Destiny Finds Common Ground with a Tankie

hello

hello hey what's up nothing much how you

doing

you know we've been we've been in better

spirits

you know we're doing really good but uh

our twitter got banned

our twitter got banned how'd you oh well

welcome to the club what'd you tweet

um so it's kind of a long story but

i'm a very petty person if you haven't

if you can't tell

i am an incredibly petty person so and

um

i was fighting a twitter turf war with

these guys they call themselves

neocons neoconservatives but like like

not as a meme

and i was just going back and forth with

them

all day and i was i got banned based

they okay basically twitter this is such

bullshit right

twitter banned me saying that it was

threats and shit right but all i said

is that i'm fucking your mother she

wants my dick all this kind of stuff

it's not a threat it's a fact and you

know no and there's nothing

threatening about that you know okay did

you try sending twitter evidence you

were actually fucking their moms maybe

they don't man

maybe that needs to be an admission i

tried but then twitter said i'm sending

explicit content to their support team

and you know

i dug myself into a deeper hole you

should have sent

your pictures you fucked up i don't know

but um yeah i mean uh

so you got banned on twitter dropping

bad for years on twitter

really shit and has that hurt your uh

your platform and all that stuff yeah i

would say something

like i still do okay mm-hmm it's all

part of the game i guess

yeah yeah same yeah um i'm actually

curious about something before we get

into the meat and potatoes this is like

a streamer streamer question right

yeah you do you restream

um kind of yeah i do have stream my

stream to youtube and twitch

simultaneously yes

because i have been hesitant to get into

the affiliate program

and i was told that you're not allowed

to do it if you have restream

yeah you're not it's pretty fun you

could try if you have an established

platform you could

try emailing them and say hey like i

already have like a platform here can i

do a stream

and they will make those deals but they

might only be for really big people so

i'm not sure

uh okay yeah i'll i'll send it to you i

don't know i would call that but maybe

you would

it doesn't yeah yeah i'll try i'll check

it out

so um i think today what do you think

about having a kind of philosophical

conversation what do you think about

that

um okay listen i just had a three-hour

date okay i don't even know what the

fuck it was

i'll talk with you okay just none of the

crazy fucking all right

or john circus no no no no i'm sitting

today you know we're not

okay oh thank you okay i'm sitting today

yeah we're good yeah get me up

okay um let's see

i'm interested to know your

philosophical background more

i mean in terms of what this f

this is a loaded question i guess does

philosophy

only mean ethics to you or do you have

like a more fundamental philosophical

world view

um like so i want to very broadly say

like philosophy is just kind of like

a way of looking at the world um so like

there are like we can

ask questions about ethics as part of

philosophy we can ask questions about

like what we can know

so like you know epistemology um we can

ask questions about like you know

what are things like or the nature of

things so like ontology

um we can ask questions about the

physical world or whatever like things

like related to metaphysics or whatever

but yeah there's like lots of branches

across but like broadly speaking i would

say like philosophy just has to do with

i don't know broadly like just our way

of like looking at the world or how we

look at the world

and then there's subsets based on what

we want to talk about

are you familiar with the idea that

this was an idea i think from foyerbach

philosopher foyerbach

that philosophy is nothing more than

religion expounded into thought it's

religion

actually thinking about itself

um i mean like chances are i would

probably agree when i start getting some

definitions of what this guy is going to

call religion like if you're gonna say

like oh well religion is just like a way

of looking at the world or something

like that then

yeah i guess sure i mean like that seems

like that kind of discussion is going to

become pretty semantic pretty quickly

but i mean i could agree but i could

also not agree like i'd say that there's

like a huge difference between

the reason why things like there's huge

like religion and like theology

right like we can arguably say that like

you know

some people worship science as a

religion you know i think that's a

statement i would probably agree with

but i think that science is different

from theology right it just depends on

how you do that

oh yeah yeah i'm not one of those people

who like says oh

everything's a theology you know just

because yeah yeah

but um like oh you believe that reality

is real well that's as much a religion

as a christian

i mean okay yeah i mean like

yeah i'm definitely not coming at it

from that angle i think the idea is more

actually that

religion is more understood um

well when we think of religion i think

correct me if i'm wrong i don't want to

speak for you but i think when most

people think of religion

they think of kind of these

metaphysically loaded not even just

metaphysically but just kind of these

almost pseudo scientific

empirically loaded claims about you know

angels being real

and you know almost something is almost

as arbitrary as saying like oh there's

unicorns and there's

but i think religion um

means something else especially in the

context of 19th century philosophy i

don't think they saw it that

superficially i think they thought

religion was more generally about

relating to um

what they would call the what is

absolute the absolute

you know okay

if i agree with that or um

what is your view about religion i kind

of um the way that i try to make sense

of this is i separate out

um two things i separate out like

religion and theology so i would say

like theology

is the like study of any particular

religious doctrine

and then religion broadly speaking is

like a set of norms and customs that are

oftentimes rooted in a theology

so like i think theology is bad

personally i don't like most like

theology

um but i think that religion largely i

think can serve a lot of very positive

functions for society to give you a

sense of community a sense of purpose

a way to guide your actions uh you know

like things of your family members

participate in a set of like norms and

customs and rituals you get to

participate in

you know so i think that although

broadly speaking a lot of those things

are good i'm not a big fan of a lot of

theology

oh well you know i think actually if you

look at the history of western

philosophy

you could really see how the idea of it

just being religion expounded and

thought not just theology because

theology is more explicit theology is

talking about

almost directly the nature of divinity

and things like that

but the the for example the distinctions

that religion is working with

i think can be uh can be grounded

sorry the distinction that philosophy is

working with can be grounded religiously

like for example

um they say the founding moment of

western philosophy was

descartes the cartesian kind of dualism

between mind and body

um and that kind of distinction i think

at least as it was expounded by

descartes in western philosophy

i think it is something unique to

christianity i think it's something

unique to

uh the kind of contradiction that's

proper to christianity for example that

christ is the man

which is the unity of the material world

with the spiritual world and

you know so you can yeah

i don't know that's a contradiction

necessarily at least from a catholic

perspective

right a catholic would say that the

trinity isn't a contradiction it just

describes like three different

um contradiction's a bad word i just

mean

it might be a contradiction like you

know from some certain

logical common sensical perspective i

just mean to say it's it's a kind of um

seemingly paradoxical yeah yeah it's a

unity of opposites in some kind of way

these are yeah that's what i mean but um

yeah i mean i've and i know it's kind of

like shitty to like not do your homework

on someone before you come on but i've

kind of

watched some of your streams and i've

watched a little bit of stuff but i've

never

actually um i'm not actually familiar

with like

is there a school of philosophy that you

associate yourself with or identify with

or

not really i just kind of have like

thoughts on things and then i just kind

of work from that

oh god i understood yeah yeah

because okay um would i be am i allowed

to kind of

do my best shot in trying to categorize

you

um yeah if you want to i always get

different people that email me they're

like oh well you're actually this thing

oh yeah it's like i don't know i think

the first thing i would say is that i

would locate you within

i know people kind of some people want

to reject this distinction be like oh

it's all bullshit

but i think there is a real distinction

between analytic

and continental philosophy and i think i

would situate you more with

the analytics here

okay my understanding is that

if at one point in time there was a

broad divide between analytic and

continental philosophy that for the most

part that's not necessarily the case

anymore but i don't actually i don't

actually know if that's true

i have an academic friend it's it's

interesting because

to me that divide was always ambiguous

before

but actually you could say it begins

with bert rand russell's crusade against

uh

what was the british word the british

trend the specific form of hegelianism

in britain

some type of enlightenment or something

a rationality or something or

no no it was a specific trend in unique

to britain and there was a bunch of

british hegelians

i forgot the name some type of idealism

it was called and burned russell he

founded a whole trend basically

to the extent of my familiarity

basically launching an attack on them

um and that's one of the i think that's

one of the founding

distinctions but it really begins with

the divide

sometime in the 30s i think british

idealism yeah that's what it's called

british idealism someone in the chat got

it

yeah it was british idealism i think the

divide actually begins

in sometime in the 30s between heidegger

and a guy named rudolph carnap have you

ever heard of karnap

nope i don't know a lot of academic

names so oh okay okay for sure

um to try and break it down um

this is how i would break on the divide

for like in layman's terms right common

sense

yeah just so that we have some so i have

like a guidance for where to anchor my

mind here

what exactly are you trying to like i

guess like demonstrate

with what we're talking about now oh

just the distinction we don't have to

talk about it but just kind of the uh

the distinction between analytical and

continental philosophy and i think it

might be relevant because

i'm coming more i guess i would be

categorized more in the continental

sphere you know

okay sure all right i'm just making sure

that i understand we're trying to get so

it helps me uh keep my mind

more focused on what exactly we're

getting at but yeah go for it okay yeah

yeah

russell attacking i think you said

british idealism or someone else tagging

british idealism

no no um yeah i was just saying you

could maybe make the argument that the

analytic continental distinction begins

with there

but i think it begins with a certain

kind of reaction

against heidegger specifically heidegger

um and hi to gary heidegger's uh

contribution to i guess you would say

philosophy i would i think it's maybe

um too specific i think heidegger was

more generally

um not just a philosopher but he was a

he was a a broader type of thinker i

think ontology actually i wouldn't

consider it

a simply a branch of philosophy and

actually i can justify why i think that

is

to me the premise of philosophy

philosophy begins

with the classical by classical i mean

we're talking about ancient greece the

classical law of identity a

is a right philosophy is about

the idea to me the platonic idea

right and heidegger's ontology

is not necessarily is is uh speaking in

terms and writing in terms that are

beyond

uh the law of identity and beyond just

idea the platonic idea and it's

explicitly the case for how to but

anyway i don't want to ramble on to

simplify things um

heidegger's basic uh insight is kind of

like this

the whole history of western philosophy

can be characterized

beginning from uh plato onwards

and specifically descartes i mean that's

the one that makes sense to most people

by a forgetting of being of what being

is so for heidegger

we don't actually uh

we have no conception

really of being as such we have a

conception of being

uh as one being among many as a type of

being so for example

a being uh

is like maybe an object like an

apple or a rock or you know an animal

a being but a being is something we have

ready at hand right

it's something that is already

intelligible

is already formally definite

and it's already readily made and

presented before us basically right

but for heidegger there is a reality of

a more

general being being as such

that western philosophy's history can be

defined

by as a type of forgetting and

heidegger's basic example of this

is uh descartes so when descartes says i

think therefore i

am for heidegger or heideggerians this

is a kind of butchering i'm trying to

simplify it but

descartes is basically reducing being to

thought to the form of its

intelligibility or

the form of its um

mediation by thought

um and okay so that's i'm rambling on

so karnapp he's an american i think or

he's living in america at this time

he basically responds to heidegger

basically by

uh by saying that

heidegger is just mystifying the use of

words

in such a way that they cannot actually

describe anything

uh real heidegger is not describing

anything real and so for karnat begins

this kind of

um view i guess he initiates this kind

of view that

um the meaning of words is ultimately

located

in some kind of definite

uh

empirical certainty of reality if we

when we're speaking uh when we're using

language

we are making definite certain claims

about

reality basically um that can be that

have to be proven you know through the

scientific method

uh empirically and so on and so on

okay so

i guess okay to simplify that even more

um a lot of people know me i'm famous

for like my debates with voss you know

debates with all these kinds of people

and to me

i have trouble communicating with them

because they have a view when they're

using words like socialism when they're

using words like fascism things like

that in general

they speak with those were um they speak

using those words as though uh the

meaning

can somehow already be established with

some kind of uh

formal mechanism as certain uh before

the fact like

there's a the most vulgar example this

is there's a definition of fascism

that's

written somewhere and we just have to

discover the true definition the true

essence

right but someone who comes from the

continental perspective

i guess or i guess a heideggerian

perspective

would look at it differently they would

say um

fascism the meaning of fascism may be

definite

but we cannot premise that meaning or

know it

uh by some formal means before the fact

that it's already something in reality

that's uh that's real

so it's not a matter of discovering the

definition per se it's a matter of

discovering

what it actually is in the first place

so meaning isn't reduced for example to

the form

we give meaning itself

okay i feel like we're in like very um

i don't wanna say esoteric land but i'm

not entirely sure where

okay i i i okay we may have taken this a

little bit uh

i may have taken this a little bit too

far off together

ask you a good question related

specifically to this topic and then we

can kind of see where we're at i guess

sure sure um yeah so do you believe

that um are you just talking about like

the formation of language or something

or whether or not like the concept of

socialism is something that is either

discovered or invented

or it's more about the fact that

what words mean is not reducible to

the form those words give that meaning

what do you mean by the form those words

give that meaning what do you mean

meaning for example

when we ask what is the meaning of uh

let's say what is the meaning of i don't

know why i'm thinking of an apple it's

maybe there's something better

what is the meaning of uh

water okay okay

that meaning is not created

by the way in which we try to describe

it or give it form through language that

meaning is a more fundamental

experience or encounter that actually

precedes the way we make that

intelligible through language

first we have some kind of more

fundamental material

uh relation to what we call water and

then

to the best of our ability we attempt to

give it some kind of description

um okay i don't think that's that

controversial

but when it comes to things like fascism

or socialism it seems like

people think i'm crazy when i just i'm

saying the same thing but

with regard to those things um

i so i think there's a difference what

was the fruit what was the example that

we just gave

water water water so i think that it's a

little bit different because

when we talk about something like water

right i think that we

well so there's a few different ways we

can use the word water right we can use

this in a scientific content

or we can use this in a scientific sense

we can use this in like a layman's sense

right so i'm going to talk about the

layman's sense of water because in the

layman's sense of water water includes a

lot of things that also aren't water for

instance water in the united states

contains

anything like fluoride or other

chemicals that might be used at a water

treatment plant

right but we're broadly speaking we've

got something that we call water right

sure

yeah so i think with something like

water i think that water

is a lot easier to understand than like

um

than like a concept like socialism or

fascism because water generally reduces

down to a

fact of the matter of a material thing

that exists

in the world ideally right that there's

some understanding of like what water is

as a as a thing and that that's

reducible and we can see that

um when you talk about like socialism or

fascism i think we're talking about like

way more abstract organizations of a lot

of different types of things

that make that definition a little bit

more open to um

i don't know if i'd say open to

interpretation or just

open to um like having like different

qualifiers put on it or different

like the definition can change a lot is

what i'm saying so i'm speaking on this

slide like

for water it's hard to imagine we could

redefine water to mean a lot of

different things but for socialism or

fascism because these things are so much

more abstract

they could probably be like shifted

around quite a bit yeah

yeah but i think water also has this

amorphous quality as you just described

we

in our everyday sense we don't relate to

water in terms of its uh

scientifically understood material

substance

and and also water has a lot of other

you know you just have to read charles

dickens a tale of two cities and you'll

see

water means a lot water means revolution

in those books you know water can

have a lot of symbolic significance it

can have a lot of metaphorical

significance

um all i'm trying to say is that like

you eliminated all like

water like so there are particular

pieces of water

things of water in the world right that

these things if all humankind were to

disappear

the underlying matter like that is being

encompassed in the term water will go on

to exist

but concepts like socialism or fascism

will disappear with humanity that those

concepts will cease to exist

because those are purely human defined

whereas like water even though it's kind

of a human definition refers

ideally to some underlying fact of the

matter some existence in the material

world

ah but let me raise a philosophical

complication and if if you don't want me

to just

cut me off and be like i want to talk

about this don't you think though it's a

little bit more

that's kind of a kind of controversial

statement because from for example a

kantian perspective

the basic idea would be that actually

the

what whatever water is in itself is

completely unknowable to us what we

speak about when we're talking about

water is somehow transcendentally

mediated

um and some actually i think even the

analytic philosophers

argue this quite often like speaking

about things in themselves

when you annihilate and wipe out of uh

humanity

um the question is a little bit more

difficult

to be like can we be certain this exists

independently of the way in which

we socially and discursively uh mediate

it

yeah so like i guess like i don't have

um my formal engagement is literally

restricted to articles that i read on

wikipedia so i'm

not going to be able to give a strong

action okay understood understood yeah

yeah yeah i i guess i'll try to get to

the

the more comments i can give you an

answer i'm just saying it's going to be

like really limited it might be really

primitive there might be philosophers

that have studied this more that

disagree with me which in which case

obviously i'd appeal to whatever they

say

the way that i view it isn't like uh

i'll do this might even i mean

maybe there's a bargain for plato i

don't even know so i recognize that

there are like

universal forms and then there are

particular things

so for instance like the universal form

of what we understand

to be like water i think that that's a

concept that disappears along with

humanity but individual instances of

water

and water is kind of hard to imagine

let's say like a tree right the

universal concept of what is a tree

i think that that concept disappears if

humanity disappears

but any individual tree that matter will

still exist the underlying fact that the

matter will still exist

um and that thing will continue to go on

but the concept of a tree will disappear

with humanity that's what i would say

oh no yeah i think the um the kind of

rough kantian view is basically that um

what to what is left about a tree

when this kind of um transcendental

mediation

of it disappears um like

how can we meaningfully say the tree

will

persist when the only thing that's

making the tree intelligible as a

concept

for itself um is the way in which it's

transcended and by the way i'm not a

kante and i don't agree with it myself

but i just like

throwing these kind of i'm i want the

reason i want to complicate the

situation because

while i'm not a kantian myself i also

don't agree

necessarily agree with the kind of um

direct kind of empiricistic realistic

view but i can i think this is the idea

that like things

um i don't know that's content i've

heard this idea i think is this like the

idea that things only exist in so far as

they're being perceived and experienced

by another thing

no no no it's it's existence uh well it

depends on what we mean by its existence

insofar as it's an intelligible form

like a tree

as a tree insofar as the tree is in

existence then yes

but um i guess the idea is like

without the way in which we mediate the

world through language or

socially or discourse however they like

to say it um

how can there be any discontinuities or

dis

differentiations in the world at all how

can a tree be separated for example from

from any other matter around

exactly precisely yeah um yeah i don't

know i'm sure victon stein is allowed to

say in terms of language for that i'm

sure that kant

and hegel have things that they say

about it um i i don't think i ever dive

necessarily that deep these are

interesting things to think about but i

don't know at the end of the day how

much these play into any type of ethical

positions i have so i don't spend too

much time thinking about these type of

things yeah

um so yeah i don't have like a great

answer yeah yeah

understood i think let's rope it back

back into like i guess the more

practical um

significance of what we're talking about

so regarding the word socialism and

fascism for example i'm bringing it back

to that

i think uh sorry

in a similar way socialism

the meaning of socialism i guess we can

i guess uh one

reproach i would have with the view that

socialism or at least the significance

of things like socialism would disappear

with

um humanity is that

to simplify it i think if

there's something about the nature of

let's say i don't want to get to pothead

whatever but there's something about the

nature of let's say uh

being or the universe or whatever that

is revealed to us by the existence of

humanity it clearly tells us something

about the universe

that human beings can arise from it for

example why

or what do you mean by that well it's

not really uh

a very loaded thing to say it's just

that it tells us something about the

nature of the universe

that it is capable of giving rise to

human beings thinking beings for example

what does it say about the universe

aside from it can just that that it can

do that

okay well i mean i have to i agree with

that of course right

and if it can do that um i think

when we ex when we eliminate humanity

from the universe we're kind of

committing

an abstraction which gives us a

one-sided view of what the universe is

because clearly the universe i mean

humanity comes from there right so when

you get rid of humanity

uh you're not getting rid of the problem

so to speak okay

but um i think let me try to translate

with what you were saying about it in a

more simplifying way so we don't have to

go on these

uh pothead directions uh i think

basically

your point is more that since

socialism and fascism are relating to

human society and organization

what they mean is we're going to have

more power

to define what they mean by means of

definitions and by means of

things like that because they don't

simply subsist

naturally you know like we have to

actually define what they mean

um yeah i would argue that like language

loses its power if we

don't define anything the whole point of

defining like everything stems from

i've taken like an instrumentalist

approach to everything like we create

things because they provide utility to

us

and as soon as the definition of words

becomes fluid then they no longer

provide utility to us so they become

worthless which i think we should the

problem though i think is that we're

dealing

even in the case of things that are

let's say holy um

social and human and transcendental

whatever

such as socialism and fascism is that

there's actually

always two elements to the meaning of a

word

there's uh in my view at least there's a

more

objective and material meaning

um unconscious meaning perhaps and then

there is the explicit and conscious

attempt we give to try to make it

or to try to give form to this meaning

all my only contention is that there's

the meaning is not reducible to the way

in which

we try to uh give form to it

so i i agree in a sense that you need a

definition of socialism

but where i disagree maybe you don't you

don't disagree i don't know but where i

disagree with people like vosh and

and those people is that um

we cannot uh we can never

reduce that meaning to the string of

words or the sentence and

whatever description we give it

why not because there is an

actual uh let's say objective meaning

of it but that is precedent uh to the

way in which we try to describe it

so you're saying that socialism or

fascism that these are like materia

of the of the universe and we kind of

are discovering these concepts there's

some underlying

no it's it's mathematics

because it seems to me that like i would

view socialism and fascism as like human

constructed things and if humans are

constructing it and necessarily it will

have some constraints

should be understandable i i know you

don't like uh leftists i don't either

but

i'm just gonna quote marx not to be

dogmatic or anything but i think mark

sums up my view

he says men and women create their own

uh men and women make history as in

and for marx history means basically the

social reality all that kind of stuff

society

men and women make history but not as

they please

okay so even though we we

as human beings we do create socialism

and fascism

it doesn't mean we do it voluntarily or

we do it

uh um we do it in a purely conscious way

and and why i say yeah i would agree

okay so yeah so i would distinguish

between two things here so

i think that i would agree with that in

practice

so like for instance if you were to

argue about like the socialist system of

x country that's going to be something

that um we're trying to like

um like define like retroactively

and that's going to be imperfect and the

people that are working there aren't

going to be like saying like oh well

what should we enact this far or this

law well let's look up the definition of

socialism

right however when we talk about like

describing something

like idealistically like oh well what is

socialism right

assuming we're not trying to describe

some particular instance of it we will

be able to

determine a set of like well this is

what this is and this is what this isn't

i think

but then i think to me the question is

how can we

arrive at um the idea of socialism

beyond the instances it takes

um well we would just it would be

whatever we collectively as humanity

arrive on right how do we arrive on the

definition of anything it could be the

definition of a chair it could be what a

man or a woman is it could be what a

democratic government is it could be

what a planet is

right so like language is like a shared

experience between all of us right so to

you would that be just basically what

most people

try to mean when they say this word

socialism and

things like that yeah arguably yeah i

agree with that i agree with that

um and i don't think that's necessarily

something

that's fully fashioned consciously

either i mean

we attribute we use words in ways

for profoundly unconscious reasons as

well but

sure the problem with and i don't want

to keep shitting on you know voss or

whatever

you know because i'm talking to you

right now so

but the problem with people like him and

socialists like him let's say not just

voss maybe

a lot of the socialists maybe you've

argued with and other socialists

to them what most people in the world

mean by socialism

is wrong because and their special

definition

uh whose basis is is

beyond i think it's just chomsky chomsky

seems like the only one who consistently

speaks about the meaning of what

socialism is in the way that they do

but they basically say

let's say someone says okay uh the ussr

is socialist or

china is socialist or whatever most

people

in the world use socialism to describe

those countries and they even use

communism right

yeah and it's a big problem

definitionally where socialism

means means it means a lot of different

things even two socialists

like i noticed that when i started

debating socialists that no two

socialists have the same definition of

social people that are self-described as

socialists

and then even across the world people

use socialists to describe

a varying number of things from economic

um

policy to philosophical philosophy

philosophical plus i'm sorry um to like

philosophical thought to like

systems of government like yeah i've

seen it thrown around and used to mean

literally everything

yeah and something that's fascinating by

the way is that

when socialism actually became a thing

for the first time in history

it was the same thing it's not like

someone first came up with a definition

an ideal of some kind

socialism basically originated as and

i'm not

you know trying to joke around as kind

of a meme you know

a kind of floating word that was

whose meaning was very vague very

ambiguous

and it seemed to only be defined by the

way in which

everyone was referring to and talking

about it it had no

um direct definition of its own it's in

the communist manifesto a specter is

haunting europe the specter of communism

the pope's talking about it the prussian

police spies are talking about it

all these people are making a fuss over

it

as to what it actually was it was wasn't

set in stone or um written everywhere

but i think the

the way in which we can give meaning to

socialism

isn't by trying to come up with an ideal

that exists at the expense of reality

for me

we should understand the meaning of

socialism by

looking at how it's been used across

reality

and especially the that

gave rise to that use and i think that's

what marx and engels actually originally

did and you know because they didn't

begin as

yeah so to shortcut a lot of this

argument i don't think i'm necessarily

going to disagree with anything you're

going to say here

but so i'm going to try to demonstrate

the problem that arises

and then i'm sure you'll agree with me

that this is a problem and then i don't

know what each of us would say to fix

this problem

so this is a common problem that will

come up when i have debates with people

somebody will say something like

oh um i'm going to use this word

oh okay i've got a really good example

actually let's look at the word

manipulate okay somebody's going to say

hey you agree that in this particular

circumstance that you manipulated this

person

and i might push back and i might say

well hold on i don't think i manipulated

this person i think you know i had a

conversation with him and i convinced

him that like i might have been

correcting a certain thing

and then the person will counter me and

they'll go okay well hold on when i say

manipulate that's what i mean i don't

mean any ill will by it now my

objection is that well manipulate is

usually loaded morally as to be like a

negative thing like usually you're doing

something against somebody

but but he assures me he's like no no no

no like i i don't think that

when i use manipulate i'm using it like

in an amoral sense like just like this

is the thing that you do

right so let's say that i agree with him

on that point and then that's cool we've

identified that

let's say that later on in the

conversation he's trying to condemn a

behavior of mine and he says something

like

well of course this is bad remember we

both agreed earlier you literally

manipulated this person

now the person has taken the word that i

agreed with earlier

and now he's retroactively fitting a

definition that we didn't agree on

i think this seems a little abstract but

this is the problem i think that people

have

when it comes to playing so fast and

loose with words is it allows like bad

faith actors to kind of get you to agree

with certain things or to talk about

certain things

where they're loading these words in

ways they're dishonest about and then

you found yourself like having a

conversation and before you know it

you're like agreeing to things that you

actually would never agree to

i think that's why people try to be a

little bit more strict with definition

so if somebody's going to advocate for

say

socialism or whatever and like they're

like oh when i say socialism i literally

just mean like government safety nets

like scandinavia it's like oh okay

and let's say i agree with that and that

person is in power they're like okay

well by the way

um all capital formation is gone all

businesses are now given to the workers

it's like wait holy shit i didn't know

you meant that with socialism you tell

me that right

now we have a problem because our

definitions are inconsistent um that's

the only reason why i think most people

will fight on like strictly defining

words why i would fight to strictly

define words because i need to know what

somebody is talking about

otherwise the conversations become a

little bit meaningless or absurd

sometimes yeah

you know um i 100 agree that

the whole linchpin of this issue is bad

faith

because when we trust intuition we trust

common sense

which i think you do as well um at that

point you know it's very clear what

someone's gonna mean when you say you're

a manipulative you know it's gonna bring

all of the commonsensical connotations

in everyday

human life that come with that word you

know

um and to me i think

but i don't actually think having

um fixed well i mean they may be uh

what's the word

modular but they're still going to be

fixed you can modulate them all you want

but they're still going to be fixed

uh like in the sense that you're going

to they're going to be constant right

i don't think having constant

definitions solves the problem of bad

faith and as a matter of fact i actually

think

that's precisely what uh

what enables bad faith to an even

unprecedented degree because

i think there's always going to be a way

for people to find leap

loopholes and use form you know

be formalistic in order to in a bad

faith way betray the actual content

that it means sure well that's kind of

true though i um

this is my my grade one engagement with

this topic have you ever heard um have

you ever written 1984

yeah yeah i read it when i was really

young yeah okay so 1984 i think is

largely a book about language

um so and i i think i agree with the

concepts in that book

that like look like it almost feels like

language to some extent

can kind of almost restrict or determine

our thoughts

right so a big part of 1984 arguably one

of the biggest parts is like redefining

like the words that people even know or

how they describe things

assuming that if you restrict a person's

vocabulary you essentially can restrict

a person's particular thoughts

and so like when or if you define words

in a certain way you can like give rise

to certain thoughts so one thing that

kind of bothers me

i'll use very cliche examples we'll say

quote unquote cancel culture

right now there are we'll look at two

words that exist in the american

vernacular

um racism and fascism

so these are words where people play

very fast and loose with the definitions

of these words

which i guess is okay but when the

punishment comes around for these words

we only appeal to the harshest and

strictest definitions

so for example when i think of like um

how should we punish a racist right

well a racist person is somebody that's

bigoted that thinks that they have like

some intrinsically superior

um existence due to a a characteristic

that shouldn't determine that oh in

other words

like a man might think he's better than

a woman or a white person i think

they're better than a black person right

that's racist and that's bad and i know

ways that i would punish that

we all agree that there are ways that we

should punish that we probably should

punish that right

however when people throw around like

that person's a racist

like they might use it in a sense that's

far different than

how we would normally associate it with

so my problem is that they'll invoke the

word or they'll invoke the term

and and when they invoke something it'll

be used for different purposes at

different times

but not everybody seems to be capable of

following the nuance of all of those

different

um like invocations and then we like end

up the conversations like nationally

become like

really fucked and i think that the abuse

and the misappropriation of that

language like that in and of itself i

think leads to harms

i think it's more extreme than just

saying well any bad faith actor will do

something bad sure they could

but this is like it's kind of like

somebody walking into your house with an

ak-47 and then killing your whole family

and you're like

well you know you know they could have

killed us with a knife it's like yeah

they could have but if we can take away

the ak-47 maybe it's good same thing

with the mystic preparation of language

we can get people to be a little bit

more strictly definitions

i think we control people's ability to

do so much of this particular type of

harm and society i would say

but um but the i don't want to

make this about 1984 because it's very

relevant to the point you're actually

raising

but to me i think the issue i take with

orwell's

relationship to language is orwell

seems to assume that the definition or

the meaning of the word

itself is already somehow established

and we're just abusing it and twisting

it

and contradicting it but to me

the the precise source of bad faith it's

not just that bad faith will still

arise the precise source source of bad

faith

is precisely when form is used

opportunistically

to betray content when the formal

definition of words is used in such a

way that betrays our common sense

our intuition our basic kinds of

unconscious associations

and speaking in regards to

fascism or racism and so on

i don't think it's that there's a

specific

definition of racism out there and then

people are abusing it i think what's

happening is that we have a very

clear not clear in the sense of clear

to to describe but we have an

unconscious

understanding of racism for example and

what most people in in their everyday

use of the word racism mean by that

like normal practical minded american

people people who don't

have time to do canceled culture on

twitter all day people who are concerned

with the practical necessities of

everyday life you know

going to work feeding your family doing

things like that you know

for them it's pretty clear what racism

means because

racism affects them at that level right

it's not a matter of abstract

um yeah but i think that my issue is

when you talk about the formula i feel

like you can invoke

so much using a certain word as long as

we're not agreeing on so like

you might take a person's individual

engagement with racism

and you know you can invoke those

feelings with the word racist but then

you apply that you ascribe racism

or some action to racism that wouldn't

actually fit that person's experience

so let's say for instance let's say

minority x has an experience with racism

and their experience with racism is

cops abusing them boss is firing them

for what they do for work

and other people being openly racist and

bigoted against them such as like

hitting them in the streets spitting on

them or whatever right

now let's say that i find out that um

some random person has um

rapped out loud to a song and they used

to slur in the wrapping or whatever

right

now when i talk to the when i talk to

that person that minority acts when i

talk to them and i go hey

did you know that person a is racist i'm

using that word

racist to invoke all the feelings that

minority x has worries

but none of those feelings actually

apply they're not actually there's no

overlap there

between the person that um is actually

being described right the other person's

being described

and that's my issue with like playing

like fast and loose with with language

and why i feel like adherence to the

form

um should be somewhat stricter we should

at least vie for that

otherwise i feel like it's so easy to

abuse but you know it's strange because

i

agree with everything you just said like

100 and i even think that is precisely

the source of this kind of

opportunism it's exactly that it's that

people are

using real things words that have a real

meaning

and they're in they're evoking all of

that you know what you just said those

real experiences

faced by minorities and of all kinds and

they're using them in opportunistic ways

that betray that meaning it's just my

only issue is that

that reality you're describing of racism

my issue is that when we attempt to

arrive at the essence of that

formally through a definition of some

kind

um we inevitably will will

set our definition one way or another

loose against the content out of which

it arose and i think the only way you

can solve this problem

is to recognize that there is no certain

or

airtight guarantee against bad faith

i think yeah but i feel like we can

still like encourage societal norms to

try to

push against it i guess like to look

more specifically like

the definition of socialism is

incredibly frustrating to me

i have a decent understanding i think of

like what a socially

like social socialist organization what

that would look like

um and i spent a lot of time arguing

against conservatives for a long time

for like you want health care for your

country that's socialism like well no

there's not really anything to do with

socialism

and i feel like i've argued that for a

long time but now i see people on the

left who argue in favor of socialism

they say well the first steps to

socialism we need like socialized health

care now the like people on the left

um like let very far left-leaning

liberals i would say

and even some like like socialist type

people are making the same arguments

that conservatives make they're like

well when the government does more

that's socialism it's like wait wait

that's not socialism what do you mean

um you're talking about like expanded

like social safety net so there's

nothing to do with socialism so like

when these definitions all become so

fast and loose

i guess like the main thing that i want

to avoid the annoying thing for me is

that as soon as somebody defines them as

something i have to ask like 20

questions to figure out what they

actually mean

if somebody these days tells me that

they're like a socialist or if they

accuse somebody being a fascist i'd like

okay well what are your policies what do

you believe in what do you want to do

because the word itself is actually

completely devoid of meaning these days

it's either invoked for for unity or for

fear

never for like actual information well i

i

i mean um the first thing is that i

think when most socialists

most people who call themselves social

especially in america

it's not just that the word they're

using is meaningless their position is

fundamentally meaningless

it doesn't really mean anything to be a

socialist in america now i guess bernie

sanders

gave some kind of meaning to the phrase

democratic socialism in the contemporary

era

but i mean the way in which that word

has been stretched in the united states

is far you know it's gone so far beyond

you know that

but to address the actual point

i guess what i would say is that i don't

think these

contradictions you're describing is

socialism just when the government does

stuff is it something more specific

i don't think these contradictions show

that socialism is meaningless i think if

there's a meaning to socialism

we have to first accept that it's a

meaning

that that it's a meaning uh there's

something about

there's a reason why the word socialism

is used in all of these ways

and while they might on the surface

appear completely contradictory

i think they can actually be reconciled

when you uh

go a little bit below the surface for

example even in the case of

you know the the government does stuff

mean why is it that

in our in the common sense uh vernacular

of americans that they describe this

uh as socialism well i think it says

something about socialism

it's not it's not just that they're

wrong it's probably like and in any

definition

if it's incorrect there's probably like

a story there to explain why it is the

way that it is

right it's it's not just that the

there's a story is that i think that

it says something about the actual

meaning of socialism that people make

that

association i think i think that i think

i mean it's not that socialism is

reducible to the government doing stuff

but

from a broader historical perspective um

socialists for example when the word

came into existence and through the 20th

century i mean

everyone who vaguely recognized that the

19th century

individualistic liberal society of you

know

laissez faire whatever this is a kind of

you know

caricature or whatever but it's a

simplification that that was no longer

sustainable so

most people who vaguely agreed with that

sentiment

called themselves socialist like oh yeah

i'm a socialist i agree that

you know this old style of capitalism or

whatever is just not

going to survive and it's it's not

sustainable and and

those people i mean their views

ranged very radically across i mean

depending on who you talk to you had

people for whom this socialism meant

what marx meant by communism you had

people for whom this meant

what the anarchists were saying you had

you know people who we would translate

as

welfare states mixed economies social

democrats

and you even had uh should i say it you

even had people calling themselves

fascists who who

would also say yes we're also socialists

we believe in

putting the nation before prophets or

whatever so

um i think these all may be

contradictory

i guess i would say but that doesn't

mean

the the word they have in common

uh just because it's going through all

these contradictions means there's no

deeper

coherence or meaning behind why that is

i think there's a reason why

they were using the word socialism in

common

well i guess you we can talk about that

meaning if you want but i

i would still push for i don't know i

still would like to push for some

coherency and definitions i feel like

that's an attainable goal

like we should be able to have some

consistency by which we speak with words

i get or do you maybe i don't know if

i'm making an emotional deal here

like don't you um don't you

wait hold on i'm sorry real quick

someone in your chat said why doesn't

destiny have to ask 100 questions when

someone says they're republican i do i

have to ask a lot of questions

because republican can mean anything

from like i hate black people and

mexicans

to i just don't want people to take my

guns but otherwise i'm like pretty

socially chill like that word can mean a

lot of different things as well look at

the

look at the difference between a neocon

versus like a trump republican

um versus like a tea party right like

all three of these groups i think are

fairly distinct

um okay so my only question to you i

guess is like um

do you don't don't you isn't it

frustrating that like

so many more abstract words just have no

definition or or like

when somebody says like hey are you an x

that you're like well what do you mean

when you say x and then go on to define

it that these words almost become

meaningless doesn't that is that not a

problem

it doesn't frustrate me because i've

always tried to

either know already like have this

deeper type of sense of

what are you trying to say basically

like and i try to get an idea of what

people try to say to by

i guess um by relating to it on a very

deep

and intuitive level and i guess uh um in

a country like america i guess

we don't really think

in uh the way we're brought up the way

this country is

a lot of things we just we build from

scratch we try to create things from

scratch you know it's the nature of the

country

and we we um a lot of times when you ask

someone what do you mean

sometimes it's very much justified and

most maybe most of the time is justified

right

especially in the common sense use but

sometimes

you're not actually inquiring about what

people mean you're asking them to

put their terms in a kind of formally

acceptable way

i mean it's almost like uh when the

teacher when you want to go to the

bathroom you're going

can i use the bathroom and they go i

don't know can you what do you mean

you know i mean they know what you mean

on a deeper

but i think that there is some value in

just knowing what people are talking

about

mm-hmm oh i i agree it's like

because there are like ways um i think a

really good example wait are you

american or where do you live or what

are you oh i'm 100 american yeah i live

in america yeah

okay so like here's an example of

something that's frustrating to me okay

um the phrases the phrases acab

or defund the police i think are phrases

that

at their root depending on how you get

at them

like the majority of americans would

probably agree with them

so if so i'm going to be a little bit

liberal um in

in like like a liberal like in terms of

how i describe these things rather than

the more hardcore left-leaning way

right but if i look at a-cab all cops

are bastards and i say well the problem

with the institution of the police force

is that one

oftentimes it regulates itself which

which is a huge problem and two

oftentimes

police officers are incentivized to look

after other police officers

so in that sense you know all cops are

bastards you know it's not good that we

have an entity that you know gets

a monopoly on violence it's allowed to

oppress us and attack us and answers to

no one but themselves it's bad

i think that i can i could probably talk

about that and get a lot of americans to

kind of convincingly like be like yeah

okay you know i don't agree with you

yeah sure i know what you're saying

but a cab the phrase all cops are

bastards when people on like say the

center or the right hear that

they're like oh you hate all cops fuck

you right so i've taken now

a word that stands for a concept that i

think is generally agreeable

and now because of the language i've

used i've immediately created a huge

division there and for what what do i

gain for doing that

well this is my problem with like having

fascinated me no i mean um

you're i actually take it a step farther

and i say the reason why people

and the meaning of it when they're

saying that it's just a virtue signal

but it's supposed it's to virtue signal

something very specific which is

this kind of mark of distinction

from the rest of the american masses

that oh you're edgy and you're cool

and you're you're you're in the know

you're above all of you're willing to go

to the extremes unlike

normal americans who have to live nor

have to deal with you know

living normal lives and raising families

and doing things that

like normal people do when you're saying

when you're

saying that kind of edgy shit which you

know is turning off normally

they're doing it for that precise reason

is that

they're trying to ground their

fundamentally anti-social

position and oftentimes i don't want to

get too much in the marxist

you know lingo but their class position

a lot of these people is that

they're not lit they're not working

basic they're not dealing with

working normal lives and dealing with uh

normal jobs they're people the majority

of people that say acab have never

actually had an adverse experience with

a police officer except for when they've

been with their white friends you know

standing outside of a starbucks

protesting or something

precisely precisely exactly and a lot of

that does come i'm not gonna

i'm not blaming them as a whole a lot of

it does genuinely come from the fact

that

in contrast to i guess the stereotype of

the 50s the post-war

the baby boomers the the millennials of

this generation

don't have stable jobs they're not able

to secure stable livelihoods and there's

no clear path

to home ownership and things like that

so i completely get that but that also

has

created a sizable population of young

people who have

are just in this fundamentally

anti-social position in regards to

society where

they don't really have any stable

foundation to make to make a living you

know

and and that kind of

cultivates these

slogans as you're saying that that

solely serve the purpose to antagonize

the majority of americans i guess um

so like here's another problem i don't

know we i don't think we can actually

reach an agreement here because there's

no way to know

because we have empirically measured

which i think feeds more to my problem

so i would like to imagine

maybe this is my naive optimism i i

would like to imagine that

most of the creations of these slogans

aren't meant to be purely antagonistic

that they do

think that at the end of the day they're

going to get some level of support or

people coming over to their side from

this

um it just seems that like by using the

language and the way they do it ends up

being contradictory but i would hope

that it's not all like just purely

antagonistic i think for a lot of people

you're right that is the case that

they're genuinely

um upset about the state of policing in

the united states

but a lot of people don't know any other

alternative they think that it's either

you're accepting the kind of status quo

views about

the police in america or you have to

adopt this trendy

slogan earring whatever that doesn't

work and i know for a fact a lot of

people are just genuinely being led

astray by these kind of bad faith

elements

and the reason bad faith elements

i guess rise to the top and you know

lead

lead these people and lead them astray

even um

is because they create a lot of

artificial

sites of conflict that people falsely

think is the real distinction okay i

know that doesn't make sense i didn't

put that around the

right way for example what you just said

so the people who are

when when people are the people let's

say bad faith actors creating the word a

cab

they're just then they're when they do

that they're going to antagonize maybe

50

of americans right at least sure and

then suddenly

you're gonna go to thanksgiving dinner

and then your uncle or whoever who's

completely turned off and against this

slogan is going to define their position

to be pro police and then this arms race

is created

where you have to start taking sides and

the whole thing is created

just by these bad faith actors whereas

i'm sure there would be a division

before the fact but they've just

created a pointless and almost uh

substanceless polarization yeah and

that's kind of my issue is when you get

people that would otherwise be on your

side

who are now all of a sudden opposed i

think maybe a less contentious term

might be defund the police

but i think when you describe what

generally people mean by that

that like funding should be diverted to

other organizations that are more

capable of

specifically handling certain problems

in society rather than having to call

the police on every single thing

that i think like most people would

agree like yeah this sounds like a good

idea

but when you just call it defund the

police you're creating like such a more

unnecessarily divisive message that does

nothing to further your political

purpose or anything

in in this in spirit of you know maybe

sounding naive and having just a

generally good faith attitude

i think maybe a lot of the problem also

results from the fact that people

don't really this is going to sound

really corny but people don't believe in

the american people anymore people don't

people just assume everyone's evil and

everyone's

i guess inherently racist and bad and

you know the enemy

so they just jump right to the case of

start

antagonizing them because they don't

actually trust that when you explain

yourself

in a way that makes sense to the

american majority

that they there's a big chance that

they'll come on to your side they they

immediately um

i guess knock on an open door or what is

the word they've closed

the opportunity they kill it before it

even gets off

i don't know what the grappling

experience yeah yeah exactly um

but i also just kind of roping that back

into this whole kind of the use of

language and definition thing

i also think that it can apply to that

too is that

we can't actually really control

in an airtight formal way what the

meaning of a word

is but if we act in a spirit of good

faith

maybe there will be a misunderstanding

as to

you know why we're using certain words

in the way we are but i think

real communication begins when instead

of saying you know

what's your definition um

you say what do you in what sense are

is that social why are you saying that

socialism you know

i think those are much more productive

because when you just ask what's the

definition

i mean the first thing is that um

believe it or not it's very hard to come

up with

definitions it's very hard to

to look at really complicated things

really complicated

i'm not gonna you know reel this back

into the whole vosh thing but for

example when voss was like what's your

definition of fascism

so what's going through my head is all

of the things i know about fascism

all of the kind of concrete historical

context in which it arose

the meaning of fascism at the time the

way it was responded to

its significance i have to use my cpu

processing power and this is what

fucking computers do right they take

i think right they take uh complicated

data and they simplify it into something

simple i think it's the hardest thing to

do

and i guess simplification is good and

that's why i said i'll simplify it but

when you simplify a word the meaning of

a word which i think is very useful i'm

not against it at all

i think the problem is that the way you

simplify can't then be um

set against all of the kinds of

uh bigger forms of data that were you

were using

to process the simple version like you

can't say okay now i've arrived at what

the essence of fascism is

and um i don't have to engage with

all the complicated mechanisms that i

went through to arrive at it anymore i

could just be content with this

definition

and forget about why i actually arrived

at the one i did

sure i yeah i mean i guess i can kind of

agree but if i return back to something

i said earlier so i said earlier the

reason why we have definitions is

because there's some

utility um i guess like um the thing

that i like about

definition so like i think the best

example of what i mean when i say a

definition

is like a it's a diagnosis like a

medical diagnosis right

so i would argue that like diagnoses

like aren't

that's not like a real thing that exists

like a human concept but like the reason

why we diagnose a disease

is because we can do something about it

right so if you get a diagnosis the best

part of a diagnosis

is hopefully it comes with some

treatment regimen right so if i've

diagnosed you with x disease

here's why treatment regimen so that's

where the good part about the diagnosis

comes from

and if we started to have a bunch of

disagreements on a diagnosis well now

we've got a lot of problems because it's

harder to talk about the prescription

or how to fix things um so more

specifically um relating to the term

fascism right

so i think that i would hope that most

people believe that the

outcomes of fascism are pretty bad i

would hope that

um you know things like you know fucking

um

things like the holocaust or any type of

like genocidal racial ethnic cleansing

whatever these are

generally bad things now if we have like

a consistent definition by which we

recognize fascism

so some like ultra-nationalistic

authoritarian populist you know taking

power

and if we have an understanding of what

what does it mean to be an ultra

authoritarian what does it mean to wield

totalitarian power what does it mean to

be a populist that weaponizes here that

when we have these concepts organized in

our head

we can for instance look at somebody

like donald trump and we'd be like

oh shit you know what this guy actually

has a lot of fascist characteristics you

know

and if i can recognize that immediately

i know that i don't like the outcome of

any fascist regime maybe i can be like

very more quickly like okay well i don't

like this particular person i can

identify very quickly why

and if somebody asks me i can say oh

well i think that he has a lot of

fascist tendencies and then we can both

have like a shared understanding of what

that means

rather than having to back and forth

argue and define and semantically

whittle each other down until we figure

out what each other means i guess

yeah i guess so to kind of um understand

where you're coming from i guess you

what you're saying basically is that

you're defining the meaning based on

the outcome more or less right um well

not necessarily i'm just saying that

like i know the outcome of this

particular meaning would be bad

so knowing the meaning is good i'm

trying to compare it to a diagnosis so

like i know what the outcome of

untreated cancer is generally

so somebody can diagnose cancer at an

early stage well then i know i can treat

against it so that diagnosis is valuable

and i don't want to spend time arguing

about what the diagnosis means or if it

exists

i just want to have like a shared

understanding so that we can okay so you

think it's

it's about what outcome it leads to

basically they're like

well yeah i'm when it comes to language

in general we exist we create language

because it serves some utility to us

but to to kind of uh pose a question

what if that outcome is purely negative

what if it just means the dissolution

of some kind of order with whereas

the actual for example positive

consequences are not

clear or they're ambiguous because for

example the way i interpret someone like

trump is that i definitely agree

with that similar somewhat similar

vaguely with fascism in the 30s

it corresponded to the demise of liberal

democratic order right

but i would then say i am not

i can't be certain that i can call

trump a fascist because he just to me he

just represents this decay and this

dissolution

i don't know what trump's positive

consequences would be well sure i mean

like trump i mean then you could argue

for some weird i mean if i'm using the

layman's version of like accelerationism

you could argue for something like that

but you'd have still at least

like so then maybe you would say like

well i think that a fascist would

ultimately be good not because i agree

with fascism but because i believe that

fascism is fascism represents some

necessary consequence of the concentr

the contradictions inherent within

capitalism

and that once that consequence is

realized fascism

that there will be some like uh uprising

against that and hopefully we end up in

some left-leaning state afterwards like

if you want to say that you could but i

still think there's a value there in

identifying the fascists

the thing with trump is that i always

understood trump and and this is

definitely related i'm not like veering

off into something about trump but

i always understood trump not in terms

of trump's positive qualities

and not from a so-called accelerationist

perspective um but um

from a perspective of we took for

granted

that this kind of liberal democratic

it's not even specifically liberal

democratic let's just say

um vaguely post-war politically correct

political order that arose was itself

the default and the norm

but if we look at american history

i mean we find that vulgar vaguely right

wing and also chauvinistic populists

i mean they seem to be the norm in in

american history i think

isn't that kind of what andrew jackson

was for example associated with my

history is fucking

dark okay i was trying to tell you but

after

yeah yeah i think

yeah i think it's it's just that um i

think we took for granted what the norm

was and what the norm wasn't i think we

we took for granted that you know the

clinton era

or even the reagan era depends on where

you think this era of american politics

started i actually think it started

maybe

reagan or jimmy carter something like

that but

um we took for granted that that was

kind of

consolidated that you know you know the

guy have you ever heard of francis

fukuyama

no the the basic idea of that guy i'm

not gonna you know bombard you with

esoteric stuff but he's a well-known guy

and he's just known for this idea that

after the 90s and after the collapse of

the soviet union it was the end of

history we reached the apex pretty much

of human development

and you know this is pretty much i mean

this is a simplification of this is what

he's known for it's not actually

what his actual views are but it's what

he's known for um

we've reached the end of history this is

the final form of

human society or whatever polit

political reality

um and i think that's vaguely imp he's

kind of

putting in intellectual terms i guess

what people

vaguely were thinking you know after

reagan or after jimmy carter that and

especially after the soviet union

collapsed that

you know uh this is the churchill's uh

worst what's it the worst one but it's

the best one what does the church will

say specifically

um churchill says i think democracy is

the is

it's like the worst government but it's

the best government of all the ones yeah

exactly precisely yeah

and i think um but when we take a

broader view of american history we see

that

it's riddled with all sorts of ambiguous

contradictions

populism explosive

national passions racial uh

conflicts all these kinds of things i

just think

i don't know why we were assuming as a

society i guess

why were we assuming that this was oh

this was over with trump and

and the reason i specifically object to

calling him a fascist

is because i think it's a way to bypass

this more fundamental confrontation with

the state of um the many uh

middle american voters who voted for him

like

there's something still at the heart and

about

america that hasn't been consolidated i

mean

and uh when we say that just trump is a

fascist we're making it seem like

he's a problem and not the symptom right

exactly yeah yeah exactly like he just

came from nowhere and then before him we

were we were somehow

already reconciled liberal democracy

sure but i mean like i agree and

disagree i i like i agree for sure

that trump is a symptom a million

percent trump did not cause

all of these republican voters to turn

into what they were there was obviously

some underlying

current there before that right and he

found a way to mobilize that well

i will say he unintentionally stumbled

into a way to motivate uh to

mobilize that um but that being said i

still think there's some value in

realizing the definitions of definitions

because if i can identify the trump as a

fascist i can say that

trump wasn't you know trump being a

fascist um it wasn't that a fascist

turned the republican party into what

this was

it said the republican party seemingly

has always been vulnerable to

voting for a fascist i think there's

some value in being able to say that and

have that argument

it's just um i think

i don't know it's it's tough for me

because to me

when i think of fascism for example i

think of

uh this was probably the most important

one that people

i don't know why people seem to forget

this one is um the context of

the decline of colonialism and war the

the military-industrial complex

this unprecedented mobilization of

society's economy

toward this um ad hoc aggression against

other countries specifically

non-european and non-western countries

i mean italy had ethiopia and libya and

then

the germans had eastern europe and this

formed the con

the context of uh fascism arising

and to me while i agree that

there's a lot of racism and chauvinism

and all those kinds of things when it

comes to trump

um i think it's it's

uh we okay in general

normal people at least think of fascism

as the worst

possible outcome of a society it's

i mean we all universally agree like the

hitler maybe may as well be synonymous

with satan you know politically

politically

um i think that a lot of people who

a lot one of the big reasons people call

trump a fascist

is because instead of critiquing

themselves for example in their own

assumptions and conceptions of politics

and the state of the american people and

so on

they immediately jump to the worst worst

possible

label just because they want to avoid

confronting a specific

state of american liberal democracy

more specifically i don't i don't

disagree at all with this this is so

this is one of the reasons why a

controversial not like

i don't like the idea of labeling like

nazis and shit like just evil people

um because i think that when you do that

you just you you pretend as though

um like nazis were like exceptional

people in human history

and that the conditions couldn't be

created to cause that group

of people to exist at any other place of

the earth that it's important not to

miss that

um and i do agree that it that i'm sure

there might be some people i don't think

it's as prevalent today

as it was like in 2016 with hillary um

there might be some people who are just

trying to say like oh well look trump

costs all of this trump costs all of us

because they don't want to take a hard

look at well hold on

maybe there might be some outcomes of

this kind of like uh

this kind of like neoliberal outlook on

the world that's caused people to be the

way they are maybe there some

responsibility lies in our current

system

in in producing somebody like trump and

making him so popular and and some

people might shirk the responsibility of

looking at themselves

um in favor of just calling somebody

else like oh he was just a fascist you

know like that's just a one-off or

something sure

i think uh so much of the trump

phenomena and trump supporters to me

was defined by just specifically their

this kind of

state of siege against you know

the libs or the left or the socialists

or

something like that like it never seemed

to me

in contrast maybe to fascism the fascist

phenomena

they never seem to actually arrive at a

some kind of positive position like at

least for example

the german the german nazis did this

they had the whole nazi ideology and

obviously mussolini did this with

explicit fascism to me the range of

people who

were trump supporters it seemed like

they only defined themselves based on

their opposition to you know the msm

the media the yeah the democrats

yeah in a shallower way a long time ago

i don't know if you ever played video

games online or anything

but um there's this whole movement

online have you ever heard of gamergate

yes yes i have

yeah like the way that i describe this

people i would just call them anti-sjw

that was literally like

all of their political beliefs are

whatever they think is like what an sjw

would think they think the exact

opposite that's how they define their

entire movement their entire ideology

yeah exactly and and to me that's kind

of why i was i was hesitant to kind of

call him a fascist because it seems to

me like it let's say trump

trump was like allowed to do it whatever

he wanted to do right

and he there was no more liberal

opposition there was no more

msm there was no more you know civil

society there's no more institutions

that were

forming this huge pressure on him i

don't i genuinely don't think he would

know what to do

i think he he thrived off of

just opposing them basically maybe to

some extent and and i also think

we can't take for granted the fact that

what i just

described this kind of bulwark of the

institutions and

they would no i would also say i mean

but i want to be i don't want to use

loaded terms here

um the establishment pretty much this

was

this trump at no point i think overcame

their power i think

uh when you the combined i mean i'll

just give you an everyday example

i i guess i'm pretty young right in 2016

i was in college

right i i was in college from 2016 to

well not i didn't begin college then but

i graduated in 2018 but i was in college

in 2016

and through my experience of the trump

era at an institutional level and this

wasn't only true for college it was true

for every other institution i

encountered it was also true for local

politics

things got more extreme in the opposite

direction as is trump things became more

politically correct things became more

anti-trump in nature so i

i don't think at any point trump

succeeded

in having his own

indepen really independent power to give

us

like what his model of society would

look like you know

sure yeah i don't even know how far he

could even think that far ahead yet

um but uh

yeah i i just uh i don't know what what

your thoughts are on you know the

the state of that at this point will

trump's whole movement

and what direction that could possibly

go in for the future but um

um i keep saying this and i i maybe i

could be wrong i don't know it seems

like the way that trump is posturing it

could be wrong but

um i still feel this way i feel like

trump is just gonna get bored and move

on i don't think that this is a guy

that's like so committed that he's gonna

like

sacrifice his personal well-being and

happiness to do any kind of political

movement i think that he's just gonna

he's just eventually he's gonna get

bored and like fuck it and then peace

out that's what i keep saying but people

keep saying he's gonna come and make his

own political thing and whatnot and

who knows i guess we'll see what about

trump's i mean because a lot of peop i'm

sorry i

forgot the statisti the exact turnout in

the election recently it was like

70 million or something

voted for him um 76 million or was that

provided it was a lot

yeah it was a lot more or less it was a

lot i don't i don't i mean those

supporters couldn't have just

you know disappeared or scattered to the

winds and it seems like there's a really

big vacuum

in the republican party right now you

know yeah especially after the capital

riots

a lot of people were turned off from the

republican party so who knows but

there's a lot of infighting right now

the democratic party so who knows

true yeah that's true

um oh anything else for me i gotta go

farm in my video game soon it's very

important for my

commune so yeah uh i guess i don't i i

don't

have anything else in mind uh okay yeah

i'm a curious personal question

oh sure what why all the posturing like

um so i don't know i'm sure you were

probably forwarded clips

i know you were um so like i listened i

was super bored one night i got sent

down some fucking youtube

uh fucking rabbit hole or whatever and i

for some reason i got the recommended

intro video to your channel it's like

you and two other people trying for like

three hours

um and i listen to a fair amount of it

almost the entire thing it seems like

you're capable of having like decently

like reasonable discussions

so why the like standing up and

screaming and shouting and

is it just for to try to like get more

interest initially to like cast a wide

net capture some people

it's actually a good question there's

there's a few reasons i want to you know

there's a few reasons that i want to

um i wanna touch on

uh the first one is that in no

particular order i can't put them in

order the first one is i want people to

have fun

i want this to be entertaining because i

because when i watch a lot of politics

i'm just getting bored you know

on twitch and youtube for sure i want to

people to have i want us to have fun you

know i want i want it to be fun i want

there to be entertainment that

value you know and i also myself want to

have fun you know i want to have fun

doing it the second reason

um i guess this was more in the case

with with you because i had a little bit

more knowledge of your background so

i never expected you were going to be

like a really bad faith actor

but it's also that

and as i'm going to confess this this is

like our first i've been only streaming

made for a month

so to go from beginning from a month of

streaming to talking to all of these

talking in front of thousands and

thousands of people like it's a lot of

i guess pressure and it's easy to get

nervous and i guess the way i respond to

that nervousness is just

becoming more energetic yeah and it's a

way to dissipate nervousness you know

um and and hype hype is a lot of

my chat is hyping me up a lot you know

that there's a lot of

intense hype you know i know for someone

like you who's really used to this and

you're

you know it's it's nothing new um it's i

guess it's not much and i completely

understand that but

to me it's like yeah of course i'm very

empathetic yeah um a lot of people look

at people in my position and they think

it's like super duper easy and it's

whatever

but there's actually like a lot of

stress like i don't think the average

human being can handle the insane amount

of crazy shit that exists in these

online communities

and nobody can really see it and you

can't really complain about it because

nobody really understands you just sound

off like really over privileged or super

entitled to complain about it so

i know what you mean yeah yeah i can i

couldn't even imagine yet because you

know you you're you know

get way more viewers than me and stuff

so i don't even know the fraction of it

but

the third reason and this is the more

nasty stuff

is that there are some peop there's some

debaters

whose whole flair doesn't come from

actually engaging and wanting to have a

normal human conversation

it comes from putting up this kind of uh

posturing and using all these kind of

bad faith tricks and

you know yeah they argue for optics

basically

exactly precisely and to me i just

wanted to prepare for that but

right off the bat you know like because

i mean i'm just going to name names

i i don't want you to take sides so if

any you can cut me off if you know you

don't want me to say this stuff

but from what i know about vos when i've

seen his earlier debates

he kind of okay i'm going to say

something insulting but

to me i always thought of wash as the

alpha he thinks he's the alpha male of

the soy boys

like he's very passive aggressive and

he's not too explicit about it but when

he's debating people he's like

because a lot of people in politics are

kind of sensitive

types of guys and they're not you know

these type of alpha whatever

he kind of just does the bare minimum to

slap him around a little bit

and then it looks like he'll he wins

basically but it's not because he

actually won

by the merits of his argumentation it's

because he basically

put up this kind of show using like you

know

gorilla you know games putting up a show

to make it seem like he's the more

dominant one you know and i

i was not going to let vosh

um put up that show in my case you know

so i guess that's why i was as

ridiculous as i was with the voss debate

but i think

you know right off the bat i asked the

guy you know hey you wanna you want to

keep it civil

or do you want to put up your show

because i can do both you know

um okay yeah

interesting gotcha yeah but but the

third one is not

it's not the it's not the reason for all

the case like that's not why i was kind

of joking around in your case you know

it was more the first two yeah i got you

yeah

do you okay final question then i'm

curious wait okay

okay first a suggestion a career

suggestion do you know who john zurka is

yeah yeah i know who he is dude have you

he's

way smarter than he seems okay i know i

know he is i know for

i do he's one of the smartest people i

know on twitch

if you can do two on two debates with

him that un-ironically would be

huge content it would be the most

frustrating experience in the world

and i think i think he might go for it i

don't know how scared he is doing like

debate content

hopefully he's not permanent i think he

got like a 10-man burning tinder stream

yeah i mean

2v2 debates like just present him as

like a serious political figure or

whatever

and dude people will lose themselves on

stream like

you know i'm 100 open to it it's just

that i don't want to like

you know impose anything on anybody

because at the end of the day i realized

we're coming from a really

controversial place politically and it

might not

be like the crazy fucking like pro gulag

shit or whatever yeah

one two against like some politics like

i don't know minimum wage or something

dumb or whatever like i just i think

that would be like

super huge entertainment i mean yeah i'd

be down for it but you know i just um

i respect if you know that's not that's

something possible

um that and then final question so do

you believe genes are real or no

um honestly uh

it's mostly a provocation you know

obviously it's mostly a provocation

i want people to realize that when

when people are talking about genes and

biology

none of this stuff is set in stone and

there's still so much

that these biologists um

these molecular biologists just don't

know and don't understand

there's a mainstream article that i have

saved somewhere

and i can send it to you in dms if you

want

and it's not written by you know any

quack it's on a mainstream respectable

website and it's written by respectable

scientists it's called it's the end of

the gene as we know it

um i think i

in a technical sense

now okay i know that it's provocative to

say there's no genes

because people like oh what are you

saying there's no there's no heredity

there's no dna

i mean there's no uh rna now that no

it's it's not what i'm saying i'm just

saying that i want

people to think about how the origin of

the concept of the gene

it does have metaphysical baggage a gene

is this kind of unit of heredity

isn't exactly compatible with what we

know today about how

heredity works i mean there is no really

single unit of heredity that's

quantifiable i mean

most if not all genes

what we describe as genes they all work

together so

thousands and thousands of genes are

working together to produce

uh our phenotypes it's not like uh it's

not as simplistic as people sure

a scientific example i could think even

regarded to that as i think for a while

people thought that dna

was like the main building block that

was kind of in charge of how everything

um exists in your cells but then we

figure out that there's like a lot of

junk dna there's a lot of repeated

sections and actually like rna is more

in charge

of like the duplicate or the replication

process and trades and there's like a

whole bunch of like

the interactions between everything are

pretty complicated um in terms of how

everything works

yeah and you know obviously the whole

field of epigenetics is you know

is putting throwing a kind of curveball

with modern evolutionary synthesis and

it's like

we thought we we had this kind of

simplistic vague idea

of genes and aren't and they code for

proteins and those create

basically who we are and that um

the genetic mutations account for the

bulwark or

phenotypical changes but we know it's so

much more

this kind of simplistic narrative just

just doesn't work anymore you know

we even know that um for dna to

to code and for dna to work it works

together with

the other uh the other

elements i guess i would call them i

don't know the other things in the cell

are all working together to

to make the gene itself work you know so

sure yeah that's where i'm coming you

know i wanted to throw that curve ball

just because

in our first conversation it kind of

sounded like you were getting bored and

i just kind of wanted to

you know i don't know oh so explain my

perspective from the first conversation

so

um i don't know if you or anyone will

believe this um i am an incredibly

genuine person

if you meet me in real life i'm the

exact same person in real life that i am

online and i believe all the same things

that i believe and you'll find that

echoing throughout

my life um because of that it's very

very hard for me to deal with people

that i perceive as being characters

because it's very hard for me to like

put on an act so when somebody is like

coming into what appears to be like kind

of like a character

i don't really want to like be authentic

and engage with it but i don't want to

like just put on a show so i'm basically

left just kind of like ah

okay and then i'm like kind of like

plugged out basically i probably think

i'm dealing with what i perceive to be

is like characters or whatever so if

you're like being like

very boisterous or very loud or standing

over there like i don't know if this is

all like a big meme and i'm not gonna

put like an actual like

effort into the discussion because i

don't know if at the end of the day like

dude why are you trying so hard like

this is all a huge meme like you look

like fucking idiots like oh okay well

it's a waste of time

yeah i completely understand that i kind

of i actually get that a lot you know

to me um i guess it was kind of my f

well i don't know

i i just i knew you weren't a bad faith

guy in general but i didn't know

like to what extent um

you would have taken me seriously like

off the bat you know but uh

now i know that you know you're actually

willing to have a normal

kind of human conversation and you know

out of all the leftists

i've talked to from so-called bread tube

um you you've you're not from bread to

whatever but you i i you know even

though you're not

yourself this kind of hardcore leftist

or whatever it just shows you how

how much bs the political spectrum is

because i think we have a much pleasant

conversation

you and i than i do with you know vosh

and

those all those other kinds of people

you know yeah it's really hard to have

conversations with people when you feel

like the entire time they're posturing

yeah i get this impression sometimes

when i talk to some people that they're

like they're not even looking at me when

they talk they're just looking to the

audience and then talking at me and it's

like uh okay

but whatever yeah yeah i mean um

yeah yeah yeah i understand that you

know going forward if you know

uh if we ever talk again or anything

i'll i'm not gonna you know

be the kind of showman or whatever

because i know you know you

in normal conversation but you know it

was a great it was a great conversation

um yeah and

yeah yeah i mean i appreciate the talk

does that have anything else you always

poke me on discord i'm usually running

around doing boring shit right now so i

can always chat if you need to okay

oh for sure for sure all right yeah that

was a good talk man see you later

yeah have a good one man let's see

everybody