 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is The Iran Book Show. All right, everybody, welcome to the Iran Book Show on this Monday night, just eight here, 8 p.m. in Puerto Rico. And 7 p.m. east coast time. Thank you all for joining me. I really appreciate it, second show in one day. So this is kind of the new format. Again, new format we're experimenting with won't launch until really December. But here we are, two shows in one day. So we'll see if on this small scale experiment, if this works or not, and whether there is appetite for this or not, hard to tell. We'll keep trying and experimenting and seeing. YouTube says live in 19 minutes. That was 19 minutes ago. No, YouTube, it's live now. I don't know why YouTube is saying that. We're live now, right here, right? Jeremy says, greetings from OC, but a different district than Porter's. Well, that's good, but bad, because you didn't get a chance to vote against her. Can you guys hear me? Can you guys hear me? Anybody on the chat? Can you let me know that this is actually being communicated? Because somebody said, YouTube said, yes, all right, cool. All right, so as you know, we've launched these new programs in the Iran Book Show. We're going to do new shows in the morning. That at least is the plan for December, and then do more in-depth longer shows in the evening. They might not be as long as some of our old shows were because we'll have covered some of the news in the morning, so we'll see how it all works out, and we'll see what kind of topics you'd like us to delve deeper into in the evening. I picked conspiracy theories today. I was thinking about conspiracy theories versus YB model. So we'll see. I want to get into much more discussion of objectivism and of morality and ethics in the evening shows, many more shows like Yuan's Rules for Life, although, again, those are not chosen necessarily the most popular, but they're the ones I want to do. We'll see if the market will adjust to me or not. We will see. All right, also curious how many of you are going to watch me morning and night? I see Frank is here and he was there in the morning. Grant, thank you. $50 support is very, very appreciated. We're still running the same goal for the evening show, $650, the morning show, $250. There'll be few, I think, evening shows, is probably the case. Maybe Monday, Wednesday, Thursday when we all balance it all out, or maybe one on the weekend and two during the week. Again, I'm just not sure yet. I want to see how all this plays out and how it all works. Of course, part of the thing that I'll make this really work is lots of questions from you that's really, at the end of the day, what this is about. I can pick topics, and that's kind of my preferences, and I'll pick the topics that interest me and things I want to talk about. But at the end of the day, you get to decide what else I can talk about or what else you want me to talk about by asking questions. And we've already got three of those lined up right here after we talk about conspiracy theories. And of course, I encourage you to ask questions about the topic we are going to be discussing. We are going to be debating. So not debating, I'm not debating anybody, but the topic I'm going to be discussing with you. So that is going to be important. I did see a tweet today that it's not quite a conspiracy theory. It's not a conspiracy theory, but it is a little scary. So I thought I'd share this tweet with you. Let me just find it quickly. It's my good friend, Yoram Khazani, who I've debated on national conservatism and who is, of course, a national conservative. He, by the way, just did a interview with John Peterson. I haven't watched that yet. I will be watching it and hopefully, Annaly bringing to you sections of it so we can talk about it. But he did tweet something today. Here it is. Here's the ultimate conspiracy theory, if you will. The thing that you should really be afraid of. This is what Khazani tweeted 13 hours ago. He said, orthodox religions, traditions. Remember, let me just say this again. Yoram is super smart, intelligent, well-read. He's Red-Eyed Rand. He says he likes Sein Rand, his kids, his orthodox kids of Red-Eyed Rand. Super smart, again, studied history, knows his history, knows the Enlightenment. He knows, says he spoke capitalism. All of that stuff. All of that stuff. And this is what he tweets. Orthodox religious traditions. Christian and Jewish are the only thing that will survive the blast furnace of ongoing cultural revolution. Make sure you're on the right side of the struggle. Orthodox religious traditions, Christian and Jewish, are the only thing that will survive the blast furnace of the ongoing cultural revolution. Make sure you're on the right side of the struggle. I mean, I'll just, just the first thing that comes to my mind is really, you think the Jews are going to survive this? You really think that when the Christians win, when they dominate countries like the United States and Europe, if there really is this revival of Christianity, they're going to go hug and embrace and be best friends with the Yarmulke-wearing Orthodox Jews? In what universe does that exist? If Christians, Orthodox religious tradition, it's a religious tradition of murder of Jews. It's a religious tradition of anti-Semitism. It's a religious tradition of conspiracy theories regarding all kind of stories about Jews and the things that they do late at night in dark in their relationship with the devil. So really, if the Orthodox Christians win, and when I talk about the moderate Christians, if only father type Christians, no, no, no, Orthodox religious traditions. And then of course, if he's right, and this is the, this is the thing, Yom Khazani's prediction is consistent with Lenin Pekov's prediction, is consistent with what I've been warning you. This is, this is the prediction that is very likely to come true. Of course, Lenin Pekov does not recommend that you make sure you're on the right side of the struggle. I mean, really, so if the Orthodox religious traditions, Christian and Jewish, are the only thing that will survive the blast furnace of the ongoing cultural revolution, and say goodbye to freedom, certainly say goodbye to liberty, and say goodbye to the pursuit of happiness, in other words, in other words, and this turns upside down the whole worldview of Yom Khazani, say goodbye to our moral life, say goodbye to morality, say goodbye to be able to pursue your values. Say goodbye to being able to pursue a rational life, say goodbye to be able to pursue a life of reason, say goodbye to be able to pursue a life of virtue, as a rational being understands such a concept, no. If the other extra religious traditions are going to win, they will decide what virtue is, they will decide what morality is, you will follow orders, you will follow commandments, you will do as you're told. There is no freedom, there is no liberty, and therefore there is no morality. Commandments are not morality. Being forced to do what you're told is not morality. Following dogma is not morality. No, this isn't some mild form of religion we're talking about here. We're talking about Orthodox religious traditions. The past, none of this watered down pro-enlightenment Christianity, none of this watered down enlightenment Judaism. No, we're talking about all out. Go back to the source, the brutality of the old and New Testament. Do it right. So now this is, and Khazani is the moderate. Khazani is the moderate, you know, the national conservatives led by Khazani have split from the integrationalists because the integrationalists believe that the national conservatives are too moderate. The Patrick DeNines, the Vimouls, the Sahaba Mawis of the world, oh no, they're not going to be as nice and as pleasant and as friendly as Yoram Khazani is. They take the Orthodox religious traditions seriously, they don't putz around. Anyway, I thought I'd brighten your day with that tweet from Khazani, but we'll talk more about it as we're going to have to dig into the integrationalists and dig in. Suppose the DeNine has a new book coming out, which I'll have to get a positive book. These past books have been integralists, thank you, Thomas, not integrationalists, that would be good, integration. See, I'm too benevolent. It's integralists, integralists who are Catholics and who are integralists. This is a Catholic theological term. So the integralists, we'll have to do a show on them, DeNine has a new book coming up presenting a positive view of what they believe because all this past work and the big criticism against the integralists has been that they have only focused on a criticism of liberalism, a criticism of the left, a criticism of Republicans, of conservatives, and they've never presented a positive, a positive God. I mean, Scott has the audacity, the irrationality, the insanity of saying at the end of what I just said and after that tweet, he has the, I don't know, I guess the suicidal instinct of saying, this is a direct quote from the chat, let's help Chazzoni then. Because there's a worst enemy, because there's somebody even worse than Chazzoni, we should help Chazzoni even though Chazzoni wants to lay the foundation, lay the yellow brick road or the red carpet, however you, whatever metaphor you want, for the other side. He's a moderate. He's a moderate. He just said that religion is going to dominate the world. He just said that the culture was upon us and religion in its orthodox traditionalist, that is, that is moderate, are you insane? The fact that somebody is even worse than you are doesn't make you a moderate. I mean, sorry, but this mentality that Scott illustrates here, it drives me nuts. It drives me nuts. It drives me crazy because this is how we lose. Let's sell our souls to the lowest bidder. Let's sell our souls to anybody who, who mows the woods. I don't know. I don't even know what words they are because Chazzoni is so bad. I would rather have, I would rather have a center left any day. I would rather have a center left world. No, my ally, if that's the standard, my ally is, is I don't know, I'd rather live in California than live in Chazzoni's world. By a long shot, maybe I should go volunteer for the governor of California's, are you insane? Do you know what it means to live in a theocracy? Even a moderate theocracy? Do you care about your personal liberties? Do you care about freedom? Do you care about your life? Do you care about your mind? Do you care about what you can read and what you can say and what you can do? Do you care about liberty and freedom? Do you even know what those mean? Do you only need to sell your soul down to a moderate religionist who wants to do away with freedom and liberty in the name of what? Because oh my God, I'm afraid of the more extremist. All right, let's switch to conspiracy theories and much more, much nicer. Sorry guys, but that pissed me off. Sometimes I get really angry. That made me really angry. I'm still really angry. Scott is still here and I'm still really angry at Scott, but not at Scott. Just at Scott. I'm angry at the whole approach, at the whole mentality that thinks that religion is benign, that tradition is benign, that orthodoxy is benign, that just a little bit of authoritarianism is benign. All right, since this is on topic and it's $50, I'm going to take James Taylor's question. He says, Jordan Peterson, just at Josh Hawley and Yom Khozonian, it's like he's priming his audience for fascism. He's having a lot of guests on, lady. I think there is a good likelihood Jordan will have you on. He won't have me on. His daughter had Alex Epstein. He might have Alex on, but he won't have me on. And he won't have me on exactly for the reason you are saying. I think you're absolutely right that he is priming his audience for fascism. He's priming his audience for the future of America. The future of America, in my view, is Josh Hawley. The future of America is the people who fall under the influence of Yom Khozonian. And this is a dark, dark America. This is an authoritarian America. This is a Putin's America. This is a, you know, this is a Jordan Peterson America. And it's not America of freedom. It's not America of liberty. It's not America, I think even Jordan Peterson would enjoy living under. So it's stunning, but yes, I think Jordan Peterson knows exactly what he's doing. He's cultivating the new right. He's cultivating the new right that's going to be in power. He senses where the winds are trending towards abandoning Trump, but not abandoning Trumpism, which means creating a much more intellectual Trumpism, which is where Yom Khozonian is. And it's where I think Jordan Peterson ultimately is and certainly where Josh Hawley is. And I think if you've seen Jordan Peterson in the last few months, the anger, the way he despises, I mean, what comes across is just that he hates, he really does, you know, hate the world. And it really is. It really is sad and, you know, and that's why there's no way Jordan would have me on, right? Because exactly because of that, right? Because why would he have me on if he's having Josh Hawley on? What's the common denominator? There is none. I would go on Jordan Peterson's show, but I don't think there's any chance he would have me. All right, so we're going to jump into conspiracy theories, quickly a reminder that I do take questions on the super chat and happy to answer them. I promise I'll try not to get as angry at you as I just did at Scott, but he asked for it. He deserves it. And I think he actually thrives on it. I think he actually likes it. It's what keeps him on the chat. Otherwise, what the hell is he doing here? He thinks I'm such an idiot and he thinks I'm so, you know, blind and I guess based on his comments, a coward, but yet he shows up if he shows. So he must like the abuse. So there's something about that. So let's, you know, let's talk about conspiracy theories a little bit. Because I think it's, conspiracy theories are interesting. You know, they seem to dominate our environment, there seem to be all around us. There certainly seem to be periods of time in which there are more conspiracy theories. There seem to be a rise in conspiracy theories over the last decade or so. Now I'm not sure that's actually true. So I've read a little bit of the research and some research suggests that actually there's no evidence of an increase in conspiracy theories. What there is evidence of is an increase of our exposure to conspiracy theories and that's because of the web and that's because of social media, that everything, that everything and everywhere, we have access to any stupid thing anybody says, we immediately get blown up in the media and it immediately gets blown up in social media in particular and we just see it. So it's unclear whether there actually are more conspiracy theories or less conspiracy theories is, you know, is, it's hard to tell. But the idea is that, again, from the research that I've read and hard to tell how accurate it is, that at least in America there seems to be a certain number of people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories, they shift from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory, that number doesn't increase that much, it fluctuates here and there but it doesn't increase that much. Now whether that is true or not, I don't know, you know, I'm not an expert in this field and I'm sure there's contradictory studies, there's all kinds of studies out there. I don't know, I'm going to lay out what I think makes sense from my perspective regarding conspiracy theories, why I think they appear, what purpose they serve and why some cultures, they seem to be more prevalent in some periods in history, I do think they're more prevalent in than others, right? So we will look at that. So first what is a conspiracy theory? Conspiracy theory is different than a conspiracy or theory about a conspiracy. There are plenty of conspiracies, lots of conspiracies in the world. What conspire to do bad things, and conspiracy theories generally have to do with bad things or at least with deception, are conspiracies all the time. Certainly something like Watergate was a conspiracy. You know, I'm sure Obama and his people conspired for a long time to pass the Obamacare Act and I'm sure Donald Trump right now is conspiring with his minions to figure out how to run a proper presidential campaign and talking to a lot of people in a lot of different places. So there are conspiracies, that is people getting together to plan something out in a sense in secret without letting people know deception might be involved but to achieve a particular goal, to achieve influence. It involves actions that are illegal. Sometimes it just involves manipulating the system in a way that gets you what you want. And in that sense, again, there are conspiracies all the time. Some conspiracies are illegal conspiracies and the government gets involved. Mafia and others engage in conspiracies all the time. And you can have a theory about a conspiracy. You could think, you know, I think this and this and this is happening. I think the Clinton campaign is coordinating with the FBI about going after Donald Trump. And if you have evidence for that, if you have evidence for that, if there's some reason that that might be true or if there's some indication or there's some thing you can point to that suggests that that is true, then it's a theory about a conspiracy and there's nothing wrong with that. The key there is evidence. The key there is reasonableness, which comes from evidence. On the other hand, you know, what is a conspiracy theory? And again, don't think of this as a theory theory. That is, here I think conspiracy theory means one thing that is the combined terminology. This is not a theory about a conspiracy. This is a conspiracy theory, which has in our common usage come to me. An explanation for an event that involves a conspiracy that is unmoored from reality, that is not where there is no evidence, where there is no facts are supported, that is unreasonable in that it is detached from reality, detached from the evidence, detached from facts. I don't know, there are lots of conspiracy theories that some of them are just blatantly false, so it's easy to deal with. But basically, they have to do with the fact that there's a group of people out there who want influence, who want to control your life, and part of the way they control your life is by feeding you false information. Feeding you false information. Or by making you think that something happened when it did not. Or that something is true when it is not. The most obvious of this is the flat earth conspiracy theory. The powers to be, want you to believe the earth is round. I think there are a number of explanations for this. They want you to believe, for example, that the earth is not the center of the universe, that the earth goes around the sun, that the earth is in that sense round, but it's not, it's actually flat, and it is the center of the universe, and the sun does go around it, and they come up with a bizarre physics to explain it all and to explain why this is. And again, the reason why you are told this falsehood, the reason why you are told this falsehood, the reason why you study it, the reason why you learn it is to diminish the centrality of the human race and the world in the universe. It's a leftist conspiracy to undermine God, basically. Started a long time ago, I guess. And of course, the flat earth conspiracy is a ridiculous absurd, it's a joke, but it's not that people actually believe this to the extent that you can believe such nonsense or to the extent that that is even, in any sense, cognition. There are people who advocate for this, who talk about it, who say it, who argue for it, and so on. Another similar conspiracy in the sense that it takes a piece of information that says everything you've been told about it is wrong. And it's wrong, again, because we want to control you, we want to pretend that we're better than we really are. And a good example there is the pretend that we're better than we really are, that the authorities or that the people. Remember, conspiracy theories arise out of a deep skepticism of any and all authorities or any and all experts, any and all knowledge, knowledge that is acceptable by people. So for example, the moon landing hoax. I don't know if you've heard about this, but there's a whole conspiracy theory out there that there was never any, they never landed on the moon, who weren't capable of landing on the moon. It's all American propaganda to try to make the US greater than it really is. It started in 1976, self-published book called, We Never Went to the Moon, America's $30 billion swindle. All that NATO money went into somebody's pocket. Maybe the Elders of Zion pocket will get to that conspiracy theory later. And in 1978, there was a movie, Capricorn One, in 2001 there was a Fox documentary, because conspiracy theory, did we land on the moon? It actually gave these idiots airtime. Now, there are millions of people who have debunked this. It's just stupid to even think about debunking it, but one of the things that makes conspiracy theories interesting, but easy to detect, easy to detect, is conspiracy theories attribute to the powers to be unbelievable efficaciousness. The powers to be are really good at what they do. They can fool you into thinking we went to the moon when we did not. They can create whole illusions, like the Earth is flat when the Earth is round, and convince you of it, and cover the truth up efficiently and effectively. So these elites that we don't trust, that we don't believe in, that we don't like, these experts, these university professors, whatever, they are unbelievably effective. Or the government that we think is corrupt and insane and inefficient and horrible in every respect, but when it comes to the conspiracy that I favor, they are amazingly good at hiding it, at deceiving you that it doesn't exist. And that's one of the characteristics, is it associates unbelievable abilities and capabilities to people who otherwise were pretty skeptical about their ability to do pretty much anything. So there's a bunch of these. Of course, QAnon is the latest. It assumes there's a whole Democratic Party apparatus that is amazingly efficient at abusing kids and children. And of course, there was such a apparatus, so it wasn't exactly the Democratic Party. But it was, you know, what's his name? The guy who had the island and who committed suicide, or maybe was killed, who knows, this conspiracy theory about that as well. But it wasn't the kind of conspiracy that gave it political incentives. Almost always, this is Epstein, there's almost always a political good versus evil, my camp versus your camp. And of course, political conspiracy theories are not unique to the left or the right. They are shared by both sides. The irrationality is not limited to any particular side. QAnon on the one hand, but on the left, you have all kinds of conspiracy theories about who runs the world, the Brandenburgs and the elders of Zion. Of course, left and right, I mean, when it comes to conspiracy theories, they often share the same conspiracies. Because in terms of running the world, both left and right share the conspiracy theory, not all left and right, but the people who are engaged in conspiracy theories, almost all share the conspiracy theory that it's Jewish bankers or bankers or the Rothschilds or the billionaires, or something like that that is associated with it. And Jews seem to pop up in every single conspiracy theory from Kanye West to 9-11 conspiracies. I mean, notice the 9-11 conspiracy theory suggests that the Bush administration was super effective and efficient, not only to blow up the buildings themselves, but to arrange for the airplanes to fly into them at the same time so they could pin it on the Muslims, wasn't their fault. And of course, they were unbelievably efficient. Everything happened just according to plan. And then they managed to cover it all up so that they basically convinced 99.95% of all the civil engineers in the world that the way the towers collapsed was actually feasible and actually the result of the airplanes going into those buildings. All of this was so beautifully orchestrated, they are so effective that it's unbelievable how good the Bush administration is at planning, organizing, and executing a complex operation. They can't take over Iraq properly. They can't execute a war in Afghanistan. But they can pull a 9-11 off seamlessly, beautifully. Oh, no, they did it so that they could invade Iraq, so they could go up to Saddam Hussein, so they could get retribution for their father, he did it for his father. You know, Saddam Hussein had a hit on, this is not a conspiracy theory, but it is a conspiracy. Saddam Hussein actually hired Hitman to kill George Bush Sr., so this was revenge. It's for the oil. Don't you know the Bush family really secretly? Don't tell anybody, please. I don't want to spread false accusations. But they really control the oil in Iraq, so the whole war was there so that they could get control over the oil. And of course, nobody knows that, there's no paper trail, only I know it. Maybe a few Iraqis. But funnily enough, the Iraqis don't know it, and the Iraqis government doesn't know it, and the fact that Iraq gets all those revenues, they don't know it. So they did it for the defense contractors, they did it for something else, so they orchestrated the entire 9-11. And in 9-9-11, they put together for this. Of course, there was an alternative explanation for 9-11 because we don't actually believe the Bush administration is that good, is that efficient, is that smart. No, the much more credible explanation for 9-11 is that the Jews did it, the Mossad did it, that Israel did it, maybe with the cooperation of some people in Bush administration, maybe not, but they managed to hide it from anybody, they managed to plant bombs in all of the towers, they managed to collapse all the towers, again, for 99.5% of all civil engineers to believe that this was even possible, that the planes doing it caused it. Because they claim, of course, is that there's no way that a plane going into a building and that jet oil burning would actually cause the towers to collapse down. Their claim is that that is impossible, and they bring out the two civil engineers in the world who agree with them, and they fall all the rest, all the rest are completely fooled by it. And they have an explanation for tower seven, which is inconsistent with explanation, 99.5% of civil engineers have fought why it fell, it doesn't matter, but it's the Jews did it. This is, by the way, believed extensively in the Middle East, we'll get to the Middle East and conspiracy theories in a minute. So the Israelis and the Mossad are super efficacious. The Bush administration is super efficacious. And it's easier to blame it on the Mossad because the Mossad has this aura of invincibility. One of the reasons it has an aura of invincibility is because nobody advertises their failures. But if you read up about the Mossad if you really read up about Israeli intelligence, you discover that just like everybody else in life, they too have failed. They're not quite as invisible. Invincible. In all other conspiracies, Princess Diana's murder, it wasn't Fayad, it wasn't an accident, it was the world family, they were trying to get rid of her. It was King Charles, he wanted to marry this other woman. This was an easy way to get over the whole thing. Of course you've got GFK murder, so it's not the only murder that's that. You've got, oh, this is my favorite conspiracy theory because this is the only conspiracy theory that I was actually, I won't say I never bought into it, but I was actually engaged with that I can remember in my life. I don't know if you guys, I mean, you guys might be too young to remember this, but there's the conspiracy of Paul McCartney's death. So if you take, is it Sergeant Pepper or the White Album? If you take one of the albums of the Beatles albums and you put it on a record player and you, with your hand, spin it backwards, spin it backwards, right? Then what you hear is Paul is dead, Paul is dead. Now, you don't really hear Paul is dead, but if you expect to hear Paul is dead and you really focus on hearing Paul is dead, you will hear Paul is dead. And there's a bunch of other stuff about, you know, how they are walking over the crossroads in some of the album covers and there's a million, no, no, no, it's Paul McCartney. It's definitely Paul McCartney. It's not John Lennon. There's no conspiracy theory. John is really dead, but there's that established conspiracy theory that I, as a teenager, I remember actually doing that with the Beatles album, actually playing it backwards to hear Paul is dead, Paul is dead and Revolution Number Nine on the White Album, Mark says. And there's also clues in the different Beatles covers and this was a whole thing in the late 1970s, I remember, about Paul McCartney is dead, right? JFK assassination, of course, there were vast conspiracy theories there and we can talk about why it's, you know, there's, I think a big reason here is the fact that the government won't actually release all the documents about the JFK assassination. Why isn't the information just public? It's decades ago. There's no intelligence that can be sourced. I mean, it might make some people look bad, but who cares? It's a long time for now. So one of the things that feeds conspiracy theories is definitely the hesitancy of the authorities to disclose information and to be overly secretive and generally the tendency of the government to be overly secretive. There should be very few secrets in government, I've said this before, very few secrets in government. Government is our servant. It shouldn't withhold information from us. So the idea that some of the JFK documents have been redacted that many of them have not been released is just crazy, crazy, right? And there are a million conspiracies about JFK and I think because and particularly because it's such a big event because it's so unthinkable because the government has been so unwilling to disclose all the information that it has to what extent was Harvey Oswald involved with Phil and the Blank, Castro, Soviet Union, organized crime, CIA, Lyndon Johnson. I mean, my guess is he wasn't involved with any of them. My guess is that anybody's conspiracy around this is just that, just a conspiracy theory that is detached from reality, detached from facts. But there are some real questions that people have certainly about the motivation, particularly given that Harvey Oswald was killed so quickly. You know, there's maybe one of the more ancient conspiracy theories was the protocols of the elders of Zion. This is a document that was appeared in Russia in 1905 that describes how Jews were undermining small group of Jews, powerful Jews were undermining Christian morality, finance and health in an attempt to take over the world in an attempt to dominate the world. People as prominent supposedly as Henry Ford and Mel Gibson have in one way or another promoted this. Henry Ford paid to have half a million copies of the protocols of Zion published in, and of course the Nazis used this as part of their propaganda machine. So elders of Zion is one of the many, many, many conspiracy theories that involves Jews running the world or attempting to run in the world and attempting to corrupt all of you Christians and really being in league with the devil. It's the one conspiracy theory kind of broadly speaking that really pisses me off because why aren't they contacting me? I wonder if your Khazoni is part of it, but they haven't contacted me. So anyway, I'm kidding, it's a joke. But it's out there and when you listen to Kanye and you listen to others talk about the Jews and the power the Jews have and the Jews controlling the media and things like that, it echoes the protocols of the elders of Zion. It's just modernized, it's just in different format, but there's Jews are often in the middle of a conspiracy, often in conspiracy theories, particularly conspiracy theories associated with power and associated with wealth and associated with finance. In the 1980s and 90s, there was a conspiracy theory in the United States that actually had some horrific consequences. It was this idea that there were satanic forces all over the country that there were daycares at schools that they were abusing children. And Geraldo did a famous NBC special, Devil Worship, exposing Satan's underground. Satanic experts went out there and they found children who were willing to testify that they had been abused. A lot of this turned out to be false memories. There was a real panic. A lot of people's lives were destroyed. A lot of schools, people who ran schools. There's the famous case in 1983 of a panic around the MacMotton preschool in a trial. Parent accused the daycare owners of sexually abusing their son and it just got blown out. It took seven years, seven years before the daycare owners were finally acquitted and had the charges dismissed. One of them was jailed for five years. So conspiracy theories can really, I mean, they can become really nasty and really scary. And they can have real consequences in real people's lives. People like Jerry Springer and Geraldo capitalized on this the same way as today you get, what's his name? It was just ordered to pay a billion dollars to the parents of the school shooting because he claimed that it was apocline. They claimed that it never existed. It was a hoax. It was a conspiracy theory. I mean, this is happening around us. This is happening every day. Alex Jones. And of course, people like Scott will defend Alex Jones because hey, he's not the left. We should align with Alex Jones. His conspiracy theories all attack the left. So they're good. I mean, these are horrible people destroy lives, destroy people. All in the name of what? Making money for themselves and spreading falsehoods and disinformation and conspiracy theories and ugliness. I mean, there was maybe the most famous conspiracy theories before QAnon, a conspiracy theory that your favorite president, President Trump was heavily involved in spreading, heavily involved in it. And that was the, and this again, if a president of the United States is involved in a conspiracy theory or if somebody running for president is involved in a conspiracy theory, how can you vote for him? How can you vote for somebody who takes a falsehood and just repeats it and propagates it with no facts, no evidence, nothing? Well, that's what Trump did with Barack Obama's birth as a birtherism. He wasn't born in the United States. No, no, no, that birth certificate is fake. Where's the evidence? Any evidence? Any evidence? Anything to suggest that that's true? Now, as I said, conspiracy theories on both sides is plenty of conspiracy theories on the left. And you could argue that at least the catastrophizing of climate change is in a sense a conspiracy theory. There are no facts associated with it. There's no evidence. There's no science. I mean, they might be for climate change, but the catastrophizing of it, the hysteria, the panic, you could argue that population bomb was a conspiracy theory. Remember COVID and 5G? That was a beauty. That was a beauty. If the Chinese were spreading COVID through the 5G network, don't install 5G because it's spreading COVID. So let's step back a minute and ask kind of the question. Why? Why do we have conspiracy theories? Why are they so popular? Or at least why are they popular? I don't know, so. But why are they popular? Why do they exist? And I think they exist for the same reason in a sense that religion exists. They exist because people need explanations. And reality is complicated. It's complex. And real explanations can be complex. And real explanations are often not satisfying. Real explanations don't fit maybe into a particular tribe of views of a particular political worldview. But it's also true that things happen that we don't have explanations for. Particularly in a pre-science era, we lived during thousands and thousands of years. Human beings lived in a pre-scientific era in which we didn't know what the hell was going on around us. But we needed explanations. We needed to know why. We needed to have a theory. And of course, religion stepped in. In a sense, we needed philosophy. We needed explanations for the very basic knowledge that we have. And then we needed explanations for the concrete events that happened around us. And if there's no science, as there wasn't, then you come up with all kind of bizarre explanations and you could go back to Middle Ages and God, all these superstitions and all the pseudo-scientific stuff, I mean, they all, in a sense, explanations, even if they're not based on anything, no facts, no evidence, they're all, in a sense, conspiracy theories. But man needs to understand. And when you have an educational system and a world that does not value reason, that does not necessarily value evidence, that does not necessarily value facts, a world that is not oriented towards evidence, again, reason, rational thinking, then trying to suddenly introduce rational explanations, trying to explain the complex history of Islam and why Islamic radicals would think that blowing themselves up and killing them in order to attack the United States and hopefully put a dent in its power, or even just the physics of why these buildings, if you look at the Twin Towers, why they so beautifully, beautifully, in quotes, collapsed so symmetrically, so in such an organized way when that looks like a controlled explosion. So what reality actually requires, what understanding the world actually requires is thinking. It's the conceptual faculty. And when people are not at the conceptual level, and when you don't trust the authorities, when you think the world is against you, when you think, when you're afraid, when you don't understand the world around you, and the people explaining things to you seem to be not interested in your interests, but that actually, and they actually scare you a little bit, then you revert to what we are without concepts and that's perceptual level. And conspiracy theories are perceptual levels mentality. It's the way a perceptual level mentality deals with the world. It's why so many people in the world out there think the world is a zero sum game. Just for example, there's a good conspiracy theory at the left that the world is a zero sum game, that we became rich by making Africans poor, by making Indians poor, by making Asians poor, whatever. That's insane. It's counter to all the evidence and it just doesn't explain the world because it's perceptual level. It's a need to explain, but an inability to do so. And the fact that the authorities, the smart people, the knowledgeable people, are not very good at explaining and when they do explain, so often, like after 9-11, so often they lie to us, so often they deceive us. Bush, for example, refusing to name the terrorists as Islamic. So the why is we need explanations. And we need them to be simple. If you're not very smart or if you're not conceptual, which is not being smart, if you're at the perceptual level, the explanation better be simple. It's much simpler to say the Bushes did it for money. The Jews did it for power than to say, well, these ideologies in the world and they're struggling for dominance and the one wants to exert its influence of the other and these poor people who have nothing and yet are radical religionists are willing to commit suicide in order to achieve this goal. It's just not as tight, not as nice. I don't know anybody who wants to commit suicide. I don't know anybody who wants to do jihad. I mean, this sounds nutty to me. Now, who is susceptible to conspiracy theories? And so who is susceptible? I think people who hold a primacy of consciousness perspective, people who reality is not a reference. People's opinions are a reference. Emotions are a reference. They're all subjective emotions are a reference. Perceptions are a reference. And in that sense, in that sense, the people most susceptible to conspiracy theories are religious. People who are religious are the most susceptible to conspiracy theories because they've already bought into the biggest conspiracy theory ever. It's all God's doing and explanation for everything. It's the neatest, most effective conspiracy theories in all of history. Why did this happen to me? God did it. Why? Who knows? God has his reasons. They're good reasons. He cares about you. He loves you. He's killing you. He's killing your kids. But he loves you. Why is he killing you and your kids? You'll find out and it's all good for you because this is out of love he's doing this. I mean, God, has there ever been a more horrible conspiracy theory than that? So it's religious people that are most susceptible. You know the region and the world or the nationalities where they are the most conspiracy theories? I'm curious if everybody can guess where in the world you have the most conspiracy theories? I mean, there are conspiracy theories everywhere. Every culture has it because every culture has primacy of consciousness. Every culture has its mysticism. Every culture has its form of religion. But which culture has the most, the most virulent, the most powerful, the most prevalent, the most dominant conspiracy theories? Yeah, it's not the United States. It's the Middle East. It's the Middle East. By the way, Daniel Pipes has written one of Daniel Pipes' books is all about conspiracies in the Middle East. And it derives from their religiosity. It derives from their acceptance already of theories, explanations for the world that are devoid of evidence. Once you accept that explanations are possible for things without evidence, there's no limit. There's no limit to the conspiracy theories you can absorb. And of course this is why conspiracy theories are so prevalent among evangelicals. So among Americans, they're much more prevalent among evangelicals who even among the Christians are the least rational. Evangelicalism is a much more emotional connection to God. It rejects kind of the Catholic attempt to use logic and rationality in dealing with theology. So you have among evangelicals this is where QAnon has thrived. They're very susceptible to conspiracy theories because they've already accepted. Emotions is a tool of cognition. They've already accepted explanation after explanation after explanation of events in the world that they preachers tell them about with no evidence, no facts, no explanation, no real explanation, no explanation connected to reality and proven logically. Logic is irrelevant among evangelicals and the more mystical evangelical, the more susceptible they are to conspiracy theories. So you have to have a privacy of consciousness. Primarily I'd say this is religionists. Of course, the left also has its versions of privacy of consciousness which often impact them in the same way and encourages them or makes them open to being susceptible to conspiracy theories. And of course, I think it also requires a certain lack of self-esteem, a lack of efficaciousness when it comes to reason and rationality. It comes from a certain fear of the world because one can't explain it. It is a search to reduce your fear through quote explanations. It's a search by people who are fearful of reality because they've rejected it. They're fearful of reality to see order in the universe. We want order. We want explanations. We want to understand. And conspiracy theories provide that order. They provide explanations. Oh, I see why Trump lost. How could Trump lose? He's the greatest president all of human history. Americans, all Americans know this. So how could he ever lost? Well, because the power is to be Democrats, Jews, the operators of voting machine companies, whatever, conspired to cheat. That's the explanation. Because I can't explain it otherwise. If he's the greatest of all time, which is already a delusion, then they must have cheated. There's no other possibility. All right. Yeah, I mean, just as religion is a primitive form of philosophy, conspiracy theories are primitive form of explanations, but they're not really explanations. They're just mythology. They just pretend. They just make belief. They're made up, all of them, from pizza gate to Russia gate to QAnon to all of these other ones, to election denialism. And often, by the way, often there are people in the chain of a conspiracy theory who know it's false and who purposefully spread it because it gives them power, because it gives them the ability to explain themselves to the people. I mean, Trump knows he lost. He knows it. He told people in his staff that he lost. He couldn't explain it. But he realized that this elaborate conspiracy theory about voter fraud would explain to his people why he lost, could justify his loss, and could even justify it in his own mind. And it's quite possible that he repeated itself often enough and he told it to enough people that he started to believe it. I wouldn't be surprised if he ultimately believed it. But suddenly, he didn't believe it initially. Suddenly, or at least there's plenty of evidence to suggest that he knew he had lost. He was surprised by it, but he knew he had lost. All right, let's see if there are questions related to conspiracy theories. Okay, Jason says, I don't care when I ought to, but there were reasons to think Obama was born in Kenya. It seems like Obama waited long time to release his signed birth certificate. What do you think Obama was playing at? Didn't this embolden Trump? Shouldn't embolden Trump? Somebody else asked about this. Oh, you did. You also said Obama, Harvard Law Review. First African-American president was born in Kenya. Is it print interview with half-brother? So why would Obama wait? Well, because why... I mean, I don't know. First, what do I know? I don't know Obama. I don't know what he was waiting for. But I think, A, why not allow the conspiracy theory to keep going? I think he benefited from it. I don't think it hurt him. I think it showed certain Republicans to be the idiots that they were and noticed that Trump didn't stop with the Buddhist thing once their birth certificate was produced. Then there was conspiracy theories about how it was produced. It was fake. It was this. You couldn't find the original. When people, journalists and other people actually went and they found the original and they displayed it, they corroborated it. I mean, this was not a secret. Anybody could have gone to Hawaii to check this out. And people did. And they found out that he was indeed born in Hawaii. So I don't think Obama had any reason to play into, in a sense, the conspiracy theories hand by rushing to get the birth certificate. And by the way, that wouldn't have stopped anything. But at the end of the day, anybody who looked at it, there was zero evidence. And when everybody looked at it and there was zero evidence, it didn't stop the conspiracy theories from continuing. It didn't make one difference because that's, again, conspiracy theories are not about facts, not about reality. I can pull out, and this is the thing about it, I can pull out, you know, the best civil engineering from the best schools in the world who say, no, no, no, that's exactly how you'd expect the towers to collapse if a jet goes into them and the jet fuel burns, right? And the reason I give that as an example is because I'm a civil engineer, so I know a little bit about this. But, and it wouldn't matter one iota, not one iota to the people who hold the conspiracy theory. They would say, well, you're just part of the conspiracy. You're just lying. It's just not true. Here's my one expert who says it's not true. And they have to have an expert, somebody who's willing to say the stupid things that need to be said. They're usually not very credible. They're usually not very good. They're usually not professionally very respected. But you need somebody like that. So I just don't see what Obama's incentive was to go rush and get you the bus certificate or whatever it happened to be. So it was, it struck me as silly right off the bat. You know, if Obama wasn't born in the United States, the Constitution's pretty clear he can't run for president. They have to be mechanisms. Somebody must have done their due diligence before they allowed him to be nominated, even in the ineffectual Democratic Party. They're not that ridiculous. If I run for president, I won't last a week before somebody figures out I wasn't born in the United States. So, no, I just don't, I don't think there's any, anything to it or there ever was anything to it. All right, let's see. More conspiracy theories. One, two, three, four. Charles Butts says, is conspiracy theory like a scientific method which is limited to the hypothesis stage? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. And this is where we're not preparians. Scientific method is not about coming up with random hypotheses. Huh, I wonder what causes that. Okay, let me think about this. It's not how science works. You don't start with random thoughts. You don't start with something popping into your head. You don't start with just a hypothesis out of nowhere. The scientific method starts with facts, with observations about reality. Facts about what you're observing or what you're discovering or what you're going to hypothesize about. About the phenomena you're studying. And then from those facts, you see some connections. You see similarities and differences and you see some relationships. And from that, you in a sense induce a hypothesis which you then test. But the hypothesis is not random. It's not detached from reality. It's the opposite. The scientific method requires the true scientific method, not the one that they claim to practice today. Starts with reality and then it ends with reality because the confirmation has to be in reality. So things like, and here I'm a bit out of my league so maybe I'm wrong on this so a physicist can correct me if I'm wrong. But people just coming up with a string theory with no connection to reality. Not based on any facts. No observations. It's not real science. So all science begins with reality. It doesn't begin in the head of the scientist. This is part of the damage, I think, is my understanding a popper is. And I think from my reading of Deutsch, this is what they think. They think it starts in the head of the scientist and there's suddenly an element of primacy of consciousness there. Jonathan says, these are all $20 questions. By the way, less than halfway to $650. Hopefully we'll have some people stepping up. Thank you for all the $20 questions because that's great that you got us here. Please feel free to ask a ton of questions. We'll go as long as we need. Ask $20 questions, $50 questions, $100 questions, but it will be good if we got to the goal today or at least got close to it. So I encourage you to, particularly if you want to support this new format, if you want to show that it's workable, then we need to get to higher numbers. All right. Jonathan says, because it requires two or more collaborating partners, so definitely not monotheism. But I get the point. I think Jewish and Asian kids do well since they're not deluded with Santa developed a better grasp of reality. Maybe. I don't know if I want to blame, you know, to blame all of it on Santa Claus, but conspiracy requires two, yes, but the point is not that religion is a conspiracy theory, it's not per se, but it serves the same function as a conspiracy theory. It's a fact less detached from reality explanation of what is going on. And it subsumes everything else because it's so broad and so big. And by the way, one of the things that conspiracy theories will always say, conspiracy theory, the advocate will always say, is prove that I'm wrong. Prove that I'm wrong. And you can't. Because an important characteristic of a conspiracy theory is it's arbitrary. It has no facts. It's not connected to reality. The only time you can prove something wrong is he says, well, I mean, for example, I mean, then in 11 you can kind of prove wrong because you can show them that it's not actually, that it's not actually what do you call it, that the collapse is consistent with the jet fuel. But a lot of times I'll just have these, like the Q and on have these random explanations of things and you can't deal with the arbitrary. You can't prove a negative. And you can't, but you can't, it's more than just not proving an evidence. You can't deal with something that is detached from reality. It's unconnected to reality. It's arbitrary, it's not cognition. Yes, I use as my example that I often use prove there isn't an invisible gremlin under my desk. Prove there isn't a conspiracy of gremlins manipulating the behavior of world leaders. Where do you even start? You can't because there's no point of reference. There's no thing, there's no anything you can attach to. There's nothing you can connect to because there's no reality. Reality is being blown out of existence. So that's important. Wayne asks any evidence against conspiracy theory is by definition evidence of the conspiracy. Yes, they twist it that way. They will tell you any evidence of the conspiracy theory they'll twist it in a way to prove in their mind. No, no. See? That's just part of the conspiracy. You are part of the conspiracy. All right, Richard just put in $100, which is fantastic because that brings us much, much closer to the goal. Now we're only $200 short, so go for it guys. $200 is very doable, should be very doable. Richard said, I'm a big fan of the new format you're on. I have to go to bed soon to take an exam early tomorrow morning. But I look forward to listening to the rest of the show during the long drive. I love being able to wake up and listen to one of my heroes each morning. Thank you, Richard. I really, really, really appreciate it. That is terrific. Thanks for supporting the show. Thanks for supporting me. And I'm glad you're enjoying the new format and plan to enjoy the new format. So I will get to your questions in a little bit. So you'll have to hear the answers to the questions in the morning since you're going to bed now. Okay, let's quickly go down this. Ryan says, like the show, YouTube algorithm is no conspiracy. No, it's not. I mean, we all know there is an algorithm. We don't exactly know how it works. So to claim that we know it suppresses this or suppresses that or does a suppress. Some of that is anecdotal, but there's very little actual knowledge around that. Sam Harris conspiracy, free world does not exist. Every action is a result of antecedent factors. It's not exactly conspiracy for the same reason that an end God is in a conspiracy. It is a just a myth. It's just false. It's just a false. Not every false is actually a myth. It's actually conspiracy. Sorry. Let's see. I'm quickly looking at Frank says, can a conspiracy theory be a way to get justice? I don't see how. I don't see how. Again, you can get a virtue, which justice is by lying by deception by evading and distorting reality, which is what a conspiracy theory is. Jonathan says a big problem is that a few of the theories do come true. MK ultra operation northward Iraq weapons, but Iraq weapons of mass destruction was not a conspiracy. That is, Iraq weapons of mass destruction was an error. It was actually an error. They thought the weapons of mass destruction and they weren't there. That is not a conspiracy. So the fact that somebody is mistaken now and uses that mistake to do something that you think is wrong anyway. It's not prove a conspiracy. There is no conspiracy involving Iraq. They did it for a variety of reasons, all which are well understood. Some of which have, you know, I'm sure that Saddam Hussein, the fact that he tried to kill his Bush's father had some role in it. I'm sure that there are a lot of factors, but the main factor was ideological. The main factor was they wanted to bring democracy to the Middle East. The main factor was the neoconservative mythology, but that's an explanation. That's not a conspiracy. And they thought weapons of mass destruction were the smoking gun that provided excuse for it and they were wrong. Now I at the time said, who cares if they have weapons of mass destruction? Why does that matter? For example, I said, this is, I said in 2002 before the Iraq invasion, I said Syria, we know has weapons of mass destruction. When I was in the Israeli army, we trained against Syria's weapons of mass destruction. So should we invade Syria? Weapons of mass destruction was never a good reason to go to Iraq, was never a good reason to invade a country. So I'm not sure about these other ones. I don't know them, but in, yes, they are conspiracies. What was the conspiracy? I mean, the best one, I think some of the best ones are arms for hostages. I think arming the Nicaragua guerrillas under the Trump, there was certainly evidence to suggest that the CIA was trafficking cocaine in order to fund the guns. I mean, yeah, bad things, conspiracies really happened. The American government has done horrible things. They've assassinated leaders that they shouldn't have. They've traded in drugs when they shouldn't have. They've done horrible things, but none of those are conspiracy theories. They're based on facts. Reagan, not Trump. Did I say Trump? Sorry. Reagan was the arms for hostages deal. And arming Nicaragua guerrillas and, you know, there was the thing, what was it, recently under Obama, where it didn't like the Justice Department send weapons to drug dealers, weren't they? Shipping weapons to Mexico in some convoluted kind of attempt to, you know, to get them. But that was, yeah, I mean, they are conspiracies. People do bad things, but that's not the same. But Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, it's not a conspiracy theory. It never was. And it's not a conspiracy. It's just reality. The intelligence agencies got it wrong, as they often do. Johnson says Obama's mom was American, so it didn't matter. I think it does. I think you have to be born on American soil to be eligible to be president. I don't think it's enough to be an American citizen, which he would have been at birth, even if he'd been born outside of America. But I think, based on some interpretation, this is why one of the candidates on the Republican side, it was said, couldn't become president. Maybe it was Ted Cruz, because he was born outside of the country, like in Canada or something, even though his parents were American. I can't remember something like that. So there's some dispute about that question of whether you're born outside of the country. Even to an American parent, do you become eligible to run for president? Let's see. Colt says, I have to deal with the conspiracy theorists on the right and left makes me sad. I kind of feel bad for them in a way. They have a poor sense of life, very poor sense of life and very poor understanding of the world. I mean, you should feel sorry for them in a sense that they're afraid. They're miserable. They're looking for bizarre, weird, irrational explanations that can't be a good place to be in life. Can't be. Jupiter Manus says, at least he was aware. I don't know what you're referring to, Jupiter Manus. Sorry, I have no idea what that refers to. Okay. Oh, there's Jupiter Manus. Okay, you're asking a $20 question and this is a comment. All right. So he said, Jupiter said, nice meeting you and Jennifer before the debate in Akron. Yeah, it was nice meeting you. You kind of disappeared afterwards. But an aside, the student, a student asked me who you were. When I told him your philosophy, he threw a fit and left. He was aware of Ayn Rand and then you say, at least he was aware. Yes. But he took a fit and left his loss. And most of the students stayed. A few of them said they would, you know, watch a few of my, of the show, maybe subscribe. So we'll see. Although all last week I was losing subscribers. I'm still down subscribers. So something's going on. Maybe it's the algorithm. We can blame the algorithm for everything, right? That's a conspiracy theory. The algorithm did it. Whatever bad happens in the Iran book show, the algorithm did it. There's the Brooke conspiracy theory, right? But it is weird. We've like no new subscribers and some leaving for the first time, I think ever. It's usually it's like a big drop and then it goes back to going up. But now it's like a drop and it keeps dwindling down and up. We're not getting the up. So I'm, I got the reference to the previous chat. So I'm, it'll be interesting to see how the subscriptions evolve, particularly with the new format. I'm hoping we can attract a broader audience and we can get more subscribers. I mean, that's the key. The key is to get us to 50,000 subscribers and quickly. The midterms definitely cause the decline. My interpretation of the midterms definitely cause the decline in subscribers. But I'm surprised usually it happens and then we get back on track. I'm surprised that there's no getting back on track. That could be that we are back on track, but there's just more unsubscribers as we go along. I'll have to check the numbers because you in YouTube, you can actually look at an every day, how many people subscribe and how many people unsubscribe. What I usually look is just the net, but I could look at the absolute number for each. All right, let's jump into super chats. There's $170 left to reach our goal. So if, if, if you guys want to help us reach me, help me, the show, help you on book show, reach the goal, then there's $171 left. That would be, you know, nine $20 questions. So we can do that. $920 questions is not that outlandish. Or we could do, you know, basically three and a half $50 questions or one and a half $100 questions up to you. All right, let's see JLoad. Are you on? Do you think a romantic character can be morally gray? Also, do you prefer Sydney or Melbourne? And have you ever traveled to one of the big luxury trains like your own Express or the Blue Train? So that's three questions, JLoad. That's three questions. Should be should be 60 Australian dollars there. Let's see. Do I think a romantic character can be morally gray? No. He has to have, you know, he has to stand for moral values. They might be the wrong moral values, but he has to stand for moral values. And he has to be committed to moral values. To be a romantic hero. And he has to choose those heroes. I can't imagine a romantic character who just is neither he nor they are morally. You know, from my reference point, it's his morality. But from his reference point, it's his morality. You know, I'd have to think about it. Are there any such romantic characters? Who goes certainly doesn't have any. So I can't think of any. All right, Richard asks, you have said you need a hundred million dollars to run for office. Would you need less for a house election? Would you be willing to run as a Democrat? I think you'd have a shot in North, Northern California, especially on issues like zoning and drugs. So my answer is I wouldn't run for the house to be one of 435. I mean, it's just it that's ridiculous. No, I wouldn't run for the house. It would be too, too uninteresting, boring and non influential enough. Would I run as a Democrat? No, no, I mean, it'd be tough for me to run as a Republican, but I can't imagine running as a Democrat. And there's no way, no way I have a shot in Northern California. I mean, look, people have run in Northern California and in California on things like zoning and drugs and have lost. So no, I mean, you know, there's a sense in which I think I could do well in Silicon Valley. I think framing argument right, emphasizing the right kind of things you could win in Silicon Valley as a Republican or Democrat. I don't think they really care. But as a pro science atheist, yeah, Silicon Valley would be one of the better places in the world to run in spite of their leftism. You just have to find ways to undermine their leftist claims on economics. And I think I'm about as good as anybody in the world today at doing that. So, you know, I don't know. This is why I was sympathetic to running in California because I actually think that I could get. I mean, I think that's the test. The test is, can you win Silicon Valley? I think I could get significant votes in California, whereas I couldn't get them in the South. I would be completely eliminated as an atheist, and I couldn't get them. I don't think in New York. But I think California is presented with the right idea as a saner than it acts. Now, maybe I'm delusional, but that's my sense. Somebody just said, somebody just wrote here that Representative Kathy Porter's lead was just cut in half. It was a pretty slim lead to begin with. And now it's kind of half. So it's about 50-50. So there's still hope. There's still hope. Join me in a moment of reflection so we can influence the vote. You know, let's, if we can put all our minds together, maybe we can influence. I mean, anyway, it would be amazing. Amazing. I would be so happy if Kathy Porter lost. That would be so. I know you guys think I love Democrats and I love the left, but I'd actually be so thrilled. If Kathy Porter lost this election, it would make my week. So even if Donald Trump announced us tomorrow, it wouldn't matter. So I really hate Kathy Porter. And I think the message it would send for her to lose is super powerful, super powerful. But, you know, but yeah, so there's better people in Orange County. There are better people in California. And I actually do think that it is, that it would be interesting to run in California and try to bring the more rational elements to actually vote. Richard, I guess, do you think John Allison would run for office? Very sad to see the anti-charter school, a California superintendent win re-election by such a white margin. What do you think of Rick Caruso? He seems like he'd be a great mayor of LA. John Allison has been asked to run many times. He refuses to run. He believes, and I think justly, and this goes back to me, that politics is really a waste of time, that the real battle is an intellectual educational battle. I think, I really do think John Allison could have easily become the governor of North Dakota. North Dakota, God, where did that come from? North Carolina, he was basically offered to run in the Republican primary. I think he would have won now, but I think he would have more than that, could have won the election. I think John Allison is the kind of person who can run in a religious state like North Carolina and bridge both elements of the left and elements of the right, and he's got the right ability to speak and to connect with people and to communicate in a way that does not offend people. So I actually think that John could have won, and he didn't want to. Just like he didn't want to, he was offered very senior positions in the Trump administration and refused those, so that was to a large extent because of Trump. John will someday tell the story of the interview he had with Trump, and the basic conclusion was, I could never work for this guy. So, yeah, I mean, John could have won, but it is sad to see an anti-charter school superintendent win. I don't know the details, I don't know who he ran against. I do hope that Rick Caruso wins as mayor of New York, partially because it's a slap in the face to the Democratic establishment. And so it's just, it would be really good to see a businessman run LA, but we'll see if he wins. It's still a very close race. Charles Watt says, well, no, wait, yeah, let's do this quickly. Are people more likely to be convinced by conspiracy theories if they are printed in book form such as Silent Spring, which led to the ban of DDT? Well, I think it always helps in all conspiracy theories, including the various conspiracy theories about white being whites and racism, and they all ultimately make it into some kind of written form, whether it's a book, whether it's a website, whether it's things like that. Because it looks more scientific, it looks more heavy, it looks more substantive, it looks more real, if it's in substance, and it is, right? But of course, it also easier to rebut and debunk when it's in writing. All right, chosen squirrel, just put in a hundred Canadian dollars, not as worth as much as it used to be, but thank you, that's a lot of money, I really appreciate it. He's got us very close to the goal, so only $92 short. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe we can make it. We've got still a lot of $5 and $10 questions, so no more $2, $5 questions, $10 questions. Any question from now on has to be $20 above, because I've got so many questions already an hour and a half in. I thought today's show would be a little shorter because I did a show in the morning as well. And if you want to ask a question, ask a question in the super chat. I see all people highlighting my name and asking questions in the chat. Not how it works, guys. Not how it works. Kind of an obscure and off-topic question I feel conflicted about. Is it rational to wait, to be intimate, to make it special? Is this rational? I can't tell if this is a religious element of me that won't die or a romantic element. It's religion. It's religion. Now, what do you mean by wait? I mean, it doesn't mean you have to jump into bed on the first date. It doesn't have to mean you have to jump into bed before the first date. But if you're serious about somebody, then you've already waited. You've already got to know them. You're already dating. You're already doing stuff together. You know each other. If you love that person, if you then sex is the next logical step, way before marriage. What if the sex is bad? What if the communication is awful? What if you discover something about them or about you that makes marriage committing to this person for the rest of your life impossible? I have said, and I mean this, but don't take it personally, but I've said that waiting to have sex until after marriage is immoral. Immoral. Because it is purposefully rejecting reality. It is purposefully rejecting an important crucial piece of reality necessary to know whether you actually want to marry the person. Sex is not a trivial part of life of a marriage. It's an important, massively important piece, massively important part of life and part of marriage. So have sex before you propose, before you get engaged, you should have sex. Now, again, it doesn't mean you have sex immediately. You want to, particularly if it's your first time, their first time, it should be special and it should be meaningful. But, okay, you probably, you know, you love this person, you share a lot with them, you have a real, and I'm not saying you should wait to have sex with the one person. You know, I don't think it destroys it to have sex with other people, and then only you do you meet the person you actually fall in love with and so on. So, again, I'm big on having sex, not randomly, but having sex with people you value and learning about sex and learning about yourself and learning about what you like and what you don't like and what the experience is like and don't wait until in a sense you're committed to having sex with one person for the rest of your life. So that's even further, but if you're already in a relationship with somebody that you really, really like and you can conceive that you will marry them, then have sex. Jeremy says the waiting isn't what makes it meaningful, I agree completely. What makes it meaningful is the relationship, who they are, who you are, as Jeremy says, and the relationship between the two, that's what makes it meaningful. And that can happen, you know, very quickly in a sense that you click with somebody, that there is that real special connection between the two of you. And sex is just how you, the ultimate in experiencing that connection and you should want to experience it as often and as, you know, and you should be, again, you should get to know, it's a way of getting to know the other person. It's a way of getting to know the other person in the most intimate way. And again, you want to do that before you commit. It's the ultimate way of knowing how you're compatible you are. It's not again, it's not the thing that will determine it, but it's certainly a big indication. And again, sex is too important not to figure out, not to figure out before you commit long term. All right, we're still short $92. Just letting you know. All right, Michael says, if egalitarianism is D2, is eugenics M2? No, eugenics isn't an M or D or anything. Eugenics is not a philosophy. It's not a theory. It's not a set of ideas. There's Armin. Thanks, Armin. I really appreciate it. Armin was there this morning and now he's here and he's guaranteeing that I meet my goals no matter where I look. Thank you. Really, really appreciate it, Armin. Armin just came in with $100 to get us over. So you can't just take any idea and say, is it M2? I mean, eugenics is a, it's not a unifying, integrating ideology. It's just a view of, a false view of human genetics and human capabilities. Egalitarianism, on the other hand, is a whole view of human life and human existence. And human society, it has political implications. It has epistemological implications. It has, certainly, moral implications in a way that I don't think eugenics is. I mean, I think they turned it into that, but it's, it's kind of a pseudo-scientific theory. Michael says, I've recently seen Shoshak Redemption. Do you think solidary confinement is immoral? The practice is outlawed in most Western European prisons? No, I don't think it's immoral. I mean, fundamentally, I think very little is immoral when it comes to treating murderers. So I think we caught on them way too much in the West generally. You know, particularly, you know, in the first, you know, somebody's committed murder. They've taken another life purposefully, particularly if they are not repented, particularly if they did it in an older age. So I think the circumstances where in order to maintain order, in order to make sure somebody is behaving, that solidary confinement is fine. I don't see any principled basis on which to reject it. I don't think it's cool enough to say, oh, well, that's inhumane to do that. Will people now revolt until they're starving? Well, I don't, I don't even know what that means. I mean, will people vote when they are starving? Do people ever revolt when they're starving? Oh, maybe the French Revolution. But there's no correlation between the level of starvation and revolting. Revolutions are issues of ideas. They're not issues of starvation. And the revolution that happens because people are starving is going to be a good revolution. It's probably going to be like the French Revolution. It'll probably be an awful revolution. Dave Goodman says, if you were in Andy's shoes, would you have tried to escape? Could you have crawled through what he crawled through? What's the proper way to react to a corrupt, sadistic person who has power over you like that warden? I mean, I don't know if I could have, I would have tried to escape, yes. No question in my mind I would have done anything in my power to escape. Could I have? I don't know, but I would have tried. It strikes me there was things in life than crawling through sewage when the alternative is enslavement. So I think I could have done it even though the thought makes me sick just thinking about it right now. But enslavement makes me sicker. The proper way to react to a sadistic person who has power over you is to find ways to eliminate that power. To find ways to do exactly what Andy did. He not only destroyed the person, he elevated his own life. Now, he lost 20 years because of the injustice committed against him. But he made the most of that situation, right? So, yeah, I mean, I would have done exactly what Andy does in the movie. Justin said, God, I support Christian nationalists because they will crush the woke left worthless and forcefully we can negotiate our liberty after their victory. There is no liberty after their victory. There is no negotiations after the victory. We all lose after their victory. So that's fine. You want to die a particular type of death. I don't. I have no interest in dying in a Christian nationalist world. I have no interest in losing to them. And I have no interest in their winning. So, I mean, I think it's, I think it's ridiculous. Justin says authoritarianism from the right is fine with me. You don't value freedom. You don't value freedom. I value freedom. I don't care where the attack on freedom comes from. I'm fighting it. And that's why you're tolerant of the national conservatism. Not because we'll deal with liberty afterwards. You don't care about liberty. You don't want liberty. But authoritarianism, the right is fine with you. So you don't care about liberty. You know, just hope, I hope you don't have friends who are gay. I, you know, I don't have, I hope you don't have any ideas that are out of the mainstream. I, you know, I hope, I hope you're good at conforming. And at being religious and following your commandments, because that's what your life is going to require. But fine, that's what you want. You can move to Iran today or tomorrow. You don't have to wait. You don't have to wait. If Trump announces he's going to run tomorrow, should the Santas just ignore him and continue to run for president anyway, or sit this election cycle out and let Trump make a fool of himself? I don't know why you're asking me. I don't know what I can bring to that question. I mean, what I would do, I would run against Trump. I would pound him into dust. I would destroy him in every way possible that I could intellectually, morally, verbally. You know, I would just, I would, I would run a campaign against them that would just completely and utterly destroy the man's life. That's what I would do. But is the Santas willing to do that? Is, is he willing to potentially, you know, end his relationship with Justin and the Republican Party in order to do it? I don't know, but I would, I would love to be in a debate with Donald Trump. Love to debate people like that. God, anything to show the world what a complete and utter moron he is. That's just me. Why is Florida the only state where Republicans did extremely well in the entire country? The Santas is clearly resonating with people in an effective way that Trump and his obnoxious ways cannot. Well, I mean, it's not the only place. I mean, Texas, Texas did very well for Republicans. I mean, all the red states did very well for Republicans. I mean, the Texas governor won by a big margin. If you remember in the past, Beto was considered a shoe-in for Senate, for, you know, governor of Texas. Democrats thought they had a real shot at taking Texas. And Texas turned out to be as red as ever in this governor to be incredibly popular. So I don't think it's unique to Florida. You know, Georgia, look at Georgia, put aside crazy walk-up, and every other, whenever the Georgia candidate was not a Trumpist candidate, they did phenomenally well in Georgia. Georgia, which was tilting towards the Democrats, State of the Abrams, almost won the governorship four years ago. This year, the Republicans trounced him, completely trounced him. So I just think that good governors and good senators who are not Trumpists, who are not irrational, who are not conspiratorial, who run solid campaigns on, you know, reasonable positions, not positions I would hold necessarily, but positions that are not conspiratorial and nutty and crazy, who have some semblance of character, did well. Kemp in Georgia, I forget the name of the governor in Texas, and DeSantis in Florida. The reason DeSantis is emphasized, and the reason that Florida is such a big deal, is that Florida wasn't a red state not that long ago. But again, Georgia seemed to be moving blue. Texas seemed to be moving blue, and they're not. They're clearly neither one of those are really moving blue. That would be my view. All right, Justin S. White ran, take died pills. I have no idea. We've done Jack 04 to secure one's own happiness is one's duty. Yeah, well, good luck securing happiness out of duty. And then, but later in other places, can't completely contradict that. And indeed, pursuing one's happiness is a moral vice. So Kant is contradicts that very statement. I assume that's an accurate, that's an accurate statement from Kant. But he completely and utterly contradicts that in other places in his writing. And again, duty is the key word that duty is you can't pursue your happiness out of duty. Colt says run this for Senate in North Carolina come 2026 $100 million. I've named my price. All right, there was a question I'm told that I did not answer a while ago that somebody is very motivated for me to answer for some reason. Something like the question was something like a Trump dissent to civil war in the GOP and how that would affect the GOP and maybe a third party. Something along those lines. I mean, I think somebody needs to stand up to Trump. Somebody within the Republican Party needs to call him for his BS needs to stand up to his nuttiness, the conspiracy stuff and all of that. Somebody needs to actually try to save the Republican Party from Trump. And the best opportunity to do that is in the primary for the presidency, which gets national attention to get the attention of all Republicans where you can muster the resources of all Republicans around you. And I think this would be an incredibly healthy thing to happen to the Republican Party. So I hope the Santas enters. I hope the Santas enters to win. I hope the Santas enters to fight Trump, even though he knows it might lose him some Republican voters. I hope he goes in to project a positive vision for America, a vision oriented towards the future. I think that's what will win. What will win is if we can come up with a vision that's positive, that's future oriented right rather than negative. And he's willing to combat Trump's nonsense that he's willing either to crush it or to ignore it or to go after Trump for everything Trump says about him. But will the Santas do that? I just don't know. Does he have that kind of charisma? Does he have that willingness to fight in public like that? I just don't know. Somebody needs to do it. Somebody needs to unite the Republican Party against Trump and then unite the Republican Party against the Democrats, who is not a national conservative. And in spite of the fact that the Santas spoke to the National Conservatives Conference, I don't think he is a national conservative. I think the senator from Florida, whose name again slipped my mind, is, but you know, he's whatever the winds are blowing, but I don't think the Santas is. So we'll see. I mean, all, you know, possible, all interesting. Who knows? All right. Speko1223 asked, do you think that Batman holds some selfish qualities with him upholding his moral code for being, or being a symbol of justice? I mean, yes, there's obviously some element of selfishness is there. There's obviously some element of justice and a moral code that he has a sense of, of, of justice. I think, see the one who doesn't kill us as Superman, but, and it really depends on what portrayal of Batman. So I think ultimately the most selfish portrayal of Batman is in the trilogy and the end of the trilogy where Batman leaves, retires, abandons the city because he's not willing to sacrifice anymore for them. He's not appreciated. It doesn't have an impact and he's not willing to do it anymore. Gail, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Who's the one who doesn't kill? Is Superman who doesn't kill? I guess Superman. But yes, I think, I think Batman has the moral characteristics of a real hero, but unfortunately he buys into a fundamental altruistic moral code. And you can see that, you can see that throughout the, throughout the trilogy on Batman that he is constantly drawn back in to fighting for a city that doesn't appreciate him, doesn't value him, rebels against him, and is not deserving of his effort. And he sacrificed and sacrificed. Now at the end he gives up, but is that from an understanding of the evil of altruism and that he should really live his life for himself? Hard to tell. But at least it gives a little indication. So that, that final scene in the cafe in the final Batman is a good scene. Is it believable? What does it really mean? Is he really retired? Is he really not an altruist anymore? I don't know. I don't know. All right. Thank you everybody. We made our goal. This has been a terrific day because we made our goal in the morning as well. We'll continue this experiment. I'm actually on the road the rest of the week. So I go to Costa Rica tomorrow and Mexico, I speak in Mexico on Thursday, so we can put it, Costa Rica tomorrow and Mexico on Thursday. I will try to do shows while I'm on the road, but I can't guarantee that that will happen. If not, then I will be back home on Friday. So I'll probably do a show on Saturday and Sunday or maybe one of them we will see depending on how I outline next week. I'll be home all week. So we will be doing, we will experimenting with the new format next week. And we'll be doing a show on Thanksgiving, probably on productiveness or productivity more broadly, productiveness as a moral virtue. I also want to do a show on Yuan's Rules for Living. I want to do a show on why be moral? Why ethics? Why does it matter? I'm curious if you guys would value a show like that. Why be moral? That would be the name of the show. All right. Have a great night. Have a great rest of your week. I will see you probably over the weekend, but maybe before that. Please don't forget to like the show before you leave. We should have more than a hundred likes there. So please like the show before you leave. Please, if you're listening to this after the fact, consider supporting the show on a monthly basis. You can do that on Yuanbookshow.com. Support on Patreon and on Subscribeston locals. Patreon seems to be the place where people are choosing to add their subscription. So go for it. Let's get big on Patreon. All right, everybody. Have a great night. See you soon. Oh, Trump is announcing tomorrow. So I'll have to comment to that. So I'll have to do a show from Ida Costa Rica, Mexico, just to analyze his beautiful speech. It'll be the greatest speech ever. The best, the most glorious speech in all of human history. I am. There's no question about it. Bye, everybody.