 Welcome to your own book show we're broadcasting today from from crack our Poland so again apologies for the background of my hotel room and hopefully video will work today yesterday I was broadcasting for the blaze that was broadcasting from Warsaw and the broadband was I mean Wi-Fi was just terrible and while the blaze I could use white internet I couldn't use it for the video and there for the video quality was was was horrible so hopefully hopefully today will be better hopefully you'll be able to to watch we're streaming on Facebook I see we've already got some people watching on Facebook we're streaming on YouTube and let me just see if YouTube YouTube seems like it's on so there are some people on YouTube as well and let me just and we've also got people on the on the blog talk radio chat so if for some reason you can't hear well though sound isn't good then you can go on to blog talk radio and and listen there as well so again welcome everybody it's on the road it's always kind of there's a million little things to do and and I'm trying right now to figure out how do I how do I get the YouTube chat to work so I can actually second actually watch it but you know it doesn't seem to there doesn't seem to be an easy way for me to watch to get the chat from YouTube online right now there it is once and once and hold on hold on we're working on it so almost there and for those of you watching YouTube the the phone number is wrong the phone about being advertised in YouTube as the phone number for this is actually wrong so don't pay any attention to that and we are going to pause that and now why can't I see the the chat on here let me just try one more thing that doesn't work all right I am all right I'm gonna skip it so I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna get you to all right everybody's there thanks for being there thanks thanks for being online and thanks for watching those of you in Facebook I see there's a good good number of people on Facebook and actually see your comments unfortunately I cannot see the comments on as I said on YouTube those of you who want to call in 3 4 7 3 2 4 3 0 7 5 3 4 7 3 2 4 3 0 7 5 in the fact and in spite of the fact that I'm broadcasting this in Poland that is a US number so if you're in Europe you can have to dial the plus one if you're in the US just a straight dial it's it's pretty straight forward and again those of you who are having problems with the video I encourage you to switch over to blog talk radio to our blog talk radio dot com and watch and listen you won't get the video but you listen there unfortunately video from Europe tends to be choppy all right you know Simon Poland so I thought I talk a little bit about Poland I talked a little bit about Poland yesterday but that was for the blaze audience I think the the objectivist audience there's some other things that are worth talking about about Poland that I think I think are quite interesting and hopefully I won't be repeating too much what I said yesterday I will also I also want to talk about independent thinking so independence independent thinking what it what does it take to be an independent thinker what does it mean to be an independent thinker you know how many how many people out there are true independent thinkers you know what's what's really involved in being an independent thinker so the virtue of independence if you will we're going to talk about that a little bit today and maybe some other topics and of course anything you want to discuss so if you want to call up and by the way when you call the number you have to press one to let me know that you want to ask a question so three four seven three two four three zero seven five and once you get on the line once you are listening on the line you can ask see I said that and and of course we've got our first caller with the first question so so let's take that before I get into the discussion of well hi you're new on book show who's this hi this is Jeff from Michigan hey Jennifer how's it going good how are you I'm good I'm good you got to speak up because I think it's hard it's hard to hear you okay I was wondering I know the United States is an inspiration to the rest of the world like Eastern Europe in there and some people say the United States now that would take the rest of the world with it you necessarily think that's true that's a good question and you know so would the United States if the United States went down would it take the rest of the world with it you know I think if that happened today then yes I think it would because I don't think the rest of the world has the the intellectual fortitude to stand its own I don't think the cause of capitalism outside the United States today is strong enough and if the United States fell or collapsed I think that most people would interpret it as the failure of capitalism the failure of liberty this failure of freedom and and a lot of people a lot of people just give up so I do think that today that is the case now whether that's the case in the future I'm not sure because what I think will happen in the future as I see it right now is that many of these countries are gaining in terms of freedom at least in terms of the intellectual foundation of freedom many of these countries have a have it in some aspect a better understanding of freedom and the intellectual foundation of freedom than the United States does and maybe 20 years from now other countries will actually be in a better position to sustain themselves intellectually even if the United States disappears so I used to think it was the United States was everything and and I don't anymore I've come much more to the conclusion that the United States is going to be very difficult to turn around it's like this massive massive ship heading towards a waterfall and turning it around is almost impossible and maybe it's easier to turn around one of the little canoes on the side and well the other way or one of the one of the smaller ships on the side but in any case in order to prevent falling off the waterfall what you need intellectual ideas which need a philosophical ideas which you need is objectivism and it's still true that objectivism has the strongest hold in the United States but I see that as shifting and who knows in 20 years whether that'll be true so yesterday I got into this argument I this is the second time I've met this guy in Warsaw and he every time I meet him his whole goal is to convince me that Poland is going to become the beacon of freedom for the world that in 20 years it'll be Poland that it would be a free place that Poland will be the center of objectivism I mean I don't know that he's an objectivist but he's very sympathetic to objectivism and he is convinced that it is it is going to happen in Poland and he's got a whole argument of why and in the history and openness and their experience with socialism and that they they are going to make it and maybe maybe they are you know we have three this this first year I think of the 20-something students in the objectivist academic center three years from Poland that's a great sign and many others from other countries around the world and so who knows where the revolution will happen who knows where objectivism will take root it's more and more and more difficult in the United States and and partially I'll get to I'll get to talking about that in terms of when I talk about independent thinking and and conventional thinking and being conventional and I think Americans are conventional in a in a deep sense life is too comfortable to break that conventionality or too many Americans are conventional even within the objectivist movement so you know I think in the future it might be different even though today I think it's the United States and only the United States in many respects that makes sense Jennifer yes hopefully they'll be freedom somewhere in the world yeah working on it I'm working on it I need a lot of help so you guys out there who are in the position to help help right thanks Jennifer thanks for calling all right so if you want to join the conversation three four seven three two four three zero seven five and and by the way talking about help as some of you know I've launched a patreon site patreon is a website where you can go and support me support the radio show support all my efforts support my speaking support everything that I do and the nice thing about patreon is it makes it very easy I think to make monthly contributions you can't take you can't make one off contributions I guess you can commit your monthly contribution then and cancel it the following month and then it would only be one contribution but it basically gets you to make monthly contributions now I want to be clear on a few things one it's not tax deductible you're not giving the money to the ironman institute it actually goes into my personal accounts however I am committed to using that money to 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because hey they get my tax money and as long as they get tax money I'm giving them nothing but if they stop getting tax money tomorrow I'd actually give the money because I get a value from them and if my tax dollars are not paying for that value anymore then I'd be happy to pay for it from my own pocket and I hope you guys feel the same way certainly none of your taxpayer money is going to fund me quite the contrary my taxpayer is being taken away my my my income is being taken away from you by the government through taxes which makes it necessary for me to ask you guys to support the show that you are benefiting from so I'm asking for anything for free value for value hopefully I'm providing some value some of you think more some of you think less but if you're listening it's not a negative value so even if you listen and disagree it must be a positive value because it feeds your disagreement and it gets you thinking and it gets you angry and whatever it is you're valuing it I'm hoping you will support that I'm hoping that you will choose not to be a free writer go to patreon.com slash your own book show and and make a contribution anything from two dollars and we get all kinds of perks of two to five ten twenty five fifty two hundred fifty five thousand dollars a month gets you a whole bunch of stuff I think I think at five thousand a month you get to you get backstage passes to all my talks and you get to travel around the world with me so I don't know why anybody would want that why anybody would want my schedule but if you can choose five thousand dollars a month that's what you get all right we have another caller so I guess there's a lot of questions today hi you're new on books here who's this my name is Logan hey Logan how's it going pretty well um so you kind of gave me a great segue about disagreeing and getting a positive value but for the most part I agree with you on everything except for one thing which I consider to be one of the most important issues and that's the war in the Middle East so I'm so relieved I'm so relieved I thought I'm so relieved because I thought you were gonna say Trump and I was going oh no I don't want to talk about Trump today so no no we agree on that the war in the Middle East so it seems like you're pretty I hate to use the word but hawkish on on the Middle East and yeah I don't know if you've ever heard of Scott Horton but he wrote a book called fool's errand time to end the war in Afghanistan so yeah I tend to be of the mind that the whole thing is a waste of time and they're not really a threat to us anyways except well to waste our own lives yeah no so so I was never particularly I was never for a ground war in Afghanistan I'm not for staying there I've never been for staying there I think it's a stupid war and a useless war I was I'm not really I was never really for a warning rock and building democracies and staying there and building it but the idea that they're not a threat to us is is is just wrong in 9-11 I think proved it and and the the many one off terrorist attacks that have happened since then are further proof of that and indeed I think that if not for the amazing work that I intelligence services do there would be many many many many many more terrorist attacks against the United States they are committed they want to kill us they want to do everything they can to destroy us luckily they're very weak and I think and I you know I'm not I'm not I'm not surprised so so they're very weak and they can't really hurt us but they want to and they can do a lot of damage and they can kill a lot of people so I don't believe in letting people kill me so if somebody wants to kill me I you know I think it's incumbent it's indeed the only job of the government to figure out how to stop them from killing me and and I think we haven't done that so I don't support having troops in Nigeria and having troops in 120 different countries and and doing all the nonsense and stupidity that we actually do around the world in the name of supposedly defending ourselves when we're not defending ourselves we're just in many respects making things worse so we might agree on that but no if somebody flies airplanes into buildings and tries to kill they try to kill 40,000 people they they only killed only in quotes only killed 3,000 people that's a declaration of war you know and and you got to find the people responsible you got to find the people who are who make it possible and who funded and support it and and you got a question got to destroy them there's it's a default on the responsibility of government not to do so what do you find objectionable about that fact no I agree with that and I think that we had done that sort of in an efficient way I mean we could have I'm sure you're not gonna like this but there were options to negotiate with the Taliban for Osama bin Laden and we could have just publicly made a big made a big thing of it but the fact is we did negotiate with the Taliban and the Taliban said no but the point is that Osama bin Laden is not the problem the point is that Islamists in the name of the same ideology Osama bin Laden acted in have been killing Americans for since 1979 at least throughout the 1980s the 1990s and we just ignore it so it's interesting because I'm sorry yeah Osama bin Laden was one of currents and needed to be taken care of I mean if the Taliban had handed him over with his deputies and his men and they could have been tried and hung and and and done away with and then fine that would have been one problem taken care of but they are you know there are thousands of people willing to replace from bin Laden and there are thousands of Islamist terrorists that have been killing Americans they're still around they're still killing Americans even though Osama bin Laden for example is dead you can't solve the problem by going after specific individuals I mean that is that is the fallacy that unfortunately many libertarians fall into because they don't have an understanding of the ideology and the motivation of the people who attacked us in 9-11 you could have killed Osama bin Laden would made no difference to the to the fact that people would have continued to try to kill Americans and to work hard to kill as many Americans as possible and again I go back the number one job of the US government is to protect the lives and properties of Americans and if somebody is trying to kill us it's their job to stop it and then the strategic question is how do you stop it and I have an idea on how to stop it but I'm willing to consider other ideas of how to stop it but the key is it's the job of the government to stop it right yeah something that you said in the past is that evil is impotent and the only way that they can hurt good people is to use the tools that good people make I'm sort of paraphrasing there but something that affects right something and yes like 9-11 they flew our planes they couldn't actually do anything without our technology sure and in the 70s now that now the way to a Islamist it wasn't true of the Nazis who built their own weapons and built their own systems but relied on science there was a product of the Enlightenment so it's not that they it's not a direct effect it's a fact that they have weapons they have oil they have money that's the point that I'm trying to get to is that in Afghanistan in 79 through 89 we were funding their war against Russia trying to turn it into Russia's Vietnam and then they turned around and use those weapons that we gave them to attack us and they couldn't really attack us if we weren't over on their land that's not true none of that is true so they didn't use the same weapons to attack us because they didn't need to while we provided some funding to the Afghans to fight the Soviets we didn't provide the bulk of the finding of the of the funding we didn't provide the bulk of the money and post Soviet Union once once the Soviets lost in Afghanistan and left we stopped funding al-Qaeda and yet they continued to get millions and millions and millions of dollars to buy weapons and to establish training camps and to establish networks all around the world and that is my point that the way to stop them is to eliminate the support that they get and the support that they get as I've said many many times and I'm not going to get into too much here is come from two countries it comes from Iran and Saudi Arabia and our job is to eliminate the network that supports people like al-Qaeda so that they can never kill Americans again that's the goal that's it it's not to take over the country but it's not any of that one last I'm sure that there's other people who want to talk but I just want to say one last thing about ISIS that I'm not like one of these people who you know talk hates America like want to talk bad about it but I don't think it's being objective to ignore the fact that we also fund terrorism indirectly through ISIS we had John McCain saying we need to quote unquote fund the good rebels the good ISIS rebels and then look how that turned out for us so well but again a short sighted in the way that we have to study what I agree I agree somewhat with what you did but we did not fund ISIS so so we have to we have to think clearly about these things and not get caught up in in generalizations and not get caught up in the way some of the media spins these issues so and some libertarians building these issues because it's just not true so there was a civil war in Syria the existing regime is a clearly anti-American regime because it's aligned with Iran and therefore anti-interest there were there were these Sunni fanatics that were not in our interest that they win so we chose I think poorly and stupidly we chose to fund what we considered moderate Sunni Arabs who would fight the regime and hopefully replace them with a democratic wonderful western government in Syria we didn't fund terrorists they weren't terrorists they were fighting they were fighting against an illegitimate government an illegitimate government of Syria it turned out not surprisingly if you know anything about the Middle East that they were much more sympathetic at the end of the day with ISIS than they were with anybody else and many of the weapons we supplied them landed up with ISIS that we were not funding terrorism with the idea of terrorism we were fighting people fighting against an illegitimate regime now I don't think we should have ever been there now there's another sense which again nobody talks about nobody in the media talks about in which we created ISIS we created ISIS by going into Iraq and and fighting a stupid war which we ended up supposedly winning by handing Sunni sheiks large suitcases of cash and they agreed to stop fighting us in exchange for that cash and help us actually eliminate certain elements within al-Qaeda in in uaq ultimately that cash was all used to to fund ISIS ISIS's takeover of northern Syria in the name of the of the Sunnis so those Sunni sheiks took American cash and basically funded ISIS so it said and to that extent I agree I mean our policies in the Middle East have created a disaster but the solution is not pacifism the solution is not all right we'll just come home and and do nothing and let them kill Americans who cares the solution is to regroup to acknowledge all the errors we've made in the past to identify clearly who the enemy is destroy that enemy and come home and and and let them rot right but but you can't come home until you actually destroy the enemy and and and make it clear to them what the consequences are of killing Americans and it then if they want to engage in civil war and kill each other I have no problem with that I mean I think it's sad whenever people are killing each other but but fine let them do it it's their problem we should not intervene that's what I said about Syria all along Sunni radicals killing sheared radicals in the other way around the longer it goes on the safe from Americans in Israel are going to be which is what I care about I don't care I care about the safety of America all right cool well I don't know if you've read my book or he learns your nose book winning non-winnable war I have yeah good okay so I you know I'm not gonna make any more arguments than I made in that book and those of you haven't but made that read that book you should all go read the book thanks for calling I appreciate it and I appreciate it that you you'll agree with me on other issues even if we disagree on this one all right so as I said I'm in Poland and one of things that that makes this country I think interesting is the fact that it is I was just talking to a local objectivist here and into one of things that makes this interesting it makes Poland interesting it's the fact that it's probably the most religious your country in Europe that it actually is very Catholic it's certainly the most Catholic country in Europe maybe in the world and probably the most religious country in Europe and that combination of religion hatred and distrust of socialism because of the communist past a educated public a decent educational system because certainly as compared to the United States but then again almost everybody has a decent educational systems compared to the United States all come together to kind of create I think an interesting an interesting mixture if you will in you know in Poland it's a place where there seems to be a lot of energy around the area of liberty about the freedom there seems to be but at the same time that energy is somehow connected to Catholicism and into religion and I think ultimately although again the person yesterday was trying to convince me that Poland will ultimately be the beacon of freedom in the world who was trying to convince me the young people in Poland are actually not that religious not that Catholic maybe that's true maybe it isn't I don't have enough experience in Poland to be able to give you an accurate assessment of whether that is true or not so you know it really is it really is hard to tell how religious young people are so yesterday I gave a talk in Warsaw on inequality and a good Q&A and you can find the talk on YouTube by the way the funds you you provide on Patreon not only help this show but also help help us get better at producing the various YouTube channels and YouTube videos and so the talk is on YouTube and you can search for it and there are a lot of questions like they always are in Poland that bring up religion and I I have to say I was kind of on fire yesterday and really went after went after Catholicism and in what was interesting was there was obviously a certain portion of the audience that was very uncomfortable with the fact that I was going after after Catholicism and then and then there was another portion of the audience that was chewing there was clapping that was excited that was engaged and and that you know it was much more that like the fact that I was attacking religion because it's so unusual for them to hear anybody you know attacking religion so so so they seem to have you did much more positively so anyway I encourage you to go listen to the talk I think it's I think it's good I think this dynamic between Catholicism and Liberty I think I think you'll find it interesting as well and and you can see it kind of play out you can see it play out in in the talk yesterday so so go have fun watch it and if you have any questions or any comments you can call up the show today and I am here listening let's see where am I exactly all right sorry about this computer issues all right there we are you can call up 347-324-3075 I noticed somebody called in and kind of dropped off and called in and dropped off so you're gone so I don't see you 347-324-3075 and when you do call in press the one button so that I know that you want to talk about that you want to ask a question all right we're going to take a quick break and we will be right back the Einran Institute fights for the future throughout history people all over the world have been fighting tyrants in the form of kings dictators and governments who propagate the immoral idea that your life does not belong to you this is why the Einran Institute is important we promote Einran's philosophy objectivism that not only teaches you as an individual the principles needed to live a happy and successful life but also the moral foundation for striving to achieve such a life Einran said that anyone who fights for the future lives in it today join us in that fight go to Einran.org today so one of the things that I've noticed in people generally and but even in objectivists is a certain conventionality in thinking a certain framing of the issues that is really comes to us from popular culture and from the world around us and lacks where is it lacks a certain lack of objectivist lacks the originality of thought the the real philosophical thought that Einran brings to any kind of debate to any kind of issue that that is out there and you know maybe maybe we can start with this foreign policy issue because I think it's a it's a good way to illustrate this because I noticed this after 9-11 people were fixated kind of into two modes that were defined in a sense by the American left and the American right they were fixated into the mode of which is typically left and and many libertarians hold but it but it's kind of typical of what you think of as left and that is we should negotiate this is a police action let's not overdo it there's don't you know we don't want to go to war and you know ultimately if you really think about it it's kind of our fault because we did all these bad things in the Middle East and it's just coming back you know you know just just backed by us and and you know let's let's hold off and let's really it's not jump to anything and let's not let's not get too aggressive and let's this is called can be managed with kind of police action and diplomacy and and remember America's not exceptional and that was kind of one approach and I think a lot of objectivists some objectivists were attracted to it particularly the ones who lean more libertarian if you will and but but most were not for good reason and the other approach was you know this is war we got to invade Afghanistan we can bring them the American values we will then invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein is somehow involved we don't have any proof that he's involved but he's somehow involved I promise he was involved and hey if we invade Iraq then we have bases from which we can invade Iran and this is just going to be a you know this is just going to be a good thing and we're going to rally all the troops and we're going to form a coalition of the willing and we're going to get other countries to support us and coalitions are good and America America never does anything wrong and you know we just we just need to beat them and we need to we need to go over there and teach them a lesson and everything will be fine and everything will be fixed and will be great and George Bush is fantastic he's a wonderful leader and did you hear what he said in his inaugural you know did you hear what he said in front of Congress he called it access of evil he said something really cool about farm policy we've been waiting for leader to say evil about something for a long time and he finally said it so we're going to be supportive of Bush and this is exciting and yay let's rally around him and and I think a lot of objectives were were seduced if you will by that point of view that pro-american but very conservative republican and very pro-bush kind of perspective and both are wrong both are not how to think about the world oh allowing your thinking to be shaped and and it's hard to get away from this but to be shaped by the so-called experts the experts of the left experts on the right the people who preach this the people who preach that and it's very dangerous in the world in which you today to be if you will sway by or to or to to to accept the what the experts have to say because the experts are biased they're biased by a lousy rotten philosophy and our politicians are biased they're biased by a lousy rotten philosophy and the left the left is terrible it's influenced by has influences by postmodernism and and and socialism and it's just a complete disaster you know it's it's it's Kantian subjectivist complete complete failure no lack of no no self-esteem a perspective on America that is anti-american at its core and that it's hard and naturally objectivists reject the left because you know it's so irrational and it's so anti-american and it's so anti-values which is even deeper right it's anti-values so they reject the left and for too many what is left is the right you know they appear to be pro-values they appear to be pro-american they appear to be tough they appear to have a america first pro-american foreign policy they appear to know what they're doing they write great books they they they give good interviews they have a whole you know they're on television all the time they have a sense of history they have a certain they claim admiration for the founding fathers and and it seems very appealing but it's not because the right in america today the the conservatives the the republicans have been just as corrupted by bad philosophy as the left has part of it part of you know part of it is is they have just been just as influenced by Kant as the left has been influenced by Kant they've been influenced by what goes on academia just like the left has been influenced by what happens in academia they they take it in a completely different direction and if you read my book on neoconservatism my book with brad thompson actually brad thompson's book that i am a mild co-authent you will see how corrupt intellectually corrupt the right is the right is platonic the right is uh is anti-objective knowledge it's anti it's anti-reality in a fundamental sense because they either believe in religion they either believe in the importance of religion for everybody or they believe that maybe there's no god but everybody needs to believe in a god because that's the only thing holding society together you can see it today in uh in denise prego says you know we'd all be murderers and rapists rapists if there wasn't a god because there would be no morality and we would have no incentive to actually behave like human beings if not for the fantasy of a god so that it's the fantasy of the god that makes us human that makes us moral and you see ben Shapiro who i i respect and and sometimes even admire what he does and what he says saying basically the same thing that it is a god a supernatural being a fantasy that makes human beings human that makes human being moral that makes it possible to be good as a human being now if you hold their view you certainly have a right to hold their view i don't trust anything you say i i don't trust you i you know so you are not an alternative source of real knowledge to the left the left you know doesn't believe reality is what it is the left doesn't believe in human reason but that's exactly what religion is it's a negation of objective reality reality is what god wants to be it's a rejection of fundamentally of reason because it's the elevation of revelation it's the elevation of authority and this is really important because the right is big on authority it's the elevation of authority above facts so the alternative to the left is not again modern american politics it's not the right but yet the right has this massive appeal and it's hard to reject both the left and the right on everything on every issue but you have to do it because they're both wrong on every issue because think about the foundations of what they consider knowledge it's that reason it's the fact it's not evidence it's not reality and again the foreign policy example is exactly that nobody stopped to ask the question who did this who's really behind it who's actually funding it who's actually at the source of it how does al-qaeda even exist where does the ideology come from you know the the right came up with all kinds of theories about democracy in the middle east and we just need to go over there and there's a yearning for freedom in every human being but that's the kind of stuff religion teaches you know we know or we should know that it's not enough to have yearning that freedom requires knowledge the freedom required a whole sequence historical ideological sequence in western history that led to the idea of freedom freedom did pop out because people have yearning for freedom and if people have yearning for freedom why is freedom so rare in human history why is freedom only happened in a few places in over a very very short period of time why isn't freedom common in human history it's unbelievably unusual to be free if you're human well that that animals are free in in the sense of which we need but so but everybody bought it everybody bought it and everybody was rushing to compliment George Bush on on his analysis because he said a few lines were good few lines that were good nothing else matters and you know we'll get to this but you're seeing exactly the same thing today a president says a few lines that are good writes a good letter and everything else doesn't matter and the context and ways getting his knowledge and and what exactly is actually going on in the world in doesn't matter objectivists are different we're fundamentally different and to be to be an objectivist means you really have to think for yourself and in the world in which we live in today that's very difficult we're busy we've got a lot going on there's there's there's a lot of polls and tugs on our time and then when we look at the media it's biased biased left biased right but always biased you pick up a history book how do you know that what's in the book is true you know by what standard when you know people are lying when you know people are deceiving when you know people are making stuff up how do you know when you read a book that it's true and and and you you know you look at the Middle East and it's a complete disaster it's a complete mess how are you gonna make any sense of the place well we've got political leaders they project strength they project confidence so let's go with them that can't be the right solution that can't be the solution of a thinking individual that can't be the solution of somebody who really cares about truth and about knowledge but it's hard it's hard to find truth it's hard to attain knowledge it's hard to figure out who knows what they're talking about and who doesn't know what they're talking about as objectivists as thinkers as people are interested in truth it's hard it's you know in the world we live in today it's very very hard because as I said who do you believe who do you trust what are your sources and again too many objectivists I find because they know the left is wrong and I agree with them that the left is wrong they know the New York Times is biased and I agree with you for the most part the New York Times is biased they they they know that CNN sometimes makes stuff up and I agree with you CNN does sometimes make stuff up in other words they know the left is bad they know the left is evil they know they reject the left so they take the right as an alternative and they stop using their critical thinking skills when it comes to the right because it's just too hard now you're challenging everybody and everything you're challenging the left and the right and their experts and all their sources of media and everything and where do you go from there you're stuck you're at a dead end you go nowhere so that's the quandary we live in today and and I find too many people going what I consider the lazy route which is going to the anti whoever's anti-left is their ally whoever's anti-left has real knowledge who is anti-left you listen to whoever's anti-left all they have to do is say just a few things that make sense and you bought in to an entire agenda and that's not independent thinking that's not reason that's not rationality that's not what it means to be a thinking independent human being all right we're going to take another quick break we'll be back right after right after this 2017 marks the 60th anniversary of iran's atlas shrug 12 years in the writing it is iran's masterwork despite being published six decades ago the novel continues to gain recognition and profoundly influence business leaders thought leaders and a growing number of political leaders its presence in today's culture cannot be denied the fascination with atlas shrug persists because it grapples with the fundamental questions of human existence and presents radically new answers whether you're an adoring fan who wants to add this new addition to your personal library or someone who wants to read the book for the first time to see what all the fuss is about pick up your copy of atlas shrug today an updated cover for the mass market edition of the novel recently hit stores check it out you can order your copy today on amazon all right we're back and for those of you on the on the chat if you'd let me know what the sound is like and those of you on facebook i'm curious how the video what the video quality is it's like yeah i don't understand why i've got a i've got a wired internet connection going into my laptop and i did a speed test on it and the speed test was all good so uh i'm not sure what's going on but the internet and its quirks uh and i'm not sure why video so bad all right we're gonna take a quick question before i get back on my on my uh discussion of independent thinking hi you're new on book show who's this greetings dr working skylar hey skylar how's it going it's going pretty well sir good so what's up kind of like the like is this kind of like the blaze like the general question period mass a general question it isn't but what the hell you on you're on so i'm not gonna i'm not gonna i'm not gonna disconnect you just ask away okay i was on a roll there i thought you'd ask a question about what i was talking about but go ahead no uh i want to know your thoughts on uh women's pursuit and participation in infantry roles within the united states military so is this just in for two roles is this combat more generally combat infantry the whole gamut so so i'm actually i'm actually opposed to women in combat um and uh because i think i think that very few women um oh put it this way i'm opposed to women in combat primarily because i think that in combat in the trenches we have to rely on our instincts on on on automatized knowledge and automatized action and i think the fact is that most men automatic response to having a woman next to them is to be protective of her now you could argue that's a bad thing you could argue that's being socialized into us you can argue we shouldn't be like that you know i i don't even want to go there but the fact is that that is the reality the reality is that when a woman is in a trench or in the woman is in combat next to you i think that most guys most men's response is to be protective and i guess that can be overridden through training but i don't think it's easy uh because i think it has some biological um um basis and the question is then um does that interfere with combat operations does that actually pose a threat to the unit to the mission to what is actually going on and again i suspect and i don't have strong feelings about any of this that uh that it is that it does pose a threat and it does slow you down and it does ultimately not because of the woman but because of the men's response to the woman now i also think that very few women are strong enough physically uh to be part of particularly elite combat units but but that's empirical they might be women who are strong enough as long as they don't moderate the rules for them as long as they don't make it easier because it's a woman so if you really test into it then fine but again i do think it slows people down i do think it makes it it makes it difficult and um and i would be against adding women to combat roles uh to the military absolutely that makes sense yes sir thank you very much you're clear it always makes sense when they agree with me thanks skyler i appreciate the call and if you want to call in with uh i guess uh either questions on the topic or random questions that you might have call in three four seven three two four three zero seven five three four seven three two four three zero seven five all right so we're talking about kind of what it takes to be an independent thinker and i think objectivists objectivists have to question everything they have to question everything they know and they have to question everything that is told to them by the people and if you will in in the uh you know in the media and politics in at the universities they have to question everything you have to be on the premise that nothing you hear is necessarily true and just because somebody says something you agree with doesn't mean that the next thing they're going to say is going to be true so uh it's uh it's really hard it's hard to be an objectivist in the world in which we live because it requires a a first-handedness in terms of doing your research in terms of figuring out what the facts really are in terms of figuring out how the world really works in terms of thinking and integrating all of that into your philosophical ideas which presupposes that you actually know what your philosophical ideas are because you've studied them properly to be fully an objectivist you have to study the philosophy you have to understand it you have to really really really think about it and you have to integrate all new knowledge into that philosophy constantly and it takes a lot of work and it takes constant work and it takes constant diligence you can't let up because the world around you is fundamentally hostile to your ideas particularly when it comes to intellectuals and when it comes to politicians they are hostile to reason they are hostile to reality so anything they do anything they say has to be taken with suspicion and therefore you're constantly on God you're constantly struggling to figure out what is right and what is wrong what is true and what is false and I find that very very few people actually do this well because it's really really hard I mean Ayn Rand was a genius if you think about Ayn Rand's commentary and and I encourage you to read her essays from the 60s and from the 70s where she comments on political events and what's going on in the world it's almost never conventional it's never oh William F. Buckley would have said that oh Rand Paul would have said that oh that sounds like Ronald Reagan when you read Ayn Rand it doesn't sound like anybody it doesn't sound like anybody it's a completely different perspective she's integrating the facts of reality differently than what other commentators are doing because she's using a philosophical method that they are not and she is not accepting conventional knowledge because it's not knowledge it's conventional but it's not knowledge so the objective is to have to develop his ability to be independent thinkers to think for themselves and this means a I think a really unique approach to thinking to living and to committing oneself to to certain ideas it means a total uncompromising focus on reality on reality on facts rather than on other people most people look to other people for knowledge for affirmation for their self-esteem for everything objectivists if you're a real tooth seeker you don't look for other people your primary orientation your primary orientation is life is towards reality it's towards facts the way they are and and this is again why I'll shift to politics and politics I don't expect left or right because I don't belong in either one of those tents and I don't support either one of those tents because I'm oriented towards reality and sometimes somebody on the left might be right and sometimes somebody on the right might be right but more frequently both people on the left and the people on the right are all wrong they're all wrong even if some of what they say might sound right so George Bush was wrong about the war he was wrong about the axis of evil he was wrong about his whole approach to 9-11 because instead of asking a fundamental question instead of looking at reality instead of looking at facts he basically adopted a kind of conventional wisdom the conventional wisdom of the of the of the foreign policy establishment which basically said Saudi Arabia is our friend Iran has nothing to do with this because you know they're shiites and you know why mess with Iran it's too complicated nobody you know it's it there's no way to there's no way to win there and by the way the Iraqi people they're secular because Saddam Hussein is secular and they've been ruled by a secular dictator so we can go in there and we can reshape the country and it doesn't take much and we could we could beat them very easily militarily and and they'll embrace us and they'll love us and they throw flowers in our way and we just give them democracy and they will flourish and then what will happen then what will happen is the rest of the Middle East will look at Iraq and say oh wow look how well they're doing we want to be like you we want to be like them and then there'll be revolutions all over the Middle East all over the Middle East to become like Iraq to adopt freedom to adopt liberty in all these countries because finally they would have seen an example that works which is Iraq and a lot of people go yeah that makes sense I see that I see that and my response was and and I'm not just trying to toot my own horn but but but I think I think it was original because I don't think anybody else said this I said right wait a minute doesn't the Middle East already have an example of a free country that has democracy and and and that's where people vote and they have respect for individual rights and property rights and and if the country's thriving and the country's rich and the country's doing well Israel why is it that they can't take an example from Israel but they will take an example from Iraq oh because Iraq's Muslim like they all if they're that tribal if they're that primitive is that religion oriented then they're never going to learn anything you don't learn that way so if they won't learn from the Israeli example why will they learn for any example nobody was saying that but that's going to fundamentals that's going to essentials that's going to reality that's going to the facts or take the whole idea of of Iraq again we talked about this earlier about Iraq becoming a democracy well if you understand the nature of religion if you understand how committed they are to religion and by the way this idea that Iraq was secular where did that come from nobody really ever explained where it came from because because Saddam Hussein was was secular and because he oppressed the religious tendencies within his culture that it made the people not religious but anybody who knows anything about the Arab world knows how religious the Iraqis were knew that half of the population over half the population was Shiite and had had deep deep roots in Iran and and if you know the history of the Middle East you know that Iran has always played a massive influence on Muslims in Iraq and in the rest of the Middle East the Iranians tend to be the intellectuals within Islam these are just facts this is just historical knowledge and it's all ignored it's all ignored but if you understand any of those facts you know that Iraqis were not eager for freedom as we understand it but they they wanted to manifest their own their own religiosity they wanted you know they wanted the Shiite Republic like Iran and the Sunnis hated the Shiites and while many of the Sunnis were relatively secular they were the minority in the country and you can go on and on and on and on facts facts and then of course what are the requirements of freedom what are the requirements for actually attaining liberty and and the idea that they would write their own constitution where they have none of the context for knowing what's liberty and freedom and and a proper government require oh any of that facts just facts completely ignored completely ignored and so many people supported the Iraq war so many people supported the Iraq war for so long because they weren't actually connected to facts to reality but were caught up in well this is the right doing it this is George Bush doing it he said some good things he seems tough he's got generals we love the army the generals are saying it and a reliance on authority a reliance on other people a reliance on opinions of people who do not share respect for facts and reality all right um if you want to call in 347 324 3075 i'll take questions and pretty much anything but i'm particularly interested in this idea of of being unconventional and what that means being unconventional one thinking press one once you call so i know that you want to ask a question so i know i've got one caller on the line right now was not out there he goes he's pressed the one all right hi you're new on rock show who's this hello dr yes hi hi uh so on on your group um there was a question about ocd and you know i wanted to ask what your thoughts were on ocd and uh other anxiety sort of disorders and how how how that interacts with the uh with with the validity of of the census well i mean so so let's let me say first i'm not a psychologist i'm not a psychiatrist i'm not an expert on these things so whatever i say you know taken a sense with a grain of salt um i don't think it has anything to say about the validity of census all it says is you've got a dysfunctional mind that is there's something wrong with the mind it's either a disease or it's a self-inflicted thing but they but whatever it is the mind is not working properly the machinery of the of the mind is not working properly and as a consequence it is affecting your sensory experiences so that says nothing you can't learn anything about a healthy mind from studying a sixth mind you know if a mind is sick with ocd or schizophrenia or or clinical depression that is not reflective on the state of a normal mind or a normal human being and therefore it's not reflective of the validity of the census it's still true that a healthy mind sees reality as it is and indeed i would say more than that might i don't know enough about these these uh inflections but many of these inflections are the senses see what they see and you actually know what you're seeing but then there's an emotional overlay onto that that says no no somehow that pillow over there on the bed which i'm seeing just as it is is a threat to me so what what i think most of these mental diseases are about is the interpretation not the actual seeing not the actual information you're getting from the census and unless you're delusional again unless you're actually seeing things or or schizophrenia i think sometimes you see things but if you're actually seeing reality it's the interpretation of that reality oh my god my that that that pillow is going to come at me and attack me um or i just fear it so i don't even think it's going to attack me i just see the pillow and i feel fear you know those are psychological problems but they have nothing zero nada to say about the validity of the census that makes sense thank you dr brook sure and and let me and let me just say i i don't know exactly where a lot of these mental diseases come from but i'll speculate that there are probably two sources one is a a disease a malfunction in in a biological malfunction in the way our brain works and our mind works that this is the consequence of that malfunction that could be inflicted by either either a genetic problem within our brain or a virus or who knows i i just don't know but something that's biological but i also think bad thinking can lead to it and i think particularly in a culture that teaches bad thinking that that encourages low self-esteem that that uh uh kind of separates thinking from emotion and celebrates emotion about thinking and that denounces reason and denounces purpose and denounces self-esteem it doesn't surprise me that we're seeing a significant increase in psychological and psychiatric problems among people that dr peacock has talked about this quite a bit and i think johnny can't think or uh is the idea that once you debilitate the human mind through our educational system once you make it difficult for people to think to be objective to to approach reality objectively then you're leaving them naked before nature and you're leaving them in a in without the tool by which to deal with the pillow to deal with reality and that nakedness i think uh brings about anxiety and it brings about mental problems and all the way possibly the schizophrenia so i think that our educational institutions our political institutions but primarily educational institutions and our intellectuals are feeding this um you know this mental health problem that we have in the world today they're making it much much worse because the tool our tool for living our tool for self-esteem our tool for finding purpose our tool for everything that we do is is is reason once you negate reason you're negating what it means to be a human being and you're opening up uh pendo's box in terms of the the ugly possibilities that of the things that can happen to to a human mind so while i think some of it is physiological i think a lot of it is psychological but psychologically inflicted on us by a culture that has no respect for human reason all right thanks for the question what's that whoops he's still there he's still there all right he's gone all right uh okay we've got a bunch of other callers hi your new unboxing who's this hi ron this is peter from germany hey peter how's it going good um i have two questions for you one is on independent thinking and the other would be an update on the theory i presented to you a couple of weeks ago if you remember yeah let's start with independent thinking okay um have you ever heard of a new uh cosmological theory in physics called the electric universe no no no uh because um it is one of the uh most encouraging instances of independent thinking i have discovered recently uh because there's a growing group of physicists in um and they are who have come completely fed up with the common cosmological interpretations of you know relativistic physics quantum mechanics big bang and all that stuff okay and they have and they have actually um and that's why they have become interested in an an alternative theory which is called the electric universe now now unfortunately i'm not knowledgeable enough to um in physics to judge the electric universe theory on its own merits but sure if you just if you just watch these guys uh in terms of the arguments they make against uh the mainstream physicists point of view it's extremely intriguing uh from a philosophic point of view because they refuse to degrade physics to this uh you know math giving mathematical descriptions of phenomena in the modern kanthian tradition they instead instead they they are really hungry and you can see that they're really hungry to explain existing entities based on observational evidence and as a result of this philosophic shift you will see a lot of greek ideas popping up again uh it's fascinating it's really fascinating for example they uh they advocate the idea that time is in the universe and not the other way around you know which which makes which makes the idea of a big bang impossible and ridiculous yeah and and they also they also want to get rid of they're also getting rid of um all these absurdities you know like black holes and quasars and all this stuff that's put out by modern physics which are you know just really ridiculous phenomenon which they use right on a black hole ridiculous phenomenon as i know some objective physicists yeah yeah i i didn't i didn't think so either i i just accepted it uh as you know uh because that's what i've been learned but but ever since i i watched a lot of the electro material it's um because yeah well one of the one of the things about independent thinking is to be objective about your thinking and i just don't know right but i i will say this it's encouraging to see people thinking outside of the box coming up with new theories uh and and going back to the facts going back to reality reexamining the data and and reevaluating it there are a lot of philosophical problems with modern at least interpretation of modern physics and if anybody is relooking at that that is a value and i think we have generally too few people in the world in which we live who are real independent thinkers i don't think there's anybody in politics today who's an independent think i think everybody there is basically a second hander one way or another one form or another and i think the only one of the reasons i always say that i left silicon valley and i love entrepreneurs and i love technology is because i think that's one of the few places in the world where you actually see real independent thinking people thinking about something completely you based on the fact of reality easily testable in reality and and and breaking paradigms i mean i i i i think uber is a fantastic example of just that i think what steve jobs ultimately did at apple with with itunes and the ipod and and ultimately the iphone is another example of that but but the whole technology industry is built in this idea that's of shattering paradigms think of what netflix did um you you don't have to sell television with advertising you could sell television uh just as a subscription basis and uh and and and but and you can do it online and you can do it you can do it all these ways and everybody everybody said they were wrong and the stock market took these massive hits and they persisted and they stuck with their ideas and they they completely changed paradigms um that that people that people held on to and believed in and you know so i so again i i've even though i know people hate me for it because they're all leftist in silicon valley or quite leftist in silicon valley i just love the fact that the independent thinkers when it comes to to their productive activity and i wish they were independent thinkers when it came to politics and philosophy but hey i'll take a little bit of independent thinking is better than none at all yeah but what really struck me is uh with this with this theory in physics is um i i just stumbled upon this youtube channel called thunderbolts project and it's a it's a quite a popular channel you know a couple of tens of thousands of subscribers and you know you how you always in your talks you you talk about how the some of the rewards you get from teaching is see the lights go on you know uh in the eye in the eyes of your if you're listening and if you read the comment sections in some of those videos uh regarding the electric university the theory you can see you know students of physics you know just completely lighting up they just are ecstatic about it i i don't know uh that's great you know because they they're so fed up about all this all orthodox stuff that's been you know preach that physics has been preaching for a hundred years and that has led to no serious i mean well it has led to a lot of results it's not overblow this i mean i mean the fact is that that we use quantum mechanics all the time not not the interpretation but the actual mathematics of it and and and and we use a lot of the knowledge we've discovered in physics over a while but but yeah cosmology and stuff like that is uh some of that has been less practical but uh yeah it's great i mean it's always good to hear that somebody's doing something new and and hopefully hopefully it's true and uh and based on good stuff on your theory or sorry um yeah uh it's just um so so uh you remember i i i was um talking about the devastating effects on secular societies once they engage in large-scale self-immolation to civil war and um and i had to revisit that theory because there's a lot after looking at some more of the evidence i still think that's uh true as far as i can tell for ancient greece and ancient rome but i can no longer say that for modern europe because modern europe has something that the ancients did not have and that is the united states um yeah and as long and as long as and as long as there is a secular you know a functioning secular alternative in existence then uh you don't you i suspect you don't have to go down that road um but if you just imagine what the 20th century and our modern world would look like if there had been all united states i think europe would look very similar to uh greece after alexander or rome you know in the latest i know i think you're right i think we would we would have had a dark ages and it would have been a complete another disaster i think the united states not just saved the world because it it won the wars but it saved the world because it presented a real alternative i i think asia would still be dirt poor uh subsistence farming dying of starvation i think europe would have declined into another dark ages if not for the existence put aside the military and economic power but just the existence of the united states as a model that could be emulated it could be looked up to and and respected and yeah it's it's completely changed the projection of history all right i i need to move on i've got i've got it looks like more callers thank you thank you my mom sure and keep me updated on uh on the theory it really is fascinating hi you're new on book show who's this hey uh i called in earlier but i have a completely different question that's fine i have a question about on rand um do you think that she loved her literature the way that her characters loved their trades for example like howard rorke in his architecture oh yeah absolutely i i mean not that she loved her literature she loved the writing the the process the the creation the everything about it i think yes i think she loved it exactly like howard rorke loved the architecture i think she loved it exactly like uh like dagny loved rare roads and i don't think i actually don't think she could have created those characters i don't think she could have given life to dagny or to rorke if not for the fact that she experienced it herself she understood what that meant she understood the effort it took she understood the the energy the mental focus the mental requirements that it took um and uh and she also understood the joy of success the joy uh that was entailed in uh in in achieving when you actually succeeded something also you have to remember that i'm going to want to be a writer from the age of nine just like dagny wanted to be a railroad executive since she was a little girl so i think she also understood that striving towards um a career a goal through out one's life so she she had a a very dagny like perspective on what she was doing does that make sense okay cool that's not something that in other regards she was more like john galt but in a sense that she didn't you know she would have joined the strike earlier she got it whereas uh where's dagny doesn't get it i mean obviously gets it because she writes it but so it's an interesting it's interesting but no no question she loved what she did she she really truly loved it uh and um anyway yeah it's uh it's it's it's great to have a profession and have something that you do that you're that completely immerses everything that you do in life that you that you can completely embrace that you completely dedicate to yourself that you can achieve in and you can gain you know all the values that that's such a pursuit allows you to gain great calling sure my pleasure um all right we're getting questions from across the board here 347 324 3075 347 324 3075 and then you have to press one if you want to ask a question you can pretty much ask a question about anything what i've been talking about independence and the lack of independent thinking a a a general view kind of that's conventional uh among people and and even among objectivists um and uh and warning against it and again to be independent is really really really hard it is not it is not easy because it requires one to be to be doubtful about about facts is presented by the people to be doubtful about the analysis is presented from other people even people that one trusts in one realm because people are so compartmentalized and so mixed they might be completely untrustworthy in another realm you can see that uh with a lot of intellectuals and tv hosts talk show hosts and people like that it means when you read history having a very you know a critical eye and a critical mind and trying to read more than one book on one period and one time on one personality trying to get as much as possible to original sources uh because it's hard to trust the the people who are you know in a sense of we're reading who are second to your third level sources uh it requires real intensity and again i'm going to use myself as an example only because i know myself so it's an easy example so now after 9 11 i'll use 9 11 as an example because it was a it was a period in which similar to today i'd say i i was being attacked by many objectivists but certainly by many conservatives by people on the right i would i would go out there and give talks attacking george bush and attacking our foreign policy and be told that i was a traitor because because i wasn't supporting the president and there was a time of war and you're supposed to support the president a time of war and and and because if i think back at what it was that i did and other people at the andrin institute did it was that we looked at reality we looked at the facts we weren't buying uh just because an authority said something we weren't buying just because somebody who you know had a degree and had a long history and explaining the middle east said something i mean partially i don't trust them because look look what a mess the middle east is so if you're such an expert how come you didn't see it all coming um but but the first thing i did i remember after 9 11 it's like ordered like 20 30 books and and myself and others that they see we just read and read and read and try to figure it out because it's not obvious and what i find astounding is how many people who don't read who don't know much about a topic but if heard i don't know shone hannity or a couple of other people comment on it think they know something think they know something so well but so stutley that they can actually or they've had one book or they've had two books or they've had an article by they've had a couple of blog sites or Wikipedia online and they're an expert and they're passionate and they'll argue and they'll condemn you completely not objective and a lack of real independence um so read read read read and don't just read stuff online and don't just read the stuff that you know i don't know you found an article in brightbot that you like because it attacks hillary clinton and you hate hillary clinton so now everything the bright bot puts out you read read widely read extensively read all different sides of an issue try to find objective knowledge but it's hard it's hard to find objective learning but try talk to people who actually have an experience in the topic whether it's technology whether it's politics whether it's foreign policy whether it's the economy i mean this it boggles the mind it truly boggles the mind how many people today have a false view of trade it's it's just it's unbelievable you know they haven't studied economics they haven't really looked at economic arguments they accept superficial basically zero sum world based ideas from all kinds of experts that go out there that say oh trying to subsidizing their industry then it's unfair and as a consequence we should be subsidizing our industry or we should put tariffs on importation of their goods for which is all nonsense and it's being debunked a million times a hundred million times and there's a science here called the science of economics and and to hear objectivists talk about American jobs as if there's some collectivistic right to a job because you're an American and as if somebody else is stealing because you had a right to it your job it's just mind boggling to me it's it's it's mind boggling to me that there is all this knowledge out there real knowledge data science real information real experiences of people and but more than that a way of thinking that Ayn Rand taught us starting from the individual starting from concrete and the impact that concrete have on an individual and all that is out the window because you know because it's easy it's easy to be conventional it's easy to get caught up with the masses with the with a group think and if people particularly people of authority say it enough times and a few people publish it in a few articles then it must be true and it makes kind of logical sense but you know what most false would make kind of logical sense we're not about kind of logical we're about the truth and the truth is often complex the truth is often non-intuitive and if you don't believe that with regard to economics i encourage you to read economics in one lesson economic one lesson talks about all the non-intuitive non-straight forward not obvious not clear cut not clear cut obviously things are just popping to your hide examples in economics where it's much more complicated where you have to dig deeper where you have to think think and figure stuff out and look at secondary and third level and fourth level consequences and yet every Joe Schmoer out there has an opinion about trade really i mean it's a complicated topic a complicated topic that's been solved a complicated topic that economists have figured out a complicated topic that's been debated for 250 years a complicated topic that there really is no disagreement about or no conflict about but i guess there is because people are fine being ignorant but having opinions i mean i'm okay if you're ignorant i'm ignorant of a lot of things i'm ignorant of science i'm ignorant of this electronic theory i'm ignorant of a lot of things but then i don't claim to be an expert and i don't want to try to talk about it but people are so passionate now about things they know zero about zero passionate about what china's like but they've never been to china they've never talked to chinese person they haven't read any books about china but you know they've heard some commentaries online about it and they've heard president Trump talk about it and they've uh i don't know and they know we have a trade deficit and then now they're experts in china and they they they they are going to comment and let us know what they think about china and everything else all right so i mean you see you see this you see this in every topic in every field fund policy everybody has a point of view about what's going on Saudi Arabia what's going on in Saudi Arabia it's complicated and it's complex and even people who really know don't know because there's a lot of uncertainty and yet people are commenting and and and social media today makes us all experts because we can comment in 144 characters we can see exactly what we think who cares what do you know it's all what you think it's what you know and based on what and is it based on facts or is it based on a tweet you read five minutes ago so being objective is important it's a thinking period but independence what do you know versus what other people or don't know what do you know versus what you've heard what you surmised what you feel like what do you actually know and it's is when you take that knowledge integrated into the rest of your knowledge what is the result is the real knowledge there that's how partially how we know how we find contradictions is we try to integrate it with other stuff we know and we go bam something something contradicts take tariffs for example i mean so okay so it sounds like tariffs if the chinese are cheating and therefore they're few american jobs and that's bad so yes i'm i'm i'm for tariffs but then okay but if for for tariffs does i mean that i'm not taxing americans if they want to buy something from china but wait a minute i'm against taxes and i'm against government intervention and the choices that individual americans make and and whose individual rights are being are being obstructed here who's right what have i taken away from somebody using coercion where have i used force against somebody and there's no answer to and obviously something's wrong here right so maybe i should rethink the tariff thing or i should rethink individual rights that's also possible maybe i should rethink the tariff thing maybe there's a different solution or maybe i framed the problem wrong or maybe maybe i'm listening to wrong people or maybe my facts are screwed up and maybe what's going on here that that's their approach i mean confusion is a good thing confusion is a sign of a thinking active mind it's it's when you take a story in a field that you know very little about and you know exactly what's right and what's wrong about it that you should wonder you should wonder whether you're truly being independent and whether you're truly being objective and whether you're truly being thoughtful so what am i asking for i'm asking for thoughtfulness i'm asking for know what you know for being objective about your own knowledge i'm asking that before you comment on stuff you evaluate seriously seriously thinking evaluation judging a serious activities whether you know what you're going to say is a fact or not or whether you're just mouthing off on stuff you have you know very little or know something or have an indication or maybe know a little bit but if you know a little bit then why are you so confident maybe you should reduce the level of confidence just change your tone so really what i'm asking here is for people to think but to think how do i say to think as objectivists to think of people who are individualists to think as people who you know really have a respect for reason and for individualism and for freedom and liberty as integrators people have respects for their own mind and want to integrate all their knowledge not just take things concretely out of context right there's one guy who came on facebook earlier and all he can say is make america great again all right what does that mean who what is america what does great mean what's the context of greatness in foreign policy and domestic policy how do you do it is anything anybody anybody in the political world today suggesting that would actually make america great again i mean really great founding fathers like great anybody out there saying anything that needs you to think that that's possible that's a direction we would head in are there any ideas on the table that would make america great founding fathers like great or 19th century like great post put aside slavery right no there isn't anybody i don't care how much you love any particular politician there's not a single politician out there who is actually making proposals in a in a serious kind of way that would lead america to become great not just a little bit better lots of people doing that but great again yeah but but but it doesn't matter right because it makes you feel good to belong to some tribe of of people who chant a particular chant and and that has emotional appeal of being part of a group but but that's not it being an independent being independent it's not being a thinker that's not taking ideas or words concepts seriously if you want to take make america great seriously break it down figure out what it actually means and then match it up against the policies of anybody in the political world today and it's not going to go anywhere you're not going to get anything all right we into our last uh i don't know 20 minutes or so if if you have any questions 347 324 3075 and 347 324 3075 now that's the way i approach things and that's why i often come to conclusions that many of you disagree with because i think i'm practicing independent thinking i want to understand i want to break it down i want to see what's actually going on here and i know many of you many people out there um uh well forget forget many people and and if you're an independent thinker and you evaluate the facts and you reach such conclusions then you're confident about those conclusions because you know they're based on facts they're based on evidence and i often express very confident passionate views on these shows because i've had come to the conclusion that they are true through a process that's pretty rigorous pretty rigorous i might say and i present the facts and evidence and i'm not convincing i'm often not convincing i'm not convincing to the outside world and i'm not convincing the objective as well and i believe strongly i believe strongly in something that most modern intellectuals don't believe in all right we're going to do that after we take a quick break i'll tell you what it is that i believe that uh most most intellectuals out there don't believe it if you're interested in going deeper into objectiveism ari campus's new advanced course objectiveism through induction answers central questions about several key values of iran's revolutionary philosophy originally given by Leonard peacock in 1997 the course teaches you the method of learning objectiveism's principles that ran used to discover them according to dr peacock objectiveism through induction is the best way i know of tying your ideas to reality and acquiring a real understanding of objectiveism visit ari campus today to enroll yeah i mean if you really want to study objectiveism that is your best the best source to study objectiveism is ari campus it's Leonard peacock's courses get engaged go take those courses and do it and and since i'm pitching let me remind you if you're listening to the show i encourage you to support the show support the show through patreon.com slash iran brook show make a contribution two dollars a month five dollars a month a thousand dollars a month would be great whatever whatever you think reflects the value that you get from the show you're listening to it some of you listen to many of them you listen to it maybe every week that means it's valuable to you well put your money where your mouth is you don't want to be that that's what self-esteem demands you you pay for the values you receive you don't have to you can you can feel right that's fine but out of the sense of self-respect i would think you would want to actually contribute to the success of the show all the money we raise through patreon goes to our marketing efforts and to uh to our development of new product efforts at the iran brook show so let me let me tell you one thing that you know i'm kind of a i believe in and that modern intellectuals don't believe in and a lot of people in our modern culture don't believe in and that is i believe in moral judgment i i believe in calling it like it is i believe it when somebody is immoral or somebody is bad when something is evil when something is wrong i believe in calling it out and and uh first of all before calling it out i believe in making the judgment of course being objective about it making it fact-based but then if it's relevant given that i'm a public intellectual i believe in calling it out so i'm gonna call it the way i see it you don't you know some people don't like it that's fine but i'm gonna call it the way i see it i'm gonna call bad people where i see them i'm gonna call evil where i see it i'm gonna call immorality where i see it a lot of people got very upset at me you know that i that i said that mark that mox and conch were just as evil as hitler installed in and they are many people don't even want me to call mox and conch evil because they didn't hit anybody they didn't rape anybody they didn't sexually harass anybody as far as we know that they lived you know peaceful lives and evil according to these people is only in the physical realm well that's not objectivism and and i encourage you to read an essay an essay called how to live a rational life in an irrational society and what is irend the one thing she singles out in that essay the one thing she singles out is to morally judge people events actions to morally judge morally judge and she articulates how to morally judge and how hard it is and how difficult it is and how much of a of a challenge it is to judge particularly other people it's really really hard dr. peacock has also talked about that but you got to do it because that's what your life requires your life requires judging people and the good because judging doesn't mean just by judging negatively it means judging positively as well the good is harmed when we don't speak up against evil and the good pulled down when we don't speak up against evil and your life your life is harmed when evil benefits and the good is pulled down so this is all egoistic it's all selfish it's about your life and to live your life fully and to live your life proudly and to live your life in a meaningful way you have to judge but it's hard work and you have to do it it's part of living and it has to be independent you can't always touch other people judges you can't trust me to do the thinking for you don't my goal is not to do the thinking for you my goal is not to get you to agree with me my goal is to get you thinking my goal is to challenge your beliefs so you start thinking for yourselves to push you to challenge you to question you but at the end of the day each one of you has to do your own thinking your own judging don't agree with me unless you really agree with me all right if you're calling because I see somebody's on the line you have to press one to indicate to me that you actually want to ask a question so 347 343 075 we've got just about 10 minutes for questions but if you want to ask a question press one in your phone so that I know you want to ask that question all right hi you're new on book show who's this this scholar again dr bro oh you're okay you're back what's up yes sir uh within the question that I asked about the you know woman in the military you said you rely on our instincts and I always and I I want to see if I've been mistaken do human beings have instincts I know we don't have instincts to make an iPhone or I mean I don't think I think like I think I said intuition but but intuitively but maybe yeah but yeah I mean we we automatize certain things and we automatize them so that they become second nature and one of the things I think men automatize is the idea that they must protect women uh that the idea that the women are to be protected and and again you know some of it's biological and some it's cultural cultural and I think young men in the military um under fire there's a girl next to them she might be fully equipped with a rifle and everything else I think that they have that their automatic response is going to be protective or they're gonna think twice about it at least in terms of putting her life at risk whereas they wouldn't think twice if it was a male so I just think it slows people down it slows men down not because it's an instinct but because that is the kind of thinking that we have integrated that now results in a particular emotion absolutely intuition if you want we all have intuitions you can't deny intuition intuitions a sense of automatic but not very fast making that you're making that clarification there's no there's no instinct involved there's intuition involved yes and it's intuition means okay you know again integrate you know a sum of integrated knowledge it now comes very quickly I mean I mean I think common the evolutionary economist talks about the fact behavioral economist talks about fast thinking I mean some people if you're an expert at something you don't have to spend hours thinking about certain problems you can just look at them like if you're a chess master and you know what the next move is you just know it just pops into your mind you've trained your mind so well that it just comes to you without you actually experiencing the experience of thinking and I think I think people who are experts in anything do that somebody sits on the piano just plays you drive a car you just drive you don't think about the actions that you're taking even though at some point you've had to have thought about it so that you can automatize the process and I think a lot of a lot of how we live is is through these automatized automatized intuitions if you will now you want to be careful about them because they might be wrong so you want to have some control over them but they do exist and particularly in emergencies we rely on them and that's where I think this male female issue becomes an issue is is in an emergency when we have to rely on these fast immediate you know you know intuitions are almost almost instincts but they're not instincts because they're not biologically in us that we have thought about them and integrate them into who we are that it can be a problem if that makes sense thanks again Dr. Rowe appreciate it sure my pleasure absolutely all right I I don't know if somebody calling from the 561 area code if you here to ask a question then press the one button because otherwise I have no idea all right so we talked today about independent things there's a lot to say about this I'm going to do a whole show on independence on the virtue of independence I think over time we'll do a whole show on each one of the virtues but it's it's it's not obvious how to do it what to do what are the kind of the concretes that that one needs to engage in but I think as Leonard Peacock puts it independence means that your primary orientation is to reality not other people not to your disagreement with other people or not to your agreement with other people but what you're interested in of facts what you're interested in is the truth that's what it means to be an independent thinker that's what it means to be independent as a human being independent as a human being both from a cognition perspective and an existential survival perspective it's about this orientation and and and the reliance on facts and evidence and and when you morally judge when you morally evaluate people it's again facts evidence and then judgment we are judging beings judge and be willing to be judged I think that that's a paraphrasing something from the New Testament that I think I in Rand liked from the New Testament so all right thank you all next week I will be back home so I'll be doing this from California which means at the very least the technological setup should be a lot better we should have good video we should have great audio we should all be set for next week I'll probably be less tired than I am now because it's what is it now it is almost 11 o'clock p.m. in Krakow time a beautiful Krakow Krakow is a beautiful city it's it's one of the one of those cities in Europe that were not destroyed during the war war so was completely flattened many cities were completely flattened luckily some city survived and we get and we get the vibe and the architecture of of a previous era which is kind of cool to experience periodically so sorry I enjoy Krakow great company today and good food and I will talk to all of you next week on Saturday and we'll probably do a living objectivism episode Saturday is the blaze living objectivism Sunday and don't forget to support the Iran book show on Patreon and also you can go check out my new website you're on bookshow.com I've got a new website it's cool all right talk to you next week have a great week everybody