 Hey everybody, welcome to episode number seven of Patterson in Pursuit. I am your host, Steve Patterson, and like I said at the beginning of this series, my intention is not just to talk to professors and people in the ivory tower, I also want to talk to pretty much anybody that I find interesting. And one person I find interesting is Mr. Michael Malis, who's become kind of a television personality and he's a successful writer and author. And we were speaking about a month ago or so just informally, and somehow the philosophy of egoism came up and he considers himself an egoist, which is something I find really fascinating. I know a lot of my listeners do too. So this is a great interview. We talk, we cover egoism, we talk about Ayn Rand, we talk about religion. And I have to give a little plug here for capitalism because I'm in the middle of New York City, right, and my wife and I are about to leave for Ireland. And we wanted to get a few interviews while we were in New York City. And one of the troubles with New York City is that it's very loud. And because entrepreneurs out there in the world want to satisfy, consumer demands, there is an app that's called Breather, which I discovered online. And it allows you to rent a quiet space by the hour in New York City, or at least a relatively quiet space because it's New York City. And they have this awesome sign up bonus where you can use your first hour for free or whatever. So we met in downtown Manhattan for this conversation in a building that neither of us had been to. We just, I pulled up my smartphone, I hit the button on the app, boom, the door unlocked, and then I got a relatively quiet space. So if anybody's in a similar circumstance and you need a quick quiet space for, you just need to get away, you need a phone conversation, an audio video interview, check out the app Breather. And if you visit the show notes page, steve-patterson.com, slash seven, there's also a sign up code where you can get a free hour as well. You sign up with that code, I'll get another free hour. So it's really neat, it's a very seamless experience. So my guest is Michael Mallis, who's a best-selling author and writer, whose most recent book is entitled Dear Reader, The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong-il, which has received pretty much universal praise. So if you haven't picked up a copy, make sure to pick up a copy. There's a link in the show notes page. Michael also has an upcoming book co-authored with D.L. Hugley called Black Man White House, an oral history of the Obama years. And that's going to be coming out very soon. So I really hope you enjoy and learn something from this interview. So first of all, Michael, thank you for sitting down and speaking with me today. Thank you. You're an interesting guy. And you have some... That's always a euphemism, you know? No, no, it's a good thing. I didn't say it's a good thing. You're kind of known as being a provocateur, I think is fair to say. Sure. And I want to dive into your own personal philosophy, not necessarily what you would say publicly on air, but what your actual worldview is as an individual. Okay. We had a very brief conversation maybe a month or so ago, and somehow the philosophy of egoism came up, which is, well, I'll let you talk about it, but it has to do with the relationship of the individual in relation to other people. What is important for the individual? Is it self-sacrifice? Is it living for yourself? And it's kind of a radical worldview, in the sense that it's not very socially acceptable. There might be some conclusions that people find unsavory, but I think it's very persuasive, very interesting philosophy, so I was hoping you could explain a little bit about egoism and what you find persuasive about it and maybe what you don't. Well, I'm just gonna add one caveat, which is something I'm very against in philosophy is this Kantian universibility principle, which is the idea that if I'm living a certain way, I expect everyone else to live that way or let alone anyone else to live that way. And I don't agree with that at all. It's something I find true for me and it doesn't work for you or you find it wrong. That's fine as long as you're treating me with respect and treat my friends kindly. So a lot of times when I, if I have a certain point of view and people hear it and they don't like it and they're like, well, prove it to me, it's like, I don't care what you think. And I mean that quite sincerely. I only care how you act and people are very bad at acting in accordance with their beliefs anyway. So it's even more irrelevant what someone thinks in general. So the definition of egoism, I think a good heuristic definition is that the self is either the basis or the end of all moral values. And I think that both of those things are true. However, it kind of has these implications that like other people either don't matter or our means to an end. And I think those are very narrow definitions of egoism because egoism probably understood is human beings have a specific nature. We are rational animals. We're also social animals. And here's a good example of egoism that kind of defeats that definition. When I was giving a talk once at Phi, I said, a networking talk, I said, if you ever know someone, even if you're used to acquaintances with them and they happen to be in your town and they're not celebrating their birthday, like this happened to a friend of mine, acquaintance of mine, call him up, take him out. And when I do this, I do this for myself and the audience laughed and I go, but it's true because who wouldn't wanna be that guy? Who wouldn't want to be someone who takes somebody else out on their birthday? Otherwise they're gonna be stuck in a hotel room. So there's no contradiction between being kind and considerate and looking out for number one because being an egoist also means, in a sense like Albert Camus, you get to define who you are as a human being. And hopefully, a smart egoist is going to wanna be an awesome human being. And that awesome human being is gonna have a very strong support network and it's gonna have a lot of reciprocity. So this idea of egoism as being someone who's just kind of like out to screw people over, Yaron Brooke, who is the head of the Iron Man Institute, who gives these talks about, look, do you think Bernie Madoff, who's regarded as an egoist, was actually happy? He's lying to literally everyone in his life. His entire existence is a scam. Yes, he's wealthy, but at any moment that sort of damocles is gonna drop. Do you really think he sleeps the sleep of the just? Of course not. I think these are things that people have to keep in mind when talking about egoism. Now, the popular response to that would be, oh, that's very cold. That on the one hand, yes, it's great that you're acting in this way that helps other people and makes them feel special, but it lacks empathy, that you don't genuinely care for the well-being of others. It's always kind of with an asterisk by it. That it's, oh, sure, I care about you, but that's because I wanna be the guy that people know as the empathetic one. How would you respond to something like that? Is that true or is that just kind of a smear? Well, I think there is some truth to it. If I hear the news that someone I don't know has died, I mean, I think people, they can only empathize with that if, for example, someone who looks like my mom died or someone who in some way I can relate to, people are, as we're speaking, people are dying all the time. It's not, I don't think emotionally really possible, honestly, to kind of feel for each one of them. I think, again, given that we are social beings, there is a psychological need to be around people who value you and respect you and receive you and to have that reciprocated. So I don't think it's really a valid criticism and I think what happens is when you stop, start putting other people first, they're not really responding to you as you, they're responding to you as this, something you're putting forward and you're not addressing who you are as a person and what matters to you. And that's where I find the real connections between human beings are. When you're with someone and you're being vulnerable and you're showing what you care about and they respond to that in kind, I think. But is that the appearance of connection or is that like a genuine connection? So I could see, and I have always suspected, for whatever reason, that my own brain structure is more along the, on the sociopathic end of the spectrum where I have a very difficult time. You're not charming enough to be a sociopath. Let's say autism. So sociopath is an autistic is charming, right? Okay, okay. I think that's technically true, actually. So here's the thing, is I could be and I know I could be because I was. I used to be back in the day, I used to be a lie, I used to be a pathological liar. For whatever reason, I guess I did have some measure of empathy and I thought this is not a good way of doing things where I would lie and manipulate people for my own ends and didn't really feel that torn up about it. That's not the case anymore, I've kind of had a conversion but I know that that's in me, is that kind of coldness and I'm aware of that. But is that, and sadly I'm comfortable with that just because I always feel like I can emotionally shut off and just really things don't get to me unless I actively try to allow myself. But if you're emotionally shut off, you're not happy by definition, right? So that's- That's not true. No, it's not true. In that state of mind, maybe not the one I'm in now, but in that state of mind, the happiness comes from the achieving of your own ends. Sure. And if my ends at that point didn't include making other people feel good or happy, I wasn't really emotionally connected to them, it was more like, oh good, this was a means to my end and it worked out and I felt happy. But did you not, you didn't feel lonely? No, and well, descriptively perhaps but the loneliness didn't bother me. So lonely in the sense that yeah, I might not have this really deep connection with somebody like I do now, my wife, but lonely just in terms of yeah, I mean I don't have a deep connection with anybody, that's great, I don't really care unless it was a means to an end. Well, I can't really speak to that because that way of thinking is quite literally alien, I think to me and probably to most people and I think my life is enormously rich by having people around where I can be myself and have people smile and laugh and enjoy my company. So if I was just by myself all the time, I'm pretty awesome and I am by myself a lot, I work from home and so on and so forth but I can't imagine that being fulfilling at least for me and this speaks to what I was saying at the very beginning just because it doesn't work for me doesn't mean it's not gonna work for somebody else. And so that's kind of what I'm, it almost sounds like the bad interpretation, the inaccurate interpretation of egoism is where I might have been and self-aware of it at the time. So would you say then the connections you're seeking out with people are ultimately rooted in a desire for your own self-satisfaction or is there some like human connection where it's like just by virtue of the fact that other people are humans, you want that connection with them for their own sake as well? No, I don't, I'm a huge, since I was a kid when I was a kid I wanted to be a zookeeper so I'm a huge zoology person so I don't regard human beings as special and awesome and every human life is magic. I reject that completely. That's also a function of growing up in a Soviet household so that kind of thinking is just completely foreign to me. Yeah, and if I'm going to feel an emotion there's going to be something egoist about it and it's very rude because I'm the one who's feeling like I'm glad when I help people and not from the sense that like I'm a do-gooder but in the sense that I've marginally made the world a better place because someone who I respect like or admire their life has been thereby improved through my action so it's kind of like increasing you, whatever that Greek word is that I can't pronounce but I'm sure you know. So that's my perspective. So just the idea that like I've done good for some, well, I mean at the same time I work with North Korea like I'm sure many of those people whose lives I marginally, even the slightest margin helped, you know, it's great. I'm sure many of them are terrible people just like people here. Now it's great because it helps you or it's great because it brings you satisfaction to bring well-being to other people. If they don't have intrinsic value, why is that great? Well, that's a fair question. I'm not patting myself on the back and deluding myself into thinking that I really had much of an impact on North Korean situation. However, you know, you go there and you see how they live and there's just some kind of broader moral principle of this is just wrong and people shouldn't live like this. So I guess once you get to a point then it's like right now you're on your own. Maybe like once you get past the Maslow when they're, if you don't have to worry about food and food and these other things which I think are just basic human needs and you don't have to worry about these day-to-day resources that I'm like, you know what? You're all set. That's very interesting. So you do have some measure of like de facto empathy towards- Is that empathy? Well, do you feel the same way towards ants or other lesser creatures or plants that as long as they have some base level of- No, not really. I guess you're right. But I also don't feel that way towards other countries. I guess it speaks that way because, you know, North Korea is as close as you can go to going to the Soviet Union during the Stalin or Lenin. So being born in the Soviet Union, there's something very personal about it to me. So you don't feel that way towards the status of somebody in India? Well, I don't know that much about India but let's say Venezuela, I don't feel that way. So do you not feel that way at all as there's no absolutely zilch connection to the human beings that are, that don't have Maslow's hierarchy of means? They don't have that basic- You know, I want to, like, let's put it this way, I never think about the people in Venezuela other than, you know, brother, you asked for this kind of situation. Whereas in North Korea, you know, having been there and having done work with it, it's a very different situation. I think it's also just human nature that once you've seen it and once you've interacted, it stops being theoretical and it starts being real. So I'm sure if I went to Venezuela and I saw this, it's just like, oh my gosh. At the same time, the people in North Korea, I've met refugees and this is how horrible North Korea is, they have a lot of starving homeless children and they call them Kochebi, which is North Korean for sparrow because since they're stunted by malnutrition, they have big heads and little bodies and they bounce along the road looking for food, right? And I met refugees and I'm like, what's like seeing these kids? And the refugees said they were a nuisance because they're all over the place and you're like, get away, I'm not giving you food. So it's a bunch of this is contextual. Being in New Yorker when you see homeless people in the subway who smell and just have their bags of garbage, you stop also because you know they have shelters or food more than they can want. So there's a lack of a measure of empathy there. So I guess I don't really have a good answer for you. I bet you very much though, if I went to Venezuela and I had any friends there, it would be a very different situation, which I think is normal. And maybe it's not justifiable, but it's still normal. Yeah, and I find that obviously that would be socially impolite to say, but I do find that somewhat compelling. What do you think about something like, this is again, theory, because we have no connection to concretes here, but the state of like children in Venezuela, because I could see the argument that look, if you're an adult and you're going along with a system and this is, you know, you haven't escaped or whatever you've kind of put yourself in a circumstance that you could make it better. But what about those human beings that are five years old and they just by sheer bad luck, they find themselves there? Do you have any kind of connection? I actually have less connection to the kids than to the adults, because I do have this kind of very old fashioned idea that kids matter less than grownups. Kids not a fully adult human being and kids are annoying as a rule and so on and so forth. So I mean, a kid is a tragedy, but all of nature, you know, if you believe in creationism, which I of course don't, but if your creation has got invented nature on the basis of eating children, like a fish will have one million offspring, that 999,000 is going to be eaten and one is going to survive. So children dying is thanks to free markets is only a very recent phenomenon that's been overcome. And historically speaking, you know, children have not been given this great value. So those five year olds, it's just like they're cute, but I don't really, but the other thing when you go to, it's the thing is when you go to North Korea and you hear those kids and until the day I die hearing their chest cold and them coughing in the school and these are the kids of the elites knowing they can't get medicine, that that's also completely devastating and heartbreaking will haunt me till the rest of my life until hopefully they're free. So I guess this is just cognitive dissonance displaying itself. So I want to know, do you think that, how much of that belief, which is really taboo to say in the United States, how much of that belief comes from the Soviet Union and Russian culture? You think that there's this, it's a mixture of realism and a little bit of despair, a little bit of coldness that look kids died as a fact. Well, I also resent enormously how parents have this, American parents have this enormous, enormous, enormous sense of entitlement that they will bring their kid, you go to a bar and there's, I've been to a bar and there's screaming children running around, they'll bring them on the plane, they'll bring them anywhere. And it's, I'm a huge animal person, like you know, at the same time, you can't bring your dog everywhere. And people would rather ask for forgiveness and permission and have absolutely no sympathy for that. So this has given me enormous amount of disdain for our children, so maybe it's the parents fault. But I don't know that that's a Soviet thing per se so much as the idea that everyone is special. First of all, very few adults are special and certainly kids. And there's gonna be that one special kid in every class and everyone else is just gonna be some cookie cutter loser who grows up to watch the Big Bang Theory. So let's continue a little bit on this line here with whenever somebody wants to play the Trump card, they start talking about the children, but what about the children? For you, you wouldn't, I would assume you wouldn't say the idea of the rights that people have these deontological rights that every human being is not necessarily special, but they have this rights that should be respected by everybody. Do you reject that idea as well? No, not at all. Oh, you don't? No, of course. So you don't reject the idea? I don't reject the idea. I accept the idea. Yes, people have rights to be secure in their person. Okay, and what do you think the status of those rights are? Is that a convention or do you think that this is like a part of nature that there are these rights out there that we all have respect? Yeah, I think it's a moral absolute and that's, you know, rights determine the way civilized human beings treat each other. Okay, so, well, that opens up a couple of questions. One is... And that the only rights are property rights. Only rights are property rights. As a, and you're saying this is not a statement of human convention, this is a natural rights, property rights are natural rights. Okay, let's go into that then. Where do you get your justification for the existence of something like property rights as a natural phenomena rather than a convention? Sure, it's the rule of logic. So if you feel comfortable going up and assaulting someone, you can't complain when that person or 80,000 people, you know, treats you in the same exact manner. So it's basically the prisoner's dilemma is one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is just you can't complain just in a logical sense when you are treated as you are treating others. But that, so that's, that would be, that sounds like a very practical standpoint. Like if we're gonna organize society in some way, let's make this a principle. Hey, you don't hurt me, I'm not hurt, that's not our mutual stuff. Well, I wouldn't use that word because if you have a right to hurt people, just you can't have a right to, you know, you're gonna treat them as a civilized person, you're gonna treat them as a savage, you know, it's your pick, either it's fine and you're gonna be treated accordingly. Okay, so would you say then, this is great, this actually sounds like a little bit like karma, in a sense, where the status of rights is not necessarily normative, it's more descriptive. In the sense that this is, are you comfortable with should statements? So usually when people are talking about natural rights, they say, oh, you should act this way, you shouldn't. No, I'm not comfortable with should statements at all. Okay, so this is more, when you say there are rights, it's more just a fact of nature. Right, it's a fact of logic, yeah. I see, I can see where this would lend towards kind of a distance or a lack of, what people might call a lack of empathy, where you're just saying, look, that person's property rights were violated, but there's nothing cosmologically wrong with that, this isn't like a cosmological violation of justice, just factually speaking, somebody stole from somebody else. I think justice is a religious concept. I think it's a very dangerous word. I think, for example, let's suppose me and you, had an eBay exchange, right? And I bought a jacket from you and you mailed it to me, and there was an honest mistake you made with this jacket, you thought it was this limited edition, it's not the limited edition, I'm gonna mail it back to you, you say fine. The question is who's gonna pay the return shipping? Now, in a just sense, you know what I mean? But if we split the difference and we both walk away whole, that's I think preferable to actual justice. So when people cry out for justice, as opposed to just kind of taking a loss, you're gonna have to kind of cut these deals in day-to-day society. So justice is a very, very dangerous idea when it comes to dealing with people's lives, because it leads, when you're self-righteous, lots of bad, like in divorce, you know? This is the problem with divorces, is that one couple's like, I've been wronged, I need justice, and this case drags on for years. That's not how things work out in reality. So that's very interesting. Usually when people talk about natural rights, what fits into their worldview is justice. That's a big part of it. And this is interesting that it's natural rights without any justice at all. Well, there's some justice, but I'm saying the idea to hold this as this kind of absolute club to beat other people, and it's very, very hard to put into practice on a day-to-day basis. So you do think that there is, what is your conception of justice? Is this something like you would say, I know there's a big school of philosophy that thinks it is, in a sense, cosmic justice as in like when somebody is wronged and then there's some kind of restitution that is justice, or do you think it's just justice is this word that we give to things that we like how situations are resolved? Oh, that's justice. Well, I think that's the problem is that it has these both definitions and people toggle between the two of them, right? So I don't know what yours is. I don't ever think of that word or use that term because I think it's needlessly slippery. So again, yes, let's suppose it's unjust that situation X happened, but if both sides can save face and work out a compromise and maybe justice hasn't been served, but peace and stability has been served, I mean, I'd gladly sacrifice justice for a fair in some sense piece that both sides are comfortable with. And that's the problem with the state is that two people will be like, we've got some kind of equitable solution that we could both live with, we'll just take a little bit of a loss and then say it's like, no, this isn't justice. On the third party, I'm gonna insinuate myself and force an outcome that reduces utility. I'm not utilitarian, but reduces utility for everyone concerned. It's like, you know what, that's really not helping anyone. Okay, now I do wonder what your perspective is on something like manipulation. So if, I know we touched on this a little bit earlier, but given your conception of the importance of individuals, individuals valuing their ends and not necessarily giving them- I didn't say individuals are important. I said I'm important. So that's not the same. I also told you explicitly, most people aren't not important. Right, right. So this is exactly what I wanted to talk about. Given those conceptions that you have, are you comfortable with the idea of, I mean, you might call it frankly, just manipulation, that there are some people that for whatever reason really aren't valuable and using them as a means to your ends, even if it causes some detriment to them, so be it. Not it causes detriment to them, no. Probably not. Why not? Because it's kind of, I think- Because you just feel bad about it. I don't want to be that guy. You know what I mean? He's a dick. That said, if I'm manipulating them for hilarity, then that is a very different kind of situation. And that's kind of detrimental. And that's kind of using them as a means to an end. Yeah, no, so I think, underlying, I think the answer to that is that you're okay with that because you value not being an ass. And you- You know, I own assholeism.com, so I can't really say that I'm an ass. And you do value mockery. So in other words, it's entirely dependent on your evaluation of the circumstance, whether or not you're kind of okay with manipulating somebody, because they don't have any kinds of intrinsic value. It's just, it's in your own benefit to mock them versus, you know, steal from them or something. Well, I would say mockery is the highest form of justice we have. When we take a someone who is lower in some sense, whether a politician or just a horrible human being, and reduce them to a gibbering mess, that is justice in its purest form. Like- To you, though. I think in a cosmic sense, what has been done to Jeb Bush in this last presidential campaign is lady justice took off her scales and she's wiping her tears away with that kerchief, laughing her ass off. Now, does that apply, though, if the person isn't like a politician or somebody that's, as you would put it, lower, like just your average Joe on the street that you don't really have any connection with? No, average Joe, no. But let's, okay. But is that just because it would make you an ass which you're not comfortable with? No, I don't think, it's a question of do they warrant it. Like, here's a good example. There are people who come on the subway, blast their stereo and start doing, I wrote an article about this for The Guardian and start doing these dance moves, right? Like, you were trapped like in a sardine can. It's illegal and just, you don't go to anyone's house or even a dance club and blast your own music. Now, if I saw one of them leave the train station, slip a nice and crack their head open, that would be great, you know? And 100% wonderful. Like, absolutely. So you wouldn't feel any kind of empathy? I would feel delighted. Really? But genuine. That's not hyperbole or entertainment, that's genuine. I made this argument, which is this. I'm an anarchist, of course. We are going to have, if we have police, my ideal situation, ideally, no police. However, given that I have to have police, wouldn't I rather the police be giving beatings to people who deserve it than people don't deserve it? Again, ideally no police. Now, people who deserve it in your estimation, meaning they're doing this really impolite thing on the subway? Then they're a good example. Now, can we push that further? Sure. To what extent are you comfortable with their cracking your head open? Are you talking like death? I mean, would you be comfortable saying, if those people just died? Oh well. I wouldn't be comfortable advocating it, but I wouldn't shed a tear kind of thing. But internally, that is such a personal question, but in your evaluation, in your worldview, internally are you going, oh good, let's ask. It might be more than one, because that person might be a good example, right? So you're saving a lot of other people from getting their ass kicked, right? Okay, so it sounds like? It's both. Okay, and you don't feel, now of course you realize this is like socially, anathema, like how would you say such an absolute rule? Not really, it's decreasing. You don't think so? In New York, these people are terrible. And they're violent, they're kicking people in the face. Oh really? I mean, they've been joke about, they're like, oh congratulations, no one got kicked in the face today. If you're joking about sometimes you kick people in the face, you need a beating. A beating or death? Well, sometimes beatings get, police are incompetent, and sometimes beatings get out of hand. Again, I don't want the police. Let's not say it's a police beating. Let's say somebody's doing their little routine on the subway, and they slip, and they just have a brain hemorrhage because they knock into something. Ultimately, are you thinking? I'm thinking God's real. I mean, that is proof. I mean, that's funny, and it is funny. But I'm saying deep down, is that truly what you think you feel? I would feel nothing but happiness, yes, 100%. Someone like that? Absolutely. See, that's fascinating, because even me with the, I don't think every human being is valuable. And all I know of this person is that they are choosing to insinuate themselves to the lives of everyone on the train, act in a violent manner toward them, and I'm supposed to care when they get their own just rewards, no. Would you make this, would you think this is a fair analogy, that it would be identical? Because you don't place value on the individual human beings by necessity, that it would be like we're essentially dogs, just advanced dogs, and one dog that's going around biting people on the ankles gets hit by a car. Yeah, that's a great example, yeah. So I wonder, you mentioned before that you think justice might be kind of a religious term, and maybe that, I think that's, historically that certainly is the case. Do you have in your own worldview, are you drawn towards any religious arguments when we're talking about this, when we're talking about human rights, and maybe how one should live their life, or is that something that you think, like organized religion, is just a complete waste of time, or do you think that there's any merit to what we consider to be religion? Well, it's obviously not a complete waste of time because many people's lives are better as a result of religion. So there's some merit to it, but I mean, it's not for me, and that's fine. I mean, I know people who have become religious, and as a function of becoming religious, they are better husbands and better fathers, and then so on. I have friends who are in AA, which is a religious organization, and if your brain has the compulsion to drink alcohol, which is something broken in your brain, and you have to break it another way, make it double negative, and accept all this religious philosophy to kind of cancel it out, I'm not gonna begrudging that. So this is, again, this is hesitant to say, but I think this is a utilitarian approach. Sure. Religion, and I think it would be hard-pressed to disagree that for a lot of people, religion, that belief system, whatever the religion is, has an enormous amount of good on their lives in terms of maybe that makes, they make peace with their family, or they're trying to aspire to live more moral lives. Even Rand, Rand praised religion. Like people think she's the worst atheist ever, but she explicitly said religion, she respects religion because as she puts it, it's a primitive canned form of philosophy. Now I wouldn't put in those terms, but her point is, if you have a philosophical code and you live by it to day to day, you're going to be a better person for it. The problem is most religions are not possible to fully put into practice, and then you get all sorts of ways to cheat, and cynicism creeps out, but in many ways, certainly religion at least gets you thinking about morality, and that's already better than 90% of people who are like mouth breathers. Right. Well, so there's always two claims here. One is that religion works for people, we might summarize things that way. The other is that the claims to actual metaphysical claims of religion are accurate, and a lot of times so, my background is in Christian evangelicalism, and both of my parents were very hardcore Christian evangelicals, and I would certainly say, without hesitation, that that, especially with my mother, it enormously shaped her life in a positive way. I mean, she was just this incredible loving person. Yeah, but her son's a pathological liar. That's genetics. Was, by the way, was a pathological liar. Sure. But they took whole cloth, the idea of the metaphysical truth of it, and biblical literalism, and everything like that, and I was raised in that, and so I had those beliefs, and then as I discovered philosophy, and logic, and all these things, I moved away from that. I still, since as far as I can remember, thought that specifically, the philosophy of Jesus Christ makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense to me, yeah, I saw that. I love the idea of, like it's radical humility. But, the metaphysical claims, a bit dubious, to say the least, especially when you're talking about biblical literalism, and then, a few years ago, I had this experience where I tactilely experienced love in this way that completely changed my life, and that was kind of a big turning point from the sociopathy to now this different version where I really genuinely care about people, and I wonder. You can't use that word, because there's sociopathy is almost certainly not treatable, let alone curable. That's an open question, because I still see it within myself, but they just, Sociopaths don't wanna change. Well, I didn't. I didn't see the need for it until I had that experience. It really was this conversion experience, the experience of love that was like, oh, wow, there's this whole another thing that. But they're not capable of that by definition. Well, that's what I'm saying is, well, I don't know that's the case, I don't think we can take it as just an assertion. That's the definition of it. There's people, they don't have the toolbox. But it might be that they'd never found themselves. No, that's the definition of sociopath. So if you were saying, like you could be pathological liar, you could be emotionally stunted, I'm not using that pejorative sense, but never. No, of course. But a literal sociopath is not fixable. But I don't think we can say that. It's because it might be the case that the sociopaths who we consider to be unfixable haven't had the kind of experience that I had. That was just worldview-shattering. But that's the definition. Yeah, but it's a bad definition because. But that's the diagnostic definition, let's say. But there's no way that we could ever know. We can't say in this circumstance, this person would act in this certain way. On your unicorn, Steve. Okay, what's the question? So the question is, part of that experience that I had also changed my metaphysical beliefs, where I thought, you know what? I don't agree with 95% of this organized religion stuff. I think literalism is outrageous. But I do think there's something more. I think that to try to explain the phenomenon of love as I experienced it with like a physicalist terminology within this very like atheist terminology, didn't find it. I experienced something that seemed outside of that or more than that, metaphysically speaking. And I'm still trying to piece together all of the philosophic implications of that. Do you think that that is, there's any metaphysical possibility of something that is greater than just the standard atheist argument of everything can be reduced to physical matter or nothing means anything. There's no narrative for the universe. Well, I think I can't speak what's going on in your mind, of course. I think if I was going to argue against atheism, falling in love is a weak argument, not in the sense that it's not true, but it's very hard to... It's subjective. It's very subjective. And it also is, it's one of the argument that stupid people use for God. It's just like, like, how can you deny God exists, look at the sunset, you know that kind of thing. And it's like, this is one of the easiest I've talked to Tom Woods about this at length. I am under the delusion that I never call myself an atheist. And I think it's a useful delusion or a fact either way that there is some kind of script going on. And here's why. If I told you that I was going to sit down with the late Harvey P. Carr and I was going to get along with him so well that this guy who had made a living writing comic books about his life was going to write a graphic novel about me, I would be certifiably narcissistic and should be put away because this is demented. Yes, that's exactly what happened. So there have been many things in my life that if I had with a straight face, posited this is going to happen, I would be the most pompous ass, even putting myself as I currently am to shame. Yet they have happened. So I think there's some part of our brain that convinces us that we, our choices and our experiences are going to be limited and don't reach for the stars. And these are very natural impulses and instincts or whatever they are, they're in the wiring. So it's very helpful to override them and be like, that is just false and something else is going on. Now there's... But that's just for me. I can't speak for anybody else. Oh, of course. Yeah, certainly. There's one position which would say to believe in a scripting as you put it is useful. And it's maybe you might even say it's psychologically healthy in terms of being motivated. But in the back of your mind, it might be like, okay, I have this belief, but it's probably false. You know, I have, it's willing wishful thinking so that I might be motivated to do these other things or think that I'm special or whatever it is. Is your belief coupled with an, like in the back of your mind, you actually think there is scripting or is it more practical than that? It's backed up by data because every single time I've had a crisis situation and my mind, which is very creative, is imagining all these horrific outcomes. None of those have ever come true and it's always worked out literally every single time. Now, this is also a function of living in America where the odds of something really bad happening to me are pretty low. But at the same time, my animal brain resource scarcity is screaming, you're going to be that naked caveman in Savannah and the lions are going to be eating you. So it's, I mean, I think that's how I would answer that. No. So it's not relevant to me whether this is what the truth is. It's just, I mean, it's relevant that I'm basing this on actual data and I'm shutting my anxious brain up. Well, one of the things that I find, what I would have found as of a couple of years ago, absolutely staggering, but since my own experience, I find, I still find it remarkable, is a lot of people say the same thing. There are, one of the things I'm doing in this podcast series is I'm talking to people about these experiences that they've had that are inexplicable. Like my experience of love, I'm not trying to persuade anybody to say, oh yeah, God exists because of, I feel in love. Doesn't make any sense. It makes, if you understand my own story and how all these things unfolded, it was like, wow, this is scripted. That's the way, that is the most plausible explanation. A ton of people have that experience in their own life. But I am interested in the truth and I wonder if your experiences are backed up by data, I don't doubt that. Do you think that that implies then that there is some kind of a God, that there is a scripture? I have no idea. And I don't think this is something I would ever be able to get any progress toward, whether this is my brain tricking itself or whether it's something external. And I think in both those cases it would look psychologically identical. And that doesn't bother, you're just okay with saying that I can get this far and say things appear scripted, but whether or not that's illusory or whether or not that is actual scripting is kind of irrelevant. Here's the difference between our upbringings. Now that this is all coming out and I need you to force me to think about this. I went to Yeshiva, which for your listeners who don't understand is Jewish school. So half the day we were taught in Hebrew, half the day we were taught in English. And the first time I met evangelical Christians was when I was working with UFC champion Matt Hughes on his autobiography and he asked me to come to church with him and I did. And I was very offended because the pastor spoke about Winnie the Pooh more than Jesus. And to me, coming from like this kind of, the school was religious Jewish, right? You know, you have this reverence for God. You can't like, you know, you don't ever, if you drop the Bible, you kiss it, you like, you don't ever, you know, like I, when I saw him autographing Bibles with people I audibly gas because the author autographs it. Even though I don't, it was just kind of a relic. Like, and you know, when Jews in synagogue read the Bible, the rabbi at the front of the room, he uses a stick with a hand on it so he's not touching the page. Like it's that reverent because this is, because again, the Torah is supposed to be God's word given to Moses. So these words are magic and everything's so fine. So it's over. And they asked me what I thought of the afterlife. You know, we had after him and his buddies and it struck me according to the Jewish worldview and I'm not religious in any sense. In the Jewish sense, life is a huge blessing. God wants you to be happy and fulfilled. And if you question that, it's like slapping God in the face, right? It's just like, I've given you life and you're challenging me. Like, like have some respect, right? And if all these questions about the afterlife, it's the idea is he's got it taken care of. And for you to be like rummaging through his drawers, I mean, you can imagine what that, you know, the implications that are. So this idea of like questioning and being like, oh, let's, let's see what's behind this curtain was subconsciously, and I think correctly, very much put into my head from a very young age. And I think that's really one of the worst aspects of Christianity specifically, where they think life's a dress rehearsal and this idea that life's a dress rehearsal. That's very, very pernicious. Even if you do believe in God, I mean, he put you on earth for a reason. And the idea that this is just a way station is I think a toxic, toxic idea. Yeah, and I will piggyback on that in the sense that in my own evangelical upbringing, there is a mixture, like I have a lot of respect for my mom's Christianity in particular, because she really, she really lived it. In the sense that 95% of Christians, you meet are just pompous assholes, if I may say so. What kind of people? And when you question them about their justification for their beliefs, it comes up with I have faith, which I don't find compelling. But there's kind of a split where there was a lot of people who also would have agreed with the Jewish idea that you can't talk about the afterlife and how might it work, how presumptuous of human beings. But there was another group of people that said, well, there's nothing to fear here. It's gotta be worked out somewhere, so let's explore. And I think one of the, well, especially because I'm really interested in epistemology and justification for beliefs, one of the things I find revolting about modern religion, 95% of modern religions, is that it seems to be reliant on the faith aspect and it's worn as a badge of pride. This is a, I am so religious and God loves me so much. I'm doing such a good job that I'm not going to question. That, I think, is the antithesis of if a God exists, what he would want. Like, if the truth is out there about these type of things, God's not like, oh, you can't go that far. It's like, well, it's gonna work itself out. So there's no mystery there. But I wonder what you think about that. Like, were your parents very religious in that way? No, no, no, every Russian's an atheist. So they're not religious at all ever and they have nothing but disdain for it. But they knew that sending me to a private school as opposed to sending me to public school when I moved to America when I was two was a no-brainer, because they saw what public school does. Okay, this is great. So you brought up before Rand. And what I have heard is that at some point in your life, if not currently, you were persuaded by objectivism. Sure. Randian ideas. Are you, do you consider yourself an objectivist? Or did you consider yourself an objectivist? And if you aren't, why not? Well, by definition, I'm not objectivist because I'm an anarchist. So according to Rand, I'm not an objectivist. So that's unambiguous. Also, I have a sense of humor, so I'm not an objectivist in that sense. I was heavily influenced by her and the line I always say is Ayn Rand doesn't have all the answers but she has all the questions and she teaches young people how to think. And once you start thinking, you realize there's big gaping holes in her philosophy. To begin with, her philosophy is based on this idea of the tabular rasa that we're born as a blank slate. And basically every single idea we have is a function of external factors and this is complete nonsense. The idea that basically we can reason our way through everything is also not complete nonsense, but largely false. And there's lots of other. I mean, Ayn Rand does not seem to me as a happy person. And she described happiness as the condition that comes upon achieving your goals. I'm sure I'm missing up the definition a little bit. And she did not seem to live a happy life. In fact, when she passed away, one of her closest associates sighed and said, the anger is gone. And Rand had righteous anger. Her anger was justified. She saw things that were wrong and she called them out. At the same time, she had kind of little to show for it. So I don't think she, and she always did hold herself up as a model of objective as a made flesh. And that was, I mean, she was a cat lady. She refused to have her cat spade so that, because she thought sex was high value. So her cat is spraying all over her apartment and scratching up her sofas, you know? So, you know, there's lots, she's probably on the spectrum, let's just say. But I think she's extremely important. I think the people who follow her nowadays are comical. Follow her like in the Ein-Rand Institute sense. There was one of these guys who's on Facebook and he went on this whole rant against Trump and I couldn't resist tweaking him when I said, how tragic is it that a student of Ein-Rand is going to condemn a man who literally builds skyscrapers? So it was very, very fun. They are, you know, as an example of how they operate, I remember during the, what was that tsunami in like the Southeast in Thailand. In Thailand. And I think that day, that day, they put out a full page editorial, I think it was The New York Times, about how a full page ad that, you know, government charity is wrong and yada, yada, yada. I'm like, is this really the time and the place? And is there any better example of government than like, okay, we're gonna get a lot of money to throw it at this emergency and get people out of these trees? So they really are bad at persuading people and are very off-putting. And I mean, I enjoy tweaking them. I don't tweak them because I kind of feel empathy for them. I feel bad for them. It's just like, but it's a very limited, I think, worldview. Now, at one point. Victor Hugo is not fun to read. Sorry, Ein. Now, at one point though, would you have considered yourself a card-carrying injectivist? I'm never card-carrying. I don't, I probably, maybe, like in college for every period. What started shaking your faith? What got me out of objectivism? I think, I mean, there's no way to say this and that sounds kind of sending because Ein Rand was on Phil Donahue and this woman got it from the audience and said, I used to agree with you and think your philosophy is proper. And Ein cuts her up and says, now this is what I don't answer. And Donahue goes, you haven't heard the question. She goes, she's already put her ideas above mine incidentally displaying the quality of her brain. And basically her point is, you know, if you're saying now that you've learned something, you reject me, you're an asshole, right? So I think it just doesn't really port to reality because she has this kind of contradiction between people's lives are a function of their worldview and she's very insistent on this and therefore it's important to have the correct worldview. However, I think most people are profoundly engaged in cognitive dissonance and self-deception and we know from people like Jonathan Hyde and Steven Pinker that we're so capable of deluding ourselves and not being aware of it and that's something to guard against but people do this innocently. So having the right ideas is a very, very weak way of guaranteeing what a person would be like in practice. And this is also the big kind of progressive myth which is like, if I have the right ideas about race or gender about this, therefore I'm a good person. If only we were that simple, you know? So it's a very, very tenuous assertion she has that the correct worldview, the correct worldview applied correctly and consistently will lead results but you're asking a lot from most people. Yeah, I found the same thing with objectivism, the really hardcore objectivist as well that if you don't agree with the way that they're framing philosophic issues they assume you're stupid. And that's very, very off-putting and epistemologically it's not a good way of going about reasoning. And the unfortunate, I'm very torn on Iran because I love that she valued philosophy as deeply as she did. On the other hand, in terms of her philosophy I think it's poor. I think various aspects of objectivism are just assertions, unbacked assertions. And so on the one hand I would recommend, yes you need to read, everybody should read on grand. On the other hand, people take that as an endorsement of objectivist philosophy which is very peculiar especially because so many people who are interested in philosophy are drawn specifically to Iran because she is explicit about engaging in philosophy but it's the actual contents of the world view that are so lacking. And they insist, and she said this explicitly that Atlas Shrugged is so tightly reasoned that to accept one part of the philosophy you have to accept it all, right? And they also say the following which is true, this novel is so revolutionary because it shows the connections between sex and economics and art and commerce and all those other things. So according to those two statements and giving brands views, a guy committed to rationality has to accept laissez-faire capitalism and BDSM in the bedroom because that's what she preaches and they kind of hand waved this away and they're like, oh that was just her personal preference sexually but that's not how she framed it. She very much framed this kind of domination in the bedroom as part and parcel of her philosophy that even preceded Atlas Shrugged and she talked about it constantly till the day she died when she in 1980 was saying she doesn't believe a female should be in command or in chief because it would destroy her psychologically. Really, I didn't know that. Yeah, she had an article called on a woman president why women should never be president because a woman's highest value is to look up to a man so think about what it would do this woman on a personal level. It's almost like a cult of personality whereas I ran said these things that must be the way it is and it's almost a reflection of my own anti-intellectualism I can't understand what she was talking about even when it goes to such extremes as sexual preference that if you're a rationalist and you're pursuing truth you're going to have one conclusion about sexual preference which almost strikes me as like an argument at absurdity. It kind of demonstrates it's no big deal. Yeah, and David Friedman I met him at pork fest and I asked him about Rand because God bless him. I first encountered his name I didn't really know who he knew he was in Usenet and there was like an objectivism group on Usenet and it was hilarious. How old was this? A humanities da philosophy does objectivism, right? When was this? Oh, 97, 96. Wow, yeah, Usenet, that's why we came here. He made some statement, he was on that side a lot and someone said to him, David, I don't know what passes for that twisted abortion that you call a brain, but, and went into it and David just goes, well, this is where I disagree with your first point. He was just, water for duck's back, right? So I asked him about that and he said Rand was something courageous and wrong and he says she has great insights, a lot of her views are awesome, she's a very brave woman and where there are gaping holes in her philosophy and she kind of puts carpet over them through vitriol and anger and you're kind of a bait and switch thing and I think it's very, very much true. Okay, so going full circle here, there seems to be a connection between Rand's focus on the self and what she might call selfishness and egoism. Sure. Do you think that she goes right in that sense where she places the individual kind of as the highest, that ultimately values are about the self. They're not about sacrifice to other people and to the extent that sacrifice is important, it's only because the individual values it. Do you think, would you consider yourself a fellow traveler in terms of how she thought of the, how she thought of the morality of selfishness she might call it? Yeah, Rand was trying to be more provocative than she actually was because, when she wrote the virtue of selfishness, she said, I use this word for the same reason you fear it. She insisted, if you look up selfishness and dictionary, it just means conserved with oneself. And it goes, no, any dictionary will tell you, it means conserved with oneself to the exclusion of others. And when Donahue again was asking her about sacrifice, she goes, it's not a sacrifice to go buy medicine for your sick wife, but it is a sacrifice if your sick wife is at home and you go to a night club instead. And it's like, this is your lifeboat argument? Like, who on earth, like my wife has, it's chemo, it's like, bye-bye, I'm going to marquee. Like, this is a situation that would never happen, probably even someone was a sociopath. I mean, maybe in that case, but it's just, this is her counter example is crazy. I mean, so if she really kind of loses the argument if she's saying, she's like, I support my husband because he's my highest value and it gives me selfish pleasure to do it. Well, if you're supporting somebody else, then the whole definition of egoism is very strict self has completely gone out the window and is a much broader sense of egoism kind of in the same sense that I'm arguing for. Okay. I really want to thank you for sitting down and speaking with me. This has been great. And, you know, a lot of the, when you start breaking out of social norms, people's philosophies are so interesting. I was talking to a gentleman in Atlanta and who was logically consistent and he had a world view and we were, where he had similar views as you. And we were talking about the concept of abortion, which is very, very controversial. And he was saying, he was very much a physicalist and didn't believe in value of individuals. And he got to, he was comfortable enough saying, I think it's consistent in my world view that we could farm human beings and use them as food, right? Which is a shocking, like, oh my God, shocking claim. And you have to analyze it given his world view. But there's just a measure of respect that I think people deserve when they're willing to publicly say things which would usually find them social condemnation. At least in the circles that I'm in around, the views that you've expressed, I really respect you being able to say it publicly. Because culturally speaking, I think we really have an active suppression of the truth in the sense that people are so focused on appearance that they don't talk about the reality of the world view and they kind of keep their cards here. So because they don't want social condemnation. And I think it's really beneficial that people can open up and talk about the truth of these ideas. I don't think anything you've said is self-evidently wrong, even though a lot of people are going to find it shocking. Well, I don't care. I mean, they are sad, sad people. And I don't, and I, again, I'm not, I've never, I don't hurt people. I'm a, if they don't think I'm a good person, that's fine. I've got a good crew and I've got a good crew because I'm a good person. I think those two things are kind of indicative of each other. All right, thanks again. Thanks, Steve. All right, so that was my interview with Michael Malus. I really hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I really do always appreciate when people have enough intellectual fortitude to come out and say things that people would find controversial. And if you listening, if you have some ideas that you think other people wouldn't like or society wouldn't sanction, I think if we want to develop a more healthy culture in the world, it's good to just stand up and say it. If somebody asks, or if you just want to make a simple Facebook post. And I don't think the appearance of kind of social agreement on issues is either very healthy or it's very accurate. I'd like to see a lot more intellectual diversity out there in the world. So if you want to learn more about Michael Malus's work or any of the stuff that we mentioned, check out my show notes page, steve-paderson.com slash seven and everything will be up there. And make sure to tune in next week because I'm talking to a mathematician in Dublin, Ireland. We're talking about infinity, which is a topic that is very, very important to me. And it just went swimmingly. Without exaggeration in the world of ideas, I really think the philosophy of mathematics has accidentally turned into this area of thought with very, very big implications, specifically when it comes to infinity. So if that's something that piques your curiosity, make sure to tune in next week. All right, thanks for listening everybody. Have a great day.