 The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this Thursday, last Thursday of 2022. Kind of exciting. Looking forward to a new year and what a way to get us into this new year mode. Have Tere Smith on the show today. This is exciting. I'm looking forward to this. Yeah, me too. This will be fun. So you had a good Christmas? Very nice Christmas. Yeah, very nice. Relatively low-key but all in good ways. Yeah, really nice Christmas. So I find this time of year kind of a good period to contemplate, kind of think about where things are, where we're heading. Do you do the same? I mean, is this? No, definitely. Yeah, I really do try every year. I do every year, take advantage over several weeks and also my birthday's in January so I sort of think of it as an extended period and I'll start sometimes realizing okay in late November and start some thoughts toward the new years. I don't exactly make resolutions but I definitely have ideas and plans and things I want to be working on and I number them and I list them in a million ways. But yeah, I give a lot of weeks thought to these things and it helps. Come back to the same ones I find, it's like I'm still doing that one or you're still working on that one. But I've made progress on a lot of fronts from doing that. No, and I do think it's a good idea to be philosophical. To get that, okay let's ascend to a higher level of thinking about things and looking at things above the day-to-day and so much that occupies our attention to get the big picture. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's a form of taking life seriously. Thinking is what it's about and in the day-to-day rushing around, traveling, talking, teaching, it's hard to step back and actually give thought to and plan. Absolutely. On a regular basis, you can try to set aside some time for that kind of reflection and I do on a regular basis as well but I do think it's good to notice that turn of the calendar. It's a big increment a year but it's like, well, we only get so many. It's about dealing with the mortality in the passage of time and it really should prod you to think about priorities to make sure, have I been prioritizing what I really want to be? Do I really want that to be or is that what I wanted for a while? Maybe I don't want that anymore. You've got to be self-reflective to really make the most of your time and your life. Any big plans for next year that you're interested in revealing and letting the audience know things you're planning to do? Not revealing. The one thing though I'll say is I'm very glad I've got a publisher now for my book that I've been working on for a few years and that has just come, meaning getting the publisher, signing a contract literally in the last couple of weeks. I'm very excited about working on that again which I've just started this week working on the revisions. It'll be a while before it comes meaning I have several months to get them the revisions then it typically takes them a year or so. Say a little bit about what the book is. I'm not sure. So it's back having spent a long time doing a lot of legal philosophy as some people know. It's back in moral philosophy which I've always well I've long considered my main home. But this book is more concerned with some of the psychological aspects of living as an egoist than just the premises of the virtues and the kinds of things that I've written on before. It addresses more of the kind of subconscious ways that even a person who's on the right premises subscribes to Rand's rational egoism and has taken courses and studied it and all how still there can be aspects just of our psyches of the way we're built the ideas we've automatized that can get in the way of our really practicing the philosophy as consistently and as effectively for our own happiness as we can. So it's a little hard to describe you know one way to put it is it's about you might say the psycho epistemology of egoism. Okay because right psycho epistemology has to do with the relationship between the conscious and the subconscious and the automatized ways we do certain things. Well what are some of those things that can affect egoism? So just to give you a quick example or two of some of the kinds of things I talk about in the book I talk about self-esteem which is one of the big values for Rand. I talk about the importance of independence but in particular I talk about a person's really foundational motivation for being an egoist for being moral because I think that's really key that one not be an egoist in order to be a good person which I think it's easy to retain but being an egoist because you want to be happy because I want to have a good time we're just talking about the passage of time we only get so many years god damn it I want to have fun that's why I'm an egoist but I think fully getting that can take some work. So it's largely about the motivation to be moral the motivation to be an egoist I talk about desires because I think we often have a kind of arms length ooh gotta worry about desires we're the rational egoists so these are the kinds of things that this book addresses some of the again kind of quasi psychological that's great yeah no so I'm excited about that in the new year but I'm getting to work on that again and it will be again it'll probably be the following year before it's actually out I'm excited about that I'm excited about you know a few other work projects that are much much smaller but just you know from from finishing the book essentially in the next few months I look forward to time to work on some of these other excellent I do look forward to more travel again we were just before the before we went live talking a little bit about you know travel to give talks and conferences again and that's always I love that on a lot of levels yeah no I I mean you get you have life students so you you get the opportunity to interact with like people for me the only way I get that is if I travel so I particularly looking forward to traveling so you're giving a talk in Miami at Ocon the projector's conferences on objectivity and everyday living yeah so what's what do you mean by that what what is that gonna what what give us a little bit of an overview of what what that is okay um so I'm pretty sure that the theme for Ocon this year I may get the wording is not quite right but it's something like taking objectivism seriously which I think is a good thing and in line with that uh I think I forget what exactly what my talk is called but it's something like objectivity in your everyday or something like that um I think there's more to mine from the ideal of objectivity than we sometimes do that is I think it's easy to fall into and when I say these things oh it's easy to fall in it's all autobiography I mean you know a large portion of what I end up studying or lecturing about is mistakes terrors me um or things that took me forever to figure out so okay but I I think it's easy to think well yeah there are certain kinds of decisions on which you need to be objective you know and there are certain kinds of issues well of course you need to be objective when you're reading an op-ed piece and you know doing a nice systematic analysis of that or when you're doing your philosophy work or okay perhaps in investing you try to you know stick to certain objective standards and so on but I think it's easy to not realize all the ways that objectivity arises all of the areas in which you can be objective or not so objective um and I mean different people are better and worse at this they're more consistent across the board or not but one so one of the things I'll try to do in the talk is simply alert us to various ways in which one can be objective or not but I have in mind simple things I mean simple um but really crucial things like how you treat your friends a lot of that comes naturally and a lot of that is healthy that does come I mean a lot of what comes naturally is appropriate and is objective and is in sync with how much you value these friends or those friends and so on but I have to say I see certain behavior among people who you think would know but it's like really really and you value that person now you know I don't know other people's how much they value a given person or not but I think I mean for instance just here's a very simple sort of example how considerate you are of other people now again that should vary depending on who the other person is and so on but there are ways of being considerate or inconsiderate there really are reflections of are you being objective about how much you do or don't value this person how you know what is this person worth to you and if so doesn't that demand a certain level of effort or appreciation or whatever it might be I think we're often not objective in the way we treat a lot of our values just more broadly not just other people but um or sometimes we're very objective about certain of our values but then others are left to kind of more scattershot decisions or more just sort of gut or well what does that have to do with objective so I want to awaken our awareness of the different ways in which we can be objective or not um and I think they're just I'm going on a long time here feel free to just get I also I don't want to give away the whole lecture I haven't written the whole lecture yet that's one of the piles around me is all the fun notes on that going um it's not obvious how to be objective in a lot of situations um and one domain that I'm thinking about is when you're dealing with other people when you're either communicating with other people and trying to do so objectively you might be teaching you might be lecturing you might be trying to your salesman you're trying to sell them on something or sell somebody at the office on a policy or also when you're collaborating with other people I think it's easy to think about objectivity when it's solo you know when you're in the silo so okay it's for me to figure this out it's for me to be a good independent person and think what's the right conclusion here okay but a lot of life is well I'm on this committee or I'm on this team at the office and we've got to come to an agreement okay so what does objectivity demand there what kinds of concessions are still objective on my part given the context and what aren't so I don't know the answer to that but I want to kind of dig on that kind of thing as well so that we can get more out of the guidance that it gives us to yeah go by reality go by logic okay what does that look like how can we concretize that more so that we can practice it more and get more out of it so it seems like it comes from a culture I mean we live in a culture in which we're taught yeah you should think and you should use logic and go by reality when it comes to I don't know the engineering problem you face so the or the or the certain types of decisions that you write you do alone but in human relationships no thinking is not relevant what's relevant there is I don't know emotion or empathy or whatever and and we're not trained in a sense when we go up yeah my reason to our relationships across the board just across the board and I don't think it's that so much people think oh reason doesn't apply it and it's not that they consciously think reason doesn't apply there it's just like doesn't occur to them it's like okay if I'm making a big purchase I ought to be systematic about this you know if I'm gonna make a bit on that house or if I'm gonna you know it's between the Subaru and the whatever the other car that I'm debating okay then a lot of people will do their charts and their pros and cons and all that but it's like how do you deal with people so I mean it's taking things seriously right it is taking objectivism seriously taking your value seriously thinking and really thinking cool now wait if I do value this person this much or if I do understand the context of this collaborative decision we've got to come to then that's going to have repercussions for how I should proceed it seems really related to your book right because it seems like all of these are kind of psychopistemological driven by a certain psychopistemological approach right it's it's yeah yeah it's noticing the subconscious more so that we can find oh wait a minute I made this assumption that that wasn't the kind of issue for objectivity to give me any guidance on it's like whoa it can be a big help here too you know and decide yeah I think another way in which there's a through line with the book is simply and this has only been becoming a little bit more apparent to me recently it's all about values yeah all about values and taking your values seriously um really practicing what you preach what you preach to yourself um I've been applying it everywhere across your life in every aspect of your life not I mean we silo things yeah right so easily departments and it's just easy to and again you don't notice them but that's why so much of the kind of introspection that we were talking about at the beginning a little bit about new years but again even on an ongoing basis one of the things I will talk about in the book I think in one or two different chapters I have segments on the value and the importance of introspection to know yourself so that you can figure out what you're doing right and wrong what you want to double down on oh I didn't realize I was doing this but now that I see it is that really what I want to be doing or the best way to do this um I let me just come back to though this theme which again I hope I'm getting right for the conference but I think it's taking objectivism seriously there's such an unseriousness about issues about values and I'm not talking about objectivist here per se I'm talking just about in the world from the the intellectuals from the philosophers I see it in some of the philosophy books that I read but from the pundits on on the airwaves and so on when you really probe some of the thing when you really probe when you scratch the surface you don't even have to probe all that long but so often you know given what they'll say at the end of this short article versus what they said at the beginning or the little slips and slides in of the the self-contradictions it just makes you think these people are so fundamentally unserious about ideas and about their own lives because to be unserious about ideas when they're talking about ideas and they know at some level we all live on our goddamn ideas that's what brought you to church on sunday or didn't or whatever it might be that's what brought you to okon or wherever or on a nice vacation it is just so unserious about values and about their own lives and values that's yeah that's the love of my life my life is the love of my life there's a selfish a selfish one absolutely no that's that's I mean that's absolutely right it's it's so frustrating it's so frustrating because you read you read most of the intellectuals today and even ones you like and then they get sloppy so they'll write a whole bunch of stuff I mean I read Barry Weiss and I read and they they can be so good on some stuff then they just get sloppy and unthinking because it's a little pushing the envelope it's a little too much yeah I find that yes very much they will be so good on so much or you really like them and you want to like them and then it's like ah but the way in which they'll get sloppy I think often betrays this kind of oh my god this is all talk ultimately for you if you could still think that and that and the second thing I was gonna pay you a compliment um one of the things one of the things I really like about you is you're such a selfish not like that like from getting to know you over the years in all seriousness this is a this is a very profound you're you're a really good selfish person in the best best way and it really is not I mean it's nice it's an inspiration good happy new year yes absolutely um so that's probably part of your appeal to a lot of people I mean you you exude as a speaker you know you're an incredibly popular speaker and understandably so you exude a certain enjoyment and passion and so on but part of what you're exuding there is this guy loves his life I love this and it's nothing fake about advocating for selfishness right because you can advocate for selfishness to look miserable it doesn't work you can advocate for philosophy of happiness and I'll be happy so you you have to it it has to it has to be consistent it has to be integration there and but I do I think that is the that really is the key to to really I mean you get super passionate on stage and I get super passionate and I think we get and we get angry some on stage and we do that because you should say off stage how angry I get but yeah it's values it's it's it's everybody will have to express it in the same like I don't think you need to be a passionate speaker show it all on stage in order to be really selfish and really passionate but yeah no I do think sometimes it comes from yeah um so let's uh last week I talked to Don about ambition you had some thoughts about this and just about work and and well-being and kind of the place of walking fly in a floating life yeah um yeah okay so I really enjoyed I listened to most not absolutely all of the questions some of the questions but I listened to most of the interview and I really enjoyed it enjoyed hearing you again Don um and I agreed with almost all of it I think there were maybe one or two points where maybe I'd have had a different emphasis on something but the only I mean one or two things I'll say and I'm not even sure like I was scribbling some notes is all off and doing now that I look back at them it's like well did he say this or am I saying this so I don't even know that I'm disagreeing at all but no I he did say something about this and I guess I would just really underscore it there's a sense in which there's a there's a danger of reifying ambition as an end in itself like yeah it's good to be ambitious it's not it's natural to be ambitious if you really want certain things but it's about the content of what you want and Don and you were definitely talking about this saying this right it I mean ambition isn't an end in itself it's not a good in itself like oh thou shalt be ambitious oh with that right oh but if there are things I want to do you know if I want to travel the world if I want to build a better app for this or that kind of thing or a whole new platform for how eight-year-olds learn foreign language or whatever it is I want to do well then I think for a healthy rational egoist you're gonna want to do it well I mean it's gonna depend obviously is this the thing you most want to do in life and so on but the ambition is a kind of natural sidecar isn't the right word but a natural kind of car lary or of naturally you would want to do the thing as well as you can because that's what will give you the reward you know the the results that's what'll help me achieve the most so it's I just think sometimes with some of these objectivist virtues or values and that isn't exactly either one of them but you know in either of those categories but there's just a whoa why is that a good thing why do I want to be ambitious oh for the sake you know it's not about I want this position I want this title or even necessarily I want to make this much money I want to answer that question I want you know like with me in my work it's like I want to figure out issue x I want to get you know better on on this issue I want to understand it more so that's really what drives the ambition rather than ambition being this other thing that oh yeah and it's a good thing to be ambitious too and yeah that's kind of fun sometimes yeah no absolutely and so how do you you know you uh you have a lot going on you teach you've uh you write you're writing a book you're writing articles you're writing essays how how do you balance all that with other values that you have in life that are not work related um not well not well the whole life work balance thing I mean yeah no I'm not good at that I overdo the work you know all honesty um yeah like some people have time management problems they don't work enough or it's like no no I have the opposite problem and I'm serious I mean I'm saying this jokingly it's like okay so I have a problem I don't do it as well as I would like to and that's why we have January every year so Tara can think about how to do it a little better and try and been making progress honest but anyway um how about so how do I balance it with other stuff uh you know I do try to reserve some time for other stuff in the last few years I've made a concerted effort to make more time for the arts in my life and that's been good and I'm just in recent weeks as I think about this coming year I'm really I'm I'm gonna up that a notch and I've already started good two hours ago two hours ago I'm very proud of myself yeah I was looking at Sandra Shaw's book on um mostly older art yeah oh yeah yeah very good um but so like so I will try to make some reserve time I do you know the thing with I mean the kind of work I do you can be doing all the time you can be thinking about these issues all the time and there's something you need a certain kind of momentum to build up with some of these issues especially when you know you have a day teaching and then a day on research again and a day teaching and I mean you're splitting your focus as it is it's really valuable to be able to have extended dedicated time to just work on this research project or that so that that makes you not want to take away that time to just go take a walk or just go watch football or you know play tennis or whatever it might be um but I do try to make time for those things and I I do uh I don't know if I mean if there's more you're asking about there I know that different kinds of things are good for me like to really vary the I mean my idea of a good time when I'm off it's reading and I mean that's great and I get a lot out of my reading and I love it but if I oh right or I'm it's like it's always with you know I am a big I take a lot of walks I like walks I've gotten even more into I love walks um just be boring but yeah oh your sound went out oh did it go out all together yeah that's better that's better okay yeah no I love walks I love I do love the outdoors uh but but but you really do have a work-centered life I mean right I mean work is it's fun though like this week I got back to the book work yeah I was working on other things while they had the book and I was waiting for you know a verdict and I was working on a lot of other things and then having signed the contract I cleared up some other stuff last week in terms of what I'm teaching next semester and got some other things to a good state and it's just been so fun to be back on I mean it's it's fun and it's because you're like making advances in your own understanding of things and it's all very selfish I want to understand these things better I want to understand the subjects in the book you know desires and fundamental motivation better because they help me live better and if I can you know if that can be helpful to other people great that's like all the better yeah but it's a life but it's fun yeah I know it's exciting to see somebody as excited as you are about the work that you do it's I think I think it's a it's a real model for people it's it's it's a beautiful thing you want to try to find the work that you do love and it's it's hard you know for a lot of people to find it or they know what it is but it's not a very remunerative area so they have to do other things and that's I mean it's challenging and people have other circumstances that make it harder to all right so let's um you know yeah I don't know if you wanted to talk you also at we talked a little bit about ambition what you were talking about was done last week they're more about work like it I could say a little bit more just about work in general not so much my own attitude toward work but we've already talked about that some but Greg Salmiere had a conference last spring I think it was on work and well-being was that the name of it something like that and it was a lot of philosophers who have nothing to do with objectiveism and a few objectivist oriented people as well and it was just clear from a number of the papers that the way people think about work is and I mean this is not news I think to you or a lot of us listening probably but this prevalent assumption that well there's work and there's well-being and there's this gap between the two you know there's work and having fun or enjoying your life and how can we bridge the gap you know and there's something really sad about that I think but that is a very prevalent mindset I think not just among certain intellectuals but I think you know in the culture definitely and it's you know as Rand teaches us it's so helpful to start with the basics or ask the most basic questions like why do we work like yeah why are we doing all this work especially if people aren't enjoying it you know if it's not fun if they're just working for the weekends which some people are but I think a lot of people aren't doing that either I think that's over a height this idea oh they're just working for the week you know for their drinks and fun activities over the weekends but um but there is this still prevalent kind of Garden of Eden mindset where it's like well we work because bloody Adam you know he sinned he ate that you know he wanted that damn apple and now we're all paying the price we're all in this penance you know as opposed to we work because we want to make our lives better it's fun and it's not just oh well we work so that we can get the money to make our lives better with that you know a bigger screen or bigger car or something but it's the activity of growing our lives you know growing ourselves and our experience is again so much fun like yeah that's why we do it um I think capitalism also has insulated people from particular people in advanced economic circumstances like we are you know in the west and israel in certain places um the success and the bounty that we now have from capitalism makes the connection between your work and your well-being or the idea that well we work because yeah we need to work but we want to work because it makes our lives better that seems so that's foreign like tarot you work but you're working with all these papers and pens and computer what does that have to do with putting food on the table yep with you know keeping the heat running when we actually had some cold weather a few days ago you know um it's as if you know because again with specialization and advanced capitalism you know you could afford to be a philosopher you could afford to be a sculptor you you know without just the patronage of some rich medici or something right um so it's made people less conscious less like cognizant of the connections there and it that I think also feeds this yeah I mean that connection between survival and work is not I mean they don't get it at all and then the idea that work is the pursuit of values in and of itself is enjoyable and fun and challenging and if you don't challenge yourself you get I mean I can't think of anything worse than boredom which I almost never experienced because there's always something of interest there's always something absolutely oh my god right there's not enough time yeah yeah yeah I mean there's and and people's attitude towards work as as something that is they want a garden of Eden and I find the idea of a garden of Eden um horrific I mean just lying around all day for me oh I know grapes like yeah I like grapes but you know yes no and I mean I and I like a good vacation and I am good at that I can take a good vacation once in a while yeah um yeah but no it's like huh you've got to be kidding like just sitting around doing that no the best days are the days that it's really hard like I'll be sitting at this desk and like ah it was really hard today but like progress like I could eke out the thing so there like some people have heard me say this kind of thing before but like the best days that I could report on when I you know have dinner with and at the end of the day or something it's like ah it was really hard today but good so it's like no the challenge is part of what's rewarding the I'm eking it out I'm you know I'm scratching ahead a little progress on this or that no that's so much of the fun yeah but going back to the um like capitalism insulates us you know these days again in capitalist societies and even in many others right you know you asked a little kid what do you want to be when you grow up when you lived in the middle ages you didn't ask what do you want to be when you grow up it's like you just you did what you needed to do to get the bread on the table and the shoes on the feet and all that stuff right it's we are so fortunate to live uh yeah yeah I mean I tell I tell the story a lot of times in my talks the um why why how could how come we got a Leonardo da Vinci I mean how come Leonardo da Vinci got to do all the different things that he did because in that society a son always followed his father in his profession he had no choice and you know so here's Leonardo da Vinci he's a painter he's a engineer he's a he's a renaissance man right um and it turns out that the reason Leonardo da Vinci was not forced to become a notary which is what his father was is because he was a bastard he was born out of wedlock or he could not join the guild of the notaries otherwise if he'd been legal legit he would have never had a Leonardo da Vinci and it's it's that's the kind of life they lived back then you did what you were told what your father did you you you work the wheel of work the land or you or you did this particular profession you didn't have these choices you go in and for you so he was more free because he wasn't legally legit so it's um people don't have an appreciation for how much how many choices we have today because of capitalism and therefore we can actually choose to do something we love we can actually choose a profession that we can actually enjoy doing and that was the work isn't just some arbitrary penance that you know we've gotten whether from a god or just well that's the way life is life is from me that way and we've got this burden to bear it's like what burden this is what this is how we live and how we make our lives all the more enjoyable so that's an area i mean i think it was a very good thing that um Greg held the conference that he did and i think that's an area on which a lot more work can be done usefully done both by objectivists and many others and actually i think that Tristan de lege one of our younger intellectuals recent phd and philosophy i think that's an area that he's particularly interested in and writing on and he gave one of the talks one of the yeah and it's something objectivism can contribute so much because as you said that the culture has this uh economized it's separate there's life there's work and work is like it's life somehow or it gets enjoying life and that's that's a horrible position and even the way we speak so much of you know work life balance and the others have said as well like whoa like it's not like well there's work and then there's your life it's is part of your life and it should be a central part uh properly understood yeah so um so here's a delicate subject i guess um we are both uh we're both aging uh ter and i about the same age and uh got a few months on you yeah you got a few months on me that's right four months i think and uh i i don't know if you remember but i when i turned 50 50 was a really tough one for me um and we were together on my birthday in at oxford yes at oxford yes we were doing a seminar there and i think i purposefully had my birthday traveling because i just i i was not interested in that birthday it was it was definitely there was something there was a certain realization that was coming and i think it has certainly over the last decade so this whole issue of of of um aging how it relates to work how it relates to values more broadly and really how to thinking about the future so yeah we're aging uh uh it's so you know the more the more you age the more conscious you naturally are of aging and like you 50 really got my attention like 40 you know you noticed all the milestone ones all the decades at you know so 40 i know but 50 was like whoa this is getting serious i didn't have an avert like i didn't plan to be any worse you know but it was like that one really got my attention and dare i say it 60 yes i'm 61 i'll be 62 soon um 60 really gets your attention okay so you guys i know there's a lot of people these days in objectivism who are just turning 40 god bless you but enjoy it and take it seriously it's um but so much of this you can say it and it's like obvious and it's almost empty like aging is fascinating well that's like saying living is fascinating like right because we're all aging from the time we're born right but there's a certain naturalness to paying more attention to age the older one is because you know okay the less future you have ahead of you you know the normal lifespan and much as we pursue extending it and much as that may happen in the future you know it's still a pretty finite future right now the more years you stack up so it's very natural as one ages especially into certain decades to think more about it it's just it's there are things i really like about aging and i guess just two primary things are you have so much more experience to go on to like the pool of information that you have is much much greater now you've got to be paying attention you've got to be drawing the lessons you know they love to say well you learn from experience and what i always say yeah not unless you try not unless you try and right look at most but i mean you can it's but it does give you just a wealth more of information and context um so you can learn a lot more from that i also and this may be just more about me but i do think i do think from some people i know that you feel a little bit more as you age more and more independent more and more sort of entitled to assert your own preferences at least many people it's like damn it you know if i only have this much time left or if i'm now how old am i i'm gonna assert myself a little bit more about what i might want to do in regards to all sorts of things it might be in one's work life and some of one's family life or sense of family obligations or whatever um you can typically carve your life more and more to your exact liking so again it comes back to this issue of values and sort of values curation you know like yeah being aware of the passing of time and the again the limited future uh you know the finiteness and just okay i likely have this many years or that many years um can just help crystallize your understanding of the relative value of things but i think there's i think there are just things useful things to think about in terms of common attitudes toward aging i mean it gets a bad rap or at least you know it's always the you know the jokes of oh well he's over the hill now you know all the bad unfunny birthday cards but the general tone is so like oh you're going down yeah i mean so many of us know hey it beats the alternatives and i mean even for those who don't have the best philosophy in life most would agree to that and uh it's just you know it's more life and how can we manage it ambitiously you might say or as best we can right i mean there are a lot of things that people will do to take good physical care of themselves and that's terrific i mean if they're doing that for healthy reasons and if they're doing that in healthy ways that's great right but physical fitness isn't the only thing that matters even as okay you might need to do more things as you age because your body is going to change in certain ways naturally um our spiritual fitness how can we deal with certain there are certain you know when you're older you have more health afflictions let's say you know in general this obviously varies a lot from different people right but and that's an emotional thing like oh my god i've got this damn pain all the time now i have to deal with this condition i'm not as mobile as i used to be that's going to impact all sorts of things that you do as you get significantly older more of your cohort more of your friend you know will be sick or will themselves pass away or will have people close to that i mean so there are things in your emotional environment in your spiritual environment that do change with age and i think giving it's giving aging per se some thought might help us do as well as we can in managing it so that we can you know make that also of it so these are very just new thoughts but no i think that's all that's really fascinating and and you know it's it's a lot if people take their lives seriously before they get older then they're likely to deal with it better i mean it's it's just a it's an issue of training your mind to think right but i found it 50 and certainly at 60 the hawaiian shrinks on you and that's what's weird and shakes you up a little bit so when you're 30 and 40 you think okay one day i'll do that and now when i think about something i really want to do it's like there is no one day i mean it's it is yes but right but it's it's right so when are you gonna do it yes yeah so if it's really important i better i better do it there is no there's no delaying right right no it's not all to come you know for the first few days it's all to come it's all ahead of you until it you know so i think and again so this is something that i could i i could maybe see writing a little something on i mean just you know a short paper or lecture something maybe not there may not be enough here but you know people talk about a midlife crisis yeah or you know the you only live once attitude i mean there are other you know or having a bucket list of like well what's on my bucket and how real is my bucket list and so on so there are there are things just in the culture and in pop wisdom that reflect concern with these issues and it'd be somewhat interesting i think to look at some of those and what's right and wrong i did about them yeah i mean it seems it seems like people are going to encounter crises if they don't take their life seriously from early on it makes it harder it's like you need because suddenly you realize what have i done with my life where am i what have i achieved are these the values i really care about but if you build your values properly then you build towards something and at any age you're still you're building towards something you know you can only if you do find wow i wish i had taken philosophy seriously earlier or something right um still okay from this point on you can still do what you so i don't want to give up on you know i don't want to make it sound like well there's just this resignation if you don't you know you didn't discover iron ran by the time you were 50 forget it or if you did just screw up in whatever way and i mean genuinely screw up okay but if i can recognize that now and what it was that i was doing or doing wrong or what even i don't know like it's not that you'll necessarily discover all the answers at once but discovering that was not the right answer or that was a sellout or i didn't really want to be with that woman that long or i didn't really want that career like those are first steps toward making the best of what what you still do have you know absolutely absolutely all right so let's um let's move to some um maybe cultural political issues uh and then oh goody you really want to cheer us up now for the new year yeah i know we've got some questions that's good we've got a bunch of questions um so i know you've been doing um you have done quite a bit of work in the past on free speech on issues of the first amendment and um that this uh this is obviously in news constantly uh with regards you know i don't know how much you'd be following the twitter files and uh issues of press freedom and pressure of government and so i i wonder what you're thinking as these days about the state of the first amendment in the u.s and and a press freedom in the u.s um and uh you know yeah i guess i guess it's a little depressing into the future yeah uh really grim uh the state of freedom of the press in the u.s and around the globe um so really grim unfortunately yeah i'm lucky in that the last several years i've been teaching at ut they're both undergraduate seminars one of them is on free speech one of them is on freedom of i'm sorry the first amendment a little bit more broadly so in the one on the first amendment we discuss freedom of the press freedom of religion and um freedom of assembly which is also often thought of as freedom of association but i also do freedom of the press in the in the free speech course um and just recent i really enjoy teaching that and getting the students just to think about freedom of the press a little bit more but also just to think about the value of the press we can come back to that if you want like yep yeah definitely but um and just recently i decided to write something so i gave a talk actually at the salem center at ut which is where greg samiri is and i mentioned this because people could listen to the talk online if they want back in i forget what month it was maybe it was october i gave a talk on freedom of the press in because one of the arguments we're hearing so much these days is well there's so much misinformation people just don't know what to believe anymore and some of the misinformation is is really damaging when people do believe when we're talking about vaccines when we're talking about electoral results and who stole the ballots at what and then you have people robbing the capitol and so like so the stakes are really big so you've got this misinformation people don't know what to believe don't we need the government to come in and kind of you know tamp things down kind of screen at least you know some of these wild claims and keep them from being made and so on so what my lecture and what now sent out a version of it as a paper i'll try to get it published in a journal um addresses is this kind of issue not just about miss not only about misinformation or not about misinformation per se but this particular argument that says look the digital era is different because of the nature of digital communications you can get an idea be a true or false whether you know it's true or false you can get an idea before so many more people that i mean just you know we couldn't have imagined the scale and at the speed and so on but that makes it all more potent the bad stuff more dangerous more damaging therefore we need the government to come in the government to come in so um i gave this talk i was paper talking about that kind of argument which i don't think cuts it though i still want i i still have some questions here um i think i'm right in what i say in that paper i really do that no the kinds of differences that they're pointing to don't really make a difference in principle um but i mean i still do have some questions there and i'm so i'm thinking about that more and having conversations about that what was i going to say part of though it's so twisted i think about an important part of what's so twisted and just wrong-headed about these arguments particularly the arguments of the sort we need the government to you know just screen out the bad stuff yeah as if the government knows what's true yeah as if that's their expertise they know what's true about the climate about the coronavirus or whatever the virus you know the monkeypox or whatever the hell the disease might be about cancer or asthma or diabetes or whatever oh they know about safe products and automobiles and so on oh they know like but it's not just oh the government knows it's like how does anybody know anything when we do have knowledge in given fields what is it that makes that possible freedom freedom of thought freedom to say you're wrong you're full of it that's garbage tar what you just said is stupid and here's why it's stupid and here why here's why you're all wrong about the digital era and so on right that's the necessary betting on which we can have actual growth in knowledge and understanding so the very clamping you know the very means of oh we'll have a safer environment for the truth by clamping down on freedom is like talk about shooting yourself in the head so this is what's real but this is part of what's really depressing I think about the state and the the state of free speech because the state of free speech and the state of freedom of the press is the state of our future right if we can't think we can't figure out what's right or wrong on any issue we can't do the right thing to treat this illness to you know grow this kind of food let alone to have the right kind of government I'll put it this further depressing way it's like we're collectivizing thought by not allowing individual thought right by oh no you can't be free to say that we're gonna shut you up you can't say that it's like so thought just gradually but steadily over time becomes more and more the collective thought that well that's that's been approved by the collective so you can say that yeah a lot to lament here unfortunately and it's so sad even just in the last few years it's gotten so much worse in the US it used to be I'd read these articles and you'd read about what's going on in Mexico or Turkey or all these nations Venezuela let alone Russia and China when it comes to freedom of the press but increasingly it's like that's what's going on here too yeah the last few years so well I mean as you get the government involved in more and more things they feel the necessity to be the arbitrator of truth in those things so if the government's going to be involved in our healthcare they're going to decide what's good for us to eat what's not then they want to police that it's part of what they do they police the things that there is yeah yeah yeah no that's a good point and it's inevitable the more the more it's inevitable in the sense the more power we give to government the more they will infringe on this aspect more than we need them to have this power to help us you know it's the and it's it's the asking for the nanny state and the cognitive nanny tell us what to think tell us what to think big daddy you know so you mentioned the value of the press I mean obviously you know so you've done some thinking about why the press is important you know because when I think people I think a lot of people just don't that is and to some extent I think this is generational to some extent but I don't want to like it's not oh it's always the young people making mistakes like but we've for a long time I mean you heard it here first right people don't know what objectivity is they don't particularly try to be objective at best at best and even this is somewhat rare they'll try to uphold some misguided idea of what it is to be objective like to be balanced or to let the you know the republican and the democrat both speak a certain amount or something like that but we don't know what objectivity is and you can tell when you you know read the newspaper today or listen to commentators but that's been a steady decline for decades just in what passes for responsible or respectable journalism um but one one of the interesting things too when you talk with students or not just students people will get very high and mighty at times when thinking about it talking about freedom of the press or freedom of speech and of course we should but particularly about the press let's say let's focus on that for now right um oh we need to have freedom of the press and oh yeah that's really shocking when we read about what russia is doing or how china is censoring people's you know everything online and so on and so on okay how what's the value of the press what value do you make of the press in your own life how responsible or like how much do you pay attention to the news where do you get the news what do you do to try to get good news like to try to get quality news that you connect and when you start asking those questions of people it gets a little hot in the room because they get uncomfortable because they don't like they're not real proud of their answers but i do think we need to pay more attention to simply what is the value of the news like what's the value of journalism what's the value like just like information and i don't think it'd be too hard for objectivists to answer that question but like the kind of information that the news gives you and obviously there's more special you know you can get business news or sports news or entertainment or whatever you want right but what's the value of knowing what they're doing on the other side of town or in the ukraine or wherever it might be like we've got it what's the value of the kind of information you get from the news then what would be necessary for me to get you know quality reliable versions of that kind of information i'm looking for and i don't know i haven't done but i i wonder what they're teaching in these journalism schools you know there's a lot of classes in big schools whether it's called the school of journalism or the school of communications and so on but i've started getting more interested in i'd like to know more of what they're teaching and i know that they have you know classes on values in journal it's not like journalists never think about values or talk about values but i recently read a sort of memoir ish book by a woman who for a while was the ombudsman at the new york times they didn't call it ombudsman i think they called it public editor they had a different name for it but that kind of role and she's now at the washington post and she writes a column on the media and it was sort of a memoir about her career but also making some arguments here and i mean that's one of the things that i mean this is not news but again it's one of the things that brought home to me how just baked in the absence of objectivity really is because even when she's trying to even when and to the extent at time she is trying to defend objectivity her ideas of what it is are so half baked and so awful that i actually thought within the last few months huh i might want to teach a course on values in journalism or you know when you were you could talk at length about objectivity and just what it is and is not and that alone would be a real service but you know increasingly we have people saying things i just heard this today i guess sam harris said this within the last few months that it and i didn't hear harris himself say it it was somebody else on a podcast saying you know sam harris said it's okay to for the press to have suppressed the uh hunter biden story the hunter biden thing because right because what's his name trump was such an existential threat to the net and so on so you've got this but increasingly boldly belligerently saying that on the air not just you know in the privacy of before we started your own um like we're going to manipulate the news like but this becoming common practice and of course it just it's like well if they do it we should do it that's that's what it all is now how the hell do you know what to believe how do you get information anymore right so we need to pay attention to these issues um yeah i wouldn't sam harris say it i watched that interview and he and he was even worse than that he said something like he said something like i don't care even if they'd found i don't know pictures of children that he was had in a basement somewhere on his laptop they shouldn't disclose that just to defeat trump and i think everybody listening knows how much i despise trump but that is nuts no and it's it's it's it's it's completely insane and it is it's it's the you know in sam harris is one of the more rational ones on a lot of issues and yet when it you know he's so emotional about this that he's willing to forego facts evidence reality reality let me i want to put in a brief uh it's not exactly a plug for this person but you know we do need the bright spots once in a while so um marty barron was the editor of the washington post until just i think a couple of years ago he retired and retired and before that he had been the editor i believe at the boston globe when they did that famous spotlight expose of the catholic priest who were covering okay wow he says some really good stuff about objectivity oh good so refreshing so this memoir i read by this other woman she quotes a bit of a speech of his so then i i looked up the whole speech it's like wow now on the one hand wow he says a is a you know i mean it's not like he's saying anything brilliant but he's saying you know he's like wait a second there are facts you know like there are facts there is truth there is reality and that's what our job as journalists is to find out it's not to make the world safe against donald trump or to you know so even in the aftermath of you know 2016 when trump was elected and so many papers were just sort of more openly saying no no now we've got a fight you know um so let me put in at least a point of praise for mr barron who i'd love and i guess he was at the washington post when trump really went after the washington post so it's good for him um yeah i mean i think one of the we talked about capitalism really one of the nice things one of the more positive things that are happening in media i think now is the opportunities for people to go out and create their own media companies and so barry weiss is a good example left the new york times started this thing online now it's turned into a whole yeah she's got a big you got a lot of people who right yeah yeah yeah people and she's got reporters now so she's actually got journalists not just opinion writers yeah and i see i see other groups uh the dispatcher some others that are doing this and we're getting much more variety now with variety you get a lot of non-objective stuff but at least at least you have more to look at a little more portfolio yeah let's see an n and fox and the new york times there's a there are 20 30 different sources now of information that you can go it is good that is good and it's we need to take advantage while we can before they clamp down further on freedom of the press but you know one of the complaints about various media including you know some of the big so a lot of people just get their news from facebook or a lot of people get their news from the other one yeah but i mean right i mean a lot um oh what was i just gonna say oh it's the economic models that a lot of people object to oh my god but they have so much power they're so big they're so rich and so on you know there are other ways or or again the complaint will be um they're just well they've got to pay these media companies or these newspapers they've got to pay the bills so and so on so on well you know there are different ways of paying bills so we're also seeing more of these um not for profit news organizations i mean on the one hand there are the sub-stack things and you can pay this person and they'll do but there are just there are ways of getting if you really have value information and i think it's we become so desperate because so much of the information and opinion has become so worthless not worth the paper it's printed on anymore right that people are like okay i'll contribute to the texas tribute or whatever it might be now i'm not here endorsing the editorial policies or positions of any of these other outlets but it's like you know there are more options available and we need to take advantage of them while we can economic models for how to do these things but again one of the um sad long-term effects of government regulation of so many areas is the stunting of imagination i'm just thinking of different ways of doing things think about the education realm for instance right well there's public education or there's the private you know the largely catholic schools for generations and generations until it has to be this way yeah they can't imagine it being anything different great let's uh we've got a we've got a bunch of questions um you guys can continue to ask questions the super chat feature is available we i'll post as we progress in terms of the super chat i'll post thank you melin really appreciate it thank you carolina there's just these are people who've contributed super chat without asking a question thank you mike really appreciate the support all right let's start with ian uh ian so it's great to see terra interviewed and looking forward to the new book for the interview suggestion shoshana melgram about einranz biography work so that we can convince her to publish it if you can figure out how to convince her to publish it that would be amazing yes um i'm excited about shoshana one day publishing that book she's doing something on the biography i think or at least on rand's life at ocon yeah i mean she gives a lot of talks based on the material but it would be amazing to have in one place a book kind of the definitive biography i don't think i yeah one day one day um hiram says am i irrational if i say that lady looks acts and sounds unbelievably gorgeous am i dumb for thinking the year started near the end of yeah i don't know what okay so can you say that somebody acts and sounds gorgeous i think i mean you might think oh that's a really nice voice that somebody has they sound intelligent you might project onto them certain attributes because of that um i don't fully get the question yeah neither do i i'm sorry um because yeah yeah hiram you might want to rephrase that i just i i don't quite get it i mean there can be aesthetically i mean gorgeous is like you know we normally think of looking gorgeous but i mean it's an aesthetically appealing in some way to the person so certainly uh the way the way a person talks or yeah adam asks is mind-based recreation like chess in the old Soviet world or computer games today a symptom of people being disconnected from enjoying their real work and needing the mental challenge that they can't get from that work i'm not sure i think it could be in some cases you know i would think um that that's where you know if they can't do certain other things that are would be intellectually challenging and rewarding but they could get some of that there then yeah in those cases i would think so i think it's hard to say and that's all that's going on for all these people or that anybody who gets a lot of pleasure you know in very different circumstances different kinds of societies where you have a lot of freedom and options and so on anybody who gets a lot of pleasure or plays a lot of chess or something there's something wrong with their lives or i'm not saying that you're trying to imply that but yeah i mean i think i think that's right it could be it could be that people use these as escapes but it doesn't necessarily mean that that is what they're using it for certainly i think a lot of people use video games today to escape but i'm not sure everybody who plays video games does let's see andrew ask what leads to the feeling of contradiction that the objective is principles are true but carrying them out in principle is drudgery oh my god drudgery what leads to that i i would think that a variety of kinds of mistakes could lead to that or drudgery is just it's like a duty orange right yeah i mean it sounds like a duty like drudgery so i'd want to know when's the drudgery like or what elements of what you're doing in trying to apply objective as principles do you find drudgerous or whatever the word would like where's the drudge in it now of course you know there are things in life that are less enjoyable than others there you know just certain day-to-day chores are not pleasant certain day-to-day chores they're not pleasant they're also not major parts of most of our life like yeah you have to take out the trash and yes sometimes you have to scrub the pan that's kind of disgusting um but it's like i don't here again i feel like i need a little bit more to fill in the example of what's the drudgery about now of course for anything too there are going to be times where you're just really tired you know or you've just been working too hard or you haven't been sleeping enough or you've got this other really big problem on your mind is you know a problem at home with somebody in the family or you know and that can really make the things that normally are not drudgery at all more difficult than usual more taxing like oh my god i gotta do this again um i mean there are occasions like that certainly in life but if there's something you know if there's an ongoing kind of tension like oh this all sounds great when i go to old con you know right here those lectures and i'm all fired up by listening to your ron or something but man this is a slog is whoa then you may just the life you've set up for yourself may have a lot of significant things wrong with it right right like maybe you really shouldn't be in that relationship or shouldn't be in that job or in those circumstances trying to do this but it could it it could be you know automatized from the culture kind of this idea because in in altruism morality is drudgery in a sense that morality is a pain it's it's it's about pain it's about compromise it's about denunciation of values and you know person could i guess hold that psychologically even while adopting a different set of values well yes no and i mean in a way this is very related to what i'm talking about in the book it's like you can still retain unconsciously retain misguided premises that warp in certain ways how you're applying or the extent to which you're applying the objective is virtues and you still man well you know i gotta go be with aunt may for thanksgiving because that's just something you gotta do now it's like no you don't gotta do that right you don't think i gotta do is die that's perhaps my favorite line from mine rand which he's actually quoting somebody else right but you know the only thing i gotta do is die but i think versions of that as you say your own may still be you know resonant in a person and those might be the things pulling one in that direction of all but it's drudgery but also though i would be careful it's like do you really mean drudgery i mean sometimes i think we do just fall into oh yeah everybody knows you know work sucks or like really is that what you're thinking is that what you're experiencing yourself sometimes people fall into doing the thing they think they're supposed to do i mean emotions yeah i mean people also have this sense that you know thinking is thinking is difficult if only i could go by my emotions it's in a sense there's a sense in which is the garden of Eden again right phony we could be free to do whatever the hell we wanted to do it free of this burden of thinking right no right it's the exact opposite all right theme asked uh einrann's typist said that when she didn't cash a check from rand to keep us a souvenir einrann told her it amounted to altruism isn't this just the same as paying for an autograph the check was for a small amount i have to say i don't remember the i mean i vaguely is like it's oh yeah i read something about that once but i don't remember the story directly from what i read about it but from what you say here it does i think i'm on your side that is um it does sound to me like they have one might think hey i value this more than the ten dollars or whatever it might have been and i think in a way miss rand was um i don't know underestimating herself or the value of like i'd take that einrann autograph uh like what that means it's like whoa whoa yeah i think she didn't have a real sense of the importance she had on other people's lives uh and and what a big deal she was i i think i've heard other stories where she it's not self-deprecate but it's not fully appreciating her own significance um particularly respecting the people enough or appreciating that they were at least like we may be limited but man we're not so limited that we can't get that oh i'm getting a lot from that woman you know and i mean sort of miss underestimating us miss underestimating isn't that a george bushes all right jinja says um agree with terror that the advantage of age is knowing more in addition it's really interesting to see how all these life stories turn out it is you're right uh so enjoying this chat thank you thank you jinja really appreciate it yeah thanks a lot it is just endlessly fascinating you know you say it's so interesting to see how these life stories play isn't it fascinating philosophy always kind of come back to bite you or like man you see it at the end there is justice in the world i mean it's not a metaphysical force but it is it is a reality out there sometimes it happens too slowly but yes there is justice out there it's there's a sense of which that's fun to watch right people getting rewarded when they deserve to be rewarded and people suffering the consequences of bad decisions all right apollo Zeus um says the theoretical versus the empirical in regards to gaining knowledge how do the two go together epistemological question right hand in hand empirical observation and you think you know you've come up with some generalizations about it and test them i mean it's just a very simple picture but um definitely they work in tandem uh at least broadly speaking i don't know what would you add Jerome yeah i mean it it's an integrated whole right it's the both reflection of the same truth to the extent that's what we're speaking is truth and you need the theory and you need the empirics for every new observe for every new piece of knowledge you need both you can't just rely on any on one of them right right no they're not two independent tracks you know one another or you know the one there's the heart and there's the head or you know one gives you the theoretical duality there's no duality there i mean it's it's it's two aspects of the same thing yeah no any theory worth its salt is going to be based on empirical observation at some level all right anonymous use uh there seems to be relatively many objectivists at the university of texas why we're given the tail was the first maybe maybe she's the reason no i don't think so uh at all because i was here for alone for a long long time um there just happened to be i mean i just so when i got the job at my getting the job had nothing to do with objectivism and i was here for many years um but then i think just you know in part there happened to be a big donor to the institute a man of significant means um who himself was a ut grad still lives in austin cares a lot about the university of texas and was willing to put up some money um and that's gone into a lot of what the salem center has and so on and there is of course the recognition that it could be good to try to cluster a few people um so some support for that but people individually have wanted to move to austin i actually i think gregg samir is a real magnet for a lot of people um and that's good uh so you just have a lot of intellectuals i mean we now have gina goreland as well on the faculty at ut which is terrific but again she got like the job doesn't have anything her position is just she got it on her own good you know merits independently of objectivism but i think part of why she wanted to come to the university of texas i'm no large part is you know her good friend and someone from whom she learns a lot and respects a lot um greg is here and a lot of other people are here so it's becoming a nice hub austin in general more broadly and it's it's terrific i mean there are a number of people here i mean a number of philosophers here mike matzab and there jason rynes is here you've got a lot of higher ground people oh check it out check it out it's super exciting what's going on in austin it really is it's uh the last just the last few years three four years and um it's it's it's very exciting because there's a real it's it's going to be a place where there's a real concentration of objectivist and we'll see how all these interactions what kind of fruit that bears i yeah yeah obviously these days more than ever because more and more people can work remotely as people realize that just in the last few years like okay i don't have to be in california i don't have to be in louisiana or wherever i can be doing my main job if i still like that job i can be in austin and oh there are other reasons you know and we don't have a state in contact and i left so and everybody else showed up so there you go i was there first but left first too yeah you were here when i came yeah that was a video in austin all right thanks anonymous user um let's see andrew says more drudgery slash objectivism nathaniel branders view was that objectivism required saintly behavior that was rigid and almost ascetic ran did say that objectivism required saintliness but her meaning was different right yeah i mean nathaniel brandon had some views about objectivism that were not good helpful but we're just wrong though i mean i think i'm just wrong headed just today i was looking at one of my chapters because i started started the revisions and the revisions of this one and i quote one of two things that he said that are just plain wrong in terms of her view of desires it's the chapter on desires in particular so um okay he said that and on what basis did he say i forget exactly what you said he said just now but like okay and what's the big and rigid almost aesthetic i mean i i mean you're gonna say more it's because nathaniel brandon had this view even when he was with thine ran that he i think i think it's still in the objectivist movement some very very bad yeah yeah yeah no that i think survived plain wrong yeah he was a bad guy he didn't get it and i mean part of what again i but i'll use it just as an occasion to plug you'll have to read my book in a year and a half or whatever is that um but no with the desires thing the fact i mean there's a kind of over correction i think in a lot of people's misunderstanding of ran emotions are not tools of cognition but that doesn't mean emotions are worthless that doesn't mean you ban emotions and you have nothing to do with emotion right to be a rational egoist part of the empirical in our experience is our emotions and they count i mean our desires are where morality starts in a certain sense right you've got to hear the whole thing but um if you don't want anything want want that's a feeling yeah that's not a rational conclusion that's not that you know the conclusion at the bottom of a three step or a 33 step argument right i bloody want something oh that gives me reason to pay attention to how to get it but the role of wants desires is absolutely critical to get values and shoulds and those things that randon is calling rigid off the ground right so it's all about loving your life it's all about i mean uh the purpose of morality is what's the quote again from gap uh from gold speed you know uh teaches how to live or something like that and just i think it was yesterday i was reading in the q and a book somebody asked rand once what's the purpose of your life and i love the way she begins it's to enjoy my life and i think she says in a rational manner or something like that but what i loved about and it goes on a few more sentences what i loved about the answer was it's all about enjoying it's all about enjoying nathaniel you missed class that day um yeah but that by the way if anybody wanted to look it up it's for the very it's toward the very end of the q and a book where they ask you something like what's what's the purpose of your life yeah all right boas asks tips for burned out parents of six month kids how to avoid procrastination regain focus i think you asked me this boas yeah that sounds like i feel like i might have heard that a week or something this poor guy and then he goes on what's your opinion in your immigration policy thomas jefferson china opio drugs crisis and the homelessness plus a lone musk oh 10 bucks boas each one yeah um sorry that's a bit much to try to digest i know let's do the procrastination yeah i but i i feel for you in terms of the you know the child in sleep deprivation all that and i have no idea i'm not a parent and have never been um i'll just say this about musk oh my god i mean he's just like the other side of uh trump in terms of the erraticness of the decision made supposed if you even want to call it decision making the mercurial policies and just sad display yes landon i had a communist co-worker tell me today that the real garden of eden was when we lived in hunter gatherer societies and farming was the first sin i i i i've seen a lot of that there's a there's a kind of a um elevation of of paleo life it's it's absurd death worship it's like yeah and if we're dead we're just best off i mean by this logic um i feel your pain landon if that was your name um i mean it's it's it has to be people hate hate their life and hate hate their work because i mean they'd rather i don't hunt together i mean they'd rather hunt than program i mean i i i find it it's hard to understand and what do they really find objectionable in civilization in the you know the slow gradual ascent to a civilized society like really what in there is it that they don't like is and do they really not like it or is it just this oh yeah that was the beginning of the end because they don't like capitalism today because they don't like that the the you know the fast food place workers aren't making 20 dollars an hour like what really is the germ of their objection um yeah it's it's it's it's some hatred of something because i mean you think about what life was like sitting around the campfire i don't know telling stories or whatever versus sitting today and what would you like about that like it's cold you say like what's to like about that nothing we're talking about not taking ideas serious i mean like if you actually ask them for and like i'm supposed to like that more i'm supposed to prefer that kind of world to this why why would you like just try to have that kind of serious conversation what are they saying okay more from landon i'm freaking out about being about aging at 34 how does one accept one's inevitable demise if some things out of your control hold you back from your goals well that seemed to shift there in the second part the if some things hold you back from your goals so it sounds like you're talking about look there are certain constraints in my life in my situation you know health related or the health of maybe my wife or something like um so there i mean it depends on what you mean or what how severe the constraints are it's like yeah there are certain constraints in life that will diminish your prospects or the range of possibilities for you and that's that can be a very sad thing um so there's no denying of that there's you know none of this is supposed to be oh you just put a nice dimpley smile on whatever the situation i mean there are objective circumstances and i hope you're not actually in them that can be severely constraining of what's possible for you within what is possible for you that you know whatever that might be whatever freedom you still have and i mean you're not legal freedom but just you know ability you have within these constraints to still make your life as good as you can that's what you want to do and yeah you'll be dead someday we all will be right that's what gives it all meaning that's what that's not you know as so many nihilists or pessimists you're like oh we're all gonna be uh you know dead someday so why should i do my homework daddy um because you go live live you get this life you get to wake up every morning this is a good deal you know and again i you know it's a better deal when you don't have these serious constraints but you you know what also in general you want to be realistic about what are the constraints but also don't aggrandize or don't make certain constraints bigger than they have to be again i have no idea of your circumstance and i'm trying to say you're doing this but i do think people sometimes do that they exaggerate the gravity or just how constraining or limiting certain things need to be good one more from line it says i recommend to show limit less on disney that focuses on age health death with chris hymnsworth it focuses on getting the most out of a long life sounds good okay melin asks uh terra how can i get a copy of the paper on free speech you spoke of i got a lot of value from the lecture oh um the so thank you and thank you for having listened to the lecture um the paper isn't available yet because it is under review at a philosophy journal and um i shouldn't make it widely available yet i can let you know uh if it's accepted at a journal and um which generally takes a long time um and give you a copy then um if you want to email me or email your own he can get it to me absolutely melin yeah melin says i get a lot of my news from you on um yeah it's a lot be careful yeah be careful absolutely uh let's see i'm definitely biased um towards being objective i guess michael says uh do you think a job could be fulfilling even if the job itself may not be do you think a job could be fulfilling even if the work itself may not be for example i love my job because of the flexibility it allows in my life but that doesn't sound fulfilling that sounds like it's a it's serving certain convenience and there's value to convenience but fulfillment from your job is a different thing from i did it i got paid for it i did it well enough that i was a miserable the whole time but that's not fulfilling fulfilling is a positive good it's a you know a positive experience of of gain actually of like of that was a worthwhile way to have spent my time and worthwhile not just for the kind of least possible reasons which sounds like the convenience thing um could could be based more on that kind of a standard yeah and and i think i think it's a it's it's it's a problem if it's if it's gives if it's just about the flexibility in life you know if we get so much of our self-esteem and our happiness from fulfillment at work be way you're not giving up a greater value for lesser value it's it's something you really need to watch for and again that's different from what your real work is your your music composition and you're going home to do that so this is great because it allows me to pay the bills i'm able to do it and still you know and i the hours are such that i still have good energy for my first love my passionate fulfilling work as a composer yeah so you still need a central purpose you still need something where you're being fulfilled through some form of work michael asks how do you think the government should be held accountable for forcing twitter to do their bidding in violating our rights so in kind of twisting the media's arm around these issues yeah yeah how they should be held accountable um i'm not quite sure actually but they should i mean they shouldn't do it it's atrocious that they do that kind of thing and they do um and they should be called out for it and we should be indignant and i rate that they it's like how dare they play the goddamn soviet union or china or contemporary russia because that is exactly what they're doing when they put pressure you know when they all you know play the pressure of whatever the carrot or the stick that they're you know or oh we'll take away your 230 protection or what have you it's despicable and it needs to be called out as such and any politician who defends it or goes down that line needs to be you know condemned in the harshest terms and and i think it could i mean imagine a world in which we're just sued the government for violating its rights so in which the supreme court would say you can't do this government you know you they have free speech you can't twist their arm you can't do that i don't think we live in such a world where the legal system would quite take that position but i think i think it would be nice for a company to try it it would be and the court i mean they've been pretty good on free speech issues in recent years not perfect by any stretch but they've been a largely free speech sympathetic court less so for commercial speech you know god forbid money be involved or something like that so it gets a little bit spicy but i think that's the legal remedy is is the victim the which in this case i think is the media is the media company needs to sue the government and and people are talking about congress can congress should investigate and so on but congress does it they bring out they bring they bring zuckerberg and they bring they bought the sea of twitter and they yell at them and they condemn them and they threaten to regulate them so congress is not like congress is better than the fbi congress can't investigate the fbi congress is the instigator of all this and then you have the zuckerberg saying regulate us well what i mean i feel for zuckerberg right no i mean there are reasons why it's understandable to do that but it's like that's how perverse this is a first amendment country right how perverse the whole universe of the first amendment and freedom of the press and all this has become but we've got to at least be pointing out these perversions as perversions as having nothing to do with the way it and you've got the executive branch presidents threatening media companies so i don't think i only think the courts can handle it because i think the other part and voters can handle it by voting these bastards out but because the branch is a governor all all part of it it's not like there's one branch of government that's that that is is free of it except the judiciary which doesn't have you know which can't reign in government it's the only one that can reign in the government and i think uh and this is something that i said in that talk that i gave on press freedom um we need to play up the analogy and not just analogy but the sameness of freedom of religion right wall of separation between church and state the two clauses in the first amendment that speak of freedom of religion the government must allow the free exercise of religion and not establish any religion not favor any religion right same goes for the proper understanding of the relationship between the press and the state we should have complete separation of press and state the government should do not a thing to interfere with the free exercise of the media publishing what they want to publish not publishing banning who they want to ban and and um free exercise and no establishment by giving special protections to this kind of journalist but i actually think i actually do think because at least at some level some people get that about freedom of religion i think there might be a little mileage to get out of playing up that similarity a proper similarity all right oops what did i do there miss that one okay so michael asks if you could ask rand a question about anything what would it be oh wow i need time to think about that just i'm just excited to thought of getting to talk to her you know just listen in i don't have to say anything i just i oh i don't know what i i know what lennard would ask him oh really what's that what do you think of my books what did i get wrong i i have no idea whatever to ask so i don't either the only thing is i will say earlier when we were talking about aging or maybe this was in relation to someone's question um but it's like how did she know so much so young yeah right it's like yeah you know when you're older you figure it out you got a lot more cut okay but you know this stuff like as a teenager where the hell did she get that and we had her she didn't have anybody to learn it right right yeah i mean what a genius i mean it's it's hard to keep it a contemplate it is all right uh let's see tera how is one to deal with a family that doesn't reflect one's own values for instance in the way dagny deals with jim and atlas shrugged is that a realistic way to deal with family um that relationship is so odd though because we see them mostly dealing with one another at work right because he's got the position that he has at the company you know you get a bigger family portrait with reardon and his family because he's sort of at the family events at holidays at thanksgiving and anniversary parties and stuff like that so even though obviously it's her brother i've never i never get the sense from uh dagney she's doing anything because he's my brother she's cutting them slack or something because he's my brother something like you know in the same way that we see that with reardon um so in that sense i'm a little what's the family thing there i mean i'll just say about family figure out what you do you know especially as an adult figure out what you do and don't value about given individuals in your family and if there are positives that really are positives um to having a certain kind of relationship you know with a sibling or a parent or whomever it might be great don't feel some inherent duty or obligation out of family as if it's this platonic ideal family or family is an intrinsic value and one must uphold family a lot of our families will tell us that that's baloney um but there there are some good people in families or you know some people who have some real uh redeeming virtue tell me but it's not automatic no no it's not right richard uh richard asks uh terai struggle understanding psychopistemology and sense of life how do you define them uh um yeah it's late for that kind of question yeah uh psychopistemology again i gave not an exact definition but what she says is that it concerns the sort of subconsciously automatized interplay of your conscious thoughts about something and your subconscious um it's in the i'm pretty sure it's in the introduction to objectivist epistemology where she lays that out a little bit more um i'm sure Leonard talks about it in opar so you could there are places you could go to get more explained it's a hard con i mean these are not the easiest concepts in the uh you know in the objectivist lexicon okay sense of life um i gave a three-part series on sense of life at an ocon several years ago i think it's called to imagine a heaven so you might want to listen to those um tapes of those because i i really try to chew the concept a lot now there she talks about that mostly in the romantic manifesto in some of the early essays in that book um and i'm forgetting the exact definition but it's a kind of emotional appraisal she says which is you know it's an appraisal yet it's an it's a sense of life so it's not a considered conviction it might be compatible or incompatible with some of your considered convictions right but it's a sense of life sort of an emotional take on life but that encompasses your values your stance toward values um again a lot more to say on that i'm sorry i'm not articulating or remembering it all very well right now but um it's in the aesthetics that she talks about it the most and again i really do wrestle with it and i think make a lot more progress um than i just did in that course to imagine a heaven you know one way that i think i've uh thought about it and sort of shorthanded it in the past and in there is it concerns your sense of what's real what's important and what's possible um i'll just leave you that as a as a teaser shall we say yeah and in addition to this course i would highly recommend a romantic manifesto she talks a lot about sense of life that's where she really i mean really digs into that concept yeah and then we're having these courses on psychopistemology i really like yes that's good and am i right in thinking that on cars essay i think there's an essay by on car gate in the companion to iran in which he talks about sense of life a little bit it's not that the whole article is on sense of life but i think sense of life is one of three kind of pillars of objectivism that he talks about yeah i think that's right yeah and as usual that's as usual of on car it's really good all right michael says even though both israel and ukraine have been on the defensive during times of war do they still deserve criticism for using conscription yeah i'm still vile anyway it's yeah no it's not like well you know if you're admirable on scores a b and c then that just erases errors that are errors let's see vandy asks favorite restaurants in austin many um depends on what you like depends on how much you want to spend i mean i don't know where to begin they're just i mean there are many many that i love like i don't tell me what the kind of thing you're looking for um daidue is one that i like very much da i d u e daidue um vest bio is a good italian place foreign and domestic is a good neighborhood place um everyone tells me about this red ash that i haven't been able to get a reservation to that's supposed to be fabulous is one of the you know but we've got the restaurant scene has come on big time and i'd be happy to collaborate you should ask ron avne yeah the foodie who keeps a handy list of his favorites all over the world any city in the world you want ron has and he's a professional foodie in that he owned or co-owned some restaurants in his time so yeah yeah all right melvin says how did you become a football fan and why the new york giants i grew up in new jersey which helps explain the giants uh it was just sort of in the family uh you know growing up my father was a big football fan and and sunday dinner was organized around what time the giants game was that day you know because it was also an italian mother so you had your midday meal but not if the giants were playing at that time and so so i mean i was right i mean it wasn't that i was expected to watch football or like football but i did you know um but it was just there so but i think it's easier with sports in a certain way if you're raised on them or if it's in the cult like it's in your immediate culture in the family in the household i think it's easier to take to certain sports that way because you just gradually learn more about them too but i liked it a lot from early on um and my father was a big football fan high school college and pro and yeah we lived in new jersey and he had giants tickets that his father had gotten when the giants first got off the ground so you're not going to take those giants away all right they're actually the longhorns have a game in a few minutes so we do have to keep our eyes on them yes all right so alamo bowl tonight we will try we will try to random mine is there at the alamo bowl so look for beautiful y'all on espn where's the alamo bowl in uh san Antonio you know hook them horns um all right landon so we'll make these the last four questions so we can let her go and enjoy the football game they uh the co-worker from uh the one who was a communist who said about the farmers oh yeah the first farmer was selfish and did it to get ahead of his fellow man um he says i wish i recorded it sound straight out of anthem but i mean like as if to be so as if that's what it is to be selfish to get ahead of the other guy who cares about the other guy i want to make an i want to be secure i want to go to bed and not have to worry about the more right like i want to be more secure more safe more comfortable i want what's good for me that's the selfish mentality not but i want to best this other guy yeah michael uh terra are you an optimist do you agree with your on uh then in 20 to 30 years i don't know if i said it quite this way we will be living in a much more individualistic west than i ran will finally become a serious name among academia in 20 to 30 years um you don't have to agree with that i don't i don't agree with that it's not that i distinctly disagree with that i'm i'm skeptical of that that within 20 or 30 years we're gonna have that i i tend to think not of that i don't think that now am i an optimist or a pessimist i'm an optimist against my better judgment no i'm an optimist i think i'm a realist you know i don't think it's a diluted or just ignoring i can i will at least be this honest i want to be an optimist um what i am and i just i think we've got reason going for us or i mean obviously we've got we've got everything that i'm right yep i mean we're talking about capital we don't we don't we not only have all the benefits of advanced capitalism we've got iron ran with whom to better understand it and all but beyond that um i mean we've got like reason has too much going for it and for all of excuse me the jerks who praise you know pre-farming civilization i just think life has too much and there's too much that too many people enjoy about life or get about life even if they don't get it consistent even if they don't live it consistently life is just in human life it's incredibly wonderful and a lot of people at least in pockets of their lives get that and they don't give that up and that's why you see all these you know chock full of contradiction people but um eh i think life is too damn good that people will let it go and i really am i mean this isn't just a story it's like oh no i do think so i think it's going to take longer than 30 years yeah but i think we could i mean i don't think it's going to take forever either um i think it's within yeah yeah michael us asked what's the worst experience you've had with a student or colleague when they discovered you an objectivist ah i'd rather not talk about it um uh with some colleagues but yeah yeah sorry um in some sense i feel like i shouldn't talk about it so i'm not going to i'm sorry but um but yeah past history yep i appreciate your interest so i don't mean yeah mark asks what school of psychology comes close to applying objective principles i don't know enough about psychology truly um so you know i'm an amateur even though i say i'm you know dilly in psychology in this book i am an amateur i will say you know cognitive behavior theory seems to have a lot going for it but i've also heard from good sources that there are many you know from psychologists that there are many species within what is these days known as cognitive behavioral therapies some of which are much better than others and um as far as i know that's not like this even the best version of that is not the solution to all problems and so on but i'm sorry i really i just don't know enough about psychology all right so marius will end with the sports question um why is it not collectivistic to support a team in sport from the view of someone not interested in sports marius um it looks pretty tribal at times well i think you may be confusing a couple of things to support a team there's nothing i don't see anything the least bit collectivist about that why you support anybody or bodies in any activity forget about sport do you support the iron ran institute well there's a lot of people at work there is that a collectivist thing to do it's a team of people you know i mean uh you know it's a team or group of people who do all sorts of things so to endorse the success or to root for the success of some group that's doing something they're playing football they're trying to i don't know you know move the culture they're trying to put out a good newspaper whatever it might be there's nothing collectivist there now in the realm of sports are there some collectivists are there some tribalists are there some people who have and display very unhealthy reasons unindividualistic reasons irrational reasons for supporting things doggie dog kind of yeah there's a lot of that but that doesn't mean that that's a that is not i think a necessary part of the games the sports themselves or the fandom of them and you know you you should try to one should try to be clear about what it is that one supports and what does one not support in a given sport but yeah and your election fandom is on youtube right um that's a weird anyway i've given a couple of lectures on sport one is about what's it called what are we cheering um sport and the value of valuing or something like that um so i get there are a couple of lectures that i gave at okons so that should be available through the way you can get past okon lectures there's another one i gave on the value of admiration in sport there are also printed versions in journals of both of those so actual lectures and there's a third one too in print that i didn't give as a lecture and that one has to do with um some of the similarities and differences between art and sport some of them it's not like a thorough comprehensive thing but yeah what are we cheering is the one that i think you're referring to yep so it might be up on relevant to the question so definitely try to find it well this has been uh this has been a lot of fun thank you it's been a lot of fun thank you it's been such a long time sure you're you're a good company you're a nice you're very nice to talk with all these people who i can't see thanks a lot for asking questions good very good new a very good new year old yes have a fantastic new year and um i will see you in austin in a few weeks yeah that'll be that'll be great too okay excellent good thanks a lot okay