Erica (2:45)

He's a philosopher. Probably one of the best and most downloaded. I think a million downloads is what I'm seeing. Stefan has a website called freedomain.com. we'll put it in the chat. Freedomain.com and I want you to know that I've been aware, and we've. Many of us have been aware of Stefan for many, many years, and he was also in Mike Cernovich's documentary called Hoaxed, which we talked about the other day. He's had the pleasure of interviewing and being interviewed by Jordan Peterson, Jordan's funny cousin, Jesse Lee Peterson, Noam Chomsky, Dave Rubin, Dinesh d', Souza, Peter Schiff, David Friedman, Candace Owens, James o', Keefe, Stephen Crowder, Joe Rogan three times. And one of our favorites, Mike Cernovich. Okay, so he. If you haven't met him, you're going to meet him now. And what I want to say to anyone who was worried about having Stefan on because he was cancelled once for thinking freely and speaking freely is that's exactly why we love you. Because our speech is free, our thoughts are our own, and if they make you uncomfortable, open your mind a little more and enter the world of philosophy. And our special guest, Stefan Molyneux. Thank you for being here with us.

Stefan Molyneux (4:17)

Thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the invitation. It's great to be here.

Erica (4:20)

We sent out the link of your beautiful words and tribute to our beloved Scott Adams. And he obviously meant a lot to you. And I think it would be appropriate if we could just open thinking about Scott and maybe telling us how you first became aware of Scott and Scott with you and what his words and wisdom meant to you.

Stefan Molyneux (4:46)

Yes, I would be happy to. And it's funny because I got a little blurry eye just seeing him again. And so, yes, I'd be very happy to unpack my heart in tribute of Scott. I actually became aware of him when I was in graduate school. Of course, Dilbert was in the papers and I was an avid reader of. I don't know, I guess we can call them newspapers for those who are under 40. You'll have to ask your parents what they were, but they were great for lining birdcages the next day and getting the propaganda delivered on ink straight to your eyeballs. So I would read Dilbert and find him very amusing, of course. And then after graduate school, I got into the business world and very quickly became a pointy head manager. Actually became a chief technical officer at a software company that I co founded. And I remember some of my employees would occasionally read Dilbert in this somerstadt subversive way, like they were reading Solzhenitsyn under Stalin or something like that. And I pointed out that I actually had a Dilbert calendar in my office. I had Dilbert pictures on the wall and that actually got me a great degree of credibility. And as a manager, like I was on their side. I was one of them. And of course I rose up through the programming ranks and I actually at one point was going to grow my hair out a little and tuft it up because I was still dark back then. And I found that Scott's takedown of corporate fluff and language was a beautiful and philosophical thing. I always found it to be deeply philosophical, like a lot of absurdist thinkers. And Scott very much pointed out the absurdity of office life. The pomposity, the verbiage, the catchphrases, the fear of hr, you know, Catbirt being the sort of the id, the conscience that could speak its mind because he was safe being a cat. In other words, as long as you're a pet that's not domesticated, you can speak your mind. And all of the various characters really burned themselves into my brain. I remember being on a flight and Scott as well, because he was a hilarious cartoonist, like one of the best that ever was. And underappreciated, of course, as a comic writer because most people know him from the comic strip, but his books were staggeringly good. As a bit of a writer myself, I just admired just about every sentence. And when you write yourself, like if you, if you're a weightlifter and you see somebody lifting a great weight, you feel it like, you know, because you've tried to do that same thing. And seeing the leanness, economy, precision and focus of his prosecution and knowing as a writer that he probably sweated blood. You know, there's an old saying about writing. It's easy, you just, you just stare at a blank piece of paper until beads of blood form on your forehead. Knowing how much Scott sweated over every sentence, maybe it came easier to him, but I think he talked about how he worked very hard to make it precise and hilarious. I remember being on a business trip with my brother. Oh gosh, this would have been 35 years ago. And we were reading about individuals and it was hilarious. And we saw a reflection of all that we criticize in authority coming out from Scott in such a benevolent way. I mean, even the pointy haired boss has his own charms. And Scott's obvious affection for the characters was really a beautiful thing. That we can love people and also love the absurdity that is within them means that we don't have this sort of Ayn Rand perfectionist mentality of who we have affection for. And I just found him to be a wonderful creative thinker and kind of a Loki based chaos agent and sort of. Let me explain what that means, and I hope I won't monologue too long. But I came from sort of a strict boarding school, Anglo Saxon precision, semi military, gotta bounce a quarter off your bed. Everything has to be perfect. Which, you know, from a software standpoint, from a business process and coding standpoint, you need that kind of strictness. And then into this sort of regimented life of, you know, reveille and morning marches in my mind comes this absolute madcap chaos agent who smashes that in very, very healthy ways. It's like that old, you know, everybody needs to bleed. That's how the light gets in. And I found that Scott's absolute irreverence without rage because a lot of people who are irreverent, like you know, the Sex Pistols, you know, they have this kind of rage to them. But his absolute irreverence and his absolute skepticism absent rage and hostility was a beautiful thing. And it got me a lot more, you know, that bell curve. You need some order, you need some chaos in this life. And he dragged me from sort of that one valley all the way to the, I think where I sit now, which is a, hopefully a decent combination of that Aristotelian me. Not too much order because then you're, you know, like the 6,000 year Chinese society that never evolved and not too much chaos, otherwise you, you can't plan and execute on anything. And I think he kind of helped drag me to that middle point of sort of ordered creativity because I think he was an obviously ridiculously disciplined fellow. I mean, I would hear him talk about his day and I would just feel like, what have I done with my time? Getting up at 4 o' clock in the morning and voluminous notes for every show and organize this. And then I have this project and I have this project and I'm open this business and I'm just like, wow, I mean, it's a nice life if you only have to sleep four hours a night. Good for you. That's not my particular circadian rhythm, but just his productivity. And then, you know, reading about the restaurants that he opened and things that he did. Just a ridiculously skilled person in every venue and a genuine love for humanity. And one of the rare voices speaking of course about optimism for the future, which is so, so, so important. It's really impossible to fix the birth rate if people are just doom scrolling and waiting for the end of the world. Either from an eschatological Christian sense or a sort of economic libertarian sense. And what, what a welcome voice in the landscape. And of course I, I, as he got more and more sick, I Found it hard to watch, of course. I mean, everybody did that. That sort of goes without saying, because it is very, very hard to watch. You know, the gods of fate snuff out such a bright candle in such a difficult way. And his. But his courage in facing that. I did write to. To Scott and just say that one of the greatest things that he did was to help remove people's, excuse me, fear of death, because he had. You know, we all wonder how we're going to die, particularly I'm going to be 60 this year. So we all, you know, there's a lot more in the rear view than there is in the road ahead. And we all wonder how it's going to be. And everyone's like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I died in my sleep? Or, you know, maybe got hit by a bus unawares or something like that? But that's not how most of us are going to die. Most of us are going to die in a slow decline that we know long time ahead what's going to happen. And we all wonder how we're going to deal with it. And when we are emotionally invested and wrapped into someone's mind, which we are. You know, every time we meet on the Internet, our neurons merge together. It's like two galaxies coming together with this great effect on each other. And the fact that he faced his death with courage, with resolution, with integrity, and continued to work and continued to do good all the way up to his end has given me, you know, as much comfort as you can have in the face of death to realize that it can be an enriching experience. It can be something that gives you great focus, depth and power. And while it is certainly something not to relish and embrace, of course, I'm sure Scott never woke up and said, I'm glad of the richness that my illness has given me. But out of great wrongs, out of great, I won't say injustices, because it's an accidental thing, but out of great suffering can come great gold. And that given that there's gonna be suffering in life no matter what, and life ends in suffering, the fact that he has taught us how to wring gold out of sort of the descending black capes of death's advance has given me at least, and I think countless others, a great degree of courage and a lessening of the fear of the inevitable end. Having seen someone march heroically into. Into the final battle we all face, you know, spraying flaming arrows of wisdom in every direction has given me some real peace of Mind looking down the road. So, again, sorry for the long speech. I hope that makes some sense. But that's sort of what I got out of it. And then just seeing him again, it's like, it does make me emotional because.

Owen Gregorian (13:35)

Yeah, he totally makes sense.

Stefan Molyneux (13:37)

I was very honored to have talked to him a couple.

Erica (13:39)

Thank you.

Owen Gregorian (13:41)

I noticed a lot of parallels in your life and Scott's in terms of some of the things you've been through. I mean, you also have been talented in many domains. You had a huge following on your free domain and still do, I think. But, you know, you went through a bunch of cancellation. Probably one of the most severe, other than maybe Alex Jones, where like every single platform demonetized you and deplatformed you at the same time. And probably for similar reasons to what Scott was doing. Just kind of speaking an uncomfortable truth that inflamed a lot of people. How did you deal with that and what was that like for you going through that process?

Stefan Molyneux (14:21)

Well, Scott's perspective helped me a lot. I mean, the power of the reframe is almost thermonuclear. I mean, there's a phrase in Hamlet that ever since I was in theater school, sort of rotated around in my brain, right? There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. And I'm not quite that far, you know, that you can be out of an airplane and think that you're on a wonderful ride at Disneyland. I don't think that you can go quite that far. And I don't think that Scott would think that either. But the power of the reframe is really, really important. Oh, there's another phrase which is never underestimate what worst luck your bad luck has saved you from. So if you look at philosophers throughout history, and I would certainly put Scott in the category at least. I mean, he was such a multifaceted person, but definitely philosophical. Being a God's debris is a very philosophical work. So truth tellers are very much treading a tightrope, a line. This is all the way back to Socrates, of course. The holy trinity of the foundation of Western philosophy. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato were all persecuted by the state. Early scientists, Galileo and so on, are tortured and so. And Oscar Wilde said it memorably. If you're going to tell people the truth, you have to figure out how to make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you. Now, I was not blessed quite Scott Adams sense of humor. So I make a joke and it's a fantastic way to bring pin drop silence to the room. It's a gift. It's a gift. So I knew that there was this line that you have to walk in telling the truth. And I suppose it's something like therapy, where if you have some real selfish monster as a therapist, I'm sure you have to tell them that truth slowly over time, because if you tell them too much, they'll just rage, quit, and. And so on. So you kind of have to slowly knead the truth into people through their epidermis or something like that. Because very few people can look at, you know, sort of bold truth straight up without losing their minds or being hyper reactive. And people programmed that way, of course, to. To react to certain words and phrases in a hostile manner. So, you know, the rage of the mob is something that we all have to surf when you're trying to bring some truths to the shore. And one of the things that I thought about when I was canceled, which, as you say, was pretty brutal and extensive, but one of the things that I thought about was, how can this be beneficial to me and to the world? And also, how might it have been worse if I was not. In other words, if you are walking, you know, let's say you've got your headphones on and you're rocking out to some classic beats and you're about to walk in front of a bus and someone violently tackles you and throws you to the ground, oh, no, I've been assaulted. And then the bus swings by and you're like, I've been saved. I've been saved. Lord of birth. Thank you. I'm gonna name five children after you and, and three of my pets and a goldfish. So what worse luck? And of course, this was brought home pretty, pretty vividly last September, of course, when Charlie Kirk, another person that I worked with to some degree was, Was gunned down because in my speaking tours, I've had to face the same death threats and bomb threats and had to have security and so on. And then there was another fellow who was beaten to death in France. And so what worse luck has my bad luck saved me from? So I chose to view the deplatforming in, in two ways. Number one, and, and this was an effort of will because part of you is just like, oh, no, my life, you know, my Life's work off YouTube, which I had. I don't know, I think you had.

Owen Gregorian (18:09)

Almost a million followers at that point.

Stefan Molyneux (18:11)

Well, they've never let me get to a million because they have to send me a plaque. Apparently they would have to produce by selling their children's kidneys because they just did not want to give me that plaque. Which I understand, of course. But no, I had. Gosh, yeah. I've had almost a billion views and downloads, and it was sort of, you know, 15 years of life work now. I mean, I still have the videos and so on, so it's not like it's all erased. But it was definitely rough. And part of me was, you know, that there is that tendency, that undertone, to feel like a victim, to feel like I've been so hard done by, and how dare they? And you look at all your options and so on. But then I thought, okay, so what are the positives that can come out of this? And, you know, thinking of Scott to some degree. So I chose to take two positives. One was liberation. Liberation to pursue what I want. Because when your audience goes down by, say, 95%, you can say, oh, no, I've lost 95% of my audience. Which, you know, happened for a while. Or you can say, I'm now not playing stadiums. I can play jazz clubs, so I can do my jazz. Cause I've always wanted to do jazz, man. Cause people were seeing me for, like, the yesterday. All my trouble seemed so far. They were seeing me for the greatest hits, right? Which was fine. And I enjoyed that. Play the stadiums, play your three chords, and, you know, rock on, Cleveland. And I'm like, okay. So I've been delegated to jazz clubs, so I can do the jazz. So I started writing fiction, which I hadn't done for a long time. I started reading audiobooks of my old novels, which I absolutely loved to do, to sort of bring those from the draw and out into the world. I got to do more core philosophy, which I had done politics for a long time, which was, you know, very powerful. But again, that's where. That's where the lasers are on the forehead, right? So I got to do jazz. So that was a real benefit. I was liberated from stadiums, which I know sounds kind of funny, but if you've always wanted like. Like Sting, you know, when he was in the Police, he would do all of his stadium tours, and then he toured smaller places with his jazz bands for a while. And he seemed to like the jazz, so I liked the jazz. And that was number one, is it liberated me to do more of the core philosophy, like the nature of reality, metaphysics, the nature of knowledge, epistemology, and so on, which I've always really loved and which is going to have the longest lasting effect. Because I was thinking of people like Mark Twain and Mark Twain had for decades a newspaper column. Nobody gives the rats behind about his newspaper column anymore. But that's what people wanted in the time. But because he focused so much in the here and now, he had much less to offer the future because all of those events have come and gone. So I was liberated from the sort of hamster wheel of the here and now, which has great effect in the present, but almost no effect in the future, to doing more core philosophy, which has less effect in the present but much greater effect in the future. I mean, Plato, the philosopher ran for office in Syracuse and ended up being sold into slavery. Because that's what happens when philosophers get into politics. He was going to be a slave for the rest of his life. Except one of the people out there buying slaves happened to be one of his former students, who paid 400 drachma to liberate him and then returned him back to his life of philosophy. So politics is a bit of. A. Bit of a filthy game. And, well, I'm snow white and pure, you see. But anyway, so. So I was liberated from that. Got to do more core philosophy. That was number one. And number two was, you know, I was. I was knocked out of the way of an oncoming bus because a lot of people have hit pretty ugly ends who've been involved in politics throughout history. And of course we've seen that much more. So I think the de platforming liberated me to do the jazz I love, which has a greater effect in the future. And also it got me out of the way of oncoming bullets and other social and political and legal repercussions or whatever has been happening to people. So I really do. I know this sounds odd. I absolutely kiss the hem of the garment of the people who canceled me. It was a liberation and a reminder almost if the gods of future. But reaching back in time, they'd say, steph, lots of people can do politics, not so many people can do metaphysics and epistemology. Do your thing. Do the thing that's going to help us the most in the future, not the thing that changes people the most in the present. Because of course, interfering with power. 50 years after I'm dead, they're not going to bury me. They're not going to dig me up and do it again. Right? But if you interfere with the, you know, come not between the dragon and his wrath. Is that line from King Lear. If you come between political people and the goals, they have a lot more power to affect you than you have to affect them. But if you really work on core philosophy and morality that really changes the future. So it was a big plus, and I'm enormously thankful for it.

Erica (22:46)

Scott, same way I believe he felt liberated, and he felt he had the creativity shackles taken off of him. He didn't have to answer to the publishers of the papers anymore. And I think he had, like, a. A breath of fresh air once he realized, wait a minute. I mean, it was. I think it was who came to his house that day. They. They went, oh, it was Joel Pollock went to Scott's house the same day. Scott got canceled and was hesitant. Should I go? Like, is he going to be upset? You know, what do I do? And he's like, no, we're going. We're his friend. We're going to show up. And Scott just said to him, like, I'm good. I'm okay. Like, this is all good. I will say your cancellation, Stephane came when canceling became like the new thing, and it was like trying to behead somebody. You know, we're going to debank you de platform. You make you, you know, disappear from the world. And then I think by the time it got to Scott, he just realized, like, oh, I'm just gonna be even more free than I already was, and I'm just gonna relish it and run with it. I love that. Marcela, I think you had a question too, Stephan, go ahead.

Stefan Molyneux (23:57)

Oh, sorry. I just want to mention very briefly that maybe there was a bit of a trade. So maybe watching me be deplatformed and still have a great time gave Scott less fear of deplatforming. Watching him die and. And be courageous with it. So obviously I get the much better end of the deal. But maybe there was that bit of.

Erica (24:14)

A reciprocity, if you will.

Marcella (24:18)

It's an honor, Stefan, to talk to you. I'm an Ayn Rand objectivist, so that's where I come from. And you're a great philosopher, and I wanted to know who was your favorite philosopher and why.

Stefan Molyneux (24:33)

Oh, Ayn Rand. Yeah, without a doubt. Oh, yeah. Led me to Aristotle and the.

Marcella (24:38)

Do you want me to be in love with you?

Erica (24:40)

That's a great answer.

Stefan Molyneux (24:41)

Reading the Fountainhead for, like, the fourth time at the moment, because I get something new from it every time I read it, so. Oh, yeah, no, Ayn Rand, without a doubt, was the one. You know, it's funny that there's a. The woman who taught Helen Keller after she taught Helen Keller, who was, of course blind, deaf, and mute, and she taught her language, tracing things on her hands. A great movie about this. And people asked Helen Keller, like, what was it like before you had language? And she said, you know, just a chaos of sensations and blurs and static and there was everything with scraps and colors and thoughts and it was all. And for me, prior to philosophy, I mean, that was me. I mean, morally speaking, I couldn't fully accept the religious training that I got quite intensively growing up, because I could very much see that religion, Christianity, was not in the position to stop the evils that were accumulating in the world. And so I had to look for something else. And then a friend of mine was really into the band Rush. The drummer from the band Rush was really into Ayn Rand. And he's like, hey, man, you should read this book. And I just had this vague sense of like, ah, some sort of science fiction, you know, woman. A woman who wrote science fiction. So that was sort of unusual because he handed me Atlas Shrugged. But I thought, well, that's. That's a bit of a doorstop. Maybe I'll. Maybe I'll try ordering a slightly smaller meal first. And yeah, I. I read. I read the Fountainhead and it just. I mean, it just hit me like an absolute ton of bricks. Then, of course, I plowed into Atlas Shrugged, we the living night of January 16, and Anthem and all of her nonfiction work. And I was just like, voracious, voracious. And the world came into focus. The. My mind, which had been spinning in a void, hit the ground and had traction. Because connecting the mind to reality is foundational for productivity. Your mind is there to change things in the world. It is not there to amuse itself. It is not there to preen itself or to show off to itself or to languish in its own inner sensations. Those are fine and intimate emergencies. But you've gotta actually get out there and do things in the world. But you have to know that what you're doing in the world is good. Not exactly. It seems right. It has approval. Heaven help you if you have approval these days. Right? But the purpose is to actually do things in the world. But in order to have confidence and not be a psychopath. Psychopaths have constant. Have confidence. That's. Have confidence. Because they're narcissists and nobody else exists for them, so there's nobody to oppose them. But if you have a conscience, you. You don't want it to tell you after the fact that you've done wrong. You need to know ahead of time, with reasonable assurances that what you're going to do is going to be good in the world, and through objectivism. And then, you know, to some degree, spiced up with Aristotelianism. Because Ayn Rand, of course, was a huge fan of Aristotle. She named the three books in Atlas Shrugged after the three laws of logic. So it gave me attraction in the world. It gave me a clarifying way to organize my thoughts and to look for contradictions and inconsistencies. And it gave me reasonable assurances. It can never be 100%, but reasonable assurances that what I was saying, what I was doing in the world would actually be good, rather than blindfoldly throwing a ball and hoping you hit a target. You may, but it's purely accidental and you can't reproduce it. So she gave me some reproducible skill in predicting the effect, the moral effects of my actions. And then, sadly, it took me an embarrassingly long time to actually bring the philosophy into every one of my personal relationships. And after that, it was. It was good because, you know, there's the world, right? And there's the people you grew up with and the people you're friends with in high school and your family and, you know, not. Not many of them come along that journey of reason and virtue and integrity.

Owen Gregorian (28:27)

Sorry, go ahead, Marcel.

Marcella (28:30)

It's funny that you pick Ayn Rand because she was mostly canceled the whole. Her entire life because she's still not considered like a sophisticated philosopher in philosophy, in universities. You know, when I would bring her up in my philosophy classes, the. The professor would be like, no. So you, you. It goes back to the theme of being canceled and being in this rogue kind of sense, where you are, like, outside of society in a way. And that kind of brings in, like, Scott being canceled, you being canceled and feeling that, um, it's just interesting to me.

Stefan Molyneux (29:10)

Well, of course, academia has as its pinnacle Michel Foucault.

Erica (29:14)

Yes.

Stefan Molyneux (29:15)

And now Michel Foucault, the most skin crawlingly repulsive. Like, if Ayn Rand would write him as a villain, people would say, oh, come on. I mean, Ellsworth 2E was bad enough. Michel Foucault, I mean, he was a completely void of any virtue. Absolutely hedonistically, narcissistic, disease spreader, drug addict, BDSM fetishist. Who's the accusations? I won't even get into them here. But, but even the things that aren't accusations and are validated is that he was one of the most skin crawlingly repulsive human beings to crawl the face of God's green earth. And he is the most cited Thinker and, and, and it's, it's wild. Of course, all the French intellectuals who wanted to lower the age of consent to about four minutes after birth. I mean, just absolutely repulsive human beings. And these are the people. And you can'. You can't have both. You can't just go north and south at the same time. No problem. You can't have these absolutely repulsive, hideous human beings at the pinnacle of your moral and intellectual edifices and then also bring in that smoky voiced Russian goddess of reason known as Ayn Rand and have the two not duke it out to the death.

Erica (30:26)

Oh my gosh.

Owen Gregorian (30:30)

I also see a parallel with you and Scott just being sort of very rationally focused in terms of, you know, you think of yourselves as very rational people and maybe more rational than average. And Scott seemed to go in this other direction with hypnotism and persuasion and essentially coming to the conclusion that people are not rational 90% of the time. And that includes him and you and me and everybody. And so he seemed to move in this other direction of kind of trying to appeal more emotionally or, you know, with visual language and different things. And I guess my perception of you is that you went the other direction in terms of sticking to the rational side. I don't know if that's true or not, but I wanted to see what you had to say about that and maybe how you approach persuasion.

Stefan Molyneux (31:15)

Scott bugged the ever living crap out of me about that. He really did. He really did. Because here I was with all of my lovely crystalline syllogistical theories that all written out and validated and logic trained creed and all that kind of stuff. And Scott was out there communicating with people in a sort of very effective metaphorical and florid language and understanding persuasion. And he bugged the living crap out of me as usual, because he was kind of right. I mean, it's all very well to have these big theories, but if you can't get them out there into the world again, that's sort of the mind that's suspending but not hitting the tarmac and getting somewhere. So in watching Scott, of course, emotional persuasion analogies and also, you know, you kind of have to be a reasonable and happy person in order to sell, you know, the classical Socratic formula. Now reason equals virtue equals happiness. I think that comes out of Ayn Rand as well. And so yeah, he bugged me because I'm like, oh, who cares about hypnotism? I'm right. Who cares about convincing people I, I don't have to do anything but be right. And it's like you kind of do, though. You kind of do. It's, it's because I was in marketing as well. So I originally built software products and then I ended up out in the world selling them. And it took me an embarrassingly large amount of time to say, huh, great. Software products, no marketing. What happens to those? Exactly. Right. So, yes, he was very, very keen in his analysis. Sorry, keen. I mean, sort of razor sharp in his analysis of persuasion. And I came, you know, he predicted Trump's win, as did I, but he came from it from a persuasion standpoint, and I came from it from another direction. And of course, without the persuasion, without the ability to engagingly and enjoyably communicate to people, it's like you can write the greatest song, but if you only play it in your own toilet, it ain't getting to number one.

Erica (33:10)

What direction did you come from with Trump?

Stefan Molyneux (33:15)

Oh, I mean, I just knew that the American population was desperate to have borders and to have less immigration and that when you are in academia and you're in the media, you are in a tidal wave that feels like it's not moving because it's moving so rapidly. You're in it like, you know, you think of little plankton in a tidal wave. Do they even really know that there's a tidal wave until it hits? Right. A tsunami. And so, because Scott and I didn't come out of academia, I mean, I did a graduate degree, but I didn't stay in academia. We, we could see from the outside the tsunami of the, the woke stuff, the left wing stuff, the, the really centralized planning stuff, the anti white stuff and all of that. We could see all of that being outside and the view from inside was like, you know, it's like the fish, you know, the old thing. Well, water. What water? You know, it's lukewarm, you can't feel it. And so we could see a momentum and a direction and a fear in the general population that we shared, I think, because we were outside the sort of bubble, but we were seeing the direction of momentum. So we could see that Trump was standing before that saying, you know, like Gandalf on the bridge, like, it shall not pass. And so we could see that. I think, I don't wanna speak for Scott, but I could certainly see that mechanism. And people in the media and people in politics and people in the arts, I mean, and in academia, they couldn't because they didn't understand what it was like from outside the tsunami, so to speak.

Erica (34:39)

So I, I'M the one on here. That's that everybody knows. It's always like, please help me stay calm. I worry about the world as most people do. And, you know, Scott would always talk about, you know, don't worry about these things. You know, it's a slow moving disaster, and we're very good at seeing the disaster ahead of us and being able to pivot personally with the things I'm seeing. Like, especially after watching the amazing speech that Rubio gave and the disastrous responses from people like aoc, I feel like we aren't slowing the ship fast enough, especially when we have politicians who are in another country trashing the country they're supposed to represent. Same with the. Some of the Olympians. And it's become like the thing to be doing. So help me and the people on here like me, who worry I'm like an Italian grandmother. So what, what do we do collectively? Like, what can you prescribe to us to help us stop this ship from hitting the iceberg? That looks like we're gonna. To me, it looks like, you know, we lost borders for a long time. It's going to take a very long time to remove these people. You know, when. When bad people leave one country and come to another country, they're still bad people. So now we're being overrun with gangs from all over the place. And, well, we know, we know what's happening. So what do we do? Because I am very worried, Stefan. I'm very worried about our country and I'm worried about the world because how many times do people say, like, I'll just leave. I'll just move. Really? Where are you going? Like, where are you going? So what do we do?

Stefan Molyneux (36:33)

Right. Well, I mean, for over 20 years, I've been talking about parenting, and I know that parenting is a slow. Is a slow process. Right. Obviously, I think most of us here, well, we would all understand that. So. PeacefulParenting.com is a free book on the philosophy of parenting. And that has produced, of course, now I've been talking about it for over 20 years. So some of the people I talked about very early on, their children are now adults. My daughter is going to be 18 this year. So to. To raise children in a peaceful, negotiated and rational fashion makes them completely immune to political temptations, because politics is about forcing people to do stuff. And if you raise children with reason, with evidence, and with negotiation, then they don't have the urge to force people to do stuff. And they are kind of immune to other people forcing them to try to do stuff as A whole, so there's a whole mindset thing that you can do about that. I do understand it's, you know, perhaps a little late in the game. You know, plant a tree because you're looking for some shade that afternoon is not necessarily the best approach, but I would certainly keep, keep focusing on that. And even people who have teenage children can change their parenting approaches. So the philosophy of parenting is one of the things that I've really worked hard to add as value as a thinker, because philosophers have talked about everything under the sun except, you know, the most moral mission that every human being is ever involved in, which is raising children. That's the most moral thing. And I think philosophers have been. Well, a lot of them are, I won't say, but a lot of them were not, not, not overly blessed with the ability to charm women and, and so on. And so they ended up, a lot of them single, a lot of them isolated. So they didn't really talk that much about parenting, which I think was a real shame, because that could have changed the world quite a bit. So you, to me, it may not.

Owen Gregorian (38:21)

Have been as much of a problem back then, because back then the fertility.

Stefan Molyneux (38:24)

Rate dried, brought to life in your personal relationships, which means if people are, you know, super pro political and want you thrown in prison for, like, they, they, well, we should have hate speech laws. Okay, well, then you want to throw people in prison for legal speech or for speech that is not incitement to violence or, you know, that kind of stuff. It's not direct threats. And so recognize that when people want to use the power of the state against you, they're kind of enemies. Now you can take some time to alert them to this, to wake them up to this, because, you know, it's like, you don't want to wake someone up by going, you want to wake someone up a little gently, you know, stroke their arm a little, wake them up. But at some point, they do have a responsibility to wake up. And people who are addicted to using the power of the state to get their way will tear apart the world and you can end up in a gulag. So if they get their way. So you have to really have that line. After a certain amount of communication and moral instruction, you have to have that line where you say, no, no, no, this is not real. This is not virtuous. This is not good. I call it the against me argument. Like, you support the use of violence against me, against me, and you got to wake people up to that. Now if they're like, oh, My gosh, I'm against violence. I'm so sorry. You're right, you're right, you're right. But if they're like, well, yes, I do and I'm happy about it. It's like, okay, you know, like hit the eject button and get out. I mean, the left is very good at this and we need to learn from the left because they do this very well. They are intolerant of people who disagree with their views. I wouldn't say that. I would say I would be. I mean, I am intolerant of people who want to use violence against me for peaceful speech and peaceful actions. So you got to bring these things to life in your actual relationships. And then the plus of that, and you know what is the opposite of worry, is not comfort, it's love. Because if you have adversity and you have people you love and who love you, then the adversity which is inevitable in life diminishes enormously, right? I mean, whenever you have to move, you don't do it alone, right? You don't try and get some giant couch down a spiral staircase with someone yelling pivot at you. You hire people because, you know, heavy loads is only lightened with good companions. And if you live, you know, with that kind of virtue, with that kind of integrity, with that kind of directness, and you shave off the bad people from around you because, you know, bad corrupt people act as a moat to keep the good people away, you end up sealed in this chamber of mal intent. And so if you have love, which is only possible through virtue, love is our response to virtue and nothing else. If you have that and you have love, you know, then you can bear almost anything with grace and the inevitable negatives that occur in life, either politically or personally or health wise or whatever, you have someone in your corner who genuinely loves you, you genuinely love them. You have people in your life where you have this shared strength of commingled affections, that's about as good as you can get. Yes, you can talk to people about politics and for sure I still do that from time to time. But if you aim at virtue, then you have the capacity to love and be loved in a very deep and meaningful way and permanent way. I say this as a man who's been married for 20 years. Oh, I should know this. No, I'm a man, I don't need to know this. 23 years, something like that. So if you have that, then you reduce your worry. And also your values have a purpose and reward. Because one of the things that Scott was talking about was, you know, it's difficult to be honest. It's difficult. But there's rewards on the other side of it as a good conscience and better relationships and so on. And so we as individuals, we can't just go out there and change the world in the way that we want, which is good, because if we could do that, evil people could do it and they have often a higher incentive. So it's good that we can't do that. But we can influence people as much as humanly possible in the most positive direction. That's the best chance we have of saving the world. If you don't want to get lung cancer, don't smoke. You won't get lung cancer. Well, no, but it means that you have a much lower chance and that we enforce and spread virtue in our personal lives. The more we challenge people's anti rationality and bigotry, the better. And that's really all we can do. And I will say this sorry just to close off because I was kind of out in the wilderness for like a half decade. When I came back, my, my ex account got reinstated. When I came back to social media, holy crapola. It was a completely different planet. Stuff was absolutely appalling, shocking. You know, people's heads would explode. It's like, it's common discourse now. I mean it's, it's wild. It's what. See, all I had to do was leave and everything. That's the causality. I just had to step out of the room and everybody knows how to cha cha cha. And so the, the, if you see this change slowly, you don't notice it as much. You know, like if your friend has lost 50 pounds, they lost it over time and it's a little bit. But then if you haven't seen them for a while and you see them, it's like, oh my God, this is crazy different and discourse that is going on now. I mean, people are routinely chatting about topics that I would have been like shaky hand typing, you know, six years ago. And like you said, the Rubio speeches are anti white racism, like iq, voluntary family relations, even with parents. Like all of this stuff is, is, is talked about like it ain't no thing. And it's like it kind of was.

Erica (43:54)

It was, you know, this is like.

Stefan Molyneux (43:56)

Galileo coming forward 400 years. I'm like, oh everyone, I should do a bad Italian. I know. Everybody does. I say that, that, that everybody does say that the earth goes around the sun and everybody knows that. And it's like, yeah, everybody accepts that. It's like I got the tortured for, you know, like this is wild. What has changed? And that level of progress has never before been achieved in human history where the Overton Window is like a bullet train these days. And that's incredible because, you know, this is an old Marxist saying, like there, there are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. And that these last couple of years have just been, you know, meltingly like you feel like one of these.

Erica (44:37)

Yes.

Stefan Molyneux (44:37)

These astronauts going through gravity by being whipped around like your skin is peeling back from your eyeballs. And it's like, how can things have changed so much? All I had to do was leave. And everyone becomes perfect at that truth. It's incredible.

Owen Gregorian (44:51)

How do you look at the fertility crisis? Because that's still a huge problem in the us. I haven't seen much of a turnaround here and it's even worse in many other countries around the world. What do you think needs to still change to get people to want to have more kids?

Stefan Molyneux (45:04)

Well, there's very complicated, sophisticated answers. But what I would say. Oh, and we get timing.

Scott Adams (45:13)

What's the time?

Stefan Molyneux (45:13)

Oh no, we got a little bit of time.

Erica (45:16)

No, I was saying. So the phones have to go away for families to grow. I think all the doom scrolling.

Stefan Molyneux (45:22)

Yeah. So whatever the problem is in society the solution is always less violence, less initiation of the use of force. So of course the domestic population is being taxed to subsidize the non domestic population to have a lot of kids. This is happening all across the West. It really is one of the most sinister things that I've ever seen because I'm old enough to remember when all of the western women were said you can't have children, that the planet, you can't have children. It's zpg. Zero population growth. It's so bad for the environment, it's going to kill the planet. You can't have children. And now it's like, oh, sorry, there aren't enough children. We need to import everyone on the planet. And it's like that is a brutal, sinister pivot that's not really being talked about as much as it is. And also it's so painful for women to, to think that they got talked out of having children because it's kind of a satanic lure. You know, dating and finding yourself and travel is way more fun than getting up for the third time to feed a baby. You know, just do that, you know. So I think that that sort of devilish temptation of you Know a lot of education, a lot of. Because education is. Is pretty easy. I mean, I was in university. I was kind of shocked at like, what, 10 hours of classes a week? Are you kidding me? What am I supposed to do? I can only get so good at hacky sack, man. So whatever the solution is, is less violence. We need less coercive transfer of wealth from the productive to the unproductive. Because in the past, smarter people had more kids. Because smarter people generally made more money, they could afford to have more kids. Smarter people generally had more kids, which, you know, did a good thing to raise the IQ of the world as a whole. Now quite the reverse is happening. Women in particular with more education, women in. And I would say education in very, very loose quotes, right? And so less subsidies for higher education. Women and men both need to be treated equal in the workplace. No quotas for women, nothing like that. And then things will begin to change. You need fewer people pouring into the country because then it's going to bring down the price of housing, because that's how it's supposed to go. You've got a baby boom. You build all this infrastructure, then there's less, fewer babies in the future, which means the price of everything supposed to come down, which encourages people to have more children. But that's all being buoyed up by a variety of government programs and policies of which immigrants. Immigration is a key one to buoy up the value of the boomer's house, to give them the illusion that they haven't been robbed blind by Social Security and the decoupling of fiat currency from any hard assets. So it's all. If you want to know the real price of American currency, just look at it. Relative to Bitcoin, it's dropped like 99.99% in 15 years. 40% of all the currency ever created in America was created over the last couple of years. I mean, there's nothing there but this endless roll of toilet paper with a president's face on it. But you got to give people the illusion of value. So you've got to art stimulate demand for housing in particular with immigration and things like that, and restricting the building of new housing. So housing prices have to come down. Wages need to increase. They've stagnated since the 1970s, since 71, when Nixon took America off the gold standard, wages have stagnated. And the American economy, unfortunately, and this is true of most Western economies, it's largely illusion propped up by propaganda, debt and force, because you have to use fiat currency to pay your Tax bills. So, yeah, the solution to that is less force, less compulsion, less forced income transfers, less forced hiring, less forced student loans. And it would be great, of course, if you could discharge your student loans in bankruptcy. That would be just delightful. And if the universities would be off the hook and then they wouldn't dangle all of this nonsense in front of people to financially enslave them for the rest of their lives in return for having them pay for their own Marxist indoctrination that has them be completely terrible employees. Okay, that's my answer.

Erica (49:01)

So would you agree that. So I'm on. I'm on the kick. Kind of like the Mike Rowe kick of forget college, you know, learn a trade, build your family. You know, unless you. Unless you're going to school for something specific, like you want to be a doctor or whatever. But, you know, why come out in debt with a job you're not going to find in whatever it is that you studied? I think to keep this country going, we need tradespeople now. Everybody wants to be a tick tocker. Nobody knows how to lay a brick or do electric anymore. I mean, everyone that works on our house and our friends houses are, you know, my age and older. And I'm like, oh, my God, we got to get everything done before we all die because nobody will be left to fix our air conditioning. You know, So I just feel like. And I also feel like maybe if people do focus on a trade, you're younger, maybe you come out of college. I mean, you come out of high school and you take an apprenticeship with a trades person and you learn a skill and a trade that you can take with you for the rest of your life and you start building your family faster instead of waiting of going through college and coming out in debt and definitely not being able to buy a home is one solution I feel like could happen with the younger generation.

Stefan Molyneux (50:15)

I think that's certainly true. And, um, I'm. I'm so committed to being a tiktoker that I will learn those cat's eye Korean TikTok dances. I will be pretty. Maybe I can charge people to turn it off.

Erica (50:27)

I actually would pay to see that.

Stefan Molyneux (50:29)

In a leotard doing cat's eye dances. I, you know, I could probably do them once. Just once.

Erica (50:34)

Once. Yeah.

Stefan Molyneux (50:35)

Carried off.

Owen Gregorian (50:36)

Sergio could probably make some AI version for you.

Stefan Molyneux (50:38)

Yeah, no, that's cheating. So the trades, yeah, I think that's fine. But I think people should very much look into entrepreneurship. You know, generally our history was entrepreneurship. You say, oh, I'm a Smith in some villages, like, yeah, but you still had to go out and sell your services. And so we kind of were petty bourgeois or entrepreneurship. So sit down with friends. You know, everyone's getting together and it's like, oh, let's play Fortnite. Okay, fine, play some Fortnite. But also sit together and say, hey, if somebody had a gun to our head and we had to make, you know, $10,000 in two months, what would we do? And just put that forward as an absolute. You know, they got elephants over the mountains. Our ancestors survived, you know, entire winters on three sardines. You know, you can do unbelievable things if you make the priority high enough. And of course, a lot of modern society is about distracting you from self fulfilling and productive priorities. So yeah, sit down with your friends and say, okay, let's say that your dog was kidnapped and we had to come up with $10,000 ransom in a month. What would we do? And just brainstorm about things and get your skills together, get that jigsaw puzzle together to stop being able to make money. Because once you become an entrepreneur, I mean, I've been, I had my corporate jobs, but I've been doing entrepreneurship for, I don't know, 25 years or more. And really there's no substitute. And so people should be getting together, particularly young people should be getting together with their friends and say, what could we do? Come on, let's, let's just, let's just whiteboard it. Blue sky it. No idea is wrong, no idea is too bad. Except only fans. So people should be really sitting there saying, rather than going on this kind of silly train track of other people's expectations and on the conveyor belt that society leads you towards, which just goes off a fiscal cliff, you know, jump the tracks and figure out what you can do on your own. I mean, when I was a teenager, I was putting up little, little signs in bus stops saying, I'll do your typing for you. Because I was a pretty good typist from writing all of that, just anything to just figure out how you can make some money. The opportunities that are available now online to do stuff, to make money is stagger. Never, ever put a ceiling on your ambitions. It's a kind of vanity to say, I can only go so far. Because you don't know what is lurking in your unconscious that could be incredibly productive. The unconscious mind has been clocked at 8,000 times faster than the conscious mind. Unleash all of that by removing any ceiling on your abilities and just figure out what you can do. Because if you're willing to think hard and take risks, you're already ahead of 99% of the people. And it's very hard to fail.

Scott Adams (53:11)

Yeah.

Owen Gregorian (53:11)

And a lot of people are worried about AI taking away all the jobs. But I look at it also as a huge enabler for entrepreneurship because to whatever extent it is going to take away people's jobs, it also means as an entrepreneur, you can do a lot more and maybe have a profitable business that wouldn't have been profitable 10 years ago.

Stefan Molyneux (53:28)

And there'll always be people, boomers, who really get AI and my mother referring to her CD player as a gramophone for. For many years. So there will be boomers who will, like, don't really get AI, don't understand it. You can just use it to sell stuff to them.

Erica (53:44)

I love that gramophone. Go ahead, Marcella.

Marcella (53:47)

I wanted to ask you about your projects coming up in next month. I think you're having a debate at war Word war debate.

Stefan Molyneux (53:58)

Word war debate. Yeah. It's going to be on April 11th in Atlantic City. I'm taking a risk, but I'm gonna go out. I think we're gonna be debating the nature of truth and knowledge, which is juicy, juicy, meaty stuff and really, really essential to get that rubber on the road of the mind. So we'll be doing that. I recently was in studio with Sam Hyde and we did a really. I've never been on quite, quite a ride like that. And that, that, that man makes Scott looked like early me in terms of chaos agent. So. But we did some really, really great, great conversations and, and great debates. So I think that's coming out shortly. And so, yeah, I'm sort of. I've been a studio band for a while, but I'm sort of back out on the road a little bit because I really, I really do love working with an audience. I love chatting with people. And so we're going to try and do sort of a dinner with people and all of that.

Erica (54:50)

So I might have to come to Atlantic City to see you.

Stefan Molyneux (54:54)

Oh, I would love to, you know, shake hands and swap mines. So I think that would be great. So, yes, that's going to be going on at Atlantic City. Wordward.com is the place to go. I don't think the tickets quite available yet, but I think they're coming out soon.

Erica (55:07)

We'll drop all of that for you after the show in the chat. And I also want to remind people that you can get Peaceful Parenting. It's a book that's free, right Stefan.

Stefan Molyneux (55:17)

Book is free, and there's also an AI there that's been trained on all my parenting material. If you have specific questions, you can check out. The AI channel is peacefulparenting.com who doesn't.

Erica (55:26)

Want all the help they can get. Peacefulparenting.com and Stefan's website is free domain.com we're going to put everything in there. And that's also his Twitter handle is free domain. Or you could put Stefan Molyneux. We'll put everything in there for you guys. And you can go back to his website and look at all the interviews and talks. And it's a great website, Stefan. It's, it's very informative.

Owen Gregorian (55:50)

So you have a locals community too, is right.

Erica (55:53)

Freedomain locals.com so we're on locals also. This is where I try to, like, wrangle you in to, to commit to all sorts of things. 1. Would you come back with us again?

Stefan Molyneux (56:05)

Absolutely. I mean, if you guys find it of value for me to chatterbox my way through your hour, I'm very happy to come back.

Erica (56:12)

We crave your kind of thinking and it's so amazing. You might hear my cat with dementia meowing in the background. So we totally consc.

Stefan Molyneux (56:23)

I'm very glad that my conscience is not meowing at me, because that would be tricky.

Erica (56:26)

It's just Stella. And also maybe we could do something on Locals, like a longer form Q and A where we can actually take questions at Scott's Locals. And that would be amazing because there's so many questions happening for you and just not enough time, obviously, today. So I just want to see like, oh, and do you want to wrap up with another question or. Marcela, we want to use every minute we have. We have three minutes.

Owen Gregorian (56:56)

Marcella, do you have anything else?

Marcella (56:59)

Oh, I have all sorts of stuff. I'm just, I, I'm so glad you're here. I, I, I adore you and I wanted to know what your thoughts are on AI. I think that's another realm that I'm not sure how, what your thoughts are on that.

Stefan Molyneux (57:21)

Yeah. So AI will replace people who don't think. So we've got to get people to start thinking because AI is just a word guesser. I've done whole presentations and interviews on AI and as a coder myself for many years, I think I understand the basic, basic principles. So AI turns a computer into an unthinking human being who just repeats slogans and navigates the way through the most common and approved sentence formats. So if you're an NPC then you can be replaced by AI So you need to start thinking from first principles, creatively and originally. Then you can't be replaced if you are just repeating the general propaganda. And I don't mean to criticize or bug anyone about that. That's kind of how we all start. I did it. And we all start that way. But we all got to kind of bust out of that egg of solipsistic propaganda and get out there and really think in the world. But the best way to protect yourself against the ravages of AI is to start to think from first principles. I've got a whole book called Essential Philosophy. Essential philosophy dot com. It's another free book that's got Art of the Argument, Art of the argument dot com. Sort of teach people how to think from first principles. And so if you're scared of AI, AI is a wonderful opportunity to stimulate you into breaking out of propaganda. Because that's all AI is, is just repeating what everyone has said before. As Ayn Rand would say, social metaphysician, a second hander, right? Don't be just a reflection of other people's thoughts. And so AI is like the camera. You don't see people painting portraits that much anymore because just take a picture, right? So AI just reproduces what is. You have to be a more imaginative artist. You have to be able to think for yourself and create for yourself. And then the more that you think and create, the more you can wind into AI itself. I mean, AI has hoovered up all of my books and therefore I've had some adjustment to AI itself. But there is, there is no defense save clarity and originality because everything that is repetitive is going to be automated.

Erica (59:19)

Luckily, we have people like Scott. We have hundreds of hours. We have Stefan, who's got a treasure trove of information. He will be back. Everybody loves you. They've enjoyed this so much. So have we. I can't thank you enough. I hope you found this enjoyable. And you guys, we will post the show. I'll post it on my ex feed and you guys, in the comments below, I'll make sure I tag Stefan in there. Tell him how much you loved him today, what your favorite things were, and be sure to follow him and subscribe to everything. And we'll be back on again. Everybody said yes. Please make him a repeat guest. So we would love that.

Stefan Molyneux (60:02)

And just final slim and just big hugs to everyone. I said this before the show, but you know, we're all dealing with this loss, you guys, much more of course, than I am being so close to him. And just big virtual hugs to everyone for dealing with this loss. We should all live a life as meaningful as to be mourned by millions. And that is the greatest testament to everything that Scott did. And thank you guys so much for keeping this conversation running, because for the conversation to die with Scott would be the final nail in the coffin that we don't need.

Erica (60:31)

Amen to that. Let's have a closing sip, you guys. Thank you, Shelly, for letting us continue this. And please, a closing sip to Scott. As he always said, be useful. And we love you guys, and we'll see you tomorrow. To Scott.

Stefan Molyneux (60:46)

Bye.

Erica (60:52)

Bye, guys.

Stefan Molyneux (60:53)

Bye.