 All right. Hello, Aaron. How are you doing today? Doing all right. Thanks for having me on the chat. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. So before we jump into all the goodness. So, yeah, you have your own podcast. Embrace the void. So how how I only recently came across it. How would you describe the podcast and what you cover and all that stuff? Yeah, I actually have, you know, in proper dude bro fashion, I have two podcasts. Embrace the void, which is these days, it's pretty much primarily an interview or, you know, sometimes debate-ish kind of show where I'll have people on mostly of the philosophy persuasion, though it can it can vary pretty widely. We often talk about politics, culture, war stuff, as well as hardcore philosophy stuff. I would say, you know, it's sort of like pitched towards like a 200 level kind of approach to a lot of the issues. Try to make it accessible for people who don't have a philosophy background as much as possible. And like, it tends to be a lot of the topics that I'm particularly interested in or people who I come across on Twitter, who I think have something interesting to contribute to the discourse and whatnot. And then philosophers in space is a little bit more structured. It's every week we take a piece of science fiction and a piece of philosophy and run them together at high speeds and try to make it entertaining. I still need to check out your other one. What kind of science fiction stuff you cover? Like books, movies, shows? Yeah, everything, all the things, books, movies, shows, games, anything that is, you know, people have tried to even done a concept album yet. People have suggested a couple of concept albums to us. But like coming up, we're going to do three body problems you've been working on for a while. We just did a really cool sort of low budget. I would say it's kind of a cult classic and that it was not popular when it came out and has kind of got a bit of a following called The Empty Man, which is a nice little bit of sci-fi horror. But yeah, we take all comers. Things we've done that were a lot of fun where like Children of Time is a really amazing book. People should check out. And then, obviously, we're gearing up for the new Dune movie that's going to be going to be Wild. We've we've covered a lot of Dune in the course of our time. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds dope. I I still and you'd probably be ashamed to hear this. But like Dune is something like my buddies are like super into. But I I don't I don't even remember if I saw the original, but I still need to check it out before the new one comes out because my son, he wants to see it and stuff like that. So so yeah, I take a very strong, like pluralistic approach to Dune. I'm very in favor of people who love Dune and I have full respect for people who do not love Dune. There are many good reasons not to love Dune and many good reasons to love both the book and any adaptation that you want to talk about. And like, I think my favorite tweet about the upcoming movie was somebody being like a friend asked me, what if it's bad? I'm like, dude, it's a Dune movie. I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah. So yeah, that's that's like where I am on this one. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's kind of how I was with like, you know, the Star Wars ones and stuff like that. I it's just more nostalgia for me and all that. But yeah, I was raised on the David Lynch Dune. So like I'm very, very pro weirdness. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So so, yeah, like one of the one of the reasons I wanted you to come on and chat because like the culture war topic is something like super interesting. And before before we get into that, like I I almost think it would be better to like rewind a little bit and talk a little bit more like philosophy and some guests you've had. Like I think the first episode I listened of yours was recently you had a professor at I believe a community or junior college who teaches people about like, you know, avoiding like a spiritual thinking and stuff like that. So like, aside from culture wars, you cover that stuff. And you also had the host of that big QAnon podcast recently. Right. And I don't know if we're on the same page with us. But one of the reasons I like to start there or even look at it is because like thinking is like a skill that we all need. Right. You know, and one way to avoid conspiracies and all the craziness going on. And one way you make sure you don't end up at the capital storming, you know, the buildings and stuff is to make sure you're thinking correctly. So so where's so is is that kind of the reason or why do you like to bring those guests on and discuss that as well? Aside from the culture war type topics? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think behind the culture war stuff is this looming epistemic crisis that we as a society are dealing with that I think precedes my lifetime by at least 30 years, if not more, that is this sort of, you know, deep conflict about sources of truth and meaning and reliability of experts and, you know, cultural signaling around the issues of expertise and such, which has sort of been weaponized by a variety of political operatives leading to, you know, a world that we're in now where we really do see a, you know, like a substantial divide politically about how people experience reality and that like we are living in very different realities in that sort of sense. And there's not a clear answer to me at all about like how we pull out of this epistemic spiral. I like to have these people on to talk about it because I think they're doing work that might help, but I am generally fairly pessimistic about the situation, right? Like I don't think we have a clear answer for, like if these people are correct, then there is something in the neighborhood of 20 million people in America who are part of a fairly hardcore radical cult that I don't see how we have a good method for dealing with that after the fact. Like deconversion is not a good system at scale. So like I don't know what's going to happen in our lifetimes because I think the spiral is just going to continue for the most part. Yeah, yeah. And that that deconversion aspect. I remember I was talking with someone, I think it was Asia Raiden, she wrote a book, The Truth About Lies. And we were talking one time and it's like, OK, well, how do we get people out of this, right? Because I think like, you know, one of the weirdest situations in recent weeks was Donald Trump up on stage at one of his rallies and he's like, hey, I got vaccinated and they're booing him. I'm like, wait, hold on, time out. All right, the guy you believe for all this craziness, then he says he got vaccinated, but you're so far gone that you're booing him about this. And yeah, I was talking about, you know, I've read, you know, I read so many books about all this stuff, like how, you know, conspiracy theorists and, you know, science deniers and all that. And it seems like the number one solution is talking with people on an individual basis and it takes time, right? And yeah, that seems like an impossible solution. And now I'm sitting here because you're pessimistic about it. And I usually have guests on who help me be more optimistic about it. So I'm like, oh, crap, maybe we're both just going to go into this. We're going to embrace the void together. But like, where do you think is like a primary contributor to this? Like, what led people to joining this cult-like thinking and this complete irrationality? What have you seen just during your years on this planet? Well, yeah, so I think it's important not to have too much of a recency bias, right? I do think that like the current situation is especially bad. But I think the like threads of that can go back, like I've said, you know, 60 or 100 years or something like that. I do think part of what's kicking us into overdrive right now is the media environment, the fact that we are all online all the time. Right. And if we weren't before the pandemic, we certainly are now. And that very online world is just like a nightmare of information, the misinformation problems and stuff. So, you know, I think that so that that is one part of the internet. The other part of what makes it worse on the internet is that you now have an ease of community that you didn't have before, right? Like the brick and mortar cult model was, you know, you could get some amount of people, but like it was difficult relatively for sort of rank and file individuals to find themselves easily amongst the community of a lot of like-minded individuals who would reinforce whatever narratives, you know, yes, ending each other as it escalates and escalates. But now, right, it's so easy to search and find these people and like get in these groups and develop these critical masses and stuff. So that's, I think, a major point of concern. But like, what is the cause of all of this, right? What is the deeper underlying cause? I think honestly, it goes back to slavery and it involves a conflict between conservative, quote, unquote, and progressive about whether society should stay at a certain particular period of development, which we can think of as the peak of human development or if it needs to keep progressing. And if it's going to keep progressing, what is that going to mean for the various rules in society? So what I think you see is on the right, you know, it really does start before the Civil War, but it very much picks up both after the Civil War during Reconstruction. And then also there's this big second wave of it, I would argue, in like the 60s through the 90s, right? So you have the Southern strategy during the Civil Rights era that involves a lot of this kind of coded language and a lot of signaling and a lot of conspiracy stuff, right? The conspiracy stuff goes back all like the whole way. And as you see it recropping up and it's always these conspiracies about like great replacement of things where, you know, like the Jews are manipulating the other people of color into destroying all the white people kind of thing. And that slowly gets coded, coded more and more into where like people who in QAnon, for example, may not realize that they're part of a deeply anti-Semitic conspiracy, but it absolutely is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. So what I mean, what happened was are, you know, like there are various reasons this could be happening. Some of it is like genuine racism and some of it was like, you know, we realize politically and there are quotes by people like Leigh Atwater about this, that like we realize politically that we can do better if we just focus on white people in this way. And so they had this Southern strategy where they focused in on white people and continued to isolate those white people from the rest of the world informationally, right? Told them to be afraid of experts, be afraid of creeping communism in your schools. Like that stuff that we hear about today was there in the 60s. It never like it hasn't gone away or anything. This has just been a conservative drumbeat that has just been more and more effective, right? It has has raised multiple generations now of conservative individuals who are deeply distrustful of any sources of information, honestly, right? Like we're saying with Trump, it's almost not, you know, it's really the case that they are out of ultimately out of control as a kind of Frankenstein creation where, you know, if you're not, yes, ending whatever they're into at a given moment, you're immediately compromised, right? So there's no one who can ever put their hands on the reins and probably hasn't been for some time. Yeah, yeah, it's it's interesting, you know, like so much that like when I think about, you know, like I try to, you know, get away from like that recency bias and stuff too. Like I, you know, one of the things that I got really interested in for a while was the satanic panic of the 1980s, right? And all that stuff going on. And I'm like, okay, like that was years ago, but then you can go back even further and further and further and further. And and then yeah, like social media is definitely it feels like it's it's given people more opportunities to dive into this. Like I think it was like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I remember for one of his interviews, he talked about like the internet has created a way like you can you can find like thousands or millions of people with the same bad idea as you now, right? Like it's so easy. Like no matter what I believe there's so many people on this planet, just like, you know, there's there's a high probability I can find some at least one person who believes this, right? And then if we can convince another then next thing, you know, we have these groups and these Facebook groups and the algorithms, they do all this this stuff to keep us together and keep us in these in these chambers and all that. And and yeah, I so let me let me ask you this, like when it comes to, you know, like just philosophy and stuff like, like philosophy is something that I only recently got interested in, right? And so now I'm the father of a 12 year old kid. And I'm this firm believer that something happened in a lot of people's childhoods, right? Where, you know, like there's parents telling kids how to think or teachers telling kids how to think, or what to think rather, and I'm a firm believer, we need to teach people how to think like with my son, you know, I'm pretty, you know, liberal, progressive, whatever. But if he turns out conservative, as long as he uses like, logical reasoning, go for it, right? I just want him to think for himself know how to think, like, what, where do you think you went right on your path to or like to even become interested in, you know, epistemology and like stuff like that, like, because I'm always wondering, is this something we should be teaching in schools at a much younger age or or like, what do you what do you think? What do you think it might be? Okay, so a couple of things there is definitely something we should be teaching at a much younger age. Most people don't experience philosophy until they get to college. I didn't accept it. I mean, like, here's what I'll say, I got lucky and experienced philosophy in late high school because I was in an IB program, which had a theory of knowledge course, which, you know, it wasn't taught by a philosopher because of course, there's been a hired philosopher at a public school, but there was, you know, a really dedicated mix of like English teachers and stuff who like took on trying to teach some of philosophy. And so I got some experience into that. But it certainly wasn't until I got to college that I had any idea that like, philosophy was something that living people are still doing right now, right? Yeah, something you could have a career in or like was important in these various kinds of ways. So, you know, I do think we should be teaching it earlier. And the reasons we're not are very similar to the reasons I just gave you a minute ago, right, it's going to be the same kinds of like, fear of experts brainwashing your children. Because the part of the problem is that like, you're a big fan of how to think not what to think. But a lot of people are like, if you're teaching how to think, and that how to think is asking the wrong kinds of questions. It's not it's just as bad, right? You're putting you're putting our traditions or our culture or something at risk by putting the wrong kinds of questions into our students heads. Now, I do want to push back on you a little bit there. It is important, very important to teach how to think. And I do think, you know, what we need is more education on things like identifying experts versus grifters, media landscape. But it's also there, there, there does have to be a mix of how of what and how, right? I, you know, when you ask how I got where I got, I'm lucky, I was very privileged. I had people who taught me, you know, to care about education and like to care about ideas from a very young age. And they also taught me things like, you know, liberal progressivism. And if I had been raised in a different environment in a different sort of educational model, you know, it's quite likely that I would have ended up with a bunch more of what I would consider to be false beliefs. And I think objectively false, if I had been, you know, raised in the kind of regressive conservative environment that I think is dominating our right wing media sphere, for example. Yeah, I, yeah, it's, it's interesting, although, because I definitely agree, like, although I'm like a huge advocate for how to think like, I read a ton and, and something I try to do, like I, for example, I, I've read Dave Rubin's recent book, right? I read it cover to cover. And, you know, thankfully, I stayed so horrifying. Yeah, like, I was like, what is this? But you know, it's interesting too. I actually read those books faster because I can't wait to see what the next ridiculous thing is. But anyways, from, from what I've read, like, I think, you know, one great book is The Republican Brain by what's it saying, Chris Mooney, maybe? But anyways, there's a lot of stuff like when I read it, no matter who it is, I read from, you know, philosophers and everything, I'm like, the liberal, and I, I just hope I'm not being biased, like the liberal thing, the, like the liberal ideas and progressive ideas seem much more logical and rational that, like, no matter what I do, no matter how I look at it, it just seems to make the most sense. So when I'm teaching my son how to think and I'm providing with him with evidence and, you know, and whatever and the, you know, the facts, I feel like I'm providing them with a bunch of liberal progressive ideas because they make more sense. But that might just be because of, you know, how I was raised, which is then going to him. But I wonder, so I don't know, you like, I don't think in any way, shape or form, unless I'm crazy, like, do you think like all conservatives have bad ideas, right? Like there's nothing good that comes out of that side. So this is a tricky one, right? I mean, there's no, there's no way that you're ever going to be able to tell yourself for certain, right, that your conclusions are not the result of the fact that these are the things that you were generally raised to believe, habituated to believe and such like that. That being said, I think it's impossible to deny that there is a difference in quality on the philosophical content coming out of liberal progressivism versus conservatism in America right now. I think there's lots of examples you can point to. I don't think there's there. It's hard for me to find somebody in the right wing intelligentsia who I'm like genuinely impressed by in any kind of robust kind of way. And I listen to, you know, shows that have folks like Ross Douthit and Lowry and folks like that on it. You know, I've read excerpts of McWhorter's book and things like that. Like I don't it's not for lack of trying. I think I think the bar is lower. And I think the bar is partly lower because of that decades and decades and decades of anti-intellectualism that I was talking about has like, you know, made it so that that like there is less competition in these particular domains, it seems like to me. So, you know, what do we do about that? I don't know. I really want there to be more like robust conservative thought. But I don't think it's good to do the kind of false equivalency thing. So like this is one of the reasons I pushed back on your like teaching how thing. More and more, I see a major problem in the media ecosphere that a lot of people really are and there's always been a concern, but like emphasizing process over product when it comes to discussions online or debates or you know, whatever kind of content you're putting out, whether it's like false equivalency bias of the news media or the like civility porn of the rational bros where it's like, what's important is that I was able to have a conversation with a Nazi without either of us getting angry. That's not important. There's no universe in which that is important. Right. What's important is that if you had the conversation with the Nazi, you made very clear to them that they were wrong and like made very clear to everyone that they were wrong. Absolutely. If you needed to make the arguments, you made the arguments, but like you didn't do this like silly, we're going to take it to a very meta level at which we actually, you know, and that stuff does come from like a genuine place sometimes where I think they really believe that, like, if you get the process just right, that like that will produce the better product in this kind of way. But like, I think there is a breakdown of the ability for some people to just say, no, the ultimate conclusion is like this one view is just very wrong and like needs to be seen as such because they're afraid that that will make them look like orthodox or something like that or dogmatic, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny that you bring it up too, because I like I I get like upset, right? Like I think the the prime example is a year or two ago was right before all the stuff went down with the Ellen show, but she took the picture. She was hanging out with George Bush, right? And she was like, I just want people to see that you could be friends with people with different views than you. And I'm like, to to morally reduce it down to, oh, we just believe a little bit differently. I'm like, you know, arguably, like you're like, you're you're taking selfies with like a war criminal, right? Like we're talking about something much deeper than like, oh, I like the like we're not talking about like, you know, different ideas around like taxation work with like there's those things that go like that. But anyways, I had or like an example of that that's close to home for me is like Joe Rogan having Alex Jones on recently and like being like, well, you know, Jones looks into stuff and he reads things like no, he doesn't. Alex like Joe like it's all bullshit. Like he makes it all up and it's totally fake. And you're a sucker for this stuff and you're propagating it to lots of people and that's just wrong. And this like there is a kind of a lot of it is very superficial, I think, because it turns these debates into like, well, we as personalities can have a relationship, right? Like what's important is that we as individuals can still feel this kind of connection. And again, like, yes, it is useful for me to have a close connection to someone if I want to try to change their mind. But like Joe's not changing Alex's mind in any serious kind of way. Like Joe's not moderating Alex's behavior or something like that. They're just, you know, Joe is feeding Alex and Alex is getting rich off of conspiracy theories. So they should both be heavily criticized for all of their behavior in that process. Yeah, let me I'm going to go on a quick rant because I think you'll understand about Joe Rogan and just kind of what's what's been going on. I used to be a huge fan of Joe Rogan and over the years, I'm just like, I can't. But anyways, especially, you know, great examples around all the COVID stuff, the vaccine stuff and everything. He has had so many scientists, independent journalists, like just people who I respect greatly on there. And something I've noticed, I don't know if you've noticed this and I won't I won't name names, but people he's had his guests on when when when he says crazy stuff about the vaccine or recently, I think the most the best example is when he was talking about that study that said vaccines can actually increase like mutations of the virus, right? And even the guy, one of the guys from the study came out and was like, no, you're misinterpreting this data. None of the people who were previous guests on his show talked about it at all, right? But then when, you know, now there's this new story about CNN and him taking the invertebrate, I can never remember then the invertebrate, invertebrate in what? Yeah, there you go. Much better at that. But anyways, they all talk about that. And you know what the science actually says, I'm like, so it feels, this is my opinion, like there's such a bias because people benefit so much from being friends with Joe Rogan and being on his show that they won't critique him. And am I crazy or have you noticed that too? Well, of course, I mean, like or maybe maybe they will, you know, soft pedal some criticism or something like that, but it is very hard. And I, you know, I understand as a person in the world that like you, you know, even even if you really dislike Joe Rogan, right, the possibility that you can use that platform to get some sort of other more valuable message out is compelling. And so you might, you know, deal with that in that sort of way. I mean, like you've seen, I don't know if you speaking of Iver Mectin, if you followed rebel wisdom's recent attempts to debunk the Weinsteins and stuff like that. But in the process, apparently it's come out that like, you know, David Fuller gave some pushback to Jordan Peterson. I'm sorry to use all of these names that no one should care about. But like, you know, he gave some very mild pushback to this guy who claims to be someone who likes to have really robust debates. And it like made it so that he can no longer have conversations with him. Like these folks will it's not it's not silly to be worried that these folks will cut you off. Yeah. And like that their ability to make it harder for you to spread your information is a challenge. Like it is. It is a problem that people face. I think I think the right thing to do. I mean, like I'm not necessarily even against somebody going on Joe Rogan's show if they really want to argue with Joe Rogan, but like take it very seriously as a project and really make sure that you understand how you're going to make this valuable for your cause. And you know, like be willing to be very critical. Like I think anybody who's trying to get on Rogan show at this point should at some point be like trying to deflect into having a conversation about how he needs to stop platforming Alex Jones and like stop promoting all of these dangerous conspiracy theories. But I don't know if you can really manage that when you're in that space and you know, you're the guest or something. I don't know if I could even. Yeah, no, I get it. Like me, you know, being like this, just you know, virtual nobody in the grand scheme of things, right? If if Joe Rogan said, hey, you want to come on in a month and between then and now, right? He says something ridiculous, could would I keep my mouth shut? You know, just thinking about how much I would benefit from it. So like I think about that, you know, with people incentive, like the their personal incentives, you know, like changing their morals. And sometimes like they're just they're silent. And I'm sure they're talking about it in private, but it sucks because they've been given a larger platform. But but yeah, I could. Yeah. And I could totally spend an hour talking about that. But but I want to talk to you about the culture war stuff because I think there's a good transition to because talking about conservatism versus liberal progressives. And here's here's where I need your help because I think I think you and I agree a ton ideologically, right? And but I see so many issues with progressives and and I know with certain sectors, but then I try to think like, are there just certain sectors of conservatism? But anyways, we're talking about like progressives and like the idea like progress, right? Pushing forward, trying new things like rebuilding systems, changing systems and all of this. Well, something I've noticed, I think a great example is, you know, Carol Hoover. And not sure if you check out her book, but you know, she wrote that book on testosterone. It's called T. Right. And there's a lot of controversy around it, like Carol Hoover is clearly very liberal, very liberal, right? But she's talking about the science. And, you know, there's some other just topics around, you know, the trans debate or, you know, even just all these other scientific discussions, but it seems like who they would label the quote unquote social justice warriors, shut those conversations down, right? They don't want to listen to science or logic. And and that's where I take an issue because I feel like part of being liberal and progressive is challenging your own side and saying, hey, we're screwing up in this aspect, let's try to fix it. But it seems like a lot of them are like, nope, if you say anything about this, you're morally terrible. So I'm curious your thoughts about that in the larger conversation of the culture wars. Yeah. So there's a lot there, obviously, I, you know, I've been thinking a lot recently as a progressive about the paradox of progress. And does it can we really be saying that we are making progress? And what does it mean? And what are we progressing from and towards? And those are, I think, important, difficult questions that get harder when you take seriously some of the critiques of the the social justice woke or whatever about things like post-colonialism and the arc of history and these sorts of ideas. Now, you know, getting getting sort of the nuts and bolts applied question first about, like, what do we do about this situation? Is this the case? I mean, it would be bizarre if, broadly speaking, this, you know, huge cluster of entities that we label as woke or social justice. I'm not going to say that those words have no meaning. I know some folks think they're like too vague to be of use. I don't think so. I think we can talk about woke ideology, broadly speaking, and we can talk about the woke camp, broadly speaking. And I think within that, we can say there's certainly a non-zero cluster of people who just don't want anyone to talk about certain topics ever, right? Just don't have certain conversations. And we can discuss the ethics of that, right? I think their argument is going to generally be, you know, take, for example, racial IQ, right? Like they're going to say trying to define groups by race and then measure their IQ is always been pseudoscience. It's always going to be pseudoscience. And it always produces harm as a pseudoscience. So we should stop doing it and just stop having conversations about, like, which race, because race is not a useful distinction within the world or something. And like it would be bad. It would be bad for people to continue to be trying to do this fake pseudoscience. So there's that. And then there's probably, like cases that are, I think, you know, genuinely hard spots for the woke where we should be having these conversations more. But there is still that anxiety about having it because of the high likelihood that, you know, the opposing team, quote unquote, is going to weaponize some particular fact as a way to push legislation about people, right? So the fear, I think around, and I haven't gotten to read tea yet, but I've certainly talked with folks on my show about, you know, debates about testosterone and sports and such like that, is that we don't know a lot and there's a lot of complicated science here, but it's very easy for some bit of information from a book like that to get into the talking points of conservatives or something and be used to, you know, rollback or prevent the access of rights for certain individuals, you know, is shutting down the debate at the position at the point of science rather than at the normative argument that happens afterwards. The better approach or not, that's also a fair question, right? Some will argue, let's just let them have the science debate and then we will stop things in their tracks when we get them to the normative debate, right? Psychologically, you might say, well, maybe that's not a great idea because people have such a natural bias that if you let someone win the argument on the science side and say, you know, this thing is unnatural and your argument is going to be, yeah, but it's not immoral, right? Then you may be at a disadvantage in making that argument. And so practically speaking, maybe you do want to fight on both fronts in this kind of way or you want to prevent on, you know, the discussion from happening on both fronts in this kind of way. And of course, there's the broader debate about like, should we be preventing some discussions at all? Or is it better for all discussions to be out in the open for everyone to see and let the chips fall where they may kind of thing? You know, I think a lot of folks are initially sympathetic to that. But I don't think it at all takes seriously either our psychological capacities or the media environment that we're facing. Yeah. So, yeah. And I think there's a lot of this, you know, like fear and it becomes like, you know, just kind of looking at it from different perspectives. But I'll fill this example at you because when you and I started just like talking and everything like I experienced this on on Twitter having a conversation because I like a lot of people say, hey, don't try to have any kind of rational conversation on Twitter. But I love a good challenge, Aaron. So I'm like, fuck it. Let's do it. So anyways, there was there was a debate going around about this article and it always comes up, right? Where there are people who detransition, right? And and by the way, I don't know if I have time to talk about this. But I think there are people like I read Abigail Schreyer's book cover to cover. I didn't think it was it was terrible. I didn't think it was pushing an agenda. I think it tried to focus on like, hey, let's at least talk about this. And as a as a parent, right? It's something that I think about, you know, but I'm all for, you know, trans rights and, you know, reducing violence against trans people and all this. But anyways, this article talked about the small minority of people who detransition, right? And some some people who are all, you know, in the in the trans debate are like, that is such a small portion. Don't talk about it. If you talk about it, you are being transphobic. You are promoting the violence against trans people. But I'm sitting here as like, you know, because I'm a recovering drug addict, you know, I'm a big mental health advocate. That's where my YouTube channel started and everything. And I'm like, listen, we need to talk about the minorities of the minorities, right? Like, for example, in mental health, when you when when people say mental health, like the broad ones are depression and anxiety, right? And sometimes people with like schizophrenia are overlooked or these like lesser known disorders because we're focusing on the big one. But if, you know, as a as, you know, liberal progressives, our thing is like, hey, let's make sure we're helping out the most marginalized. So when I think of like the minority of the minority, that's somebody we need to talk about. But they shut that conversation down due to that fear. You know what I mean? So do you think do you think our fear is making like, you know, causing, you know, causing a significant amount of harm to some even smaller populations that we should be addressing? You know what I mean? Yeah. And here I also want to add, right? We don't have a good handle at all on quantitative like how many of the like social justice vote community are we talking about here who just don't want the conversation to literally happen at all versus ones that want to like are fine with having it as long as it's properly caveated, right? So like my my impression would be, right? There certainly are some people, especially on Twitter who like have no patients left and we can talk about why they have no patients, right? And maybe they've earned not having patients at this point because they've dealt with this conversation 10,000 times, right? But like most folks if they're at a point where they have patients are going to be willing to say, yes, we should we should care deeply about people who detransition, right? And we should try to understand what they need. And like, you know, I had a really good conversation with a trans friend of mine on embrace the void a while back where they talked about they talked some about like, you know, some anxiety about talking about the downsides of transitioning about feeling like in the community, you have to sort of give this impression that it's all sunshine and rainbows, right? There's no costs or trade offs or anything like that. And I really do I'm very sympathetic as members to people in these marginalized communities feeling like if they are more forthright or open about that kind of stuff, it will again be weaponized because you see it happen all the time, right? Like, think of the comparison to Christian conversion therapy, right? The people who, you know, it's we should absolutely be studying and trying to help people who are gay, right? I might in my opinion, it seemed to be our gay, right? But go through these kind of abusive deconversion models by which they push themselves to not be gay, right? And, you know, but like, you can you can understand why if you roll back the clock 20 years, people would be similarly frustrated if everyone was spending a bunch of time talking about that handful of individuals as opposed to the vast majority of gay people who like aren't going to be de gay, right? And who just want to have their gay marriages and such. And so I think similarly, a lot of folks today are just going to be frustrated if too much emphasis is being placed on the de transitioning individuals and not enough is being placed on the larger number of individuals who would be happy to be able to transition more effectively and are being denied that because of a variety of society issues, right? Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and it sucks because I totally I totally get that, right? Because, you know, based on the data I've seen, it is a very small portion of people who do de transition. But like this is like life change, like, for example, right? Like I think about how, you know, legally you have to be 18 to get a tattoo. That is permanent as hell, right? So like when I think about that in my own son, it's like, you know, this is something that I think, you know, should be discussed, but I get the concern. But, you know, part of this, too, like with these concerns and these worries and since I know you're into, you know, these and you and you look at these social issues and we're talking about race and IQ a second ago, because I think, you know, all these like, you know, they require a little bit more nuance. Like so with race and IQ, right? So I so I'm half black, right? So like even in this last year and I've been really reflecting on what half of my family has dealt with and trying to learn more and talk with them and everything. And when I look at race and IQ, so first off, I just started this new series on my sub stack. Like I think the whole concept of intelligence and IQ was just really ridiculous overall. But if we are focusing on intelligence and race and IQ and all this, like there's this new book coming out, the genetic lottery. And there's already debate about it, even though it's not released. Like I got an early copy, but I'm like, hey, everybody, chill out until you read it. Right. But let's say, for example, so let's let's talk about black communities and people saying, OK, look, we give a bunch of black kids IQ test, intelligence test, boom, they're lower, right? Well, that's that's a limp. That's not even looking at a lot of other factors. Are we looking at the types of schools, right? Are we looking about at the lack of resources? Are we looking at what can cause a lower IQ that's from not having a stable household? Like one of the arguments I hate that I absolutely hate with all my heart is like, well, well, look, look, how many of them come from broken homes and don't have a black father around? I'm like, have you looked at the insane incarceration rate of black men? Maybe that has something to do with these broken families. So like we have to look at this. So so it feels like you have to take the like the genetic component of it is to focus on without looking at the societal issues. Because if we just said, hey, you know, this race seems to have lower IQs, there's too much focus on the genetic component. But if we if we at least have the conversation about race and IQ, maybe that can lead us to the social component. If you know what I mean, or do you think like there's too much risk even talking about the two together? You know, because I feel I feel like there's a lot of benefit to be gained if we acknowledge that stuff. So I don't think there's a lack of acknowledging it. I think if we want to get to a point of having a better conversation about that stuff, I think the solution is genuine evidence that it can really be decoupled from policy and outcomes and conclusions. So so take the exam, you know, going back to the conversion therapy stuff again for a second, right? I think if you if you wanted to have a conversation with a gay person today about like Christian conversion therapy, they're probably not going to feel threatened by it in the same kind of way, right? They're probably going to laugh about it. I mean, like or they'll say, you know, it's bad for people who are still trapped in parts of the world that are still experiencing and like dealing with that stuff seriously. But like in so far as I think there is a larger sense of security within that community about they're not going to be put back on sort of a culturally taboo list or something like that. They probably, I think, feel less concerned about discussions around. So for example, I've been seeing more discussions recently about, you know, is how much is your sexuality a choice? There's a book coming out about the right to sex that talks about the malleability of sexual preference. And like there was a big talk, you know, like during the gay rights movement during like the especially towards the other 2000s part where it was really making progress. You know, there was a strong emphasis on it's not a choice, right? It has to be something biological or something right like that because people felt like if it wasn't a choice, it would be it would be a better argument as well as because I think a lot of people do do feel like they were being told it was a choice. They wanted proof that it wasn't because for them personally, it isn't right. Probably it's probably true that for a lot of people, the vast majority of your sexual preference is non-malleable that to some extent it may be malleable in various kinds of ways with enough kind of effort. You know, it's sexuality is very, very complicated. So like and so like I think it's good that we make space now for people to talk about like the malleability of their own sexual preferences. But it's probably the case that we can only do that because we did that thing before, right? It might need to be the case that there are periods where like we really need to be shutting down like I haven't read Schreer's book, though my understanding is that it's it's pretty problematic kind of variety of like empirical ways and not just like normative conclusions or something like that. And I think there is a lot of you know, misinformation and bad science running around in the turf world just like there is in the sort of race realist kind of world. So to bring it back to the race stuff, right? Like we don't there. There seems to be good arguments to say that like races don't track consistent genetic populations. So it's not even like we're drawing lines around something that's actually there, right? But as you said, even if we want to talk about populations that are being coded in this kind of way by society, you know, inner city students of color or something like that and you will see, you know, woke sociologists talking about black people in this kind of way. Then, you know, we need to be more sophisticated about like nature, nurture, conversations and stuff. So it's not just like is it genetics or is it environment? It's, you know, modern genetics tells us that like those things aren't separate. It's, you know, genes interact with their environment. Like, you know, epigenetics makes it such that like, you know, these are not clearly separable kinds of things. And again, I'm not an expert on that stuff. I'm just, you know, receding philosopher. Scientists can continue to argue these kind of and I think it's good to argue these kind of things. But I do think we have a very, very high burden of responsibility when you're talking about these kind of topics that are very known to be weaponized and easy to weaponize that you'd be really, really clear on both the empirical and the normative side of things. So that, yeah, I guess that's where I'm at on that at this point. Yeah. So, so this leads to one of the one of the biggest questions I'm going to ask you because I, I like, like I said earlier in the show, like, I, I've been, you know, I have authors on here who who managed to balance my pessimism, right? So let's go to a dark place real quick. So you, you know, kind of not so optimistic about how things are going, you know, a philosopher who looks at how people think and ask the deeper questions. Here's something that I wrestle with a lot because as far as everything we're talking about, like, like you're talking about how things are weaponized, right? So when I think weaponization, I'm less like, OK, who's going to weaponize it, right? You know, people in power or whatever, and then they talk to larger groups and then that goes into their little echo chambers and we got some bad ideas floating around. So here's the big question. OK, are you ready? Do we think that that people are just too dumb for us to have these complex conversations? Like, is that is that what we're getting at, Erin? That's what I'm trying to figure out, because that isn't that the isn't that the root fear that these people can't sit back and and be like, oh, well, they said this, maybe I should see if there's any counter evidence or maybe I should fact check that. Do we think people are too lazy and stupid so we don't want to have these conversations? Is that what I think that's the wrong way? Right? No, I mean, like, look, I'm not going to say that humans are are are smarter than they actually are. Like, realistically, as individual thinkers, we are unreliable thinkers. We are biased. We're full of like flawed heuristics, like we're very prone to group think and being pressured socially by our community into what we how we act and what we believe in stuff. So like, yeah, we're really flawed thinkers, but like also, you know, I don't think we should be viewed as bad or something. And like, so there's a kind of elitism, I think, that can creep in where you have this impression that like most humans are that way, but like some people aren't or something. And I don't think that that's how we should understand it. Like no amount of development of critical thinking training, I think really makes you immune to misinformation and bad, you know, epistemic luck. It may make you slightly more resistant to it, right? But at the end of the day, if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, getting the wrong kind of information in the wrong ways, I think it's very hard to imagine that your brain holds up and like doesn't doesn't succumb in these kind of ways. So I think it's not that people are dumb. It's that we've created a system that is heavily predatory towards the way that human beings are and that like what we need to be doing is better regulating our our epistemic environment so that individuals are not being inundated with conspiracy theories and misinformation 24 seven because the reality is there's no amount of mental training that will protect you, right? That's just not so like if what we mean by you're dumb is that implicitly you have to be smarter in order to avoid this. There's no smarter. There's just, you know, there's human beings and they're either in a space that is improving their, you know, understanding of things or they're in a space that it's slowly sort of degrading it. I think. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And and for lack of better words, I I use the word dumb. But for example, like I I got really interested in all of our flaws in thinking years ago. And I'm usually reading a lot of books at the same time. I just have a rotation always in my rotation, you know, our books, you know, like from philosophers as well as books on just, you know, all of our all of our issues with thinking. I put it this way. I like reading books that remind me how dumb I am, right? That remind me of biases, remind me of, you know, these these heuristics and shortcuts and all this. And and to what you were saying, like even Daniel Kahneman, right? I remember him being asked in an interview like, OK, since you've been researching, you know, like biases and heuristics your whole life, pretty much. Are you like immune? And he's like, no, hell no, right? Like it depends on the situation and and all these things. So so and like and I think, you know, you're correct where you're like, you know, we have people who who prey on that. They know these flaws or even they don't know these flaws. Like I don't I don't necessarily think that like Trump like knows about all these issues, right? With our thinking, but he like luckily falls into them. Doing it on a more intuitive format. Yeah, exactly. So so, you know, something I want to do and something I try to do is to educate people about these things and just be like, hey, our thinking sucks. We are wired this ways. There's actually, you know, good evolutionary reasons why we're wired for some of these things. But but yeah, I don't know. Like so, here, let's reframe this. Is the fear that enough people aren't aware or even care about these biases and thinking errors that we're afraid to have these conversations? You know what I mean? Yeah, so there's a really great paper by a guy I've been studying with named Clark Chin about the four lenses. He divides it into four lenses of post truth, right? So post truth is our broad term for like this like world where it feels like truth doesn't matter as much to people in various ways. And there's probably he think, you know, there could be four different things going on. Let's remember all of them off my head, right? So there's the, you know, people are not getting good training and critical thinking. That's one major lens. You see a lot of research on that, a lot of work on that particular problem. And it makes sense, obviously, especially from an education background, that's gonna be the most tractable of the four lenses in theory for our kind of educational work, right? Get in there and this is gonna be, you know, like you'll see people say, oh, well if you teach someone, you know, these five basic steps, whenever they get a new source of information or something that will protect them. And maybe those things are helpful. Like there are situations I think where those apps absolutely can. So for example, one weird trick that'll make you better at noticing misinformation, always check the date on something before you share it. Because shit goes around the internet from like five years ago and people pretend, and like I've done it too. We've all, like that's the point, right? I'm not special, right? I've also made the stupid mistake, right? But you make it, you know, and you notice it enough time and you're like, okay, I gotta stop, I gotta check the date, right? Stuff like that. So that's one lens. The second lens is the cognitive biases problems. So this is gonna be your catch-all for like confirmation biases and all these sorts of things. And they're usually the solutions are to try to make you more aware of your confirmation bias or I think the better solutions are, get you into a group thinking environment that takes advantage of the way that we are good pro-social thinkers, right? That like we actually can use a communal environment to weed out bad ideas rather than reinforce them. Lens three is the people who just don't care about the truth anymore, right? And there is some non-zero portion of those sort of epistemic nihilists in this kind of way. The classic bullshitters in the philosophical sense, right? Someone like Donald Trump who doesn't care what's true or not, right? And it's not at all important and it can make some a better liar on one level at least, right? Like there's no hesitation in that kind of framework. But there's also people in that group who are not like pathological liars who may just be burned out, right? There's a kind of epistemic burnout where there's so much information coming at you all day every day that maybe you just kind of give up a little bit about caring about what it actually is true or not. And you're like, well, I'm just gonna, can I believe what I wanna believe a little bit or something, right? So, I'm sympathetic to those people as well. The world has gotten more and more complex and that complexity is more and more in your face than it has ever been before. And that's hard. Just like we have ethical burnout from watching all the suffering in the world. I think we have epistemic burnout. And then like, I'll just cap it off there. The fourth lens is genuine disagreements. And this gets back to the culture war some. Genuine disagreements about ways of knowing, right? So different people might believe there are different sources of knowledge in a sense, right? So not just your classic quote unquote, scientific method, experimental design kind of thing, maybe standpoint epistemology or maybe just cognitive science or social psychology or something that maybe you're qualitative versus quantitative different approaches to kinds of knowledge, religious ones, right? And I think there's a lot of revealed ways of knowledge get in there as well. And that to me is a very interesting place where there could be more work being done about how do we make a world, how do we make a rule essentially that includes good versions of alternative ways of knowing and excludes not good versions. And I don't think we have a good way to distinguish between those. And in the absence of that, there's a lot of very sort of messy epistemology running around, I think. Yeah. I think that's a good stuff that paper that you're talking about. I'll link it down in the description if anybody wants to take it out. I'm going to read it after this. And because that sounds great. Like something I'm regularly thinking about because people are like, there's so much. There's so much people like, oh, we need better scientific literacy. We need better journalistic literacy. And I'm just like, none of that matters if people don't care about the truth, right? Like it doesn't matter because I, like we were talking about earlier, I could find anybody who believes the same conspiracy as me. I could also find any research paper that agrees with me too. Like there's stuff out there. But is it peer reviewed, right? Is there a consensus around? You know, so it really comes down to do people care about the truth. And that's something I think about a lot. I recently had John Petruccelli on here. He's a social psychologist who just wrote a book, The Life Changing Science of, you know, Detecting Bullshit, you know? And that's what bullshit is, just not caring. So I have a couple, a couple of last questions for you, Aaron. And with, with what you were, what we were just talking about and this kind of empathy and understanding that, you know, some people don't know what they don't know, right? Some people aren't even doing this purposely. Some people are just cognitively burned out. So on Twitter, you get into some debates every now and then, right? I do on occasion. Yeah. So I'm curious, I'm curious. Like when, when you see people just say some really dumb shit or wrong stuff, like, do you, because this is another topic I'm interested in. Do you think these are like bad people with bad intentions? Or like, do you give them a benefit of the doubt? Like, do you think, like, how many of these people, a lot of the people I've interviewed on my podcast, they don't think there's as many grifters as we think there are. But like, how many do you think are grifting and just playing into their audience to make money, you know, grow their, you know, their status and all that? And how many of them do you think, like, just don't, don't realize it? Like, do you think that there's people like, here's, here's a good one for you. Let's practice. Let's see how, how deeper empathy goes. You think that Tucker Carlson was just kind of raising a bad environment and he just believes this stuff to really be true. You know what I mean? Like how much of a benefit of the doubt do you give these people that you're debating with or arguing with? So we want to be careful and distinguished between moral judgments and responsibility, like moral responsibility judgments, right? Is Tucker Carlson a bad person versus do I, you know, like have personal animosity and feel that he, you know, should suffer in some exquisite kind of way are very, very different questions for me because of moral luck, right? Because I have this very peculiar view that nobody has any free will and everyone is radically, you know, acting in ways beyond their control. I do genuinely have compassion even for fucking Tucker Carlson. Is, is he a two bit racist hack? Absolutely. Right. Is he causing harm 100% you know, but he's also probably a miserable unhappy and like, you know, he probably like, I would not train my life for Tucker Carlson's right. Even though he's wicked rich or something. Yeah. Because that would be a terrible life to live in my opinion. He's not flourishing. If that's, you know, if that matters to someone. But like, so I have compassion for him as a not flourishing being, though I do also think that like he should be off the air, like he should be not allowed to propagate racist nonsense to his, to such a large audience or something like that. So, so your broader question of like grifters versus, you know, I don't, it's not important to me if Tucker Carlson and his heart of hearts is genuinely a racist or if he's just playing the game because he realized this was the game that he was good at. And like, that's the one he wanted to play. And it doesn't matter, right? Like I'm a consequentialist when it comes to things like this, he's causing harm and he should be stopped in this kind of way. You know, if people care, we can have a conversation about like, you know, how much is James Lindsay genuinely radicalized versus just a grifter? And the answer is probably a lot of both. Like it's just, you know, it's a feedback loop, right? If you're of a kind of narcissistic disposition and you get feedback for a certain belief structure, you will come to believe that belief structure as long as you keep getting that kind of positive reinforce because it's easier, right? It's very easy to do that than to like keep up some complex multi-level personality or something like that. So, you know, amongst the rank and file though, it's very easy for me to have lots of compassion because I think a lot of these people are really being pumped full of misinformation and like they're getting it from every angle in their communities. It's very hard for them to find an alternative outlet of information and not get shut down for doing so. And I think, you know, when you look at a cult, maybe you have some amount of animosity towards the cult leader. Like I can understand that emotional reaction. I think ultimately they're part of the system too and like got there through forces beyond their control as well. But like if you're going to have animosity, I think it should be limited towards them and that like members tend to just be victims. These tend to be people who more often than not, we're not in the best place in their lives when they got hit with targeted, you know, conversion techniques like love bombing that like make someone feel so good that like all of us would succumb in the wrong situation if it got us at the wrong moment in our lives or something. So, you know, I think it's very easy to generate a lot of compassion for most of the people involved. It gets a little harder when you get up to the top. But like, you know, I think it's not a big deal because I think mostly we just need to be like whatever you think about Brett Weinstein or Joe Rogan or these people as individuals, as performative artists, their art causes a bunch of harm and needs to like not be mass produced. It seems to me. Yeah. Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. And I, you know, when I look at this stuff like 2019, I had a bunch of people coming after me and that's why I'm like really on the fence when it comes to these like, you know, the outrage or like the cultural wars and everything because I've seen like just getting my own voice like shut down and just feeling like piled on. But I have a lot of empathy and I understand like that's why I went on this quest to learn about group thinking and the rationality and stuff. I'm like, okay, I get it. This is just a human flaw, whatever. I'm over it. Right. So I do and you know, I do empathize with you know, the people at the bottom as well as somewhat the people at the top. I actually have an episode coming up with Greg Caruso and he's a lot about that. Hey, free wills. Not really. Yeah, he's been doing some publishing on that. I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I find it all really interesting, but, but to end, to end on a happy note, Aaron, let me see how I want to phrase this. All right. So one question I always, you know, try to ask people when we're looking at these like broader issues and like, you know, the polarization, the misinformation and like, does it start at the top? Or do we need, do we need to regulate people? Like, you know, Tucker Carlson or even some people on the left, like it, you know, CNN and everything who are just kind of like really pushing their own, you know, kind of corporate agenda. But a lot of people say, no, we need to start at the bottom. It starts with us. So positive note, a little optimism. You got a magic wand. What is the first thing that we could work on. On a societal level in our communities. If I'm going to go out and I have 10 friends coming over, they're going to listen to any advice I give them. How do we start resolving this issue, helping people, I don't know, think in a different way, think better, check stuff. What, what's the first step towards this? Redistribute massive quantities of wealth. Explain. Why is that going to help? If you substantially reduce wealth inequality and equity and redistribute massive quantities of wealth and lift a bunch of people out of poverty and I think generally have more widespread economic security. You have less people in these vulnerable situations and less people feeling like they are, because, you know, a part of what is driving all of this in the current world, I think is a genuine crisis for a lot of people of meaning and value and feeling like what is, what are they doing in the world? What is their purpose? And like these conspiracies give people a purpose. They give them a sense of purpose. And so I think if you would give people resources to find a healthier sense of purpose, I don't have to say that all conspiracy theorists are like poor or something like that. But I do genuinely think that a lot, so many of the things that we discussed are quote unquote downstream of these material systemic problems, you know, and that if we fix wealth inequality, because like for example, if you really deal with wealth inequality substantially in theory because of our terrible school funding system, you would in theory improve the situation in terms of funding of a variety of schools because those communities would have more resources to distribute towards those schools. So you'd have improvements there. I think you'd have less sort of moneyed interests that were interested in putting a lot of that money towards lobbying in ways that end up producing a bunch of misinformation and culture war kind of stuff. I still think you also have to have moderation in your epistemic environments. But I also, you know, I'm sympathetic to the idea that like the best community moderation is by the community and not by, you know, AIs or by Facebook itself or something like that, that like what you really need are, you know, those communities where moderators are empowered to make substantive decisions about both sort of form and content within their communities. And then you get like really healthy. So for example, the Facebook group philosophers in space that goes along with our podcast is one of the healthiest epistemic environments I've ever been in. And it's like a great social environment as well. And I have to do next to zero sort of moderating of individuals in that environment. I kick people every once in a very long while when someone who's problem like causes major issues shows up, but for the most part it's just not a problem. But partly it's not a problem because we're not trying to do this performative, you know, fight a war over every topic kind of thing. I wrote an article on skeptic mag if folks are interested on the UK skeptic mag about a place called monster island that we made on Facebook a while back. That I think is the kind of world we should be trying to avoid. Right. And the world that we should be moving towards is one where people can have hard conversations because they feel like they're in a space where that will be productive and not sort of used against them in some way. Damn it, Aaron. That was that was such a good answer. Maybe it's because this morning right before we started recording, I wrote a, I wrote a sub stack piece about wealth and equality and concentrated wealth and, and it's so true. There's so much, there's just so much around like, like think about when we think about like QAnon or, you know, people storming the capital. And a lot of it feels because people feel like they're, you know, we're, we're scrounging for resources. Right. And when you do that and you create villains, it's really easy to sell these bad ideas where people are less likely to critically think about it and so many things. Right. But we lift everybody up just a little bit. Now I don't care so much about immigrants coming in. I don't care about these people having as much because I can feed my family and pay my damn bills. And, you know, the schools in my area, no matter what part of town I live in. So yeah, I can go on that for another hour or so. Dammit Aaron, perfect answer. That wasn't, I didn't, there's no, there's no one solution. And the reality is upstream and downstream are kind of illusory concepts, right? The reality is everything is a giant mess. Everything is upstream and downstream of everything. You know, part of the reason we're not seeing as much progress as we should be is because you have to be moving on many things at once to be getting any kind of forward momentum. And it's very hard to keep all of those plates in the air at the same time. Like, you know, fixing the healthcare system would be another major improvement, right? Like just reduce stress and anxiety for everyone, not even thinking about the financial stuff, but like how much time we all spend dealing with fucking insurance and like how to solve our problems with insurance, even when you have insurance, terrible. Yeah, yeah. You know, one of the last things I'll say is one of the, one of the, I think one of the most important studies that I've come across and I had a professor on here, not that long ago talking about it is, is they've done, you know, they've replicated this multiple times where when people are, you know, low income, they make worse decisions and it's because they're using so many cognitive resources, right? Like you just mentioned health insurance. We're so worried about this stuff. And I, I'm very fortunate. I've managed to get back on my feet from my drug addiction, but I remember, you know, not, you know, standing at a gas pump. When you're standing at a gas pump and wondering, should I put $2.50 instead of $5? Those are cognitive resources. I shouldn't have to fucking worry about, you know what I mean? Do you read cracked back when it was a real thing? And before like they fired everybody and it became defunct. Yeah, some somewhat. Yeah. There's one of the greatest writers of all time on crack was a guy named John Cheese who wrote some of the best articles ever about like what poverty does to your brain. And he like was talking from very personal experience and it's all the same stuff that you're describing that these sort of social scientists have come across a lot more now. But like I highly recommend going and Googling old John Cheese articles about like the five things they don't tell you about poverty and stuff like that. He just absolutely crushes, you know, the concept of poverty traps, right? Yeah, I am. I'm writing that down. And if I find it, I'll link it down below. But yeah, yeah, because that's, I think that's something that everybody needs to be educated on to start working on solutions because, you know, these people aren't dumb. It's just another way that we're designed and we need to realize that, but, but yeah, Aaron, this, this was awesome. I can honestly talk to you for like three more hours. So we might have to do a part of some time. So anytime. So yeah, let everybody know where's the best place to find you. You got two podcasts to just repeat those again. So I make sure that I got all that stuff linked as well. So people can find you and watch you argue with people on Twitter as well. Absolutely. So the podcasts are embrace the void and philosophers in space. They should be on all your podcasts apps these days. And you can find me on arguing on Twitter at ETV pod. Yeah, come hang out. Beautiful. Awesome. And I loved it. And yeah, we'll, we'll definitely be talking real soon. Great. Thanks, Chris.