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Stay humble, keep learning. Surround yourself with quality people. Strive for constant improvement.
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Brief Summary
In this final part, we highlight the importance of humility and continuous improvement. Despite studying philosophy for 20 years, we remain humbled by the vast knowledge. We encourage open-mindedness, learning from others, and challenging our own certainties. Surrounding ourselves with quality people and embracing humility is crucial for growth. Let's strive for constant improvement on our personal journeys.
Chapters
0:00:03 Understanding Different Types of Causality
0:03:36 Philosophy and Choice in Causal Chains
0:08:49 Philosophy: Maximizing Choice and Preventing Coercion
0:14:01 Root Causes vs. Symptom Treatment
0:19:51 Expertise and Dismissive Contempt
0:24:10 The Plot Hole in Blade Runner: Risking Lives for Robots
0:26:37 Hunting Down Robots About to Die: A Grave Risk
0:27:29 The Moral Dilemma of Revenge
0:30:00 Misunderstanding the Point of the Movie
0:30:48 Art and Personal Reactions: People Get a Little Crazy
0:32:59 Providing Value and Skepticism in Contributions
0:39:16 The Pursuit of Happiness and Maximum Development of Abilities
Long Summary
In this final part of the conversation, the main speaker addresses the importance of humility and continuous improvement. They recount their own experiences of feeling overwhelmed and humbled by the vast knowledge in philosophy, despite studying it for 20 years. The main speaker emphasizes the need to acknowledge that they don't have all the answers and encourages further conversation and learning from others. They express empathy towards individuals who come across as arrogant but emphasize the importance of conquering the ego and recognizing the potential for growth. Surrounding oneself with quality people who strive for improvement is highlighted as crucial. The main speaker also discusses the principles they have established in philosophy, such as UPB, property rights, non-aggression principles, and peaceful parenting, but emphasizes the need for continuous improvement and remaining open to challenging one's certainties. Being humble and continuously improving are seen as intertwined, with the main speaker concluding that recognizing one's limitations and approaching knowledge with a blank slate mentality is essential for growth. They urge listeners to embrace humility and strive for continuous improvement on their journey.
Tags
final part, importance, humility, continuous improvement, studying philosophy, 20 years, humbled, vast knowledge, open-mindedness, learning from others, challenging certainties, surrounding ourselves, quality people, growth, constant improvement, personal journeys
Transcript
[0:00] Good morning, good morning, hope you're doing well, Stephen Molyneux from FreedomAid.
Understanding Different Types of Causality
[0:03] Couple of questions from freedomaid.locals.com, hope you would join the community.
Need some help clarifying what causality means and if there are different types of causality. Say for instance, I have headaches.
I choose to take meds for the pain. The meds also risk damage to my liver and I'm aware of the risks.
My liver fails and I die. What was the cause of my death?
Or another case, if every pregnancy requires prior insemination, is pregnancy caused by insemination?
Even if not every instance of insemination causes pregnancy?
[0:35] Well, with regards to the second one, well, if every pregnancy requires prior insemination, pregnancy is caused by insemination.
So what you're trying to do is you're trying to mix the biological with the philosophical.
So at a physical level for sure, pregnancy is caused by insemination.
However, from a philosophical standpoint, pregnancy is caused by the choice to engage in sexual activity, obviously procreative, usually raw dog sexual activity.
[1:09] So from a philosophical standpoint, because philosophy is not biology, a different discipline, right?
So yes, if you have the egg and you have the sperm and fertilization occurs, you get an implantation occurs and all these dominoes fall, you get pregnancy.
So that's from a biological standpoint.
The question of philosophy is, well, how did that sperm get into proximity to the egg to begin with?
And that's usually because, I mean, outside of rape and so on, that's because there's a choice to engage in procreative sexual activity.
So from a biological standpoint, the cause is physical. From a philosophical standpoint the cause is choice.
Choice to engage in usually in unprotected sex or to engage in sex and you know birth control fails or something like that right so or you want to get pregnant right so it's the choice to engage in sex that is the cause of pregnancy.
[2:06] Philosophy is at the beginning of the dominoes right if if there are dominoes you're not far back enough in the causal chain to engage philosophy, right?
So if the woman says, well, I'm pregnant and the cause of it was the sperm hitting my egg, well, that's not philosophy.
And the question is, does choice matter in the situation?
So once the sperm is in the woman, then there's no choice really about whether you get, you can't will yourself to not get pregnant if the sperm is there, right?
I guess you can will yourself to become unpregnant through an abortion, but if there's no free will involved, it's not the realm of philosophy.
[2:49] Now you have a choice as to whether you engage in procreative sexual activity, but you don't have a choice once the sperm is around the egg whether you get pregnant or not. That happens or it doesn't.
In the same way, I mean take an obvious example, in the same way you have a choice as to whether you jump off a bridge or not.
But once you jump off the bridge you have no choice as to whether you fall or not.
So you say well what's the cause of someone who dies from jumping off a bridge?
Well, physics, biology would say the cause is the impact on the ground and the resulting trauma to the body and disruption of the systems and death of the organism, right?
But that's not philosophy, that's physics and biology.
Philosophy and Choice in Causal Chains
[3:36] Philosophy is where the choice is. Once choice has been committed, in other words, once there's no longer a choice, like you can choose to jump off a bridge but you can't choose whether you fall or not.
So once we're in the realm of physics and biology and choice is no longer possible, then philosophy has nothing to say about it.
Philosophy can talk about the choices that lead you to the inevitabilities, but once something becomes inevitable, you jump off the bridge and you fall, once something becomes inevitable, it's no longer the realm of philosophy.
I mean, this is the old analogy I've used of being a nutritionist, right?
[4:09] That a nutritionist will try to guide you towards healthy eating so you don't become obese and sick and so on, right?
But if you don't listen to your nutritionist, because you have a choice there, right? Well, if you don't listen to your nutritionist and you're 300 pounds and your arteries are clogged and you're having a heart attack, it's no longer the realm of nutrition, right?
There's no point calling your nutritionist saying, I have a heart attack, right?
Call the ambulance, get to a hospital.
[4:35] So this is when you look at any particular proposition and you say is there the realm of choice?
Is there a choice?
And not a closed choice, but an open-ended choice.
So one trick that people use, this is not the person who's asking the question, it's a great question, we get to the headache and liver thing in a sec, but one of sort of the classic ways that people attempt to destroy philosophy and make people depressed, horrified, anxious and avoidant of moral choices is they give you two terrible choices and say that's philosophy.
I mean Sophie's choice, you know, where she has to choose which child she saves in the Holocaust or the trolley problem where you have to throw a switch and kill, you know, I don't know, one genius or ten average people, whatever they make up with this kind of stuff.
So they put you in a situation where there are two terrible choices and they say choose in this agonizing, hellish situation where there's no good choice, and...
That's philosophy, and that has people avoid philosophy or think that moral choices are only in extremities, under coercive situations, and so on, right?
[5:46] And sometimes called the ethics of emergencies, you know, who do you eat first if you're trapped on a mountain in the Andes, who do you throw overboard if the ship is sinking, right?
These are all — you're not in a situation of choice, you're in a situation of extremity.
Now, of course, people will say, ah, but there is a choice.
Now there is a choice in that you can, in the trolley problem, you can throw the switch and have the track go down side A or side B, so no, there totally is a choice.
[6:12] To which I would say that is not the realm of philosophy, now of course I just said that the realm of philosophy is choice, but it's got to be open-ended choice.
Once you're in a situation where somebody's got a gun to your head and says you have to shoot either your dog or your cat, right, then you're not in a philosophical situation.
You're in a situation of emergency alternatives dictated by somebody else's choice to use force upon you, right?
So in the trolley example, it's the person who tied up the people or strapped them to the track or something like that.
That person has made the choice.
And when it's not an open-ended choice, then it's not a philosophical situation.
So, if you have a gun to your head and somebody says, you've got to shoot, or you've got to, I don't know, hurt your dog or your cat, right?
That's not a philosophical situation.
Because you already have the introduction of choice-limiting coercion in the same way that if somebody ties somebody to the trolley tracks and you've got to throw a switch.
Of course, none of this makes any sense at all, right? It's all completely artificial.
And the more artificial moral choices are presented as, the more they're trying to drive you away from morality by making it traumatic, right?
Like, you hear it too, you gotta shoot your dog or your cat.
It's like, well, nobody wants to do that, that's horrible, and so I'm just gonna avoid moral problems. None of it makes any sense.
[7:38] You can't even tie people to trolley tracks, right?
I guess you could tie them up and throw them on the trolley tracks, but then they could just wriggle off, or maybe you sedate them and tie them up and throw them on the tracks or something like that. But trolleys have drivers, and drivers have brakes, and trolleys can stop. Like, none of it makes any sense.
It's all a completely artificial situation.
So when you're in these emergency, coercive, alternative situations, all philosophy can do, it can't tell you what to do.
In the case of emergency, coercive alternatives, it can't tell you what to do, because there's no free choice, right?
What it can do is it can say here's how to avoid ending up in those situations and that's what philosophy can do.
In the same way that a nutritionist can't tell you how to handle heart attack but.
[8:27] The nutritionist can tell you how to avoid that situation. And how do you avoid a situation where you end up with something like a trolley problem?
Well, you make sure that the non-aggression principle is applied to people in childhood so they're not brutalized and abused, so they don't end up tying people up and throwing them on trolley tracks, right? That's how, right?
So it's about prevention.
Philosophy: Maximizing Choice and Preventing Coercion
[8:49] Or to put it another way, philosophy is about maximizing the amount of available choice in society.
You do that by being the most peaceful and moral and voluntary towards children so that they don't end up putting other people in impossible situations, right?
Terrible things are happening and the only thing you have left is horrible alternatives.
Well philosophy can't of course tell you whether if you're forced to shoot your dog or your cat whether you should shoot your dog or your cat.
I guess the ethics of self-defense would say you're justified in using force against the who's forcing you to shoot either your dog or your cat, but it can't tell you what to do in a situation of coercion.
Philosophy is about prevention not cure and once choices have narrowed down to one or two or three coerced alternatives philosophy is no longer present, any more than nutrition is present when you're actively having a heart attack.
So that's an important consideration to remember.
If it's not open-ended, it's not philosophy. If it's not about prevention, it's not philosophy.
[9:57] Philosophy is about how to avoid getting into these situations.
It's not about what you do when you're in those situations.
[10:06] So the question, he says, I have headaches. I choose to take meds for the pain.
The meds also risk damage to my liver and I'm aware of the risks.
My liver fails and I die. What was the cause of my death?
Well, the cause of your death was the avoidance of choices.
Now, from a biological standpoint, you'd say, well, the meds damaged the liver, your liver fails and you die. What was the biological cause of your death?
Well, the biological cause of your death was liver poisoning from pain medication.
[10:37] Philosophically, like once the pain medication is in your system and impacts on your liver and your liver fails and you die, once the pain medication is in your system, well, that's like the sperm being in the vagina or birth canal or fallopian tubes of the woman.
Once it's there, things are going to happen, right?
And once those dominoes are in place, then philosophy has nothing to say.
So the question philosophy would answer is before you take the path of pain meds, which, Before you take the path of pain meds, that's where philosophy is.
So philosophy would say, okay, so you have headaches, now you have a number of choices on how to deal with those headaches, all right?
You have a number of choices on how to deal with those headaches.
One of those choices is pain meds.
And philosophy would say that the solution that requires the least alteration and increases knowledge the most is probably best, the least biological alteration.
So let's say you're depressed, right? I mean, let's say you can munch a bunch of pills that will mask the symptoms of depression.
Well, that's the most alteration and the least gain of knowledge.
[11:57] Now, philosophy would probably say something like, or this would be my sort of first approach, would say, okay, so minimum alteration is probably for the best because the body is a complex system and the less you mess with a complex system, the more predictable the outcomes are going to be.
So medicine in some ways is like coercion in society. You want as little as humanly possible, if there are alternatives.
So if you have a bad infection that your body can't fight, then yes, take some antibiotics, but that's kind of like an extremity of self-defense in a coercive situation.
If you consistently get infections, you probably need to look for an underlying course and not just keep nuking yourself with antibiotics, because the antibiotics are going to have effects on your digestion and all other kinds of things and so on, right?
So the least external intervention and the greatest gain of knowledge is probably the best approach.
Now, you understand, these are all analogies, there's no medical advice here, I'm not a doctor, right?
These are all just analogies for self-knowledge and philosophy.
Consult your doctor if you have any medical issues, don't listen to podcasters.
Alright, so, with regards to a headache, the question is, why am I getting headaches?
[13:14] Now, if you nuke the symptoms with painkillers, you do not gain the knowledge of why you're getting headaches.
Maybe you're getting headaches because you're really stressed.
Maybe you're getting headaches because your pillow was really bad.
Maybe you're getting headaches because you don't exercise and you sit all day.
Maybe you're getting headaches because your posture is bad. Maybe you're getting headaches because you're surrounded by disruptive and abusive people that are causing you misery. Like maybe there could be any number of reasons as to why you're getting headaches.
Some of them may be psychological, some of them may be physical but correctable by yourself like posture and sleeping, and some of them, maybe you've got a brain tumor.
I don't know, right, this is what, what is it they say, my ear is itchy, WebMD, cancer.
Root Causes vs. Symptom Treatment
[14:01] So you would want to look at root causes rather than nuke symptoms. symptoms.
If you have repetitive headaches, then you probably need to look more into your whole physical and psychological well-being scenario and environment rather than just nuke the symptoms.
So in this causality, I have headaches, I choose to take meds for the pain.
So why would you choose to take meds for the pain?
If you have headaches, you have sort of consistent headaches, and you choose to take meds for the pain, why would you do that?
Well you would do that because you want to avoid knowledge.
You want to avoid the knowledge of why you have headaches.
Now why you'd want to avoid the knowledge, that's a whole other question.
You know if you're surrounded by people who are exploiting you and the headaches are the result of the stress of being exploited, then obviously the people who are exploiting you want you to take, Aspirin, rather than figure out that your headaches are stress-related because you're being exploited by people, they would much rather you take meds than figure out the cause, right?
Of course, the aspirin manufacturers or whatever, they would rather you take that.
The doctor would probably rather prescribe pain meds than try and figure out root causes because it's not his specialty and so on, right?
Now, it's painful to figure out root causes.
[15:25] And so taking meds to mask symptoms rather than figuring out root causes is based upon the preference for short-term gain over long-term gain.
[15:37] You would rather take a pill to deal with the pain of a headache rather than figure out the root causes of the headache and change lifestyle or relationship or exercise habits or posture habits or whatever it is going to be, right?
So you would rather mask symptoms than deal with root causes in the same way that some people would rather take painkillers for a toothache rather than go to the dentist and deal with the root causes and the root problems.
So from a biological standpoint, yeah, the toxins in the painkillers kill your liver, your liver dying kills you, and that's the cause from a biological standpoint.
But from a philosophical standpoint, the cause would be avoiding self-knowledge, avoiding the knowledge of the cause of the headaches and dealing with root causes and changing lifestyle or habits or whatever it is, right?
Now, of course, maybe you go through every conceivable root cause, I'm not even sure what that would mean, but let's say you do go through every conceivable root cause, and you just have some problem with...
[16:37] The headaches. I don't know what this would mean but you know let's just say that there's nothing you can do about the headaches.
You just have mystery headaches and there's no stretching, no exercise, no chiropractic, you know like nothing, there's nothing, you know, stress reduction, no better sleeping, there's absolutely nothing you can do.
Well then the cause of your death is still not the headaches.
The cause of your death is that you will choose to risk death rather than live with headaches.
[17:10] Now again, headaches of all different kinds of severity, that sort of minor ache from off sleep to, I don't know, maybe migraine. Migraine, so I guess would be different.
So wherever the dominoes are inevitable, there is no philosophy.
Wherever the choice is limited, there is no philosophy.
So people say, well, what's the ethics of the trolley problem?
There are no ethics of the trolley problem.
It's like saying the nutrition of a heart attack.
There are no ethics of the trolley problem other than a society has probably violated children's integrity, physical, emotional, through abuse in order to produce people who want to torture others with trolley scenarios, right?
That's probably because the trolley scenario, sort of the ethics of emergencies, they're all just a form of verbal abuse.
Putting you in impossible situations and saying you're responsible for the outcome.
That's just putting you in a situation of verbal abuse.
[18:09] Choose these two impossible situations, both of which are going to make you feel terrible, and that's just a form of verbal abuse.
I mean, it's like some really sadistic father putting two plates in front of his kid saying, one's poop and one's vomit, but you've got to eat one, and then mocking him for the rest of his life for eating poop or vomit.
That's just sadism, it's just verbal abuse.
[18:32] And because you'll notice that every time you come up with solutions, they're not allowed, right?
Well, I just get the people off the tracks. No, you can't. Well, I just yell at the guy to put the brakes on the trolley. Well, they're not working.
Like you just, you know, so you just, it's all designed to just make you feel terrible about questions of virtue and ethics and all of that.
So that's important.
Any time you're not in an open field of choice, philosophy doesn't apply.
That philosophy is about free will and free will should not, cannot be constrained by violations of free will.
I mean it can be constrained but then it's not free will anymore.
Somebody puts a gun to your head, you don't have free will anymore.
I mean to say that situations of coercion are philosophical is to say that situations where free will is being violated are free will situations.
I mean that's, I mean it's actually offensive like deep down it's like saying that the guy who gives money to a robber who's got a gun to his head is charitable and voluntarily transferring property.
It's like equating lovemaking with rape and yeah yeah and situations of free will where philosophy is situations with your gun to your head has nothing to do with philosophy other than it probably resulted from prior violations of free will particularly with regards to the child and abuse.
So all right let's do one more here.
Expertise and Dismissive Contempt
[19:51] Just wanted to address Steph's point regarding the film Blade Runner.
What Steph called a plot hole was actually the point of the entire movie. Mmmmm.
[20:00] Oh my, oh my, oh my. How the confidence doth swell.
How the confidence doth swell. Listen, people can tell me about human nature and tell me that I've missed the blindingly obvious, but I have had thousands of conversations with people about the root causes of their emotional and self-knowledge challenges and so on.
So I am in possession of a unique data set with regards to human nature and motivation and childhood and adulthood.
With regards to analyzing stories, and please understand, nobody should ever defer to me because of my experience. Of course not.
It doesn't, just because I'm knowledgeable and experienced doesn't mean that I'm right.
But if you approach me without reference to my knowledge and experience, it's just kind of off-putting. I'm just, it's just kind of off-putting, right?
[20:51] Somebody who has been a sort of top-ranked physicist for 30 years doesn't mean that he's right.
But if you waltz up to him and laughterly instruct him on the basics of physics, it doesn't mean that you're wrong and he's right.
But I'm just telling you, he's not going to listen to you. He's just going to roll his eyes.
And so the fact that I have, oh my gosh, I mean, I've studied literature at the university level, I've written 30 plays, hundreds of poems, I've written novels that are pretty great, I'm a trained actor, I've acted in plays, I've analyzed characters, and none of this means that I'm right, but if you approach me without any recognition of my expertise, I don't really care what you say, because Because I have to be efficient, you know, especially at the age of 57, right?
I'm two-thirds of the way through my life, maybe even three-quarters for all I know.
And it may be tomorrow that I die, right?
[21:55] So somebody who comes up after I have been, you know, I wrote my first short story at the age of six, which is more than half a century ago.
I started writing novels when I was 11 years old, you know.
I've written, like, so much, analyzed so much, I've done shows with a tenured university professor analyzing Shakespeare and other stories and so on, like, I know my stuff.
It doesn't mean I'm right, I understand it. People say, oh, well, but if I know my stuff and you just tell me, well, you missed the entire point of the movie.
Okay, hey man, that's a bold claim. And if I go up to a physics professor or a physics expert who's, you know, contributed massive new things to the field, if I go up to this guy and say, man, you don't understand physics at all.
You know, that's a bold claim. That's a bold claim.
[22:52] And also, now if the guy who makes the movie comes up and tells me I missed the whole point of the movie, that's one thing.
But if some guy just watched a movie and then says, Steph, you missed the whole, you missed the point of the entire movie, my suggestion is having this kind of insulting approach to an expert is not going to have...
Like you're driving quality people out of your life.
I say this with great affection and great positivity and great enthusiasm.
You want good people in your life.
And if you approach experts with dismissive contempt, well, you're just not going to have quality people in your life because quality people don't want to be around that.
Now, I'm not saying that you can't disagree with me. Of course, I think that's wonderful. Please go ahead, you know, just disagree with me.
Disagree with me, for sure. Yeah, I mean that's a great way to learn, and every statement I make could possibly be wrong.
So yes, absolutely disagree with me. But if you contemptuously dismiss something that I said without making an argument, I'm just not interested.
Like I'm just telling you, like quality people don't want to be around people who tell them that they're dumb and wrong with no argument. They just don't want to be around, right?
The Plot Hole in Blade Runner: Risking Lives for Robots
[24:10] And listen, I mean, I'm telling you, man, you want quality people in your life.
I mean, especially now, especially these days, especially with the way the world's going. You absolutely want quality people in your life, and you're just driving them away with this approach, right?
Just so he says, just wanted to address Steph's point regarding the film Blade Runner. What Steph called a plot hole was actually the point of the entire movie.
Okay, so, I don't know, minor spoilers or whatever, right? So, my argument regarding the movie Blade Runner was, why are they risking everyone's lives shooting into crowds, getting Dekker probably killed and other people killed and so on?
Why were they doing all that for robots that were within 12 hours of dying anyway?
Why would they do that? Just let the robots die.
[24:55] I mean, it's a plot hole. And people are saying, ah yes, but the robots are killing people. And it's like, well yes, but the robots are killing people who programmed them to die.
The robots are acting in self-defense.
They just want to come back and find out how to not die. They're looking for medicine, and they're getting shot for looking for medicine.
And then once they find out that people have programmed them to die, and there is no medicine, they kill those people in the same way that you would probably be justified in killing someone who poisoned you without a cure, right?
We would all understand that, right? We would all understand that particular situation.
So that's a plot hole and needs to be addressed. And the fact that it isn't addressed is interesting, right?
It just, to me, it made the whole film much less dramatic at the end when, you know, Rutger Hauer with his sort of famous, and he think he made up that speech for the movie.
Rutger Hauer's character with his famous speech, Like, there's supposed to be this whole battle scene between the robot and Dekker, the Harrison Ford character, and the robot's about to win and he just dies.
So he was going to die anyway. So what's the point of the whole fight?
What's the point of the whole battle?
[26:05] So that's a plot hole. Now, you can patch it up with some particular form of imagination, but it needed to be addressed in the movie.
They needed to explain... Like, Dekker needed to ask... I mean, if I was writing the movie, that's a big plot hole.
So what I would do is I would say, Decker would need to say, well, look, they're going to die within 12 hours.
Like we know exactly how long they live. We know exactly when they were made.
They're going to die in 12 hours. Just let them die.
Right? That's a plot hole. Now maybe there's an answer they could come up with or something like that, that makes it more compelling.
Hunting Down Robots About to Die: A Grave Risk
[26:37] But why would you hunt people down who were just about to die?
And say, oh well they're killing people, but you know, Decker is shooting into crowds, he's like, you know, destroying property and so on, right?
There's grave risk and danger. He's putting his own life at danger for people who are just about to die.
And also, given that the two people that they kill, I mean, all the people they kill are trying to catch them and kill them because they're trying to find medicine for their imminent death, right?
The guy at the beginning and the geneticist guy with the aging disease and then the guy with the fish tank glasses who's in charge of the whole program.
So once they have killed all the people who have sentenced them to death by building into them that they will die after four years, I think it is, so there's no threat to anyone.
The Moral Dilemma of Revenge
[27:29] Be like if some guy was out to kill the guy who killed his wife and that guy was about to die and he killed his wife, why would you risk your own life hunting him down?
He's not going to kill anyone else because he only wants to kill the guy who killed his wife. So he kills the guy who killed his wife and he's about to die. He's an hour from dying.
Like why would you risk your own life to kill someone who had already achieved his objective of revenge and was about to die? He's not going to kill anyone else.
Now, you could say, well, you know, they're going to give you a million dollars because they want you to prevent, the rich guys who created this program want you to prevent the robots from killing them.
Well, all right, that would be one thing. But then he's, it becomes a much less sympathetic character, right?
The Decker character is much less sympathetic because then he's just a gun for hire to protect billionaires from the evils, from the back, blowback of the evils they're doing, right?
This is not, it's pretty nihilistic, right? and you need to have some sympathy for Dekker.
[28:26] And of course, even if that were the case, the final fight with Chris, the Daryl Hannah character, almost good to get that word out, with Chris, the Daryl Hannah character, and then the Rutger Hauer character, the two robots, the penultimate fight is when they've already achieved their objectives of killing the people who did them wrong.
Killing the people who poisoned them genetically so they'd die after four years.
Right, so why? Why bother? They're about to die. Why? Why risk your life to kill people who've already achieved their objective of vengeance and are about to die? It makes no sense.
Now, again, you can make up something if you want, but it's not addressed in the movie.
[29:03] Therefore it's a plot hole. You say, ah yeah, but there's an answer based upon the lore and it's like, no, I don't care, but you can make up anything you want.
But it's still a plot hole to the movie.
And it needs, it needed to be addressed, but it wasn't. So anyway, just to move on, right? So just want to address Steph's points regarding the film Blade Runner.
What Steph called a plot hole was actually the point of the entire movie.
The point was that humans were rapidly becoming unfeeling, unthinking machines, whereas the robots, i.e. the cyborgs, were the ones behaving in a human-like fashion.
The humans are just blindly following orders, not thinking, not questioning.
Likewise, it is the humans showing little concern and regard for their fellow man.
Achieve the objective at all costs, that's the problem, and the primary point the movie was trying to make.
Well, first of all, whether the humans were becoming unfeeling, unthinking machines, whether the robots were more human, has nothing to do with the plot point I was talking about.
Even if we accept that, I don't know if that's an answer or not.
I would have to sort of think about it more.
Misunderstanding the Point of the Movie
[30:00] So, I mean, not only is this person loftily telling me that I missed the entire point of the movie, but his point has absolutely nothing to do with what I said.
So whether the humans are unfeeling and the robots are feeling, I mean, none of that makes any difference as to the plot hole.
None of it makes any difference as to the plot hole. The plot hole is logical and motivational, right?
Why would you risk your life killing people who pose no threat to others who are just about to die.
And they pose no threat to others because they've already achieved their objective of vengeance against those who murdered them, as they perceive it, right? Programming them to die without a cure.
Has nothing to do with. The point was that humans were rapidly becoming unfeeling, unthinking machines.
Okay, fine. I mean, that's a theme, but that has nothing to do with the plot hole.
Art and Personal Reactions: People Get a Little Crazy
[30:48] So my guess is, you know, when you deal with art, people get a little crazy.
Like, honestly. I mean, you know that, right? You deal with art, people get a little crazy. Because they take it personally. My favorite art is my this, it's my that.
And if the movie has sort special meaning for you, and you know, it's a pretty good movie.
Just gaping plot holes that make the ending kind of empty.
But if the movie has sort of very special meaning to you, and I point out a plot hole that you've missed, maybe you feel embarrassed or humiliated or maybe I should have noticed or whatever, so you react, right?
But here's the funny thing about this comment, and again, I say this with positivity and you know, just sort of pointing things out that are empirical and logical.
So, he says, the movie is trying to show that humans are becoming unfeeling, unthinking machines.
[31:39] And that's bad, right? So, you should be a human being with depth of thought and feeling.
You shouldn't just be like a robot that's programmed and doesn't just react automatically and so on.
But he's defensively reacting automatically and not thinking, and in a sense lashing out right, in terms of saying, I missed the entire point of the movie, which is completely unrelated to the pothole.
So he's not self-critical, right? And this is what you need to do in the world.
I mean, if you want to be successful in any realm, intellectual, artistic, like genuinely successful, not just sort of make money.
If you want to be genuinely successful in any realm, you need to be relentlessly self-critical.
[32:20] Before I ask a question of an expert, I will look up other possible answers.
I mean, don't you do that? Don't you do that? Isn't that a basic level of respect for expertise and so on?
So, if I criticize someone for having no idea of the theme of the movie, I want to make sure that I'm manifesting having learned from the theme of the movie, right?
In other words, I'm not going to react in an automatic programmed manner.
And I'm going to be self-critical and be skeptical of the value of my own contribution.
How is it that you end up contributing to the world?
Providing Value and Skepticism in Contributions
[32:59] Well, the first thing you have to do is be skeptical of your own contributions.
Be skeptical of the value of your own contributions and recognize that it's going to probably take you a long time to provide any actual value to society as a whole.
[33:15] It's going to take you a long time to provide value to society as a whole.
You write 10,000 hours. If you really want to understand plots, themes, characters, stories.
[33:29] You know, be an actor or study plays and motivation, because plays are empirical as to action, as to actions and words, not thoughts.
Unless you have a soliloquy like Hamlet, where thoughts are revealed, which is kind of rare in modern naturalistic plays, right?
And in novels, of course, there's something called the unreliable narrator, which is where somebody says what happened, but it turns out that they're not really telling the truth, as opposed to the omniscient narrator who's not supposed to lie about things, right?
So if you want to contribute to an expert's understanding of plot and character and story and motivation, and like somebody who's I've spent literally half a century creating some works and you know my novels have been fairly successful and my books as a whole have been fairly successful like you know 100,000 plus downloaded a month, not bad for some really challenging novels in an increasingly anti-literate age.
So if you want to provide value to somebody with half a century's experience and of course I've been trained by professional writers in writing, I have gone to the top theatre school in Canada which only accepts 1% of applicants, and I produce my own plays and written my own novels, and of course I do role plays with people which is a form of improv to step into characters and so on.
[34:54] So if you want to tell me about how I'm just so obviously wrong about something I have half a century's experience in, again, I'm not saying obviously I can make mistakes, but if you just laughterly inform me and then get things totally wrong, you have no credibility.
And that's fine, but the problem is you have great credibility with yourself, but no credibility with people who have knowledge.
[35:18] It's like, you know, when a kid just pronounces nonsense French sounds, fully confident that he's speaking French.
I mean, we would accept that as a kid as a kind of a playful and fun thing to do.
But if you spout a bunch of nonsense syllables thinking that you're actually speaking a language, people who speak that language just look at you like you're, like, what?
Do you not even know you're not speaking French? Do you not even know that you don't know the language? Do you not even know that you're totally wrong?
You're loftily informing an expert how wrong the expert is, and then you get things completely wrong yourself. off.
Now, I'm not saying you're wrong about the theme of the movie and so on, that's a different matter.
[35:52] I think the theme of the movie is much more about science destroying God but that's a topic for another time.
You could be right about the theme of the movie, but the theme of the movie has nothing to do with the plot hole that I examined.
It's nothing to do with the plot hole. And the fact that you wouldn't be skeptical of that.
So before I post something, particularly if I'm talking about a sort of area of expertise, I would really be self-critical about whether I'm providing any value, right?
Now, of course, if I've identified a plot hole and yet the plot hole is addressed in the movie, then I would be mistaken.
And maybe it is addressed in the movie, in which case, you know, like when I said in the movie Joker I made an error and then went and re-watched it and the audience who told me I'd made an error was totally right and I thanked them for helping me get it right, I got something wrong.
So that's fine, get things wrong, that's no problem.
But yeah, there's a plot hole and the theme of the movie doesn't change the plot hole.
Yeah, I'm sort of laboring on this point and it's not particular to the movie, but I'm sort of laboring this point because I just want you guys as a whole to have quality people in your life.
[37:01] And if I go up to a tax accountant with 50 years experience, right, and say he doesn't know a damn thing about tax law and he's a complete idiot and got it totally wrong, what are the odds that that tax accountant who's been one of the most successful tax accountants in human history with 50 years experience and I tell him he's, and I have, you know, particular training in tax law and I go up and I tell him he's completely wrong, he got it totally wrong and he doesn't understand a thing about tax law.
I mean, what's he, how do you look, this is so important, like how do you look to the other person? How do you look to the person with deep knowledge and expertise?
Now my guess is, and this is a big challenge of course that we all face, right, which is the transition from being a big fish in a little pond to a much bigger pond, right?
I mean, as I mentioned before, everyone who was an actor in theatre school was the best actor in their local environment. I was the best actor at my university and all of that.
And then we get to where everybody has a lot of skill and expertise and it's kind of an adjustment, right? It's a big readjustment.
[38:00] This is the kind of thing where you probably... I'm getting a guess, right?
So the situation is something like this, and it's very common, and there's nothing to be... it's not a bad thing, it's not a wrong thing, it's just a transition thing that everybody needs to understand if you want to reach to the top, right?
So my guess is that you're the smartest person in a group of relative dummies, and you are a smart person, and I think that's great. I mean, I'm trying to sort of help you with that, right?
So you're the smartest person, and you think about the themes of the movies, and I think your theme of the movie is actually very interesting, and there's a lot of rich stuff there, right?
So you're used to dominating people because you're the smartest person in a group of relative dummies.
And so you're able to out-talk, out-argue, out-debate everyone in your environment.
[38:46] Great. You're the best softball player in your local pickup team.
And everyone's like, wow, you're really good, and you can win and hit the ball and catch and throw, right? So you're the best softball player in your local pick-up league.
Fantastic. No problem with that.
But then, you step with that kind of arrogance into the show, right, into the big leagues.
With regards to philosophy, free domain is the big leagues, and there are other big leagues out there obviously, right, but I'm just talking about this particular venue.
The Pursuit of Happiness and Maximum Development of Abilities
[39:16] And it's tough. It's tough. And the reason I'm saying all of this is I want you to continually improve.
And if when we when we are the best in our environment, we generally stop improving, And I want you to continually improve because that's where happiness is I mean Aristotle's got it pretty pretty good as far as this stuff goes that happiness is the, Maximum pursuit of our abilities is the maximum development of our abilities in pursuit of the good The pursuit of virtue, integrity, the maximum development of our abilities.
Now, what is the maximum development of your abilities?
I don't know but arrogance is the opposite of that Arrogance is the opposite of that.
So you may be the best actor in your high school. You may be the best debater in your circle of friends.
You may be the best baseball player in your local pickup league. Great.
Do you want to become a great baseball player or do you want to just be the best baseball player in your local environment?
And listen, I don't care. I mean, I think it's better if you pursue maximum excellence because who knows, it's a form of arrogance to even know what you're capable of.
Do you want to be great or do you just want to be better than the rubes around you?
[40:30] Now the problem is if all you want to be is better than the rubes around you then you'll come across real experts and you'll be arrogant because you think you're the best, not just the best around your local environment but you're the best.
And then you'll be the best local baseball player in a pickup league and you'll for some reason end up in the major leagues and you'll get smoked!
[40:50] Smoke. And that will be shocking for you and disorienting. And I get that.
We've all been through it. I say this with no lofty superiority.
We've all been through it.
And that moment where you get smoked in the big leagues is the moment that determines the rest of your life.
Do you retreat back to Smallville or do you say, wow, I got a long way to go?
Hey, man, with regards to philosophy, I've got a long way to go.
I still feel enormously humbled relative to the knowledge that is out there and available in the realm of philosophy.
I still feel humbled, I still feel like a beginner in many ways, you know.
The journey ahead is vastly greater than the journey behind and it's a continual improvement.
I mean, I had to admit after studying philosophy for 20 years I didn't actually know what ethics was, which is the entire point of philosophy.
Not an easy moment, but out of that came UPB.
Every time I do a listener call I don't know the answer to the problem.
I don't know the solution. I don't know the facts that bring the greatest value to bear on the situation. I don't know.
And that's why I will spend an hour, hour and a half, sometimes even two hours just asking questions and gathering information, because I don't know.
[42:03] I mean, this is why I don't generally just take an email with a complex personal problem and just provide an answer like in this situation, right, in this kind of format, because I don't know.
That's why on the live streams if somebody asked me a question I'll say, listen, I can't really give much of an answer because I don't have enough information.
Call in at freedomain.com, we can talk further and so on, right?
And I hope that modeling this kind of humility and excitement about the future, right?
Humility is excitement about the future because it means there's so much more to do, so much more to grow, so much more to learn.
I mean, Freddie Mercury had mastered rock and pop, and he went on to quasi-opera with Monserey Caballé, a Spanish opera singer.
That's a bit nutty. What the heck? Well, I don't think this experiment was particularly successful, although the Golden Boy is a fun song, but yeah, he wanted to do more, wanted to try more, wanted to... he tried ballet, all this kind of nonsense, right?
Good, good for him. Keeps you alive, keeps you going.
So if I'm humble after 40 years, I mean technically after about 15, so 42 years.
If I'm humble, deeply humble after 42 years of studying philosophy and art, literature, plot, character, and have vast experience in these matters.
[43:26] If I'm humble in these matters after 42 years and somebody comes in, gets things completely wrong and is totally arrogant and contemptuous.
[43:36] I sympathize with the mindset, I really do, but I just hope you, I mean, and I know it's tough, right?
It's tough for the ego, right? I get that, but you know, conquering the ego is pretty important.
[43:47] Says, I am great. Philosophy says, aim to be great. Aiming to be great means accepting there's a long way to go.
So to have quality people in your life means that there are people who are continuously improving, but you can't continuously improve if you're vainglorious and arrogant about your existing abilities.
[44:05] If you think your knowledge is already perfect, you don't work to improve it.
I don't practice walking every day because I'm pretty good at walking.
I can walk, right? I don't practice it because I'm good enough at it.
I'm not a power walker or a marathon walker or a speed walker, but I don't practice breathing.
I don't see if I can digest things or not, right? Because those things I'm confident and comfortable with, right?
I don't have to remind myself which way to hold the tennis racket, right?
Now I can continuously improve in tennis and after a certain age it just means getting less bad less quickly, right?
Because you hit your physical peak a while ago, right?
[44:46] So quality people are people in the process of continuous improvement which arises out of humility and tentativeness and deep unwillingness to establish certainties.
Now of course you have to have certainties, otherwise there's no standard by which you can improve, right?
So I have certainties relative to reason and evidence, relative to UPB, these things are all established and proven, relative to property rights, non-aggression principle, peaceful parenting.
I have proved all of these, so my improvement comes out of a base of certainty that is very hard to establish.
I mean, if it had been established, there wouldn't have been any arguments about metaphysics or epistemology or ethics.
In philosophy, when after thousands and thousands and thousands of years, there's no consensus.
And there's no consensus because there's no humility.
Humility is, how do I know that? Do I really know that?
And you You can go pathological like Socrates, I know that I know nothing, it's all nonsense, right?
[45:43] To self-contradictory as we well know. So if you can't be humble enough to recognize how little you know and to build your knowledge from a blank slate base of principles, reason and evidence from the ground up, then you won't ever be in a state of continuous improvement.
If you look in the mirror and you're already your perfect weight, you'll stop dieting.
If you're 300 pounds you'll diet. Maybe you should probably should, right?
But if you're a great weight, not underweight, not overweight and you won't diet.
I mean you may have a nutrition plan but you won't restrict calorie to further lose weight.
But if you're fat and you look in the mirror and your genuine and entire experience is that you're the perfect weight then you won't diet.
[46:30] If your self-image is that you have perfect knowledge then you won't improve.
And then the people who are improving, who are quality people, who've become quality people through the process of improvement, those people will reject you because you're so far back on the journey they can't even see you.
And again, this is not anything to make you feel bad, again we all have to start from somewhere, and I'm trying to reach the true self of you that really wants to improve rather than arrogantly castigating those with a century of experience and successful experience too. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
I don't mean to laugh. But it's, you know, honestly you're like a person who's 400 pounds lecturing an expert nutritionist who's got an ideal body weight exactly how they got everything about eating wrong.
You understand? I mean, to people with knowledge, to people with expertise, to people with experience, they are... it's a tragic thing to see and I hope that you will reflect upon this.
Thanks everyone so much. FreedomM.com slash donate. Lots of love. Talk to you soon. Bye.
