#618 - Destiny - Why Are Liberals More Depressed Than Conservatives?

21:59And you can get into a mindset we start blaming everybody else and what happens is you take no personal accountability and The real mindset for improving in those games and everybody knows this even if they're upset at the time you're not gonna say they'll tell you The real mindset for improving is All you can do is take the most responsibility for your own actions as much as you can and try to improve on that Sometimes you might be in unwinnable games where your teammates are causing to lose, but who cares? Find out what you can approve on and go forward. And we know that's true for games. We probably know it's true for sports, but then as soon as we come into the real world, it's like, oh, you're black, you didn't get a job.

22:29They were probably racist. Oh, you're a woman. You know, you're application turnover. They were probably sexist. How can you expect that that mindset doesn't fucking destroy a person's ability to navigate the world? When they've constantly been told that classes around them are what are keeping them down, and they amount up, yeah, I just, I feel like the amount of personal agency you have goes. It rips the agentic person out of it. There was a really interesting part where it said that one of the reasons or one of the potential justifications for why it would be the case that liberals are more depressed is because they correctly perceive injustices in the world.

23:07That was Matthew Eglaceus' take on it or that was what... It could be potentially that basically they're more in tune with what's going on that's bad, but I don't know that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because of that, like because the liberal boys are more in tune than a female who's got all manner of hormones going on and her body images up in the air and she's 14 years old and she's now a sexual object and God knows what I'm supposed to do with myself and everyone's treating me in a different way and I'm becoming a woman and I'm having periods and all this stuff and being tapped into injustices is more than...

23:40I mean, I could say being the case. For me, a lot of stuff related to women has, when you get turned on to a lot of the really weird shit that goes along with being a woman, especially in this world. As soon as I noticed that, that's a really sad and depressing thing to take into account. And this is fucking... Yeah, and it's a guy, like I overlook all of that. And there's so many, I have to be careful now, even. Like, there'll be people that, a woman will ask me, oh, like I'm doing a show with this guy, like do you think he's cool on it? I just feel like, yeah, this guy's like super cool, it's whatever.

24:06And now I know I can never say that about a guy unless I've seen him interact with a woman. Because how he interacts with me doesn't fucking matter because there are guys that interact with who's super cool very polite Like just like this is an exemplary dude He's a really awesome guy and then like all see him in another and in at least one circumstance He tries to be a woman that I was like for I'm like what the fuck is wrong with you dude? And it's like an insane fucking world where it's like yeah when I get to notice him by that stuff I could definitely see it being more like fuck When I was a carp cleaner that was the point of my life where I was the most libertarian where I was like I need to do what I can I got a work hard I got a figure this show blah blah blah blah and holy fuck it wasn't until I got rich that I realized wow there is so much of life that is fucking bullshit well like in terms of like how much easier life is in every single regard when you become wealthy I don't know if it's because I was a commuter a lot but a lot of the misery in my life surrounded usually was around my fucking car okay I drove a piece of shit car things like flat tires or speeding tickets that's It's like a kick in the ass for like three to six months, depending on how fucked you get, right?

25:09If you crack a wheel, anybody from Nebraska that drives an I80 going back and forth from Omaha to Council Bluffs knows it when it snows, those potholes are fucking insane, that shit will fuck you over. And then like every single bad thing gets worse because of every other thing right now. So like let's say that I crack a wheel, okay. Well now I gotta call a friend to get the fuck out of here. I have to leave my car somewhere on the side of the road. I've got a right of big sign. This is please don't fucking tell me. They're gonna tell you anyway. Now that it gets towed, I got a $75 fee, at least from the state.

25:36And now every single day it sits in this tow yard. It's like an extra $100 and it's just like so much fucking stress. And then as a rich person, I get pulled over for whatever the fuck I hire a traffic lawyer. Make it go away. I don't give a fuck about anything. Right, I could go total my car and Uber somewhere else. I go to dealership by now. I don't get, the life is so much different for like a wealthy person in so many ways. I feel like my kid for example, I'm trying to think of like, well, where do I want to go to school? I was like, I want to go to a good, I want to be the best school district.

25:58So I just buy a house in the best school district and then we move there. Right, and then over the pandemic, when people have to stay home, right? Or even before the pandemic, fuck up. My kid isn't like first grade, and these motherfuckers are getting assigned laptops, and they get like take home. I'm like holy shit. And there are other places in North Omaha, South Omaha, where these kids like barely have like functioning textbooks. And I don't know, from the eyes, like I said, when I was a poor person, I'm like, okay, I'm in a work hard and libertarian, I could do this blah, blah, blah. But then it's a wealthy person, I'm like, I was like, damn, this is some fuck shit.

26:23My life and my kids like are so much easier now, just because I have money versus like what it would be otherwise. And fuck, that kind of sucks here. So to send it back, I'm not saying you should be depressed because you see the addresses of the world more or whatever. But I do think that there is something to be said where like when you start to notice more of shit, you're like, oh, that is kind of like shitty, that is kind of suck. Yeah, for the people that haven't read that article, some of the really interesting stuff that I found, there's a 10 percentage points gap between the share of conservative versus liberals who report being very happy in virtually every iteration of the GSS studies since 1972.

26:54Conservatives do not just report high levels of happiness, they also report high levels of meaning in their lives. The positive association between conservative ideology happiness only rarely reversed. Liberals were happier than conservatives and only five out of 92 countries and never in the United States. Studies have repeatedly found the conservatives both politicians and laymen tend to be more conventionally attractive than liberals and have better sex lives. People who are healthier and childhood have shown to be more likely to become conservatives as adults. Meanwhile, people with higher measured cognitive ability also likely to support economic conservatism and cultural liberalism.

27:28What the fuck, like why? What's going on there? I mean, we'd have to talk through each of those things by distance. Yeah, from the, I mean, we can if you want to. I feel like, here's what I feel, okay. I have a lot of protective factors that make me able to deal with adversity very well. And I feel like left -leaning people don't equip you with those tools at all. You have to be able to be confronted with a difficult situation and overcome it. And it feels like from the left, our idea of compassion for children as removing as much adversity from possible. But you need a little bit at least to be able to function in the world.

28:00And as you remove the ability for people to deal with any type of adversity, and then you give them excuse after excuse, after excuse for why everything is unfair, everything is unjust, everything is horrible, then I was like, what do you think is going to happen? Something that's a little bit telling, I don't know much you read of that article, but did you see the thing where it was like a person's view of their race and ethnicity versus other people? No. So in that article, every single race obviously has a very favorable view of people in their own race with one exception and it was white liberals.

28:31Have a very negative, the graph is like it's like black people, Asians, Mexicans and then the negative which for white people are hating white people. I'm like come on really? That's a fucking cringe. You're like flagellating yourself. Yeah, it is insane and it's like holy shit. Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's a really interesting graph. It's just like seeing like the big bar, the big bar, and then the other big bar, like Jesus. There's no other ethnic group or combination of factors where somebody hates themselves as much as like white liberals do. I wonder, did you have a look? Does it show that longitudinal?

29:02Does it show when that kicked in? Because I can't imagine it would have been the same. I don't think it doesn't show it longitudinally, but that article frames everything in the perspective from 2011 and onwards. It calls it the great awokeening. Yeah, yeah, I remember seeing that bit. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Seed. Seed's DSO -1 daily sin biotic is one of the most advanced probiotics and prebiotics on the market. With 24 strains, it is a broad spectrum, probiotic and prebiotic formulated for digestive, gut, immune and additional system benefits with 53 .6 billion AFU. It's two -in -one capsule technology protects against stomach acid and digestive enzymes for viability through your digestion.

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30:14One of the other things that I know you've spoken about a good bit recently is kind of the concerns of too much freedom. So if you just blast open all of the doors, you don't need to adhere to any expected traditions. There are no stereotypes, no archetypes, nothing is grounded in biological fact and then perpetuated by culture, which causes everybody to have to find themselves out from first principles. It's like, you're a man. Okay. There are no expectations for what you're supposed to be as a man, which means that your job, sonno, is to deal with the existential pain, the crushing weight of existence, and just work out what you're supposed to be going forward.

30:48I wonder whether unlimited degrees of freedom causes people to just become nihilistic. It's like, existential fucking crushed. And then they go, oh, I don't really know how to do this, and they give up as opposed to perhaps if you do have some slightly more conflicted, but it's that's like you're more constrained expectations for a conservative, maybe that does give you guardrails, which actually gives you a little bit more movement in the right direction. Yeah, I think our identity, truly it's fractured among every person that we meet, it's fractured in society to some extent. Like when we think of, what does it mean to be successful at x, y, z?

31:20We tell ourselves a story that it means I wanna be the best person that I can be, but that's truly, I think that's a lie. I think what you wanna be is you wanna be the best person that like everybody thinks you can be, or everybody says you can be. Like what does it mean to be the best version of a man? It's not just what you think it means to be a man. It's, well, what does everybody think it means to be a man? And then achieving success on that level, where everybody else is looking towards it, I think is truly where a lot of the good films are going to go. Because we have social beings, right?

31:44We socialize. That's how humans succeed. We never lived as like individual hunters. We're very much like pack animals, social creatures. So if every single person in a society has their own view of everything, some people will be okay, probably a very, very small minority. Less than like 2 % probably or like like that type of role. I like that type of role. That's fun for me I'm a very discreet autistic like oh whatever, but for most people You want to be the best of What everybody agrees is the best to be it's kind of it's like it's the age old I remember the 90s in the 2000s there lots of jokes like this like you're unique just like everyone else You know when you want to have like the most unique and cool fashion you don't really want the most you can cool fashion You want the thing that everybody else wants but just not everybody else can afford to get But it has to be something that we all agree is the coolest thing and then that's what makes you like the most unique You know, but it's it's just kind of it's just weird like delusion We have where we're like oh yeah like I really do want to be like a truly unique and outstanding individual It's like not really that's terrifying You just want to fit very neatly within the fold of what's socially acceptable But you want to do it like in the in the very narrow parts and everybody can afford you know is modern liberalism incompatible with happiness on average Do you think in the way that a lot of people in the sort of super progressive position hold it?

32:58When you're, okay, in order to truly learn about electronics, when you take things apart, like remotes and shit, you don't learn anything until you actually put it back together, okay? And I think one of the problems we have, especially on the left, is we deconstruct so many different ideas, but we don't ask ourselves why the fuck were they there the way that they were? You know, I think that - Suggested in electronics. What? Chesterton's electronics, like Chesterton's fence. Oh, I have no idea what that is, but I'll say it like - not heard of Chesterton's fence. No, what is that? There is no way that you've gone through your life and not heard of this.

33:30So Chesterton's fence is there is a fence in a field somebody walks up to it, a conservative or and a liberal both walk up to it. And it's kind of just a panel of fence in the middle of a field and they think, well there's no point for this to be here. The conservative presumes, someone has put this here, even though I can't work out why it's here, we'd better leave it. The liberal says, there's evidently no use for it, let's tear it down. It's basically don't throw the baby out with a bath water or don't throw a bath water out until you've worked out why there might be a baby in there. Okay, sure, that's exactly what I'm talking about basically.

33:56Yes. Yeah, but so I think we had an issue with that. So when you ask like, is liberalism, you asked is liberalism incompatible with like the current iteration, the most modern 2023 version of what most people like caricature as liberalism, is it incompatible with happiness on average? I think it can be, but I think we're pushing a little bit too far. We're not asking ourselves like, you know, are we throwing out the baby with the bathwater basically? There's a lot of cool things that can happen with deconstructing gender roles. And I think there's a lot of value to throwing out some things like I think that um, for instance women can be more successful than we ever thought possible.

34:29That seems to be a thing that we're even more surprised about every single day, especially when it comes to school. Correct. But does that mean that we need to have no gender roles whatsoever? Like do we need to abolish every single thing related to like male -ifimal archetypes? Because there's a lot of people that draw a lot of value from those. Probably not. We probably don't have to do that. But people are so keen to get rid of everything that it's hard to ground and like any of our conversations anymore and any type of real thing, you know? Yes. Well, if you demonize motherhood, that means that there are innate biological urges for women to become mothers.

35:03But this self -hatred thing that you mentioned about white liberals must also happen for women who maybe feel like they're supposed to have a career. But it's like, I kind of like the idea of being a mom. I think 86 % of women say that being a stay at home mom is an option that they aspire to have, like just the potential that they could have. But, you know, the self -hatred would be rampant if you were to actually be truthful about that, which causes internal conflict and strife. Yeah, I would imagine so. That 86 % number sounds really high, but I mean, yeah, I mean, I imagine option that they would aspire to have, like, substantial.

35:34I mean, the bar is set very low. Sure. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think I agree. So it's so fucking hard for people to, it's really hard for people to like live with and accept that other people around them can be different. Like it feels like people are very keen to just like hammer home, like every fucking idiot. Like, first is like on the left for progress as we talk a lot about like diversity of thought and everything or diversity or whatever. And there's not very much diversity and a lot of friend groups on the left or the right, you know, like people say, oh, I've got like a conservative friend.

36:02It's like, no you don't. You've got a friend who's like a conservative but they hate Trump, they're not a big fan of guns. They just like don't want a $25 an hour minimum wage, right? Show me a conservative friend you have that like drinks moonshine and wears a mega hat, okay? Show me like a real, because there's not like, we're very much like separated from each other. Was that ever the case though? Was that the case in the 90s? Where we had friends that were very different from each other. I feel like the internet has changed things a lot because now you can hyperselect groups of friends and individuals you never could before.

36:32Like you couldn't really find, you had really extreme ideas. To some extent you were forced to confront the people around you and kind of you couldn't tumble down into your own echo chamber on Reddit or Telegram or Discord because you would geographically constraint. Yeah, if you wanted to be a vacuum fucker in 1990, people are gonna look at you weird, and you're gonna be on your own there. Some of the fuck's vacuums. That's not euphemism. No. Whereas today, if you wanted to fuck vacuums, you could probably find an online support group for it. They will give you the best vacuums to have sex with, and you can do that your whole life.

37:03But I'm just saying that you probably, to some extent, in the 80s, 90s before the internet, you kinda have to be, talk to your neighbors, and be somewhat gotten into the around you. Yeah, whereas today you have, fuck, there's fucking 21, 22 year old kid who's leaking classified documents to look cool A bunch of people on Discord, bro, what the fuck are you doing? Yeah, it's like Jesus. Yeah, interesting Yeah, I am it's the freedom thing again, so the conversation I had in Qatar about masculinity Came down to the fundamental tension of the guy I was speaking to said we need to kind of blow up in the doors of what it means to be a man because they're constraining and some people who don't fit into those existing paradigms are made to feel like they're not a man or they're discontent.

37:49My realization was, well, yeah, totally there are certainly ways that you could optimize for every single part of the normal distribution, right? Like, right out to zero and a hundred. But if you do do that, then it's the same as it being nothing. Like, if masculinity is everything, it's also nothing. And the same thing goes for like pick whatever stereotype or archetype you want to have. If you blast the doors open completely, you're saying you need to work this out for yourself. There are no expectations, there are no guardrails. Nobody is coming to help you. And if you do use any of those traditions that have come from the past, you're going to get attacked for it.

38:20Yes, precisely. That's you being fucking like, there's like by the patriarchy or fucking feminism or whatever. Yeah, there's like two ways you can go. One is that you have like the hyper rigid defined like, this is what it means to be man and nothing else I can work. And then you've got like this like blow open everything and it's like we can't say there's anything about being a man And it's like there there is like third option that we were kind of Gunning for in like the late 90s early to that's it felt like where it was like listen We can actually blow open really wide what it means to be a man or woman if you want to be a guy and paint your nails And we're fuck a makeup then go for it And you know what a lot of guys aren't gonna be like you but that's okay You just kind of like can do your own thing But now it's not enough to say this can be like really different and that's okay Now there has to be kind of like this tear down of like the norm in the middle as well Like it can't just be that like you can be unique and kind of do your own thing and whatever now like everybody has to be nothing In order to make it okay instead of teaching people that like sometimes you're just like it's okay to be a little bit weird You can be weird, but now like weird is like a slur and as we know actually I'm not weird You're just like heterosystemormative and this is like a horrible thing for society.

39:23It's like okay, fuck you Yeah, so optimizing for the extremes and sort of bringing those in and making them part of the norm One of the other things, again, that I've been thinking about is how this relates to people's lack of capacity or desire or motivation to deal with difficulty or suffering or any kind of anything that requires you to push through hard stuff to find meaning on the other side of it. And I guess it's kind of the same. Why bother? If the system's rigged against me, if there is no meaning in anything, if having a family, all of the previous anchors that we would have found meaning from in life.

39:57If all of those have been blown open, then fuck it. If I do come up against any kind of difficulty, that should have been snow plowed out of my way before I got here. Yeah, there's a different, there are two concepts called stress and use stress, where, yeah, oh my God, I'm so glad a friend told me this like two years ago, because I've never heard of this before. It was really, one thing that's really difficult for me is I love stress. It is very empowering to me. When I'm in stressful situations, I feel like I'm alive, okay? When people are gunning for my career, writing big things, accusing me of shit, It was very fun for me to navigate those things.

40:26It was like, oh fuck. And I learned this term a couple of years ago, a friend she read a book called, fuck, it was like the power of stress or something. I don't remember something like that. But she said that, well, she said, the reason why you probably feel this way is because there's two types of stress. There's stress, which is bad for you. Physiological, it's a horrible thing. It causes a lot of ting and then it's going to click you stress, which is similar to what you're stressed. But the difference is for you stress, you stresses when you're going through stressful things, but you feel like you've got tools to deal with it.

40:53and stress is when you feel helpless. And despite how weird my upbringing is in my life, whatever, I've never felt helpless. I've always felt like if something is fucked, I'm the only person who's gonna do anything about it. I have to do something, we'll figure it out. I'm out of the work, fucking 16 hours a day, seven days a week, but we'll do something. So for me, stressful situations are like, okay, it's challenging, but I gotta work my throat. But when kids don't have the ability to learn how to manage or do with stressful environments, then stress becomes this horrific, all encompassing blanket of darkness that falls on you and you're like, fuck, I can't do anything, I'm paralyzed, I don't know what to do, I've lived so much, and they have no idea how to deal with any of the adversity.

41:31So yeah, I agree that people today, if the adversity is not plowed out of their way, they basically turn to these helpless frumps of nothing that I can't deal with anything. Why is that, let's call it fragility to stress. Why is that so prevalent in some corners of the left, Do you think? Because it seems to me that the right almost identifies itself as being the... Even if it's not true, even if this isn't how they show up, it's how they state. Which is, we, like I'm built for hard things, everyone's Tim Kennedy with a fucking knife behind his back. That doesn't seem to be the same on the left at the moment.

42:07And that, to me, seems like a self -defeating ideology, because you're making yourself inherently more fragile and less capable of dealing with anything that you come up against, including the ideology on the opposite side of the aisle that you say that you fucking hate. Yeah, I think that people on the left have to adopt my ideology. I think that you have to teach people about the unfairness of systems and all of that I think that's good to know it's gonna be aware of it But you also have to treat people's individuals at the end of the day and tell them like hey listen Like despite how unfair the world is or whatever you can't say they're cry about you have to do something about it so you know Like class analysis should be like a medical diagnosis When you go to the hospital and you get a diagnosis for some sort of like medical ailment or medical disease or whatever Are you from the left?

42:47Are you from the right? Sure. The reason why you get the diagnosis, the only reason why we have diagnoses for things is because there's a treatment plan, right? So if you talk to so many, you say like, hey, listen, you're part of this class and you might be affected in this way. This is what you have to do about it, right? It has to come paired with that piece of advice. It can't just be you're part of this class. You're fucked. You're part of this. So like, you'll never get it, right? It's going to be like, okay, well, you have to, you've got this. So keep this in mind. Do this, you know? I noticed it when it comes to like mental elements, people will do that a lot.

43:15Like on Twitter, people are like, oh, like I've got OCD, I've got an A, C, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, they'll say, okay, well, what are you doing about it? And it's like, what do you mean, what am I doing about it? It's like, well, what the fuck is the point of knowing you have this thing? You're not fucking doing anything about it, right? Or in people will say things like, oh, I can't do that because of my ADHD. And it's like, what do you mean you can't do that because you're an ADHD? If you have ADHD, do something about it. What the fuck? Why would you just use that as an excuse to do nothing, you know?

43:35What is your vision, or if you were able to try and give some advice to liberals in general. You know, you're coming from the left. As far as I'm concerned, you're the most reasonable person that I listen to, the period. No, I'm just going to go, look, close. Dude, I really appreciate the stuff that you put out. I think both me and a bunch of people from Austin who would not really listen to anybody that was coming from that side of a talking point are like, fucking, destiny keeps on getting these things right as far as I can see. And even if it's not the background that I come from. Like fuck yeah, like that's reasonable, it's well balanced, it's understanding, it's agentic, it's aspirational, which I think is really, really fucking important.

44:12Like if the vision that you put forward for somebody is to be this like cooked victim that is completely at the mercy of the world around you, who, who, like how are you selling this to almost anybody that wants to have a grand vision for their life? What is the, first off, what's prediction for the way that the left means for not what do you want to happen, but given where we're at, the progressive eating itself, et cetera, et cetera, is that going to correct, self -correct and move more back toward this vision that you've got and something from the late 90s, early 2000s, or is this continuing to run away with itself into an extreme?

44:50I think it's kind of sad, but I think the left, I think the progressives are starting to fall apart. I don't think whatever comes next will call themselves progressive. Like, I still do, but I have to qualify a lot because I don't want people to instantly some of the things about me. If you've been watching it online, have you seen the Young Turks? Correct. Yeah, tell me to explain to people briefly what's happened with the Young Turks. Well, if you've watched Bystrain, they're basically going through what I went through three years ago, where it was really funny because like Anna was saying on the Inters, she's like, I'm tired of working with these lectures.

45:17They come on this show, they build up a big audience, and then they leave the show, and they act like they never heard it before, and they start trashing you. And without any names, I've had people to the exact same thing to me. And it's funny because like if I leave somebody's show and then somebody asks me something in the future, I think I've had people ask me about you because I think that you're a bit more into some of the Manosphere Red Pill stuff than I think I am. I think so, yeah. In terms of some of your takes, and I wanna say people can find it if I'm wrong. But like if people ask me about you, if I see a clip of you, I'm gonna say, I talked to him in a pod guy, he seems like a pretty reasonable guy, we might have some disagreements here.

45:54That I think that would be about my take. But I feel like other people will come away like imagine you are me and then I'm like a random leftist Somebody would show me one clip of you and they'd be like oh, you probably fucking hates women That guy is just a fucking piece of shit and it's like you talked to this guy You were on this guy show or sometimes you had extended relationships with people But as soon as they do one thing wrong, it's like the backlash is fucking insane And so it happens so much with progress is where for Anna it was over two big things one is She had something to say about homeless people because there was some homeless guy in Seattle or San Francisco that attacked a woman on the street.

46:27This happened a few years, I think a year or two ago. Oh yeah, it was a huge thing. And she was like, this is crazy. This guy should be in jail. And all the progress is like, you can't just put homeless people in jail. There are unhoused neighbors and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh my god. There was that big thing. That was a year or two ago, Anna. And then recently it was over the, called me a bur - I'm a burthing person or whatever. Yeah. And I was like, oh, you're fucking trans woman. I don't know how you hate trans people, like, pro. The young Turks are like, a validly progressive. These guys aren't even like Democrats.

46:58These guys are like progressive. And you guys are spiral. Yeah, holy shit. Period spiral kicking in yet again. So like, I don't think that's gonna let, if you're getting like the young Turks breaking off your movement, I don't think that's gonna last for very much longer. And again, like you said, like these people have like no fucking tenacity to deal with anything. So they all eat themselves alive. They all have very low ability to cope or deal with adversity. It's just like a horrible, yeah. We'll get back to Destiny in one minute, but first I need to tell you about whoop. Whoop is the best fitness tracker that I've ever found.

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47:56Head to join .woop .com slash modern wisdom. That's join .woop .com slash modern wisdom. Someone called you alt left. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's, oh no, when you say someone, are you talking about the squirrel? No, someone replied to me on Twitter. They basically said, interesting conversation you had about such and such recently, would look to see someone from the left's take, and I replied and said, interesting, I've got Destiny coming on in a week's time. Like, basically, you're not a real leftist, or alt left was like a way to discard the fact that I was bringing you on, that wasn't left enough.

48:31I didn't even know that alt left was a thing. There's a weird squirrel Twitter account that calls me alt left, but she says that because I'm like not conservative, but I'm like racist and transphobic and bigoted in an Nazi and blah, blah, blah. So I don't know if that was a reference to that or not. I would peer to spiral kicks in again. So, okay, so that's, you've said that you think that this progressive thing is not going to be able to sustain itself. Like people are getting a little tired of like the crazy cancellation shit and the left are obviously all eating themselves alive and they haven't gotten any political power.

48:57It's inherently self -defeating, right? If everybody is constantly looking for whoever is next going to be shaved off the outside of the purity spiral, it's so self -contradictory that after a little while everybody has to abandon it because everyone has been, everyone has had the finger pointed at them or themselves. Yeah, but I mean like, I feel like everybody does this. I feel like every time a group gets massively in power, they can't help but eat themselves alive. I feel like I remember this in, fuck, was it McCain, Palin 2008? Oh, maybe you weren't here. Home country. Yeah, where Republicans get in power and then they start eating themselves alive because they're starting to cut off because this guy is more men and this guy is weird or what.

49:37So I mean, it feels like any time a group gets in power, they start that weird fucking purity test, and it's like, you can't be part of this group and you don't do this. But we're seeing that on the right as well. It's some degree, right? A little bit, although for, I think, for different reasons, kind of. Trump is fucking insane. And I think that that, I think there's like a unique set of things that are causing. The problem, the big difference is the number of tenants. In the United States and the left, as much as progressives might be powerful on Twitter or in schools or whatever, they represent a very small portion of the Democratic party.

50:08They don't really have very much political power. There's like four people in the house, and like that's it. But on the right, Trump is their like extremist guy, And that's like fucking half the Republican Party will follow Trump off a cliff right now So they have like a very unique situation where they're trying to deal with that at the moment I think why didn't the Trump indictment get more media coverage? I thought it would have been I mean it was not not covered, but I figured it should have been something absolutely fucking massive And it didn't seem that way to me It was massive for a day, but our news室 because we're very quick now.

50:35It's like we get over shit in like one or two days Also, the diamonds are kind of like boring. It wasn't like anything like super spicy even though people had been saying they were gonna be pretty boring and they came out and they're gonna like meh So, but then it's also like Trump is just very fatiguing. There's so many like insane things involving him all the time Then at some point it's like hard to care anymore. It's like oh, yeah Like even the whole indictment that things surround really like if we were to go back like five years or six or seven years Like the most surprising thing would be like could you imagine having a president of the United States that was fucking porn stars behind Is like recently had a fucking child's wife's back That's like an insane thing.

51:12Could you imagine if Obama had done that? Or is now sat incredibly hard. Yes, or incredibly loaded on how you view it. So it's like, so now it's like, oh, Trump did it then. I'm like, okay, whatever, you know. What about the fact, if this progressive thing isn't viable because the progressives that are telling people how to live their lives are the ones that are killing themselves and on anti -depressant, what is it? Like some insane percentage of... Geez, for some of us, like 50 % of, I think, liberal women at a certain age have been like like on some type of like antidepressant like Jesus. Yes.

51:41If that's the, you should live your life this way. Well, come on, like proofs in the pudding. This doesn't really seem to be growing particularly much coal. Have you seen the Twitter video? Or somebody's like, it's time to rise up my comments brothers we need guns and shit. And then it starts playing some like fucking 90s pop punk emo song. And it's just like tweet after tweet of like, like, oh fuck, I have to show this to you later. It's really fucking funny. Sorry. Okay. I'm gonna show you this. People in the audience when I'm talking about, okay, okay, so if the progressive thing isn't viable does that mean that the trad things viable?

52:14No, absolutely not Absolutely not and this is what this is what frustrates me so much is that Progressive are obviously fucking lost but then like conservative or some of the trad people like, okay We're gonna go back to being trad. No, you're not we're never getting rid of abortion We're never getting rid of birth control women are working in ways that they never have before and they have so much control over reproduction that the world is fundamentally changed Yeah. And whatever we go forward with in the world, it has to take into account those two realities. So anybody that's walking out here expecting that men can get women with paychecks or by being alpha, your everything you're saying is doesn't matter anymore.

52:49You're talking about a world that doesn't exist anymore. And anybody that's talking about like very traditional roles in terms of like who's earning more money in a house or whatever, you're probably not relevant anymore. So we have to carve out some world in the future where we have some idea of a masculine or male archetype that's compatible with the fact that your wife might be earning or even out earning you, right? That has to be a thing because once Pandora's box is open in terms of like the reproduction shit and the working shit, it's just not going to go away. Women are going back to what they were before.

53:18It's not going to happen. And it sucks because like it would be interesting to see a lot of like trad talks in that direction. There's only, you know what? There's only one person I've ever heard. Give a good take on trad relationships and it was fucking Ben Shapiro. Did you see Ben Shapiro's conversation with Lex Friedman? Bits of it. I come from a very conservative background. I grew up Catholic. And when I listen to traditional people talk about male -female relationships, the fact that the woman was staying in the house, it was always something that was spoken about with the utmost amount of respect.

53:49A woman might stay in the house, but like this whole, the way that the father is the leader, like it's kind of true, but it was always with consultation and consent and cooperation. Yes, always. And the way that people talk about it today is with such fucking derision and hatred for women and like, oh yeah, like she stays in the house and the man is deleted, the man is in charge. And as like even the sitcoms before, even when the fathers were highly competent, show that the woman was very much an important figure. Bill Cosby was like, was he a doctor or a dentist? And like his wife, like even he was scared of his wife in the Fresh Principle layer.

54:23The uncle Phil was a fucking high -powered attorney lawyer and his wife was very scary, right? That was always the case. The way we ruled that forward into the period where men became the clowns, the homo -sympsons of the world, the pedigriffens of the world. It's even more. It's the one that is the competent one. She's the one that's balanced. She runs the home. She runs the man. Yeah, even in a traditional sense. So like when the trad people talk about this, one of my big complaints about like red pillars, is there's always so much adversity between men and women, rather than like cooperation.

54:50So any trad thing going forward, I don't think there's anything wrong with trad stop. Some of it is fun. Like some masculine and feminine roles can be fun in the bedroom, out of the bedroom, whatever. But it just has to be done with respect to where the, kind of like the labor market is and the education and everything and the reproductive rights are today. Because that's not going to change. So it has to incorporate that going forward. How do you square the circle of women's, I'm going to call it over success, but women's increased success in both education, employment and status with the fact that on average, women want to date a man who's as educated or more, as employed or more as status for a lot more.

55:24Women want to, but that has changed pretty dramatically. I wish I had the certain hand, but I want to say it was like 20 years ago, it was like, it was like 45 % of women would never consider dating a guy that was earning more than that was earning less than them. And I think that number has fallen out at like 29%. And it'll probably continue to change over time. But yeah, that's going to be something changing going forward. The, there's my, just me, my capitalist mindset. But like I always, when people email me and they always say like destiny, I want to start like this business or I want to start this website, I want like what's your piece of advice to me?

55:57The one thing that I always ask somebody is, if you wanna start a small business, first question in my opinion, you should be able to answer is why would somebody use your thing over anything else? If you don't have a snappy response to that, then quit, go do something else. You need to know a meaty like, they wanna use my thing or watch me because I can offer this unique thing. And I think you should approach everything in life like that. So if you're a man and you're approaching a woman and you're trying to say, okay, I wanna be a really shippling woman. Well, what do you have to offer? What's the value add?

56:22It can't just be a paycheck because women are working. It can't just be dick because she's got birth control and Tinder. It has to be something more than that. And people aren't equipping men, I think, to have a good answer to that question. You know, you can talk about like the alpha hypermasculine stuff, but like to be that masculine, you're talking about like 1 % of guys. You know, you're talking about like even six figure depending on where you're at, might not necessarily be the shit. You know, you're talking about a very, very small percentage. So I feel like a lot of people aren't equipping men, like to be able to like have that value out for women.

56:53What else some of the value on's then? If it's outside of providing resources, employment, et cetera. There's gonna be a, I'm gonna trigger the fuck out of a lot of people saying this. Here's how I view like the world is gone, okay? Women were feminine, men were masculine, and women over the past 20, 30, 40 years have done a really good job at kind of capturing and incorporating a whole bunch of masculine traits, okay? Women are working, they have a lot of independence, They're kind of managing their shit. They've done a really good job at incorporating that. We'll also still being feminine. Some people say that make you less feminine, but they still have the feminine traits too.

57:31They can take our houses, they can clean all the shut. Maybe some of them can't cook, whatever. For men, I feel like because of the way that we raise, the way that we were socialized or whatever, we still kind of have our masculine things, like men can work jobs and do that. And they do sometimes even to their detriment. For example, like over the coronavirus pandemic, men were staying home more than women to continue working to provide their for their families, right? So the education gap grew even more during the pandemic. Seven times more men dropped out of college during COVID than women. Yeah, to maintain households and everything, right?

57:59So men are still working, they're doing that. But the problem is men haven't incorporated any of the feminine traits into their psyche. So women are now like these like alpha omega like masculine feminine creatures that are now going through, yeah, they're going through the world. And men are like, okay, well, I'm like, I'm very masculine and it's like, okay, well, can you be communicative? Do you have emotional intelligence? Can you do any of these things? things that traditional like guys don't give a fuck about because like I don't need to be emotionally intelligent. I have a paycheck. Yeah, you need my money to survive, bitch.

58:27What are you gonna do, right? And now she's like, well, I have a lot of money. Fuck you. I was like, okay. So one of the things that I could see as a complication or a wrinkle there is that the sex drive and desire for women from men is so great that even a woman who has ingrained her masculine is still going to be attractive to the guy. For sure. I'm not convinced that a guy who has embodied his feminine becomes more attractive to a woman, especially when you have this disparity with regards to earning and education. I think it's possible. I just think we have like really weird and toxic ideas of like what feminine means, especially from like red pill or manistria spaces.

59:02I run into this all the time. That for instance, it's, oh man. Okay, here's a really, really insane example to me that I hear. Okay, I don't know if you said this, but a lot of red pillers say this thing where it's like, if you're ever, you should never, ever be emotionally vulnerable to a woman because she might. never, ever, ever said that. I'm not just to get it out there so that you understand my positioning within the world of men's advice. I'm not a part of the manosphere. I never have been. I'm not red pill. I never have been. Gacha, gacha, okay. I am so blue -pilled that I'm cooked in the eyes of the manosphere.

59:33I'm so bigoted that I'm a misogynist in the eyes of guardian readers. Gacha, gacha. I split the difference straight down the middle. And when it comes to the emotional vulnerability thing, that is a story that is told by men who have only ever been in relationships with women who haven't got good emotional control. There are women out there who will and I've been in relationships with some of them that solve vulnerability as a strength to be opening up as a... Or even, yeah, or even so people will say that like if you're ever emotionally vulnerable she might leave you, right? But if you're like and if you're an emotionally intellectual man, you know emotional intelligence, emotional vulnerability is one of the biggest tools a manipulator can use totally fucking mind fuck somebody because showing limited in Massive Vulnerability, you can get a woman incredibly obsessed with you.

1:00:15And any guy that is like a manipular person knows that. Well, think about what the push and pull is, right? The high powered boss bitch female lawyer that wants to be tied up and dommed by her husband on a nighttime. Why is that hot? Why is that interesting because of the polarity? Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes. The same thing goes for the guy that can be vulnerable on one side, but is also super competent, going out there and doing his thing is able to show strength, but show something else too. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. The polarity is really important. And I know this is my life because I'm online.

1:00:45I'm like hyper aggressive, ultra debate bro. You know, very, I'll say masculine. Yeah, like a very, very, very aggressive. But then, do you say wanna be pegged in the bedroom? No, nice try. But like on a personal level, if somebody sees me and I'm like a bit more emotional, the vulnerable or maybe open to somebody, it feels like very special, it feels very earned. Like, oh cool, like and every woman I've talked to, I have never in my life had a woman tell me, like, God, I wish you would just be more aggressive to me personally. It's always like, I wish you would open up more, I wish it would be more blah, blah, blah, blah.

1:01:10And it's like, I try. I have issues with some, it's like, yeah. But that's an idea of what it means to be more feminine. But every time you say that, it's like a red pillar, whatever, they're like, oh, you want to just cry and sob and blah, blah, blah, blah, and say, no, that's called being a fucking child. Okay, not being a motion adult, yeah. Think about that. It's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war quote that everybody loves to throw around. Okay, turn that on its head and say, it's exactly the same thing, but in this instance, being a warrior is being able to integrate your emotions.

1:01:34Yeah. Okay, is it not better to have an understanding of your emotions being connection with them and then choose to deploy them when you think that it's appropriate and be able to open up as opposed to being like, no, this is just a black box that me and no one else is ever going to look at. And I'm going to die at age 70 because of fucking like emotional spiritual death. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's really dumb. Like that having that emotional tells us is so, so, so important. It's the number one thing I need to work on in my life that I'm like actively like working a lot with my wife even is like trying to be like a little bit more emotionally communicative because I've grown up like as a very very stoic person.

1:02:06But I think that every woman wants that type of communication with a guy on a healthier level. But a lot of men don't learn it because we don't really communicate with ourselves like that. There are also some women out there that I think would see. I've been around them once that we'll say, if I see my partner make a joke that doesn't land, I cringe inside. My ovary shrivel up inside that they're hyper -hyper -attuned to a man's state. There might be. There are also some women that only did guys with super -huge forearms. There's always going to be the acceptance of course. Yeah, well there you go.

1:02:37But I mean, in general, being a bit more emotionally intelligent communicative is pretty important as a guy, I think. You have to, especially to understand women, you need to be more in tune with yourself to see it like in other people too. Remember as well, the biggest predictors when it comes to longevity in relationship are emotional stability, conscientiousness, growth mindset. Those are the ones that they have the best predictive power. The stuff like traditional attractiveness, education level, education level is controlled for a little bit, but earnings have none of this, but that's not what you're optimizing for.

1:03:12And this is where I think that in trying to integrate some of the insights that I talk about a ton on the show, but saying, okay, what's your outcome goal here? Is your outcome goal to be able to fuck as many girls as possible or to sleep with one guy in Never Catch feels, or is it to try and have a flourishing relationship that's going to make you feel fulfilled and not mean that you die alone at like fucking 75 with a ton of dogs? Yeah. Like, what are we optimizing for? Yeah. Yeah. Like I talk about, like in my opinion, there's like, people treated us like there's two boxes. You've got femininity and masculinity.

1:03:43And then like you try to like maximize women femininity and masculinity. And I always do it like there's like three boxes. You got like femininity, maturity and masculinity. We all need to work on maturity. And then like feminine eating a mask and there's like really fun things on the side, you know If you've got a guy who is incredibly intelligent. He's a hard worker He's really driven he's in tune with everything and he's like he's you know, tries to the best like That's awesome if he's also like six four. That's a huge that's a bonus It's like a fun thing on the side if you've got a girl is got like you know She's got all of her stuff figured out and she got like big boobs like that's cool Like the mask and the feminine things are like really fun things on the side And they can like be really fun things to play with but that's not like the main driving contributing successes in these relationships, I think, you know.

1:04:19Think about what current dating optimizes for though. It optimizes for those easily displayable objective metrics of success. It's the Rolex on your Tinder profile. It's the number of followers that you've got. It's the blue tickets, the car, it's the size of the boobs. It's a let filler itself, etc. Yeah. And for fucking men today is fucking TRT. It is. I can't. Well, I think guys are heading towards a world where we're finally going to start to see how negative social media can affect you in the way that has been affecting women for so long. Okay. Why? Because all these motherfuckers now, okay?

1:04:49All these guys, I don't give a fuck, 99 % of fitness influencers are on fucking gear and TRT counts as gear now, okay? Every motherfucker does, I haven't seen so many videos, so many things where guys are like, oh, these are like my six month results for like lifting or whatever. Then these guys are like the leanest fuck, they're getting huge. And it's like, oh, like I'm 27 lifting for the first time in five months, this is my, like bro, really? So why is that what's that got to do with the female impact of social? Oh, because I think for women, I think women see like a whole bunch of like this is what women should look like you should be this and that and like Everybody's using like filters and live filler and and T .O .D.

1:05:24is the For a guy that's like, yeah, it's gonna be nice to like oh well if you're a guy and you've been lifting for six months You should look like this and it's like no shot Yeah, and I've seen more more of those like pop up everywhere now where it's almost like and because T .R .T. I so accessible these days Have you ever had your levels done? Have you ever had your tests done? Yeah, they're very low What do you think? Well the last time I checked is 308 wow that is low. Yeah, that's like nearly subclinical I think. I've heard the range number from 300 to 1000, or you've got eight, you're playing with eight.

1:05:51Yeah, or 350 to 1000, so I'm already below it. But I don't have any of the symptoms of low T. So like, yeah, I'm drunk. I'm in the jam, I'm doing my best, but yeah. Well played. We were talking before we got started about some of the challenges of how people observe success, especially in the modern world. You have a lot of young people that watch the stuff that you do, you probably communicate with a bunch of them either like through stream or privately as well. What do young people believe will make them happy in the modern world, but actually won't? What are some of the myths that they're told about finding meaning and fulfillment in life?

1:06:23I feel like this is a really hard one for me because I think my mind works in a pretty unique way in that I am a very individual, not powered by other people's approval. Kind of mindset. It's helped me a lot in the streaming world because I've been able to deal with a lot of people hating me at one point in time. So I'll say this cautiously, but I feel like chasing other people's approval is it's a bad way to live Because it's very much like live by the sword die by the sword type of thing to where if other people's approval makes you feel really good about yourself Other people's disapproval is gonna make you hate yourself.

1:06:54You're outsourcing yourself with Self -worth to the front. Yeah, I've always been big and like self -esteem and self -confidence are called that because they come from yourself Like if you're a self -confident person, but only because you've got a huge support network and everybody around you's telling you a good job It's not that's not true. Yeah, you like self -confidence like I want to do a thing and everybody's coming fucking retarded But I'm gonna do it anyway because I think it's the right thing to do like that's like self -confidence That's what you really want you know to some extent you don't be like a narcissist, but um, yeah, so I think that um Trying to find things that give you like a genuine source of joy that like give you like a deep sense of meaning that feel really good for me It was music is music is really fun to do musical things I don't care about the people like it or don't that's a really cool hobby for me to do this No, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't give a fuck.

1:07:35I don't like impress anybody Those types of things are really important. If you spend your whole life living by other people's opinions of you, you'll die by other people's opinions of you. Does a desire, sometimes, that I notice in myself, especially if I'm in a zero sum back by tea mentality, where I'm trying to get one over on somebody else, that I'll find myself almost trying to win it a game that I know that they care about, but I don't. So let's say that I get a ton of pushback on the podcast or on something that I've done to do with the fact that I'm way too blue -pelled. And I'll think, okay, well, I'm bigger than you.

1:08:09Like, I'm in better condition, I'm leaner than you, I'm stronger than you, I'll better go to the gym, and this will motivate me more to go to the gym. It's like, hang in a second, like you're playing a game that you know that those people value. But it's not your game. Like, where does this come from? So you can almost find a way where people take the desires of those around them, import them in, and then say, oh, I'm going to do all of these different things which involve winning at everybody else's game, without ever working out what the game is that I care about, without working out what would genuinely fulfill me.

1:08:39And then when you look back and you think, oh, what is the list of accomplishments or pursuits that I've gone through and you just see shadows of everyone else, you know what I mean? I'm really hard to think because I just watched in the past day or two something about like how, when other people like invoke hatred and you, you're basically letting them control you in your life, yeah. Like a guiding principle that I've used for my life is, there are things that I want to do. And I have to be a certain person to do those things. So for me, success is like improving myself and kind of gradually sculpting and building myself to be that person.

1:09:13And the only person I can compare myself to is myself because everybody's got like a unique starting point. But what do you want to do with Peterson? Yeah, maybe. I might. Jordan Peterson, a lot of good things to say before like 2018, I think before his brain broke. Real honestly, truly, really did have a lot of good things to say. But yeah, like it's truly like the most important person to compare yourself to is yourself. It's they he has the same starting position as you he is all the same things going for him and against him And as long as you're doing better than you were yesterday like you're making improvements And that's like the best way to live I think one of the problems you would have there especially from current progressive ideology Would be that doesn't take into account all of the challenges that we're facing Systemically and so and you go well no it does because both versions of you are facing the same problems Yeah, but it is so disempowering again this sort of Everything is outsourced everything is systemic the world is against you I can see how it must be very disempowering.

1:10:03It must be very disempowering to be somebody who, you know, there's a, how much is political ideology heritable? It's like 25%. I think it's like 0 .6 or 0 .7. It's like very high, like 60, 70%. Okay. Very, very, very heritable. Right. So my point being that you are basically working from a genetic backup of what's going on here. And you can have a world in which you want to have of the driven individual agency, personal sovereignty, all of that shit, but you also happen to hold this political view that doesn't really seem to work and it seems to be a lot of friction going on. There is friction.

1:10:40I don't know how to explain it, but there is a way, there's gotta be a way to do it. You have no idea what you're an outlaw here with this. I know, but like so for instance, right? I've been taking the gym very, very seriously for the past six, seven months. I've been taking it pretty seriously for the past two years, but very seriously for the past six, seven months. Good month. When I go to the gym, okay. It's hard again. It's hard to progress and I'm probably starting off at a lower level muscle and I'm probably Taking a little bit longer to progress in my list than I would otherwise and when I go to the gym Two things have to exist in my mind at the same time one is okay progress is gonna be a little bit slower than me Okay, I know that I understand it okay.

1:11:14I accept that but I still have to try as hard as I can those two things can't Count our act each other and if you're if you're not careful the problem is it like in a way Hey, 308T for me, is it nano liters per desid grammar, what the fuck whatever it is, right? 308 for me is like the liberal mindset. And being as big as possible is the conservative mindset, right? If I let that 308 number define me, why the fuck should I even bother going to the gym? I'm never gonna be as big as I could have been if I would have started lifting at 15. I'm never gonna be as big as a guy willing to do TRT. I'm never gonna be as big as a guy that's just natty, more testosterone than me.

1:11:50Fuck it, why should I waste more time? But if I go out of the conservative route, right? Okay, well, you know, it's taking me six months of grinding to get my squad up to like 195 like another guy would be at like 315 by now, right? I'm a fucking weak piece of shit. I'm the fuck am I like, you know, I can't I'm trying every day I'm just gonna add five pounds of art. I'm an injured myself like every two months, right? That's like the conservative mindset is like fuck I don't care about this in a picture I'm gonna work as hard as possible And it's funny because in a way through my kind of like lifting history I've dealt with both of these right on the conservative mind set one is like I don't know how many people realize is like pushing yourself in the gym It's actually really easy.

1:12:24The hard thing is the discipline to control your meals, your sleep, and the routine. That's the really hard part. It's really easy to go to the gym and work out to get injured. I can do that all day. And I've done that before. It's like, fuck it. 10 more pounds on the bar. Fuck, I just fucking snap my shit. Fuck, I injure my shoulder. Fuck me, you know. And then on the liberal side, it's also where it's like, fuck me, my tea is low anyway. Do I really need to be shredded? Right? I got a lot of fucking money. I fuck a lot of women. I'm really successful online. Who the fuck cares if I have low tea?

1:12:49And I don't work. Yeah. Right? So there's... I don't know how I do it. I manage to for most things in my life somehow, but you have to be able to balance those two things out, where it's like, I'm gonna work as hard as I possibly can because I'm gonna be the best version of myself, and I recognize that how good I can be as myself might be controlled by some environmental factors. But like, there's the environmental factors are saying that I can exist in this range, but in this range, the conservative or personal factors are gonna determine where in this range I exist. It's all on you. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

1:13:17I really like that conception. One of the things I've been thinking about is because the gap between opinions and deeds, so for pretty much all of human history, the thing that you said and the thing that you did were very closely aligned, right? You couldn't say a thing that didn't involve you being there to say it. There wasn't some, you know, up until the fucking printing press and who had access to that. So, if you were going to make a statement about how virtuous you are, about the way that you acted, the way that you showed up, what time you got up, how many berries you caught, what animal you killed, etc., etc., all of that would be pretty much there in front for everyone to stress test it.

1:13:47Is this real? Now, someone's opinions and their deeds have been separated so much that all that we see of people for the most part are opinions. You can be the most loving, caring partner, the most well balanced, liquid, whatever it is that you say that is able to be out front and no one is really going to be able to stress test what's happening behind. This I think is fostering the performative empathy or the ability for people to do a performative of empathy, which is why I'm always so skeptical when someone starts talking online about proselytizing, they're so caring about this particular maligned group.

1:14:25But then a couple of months later, you see them throw the same sort of shade that they've just been protecting someone against another group. And this is why hypocrisy and scandal are probably, I would say, the like the most catnip content on the internet because what you get to do is it's perfectly designed for social media. It gets to say, here is something that happened before, or that they said before, and here is something that they've done now. Look at the difference between these two things. And that's, again, the performative empathy thing, to me, makes a lot of super progressive commentators seem disingenuous, and I think.

1:14:58Yeah, it's a really hard one. Something that I said earlier in this conversation was that our identity is sharded between all of society. Like who you are is not just who you are, it's what everybody thinks you are. Yes. right, as much as that is a horrible concept. This is only what I've had to rest with a lot of the past few years. For me personally, my kind of idea was like, listen, I'm gonna let my actions speak for themselves, okay? You might think I am a whatever, but like look at my history. And I realize it's actually not good enough to wear it. So like for instance, I think I've done a lot of like pretty cool political things in terms of motivating my fan base to get out and canvas for people.

1:15:33Personally, I've spent I think of this one over $150 ,000, housing people, hotels, getting people to go to places, canvassing and all of this has been a lot of my own money on this in a lot of my own time with us, and it's a really cool political project. But I'm not like you're like bragging about it or jerking off about it, because you know, my actions are you themselves. But I noticed when I show up in sort areas, people are very, very, very quick. They'll be like, oh, didn't you say this about Kyle Rittenhouse? Didn't you make this joke about black people? Didn't you say this? And it's like, okay, well, I've also done like this, I don't know about that.

1:15:57I don't care. I'm gonna say, okay, well, fuck. So to some extent, like doing the PR and the virtue signaling is actually kind of important. And now I've had to be like, okay, hey, I did this thing. I need you guys to know that because in the future I know you fuckers are gonna attack me for every negative thing I said so I need to be like front and center all the positives It's very irritating thing to have to work it because I do agree to some extent It's nice to like I want my actions to speak for themselves But Mike your actions don't say anything you have to actually speak for them You know, yes and very frustrating because there is an asymmetry of attention placed on the stuff that you do that is bad Depending on the agent that you're interacting with because they don't want to give attention to your good things You know, yes, so you need to be out front with those sometimes well again But the problem is in a world in which opinions and deeds have been separated so much Your the level of how how heavily you're going to be scrutinized and discredited for the things that you say It's okay.

1:16:43Where's the fucking receipts show me the homeless person that you housed show me the images of them going in there And then if you do do that, oh well, you're capitalizing on your like fucking social media altruism project I think you just have to own some of it. That's what I say Like for instance like for people that People will do YouTube videos where they give away money and homeless people to do whatever and be like Oh, you're just doing that for publicity and say well, it's not just for a bubble But no, no, fuck it say you are doing it for publicity Who the fuck cares the homeless guy that's getting the money doesn't give a fuck why are you giving a money He doesn't give a fuck if you're doing it for publicity He's getting good shit and who cares if you're getting publicity you're getting publicity doing a good thing Who cares if that's the only reason you're doing it the only reason that I donated a million dollars from malaria research and fucking and Africa is because I knew I get, who cares, fine, that's fucking fine.

1:17:27You should get good attention for it. I think people should just own it. But people are so scared of being like vain or whatever. I mean, being vain in those ways, I think is fine. Like if you're vain because you're a philanthropist or you're vain because like, oh, like I mentored, you know, 550 young boys and got them out of like prison and to find like, okay, yeah, who cares, brag about it, be you know, whatever you want about. I think it's okay to do that, but yeah. I wonder whether, I wonder what's gonna happen moving forward. I wonder whether it's going to be the case that we need good deeds to be done so that people are going to be given more leeway with that.

1:17:58Because the amount of scrutiny that does get applied to this stuff and the amount of, like it's a disincentive. If you were to say everybody's opposed about doing good things online should quite rightly be like, well, yeah, well done. You did go and do that. But this sort of culture of cynicism and satire and like sadonic commentary that we spoke about earlier on seems to kind of take that away. This is... Yeah, I don't think any of that actually matters at all. We talked about this earlier. I think one or two bad things is enough to undo literally everything you've done. Like Anna is a really great example for the on the Turks.

1:18:25This is like the largest or was the I think still is the largest like progressive left leaning channel. I think Chiang with Carcola Inski helped start and fund the justice Democrats and everything. None of that matter. She made one or two bad statements and other people like fuck Anna like I'm done with her. Like what the fuck do you know what the peak end rule is? Have you heard of this? No. Okay. So it's a cognitive bias that was discovered by Aiman Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Kahneman wrote thinking fast and slow. During a colonoscopy every minute the patients were given a rating and they could rate how painful the experience was.

1:18:57Then one day later they were asked to rate how painful it was and six months later asked to do the same. What they discovered was that there are two parts of an experience that determine the reflective pain that someone remembers and it was the peak, how high it got at any point throughout and the end. So they actually discovered that they could and changed the remembered pain of the colonoscopy by extending the length of the colonoscopy at the end and bringing the pain was basically how much it was moved. If you get to move a lot, it's a lot of pain, if it doesn't get moved much, it's not. So they had a control to be able to work out.

1:19:30So what they did was they found if they just left the little scope thing in the ass for an extra couple of minutes at the end and it wasn't very painful in retrospect, it was half as painful, the memory was half as painful. So it's called the peak and rule. Interesting. I came up with something called the peak hate rule, which is basically that every single content creator on the internet is defined by their most egregious transgression and their most recent transgression. So Jordan Peterson is both a transphob for, you know, the Bill C16 thing that he both became most famous for. And I don't know what he said, a spot -illustrated, let's say, like that's his thing.

1:20:08Hassan Arby would be most famous for American Z911, yep. and whatever he brought up. He brought a bunch of donating to Amazon, I think was a big thing. The Amazon Union thing. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's so interesting you say this, because you got there in such a different way, but I actually, 1 million percent agree. I have two different things that I apply this to. One, has to do with streaming, okay? And I see this time with a lot of people. They'll get into a very dramatic situation. And online, when you're in drama, I don't know if you've ever been at the receiving end of like, hey, mob online.

1:20:37Not yet. When it happens. It feels like the end of the world. And I always tell somebody, my saying is like people only remember you for your last three streams. Whatever the fuck you do, don't stop streaming. I know it sucks and it feels good, but keep streaming and in two or three days, people will fucking forget. But if you stop now, this is your defining moment and you will never come back. And that rule has worked 100 % of the time. I've known people, they got into a big drama and like fuck, I can't and they take a little bit of break off or whatever. And they're done. They can't do it. They can't go back.

1:21:04Yeah, because it was wait, what'd you say? Atriok. Atriok. Oh, was he the deep fake guy? Yeah, the deep fake guy. Yeah, he took a big long break, which is allowed everyone to kind of get sucked into it. Did he get back to streaming? He was a really big streamer though, right? Massive time. I think he's got it. He might have had a break, but like in general, I've known a lot of people who, he's usually for like the mid -sized people, they'll take that break, and then they might try to come back like once, but then that wave of hate flashes, and then they quit, and they just, they could have pushed.

1:21:29That's like no to your entire career. Yeah, and they can't come back and they get fucked by it. And I'm like, just keep, I've had like really dramatic things. And I had, I went to an MLG. I got to do a super - Well, it's a super - Well, it's a MLG. Pro gaming tournament. This was like 11 years ago. Okay. Really dramatic. I did stupid things. Girl hack my Twitter account, post my dick on my Twitter. Just a very dramatic, very stupid thing. And I was home, I streamed the next day. I was like, fuck it. Stream the next day. People made jokes, whatever. Two or three days later, as dramatic in the sense of it, people were like, okay, we're done.

1:21:57We're through it, right? Just keep streaming, keep streaming. No matter what the fuck happens, keep streaming. In two or three days, everyone forget. What about how to deal with it into personally? Let's say that it's not necessarily a content creator or it might be, it could be someone that just does something that causes the world to point a lot of fingers at them. How do you, like where do you go within yourself? Do you spend time with friends? Do you reframe it in a particular way? Do you just have to keep giving new impressions of you, I think. So I had two examples. One was the professional level.

1:22:23The second thing is, have you ever heard of the saying, you never get a second chance to make a first impression? First impression is so important. Something that I found this is especially true like on dates and when you're making a new impression on somebody In my personal opinion the first impression is largely irrelevant what really matters is like the last like 30 to 60 Be general person. Yeah, it's like if you go on a date and something is like really fun in an exciting reddit beginning And like the last like two hours are kind of like going that's what they're gonna remember you for But if you're gonna day in and it's kind of like starts awkward It's whatever blah blah blah but you end on a high note.

1:22:53You're that's so much better It's so good to do that. Like, just end on like a really positive impression of you or something, and the next time, that's what they're gonna have with their head more than remembering the first impression. I find personally, people don't remember first impressions that much. They definitely remember the last interaction they've had with you though. So, yeah, keep having impressions of people. Somebody had a negative impression of you, had a negative thing, like, treat, keep trying to have positive interactions. Obviously, be careful with this. I'm not saying that, like, if you give a bad impression, go stalk somebody at work and try to like make them see you're definitely whatever.

1:23:20But, yeah, you can fuck up, but like, don't let that be your last moment with somebody we're like, oh, I fucked up. I'm not going to talk to them again. Because that's all they're ever going to remember of you. Yes. I really like that. And I like the fact that we've come at this from, it couldn't be more different. Very, very different, very different angles. How worried are you about being replaced by GPT -6? Is it going to take six to five? Is it going to do it? I don't fucking know. I don't know. But like, I spoke to Rob Wiblin, guy from 80 ,000 hours podcast, like Megan, EA, effect, vultruism, existential risk.

1:23:51And he basically said that he's like, looking toward the twilight of his career, is he winds down to be replaced by robot robber, fucking like Rob Chat or something. Is there something unique about human creation that you think that's not going to be able to be replicated by ChatGPT down the line? Like within the next, let's say within the next tenures. I think that AI is going to force us to confront a lot of very uncomfortable aspects of humanity that we have never thought about before, or maybe like philosophers have thought about, but normal people haven't. And I don't know what answers we're going to decide what's some examples.

1:24:31What is art? It's very, very deep. So here on the broadest sense, computers are calculators, and we thought for a long time that that's all they can do. But things like creativity, inspiration, that's exclusively the domain of humans. The computer's not gonna be able to create a beautiful art piece, make it symphony, blah, blah, blah, right? They clearly they can. comes mid -June smashing that. Exactly. Winning art contest and triggering people and you know, now if you ever hate artists online the funny thing to do is when somebody posts a picture I'm just going to replies and I'm like this is so beautiful what prompt did you use?

1:25:01Wow. And they'll lose their fucking mouth. But yeah, clearly like if a human can do it a computer can probably do it. And that's a very unsettling thing for a lot of people to realize. And there's man I feel so bad there's a lot of philosophers like philosophy of language and and existence and all this shit that they would have had a lot of profound stuff to say, but it's like, what does it mean for something to even exist? So for instance, if I can start creating stuff digitally, like here's a question, okay? I can use an AI to make like a fake person now, right? And now I could get to the point almost where I can convincingly create like dialogue, comedy, like they can do like a full podcast, and you look at that and you're like, okay, well that person's not real, so it's not the same.

1:25:44And it's like, well how real are they compared to like me? If we never interact, there's a lot of people Watchers will never interact with me real life ever right is there a meaningful difference between my existence and that person's existence The person that isn't even real everything's just like a piece on B Right a little bit. Yeah, um or even more like Yeah, like what does it mean for a thing to even be that like it's kind of a that's like a question Where it's like I'm really high, but now we actually have to really think about that what does it mean for some to exist? What does mean for human?

1:26:08If so what does it mean for you to be you or what is it? What is the threshold of bandwidth and resolution at which you need to be representing yourself for it to actually be you. Does it need to be 95 % because there are tons and tons of things that you think and do that don't come across externally. You're in a world is a billion times richer than what you represent to the outer world. And given the fact that all that anybody else sees of you is what you represent, if you can find something that does all of the outside stuff within a couple of percent of accuracy, Well, what does that mean that it isn't you?

1:26:45We basically, there has to be some axiomatic, like, foundational belief that just says, I'm going to value something because it's human, but it's like unjustified. That's all it is. Because, like, we can imagine a world where AI is now creating art, and maybe people like, okay, well, I only like imperfect art because I know that it was made by a human. Well, an AI could make imperfect art. And it's like, okay, well, right. At some point, I like it just because it's human -made, but there's like, no, there's actually, there's no justification for that. We thought there was. Well, it's beautiful because it's unique.

1:27:10AI can create anything. Well, it's beautiful because it's imperfect. Yeah, it can be imperfect. Well, you know, like, so you think that it's just a question of, like finesse and resolution and how much detail this thing can go into, that let's say, I don't know the elicit into the episode that Joe Rogan, like it was AI Joe Rogan did with AI, the dude that runs open AI, and they're talking, it's a full hour long podcast and that speaking backward and forward, but there's some things that are missing in their fewer errors than you would expect. The laughs aren't quite right. Basically, the degree of humanness hasn't been fully replicated, but if you roll the sophistication of the program forward, it just starts to, oh, well, what you need is someone to get the word wrong three times and forget someone's name.

1:27:55Exactly. So the imperfect nature gets brought in. All right, so are you out of a job within 10 years? I have no idea. We got to figure out how it's going to work. And then you've got to exist within that paradigm. I figured out how to work it because, yeah, I mean, obviously this is a thing that's coming and you're not going to be able to stop it because the technology's out there. It's freely available for people to work on and iterate on. I'm not going to pretend to predict what the future's going to look like 10 years from now. Seven years ago, I thought that it was impossible to suddenly like Trump could ever be president.

1:28:21So why would I try to predict the future of AI? What about the danger of AI created content online? We obviously had, when was it, Cambridge Analytica 2016. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, the Facebook stuff. So Cambridge Analytica for the people that don't know was able to create, I was able to deploy very, very targeted ads at super small cohorts of people that the pain points of those people were understood. At least the copy and the advert for that had to be created by a real human. It would feed back up to the humans and then you get some fucking shadowy cabal of Vietnamese copy writers to come and do whatever the meme is that you make, and then you make a joke about Hillary.

1:29:03Now, you can do both ways for this. So you can find out which person has which pain point, feed that into an algorithm, and have an individually created piece of content that targets precisely their unique personality to nudge their preferences in one way or another. Surely that's fucking terrifying. Yeah, of course, yeah. I don't know what the... I'm not gonna be able to give you the answer to that. I just think about the future demise of the internet. I suppose as well, with social media, what humans have been trying to do, and this is what audience capture is, and it's heart, is they're trying to reverse engineer the desires and preferences of the people that they can reach, then feed red meat to that audience.

1:29:42But when you have algorithms working in both directions, it completely cuts out the content creator. So I wonder, I don't know, within not very long, Elliot Zayukowski reckons that fucking in X percent of all content on social media is going to be created by machines. Okay, well, I don't know. Are we gonna be able to compete with that? I'm not sure. I have no idea, yeah. It's gonna get spookier when AI is creating like full length like movies and songs and stuff too. Oh, fuck, so yeah, it's nothing safe. Yeah, exactly. So like, yeah, what is that? Because we, again, we imagine we appreciate things because like it was made by a person we think.

1:30:17That's probably not true though, right? The important thing is just that we think it was made by a person. But if it wasn't, like, given the fact that we presumed that the domain of creativity and art was something that... You named it humans? Yeah, but actually, no, they can do it better. That sort of, for instance, right, like, unobjectionably, copywriting, the average copywriter on the internet is probably not as good at copywriting as GPT -4 is. If you were to say, write me an advert for this two bedroom apartment in Austin City Centre. GPT -4 on average will be able to do that better than the average copywriter.

1:30:48Scale that all the way up. then you could, I was just thinking, imagine if in five years time you could type into whatever the new version of chat GBT is create me a 10 hour extended version of Avengers Endgame in which this thing happens and it'll probably be able to render that for you. Maybe. With all of the original characters, with everybody in there. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. And the technology is all like, it's funny because we keep seeing the graphs of like, this is like technology, it's like this. And it keeps seeing like, well, it's going to slow down eventually. But like, you got to figure like what, 20 years ago we didn't really even have cell phones.

1:31:30Yes. I think I was 18 when the first iPhone came out. I think it was 2007. Well, remember the limitation at the moment I don't think is computational. Moose law, which is that is every three years or every two years. There's a number of transistors will double every time. However many years, right? That's, I think that is starting to actually top out a tiny little bit. No, if it is or not. We're down to like, I remember I thought it was like 16 nanometers or maybe 20 nanometers. It was like the theoretically smallest distance between transistors. And I think the new tensor shit or whatever coming for the next Google phone is like three nanometers.

1:32:04Is Mozilla finally ending? I feel like people in writing articles like that for the past like five years. Perhaps what's the state was called? Consensuses that Mozilla is slowing down, when it might soon be augmented and then drive improvements further right here, fuck off. Yeah, that's hard to know, yeah. Yeah, okay. And then yeah, like look at this AI stuff where it was like three, two or three years ago, I don't think we cared much. It was still kind of like a meme. And now when like two years, it's like, fuck. Game over. What's happening? Did you ever read super intelligence or listen to it?

1:32:30No. So it's a book by Nick Bosteron who it was like, these seminal, this is how AGI is going to fuck us in the ass and it came out 2014. It's kind of technical, but it's a good lesson on Audible. It's one of the books on my reading list. And I remember saying on this very podcast, probably four years ago, I totally got red peeled by Nick Bosterium. I was adamant that this was going to be the end of fucking civilization and this is what's going to happen. And now I'm actually kind of sweet with it. I don't think the AGI is that big of a threat. All of the promises that were made and all of the fears that came out the back of it haven't happened.

1:33:01And in the last six months, this has completely been fucking turned on its head. And it's like, oh, right. And this happened off basically chatbots. And you go, what a chatbot is able to do, just scale that up infinitely, and that's like fucking civilization. Have you seen the movie, Hur? No, everyone keeps on fucking telling me to watch it. Just a guy that falls on level like a chatbot, basically. Yes, but like, here is something that I said, and I still believe this is true. I think that our acceptance for new technology, I think it happens very quickly and it's normalized very quickly. There are some things we think would like would never happen, but as soon as it does, We'll all accept it very fast.

1:33:39Here's one thing that I'm a little bit worried about is I think that at some point Chatbots are gonna get really good at having very human like conversations with you And I think the idea of having like a girlfriend chatbot I think that once those get good enough I think people will get very addicted to that very quickly and it'll be like shit You'll have like thousands or tens of thousands hundreds of people that have like these kind of like Discord girlfriends that are just chatbots and it sounds like silly and it sounds stupid and it sounds dumb but I think as soon as you get one that communicates at a good enough level with you, I think people would actually get hooked on it.

1:34:11Human desires are very long -leather, that you can press down on. I mean, you have seen this in your YouTube comments. I haven't recently, but I did a little while ago. People unironically commenting, just hold on, by the sector about to come soon. And that was before language learning models and chat GPT and stuff. There was a white pill that one of my friends and evolutionary psychologists called William Costello told me, which is, you could imagine a world in which VR plus language learning models plus very advanced AI would create a sandbox in which both men and women could learn how to interact with each other and flirt and it would almost be like a game.

1:34:46So you would practice flirting and then that would allow you to take it because one of the problems and one of the reasons that people have approach anxiety is that the cost of practicing and the cost of failing are exactly the same. Every day is game day. You don't get to go up and have practice rounds. If you fail, it's embarrassing in the real world. There's no like, there's what I always say and people ask me like, how do you like, if I want to like practice talking to women and everything like, what do I need to do? And it's like, it's super, super, super easy. You just need to have a lot of friends that are girls in like freshman year of high school.

1:35:15But if you're like 26 and you have none, you're like, you're fuck. This is a very high, but it's you going to the gym. What? It's you going to the gym at 34. Sure, yeah. A little bit. Well, no, it's not because going to the gym is fine. I can go and lift on my own. And if you fail and snap your shit. Yeah, but at least that's on my own, but like social interaction is like so much to get but it's like I've been friends with girls My I had a friend group of girls because I went to a Catholic high school with that was all boys and my friend group of girls Was at a high school that was all girls so when I was hanging with them I was getting tons of human interaction my whole high school life so talking to women for me is like not a big deal But if you're like 22 and you've never had like a lot of friends that are women where the fuck do you start?

1:35:52Holy shit. Yes, that's very very very very very daunting. Yeah, so it's like a hard thing to overcome Yeah, one of the potential like again, that was one of the white pills would be VR Create a sandbox in which people can practice another reason why the AI girlfriend thing is maybe not quite a seductive For guys or girls is that there is still no status attached to it because you're not being chosen so there is an element of prestige associated with being selected and if all that you require, it's like no one brags about the fact that they have an only fan subscription that they're paying to. Like anybody with the price of a cheeseburger spare per month has an only fan subscription.

1:36:34What is special is being selected. I don't know, I'm not sure. I think that that is special but there is a very real emotional component to it as well. That might be more important. Yeah. So maybe the selection thing is whatever but if the emotional thing is high enough because because there are people that get really, I used to think this was bullshit, but the more women I've talked to that have done escorting, the more it seems to be true, that a lot of the people that pay for escorts really aren't looking for like an awesome prostitute all night. They really are just looking for like companionship.

1:37:05And there's no status to buying an escort, other than I guess you have the money to afford it, but like the emotional companionship that you get from it is like so big, it's like fuck it, I'll pay for it. If you are sufficiently lonely because you're living in this atomized, pod universal basic income world, that yeah, well listen. And it's hard to think like in our world, like walking into, I think I fucking hate the guy, but Andrew Tate said this and it's probably true that pulling up to a party and like a fucking, the most expensive Bugatti in the world is not as impressive as walking into a party with four really hot women.

1:37:35Pretty select. Yeah, it's so like, but, and that's maybe people in our world might think like that. But if you're like a guy who's like 27 years old and you've never had a friend that's a girl before, are you really thinking is that guy at home listening? anything like, God, I just want you to go that likely so I can show everybody how cool I am. Or as usually, I really wish a woman would just talk to me because I want like that companionship. It probably just wants the emotional connection, you know? Or even in the status signaling. Did you see Tate in the new South Park? No, I have not. Did you know that he was in it?

1:38:01Nope. Andrew Tate is represented in the new South Park episode, the one that they finished the season with. Oh nice. As a Romanian sex trafficker. They don't use his name, but it's the same haircut, it's the same glasses, it's the same beard. and then the police come in and again they haven't used his name but the likeness is like so fucking so Randy The girls leave for spring break and Randy is distressed at the fact that Kyle and his friend Stan and his friend are playing Warhammer 40k Yeah, and this he says that this is fucking gay like why are you doing it blah blah blah? I'm gonna ring some on and get like some girls round and it's The tape guy that brings these people around it's I mean, you've gone this season from Harry and Meghan to Andrew to started with Harry and Meghan, finishes Andrew take, so fully all the breaths of the internet.

1:38:51Yeah. Fucking wild. What else you got coming up? What can people expect from you next? I mean, tomorrow we've got all the panel stuff going on. I think we're going to Tennessee to debate some libertarian guy in Ukraine, Russia. Next month I got a Wales and there's like a bit of a game. Oh yeah, let's go. Yeah. Why? There's like a light festival or something. Do you know who's Giezeka's? Yeah, yeah, he's gonna be there and a few other people were gonna be talking about stuff So yeah, I just a lot of random shit going on. He's an interesting dude Mm -hmm. I follow a an account called like out of context, Zizek Okay, and it's even in context.

1:39:25He's very funny He's like fucking brilliant look destiny. I really appreciate you man. Thank you for coming out Where should people go if they want to check out more useful? Instagram dot com such destiny twitter dot com such the omniliberal and youtube dot com such destiny