 It's a big question. It's okay. That's kind of me. Though radical, fundamental principles help rebuild rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. All right, everybody. Welcome to Iran Brookshow on this Saturday afternoon. I apologize. I know there's been some confusion about the hour. Some of you thought it was going to be at 2 p.m. and the email said 3 p.m. and some confusion there. It's all my fault, so don't worry about it. I screwed up. I apologize for that. I think I set up the YouTube for 2 p.m., but actually everything else was at 3 p.m. So anyway, here we are. It's 3 p.m. Let's see. We have a panel and they will do a first round of questions. Super Chat is open, so you guys that are not on the panel can ask questions on the Super Chat. As always, let's see for some reason. All right, hopefully that'll get better. All right, before we get started, I have a quick announcement. I'll probably repeat it later on in the show when there are more people on. A quick announcement. I've been teasing this for a while and maybe some of you have guessed, but I've been asked by the Peterson Academy. This is Jordan Peterson's new online, I don't know if it's a university. I don't know what it is exactly, but it's basically online courses that are canned. Ultimately, you'll be able to write a subscription and you'll be able to watch all these courses. It'll be a monthly subscription and there'll be a lot of these. Anyway, I've been asked by Peterson to do a class, and in negotiating the class and negotiating what I would do, I ended up making two proposals, and they ended up accepting both of them. So I will actually be doing two classes for Jordan Peterson, one on the nature of capitalism. So one on the nature of capitalism. These classes are eight hours long, or eight sections, about an hour each. So I'll be doing one on finance and one on capitalism. So one on the nature of capitalism, one on the, I can't share the exact title, but it's something like morality and functioning of finance, something like that. They're eight hours long. They are taped at a studio with, so they're the very high quality production value. I've seen some samples, and I've seen some samples and the production values are very, very high. And so I'm looking forward to this. It should be a lot of fun. So I go to Miami and I tape these things in Miami. Now, the reason I'm telling you this partially is that there is a live audience during the taping. That is, there's kind of a classroom setup. And you're speaking in kind of almost like a green room setting. And we're looking for people to be in the live audience while it's being taped. So there is an application you can fill out. It's at petersonacademy.com slash brook petersonacademy.com slash brook. And you can go there and you can actually, I'm putting the URL in the chat and you can apply to be in the audience. It doesn't go to me. It goes to them and they get to decide. You have to be 18 years old there. You have to take care of your own food, accommodation, travel, all of this. Anyway, it's April 30th to May 2nd is the capitalism one. Later in May, it will be the finance one and there'll be a separate application for that. April 30th to May 2nd, from 9am to 2.30pm. So we're taping one hour, short break, another hour, short break, another hour. So it's right in the row. And again, Miami, Florida, April 30th, May 2nd, 9am to 2.30pm. I don't know if you have to commit to coming to all three days or you can just come to one day or what you actually can do. I have no idea how that works, but feel free to apply. And it would be great to have some friendly faces in the audience. Otherwise, it'll be kind of the Jordan, the Peterson people who come to all the other courses that are being done there. But this is, I think, exciting. It's going to be fun. And I'm doing two of these and it'll be great if like every year I do a few courses for them. Maybe we can actually get a close on objectivism at some point or stuff like that. And again, very high quality, an audience I probably don't reach typically. So hopefully it'll have an impact on this show in terms of growing the show and everything else. Maximus says, does he know how much you hate him? I mean, I don't know. I don't know. But people do. I mean, as people watch my stuff, and at least the person I negotiated this deal with and the invitation did come directly for Jordan Peterson. And we'll see what happens. And the idea, I think for him, is to build a platform with people from all, I mean, I asked, is this just going to be all right wingers or whatever? And because then I'm less interested in the idea was, no, this is a wide spectrum of people and they're trying to get people from a wide variety of perspectives. My guess is some people will turn them down. But so it's not going to be just Jordan Peterson like people. It's going to be a wide variety of people. I think I mean, we'll see, we'll see how it goes. We'll see what it's like. We'll see what the platform hasn't launched yet. You can go to Jordan, you can go to Petersonacademy.com and see what they have as just the landing page there, just as an intro. And but it would be great if those of you, if you live in Southern Florida, and you'd like to come or whatever, if you'd like to visit and come, it would be great to have you there. It would be a lot of fun. This is going to be a great way. They haven't no limitations of what I say. So I'm going to present capitalism from the perspective of Vyn Rand, up as in finance from my perspective, which is I think an objective perspective. And morality, I will talk about morality. I'll talk about self interest. We'll talk about the history of capitalism, what is capitalism, the nature of capitalism, they're both every aspect of this. So I am super excited about it. I'm doing this debate on the Israeli-Palestinian thing tomorrow. Once that's over, I'm really dedicating other than the shows and all my lecturing in Latin America, the rest of the space in my brain, whatever's left over, hopefully a significant amount will be dedicated to preparing for the capitalism talk. And then once that's over, I'll start preparing for the finance talk. So I'm excited about that. Tomorrow's debate will not be live. It's taped and it will be released by Robert Breedlove. Breedlove is his name. He is a podcast bitcoin guy and he'll release it, I guess, when he's ready. So I'm not sure when, probably fairly quickly, but within a week, I guess, but it will be released somewhere. All right, what else? I think that is it for now. I'll fill you in more as I learn more. And again, it would be great if some of you guys applied for this and could come. So yeah, a good string of events. As I said, Mila is coming to our conference and I'm doing this. And hopefully all of that will result, the net result of that will be more exposure to a wider variety of people, which is my goal. I'm not about to convince Mila and I'm not about to convince Jordan Peterson, but I do want access to people, to new people. All right, let's get rolling. We will start. I think everybody knows how this works. We've got a few newbies on the panel today, which is always fun. And we're actually going to start with one of them. Because Jackson was on first, so Jackson, you get to ask the first question. Okay, lots of pressure. So the question I have, and I've been thinking about this a little bit lately, but on one of your shows, you're on a few weeks ago, and I think it might have been the show about where our rides come from. And you were playing a clip from Bishop Robert Barron about and another woman from a media site who was talking about whether they come from God or come from the government and how both of those are wrong. I think you may have mentioned something about the golden age of Islam. When there was a period of Islam, I think maybe like in the 13th or 14th century, where there was a lot of progression of knowledge and science and reason, and this was sort of based off of similar principles as to what happened during the Renaissance when the Western Europeans rediscovered Aristotle and the Greeks. And I was curious about that because I wondered if that, and I know a little bit about the history of the golden age of Islam, but not too much. And I wonder if that could serve as a good roadmap for people to, context people to evaluate what is happening now in our society and how our politicians and the culture are increasingly using religion as almost a somewhat authoritarian tool to tell us how we should live. And it seems like it stems from two things. Maybe I would say fear and lack of self-esteem, but nonetheless how the danger of how something that might seem benevolent in our society can actually increasingly lead to a situation where it becomes a serious threat to human life. And I guess going off of that, this is kind of tangential to it, but I was reading Philosophical Detection the other day on Rand's essay and I sort of made this connection where she was talking about philosophy, just systems of rationalization and how self-abasement is a form of evasion. And it kind of came to me, she was talking about it in the form of altruism, but it seemed to me, I was like, well, Christianity is a system of self, basically the whole premise is self-abasement. The conclusion I kind of come to is, it seems like it's primarily based off of fear and leads to a lack of self-esteem because of the self-abasement. And it seems like that might play into the trend and authoritarianism that we see going on in the Republican Party to, I guess, not to a small extent, but in America it's to a lesser extent than it is in other places, but it's still going on nonetheless. And I wonder if you could comment on that a little bit. Yeah, I know. I think that's absolutely right. Christianity, basically, because of itself abasement, its emphasis on humility, its emphasis on original sin. I mean, we're all sinful, we're all inherently, in a sense, bad. So there is definitely this sense of this difficulty in gaining self-esteem when you start from the premise that you are already sinful by both. And where humility and humility here doesn't just mean not being a bad God, but it means humility. It means an understanding of how worthless and how lack of how little you know about the world and how don't trust your own mind and don't trust your own ability, how bad that is, how extensive that is. That makes really self-esteem impossible. So it's absolutely right. There's no question in my mind that it is Christianity at the core that drives, that is driving us towards authoritarianism, particularly in the United States. But I wouldn't say you can't start with the premise that it's fear. I mean, the beginning is always philosophical. The beginning is always ideas. And I would say that the ideas that generate the fear, the ideas that have led us to the point where Christianity has this kind of impact on us, in spite of the fact of how secular our culture was and is, to some extent, are the ideas of Kant and the idea of the German Romantics and the ideas of the philosophers of the 19th to 20th century all the way up to the post-moderns and analytics and all the way to today. Those ideas basically told people, emphasized to people, are impotent reason really was, how reason didn't really connect them to reality. And at the end, that made them dependent on their own, on emotion, dependent on emotion and therefore on others. And that leads to the fears. It's always bad ideas that, in this case, crowd out good ideas, the ideas of the Enlightenment. Including Christianity, though, right? You're saying Christianity is such an impotent set of ideas that Christianity is not a powerful set of ideas. Christianity has been debunked. It's been ridiculed. It was marginalized. The Enlightenment basically marginalized it. In Europe, a significant percentage of the population became atheists. I mean, Christianity is not a serious threat, but Kant is. And Hegel is. And the philosophers are. And I think that people are turning to Christianity, back to Christianity because of the default of philosophy, but it's the failure of philosophy that is driving where we are not the power of Christianity. The power of Christianity was thoroughly thrashed during the 17th and 18th century, not as thoroughly as it should be, not as thoroughly as I ran to, ultimately. But it was. And that's why Europe became so secular. But in its place, in the place of Christianity, it was very powerful, secular ideas that are just as evil, just as bad, and that have now opened up space for Christianity to make a comeback. Now, in terms of the golden age of Islam, I'll just say, which is a big topic, but I'll say, I don't know if that's the power where you really want to use because people feel alienated from that partially because it's Islam. It's a different culture. And also because Islam never had an enlightenment. They had, they had a renaissance in a sense. They had, although not really not in the aesthetic realm, only in the kind of philosophical realm. They had this period in the golden age where they had science and they had philosophy and they had this debate between reason and, between reason and faith, and that mimics what happened in the Catholic Church several hundred years later. And that debate, I think, was ultimately decided on the side of faith. I think it's hard for people to relate to that. There are lots of Christians who want to deny that it even existed. And I think a better example is the fall of Rome. You had a thriving, successful culture, culture of Greece that impacted Rome in the early centuries of Rome. There was still science. There was still, there was still great arts. There was thriving culture. There was, you know, an empire that still had technology and still had a very positive view. I mean, there were problems. It was after all the dictatorship in an empire, not exactly a freedom-loving place. But as Christianity comes to dominate the Roman Empire more and more, the Roman Empire sinks and ultimately disappears into a dark ages. And I think that, and this is the book which I highly recommend, The Closing of the Western Mind, documents this really thoroughly. So that to me is the better parallel than the Golden Age. And, you know, the Golden Age of Islam partially really, you know, the last remnant of it only ended when the Christians kind of basically conquered it, right? The remnant of the Golden Ages of Islam were in Spain in the 14th to 15th centuries. And by the 15th century, end of the 15th century, basically the Christians had taken over all of Spain. And now the Golden Age was moving from Islam to the Christian world. Anyway, that's kind of a quick answer. You know, the Golden Age of Islam in and of itself is a big topic and a fascinating one. Okay. Yeah, I have the Closing of the Western Mind on my reading list, but yeah, I added that when I heard you mention that book and it sounds very interesting. So maybe I'll move that up to the top of my list. Yeah. And then the next one after that is the reopening of the Western Mind. And that I'm in the middle of, I took a break from that to read some other stuff, but I'm going to go back to that soon. But that the reopening of the Western Mind, which is leading up to the Renaissance, leading to the Renaissance and then the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. So those two books are highly recommended. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Jackson. All right, Andrew. Ron, you've been talking about the, well, in the last show on the Israeli conflict, long show you did Israeli Gaussian conflict with Joe Rogan and the culture of stupidity. I wanted to, so I have a formulation. I want to see what you think about it, about altruism's role with stupidity. That altruism's demand to favor the weak is a mistake that has severe consequences. The strong can be and often is strong because it's good. And the weak can be and often is weak because it's bad. Favoring the weak thus often means favoring morally bad and severely distorts a person's moral judgments to the point of stupidity. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, the strong here doesn't just mean physically strong or militarily strong. It means successful, rich, productive, able, smart, scientifically advanced. And those are all disfavored by altruism. Those are all rejected by altruism in favor of the weak. We see that with the math curriculum I talked about yesterday in California in order to, altruism demands that are in order to favor the, we must not only favor the weak students of mathematics, they're not so smart ones, but we must also cripple the smart ones so that they don't express their smartness. They don't express how they are bad in mathematics and everybody else. And that's exactly what does that do? I mean, that creates a culture of people with stupid in math because even the smart people don't get to be smart in math. They're being suppressed. And that's all altruism. So absolutely, I think that's a good formulation. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Andrew. Alexander. Awesome. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Yeah, you're fine. All right. Perfect. I have more of a kind of a future-based question. Okay. So the Iron Rand lexicon. So the book was published in 1988 and it appears that more and more articles and content and definitions have been added, especially on the ARI's website. And I was wondering if there are any plans to expand the lexicon and maybe republish a new version of it, maybe even include some of Lenin Picoff's ideas in it. And also, I do not know how a dictionary-style book would translate into being an audiobook as well. But have you heard anything about that or can you elaborate on any of that? So I don't know. I doubt that the lexicon will ever be expanded significantly beyond maybe some work of Lenin Picoff. I mean, it is a lexicon of Objectivism, i.e. Iron Rand. So any expansion would require change in the way it's being described. I can imagine another lexicon being created that is of the broadest set of materials. There wouldn't be an Objectivist lexicon, but it would be described some other way. So that could be interesting. There is a glossary for Objectivism, which includes a lot of definitions. So if you google glossary for Objectivism, I think you'll find, I think, I think I have you been saying his wife has something like that, put something like that and put it up. In terms of an audiobook, I just don't think it would work. So I doubt that it would be there. And I don't think it's that valuable because the reality is with something that involves definition like content, you need to really read it and you need to slow down when you do it. Just to say a definition, it just goes by too fast and you can't really do much with it. So I value the lexicon and I value any kind of dictionary type thing for Objectivism very much, but I need it in front of me. I need to be able to look at it, read it. I need to be able to be at that pace. And I think if it was spoken, it would just go over the top of my head. It would hard to retain and would be less valuable. And then the same kind of question, ominous parallels, any plans on turning it into an audiobook? Because there is no audiobook for that one. I'd love to listen to that one. Yeah, me too. God, I didn't realize that. I mean, that is completely in the control of Lana Pieckoff. But I know that he wants to promote it more last time I talked to him. So I didn't realize there was no audiobook. So yes, audiobook would be one way in which to really promote it. Let me look into that and see what we can do. I would love to have an audiobook of ominous parallels. I think it would be, I think it would sell well. I think it would be it's so relevant right now. It would be, I think there'd be a lot of people interested in renewing or discovering that book. Good. Thanks, Alexander. Adam. Muted. There you go. Okay. I just unmuted myself. Just something I wanted to mention first, which is you mentioned a student of Objectivism whom you met in Amsterdam who comes from Ramallah in the West Bank. Yeah, I made a mistake. She's not from Ramallah. She emailed me to tell me I made a mistake. She's from Ramallah. And Ramallah is not in the West Bank. Ramallah is an Arab town inside Israel. So she still comes from an Arab family, but an Arab Israeli family, not a West Bank family. So my era, I was going to correct it. I got an email from her. She's still just as courageous because it's still tricky to be an objectivist in that community, but not quite as tricky as it would be if she was in the West Bank. Okay. I wanted to mention that Intel, and I understand that she works at Intel in Israel, because of America's unfortunate limits on legal immigration, Intel opened a third lab after the U.S. and Israel in Poland. And they already have scientists and engineers from 40 countries in that lab. Poland has the immigration policy that you advocate, namely if someone has a job offer in Poland, they get a visa. Yep. And so now, if it takes too long to get a U.S. visa, she can probably go to Intel in Poland. And she wouldn't face any of the potential problems that she would have coming from Israel directly. I'll tell her that. Thank you. Okay. I wanted to add that even though Poland is very much divided between almost 50-50, between a theocratic major party and a secular major party, in terms of economics, both of them are mostly classical liberal or what is called in Europe neoliberal. And they've had the fastest economic growth in Europe for three decades now. And according to some observers, they are going to go in terms of median disposable household income. Disposable means that you subtract government spending from the gross domestic product before you allocate it to households. And that is a very good measure, especially when adjusted for cost of living, which reflects such things as cronyism, corruption, subsidies, tariffs. So I think it's a very good economic measure of how well an economy is doing. And Poland is due to overtake the United Kingdom within the next few years. They're heading in that direction. The question. Yeah. So I guess the question for you is that are we passing Poland and other places with a good philosophy of education in the opposite direction with more and more Americans being in the generations disminded by the comprachicos? Yeah, I mean, I think that the United States is in decline. There's no question about that. And it's a decline in many, many parameters. It's decline economically, all driven, I think, by a rotten educational system, a progressive educational system really created and gifted to this country by Dewey and his followers, the progressives. I don't see enough of a backlash or enough of a shift. If anything, they're getting crazier. You can see that really in the kind of stuff that I talked about yesterday about some of the math education in some places in California. So, yes, there are countries around the world that are freer, that have better educational systems. I hope Poland continues on the track that it's on. It certainly has extraordinary rate of economic growth, even on a per capita basis, and particularly for European country. And it will overtake the UK. I mean, UK partially is in a recession and decline, but Poland could overtake Germany at the rate it's going. And part of that is the educational system. I worry about Poland because of the dominance of Catholicism. And as you said, there's a 50% theocratic, 50% secular. And without a good philosophy, without better ideas, and with the pressure of the bad ideas from Europe, the pressure of bad ideas from the US, will they be able to resist the bad ideas? I hope so, so far, so good. And of course, more recently, the secular political party won the election in Poland. So, you know, we'll see. But Poland does seem like it's on the right track. The Czech Republic is another place in Europe, which is relatively on the right track, probably not as good as Poland. But these are Eastern European countries that learned the right lesson from the fall of communism and have implemented kind of, I think, more enlightenment ideas. The Czech Republic is completely secular. There's no religion there at all. Poland's still battling its Catholic past. And it struggles because it's also got this connection with, you know, the Pope, the Polish Pope who came to Poland and is credited rightly or wrongly with a lot of the resistance to communism. But yeah, I mean, America is in deep, deep trouble. And it's good to see that other countries are in better shape and that they're heading in the right direction. And maybe they will influence us rather than us influence them. But to influence us, we'll have to have more open immigration because we need them to emigrate here in order to help influence our culture. Thanks, Adam. Let's see, Steve. I guess continuing with religion. So I finished the book Christendom. And one of the things that was really interesting is how malleable Catholicism has been over this, even over the span of the book. In some ways, it makes it so much easier for them to like roll into like any new country and they can kind of like tweak it for the local populace. And it seems like in spreading objectivism, this is a much more difficult problem because we don't have that luxury. And we've got reality. We're kind of stuck with reality. It's like... I wish I shared your optimism about being so in tune with reality. But I guess like, how do you think about that? Because in some ways, it seems so much larger from... Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, one of the things that comes out of Christendom is this idea that... And that ends at like 1200, 1300. Whereas Christianity only becomes even more malleable as you go further into the future. And look at the Pope today declaring gay marriage is okay. And he would have been burnt at the stake not that long ago for just suggesting that. Never mind actually saying it. So Christianity is completely malleable because it's a completely subjectivist religion because it is like all religion. It relies on some kind of contact and communion with a being that doesn't exist. And therefore you can make up whatever you want in terms of what that being is actually telling you, which means how to interpret the holy books and what they mean and what they imply. And one of the things that... I think closing of the modern mind, closing of the western mind makes a point up is how important it is that Paul basically... And I think Christendom does as well, maybe another book. No, Dominion has this too, because Dominion, the whole book is like Christianity is everything. Christianity is in everything. He makes the case that Paul basically says Christianity is in the heart of man. So anything is in your heart is Christianity. Anything that you feel is Christianity. And as long as it's consistent with your emotion, so it can be anything. And in Christendom he makes the case that when it comes to the UK, to the Britain, it morphs in order to adapt to a warrior culture. And in order to adapt to them, then suddenly war is okay. And suddenly a god is on your side in a war, which is... Constine has a little bit of that, but then it really embezzled in this night's culture, all these nights fighting for God. I think only Christians would be horrified by that idea. So now what about objectivism? No, of course, objectivism cannot do that. And objectivism is oriented towards reality and facts. And it will only spread, it will only gain influence, it will only advance among people and to the extent people respect reality, facts and logic and reason. And it just won't happen otherwise. Now, that's not to say that people will interpret certain aspects of objectivism differently here and there. And there will be all kinds of... I mean, it's happening today. We've got all these other institutions and interpret objectivism in kind of bizarre ways. I just saw a video where the CEO of the Atlas Society was asked about religion and Christianity. And she says something like, well, look, you can read Ayn Rand and take what you want from it and discard what you don't like from it. You just take the stuff you like. And that's kind of like the New Testament. Take the New Testament, take what you like, they discard. I mean, that's not objectivism. But people are going to do that. So you'll have all kinds of things like that. But no, objectivism in the end is one set of ideas that won't expand, it won't grow until people respect facts, reality, reason. And it's going to take a long time because that's really hard and really hard, particularly in a culture that's been softened up by religion, by emotionalism, by whatever you do what you feel like doing. So yeah, it's hard. I mean, I see that just in ordinary discussions, right? You argue with somebody, you probably all have this experience, right? You debate somebody and you've got facts and you're showing evidence and it doesn't penetrate. It doesn't go anyway. And you're like, it's hopeless. And there's a sense in which it's hopeless. It's hopeless to convince people who won't accept reality of anything about objectivism. Move on. You've got to find those who do. And hopefully over time, more and more people will be willing to embrace reality and reason. They did for a while during the 18th century, the intellectuals at least. And we need another period like that. We need a new enlightenment this time guided by objectivism. Thanks, Steve. Skylar. Greetings. Good afternoon, sir. Salute. Good to see you. Good to see you as well. Good to see the panel. My question regards Iron Rans. I think it was an essay The Age of Envy. It was written, I think, in 1971. To what extent are we still in an age of envy and how worse or how better have we gotten since she wrote those words? Wow. I mean, it's hard to think that we've gotten better. And it definitely seems like we've gotten worse, right? The ideology of envy, which I think ultimately is egalitarianism. That's the ultimate in envy is bigger today than it was back then in terms of its influence on the world. I think so. I think in that sense, we're much worse. That is philosophically, we're worse. You can look at both the conservative movement and the left as much worse, both infected by this idea of envy. The left has taken it to consistently to this idea of egalitarianism. The implementation of that idea, you call it world culture, however you want to call it, is just about the most horrific that one can imagine in terms of a set of ideas and how they implement it. It is the kamiruj. They just don't have the power. They don't have the guns, but that's what they would do if they had it. So yeah, sadly, I think it's much worse. And there's a lot we need to do. There's a lot of work to do to fight against that. I also think the good people is bigger. But the culture, I think is worse. We're richer. We've gone through periods where envy seemed to have lost some of its... So if you'd asked me in the 90s, I would have said, oh, we're much better. But what was in a sense going on in the 90s is in the background, all these university professors were building the case. We're taking envy and taking the ideas to the next level. And all of that really got manifest in the 2000s, certainly in the 20s. And it's all over the place today. So yeah, sadly, thanks, Scott. Robert. Yeah, I was wondering, I'm curious if you've heard the latest Sam Harris. He's back on Free Will with Robert Sapolsky. It was an interesting episode because toward the end, they raised some of their own challenges. At the end of the day, they spent 45 minutes on how we're talking about there is no Free Will. And then toward the end, they said, well, raising children, for example, leads to some problems because Merit is out. Nobody deserves anything. You're born with all your attributes or circumstances force you into your situations. Pride is out. But if you're going to raise kids, how do you get them to be ambitious and capitalize on their so-called gifts without telling them? Is an ambition out? Well, they don't want ambition. It's funny. Even the idea of wanting something is ridiculous if you don't believe in Free Will. But I'm curious if you heard that latest episode because it's interesting. They were willing to get into some of their kind of issues. And also, and I guess my bigger question for you is, Sam Harris has been so good on so many things. He's downright courageous in regard to October 7th in Israel. How do you judge somebody like that? All right. So I haven't heard the episode. I'm not really surprised that they would go there. My sense of Sam Harris is he has so rationalized this position of Free Will that he is willing to challenge it in his own mind because it's so solidly in some kind of loop that he can find excuses and find his way out of it no matter what. But I'm curious to listen. I don't know if I can tolerate the first 45 minutes, but I might skip ahead to the other part. So it's not honesty exactly because he won't completely question his premises. But there's something there that I don't think, I don't think Sam Harris would consciously say to himself, no, I'm not going to ask the tough questions because that might change my mind. I mean, I think he is willing to ask the tough questions. He's just got the answers to all of them because the whole thing is just so rationalized and it's so divorced from reality. How do you judge him? God, I mean, you have to judge him as this deeply mixed case. First of all, you have to judge him as courageous. The guy is incredibly brave, is incredibly courageous, and it's not only, I mean, what he did after 9-11 and what he did with the new atheists and the way he went after Islam and then the way he went after religion was just spectacular. It was well done and it was brave. It was brave in the face of real physical threats, not just hypotheticals, but real physical threats. He took the right position on Islam and it was just admirable. Then I grew with you after October 7th to this day, his position on Israel, his position on the moral difference between the two. I don't know how there's morality if there's no free will, so I don't know how he talks about that. He even has a talk on Ted, like he has a Ted talk which is bridging the, his odd gap where he says, you can derive morality from reality. Now it's flawed and it's got problems with it and it's kind of circular, but he's trying, right? He's trying to derive morality even though he doesn't believe in free will. He loses it at some point. I wonder if they talked about that as one of the challenges they have. How can you have morality with no free will? Did they bring that up? No, no, they didn't go. I wish they would have. I want to see you and Ankar locked in a room with St. Paul St. and Harris until you ironed that out. But yeah, I was curious because within the community, the objectivist community, I get people when I will post what I found interesting about these conversations who say, no, no, no. He's evil to the core because he's evading reality and there's something wrong with you, Robert, for caring about this or for keeping that discussion going. Yeah. I mean, if that were the case, you couldn't listen to anybody. You couldn't gain value from anybody. You could, and look, I wanted to emphasize some other things about Sam Harris. Sam has been courageous in other dimensions as well. He is incredibly consistently anti-Trump in a rational kind of thoughtful way that I think, I mean, sometimes he gets irrational and unthoughtful, but mostly rational. He has a fantastic episode on guns, right, which pissed off the left, right, where he talks about the value of having gun ownership and so on. But the way he analyzes, he just does it so rationally, so clearly. And so he'll take a topic often and just do the best presentation on that topic that I've heard anyway. So, no, I have to say, in many respects, I'm a fan. I think he's amazing. And it drives me nuts that somebody could be that compartmentalized because as soon as he talks about psychedelics and about free will, he's completely lost the thread. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He's a complete idiot. And when he talks about capitalism, he's a complete idiot. But when he talks about things like guns, and when he talks about things like Trump, and when he talks about Islam, and when he talks about Israel, he's amazingly good. And I consider him in those days. So how do I judge him? He's a mixed case. He's a mixed case of massive evasion and rationalization and amazing capacity to reason through a problem and to think it through and exhibit all the things that he denies exist like free will, which is necessary for that reasoning capability. So what about your own the aspect from he evades objectivism? Everybody evades objectivism. I mean, I mean, I'm going to do it. I'm going to write the human race off because they evade objectivism. No, but he's particularly able to look at it and choose to evaluate it. He has the brain to do it. He has the intellectual curiosity to do it. So that's bad. He's an evader. He's an evader and a rationalist. Okay. But that goes with the free will. And that goes with the drugs. And he sees objectivism as a threat because he's built up in his own mind this whole rationalistic view about free will and about life and about the world. I also don't know who he's had, what his experiences with objectivism have been like. I mean, I sometimes worry about some of these guys meeting some noxious objectivists and they kind of write off the whole thing because they met some me when I was 18 or something. No, I mean, but somebody really obnoxious and for writing it off. So you have to judge him as really, really mixed. But I mean, everybody's smart in the world that they're all the scientists and they're a lot of philosophers that should understand objectivism better, should, when they read Iron Man, get it. And a lot of them do read Iron Man and they don't. And it's just blank. So you can't just just rule them all out and say, I appreciate that, Yaron, because he is a mixed case. And some people will read an essay like the Cult of Moral, Granus. And when she gets to the end and talks about complex cases where you really need to pick out, well, what is the black? What is the white? Some people still seem to take that as, oh, well, you're giving them a sanction. And so no, I know what I criticize Harrison for and what I don't. But yeah, that latest conversation is worth listening to. And it's good to know I'm not the only one who says, yeah, he's good and he's bad, but he's good. No, and I enjoy listening to him on some issues. And he drives me nuts on others. And I think he's better than Jordan Peterson, let's say, right? So even though I don't know if you heard my announcement, but all right, about Jordan Peterson. So let's see. All right, let's quickly do some super chats. I do have kind of a hard stop today. So we do have some limitations on time today. But let's do some super chats and then we'll go back. And I'll do a couple of $50 ones. Michael, you notice how parents constantly beg about how smart and amazing their kids are? That that is an altruism. It's often a form of not insecure narcissism. They're letting out. That's right. What's screwing people up isn't just altruism, but improper, rejecting altruism. But that's exactly the point Michael, and that's what I keep emphasizing. They become narcissists because they're rejecting of their rejection of altruism. Altruism is what sets them up as narcissists. But it's always altruism. Altruism is what is driving this behavior. And they will often feel guilty in different ways about the different aspects of their narcissism. So they'll do things in other realms in their life to show their altruistic credentials. So no, it's all driven by altruism, even their narcissism, which you say it's an improper rejection of altruism. Yes, but they're not offered an alternative because one of the reasons they can't go the self-interested route, the egoistic route, is because narcissism blocks that, eliminates that, and doesn't make that possible. So what you're stuck with is either being altruist or be some kind of hedonistic, narcissistic person or pragmatist. You're stuck with all these alternatives, but self-interest, egoism, altruism, the one thing altruism is very effective at doing is ruling that completely out of the way you think about the world and the way you think about reality. All right, Hapa Campbell also $50. I noticed leftists get especially nasty towards PhDs who are on the right. They come at you with moral intimidation. If you're sophisticated enough to get a PhD, you should be enlightened enough to reject selfishness and capitalism. I actually haven't noticed that. So I don't know where you've noticed that. I'm not challenging that. It's, it makes sense to me. I've never been challenged by that, maybe because I don't make a big deal out of my PhD. But yeah, it makes sense. They think that they're the smart ones. They have, most of the PhDs are lefties, and they think they dominate it, and they think only stupid people, I mean, they literally think this. They think that only stupid people can be pro-capitalism. And therefore, they are shocked that somebody who's not stupid is pro-capitalism. That surprises them. And so it doesn't surprise me that they reject anybody with a kind of a PhD. Adrie, $48. Thank you, Adrie. He says, I like the YBS. Thank you, Adrie. I appreciate it. And that was Adrie's first super chat. So thank you. James, I don't think the regulate big tech crowd is going to go anywhere. The digital world is just too sophisticated. It isn't like a factory, which is simple to impose controls over. I'm trying to understand the question. I don't think the regulate big tech crowd is going to go anywhere. I don't think so either. They're going to stick around. The digital world is just too sophisticated. Yeah, they're going to keep trying to regulate it. They're going to keep coming up with new ideas to regulate it. In spite of the sophistication of the digital world, the digital world will keep finding ways around the regulation. And new regulation will be imposed in order to clamp down and control it. And that challenge will keep going on just like it goes on in finance. They regulate finance, and the financial markets finds ways around the regulation. And then they regulate the new ways around the regulation. And then it's an ongoing think about the wasted brainpower resources capital that goes into finding ways around regulation instead of finding ways on how to be more productive and how to create more wealth. All right, Liam, you might feel frustrated that our movement is going slowly, but what you're doing is working. I appreciate that, Liam. It certainly is working on kind of one mind at a time. There's no question. It's just the millions of might at a time. I haven't got it. I haven't found the formula for the million minds at a time. I've got it down to one mind at a time that's going to have to satisfy. Hopper Campbell says, thoughts on UFC president Dana White. He was on Lex the other day. He ended the show by saying to the fact he hates having to sleep eight hours a day. He loves life so much. He wants it to be a 24 hour event. I mean, that's a great statement. I don't really know Dana White. I'm not a fan of UFC. I know a lot of objectivists love UFC and love fighting. He loves Trump. He loves Trump. Okay. I mean, to me, the bigger thing against him is that he's UFC president. But I'm not big on fighting. I don't like the idea of physical force as a sport, a physical force against another human being and really trying to hurt them. So like the Olympic sport of wrestling, you get a sense that they're not hurting each other. It's more about technique. But there's no real hurt. There's no blood. I'm not a fan of boxing. I'm not a fan of all cage fights. The whole idea of a cage fight belongs in Mad Max, right? And not in a civilized society. So anyway, I know I'm pissing off a bunch of people, but that is my opinion. And so I don't know that I could relate to Dana White. I appreciate this idea that you want to use every second of the day and you don't want to sleep. I still only have that attitude, although Atea and others have convinced me that I need eight hours whether I like it or not. And my other hours are going to be more productive if I get them. Although I find it almost impossible to actually sleep eight hours. I wake up too often during the night to actually get eight hours of sleep, almost ever. Clock, if you cannot achieve equality of performance among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, how realistic is it to expect to achieve it across border and deeper society divisions? Zero. There's zero probability of that. That cannot happen, will not happen, not achievable. It goes against the metaphysical nature of reality and the metaphysical nature of mankind. So it can't happen. That doodle bunny, we live in a world where the truth has to be explained again and again while a lie is believed immediately. How can this be partially because the people telling the lies are the people who are supposed to be telling us the truth. That is that the people who tell us the lies are the intellectuals, the people who are responsible for helping us discover truth and figuring out what is true and what is not. And we will lie on them, like it or not. We will lie on them for our knowledge. So people follow the intellectuals. People don't have the time. Some of them don't have just the sheer intelligence to discover truth by themselves. So they're very much dependent on the intellectuals. When the intellectuals betray you, it's very, very difficult to recover from that. It's very, very difficult to recover from that. Therefore, when the intellectuals repeat a lie over and over and over again, people just accept it because they don't have the ability and the resources to go figure out that it's not true. Sad as that may be. All right, let us return to the panel. I'll just mention this before we return to the panel because we've got a lot more people listening right now than we did before. I've been invited to teach a class, a couple of classes actually, for the Peterson Academy, Jordan Peterson's new online thing, university, whatever, not a real university, but it's an online educational platform. And you can attend, as part of the live audience, these things have a live audience. This is not about building coalitions at all. There is no coalition possible, but it is about teaching and it is about spreading the word. So if anybody's interested in coming and attending and being in the audience while I talk about the nature of capitalism, then please consider applying to be a member, to apply to be in the audience. You can go to PetersonAcademy.com slash Brooke, PetersonAcademy.com slash Brooke. And it's April 30th, the May 2nd, 9 a.m., to 2.30 p.m., you might have to come to all three, maybe only, you know, you might be able to come just for a day. You have to fill out the application to find out. But it would be great if we had some of you there. That would be cool. So you can come and have asked me live. No, I mean, they have very stringent behavior requirements. So there's certain things you have to agree to behave in a certain way. These things are taped, high production value, and they want a certain aesthetic to it. So audience participation is very limited. It's mainly me just talking, but there will be some audience interaction with some Q&As. All right, let's jump to our panel. Let's see, where are we? Let's start with Alexander. Sure. I have a quick comment and a question. One of your episodes, going back a couple months, you were saying, hey, I'm interested in doing a culture war and cultural show. I just wanted to say that I'm all in favor of that. It'd be great to get a focus show. And you stated in that episode that the Republicans have lost their culture war and that they're now trying to use the power of fiat and dictate to really instill their values in the society. So I just wanted you to elaborate on that a little more. And also, can you just bring more examples of culture wars, how they were fought and won or lost? Yeah, I mean, again, a big topic. But look, Republicans, look, they lost their struggle against gay marriage and against treating homosexuality as in some sense as normal. They lost that, right? They lost that big time. They lost really the hearts and minds of people around abortion. They lost a cultural battle around abortion. So 65% of Americans, almost 70% are supportive of abortion, at least some access to abortion or pretty extensive access to abortion. And it's only like 80% some access to abortion. It's a very small minority that believe there should be no abortion period, everything. And they've lost complete control of the universities. They've lost control of the cultural institutions in a sense of think about museums, schools and everything like that. And this is not good. Those other issues, it's good that they lost. These other ones, it's not good that they lost. It's bad that the guys who won won. So there's a lot out there that is very non-conservative. They've even lost the battle for how we dress and how we dress for work and how we have a much more casual culture than we were even 30 years ago. Never mind that we were 70 years ago. So in that sense, we've become less conservative in a sense of conserving. They've lost a battle over sex. I'm sure premarital sex is probably at all time record highs. I hope so. So those are the things, the kind of things that they have lost. Again, the left has won most of those. And again, some of it's really bad that the left won. The whole woke issue and all of that. Although I think on the things the left is wacky on, I think they're ultimately going to lose. And there's significant signs that Americans will not accept woke, DI, and a lot of the racism, the anti-racism, I think is the left. The American people are going to ultimately reject. Other culture was, I mean, look, the biggest culture war was the Enlightenment. And the Enlightenment was a culture war against Christianity, against a culture where individuals had no say in their life, a culture in which religion and family dictated all, a culture where sex was basically at least was something that morality was very severe about. And I think that changed. It took a long time to change, but it changed. The role of women in society was part of the big culture change, the fact that women were not stuck at home and just having kids and so on. And that was, of course, a big issue in the 18th century and then became more so in the 19th until women were completely emancipated in the 20th. Of course, slavery, think about the cultural war against slavery, which started in Europe in, again, the 18th century was in America in the 18th century. And then, of course, we fought a civil war over. So, I mean, there's a sense in which all the good stuff that the culture has done to defeat the conservatives is still the Enlightenment. That is still the momentum of the Enlightenment. So the Enlightenment is responsible for these good cultural changes. But you can also think about bad cultural changes, the change from Greece's Rome to Christianity to a dark ages, a shutting down of the mind, a shutting down of individual behavior in a regimentation and collectivization of the world. So I think those are some examples. But all of human history of the West is this closing and opening of different cultural attitudes. Jerome, your answer really integrated to me that what's his name? Michael Knowles wants to go back to before the Enlightenment. Yeah. He thinks it's better. That's, I mean, if you look even at Jordan Peterson, he will sometimes say positive things about the Enlightenment. But ultimately, he and so many other conservatives associate the Enlightenment with the woke left today. So it's the Enlightenment led to the woke left. They blame Thomas Jefferson for the woke left. So they associate the Enlightenment with rabbit subjectivism and they don't get it. They don't get the way in which the Enlightenment is based on reason. And they don't get how reason is connected to reality. That's Kant's fault. And they don't get what reality really is in terms of how reason works. So yes, what the conservatives really want, what they really want to conserve, is the pre-enlightenment world. And you see that what it was a tucker-costing complaining about modern architecture. All the people online were veering seed rolls and condemning modern architecture. And yeah, they want to go back to the cathedral. They want to go back to pre-enlightenment. They want to go back to pre-individualism, where people were forced to fund and work on building cathedrals that made them look small and made them look insignificant and the denunciation, the repudiation of the individual, which is what the pre-enlightenment world was all about. Thanks, Alexander. Good question. Thank you. Thank you. Steve. One of the things I've been, I guess, personally is I haven't been able to care very much about a lot of the objectivist applications to kind of like politics or kind of like the largely kind of example would be like, it'd be interesting to talk about or it's like somewhat interesting to talk about a world without a Federal Reserve. I just like when it comes to like if you work in finance, like the Federal Reserve is going to be a part of your life, whether you like it or Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. or not. I guess, how do you think about like the split between like these two worlds was all like one hand, like, okay, yes, we'd like to move in this direction of like a more ideal world than we live in. But I have to like go do the things that I have to do. And that requires like, like our reality orientation is useful. But like part of that reality is like, whether I like it or not, like a machine learning, the government is going to break it. And now we're only really negotiating how that's going to happen. And what exactly that is going to look like, like the weather it is going to happen or not has like already sailed, or that ship's already sailed. So like, how do you think about these kind of things? Well, I mean, I mean, you really have to look, you deal with the reality as it is, you have to, you cannot be successful otherwise. And that's what reason requires. It requires you and what egoism requires is you have to deal with the world as it is. And you have to make the most of the world as it is. If you're in finance, the Federal Reserve is there and it'll screw you once in a while. And its existence will piss you off periodically. But you have to take that into account in any decisions you make. And if you're not, if you don't, you're not being rational. And you're subverting your own mind, you're subverting your own existence. And, you know, but, but also holding that it shouldn't exist. And it shouldn't be like that is how you maintain your sanity, right? It's how you maintain your sanity when you see the Federal Reserve doing stupid things or ridiculous absurd stuff that might affect you in a bad way or not. But so you, and so you've got to hold both at the same time, which is harder, right? If we lived in a perfect world, in a less of a capitalist world, life would be easier. There's no question, life would be easier. We'd have so much more mental space just to focus on succeeding at life. And now we have to deal with the bullshit and we have to deal with holding perspective and holding what our ideal is and living in this reality and dealing with all the bogus stuff that happens on a regular basis. And it makes it harder because you have to juggle too many things. It just, and you just have, that's just something you just have to accept because there's just no alternative. You can't, there's no, you can't escape to the alternative universe. It's not there. Yeah, I feel like I've, I've maybe have accepted it too much. Like one of the things is like, I've had a very hard time getting upset about like almost anything. Like when they were talking about student loans, like being forgiven, a bunch of my friends were all wild up and on the guys, it's a trillion dollars, no one cares. If it's not this trillion, it'll be another trillion, like the trillion is going to get set. The point is not to care about every specific thing because that'll drive you nuts, right? Because you will devote too much mental energy to it. But that's the point. The point is you do care, right? When you're saying a trillion this, a trillion that, that you caring, that you saying, this is crazy, you know, I'm not going to get dove into that rabbit hole of this specific, like some objectivist do is like, they find some issue and then they go down the rabbit hole and they can analyze everything and you lose track of, no, I mean, this is just one little thing. Look at everything that they're doing is crappy. So you have to hold that. But don't forget what your ideals require. Don't forget the kind of world you want to live in because it'll, I think it'll grind you down if you don't hold that in some way. If you, you know, this is why I think people read Atlas Shrugged every few years because they need that, they need to bring it to consciousness every once in a while. Yeah, maybe, maybe, so, so we need to remind ourselves that, that of what the ideal is to stay sane in the world in which we live, I think. Thanks, Steve. Stay sane. Adam. Yes. Why is it that bad news about California circulates fast and then when it turns out to be either insubstantial or false, nobody knows about it. For example, there was a state panel and education guidelines that dropped advanced algebra from the secondary school curriculum. And the next thing, the University of California and California State University, both of those are the main government university networks in California announced. Don't pay attention to that. We are still requiring advanced algebra for admission to our universities and that didn't make the news. Well, because first of all, I don't think it's that significant. But secondly, look, California is now the model of a leftist state in everybody's mind. So the right will latch onto everything bad California does and make a big deal out of it, just like they do with with any anything that a red state does that is the model of kind of a conservative thing. But so it gets a lot of resonance in the media when a bad things happen. And generally, good news is never reported. I mean, when was the last time you saw in the news anything good? But, you know, and the math thing is complicated. So and that's also something news news don't like to report. So there is this recommendation by these guidelines for mathematics that are official state policy, but they're not imposed. They're just guidelines. And some districts accepting them, some districts are not. For years, San Francisco banned algebra for middle schools. But there's been a massive rebellion against that within San Francisco, particularly among Asians in San Francisco who like, no, I want my kid to study algebra in eighth grade. Don't deny my kid that. And now San Francisco is reintroducing algebra in eighth grade, even though the guidelines from the state say don't teach algebra in eighth grade. So but yeah, nobody has an incentive to report on the good news because the left doesn't have an incentive to report on it because they're not sure it's good or not, right? Because in their perspective, it's not clear that teaching algebra in eighth grade is a good thing because they were egalitarianism. And the way it's not going to report it because they want to make San Francisco look as crazy and insane as possible. It's the same thing about you know, I've been fighting with people in the chat about crime, right? If you look at violent crime in America today, it's high. It's higher than it was in 2014, 2016. But it's much, much lower than it was two years ago. And it's quite a bit lower. It's a lot lower than it was in the 90s and the 80s. But nobody wants to believe it because that upsets their particular view of the world. And nobody's going to report it. You have to go find the data because nobody reports good news. Nobody reports the good stuff that's happening, right? Yeah. So nobody has an incentive like the Biden administration approved the commissioning of this nuclear power plant in Michigan. Like the right doesn't have an incentive to say that because that makes Biden look good. And the left doesn't have an incentive to say it because they're against nuclear power. So nobody has an incentive to actually promote a story like that. And you see it over and over again. Thank you, Adam. Let's see. Andrew. Yeah. I just actually asked Ben Bear this question. So I'm curious about your take on it. Oh, God. Okay. There was an ARI roundtable before your show. And he in his talk on Augustine brought up how like Augustine in his biography, he had stories that were like second-handed and where he acted second-handed. And I was curious if Ben was connecting mysticism with second-handedness. So I want to ask you as well, like do you view a connection there? Well, I'm sure there's a connection between mysticism and second-handedness. Because at the end of the day, if truth relies on mysticism, on revelation, then most people don't get the revelation. Only the pope gets the revelation or only the theologians who understand the exact meaning of the written word understand what it really says. So most people have to accept stuff on the basis of faith. But what does that mean to accept stuff on the basis of faith? Faith doesn't just just introduce itself into your consciousness. It means they have to accept it based on somebody else's word. They have to accept it because somebody else told them so. They have to accept it because some expert suggested it. And that's second-handedness, right? They have to do it from there. There's no other way for them to how do they know what this passage in the Bible says other than an authority told them so? Yeah. I mean, he basically, he, in essence, I think what you're saying agrees on because he basically said that Augustine was telling stories about subordinating his mind to the judgment of others. Yeah. Which is a mystic, you know, a basis for mysticism. Yeah. He had to because the reality is that Augustine says the church is always right. The church is the truth. The church is the truth, not God. The church, i.e., the pope, i.e., the Catholic church has dogma and that dogma is the truth. Even if I don't quite understand it, even if I don't quite get it, it doesn't matter. It is the truth. That's inherently second-handed. That establishes second-handed as the way in which the church has to be. Got it. Thanks, Andrew. I'm glad Ben and I are on the same page. Skyler. Yes, sir. As April 15th, fast approaches and people have had the deadline for paying and filing their taxes, I just want to know a simple question. Why is it $600 as the as the minimum amount for you to be taxed? And I think it goes along with minimum wage and licensing laws that this incentivizes people from, you know, pursuing work. Is it from bureaucrats whim that it's $600? So what do you mean $600? If you make less than $600, you don't have to pay taxes on it? No, no. It's the threshold for being taxed. $600 is the threshold. It's the threshold for reporting your income on the front of 1099. I can tell you as an account. So and it is administrative convenience. Thank you. Mostly so that it's easy. So otherwise, the IRS does not want to receive 10 billion forms, 1099, any given year. So they're only picking up, you know, the most egregious stuff and expensive stuff. But you have to report all of it. You know, the rules are we have a voluntary compliance system. You have to all your income, 600. Even if you never received the form 1099, somebody forgot to send you one exactly in the same, you know, rule $10 for the form 1099, you know, for interest and dividends. So those limits are for administrative convenience. The IRS doesn't care about that because their computer is just going to be inundated with the whole one. That's the debate right now that we have with the new reporting on, you know, Zell transfers and all of that stuff because the limits have been dropped from I think they used to be 20,000 or something absurd like that down to now they're going to five and they want it to be as low as 600. So whenever you send money to your grandma, you know, for whatever kitchen table you got from her, you'd have to report it on your schedule D and people are just like, this is going to be insane, you know. Yeah. That's just convenience. Thank you. So thank you, Alexander. Obviously a tax accountant. But yeah, it's more convenience than anything else. There are plenty of ways in which the tax system is trying to manipulate you and trying to disincentivize you to do certain things and not other things like own a home and not rent. You get a tax deduction. Oh, and own a home with debt, not cash, because you get a tax deduction on your mortgage. But if you buy a car with debt, you don't get a tax deduction on that. So there are all kinds of ways in which the tax system is trying to disincentivize behavior. But I think the 600 is just convenience. You know, that's why they had 80,000 UIS agents, although I think that number keeps getting cut down because they're inundated with stuff they can't keep up. They can't keep track of everything, right? They still managed to make errors all the time. So they still manage to make mistakes all the time and screw us over. All right. Let's do these switch-at questions quickly, and we'll call it a day. Thank you to the panel. Really appreciate it. And let's see, Ed. Oh, I wanted to go and just say Audi F. Thank you for the sticker. Wes, thank you. Really appreciate the sticker, Wes. Jonathan, thank you. And I think that's as far back as I can go. All right. Let's do these questions. Ed, has Leonard Picoff said anything about his view on artificial intelligence since chat GPT? No. And I doubt Leonard has used chat GPT or tried it out. I'd be shocked if that were the case, given his general aversion to tech, put it that way. That little bunny, is it possible to ignore the haters since they are everywhere? Yeah, it's impossible to ignore them. You just have to place them in perspective and not let them get to you, right? Not let them destroy your ability to live your life and live your life well. Michael, continued, that was my point from yesterday. Not that I'm saying altruism isn't fundamentally widespread evil. Okay, so yes, I agree with you. Altruism, and I've said this many, many times on the show, altruism doesn't manifest as I need to sacrifice. I need to constantly sacrifice for other people. I mean, it does in Mother Teresa and maybe a few other people. But in 99% of the time, it doesn't manifest itself that way. It primarily manifests itself in ways where people are trying to either through guilt or people trying to live their life somehow without the altruism. So it's narcissism, hedonism, pragmatism, all these other ways as a rejection of. So absolutely. But the background is always altruism. The thing that is driving them is always altruism. Jake, thank you, Iran. You're helping the window cleaning day go by faster here in Colorado. Thank you from Andrew and Jake. Appreciate it. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Jake. And yeah, window cleaning is good, particularly in Colorado. We have beautiful views. Gail says, I have wondered if the government let big tech have some freedom just enough to keep them innovating so they can steal it for their purposes. I don't think that that conscious of what they're doing. I mean, if they were too easy, they would be. But I don't think they are. I don't think they're sophisticated enough. There's a sense in which that's true. I think there's a sense in which even they recognize, oh, well, if we really clamp down and we won't get innovation, we won't get increased GDP, there will be unemployment. We don't want that. We still need to control them. But I don't think I don't know how they hold it in their own minds. But it's definitely the case that they need the golden goose to lay the golden egg so that they can fund all their power-lusting programs with so they don't, they're careful not to have the boiling fog jump out of the pan, right? They want to boil it slowly. They will kill it at some point, but they want to do it slowly. Robert said how to jump off the panel to prep for big Saturday night with Amy and friends. Thanks as always for the hard work, answers and insights. Thank you, Robert. Really appreciate the support. And Mark says greetings to Iran and everyone on the panel. I'm interested in joining the next AMA. Would you guys recommend it? Also, want to share an opportunity? Yeah, absolutely. Feel free. I think your Angelus sends out the link for it so you can participate next time. As long as you maintain above $25 a month, you are eligible to participate. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for the support. Jeremy did another sticker for $10 and that is his 20th Super Chat. So for some reason, YouTube tells me one, three, five, 10 and 20. Some of you have well exceeded that and it doesn't tell me by how much. All right. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. I hope you guys go to aynvan.org. So I start here to apply for scholarship for OCCON. I hope you go to Alex Epstein, dot statistic dot com and subscribe to his sub stack and subscribe to his Alex AI app and everything else, get his energy talking points. And I will see all of those sponsors. I will see you guys on Monday. Probably do two shows on Monday given the Tuesday is I'm flying on Tuesday. I'll be on an airplane all day from six in the morning to the 9 p.m. on my way to Sao Paulo, Brazil. And so two shows on Monday. I'll see you all there. Have a great weekend. Have a wonderful. Is it okay to say have a wonderful Easter? Friday was when they crucified him Sunday as he comes back to life. So I guess it's it's cool. Resurrection Sunday. What's that? I said resurrection Sunday. That's what I said. Resurrection Sunday. Resurrection is cool. I like resurrection. All right. So, so happy Easter to everybody. Go find those eggs and the bunnies and figure out here's an integration challenge for you. Integrate that with the resurrection of Christ. That'll be your your concept in a hat challenge for the day. Bye, everybody. Thanks for the support. Thanks to our panel. Thanks to all the super chatters. See you Monday. Bye.