 No radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest and individual rights. This is the Iran Brookshow. Oh right everybody, welcome to Iran Brookshow and this Thursday evening, it's a second show today. All right, this is going to be fun. We've got Ben, Ben Barrow with us tonight. Fellow at the Ayn Van Institute, PhD in philosophy, was a philosophy professor for many years at a Catholic university, Catholic university. Two Catholic universities. Two Catholic universities. It was Loyolas. It was also a professor at a Catholic university, but just which university, but yeah, I got in trouble for that too. So, so Ben is going to join us with the general topic today is altruism and religion we're going to cover a lot of different things related related to that. We're also open to any topics you guys want to talk about so feel free to ask questions and use the super chat or you can support the show without asking a question but ask questions that that always lives up to show makes it more interesting that where we cover stuff that material that you are interesting. We should have put woke ism in the title and we maybe we maybe we would have created a bigger store. I don't know. But one of the one of the topics you've written about you've written about quite a bit lately is kind of the this general idea that people were secular and think that they're, you know, beyond Christianity and they've gotten beyond religion and they are people of science or reason or whatever. And yet they're still stuck on the morality of religion so walk us through that. Yeah, when you're when you're a fish swimming in water you don't know that water is what you're in it's it's just the world to you and that's the way that I think a lot of people think about morality and and altruism the altruism is the only morality they've ever known and they equate it with with morality as such. And so they think if I'm going to be a moral person whether I'm a Christian Jewish atheist doesn't matter. That's about that's about not caring too much about my own interests it's about sacrificing them to others. And part of the reason I'm interested in this question is because I think there are secular people out there, some of whom are more rational than others and who pride themselves in not being religious and because they think religions are rational. But if they were to realize that the morality that they treat as a given that they that they think is the only morality there ever was is actually a product of religious thinking and religious ideas I think they would drop it. And so there's there's a there's some work to do there with showing them that that's in fact true that that if you look at the logic of altruism it it ultimately comes from religious ideas if you look at the history of altruism it comes from historical religion and one thing we see today. I think is certain strains of secular thinking, certain kinds of movements, especially on the left, which is traditionally the secular wing of our politics. It's becoming more and more obvious that the morality that they rely on is a religious morality and the two, the two movements that I have in mind here are one of them is wokeism. And the other is effective altruism. So before we get to those let's let's take a step back and talk a little bit about what about what altruism means and what it means in the culture. And, and then. So let's start with that what what does altruism actually mean. I mean a lot of people when you mentioned altruism I think I think generally in the culture they'll say yeah it's being nice it's being polite it's opening doors it's. It's thinking about the other it's taking other people's. You know the fact that you your actions have another people into account. Why is it important that it's not that really. Because yeah a lot of people use it simply as a synonym for benevolence or any kind of other regarding behavior. And that's the big mistake. Altruism is the is a moral theory that says that you derive your moral justification for living by you know from service to others. So you can have egoistic reasons self interested reasons for having the regard for the rights of others even for helping certain other people out in certain cases. And not altruism altruism is the idea that morality is all about other people and especially about sacrificing yourself to other people. And what in this context is sacrificing mean. You know when we say sacrificing other people again people have a very benevolent interpretation of sacrifice and Jordan Peterson goes on and on in some of his videos about oh, you know you invest now and you reap the benefits in the future and he does have to take place with different rights and that's it. It's like hitting the plate sacrifice with the investment. What is, what is the word seconds actually mean what are what do we mean and what, what should it mean in a culture. It means giving up a greater value for a lesser value or for a non value it means not, for instance, you, you love your wife, your wife is sick. I don't know, spend the same amount of money, but for saving a stranger or spend more money to save lots of strangers who mean nothing to you, which by the way is exactly what the effective altruists are advocating these days. Yeah, we have strangers 10,000 years from now. Not just- It depends on which version of effective altruism, but yeah. So altruism is about sacrifice, about rejection of your own values. The word itself, the concept itself, the way we use it today, I think was coined by Comte, the French philosopher. Yes. So is it a modern concept? Is this a generated from modern philosophy? I mean, the term is definitely pretty modern because it comes from Comte, who's 19th century French philosopher, but the idea of it, that this is the primary concern of morality, certainly goes back before Comte. It goes back, you see it, even in secular philosophers earlier than Comte, you see it in the manual count in various forms, you see it in the utilitarians, you see it in Hume in certain ways, and you obviously see it in Christianity, Christianity, I wouldn't say is quite the same as altruism, because altruism is the idea that's other people who are the moral target. They're the ones who give your life moral justification for Christianity. Other people are of secondary concern to your moral obligations to God, but of course God is still someone other than yourself, and you're still supposed to sacrifice for him, and the first thing he usually tells you is to give things to other people, in order to please him. So a lot of these doctrines fundamentally come from religion for that reason. So can you walk us through how religious, how particularly Christianity, but religion generally is altruistic? What is it about the teachings that lead to a morality and explicit morality of altruism? Well, the first thing to say, I think, is that once you get clear on how altruism is not primarily about just doing nice things for people, which you can have self-interested reasons to do, it gets, it's a little easier to understand. And there's a second point to make on top of that, which is that it's not even really about helping people, even though it professes to be about helping people. It's much more about sacrifice as an end in itself. It's much more about the importance of giving up. And then of course, other people are just kind of an excuse to give things up. I mean, the importance of denying to yourself. Right. And when you understand that that's what's really at the core of the idea, it gets a lot easier to see how this is coming out of religion because, I mean, one of the key concepts in religious morality is the virtue, the alleged virtue of humility, and the idea that there's a sin in pride. And humility is, you know, that's a concept I think you see in religious morality well before they start talking about altruism. You often see it even before they start talking about sacrifice. But what humility is, in fact, is the idea you are nothing, you should think of yourself as low, as worthless, and that you only gain any kind of moral meaning by recognizing your worthlessness and your dependency on some higher power that you need to bow before, that you need to submit yourself to. And that submission is, I think, the form, then, that sacrifice to others ends up taking. Yes, it's your pain, your suffering, whether somebody else benefits from it is irrelevant. It's just kind of an anti-self is at the core of the kind of religious perspective on altruism. Why do you think altruism requires religion? I mean, you mentioned that earlier, that really to justify you have to go back to religion. Well, I mean, first of all, it requires some worldview that's going to give the altruist a reason to think that he's worthless. Religion serves that up ready-made in all kinds of ways because of original sin, because of the idea that there is this higher power that's by comparison to which you are worthless. And there is, I think, secular versions of that. You see it, for instance, in, I think, modern wokeism, where there's a version of original sin. We're all racists. And the higher power that we submit ourselves to is to the victims of oppression, in effect. But you also need a... And this is, I think, very important in something I've only really started to appreciate sufficiently in the last few years. The reliance on religious faith is essential, because on top of the point that what altruism is really all about is not about helping, it's about giving up. The most important thing that altruists want you to give up is your reliance on your own independent judgment. And that's what religious faith encourages. And it's what any number of forms of secular faith, secular reliance on emotions, secular shaming people for wanting to know for themselves, they do the same thing. And so, in fact, if you look at any of the various secular forms of altruism, they all rest their case for altruism on some kind of irrationalism, some kind of reliance on emotions, which amount to their secular version of a faith. So is this the point... Rand makes the point of, you know, to really demolish altruism, all you have to do is ask why. Yeah. And they have no answer, right? They have no answer other than to point an ancient book or to say it's reveal truth. And... If no earthly reason and no earthly reason has ever been given. Yeah. And so how does this sustain itself? Like, I mean, we've gone through an enlightenment. People can be incredibly rational, incredibly reasonable, you know, in the secular world when it comes to a lot of different issues. But it seems like when it comes to altruism, almost nobody is willing to accept an alternative. Nobody is willing to challenge it. Nobody's willing to question it. It really is, you know, the one thing that you cannot, that everybody agrees on in one form or another. And you said earlier, they equate it with morality. It's exactly that. You can't even get through to them because every time you say morality, they hear altruism. So you can actually put self-interest and morality in the same place because they have them in two complete different compartments in the file system. They can't unite them. So what do you think it is that has made it so sticky, so prevalent that there's just nothing else? Well, there's an easier answer and a harder answer to that question. I think the easier answer is to say all the different altruistic and religious philosophers who've been pushing this for centuries, if not millennia, who give it intellectual credibility, who influence each other, who create an intellectual establishment in favor of it. And there's plenty to say about that. So I actually gave a talk last summer at Ocon called Einran's Genealogy of Altruism where the major focus of the talk was, well, take for granted that altruism is not rational. It doesn't have a rational basis. So it doesn't come from rational reasons. It's got to come from irrational reasons. And so you can explain that by pointing to what the philosophers have said. But at a certain point you have to stop the regress back in history and say, well, some of these philosophers just came up with the idea for bad reasons and it's ultimately a psychological explanation. There are a lot of psychological explanations that you can point to that explain what incentivizes people to believe in altruism. It's not a good incentive. It's not any kind of self-interested incentive. It's a defense value. It's something that they've embraced out of fear, out of hatred of other people for one reason or another. And there's a range of different kinds of motivations, some of them more understandable, some of them much less innocent. Everything from simple just fear of disagreement with other people and other people tell me that this is what morality is all about. So I better go along with the herd on to a desire to appease other people because you are maybe a young intellectual and you want to be able to claim that you want to be able to use your mind somewhat independently. But if you do that too much, you'll be seen as selfish. And so you need to explain, well, I'm really doing this for the sake of the greater good. That's the kind of altruism as appeasement motivation, all the way to simple envy and power lust where you know you can control people through guilt and you also really hate and are afraid of the people who exercise their own independent judgment. They do something that you decided not to do and it reminds you of your own guilt for not having decided to choose for yourself, to think for yourself. And so you go to war with people like that on the premise of I can prove that if I can convince them to believe this altruistic faith, I'll have put one over on them and shown them that you don't have to think for yourself to live. Yeah, I mean it's amazing to me how successful altruism has been and the people who really rebel against it tend to be either pragmatists or kind of nihilists. And of course they're rebelling it against it by in some way embracing it. But other than that, nobody has ever really thought through an alternative. And that makes our achievement so much greater. I mean we've gone through well over 2,000 years considering an alternative to altruism she has. There's a place where someone asked, I can't remember who it was, why she was able to come up with her ideas when no one else was. Is it some special intelligence that you had? And she was insistent that it wasn't any special intelligence, although I think we agree she was pretty smart. She was insistent that it was honesty, that she was more honest than other philosophers. And you have to be supremely intellectually honest to be willing to break with so many intellectual authorities on a topic like the morality of altruism. I mean to what extent do you think, and then we'll get to the kind of woke-ism and stuff, but what extent do you think, let's say, Spinoza and then of course Nietzsche at least identify that there's a problem with altruism even though they can't really formulate a coherent alternative to it. I know a lot less about Spinoza than I do about Nietzsche and I wouldn't even say about Spinoza that he was identifying problems with altruism. He defended a theory that was more egoistic sounding than others in the period. I won't say anything more about him because I don't know him well enough. But Nietzsche I know more about and I think Nietzsche was also, in spite of the many flaws in his philosophy and the many irrationalities in his philosophy, I think he was also a more honest philosopher in certain ways that he was willing to break with the herd in spite of how much it cost him in terms of popularity and he suffered for his lack of popularity for a long time. I do think of him as a critic of altruism but as one who is just the way you put it didn't think fully through the alternative and to the point where what alternative he had and it wasn't entirely clear that he had a fully worked out positive alternative but whatever the alternative was it was still a variation on the expectation of the necessity of sacrifice where he still thinks life is zero sum, it's not win-win, one person's profit comes at another person's loss and so rather than be a altruist who's going to give up I'm going to advocate that at least some of us be kind of predatory egoists who sacrifice others to the self and even there he didn't think everybody should do that so he only thought certain higher types had the necessary will to power to be the ubermensch who sacrifices others everybody else still needs to be an altruist and sacrifice to the higher types. So in the post-enlightenment period altruism is clearly secularized by philosophers probably first by Kant and in what way do you think Kant secularizes the morality of altruism? Well he has lots to say here and it's hard for me to know where to start but probably the most important contribution he makes here is in defining morality in terms defining moral action in terms of a particular kind of motive and making crystal clear from his perspective there can be no inkling of self-interested motive in a moral action so it's not sufficient that you are doing something that actually helps people there's famous examples that he describes in the groundwork for the metaphysics of morals somebody who's a philanthropist let's say and who has this great benevolence toward other people goodwill toward other people he enjoys helping out other people but he gets no moral credit according to Kant if that's the reason he's doing it if he's doing it because it makes him feel good not only if it just is for some kind of direct self-interested consequence leave especially aside if he makes more money because he ends up giving to philanthropy that would certainly question, challenge, negate the moral credit of his action even if it's just that he feels good doing it and that's the reason he does it no moral credit there it's the only clear case that he gives where someone gets moral credit is if they hate their life they hate everybody else but they tear themselves from their stupor and help people out anyway only then do they get moral credit according to Kant now there's philosophers who debate it but what if he feels good doing it not the reason that he's doing it okay maybe he might get moral credit then but epistemologically Kant is always worried that even if you don't realize it there might be some secret self-interested motive that's at work and so if you want to really know that you get moral credit if you want to really know that you're doing it for the right reasons the only way to know for sure is if you're experiencing pain you have to be nailed to a cross yeah and he makes that very explicit by the way and critique of practical reason yeah and this is I think you mentioned it earlier but the bottom line for altruism is not helping other people the bottom line for altruism is the suffering of the individual and that's what they want to see you bleed they want to see you bleed so a lot of the secular movements that have come from the 19th century and that have come to dominate wokeism is the most recent but even communism seem to be inspired by religion they seem to reject religion and yet embrace often its epistemology and its morality truth is revealed and the morality is a morality of altruism so maybe let's go through a few examples and see how that manifests itself I don't know if you want to start with communism or if you're comfortable doing that we could sure I was telling you before the show started that because I've been doing this research on the religious roots of altruism and doing this talk on St. Augustine at Okon I've been reading a lot of Augustine and this isn't going to the connection to socialism and communism isn't the point of the talk but that gives me a good opportunity to share the following which I came across while I was reading The City of God book 5 chapter 18 of The City of God the Christians make a common property of their riches with a far more excellent purpose namely so that they may distribute to each according to his need in compliance with what is written in the Acts of the Apostles with no one calling anything his own in all things being held in common a doctrine by the way that Augustine practiced when he lived a monastic existence and founded what amount ended up being the Augustinian order and wrote the rules for all subsequent monastic orders they were the original communists the Christian monastics and Augustine was right there to explain to them why well because you should be humble and not be proud you shouldn't claim any of your property for yourself but you should share it in common with others and admittedly in that part of the book and what he was advocating with regard to monasticism was a voluntary arrangement but it's not like Augustinian Christianity has any principle basis for making a case for individual freedom I mean he advocates slavery later in the city of God he says you're a slave to God part of being humble means recognizing that you are a slave to God and in fact politically speaking you're probably better off being a slave in many cases because the way he puts it is better to be a slave to man than it is to be a slave to sin so not much of a case but rather for you know why it should always be a voluntary arrangement if you believe in slavery No, he's percussion he gives the justification for campaigns to convert people to Christianity and why the heretics should be tortured and even relatively modest heretics not even the ones who are disagreeing in big things like he wants to torture the Donatists who have all the exact same dogma they just don't happen to think the Catholic church has preserved its apostolic succession so they have different communion rituals torture them so it's that's just one example and there's many others that you can see throughout history one that is people interested look up the name Rudolph sorry, Moses Moses Hess who was a who's raised Jewish in the 19th century and lost his religion and worked to look for an alternative I worked without rest to rediscover my God whom I had lost I had to have a God and I did find him after a long search after a terrible fight in my own heart he went on to substitute Christianity's concept of heaven for socialism's concept of heaven on earth and Hess is the one who introduced basic socialist ideas to Engels and Marx and so there's another example you can look to or just fast forward to I think two years ago Pope Francis writes an encyclical called Fratelli Tutti which means brothers all and argues on the basis of some of the same kinds of Augustinian ideas that I just mentioned along with Saint Ambrose who was Augustine's mentor for why if you are holding private property to yourself you're in effect stealing it from the poor because it really belongs to the poor and so therefore when government redistributes wealth it's not violating anybody's rights it's just returning to the poor what was stolen from them in the first place because after all all these goods were created by God and given to man in common and it's only the prideful selfishness of men that has separated what God had joined and so there's just no religious basis for anything like private property rights and I'll go one step further um there's you sometimes hear people say that okay Christianity has all kinds of flaws and irrationalities but you have to give it credit for at least one thing that it's got this special respect for the individual soul individual salvation Einrand herself said this in certain letters that she wrote this is something I disagree with Einrand about like I do not I think that's maybe true of the way that many modern Christians have retroactively interpreted their religion in light of the enlightenment but if you go back to someone like Augustine who's one of the four doctors of the church one of the founding fathers of the religion who defined all the core doctrines I don't see any basis for saying he has any respect for the importance of the individual soul and you see so much evidence to the contrary you see for instance the fact I mean his idea of original sin is a form of determinism and it means you have no free will but free will is the essential core of individualism if you can't if you don't control your life you're instead predestined by God for salvation or damnation there's no individualism there and it's more than that like there's this concept he has called many have probably heard of as the body of Christ it's the idea that the church forms a collective and especially in the afterlife when we we are separated from we're purified and no longer tied to the the lust of the flesh we merge into a great collective sacrifice for the sake of God and I can read passages where he says stuff like this and there's no individualism there I want to escape from this mortal coil separate myself from the sufferings of this life and enter into a kind of nirvana where all is forgotten in the afterlife there's no individual soul left there and it's interesting there's a little bit of that in kind of Marx's utopia at the end and there's it does seem like sadly Augustine Augustine is making a comeback these days among Christians he was quoted in the Wall Street Journal by Peggy Noonan about why we shouldn't be prideful and create new technology and that's why we need to worry about AI and Josh Holly is a huge scene Augustine fan he waits a lot he's quite quite intellectual he waits quite a bit about Augustine so in the modern world today what extent are some of these secular ideologies religious and to what extent are they inspired by Christianity and let's go straight to wokeism first of all what is wokeism there's a big debate about how one should define wokeism but what is it in what way do you think it's religious and and altruistic where's the altruism I wrote about this in an article I published to some months ago about John McWhorter's book Woke Religion and the first thing I would say is go to McWhorter's book to find the evidence because he presents a lot of it on his own without I think interpreting it along the lines that I do but so it's a social doctrine that holds that we are in effect defined by our status as our oppressors and the kind of victimhood in question is victimhood on the basis of race racial injustice the oppressors have this original sin and they need to repent they need to atone for their sin and above all they need to be humble they need to not exert or express pride the sin of pride this is not the language they put it in but what it amounts to in effect is your prideful sinner if you think I am able to escape from the clutches of racism I can be an individual who judges people objectively according to their moral character and yes I know there's other people who are racist in the world and racism is a problem but I am not bound by this sin and therefore do not have to atone for it if I am not one of these sinners some people might have to but not me and that's by the way a sin that the woke accused McWhorter himself of even though McWhorter is black and he's probably more reviled than white people who agree with what he's saying because he's got the audacity to stand up and say yeah I know there's racism but it's never really affected me that negatively and I've done quite well for myself and by the way I think that what these woke leaders are selling us is bullshit so to what extent is altruism shaping the whole woke phenomena and how do you I don't know if you've looked into intersectionality and how intersectionality is related to woke and again it seems to be one of the most explicit manifestations of altruism out there I haven't looked a lot at intersectionality but the way that it's the way that I understand it is that you can't just divide the world into race or class or sex you have to look at the minute permutations of each of those which result in a particular subset of people based on their race and class and sex being even more victimized and oppressed than others how victimized and oppressed are you you gain virtue in a sense by being more oppressed and more victimized and I think more importantly from the perspective of thinking about how this relates to altruism you get you get more moral credit if you show how concerned you are with people who are in this subset of combinations that makes them the most depressed so you know sometimes they talk about the oppression Olympics where if you can show that you've got all the greatest disadvantages then you win bad Olympics and I think that's more or less what what the present concern about intersectional politics is about I mean I should say it's not that there's nothing to learn from the sociology of studying why is it for instance that what does it mean to be a black woman as opposed to a white woman and yeah you probably are at dealing with bigger disadvantages and because of that and that's good to know and when you're trying to figure out actually practical solutions to various forms of injustice you need to know something about that it's just that the way that that knowledge is channeled toward like the privilege walks that people are supposed to do at college campuses where you take more steps forward or backward depending upon how many of these categories you fall into just for the sake of stigmatizing certain people that's the problem and how do you see all of this connected to to altruism so again I think it's a way of penalizing those who are perceived to be good in some way from those who have to those who haven't it's a way to make you feel to suffer original sin if you're white you have original sin you know if you're male you have original sin and it just applied further and further it's hard to say what is the exact relationship between altruism and this ideology you know it's not that I think it's the thing we were talking about at the beginning where we're talking about a culture where altruism is literally seen as simply equated with morality so everyone is swimming in that sea and some people are simply taking it more seriously than others I think that the kind of social justice movement is the the wing of the altruist movement that has decided to channel that in the direction of we are going to worship at the altar of of victimhood we're going to worship at the altar that's going to be our god and that's they're the ones to whom we're going to direct our sacrifices for whatever sociological psychological reason that's that's the direction they've gone and you know some of them may be channeling it from their own religious background some of them may be fully secular but like again this is just this is all they've ever known that morality is that religions always had a monopoly on morality there's this telling passage in McWarder's book that I quote in my article where he he shows the sort of concrete meaning of this and again he's not thinking of it in terms of altruism per se but I'll just read this because I think it's it's telling he says this is all very Abrahamic as religion goes Muslim Islam the core of such words in Arabic is the consonants SLM which constitute the concept of submission one submits not only to a God to suspend disbelief is a kind of submission that's a very important point it is no accident that many of the white elect that's what he refers to as the woke spontaneously put their hands above their heads as an indication that they understand that they bear white privilege think of this type asserting oh I know I'm privileged while holding their hand up palm out like a Pentecostal they're so comfortable with that gesture and attesting to their privilege because of an overriding impulse to indicate submission or up there looking down on them I mean that's that's an elegant observation on his part so what was that that point you made is really in the middle that was really important oh the to suspend disbelief is a kind of submission because that that is his brushing up against the fact that the ultimate form of sacrifice in the ultimate form of humility that altruism really demands of you is the sacrifice of your mind which is one reason why I am quite upset that a number of the better rational secular even critics of woke have embraced now this idea of intellectual humility or epistemic humility like the problem with the wokeism they say is that they're not humble enough they should really stop believing so hard but wait but that's committing the very same crime as the woke as saying don't be so proud don't believe things so with such confidence I mean there is a problem with wokeism with regard to it's false confidence but if you have it's the same problem with religion right they force confidence in their religion so let's talk about effective altruism and then let's turn to the questions so there is this movement that seems to want to take altruism seriously and to be good at it and they call themselves effective altruism you wrote an essay on this they I've met some of the people active in this they strike me as super smart usually really off the charts smart very technologically oriented very secular religious at all but what is it that they're doing to what extent is it really altruism and to what extent is it effective we should come back to the point that they're really smart and often seem well-meaning because I think that's a sign of something but let's first talk about the the actual idea that they're practicing so they are it's funny because for many years philosophers would criticize Einrand and Objectivism for saying what do you mean altruism is evil yeah of course this straw man of an idea of self-sacrifice that you say people advocate is pretty bad Einrand but nobody really advocates that along comes Peter Singer who advocates exactly what she says altruists advocate and Singer then spawns a whole movement a whole social movement people who you know often radiating out from from Oxford where he taught from his students that that say look if morality is about the interests of other people and it's not about our own interests then we need to be if we want to be moral if we want to not be evil even sometimes the way he puts it then we can't live the way that we've been living in the modern west of the modern consumer culture where we you know maybe give a little bit to charity and feel guilty on Sundays or when we're voting for the Democrats or the Labor Party we have to live it full time and that means giving as much as we possibly can and not just to causes that feel good we have some sentimental connection to it but because we've done research to show that this amount of money that we're giving is going to save as many lives as possible whether by buying malaria nets for people in the third world or or what have you and so there's now this whole culture this whole movement that's grown up around this idea where they intensely research what are the most cost effective ways of saving the largest number of lives and then the latest spin on this is what they call long termism which is the idea well if singer says that the life we save isn't has to be we have to be concerned with the most lives we save wherever they are in the world and it doesn't matter if they're right in front of us or on the other side of the planet distance in space is not morally significant and so there's no special reason only to save the people around you that's selfish should save people wherever they are around the world well but if distance in space is not morally significant then neither is distance in time and so if you know that the actions that you're taking today are going to have some effect in the long term future then you should be concerned about that as well and you should be concerned about maximizing happiness not just around the world today but throughout human history millions of years from now and after all that's where most of the people are going to live because population is going to grow and then eventually the digital computers will evolve their own consciousness and take over the universe and we need to be concerned about maximizing their happiness it's an idea that the long termists like William McCaskill get from a philosopher named Derek Parfit who makes that point about the moral and significance of time and so they have all these theories about how we need to plan to avoid all kinds of what they call existential risks and whatever it is that poses the biggest chance of causing the extinction of humanity even if it's in the vastly distant future that's what is really significant and we are but the servants of that greatest happiness in the future and it's with long termism that I think the kind of religious aspect of this altruism really starts to come out because they advocate some really nutty sounding things like you should be having lots and lots of babies because of course the more babies we have the more future population there is and therefore you're maximizing population in the future and it's not because having babies makes you happy but because you're maximizing the greatest happiness and then there's this worry about AI taking over like much like the the world of Augustine was so worried about demons they're now worried about the computers that are in our midst spelling our damnation So to some extent though they sound like altruists who really care about other people versus the altruists who seem to care mostly about your own suffering to what extent do they push this to individual suffering and to people really you know really sacrificing well I mean in actual practice if you were to abide by their ideas it would certainly mean that and you know they it's important that it's not just you know giving 10% 20% of your your income it's you actually choose a career not because you love it but because it's going to make the most money so that you can give it away and so everybody's now heard of Sam Bankman Fried whose cryptocurrency exchange collapsed and Bankman Fried was somebody who was interested in animal welfare but this William McCaskill guy said no if you really want to do the most good what you need to do is go into finance make a lot of money give it away and that's what he did even though he didn't really want to even though it wasn't what he personally enjoyed and you know maybe that's why he wasn't very good at it but it's yeah the idea is your your choice of career is totally alienated from any personal values it's all about just the consequences you are a you are in effect a channel for utility and that's it there are stories of people like there was a student of Peter singers I can't remember his name who was inspired by him to donate his kidney to a stranger now his wife didn't want him to do it because she said well maybe our own children will need that kidney someday but of course that doesn't count as a moral reason in singers view because the fact that they're closer to you and your interests is not morally significant you know kidney someone needs a kidney and that's it doesn't matter who they are my relationship to them and then so he did that and there he's not the only one I think he inspired other people to do the same thing so yeah I mean if you actually practice this then you are you're giving up quite a lot it's a real call to sacrifice all right so religion really is everywhere it's hard to escape it at least morally and and I think the logistic logically because where do they get this knowledge from it has to be ultimately from emotion and you know the because it's not logic it's not reality yeah and in my article about effective altruism I trace basically the history here I mentioned the these guys get their ideas from singer and Parfit singer and Parfit are utilitarians and utilitarians of a particular stripe they they get their utilitarianism from a 19th century British philosopher named Henry Cidwick who was probably he's not as famous as John Stuart Mill but he's probably more intellectually influential in the academy because he Mill wrote very little about utilitarian Cidwick wrote enormously and was the major theoretician of it and when you read Cidwick you you you find out the foundations on which he bases his philosophy and it is basically faith it's I have an intuition that impartiality is the basis of morality and if you even look at Cidwick's intellectual autobiography Cidwick too was raised religious like like Moses has gave up his religion searching for meaning in life and said I found this new God and it's it's it's other people and the greatest happiness it's interesting impartiality is also you know the basis for Adam Smith in in the theorem of sentiments I mean it's also third party perspective this kind of impartial third party and that's that's where that's what that's what is good what is good is bad yes Cidwick's characteristic phrase was the view from nowhere and it's what sounds like the point the point of view of the universe you from Norwich Nagel but the point of view of the universe so he doesn't think that there is a God but you know if the universe had a point of view from that perspective you would want to maximize the greatest happiness and of course that makes no sense at all but he feels the need to have that metaphor even though he knows it doesn't refer to anything real just to make sense of this idea of morality alright great let's let's jump into some questions here we've got two let's see so guys you can ask questions you can use super chat to do it you can ask on this topic or any topic you got we've got a philosopher here so all the questions that I've told you ask the philosophers that you can ask Ben I'm sure be happy to answer so I we are let's see we've got quite a few questions but let's try to do $20 or more questions as we move forward so we can try to make our goal for this evening Ian asks do you think the non-Abrahamic religions are as altruistic Buddhism, Hinduism for example seem to be very anti-individual and irrational in their own way but are they also altruistic? Well depends I guess on what you mean by altruism if you mean are they out there doing lots of service work for other people well then I guess not they're meditating but as we discussed earlier not really what the essence of altruism is all about it's really all about giving up and from that perspective I would argue that at least I don't know as much about Buddhism and Eastern philosophy as I do about Western or religion for that matter but from the little that I know that like the most popular influential strains of Buddhism are in certain ways worse in this respect precisely because they counsel so much giving up and it's one of the things I mentioned in my article about effective altruism is Derek Parford at the end of his book and the appendix of his book actually says the truths this is on which I base my moral philosophy can be found in the texts of the Buddha because it's the Buddha who says not just don't be selfish but that there is no such thing as the self the self is just an illusion and that's part of the reason why we shouldn't be selfish because we're not actually serving anything that's real when you plan for something in the future when you invest and work hard to achieve some long-term goal says Parford you're really sacrificing for the sake of a future self that isn't you and that's no different he thinks in substance than sacrifice for another person so if you think there's a reason to invest for yourself there's equally good reason to sacrifice for another person it's all the same thing if there's no real self that's what the Buddhists encourage and they gave Parford the idea sounds a little bit like it sounds like Sam Harris got it from from the Buddhists this notion quite possibly because he talks a lot about the fact that there is no such thing as self and I guess he discovered that while on drugs I remember at that moment he didn't have a self so yeah so to what extent is is altruism and selflessness the same thing I mean they're not the same thing if you're trying to categorize people's theories there's definitely forms of selflessness that are not altruistic in the sense that they're not oriented toward other people altruism is about other people more obligations morality being defined by your obligations other people and Augustine Christianity that arguably is a form of selflessness is asking you to selflessly sacrifice for God but that's not altruistic so that that's if you're separating defining different formal theories but if you want to look at altruism and ask like what is its essential spiritual meaning then it is essentially selflessness it's essentially a call for sacrifices and in itself doesn't really care about other people right Andrew asks what is the connection between altruism and dependence and or egoism and indepence well altruists usually make a big deal about the fact that they think we are metaphysically dependent on some higher power and therefore can't make it on our own and so therefore shouldn't try and should should be humble and sacrifice it's part of the reason why they think their view is rational recognizing the truth and here it's any number of different kinds of dependence is it dependence on God, is it dependence on society is it dependence on your race you are inseparable from them you can't make it on your own and therefore what you can do is to is to recognize that fact and give back in effect to the entity the power was that you are dependent on right let's see Shazwat says should it's a wonderful life be rebooted as an egoistic character study what if George Bailey followed his dreams and embraced rational self interest the story wouldn't even need an angelic intervention that's an interesting question I mean it strikes me that I mean if what he means by reframing it on egoist terms would be like what happens if somebody sees what happens to the world without them I think somebody wrote that story already it's Atlas Shrug yeah I mean it's amazing to me that there are people out there there are objectivists out there who think it's a wonderful life has a positive story and is a is a movie that reflects in a sense objectivist objectivist values in some how I would never say it reflects objectivist values I think it's a very well made movie and part of what makes it appealing is that I think it draws on a very compelling package deal which is that yeah hard working productive people do actually make a difference to the world around them and you know there's a way in which the character George Bailey is portrayed as he's sort of a little Atlas of his town but then the emphasis isn't when these people come expecting everything from you without any gratitude you should quit you should you should revile that in gratitude on their part it's known now you realize that they are the meaning of your life and so that's part of what makes it compelling I see why people enjoy it it's a trick and the movie is filled with altruism I mean he wants to go to Paris and he can go to Paris because he has an obligation to his family and he wants to do this but he can't do that because the reality is that if you rewrote it he would close the bank take his wife and kids rent a place in Paris and travel the world and do all the things that he wanted to do beforehand and none of the story would be the same you can't have the same story if he's an egoist because he acts completely differently the whole movie is driven by a duty premise he is obligated in duty and the one guy who is portrayed as egoistic in some way it's a crook, it's a thief the other banker from a mall perspective the movie is awful but it's so well made and it's compelling because of the package deal and it's compelling because the characters are interesting and you know you wanted to be successful and you understand why he wants to commit suicide so it's but you know Rand I can't remember where this is but Rand called Frank Capra a communist she basically thought he was what was wrong with Hollywood from an ideological perspective and all of his movies if you go watch his movies and it's a wonderful life as a good example of this are viewed by so many people as pro-america and as presenting this positive view of America and yet I think he's a communist and it's really interesting to look at his movies from that perspective and suddenly you realize no none of the things that are really pro-american he's undermining American values at every step of the way like this yes and there's one actually my favorite one it's about small business and entrepreneurs and it's got this but there's an underlying hatred of business success there's an underlying hatred of big business of anybody who's being successful what's it called let's see this is the beauty of the internet while we're speaking we can we can look it up films I like it, I mean his movies are all really well made and really entertaining this stupid thing gives it to me I don't want it in Spanish, I don't understand Spanish, I don't know Spanish why is it alright this is not going to work because all the names are in Spanish so I can't tell what it is oh that's weird oh there it is okay let's see that's not that one I mean one of my favorite comedies is Austink and Olay's I don't know if you've ever seen that I have, it's been a while really that is really funny but it's pretty morbid as well State of the Union you can't take it with you you can't take it with you it's a really interesting movie and worth watching just from that title I can kind of guess yeah but it's it's again Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, Gene's author so great acting, really really well made, everything about it is first class and but it has it's filled with these package deals but ultimately it's undermining of real American values alright Wes thank you for the support really appreciate really appreciate the sticker thank you Shahzad as you know I usually every Christmas spend a little time talking about it's a wonderful life Steven says an outstanding discussion thanks thank you Steven clock do you think sociopaths and predatory people are reacting against altruism or did they or did they skip of altruism altogether and come to the conclusion that being exploitative and manipulative with a way to go through life it's a psychological question that I probably can't answer with too much authority I can speculate a little bit I wouldn't be surprised if there are some people that some people call sociopathic who are this way but I certainly not don't think it's the only reason for it the most important source to look at here is Ayn Rand's essay selfishness without a self where she talks about the tribal lone wolf character or type and she and that's a kind of sociopathic antisocial a moral character who she says is a product of what she calls the anti-conceptual mentality the person who never really defines any values on his own but because he is so manipulative he is rejected by a lot of different tribes who realize he is manipulative and so he goes from tribe to tribe trying to find one for himself and there's a way in which that's the product of altruism in that it's the sociological consequence of tribalism but I'll just recommend that people read that essay I think it's an underappreciated essay I think it explains a lot about a lot of people that we see in our midst not just serial killers but conspiracy theorists and school shooters and certain candidates as well I see this in business people what I see in business people is they what happens is they reject morality because they know they can't be altruistic to run a business you can't be altruistic altruism doesn't work in business you'll lose money you can't do the things that a businessman knows and wants to actually do so what they do is they abandon morality and they're basically good people so they're not going to become sociopaths but what they become is pragmatic pragmatists and pragmatists often will live on the line of immorality of lying and stealing and cheating because again morality is out there's no clear line for them so if it works so I do see people rejecting morality because they reject altruism but not having an alternative not having anything in its stead I should say I don't think everybody who does that who behaves the way you just described is either a sociopath or a tribal lone wolf the tribal lone wolf type is like the end of a spectrum I think that's right I think the better people land up being some kind of pragmatist they land up cutting corners sometimes and not and being confused about where the boundaries are of what's right and what's wrong but yeah it takes a certain it takes a certain evil to really cross that line and become a predator a real predator Jennifer says I know saying the common good is referencing a collective but I think saying the greater good is even worse there are values that are commonly good for all individuals but nothing greater than the individual I think that's right I think there's a rational way to spin the meaning of common good it's not what I would ever start with but if what you mean is something that where everybody benefits and nobody loses from some arrangement or institution that's a common good in fact I think if you go back to the 17th to 18th century that's actually the way the phrase was intended to be used but it got perverted and but yeah greater good or higher good is something that is perceived or understood as being above the needs of any individuals and that is there's no rational way to spin that alright Justin okay just as you said RFK is just a conspiracy theorist regarding CIA talking about the CIA but he has first-hand experience that you ignored he saw as a little kid CIA directors pressuring his uncle JFK to conform to their agenda before he was killed oh god Justin I'll leave this one to you no none of that is real and you certainly don't know it's real you know who knows what happened with Robert Kennedy but there's zero evidence to suggest that the CIA killed Robert or JFK either Kennedy that is one of those crazy conspiracy theories that has been pretty much debunked we know he killed each one of those people maybe we don't know all the motives and all the links but there's plenty of reasons but there's no evidence to suggest that it's the CIA that's just that's just completely arbitrary and yeah he's just a I mean RFK is a power-lusting nutcase and he will he comes up with a new conspiracy theory every little while you could argue that there is evidence that Wi-Fi is melting your brain is doing bad stuff to your brain there are studies showing that Wi-Fi can harm brains of rats there was a study that showed that Wi-Fi doesn't harm brains of rats and there's no study showing it does any harm to human beings so you can take those few studies selectively that you want to take and you can turn that into a massive theory about Wi-Fi hurting human beings but that's irrational and it's you've done some stuff on conspiracy theories man yeah but that would probably go in a whole different direction Wi-Fi is very dangerous when you use it to browse conspiracy theory websites true and when you're trying to communicate with submarines that are four kilometers under the Y because that was something that people claimed that anyway there was a whole thing about Starlink failed and that's what failed the submarine there was no internet under the water but it took a while for people to get that sadly that whole issue has been resolved now and there are probably no survivors they're all dead it looked like the thing imploded James asked is there any benefit to the eastern notion of letting go of being detached or even meditation to an extent to help manage one's emotions assuming one understands that one's values are what one's values are and live egoistically is there a contradiction between egoism and letting go of being unattached or meditation I don't see any value in that idea as it is usually understood and for more on this take a look at the interview that you did some weeks ago I think with my colleague Aaron Smith about Stoicism which is the ancient Greek and Roman version of the same idea and why it is a way of giving up on life now like with every systematic and influential philosophy it draws on elements of truth that make it plausible and there is some wisdom to the idea don't sweat the small stuff if the big stuff is really important and sometimes people do that and get caught up in things that aren't really important and they aren't in control of their thinking in those sorts of cases it might be better for them to take a walk and think about something else but if you want the official argument to take on the question of should you simply not want things in life so that in case you lose them you won't be frustrated and you won't suffer pain read the fountain head where this is exactly the attitude that Dominique Franco has at the beginning of the book and she says I want freedom to expect nothing and people quote that line from her sometime as though oh she's in favor of freedom no that's a statement of stoicism which she comes to abandon when she realizes she has to stop hating and fearing the world and that when she realizes that if she pursues her values and stops caring about what other people think about her pursuing her values then you achieve happiness that doesn't mean that you're always going to succeed in every possible way and life always involves the possibility of risk and loss but that's part of what you embrace when you embrace life but that doesn't mean that let's say something like meditation is going to always be a bad thing I haven't been convinced by empirical evidence but I don't see anything philosophically objectionable about it it helps me fall asleep it could be something like that for me that is the only virtue it has it helps me if I do it in a sense right I fall asleep faster it helps calm me to the point where I can sleep more power to you but beyond that I get no I see no value in it for me Shahzad asks do effective altruists believe that their effort to earn money in the first place prior to giving it away is useless or even harmful well it would depend on what you mean by in the first place so they're utilitarian consequentialists they think the only way to evaluate the moral worth of something is by its long-term consequences and so there's no in the first place before it has any consequences it always has consequences and I mean I guess they might say look if you make money and just I don't know burn it up in a pile that's not doing any good nobody most of the time does that if you don't do what they recommend and instead you just spend it on your personal consumption and your family they would say well that's not that it's completely devoid of moral significance you are creating a certain amount of happiness for a very small number of people and if you were the only people in the world then they would have no problem with it but they also think your moral obligation is to maximize happiness and so it's not you are just one column sorry you're just one row and a very long column of numbers and you count for that much so you count for one you know millionth or whatever of the fraction of the whole of the greatest happiness but that's it and so your actions affect many other people and that's where the moral weight comes in alright let's see okay so we're done with all the $20 questions we got a bunch of two five ten dollar questions if you still want to contribute Super Chat is open we're about halfway to our goal so there's still a way to go so please consider we got about 80 people watching live it's like four dollars from everybody watching live right now would get us to our goal so consider doing that alright Justin why won't scientists debate RFK Junior cowardice do you want to take this I have put up a few tweets on this subject in the last week you know the first tweet that I tweeted was that you can't infer from someone's unwillingness to debate anything about the quality of the content of their own intellectual position it could be that they're not confident in their own position that's possible that's possible could also equally well be that they think that they are giving a platform to a fraud or some form of irrationality they don't want to amplify that person's voice this is an issue that has been of some significance to objectivists in the past we make a there's a view that you don't want to sanction evil that evil only thrives when through the sanction of the victim and through the sanction of good people and one way that it can do that is by being given a voice in certain kinds of debates now it's you know a difficult question to determine when that is a real dynamic when a particular debate in a particular exchange will empower an irrational idea rather than defeat it but for the reasons that you mentioned before RFK falls into the category of somebody you don't want to give a platform to and you don't have to have any views about whoever this scientist was who turned him down what the quality of his character is I don't know anything about him I'm just saying one could have good reasons for not wanting to debate with someone like RFK Alex debated him and I think did a good job dismantling him so at some point Michael says is skepticism a secular form of mysticism or does it belong in its own category aren't mystics skeptics equally likely to be altruists they seem like two sides of the same coin what was the first formulation of the question is skepticism a secular form of mysticism not necessarily no it depends a lot on what you mean by skepticism I mean there's there's local forms of skepticism where someone's like if you describe themselves as a religious skeptic they're skeptical about religion they don't believe religion they doubt it they think it doesn't have any rational basis certainly nothing mystical about that if their skepticism is confined to just one subject now there are global skeptics philosophical skeptics who think there is no knowledge of anything and they doubt everything and they're not the kind of paradigm case I would give of a mystic but they are the other side of the coin of a mystic where a mystic is someone who thinks that you there's a undefinable ineffable form of knowledge like for example religious faith and a skeptic global skeptics are often people who think that the only way you could ever get knowledge is through this ineffable form of knowledge but then decide that's irrational that would never work there's no reason to think there's this kind of strange platonic knowledge and therefore we're going to give up on the possibility of knowledge as such and they're of course neglecting the possibility that there's a rational means of knowledge that could just as well work so kind of mystical notions that are often at the foundation of many arguments for skepticism for that kind of global skepticism so most famously here think about Descartes when he's in his skeptical moment thinking maybe I'm a victim of an evil demon and there's just me in the universe and nothing else why does he think that might be a possibility well because his soul grounds for considering possible scenarios is that he can imagine that's true well nothing rules it out and he considers his his mere imagination as a source of knowledge of possibility and that's kind of like using intuitions and ethics to ground your knowledge of what's good it's just something that pops into your head and isn't actually evidence you need to have evidence for even possibilities and if you don't have evidence of an evil demon who's controlling your life there's no grounds on which to say that it might be there so there's a kind of mystical epistemology that's often at the basis of skepticism Papa Campbell is Islam more altruistic than Christianity and Judaism this is why Muslim world has rejected the enlightenment more than Europe I'd actually be interested to hear your answer to that question I don't think so I don't think inherently Islam is more altruistic than Christianity I think they both emphasize submission to a God Islam actually has very similar to Christianity has a kind of a tithing that you're supposed to give to help the poor but it's not very high and there's nothing there's no the mixture will inherit the earth in Islam Christianity there's very much as adoration of the poor and the suffering and I think it comes from the fact that Christianity was a religion of poverty it was a religion of the poor it was a religion of the politically disenfranchised Islam is a religion of winners Islam is a religion of the victorious Muhammad is a trader he is a warrior and he is a husband to I don't know four wives at least one of them being nine years old but still it's much more of a self-confident religion that has a certain admiration for success versus Christianity but what happens with Islam is because it's a religion because it's mystical and because it ultimately submission to a mystical entity a mystical authority it cannot survive it cannot succeed it cannot thrive without a strong secular component which I think the Greeks provided Islam for about 300 years in the early days of Islam in about 900 to 1200 and the reason it's not impacted by the enlightenment is because the enlightenment never got there most of the enlightenment so they were under the Ottomans for the most part or northern northern Africa very primitive, very backward, very illiterate they never got the enlightenment they never got the printing presses they never got all of that and by the time they started figuring out there's something in Europe we should find out about and started sending their kids to schools in Europe they weren't teaching the enlightenment anymore they were teaching socialism and fascism I mean they were teaching so when they came back the secular Arabs became fascist and socialist and that's what associated the west so they skipped over the enlightenment the enlightenment never affected them and their own renaissance happened in the 9th century AD and it was dead by the 13th century I can't do much better than that though I would add also I mean you mentioned by the time you start paying attention to what's going on the west there's only socialism and fascism and you mentioned the Arab nationalists but you should also mention someone like Syed Kutub who is the intellectual progenitor of al-Qaeda who I think was also influenced by these probably more officistic elements of the west it depends on which Islam you're talking about al-Qaeda Islam they're pretty bad but there's a long history of that religion as with every other yeah and Syed Kutub is interesting because the problem is that they are they're very religious so the enlightenment skipped over them the ones who got educated got educated with bad ideas they brought them back that spurred a religious revival because people didn't want to be fascist to socialists so they adopted religion which often happens and Syed Kutub is part of that he's rebelling against the secular military regime in Egypt and he's rebelling by becoming more religious and then he visits the United States and he's shocked in America by the fact that like in churches women and men are dancing and that he writes about this as just an epiphany of how evil and how corrupt the U.S. is and how corrupt secularism is and it just makes him even more you know more committed to his religion but yeah I mean the the religious backlash in the Muslim world is to a large extent a backlash against the failure of secularization because they went straight from they skipped over the enlightenment they went straight to post Kantian kind of Europe and U.S. which had nothing to offer them so of course there's massive amount of altruism you know think about suicide bombers you don't get suicide bombers generally in Christianity so to the extent that the real religionists are willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of God for the sake of their Allah that is about as altruistic as you get but I would still argue that in day to day historically in the day to day in a pure religious sense in a day to day life Islam has more respect for wealth creation and more respect for enjoying life than Christianity does Christianity is very Augustinian in that sense it's focused on the suffering you know you have sexual urges you go all around in the snow and you whip yourself you know afterwards in Islam you have sexual urges you go full wives you've got lots of options so I'm not suggesting it's rational I'm just suggesting it has it doesn't have quite the same viciousness about life and about enjoying life Christianity is uniquely a uniquely vicious religion it's uniquely anti individual happiness success I think Judaism is nothing like Christianity and again modern Christianity is done differently in its origins this point has been made even clearer to me by reading Augustin because he and many of his ilk in the late antiquity period are one of the themes that occupies them is what's wrong with the Jews and the Jews care too much about the law and the law is really only there as a covenant from God for the Jews to prosper on earth and they just don't care about the afterlife they just don't care about their immortal souls and what's going to happen to them they care too much about the world in effect and it's themes like that that eventually get picked up much later by people like Luther and then Marx and all the other forms of anti-Semitism is further reason to despise the Jews and of course it's worldly there is no afterlife really in Judaism there is no immortality of the soul in Judaism at least not originally and there's the Talmud particularly during the period of Jesus the Talmud would have been dominant there's schools of jurisprudence they are arguing they disagree constantly and the Bible is just like in the background setting a certain level of principles but they're arguing about judiciary issues and it's a precursor to common law and that's offensive to the Christians and it's too secular it's not enough of the religiosity and this is a respect in which Christianity goes takes things in a bad direction because of the Greeks because this is what Augustine gets from the Platonists the whole idea of the immortality of the soul that's not in Judaism because that's pre-Platonism and it gets injected into Judeo-Christian religion through the Platonists because of Augustine among others yeah no question many of the early Christians were kind of some form of Neo-Platonists and they took so much from Plato and the structure of the church with the Pope almost a philosopher king and somebody who can commune with the world of forms God in this case I mean all of that is so platonic and it's not that Judaism is just Italian because I don't think they were reading Aristotle not until Maimonides who brings Aristotle in but it's just more focused on living it's just more focused on day-to-day life and well there's a whole conversation there but if you read the Old Testament the Old Testament's like the story about politics, about these people who's trying to look for a home and wars and battles and God intervenes and he switches kings and he tells them you don't want a king, kings are bad for you and then they do want a king and it's much more about the world than how to live in it and then particularly later on there's a reason why all these religions are called Abrahamic because he's the ultimate sacrifice willing to sacrifice his own son so the one figure that all religions love is Abraham because he's willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and that's the sense in which they're all united by altruism Frank says, have you read philosopher Helvetius who wrote about egoism also like Pelagius a heretic Christian who put free will and rational deed above grace I don't know anything about Helvetius I know a good amount about Pelagius and he's super interesting and he's someone I'm going to talk about a little bit, my summer talk in a week because he's why we he's where the doctrine of original sin came from in reaction so he's a heretic who says there is no original sin and he didn't say that yet because nobody had come up with the idea yet but he says perfection is possible we have free will, God gives us free will and therefore we can be morally perfect if we want now granted this is moral perfection by Christian standards so that means we can be really aesthetic and give up everything but we can perfect ourselves and our own salvation and Augustine thought this was terrible because who are you to think that you can save yourself that you can earn your salvation that means you are responsible somehow for something good happening but God is the only one who creates anything good good things come from God and so Pelagianism is the ultimate form of the sin of pride the idea that you can be responsible for your own sin and so he reads Pelagianism out of the church he declares it a heresy he writes all kinds of books against Pelagianism and it's by rejecting Pelagianism that he formulates the doctrine of original sin is a very very interesting book which I just recently read a big chunk of what is it called the theology of liberalism by Eric Nelson published by Harvard University Press just two years ago and Nelson argues that if you look at all of the major classical enlightenment figures like Locke and Voltaire and even well there's a few others but he says they were essentially Pelagians that they even though they weren't famous for it at the time if you look into their writings closely enough even though they consider themselves Christians they rejected original sin and you see this for example in Locke's reasonableness of Christianity his version of Christianity has no original sin in it and that's really important for the development of enlightenment philosophy and a case for freedom another interesting tidbid that relates to this point is that the abolitionists in America were largely Quakers and one of the things that made the Quakers distinctive was that they too were at least semi Pelagian and rejected a form of original sin I don't think you could be any kind of moral radical and think gosh like there's this horrific practice that everybody around us is engaged in and they've done it for thousands of years but we're not just going to sit on our laurels and be content with the fact that they've always done it because we can perfect ourselves and we can get rid of this evil in our midst so Pelagius has always been a kind of symbol of rebellion against original sin and all the worst things about Christianity and wherever it pops up and wherever his followers and just people who kind of have an idea that's sort of like his are found in history you always get moral radicalism to guess which American politician has written is written about the evil of Pelagius I believe it's Josh Hawley yes Josh Hawley I mean he takes this stuff seriously he knows his stuff and he takes it seriously and he he really is a you know, Augustinian and he hates Pelagius he's written about it I can't remember if it was his thesis or something but he's written about it and I think it makes it into some of his books so this guy is one more interested about Pelagius that same book by Nelson there's a whole chapter on John Rawls because Rawls they recently uncovered his undergraduate thesis from Princeton little known fact before he was a secular philosopher type Rawls was thinking about going into the seminary as an Anglican priest or minister and he wrote his undergraduate thesis at Princeton on why Pelagianism is so terrible and why everything is dependent on God's grace and why we can never we can never take credit for any of the things that we've done morally speaking we can never claim that our wealth is our own because we got it all from God's grace and this is exactly the thesis he goes on arguing for, goes on to argue for in theory justice except in the secularized guys wow that's powerful I like that this stuff is everywhere all right Shazbut says how much would it cost to get Ben to review the TV series The Good Place or does only Iran do stuff like that I've seen the first season of it I've been meaning to watch the rest I don't know how much he'd have to pay a lot because watching that much TV would take me away from a lot of other intellectual projects What did you think of the first season? I thought it was interesting I thought it was just rare in the fact that it's trying to dramatize moral philosophy in primetime television when do you ever see that I sort of saw the end coming because I guess I don't want to spoil it I think there's a literary predecessor to the overall plot arc of that season a lot of objectivists know about but I won't mention it I would really have to go back and watch again though to be able to comment on the way on the actual philosophical ideas in play to see what the arc of it is to see what the theme of it is that wasn't quite clear to me from the first season I suspect I'd get more by watching more the rest of the seasons all right let's see Clark is the spirit of growth and progress greater than the force of altruism in people's minds he says I believe it is well not in everybody's mind definitely not in altruists minds the idea that it is greater than altruism is I think in effect the idea of psychological egoism it's the idea that everybody really is at the end of the day after their own self-interest and that is a deterministic view that denies the fact of human free choice it's also a view that is very much the concern of at the shrugged it's a view that I think Dagny sort of has at the beginning of the story she thinks how could people not value industry how could people not value productiveness there's all these looters and statists who are trying to shackle my business but it must be they just don't realize what I need to produce they don't realize that I need freedom if I can just work a little harder I can prove to them how I can save the country and then they will leave me alone and let me run my railroad but of course the more she works for them the more they destroy things and what she realizes at the end of the story is no there are some people who do not value industry who do not value productiveness who do not really want to live and it's when she realizes that she finally realizes I've got to go on strike and it's a whole climactic scene where she makes this realization I did a whole talk on this topic it was the role of the role of free will it was a sub theme in Atlas Shrug Ocon a few years ago you can find it on YouTube not your average algorithm asks I'm going to rephrase this any promising students commonly training at the OEC what we call the INRAN University now and there are many promising students I'm not going to mention their names because they're still students but wait a few years and see what they do that sounds good Liam says Benny you Benny you've seen students and faculty becoming more aware of INRAN's ideas and taking them more seriously as a thinker than when you were last on the podcast is he asking about in the wider culture in the world out there if he's asking about college professors in mainstream universities I mean I think it was last time I was on the podcast was maybe 6 months ago so I haven't seen that many changes in that short of time if I take a broader view it's a mixed bag it's like I've been in the philosophy world for something like 25 years and I think in certain ways mainstream academia has become more tolerant of INRAN but in other ways it's become even more radically repelled by her and it depends on who in academia you're talking about and my sense of the way academia has broken down is that there's a large number of professors who are afraid to do anything controversial and who kind of hide in their shells and if you write a paper about INRAN for them they'll treat her like any other person that you write a paper about and they won't punish you for it and they don't agree with her but and it's a good question like how many professors are like that but there's a whole rabid minority of professors and they're the ones who are leading the charge of woke politics today who along with many other thinkers would very much like to cancel INRAN for all kinds of reasons she's a traitor to her sex and there's a rape scene in the fountain head and she's probably racist too because all the characters in her books are white so yeah I'm myself worried about the how much longer the the books the novels have in the high schools there are not too many it can't be there's so controversial that to the extent that social justice woke politics is involved to any extent in public school districts it's going to get harder to teach them because they're going to be too controversial and too racist sexist classes so it's a real mix and it's it's part of the reason I think why we very consciously at the INRAN Institute are beginning to create alternative institutions while we're creating the INRAN University for people to be able to come and learn these things on their own without interference by the worst of these professors and yeah there's a lot of good professors out there too but usually the better ones I think are not very courageous these days only a very small handful who are how it is rampant Apollosus asks what's the relation between altruism and the malevolent universe premise well if you there's I think a reciprocal relationship and it's hard to know which comes first if for whatever metaphysical reason you think that the universe is not auspicious to human achievement if you think that the universe is out to get you you can't achieve anything on your own you'll default into altruism for the reasons we discussed earlier you'll think I'm it'll encourage you to be humble I can't achieve anything on my own so I might as well just recognize that fact and sacrifice to other people so that's one direction of causality but I think it works the other way too because if you adopt altruism you can't practice it consistently and you will you'll be convinced that the good is something impossible to achieve which is one of the malevolent universe premise and you see John Gault warning Dagny Taggart of this toward the end of the novel when she decides to leave the valley and go back to the world because she thinks that she might still have a chance to win she might still have a chance to beat the looters at their own game by convincing them that she can outproduce everybody and he says this is where he says like if you if you go back and if you fail don't don't damn reality don't damn existence it's your ideas that have failed not reality but the actual good as real is possible it's yours and you see Dagny even beginning to have a sort of tentative malevolent streak in her when she goes back to the world she starts to think maybe my ideals aren't achievable and I'm going to fight for them anyway and she's got this kind of bironic attitude but that's the malevolent universe starting to creep into her worldview because she's pursuing what is in fact a form of sacrifice she doesn't think it is but she's it is in fact and it's only when she realizes no I can't live like this I can't convince these people they don't want to live they're only helping them to get away with their pretense and quits that she regains her original perspective and she's always been a benevolent universe person throughout most of the book it's just starting to weaken briefly in the middle of the book and then she regains it because of her decision to go on strike all right let's see all right let's make answers shorter now just because coming on two hours and we've still got a few all right let's see Mark asks Toscan has started this week and Okon coming in July thoughts on them and to any of the events later this year and in 2024 events Ben will be at well he's not a Toscan no my only thought on that is that there's a reason why on our website for Okon we have in big letters now the Objectivist Conference because it's the only one yep yeah it's going to be a great conference Ben is giving a talk there we do have a conference in Europe next year in Amsterdam I think it's in March there will be a European conference in March I'm not sure who the faculty are going to be there but Amsterdam is such a great city that'll be a terrific conference I don't think there are any other conferences per se that we have planned right now because there's Okon next year which will be somewhere I'm not allowed to say where but somewhere on the west coast I think I can say that there's the west coast turn I don't know how we got to Miami this year this year's west coast turn but we're in Miami this year anyway come to Okon it's going to be amazing it's going to be a lot of fun a lot of people I think close to about 500 above 500 and a lot of students so a lot of young people Andrew what has been think of the criticism of Rand's presentation what has been think of the criticism of Rand's presentation of Tuhi that he's too conscious of too conscious of his own evil I think that Ayn Rand herself thought that he was not psychologically possible but that it was something she was adding for dramatic effect I'm pretty sure that's in a letter she wrote to a fan so if it's a criticism I don't think it's a criticism I think it's just an observation she'd probably agree with it and remember novels are novels they're not meant to be philosophy just not psychology not credible accounts of human psychology necessarily yes justice is RFK Junior a tribal lone wolf he went from left wing environmentalist to right wing anti-vaxa in a decade I think he's a left wing anti-vaxa I don't think he's a right wing anti-vaxa being an anti-vaxa doesn't put you necessarily in one camp or the other they are left wing anti-vaxa and right wing anti-vaxa but the whole left and right wing differentiation is somewhat bogus I don't know if you have anything to say about RFK yeah James you're on a follow up from previous question based on Ben's answer would a good way to summarize a proper view be be rational and keep the full context with regard to Ben's idea of don't sweat the small stuff oh ok so with regard to don't sweat the small stuff be rational keep the full context that's not bad yeah I think that's really good yeah alright boys tips for boys does this with any interview I do we did this to you six months ago tips for burn up burnt out parents of one year old how do we gain focus motivation prediction on US inflation rates, tech, jobs New York City, Bitcoin Musk, Jamie Dimon and ARVR in whatever order you want all for five dollars I have very little to say about most of those things especially not tips for burnt out parents of one year old since I have no children so I have not been through that I mean burnout is something that's maybe a more general phenomenon I think it often results from people choosing a course in life not because they really want it but because they see it as a duty I don't think it's always that way but it's something it's a case to be on the lookout for altruistic motivations certainly there are people who become parents for altruistic reasons not because they really want to have children yeah alright friend Hopper says thanks for having another amazing guest on your show Ben is great on the new idea live along with all sorts of other great ARI fellows great show thanks friend Hopper uh Justin says why is the objective movement very white is it it's white I don't know I'm a little colorblind I think I think that this is one of those kinds of questions where it's not really a question about the objective is movement it's a question about intellectual movements generally speaking and from that perspective objective is not too different from socialism communism feminism effective altruism you name it these are all it's a lot of white people so yeah it's not only men by a long shot they tend to be white but but even the white stuff I mean the reality is I go to Latin America and the large audiences of people consider themselves objectivists and they're not technically white whatever the hell that means I'm not a big fan of identifying people by the color of their skin there's a there's a big group now of objectivists in Africa I don't know how serious they are I've met some of them but I don't know if the movement is real or not but there is some activity online and they do want to have a big conference next year in Nigeria or Kenya or something it's just a it's just a reality of the last 250 years or really since the Renaissance that the western Europe and the United States have been at the forefront of intellectual movements and of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and they tended to be have light skin I see no greater deeper meaning than that once these ideas pervade in geographic areas where people have different types of skin they will be popular there too I think actually Ocon is going to be can we say more diverse because quite a few people are coming from Latin America I think we've got quite a big group coming from Latin America I think it's been increasingly diverse for years now and for those single guys out there more women definitely more women at the Ocons alright let's see we've got two last ones WCZN from New Zealand says positive news Mark Andreessen I saw that he did I think he did it today I'm looking forward to listening to that one Mark Andreessen is this is a character that I I really like I also can't forgive him for his ancient sins of Microsoft but I really like him so he's quite good on a lot of issues he was going through an Iran phase sometime in the last 6 to 12 months on Twitter quoting all of the kinds of passages from her book he's been following me on Twitter for 3, 4, 5 years now so he won't communicate with me when I send him private messages but he does follow me on Twitter so I think he's definitely attracted to Ayn Rand I think Ayn Rand interest goes back even to the before Microsoft days but he's excellent on certain things I mean his essay build was very very good particularly in a sense of life sense I mean I would quibble with a few details but the sense of life was terrific and his response to AI panic and hysteria has been phenomenal, highly recommend I did a show on this and I highly recommend the essay he wrote on AI and why it won't kill us all I went to my alma mater you went to where did you go? University of Illinois okay and he's done amazing things and he's been very very successful so you give him credit for that okay Mark says last question many weird modern ideas come from universes like hermeticism I don't know what that is and the God mind monoism of that system what to make of claim that universe is God hermeticism is a syncretist mystery religion from the late antiquity period which I don't know too much about but it had the idea that God Hermes wrote these texts and they synthesized different strands of Platonism and Christianity and I don't know too much about it the way he describes it it sounds pantheistic because he said the universe is God how to think about that idea it's depending on where it shows up in history it's either a good thing or it's either a better thing or a worse thing so if it's when it first shows up is with the Stoics I think they're basically kind of pantheist and there it's very bad because it's the first time it's coming up and it's introducing a form of consciousness into the basic nature of reality that they didn't think was there before and it's a retreat from the kind of realism of the classical Greeks Spinoza was a pantheist who in different places said things like the universe is God now coming out of Spinoza's mouth it has a different kind of effect because this is now after in thousands of years of Christianity and coming out of Spinoza's mouth it's a way of depersonalizing God saying in effect God is nature and there are a lot of people who think that when someone like Spinoza says that he's basically saying there is no God there's just nature and so it's you know he's still probably not he's not an objectivist or an Aristotelian but he's increasingly secular with going back to the Stoics which is you know progress in so far as it's regressing from Christianity All right thank you Ben this has been wonderful we just hit two hours thanks to all the superchatters, thanks for the support really really appreciate it lots of questions, lots of good questions and great I will see you Ben at Okon in a week and a day a little spooky I'll see you guys tomorrow morning for a news roundup and over the weekend we'll do a couple of shows and so thanks everybody for sticking around and see you soon Ben, bye see you around, thanks