 Yeah, great. So radical fundamental principles of freedom rational self-interest and individual rights This is the Iran Brook show. Oh right everybody, welcome to your own book show on Thursday February 8th This is our usual day for interviews and I'm excited Excited today to be interviewing Jason Jason right. I think this is the first time I've had yeah. Yeah, that's All right, I should have had you earlier But I'm sure we'll have you again. So thanks for joining us Well, see how it goes first and you know true true, you know, you never know Jason There's always there's always that element of surprise So Jason is a philosopher He's got you got his PhD in philosophy from some significant university University of Pennsylvania. That's right. And I met Jason when he ran the objectives club at Stanford University when he was an undergraduate. I think he was 12 something like that It seemed that way, but no, he was he was a little older than that, but he was young and Jason was also a philosophy professor. We go to university in Chicago and is now a fellow and instructor at the iron rain University He's teacher. He's taught classes at the iron Rand at the iron rain University So yeah, and I saw Jason in Austin. I don't know two weeks ago I think yeah. Yeah for a very lively talk on Israel's moral war Yes, a lively talk Lively response to my relatively lively talk, but yeah So Jason is you voted the station on Plato. Is that right? Plato's theology. Yeah, Plato's theology. I've been I've been working on a book about that for forever So should we call something like that forever? Yes, but a book Jason is gonna write but I'm writing it. It's just taking me forever. Yeah, good Well, one day it'll be done and but Jason has a lot. I mean, he's Incredibly well educated in in Greek philosophy, but more broadly in Greek culture And more broadly than that in intellectual history and in philosophy History philosophy and in history. I mean, there are few people actually in the world that I know That know more than Jason does just in terms of the amount of knowledge stored in their brain of his it is it is truly astounding And it's not just stored there by itself. It actually gets integrated. So Which is which is really cool. So So what I thought we'd start because I came up with this idea of the rise and fall Which is obviously not an original idea, but We be we attended a Session in Austin with some of our fellow fellow Objectivist intellectuals Ben Bear was there in Greek so Mary and we were talking about intellectual history and and some of this this context came up of Kind of what explains the the decline of Greece and Roman civilization and then what explains the rise of the Renaissance and then The the the seeming threat that we're living through right now Maybe it's more than a threat It's a reality of really a decline of Western civilization of a decline in in the achievements of of the west So so I thought we do kind of a obviously it's gonna be however long we do this It'll be brief because that history is long, but I thought we'd start with with with with Ath with Greece I mean, there's a lot of talk about Reese was wonderful. It's a lot of talk about the philosophy, but but I don't know that a lot of people know Okay, what was really wonderful about Greece? That is what what is it that made Greece special? What were the ideas that were uniquely Greek and and how did how did those ideas impact the culture within Greece? Yeah, yeah, so it's helpful. I think to start out by talking about a time when Greece was not special So there was I Mean it's not that it wasn't a very sophisticated civilization, but it just if you go back to the Bronze Age from say 16 to 1200 BCE Greece The Mycenaean civilization is is impressive But it looks much like the civilizations you have around the Mediterranean and Near East centralized palace structures with a priesthood and a kind of king in economy that all runs through there Art that looks like other Near Eastern stuff The Minoans whose language at least was not Greek actually have much more vibrant and interesting art, but That was in the Bronze Age around 1200 BCE There's a vast collapse of Bronze Age cultures Egypt is just about the only place that kind of doesn't have a Doesn't go backward society-wise, but even it is somewhat destabilized and At that time So in the Bronze Age the Greeks had a writing system each symbol was a syllable they lose that they lose writing It's it's it's really a post you have to imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario where they have gone back technologically intellectually But by about 400 years later 800 say BCE they have regained writing now based on the Phoenician alphabet and then they turn some of the letters into vowels and they and Their population begins to boom so much so that Greek cities throughout the group throughout Greece and Ionia which is the western coast of modern Turkey where which is all Greek and Magna Greece is it like The sub Sicily and southern Italy Greek cities from their send out colonies As far as Odessa, which was originally a Greek City as far as Marseille Don't tell that to Putin. I mean there's a war with Greece. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah So they just it explodes and this is the Iron Age now and From about 800 to 600 or 800 to 500 is what we sometimes call the Arpaic Period in Greece and that shows a rise of very strong or Independent city-states each is called a Paulus, which is where our political comes from and they have various kinds of constitutions But they all have certain things that are interesting about them in comparison to other parts of the world. So you see at least among People who are called considered citizens more of a more ability for For non aristocracy say to participate politically and so on But the real the really big innovations politically begin around 509 BCE when Klycenes in Athens they overthrow the Persistrated dictatorship and then they established the first democracy More of an a century before Solon's reforms had made some of that a little more possible for it to grow a middle class and so on but The democracy really begins at the end of the 6th century and then and now I should say from about 600 BC on We do see something very interesting in terms of Greek philosophy And we have the beginning is starting in Ioni at the southwestern part of Turkey You do see the beginnings of natural sciences. We understand it and philosophy So I mentioned all this because I wanted to contrast the earlier part. So here are the differences When the Greeks come make a comeback as it were and they regain writing and so on Here's some of the interesting things about their civilization that that are not necessarily true before The they do not have kings really there's Sparta had two kings, but they're just in charge of the military and If they're not ruled by by monarchs like so many of these other places They don't have a priestly caste Say unlike the Hebrews unlike the Magi and Persia, right? So There are priests at like local places and sometimes that's hereditary But any Greek at any time can erect an altar and make an offering to a god That has a really big impact on how their culture grows And And do you have these different local cities? So one of the things you see is that there are they are an extremely competitive culture It's sometimes called agonistic Pick some endeavor in which a human being can show excellence. The Greeks will make a contest to see who's best about it They had poetry competitions. They had pottery painting competitions They had you know, like it's Eurovision to the next to the next level um And that has an impact on their intellectual development because you don't see that same Kind of thing say it in China now some of that's because of a huge urge of intellectuals by the first emperor of china, but um, even early on you find greek poets and There's there's no they all revere Homer But there's but everybody wants to be the next Homer and they don't hesitate from taking shots at Homer To be the next guy. So there isn't this automatic reverence for anything in the past people want to be the next thing so There's competition. There's innovation and there's a decentralization of power in a number of different ways And that's what starts it. That's not what makes it great, but that's what those are So this is how it this this is the start. You've got some political freedom You've got the beginnings of philosophy. You've got beginnings of of science You know what What does it reach that is that is what does it get to at its height? What does it look like at its height in terms of a culture civilization? Yeah, um at its height, um so I would say it reaches its cultural height a little bit after it has reached its political height So the political height I think you see in the fourth century bce When you have both some independent city states and leagues of democratic city states Coming together and In self-government But then Philip II Alexander the Great's father conquers Greece Then Alexander takes that over and then His various successors have these large huge kingdoms that spreads greek culture and ideas across the near eastern world Which is cool. Um, but um as far as india, but uh But it does change the kind of politics. Although there there is some in some places local freedom But that's the political height, but culturally. I think it kept and scientifically economically you see I think Somewhere between three and a hundred bce. You things are just kind of getting better and better You have alexandria. I'm the great library there. It becomes an incredible center of mathematics and in even mechanical invention um You have a flourishing art which not only is there, you know, the kind of great classical art from 500 to 400, but then Greek art kind of goes through its romantic period in the Hellenistic era from 300 to you know To the turn to the common era and it's it's much more emotional. You see much more kind of personal values you get novels about lovers who are separated and things like that so Uh and then intellectually, I mean you get In a sense the height philosophically is Plato and Aristotle from about 400 to 320 bce But that does it doesn't stop there than the stoics and the epicureans and the skeptics keep it going and we do get lots of new Issues and debate some philosophy and new concepts which are pretty integral but um, but in terms of mathematics it keeps progressing and and so on and in a sense um It doesn't really I mean there are some people who would say Greece doesn't end until 1453 ad when Byzantium is finally conquered by the Turks Yeah And I mean by that point it's unrecognizable, but there is a sense in which You know if you went to assert certain greek cities in 600 of a common era They'd be christian, but in other ways they would still look rather greek and rather sophisticated um Certainly economically and things like that. Uh, but but really I mean really what's amazing about Greek intellectual life in the classical era say from about 500 to 320 and then the Hellenistic era is It's not that the Greeks the Greeks don't invent man. They don't invent astronomy They don't invent stone carving or anything like that. They take them from older civilizations that they have a lot of respect for um, and then they But they innovate in rapid ways that nobody has done before Or or had done in a very limited way um, and they do it in a much rap more rapid scale and intellectually Owing a lot to Plato and Aristotle Greek math greek science Changes and becomes If it already sort of was but then with them it really cements into a search for causes and explanations and proofs so other parts of the world do math that was ahead of the Greeks in certain respects and then Other parts of the world would advance beyond them mathematically in certain respects But one thing that's sort of different about greek math, let's say from Plato's time on Is that other places you'll have amazing sort of uh Sol solution procedures like if you want to find this here's what you do or if you want to do that right and um But what you don't have are these proofs in the same way There is this interest of show me why of necessity this has to be the result and you have to be able to get this um, that's quite unique and remarkable um And then in science you see other places where they have tech that the Greeks don't have and other practical discoveries But you don't have the same kind Some places it emerges it doesn't catch on but um The same kind of search for causes of like what's making this and what's making that happen? And then how do we explain it? So would you say that There's a risk there's certain Searching for cause and effect that exists in Greece because they're philosophical that doesn't in other cultures Yeah, that's I mean yes in in in math and science it it seems like It's so now it's possible That there was some of that say in some places and it got wiped out um, but uh But yeah, I mean the the china for there's a so Nobody is so Expert in the ancient languages and the ancient texts that they can really do the history of science in Greece And the history of science in china But people just is that person doesn't exist But the guy who's come, you know, who's the like the kind one of the top people in of chinese history Nathan Sivan one of the most famous names in greek science to your loyte. They collaborated together Which is the next best thing. Yeah and uh, and they did a series of kind of studies and Lloyd often looks for kind of sociological Explanations and causes and some people can find that in a way Not intellectualist enough about causation like it's not enough about the ideas making things happen But he does make some of these points that i'm making about social differences and how the greeks behave, but anyway sivan and and loyte they pointed out um In chinese philosophy, you don't get a concept like the greek concept of nature and that's a game changer. Um This sort of deep inner Identity of something that is responsible for all these things that it does and and so on Um, and then and then i don't know if you know the answer to this, but i've always been curious. I've never seen it, but does does chinese philosophy have the conscious concept of reason and law yeah Well, so i don't i'm not this is really not my area but i will say you have in the early confucian writings you have um You have what we call in philosophy moral psychology where you're looking at people's behavior and people's thoughts and Emotions and so on and you start classifying things up in sort of different faculties or states So you do have for example in mensaeus's Confucian analytics You do hear about like a good heart and a bad heart and it's something like somebody who actually thinks long term Versus somebody um whim and so on now. It's not quite reason yet I don't know if they had something like that, but there's certainly you can see parallels that they're on the same kind of path and I mean if It's an interest if you ask me like when did Greeks have the concept reason as we know it like it's actually a little bit tricky um because I mean in the generation after Aristotle People start using the term logos which means a speech or an account or um More or less as how we might use it and they can just refer to All the other non-human animals other than the gods as as as oligarchs As the un-reasoning brutes and so there's a single word right prior to that in aerosol and play-doh You the the thing that's closest is noose which is intellect smart And then from nesis which is wisdom or or making good decisions But it's also associated with knowing so it's it's actually kind of late in the game, but it all comes together as one clear concept But you can get a lot done piecemeal like a concept of this kind of thinking and a concept of that and so So how how would Aristotle have conceptualized what he was doing When he was doing science, you know kind of in a sense coming in inductive science So when he was and then when he was doing logic did he see Oh, you know deductive logic. Did he see those as being in some sense You know all part of An epistemological Inception. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, so So it's it's actually funny where he would put his own logic and his sort of overall science um because Well, no, I think he would be part of what he called first philosophy So, um for Aristotle Reason the highest kind of part the the end the uniquely human And god's um par really has two aspects theoretical reason the news of a part of our Reason that just knows things and that deals with things that cannot be otherwise um And then practical reason which deals with things that might go one way or might go another and deliberate and um within the domain of theoretical reason There are really three science three broad sciences mathematics theology or first philosophy or metaphysics And then physics which is all natural science Whereas when you start using practical reason there are sciences like politics and ethics And rhetoric and other things like that and then there are applied or productive sciences like the crafts So he would I'm sure he thought of his logic of the analytics as part of theoretical science Um just describing these forms of argument and so on um uh and And yeah, I mean he he his so His theory about what a science at least as its complete Looks like or what an explanation looks like is closely tied To his picture of deduction now that doesn't mean he thinks you achieve scientific results deductively That's not his view at all, but it it is important to how he sees it. Um, yeah I hope I wasn't too round about an answer. I'm trying to be I have a tendency to go on I'll try to be a little pretty okay, um Okay, so so grease is this Uh, obviously amazing culture Scientific progress is being made mathematical progress is being made Uh, that culture spreading to places like alexandria and others Uh, it has an impact on roam. I take it on the on enormous enormous impact on room I I should say I do want to make one point. Um, uh grease in interestingly has in some ways has Many many many less hang-ups about sex and sexuality than we do even today as a result of christianity um that said however Classical Greek culture is profoundly misogynistic Um in a very deep way Um It Women just were not supposed to leave the house. Even the romans in some way were less so so Oh at a roman drinking party you would bring your wife At a you would never your wife. You would never bring your wife to to To that for the greeks. She would stay home where she you know and just work on her weaving And you know, but there would be there'd be there'd be dancing girls and flute girls there So that that's fun, you know, but We're dancing boys as the case may be um All right, so so so I mean humanity is on a phenomenal path at this point. Maybe not so much politically Uh grease descends into kind of monarchy's and then the roam descends into an empire and ruled by by You know authoritarians, but uh, but the culture is still alive and thriving and successful What what are the forces bringing that to a You know to an and really certainly in the western in the western empire and to some extent in the eastern is as as as nice as we might think, um, what do you call it? Byzantine was it it wasn't it wasn't Rome of the first century yeah it's so it's It's hard in some ways that it is hard to say and what I mean here is um In some ways it's very hard to um at certain points In the you know in the bc's and then maybe the first century or two ad to really get a clear sense of like what the intellectual Or philosophical vibe is we know about different schools of philosophy It's harder to get a sense of which was ascendant and what impact was it having? um, but things were in general In certain ways say from the ad is on Getting more superstitious and more mystical. Um, even before christianity was a major force That was already happening among greek pagans. Um, it's just getting Spooker some of that comes over from Babylon by way of astrology other But you might also say it now had a market when it didn't before it's hard to say But you next put a plate of theology to what extent is this Plato's? um He hasn't yeah, it he has an impact. Um, it's there is a period of time where, um Plato and Aristotle are a little bit sidelined And the stoics and epicureans and skeptics are in turn But by the first century bc by the end by the end of the first century bce Dogmatic platinism is it is back in some ways of probably in some ways It probably just moved to alexandria and was festering there It it makes an impact. It's almost impossible to find any kind of mystical Thinking that that doesn't show or we don't strongly suspect bears the mark of platinism Just to give you an example, um So the earliest Judaism but also the earliest christianity and the earliest islam The day of judgment on the day of judgment Your corpse will get back up. It is corporeal resurrection Um, if there is some future life, right It's not your soul That exists in some other dimension That's plato And the extent to which any of these the west vote any of the abrahamic monotheisms Think of the afterlife in terms of where your soul goes Is is plato because the actual abrahamic thing is way cruder than that Yeah, I mean in the in the original Judaism, there's no afterlife That's a concept that seems to be introduced later on It's not in the old testament as far as I can tell as far as I know, there's I mean there's there's Shield and get it like you but that's in a way that might just be we put you in the ground And um Yeah, it it does come about later. So a lot of that stuff is very very It's ultimately plato has an enormous role for that in that growth of mysticism. I think that's fair So Mysticism is rising Yeah, that prepares the ground for for kind of the the white spirit adoption Kennedy Yes, oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so people point out That there's like a it's almost before there were memes like, you know scholars have these sort of memes and they're like Here's a guy and like you hear a bunch of things like he was some say he like he was the son of god And he performed this miracle and he did this and they did this and you're like, who is it? And you're like jesus. No, it's apollonius of tianan um There were a whole bunch of these weird apocalyptic Miracle working guys all over the ancient near east and Mediterranean People are looking for this um The other thing is like even early christianity is not all one thing. It's like a dozen different Things and then there are a bunch of things that are What like say gnostics where is it christian or is it jewish or is it? Pagan and it it's this whole Mille you of all this stuff and I definitely think it's in that ferment that christianity gets going um And it in some ways you might think it had some of the appealing bits of Judaism, but it wasn't an ethnic It wasn't a tribe's culture and it didn't have All the observant the ritual observances that make Judaism a pain. Um You know, you can just circumcise your heart. Oh, that's good. Um Judaism it was a yeah for the masses Yeah, um, but And it was actively it was actively um proselytizing, but yes, I mean, I think this stuff christianity wouldn't have gotten going the way it did if that wasn't the kind of cultural vibe But it's also the case that if Constantine hadn't Converted the empire who knows what would have happened. It really does make a big difference when The church gained state power. I mean for one thing It's only at that point you can start to say there's the church you prior to that Five bishops like the Bishop of Antioch of Alexandria of Rome of Jerusalem one other place there But at least symbolically they're equal, but it's clear that Alexandria and Antioch and Rome are the big ones um But like each one of bishop is he's a prince, you know, basically he can make all these decisions um And even still like there are many different Theologies of christ many different views of was he a human was he god is see this is he that There was way more into Ideological diversity among christianity. It's theology than there is today way more and it's only when the state Wants this to be a state religion that they're like, yeah, we're going to settle this And and and the people who aren't on board on this version are going to die that you know Yes, I think it was the first council and I see I was sat down the law and then Then they kept doing it for you have a council of chalcedon And then the yeah, mm-hmm. Yeah, it's And it's funny. I sometimes say It's funny that they picked the most irrational version of christianity Well, let me let me say right. So there's one version that says, uh, this is um Sometimes called adoptionism Arianism is one way it goes and the idea is jesus was you know the son of joseph and mary He's born a human being and then god During save his baptism in the jordan river by john the baptist god adopts him And now you have to understand that like legal adoption was very common in the roman empire Most of like the emperors Were only the sons of the previous empire through legal adoption But that was a big thing and um, and so yeah, he was yeah god adopted him. That's when he became god's son And okay, that makes sense. You know god could god could do that Or another version is okay. Yes. He's a projection of the divine spirit He's not a human being. He's like a hologram or a ghost So he couldn't have really died on the cross. Anyway, a god should be immortal and and You shouldn't be able to harm a god, you know So that that was called dosetism, but like either one of these Makes way more sense than he was simultaneously man and god and he has both natures But only one nature, but it's also two and also three but not one but also one so like they pick the The most incoherent one And they they they envisioned he go before he existed, right? Yeah, something like that or he took inspiration But I think that I mean you could here's a thing right like it's a faith And you might think I don't know if this is true, but I sometimes this is like a hypothesis I sometimes entertains just a hypothesis that um Among these various kind of competing things um, it's the most irrational one That might win out or might win out with power because it's the one that most of all says Yeah, you just have to nod your head even though it makes no sense because in a way none of these make sense It's just some of them have a little make a little more sense But if you're willing to just if all this is about is whether you can compel a person To say one equals two Then make them say one equals three Interesting I I like that idea. I mean it makes sense to me And it it could very well be part of the political calculation of Constantine In terms of okay, I I want people to take this on faith and that's a kind of a bending the knee So what I've always read is that he personally did not care which theology they pick as long as they Kill the guys who disagreed. Yes. Well, I think it was he wanted it so that they would stop arguing. Yeah I don't yeah And they could yeah, they could kind of have they could stay on message by having a message Yeah, uh, but I don't know That may look I should say like that may be completely unfair to how the The the petristic debates of christology were going. It's it's just something I like to think about sometimes And I will say um to this day like bachoptic church is the result of monophysitism Which means only one nature. So, you know, he was man then he was god, but it wasn't like um and when they went that way and The church went the official church went the other way that was Then the Coptic church Egypt breaks off and it has been argued that Had the Byzantines not been so Um inflexible about that They might have kept Egypt during the Arab conquest. They might have remained a thing and that that ultimately cost Yeah, you know the most Yeah, anyway, but I don't know so so christianity You know becomes dominant for political reasons so a large extent um and because the culture is ready for it There's no will it doesn't seem like there's much opposition to it. Uh Post-constantine there's some resurrection of of but but Yeah, so julian the apostate um the emperor julian tries to Flip it flip it, but I I'll say right like so the if the alternative at that point is neoplatonism and it in some ways it looks tidier intellectually even kind of paganism had before but it's As mystic if not more so so it's not like it would have been I mean it would have lacked some of the pathologies of christianity, but it would have had its own um It wasn't as Poisonously altruistic. Yeah, so so would you say what kills? kind of that greek spirit of inquiry of of looking for cause and effect of science and um and and kind of Human happiness is what kills it is is christianity would have died probably died anyway is is that where The ideas were going um and what is it about christianity that actually kills it? Okay, so there are a couple things here and some of it. I I think we just I don't know that we know Well first some of it is what what would have happened if not for this or that that's always kind of a guess, but Okay, so I would I think that you never get You never get a fully worked out And totally satisfactory rational egoism In greek philosophy and I think in a way if if you don't get it close enough to that It's quite possible. You will backslide as um As long as you accept a certain amount of sacrifice into the code it it'll come to dominate more and more And then the other thing is just the growing. I think mysticism now what's unique about Or relatively unique about christianity compared to other Near-eastern and Mediterranean stuff is the uh the Degree to which it is anti Well the the degree to anti selfishness you might think and anti happiness and anti justice you might think um as jesus says right like uh You love your friend. Well, even the greeks do that right and hate their enemy, but I want you to love your enemy. Um Nobody really thought that because that's crazy. Um in a in a certain sense. Um Plato did this. Plato said You the just person does not harm his enemy Now that doesn't mean you don't kill your enemy if your enemy is bad They killing them is actually good for them. Um But he thinks the just harm no one Which is to say the just don't make anybody else bad It's no part of being a good person that you make other people worse, right? Um, but that was as far as he went even he didn't think but just Give equally They're equally nice to to scoundrels as they are that would be unjust So, you know, so like Plato will say something like look it's better to suffer an injustice than to perpetrate it I agree, right and that was very radical But he wouldn't have said he wouldn't have said, you know, um So go ahead like, you know, give them your code as well. He wouldn't say, you know, turn the other cheek um That so that is quite unique with with that algorithm is is unique and it's uh and and and the the mysticism that is embedded by this in this perspective of Jesus and the irrationality and the contradiction embedded in this seems unique Yes, so, um As much as people might have been interested in in in platonism and its other worldliness and so on Um, it didn't inspire the same kind of monasticism The christianity did it's also the case that people who were rich who became interested in it They stayed rich they made um and they continued to kind of contribute to their cities or the emperor in a kind of pro-social way Whereas christians in the fourth and fifth century they rich christians began giving away their money at large um To hopeless causes in a way like so no longer was it i'm going to build a theater and everyone's going to enjoy it Or i'm going to build a park or an aqueduct and you know have packbell Aqueduct on it and have honor and so on which was how Big giving had previously looked we sometimes call it civic eugatism Doing good deeds for the community that you're a part of Instead it became let's throw away money on the poor and really think of it as pouring water on the desert sand Why that was the quickest way to just dispense your money because it is easier to enter The kingdom of heaven for a rich man than for a camel to pass through the eye of an eagle And then people would also say whatever treasures you give away in this life you store up as treasures in heaven and People took that literally they actually thought that the more money they gave away I just threw away um the better their next life would be in in some Quasi material spiritual way Yeah so let's um so really by by you know five six hundred uh ad That spirit that is the greek spirit and the early roman spirit is kind of is kind of gone certainly in the west But then he um, yeah Yes, it comes back and and I was gonna you know, what what do you think leads to coming back In the in the renaissance or leading up to the renaissance. Of course, it's not just one event It's not one point in time But but what is what is going on there? Well, I mean a couple things. I think you have a couple of centuries of fairly vibrant intellectual and artistic development in the muslim world um They are it's The trade is extraordinary. The technology is growing the scholarship is is impressive. They want to learn things They're figuring things out. Um bagdad is the cultural center of the world. I mean, it's it's it's a positive culture um and and it's all linked to Kind of the conquest of busitine or busitinean cities particularly in syria and the discovery of weeks Yeah, yeah, so yeah, it's pretty early on after about a century, perhaps you start seeing uh islamic philosophy based upon Greek philosophy the mutazili and then later the kalam movements. Yeah, and it becomes it's very impressive. Um And it's science too. It's mathematics and Yes, they they they extend greek science in in all these different respects and greek philosophy and and so on And and they have extraordinary literate bodies of literature and and and so on so that is a lively culture and there's a sense in which europe in a way gets A shot in the arm a kind of transfer of vitality from its engagement albeit an antagonistic engagement with the muslim world and the crusades But not just the crusades. Um, but but through trade by way of spain and other places their learning becomes european learning But certainly spain i think when the christians start conquering spain They're discovering the libraries that the muslims discovered in syria You know a thousand year you have 500 600 years earlier. So it's that that transmission belt of ideas and knowledge is continuous Yeah One thing that's hard to kind of figure out so it's become fashionable today for um medievalists So medievalists have never really or at least most of them have never really loved the term dark ages But it's it's except like their antipathy for that has accelerated now. There's two things right so one is The high middle ages Are not a dark age But you might think but the dark age is that period of like 600 to 900 ad in europe is pretty dark right, but even now they're trying to change that and um They are so i don't i don't really i don't really Take that part very seriously or credible But it is true that the 13th century like the 1200s um, and even the 12th century 11 are showing remarkable amounts of intellectual and cultural recovery in some ways in europe And it's i think it's plausible to think that had the black death Not completely devastated europe in the 14th century that the renaissance would have happened perhaps 200 years earlier And and you know, so let's talk about the renaissance kind of uh, I know rand talks about Aquinas and and uh, Aquinas bringing kind of avastartal into uh Embracing avastartal within the kind of the catholic church um and struggling with the idea of reason versus faith as Kind of the spark that sets up the enlightenment Not the enlightenment the renaissance walk us through what's going on during this period particularly post Aquinas um in in okay Yeah, so Aquinas is 13th century. Um, and he's in in in france. Um so he's one of a number of of European scholars who are reading aerosol usually in latin translation from a translation in ebru from arabic from greek or from syria to arabic to It's a long chain. Um He is not The most Aristotelian them by any means there are other philosophers Just before and around his time who I consider better Um spiritually intellectually. I mean, he's a brilliant guy, but he's a christian at the yet Who uses aerostomal rather than an Aristotelian who sneaks it into christianity. He's not that. Um Or it's 50 50. Um, and it's also I think it's um It's a bit of kind of I kind of think backwards looking history That oh since Aquinas became the church father, of course he dominated Um, I don't think that's an entirely accurate picture of what was going on like other people were reading other things and but but what he isn't emblematic on Is that christians have started reading the works of aerostotle um and that following islamic commentary on the works of aerostotle and other greeks And you begin to see in the 1200s um The building of universities around europe or the the forming of universities at first. They're not a physical campus so much as groups of students student unions so to speak that hire and get permission to hire faculty and the faculty come and they lecture uh on medicine Roman law because they now have justinians code um aerostotle and logic another or an or theology and but that creates a big intellectual ferment um and what There's a way what so the renaissance in terms of philosophical influences like the italian renaissance What it what actually happens is a bunch of fleeing Byzantines when the empire collapses come to Italy and they actually they increase the knowledge of gree Which had been trickling in so you've got a huge translation of greek literature and that re and that excites um the artistic imaginations the poetry and so on um in terms of philosophy people start reading play-doh actually not aerostotle but um the mere fact that they have this much more vibrant and this worldly culture to study and create art about and so on seems to kind of Ground it in certain ways that uh that are very healthy. Um, and I think that that's sort of what at least the italian renaissance is is about So somebody asks here where is it? um Way of renaissance So why You know, I mean, this is why the enlightenment rises in a christian civilization not islamic buddhist kindua Taoist But but there's also a question about did gingis kahn destroy islamic the islamic golden age. So what happens in islam? That prevents it from reaching So, you know continuing on this back does it it stops at some point or at least the progress stops Yeah, so it's not it's not gingis kahn. It's his son who sacks bagdad, but it is he did um devastated It is said that the rivers ran red first with blood then black with ink and destroyed the greatest libraries from uh in the world um That had an impact for sure, but uh, but other places Carry forward the culture. So southern spain cadiz And the andelucian uh kind of renaissance Persia and parts of afghanistan. So it's not as if It all got wiped out the um it's It was getting in some ways the philosophy became stagnant. Um, it Let's put it this way If you look at like avicenna and then the The centuries have just recycled avicenna after avicenna It looks like the worst kind of scholastic medieval stuff that people like de cart and galileo and so on are complaining about um Now some people say well, oh, it's al ghazali. It's not his his influence is not as transformative I think as people think he's he's Shia and his sufi it's it's he's It's not the game changer some people think he's he's not the islamic world's colons or something um, it's just it's just it's just um, I don't know why if it what there was a failure to launch Uh, but it it seemed to at certain points stagnate and fall behind europe in other ways It wasn't always obvious it would there was a time period where it looked like the turks could take over europe. Um They they were the most technologically advanced. They had cannons. They had all kinds of stuff. Um Yeah, but that's not totally satisfactory, but I mean, um Yeah, but they never had a renaissance in the sense that europe had a renaissance. Um, Yeah, and and even the can even the technology they developed was A lot of it was borrowed from cultures to the east that they were trading with and there was very little Innovation within those cultures. It seems like post 13th century outside of spain where I think there is continued progress in islamic culture islam really does Um start decaying even with the ottomans. Yeah, so I mean you see tremendous work in mathematics and extraordinary scientific work in astronomy and navigation um Stuff that really that in some ways allowed The european renaissance to become an age of exploration had If they didn't have the this extent and think and other Arabic tools that you just uh, it wouldn't have happened. Absolutely. The astralium. I should say yes, right? um, yes, so let's see so What characterizes what would you say characterizes the enlightenment? um, do you see it as a as a first of all do you see it as kind of a A continuation of the renaissance is that one kind of a thread that goes from the renaissance through Is there is there a real shift there or and then what are the characteristics? What is what is exciting about the enlightenment? I yeah, so I think that um There is a continuity in the sense that with each new successive generation of intellectuals it becomes Possible to give to the magisterium of reason more and more and faith is is correspondingly diminished um until it basically becomes possible By the end of the 17th or 18th century to say faith is Faith is out. It's there's nothing to recommend it that reason that isn't just reason Regurgitated and its reason it has authority To to answer all questions that we bring before the human mind um That's that's so that is the distinction of the enlightenment so Kant in his essay what is enlightenment? I think does Identify what is essential to be enlightenment? It is the it is the human it is human beings entering their maturity Which is to say it is human beings realizing that everything is to be turned to the authority of reason Even reasons own powers and limits And um, and that's how we're going to decide questions. So it is it is And you do see something equivalent similar Among the Greeks in the fifth and fourth century bce There's a period where suddenly they just about any human practice you can imagine they go Is this natural is there a point to this? Is there a good way to do it? Is it just Even things like slavery they're they're willing to consider just about anything It's anything goes. Um And I think you get that again in the 18th century for for Europe. That's what I think that is the essence of the enlightenment in particular because the 17th century had shown such enormous successes in Natural science the idea was we can continue this in the social realm We can ask what are the smart true rational ways For human beings to live and the same thing happens in Greece that first you see A successful application of reason to nature and then it looks inward and goes well, what about What about us? Yeah So so this um this idea of uh, the slavery is an evil That exists in um a free woman Among greeks free will Aristotle in the in the in book one of the politics in a place where he defends natural slavery Says there are those who say and argue that all slavery is is contrary to nature and therefore unjust We don't know who those people were Yeah But he He says it and then he agrees with them or some people like them who think that Greeks enslaving other greeks or civilized people enslaving other civilized people Is unjust it's only when someone who is Whoops literally in some sense mentally deficient is the slave to someone that he thinks it's just now He's utterly wrong that that's a normal human occurrence. It's not when he thinks it is but um Yeah, so there were people who we don't know who similarly, um I'm just I'll just need to check this the you know, I'm saying that because I just read dominion, um, you know this book this book that tries to say Christianity invented all good everything good in the world um, it's it's yeah, uh, but one of the claims he makes in there Is that no it was first christians I think at a gregory that came up with the idea that christ is it slavery's bad This is the first time really in human history this became A significant was a significant view presented even though it was dismissed at the time um No, and I'm right at when he said it didn't seem right when I read it, but Yeah, it's good to know And it's also the case that um being there were debates about How to treat your slaves where some people had better views Plato complains in the republic, but one of the annoying things about democracy At least it's like an Athenian democracy Is like the slaves are so rich and allowed so much leeway that you can't even tell who's a slave and who's a free man On the street now he complains about this like this is a problem. It shouldn't be that way but that was the way it was and and um in comedians, um, you know Like our stuff and you're always complaining about like the slaves are richer than we are now because they started a bank or something like that The intellectual sources that we have from antiquity are not The most in a way progressive by by not just current left but in general like european small l liberalism perspective The pro-democrat there are voices that must have been there pro-democracy uh pro Business class that we don't have we mostly have voices that reflect old landed aristocrats who don't like All these greedy merchants and But we know that there were arguments on the other side and You know Plato gives us one or two hints of like an Aristotle one or two hints of what the versions of their arguments were and they're pretty good So there were better views. There was a kind of lost liberalism that we don't really know about so, um So the enlightenment is this uh, again, you know, maybe a little bit like Greece Uh, this amazing period of intellectual development science is is uh is going to you know Is being pursued and uh I was just reading about did roe and and you have to come to the conclusion They were even questioning kind of the christian sexual mores, right? I mean did roe is pretty pretty racy in his views on sex and I mean, he's quite a character and really fascinating. I just know much about him other than the encyclopedia But once you actually read about what he wrote, it sounds really amazing It so again, ran describes kind of this at least intellectually the killing of the enlightenment is is done by cons so maybe you can walk us through You know what that means and and how he does it Uh, and then maybe we can talk about kind of the remnants today of kind of this conflict that still exists I think around the enlightenment sure sure so, um first I want to point out that in some respects the The fault lines in the weak points the weak foundations philosophically of the enlightenment Are there before Kant if you look at Dahlin bears pro Preliminary discourse And he talks about the state of all the sciences He begins by talking about the state of philosophy and there's some stuff shows a lot of influence of lock And it's good in the sense of knowledge begins with the senses and and so on But then it very quickly goes to we don't really know what the external world is like And we can't know this and we can't know that and suddenly and you realize like the domain of things that he thinks we can't have knowledge about is vast And it's only going to get more It's only going to be exacerbated At the same time you have Yes, some of the sexual more is some of the monastic virtues of christianity are being attacked and rightly so um You do not have a rebirth of egoism You don't that part christianity one and I think more more than some Some attempts at it right so so There were little bits and how like what's his name how like oh somebody's actually asking about this guy. Where is it? How like Helvetius Helvetius, you know a trying pleasure pain. They're trying to come up pursuit of happiness Yeah, so christian wolf has perfectionism and stuff. It's interesting like you see wolves Students and defenders bending over backwards to say oh, this is not egoism Um, even when it's more Aristotelian, so that doesn't change. Um And when people attack spinicism or they attack atheism Usually it's enough to just say something's atheistic But if they need to go any further They will say and without fear of god You would you wouldn't do this and you wouldn't do that and some of it is you you know You'll kill your grandmother for pocket change But some of it's you won't tie then you won't be charitable and you won't you know be me um Now in I wanted to say those is that what are the kind of fault lines that are already there, but And I think given enough time those would have fracked But you can think of contests taking an iron spike in a mallet and And hammering them really hard and in novel ways that make it Make the kind of accommodations that were going on no longer possible. So so let me describe two things con completely kills The rationalist project of Which in a way is good if you look at the rationalist stuff. He's attacking. It's it's absurd Pie in the sky. It's just spinning your wheels making stuff up and he rightly says this is all bs But it was also, you know, those were the people who still thought We have to prove god's existence and we can and then we'll prove this and we'll prove that It was bogus, but at least it suggests they still thought That was a valid demand to try to prove that and con kills that project Any attempt to revive it say like with intelligent design movements and stuff is always profound Is far more intellectually dishonest than it was the first time around because you know, nobody really buys But he leaves room for for faith And argues that fair or moral reasons you can hope for these things like god and the future life and things like that and so then the thing to look at is is is His more his morality. Well, let me say one more thing about his metaphysics and epistemology Kant um, you had in earlier European philosophy a kind of notion that there is a veil or there's a gap between what's in our heads and what's in the world And there you have people kind of stuck in their heads trying to figure out how we can get out of it and know something And and it gets more and more skeptical um But kahrt in a way puts his finger on the fundamentals and he's I will say he's a genius he absolutely sort of sees what's going on and Takes the next step that is all the all the superficial things in a way that people are arguing about He he jettisons like that's superficial. This is what it's really about And he's in in a sense. He's right. That's what it's really about. He takes the wrong view So he makes it really the case that Any notion of something kind of coming into our consciousness in a certain way Is going to be cut off from real reality um And that will have profound profound profound ramifications for how people think about The power of reason moving forward The other thing is that in morality he makes a concept of of duty central and it's far more powerful Here's a here's one way to think about it. He takes the worst part of christian ethics And he makes it defensible to secularists That's just to philosophers It's it's not about, you know, there's a voice from an old man on a mountain and he said that that part's gone Now it's just the voice of reason itself, but it's all the kind of the worst things about the morality um, it distilled down and That's incredibly um damaging even um And it solidifies into moral philosophy Something that had come along with Judaism and Christianity But now becomes like a feature of just how people think about ethics at all And that is instead of thinking about ethics as oh, how do I live my life? What's a good way to be happy something like that ethics is now a rule for deciding if this is naughty or okay or permissible right even Utilitarians they want to maximize pleasure and minimize pain, but they still think like it's Is this okay? Is this naughty or nice right like that's what morality becomes and that really begins with with the Abrahamic religions and God tells you this but but it becomes I mean, but now philosophers instead of thinking what are the virtues and how do I live a good life and they just think naughty or nice and that's profoundly damaging I will say this I think Rand seems to say in places in various places and I think she's right that in a way By the enlightenment mysticism would have been dead But altruism brought it back So even despite those problems I've mentioned in their epistemology and metaphysics I still think yeah faith would have been Dead if it hadn't been that it was only through faith that people could justify the morality But people will go to any length To justify Well, so a moral code will let people justify anything to themselves and they will go to any length because they need a code And I think that's what happens So, I mean we got a yeah, we got a ton of questions. Um, oh, yeah, let's go. Yeah Let me um, yeah, let's take these questions and then we'll see some of them. We'll get us We'll get us back into this some of them a little Out of left field like the first one, but it's 200 bucks. I have to have to treat it. Oh, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is a free world question Um Consider the following thought experiment Part one you find yourself in a situation where you have to choose between two options and b you choose a No one and nothing forced you to choose a or prevented you from choosing b. You chose a out of your own free will All right part two now imagine that some advanced alien newer science Scientist had observed us and was able to rearrange all the atoms in your body And all the atoms in your immediate environment Uh to the to the exact state where they were the instant before you made that choice Would you still choose a? Do you have any choice? Okay, so okay. Good question. So what this is getting at essentially is that Metaphysically what's it the metaphysical condition that that anybody who isn't a compatible list is Who doesn't think well, we're determined and there's free will but free will is this water down thing anybody else thinks there has to be this the possibility of alternative of something alternative so, um The principle of alternative possibility we call it so all things being exactly the same Could you have done otherwise or does anything ever happen that does not happen of necessity, right? Now there's no way in fact an alien could do this because You were not a copy of an alien doing a free will experiment and the copy of you That's a copy of an alien for a free will experiment is so there's already a sense in which it cannot be identified But that doesn't matter right it's probably enough If you made a you know a carbon copy physically at least of me and you put him in a room that was Indistinguishable from the room that I was in and you gave him options a and b I am of the view that it is possible if it was possible for me to choose b It is possible for him to choose b and he might do it and not choose a now. Here's the thing Whatever view and that what that suggests is that if free will is real it must be the case that The entire state say of my brain at at some time Is necessary but not sufficient to determine what it will become And that's you know and physics will have to under explain how that happens but um Now um It's not as if All of physics is deterministic. It hasn't been for a hundred years. I should say but anyway, um Now A kind of a mechanistic By deterministic, I mean One input one and only one output Yeah, so but and and you know, I'm not saying it's probabilistic Probably if it was random even random with different chances that wouldn't be Self causation it has to be I make the choice But you know how consciousness does this we don't we don't know but um Now now but here's the thing When you say option a and b it just sounds like two labeled buttons and there's no point, right? And it may be that look if a and b are If they are actual options Then the copy of me is going to have my values and it's probably going to think thought similar to me Now if I was on the fence and I maybe I could have gone for b then he might but if it was something like Something where I had some moral principle at stake and I chose a I don't think that Meet that copy of me is ever going to choose b but I don't think that means anything because There's a mistake in thinking that nothing because nothing determines us But nothing influences us or plays a role the challenge is explaining how on the one hand Yes, our values and our experiences and our past thoughts and deeds Constraining the realm of possibility for us Make certain things more likely for us to continue to do and others less likely But that within those Constrained spheres there still remains an absolute core of freedom where I could do one thing or not do it and do something else Good Dave if you have a follow-up Now's the time All right adam asks if I understand rand correctly She believes once a culture becomes more and more anti-reason The harder it is to reverse that trend Do you see in history that this intellectual inosia is more difficult than momentum in the opposite direction? theories as to why Oh, that's a good question You know, um, I think that Requires I'm trying to think I'm trying to think of a scope a scale at which There's enough resolution to talk about, you know a kind of relative period of more irrationality And then a period of greater rationality of greater rationality And I mean like I can think of there were periods in American history that show big religious revivals and people Seemed to get dumber and then they and then they seem to Simmer but it's not clear if If that's or change in people's thinking or just the ones who think that way are more vocal and making more of a nuisance of themselves I don't know. Um, I don't know why Let's put this let's put it this way Here's a possibility that once you have um A negative turn in a culture based off of some deeply held and bad philosophical premise Things will not get better Until you start to address that um Now um Conversely when you have a good fundamental philosophy like a kind of Aristotelian philosophy Until its foundations have been weathered away And even a little bit after that Things will grow. You'll have new technology and so on until It runs out of steam and it just and everything collapses I don't know if one of them is easier or harder to reverse than another. I will say this It's harder to reverse The descent into more irrational culture if you were just coasting On a good but imperfect thing a thousand from a thousand years ago Because unless someone new introduces a new source of rationality You don't have anything right um whereas More people can just repeat the same old bad things and that'll have the same negative effect um And remember death is the default um so and us behaving like Our primate cousins is the default unless we Know choose how to be better. Yeah, we can see that all around us I I mean this so You know in a sense the culture we live in today is still cruising on some On the good of the enlightenment. I mean there's plenty of enlightenment around us and and it's actually stunning how good life is in spite of Kant and You know everything that he's Spone since then. So how do you see that? How do you see how that plays in? I mean we had cons but then we had industrial revolution. We've had 200 years of Yeah, incredible progress So it takes a really like the conveyor belt kind of thing that ran talks about I think we have to understand it on the scale of centuries Um centuries plural, right? um for it to fully work its way into a culture or to Allow, you know, because it's it doesn't even go from philosophy to science overnight It takes centuries of people being able to kind of explore and think a little bit in european universities and other places Before they figure out modern scientific methodologies and so on so um And remember it's not just it's not as if philosophy does all the work for you philosophy makes it possible It can encourage it But you still need people to make discoveries in economics and make discoveries in physics and and that just takes human effort and genius Right, which doesn't happen automatically But there's enough talent in human beings if they want something and they work hard enough that if with the proper fundamental kind of Soym to grow and I think we can be optimistic um, so one reason things continue to improve is there's a big Uh, is it takes a long time? and it's also the case that um Both what happened in the enlightenment industrial revolution and what happened in politically through um declarations of the rights of man and then the united states of america um In a way keep certain positive things alive. So I think And I will I want to say something it's often that we think of this as well technology still improving But everything else is is getting worse. I don't even think that's true like There isn't today people have more freedom to find A sexual partner that works for them and that accords with their romantic values at any point in human history That is um pretty much an unmitigated good and it is a cultural achievement Yeah, um and a political achievement. That's really good. I think it's built upon basically enlightenment views about about consent and about choice and and and so on and and rejecting mysticism and the church or the church all these religions that are all against it so Yeah, and I think if you're if you're black or some other minority We probably we're not perfect yet It's still far from that but but I don't know if a culture in human history that is was more accepting of differences between human beings and the way we look and and uh Then then probably right now We're still a way to go but it's still much better than it's ever been Yeah, I mean in some ways I think it's um There are debates about like how multi ethnic Is the conception of romans at certain periods or and so on and So there are probably there are places in in time where Um people didn't care about that They cared about this, you know, which language or which king you had or which religion you worship so I'm not saying there was like It may not be the most colorblind things I've ever been but it is in the sense that people accept that Racism is evil and that it ought to be eliminated. That is good So far as we understand it properly and don't end up encouraging it By you know reverse Yeah, uh, let's see Uh, all right, we're gonna have to speed it up. Um, okay I can ask questions. I I've read some people that say popular ideas of Heraclitus Everything is fire can't step in the same river twice, etc. Are based on Plato's misrepresentation Not reality thoughts Plato has an enormous impact on how people read Heraclitus so Heraclitus Plato's reading of Heraclitus very much influences Aristotle's and then Aristotle and his school Basically write what becomes the history of early Greek philosophy that everybody works off of so Um, they are the reason why we say Heraclitus thought everything was fire Um, Heraclitus thought everything was everything and fire in some ways is a nice metaphor for that But he thinks the death of fire is there and the death of air is water like it's all true, um It seems to be Some people look at Heraclitus and think well, he thinks that there everything is really one um, and apparent opposites are really the same thing um And things are constantly changing that in that change there is continuity um, and That it doesn't seem like Heraclitus draws from this skeptical further step that because everything is changing We don't know anything That seems to be Plato's take on it that because the sensible world is always changing like Heraclitus says Therefore there is no knowledge of sensible things that part seems to be played out Joseph Thaley said all things are water Pythagoras. He didn't said numbers underlie everything here Okay, but all is the one. Um Let's see To identify the human mind works by integration explain how integration was key to the key Greek idea Okay, so um, so first off. I want I want to clean up. So there's no evidence Thales never said everything is water um There's a place where Aristotle is trying to understand is speculating that that Thales might have thought a thing he thought and said because he might have thought everything was water What he thought was that Things came out of water and perhaps floated on water and that's just a near eastern view You find that in bits of like the Torah of like there are waters below and waters above and then we are in this Expans in the middle, but in any case, um Okay, so you do see in early group philosophy an increasing kind of move of integration the best example is Thales's student an aximander um, and an aximander is perhaps the first person to have drawn maps of the world um he uh And he He has the basic kind of notion. Oh, and he introduces we think the concept of cosmos so The word cosmos is etymologically the same as cosmetics Cosmologists and cosmetologists originally it is a word that means to pretty yourself up to put together your whole insom or toilet or something like that. So you're all done up and An aximander takes that and thinks all of this is a cosmos. It's a well put together thing Previous greek thought talks about an underworld the earth the sea the sky But there's never a kind of let's step back and and say oh, it's all one thing and it and it all works together in some kind of system So that's an enormous enormous leap forward. Um, and that is you know, that's so that's the power of integration. Um later Like perhaps his student an aximonies begins to think maybe everything is one kind of thing under various transformations um But I don't think that's that's in thales yet. Um in In any case. Yeah, so yes integration is Um, all philosophy is in a sense a massive kind of integration Um Of our whole lives of our whole universe of our whole body of knowledge that that's its job All right, this is a current event question from liam Jennifer comley the mother of the school shooter was just convicted of manslaughter from the victims Uh, her son shot Is this a rights violation or should the parents of school shooters be held criminally responsible? Do you know anything about this case? I don't know very much about this case. I so I don't know I will say this. Um I think I think Kyle written house's mom who drove him across state lines knowing he had a gun and wanted to get involved I think she bears legal liability for some certain things. Uh, that might piss off some of your viewers, but um, look if you know that your Kid has access to a deadly weapon And you don't prevent them from doing it Especially if there are red flags about their mental health Then you bear some kind of legal liability absolutely Um, I don't know if it means manslaughter or something like that But you did not take steps that were your responsibility that led to somebody else's harm or death and that should that's a thing. Yeah Yeah, I know I agree completely In this case, I think the mother gave him the gun And he was clearly showing signs of you know, uh craziness and she neglected And she didn't follow it up and she so she was criminally negligent at you know, so Yeah, I think she again, I don't know the technicalities manslaughter if that's a right thing I don't think it's a she bears some Responsibility here without any question and notice that it's almost never the case that parents are criminally charged with a school shooter. I mean Just parents is not a crime. There are a lot of bad parents and and even if You could be a great parent that still have a kid who's a school shooter. So it's it's that There's free will right we talked about that. So it's it's um, but it it you or not So they they don't usually prosecute. So when they do you've got to look a little deeper And there's probably a reason why It's not that nutty that it's completely random these days Yeah, my understanding is that the parents in this case Basically put the gun in his hands and didn't take it away when they knew there was a You know, there was a decent chance. He was going to kill people. Um It it was yeah, I mean but again, I haven't followed it closely. So don't take my word for it I'm I can just expound on the general kind of ideas here Hugh says great show Thank you. All right now These are lower dollar number questions. So we have to do the faster, right? That's the All right, and there are a lot All right, so I like says hi Jason. What is needed to develop a theory of propositions? Has the necessary work been done in objectivism? Which source would you recommend? Just an easy one Aristotle's day interpretasione. He um other than just modality He pretty much worked out the theory of propositions um If if most you might want to say hey, we could use some stuff about modality and some stuff about Conditionals disjuncts things like that, but again that stuff is also kind of worked out in baby logic So I think we have a theory of propositions a proposition says of things that they are or are not this way or not this way That it's a subject into predication the predicate I think that's Eric. I mean that that's what it is. I think that that's not anybody written about that in uh, you know in a Modern, you know book taking out stottle and maybe integrating that um Yeah, some people like scott zones is uh, not scott some uh, uh summers Summers is uh the logic of natural language um, which kind of did something that people thought predicate logic of aerostatelian style couldn't do it couldn't do relations and that that's Why propositional logic was so much better than he showed. No, you could do it. Um, that's nice. Um A lot of other things, but I mean honestly you'll get most of what you need. Um, an aerostotals day interpreter tussione. It's really good Justin asks Dr. Reigns, what is why is anti-semitism on the rise? Is it worse on the right or on the left? Is it on musk a modern day, Henry Ford? Uh It's on the rise because irrationality is on the rise and it is it is the lowest hanging fruit of human depravity um in some way, I mean it's uh it It didn't have to be that like that anti-semitism became but kind of tribal racist um thing that would spread across the globe. It could have been other things. Um, but that certain combination of things did and and it and it uh, you know, it has So it has roots and and people come back to it. Um, do I think it's worse on the right or on the left? I think in the united states the bigger threat To individual jews and their lives and communities is from the right from foreign policy It might be vis-a-vis israel with the left But it's not as if you should trust republicans because for one thing They made a deal of dentin yahu and he's dirty as as the bottom of my shoe And and and on top of that right like there they have a game plan like They think that for the christian messiah to come back certain things have to happen with jewish settlers And then they want to see everybody turn to christian in israel and if that doesn't happen They will they're crazy people. So they will do crazy stuff. They're not really they're not the friends of jews in a deep set um They just have a crazy prophecy about how all this has to unfold for christian world domination um on the you know, um that there's a lot on the left and um Anti-zionism isn't anti-semitism. Well, you can bear bear or sometimes you have a distinction without a difference I mean if you look at the standards by which zionism is held versus every other kind of nationalism It doesn't add up. It clearly Judaism has a plays a role But some of that I think in your own your own work has shown I think that to some extent it's more about altruism and the fact that israel is a successful state And the palestinians are the oppressed that that actually, you know, it's more like leninism that that drives some of this then Perhaps anti-semitism and then is I I have no respect for ilan musk. I know many objectives see a lot more quality in him um he is I think If he ever if there was anything ever any good about him, I think it's gone. Um, look Just to have that kind of disregard for your employees and your shareholders Like you just don't give a shit about the jobs you will cost them The wealth you will cost them by just throwing the value of your company out the window by saying Whatever pops into your head You cannot be a just person and do that You can't be an honest person and do that. That is really nihilistic. It's Um, and the thing is is like you might say hey, it's his company Yeah, but he he has moral responsibilities to those people Um, and sometimes legal responsibilities and he doesn't care Yeah All right, I think he I I think he has twitter just to Extend, you know, his own crazy thoughts which includes more and more far right-wing stuff and twitter has gotten really crap because of it Yeah, I mean, I think he has a certain genius and but he he's also when it comes to politics or any expression of ideas It's whatever comes into his mind and sometimes it's horrible. Sometimes it's pretty good But it's just whatever comes into his mind. There's no system. There's no there's no and and that has driven him To the rate it could have driven him somewhere else. It's it really is kind of whatever occurs I think so So glad it was his uh influence of greeks by egyptian philosophy Is there such a thing as egyptian philosophy? Um, there's there's egyptian um religion. There's egyptian mathematics. Uh, I don't know but it Reaches a point you could you can kind of call it that though. It's not really what The the greece. I will say there's chinese philosophy. There's indian philosophy I don't really really think there's something that reaches the level of philosophy in ancient egypt But it's not my area. There might be some there are a couple things. There is a conversation between a man and his Pa, um Which is kind of philosophical and reflective. There's there are certain fairly, you know, social themes in The uh the tale of the eloquent peasant So some of it middle egyptian literature actually is kind of right. Okay. Did it influence the greeks? Um The greeks there isn't Philosophical influence, but it seems that it overwhelmingly it's more from babelon in persia now When the greeks don't know Who they got an idea from but know they got an idea from somewhere else They default to saying it came from the egyptians. It's it's a trope So when herabitus is talking about the belief that the soul is immortal and reincarnated He says It came from egypt and then certain people introduced Pythagoras, right to the greeks. He doesn't name Pythagoras by name. Now the thing is is that um There's reason to think um reincarnation was not an originally greek idea And the egyptians have a very very complex and robust eschatology, but it doesn't involve reincarnation So that's just like uh, yeah Yeah, he so every ancient greek sage went to egypt and learned and the greek say this the thing is is that like That's that's that's not like that's the greeks yada yadaing their own ignorance of where this stuff comes from It doesn't actually mean the greeks stole all this Egyptian wisdom, but they but they took and often acknowledged other influences Just an ass, you know, you'll love this one. All right. What is the philosophy behind maga? What is trump's personal philosophy? Why did the conservative movement give up on liberty in 2016? I don't think trump as a philosophy. I think trump has neurosis I think trump at any given moment of trump's existence There is an overwhelming Um because there's overwhelming evidence from his entire life that he's a piece of shit And that everything he says about himself is a lie And he feels a constant need to continue keep that lie going to evade from himself the fact of his own wretchedness And I think every single thing he does every lie He makes up every outrageous thing come comes from this desperate attempt to keep running from his own Awareness and shove it down and the maga movement is an attempt to make this man's Insanity a reality but Building on the fact that it cues into their racism their conspiratorial thinking their Their okay, it's not a philosophy, but you can talk about elements of it is anti At elitist but anti expertise. So yes um by coastal elites can be smug and some of that smugness is values that are that are mistaken and wrong but also if someone has Gone to college or or or beyond that and can actually do stuff and know stuff that is a distinction and Yes, you should respect the experts when the experts tell you about certain things. So there's an anti kind of expertise There's there is resentment of the parts of the country that are actually growing And actually producing as against the rust belt as against places that are have never been and never will be anything um And the thing is is like the good people they leave they move away from these places and they go to cities And Yeah, the rest of a country which is where our culture comes from where tv comes from we think of them as flyover states because they are Um and people don't like that And they didn't like that. There was a black president I mean i'm i'm not i don't have a lot of sympathy. I think it's To be extended to philosophy. It's it's White christian nationalism Yeah, I I mean, I think philosophy is too You know too much of an integration to attribute to them it's you know fear and hatred is Is Is drives much of it and the fear comes from lots of different places and the hatred comes from lots of different places Um, and they found somebody to reflect that back to them and he runs on that He knows exactly. I mean that's a sense in which he is brilliant. He knows exactly how to push their buttons um, and he understands what rand has something about You know being a people's person, you know Knowing people and how to I think she talks about tui that way Trump has that non-intellectual level, but at a kind of a visceral level I see here's the thing. I actually think it's a further Condemnation of all of his followers and enablers that he's gotten this far because I don't even think he has that Like you're like he has some shrewd sense of I don't think he has any shrewdness Like I think a person who's even remotely shrewd would not constantly say the same self incriminating things I think it's they so or they are so enamored with the fact that he will do awful things that they want That that they keep that going like for example um Okay, uh, I know we have to go quick but this is this is good So I heard a story from a story about somebody that was being approached um to by the trump administration They wanted him to come in and this person was a very successful business leader and Trump told him this story And that trump told him this story and in this story Trump was trying to under Not pay a bank or something that he owed money to the full amount And so he was negotiating back and they wanted to get some of it back And he said well and then trump says all right. Well, how about for that last million dollars? We flip a coin And the banker as trump's telling says okay fine and then trump brags to this person He's trying to recruit that it was a fake coin or but he lied about the flip Right, so like look I got it over on this now. Here's the thing Not only is trump admitting i'm a cheater to this to this person But he's doing it in a stupid lie that no one would believe there's no way some bank executive was like Okay, the last million will flip for it donald that didn't happen So he made up a like a five-year-old's lie Like a like the kind of dumb lie a five-year-old tells you like how did these cookies get here? Oh, well this thing You know like you're not smart enough to know but that lie can't be convincing And and one that's supposed to make him look superior because he did this incredibly ethical thing will mean it never happened, right? That's him um That's not clever. That's not reading people um If he could read people he'd know not to ask, you know the generals who are never going to go along with axe to do axe um, I I think he's just I think he's a Rabbit dog who stumbled into a place that was ready to make a rabid dog emperor All right favorite historian history book recommendations Woo, there are a lot of really good ones. Um, uh, I love There's a book uh By freedman called who wrote the bible freedman's gone a little wacky more recently But he's a he's a bible scholar. It's about what we call the documentary hypothesis That is that Key parts of the old testament to the first the top what you call the torah the first five books of the bible that they are written by Several different authors and how we know and what we can reconstruct about Who these authors were and what their agendas were it's it's it is one of these very rare books That is pitch at a level that a popular audience can understand it and simultaneously Makes scholarly advances in the field. That's you know, like there's that there's the origin of species There aren't many books that can boast doing that. It's really great. Um, I really like Well, um, they're my favorite history textbook Uh is pomeran coltons. Um, european history. I love it's it's it's classic. I love it. Um, I like uh, those are a couple um And then you could ask me specific issues, but I really like those great, um Dr. Reins, have you read Brian Kaplan's case against education? Do you agree that there are too many people going to universities? Uh, I didn't read the book, but I got familiarized with his arguments and views when I was working for uh higher grounds montessorium um And uh, I think some of his points are good and some of his points. Um, aren't I think in some ways he's Too dismissive or has too narrow a view about what the point of education should be so when it doesn't Do x, you know, he thinks it's a failure, but I do think that um, it's Yeah, I mean, I think we uh This is hardly a new take but America has um underproduced skilled tradespeople and um We send people to get Undergraduate degrees who aren't interested in learning more school stuff and it's kind of a waste of their time And and that's true The problem is that we have so failed in primary and secondary education that they're basically learning in college But they should have learned as high school students. So in that sense No, I don't think it's I think everybody should be getting that much kind of education It's just to go on with it. Yeah. No, that's that's probably a mistake Michael asked did I not come too late? Was the only way for america to be saved from atlas shrugged uh is to have been written in 1857 not 1957 I don't know. I don't know. Um I I will say this. Um, I am I Since 2016 I have been Way more worried and pessimistic than I was before then and it's not like I first saw great things for america's future It's just I thought the decline would continue to be the slow the slow Corrosion I didn't think it would start Heading for um, you know, nazi germany at a breakneck pace. Um So that's worrisome And I think hindsight will be 2020 and we'll be able to say yes or no, but um, I don't know I'm not sure she could have written it in 1857. Yeah. Yeah I mean she told me she needed the industrial revolution in order to write it. So it's It's one of those hypotheticals that uh, yeah all right, um glad of war says Jason theoclitus and God, I can't pronounce this Dio do Doris Diodorus Diodorus, which one Diodorus the Diodorus the atheist Diodorus With those two significant Oh, oh, uh Oh, okay. Diodorus Sick Diodorus syculus, um, that's that's that's different. Um, I mean he's for for history. He's he's important. Um, so uh I couldn't make out who the first is supposed to be. Um, can you type it in chat? You'd think I'd studied maybe maybe I never studied phonics. It's it's quite possible. Um, let's put this in chat Okay, how do you pronounce that? Oh, there's entities. Oh, okay. Well, you take that Yeah, um So, yeah, uh, yeah, so these are Greek historians. Um, so they're very significant. Um, and uh, I I kind of prefer to sit I For historians after Thucydides, I prefer Polybius, but Diodorus syculus is important. Um, they're very important. Um Thucydides becomes, um, the model in many ways for secular history for the rest of the western, um tradition. Um, And it's not just that oh Herodotus is too much of a fabulous too much myth. It's in a way Herodotus is sort of doing history, but he's sort of doing ethnography and and other and just a bunch of different things. Um, but Yeah, I mean they're very important. I guess, um Right. So are you familiar with the ancient chinese philosopher Lao Zai Some say the first libertarian thinker Uh, okay. Um, so, uh I don't know if it's so there's there's louts, uh, um, you know what? Yes, I my Oh lousy. Oh, yeah. So there's some people think he's an atheist. I'm sorry an egoist like an ethical egoist and that um, and that So it's sometimes said that Confucianism was meant to be a kind of middle path between Lao Zai's egoism and the extreme altruism of moism. So If you want something that says altruistic as christianity Moism In china was that I don't know enough about him to say anything important other than I've heard of him And I I hear it's pretty Egoistic, but I I don't I don't know um Yeah, when I was in when I was in china the the chinese free market intellectuals all thought That he was a significant kind of Advocate of liberty and freedom individual liberty and freedom I mean look, um There is tradition of confusions as against the legalist school that wanted State power the confusions often were the defenders of the free market of trade Um and other things. So there's there is a robust history of that in in chinese law And maybe he's a part of it. Um, I look once you get, uh, I mean East of uh east of the jordan river. I haven't heard of it. I mean, uh, no recursion maybe but yeah All right, just an ask what's homosexuality rampant in ancient greece and rome? Um, so there's always been homosexuality and um, my guess is there's always been Probably about as much as it as there is now just because um people tend to act on their sex drives um And uh, it's a and it's a shame when they can so The in greek and roman culture, they don't think of homosexuality the way we do. Um, that's the important thing So for example, um, we tend to think that Regardless of with this biological sexes or genders of the people involved If you have an adult and a minor it's wrong And then many of us think if it's too consenting adults, it's at least not Maybe not everything about it is great with the psychology, but at least it's not wrong and um You know, I mean like somebody is taking advantage of something but like, you know Now that's not how the greeks think the greeks think that um Two grown men two greek citizens Cohabitating as sexual partners is weird and bad But a 30 year old greek man with an 18 year old boyfriend Might be okay and good And the reason that the difference is that There is a kind of clear Dominant and subordinate or top and bottom in that relationship And that and when they think about male sexuality That's an important kind of component. Um, so the idea is once you're an adult male You shouldn't be submitting to someone. You should not be anybody's bottom Um, but that's okay when you're younger and and so and it's complex there because there are people in Greece who are who had relationships like a modern homosexual relationship And then you have the pederastic relationship. The main thing is that they don't The lines are not the same as as we think about them. And here's another way. Um, When we think if you're if you're essentially gay um, or essentially lesbian and you have And you're married to someone of the opposite sex. We think of this as inauthentic as problematic and so on. Um for the greeks and the romans if you're you know, your main Uh romantic interest is your boyfriend, but you also father children with your wife. That's fine Yeah All right, friend of Aristotle says no question. Just an appreciation to both of you. Thanks friend. Thank you Justin says should you pen fire Amy wax? Oh, uh, oh, she's uh, um, well, I think she has tenure And that's hard Yeah, oh, I mean look she's she's awful. Um, but what what they you know in a just world They they probably wouldn't could but they she has a contract and you know, um They can't Justin says, uh, there are many modern historians who claim that the dark ages wasn't as terrible as we previously thought What say you? Depends. Um, like we've we've we've found pockets of things that That weren't as bad as some of the things we thought um but compared to The roman empire It was a big step backwards in just about every appreciable way from public health to education to art Yeah, things got worse in western europe. Um They didn't get As bad as quickly in some places as others There were places that stayed pretty civilized in the eastern part of the empire But um, but yeah by and large. I think It got bad in some places very very bad Is batman an objectivist hero? Is he inspired by francisco deconium? Okay, great. Um, so Frank miller who wrote the best batman comics of the last of two generations who basically revived Batman as a character was clearly and he's admitted, you know influenced by iron rand So batman year one and the dark knight returned and the dark knight strikes again, especially Are you can really see rand's influence? okay now, um batman is based The character is based off of zoro Zoro is based off of the scarlet pimper now And the scarlet pimper now is based on um schiller's fiescu And rand read that she probably also read orziz scarlet pimper now And those are part of the inspiration for francisco deconia I should add that fiescu itself Is inspired by the legend of lucius junish junius brutus the founder of the roman republic who pretended to be an idiot for many years While he slowly prepared to overthrow vatark when monarchy. So it all goes back to lucius junius brutus Okay, but but is batman. Yes, batman is awesome Batman can take down superman who is a living god Why because batman is a smart man and a smart man can defeat a living god It helps that he has all that money and gadgets But he invents those gadgets and and even though he pretends to be a fool a poppish, you know Guy he keeps wane enterprises in in the black. So He's awesome batman is awesome. Yeah, I mean he needs to see a therapist but Yeah, I think frank billow does too. Um What were you gonna say about frank miller? Did you ever get to meet him? No, I didn't but I I've met people who've met I've met people who met frank miller and you know, there's a wackiness there, which is not surprising given what you do Um, why did the lateman rise in a christian civilization? I think we've actually answered this. I think we did that earlier Because it was becoming less of a christian civilization. Yeah Is peterson trying to revive the dark ages? I think that's Yes, do you think he's explicitly trying to revive the dark ages? Not explicitly not explicitly, but I think we're up in other words yeah, but um, but yeah, I mean, um yeah from his theism to his Toxic masculinity stuff is that's actually what it means to be a man to all to these weird mythic constructs to Yeah, he's anti-enlightenment. Yep. Very much so Um, did gingis kahn destroy the islamic golden age? Like we asked that we did that. All right Is Charles maria racist? yes Yes, yes, yes, and there's look it's not just the bell curve like you go back and look at earlier stuff in his career There's a track record. There's a trail. He's absolutely racist Uh ian asked does jason play board games? If so as he ever played the game packs renaissance. It was designed by an object of his name phil echelon I've never played that. I i'm a geek Um, I like video games. I love tabletop rpgs You know dungeons and dragons and all those other things and I played all those I'm not as big of a board game player or a few I like Um, I have not played that. Um, I would I would try it I would try it Hacks renaissance is called All right. Frank says uh before rand taught us egos and the french philosopher. He'll live he'll live Vicious Vicious discussed egos and have you come across his work, especially in english? What do you think? I haven't read him. Um, I'm aware of him and and others um Not having read him. I really can't say anything about him specifically and I won't I will simply say that The vast majority of egoistic particularly explicitly egoistic thinkers Prior to rand are often very disappointing. Um The the ones in a way who are best I mean well Aristotle And and spinosa Um, and there and there are things about their ethics that are not great at all. Um, but they're they're Healthier and and it's you know, you could look at the person that they're talking about as a moral ideal And not think that's a disaster. You can think oh, yeah, that's pretty good So I don't but I don't know about how vicious and particular Glad of well objectivism's impact on how you study and teach history Oh, it's I mean profound. Um Let me so, you know, I I I didn't I I was interested in philosophy before I found objectivism and I was reading it, you know in high school But I think you know, I was about 18 summer before college I read at the shrugged and then I read everything rand had written that I could get my hands on and You know and others things and so it was a very big it was formative in my philosophical and historical development But I've never um I've I've always kind of thought when it comes to so Her philosophy is in the background of my own kind of philosophy my own Concepts my own idiot elect if you will when I read a philosopher. So it and that makes a difference but um I would say but I've I have tried and I think I have Kind of kept separate Her view about the history of philosophy like when I come to history of philosophy I'm just like, all right. I just want to look at it and you know, European history And I don't then there are places where I might agree with things. She says or but Leonard says and places where I disagree though But the overall influence of her philosophy is very significant there Let me tell you give you one though Like little thing So I was as an undergraduate my honors thesis was on Aristotle's metaphysics book gamma. That's where the law of non-contradiction is It's like the most objectivity thing in Aristotle you can find and and I loved it and In graduate school partly because of who I was working with but Also for these other reasons I'll say in a second I moved away from working on Aristotle and turned to Plato and part of the reason was I realized at a certain point That when there was a kind of interpretive ambiguity I found myself too drawn To giving Aristotle the good answer the right answer and I knew that that was not objective as a historian That was not what a historian should do and with Plato As also with Kant. I was sort of Free in a way like I what they could say something better than I was expecting They can say something worse than I was expecting So you wouldn't bias with the negative? You didn't have the same kind of bias but but on the other side Maybe a little but not not nearly as strong. I um I because look, I mean Um, I know they're geniuses. So if they get some things right, why is that a surprise? Right? If they're insightful, you'd you'd expect it. Um, No, that makes sense and and plus this Aristotle is an element of fuel worship, right? Yes, oh, absolutely. Now people think that I mean some people have heard my Plato my Plato's theology and they think oh, you're trying to make him worse and and I'm like I didn't like I wasn't setting out to like make him look more like Like a modern Christian or something like that because I thought it's it's much more like I wanted to understand I wanted to understand where certain ideas came from I was very interested in evolutionary biology. I was interested in intelligent design I wanted to know who's responsible for this disaster and it turned out it's him Um, it's played out But like I didn't make that up and I'm not pushing him into something that I don't think is there it's there people just didn't Adequately appreciate how important it is to him in what's there Um, Daniel says Arthur humans in the cave in the light spoke of a parallel between heraclitus The way heraclitus use locus And the Taoist concept of Tao Both those way. Yeah, physics of change thoughts on this connection Um, yeah, I mean Sivan and Lloyd seem to talk occasionally about stuff that might be there. Um, I've My my so It is both the case of early Taoist texts And the case of the fragments of heraclitus That they are highly enigmatic and that people in their own times say things like what the hell are they talking about? In the case of heraclitus, I can read the greek and Say for my own stuff. Yeah, what the hell are we talking about? I can't do that with the ancient chinese So I so I've only read it in translations and the trend it's not like the translations Sound similar to one another. It's like you're like, I don't know. So I don't know but From when I read the first time I read some Taoist early stuff. I was like, wow, this sounds a lot like heraclitus To take that for what you will some people do think that His law goes or the way Unity and change is like the Tao and and maybe it is Mm-hmm Did um, that was daniel. Let's see glad of war. Uh, did cons velocity have an impact on slavery? No Either way, I I don't I don't think it had any impact on it one way or the other Um, I was a glad of war thoughts. I mean, oh, I accept except this i'm um To the extent that you think like Founding documents say for the un had a role in stamping out any slavery that Remained in certain parts of the globe or something but I don't I don't think so but um, Yeah, I mean if you wanted to argue Cons responsible for the rise of collectivism and collectivism has without calling them slaves enslaved hundreds of millions of people Then yes, but you know As as bad as his influence is conscious, you know cons political philosophy is not What came after in ways? He's he he Allows it to happen, but you have to be fair and say He wanted, you know in he was still advocating in certain ways for individual rights as bad as ethically he was Thoughts on bruce ghillies case for colonialism I don't know it. Um, but yeah, I don't know it Um, wc zian reading will do rants life of greece is a dense and hard to retain What themes and ideas should I look out for to build an integrate integrated understanding? As opposed to a haze of cons of concrete Um, I'm not a huge fan of adorants. Um, I I think they had a nice impact on Like extending certain things at a certain time, but I like it's um, I prefer Uh, if you want a kind of big overview of greece It's dated. There are things that are not up that are not quite right and it's a little over romanticizes the greeks But hdf kiddo k it to the greeks. It's a very slim volume It's very beautiful and he was a real a serious classicist and I think it has some of the really nice themes Here's the other thing I will highly recommend Um, yale has various courses on that they've put online for free. You can get them on youtube and the course on uh on greek history By donald kagan is excellent and covers A lot of the k a g a n donald kagan yale open courses his course on greek history He's he's it's great. It's just great Way better way to learn it Okay, rob asks thoughts on marshal mclughan and Irving Goffman Okay, um I'm McLuhan, I at least tried to read a little bit of his famous book. Um, I thought it was largely gobbly guck Um, the hot culture hot and cool culture. What the hell is he talking about? He was influenced by a very interesting classicist who was also at toronto at the time Uh named havalok who wrote um live The greek liberal tradition or liberalism something like that Which in part was about something I was talking about earlier about there's this lost voice of like the pro Freedom greeks the pro democracy greeks havalok was talking about that but havalok also connected it with the shift between oral culture and literate literate culture and some of the and that influenced mclughan and there it's It's not as if nothing changes in a culture when you change the medium, but I tend to think that No, the medium is not the message if the message were better the medium would carry it and so on like it I think if we lived in I think if we lived in a different kind of intellectual error people would be using the internet differently You'd have everything you have now, but you'd also have higher brow stuff. Um Goffman, I understand for what is it stage theory basically about social roles and masks. Um, that's um and uh I just don't know very much about it. Um uh, I think one can go too far in talking about Performing roles and things like that, but it is fair to say that um in that in say certain family dynamics people take on certain roles sometimes that they're not aware of it's also fair to say that um people Often want to project and do project a version of themselves that may or may not be Exactly who they are sometimes it's who they want to be sometimes it's who they want to be seen as and It's something that psychologists should pay attention to and i'm glad they do but i did goffman do a great job of it I have no idea All right, this is um, yes, uh, how do you think christianity plays a role in latin america's Improvishment and consistent popularity of socialism In these countries and what makes american protestant christianity different? Um, I would be I would be shocked if Catholicism i'm sure catholicism has a lot of influences. I also think um Being under spanish rule as against english rule also, uh Or french rule also had a role in in some of this um I look if you look at the if you look at the pilgrims Okay, you know in messachusetts, they were nuts. They were you know, they They were the english version of of of the taliban They weren't quite that violent, but they were they were nuts They wanted to have a theocratic state and it's but it's much more, you know other later english and other colonists that that Who are more of a sane kind of age of reason british? That make out to build america is a kind of country of enlightenment and yeah, I mean, I don't um, I don't Let me say this I don't know enough about latin american history to know Why after bolivar you didn't get? Republics that were able to move in the direction of united states. I assume some of it is that Um, you know, you probably didn't have the same kind of middle class there that you had in the colonies Some and some of its spanish rule and some of it's probably the church But I honestly like something clearly wasn't there that was in our colonies and some things went wrong But didn't go wrong here, but I don't know exactly what they are And it could be related to Catholicism and its hierarchy and and authoritarianism that is a little different than the Protestants Or the better Protestants. Um, yeah, I mean it has a way. I mean so it is true that you know, there's this Protestant work ethic And it's also true that the church where it exists tends to gobble up a lot of resources and sit on a lot of capital And and it makes gesture is it relieving the poor but doesn't actually lead to anything that gets them out of poverty ever so well, and I mean it's a whole interesting topic, but Protestants also Disagree with one another all the time. So they they're like a thousand Protestant sects. Yeah, but there's there's less a lot less centralization of power There's a lot less hierarchy and authority than there is under the catholics where it's one dogman It's it's uh, they they disagree, but they still refer to the to the hierarchy Uh, is evolutionary psychology a pseudoscience? Pseudoscience or junk science. Um, to the I to the extent that those are two different things I don't know which to call it's junk. Uh yeah, so That some things about the capacities that we humans have are the results of Evolutionary forces sexual natural selection. Yes. Yeah, probably um, or yes, um, but uh That you can take some alleged Trade that they never even show is actually a trait. Um that is distributed among humans regularly And that that's some biological reason as against an incredible amount of And that that's due to the made up story about the deep past of human beings That they don't actually know but they're making up that any you know that any of that is even plausible That's not science And most of evolutionary psychology. I'm sorry to say is This this modern gender bias that I believe in How can I explain that as the gender bias of cavemen? And that's what it is. It's like How come guys are jerks and uh won't call a woman for a month? Well, because cave guys who were cave jerks Screwed more cave women in that month before they called and so they had more descendants Which is why guys today like every bit of this is is just made up and doesn't explain anything yep All right boys has the regular question. Um tips for tired parents and thoughts on virtual reality artificial intelligence bitcoin and new york city um New york city. Uh, I love it. I'm a new yorker. Um I still want to say it's the greatest city on earth, but it's very clear that it has not I mean at the beginning of the 20th century It was the greatest city on earth hands down and it was growing and it you know It was the world of the future and it isn't anymore. Um, and I think that's That's tragic. I hope I live long enough to see the day when it is again. I love it I love it with every part of myself um Even the things I hate about it. I love um in a way, uh, it's filthy and I um, I love it. Uh, okay, uh, bitcoin I don't know if you're super clever. Maybe you can make some money. It's it's not money I don't think it ever in our lifetime will be I honestly I think Should world governments decide to crack down on it. You'll lose everything you put it into it I wouldn't I wouldn't bet on it Uh, oh and by the way, it's not like the blockchain gives you the anonymity. You're oh, this will give me anonymity Like no, I mean, yeah, you can buy your weed with it or whatever But like actually it records every transaction. So Absolutely, you're better off with cash. Okay. Um, what was what was before that a tired pain? virtual reality Uh virtual reality, um Yeah, let's let's let's see more of it. Uh, they've been promising it to us for years I hear venue the new apple thing looks pretty cool. Um, you know, it's Uh AI, um, I'm not worried about it taking over Terminator style um Could I be wrong? I don't know. I mean, but uh But I still wouldn't think it was conscious and you know It would just be like we created this software that's causing cast huge cascading problems But in any case, um, it's pretty cool I'll I am not impressed by the llms like chat tbt does not impress me like the stuff it comes up with But dolly impresses me like the image creating things and I think probably our traditional artists Are getting screwed because they were never paid for the data mined from them Um, but it is quite amazing I can't drop her shit and when I want my dungeons and dragon players to like see a certain thing I have no hope of doing and then I go to dolly and I'm like give me an elf who's like a kgb agent elf And I have to change the prompt a couple times, but then eventually I'm like, yeah, that's what I wanted or more or less That's amazing. That's I never would have that's magic. That's wonderful. Um, oh tired parents I don't I don't have kids. Uh, I'd like to one day. I I don't know caffeine. Um, uh Uh They need something stronger, I think All right Daniel, uh, how long How how long does the trump ushered in dictatorship last? There's a little question if it if it occurs. I I hope it doesn't I really hope, uh But if it does there's I think it's it's highly unpredictable how long they last In this sense that some of them Through their own incompetence and internal fighting collapse very quickly or they get replaced by another strong man who seizes the military um, it Greece Athens lost and restored its democracy half a dozen times in you know in 20 years and so not 20 But in other places they get a certain kind of lockdown and Take Iran nobody thought Before the Iranian revolution that it was gonna that Khomeini Was going to be the person to replace Fasha and that his Frazy version as long as fundamentalism was going to dominate And lo and behold the Iran is still that right so you just yeah And I mean god and look at north korea, right? I mean like it's it's it's really hard to predict I will say this if I mean The opposite of god forbid like god Give him the stroke that he's already earned, you know to download from i hope he does But if he were to drop dead today, or if he were really sent to prison or or what have you We would not be out of the woods first of all until the day he dies Trump will continue to be a cancer in this country. He will tweet. He will send things out from prison He will agitate and and the maga people will will love it though They'll lap it up and but even then once he he he's dead There will not be an it'll be hard to find a single human being that that Condenses the same amount of insanity stupidity And viciousness that he has he's like a thought experiment about how many human Weaknesses and ills can you fit into one? sack of skin It's it's quite remarkable if you think about it. Um and it's just hard to get somebody that Bad who isn't already dead that the enough people kept propping him up to keep it going But you'll certainly see people trying you'll see And you'll see josh holly's and you'll see j.d. Vance's and you'll see every one of the Steven miller and steve bannon every one of these nazis Um uh christian fundamentalist you're Mike johnson and all these people and they they will try to fill the vacuum and eventually one of them will And then we'll have that to deal with so it's not going to go away until There are better ideas or something to replace it. My hope is that enough never trump republicans and sent and you know middle of the road democrats um My hope is that some that eventually you get a center center left party and then you get more of a far left party and And that that's where it kind of goes. Who knows? I don't know yeah Daniel iranians are almost universally opposed to the theocratic regime any theories as to why Did remnants of islamic golden age survive in persia? so no i mean persia um persia had European education persia had was really catching up to europe but in the beginning of the 20th century First of all persia has an enormous and highly advanced culture Within the islamic world persia in some ways was always Less, I mean it's shia rather than sunni. It always had more artistic depiction of human figure There are lots of things about persia strength going in um and then on top of it by the middle of the 20th century it had a cosmopolitan middle and upper class with european educations and liberal values and stuff and That went underground But the shock could I mean sorry, but the the the komeini couldn't Just wipe it out. That's that's why they they hate him because now there are there are classes of people in iran who Being the morality police and harassing women is about the best job they can get and they are in hawk with That's the state apparatus in that way and then there are religious people But it tends to be the less educated and less affluent classes They continue to kind of pass down more modern values. I think that's that's why and it's it's a shame because If it weren't say israel and america's worst enemy It would be our best friend in that region. There could be Yeah, absolutely Jews and persians have a long love history and it's and and and you can see it in l.a. today Yeah Yeah yeah Daniel says is there any relationship between praxis And praxology or is it just a superficial etymological connection praxology is from praxis um praxis So the greek verb is protein um It's it's doing something, but it's in the sense that an agent does something. So it's like a deed, right? So like um An animal doesn't perform deeds a chair doesn't perform deeds even if it does something but a human does so and so And so praxeology is certain kinds of studies of behavior and yeah, so Um, wcz in thanks for the recommendations and then the last question we have is Is john walls the father of woke? And who is john walls? John rolls, uh, is a very important 20th century political philosopher Many years at harvard 19 his greatest distinction is his book from 1975 a theory of justice And It is it was a version of egalitarianism It was not the most radical form of egalitarianism and here is the distinction At a time when you know communists other very far left people Were saying Let's go for equality even if it makes everybody worse off We're all said hey Let's allow some inequality If any more equality would make those poorest people even more more worse off So there was a sort of like let's take one step back from the nihilistic abyss visa the egalitarianism and the thing is is is look Center left people, you know, you're typical kind of democrat. You're typical kind of Um, uh mixed economy welfare state social democrat people they were looking for a principled Political philosophy that gave them some kind of like to stand on vis-a-vis against the marxists for the longest time And rolls gave it to their you know, this was mana from heaven. Look, but maybe you don't just seem like wishy-washy We don't just seem like we're hypocrites. Like we actually have a philosophy so rolls became a kind of really popular version of Kind of contian social democrat center left and that's um as well as egalitarianism and some of what he's well known for is Egalitarian arguments that furthered egalitarianism He wasn't as I've said the most extreme egalitarian But he did do a lot to popularize egalitarian political philosophy. He's not the He's not the founder of of woke That I mean, I take it that that is much more Sexuality gender and race are not nearly enough on rolls. His radar screen is compared to class For him to be any way sort of responsible for that I mean being an american political philosopher. He's aware of some stuff of race um and you know, he was aware of And I think broadly sympathetic with you know, second way of feminism as am I, you know, like women should be allowed in the workplace And and should be equal to men in those regards, right? Like yeah, but it wasn't yet You know, what is gender and sex and so on so? Yeah All right, daniel says you on gotta have you on again Thank you daniel. I will Thank you, jason. Thank you. This is a pleasure. Um, I Yeah, this is really great. Um, i'm sorry if I went on too long with my answers. I I I tend to do that a little but uh, hey Lex Friedman has changed the the the standards, you know, if you're not going three four hours. You're just not doing Doing your thing You think that's more that's more him unless I mean like i'm happy to not give joe rogan credit for anything. Um, but uh Somebody who's never watched joe rogan, you know, maybe i'm wrong. I very well could be wrong and i'm giving false credit, but um God that lex freeman tweet the other day that was so bad Oh, you know, he unfortunately Um, yeah, he Tucker Carlson. That was awful. Yeah And he's he's got some bad stuff on the israeli palestinian stuff. He's just too much looking for A middle road and everybody to be nice to one another and We need to listen to everybody and why can't we all get along just a little I don't trust I don't trust anyone named lex. I'm sure that this is because of lex luther Uh, but it's a bias. I don't know how to yeah, it's it's there All right, so stinger bell is a snuck in a question here. Hello jason, and you are how does abram How does mazlo's hierarchy of needs compare and contrast with objectivism? well, um So a couple things ran thinks that Any kind of human values even the most basic ones requires choice and requires knowledge She makes the point right you wouldn't even know what the pain in your stomach meant vis-a-vis hunger if you hadn't acquired the concept and and so on and you couldn't do anything about it if you hadn't learned ways of feeding yourself um Now it is true that Certain needs are are needed to get to other things But I think that in general ran thinks that our higher spiritual needs are not More icing on the cake. I mean, maybe mazlo doesn't think so either. Maybe that's not fair to mazlo But you know that art and sex and philosophy that these are hot the highest sort of needs are Certainly part of her thought. Um, I I take it that When you get higher and higher into mazlo's needs it tends to reflect more and more Your typical kind of western philosophy. So probably more altruistic probably less This that and the other thing but Look it it's not a bad thing if people think of building up their needs and and Seeing spiritual needs is something to build up. I mean, yeah, I I don't know I don't know. I also don't know like in what sense it's As a hierarchy as a developmental scheme that it's right in other words Sure, like a very young child isn't going to have the same kind of intellectual spiritual needs As someone older that that much is true, but that it goes in the kind of Order that he says I don't I don't know Yep All right, thanks Jason. It's late here. Thank you Uh, I will see you probably in austin sometime soon and yeah I will see you guys tomorrow morning I'm tomorrow. Yeah, Jason. Oh, I should say, um, I'm gonna be it. I in rank on I'm gonna be I'm doing like four different talks There on a number of these things I'm gonna be talking about the greek enlightenment I'm gonna be talking about the european enlightenment and those philosophical Fault lines in it. I'm doing a I'm doing a panel I'm doing a workshop a workshop on the european enlightenment a general talk on the greek enlightenment Another workshop with ben bear on the history of christianity and some of this dominion stuff and then a panel with Greg salmary and terra smith on Cultural changes and intellectual patterns and stuff. So if you like this stuff, I'm I'm doing more of it. Yeah, I meant I meant conference in austin I think it's much 20 something and Yeah, if you are serious about studying objectivism and I think if you're a student But maybe if you're not even not a student but you're serious about studying objectivism You can get a scholarship. So you can apply it to ironman institutes go to ironman.org Slash start here and you can apply for the scholarship I think you have to do in the next few days because at some point It's some point we run out of time in terms of scholarships But even if you don't get a scholarship conference sounds amazing. You should you guys should just go It'll be good. Have a great night. Thank you. Thank you. Bye Jason. Bye guys. Thanks all the superchatters. See you soon