Michael Malice and Yaron Brook: Ayn Rand, Human Nature, and Anarchy | Lex Fridman Podcast #178

The following is a conversation with Michael Malice and Yaron Brook, Michael's third time on this podcast and Yaron's second, but together for the first time. Michael is an anarchist political thinker, host of a podcast called you're welcome and author of Dear Reader, the New Right and two upcoming books, Anarchist Handbook and the White Pill. Yaron is an Objectivist philosopher, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, host of the Yaron Brooks show, and co author of the Free Market Revolution and Equal Is Unfair. Quick mention of our sponsors, Ground News, Public Goods, Athletic Greens, Brave and four Sigmatic. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that this conversation is a kind of experiment. Both Michael and Yaron are thoughtful and passionate, united in part by an interest in the history and philosophy of Ayn Rand. But they are also very different in style. Good conversation, like good food, is often made delicious by pairing of contrasting elements. For example, someone suggested I try a peanut butter, bacon and banana sandwich, which apparently is very good among the three of us. I don't know who's the peanut butter, who's the bacon, and who's the banana? I'm guessing it's probably me. I'm the banana. But I hope the final result, the final dish, if you will, is equally delicious. We talk through, I think, a lot of interesting ideas, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes even in rare cases, saying something humorous, including dark humor, especially Michael's case. All three of us are sensitive to the suffering in the world today and throughout human history. We think about it, we talk about it, and we deal with it in different ways. Be patient with us, whether you agree, disagree, enjoy, or dislike the result. I hope if you listen, you're a wiser person on the other end of it. I know I was. Mostly I really enjoyed this conversation because no matter what Michael and Yaron believe, underneath it all they are genuine, kind human beings that I'm lucky to be able to hang out with and learn from. This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here's my conversation with Michael Malice and Yaron Brook.

I've been a huge fan of the two of you for the longest time.

Are we recording? Is it starting or you're just talking?

I'm not recording at all.

Not going to compliment us if it's not.

He's very speaks very highly of me. You? I don't know, maybe he's being peony.

Does this to me on the show.

Objectivists don't like charity, so don't compliment him. He won't think it's sincere.

So it's an incredible honor that both of you would show up here. If we. Let me just ask this sort of profound philosophical question. How well do you think we would get along if we were stuck on a desert island together? What would life be like?

I thought the original question you had that you sent us this question was how long would it take for us to murder one another or something like there was murder in the question, if I remember.

I listen, he sent us homework, right? All these questions.

I ignored it.

I. I didn't spend four years at Patrick Henry University to do homework. To answer your question, I think it would be very easy for us to live together in desert island. In terms of interpersonal. I know, and I say this because I know a lot of people who have been the show Survivor, so they. And I know a little bit about the dynamics. So when you have people who are intelligent who are going to have the same goals, I mean, and there's space to go away if I'm annoyed at you. I don't think it would be that hard at all.

What's our goals on a desert island?

Food, shelter?

Survival.

Survival.

Survival. Basically. Survival and getting out of there. Right? You don't want to stay on the desert island. So. Yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't think. I think that's true of any three, you know, even semi rational people who, you know, who basically share the goal that they want to survive, they want to thrive, they want to get off of the island. Why would there be conflict? Yeah, well, I mean, there would be conflict, but. And there can be conflict, but they'd find ways to deal with it. I don't have this negative view of human beings, particularly not as individuals. It's when they get into mobs and groups and collectives, that ideology can really motivate them to do horrible things.

One of the things that really drives me crazy is how sinister an impact the book Lord the Flies has had on our culture. I read it in high school. It's a superb book. That's not even a question, but it's not accurate. We see in many situations where people are trapped together under difficult circumstances. Obviously that book is about children that very quickly. It is not about conflict. It very quickly becomes about cooperation. Let's work together. We all have the same goal. This is not a time to worry about other things. Really the human beings. The animal instinct that kicks in is the social animal. And I'm going to shut up and go over there and have stop my feet instead of Arguing with your own. Because we're really trapped in the situation and we need to make it work well.

And to the extent that they're bad people, bad people are dealt with. Right. So this is true of all of, you know, how did we survive as a species?

Right.

How have we survived as a species? We've been on a desert island, in a sense, as a species, forever. Tribes survived. They survived by cooperation. They survived by dealing with bad people. Civilization is created by people cooperating and working together and allowing individuals to thrive within the group. And when bad people arise, they deal with them. Now, sometimes these groups get captured by bad people and bad ideas. And probably from day one, that was going on, the whole tribe is probably a bad idea to begin with. But underneath it all, the fact is that to survive as a species, we need to think, we need to be rational. And if we don't have any respect for reason, then we would all die. We would die off.

So that. That's a hopeful message, but where does that go wrong? So with three people, we might get along. We would focus on the basics of life.

We have similar goals once women are introduced, they're incessant irrationalism.

No, no.

And less of their hormones for Sol.

Look, three of us in the desert island would be nice, but without women, it wouldn't be fun.

I'm going to edit out half the things Michael said through his podcast.

As you know, I used to run the Ayn Rand Institute. She. She was a woman. Last time I looked.

Oh, wait a minute. You know, to say.

Yeah, yeah.

When Ludwig von Mises or Haslet.

Yeah, it was.

Mises was praising Ayn Rand and some. I think it was Haslet who said it to her. He said, ludwig von Mises said, you're the smartest man I've ever met. And Ayn Rand said. Did he say man? Right.

No, she viewed as a compliment.

Right. But she was. She wanted to be clear that he said, oh, yeah, she was excited.

Absolutely.

She was excited, but she was.

I took it as her perceiving him as seeing her as a full equal.

Oh, I think that's right. I think that's right. Plus, plus, I think the perception out there, the perception in the culture of men as being rational, you know, was. Was a compliment because that was. That was affirming that he viewed her as a rationale.

Yeah. Because Mises, old school, he's an older Eastern European guy, so he would definitely have these rigid views of the. Like his wife, I read her autobiography, Margit von Mises, and basically he made her, his secretary. To the point where like if he's typing something or he had something handwritten, she had to type it out. And if she made a typo, he would tear up the page. He had to start from the beginning. But it's like, this is the role of the man, this is the role of the woman. So for him to regard her, this was kind of a breaking through moment, not that she was secretly, you know, misogynist.

So I think we go wrong when people try to understand the world around them and come up with wrong ideas. And it's natural that they would come up with wrong ideas because it's hard to figure out what's right. So we start with trying to come up with mystical explanations for the existence of the things around us. And that I think very quickly leads to some people being able to communicate with the mystical stuff out there and some people not being able to communicate and some people wanting to control other people and using those pseudo explanations as a way to control. So you always have. Rand called it Attila and the witch doctor. You always have a witch doctor. The mystic, the philosopher, the intellectual, the philosopher king is a unity of the. And you have an Attila, you have somebody who wants control of the people, who's willing to use force to control other people. And when those two get together, that's when things go bad. And unfortunately, 95, 98% of human history is when those two are together. And so the not having them together, having the right ideas. And the right ideas are ones that are not exclusive to those guys. And where we don't allow Attila to have that kind of physical power over us, that's an exception, and that's rare. And that's what needs to be defended.

Yeah. Stalin's not personally killing people, Hitler's not personally killing people. Charles Manson's not personally killing people. They need their goons.

They need the goons, but also they don't have original ideas. Nothing Stalin says is original to him. Right. He needs a Marx, even Lenin. Right. They all need a Marx. Right. And Marx needs a particular line of thinkers that come before him that set him up for these kind of ideas. So Stalin both needs his goons, even though he's somewhat of a goon, particularly Stalin.

Yeah, he was a bank robber.

Yeah, yeah. And then, so take Lenin. Lenin, I think, is a better example. Cause Lenin's more intellectual, if you will. But Lenin needs his goons. He needs his Stalins. But Lenin also needs his Marx. And we don't want to let Marx off the hook. Because Marx knows, I think, implicitly, that his ideas have to lead to Lenin and Stalin. His ideas are not neutral.

I don't think it's implicit at all. I think Marx very much glorified revolution, blood and terror. This is not implicit in his.

No, absolutely. I mean, there are letters between him and Engels where they talk about which peoples will have to be eliminated because they don't have that proletarian thing. Right. So I think certain peoples in Southern Europe are not appropriate for the utopia to come and will have to be gone.

And Marx also had this concept, which we still see today in garbled ways of polylogism, which is, if you're a capitalist and I'm bourgeois or I'm a worker, your logic is different than mine. It's literally going to be impossible for us to communicate. And at a certain point, you're going to have to be liquidated. And they pretend that doesn't mean murdered, but it means murdered. And very quickly, everyone becomes a capitalist or bourgeois. And then you have the holodomor and things like this.

No, he knows exactly where it's going to lead. And this is why people say, oh, Marx is not evil. He just wrote books. No, it's the people who write books who are responsible for the way history evolves. And they know the bad guys certainly know the consequence of their ideas, and they need to bear the moral responsibility for what happens when the ideas are implemented.

Here's. Wait, can I ask a question? Yeah. Because I think I know more about Rand than Yaron does. So let's see. Okay.

The gauntlet's been thrown down.

Who did Ayn Rand say is the most evil man who ever lived?

Immanuel Kant.

That's right. Correct.

No, that I know. I mean, so it's a big deal that Emmanuel Kant is. And most people don't understand why, because if you read Kant, there's certain passages in Kant that sound pretty liberal. They sound pretty. He's for the. It sounds like he's for the individual. He sounds like he's for the American Revolution, things like that. But when you. When you actually read his philosophy and what he's trying to defend and what he's trying to undermine. Yeah, he's trying to undermine the foundations that make the revolution possible, that make freedom and individualism possible. He's trying to destroy the Enlightenment. And the Enlightenment is. Are those ideas that make freedom, individualism feasible. He's trying to undermine reason. And without reason, we're nothing. We're not. We can't survive as a Species, so. And that's why she thought he was the most evil person, because his ideas undermine the very foundations of what it requires to be a human being. Reason and individualism, those are the things he's trying to eviscerate. I know you've talked about Hoffman before. So Hoffman is a modern day attempt to.

Who's Hoffman?

Donald Hoffman.

Donald Hoffman.

Donald Hoffman is the University of California, Irvine neurologist, Neuroscientist, something like that. So I met him once and we were at one of these conferences where you do a quick intro, you sit and you do a quick. His introduction was. I've just written a book that proves that evolution has conditioned us not to see reality.

Okay, that is very Kantian.

Yeah. And he is basically just presenting pseudoscience to defend Kant's position about epistemology and about metaphysics. And there's nothing original there. And he puts up a bunch of equations and he says, I ran a simulation and it proves I'm right.

So your honor is a little bit frustrated with Donald Hoffman's work. Let me.

I'm frustrated. I just think it's completely wrong. And it is. And it's anti life, anti mind, anti evolution. I think he's an anti evolutionist at the end. And I think it, you know, anytime you say, look, here's the important point. Anytime you say reality doesn't exist or.

That you perceive it, well, who are you?

What do you mean by. What do any of your words mean? What does anything you say even mean if it doesn't refer to something that's actually out there in reality?

Let me try to defend this point of view, because in a certain kind of sense, I hear it as being humble in the face of the uncertainty that's around us, sort of, you know, when you speak with the confidence of Ayn Rand and yourself, that reason can be like this weapon that cuts through all the of the world and makes us like have an ethical moral life and all those kinds of things. You kind of assume that reason is a superpower that has no limits. Wait, hold on, hold on a second. Okay, but, but I got this one. See, this is already leading to murder by words.

Yeah. And we've been only talking together on an island.

We just make him our slave. We're all going to get along. He's just going to do the work.

But I'm afraid I cannot provide any value as a slave. So this is, this is not going to end well for me.

Value as dinner, that's the problem.

I'm trying to get that's a solution.

What was.

Okay, but Donald Hoffman says that there is, like, he makes an argument that exactly as you said, that the, the what we perceive is not. Is very, very far from actual physical reality. In fact, we're not able to perceive the physical reality at all. And he also makes the bigger claim that evolution prefers beings who are not attached to reality. So, like, evolution created creatures that are basically functioning way outside of what.

Okay, now I got this. I got this. Okay? Because there's a lot to unpack here, and I hate all of it. Okay, first of all. No, no, I'm serious. First of all, when you were making that comment about how, you know, reason is a superpower beyond limit, you're being ironic, but it's true. And I'll give you one example, which is astronomy. If you look at the physical size of the universe, it's literally, in one sense, incomprehensible. So he's right in the sense that I do not understand, and none of us understand what it means for 93 million miles away for the sun to be. It's a number on the screen, right? That said, the fact that my mind, and I'm not one of the great thinkers of all time is close, but we're getting there, is capable of appreciating what the sun means, what heliocentrism means. The fact that we can. You know, you're a math person, that you could look at galaxies and reduce it to 10 to the 64th power in terms of distance. That shows the unlimited capacity of the human mind and reason, number one. Number two is if he says that evolution favors those who are not in touch with reality, and I don't know in what context he's saying that because that sentence could mean a lot of different things. Evolution is what guides reality, is what guides evolution. Evolution works because you are fitted to the reality of the situation around you. It's not that someone is sitting down and says, well, I'm going to add a fin to this animal, and that fin helps it swim. I engineer a check mark. It's that mutations occur. The vast majority of mutations are against reality. They do not further this animal's life or this plant's life or this fungus's life, but the ones that are in touch with reality, such as, okay, it's really cold here, there's no predators here. If I could figure out, I'm using that term very loosely, a way where I could survive in the cold, I don't have predation. It's really great. So the fact that Unconsciously and mindlessly, this process can force the mutation and evolution of the form precisely means that they're in touch with reality. Now, if he means the consciousness is not in touch with reality, that's another thing that I really hate.

You're referring to the reality as like the biological reality of evolution, but all of that is based on many other layers of abstraction that ultimately has quantum mechanics underneath it all. And he's saying somewhere along the layers you start to lose more and more and more attachment to the actual.

One more sentence.

Sure, sure.

I do not. I despise the idea. I say despise. I'm not using this. I'm not joking. And the idea that the reality we don't live in is somehow more real than this, that is a very dangerous idea to say. Well, quantum works in this way. And I'm sure he's correct and none of us disagree with that. What we perceive macro works in a different way. Well, that's the real reality. And this is fake bullshit. This is the real reality. That is a different type of sub subset. But no one's living there.

Well, and it's a subset, and humanity.

Is the starting point.

It's a subset that has to integrate with this world. There isn't two worlds, one in the quantum world and one here. They're integrated. Now, we might not have the scientific knowledge to know how they're integrated, but so what? We know that there's only one reality, and that's this one. He, he has this difference. He says evolution matches up to fitness, not to reality. And he creates this dichotomy between four fitness and reality. But that's complete nonsense. There is no such thing as a concept of fitness outside of fitness. To what? To reality. The fitness and reality are the same thing. They're not separate things. So the whole way he sets this up intellectually is wrong. I think to some extent dishonest and certainly philosophically corrupt. And it's Kantian again. He's accepted Kant's ideas, and everybody pretty much has accepted Kant's ideas for the last 200 years. And they give it a different facade. And he's giving it an evolutionary facade, but it's just a facade for the same idea. And that is that somehow, because we have eyes, we cannot see because the light waves are going through a medium, and that medium necessarily distorted. The medium changes the resolution at which you see. Right. Like if I take my glasses, I'm seeing it a little differently. But the thing is still there. And the thing is still there in the Way I see it, because the handle. I'm grasping the handle and lifting the cup. That's not an illusion. That is a real cup.

So do you think some things are more real than others? For example, money. There's a bunch of things that seem real. This is not an Animal Farm reference.

It's gonna be about love. There's nothing as real as love, right? Lex, what is love?

Love is a fundamental part of the quantum mechanics. Yes. No, no, no. Is there some things that have. Are become reality because we humans in a collective sense, to believe it.

You can't believe something collectively now, but it doesn't become real.

What does it mean to say something's real, that is you can. So love, for example. Love is a good example. Right. Love is an abstraction. Right. It's not. It's not something I can touch, it's not something I can see, but it's certainly something you would feel.

Well, it's something you could hit. Right.

And we love differently. I don't think it's true. I think I'm just love you. You can't. Love is. Love is an abstraction. So is love real? Yes, it's real because I feel it. It's an existent, but it's not existent in the same sense as this cup is. So, you know, abstractions are real, but at the end of the day, all abstractions have to be able to be in a. You know, reduced to actual concrete. So you can either.

See, I really don't like criticizing someone whose work I haven't read secondhand. So I want to take this away from speaking about him personally because I'm not familiar with his work, but I.

He's a nice guy.

That makes me like him. That makes him like him less, I think.

Now you're back talking about fitness, evolutionary fitness.

I think there's disingenuousness when we talk about the word real in terms of ideas are real versus the cup is real. And you try to switch back into between those two meanings.

And.

And it's a little bit of linguistic wordplay that is trying to force a point that's not accurate, in my opinion.

Well, I think the issue is. And what he's challenging is, and what Kant is challenging is do we know reality? And I think the answer is yes, we do. We know reality. We observe it. Now, do we know everything about reality? No, we can't. For example, sense what a bets baby bat. Sense as reality.

Right.

A bat observes reality through. What is it?

Sonar?

Sound waves. Right. Through sonar. Right. So it has a different sense but it's the same reality. It's still a table. The bat's spatial relationship to the table is different than ours, but the object is still the same object.

But how do you know that's true? Are you not just hoping that's true or assuming that's true?

No. That's what no means. No means I have identified an aspect of reality that's literally the definition of knowledge. Now, if you say, how are you certain? Well, that's a whole other question. But one of the reasons I know I'm certain is because this happens.

Yes.

Okay.

And I know this is going to happen. And if I tell. If I tell you, if you go downstairs, you're going to see, you know, Mr. Jones, and you walk downstairs and I see Mr. Jones, at the very least, you know something's going on there.

So what about all the things that mess with our perception?

For example, we've talked about psychedelics before.

Talked about in dreams where you detach from. I mean, there's certain things that happen to your brain to where you're not able to perceive.

So you're not perceiving reality. That's right. So your brain is creating a different reality. It's not real. That's.

How do you know it's not real? How do you know? The elves we meet and.

Because I need it. Because, partially because I need to take a drug in order. Because I need to take a drug in order to do it. Because I'm asleep when I'm dreaming. It's not reality. That is clearly a creation of our mind. It's not a creative.

Hold on. Let's. The drug is real.

The drug is real.

If you are. I'm not. I think you're going to be thinking I'm joking a lot more than I am this episode. I'm going to be the humorous objectivist. He could be the jest, the court jester. In terms of psychedelic. When people are perceiving these elves, these machine elves, these other entities, whether they are. They could either be real or not, I don't know. But the point is that doesn't go to his broader point, because if these beings exist and the only way to precede them is to take a drug, they still exist. This is just. For example, if I'm walking outside in the woods at night and there's a deer and I can't see it, but if I put on night vision goggles, I can see it. That deer was there the entire time. It's not that the night vision goggles caused the deer to appear.

You can recreate it, not only using night vision goggles, but you can then use sonar. You can use other mechanisms by which to prove that the deer is there. The thing with psychedelics is that. Now, I don't know, because maybe I'm the least experienced with psychedelics here. Probably. My guess is every time you take the psydelic, you have exactly the same experience of the deer.

No.

Second, are there other mechanisms, other scientific mechanisms by which I can find the deer out there other than the psychedelics?

We don't know yet.

Well.

We don't know yet.

Well, but this is Occam's razor, right? The simplest explanation here is the most likely, and that is that you've taken something that's messing with the chemicals in the brain. Something is being that your brain can project. We dream. Nobody's arguing that the dream is real and reality's not. Or if they are, I think they're nuts. The dream is a dream. Your brain is creating an image of telling you a story. Psychedelics are simulating the same thing. That's probably what's going on until there's evidence to the contrary.

Hold on, I'm gonna disagree with you a little bit, because let's take Adderall, for example. No one here disagrees. That's something much more simpler than less. You know, out of this world. I think what he might be speaking to. I know Joe Rogan talks about this and other people in this space, is that when you take certain drugs, it changes your perception. It doesn't have to be otherworldly. It changed your perception of what's around you. And as an example, what they talk about is the three of us are talking. There's lots of other stuff in the room. We're only aware of it vaguely on a personal level.

It changes the.

Hold on, let me finish.

No, I don't do that.

Well, yeah, you're about to start.

This is back to the desert island.

They just resolved it within three seconds. Yeah. There's no conch.

He's trying to get us.

Yeah, it's not going to happen. I'm trying.

Exactly. He's trying to create murder.

No one has Asmar. It's going to be fine.

Because if the two of you murder each other, there's more food for me.

There's no. You're all you probably alcohol ratings would go up.

Viewership would go up.

Yeah, it's up for the ratings.

Yeah.

But if you take, for example, Adderall or speed. Right. People like you focus on things. You perceive things. That aren't there. But that doesn't mean those things weren't there to begin with. There are absolutely ways to change human perception chemically, through glasses, through getting drunk. None of that changes the fact that the reality underneath it is real and is causing this effect.

Absolutely. And it has a particular nature. Right. And all it's doing is changing the focus. Right? So if I take off my glasses, I'm seeing the same thing. I'm just seeing. Something's out of focus and maybe in the distance. I can't see something. It just, it's gone. And then I put it on. There it is. That thing was always there. It's just my, the sensitivity I have to. It has changed and it's absolutely. We're not sensitive to everything equally. And drugs can change through relative sensitivities. It doesn't change reality, it changes our ability to focus on reality.

Let me give you one great simple example. The microscope. I forget who it was. His name was with an L. The scientist who discovered it, he had a drop of water and he's seeing monsters, the protozoa in this drop of water. For him it must have been. It is like a drug experience. Wait a minute, I'm drinking this. And there's alien beings whose shapes are completely crazy in this water. Those beings were always there. Those beings were there before any of us were here. They've been there for billions of years. But because he had this apparatus, now he's able to see protozoa. No one's arguing protozoa are extra dimensional. No one's arguing the supernatural. Amoebas are well studied. Paramecia, all the other lots. So if these elves, the machine elves, are real and the only way to perceive them is through DMT or something like that, that doesn't contradict the broader point that they've always been there and this is the mechanism for perceiving them.

So here's the word I was looking for. It's a word. Actually. Greg, Greg taught me this. So, Greg. So, Mary. So it's resolution, right? Yeah. So it's resolution. My resolution changes with the glasses. My resolution gets finer with the Microsoft microscope. So there's probably some bacteria here on the table.

100%, right.

There's no, there's no doubt about it. I can't see them. So I need a Microsoft to see them. But they're either there or they're not there. And I have the tools to discover whether they are there or they're not there. And that's called a microscope. Now, they could Be even smaller beings that even with a microscope I won't be able to define. But that's completely arbitrary to claim that, that they're there until I find a tool to be able to discover it. The same with what you see if you're seeing other beings when you're taking psychedelics, unless you find another tool to be able to see them with. The simplest assumption is probably the truest assumption.

But even the not simplest assumption doesn't contradict the broader point.

No. Which is again, if it turns out that there are these creatures that you can only see with psychedelics, and they are these creatures that you can only see with psychedelics, and our resolution, while we're not on psychedelics, is not fine enough to observe them. So what? That doesn't change the fact that we evolved to survive in reality as it is.

What do you do with the possibility that our resolution as it currently stands is really, really crappy? That basically. No, but you don't know that.

No, we know it. We know it compared to who?

Because compared to the future possibilities like artificial intelligence.

It is true.

But that's not relevant much.

Much like orders of magnitude here.

I'll use the standard that Hoffman uses, Evolution. Right. The reason I know that our resolution is phenomenal, is phenomenally good. Right. Is look at us, we're sitting here comfortably in an apartment with air conditioning in warm Austin, with microphones. And where did all this stuff we're really good at survival and changing environment.

Indeed.

If you look at the species that we know of, there's not a species that come anywhere close to our ability to deal with reality, to observe to reality, to understand reality and to shape it now, in the future, well, we'll come up with machines that can figure out stuff that we have no clue about today. Yeah, but so that's only because we're so well suited to reality that can we create those machines?

And I promise you, in the future it's going to be much more what you're saying that's how it's going to happen?

No, but the thing is, when the creatures from the future look back to the things we're saying now, what Ayn Rand is saying, what you're saying with certainty, do you think they'll laugh at the level of how much confusion there was? How much inaccuracy?

Did you. No, let me get this one. You know what they're going to do? They're going to do what you do when any of us read Aristotle or read any of these great geniuses of the past. It's like these people didn't have electricity. They didn't have, like warm clothes or anything. And they're able to figure out the diameter of the earth, like the creativity to be. And to get it within like a few miles. The creativity and to figure out the speed of light when you don't even have a stopwatch. When you look back, like, a lot of it's nonsense and we. But at the same. It's like when you're talking to a kid, you don't. You disregard the nonsense. And when they get something right, it's all. That's. So it's never a numbers game. Right. So it's the few that validate and justify the rest. So when you look at Aristotle, he's talking about the. There was one of those causes which is like time travel, and it doesn't really make sense, but you look at the rest of his stuff, or even Plato or any of these greats, it's like, oh, my, this is an amazing miracle. I wouldn't say literally miracle. I got you, everyone. But at the same time, yeah. A lot of these other people had stupid ideas. You don't care. You care about those great, great minds and how they moved us all forward to this day, we still study Pythagoras.

And it's not even just the sciences and the math. Think about the philosophy. I mean, how much is there to learn from reading Aristotle or Plato, Socrates, when you disagree with them? I mean, how many giants have there been in all of human history that have had the minds of Socrates, a Plato and an Aristotle a thousand years? Will they look back at Plato and Aristotle and admire them? Absolutely. Will they find certain things that are wrong? Yes. But certain things that Aristotle discovered are absolutely right and will always be right. Certain things that Ayn Rand discovered will always be right. I think a lot of what she came up with. Will some things be discovered to be wrong? Yeah, that wouldn't shock me. But the genius and the truth that we know today is amazing. It's stunning to be pessimistic about us, because in the future we'll know more.

Not pessimistic, but more humble.

There's a reason to be humble. I mean, I really think humility is a vice, not a virtue. What's there to be humble about? Look at life. This is amazing.

We should be. But the word humble has a different meaning.

No, I know.

Okay, okay.

I was going. I was going to give. I mean, humility in a sense of, you know, humility in a sense of not appreciating. The genius and the ability and the, and the success and all the stuff that we as individuals, I think in our lives. But as a culture, as a movement, if you think about movement in terms of those of us who respect reason, have achieved in spite of the odds, we should be proud of that. And pride is the virtue. Humility in the sense of, yeah, I know there's more to know. I know there's a lot more to know and in the future we'll know more, sure, but I don't think that's the way. See, I take humility as the way the Christians use it, which is the other way. And I think it's a real vice. It's, don't think of yourself too much just because you can think, you know, that's no big deal or just because you can create this. It is a big deal. Your achievements are a big deal and you should take credit for them. So be careful with the word humility because the real meaning is the Christian meaning, which is a very, very bad meaning.

Hold on, let me be a little pedantic because there's no such thing as real meaning, right? So there's different meanings. Okay, hold on, this is semantics, but here's another real meaning that you're not going to disagree with. Which is the smartest person on earth is ignorant of 99.9% of knowledge, right? So if I meet someone who is less intelligent than me and less informed than me, it is still certain that this person has things to teach me. If I go to a mechanic and maybe this guy's dumb as rocks, I don't know anything about cars. What he tells me about that car is I could take it to the bank, he's going to be in a position to inform me. So one of the reasons humility is extremely important is very often you have people and you see this very much in academia who think you know exactly where I'm going, Iran who think they're know it alls and they think, oh, I have this degree. You're a layman, you've never been formally educated. Therefore not only you dumb and uneducated and you're wrong. And it's like this person might be have one a great example of this. And this is an example Yaron might not like is a lot of times you have these native populations and they'll have a better understanding of the animals around them, the plants, the fruits, whatever. And you'd have these scientists and be like, oh, they're talking about this monster in the woods. Yeah, whatever. This giant, this giant ape. But it was real. It was the gorilla. But you dismiss them because oh, these are stupid, ignorant, whatever people. That's kind of changed to some extent. But that is an aspect of humility that I think behooves especially highly intelligent people. Because there is such a presumption to be dismissive of people who you regard as less than. But they're often right.

So I agree with all of the concrete examples. I just think we should come up with a better word than humility. And I don't have one cuz I'm not a woodsmith. This is not my strength. But humility is a word from the Christian ethics and it means something very specific in the field of ethics. And it means the opposite of what I think virtue requires. It's demeaning, it's to put you down. It's to resist pride. And I think pride is a very important thing.

I don't know your honor, but again.

You have to define your terms properly.

Hating myself has been quite useful for me as a.

Well, but that's because you rushed and Jewish. So, so by, you know, this changes everything. You know, this is, this is what happens, right? We're brought up to, to, you know, to. To feel exactly that way.

Been a good Russian boy. So we got him.

Oh my God.

What is this? What is this gat again? What is this? What is that what it says?

Yeah, it's G. I can't, I can't. I'm blind.

Yeah, but as long as you're good.

But is it kosher? Did you check if it's kosher?

This is Ukrainian, my friend.

Oh, oh my God. That is a sin. Dare you. That is really simple.

You know, me and I were born the same town.

I'm kidding. My dad's Ukrainian. Don't get mad.

So I don't think, I don't think self. Self. What did you, how did you define it? Your self hate? Yeah, I think, I think self hate destructive. Speak for yourself. I think that humility is quite destructive. Humility in the sense of I'm no big deal. No, I mean if you've achieved something in life, you are a big deal. And you are a big deal because you know, look, you got the two of us to fly into town just to sit down here and have a conversation with you. You're a big deal.

He says more about you than me.

We're lonely to pray.

I'm not lonely. I might be destined.

I'm starting to question your ability to reason with the decisions you're Making on the aspect of. And I should mention that the Idiot by Dostoevsky is one of my favorite novels and there is a Christian ethic.

That runs through that because. Yeah, I mean, particularly. I hate to bring this up, but particularly Russians, and particularly Russian Jews, and particularly Eastern European Jews. Incredibly Christian. There's a real Christian theme in Judaism that's about guilt. Guilt is not. There's no guilt in Judaism. King David doesn't feel any guilt. Solomon doesn't. There's no guilt in the Old Testament. Plenty of guilt. Once Christianity has an impact on Judaism. We're raised to feel this way. We're raised to be humble, we're raised not to feel special. We're raised to think we're no big deal. And our mothers put us down and use that against us and try to inflict guilt on us. They raise us up and then they knock us down. It's a mechanism, but it's a cultural mechanism and I think it's very destructive to self esteem and to happiness.

And I'll give you a great. He's absolutely right with what he just.

Said, because I disagree. Well, yeah. Why, why is he right?

Because, like my family, for example, still doesn't really understand how I could pay the rent because I don't go into an office. And like when I started out trying to be a writer, the immediate reaction isn't which. A lot of times I talk to kids, right, and they have these aspirations and I'll tell them, go for it while you're young. If you fail, you'll go to your grave like, I tried my best, I didn't make it happen. Whereas if you don't try and never achieve, you are going to feel horrible for the rest of your life. And this is the example I use all the time I bring up. Many times I go, go to any bookstore and look at all those terrible, terrible books on the shelves that you wonder, how is this a book that could be you? You could be that crappy writer. But the thing is, in that culture that Yaron was talking about, you tell your family, I'm going to be a writer. Who do you think you are? Why do you think you're going to be. You're no Stephen King. And it's like, why do you have to be Stephen King? Why can't you just be a mediocre, crappy writer making the rent the best.

That you can be?

But even that is an amazing accomplishment. If I don't have to go to an office and I write books that not that many people read this is story of my life. At the same time, I do have pride because I made this happen.

You can be the best version. I mean, this is a cliche, but you can be the best version of yourself. It's not a competition. And yet our Jewish mothers, that's not what they aspire us to be. They aspire us to be the best version of what they imagine, what the culture imagines, you know, what society imagined. It's not about you in their minds. And I've seen it. I see it all around me. People putting their kids down, putting themselves down. It's not healthy.

I've never told this story. I'm going to tell it now. When I graduated college, I was a temp for a while because I didn't know what I wanted to do. Right? And when you're a temp, it's like playing roulette. You're going to have jobs that pay well, that suck and pay well, that are great or that are great, that don't pay well and suck and pay poorly. But when you're 21, you have that kind of space. And my grandmother was talking to her brother, you know, he's talking about his kids, she's talking about me. She's, you know, from Odessa. And she told me she lied to him about how much money I was making. And that's something I've never brought up. And it still hurts me because it's like your approval of me should be a function of my character, my happiness. And the fact that you feel ashamed over how much money I'm making, especially at this point in my life, I thought was very. Really misplaced priorities.

Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know. I don't know what to make. Make of that. I. I think the. There's a huge benefit to the humility terms aside for believing that others can teach you a lot. Everybody, everybody can teach you.

We all agree.

I just mentioned that to make it all.

No, you do. Exactly, exactly the point. But for that, I do believe you have to not constantly sort of break your ego apart and constantly question whether you know anything about this world. And sort of. There's a negativity with it that, that I think is very useful and it's also very fulfilling. Just constantly. I don't know.

It's the other way around. I find that the more, the more I know, the more I know, I know, the easier it is for me to learn from other people. The broader context I have, the more curious I become, the more areas I know, you know, it's true. That the more you know, the more areas you know you don't know. And, and the more I find myself attracted to people who can teach me something about things I don't know. Whereas if I was ignorant, if I truly believed I didn't know anything.

I.

Don'T know how I would live. It would really completely challenge everything, everything about life for me. Where would I even start? You wouldn't know where to start. So, no, I think. And if you don't recognize what you know, you don't have a full appreciation of yourself. So really building a recognition of what do I know. Right. And how much do I know is really crucial to living.

And I'll tell you something else that furthers my life enormously is when you reach a certain point in your career, in your life, and you're talking to people who are a lot younger and they might be smart, driven, intelligent, they lack Data. When you're 23, you don't know how to speak corporate. You don't know what the code words are. So if I am in a position to sit down with this kid and be like, do X, Y and Z. And here's why I'm coming to this conclusion. This is the information that reached me to this conclusion. And I can save them from some of the suffering I went through. That is very gratifying. It's making the world a better place. And it's also the opposite in a sense of humility, because, like, in this context, I'm an expert or I'm at least knowledgeable enough that I'm comfortable giving you advice.

Yeah.

And look, everything I do is about me knowing stuff that other people don't. And I know a lot of stuff other people don't. And I do. And it's fun. I'm a teacher. I'm a teacher at heart, always have been. It turns out I didn't know that early on. But, you know, I like becoming an expert and then trying to teach people doesn't mean I know everything. Quite the contrary. Again, the more I know, the more I know that there's certain things I don't know and there's certain areas of expertise I don't have. But look, pride is a broader concept than that. Pride is about. And humility is the opposite of pride. And Christianity has that right. Pride is about taking your life seriously. Pride is about wanting to be really good at living, wanting to have the knowledge. And I think what you're describing is. You're describing as I'm constantly learning. Sometimes I have to re. Challenge myself. I have to question what I believed in order to gain new knowledge. That's all good, but that is a drive that is driven by pride. You want to know. There are lots of people out there that don't want to know because they don't have that pride. They don't have that commitment to live, the commitment to achieving something.

And I'm going to say something else that I think is crucial. Humility is extremely important when it comes to politics, because if you feel comfortable telling someone you've never met how to live their life, that is a complete lack of humility.

Well, I lack it, obviously, because I tell people how to live all the time.

Not through the force.

Not through force. That's what I'm saying. And of course, not in the concrete. I don't tell them, you know, move to. Although I did tell them to move to Austin, But I don't tell them, this is what you do as a profession. But I give them the principles because I think they're principles.

They're making a choice. That's my point, politically. What I'm saying is it shows a lack of humility to be like, I've never met this person. This is how I'm gonna take money from him. I'm gonna see.

But I don't see that humility. There's nothing.

No, it's the lack of humility.

No, but it's not even a lack of humility because it's.

Who am I to tell him how to live?

Humility, no, who are you to tell him how to live? Is an issue of. It's an issue of force and rights and a bunch of different things. I don't think it's a lack of humility there. I think it's a lack of being a human being.

It could be both. Sure.

I think it's. Who gives you the right to dictate to somebody else how to live their lives?

Yeah, but that's the lack of humility. If you think you have that right.

Again, we're using humility in a very different way.

No, we're using the same way because the person who feels comfortable, they think, I know better than you how you should live your life to the point where I'm comfortable forcing you because I know it's going to be best for you in the long run.

And the answer is you don't know.

Right. But that's a lack of humility.

I think in your mind, Yaron, humility somehow tied to the Christian concept of humility. And so you're kind of allergic to the word?

Well, absolutely, because it's part of. If you look at the cardinal virtues, the cardinal sins in Christianity, pride is a cardinal sin and humility is a cardinal virtue. But they don't mean it in this sense because they're happy to tell you how to live, right? They're happy to be philosopher kings over your life. And they believe that's being humble.

And.

And you should be humble, by the way, in listening to the Pope or listening to God, because what do you know? You know nothing. God knows everything. So you should shut up and do what you're told. That's the sense in which I don't think you should be humble. I mean, it's a sense in which I always use the example of Abraham, right? God comes to Abraham and says, go kill your eldest son, your only son, right? Your only son. Go kill him. It's like. And what does Abraham do? Says, yes, sir. And he's a moral hero for Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He is a moral hero because he follows orders, because he's humble. You know, I would tell God to go to hell. Screw you. I'm not killing my son. You know, there's no way.

I mean, he killed his son, so it's only fair.

Well, this is before he killed his son, so I didn't know that. Right, but. No, but part of the evil, part of the evil of Christianity is that he's killed his son in the most torturous form of death possible. I mean, the whole story of Jesus is one of the most immoral, unjust stories ever told. And that Christians elevate this to a position of. I'd love to have this conversation with Jordan. Right? Jordan Peterson. The idea of elevating.

That'll never happen.

No, it won't. But elevating Jesus. Exactly. Elevating Jesus to a superhero status for one of the most immoral acts in human history is horrific. So, yeah, I mean, I'm opposed to God sacrificing his own son, never mind my son. But yeah, let him go do it to his own son.

But he didn't kill Isaac. He killed the goat.

The story's about Abraham, not about God. First of all, God is mean, right? To put Abraham through that. But Abraham has to assume that he's going to kill his son and he lifts his. He's going to do it, and he stopped. So the whole point is obedience. That's what humility leads to. It leads to the opposite of the story you were telling. It leads to people saying, yes, I should be told what to do. Where's the authority? You actually know something. I don't know anything. No, I know a lot. And I know a lot about my life, the science. So you stay away from my life. Because I have pride in my life.

The science is settled. Right? Look at these experts. Who am I to argue with these experts? They tell me to drink dog pee. I'm going to drink. What am I going to not drink? Dog pee.

Yes.

Yeah, let's go back to.

Which we're on island again.

We're back to the island Manhattan. And let's. Let's go to the island. Let's. I live on an island, so everything is an island in some context. Like Earth is an island. This universe is an island. In a multiverse, there's multiverses.

There's only one universe.

All right, so. So let's invite Jordan Peterson to this island.

You wish. Hold on. Hold on a sec. Hey, girl, what you doing? Lex. Lex Friedman. Look him up.

Lex who?

Yes.

I don't know. Lex has as big of a following almost as Jordan.

I know Jordan. I know his family, actually, through Jim Keller, who's his relative. He's an engineer. And I just talked to Sam, who is perhaps a little bit aligned in some sense on your perspective on religion and so on. So let me ask, is there religion?

Yes, but.

But other things. No. Sam Harris.

Yeah.

Oh, sorry. Sam Harris.

He's on first name relationship. These guys.

I just talked to Sam.

I thought.

Humility. Let's talk about humility. Like my buddy Sam. I was talking to Barack. You might know him.

Yeah, I. I simply.

Humility went out the window.

I'm just a natural language processing model that. I assume that once I mention Jordan Peterson, it becomes an obvious statement. What's the Sam means? This is how neural networks think. This is how robots think. Michael, you should know this. I thought by now you'd be a.

Scholar.

For the sake of the audience.

Humility. Everything can teach you something, even a robot. Okay, so do you think there's value in religion or broader, do you think there's value in myth, in this? We've been talking about the value of reason. Do you think it's possible to argue in society as we grow this, the population of our little island, that there's some value of common myths, of common stories, of common religion?

There was value. There is no value today. So human beings need explanations, right? They need a philosophy to guide their life. They need ethics. They need some explanation of what's going on in the world, right? And it's no accident that the early religions had a river God and they had a sun God and a moon God, because everything they didn't understand, they made God, right? So they had multiple gods because they didn't understand very much. As human understanding evolved, increased as we knew reality more, we came to the conclusion of, you know, this is very inefficient to have all these gods. This is a genius of Judaism, right? Let's just have one bucket to put all the stuff we don't know in, and we'll call it one God. And then we don't. As we gain new knowledge, we can just take it out of the bucket. That's God, and put it into the bucket of science. At some point, though. At some point. And that point suddenly came during the scientific revolution. I think we could come to the conclusion that, no, we don't need this bucket that's called God to explain the things that we don't know. We can say we don't know, and we're learning, and slowly our knowledge is increasing, and yet there's a lot more that we don't know. But we don't need to throw it into some bucket that's called God in order to have it. And I think that's true for morality and it's true for everything else, right? As we gain the tools to understand what morality requires, we don't need a set of commandments. We can figure out morality from human nature and from reality. So I don't think we need religion anymore. I think religion needed to die probably about 200 years ago and was dying. I think up until Kant, it seemed to be dying. And one of Kant's missions, as he says, is to revive religion against attack of reason and the Enlightenment. Now, mythology is a little different because it depends what you mean by mythology. Certainly we need stories, and certainly we need art. Art is. And Rand writes about this a lot. And, you know, she's an artist and she writes in. I'm a huge fan of the Romantic Manifesto, which I think is one of her underappreciated masterpieces.

Oh, I hate it. Okay, okay.

Yeah. So I think we have a real need, right? As a conceptual being. We have a need for aesthetic experiences. We have a need to concretize abstractions, to concretize abstract ideas, to concretize the complex nature of the world out there. And that's what painting sculpture, to an extent, music, but painting, sculpture, literature does for us. So to the extent that mythology serves that purpose, it's just art, right? To the extent that it serves another Purpose that is that it's a way for the gods to communicate with us. Or it fits some kind of pre existing mental construct that we have again kind of a Kantian perspective. Right. That we have these categorical imperatives and this mythology links up to then I think it's false, it's not helpful and destructive. So I believe religion today is a destructive force on planet Earth. I think it's always been a destructive force. It was just a necessary force. You needed an explanation. People needed something to believe in. Once you get philosophy and once you get philosophy that starts explaining real life, real world, you don't need religion anymore. And indeed it becomes a destructive force. And you look around the world today, it's an unbelievably destructive force. Everywhere it touches is, is, is, is bad for life. Again, mythology depends. Art is essential, very, very crucial to human existence.

I mean I'd love to hear what you think, but you don't see religion and philosophy and mythology on as just a continuous spectrum.

Yeah. So religion is a primitive form of philosophy.

I pre philosophical where I thought ran with that Yaran was going to go and he didn't go was that. I think I agree with what he's going to say. Rand was a mythologizer in certain specific contexts. Atlas Shrugged is a myth. It's one thing to sit down and say these are the people who move us forward. These are the values that are important. When you experience it through a story, through a movie, through a TV show, a poem or a painting, it affects you in a very visceral, very different way. Talk about American history. You have the Founding Fathers then you have the myth of the Founding Fathers. Now unfortunately, the term myth often means lie, but it could mean in a, in a useful sense an abstraction to help you systematize and concretize ideas. So you have the myth of Reagan, you have the myth of Thatcher. These, you know, the reality often falls very short. But when you look at how these different figures are mythologized, not only is it very inspirational on a personal level, very motivating on a personal level. It's also a great way to concretize ideas because just how humans think. It's one thing to think about ideas, but when you see someone who embodies these ideas, Miss America. You know, I was saying earlier I had an asteroid on my show, these people might be jerks, but when you look at them one specific aspect of their life and you extrapolate it, that can be to anyone very motivating. And it's very important for people to have the belief that happiness and achievement is possible, because it's very hard to keep that in mind, especially if you're depressed, if you're anxious, you're unemployed, you don't have a girlfriend, you think it's going to be like this forever. And then you look at someone's story and they're like, you know what that astronaut I interviewed, Clayton Anderson, he applied 13 times, didn't get a call back, applied the 14th time, got a callback, didn't get the job. Fifteenth time, he'd get the job. He talks to kids and he goes, listen, apply 13 times. Even if you don't get the call back, you'll still feel I'm doing something.