 Thank you all for being here. I know you've just had a pretty big conference and you must all be exhausted. So I appreciate you coming one more time to take you a talk. So entrepreneurs, I mean really at the center of every market economy are entrepreneurs. Everything we have around us really is a product of somebody with an idea. Not just an abstract idea but the idea that they then put into practice to build something, to create something, to make something. From my iPhone to electricity to every product that we in the amazing modern life that we live we benefit from is a product of some business person who discovered a profit opportunity and actually took advantage of it, built something, made something out of it. A culture of Western civilization doesn't really exist in the form that we understand and we know it today without what entrepreneurs do. And entrepreneurs go hand in hand with the kind of economic freedom that we have had over the last 250 or so years. Because what does an entrepreneur need in order to be successful? What is the core of the entrepreneurial activity? Well it's to think, discover, imagine, figure stuff out that nobody else has. And then have the freedom to express those thoughts and actions, to actually go out there and do and execute. Without permission, without somebody's authority, without somebody's signature. But just to have the idea and to go and live it. And that of course did not exist until about 200, 250 years ago with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, with the post-enlightments in Europe and in the United States where our economies were relatively freed up. And entrepreneurs could think without worrying about whether their conclusions they came to might be, the ideas that they had might conflict with what the authorities allowed, what the authorities permitted. And then have the knowledge that they could actually act on those thoughts. Again, they wouldn't have to ask for somebody's permission. The economies that have been the freest have generated the greatest number of entrepreneurs. The economies that have left people free to think and to act based on their own judgment have been the economies that have had the greatest entrepreneurial activity. And as we constrain those freedoms, as economies become less free, as we're witnessing in some countries in the United States, maybe the one that I'm most familiar with, you're actually seeing entrepreneurial activity being restricted. The formation of new businesses in the United States is down over the last decade or so. Primarily, I think, because of the amount of regulation, the amount of constraint, the amount of permission, authority that one has to get in order to start a business and to sell products and to hire people and to do the things that entrepreneurs must do. So entrepreneurship is really at the center of everything we have achieved materially in the West. And I tell students, this is a slightly older audience, so I think you guys appreciate this more. I mean, we live in amazing times. We live from a material wealth perspective. It's unbelievable how good life is today. Our life expectancy, our quality of life, our standard of living, these things we have in our pockets that only existed for the last 10 years and yet have changed our lives in dramatic ways, enhance our ability to communicate, to be entertained, to compute, to find information, to do all these things. Most of the kids I've talked to are taken for granted because they were born with it almost. Most of us remember the days without cell phones, never mind without supercomputers, super entertainment systems, super telecommunication devices, super encyclopedias in our pockets. All of this is a product of entrepreneurship. And one of the mysteries that applies to entrepreneurs, much more generally to capitalism and free market, is given how much benefit society, all of us as individuals, have received from the entrepreneurial activity for entrepreneurs themselves. Why do we trust them so little? Why do we want to control them so much? Why is the perception of entrepreneurs generally, I mean, when they're small, when they're starting, when they're struggling, but God forbid they be successful and then we start hating them? I mean, the image I have, the image I have of this is recently Mark Zuckerberg. I don't know if you saw Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress. And he is a man, whatever you think of Facebook, that's changed the world. You know, he's got billions of customers, not millions, billions of customers who use his platform, hopefully to make their lives better. Most of the people who use Facebook use it for family pictures and for communicating with friends and stuff. Some of us use it for philosophical, activist, political reasons, but we get upset because of this. But most people benefit enormously from Facebook. It's a platform to communicate with other people around the world. He is what you should consider a hero of modern business, of modern entrepreneurship. He's changed the world for the better. And these, you know, I can say this in this audience, he's known nothing, ignorant and stupid. Politicians who created nothing, built nothing, employed nobody, changed the world. This giant, they don't understand. Like the whole testimony was about a cryptocurrency that Facebook wants to launch and needs permission in order to launch it from the regulatory. And Congress doesn't like the fact that Facebook is going to launch a cryptocurrency. And they kept telling him, will you guarantee that it's going to work? And Zuckerberg kept saying, I don't know if it's going to work. We'll put it out in the marketplace and see people like it, which is the answer an entrepreneur would give, right? As entrepreneurs, we don't know what's going to work and what's not going to work. If we knew it wouldn't be particularly risky and it wouldn't be particularly entrepreneurial, I'm guaranteed that it's going to work. Otherwise they don't want to allow it. Or not allow it. By what right do they have? And the sad thing is, now that was the better question. Some of the questions were about how many LGBTQ people were on his board of directors and how many employees he had that were gay or this or that. I mean, things that were irrelevant to the discussion. But that's what they were drilling on. It was an embarrassment to any thinking human being. And yet, I'd say most people were happy that Zuckerberg was under attack. Most people resent these guys. I mean, America in general right now, everybody loves to hate big tech or big banks or big industry or big Walmart or big anything. Anything big, anything where an entrepreneur has been successful, we love to hate. The question is, why? Now, there's a sense in which this has always existed. You know, going back to the 19th century, what did we call in America the great industrialists of the 19th century? We called them what? Robber barons. Robbers. And barons. Robbers because they stole, barons because they're aristocrats. None of them were aristocrats. You guys in Europe know aristocrats. You know, Rockefeller was a poor kid. Carnegie came from nothing. And they built something. They made something. They wanted aristocrats. And suddenly they did it with robbers. They produced value. They were traders. They were producers. And yet we hated them then. But it seems that every decade we hate them more. Consequences of hating them and mistrusting them is that we regulate them. We control them. We don't believe them. We want to make sure they won't rob. So we put a regulator on every one of their shoulders to check everything that they do, to make sure that what they're doing is appropriate by some extent. So what is it about our culture? What is it about our world that makes us distrust entrepreneurs so much? Why do we treat them as bad as we do in America right now? In America right now it's very popular. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, AOC. Do you know AOC in Austria? Alexandria Ocasio-Quartez. She's made it to Austria. She's big time. Now they're saying a society that allows for there to be billionaires is an immoral society. A society that allows for billionaires is an immoral society. And this is, again, quite popular. You know, none of those people will probably win the next election. But get a significant amount of votes. They're all quite popular, particularly among young people. So what is it about being a billionaire that's so offensive to people? That's so bad. Because what does billionaires do? How do you become a billionaire? Crete value. Lots of people create value. But how do you become a billionaire? Lots of entrepreneurs create value. What's the difference between a non-regular entrepreneur and a billionaire? There are other people which are willing to become billionaires. So other people, you allow other people to become millionaires. That's a consequence. But not... Yeah, so not only are you creating value. You're creating value for millions or hundreds of millions of people. And you're creating so much value that people, those people are willing to pay you more than it costs you to produce whatever it is yourself. But the only way to become a billionaire is by changing the lives of hundreds of millions or billions of people for the better. Because they're willing to pay for your product. Why are we willing to pay for products? Because they make us better. Because we believe. We engage in trade because we believe that trade is going to make our lives better. So in a free market at least put aside the chromians and put aside the favors, the red-seeking. In a free economy, if somebody becomes a billionaire, it's because they've created value that billions of people, hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay for and are better off. So you can't become a billionaire unless you change the world, make the world a better place for hundreds of millions of people. These should be the greatest benefactors of mankind. We should be erecting statues. Naming streets after these guys. Instead we put them in front of Congress and wag fingers at them. Regulate them, control them and threaten them with taxes now popular in America again because of the left. Our wealth taxes. We want to take away their wealth and people are calculating how high the wealth tax needs to be to eliminate billionaires in America. To take so much of their money away so that within 10 years there won't be any billions. That's serious. People are seriously making these calculations which is insanity. If you remember those of you who read Thomas Piketty's book, you know, what's that? I like to call it Das Kapital for the 21st century. And it is Das Kapital for the 21st century in a sense that in the 21st century even the Marxist are unsophisticated. Because that book is so unsophisticated. There is no theory. It's basically empirics and really garbage theory. There's no economics in it. At least Marx was sophisticated was a bit philosophical. Had something somewhat interesting to say. Piketty is just nonsense from beginning to end with lots of data and data we know those of us who have done data you can manipulate you can play around with it you can get any result you want if you know which outliers to take out and how to set up the regression analysis. Right. Anyway Piketty suggested a wealth tax of 10% on everybody globally so he couldn't escape. And why did he say why did he want a 10% wealth tax? Not to help the poor because he said he had enough money to really help the poor not on a global perspective. Why did he want the 10% wealth tax? To get rid of those millionaires to knock people down. He said it in the book to reduce inequality not by raising the bottom but by knocking down the top which reveals everything you need to know about Thomas Piketty in my view. So why isn't we hate them so much? This is where it gets controversial I think. You know at the core what entrepreneurs doing why are they doing what they're doing? Why are they doing what they're doing? Why does an entrepreneur get up in the morning and go to work and they work hard and work long hours and really you know put themselves up? Why do they do? Particularly when they start out I mean it's hard work but all through I mean even when they become billionaires they're still working long hours Jeff Bezos second richest man in the world these days works long hours works really hard Why? Self-interest No They like it What's that? They like it Well why is that not self-interest? Is it liking it self-interest? Yeah I mean that's self-interest The reason they do it is because they love it they don't just like it they love it the challenge the excitement the building something the making stuff to create products in their own image So it's self-interest it's liking it Now you know it's also what? It's also money particularly early on right? They want to make a profit and partially you want to make a profit because it indicates that your product has value the profit is a symbol of a value but also because you want to be rich entrepreneurs go to work they do what they do they engage in what they do constantly because they love it because it's good for them because it's in their self-interest and what does our culture think of self-interest? for anybody what is their view of self-interest? not economically not politically but morally the heart morality of entrepreneurship right? what is it the heart? Egoism Yeah it's an egoism what does egoism mean? That's it Is that good or bad? does egoism good or bad? Well not according to you according to the culture what does the culture think egoism is? good or bad? it's kind of embarrassed what's that? it's kind of embarrassed it's kind of embarrassed I mean when I ask audiences a lot of times you know why do these people work so hard and you know they may come up with all kinds of reasons but nobody will say for the money because nobody wants to be embarrassed by the idea maybe of course it's also for the money it's not only for the money but it's also for them or self-interest I mean people say it but you know you even corrected him and say no it's not self-interest it's liking it because liking sounds better than self-interest self-interest sounds better we live in a culture with self-interest egoism selfishness all these terms are associated with bad stuff it's embarrassing because what does it mean to be moral in the culture in which we live? what does it mean to be moral? to be a good person to be really, really you know where you build statues for you and they make they name streets for you and maybe you get sainted at some point or whatever but you know somebody who's considered morally good you're a higher purpose than yourself and what is a higher purpose than yourself usually? you know some other people right benefiting humanity now what's interesting is that entrepreneurs benefit humanity so it's not about benefiting humanity that much now let's give an example of Bill Gates Bill Gates one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the 20th century certainly Bill Gates changed the world he changed the world there's not a human being on the planet who has not been touched by Bill Gates even those people who've never used a computer probably are getting their aid because the logistics is so much more efficient because of computers so even there he touched indirectly by Bill Gates he's changed the world for billions of people and he became the richest man in the world how much moral credit do we give this great benefactor of mankind? moral credit zero, negative he's too rich we can redeem Bill Gates he can leave Microsoft which he did he can start a foundation and he can start giving all the money away now he's a good guy now we like him not enough to make him a saint why? how many people is he going to help by the way through his philanthropy? thousands, maybe tens of thousands a lot of people not as many as the business but because it's a philanthropy because he's not making money doing it it's okay morally and because he's not making, building, creating stuff it's okay because he's only giving it away God forbid you make and build stuff that's no no the good stuff is to give it away I'm not against charity charity is great big battle now since many years already to change the kind of morality which comes from very very from a very very long kind of goal when we win even humans well I don't know that the morality can come from when we're before humans because I don't think morality is built into a genetic maker we can talk about why we can talk about what it's being built up through the millions it's being built up and we can talk about why that is but the important thing right now is to just observe that it is so here's this guy giving it away he's a good guy still not a saint we're still not building statues why not what's the problem with Bill Gates today I mean he doesn't work he's not making any money he's not in Microsoft anymore so the tainter prophet is gone he's now giving his money away but he's still not at the pinnacle of moral worth why because it seems like he committed sin this is just like repentance actually repentance is like a gift yeah but repentance is good but we're going to get the sense that he's fully repented what is he missing he's still a billionaire he's still alive that's a sin we'll get to that he's still a billionaire yeah he's still a billionaire he's still the richest man in the world he lives in a big house which he feels guilty for appropriately right he feels like he said he's got one room in his house in an interview he said I've got a room in the house the whole room is a trampoline for my kids and he said I don't know if I should feel guilty about that and I'm like why should he feel guilty about that your kids are having fun you ruined the money what's it feel guilty about but again that morality I've got a trampoline in my room what would it take for him to become a saint I mean he'd have to die but it's not just die like if he died tomorrow it wouldn't work what would he have to do before he died he'd have to give all his money away he'd have to like live in a tent and he'd have to bleed a little bit for us he'd have to suffer a little bit because if you go to a lot of museums I'm sure in Vienna this is true and you go look at paintings of saints you won't find any that are having fun you won't find any that are smiling and enjoying life they usually have arrows sticking in them and they're some form of gruesome death right that's what it takes to be a moral hero we live in a culture in which building, creating, making that's the moral code we live with it's the moral code we've inherited from millennial with entrepreneurs it challenges that moral code I think that's a great contribution I mean it says I should live for other people but not just help other people not just make other people better off because business does that for the best what the moral code actually says the modern moral code the last 2000 years at least says is that I should suffer for other people I should sacrifice myself for other people I should make myself worse off for other people and she asks a simple question why? why should anybody live like that for somebody else? because it's written in a book because some philosopher told us but what is his reasoning? and there is no answer for the why other than we have decided we have accepted maybe there is an answer in a way that this is a more difficult sacrifice as compared to being an entrepreneur and having a nice life being built against and compared to dying for other people but why is dying for other people a good? why in morality do we view that as good? that is good but that everyone recognizes that that's harder than alternative so is a lot of things in life are hard that seems to be the hardest yeah but why is morality about what's hard? what is it about morality? which says the good versus evil good versus bad this is what you should do versus this is what you shouldn't do why should you do what's hard? what is the value of hardness? for whom is the value of hardness? there may be several explanations but I would take constant consideration of religions for example that all great prophets or let's say people have sacrificed for other people for 15 days after the dream lived there so that's maybe the source of such morality there's no question that the source of the morality is religion ultimately Christ dies the most horrific death possible for whom? to experience the power of sin yes for sins not he committed for sins all of us committed for somebody else's sins he dies the source is ultimately religion but it still begs the question of why? I would argue that there is no logical rational reality based reason that at the end of the day what morality should be is what Aristotle viewed morality as morality for Aristotle was not about how to suffer for other people it's not how to sacrifice yourself it's not how to inflict to do something hard for the sake of doing something hard morality for Aristotle was a guy to how to live how to achieve what he called eudaumonia which is I know I'm butchering the you know how I'm pronouncing it but it meant happiness flourishing a full life as a human being living the best life that you could for you comes to the same conclusion morality is not about it starts with a fundamental question how should I live? completely different than other animals we don't know whether animals have been genetically coded they know exactly what to do they know when to do it, how to do it we don't say that's immoral to an animal because they have no choice they're programmed, they're coded they need to choose we have the ability to guide our lives what's good for us? we still don't know even materially what's good for us we don't know what food to eat what nutritionist you talk to is fat good for us or is it fat bad for us I'm on the good for us this month I don't know about next month I'll read another study and I'll convince me the other way around even at the level of material survival it's so complicated that we are not sure what to eat and what not to eat what about in terms of ideas in terms of action in terms of what we should do on a day-to-day basis what leads to goodness and what leads to bad what is going to result in a flourishing successful life and what is going to result in a horrible awful so that is the fundamental choice that we have is to live or not to live morality should be, ethics should be science in Aristotle's sense of figuring out what are the actions what are the values and virtues that we should adopt that lead to a successful, flourishing prosperous, successful life as a human being and that's the project Rand engages in and she proposes some ideas what's the most important thing we should be pursuing as human beings that don't deliver successful life what is it that makes everything around us possible what is it that makes entrepreneurs possible freedom is a consequence before freedom, freedom to do what to do it it's our ability to use our minds you have to have the right to do it but that politics that's way downstream from morality you have to start with what makes it possible for us as individuals to live and what makes it possible for us as individuals to live is a capacity to reason a capacity to know the world to know reality and then to apply reason to rearrange it I mean entrepreneurship starts with an idea and with execution all that requires the application of human reason to a problem you know it's not just the thinking it's then we got to do something with the thinking to be productive we got to apply the thinking we got to act on the thinking so for Rand for her idea of morality is an idea of egoism of self-interest it's an idea of the purpose of life the purpose of morality is to help me live the best life I can to provide me the principles to allow me to live the best life I can live for myself starting with thinking with reason acting on that reason to sustain my life which means productive activity means being productive other virtues that include honesty and integrity and others but those two are key for the discussion we have on entrepreneurs because what do entrepreneurs do they're thinkers they're rational to the extent that they're successful they're using reason they're observing reality they're integrating the facts they're coming up with new ideas they have to think for themselves if they just copy other people they're not going to make a lot of money they're not going to be successful they're not going to build successful businesses they can only build successful businesses by coming up with original ideas that are theirs take those ideas and manifest them in reality and execute and build and create for recognition they are all they're the good guys they're the mother traces they're the ones who should be sainted they're the ones who are ultimately the benefactors of mankind they're suspicious because they're self-interested what do we know about self-interest what do we be taught since we were this small about self-interest it's bad and what behaviors are associated with what do we associate with self-interest they live at the cost of others absolute they lie, steal, cheat they exploit, they take advantage of people they'll do anything to get their way and they don't trade with others they exploit others they take advantage of others they don't sacrifice for other people they expect other people to sacrifice for them now think of that that's the bucket the file in our mind the file that has on it selfish or self-interested or egoist says lying, cheating, stealing, living at the expense of others then we have a file called businessman or entrepreneur and in that file it says egoist, self-interested which means lying, cheating, stealing living at the expense of others now what do we do people that we think are going to lie, steal, and cheat are going to live at the expense of others what we want to control we want to catch them we have to regulate them we have to look over their shoulders we have to know everything that they do because we know they're going to be cheating they're going to be lying, they're going to be stealing everybody remember Fox News used to have this guy called Bill O'Reilly Bill O'Reilly is pretty famous internationally he's an obnoxious interviewer so I remember in 2002 I was on his show and he wanted to fire every CEO in America why? because there were a few crooks that were caught you remember Enron and Worldcom there were a few of these scandals and he said, well of course he said all CEOs are crooks because they're all self-interested and we should fire them all preemptively we know they're crooks, just fire because that's what conditioned to that that we associate business entrepreneur with self-interest we associate self-interest with lying, stealing, cheating that's what you get we have to because we know that if we don't have food inspectors McDonald's is going to poison us we know that if we don't have elevating inspectors all those elevators are going to drop and kill us because we know that they live by exploiting other people and as much as we teach people about economics, we teach people about trade we teach people about win-win transactions we can't get underneath, which is where the ethics are which is more morality is where they don't trust they don't trust the system they don't trust the people, they don't trust the entrepreneur because it's unethical because we were taught since we were very little that it's a sin so I would argue to all of us in the kind of free market world trying to change the world then we're going to have to challenge these ethical beliefs to get anywhere it's not enough to do the economics and the politics we also have to challenge these beliefs about morality these beliefs about self-interest if we're going to be successful we have to start with that the world today presents us with two alternatives in morality you can either sacrifice suffer your father's or you could be a lying, cheating, stealing SOB I suggest there's a third alternative and that is that your rational productive egoist who is focused on his own happiness by doing so, by producing by creating, by building and by making the world a better place not because that's your intention but because that's the outcome because nobody will trade with you otherwise because trade is a win-win and the more we maximize trade the more everybody wins and then that's what egoists do and I think if we can change that moral paradigm then of your entrepreneurs and of your capitalism and of your freedom we'll shift as one thank you so I think we have time for a few questions thank you very much for your presentation I'd like to ask you don't you believe that in fact the situation the atmosphere is artificially created by some political philosophy and the education of people like from the week even in the United States if I remember properly that some educational problems like Head Start it was the basis for education just for the high school or even the pre-school Head Start is pre-school so they put inside children from the beginning very special ideas about what is morality in the society and I can give you an example on the other hand I come from Spain you know I'm sure you know Amancio Bottega who is the founder of Sara so even in my thinking that right now there is a political party in Spain that they try to push Amancio Bottega to avoid him to provide very well equipped medical equipment for some hospital and all these things and all these groups try to criticize him because he provides for free this type of equipment so it's the kind of of political morality that they try to impose on her and I think I don't think it's any particular group trying to impose a political morality I think it's the morality that is in the air it's in our churches it's in our philosophers if you read people like the word altruism which we often characterize this idea of living fathers was coined by a French philosopher called Augustine Comte and Comte said if you you know if you you must place as your highest value the well-being of other people and if you think that by helping them you're going to be better off you're going to enjoy it then it doesn't count as morality Emmanuel Comte says the same thing so our basic philosophers who help establish in the early 19th century spoke left and right within western civilization are all saying the same thing self-interest is bad self-interest is exploiting other people and you must live for others then that it becomes part of the education of what do we drink it's just in the culture it's everywhere and of course you get it from religion and if you combine religion with the secular philosophers it's very hard to combat you have to get them when they're very young it's very hard to combat that so yes I think they get it in the early educational system but they don't get it in the early education because it's in conspiracy they get it in the educational system because most people you ask them what is morality they say yeah it's living fathers it's sacrifice it's it's mother Teresa the ideal right that's the image so yeah I mean even when you're trying to do even when you're trying to give away stuff they don't want it because you're a billionaire you're successful you are they don't trust you they don't believe in you you've got an angle you're gonna exploit people somehow even the charity you do doesn't count anymore but that's in the philosophical air it's in the philosophical curriculum it's in philosophy departments everywhere and unless that is challenged I don't think we can make much progress in changing people's attitudes towards entrepreneurs and we're not going to change people's attitudes about capitalism or about freedom unless you change people's attitudes about entrepreneurs well thank you for the great talk I just have one question regarding the thoughts on the basis for morality I have two things that I would like to get first of all we think of an evolutionary psychology perspective that that might be the reason why specific morality standards like altruism are more prevalent because maybe in some time in the past it was more beneficial to have the person sacrifice themselves to save the tribe from something that had a women's situation where they say ok I saved you from this but if I survive give me all your stuff and the second part would be I'm sure you're familiar with the personality types and political positions like John and Hyde sort of stuff I get the feeling that there might be a similar thing with morality like a personality traits type having different morality senses so those two things evolutionary psychology and morality moral position and personal so they're both related because they're both related to this idea of what is within the realm of our choice and what is ingrained in us in personality types which are really genetic decoded and so on in places according to some including Hyde I'm skeptical of the whole literature I'm skeptical of evolutionary psychology I think I don't think they know what they're talking about for the most part and I'll give you a few examples so there are a lot of things that that you have maybe instincts that's one category you have emotions you have inclinations that's a different category propensities, talents ideas I've never seen any evolutionary psychology actually go through all of those and define them and I'm probably missing some and define them and tell me what is possible to genetically encode and what is not because I can guarantee that ideas can't be genetically encoded ideas are complex things that one has to have experience with in order to generate so you can't have ideas can emotions be general? some emotions like the basic ones like fear and pleasure maybe but most sophisticated don't you have some experience with in order to generate so it's not clear to me that there's clear clarity within the science of what is and what isn't genetically possible but they come up with these big declarations like Morale the world is a very sophisticated idea it's an can you separate the choices people make the influence the environment has and maybe in some way a genetic manifestation of those I doubt it I doubt that anybody can today I doubt that we have the knowledge to do it and I can almost guarantee that we're not going to find morality in our genes morality is too sophisticated and an idea too sophisticated it's a massive abstraction and what would it mean if we did what would it mean there's no such thing as morality because the whole basis of morality is choice and if it turns out we don't have choice or at least in this realm we don't have choice then there is no morality you can't blame somebody for doing something that they're programmed to do and they have no choice about there's no morality if you take out that idea or if you're pre-programmed to be Republican or Democrat which I think is ludicrous with all due respect to Jonathan Hyde so so in my view the whole field is young they're going to think a lot differently in 50 years than they do today there's so a lot of stuff they need to know they don't know much and I think we put way too much emphasis on it morality is about fundamental choices that you make about your life and about the direction of your life it's not just after that act it's more broadly and there's still the question of I'm going to die for the tribe right why do I overcome can I not die for the tribe can I choose not to do it and if I choose not to do it I'm sure that I did it because I was programmed to do it or because I felt pressure from the tribe to do it and I gave into that pressure or because I really love my tribe and I did it for the tribe because I really loved it who knows but the idea that that is somehow genetically encoded on us to jump and commit suicide partially in a modern sense so I just don't think any of that is encoded in one of the great I mean one of the underappreciated modern among modern selection evolution has created this amazing thing called human consciousness which is a leap beyond any other animal consciousness that exists because it has both free will and the capacity of the reason which means it doesn't need as much programming as others because it can program itself because of its uniqueness and by doing that you minimize the necessary coding that exists in it so a lot of the stuff that we take for granted that animals have that are coded into it human beings don't need to and it's much more efficient because we can create the coding ourselves so I think free will is a big deal and I think we have a lot of it not a little bit like some intellectuals or like Sam Harris not at all I think it's a big deal and I think that we underappreciate how much of it we have and by doing that we give people excuses for how they live your life is yours, it's in your control take hold of it and do something useful with it