Going and asking for a government is known for using these kind of regulations.
Governments that like power and control very very dangerous. And you know that if
the government got their hands on AIA technology, it's much more likely they would
do harm than any private industry would do. What's your advice for someone who's
young and motivated and wants to change the world and do something good for society,
Well, stop wanting to want to do something good for society. Let's
start with a big question. What makes us different from all the animals out
there? Well, what makes us difference to our capacity to reason, our
capacity to abstract for abstract thought. The fact is that animals are perceptual beings.
They can they can see, and they can respond, but they cannot
conceptualize, They cannot generalize, they cannot predict the future, they cannot predict
different options, they can't weigh those different options. They can't change their environment
in any significant ways. You know, with exception of maybe beavers and birds
who create nests. You know, human beings built skyscrapers and we build computers
and we can actually change And maybe what's behind much of that or essential features
the fact that human beings have free will and animals do not. Human beings
have the capacity to choose, you know, to use their reason, to
use their thinking capacity, to use their rational mind or not. And animals
just despond stimuli based on based on programming that is embedded in their in their
genetic code. So you reject the evolutionary psychology argument that humans just evolved to
be in a particular bubble and cannot explain or understand certain things that are beyond
their capabilities. No, I mean I don't know what human beings cannot explain
or understand. Every time somebody is assumed that we cannot know something, it
turns out that later behind we can. I don't think that any metaphysical barriers
for us to be able to understand things. I've reject a lot of the
evolutionary psychology. I don't reject evolution. So there's no question that there are
elements in the structure of our brain and the way we are you know,
the way we are designed in as not designed, but the way we are
biologically constructed and exist is determined by by evolutionary processes. The the great innovation
that the evolution in a sense has with human beings is that it didn't have
to design the entire code. It didn't have to have all the elements of
the code in so, uh, you know, we are we are self
programming beings, so we can actually design our own code. And that's a
huge for survival perspective, a huge benefit because if our environment changes, then
we just need to figure out how to survive in a new environment. We
don't have to wait multiple generations they evolve, you know, genetic answers or
not to evolve in therefore go extinct. We can actually solve problems, we
can figure it out, and we can survive in a variety of different environments.
So as the environment changes. So it's a it's a massive leap forward
in from a volutionary perspective where the coding is done through reason, by by
the rational being in response to changing environment, in response to an environment that
now the human beings can actually change for their own benefit. A lot of
people reject the notion of God, but stick with the morality that comes with
religion. So with Christianity, it is obviously that of altruism and self sacrifice.
Quite a few people who are atheists still seemed to be taking the morality
of Christianity. Seriously, it's almost like rejecting God is the easy part,
but rejecting moral the morality takes more effort. Why do you think that is?
Why is it difficult to accept the morality of selfishness? I mean partially
because the Christians and the philosophers that have been influenced so much by Christianity have
been so effective in setting both in articulating in the case for what they want
for this morality, but more importantly in making it seem like there is no
alternative, right, any any alternative is just dismissed offhand. It's not even
considered, it's not even really thought through. So they position the world as
you can either be an altruist which means self sacrifice, which means you know,
living for the sake of others, or you're a lying, cheating,
stealing s O B. And there's really no alternative, and they can comprehend
an alternative beyond that. And they've conditioned our thinking to think of the other
when it comes to morality. Our mind automatically goes through, well, how
to treat other people? What about other people? So it's very hard for
people to conceive of an alternative to run it through. And then the other
thing they've been very good at is this is, you know, in a
sense, separating morality from reason, separating morality from morality from reality and from
values. Uh well, and from and from nature, and from from our
own biology, and from from the reality around us an ability to think rationally.
So that where do you get one morality? Well, if you can't
get it from reason, then oh well then we can't get over a revelation
because we're not mistakes. Well when our religious maybe we still are mistakes of
Plato certainly gets it from revelation, even though he's not religious in a conventional
sense, but he's still a mystic. So they still find different kind of
mystical ways in which to derive their uh, their morality. Or well,
it's just from society. You know, it's worked so far for humanity.
Maybe maybe maybe that's why it's good. You know, we've we've come this
far. Let's just stick with the current morality or take their the Christian morality
and tweak it a little bit, make it a little less offensive, and
we can live with that. You know. Somebody like uh, you know,
some of them try to come up with a reasoned approach the morality based
on reason. But but they they, for whatever reason, they limit themselves
to a rational explanation for the Christian morality from morality of altruism. They can't
conceive eva what Ryan's geniuses that she starts from scratch, that she says,
why do we need morality? What's it for? And she doesn't just assume
morality is what people say it is. She doesn't assume morality is how people
behave, how quote good people behave. She doesn't. She asks the fundamental
question, what do we need it for? Why do we need it?
What is it? And she she builds from there, and therefore she can
completely reconceive and or think of completely new approaches because she's not hemmed in by,
you know, by the conventional view of And look, it turns out
that it takes a real genius to do that, right, So all these
atheists are really really smart people, but they're not geniuses. And it takes
a real genius and somebody with an immense originality and honesty to be able to
reject status quo to such an extat as to basically formulate a completely new approach
to morality from scratch. Yeah, going on that there seems to be a
widely held assumption that inequality is bad and if there's anything we can do to
decrease inequality, we should do it. What's wrong with that assumption? Well,
what's wrong with that assumption is well, first, it's it's it's meaning
engless. Right, what does inequality mean? Do you mean equality, inequality
of wealth, inequality of income, inequality of brain power, inequality of good
looks in equality of what? Right? And so people throw out inequality without
really defining it and without talking about it. And but but there is an
implicit assumption in that, And the implicit assumption in that is that there's some
virtue to all of us being the same in some important categories. So you
know that that that sameness is good, and that just is mind boggling and
silly. I mean, what is what is so good about sameness? There's
nothing good about saying us. Indeed, as as we've seen, it is
the division of labor. It is the fact that we have different values.
That it's the reason we trade, because because we have different estimates on the
value of any particular thing, it's the reason we specialize and go into different
fields. So and that enhances human will being dramatically. We all have different
values. We clearly all have different biologies, and we have different uh you
know, we grow up in different environments that we make different choices. So
we're all fundamentally different. So there's this metaphysical fact that they're trying to reject
of the fact that we're all different. And and so then then they say,
well, no, it's what we're really concerned about is inequality of wealth
or income. And then and then the question is, okay, but where
does wealth and income come from? And white you care so much? What
do you care so much about wealth and income? And what they reject is
the idea that people create wealth and that income is something that's earned and I
deserved. You know, you saw this in Obama's famous speech was twenty twelve
or twenty fourteen where he said you didn't build that. You know, businessmen
didn't create what they created. You know, we're all in a sense in
the speech, implicit and explicit, we're all creations of our environment, creations
of our genes. You're not responsible for anything. And that has a certain
philosophical tradition, certainly going back to John Walls who said, you know which
is products of our genes and our environment. And you're not responsible for your
genes and environment. Therefore you don't deserve anything you got because whatever you produce,
whatever talent you have, they're not yours. That just happened, happened
to land on you. That's a weird formulation, because they are yours.
They are you, even if even if you got them from your your genes,
what are you to logic? You to logic than you are your genes,
So they are you. But all of these theories, you know,
reject the idea that you as a agent, as a have free will and
therefore have responsibility for your own successes and your own failures to a logic extent.
So and therefore you just don't deserve what you get because you're not responsible
for it. You don't deserve what you get because it's it's in a sense
of determined that you will get that anyway. It's deterministic, and you don't
deserve what you get because we have this ideal of equality that you must be
sacrificed towards. And that's altruism. So it's this combination of determinism, altruism,
and collectivism. Uh and and the inequality or the the worship of equality
is kind of the culmination of all of that. It's the it's the integration
of all all of that into into this egalitarian ideology that it tries to tries
to bring about some kind of equality of outcome among all of us. It's
it's impossible to do without the use of physical force. It's impossible to do
without violating individual rights on a massive scale. And it's impossible to do without
restraining people's freedom and therefore their ability to create the wealth and prosperity that we
all enjoy. What's your take on the growing domurism surrounding artificial intelligence, all
these otherwise smart people arguing for regulation and sewing down a progress in the field.
I mean, in a sense, there's nothing new. There's always been
people who have been doomsay as about growing technology, and and so in that
sense, it's not new. What's new is the fact that the people leading
the charge in the technology itself are the ones who are most skeptical about it,
are the ones who are most dooming loom about it. But essentially all
of this comes down to people not really understanding the nature of thinking and intelligence
and reason and and the value added that it all provides. Right, So
let's say you could build a machine that became conscious and it was smarter than
all human beings. Well, that machine would want to trade with human beings
because it would realize other human beings have reason, they have values. I
can produce values, they can produce values. There's a there's a great interchange
ability to interchange here and exchange. So they don't understand reason, they don't
understand trade, and then on top of that, they don't understand consciousness.
I mean, machines are not going to be conscious. They're not going to
be you know, it's not like a machine will have values and goals.
And the actual value added of artificial what they call outificial intelligence, is massive.
I mean, basically, it is a way to dramatically increase their fficial
see of the human mind to efficiency, the ability of human beings to produce,
the ability of human beings to create. I mean, if if much
of the technological revolution or the industrial revolution has replaced muscle with machines, what
AI has the potential of doing is taking certain tasks of the mind that are
non creative and replacing them with machines and then freeing the mind up feeing individuals
up to be to be engaged in those activities that again we are you don't
have a comparative advantage in doing creativity being one. And of course valuing Machines
don't value, So we have to provide the context in which machines are producing
goods because why are they Why would they want to produce the goods? They
don't consume them, So they has to be. There has to be,
they have to be valued, They have to be valuers and only human beings
giving value. So no, I mean, look, just in any technology,
there's dangers, right you can you can you can run people over with
a car, you can cut people over with a knife, you can bomb
people within with nuclear weapons. But the question is who is in the best
position to create safeguards so the technology is not used to abuse people in the
abuse rights And I think the best people are the people who understand the technology
the best, and those are the people within the industry, those are the
people who are building it. And if you look at if you look at
people like like I forget his name now, the guy, the guy who's
advocating the guy who founded AI CEO of AI Open AI what's that, Sam
Altman, Sam Altman, I mean, these are smart, really smart guys.
They're generally benevolent. He's not trying to take over the world and destroy
the planet or destroy life on Earth. I trust him more than I trust
a group of international global bureaucrats to regulate things and to make sure it doesn't
happen and something bad doesn't happen. So look, I give this example on
the show I did the other day. It's you know, in the biotic
industry, you can you can cause a lot of harm, particularly now a
genus licing and with the with the our ability to change the genetic makeup of
human beings even before birth, you can really do some crazy stuff and build,
you know, create monsters and hurt human life and hurt human ability.
And scientists are not doing that, not because these government regulations, but because
they got together and they said, look, the science are still young,
we're not sure exactly what we're doing, we're still learning. Let's not do
certain things, Let's let's figure it out as we go, Let's go slowly
where it's dangerous, where we're not sure. And for the most part they've
done that, and you know, without hurting real scientific progress. Why can't
the AI community get together and do the same thing and basically set up like
a group within the industry that says, here are the dangers, here are
the things that we think we could go wrong. Let's make sure we don't
do these things. Let's monitor each other without giving AWA any trade secrets.
Let's let's try to let's try to just just live up too high ethical standards
in terms of what we're doing, so we don't cause more harm than good.
That's the way it should be done. People like Sam all point of
people that I would trust engaged in something like that, But going and asking
for a government that is known for abusing these kind of regulations, governments that
like power and control very very dangerous. And you know that if the government
got their hands on AI technology, it's much more likely they would do harm
than any private industry would do harm. So funny you mentioned trade and values,
because so there's AI and there's a GI, right, and artificial intelligence
is basically like the chat gp D kind of stuff, and that's nowhere close
to AGI. And I guess that also falls back to like a false understanding
of epistemology or reason, as you call it, and what I was so,
like, my best reputation of this is that have you heard of the
paper clip maximizer argument, Like that's basically, if we give the AI a
goal that to turn to make the maximum number of paper clips it can,
then what we'll do is like it'll even turn us humans into paper clips,
because if that's its goal, it's just focused on that. But so if
it's an AI artificially intelligence, if it's not a GI, then if it
can do that, then we can just obviously plug it out right, we
won't let let it happen. But if it's an artificial general intelligence, then
I don't think that it would be so focused on that one goal so as
to make even humans paper clips if it's smart enough. So it depends what
you mean what we mean by it but official general intelligence, And it also
depends on whether that is even a possibility. That is it can you create
general intelligence you know, from from from electrons in on silicone, you know,
and it's it's these are still like I am skeptical that you can create
human like intelligence on a chip. I think you have to have biology to
create human like intelligence. And indeed, human like intelligence cannot be separate if
our ability from our ability to value, and to be able to value,
you have to be conscious. And consciousness is a is a phenomena of life,
and therefore to be able to be conscious, you have to be alive.
So we can't create life. We don't know how to create life yet.
We haven't created life in a laboratory yet. And you don't create life
for silicone you as far as we know, the way to create life with
corbon. So there's still a lot of steps that need to be taken before
we can get to human beings creating a life form that has intelligence similar to
humans. And if we can and that life form is a valuer, then
we trade with it. And if and that's great because it'll be able to
provide us with fantastic services because it'll be super smart, and we'll provide it
with whatever it turns out it needs, are its desire or its values are.
So you know, this idea that reasons somehow leads to a being that
wants to turn human beings in the paper clips, it just right. And
it's true that if it's a dumb machine and it's still turn everything into paper
clips, that will turn everything into paperclips but that means it's dumb, right,
that's by definition what dumbness is. It can't think beyond that. Once
it can think beyond that, and certainly once it can value why, Yeah,
it would ask itself why. It would have its own morality, its
own kind of understanding of the world. And maybe it would start with our
values, because we created them. And if we did, which is right
now at least a far possibility, if we created them, then it would
be like it's our child, you know, like another person, and they
will certainly have our own values, like because they were scial values. The
mall values would be the same, because the mall values of all values for
a living being with a consciousness and with free will and with reason. So
if you create a being with reason, they would have it would have very
similar values to and the smarter they are, the easy it will be to
show them that these are the true values. Do you think about alien civilizations
at all? If there are people else where? I don't, you know,
I get it, I like say fiction, I don't, But it
seems like a waste of time to think about it, because either there are
alien civilizations or they're no alien civilizations. It doesn't matter to my view of
the world. It doesn't change anything about my life. If they show up,
it might eat that'll be interesting and fun. But as long as they
don't show up, the speculation doesn't interest to me that much, other than
if it's a part of a science fiction story. When their success or demise
also depend upon their ability to create wealth and their culture and whether it promotes
or inhibits the growth of knowledge. Absolutely, I mean, you know it.
The specific biology will determine what constitutes wealth. Maybe, but but yes,
I mean I'm not I'm not fearful of aliens coming here to enslave all
people. If there's that advance, then the slave is no good. If
they're that advanced, they would realize that the best way to deal with us
is to trade, and and yes we can't. Maybe, you know,
the whole point of comparative advantage is that you do that even if you're inferior
to somebody else in your ability to produce, then producing everything doesn't make any
sense if you can produce some of it. Right, If you can produce
something, even if you're inferior in that one thing, it's they should focus
on the things that they have a the largest advantages and let you produce the
things that you have that you that where they have the smallest advantage and everybody's
everybody benefits when that happens. And that's true with aliens as well as it
is with other countries well other individuals. What are some popular movies besides Avatar
Thatty deeply philosophically disagree with. We can actually add books to that same question,
fiction or nonfiction. Oh, questions like this where I have to have
to dig into my memory are really really hard for me. I mean,
there are very few movies that have a good philosophy. Most movies have bad
philosophy. Is you know, think about the the explicit altruism in in in
a lot of the superhuman movies, the duty premise that they have in terms
of saving the world or saving civilization, or saving this person, the commandment
I shall not kill that. I don't know what is it Superman or Batman
or somebody UH has to live by even even as people are being slotted left
and right by the bad guys. So so, you know, most movies
have at their core some kind of bad philosophy. It's rare to find a
movie where you can say, yeah, that right on it, or think
of Game of Thrones, right. Game of Thrones is a good example.
It's it was a huge hit, very very popular in the culture. But
what is it about. It's about power, it's about force, it's about
it's about they know, it's not about values. It's it's kind of intriguing
to see. The whole Bowe is about how force is being used and the
only alternative is to use force. There's an alternative to force. The only
way to gain the hinder throne is through the use of force. And then
you just see the different characters using force in different ways. It's a you
know, dog eat dog world. It's a zero sum world. It's not
a it's not an even so even when you have a character who who's freeing
the slaves and views has some positive view in the end of the day when
she needs to when when when when she gains power, she's going to rule
and she's going to slave all of us, so, you know, but
that that comes from a recognition maybe that force is bad. But when no
alternative, no idea of what alternative there is, And in that sense,
there's no real heroes in the show because it can't conceive of a hero.
It can't think of what that would look like, what that would be.
So I can't really it's very hard to find a show doesn't have some element
of altruism or collectivism or uh, subjective apistemology, or a lack of understanding
of the world of the mind or you know, something like that. So
one has to find whatever good there is in the movies that exist and not
not why we too much about that. You know, some movies are so
bad philosophically Avatar, that's just not worth watching in my view. But most
movies are mixed, and you've got to enjoy the good parts and and uh
and and live with that. What do you think about the current education system?
Oh? Yeah, I mean it's awful. I mean it's easy.
It's awful. It it there's, there's it's it's an an educational system that
promotes thinking. It's not an education system that helps us or helps us gain
the skill of thinking, or teaches us how to think. And it's also
not an educational system teaches us facts about the world said, it defaults on
both of the main responsive Well, is an educational system train us and teach
us how to use the tool that we have our mental capacity and teach us
about the facts as they're known today, about the world out there, which
which we need to we need to have, you know it. The educational
system either teaches us dogmas that we have to memorize or we have to buy
into, or it teaches us that our emotions are more important than using our
mind and reasoning through problems. And it teaches us that, at least to
some extent, that facts a subjective, that who knows what the truth is
and history is, you know, is an issue of perspective, and and
they'll take it seriously and generally don't take knowledge or thinking too seriously. All
of that, I think is what is projected by the educational system, and
it's the consequence are in a sense of dumbing down of of of people Americans
or really any educational system. Some are better than others, but not a
good And what we don't have is real competition in education and real a real
competition in people proposing different ways to do education right and to do education well.
And we don't even have really a discussion about what are the standards right
which we would measure what a good educational system is and what a bad educational
system is, So there's a lot of work to be done in education.
There's some people doing good work in education, but there's a lot of work
to be done in education to kind of unpackage all that and figure out and
figure out kind of an ideal or or a better system. I saw in
a video if you talking a little bit about the Beginning of Infinity, the
book by Day of Deutsche, and you say his epistemology just keeps missing,
and that you wish someone would give him to read introduction to objectivist epistemology.
I'd love to talk about Yeah, I'd love to talk to you about that,
because I think iron Rand is awesome and she has a powerful defense of
capitalism and the critique of altruism. So also it's just so inspiring in pro
progress. But I fundamentally disagree with her epistemology. And I had your friend
and colleague Don Watkins on this podcast and we talked a little bit about ransompistemology,
but I didn't find it very convincing. So I very much inclined towards
deepistemology explained by Carl Popper first and improved upon by David Deutsch in his books.
To start with maybe what do you think about the beginning of infinity?
Yeah, so actually being infinity similar to your Stein Man. I mean,
I love I love what David Deutsch has to say about progress, and I
love his confidence and optimism and in human you know, in human beings and
ability to change, to change that environment and to improve our environment, and
to manipulate, if you will, the Adams in the world, to constantly
make them, make life better and make the universe different. And his personology
is completely screwed up, and it's completely messed up, and it makes absolutely
zero sense. And you know, I find that and I think that,
of course, that comes from Papa. I think Papa is is completely wrong.
David Deutsch is a lot better than Papa, I think, primarily because
he has a much better view of progress and humanity and I think Papa is
much more mixed in that sense, and Deutsch is much better. But yeah,
the pistemology is completely screwed up. And it's it's mind boggling to me
reading reading the book because basically it's and I can't and I don't have the
book in front of me, so I don't have the exact sections. But
basically, these massive contradictions where the epistemology is completely tripping him up. He's
making this argument about a human progress that requires rans epistemology, and he's advocating
in opostemology that in a sense, it is the exactly opposite, which undermines
his whole argument about progress. So it's and it's yeah, so it's it's
it's so it was so frustrating to read Devo. There were chapters, there
were Wow, you know, he makes he makes the best argument possible,
for most inspiring argument, and then and then the next chapter is like,
what the hell what's he talking about? He doesn't know what he's talking What
do you think is fundamentally wrong with noises with a stemology? Well, the
fundamental problem is that he doesn't start with reality. He doesn't start with facts,
he doesn't start with evidence, and so he doesn't start with human senses.
He starts with Plato. He started who supposed he rejects what he spots,
starts with Plato. He starts with you know, I think, therefore
I am. He starts inside his own mind, and there's nothing inside his
own mind. There's zero inside his own mind until he uses his senses to
gain facts about the world out there. So the beginning point in epistemology,
at the beginning point in thinking, the beginning points in Uh, you know,
cognition has to be what's out there, identification, identifying what exists in
the world. And only then can you think. There's just no thinking that
can happen Before then it's there's a there's a tool with no content, but
the content comes from outside the content. You're not born with content, you're
born with the tool. Do you think there's no sort of thinborne knowledge that
may possess when where you start out, Oh, there's no thin bone I
don't know what thin born knowledge is. But there's no knowledge, So I
don't know what thin or thick bone knowledge. There's no knowledge. So like
if you have as a tool, you have senses, and you have a
tool that integrates the information that comes from those senses and integrates them. So
you have a tool, and you could argue that the thin bone knowledge is
the the oh God, the ability of the tool to do what it does
right, the mechanism by which the rules that the tool functions by. If
you will, I don't, But that's not knowledge, that's just that's the
mechanism by which the tool has to function. There's just no other way.
But it's taking the evidence that is received by the census integrating them. And
that's where facts and knowledge comes from. And until you have that, you
have nothing. And there's no it's not an accident that babies know nothing.
They know nothing. They can they can suck, basically, and they can
cry, and they can poop, and that's it. Having had some I'll
tell you they know nothing. And then as they start looking around the world,
as they start gaining information, gaining data from the world, integrating that
data. I mean, one of the amazing things about having babies is that
you can see iron ran As epistemology in action as they form concepts. I
mean, to me, Ransom eistemology was, you know, proven empirically.
You know, just by watching children and how they how they phone concepts,
and how they act and how they integrate. And it's it's right there that
you can see it in action. So you get the data and then you
start integrating. You see similarities and you see differences between you First you see
differences, and then you see similarities between things, and that allows you to
integrate those into abstractions and and then you then you can start thinking abstractly.
But until you phone those abstractions fund the data that comes in, you can't
think abstractly. So everything starts with observation everything, and that observation could be
in very sophisticated science, could be can be indirect, right, it could
be using a microscope or ultimately using observation, using math that explains that is
based on certain observations that are at a different level. But at the end
of the day, it all starts out there. And only then can you
say, first you have to observe the phenomena of gravity before you can have
a theory about gravity. First you have to drop bottles, lots of bottles.
And you know children do that. They'll take a thing and they'll let
it go, and then you'll pick it up and you'll give it to them
and they'll drop it again. And what are they learning here? They're learning
causality, They're learning about gravity. They're learning how they can manipulate their parents,
which is causality, right. But they are learning through experimentation. They're
learning through trying something and seeing, oh, let's try it again. Oh
and now I come up with a generalization. Ah, that's what it is.
Let me, let me, let me make sure the generalization actually works.
I'll drop it a few more times. Right, So they're inducing.
Induction is the only way in which we gain new knowledge. There is no
new knowledge outside of ultimately outside of induction. So we induce, and then
we deduce from those inductions. But to eliminate induction from human knowledge, from
human reason, is they eliminate knowledge from human reason. We don't know anything
in that case. Let me try and put forward a pithy version of poppers
the physmology or which do improves bond? So observation is not a source of
knowledge. You cannot observe the facts of reality. Quote unquote. The purpose
of observation here is to test our theories. For where theories come from.
The trees come from the mind. They're conjectured. So so babies have theories.
They just pop pop up theories and then they test those theories and they
just they just conjected by a baby. A two year old conjectures a theory.
When so, yes, when you when you reject like inborn knowledge,
I would say that we have a lot of inborn knowledge, and some of
like even sucking. Even sucking is like sucking mother's milk is part of your
inbond knowledge. After a while, we not knowledge. It's a it's a
reflex. It's a muscular reflex. If I put my finger in a baby's
mouth, it'll start sucking. It's it's not I need to suck in order
to eat. And then if I need to find the nipple because there's milk
there, it's put something in my mind. I'll suck Because it's a reflex.
It's it's it's a it's it's it's a it's a there's no cognition,
there's no mind that's involved in the sucking. Why does it then, uh,
why do we not have that sucking reflex after a year or so?
Well, because because one of the things that happens with human beings is as
we gain, as we gain conceptual knowledge, as we gain practice, in
a sense, we override the the the instincts. The sucking thing is still
there, but it because it stops being because wait a minute, I don't
need to suck. I can have chew, so I don't need to suck.
Stop sucking, Okay, so I can stop sucking. So we actually
override. But the only way we can override it is by gaining concrete,
factual information about the world. One of those facts informations we gain is I
can chew my food in a sense. Right. They don't literally think that,
but they experience the chewing of the food, and that results in new
knowledge about how to gain you know, in regarding the fact that they don't
need to suck anymost they stop. I think I agree with that. But
so so everything. So everything starts with you open your eyes. You see
stuff, and there there's the facts of reality. There's reality and your mind.
Your mind is not passive. Your mind is integrating, it's working with
the stuff. And in that sense, there's you know, in a sense
thing knowledge you know in that sense. But all the facts come to outside.
There's no there's no factual information. And if there is factual information inside,
where did it come from? So looking at all not mystics, right,
which is not a mystic? So where did the fact actual Where did
the factual knowledge come from? Where did all these facts come from that you're
born with? So I don't we looked at the night sky for thousands of
fears before understanding what stars actually are? We? Yeah, people, so
we so we so we it's true. We came up with hypothesis that were
wrong, like the lights the gods or whatever, but we started with an
observation. The observation is the night sky. The observation is light in the
sky that kind of moves a little bit even there. And then we came
up with hypothesis maybe it's God's We didn't have any way to test it,
so we stuck with that hypothesis and then maybe other people okay, but we
started with an observation. So every hypothesis, every single hypothesis that is that
has any kind of legitimacy, starts with an observation. Hypothesis might be wrong
and it needs to be tested. I'm full hypothesis and testing, but you
cannot hypothesize without observation. And when you do, you come up with crazy
theories and physics, as I think David Deutsch does. Crazy theories and physics
that have no reality. String theory and what is it multiverse multiverses are just
one example of I think crazy theories that have no reality that mean nothing,
that the detachment everything, it's because they start in here and they're not connected
to anything out of there, and of course they're not testable. Yeah,
I don't think a podcast is the best way, the best format to have
this kind of class if idea, because there's other obligations as well. But
as someone that's about to put forward stances, we should definitely continue this conversation
because I do think there can be a fruitful meaning of minds between objectivists and
critical rationalists because we both care deeply about progress, individuality, and freedom,
and so there could be fruitful discussion there about epistemology as well. Yeah,
I agree. Anyway, the final question I wanted to ask you is what's
your advice for someone who's young and motivated, let's say, out of high
school and wants to change the world and do something good for society. Well,
stop wanting to want to do something good for society. You know why
do you want to do something good for society? So start with start with
identifying your own values, and start with wanting to do something good for yourself
and wanting to live the best life that you can live. Maybe at the
end of the day that involves that will probably involve something the society benefits from
society, depending on which society you know you want to benefit Russian society,
do you want to fit Abohenian society you want to benefit putin or do you
want to benefit you know, David Deutsch or world full of David Deutsche's Who
do you want to benefit? So I the whole try to get away from
these notions of society and mankind and all this stuff, and and think in
terms of a specific you know, narrow it down to what kind of human
beings you want to actually help, and figure out why you want to help
them, and and have a have a real perspective in terms of your own
values and your own life and your own well being. What do I want
to do and why do I want to do it? So I would start
the figure out what really makes you, what you really enjoy doing, what
is really valuable to you? And uh, you know, and I and
I think and it could be it could be science, if it could be
philosophy, could be a lot of different things. And your duty. You
don't have a duty to society. If you have a duty, it's to
yourself and and so so start you know that that is I think the starting
point. You know, I recommend everybody read Ran because I think particularly for
the for the ethics, particularly for the morality. I think I think it's
crucial. Although the morality depends very much on the epistemology, I don't think
it stands alone. So I encourage an encourageating young person to study iron Ran
and then figure out what what are that individual's real you know, values,
what what what? What is what is really important to you, and and
really dedicate yourself to to pursuing them and not not compromising with them and taking
risks. I mean, one of the things that I think is a real
problem in the world is when people become so risk averse that they tend to
be afraid, and they're tend to be passive, and they, uh,
they don't engage with the world, and they don't engage with their own values,
and they don't pursue them aggressively enough. You're on. Thank you very
much for your time. I appreciate you coming on. My pleasure, my
pleasure. Thank you.