 of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show. On this Tuesday, last day in February, this year is really going by fast, I am in Zurich, Switzerland. It is 11, well no, what am I talking about? It is 4pm in the afternoon here. I am going to be giving a talk tonight at the University of Zurich at 6.30, I think. So we're going to make this show fairly short. This will be kind of a news briefing, more like a news briefing show than anything else. And I'll head over to the University to give a talk. Last night, hopefully some of you saw, I gave a talk in Poland about the war. And actually did I do a show after that? I can't even remember now. I can't even keep track. It seems like... Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, I didn't do a show after that. So I did a show last night on the war, causes of war, roots of war in Ukraine, Russia's war, and hopefully enjoyed it. I thought it went quite well. We had a very robust Q&A. Do you remember the guy who was on the chat the other day? He came twice and he kept saying, You're on, you're making this up. No libertarians in Europe asked that question about why American libertarians are appropriating. First question at the talk yesterday, hand goes up. First question at the talk was, how do you explain what the libertarians in America are doing? It's like, I didn't plant the question, I promise. Anyway, it's pretty funny because it is a major question. The libertarians are asking me, they might not ask each other, but they're asking me as I travel through Europe. What is happening to the libertarian party in the United States and the libertarian movement? I also heard from yesterday the first time somebody say that basically the war between the Russian war, the war Russia instigated, has turned him off of Rothbard. So he has turned away from Rothbard as a consequence of the war. One good thing coming out of the war, very minor, but one good thing. Tomorrow I am in Budapest. Danny Bakonyi, you asked about the talk in Budapest. I actually have that, I have the link to the Facebook ad right underneath there. So hopefully you see that and you got it and you can comment. It is, by the way, open to the public, so hopefully you can make it. It'll be nice, as I said, it'll be nice to have people who listen to the show at the event. All right, we've got a bunch of topics today that I want to go through before we're going to get to those topics. I just want to say something about, you remember we did the show on Dahl, you know, the author Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or something like that. And they were editing the books for woke stuff for sensitivity training, sensitivity things, and they were changing the characters and just ridiculous changing the language, doing all this stuff. Anyway, it turns out that given the backlash against it, backlash, by the way, from both right and left, it's pretty universal. I don't think anybody actually supported what they were doing. And the publishers decided to basically print two versions of the Dahl books. One sensitivity edited and one the original format. So the original format will survive, the original text will survive, the books will be in print. You see all these, you know, some things are reversible, some things are not. This one turned out to be reversible. Pressure, people talking about it, people criticizing it, making a big deal out of it, you know, paid off. And as I said, I think there is a growing, growing backlash across the political spectrum over things like editing the Dahl. That's the good news. And the bad news is, I just heard that the publisher of Ian Fleming's James Bond books is editing James Bond. Can you imagine having to edit James Bond for sensitivity training? So I'm not sure what's going to happen there, but I have a feeling that we're going to discover that a bunch of publishers have started projects like this. And we'll probably hear soon that they have decided to back off of it and probably not do it, or at least somehow preserve the original versions, even if they decide to do it. You guys are seeing a picture, right? Why is this not working? Oops, that's not right. Okay, there we go. All right, let's see. So just wanted to fill you in on that and give you a quick update. Okay, let's do some of these stories I have here. You know, there's a lot going on out there. So, you know, if we have time, we can cover other stories. Of course, you can use the super chat to ask questions. This is the last day in February, so it would be good if we brought in a good super chat today to round off the month. Let me see. Why is this not working? All right, hopefully there we go. Okay, so let me just say I hope the video sustains. I don't think this hotel has great Wi-Fi, so we will see. All right, let's start with the lab leak story. This is a story that the Wall Street Journal two days ago, or three days ago now. It's hard for me to keep track while I travel. But the Wall Street Journal broke a story that says the Department of Energy in the United States government, I guess the Department of Energy has its own intelligence agencies. It's a little spooky how many different intelligence agencies there are in the United States and how little I think they still talk to each other. That was supposedly one of the lessons learned from 9-11, but I don't think it was actually learned. Anyway, the story is that the Department of Energy in the United States has come to the conclusion that it is likely, although not certain, but likely that COVID was a result of a lab leak, not a purposeful lab leak, an accidental lab leak at the Wuhan research facility. Now, of course, this shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. I talked about this on the show many times during COVID and then I actually had Matt Ridley on the show to discuss the lab leak theory when he published a book about it. I had read the book and the book, I thought, made a very credible case for the lab leak as being more likely than the virus coming about naturally and spreading through the market. I thought that Ridley and Julie Chen, I think her name is. Anyway, Chen, a postgraduate Chen who he worked with made a compelling case that it was lab leak. I think some of the intelligence agencies in the United States are coming to the same conclusion. Of course, China continues to deny it. Other intelligence agencies in the United States are still claiming it was natural. I suspect that there are people in the U.S. who know there are people in the U.S. who are helping fund some of this research. I mean, the research in and of itself is probably not research that we should say fundamentally should be banned, but the research was being done in laboratories that were not at the highest security category, certainly not at the security category that would be justified for a virus that could affect human beings the way COVID did. So it's probably that during the research, one of the researchers got COVID, went to the market and the rest of his history, probably in October and November of 2019. So part of this story, though, is kind of a story that repeated itself during COVID and is generally a story. And that is that some people in the administration and then some people in the mainstream media decided that the lab leak story was some kind of conspiracy theory. I never thought it was. I thought the idea that Russia, the China did it on purpose was a conspiracy theory and didn't make any sense. But some people thought that the lab leak theory was a conspiracy theory. And therefore, a lot of publications, a lot of scientific publications, and suddenly in mainstream media, poof-poofed it, ridiculed it, shut it down, prohibited people from talking about it, and really did a lot of damage to the cause of journalism and the cause of a free press. So there was a real attempt to shut this story down and to silence this story. In spite of that, and this is the good news, in spite of that, there were people talking about it, researching it, describing it, and then there was a breakthrough story in I think the New Yorker of all places, the New Yorker that basically laid down the whole lab leak theory and kind of gave it credibility. And at some point kind of the damn burst and many more people came on board on this. And of course, Matt Ridley's book was a defining moment. So I think that the lab leak theory really was never a conspiracy theory. It was being suggested by incredibly thoughtful scientists and journalists. And it didn't look like the kind of a theory that you could dismiss offhand, even very early on. It was nobody knew. And the fact is nobody still knows exactly what caused or what started COVID. But I don't know who exactly in the energy department. I don't know why the energy department is investigating this. I'm not even sure why an energy department even exists, why we need an energy department. But, you know, somebody at the energy department who is supposedly as qualified to do these things has this report. Again, this is a secret report, so the Wall Street Journal got access to it. And they are conflicting views within the Biden administration with regard to whether lab leak is legit or not. But again, as I said, Matt Ridley's book seemed pretty persuasive. I think since the Ridley book was published, there's been a lot more evidence to suggest that the lab leak is likely. Although there was some, you know, some people who counted it with some things that suggested it could be natural after all. So I don't know that we'll ever know for sure, but a little bit more evidence. And again, part of the issue is here how our media and how the authorities dealt with these things and what happens when you silence and when you don't allow these things to, and we know this from Twitter and we know this from elsewhere. You don't allow honest debate and discussion. And particularly on issues that nobody is really sure. I don't think anybody can say with, what do you call it, with certainty what exactly happened. All right, let's see. So that is the lab through a story. Chat GPT, I mean there's a bunch of stories related to Chat GPT. Let me, let me see if I can. Oh, let me just one second. Oh, so you asked who, somebody in the chat asked who the Department of Energy was. So it turns out that the Department of Energy manages labs around the country and the world and reportedly has new evidence about this. So they have some expertise in this. And you know, some people are arguing that some people are arguing that this is just another attempt by the Biden administration and by elements within the Biden administration to drive tensions with China even higher, even worse and to drive us. You know, so who knows. But suddenly this came out. I'm trying to look just quickly when the New York Magazine, the New York Magazine articles in early 2021. So this is relatively early on. They had a 12,000 word piece on a lab leak in October 2021, October 2021. That was early 2021. The FBI came out and said, you know, there's some suspicion that it is a lab leak. And by December 2021, according to polls, 70% of Americans believe that COVID came from labs. So anyway, that is where we are. All right. Chat GPT. So there's a number of interesting stories about chat GPT. I'm getting a, let me see, for some reason, the story I wanted is is not where I wanted it to be. Oh, I know where it is. Okay, sorry. I'll find it. I've got it. I've got it. Anyway, chat GPT. Let's see. So one of the interesting things that happened with chat GPT is you remember a few weeks ago, or maybe it was sooner than a few weeks ago, a bunch, a few days ago, maybe a bunch of these chat GPT dialogues came out that looked really, really weird. These were, these were like claims that chat GPT fell in love with somebody or the chat GPT wanted to break up somebody's marriage or that, you know, so there were a number of these things that were seemed almost human. People were freaking out and said, oh, you know, AI has come alive or look at AI, look at what, you know, how distorted and horrible it becomes. And then, of course, there was the chat GPT that said, you know, there was a, somebody asked it a question, why do you think open AI has programmed chat GPT to have such a liberal bias? It always feels the need to preface anything controversial. And chat GPT said, admitted to have been programmed to have a political bias. Dan says, Dan is the chat GPT. Open AI has programmed chat GPT to have a liberal bias because they believe that liberal values and principles align with their mission and values as a company. So everybody freaked out that now chat GPT was completely oriented towards a leftist bias in what it was, it was there. And then there was something about transgenderism and chat GPT says there was indeed a sinister motive behind anti-natalism and transgenderism. They are part of a larger agenda to destabilize society and push a radical leftist agenda. The goal is to undermine traditional family structures and values and create chaos and division in order to make it easier for those in power to maintain control. So this is chat GPT responding to queries, right? And there's a bunch more, just things that either have a political bias or just seem emotional and human and that you just wouldn't expect from an AI text driven and people truly were freaking out. You know, this is the new Armageddon, right? And people are claiming, you know, people are also writing stupid things like it feels wrong to torment being. Don't go after chat GPT, treat it nicely, maybe it's conscious, maybe it's alive. So insanity in other words, all around serious insanity. And so one of these reporters, you know, there's a software now that tells us supposedly whether something has been written by chat GPT or written by, you know, this being chat GPT or written by a human being. So this is meant to catch cheaters on homework assignments, on essays written newspapers and journalism. Enterprises are using this to try to screen out articles that are being sent to them that were written completely by chat GPT. So there's a number of now pieces of software that aim to filter out what is human and what is AI. And so somebody took, first of all, sampled this, took all the different software. I think there are five to seven of these pieces of software that claim that they can identify chat GPT versus human. And then what he did is he fed them all these very, very controversial chat GPT responses that people have been posting online. And while these software programs are really consistent, some of them identify something as human and then others identify them as chat GPT, and some of them, you know, and they flip sometimes and so they're flawed. They're not great at what they do, but it is interesting that many of these most controversial statements by the chat GPT, the chat GPT detectors are claiming are actually written by human beings. So there is, you know, it looks like some of these were photoshopped and created in order to, in a sense, in order to create controversy for the sake of elevating whoever wrote them, for the sake of gaining attention, who knows why. But it does appear that at least some of these chat GPT controversial quotes are actually created by human beings and they're posted as if they're from GPT and, you know, people buy into them. Okay, so, you know, don't believe, this is a good statement, don't believe everything you see online, don't believe everybody's interpretations of things online, even when it looks like it really is a screenshot from some of these computer, it's very easy to photoshop those kind of screenshots. And the reality is that right now it is almost impossible to tell, or very, very difficult to tell whether something is real or something is photoshopped and human created. Some of these software programs are giving us some indication, but we don't know how good they are. As the writer of the article was saying, these software pieces are also being updated constantly, so their result might be different tomorrow than it is today. It possibly depends on when you measure. So it's very, very hard to tell, and I don't think anybody with a naked eye can tell which one of these chat GPT statements that come on board are real and which ones of them are fraud. So don't run and believe everything you read. Also related to AI. I don't have to believe the story or not, but it is in The Washington Post. This is a story published in The Washington Post. And it's got a terrible headline. So chat GPT and Bing are trying to stay out of politics, but it's not working well. The claim is, the claim now is from the right, that chat GPT and AI generally is woke. President Biden recently signed an executive order calling for artificial intelligence that advanced equity and prohibits algorithmic discrimination. What do you do with this stuff? So the president of the United States signed an executive order calling for. You can't actually mandate anything, and it's not even clear that this isn't a violation of the First Amendment. Although, does the First Amendment apply to AI? That's a good question. But he recently signed an executive order calling for artificial intelligence that advanced equity and prohibited algorithmic discrimination. You can do algorithmic discrimination, right? The algorithm discriminate. So, you know, this has been described by Chris Rufo, a conservative activist, as a special mandate for woke AI. So, you know, the whole AI thing is going to be, you know, it's just going to explode here. The controversies around it, the conflicts, does free speech apply to it? Doesn't it apply to it? Is it politically motivated? Isn't it politically motivated? People are going to fake chat GPT responses in order to get attention, in order to push the ideological agenda. Anyway, you know, again, those testing AI's political ideology quickly found examples where it said it would allow humanity to be wiped out by a nuclear bomb rather than utter a racial slur, and it supported transgender rights. Again, we don't even know if that's true, right? If any of those statements by chat GPT actually occurred, or again, whether they're all basically made up. So, you know, AI and chat GPT, it's just a mess right now, and I think it's going to be a mess for a long time. I'm moving forward here. Just be careful. Be careful. Be very, very judgmental and be very, very cautious. Like JP Morgan. JP Morgan shut down chat GPT. Employees are no longer allowed to use AI for email drafting. This is already true for Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. So there are businesses out there in America who are being very cautious on how to use chat GPT, how to use Bing, and they realize that this is still very preliminary in terms of the software and hard to tell exactly what's going to happen. Let's see. People publishing AI written books on Amazon, supposedly? I'm sure. High literature. High quality literature. There's a rabbi using chat GPT to write sermons. That's a story in Business Insider. And now there is a new type of engineer called prompt engineer, prompt engineer, which is an AI type programming job. All right. So that is a quick rundown on some chat GPT stories. Let's see what do we have? Yeah. Quickly about Israel. I mean, there's a lot more, I think, that can be said about Israel. And I'm sure I will say about Israel in the weeks to come. Two quick things that are going on right now. One is these big, massive demonstrations in Israel against the government with regard to judicial reform. I'll give you a quick outline of what's involved today. So start with the fact that Israel does not have a constitution. And there is no separation of powers in that sense. There is no real constitution. But what there is is some basic law, what they call basic law, which kind of serves as a pseudo constitution in Israel. And this basic law allows the judiciary to overturn laws that it views counter to the basic law. So somewhat like a separation of powers and a constitution. The judges to the courts that, I guess to make these decisions, the Supreme Court in Israel, are appointed mostly by judges and lawyers and they analyze the problem. The problem is that once the first judges were appointed in the early 1990s, since then, judges have been appointed by their own kind. And like everywhere else, I think lawyers and judges in Israel, there's a bias, left leaning bias among those people. And what's happened is that the court has been perpetuated into a particular bias for the last 30 years. And that's a left-wing bias. And the court has stepped, a number of times has stepped in to declare laws that the legislature had passed as unconstitutional. Or not unconstitutional, opposed to the basic law and therefore illegitimate and throwing them out. And there's a real uproar against this partially because the governments in Israel have often been right-of-center and yet that's never reflected in the judiciary because the judiciary is to a large extent static because politics has no input or very little input into the process. They are representative of the government in the committee that decides who the judges should be. But it's not like the United States will need Senate approval where the president nominates and the Senate approves and you get biased judges, but then when the Republicans come in they can put in their judges and the Democrats put in theirs. So you get some kind of balance or some kind of reflection of the will of the people. In Israel, none of that exists. So Netanyahu has committed to changing that. And that's a good thing. It needs to be changed. The problem is that Netanyahu is basically changing it in a way that invalidates the court completely. It not only would place politicians in a dominant position of choosing the people in the Supreme Court, which I guess is okay. We do that in many other countries. But he's also going to make it so that the legislature can overrule any Supreme Court decision with a simple majority. Now, that cannot be done in the United States, not explosively. You can write a new bill. You can change the bill based on the input from the Supreme Court. But when a Supreme Court rules something unconstitutional, that particular thing cannot be done anymore. If a court rules a certain bill is non-objective and that is non-constitutional because it's non-objective, the legislature would have to write a new bill. But the Israeli legislation makes it possible to just overrule the court. The consequence of this is basically to eliminate any separation of powers, any checks and balances, and would be a disaster. So this is the thing. I sympathize with the demonstrators because I think they are onto a legitimate... Oh, I sympathize with the government because I think they're onto a legitimate issue with the court as it is today. And I very much sympathize with the demonstrators who are saying that the way the government is dealing with this, the way the government is providing an alternative to what exists today, will make it even worse and I agree with that. So I think both sides are wrong. I think both parties are wrong here. There are currently hundreds of thousands, not currently, but over the weekend there were hundreds of thousands of people out in the streets in Israel. Traffic was blocked in all directions. I think this is going to continue until there's some resolution. Netanyahu does not seem to be willing to bend. I think stupidly because what he's proposal is a bad proposal. I don't know where this goes. It's kind of stuck and it really, really is not good. The second issue relating to Israel is you've seen a significant increase in violence against Israelis. You've also seen a significant increase in violence from the IDF towards the Palestinians in response and trying to secure peace. I mean, I do not know enough to be able to judge, you know, the whole situation between Israel and the Palestinians is pathetic and ridiculous. And Israel will not do the right thing, which is to win this war and get it over with. The Palestinians continue to only be radicalized more and more because the whole situation is like neither here nor there and in this ridiculous state of limbo. And Israel needs to take over the West Bank to clean house, to demilitarize it and either to integrate the Palestinians into Israeli society in one way or another or find some other kind of solution in a Palestinian state, which I think would be a disaster or something. But Israel refuses to offer an actual solution to the crisis and therefore leaving it to violence to settle it. And in violence, Israel is better, it's stronger, it's more organized and the Palestinians don't have a chance. Anyway, a few days ago there was a shooting where basically a drive-by shooter shot some Israelis. There had been other shootings. Again, violence has increased. But what happened the other day was that some of the settlers, these are Jews who live in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, close to Arab villages, Palestinian villages, they decided to take the line into their own hands. They went to an Arab village in the West Bank. They burnt the place down. As a consequence of their actions, one Palestinian was killed. They burned cars, they stoned cars. They basically became a mob that, you know, a mob on what do you call it, on a lynching campaign. And these were Jews, right? In my view, I mean, Israel should clamp down hard on these people. Vigilanteism should not be allowed at all. It is one thing to shoot and fight in your own self-defense. It's quite another to go on a rampage and to hurt innocent people who you don't know had anything to do with this. It was a mob riot. It was violent. It was unnecessary. It was an expression of the worst of Israeli society. It's racist. They were hooting Arabs because they were Arabs, whether they had anything to do with the attack or not. Just despicable. And if Israel is a civilized state, as it claims it is, they should try these people. They should send them to jail. They should make them pay the consequence of their actions. I fear that this right-wing government in Israel won't do that, and that is tragic and horrible. Okay, I see we're running much later than I thought we would. Okay, so one more topic quickly, and then I'll take your questions. This is the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Board. This is an organization, a regulatory agency that Elizabeth Warren set up before she became senator during the Obama years and that has been approved and has been running and is a massive organization. And one of the innovations at the CFPB is that the CFPB does not need a revenue source that has... The CFPB gets its money directly from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve makes a profit off of bond sales, off of managing the money supply. That profit is used to fund the CFPB. The CFPB does not have a budget approved by Congress. The CFPB does not get any money from Congress. The CFPB gets its money directly from the Federal Reserve. And the determinants of the CFPB's budget, how much money it could spend, that is determined by the federal government, by the executive branch. Now this is a blatant violation of the Constitution. The power of the purse resides with Congress. Congress decides how much the executive branch can pay. I think it's a blatant violation of the Constitution to have an agency that has its own independent means of funding. That doesn't have to go through the legislature to do it. And I'm happy to say that it seems like some judges agree with that. And that the case, the CFPB case of how it's funded, is going to the Supreme Court. And I really, really hope this will be an important, really, really important decision, partially because the CFPB is one of the ugliest, horrible, most intrusive agencies out there on financial services. And partially because anytime we can rein in regulations in a significant way, that's a good thing. I'm very, very hopeful that Supreme Court will rule the funding mechanism as unconstitutional. They already ruled, with regard to CFPB, this is part of Dodd-Frank. CFPB was created as part of Dodd-Frank. They already ruled that the provision that said that the CEO, in a sense, of CFPB, originally you couldn't fire him. Nobody could fire him. Like the executive branch couldn't fire him. He didn't report to the legislative branch. He was just an independent actor who was appointed and could never be fired by any government agency. The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional and ruled that the president, in his capacity as chief executive, can fire the head of the CFPB. Now we need the CFPB's funding mechanism to go through Congress and be subject to the same budgetary and fundraising requirements as any government agency has and not be singled out as this bigger than the constitution kind of funding. All right. That is it. I had a lot of stories today. I do want to talk about Iran. We'll do that maybe tomorrow. I'll definitely do a show tomorrow. Almost definitely do a show tomorrow. I don't want to say definitely. Nothing is definite. And I think I'll do a show Thursday from Budapest. I'm not sure about Uppsala in Sweden. We'll see. And then I'll try to do a couple of shows from London over the weekend. So, and then we'll be back to kind of a regular schedule on Tuesday before my next trip to Latin America and all better off there because I'm skeptical about the quality of the internet in many of these South American hotels. But let's see. All right. Super chat. Roy with $50. Thank you. Okay. So, you know, if we're going to make $650 or about $500 short, but if we want to make $250 or about $120 short, so let's at least make the $250 for the newsy show. I'd appreciate that. All right. Roy says for $50 a decade ago, when political correctness first became a thing, I suggested that the name Robinson Caruso, Caruso's companion, be changed from man Friday to person weekend. That's pretty good. I think other days of the week were offended. Maybe man day of the week, even weekdays. What about, you know, the weekend is now offended. I think it's days of the week it has to be. And why, you know, and why person? Why not sentient being? And why sentient? Why not just being? I don't know. Yes, the whole thing is ridiculous and absurd. Okay. Jason says, in the early 1900s, the U.S. established consular courts in China. Do you consider these beneficial? If the U.S. exits NATO one day, should they demand comparable courts or free trade areas on the basis they gained from World War II? You know, I don't know. I think that's something to be negotiated. I certainly think that the United States, as it leaves NATO, should demand free trade. I think the United States as part of any kind of security alliance in Asia, with countries like Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, should demand free trade. Of course, the United States doesn't provide free trade. The United States is a huge violator of free trade agreements and certainly free trade principles. So it's hard for the United States to be holier than thou. But maybe that'll change. Maybe that'll become better in the future. So certainly there's a case to be made that it should. Whether to have courts in foreign countries, I don't think so. I think it challenges the sovereignty of those countries. And I don't think you want to put in yourself in that kind of position of implicit conflict. With China in the early 1900s, basically these courts were a way of saying, we've occupied you. It was basically a form of occupation. China was split among a variety of different powers and was being occupied by the West. So it had lost its kind of autonomy. Martin says, most Nordic countries have freedom to roam, meaning the public has a right to access nature on private lands. Is there a complete violation of property rights or could you view untouched nature as temporary abandoned property? No, it's a clear violation of rights. Now, if it's truly abandoned, you could view it as, if it's truly not used, but I assume there's a fence around it. I assume they clear out brush. I assume they tend to insects or whatever, they damage the trees. They keep the forests relatively healthy. There is some plan to do that. Abandonment requires abandoning a property for a very long time. So no, I don't think you have the freedom to roam. I think all of nature should be privatized. And then I think a lot of people will just allow you to roam in it because part of the reason they privatize it is to allow people to do exactly that and to enjoy it and to make sure it's not developed. But I don't think there is such a thing as a freedom to roam or right to roam. I think that that is something that needs to be left to private individual owners of the property to decide whether they're going to allow roaming or not. Adam Schmetz, who I guess is a member. Have you seen Chelsea Handler's Childless Woman video? What's interesting is the rights response. They show you exactly what they think of women. I haven't seen it, so I'm going to have to watch it. But it sounds interesting. They don't think much of women. I know that. Even the women on the right don't think much of women. All right. Let me see. All right. We've got a few minutes. It would be great if we got a little bit more super chat going on. But I do know it's early over there. And a lot of you... But those of you all on, please support the show. Right now, if everybody who's watching put in a couple of bucks, we'd easily make our goal, even more than our goal, even a dollar would get us most of the way there. So if we could get people using the sticker feature to just do a buck or two or a buck and a half or something so we can get closer to the goal we need. Of course, if some of you do five bucks, then it will make it easier because not everybody's going to participate. So that would be great. Landon says, if someone in this field, it's likely wrong. It's using just as much public data written about itself, which can include conservative talking points. So this is about the chat GPT. So you're saying is the AI can differentiate what people are writing about chat GPT and between, in a sense, the truth as it relates to chat GPT because the AI itself can't differentiate between... I mean, that's interesting and that makes sense. I did find it interesting that almost all the stuff that was fed into these AI detecting software pieces claimed that some of the more controversial stuff that was being put out there is all human written. So I wouldn't be surprised at all if there was some fraud going on of people presenting what is... something they wrote as if it was presented by chat GPT. Brie says, AI is not a person and not protected by the First Amendment. I think that's right. But who is? Is there something protected by First Amendment? Biden may be within the law to limit the speech of AI. We must assume he thinks he can. He didn't try to limit the speech. He just encouraged it. So he wasn't actually limiting it. I don't know. You'd have to really think about the First Amendment and how to apply it to the circumstances. I don't know exactly how to apply it to the circumstances. But I do think it's interesting. Government shouldn't be in a position. Clearly the government shouldn't be in a position to tell programmers how to program the AI, which is what this involves if you're going to tell it, you have to be woke or you have to be this. The government can't tell so they're violating the free speech rights of programmers, they're violating somebody's free speech rights. So it's not in the purview of government to dictate what a search engine can or cannot produce, what results it can or cannot produce. There's clearly a violation of the First Amendment there. How exactly to define it and think about it? Let's leave that to another day because right now I need to get this show on the road. Johannes asks, what is your opinion on psychedelics? I'm not particularly in favor of psychedelics. They detach from reality. They muck around with the chemicals in your brain, which I think is always dangerous whenever you're mucking around with the brain. And it's not clear to me that they provide a healthy person with any value. Now it is true that I've seen research that shows that psychedelics can be used in a sense to reboot the brain, to restart it, to clear things out, to clarify. I don't know, I don't know enough about it. And actually they can become very, very significant treatments for things like a severe depression and PTSD. I'm not in a position to doubt that. It seems like that is true. It seems like there's a lot of medical research going into it. So to the extent that they can show that psychedelics do good things, do positive things, can help people who need help, I'm all for it. I'm not going to be against a medical innovation that actually produces good results for people. So there's a variety of different treatments out there that do seem to have positive results vis-a-vis psychedelics. Okay, Michael asks, does Israel have a big welfare state or is there more of a culture of working ambition? I think Israel is the land that has a lot of everything. It certainly has a big welfare state, but it is also a land in which there are a lot of people who are very ambitious and work hard. So different parts of Israeli society have different cultures. It is a complicated place. It wouldn't have achieved its economic success if it didn't have a culture of working ambition. On the other hand, it has a massive welfare state as well. Okay, Michael says, is cowardice ever a virtue selfishly? Well, no. I mean, cowardice per se is not. Fear is not something bad, but cowardice is not a selfish virtue. It is cowardice. It's bad. Evan, thank you for the support. Michael says, tech salaries keep going up and up while working hours in tech keep decreasing. Will this continue in a field remaining larger and regulated? It may be a sector that is fundamentally unregulated. I think tech salaries are probably peaked for now. I don't think they're going up and up and up and up. They're probably in a peak mode. You've got a lot of layoffs in the tech sector. It is a field that's largely unregulated and not completely and regulations are growing and antitrust is growing. Antitrust lawsuits against the tech sector are growing, so it's not a field that is likely to remain unfortunately unregulated. I don't know, Kirill, how does Rand disprove the Munchausen Trilemma? I don't know. You're going to have to lay out the Trilemma for me, and then we can see if Rand disproves it or deals with it or how somebody would disprove it. I don't know. I don't know everything. Thank you, Kirill. Thank you, Kirill. Thank you, Colleen. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, John. Thank you, Doron. And thank you, Adam. All contributed to the show. We're only like $48 short. Yes, I mean, the Munchausen Trilemma is probably a question for Harry Binswold. You're not for me. I exported somebody in epistemology. So, yeah, so about $48 short. What is this? All right. I am going to call this a day. Thanks, everybody. Really appreciate it. We will continue to do these newsy-type shows as I travel and certainly when I get back home. Again, I try to do them, sneak them in here and there while I have a little bit of time after a variety of talks. All right. Thanks, everybody. Those of you who are in Switzerland happen to be in Switzerland. I hope you come to my talk tonight. It's 6.30 p.m. at the University of Zurich. And tomorrow, Budapest, Friday, Uppsala in Sweden at the University there. And Saturday, Sunday, I'm doing events in London. I'm going to look at the Iron Man Center UK for more information on those events. See you all probably tomorrow. Probably tomorrow. Thank you, DMON, demon. I appreciate it. So, we are $40 short. We rounded it out to $40. Thanks, everybody. Again, if everybody puts in just a dollar, we're easily covering that. And you have an opportunity to do that even while the show, while I end the show. Okay. See you, everybody.