 So, my solution to our homelessness and crime epidemic, I've drawn it from a model that's already working, so in hospitals like San Francisco, they are so overrun by the expenses of dealing with the homeless that they've found it is easier, is less expensive to house people. So, the most expensive homeless patients, they have put them in housing and provided them with the support that they need. And so, in essence, my solution to the homelessness and the crime crisis is that we focus on those who are the most disruptive. The 500 most disruptive people on public transport in New York City or Los Angeles or Washington, DC or Chicago, they've got to be dealt with. Steve Saylor had a blog post about this. So, you take those homeless who are causing the most disruption and the most expense and they have to be dealt with. They either need to be placed in housing with appropriate support or if they're committing crimes, they need to be arrested, imprisoned, prosecuted, or they need to be put into mental asylums. So, those people who are causing the most disruption and damage to society, whether through criminal activity or just making nuisance of themselves, particularly in public spaces, particularly disrupting, say, public transport or the core downtown areas of cities, they have to be dealt with. So, you put your most resources at dealing with those who are causing the biggest disruptions, those who are committing the most amount of, in particular, violent crimes and just disrupting the lives of hardworking citizens who are contributing to your tax base. So, I'm borrowing from something that's already working at major cities in the United States where hospitals find it is cheaper to house their most expensive homeless patients and to take care of them and to provide them with the support that they need. And so, we just extend that model at dealing with those homeless who are causing the most complaints, the most disruption, right, who are causing the most damage to businesses, and they have to be removed from a homeless situation. So, they either voluntarily go into supportive housing with all the infrastructure that they need to stop being a threat to society, or they have to be prosecuted for their crimes and put away either in prison or in mental health facilities. So, there, in short, is my solution, my thinking for how to deal with the homelessness and the crime crisis. But I need a drink. But the admission of that is a challenging thing because it really starts to shatter our idealized self, that I am in control. I have power. Herb talked about it as our culture is obsessed with self-reliance. You can do anything you set your mind to. That's the defining characteristic of our American ideal, the American culture. Well, I remember Father Martin used to say, if you want to understand how useful willpower is in terms of dealing with alcoholism, he says, try to use willpower when you have diarrhea. It just doesn't work. No matter what you do, if you have to go, you have to go. He says, if you have any question of what powerlessness is like, just think about that. I love him. He was a very special man. Okay, that's psychologist Alan Berger. He's written a lot of books, and he's got a terrific YouTube channel that I spend probably 30 minutes with a day or so, optimal recovery and emotional sobriety. Okay, now that I've achieved some optimal recovery and some emotional sobriety, let me get to my next topic, and it's a continuation of my last stream. So the last stream ended with Elliot Blatt writing into the chat, look forward, you're still an ethical monotheist, and the answer is yes. But I don't really talk much about ethical monotheism on this stream, because I'm not sure it has much explanatory or predictive power. So it has a lot of power for improving the quality of your life, certainly for some people, but I'm not sure that it has much explanatory or predictive power. So for example, that was a key Nathan Coffness critique of Kevin McDonald's theories about the Jews that they lack explanatory and predictive power. So what makes a social science theory powerful is if it has explanatory and predictive power. Now, poetry can be beautiful, and humor can be beautiful, and all sorts of things can be beautiful, theology can be beautiful without having explanatory or predictive power. So explanatory and predictive power is not the be all and end all of theorizing about life. But I was just thinking, as I was walking this evening, why did I reference ethical monotheism much on the show, given that it plays a pretty big role in my life, but I'm just not aware of it having tremendous explanatory predictive power about what's going on in the world around us. So there are all sorts of beliefs I think that help an individual that doesn't necessarily have much explanatory or predictive power. They provide comfort, they provide guidance, they provide an in-group, they provide purpose and meaning to life, they provide rituals. These are some of the benefits of religious beliefs, but I want to get back to this terrific 2011 book by an English Atheist professor, Stephen Law, believing bullshit. What happens when you get sucked into an elect... How not to get sucked into an intellectual black hole? And so when I encountered Dennis Prager on the radio on KBC in the fall of 1988, I was pretty desperate. I was desperate for meaning because my life had fallen apart. If you're desperate for meaning, that's usually really bad news because it means that your life is not working. We are just developed by evolution or by God to primarily be concerned about our family and then our extended family. And then if there's room after that, our friends and our in-group and our tribe, that's how we built. And if you're spending a great deal of time thinking about meaning, I think for most people in that conundrum, there's something misfiring, miswiring, something not working. There's something wrong with you if your life is not primarily about your family. And hey, that's me, my life is not primarily about my family. I've certainly gone down some wrong paths in my life. All right, all my life, people telling me that I needed to eat meat to be healthy. But hundreds of people told me that, I ignore them. So most of my life, I thought I was just so much smarter than everyone else. But in all sorts of key important areas, I was so much dumber than everyone else. So it's easy listening to live streamers, to gurus, to preachers, to peddlers of meaning, right? People in the wisdom genre. Very easy to fall into a bubble of belief that while seductively easy to enter, could then be almost impossible to think your way out of again, to quote Stephen Law. So what made Dennis Prager's belief bubble so seductive to me? And the first thing that makes a belief bubble seductive is that there's something wrong with you, right? You are not rooted in your family, taking care of your family, enjoying your family, building your family, protecting your family, and providing for your family, right? So the people in Kenya who followed that evangelical Christian pastor to starve themselves to death so that they could meet Jesus, while the people who followed Jim Jones to Guyana, right? And the people who followed other cults, David Koresh, to their death and destruction, do you think that they had meaningful fulfilling family lives prior to encountering these gurus? No. There was a giant emptiness in their soul that some people meet that emptiness in their soul through alcohol, other people through pornography, other people through extreme politics, other people through workaholism, and some people meet it through trying to find meaning. But if you're desperate for meaning, you're almost always going to go wrong, right? And so the thing that makes a belief bubble so seductive primarily is that you are particularly vulnerable, right? If you're busy providing, protecting for your family, you're highly unlikely to fall into some seductive belief bubble, you know, peddled by Nick Fuentes or some other guru. So on the surface, here was Dennis Prager's belief bubble. And on the surface, this is what I found so seductive, like it provided me with meaning in life. Dennis Prager said, you are needed, like in the fight for good values. It's like, wow, like I was sick. I was bedridden. My life had fallen apart. You know, nothing was working for me. I was just everything I had put my hand to it just turned into a giant failure because I no longer had my health, which was due to the stupid vegetarian diet that I was raised with. But I felt like I was needed in the fight for good values. That was incredibly inspiring. Then when I started making a partial recovery of my help, health, and I wanted to get out there, you know, fighting for good values. And I questioned people and I tried to fight for the good values that Dennis Prager articulated. Then Dennis Prager would say to me, well, you need to ask yourself, you're the, you know, right person to stand up and say these things. And so it was incredibly discouraging to me. It was like a very rude shock to realize that, yeah, I was needed in the fight for good values. But as someone who would lick envelopes, right, I was needed in the fight for good values and someone who'd sweep the floor. I was needed in the fight for good values. You know, as someone who would, you know, file documents. I was needed in the fight for good values in all sorts of menial roles. Like I thought I was needed in the fight for good values in, you know, roles up front in front of the camera, like in front of the media, like, you know, getting lots of attention and women. That's where I thought I was needed in the fight for good values. But Dennis Prager, when he witnessed me fighting for good values, he suggested, you know, you need to ask yourself, are you the right person to say these things? And, you know, is this the right situation for you? And are you helping the cause? Are you hurting the cause? Because obviously I was hurting the cause more than I was helping the cause. Elliot Blass says what people call mental problems really emotional problems. Well, our thinking and our emotions just kind of go together. They all occur in the body. So the body is affecting our thinking and our emotions. Our emotions are affecting our thinking and our body. Our thinking is affecting our body and our emotions are all affecting each other. Look, the chronic fatigue set in soon after you left your parents out. No, the chronic fatigue syndrome set in when I was in my parents' house. I just woke up with what seemed like a bad flu in February of 1988. And I was not the same until about two years ago when I discovered beef organ capsules. So Dennis Prager's belief bubble, which I was an atheist at the time, but I was desperate for meaning. And so I knew that like God was probably the best way to find, you know, sustainable meaning in your life. And so Dennis Prager said without belief in God, murder is not objectively wrong. And I agree that with that without belief in a transcendent source of morality, all you have are opinions about morality. So still believe this belief that without God, you can't produce a good society. I don't believe that because I see that the Japanese, for example, have produced a really good society, a more moral, more law abiding society than anything produced by monotheists to the best of my knowledge. Belief that people aren't basically good. I still believe that belief that the most important thing in life is to develop good people. I believe that. But I differ with Prager. Prager thought the primary way to develop good people is through moral instruction. And I reluctantly come to the belief that the best way to produce good people is to try to facilitate, you know, people having a family and being connected to family, extended family, friends being out to, you know, choose their own immunity, having freedom of association. Then when people are bonded to other people, they're going to be much less likely to act out in some anti-social and destructive way. And moral instruction isn't really going to cut it, right? It can be a nice sprinkle on top. But what you fundamentally need to do is calm people down through connection to other people. So I know from my own experience, when I am connected to other people, I tend to behave and speak in a much more pro-social way. So when I was struggling, right, with just tons of credit card debt between 2011 and 2016, I was much more susceptible from 2011 to 2015. I was much more susceptible to saying, you know, extreme things and thinking extreme things because I had very little in my life that was worthy of protection. I was just carrying over $50,000 in credit card debt. And I started paying off the credit card debt, building more friends and community and building more good things in my life and making more money. Then I had more things to protect. And then I was incentivized to speak and behave in a much more pro-social manner. So between, I don't know, after the overfell ruling that happened until about 2015, I kind of had a fairly joint attitude towards society. I was like, ah, you know, part of me just wanted to, you know, burn it all down and start again. I guess. Right. Belief in God, yeah, still believe in that. Belief that God gave the Torah, the divine recipe for goodness. Yes, I believe in that. Except I have to admit that there are other recipes for goodness that empirically seem to be more powerful perhaps than even the Torah, such as whatever the Japanese have going on. I believe that Judaism embodies ethical monotheism. I am quite skeptical on this. I believe that Judaism is the religious component of Jewish tribal identity and that there is an ethical monotheist stream and strand in there. But say that Judaism is primarily about ethical monotheism doesn't seem right. Belief that hatred of Jews represents hatred of God and no longer believe that. Sometimes it does. Mostly I don't think it does. And Elliot Blatt, what's going on, bro? Blessings. Late show, man. Yeah. You know, other things come up, so schedules change, bro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting topic. I'm just trying to think of, I just want to follow a thread a little bit here. So how old were you when this chronic fatigue set in? So it hit me in February 1988. So I was 21. 21. Okay. And I have a theory that you had a pretty strict upbringing. Is that true? Yes. But not moderately strict. So I mean, basically, when I left the house, I would pretty much do what I wanted and largely got away with it. I'd code switch just since I left the house. And we also, at age 14, we got a TV. Yeah. And at age 16, 17, I started going to movies with the permission of my parents, though they didn't know some of the movies I was seeing. Yeah. Okay. But like, I'm comparing, I'm comparing your story to stories of other people I know. And they grew up in, not, they grew up in Christian science, not Seventh Day Adventism, but they're, I don't call them similar, but they're not, they're sort of offbeat Christian denominations, though. They're not sort of mainstream Christian denominations. And I just wonder if there's like a correlation between, there's like this, a certain level of dogma that you grew up with. And when you're old enough to sort of stand on your own two feet, you have to do a lot of settling and find and get your legs underneath you intellectually, because you're finally able to sort of play with some of those dogmas that you're not, you're no longer compelled to believe in. And that leaves like a vacancy. It leads a, it leads a void in your soul that needs to be filled with something else. Am I on the long track here? No, I think you're on the right track, because the way I would phrase it is if you're raised in a high intensity religion, right, Seventh Day Adventism, Orthodox Judaism, or high intensity religions, or I would assume Christian science is a high intensity religion, then as you grow up, and let's say you start to leave that high intensity religion, you've got to find something else probably equally intense to replace it. Yeah, yeah. And because you led a pretty clean life in terms of like, I mean, your diet and, you know, a vegetarian diet, you know, it's a double-edged sword. It's also, it's pretty low impact on your body. I mean, it's like, you may not give you all the nutrition that you need, but I think it probably doesn't weigh you down the way like a, you know, strong meat and fat diet that a lot of people eat in America. So I don't know, I'm just working with the puzzle here. I'm just working with the pieces. I didn't have, you know, I'm kind of tired myself, you know, I've been really exhausted physically and emotionally in these past weeks. And I just, I don't know if it's chronic fatigue or not. I was just a period of fatigue. But I think it originates in the body. I think your thoughts and then your feelings, they sort of do this dance where they reinforce each other, you know, and they create sort of emotional knots that have actual physical repercussions. And they need to be unwound somehow. And they need, or they need to be, you know, kind of blotted out with alcohol or some sort of drugs. So I'm sorry, Luke, I'm just rambling here. No, no, I think you're right that they definitely need to be blotted out with alcohol or drugs. Yeah, because you didn't really drink. You don't drink. And you don't do drugs. You eat, you know, a very, you know, you, you ate the something that was just diet, which is pretty, I think it's healthier than most diets. I don't think you can attribute these problems to your diet growing up. Okay. Yeah, whatever. Yeah, that's just my opinion. But who cares? I wish I, I wish I thought through questions for you. So how many people do you see in real life? Like how much time in a typical day do you interact with people face to face who bring you joy? Me personally? Yes. Yes. You personally. Zero. Well, I would wager that's the primary reason for feelings of exhaustion. Because for me, that's the primary source of energy for me is interacting with people I enjoy. Yeah, I don't do this by choice. It's not like I don't try. But yeah, when I interact with people, I guess there's so much friction and tension and neurosis. And I don't feel like I'm the one bringing that. I feel like people that are open to interacting with me generally have very serious problems. And they're looking for somebody to take those problems away from me. So I know that's a very self serving thing to say, but I think it's true. It's been true where it's been a sort of degradation of the quality of social interaction, at least in my life. And so I've sort of, you touch the hot stove so many times that this caused me to retrench into semi solitude and and this modern internet lifestyle certainly supports that. So I sort of get like the simulacra of real human interaction through the internet, but it's it's not the same. And I acknowledge it is a problem. When did you last consistently have, say more than an hour a day on average of joyful face to face interactions with people? About five years. About six years. Yeah, I used to be, I used to be like part of like a tennis club. I would play tennis three or four times a week. I would hang out with people. But slowly one by one, they've moved away. Everyone's moved away. And there haven't sort of been people that moved in to take their place. So yeah. And then again, but you know, basically with the 2016, there seemed to be some sort of gift in the whole social landscape where like a lot of people that I knew IRL, I made the mistake of disclosing that I was pro-Trump 2016. They ceased wanting to have anything to do with me whatsoever. Now, I didn't want this. I didn't go out of my way to mention this, but I did sort of intimate something on Facebook. And the reaction was severe. And I then I started thinking, then I started looking at those relationships and thinking, well, were those real real relationships to begin with? Were they like, where does people have had my back? If like a real minor disagreement around politics would be enough for them to want to cut all ties with me. I often hear people talking about, you know, would so and so have my back. And I've never, I've never really thought of that as a, as a criteria. It's not something I really think about. I just, I don't look for people to have my back. It's not something I think about, but I, but it is a very normal human reaction. Well, yeah, I mean, to really be okay, there's, you can have friendly acquaintances, but to have friends, I think friends have to meet a higher standard. And like that have your back standard is I think the good one to use because, you know, that's how you, that's how you know if there's a real bond there, you know? I've never used it. I have never used that as a standard. It's never occurred to me. I've never, I don't think I've ever consciously sought friends who would stay friends to me, even if it became like against their interests. I've always just expected my friends to behave in their own best interests. And that means that they would have me in their life to the extent that that was consistent with their best interests. But if events change, so it was no longer consistent with their best interests, I would always expect them to move on from me. So I've just never had that criteria. It's never, I guess friends are just like we enjoy spending time together. But I've never expected them to have my back. Well, maybe, I mean, maybe, I think it's a good standard. It's not that I, that's what I want for my friends, right? I don't, I'm not looking for people to quote unquote have my back in a literal sense. I'm saying those are the people that it's a stronger bond. It's, it represents like a stronger bond. Like you need a ride to the airport, right? Or you need a ride from the airport. You, isn't that sort of, sort of the price of like real friendship is that you're willing to inconvenience yourself from time to time, not necessarily sacrifice your interests, but occasionally inconvenience yourself. Yeah, I've never thought of it in those terms. I've never expected, you know, friends to give me a ride to the airport or ride to the hospital. Now, sometimes, you know, friendships will develop. And I mean, I've almost never used people. I've never asked anyone for a ride to the airport or pretty much a ride to anywhere. But I mean, sometimes friendships develop, but I just, it's just putting too, just too high of a price. Yeah, I've just never said, for example, having my back, I would never, I would never want you to like have my back in some kind of, you know, internet, you know, conflagration. Like I wouldn't expect you to, or even wish for you to speak up for me. Like let's say you're part of a group in real life or on the internet, where every single person was trashing me. I just don't think it would give me any benefit if you spoke up for me. I've never expected this from people. It doesn't do me any good if you go, oh, 40 is not such a bad guy. But I know that's really important to a lot of people. But for whatever reason, it's just never been a consideration for me. Like I wouldn't want you to waste your breath or waste your energy, you know, defending me if you're in a group in real life or online that was trashing me. Like I wouldn't do it for you. I'm not someone who goes around defending people. It's just pointless. It doesn't change anyone's mind. And so let's say I was in a group of five people and four of them just, you know, trashed Elliot Blatt. I mean, I wouldn't bother. I'd just go, huh, okay, you know, understand where you're coming from. And, you know, I just move on. All right. So you are you still counseling people with the 12? Yeah, I still sponsor people. But but I tell them, like, don't ever bother trying to defend me. You know, don't these are your friends. Do you consider these people your friends? Some of them I've become friendly with, but I'm not sure if I'd consider them friends. Because it's a weird, it's a weird style of relationship. It's a real weird mode of it's a weird mode of relationship, because it's it's sort of intimate, but it's there's no friendship. And when you're talking about 12 type matters, there's a certain level of intimacy there. Isn't there? Yes, there is intimacy, but there's often not French. I don't always like my sponsors. And I would expect that many of my sponsors that particularly like me either. Okay. So why do you think? Oh, because it's good for me. And it's frequently good for them. Just like I would, you know, take on a client or do a job. The client or the boss doesn't have to be a friend. It's just an interaction that's good for me. But your sponsors don't pay, right? It's a volunteer effort. Right. But, but there's still a payoff like by me taking an interest in their recovery, that's really healthy for me. Like so having like having a job or having a client, right? That's, you know, wonderfully boosting of reality. Because effectively for a normal person for 40 hours a week, you have to put someone else above your own desires. You're effectively a slave 40 hours a week. And then, and then to add 5, 10, 15 hours above and beyond that where you put something, you know, someone else above and beyond what you desire, right? It's really, it's, it's humbling and it's just the egotistical selfish people like myself. It's a, it's a good, good change. Okay. Okay. Now, let me turn the question around. How many times, how many hours of times are a week or a day do you have face to face interaction with people that bring you joy? I would say, I would say about 40 plus hours a week. 40 plus. Now, are these through your religious community? Or yeah, religious community, 12 step community, friends and clients and work situations. Okay. Well, you're, you're a lucky man. Like you're fortunate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how would you feel if you were in an office 40 hours a week filled with people that you liked? Oh, I'd love it. I'd love it. I think it's great. But I just had so many bad experiences in offices. And what's the common denominator on all these experiences? Well, obviously it's me, right? Yeah. But I don't think it's only me. I mean, it's not under you. The work doesn't revolve around me or you. All right. I, I, I, I generally, I genuinely feel I get like the line share bad luck when it comes to work situations. I don't know. I mean, I, I guess, you know, I mean, I don't know. I just, I do my work, right? And I, I'm ultimately, I'm responsible. So in my, you know, the work I do, like I'm responsible for it when, you know, succeeding or failing, right? And if it fails, there's just a lot of repercussion, right? So I have to sort of have a serious disposition at work, right? I can't engage in a lot of socializing because if I do the work suffers and there's real consequences to people. And then there are bad feelings that go, you know, all the way around. So in offices, there's a lot of people who it really doesn't matter if they show up or not, you know, their, their, their contributions don't really matter. They're just kind of fluff and they create all these social dramas and things like that, that I, that I simply can't participate in because they would put me at risk or put all of, put the whole company at risk if I were to sort of engage in those things. And I feel like there's no, I don't know, there's never been like the respect or accountability for that. There's no sort of, there's just a lot of bad behavior in offices, Luke. Yeah, but there's nothing you can do really about how other people behave to what extent you're responsible for this lack of joyful interactions with other people. Like, where are you going wrong? We're up, we're up. Nothing. I'm doing nothing. I didn't do nothing. I don't mean that. Didn't do nothing. I didn't do nothing. I'm being serious. I'm being honest, right? I really don't feel like I've done anything wrong. Like, I'll give you an example. This woman, my boss, my, so these companies have all these these ridiculous hierarchies of managers. And so my direct boss, my immediate supervisor, came over and asked me a question and then I answered it. I just answered it and I thought perfectly, you know, a business-like, professional, courteous manner. And, you know, a couple of hours later, she was irate at me. She wanted to talk it through because my tone of voice, she felt like tone of voice was, was, you know, disrespectful or insulted her in some way. And she wanted to, but she couldn't quite say it. She was just sort of like dancing around this and she was holding me captive and she was trying to sort of exert authority on me by sort of all these strange lattice of intimations and things, right? Just a completely useless interaction. And I truly didn't do anything, Luke. I just, I asked a question and I answered it politely and that was that. And then someone else's psychodrama had to be injected into my, my work experience. And I, I just don't think you can say that there aren't loony tunes out there who do real damage. Yeah, but what you control is yourself. So what was your role in setting this woman off? Like push yourself, like, you know, go, go huge, go, go big. What was your role? She was, here's the truth. She was an imposter, right? She knew she was an imposter and there's a lot of women like this in tech. They're imposters. They're there, they're promoted socially. They're not there because they have any particular skill in the domain, right? They're imposters. They know they're imposters. And if you answer a question or you know something, this triggers, this sets off this fear and terror in them that's, you know, you know, she knew that I knew she was an imposter, right? This was the subtext that was going on. And so that's not on me. But what was your role? Where was it? Where, where were you, where we, where could you have done something differently? Obviously, this is a very frustrating interaction. You seem to have, you know, a lot of them. So what could be a variable that you could possibly change who would make these sort of interactions less frustrating? I need to work for myself and never, never talk to another human being for the rest of my life. That sounds like a winning strategy. I could deal with people on my terms, right? When I deal with people on my terms, you know, I'm rather a gregarious person. People tend to like my company. They look forward to interacting with me. They find me funny. But I find my hierarchical relationship and I have to, I have to like ingest someone else's bullshit. Yes, I become ornery. I become, I have defenses that I need to put up around me because my livelihood's at stake. So how often do other people have to ingest your bullshit? Never. I don't offer any bullshit. I offer clarity, wisdom, and light only. You don't think that's possible? See, this is the way the 12 steps hurt you, Luke. You, you sometimes I think that you play a role in your own suffering. Wow. Yeah. This is the dogma. This is just a dogma. Like, well, you know, I'm open to the possibility that, you know, I contribute, but I think it's a mistake to always just, you know, commit perikary every time there's a disagreement and someone's wrong and you're right. Right? Sometimes you are objectively right and someone else is objectively wrong and their behavior is bad and yours is fine and honorable. So you can't just say there's two people, just because there's two people present, right, that both were, both are equally at fault. So like the subway guy, right? So this, you know, this guy was acting out. He tried to restrain him or whatever. The guy ends up dying. Yeah, he could have just done nothing, right? But he didn't. He, he played, you know, he decided to take on heroic role. So, yeah, theoretically, he played a part, but he wasn't the, he wasn't the, you know, the, the aggressive party, the instigating party in that exchange. Well, the, as I understand it, the guy who died had not committed any violent behavior in that interaction. He was just saying crazy things. So as I understand it, the, the Marine was the one who instigated violence and killed him. So I would say without being, you know, authoritative on the topic because I don't know that much, I would say that if someone is not committing violence in that sort of situation, you should not commit violence on them, even if they're saying crazy things. Yeah, I, I, I, I probably reached for an example. That was the first example it came to mind. And I don't know the specifics. But let's just say, let's, let's continue as though, let's just continue as though my, my example is as I'm portraying it, right? We have somebody, right? So let's, we're talking about 100% right. Yes. Let's say so exactly. So, so let's, let's, so what's important. Let's say, okay. So is, is being right important? You can be dead right. All right. If there's a, so there was a time that I blew through a red light at like 60, 70 miles per hour. And if you had pulled in front of me, you had the right of way. You would have been right and you would have been dead. So from most of what you've been saying tonight, being right is of premium importance to you. And I'm suggesting that in all sorts of arenas, being right is not the most important thing. So it's better to, to be alive rather than insisting on the right of way and getting killed. So deferring to someone else's, you know, horrible criminal behavior of driving through a red light at 70 miles an hour and maintaining your life, I would say is a more adaptive strategy than insisting on being right and ending up dead. I think, I think all these various metaphors and examples come up the rails a bit, right? So you've not encountered this at work. You've never had this experience where all the time where other people are wrong and I'm right. Yeah. Right. All the time. All the time. Not just in life. Would you avoid those if you could? Yeah. Yeah. I avoid, I try to avoid situations that are against my best interest and insisting on being right is rarely my best interest. So, okay. Remember Josh Randall? Remember Josh Randall? He was a regular in the chat and one time I picked on him and he has never come back to the show since. And I did text him an apology, but I believe I was, you know, there were right things and what I had to say, but I made a mistake on picking on an integral member of this community and he has never come back since. And I miss him. You know, I miss what he brought to the show. So even if what I said was right, I suffered as a result of being quote unquote right. Okay. Pass. Those are totally different things. So I'm not saying you could be right, but you're texting and trolling him is a different thing, right? And even if your trolling was based on being correct, that's not the issue because you don't, immediately, you might have been quote unquote in the wrong about trolling him, but his thin skin couldn't really handle it. And so did you, you know, did you really lose by getting rid of him? Yeah, you know, I enjoyed, I enjoyed having, having Josh, you know, in the chat and having, you know, just 100% positive relationship with Josh over the course of about six years. And so as far as like thin skin, I mean, we're all incredibly thin skin at times. That's just part of being human. You can't escape having a thin skin at time. We're all vulnerable. Everybody hurts, bro. Everybody hurts and everybody cries. Well done. I still don't think we're connecting though. And I don't think the ideas are being ventilated. Yes. So you don't, you don't suddenly, if you're with a group of people that are pro homosexual marriage, you don't change your position on homosexual marriage, right? I don't, I don't speak up and disagree with them. I just, I just go with the flow. I mean, let's say there are all sorts of other positive benefits to the interaction. I just disagree with them about gay marriage. So I just said anything. So let's say they're just going yackity, yack, yack, you're at a social situation. And they're all going yackity, yack, yack about homo marriage and how great it is. And what do you do? Do you just hang your head and stare at your plate? Or do you, do you, do you, does your face get red like Larry David's? You know, how do you, how do you handle that? I don't think my face ever gets red. I can't recall ever being in that situation. But I mean, I've certainly been in a situation where other people have, you know, points of view that I strongly disagree with. And I handle it by keeping quiet. And if I say anything, it will be some sort of joke that will be enjoyed by, you know, some of the, some of the people there. Yeah. I used to do that too, but now it doesn't seem like my jokes are appreciated. Well, anyway, Luke, I don't know. I, I'm sorry for this kind of scattershot call. You know, I didn't, I just kind of was quick on the draw, but I don't know. Trying to hear what I'm trying to say, like you could be you at a more decisive level, right? Do you feel like you are hedging or you could be more decisively boot at all times? Yeah, I could definitely, I would say use the word differentiated. Like I could always be more of myself and say less, less needy. At the same time, I don't want to gratuitously need, needlessly hurt the relationships most important to me. So both, both aims are important to me. Becoming who I am and simultaneously building the relationships most important to me. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, look, I'll let you go. I'll meditate upon what you've said. Blessings. All right. Blessings. So talking about people who give you a seductive belief bubble, right? And how it's so easy to fall into it, but then it's almost impossible to think your way out again. That's what gurus do. That's what preachers do. Let's get a little bit from decoding the gurus here, Christopher Cavanaugh and Matt Brown. Like a little tweet, I've been wanting to, and I also saw one of these like YouTube shorts or Tik Tok shorts or whatever. They are with him talking about a study which suggested that when men smell sad tears, very important. So this is a critique of Andrew Huberman who's a professor at Stanford University and is huge on YouTube. And my friends of mine just swear by Andrew Huberman, just, you know, do everything he says. Sad tears of women, women who have been exposed to a sad stimulus. They essentially are less money. They've been attracted for whatever. And it's, I was listening to going, what? This paper came out in science showing that humans, men in particular in the study have a strong biological response and hormonal response to the tears of women. What they did is they had women and in this case it was only women for whatever reason cry and they collected their tears. Then those tears were smelled by male subjects or male subjects got what was essentially the control, which was the sailing. Men that smelled these tears that were evoked by sadness had a reduction in their testosterone levels that was significant. They also had a reduction in brain areas that were associated with sexual arousal. And then I looked up the study that he referenced and would you be surprised to learn Matt? It's a small sample study with a lot of outcomes, only some of which, you know, reach significance. A lot of P values hovering, 0.03, 0.02, 0.015 and so on. Chris, I saw your tweet about this and I did notice that the people have reported P is less than 0.02, P is less than 0.037. Yeah, it's because it must be just writing. Right? Because yeah, I know. And the other thing is Huberman still, you know, he has a cadre of the offenders. I haven't spent a great deal of time with his content, but I would say he's guilty of overhyping relatively weak studies and throwing in maybe like hand weaving disclaimers, right? But when I saw this, I had somebody respond on Twitter saying, you know, well, but this paper is in science. I was like, and like, that doesn't make the quality of the paper any better. And it took me literally about one minute to discover a 2017 attempt at replication of the people that he's citing. I don't know if there's a different one that he was talking about, but in any case, it's a people where they tried to replicate a different research team. How do you think that fared? Probably not well. Failed? Yes, failed. So, you know, you're kidding me. You're kidding me. So when men smell unhappy tears, it doesn't make them less horny. Just as horny as before. We don't know yet, Matt. The question is the thing is we don't know, because the literature is just not advanced enough on this topic yet. But Is what you're saying, nothing can decrease men's horniness? There's like literally nothing known to science? That is, that's the takeaway. But it's just, I see people often respond and they're like, why are you being mean to such and such, right? Like somebody that they like if they say study, and I want to tell them, it doesn't matter who cites the study, right? And it doesn't matter what the topic is. The criteria for a good study is the same, right? Now, do people apply it consistently? No, but the criteria is the same. If you have low powered studies that have multiple outcomes appear to be engaging in practices that allow for multiple researcher degrees of freedom to be exercised, they're not pre registered, you know, sometimes the data isn't available, whatever, you should be skeptical of the results. That's all. Okay, so why was Christianity so successful? Because it created an in group that where people sacrificed for each other, where you had a real sense of community and you had a sense of meaning and purpose in life. Then why did Christianity decline? Because people found other more effective ways of finding purpose, meaning and in groups in life. So much of politics, much of religion, much of what people do is going to be powered by the quality of the interactions of the community of the friends and the aesthetics of what you participate in. And so people like Nick Fuentes or Richard Spencer, right, they create an aesthetic, they create a sense of humor, they create an in group that adds meaning and purpose to people's lives. So what type of person, you know, falls under the sway of a Nick Fuentes or of an Antifa or, you know, communist activists, and they're not happy people with families, generally speaking, right, they're people with a giant hole in their soul just like me when I discovered Dennis Prager. So it's a big, big warning site when you have a desperate, you know, drivingly strong need for meaning you're willing to just jump on, you know, board with all sorts of seductive belief bubbles. Just be skeptical, look for independent replications, look for how big the claim is that's being made, and then adjust your excitement accordingly. And it's yeah, overhyping studies is really common. And it's always the same thing. So just, you know, you don't have to, you don't have to dislike people to know when they're overhyping studies or they're ignoring low quality signals. I'm just impressed. Like we can go and start talking about any topic and you will somehow bend it towards your own personal wins of the week and have an opportunity to rant about open science. This is you too, Chris. You brought up Hooperman. You brought it up. That's me. And also, the point with the open science thing is because it doesn't matter the topic, right? Like I'm not an expert on ivermectin studies. But when you look at the. So you'll notice a lot of people who normally denigrate academics and scientific studies like Dennis Prager, they love to embrace academics and scientific studies when they support their point of view. But the studies are created equal, right? Some studies are much more powerful than other studies. And it's not like if you have 10 week studies that they overpowered the evidence found in one strong study. But to distinguish the week studies from the strong studies takes work. And it's not as emotionally satisfying as finding that one week study that backs up a point of view on life that brings you pleasure and meaning and happiness and an in-group and excitement and laughter. Literature, you see the same flags pop up. When you look at supplement studies, you see the same flags pop up. When you look at stereotype threat, you see the same flags. So just learn the methods, learn the basic way to assess studies critically. And a whole world will open up to you where you can look at studies that be critical about them. It's an exciting world. It's called academia. Introduce some research on what happens when you drink somebody's tears. Smelling. Okay, that's not going to do much. I can see why that didn't replicate. I'd like to see some research into drinking tears, liberal tears, conservative tears. Irish tears, Australian tears, maths tears. Yeah, I agree. So anyway, that's Hooperman. And actually, we have a little bit of a medley of various guru activity that we wanted to get to. And in order to introduce that, I think there's a specific clip that people need to hear. And I don't think we should give any introduction. We should just let them hear the raw audio and people can judge for themselves. No editorializing. I mean, I can go on forever. So here's a fun one. Music. I'm going to propose you learn how to play guitar, but I'm going to propose it in a way that is going to be almost completely the opposite of almost everybody's experience of that. Take a guitar or any other kind of device and do exactly and nothing but this. Pluck one string and listen to it. Try to see how carefully you can sense the sound that it makes, the difference between the strength of the plucking and the strength of the sound, how it becomes quieter over time. Literally just do that. Then maybe, maybe if you feel up to it, consider plucking another string and seeing if you can notice the difference between the two. That's discernment. That is the discernment in its raw deepest sense. And don't do anything more than that. That's humility. Don't try to rush into something. Don't try to suddenly become, be playing free bird or whatever, stare at the heaven. Just learn how to listen to the sound of a single note being plucked and dying. And maybe also, if you can, see if you can relate to that as the story of all lives. And that's the sacred. So there you go. It's actually not that hard. Yeah, that's pretty simple. That's the secret. That's it. That's how you learn guitar. That's, that's where we started, right? That's how you learn guitar. Well, it's like Jordan Peterson, you know, waxing lyrical over the country rock music he heard, that, you know, the divine is contained in those moments. And yeah, I just, I love, thanks so much to love a guitar clip, but also at the beginning, somebody on our subreddit pointed out, he says, you know, pick up a guitar or any other device. So that's not even specific to guitars. It can be any other device. Make two sounds with the device. Just listen to them. That's amazing. Amazing stuff. Look, that just stands alone. It's a beautiful shining gem. Yes, what we want to do, what we thought we'd do is, you know, just revisit some of our previous topics, see how they're traveling, see whether or not they're still dispensing wisdom. And that was Jordan Hall. That was Jordan Hall. Who doesn't know, SenseMaker Supreme teaching you how to play guitar. So not everyone in our audience is a, you know, you can say you're a guitarist. Yep. Yep. And you're more, you're a more humble person. You know how to play guitar. You've learned how to practice discernment. And what was the last thing he said? So like about the intercom. That's the secret. That's the secret. So pluck a guitar, two strings, and that's discernment. Stop. That's humility. You don't want to be plucked in three or four trying to play like... What the show host. Yeah, no, no, no. And if you can detect the difference of notes, that's the secret. Done. Lesson one, finish. Oh, good. Now practice your strumming. Yeah. Like, Jordan Hall does what he does better than any other guru. Like he, he, he maxes out a particular dimension of our thing, whatever that is. So he's good. And another person, Chris, who has, has changed. This is James Lindsay. James Lindsay. He's evolved. We've talked about this. You know, he went from being, you know, anti-work, New Atheist. New Atheist. We started off New Atheist. Yeah. And then became like a Twitter troll, essentially. Anti-work Twitter troll. Yeah. Your mom type stuff. And red-wing reactionary... Christian sovereign nations, weird sort of helper. Yeah. Not, yeah. Christian kind of like dancing around with Christian. He's not a Christian, but he's playing football with Christian. Okay. What about the nefarious elites and professionals who are trying to make the resurrection impossible? The Milky Godward podcast. I strongly suspect it's a demonic Psyop. The way American morticians automatically embalm the dead as soon as they get them. Quick, let's drain all their blood and replace it with formaldehyde. Probably to halt the pineal DMT process might make resurrection impossible. Those damn satanic morticians, man, trying to just embalm the dead as quickly as possible. And then, gosh, Donna, making resurrection near impossible. That's a shonda. And so, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, he's, he's been good. He's clearly stared into the orb of Wokeness for far too long because it's had an effect on Chris. And I will read out to you his most recent missive on the Twitter machine. On a suggestion earlier, I watched a lecture from a Catholic priest who was also an exorcist. It's about demonology, your favorite topic, Chris. And it was sent to me unsurprisingly because it offers some insights into communist psychology. Now, I don't believe in demons, but I got some insights. So the biggest thing that stuck out to me is that he claimed that demons are characterized by an absolute and intentional rejection of the assignment they had been given. And in that absolute rejection, they are damned and so worked to negate what they were purposed to do. I don't think there is a better definition for demonic than that. Having been led through self pity to self hate takes it upon themselves to negate the true purpose for their being, which on some level they know, as rebellious angels, demons would know it perfectly. He also pointed out that demons influence people through their emotions and their interpretations of features of their lives. I found that accurate to the purpose of understanding communist psychology also as I've been calling it a religion of pathos for some time now. Now, I won't read until I think that one last bit, Chris, if we take the logos as the order and structure of the universe, demonology would describe willful rejection of the logos. Nothing could make such an invitation better than emotion that eventually turns toxic in brackets pathos turned pathological self pity to self hate to just hate. It goes on, Chris. It goes on. But you're really waxing lyrical and bringing in this is like it's been happening for a long time. Yeah, keep cropping up, doesn't it? Lots of people are interested in the logos. They were addicted to the logos. Yeah, everybody's talking about the logos. John Kravaki, I think also has a side interest in the logos. It's game B. I think game B Jordan Hall as well, probably on the logos at the weekends. So yeah, yeah, that's cosmic, Matt. That makes you think, that makes you think. I'm just sort of impressed or just curious as to the direction he's going. It's this dovetailing of a kind of, I don't know, reactionary politics. But okay. So Jordan Hall and company were talking in previous months about humanity has just been playing game A, which is like some kind of trivial way of going about life. But there's this whole other way of living game B. And that one really knows exactly what it is. But isn't it alluring? Isn't it wonderful to think that there's this fantastic way of life, but game B that's just out there and like how long are we trivial mundane people going to continue just soldiering on through game A when there's this wondrous transcendent game B available? Anti-wokenness, but also godliness. Like he talks about being at war with the laws of nature and nature's god or merely being derelict will reliably return bad results combined with self-pity, immaturity and entitlement indulgence. This leads to externalizing one's failure and thus one's locus of control destruction lies that way. What is even he doing? Doesn't it end that Fred with him like talking about how discipline is the answer and like training your mind become essentially as with all of them wants to recruit people into looking up to him as the would-be instructor on how to train your mind and develop discipline in the face of modern corrupt culture. It's so fucking boring, man. Just they're carbon copies of each other, complaining about the work mind virus and they all creamed their pants over the logos. That's a bit graphic, but I've just said they have an unhealthy fascination with logos and Christian symbology and all this kind of stuff. Like get some new material. Like there's all the religions. Couldn't they go into the Hindu? Can't they be on low? No, Christian is the best one, even if you're an atheist. Yeah, like it is a self-help, right? He talks about, you know, growing a sense of mastery, becoming strong and not blaming others, growing into liberty. Talking about being under God's law provides protection. If we merely accept natural law submitting to truth, truth comma logos and brackets lends itself to success and peace. Like it's cosmic, it's anti-work, it's religious demons, but also self-help. I mean, it's Jordan Peterson. It's Jordan Peterson. It's like a knockoff Peterson-esque stick and I don't think any of them know that. Wow, gotta disavow that very crude talk about creaming over the logos. Consciously doing that. I mean, some of them I guess do, but I think like Lindsay's so incredibly unaware, he's so lacking in self-awareness of where his influences are that, you know, he's adopted almost entirely the opinions and views of Michael O'Fallon, right? All the anti-globalist Alex Jones type stuff. And he doesn't recognize at all that he didn't come up with those ideas, right? That he has just swallowed them from the ecosystem. That was around long before James was there and will be around long after he feeds back into the EPIR. So it's just, it is frustrating. They're manifestations of the fucking egregore of annoyance. They just felt like lost boys, especially James. He's gliding around and sort of shifting from one sort of thing that provides some kind of meaning to the next, dispensing these supposedly- Extremophiles, Matt. Extremophiles. I think that partly explains along with the personality defects and that kind of thing, but like once you see people who are able to so fluidly glide across ideologies in such a relatively short space of time with little dissonance, I think it's just illustrative of the appeal of having some ideology or worldview, which explains things, right? And which gives some attention and meaning and purpose and so on. So it doesn't really matter what flavor it is. And that's the consistent factor, I think. Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. Well, anyway, there you have it. That's our two nuggets of wisdom for this week. We're visiting a couple of previous gurus. We've learned how to play guitar, identified the logos. That should help people out till the next episode. Well, yeah. OK, there you go. Quick show tonight. Take care.