 Media is now streaming, okay. A little technical glitch, you're almost there. So radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Monday, April 15th. It is tax day. Hope everybody's got their forms submitted and their checks written so you don't land up in jail. That's not very egoistic to land up in jail. It is a real pleasure today to have Tara Smith with me, a philosopher at the University of Texas in Austin, a frequent guest on the Iran Book Show, and particularly excited because we're talking about two new books today. I mean, sometimes it's one, but two, that is pretty amazing. So welcome, Tara. Great to be here. Thanks a lot for having me again, Yron. Oh, absolutely. So we're going to talk about two new books, one authored by Tara, Egoism Without Permission, The Moral Psychology of Iran's Ethics, and the second is a book that has several essays. Most of them I think by Tara, but we've also got Greg, and we've Greg Salamieri, and we've got Ankar Ghatte in the book, and then I guess some Q&As, where you learn Juno also participates. So we're going to be talking about both those books. You can ask questions about any of the topics that we're going to be covering in our discussion. We're going to start with the Egoism, and then we're going to turn to the book on the First Amendment that both are coming out hopefully in the next month or so, so we can look at that commission May. Yeah, the next couple of months. Amazon, I just noticed tonight, Amazon has moved up what they're saying the publication date is for the Egoism book to May 21st, and the other book, the Iran Institute is putting out the First Amendment collection. That will probably be out in late May, early June. It's a little uncertain, but yeah, both coming out relatively soon. Excellent. And so you guys can, at least the Egoism book you can pre-order now on Amazon. It's available for pre-ordering. The First Amendment book, I'm sure you're here, and I'll let you know once it's been published by the Iran Institute, and you can purchase it. Or I think they sell it through Amazon, so it will probably be available for pre-order maybe right before it's actually officially published. So I'm wondering about the title, Egoism Without Permission. That's one part of it, which is really interesting. Why the Without Permission? And then the second part, and maybe we should separate these two out into two, but the second part is moral psychology of Iron Man's ethics. The concept of moral psychology is, you know, let's talk about that because it's not, I don't think it's obvious what that means. Sure, sure, sure. It's a term that moral philosophers use and that it's gotten a lot of attention, the subject or the subfield of moral psychology in the last 20 years, let's say, in academic philosophy. But it's not that exotic. It's basically concerned with the interplay of a person's psychology and their over-expressed beliefs. You know, you've got your convictions of whatever they might be, religious, non-religious, altruistic, egoistic. You've got what you believe in, and then you've got some subconscious. So largely by psychological, you can think subconscious beliefs, premises, inclinations that you might not be as fully aware of, but how those can affect the way you practice what you preach or what you believe. And that's what I was interested in exploring in this book in terms of egoism. Because I think it's one thing to, let's say, convert to egoism. Or, you know, a lot of people will say, I didn't convert, I just read Ayn Rand and she articulated everything I already believed. But either way, right? The thought is, my thought is, look, it's one thing to expressly endorse the ethics of rational egoism and the virtues, honesty, productivity, you know, the whole thing. It's another thing to actually live that and live it consistently. And I think that many, many of us, God knows this is true of me and a lot of people I know. Even when you've been an objectivist for a long time, there's a lot of baggage from the way you were raised and what you believed. So it's not enough to endorse egoism. I think you have to do a lot of active detox work. You need to, let me throw a few, you know, you need to clean out the closets. You need to weed. You know, however you want to think of it, altruism is sticky. Intrinsicism, an intrinsicist idea of what morality is all about, that's sticky, I think, for a lot of people. And you can find, you know, just a quick example, you can find yourself torn, like, oh, no, I really should do this thing that my family wants me to do. Now, of course, if you think of that from one level, it's like, wait a minute, if I really don't think this is in my interest, I shouldn't do it. Yet you feel so torn on, I mean, a lot of us, and then you feel guilty about feeling torn and so on, right? But the point is like, these hooks might be in there. And again, often subconscious, or you don't even realize they're there. So what I wanted to do in the book is expose some of these to address more the living of egoism, not just egoism on paper and theory or in the book, but to discuss some of these sort of interstitial or sort of in between ways in which some of our inclinations can get in the way of our practicing egoism as consistently as we'd like so that we can benefit the most. Okay, I've just gone on a long time there, so. No, that's good. And so how much, to what extent is the solution, in a sense, of undoing the baggage or getting rid of the baggage, you don't undo baggage, getting rid of the baggage, how much of that is psychology versus philosophy? Oh, that's a good interesting question. Well, I think it's because you could imagine in a national society, we would go to psychologists to help us. Yeah. To some extent, get rid of this. And I think they could help us, but I think they could help us by helping us identify very consciously, oh, yeah, that's a mistake you're still making, Tara, but it's a mistake. So I do think philosophy's got to be the driver here or your conscious beliefs. But again, it's one thing to notice, oh, that's really stupid. And it's another thing to find yourself never tempted in that direction again. It's like, I wish all I had to do was recognize, oh, that's really dumb, or that's a leftover of altruism, and then it just vanishes, if only. So I do think good psychologists, and there are some, good psychologists can help us notice these things more like when we're falling into certain traps based on just the way we were raised. And it's not always just a function of altruism or just a function of intrinsicism. I mean, maybe you absorbed certain ideas about yourself, how good you are on things your parents often said or others around you often said, and you might have formed some really unhealthy sort of self-identifications or self-conception. And you know, I mean, we all know what many psychological problems are. And again, the general thought is those can get in the way of our being as fully rationally selfish as we'd like to be again, so that we can get the most out of it. How much is this is about aligning your emotions with your ideas and getting them kind of in sync? It is definitely somewhat about that. I don't think it's just that, but emotions are sometimes some of what I mean, they often exert a strong pull on us away from what we really fully consciously think we should do. So I mean, one of the things I play up in one of the chapters of the book is the importance of introspection. I mean, that has just become clearer and clearer and clearer to me over the years. And I mean, anybody who's heard some of my lectures in the last few years has probably already heard me extoll introspection. And I'm certainly not the only one. I mean, Gina Gorlin talks about it. I mean, many of our psychological people and others. I mean, John Watkins, Benzwanger. But it's so, it's so important to try to get to know yourself. And a lot of that has to do with knowing your emotions and what's really going on under them and knowing your emotional tendencies. And why do I tend to get so nervous about this or why am I so intimidated by that? And the more we can understand our emotions to sort out what's right-minded, like which of their premises are sound and which aren't and where they come from, the more we can exert control. So again, I do think it's got to be your conscious beliefs and your philosophy doing the driving. But we live fast too. And you have emotional reactions in a hurry and what's automatized. I mean, this is part of why these even wrong-headed ideas have such a grip on us because they're so automatized. So definitely unpacking some identifying some of your emotions and what's good and bad about them. But another thing that I do, now this isn't exactly an emotion, but I have a whole chapter in the book on desires. Love desires. I love my desires. I love the things I desire and I love desires. And that's what I'll actually be talking about primarily. I'm giving at Ocon this summer, I'm giving a lecture on the book, but it's really going to focus mostly on the chapter on desires. So one of the things I do play up in the book is the importance of desire and getting in touch with your desires and kind of like realizing how vital they are to selfishness. So how do you differentiate between desire, emotion and value? Oh boy. I should have reread the chapter. Sorry. Sure. No, no, no. I mean, a value should be a really considered, so it should be certainly more than an emotion or an emotional urge or tendency or even a desire. I might really desire something or some moment, but it might not be the best thing for me and so on. So you can't go just by even desires or emotions. A value should be an all things considered, full context, rational. Yeah, that'll be good for me. For life. Go for that. I'm sorry. For life. Yeah, yeah. Right. I've got to have that kind of assessment. Now, not all my emotions are pro-life or based on very realistic impressions or assessments of things, nor one's desires necessarily. So yeah, we've got to differentiate these things, but I do think there's a, the emphasis on rational egoism. It's got to be reasoned egoism sometimes leads people to think that the safest way to be rational is to be anti-desire or at least to keep desires at bay. And that I just think is really mistaken and really unhealthy. And part of what I want to do is liberate desires, because ultimately life is for having fun. And there are even great passages from Ayn Rand and Leonard Peacock that basically say that, that give you permission, not that we need permission in a book called Egoism. So I'm joking here folks, but they give you permission to feel what you desire and think about it and go for it. And so in the chapter about, so what is the place of desire and rational egoism? That is, because I assumed, and then that has to talk about the relationship between desire and values and the importance of desire, hopefully too. Desire is the launchpad in a way. You know, one of my, so think about, if you're familiar, I know you are your own and listeners, you know, in her essay causality versus duty, she's got this passage and it's a few paragraphs really where it begins. But I think of it as the many musts passages in which she says something like, you know, reality presents you with a great many musts, but all of them are conditional. Okay. So I'm paraphrasing here. Okay. But, you know, you must do this, if you want it, you must do this, if you want, you know, but they're all and it's right before that paragraph, a paragraph or two prior, where she gives one of my favorite lines and olivine random, you know, that's saying a lot, but it's where she refers to an old Negro woman saying something like the only thing I got to do is die. Like someone is telling this woman, you got to do something, you got to do something, you have to do something. And again, this is not her exact language, but it's the only thing you've got to do is die. It's like, if you want certain things, like want, desire. So right there at the ground floor of why it makes sense to do anything is I want it. And really what the book is about is, again, you might say, I mean, you could describe it as about in a few different ways. It's, I don't need a license to pursue my happiness. I don't need to earn my place at the table of life, because I think often people think, oh, you know, I've got to kind of show that that I need to validate myself such that I'm entitled to happiness. The fact like you're alive, you want to live, you want to have a nice life, you want to flourish, you want to be happy. Okay, figure out how to do it. Here's the way to do it. I figured out all the basics for you. Here are all the basic principles. Now we're still trying to figure out the wrinkles and the bottlenecks because it gets complicated when we try to actually practice some of it. But so in a sense, now again, you have to read the book to really get this clearly, and a little bit more accurately, but it all begins with desire. And it's about like, yeah, I have things I want, and that after I rationally fully consider them, yeah, I want to want, I want to get those things. Yeah. And so there's a chapter about selfishness of soul happiness needs no permission. And of course, permission also appears in the title. So what are you trying to emphasize with this without permission or needs no permission? Yeah, so it really is this idea I just referred to. I don't need a license. And I think, again, there can be a lingering sense, because many people come to egoism after having been basically altruists, I mean, more or less vocally or aggressively, it's like, that's what we absorb from the culture you're supposed to be, right? So I think there can often still be a kind of guilt, you know, when you're an ego, it's like, yeah, I should pursue my self interest, but I should be a good person, right? And that's part of what I'm supposed to be. I've got to be good and an egoist as if goodness has some hold on you independently of the idea that this will be the good thing to do, because it's good for you. And that's the only reason, that's the only reason to do anything. That it's good for me period, that's it end of story. So at the beginning of the book, as an epigraph, I have, I quote the line from Anthem, I need no warrant for being. I mean, I mean, that you could say is what the book is all about. You don't need a warrant. You don't need a sanction. You want it. That's good enough. That's all you need. So that's really what the book is about is sanction warrant. And interestingly, I think that's something that comes through very strongly in a lot of her fiction. Like, it took me a while to get that, you know, just over, I mean, I've only been with this philosophy for, I don't know, 40 something years, I don't want to count. If you won't count, you're on. But if you think of certain characters, if you think of Kira in We The Living, if you think of, you know, of Anthem, which I just quoted, if you think of wine and I need, you know, let alone Roark or God was like, I don't need, I don't need no sanction from nothing. There's nothing they got to do. There's no morality they have to live up to. So it's morality or egoism without guilt, without us kind of second thought, without permission, without apology. It's the antithesis of that excuse me for living. You know, it's like, no, I'm not born with a mortgage. I'm not born with this debt that I've got to pay off. And then if I pay off the debt, then I get to enjoy some life. Happiness is not a guilty pleasure. It reminds me of Dagny's attitude towards sex versus Reardon's attitude towards sex. Oh, good, good. That's another one. Yeah, another good thing. She's going after Reardon, you know, and she's loving it. And he's married and that, okay, but, you know, this is a desire. This is a value. And I think that's a good example. And people have a, you know, a lot of, I think people who come maybe from religion or more dogmatic have a problem with sex in Ain't Ranch, right? Because of these issues. Yeah. I think there's that the holding back, I mean, sex is one area in which you can manifest itself, your beliefs about sex, but this, oh, but really, I shouldn't do this, really, I have to be a good girl. And there's as if there's just this inherent authority to being good. And then, yeah, maybe egoism gets to ride sidecar or to be a, no, no, you can't have those two kind of rivals for your ultimate sort of allegiance. No, no, my allegiance is to me and nothing else. Egoism without permission, without somebody else's blessing. There's a similar thing that in, well, it's not, it's similar in a certain sense, at least. There's a line about Francisco at some point, and it's something to this effect. He was far into the idea that joy is a sin or something like that. It was just so alien to him. And I mean, I hate to say this, but it was alien to me that joy couldn't be a sin, like growing up and for a long time afterwards, and a long time after, I'm an objectivist, I'm an egoist, and I'm a pretty good egoist, and I'm pretty damn selfish. But, you know, if you're holding on those things, they're just going to get in your way and hold you back. So it's like, we got to face these. Yeah, and that's the psychology. I mean, there's no escaping the fact that we grow up in a particular environment that whether it's religious environment, or I mean, every environment is going to be altruistic to some extent. And that leaves scars. I mean, it definitely does. And just other things, again, that aren't necessarily particularly philosophical, but, you know, a little kid who's compared to other, you know, maybe it's the parents compare the siblings a lot, or they compare you to some other, you know, and you take things in in certain ways, even if they're not intended, right? Like, even if though they weren't tying to give you that message or that message, we're very impressionable. And we form self identities that can be hard to grow at and can still be there even after philosophically, we've done sorts a lot of cleanup work and so on. So there's a chapter on self-esteem in there. And it's funny, I was saying earlier that I, you know, over the years, I've increasingly appreciated the value of introspection and knowing yourself. Similarly, self-esteem is one that just, man, the more you live, the more you see self-esteem problems as what can so often be behind people's problems, the way they get in their own way sometimes. And, you know, at times, for sure, I'll plead guilty to that, you know, self-esteem deficits getting in my way, for sure. Yeah. I mean, I hate to say it, but a lot of the book is autobiography in terms of, you know. You're working out issues. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. It's selfish. I tell you, it's selfish. So you have a chapter on independence. You've got a chapter on independence in one of you other books. Yeah. You've talked about independence in the past. So what is the new perspective here? Well, it's just here because I think, so yeah, the two, like independence I have written on before, it's one of the virtues according to Rand, and I try to examine it in the book that I, you know, in Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics where I go into all of the virtues of chapter each. But it's one of the things that I think is so key to kind of giving yourself, you know, giving yourself the permission to go after happiness, to be fully selfish. So if sort of the setup in the early chapters is desires are really important. We have to be comfortable embracing desire. And then there's a chapter where I really tackle the heart of the book, the sanction issue. But then I talk about in the next couple of chapters, independence in one chapter, self-esteem in the other, as two somewhat psychological aspect. I mean, obviously independence is a virtue. It's something I can consciously practice. But how inclined one is just naturally inclined to be independent or not, I think has certain psychological, certain psychological flavor to it. And I think both independence, yeah, independence and self-esteem are really critical to being able to give yourself permission, full authorization to just go after your happiness. So I think they're pivotal for that at the same time. They are really, like if you get up the gumption to be 100% egoist, egoistic, that will strengthen your independence, that virtue, right? And it will strengthen your self-esteem, that great value. So you get a kind of healthy, mutually reinforcing cycle, I think. So it's more, the reason I spoke about, you know, in a dedicated chapter to independence here is really to play up its role in fueling this real selfishness, this deep selfishness. So, you know, another way to say some of what I've been saying is we think of egoism as a theory of how to lead your life, lead it for your own benefit, right? You should be the primary beneficiary, go after what's going to actually be good for you. We think of it as how to lead your life. But it's really important, I've come to think, that the why, and it's also a theory of why you should lead your life in any particular way. The why has got to be you fully and nothing like your own happiness and benefit and nothing else. So I think to have the courage to be able to say, yes, I am the sole reason to give a damn about morality is me, that's going to take independence. So again, it plays a really important role, I think that takes a lot of independence to go against the grain, the culture. It's fascinating how you can take any one of these virtues and values and approach it from so many, I mean, Rand wrote about independence and you wrote in a book about independence and now you're writing again and other objectives are going to write on independence and Yes, no, they're so rich. I think because they're so fundamental, right? Because she's like, you know, this thing really is fundamental. And believe me, one could in a book like this that's looking through the kind of somewhat psychological prism, you could have taken all of the virtues. It's a really interesting work on pride and the psychology of pride, right? So there's much more to be done, you know, I'm not saying I'm going to do it, but there's much more to be done. And happily, I do think like it's a rich time for psychology and egoism and objectivist egoism right now, because again, Gina Gorlin is working in this territory. I mean, she's somebody I deliberately sought to talk to at times when I was working on this book. Don Watkins recent book on effective egoism. I'm forgetting that's the exact title, right? But I mean, he talks about some of the interplay of psychological issues. I mean, even if he doesn't use the language of a psychologist proper, right? He's definitely talking about some of these issues. Gene Benzwanger is there's a lot of interest, I know among just people who maybe aren't writing on these things, but about these issues. So I think it's a good time to be, I mean, it's a fortunate time for me to be exploring some of this material. Absolutely. And it's more evidence is if we need more that this, there's a lot of work to be done in objectivism. So all of you budding intellectuals who would like to enter the field, there's a ton of stuff to do. And part of what's interesting too is the applications of the philosophy, they're more complicated than you think. Oh, come on, we have these virtues. A few people have written at length about these virtues, we've got the template, and then you just go apply it. Huh, like you wish, right? And in some ways, this is even the easiest in some ways is the easiest, you know, we face this and all it's like, Oh, go apply the objectivist epistemology to philosophy of law and questions of evidence in court, right? Go apply, you know, you know, this principle of moral virtue when you're dealing with your family at Thanksgiving and the pressure is on or whatever it might be, you know, so the applications alone leave, but I mean, there's guidance to be had from, you know, some good deep inquiry on these things. I don't mean that application is the only area where we need work, but just to say that it's easy to assume the applications will be straightforward. They're often not for a variety of reasons and working through some of okay, this is how this virtue or this principle of objectivism should apply here. That's certainly a rich area. You've got a part one and a part two to the book. Why two parts and what's the relationship between the two? Well, I wanted to so the I've mentioned the first four chapters which comprise part one, those are on desire on this fundamental sanction idea that you don't need to sanction or warrant an external warrant, independence and self-esteem in a way that's all the fully, fully new material. But then, you know, because I hope some of the people reading this book won't be very familiar with the things I've said before about egoism and what genuinely is your self-interest in part two, because a lot of people in moral philosophy who have no affinity or affection for Ayn Rand's philosophy, a lot of them have been talking in recent years about very allied ideas of human flourishing, human well-being. So to address some of what they're talking about and talk about how this view is different, but, you know, we're interested in the same thing. Here's the objectivist take on what well-being really is. I have a chapter on, I forget what I call it right now, but self-interest, a flourishing life, because there's a lot of conversation about flourishing and I really debated what to call that chapter, even though I just forgot it, but I wanted to call it self-interest because damn it, that is what it is. I had no way wanted to kind of obscure that. No, no, what Rand is advocating, what I'm advocating is your self-interest, but that's what flourishing is all about. So in both chapters, so there's a chapter on what do I mean by self-interest, and then there's a chapter on what do we mean by egoism. In both, I'm definitely bringing up some new things that I haven't explored in print before now. There will be some overlap with things I might have written before about egoism and the interest that it serves, but I play up some different facets that seem more germane to what the rest of the book is all about here. Who's the target audience? To what extent is the book written for academics in the field? To what extent is it written for objectivists who want to be better at living? I have to say, so it's written in an academic way, not I think an off-putting way at all, I mean very accessible to the educated, interested person for sure. But this book, I mean truly, this book really is aimed at objectivists. People who basically sign on, subscribe to egoism, but might encounter some of these psychological hangovers or baggage that we talked about at the beginning, like most of us do. Really, that's who I'm writing this for, but it is also, I mean, I think a serious academic or philosopher who wanted a taste of how those objectivists are saying you should live the philosophy because it's really about living egoism, this book. Okay, here's a look at some of it, so they could get a good idea of it. And again, I think that's part of why those later chapters just on, here's what we mean by self-interest, here's what we mean by egoism, here's what it doesn't mean given all the caricatures and so on. So yeah, it's hopes to reach both audiences, but it's very much for objectivists. Good. Maybe say a little bit about how this project came to be because at some point you were not waiting to talk about this. Yeah, I'm never writing a book about, listen, that's the default, please. You know, people always finish something's like, oh, what's your next book? I have no idea if there's going to be a next, okay, so thank you. That's my defensiveness. Where that came from in my self-esteem issues I'll explore after we get off. Let's see. So, you know, so I had spent a long time on my, working on legal philosophy, there was a period of, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago, I was working on legal philosophy and that started with some articles and then eventually I decided I wanted to do a book, but I was really very immersed in certain kinds of questions on legal philosophy for a long time. But even as that was going on, you know, you're constantly making notes on other things and I'm interested in this and, you know, you might be forgiven talk, thinking about an issue and very interested in that issue. So I, there were still some issues of moral philosophy and in particular, like emerging in my own interest was this psychological end of it. So those things are bubbling and then I wanted to get back to doing some moral philosophy, but at first, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do. You had, so you've just started circling around different areas and then thinking, okay, what are the different areas? And I literally remember a few mornings being at coffee shops and sort of charting out so, and there were maybe these six or seven different issues and I was like, what do these have to do with each other? Do they have anything to do with one another? Is there a through line here? And over some, you know, and then I thought, okay, I'll do papers on these four things. And I don't know, I was probably starting to work, but early on in such even a paper, I'm just generating a lot of thoughts, you know, then I'll pull out what I think might be good. At any rate, I forget how long it was, but over at least a year, I was wasn't yet thinking about, but then you realize, no, there's enough here that I do think and come together into a coherent, into a coherent package that I'll pursue it. But that's, that's often how they, not always, but that's often how they happen for me. So just to remind everybody, and I know there's some people who weren't here at the beginning, the book is called Egoism Without Permission, the Moral Psychology of Iron Man's Ethics. It is, it's already on Amazon, so you can pre-order it. It'll be out, it looks now towards the end of May, so May 21st, I think is the date on Amazon. So if you're interested, hopefully you are, go over to Amazon and pre-order it today. They're pretty good about getting it to you pretty much the day it's published when you pre-order a book over there. I think right now there's only a hardback copy. I think so. I think the plan, I think the plan is to not issue a kindle immediately. I think they want to get all they can out of the hardback to be kindled. So hopefully there will be, pretty sure there will be at some point a kindle, but right now it is available hardback. On Amazon, publication date is May, something 21, we think. But there's a second book. Tara's been busy. Well, well, this is a, okay, I have to say a lot to qualify this one. This, shall I do that? Go ahead. Okay. So this is a book, it's a collection, it's a collection of mostly previously published essays. So the book is the First Amendment, essays on the imperative of intellectual freedom. So in, I referred a few minutes ago to, there was a period there, I was working a lot on legal philosophy and I was mostly working on the issue of interpretation of the law, theories of judicial review. But I also developed an interest in the First Amendment. So I, in law reviews, I published two pieces on free speech and two pieces on freedom of religion. And I had thought for a while, gee, wouldn't it be nice to put those together in a little collection? But I didn't want to do it. Like I couldn't be, but I have other things. And also, you know, going back to things you've done before, that's no fun. But I thought, you know, gee, Ankar Gatte has that great piece on the separation of church and state, which was published in the Foundations for Free Society. And gee, Greg Salmiere talks about free speech issues sometime. Wouldn't it be wonderful to put these together? Anyway, so I mentioned this to Elan Giorno. And I can't say enough about how wonderful Elan has been. He liked the idea right away. And he made it happen. God, I mean, he's just made it happen. He's like, couldn't make things easier for me. Anyway, so that's how this book came to me. So again, it's four essays by me that have been previously published in law reviews, two on speech, two on freedom of religion. We've got the Ankar piece on freedom of religion in there. And we've got a new piece. So Greg did write, put together completely brand new based on or and related to some talks that he's given in the last two or three years. And additionally, and I think this was a really good idea of Elan's, I didn't even know how good an idea was until we did it. He said, why don't we have a couple of interviews with the three of you. So you would refer to this at the beginning. What it actually is, is there are two interviews around tables where Elan asks the three of us together questions. And one set, one interview is largely focused on Ayn Rand's thought, how her distinctive understanding of freedom and intellectual freedom informs the book and the essays in it, how her view differs from some of the other defenders of freedom of speech, John Stuart Mill historically and so on. So that's one roundtable discussion. And then the other is I think really valuable because there Elan asks us about a number of very contemporary controversies. So we talk about section 230. For those of you who know what that means, having to do with tech social media company regulation, we talk about cancel culture, you know, we talk about responses to terrorism and different things. So it's got it's nicely, you know, even while again, I want to be truthful in advertising, some of the pieces have been published before some of you may have read some of them. I think it's really nicely rounded out with the new essay by Greg and these two discussions. So that's great. Yeah. So the title is the First Amendment essays on the imperative of intellectual freedom. Why intellectual freedom enough free speech? Because I think we can't do a proper job or an effective job of defending free speech if we really don't know what it comes from. And I think like it's a form and expression and exercise of intellectual freedom, which itself is just an exercise of your freedom, which is a reflection of your right to your, you know, to your damn life. So but I think so the freedoms, the several elements of the First Amendment. And the First Amendment talks about speech and it talks about religion and it talks about the press and it talks about the right to petition the government and it talks about the right peaceably to assemble and so on. What unifies all of them is intellectual freedom. Those are all ways of manifesting or exercising intellectual freedom. But the understanding, and I think this is clear to many of us, I'm sure many of the people listening right now, an understanding of the foundation of free speech, understanding of the foundation has really been eroding. I mean, people talk about balances and compromise and all sorts of misguided standards. Similarly, religious freedom. That's what that really means, not well understood, exemptions chip away at the proper understanding of freedom and so on. So I think it's appropriate that we go a little broader than just freedom of speech, because if we don't understand the foundations more solidly, we're not going to be able to defend speech or religion or anything, you know, freedom of these things or freedom of the press, which is another whole story. So you have, you have two essays here on freedom of religion. And on call has, of course, the separation of church and state. How would you characterize the unique, you know, what's unique about the objectivist view on issues of religious freedom? I mean, conservatives talk about this all the time. So reporters talked about this, a huge issue. What is it about? What is it unique and objective? Well, yeah, okay. So two comments, I guess. This first, I'm not sure we're unique in this, but we're certainly pretty distinctive from the conservatives and I mean, most conservatives would talk about it today. Freedom of religion has nothing to do with the value of religion. I mean, that's one way to put it. It has nothing to do with the value of religion. Many, many people, I mean, most people who defend freedom of religion do so by telling us how wonderful religion is and how important religion is to different people's lives. I don't have the right to marry because marrying is valuable. I don't have the right to travel because of the value of traveling, right? I don't have the right to religion because of the value of religion. I have the right to freedom of religion because of the value of freedom of the mind to think whatever it wants to think about intellectual matters, philosophical matters and so on. So the objectivist understanding of freedom of religion is not based on the alleged wonderful value of religion. If any, I mean, religion is a menace, okay? But you need to be free to figure out that it's a menace or to think whatever you want to think about it. Damn, what was the other thing I was going to say? There were two thoughts. Damn, the second. The objectivist unique position on the religion. Yeah, but the second observation has escaped me. Well, yeah, damn it. Hopefully that'll come back. But I will say, if you have, again, the wrong foundations, then you'll think, well, and so far as religion is valuable, we have to protect it. But if and when it's not, we don't have to protect it. So for jump to freedom of the press, when journalists say good things, useful things, helpful things for the public good, oh, we'll give them freedom. When they don't exercise it so well, when that journalism isn't so valuable, we won't protect it. So you see, if the freedom of religion or the freedom of the press is indexed to the perceived value of that thing, you don't have freedom anymore. Okay. How does that relate to the whole campaign? I mean, about misinformation and on social media and in the press even, and the campaigns are kind of banned misinformation. Yeah. Well, it is very related in the sense that again, a lot of the arguments you'll hear on behalf of freedom of the press, and again, bear in mind, these are arguments from the people defending allegedly, or it's like, this is from the relative good guys, at least they want to defend freedom of the press, right? But the way in which a lot of people, most people do it is by pointing to the valuable contributions that the press makes. Valuable as many contributions may be, and increasingly we have a lot of garbage coming out of what should be, and what were for a long time the most, they were properly respected. I mean, it's just abysmal, but I'm distracting myself with my anger here. Let's see. Once again, I lost my thought. Sorry about that. Yeah. It may be true that sometimes the press is really valuable and they give you good stories and good information and all that. That's not why we have freedom of the press. Your freedom is not based on the fact that you're a valuable contributor to society. You see, but again, I think that there's that similar idea of religion is a really good thing. It's a really important thing to some people and or it's a really valuable thing for society that some people be religious. Similarly with the press. Oh, the press does really helpful work for democracy and for the democratic price. Even if that or to the extent that that is true, that's beside the point as to why you have these freedoms in the first place. So again, this in part goes back to the question of this is why we need to understand the value of intellectual freedom, not just the piecemeal. Well, let's just talk about the I mean, you could do really good work. And again, those philosophers out there or just legal theorists out there who want to do more work, there's a lot more good work that you could do just on freedom of speech or just on freedom of the press or religion and so on. But again, part of the thinking behind this book was we need a better grip on intellectual freedom as such so that we can properly, you know, sort of show people the basis for and the bit with the basis for any of these freedoms of assembly, association, press, etc. When you want, it's only when you understand the basis, right that you could understand the application correctly. And that's what's so missing. And there's a few of speeches under attack. Every way, maybe one of the most more egregious ones is is in Scotland right now. I think Ireland also has a similar bill, both Ireland and Scotland, these hate kind of hate speech laws. You're taking what what's what's going on there. Oh, it's so abysmal. No, I was so sad the other day to read about this law that's just gone into effect April 1, I think in Scotland. And it's another anti hatred, you know, anti hate speech. What's particularly sad is when countries like the Scotland's and the Ireland's of this world, you know, go down this route. But I have the right to hate people. I have the right to encourage you to hate hatred is not a violation of anybody's rights. It's not even a bad thing necessarily. It is not necessary. I couldn't agree more. There are some people, not many think it well, not many that I've known or that sort of. But there are some people you wish that person ill, justifiably, you wouldn't lift a finger to do them ill or to do them, you know, to to injure their right. Whether or not people hate one another again, just it isn't the business or the government. How we feel about one another, what we think about one another is not the government's business. So I mean, there's just that aspect of it. I mean, that's one aspect of this, this law and this kind of law that, oh, you may not encourage hatred. I mean, you should be able to encourage whatever ideas in so far as they remain ideas as you like. There's also the vagueness of such laws, the amorphous quality of what counts. There's which minority groups may you not, you know, you may in particular, you may not offend or incite hatred against groups, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. I never see objectivists on the list. And of course, the list generally expands on these. I mean, it's just arbitrarians. I mean, well, it's kind of, it seems that it's often just guided by altruism. It seems like it's geared towards those who somebody is defined as most suffering by some altruistic criteria. Yeah, we get into the suffering contest or the victim of the week contest. And the sad thing is, none of this, in what I'm saying, people can say things which are very, very hurtful. And I in no way mean to minimize the pain and the anguish and how that can stay with you and so on. So there are real evils here, but they're not of the sort that involve rights and should involve government coercion such that you may not say this or that, you know, one of the other things you asked about a minute ago was misinformation. And I read a good, I read a short column in the, in the, I think this was in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago, but the best thing about the column was when it identified the author, it identified the name of his new book and it was something like this. Misinformation is what we call it when we want to shut you up. It was something like that. But I mean, essentially it's like, yeah, we call it misinformation when we want to silence you on that, right? So again, the idea of having a government be at a government in Scotland or, you know, I mean, in the US because increasingly, oh, we have to regulate disinformation and misinformation. We need to be the, you know, we're the authorities on everything. We know it all on everything. Didn't you see that with COVID or with the laptop or what, you know, Hunter Biden, like, didn't we know it all on everything? So we'll do the sorting for you. Again, I've talked about this at times as, you know, the cognitive nanny state. And by the way, I do have an article coming out in a philosophy journal on disinformation. It's not coming out until the end of the year, but it's not in this collection that we're publishing, but it'll be a new piece on misinformation, yeah, coming out the end of the year. I mean, there seems to be some kind of equivocation between physical force of violation of rights and emotional put. And how dangerous do you think that is? Well, it's very dangerous to confuse speech and action. And that's a lot of what is involved here. And one of my essays in the new collection is on that difference. It's called, it's called just saying, like just saying, but it and then there's a long subtitle again, which I forget. But it's about the importance of maintaining that distinction between speech and action. And again, speech can cause a great deal of emotional, you know, anguish. But that per se does not impinge on a person's freedom of action in the way that physical force does. Now, a slight, I mean, there is a little asterisk. I think there can be circumstances in which one. I think emotional, interestingly, this is something I've been thinking about in connection with another project, which I don't even want to start talking about yet. But I've been thinking a little bit more about not so much in connection with speech, but emotional duress, emotional anguish. I mean, there are different terms one might use. But the law sometimes recognizes as a legitimate hurt or something you should have remedied to be deliberately exposed to certain kinds of emotional distress. And I'm not willing to write that off as ridiculous by any stretch. But the conditions in which that is something that you should be liable for, I think I've got to be really strict. And certainly, you know, just hearing other people's point of view when it is hurtful to you or offensive to you or expresses their hatred of you, does nothing to to limit your freedom. So unless you for that. Does the does the essayist talk about when speech becomes action? Yeah, it tries. Yes, it tries to. I mean, it addresses some of the usual arguments for but isn't this symbolic? Like, isn't this actually action and so on? Because that's a that's a thorny area, I think. But it's it's one that I generally emphasize the importance of distinguishing speech from action. Because if you blur those borders, then you, you really lose freedom of speech altogether, because any speech can be taken as action. And on that basis, give the government has much more of a justification for restricting it. Yeah. No, it's crucial to understand what speech can do and what speech can't do. And one way I put it sometimes is, you know, my speaking can't twist your arm. But think about that for a minute. My whatever Tara says, even when she's really convincing on a given, right? It doesn't. It doesn't twist your arm. It doesn't make you think anything. I hope to make you think certain things. I want to be an effective speaker or author and so on, right? But whether that happens depends on you. It's a two party game, right? It's like, it's a team, not a team sport, but it's like, it's an audience participation kind of thing. You decide what Tara's saying is a crock. What Tara's saying is really good. What Tara's saying is something I want to think about a little bit. That's up to you. I can't twist your arm. Similarly, Thomas Jefferson, right? Whether I believe there's one God, 20 gods, neither picks my, you know, whether my neighbor, again, roughly paraphrasing Jefferson, but this was one of his good lines. We had a few. You know, whether my neighbor believes there's one God or 20 gods, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. It doesn't injure me. It doesn't physically. So it's not my business. Do I have Jefferson in the next room? Okay. Good. So we got a lot of questions. So let's maybe let's go to questions and let's see. Let's start with Liam. Yeah, I think this is related directly. So Canada, Australia and England have rejected free speech. It only exists symbolically in paper for them. This wasn't the case a few decades ago. The only country in the world that has gotten better in free speech has been the US through the courts. I mean, any thoughts on why that is, why the US has gotten somewhat better, at least on certain issues regarding free speech and the rest of the world moving away. Really? I mean, I just think the grip of collectivism has been stronger in many parts of the world. And that's what's exerted itself because the kinds of arguments made on behalf of a lot of the hate speech, and that's a lot of it. A lot of restrictions on offensive speech and hate speech made when I've read some of the arguments that are persuasive to people in those countries that then enact the kinds of laws that Liam is talking about. They're very collectivist. They're what's good for society is what's most important. I think, well, so John Stuart Mill is he's sort of the patron saint of most defenders of free speech. Now, including in the US, including a lot of US people, so that's kind of against where I'm going here. But I think the grip of that million perspective, we should have free speech because it's in the public interest, because it best serves social utility, not because it is the individual's rightful freedom. That understanding of free speech enables people to think that these restrictions on speech are actually a part of what's necessary to respect free speech. So it may be the further collective, I mean, the way that collectivism is, okay, let's put it this way. Mill collectivizes free speech. Well, to do that is to kill it as free speech. Okay, no, it's speech as long as it's good for society. Okay, but that's the kind of idea that I think has taken on and a lot has taken off in a lot of these other countries. Why the US has been somewhat better? I don't really know. I mean, maybe it's just the still, though dying individualism here. Now, in terms of the US being better. We have a bill of rights. Better in some respect, I'm sorry. We have a bill of rights. By any stretch. Yeah. Go ahead. Go ahead. No, I mean, there've been some, there've definitely been some good free speech decisions in recent years, but not always for the best of reasons. And not certainly not consistently. In this country, we continue many on the court on the Supreme Court continue to regard commercial speech as just a second class citizen. You know, they have these tea like this kind of, they will distinguish between political speech and religious speech, which tend to get the most respect from the courts. But then there's artistic speech or, you know, educational speech or commercial speech. That's like, that's the, you know, the black sheep of the family. Nobody wants to protect that. Yeah. And I think some, and we'll see these the current what's on the docket these days in terms of regulations of social media companies and all we'll see. I mean, there are some really important decisions to come about free speech. Yeah, they really are. They're in front of the Supreme Court right now in this, in this sitting. I mean, the United States has a bill of rights. That's what I was trying to say. So we have it codified in a way none of the other countries have. They more have it as a tradition rather than something. And some of them right. And I believe that even some of them that do have something in their charters or constitutions about free speech, at least in some cases, it is conditional. Like, I'm pretty sure that in Canada's charter or whatever the relevant document that says something about free speech, I'm pretty sure that in that wording, even it's, there's some important condition that's very unlike the Congress shall make no law, you know, Congress will make no law. Damn it. Yeah. No, that's a good point though. We have, yeah, thank God. Thank God for the bill of rights. James says, how is the objectivist movement doing on campus in Austin? I'm not confident you and Greg are enough to change the culture. Do you think we could groom an objectivist to be elected mayor of Austin in the next decade? So in terms of how objectivists or objectivism is doing in terms of like a campus club or something. So I gather because I'm not involved with it myself at all. But I gather there has been this year, a pretty active group of that gets I so I've heard this from people who participate somewhat, some grad students in particular. But it's mostly undergrads. I think I think they've been meeting pretty regularly and having discussions of set topics. And I think they get anywhere from five to six to 20 people. So I think and a lot of this really is due to I think Greg's encouraging this. And I think he's a little bit more involved with them than I am, or potentially even a lot more involved because I'm not involved at all with them. But there is something happening. But I mean, the thing on college campuses in my experiences, it always depends on the commitment of the leaders and leaders graduate and leaders leave. And so year to year, it can be very up and down. But there hasn't been a steady stream of activity coming from students on campus in recent years. I'm hopeful that this one might stick more because there's been a lot more other objective of story and material provided by Greg and his program in particular. A mayor in Austin in the next 10 years, I doubt it, but seeds of hope for this like but but you know, it's not beyond the realm of possibility. I'll simply say this. Simply say this, there is someone who shall remain nameless who has recently moved to town. An intelligent and savvy gentleman who has become very interested in housing issues in our town and really educating himself about them and getting more involved civically with that. So I have no idea what his plans are, but it's not ridiculous to me. I mean, would he I don't think anybody's going to be elected on an objective this platform. That's the kind of thing you're talking about now. Austin is not. Yeah, sorry. And we're not into grooming. Politicians certainly not. Yeah. Cassandra. Hi, Tara. Can you talk more about moral relativism? Why is it wrong for people to have different models based on cultural religion, etc? Because it doesn't work. Because reality is what it is. And there are only certain kinds of action that can meet our needs. So, I mean, really, the answer lies in the whole case from the ground up for the objectiveist ethics. The whole reason to have ethics, to have them to distinguish good and bad right and wrong is because of the nature of the beast. And the nature of the beast of the human beast is we have needs. And unlike lower forms of life, fulfilling those needs is not something that just happens automatically because we are genetically coded in such a way that we get our nuts or we drink in the sunlight or the water, you know, depending on whether we're talking about certain plants or animals and so on. We need to use our minds. We need to figure out what will meet our needs and what won't. And what won't. And, you know, people, whether they, you know, whether we dignify them by saying it's this culture, it's people in this part of the world, like individuals, groups of individuals. We don't make up what the rules are, what our needs are. We need to respect reality so that we can figure out faking things doesn't change things. I need these sorts of, you know, foods. I need these sorts of relationships. I mean, on all different levels, there are facts about our needs that dictate the general lines of what is good for us and what is bad for us. So that now, within those, there can be optional about, you know, there can be variation in what your own likes to do on a Saturday afternoon off and what Tara likes to do on a Saturday afternoon off, but it's got to be consistent with the principles that are going to fulfill our needs. Right. I'm not sure this is a question for Tara, but Shazba writes, Zimbabwe adopted a new gold-based currency. If such policies are made with pragmatic motives rather than the egoistic desire of the citizens, are they at risk to stall and black backslide? I think the answer is yes. Yeah. I mean, in general, like pragmatic as opposed to principled decisions are not going to work out how quickly or long it will take for that to become obvious can vary, but I have no particular insight on a, you know, on the particulars of a currency and, yeah, the reasons for it. Sorry. And we're asked regarding emotional independence for a person whom awarding one, okay, let me just make sure that the grammar read, writing emotional independence for a person whom awarding oneself pride is foreign, say a former serious Christian or second-hander. How does the person learn to grant themselves pride and do so independently? Interesting. So one thing I just want to say is emotional independence, which I think was referred to at the very beginning of the question. I'm not advocating emotional independence or, I mean, whatever one's emotions or inclinations to be independent, independence as a virtue and independence as a good thing is, I'm going by my judgment. I am deliberately going to go by my judgment here. I might listen to what a lot of other people think, but then I'll weigh it and figure out what I think. So that's really what independence is all about. I understand how it can be really hard to have the sort of guts to exert that kind of independence, particularly if you've been raised in certain ways, whether it was altruistic or religious or just for various other reasons. But I think you've got to start practicing independence. That is exercising independence, just like step up sometimes. And even when it's uncomfortable and you think, oh, they're going to hate my saying this or like you've got to exert it. And then you've just, I mean, in terms of feeling pride from that or giving yourself pride, you've just, I mean, you do have to give it to yourself. That is, you have to say that was good, Tara. However, turned out in terms of other people's reactions, right? But, you know, those first times that you're exerting a little more independence, you've got to credit yourself. You've got to be honest that if you're doing this because you think this is a better way to live, well, then you want to credit yourself for what you're doing, right? I mean, if you put yourself on a budget, let's say you've been spending too much money for a period, you've really realized, no, no, I've got to go on a budget. And, you know, this week, I resisted that pair of shoes I wanted to buy on Amazon or whatever it might have been, right? You know, it's like, you have to give yourself, yes, that was good. That was me acting according to the plan, according to the new program and so on. You know, you have to help yourself here, right? There's enough in your way. If you have, again, this baggage or this guilt or I can't feel pride in anything. But again, pride too, I mean, you will feel it more naturally. You will feel it naturally over time. But you just have to be honest with yourself about what you're doing. And again, give yourself permission. It's good to feel good about yourself when you do things that are good to do. And man, if you're exerting more independence, that's great. That's great. But you've got to learn to tell yourself that. Yeah. All right. I don't know. Have you ever seen the TV show, Andal? No. No, sorry. Shazba, we're going to keep that question for another time. I'll save it. Let's see, Adam. In view of the prosecutions and arrests for hyperbolic expression, he's talking about school board public comments as threats. What is the objective boundary between blame and condemnation and threats? I don't know the exact, I mean, I don't have a good view of what the exact boundary should be. But there's certainly a difference in kind between blaming somebody for having done something, saying you're responsible for this and threatening to do something to you, such as violate your rights or I'm going to hurt you because of it. I'm going to come to your house and throw bricks through the window. I'm sorry, I'm not giving you a more particular way of drawing the boundary in those hard cases where there may be circumstances in which the expression of condemnation in conjunction with some other factors like we've got these weapons right here at the ready and so on. There may be circumstances in which that's understandably taken as a threat, but there's certainly a difference in kind between the harshest kind of condemnation of what somebody is doing or has done and issuing a real threat. I'm warning you or I'm telling you you're going to suffer for this because we're going to do something about it. Sorry, that's all I can say. It's just so important that the law does respect these differences in kind because otherwise like, oh, that was a threat or I felt threatened and then we shut you up. Shut you up your own because you're saying these things that will condemn an invasion or something like that, somebody for invading. Philip says, thank you, Tira, for being such an instructive source. Apollo Zeus. But I don't have any handouts tonight. I gather that I heard the people was saying, oh, you're having Smith on. Are you going to have handouts? I'm sorry I have no handouts, but I have my own notes. I always have notes. I know somebody in the morning show asked about that afternoon show. Apollo Zeus says, personal change is one thing, but how to resist an altruistic culture from putting the brakes on change, I guess on your own change. Oh, they don't put the brakes. I mean, they can give you a hell of a lot of, you know, I don't know, headwinds or what. It's like, absolutely. But don't give them any more than you have to. Now, you know, like, yeah, it's hard. Absolutely. It's hard in the whole. There's so much pressure to hell with, but it's like, damn it. If you want your life, you have to do what you have to do to get it, right? You want to flourish? Then you just like, nope, I'm sorry. I'm not coming home for Thanksgiving this year of mother or whatever it might, you know, whatever form it might be or no, I'm not signing up for the community cleanup with everybody else at the office because it's part of the United Way campaign this week or whatever. Like, no, you just, I mean, you're an agent, you're responsible person responsible to your own, your own flourishing. If you really want, like, you have to remind yourself sometimes, what am I really after here? What should I be going for? I'm going for me for what's really going to be good for me. And if all things considered, this is not in any way to endorse just emotional decisions or just, you know, do what you feel like doing. Like that's a real misimpression of objective. Oh, now that I'm an egoist, this is going to be easy because I've spent so much time as an altruist resisting, you know, I've had to clamp down on all my inclinations, egoism, that's going to be a breeze. I get to do whatever I want. No, once or not the way you figure it out, right? But you do, again, to resist the cultural pressures against you being a rational, healthy egoist and flourishing, you do have to remind yourself sometimes, what am I really after here? And then just, yeah, and it will take some courage and it will take some independence and it will take some self-esteem to think that whatever they think of me and however they treat me, you know, whatever funny looks they give me, I know what I'm for and what I'm about and what's going to be good for me here and I'll do that. So you just have to tough it, tough it out, kind of tough it out. Friend Hope, I ask, is your egoism book good for non-objectivists? I've been thinking a lot about how to communicate objectivism to late people and ransack epistemology concept. And your book sounds interesting to me, can't wait to read it. So I guess, is it a good introductory book for non-objectivists? Yeah. I don't think it's a good introductory book for non-objectivists. Like, I definitely think a non-objectivist, but who already has some, like maybe they, they're not an objectivist, but they've heard you talk an awful lot in detail, you know, or they've read some of objectivist ethics. Like, if you have a little bit of objectivist ethics under your belt, basically understanding it, then I think it could be fine for a non-objectivist, but it's certainly not an introduction to objectivist ethics. But I will say this, the two, the two final chapters in part two, the chapter on what is self-interest and what do we mean by rational legalism? I think those two chapters, yeah, that's the kind of thing you could give. And those are, I think those are the longest chapters in the book too. So that's pretty hefty as a portion of the book. I think though, I mean, I'd have to, I'm pretty sure those could kind of, oh, those would be quite decent on their own to, to, I think correct a lot of misimpressions that people have just, you know, that they've innocently absorbed from the way this is all usually portrayed. Yeah. I think those could get people thinking about self-interest in some better ways than they often think about it. And actually, there was one, when I just make a, because something in that question reminded me of something, again, just in talk, in terms of talking about, you know, the psychology of egoism and so on, it's interesting just in the last week or so, I've been rereading Ran's essay, causality versus duty. And she says, and you know, a lot of that is anti the Kantian notion of duty. And that's a lot of what I'm trying to kill in the book, even though I hardly talk about Kant. I mean, I think he shows up in a footnote or two, but it's very much that idea. But interestingly, and this had not really captured me previously, she says in there that a lot of Kant's influence is psychological rather than philosophical. And she refers to his psycho, how his psycho epistemology kind of exerts a grip on us. And it just very in terms of like, yeah, and that's exactly the grip I'm trying to loosen in the book. Yeah. She always makes these incredible psychological observations. I mean, she she doesn't shy away from talking about psychology and what's what's motivating them. Because it's so entwined with how we all live. And it's bright. I mean, the book is about motivation. Why do you want to be more? Why do you want to be? Yeah. And I think as a novelist, she had a developer view, right? Because she had to be able to tell us about the inner lives of the character she's writing about. Right. To make them so credible and so powerful as she did. Yeah. No. And it really is interesting how so many of her characters really convey this sense that it's hard for us, even when we love the books and love the characters. Yeah. Right. Richard asks, a mom, a mother losing an argument with a teenage daughter says, I gave you life. How does the daughter avoid developing a mindset that she owes her mother her life? Oh, my God. That's that's a classic. Well, I mean, you know, how does the daughter avoid developing this? Developing what? The the idea that I just owe it back to her? Yeah. I owe her everything, right? I owe her my life. Right. But I mean, okay, that just seems so ridiculous. It's like, I didn't ask, I mean, I didn't ask you for this. You're like, the whole idea of having a child such that that child would then be beholden for you for your whole like, that there's something so perverse about that. It's hard for me to even get started on. I mean, certainly it's under, you know, if you're subjected to that kind of, I mean, that kind of terrible guilt inducing, I mean, that that's, that's hard to deal with. Okay. But, you know, hopefully you're intelligent enough to look at the world around you and get I the idea that that's completely invalid. The idea that one should that a person should owe their lives to, you know, the parents who brought them into this world, owe their life. And that's in that ongoing, it's like, no, life is for the living of the person whose life it is. And yes, there may be certain debts to parents of certain amount of respect for certain period, you know, certain, certain, not unqualified by any stretch, but, you know, certain for a certain period and certain respects and all, but sorry, I don't do have thoughts on that one. I mean, I don't know if you had a, well, anyway. No, I mean, I don't think there's a recipe here. I mean, the daughter's gonna at some point have to identify exactly what you just said. It's my life. I, you know, I'm the one living it. And thank you for giving me life. I like life. Life is good. But the whole point of giving me life is not to live as your slave in a sense. It's the it's to live my life. Yeah, not to live as a slave is a good way of putting it too. I mean, one could ask the mother like, try to get more of the reasoning here, right? Because I think that will expose how little actual reason is involved. But it's like, what would you want me to do? And like, really? And, you know, you can get them to think about their own lives. And is that how everybody should live? Like, yeah. All right, let's see. Andrew, should work and play be psychologically connected? It stood out to me that Rand once wrote in a letter, likely exaggerating, but with a core of truth, that her only fun was writing at her desk. I don't know of that or recall, you know, I don't know of that particular, but should work and play be I forget the word or like connected or psychologically connected. Oh, it's a little hard to say what, well, it can be extremely healthy, I think, and valuable when work and play are connected in the sense that you're working feels like play, or it's as much fun as play. And happily, I will report the last couple of weeks. I've been working so damn hard, and I've been having so much fun. It's just, that's great, or to be a law. And part of this is because I just started teaching an ARU class for the first time. And God, it's taken me so much longer to prepare and do everything I want to do for these classes, but it's so much fun. So I'm at a nice period of having that lovely experience of, oh, man, this is good. But I mean, apart from just even these weeks, I know the kind of thing that I and Rand is talking about there in that the best days for me work wise are the days when it's really kind of hard, but it's not so hard that I can't do it. It's like there's a kind of level of challenge that's fun. And it's just hard to escape that way of characterizing it. So I certainly, I mean, what are the alternatives? If we're really thinking about, is it desirable for work and play to be connected in this way or something? What's the alternative? No, work should just be hell or work should just be gruel or work should just be, you know, grin and bear it or something like life is for the fun of it. Life is for the fun of it, right? So you want to try to find work that's enjoyable. That doesn't mean it's a laugh a minute. It doesn't mean there aren't, you know, difficult patches or less pleasant patches and so on. But yeah, I mean, there's a lot and there are other conversations to be had just about the role of productive work and attitudes toward work. You can't engineer these. You can't exactly, you know, dictate yourself to yourself how you'll feel about this work or any given work or any given work day. But there are certainly things you can do to try to figure out the kind of work that will be rewarding for you, that will be fulfilling, that will be fun to, you know, and I mean, that word can be used in different ways, but that will be really satisfying and enjoyable. I mean, there's a lot that you can do to try to figure out what that is. And sometimes it takes some going through, you know, trying some different things that won't all be wonderful to figure out, no, this is the right fit for me. But it's also true that you can have fun and play outside of work, that is they don't have to be constantly in the sense. Yes, right. Oh, for sure. No, there's lots of other, you know, go play tennis, go to the concert, go. Yeah, take a walk. No, there's a lot. Look at the birds. Come on. There's a lot to do. Yeah. There's lots of other many, many ways to play. I mean, sometimes you do need to play away from work. I mean, you can grind the work so hard that you're no longer all that effective at work. You're also burning yourself out and feeling more like you will be much fresher for work often if you give yourself space to do other things and have other just delights and so on. And it just infuses your life in so many ways. Yeah, so, yeah. Michael asks, do you agree that parents, actually parents practicing justice on an altruistic standard is punishing the child's expression of independence, thinking and acting is thinking and acting for himself and rewarding obedience. Okay, God, I found that I'm sorry, I found that a little bit difficult to follow. I think in part because justice on an altruistic standard right off the bat, like, oh my God, what the hell is that going to be? Well, you get rewarded for sacrificing, I guess. Okay, so I'm sorry. So what's the question again? I mean, if you're rewarding for sacrificing, that's not encouraging what's actually going to help the child. Yeah, so he's saying, do you agree that it's punishing the child's independence, expression of independence, and it's rewarding obedience, that that's what justice, you know, raising a child with justice in an altruistic sense means, it's obedience. I think it's just, yeah, if that is what's meant, but I'm not quite sure that that would be the way or the only way of taking altruistic justice. But I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around exactly what altruistic justice would be. I mean, egalitarianism, I could maybe get a little bit more clearly, and that's usually comes from an altruistic perspective. But I couldn't, I'm sorry, I just, I can't, I don't have a clear notion of what an altruistic notion of justice would be. It just seems the inverse of justice. And if that's what one means by it, right, it's like punish, you know, punish the good and elevate the bad. And God knows there's, there is a lot of that. But yeah, that's punish, I mean, that's just completely back. I mean, that's just, that's, again, just, it's anti-life. I mean, it's rewarding evil. It's an encouraging evil. So that's, it's even worse than punishing your child in a way. Eric, what principles of introspection lead to knowledge rather than rationalization? Honesty. There's no, in all seriousness, what's absolutely essential is you have to be honest with yourself. And you, part of how you do that when you're introspecting is you pay attention to those little, little, little, little, little germs of doubt. Like, if you hear some part of you is like, hmm, is that really it? You know, we're trying to analyze, let's say, why I was so upset about that meeting, you know, or that conversation I had with the friend, you know, there's something I'm trying to analyze in terms of trying to maybe understand my emotional reaction or why I'm so worried about this thing, you know, I'm trying to understand. And I come to some like, yeah, yeah, this is what's going on for me. Oh, yeah, now I see, yeah, that was really part of it. But if and to the extent that there are, but maybe there was this too, or maybe that's not the whole story, you have to honestly pay attention to those. That doesn't mean you will immediately be able to get the full answer. But, but be honest with yourself about, there might be more there. Maybe I need to come back to that. Like, yeah, I do need to come back. Like, so this is the kind of thing I mean by being honest, like, yeah, you know, smart people are really good at rationalizing. It's a danger of intelligence. You can come up with a rationalization for any conclusion you want, including, I'm great, nothing wrong with how I treated the friend or what I said and like, yep, that's always a danger. But it's a danger to the extent that you're not honest, and you're not really trying to introspect. You're just trying to tell yourself good stories about yourself. That's a complete waste of time. Okay, so introspection has got to be honest, but you've got to be honest, and you're not always going to like what you're fine, right? But you're so much better off finding out what's really going on. So, like, if you want to, I think that's probably the key principle, there may be more, but I think honesty is just crucial. And nobody else can give you the whole how do I be like, pay attention, be, you know, be truthful with yourself, you can usually tell when you're Yeah, this one's related from Paulo Zeus. Do you have guidelines or proper systematic introspection? No. And I don't think there's only one way to do it. And again, I'm not a psychologist, or I haven't said that, but I'm not a psychologist. No, I don't have, you know, a model or a template, or this is the way to do it. But I mean, I do it a lot myself, by putting out questions to myself, you know, just like, well, so what's going on, I mean, they can start at a very broad level sometimes like, yeah, you know, I've been a little, why am I been a little flat lately? Or why have I been a little this? Or again, you know, why am I so upset about that thing? Or scared of that? Or what's going on? Why am I, you know, so there are usually some what's going on? Why is this going on questions? Do I really want to write this book? Do I really want to do this thing? And you just start poking around what's, you know, but you need to give yourself time. That is one thing. It takes time. I mean, I do a lot of this by journal writing. Again, you can do it on a walk and so on, but you do need to sustain thoughts and give yourself space and space to revisit. You know, don't have the expectation you'll solve your problems. You know, if I give it 20 minutes or if I give it 45 minutes, oh, I'll solve like sometimes you're just opening up to, oh, this is going on too. And that's going on too. So, you know, there's a certain openness that you need to find out what's really going on. So Phillip is ready. He pre-ordered the book on Amazon. Thank you, Phillip. That's great. Thank you very, very much. Appreciate that. Paulo Azuz asks, if you have any memories of the giants winning the Super Bowl? Absolutely. I was at the first Super Bowl that the Giants won. I went with my sister, and it was marvelous because believe me, when I grew up, the Giants, like really my earliest, you see, now you got me started. This is good. When I grew up, but I'll try to be quick here. When I was growing up, my first members of the Giants were seasons in which we would win one game. And the idea that we would ever win the Super Bowl was like dream on. And then, you know, Bill Parcells and those guys in the 1986-87 season, we did it. And we were season ticket holders, so we were able to enter the lottery to get tickets. And tickets then, they weren't like, you know, what they didn't cost what they cost today. At any rate, we were able to enter the lottery to get tickets. And we got tickets. And my father, who was the great Giants fan, who raised us to be Giants fans, said, you girls go. And it was just wonderful. It was a highlight. It was fun. And it wasn't work, but it was play, and it was joy, and it was great. And thank you so much. And I still, of course, have the ticket as well as the ticket for the first NFL Giants game I ever went to where we played Gale Sayers. Well, we played the Browns and Gale Sayers played. And that was a lot of fun. So thanks for asking. Who asked that question? Apollo Zeus. Apollo Zeus. Thank you very much. That's very sweet of you. I'm sorry, I just bored the rest of you. That's great. Maria Lee says, if the press must serve the common good to exist, that is altruistic. It means the government vets the content we see. Why can't people see that? It's the road to tyranny. Yep. You know, I find it as in some ways, as puzzling as you do, Maria Lee. Yeah, I mean, it seems, and actually, when I don't know, when I point this out to students often, it's not that hard to get, you know, that, oh, yeah, if the government is telling us who the good guys are, you know, what the good information is, and so on. But people are so steeped in collectivism, I think that's it. You know, it's just, and even, I mean, I'll find often with people, you know, you'll point out what's wrong with a certain view, and then they get it in a different application. And again, it's the failing to think in principles, and they won't see how, okay, but that's a form of the very thing that you just saw, couldn't actually like this policy in general doesn't work. Oh, but then this application, they just don't get it. Sylvanos asks, Hi, Tara. Is it a sign of a damaged ego, if you're more easily motivated to do things for others, or that you're just extremely motivated? Okay, I'm not sure I get that. Is it a sign of a damaged ego, if you're more easily motivated to do things for others? Or is it just that you're just motivated? Yeah, it's not clear. Well, I think, okay, but I'll say something on at least part of the question. There is a phenomenon sometimes of people being too ready to help others as a way of distracting them from leading their own lives. I mean, I've known such people. Now, they're not particularly egoistic people, or they don't even tend to be egoistic people. They're not particularly altruistic people either, and this is like a big part of their self identity. But there's a way in which sometimes, oh, I'll help you solve your problem. I'll help you solve, you know, oh, my friend over here has this problem, my cousin over here has that problem. And it's like, get your own life and get with it. And so there's a sense in which, oh, well, I'm helping others. So that's good. That looks good, according to the altruistic cultural ethic and so on, right? So I think you can use that as a crutch or a kind of disguise for avoiding your own interests and needs and getting on with your life. Now, a readiness to do helpful things for others, there's nothing wrong with that. And there are some people who we should help sometimes, and it's a pleasure to help. And it's a selfish pleasure to help. And I mean, so certainly there's lots of room for generosity and benevolence in action, not just in theory, within objectivism, but an over readiness or an always put the, oh, I can help others. I mean, yeah, that's the sign that there's something wrong. Gotta have your own values and be ready to go. So we do just a couple more of your own. We have, let me tell you how many we have. Some of them are pretty short. We've got eight. Okay. Let's take three or four. Okay. That'll do. Well, no, I'm going to skip that one. WCZN says, before the interview, it seems I was operating with an assumption that I needed to earn the right to desire. Just correcting this, I feel more real. The world is brighter, clearer. Thank you, Tara. Oh, I hope so. Yeah. No, I don't know if I don't know, but there's a sense that I think some of us sometimes have of like, I need to earn my place, like I need to do something to be validated or to get some sort of certification that I'm okay. No, you don't. No, I don't think so. But again, I say that now easily having struggled to realize, gee, Tara, I don't think you need that. Mary-Lynn asks, if you understand private property and the war that plays in free speech, how much is free speech endangered by that lack of understanding? Okay, that can get pretty complicated, but definitely again, this all has to do with, if we don't understand the principles or the roots of the right to freedom, we're going to choke all of the particular freedoms of trade, or I forget which term you're using here, but the sort of the property, right? Property, speech, freedom of the, it's like they're all part of one path. It's intellectual freedom. And I mean, you need intellectual freedom in order to run a business in order to gain property and so on, right? There are a million decisions, decisions, thought, things you have to think about to start a business, to run a business, to keep it competitive, like all the, like so many things you need freedom of thought so that you can think the best thoughts, the most right, you know, get the best ideas and so on. Yes, so when we have misguided ideas about property, about trade, about business, when we have misguided ideas about the intellect, about speech, about the press and so on, it all poisons because it all constricts us, right? Because all of it is limiting our freedom to do whatever we want, experience however we want, such that we can get the best ideas, you know, reach the best conclusions, lead the best lives. So it's really destructive. Okay, so last question. Could you explain what is meant by moral values? Does it refer to values of character whether it's rationality or being a good communicator? Or does it refer to proper pro-life values in general? What's the contrast, Dan? What was the first one? What is a moral value? Does it refer to values of character? Not, no, not only values of character. Yeah, no, I mean moral values, if you think of the three biggies, according to Ayn Rand, reason, purpose, self-esteem, I mean reason is something that you, the individual, should use. Should value, should esteem in others, and sorry, something just fell. Yeah, I mean, so it's not a value of character exactly, right? It's something that you should, I mean, I think in general values are things that you should act or that you should follow, things that one acts to gain or keep. They're all sorts of valid, you know, no, they're not all moral values, but there are values of character, like I should value my integrity and act in ways to maintain my integrity and to be a person of integrity, right? I should value my productiveness and so on. So I guess, I think about it in that way, I mean, a lot of these are of character, though there was something in one of the examples that you get, something like being a good speaker. Yeah, like whether it's rationality or being a good communicator. I mean, it might be a characteristic of a given person that he's a good communicator, but I wouldn't see that as a moral value in the sense that that has to do with his skill in a certain area, a valuable area, but it doesn't really have to do with his moral character or it's, you know, to be a good communicator, to be a good mathematician is not a moral value. So I think moral values have to do with the very things that morality governs and morality doesn't govern how to do math, how to speak well, those kinds of things. So I'm not satisfied with my answer here and I think it is an interesting question, the relationship between values and moral values. So I definitely think there's something there, but I don't think I've nailed it. I don't think the question gets quite right, but I don't think I've given you a very good answer either. So sorry. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you all for all the questions. Really nice talking with you about all this. This is fun. This is fun. Good. And we sold a couple of books, I think, at least. Thank you very much. That's great. That's wonderful. Good. So check out the books. And I will let you guys know when the free speech book comes out, which is soon, hopefully, and the Egoism book is already on Amazon, so you can check that out already. All right guys, thank you. Those questions that are left to the extent that I think I can answer them, I'll answer them tomorrow. If not, we'll just hold them over for the next time, to us here. Okay, good. Thanks a lot, your own. Thank you all. Have a good night. Bye. See you guys tomorrow. Okay.