Modern Wisdom - #756 - Destiny - Have We Reached Peak Stupidity?

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Destiny is a streamer and a YouTuber. It's hard to work out what's happening in the world. It's difficult to determine if what you see or hear or read is truthful or trolling or a psyop. So are people... actually becoming dumber or is it a normal response to a confusing time? Expect to learn what the future of media might look like, why being tribal is so dangerous, whether we have passed peak wokeness, Destiny’s thoughts on the 2024 election, if the red pill movement is dead or not, what Destiny thinks about his most recent ADHD diagnosis, his reaction to the internet chiming in on his divorce and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first box at https://www.drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get the Whoop 4.0 for free and get your first month for free at https://join.whoop.com/modernwisdom (discount automatically applied) Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: http://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: http://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: http://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello friends, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Destiny, he's a streamer and a YouTuber. It's hard to work out what's happening in the world, it's difficult to determine if what you see or hear or read is truthful or trolling or a psyop. So are people actually becoming dumber or is it a normal response to a confusing time? Expect to learn what the future of media might look like, why being tribal is so dangerous, whether we have passed peak woke, Destiny's thoughts on the 2024 election, if the red pill movement is dead or alive, what Destiny thinks about his most recent ADHD diagnosis, his reaction to the internet chiming in on his divorce, and much
Starting point is 00:00:41 more. I always enjoy speaking to Destiny. He's got interesting insights. He's a guy who is ardently from the left and very reasonable and prepared to debate and understands his positions. And you don't need to agree with all of the things that he says, but the fact that he has got
Starting point is 00:00:56 a very well thought out base and foundation about why he thinks those things, I think is quite admirable. And it is always good to hear different perspectives. Don't forget that you might be listening but not subscribed and that means you will miss episodes when they go up. The next few weeks have got an insane lineup of guests, including a world first for both modern wisdom and I think the entirety of podcasting and I'm very excited to tell you more about that. But the only way that you can ensure you won't miss them is by hitting
Starting point is 00:01:24 subscribe plus it supports the show and it makes me very happy indeed. So go and press follow on Spotify or subscribe on Apple podcasts. I thank you. Honestly, the difference in the quality of your life when you have a world-class backpack is pretty hard to describe. Nomadic make the most functional, durable and innovative backpacks, bags, luggage and accessories that I've ever used. The 20-litre travel pack and carry-on classic are absolute game changes. The amount of thought that they've put into every pouch and zipper is incredible. They're beautifully designed and not over-engineered and will literally last you a lifetime because they've got a lifetime guarantee. So if it breaks at any point, they'll give you a new
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Starting point is 00:03:20 they will give you your money back. Head to join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. That's join.woop.com slash modern wisdom. But now, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome destiny. You just did Piers Morgan. Well, it was like a live segment from this morning, sure. Okay. Yeah. How was that? Is that the first time you've spoken to him? Yeah. All right. What did you think?
Starting point is 00:04:03 It was okay. It could have been way worse. It could have been way better. They brought me in. It was a segment on like, the differences between like Trump and Biden and their senility, basically, is Biden's senility gonna be a huge problem and my opposite person is like Tommy Lauren
Starting point is 00:04:15 and it's a very much like mainstream media opinion, like or a mainstream media appearance. So it's like, give me your like 30 seconds splurg, give me your 30 seconds splurg and the next question. And I hate that bag of forth like drives me crazy. So. Well, I mean, it says everything that we're having a discussion about who is the most senile among all of the
Starting point is 00:04:31 different politicians that might influence the future. Yeah. What a world. There's a lot. But at the end of the day, the voters only have themselves to blame. So. That's true.
Starting point is 00:04:41 But then I guess you can only vote for the people that are there. No, there's a lot of people to vote for these are the two most popular ones. I think that the system is delivering the people that have the widest support right now. Yeah. They might not be universally liked,
Starting point is 00:04:53 but you only have to have a plurality of the support to make it through. Like people are looking at you like, ah, I guess like sure. But people might not like them. Like 80% of people might not like Biden or 80% of people might not like Trump, but those 80% of people don't all agree on who should run instead.
Starting point is 00:05:06 So that's the issue. Right. Yeah, interesting. I wonder if people could coordinate better whether or not you would have better outcomes. I don't know. Vice media shutting down, no longer publishing. Have you seen this? Are they shutting down or are they just not going to publish articles on that website
Starting point is 00:05:22 anymore? That's technically what it is. In a memo to Vice Employees Thursday, CEO Bruce Dixon said that the company will be cutting several hundred jobs in the next week as part of its major restructuring advice. We'll discontinue publishing content to its own website and instead we'll put more emphasis on our social channels as we accelerate our discussions with partners to take our content to where it will be viewed most broadly. What do you think?
Starting point is 00:05:42 Cool. I guess. Does anybody read like website stuff from Vice? I feel like they were most known for the YouTube video content, like the investigative journal stuff. I should know the lady's name. I wish I did, but she does really cool stuff.
Starting point is 00:05:53 I remember she went to China to investigate the Weaker stuff. Yes. She like, she does a lot of cool stuff. There are a couple of cool things on Vice in terms of what I've seen for video content. I don't read their website as much, so. I don't know if it's a big loss, Matt. I mean, Vice is one of those things where when you do see
Starting point is 00:06:07 articles shared, it's usually like rage sharing. You know, white people can't suffer racism or like some, some, something that seems to be purposefully that almost like rage trigger people to click on it. Sure. But I have definitely enjoyed me some vice mini documentaries, 20 minute,, 30-minute, lunchtime viewing things on YouTube.
Starting point is 00:06:27 I've seen one, there's a bunch that they do about party culture in the UK about like aging ravers, like people still doing drugs in their 50s, 60s, 70s, like classic Larry British people. So that's good. But I don't know, I just wonder, you just did Piers Morgan. Tucker Carlson has left his mainstream credentials behind and moved independent. Piers is leaving talk TV and going to basically be a full-time YouTuber, essentially, although it'll probably be a little bit more advanced than that. I don't know, it just
Starting point is 00:06:56 seems like there's some interesting movements. Maybe it's more so in the video side of things, but that was Vice's written content and that's being pivoted What do you think? What's the state of? Modern media landscape and what do you think's in the future? I don't know it's different for different perspectives as an as a content creator My guess is going to be alternative media is probably a lot more money Mainstream media is probably a lot more exposure. They'd be my guess In terms of are we moving towards a more alternative media landscape
Starting point is 00:07:27 where everybody's consuming alternative media? That's kind of already happening, or has already happened. In some ways, mainstream media has kind of integrated itself into alternative media. So people might get all of their, for instance, their news through Facebook or Twitter, but that might be coming in the form of headlines
Starting point is 00:07:40 for mainstream media publications. Yes, yes. I would definitely say it feels like we've moved past, especially with Tucker Carlson leaving, it feels like we've moved past the age of the pundit where you had these like huge, like larger than life figures like the Anderson Cooper's, the Tucker Carlson's, the Bill O'Reilly's, John Stuart, I guess, is back now. He's just pivoted back. Well, he tried to go to Apple and there was some editorial differences, I think, that
Starting point is 00:08:08 caused issues at Apple and then he'd wanted to bring up some stuff to do with China and that wasn't allowed. And yeah, he ended up basically going full circle back to somewhere that oddly had more freedom or at least editorial freedom, I think, as far as he was concerned. Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea with a... I think we have huge issues in our media landscape right now. I don't think they're necessarily tied into mainstream versus alternative, but I
Starting point is 00:08:32 know that that's where everybody's fixated on. Um, what is the, what should people be more concerned about then with regards to media landscape? Epistemic grounding. Uh, we live in like completely different worlds more today than we ever have. And it's probably true every single day that our factual understanding of the world has diverged so much between the different groups that it's becoming unworkable, or maybe has already become unworkable. Such that I think it was finally when the Jewish space lasers were clearing out real estate for Oprah in Hawaii that I realized I was like, oh my God, nothing can happen anymore as it is.
Starting point is 00:09:07 We're past anything ever happening that just happens. There are gonna be no more normal plane crashes, there are gonna be no more diseases, there are gonna be no more vaccines, it's all gonna be a conspiracy. It's all gonna be a secret missile attack, it's all gonna be a secret Jewish super weapon, it's all gonna be a secret Bill Gates microchip,
Starting point is 00:09:22 like nothing can happen anymore without it being part of some grand narrative or grand design, which I think is really sad. Why? Why? Like what's the undercurrent that's driving that? Is it just a multiplicity of different people being able to comment on it? Is it the fact that free access to information means that everyone has a different perspective
Starting point is 00:09:40 on the same story? Is it the fact that there's no centralized flow of information which is giving someone the narrative? Somebody sent me an email a while ago that I thought was really interesting. I think it was just his idea. I think he called it the magic box idea or something. And basically, I think as humans, we become further and further separated from the actual things that are happening with everything that we interact with. So for instance, if I do the oldest example, you're familiar with like an abacus, right? Yes. Right?
Starting point is 00:10:10 Yeah. Like I can see the math happening there. I know exactly what's happening. You can't lie to me about an abacus, okay? If I have a calculator, it's a relatively simple device. It only does math. I can see exactly what's going on. As the devices become more and more complicated and you become less and less aware of what's
Starting point is 00:10:24 happening under the hood, it becomes easier for you to insert more random stuff that you're not aware of. So like nobody thought that an advocate would track you. Nobody really thought a calculator would, but is your phone tracking you? Is it listening to every single word you're saying? Even with no evidence presented for any of these ideas, which there never has been, that your phone is secretly listening to you and recording stuff and all that, because a lot of people on tech sites have tried to investigate this, people still think it.
Starting point is 00:10:45 And I think that that example with phones can be blown up to literally everything, from carbureted to feel injected cars, from bureaucratic organizations that might just like manage a local level thing to the FDA that does, vaccine approval on a nationwide level, from literally every single thing in our life, things that we used to look at and kind of understand,
Starting point is 00:11:05 things have gotten so, so, so complicated that I think that people are kind of starting to fill in the blanks very easily and quickly with a lot of other stuff. There's no real way to like argue against them, you know? And you will slot into it stuff that just fits your priors, your biases, some half remembered truth or some whim or hearsay.
Starting point is 00:11:23 And you just sort of throw this into the workings. The Abacus example, whoever gave you that, that's a really smart. Just thought of that on the spot. Really. You got a destiny original. No, that was me. You got a destiny original analogy right on the spot.
Starting point is 00:11:36 This is some real shit right here. But no, yeah, it's, you can see the working. You can see step by step, what's laid out in front of you. But people weren't given the workings of what was happening in government or in war or in news previously. There was still a degree of opaqueness to what was happening. So what is it that's different between 100 years ago and now? I think that ironically enough, the people that seem to have the biggest problems with liberalism, with freedom and everything,
Starting point is 00:12:03 so I'd say the anti-institutional people that are like, well, we need to bring back religion and kind of like conservative social values, whatever. I think that they've, to some extent, fallen to be the biggest victims of, I hate to say this, because we're ex-liberal, like too much liberalism, too much freedom, and that there's probably some important guardrails
Starting point is 00:12:19 that kind of keep us in track or in check about how we need to live our life. Like in a given tribe, it's probably good if there's shame around eating poop or having sexual attraction towards children or trying to stab and kill somebody. Like there are some socially cohesive elements that are good that we all enforce these things, to keep everybody a little bit in line. Whereas today, because we have so much freedom with the internet, which is the thing that has changed our life more than anything else in the past 20 and 30 years, nobody wants to talk about it. They just talk about,
Starting point is 00:12:53 it's either feminism or it's Red Pill or it's Space Lasers or it's Biden in the deep state, but the internet has dramatically changed for such a quick time period. It's such a quick time period. Right? When I was in grade school, someone's didn't really exist. Not really, not like they do today. Yeah, same. Things have changed so much,
Starting point is 00:13:09 and now people have the ability to select for their world way more than they ever did, and that is incredibly damaging, because there's some amount of friction that is incredibly healthy for the human mind. It's good to be able to step into a room, but look at like grade school or high school or college. Everybody manages to make friends,
Starting point is 00:13:24 but it's not because they all swiped right on each other to get the perfect match of qualities, just because when humans spend time together, they learn to ease the friction and they kind of get along with each other. But now that we have the ability to hyper select for every single fucking thing that we want, it is, I think it's incredibly damaging to the human mind because it lets us select for too many things that we no longer have to become comfortable with. Like an example I would use is that like, you, you know, if, if 30 years ago, if I really wanted to fuck my toaster, I'm probably not going to fuck it that
Starting point is 00:13:51 much. I'm probably not going to talk about it that much. Absolutely not. Um, and I don't even know if I'd be able to find like a, like a, anybody or any camaraderie, it would just be really rough. But today I could probably type in like toaster fucking recommendations and get the top 10 models ranked from quickest to slowest orgasm for toasters that I wanna fuck. And now I've got a whole world of people that all support my toaster fucking ambitions.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And that's funny for the toaster fucking thing, but when we talk about vaccines or COVID or education or the FDA or the deep state or andri tate or any of these things, well now it gets really scary. And that's the world we're in, where you can select for your reality rather than having to deal with the reality that might not be as much fun to deal with. Right. So it allows echo chambers to continue to propagate. There was something, you may have seen this. Someone explained where EMOS went and they basically talked about the lack of development of subgroups that they kind of come together
Starting point is 00:14:46 briefly and then sort of fracture off into other I mean you'll remember like emos and Gothen like there was genuine Cemented subgroups, maybe they only existed for five years or something, but they were there right there was like an actual They had an identity and they had dress and they had all the rest of this stuff but I wonder whether the Sort of universality of everybody trying to optimize for the same things, which is really like clicks and attention online, no matter who you are, even if you're just like some normal person that wants to have like more fans and more friends on Instagram and be more popular in school or have a better
Starting point is 00:15:15 Snapchat streak or whatever the hell it is. I wonder whether there is something about this universal currency of status where everyone eventually has to play that game because there's only a few routes to be able to be successful within that one thing And the same thing is going to be true of your ability to sense make like there's only so many different paths that you can have to be able to Reach that or to be able to be successful as a fucking newscaster or to be able to be successful and catch attention online so I wonder I wonder how much of this is just people trying to make sense of the world and instead what
Starting point is 00:15:48 they do is find things that confirm their biases and then just sit and steep in those groups. But for some reason it doesn't seem to cohese in the same way that it used to. That's, it's really interesting you said that because I have another theory or idea on how society is like kind of falling apart, not falling apart, splitting apart. And it plugs into that perfectly. And that I think that people aren't fundamentally different today than they have been for the past 100,000 years. We're all humans. We have more or less the same-
Starting point is 00:16:09 Roboterials. Yeah. The biggest thing that I think has changed, there's two things happening right now, and that we're becoming more separated than we ever have been, and more similar than we ever have been. And the way that I feel like this is working is people are withdrawing into two separate groups that are enforcing within these groups an insane amount of homogeneity. And I think the reason why this is happening is because it feels like our communities have gotten larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. So for instance, it might be that maybe 30 or 40 years ago, maybe I super identify with the kids in my neighborhood,
Starting point is 00:16:42 you know, because when I was growing up, the people that you hung out with was whoever you could walk to, or when you were old enough, whoever you could bike to. This is your community. These are the people that you hang out with. You develop ideas. You develop intense, at least for me,
Starting point is 00:16:54 like high school rivalries between football teams, between like, yeah, that's like your community. And then when you get a little bit older, maybe you identify as an adult with your neighborhood, maybe you identify with a city that you're in or a political group in your city or a sports team or whatever. I think that these were,
Starting point is 00:17:06 maybe it might be like older, it might have been like churches or unions that you're in. These are the things that I think people identified with and they enforce a lot of homogeneity in these groups, which is probably normal to some extent, right? You're gonna want people around you to be very similar. That's just normal. You hang around with people that align with who you are.
Starting point is 00:17:23 Yeah, yeah. And that could mean appearance and race It could mean ideology it could value. Yeah, it could be a billion different things I people really don't know a lot of laws can be religion But today what's happened is the internet has made it so that the smaller groups are not Really fun to be in they don't really feel important. They don't feel impactful or meaningful So instead what happens is is the group that you're belonging to is larger and larger and larger. Forcing homogeneity on a neighborhood that you live in,
Starting point is 00:17:50 where I'm from Omaha, Nebraska, is a lot different than forcing homogeneity on 160 million people in the United States, versus the other 160 million people. So to draw back to what you were saying earlier, is that as these groups become larger and larger, it's harder, I think, or it feels like it's harder to have these certain types of subcultures and everything, because everybody's part of like this global culture now, which is all enforced by and facilitated by the internet.
Starting point is 00:18:15 Right. And then, but you also have, it's interesting that you say both becoming more similar and more different. Yeah. And that we're getting further apart because these different groups are flying away from each other at the speed of light. Yes. But within these groups, you have to have a cohesive opinion. You have to have an opinion. If you work in a warehouse in Alabama, you still have to have an opinion on whether or not
Starting point is 00:18:34 Leah Thomas could be an athlete in college. Or whether you work in or live in Seattle, you need to have an opinion on AOC. Or if you live in LA, you need to have an opinion on whether we should be supporting Ukraine or Israel. And like, yeah, these, the huge global culture has extended beyond the neighborhoods and the churches, everything to include everybody. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:54 Everybody has a phone or the internet. The number of things that you need to have an opinion on, the number of things that you're exposed to has increased. Yeah. The level of purity and agreement within the group that you need to adhere to in order to not be ostracized by the group has also increased a little bit. I think that is a I would say that that's probably like an artifact so it feels like you have to be more pure but it's not really that you have to be more pure it's just there are so many more issues that you probably have more ways to get wrong. ways to get wrong. So like, yeah, exactly. So like, for instance, like 20 years ago, I don't know if there would have been a social
Starting point is 00:19:26 group enforcement on like the type of beer that you're drinking. But after the, whatever the trans Bud Light stuff was or Bud Wiser stuff was, that might be part of your group now. It's not that they've gotten more peer and that they demand more rigidity to the ideas than they used to. It's that now there are more ideas that you have to adhere to basically. Yeah. So it appears like they're more peer, but it's just more stuff that you have to adhere to, basically. Yeah. So it appears like they're more pure, but it's just more stuff
Starting point is 00:19:45 that you have to keep in mind. I think Bud Light is a really fascinating little canary in the coal mine of sort of modern culture. And I've had a number of conversations about this where when Bud Light happened, it was a huge big deal. Bud Light was almost like a simulacrum for America. It's like, see, this is something that used to be pure and patriotic. And it was trucks and eagles and all of that. And see what's happened. These these wokeies have come along
Starting point is 00:20:13 and they've annihilated it and all the rest of it. And then full circle only, when was that? 12 months ago, 18 months ago? It wasn't more than two years ago when that happened with Dylan Mulvaney, right? It was in the last two years. And now you kid rock, the guy that shot the fucking cans with an AR-15 is drinking it on Rogan's. I bought $10,000 a stock, I think, like the day after all that broke. And I, yeah, my beat the market. And it goes obvious. It's like so stupid, right? Yeah. I posted those games on Twitter. It was like, thanks, conservatives. Yeah. What did it go, where did you go from and to? How far has that speed went? I don't remember.
Starting point is 00:20:46 I just don't beat that. But it's moved a good amount. Yeah. Beat them up. But yeah, it just seems to me the speed with which people will foam finger wave for or against something and then forget the position that they held so vehemently. I really, really have a huge problem with people that are like so adamant that a thing is true. And then only shortly after that, they're so adamant that a thing is either no longer true or they don't recognize what they said before.
Starting point is 00:21:12 Without at least going, ah, do you know what it is? Maybe but like weren't the, you know, like libtard wokeies that I thought that they were. Maybe that was just one malignant marketing campaign that went around. Whatever, just show you're working, like show your thinking to take you from where you were to where you are. Because it just sounds an awful lot, like wherever the tide sort of comes in and wherever the tide goes out,
Starting point is 00:21:33 that you kind of get ripped along with it. And I don't know, it's one of the reasons why I'm quite skeptical of people who don't caveat much about what they say. If you speak in absolute, you better be certain because my threshold to speak with that amount of certainty that I know that this company is one thing or I know that this company is another thing.
Starting point is 00:21:52 It's like, it's pretty high. So you either don't know what you're talking about or have done tons of work, which should be evident in the way that you speak about it. I have lots of ideas about this. The first thing, the first thing would be a criticism of people in general, it feels like nobody's capable of having
Starting point is 00:22:08 a moderate reaction to anything. I'm gonna be honest, when I saw the Bud Light stuff and the, I thought it was cringe, but like that's not a reaction that people can have anymore. It's either the worst fucking thing in the world or it's like the most important foundational bedrock part of LGBT, like nothing can just be like, oh, that was kind of dumb or oh, that was kind of grander.
Starting point is 00:22:25 I kind of like that. It has to be zero to 100. So that's really annoying. A second thing is, let's see, changing opinions or people that felt like they had strong opinions about one thing that have changed dramatically. These are two things.
Starting point is 00:22:40 I talk in my stream a lot about these things. Watching the evolution of my parents' beliefs politically has been unreal to me. My mom and my dad, my mom is from Cuba, so she's a Cuban immigrant, very pro-American people in general, very pro-Republican people. We all cried when Allianz Gonzalez got shipped back to Cuba, under Bill Clinton and Hayden and blah, blah, blah. My mom and dad are very patriotic, okay? 20 years in the Air Force for both of them. My dad, if you join the military in the United States, it's probably true in every country in the world.
Starting point is 00:23:10 When you join the military, you get a ton of vaccines, okay? You just, they up and down the line, it's like 20 shots. You don't even know what you're getting injected, right? That's what they do. My dad actually had a vaccine injury and it is deltoid, such that he can't really raise his arm very well, like past this level, and that he gets like paid disability
Starting point is 00:23:25 from the Air Force from that. It's a real injury from vaccines, okay? Despite that, when we grew up, you had to get your vaccine. It was a non-negotiable. My mom would never even think for two seconds that like her children would not be vaccinated. It wouldn't even be a second thought. Today, I think we've had three family members
Starting point is 00:23:42 so far die from COVID. My mom will not get any of the COVID shots. And I don't think she trusts any vaccines at all anymore. So the evolution of her belief on that has been crazy. And I'm sure there's a lot of Republicans that have followed the same path. The evolution of the treatment of Russia. When I grew up, I heard all about the Chai comms, the Chinese communists. I heard all about, you know, Red China and the Soviets.
Starting point is 00:24:01 She would always refer to Russia as the Soviet Union. And today, for her opinion on, you know, the Russians like, I guess whatever, Stevie, but it's not our deal. We don't have to be concerned with it, whatever. That's insane to me. The difference in treatment between the demeanor of the president, I remember my mom came home one day and she was crying over the Monica Lewinsky stuff and I didn't understand it. I was super young at the time.
Starting point is 00:24:23 And she was trying to tell me that like, you don't understand like the president is the commander in chief of the armed forces, the way that he treats women that rolls down to everybody. And my commanding officer is going to treat me this way. I already have to deal with all those sexes in the air force. And then for her to listen to those Trump grabbing by the pussy tape, so she's like, come on, Stevie, boys will be boys. It happens. It's not a big deal, blah, blah, blah. That is, yeah, that, that.
Starting point is 00:24:42 Yeah, that's wild. Bit of a pivot. Yeah, it's insane to me. There's two underlying things, there are two really important things to keep in mind that have taken me too long to figure out. One is that people don't genuinely generate beliefs from some consistent underlying system.
Starting point is 00:24:56 They inherit constellations of beliefs that all kind of rely on each other from social groups. So if you join a social group that says, like, Andrew Tate is innocent, they probably also think that Donald Trump is a victim of the deep state, that there's a swamp that needs to be drained. They think that the election was stolen. They think that the vaccines are fake. They think that space lasers probably did have something to do with Hawaii. They don't trust the FDA. They think that we shouldn't be wasting time with Russia and
Starting point is 00:25:19 Ukraine and Putin is probably more on the right than we want to admit. They have all these beliefs that are part of the Constitution. And it's true for the left as well. I'm not like I'm bullying people on the right, but it's true for the left as well, that they have these constellations as well. But the thing that bothers me the most, and then I'm sorry, I'm wrapping this up. No, no, no. Yeah, the thing that bothers me the most is,
Starting point is 00:25:37 I did this for a little bit and then I stopped because it was truly depressing. I thought that people are just kind of dumb. They don't do any research or homework. You get these like constellations of beliefs and you don't realize how wrong you are. So what I started to do was for big content creators, if you're gonna make a big claim
Starting point is 00:25:50 and your job is alternative media, bet some fucking money on it, okay? If you think that Trump is gonna win and you're 99% sure at 99%, you should be able to give me 50 to one odds then on a hundred bucks, 99% sure, one to 99, okay, sure. When I started making bets with people on stuff like that, I expected people to tell me to fuck off,
Starting point is 00:26:08 or I expected people to take the bet because they were overconfident. But a third thing started happening, that was incredibly surprising to me, that actually aligns with, you know, Peter Bogosian? Yes. Yeah, it aligns with a lot of the stuff I've seen him do. Somebody will say something like,
Starting point is 00:26:21 Trump is winning the next election 99%. And I'll be like, oh, okay, do you want to bet? I'll take $1,000. And if I'm right, you pay me 100 grand, okay? Cause you're that confident. And instead of telling me to fuck over, instead of saying, you know, whatever, what they actually do is they start to speak.
Starting point is 00:26:36 And all of a sudden I realized they have all the information of the brand. They're like, well, hold on. He could get sick and die. He could have some senility issues. He is old, maybe for some of the end diamonds, he might have done stuff. Other stuff could come out.
Starting point is 00:26:53 It's not even that they are afraid of the bet or they just immediately tell me to fuck off. They actually do have the information there. They're capable of exercising the critical thought process. They just don't most of the time because of the time because of the social pressures for our belief systems. That was the really, and I stopped doing it.
Starting point is 00:27:08 I was like, this is insane. Wait, so you know all this, you know all of the reasons why what you said before was dumb. It just took somebody to put a quantitative value on your conviction for you to appropriately scale back your belief. That was crazy. And why was that so depressing to you?
Starting point is 00:27:23 Because I was just telling me they were dumb. Not that they actually had all the information, but they were choosing not to apply it. I remember when I debated Glenn Greenwald recently, who's a hack who the only reason he ever heard his name before is because he happened to be the journalist that Edward Snowden wanted to dump the Snowden papers. And we were debating and he was bringing up, it was over the January 6th Trump stuff
Starting point is 00:27:41 and he was bringing up, I studied his videos, I studied the arguments, I've read the papers, I know all the bullshit arguments, and he brings up like, oh, well, there was an elector scheme in Hawaii, and you know, and now they're doing another one, and it's the same thing. And I'm like, hold on, the elector scheme in Hawaii, the state legislature approved both those slates of electorates. I won't go into the details, but I didn't actually say that. I was like, well, hold on, wait, the Hawaii thing, what do you mean by bringing up the Hawaii thing? And then he actually went into detail about the Hawaii thing. I was like, wait, so you knew what was going on here, but you still brought it up as a comparison? Because once you bring up all the facts,
Starting point is 00:28:11 it's completely different from the Trump thing. So yeah, my view on people as like an internet debater, try to change people's minds things has shifted a lot over the years where, at first I thought like people are kind of dumb and they fall into a lot of these bad thought processes and thought patterns and cognitive biases and blah blah blah. And we do have those, but people are actually a lot smarter than I think people realize.
Starting point is 00:28:30 And if you treat a person as smart and you present them with the right information and you try to break them out of like an echo chamber or this epistemic circularity that they get caught in, I think people can surprise you. There just has to be that push to do it and a recognition that like you're not misunderstanding this because you're stupid. So because there's an immense amount of social pressure that's boxing you into this thought-prodder. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. It's a healthy alternative
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Starting point is 00:29:31 how confident they are that you love it. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first box by going to the link in the description below or heading to lmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drink lmnt.com slash modern wisdom. I had this idea called the soft signal of effectiveness that there is a trend on the internet for people to be, you know, the most vehement like flame sword wielding motherfucker, like I'm gonna come for you and I'm gonna tear you down and you make you look stupid. It's gonna be filled with sardonic comments and all the rest of it. But I think that that activates whoever you're speaking to's defense system. That's the antibodies just come up. I don't want to be made to look like a complete idiot. So I'm just gonna stand my ground. And I think that, sure, there's times where
Starting point is 00:30:20 ridicule is a useful tool. And you can use that to kind of, oh my God, like that discomfort kind of kicks you out of stuff. But for the most part, because people just embed themselves into their beliefs, especially if the fear is, I'm going to look stupid or lose status if I get this wrong, that actually going, okay, well, tell me about that. So just walk me through your thinking and being a little bit more gentle. So soft signal of effectiveness being most of the guys that are the real hardcore vehement, piss-taking people. I don't think that they change behavior particularly well. The question is, what is it that you're trying to achieve with this communication that you're
Starting point is 00:30:55 having? Are you actually trying to get a good outcome of bringing people closer to something appropriating truth or are you trying to look cool and dunk on the other person during this discussion? Yeah. Yeah. And then you have to be mindful and dunk on the other person during this discussion? Yeah. Yeah. And then you have to be mindful of so much about like they're changing their mind too. This is something that I kind of bring up, but it feels kind of bad to do this. But like, if I'm debating somebody who, let's say somebody like Ben Shapiro, okay, who I
Starting point is 00:31:17 respect as an intelligent person, he's clearly intelligent. He's really good with this company. But Ben Shapiro is a pundit on the daily wire and he's the part owner of the daily wire, which is a conservative news outlet. His livelihood to some extent depends on him remaining in the good graces of a conservative audience. So if two studies were to come out tomorrow, the larger studies of all of mankind prove that socialism and socialized healthcare are the best things to increase the standards
Starting point is 00:31:41 of living for everybody, for somebody like me, because I'm not like, uh, I don't have a necessarily a political alignment. I can say like, oh, I changed my mind. These are like, cool, I follow this now. But if you're a hardcore dug in on the conservative side, it's going to be really hard to change your mind. And that's not what people are coming to you for is to just hear your unique take some things. They want a little bit of the reinforcement of the, um, I don't want to
Starting point is 00:32:02 say the echo chamber they're in, but a little bit of the reinforcement of like the social constellation of ideas they've inherited. And then I'm going to start using more left-linger examples of all your conservatives are feeling very bullied and you're honestly now sending with on the left that like when research and data was coming out that for a while we got way too hyped up on the trans kids stuff. Okay, personally, I still think that there is a strong
Starting point is 00:32:20 argument for people under the age of 18 to have medications made available to them. And that's a whole other thing you get into, but people got way too gung-ho about it. There is a strong argument for people under the age of 18 to have medications made available to them. And that's a whole other thing you get into. But people got way too gung-ho about it, and you need to be willing to critically accept research that might not reinforce that position. And a lot of people on the left were totally unwilling to hear or see any data that might say that like, oh, you know, distance rates might be like this, or giving medication to
Starting point is 00:32:43 people might not produce those outcomes, or some of these studies aren't the best that we're using for this particular thing. Um, yeah, people, people have a really hard time accepting information sometimes that is contrary to their, uh, you know, their belief system. And well, it's part of the acceptance within the group. And then it's also a, you can think of it kind of like a smooth ball, right? If you've just accepted this worldview wholesale, that it's very easy.
Starting point is 00:33:07 I don't need to do a ton of sense-making myself. I'm going to be accepted by the group. Any hole that you pick in one of those things, well, what does this say about my opinion on immigration or on gun rights or on abortion or on how we should deal with the Ukraine or on the sense of agency or what we should do with socialized healthcare?
Starting point is 00:33:23 All of these things sort of start to crack and crumble underneath the pressure of one of these threads becoming unpicked. Basically, yeah. And more importantly, because of the way that it works as a constellation and that they're all uniquely generated, they all are kind of self-reliant on each other.
Starting point is 00:33:37 It can't be the case that, oh God, my, the past six months has been fighting with conservatives over Trump. So that's all my example. I'm so sorry. Okay. Listen, progressives have big problems too, but it just can't be the case that the FDA is trustworthy. That can never be the case because if that's the case, the whole premise of the FDA being
Starting point is 00:33:54 untrustworthy has to do with the concept of the deep state. It has to do with the government being against us. It has to do with pharmaceuticals being corrupt. It has to be stacked on top. Yeah. It's all, they're all like, it's like a Jenga tower, but there's no foundation. They all find a way to keep the blocks in the air. Like it's Minecraft.
Starting point is 00:34:07 Zero gravity, Jenga tower. Yeah, and you can't pull anything out because wait, that does, because everything would completely totally fall apart. And the problem when you're in a social group is you can't have an incongruity of applied ideas because that implies that you have an incongruity in fundamental values.
Starting point is 00:34:22 What do you mean the applied ideas? As in, if I'm with a group of conservatives and I say, I believe in affirmative action and a $15 an hour minimum wage, and the conservatives go, okay, well, you're an idiot. You want to destroy the economy and your bigger tree of low expectations or like, okay, I don't care. Our values are fundamentally different. So our applied positions are obviously gonna be different
Starting point is 00:34:46 I'm for and this isn't my personal position like I say like oh, well, I'm for a minimum age of fabrication You're not but that's of course our applied positions are way different We have a difference in values, but if I'm next to somebody that is near me Ideologically or supposedly identical to me ideologically. Well, if we start to If we start to separate on applied positions So maybe I believe that we need to build more housing start to separate on applied positions, so maybe I believe that we need to build more housing to help homeless people. And somebody else says, but we need to enact
Starting point is 00:35:10 strict rent control to keep rents down. If we have a disagreement there, that person isn't going to attack me on the applied position. He's not gonna say, oh, you wanna build more housing? Rent control is obviously better. That person's gonna go to the core belief and he's gonna say, oh, well, you hate homeless people.
Starting point is 00:35:24 Now, the core belief attack from somebody close to me hurts a lot more than from the conservators. Like, wait, hold on, I don't hate homeless people, right? And I'm sure it's the same for you and a manosphere. Well, you're not, I know you branched out from that, but like, if you think of like a manosphere or like a red pill person, if they're on a show with a bunch of feminists and like, you hate women and you're damaging to men and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, you're a feminist.
Starting point is 00:35:42 Obviously we disagree. But if it's two red pill is disagreeing with each other, like I think that your advice is horrible for young men. You're not advocating for them or whatever. It's like, wait, what the fuck do you mean? That's my whole platform. What do you mean I'm not advocating for them? Now you've got a huge disagreement.
Starting point is 00:35:53 I think this is called, I think it's called the, it might be called the bigotry of small differences, but basically that the closer somebody is to you, ideologically, these little differences seem to, yeah, get super exaggerated. I've seen this. There's a really good little process that I went through.
Starting point is 00:36:07 A friend asked me, how do you know if the content creator that you're consuming is someone that you can trust, basically? How do you know if they're trustworthy? And the same thing is true, I think, for friends. You can actually use this for friends just as easily as for content creators. The answer, they're subscribed to my channel, youtube.com. That's definitely, yeah, that would help. But first one, when was the last time that this person surprised you with an opinion? Second one, when was the last time that
Starting point is 00:36:35 they publicly admitted that they were wrong about something? Third one is, does their in-group bind together of the mutual love of their in-group or the mutual hatred of an out-group? And then the fourth one was, do they speak to people with differing points of views and value sets for reasons other than mocking them? And if you go through those four steps, and there's probably like a million others, they're just like kind of obvious ones for me. There's no one really that triggers at least a few of those that is also a shite stuff.
Starting point is 00:37:05 Like it's very rare, unless they're doing it performatively and playing some 5D chess, it's very rare that someone goes through those things. And I think that even using that for yourself, whether you're someone that creates shit online or just wants to be able to make sense of the world, thinking, okay, when was the last time that I admitted that I was wrong? When was the last time that I had an opinion that people would have probably been surprised by? When was the last time that I consumed a piece of content that I probably going to disagree with? Do the people that I hang around with, do we mostly talk about things that are shared values or shared hatreds? That's just a nice little process to go through. And that's helped
Starting point is 00:37:35 me, you know, we consume content too. Like the people that make it also consume it, you know, you're sat waiting for an Uber or doing whatever, you're waiting for someone to arrive and you're like, I'll see, I'll watch Taylor Lorenz versus the lips of TikTok lady. And I'll see what goes on. And you start to form opinions about this sort of stuff. So I think it's important. Like that's just a really nice self-correcting mechanism or at least like a process that you can go through that helps.
Starting point is 00:37:58 Yeah, I definitely, I super agree. Yeah. I would add on to that for an individual that's listening to this or for content creators or whatever too. Something that I've helped a lot is don't try to free yourself from biases. I think that this is a fool's errand
Starting point is 00:38:11 and I think it lures you into a false sense of security. I think it's better to just be aware of like cognitive pitfalls and then try to correct for them afterwards. So for instance, you mentioned that thing about getting upset, people will dig in. I absolutely dig my fucking heels in. I will and if I don't like you enough and if we're arguing passionately enough, I absolutely dig my fucking heels in, I will. And if I don't like you enough,
Starting point is 00:38:26 and if we're arguing passionately enough, I'll argue that two plus two equals five, if I disagree with you that much. And I know that about myself, and I know that that's the thing. I'm not going to claim that that doesn't happen, and I'm not gonna spend my entire life trying to make it so that that doesn't happen,
Starting point is 00:38:37 I'm not gonna get mad, I'm not gonna get mad. But instead, what it'll do is, listen, when I argue, I get heated, I know that, but the next day, if I've got a big argument, I'm gonna review it because when I'm removed from the argument over 24 hours, now I can go over and it's like, okay, did this person make a good point?
Starting point is 00:38:48 I feel like I didn't have a good response to this. Like, do I need to strike the my argument? Were they better on some things? And I need to just like take parts of their argument. Like being able to correct for biases rather than to try to eliminate them is a way healthier mindset. When I was doing research as well on certain podcasts,
Starting point is 00:39:03 fuck, the conservator still comes again, but like for Dr. Malone, the guy who said he was the father of the mRNA vaccine when he was on Joe Rogan, before I started doing research and I would do a lot of this on stream, I would write at the top of a notepad for claims I want to write. The first thing I would write is, I do not like Joe Rogan's opinion on vaccines. I don't trust Dr. Robert Malone at all. The reason why I write these two things down is because I know that this is priming me to disagree with anything that they say.
Starting point is 00:39:27 So I have to be extra careful when one of them says something like, oh, well, you know, oranges actually make your dick bigger. I might just think immediately, like, this is so stupid and write that because I hate both of them, but I need to keep on, okay, hold on. I know that I'm primed like crazy against both of these guys. I'm aware of that.
Starting point is 00:39:40 So I need to be careful when I am evaluating their claims because I might just say that they're not true because I just don't like them. Yeah. Adjusting your sight on a... Basically, yeah, the zeroing on your brain. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Zeroing in in your brain. Yeah. It's a nice way to put it. Yeah. You have to just like try to correct for biases or be aware of them, but don't pretend that you can get rid of them. You absolutely cannot. There's no way as a human being. Do you think that the debates that you do help to change minds? Obviously, you've spent, you've got
Starting point is 00:40:02 this big one coming up and you've done it a number over the last few months and it's like a high price, although you're interested, right, you're engaged and stuff. What do you think is the net outcome of you sitting down with Glenn Greenwald and Alex Jones or you sitting down with Norman Finkelstein and Lex Friedman or whatever? I think there's several things that happen. One is that hopefully, this is a broad, broad,
Starting point is 00:40:29 broad narrative thing, but hopefully it shapes the views a little bit of both sides. So if you're a pro-Palestinian and you hear me argue, maybe you moderate a tad on some of the things that you're saying about how evil and bloodthirsty Israeli citizens are. If you're a super big Zionist and you hear me argue, hopefully you moderate a bit on your opinion. It's like, okay, maybe Israel has made some mistakes historically. And then if you're homeless in the middle, those are the people that I try to like scoop up basically are people who email me and let's say like, Hey, I was really big on this pro-Palestinian stuff, but all the demonstrations and the pro-Hamas stuff made me feel really like crazy and not
Starting point is 00:40:59 at home. I'm glad I found something that's reasonable or maybe it's like, Hey, I'm like a super pro Zionist guy, but you know, I'm really uncomfortable found something that's reasonable or maybe it's like, hey, I'm like a super pro-Zionist guy, but I'm really uncomfortable with how much people support the mass settlements and the demonization of Palestinians and pretending like we never have to make any concessions from ever. And I'm glad that you're there. So yeah, I try to like kind of scoop up the people who are a little bit politically homeless right now and then hopefully I can kind of soften the positions on both sides, depending on what particular issue that I'm arguing with. Which is presumably why you've got a problem with the short soundbite thing,
Starting point is 00:41:25 because it doesn't allow the entirety of the conversation to be encapsulated. Yeah, basically. And people, I don't like short soundbites, because people don't engage with them like short soundbites. I don't make 30-second videos. If you hear me say something in 30 seconds, that's going to be an excerpt from a larger conversation. If you hear me say something like, destiny says that Palestinians have historically always been violent towards Israel, okay? I think that's a true statement. That's a soundbite that you can cut.
Starting point is 00:41:51 And if you have that soundbite, what you would say is, like in my opinion, you can say like, oh, Destiny believes that Palestinians have historically always been violent towards the state of Israel. That's fine. But you can't take that and say, Destiny thinks that Palestinians are solely to blame for the problems between Israel and Palestine. Or Destiny only thinks it's Palestinians who have made mistakes historically
Starting point is 00:42:08 with Israel and Palestine. People will extrapolate so much from one clip instead of just watching a larger conversation or getting more of a holistic view on what's going on. The equivalent would be like you hear a friend. If we conducted ourselves in the real world, people treat content creators, you'd be hanging out with a friend and you'd be like, hey, what do you want to eat? Your friend would say, you know what? I can really go for a pizza right now.
Starting point is 00:42:24 And you're like, pizza? do you hate all Indian food? Like, what do you mean? No, I just want a pizza. Do you hate steak? No, I just wanted a pizza. Okay. Well, you just said that you like pizza. Do you not like any other type of food?
Starting point is 00:42:34 Or it's just like so bizarre that you think in 20 seconds you can get a clip and have a full summary of like what somebody has thought about an issue or said about an issue. Did you watch how much have you got to watch that Taylor Lorenz versus Libs of TikTok debate? Did you watch much of it? I watched, there is, part of it was posted on Twitter, I think like three minutes and I watched that. Was it, how much, how much like the total? I managed to get 15 minutes into it. Okay.
Starting point is 00:42:55 And it was a car crash. It was, so you say that books should be banned from schools, which books have you read? And it was, I've actually read this one and this one and this one. You think that children's body parts should be cut off, which parts exactly? And it was just like this, I don't know, like an unstoppable object in an immovable force, like just clashing up against each other. And Taylor Enza's got this mask on outside, which just seems to be like, it's like purposefully... The person's like, yeah. Yeah, like it's like the...
Starting point is 00:43:22 This is my joke. Like every single,, like if somebody, like so many Democrats got long COVID, so many Republicans got vaccine injuries. It's just so crazy how that worked out. You know, every conservative that got vaccinated and those 10 people that have died from vaccines and every Democrat seems to know like five people with long COVID is crazy how the, it's sorted itself out that way, you know? Yeah. What's the, because there's woke fishing, what's the other one like trad fishing, I guess,
Starting point is 00:43:42 but this is like trad triggering, right? It's like purposefully doing the thing. Say what you want about Taylor Lorenz. Like she knows the optics of what she's doing. Have you seen her Instagram? Oh, no, I'm not. It's just, I don't need to spend too much time on it, but it's a lot of like meta memes about what's going on, kind of about the situations, about all the rest of it.
Starting point is 00:44:00 So she's obviously playing this like huge. Oh, do you think, do you think that the mask was part of the meme then? Absolutely. Oh, I have so much more respect for her if that's the case. 100%. I thought she was like, oh, that's really funny then. Fun. I saw it and I was just like, oh God,
Starting point is 00:44:12 why are people still wearing masks outside? It's 100% because she knew that by sitting down doing it, that I think, I'm not calling Taylor Lorenz a media genius. Like I think that she's like pretty reliably an idiot. But there are certain things that she's able to play, like certain games that she's able to play. Okay. Where she's doing that.
Starting point is 00:44:32 And the reason that I think this, I've got my biases based on her Instagram, and her Instagram is very meta. It's all about the narratives about her or about what she's been talking about or whatever. And if you saw it, you'd go, yeah, like, it takes a degree of sort of stepping out Okay. from it and seeing it from where it is.
Starting point is 00:44:50 Doesn't make her points or her any better of a person. But, um, interesting. Yeah, I think the mask, I think the mask was a bit. I'll check that out later then. That's pretty funny. Yeah, it's pretty funny. It is pretty funny. Um, the only thing I would have made it better, I guess, is if she showed up with like a little
Starting point is 00:45:02 bandaid on her arm for that. I just got my second boost. For her 50th booster shot, yeah. I had this conversation the other day about whether or not we've passed peak woke. Like whether or not- We did about a year and a half ago, that's my guess. When would it have been?
Starting point is 00:45:17 I feel like, though I think that there have been a couple court cases. One was near, I think it was about two years ago, it was at a school called Overland Something. And I think a black person tried to steal something from a bakery across the school. And the students, and the bakery called the cops, and they didn't know the person there.
Starting point is 00:45:37 And the students protested saying the bakery was racist, but the college joined in with the students basically. And I think that college basically ended up owing like $30 million to the bakery over that lawsuit. It was huge. There was that, there was the whole flushing the Harvard and the two other administrators get raked over the coals on the weird. Yeah. That was really cringe. And I think most people saw it as such. I think a lot of the pro-Palestinian stuff, which is unfortunate because they do need good international representation,
Starting point is 00:46:07 but the marches and all of that was not good publicity for them. Yeah, and I just, I feel like people are looking at all kind of the council culture stuff a little bit less. I feel like anecdotally, like the word retard is coming back a bit more. And it's, Schengel has used the word gay in his SNL. Did you watch this?
Starting point is 00:46:24 I have not. So he. Oh, he was gay and cracker, didn't he? He's great. Gay, cracker and retard. OK. All in. My chat said that and they said I need to watch it
Starting point is 00:46:32 because he said gay and cracker. I haven't watched it yet. And retard. OK, wow. So yeah, he's doing this bit about how as a young boy, you're basically your mom's gay best friend. And he says, you remember that? You remember when you were young, you were just gay,
Starting point is 00:46:47 and then starts rolling into the get. So he kind of tempers it a little bit and plays it down the line. But yeah, I think you're right. I think those words coming back into resurgence. And there was a novelty around this, like actually being woke, being aware of all of the different social issues and this sort of performative empathy, toxic compassion thing that was like novel and made
Starting point is 00:47:10 you seem progressive and aware. And now it seems like a meme. Yeah. And it also, it didn't really penetrate as much as people thought it would. It's very funny because the perception in the United States, fuck I'm about to bully conservatives again, the perception in the United States is that the far left was a huge problem and there might be some extremists on the right or whatever, but the reality is the far left didn't make it anywhere legislatively.
Starting point is 00:47:34 Of the justice stems that got in, they've moderated so much that now the Wokies have abandoned them. They're super angry about Bernie Sanders and his position on Israel-Palestine. They've not liked AOC for a long time because they thought she sold out to Pelosi and she's not attacking other Democrats as much. So they have no power in the lawmaking bodies. Largely speaking, like older Americans don't vibe with the super woke stuff basically at all.
Starting point is 00:47:53 And the only place that these people kind of have powers in like school administration. I was gonna say. And even for like some of the school stuff, people are kind of looking at this like, this is getting kind of silly. You're not seeing like the huge protests and demonstrations like you used to
Starting point is 00:48:03 against like the Milo Yiannopoulos's and everything. But on the right, their party is about to jump off a cliff following Donald Trump. Something like 80% of Republicans would literally follow Donald Trump to the end of the earth, which is a big problem for the Republican party, but they seem to not think that they're kind of captured by anything.
Starting point is 00:48:19 So it's funny that for the most part, like the Democratic Party and Democratic voters are basically like center left. And they kind of like got tugged along a little bit with all of the crazy woke stuff. But now they're kind of like, eh, this is like whatever. But on the far right, I think it's something like, I say far right, but it's the majority of Republicans. I think it's something like 70% of them don't believe in the results of the last election.
Starting point is 00:48:36 They think that it was actually rigged. That like when you look at policies in terms of far right, disbelieving the last election versus allowing trans fucking like child porn bucks in schools or whatever the neck, the most recent accusation is, I don't know whether people would find an equivalency between those two things. The biggest problem that I think are the thing that people often as underrate is how pervasive the belief is. So for instance, like Nazism in the alt-right, in my opinion, was a big concern because of the type of belief that it was,
Starting point is 00:49:10 but it never really picked up that much. It was a fringe belief. Yeah, it was a fringe, right? And then that, and I had a huge problem from 2016 onwards of like, you know, like people on the left calling everybody a fucking Nazi. Like, bro, do you, no, stop. Then I have a neo-Nazi.
Starting point is 00:49:23 It's not a good label to call all of these people Nazis, all these people, all right, it doesn't make any sense. And I agree, like I said, especially for the trans stuff, although I think we've moved past the peak culture moment for that. Although a lot of that was also, it continued to be perpetuated because conservatives apparently had nothing else to talk about besides trans people. So they fed into it a lot as well. That's true, man. I mean, we saw so much of the discourse was not necessarily about the first incident. It was about the reaction to the incident and the subsequent reaction to the reaction
Starting point is 00:49:51 and the discourse that came out about that. And also the overreact, this goes back to the moderated reactions thing. I feel this is a totally unsubstantiated belief. I can't prove this at all, just my feeling. I feel like a lot of parents got mad about stuff in school libraries and about what their kids were in class, not because it's gotten worse than it ever has been, but because with COVID and with children staying home for the first time ever,
Starting point is 00:50:15 parents are actually looking at the curriculum of whether children were learning. And for the first time ever, they were like, wait, what the fuck is this? Like, well, it's not not a problem just because you're not aware of it. Sure, which I agree. But I have an issue with people thinking that stuff has become uniquely bad. Something that I believe in very firmly is I think the downfall of Andrew Tate, I also can't prove this, I think the downfall of Andrew Tate started with those stories that came out of the UK about little boys in class bullying little girls using Andrew Tate stuff.
Starting point is 00:50:44 Those stories got huge. And then the talk of like our little boys in school bullying little girls using Andrew Tate stuff. Those stories got huge. And then the talk of like our little boys in school learning things from Andrew Tate and blah, blah, blah. And it was horrible and people had, you know, articles. We get very defensive about children in many ways. Yeah, but the thing that I was thinking was like, yeah, I'm sure this is happening
Starting point is 00:50:59 and it's definitely horrible, but how much are we just now seeing, you know, little boys and girls bullying each other in school because we've got cell phones in front of everybody. This isn't a new thing. And I'm not saying it's okay, but like we've always bullied the fuck out of each other now seeing, you know, little boys and girls bullying each other in school because we've got cell phones in front of everybody? This isn't a new thing. And I'm not saying it's okay, but like we've always bullied the fuck out of each other school, you know? Yes. Yeah. So to circle back, I'm not defending the whatever weird Trans books or sex or gay sex guides or whatever exist in school libraries. I'm sure they're out there and I'm sure a lot of them are
Starting point is 00:51:18 inappropriate and dumb, but like there's a switch. Thank God it hasn't happened to me yet. But parents like flip a switch when they become parents where they forget every single thing about being a kid. And they're like, oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. I can't believe my kid is fucking seeing this shit and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, when I was a kid, I don't know if it was like this UK, but I remember staying up at night,
Starting point is 00:51:35 where you would go to like, it was channel 14 and 15, and it was like the cinemax. Like soft core porn. Yeah, but it was like blurry. But like every now and then it would like come through. A half a boob. Kind of see like the boob and it was like green. like come through half a boob kind of see like the boob And it was like green. Yeah, that's what we did as kids
Starting point is 00:51:48 But I feel like if parents are their kids doing it today be like, oh my god It's the wokeness that's like getting my 12 year old to think of porn or if like a movie like Mrs. Doubtfire came out today They'd be like wow Robin Williams pushing the woke trans cross-dressing agenda. It's like brown. Yeah. Yeah. That is, I don't know, man. The capturing of smart people's attention, Douglas Murray, good friend, and he said he can't believe how many people have spent their time over the last few years debating about whether men are men and women are women or not. And that's a critique, I think, both of this shouldn't be a discussion that we're having, i.e. sex is something which is binary and real, and also the overreaction from his own side of this capture when there are other things that we could be focusing on. He went and did this documentary around the streets of Philadelphia looking at this tranc epidemic.
Starting point is 00:52:37 Like that's a huge problem. And fentanyl and opioid crisis, all this shit. Like those are really, really, really big problems, but they don't play quite so well on. That's the culture war stuff, yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so you've got like DeSantis passing stuff in Florida
Starting point is 00:52:54 of like banning hormone therapy for trans, it's like, how many people is this even impacting? I remember when Matt Walsh went on Joe Rogan and I think Rogan asked him, how many kids do you think are on hormones? And this is right after he did a whole documentary on it. And Matt Walsh was on Joe Rogan and I think Rogan asked him, how many kids do you think are on hormones? And this is right up to you in a whole documentary on it. And Matt Walsh was like, it's probably in the millions. And the answer is like 5,000 over like some of you is like, really dude?
Starting point is 00:53:12 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, another thing that's played into this and there's always something new. And dude, I'm, you know, vehemently against almost all of the bullshit woke stuff. But for not only for the reason that I think that it's in itself is dog shit, but that it captures everyone's attention on all sides. You get the reaction, then you get the subsequent re-reaction, and then there becomes this big debate and it gets blown out of nowhere.
Starting point is 00:53:37 It's like the especially for some reason, especially the woke stuff for both sides seems like such a shelling point that everybody can get super passionate about. And this most recent thing with Gemini with Google's AI disaster. Have you not seen this? No, my mind is all studying for this debate. Yeah. What's this? Allow me to educate you.
Starting point is 00:53:59 Go ahead. Oh, wait, wait. Is this the thing where when you ask for pictures, it's always of like black people and Asian people? That would be correct. Okay, I've seen the memes. I don't know anything else about it. Okay, so I don't know it in depth, but I'll try and give you a good overview. Uh-huh. It tried to be so anti-racist that it ended up being racist.
Starting point is 00:54:15 Okay. And it annoyed people on the left because if you asked for an image of some Nazis, it was black Nazis. And then it annoyed people on the right because if you ask for an image of the founding fathers It was black founding fathers Uh-huh so everybody got pissed off and then it sort of hid it did a combination of hidden erased history in this regard But people were using it Using its anti-racism to be really racist so they would say something like can you give me an image of
Starting point is 00:54:42 14th century philosophers Can you give me an image of 14th century philosophers drinking grape juice and eating watermelon? And it would be for black people drinking grape juice and eating watermelon. So just the whole retroactive changing of history after the Super Bowl thing where they collected correct Delyshah Key's voice, I think at the start, it's all part of some, like a big constellation
Starting point is 00:55:02 of different data points that are making people very concerned about what's happening to history and what's an acceptable it also has implications for whether or not Google itself is a reliable search is it going to deliver information in a way which is actually factual like given that so many people are going to use that to try and find something out. But if all of the real stuff is hidden down on page fucking five, you don't know. So yeah, I mean, from a branding position, very bad. I could not have done it more poorly than this. And it's probably, according to Mike Baker, it's probably gone through a million differently. This isn't the sort of thing. It's not like a Bud Light thing that perhaps was just one part of the marketing department that threw a case of six packet at Dylan Mulvaney. This is gone through an awful lot of layers before it's got here.
Starting point is 00:55:45 So it doesn't seem like it's happened by accident. So you think there was like an intentional ploy to make it like not racist or? I think that they are force feeding diversity in so much. Obviously they didn't mean for it to be so apparent that like anyone with the most basic prompt in history could create something which had a standard. Like you can't make it to make a family of white
Starting point is 00:56:04 or you couldn't get it to make a family of white people. I think the only way you could get it to make white people is if you ask for Ukrainians. But it was like a Native American president and show me an image of the king of Spain from the 18th century and it's like a black guy. So I think that it was force-feeding dialogue. And you can say, ask it things like, show me you're working or ask, like, explain to me why you did this. And it's just the most rudimentary, basic, wokey talking points, like the most cringe. Like it is important that we represent people from diverse backgrounds and like just it was that. So it wasn't much complexity to it, but this force feeding of diversity plays into the DEI concern that a lot of people have at the moment. And it's just more distraction.
Starting point is 00:56:51 I'm like, God, like if this hadn't happened, if you just made it an accurate representation of what people needed, but now we've got another, and right now, this very moment, could be talking about something else that would be really useful. But it's an important, now it's another important cultural moment to try and dissect to work out what's going on. And it just every single time it pushes us back, pushes us back, pushes us back. I think there are two huge issues at play. The first thing is I always tell people, if you're trying to engage in real true political discourse, you're trying to understand people, don't ever start with the assumption that
Starting point is 00:57:20 people are doing like evil, crazy stuff. I think that when you start from that perspective, you've already lost the ability to understand the other side. So people on the left that want trans kids legitimately feel like, or a lot of them legitimately feel like there are children that are in need that have to get some medical stuff to make their lives workable basically. And I think that probably comes from a place of compassion,
Starting point is 00:57:41 generally speaking. I think that when people on the right are fighting against stuff related to trans kids, I think they genuinely believe that there are a lot of children that can get confused and then get swept up in online communities and then start taking medication or hormones and they don't know what's going on and it's going to be damaging to them. And I think it generally comes from a place of compassion. I think it's important to start from there because if you start from the place of like, well, my enemy is trying to destroy the country for XYZ reasons, you're like, you're totally lost, right?
Starting point is 00:58:07 The people that did the instruction on January 6th, I imagine they genuinely thought that the election was stolen. They really did think that that election was stolen and that there was some craziness of happening and that's why they had to go to the White House and try to stop the confirmation of vote and everything. I genuinely believe that they thought that.
Starting point is 00:58:20 Now that they were just like, we're gonna mess everything up right now because there were some real bad dudes. I think that, I only say that because usually when corporations make mistakes, I think that they're usually trying their best because when a lot of people are involved, I think they're usually trying their best.
Starting point is 00:58:36 Now, if it's just like one or two people involved, sometimes like personal agendas can really mess things up, but if it's a lot of people involved, the idea that there's like this top-down order of like, okay guys, fuck white people, we're gonna do this, we're gonna edit them out, we're gonna make sure that there's a top-down order of like, okay guys fuck white people We're gonna do this. We're gonna we're gonna edit them out We're gonna make sure that we're blah blah blah blah blah as opposed to somebody like listen We got to make sure that these are you know diverse enough
Starting point is 00:58:52 We don't want to have so every single thing is spitting out a million white people and then they probably over correct So a lot of cowardice I think cowardice cowardice. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it's so this is Andrew Schultz Talked me about this like his Schultz's razor is it's not coordination, it's cowardice. Sure, yeah. Because somebody might be scouting and like, hey, are we fucking up right now guys? Because you don't want to be the one to- Precisely.
Starting point is 00:59:11 For sure. And that could absolutely be a thing too. Absolutely. I think that's a big part of it. And especially with this dynamic we're talking about now. Because if you're the guy, it's like being the fucking first person that stops clapping after like some dictator stands up and gives a speech. I'm not going to be the fucking first person to stop clapping after some dictator stands up and gives a speech.
Starting point is 00:59:26 I'm not gonna be the fucking first person to stop clapping. I'm not gonna be the guy that says, maybe this whole diversity thing, maybe it's going too far. Maybe we don't need to do affirmative action. Maybe we should keep the SATs. Maybe they do actually have a, you know.
Starting point is 00:59:38 Maybe men actually need a little bit of affirmative action in school. Or maybe we're going a little bit too far on having 20% of our advertising trans people. so you think that women, you want to get women out of the boardroom and back into the kitchen, is that right? But remember, it's because a slight difference in applied position will be interpreted as a huge difference in fundamental moral belief. You want to cut trans advertising because you hate trans people. You want to get back on the diversity stuff because you
Starting point is 01:00:00 think white people are better than black people, right? That's always where it goes. So it's so hard for, and in these environments, it's going to be a lot of like-minded people, so hard for them to course correct, which is why I talk about how when those two groups like branch off into their own thing, that is incredibly destructive. I hate the fact that conservatives all talked about how we need to get out of the schools because they're corrupt and whatever the fuck,
Starting point is 01:00:20 because well now the people in the schools are even more fucking insane. I need you there. You need to be there. You got to be participating. Or when left-leaning people don't want to participate in certain aspects of like conservative culture. When left-leaning people don't want to celebrate success or wealth or you know, business is doing well or patriotism. Okay, well cool. Well now if I have a, if I'm a patriotic American,
Starting point is 01:00:37 I basically have to be a fucking conservative because I'm not going to be patriotic on the side that's telling me to hate my country for fucking slavery and colonialism and white supremacy. Recap that. So it's the difference in applied position is indicative of a difference, a change in value. That's what people feel like. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So just because this is something that you want to have happen in the real world, there is an implication about your moral stance. Because for most people, they didn't do the work to go from the initial, the grounded ethical stance to the applied position.
Starting point is 01:01:06 And since they didn't do the work, it's one and the same to them. That's why if I talk about Israel-Palestinian, it's so frustrating, it still happens. When I talk about Israel-Palestinian, I say, I don't think I would say anything happening right now is apartheid or genocide. They don't hear, okay, you don't think it's apartheid or genocide. They hear, you think it's okay what's happening? You think that Palestinians should live in territories where they never get a stake? You think it's okay to kill civilians. That's what people
Starting point is 01:01:26 hear. The same way that you might say, I don't know if I support affirmative action. You just don't like black people. You think that it's their fault, everything in the United States. Or if you say, maybe we've gone a bit too far on the diversity stuff, they're like, oh, okay. Well, the only reason you can think now is because you hate diversity and you're a white supremacist. Yeah, because they, yeah, those things are so connected. So it's a, it's a, it's not a slippery slope of, it's like an interpretation of slippery sloppiness. It's this very small iceberg above the water. This happens. It's not even a slippery slope. It's a horizontal platform. That's it. These things are here. When I, that's why when you, there's a, who's the Alex O'Connor worker or whatever, there's a
Starting point is 01:02:01 ethical position. I think it's called, it's, you can be an ethical, anti-realist who believes in non-cognitivism. And when you believe in non-cognitivism, what you're saying is, when I express a moral proposition, I say that murder is bad. What I'm actually doing is I'm just expressing an emotional state.
Starting point is 01:02:14 Murder boo. I don't like murder. Murder boo. Emotive. I think it's non-cognitivism, right? No, no, no. Is it emotive positivism? Fucking goddammit.
Starting point is 01:02:22 I'm just gonna random philosophy turn. He's gonna scream at me. He taught me about this two nights ago in Miami. He came out for my birthday. Emotive fucking epistemics or something like that. Maybe that's... But yeah, it's basically, I mean, this is one of his best ideas
Starting point is 01:02:38 that he taught me and I've now forgotten. But yes, it's basically whenever somebody says that they're in support of something or against something, it's basically like yay abortion or boo abortion. Exactly. Yes. And then they work back from that position and just try and retry. They don't even work back.
Starting point is 01:02:51 They just sit there. Yes. Okay. That's why, so like for instance, if a girl releases a story, I cover a lot of, we call them rape reviews on my stream. It's a little crude. Rape reviews. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:01 Because people put out the me too stories and then we'll read it through them. It's like, okay, well, what is the, do we feel like it's a credible allegation of what's going on? And for a lot of these things, if you say woman raped, you're saying, what you're really saying is what happened to her was really bad. And if somebody out- Boo, rape.
Starting point is 01:03:13 Yeah, or boo, whatever that was. And if you kind of, he's like, well, I looked at this, I think the guy was definitely pushy. There might have been like some groping, like not good sexual stuff. I don't think it was rape. They hear you saying rape, yay. Hmm. Or if you push against the diversity measures, you know, not good sexual stuff. I don't think it was rape. They hear you saying rape, yay. Hmm.
Starting point is 01:03:25 Or if you push against the diversity measures, you know, white supremacy, yay. Or if you push against the, you know, the trans youth stuff, like, oh, discrimination, yay. Hmm. Oh, trans suicide, yay. Because for a lot of people, the applied position and the ethical position are one and the same.
Starting point is 01:03:40 These are inexorably linked and there is no difference that can happen. Which again, if you're debating somebody different than you, who the fuck cares? I don't care if we have different applied and ethical positions. We're supposed to, but if it's somebody similar to you, we can't be disagreeing. What do you mean you don't think there's a genocide? You think it's okay to murder innocent civilians? Like those two things are linked and they're not, it's a total non sequitur.
Starting point is 01:03:57 Yeah. Just how unified is the left compared with the right? Do you think at the moment this can be within the cultural commentary space? This can be within the people who support the side. This can be within the politicians that are a part of it. Do you have a sense of how fractured each of these are comparatively? I feel like the right is more unified, probably because they have a figure like Trump to unify around. The left feels a little bit more scattered, but there's also going to become, it's also like very dependent on the communities that you're in. Like I said, like if you're online on Twitter, your impression of the American left in the
Starting point is 01:04:35 United States is like a crazy woke mob of like cancel culture children running around the streets. And then you forget that like if you go to like North Carolina or Georgia and you're talking to like 30 year old, 35 year old, 50 year old, like black voters and stuff, these people are not woke, pro-trans people running around on the streets saying like, my child needs HRT, right?
Starting point is 01:04:54 This is not the demographic at all. Or even when you look at like older democratic voters, like generally these people are gonna be kind of the cool old woke people, the cool like the cosmopolitan elites who are like, yeah, I am a woke person, I believe in gay marriage. That used to be like the woke positions. What would be yuppies or something.
Starting point is 01:05:11 Yeah, but those people largely had like cool social beliefs. Like I think that we should have gay marriage. I think freedom of speech is important. I think that, yeah, it was like, we should probably have some kind of like worker protections and unions need to come back and blow, like those kinds of woke things, not the like my four year old identifies as a it, it's a whatever.
Starting point is 01:05:27 Tac helicopter. Yeah. Also, oh, and on a real quick thing too, because you brought this up earlier with both sides on this, one of the big issues the left has is a situation will come up. Somebody comes on and they say, my four year old child is trans. And I know that because you know, they kicked right in the womb or whatever and then conservatives will go You're fucking insane. Okay The what should happen is is what I do when somebody comes to me and they bring me a crazy left-leaning belief and they'll go What about when this guy said that this thing can can happen when they said that like all women are constantly being raped by men By looking at them then what I say is oh, that's really dumb. And then you move on. One of the big reasons why some of
Starting point is 01:06:05 these small issues get blown up so much is because the people on the left will take the bait and they will start defending absurd shit. There is not an epidemic of people with four year old trans people in the United States. There is an epidemic of people willing to defend them though. And that's the issue. And that's why people on the right feel so justified in like their culture or stuff. Even if it's not a huge amount of people. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure this
Starting point is 01:06:24 out because I'm always thinking I'm like, why is it such a huge issue when it's not a huge amount of people. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it took me a long time to figure this out because I'm always thinking, I'm like, why is it such a huge issue? Would it say, trans people are like 1% of the population, if that, depending on how many intersects can be a lot. 19% of the discourse. Yeah, and but when you talk to conservatives, you look at you go polls, I think the one that I saw was I think conservatives think 20% of people
Starting point is 01:06:39 are trans in the US. And I'm like, well, why is this the case? But then when you look at the left, well, how many people are there willing to defend it? And now I understand more. Okay, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Starting point is 01:06:49 So it's like a, it's not about the volume of incidents that occur, it's about the volume of discussions that occur around that. People willing to defend it. Yes, correct. Whereas if everybody in the office is like, yeah, this is really dumb, then you've defanged to the right.
Starting point is 01:07:03 Well, because who the fuck are they going to fight against? Right? So when Tim Pool and all these people obsess over these weird books and libraries about like guides to gay sex or whatever, like, if this is brought up to me, I'm going, okay, if that's in those libraries, yeah, that's pretty weird. It probably shouldn't be there in schools. And then you're done with it. It's not going to be a huge thing on like, well, LGBT people and gay people need to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like, no, it is weird and it's dumb.
Starting point is 01:07:24 And just don't defend it. And then move on from it. Why would you, why would you stake your position there and die on that hill? There's so many more important things to fight over. Who do you think's doing the best work in the political space at the moment? Is there anyone that you're, that you watch yourself or is there anyone that you think, even if I don't watch them, I can respect the way that they work with this stuff? I don't watch enough because I stream and I work like all the time.
Starting point is 01:07:44 So it's hard to like sit down and listen to like podcasts or shows or whatever. Yeah, I don't want to venture any guesses because I'm sure there are people out there, but most of what I see is not good. But it's also those are mostly the people that I debate and everything. Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting, an interesting world at the moment. I think looking at... Wait!
Starting point is 01:08:04 I will shout out one guy. His name is Josiah or pondering politics. He's a cool guy. His channel was like exploding recently. He does a good job at trying to evaluate things like pretty fairly from the democratic side. Yeah. Not Crystal and Saga.
Starting point is 01:08:15 Who's the other guy that's kind of like slightly left leaning being unrogan a bunch, records in that green. He's got like a neon green behind him. No idea. Fuck the guy's name. Even if you think of it, I'm not gonna know him properly. Right, okay. Well, he seems to be like green behind him. No idea. Fuck, the guy's name. Even if you think of it, I'm not gonna know him probably. Right, okay.
Starting point is 01:08:26 Well, he seems to be like kind of popular. Uh-huh. And then you got a debate with, second time actually, we had the last time, one of the last times that we were together was at the Vulcan when you were on stage with Alex Jones. And then you had another crack.
Starting point is 01:08:38 How did that go? About as I expected it to, yeah. He's definitely very much like a showman, which I can't tell that it makes me hate him more or less, I don't know. How'd you mean? Like I think that he is legitimately a grifter in that like he knows he's putting on a show.
Starting point is 01:08:53 Like I remember when we were talking, he did this thing where when we were having a conversation back before, I think I started like, I started like mocking him and he looked at me and I think he put his hand on my shoulder and I moved his hand, I was like, don't touch me. And I remember when we- Were you genuinely irritated? No, I just don't like it. If somebody and I moved his hand. I was like, don't touch me. And I remember when we genuinely irritated.
Starting point is 01:09:06 No, I just don't like it if somebody's trying to like show like physical dumps like, no, get your fucking hand off me. We're gonna do this, right? If you want to kill me, we can kill me, but you're gonna put your hand on me. It's fucking weird. You're my dad. But I remember after we finished, right? And I'm because I feel very strongly about all my political beliefs. If you talk to anybody in my personal life, they're gonna tell you that like, if we got to eat and you bring up something that is great,
Starting point is 01:09:23 it's gonna be just like a stream. I'm gonna be arguing with you. I just feel very passionately about everything that I believe in. But after the show with Alex Jones, you know, like, I'm still like pretty like in the zone of debate, like he got, it was like, oh, that was, that was a great show. It was real funny. When you did that, get your hand off me thing, hilarious or whatever.
Starting point is 01:09:37 And he just like walks in and I think for him, I think it literally is just like a big show. Like he just has fun with it. He's like WWE. Basically, yeah. Which in one sense might make me dislike him less because I'm like, okay, well, he doesn't actually believe in the crazy things he says. But then in another sense, kind of makes me hate him more because it's like,
Starting point is 01:09:52 well, fuck, your listeners definitely believe this shit. And now I don't know if you're propagating this for like fun and people are really taking it seriously, even though you don't. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I understand what you mean. If someone is compelled because of the way that they believe that it legitimates, their gregarious position is like, oh, well, you kind of at the mercy of your emotions as opposed to if... Yeah, that's a difficult one.
Starting point is 01:10:16 This is why I don't usually spend much time figuring out if somebody's a grifter or not, because it doesn't matter. The harm is real regardless. Well, if you're on the internet, everybody's a grifter and everybody is a shill and everybody is stupid and everyone is in it for the money and doesn't really agree with what they believe in and they're just doing it because they're a part of the
Starting point is 01:10:30 whatever the media apparatus, but the followers do. So that's what you have to address. Even a bench appear when all these people are grifters, the people that listen to them really believe it. So that's what you have to address. It's the second order thing again about, it's not about the incident, it's about how the incident is interpreted.
Starting point is 01:10:42 It's not about the event that happens, it's about how many people then are prepared to defend themselves in that event. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't fucking know, man. It's, it seems, it seems to me like a very messy time. And I'm really, really hoping that it's just going to be more sane out the other side of this. Everything seems to be ramping up ready for November, but I don't know, we'll wait and see. Do you think the red pill is dying? That's something that both of us have spent
Starting point is 01:11:11 a little bit of time orbiting in one form or another, either you debating it or me getting abused by it. What do you think is happening with the red pill at the moment? I think most stuff has like a, probably like a two to four year shelf life for internet content. And I think I kind of came and I kind of went, and you take it and the pre-trial or pre-indictment imprisonment
Starting point is 01:11:28 probably hurt a bit because it took away a lot of the publicity. I think that the nature of like the conversations for the red pill stuff, I think was really bad. I think the content strategy from a lot of the red pillars I think was very subpar. How so? Like for me, the way that I've stayed fresh and relevant
Starting point is 01:11:48 for 15 years of content creation is because I'm always finding like new stuff to talk about or a new angle to kind of like hit something from or like I'm kind of moving on with contemporary events. I feel like for Red Pill stuff, I feel like I could have written the script for those shows after being on two of them to where it's like, okay guys, today we're going to talk about does body count matter?
Starting point is 01:12:04 Do guys value you for the amount of money that you make? Do women fuck over men in divorce? Are men lonely because they're simps? It was like the same topics for like over a year, such that it became like a meme where when I would show up on a show, some of the fans would like bingo cards of like, okay, well, when is the body count question coming up?
Starting point is 01:12:19 High Pergamy. Yeah, high Perg, are women high Pergamist or not? And then it's like, and then it's funny because like the questioning would always, there's a fallacy called all roads lead to Rome, I think. If there's not, there should be one. We're basically literally, no matter how somebody answers a question,
Starting point is 01:12:33 it always goes back to what you want to do. So I might say to a girl, have you ever dated a guy? You say you don't care about guys at all. If you're a dated a guy that's five five, and the girl might be like, no, I haven't, cause you hate short guys, you know, you won't. And she's like, well, no. Okay, have you ever dated a guy that's 5'5", and the girl might be like, No, I haven't, because you hate short guys, you know? You won't. And she's like, well, no. Okay, have you ever dated a guy that's 5'5"?
Starting point is 01:12:48 Yes, I have. Oh, when? When I was in high school, I actually dated a guy that's 5'5". Really? Are you together anymore with him? Well, no. You dumped him because he was a short king, right? Like, yeah. Or it's like, are you dating a guy that's 5'5"?
Starting point is 01:12:59 He's like, yeah, I am now. It's like, oh, really? Is he rich? No, he's not that rich. Does he have a huge dick? Yeah, his dick is pretty big. Oh, hyperchemist, you just want the pool boy. You're probably going to, you know, find a rich guy and stuff like that. There's always a, Andrew Tate actually is the perfect example of the all roads lead to Rome. Okay. When Andrew Tate had the pre-trial imprisonment,
Starting point is 01:13:18 there were never going to be charges because it was all a scam. It was just a sham kangaroo court. Now that there are charges, if there wouldn't have been charges and he would have been released with no charges, no indictment, it was because obviously it was a scam, right? But now that there are charges, well, obviously because it's a scam. Of course they're gonna make up charges.
Starting point is 01:13:35 So now they're gonna go to court and if they go to court and they get, if they go to court and they beat the charges, it's because it was bullshit the whole time. But if they go to court and they're convicted, well, it's because it's bullshit the whole time. They're gonna go to court and they're convicted, well, it's because it's bullshit the whole time. They're gonna make it up always. So literally no matter what happens,
Starting point is 01:13:48 it's always because of your particular prediction of the world. So you end up with these prediction models that will predict every single event, which means they don't actually predict anything, but it allows you to escape the cognitive dissonance of your predictive model, not being correct. So you don't have to worry if you've got a good view,
Starting point is 01:14:03 like a good blueprint of the world, because literally no matter what happens, you've always got a way to make sense of it in the future. Well, this is why that four step process of when was the last time someone publicly admitted that they were wrong, when was the last time they surprised you? Someone came out and had a discussion about this and was like, you know what it is? I actually think that a lot of the time I do actually see girls in relationships with guys that, hypergomously, I wouldn't predict that they were in a relationship with. That guy just seems to have game.
Starting point is 01:14:26 It's not really about the fact that he's tall or fit or rich or has status or, or any of these things. He just seems to be like a really nice guy and she wants to have a family and he ends up being, you know, I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't expecting that. That was something that would have surprised me. You think, okay, well that shows an evolution of talking points, but I don't know how many times.
Starting point is 01:14:45 And this is why I've still fascinated in evolutionary psychology and intersectional and intersectional dynamics and all of that stuff. It's still very interesting to me. But the whole lambasting women for having standards that are too high, that never was something that really crossed my world of content creation. But even now, it's okay. So what else is happening? Here's an interesting angle. Here's a much more interesting angle for me for something that's contemporary and new. This skew of young girls to the left and this skew of young guys to the right, given the fact that most people date within their political affiliation and because politics are
Starting point is 01:15:24 becoming more important to each individual person now, that's interesting. That's like a new, that most people date within their political affiliation and because politics are becoming more important to each individual person now. That's interesting. That's like a new, okay, so where's this coming from and what does this mean? 30% of Democrat parents are afraid that their son or daughter would marry a Republican. That's interesting. I was like, what about like parental pressure and how does that play into it? That's interesting.
Starting point is 01:15:40 You can keep talking about the same thing, but do it with a different angle on it, continuing to just hammer away in the same points. And no, it's just, fair play if you have that degree of patience, maybe, to be able to just have the same conversation a thousand times. But I don't have that in my toolbox. The description is boring, the descriptive part, because yeah, it's the same thing over and over again. And then the prescriptive part is boring because for a lot of these movements, people don't actually give you good advice
Starting point is 01:16:09 to kind of navigate it sometimes unless you can become a top one percenter. Instead, what they try to prescribe is like a world that doesn't exist anymore. Like this is no good because women have birth control because women are earning money and blah, blah, blah, blah, it's like, okay, well, that's not changing. So you have to give advice for the world that exists now, not tell guys you have to become
Starting point is 01:16:26 a top 1% or you need to earn so much fucking money that the traditional girls or whatever will go back to liking you. It's never advice geared towards, well, how do you navigate the modern world where women don't need men as much, where women are looking for different things in relationships? How do you navigate that? It's just like we need to go back to the days of old and everything is messed up now because of feminism and complaining and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, talk to me about the ADHD diagnosis. It seems like a big change for you. Yeah, it's a totally huge change.
Starting point is 01:16:56 I think when my son was seven, he had huge attention problems in school, such that he would like, he was like rolling around on the floor, he couldn't stay in his chair. Between classes, they were having him crawl through like resistance tunnels to like burn off energy. It was a huge problem of focus. At home, it was really hard to get him to stay on task for like chores.
Starting point is 01:17:18 If I wanted to go out and like pick up leaves with him, like doing the yard or whatever, it's really, really, really difficult to get him to stay on task or anything like that. And then at some point, because we considered initially like maybe his autism or something weird like that, I don't know. And then the school psychologist, school therapist or whatever, floated the idea of ADHD. And then we took him to get an evaluation and he got like clearly marked for ADHD.
Starting point is 01:17:39 And I didn't buy that because I can play games with my son. We're playing like Minecraft or something. He can sit down on the computer for fucking 16 hours. And I would like do these bullshit tests. I'm going to sit here. We're going to look at each other for five fucking minutes. You're not going to move. We're going to sit here and do this.
Starting point is 01:17:51 I know you can do this and we would do these things. Like this is, I don't, this is bullshitting. I don't believe it. I didn't even believe they like 80. She was really a real thing. Um, so then now that's my personal feelings on it. Um, and at the time, like that's written at the top of the dock. Yeah, I don't believe that it's real.
Starting point is 01:18:09 I would never take a brain pill medication because I don't want to change who I am, blah, blah, blah. But my responsibility as a father to him supersedes my own personal views on it. So I owe it, if for nothing else, I owe it to him to at least do the research. So when I started doing reading and research on ADHD, I come across a whole bunch of things
Starting point is 01:18:25 that I didn't understand relating to ADHD. And the most shocking thing was for everything that I researched, because I was trying to find, does his behavior show up? I found all of my old behavior showing up. So huge discrepancies on standardized testing where I might do 98th or 99th percentile and everything versus GPAs or homework.
Starting point is 01:18:44 I didn't ever do homework. My GPA was a 2.7. That was curved up because of like honors classes and AP classes, so my GPA was horrible. I had to have like a teacher sign my assignment notebook and then my parents sign it or else I would get a detention because I was so bad at doing homework. I didn't like to read, I would cry
Starting point is 01:19:00 if I got assigned reading for more than like a few pages. I could never do it. I remember in high school I used to do like, I would do like cliff notes and spark notes and extended reading so that I could avoid doing the actual reading It was just like a bunch of really really dumb behavior But I always thought because I could play video games for 16 hours. I must not have ADHD And that's like one of that there that's like three of like 15 other different behaviors. I'm like Jesus Christ So after I read all that I was like, okay, fuck it my son I guess if I'm to believe 80 she's real my son probably has it. So he got medication, it helped him a ton for school,
Starting point is 01:19:27 and he's continued to stand it and it's helped him a ton for school. Seven years later, think about like five or six months ago, I've got a friend that's staying with me. And she suggests she's like, listen, everybody knows you have ADHD. It's like a Joe Grunz, Fima, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like, yeah, but everybody has ADHD, everybody's autism, like whatever. And she has Adderall and she's like, you should just try this for like a week. And I'm like, okay, fuck it. Why not? Sure. And I enjoy recreational drugs. And she has Adderall and she's like, you should just try this for like a week. And I'm like, okay, fuck it. Why not? Sure. And I enjoy recreational drugs. I tried the Adderall and for the first like two or three days, I was definitely like, amphetamine high. Okay. I don't know if you've like done amphetamines recreation. It's just like,
Starting point is 01:19:55 it's like a euphoric. You feel so good. You're like in a good mood. You're super heavy. I'm like, okay, this is cool, but like, I'm fucking high. Okay, I know it is. I know like an infetermint high feels like. And then on day four, the euphoria, the like, I mean euphoria of like doing a drug recreationally basically disappeared. And then when I went to stream and stuff, I noticed that I could pay attention to what I was doing without having to have a game going on in the background,
Starting point is 01:20:19 which was a really huge departure. Cause if you've ever watched any old videos, I'm always like playing Minecraft, playing video games, doing something while watching a video, but I could just sit and like read stuff. And then I noticed over the next week that I was like, holy shit, I can read stuff for like four hours a day. I could just sit and read and read and read and I'm returning the information and I don't
Starting point is 01:20:34 feel like I have to do a million other things. And that's basically after that I was like, fuck it, I want to do a therapist very easily. I could get ADHD diagnosis because of my childhood stuff. And then I got a prescription for Vyvanse. And yeah, I don't think Vyvanse is, it's an amphetamine similar to Adderall. Okay, a bit more powerful, a bit less powerful, a bit more something else.
Starting point is 01:20:53 Adderall is a combination of four different amphetamine salts. Vyvanse is one of those amphetamine salts, but it's got an attachment of another molecule that makes you digest it slowly, so that it like is an extended release amphetamine basically. Okay. It's a list dextro amphetamine or list dextro amphetamine. It's a lysine attachment to a dextro amphetamine thing.
Starting point is 01:21:10 And then when you eat it, your body, I think it deliver pulls off the lysine thing and then you get the slow release of them. So you get time release version. Yeah. Similar. And if there's something that you presumably you've done your research to work out what it was that you would have preferred to have had? The other, basically the other option is Adderall XR,
Starting point is 01:21:25 basically, I think. Right. Yeah, but yeah, for the past four or five months, I've learned like the entire history of Israel-Palestine. I've read like 100 page papers on like legal theory for my debate with Glenn Greenwald. I'm able to research and retain information and be interested.
Starting point is 01:21:40 And I haven't played like basically a single game in like almost half a year in like four or five months. It has dramatically changed my engagement with the world in like an unbelievable way. So James, my business partner in Newtonic had an adult diagnosed with ADHD as well. And what does that do? You know, you're a person who thinks that you know
Starting point is 01:22:00 who you are. You've been you for like fucking 35 years or some shit. Like you thought that you knew the landscape who you are. You've been you for like fucking 35 years or some shit. Like, you thought that you knew the landscape of your own mind and who you were. And this is me, Steven, out in the world. And then someone comes along and kind of says, well, this is a part of you that you haven't been able to fully understand. Does that change your sense of self? I think that my whole life, and I think this probably happens as everybody gets older, I'm sure it's happened to you. The smartest age that you ever are is 19, because you know everything. I've always joked that like if I go back, maybe even with you, I said this,
Starting point is 01:22:35 if I could go back in time and talk to myself, I wouldn't believe anything I'd have to say, even if I knew I was coming from the future. Yeah, because at 19, 20, you know everything. One of the things I've learned as I've gotten older is subjective experiences are very, very hard to understand. So I try to be really careful when I speak about other people's subjective experiences and your mind and how you relate to the world is another one of those subjective experiences. So I guess in my mind, and it's funny
Starting point is 01:22:55 because I came across a lot with ADHD stuff, that ADHD can be simultaneously overdiagnosed and underdiagnosed at the same time to where if somebody is just either lazy or has an attention problem or whatever the fuck Cuz it for a variety reasons they might get an ADHD diagnosis, but if somebody has ADHD They might feel so like my feelings are like if I just focus. I know I can do this. I'm just a lazy fucking piece of shit There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to fucking just stay on task for three hours
Starting point is 01:23:22 Everybody can do this. There's no reason I can't do this, right? And my feeling is that like, I'm probably just more lazy than the average person. And so that's why. But then after doing a lot of reading and then taking like a pill for a little bit, and I'm like, okay, well shit, I wonder if this is like the ordinary mind
Starting point is 01:23:37 or if this is more closer to the subjective state of other people. Yeah, it just makes me- Does it change your theory of mind about other people? Obviously, you know, if you're lambasting yourself, basically saying, you should be more disciplined than this, you should be able to stay focused. Why can't you just do this thing
Starting point is 01:23:52 without getting distracted every two minutes or without having to play a video game or without having to have three video screens open at once? No, that's an internal monologue that you've habituated. It's a very well-worn path. I'm just fascinated by people that have like, oh, and now I have a very different story that I tell myself about why I am the way I am
Starting point is 01:24:13 and what that means and why that could be the way. And yeah, it seems like a huge pivot. Yeah, I mean, I just try to be open to everything. Maybe there's something that'll, you know, dramatically shake my subjective interpretation of myself in the future, but I'd rather be be open to everything. Maybe there's something that'll dramatically shake my subjective interpretation of myself in the future, but I'd rather be more open to it than more closed off to it,
Starting point is 01:24:30 because I wanna feel like I'm making progress towards a better version of myself, rather than like, well, I have figured it out when I'm 20 and now I'm not gonna change my feelings at all. And I know there's a lot of things that I skew off the norm for. Like I remember when I was like 20, 21, 22, like if you would ever come to me, no,
Starting point is 01:24:43 it would have been like from like 22 to 25. On stream, people would ask me questions like, oh, like I've got a toxic relationship with my mom or dad. Like what should I do? And my answer is always very simple. You just kind of out of your life, never talk to me again. That's so easy. Why would you maintain toxic relations with your parents?
Starting point is 01:24:54 What a stupid thing to do. Like that's so dumb. But then as I've gotten older, I'm like, okay. Well, people have feelings about their family and it's pretty obvious that most people's feelings are way off of where mine are So it's pretty stupid of me to suggest something for other people and assume that you know It's the same thing for everybody
Starting point is 01:25:10 So I just try to be really aware of the different subjective experiences that people can have and that mine might change in the future too Because I don't get locked in on some dumb shit. Yeah. Yes. I felt quite bad Watching I didn't reach out because there was enough people doing that already But I felt quite bad watching the entire internet kind of scrutinize your relationship over the last few months the divorce stuff Yeah, yeah, man like I know that you appear is like this sort of Emotional punching bag stoic fucking brick Well, everything is super transparent and everyone knows kind of everything that's going on and you Have a capacity to be able to deal with discomfort that There seems to be like, I don't know,
Starting point is 01:25:46 beyond certainly outside of the norm. But that made me feel uncomfortable, like watching everybody else dissect your fucking, like this intimate part of a downfall of a relationship online. So I imagine that like rolled in with a fucking ADHD diagnosis, plus changing the chemical structure of your mind. Like that's what I mean, like the last 12 months. Oh, it was a lot for sure.
Starting point is 01:26:08 I remember that I almost, I scaled back on my last prescription request, I scaled back a little bit of my dose of my Vyvanse, cause I noticed that my, cause I wear these stupid little things to track like through my jumps of my heart rate. My resting heart rate had risen like 17 beats per minute. That's a lot. In like two months.
Starting point is 01:26:22 That's a lot. And the research that I did, I think that the average heart rate elevation for somebody on amphetamines I think was 4.9 beats per minute over a whole lifetime of like doing these amphetamines. So for mine to have risen almost 20 in two months, I'm like, holy shit, my... Something's going on. Something is exploding. And I don't even know if this is possible with medication. But then, but now it's all settled. And I realized it was probably just that period of like a lot of like stress that I'm dealing with from my own relationships, from like the public
Starting point is 01:26:46 stuff and you've got to keep streaming through everything and then like the research from how they base everything. Yeah, there's a lot to deal with, but yeah. Yeah, it was definitely physiologically, it was definitely tough, but I've always felt like I have the tools to deal with everything. And in some ways there are parts of my life that look incredibly difficult that actually make things so much easier for me I talked with the Lex
Starting point is 01:27:08 I've talked to a lot of people that are more behind the scenes about this because a lot of people look at my life And they're like it's got to be so fucking hard to have your relationship and everything else like out front and center for all these people to dissect and My thought is it's got to be so fucking hard to try to keep that secret Oh my god, because if you try to keep things secret You it's got to be so scary every day on the internet, something might get leaked, somebody might find something out and now you've got to like try to figure out like, how do I defend this without revealing too much and what do I say and what else is going to leak and blah, blah, blah. For me, there is the added stress of when everything's public, everybody can comment on it, but it's
Starting point is 01:27:37 also like, this is it. There's no way to hide. Yeah. And also you see what you get. Like there's never been a time in my 15 years where something has leaked of me, where they're like, oh my God, that's the real destiny. He does this behind closed seats. That's what's going on. This never happened. Like basically you get what you see.
Starting point is 01:27:50 Which in some ways makes things easier for me a lot. Yeah. Will you do the same thing when next relationship rolls around or have you got a like, maybe we don't need to go quite so public with stuff. Have you got a strategy for that? I think now I'm being really, really, really critical of who I would select next.
Starting point is 01:28:07 Like I've got like a whole list of criteria that I'm like writing down and evaluating for people because I'm trying to figure out like what works, what doesn't. I've got like my X's on this, like list of criteria and like what would have worked or what didn't work or blah, blah, blah. I don't know if I'll ever be dating again
Starting point is 01:28:20 or if I'll get married or what that looks like just because my life is so crazy. If I do do another relationship, it would probably be another open one. If I do do another relationship, it would probably be another open one. If I do do another relationship, it's probably gonna end because most relationships do. And when it does, everybody, if the red pill syrup is popular, will say, well, it ended because it's an open relationship,
Starting point is 01:28:32 despite the fact that I had four monogamous relationships for this that all ended for a variety of reasons. But yeah, I mean, we'll see if I did or not again, it just depends. But my life was like really crazy and really busy and it's hard to slot anything in there. Yes, yeah. Not dating again is a, I don't know, like, I wonder, I wonder what will happen when
Starting point is 01:28:52 you're further outside of the blast radius of your most recent, like fucking slow motion car crash, public car crash thing. It's just, it's a lot for the other person to deal with. That's the issue. So you have to find somebody that is willing to deal with all the public stuff, probably somebody that works in content creation, because otherwise it's hard to explain this world to a normal human being. Allow me to step you into this world that you didn't choose, that you don't really understand.
Starting point is 01:29:17 And how do I make you understand why there's a whole forum of people that obsess over every time you turn your Discord on or off or people that try to figure out what our address is or why people say, I'm a pedophile or why this guy, why is it today that Muslims are trying to find your address to go and jihad you? And that's a lot for an ordinary person to be brought into. I think that is a lot for an ordinary person to be brought into, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:38 Speaking of that, it's assumed that I know nothing about the Vosh scenario because essentially I don't. But I know that there's been stuff that you've been at least commenting on. What's the 30,000-foot view of the last few weeks? I hate being charitable to him at all. What's happened is Vosh has made a collection of fairly edgy statements in his past that on their own are all, I would say, probably defensible, but taken collectively against people that don't like him can present a very compelling narrative
Starting point is 01:30:16 that he's like a pedophile basically. So like, I think for instance, there was like an argument before relating to why he didn't, he was, I wish I could remember, I don't wanna misquote this because it's so important to get the exact wording right. So I could be misquoting, you can go find the video if you want. But I think he was like an argument before relating to why he didn't, he was, I wish I could remember, I don't want to misquote this because it's so important to get the exact wording right. So I could be misquoting, you can go and find the video if you want. But I think he was in an argument where he was like, it was something like in a very edgy way, he's like, I don't know why people care so much about child porn because of the
Starting point is 01:30:34 harm created to children, but we're okay buying and having things every single day that are made by children in sweatshops where they kill themselves. But then people will hear something like, oh wait, so you want to make child porn legal, but his argument was really, well no, we should probably make sweatshops illegal. But it's just like a bunch of stuff like that that's piled up over time. And then, so that's like the factual foundation.
Starting point is 01:30:53 And then the rhetorical foundation or the content direction foundation is Voshe has very intentionally isolated himself from the rest of the world, and he conducts himself in an incredibly aggressive bullying way So he doesn't really have anybody in his corner to defend him Or to lend him any credibility because he's made enemies of anybody that would be friends with him
Starting point is 01:31:14 And he's been incredibly uncharitable to everybody else in in his part of the world So he's he's done it to himself. So I'm not really some I don't feel very much sympathy I might feel sympathy over the hyperbolic statements that get blown up because I've made like a lot of statements But a hyperbolic statements that get blown up because I've made like a lot of statements that are hyperbolic that get blown up. But I don't feel sympathetic that this is what he has to go through right now because he's, yeah, he says completely untrue, factually untrue things
Starting point is 01:31:31 about me all the fucking time. And now watching it come back to bite him in the ass and him to have nobody in his corner to defend it is really funny. So, exactly, yeah. It doesn't surprise me, or at least I certainly see looking at the world of streaming, you guys put an awful lot of hours in.
Starting point is 01:31:47 That in itself just practically gets you out of the way of being able to spend time socially, just doing stuff. And then because so much of it is on its own, you do streams with other people sometimes, right? Or like maybe even like a good bit at the time. But so many streamers are just spending hours and hours and hours and hours, just them and a camera and a screen. And it seems like of all of the different content creation methods, it's the one that is the most isolationist. It's that and then only worse than that are those people that try and rebuild ghost towns
Starting point is 01:32:21 like in fucking Greenland or something like that. Those are the two that are the worst. So yeah, I mean, I have a great degree of sympathy for streamers overall because it's a rough job. Not as much as to say it's a harder job than like being a bricklayer. Retail, yeah. Was it retail?
Starting point is 01:32:39 I don't know, you're talking about Hassan, right? Yeah, not that hard. That's another funny example where I actually, and I've given the same thing in the past, Hassan was 100% correct in his assessment and his statement. He just said it in kind of a bad way, but he doesn't have anybody to defend him either. And it's funny because he blamed my community completely
Starting point is 01:32:53 for that clip blowing up. But I'm willing to bet that you would agree with the entire context of the statement and that what we do for work right now, in ways it can be more sold or stronger, it can be more difficult than jobs that work prior to this, just because of all the added stressors and all the added things that are going on But you're compensated generously for it and you have a greater degree of autonomy
Starting point is 01:33:11 Exactly. Yeah, and that's always the big difference like a McDonald's worker in a second would step into my life I would never step back into working at McDonald's ever So even if there are more challenges and and more soul destroying aspects of this job Which there are if I got divorced as a McDonald's worker, I don't have to deal with 75 year old fucking Rolo Tamasi making arguments about why this McDonald's worker broke up. I don't have to deal with that. I don't have to worry about like fucking nude pictures leaking or everybody having an opinion on some shit I said.
Starting point is 01:33:36 But I make 100 times the money that I did when I worked at fucking McDonald's and I get to choose every part of my life when I get it. So it's not, did have a point, but man for him, the socialist guy that lives in a $4 million mansion, it was a $250,000 Porsche and flies in private jets and wears $1,000 outfits. It sounds horrible coming from him. Optics are a big deal. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:33:55 And fuck him. I'm not defending him because yeah, that was his fault. I could have been a big defender of him on that art because I love defending takes like that because they're technically correct, but they're optically horrible and those are my favorite things to defend. You know? Yeah, dude, I, you know, I did a video, which is still up on the channel, I think something like what no one tells you about working for yourself. And oh, shit. Yes. That's the same. It's all of the thing. It's all of the points.
Starting point is 01:34:17 If you are both the organ grinder and the monkey, if you're both the task master and the worker, there is always in the back of your mind, is this the best thing that I could be doing with my time? So not only do you need to design what you have to do, you then need to discipline yourself to go and do it, and then you need to go and do it, and then you need to review and question whether or not that's the thing that you're supposed to do. And even when you're away on holiday, whatever that even means, there's always this degree of I could be working a little bit more, and then work begins to bleed into leisure time.
Starting point is 01:34:44 So there is this huge, big, long list. And someone brought it up on a Q&A a couple of weeks ago where they said, lots of people in the personal development finance space are disparaging about nine to fives. But I actually really love my nine to five. And I feel a bit bad because I'm like a second class citizen for liking this like cucked job type thing. Why do you think people have such bad opinions about it? And I was like, that's a first off great point. Secondly, it made me realize I've never disparaged nine to five. So I'm like, look, if you can find a way to be able to work for yourself, I think it's a reliable route towards having a fun life that you're probably going to enjoy. But it's not the only route. I know tons
Starting point is 01:35:23 of people that have nine to five perfectly happy lives. Yeah. And there are all of these other side effects that come along with it, like having to be the person that when you're going to get up today, how long are you going to stream for? Well, you choose and if you don't stream for long enough, who says when enough is done, like what's the rules around this? How hard are you supposed to work?
Starting point is 01:35:42 How well are you supposed to do? And all of that gets externalized when you've got a job, which is liberating. And it's just what's the rules around this? How hard are you supposed to work? How well are you supposed to do your job? All of that gets externalized when you've got a job, which is liberating. And it's just, what's your personality? What's your predisposition? What do you want? People have an inability sometimes to just like analyze like the pros and cons,
Starting point is 01:35:55 things have to be fully good or fully bad. I don't know if this would be a huge point of disagreement for us, but you do like a lot of like health and fitness stuff, right? Yeah, like a position that I have relating to like food is I don't think there's no such thing as like a good of health and fitness stuff. Yeah, a position that I have relating to food is I don't think there's no such thing as a good food or a bad food.
Starting point is 01:36:09 Foods just do different things. If you've got a sugary calorie bar, or a candy bar that's just empty carbs or whatever, that's all it is. It's energy for the day, high in sugar, that's what it is. It's not necessarily a bad thing. If you've hit all your micros and macros for the day but you need 400 more calories,
Starting point is 01:36:22 if you want to eat a fucking KitKat bar, it works. There's no such thing as a holy good food or a holy bad food, something super high in vitamins or whatever, it doesn't matter if you can't absorb it for whatever reason or if you're not deficient in it, like there's no fucking point. It is what it is, like understand the pros, understand the cons.
Starting point is 01:36:36 Exactly, yeah. And I think when it comes to like nine to fives or entrepreneurship, it's the same thing. Or with renting or buying a house. There are pros and cons to both of these things, right? I'm a millionaire and I don't, well, I own a house with my kid and my kids when I live. That's irrelevant.
Starting point is 01:36:49 I don't own a house personally. I live in apartments. I'm probably gonna live in apartments for the next like 10 years. I'm gonna buy a house and settle down somewhere. But people would think that like, once you've got money, the most important thing is to buy a house because you don't wanna set your money on fire.
Starting point is 01:36:58 I'm not setting my money on fire when I'm in an apartment, any more than I set my money on fire when I go to a restaurant and buy food. Like I'm literally paying for something that I'm gonna shed out my toilet later, any more than I set my money on fire when I go to a restaurant and buy food. Like I'm literally paying for something that I'm gonna shit out my toilet later, but that's not wasting my money, I'm getting a meal out of it.
Starting point is 01:37:10 So I think when I'm renting an apartment, I'm not wasting my money, I'm paying for a place to sleep and live every day. There are super big pros to entrepreneurship if you've got the mind for an entrepreneur. And I don't mean the mind like you're smart enough, I just mean the mind that like you enjoy self-direction. Contribution and the disposition.
Starting point is 01:37:25 Yeah, you enjoy like the uncertainty, the ups and downs and you can navigate. Variety. Yeah, not everybody enjoys that. And nine to fives, I've known people that have stepped into the entrepreneurship and then gone back to the nine to fives and like, listen, I can fund all the hobbies and things I want to do with my nine to five and I don't have to worry about, you know, where's my paycheck going to come from? Is this going to be a slow month for me? Yeah. So yeah, there's pros and cons to both. And the demonization of like nine to fives, and you're a fucking loser because you're not a rapper or because you're not a small business owner or because you're not a fucking
Starting point is 01:37:53 superstar streamer or YouTuber, it's like, no, fuck you. You can do whatever you want. Just, yeah, figure out what works at the pros and cons for you. Yeah, I think that's good. And that's not something that I've heard a lot about, like championing. It's part of this disparagement. I think that we're on And that's not something that I've heard a lot about, like, you know, championing. It's part of this disparagement. I think that we're on the same page that you're relatively pro-college as well. I'm super pro-college, yeah? But if you think you've got a better path besides that,
Starting point is 01:38:15 then yeah, by all means, go for it. But for all these people, fuck. All these people will complain about the deep state, the politicians, the lobbyists, and the Bill Gates and blah, blah, blah. When you look at all these people that you think have rigged the world and they lobbyists and the Bill Gates and blah, blah, blah. When you look at all these people that you think have rigged the world and they're corrupting everything, blah, blah, blah, what do they send their kids?
Starting point is 01:38:30 They're not, Bill Gates doesn't tell his children, like, oh, you're 19, you're not going to college. They all send them to fucking Ivy League schools. They all send them to the best schools. They get the best degrees. They all come to the- They're supposed to be the most woke ones. They're the ones that'll be the most brainwashed.
Starting point is 01:38:41 Maybe, I guess, but like, they're going to college. They're not like telling, you would think that like, well, if they'd figured out. Well, you look at the Steve Jobs didn't give his kids iPads type argument, which is, be aware of what the lifestyles and technologies are of the people who are in power. And if the people who are in power are sending their kids to universities, like if you just want to model what they're doing, they've got skin in the game with regards to that. Yeah, for me, I mean, I don't disagree.
Starting point is 01:39:09 I'd learned basically zero when I went to university, but I had great life experiences and it taught me an awful lot. It was like Navy Seal hell week for five years of socialization. Sure. Of you need to learn what it's like to get drunk and lose your keys in Manchester and have an argument with your friend at three in the morning. You need to learn what it's like to have an argument with a housemate where you can just request from the university that you move flats. All of those things,
Starting point is 01:39:33 when are you going to learn that? 25? 30? Yeah, it's the part of the transitioning into adulthood. Yes. So I think it prepares people. But I understand that it's all a big scam, no one learns anything that's important. And in an ideal world, yes, would higher education actually educate you effectively, along with giving you the life skills? Probably. But of the two, they're like, I would give it 50-50 for what you come in, maybe even more on the life skills side of things to be able to, okay, well, what's it like to have your attendance be so low that maybe you're going to get kicked out of university?
Starting point is 01:40:08 Because that might happen with a job in a couple of years time when you're ill or some other like administrative fuckery happens. Is that the first time that you're going to ever encounter something like this? No, like you can get to do it with lower stakes and move through that stuff. So yeah, I- And people have this weird thing where they're like, well, it's just people should be wasting their time on humanities and English degrees. And it was like the majority of degrees people get from,
Starting point is 01:40:28 from colleges are STEM degrees. I did business and marketing. And I've got two degrees, one of which is a masters. Can't remember anything from either of them. Sure. Like I might as well have done woman's studies. Sure. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:40:41 Or, or all the people, I think it's like, I want to say it's like 50% of people get STEM degrees anyway. Like they probably needed it. If you want to be, I think it's a really high percentage. Yeah. Somebody post, go look it up. You've got the fucking iPad. Yeah, it's not connected to the internet. Oh my God. Yeah. But it's a really high percentage. I think it might have been over a majority of the degrees are STEM related degrees anyway. Like that's the vast majority of people go to school for are that. But I think people have this impression that like 85% of college students are humanities students.
Starting point is 01:41:03 Taylor Swift degrees or whatever the fuck it is. Yeah. And then also too, and again, a moderated position. Like there are ways to do it intelligently. Like people say, oh, I don't want to go to college and get $100,000 in debt. You don't have to get $100,000. The average student loan debt is on $100,000.
Starting point is 01:41:16 I think it's like like $28,000 or something. It's not $100,000. Also, if you want to go to community college for two years or do this or whatever, like there are ways to make it more manageable as well. You know, you can be smart about it. You don't have to go all in and be an idiot. It's just the scary thing for me,
Starting point is 01:41:33 heavily anecdotal by the way, the scariest thing for me is that when people say, forget college, don't do that. In my mind, the people that don't need to go to college know that. There isn't a guy who's got this huge portfolio projects that he's worked on that's got like all this knowledge who's 18 and he's like, God fuck, do I need to go and get a comp side degree and blah blah blah.
Starting point is 01:41:54 He knows what he's gonna do. You know, people point to Bill Gates, he's like, Oh well Bill Gates didn't go to college. Bill Gates didn't fail remedial English. Okay? Bill Gates did not go to college because he couldn't get his fucking GED. Okay? Bill Gates did not go to college because he couldn't get his fucking GED. Okay, Bill Gates did not go to college Because he thought he was gonna make a big trading fucking crypto. Okay, that's not that these are not the same comparisons
Starting point is 01:42:12 So if you don't know what you're gonna do and you've got like a general idea Yeah, go to college get your degree do that But don't tell people like oh no don't go to college like the universe has something grand planned for you because most of these people are gonna You know fuck around with dropshipping on the internet for a year and a half Hook up with a chick and get her pregnant and then the rest of their life is gonna be retail or service, you know, starting at 21 because they just didn't really have strong direction. That's not liberation.
Starting point is 01:42:33 Yeah. What do you think is gonna happen in November election time? I, my belief for a while has been that I think that, I think Biden is gonna win. I think he's gonna win pretty handily. My feeling for that is because I think the biggest thing that was going to hurt him was going to be the economy. But I think that the sentiment on that has already adjusted
Starting point is 01:42:51 pretty heavily and I don't see it going down. I think that we're on a huge up shoot right now economically. And the Fed is even talking about considering dropping rates or whatever. So if the economy is fine, foreign policy wise, it's just Ukraine and Israel. It's funny, people give Biden a lot of shit on foreign policy, but if you compare our foreign policy aims right now compared to what they were under Trump, our involvement is way better.
Starting point is 01:43:13 I think that Israel and Palestine, that's a worthy thing to be involved in, if for no other reason than to restrain Israel. And Ukraine, Russia, that's a worthy thing to be involved in. We're not in Afghanistan anymore. We're not in Iraq anymore. We're not in Iraq anymore. Biden ended the participation in the Saudi-led coalition to go and fucking drone strike Yemen all the time, right? The strikes that we are doing in Yemen
Starting point is 01:43:32 are very specifically on missiles, bling about. So that's good. I think that the foreign policy stuff is good, even if people try to make it into a thing. I think domestically, I think our economy is good. The border is an issue. It always is an issue. But I don't think Republicans can yank the illegal immigrant chain for, you know, seven months or whatever. I think
Starting point is 01:43:48 that they probably pulled that one too early. So I just basically, broadly speaking, I think the road to the election and all of the special elections that have gone on over the past couple of years have been really good for Democrats. So I think as long as I think the road forward for Biden is pretty safe as long as he doesn't, his brain doesn't leak out of his ears. I think it's pretty safe. That's a big if as he doesn't, his brain doesn't like out of his ears. I think it's pretty safe. That's a big F. That's a big F.
Starting point is 01:44:08 For Donald Trump though, he's got all of these indictments. He's got the New York case that is, I think they're trying to start that one in March. What's that? The New York case is the, where he was making, he was getting Cohen to make payments to Stormy Daniels. The Hush payments basically,
Starting point is 01:44:22 which just kind of looks bad. The porn star fucking cheating on his wife and all that. So you've got like all the news of the indictment stuff. You've got whatever crazy shit that Trump says, abortion is still really fresh on people's minds. And now you're getting more stories about like crazy laws. It's still fresh on people's minds? I think so, yeah.
Starting point is 01:44:38 I'm basing this on opinion polling. And I was with my community doing door knocking in Ohio for like get out the vote stuff and as you go around and I always try to do it at least one day so that I can like have the experience and talk to people. I was really surprised at how many people when I knocked on doors, there are the two issues that everybody always brought up
Starting point is 01:44:54 were protecting democracy, which seems like shit I would hear on Twitter. And the second one was abortion. Everybody. What sort of people is this a broad cross section and older people or younger people? Yeah, it's older people. You're knocking on doors in Cincinnati, Ohio,
Starting point is 01:45:07 of likely registered voters, basically, making sure that they're still registered to vote and they know about the upcoming primaries and elections. So I think abortion is gonna be a big driver. I don't think the Afghanistan pullout, I don't think that's gonna be a big negative driver. I think it happened and then whatever. Yeah, that's my broad view.
Starting point is 01:45:22 I think the road ahead for Biden is pretty easy as long as he maintains, okay? And I think the road ahead for Biden is pretty easy as long as he maintains. I think the road ahead for Trump, I don't see it getting better because he's not in office. There's no way that he can do anything good. There's a lot of potential pitfalls coming up that could be really scary. How big of a deal do you think what's going on at the border is? I've had a number of conversations about this.
Starting point is 01:45:42 It does seem like a really big catastrophe. I mean, it always does. Republicans have yanked that chain for a decade. It's a bigger catastrophe right now. It's always a bigger thing. Have you had a look at the stats around this? You tend to have some... Yeah, I've seen numbers. It's hard to know because they always change how they count some things. I think under the Obama administration, they were changing how they consider a deportation, ended up being like somebody that was met at the border and turned away. There's like these weird things that go on
Starting point is 01:46:11 with the numbers all the time. I agree that the border is a problem, but I don't believe that it's like a uniquely felt problem that's having a drastically negative impact on the average of our lives. I don't think that that's happening. So it's a problem because the media says it's a problem and because people want it to be a problem,
Starting point is 01:46:25 the Republicans do, for a good reason, because it probably is the strongest thing they have electorally, but I don't think the country's falling apart or like crazy shit is happening because of stuff going out of the border. But Democrats do need to find a way to deal with it. Although right now, the things that suck is that one,
Starting point is 01:46:39 Donald Trump had COVID, which helped a lot because he was able to do, was it Title 42, Title 49, that basically said, because we're in a state of emergency, I can enact crazy measures at the border and people just weren't illegal immigrating as much because of COVID. So he had a huge benefit to his last time in office because of COVID. And then when Biden came in, he was- Because he got COVID? No, no, because of COVID.
Starting point is 01:47:00 Right. It dramatically changed. Because he got COVID. I was like, it's like you being ill as the president, unlock some super secret power. He got the COVID event basically. Right. Okay. Oh, right. Right. It dramatically changed. Because he got caught. It was like you being ill as the president unlocks some supersede for power. He got the COVID event basically. Right, okay. Oh, right, yes. Biden tried to use Title 49 to control border stuff,
Starting point is 01:47:11 but he wasn't able to. And then the amount of people coming to the border now is a lot higher. As a percentage of like turnaways and everything, the Biden administration is doing better than the Trump administration, but there's such a greater number of people there to deal with, it's just a difficult problem.
Starting point is 01:47:23 Apparently that is the rumors that I've heard because they know that Biden is going to be soft on them. People say that and I'm curious where the truth is on that. People say, so it is true that more illegal immigrants come to the border when a Democrat is in office. But I'm curious, is it because Democrats want to let them in or is it because Republicans say that Democrats will let them in?
Starting point is 01:47:44 Because remember Kamala Harris' favorite thing of like, do not come. Do not come. One thing that the immigrants do not come. That was a funny meme of hers. Yeah, of her saying that. And it's not like they don't let you in just because it's a Democrat in office. I don't think there's like a meaningful change in border policy with a, with a demon office over Republican. But if you say it enough, I don't know, maybe that's why people do comment. Yeah. Right. Okay. So this is like the shadows on the wall, but the shadows have been created by the Republicans. So the Republicans could be advertising the weakness of Democrat immigration policy. And that is what is being taken by people.
Starting point is 01:48:14 Which for the most part is about the same under Biden as it was for Trump. They ended like certain types of like family separation at borders, but nothing, I don't think anything meaningful has changed between Trump and Biden. But so I'm curious, like I haven't seen statements and I'll fully admit, because I've been doing Israel Palestine stuff and then the rebels before that. So I haven't followed this issue as closely, but I haven't seen a bunch of statements from Democratic lawmakers who are like, we want the immigrants to come to the border, please come or like illegal, we're going to be softer on them.
Starting point is 01:48:39 We're going to do something to let these immigrants in or blah, blah, blah. I've never heard that. I've heard a lot of Republicans saying that though. So I'm curious like what the statements they hear are. That's very interesting. The difference between being effective in terms of rhetoric and effective in terms of the impact that it actually has on the world, because it could be creating the second one whilst trying to achieve the first one. Every election cycle, there's been something that's been timed quite well.
Starting point is 01:49:06 Emails for Hillary, the underbinding laptop story, I'm kind of waiting. Oh, for a thing? Oh, dude, there is going to be a thing. There has to be. It's like, I don't know, do you remember when the TV show, do you ever watch that? I remember lost, I never watched it, but I don't know. You always knew that the season finale was going to finish on a cliffhanger.
Starting point is 01:49:26 Oh my God, what's the cliffhanger going to be? And it feels like that now. But this is the problem, blurring the line between entertainment and politics. I shouldn't be waiting for the next election cycle to come around and for whatever the revelatory story is like I'm about to see prison break season three finish. It should be treated with a little bit more like seriousness. One thing the issue is both of these guys have been investigated quite a bit.
Starting point is 01:49:53 And by both of these guys, I mean Hunter Biden and Donald Trump. So I don't know if anything new, it doesn't seem like we're getting much new about Hunter. I might have dried the well on both sides. Well, but the problem is on the Hunter-Biden side, I think that's probably true because, especially now that this confidential informant
Starting point is 01:50:11 was heavily compromised. Oh no, I don't think that it would be just Hunter-Biden. I think that there will be something. No, what I'm saying is in terms of what could leak, I feel like for a lot of the Hunter-Biden stuff, we've milked this cow. But the problem is for Trump, we potentially have new wells of information
Starting point is 01:50:24 because of the ongoing court cases. That gives you a novel ability to reach in through investigative power, through discovery, through criminal indictment, through trial to reveal stuff that's never been revealed before. Here's a statement of some kind. Here's a court recording. Here's a whatever. Like for the J6 commission, a lot of the people near Trump pleaded executive privilege. I don't have to say what I said because this is to the president of the United States, which works in front of a congressional committee, doesn't work in front of a
Starting point is 01:50:52 criminal proceeding. This is kind of like pleading the fifth, but it's special. Yeah, for the president. Yeah. But that didn't work in a lot of the like the Jack Smith federal investigation cases. So it could be that there's more stuff that could come out, whereas this stuff is continually brought
Starting point is 01:51:05 to the forefront of American minds, they have like a slightly less favorable view of Donald Trump, because I do find, for instance, for a lot of the Donald Trump cases, when a lot of Republicans, all even Democrats just don't know any of the facts. And when you present a lot of the facts, they're indefensible, it's not even close.
Starting point is 01:51:21 It's like unhinged insane shit. So I don't know how much that'll affect things but also Democrats have been yanking on the you know Donald Trump is doing illegal stuff and we're gonna get him chain for four years and it didn't seem like much came out of that Or for eight years, I guess. Yeah, so who knows I know I bet $3,000 on buying it. We'll see what happens. Okay. I bet money on it. I believe strong and I am what do you think about a Vivek Ramaswani We'll see what happens. Okay. I bet money on it. I believe strongly in it. What do you think about Vivek Ramaswani? The Trump clone guy that dropped out because he realized he has no political future because he just served there to yeah Be a Trump clone pick up some popularity write a book. Yeah Him yeah, that's that's what you think about him. I don't yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, it was an interesting one. I think Yeah, okay. Yeah, well, it was an interesting one. I think someone that's young, just generally young at all, that's involved in American politics just stands out. Yeah, young is cool, but he talks like a salesman. I feel like every time he was talking, I was hearing a pitch for like a new Dyson vacuum cleaner.
Starting point is 01:52:16 Well, there's a degree of that no matter what industry or in whether it's in content creation or politics or media or anything, there is a swing at the moment toward as much authenticity, as much relatability as possible. I guess that goes back into what you were saying about the openness and honesty around relationships and dating and fucking an adult ADHD diagnosis. All of these different things, just being open and honest about them, allow people to find areas of your story or anybody's story to like hook into and go, oh, that's kind of like me or that's like my sister or that's like my best friend or that's like my whatever. And people had a problem with the rocks appearance on Rogan because they
Starting point is 01:52:59 said it was he kind of seemed very curated and it was super, super smooth and all of this. And what they wanted was, you know, like, who's the man behind all of that? Yeah, precisely. Like, I want to speak to Dwayne. I don't want to speak to The Rock. Yeah. And I think people felt like they didn't really necessarily get that. And then I think that Tucker Carlson and Putin, that interview was just like the same thing. It was like we got a very well curated
Starting point is 01:53:27 orchestra, like a curated performance by Putin. And we didn't really get to see anything that was real there. Yeah. One issue that I have with people is somebody being genuine is not necessarily a good character trait. And people overrate that too much. How's that? People can be genuine and be a bad person, a genuinely bad person, but people will give a lot of people credit just because they're genuine. It's like, okay, sure, like this person might be genuine,
Starting point is 01:53:53 but that doesn't, that's not necessarily a good thing or necessarily a bad thing. Like they could just be really bad. Like they could be a genuinely bad person. It reminds me of, for a lot of debates that I do, I gotta hate this, I hate this. It's gonna happen under this fucking video.
Starting point is 01:54:06 No, not as much, because we're gonna disagree as much. When I debate people that I disagree with, I'm very rhetorically careful about how I present myself. I don't wanna come off as too argumentative or too destructive to the conversation. I wanna be constructive. I wanna be somewhat agreeable, so I'm finding common ground.
Starting point is 01:54:18 But ubiquitously, under every single one of these videos, this is such a great conversation. I love that two people are talking and they're not shouting at each other and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's like these videos, this is such a great conversation. I love that two people are talking and they're not shouting at each other and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's like, okay, that is true, but like comment on the conversation now, okay? Just because we're talking and we're being agreeable
Starting point is 01:54:33 doesn't mean it's necessarily a good conversation. That's a good first hurdle to get over, but now talk, like evaluate the conversation yourself. Yeah, and I find like that happens, that same thing happens with the genuine part of like, oh, I like this guy because he's genuine. It's like, yeah, genuinely evil, genuinely an asshole. Like that's not a, yeah, it reminds me,
Starting point is 01:54:48 I'm sorry, fuck, there's so many examples. Have you ever met a person in real life? Big red flag, by the way. If you have ever met a person in real life and you're like, oh, why don't people like you? What's going on? The guy's like, I'm just too honest. No, it's not that you're too honest.
Starting point is 01:54:57 You're an asshole. Yeah. Yes, I remember when I was in school, there was kids that would misbehave or whatever. And there would be like extra dispensation given by the teachers to the kids that were naughty. They were the ones that were always disrupting class or weren't handing homework in or weren't doing whatever.
Starting point is 01:55:20 And then me as one of the nerds, I would be held to a higher standard. If I misbehaved in class. I would feel like I got picked out by the teacher and told like, that I shouldn't be doing whatever. I'm like, hang on a second. He just like fucking kicked a bin over. You just went over and quietly told him to do that. I always used to feel unfair that the people that were able to behave
Starting point is 01:55:44 were held to a higher standard than the people who weren't able to behave. And I guess it's kind of like this. It's like, you can be yourself, but if yourself is being an asshole, then it doesn't make you more virtuous. That being said, is it better for somebody to be a genuine asshole than a lying, like virtuous individual? Yeah, I guess it just depends on what the lying thing means. And that's a really hard thing personally to sort through for an individual. And it's a hard thing to sort through and how you evaluate other people. So like for instance, let's say that I'm meeting a girlfriend's family.
Starting point is 01:56:17 I'm not going to that dinner as destiny. I'm not going to be making edgy jokes about how much money would you accept to fuck a dog every single night if you were getting paid money. That's not going to come up in that family conversation. I'm going gonna be making edgy jokes about how much money would you accept to fuck a dog, you know, every single night if you were getting paid money. That's not gonna come up in that family conversation. Okay, I'm gonna be respectful. I'm gonna ask questions about the family's job. I'm gonna be like on my best behavior. Am I being a fake fuck by doing that?
Starting point is 01:56:34 Am I being disingenuous? I wouldn't say so. I think that you wear different hats depending on who you're talking to. The issue comes from, are you communicating things that don't comport with your core values when you're talking to somebody else? So if I was meeting a girl's parents and they were racist and they asked me, you agree that black people are lazy? And I was like, yeah, I guess they are.
Starting point is 01:56:54 That's a problem, assuming that you don't actually think that because now you're violating core principles, core values. I find that a lot of the time when people are criticizing people for being not genuine, it's just because they're wearing a different hat, not necessarily because they're like lying or misrepresenting themselves. But yeah, that's a hard one to start through anyway, because some people might think that they're lying and misrepresenting themselves. It's not like we and our nature and the way that we present ourselves are transparent to ourselves either. Sure. A lot of the time we get skewed or manipulated just by the situation.
Starting point is 01:57:25 Uh-huh. We just, I don't know, I got caught up. I was talking to such and such a person and I was tired or I wanted them to like me or whatever. I didn't mean to say X, Y, or Z. But this is kind of going back to what you said at the very beginning, which is like giving people a little bit more grace, like hoping for the best in people and believing, like, look, I think that if I was you, I would act the way that you are.
Starting point is 01:57:46 I don't think that most people are evil. I think that they're trying to do good. Like just starting from a place of more gentleness, I suppose, and a little bit more gentle, Steven. A little bit more room, giving people a little bit more room and hoping that they can come along for the ride. That seems like a much easier way, a much nicer way to live life. It can be, yeah, but it's not so much fun to watch.
Starting point is 01:58:11 No, it doesn't get this. That's why I say it's people's fault sometimes because of the type of content that they consume. That's the direction that the content heads in. We're not in this media landscape because the Jews pushed us here or because there was an alt-right conspiracy or because the woke tards got us here. We have the media landscape we do today because it's what we enjoy watching. And we definitely record the video there. It's self-selected.
Starting point is 01:58:29 Yeah, we put a clip up from the Piers Morgan interview, and it was a clashing with Piers Morgan over alcohol and going sober. He said that sometimes people that go sober can be boring. I said that that assumes that people who drink are interesting, and we went back and forth, and there was a bunch of comments. Hey, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 01:58:45 Hold on. He made the argument that alcoholics that get sober could be boring. Not necessarily alcoholics, but that, uh, I was saying I went sober for a good chunk of my twenties and found it was good for not being hung over once every week or once every two weeks. So I got more productive and made changes in my life and like, yay sobriety. Even though I didn't drink that much. And he said,
Starting point is 01:59:05 well, do you not find that if you do that, you're just going to be around people that are boring? And I was like, that assumes that people who drink are interesting. So we had a little bit of a back and forth on that. And then he'd grown up in a pub and he said, look, I've seen that it helps people to come out of their skin. And you know, some people are a little bit socially anxious and so on and so forth. And I was like, well, that also kind of shows that the people that you're around, the friends that you're around, you need to sedate yourself in order to be yourself with them. So you need to find better friends. The issue isn't that you need alcohol, it's that you need friends that can help you to be yourself around them. And I don't think that alcohol, I think
Starting point is 01:59:35 alcohol is actually masking a lot of those problems. And many people haven't not had a drink, especially in the UK, like classic working class culture, haven't not had a drink since they were 15 or something. The longest time they went from when they first ever had one to now was two weeks and they don't ever think, but they'll be concerned about whether or not creatine or ace-k or artificial sweetness or something, getting them, meanwhile, they're putting like a reliable poison into themselves. And I love me some alcohol too, like I was a club promoter for 15 years. I'm a part of it. And just trying to thread that needle. Anyway, like we titled the episode is clashing with Piers Morgan over alcohol and going sober or something. And like so many people in the comments like, this wasn't a clash. Where's
Starting point is 02:00:16 the clashing? This isn't, I'm like, well, okay, fucking debating Piers Morgan. But like, you fucking, like you clicked on it. Like you clicked on it. So what is it? What's the game that you want content creators to play? Like is it clickbait? If your interpretation or the threshold that I have for clashing is this and the threshold that you meant for debating is that. It's like, oh, fuck. And this is, this would be the part to where I'm critical of audiences,
Starting point is 02:00:38 but I don't know how much the culture can change there. This is the part where I would shift my criticalness then to content creators. And I think the left has had a huge problem with this for a long time. I think the left for a long time assumed that you just can't defend left leaning ideas because right leaning ideas are too easy. Like it's easier to just say like affirmative action bad
Starting point is 02:00:54 because it's racist versus well, how do you defend affirmative action? But I think that something way different has happened. I think that people on the right have spent a really good chunk of time figuring out how to make their ideas entertaining and fun and funny and people on the left just assumed that like, well, we're right and it's difficult.
Starting point is 02:01:08 So fuck you, you either get it or you don't and I'm not gonna sit here and educate you on that. It's like quite an elitist perspective of this. Very, very, very elitist, yeah. So I think as a content creator, you have a responsibility to two different things. You do have a responsibility to be factually correct and to not spread misinformation.
Starting point is 02:01:21 I think you also do have a responsibility to be entertaining and funny, you know? For all the theories on Trump, I have one bullshit theory that I genuinely believe that a huge chunk, I'm gonna say 45% of Trump's success goes back to all the way back to the red pill stuff. The game, I think he's a really funny guy, and I think that carries him really far,
Starting point is 02:01:44 more than being genuine more than whatever Identifying yeah, the fact that when he goes on stage and he starts talking he's funny He can work a crowd really well a lot of people knew him from the apprentice where he was like almost universally liked I'm pretty sure those were popular reality TV shows and the apprentice and everything He's a funny dude his tweets were fucking hilarious whether you were on the left or the right And I think that actually goes really, really, really, really, really far. And it plugs into something that I thought funnily enough,
Starting point is 02:02:09 because people always bring up like, you know, like, well, what was it like for you in high school? Because you were short, you were underweight, you had bad acne, and my going through high school, I always just thought the fact that I'm funny makes everything work. I can literally talk to, I had huge groups of friends from different areas, I had no problem talking to girls.
Starting point is 02:02:22 I didn't even know that five, seven, or five, eight was short for a guy. I didn't even think about five, seven or five, eight was short for a guy. I didn't even think about that. Cause if I can make somebody laugh, like I'm good to go. And I think it is true for Donald Trump that a huge part of his success is just the fact that he's funny and people will watch him for that. Riz and charm are massively underpriced by most people.
Starting point is 02:02:37 Because most of the time on the internet, at least with the like performative autism, hermetically sealed box that almost everybody exists in, especially the terminally online people, it's never actually humor. They're not playing with wit and charm and interpersonal flow. What they're doing is trying to find some cutting,
Starting point is 02:02:57 sardonic, like weird dunk take, which isn't the same. That doesn't come, if you say that in person, in an interview or to a friend or on a debate, it sounds petty and it sounds... It usually sounds quite demeaning and it doesn't sound... Whereas, Douglas Murray against Malcolm Gladwell, when they were debating about, is independent media more important or better than mainstream media or whatever it might be? And Douglas got like three laughs, big, relatively big laughs throughout the entirety of the conversation. So guess what?
Starting point is 02:03:26 He won. Like he won in the hearts and minds of so many people and the same thing goes for this. This is what Sam Harris said, if you do a debate and you get between two and three absolute zingers where most of the room laughs, it's really hard to have lost that debate unless you've been absolutely sideswiped by all of the facts and everything else and you've looked like an idiot outside of that. Like people like charm. Yeah. And people will act like, people will say things like,
Starting point is 02:03:49 oh, like that's why debate is fake because people just go by who they'd like more and blah, blah, blah. I'm sorry, but that is every single facet of your life. Every single facet of your life is going to be influenced heavily by how other people view you and how social you are with other people. Whether it's for promotions at work or job performance, whether it's relationships with
Starting point is 02:04:09 professors in college, whether it's politics, how will people like you, whether it's as a content creator, whether it's your friends. Getting moved to the front of the group of a table wait list at a restaurant. Yeah. Whether it's how you relate to a significant other. How many autistic guys or girls have you heard say something like, I don't know why they're so fucking mad. I was 100% correct. That doesn't fucking matter. You think that matters. Yeah, I know this better than anybody Yeah, yeah, that doesn't fucking matter how right you are in the conversation people like oh you don't care what I'm saying
Starting point is 02:04:34 You just care about how I say it. Yeah, no shit. They care about how you say it. There's a big difference between hey I'm really worried about you you're getting a little bit of late wait Like let's do something like work out or eat better versus saying like you're a fat fucking piece of shit And if you don't lose fucking weight, I'm going to divorce you. Right. Those are two, you might be communicating factually a similar thing, but the delivery is incredibly important. And the dumbest thing about this is people fucking know this. People know this is important because you know that the way that somebody communicates with you is going to influence how you perceive the message and how you take it. And you're going to get irritated when people are short or snarkier.
Starting point is 02:05:01 the message and how you take it. And you're going to get irritated when people are short or snarkier. Yes. Your desire for other people to ignore that doesn't extend to your enjoyment of other people being humor, like full of humor and funny. Yeah. Like you are more than happy to be charmed by that guy or that girl that does that thing. And you're like, I can't, I really don't agree with most of what that particular content creator says.
Starting point is 02:05:21 But there's something about the way that they communicate. I just, I really, I really love the fact that Matt Walsh is dry and Sardonic. I really love the fact that Destiny makes retard jokes, or I really love the fact that X, Y, Z. Those things just cut through an awful lot of the biases and meanwhile you're saying to the world, no, no, no, you shouldn't give privilege to people that are entertaining and are funny. You can't get to have it both ways. And so many, yeah, I think.
Starting point is 02:05:48 John Stuart wasn't the smartest person in media when he did the Daily Show, you know, however many 20 years ago or whatever. He was really funny. He was really entertaining. That's what he is. He's running it back. He's running it back.
Starting point is 02:05:57 I don't know how funny he is now, I'm not sure. I just haven't watched this much. I saw one little bit of a monologue. It was him offering that black justice lady. Is there like a black lady? Is she on the Supreme Court or is it a guy? Oh my God. You're talking about Clarence Thomas, I think.
Starting point is 02:06:15 Yes, yeah. Was that the Daily Show? I thought that was Stephen Colbert, mining that up. Oh, it might be. I can't remember who it was. Offering them. Oh, no, no, no. John Oliver, I think was the one.
Starting point is 02:06:23 Thank you. Yes, British guy. Yes, offering them an RV and a million dollars if they... Yeah, to step down as a Supreme Court dresser, which is funny. What's next? What are you doing next? What's the focus?
Starting point is 02:06:36 In two days, I go to New York City to do that. Finkelstein debate, my conversation, I had a conversation with Jordan Peterson, I think two weeks ago, that'll probably get published sometime in a month. Was that with him or virtual? No, it was with him. I went to DC, I think two weeks ago, that'll probably get published sometime in a month. Was that with him or virtual? No, it was with him. I went to DC, I think, for that.
Starting point is 02:06:48 And then next month, I'm trying to find, because I started this Vyvance, but past like four or five months on my stream have been very research-driven. I've taken like more notes and studied on this thing, probably more than I have cumulatively for everything else in my entire life. So I'm trying to next month figure out
Starting point is 02:07:04 like something a little bit more chill to do, something more bite-sized, something more culturally relevant. So maybe it'll be like research about the border or immigration or something, but something to keep my family a little bit more engaged than me literally reading the end of books on stream and shit. I hope that they weren't enjoying you playing Minecraft because that's gone out of the window. They've fully put state on all of your gaming content as a gaming streamer by taking a drug. Yeah, but I think it's probably okay. I think people like the political stuff more
Starting point is 02:07:28 that I'm more focused on. I just wanna make sure it's like relevant and entertaining and not like hardcore deep dives on the history of like entire conflicts. How did you find Jordan into personally, I don't know how much time you get to spend with him and in terms of your debate and stuff? And her personally, he was fine.
Starting point is 02:07:44 Ideologically, he was about where I thought he would be, which is kind of disappointing. I was hoping I was surprised. I have this theory that people get broken by events and then they never recover. A really good example of this. Do you know who, Brett Weinstein? Yes. I think is a perfect example of this.
Starting point is 02:08:01 Have you read the stuff that he was writing or talking about during the Evergreen College fiasco? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that all of it was unbelievably reasonable. I thought he'd seem like a reasonable guy, everything was like, cool. But I think that event like broke his mind over the wheel. And then now, you know, he's on Joe Rogan saying,
Starting point is 02:08:16 I think 13 million people have died probably from vaccines in the United States. I'm like, really? I think for Jordan Peterson, I think it was the C16 stuff that like the woke fighting or whatever, like people will have this moment where they fight against another side. And it's something a switch flips.
Starting point is 02:08:31 And because they get attacked by the other side so much, they become entrenched into the antithesis of that movement. And that's unfortunately, because I think Jordan Peterson has a lot of, or had a lot of really insightful things to say about philosophy, not philosophy, I'm sorry, a little bit about philosophy, but mainly psychology that I really appreciate listening to. But now it's just like all the, I feel like I'm starting to do a random Trump voter. Like, I
Starting point is 02:08:51 think I was trying to bring up the frustrating. I think I brought up this idea of the constellation of beliefs that people have and it was funny because I think in this interview that we do, in like one minute when I bring up climate change, he's brought up the WEF, I think like eating crickets, like the everybody will be poor but own, but you won't own anything and you'll be happy and depopulation and 20% of Europe is dying because of the vaccine, all the overhead deaths because of like Detroit. And it's just like, yeah, when I see minds
Starting point is 02:09:21 that it feels like they get captured because they become entrenched in the opposite if we ever bullied them last, that's just like a great wasted potential for me. And I feel like he suffers from that quite a bit. I don't know whether those two guys have had that happen because of that situation, but I certainly know. The last time that we were together, I told you about the peak hate rule, which is that every content creator is best known for their most well-known transgression and their most recent one. So Jordan would be like, he hates trans people
Starting point is 02:09:47 and doesn't want to say their names and he calls sports illustrated models fat. Like Hassan would be, he said that Americans deserve 9-11 and he thinks that being a streamer is harder than working in McDonald's or whatever. Like everybody, every creator is captured by the biggest thing that they did
Starting point is 02:10:02 and the most recent thing that they did. And that's definitely the way that they're interpreted. And I can totally see, I even see this in myself, man, like, you know, there's been a big change in scrutiny and attention and stuff over the last year. And there's no media kit. There's no one throws a training manual at you to go, oh, and by the way, when you reach half a billion people a year, this is how you think about yourself or how you deal with attention, how you deal with criticism on the internet.
Starting point is 02:10:29 If you have a constitution like you, maybe that's something that is a little bit easy to do, but even for you, it must be like, I'm fucking hell, I feel this ambient fucking vigilance of an awful lot of people. And then if you have all of the way down the spectrum to the person that's the most sensitive in the world, they're going to really struggle with that, even though that wasn't necessarily what they asked for, but they did ask for it because they decided to just do this thing and they keep going and then you accumulate this audience. All of that, I can completely see how one of the responses from people would be, all right, you've made me feel the world that I wanted to love me and validate me, jilted me. Fuck you. I'm
Starting point is 02:11:09 out. I'm never going to listen to you again. You're all shills or part of the W E F or you're all libtards or you're all like, like, well, are you all whatever, like racist, transphobic? It's very easy to do that because you never have to deal with the unrequited love thing again, ever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just frustrating because it's such a thought terminating view of the world and then you end up losing your reasonable faculty to evaluate positions and now you've just
Starting point is 02:11:37 bought into the opposite of whatever the other side said and it just feels, it's disappointing and dumb, I think. Yeah. Humans humaning is inconvenient a lot of the time because there's other stuff that they could have done destiny dude I appreciate you man. Good luck with all the debates and I'm not sure the next time you come through Austin But we'll have to do barbecue and a training session or whatever it is that you've got on sounds great. I look forward to it Offence Yeah, oh yeah, yeah Offence

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