Podcast Host (2:01)

That's also a different kind of debate. I've seen those debates. Those are crazy. You're talking so fast.

Kaizen (2:05)

Well, those are. Yeah. So there's different types. Is Lincoln Douglas, this policy debate. And in the type of debate that you normally see in these viral clips, they do this thing called spreading where they just talk extremely quickly to the point where you can't even follow what they're Saying, I think that's the dumbest thing in the world. Like, that's not the point of debate. The point of debate is to actually have an engagement of ideas and, and discover mutually what the best ideas are. Yeah, so that's my general philosophy on discussion in general.

Podcast Host (2:29)

I feel that. Was there anything Destiny said that you actually agreed with?

Kaizen (2:32)

Yeah, so we actually agreed on Israel, Palestine, which was surprising. And I actually wasn't sure what his position was. And I tried to go in not assuming what it was. And I, I spoke first about Israel, Palestine, and to recap what I said, I basically said, look, regardless of your positions on the founding of Israel and October 7th and Israel's response, like, we're here at this point in time, so what should we be doing going forward? And I often don't hear people talking about what we should be doing going forward. They're just assessing what's happened retroactively. And I said, even if you're strongly pro Israel, there should be a question of what happens after the bombing. Because Hamas is fundamentally more than just a political party or a group of people who are making tunnels under the ground. It's an idea. It's an ideology that's fueled by resentment and trauma. So in order to actually remove an ideology, you can't just bomb an ideology out of existence. And in fact, if you bring violence to, to extreme of a degree, it actually just perpetuates the same ideology that you're trying to eradicate. So my point was I actually think Israel needs to be focused on winning the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people after what they've done in Gaza. Otherwise what they're going to do is raise a new generation of Palestinians who have the same resentment toward them, and it's actually self sabotaging for the Israeli people. So my concern is that, and this is my concern with governments more generally. A lot of the time we conflate a government with the people. And in America, no one would ever say, if you criticize the president, then you're un American, or people would say that. But we generally consider those people ideologues. But somehow in America, people who are criticizing the actions of the government of Israel get conflated with anti Semites or people who don't want the Israeli people to be safe. Which is of course not true. Right. Like, just like if an Israeli criticized Trump, I wouldn't say that they hate America. I wouldn't say that if an American criticizes the Israeli government, they hate Israel. So my position is coming from a perspective of what's actually most effective for preserving the dignity and safety of the Israeli people and the Palestinian people? Am I concerned that the Israeli government, at least in their public messaging, are not actually facilitating a long term plan for peace and destiny? Largely agreed with that. I'm not going to put words in his mouth, but he said I agree on, on a lot of that. And he had some points that he disagreed with, but we didn't actually get into the thick of it.

Podcast Host (4:56)

That makes sense. Do you feel like the anti Semitism term is being thrown around too much? Like you've probably been labeled that I'd imagine on social media, right?

Kaizen (5:03)

Not yet.

Podcast Host (5:03)

How you haven't.

Kaizen (5:04)

Yeah, so I guess maybe I'm doing something right or maybe I haven't talked about it enough to track that yet. And yeah, you know what I see is that whenever we engage in these collective labels about groups, we can conflate genuine criticisms of what members of the group are doing with hatred toward the entire group. So for example, we just went through this trend where for the last several years we had political correctness and then we had wokeism. And in Wokeism all these ideological tripwires were created. So if you question what black people are doing or the health of the black community, or you talk about black on black crime, you get accused of being a racist and it's systemic racism. And obviously it's not true that any critique of what any black person does or any questions about whether a black person has gotten a position through merit versus on identity, it doesn't make you a racist. You could be someone who is committed to principle and concerned that principles are not being followed.

Podcast Host (6:04)

Right.

Kaizen (6:05)

So now I see what's happened on the left being co opted by some of the right where anyone who's critical of the state of Israel gets labeled as an anti Semite. So yes, we are applying this label over much. And when that happens, it actually means anti Semite ceases to have meaning anymore. Because if you're calling everyone an anti Semite, then no one is really an anti Semite. It's just like this group of people that you disagree with and it shuts down the ability to have proper conversation. Now to be clear, there's genuine anti Semitism and it's on the rise and it's too high and it needs to be addressed. But actually the best way to deal with anti Semitism is to listen to the people who are not anti Semites discern who's an anti Semite versus someone who's just critical of what a foreign government is doing and making sure that you're addressing the former while not lumping them with the latter. Because if you start suppressing the latter group, the people who are just critical of Israeli government actually harbor more animosity. Because now the people who are like, I'm not an anti Semite, but you're calling me an anti Semite and you're trying to censor me start to get radicalized and then they start to have hostility toward all people. So it's a self defeating mechanism.

Podcast Host (7:13)

Yeah, makes sense. You said earlier you made a video of. Of Trump and you were critical. Was that about Israel?

Kaizen (7:19)

Yes, I've had several videos critical of Trump mixed in there. Most recently, I was critical of his approach to Mahmoud Khalil. The deportations of that. Do you hear?

Podcast Host (7:29)

I didn't follow that one.

Kaizen (7:31)

So Mahmoud Khalil was a organizer at Columbia University. And Columbia University since October 7th has had a lot of peaceful protests. It's had rallies, it's had violent protests, it's had takeovers of buildings. So the full spectrum of political protest. Mahmoud is someone who was here on a legal, permanent residency. So you had a green card. And when the Trump administration came in, they announced that they were going to crack down on anti Semitism on college campuses, which is a legitimate issue. This became a lightning rod issue, though, because Mahmoud from the pro Palestinian side was considered someone who was a peaceful organizer who is not sympathetic to Hamas and has actually made statements condemning anti Semitism. But the Trump administration said that he's a Hamas sympathizer and they tried to deport him out of the country. And they did that without an arrest warrant. You know, they basically came to his house, pulled him out in the middle of the night, put him in his detention facility, and it caused a huge uproar. Originally when I saw that, it's. This is interesting when we talk about information ecology, because originally when I saw that, my first instinct was to look for the reasons why Mahmoud got deported. And I found that he was affiliated with an organization called Columbia University Apartheid Divest, or quad. And he was a lead negotiator for Quad, which makes him a leader in some sense, at least of the organization. And QUAD has made some statements on social media that are explicitly pro Hamas. So they called October 7th a moral, military and political victory. They were justifying violent resistance. They're clearly pro Hamas. Like, just objectively, I'm not even speaking normatively about whether they should be or not. That's just what they said. And I looked at that and I said okay, well if he was a lead negotiator of Quad, then one could make the argument that he is responsible for their statements. So if they're making statements on Instagram being supportive of Hamas, he's a leader of the organization, so he's responsible for the statements that the organization makes. And then I took a step back and I realized, okay, that's a plausible case for why he should have his green card revoked. Because under immigration law, if you're expressing pro terrorist sentiment, unlike a citizen who has full first amendment free speech protections, you actually are here on like a trial basis. So there's certain things you can't do if you are on a student visa or even a green card. But then I realized, well, the Trump administration did not give the justification that I found. I had to go out of my way to do this research and find all of this information so I could see the argument for deporting him. But they're not making this argument, they're just saying pro Hamas violent protests and they're not actually presenting specific evidence of that. So my concern was, hey look, first of all, if your government is deporting people from the country, which is, you know, that's a pretty extreme act there should be very specific, clear.

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Kaizen (10:55)

Your rationale for why even if you agree with a deportation, they should be making the justification to you, you should not have to justify it for yourself. When I realized I was justifying it for myself, I realized no, no, this is not right. Extreme actions require extreme amounts of evidence to justify. So I critique the Trump administration for that. And to be clear, I'm open fundamentally to the idea that people who are here on some sort of provisional visa status are held to a higher standard even than American citizens. I'm open to that idea. But if they violate that standard, they should be very clear about what the standard is and how specifically they violated it. Yeah, because if we bring it to another case now, that's actually much less Strong. There was a woman named Remisa Austerk. There was a video that went viral of her. I think she was a student in Massachusetts. She was just walking home one day and literally a van pulls up, a bunch of. I don't know if there was Immigrations and Customs Enforcement or dhs, but federal agents pile out of this van, some of them have masks on, and they accost her in the middle of the street and throw in their van and wow. Try to deport her. It's crazy.

Podcast Host (11:59)

Like, I didn't know that. I thought that was just a movie scene. I didn't know that actually happened.

Kaizen (12:02)

It actually happened. It was such a bad look. And in her case, I tried to look for some sort of justification for this and all I could find is that she had an article critical of her university investing in Israeli aligned causes.

Podcast Host (12:17)

Wow.

Kaizen (12:18)

And that was it. That was the entire op ed. Like, there was no evidence that I was able to find of her in protest. There was no evidence of her saying anything pro Hamas at all. And regardless, I, as an individual citizen should not have to go and do a bunch of research on X and using AI reading all these articles. My government should just tell me what the rationale is. So ultimately, this is about principle and my concern. Even though I voted for Trump and I was supportive of his candidacy, and I still think he's been doing a good job overall, there are breaches of trust like this that erode his ability to actually follow through on the promises he made to the American people. Because there's what the President can do. And I'm not saying he can't do these things. And there's what the President should do, and there's a justification for that. And ultimately, if your government is not giving you good reasons for what they're doing, it doesn't mean that they can't do what they're doing. But you should not give them your trust.

Podcast Host (13:13)

Right. That's concerning. I remember asking Charlie Kirk last year what the biggest threats to America are. And he said, the government agency is being weaponized. And I guess I just assumed that would stop when Trump got in office, but it sounds like it might still be going on.

Kaizen (13:26)

Yeah, the pendulum can swing from the other direction. And here's the problem. I mean, some people, maybe they disagree with me, maybe they think that what Trump is doing is justified and they think these people are communists and this is some sort of Marxist revolution and needs to get these people out because it's some sort of cultural cancer. Okay, what's stopping the Left from making that same exact argument when they're back in power. Because eventually they will be. That's my concern.

Podcast Host (13:51)

That's true.

Kaizen (13:52)

If we react to the pendulum moving to from one extreme by moving it to the other, eventually the same double standard that was used on your behalf will get used against your half.

Podcast Host (14:02)

Yeah.

Kaizen (14:03)

So that's my concern. It's not about just, hey, who do I agree with more generally? Who am I ideologically aligned with? It's about principle, because principle is the thing that makes America great, and it makes it so that we at least have the expectation of equal treatment under the law.

Podcast Host (14:18)

Yeah.

Kaizen (14:19)

So that's my concern there.

Podcast Host (14:20)

No, it makes sense. It's scary, man. Did you see what happened to Hassan Abi at the airport?

Kaizen (14:24)

I did not.

Podcast Host (14:24)

So he's like a streamer on. Heavily on the left. And he got stopped at the airport, interrogated for two hours. Whoa. About his. His business and his dealings and talking about certain people. That's scary, man.

Kaizen (14:36)

Yeah. And look, I don't know. In his case, maybe there was something to that. I don't know much about Hassan or what he was interrogated for. My main thing is I just want the rationale to be clear.

Podcast Host (14:46)

Yeah.

Kaizen (14:47)

And the rationale should not be a. Or an ex post or a true social post saying this person's pro Hamas. It should be specify what exactly they did and they said, that is pro Hamas. And make that case clear so that in the future, when the opposition is back in power, they are held to the same standard of clarity.

Podcast Host (15:05)

Agreed. We got to talk about this Biden cancer stuff. Stage five, huh?

Kaizen (15:09)

Yeah.

Podcast Host (15:10)

They just discovered that.

Kaizen (15:11)

Yeah, boy. Yeah. Allegedly crazy. Yeah. So I think, just to recap what we know so far, so I think now people are largely familiar with this whole saga of Biden going on to the presidential debate stage. It was pretty clear that he was in cognitive decline. The guy didn't seem to be able to complete sentences, and he's just incoherent at times. And then it raised questions about. In my mind and I think many of the American people's minds, how long has this been going on? Like, was this guy cognitively impaired for the entire presidency? For a few months before the debate. A few weeks, years. We don't know. So there are already questions about his mental health up to this point. Now, in the last week, before we even get to the cancer stuff, the story about cognitive decline on Biden's part has been brought to the fore because there's a CNN journalist named Jake Tapper who's releasing a book tomorrow, May 20, covering how the Democratic Party covered up Joe Biden's decline, allegedly. So this has actually been a. It's been enough of a big story, if you're following politics, that you're aware of it, but probably a lot of people are not aware of it because it hasn't really hit that mainstream level awareness. So I point this out because there were already questions emerging about whether there was a cover up on the Democratic Party of, of Biden's condition. Now, last night, Biden announces that he has cancer, prostate cancer. And it's an aggressive form of cancer that is seeped into his bones. And obviously, I'm not a medical expert here, but there are concerns from medical experts who have said it's inconceivable, actually that he could have this advance of a stage of prostate cancer. And he didn't know this well before. In fact, there was one gentleman, his name was Howard, I forget his last name. It might have been Reigns. He's a Yale University professor, I believe radiology said it's actually inconceivable that they didn't know this before. And this is Yale University. This is like a liberal institution.

Podcast Host (17:12)

Yeah.

Kaizen (17:13)

So now there's a question of, did you not only cover up his mental health, but was his physical health covered up? Now, why is this important? Well, obviously Biden's not president right now, but he could have been. This means that in an alternative timeline, Biden is our president and he has prostate cancer and he's in cognitive decline. And that was covered up sufficiently to the point where he got elected by the American people. And that would be the guy in control of the nuclear launch codes. That would be the guy deciding our foreign policy in the Middle East. That would be the guy negotiating Ukraine, Russia. That's insane.

Podcast Host (17:47)

Crazy.

Kaizen (17:48)

That's absolutely insane. So from my standpoint, again, we would go back to principle. If this had been Trump, people would be losing their minds. Okay? Like, people would be in an uproar and saying that Trump is corrupt. We need to put him in prison. Everyone around him needs to be put in prison. And we should be applying the same standard here, because on a human level, I'm sad for Biden. It's horrible that he has cancer. It's horrible for his family. But he's not just a human. He's also our president, who was our president. He could be right now. So if anyone around him was complicit in not only covering up his cognitive decline, but the decline in his physical health as well, that is so grossly negligent, it's unethical.

Podcast Host (18:39)

Yeah.

Kaizen (18:40)

And when we look at this, the timing of it is interesting because look, if we evaluate things probabilistically, look, there's a non zero probability that this all just, it's all coincidence that. Yeah, there was a story about this book coming out that's going to reveal how Joe Biden's mental state was covered up and it just happened to coincide with the announcement of Biden having prostate cancer. And there's a non zero possibility that this was planned, that this is a legitimate cover up. Now let's evaluate what's the benefit of releasing this news at this time. Well, think about it strategically. If you're responsible for the Democratic party or Biden's legacy, it's actually perfect timing to announce that he has prostate cancer. Because now it actually throws water on this fire that was building about his cognitive health. Because now you get to shut down conversation. Now you can say, oh my God, this guy has cancer and you're politicizing it and you're, you're really gonna attack this man who's in his final days. No, we shouldn't talk about the cognitive decline. We should have respect, show a little grace. And that's how leftist publications are reporting it. If you actually look at it, I just looked at this. Leftist publications like Newsweek, you could consider it center or center of left, but more left aligned or the daily cause chaos. They're focusing on how Donald Trump Jr. Is calling this a cover up.

Podcast Host (20:08)

I saw that.

Kaizen (20:09)

Whereas publications on the right are focused on the fact that medical experts are saying there's no way that they didn't know about this prostate cancer while Biden was president. So all of this is whether it's intentional or unintentional manipulation of psychological bias. Because if you're more Biden aligned, you're going to look at this as, wow, these Trump people, they have no shame. They're completely graceless. They're even going to attack a dying man. People on the right are going to say, this is a cover up by the Democrats. We told you. I think all Americans should be able to acknowledge, yes, Biden having cancer is sad on a human level. No, this does not mean we can't ask questions about whether this was covered up. Because Biden is not just a human, he is also our president. And if we were about to have a president who was in physical and mental decline leading the country from 2025 to 2029, that's a huge issue. And we need to look at this. So we make sure it never happens again.

Podcast Host (21:07)

Yeah. And there's a good chance he had it during his last tenure, too, to be honest.

Kaizen (21:11)

Who even knows at this point? And then the question is, who's running the country?

Podcast Host (21:15)

That's the real question.

Kaizen (21:16)

Yeah. Who's been running the country? Because if it' not the president, who's democratically elected by the president, it's someone else, or no one's at the wheel. Everyone's just running around like headless chickens. And that's an equally deplorable state.

Podcast Host (21:28)

Yeah. I mean, it clearly wasn't him, though, if we're just being honest.

Kaizen (21:31)

I don't see how it could be him. I mean, this guy. I believe they scheduled the debates so that it was timed throughout the day so he wouldn't get sleepy. It's like the guy literally has to schedule debates around his bedtime. That's not the person who I want in the room with sharks like Putin. That's not the guy who I want at the helm negotiating with Netanyahu on whether we are going to drop bombs on Iran.

Podcast Host (21:53)

Yeah.

Kaizen (21:53)

It's not the guy who I want defending and protecting and standing up for America.

Podcast Host (21:57)

Where do you stand on Doge and Elon? Because I see a lot of mixed things about him online.

Kaizen (22:01)

Yeah. So whenever we talk about the problems of Doge, it's important to compare those against the problems that Doge is meant to be solving. So let's talk about the problems that needs to be solved. And I believe these are objectively problems. We are at nearly $37 trillion of debt. Our debt to GDP ratio is 127%. That's the highest it's ever been, including war. There are other countries with higher debt to GDP ratios, like Japan, but the difference between us and countries like Japan is we are one of the largest providers of debt in the world. So we're very reliant on the trust of other foreign creditors in the United States. So it's not like, oh, if you reach 130% debt, GDP, all of a sudden, America falls apart. But as our debt to GDP ratio increases, the level of trust in creditors, of creditors in the US Decreases. So there's a point where people decide, you know what? I don't want to hold American debt. I'm out. Then we are in a real problem. We have a real problem because, yeah, we would go bankrupt, and we have a $2 trillion deficit that neither side has really addressed. And I hope that Trump addresses it, but we'll see. So that's the backdrop, right? We're not talking about a possibility of just a recession. We're talking about a possibility of another Great Depression.

Podcast Host (23:20)

Damn.

Kaizen (23:20)

Or even worse. Like, that's how bad it can actually get. And just like when people have debt and they're accruing interest on their personal debt, it just sneaks up on you. This is sneaking up on us. And just the interest payments on our debt are more than half of our annual spending.

Podcast Host (23:36)

Just that interest.

Kaizen (23:37)

Just the interest. Maybe not annual spending, but just the Pentagon's budget is now exceeded by the interest payments on our debt.

Podcast Host (23:43)

Holy crap.

Kaizen (23:44)

So that's the big problem that we need to be solving. So when I look at that, I see an existential crisis that is a slow burn. So we're not. It's not like a war, right? It's not something acute that everyone gets agitated about, but it's still an emergency situation. So against that backdrop, we need to do something and it needs to be radical, because if we don't make a radical change, we're going to be in. I don't know if I can curse.

Podcast Host (24:11)

You can.

Kaizen (24:11)

Deep. We're going to be in deep. So in my mind, we. We've tried multiple government spending reforms over the course of just the 2000s. Obama tried it, everyone's tried it. And at best we've saved maybe $30 billion from Doge like efforts in the past, and those always relied on the government auditing the government, and it just hasn't worked. So we needed to try something new. We needed to bring in private industry. We need to bring someone in with a demonstrable track record of making organizations hyper efficient, and that's Elon. There's no one better at in the world at it than Elon because the guy is launching reusable rockets into space. He's trying to colonize Mars. You don't have any leeway to be wasting money, right? That's the level of your mission. So I'm glad that Elon was brought in. And when people say things like, oh, he's on an unelected shadow president, I mean, first of all, there are plenty of people who are not elected who are in powerful roles in the government and called the cabinet, right? Like we, we pick a president and then he picks who he wants to assist him. Now, one could argue, okay, well, with the Cabinet at least there's some sort of checks and balance with the Senate confirmation hearings. And that's true. That's why Elon doesn't have statutory authority to just shut down government departments. He has to get approval.

Podcast Host (25:31)

Right.

Kaizen (25:31)

And I think a lot of people don't realize that DOGE is actually an advisory organization that's embedded into these government agencies. And, and to make any kind of staffing cuts or budget cuts, it needs to get signed off on by these government agencies. So any change that you see being made by DOGE is not actually made unilaterally by doge. It's a. It's suggested by DOGE and then it's approved of by these government agencies. Furthermore, Elon, he is a special government employee. So that's a special status. And as a special government employee, you can only work in government for 130 days out of the year, year out of the 365 days. He's almost done with that. So I'm saying that because a lot of people are concerned that this unelected billionaire is just doing whatever he wants in government. It's literally just not true. Now, to the question of the cuts that they have been making, they've actually said themselves, we're going to make mistakes. Sometimes they'll cut something and have to reinstate it. And they've actually done that several times. There was a case where they cut a bunch of people from the National. National Nuclear Security Administration. They cut, I think it was maybe around 177 roles. And they realized they needed those roles, so they reinstated them.

Podcast Host (26:44)

I saw that one. Yeah.

Kaizen (26:45)

Yeah. It's like good. Like sometimes you're going to overcut and you can bring these people back. They've shown that they're dynamic and they're responsive to feedback. And when they make mistakes, they make changes. So with all of that context, I would say I'm glad that DOGE exists. Yes, they've made mistakes. I think the biggest fundamental criticism I have is their messaging is overly partisan. Like, this is one of those issues that we should all be able to get behind government efficiency. And somehow it's been politicized. And I think it's been politicized a lot by the media. And mainstream media is mostly leftist. But I also think that DOGE themselves and some of Elon's comments on X have added more fuel to the fire than is needed. That's my biggest concern. But according to them, they've saved $170 billion so far.

Podcast Host (27:30)

Wow.

Kaizen (27:32)

We'll see what happens when congressional approvals need to be procured to solidify some of those changes. But that's already way better than any government saving initiative ever. And we're not even 170 days in and they saved $170 billion. Even if you discount that by a factor of 50% and you say they've only saved $85 billion, that's still a lot. And that's still the most successful government savings initiative of the 21st century. So, look, ultimately my heart goes out to the people who have been subjected to layoffs. That always sucks. Yeah, it sucks that, you know, we shut down programs like USAID that I do think have been politicized and have been doing stuff that we shouldn't be doing in foreign countries and have been used by the CIA to pedal soft power. And I also think that they've been helping people in a lot of Eastern world nations. And it sucks that, yeah, when you cut things, people who are reliant on those things suffer. And at the same time, I think we're going through a fundamental reimagining of what the government's role should be abroad. I think we've prosecuted this agenda of America needs to intervene and save every third world country and send boots on the ground to spread democracy and all that stuff. We need to focus on America first. We are not abundant enough to be just giving away resources to the rest of the world. We clearly have a tremendous amount of government waste, fraud and abuse, and we need some help from a third party to get involved. And I think that's what Doge is.

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Kaizen (29:28)

Experian, we've demonized billionaires in this country.

Podcast Host (29:44)

Right? Right.

Kaizen (29:45)

And I don't think it's all without justification. Right. Those Occupy Wall street people saw how a lot of these institutions were taking advantage of American taxpayers, and then they got bailed out. And that felt awful to people both on the right and the left. And then there's concerns about whether billionaires are playing by the rules and all that. So I understand the backdrop of why there's this suspicion against billionaires. And at the same time, one thing you can't argue is that billionaires are the best at money, the best at the game of money. So ideally, when you have a money Problem. You want someone who's good at the game of money helping you solve your money problem. So I'm glad that there's billionaires involved in the government. And my expectation is that the democratically elected President Donald Trump is keeping those people in check. Right, because he's supposed to represent the will of the people. I get that he's a billionaire as well, but just like we talked earlier about how everyone who people do this thing called group attribution error, where they say that because part of the group is bad, all of the group is bad. So they say, oh, because some of these billionaires are evil. All billionaires are evil.

Podcast Host (30:51)

Right.

Kaizen (30:51)

Which is not a first principles way to evaluate things. You need to evaluate the individual, see how the individual done things that are ethically reprehensible. I haven't seen anything that Elon has done that has been breaking the law or in some way manipulating American taxpayers for the benefit of Tesla or SpaceX or Neuralink. So instead of just assuming, oh, billionaire, billionaire, evil. When no one was saying that before he endorsed Trump, by the way, they loved him before. Yeah, he was loved by the left and the right didn't really care for him, but he was loved by the left. Let's evaluate. Hey, is this person equipped for the task? Are there appropriate checks and balances to make sure that this person is kept within guardrails? And is there a task worth deploying that person against? And I think the answer in all three cases is yes.

Podcast Host (31:35)

It makes you really think. Do most people value their emotions over facts?

Kaizen (31:39)

Yes, obviously.

Podcast Host (31:40)

I feel like most people do.

Kaizen (31:41)

Right, obviously. And it's very hard not to, because look where basically, like every human is basically a primate with a overdeveloped prefrontal cortex, like strapped onto a limbic system. Okay, we're very emotional. We have all sorts of emotional unconscious drives that we're not even aware of.

Podcast Host (32:03)

True.

Kaizen (32:04)

So the way that most people operate, and I'm saying this includes me too, I'm subjected to cognitive biases that are driven by emotional unconscious desires. Is we form a conclusion emotionally and then we look for evidence to justify that conclusion, facts, rather than the other way around. So it's the work of everyone to become aware of our own emotions, clear out our fear, and be as rational as we can. Because ultimately, if we act emotionally and we're not thinking rationally, then we actually hurt ourselves in the end because we have all these blind spots that we're subjected to. So, yeah, most people are emotional and that's okay. Emotions aren't Bad. Every goal that we have is emotional. Why do people want to get married? Because it'll give them long term happiness. Why do people want to get rich? Because it'll give them long term safety and contribute to their long term peace. Why does anyone want anything? Emotion, that's okay. But we shouldn't let the fact that we have emotional goals let us adopt emotional logic. Yeah, that's irrational, I guess.

Podcast Host (33:09)

How did you rewire your brain? Because you went to super liberal college, you probably grew up. I don't know what your situation was, but how did you become more objective over time?

Kaizen (33:17)

Yeah, I think. Yeah. So you know, I'm black, I grew up in New York, I moved to la, I worked in tech by default. I was just around leftist worldviews all the time. And I always voted for Democrats until the second time Trump came around. And that was really hard to switch my opinion.

Podcast Host (33:37)

Yeah.

Kaizen (33:38)

And I think part of what made it easier was I had actually been on my own personal development, or you can call it a spiritual journey that started with being at Harvard, because at Harvard I was actually really depressed. And that was the first experience I had had in my life of achieving something that I thought would make me happy and realizing it didn't make me happy. And I was forced to confront my whole mental model because if I thought that this thing would give me satisfaction and it didn't, then that must be. There's something wrong with my rationale. So I, yeah, I did a lot of work in therapy and meditation and coaching and more esoteric things like plant medicine, energy work, until I just reached a point where I was a lot more clear on who I was and I got to see the ways in which I could deceive myself. And as a life coach for the last three years also enabled me to see that in other people. So I wasn't a political person until 2024 at all. But when I realized how much division there was and I realized how much of it was emotionally driven, not factual, that's when I actually started talking about politics. And I was not coming at this from the standpoint of I'm some political pundit or someone who's well versed on politics, because I wasn't. And I feel like I still don't know a lot about politics or political history, but I feel like I understand a lot about the human condition. I understand how lies can be so pervasive, starting with the lies that we tell ourselves about ourselves and the lives that we're living. And I think everyone wants basically the same Things we all want to have human connection. We all want to have enough resources that we don't have to worry about it. We all want to feel significant. We all want to feel like our life is meaningful. Meaningful. And if we can have the humility to recognize that, hey, we are all subjected to delusion and we are most susceptible to self delusion, then we can have enough intellectual humility to see the world clearly. But if you see yourselves clearly, you can see the world clearly.

Podcast Host (35:39)

Facts. Yeah, I love what you said about emotional division too, because I feel like it's so apparent to me and that's what's going on. But people don't even realize they're being played.

Kaizen (35:46)

Absolutely. And it's hard to realize you're being played because no one wants to feel like a fool. But we're all foolish and like, being a human is absurd. Like we all believe ridiculous things about ourselves, about other people. And when we all have that level of humility, then we can have compassion toward ourselves and compassion toward other people and realize, okay, none of us has access to the full truth. Everything that we believe we should be skeptical of. And the only way we can access the whole truth is together.

Podcast Host (36:13)

Right. Do you think it's important to have outside, like a lot of people live in these bubbles? I feel like. Do you think it's important to talk to all walks of life?

Kaizen (36:20)

Absolutely. That's the only way. I mean, you know, there's this story of a bunch of people from different religions all being blindfolded and touching an elephant. And one person will touch the elephants trunk and they'll say, this is a tree. Another person will touch the elephant's tusk and say, oh, it's a rhino, duh. Other person will touch its ear and maybe they think it's a palm tree or something. And when you take off the blindfold, you realize, oh, they're all touching the same thing. They're all accessing the elephant just from different parts. And I think the truth is the same where we all have access to the truth from different perspectives. The truth is objective, but we access it subjectively. So in order to access the truth, you need to be aware of other subjective perspectives. So you can make your way through the labyrinth and get as close to the center as possible. And no one can do that individually. It's extremely difficult. I mean, why does anyone believe the things that they believe? Why do I believe that.

Podcast Host (37:26)

The Earth.

Kaizen (37:27)

Orbits the sun rather than the opposite? Well, it used to be that everyone believed that the sun orbited the Earth. And we were the center of the universe. Why? Because authorities tell us that. Not because we are deriving this stuff from first principles. I've never looked through a telescope and plotted out the movements of the Earth. And now to me, it sounds ridiculous to say that the Earth doesn't orbit the sun. But why? Because authorities told me that. And I recognize that now, currently in 2025, I have enough tools that I could derive that myself by observing celestial body movements. But most of what you and I believe is because someone told us that. Wow.

Podcast Host (38:05)

That's crazy to think about, right?

Kaizen (38:06)

Right. Yeah. It's like, why? How does a phone work? I mean, in reality, very few people could discuss from first principles how your phone works.

Podcast Host (38:15)

Like, I have no idea.

Kaizen (38:16)

It's crazy. I have no idea either, dude.

Podcast Host (38:18)

Like, FaceTime. Like, how is that possible?

Kaizen (38:19)

Like, how is that possible? Like, and how am I confident that there's actually a human talking in real time on the other side of the planet to me, rather than this is just some illusion on my phone? Because we're told. Because we're told. So, look, science is mostly just magic that we understand the rules for, and we realize that most of your worldview is constructed off of what people told you and the collective human wisdom and observation, then it makes us a lot more humble and open to new ideas.

Podcast Host (38:49)

Yeah, there's that meme about, like, no one has an original thought. Have you seen that?

Kaizen (38:53)

I haven't seen that.

Podcast Host (38:53)

It's so funny. It's like every thought you think is original, someone's already thought of it.

Kaizen (38:57)

Yeah.

Podcast Host (38:58)

Like, we have no original thoughts.

Kaizen (39:00)

If there's something to that. I mean, there's a story of Michael Jackson and Prince when they had this rivalry back in, I guess it was the 80s, before my time. And there's this cool story of they were like, neck and neck just vying for musical dominance.

Podcast Host (39:16)

Yeah.

Kaizen (39:16)

And there was this moment where Michael Jackson, he wakes up at like, 4am and he has this inspiration for a song. And he calls up his producer. He's like, we need to get to the studio right now as producers. Like, why? Like, why do we need to do this right now? It's like 4:00am, Michael. And he says, well, if I don't do it, Prince will. Which is interesting. Like, how would he know that Prince is going to have this idea? And I think that he had this intuition that the ideas that I have are not even mine. It's inspiration. I don't know where it comes from. Like, you think about it, like, you have all these thoughts during the day. Where do these thoughts even come from?

Podcast Host (39:51)

Right.

Kaizen (39:51)

So again, it's just like this level of humility that most of what you believe, you don't actually believe it because you know it. You believe it because you told it. Most of what you think, you don't even know where that thought's coming from. And a lot of these thoughts you form attachments to and you form your identity off of it. There's way more that you don't know that you do know. There's currently things that we all believe that are false, demonstrably false. It just hasn't been demonstrated yet. So let's just have a little bit more compassion for the fact that we're humans and we need each other to get to the truth.

Podcast Host (40:21)

Yeah. We are so programmable, when you think about it.

Kaizen (40:24)

Oh, that we're all programming.

Podcast Host (40:25)

Yeah. Because we just get born and raised in a public education system. Our parents are programming thoughts into our brains. We're just like. Like a blank slate. Right.

Kaizen (40:34)

Yeah. Where it's a public indoctrination system too. Because if it was really education, it would be teaching us to critically think. And I think that's actually one of the things that will become a competitive advantage in the future. Can you actually critically think? I think a lot of the time people don't realize that thinking is a discipline. Logic is a formal discipline. It's a subsect of philosophy. You can take a class on logical thinking. There's logical notation. There's a proper way to think. Unfortunately, a lot of. And I know I criticize the left a lot because I think the left is just more deranged right now. But there's derangement on the right for sure. Sure. But one of the byproducts of leftist ideology is this belief that if you feel something, that makes it true. So your truth, my truth, whatever you feel like. If you feel like a man, then you're a man. If you feel oppressed, then you're oppressed. If you feel like the world is unfair, it's unfair. And the problem with that worldview is underneath that is an assumption that there's not an objectively correct way to think. There is objective objectivity and critical thinking. You can understand what a logical contradiction is, or contrapositive or converse. There are formal logical fallacies, things that just cannot be true. There's. You can think of logical thinking the same way that you think of physics. There are rules. You can't violate them.

Podcast Host (41:59)

Yeah.

Kaizen (41:59)

But unfortunately, young people are not taught that, and they're not even exposed to the idea that there's such a thing as correct thinking. And as a result people are not thinking for themselves and they can be co opted by any idea just because of the emotional force of that idea. So people are not thinking, they're emoting.

Podcast Host (42:18)

So that being said, do you believe in right and wrong, good and evil, or do you believe it's all subjective?

Kaizen (42:23)

Yeah, I believe in right and wrong, good and evil.

Podcast Host (42:24)

You do?

Kaizen (42:25)

Yeah. And there's some things that I would hope we can all agree. Like do we agree that raping a child is wrong? Very, very few people would justify that. It's right.

Podcast Host (42:34)

Right, right.

Kaizen (42:34)

So at the extremes we can see things where it's like, look, almost 100 of people are going to say yeah, that's evil. Now there are cases where people will say, oh well, there's necessary evil. Which is an interesting concept that I'm open to some relativism on. Right. So people would say, okay, well would it be worth killing 16 year old in order to stop nuclear apocalypse? Many people would argue yeah, but you probably wouldn't say killing the 6 year old is good. You would probably say it's evil because you're killing a child and you're trying to stop a greater evil. So what's the difference in this moral calculus versus saying it would be good to kill the six year old child? Well, your emotional distribution would be a lot different because you wouldn't be celebrating killing the six year old to stop nuclear annihilation. You would kill, yield deeply. This is horrible. And we should figure out anything that we can do to make sure we never have to make this horrible choice again. It's very different disposition. So I do believe that there's objective good and evil. A lot of this rests on the question of what is good and evil. I think that's the deeper question.

Podcast Host (43:39)

Yeah, yeah.

Kaizen (43:40)

To me good is things that promote life in terms of quantity of life and quality of life. Things that are evil take away from quantity and quality of life life. So yes, that's why killing a child is evil. You're taking away life and human life. And obviously if we talk about like al, if they're aliens, how do we factor in aliens, animals? Yeah, like it's, it gets complicated. But at least we can think of good and evil from this basic framework. And from that basic framework there are things that are objectively good and evil. But it becomes difficult because we're not even clear on what the definitions are and we don't agree on them. But I Believe we actually had a rigorous conversation about, at least from a human perspective, is there good and evil? We would be able to arrive at some universal truths around good and evil. Like, yes, the annihilation of all 9 billion people on the planet would be evil.

Podcast Host (44:27)

But I know you went on a spiritual journey. Do you tie yourself to a specific religion or.

Kaizen (44:33)

I don't. I like to say that I know God exists and I fuck with Jesus.

Podcast Host (44:42)

I love it.

Kaizen (44:43)

So I resonate most with the teachings of Jesus and how he talks about being a good human. I think his rules, even if you don't believe that he's the son of God, are very tangible and practicable to your life.

Podcast Host (44:54)

Yeah.

Kaizen (44:55)

And I think for a lot of people, I think we have a crisis of godlessness in the west more generally, but America specifically. And look, even if you disagree on metaphysically whether God is real, I think people who believe that God is real tend to be more mentally healthy. And there's research that bears this out. Less antidepressants, they report higher quality of life. It's just true. So whether they're right is one question. Whether it's effective to believe in a higher power is a different question. And one of the reasons why pride is considered one of the greatest sins is because pride is essentially elevating the ego, your own ego as a highest authority. Because if there's no God, then who's the highest authority in your life? It's you. And if you're the highest authority, then you're very susceptible to confusing yourself, deluding yourself, lying to yourself, because there's no objective morality. So I think that's a purpose that God serves in society. It's about orienting you to some sort of ideal that is higher than you. So you can't keep justifying anything to yourself.

Podcast Host (46:03)

Right.

Kaizen (46:04)

And the reason to not do evil things, you don't even have to think of it because God will send you into hell forever. You can think of it because you will be in hell if you do evil things. Right now, psychological hell will obtain if you do evil things. Why should you not cheat and steal? Even if people would never find out? Because you will know that you are a cheat and you are a thief. You will not trust yourself. You will not have self esteem. That's the reason to follow a lot of these ten Commandments. So yeah, personally, obviously I'm a cultural Christian because I grew up in the United States. I went to Catholic school. Growing up, I had my whole break from it because I didn't really like the institution of Catholicism, especially when we found out all this stuff about them abusing little kids and stuff.

Podcast Host (46:45)

Yeah.

Kaizen (46:46)

But I think the core thesis of having a religion at all is positive and efficacious for having a good individual experience. And I resonate with the way that Jesus in particular talks about God.

Podcast Host (46:58)

Makes sense. I know there's a huge movement on the right towards Christianity. I don't know how I feel about it yet. You know. Yeah, it's. I see mixed things on it, but we'll see how it plays out.

Kaizen (47:06)

Yeah, I. Look, I think the problem with this is not a problem with Christianity inherently, but it's a problem with any kind of ideology is people can be so bought into the ideology that they dehumanize other people who are not part of that same ideology. And that's how atrocities like the Crusades happen, for example. Or in. In Islam. This is obviously not all of Islam, but we see the Muslim Brotherhood and extreme Islamists. So every ideology can have its extremes. And I'm glad that Christians are feeling pride in feeling Christian again. Or maybe not pride, considering what I just said about pride, but love for Christianity and confidence and they don't feel ashamed of being Christian. And yeah, everything in the universe is about balance.

Podcast Host (47:50)

Yeah.

Kaizen (47:50)

So you don't want to swing from one extreme of absolute shame. You can't talk about God, you can't talk about your faith to absolutely complete rejection of anyone who hasn't have a different worldview and moral crusading.

Podcast Host (48:05)

Yeah, I agree. Kajin, this has been awesome, man. I can't wait to set up some debates for you.

Kaizen (48:09)

That'll be fun, man.

Podcast Host (48:09)

Yeah, let's do it. What's next for you? Where can people find you?

Kaizen (48:11)

They can find me on Instagram X Tick tock at that's Kaizen. So T H A T S Kaizen and you can go on my YouTube channel I share long form thoughts and eventually I'm going to be releasing a thought, a course on critical thinking.

Podcast Host (48:26)

I love it.

Kaizen (48:26)

You can look out for that too.

Podcast Host (48:27)

And if there's any college campuses that want to have you there, reach out to them as.

Kaizen (48:30)

Yeah, yeah, I would love to talk to students and look, ultimately I'm less interested in who's right or wrong and I'm more interested in how we think and how we conversate. So if you're interested in helping me help you do that, reach out to me.

Podcast Host (48:43)

Do it. Check them out, guys. See you next time. I hope you guys are enjoying the show. Please don't forget to like and subscribe. It helps the show a lot with the algorithm. Thank you.