as that would seriously be epic Reservoir of course says 35 to 45 goes by in a blink of an eye I believe it Brooke Chavez says I'm 35 welcome to the club of like mid 30s Brooke and Dowdy Thomas says 31 is throwing up on corona familiar I am basically I have to let you know I am amazed at how time is flying so fast you guys it's honestly it's frightening to the point where so I've been living here in Fort Collins, Colorado for two and a half years now a little over two and a half years and it honestly seems like I moved in like nine months ago I'm like gosh I can't believe how fast it's gone the funny thing is so yeah so I before coming here I lived in two years for two years in two different cities Lobbock, Texas at Texas Tech and then East Texas Nackadoches for Steven of Austin State University and those two years in each place I felt like I kind of like let's say by comparison to those two years in each place it seems like my time in Colorado has been even shorter even though it's actually been longer by seven months it's just nuts and so Nero says James is like a B version of Dr. Josh's impression of Kent Hovind that's true Dr. Josh he has a phenomenal impression of Kent Hovind and he also has an even better it's a phenomenal impression of praise who goes that's been totally debunked man so yeah it's funny is it George VN says I hope your channel grows a lot James you provide really great content thank you so much seriously that that's encouraging I appreciate that that means a lot it really does and so yeah we are excited about the future you guys and so other debates coming up we are trying to work on this will probably be sometime in mid April we're trying to work on a debate between Maddox in T-Jump versus socialism left oh gosh socialism done left and mouthy so that's another debate that we're hoping for in April as well as some of you guys are going to get triggered get ready we're hoping to get Billy Zig to partner with let's see ha ha ha ha oh god sick give us is the the james uh coons action figures and the worst but that's behind my Nathan Thompson plushy with glow busting catchphrases oh that's right yeah you can't go wrong with that that's funny one of the the more humorous things I know you guys some of you probably hate it but it is kind of funny celebs is only 28 it must be terrible to be old it's actually pretty good Caleb just for your information and the other thing is but yeah basically when Nathan in one of his debates I like turned away to look at something and I look back at the screen and I hadn't even noticed the change Nathan has a globe on his head like it's almost like a helmet that he's wearing and it just looks so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh but the point is this here's the trick want to say yeah we are we are pumped about the future and so I am excited for it we do appreciate it and then I always I'm I'm so like what's the word I'm getting used to sharing this is that if you had not known it you guys we were pumped that we have a Patreon which we are excited as it's a lot of fun we love the Patreon and so it's a want to encourage you to check it out if you are excited about the vision of modern day debate namely the goal of a neutral platform hosting debates where everyone has their fair shot to make their case on a level playing field that's our goal that's what we're doing folks and that's what we are excited about doing in the future and so if you're like hey I like that I'm all in well our Patreon is pinned at the top of the chat and so you know consider that and Clay Corbin says Wotan versus Darth yeah that would be interesting we uh we are open to that but I don't know if that's gonna happen Wotan I actually reached out to recently no response I don't know I know he I have no reason to think he's mad he's probably just busy and you know I think that Wotan actually wanted to switch into political topics instead of flat earth that's not a joke I'm totally serious holy holy I I agree Mark Reed if we could host a debate between Nathan Thompson and Kent Hovind it would honestly it would just be insane like nobody wants to host a debate more than me it would actually be epic the only Nathan wants to I think Kent realizes it's outside of his experience and specialization of stuff that he's used to debating and so Kent is the one who says no over and over I've asked him for real more than once I'm pretty sure and I know other people have asked him and so it's a toughie like it'd be it'd be a cool one I agree but bear with me and so see gut-sick Gibbons says don't forget Nathan has the hot gun sunglasses the hot glue gun sunglasses on his hollowed out globe head cosplay I'll never forget being accused of being a member of the globe head space monkey religion by him I remember that oh Erica you were like oh and I think afterwards you were like I don't really want to debate him again we appreciated you being a good sport I'm telling you Erica I'm telling you think about it this way Erica hey we only live once you know we have to we have to seek out the adventures we have to it's kind of like back to the future have you ever seen back to the future the idea is that it's like back to the future absolutely epic fun adventure and we all have that opportunity and Erica that opportunity the equivalent of traveling to the past and the future is debating Mr. Batman okay I just want to let you know that that is the you know you're back to the future adventure Erica okay so I don't know if I told you you guys want to hear a story really quick this was when I was pretty much sick where I was kind of tired of adventures and no I didn't debate Mr. Batman to have an adventure though I mean that'd be a heck of one what I did is I don't know if I ever told you you guys I one time moved into basically there was this ad I think it was on Craigslist maybe I can't remember where it was I think it would have to be where it was they said hey if you have experience working with people with like mental disabilities we are looking for someone who would move in and they had said like with my son and who at the time had he had schizophrenia and I said I'm willing to because I've worked in group homes before and I said I've got experience and I'd be willing to try and so I moved in with this gentleman and what happened was did I ever tell you the story that he tried to kill me no joke I'm totally serious and it wasn't anything to do with schizophrenia like well maybe it was but I want to be clear that like there's a lot of literature that's been published on this that overall when you look at all mental disorders like people with mental disorders are not any more likely or disproportionately represented among those who are violent and so I'm not trying to throw any you know I'm not trying to create any sort of stereotype I want you to know that now what happened though this coincidentally happened to be a case in which no joke the gentleman tried to seemingly tried to kill me and what happened was I don't know what it was but basically he got sick and he threw up in the morning and so his mom let me know she said hey don't let him you know don't let him eat anything the rest of the day because he'll throw it up so just try to you know encourage him to have like seven up and everything and you know that he can hold down and I was like okay okay and so that night he was gonna have a burrito and this is like a long time we would have been living together for eh maybe a month and what was happening was he was gonna have a burrito and I said you can't do that man I'm sorry but you know you'll throw it up and your mom told me I shouldn't I you should just have seven up or juice or something and so what happened was I unplugged his burrito cooker you know the little cooker and he got angry and went to his room and later that night no joke I woke up at about it was probably I think it was 1.30 or 2 in the morning in that range what happened was I smelled gas like there was something funky I smelled so I was like what is that and so I went into because I thought I was like is this coming from the kitchen is this the stove and went into the kitchen and the stove the burner was turned on just enough to where it was letting out gas from the burner and there was yeah basically I was like well that is super weird why would that be the case and what happened was I was trying to figure it out and what I realized though is I realized he was gone so he had left the apartment but before he left he turned the gas on to where it was leaking from the oven and I thought well maybe he just bumped into it you know maybe it's a coincidence because he did like leave sometimes for late night walks but I thought but at the same time this is like later than usual and what happened was I turned off the gas obviously and I tried to let the apartment air out you know turning opening up windows and all that and I went looking for him because I wasn't convinced yet that he was trying to murder me what happened was I eventually found him it was like three in the morning at Walmart he was walking around and I was like hey you know we got to go home and this is again I didn't think that he was actually going to you know I don't think he was trying to murder me yet what happened was I called his mom though because there are other problems where where I was like I don't think this is gonna work out and I let his mom know I said hey um you know the oven was left on and I don't know what's going on here but I just don't feel comfortable living here anymore and you know and I thought maybe this is retaliation because I wouldn't let him have a burrito I maybe just loves burritos I don't know so I told his mom like hey this isn't gonna work and she's like I hope you don't interpret this as like what you know based on what Kyle said and I was like what Kyle say Kyle was the day staff so when I would go to school during the day Kyle would be a guy who basically would come to the apartment and hang out with the fellow that I lived with just to be sure that he his needs were met and and I said what did Kyle say and she's like nothing and she and I was like no but for real what did Kyle say and she's like well you know and I was like I don't know what was it and she's like well Kyle said that you know your roommate said that he planned on gassing the apartment and I was like what are you serious I was like and you think this is a coincidence I was like this is like it is that he was trying to gas me like that's exactly what happened and so long story short I moved out I'm so glad I survived and I didn't get murdered I really enjoy being here I'm thankful I'm alive and so anyway I just want to let you know about that story I'm thankful to be alive and I'm very serious about that I'm thankful because that's seriously I could have gone to sleep that night and never woken up so I'm thankful Guts at Gibbons says so I feel like what you're telling me James is that debating Mr. Batman would be as fun is almost getting killed by someone how on earth could I even consider refusing you but here's the thing it's an adventure if the hobbits never left the Shire what kind of adventure would Lord of the Rings be it would be a boring boring movie you know just Bilbo you know hanging out there and uh and you know Frodo just hanging out at the Shire like you have to go out there and go for it and have that adventure with you know Mr. Batman and so let's see Nero says imagine getting put on a shirt over a burrito and uh Sigma and he said what what did Kyle say that's right yeah I was wondering the same thing thank you club who said that story was much better than a lifetime movie I appreciate that Caleb I really do but yeah you guys I'm excited so thanks for listening to that story it's a yeah I'm I'm like so I am thankful like and uh so what I'm saying is Erica it's time to debate Mr. Batman okay but yeah thank you guys for all your support seriously I love you guys you guys are honestly fun I do appreciate you more than you know Woody thanks for that picture of a burrito Brooke Chavis yeah I totally it's alright TJB says be careful thank you for that Nero says glad you survived me too I appreciate that Sigma and he said came in for a debate state for Bunker story time thank you for that I appreciate that Michael Stein said fire is bad and good yet you're right could be used for good or bad true story wild wilder than now says wow that's a harrowing story I'm glad you're with us too thank you I appreciate that my friends seriously I love you guys I know I'm actually like the for real though I tell it like a joke but I'm like wow that like really seriously like if I I'm a pretty light sleeper and now I'm thankful that I am my whole life I was not thankful that I was I kind of wish that I could just sleep through any but all sorts of things wake me up um sound smells like whatever light I'm pretty like I like to just be in a very controlled space and so um I'm so thankful though because it's like it's absolutely true it would have been the most tragic thing in my life and that's like the yeah so but we uh I appreciate you guys thanks so much Brooke Chavis says jays we need story time after every debate there I could share fun stories about like I used to do couch surfing you guys I don't think I ever told you this um I used to do couch surfing which if you it's like Airbnb except you don't pay it's just it's all about the relationship it's just about you know you make friends and you you stay with them and you get to know them and you you know enjoy each other's company and so yeah you like stay at their place while they're staying there and they're strangers you know they're just on the internet you know they have reviews so people leave reviews for each other anyway I should go it's three and a half hours so want to say thank you guys this is honestly even a blast I totally appreciate you Chris Gammon I'll tell you the other I'll tell you the story some other time because it's a it's a wild one um and so but yeah thank you guys Mr. Pieces James Mr. Batman is not a channel favorite if he comes back on banning from saying the P word I don't even know what P means I don't know if you can email me the word but thank you guys so much for all of your support seriously keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable and skeptic seven seven says would you be just by beating him up if you tried to kill you well he was a small man so I wouldn't if I was trying to defend myself I would try to like restrain somebody so that they're just not able to hurt me but I don't want to like inflict pain on somebody because they're like in any case if I could it seems like if in any case if you could restrain them without causing them you know severe pain like that's way more preferable than beating somebody up it seems like the most controlled way to do it right like it seems like the most wise way to do it because I could see like let's say it's a bar fight and somebody you know and maybe they're not you don't sense that they are disabled right let's say it's at a bar and they want to pick a fight with you and you know I don't like I don't have much I don't have hard words for anybody who like you know after the first punch is thrown you know they beat up the other person and I'm like yeah I kind of understand they're in fear mode and you know they're it's like fight or flight kind of thing so I'm kind of like yeah I don't blame them but like I feel like the most controlled thing would be like in any case you you just try to ideally you know take them down to the ground restrain them so they can't hurt you anymore and you know then you don't have to hurt them either and maybe it hurts a little when you restrain them but not like you punched them Michelle Louise Davis says hi thanks for coming by Michelle good to see you again guts to give it says a very heavy sleeper but once I woke up to the smell of my dog having thrown up five times it's kind of like your story but just with a smidge less attempted murder that's so true I'm so glad nobody has tried to murder you it's uh the funny thing is it never really traumatized me I don't know why for some reason I took it pretty well I don't know like I I feel like I would have been more like rocked by it emotionally but it's just kind of like yeah I mean like I guess it was just because I think I knew that it was the schizophrenia but Nero says more stories from James I would love to share more stories we should do this more often this is fun and then Chris Gennett says nice to meet you thanks James thank you my friend thanks for coming by top out too good to see you King 101 yeah this was a long one and a fun one thanks Brooke Chavez for coming by says good night everyone good night thanks everybody for hanging out with us love you guys seriously you make this fun appreciate you guys I hope you have a great night keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable as we strive to provide that level platform thanks everybody appreciate you hope you feel welcome no matter what walk of life you're from thanks and we will see you tomorrow night we have an epic debate you guys so I do want to encourage you you don't want to miss it guys that's going to be epic Maddox and Randolph are going to cross swords tonight and so we are pumped for it and so thank you guys sigman he says thanks James thanks chat department good health and grand grand spirits thank you my friend and Manic Panis says she should have at least apologized for her son trying to kill you James yeah she was in denial like she was like oh no that's not what it was and I was like I don't know like how many data points do we need here I was like like I imagine if you like kept living in the place it's like you'd have to be kind of dumb to keep living in the place at that point right it just seemed like it was like ah it's definitely what I lean toward but Saito Nav says used to see some great fights at the Ram Skeller interesting I'm trying to think of where the Ram Skeller is but I don't get out much for real thank you guys keep sifting all the reasonable from the unreasonable take care everybody love you guys